After all, the society that lives for today at the expense of tomorrow has no future, while the society that lives for tomorrow at the expense of today will never survive to reach it.
We need to balance these two realities, in a pragmatic and timely fashion, right here at home in Manitoba.
Peter Denton teaches the history of technology at the University of Winnipeg and chairs the policy committee of the Green Action Centre. His column was also published in the Winnipeg Free Press.
There's still a couple of days to the weekend so to get you through it here's something to cheer you up.
Deuntay Diggs, a 2nd Lieutenant for the county sheriffs office in Stafford, Virginia, can be seen slaying it at a homecoming pep rally in the US on Friday.
If his dancing rendition of Queen Bey's 'Formation' doesn't pick you up, then maybe the school kids going berserk will do it.
My sister teaches at a high school in Virginia and she just sent me this video of their county lieutenant dancing to formation @ a pep rally pic.twitter.com/2jaXnFgYrC here for harry (@hereforthe1d_) October 14, 2016
Diggs is a motivational speaker and he says he is the first openly gay deputy to serve at the Stafford County Sheriffs Office. Two days before he gave this sensational performance, his mother had been given two months to live after her cancer diagnosis.
Deuntay is getting married in July to his partner, Benjamin Leitner, and wants to dance with his mother at the ceremony.
He cancelled his school visit to stay with her in hospital for a couple of days, but while he showed her some of his dancing videos he decided to go through with it after she encouraged him "to keep on dancing".
He told Buzzfeed: "Were sitting there talking and I said, 'Well, I want you at my wedding because were supposed to dance together'. And she hasnt seen any of my dancing videos.
"So we sat and laughed for a little bit and watched the videos, and she said, 'Well, I want you'. So I came back and I told them I wasnt going to cancel."
Diggs - who deals with race and how law enforcement is percieved - said: "The reason Im doing this is to show kids that they can make it, that they can survive, that they can be successful.
"Ive been very fortunate, at this time when people look negatively upon law enforcement, that Im able to change that narrative and open up some conversations and engage with people.
I didnt want to disappoint the kids. And dancing helps.
It certainly does. Let's look at it again.
H/T: Buzzfeed
The Taoiseach has defended the slow pace of relocating refugees from the Mediterranean to Ireland.
He told the Dail that 69 refugees had been transferred to Ireland since October 11 after fleeing the Middle East via Greece.
Doctors could be set to strike as part of a row with the HSE.
The Irish Medical Organisation is demanding management reinstate the 3,000 'living out allowance' for non consultant hospital doctors.
2.38 tonnes of cocaine have been seized, 529 human trafficking victims identified and 386 individuals have been arrested following a week-long international operation carried out in over 11,000 locations worldwide.
As well as this 181,550 was seized.
Fifty one countries and four international organisations teamed up with Europol to deliver a major blow to organised crime groups operating across the European Union and beyond.
The Global operation Ciconia Alba is said to have delivered a major blow to organised crime.
The operations focused on disrupting the most dangerous criminal networks currently active including facilitated illegal immigration, trafficking in human beings, drug trafficking and cybercrime.
Field law enforcement officers were supported 24/7 from an operation coordination centre located at Europol's headquarters in The Hague.
In one case, Austrian authorities discovered a cannabis plantation while performing checks at a brothel to identify potential victims of sexual exploitation.
The officers ordered the closure of the premises, which was being run as an illegal brothel, and a new investigation was initiated.
In another case, Europol was able to establish links between a payment card fraud case and a case on facilitating illegal immigration.
This information was forwarded to colleagues from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) based at an airport in Athens, Greece.
Following the lead provided by Europol, the officers intercepted four irregular migrants who were intending to travel to Italy. Four forged passports and four fraudulently-purchased flight tickets to Italy were found on them, and the individuals were arrested.
Also, a fake travel agency was discovered in Greece that was facilitating the trafficking of human beings and illegal immigration. The successful result was based on analysis of Europol information, notifications from airlines and the proactive approach of Greek police.
In addition, intelligence collected during the operations triggered the initiation of 449 new investigations.
Director of Europol Rob Wainwright said: "Countries and organisations across the globe working together as one entity is the modern response to borderless serious and organised crime. As an immediate result, some 386 suspects have been arrested"
24 non-EU countries were involved in the operation including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Switzerland, Thailand, USA and the United Arab Emirates as well as others.
Students are taking to the streets of Dublin today, calling for free publicly-funded third level education.
Here's @UCCSUComms from @UCCSU talking about why marching for #EducationIs important! @TheUSI #Demo pic.twitter.com/f9gWGCgEoe
The Union of Students in Ireland expects up to 5,000 people to march to Government Buildings for the protest.
They want the Government to adopt the state-funded option proposed in the Cassels report on Higher Education.
USI president Annie Hoey says an alternative option of student loan schemes would be a disaster for third-level education.
"We don't believe that young people and our students should be strapped with mortgage-style loans and debt," she said.
"We already have the second-highest fees in Europe, and we don't want them to go any higher, we believe that education should be publically funded and accessible to anyone who wants to avail of it."
The Mercy University Hospital have appealed to the public to use other care services due to a surge in patients.
Patients with less urgent complaints are asked to contact their GPs or South Doc or avail of the services at the Mercy Urgent Care Centre, St Mary's Health Campus and other urgent care units in Cork city.
A senior Iraqi general has called on Iraqis fighting for so-called Islamic State in Mosul to surrender as a widescale operation to retake the militant-held city entered its third day.
Lt Gen Talib Shaghati told reporters at a military base that up to 6,000 IS fighters are inside the city. He did not say how many of them are foreigners.
IS captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, in a lightning advance in the summer of 2014.
The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats over the past year and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq.
So far, the militants have put up fierce resistance in villages surrounding the city, where most of the fighting has been concentrated.
IS has sent trucks loaded with explosives towards the front lines and fired mortars to slow the Iraqi forces' advance.
An Iraqi officer from the 9th Division said his troops were now around one kilometre away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul.
Over the past day, IS sent 12 car bombs, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, he said, adding that Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds.
To the north, air strikes pounded Bashiqa as Kurdish forces fired mortar rounds from an area overlooking the IS-held town.
Save the Children said 5,000 people have fled to a refugee camp in north-eastern Syria from the Mosul area in the last 10 days, with another thousand waiting to enter at the border.
The group said the overwhelmed camp is "littered with waste and faeces, with a looming risk of outbreaks of disease".
It said there are just 16 toilets shared by more than 9,000 people, many of whom only have access to dirty, untreated water.
"Conditions there are among the worst we've seen, and we expect thousands more people to be on their way soon," said Tarik Kadir, head of the group's Mosul response.
The top commander of US land forces in Iraq says US army Apache attack helicopters are striking IS targets in support of the push to retake Mosul.
Adding US attack helicopter crews to the unfolding combat is an extra element of risk for American troops.
Major General Gary Volesky said the Apaches were being used at night to strike targets from a distance.
He said the mere presence of the Apaches was a confidence booster for Iraqi soldiers.
Maj Gen Volesky, commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, said he believes IS fighters in Mosul will put up a stiff defence in the city but eventually lose and morph into an insurgency.
The operation to retake Mosul is the largest launched by the Iraqi army since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Some 25,000 troops, including Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and state-sanctioned Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Units are approaching the city from different directions.
The participation of the Shiite militias in the operation to retake the mainly Sunni Mosul has raised concerns that the campaign could inflame sectarian tensions.
Rights groups have accused the Shiite militias of abuses in past campaigns against IS-held areas.
In a bid to alleviate those concerns, Shiite militia leaders announced that they will only focus on capturing the mostly Shiite town of Tal Afar to the west of Mosul, and not enter the city itself.
"The only troops who will enter Mosul are the army and police, not the Popular Mobilisation Units or the peshmerga," said Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Brigade, one of the largest Shiite militias.
"This has been agreed upon," he said at a press conference in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Amnesty International said in a report released on Tuesday that Iraqi government and paramilitary forces detained, tortured or killed hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians fleeing IS-held areas during the operation to retake the Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, earlier this year.
The Iraqi government has denied any systematic violations by security forces or the militias, and says individuals have been held accountable for occasional abuses.
Ecuador's government has said it has "temporarily restricted" WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's internet access at its embassy in London.
It came after the whistleblowing site released another batch of emails from the campaign manager of US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Ecuador's foreign ministry said it did not interfere in foreign elections but stood by its decision in 2012 to grant Mr Assange asylum.
Mr Assange, who is wanted for questioning in Sweden over a sex allegation, has been living inside the Ecuador's London-based embassy for more than four years.
Left-wing president Rafael Correa's government said it had not been pressured into making the move to restrict Mr Assange's internet access and had made the decision on its own.
WikiLeaks claimed that US secretary of state John Kerry wanted Mr Assange to stop publishing documents while talks on a peace deal continued between Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), and the Colombian government.
An accord signed with the left-wing rebel group was narrowly rejected in a national referendum.
WikiLeaks said in new tweets: "Multiple US sources tell us John Kerry asked Ecuador to stop Assange from publishing Clinton docs during FARC peace negotiations.
The Ecuadorian ministry did not give details about the type of restrictions which had been placed on Mr Assange's internet access but stated that it would not would not change WikiLeaks' ability to carry out its journalistic activities.
Mr Assange believes that if he leaves the embassy he will be extradited to the US for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks claimed there had been an "elaborate plot" to falsely claim that Mr Assange received money from the Russian government and a second plot to "frame" him for sexually molesting an eight-year-old girl.
The second plot includes the filing of a fabricated criminal complaint in the Bahamas, a court complaint in the UK and laundering part of the attack through the United Nations, it was claimed.
Kelly Steckler was born Feb. 29, 1972, in Fargo. Kelly's birth mother chose life for Kelly; for this choice, our family will be forever grateful.
Kelly Steckler, 44, Mandan, donned her angel wings on Oct. 16, 2016, at Sanford Health. Services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 21, at Spirit of Life Catholic Church, Mandan. Burial will be at North Dakota Veterans Cemetery.
Visitation will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Weigel Funeral Home, Mandan, where a prayer service will begin at 7 p.m. Visitation will continue on Friday, one hour prior to the service at the church.
At 18 months, Kelly was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis which limited her physical activity for her entire life. Kelly's joys in her life were her cat, horses, dogs and her Green Bay Packers!
Kelly graduated from Mandan High School in 1990, the University of Mary in 1994 with a bachelor's degree in business administration and a minor in computer information systems. In 1999, she completed the Bismarck-Mandan Leadership program through Bismarck State College. Kelly earned a master's degree in library science from the University of North Texas in 2003. She was a member of Beta Phi Mu International Library and Information Studies Honor Society.
Kelly started working at the Mandan Public Library in 1988 as a circulation clerk, in 1994 became Assistant Director, and in 2004, she became the Library Director of the combined Morton Mandan Public Library. She served as the Central Dakota Library Network's Financial Officer for over 20 years. Kelly was very active professionally, and was a member of American Library Association, the Mountain Plains Library Association, and the North Dakota Library Association. In over 20 years of service to the North Dakota Library Association, Kelly was an inaugural member of The Good Stuff Editorial Committee, the Public Library Section Chair, and a member of the Strategic Communications, Planning Committee and served as the Association's Legislative Committee Chair starting in 2006. In 2007, she received the President's Recognition Award for her outstanding work as the Legislative Chair. She advocated on behalf of all North Dakota public libraries and testified several times before the legislative body in support of state aid. Numerous legislators knew her by name. Her contributions have made a lasting impact that will strengthen libraries for years to come.
She also served on the Bismarck-Mandan Mayor's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, Mandan Tomorrow Leadership Pride & Image Committee, and was a past director on the Mandan Progress Organization Board.
Kelly was very active in the Arthritis Foundation and in 2006, she was chosen as North Dakota's representative to attend the Arthritis Foundation Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C. She served on Arthritis Foundation's North Dakota Leadership Board and was the 2007 and 2016 Bismarck-Mandan Arthritis Walk Honoree.
Kelly's family thanks the Sanford Seventh Floor nurses, staff and doctors for the caring, compassionate care for Kelly during her journey the past several years.
One of Kelly's favorite quotes was, "She believed she could, so she did." This statement epitomizes how Kelly led her life and everyone who was lucky enough to know her can attest to that.
Kelly is survived by her mother, Helen; her brothers, Todd (Mayra) and their children, Angela and Jacob, McAllen, Texas, and Scott (Kathy), Mandan; her aunts, Del Steckler, Edina, Minn., and Marian Gruenfelder, Laramie, Wyo.; her uncle, James (Isabelita) Doyle, Velva; and three cousins, Barbara Muller, Jean Petty and Judy Sanders.
She was preceded in death by her father, Terry Steckler; and her grandparents, Lucas and Elizabeth Steckler and Bernard and Alice Doyle.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery, Arthritis Foundation, Central Dakota Humane Society or Morton Mandan Public Library.
Go to www.weigelfuneral.com to share memories of Kelly and to sign the online guest book.
Syrian government forces and their Russian counterparts are preparing to open corridors out of the besieged districts of Aleppo, in the hope that fighters and civilians will evacuate the contested city's rebel-held quarters after weeks of bombardment has left the area in ruins.
The city's eastern quarters experienced relative peace for the second consecutive day in the run-up to the hoped-for evacuation on Thursday. Russia's military said two corridors would be opened for militants to flee to the neighbouring, rebel-held province of Idlib.
The government's overture to rebels and civilians trapped in Aleppo's east follows a pattern of evacuations around the country that the UN has likened to "forced displacement."
On Wednesday, some 2,000 residents of the once autonomous Moadamiyeh suburb of Damascus were carried by government buses to Idlib as part of an arrangement to restore government control after years of siege at the hands of the military.
Hassan Ghandour, a former Moadamiyeh resident who liaised between the suburb and besieging forces, said on Wednesday the evacuees included 700 gunmen. He said the government is to release all detainees from the suburb in exchange for the evacuation.
Several activists also left with the convoy. Wassim al-Ahmad said it would be "impossible" to live again under government authority, saying he did not trust official promises for amnesty.
Some of those remaining in Moadamiyeh struck a defiant tone.
"I'm not going to settle anything with the government," said local resident Mahmoud, who declined to give his family name out of safety concerns. "I'm going to stay in my home."
"I've spent five years of my life besieged here. I've been through war, siege, starvation... bombardment, and poison gas - I've survived with all this so I can stay here."
Government forces gassed the suburb along with two others with Sarin on the night of August 21 2013. About 1,300 people, mostly civilians, suffocated to death around the capital.
Some 28,000 people remain in the Moadamiyeh, down from a pre-war population of 105,000, according to the government.
In Aleppo, government buses queued at checkpoints leading to the besieged east prepared to take evacuees to Idlib on Thursday, according to the media arm of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the government in Syria.
The government's foreign ministry said soldiers were withdrawing from the designated corridors to reassure evacuees.
Civilians will also be allowed to evacuate to the city's government-controlled western districts.
It is unclear how many people will take up the government's offer after weeks of siege and bombardment pulverised the east and shattered its medical network.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 640 people, including 128 children, have been killed in rebel-held parts of Aleppo and the surrounding rural areas since a truce brokered by the US and Russia collapsed on September 19. It said 88 people, including 14 children, were killed in retaliatory shelling on government-held Aleppo.
Bassam Heji, a member of the Nour el-Din al-Zinki rebel faction, said the Russian offer is a "trap" that only reflects its intention to "exterminate" the residents of the eastern, rebel-held Aleppo neighbourhoods.
The arrangement follows a proposal by the UN Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, to allow al Qaida-linked militants to leave Aleppo in exchange for a truce and local autonomy for the city's eastern districts. Rebels, along with many residents, rejected the offer.
But Russia and Syria moved ahead unilaterally with the evacuation arrangements without making any promises for an extended ceasefire or self-administration.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the break in fighting should allow the moderate opposition in the east to sever ties with militants.
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would work with Russia's government to evacuate the al Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, formerly known as Nusra Front from the east.
Mr Erdogan warned about the possibility of an influx of at least one million people to Turkey in the event of a population movement from Aleppo.
"We cannot pay this cost. Those who incite this must sit down with Turkey and talk," he said.
Kurdish-led forces meanwhile pressed their campaign to drive Islamic State militants from areas in northern Aleppo province, expanding the front line with rival Turkish-backed opposition fighters also operating in the area, according to local rebels and activists.
The Russian military accused a US-led coalition air strike of killing six civilians in Hassajek, hours before the announcement that the village had been taken from IS.
Despite the brief lull in the fighting for Aleppo, most of the surrounding province has become Syria's hottest theater of combat, showcasing the complexity of the terrain where rival forces are vying for control.
In the area of Hassajek, three rival groups are battling IS: the Kurdish-led forces, Turkey-backed Syrian rebels and troops loyal to the government of President Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish-led forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, gained control of Hassajek, killing at least 10 IS militants in fighting there.
One of the fighting units in SDF, the Rebel Army, said in a statement that the clashes with IS militants continued for the third straight day further to the south. It said its troops also seized weapons and ammunition from IS.
The advance by the Kurdish-led forces has widened the front line between them and rival Syrian rebels, who in recent weeks have pushed into northern Aleppo backed by Turkish tanks and aircraft, driving out the Islamic State group from villages and towns it controlled. The Turkey-backed offensive also aims to undercut Kurdish aspirations for a contiguous and independent east-to-west stretch of territory in Syria.
The Russian military's Reconciliation Centre in Syria said the strike Hassajek also wounded four people and destroyed two houses.
Russian military surveillance spotted two Belgian F-16 fighter jets over the area at the time of the strike, the centre said, adding that Russian and Syrian warplanes were not flying over the area.
Russia's Tass news agency reported from Brussels that the Belgian defence minister denied Belgian aircraft had struck the area.
British Police are hunting a man described as one of the country's most prolific conmen.
Mark Acklom is believed to be on the run in Spain, after being released from prison for duping two brothers into paying him 200,000.
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The coal industry doesnt want to be left behind as the nation explores its energy options. Companies have been funding research for some time and North Dakota plants have adopted the latest technologies.
In a Sunday story by reporter Jessica Holdman, Lignite Energy Council President Jason Bohrer noted the nation has started to move toward a carbon-free future. The industry plans to embrace, not fight, the change. It wants to increase research and down the road would like funding from the state.
The industry approach makes sense. If coal is to remain part of the nations energy policy than some changes will be necessary. How quickly North Dakota will be in a position to provide funding is unknown. The states in transition as oil development slows and revenues decline. The upcoming legislative session will focus on balancing the budget and that might require more cuts.
So the coal industry knows research funding will have to come later. That doesnt mean the industry cant outline its goals to legislators in hopes of setting the stage for future funding.
Project Tundra, an effort to retrofit Minnkota's Milton R. Young Station near Center with scrubbers to capture carbon emitted by the plant, is being conducted by ALLETE Inc. and Minnkota Power Cooperative. Carbon-capture technologies have been deployed commercially on smaller scales, but this is a bigger challenge. The state could get involved in the project. The coal industry's proposed new energy investment program would have $250 million to $300 million funded for 10 years. The industry would like to make the fund permanent through taxes on coal extraction.
Thats a large investment by the state. There also are other major projects awaiting state funding, so its good legislators will have at least one session to digest industrys proposals. It will be beneficial to the state as the industry takes carbon-free steps. Whether the state can provide as much assistance as the industry would like remains to be seen.
Theres no doubt the opportunity exists for technological advancements. Its also possible that new technology thats developed could be sold, bringing a return on the investment. It will be interesting to see how the state and coal industry can work together.
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FARGO The three North Dakota State University juniors laughed when asked about the presidential election.
Itll be the first for Joe Knapp and Michael Petrich, both from Woodbury, Minn., and their friend Kali Oeltjenbruns, from Parkers Prairie, Minn., and they werent thrilled with the choices they faced.
Its just like a joking matter between the top two candidates, Petrich said as he sat with his friends at the Memorial Union Monday. Its just the lesser of two evils you gotta pick from.
An independent who leans Republican, he said he will not be voting for someone of Donald Trumps temperament. He knows how to run a business, he just doesn't know how to run a government.
But he said he cant bring himself to vote for Hillary Clinton either because shes crooked.
I think Hillary is the best option because she's had experience, said Oeltjenbruns, an independent who leans Democrat. Yeah, her experience hasn't been the greatest, but she knows that, so hopefully shell change.
Knapp, an independent who leans Libertarian, said he plans to vote for Gary Johnson.
Its been an unusual campaign season with two frontrunners who are both disliked by a majority of American adults, according to polls. For those who have never voted in any presidential election, its marred a milestone of citizenship.
Asked if he was excited about voting, Petrich said, Voting, yes, voting for who, no.
Emily Odland, an NDSU freshman from Velva is from a family of Republicans, and shes going to vote for the partys candidate but shes not thrilled about it:
Our choices arent the greatest between the two of them, but I think that theres really only one choice, she said.
Odland, who said she has long looked forward to voting, has already filled out her ballot.
She voted for Trump, she said, because she dislikes just everything Clinton stands for, including Clintons support for abortion, not telling the truth, scams and being married to Bill Clinton.
The leaked tape of Trump bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent came out before Odland voted, but it didnt affect her. She said the news media is biased in favor of Clinton. They make Trump look worse than he is.
Jihan Brifki of Moorhead, Minn., immigrated here in 2011 as a Kurdish refugee from Iraq, and she became an American citizen last year. Brifki, who voted in Iraqi elections, will vote for a U.S. president for the first time in November.
Brifki, 33, said she doesnt know too much about Clinton but plans to vote for her because of her experience in government. I like Trump, too, but, you know, the way he talks its not the president, she said.
Brifki said shes eager to vote for a candidate who will be good for the country and the rest of the world. She said Clinton will be good for all refugees.
Laura Orpen, an NDSU sophomore from Battle Lake, Minn., said shes been told its an unusual election. Ive heard from a lot of older people that this is the strangest election theyve ever seen, and theyve told me I feel sorry for you that you have to make this choice.
Though she said she doesnt know exactly how shell vote, she is leaning toward one. I like Hillary Clintons confidence. I think she has a lot of poise, especially when dealing with an opponent whos very hot-headed. I see her as someone who can keep a cool head.
Trump views on women upset her. I cant handle listening to him talk, she said.
Shes felt that way for a long time, but when the leaked tape came out, she said she thought, Uh-uh, hes not good enough to be president.
Orpen said she wished there was a candidate she could really embrace. When Dr. Ben Carson was in the running, she said she liked what she read about him though she didnt agree with him 100 percent.
Ali Kuno, a 29-year-old Fargo resident, became a U.S. citizen last month after moving here from Kenya in 2012. He said the political brawling between Clinton and Trump is similar to the contentious campaigns of candidates in his home country.
They accuse each other for corruption for not being good person, he said.
As a first-time U.S. voter, Kuno said hell be casting his ballot for Clinton. I see her as somebody who is nonpartisan, somebody who is neutral to all people, to all religions, he said.
Kuno said he could not vote for Trump, a racist who insults everybody.
Mason Sattler, 19, is set to graduate next fall from Minnesota State University Moorhead. For him, picking a presidential candidate is painful.
"Oh God, this hurts, he said with a smile before acknowledging that he plans to vote for Clinton. I would say that Clinton is at least more qualified. I would much rather somebody who's had some pretty nasty blunders but at least has some experience.
Originally from Oregon, Sattler said he knows not all presidential campaigns are like this one. "It just doesn't feel like we're really discussing any issues. It's a circus," he said. "We're complaining about whose scandal is worst."
Sattler, who describes himself as a hardcore liberal, said he took time to view debate footage from prior presidential races, and he found more civil discourse and more agreement between candidates on certain issues.
"We're so polarized as a country, he said. It's really unfortunate.
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An actress arrested during an oil pipeline protest last week entered a written not guilty plea to the misdemeanor charges against her, and her scheduled court appearance on Oct. 24 has been canceled.
Shailene Woodley also filed in court on Tuesday to allow her Grand Forks-based attorney, Alexander Reichert, to appear on her behalf at all future court dates in Morton County.
Reichert said it's common for him to file requests to waive the first hearing with the court. "All that she would do is sit there in court for a couple hours waiting for her name to be called," he said.
He does not know yet whether Woodley will return for future hearings.
"We're still in the early stages of the case," he said.
Woodley is charged with criminal trespass and engaging in a riot, both Class B misdemeanors, for her alleged role in a Dakota Access Pipeline protest near St. Anthony on Oct. 10. She is one of 27 people arrested during protests that day.
Woodley posted a live video of her arrest at the Morton County construction site on Facebook. It has been viewed more than 3.6 million times.
The movie star, who has acted in "Divergent" and "The Fault in our Stars," lives in Los Angeles, according to court records.
She prepared for the installation with a "heart-making workshop" the aim being to make 1468 terracotta hearts, one for each refugee languishing on Nauru and on Manus Island. Now visitors to Seeking Refuge are invited to unwrap one of the cloth-wrapped hearts, to place that naked heart with all the other unwrapped ones in the centre of the installation, to write a message of support on the cloth and then to fix it to the fence (representing enclosure) that is part of the installation.
When Australia's treatment of refugee boat people feels heartbreaking perhaps it helps the bleeding hearts among us (this reporter is one of them) to do some therapeutic heart-making.
This reporter, while conscious of doing a masturbatory, feel-good, bleeding-heart thing that will not touch a single heart of ice in Australian government or opposition and that won't help refugees in the slightest, duly took part in the artist's prescribed ritual.
One of Barak Zelig's contributions to the passionate, angry and a little despairing Seeking Refuge is his tiny clay and plastic Large boat for a few people. It is so tiny that, standing on a white-painted windowsill, it looks as though it is afloat on a flat expanse of white ocean.
The little work requires quite a long, close stickybeak, the artist explained to this reporter.
Look closely at the jet-black human figures and you'll find that there are men, women and children among them. Seasickness is plainly tormenting some of them. By their dress some of them are soldiers because, Zelig is saying, in these terrible boat people refugee circumstances the distinction between fighter and civilian is often blurred.
He says that their jet blackness suggests that they are smothered in crude oil, a symbolic reference to how oil conflicts (for example in Libya and Iraq) are part of the horrors that Mediterranean region refugees are fleeing from. And another reason for the total blackness of everyone is that by making them all the same (no varieties of complexion and dress) they're given what Zelig calls a "universality". They are all alike just as all members of mankind are alike, meaning that all of us should think of them as brothers and sisters we should care about and work to help. There (desperately bobbing about on the sea in fragile boats) but for the grace of God, but for happenstance, go all of us.
A motorcyclist who caused a horror crash which killed a man and seriously injured two others on the Monaro Highway south of Canberra has told a court he wished he was the one who died.
Joe Ciantar, 67, had his leg amputated as a result of the Royalla collision in which Raymond Solway, 65, was thrown from his motorbike and died on November 28 last year.
The scene of the fatal crash on the Monaro Highway at Royalla. Credit:Jay Cronan Fairfax Media
He pleaded guilty to negligent driving causing death and two counts of negligent driving causing grievous bodily harm.
Ciantar sobbed as five victim impact statements detailing the lasting grief and injuries caused by the smash were read aloud in the ACT Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
After months of pressure, the Baird government has caved into the demands of lawyers and will reconsider some of the controversial aspects of its green slip reforms.
On Wednesday, the NSW Department of Innovation and Better Regulation sent a letter to legal bodies, including the Law Society of NSW and the Australian Lawyers Alliance, saying it will reconsider aspects of the proposed compulsory third party insurance scheme.
The reforms are not off the table. The government is pausing the process to re-examine recommendations put forward by the legal profession in relation to legal costs.
Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation Victor Dominello confirmed the "interim measure" to implement a proposal to restrict legal fees for low-severity claims via a regulation change.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has widened its probe into Clive Palmer from his company Queensland Nickel to include other entities associated with the former parliamentarian.
The revelation of the broader investigation in Mr Palmer's business affairs was made by ASIC commissioner John Price during Wednesday's Senate estimates hearing in Canberra.
Clive Palmer at Brisbane's Federal Court during the public examinations into the affairs of Queensland Nickel. Credit:Jorge Branco
"We do have some additional interests in various other corporate entities associated with Mr Palmer," Mr Price told the hearing.
He declined to comment further on what other entities associated with Mr Palmer had come under investigation by the corporate watchdog.
The new owner of Carlton & United Breweries has wasted no time extending an olive branch to union leaders in an attempt to end a feud that has seen the company's Abbotsford factory picketed for 18 weeks.
Just weeks after AB InBev sealed its mega-merger with CUB's former parent SAB Miller, a special meeting has been organised for Thursday morning in front of Fair Work Commission president Iain Ross in an attempt to break an impasse over maintenance workers at the plant.
In a letter to two unions, newly appointed CUB chief executive Jan Craps said management had asked the Fair Work Commission to "attempt to bring the parties together to resolve the dispute".
In the letter last week, Mr Craps said he had recently commenced his new role as the regional president for AB InBev, the Belgium-based multinational that recently took over CUB from former owner SABMiller.
Doing well in the final year of high school may no longer be enough to land that first job.
A group of prominent employers including KPMG, Blackmores, Macquarie University, Hungry Jacks, Aussie Home Loans and Luna Park have agreed to ask prospective employees if they have a Duke of Edinburgh Award to help assess whether they are well-rounded and team players. The award is a youth development program for people aged 14 to 25 and involves community service volunteering, physical recreation, learning new skills and taking an adventurous journey.
Neelam Gopalani believes her Duke of Edinburgh awards helped her secure her first job with a major accounting firm after she completed high school.
After completing her bronze, silver and gold Duke of Edinburgh medals, she started work as a cadet accountant with PwC Australia.
GRAFTON -- A Grafton man was ordered to 15 years in prison for what Pembina County prosecutors say is the worst attack on a law enforcement officer they have seen.
Clifford Edward Monteith III, 27, signed a plea agreement that would drop four charges, including a Class A felony count of attempted murder, if he pleaded guilty to five charges, including a felonies for assault and disarming or attempting to disarm a law enforcement officer.
Pembina County District Judge Laurie Fontaine sentenced Monteith on Monday to 15 years in prison minus 134 days credit for time served.
What we were looking for was definitely a sentence that would serve the interest in protecting the community, and he will be off the street for 15 years, which is substantial, Pembina County States Attorney Ryan Bialas said. At 15 years, there is no doubt in my mind he will be able to go in and complete programs in order to keep him safe from himself as well as the community safe from him in the long run.
The sentence follows a June 5 traffic stop in which Monteith attacked Deputy Brad Bowman with a hunting knife, according to court documents. Charges state Monteith punched and head-butted Bowman multiple times and tried to take the deputys gun from him. Bowman used a Taser on Monteith, who fought it off, and ran to his patrol car to escape the attack, which ended when the deputy shot Monteith three times. After kicking the side of the patrol car, Monteith fled but eventually was arrested.
Bowman feared for his life and was injured during the attack but since has made a full recovery. Monteith also recovered from his injuries.
Defense attorney Erik Escarraman said he thought his client was remorseful.
I think what has happened was a tragedy for everyone, including himself, Escarraman said. It should help him enable a new life. I think this is the start of a path forward.
Monteith had a long history of criminal cases, including theft, driving under the influence of alcohol and aggravated assault.
On Thursday morning the board of Crown Resorts will be in the firing line. The shareholders, who will assemble before them at the company's annual meeting in Perth, will be looking for answers, having watched more than 10 per cent wiped off the value of their shares this week. But its largest shareholder, James Packer, won't be sitting on the stage and taking the investor heat.
Crown is now a company in crisis its entire China-based workforce is in detention and its Chinese customers' details are in the hands of authorities following the police seizure of company laptops.
Before facing investors, directors will have held their Wednesday evening board meeting a gathering that will more closely resemble a war room strategy session than a usual update of first-quarter trading conditions and consideration of the accounts.
It will be a mettle-testing time for the board, who bear the ultimate responsibility for the operations of the company and its behaviour.
The Australian Energy Market Operator's updated findings on Wednesday in effect clear wind power per se. The report says the operator-overseen settings designed to shut down individual wind turbine generation after a series of shocks to the system were wrongly set too low. As such nine of the 13 wind farms online at the time of the event did not ride through the six voltage disturbances that flowed from five system faults within 88 seconds.
The Clean Energy Regulator figures gain extra potency in light of a second reality check: that the anti-renewables panic in reaction to the South Australia blackout on September 28 was misguided and politically skewed.
First news that little more than a year's pollution from the Adani coal mine planned for central Queensland would wipe out most of the foreseeable gains from the $1.7 billion taxpayers have forked out for the Coalition's Direct Action emissions reduction scheme.
What's more, the AEMO concludes that "the most well-known characteristic of wind power, variation of output with wind strength (often termed 'intermittency'), was not a material factor". Indeed, less than 5 per cent of the wind power reduction was due to excessively strong winds stopping turbine generation.
By contrast, technical glitches stopped back-up coal-fired power stations from plugging the gap as the emergency plan demanded.
The South Australian emergency findings expose Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg for unhelpful politicking. Despite backtracking later, he must be ruing this comment: "When you have a high use of renewables some 41 per cent in South Australia it leads to a lack of consistency in the quantity of generation namely that, when the wind is not blowing or when the sun is not shining, electricity is not being generated."
Renewables such as wind, solar and hydro power must be part of any comprehensive plan to meet our global emissions reduction commitments. The question of how much depends both on cost and reliability.
Oliver Yates, the outgoing chief executive of the government-overseen green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, told the Herald that the Turnbull government should raise the renewable energy target and be more ambitious than targets it agreed to in Paris last December. They were to reduce 2005-level emissions by between 26-28 per cent by 2030 to try to hold global warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
There must already be enough guns in Australia to shoot every feral pig a thousand times over. What is going on? Ian Trevena Mosman So, David Leyonhjelm likes guns and a fast action shotgun in particular. Big deal! But the fact that he is prepared to offer up his vote in the Senate on the completely unrelated matters of immigration or industrial relations law shows him to be an utterly unethical political game player. I hope the voters of NSW remember this when there is an opportunity to remove him from the Senate at the next election. Peter Winkler Vaucluse Senator Leyonhjelm is a very dangerous man to have in Parliament. Any agenda to relax gun control laws is not wanted by the vast majority of Australians. The Senator's support of guns would have an eager audience in the US where gun violence wreaks havoc everyday and causes nothing but misery.
John Cotterill Kingsford What is the reason for wanting to import a rapid-fire Adler shotgun into Australia and why the need to reverse the ban on any such dangerous weapon? Perhaps more perplexing and worrying is that we have elected a senator, David Leyonhjelm, who is pushing this move and a Prime Minister who was apparently willing to consider compromising his integrity, ignoring the consequences and sacrificing the peace and safety of us all. Christina Foo Wahroonga As each day passes, Malcolm Turnbull is looking more politically inept and hamstrung by the arrangements he has been forced to put into place to protect his position as Prime Minister, as well as the concessions he might need to make in order to get crossbench support to get government bills passed by the Senate.
His fumbling performance in relation to the import ban on the Adler shotgun and growing community outrage over recent revelations about government responsibility for abuse of asylum seekers, have left his government scrambling to find scapegoats for their own shortcomings. A most unedifying sight. Phyllis Vespucci Reservoir (Vic) We should not be surprised that the Prime MInister's political judgment is once again being questioned. His shortcomings in this area have been evident for some time. They were first exposed in the disastrous Godwin Grech affair and revealed again in his ill-timed and ill-thought double dissolution election. They were evident once more in the way he was caught flat-footed by Labor's Medicare scare campaign (lifting the freeze on the Medicare rebate would have spiked Labor's guns) and again in his refusal to budge on the issue of same-sex marriage. John Howard was often criticised for being a cunning politician yet it was this very cunning which made him such a political survivor. Malcolm Turnbull appears to have none of that cunning and, as a consequence, only a remote prospect of survival.
Garth Clarke North Sydney Asylum-seeker treatment masked in cloak of hypocrisy In light of successive governments' well-documented outrages committed against asylum seekers and accepted refugees, and the various tactics used against those who keep their plight in the public mind, it must be some kind of sick joke that Australia is seeking a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, something akin to Roger Rogerson applying for the job of police commissioner ("Report finds human rights activists suffer climate of fear", October 19). I won't labour the point that has already been eloquently expressed by so many reports, the latest by Amnesty International and yet another UN envoy. That Australia not only trashes its own laws, conventions, treaties and reputation in a quest to stop asylum-seekers arriving by boat, but also does so under the sanctimonious pretence of stopping people-smuggling and preventing deaths at sea, is perhaps the most galling abrogation of our country's humanity. If I may paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the government should direct its marketing campaign to deter refugees by suggesting that they seek sanctuary in Afghanistan or North Korea, countries where brutality can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
Andrew Dalton Annandale The level of self-flagellation on the Letters page over the issue of the treatment of asylum seekers on Nauru is worthy of a Dan Brown novel. Will all those who are "ashamed to be Australian" actually leave this "cruel" country and stampede to New Zealand in trendy disgust? Should New Zealand be worried? Garrett Naumann Cammeray NSW taxpayers facing losses So the Chinese are erecting a Great Wall between the new casino and the Chinese VIP market with the likelihood that Packer profits will shrink ("James Packer's Barangaroo could be the world's tallest white elephant", October 19).
I'm not sure how Elizabeth Knight can confidently predict the Premier will stick to his promise to keep pokies out of the place given his recent pirouette. If she's right there are other solutions: Packer could just cop the loss, someone could write a children's book called "The Tallest White Elephant" and plough the profits back into the venture or another NSW asset could be sold off. My churning stomach tells me there is only one solution with the current mob in Macquarie Street NSW taxpayers are going to have to dig deep. Lyn Savage Coogee Let's get this straight. The Baird government allowed James Packer to build his hotel over height limits and on land dedicated for public space based on a business model that rests on practices considered illegal in China?
Todd Hillsley Homebush More than a third of Crown Casino's revenue last year came from international visitors, mostly from mainland China. With China cracking down and Crown's income taking a hit, my bet is that James Packer will raise the stakes by crying poor and seeking more modifications to his Barangaroo casino plan. Perhaps more land, possibly more apartments and probably poker machines. Mike Baird may say "no" now, but I don't have a lot of confidence that he will hold that line if Packer threatens to pull the plug. This government has demonstrated time and again that money talks, and Packer still has oodles of it. Denis Wolff Carlingford
Barangarooted. Jim Dewar North Gosford How many low-rent homes could fit into Packers' Barangaroo building? If its future as a casino fleecing whales is collapsing perhaps the government could take it over and offer it to the residents of Sirius and Millers Point as an alternative. Peter Wilson Quorrobolong I take it that James Packer is not planning on visiting China anytime soon.
Patrick St George Goulburn Jobs for (Liberal) boys I can remember when the most regular taunting of the Labor Party by the Liberals was that it was a party run by "faceless men" and that it constantly provided "jobs for the boys". With two recent headlines, it would seem that the shoe is definitely on the other foot ("O'Farrell joins Abbott, Baird in backing Liberal voting reform", October 19, "Dumped MPs 'warehoused' by mates in advisory roles", October 18). Brian Collins Cronulla Life in the real world
Don't you just love these people who claim they know about "the real world", and that others don't? Their "real world" mostly turns out to be a mean and cynical one, devoid of compassion. Stephen Sasse (Letters, October 19) asks: "Where is the vision and systems thinking in Merkel's unilateral decision to open Germany to more than a million refugees?" Well, no doubt Angela Merkel understands that taking in these refugees will slow the gradual decline in the population of Germany, and as they are mostly young, also slow its aging. That's vision and demographic systems thinking for a start. Moreover, it is likely she is aware that these refugees are survivors with above-average resourcefulness and a determination to make the most of the opportunities offered them. Undoubtedly she's also aware of the role that the the exclusion of minorities has played in German history, and wants to do what she can to make amends this time. And she's aware of the role that compassion can play in healing damaged lives. That's all real world thinking in my book. And good on her for her courage.
Geoff Gordon Cronulla Senate poll drawback Ron McCallum's proposal of an election for every casual Senate vacancy would be open to gaming (Letters, October 19). Imagine the incentive for an incumbent government to offer jobs to opposition or minor party senators that would arise from his suggestion. A government would most likely benefit from a casual Senate vacancy in an election that would effectively freeze out minor parties. David Godden North Tamworth Little people ignored
While the government presses ahead with its union-busting legislation, where is the legislation to protect the 200 home owners struggling to have their homes not only completed but completed satisfactorily following the collapse of Bob Day's building companies (Letters, October 19)? Corrado Tavella Rosslyn Park (SA) US disquiet Terry Beath (Letters, October 19) is surprised the US has reached peak snake oil but surely the central talent of Donald Trump is his capacity to weaponise stupidity and we are sadly still a long way from peak stupidity. That other great American oracle Forrest Gump warned that stupid is as stupid does, so given that voting has already been under way in the States for three weeks we must hope that Beath is not in for more unpleasant surprises.
The number of Australians arrested and hospitalised overseas skyrocketed last financial year, prompting a warning from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop about reckless behaviour and the growing workload placed on Australian consular officials.
A total of 1551 Australians were arrested in foreign countries in 2015-16, an increase of 23 per cent, with drugs, fraud and assault the most common offences. There were 391 Australians assisted in overseas jails, 61 of which were in mainland China.
A further 1667 Australians landed themselves in overseas hospitals, an increase of 15 per cent. The biggest hospitalisation hot-spots were Thailand, (176 incidents) Indonesia (153), the US (122), New Caledonia (75) and Vietnam (72).
Ms Bishop said the figures made for "interesting reading". She was particularly concerned about a lack of knowledge about local laws and customs, noting that Australian consular action was "significantly constrained" once people were subject to a foreign legal system.
The task of being an intelligence chief has become tougher with the rise of cyber threats and terrorism, according to the former head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, David Irvine, who says he would like to see a "much stronger" national cyber industry. Speaking during a rare interview in Canberra, Mr Irvine said "when you put cyber on top of [terrorism], it takes a bit of time off your sleep at night. The two issues have grown exponentially within a couple of decades and while the nature of the threats is the same, the vector has changed. And cyber is a new and very potent vector." Former director-general of ASIO David Irvine said Australian companies ''lose control'' of their information when it goes overseas. Credit:Jeremy Piper Mr Irvine, who led Australia's overseas spy agency ASIS before he headed up ASIO, said he'd been "horrified" at the revelations of Edward Snowden, the subcontractor to the National Security Agency who exposed vast top secret US government programs for monitoring global communications. "People say, well nobody lost their lives as a result of Snowden, but how do you know that? You run through your mind all the possible consequences of having your capabilities, which are there to defend the country, exposed, and once exposed they become much weaker capabilities. And that was the impact of Snowden."
Mr Irvine expressed surprise at the "baldness" of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee data base (allegedly by Russia) in the current US presidential election campaign, aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton. "There has always been in the espionage/sabotage business the use of purloined information to obtain a political objective" he said. "But the baldness of [this] is a little bit surprising, the unsubtlety even more surprising. "The tragedy is that it restricts the freedom of our politics in a whole variety of ways, it puts strictures on our political decision makers ... they have less free conversations, become more afraid to express themselves in emails. I certainly am much more careful in the way I express myself in emails than I might have been a few years ago." Mr Irvine was a guest at a series of security briefings for government agencies organised in Canberra this week by Australian cyber security firm Nuix. Also attending the briefings was the company's US-based vice-president, Keith Lowry, who worked at the Pentagon at the time of the Snowden leaks and lead a team trying to assess the damage from the revelations. He told Fairfax Media that many Australian government departments were "still exposed to serious data security risks because they do not conduct ongoing insider threat assessments". Mr Irvine said cyber security was the area where those charged with protecting critical infrastructure in Australia "really had to focus in the next few years".
So concerned is the head of the Treasury about the cost of housing, he says he is having to help out his own son, and that parents like him are endangering their superannuation.
"It's a worry, the Bank of Mum and Dad," Treasury secretary John Fraser told a Senate estimates hearing.
"I talk with people my age, and the Bank of Mum and Dad is becoming more and more prevalent. It has impacts on superannuation, where superannuation is going to, it has impacts on why people are saving in their older years, to fund their children's housing needs. And not just purchase, but often rents.
"I am not talking not just about young people entering the housing market as young professionals, I am talking in particular about the lower income people. It's an area that I do worry about."
Women currently make up 17 per cent of BHP's staff. So it's got a lot of work to do to reach its ambitious target to have women make up half its workforce by 2025. The policy will be announced at the company's annual shareholder meeting in London on Thursday. [James Wilson/Financial Times] () 3. China has Crowns' details Chinese police have seized computers, laptops and mobile phones of Crown employees and almost certainly have the company's detailed records on the gambling habits of the company's big spenders. [Philip Wen/Fairfax] 4. Abbott's new 'logic'
Former PM Tony Abbott appears on the ABC's 7.30 program on Wednesday night. Credit:ABC It's a marvellous world inside Tony Abbott's mind. His latest request for sane folk to suspend their belief in things like logic and facts and written statements is a marvel. Last night he appeared on 7.30 and attempted to deny he had struck his own deal to allow the Adler shotgun into the country after 12-month ban. [Watch] The email confirming the deal was sent by an advisor to Minister Michael Keenan. But Tony Abbott says even though it belonged to his government, because the correspondence was sent by a "staffer in a minister's office," he never personally struck any deal on guns. [Tom McIlroy/Fairfax] "Tricksy," I think Gollum would say.
When asked if he'd be interested in running for the leadership, he said: "I'm not expecting a vacancy anytime soon." "I think the last thing we need in this country is a revolving door prime ministership," he added. And when pressed on the speculation he'd like the job back: "Well it's not a question of what I might like, it's a question for what the partyroom wants." I think we can safely say once and for all, we all know what's he's up to! And who can blame him, watching Turnbull make a fist of it seemingly every other day. Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce during Question Time. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The Daily Telegraph reports Deputy Prime Minister and federal Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce also supports allowing the Adler in. [Andrew Clennell] This is also referenced in an excellent analysis piece by Gratts. [Michelle Grattan/The Conversation] It's a bizarre world indeed when Abbott is siding against the Nats, as Mark Kenny notes. [Fairfax] 5. In other politics news: You can't make this stuff up. DFAT flew 23 boffins to Paris for a talkfest on...how to save money! [Heath Aston/Fairfax]
John Fraser Treasury Secretary before a Senate Committee at Parliament House in Canberra. Credit:Andrew Meares Australia's triple-A rating could be downgraded as soon as the mid-year economic update is issued (due by the end of the year) and Treasury Secretary John Fraser says this would affect us all. [David Uren/The Australian] Fraser says soaring private and government debt is threatening the rating. [Jacob Greber/Financial Review] In Queensland, former Premier Campbell is saying I-told-you-so after Standard & Poors cited his politically fatal public sector job cuts as a reason to affirm that state's AA+ rating. Newman also says public servants have since thanked him because they've gone on to start new and exciting careers. [Courier Mail] The bungled online census will cost taxpayers $30 million. [Primrose Riordan/Financial Review]
And it's been a while since an intervention from Jacqui Lambie. The Tasmanian independent is now demanding Australian soldiers be allowed to conduct war crimes if their opponents belong to Islamic State or the Taliban. What was that about never letting the terrorists win? [Andrew Greene/ABC] Peta Credlin says male chiefs of staff are not accused of having affairs with their bosses and the accusation that she was having an affair with Tony Abbott is sexist. [Sky News] And don't miss Deborah Snow's excellent interview with former spy boss David Irvine. [The Sydney Morning Herald] 6. Saudi royal family executes one of its own Prince Turki bin Saud Al Kabir shot dead a man after a brawl. He was executed on Tuesday - making it one of the first-known executions of a royal family member since 1975.
Saudis have reportedly largely approved of the decision. [Bloomberg] And that's it from me today, you can follow me on Facebook for more.
For one of her final acts as America's First Lady, Michelle Obama confirmed she is the sun the White House revolves around, or, to be more apt, the disco ball.
Obama saved the best til last and pulled on a bright, slinky, Studio 54-esque dress by Versace for her last State Dinner where she and husband Barack hosted Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi and his wife, Agnese Landini for an evening of buttermilk gelato and American Wagyu beef.
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama welcome Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his wife Agnese Landini to the White House. Credit:AP
The rose gold gown that lit up the usually dull Washington solar system was made out of a glomesh looking material. A fabric synonymous with Australian accessories brand Oroton, which created purses using the gold and silver metallic mesh back in the 1970s.
Her latest look has been heralded by the fashion press as a "Goddess Fashion Moment" while others used the opportunity to pledge their allegiance to Obama, signing off stories about her outfit with, "Miss you already".
It started with a trip to the pub on a Friday night. But what unfolded between a group of ice-addled young men over a weekend in suburban south-western Sydney is hard to fathom.
Twenty-year-old Dane McNeill was subject to what the coroner described as a "lingering death" beaten, stabbed, bound and drugged before his body was stuffed into a suitcase, dumped in a reserve and set on fire.
Victim Dane McNeill was attacked after asking for help with a debt.
Azam Charbaji, 26, and his brother Haysem, 24, were found guilty of the brutal murder by a jury on Wednesday after a trial lasting nearly a month in the NSW Supreme Court.
Haysem's then girlfriend Lexy May Jamieson, 26, was found guilty of accessory after the fact after she sought advice on how to clean up the murder scene and dispose of the body.
He is accused of defrauding a Sydney-based technology company of $9 million and using the proceeds to make repayments on a multimillion-dollar mortgage and transfer money to bookmaker Tom Waterhouse.
Andrew Sigalla, a former director of listed company TZ Limited, pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court on Wednesday to 24 charges of defrauding the business.
Andrew Sigalla (right) leaves the Supreme court on Wednesday. Credit:Jessica Hromas
At times Mr Sigalla grimaced and shook his head in the dock in Court 1 in the King Street court building in Sydney.
The complex fraud trial, which is expected to run for well over a month, opened with allegations Mr Sigalla used his position as a director "dishonestly with the intention of directly gaining a benefit" for himself, his companies or an associate.
The State Health Department is revising permits for special oil field waste companies to require monitoring of all loads that have potential for radioactivity.
The modification from suspected to potential radioactivity comes after department surveys this summer found three of 12 special oil field waste operators had illegal radioactive material at their landfills.
Steve Tillotson, assistant director of the state's solid waste program, said about half of the companies affected have received notice of their permit revisions, with the rest in process.
It is a fairly long process that we go through, said Tillotson, noting that the department has the authority to revise permits for cause.
All three of the companies found with illegal radioactive waste had applied to change their permits to dispose of up to 50 picocuries of radioactive waste under new rules that increase the level from 5 picocuries. So far, none has been approved.
One of those companies -- IHD Disposal, which operates a site north of Alexander in McKenzie County -- was ordered to hire a third-party inspector after radioactive waste was discovered in May and June. The company removed about 950 tons of material at that time, then removed an additional 980 tons in September based on the third-party findings.
IHD has since put its radioactive waste disposal application on hold. Manager Chris Kreger said the landfill is monitoring all incoming loads with a hand-held detector and will upgrade to a portal-style monitor within a couple of weeks.
He said some loads have had elevated readings, but they are as likely to come from soils with naturally occurring radiation, which is not regulated, as they are from prolonged contact with filters or other oil field technology.
Kreger said the modified permit is not a problem for IHD.
Theres not anything in there thats causing acid reflux. The procedural changes are nothing that we cant live with, he said.
He said IHD intends to move forward later with its request for a revised permit to handle the new level of radioactive waste.
We will, eventually. Right now, were working with the county to make sure the county is comfortable and understands our processes, he said.
Tillotson said the department will not take action against IHD for the violation.
As a result of the departmental survey, Gibson Energy removed 18 yards of illegal waste from its WISCO landfill near Williston, and Secure Energy removed 10 loads from its 13-Mile Landfill at Williston. Both of those companies also have applied to handle the new, higher level of radioactive waste allowed under the new rules.
The debate over shaking up Queensland's retail trading hours is more complex than just a fight between big business and small corner stores, an issues paper says.
The Palaszczuk government released the paper on Wednesday, inviting the public to have a say on options for retail trading hours reform as part of its review.
The report illuminates how restrictions may encourage shoppers to make purchases online, outside of trading hours, rather than locally during trading hours, and the growing number of households with dual incomes or single parents contributing to many people being time-poor.
It also points out that negative impacts of extended trading hours on small business may be "overstated".
Zhang Sitong was saving a friend's phone number on his Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone when it started to vibrate and smoke. He threw it on the ground and told his friend to start filming.
Two employees from Samsung Electronics showed up at his house later that day, he said, offering a new Note 7 and about $US900 ($1166) in compensation on the condition that he keep the video private. Zhang angrily refused.
Only weeks before, even as Samsung recalled more than 2 million Note 7s in the United States and elsewhere, the company had reassured him and other Chinese customers that the phone was safe.
"They said there was no problem with the phones in China. That's why I bought a Samsung," said Zhang, a 23-year-old former firefighter.
Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas met with the French owners of the state's dirtiest power station in Paris earlier this month amid speculation the plant could be shut down permanently as early as next April, costing up to 1000 jobs.
The state government has confirmed Mr Pallas held private talks with Hazelwood's majority owner, French energy giant Engie, on October 4 whilst in Paris.
Hazelwood plant and mine from the air. Credit:Jason South
On Wednesday Premier Daniel Andrews refused to say what was discussed at the meeting. But it comes at a crucial juncture for the Latrobe Valley, with the government scrambling to formulate a community assistance plan ahead of a looming announcement.
That followed revelations in The Age that Hazelwood, which supplies up to one-quarter of the state's electricity, could be closed as early as April 1.
Russell Street bomber Stan Taylor has died in custody.
Taylor has spent his last 30 years behind bars for the 1986 bombing of the old police headquarters in Russell Street, Melbourne.
The bombing killed 21-year-old Constable Angela Taylor and wounded 21 others.
Taylor is believed to have died at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne on Wednesday aged 79. His health had been deteriorating for more than a year.
Jay Franklin says he is living in constant pain. Professor Downie said after the Quebec government restricted medically assisted death to people who who were "at the end of life" - the same approach since adopted for the whole country - one man decided to starve himself for 53 days to qualify. The 61-year-old man who was living with severe disability after a stroke, Jean Brault, also reportedly refused water for eight days so his body would deteriorate to the point where he was eligible for doctor-assisted death. In another cruel twist, Professor Downie said the wording of Quebec's law meant Mr Brault had to do it slowly so he would retain enough mental capacity to re-confirm his request immediately prior to a doctor giving him a lethal drug - a legislated requirement. In June, a Victorian parliamentary inquiry recommended the government introduce legislation to allow adults with "decision making capacity, suffering from a serious and incurable condition who are at the end of life to be provided assistance to die in certain circumstances". It describes end of life as "final weeks or months of life".
The state government has until December to respond to this recommendation but already Health Minister Jill Hennessy has said she supports law reform based on her mother's experience of multiple sclerosis, a neurological condition that can slowly rob people of physical and mental function. In an interview with The Age last month, Ms Hennessy said her mother has at times expressed a desire to control her own death but instead "has to literally wither away until an infection takes her, or she chokes, or pneumonia comes by virtue of her body breaking down internally". "It's unbearable to think that will be the end of her life," Ms Hennessy said. Professor Downie said the Victorian government should consider that people with such conditions may not qualify for a law that is restricted to people dying, and that some of these excluded people might resort to desperate measures to qualify. Jay Franklin at hospital in 2016. Credit:Justin McManus
Another practical problem that has arisen in Canada is that people receiving strong painkillers leading up to a medically assisted death have to be "lifted" out of their medication to ensure they have the mental capacity to re-confirm their request immediately prior to receiving the lethal drug. "Can you imagine that?... You bring somebody back into a state of excruciating pain in order for them to say that's what I want," she said. Ms Hennessy declined to comment this week on who should qualify for any future law, but chair of the committee that recommended the legislation, Edward O'Donohue, said six of the eight committee members agreed to restrict any potential law to people in the "final weeks or months of life". "Decisions at the end of life are a difficult and complex area and we were seeking to limit suffering while respecting the sanctity of human life," he said. Mr Franklin is disappointed with this and says if the South Australian government allows people without a terminal illness to access its potential law, he will move interstate immediately to try and qualify.
He says over the past 10 years he has thought a lot about ways to die because he is not eligible for an intestinal transplant and his pain is escalating without adequate relief. Mr Franklin says there is no prospect of his condition getting better, and that he often requires hospital care to get intravenous painkillers, and treatment for infections that enter his blood stream through the catheter in his chest. He fears an infection could take his life in an intensive care unit where he is hooked up to machines with wires coming out of his body, or that a painful bowel obstruction will occur. "That's not the way I want to go," he says, adding that he could also continue to live for decades in increasingly distressing pain. Mr Franklin says he also faces another conundrum. He says he has obtained a lethal drug to take his own life, but isn't sure the dosage is sufficient to ensure his body absorbs enough to die. Even if he does come across an adequate dose, he says he would have to strongly consider taking it alone to prevent loved ones being suspected of assisting a suicide - a criminal offence with penalties of up to five years' jail.
Teachers at a troubled high school in Western Australia's Goldfields region that was trashed just hours after a $45 million redevelopment was unveiled want security guards on-site around the clock.
Three 13-year-old boys and a 10-year-old boy were charged with a string of offences after Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School and another school in the town were broken into and vandalised on the weekend, leaving a $100,000 trail of damage.
The crimes prompted the mayor to ask Premier Colin Barnett to attend an emergency summit to deal with the town's social problems, which largely involve youth crime.
Mr Barnett and deputy premier Liza Harvey will attend the Kalgoorlie Leadership Summit on Saturday, November 5.
Just when we thought the Perth robber who accidentally pepper-sprayed himself in the face would take out the award for worst crook of the year, two teens on Wednesday have gifted us a new entry.
The pair are allegedly linked to a break-in at a house in Waikiki two weeks ago where a raft of belongings were stolen from a Perth family, including the mother's mobile phone.
The duo began taking selfies on the stolen mobile phone's camera. Credit:Facebook
Weeks on, police investigations had failed to track down the culprits - that was until the duo began taking selfies on the stolen mobile phone's camera - which they assumedly didn't realise were being uploaded to the mother's iCloud account.
"[On Wednesday], I noticed photos on my iPhone through streaming," the mother, who did not want to be named, said. "I had both my stolen iPhone and iPad hooked through my Apple account and connected through iCloud.
Razor blades have been discovered buried in the sand of a Waikiki playground.
The discovery was initially made on Tuesday evening, when two children were allegedly injured playing in a sand pit opposite to Waikiki Primary School.
The playground is now open.
A City of Rockingham spokesperson said council workers were sent to sift through the playground's sand on Wednesday morning.
"The sand pit area has been blocked off since 7pm on Tuesday night, directly after the incident happened," a spokesperson said.
London: The British government is counting on Australia's taste for British beer and cider to boost its Brexit trade plan and is planning an ad blitz to whet our appetites.
It also hopes we want more of their jam, tea and biscuits.
Some British ales on the bar at the Sun Inn in Faversham, UK. Credit:Bloomberg
The "UK Food and Drink International Action Plan" was launched on Tuesday by the UK secretary of state for food Andrea Leadsom a prominent "Brexiter".
It identified Australia and New Zealand as the first of nine "priority target markets" for an additional 293 million in exports over the next five years.
DEVILS LAKE -- Devils Lake may eliminate its ban on pit bulls after local leaders said language in city code already addresses dangerous animals.
The Devils Lake Commission asked City Attorney Tom Traynor to draft an amended document to eliminate a ban on specific dog breeds, including pit bulls. The request comes after a resident who is considering adopting a pit bull asked the city to reconsider its position on the ban.
Pit bulls and some of these other breeds, its how they are raised, Mayor Richard Johnson said. Responsible owners, it is their duty to train (their dogs) in the right way. If you train them to be aggressive, a Chihuahua can be aggressive.
Adopted in 1987, the animal section in the citys code of ordinances prohibits residents from keeping, owning, harboring or in any way possessing a pit bull within city limits. That includes bull terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers, American pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, dogs mixed with the aforementioned breeds or any dogs that have the appearance and characteristics of being predominately of the breeds commonly known as pit bulls, pit bull dogs or pit bull terriers.
Those who possess pit bulls could face a $500 fine and spend up to 30 days in jail. The dog also would be removed from the city.
There is enough language in the citys ordinance to address dogs that may be considered dangerous, City Administrator Terry Johnston said. Johnson agreed, stating the ordinance allows the city to address any dangerous animal, whether they be dogs, cats or any other pet allowed within city limits.
To be breed-specific is probably not good, Johnson said, adding he and commissioners questioned why the city continued to target pit bull breeds.
City code lays out what defines a dangerous animal, including those that attack people without provocation.
Johnson said he has spoken with residents who said they would be fine with eliminating the ban on pit bulls as long as an ordinance addressed dangerous animals. Its unknown if the commission will pass the amendment, but it is willing to review it, he said.
I got the sense that the commission wants to take a good, hard look at it and get some input from the people, he said. Well see once we get more public information out on it.
The city likely will have the first reading of the amendment eliminating its ban on pit bulls at the Nov. 7 commission meeting. A decision to adopt or reject the amendment could be made as early as Nov. 21.
Almost three quarters of the way through the debate, Donald Trump said the election was "rigged" and Hillary Clinton should not have been allowed to run.
"Millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn't be registered to vote," he said. "She should not be allowed to run, and just in that respect I say it's rigged."
Clinton hit back with a response, which my colleague Nick O'Malley described earlier in this blog (1.13pm AEDT) as "devastating".
"You know, every time Donald thinks things aren't going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him," she said.
"The FBI conducted a yearlong investigation into my emails. They concluded there was no case. He said the FBI was rigged. He lost the Iowa caucus, he lost the Wisconsin primary, he said the Republican primary was rigged against him. Then, Trump University gets sued for fraud and racketeering. He claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him.
"There was even a time when he didn't get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged against him."
Trump responded, "Should have gotten it" to laughter from the audience.
Here are some of his Tweets about the Emmys:
Latest News Property investors abandon Queensland market Government laws threaten investor control, says industry body
Call to expand approved housing projects Sunshine state planning laws should be eased, says developer
Online mortgage marketplace HashChing has hit $2 billion in home loan applications one year and three months since it was first founded.The fintech reached $1 billion within a year of operation and then doubled this amount three months later.The fact that weve hit this next billion-dollar milestone so quickly is testament to the huge demand for our technology, said Mandeep Sodhi, CEO of HashChingNearly 4,000 customers have used HashChing which currently has more than 290 brokers registered with the platform.Being able to access mortgage brokers directly is something that previously hasnt been possible, and its saving our customers tens of thousands of dollars over the life of their home loans, Sodhi said.Atul Narang said that HashChing combined artificial intelligence and machine learning to match home buyers with mortgage brokers in their area.As soon as a user submits their details, HashChings unique algorithm uses analytics that matches them with the broker that will give them the best and most relevant service, he told Australian Broker.The algorithm looks at a number of factors such as how long it takes the broker to respond to a lead, and consumer feedback at the close of a lead.If a broker has received 20 five-star ratings and his or her response rate is really good, he or she will automatically transfer into the top list of brokers, Narang said.Sodhi told Australian Broker that the ancient CRM systems that brokers traditionally use were bringing down efficiency and increasing time and costs.Once brokers sign on to the HashChing platform, they get an intuitive dashboard with all the business tools essential to effectively manage leads, from custom reminders and document collection and through to other digital functions, he said.Brokers save on marketing costs as well, he added, as the firm does not charge on a per-lead basis.Brokers are only charged on loan settlements and a small monthly subscription for access to the CRM system with the right tools.This empowers brokers by allowing for easier customer management and updates, he said.HashChing wasnt looking to act as another player in the market especially with the low margins currently in the home loan industry, Siobhan Hayden, HashChing adviser and former CEO of the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia ( MFAA ), told Australian Broker.HashChing is seeking out value adding opportunities for all stakeholders, and ensures broker and customer experience is at the forefront of its service, he said.Ive always been passionate about the broker proposition; I think HashChing does inherently deliver a better service. We manage our system to not only make the broker successful but to improve the customers experience as well.
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84th Precinct
Brooklyn HeightsDUMBOBoerum HillDowntown
Under the sneak
A home invader wearing a snorkel and ski jacket wreaked havoc on two residences in the 84th precinct on Oct. 10.
First, the masked man was caught in a womans Bond Street bedroom going through her drawer and jewelry box.
The lady found the creep in her home near Atlantic Avenue at 8:55 pm, and yelled Who the f are you? The jerk motioned for the woman to be quiet by placing his finger over his mouth, prompting the terrified resident to run out of the room, cops said. When she returned, the burglar had fled through the window, according to a report. She surveyed the scene and discovered the filcher had taken her iPhone, yellow wedding band, and other jewelry.
The bandit then struck less than an hour later at a Front Street home.
The victim told police she walked into her residence near Bridge Street at 9:20 pm and the man approached her from behind, took her iPhone, wallet, and house keys from her, and fled. The pilferer passed the property to another guy on a bike on Gold Street, according to a report.
Condiments and crooks
A pair of thieves stole $400 from a 68-year-old woman on Plymouth Street on Oct. 14 after throwing mustard on her jacket and pretending to help her wipe it off while picking her pocketbook.
The victim was strolling near Main Street at 2:30 pm when the two crooks splashed her with the yellow condiment and then started helping her clean it, apologizing as they went. But in the meantime, the men were busy removing the cash from her bag, police said.
Sprayed
A baddie sprayed a man with an identified substance on a Manhattan-bound N train on Oct. 11.
The man was sitting in the middle section of the train when the cur sprayed a liquid substance in his face, causing him pain and discomfort, police said. The man went to Brooklyn Hospital, whose doctors were unable to identify the liquid, according to a report.
Caned
A man bashed a Court Street fast-food worker with a cane on Oct. 15 while demanding free food and a bathroom.
The employee of the restaurant near State Street told police the man entered the establishment at 1:54 am and asked for food and a bathroom. He told the guy the restaurant was closed, and the nogoodnik started hitting him with his walking cane and then fled, authorities said.
Lauren Gill
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76th Precinct
Carroll Gardens-Cobble HillRed Hook
Illegal teeth cleaning
Cops cuffed a guy for swiping three toothbrushes from a Smith Street store on Oct. 17.
The 48-year-old suspect put the battery-powered brushes in his jacket at the store between President and Union streets at 8:30 am, according to authorities.
Bike swiper
A punk stole a guys motorcycle parked on Pacific Street sometime overnight on Oct. 16.
The victim parked his 2009 black and green Kawasaki between Clinton and Court streets at 10:30 pm, and when he went to pick it up at 8:30 am the next day, it was gone, police said.
Smashed
A nogoodnik threw a brick through the window of a clothing store on Atlantic Avenue on Oct. 17, police said.
The baddie launched the brick through a glass window of the shop between Clinton and Court streets at 3 am, swiped merchandise, then fled down the street with the unknown property, according to authorities.
What about the bike?
A baddie stole a guys bike equipment from outside his home on Sackett Street on Oct. 16.
The jerk took the 26-year-olds specialized black bike seat, specialized black handlebars, and a generic bike rack from the home between Clinton and Court streets at 3:20 pm, police said. The crook fled down Hoyt Street, according to authorities.
Educated burglar
A jerk stole several items from a students home on Clinton Street sometime overnight on Oct. 14.
The malefactor swiped the 30-year-old victims college textbook and notebook, a set of keys, an engraved pen, an electronic benefits transfer card, and a blue totebag from her home between Mill and W. Ninth streets sometime between 11:12 pm and 7:50 am the next day, according to authorities.
Julianne Cuba
Making a state rainy day fund for K-12 education accessible to lawmakers for use for educational purposes will be a high-dollar matter before voters this fall.
The states education and public employee union supports the Measure 2 and sees it as a way to protect education from serious cuts in tough fiscal times. The North Dakota School Board Association sees it as poor policy that could drain a valuable resource to fix a temporary problem.
Measure 2 would amend the state constitution to change in what ways the funding from the Foundation Aid Stabilization Fund can be used.
Currently, 10 percent of oil extraction tax revenue is placed in the Foundation Aid Stabilization Fund.
A section would be added that, when the principal exceeds 15 percent of the total general fund appropriation for state aid to schools for the most recent biennium, the excess money could be transferred by the Legislature for education-related purposes.
As of Aug. 1, the fund had a balance of more than $608 million.
North Dakota United President Nick Archuleta said the Foundation Aid Stabilization Fund is a stranded asset that can only be used when the governor calls for budget cuts.
Every school district has had this conversation already. Theres not a lot of fat in these budgets, said Archuleta, who indicated that the measure may be the only way to keep education funding whole next session. There just wont be enough funding. Theres just no other way around it."
North Dakota School Boards Association Jon Martinson said the group has three concerns over Measure 2.
Some are troubled by giving the Legislature access to the fund and the ability to spend down on the fund over a period of time to potentially exhaust it, according to Martinson. Finally, the language referring to education-related expenses is worrisome.
Our association is not interested in giving access to our checkbook to someone else, said Martinson, indicating that if it does pass, his organization would want to be at the table to clarify the definition of education-related purposes.
Archuleta argued Measure 2 would not deplete the fund, though he didnt have a concrete figure on how much could be tapped next session, if it passes.
We will have to take a look and see what the numbers are, Archuleta said.
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The Gowanus Canal was introduced to its own, disgusting version of Louis XIVs famous Versailles water festivals on Saturday when a fleet of handmade vessels navigated its noxious waters under the light of the full moon during the inaugural Tides of October flotilla in Brooklyns Nautical Purgatory and every boat that took a dip paid the ultimate price.
Vessels that floated along the sludge-filled thoroughfare emerged covered in a film of the waterways famous filth, and, much like the Titanic, will never sail again.
They got pretty dirty and we threw them all out afterwards, said Andrea Parker, who is the executive director of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, which sponsored the event. They mostly just looked wet, they werent covered with coal tar.
Participants crafted their boats out of materials such as plywood, styrofoam, and even ice and one organizer put a Barbie and Ken doll at the helm of her vessel, which she said was right where the famous couple belonged.
I thought they might like the canal, and maybe it was a little bit of a critique of gentrification, said Nancy Seaton, a Queens resident who helped put on the flotilla with a small crew of designers.
The watercrafts set sail from the Carroll Street Bridge at 6:18 pm the time of high tide and drifted to Second Avenue as dozens of people watched the spectacle.
But an unexpected tide in the opposite direction challenged the sailors, creating conditions similar to the worlds most treacherous triangle in Gowanus, said Seaton.
They got caught in the tide which was coming in when we launched at the bridge so it was a little like the Bermuda Triangle she said.
Canoers were ready for action, though, and staged a rescue mission by herding the fleet to its home port.
And Parker said the flotilla reminded residents that the canal is much more than the butt of dead body and gonorrhea jokes (or facts) and is an important part of the area.
Its nice to be able to get into the canal and do something creative and engaging, she said. The canal is also the center of our community.
Saturdays boat parade marked the first Tides of October flotilla, but Seaton said that shes hoping it will grow into an annual event with even more boats next time around.
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78th Precinct
Park Slope
Bad ticket
A belligerent beast tried and failed to spit on a parking enforcement officer amid a juvenile tirade on 12th Street on Oct. 7.
The officer reported that he was slinging tickets near Seventh Avenue at 1:35 pm when the irate man began hurling insults his way.
But that wasnt all the victim had coming the enraged assailant discharged a virulent lugy in his direction, although, whether by swift action on the officers part, or the spitters poor aim, it failed to connect, cops said.
Swell job
A savage whack job attacked a woman as she sat waiting for a bus near Grand Army Plaza on Oct. 7, beating her so severely that her eye swelled shut.
The victim told police she was lounging at the bus stop near Eastern Parkway at 10:15 am when the menace stomped up to her and started swinging.
The brute clocked her three times in the face, cops said.
Hot spot
An indigent man threatened a motorists life over the matter of a parking spot on St. Johns Place on Oct. 4.
The victim told police that he was attempting to park his car between Fifth and Sixth avenues at 6:15 pm when the irate nut ran over to claim the spot as his own and threatened to shoot the victim if he didnt scram.
The victims assailant is a known homeless man, although it remains unclear if he owns a car, or a gun for that matter, cops said.
Pedal pushers
Thieves absconded with two bikes within the 78th Precinct on Oct. 1
The first theft occurred on Fifth Avenue after 4 am, when a victim chained his bike between Garfield Place and Carroll Street, only to return a few hours later to find it stolen.
Later that day, another victim secured his bike to a rack near Eastern Parkway at 3 pm, and returned a few days later to an empty spot.
Colin Mixson
Porter is getting to umpire his second World Series
Alan Porter is working his second World Series as an umpire. He'll be behind home plate if the Phillies and Astros need a Game 7.
A film crew covering the Dakota Access Pipeline protests says they were accosted by protesters and prevented from leaving the camp in southern Morton County when they started asking questions about how protesters were using fossil fuels.
Filmmaker Phelim McAleer said he was assaulted while conducting an interview and he and his crew held hostage in their vehicle for 30 minutes when they attempted to leave the camp Tuesday, Oct. 18.
It was a mob scene and there was no leadership and nobody in charge and we feared for our lives, McAleer told Forum News Service on Wednesday.
McAleer, one of the filmmakers behind FrackNation, a documentary that aimed to counter the anti-fracking movie Gasland, said he was reporting on the pipeline protest for the FrackNation Facebook page.
McAleer, producer Magdalena Segieda and a local photographer, who McAleer declined to identify, spent time at the camp on Monday and covered two protests in Bismarck-Mandan.
We werent asking many questions at that stage, we were observing and filming, McAleer said.
About 10 a.m. Tuesday, they were conducting interviews near the kitchen area of the camp and asked questions that included how the protesters traveled to the camp and pointed out that the tents were made from plastic, a product of oil.
Theyre using fossil fuels to come and protest fossil fuels, McAleer said. Is this not a contradiction, is this not hypocrisy?
During one interview, McAleer said a man lunged at him, grabbed the microphone and elbowed and pushed him trying to take away the microphone.
The crew then realized it was an unsafe situation and went to their vehicle to leave. Vehicles blocked them from leaving and a crowd McAleer estimated at about 30 surrounded the vehicle. Some had sticks, others threatened to slash their tires and others were demanding the video be deleted. Some also shook the car and punched the windows, according to the filmmakers.
Morton County Sheriffs Department spokeswoman Donnell Preskey said authorities are investigating the incident for possible charges including terrorizing and felonious restraint, and officers have reviewed the video recorded by the filmmakers, part of which was shown to reporters at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
This is a public location that this campsite is on, and that is not acceptable to not allow people to leave their camp, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said, referring to the camps location on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land.
Bismarck Police Lt. Glen Ternes, who was among the dozen officers in five squad cars that responded to the scene, described seeing the maroon Chevy Traverse being shaken by people in bandanas and blocked in by a white pickup. Authorities didnt want to go into the camp but would have if necessary, he said.
I had to say please in the PA to get them to release that vehicle, and that just basically was because we were sitting there and I cant tell you the number but there was a lot of bandanas, a lot of people that were really riled up, and I had 12 officers there, he said.
McAleer disputed a social media report that the crew was filming children and said all interviews were conducted in a public area of the camp.
McAleer, who has been a journalist for 30 years and covered The Troubles conflict in Northern Ireland, said the most frightening thing was so many people there willing to do so many crazy things.
There seemed to be no voice of reason there, he said. Anything could have happened.
The crew called 911, but cell reception was poor and they were unsure if police were on their way.
For both of us, it was most the terrifying experiences of our lives, McAleer said.
After being trapped in their vehicle for 30 minutes, the journalists were able to leave with a police escort after law enforcement arrived and were taken to the Morton County law enforcement center in Mandan, where they were interviewed. They were staying at the Prairie Knights Casino and Resort on the Standing Rock reservation but decided to change hotels after some protesters approached them at the hotel and began filming them.
Its an amazing situation where journalists need a police escort, McAleer said.
McAleer said he does not plan to return to the camp and said journalists should not cover the protest if theyre not allowed to ask the pipeline opponents difficult questions.
Whats very clear is that when journalists dont ask softball questions, then they get attacked and assaulted and put in fear for your lives, he said. This sends out a very clear message we wont want difficult questions.
Cody Hall, a spokesman for the Red Warrior Camp within the Oceti Sakowin Camp where the incident took place, said he didnt witness Tuesdays incident but added journalists who obey the camps house rules are treated with respect.
If you had the intention to kind of stir the pot, youd better be able to take the steam, as well, he said.
Groups suing the State Health Council for approving new radioactive disposal rules at an illegally noticed meeting are asking the judge to award attorney fees plus $1,000 in damages.
They also are seeking a determination that, even though the council later ratified its decision at a properly noticed meeting, the rules are not retroactive and can be voided.
The suit was brought by the Dakota Resource Council and the North Dakota Energy Industry Waste Coalition. The groups initially asked the court to find the council in violation of the states public meetings laws after it approved new radioactive disposal rules at a meeting without giving the public proper notice.
The council later decided to hold a do-over meeting without waiting for the court. In August a year after the illegal meeting the council ratified the new rules.
The groups attorney, Sarah Vogel, said the do-over meeting did not make the initial lawsuit moot, and the judge still should make a decision on it to create case law on the topic.
There is no reason to assume that similar violations of the open meetings law will not occur again and again unless the court steps in to clarify the law, impose appropriate sanctions and direct the attorney general to undertake appropriate steps for compliance, Vogel said in court filings.
Further, although the council ratified the new rules, it did not expressly declare them to be retroactive as is required, she said; and therefore, they can be voided by the court.
latest news
October 31, 2022
Buddy TV
In November, there are hundreds of new and returning TV showsit can be overwhelming to try and choose what to watch. That's why we've selected some of the best options...
Emotions run deep on This Is Us, which isnt afraid to push the envelope a little bit. Just four episodes into the first season, The Pool brings up the topic of racism and even bullying. During a heat wave, Rebecca and Jack struggle to keep their cool, literally, at the local pool. In present day, Kate learns something unexpected about Toby, while Kevin heads to his first Broadway audition. Meanwhile, Williams presence is bringing up some tough memories for Randall.
10 Heartbreaking This Is Us Moments from Kyle >>>
Keeping Their Cool
Things we take for granted nowadays include central air! But in the 80s, Rebecca and Jack struggle to keep cool after their A/C breaks. So Jack suggests a fun, relaxing day at the pool. A reluctant Rebecca agrees, and they head off. At first, its fun and games, as Jack races around to find available chairs. But soon, Rebecca is no longer relaxed as she makes sure each of her kids are lathered up in sunscreen and sticking close by.
Of course, this lasts all of five minutes, as Kate heads off to talk to some classmates, with a worried Rebecca concerned about Kate wearing a two-piece, fearing cruel kids. Her nightmare comes true when Kate is handed a note from one of the girls saying they dont want to play with her anymore.
As Jack races around the pool, still in search of chairs, Randall sneaks off, leaving Kevin in the pool by himself. A frantic Rebecca and Jack search for Randall, and Rebecca finds him playing with a black family. At first, the tensions are slightly high as the mother is passive-aggressive toward Rebecca. Rebecca gets defensive about her son, and as she storms off, the woman offers her tips on how to properly cut Randalls hair to avoid razor burn.
Meanwhile, Kevin is still in the pool with no one watching as Rebecca and Jack deal with their other children. They find the cruel note given to Kate, while Randall scribbles some numbers in a notebook. Kevin swims too far into the deep end and almost drowns. He freaks out on his parents, saying they dont care about him. Jack makes it right, though, reassuring him that they do love him.
A now-calm Rebecca heads back over to the black family and asks the woman for the name of a good barber. The woman is kind and starts to write it down as she offers Rebecca tips on how to care for Randalls skin. Rebecca, seemingly grateful now, suggests they make a play date soon, and the woman gladly accepts the invitation.
And Jack cheers Kate up by giving her his favorite T-shirt, telling her a story about how its magic.
Stalking is Research, Right?
Kate and Toby are out eating a healthy lunch when Toby runs into his ex-wife, Josie, who happens to be very pretty and thin, much to Kates dismay. This information sends Kate into a downward spiral, as she cyber-stalks Josie. She even takes it a step further and goes into the shop that Josie owns. When Josie asks if shes there about the job opening, Kate finds herself on a job interview, which she eventually gets.
Toby obviously flips out on her. Kate pulls the I have issues card yet again, but Toby isnt having it. He explains that the reason he got divorced is because Josie was cruel to him. She cheated and lied throughout the marriage. He explains that after the divorce, he gained almost 100 pounds and had suicidal thoughts. He wants Kate to know that everyone has issues, including him. She apologizes and says that her issues just wont go away overnight, and Toby says neither will he. I mean, can this guy be any more perfect for Kate? She agrees that she wont take the job.
Making It in the Big Apple
After Kevin lands in New York, he calls Randall to let him know hes on the East Coast. Then he heads to his first Broadway audition, which he shows up late to. He starts by telling the director and playwright that hes not just another Los Angeles movie star wanting to break into the business. He wants them to take him seriously, except that the audition goes horribly wrong. The actress hes paired up with, Olivia, is exhausted and doesnt even want to let him audition.
After the audition, Kevin runs into Olivia on the street. She asks him to get a drink. At the bar, she suggests, as a friend, that he move back to Los Angeles, as she wouldnt want to see him fail. However, after she goes through her whole speech, she gets a text that Kevin got the part and she storms out of the bar.
This is Us Recap: Everything You Need to Know >>>
Black and White
Randalls kids seem to be adjusting well to the news that William is their grandfather. One morning, William heads out for a walk in the neighborhood when hes stopped by a security officer. When Randall heads out to find out whats up, the officer explains that someone called him about a person loitering in the area. He apologizes when Randall explains that William is staying with him, and the couple who called security apologizes too.
Later on at a clothing shop, Randall confronts William about the incident. He explains that he chooses to ignore racism around him and just let things go, and perhaps William has to do the same. However, later that night, Randall cant let the feelings go as his daughter plays Snow White in the school play. He notices the irony of a black child playing Snow White and tries to ignore the laughter in the audience.
Back at home, he has another chat with William. He explains how even though he grew up in an all-white family, that doesnt mean he didnt suffer. He tells William about the notebook he kept as a child and that he would mark down in the book every time he met another black person while growing up. He adds that he always wondered if any of the black men he met were his father. William then apologizes for everything and tells Randall that hes a good man.
Just as Randall and William are sharing, the doorbell rings. As he gets up to answer the door, Randall passes a photo of his family with the woman from the pool. At the door is Kevin, and his nieces are thrilled! Kevin says he wants to crash with Randall, and both Beth and Randall reluctantly agree. Randall then introduces William to Kevin as his biological father, and William is thrilled. Hes also super pumped that The Manny is Randalls brother.
Tough Subjects
Racism, obesity, bullying. The list can go on and on about issues that people deal with on a daily basis, some more serious than others but all important to the people dealing with them. This Is Us seems to be taking them all on, just in small doses. I think Mandy Moore did a good job portraying a very stressed-out mother, just wanting whats right for her family, but at the same time its clear shes in over her head. Rebecca doesnt seem prepared for motherhood. But then again, what parent is fully ready when children are born? Especially triplets. It was nice to see Jack stepping up, but I am still curious about what happens to him!
I like that Kevin is in New York and facing things he hasnt faced before, though its clear that hes always felt like the left-out child. So Im curious how staying with Randall will play out.
And Kate needs to lighten up. Im curious about more of her backstory and why she is the way she is. To me, shes slightly self-absorbed, always talking about her issues with her weight and her insecurities. Im glad Toby finally stood up to her, but Im also glad that he still looks past those qualities to see the good in Kate because they are good together.
So what did you think of The Pool? Do you think This Is Us does a good job with tough topics? How do you like the time jumps? Let us know in the comments below.
This Is Us season 1 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC. Want more news? Like our Facebook page.
(Image courtesy of NBC)
Abuse of some prescription drugs can be risk for college sexual assaults, regretted sex
This study shows NMUPD, particularly anxiolytics/ sedatives, can have similar effects as alcohol, including slowed decision-making and physical coordination, which can decrease the ability to recognize danger or fend off a potential perpetrator.
BUFFALO, N.Y. Numerous studies have found that heavy alcohol use by the victim and/or perpetrator is a factor in more than half of sexual assaults on college campuses. Now, research from the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions has found the abuse of prescription drugs by college students also can play a role in negative sexual events such as sexual assault and regretted sex.
RIA Senior Research Scientist Kathleen Parks, PhD, studied the effects of nonmedical use of prescription drugs (NMUPD) by college students, including opioid analgesics (such as Oxycodone), anxiolytics/sedatives (such as Xanax, Valium or Ambien) and stimulants (such as Adderall or Ritalin). NMUPD is defined as the use of a medication without a legal prescription.
The research found that among the 1,755 students studied, more than 500 reported NMUPD, and of those, a significant number experienced negative sexual events. More than 14 percent of the students who abused prescription drugs experienced regretted sex, and among the female students, 7.1 percent reported being victims of sexual assault.
Significantly, the only prescription drugs associated with regretted sex and sexual assault were anxiolytics/sedatives.
The responsibility for rape or any sexual assault always falls squarely with the perpetrator, Parks says. This study shows NMUPD, particularly anxiolytics/sedatives, can have similar effects as alcohol, including slowed decision-making and physical coordination, which can decrease the ability to recognize danger or fend off a potential perpetrator.
The study did not find that nonmedical use of opioid analgesics or stimulants was associated with negative sexual events.
NMUPD is an increasing public health concern, particularly among emerging and young adults, Parks said. Given the results of this study, parents and college administrators should be concerned about the relationship we found between nonmedical use of anxiolytics/sedatives and negative sexual events, and find ways to educate students about the potential dangers.
The study is available online and will appear in a special issue of the journal Addictive Behaviors in December. Its co-authors are Michael Frone, PhD, senior research scientist at RIA, Mark Muraven, PhD, Department of Psychology, University at Albany, and Carol Boyd, PhD, RN, FAAN, University of Michigan School of Nursing.
RIA is a research center of the University at Buffalo and a national leader in the study of alcohol and substance abuse issues. RIAs research programs, most of which have multiple-year funding, are supported by federal, state and private foundation grants. Located on UBs Downtown Campus, RIA is a member of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and a key contributor to UBs reputation for research excellence. To learn more, visit buffalo.edu/ria.
Campus News
UB receives EPA Green Power Leadership Award
UB currently is using nearly 213 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually, enough to meet 100 percent of the universitys overall electricity use. The university is generating electricity from on-site solar energy systems, including the 3,200-panel Solar Strand on the North Campus. Photo: Douglas Levere
By DAVID J. HILL
EPAs annual Green Power Leadership Awards recognize the countrys leading green power users for their commitment and contribution to helping advance the development of the nations voluntary green power market. EPA presented UB with a Green Power Partner of the Year award Monday at the 2016 Renewable Energy Markets Conference in San Francisco.
UB was one of only three organizations nationwide to be chosen as a Green Power Partner of the Year. With this award, EPA recognizes Green Power Partners who distinguish themselves through their leadership, overall strategy and impact on the green power market.
UB is currently using nearly 213 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually, which is enough to meet 100 percent of the universitys overall electricity use. In addition, the school is generating electricity from on-site solar energy systems. These include the 3,200-panel Solar Strand installed in 2012, and a series of panels on the roof of Norton Hall. By choosing clean, renewable energy, UB is accelerating the transition to a more sustainable energy future.
UB is honored to be recognized by the EPA as a national leader in using clean, renewable energy, said Laura Hubbard, vice president for finance and administration. We are committed to making UB a more sustainable campus through a variety of green power initiatives.
UB ranks No. 1 on EPAs Top 30 College and University list and No. 32 on the National Top 100 list. Each list highlights EPA Green Power Partners using the most renewable energy annually as of July 6, 2016. EPA updates its Top Partner Rankings quarterly.
Green power is zero-emissions electricity that is generated from environmentally preferable renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, eligible biomass and low-impact hydro. Using green power helps accelerate the development of new, renewable energy capacity nationwide and helps users reduce their carbon footprints.
According to the EPA, UBs current green power use of nearly 213 million kWh is equivalent to the electricity use of more than 19,000 average American homes annually.
UB strives to evolve, build resilience and minimize its environmental footprint, as most potently illustrated by its aggressive commitment to become climate neutral by 2030.
The past 12 months have seen one success after another for UBs sustainability efforts. Earlier this fall, UB landed at No. 57 on the Sierra Clubs 2016 Cool Schools list, which ranks colleges and universities based on sustainability criteria. The Princeton Review recently ranked UB among the nations Top 50 Green Colleges.
In May, UB was named one of three winners of Gov. Andrew Cuomos Energy to Lead competition. Last fall, UB submitted an exhaustive report on its sustainability efforts, which earned a gold certification as part of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Educations Sustainability, Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, or STARS.
The Board of University and School Lands said Tuesday the state is not trying to claim oil and gas minerals under Lake Sakakawea as some mineral owners had feared based on the states response to recent lawsuits.
Gov. Jack Dalrymple, chairman of the land board, recommended Tuesday that members pass a motion clarifying that the board has not changed its position on mineral ownership under the Missouri River.
The land board has traditionally leased minerals under the Missouri River but not minerals under Lake Sakakawea, created by the Garrison Dam.
However, attorneys representing the state have argued in recent lawsuits that there is no distinction between the historical channel of the Missouri River and Lake Sakakawea, leading some mineral owners and oil industry representatives to question whether the state is trying to claim minerals under the lake.
A motion passed unanimously Tuesday states that the land board has not changed its leasing practices under the Missouri River and Lake Sakakawea and board members would not do so unless directed by the Legislature.
The lawsuits, including William S. Wilkinson v. the Board of University and School Lands, involve disputes over mineral ownership.
Theres no question that because of the Wilkinson case and other cases and the way they are evolving, that some people are interpreting those cases to mean that well be doing things differently in the future, Dalrymple said. I dont think thats the case and I think we need to clear that up right now.
State Treasurer Kelly Schmidt said some confusion could stem from the boards action in November 2015 to ask the state engineer for an estimate to survey the ordinary high water mark from the Highway 23 bridge to the Highway 85 bridge.
I think there could have been an interpretation of that that said we were going in a different direction when we were just continuing to ask additional questions, Schmidt said.
Secretary of State Al Jaeger said there was a misconception about what the board was doing by responding to lawsuits.
We havent changed anything and we havent instituted any of these lawsuits, Jaeger said. Were just in a position where we have to respond to them.
The land board consists of the governor, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction, state treasurer and the attorney general. Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem was absent from the meeting.
Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said after the meeting that the land board provided the clarity that the industry and mineral owners were looking for.
Clearly we hope that the attorneys on behalf of the land board do their due diligence on those lawsuits but not through those lawsuits seek to expand their ownership of the minerals, Ness said. Thats what the mineral interests and others were hoping to be clarified.
World Series Game 3 postponed due to rain in Philly
Rain is moving into Philadelphia and it could impact Game 3 of the World Series
FARGO -- Democratic-NPL candidates for the North Dakota Legislature called upon top Republicans to withdraw their support of Donald Trump as the partys presidential candidate in light of his boasts that he made unwanted sexual advances against women.
The Democrats said North Dakota Republicans have been virtually silent about Trumps conduct and statements, days after the recorded comments prompted some Republicans to withdraw their support.
This is wrong, this is unacceptable, Karla Rose Hanson, a Democrat running for House in north Fargos District 44, said Tuesday. Enough is enough. What will it take to denounce Trump?
Hanson and her fellow Democrats stood before a mosaic of blue posters asking What Will It Take? for Republicans, including legislative candidates, to denounce their presidential contender just three weeks before the Nov. 8 election.
Hanson and fellow Democrats said Trumps comments make it more difficult for victims of sexual violence to come forward, and help to encourage a rape culture that makes it easier to abuse women.
State Rep. Mary Schneider, who represents central Fargos District 21, said she has seen the damage rape and sexual abuse cause firsthand as a former police officer and as an attorney.
Rape and sexual assault are about power and the abuse of power, she said.
North Dakotans want leadership, said Rep. Josh Boschee, a House member in District 44. Unfortunately all we have heard is silence.
Boschee said he hoped his Republican colleagues would have strongly denounced Trump, but said that so far that hasnt happened.
Its twelve days and we still havent heard anything, he said.
North Dakotas top Republican officeholders and candidates have issued statements critical of Trumps comments about groping women -- which some have called admissions of sexual assault, comments Trump later disavowed -- but have stopped short of calling for him to withdraw.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., called Trumps comments offensive and wrong. He not only needs to apologize, he needs to show through his words and actions that he does not believe in the views expressed in the video.
Since Hoeven made that statement on Oct. 8, Trump has not apologized, but has accused his female accusers and the news media of lying.
Doug Burgum, the Republican nominee for governor, criticized Trumps remarks. These comments are offensive, wrong and unacceptable, he said in a statement at the time. It is disappointing that our presidential nominating system produced two flawed candidates.
U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., a staunch Trump supporter, said he continues to back Trump, who he has said is favored by North Dakota voters. I take my cue from North Dakotans, Cramer said, calling Trump a better choice than Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate.
Kylie Oversen, a Grand Forks legislator and chairwoman of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party, said Trumps remarks raise concerns that go beyond politics.
I dont think it should take political pressure to speak out about issues like this, she said.
Chip Thomas and Lisa Nevada
The Earth is turning away from the sun once again as we earthbound creatures pull on our hats and jackets to meet the new chill in the air. Overhead, the sandhill cranes, Western meadowlarks and American wigeons are arriving, while the chipping sparrows, blue-winged teals and Brewer's blackbirds are just beginning their long journeys southward to Mexico, South America and beyond. At the South Valley's Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, the composition of the changing Earth is explored in the meditated movements of dancers and mural work wheat-pasted over the crumbling remains of a dairy barn. Together, the movement and the imagery articulates a different journey. Golden Migration is a collaborative work by dancer and choreographer Lisa Nevada and public artist and photographer Chip Thomas, aka jetsonorama. Thomas, who hails from North Carolina, has been living and working as a physician on the Navajo Nation since 1987. Through documentary photography translated to large-scale murals on underutilized structures, Thomas creates what he calls a love letter to the Navajo Nation. In addition to collaborating with Nevada on work at Valle de Oro, Thomas will also be creating a mural on the facade of 516 Arts. Both pieces are part of 516's DECADE programming, celebrating the beloved Downtown institution's 10 year anniversary. In anticipation of his upcoming work in Albuquerque, Thomas took some time out to illuminate his body of work.
Alibi: How is healingin your work as a physician, for exampleand your art related?
Thomas: There are definite parallels between my work as a physician and my work as a public artist. When I was in my middle school years in North Carolina I had a unique opportunity to attend a Quaker school where one of the things that was emphasized was consistency and continuity between one's work [and] spiritual life. I'm realizing this balance through my public art project.
As a physician I work to help patients achieve wellness. I think of it as facilitating an environment of wellness within the individual; whereas my art, in reflecting back to the community some of the beauty they've shared with me, helps create a psychological environment of wellness. I see the two practices as being complimentary and though it sounds trite, I feel there's integration between the left and right hemispheres of my brain.
Chip Thomas
Do the landscapes of the Navajo Nation provide the ideal backdrop? Do they present any unique challenges?
I'm originally from North Carolina. My most vivid memories of seeing the horizon there were on trips to the ocean. Here, I see the horizon daily in 360 degrees and in this enormity of space, [I] appreciate my place as but a grain of sand in the universe. The Southwest seems to demand work that is big and bold in order to be noticed, certainly, but also as part of a dialogue with the landscape. More specifically, I enjoy placing work on roadside stands, especially those that have fallen into disuse. I've had examples of the art reactivating these spaces. The other thing that can't be overlooked here is the quality of light as it changes over the course of a day and from season to season. I love appreciating subtle differences over time.
What do you hope audiences gain from seeing your workboth audiences that live on the reservation, and those passing through?
I see my primary audience for this work as being people on the reservation. I'm aware that motorists from all over the world pass though this area as they venture to the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly; however, I'm hopeful people on the rez feel good about the work, themselves and their traditions in seeing [it]. Having said that, I've heard from non-Indigenous [motorists] passing through the area that the images help the rez seem more accessible. They get an idea of who is out here as they catch glimpses into the richness of the culture.
What are your favorite places in the Navajo Nationnot just for presenting your workbut just to be and see and experience?
I think my favorite spot to go sit and reflect on the meaning of life is up Highway 64 between the community of Cameron and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon along the Little Colorado River Gorge. As one climbs up to the South Rim you get an expansive view of the Painted Desert and lands beyond while looking at a deep, dark cleavage in the Earth. I find the Little Colorado River Gorge to be more immediate, personal and accessible than the Grand Canyon. Having said that however, I still ride my mountain bike regularly there's a series of canyons a mile from my house where there are ruins and arches. This canyon system extends 40 miles north to Lake Powell and the Escalante region in Utah. I ride my bike speeding past chasing dogs asking myself how I'll ever leave this place and its beauty. [It's put] an intoxicating spell on me for 29 years and counting. I've yet to come up with an exit strategy.
Thomas, who hails from North Carolina, has been living and working as a physician on the Navajo Nation since 1987. Through documentary photography translated to large-scale murals on underutilized structures, Thomas creates what he calls a love letter to the Navajo Nation.
How has your identity or personal history impacted the way you create and/or what you address in your work?
In 1995 I was interviewed by the Utne Reader about my photography, my work on the rez and an amazing 12,000 [mile] bicycle expedition from the top of Africa to the bottom. In that interview I acknowledged how, as a person of color, I choose to have an inherent bias in my work in that I feel a need to counter the negative narrative that dominates much of the media. The struggle continues. As Bob Marley sang, "Who feels it, knows it."
Social and environmental justice issues are present in your workwhat feels pressing now?
I went to Paris last December, three weeks after the bombings, to attend the World Climate Summit. In the early 70s when I attended the Quaker school in the mountains of North Carolina, we were learning then about the greenhouse effect burning a hole in the ozone layer. That sensitivity to the planet and our impact on its resources for ourselves and future generations remains a pressing theme.
One good thing about Arizona is it affords me multiple opportunities to be socially and politically engaged. The issues I've been most passionate about include climate change, climate justice, police violenceespecially against people of color criminal justice reform and gun violence. I've done some work addressing SB1070 (racial profiling of brown people), in Arizona. I'm a proponent of healthcare reform and universal access to care, but haven't generated any work around this yet.
How was creating Golden Migration different from previous work?
Well, I've done some interesting collaborations over the past couple years however, I've never collaborated with dancers before. I think what's interesting about the images I chose to present as public art [is the] focus on individuals within the company as opposed to group shots. While I appreciate form and pattern, I'm more intrigued with getting close to individuals and finding gestures or movements that speak to the universality of the human experience. In that sense this project really isn't different from what I normally do.
How do you expect the dance component to deepen, change or express the idea differently?
It's the difference between 2-D and 3-D. My work sets a theme, raises a question, the dancers answer the question and in so doing, dramatize the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world.
Visit 516 Arts (516 Central SW) to scope out mural work by Thomas; get an extra dose by making a reservation to see Lisa Nevada and Thomas' collaborative work, Golden Migration, in the form of a free dance tour at Valle de Oro on Saturday, Oct. 22, and Sunday, Oct. 23. The work will be performed at 3 and 5pm each day.
Developers of a proposed nickel mine in northern Minnesota plan to move construction of its processing plant to North Dakota because of environmental concerns. Talon Metals has been under pressure from environmental groups and the Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa about a plan to build the processing plant in Tamarack, about 50 miles west of Duluth. Talon says removing the processing facilities from the Tamarack mine site in Minnesota will significantly reduce land disturbance and the scope of environmental review and permitting. Talon is negotiating to buy an industrial brownsfield site in Mercer County, North Dakota. The company has received a $114 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project.
THE WEB OF FREEDOM
J C Kumarappa and Gandhi's Struggle for Economic Justice
Venu Madhav Govindu & Deepak Maghan
Oxford University Press
358 pages; Rs 895
The Web of Freedom, a political biography of Mahatma Gandhi's close aide J C Kumarappa, comes at a critical juncture in Indian history. While on the one hand, the old understanding of capitalism's transformative powers has eroded, Dalits and other oppressed groups have taken to the streets, unable to bear the injustice that continues to be their lived experience despite being conferred political equality 66 years ago by the Constitution.
British carmaker is planning to launch one new product every year globally and the same would come to India also, till 2020. The product line up includes a SUV, which would suit very well for India, said a senior official from the company.
Meanwhile, the British marquee luxury automobile producer, which was witnessing slowdown in sales due to import duty hopes to sell around 10-12 units in India next year, said an official.
Canadian alternative-asset-manager Brookfield, with $200 billion worth of assets under management, set up its office in Mumbai 2009. Anuj Ranjan, its managing partner for India office, did not make any investment in the first three years. Over the next three years, however, he invested in assets worth $2 billion.
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Global accounting firm will pay $11.8 million to resolve allegations it failed to uncover deceptive tax practices at an oil services company, the US market regulator announced on Tuesday.
The announcement follows September's settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the oilfield services firm Weatherford International, which the SEC fined $140 million for fraudulently lowering its year-end tax provisions.
The SEC said that Ernst & Young, one of the global "big four" accounting firms, had failed to detect the fraud for more than four years.
Craig Fronckiewicz, the partner who coordinated the audits, and Sarah Adams, a former tax partner who was part of the audit team, both agreed to suspensions from handling the accounting of SEC-regulated firms to settle charges of having ignored "significant red flags" during the Weatherford audits and reviews, the SEC said in a statement.
"The audit team was aware of post-closing adjustments that Weatherford was making to significantly lower its year-end provision for income taxes each year, but it relied on Weatherford's unsubstantiated explanations instead of performing the required audit procedures to scrutinise the company's accounting," the SEC said in a statement.
Ernst & Young, which reached the settlement without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations, will pay $10.8 million in disgorgement and pre-judgment interest and a penalty of $1 million.
Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II said Tuesdays decision by law enforcement to remove the traffic checkpoint on North Dakota Highway 1806 is long overdue.
It was always unnecessary, said Archambault, noting that hes been asking for its removal since it was set up in September.
Law enforcement has said the checkpoint between Mandan and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest encampments was critical to protect motorists driving down the highway as well as protesters camped near the road or walking along it.
Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said Wednesday there have been fewer people on the roadway, so he decided to move his limited resources elsewhere. Additional signage will remain at the former checkpoint site.
The two to three dozen National Guard members who were manning the checkpoint are being reassigned to community outreach, according to Guard spokeswoman Amber Balken. The soldiers will visit with residents in rural Morton County, listen to people's concerns and report any illegal activities to local law enforcement.
"We want to make sure we're taking care of those Morton County residents just like we've wanted to do all along," Balken said.
Initially, Highway 1806 was barricaded and traffic toward the reservation was redirected to North Dakota Highway 6 because of protest activities that started in mid-August. Later, the barricade was rearranged so people could drive through, though people were often stopped there.
Archambault said the checkpoint highlighted North Dakotas overreaction to the pipeline protest, which also is active in other states in which construction equipment has been burned and destroyed.
You dont see those places declaring a state of emergency and sending up the Highway Patrol and National Guard. You only see that here, where people are trying to protect the water, he said.
The chairman said hes thankful that despite the heightened threat brought by law enforcement, no major incidents have happened.
Its pretty amazing with the number of people, and we continue to pray that no one gets hurt, he said.
He said he has always emphasized that the action against the pipeline should be peaceful and prayerful.
But we have a lot of guests from all over the world that are passionate about this, and they dont always conduct themselves in the best behavior. Were not all perfect, and it creates some disturbing results, the chairman said. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe does not encourage wrongful behavior. We say, do this in prayer and peace.
Civil liberties groups also have criticized the checkpoint, though Morton County spokesman Rob Keller said this did not factor into the decision to remove it.
In a statement released in September, Jennifer Cook, of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, said, "The states declaration of emergency, the highway roadblock and checkpoint, and National Guard call-up sets a tone of intimidation and signals its intent to silence and punish free speech."
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's U.S. unit is facing a proposed class action lawsuit from three Galaxy Note 7 customers, according to a filing in a federal court in Newark, New Jersey.
The acquisition of rival firm Ibibo will give MakeMyTrip a dominant position in online air-ticketing and hotel business. Rajesh Magow, co-founder and India CEO of MakeMyTrip, explains the synergy benefits and strategy behind the transaction to Aneesh Phadnis. Excerpts:
What kind of cost benefits and synergies can we see after this? What about margin growth?
Well keep the MakeMyTrip and Ibibo brands intact and their distribution will remain separate. On the back end, there are opportunities for integration. We see synergies in contracting from hotels and other suppliers. We run separate customer service call centres and that could be integrated to bring more efficiencies. As a single entity, well have better negotiating power and the transaction allows us to optimise our advertising and marketing expense. We feel that margin growth will happen with the change in our revenue mix. Currently, our blended margin are 8-9 per cent and we expect that to increase with the growth in our hotel booking business. Currently, 50 per cent of our revenue is from hotel bookings and we expect it to increase to 70-75 per cent in the next three to four years.
may prefer a higher rate at the top end of the goods and services tax (GST) bracket, rather than have a cess that is non-creditable by nature, with a cascading effect on the indirect tax system.
Italy-based Bonfiglioli, which makes gearboxes, gear motors and inverters for the industrial automation and renewable energy sectors, is planning to expand capacity in India with an investment of about Rs 85 crore, by February 2018.
Transmissions Pvt Ltd, the India-based subsidiary of the company, is targeting to reach Rs 1,000 crore turnover by 2020, from a revenue of around Rs 650 crore, posted last fiscal.
The second draft of the regulations, which were notified by the Union health ministry on Wednesday, four months after the first draft was issued, have once again drawn flak. The fresh rules, while dividing the into four groups on the basis of risk, have capped their shelf life at five years. Companies, mostly multinationals (MNCs), protested saying the rules were too stringent, citing global norm of 10-year validity for .
Consumers can now select a cab-hailing service from after typing in requests for taxi to Delhi, or Ola/Uber to airport, for example.
They will see a tab for Uber and Ola, with fare estimates and pick-up times.
Ola and Uber are cab-hailing apps.
When a user requests for taxi to Delhi or Ola/Uber to airport, the app or browser will ask the user to select a service and open the app to book the ride.
In case the user doesn't have the Ola/Uber app installed on the device, will show a link to install the app.
"Choosing the best transit option can be a task at times. Our aim is to help users simplify their everyday travel. With this, users will be able to order, explore, and make quick comparisons about the best estimated taxi fare directly from Google Search results on their mobile," Google program manager Sanket Gupta said.
Earlier this year, the feature was put on Google Maps.
Ola said the move helped facilitate its focus on making cab bookings more accessible and seamless for customers everywhere.
With sharp words and sharper actions, the Supreme Court is putting its might behind hapless home buyers who have for long suffered at the hands of developers. Over the past two days, the apex court has taken to task two developers and ordered them to refund investors' money at once for failure to deliver projects.
Kirloskar Motor on Wednesday announced a partnership with ride hailing app Uber, giving 90 per cent funding to driver on the Uber platform to buy Etios and Liva models.
Toyota's Financial arm, Financial Services India Ltd. (TFSIN) will provide the funding on-road funding of the cost for first time drivers. The funding scheme encompasses vehicle cost, accessories, service packages, registration road tax and insurance. The scheme will be applicable till December.
Kirloskar Motor has collaborated with Uber offering major support to first time aggregator customers through this scheme.
" We believe the 90% on road funding scheme will lead to a positive growth in the ride-sharing market. This initiative is another step closer to changing the dynamics of mobility needs of an average Indian and we are glad to be part of it. Fleet operators across India today have understood the value proposition of Etios. Etios & Liva have set a safety benchmark in the industry," said N Raja, Director & Senior Vice President (Sales & Marketing), Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd said,
" Toyota vehicles are among the most popular cars on the Uber platform worldwide. We are proud to partner with Toyota India to boost grassroots entrepreneurship," said Amit Jain, president, Uber India.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has agreed to dedicate a parcel of land near the community of Cannon Ball to a winter camp for people who plan to continue to participate in the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline movement.
Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II said Tuesdays 8-5 vote sets the stage for a process to partition the acreage, located on the south side of the paved access road to Cannon Ball about a quarter-mile off North Dakota Highway 1806.
He said the partitioning is required because the tribe doesnt have a full interest in the land and has to obtain agreement from private individuals who share in it.
Archambault said he hopes that can happen quickly, so that preparations to create shelters for pipeline activists can get underway.
If people are willing to stay and continue the fight against Dakota Access Pipeline, we have to be more proactive in creating a safe place for people to take shelter, he said. The tribe has always been supportive of everyone whos been supportive of us.
A working group of camp associates has developed a plan for the winter camp, including some central buildings for gathering, food preparation and dining; an educational facility; dwellings; and access to renewable energy.
Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said Tuesdays decision by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council is a very positive step forward.
It allows us to order materials for the main Mandan earth lodge. Teepees are coming in, and the structures for infrastructure need to start happening, Goldtooth said.
Archambault said he is not trying to control who lives where this winter, but he is trying to ensure people who come to help have options during extreme winter conditions.
I dont dictate, and I dont control. I work with people, and were doing our best to do that, he said.
The land west of Cannon Ball was one of three possible locations for the camp. All were near the community of about 800 people that is already the gateway community to the original Sacred Stones spirit camp, which now has about 100 people living on the outskirts of town.
The site picked Tuesday is the most easily accessible from Highway 1806. It's about 4 miles from the large overflow encampment that spontaneously formed when the pipeline activism started up in mid-August.
Goldtooth estimates about 1,000 people are still in the overflow camp and that about 500 people will remain through the winter.
He said he doesnt know exactly how many would move to a winter camp, but said it would be a good move for three reasons. The first is to move out of the Cannonball River floodplain, where the overflow camp sits now, in case theres high water in the spring.
The second is that the new camp could be more well-thought-out than one that grew organically as people started coming in by the hundreds and, eventually, by the thousands.
The third reason is the continued uncertainty of being on land owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is under an extended grazing lease, he said.
Theres already been feedback that some people want options. Some people will stay in the overflow camp, and some say if theres a winter camp they want to go there, Goldtooth said.
He said the winter camp will be completed by volunteers with donated money and materials.
Robert Fool Bear, the Cannon Ball district chairman, said the town has been welcoming to the anti-pipeline activists, though there are some concerns about strangers in town. He said the district did not want to decide if the camp should be set up there, out of the belief that the decision belonged to the tribal council.
Bengaluru-based wealth management app Fisdom has raised Rs 7.33 crore ($1.1 million) from . The company will use these funds to further invest in technology, team expansion and customer acquisition, a press release stated.
Wipro, India's third largest software exporter is expected to see subdued growth and see pressure on margins in the second quarter.
After creating waves with its affordable smartphones in India, Chinese smartphone giant is now looking to make inroads into the country's hinterland for which it has partnered with rural-focused retail platform Storeking.
The process of laying the 15-km-long railway track connecting Agartala to Bangladesh's Akhaura region will be completed in two and a half years, an official at the Ministry of External Affairs(MEA) said on Wednesday.
"Of the total track, a stretch of five kms will be on the Indian side and the rest in Bangladesh. The project would be completed in two and a half years," told the MEA Joint Secretary, A K Gupte, while addressing a group of reporters at Agartala.
According to Gupte, the total cost of the project, which is worth Rs 972.52 crore, would be borne by the government of India, adding that the Indian side was being funded by the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region. Whereas the MEA was financing the project across the border.
An eight-member-team led by Bangladesh's Additional Secretary of Roads and Railway, Sashi Singh, met a group of Indian delegates led by Gupte at Agartala on Wednesday. This is the fifth meeting of the project's steering committee.
Officials said, acquisition of lands on the Indian side have already begun.
New Delhi is keen to establish a rail link, which will connect West Bengal and Tripura through Bangladesh. The Agartala-Akhaura railway route will connect Indian Railways with Bangladesh rail network to improve connectivity and boost trade between the two countries.
The neighbouring country had agreed to lay tracks between Akhaura and Agartala during its Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to New Delhi in January 2010.
At least some of the Indian language may start appearing in the internet domain names next year, effectively ending the monopoly of English over the internet medium in the country. The process of finalising the necessary rule sets for 22 Indian languages identified by Government of India was progressing towards this direction, say the Indian officials involved in this exercise.
The Maharashtra government said on Wednesday it was bringing forward the start of the sugarcane crushing season to November 5, instead of the earlier date of December 1, for 2016-17. The state cabinet took the decision.
In a bid to push for adoption of cleaner fuels by state transport corporations, the Green Tribunal (NGT) on Wednesday yet again rapped states for not clearly spelling out their compressed natural gas (CNG) policies.
growers in Karnataka, earlier pinched by a drop in production and price, are now feeling the heat from a crash in price of arecanut, a major intercrop (growing in alternate rows or sections in the same field) for them. The price of arecanut (better known as the source for the betel nut or supari) has dropped over a year from nearly Rs 75,000 a quintal to Rs 25,000-30,000 a qtl. Around two-fifth of the country's crop (India is the world's biggest producer and consumer) comes from Karnataka.
ST. THOMAS -- A woman who shot her husband at their home in St. Thomas will not face charges, but her spouse could spend more than 30 years in prison after investigators said he was the first to pull the trigger.
Brandon Allen Thompson, 31, was charged last week in Pembina County District Court with a Class A felony attempted murder charge, Class C felony counts of aggravated assault and terrorizing, and a Class A misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment after investigators said he opened fire on Edward Kennelly while he was visiting Thompsons wife, Lora.
Though Lora Thompson shot and injured her husband, an investigation revealed criminal charges against her were not warranted, Pembina County States Attorney Ryan Bialas told the Herald on Tuesday.
After lining up the distances, the trajectories and the statements, BCI (Bureau of Criminal Investigation) told me it would be inappropriate to file charges on this case, he said, referring to Lora Thompsons involvement in the shooting. As a prosecutor, if the forensics are not there, ethically, I cant file charges.
Brandon Thompson came home Thursday to find another man in his house with his wife, investigators said. An argument broke out and Brandon Thompson fired a 9mm Luger handgun at Kennelly from 5 feet away, but he was not injured, according to court documents. During a struggle, Brandon Thompsons gun was dislodged, according to investigators. When witnesses said he went after a military-style rifle, Lora Thompson grabbed the dislodged handgun and fire at least three shots at her husband, with one hitting him in the back, according to investigators.
Brandon Thompson was arrested but since has been released on bond.
The decision to not press charges against Lori Thompson was based on forensic reports from the BCI, interviews and statements from witnesses and information disseminated from debriefings, Bialas said. The Sheriffs Department also didnt file criminal charges against Lora Thompson, a step prosecutors use in deciding if a case should go to court.
Everyone was under agreement with the evidence that we had, it just was not appropriate to file charges against her, Bialas said.
Lora Thompson claimed her actions justified self-defense, telling Forum News Service she was consoling a friend, and her husband misinterpreted the situation. While there is evidence Brandon Thompson did not want Kennelly at the Thompson house, investigators and Bialas agreed Lora Thompson acted in self-defense.
Some have been critical of the lack of charges against Lora Thompson, with one group of people starting a petition on www.change.org to have Brandon Thompsons case dropped. The online petition stated he had no intention of killing Kennelly and was just trying to scare him away with a warning shot.
The petition defending Brandon Thompson as an amazing dad of two boys had gathered more than 460 supporters as of 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Bialas said his office wanted to be transparent about why no charges would be filed against Lora Thompson.
Brandon Thompson faces 20 years in prison and a $20,000 fine for the Class A felony, five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each Class C felony and one year in prison and a $3,000 fine for the misdemeanor charge.
His next court appearance is Nov. 30.
Forum News Service contributed to this report.
The central government will establish at least one (KVK, agriculture science centre) in each of the 646 districts in country. Of this, 100 will have special facilities for skill development, while an equal number will be converted into pulses and oilseeds hubs, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said on Wednesday.
Confident that 'Make in India' will transform the nation into a manufacturing powerhouse, Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh on Tuesday said India is seen as the sole bright sport in a troubled global .
"India is now being seen as the sole bright spot in a troubled global . When foreign investors look at India, they feel confident and reassured. Nearly $26 billion has flowed into the country this year so far since we opened the floodgates for FDI across sectors," he said.
He further said that there is no alternative to a robust manufacturing sector to uplift the over 1.25 billion people of this country and 'Make in India' programme will help in achieving this goal.
Talking about the steel sector, Singh said that in 2015 India became the world's third largest producer of the metal and will take the second spot in a few months.
The country led the growth in steel production and consumption globally in 2015 and the trend is continuing this year as well, he noted.
He said the government is taking policy measures to further boost steel demand in the country.
"R&D can be used to develop cost effective, environment friendly and new technologies. It can also be used to develop new products that can help in promoting steel usage. Pre-fabricated structures, steel toilets and other such innovative usages can be adopted using R&D," Singh added.
'Make in India' can help in a big way by focussing on R&D in the steel industry, whether it is in defence, space or nuclear power, which will help in two ways -- reducing outflow of foreign currency and inculcating a sense of pride in domestic technologies, the minister said.
"The government is also taking steps to ensure that quality steel is available to Indian consumers. This is very important from the health and safety point of view," he said.
On Monday, US defence giant became the first international vendor to respond to an Indian Air Force (IAF) letter, soliciting interest in building a single-engine, medium fighter aircraft in India, with full transfer of technology.
With a view to attracting more IT companies in the state and provide space for offices and other purpose, state will soon expand its existing 'Crystal IT park' in Indore. "It would be a new IT park where we will offer more space to the existing and potential investors," Rajendra Prasad Shukla state industry minister told Business Standard. The state is likely to showcase the propsed park in teh forthcoming global investors summit to be hosted in Indore on 22-23 of this month.
For millions in the country, the (PMUY) may be a harbinger of access to energy, but four-month-old Varshas hapless fate has raised concerns about the programme.
Three financial institutions, including the BSE, have faced cyber attacks in the last three months. Several banks have faced an increase in some form of cyber attack or security breach in recent times.
The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh inaugurated the celebration to commemorate the Canonization of Saint Mother Teresa here today. The event was jointly organised by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, Archdiocese of Delhi, Diocese of Faridabad and Diocese of Gurugram. .
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During the occasion, Shri Rajnath Singh said that Saint Mother Teresa has always been referred as Mother because of the love given to her, as a Mother. He said that from Macedonia, Alexander came to India to conquer land but Saint Mother Teresa came with love to conquer hearts. The Home Minister said that diversified language in India could not act as a barrier to Saint Mother Teresa, because she knew the language of smile and it has been acknowledged across the world. .
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Shri Rajnath Singh said that as per Hindu culture, whole world is considered as one family and there comes no hatred, when we see others as a part of family. He further said that India is a university of tolerance and for peaceful coexistence, tolerance is the building block. .
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Shri Rajnath Singh said that full security will be provided by the Government for all those who work towards humanity, in India. Recalling attacks on Minorities during the previous election in Delhi, he assured that Minorities will be protected in all possible ways. .
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The Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) Shri Oscar Fernandes, Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Cardinal George Alencherry and other dignitaries were also present. .
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Inland Waterways Authority of India awards contract for construction of Multi - Modal terminal at Sahibganj
The multi-modal terminal at Sahibganj in Jharkhand is soon to become a reality. The Inland Waterways Authority of India has recently awarded the contract for construction of the terminal to Larson & Tourbo (L&T). With the targeted completion of Phase -1 in 2019, the state of the art terminal will have a cargo handling capacity of 2.28 MMTPA.
Given Jharkhands coal reserves of nearly 80 billion tonnes, the location of the multi modal terminal at Sahibganj is especially significant. It will play an important role in transportation of domestic coal from the local mines to intended thermal power plants owing to its good railway connectivity .
Besides coal, stone-chips are also expected to be transported through the terminal.
The multi modal terminal will have facilities including berthing space for two vessels, stockyard for storing, belt conveyor system with fixed hoppers, barge loader, shore protection works, roads, ramps and parking area, and terminal buildings.
The Sahibganj terminal is the second out of the three multi-modal terminals planned under the Ganga Jal Marg Vikas Project, to be awarded for construction in a record time. Earlier in May, IWAI awarded the contract to construct a multi-modal terminal at Varanasi to AFCONS Infrastructure Ltd. The third terminal will be constructed at Haldia in West Bengal.
The Government is developing National Waterway-1 under the Jal Marg Vikas Project, with technical and financial assistance of the World Bank at an estimated cost of Rs. 4,200 crore. The project would enable commercial navigation of vessels with capacity of 1500-2,000 tons.
Phase-I of the project covers the Haldia-Varanasi stretch. The project includes development of fairway, Multi-Modal Terminals at Varanasi, Haldia, and Sahibganj, strengthening of river navigation system, conservancy works, modern River Information System (RIS), Digital Global Positioning System (DGPS), night navigation facilities, modern methods of channel marking, construction of a new state of the art navigational lock at Farakka.
MoU Signed between NICPR and All India Institute of Ayurveda for Cancer Prevention and Research
An MoU was signed here today between the National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research (NICPR), an autonomous institute under Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA), an autonomous institute under the Ministry of AYUSH. The main objective of the MoU is to set up a Center of Integrative Oncology at NICPR-Noida as joint venture of Ministry of AYUSH and Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare for collaboration in the areas of cancer prevention, research and Care.
The MoU was signed by Prof. Abhimanyu Kumar, Director- AIIA and Prof. Ravi Mehrotra, Director- NICPR in the presence of Shri Ajit M. Sharan, Secretary, Ministry of AYUSH, and Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Secretary, Department of Health Research (Ministry of Health & Family Welfare) & Director General, Indian Council for Medical Research. This MoU would pave the way to carry forward the ongoing bilateral dialogue and facilitate collaboration with National Cancer Institute, USA. Setting up of this Centre is an outcome of the deliberations held in Indo-US Workshop where in the invited US delegates from Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), National Institute of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NIH) deliberated with the eminent experts from India having expertise in Cancer research and other promising areas for two days to share experiences and work out a road map for future collaborations. Dr. Swaminathan while appreciating the initiative observed that the main aim should be to reduce the incidence of cancer for which preventive aspects with the strengths of AYUSH systems should be explored. She viewed that the collaborative research should aim at developing traditional medicine as adjuvant therapy to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. She emphasized on collaborative studies both short term and long term involving institutions of repute at national and international level. Shri Sharan appreciated the efforts and assured that funding would not be a constraint in carrying out the activities under the MoU. He outlined the five major action points as follows:- Awarding 10 new research fellowships every year - The process for the first batch will be completed by March, 2017. Minimum of five collaborative research projects will be supported in the financial year 2016-2017. Ministry would also develop few Centres of Excellence for cancer research and has identified the AIIA and the Rajaram Deo Anadilal Poddar Ayurveda Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai, a unit of Centre Council for Research in Ayurveda Sciences (CCRAS). This would be done by March, 2017. A Steering Committee and Scientific Advisory committee would be jointly constituted by the Ministry of AYUSH and the Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & F.W by Dec, 2016 International Conferences would be organised annually. On this significant occasion, a Web portal on Network for AYUSH Cancer Care (NFACC) developed by the AIIA was also launched by Secretary, AYUSH. The portal would help to collect the national data of experts, scientists, practitioners, institutes, universities located across the country and engaged in cancer care & research. An online App of NFACC has also been developed. This app will be available on the website of various AYUSH institutions which will provide a hyperlink to the main Portal. In future, this portal will have collection of research papers related to Cancer care, information about the facilities available for Cancer care through AYUSH systems. NB/SK
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
PM sanctions ex-gratia relief for the victims of fire accident in Bhubaneswar SUM Hospital, Odisha
Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has sanctioned an ex-gratia relief @ Rs.2 lakh each to the next of kin of the persons deceased and @ Rs.50,000/- each to the persons, who got seriously injured in the fire accident that occurred in the Bhubaneswar SUM hospital, Odisha on 17.10.2016, from the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President of India to Inaugurate 28th Accountants General Conference Tomorrow in National Capital
President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate the 28th Accountants General Conference being organized by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India here on 20th October, 2016. Lok Sabha Speaker, Ms. Sumitra Mahajan, Public Accounts Committee Chairman, Prof. K V Thomas and CAG of India, Shri Shashi Kant Sharma will also address the Conference. On the second day of the conference Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley will address the officers.
The Accountants General from all over the country will participate in the conference and will review the international best practices prevalent in audit and accounting. Besides the main theme, they will deliberate upon four brain storming sessions on (i) Auditing the programmes related to Sustainable Development Goals (ii) Meeting Challenges in Revenue Audit (iii) Impact of Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS)on Accounts & Entitlement (A&E) Functions & (iv) Audit of Local Bodies: Perspectives & Concerns. The recommendations emerging out of these sessions will be presented to the full assembly chaired by the CAG with all the Dy. CAGs and Addl. Dy.
CAGs present.
The environment in which audited entities, and consequently audit, functions is very dynamic - both in terms of structure and methods of implementation of public policy as well as the practice of audit and accounting. In order to keep pace with this dynamic environment, it is important that the IA&AD keeps reinventing and rejuvenating itself. A regular internal and external consultative process facilitates this effort to adapt and upgrade professional practices and methods of functioning. With this view, the IA&AD regularly organizes seminars, conferences and workshops. The Accountants General Conference is a prime platform where the entire top level management of the IA&AD come together once in two years to review, discuss and recommend the direction in which the IA&AD needs to move in order to deliver its mandated duties in the best possible manner. It offers a forum for exchange of ideas, grappling with evolving issues and experience sharing. .
Indian Audit and Accounts Department (IA&AD), headed by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, constantly strives to discharge its professional duties, both as an auditor and an accountant, in accordance with the international best practices. Today auditors are seen as partners in improving the governance, and audit reports serve as an aid to governments. In the public domain there is an increasing awareness and demand for transparency and accountability in public sector service delivery. The Comptroller and Auditor General is seen as the agency which is mandated to keep a watch on economic, efficient and effective governance. The foundation of sound governance with accountability rests on a system of robust public financial reporting. .
About 200 Accountants General posted all over the country, former CAGs of India, members of Audit Advisory Board, members of Government Accounting Standards Advisory Board and senior government officials are attending the conference. .
The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh reviewed the work and activities of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) here today as a part of ongoing review of Central Armed Police Forces. This meeting was attended by MoS(Home) Shri Kiren Rijiju, Home Secretary Shri Rajiv Mehrishi, Secretary (Border Management) Shri Susheel Kumar, Director General SSB Smt. Archana Ramasundaram, Addl. Director General SSB Shri S.S. Deswal and Senior Officers of Union Home Ministry and SSB. Director General SSB gave a detailed presentation on the working and operational preparedness, deployment, Administration & Logistics and future plans of SSB in the meeting. .
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Discussing the recent attack by militants on SSB troops in Jakura Srinagar, Kashmir, the Union Home Minister appreciated the retaliatory efforts made by SSB jawans and directed to provide all necessary support in terms of providing vehicles, Assault weapons, clothing etc, on priority to the troops of SSB deployed in J&K. It is pertinent to say that six Battalions of SSB are deployed in J&K since 2013 and seven Bns are also involved in anti LWE operations in Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. .
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Shri Rajnath Singh said, a contingent of SSB will soon be deployed in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. Director General, SSB informed that the SSB has already constituted 140 personnel Police Unit for the purpose. She also informed that SSB is the first CAPF to induct women Combatised Mahila personnel. The force is ready to depute one Female formed unit for overseas deployment under the UN Peacekeeping Operations. .
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Shri Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister appreciated the works and activities of SSB in the LWE-affected areas and also in the State of Jammu & Kashmir. He applauded the achievements of SSB in preventing Naxal activities and the alertness with which SSB is performing its duties in J&K. .
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Union Home Minster also discussed the security arrangements of Indo-Nepal Border and directed that intensive vigil should be maintained on Indo-Nepal border as terrorists may take advantage of the porous border. .
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The blue-eyed 18-year-old Arshad Khan from Pakistan, who caught the world's attention a few days earlier when a local photographer Jiah Ali posted his picture on social media has now landed himself a modelling career with online fashion retailer Fitnit.
The Islamabad company, which was recently started by 15 young and enthusiastic student on a Facebook post, said Arshad will be working as a model for its full version launch. Chai wala is no more chai wala, now he is fashion wala!.
The Instagram post on October 14 by Ali resulted in an internet storm with # being among the top Twitter trends not only in Pakistan but also in India, London and Dubai.
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign considered tapping Apple chief executive Tim Cook to be her running mate, according to hacked emails published on Tuesday by WikiLeaks.
In an email dated March 17 to Clinton, campaign chairman John Podesta also proposed the mega-billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, his wife Melinda and General Motors chief executive Mary Barra as possible Democratic vice presidents.
"Let me know if there are people you would like to see added or removed," Podesta wrote, enclosing a list of more than 30 names.
"I have organised names in rough food groups."
The email also identified well known military figures -- such as Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine Corps General John Allen, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan -- as well as Clinton's opponent for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and other lawmakers.
Podesta also suggested billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as well as more conventional political choices, such as Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.
Clinton ultimately settled on Virginia Senator Tim Kaine to campaign with her.
Podesta has not publicly verified that the emails are authentic, but told reporters that he believed that "Russian intelligence agencies" had hacked into his email account as part of efforts to favour Republican nominee Donald Trump.
US officials have formally blamed state-sponsored Russian hackers for the exposure of internal emails from the Democratic party and other prominent people and institutions.
German carrier Lufthansa is the latest airline to impose a total ban on passengers taking the smartphone on any of its flights.
The airline had previously banned the phone from flights in the United States and told passengers on other flights to keep the device switched off and unplugged.
On Wednesday, Lufthansa said on its Twitter account: "As per an official directive, Samsung Note 7 smartphones are not permitted on any of our flights. Please leave them at home!"
Important: As per an official directive, Samsung Note 7 smartphones are not permitted on any of our flights. Please leave them at home! Lufthansa (@lufthansa) October 18, 2016
Samsung has recalled more than 2.5 million of the phones after faulty batteries reportedly caused the device to catch fire.
prices rose on Wednesday, lifted by a report of a drop in US crude inventories and declining production in China, while an upbeat OPEC statement on its planned output cut also supported the market.
A slightly weaker dollar boosted as well, traders said, as it makes fuel purchases cheaper for countries using other currencies, potentially spurring demand.
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were trading at $50.73 per barrel at 0326 GMT, up 44 cents, or 0.87 per cent, from their last settlement.
Brent crude futures were at $52.14 a barrel, up 46 cents, or 0.89 per cent.
"The American Petroleum Institute crude inventory numbers were released ... this has given early Asian trading a bullish start," said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA in Singapore.
US crude stockpiles fell 3.8 million barrels in the week to October 14, to 467.1 million barrels, the API reported late on Tuesday.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) is due to release official crude and fuel storage data later on Wednesday.
Traders said oil was supported by Mohammed Barkindo, secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), saying he is confident about the prospects of a planned production cut following an OPEC meeting on November 30.
"I am optimistic we will have a decision," he said.
In its first output cut agreement since 2008, OPEC said it plans to reduce production to 32.50 million to 33.0 million barrels per day (bpd), compared with record output of 33.6 million bpd in September.
The group also hopes non-OPEC producers, especially Russia, will cooperate in a cut.
In China, a raft of economic and trade data was released on Wednesday.
While economic growth was in line with expectations, at an annual growth rate of 6.7 per cent in the third quarter, its oil figures were supportive of higher oil prices, traders said.
China processed 43.8 million tonnes (10.7 million bpd) of crude oil in September, up 2.4 per cent from a year ago, government data showed on Wednesday.
Over the same month, China's oil production fell 9.8 per cent to 15.98 million tonnes (3.89 million bpd), in its steepest decline in 19 months.
Around 620 rebels and their families began evacuating a besieged town, located southwest of the Syrian capital of Damascus, on Wednesday, a local official said.
"The buses of rebels have begun moving," said Hassan Ghandour, a member of the local committee overseeing the deal in Moadamiyat al-Sham.
According to the deal, brokered by the Syrian government, buses ferrying rebels and their families would head towards the Idlib province, northwest of Damascus.
Moadamiyet al-Sham has been under a devastating government siege since early 2013.
Syria's government has championed such local deals, which typically see rebels evacuated in exchange for an end to their encirclement, as a way to bring stability to the war-ravaged country.
Another member of the local reconciliation committee who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity put the number of evacuees, including rebels and civilians, at 2,100 people.
Any remaining rebels would hand over themselves to Syrian authorities "to have their status regularised," the member said.
"Then, the Syrian army will enter the town and state institutions will return to it. Infrastructure like water and electricity networks will be repaired beginning on Sunday," the member added.
More than 300,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011.
Singapore signed an agreement on Wednesday to start testing self-driving buses, as the city-state pushes ahead with its vision of using autonomous technology to help deal with the challenges posed by its limited land and labour.
Days ahead of Prime Minister Theresa May's India visit, the UK on Tuesday hailed Pakistan's "significant sacrifices" in combating terror while responding to a petition calling on the British government to "strongly condemn" for providing a safe haven for terrorists.
Days ahead of UK Prime Minister Theresa May's visit, the country on Tuesday hailed Pakistan's "significant sacrifices" in combating terror while responding to a petition calling on the British government to "strongly condemn" Pakistan for providing a safe haven for terrorists, as reported earlier.
Bonita India, a leading Indian manufacturer of stylish and innovative home utility products, has won the 'Best Emerging HR Strategy' award at the recently held 'HR Excellence Awards 2016' organized by World Magazine.
The award is meant for startups that have a powerful HR strategy to promote excellence and achieve organizational goals in the formative years.
Anurag Batra, Editor-in-Chief, World and Prabir Jha, CHRO, Cipla Limited handed the award over to representatives of Bonita India.
The BW HR Excellence Awards recognizes excellence in HR and strategic planning of organizations and individuals who are currently pushing human capital as a key resource in development.
The award categories this year was focused on three pillars, namely HR strategy excellence, HR execution excellence and HR people excellence.
The awards ceremony was held at The St. Regis Hotel in Mumbai and a total of 22 categories of awards were given.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Karnataka Home Minister G. Parameshwara on Wednesday expressed hope that the state would get justice on the Cauvery water dispute.
Speaking ahead of the all-party meeting called by Karnataka Chief Minister K. Siddaramaiah, Parameshwara said that they would discuss in detail as to what best can be done on this matter.
"We are hoping that we get justice, we always go before the Supreme Court with that kind of a mindset. But unfortunately we are been hard-pressed like this," Parameshwara told ANI.
Earlier in the day, Congress leader N.A Harris said the water is scant in Karnataka with a modicum of it left for drinking purposes. He also said that the report accurately showcases the state's water scarcity.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will today resume its hearing on the Cauvery water dispute after it directed the Karnataka Government to release 2,000 cusecs per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders are given.
The Karnataka Government has in response filed a petition asking for larger constitutional bench to be constituted to look into the dispute.
A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar are presently hearing the case.
The GS Jha-led Supreme Court appointed team had on Monday submitted its report before the apex court after inspecting the Krishnaraja Sagar and the Kabini dams in Karnataka, and the Mettur and Bhavani Sagar dams in Tamil Nadu.
The high-level central technical team also interacted with the Public Works Department (PWD) officials and delta farmers in Thanjavur Nagapattinam and Tiruvarur districts. The farmers in Tiruchirapalli and delta regions told the team that the samba crop will be damaged if water from the Cauvery is not released by Karnataka.
The committee has stated 42 of the 48 talukas of Karnataka in the Cauvery basin have been affected by drought. The team was constituted as per orders of the apex court to assess the realities in the Cauvery basin areas in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With the Supreme Court looking into the technical committee's report on the Cauvery river-sharing dispute, the Congress on Wednesday hoped that the report enlightens the judges of the court and make them understand the ground realities of Karnataka.
Congress state leader N.A Harris said the water is scant in Karnataka with a modicum of it left for drinking water purposes. He also said that the report accurately showcase the state's water scarcity.
"Hope the technical committee's report will enlighten them and make them understand the situation here and then only give a verdict on this. I am sure that the learned judges will give a very reasonable and fair decision which will not be against Karnataka," Harris told ANI
"The problem with us is that we are lacking drinking water. The judges should understand that. We are not asking water for farming we are asking for drinking," he added.
The G S Jha-led Supreme Court appointed team on Monday submitted its report before the apex court after inspecteing the Krishnaraja Sagar and the Kabini dams in Karnataka, and the Mettur and Bhavani Sagar dams in Tamil Nadu.
The high-level central technical team also interacted with public works department officials and delta farmers in Thanjavur Nagapattinam and Tiruvarur districts. The farmers in Tiruchirapalli and delta regions told the team that the samba crop will be damaged if water from the Cauvery is not released by Karnataka.
The committee has stated 42 of the 48 talukas of Karnataka in the Cauvery basin have been affected by drought. The team was constituted as per orders of the apex court to assess the realities in the Cauvery basin areas in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court will today resume its hearing on the Cauvery water dispute after it directed the Karnataka government to release 2000 cusecs per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders are given.
In response, the Karnataka government has filed a petition in the court asking for larger constitutional bench to be constituted to look into the dispute.
A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar are currently hearing the case.
The G S Jha-led Supreme Court appointed team on Monday submitted its report before the apex court after inspecteing the Krishnaraja Sagar and the Kabini dams in Karnataka, and the Mettur and Bhavani Sagar dams in Tamil Nadu.
The high-level central technical team also interacted with public works department officials and delta farmers in Thanjavur Nagapattinam and Tiruvarur districts. The farmers in Tiruchirapalli and delta regions told the team that the samba crop will be damaged if water from the Cauvery is not released by Karnataka.
The committee has stated 42 of the 48 talukas of Karnataka in the Cauvery basin have been affected by drought. The team was constituted as per orders of the apex court to assess the realities in the Cauvery basin areas in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A group of budding chefs recently celebrated World Bread Day by baking and preparing a huge vegetarian burger bun that attracted food lovers from across the city.
It took almost 16 hours for 47 catering students and five chefs to make the 1.5 feet tall and three feet wide burger, which was handed over to an orphanage after display.
The giant burger was prepared with 35 kilograms of refined flour (maida), two kilograms of sugar, one kilogram salt and yeast each, 12 litres of vegetable oil and 21 litres of water. Moreover, no preservatives were used in baking the huge burger that weighed 65 kilograms.
In addition to this, a variety of bread from seven countries were also displayed at the venue. The initiative was taken up by a private hotel management institute.
The event also saw students baking breads from countries like France, Italy and America.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Wednesday said the Constitutional amendment proposal would be put forward in the House before the upcoming Chhath festival.
Asserting that the consensus of major political actors of Nepal will be taken, Dahal said the discussions were underway for the same, for tabling the proposal within next three weeks.
"The draft proposal is at its final stage," said Dahal.
The Prime Minister's statement holds importance in the wake of various madhesi organisations demanding two states for them, which requires an amendment in the Constitution.
The Prime Minister was addressing Parliament to inform about his visit to Indian state of Goa for BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit earlier this week, a report in the Himalayan Times said.
The government was doing further homework as dialogues so far had not been much fruitful so that it could be made more fruitful, he said.
Dahal claimed that concluding the Constitution amendment process in consensus of the main opposition CPN-UML and agitating parties and groups including Madhesis, Tharus and Janajatis was government's top priority.
While addressing the disgruntled groups, he ensured them that their concerns will be addressed.
Dahal also informed that local body restructuring process was moving ahead in consensus of major political parties.
After the Local Body Restructuring Commission would submit its report on time to ensure implementation of the Constitution, he was confident that the local body elections would be held by mid-April.
Dahal claimed that he ensured effective implementation of past agreements signed with India during his recent India visit for the BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit and added that India had agreed to proceed with the financial cooperation pledged for major development projects including the Pancheshwor Multipurpose Project.
"This visit has helped us to strengthen Nepal-India ties existing for a long," the Prime Minister said.
He said that the bilateral meetings with leaders of India, China, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and South Africa were fruitful in developing ties with them.
Terming his "joint meeting" with Indian PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping a "happy coincidence," Dahal said that it should not be dragged into "unnecessary comments."
Urging that baseless comments could affect our relationships with our neighbours, he said that he felt proud that he could utilise the rare opportunity, which could have been impossible if it was planned.
The legislative body was informed by Dahal that the Chinese President had assured him to visit Nepal at the earliest, if not this year.
The PM in his around 45-minute long address did not mentioned the UML but had frequently targeted the opposition party, thereby rejecting the accusations it had made against his government on various occasions.
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Stating that there were increasing intelligence inputs of activities in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district post the Uri terror strike, defence expert Major General (Retd.) P.K. Sehgal on Wednesday said that the Government of India must take apt steps to eliminate and neutralise such elements.
Major General (Retd.) Sehgal, who was commenting on the raid conducted by the security forces last night in Baramulla district, said that it was based on intelligence inputs and carried out to find out the truth.
"Ever since the Uri attack, there were increasing intelligence inputs of activities in Baramulla district. There were intelligence inputs that pro-Pakistan elements as well as terrorists have hidden in those places and the locals are beginning to give them some sort of a support either voluntarily or being forced to do so," Major General (Retd.) Sehgal said.
"So, to find out the truth behind it, last night the army, the security forces, the paramilitary forces, the Jammu and Kashmir Police carried out a combined raid in 12 villages, recovered lots of arms and ammunitions and arrested 44 people who apparently had linkages with terrorists or had terrorists oriented design. Also quite a few hideouts were busted and a lot of other inputs were made available to us which will help the security forces to clean up that area," he added.
In a major military operation, the security forces successfully bust the terrorist hideouts in Baramulla district last night. A large number of suspected hideouts were also located during the crackdown.
After 700-odd houses were searched, the security agencies seized petrol bombs, Chinese and Pakistani flags, LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) letter pads, illegal mobile phones and other seditious materials.
The operation was a crackdown conducted jointly by the Border Security Force (BSF), CRPF, the army and the Jammu Kashmir Police.
The cross border violations between India and Pakistan escalated after the Uri attack in which 19 Indian soldiers lost their lives.
Pakistan violated ceasefire 25 times in 10 days other than the militant attack that also targeted civilians. India also tried to diplomatically isolate Pakistan globally following the Uri attack.
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The Zoological Park has temporarily shut down after nine birds died and a few of them were detected with influenza and is taking steps to ensure that the infection does not spread to the rest of the birds and animals in the zoo.
"The issue was detected last Friday and Saturday in which a total of nine birds died including rosy pelicans, painted storks and ducks. We sent the samples to Jalandhar and Bhopal and few birds were detected with influenza and since then there have been no deaths," Riyaz Khan, PRO of the zoo told the media here.
However as a cautionary method, all visits have been prohibited from the zoo for a few days until the entire area is declared as safe by the concerned agencies, who will be arriving to take stock of the situation.
Asserting that all steps are taken for the infection to be contained, Khan added that the zoo is lush with vegetation and plants, making it difficult for the virus to spread.
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Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday called upon IAS officers of the 2014 Batch of the Uttar Pradesh cadre to always uphold their reputation and credibility.
Asking them to bear empathy for the last man in the queue, the Home Minister said, "The IAS officers shoulder big responsibility in the district and must win the trust of the common people without hurting their feelings."
Recalling his tenure as the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Singh asked the IAS Officers "not to hesitate to put across their point of view before the ministers in case of difference of opinion".
About 35 IAS officers of the 2014 Batch of Uttar Pradesh cadre as well as officers, who are domicile of Uttar Pradesh and are currently posted in various ministries/departments as assistant secretaries, participated in an interactive session with 11 Union Ministers led by the Home Minister here today.
Interacting with the officers, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said, "The IAS officer being the steward of administration in the district should always show concern to the interests of poor people." Parrikar asked them to show sensitivity to issues of the Armed Forces personnel and Ex-Servicemen.
Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Sanjay Gandhi said, "As District Magistrates, the IAS officers should show a sense of compassion and kindness to resolve the problems of the common man."
Other Ministers, who participated in the interactive session, included Minister of State (MoS) for Tourism (Independent Charge) and Culture Dr. Mahesh Sharma, MoS for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) and Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, MoS (External Affairs) General (Retd.) V.K. Singh, MoS (Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation) Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, MoS (Food Processing Industries) Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, MoS (HRD) Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, MoS (Women and Child Development) Krishna Raj and MoS (Health and Family Welfare) Anupriya Patel.
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A new study has found out that brain cells called glial cells play a critical role in controlling appetite and feeding behaviour.
In a study by of mice, the MIT neuroscientists found that activating these cells stimulates overeating, and that when the cells are suppressed, appetite is also suppressed.
The findings could offer scientists a new target for developing drugs against obesity and other appetite-related disorders, the researchers said.
The study is also the latest in recent years to implicate glial cells in important brain functions. Until about 10 years ago, glial cells were believed to play more of a supporting role for neurons.
"In the last few years, abnormal glial cell activities have been strongly implicated in neurodegenerative disorders. There is more and more evidence to point to the importance of glial cells in modulating neuronal function and in mediating brain disorders," said senior author Guoping Feng.
It has long been known that the hypothalamus, an almond-sized structure located deep within the brain, controls appetite as well as energy expenditure, body temperature, and circadian rhythms including sleep cycles.
While performing studies on glial cells in other parts of the brain, researcher Naiyan Chen noticed that the hypothalamus also appeared to have a lot of glial cell activity.
"I was very curious at that point what glial cells would be doing in the hypothalamus, since glial cells have been shown in other brain areas to have an influence on regulation of neuronal function," she said.
Within the hypothalamus, scientists have identified two key groups of neurons that regulate appetite, known as AgRP neurons and POMC neurons. AgRP neurons stimulate feeding, while POMC neurons suppress appetite.
Until recently it has been difficult to study the role of glial cells in controlling appetite or any other brain function, because scientists haven't developed many techniques for silencing or stimulating these cells, as they have for neurons. Glial cells, which make up about half of the cells in the brain, have many supporting roles, including cushioning neurons and helping them form connections with one another.
In this study, the research team used a new technique developed at the University of North Carolina to study a type of glial cell known as an astrocyte. Using this strategy, researchers can engineer specific cells to produce a surface receptor that binds to a chemical compound known as CNO, a derivative of clozapine. Then, when CNO is given, it activates the glial cells.
The MIT team found that turning on astrocyte activity with just a single dose of CNO had a significant effect on feeding behavior.
"When we gave the compound that specifically activated the receptors, we saw a robust increase in feeding," Chen said. "Mice are not known to eat very much in the daytime, but when we gave drugs to these animals that express a particular receptor, they were eating a lot."
The researchers also found that in the short term (three days), the mice did not gain extra weight, even though they were eating more.
"This raises the possibility that glial cells may also be modulating neurons that control energy expenditures, to compensate for the increased food intake," Chen said. "They might have multiple neuronal partners and modulate multiple energy homeostasis functions all at the same time."
When the researchers silenced activity in the astrocytes, they found that the mice ate less than normal.
Still unknown is how the astrocytes exert their effects on neurons. Some recent studies have suggested that glial cells can secrete chemical messengers such as glutamate and ATP; if so, these "gliotransmitters" could influence neuron activity.
Another hypothesis is that instead of secreting chemicals, astrocytes exert their effects by controlling the uptake of neurotransmitters from the space surrounding neurons, thereby affecting neuron activity indirectly.
Feng now plans to develop new research tools that could help scientists learn more about astrocyte-neuron interactions and how astrocytes contribute to modulation of appetite and feeding. He also hopes to learn more about whether there are different types of astrocytes that may contribute differently to feeding behavior, especially abnormal behavior.
"We really know very little about how astrocytes contribute to the modulation of appetite, eating, and metabolism," he said. "In the future, dissecting out these functional difference will be critical for our understanding of these disorders."
The study has been published in mSystems.
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned the Pakistan government that it risks meeting its repayment obligations with regard to the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project despite it having the potential to lift the economy
This warning has been issued in the IMF's latest and final review of the just concluded programme, reports the Express Tribune.
"During the investment phase, as the 'early harvest' projects proceed, Pakistan will experience a surge in FDI and other external funding inflows," says the Fund in a short evaluation of the impact of CPEC related investments on Pakistan. However, the import requirements of these projects "will likely offset a significant share of these inflows, such that the current account deficit would widen" within manageable levels during these years.
The report estimates that CPEC related imports could reach 11 per cent of total projected imports by 2020, equal to just over USD 5.7 billion, while inflows under the corridor will touch 2.2 percent of projected GDP in that year. Gross external financing needs of the country will jump almost 60 percent by then, from a projected USD 11 billion for the current fiscal year, to USD 17.5 billion in 2020.
Pakistan will see USD 27.8 billion in "early harvest" projects under CPEC in the next few years, with the remaining USD 16 billion coming over a longer timeline stretching out to 2030.
"Pakistan will need to manage increasing CPEC-related outflows," warns the Fund, once the Chinese investors begin repatriating profits, adding that the amounts involved "could add up to a significant level given the magnitude of the FDI".
Outflows will also come in the form of repayment obligations on the loans taken from Chinese banks for these projects, which are expected to rise after 2021. Both of these, repayments and profit repatriation, "could reach about 0.4 per cent of GDP per year over the longer run".
The Fund acknowledges that CPEC related growth could cover these payments over the longer term, but warns that this is not guaranteed.
"Reaping the full potential benefits of CPEC will require forceful pro-growth and export-supporting reforms" the report says, citing improved business climate, governance and security as necessary preconditions to enable CPEC investments to generate the resources required to cover their own associated outflows. In addition, "allowing greater downward exchange rate flexibility" will also be necessary.
The matter of rising CPEC related outflows was discussed between the Fund staff and the government during the discussions prior to the review. The government told the Fund that "additional Chinese investment over the longer term, building on CPEC as a platform, could also help cover the projected CPEC related outflows," according to the report.
For the fund, CPEC outflows are one of the medium to long term risks facing Pakistan's economy. It calls for "sound project evaluation and prioritisation mechanisms based on effective cost-benefit analysis and realistic forecasts of macroeconomic and financing conditions" to help mitigate the risk.
It points out "a need to ensure transparency and accountability in project management and monitoring", pointing specifically at the power purchase agreements being signed with Chinese IPPs, calling on the government to ensure that the cost of power purchase "remains favourable" for the distribution companies and consumers.
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Rajasthan Law Minister Rajendra Singh Rathore on Wednesday said the state government has filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court against the decision of the High Court that acquitted actor Salman Khan in the 1998 alleged chinkara poaching cases.
The Rajasthan High Court on July 25 had acquitted Salman in the poaching case for the want of evidences. The Law Minister had said the government was studying the merits and demerits of the case, and has now decided to appeal against the decision in the Supreme Court.
"Law is same for everybody, even if a person is a celebrity, and that is why the state government has decided to file an SLP," he told ANI.
"In the SLP, we have urged the apex court to quash the decision of the high court and Harish Dulani, a key witness, whose statements are not recorded, should be record now and the apex court should also take his statement into consideration," he added.
Salman was convicted by a lower court in 2006 in the two chinkara cases, but this was overturned by the High Court in its judgment Monday.
One of the animals was killed at Bhawad on the outskirts of Jodhpur on September 26, 1998, and the other at Ghoda Farms on September 28, 1998.
At that time, they were shooting for film 'Hum Sath Sath Hain'.
Chinkara is an endangered animal accorded the highest protection under the Wildlife Protection Act.
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Oscar-winning film-maker Michael Moore recently announced that he would bring a surprise documentary called 'Michael Moore in Trumpland' to the big screen.
With an initial New York screening, where tickets will be free, the film will then be officially released on 19 October, reports the Guardian.
The official description of the documentary reads, "See the film Ohio Republicans tried to shut down. Oscar-winner Michael Moore dives right into hostile territory with his daring and hilarious one-man show, deep in the heart of TrumpLand in the weeks before the 2016 election."
The 62-year-old film-maker also recently took to his Twitter handle to announce the free screening.
"Hey NYC- Who wants a peek @ what I've been up 2? Tues, 9:30pm, IFC Center. TIx free, 1st come, b.o. opens 8:30pm," he tweeted.
Earlier last month, Moore had shared on social media that he was banned from performing and filming the show at a theater in Ohio.
"It always amazes me when people choose to just outright lie instead of simply admitting the truth and then being proud of their decision," he wrote then.
"I'm sure the good people who run this theater are not, in their hearts, proud of what they've done and were certainly hoping their little act of censorship wouldn't be known by anyone. They probably didn't think we'd bother to out them so publicly. That's how small towns get away with stuff like this. And if you grew up in one of these places, you know what I'm talking about," he added.
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Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) workers gathered at Multiplex Metro Cinema here on Wednesday to protest against screening of Karan Johar's 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' having Pakistani actor Fawad Khan as one of the casts.
The party workers assembled at multiplex, and raised slogans against Johar and demanded his film not to be released.
"The upcoming movie of Karan Johar 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' casts Fawad Khan and we will not let this film be released here. Right now, we are asking all the multiplex owners politely to not to showcase this film here and after that also, if they showcase the film, then we will break the glasses of those theatres," said MNS leader Arvind Gavade.
Earlier on Tuesday, Johar broke his silence on the row over his upcoming film 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil', in an emotional video statement expressing a "deep sense of hurt and pain" by the charge of being anti- .
"I condemn terror in the strongest terms; I respect our army, for me, the country comes first," the 44-year-old said.
Johar, who made his directorial debut with the blockbuster romance Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, further said: "The best way to express your patriotism is to spread love and thats all I have ever tried to do through my work and cinema."
Yesterday, prominent industry veterans including filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt met Mumbai Police Commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar and Joint Police Commissioner (Law and Order) Deven Bharti, who assured them that they would provide protection to theatres screening Dharma Productions next release 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil'.
The meeting took place in the wake of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) veiled threat of vandalizing multiplexes if they screen 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil'.
CEO of Fox Star Studios Vijay Singh, CEO of Dharma Productions Apoorva Mehta and Siddharth Roy Kapur, the CEO of Disney India and the UTV Motion Pictures were among those present in the meeting.
Shunning long-time speculations about whether the movie will release on its defined date or not, Bhatt confirmed that they would stick to the initial date of release, adding the movie will hit cinemas worldwide on October 28.
Reaching out to the MNS workers, Bhatt urged them to show sensitivity about the fact that the movie has already been made and allow Diwali to be a festive affair for everyone.
"I have a request as a fellow Indian to my brothers in the MNS, I am humbly requesting you to let us entertain people on the occasion of Diwali," he said.
Meanwhile, Mumbai Police spokesperson Ashok Dudhe said that all multiplexes and single screen theatres would get protection to release the movie so that no disruption is caused in middle of the shows or in the city as a whole.
The movie starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been under fire because it also features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in a cameo.
The MNS after imposing the ban on artistes from the neighbouring country, in response to the terror attack in Uri led by Pakistan, had on Monday openly threatened the theatre owners if they screen the movie.
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Panthers Party chief Harsh Dev Singh criticized the meeting of All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leader Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi and Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit on Tuesday and alleged that Islamabad has used Hurriyat to vitiate the peace in Kashmir.
"Hurriyat leaders have been allowed an easy access to Pakistan High Commission and they have been meeting the high commissioner earlier also and once again Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi has called on the High Commission of Pakistan. They have discussed Kashmir as well this only shows that how is trying to persuade Hurriyat and other separatist to continue their struggle and crusade against India. That amply reveals their mindset and they are interested in vitiating peace and continue to do so," he said.
"There have been several occasions where Hurriyat leaders have been meeting Pakistani high commissioner and Indian government has failed to act against Hurriyat for political reasons because BJP is a partner in PDP government in Kashmir which has a soft corner for the separatists and other Hurriyat leaders," he added.
"We believe that government of India needs to assert and it should disallow such meetings because they tend to promote violence in Kashmir and they are being tutored by Pakistan and Islamabad is operating through this Hurriyat and other separatists," Singh told ANI here.
Harsh Dev Singh urged the Union government to monitor these meetings sternly.
On Tuesday, All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leader Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi met Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit and discussed the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
The meeting comes in the backdrop of continued unrest in the Valley which has been witnessing violent protests since July 8 after the killing of Hizbul terrorist Burhan Wani, who has been hailed by Pakistan government as a "martyr".
"The APHC leader Syed Al-Moosvi met Basit at the High Commission here and discussed the situation in the state," Pakistan High Commission sources said. However, they did not divulge any further details of the meeting.
Syed Al-Moosvi along with other party leaders had strongly condemned the restrictions and use of force by security personnel.
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The Congress on Wednesday brought an adjournment motion in the Kerala State Assembly to discuss the rising political violence in Kannur.
The Opposition party has accused Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M)) rivalry behind the rising crime in the city and making Kerala as a murder center.
Declining the allegation of the Congress, CPI (M) leader and Kerala's Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the RSS makes deliberate attempt to create law and order problems in Kannur and alleged that till now six peace talk has failed as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) kept away from it.
He further said that the police take strong actions with special control rooms and bomb squad adding that there is no emergency to discuss the matter in the assembly.
Early this month, a CPM and a BJP worker were murdered in the Kannur.
The CP (M) worker was killed and the BJP activist was hacked to death at a petrol pump near Pinarayi in Kannur district in Kerala.
Meanwhile, both CPM and BJP are now blaming each other for the death of their respective party workers.
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The Deputy Director General of Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau (IB), Ali Ahmed Sabir, has reportedly told the Senate Standing Committee on the Cabinet Secretariat that intelligence agencies in India and Afghanistan are looking at various options to sabotage or damage the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.
"The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) are some of the potential threats to CPEC, as the former is directed towards China which is a prime stakeholder in the project," the Express Tribune quoted Sabir, as saying.
According to the Express Tribune, this is the first time that a state agency has publicly talked about a possible nexus between India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) with regard to sabotaging the .
The Senate panel has reportedly told all concerned agencies to take all possible measures to ensure the security of projects, particularly those located in the Gwadar and Gilgit-Baltistan regions.
Intelligence Bureau Director General Aftab Sultan has informed the panel that there is a shortage of manpower, but every effort will be made to prevent subversive or suspicious activities.
Pakistan's Supreme Court has asked the Nawaz Sharif-led federal government to convince it that it is willing to conduct a census in March 2017.
A three-judge bench of the apex court rejected Attorney General Aushtar Ausaf's argument that the government is facing logistical roadblocks in completing the exercise, reports the Express Tribune.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, who headed the bench, said in his order that "the AG has tried to impress upon the circumstances which are not in the control of the government, but we are not at all impressed with his contentions."
The order directed the federal government to come up with "a specific date" on which it will hold the census when the matter is again taken up in a fortnight.
The population census is the biggest peace time logistic exercise, involving the mobilization of about 200,000 manpower including 167,000 enumerators - one for each block - an exercise that will incur an expenditure of Rs14.5 billion.
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A complete ban on airing of Indian content in the country has been approved by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on Wednesday with effect from October 21, said a statement released by the regulatory authority.
The authority took this decision in their 120th meeting held today here, reports the Dawn.
Earlier, the Pakistan Government had suggested banning the airing of Indian content in a tit-for-tat, following a ban by India on airing Pakistani content.
A statement issued from the regulatory authority said, "The ban will come into effect at 3pm on October 21, and the radio and television stations which violate the ban will have their licences suspended without a prior show-cause notice,".
The ban extends to all Indian content on cable and radio being aired in the country.
The PEMRA statement said, "PEMRA, with the authority vested by the federal government, today announces the cancellation of the one-sided rights given to India by the Pervez Musharraf government."
Earlier in October, the power to revoke or suspend licences of companies airing Indian content without providing prior notice was granted to Absar Alam by the authority.
On Aug 31, it had announced to take a strict action would against the channels airing foreign content more than the prescribed limit and traders selling illegal DTH sets.
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Pakistan has urged the United States to revise its travel advisory pertaining to the country in a bid to promote a softer and more investor-friendly image to American citizens.
This request was put forth by Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan, during the 8th Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) Council Meeting held on Tuesday.
According to the Express Tribune, the meeting was aimed at securing preferential access to the textile market and an easy-visa regime for exporters of IT-related services to further strengthen trade ties between the two countries.
The US delegation, led by United States Trade Representatives (USTR) Ambassador Michael Froman, included US Ambassador to Pakistan David Hale among others.
The Pakistani delegation comprised Commerce Secretary Azmat Ranjha, Commerce Additional Secretary Asad Hayauddin and Trade Minister at Washington DC Ali Tahir.
During the meeting, the two sides discussed ways and means to improve access of Pakistani exports to the United States, including those of textiles and agricultural items, enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in Pakistan, opening up of defence procurement in Afghanistan to Pakistani companies among others.
The United States is Pakistan's largest bilateral trading partner. In FY 2015, Pakistan's exports to all countries were estimated at USD 24.59 billion and its imports at USD 41.43 billion.
In fiscal year 2015, the United States accounted for approximately 16 percent of Pakistan's exports, the second largest market behind the European Union, and USD 1.20 billion of its imports. Bilateral trade between the United States and Pakistan exceeded USD 5.1 billion. The United States is also one of the top sources of foreign direct investment to Pakistan, with USD 209 million.
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The nerves we feel before a stressful event, like speaking in public, for example, are normally kept in check by a complex system of circuits in our brain.
Scientists at Rockefeller University have identified a key molecule within this circuitry that is responsible for relieving anxiety. Intriguingly, it doesn't appear to reduce anxiety in female mice, only in males.
"This is unusual, because the particular cell type involved here is the same in the male and female brain, same in number, same in appearance," said researcher Nathaniel Heintz. "It's a rare case where a single cell type is activated by the same stimulus but yields two different behaviors in each gender."
Heintz and colleagues demonstrated that a protein called corticotropin releasing hormone binding protein (CRHBP) reduces anxiety in male mice by halting the activity of a stress-inducing hormone.
The results may provide insights into new therapies for anxiety-related conditions.
The study has been published in Cell.
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Shiv Sena on Tuesday urged the Devendra Fadnavis government to be transparent about BJP worker Ganesh Pandey molestation case after giving assurance six months back.
Shiv Sena leader Neelam Gore has asked the Bombay High Court and Commission for Women to monitor the State Women Commission's working.
"What we are saying is that Ganesh Pandey is a BJP worker and co worker of Ashish Shelar and the victim women who has sent the letter to State Women commission has taken the name of many influential people," she said.
"State Women Commission would investigate the matter and Chief Minister assured us on March29 in the state assembly that steps will be taken in this regard but six months have gone by and the State Women commission comes to the decision without proper investigation," she added
"This is a grave situation that people who are fighting will get tired and still don't get the justice then who will watch the watch dog because it is the duty of Women's commission to protect the rights of women," she added.
"In this situation we would urge Commission for Women and High Court to monitor the State Women Commission. They should have given the report within 3 months and it was important to strengthen the report," Ghore said.
"Our Chief Minister is also the Home Minister and he always talks about the women issues. It would be appropriate if the state government informs people about the issue," she concluded.
Seven months after a senior office-bearer accused the then BJP youth wing chief of molesting a the 41-yearold woman at a hotel in UP during a three-day party conclave.
The women has told the state women's commission that it isn't worth her time to chase the case against Ganesh Pandey, who was booted out of the party right after she levelled the charge.
The woman had complained to the BJP city chief on March 22 that Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha chief Pandey, 35, had tried to kiss her in a hotel room in Mathura on March 4 to win a bet, days after which Pandey was stripped of his position and suspended from the party.
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In the wake of the recent horrific incident in Bhubaneswar's SUM Hospital where over 20 patients lost their lives and at least 120 others sustained injuries following a fire mishap, Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain on Wednesday called for an emergency review meeting of the officials of government hospitals.
The hospital administration and fire officials would attend the meeting called by Jain.
The blaze was suspected to have been triggered by an electric short circuit in the dialysis ward on the first floor of the Sum hospital and spread to the nearby Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
The Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Wednesday issued a notice to the Odisha government over the massive at the SUM hospital in which at least 20 people were killed, adding that the hospital in question was reportedly warned as early as in 2013 for not keeping the safety measures but the hospital authorities ignored it.
In a statement issued today, the NHRC said that it had taken suo motu cognizance of reports that due to suspected short circuit, a major fire broke out in the SUM Hospital and Medical College.
The Commission further stated that in Odisha, out of 568 hospitals, only three have clearance of the department of fire safety.
"The Commission has observed that callous attitude and lapses of the authorities, if any, amount to violation of right to life of the patients. It has expressed shock how the State authorities allowed such a large number of hospitals to function without proper fire safety clearance," the statement added.
Accordingly, it has issued a notice to the Government of Odisha through its Chief Secretary calling for a report in the matter within six weeks including the relief and rehabilitation granted to the next of kin of the deceased and the injured.
He has also been asked to inform about the steps and precautions taken or proposed to be taken by the State Government to prevent recurrence of such mishaps.
Meanwhile, after taking stock at the SUM hospital, Union Health Minister JP Nadda said that there were safety issues that needed to be addressed, adding that stringent action will be taken against the people responsible for the tragedy.
Speaking to the media after interacting with the patients, Nadda said that he had been instructed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the very moment the fire was reported, to ensure the safety of the patients at the hospital.
"It is very saddening and shocking. It's also painful and worrisome that such an incident has taken place. I've been told that an inquiry is going on, but prima facie I find that some safety issues are there which need to be addressed," Nadda said.
The Union Minister also called on the state government to take adequate steps and action so that the faith of the people is reposed, while adding that the people responsible should be punished.
On the basis of the preliminary fact-finding report, Odisha government yesterday filed two criminal cases alleging negligence in conduct and safety against the hospital and initiated administrative inquiries into the mishap.
The Bhubaneswar Commissionerate police have arrested four hospital staff on charges of negligence in conduct and safety.
Some patients who were shifted from SUM Hospital to other hospitals in Bhubaneswar after the fire mishap, are said to be in critical condition and fighting for their life at the ICUs.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After film-maker Karan Johar gave in to the pressure of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and said he will not work with Pakistani talent in future, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday said that it would have been better had the director expressed solidarity with India's armed forces post Uri and Pathankot attacks.
BJP spokesperson Shaina NC told ANI that the Centre has decided to give protection to every theatre that is going to showcase Johar's film.
"Clearly, there is a sentiment in public at large, which is anti-Pakistan at the given juncture as we all know post Uri and Pathankot. I wish the directors like Karan Johar would have come out with a statement in solidarity with our armed forces after the attacks rather than let a controversy break loose," said NC.
"However, we do believe that the rule of law must prevail and because it cannot implement retrospective, our government has decided to give protection to every theatre that is going to showcase that film," she added.
NC further said that the question is who has actually boycotted this particular film, as the government has no role to play.
Earlier on Tuesday, Johar broke his silence on the row over his upcoming film 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil', in an emotional video statement expressing a "deep sense of hurt and pain" by the charge of being anti- .
"I condemn terror in the strongest terms, I respect our Army, for me, the country comes first," the 44-year-old said.
Johar, who made his directorial debut with the blockbuster romance Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, further said: "The best way to express your patriotism is to spread love and thats all I have ever tried to do through my work and cinema."
Yesterday, prominent industry veterans including filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt met Mumbai Police Commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar and Joint Police Commissioner (Law and Order) Deven Bharti, who assured them that they would provide protection to theatres screening Dharma Productions next release.
The meeting took place in the wake of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) veiled threat of vandalizing multiplexes if they screen 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil'.
CEO of Fox Star Studios Vijay Singh, CEO of Dharma Productions Apoorva Mehta and Siddharth Roy Kapur, the CEO of Disney India and the UTV Motion Pictures were among those present in the meeting.
Shunning long-time speculations about whether the movie will release on its defined date or not, Bhatt confirmed that they would stick to the initial date of release, adding the movie will hit cinemas worldwide on October 28.
Reaching out to the MNS workers, Bhatt urged them to show sensitivity about the fact that the movie has already been made and allow Diwali to be a festive affair for everyone.
"I have a request as a fellow Indian to my brothers in the MNS, I am humbly requesting you to let us entertain people on the occasion of Diwali," he said.
Meanwhile, Mumbai Police spokesperson Ashok Dudhe said that all multiplexes and single screen theatres would get protection to release the movie so that no disruption is caused in middle of the shows or in the city as a whole.
The movie starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been under fire because it also features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in a cameo.
The MNS after imposing the ban on artistes from the neighbouring country, in response to the terror attack in Uri led by Pakistan, had on Monday openly threatened the theatre owners if they screen the movie.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
CEAT announced the rollout of a new breed of 'Puncture Safe' tyres for the two wheeler market.
This new range will offer a technology to consumers that will allow tyres to resist punctures with no loss of air pressure and allow a hassle free and safe ride. This new range is currently available only in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the Company proposes to roll out the "Puncture Safe" tyre range in the other markets in a phased manner.
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The multi-modal terminal at Sahibganj in Jharkhand is soon to become a reality. The Inland Waterways Authority of India has recently awarded the contract for construction of the terminal to Larson & Tourbo (L&T). With the targeted completion of Phase -1 in 2019, the state of the art terminal will have a cargo handling capacity of 2.28 MMTPA.
Given Jharkhand's coal reserves of nearly 80 billion tonnes, the location of the multi modal terminal at Sahibganj is especially significant. It will play an important role in transportation of domestic coal from the local mines to intended thermal power plants owing to its good railway connectivity .
Besides coal, stone-chips are also expected to be transported through the terminal.
The multi modal terminal will have facilities including berthing space for two vessels, stockyard for storing, belt conveyor system with fixed hoppers, barge loader, shore protection works, roads, ramps and parking area, and terminal buildings.
The Sahibganj terminal is the second out of the three multi-modal terminals planned under the Ganga Jal Marg Vikas Project, to be awarded for construction in a record time. Earlier in May, IWAI awarded the contract to construct a multi-modal terminal at Varanasi to AFCONS Infrastructure Ltd. The third terminal will be constructed at Haldia in West Bengal.
The Government is developing National Waterway-1 under the Jal Marg Vikas Project, with technical and financial assistance of the World Bank at an estimated cost of Rs. 4,200 crore. The project would enable commercial navigation of vessels with capacity of 1500-2,000 tons.
Phase-I of the project covers the Haldia-Varanasi stretch. The project includes development of fairway, Multi-Modal Terminals at Varanasi, Haldia, and Sahibganj, strengthening of river navigation system, conservancy works, modern River Information System (RIS), Digital Global Positioning System (DGPS), night navigation facilities, modern methods of channel marking, construction of a new state of the art navigational lock at Farakka.
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Rs. 2/kg wheat and Rs. 3/kg rice will soon be available to all beneficiaries under Food Security Act
The Government has taken number of initiatives for the protection of the interests of consumers. Very soon services and products in the area of health, food etc. shall have to follow mandatory quality standards. Precious metal like Gold and silvers shall have to wear hallmarking for the larger interests of consumers. New Bureau of Indian Standards Act has been enacted for this purpose and rules are being framed. This was announced by Shri Ram Vilas Paswan, Minister of Consumer Affair, Food & Public Distribution while addressing Regional Editors' Conference in Chandigarh today. Sh. Ram Vilas Paswan said his ministry is also working on new Consumer Protection Act which will have more teeth to protect the interests of consumers. An authority has been proposed under the Act to take suo motto action if product and services are not up to the standard. The Minister said charging over MRP is unfair trade practice and expressed hope that the new Consumer Protection Act will effectively check that.
Regarding misleading advertisements, Sh. Ram Vilas Paswan said effective provisions have been proposed in the new Consumer Protection Act. The Act will enable people to file complains in Consumers Courts online from any place in the country and it will ensure time bound admission of their complaints in the courts.
Highlighting reforms initiated in Public Distribution System, Sh. Ram Vilas Paswan said that so far 100 percent digitization of ration card has been completed and about 70 percent cards have been linked with Aadhar Cards to make the system more transparent and leak proof. The Union Minister said that at present more than 81 crore people are getting subsidized food grains i.e .Rs. 2/kg wheat and 3/kg rice under National Food Security Act and very soon beneficiaries from across the nation except Tamil Nadu will get food grains as Kerala has also agreed to implement the Act next month.
Referring efforts being made by Government to check prices of essential commodities, especially pulses, Sh. Ram Vilas Paswan said that incentives given to farmers will increase the availability of the produce soon. He said that besides increasing MSP for the pulses, the Government agencies are making direct procurement of pulses from the farmers at market price for the buffer stocks of 20 lakh MT. The states are being provided pulses at subsidies rates from this stock, said the Minister.
Sh. Ram Vilas Paswan asserted that consumer awareness is of paramount importance for safeguarding their interests, and appealed media to play an active role in this regard.
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The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today launched the National SC/ST hub, and the Zero Defect, Zero Effect (ZED) scheme for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) at Ludhiana in Punjab.
Speaking on the occasion, he said Ludhiana is an important economic centre, and therefore, it is natural to launch a scheme related to MSME from the city. The Prime Minister said that the MSME sector is crucial for the economic progress of India.
He said MSMEs must match global quality control standards.
Talking about the distribution of charkhas, the Prime Minister said Khadi is a priority for us, and a charkha at home brings more income. He said Khadi is marketed well now, adding that once upon a time, the apt slogan was 'Khadi for Nation,' but now it should be 'Khadi for Fashion.'
The Prime Minister said that a spirit of entrepreneurship among Dalits will benefit us. He added that there are youngsters whose dreams are to create enterprises and jobs.
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A lot has happened since my last blog post more than seven months ago. In the fall I made several trips - in October to Wyoming for the annual meeting of ...
3 years ago
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's aide, who also serves as an upper house member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, visited the controversial here on Wednesday.
Seiichi Eto's visit is the latest following some of the Prime Minister's Cabinet ministers and a contingent of more than 80 lawmakers from different parties paying homage at the shrine, Xinhua news agency reported.
Abe himself made a ritual offering to on Monday to observe the spring autumn festival.
Visits and offerings made at the shrine during its festivals by politicians, however, draw the ire of Japan's neighbours as the stands as a testament to the country's past militarism and acts that Japanese Army committed during wartime.
The shrine honours 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from the World War II.
China on Monday called on Japan to reflect upon its past aggressions after Abe sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine.
"We firmly oppose the wrong-doings of Japanese politicians," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, stating that Tokyo should make a clear break with its militarist past so as to win trust from its Asian neighbours and the community.
A leader of the Janata League, a front organisation of the ruling Awami League in Bangladesh, succumbed early on Wednesday to injuries sustained in a deadly attack the previous night, media reported.
Sheikh Swadhin Monir, President of Fatulla Awami Janata League, was attacked near his house in Fatulla upazila of Narayanganj on Tuesday night, Dhaka Tribune reported.
Monir's nephew Ashraf Hossain said: "My uncle had a feud with local Swechchhasebok League leader Mir Hossain Miru relating to the business of cable connection in the area."
"Miru's supporters stabbed my uncle and two aunts while they were returning home from a relative's house on Tuesday night."
The injured were taken to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) where Monir succumbed to his injuries.
DMCH police outpost SI Bachchu Mia said: "Monir died at the hospital around 6.00 a.m. today."
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Fed up with the "betrayal" by the BJP, major Bodo groups in Assam are determined to go ahead with a 12-hour railway blockade on October 24 to revive the demand for a separate Bodoland state and "expose" the party that rules in the state and Centre.
The strike is being spearheaded by the National Democratic Front of Bodo (Progressive), in collaboration with the All Bodo Students' Union (ABSU) and People's Joint Action Committee for Bodoland Movement.
The Bodo groups say their faith in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to resolve the Bodoland issue was "misplaced" and they only got "false assurances" from the party -- during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2016 state elections.
The Bodos - Assam's biggest tribal community -- claim the BJP is not even ready to discuss the issue of Bodoland any more. Bodo leaders claim they were rebuffed by BJP leaders whenever they tried to approach them in the past one year.
"Before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Rajnath Singh (then BJP President) had assured us that the Bodo issue would be resolved if the Bodos support the BJP. The party fed us with false promises. The thousands of cadre of Bodo militant groups, who gave up arms thinking they would get to realise the dream of Bodoland under the BJP, are now getting increasingly frustrated," Promod Bodo, President ABSU, told IANS.
"We have been betrayed, discriminated against, exploited and deprived by the BJP at the Centre, and at the regional level we have been suppressed and oppressed by the Assam government, though our party is part of the ruling coalition. The BJP is playing a game of political hegemony in the state. But we will do everything to achieve Bodoland," he said.
Bodo said his community is struggling to preserve its culture and identity.
The demand for Bodoland started in 1967. The struggle became an armed conflict after the formation of the Bodo Security Force, a militant group later rechristened NDFB. Currently, two factions of the NDFB -- NDFB (P) led by Gobinda Basumatary and NDFB led by Ranjan Daimary -- are in peace talks with the Centre, while NDFB (S) led by Songibijit I.K. is against holding talks with the Indian government under the Constitutional framework.
The Songibijit faction was responsible for the recent killing of 14 civilians in an attack in Assam's Kokrajhar district, that also left 20 injured.
The Bodo groups remained silent during the last couple of years waiting for the BJP to act on its assurance. The Bodo groups have decided to resort to a railway blockade on October 24, and are promising more severe measures of protest to make the government heed their demand.
Asked if the Bodo community was divided over the Bodoland issue, Promod Bodo denied any differences. He said the Bodo community was united and even the NDFB (S) was ready to join the negotiations if the government had a "proper policy" to resolve the Bodoland issue.
Gobinda Basumatary, General Secretary of NDFB (Progressive), told IANS: "We have been betrayed and exploited by the BJP. When the elections came in 2014, the BJP sought our support and assured us a small state within India. We supported the BJP and they came to power. But, in the last two years no talks on the statehood issue were held."
Basumatary, the first NDFB militant to give up arms and join the peace process, said during his three meetings with Home Minister Rajnath Singh and more than seven meetings with his deputy Kiren Rijiju over the past two years, there was no response to their demand for a separate state.
Another key NDFB leader, Ranjan Daimary, who has joined the peace process, has declined to join the revival plan for Bodoland. He feels that actively participating in the statehood agitation now would hamper the peace process.
"After declaration of the ceasefire on August 1, 2011, we entered into formal ceasefire on November 23, 2013, and since then we have been holding talks with the government. We support the movement for Bodoland led by ABSU, but right now we are not involved directly as we are engaged in political dialogue," Daimary told IANS.
(Rupesh Dutta can be contacted at Rupesh.d@ians.in)
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday accused the BJP-led central government of "misusing" Delhi Police, CBI and ACB against the "elected government" in Delhi.
Addressing a press conference here, AAP leader Ashish Khetan urged Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah to cooperate with the Delhi government and not to use the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Delhi Police and Anti Corruption Branch (ACB) to "harass" the AAP MLAs.
Khetan, who is also vice-chairman of Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC), alleged that while Delhi Police is always in a hurry to book and arrest AAP MLAs, it doesn't show the same urgency in pursuing the case further.
"Gulab Singh was the 14th AAP MLA to be arrested. But out of the 14 MLAs, Delhi Police has filed a charge-sheet against only one of them," he said.
Delhi Police had filed charge-sheet against AAP MLA from Model Town, Akhilesh Pati Tripathi, last year in a case of rioting and assault. Tripathi was later acquitted of the charges.
Khetan's remarks come after Gulab Singh, in charge of the AAP's affairs in Gujarat, got bail on Wednesday.
"While granting bail to Gulab Singh, the court reprimanded the police for not disclosing all relevant information while procuring a non-bailable warrant against him," Khetan said.
He added that Gulab Singh had written to Delhi Police on October 10 that he will be available for questioning from October 18 onward after Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's rally in Surat.
"But Delhi Police did not inform the court about this letter while asking for the warrant," Khetan said.
Gulab Singh, also an AAP legislator in Delhi, was arrested by the Delhi Police on October 16 in Surat -- ahead of Kejriwal's rally -- on a non-bailable warrant.
The warrant was issued in connection with an extortion case after he failed to turn up for interrogation.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Brazilian President Michel Temer has played down the corruption charges against several of his cabinet members.
The President said on Tuesday the charges are minor, describing them as "simply allegations."
He said the government will wait and see whether the cases against his ministers move forward to a stage where there is a need to take action, Xinhua news agency reported.
"These things need to be consolidated. If they do consolidate, then the government will see what it will do," said Temer.
So far, several high-profile names of the Temer's administration have been involved into the Federal Police's Carwash Operation, which is investigating corruption conducts in state-run energy giant Petrobras and other government contracts.
Temer himself has also been mentioned by some accused of taking bribe.
In the past days, two more charges were added during the testimonies of some defendants, who reportedly turned into witness to the State.
Moreira Franco, Executive Secretary of the Investment Partnerships Program, allegedly took 3 million reals (941,600 US dollars) in bribes in 2014.
Sports Minister Eduardo Picciani was accused of money laundering through his family's company engaged in the sale of overpriced cattle.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Jim Carrey is battling two lawsuits accusing him of complicity in his ex-girlfriend Cathriona White's suicide.
Carrey has given the court a detailed account of his relationship with White, who died of drug overdose in September 2015, reports mirror.co.uk.
He has attacked White's mother Brigid Sweetman and White's estranged husband Mark Burton, who also accused Carrey of supplying her with the pain killers the young woman used to end her life.
Carrey's attorneys are seeking to put the litigation on pause until White's mother posts a $372,700 bond, which they contend will be necessary to cover the actor's legal defence.
The motion also included a 10-page declaration from Carrey in which he narrated the troubled relationship in deeply personal terms.
Carrey said he truly cared for White but like all couples they had their ups and downs.
The actor claimed that in order to obtain a Green card, White married Burton, even though she and Carrey were still dating.
According to mirror.co.uk, Carrey said that he paid for White's housing and provided her with a stipend but turned down her request for marriage so she could avoid deportation back to Ireland.
Earlier, White's mother Brigid Sweetman said the actor should be ashamed of his treatment of her daughter.
He is alleged to have illegally provided her prescription drugs involved in her suicide.
White's mother also accused him of giving her three sexually transmitted diseases.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Zoo will remain shut for some more days, an official said on Wednesday, as tests confirmed that bird influenza had indeed killed two of the 10 migratory birds.
"We sent the carcasses to a lab in Jalandhar which were forwarded to Bhopal. The presence of bird influenza was confirmed in two samples," a zoo official told IANS on the condition of anonymity.
He said the zoo, which was shut on Tuesday, would remain closed for another four to five days while the staff take stool samples of other birds.
The zoo was temporarily shut since nine uncaged or migratory birds died on October 14, 15 and 17. The 10th bird died on Wednesday.
The dead birds included Painted Stork, Rosy Pelican and common ducks. Officials said these birds migrate from Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan in August and leave in March.
An official told IANS that these birds dwell in the ponds of the zoo. Officials do not know where the birds caught bird influenza or bird flu.
"The common ducks lived in a separate pond while Pelicans and Storks live in one. There are three such ponds in the zoo," an official said.
The carcasses were sent to Northern Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, Jalandhar, which forwarded them to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory, Bhopal.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
One hundred and ninety-seven countries have unanimously approved Indias nomination of Rajendra Shende as a senior expert to the United Nations Environment Programmes Technology and Economic Assessment Panel of the Montreal Protocol -- the most successful global treaty aimed at protecting the ozone layer.
Shende, a former UN diplomat on global environmental treaties and presently Chairman of the TERRE Policy Centre, was seconded by the US, Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
"The universal approval of Shende by the countries, that included China and Pakistan, is considered a welcome development for India and its leadership role under climate change," a statement said.
The Technology and Economic Assessment Panel is the UNEP's overarching body of that assesses emerging alternative technologies in five main industrial sectors that safeguard the ozone layer and climate system. It provides the cost benefit analysis and policy relevant information for the countries to take transformative decisions towards sustainable development.
Shende's approval came at a just-concluded meeting in Rwandan capital Kigali where negotiators from 197 countries reached a legally-binding agreement to counter climate change by cutting the global use of the powerful planet-warming hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used in air-conditioners, refrigerators, foams and aerosols.
"This has been considered as the Montreal Protocol would shift its focus from protection of the ozone Layer to climate change issues of reducing global warming, enhancing energy efficiency and reducing pollution. TEAP would advise, on transfer and development of alternative technologies and estimate level of financial assistance needed for the developing countries," the statement said.
Shende is a gradate from Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay and worked in private sector before joining United Nations in Paris till 2011. He was coordinating lead author of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report of 2007, a co-winner of the Nobel Peace prize.
He has won two awards from the US Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) for ozone layer protection and then climate protection. As an expert reviewer, he has also been associated with number of UN assessment reports, including the Science Assessment Panel of the World Meteorological organization in Geneva.
Shende currently leads a not-for-profit think tank and action platform focused on energy and food security.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a move to meet the shortage of doctors in the state, the Haryana government on Wednesday decided to raise the retirement age of practicing doctors from 58 to 65 years.
Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij told media here that the decision was taken at a meeting of the Haryana health department, chaired by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
Vij said that, however, those doctors who were working on administrative posts, would retire at the age of 58 years.
"They will be able to continue to serve up to 65 years only if they opt to practice in any health institution of their choice," he added.
The Health Minister said that it has also been decided to invite applications from those retired doctors who would like to rejoin service as medical practitioners.
"They would be re-employed. This measure would help in checking the shortage of doctors in the state," Vij added.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Shahid Kapoor, who has launched his own fashion brand called SKULT, says there was a time when he had poor sense of fashion.
"I think I was a fashion victim 10 years back. I had absolutely no idea about what to wear or where to buy. I didn't have any knowledge of Google or social media where you could discover what's going on," Shahid said here.
He launched his fashion brand on Tuesday here, and it will be exclusively available on Abof.
The actor said: "I would wear a bright yellow T-shirt, tight jeans and boots, and thought it was cool. So, it's been a long journey. In last 2-3 years, I understood a little bit about style and wanted to express myself in the fashion line."
Talking about the brand, the "Udta Punjab" star said: "SKULT is something very close to my heart. It is about freedom, freedom of expression, movement and street style."
On personal front, Shahid and his wife Mira Rajput welcomed their first child, a daughter, in August.
And work wise, he will be seen in Vishal Bhardwaj's upcoming period drama "Rangoon", and will soon start shooting for Sanjay Leela Bhansali for the upcoming magnum opus "Padmavati".
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The call for boycott of on Indian social media is "rabble rousing" as Indian products cannot compete with those of China, the state-owned media said on Wednesday.
In an acerbic op-ed, Global Times launched a blitzkrieg of a sort against India, saying New Delhi can only "bark" and do nothing about the growing trade deficit between the two countries.
ALSO READ: Modi made India more proactive: Key things Chinese media said about BRICS Summit
China's continued opposition to India's effort to declare Pakistan-based militants as international terrorists has angered many Indians who have called for a boycott of Chinese products.
It described Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project "Make in India" as "impractical".
The daily warned Chinese companies not to invest in India as it would be "suicidal" to put money in a country where corruption is high and the workforce is not hard working.
"There has been a lot of talk recently in the Indian media as well as on social media about boycotting Chinese products. It's just rabble rousing," it said.
"Indian manufacturing cannot compete at all with Chinese products, for various reasons."
The daily said that India was to yet build roads and highways and had chronic shortage of power and water supply.
"Worst of all, corruption is highly prevalent from top to bottom in every single government department."
It slammed India for courting the US.
"The US is no one's friend. The Americans are just indulging India in order to contain China, as the US is jealous of China's development and global power," it said.
"India has enough money but the majority of it is concentrated with politicians, bureaucrats and a few crony capitalists. Indian elites don't want to spend funds available in the country, which in reality is the taxpayers' money but is utilized by the Indian establishment for its own personal consumption," it said
"Because of this, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started impractical schemes like 'Make in India'. The reason is that the Indian establishment wants foreign companies to invest in the country. It would be completely suicidal for Chinese companies to put their money in India by starting manufacturing projects there. The labour class in India is not very hard working or efficient," it argued.
The daily said that instead of opening shops in India, Chinese companies should set up their manufacturing units in China.
The world's third-largest smartphone maker, Huawei, opened its manufacturing unit in India last month.
"In any case, Indian businessmen flock to China in large numbers to buy products from China and sell them in India. This model suits China, so why disturb it by going and wasting money setting up manufacturing facilities in India? Let the Indian authorities bark about the growing trade deficit with China. The fact of the matter is they cannot do anything about it."
India and Myanmar on Wednesday signed three agreements following delegation-level talks headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the southeast Asian nation's State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi.
"#IndiaMyanmar: Partners in Progress - The two leaders witness exchange of agreements in sectors of power, banking and insurance," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.
One memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on cooperation in the power sector.
A second MoU was signed on banking supervision between the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Bank of Myanmar while a third MoU was inked for designing an academic and professional building programme for the insurance industry of Myanmar.
Suu Kyi met Modi on the third and concluding day of her state visit to India.
On Tuesday, she met President Pranab Mukherjee and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
Though Suu Kyi is not the President as Myanmar's constitution bars her from this post, the Nobel peace laureate is effectively the de facto ruler of the country.
This is the first official visit of Suu Kyi to New Delhi since her National League for Democracy (NLD) assumed power in Myanmar in March this year.
Prior to reaching New Delhi on Monday for the state visit, she attended the BRICS-Bimstec Outreach Summit in Goa on Sunday.
Her visit comes after Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw's visit to India in August this year.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The fourth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission, the top bilateral body at the Foreign Minister-level, will be held on October 26-27 in New Delhi, an official said on Wednesday.
The Joint Commission meeting on October 27 will be followed by a Foreign Secretary-level meeting, Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement here.
During the recent state visit of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' to India, both sides had agreed to hold the meeting "at the earliest".
Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat and his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj will lead the respective delegations at the meeting that will review and assess all facets of bilateral relations and will give a direction to the future course, said the statement.
The meeting will also dwell upon a wide range of bilateral issues and try to find a way out, including expediting the India-funded projects and setting up of a joint mechanism at the government level to monitor progress of these projects in Nepal.
Besides, the meeting will also try to work out a time-bound plan to complete the pending projects, it said.
Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Premier Dahal had agreed to expedite the pending projects through a bilateral monitoring mechanism.
Earlier, the joint commission meeting was scheduled for August 20-22 in New Delhi, but it was cancelled after a change of guard in Kathmandu. The third meeting was held in Kathmandu in 2014 after a gap of 23 years.
The joint commission is a high-level mechanism that comprehensively aims to review India-Nepal relations in the areas of politics and security, trade and investment cooperation, water resources and power, connectivity, development assistance and education and culture.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After facing protests within the party, the BJP-led Jharkhand government has indicated that it will soften its stand on the changes proposed in the two land acts formulated during British rule to protect rights of tribal and indigenous people.
The Raghubar Das-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in July this year had brought an ordinance to make changes in the Chotanagur Tenancy Act (CNT) and Santhal Pargana Tenancy (SPT) acts.
Jharkhand Governor Draupadi Murmu had sent the ordinance to President Pranab Mukherjee, who sought a suggestion from the central government.
The Centre referred the ordinance to National Schedule Tribe (ST) Commission, which advised against the state government's proposal.
The ordinance is pending with the President. There are rumours that Mukherjee has returned it, but there has been no official confirmation on this.
National ST Commission Chairperson Rameshwar Oraon had, in an earlier interview to IANS, said: "The changes in the two land acts are against the 2013 Land Acquisition Act and a violation of the fifth schedule of the Constitution."
After clearance of the ordinance, the Jharkhand government can acquire agricultural land for non-agriculture purposes such as building roads, power projects and malls.
The opposition parties, including the BJP's alliance partner, the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU), had opposed the ordinance. Even a large number of tribal legislators had opposed it within the BJP.
According to sources, at the two-day BJP state executive meeting which began on Tuesday, BJP leader Saudan Singh sought the view of the legislators on the issue.
Sources in the BJP revealed that Singh categorically wanted to know the legislators' objection to the ordinance.
Singh also sought suggestions from the tribal legislators on how to protect rights of the tribal people and at the same time allow the land act to be amended so that land acquisition can take place.
The Chief Minister also agreed to accommodate the views of the tribal legislators.
Party sources said the Jharkhand government can prepare a new draft to be tabled in the winter session of the state assembly.
The party's move is seen as a bid to keep calm the restive BJP legislators at a time when the state government of the Chief Minister is completing two years in office in December.
"The meeting of tribal legislators was convened during the state executive meeting so that a message is sent among tribal people that a non-tribal Chief Minister and the BJP are not imposing anything on them," a BJP leader said.
"The party leaders are also of the view that the opposition which has scored over the BJP for now, can get mileage in the coming elections," the leader told IANS.
The BJP MPs and legislators have openly opposed the state government's Domicile Policy and ordinance on land acts putting the party and the government in an embarrassing situation.
Different tribal organisations in the past called rallies to protest the ordinance. Another rally has been called on October 22 by Adivasi Sangrash Morcha.
--IANS
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Karnataka on Wednesday agreed to abide by the Supreme Court's directive to release daily 2,000 cusecs of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu till its further order.
"We will abide by the Supreme Court order. I would not like to say more as the case is sub-judice," said state Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T.B. Jayachandra here.
Earlier in the day, reserving its ruling on the state's appeal against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal, a three-judge bench of the apex court said its Tuesday's interim order to Karnataka for releasing 2,000 cusecs daily to Tamil Nadu would continue till further orders.
"The interim order dated October 4 directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu will continue till further orders," said the bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A.M. Khanwilkar.
The state cabinet, which met here, also briefly discussed the top's court order.
State Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, however, maintained that the four reservoirs across the river basin had only water for drinking purpose in the region till the onset of next monsoon in June 2017.
"We do not have surplus water in our reservoirs due to deficit monsoon rains this year. We have also conveyed our distress to the expert committee with data on inflows and outflows in the dams," Siddaramaiah told reporters here later.
In a related development, Farmers Protection Forum President G. Made Gowda opposed further release of water, as the expert committee had submitted to the apex court its report stating that Karnataka was facing water shortage.
"There is no need to release more water to Tamil Nadu for irrigation as we need it for drinking needs. Moreover, with the north-east monsoon due to set in next week, farmers in the neighbouring state will have rains for irrigation," Gowda told reporters at Mandya, about 100km from Bengaluru.
--IANS
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The Kerala government will devise a new strategy to support small and medium IT companies in the state to tap into the Middle East markets more effectively, a senior IT official said on Wednesday.
For this the government along with the industry body, Group of Technology Companies (GTech), is mulling over funds to support companies to create prototypes that have market potential.
IT Secretary M. Sivasankar, who is in Dubai attending the five-day GITEX Technology Week, also held a series of discussions with a team of high level IT officials to cement the basics.
Most often, small and medium companies face constraints of funds while trying to make innovative products, Sivasankar said.
"Apart from addressing the gap between the buyer and the company entering the co-ownership model, the government will now consider a fund to support companies to create prototypes that have market potential," he said.
Sivasankar pointed out that the relationship between TECOM Group -- a strategic business enabler of 11 communities in Dubai and Smart City Kochi -- IT Special Economic Zone, would benefit both the United Arab Emirates and Kerala.
GTech feels that the current economic environment in the Gulf presents huge opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kerala and it should be tapped.
"Corporates are moving from expensive solutions provided by large conglomerates to cost effective ones offered by SMEs," GTech's Business Head Rafeek K Mohammed said.
"If our companies are able to deliver economic and scalable solutions, there will be takers," he added.
Twenty eight IT companies from Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode are currently participating in the GITEX that concludes on Thursday.
--IANS
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Parma (Italy), Oct 19 (IANS/AKI) Prosecutors said on Wednesday they are probing a manager at the company that employed two Italian engineers who were abducted last year by Islamic State militants in Libya and killed in captivity.
The unnamed manager at Parma-based engineering firm Bonatti is under investigation for manslaughter and breaking employment law over the deaths of Fausto Piano and Salvatore Failla in March last year, according to prosecutors.
The offices of Bonatti were also searched as part of the probe, investigators said.
Piano and Failla were kidnapped, and found dead after a firefight in the western city of Sabratha in Libya in March last year in circumstances that have not yet been fully clarified.
The case has raised fears for the safety of two other Italians and a Canadian who were abducted outside the remote southwestern Libyan city of Ghat last month.
No group has claimed the kidnapping of Bruno Cacace and Danilo Calonego and the Canadian, identified only as Frank. All three men work for the Libyan branch of Italian engineering firm Contratti lnternazionali Costruzioni.
--IANS
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The eight-day long Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival with Star will screen 175 films, including features, documentaries and short films from 54 countries, from Thursday here.
Right from its opening ceremony at the revamped Royal Opera House here, the fest will be bigger than its previous editions, promises MAMI Festival Director Anupama Chopra.
Actress Konkona Sen Sharma's directorial debut "A Death in The Gunj", which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, has been chosen as the opening film of the festival.
"It will be a bigger festival in total in terms of events and the verticals," Chopra told IANS.
While American drama film "Manchester by the Sea", directed by Kenneth Lonergan, will close the fest, Turkey has been selected as the country in focus.
"A big delegation is coming from Turkey and we are very excited," she said.
The "big movie mela", as Chopra likes to describe the fest, will showcase films from France, Brazil, the US, Australia, Germany, Russia and more, but the attendees won't get to watch a Pakistani classic.
Amid the growing tensions between India and Pakistan, the festival organisers decided not to showcase "Jago Hua Savera", which was to be screened as part of the Restored Classics Section of the event.
The decision comes after Prithvi Maske, President of Sangharsh Foundation, an NGO in Mumbai, filed a complaint at Amboli police station against Jio MAMI for screening of the 1959 A.J. Kardar directorial.
When IANS asked her before the complaint was filed if she was expecting any kind of protest against the Pakistani film, Chopra said: "I hope not. We are just showing a movie. Our function as a festival is to bring great films to people."
But there are other films that moviegoers can enjoy at the fest, which will conclude on October 27.
The Jio MAMI Movie Mela with Star will showcase the first look of the much awaited S.S. Rajamouli's "Baahubali 2: The Conclusion" on October 22 here.
Short film "Azaad", presented by filmmaker Mira Nair, is set to premiere at the fest.
Political thriller "An Insignificant Man", which chronicles the journey of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal from a social activist to a controversial politician, will also premiere in India at the festival.
The list of premieres doesn't end here. Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane's "Trapped" will have its premiere and so will actress Priyanka Chopra's Marathi film production "Ventilator".
This time the fest is going big with Marathi cinema. It will celebrate Marathi cinema with the launch of its new segment Marathi Talkies.
"Marathi cinema has always been a big part of the festival, but we have launched the segment to have one day to showcase it and highlight it," said Chopra.
The Half Ticket, a section for children, is different this year.
"Half Ticket is going to be something where parents can bring their children otherwise we used to work with schools," she explained.
Film enthusiasts can also look forward to sessions and other activities.
American filmmaker Cary Fukunaga will conduct a masterclass during the festival. The masterclass will give insights into his craft, challenges and choices of a filmmaker.
"Music, Masti, Modernity - The Cinema of Nasir Husain", a book based on the legendary filmmaker Nasir Husain, will be launched. To celebrate the launch of the book, written by Akshay Manwani, Nasir Husain's cult musical hit film "Teesri Manzil" will be screened at the event.
The book launch will be followed by a panel discussion about Nasir Husain's cinema and how it has shaped generations of directors. The panel will include superstar and Nasir Husain's nephew Aamir Khan, director and Nasir Husain's son Mansoor Khan, Manwani and producer Nuzhat Khan.
"I hope people of Mumbai and who travel to Mumbai go back with great movies and memories with slightly new ways of thinking and looking at cinema. That's what film fests should do," she concluded.
(The writer is in Mumbai at the invitation of Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival with Star. Natalia Ningthoujam can be contacted at natalia.n@ians.in)
--IANS
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Myanmar will soon notify a new investment law according the same treatment to foreign companies as is being given to domestic companies, that will make doing business easier in that country also for Indian firms, Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday.
Suu Kyi said this at a meeting here with Indian business leaders, organised jointly by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the External Affairs Ministry, according to a CII release.
"With the enactment of the new law, the Myanmar Minister hoped that there would be transparency in contracts, the rule of law would be enforced and corruption would be curbed," the statement said.
She said issues such as repatriation of profit and also of capital have also been addressed in the new law, the statement added.
Suu Kyi also said Indian investment in Myanmar must be linked to Myanmar's overall development.
Suu Kyi is on her the first official visit to New Delhi since her National League for Democracy (NLD) assumed power in Myanmar in March this year.
Earlier on Wednesday, India and Myanmar signed three agreements following delegation-level talks headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Suu Kyi.
One memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on cooperation in the power sector.
A second MoU was signed on banking supervision between the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Bank of Myanmar while a third MoU was inked for designing an academic and professional building programme for the insurance industry of Myanmar.
In his address at the business meeting, Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha said India-Myanmar bilateral trade was well below par and measures needed to be taken to boost trade.
He said India was working on completing the various connectivity projects that were underway which would link India's Northeast with Myanmar.
India has been a major trading partner of Myanmar and since the signing of the trade agreement between the two countries in 1970, bilateral trade has grown steadily from $328 million in 1997-1998 to $2.052 billion in 2015-2016.
The State Bank of India resumed banking operations in Myanmar earlier this month after a gap of 53 years by inaugurating a branch in the country's largest city Yangon on Monday -- becoming the first Indian bank to do so.
--IANS
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Myanmar's Union Election Commission on Wednesday announced to hold by-election of the parliament on April 1 next year.
The by-election will be held to fill 18 vacant seats -- nine in the House of Representatives (Lower House), three in the House of Nationalities (Upper House) and six in state parliaments.
According to the UEC, the date for issuing forms to overseas voters to cast vote in advance is set between November 15 and December 15 and date for submission of names of candidates is between November 28 and December 7, Xinhua news agency reported.
Campaign period will be from January 30 to March 30 next year.
Election result or names of winning parliamentarians-elect will be announced within the next four days following the by-election on April 1 next year.
The vacant constituencies were produced when the country's general election was held on November 8 last year, there were some constituencies which failed to hold the polling.
Other parliamentary seats were left empty after parliament members were appointed as government cabinet ministers.
--IANS
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There was a time when young people dreamed of more earthly pursuits. Generations of children were put to bed with successive chapters of Robert Louis Stevensons Treasure Island and drifted off to slumber with visions of pirates and South Seas islands swimming through their heads. Its not that Stevensons characters have been completely relegated to the dustbin of history. Its just that todays tweens and pre-tweens are far more likely to be versed in the teenage dystopias of books like The Hunger Games than in the old-fashioned adventure yarns of Stevenson, Verne and the likewhich is why its refreshing to find such a lovely little kids adventure tale in the French-Danish film Long Way North.
This animated tale reads like Jack London by way of Czarist Russia. Set in 1880s St. Petersburg, it begins by introducing us to Sasha, a 15-year-old aristocrat whose upper-crust parents are throwing her a debutante ball. Unlike her snooty friends, Sasha isnt interested in the comings and goings of the royal court. Years ago her grandfather, a famous explorer, disappeared while trying to reach the North Pole. Sasha idolized her grandfather and remains dedicated to his memoryeven though he vanished along with the Davai, a terribly expensive, state-of the art icebreaker. The Czar has offered a 1 million ruble reward for the location of the missing ship. And thanks to the timely discovery of some long-lost papers, Sasha believes she knows where it wound up. At her ball, however, Sasha offends a pompous princewho happens to be the Czars new minister of scienceby suggesting that everyone has been looking in the wrong place all these years.
According to the notes Sasha has discovered, Grandpa Oloukine took a different path North. But Sashas impertinence ticks off the ministerwho had it out for old Oloukine anyway. With the country struggling financially (and the Russian Revolution not too far off on the horizon), Oloukines failed journey to the North Pole is seen as something of a brave folly. Worried about his own social standing, Sashas father punishes her for ruining the ball and chasing off the minister.
This animated tale reads like Jack London by way of Czarist Russia. Set in 1880s St. Petersburg, it begins by introducing us to Sasha, a 15-year-old aristocrat whose upper-crust parents are throwing her a debutante ball. Unlike her snooty friends, Sasha isnt interested in the comings and goings of the royal court.
But Sashas a stubborn young lady. Shes not about to abandon her beloved grandpappy and his reputation. So she runs away from home, figuring if she can find the Davai, she can claim the reward, save her family and rescue Oloukines reputation as well. Jumping a train, she heads to the northern coast, hoping to buy her way on a boat heading past the Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen, where she believes grandpa and the Davai veered east instead of west.
Sasha has never been on a ship before, but shes a smart girl and has studied sailing, navigation and cartography. Once shes out in the real world, however, it becomes clear that her book learning only takes her so far, and that shes quite a bit more spoiled than she thought. In short order, Sasha is stuck in a backwater port town, broke and out of options. But thanks to her tenaciousnessand the kindness of some strangersthe young gal toughs it out and soon lands a berth on a ship willing to help her hunt for her grandfathers (hopefully still ice-bound) ship. Once on board she proves a quick study, pulling her own weight and earning the respect of the ships gruff captain and his occasionally hapless first mate. What follows is the stuff of classic adventure yarns and a welcome alternative to the majority of todays high-tech, ADD-style cartoons (in other words, most anything shot after Shrek).
Long Way North is directed by animator Remi Chaye (who worked on 2009s The Secret of Kells and 2011s The Painting). The simple, graphic animation favors large blocks of sophisticated color, sans outlines. The stylish, story-book look is reminiscent of cut-paper illustration or early Soviet propaganda posters. Many of the films action sequencessuch as a climactic blizzardare wonders to behold, striking and poetic. The script (from European cartoon writer Claire Paoletti) is somber and a bit linear, offering a straight- on- till- dawn narrative with few surprises. Still, at doesnt shy away from the juvenile survival storys darker aspects, getting about as harrowing as it can for a PG-rated film (lots of danger, but definitely no cannibalism).
The American voice cast is perfectly functional. There are no names of any note among them, and the often exposition-heavy dialogue comes across as a bit stiff at times. (The original French is reportedly much more fluid.) But everyone involved gets the job done, and things smooth out quite a bit as the action kicks in.
In the end what will stick with viewers is the icy imagery and the admirable young heroine plucky enough to land herself a spot in a Hayao Miyazaki film. Thats more than enough to please Disney-weary adults in the audience. And with luck, it will inspire a young viewer or two to search for adventure closer to home than Hogwarts.
While the federal governments war on poverty achieved some progress towards meeting basic material needs, says Ray Nothstine in this weeks Acton Commentary, it has no answers to the deeper dilemma of dependency and hopelessness faced by many Americans.
One book that highlights the problem and that is receiving considerable attention this year is J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy. Vance uses his own story to depict a crisis of culture among the white working class, especially in Appalachia. When President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society programs over 50 years ago with an iconic visit to Eastern Kentucky, it produced forlorn images of families in dilapidated shacks. The region remains under siege by poverty. The problem, in large part, as Vance explains, is wrapped up in cultural and family decay. Vance, who declares, Poverty was a family tradition, was able to break free from the cycle and escape a chaotic future by moving in with a grandmother. Stability in the home brought with it a possibility to changes ones life trajectory.
The full text of the essay can be found here. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda on Wednesday demanded action against those responsible for the massive fire in a hospital here that killed 19 people.
"An inquiry is going on. Prima facie I find some safety issues which need to be addressed," Nadda said after visiting the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospitals.
Describing the incident as "very shocking, painful and worrisome", he sought punishment for those responsible for the tragedy. "The state government must take necessary action so that people's faith is reposed."
Nineteen people were killed in the fire in the ICU of the Dialysis Ward of the SUM Hospital on Monday. Another 106 were injured.
--IANS
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A two-month-old baby weighing 2.1-kg has successfully undergone a liver transplant at a city hospital here and is claimed to be the smallest baby yet to undergo the surgical procedure.
David, a Nigerian national, was brought to the Medanta Mediclinic Hospital by his parents in the absence of medical advancement in the African region.
On the new born's arrival at the hospital, doctors discovered that he was suffering from Neonatal Hemochromatosis (NH) -- a rare metabolic disorder causing excessive iron deposition in the liver, causing it to fail.
According to the doctors, while David's birth weight was 3 kg, the disease ravaged him, leading to malnourishment and weight loss.
"David was in severe liver and bone marrow failure when he reached us, malnourished and barely alive. He and his parents travelled from Nigeria in the hope that we could save him. While the odds weighed heavily against him, we decided to proceed with the rare, first of its kind transplant," said A.S. Soin, Chief Liver Transplant Surgeon at the Medanta Mediclinic Hospital.
Talking about the patient's condition, the doctors stated that the complication over performing the surgery was more because he also had jaundice, bleeding tendency, anaemia and low blood counts.
Detailed evaluation not only confirmed liver failure due to NH, but also revealed bone marrow failure due to a condition called hemophagocytic lympho histiocytosis (HLH).
However, a team of doctors, which also comprised Neelam Mohan, Chief Liver Transplant Physician, decided to go ahead with the transplant.
"We cautiously treated HLH and infection for three days and proceeded with a high-risk transplant which would give him at least a 70 per cent shot at life. The usual success rate of transplants at our centre is 95 per cent. Without a transplant, the baby was unlikely to survive beyond a few days," said Mohan, while speaking to reporters.
The doctors also said that the size of the baby was the biggest problem during the surgery.
Mohan said: "David's father James, the only suitable donor, was about 43 times as heavy. There were no previous reports of a successful transplant with donor heavier than 25 times the recepient's size. This meant we could use only 5-6 per cent of James' liver for the transplant, whereas usually, about 10-20 per cent of the donor's liver is used for transplanting in children."
Doctors said similar rare previous attempts elsewhere had ended in failure in 1-2 weeks.
However, as the transplant of David is successful, he is expected to enjoy a normal life ahead though he will need close, long-term monitoring.
Vijay Vohra, head of the liver anaesthesia, said: "It was a big challenge to maintain David under anaesthesia over the nine-hour surgery, because of his very small veins and wind pipe, small dosages of medicines needed, and the precision required down to a millilitre in managing fluid and blood product administration."
--IANS
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A day after the West Bengal government constituted a CID probe into the repeated cases of fire in the country's oldest engineering firm Jessop's factory premises, the police on Wednesday started a suo motu case against its owner Pawan Ruia and other directors.
Four people, allegedly burglars, have also been arrested for intruding into Jessop's factory near suburban Dumdum on Tuesday night, police said.
"We have enhanced the security arrangements inside factory premises and started ambush system by posting personnel in civil dress. Four burglars were arrested yesterday. Police will start a suo motu case against them as the factory owners have not lodged any FIR," Barrackpore City Police Commissioner Tanmay Roy Chowdhury said.
"Dumdum police station have also started a suo motu case against Jessop factory owner Pawan Kumar Ruia and other directors," he said.
The West Bengal government on Tuesday ordered a CID probe after repeated incidents of fire over the past one month in the Jessop factory premises.
On Tuesday, police accused Jessop owners of flouting High Court order to repair factory walls, clean bushes and make adequate lighting arrangements in the factory premises.
Ahead of the state assembly elections this year, the West Bengal government passed a bill to take over the Pawan Kumar Ruia group-controlled ailing industrial units -- Dunlop India and the 228-year old Jessop, a maker of wagons, EMU rakes and cranes.
Founded in 1788 as Breen and Company, the firm was re-christened Jessop in 1820.
The central government took over its management in 1958 and then the company as a whole in 1973. Over the years, the company turned loss making.
In 2003, the government sold its 72 percent stake to Ruia, who turned it into a profit making business within a short time. However, over the years, the firm fell into tough times.
The company was shut down indefinitely in 2014.
--IANS
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Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta Police on Wednesday unearthed property worth crores of rupees in raids conducted at two locations here of a senior officer of the Electricity Department.
The raids against Satyendra Singh Chauhan were continuing when reports last came in.
Lokayukta Superintendent of Police Amit Singh told IANS: "We had received complaints of Chauhan owning property disproportionate to his known sources of income."
"Based on the information, two teams of Lokayukta Police conducted raids today (Wednesday) at his Bhagwan Colony residence and at a water plant located in Dwarkadheesh Colony," he said.
According to Singh, documents pertaining to residential plots in Anupam Nagar and agricultural lands at several places have been found so far in the raids at the three-storey palatial building in Bhagwan Colony and the water plant in Dwarkadheesh Colony.
Besides, two four-wheelers, three goods-carrying vehicles and passbooks of several bank accounts have also been recovered.
The Lokayukta SP said the value of the movable and immovable properties traced from various locations and belonging to Chauhan run into crores of rupees.
Chauhan is currently posted as Deputy General Manager (Vigilance) in Morena district.
--IANS
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In a major initiative, the Indian Railways on Wednesday signed an MoU with Union Urban Development Ministry to redevelop railway stations and adjoining areas on the lines of Smart City.
To enhance passenger amenities, easy access to stations and enabling optimal utilisation of land at railway stations, the MoU for 10 cities was signed in the presence of Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu and Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.
These stations are: Sarai Rohilla (Delhi), Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Varnasi, Jaipur, Kota, Thane, Margao (Goa), Tirupati and Puducherry.
Both the ministers lauded the joint initiative as a historic landmark that brings synergy in development of smart cities since there cannot be a Smart City without a smart railway station.
"This convergence based city development will result in qualitative improvement in city life," Naidu said on the occasion.
He suggested that to begin with 10 cities could be taken up for the proposed redevelopment with the involvement of National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC) which has successfully executed redevelopment projects on self-financing basis.
"Railway stations have been the core of city development and have become congested over time and their redevelopment offers immense opportunities for changing city landscape," Prabhu said.
He said that several countries like Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK and Belgium have showed interest in redevelopment and a Round Table of domestic and overseas bankers will be organised next week to discuss financing of these redevelopment projects.
To be implemented first in the 100 cities included in the Smart City Mission, redevelopment of railway stations will be undertaken in AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) and HRIDAY (Heritage Infrastructure Development and Augmentation Yojana) cities extending the scope of the MoU to over 500 cities.
Railway station and the adjoining area in each of these cities will be redeveloped on the lines of Area Based Development provided in the Smart City Mission Guidelines.
"The joint initiative of the Ministries of Urban Development and Railways widens the Smart City development to one more area in each of the mission cities with each city required to select one area under respective Smart City Plans in the first phase," an official statement said.
While the Ministry of Railways takes the responsibility of forming Joint Ventures, the Ministry of Urban Development will work with the states and urban local bodies for integrating railway station redevelopment as part of smart city development plans.
The MoU states that both railway station redevelopment and Smart City concepts are part of holistic development of respective city. Redevelopment of railway station and its area as part of Smart City Plans leads to an integrated public transport hub around railway station and encourage Transit Oriented Development.
--IANS
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The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) sub-committee has recommended to the Union HRD Ministry that a "no-detention" policy for school students till class eight should be reviewed.
The sub-committee has also recommended that six per cent of the GDP should be spent on education.
The CABE sub-committee chairman, Punjab Education Minister Daljit Singh Cheema, said that the 189-page report of the committee was on Wednesday submitted to Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar in New Delhi with recommendations on improving the school education sector.
In a statement after submission of the report Cheema said that the committee has recommended pre-primary classes in primary schools to improve the level of students belonging to government schools.
"Besides this, the committee also recommended the reviewing of 'No Detention' till eighth standard, apart from commencing fifth and eighth standard exams independently as was the case earlier," Cheema said.
"While preparing the report, the expenditure by various countries on education was also compared, after which it was recommended that a minimum of six per cent of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) should be spent on education," he added.
"The committee has also recommended spending more on elementary/primary education besides having a head for every school compulsorily," he said.
Significant aspects of the recommendations made in the report were also considered in the meeting with the HRD minister, Cheema said.
The recommendations of the report would be debated in the annual meeting of CABE to be held on October 25 in which all the school education and higher education ministers of all the states would take part.
The committee recommended that a recruitment calendar is needed to be prepared in advance in order to ensure that no post remains vacant in the wake of superannuation.
"The committee has also recommended the constitution of a committee of academic experts to review the course syllabus, duration of course and practical training in vogue at present to become a teacher," he pointed out.
--IANS
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Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday accused the RSS of deliberately trying to create unrest in Kannur district, which has been marred by political violence in the recent months.
He, however, agreed to the Congress-led opposition's repeated demand in the assembly for a dialogue to ensure peace in the district.
Ever since the Vijayan government assumed office in May, seven political murders have taken place in Kannur -- of four activists of the Bharatiya Janata Party and three of the Communist Party of India-Marxist.
Senior Congress legislator K.C. Joseph, who represents Irikkur assembly seat in the district, sought to move an adjournment motion to discuss the Kannur violence.
"It's rather strange that whenever the CPI-M rules the state, peace disappears in Kannur district. It's a matter of deep concern that the violence is unleashed by a party that rules the state and by a party that rules the country," he said.
The Congress leader said the Chief Ministers in the past have always taken the lead to hold peace meetings whenever violence broke out. "Now, even after seven murders, the present Chief Minister is silent," Joseph said.
In response, Vijayan said Thiruvanthapuram district led in terms of political murders while Kannur was at sixth place.
"In Kannur, the RSS is trying to create unrest on purpose. RSS people arrested for crimes in Kannur hail from outside," the Chief Minister said.
Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy requested Vijayan not to let matters drift and urged him to immediately bring all parties to the table to sort out the problem.
"The need of the hour is that there should be an overall change from within... that one should not act with vengeance. Now that Chandy and others have asked for peace talks, I am ready," the Chief Minister said.
Vijayan said local leaders in Kannur should first sit down for talks and later state-level leaders of political parties can meet in Kannur or the state capital. "I will fix the time and let you know," he added.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday wished speedy recovery to Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee, who was seriously injured in a road accident in West Bengal.
Abhishek, nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, sustained serious injuries on Monday when his car hit a towing van at Ratanpur, about six km from Singur on Durgapur Expressway in Hooghly district.
"Sonia Gandhi has extended her good wishes for health and fast recovery to Abhishek Banerjee. Her thoughts and prayers are with Abhishek and the Banerjee family in these testing times," said an official statement.
Gandhi also expressed her happiness over Banerjee's condition being stable and his responding to the treatment.
Banerjee was rushed to a Kolkata nursing home where doctors said he had sustained an orbital injury in a facial bone below the eye.
Mamata Banerjee has ordered a Criminal Investigation Department probe to find out if there was some foul play.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A manhunt is on to nab multiple suspects involved in a San Francisco high school shootout, authorities said.
At least four teenaged students were injured, of whom one is reported to be critical.
"One 15-year-old female victim with life-threatening injuries to her upper torso was rushed to the San Francisco General Hospital," San Francisco Police Officer Carlos Manfredi told Fox News.
The San Francisco Unified School District said that the shooting was "an isolated incident outside of the school building, where one female student was targeted by outsiders", CNN News reported on Wednesday.
Students of the June Jordan School for Equity had treated the initial shots fired on Tuesday as a prank, until school officials ordered an immediate lockdown.
In the end, four students were injured in the parking lot shooting around 3.20 p.m. as they were being dismissed for the day, Manfredi said.
Investigators had launched a combing operation tracking each room inside the school building to hunt down multiple suspects.
The shooters, wearing dark hoodies and jeans, were last seen running across the parking area towards the locked-down school building.
The restrictions were, however, lifted about an hour later after the police had cleared each room.
Besides the girl victim, who appeared to be the target, all the other boys received non life-threatening injuries and were given first aid.
According to police, all four male suspects were still at large. It was unclear whether they had fled on foot or in a getaway car.
School district officials had tweeted that June Jordan high school would open for classes on Wednesday. However, they planned to have additional "support" on hand for both the students and staff.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has invited President Barack Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother and the mother of one of the US citizens killed in the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi to the third and last debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
The televised debate, which will take place on Wednesday evening in Las Vegas, will be the final face-off between the two candidates before the November 8 election, EFE news reported.
In accord with his defiant attitude in the second debate, to which he brought three women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual abuse or harassment, Trump has now decided to invite Malik Obama, the President's half-brother, who last July expressed his support for the magnate.
Trump's campaign director, Kellyanne Conway, told MSNBC that Malik Obama "wanted" to attend the debate and that members of the mogul's team are "happy" he was invited.
When asked at his daily press conference about that invitation, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the President has not spent "a lot of time" thinking about it and that no relationship exists between him and his half-brother.
Also among Trump's invited guests are Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, a State Department IT consultant who was killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack.
That attack occurred when Clinton was Secretary of State and, during the Republican National Convention in July in Cleveland, Smith specifically blamed the Democratic candidate for her son's death, EFE news added.
Meanwhile, Clinton has invited to the debate, among other people, Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman, who since August has been one of her high-profile Republican backers.
Billionaire Mark Cuban, one of Trump's most ferocious critics, will also be on hand at the debate, just as he was in the first face-off between the two presidential candidates.
The debate will be moderated by conservative Fox News journalist Chris Wallace and it is expected that it will be the first time the two candidates will discuss the immigration issue.
The contest will be divided into six 15-minute segments covering the national debt and social programmes, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, foreign policy and the candidates' ability to be President.
While Clinton has devoted several days to preparing for the debate, Trump has said that he trusts his own instincts to see him through.
The latest voter surveys in Nevada, a state that could be key in deciding the Nov. 8 election and where Hispanics represent 27.8 per cent of the population and 17 percent of the possible voters, show that Clinton is leading Trump by 2.5 per cent.
It is expected that the TV viewing audience for this contest will be smaller than that for the second debate, when 66 million people tuned in, a figure that was lower than for the first debate, when a record 84 million people watched.
--IANS
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
This is a guest post by Philip Booth, Professor of Finance, Public Policy and Ethics, St. Marys University, Twickenham; Academic and Research Director, Institute of Economic Affairs. Booth will be speaking in London on Dec. 1 at Acton Institutes The Crisis of Liberty in the West conference (register here). This post is based on remarks prepared for delivery at the United Kingdom Government Foreign and Commonwealth Office conference on Preventing Violent Extremism by Building Inclusive and Plural Societies, Oct. 19-20.
Economic freedom and economic harmony
By Phillip Booth
In a free society, persons participate in economic exchange and civil society freely, without interference as long as they do not harm others. Of course, actions such as inciting violence and so on need to be dealt with and possibly prosecuted. But, individuals and families, often working as communities and through civil society organisations are able to go about their life without undue impediment. In such a situation, the government does not have positive powers as such or at least not many of them it exists to promote justice, provide for the needy who cannot be provided for in other ways, ensure that there is peace and civil order, and so on. Such a society should be one in which parents can send their children to religious schools of the parents choice and where people can worship freely again, assuming that such schools or religious groupings are not inciting violence and threatening peace.
When thinking about economic freedom, perhaps we focus too much on the economic efficiency benefits of a free society and do not talk enough about how such a society also promotes peace and harmony.
Business is especially important here. This cannot be stressed enough. There are relatively thick ties within families and within churches and mosques, for example. However, there are often very thin ties between churches, mosques other religious groupings. Business makes those thin ties thicker. It requires people of different faiths to co-operate. People encounter a much greater variety of persons who are different from them in the business world as customers, employers or suppliers than they do in any other area of their life. Indeed, in the business world, discrimination is expensive. If I dont want to be served by a Pole, a Muslim, an Italian or a Chinese person in a restaurant in London, I would probably end up at a very bad restaurant! If I did not want to be driven by a Muslim taxi driver, in some cities I would literally never get a taxi. Business is a mutually enriching activity and so encountering others different from ourselves through business co-operation is very important.
This is a not a relativist position. It is not an attempt to suggest that all religions are equally true. However, co-operation through business is an essential part of a free and tolerant society.
The word competition often used in business means to strive together for. Business is about finding the best forms of economic co-operation between those who work in the business, its owners, its suppliers and its customers. Business freedom can nurture co-operation amongst people who would otherwise never know each other.
So, my first contention is that business freedom matters not just for prosperity I shall come to that but for peace and harmony within society. Civil freedoms (for example, the freedom to educate ones children as one would wish) and freedom of association matter too of course.
Economic freedom and prosperity
There is also no question that there is a very strong relationship between economic and business freedom and prosperity. The pre-conditions for a thriving business economy are well known. They are peace, good governance (including respect of private property), freedom of contract, the effective enforcement of contracts through the courts, the rule of law, the absence of corruption, a regime in which businesses can establish freely and reasonably free trade. This list is not exhaustive and the different factors are linked. By and large, if these preconditions are present, there will be development and growth if they are not, there will not be.
There are lots of different indicators of economic and business freedom and related issues. Research has been undertaken using the data from the Fraser Institute Index, which is probably the most used by academics. This research found, for example, that, between 1980 and 2000, which was the crucial period when the development of previously poor countries really took off, the top twenty-four countries ranked by the quality of their legal systems had an average GDP per capita of $25,700 at the end of the period and average economic growth of 2.5 percent. The bottom twenty-one countries had an average income of $3,000 per capita and average economic growth of 0.33 percent.
Development and a thriving business sector is impossible without the basic legal structures necessary for free economic activity. We have no idea in the West what life is like, for example, in a country such as Haiti, where it takes 97 days to establish a business and 312 days to register property. This means that unregistered businesses cannot enforce contracts except by violence; corruption is routine; employees of unregistered businesses do not have proper contracts; and so on. In general, when the preconditions for a free business economy do not exist, there is no only poverty, but conflict replaces co-operation.
It can also be argued that the prosperity that comes from business freedom also makes violent conflict less likely. If the youth of a country are unemployed or if people are desperately poor, they may feel they have not a lot to lose from a life of violence and something to gain. If they have the potential for prosperity, they have much to lose from turning to violence.
The alternative to a free economy is one that is centrally controlled to some degree or other and where the state is responsible for the allocation of resources and determines on what terms people can participate in economic life. Then, the state becomes the main power centre and it uses its resources to coerce rather than to promote freedom. Furthermore, if the state is the source of economic power and largesse then this, in turn, sows the seeds of conflict as rival groups try to get hold of the levers of the state. The conflict over oil resources in some countries is a good example here.
It is often argued that religious freedom tends to promote prosperity. However, business and general economic freedom has a tendency to promote harmony, including harmony between religions. Indeed, there can therefore be a virtuous circle of religious and business freedom promoting prosperity which then reduces violence. A reduction in violence then creates a better environment for business, which, in turn, provides an even better environment for peace, co-operation and prosperity.
In recent weeks a great deal has been said about how, post the 'surgical strikes', we have 'isolated' Pakistan. First, Bhutan and Bangladesh closed ranks with us in condemning the terrorist attack in Uri and supporting the retaliatory action across the Line of Control (LOC). Later, they were joined by Sri Lanka in regretting their inability, along with India, to attend the SAARC meeting scheduled to be held in Islamabad later in the year. Nepal, not so forthcoming had, perforce, to back out as well. To some extent, therefore, it could be said that Pakistan stood isolated, at least, in the South Asian region though why Sri Lanka and then Nepal, did not join immediately in condemning the Uri attack or in supporting our action thereafter, remains a question unanswered.
The visit of Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to India for multilateral meetings in Goa and a bilateral summit in New Delhi is significant. This is her first visit to India since democracy was restored in earlier this year and comes two months after a state visit by Myanmar's President U Htin Kyaw. Ms Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement during decades of military rule, has deep ties with India; she was an undergraduate at Delhi's Lady Shri Ram College. Yet considerable work will have to be done, particularly on India's side, if it is not to lose the initiative in its neighbour entirely to the People's Republic of China. Myanmar's long years of isolation have caused it to have an immense infrastructure gap. It now seeks to parlay its strategic location between the economic powerhouses such as China, India, and Southeast Asia into development gains. It also has considerable natural resources, including natural gas, to be exploited.
With reference to "Why merge public sector banks?", Subir Roy has succinctly explained the futility of the current merger process evident in the banking sector. The Reserve Bank of India has surprisingly remained silent on the issue.
Joita Estate had constructed a building at New Alipore in Kolkata and sold flats to various home buyers. The owners were given possession of their flats in March 1999 and they have been residing in their respective flats since then. The builder had also got the mutation entries carried out in the records of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, which reflected the names of the flat purchasers as owners of their flats. However, the builder failed to execute the sale deed despite repeated demands.
My daughter has received a scholarship of Rs 5 lakh. Will she be taxed for this amount? Since she has never filed taxes, she does not have a PAN card. Should I make a PAN card for her?'
As per section 10(16) of the Income Act, 1961, scholarships granted to meet the cost of education are exempt from income . The term scholarship is not defined under the Act. However, the dictionary meaning of scholarship is anything which makes education free of charge at a concessional rate of fees. Also, in general parlance, the cost of education may include not only the tuition fees but all expenses incidental to obtaining education. Considering this, scholarship received by your daughter to meet the cost of education may be claimed as exempt u/s 10(16) of the Act.
Delhi Chief Minister on Wednesday accused the central government of harassing the Delhi government for doing "good work".
After Gulab Singh, in charge of the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) affairs in Gujarat, got bail on Wednesday, Kejriwal asked the central government as to what purpose did his arrest serve.
"Gulab gets bail today (Wednesday). FIR against Imran (Environment Minister) quashed by Delhi High Court yesterday (Tuesday). What purpose is served?" the AAP convenor tweeted.
"Centre (is) harassing us because Delhi government (is) doing good work," Kejriwal wrote.
Gulab gets bail today. FIR agnst Imran quashed by Del HC yesterday. What purpose is srved? Centre harassing us bcoz Del govt doing gud work (@ArvindKejriwal) October 19, 2016
Gulab Singh, also an AAP legislator in Delhi, was arrested by the Delhi Police on October 16 in Surat ahead of Kejriwal's rally on a non-bailable warrant.
The warrant was issued in connection with an extortion case after he failed to turn up for interrogation.
The Congress said it had issues with the Centre over the lack of uniformity in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate and exclusion of certain commodities in the proposed tax regime.
The Congress on Wednesday attacked the government for denying that surgical strikes-like military operations also took place in the past.
This comes a day after Foreign Secretary reportedly informed parliament's Standing Committee on External Affairs about having taken place in the past as well.
Asserting that the Congress never doubted the September 28-29 across the Line of Control, party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi questioned the silence of Prime Minister on the BJP's continued bid to politcise the defence force's action.
"The government shouldn't deny that this (surgical strikes) happened before. While we support the operation, they should be magnanimous enough to say that this is not the first time that this country has conducted these strikes," Singhvi told the media here.
"The Foreign Secretary in precise terms has said that have happened before. We have no reason to not believe his precise assertions," said Singhvi referring to the parliamentary panel being informed about previous surgical strikes-like military operations.
"Does it look good for the Defence Minister of this country to be directly contradicted by none other than the Foreign Secretary?"
"Which one of them is prevaricating? The Foreign Secretary has spoken in measured and precise terms," said Singhvi.
This kind of prevaricating only to score brownie points is unfortunate because it paints the nation in a bad light, he said.
"While the Prime Minister joins us in saying this issue shouldn't be politicised, it's happening under his nose by his colleagues," the Congress spokesperson said.
"Why has not the Prime Minister mentioned even once about the posters dotting Uttar Pradesh, which politicise these strikes," Singhvi asked.
Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar, who is known for being outspoken, on Tuesday claimed there was a time when MLAs used to defect for Rs 50 lakh, but nowadays not even a corporator can be made to switch the sides with that amount.
Pawar, who was speaking at a party meet in Karmala in Solapur district, recalled the incident of how the Vilasrao Deshmukh-led state government had to ferry its MLAs to Bangalore to avoid any sort of horse-trading before the majority vote.
"Due to the fear of horse-trading and defection of MLAs, Vilasrao Deshmukh got frustrated and in that period MLAs were ferried to Bangalore as that time MLAs used to defect for Rs 50 lakh, but nowadays even a corporator cannot be made to cross over with that amount," he said.
Pawar also appealed to all the parties not to give candidature to those who defect and join other party.
Even as the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) framework is being given the final touches for implementation from April 1, 2017, Uttar Pradesh is projected to be a major beneficiary under the liberal tax structure.
Joe Carter
Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).
The Tamil Nadu governments Cabinet meeting on Wednesday was held under the leadership of Tamil Nadu Finance Minister in the absence of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who has been undergoing treatment at Apollo Hospitals here since September 22.
A dozen workers of MNS were today arrested for protesting against the upcoming release of filmmaker Karan Johar's "Ae Dil Hain Muskhil" as the party rejected his statement that he will not "engage with talent" from Pakistan in future.
The workers from MNS' film unit Maharashtra Navnirman Chitrapat Karmachari Sena were protesting and raising slogans outside Metro Cinema in South Mumbai.
The Raj Thackeray-led party has asked the theatre management not to hold any show of "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" which features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
The MNS had given a written appeal to the theatre management urging them not to show the movie as it features a Pakistani actor. The party workers also raised slogans outside the theatre, police officials said.
"We arrested 12 MNS activists and booked them under relevant sections of Maharashtra Police Act and also CrPC," Senior Inspector of Azad Maidan Police Station Vijay Kadam told PTI.
They were produced before a local court which granted them cash bail of Rs 5,000 each in the case (carrying out procession without permission) under the Police Act.
The MNS activists were also booked under the CrPC section 151 (3) (arrest to prevent the commission of cognisable offences) in which they did not get any relief and sent to judicial custody till November 4.
Seeking to calm tempers over opposition to the release of his directorial venture, Johar had yesterday made a fervent appeal against stalling the release, saying he will not engage with talent from Pakistan in future.
However, MNS said reality has dawned late on Johar.
MNS cine wing head Amey Khopkar, after a meeting with senior party leaders and Raj Thackeray, said they were firm on opposing the release.
"We will not allow the film to be screened in single screens and multiplexes. Reality has dawned late on the producer," Khopkar said.
The MNS and some other political parties have opposed release of films with actors from Pakistan after the Uri terror attack, putting a question mark on the fate of Johar's movie, slated for release on October 28.
The Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India, too, decided not to screen films with Pakistani actors in four states -- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa.
A team from Johar's Dharma Productions along with filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt and Vijay Singh of Fox Star Studios had yesterday met Mumbai's top police officials and sought protection for the theatres to screen the film.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Ashok Dudhe had said, "Mumbai police will provide adequate protection to cinema theatres.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two persons have been sentenced to life imprisonment by a special CBI court in connection with a 2005 honour killing case here.
Justice Rajender Kumar held the brother duo, Suresh Pal and Angrej Singh, guilty of strangulating Pal's daughter, who married a man belonging to another community, under Section 302 (murder) of IPC.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 15,000 each on the accused, public prosecutor Kuldeep Pushker said.
The incident took place on November 2, 2005 at Bhura village in the district. Subsequently, a case was registered against three persons.
The third accused, Bhupender, died in jail during the trial.
The probe was transfered to the CBI and the case was taken up in the special court in Ghaziabad.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two Indian-origin brothers in Singapore have been sentenced by a court here for failing to report for the compulsory National Service, in the second such case involving members of the Indian community this week.
The brothers - Sakthikanesh Chidambaram, 25, Vandana Kumar Chidambaram who turns 23 in two weeks - remained out of Singapore without a valid exit permit and failed to report for the National Service (NS) for more than five years and for more than three years, respectively, the court was told.
Yesterday, Sakthikanesh was jailed for three weeks, while his younger brother Vandana was fined SGD 6,000.
Sakthikanesh, earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to report for the the National Service for five years, six months and 17 days. Vandana earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to report for the NS for three years, six months and two days.
Both men also admitted to one count each of remaining outside Singapore without a valid exit permit and these charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.
In June 2008, Sakthikanesh was told to register for the NS but he left Singapore later that month to pursue his university education at the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, only returning in April 2014, after he had completed his studies.
He enlisted for full-time NS in September 2014. In May 2010, Vandana was told to register for NS. But he only returned to Singapore in June 2014 and enlisted for full-time NS in August 2014.
In his judgement grounds, District Judge John Ng found that the brothers had "a substantial connection to Singapore". He noted that both got their NRICs and used Singapore passports for travel.
"From the facts of this case, it is clear to me that the parents and the boys had no intention of giving up their Singapore citizenship before their NS obligations came to the fore," he said.
The judge, however, took into account the fact that both men surrendered themselves and had pleaded guilty to their charges. They also performed their NS exceptionally well, he noted.
Yesterday, a 22-year-old Indian-origin man Jay Kamal Shah was sentenced to six weeks in prison for not performing his national service obligations.
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In a police shake-up, Uttar Pradesh government issued posting orders of three senior officials on administrative grounds.
SP (crime) Pardeep Gupta, SP (rural) Rakesh Jolly and SP (city) Santosh Kumar Mishra were issued transfer orders here yesterday and three new superintendents of policehave been posted in their place.
The step was taken five days after SSP Deepak Kumar's transfer to Ghaziabad.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After Indore, telecom major Bharti Airtel today launched 4G services in Bhopal, Raisen and Vidisha districts in Madhya Pradesh.
The service, Airtel said, will start in almost all the major cities of the state and Chhattisgarh by end-November.
"We are delighted to launch our 4G services in Bhopal, Raisen and Vidisha," Bharti Airtel Limited (Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh) Chief Executive Officer Dharmender Khajuria told reporters here.
"Our valued customers can now upgrade to 4G at no additional cost with our value-for-money plans for pre-paid, post-paid and devices," he added.
Airtel 4G promises to deliver fast mobile broadband speeds and allows customers to enjoy uninterrupted HD video streaming, superfast uploading and downloading of movies, music and images, the CEO said.
Khajuria said his company has also announced a new 4G offer for prepaid customers who can now enjoy 10 GB 4G data for just Rs 249 with any new 4G handset.
"With Rs 249 recharge, 1 GB data will be instantly credited to the customer's account and the additional 9 GB data can be claimed by the customer through My Airtel app," Khajuria added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nearly one dozen armed miscreants looted over 500 gunny bags of wheat from the godown of Punjab State Warehouse Corporation in Batala, police said today.
Manager, PSWC, Major Singh manager lodged a complaint with the civil lines police station that armed miscreants forcibly entered the godown last night and tied hands and legs of two watchman of there. They broke CCTV cameras installed in the godown and looted 531 gunny bags of wheat which valued at RS 5.50 lakh, police said.
SP (Investigations) J S Saroya and other police officers inspected the spot and investigation is on , they added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A day after TMC MP and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, was injured in a road mishap, a team of forensic experts today visited the accident site near Singur on National Highway 2.
The team collected broken glasses, examined the paints on the surface of the truck with which Abhishek Banerjee's car collided while returning to Kolkata after a public meeting in Murshidabad district.
Police today registered attempt to murder and conspiracy case against unknown persons in connection with the mishap involving Banerjee, the All India Trinamool Youth Congress president.
Sections under the Highways Act were also added in the case, a senior officer of the CID said.
Though nobody was detained in the incident, a few persons, mainly eyewitnesses, were today questioned by the CID, the officer said.
Sources in the CID said reconstruction of the entire incident would be done to evaluate "who was responsible for the mishap".
The Chief Minister visited the nursing home, where Abhishek is under going treatment, towards the afternoon.
Senior party leader Manas Bhuniya, who recently joined the TMC from the Congress was accompanying Abhishek, said that his own vehicle was behind the TMC MP's convoy.
(Reopens CAL9)
According to the medical bulletin of Abhishek Banerjee, issued in the evening, the MRI report confirmed "orbital floor fracture".
At present the MP is under strict observation of the 14-member medical board. Any decision on surgical intervention will be made as soon as the acute swellings subside.
The Madras High Court bench here today directed its Registrar (Judicial) to bring to the notice of Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry a matter related to the fabrication of documents allegedly by an advocate to help his client win a case.
The matter related to the appointment of a Principal in a college under the ambit of a State-run varsity in Tuticorin district which was challenged by a teachers' association.
Disposing of the writ appeal, the court said it was unfortunate that advocate V Dhayala Mani was found to have forged and fabricated records for the benefit of his client association but apparently without their collusion.
The court also said that the police having booked a criminal case against the advocate in this regard must be brought to the notice of the Bar Council for necessary action.
While representing the teachers' association which had challenged the appointment of Mohan Raj as principal, the advocate had allegedly fabricated an official communication to tilt the case in his client's favour.
The petitioner association submitted that the fabrication was done without their knowledge.
The court directed the Registrar to forward the papers to the Bar Council within two weeks.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Conservative party MP today triggered a row after he suggested dental checks must be used to determine the age of migrants entering the UK from France under a new agreement reached between the two countries over refugee children.
Monmouth MP David Davies said mandatory teeth checks would reassure people that the unaccompanied migrants coming into the UK to join relatives were indeed children.
"If they are jumping on lorries, they are not going to be averse to lying about their ages. We should do the tests," Davies said.
Downing Street said "a whole range of checks are in place that the Home Office and Border Force are using in cooperation with partners" and theUK Home Office was forced to issue a statement against dental checks.
"We do not use dental x-rays to confirm the ages of those seeking asylum in the UK," said a UK Home Office spokesperson.
"Where credible and clear documentary evidence of age is not available, criteria including physical appearance and demeanour are used as part of the interview process to assess age," the spokesperson added.
The first children with links to Britain arrived this week, after French authorities ratified a list drawn up by the charity Citizens UK, which is working with the UK government to bring unaccompanied minors over from Calais in France.
However, photographs of some of the children have been printed on the front pages of some UK newspapers alongside headlines questioning their ages.
The British Dental Association (BDA), which represents dentists and dental students in the UK, disputed claims that dental radiographs could accurately determine whether someone was under 18 or not.
"It's not only an inaccurate method for assessing age, but it is both inappropriate and unethical to take radiographs of people when there is no health benefit for them," a BDA spokesperson said.
Diane Abbott, Opposition Labour's shadow home secretary, said it was "an outrageous demand, which would further violate the human rights of vulnerable refugees".
"They have suffered insanitary and dangerous conditions and should have been admitted long ago. This is a vile, reactionary clamour. It distracts from the government's responsibilities to these refugees, which it has largely neglected to date," she said.
French authorities plan to close the so-called "Jungle" refugee camp, situated near the port of Calais, by the end of the year.
UK officials in Calais have been focusing initially on unaccompanied minors who have the right to join relatives in the UK under EU legislation, known as the Dublin regulation.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Showcasing better seat space and extra baggage allowance, Air India is taking on rival airlines with cheeky advertisements dotted with smiling and sad emojis.
The national carrier, which has turned operationally profitable after a decade, is working on ways to attract more fliers as well as push brand 'Air India' against the backdrop of intense competition and aggressive ticket pricing ways.
Close on the heels of indulging in a bitter war of words with IndiGo over placing of hoardings at the Mumbai airport, Air India today came out with cheeky advertisements that indirectly takes a dig at rivals.
Without naming rivals, the state-owned carrier has made use of happy and sad emojis to convey that its flights provide more seat pitch, complimentary food as well as allow carrying extra baggage.
Generally, an emoji refers to a digital image used to express emotions.
"Today when airfares are almost on par, here's what makes the big difference... Choice is yours," Air India's latest advertisement said along with a tabular presentation of the three aspects spread across three categories.
When contacted, an Air India spokesperson said the national carrier was only "presenting" facts through such advertisements.
"We are only presenting facts and the good side of the airline to the customers," the spokesperson said.
However, an Air India official said that getting aggressive is the demand of time amid cut-throat competition in the domestic airline space.
"The profits and margins are so squeezed in the airline industry that you have to take competition head-on and go for aggressive advertisement and marketing pitch," the official noted.
Against the attributes of 'best seat pitch, 'hot and delicious complimentary food' and 'free baggage allowance' in three separate rows, there is a smiling emoji for Air India while it is a sad emoji under the heading 'other rivals'.
Air India allows up to 35 kilogram baggage for business class travellers and the same is up to 25 kilogram in the case of economy class fliers, as per the advertisement.
Last month, there was a controversy over advertisement involving Air India and IndiGo and the matter was sorted out later.
The controversy started when the Air India advertisement
placed next to the check-in areas of IndiGo said: 'Wish you a comfortable flight. Next time fly with Air India and feel the difference.'
IndiGo responded with a counter advertisement that named Air India directly. At the check-in bay of the national carrier, IndiGo had put up a small standee that read: 'Yes, Air India, there is a difference. Says the government.'
The matter, however, was later resolved after the issue reached the Civil Aviation Ministry.
For the first time in a decade, Air India has reported an operating profit of Rs 105 crore in 2015-16, aided by lower fuel costs and higher passenger numbers, even as the national carrier incurred a net loss after interest of Rs 3,837 crore in the same period.
Registering robust growth, domestic airlines carried over 23 per cent more passengers at 82.3 lakh in September compared to the year-ago period, according to official data released today.
Even though the growth rate is 23.46 per cent for September, the overall number is slightly lower than 83.81 lakh passengers flown by carriers in August.
Last month, budget carrier IndiGo remained the market leader with 40 per cent share while rival SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor of 93.5 per cent.
Latest data from aviation regulator DGCA showed that local carriers flew 82.3 lakh people last month compared to 66.66 lakh people in September 2015.
"Another month of record growth for Indian aviation. Maintains its top rank with 23.4 per cent growth in Sep 2016," Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said in a tweet.
The sustained domestic air passenger traffic growth of more than 20 per cent over the past year also comes against the backdrop of airlines coming out with attractive fares to garner increased market share amid stiff competition.
"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January- September 2016 were 726.98 lakh as against 590.21 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 23.17 per cent," DGCA said.
In terms of market share, Jet Airways was at the second position with 16.2 per cent.
National carrier Air India emerged third with 14.7 per cent market share, followed by SpiceJet (12.5 per cent), GoAir (8.3 per cent), Vistara (2.5 per cent), Jet Lite (2.4 per cent), AirAsia (2.3 per cent) and Air Costa (0.6 per cent) and TruJet (0.4 per cent).
Among others, Air Carnival's market share stood at 0.1 per cent while Air Pegasus did not operate any flights in September.
The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.42 per cent in September with Air Carnival seeing the maximum at 21.88 per cent.
"Technical" reasons accounted for 48.1 per cent of the total cancellations last month.
"During September 2016, a total of 728 passenger related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of September 2016 has been 0.9," the regulator said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Punjab Congress president on Wednesday castigated the Parkash Singh Badal government for allegedly neglecting families of fallen soldiers in the state.
He said the SAD-BJP government had failed to maintain a statue of Victoria Cross and Maha Vir Chakra recipient Subedar Nand Singh at Fauji (Shaheed) Chowk here.
Amarinder today led a large gathering of party workers and local residents in cleaning up the "neglected statue".
Expressing anguish over its condition, Amarinder said there was no point in setting up memorials if the government could not ensure their proper maintenance.
He urged the Indian Army to take over the upkeep of such properties to prevent them from falling into disrepair.
"Our martyrs deserve no less," he said.
Amarinder, who hails from the first Sikh battalion, described the condition of Nand Singh's memorial as "yet another glaring instance of how little the (ruling) Badals care for our soldiers and their memories."
The soldier also finds mention in Amarinder's book 'Lest We Forget'.
"Unfortunately, the Badal government has never shown much respect for our army or its personnel," he said, referring to the prolonged stir of the war widows in Punjab.
"The war widows have been trying unsuccessfully to draw the government's attention to their plight," said Amarinder Singh, while reiterating his commitment to addressing the concerns of the widows and families of the martyred soldiers.
Amarinder reached Bathinda, considered a Badal stronghold, yesterday at the culmination of the second day of his Kisan Yatra roadshow.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has total assets worth Rs 3.73 crore and also a debt of Rs 3.06 crore, his son and Telugu Desam General Secretary Nara Lokesh announced today.
Naidu's assets include a house in Jubilee Hills area of Hyderabad valued at Rs 3.68 crore and an Ambassador car worth Rs 1.52 lakh. He also has cash of Rs 3.59 lakh in his bank account, according to Lokesh.
Interestingly, the Chief Minister's one-year-old grandson and Lokesh's son Devansh is richer with a house worth Rs 9.17 crore and fixed deposits of Rs 2.4 crore in his name, besides a cash deposit of Rs 2.31 lakh, according to the family's assets declared by Lokesh.
Naidu's wife Bhuvaneswari, on the other hand, has assets worth Rs 38.66 crore and debts to the tune of Rs 13 crore.
Lokesh himself has assets worth Rs 14.50 crore and a debt of Rs 6.35 crore. Lokesh's wife Brahmani has assets worth about Rs 5.4 crore.
"This is for the sixth consecutive year that we have declared our family's assets. Heritage Foods (a listed firm) owned by our family has a turnover of Rs 2,321 crore with a profit of Rs 55 crore," Lokesh told a press conference in Guntur.
Referring to allegations that there were many benami properties (assets held in the name of another person or under a fictitious owner) in their names, Lokesh challenged those making the claims to prove them.
"YSR Congress leaders are carrying out a misinformation campaign that we own benami properties. If they can prove it, I will give away such properties to them," the TDP General Secretary asserted.
Replying to a question, he said the TDP would pressurise the Centre to ban currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations to curb black money.
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Vice President Hamid Ansari today left for home after concluding his five-day trip to Hungary and Algeria during which he held discussions with the leaderships of the two countries on strengthening bilateral ties.
Ansari held talks with Hungary's President Janos Ader, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and other top leaders as both the countries agreed on the need for elimination of the menace of terrorism and sought a strong global legal framework and sustained global action to deal with the threat.
India and Hungary also signed two MoUs, including one on water management, during the three-day trip to the central European country.
The Hungarian Prime Minister had said his country set up a working group on technology to explore the possibilities of bilateral cooperation in various issues, including defence production for mutual benefits.
The Vice-President expressed India's appreciation for the support extended by Hungary to India's membership of the Missile Technology Control Regime and for its Nuclear Suppliers Group membership bid.
During his two-day visit to Algeria, Ansari held wide- ranging discussions with Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra and stressed on taking the India-Algeria ties to a new level and to "rejuvenate" the bilateral relations, officials said.
Ansari also met President of Algerian National People's Assembly Mohamed Larbi Ould Khelifa and President of Council of Nations Abdelkader Bensalah and discussed with them various issues of mutual interest.
Other issues like anti-terror cooperation between India and Algeria also figured in the meetings the Vice President had with the Algerian leadership.
India is keen to join hands with Algeria to explore the possibilities of setting up a multi-billion dollar fertiliser project, bearing in mind the phosphatic reserves available in the North African country which is estimated to be more than 5 billion tonnes.
A preliminary meeting on the issue was held here between Minister of State for Fertilisers and Chemicals Mansukh L Mandaviya and Algerian Minister of Industry and Mining Abdessalem Bouchouareb and if the discussions lead to setting up of a joint venture mega fertiliser company in Algeria, the price of fertiliser in India is expected to come down along with the subsidy burden of the government with regard to fertiliser. Mandaviya is accompanying the Vice President.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As part of efforts to "rejuvenate" India's ties with African nations, Vice President Hamid Ansari today met the top leadership of Algeria and discussed with them the ways to further strengthen bilateral ties in various areas including anti-terror, trade and economy.
Ansari held wide ranging discussions with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra and stressed on taking the India-Algeria ties to a new level and how to "rejuvenate" the bilateral relations, officials said.
Other issues like anti-terror cooperation between India and Algeria were also figured in the meetings the Vice President had with the Algerian leadership.
Secretary (West) in the External Affairs Ministry Sujata Mehta has said terrorism is not new for Algeria and it has fought a very difficult terror group in the recent past.
India is also keen to join hands with Algeria to explore the possibilities of setting up a multi-billion dollar fertiliser project, bearing in mind the phosphatic reserve available in this North African country which is estimated to be more than 5 billion tonnes.
A preliminary meeting on the issue was held here today between Minister of State for Fertilisers and Chemicals Mansukh L Mandaviya and Algerian Minister of Industry and Mining Abdessalem Bouchouareb.
The price of fertiliser in India is expected to come down along with the subsidy burden if the talks between the two countries lead to setting up of a joint venture mega fertiliser company in Algeria.
Mandaviya is accompanying the Vice President.
Ansari's visit to Algeria came after a long "cooling off" period which, officials said, was over now.
"They (Algeria) want cooperation and we want cooperation. Both sides want the relations to be strengthened," Ansari had said earlier.
Algeria's President Bouteflika was the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations in 2001.
Ansari, who arrived here from Hungary on Monday night as part of his second leg of two-nation tour, yesterday met President of Algerian National People's Assembly Mohamed Larbi Ould Khelifa and President of Council of Nations Abdelkader Bensalah and discussed with them various issues concerning both the countries.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least three pending judicial requests including one relating to 1984 anti-Sikh riots witness along with 13 extradition pleas from India may be discussed between the CBI Director and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson who is visiting here.
Paulson, who will be delivering D P Kohli memorial lecture here tomorrow on the theme of policing in 21st century, will hold discussions with CBI Chief Anil Sinha.
They said at least three Letters Rogatory or judicial requests to Canada hovering around a corruption case, a cyber crime and examination of a witness of 1984 anti-Sikh riots involving Congress politician Jagdish Tytler are likely to crop up during the discussion.
The agency had taken over investigation in the FIR registered at Bara Hindu Rao police station relating to anti-Sikh riots at Gurudwara Pulbangash in North Delhi where three people were killed on November 1, 1984, a day after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
It had filed a closure report and claimed that it could not get in touch with Narinder Singh, son of an eye witness who is believed to be in Canada.
Arms dealer Abhishek Verma had claimed that Tytler had allegedly helped Narinder Singh to settle in Canada.
Besides, the sources said, India is also likely to raise the issue of 13 extradition requests which are "under process", including for some wanted persons facing charges of terror and drug trafficking among others.
India had signed Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Canada in 1998 to facilitate assistance in criminal matter.
After the signing of MLAT, Canada has so far processed eight Indian judicial requests relating to human trafficking, bank fraud, anti-corruption among others.
So far India has processed two requests related to cyber
crime and human trafficking which had come from Canada besides six fugitives having charges of sexual abuse of children, drug trafficking and murder have been handed over to the North American country.
Canada has processed four extradition requests from India handing over fugitives having allegations of murder, kidnapping and murder.
India does not have any pending LRs emanating from Canada, the sources said.
Among 13 extradition requests "under process" with Canadian authorities, seven are for alleged drug traffickers including several members of an international gang led by Jagdish Bhola.
Paulson will be delivering the prestigious D P Kohli Memorial lecture which "is organised annually by the CBI in honour of its founder Director, late D P Kohli. He was the Head of Special Police Establishment and Central Bureau of Investigation from 1955 to 1968," CBI said in a statement.
It said Kohli was a visionary who sowed the seeds for the evolution of CBI into an effective and vibrant organisation. It was on account of his vision that CBI today enjoys the reputation of professionalism and fairness and has the confidence of all sections of society.
Commissioner Bob Paulson joined the RCMP in 1986 in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Prior to joining the RCMP, Commissioner Paulson served for almost seven years in the Canadian Armed Forces, it said.
He became the 23rd Commissioner of the RCMP on November 21, 2011.
He has worked in different capacities in areas of major crime, aboriginal & community policing, investigation of serious and organised crime etc, it said.
Lt Gen Surinder Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C), Western Command today reviewed field formations deployed in Himachal Pradesh along the International Border with China during his two-day visit.
Lt Gen Singh, while reviewing the operational readiness of the formations in the forward areas, had detailed deliberations with field commanders, besides interacting with troops, a defence release said.
The Army commander appreciated the high state of operational readiness and the motivation and morale of troops despite the difficult terrain and extreme weather conditions.
He exhorted the troops to remain alert and operationally ready. He also emphasised on the need to ensure infallible security measures and be ready for all contingencies.
The Army commander also met Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh at Shimla today and also had a meeting with Lt Gen DR Soni, GOC-in-C Army Training Command, it said.
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As ISIS sees its territory shrink to half its original size and its dreams of a caliphate evaporate, the extremist fighters are losing access to the sources of revenue that once gave them their power, prompting them to turn to extortion, kidnapping or foreign donations like their predecessors, the militant group al-Qaida.
The Islamic State group had a unique ability to capitalise on the natural resources of its territory in Iraq and Syria and swiftly implement a system of taxation and governance that allowed it to rule an area that once was the size of Switzerland.
As the battle gets underway to retake Mosul, the group's largest stronghold in Iraq, the Islamic State group is being denied access to revenue sources such as oil and gas and cash reserves that once amounted to more than USD 1 billion in 2014, said Daniel Glaser, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for terrorist financing.
With those resources slipping away, the Islamic State group is expected to revert to "traditional methods we see al-Qaida using whether it's deep-pocket donors, whether it's charities, whether it's NGOs, whether it's criminal activity," Glaser said in a recent discussion at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Beyond oil and gas sales, the Islamic State group also generated some USD 30 million per month in Iraq from taxation and extortion in 2015.
Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on IS who advises the Iraqi government, said the militant group currently makes about USD 4 million per month from taxes in Mosul alone.
Al-Hashimi said the group charges a 4 per cent income tax on salaries less than USD 600 per month, and 5 per cent on monthly salaries between USD 600 and USD 1,000.
Bank robberies made up the Islamic State group's third biggest source of revenue, mainly in Mosul, where there was more than USD 500 million in state-owned bank vaults when they captured the city in June 2014, but that was "a one-time take for them," Glaser noted, and they are quickly burning through that cash.
Glaser says the Islamic State group is under financial duress. Fighter salaries have been cut in half in some areas, including in Raqqa, Syria, its de facto capital. The group also set up an internal corruption agency, suggesting corruption may be a factor, Glaser and al-Hashimi said.
To compensate, there's been a noticeable spike in the IS group's revenue from criminal activity, such as extortion the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism says extortion accounted for a third of its revenue in 2015, compared to 12 per cent in 2014.
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Ashoka Buildcon Ltd today said it has bagged Rs 178.66 crore project from DVVNL for execution of work on rural electrification on turnkey basis under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) scheme.
"The company has received Letters of Intent (LOIs) from DVVNL (Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd) for execution of work on rural electrification on turnkey basis under DDUGJY Scheme...On behalf of DVVNL/ Government of Uttar Pradesh for Aligarh and Kanpur Zones," the Ashoka Buildcon said in a filing to BSE.
"The aggregate accepted bid value of the projects is Rs 178.66 crore," it said.
The company is a leading highway developers in the country with portfolio of over 28 public private partnership projects.
The company is present in 9 states across the country executing several prestigious projects for national and state governments.
It is also active in power transmission and distribution sector with various power projects in Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Bihar.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has summoned the Assistant Inspector General of CBI and Deputy Commissioner of Police in connection with the suicide by tainted senior government official BK Bansal and his son allegedly due to harassment by a few officials.
DCW had earlier issued notices to CBI and Delhi Police seeking action taken report in the case. But the commission was not satisfied with the responses received prompting it to issue summonses.
"Prima facie, this appears to be a shocking instance of alleged victimization and abetment of suicide of the family of an accused. DCW had sent a notice to the Director, CBI.
"However, no information was provided to the commission and it was informed that the matter is pending inquiry in the CBI," the summon issued today read.
"The reply was found to be unsatisfactory and inadequate. The commission then sent another notice seeking a detailed point-wise reply. However, till date no response was received neither any action was taken on the suicide note. Therefore, the AIG, CBI has been summoned to appear before the panel and provide the detailed reply," it added.
The commission said in a statement, "DCP East, Delhi Police was sent a notice to provide an action taken report in the case. The reply was found to be unsatisfactory and inadequate. Therefore he has been summoned to appear before the commission on October 25 to provide the detailed reply".
Two months after his wife Satyabala and Neha committed suicide, Bansal, former Director General Corporate Affairs, and his son Yogesh had also allegedly hanged themselves on September 27.
In their purported suicide note, Bansal had alleged that a CBI DIG, two women officers and a "fat" havaldar of the agency had tortured his wife and daughter to the extent that they ended their lives soon after his arrest on corruption charges in July.
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Home Minister Rajnath Singh today asked a group of newly-inducted IAS officers not to hesitate in putting forth their point of view before the ministers in case of difference of opinion.
The assertion was made during an interactive session between 11 union ministers, including Singh, and about 35 IAS officers of 2014 batch of Uttar Pradesh cadre as well as those officers who are domicile of the state, presently posted in various ministries as Assistant Secretaries.
Addressing the young officers, Singh called upon them to always uphold their reputation and credibility.
Asking them to bear empathy for the last man in the queue, he said the IAS officers should shoulder big responsibility in the district and must win the trust of the common people.
Recalling his tenure as the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Singh asked the IAS officers not to hesitate to put across their point of view before the ministers in case of difference of opinion, according to an official release.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the IAS officer being the steward of administration in the district, should always show concern to the interests of poor people.
He asked them to show sensitivity to issues of the armed forces personnel and ex-servicemen.
Minister of Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi said as District Magistrates, the IAS officers should show a sense of compassion and kindness to resolve the problems of the common man.
Other ministers who participated in the interactive session included Minister of State for Tourism (Independent Charge) and Culture Mahesh Sharma, MoS for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) and Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, MoS (External Affairs) V K Singh, MoS (Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation) Sanjeev Kumar Balyan and MoS (Food Processing Industries) Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
Ministers of State for HRD Mahendra Nath Pandey, MoS (Women & Child Development) Krishna Raj and MoS (Health and Family Welfare) Anupriya Patel also participated in the session.
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A Belgian tourist was trampled to death by an elephant near Kenya's famed Maasai Mara wildlife reserve, police said today, the second such incident in a month.
"He was badly injured by the rogue elephant and succumbed to injuries at the Talek Health Centre," a police officer in the area said on condition of anonymity.
The death of the Belgian man on Monday in circumstances that remain unclear comes a month after an Italian man was trampled in the Tsavo National Park, southeast Kenya, while trying to take a photograph of an elephant.
Kenyan daily The Standard reported that in a separate incident yesterday, a Kenyan secondary school student was killed by an elephant on the way to school.
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) warned in a statement today that a fierce drought gripping the country was pushing wildlife further from their traditional habitats in search of food and water, increasingly bringing them into contact with humans.
"From the cases recorded by KWS, it is evident that there has been an increase in reported incidents of conflicts compared to past years; the notable ones being attacks on people, property destruction, livestock predation and crop raiding," said the statement.
KWS warned that such interactions were likely to increase and urged caution in high-risk areas.
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In the wake of death of eight water birds due to H5 avian influenza at the the Delhi zoo, bird sanctuaries, poultry farms and chicken markets in the city will be closely monitored, the city government today said.
Delhi Development Minister Gopal Rai said the situation is "not alarming" for now and added that the influenza doesn't affect humans directly.
Rai, who heads the state Animal Husbandry Department, said National Zoological Park (Delhi zoo) has been shut for three days as part of precautionary measures.
The minister went to the zoo with officials today to take stock of the situation. He said this is for the first time that H5 avian influenza has affected birds here.
The government has set up a monitoring cell and issued a helpline number (011-23890318) appealing Delhiites to inform in case they spot dead birds in their vicinity.
At the zoo, a ten-member team will be closely monitoring the situation.
"We've constituted six rapid action teams to monitor the situation in Okhla Bird Sanctuary, Ghazipur Murga Mandi, Yamuna Diversity Park, Najafgarh Drain, Nizamuddin, where migratory birds come in good numbers," he told reporters here.
Rai said the dead birds were "migratory" which indicates that there are some affected points in their transit route due to which birds at Delhi zoo also got affected.
"We are taking steps to prevent spread of virus. Tomorrow, we are holding a meeting with officials of Health, Revenue and other concerned departments.
"In the meeting, discussion on medical arrangements in city's hospitals will also be made so that people don't face any problem in case of emergency," he said.
Asked about human infection, Rai said that according to experts, birds are only affected.
"If people consume infected chicken, they can get affected. If virus spread and its symptoms are spotted, we will put some restrictions," he further said.
Rai also said the Delhi government has called a meeting on Friday with a team of officials of Maharashtra, which effectively dealt with this virus 10 years ago.
Ten birds have died in the last 10 days and out of them, eight have died due to the H5 avian influenza.
Two birds died while On October 14 while six were found dead the next day.
"We had sent samples of these dead birds to Jhalandar lab which detected symptoms of some virus. For second opinion, we had sent these samples to Bhopal-based laboratory run by the Centre which also confirmed the same," he said.
He said that on October 17, one more bird died. Today as well, one bird was found dead. The reason behind their death has not been confirmed.
India had declared itself free from bird flu in
September.
In a statement, the Centre had also emphasised the need for "continued surveillance especially in the vulnerable areas bordering infected countries and in areas visited by migratory birds".
Bird flu affects mainly the domestic poultry. The disease spreads from infected birds to other winged creatures through contact with nasal and respiratory secretions and also due to contamination of feed and water.
Last time, the virus was detected in Chandigarh. In 2004, Kerela Bird sanctuary witnessed outbreak of the influenza. In 2006, poultry farm in Maharashtra was severely affected due to the bird flue.
In 2008, it was detected in West Bengal Poultry Farm.
Delhi's National Zoological Park has been battling a spate of animal deaths since early this year. Over 40 spotted deer were found dead on its premises in January.
BJP in Kerala today hit out at the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for blaming the RSS for the violence in Kannur and doubted his "call for peace initiative".
BJP state chief Kummanom Rajasekharan said it was unfortunate that Vijayan used the state Assembly to attackRSS for the Kannur violence and give a clean chit to CPI(M).
Slamming the CPI(M), he said after the LDF government came to power in May, 250 incidents of violence took place and CPI(M) workers were accused in 80 per cent of them.
CPI(M) attacked 31 houses in two stages at Pinarayi itself, the homeland of Chief Minister, after this government came to power, he alleged.
Rajasekharan said police remain mere spectators to the violence in Kannur. "Police in Kannur had openly stated that they were helpless and CPI(M) cadres were even threatening them (police personnel)," he said.
"The Chief Minister who knows everything that happens in Kannur is now blaming RSS for the violence. This triggers suspicion whether he was serious in bringing peace to the area," he said.
Referring to the statement of CPI-M Kannur District Secretary that the party in Kannur did not have the "habit of suffering everything with folded hands," Rajasekharan said, "When the Chief Minister was calling for peace, his party leader was encouraging violence."
Rejecting Vijayan's charge that BJP did not co-operate in peace talks, he said it was CPI-M who refused to budge.
"It was CPI(M) leaders who rejected with contempt the peace talk proposal made by RSS chief", he pointed out.
Meanwhile, senior CPI(M) leader P Jayarajan today said, it was not right to equate CPI(M) with RSS and said "the party ignore those who weigh both CPI(M) and RSS in the same weighing balance".
"There will be permanent peace in Kannur if RSS decides," he told reporters here.
RSS leaders from outside the district were also involved in the violence, he said, adding police should apprehend them by charging offences of conspiracy.
He alleged that some BJP leaders were behind the murder of CPI(M) local committee member Mohanan in the district earlier this month.
He also criticised CPI state secretary Kannam Rajendran's statement that CPI(M) should not fall in the trap of RSS that law and order situation has collapsed in the state.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP today organized a party workers convention in Srinagar summer capital.
In the BJP workers convention all the senior members - including state office bearers, district presidents, constituency presidents and other members were president and discussed the prevailing situation in Kashmir, BJP spokesman said in a press release.
The senior party members of the party appreciated the party workers for remaining steadfast during the present crisis in Kashmir.
"The party leaders expressed grief over the loss of lives of both security forces and civilians in the ongoing unrest", spokesman said.
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With the Samajwadi Party (SP) embroiled in a "huge drama", no force can stop the BJP from forming the government in Uttar Pradesh next year, Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy claimed here today.
"Our campaigning for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election is on. There is a huge drama going on in netaji's (SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav) party. So, no force can stop us from forming the government in that state," the Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship told reporters on the sidelines of an event here.
Assembly election is due in Uttar Pradesh early next year.
A family feud had broken out in the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh recently over the sacking of two ministers, considered close to Mulayam's brother and state minister Shivpal Yadav, by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav who had also stripped his uncle Shivpal, who is also the SP's state unit chief, of key portfolios.
Mulayam struggled to put a lid on the internecine conflict and the feud reportedly caused a heartburn among the SP cadre, believed to be divided between Akhilesh and Shivpal camps.
Rudy was in the city to launch a Skill Development Plan of the Maharashtra government.
On the occasion, he elaborated on various skill development initiatives undertaken by the Centre.
He said the government would launch training institutes for drivers in "each and every district of the country" to produce "world-class" drivers.
"Around 22 lakh trained youths are needed to operate various kinds of vehicles in the country. Thus, we have decided to open driver-training institutes in every district of the country. This will also give a boost to Prime Minister's Skill Development Mission," Rudy said.
He appealed to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who was also present on the occasion, to open such institutes in all the districts of Maharashtra.
"I request the chief minister to open such training institutes in all the districts of the state. They will not only train the drivers for the country, but will also fulfil the requirement of drivers across the world by teaching them French, Chinese and English languages," Rudy said.
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Accusing BJP of having upper caste tilt, senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar today insinuated that the saffron party used its backward class leaders with mass base like late Gopinath Munde to grab power only and then dumped them for likes of Nitin Gadkari, Prakash Javdekar and others.
The former deputy Chief Minister also claimed that BJP was getting alienated from masses and deviated from principles laid down by social reformers like late Shahu Maharaj, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and B R Ambedkar.
"As a young boy, I used to hear that BJP is a party of 'Shetjis and Bhatjis' (insinuating that it represents only upper caste traders and Brahmins), but in recent years leaders like late Gopinath Munde, N S Farande and Annasaheb Dange, representing backward classes, contributed significantly for the growth of that party.
"Today, when the party is in power we get to see leaders like (Nitin) Gadkari, (Prakash) Javdekar, (Suresh) Prabhu and Piyush Goyal (suggesting that they are upper caste leaders). It clearly indicates that the party has used its leaders from masses and (then) set (them) aside after attaining power," Pawar said addressing a rally at Pimpalner village in Madha tehsil of Solapur district.
Ajit Pawar is the nephew of veteran politician Sharad Pawar.
His remarks came at a time when mega rallies being taken out by Maratha community for reservation has brought a churn in state politics, whereas dalits too are asserting themselves against any perceived move to dilute SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
"Current leadership in state is mostly from Vidarbha region (from where Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis hails), hence they are biased towards sanctioning funds for western Maharashtra. This is nothing but sheer injustice," he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With a video of two sons of a murder accused mercilessly beating their Dalit classmate here going viral on social media, the duo have been sent to a remand home even as police assured security to the family of the boy.
The maternal grandfather of the boy, a class XII student of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Gannipur here, lodged an FIR with SC & ST police station on Monday.
In the FIR he also claimed the entire family was terrified because the father of the two brothers is a notorious criminal lodged in jail outside the district in a murder case.
According to Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashish Anand, the two brothers have been sent to remand home after being presented before Juvenile Justice Board yesterday.
They have also been removed from the school which gave them forced Transfer Certificate.
School principal Rajiv Ranjan had lodged a written complaint with the Kaji Muhammadpur police station.
The purported video of the incident shows the two brothers -- one of them a student of class XII and the other of class XI -- pushing and thrashing the victim in presence of some other schoolmates on September 25.
Meanwhile, police has assured security to the family of the boy.
"I have given my phone number to the family to call me any time if they feel insecure. I have also directed Kazi Muhammadpur police station to ensure that the family is not hurt by anybody in the wake of the incident," Anand told PTI.
He said he had told the school Principal that there should be no inconvenience to the boy in the school in the wake of the incident.
Union Minister of State for HRD Upendra Kushwaha had taken strong note of the video and on his directive a team of Kendriya Vidyalaya officials had paid a visit to the school on October 14.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court, scrutinising the two-decade-old 'Hindutva' judgement, today asked whether non-contesting spiritual leaders or clerics can be held accountable for "corrupt practices" under electoral law for asking voters to vote for a particular party or candidate.
"How can a person, who himself has neither contested nor returned as a winning candidate, be tried for allegedly resorting to corrupt practices under the Representation of the People (RP) Act," a seven-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur asked.
The court is examining the "scope and width" of section 123(3) of the RP Act which deals with electoral malpractices amounting to "corrupt practices", among other things.
"The appeal by a candidate or his agent or by any other person with the consent of a candidate or his election agent to vote or refrain from voting for any person on the ground of his religion, race, caste, community or language or the use of, or appeal to religious symbols or the use of, or appeal to, national symbols..., for furtherance of the prospects of the election of that candidate or for prejudicially affecting the election of any candidate" would amount to corrupt practices, the provision says.
Senior advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for Abhiram Singh whose election as an MLA in 1990 on BJP ticket from Santacruz assembly seat in Mumbai was set aside by the High Court, referred to section 123(3) of the Act and said that corrupt practice can only be established if either the "candidate or his agent" seek votes on the name of religion.
If any other person, like late Bal Thackeray and late Pramod Mahajan in the present case, sought votes on these grounds, referred to in the RP Act, then there has to be the "consent" of the candidate, he told the bench, which also comprised justices Madan B Lokur, S A Bobde, A K Goel, U U Lalit, D Y Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao.
During the day-long hearing, the bench asked the counsel as to how the statements of religious leaders or clerics, made much before the commencement of the election process, seeking votes on the objectionable grounds, would fall foul of the RP Act.
Datar, during his arguments, stressed on the legal
requirement that the consent of returned candidates was necessary if he is to be held liable for "corrupt practices" for allegedly using inflammatory statements of any religious leader or cleric.
"In my case, main speeches were made by Bal Thackeray and Pramod Mahajan, who are now no more," he said, adding that "their examination was needed for holding me guilty under the provision concerned."
It was alleged that both the late leaders had sought votes in the name of Hindutva and 'Hindu Rashtra'.
"A returned candidate has been disqualified because of the speech of somebody else and that too without his consent," the bench observed.
The bench further sought assistance of Datar, appearing for the former BJP MLA, on the issue whether the old and stale statements, used belatedly in an election, can be held to be violative of the RP Act.
Another senior advocate Shyam Divan said the issue which required to be decided was on "narrow compass" as the court has to decide the scope of section 123(3) of the Act.
"There is a contradistinction with regard to whether consent of the returned candidate, in adopting corrupt practices, can be inferred from the materials or it has to be established," Divan said while highlighting the differences of opinion in earlier apex court verdicts on the issue.
Yesterday, the bench had referred to the instances of 'deras' in Punjab and their heads asking supporters to vote for a particular party or a candidate.
"These deras are not connected to religion per se and follow a particular way of life. If the head of a dera asks its followers to vote for a particular political party, would that also fall foul of Section 123(3)," it had asked.
The court had decided to go ahead with the hearing, ignoring the request of some parties in the matter to involve Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi for his assistance.
The bench began the hearing by grappling with the issues which could be examined by it and wanted to know whether some of them could be remanded back to a smaller bench of five or three judges.
Earlier, Datar had submitted that the case of his client
Singh should be separated from this hearing as all similarly situated people had already got relief from the apex court.
He said the appeal filed in 1992 by Singh, whose election to 1990 Maharashtra Assembly was set aside in 1991 by the Bombay High Court, has wrongly been tagged to the main petition of Narayan Singh whose appeal by the five judge bench was referred to the seven judges.
The senior advocate said there were 10 such appeals against the high court order and, except in two, the election of others were restored by the apex court and therefore, Abhiram Singh should be treated on the same footing and his appeal should be remanded back to three-judge bench.
He made reference to the similar relief secured by former Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi contending that there was no conflict in that judgement.
The apex court in February 2014 had tagged Abhiram Singh's petition with others in which the five judge bench had decided in 2002 to re-visit its 20-year old 'Hindutva' judgement for an authoritative pronouncement on electoral laws by a seven judge bench.
The issue assumes significance as questions were raised on its 1995 verdict which held that vote in the name of "Hindutva/Hinduism" did not prejudicially affect any candidate, and since then three election petitions are pending on the subject in the apex court.
The apex court's three-judge bench in 1995 had held that "Hindutva/Hinduism is a way of life of the people in the sub-continent" and "is a state of mind".
The judgement was delivered in the case of Manohar Joshi versus N B Patil which was authored by Justice J S Verma who found that the statement by Joshi that the 'first Hindu State will be established in Maharashtra' did not amount to appeal on ground of religion".
The issue of interpretation of section 123(3) again arose
on January 30, 2014 before a five-judge which referred it for examination before a larger bench of seven judges.
The seven judges is now dealing with the appeal filed in 1992 by Abhiram Singh.
A three-judge bench on April 16, 1992 had referred to a five-judge Constitution Bench Singh's appeal in which the same question and interpretation of Section 123(3) was raised.
While the five-judge bench was hearing this matter on January 30, 2014, it was informed that an identical issue was raised in an election petition filed by Narayan Singh against BJP leader Sunderlal Patwa and the another Constitution Bench of five judges of the apex court had referred it to a larger bench of seven judges.
Thereafter, the five-judge bench had referred Singh's matter also to the Chief Justice for placing it before a seven-judge bench.
The January 30, 2014, order said, "Be that as it may, since one of the questions involved in the present appeal is already referred to a larger bench of seven judges, we think it appropriate to refer this appeal to a limited extent regarding interpretation of sub-section (3) of Section 123 of the 1951 Act to a larger bench of seven judges.
"The Registry will place the matter before the Chief Justice for constitution of a bench of seven judges. The matter may be listed subject to the order of the Chief Justice."
The apex court had also noted that "in the course of arguments, our attention has been invited to the order of this court dated August 20, 2002 in Narayan Singh vs Sunderlal Patwa. By this order, a Constitution Bench of five judges has referred the question regarding the scope of corrupt practice mentioned in sub-section (3) of Section 123 of the 1951 Act to a larger bench of seven judges.
"This became necessary in view of the earlier decision of a Constitution Bench of this court in Kultar Singh vs Mukhtiar Singh," the court had said.
Canadian pension fund manager CDPQ today announced an investment of over Rs 1,000 crore to acquire a sizeable minority stake in TVS Group's third-party logistics arm, which will include buying out the existing private equity investors Goldman Sachs and KKR.
"CDPQ will invest over Rs 1,000 crore (USD 155 million) to acquire a minority stake in TVS Logistics Ltd. With this transaction, Goldman Sachs and KKR will fully exit from their investments", TVS Logistics Services' Managing Director R Dinesh told reporters here.
Declining to reveal the percentage of stakes held by Goldman Sachs and KKR, he said, "Goldman Sachs had done investments of about Rs 120 crore and KKR was about Rs 240 crore".
Goldman Sachs had pumped in Rs 120 crore in two tranches from 2008 onwards while KKR invested in the company in 2012.
CDPQ will purchase most of their joint stake (held by KKR and Goldman Sachs) while TVS family members and management will acquire the remaining, he said.
"We are perfectly in align with CDPQ. They are ready to invest more", he said.
CDPQ, which has done a slew of investments in the country, including buying a 30 per cent stake in Edelweiss ARC, will also "commit significant additional capital" for financing acquisitions and expansion of the company, a joint statement released by the two companies said.
"TVS Logistics, which clocked revenues of about Rs 4,200 crore last financial year, has set a target of achieving Rs 5,700 crore in this year", Dinesh said.
"Our target is to triple that revenue in the next three to five years," he added.
Stating that the company has been diversifying its business, he said, "earlier our focus area was one hundred per cent in auto sector. Now it is less than 30 per cent. In the United Kingdom majority of the business is defence. We are talking about projects of about two billion pounds."
Asked whether the company was looking to go public, he said, "We always have the option to go public but not now.
Terming that the TVS Logistics a "very dynamic" company and has been growing very fast over the last few years, CDPQ President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Sabia, through a video message, said, "we are convinced that the company has grown under the leadership of Dinesh. We are coming on board to help it grow not only in India but also internationally".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A closed Catholic church in the US state of Pennsylvania has been sold to a Muslim cultural group for nearly two million dollars to clear debts, a media report said today.
The Immaculate Conception BVM Church, situated in Bristol township in Bucks county, was sold for USD 1,775,000 on Friday to the United American Muslim Society (UAMS) of Brooklyn, LevittownNow.Com reported.
The money from the sale will go to pay down a debt of USD 704,997 for Immaculate Conception and USD 258,042 for Queen of the Universe, Catholic community. The remaining funds will go to parish savings, Archdiocese of Philadelphia spokesman Ken Gavin was quoted as saying by the report.
The church, which closed on January 1, was merged with the Queen of the Universe Parish in 2014.
The announcement of the sale was made during weekend masses was "positively received by parishioners", Gavin said.
UAMS is the parent corporation for the Turkish-American Muslim Cultural Association on Levittown Parkway where they are based since 1991.
"They are widely known as people of faith, family, prayer and education in the moral life for their children and the families of Bristol Township," Gavin added.
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Pakistani troops today violated ceasefire in Rajouri-Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir, shelling Indian positions with mortar bombs and using automatic arms.
"There was unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Bhimber Gali (BG) Sector from 1630 hours today," PRO Defence said.
The Pakistani troops used small arms, automatic weapons and 82 mm mortars bombs to target Indian positions, he said.
Indian troops responded appropriately and befittingly, the PRO said, adding there were no casualties till last reports came in.
This was the 30th ceasefire violation by Pakistani troops along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir since the Indian army carried out surgical strikes in PoK to destroy terror launching pads.
Yesterday, the Pakistani troops fired 82 mm mortar bombs, used small and automatic weapons in firing on Indian forward posts in Laam Battalion area in Naushera from 2030 hours to 0130 hours.
Indian troops retaliated and gave befitting reply, he said, adding no one was injured in the ceasefire violation.
On October 16, Pakistani troops violated ceasefire twice along LoC in Naushera and Rajouri sectors in which one jawan was martyred.
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A Central government team today visited Nehru Nagar in Nashik Road here for a proposed paper mill project, required for printing currency notes.
The team will submit its report to Union Finance Ministry, under which city-based India Security Press (ISP) and Currency Note Press (CNP) function.
The team comprised General Manager of CNP, S P Varma, members of Security Paper Mill (Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh) P R Gauda, Security Printing & Minting Corporation Ltd of India (SPMCIL) members Rakesh Kumar, Praveen Gupta, Manishankar and others.
Shiv Sena MP Hemant Godse from Nashik while welcoming the members said, the Central government has set a target to produce 48,000 metric tonne note (currency) paper by 2024.
"Currently, 16,000 MT paper is being produced. To achieve the target of remaining 32,000 MT, two machines have been sanctioned in-principle for Hoshangabad SPM to produce 16,000 MT, while scouting is underway to set up a mill here to produce another 16,000 MT," he said.
Godsde further said the 250 acres land is lying unused with ISP and CNP at Nehru Nagar and it could be efficiently utilised for setting up a new paper mill which will be economically viable as well.
He said Nashik Road railway station is close these places, transportation cost will be less and the cotton required for producing currency paper could be transported by train from neighbouring Jalgaon.
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Asking Odisha government to take action against those guilty of "serious lapse" that led to death of 21 people in a hospital blaze here, Union Health Minister J P Nadda today said the Centre would soon issue a fresh advisory to all states to avoid repeat of such incidents.
His remarks came on a day when another fire outbreak was reported in Kendrapara district headquarters hospital in the state. However, there was no casualty.
"We have to see that such incidents do not repeat. I will ask the officials to make more stringent provisions. I will personally see which issues need to be revisited. A fresh advisory will be given to all the states so that such incidents do not take place anywhere," Nadda told reporters before winding up his one-day visit to the state.
He said there was "serious lapse in the said hospital where people died. The state government should ensure that the culprits responsible for the incident should not go scot- free."
Terming the hospital fire tragedy as "very serious", "worrisome" and "shocking", Nadda said, "There was breach of safety measures. The incident would not have taken place at all, had safety measures been in place."
Though fire safety is a matter related to Home department, Health department also has a responsibility to ensure safety of patients in hospitals, he said.
Nadda said he was told that the hospital did not have fire safety measures. "Inspite of that (not having fire safety clearance), the hospital was running. It is a serious matter," Nadda said.
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China's Shenzhou-11 spacecraft carrying two astronauts docked with an experimental space lab orbiting the earth through a remote-controlled automatic operation in the wee hours today.
The astronauts entered thespace lab Tiangong-2 after the spacecraft successfully docked with the space station and completed the automatic docking around 1 AM (Indian Standard Time), Beijing Aerospace Control Centre (BACC) said.
Shenzhou-11 was successfully launched on Monday in China's longest-ever manned space mission.
The rendezvous between the spacecraft and the lab took place over 393 kilometers above Earth, BACC said.
The event was telecast live by the state-run China Central Television, (CCTV).
The two astronauts aboard Shenzhou-11 -- Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong -- later entered the lab and will stay there for 30 days carrying out different experiments.
Shenzhou-11, China's sixth manned spacecraft, will undertake the longest-ever space mission of China.
The two astronauts will spend a total of 33 days in space.
BACC deputy chief engineer Sun Jun told the state-run agency Xinhua that the precision needed for the orbit prediction and automated docking calculation was much higher than the previous docking missions.
Once docking was complete, commander of the mission Jing Haipeng opened the hatch of Tiangong-2 and floated into the space lab, followed by Chen Dong.
The two astronauts extended greetings to all the people of the nation in the space lab, and checked the status of the space complex formed by Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2.
Before entering the space lab, the astronauts entered the spacecraft's orbital compartment and removed their intravehicular mobility unit spacesuits to change into blue jumpsuits.
Tiangong-2 was sent into space on September 15. The space lab was launched as part of efforts to set up China's own manned space station by 2022, which will make it the only country to have such a facility in service as the current in-service International Space Station (ISS) will retire by 2024.
Other objectives of the space mission include aerospace medical experiments, space science experiments and in-orbit maintenance with human participation, as well as other activities, Wu Ping, Deputy Director of China's manned space engineering office said.
The astronauts will undertake ultrasound tests during space travel for the first time, cultivate plants in space, and test the three winners of an experiment design competition run in Hong Kong for secondary school students.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hundreds of displaced Iraqi Christians danced and sang to celebrate an Iraqi military operation to retake their community's main hub of Qaraqosh from jihadists.
Iraqi Christian men, women and children -- some of them holding candles -- gathered at Mar Shimon church in the Kurdish capital of Arbil to pray and celebrate, an AFP correspondent reported yesterday.
Iraqi federal forces on Tuesday moved deep into Qaraqosh, a town that lies around 15 kilometres (10 miles) southeast of Mosul and was seized by the Islamic State jihadist group in August 2014.
"Today is a happy moment. There is no doubt our land will be liberated and we thank God, Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary," said Hazem Djedjou Cardomi, a journalist among the crowd.
The evening gathering was organised in spite of what remained a fluid situation in Qaraqosh, with Iraqi forces taking position in several neighbourhoods but IS fighters potentially still holed up in others.
Qaraqosh had a population of around 50,000 people prior to an August 2014 offensive across the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul that forced almost every resident to flee.
The overwhelming majority of Qaraqosh residents were Christians, making it the largest Christian town in Iraq.
"We have been through a lot of suffering and today we are looking forward to returning to our region as soon as possible," Cardomi said.
Also present at the joyous gathering in Arbil, the nearby capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region to which most displaced Christians fled two years ago, was George Djahola, a Syriac father.
"The people had this idea to celebrate when we heard this morning about the liberation... Or at least the army's progress and entry into Qaraqosh, the first Christian town in the Nineveh Plain," he told AFP.
"Over the past two years, people were alive but their joy was not complete. They want to return to their homes, their land -- even if they have been destroyed -- and live in peace in their town," he said.
Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi federal forces on Monday launched a major offensive aimed at retaking Mosul, the second city and last major remaining IS stronghold in the country.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Shiv Sena is awaiting a proposal from the BJP over an alliance, if feasible, for the forthcoming civic polls in Maharashtra.
The Sena is an alliance partner in the BJP-led NDA governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra.
"The prospects of an alliance were discussed and it was decided to await a proposal from the BJP," a Sena source told PTI today.
In view of the polls, slated to be held between November 2016 and January 2017, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today held a meeting with the outfit's district unit chiefs and district coordinators from across the state to discuss strategies.
He is scheduled to address the ministers and legislators tomorrow.
The four-phase polls will be held for 212 civic bodies, including 192 municipal councils and 20 nagar panchayats, in 25 districts.
The contest, being dubbed as a 'mini' Assembly election, will be held for a total of 4,750 seats covering 2,485 civic wards.
While the first phase is slated to be held on November 27, the subsequent phases are scheduled for December 14, 18 and January 8, 2017, barring the two districts of Mumbai and Thane.
The counting of votes will be held on the next day of voting in each phase.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
kelly_4f13dbc0-e07a-4506-aa8f-1624d846be4c-prv.jpg
Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss., talks with General Superintendent Lance Carnahan during a tour of Ingalls Shipbuilding on Tuesday. Kelly met with shipbuilders on the amphibious assault ship Tripoli (LHA 7) and amphibious transport dock Portland (LPD 27) and was also reunited with Ingalls employees who were fellow veterans of the National Guard's 890th Engineer Battalion in Gulfport.
(Lance Davis/Ingalls Shipbuilding)
PASCAGOULA, Mississippi -- U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) toured Ingalls Shipbuilding Tuesday, with the tour serving as a de facto reunion of sorts for the Congressman, as well.
This marked Kelly's first tour of the shipyard, the state's largest private employer, since winning a special election in June 2015 to fill the 1st District seat following the death of Rep. Allen Nunnelee.
"As the largest employer in Mississippi, Ingalls sets the standard for the shipbuilding industry," Kelly said after the tour. "Their commitment to the nation, building the best ships for our service members, and their talented team members are the type of dedication that makes America great."
In addition to the tour and meeting with Ingalls leadership, Kelly was reunited with Ingalls employees who -- like Kelly -- are veterans of the Mississippi Army National Guard 890th Engineer Battalion, based in Gulfport.
Kelly has served 30 years in the National Guard and currently holds the rank of colonel. He served two tours in Iraq and earned two Bronze Stars for his actions.
Kelly also met and spoke with shipbuilders on the amphibious assault ship Tripoli (LHA 7) and the amphibious transport dock Portland (LPD 27).
"It is always a privilege to host one of our U.S. Congressmen so they can see the quality, pride and skills of our workforce," said Ingalls president Brian Cuccias. "Representative Kelly's visit allowed him to understand the complexity of our facility and the processes it takes to build four classes of military ships simultaneously at an affordable price.
"We thank him for visiting our shipyard and supporting Mississippi's shipbuilders."
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump today accused Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of taking money from foreign lobbyists and interest groups as he asserted that her win in polls would mean that America has lost its independence.
"If we let the Clinton cartel run this government, history will record that 2017 was a year America lost its independence. That's true, that's true. It will not happen on our watch," Trump told his supporters in Colorado ahead of the third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas.
"It's like when they look back at us at this time, you know, in history, we will not be the ones that they talk about the replacement of the great Trojan horse, right? You understand that. We're not going to be the fools that allow that to happen. I say it again, when it comes to Washington, D C, it is time to drain the damn swamp," he said.
Trump also asked the outgoing US President Barack Obama to stop campaigning for Hillary.
"He should stop campaigning for crooked Hillary, and he ought to get out and work on jobs and work on the border. Boy, oh boy, he's got a lot of work. Fortunately, he doesn't have much time left," the 70-year-old business tycoon said.
"But to be a rich country we must also be a safe country. National security begins at the border. Speaking in secret to a foreign bank, crooked Hillary Clinton said her dream is for open trade -- there go your jobs -- and open borders -- there goes your country. That's what it is. Your jobs, your country," he said.
Trump reiterated that the current system is rigged by the donors giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Clinton's campaign.
"The reason crooked Hillary pushes for NAFTA or the Transpacific Partnership and for completely open borders is because her international donors control her every single move," he alleged.
Referring to Wikileaks, he said the series of leaked e-mails show top officials in the Clinton campaign scheming to take massive sums of money from registered foreign lobbyists.
"But don't hear the media talking about it. We all talk about it WikiLeaks proved. And by the way, they are not being covered, they want to cover fictitious stories about me, it's fiction. They want to cover -- they just want to cover fictitious stories on me," he said.
WikiLeaks has provided things that are unbelievable but the media is an extension of the Hillary Clinton campaign, Trump alleged.
"Clinton and her cronies have sacrificed your security, your family's safety and your country's safety as though it meant nothing at all to her. Remember also that Hillary lied under oath to Congress, saying she had never sent or received classified information on her insecure server, and pretended not to know what the letter C meant, confidential information that was classified, right," he said.
"Hillary then told the FBI she couldn't remember 30 times, right? Thirty-nine. Thirty-nine times, and then in written testimony last week under oath she couldn't remember another 21 times. Bad memory. She's got a bad memory," he said.
In a bid to introduce clean fuel across the country, the National Green Tribunal today directed five northern states to explain their stand on making CNG as the main fuel for vehicles.
A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar directed Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi to file affidavit giving details about cities which are connected with the supply of CNG and the areas proposed to be connected.
It asked them to explain which functions are to be performed by the states and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) in this regard.
The green panel also asked PNGRB to submit a comprehensive plan for laying CNG pipeline for distribution.
"PNGRB shall clarify how many cities shall be covered with supply of CNG and what is the current status of CNG use in these five states," it said.
The matter was listed for next hearing on October 28.
On the last date of hearing, the tribunal had warned of halting state transport if they did not introduce CNG, saying most particulate matters in the air inhaled by Delhi'ites emanated from there.
The NGT in September had asked Uttar Pradesh and Haryana government to mull over the possibility of installing CNG stations in NCR while refusing to grant permission to over 10- year old diesel vehicles to ply in these areas.
On July 18, the green panel had directed authorities in Delhi-NCR to cancel the registration of all diesel-powered vehicles which were more than 10 years old.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has played a major role in safeguarding the maritime interest of the country, Director General of ICG Rajendra Singh said today.
Addressing a gathering after Commissioning the Inshore Patrol Vessel (IPV) of ICG Ship 'Rani Gaidinliu' at Coast Guard Jetty here, he said the changing security Scenario in the Maritime domain dictates the need for coastal security on a 24X7 basis where the coast guard have to maintain a constant vigil.
Singh said the Indian Coast Guard's fleet Strength has gone to 123 Ships and 62 Aircraft From 1997.
He said ICG ship Rani Gaidinliu, named after the freedom fighter from Manipur, will Primarily focus on surveillance at the sea, coastal patrol, anti-smuggling operations, protection of fishermen, beside the routine Search and Rescue Operations.
ICGS Rani Gaidinliu is the fourth of its class and has been designed and build ingeniously by Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), Visakhapatnam.
The Vessel is equipped with the most advanced and sophisticated Navigational and Communication sensors and equipment, Singh said.
It is 51-metre in length, 330 tonnes displacement, capable of achieving maximum speed of 34 knots. The ship is fitted with the state-of-the-art communication, navigational equipment and 30 mm CRN-91 gun on-board as main armament. It will be based at the Krishnapatanam Port.
Indian Coast Guard Region (East) Inspector General, Rajan Bargotra, Deputy Chief Minister of Manipur Gaikhangam, Flag Officers and other civilian officers also attended the function.
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Citing importance of free and fair elections, President Pranab Mukherjee today said it is important to create a conducive atmosphere to enable people to exercise their voting rights without fear or favour and see that the outcome of elections is not vitiated.
He was speaking to the heads of election management bodies and international electoral institutions of different countries attending the 'International Conference on Voter Education for Inclusive, Informed and Ethical Participation'.
Addressing the delegates, the President quoted Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, co-founder of erstwhile Czechoslovakia and said "Democracy is the political form of humanity".
He said that the heads of election management bodies present there were custodians of democracy and therefore of humanity. Mukherjee said that democracy would succeed through their responsibility of discharging free and fair elections as per the Constitution of the country concerned.
The President said that after India became independent and was transformed into a Republic, there were many doubting voices with regard to success of adult suffrage in the country.
However, the Election Commission of India, which has an important role in our democracy, has been delivering the citizens well managed elections in a country with a vast area and a huge population.
The country has seen consistent rise in voters' participation in successive elections. The General Elections to the lower house of Indian Parliament in 2014 recorded a historic turn out, the President said.
Mukherjee said that he was happy that the voters also chose a stable political regime by electing a single majority government.
The President said that the basic objective of democracy is to have an electorate which is informed and constantly engaged with the affairs of the State.
"It is important to create a conducive atmosphere to enable people to exercise their voting rights without fear or favour and see that the outcome of elections is not vitiated.
"Voters must be educated to exercise their right to vote with full responsibility and seriousness," he was quoted as having said in a press release issued by Rashtrapati Bhavan.
He told the delegates that being experts in their field it was for them to decide how successful elections were to be implemented.
Mukherjee hoped that the deliberations at the conference would lead to better voters' education and increased voters' participation.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress today alleged that the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh is in the thick of a "scam of monumental proportions" in the resettlement and rehabilitation of the oustees of the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada.
Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told reporters that the Judicial Commission headed by Justice S S Jha has "indicted" the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in the matter.
Congress has already been targeting the government over the multi-crore Vyapam scam and demanding the resignation of the chief minister.
"The Chouhan government seems to have become a Vyapak Ghotala-all Pervasive Scamster-Government, even as the Prime Minister continues to patronise him (Chouhan) and his corruption," Singhvi alleged.
He said the scandal has put question mark on the future of thousands of families affected by the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
The Commission, after a seven-year investigation, has "exposed the rampant forgery of documents" that allowed compensation to be paid to impostors, he said, claiming the scam is of "monumental proportions".
The Jha Commission was appointed by the Supreme Court, he said.
The compensation was meant for those who will be displaced when the dam's height is raised.
The commission has also brought to the fore that the state government did not cooperate with its inquiry and made every attempt to prevent the damning report from being made public before it was finally tabled in the state's Vidhan Sabha at the end of July, Singhvi said.
Targeting the Prime Minister, he said Narendra Modi never misses any opportunity to politically encash the Sardar Sarovar Dam but could not prevent the massive corruption in this 'Narmada Dam Scam'.
"Congress demands that the Jha Commission report be made public and appropriate action under the Supreme Court guidelines taken so that the culprits of this massive Narmada Scam can be brought to book", Singhvi said.
"The Prime Minister talks about 'Swachh Bharat'. It is high time that Narendra Modi first provides us a 'Swachh Sarkar', which is devoid of corruption", he remarked.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A special CBI court today granted bail to Financial Technologies (India) Ltd promoter Jignesh Shah in connection with a case against him for allegedly suppressing facts to get an extension for stock exchange MCX-SX from market regulator SEBI.
Special court judge P S Tarare granted bail to Shah on a surety of Rs one lakh.
Shah was arrested on September 20 by CBI. The central agency had said that it suspected some former SEBI officials of being hand-in-glove with Shah, who may have bribed them.
MCX-SX, promoted by Shah and others, had submitted an application in 2008 to SEBI, seeking extension of its recognition as an exchange for currency futures trade.
MCX-SX promoters had entered into a share buyback arrangement with Punjab National Bank, L&FS and IFCI in violation of Securities Contract Regulation Act and Securities Contract (Regulation) (Manner of Increasing and Maintaining Public Shareholdings in Recognised Stock Exchanges) Regulation, 2006.
CBI alleged that Shah, with the connivance of SEBI officials, suppressed this fact while obtaining extension.
SEBI officials deliberately did not issue a notice to the exchange for cancellation of its recognition in the currency derivatives segment when the markets regulator had already rejected a request of MCX-SX for trading in other segments, CBI had said.
The agency named Vishaka More, the then Assistant General Manager of SEBI, Rajkumar Dangeti, then Deputy General Manager, and Muralidhar Rao, who was then the Chief General Manager at the markets regulator as accused, did not arrest them.
Claiming innocence, Shah had argued in the court that he was only a non-executive director and one of the members of the 18-member board of the exchange.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan today suspended the principal of its school in Bihar's Muzaffarpur and transferred the Vice Principal along with 14 teachers in connection with the incident of two students mercilessly beating their Dalit classmate whose video went viral on social media.
The errant students were already suspended yesterday.
HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar took to twitter to announce that stern action has been taken against the accused students and school authorities.
"Stern action has been taken against the accused students & school authorities in connection with the unfortunate violent incident. The 'victim' student will be provided admission in another #kv if he so desires & necessary medical help will also be provided to him," he tweeted.
The decision to suspend the principal and transfer the 15 staff members was taken by the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) after deliberating on the report of a panel that probed the incident.
"KVS has taken strong action against the students involved in the incident. The duo have been suspended along with principal Rajiv Ranjan. 13 teachers and one assistant besides the Vice Principal have been transferred," an official statement said.
The decision has been taken on basis of recommendations of the probe panel which concluded the school administration had tried to cover up the incident.
"Also, the video reflects that this was not a sudden incident but was well planned and was deliberately shot to create fear among students," KVS said.
The incident came to light when video of two sons of a murder accused mercilessly beating their Dalit classmate went viral on social media.
The purported video of the incident shows the two brothers -- one of them a student of class XII and the other of class XI -- pushing and thrashing the victim in presence of some other schoolmates on September 25.
The maternal grandfather of the victim, a class XII student, lodged an FIR with SC and ST police station in Muzaffarpur on Monday.
In the FIR he also claimed the entire family was terrified because the father of the two brothers is a notorious criminal lodged in jail outside the district in a murder case.
Though the incident took place on September 25, the school principal has been accused of not acting promptly on the victim's complaint.
The victim student, fearing threat to his life, has gone into hiding. It was only after the video of the incident went viral, including on Facebook and Twitter, that the principal filed a written complaint, following which the police lodged an FIR.
The two students have been sent to a remand home even as police have assured security to the family of the victim.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Heavy fighting rocked Yemen hours before a UN-brokered ceasefire was due to begin today, as warring parties come under mounting pressure to end a conflict that has raged for more than two years.
The truce will be the sixth attempt to end the bloodshed since a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in March 2015 to support the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels overran much of Yemen.
Civilians have paid the highest price in a country that was already the Arabian peninsula's poorest.
Almost 6,900 have been killed -- more than half of them civilians -- while another three million are displaced and millions more need food aid.
A United Nations report said air strikes by the coalition were suspected of causing around half of all civilian deaths, while rebel-affiliated groups were responsible for about a quarter.
The UN special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, on Sunday announced the truce from 23:59 (local time) for an initial three days, subject to renewal.
But clashes involving heavy artillery and air raids killed at least five people across the country on Wednesday, including fighting near the Saudi border and around the capital Sanaa, military sources said.
The last ceasefire attempt began in April alongside UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait but both the rebels and the coalition accused each other of breaches.
After peace talks collapsed in August, fighting escalated until an October 8 coalition air strike which the UN said killed more than 140 people and wounded at least 525 at a funeral in Sanaa.
The United States announced an "immediate review" of its intelligence and refuelling assistance to the coalition, whose investigative team then released unusually quick findings from a probe of the incident.
It said a coalition aircraft "wrongly targeted" the funeral based on "incorrect information".
In another major development, the US Navy for the first time targeted Huthi rebels directly.
On October 13 it hit radar sites which, the US said, were involved in missile launches against a US warship and other vessels.
Yemen's Huthi rebels are allied with members of the security forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh. They control the capital Sanaa and other territory but coalition-backed forces earlier pushed them back from the southern port of Aden and adjacent areas.
Both the rebels and pro-government forces have come under increased international pressure to silence their guns.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the wake of the fire tragedy at a Bhubaneswar hospital, Delhi government has ordered a fire safety audit at all its hospitals and sought a report on it to ensure no such mishap occurs in the national capital.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain today held a meeting with senior government and medical officials to review the fire safety measures in place at various city hospitals.
At least 21 persons died and more than 100 others were injured in a blaze that broke out at the SUM Hospital and Medical College on Monday evening.
The hospital in the Odisha capital was functioning without any fire safety clearance.
"We reviewed the fire safety procedures at various Delhi government hospitals. Director of Delhi Fire Service and other senior officials were present. We were told that most of them are fine. But, we decided that a fresh inspection be done. A copy of the report would be sent to me," Jain said.
"It was decided that a committee including Secretary Health, Secretary PWD, Regional Director Health Services and other officers/departments of Delhi government will be constituted to handle the same. PWD Secretary Ashwani Kumar will be the nodal officer for this exercise," Jain said.
It will be the responsibility of the committee to suggest guidelines for disposing contaminated waste.
During the meeting, it was also decided that dedicated teams would inspect all hospitals within seven days to ensure that all staircases, corridors, roofs and open spaces are kept free of any encroachment.
The minister said all efforts will be made to make Delhi hospitals fire-safe and that the government will set up fire-safety protocols on the basis of the report of the committee.
"Within a month the government would finish inspection of all hospitals. The inspection would include key government hospitals such as GTB Hospital, G B Pant Hospital and LNJP Hospital," he said.
The Health Minister said deficiencies in the hospitals would be checked and listed.
"The team has also been directed to visit private hospitals so that all arrangements can be made in case of any deficiency," he added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Wildlife and bird experts today advised against any panic in the wake death of birds at Delhi zoo, saying chances of the H5 avian influenza spreading among exotic migratory birds was very less.
Chances of the virus affecting humans at this point was not even a distant possibility, experts said. They also pointed out the absence of mass mortality among birds, which are seen in case of flu outbreaks.
"Saying the birds were migratory would be misleading. There are local migratory birds as well, as not all of them come from places like Siberia. And those species have not started coming yet. It's just the beginning of the migratory season," wildlife biologist Dr. Faiyaz A. Khudsar said.
Dr Khudsar, who is the lead scientist at the Yamuna Biodiversity Park, said the H5 avian influenza, which largely hits poultry, does not usually affect humans. Chances of infection come further down when poultry meat is properly cooked at or above 70 degrees Celsius, he said.
Noted ecologist Prof CR Babu echoed Dr Khudsar's views, saying there have been no reports of large flocks of migratory birds landing as of now.
"The October temperature is also warmer than usual. And there should also be a differentiation between exotic migratory birds and resident migratory birds. There is no reason to panic," he said.
Bird watcher Anand Arya, however, said the situation can be problematic in case the birds that have died are of exotic species, as birds from the similar source could have landed in wetlands across India. Birds also cohabit during the migration season, he said.
"The first landing point of these birds is usually Himachal Pradesh's Pong dam. Then they gradually come down to warmer areas as the temperature falls in the upper reaches. So infections can spread but it is early to say," Arya said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar today said if voted to power in the Mumbai civic body polls slated early next year, his party would provide template for development of the metropolis.
Addressing the NCP's city unit workers, Pawar said all civic bodies run by his party are functioning well and there had been no allegation of irregularities.
The former Maharashtra Minister said traffic woes and unplanned dumping of garbage are some of the issues the Shiv Sena-BJP ruled BMC has "failed" to address.
In Nagpur, where the civic body is run by the BJP, civic employees are not being paid their salaries. In Nashik, people are fed up with the Raj Thackeray-led MNS whom they had voted to power in 2012, Pawar alleged.
But people of Pune and adjoining township of Pimpri- Chinchwad, where the civic bodies are ruled by the NCP, are happy with the party's performance, he claimed.
"If Mumbaikars give power to us, we will show them what development is all about," Pawar maintained.
The NCP leader said farmers and the common man are fed up with the policies of the BJP-led Government in Maharashtra.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ecuador has said that it had cut the internet access of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is holed up at its London embassy, due to leaks by the anti-secrecy website that could impact the US election.
"The government of Ecuador respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states. It does not interfere in external electoral processes, nor does it favor any particular candidate," the Ecuadoran foreign ministry said in a statement yesterday.
In consequence, the ministry said, it decided to "temporarily restrict" communications at the embassy.
WikiLeaks has published a damaging trove of hacked emails from US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the recent weeks.
On Monday it accused Ecuador of cutting off Assange's internet communications at the behest of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
The United States denied the allegation.
"Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period," State Department spokesman John Kirby said yesterday.
Ecuador also implicitly denied the claim in its statement.
"Ecuador's foreign policy responds to sovereign decisions alone and does not yield to pressure from other states," it said.
Ecuador reaffirmed its decision to grant Assange asylum, and said the restriction on communications at its embassy did not hinder WikiLeaks itself.
"This temporary restriction does not prevent the WikiLeaks organization from carrying out its journalistic activities," it said.
Assange fled to Ecuador's London embassy in June 2012.
The 45-year-old Australian is fighting extradition to Sweden to face a rape accusation.
He denies the allegation and says he fears Sweden wants to hand him over to the United States to face trial for the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rashtriya Progressive Kisan Association, a consortium of seven farmer organisations, has written to the Prime Minister demanding commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard at the earliest.
The consortium favoured quick rollout of GM Mustard for farmers in arid and semi-arid regions and asked stakeholders to stop politicising the commercialisation of GM Mustard, which is currently under review with the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC).
"A consortium of 7 leading national farmer organisations under the aegis of the Rashtriya Progressive Kisan Association (RPKA) has submitted a petition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting the commercialisation of GM Mustard," a statement said.
RPKA said it represents over 80 million farmers across 16 states. It had earlier collected over 1.38 lakh signed farmer petitions from across key agricultural states and submitted this to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Environment in support of GM Mustard.
The association's CEO Hari Singh Yadav said: "The on-going polarization around GM Mustard is unfortunate as it not only hurts the farm economy, impedes India's agriculture self-reliance but also takes away the Indian farmer's right to choose technologies best suited to him."
Farm technologies should be allowed to be effected by regular market forces which will determine their success or failure.
"Our entreaty to the government is to let the technology speak for itself and to go ahead with its commercialisation as soon as the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee gives it a go-ahead with regards to its bio-safety," he said.
"Globally and in India, GM technology successfully co- exists with conventional hybrids as well as organic farming methods," RPKA said.
The seven organisations under RPKA are -- Sir Choudhary Choturam Bhartiya Kisan Samiti (BKS), Consortium of Indian Farmers Association, Kisan Coordination Committee, Shetkari Sanghatana Trust, United Farmers Empowerment Initiative (UFEI) and Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI).
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The fee income generated by overseas branches of Indian banks declined to Rs 8,680 crore (USD 1.3 billion) in 2015-16 from 9,430 crore a year ago.
However, total income of Indian banks' branches operating abroad increased by Rs 1,970 crore to Rs 45,200 crore, whereas the income of foreign banks' branches operating in India declined marginally by Rs 30 crore to Rs 64,740 crore.
This was reflected in a survey on International Trade in Banking Services (ITBS) put on RBI's website. The survey provides information on the branches/subsidiaries of Indian banks operating abroad and foreign banks operating in India.
"The fee income generated by overseas branches of Indian banks declined to Rs 8,680 crore in 2015-16 from Rs 9,430 crore a year ago," the survey said.
Trade finance related services of the Indian bank's overseas branches declined from Rs 1,510 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 1,370 crore in 2015-16. It also fell in case of foreign bank branches operating in India.
Indian bank branches in UK had the largest contribution in providing banking services in terms of fee income, followed by the UAE and Hong Kong.
Fee income of foreign banks' branches operating in India also declined to Rs 7,080 crore from Rs 7,270 crore in the previous year.
Indian banks' branches operating abroad recorded credit growth of 5.8 per cent to Rs 8.81 lakh crore (USD 132.9 billion) in March 2016 and lending by foreign banks operating in India increased by 12.4 per cent to Rs 3.77 lakh crore.
On the other hand, deposits of foreign banks' branches operating in India increased by 13.7 per cent to Rs 4.57 lakh crore in March 2016, whereas the deposits of overseas branches of Indian banks declined marginally by 0.9 per cent to Rs 5.6 lakh crore.
Overseas branches of Indian banks employed 63.1 per cent of local employees, 33.9 per cent from India and remaining 3 per cent from other countries in 2015-16.
In contrast, 99.4 per cent employees of foreign banks operating in India were from local sources. During the year, employee-strength of overseas branches of Indian banks and foreign banks operating in India increased by 3.7 per cent and 4.4 per cent, respectively.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid suspicion of foul play in the road mishap in which West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew and TMC MP, Abhishek Banerjee, was injured, a team of forensic experts today visited the accident site near Singur on National Highway 2.
The forensic experts collected broken glasses, examined the paints on the surface of the truck with which the TMC youth wing president's car collided while returning to Kolkata after a public meeting in Murshidabad district.
Police today registered attempt to murder and conspiracy cases against unknown persons in connection with the mishap.
Sections under the Highways Act were also added in the case, a senior officer of the CID said.
Though nobody was detained in the incident, a few persons, mainly eyewitnesses, were today questioned by the CID, the officer said.
Sources in the CID said reconstruction of the entire incident would be done to evaluate "who was responsible for the mishap".
The Chief Minister visited the nursing home, where Abhishek is under going treatment, towards the afternoon and again in the evening on her way back home from the state secretariat to oversee her nephew's health condition.
According to the medical bulletin issued in the evening, the MRI report confirmed that Abhishek suffered "orbital floor fracture".
At present he is under strict observation of the 14-member medical board. Any decision on surgical intervention shall be made as soon as the acute swellings subside.
Earlier in the morning the medical bulletin said Abhishek was out of danger and his health condition was improving.
"The condition of Abhishek Banerjee is much better. He is completely out of danger. The CT scan report was normal," hospital CEO P Tandon said.
Abhishek is presently in the ITU, Tandon said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A four-and-half year-old girl died after falling into an open septic tank near the premises of a private school in northwest Delhi's Swaroop Nagar area, police said today.
The incident took place yesterday at around 2 PM at a vacant plot situated between Sant Sujan Singh International School and the Sardar Colony Gurudwara when Nandini was returning from her school, they said.
"Nandini was returning with her mother and her siblings when she started running and accidentally fell into the septic tank," said DCP (Northwest) Milind Mahadeo Dumbere.
"Nandini's mother, who was accompanied by her two other children, jumped after her daughter but could not save her. Nandini was taken out by the locals after her mother raised alarm and rushed to a nearby hospital where she was declared brought dead," he added.
The deceased's father Ranjeet, an auto driver, alleged the tank was being used by the school for discharge of sewage.
A case under sections 336 (Act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 304 A(causing death due to negligence)has been registered at Swaroop Nagar police station and the police is trying to ascertain the ownership of the land where the tank is situated.
Meanwhile, the authorities at Sant Sujan Singh International School claimed the land was not under their ownership.
"The incident did not take place in the school premises and the agricultural land in which the septic tank is located does not belong to our school," said Vice Principal of Sant Sujan Singh International School Mandira Yadav.
Locals protested outside the school's gate in the afternoon alleging that Nandini was killed because of the school's negligence.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Undeterred by the Kashmir turmoil, Rs 4,300 crore of NPAs and a big fall in profitability, J&K Bank's new Chairman and CEO Parvez Ahmed has set out to clean things up and is hopeful of a turnaround in fortunes soon.
"I don't see any concern. It is a challenge for me. We will manage the situation (due to the huge fall in profit and NPAs)," Ahmed told reporters here.
Ahmed took charge last week. "We have a dedicated and competent workforce and senior employees. With their moral up, we will improve the present state of the bank," he said further.
Ahmed is the first in-service and second in-house chairman and CEO of the bank.
Asserting that there is no substantial impact of Kashmir unrest on J&K Bank's business operations, he said loan accounts affected by the unrest are being restructured.
"There is no serious effect on J&K Bank due to unrest. No substantial impact is on J&K Bank. Once the situation revives, cash flow... Which is down by 30 per cent will be back," the chairman hoped.
J&K Bank, the state's only listed company, reported a net loss of over Rs 56 crore in the quarter to March -- a first in its operational history of 75 years -- which is mostly attributed to bad loans. In the first quarter, the fall in bottom line was sharp -- as much as 85 per cent.
As of March 2016, the bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) soared to Rs 4,368.62 crore, that is nearly 10 per cent of gross advances.
"Now, our focus will be on consolidation and recovery of NPAs at J&K Bank. Once we focus on NPAs, it will reduce the impact on the bottom line and will improve profitability. It is an area of concern for us," Ahmed said.
"We are planning to restructure loans badly affected by the unrest. Such loans will be covered under a package subject to approval of RBI."
The tense conditions in Kashmir spanning over 100 days following street violence have hit business, industry, trade and travel sectors hard, impacting the business of J&K Bank.
"We have set 18 months as the target to put the situation back on track. If the situation improves (in Kashmir), we will not take much time to consolidate," he claimed.
The J&K Bank chairman promised a better performance ahead and is clear that "once we are through with this consolidation phase -- and I assure you we will manage it successfully -- we will head towards greater numbers".
He backed it up, saying the record speaks for itself as the bank had managed things in the most turbulent phase of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.
Born in 1964, Ahmed, with science background, joined the bank as the company secretary in 1998 and headed the business support division, corporate credit and customer care.
Ahmed, who has also served as Zonal Head for Kashmir, is member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) and has been the honorary chairman of Srinagar chapter of NIRC of ICSI.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Online furniture rental company Furlenco today said it has raised Rs 200 crore (USD 30 million) in funding through a mix of equity and debt.
The fresh round of funding includes USD 15 million of equity and USD 15 million of debt, according to Ajith Mohan Karimpana, Founder and CEO of Furlenco.
The equity portion of the investment is led by Lightbox along with Axis Capital (no relation to Axis Bank), a Hong Kong based VC fund and a clutch of prominent high networth individuals or HNIs, the company said in a statement.
The debt was raised from banks, NBFCs (Non-Banking Financial Company), HNIs and Indian family offices.
"The funds raised will be used for expansion to newer categories, product ranges and more cities in the next one year," it added.
In March 2015, Furlenco had raised about Rs 37 crore (USD 6 million) from Lightbox.
In the past 18 months, Furlenco has furnished nearly 15,000 homes with products worth over Rs 100 crore of market value, the release added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) today burnt the effigies of Madhya Pradesh Finance and Industries ministers in protest against the invitation to Chinese companies for Global Investors Summit to be held on October 22-23 here.
The SJM workers set afire the effigies of MP Finance Minister Jayant Mallaiya and Industries Minister Rajendra Shukla at the historic Rajbada in the city.
"We are totally against inviting Chinese representatives for the Global Investors Summit (GIS) as China is continuously extending financial support to Pakistan which is involved in anti-India activities," Coordinator of SJM Indore-Ujjain Division, Suresh Bijolia said.
Terming China as an "anti-India country", he demanded that no Chinese company should be allotted even an inch of land for setting up any industry in the state.
Meanwhile, Mallaiya had clarified on October 15 that since invitation to Chinese representatives was sent quite earlier, it is not wise to prevent them from taking part in the GIS at the last moment.
Shukla, too, in his statement on October 10 had said, "In our country only those Chinese goods are opposed which are made in China. But if a company of that nation sets up its plant here then it will not only generate employment for the people but also earn revenue for the state.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Chief Electoral Office in Goa has ordered an inquiry into pictures which surfaced on the social media showing hundreds of EPIC cards dumped in a roadside drain in Margao, 40 kms from here.
Goa Forward (GF) party too met officials at the Chief Electoral office producing pictures of the voter cards which were found dumped in the poll-bound state.
"I have asked District Collector to submit a report within 48 hours about those pictures," Joint Chief Electoral Officer Narayan Navati told PTI today.
Navati said a thorough probe will reveal the truth behind the cards but the first look at the pictures indicates that these are old Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) cards.
"They may have been dumped in the dustbin during shifting of mamlatdar office in Margao town. But I will be able to comment properly only after the inquiry," he said.
The Collectorate complex including mamlatdar office which was earlier located in the heart of Margao city has shifted to the outskirts in a new complex.
Goa Forward (GF) Party had raised an alarm when nearly 500 voting cards were found in the roadside drain on the way to Old Railway station in Margao town.
The party suspected foul play behind the act and has demanded a probe into the entire episode.
"We demand a thorough inquiry in the matter and action on the officers handling the process of electoral roll. We have been getting complaints from a certain section of a community from across the state that their names are deleted from the electoral rolls which is done mechanically at the behest of BJP workers," party's spokesman Durgadas Kamat alleged.
He accused BJP workers of coaxing election commission officials to delete names from voting list.
"BJP is so desperate that they are trying all this dirty tricks so that the names of those voters who are against BJP are deleted from the rolls and they would not be able to vote in the upcoming assembly elections," he said.
Goa Forward will petition the Election Commission at Delhi in this matter by October 19, Kamat said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Government today said work on multi-modal terminal at Sahibganj to handle 2.28 million tonnes of cargo per annum will become a reality soon with the award of the contract.
"The multi-modal terminal at Sahibganj in Jharkhand is soon to become a reality. The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) has recently awarded the contract for construction of the terminal to Larson & Tourbo (L&T)," Ministry of Shipping said in a statement.
With the targeted completion of Phase-1 in 2019, the state-of-the-art terminal will have a cargo handling capacity of 2.28 million tonne per annum (MMTA).
Given Jharkhand's coal reserves of nearly 80 billion tonnes, the location of the multi modal terminal at Sahibganj is especially significant, it said.
It will play an important role in transportation of domestic coal from the local mines to intended thermal power plants owing to its good railway connectivity.
Besides coal, stone-chips are also expected to be transported through the terminal.
The multi-modal terminal will have facilities including berthing space for two vessels, stockyard for storing, belt conveyor system with fixed hoppers, barge loader, shore protection works, roads, ramps and parking area, and terminal buildings.
The Sahibganj terminal is the second out of the three multi-modal terminals planned under the Ganga Jal Marg Vikas Project, to be awarded for construction in a record time.
Earlier in May, IWAI awarded the contract to construct a multi-modal terminal at Varanasi to AFCONS Infrastructure Ltd.
The third terminal will be constructed at Haldia in West Bengal.
The Government is developing National Waterway-1 under the Jal Marg Vikas Project, with technical and financial assistance of the World Bank at an estimated cost of Rs 4,200 crore.
The project would enable commercial navigation of vessels with capacity of 1,500-2,000 tonnes.
Phase-I of the project covers the Haldia-Varanasi stretch.
The project includes development of fairway, Multi-Modal Terminals at Varanasi, Haldia, and Sahibganj, strengthening of river navigation system, conservancy works, modern River Information System (RIS),
Besides, a Digital Global Positioning System (DGPS), night navigation facilities, modern methods of channel marking, construction of a new state of the art navigational lock at Farakka.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Government has sought putting on hold the arbitration initiated by British oil explorer against a Rs 29,047 crore retrospective tax demand and instead wants a parallel arbitration initiated by Vedanta Resources to be taken up first.
The government using retrospective tax legislation had in January 2014 issued a tax notice on for alleged capital gains it made on a 10-year-old internal reorganisation of its India unit.
Three months later in April 2014, it imposed a tax demand of Rs 20,495 crore on Cairn India, the UK firm's erstwhile subsidiary for failing to deduct tax on the capital gains.
and Vedanta, which had bought Cairn India from the Scottish firm in 2011, had initiated separate arbitrations against the tax demands.
Cairn Energy had initiated the arbitration in March 2015 and the three-member arbitration panel had been constituted. But at a hearing earlier this month, the government contended that the proceedings should be put on hold, sources said.
Its counsel argued that the government wants the arbitration initiated by Vedanta to be taken up first.
Sources said the counsel also made an application seeking more time to reply to Cairn Energy's demand for a compensation of USD 5.6 billion from the Indian government for raising a retrospective tax demand.
As per the schedule drawn up, the reply was to be filed by mid-November.
Sources said that in the Vedanta arbitration, the government may contend that tax issues cannot be arbitrated under bilateral investment protection treaty and once it wins a favourable verdict there, it will use the same to quell Cairn Energy's plea as well.
A three-member arbitration panel headed by Geneva-based arbitrator Laurent Levy began hearing Cairn Energy's plea against tax demand in May and the company filed its 'Statement of Claim' in late June.
The Indian government was to file its 'Statement of Defence' by mid-November and evidential hearing was expected to commence in early 2017, sources said, adding that the plea made by the government will essentially delay the entire process.
The British firm challenged the tax assessment by seeking an international arbitration under the UK-India Investment Treaty, which unlike the Dutch treaty provides for resolution of tax issues. UK telecom firm Vodafone has initiated arbitration on a separate retrospective tax under the Dutch treaty.
Cairn Energy named former Bulgarian minister Stanimir Alexandrov as its arbitrator in the tax dispute, while India appointed Singapore-based lawyer J Christopher Thomas as its arbitrator. The seat of the panel was decided to be at Hague in Netherlands.
An accused in a post-Godhra riots case in Ode village of Anand district of Gujarat was today brought from London, where he was arrested, and produced before a local court, which remanded him in 14-day judicial custody.
Samir Patel, who had escaped to UK after jumping bail, was brought to India in the wee hours of today by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the massacre. Patel became the first person to be sent back from Britain 24 years after India and the UK signed an extradition treaty.
Later in the day, the 40-year-old was produced before Additional Sessions Judge R T Panchal, who sent him to judicial custody for two weeks. Patel has been lodged in Anand sub-jail.
He was arrested in West London in August by Scotland Yard following a Red Corner Notice issued against him by Indian authorities in the case in which 23 people from the minority community were killed during the riots.
Three members of the SIT had left for London on October 12 to bring him to India.
His extradition order was signed by UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd on September 22 and the "surrender arrangements" were finalised for his departure.
Two other accused in the case, Natu Patel and Rakesh Patel, still remain at large.
The massacre at Ode took place on March 1, 2002, when 23 people, including nine women and as many children of the minority community were burnt to death in a house by a mob of over 1,500 following the Godhra train burning incident.
The next day, four more persons were killed in a different locality in the same village.
In its verdict delivered on April 9, 2012, a Special Court had convicted 23 people and acquitted as many in the Ode riots case.
The Ode episode is one of the nine riots cases being investigated by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Aviation regulator DGCA today informed the Delhi High Court that they have taken all necessary steps to ensure safety and security of aircraft and passengers in the country.
The Director General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) made the submission in response to a petition alleging that aviation authorities were overlooking the prescribed maintenance schedules and seeking directions to ensure safety of passengers on aircraft flying in and out of India.
"All these issues have been dealt with. We have already filed a detailed affidavit. I can take this court through all the steps taken by us. The petitioner cannot be above the DGCA technical committee," DGCA's counsel told a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal.
The counsel appearing for the petitioner said there were several vacancies in DGCA and proper monitoring of aircraft should be done by them.
The bench then observed "How can the court go into these aspects? There is a ministry for this and DGCA is an expert body. They will do that."
The bench fixed the matter for hearing on December 1.
The petitioner, Alok Kumar, has given some suggestions like setting up of an independent expert committee to monitor the functioning of DGCA and ensure strict compliance by airlines operators of usage and maintenance of each aircraft.
He has also suggested that existing vacancies in DGCA should be filled up and it should also install systems to monitor and check usage and flying hours of each aircraft.
In its affidavit filed before the court earlier, DGCA has said they have been "carrying out review of airworthiness of aircraft every year. During airworthiness review, the maintenance carried out in the preceding year vis-a-vis approved maintenance programme are also scrutinised".
While seeking dismissal of the plea, DGCA has said they had a "surveillance programme covering continued airworthiness management and aircraft maintenance of all the organisations to ensure that airworthiness and safety of aircraft are not compromised."
The Centre had earlier refuted the claim that civil aviation authorities were overlooking the alleged violation of aircraft maintenance schedules by airlines, endangering passenger safety.
Civil Aviation Ministry and DGCA had denied that various private airlines operating in the country were "violating/ circumventing the mandatory provisions for airworthiness and air safety".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kerala High Court Advocates' Association has suspended the membership of former Lok Sabha MP and media analyst Dr Sebastian Paul for allegedly criticising the stand taken by certain judges on the issue of tussle between lawyers and media persons in the state.
Citing a speech made by Paul in Kozhikode last week on the issue, Kerala High Court Advocates Association alleged that Paul, a practising lawyer, continuously made "defamatory comments against the judicial system and legal fraternity."
"You are already facing disciplinary proceedings and again continuously making contemptuous statements defaming the judicial system and legal fraternity with an ulterior motive to have an unlawful gain from the media," the association said in its notice issued to Paul.
Reacting to the suspension, Paul said such action further reveals that Kerala High Court Advocates' Association, which cherishes a golden past, has failed to touch the core of the issue between the advocates and media in courts in the state.
Aul had been raising issue of freedom of press in all possible avenues eversince media was targeted by a section of lawyers in Kerala High Court and other courts in the state following reporting of a molestation case allegedly involving a government pleader.
Media persons have not been allowed to report court proceedings since July after some advocates had attacked them outside the Kerala High Court complex and warned against covering the proceedings there.
The Advocates Association's move came a day after five advocates were arrested in connection with a case relating to threatening and dragging of journalists who had gone to cover legal proceedings at a Vigilance Court in Thiruvananthapuram on October 14.
They were later released on bail.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Uttarakhand High Court today once again asked former chief ministers of the state occupying government bungalows here to specify a time-frame for vacating them.
Hearing a petition filed by activist Avdhash Kaushal in 2010, a division bench comprising Justice K M Joseph and Justice V K Bisht asked the five ex-CMs to give a written undertaking by tomorrow, spelling the time-frame for vacating the bungalows, petitioner's lawyer Kartikeyan Gupta said.
The directive came after the state government submitted to it copies of its orders, asking the former CMs to vacate their official bungalows by December 16.
The High Court had asked the state government on October 7 to explain the steps taken by it to evacuate the government bungalows occupied by former CMs, years after demitting office.
The notices have been issued to five former CMs, including N D Tiwari, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri, Bhagat Singh Koshiyari and Vijay Bahuguna.
The High Court also rejected Bahuguna's request for extension of the two-month deadline to six months to vacate his premises. It also turned down Tiwari's request for exemption on grounds of sickness.
Armed with a recent Supreme Court order directing former chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh to vacate government bungalows occupied by them for years in Lucknow after demitting office, Kaushal, a Padmashree awardee, had sought early hearing and disposal of his six-year-old petition on a similar matter at the Uttarakhand High Court.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court today restrained omni (private) bus operators in Tamil Nadu from collecting higher fare during the coming festival season.
The court passed the interim order on suo motu proceedings initiated by it based on media reports that passengers were being fleeced in view of expected heavy rush on account of Deepavali festival falling on October 29.
A division bench ordered that the bus operators should charge the same fares, which they had been collecting since last year, from October 27 to 31.
The bench earlier observed that the bus operators should not be allowed to charge even a single paise as extra fare using the festival season rush.
It wondered why state government was not fixing the omni bus fares as in other states.
The counsel for the bus operators submitted that there was provision in rules to prevent collection of extra fares during festival season. He, however, said the fares were fixed according to the diesel price.
The omni buses were already suffering loss, and they proposed to charge only 10 per cent extra during the festival season and it had been conveyed to the concerned officials.
At this the court wondered why operators were in the business if they were incurring loss.
The government pleader submitted that no meeting was held between the omni bus operators association and officials.
Transport department officials said omni buses were operated on contract basis and fares fixed according to luxury provided.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bombay High Court has expressed unhappiness over non-payment of pension and arrears to retired judicial officers and warned that if they are not paid their dues, it would summon state government officials concerned and deprive them of their pension for two years.
"We are most unhappy at this state of affairs. We expect the payment of pension and arrears to commence within four weeks," said a bench of justices S C Dharmadhikari and B P Colabawalla in an order delivered on October 13.
The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, filed separately by Retired Judicial Officers Association and some retired judicial officers in their individual capacity, urging for a direction to the state government to release their pension and arrears forthwith.
Posting the matters for hearing on November 17, the bench clarified that it would be constrained to pass an order summoning all the officials concerned to the court.
"If we find that they are recalcitrant and were avoiding to perform their duties for no genuine and justifiable reasons, then we would go ahead and deprive them of their pension by issuing a direction that they will not obtain any benefit post-retirement including payment of arrears for two years. We hope that none will invite such drastic consequences," the judges noted.
Government pleader Abhinandan Vagyani told the court that the recommendations of Shetty Commission and Padmanabhan Commission with regard to computation and payment of pension are being implemented by the state. Even the issue of arrears has been considered, he said.
However, there were some clarifications sought by the office of the Accountant General and now the Department of law and Judiciary has taken steps to prepare replies and forward these clarifications to the Accountant General's office.
"That would be done within two weeks," he assured.
Helios, multi-brand premium watch retailer from Titan Company limited, today said it has partnered with Swiss watchmaker Raymond Weil to offer its watches in India.
Through this strategic partnership, Raymond Weil will be exclusively retailed in India through Helios along with another retailer for luxury watches 'Ethos', the company officials said.
"...If you look at the contribution of Swiss brandsit is somewhere in the range of about 25 to 30 per centtoday. We want to scale that up, and specifically the affordable luxury brand's sales are expected to double over next three to four years," Titan Company Limited CEO (Watches and Accessories) S Ravi Kant told reporters here.
"Today we are taking an important step in that direction...At Helios, we are always looking to partner with brands that share our passion for craftsmanship and synergy with Raymond Weil...(which) is a testament to this cause," he said.
Claiming to be the first Swiss brand to enter the Indian market, Raymond Weil said it has been reaching out to the discerning Indian consumer since last 30 years and hasa strong base of loyalists.
It has presence in about 110countries.
Raymond Weil President Olivier Bernheim said the reason for the partnership is to have a quality distributionnetwork in the country for their products.
"Our aim is to build in India and to partner with the same kind of quality we think we have in United States, England, Australia and Spain, where we see trained and educated sales staff who are coherent with our strategy."
Responding to a question on service requirements, Bernheim said Helios staff are trained by Raymond Weil in Geneva.
Also, spares will be regularly shipped for the service requirements.
Helios houses a wide collection of stylish timepieces for men and women, offering a range of the latest collections from over 25 international brands.
It also provides after-sales services across its stores.Helios will soon be having 50 stores in about 27 cities in the country.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hindustan Zinc today reported a 15 per cent fall in net profit at Rs 1,901.87 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 on account of higher depreciation charges, among other factors.
The firm had clocked a net profit of Rs 2,248.42 crore in the year-ago period, it said in a BSE filing.
Total income of the firm declined by 11 per cent to Rs 3,877.47 crore in July-September quarter of this fiscal from Rs 4,357.88 crore during the same quarter in 2015-16.
Total expenses were, however, lower at Rs 2,232.44 crore from Rs 2,347.29 crore during the period under review.
"The y-o-y decrease for Q2 2016-17 was due to higher depreciation and lower investment income on account of smaller corpus despite higher mark to market gains," Hindustan Zinc said in a statement.
On the year-on-year decline in revenues, the firm said the decrease during the quarter was on account of lower volumes, partly offset by higher zinc and silver prices and rupee depreciation.
HZL Chairman Agnivesh Agarwal said: "The price rally in zinc continued this quarter with prices climbing 18 per cent from the previous quarter, consistent with its strong fundamentals. Silver prices too have rallied coupled with increasing silver volumes."
Favourable market scenario and firm's smooth transition to underground mining has boosted investor confidence, heralding HZL's entry in the top 25 club in terms of market capitalisation in India, he added.
Zinc metal's cost of production per MT before royalty (COP) during the quarter was at Rs 54,186 (USD 809), down 12 per cent from previous quarter and up 8 per cent y-o-y (5 per cent in dollar terms), it said.
The sequential reduction in COP was mainly on account of higher volumes, while the y-o-y increase was attributed primarily to lower average grades due to change in mining mix, higher mine development and planned lower production.
Cost reduction initiatives for operational and commercial efficiencies were partly offset by higher petroleum product prices and lower acid prices, the firm added.
HZL said its net cash and cash equivalents was Rs 25,166 crore, out of which Rs 22,726 crore was invested in mutual funds and Rs 4,331 crore in bonds.
It also announced that in accordance with the recent Sebi guideline, the Board has approved the Dividend Policy, which entails a minimum dividend of 30 per cent of net profits or 5 per cent of net worth, whichever is higher.
Integrated zinc metal production during the quarter was at 149 kilo tonnes (KT), down 30 per cent y-o-y, in line with mined metal production.
Integrated lead and silver metal output during September quarter stood at 31 KT and 107 tonnes, respectively. On y-o-y basis, integrated lead production was down 22 per cent in line with mined metal production, while integrated silver production was down 3 per cent.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Beaverton Christian Church, 13600 S.W. Allen Blvd., invites the community to tour the Compassion Experience on its campus Oct. 28-30. This is a free community-wide event that brings visitors into true stories of life in the developing world.
The Compassion Experience is part of Beaverton Christian's church plant in Bolivia through Compassion International, the world's leading authority in holistic child development. through sponsorship.
The 2,000 square-foot interactive exhibit emphasizes the harsh realities of children living in extreme poverty in a developing country like Bolivia by visiting homes, markets and schools. Each guest receives an iPod and headphones for a 20-minute, multi-media tour that showcases the lives of actual Compassion children, narrated from their own perspective, that presents an inside look into how they live and their stories of hope.
There is no cost but guests need to register online at compassionexperience.com to schedule tours of the exhibit during morning, afternoon and evening hours.
"We are really excited about hosting the Compassion Experience as part of our Bolivia Church project," said Dan Ferguson, Beaverton Christian's Executive Pastor. "I recently traveled to Bolivia with Compassion International and was very impressed with the organization, its accountability, and dedication to the Great Commission."
"The difference that can be made in the life of a child in poverty is life changing.," Ferguson said. "Hope is on the rise in the developing world, however there are still so many children waiting."
"This event is available to the whole community, so be sure to invite your neighbors, friends and family," he said.
On Sunday, Beaverton Christian Church members will have the opportunity to sponsor a child from the church plant in Bolivia.
"We hope to sponsor hundreds of children through Compassion International" Ferguson added. "I know this ministry makes a difference in a child's life and the sponsor's life, too."
For more information, contact the church office at 503-646-2151 or visit www.bcc.org.
About Compassion International:
Compassion International is the world's largest Christian child development organization that permanently releases children from poverty. Founded in 1952, Compassion successfully tackles global poverty one child at a time, serving more than 1.3 million children in 26 of the world's poorest countries. Recognizing that poverty is more than a lack of money, Compassion works through local churches to holistically address the individual physical, economic, educational and spiritual needs of children - enabling them to thrive, not just survive. Compassion has been awarded eleven consecutive, four-star ratings by Charity Navigator, America's largest charity evaluator.
Militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen has asked migrant Kashmiri Pandits, who were forced to flee the Valley in early 1990 after the eruption of militancy, to return to their homes, assuring protection to them, and also said it was planning to raise a group of Sikh youths.
"We request Kashmiri Pandits to return to their homes. We take responsibility of their safety," Zakir Rashid Bhat alias 'Musa', the self-styled commander of the militant outfit, said in a brief video message released on Tuesday.
Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee the Valley after they were targeted by militant groups during the outbreak of militancy and have been living in Jammu and other parts of the country.
"They should look at those Pandits who never left . Who has harassed or killed them?" asked slain militant Burhan Wani's 'successor'.
Dressed in military camouflage and fiddling with a grenade in the video, Bhat, who dropped out of engineering course from a Punjab college and joined Hizbul Mujahideen some years back, also gave a bizarre argument that Pandits were forced out of the Valley under a planned strategy to target Muslims.
He claimed that the government was planning to take action in the Valley in an operation similar to 'Operation Blue Star' in Punjab.
Bhat revealed in the 1.38 minute video that the militant was planning to raise an exclusive group of Sikh youths in the outfit.
"Our Sikh brothers are requesting us to join Hizbul Mujahideen...We are with them on every front and God willing, we will try and make an exclusive group for Sikhs in the outfit," he said.
About the latest trend of weapon snatching in the Valley, especially in south districts, he said, "Many youths have taken to Jihad, snatched the weapons and joined our ranks."
Two green banners with religious slogans and as many weapons on both sides behind him could also been seen in the video which was shot at an unknown location.
South witnessed a spurt in weapon snatching incidents over the past three months of unrest which was triggered by the killing of Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8.
The unrest has so far claimed 84 lives and injured thousands of others.
Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) today said it has sold more than 50,000 units during the three months to June in Rajasthan.
"...Honda has sold 51,654 units in Rajasthan from April to June this year," a company statement said.
"Growing at a robust 26 per cent, automatic scooters are becoming preferred choice of customers.
With a dominant market share of 60 per cent in the scooter segment, Honda is leading in Rajasthan," Yadvinder Singh Guleria, Senior Vice President - Sales & Marketing of the company, said in the statement.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Japanese car major plans to introduce new products, including SUV and bigger sedans, as well as add more features in future models to regain lost ground in the Indian market.
Aware of the change in market dynamics with a big shift from A and B segments to premium side, the company is gearing up to meet the new demand in India.
"The market is changing. We are seeing a big shift from A, B categories to upper segment and that's why Maruti and Hyundai are also trying to move to the premium side. So, we are also carefully monitoring this segment movement," Cars India President and CEO Yoichiro Ueno told PTI.
Besides, there is growth in the SUV segment so that's also a big change, he added.
Asked if the company plans to launch a new SUV model soon, Ueno said: "You can expect, yes," he said.
When asked if the model could be HR-V, he said: "It really depends on customers' voice. If there is a lot of demand or request, then we might look at it."
Admitting that the gap between products in different segments has not helped the company, Ueno said: "There is a lot of demand to upgrade from City to bigger cars and unfortunately, we don't have a bigger car... Especially the dealers are requesting. They don't want to lose these City customers to other brands."
Ueno added: "We are receiving a lot of request to reinforce the SUV market, we have CR-V but practically City is the flagship model."
Stressing on the need to be nimble-footed and deliver products which customers want in a fast changing market, Ueno said: "We think it is very important to catch up."
When asked if the company plans to develop models specifically for Indian market, Ueno said: "At the moment, our strategy is to bring global models rather than exclusively develop for any specific market."
The shift in demand from diesel to petrol in India has also resulted in the company losing ground and it was late to adapt to the changes.
"Unfortunately, from end of last year to this year, there was mismatching of the inventory. Our inventory was not matching the market demand," he said.
However, by July this year, "dealer supplies normalised and so the situation is now coming back to normal".
In April-September this financial year, the company's domestic sales were down 23 per cent at 74,855 units while its sales in September fell 18.77 per cent to 15,034 units.
Hong Kong's legislature again descended into chaos today as the pro-Beijing camp blocked the swearing in of two new lawmakers who want the city to split from China.
Tensions are high in the semi-autonomous city as fears grow that Beijing is tightening its grip, fuelling an independence movement in Hong Kong.
The former British colony was handed back to China in 1997 under an agreement protecting its freedoms for 50 years, but there are concerns those liberties are being eroded.
A new wave of lawmakers advocating independence and self-determination were voted into the Legislative Council (Legco) -- Hong Kong's lawmaking body -- in citywide polls last month.
But at last week's fraught swearing-in ceremony, young pro-independence lawmakers Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung had their oaths rejected after they draped themselves in "Hong Kong is not China" flags.
The oath states that Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China.
Both refused to pronounce China properly, and Yau was heard to replace the words "the People's Republic of China" with "the People's refucking of Zeena".
They were given permission to retake their oaths on Wednesday, but when it came time to do so, pro-Beijing lawmakers walked out, forcing the meeting to be suspended due to an insufficient number of legislators in the chamber.
That led to a shouting match between furious pro-Beijing and pro-democracy legislators outside the chamber.
"If they want people to respect their oaths, they have to express regret over their behaviour last week and to apologise to all Chinese around the world," pro-Beijing lawmaker Priscilla Leung told reporters.
Her fellow legislators chanted "Apologise!"
Hundreds of pro-Beijing supporters waved Chinese flags and stamped on pictures of Baggio and Yau outside the legislative council building ahead of the swearing in.
Baggio and Yau said they wanted to complete their oaths, but would not apologise for last week's behaviour.
"We are empowered by the people to enter the Legco," Baggio said.
One pro-democracy lawmaker left in the chamber as Wednesday's confrontation raged was surrounded by security after turning China and Hong Kong flags on pro-Beijing legislators' desks upside-down.
The session was eventually adjourned without Yau and Baggio having the chance to make their pledges.
The chaotic scenes came after a late-night court bid on Tuesday by city leader Leung Chun-ying and justice secretary Rimsky Yuen to block the pair from taking up their seats.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Goa Tourism department today announced that its adventure initiative of Hot Air Balloon rides has re-commenced in the state with the advent of the tourism season.
"The initiative was launched during the last tourist season for the first time in the coastal state providing another avenue of adventure tourism for the travellers," Nilesh Cabral, Chairman, Goa Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) told PTI today.
The hot air balloon rides are provided in South Goa's Assolna village.
"We are very happy to re-start operations of Hot air ballooning services in Goa. Hot air ballooning service was abig hit in Goa last seasonandin the second year promisestoan excitingand mesmerising affairthan before," he added.
Cabral said presently, two hot air balloons are put intooperation for domestic and international travellers.
"We are confident about attracting high-end tourists this season to experience the thrill of touring the state ina hot air balloon in addition to many more newtourism adventure services," he added.
TheHotAirBallooningSafarisare designed by CampingRetreats, a Delhi-based agency, an official statement said.
All the required permissions and safety checks for the balloons are obtained. The entire system meets all the required safety standard and certifications, it added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Haryana Urban Local Bodies minister Kavita Jain today said she has decided to give Rs 50,000 to each of the 19 district jails out of her discretionary funds to make available "quality literary and religious books" to the prisoners lodged in these jails.
She said the Jail Superintendents would constitute committees for purchase of literature for libraries established in each jail.
The grant would be released directly to the Jail Superintendents concerned at the earliest, Jain said.
She said it is the "responsibility" of the government to "connect" every citizen of the state with its cultural heritage.
Provision of such reading material could also help the prisoners in giving up the tendency of committing crime. The books would also increase the knowledge of prisoners, she added.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Haryana government today said it has decided to raise the retirement age of practicing doctors from present 58 to 65 years to check the "shortage" of doctors in the state.
Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij stated this here after the decision for the same was taken in a meeting presided over by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
He said that in doing so, the state government has followed the "vision" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Vij said it has also been decided that those doctors who were working on administrative posts would retire at the age of 58 years. However, he said, they would be able to continue to serve up to 65 years only if they opt to practice in any health institute of their choice.
The minister said it has also been decided to invite applications from the retired doctors who would like to rejoin the service as medical practitioner.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
British star Hugh Grant has joined the sequel to the 2014 hit "Paddington".
Brendan Gleeson will also be a part of the sequel, whose shooting is currently underway.
Grant will be seen in the role of a vain, charming acting legend whose star has fallen somewhat in recent years, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Gleeson, meanwhile, will play the role of a notorious safe-cracker and strongman who becomes Paddington's unexpected ally.
The story will see the Peruvian bear embark on a series of odd jobs to buy a book for Aunt Lucy's 100th birthday. But when
the book is stolen, it's up to Paddington and the Browns to unmask the thief.
Ben Whishaw again voices the famous bear while Imelda Staunton is voicing Aunt Lucy.
Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin all return from the first CGI live-action outing.
David Heyman is again producing with Paul King back in the director's chair.
The movie was a surprise hit in 2014, amassing more than USD 270 million internationally.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 300 school children were hospitalised in China due to food poisoning, authorities said today.
Shigella sonnei bacteria were found in the feces of patients who are among hundreds treated for food poisoning in northern China, they said.
More than 300 school children have been hospitalised since yesterday afternoon, but none face life-threatening illness, state-run Xinhua agency reported.
According to doctors, patient blood test reports showed high white blood cell levels, indicating infection.
Experts said the discovery confirmed that the students were suffering from gastrointestinal diseases caused by the bacteria.
"Shigella sonnei bacteria can breed in food and water at an optimum temperature, which can easily cause bacillary dysentery," they said, adding severe cases of shigellosis can be so serious that patients, particularly young children and the elderly, need to be hospitalised.
Further investigation into the cause of the outbreak is under way, the report said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan says he respects the decision of the people with regard to the ban on Pakistani artistes following the Uri terror attack, but believes that art transcends boundaries.
When asked if cross border talent should be encouraged or the demand for ban on Pakistani artistes is justified, Khan told PTI, "I respect the decision of people of India, the government of India and our Prime Minister Narendra Modi."
However neither the government nor the PM has said anything regarding the ban on Pakistani artistes.
"Whatever the government and our PM would decide, I would respect their views," Khan said.
But at the same time, he said, "I think artistes are not bound by any religion. Art has no religion, art is beyond boundaries."
The Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has been protesting against the release of films featuring Pakistani actors and has intensified its efforts to stall the screening Karan Johar's upcoming film 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' as it features Fawad Khan.
They even issued a veiled threat to vandalise multiplexes and theatres exhibiting the movie, which is slated to release on October 28.
"Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" stars Ranbir Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Anushka Sharma in lead roles while Fawad, whose casting has been at the center of the controversy, is in a cameo.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
When it comes to apocalyptic visions, its hard to beat those of tangerine-hued prophet of doom Donald Trump. According to his 3am Twitter visions were on the verge of an American hellscape of invading Muslim jihadists, ruined economies, rape-crazy Mexicans, conspiracy-stoking media manipulators, rigged elections and fat, entirely undatable beauty queens. In comparison, the end-of-the-world scenario laid out in Syfys new series Aftermath seems rather quaintand if were being honest, a little silly.
Aftermath is, like most stuff on Syfy, a cheap Canadian TV series sneaking over the border and trying to pass itself off as American. (Hmm. Maybe Mr. Trump is right.) The maniacally paced cluster-hump follows the lives of the Copeland family, a patently unrealistic clan of random stereotypes living on a farm in North Pasco, Wash. Mom Karen (Anne Heche) is a former Air Force pilot with kick-ass survival skills (a role Heche has a hard time selling no matter how hard she wears those mirrored sunglasses). Dad Joshua (James Tupper) is a world cultures professor who drives a hybrid. (Because thats a totally realistic husband-and-wife pairing.) Theyve got a son (Levi Meaden) and two twin daughters (Julia Sarah Stone and Taylor Hickson). Life around the Copeland farm is difficultmostly due to the endless earthquakes, hurricanes and meteor showers battering it and every other part of the globe. Also, there are the assorted demonic entities that stop by every once in a while to kidnap family members. Not to mention the feverhead disease sweeping through the population, turning people into blood-crazed killer zombies. Cartoonishly self-reliant Karen does her best to poo-poo talk of the Apocalypse. Whats a little fish rain or flesh-eating bacteria to a mom in mirror shades? Meanwhile, everyone else seems to worry more about their cell phone coverage than about the impending end of all life on Earth.
Despite one teenage daughters plan to run away and join her online boyfriend at college (a perfectly reasonable plan when faced with tornadoes and killer zombie hordes), the Copelands family up and hunker down at their farm. Huddling safely near a picture window during a Category 5 hurricane, the Copelands emerge unscathed. Heck, leaves arent even blown off trees as various low-budget natural disasters attempt to knock off our scrap-happy brood. Their resolve is broken, however, when a supernaturally possessed neighbor (whom Joshua somehow identifies as a skinwalker) flies off into the sky with their daughter. Naturally, the remaining Copelands pile into their RV and go looking for her, Walking Dead-style. Its a brilliant plan, setting up the inexpensive road-trip momentum of the shows first season.
Its hard to tell if Aftermath is trying and failing to make fun of its cheesiness or if everyone involved just gave up as they were shooting it. Syfys equally goofy Z Nation at least has a sense of humor. Nearly every po-faced character here seems oblivious to the extinction-level destruction unfolding around them. With just a slight tweak in attitude, this could have been the Naked Gun of Syfy shows. Instead, its an overstuffed, underfunded mishmash of every apocalyptic scenario Hollywood has ever barfed up.
More than two months ago I started the process to have my ESP8266 WeatherStation listed on Amazon. The big online platform offers a service called Fulfilled by Amazon or short FBA which allows you to send your items directly to their warehouse. Your product will then be shipped to your buyers with the usual speed and quality as if it was a product sold directly by Amazon.
While the products you order from my shop come directly from China I have limited possibilities to customize the starter kit with this supplier. For Amazon I wanted an improved product: ready with instructions, packed in a convenient plastic box for storage. So I had to look for another supplier for this special batch. Alibaba helped me to get into contact with some suppliers and picked three to send me samples. All of them sent express and arrived within a few days in Switzerland. I tested the display and the NodeMCU module rather carefully but neglected to test the USB wire since I thought it was a commodity. I picked the supplier based on language, how fast the responded and the price. I made the order and had 20% of them sent to Switzerland while the other 80% went directly to a Amazon warehouse in Texas.
While the shipments were still on the way to Switzerland and the US I desperately needed a USB cable and picked the one from the sample box. But for some strange reason I didnt see the NodeMCU when plugged into my Mac. I slowly realized that all the USB cables I had ordered were just for charging and not for data transfer. Some harsh emails were exchanged with the supplier in China but I had to realize that it was at least partly my fault. By that time the shipment for the US had just arrived in Texas. What should I do? Removing items from the Amazon inventory is only possible with a destination address in the US and I live in Switzerland.
I remembered that a friend from grammar lived now with her family in the US and contacted her through Facebook. I asked her if her boys could help me to replace the wrong USB cables in exchange for some pocket money and she agreed. Now it took almost a month until Amazon completely removed all the items from their warehouses all over the country. When all of them had arrived at my friends place she and her boys quickly replaced the USB cables with the ones from China my supplier had sent to her. After that UPS picked up the box with the starter kits and brought it to yet another Amazon warehouse.
The moral of the story is that you should always test every aspect of your product even commodity items like USB cables. On the other hand this story also shows that there is (almost) always a way out of such a frustrating situation. Look at it as a challenge and not as a problem.
This is the very short story of my long and winding road from a Chinese supplier to a Amazon warehouse in the US. Now the next chapter has just begun and I keep my fingers crossed that it was worth all the troubles so far You can see and order the result of that work here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KE7BA3O
The idea of compulsory has not been found practical, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said on Wednesday, months after the government rejected a similar demand in the Lok Sabha.
"Issue of compulsory as prevalent in some countries has been a matter of discussion earlier...We found the idea not so practical. But we will like to hear," he said.
He was addressing an international conference on voter awareness here.
In February while responding to a private member's bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on compulsory voting, then Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda had said though he appreciated the intention of the members, it would not be possible for the government to introduce compulsory and penalise those who failed to exercise their franchise.
The Law Commission in its report on electoral reforms submitted in March last had also decided against recommending compulsory voting by terming it as "highly undesirable" for a variety of reasons such as being undemocratic, illegitimate, expensive, unable to improve quality political participation and awareness, and difficult to implement.
Later, responding to a question by reporters on the holding of simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly elections, Zaidi said the Commission has told a Parliamentary committee and the Law Ministry that such an exercise can be undertaken once political parties are unanimous in amending the constitution and the poll panel's certain demands like buying new EVMs are met.
In its reply to the Law Ministry in May on the issue, the Commission had said it supported the proposal but cost involved will be to the tune of over Rs 9,000 crore.
Deposing before the parliamentary panel which gave its report on 'Feasibility of holding simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies' in December last, the Commission had expressed similar "difficulties".
The Commission has told the government as well as the committee that simultaneous conduct of elections would require large-scale purchase of Electronic Voting Machines and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.
While as per electoral law, elections can be held six months prior to the end of the term of a House, the term of the House cannot be extended except during proclamation of Emergency.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said during a meeting of BJP office-bearers on March 19 that state elections coupled with local-level polls, spread across virtually every year, often "hinder" the execution of welfare measures. He was keen on simultaneous elections once in five years.
In a first, India and China today carried out a joint army exercise in eastern Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, a move that comes amid hectic diplomatic manoeuvring between the two countries over a host of issues like Nuclear Suppliers Group and designation of Masood Azhar as a terrorist by the UN.
During the day long exercise on Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) a fictitious situation of earthquake striking an Indian Border village was painted. Thereafter joint teams carried out rescue operations, evacuation and rendering of medical assistance.
This was done as a sequel to the first Joint Exercise held on February 6 in the area of Border Personnel Meeting Hut at Chushul Garrison of Eastern Ladakh, along with Chinese troops of Moldo Garrison.
Sources said that in February, the exercise was held in the Chinese side and this time in the Indian side along the line of Actual Control.
The Indian team for the exercise was led by Brigadier R S Raman and that of the Chinese was led by Sr Col Fan Jun.
The exercise was a great success and has not only refined the drills to provide succour to the border population in case of natural calamity but has also increased the level of trust and cooperation between the two border guarding forces along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh, the Army said in a statement here.
The joint exercise, compliments the Hand in Hand series of the India-China joint exercises and the effort of both the nations to enhance cooperation and maintain peace and tranquillity along the border areas of India and China, it said.
This year's edition of 'Hand in Hand' will be held at Aundh, near Pune in Maharashtra, from November 15 to 27.
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The fourth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission, the high level bilateral mechanism, is scheduled to be held in New Delhi next week, the Nepalese government said today.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Nepalese counterpart Prakash Sharan Mahat will lead the two delegations at the October 26-27 meeting that will review and assess past agreements and commitments reached between the two countries, according to Foreign Ministry officials here.
The Joint Commission meeting to be held between the two foreign ministers will be followed by a Foreign Secretary -level meeting, the officials said.
During the recent state visit of Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' to India, both sides had agreed to hold the Joint Commission Meeting "at the earliest".
During the meeting discussions will be held on a wide range of bilateral issues and also focus on expediting the India-funded projects and setting up of a joint mechanism at the government level to monitor progress of these projects in Nepal.
Besides, the meeting will also chalk out a time-bound plan to complete the pending projects, they said.
The third meeting of the joint commission was held in Kathmandu in 2014 after a gap of more than two decades.
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Indian-American hotelier has been charged with criminal mischief for allegedly trying to light two dogs on fire, an allegation his lawyer has denied.
Chatwal, 44, had turned himself to the police early Tuesday morning and has been charged with criminal mischief, torture and injure animal, reckless endangerment and arson.
The charges stem from an October 7 incident in which Chatwal allegedly got into an argument with a woman walking the dogs outside his home in the city.
Chatwal, accused of allegedly pulling out a lighter and aerosol can to hurt the two dogs, pleaded not guilty to the charges during his appearance in a Manhattan court on Tuesday.
Chatwal's bail was set at $50,000 and the next hearing in the case is set for December 8.
His attorney Arthur Aidala told PTI that Chatwal denies all the charges and "proclaims his innocence".
He said he is a non-violent person who would never injure an animal or human being.
"His personality and disposition in his 44 years is not of somebody who would injure another animal or another human being," Aidala said.
He informed the judge that Chatwal's "personality and disposition is that of a calm, peaceful and non-violent person" as Chatwal himself owns many dogs and even takes care of a horse.
"He is known as being an animal lover. We vehemently disagree with the set of facts that the prosecutor put forth in court," Aidala said.
Aidala said he also informed the judge that the dogs in this case were not hurt and were not even taken to the veterinarian until days after the alleged incident occurred.
He said even the case the prosecutor puts forth says that some of the hair on the dogs' back was burnt but none of the dogs were burned and neither did they suffer.
It was among Chatwals' priority to make sure that the dogs in question were unharmed and were well-treated and cared for, Aidala said.
"The big takeaway from this is that the dogs were never hurt, that was very important to Vikram and his whole family to make sure no one is accusing him of actually hurting the dogs. Even the prosecutor said the dogs were never hurt. What flies in the face of the charges is that Chatwal is just not the kind of person who is going to attack anybody, let alone the dogs walking down the street," he said.
Aidala said he would meet with the prosecutors in the coming months and explain to them what really happened.
"We will try to work out some sort of disposition regarding case," he added.
An Indian-origin private equity investor has been convicted of conspiracy and securities fraud in the US for tipping off two friends about a proposed 2013 acquisition of a firm by India-based Apollo Tyres, an insider trading scheme that netted over USD 1 million.
Amit Kanodia, 49, was convicted by the federal jury in Boston following a six-day trial of one count of conspiracy and 10 counts of securities fraud, with each count representing the purchase of Cooper Tire securities by co-conspirators Iftikar Ahmed and Steven Watson.
Kanodia was acquitted of eight additional counts of securities fraud related to other purchases made by Ahmed and Watson.
US District Court Judge Nathaniel G Gorton scheduled sentencing for January next year.
Ahmed, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi and Harvard Business School, previously fled to India in May 2015 after prosecutors accused him and longtime friend Kanodia for having engaged in insider trading.
Ahmed remains a fugitive, while Watson pleaded guilty and is set to be sentenced in November.
In the spring of 2013, Kanodia tipped off his two friends, Ahmed and Watson, about the contemplated acquisition of Cooper Tire and Rubber Company by India-based Apollo Tyres.
Kanodia learned about the possible acquisition from his wife who was the General Counsel of Apollo at the time.
In the months leading up to the public announcement of the acquisition, both Ahmed and Watson purchased shares and options in Cooper Tire which trades on the New York Stock Exchange.
On the day of the announcement, Cooper Tire's share price increased 41 per cent and Ahmed and Watson began selling their interests in the company for a combined profit of more than USD 1 million.
Both Ahmed and Watson paid Kanodia a portion of their illegal profits.
The conspiracy statute provides for a sentence of upto five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of USD 250,000 while the securities fraud statute provides for a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, five years of supervised release and a fine of USD 5 million.
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Iraqi forces prepared to retake the country's largest Christian town from the Islamic State group today, a key milestone in their progress towards the jihadists' main hub of Mosul.
of the move to recapture Qaraqosh sparked jubilation among Christians who had fled the town, with many dancing and singing in the city of Arbil.
Launched on Monday, the long-awaited advance on Mosul was making quick progress but US President Barack Obama joined a chorus of warnings the battle for ISIS' last Iraqi stronghold would be tough.
Officials have said the retaking of Mosul - in Iraq's largest military operation in years - could take weeks or months and warned that the hundreds of thousands of civilians still in the city could be used as human shields.
Federal forces stormed Qaraqosh, about 15 kilometres southeast of Mosul, yesterday but ISIS fighters remained in the town.
Units from Iraq's elite counter-terrorism service (CTS), which has done the heavy lifting in most recent operations against ISIS, were poised to flush jihadists out of the town, officers said.
"We are surrounding Hamdaniya now," Lieutenant General Riyadh Tawfiq, commander of Iraq's ground forces, told AFP at the main staging base of Qayyarah, referring to the district that includes Qaraqosh.
"There are some pockets (of resistance), some clashes, they send car bombs - but it will not help them," he said.
Displaced Christians held early celebrations last night in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan, where they fled after IS seized the town.
After gathering for a group prayer outside a church in the city, some in the crowd sang, danced and clapped their hands, while others held lit candles.
"Today is a happy moment. There is no doubt our land will be liberated and we thank God, Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary," said Hazem Djedjou Cardomi, a journalist among the crowd.
Qaraqosh was the largest of many Christian towns and villages seized by the jihadists who swept across the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul in August 2014.
The mass exodus it sparked displaced a large proportion of Iraq's already dwindling Christian minority, sending most into the neighbouring Kurdish region.
Qaraqosh was a town of around 50,000 people in 2014 and is home to at least seven churches, making it a key hub for the more than 300,000 Christians still in Iraq.
Three days into the operation, Iraqi forces were closing in on Mosul from several directions, including the south where federal troops and police have been battling through IS defences and retaking villages as they work their way up the Tigris Valley.
Today, Iraqi forces reached the village of Bajwaniyah, about 30 kilometres south of Mosul.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A senior Iraqi general today called on Iraqis fighting for the Islamic State group in Mosul to surrender as a wide-scale operation to retake the militant-held city entered its third day.
Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati told reporters at a military base yesterday that up to 6,000 IS fighters are inside the city. He did not say how many of them are foreigners.
IS captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, in a lightning advance in the summer of 2014. The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats over the past year, and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq.
So far, the militants have put up fierce resistance in villages surrounding the city, where most of the fighting has been concentrated. IS has sent trucks loaded with explosives careening toward the front lines and fired mortars to slow the Iraqi forces' advance.
An Iraqi officer from the 9th Division told The Associated Press that his troops were now around 1 kilometer away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul.
Over the past day, IS sent 12 car bombs, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, he said, adding that Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, did not provide specific figures.
The operation to retake Mosul is the largest launched by the Iraqi army since the 2003 US-led invasion. Some 25,000 troops, including Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and state-sanctioned Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units are approaching the city from different directions.
The participation of the Shiite militias in the operation to retake the mainly Sunni Mosul has raised concerns that the campaign could inflame sectarian tensions. Rights groups have accused the Shiite militias of abuses in past campaigns against IS-held areas.
In a bid to alleviate those concerns, Shiite militia leaders yesterday announced that they will only focus on capturing the mostly Shiite town of Tal Afar to the west of Mosul, and not enter the city itself.
"The only troops who will enter Mosul are the army and police, not the Popular Mobilization Units or the peshmerga," said Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Brigade, one of the largest Shiite militias.
"This has been agreed upon," he said at a press conference in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Amnesty International said in a report released yesterday that Iraqi government and paramilitary forces detained, tortured or killed hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians fleeing IS-held areas during the operation to retake the Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, earlier this year.
The Iraqi government has denied any systematic violations by security forces or the militias, and says individuals have been held accountable for occasional abuses.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jihadist leaders are fleeing Mosul, a top US general in the coalition battling the Islamic State group said today as Iraqi forces closed in on the northern city.
Mosul was where IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his "caliphate" two years ago but is now the group's last major stronghold in Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who announced the launch of a broad offensive to retake the city on Monday, visited the front line today.
In the biggest Iraqi military operation in years, forces have retaken dozens of villages, mostly south and east of Mosul, and are planning multiple assaults for Thursday.
"We are telling Daesh (IS) that their leaders are abandoning them. We've seen a movement out of Mosul," said Major General Gary Volesky, who heads the anti-IS coalition's land component.
He told reporters in a video briefing that the many foreigners among the 3,000 to 4,500 IS fighters would likely end up forming the core of the holdout jihadist force.
Volesky noted that the Iraqis would screen anyone leaving Mosul, and attempts by foreign fighters to blend in to an expected exodus of displaced people would be thwarted.
"It's difficult for them to blend into the local population based on the number of different types of foreign fighters that there are," he said.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians were still trapped in the city with dwindling supplies, many sheltering in basements as air strikes intensified on IS targets.
"We couldn't sleep last night because of the air strikes. The explosions were huge," said Abu Saif, a 47-year-old resident contacted by AFP.
"Many families are starting to run out of some basic food goods, there is no commercial activity in Mosul -- the city is cut off from the world," he said.
East of Mosul, forces were poised for an assault on Qaraqosh, which lies about 15 kilometres away and was once Iraq's largest Christian town.
of the move to recapture Qaraqosh sparked jubilation among Christians who had fled the town, with many dancing and singing in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil on Tuesday night.
Units from Iraq's elite counter-terrorism service, which has done the heavy lifting in most recent operations against IS, were poised to flush jihadists out of the town, officers said.
"We are surrounding Hamdaniya now," Lieutenant General Riyadh Tawfiq, commander of Iraq's ground forces, told AFP at the main staging base of Qayyarah, referring to the district that includes Qaraqosh.
"There are some pockets (of resistance), some clashes, they send car bombs -- but it will not help them," he said.
Qaraqosh was the largest of many Christian towns and villages seized by the jihadists who swept across the Nineveh plain east of Mosul in August 2014.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Italy has moved to crack down on the widespread exploitation of farm workers with tough new penalties for abuses to which immigrants from Africa and South Asia are particularly vulnerable.
A law approved by parliament late yesterday provides for mandatory prison terms, fines and asset seizures for farm owners and intermediaries involved in illegal practices that can result in casual workers taking home little more than a euro (dollar) an hour for backbreaking work.
The new legislation was hailed as a "major step forward" by trade unions, who say some some 430,000 agricultural workers are subject to extreme exploitation across the country.
Under the so-called "caporalato" system, fruit pickers and other seasonal workers are typically recruited, organised and paid by an intermediary, enabling the real employers to sidestep payroll taxes.
A daily rate of between 22 and 30 euros for a 10-12 hour day - less than half the legal minimum - has reportedly become the norm across much of the sector.
In practice, many workers frequently earn far less because the intermediaries charge them for transport to-and-from the farms or even for water.
Lawmakers were moved to tighten regulation of the sector after several deaths on farms in the summer of 2015.
Activists say the problem has grown worse in recent years with the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants in Italy, many of whom end up living clandestinely.
Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina welcomed the new law. "Now we have more effective instruments to wage what needs to be a daily battle because you don't negotiate where human dignity is concerned," he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Government-run India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) today said it has fixed a revenue target of Rs 250 crore for this fiscal year.
This was stated by ITPO CMD L C Goyal while signing an MoU with the Department of Commerce.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is a negotiated agreement and contract between the administrative ministry or department or holding CPSE, to fix the targets before the beginning of the financial year.
"On this occasion, Goyal mentioned that for the year 2016 -17, the 'excellent'' financial target for Revenue from operations (gross sales) has been fixed at Rs 250 crore," the commerce ministry said in a statement.
He also mentioned that ITPO will make all efforts to achieve 'excellent' rating as per the targets given by the Department of Public Enterprises for the year 2016-17 and ensure delivery of better services to all the stakeholders.
ITPO is the premier trade promotion agency of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
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In the last two decades, London has forged a reputation as the technology capital of Europe and as a global capital of the fashion technology sector a competitor to New York and Silicon Valley, where creative, commercial and digital talent thrives in a single cosmopolitan place. Some of the biggest names in the fashion industry, especially in e-commerce such as Asos, Farfetch, Lyst and Yoox Net-a-Porter have headquarters in the British capital.
But in the wake of Britains vote in June to leave the European Union, a development that raised the possibility of an immigration crackdown, a drop in foreign investment and economic uncertainty, Londons high-ranking position has come into question.
Taavet Hinrikus, the Estonian co-founder of the money-transfer company TransferWise, which says it has a valuation of more than $1 billion has told The Guardian that his company is unlikely to continue hiring at its London headquarters. Peter Smith, chief executive of the financial technology company Blockchain, said this month that many non-British tech entrepreneurs in London were deeply offended by the British governments stance on immigration since the vote.
And while the fashion community has stayed relatively silent on the subject, there is little doubt that businesses have been mulling their options as European capitals on the Continent position themselves as worthy alternatives. Venture capital investments in Britain plummeted 40 percent in the second quarter this year compared with the first quarter, as uncertainty before the vote held investors back, according to data published this week by CB Insights.
Given that climate, an announcement this week from the Yoox Net-a-Porter Group about plans to centralize its Britain-based technology operations in the BBCs former headquarters in West London has been a welcome vote of confidence.
Yoox Net-a-Porter, a British-Italian company, said on Monday that it planned to accommodate about 600 staff members in its new technology hub by March, taking two floors about 70,000 square feet of state-of-the-art (and expensive) office space in the new MediaWorks building at White City Place. That represents a 20 percent increase in the size of the groups technology team, which the company says will have as many as 1,000 employees in Britain and Italy.
Although a majority of Londons technology headquarters are in the east of the city, Alex Alexander, chief information officer of Yoox Net-a-Porter, said the company wished to stay in the west to be close to its other operational base, above the Westfield shopping center. Other big names in the local creative sphere said to be setting up offices in the White City development include the fashion label Stella McCartney and the Royal College of Art.
We were keen to show our commitment to the U.K., Mr. Alexander said by telephone from New York, and felt that bringing all of our technology talent into a single hub was an important step in terms of bringing our five-year plan, which is based on outpacing our competition on mobile, to fruition.
He brushed off suggestions that Londons reputation had been tarnished by the countrys decision to leave the European Union.
We continue to have real confidence in London, regardless of the decision to leave the E.U., and see this investment as an opportunity to reaffirm that, Mr. Alexander said. We dont see any side effects in terms of talent being drawn here. We are expecting to see a steady flow continue and think the city will remain a world-leading tech hub.
Fashion companies are not alone in doubling down on the British capital. Facebook and Google, among other American tech giants, also have plans to expand their London operations, investing in development and sales teams to fuel their European activities.
Predictably, signs of major technology and fashion companies taking steps to expand its presence in London was met with open arms.
I am delighted that there will be yet more new tech jobs coming to the capital, said Rajesh Agrawal, Londons deputy mayor for business and enterprise. This highlights once again that London is open for business, new investment and global talent.
For now, the signs for Britain are encouraging. Of Europes technology unicorns private companies with a valuation of more than $1 billion almost 40 percent are based in the country. Nearly a third of all European venture capital funding comes to Britain.
But it is still early. There is no certainty that Europeans working in Britain will be forced to leave once the withdrawal from the bloc is final, and a report by Balderton Capital shows that while engineers in Berlin or Paris earned on average almost 18 percent less than their London counterparts do, the devaluation of the pound was fast closing that gap.
Whether entrepreneurs looking to start the next billion-dollar fashion technology business might favor Berlin, Dublin or Stockholm which have established technology sectors and benefit from the European Unions free flow of labor remains to be seen.
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Two Japanese cabinet ministers visited a controversial war shrine today, after a mass visit by lawmakers angered China and South Korea which see it as a painful reminder of Tokyo's aggressive past.
The ministers -- internal affairs chief Sanae Takaichi and Katsunobu Kato, in charge of womens' empowerment -- are close to conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who did not visit the Yasukuni shrine during this year's four-day autumn festival.
Abe, often criticised for what some see as revisionist views on Japan's wartime record, sent a ritual offering to the shrine instead.
He has not gone to the site in central Tokyo since late 2013 in an apparent attempt to ease diplomatic tensions.
Yesterday a group of about 85 legislators arrived at the leafy site for an annual pilgrimage, sparking a rebuke from Beijing and Seoul, which called on them to show "humble self-reflection and sincere remorse for Japan's past wrongdoings".
Yasukuni honours millions of Japanese war dead, but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes after World War II.
The indigenous Shinto religious shrine has for decades been a flashpoint for criticism by countries that suffered from Japan's colonialism and aggression in the first half of the 20th century, including China and Korea.
Abe and other nationalists say Yasukuni is a place to remember fallen soldiers. They compare it to Arlington National Cemetery in the United States.
His visit in 2013 to mark his first year in power sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a diplomatic rebuke from close ally the United States which said it was "disappointed".
Ave has since refrained from going, sending ritual offerings instead.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today launched two-day Gram Sabha from Littipara block's Sonadhani village in Pakur district.
Launching under 'Hamari yozana, hamari vikas', Das laid on-line foundation for over 20 yozanas.
Das told the villagers to discuss and prepare 'yozanas' as per their priorities and the government would transfer funds directly in the gram panchayat account.
He also told the villagers that they should decide how should their village turn 15 years from now and on that context prepare 'yozanas'.
Jharkhand Rural Development Minister Neel Kanth Singh Munda had said the two-day gram sabha meetings would be held in 32,000 revenue villages, beginning today.
It would continue till October 31.
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The winter session of Karnataka legislature will be held at Belagavi from November 21 to December two.
Announcing the schedule after a cabinet meeting here, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra said the session would deliberate issues including Mahadayi water dispute affecting North Karnataka region.
The Kalasa-Banduri Nala (diversion) project, which will utilise 7.56 tmcft of water from the inter-state Mahadayi river, is being undertaken by Karnataka to improve drinking water supply to the twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad and the districts of Belagavi and Gadag.
Last month, tension had gripped most parts of northern Karnataka after Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal rejected the state's plea citing various grounds, including ecological damage that the Kalasa-Banduri Nala project may cause. The protests turned violent on July 28 during which government offices were attacked and public property was damaged.
A state-wide bandh was also observed on July 30.
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The Karnataka Co-operative Milk Producers Federation Ltd (KMF) today commenced operations in Maharashtra, where it is targeting to supply 25 lakh litres milk each day.
"We are expanding our network of milk supply. KMF is currently supplying over 80 lakh litres of milk to Karnataka and Chennai per day and is now targeting to supply 25 lakh litres in Maharashtra," Federation Chairman P Nagaraju told reporters here.
The largest co-operative dairy federation in south India has been playing a vital role in boosting the rural economy since its inception in 1975, he said.
KMF covers 22,000 villages, 13,000 milk co-operative societies, 14 district milk unions and 22 lakh milk producer members. It procures 65 lakh litres of milk each day and pays Rs 15 crore to farmers, Nagaraju said.
The company launched its milk brand - 'Nandini' - in Mumbai today. It sells products like liquid milk, long-life milk (flexi) and pasteurised curd under the Nandini brand.
Over the last 40 years, KMF has turned Karnataka from a milk-deficit state into a milk-surplus state. KMF is striving to excel on three critical fronts namely, quality, competitive price and service, he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Karnataka government today welcomed the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (KWDT)'s refusal to look into allocation of the river water to four basin states afresh, saying it had vindicated the state's stand on the issue.
With the Tribunal's decision, "We would urge the Union government to issue notification of the final award of the KWDT-II," Karnataka Water Resources Minister M B Patil told reporters here.
While refusing to look into allocation afresh, KWDT headed by Justice Brijesh Kumar however said it will take up the issue of distribution of water allocated to erstwhile undivided Andhra Pradesh between the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have termed the decision as "disappointing".
"It has vindicated our stand on the issue," Patil said, adding, Karnataka had made a strong plea against any steps to reallocate the Krishna water afresh.
He said today's decision would help Karnataka go ahead with its plans to utilise the state's share of Krishna water as allocated by the tribunal earlier.
Patil said the state counsels had argued before the tribunal that reallocation of water should be confined to sharing of water between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana from the share allocated to the erstwile united Andhra Pradesh.
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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejariwal and Aam Admi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas today filed a petition in the Allahabad high court challenging summonses issued against them by a lower court in connection with a case of allegedly making provocative speeches during the last Lok Sabha elections.
The petition is likely to come up for hearing on October 21.
According to petitioner's counsel Onkar Pandey, on April 20, 2014, during Lok Sabha election, an FIR was lodged by the Assistant Election Officer against the two leaders for allegedly making provocative speeches in Gauriganj area of Amethi constituency represented by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
A charge sheet was filed in the case on April 13 and on October 7 this year the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Sultanpur issued orders summoning them.
They have challenged the order before the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court, Pandey said.
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CPI(M)-led LDF government in Kerala is getting ready to expand "community kitchens", envisaged to distribute nutritious food among tribals across Attappady, one of the largest tribal belts in the state.
Minister for Scheduled Castes and Tribes A K Balan informed the Assembly that the kitchens would be expanded in all 192 hamlets in Attappady in Palakkad district this month itself.
A total of Rs 3.48 crore had been handed over to the women self-help group 'Kudumbashree' for setting up the kitchens in rest of the hamlets.
"Community kitchens are already functioning in 93 hamlets in Attappady. It will be expanded to all 192 hamlets in the belt this month itself.", he said.
"The number of community kitchens were 53 during the time of previous UDF government," he said while replying during the question hour.
The number of infant deaths due to malnutrition had come down remarkably in tribal areas after the LDF government came into power, the minister said.
In the last three months, six tribal children died in various settlements, which was low compared to the figures in the previous years, he said.
A total of Rs 30.51 crore had been allotted for the treatment expenses of tribals during the present government's tenure, he said.
Community Kitchen is a nutritional meal programme envisaged to address the malnutrition issues of tribals in the state.
It was first started in the tribal areas of Palakkad district in 2013 to provide one full meal each day to children below six years, adolescents, pregnant women, and those above 60 years of age.
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Agitated locals today staged a demonstration in front of the SUM hospital here during the visit of the Union Health Minister J P Nadda demanding a compensation of Rs 15 lakh to the families of those killed in the hospital blaze.
They were also demanding the arrest of the chairman of the trust that manages the medical facility and job to each of the affected families.
Siksha 'O' Anusandhan (SOA) University, which runs the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, had yesterday announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh each to the next of kin of those killed.
The Odisha government has also announced a solatium of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of those killed.
With the locals staging the demonstration demanding arrest of the "owner" of the privately-managed hospital, the Odisha government today indicated that the police might take action against him.
"We have filed FIR at the Khandagiri police station against the SUM Hospital authorities. As he (owner) is part of the management, the police may take action against him also," director of medical education and training (DMET) P C Mohapatra said.
Mohapatra said, "As we have filed a case against the management of the hospital, there is a chance of his arrest, as he is part of the management."
The DMET's statement is significant in view of the public resentment against the SUM Hospital management.
One more person died of suffocation today, taking the number of those killed in the fire at the hospital to 21.
Yesterday, on the basis of an FIR filed by the fire service department, the police had arrested four officials including the medical superintendent.
Besides the medical superintendent Pushparaj Samantasinghar, the police had booked electrical maintenance engineer Amulya Kumar Sahu, Fire Safety Officer Santosh Das and retired Junior Engineer Malay Kumar Sahu.
A case has been registered against the four officials under sections 304, 308, 285 and 34 of IPC.
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R Madhavan and Dia Mirza are back as the adorable couple, Maddy-Reena from "Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mei", for a special photoshoot to celebrate the 15 years of their hit romantic film.
The duo recreated the film's official poster and Madhavan shared the new version on his Twitter page, much to the delight of the fans.
"And a recreation of the poster.. How gorgeous does @deespeak still look..#15yearsofRHTDM," Madhavan tweeted.
The picture showed Madhavan resting his face on Dia's head as the two pose for the photo, looking as dreamy as the original poster.
Replying to his tweet, his co-star posted, "He is as charming as ever :) @ActorMadhavan Reena will always love Maddy. #15YearsOfRHTDM."
"Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein", released in 2001, was written-directed by Gautham Menon and also starred Saif Ali Khan.
It followed a Mumbai boy, Maddy, who does not believe in the idea of love until he meets Reena. Soon, he learns that Reena is set to marry Rajeev Samra, an old friend who is now an NRI. After he gets to known that Reena doesn't know how her friend looks like now, Maddy pretends to be Rajeev to woo her.
The love triangle was backed by melodious music. The film wasn't successful at the box-office but over the years made its place in the youth's heart for its endearing love story.
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Maharashtra government here today launched 'Kaushalya Setu', its skill development programme for students.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union Minister of State Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (Independent Charge) Rajiv Pratap Rudy and state Education Minister Vinod Tawde were present on the occasion.
Under the Kaushalya Setu initiative, students of Maharashtra State Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education, who fail to clear Class X or SSC exam, would be accommodated in the skill development courses, so that they do not lose a year.
Praising the initiative, Fadnavis said, "We have started various skill development programmes, but this (Kaushalya Setu) is the best among them."
"Maharashtra will play a leading role in fulfilling Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Skill India Mission-2020," he added.
Rudy said, "This is a pilot project and if it is successful, it will change the fortune of the entire country."
Elaborating on the initiative, Tawde said, "No student (of Class X) will be termed failed in the exam, but will be provided training as per his skills under this initiative."
Under this programme, no student will sit at home after matriculation and will receive skill-oriented training, the minister said.
"The programme will give a big boost to Modi's dream of skill development as about 24,000 students will be provided training under 'Kaushalya Setu' initially," Tawde said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Catholic education group has released a new set of academic standards that weave Roman Catholicism throughout the curriculum. The standards are being pitched as an alternative to the Common Core State Standards .
The standards were created by the Cardinal Newman Society, a nonprofit whose mission is to promote and defend faithful Catholic education. It was founded in response to a concern among some Catholics that Catholic education was undergoing a creeping secularism. The Cardinal Newman Society has been cautioning the nations more than 6,500 Catholic schools against adopting the common core for almost three years.
Some of the groups arguments echo those of other common-core critics: One is the concern that there is less focus on literature in the standards, and another is that the math standards dont prepare students to take calculus in high school .
Other criticisms are particularly Catholic. The group argues that the common cores utilitarian objectives and lack of emphasis on the whole person represent an incomplete understanding of the purpose of education. Because common core gets man wrong, it gets education wrong, the group writes . Catholic insight into human nature and into mans relationships with his fellow man, nature, and God allows for a more complete exploration of the world and not just all that is in it, but also that which transcends it as well.
The new standards cover history, science, math, and English, and are broken into two sets: Grades K-6 and 7-12. The content is notably different from the common cores. An early literature standard, for example, asks students to be able to demonstrate how literature is used to develop a religious, moral, and social sense. A math standard asks students to learn to display a sense of wonder about mathematical relationships as well as confidence in mathematical certitude.
A set of appendices also highlight other aspects of Catholic education. Appendix A focuses on Educating to Truth, Beauty, and Goodness . The standards also come with resources for teachers hoping to create learning progressions .
Earlier this month, the Cardinal Newman Society published a blog post urging Catholic schools to leave the common core behind , citing the findings of a report from the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research called After the Fall: Catholic Education Beyond the Common Core . The report argues that the common core is focused on workforce development and not aligned with the broader project of Catholic education.
The Cardinal Newman Society isnt the first Catholic group concerned about how the common core fits into Catholic schools. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released an FAQ about the common core in 2014. The conference took a softer line, pointing out that the dioceses have typically considered state standards and adapted them to their schools, and that students who attend Catholic schools will be assessed on tests such as the SAT that are influenced by the common core. The CCSS should be neither adopted nor rejected without review, study, consultation, discussion, and caution, they wrote.
But the bishops also wrote that a critical part of Catholic schools missionto educate young people as Christiansis not covered in the standards.
Thomas Burnford, the president of the National Catholic Educational Association , which represents Catholic schools and teachers, said in an interview with Education Week that Catholic schools will not be required to use the new standards. Individual dioceses (geographic districts that are overseen by bishops) select their curricula.
Burnford said that in the last few years, more Catholic schools had looked seriously at the Common Core State Standards. But the vast majority use other curricula, often produced by Catholic publishers.
We respect the individual decision making of each diocesan system and schools, he said.
As for the new standards, he said, Im sure some dioceses will look at them as a new potential resource.
Burnford said that the NCEA is not for or against the common core. What we are for is an authentic integration of faith into the curriculum, he said.
Catholic schools have been undergoing a long-term demographic shift , as my colleague Arianna Prothero reported last year. Enrollment has dropped to 2 million students from a peak of 5.2 million in the 1970s. (Some 50 million students attend the nations public schools.) The nations Catholic population is also shifting westward and southward, while there have historically been more Catholic churches on the East Coast and in the Midwest. But the NCEA is still the largest association of private school educators.
The overlap between Catholic schools and the public sector has also been evolving. Catholic schools make up the bulk of schools that receive school vouchers, and the NCEA argues for school choice, tax relief, and vouchers. Some Catholic schools have even converted into charter schools .
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Group-owned SmartShift, an aggregator for cargo owners and transporters, is targeting to build a community of one million stakeholders in three years.
The company, which has completed one year of operations, has so far garnered 10,000 stakeholders and claims to clock about 1,200 transactions every day.
"Going ahead, we will continually focus on nurturing customer relationships and move beyond mere transactional business to add significant value to customers' lives," Kausalya Nandakumar, CEO, SmartShift, told reporters on Wednesday.
The company has been growing 50 per cent month-on-month, and is servicing over 500 pin codes in two cities apsrt from fulfulling the last mile requirements of over 25 corporates, she added.
"Currently operational in Mumbai and Hyderabad, the platform plans to extend its services to two more cities during the current financial year as part of its overall expansion plans across India," she said.
According to industry estimates, the logistic space in the country is pegged at USD 130 billion with up to 40 percent being in the intra-city space.
SmartShift is the first in-house startup incubated within the Group.
Elaborating on the company's revenue model, Nandakumar said SmartShift is "revenue positive" now, and works on a commission-based model, which is collected from the transporter.
Since its inception the company has collaborated with LendingKart to provide collateral free loans to business owners including Insurance Brokers and Indian Oil Corporation.
The Bombay High Court today asked the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to file its reply to an appeal by Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, against the trial court's order rejecting his bail plea.
A bench headed by Justice Naresh Patil posted the matter for hearing on November 16 along with the bail petition filed by a co-accused in the case, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur.
The judges also called for original documents and case papers filed by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra police and NIA, the two agencies which had probed the matter.
In June 2016, the HC had dismissed an appeal filed by Purohit against the trial court's order rejecting his bail plea and asked him to approach the trial court afresh.
Thereafter, Lt Col Purohit moved the trial court, but the bail plea was once again rejected. Aggrieved, he approached the high court, which sought NIA's response today.
The high court had earlier asked the trial court to consider the new material in the supplementary charge sheet filed by NIA while hearing his bail plea.
Purhohit contended that the trial court had not taken into account the new material in the supplementary charge sheet.
His lawyer Srikant Shivade argued that Purohit was in jail for more than seven years and, as NIA had concluded the investigation, he should be enlarged on bail.
The trial court has consistently refused bail to Purohit since 2010. His last bail plea was rejected in October 2015, following which he moved the high court.
Purohit has claimed in his appeal that the trial court should have appreciated that he has "an outstanding, meritorious record and that he risked his life to fight against terrorism across the country". He also alleged that he had been "framed".
Co-accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur too has moved for bail separately and the high court has kept both the petitions for hearing on November 16.
Thakur was given a clean chit by the NIA earlier this year, but the trial court refused to grant her bail. Her petition in the high court said the lower court had failed to take into consideration the change in circumstances.
On May 13, NIA had filed a supplementary charge sheet, giving a clean chit to six accused, including Sadhvi Pragya. It also said that the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) was not applicable in the case.
Six persons were killed in a blast at Malegaon, a Muslim-majority town in north Maharashtra, in September 2008.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A local court has sentenced a man from Navi Mumbai to two years simple imprisonment for duping people through 'ponzi' schemes promising to double investors' money in a short time.
Special Judge V V Bambarde found Gurmitsingh Kundansingh Bhatti guilty under section 3 of the Maharashtra Protection of Interests of Depositors (In Financial Establishments) Act, 1999, under which he was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment and fined Rs 5,000.
He was also found guilty under section 420 (cheating) of IPC and sentenced to one year imprisonment and fined of Rs 1,000. Both the sentences will run concurrently.
As per the prosecution, Bhatti was managing business of a city-based private company Shreehari Enterprises.
The case pertains to 1999, when he collected deposits for 3, 6 and 12 months from 300 to 350 depositors, totalling to around Rs 70 to 75 lakh, the prosecution claimed.
The Reserve Bank of India informed Thane police that they had not given permission for the said collection of money, the court was told.
The firm had promised to double the investors money, who deposit for at-least three months. Depositors were issued cheques of interest which were firstly en-cashed but on the second occasion onwards, they bounced, it said.
The prosecution said investors found that the firm was closed and hence they lodged a police complaint.
During the proceedings, statements of 133 depositors were recorded and 28 witnesses were examined.
The judge in his order said the prosecution has proved that, during March to August 1999, the accused who was responsible for management of or conducting business or affair of financial establishment company, which has fraudulently defaulted repayment of deposit on maturity with interest and in furtherance of common intention with absconding accused, cheated depositors.
"It is seen that the depositors/witnesses have been induced by advertisement. Similarly they have been induced by the accused that they will get double amount if kept in fixed deposits with Shreehari Enterprises. It is impossible to pay the double amount. So there was intention on the part of Shreehari Enterprises and the accused to deceive those depositors. It shows dishonesty on the part of accused," the order stated.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 43-year-old married man was arrested today for allegedly cheating a city-based woman of Rs 7.5 lakh under the pretext of marrying her by posing as a groom and resident of UK.
The accused, identified as Sasidharan Kattiri, a native of Kerala's Palakkad district, is working as an administration officer in an infra firm at Bengaluru, police said, adding that he had registered his marriage profile on a matrimonial website.
The victim, a resident of Madhapur area here, had also uploaded her profile on the matrimonial website after which the accused sent request to marry her.
"She accepted his request and communication started between them and finally marriage got fixed," stated a release from Cyberabad Police.
Kattiri then asked money from the woman in the name of marriage and for obtaining visa to UK.
"As he portrayed himself that he is a permanent resident of UK, the woman in good faith transferred Rs 7.5 lakh to his bank account. Apart from this amount, Kattiri has taken a gold ring, a gold chain along with a golden pendent and a mobile phone worth Rs 32,000 in the name of marriage rituals," police said.
After taking all these goods, they were supposed to get married in the presence of the woman's family and relatives.
"However, the accused went absconding. Though, she tried to contact him several times but he changed his mobile number too. She came to know that Kattiri is already married with two children and lodged a complaint," police said.
Cyberabad Police registered a case and during the course of investigation apprehended the accused and found that he also had a dowry harassment case lodged against him by his wife.
Kattiri has allegedly been involved in similar cases in Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan, police said.
He was produced before a court at Kukatpally for judicial remand.
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Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal today refuted the allegations that the Centre was planning to shift a mega power equipment production plant at Mannavaram out of Andhra Pradesh, saying it will not be shifted but intensive efforts would be made to improve its business to create more employment opportunities.
"The Mannavaram Power Projects Equipment Manufacturing Plant will not be shifted to any other place and intensive efforts will be made to ensure more business for employment generation," Goyal said, after a review meeting chaired by Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu here today.
Naidu convened a meeting with Goyal, Heavy Industries minister Anant Geete, Chairmen and Managing Directors of NTPC, BHEL and other senior officials including those of NTPC, BHEL Power Projects Ltd (NBPPL) which is executing the project.
Recently, Member of Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council Yandapalli Srinivasulu Reddy had accused the central government of making moves to shift the Mannavaram project out of Andhra Pradesh and also staged a dharna in association with Left parties.
Also, there were allegations that the Centre was deliberately sidelining the project brought by Congress regime.
"It was also decided in the meeting that a four-member high level committee, chaired by CMD of BHEL, will explore and recommend measures for ensuring sufficient work orders for Mannavaram project, including through diversification of manufacturing activities," Goyal said.
He also said necessary action would also be taken to do away with the condition that makes it mandatory for NBPPL to take prior approval of BHEL to participate in competitive bidding.
Explaining the reasons for lesser than expected performance of Mannavaram project, Goyal said this project was "poorly conceived" and initiated in 2010 without adequate homework and assessment of business environment which led to deferment of Rs 4,800 crore investment in second phase within six months by the then government.
Meanwhile, Naidu said that Coal Ministry has agreed to provide domestic coal linkage from Coal India Limited to the 4,000 MW Pudimadaka Power Project, so as to make available power supply to the people at lower cost.
Goyal also told Naidu that tenders will be opened tomorrow for commissioning of another 125 MW of solar power generation at the 1,000 MW Kadiri Solar Photo Voltaic Power Generation Park in Ananthapuram district.
250 MW of solar power is already being generated here and for the remaining 625 MW, tenders will soon be called, he said.
Naidu also said the New and Renewable Energy Ministry will soon decide in consultation with the Andhra Pradesh government whether the National Renewable University at Ananthapur is to be set up under central law or state law and will take necessary action in this regard.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Marathi film industry body today backed calls for ban on Pakistani film artistes working in India and opposed release of films featuring them.
In a statement here, the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal said it opposed release of films featuring Pakistani artistes till relation between the two countries improved.
"If such films are released, there would be tension during the festive season and people would not be able to properly celebrate Diwali," said the Mahamandal, which is affiliated to the Film Federation of India.
The organisation said it supports the ban on Pakistani artistes and technicians imposed by the Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association and Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India, which has said it will not screen films featuring actors from the neighbouring country.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
British Prime Minister Theresa May today indicated in Parliament that during her India visit next month she would be encouraging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in the UK.
Conservative Party MP Hugo Swire asked her during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons if the topic would figure during her first visit to India as British Prime Minister between November 6 and 8.
"When she goes to India next month, will she commit to persuade Prime Minister Modi to attend the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in the UK," Swire asked, in reference to the "increasing relevance" of the Commonwealth for trade given Britain's impending exit from the European Union (EU).
In response, May said, "I am happy to encourage all leaders to attend CHOGM when it takes place here in the United Kingdom...We are indeed looking at the possibility of trade deals in relation to the Commonwealth."
"I applaud that first-ever meeting of Commonwealth Trade Ministers (2017), which is an important step as we look to forge a new global role in the world, ensuring that we make a success of leaving the EU and trading our way around the world," she said.
May will arrive in New Delhi on November 6 to inaugurate the India-UK TECH Summit along with Modi.
The two leaders are expected to hold bilateral talks over a working lunch on November 7 before the British Premier heads to a second Indian city, likely to be Bengaluru, on November 8 as part of her three-day visit.
May will be accompanied by UK international trade secretary Liam Fox, who will be attending the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO).
The UK delegation will also include representatives of small and medium businesses from regions across the UK and a number of commercial deals are expected to be signed during the visit.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Scientists, including one of Indian origin, have found that people who suffer from migraines harbour significantly more microbes in their mouths which have with the ability to modify nitrates.
"There is this idea out there that certain foods trigger migraines - chocolate, wine and especially foods containing nitrates," said Antonio Gonzalez, from University of California, San Diego in the US.
"We thought that perhaps there are connections between what people are eating, their microbiomes and their experiences with migraines," said Gonzalez.
Nitrates, found in foods such as processed meats and green leafy vegetables and in certain medicines, can be reduced to nitrites by bacteria found in the mouth.
When circulating in the blood, these nitrites can then be converted to nitric oxide under certain conditions.
Nitric oxide can aid cardiovascular health by improving blood flow and reducing blood pressure.
However, roughly four in five cardiac patients who take nitrate-containing drugs for chest pain or congestive heart failure report severe headaches as a side effect.
Using publicly available data from the American Gut Project, a crowdfunded citizen science effort managed by Gonzalez and colleagues sequenced bacteria found in 172 oral samples and 1,996 fecal samples from healthy participants.
The participants had previously filled out surveys indicating whether they suffered from migraines.
The bacterial gene sequencing found that bacterial species were found in different abundances between people who get migraines (migraineurs) and non-migraineurs.
In terms of bacterial community composition, the team did not find huge differences in either fecal or oral samples from migraineurs compared to non-migraineurs.
Researchers, including Naseer Sangwan from the University of Chicago, then used a bioinformatic tool to analyse which genes were likely to be present in the two different sets of samples, given the bacterial species present.
In fecal samples, they found a slight but statistically significant increase in the abundance of genes that encode nitrate, nitrite and nitric oxide-related enzymes in migraineurs.
In oral samples, these genes were significantly more abundant in migraineurs.
The study was published in the journal mSystems.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two auto-rickshaws, one of them belonging to a local Hindu Munnani functionary, went up in flames, in this tourist town, police said today.
North town Secretary of Hindu Munnani and owner of one of the auto-rickshaws, Nagaraj had lodged a complaint that the vehicle parked near his house, was destroyed in fire, they said.
The incident came to light when some passers-by noticed the auto-rickshaw burning, around 4 AM today and alerted Nagaraj, who rushed to the spot, they said.
While Nagaraj's vehicle was completely gutted in the fire, another auto-rickshaw parked nearby was burnt partially, triggering tension in the area, police said.
A huge posse of police personnel has been posted in the area, which is communally sensitive, to prevent any untoward incidents, they said adding investigations are on.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rejecting filmmaker Karan Johar's statement that he will not "engage with talent" from Pakistan in future, the MNS today protested outside a cinema hall here while asserting that it will not allow "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" to be screened in single theatres and multiplexes.
Four MNS film wing workers were later detained by police after they protested outside the Metro cinema hall in South Mumbai, asking the management not to hold any show of movie "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" which features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
"The MNS activists were raising slogans outside the Metro theatre for some time. The police asked them to carry it out peacefully but they were not in a mood to listen to us. We have detained four MNS workers so far," a police officer from Azad Maidan police station said.
Seeking to assuage tempers over opposition to the release of his directorial venture, Johar had yesterday made a fervent appeal against stalling the release, saying he will not engage with talent from Pakistan.
However, the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) today said reality has dawned late on Johar.
MNS cine wing head Amey Khopkar, after a meeting with senior party leaders and Raj Thackeray, told PTI that they were firm on opposing the release.
"We will not allow the film to be screened in single screens and multiplexes. Reality has dawned late on the producer," Khopkar said.
The MNS protested outside Metro cinema he said, adding that such protests will be held at all cinema halls.
The MNS and some other political parties have opposed release of films with actors from Pakistan after the Uri terror attack, putting a question mark on the fate of Johar's movie, slated for a pre-Diwali release on October 28.
The Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India too decided not to screen films with Pakistani actors in four states -- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa.
Johar's film starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is facing trouble for Pakistani actor Fawad Khan's extended cameo.
A team from Johar's Dharma Productions along with filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt and Vijay Singh of Fox Star Studios had yesterday met Mumbai's top police officials and sought protection for the theatres to screen the film.
Assuring all help from their end, Deputy Commissioner of Police Ashok Dudhe had said, "Mumbai police will provide adequate protection to cinema theatres as and when required.
Party's cine wing executive president Shalini
Thackeray today said Karan Johar's video has come very late.
"... And after seeing it, I find he is acting and not appealing from his heart. He should have listened to our demands at the first time. We have intensified the agitation and now it cannot be withdrawn easily," she said.
Meanwhile, Mumbai Congress unit president Sanjay Nirupam pointed out the handling of law and order over the threats by MNS.
"I am against Pakistani artistes in Indian films. But it is upto the government to take a decision on release of a film which has been shot with artistes from the neighbouring country...," he told
How Are Police Using Facial Recognition Software? And Is It Accurate?
Law enforcement is always looking for better tools for analyzing criminal evidence in the hopes of achieving more accurate convictions. And, as technology advances, there are more tools at the police's disposal. One of the newest is facial recognition software and facial examination experts.
The new software has already been used to catch, and convict, alleged criminals. But how comprehensive is the technology, and how accurate are its results?
Federal Faces
In 2014, the FBI launched the billion-dollar Next Generation Identification system, claiming at the time to house 51 million photographs and would grow exponentially over the coming years. And the NGI system has already been credited with tracking down criminals, including an alleged pedophile who had been on the run for 19 years. (The city of Chicago also installed its own facial recognition technology, which it claims helped them nab a stickup artist.)
But considering the FBI has admitted to faulty forensic evidence testimony when it comes to hair and bite mark analysis, it's fair to question whether the new facial recognition technology is any more accurate.
Forensic, or Fake?
In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a blistering critique of forensic science in which it concluded that, outside of DNA analysis, no other forensic method could reliably and consistently "demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source." And a Virginia Law Review article from the same year showed how junk forensic science can lead to faulty convictions: "[I]n the bulk of these trials of innocent defendants -- 82 cases or 60 percent -- forensic analysts called by the prosecution provided invalid testimony at trial -- that is, testimony with conclusions misstating empirical data or wholly unsupported by empirical data."
And The Intercept last week related the story of Steve Talley, a Denver-area financial adviser who was twice arrested for bank robbery. Both times his arrest was based on facial recognition analysis. And both times police got the wrong man. Fortunately for Talley, he had other evidence --phone records and eyewitnesses -- to clear him of the charges. While it seems clear that judges, juries, prosecutors, and defense attorneys should approach facial recognition technology with the same skepticism of other failed forensic sciences, other defendants may not find themselves so lucky when faced with a similar analysis.
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The Immigration department has submitted to Home Ministry its report on the lapses on part of its officers in allowing controversial meat exporter Moin Qureshi to go out of the country despite ED's Look Out Circular (LOC) against him.
Qureshi, who has a money laundering case pending against him, had managed to leave for Dubai last weekend after showing a court order in an income tax case. The Delhi-based meat exporter was detained at the IGI airport here based on a LOC issued by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
The probe has suggested Home Ministry that the mistake by the immigration officials was "bonafide" and not "malafide", official sources said today.
The Home Ministry is reviewing the report and any action would be taken against the officials involved in the gaffe after its perusal, they said.
The report gives a blow-by-blow account of the incident and has documents submitted by Qureshi to the immigration authorities, the sources said.
Qureshi was detained at the airport on October 15, following which the Immigration department had informed the ED about it. He then presented a court order in which there was no restriction on his flying abroad. The immigration officer checked for the veracity of the order and allowed him to fly to Dubai.
When the ED team reached the airport to take the meat exporter into custody, they were informed that he had been allowed to fly on the basis of the court order.
Later, the immigration officer realised that the order was in connection with an Income Tax case and not in the ED matter, prompting the authorities to order an inquiry.
The ED had registered a case against Qureshi under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) last year. He is under the scanner of probe agencies for alleged tax evasion and hawala-like dealings.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BSP national general secretary Naseemuddin Siddiqui today cautioned the Muslims against SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav describing him as "more dangerous than Prime Minister Narendra Modi".
"Muslims, you all need to be wary of Mulayam Singh Yadav...He is more dangerous than Narendra Modi...During Modi's term as chief minister of Gujarat, 42 Muslims were killed in the Godhra riots, while 187 of them were killed in the Muzaffarnagar riots (in Uttar Pradesh) under the SP government," he said at the BSP's 'Bhaichara Committee' meeting here.
"Muslims, if you dislike Modi so much, why don't you dislike Mulayam?" Siddiqui asked, adding that the community had been voting for Mulayam for 25 years but what had he given to them in return.
"Mulayam remembers the minorities only at election times but after that, they are forgotten...All the parties, be it the Congress or the SP, have used Muslims as a vote-bank," alleged the BSP leader.
Siddiqui said riots did not take place "on their own" but were "instigated".
"Both the SP and the BJP instigate riots as part of a conspiracy for their political gains," he alleged.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Myanmar will come up with new investment guidelines to make business environment transparent for foreign companies, its top leader Aung Sung Suu Kyi today said and also evinced interest to cooperate with India in sectors such as infra, agriculture and skill development.
"Opportunities for cooperation must be mutually beneficial and must be a fair deal for both countries," industry body CII quoted the Myanmerese leader as saying at an event here.
According to the statement, Suu Kyi, who is State Counsellor and Union Minister for Foreign Affairs, Republic of the Union of Myanmar, further said Myanmar was in the process of notifying a new investment law which would accord the same treatment to foreign firms as was being given to domestic companies.
"With the enactment of the new law, Suu Kyi hoped there would be transparency in contracts and the rule of law would be enforced and corruption would be curbed. Issues such as repatriation of profit and also of capital have also been addressed in the new law," the statement said.
She said the Indian industry could cooperate with Myanmar in areas such as skill development, agriculture especially organic agriculture, agri-machinery and infrastructure development among others.
On this occasion, Secretary (ER) in Ministry of External Affairs Amar Sinha said that economic relations between the two countries needed focused attention.
Sinha noted that bilateral trade was well below par and measures needed to be taken to boost trade.
He further highlighted certain issues between the two countries which needed to be resolved including the need to modernise banking and finance channels in Myanmar, equal treatment in terms of tariffs and duties, tariff rationalisation in the automobile sector and clarity on Myanmar's energy policies.
The Secretary stated that on its part, India was working on completing the various connectivity projects that were underway which would link India's Northeast with Myanmar.
Suu Kyi is on her first visit to India after her National League for Democracy wrested power from the military junta in a landmark election earlier this year.
Suu Kyi, who could not become Myanmar's President due to a constitutional provision but has full control over the government, holds the position of State Councillor and Foreign Minister.
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A mysterious hybrid species, recorded by Ice Age cave artists in great detail more than 15,000 years ago and dubbed as the Higgs Bison due its elusive nature, was the ancestor of the modern European bison, scientists who analysed ancient DNA have discovered.
The mystery species originated over 120,000 years ago through the hybridisation of the extinct Aurochs (the ancestor of modern cattle) and the Ice Age Steppe Bison, which ranged across the cold grasslands from Europe to Mexico.
Research led by the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide showed that the mystery hybrid species eventually became the ancestor of the modern European bison, or wisent, which survives in protected reserves between Poland and Belarus.
"Finding that a hybridisation event led to a completely new species was a real surprise - as this isn't really meant to happen in mammals," said Alan Cooper, ACAD Director.
"The genetic signals from the ancient bison bones were very odd, but we weren't quite sure a species really existed - so we referred to it as the Higgs Bison," said Cooper.
The team, including researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), studied ancient DNA extracted from radiocarbon-dated bones and teeth found in caves across Europe, the Urals, and the Caucasus to trace the genetic history of the populations.
They found a distinctive genetic signal from many fossil bison bones, which was quite different from the European bison or any other known species.
Radiocarbon dating showed that the mystery species dominated the European record for thousands of years at several points, but alternated over time with the Steppe bison, which had previously been considered the only bison species present in Late Ice Age Europe.
"The dated bones revealed that our new species and the Steppe Bison swapped dominance in Europe several times, in concert with major environmental changes caused by climate change," said Julien Soubrier from the University of Adelaide.
"French cave researchers told us that there were indeed two distinct forms of bison art in Ice Age caves, and it turns out their ages match those of the different species," said Soubrier.
The cave paintings depict bison with either long horns and large forequarters (more like the American bison, which is descended from the Steppe bison) or with shorter horns and small humps, more similar to modern European bison.
"Once formed, the new hybrid species seems to have successfully carved out a niche on the landscape, and kept to itself genetically," said Cooper.
"It dominated during colder tundra-like periods, without warm summers, and was the largest European species to survive the megafaunal extinctions," he said.
"The modern European bison looks genetically quite different as it went through a genetic bottleneck of only 12 individuals in the 1920s, when it almost became extinct," Cooper said.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
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Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today condemned the attack on his colleague Babul Supriyo in West Bengal and asked the state government to take immediate action against the guilty.
Stressing that political differences would always be there, he called for tolerance among the political parties and respect for each other.
"I strongly condemn the attack on my colleague Babul Supriyo. The state government has to take immediate action against the people responsible for it.
"Political differences will always be there. There has to be tolerance among political parties. We must respect each other," he said on the sidelines of an event here.
Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Supriyo was today attacked with bricks allegedly by Trinamool Congress activists in Asansol when he was on way to a police station to stage a protest against the arrest of some BJP workers.
On the issue of triple talaq, Naidu said many Muslim countries have banned the practice, while it continues in India because of the self-interest of some political parties.
"There is no question of forcing anything on anybody...Any religion on anybody. This government does not interfere in religious affairs of anyone at all. When we talk of triple talaq, our aim is justice and equality for women, he said.
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Rajya Sabha MP Parimal Nathwani has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to name the Vadodara airport after late visionary king Sir Sayajirao Gaekwad III, who ruled the erstwhile princely state of Baroda from 1875 to 1939.
The Prime Minister is set to inaugurate the new international airport terminal building here on October 22.
In a letter to Modi, Nathwani, an independent MP from Jharkhand has written, "I request you to name the Vadodara airport after the noble and popular ruler of erstwhile princely Gaekwadi state of Baroda - Sir Sayajirao Gaekwad III."
"Over the years, NGOs, business organisations, educationists, artists and others have been raising this demand to name the airport after Gaekwad," Nathwani said.
"Gaekwad played a key role in development of Baroda's textile industry, and his educational and social reforms included among others, ban on child marriage, legislation of divorce, removal of untouchability, spread of education, development of Sanskrit," he added.
Nathwani also said that late BR Ambedkar in a letter written had thanked Gaekwad for making him (Ambedkar) what he was.
As per Nathwani, "It (naming of airport after Gaekwad) will inspire the youth to undertake philanthropic work and give them an opportunity of learning lessons on effective leadership".
Recently, Union Minister of State for Social Justice Ramdas Athawale had also demanded rechristening of the Vadodara airport after Gaekwad.
Shubangini Devi Raje Gaekwad, a member of the Royal family and Chancellor of Mahararaj Sayajirao University of Baroda has also penned a latter to Modi, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar requesting them to name the airport after Gaekwad.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A premier national cancer institute under the ICMR and All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA) have joined hands to set up a 'Center of Integrative Oncology' for collaborating in areas of cancer prevention, research and care.
An MoU in this regard was signed by the National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research (NICPR), Noida and AIIA, an autonomous institute under the Ministry of AYUSH in the presence of Soumya Swaminathan, Secretary, Department of Health Research, Union Health Ministry & Director General, Indian Council for Medical Research and other top officials.
"The association will allow validation of claims made in the Ayurveda and other domains of Ayush, both at laboratory and clinical levels, as to the efficacy of this traditional school of medicine," Swaminathan said.
The ICMR Director General also said the main aim of this tie-up should be to reduce the incidence of cancer, for which preventive aspects with the strengths of AYUSH systems should be explored.
"The collaborative research should aim at developing traditional medicine as adjuvant therapy to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy.
Adjuvant therapy for cancer usually refers to surgery followed by chemotherapy or radiotherapy to help decrease the risk of the cancer recurring.
She also emphasised on collaborative studies, both short-term and long-term, involving institutions of repute at national and international levels.
Secretary, Ministry of AYUSH, Ajit M Sharan assured that funding would not be a constraint in carrying out the activities under the MoU.
He also outlined the major action points of the ministry, saying, "10 new research fellowships would be awarded every year. The process for the first batch will be completed by March, 2017."
"Minimum of five collaborative research projects will be supported in the financial year 2016-2017. The Ayush Ministry would also develop few centres of excellence for cancer research and has identified the AIIA and the Rajaram Deo Anadilal Poddar Ayurveda Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai, a unit of Centre Council for Research in Ayurveda Sciences (CCRAS). This would be done by March, 2017," he said.
A steering committee and scientific advisory committee would be jointly constituted by the Ministry of AYUSH and the Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare by December, he said.
International conferences would also be organised annually, he added.
The centre is an outcome of the deliberations held in Indo-US Workshop (in March) and, the MoU would pave the way to carry forward the ongoing bilateral dialogue and facilitate collaboration with National Cancer Institute in the US, officials said.
A portal on 'Network for AYUSH Cancer Care (NFACC)' developed by the AIIA was also launched.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi government today informed the Delhi High Court that no coercive action would be taken against street vendors in the national capital during the ongoing festive season of Diwali.
The AAP government told a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal that after deliberations, the authorities concerned have decided not to take action against street vendors as of now and this has also been communicated to the office of the Lieutenant Governor (LG).
The bench then asked, "Who will be a genuine street vendor? Who will identify that a street vendor is genuine or not?"
Responding to this, the government and civic bodies said "it is a stop-gap arrangement only for Diwali festive season".
The bench said it would not take on record the copy of decision taken by the authorities concerned, which was placed before it, as it might further complicate the issue.
"If you (authorities) want, you can take action. We will not say anything. We will not take it (copy of decision) on record as it might complicate the matter," the bench said and fixed the matter for hearing on November 7.
The bench was hearing pleas of Congress leader Ajay Maken and two NGOs alleging that municipal bodies of central and south Delhi were "throwing out" street vendors from hawking zones, despite a high court order protecting them from such action.
During today's hearing, the counsel appearing for the applicants told the bench that despite the high court order, the authorities were removing the street vendors.
The bench, however, said, "we cannot go on reviewing our order. We have passed a detailed order. You wait till November 7. We will hear the matter along with the main matter".
Maken and the NGOs, in their applications, have said the high court on October 5 had ruled that its September 9 order that no street vendor should be evicted from the city roads without due process of law, shall not be applicable on non- hawking zones.
They had contended that under the garb of this order, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) have started throwing out people even from hawking zones like Rajiv Chowk, Indira Chowk and Lajpat Nagar.
The applicants have sought that NDMC and other municipal corporations be restrained from taking any coercive action against street vendors in any area which has not been declared as a 'no-vending zone' under the earlier scheme.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Goa's plush Kingfisher Villa, where Vijay Mallya has hosted several glitzy parties in the past, failed to attract a single bidder at an e-auction today -- marking yet another failed attempt by lenders to recover dues from the embattled businessman.
While repeated attempts have been made without any success for sale of several other assets kept as collaterals by erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines of the Mallya-led UB Group, the famed Villa was put under hammer for the first time.
However, the auction turned out to be a damp squib, supposedly due to its high reserve price at Rs 85.3 crore, sources said.
The 12,350 sq mt Villa was once used by Mallya to host lavish parties in his 'good times'.
"None of the bidders came forward, so the auction of Kingfisher Villa failed. Higher reserve price could be the reason," a source said.
The sea-facing palatial villa, situated in Candolim, Goa had earlier attracted interest from at least half a dozen players in the hospitality industry and a media group, when it was opened for inspection to interested bidders during the end of September and early October.
The 17-lender consortium led by State Bank of India took physical possession of the property in May after a long legal battle with United Spirits over tenancy rights.
The Villa was owned by United Breweries Holdings and mortgaged by Kingfisher Airlines to the consortium of banks to obtain loans in 2010.
The Villa is among many movable and immovable properties under lenders' possession, which they are trying to auction as a part to recover Rs 9,000 crore from Mallya.
In August this year, lenders to the now-defunct airlines and tax authorities had put under hammer various movable and immovable assets of the KFA for a second time, but failed to get any buyers.
The assets which were put on sale included the airline's erstwhile headquarters, Kingfisher House, near Mumbai airport, cars, Mallya's plush personal jet and numerous brands and trademarks, including the famed 'Fly with Good Times'.
Most of these assets were put on auction for a second time, and with a lower reserve price.
Lenders had reduced the reserve price of Kingfisher House, which has a built-up area of over 17,000 sq ft and is located in the prime suburb of Vile Parle, to Rs 135 crore from Rs 150 crore.
Similarly, the reserve price of the airline's trademarks, including Kingfisher logo and the tagline 'Fly the Good Times', for the last month's auction was reduced to Rs 330.33 crore from Rs 366.70 crore.
All auctions had failed as bidders found the reserve prices too high.
The grandeur of the Kingfisher Villa finds mention in the autobiography of flamboyant West Indies batsman Chris Gayle. Gayle, after joining Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), which was earlier owned by Mallya but is now with Diageo, got an opportunity to stay in the Villa where he had spent five days as "the king of the villa".
Mallya owes over Rs 9,000 crore to lenders like SBI, PNB, IDBI Bank, BoB, Allahabad Bank, Federal Bank and Axis Bank, among others.
He had left the country in March and is currently said to be in Britain, having defied several court orders to return to India.
In a bid to cope with festive rush, Railways have said there will be no sale of platform tickets from October 27 to November 5 at major stations in Delhi Division, including New Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin.
According to Northern Railway, there will be no sale of platform tickets at major stations including Old Delhi, New Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Sarai Rohilla and Anand Vihar terminals from October 27 to Novemeber 5 this year due to Diwali and Chhat festival rush.
However, persons coming to stations to assist the aged and lady passengers who are not in a position to fend for themselves at the railway station will be exempted from such restriction, a Northern Railway official said.
Northern Railway has pressed many special trains to clear the festival rush.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Software Engineers Over 40 Can Join Age Discrimination Suit Against Google
Last week, a federal judge in Northern California granted the motion to conditionally certify the class action case against Google for allegedly committing age discrimination against applicants. The lawsuit claims that programmers over the age of 40 were discriminated against in the application process at Google.
The judge's ruling means that the lawsuit can proceed to the next stage in the class action process of sending out notifications to potential class members. Google will likely be required to provide the contact information for anyone that fits within the case's definition for class members.
What's Being Alleged?
The plaintiff in the case against Google claims that Google actively avoids hiring programmers over the age of 40. The plaintiff explains that she was required by Google to put her school graduation years on her resume so that the interviewer would be able to know her age. Additionally, it is alleged that the average age of programmers at Google is 29, compared to an average of 42 around the country.
The plaintiff was also able to find several others to declare under penalty of perjury that they experienced a similar situation of being asked for information for the purpose of identifying their age, and not being selected after the disclosure.
The court found laughable and unconvincing Google's argument that they could not have committed discrimination because they have a clear anti-discrimination policy.
What's Conditional Class Certification?
A class action or collective action is when a person or group brings a lawsuit against one entity, or party, on behalf of themselves as well as others who are similarly situated. Typically, courts allow these types of cases because they are efficient, cost effective mechanisms to provide legal remedies when many people have been affected.
When a court grants class certification, the court is saying that the plaintiffs have enough evidence to convince the court that there are numerous individuals entitled to relief, that those individuals are properly defined/definable in the case, that it serves the court's goal of efficiency, and the case has a certain threshold level of merit.
In some class actions, a court will grant conditional class certification at an early stage in order to be able to identify the number of potential class members. When a Conditional Class Certification is granted, the plaintiffs, as in the Google case, will be allowed to request contact information for and contact other potential class members.
Circuits Split on the Law
Last week, a ruling in an Eleventh Circuit basically stated that this exact type of case, an applicant's age discrimination suit alleging disparate impact could not proceed because the ADEA does not protect applicants from disparate impact, only intentional discrimination. The court did distinguish however that employees can make ADEA disparate impact claims, only applicants cannot.
While the case against Google may turn out to have some underpinnings of intentional age discrimination, the bigger class action component would more than likely still be a treated as disparate impact claim. While the Eleventh Circuit based its decision on a close reading of the law, their decision is not precedential on the Ninth Circuit courts where the Google case is pending.
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The Deputy Commissioner of East Singhbhum district, Amit Kumar today directed the concerned administrative and police officials that no slackness will be tolerated in dealing with law and order situation.
The directive was issued after Kumar convened an emergent meeting of the officials in the district headquarter here.
Earlier, while addressing a 'Jan Samvad' in connection with deteriorating law and order particularly spurt in criminal activities in Mango, Azadnagar, Olidih and MGM police station areas under his assembly segment (Jamshedpur West) on Tuesday, Jharkhand Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affair Minister Saryu Roy threatened to resign if immediate action was not taken to rein in criminals.
No slackness in maintaining law and order will be tolerated, the DC said while asking the officials to identify government lands under Mango, Jugsalai and Jamshedpur Notified Area Committees and put up a board following a videography.
Expressing dissatisfaction over the action taken by the Excise department to check sale of illegal liquor, Kumar reprimanded the Assistant Commissioner of the department and asked him to ensure that not a single drop of illegal liquor be sold in the distirct.
The DC assured to provide adequate manpower, if needed, including magistrates and police force to conduct massive raid by forming team and report to him.
Kumar reiterated that the excise and police department should not fulfill formalities by arresting small fishes in the trade but catch the big one indulged in selling illegal liquor in an organized manner.
Strict action will be taken against erring officials if found adopting partial or negligent approach in this regard, he said.
The DC also asked the Senior Superintendent of Police as well as Superintendent of Police (city) to gather adequate intelligence about the criminal gangs involved in gang war and crush them to ensure peace and tranquility.
Besides, identify the criminals disturbing the prevailing law and order and recommend to bar their entry into the distirct, he said while asking to intensify patrolling to put rein on illegal lotteries, gambling etc.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Norway has evinced interest to collaborate with West Bengal in the fisheries sector in the near future, a state government official today said.
"Norway has expressed an interest in collaborating with the state on technical knowledge in fishery and investment in this sector," state fischery secretary P K Mishra said on the sidelines of an interactive session with Norweigian Ambassador to India Nils Ragnar Kamsvag at ICC.
The ambassador said Norway was keen on investment opportunities in this sector in India.
The Scandinavian country is a big exporter of Salmon to various countries, including India.
Another area of collaboration could be LNG terminals where Norway has in-depth knowledge.
Kolkata Port Trust has shown interest in attracting Norwegian companies in setting up LNG terminals here.
Norway is one of the big investors in India with its sovereign wealth fund, which is the biggest in the world with total investment of USD 13-14 billion.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Only three of Odisha's 568 hospitals have fire safety clearance, the National Human Rights Commission said today and issued a notice to the state government over the fire incident at a hospital in Bhubaneswar which has left 21 people dead so far.
The Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports that at least 21 persons died and more than 100 others were injured in the blaze that broke out at the SUM Hospital and Medical College on Monday evening.
"In Odisha, out of 568 hospitals, only three have clearance of the department of fire safety," the NHRC said in a statement today.
The Commission has issued the notice to the Odisha government's Chief Secretary and sought a report in the matter within six weeks, including on the relief and rehabilitation efforts for the next of kin of the deceased and the injured, an NHRC official said.
"He has also been asked to inform about the steps or precautions taken or proposed to be taken by the state government to prevent recurrence of such mishaps," the official said.
The Commission has observed that "callous attitude" and "lapses of the authorities", if any, amount to violation of right to life of the patients, and expressed shock as to how the state authorities "allowed" such a large number of hospitals to function without proper fire safety clearance.
The NHRC has also observed that reportedly the hospital in question was warned as early as in 2013 for not having adequate safety measures but the hospital authorities "ignored" it.
The Director General of Fire Service in Odisha Binay had Behera yesterday submitted a report to the state government on the fire that reportedly started in the Operation Theatre of the Dialysis Ward and spread to ICU and nearby wards.
Behera has mentioned in the report that fire safety norms as per the 2013 guidelines were not followed by the hospital authorities, a government official said.
"40 patients in a critical condition were admitted to different hospitals," the statement said.
Detecting serious lapses in safety measures, Union Health Minister J P Nadda, who inspected the fire-ravaged hospital, today said all those responsible for the incident should be punished.
The state government has ordered a high-level probe by the Director, Medical Education and Training, into the incident.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the last 13 years only two Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have come up in Madhya Pradesh, according to an RTI query.
"Since 2003, 10 SEZs had been notified in MP. But only a Multi Product SEZ at Dhar district's Pithampur Industrial area and Crystal IT Park having the status of IT SEZ in Indore have become operational," Chandrashekhar Gaud, an activist based in Neemuch told PTI citing information given to his RTI query.
The two SEZs have been developed by Indore Audyogik Kendra Vikas Nigam, he said.
"A mining product-based SEZ and an agriculture produce based SEZ to be developed in Jabalpur by Jabalpur Audyogik Kendra Vikas Nigam have been denotified," the RTI reply said.
Aluminium products based SEZ to be developed by Hindalco Industries in Singrauli district and an IT SEZ that was to be developed by Parshwanath Developers in Indore have also been denotified, it added.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Impetus are developing their SEZs, which were notified in 2013, at different locations in Indore.
The central government's levy of Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT) and Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) on SEZ have come as a deterrent to SEZ expansion in MP and India, sources said.
Pithampur Audyogik Sangathan head Gautam Kothari said they had urged the previous UPA government to roll back MAT and DDT on SEZ. He added that the NDA government was yet to take decision in this regard.
"The industrialists are shying away to make investment in the SEZs due to burden of MAT and DDT," Kothari said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid Indo-Pak tension, Pakistan's media regulatory authority today decided to enforce a complete ban on Indian TV and radio contents from Friday and warned that the licences of those found guilty of violating the ban will be suspended.
Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) decided to ban airing of Indian content from October 21 at the request of the federal government, it said.
"The ban will come into effect at 3 PM on October 21, and radio and television stations which violate the ban will have their licences suspended without a prior show cause notice," PEMRA said in a statement.
The ban extends to all Indian content on cable and radio being aired in .
The authority also decided to cancel one-sided rights given to Indian media by the government of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf in 2006.
PEMRA has already decided to get tough with Indian contents after complaints that most of the local channels were using more than five per cent foreign contents as allowed by it.
The regulator on August 31 said that strict action would be taken against the channels airing foreign content more than the prescribed limit and traders selling illegal DTH sets.
The decision was implemented from October 16 as PEMRA launched crackdown on those channels using foreign contents illegally.
Earlier in October, PEMRA granted its chairman Absar Alam final authority to revoke or suspend licences of companies illegally using Indian content.
Tensions have ran high between India and since the terror attack on an Indian army base in Uri on September 18.
Later, India said it carried out "surgical strikes" across LoC and destroyed terrorist launchpads on September 28.
Pakistan has denied any surgical strikes took place, but said two of their soldiers were killed in cross-border firing by Indian Army.
A Palestinian woman approached Israeli border police with a knife in the northern West Bank today and was shot dead by officers, police said.
A police statement said the 19-year-old approached officers at the Tapuah junction, ignored orders to stop and pulled a knife.
"At this point the officers shot her," police said, adding that she was killed.
Police identified her as a resident of Asira Al-Shimaliya, a village north of Nablus, which is located near the Tapuah junction.
Also known as Zaatara junction, it has been the site of a number of violent incidents.
The Palestinian health ministry said "a woman was killed after being shot by the occupation forces at Zaatara checkpoint."
The incident comes as Jews celebrate Sukkot, a week-long holiday that has led to tensions with the Palestinians in the past.
Violence since October 2015 has killed 234 Palestinians, 36 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese national, according to an AFP count.
Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out attacks, according to Israeli authorities.
Others were shot dead during protests or clashes, while some were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For the first time after the Tamil Nadu Governor re-allocated the portfolios of ailing Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, state Finance Minister O Panneerselvam today presided over a meeting of the state cabinet to discuss, among other matters, the vexed Cauvery issue.
Although the government did not release details of the agenda of the meeting, the Cabinet is understood to have deliberated on the ongoing Cauvery water sharing dispute with Karnataka, besides other subjects.
The meeting also comes ahead of the scheduled onset of north-east monsoon later this month. The rains in December last year had wreaked havoc, flooding Chennai and nearby districts.
Last week, Tamil Nadu Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao had allotted the portfolios including Home held by to Panneerselvam, till the time she returned to resume official duties.
The government released photographs of today's cabinet meeting, where Panneerselvam was seen seated with a picture of placed on his desk.
The nearly hour-long meeting was held in the backdrop of the ongoing Cauvery water sharing row with Karnataka and demands by Opposition parties for an all-party meeting on the issue.
Farmers' bodies and political parties had staged a two-day state-wide rail blockade ending Tuesday, urging the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board.
The Raj Bhavan had last week in a release, said Paneerselvam, who holds the Administrative Reforms portfolio, in addition to Finance, "will also preside over cabinet meetings."
The last Cabinet meeting held by was in July this year to discuss the state budget.
68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to the Apollo hospital on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration.
A specialist from London besides three-member team of doctors from AIIMS, Delhi, had also examined Jayalalithaa, who is being treated for infection with respiratory support.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With a picture of Jayalalithaa placed on his desk, Tamil Nadu Finance Minister O Panneerselvam today presided over a meeting of the state cabinet for the first time after the Governor re-allocated the portfolios of the ailing Chief Minister to him.
Although the government did not release details of the agenda of the meeting, the Cabinet is understood to have deliberated on the ongoing Cauvery water sharing dispute with Karnataka, besides other subjects.
The government, however, released photographs of the meeting, where Panneerselvam was seen seated with the picture of Jayalalithaa placed on his desk.
The meeting also comes ahead of the scheduled onset of north-east monsoon later this month. The rains in December last year had wreaked havoc, flooding Chennai and nearby districts.
Last week, Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao had allotted the portfolios including Home held by Jayalalithaa to Panneerselvam, till the time she returned to resume official duties.
The nearly hour-long meeting was held in the backdrop of the ongoing Cauvery water sharing row with Karnataka and demands by Opposition parties for an all-party meet on the issue.
Farmers' bodies and political parties had staged a two-day state-wide rail blockade ending Tuesday, urging the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board.
The Raj Bhavan had last week in a release, said Paneerselvam, who holds the Administrative Reforms portfolio, in addition to Finance, "will also preside over cabinet meetings."
The last Cabinet meeting held by Jayalalithaa was in July to discuss the state budget.
68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to the Apollo hospital on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration.
A specialist from London besides three-member team of doctors from AIIMS, Delhi, had also examined Jayalalithaa, who is being treated for infection with respiratory support.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Philippine police van rammed into protesters, leaving several bloodied, as an anti-US rally turned violent today at the American embassy in Manila.
At least three student activists had to be taken to a hospital after they were run over by the van driven by a police officer, protest leader Renato Reyes said.
AP Television footage showed the van repeatedly ramming the protesters as it drove wildly back and forth after protesters had surrounded and started hitting the van with wooden batons they had seized from the police.
Police later arrested 23 protesters, who broke into a line of riot police and hurled red paint at the policemen and a US government seal at the seaside embassy.
"There was absolutely no justification for it," Reyes said of the violent police dispersal of about 1,000 protesters. "Even as the president vowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the US."
The violence happened as the protesters gathered to demand an end to the presence of US troops in the country and to support a call by President Rodrigo Duterte for a foreign policy not dependent on the US, the country's longtime treaty ally.
Duterte was on a state visit to China, where he is seeking to repair relations strained under his predecessor over territorial conflicts in the South China Sea. Duterte is also seeking to expand two-way trade and investments and seek financing for badly needed infrastructure projects.
Amid an uneasy relationship with the US, Duterte has tried to reach out to China and Russia, bringing uncertainty to his country's long alliance with America.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said it was "time to say goodbye" to the US during a visit to China today, as the combative leader reconfigures his country's diplomatic alliances.
Duterte is in China for a four-day trip that is expected to confirm his tilt away from Washington and towards Beijing's sphere of influence.
During a speech addressing the Filipino community in Beijing, the firebrand president said the Philippines had gained little from its long alliance with the US, its former colonial ruler.
"Your stay in my country was for your own benefit. So time to say goodbye, my friend," he said, as if addressing the US.
"I will not go to America anymore. I will just be insulted there," he added, before once again referring to US President Barack Obama as a "son of a whore".
Duterte, who took office in late June, said he was fed up with the Philippines' foreign policy being dictated by a Western agenda.
"What kept us from China was not our own making. I will charter a new course," he said.
Foreign policy under Duterte has dramatically shifted from that pursued under predecessor Benigno Aquino, who took Beijing to an international tribunal over its extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea and won a resounding victory.
The move infuriated Beijing. But Duterte, who took office in June shortly before the tribunal ruling, has made a point of not flaunting the outcome.
He has also suspended joint US-Philippine patrols in the South China Sea, and has threatened an end to joint military exercises.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Real Online Reviews, Real Lawsuits, Fake Defendants?
Are businesses (or their reputation management companies) suing fake defendants in order to get rid of negative online reviews? That's the argument made by Eugene Volokh and Public Citizen's Paul Alan Levy recently in the Volokh Conspiracy.
The duo looked at 25 court cases that followed a suspiciously similar pattern. First, a self-represented company, often with ties to a reputation management firm, sues a defendant for a defamatory online review. Then, the defendants agree to an injunction which quickly results in a court order to take down the allegedly offending content. Suddenly: poof, no more bad review. But when someone tries to find track down those defendants, they're no where to be found. Indeed, they might not even exist.
The Case of the Missing Defendant
Why conjure up a fake defendant and bogus litigation, you might ask? The answer, as Volokh and Levy explain, is fairly straightforward:
[Google and other internet platforms] won't take down material (or, in Google's case, remove it from Google indexes) just because someone says it's defamatory. Understandable - why would these companies want to adjudicate such factual disputes? But if they see a court order that declares that some material is defamatory, they tend to take down or deindex the material, relying on the court's decision.
Volokh and Levy detail a host of bizarre lawsuits that seem to follow nearly the same pattern. Here's a representative example. A Georgia man named Matthew Chan complains about his dentist on Yelp and other sites. Several months later, Yelp pulls the review, due to a court order. A Matthew Chan had been sued, but not the Georgia Chan. Instead, this Matthew Chan was in Baltimore -- a person who, according to Volokh and Levy, doesn't seem to exist.
In another case, a debt relief company sues to remove a series of blog posts on abusive practices written by Steve Rhodes. But they don't sue Rhodes, who is based out of North Carolina. Instead, one lawsuit goes after Deborah Garcia of Rhode Island, another unlocatable defendant. Garcia stipulates to a libel judgment and Google is soon sent a court order resulting in Rhodes' posts being yanked from Google's search results.
To make matters worse, the ostensible plaintiff's in both Chan's and Rhodes's case claim that their signatures on the complaint were forged and that they never authorized the lawsuits.
That's One Way to Manage Your Reputation ...
So what's going on here? The common thread in many of the cases, according to Volokh and Levy, seems to be a reputation management company headed by Richart Ruddie, which advertises a "lawsuit removal service" to get rid of "slanderous material" on the internet.
Ruddie declined to comment on Volokh and Levy's investigation.
But, if Ruddie is drumming up bogus suits to get negative content ripped from the web, he wouldn't be the first. The website Pissed Consumer reported earlier this year that online reputation management companies in California were allegedly using "suspicious plaintiffs" (read: fake) to file defamation suits for the benefit of third party companies.
Some web platforms, for their part, are fighting back against the sort of schemes Volokh and Levy detail. Yelp will go before the California Supreme Court soon, to challenge a default judgment against a negative reviewer and a resultant court order telling Yelp to remove the post. (There don't seem to be allegations that the absentee defendant in that case is not real, though the Los Angeles Times notes that service was delivered to an address where she no longer lived.) Yelp argues that the orders violate the company's First Amendment and Due Process rights, though it has been unsuccessful in the lower courts so far.
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The Gujarat High Court today asked the state government to furnish details of the contractual appointment of two retired police officers who are accused in Ishrat Jahan and other alleged fake encounter cases after a PIL challenged their appointment.
A division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi asked government pleader Manisha Luvkumar to seek instructions from the government over the appointments of N K Amin and Tarun Barot, both accused in encounter cases, for a tenure of one year on contractual basis after their retirement.
The court, while hearing the PIL filed by retired IPS officer Rahul Sharma, rejected the petitioner's request to grant interim stay against their appointments, and kept the matter for further hearing on November 16.
Sharma said in his petition that the two officers have "criminal antecedents, and their appointment to senior positions in the police force is not conducive to general public interest."
Amin was chargesheeted in two alleged fake encounter cases--one of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, Kauserbi, and Tulsi Prajapati, and the other of Ishrat Janah, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillay, Amjadali Akabarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar-- the petitioner said.
He was arrested in both the cases and served eight years in jail since August 2007, and was discharged in the first case, while the Ishrat Jahan case against him is still pending before the trial court, Sharma said.
After getting bail in August 2015, the state government posted him as SP Mahisagar, and after he superannuated on Aug 31, 2016, he was reappointed on contractual basis as SP of Mahisagar, "against the existing rules," Sharma said.
Barot, also an accused in two alleged fake encounter cases of Ishrat Jahan and Sadiq Jamal, was charge sheeted and arrested in both the cases and released on bail in June 2015, the petitioner said.
He superannuated in 2014 while still in jail, the petitioner said, but the government appointed him on October 13, 2016 as DSP Western Railway, vadodara, for a year on contractual terms.
"The aforesaid contractual appointments of retired police officers with criminal antecedents is not in the interest of a healthy police administration...They are against the provisions of the Gujarat Police Act as also contrary to the directions issued through various circulars of the government of Gujarat," the petitioner claimed.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a joint action Loni and Sahibabad police arrested two notorious criminals and jeweller from Kirawal nagar area of North-East Delhi and seized stolen gold and silver ornaments worth Rs 20 lakh, two country made pistols and four live cartridges from them.
Senior Superintendent of Police, Ghaziabad, Deepak Kumar Singh said acting on a tip-of teams of both the police stations conducted raid at a place near Lal Bagh trisection of Kirawal nagar area of North East Delhi and arrested the three persons.
Singh said the arrested trio have been identified as Ashoo, Faraz (both robbers) and Chetan Sehgal, a Karol Bagh resident and goldsmith who used to buy stolen gold from the duo.
Around 18 cases of loot, theft and arms act are registered against Ashoo and Faraz in Ghaziabad.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The biennial election for six seats in the Maharashtra Legislative Council from as many local bodies will be held on November 19.
The six candidates will be elected from the local governing bodies where the elected corporators of municipal corporations and councils will vote. The elected members will have a tenure of six years, stated an Election Commission (EC) release today.
Gurumukh Das Jagwani, currently representing the Jalgaon local authorities constituency, is the lone BJP face for these six seats.
Amarnath Rajurkar from Nanded, a close aide of Congress' state unit chief Ashok Chavan, is likely to get the party ticket again.
The remaining four seats are currently represented by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
While the Satara-cum-Sangli seat is represented by Prabhakar Gharge, Yavatmal is represented by Sandip Bajoriya, Pune by Anil Bhosale and Bhandara-cum-Gondia by Rajendra Jain.
The notification for the polls will be issued on October 26. The candidates will have to file their nomination papers by November 2 and the last date for withdrawal of nomination is November 5.
Counting of votes will be taken up on November 22.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Puducherry government-run engineering college will be upgraded into a technical university in the next couple of years, Higher Education Minister R Kamalakannan, today said.
Inaugurating a two-day international conference on 'Advances in computational intelligence in communication' at the Engineering college here, Kamalakannan said, the upgradation of the 31-year-old college would take place under the central scheme of RUSA (Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan).
The Centre would provide the funds required for the development of infrastructure and other amenities once the college is upgraded into a university, he said.
The Minister called upon the management of the college to put in strenuous efforts to ensure that the institution notched the top rank from the present 49th rankit occupied at the all India level.
The college principal P Dananjayanalso spoke on the occasion.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A big change in the health of families would be seen through the 'Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana' as it would save the beneficiary from inhaling smoke for an hour, equal to 400 cigarettes, while cooking at home on firewood, Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan said here today.
Quoting from a survey on domestic pollution, he said it was "unfortunate" that Jharkhand had so many of such kitchens, even though gas connections came to the country around 1955.
Addressing the gathering at the launch of the scheme by Chief Minister Raghubar Das, Pradhan lauded the chief minister for giving free gas connections with stoves and predicted that the state's fool-proof 'yojana' would enable 23 lakh poor families get LPG connections in the coming years.
He said the government was also mulling pipeline gas in the next three-four years in Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Hazaribagh, Bokaro and Giridih districts.
Pradhan lauded the state government for launching Direct-Benefit-Transfer (DBT) in kerosene sale in four districts -- Chatra, Jamtara, Hazaribagh and Khunti -- as the "first" in the country.
Referring to state Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs Minister Saryu Rai's statement that Rs 700 crore could be saved with the introduction of DBT, the Union minister said it would certainly be discussed at the international stock exchanges.
In his speech, Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Sudarshan Bhagat said the Ujjwala Yojana would help protect the environment and it covered "women's dignity".
(REOPENS CES 25)
Pradhan claimed that six lakh new gas connections were given in the last two-and-a-half years, adding that there was a plan to add 27 lakh BPL families with the Ujjwala Yojana.
He said the Sindri fertiliser plant would be revived, adding that it has been decided that the pipeline yojana would be through Bokaro.
The pipeline would go from Allahabad to Haldia, he said, adding that Rs 50,000 crore would be spent to lay the pipeline for 2,500 km.
Delhi High Court today said that the principles of natural justice applicable in criminal cases would not be the same for disciplinary proceedings being held by a university against its students.
Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva made the observation in response to the argument on behalf of some students, including former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, that JNU did not give them the due opportunity to defend themselves against the charge of indiscipline.
Apart from the three, 18 other students have moved the high court challenging Jawaharlal Nehru University's (JNU) order holding them guilty of indiscipline in connection with a controversial February 9 event.
The court heard arguments on behalf of Umar and listed the matter for further hearing on November 7 when it will hear the pleas of the other students. Till then, the interim position will continue, it said.
The students have contended that not giving them due opportunity to defend themselves against the charge of indiscipline, violated the principles of natural justice.
The court, however, said a university has to maintain strict discipline amongst its students and where disciplinary proceedings are being held, "you cannot expect the same principles of natural justice as you see in a criminal case."
It, thereafter, asked the lawyer for the students to show the rules that JNU had to follow while taking disciplinary action against its students.
Advocate Akhil Sibal, appearing for Umar, then told the court that the JNU Students Discipline and Conduct Rules say that due opportunity to defend themselves has to be provided.
He said that in the case of Umar, no such opportunity was given to him. He was not even informed about the charges against him and was only told that a high-level enquiry committee was looking into the February 9 incident where he has to appear to explain his role and defend himself, he said.
The students in their pleas have also challenged their punishment, which ranges from rustication for a few semesters to withdrawal of hostel facilities.
The appellate authority of the university had rusticated Umar from JNU till December this year, while Bhattacharya was asked to be out of the varsity for five years.
Kanhaiya, Khalid and Bhattacharya were earlier arrested in a sedition case in connection with the February 9 event on the campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. They are now out on bail.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ahead of investors summit in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today said proposals worth over Rs 2.78 lakh crore are at different stages of implementation.
The two-day Global Investors Summit (GIS) at Indore aims to showcase the strengths and industrial prowess of the state, and provide a platform for interaction with Indian industry leaders, policy makers, investors and other stakeholders.
"Investment proposals worth over Rs 2.78 lakh crore are already in different stages of implementation after GIS-2014," the Chief Minister said in an interview to PTI.
Chouhan said he would be giving details of preceding four biennial summits at Indore.
In the 5th edition of the GIS, the UK, the US, Singapore, South Korea and UAE are partner countries.
Total 6,819 people had registered for participation but we could accommodate only 4,695 of them, Chouhan said.
As many as 260 investor representatives from 37 countries are participating in this GIS. Besides, 368 Guests of Honour have consented to attend it.
Investment proposals worth USD 66 billion were received at the 4th GIS in 2014.
Expecting a good response from the summit, Chouhan said the state grants 84 types of approvals online through single window system.
"Now we have moved forward from single window to single table. Under it the ministers, investors and myself sit together and after discussing the investors' problems solve them in one go," the Chief Minister said.
On problems related to land allotment, he said the state has taken a very concrete arrangement for hassle-free land allotment to the investors.
"We have created a land bank vesting 1.20 lakh acre land for industrial purpose. Of this, 25,000 acre is developed and about 7 thousand acre is under development," he said, adding that about 15,000 acre developed land is readily available for industrialists which they can obtain by booking online.
To ensure availability of land at reasonable rates, the state government has decided to bear expenditure on external infrastructure in industrial area and to provide 40 per cent of expenditure on internal development by way of grant.
Chouhan further said his government has implemented sector wise policies and taken special care that the processes and procedures are very simple to attract investments.
He also informed that State Tourism Policy-2016 has been implemented and 9 thousand hectare reserved for tourism projects. The policy provides for a number of fiscal incentives in tourism sector.
Referring to other initiatives to attract investments,
Chouhan said the state government has implemented Science and Technology Policy-2016, which offers concessions to IT and electronics manufacturing units.
"Now IT units can be set up on PSP land use also in the Master Plan areas of major cities. Arrangement has also been made to develop IT investment area in private sector," he said.
A new package policy for promoting food processing units was announced last October which provides for tax exemption equal to 20 per cent of the cost of machines and plants.
The Chief Minister also said that six food parks have been set up in the state.
In health sector, the state has introduced Madhya Pradesh Health Sector Investment Promotion Scheme offering capital subsidy.
Land at Re 1 premium can be made available for setting a medical college outside urban areas, he said.
"We have come up with a Start-Up policy that provides for capital subsidy among other things. We have set up a Rs 100 crore Venture Capital Fund for promoting ventures based on innovative ideas," Chouhan informed.
The Summit, he said aims at attracting investment by showcasing Madhya Pradesh's resources, potentials, investment prospects and investor friendly policies to the prospective domestic as well as overseas investors
Madhya Pradesh is now among top five states of India in Ease of Doing Business.
"Now Madhya Pradesh has been established as a creditable brand at national and international level. Global Investors' Summits have played a major role in it," Chouhan said.
Industrial growth rate of the state has been about 8 per cent continuously and almost all major industrial houses have invested in the state and are willing to further increase their volume of investment.
Thus, the investors' summits have "yielded very good results", he said, adding "Our Make in Madhya Pradesh initiative has been quite successful".
The Chief Minister said the state received FDI worth Rs 6,614 crore in the last one year.
The 'Make in India' initiative is opening up new vistas in Madhya Pradesh, too, he said.
Chouhan said at the first GIS held in 2007, investment proposals of only USD 18.3 billion US dollar were received and 301 delegates attended it.
Unitech Resorts Ltd was today directed by the Supreme Court to refund Rs 15 crore to 39 home buyers in its Gurgaon project, saying a property developer must respect the contractual commitment and live up to the terms of the contract.
The apex court while directing Unitech Resorts Ltd to deposit Rs 2 crore in four weeks with Supreme Court registry said the firm by "delaying or procrastinating" the completion of the flats cannot base its stand on "excuses or any subterfuge" to advance the stand that constructions take time.
"It needs no special emphasis to state that the property developer has to respect the contractual commitment. It has to live up to the terms of the contract and gain trust so that the people who dream of houses can repose faith in him. Not for nothing, it has been said, 'the foundation of any economy is faith and if faith is lost, everything is lost'.
"True it is, there is a saying, 'Rome was not built in a day' but it is in the realm of metaphor," a bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar said.
The bench noted that Rs 16.55 crore was deposited by the 39 home buyers who had booked flats in Unitech Vista project in sector-70, Gurgaon and are before the court.
It also noted that the company has deposited Rs 15 crore with apex court registry in compliance with an earlier order.
"As Rs 15 crore has been invested and some interest has accrued, let the same be given to the respondents (home buyers) on pro rata basis on proper identification by the counsel.
"The appellant company is directed to deposit a further sum of Rs 2 crore within four weeks hence," the bench said and posted the matter for further hearing on January 11, 2017.
The apex court said, "the appellant (Unitech) by delaying or procrastinating the completion of the flats cannot base its stand on excuses or any subterfuge to advance the stand that the constructions take time".
The apex court clarified that the aspect of interest and compensation payable to the home buyers for the delay in giving the flats on part of the company will be deliberated at a later stage.
Taking the real estate company to task for saying
construction takes time, the apex court said "the submission ... Rests upon the metaphor that 'Rome was not built in a day' but serves no purpose. It is flat or money. And nothing else."
"The respondents (home buyers) collectively make a demand for refund of money because they have fought the litigation with ceaseless vigour and enormous hope," it said.
The bench, which heard the grievances of some of the home buyers who were present during the hearing, recorded their anguish and said, "the voice of anguish is echoed in the court room as they say their dreams have been shattered and they have been constrained to pave the path of impecuniosity".
The home buyers, through advocate Brajesh Kumar, refused to accept the proposal given by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Unitech, that three towers will be completed by end of April 2017 and some of them will be given flats along with some amount as directed by the court.
He said that Rs 5 crore deposited by the company with the apex court be distributed among the purchasers towards principal amount and flats be handed over by April 2017.
Singhvi said the remaining Rs 10 crore deposited with the apex court should be given back to the company for facilitating the construction.
The flat-buyers who were present in the court room and through lawyers outrightly rejected the proposal and demanded refund, along with interest and compensation.
The apex court had on August 17, directed the embattled real estate firm to deposit Rs 15 crore principal amount by September-end to pay back investors and home buyers who were not given possession of the flats on time.
Investors have told the court that they had paid money to the firm on time and the company was scheduled to hand over the possession of flats in 2012 but has not done till date.
Over two dozen home buyers of Unitech's housing projects in Noida and Gurgaon had approached the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) after the builder had failed to give them possession of the flats as per schedule.
The consumer forum had asked Unitech to refund the money to the home buyers with interest.
The apex court had earlier asked the company to deposit an interim penalty of Rs 5 crore with the court registry after the firm challenged the order of the consumer forum which had asked the developer to pay Rs 5 crore penalty to three buyers of its Burgundy project.
The court had said the penalty deposited with the court will be awarded to the buyers or returned to Unitech, depending on the outcome of the case.
A leading pro-left civil society group here appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi today to scrap a deal with Bangladesh for building a coal-fired power plant near the fragile Sundarbans even as UNESCO warned against the project it says threatens the world's largest mangrove forest.
"We have sent the Indian premier an open letter reiterating our demand to scrap the Rampal power project to save the Sundarbans through the Indian High Commission in Dhaka," National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral, Resources, Power and Ports spokesman Anbu Mohammad said.
He said the letter was sent as construction process of the plant being built with Indian assistance near the World Heritage Site of Sundarbans was underway despite widespread criticism and protest from national and international experts and general public.
Witnesses said police allowed five representatives of the group to hand over their letter to the High Commission as over 200 activists marched towards the mission at upmarket Gulshan diplomatic enclave.
The protesters submitted the letter a day after police stopped them on their way to the Indian mission.
The UN's culture and science agency UNESCO, meanwhile, issued a second statement in the past month yesterday urging Bangladesh to halt construction of the huge coal-fired power plant reiterating its fears that it posed a serious threat to the delicate ecosystem of the Sundarbans forest.
"The Sundarbans in Bangladesh is part of the world's largest mangrove forests, home to the famous Bengal Tiger and a hotspot for dolphins, turtles, and birds. Millions of people depend on this labyrinth of tidal rivers for food, homes, and flood protection," the UNESCO statement read.
It added, "The proposed Rampal power plant, a 1,320 megawatt super-thermal power plant located just 65 kilometres from the World Heritage property, poses a serious threat to the site".
UNSECO identified "pollution from coal ash by air, pollution from wastewater and waste ash, increased shipping and dredging, and the cumulative impact of industrial and related development infrastructure" as four key concerns related to the plant's construction.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina earlier denounced protests against the proposed coal-fired power plant.
"Let me tell you one thing, I would have been the first person to oppose the power plant had there been the slightest chance of damage to the Sundarbans," she had said.
REOPENS FGN 10
The premier said the proposed plant would be a "ultra-super critical plant" having "all available ultra modern technology to prevent pollution" using "highest standard coal to be imported from Australia, Indonesia and South Africa" instead of low-grade Indian coal.
"I would like to suggest those who are opposing the coal-based plants to visit Barapukuria Plant at densely crowded location (in northwestern Bangladesh). Despite being a sub-critical plant, it did not cause any harm to the environment and public life in the past 10 years and rather it made fertile the land there," she said.
Bangladesh and India in July signed the landmark deal paving way for launching the construction work for the plant marking the transition in cooperation from electricity export to generation
Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company Limited (BIFPCL), a joint venture enterprise, inked the deal with state-run Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) which was selected under an open international tender for constructing the plant at Bangladesh's southwestern Rampal near the Sundarbans.
India's Exim Bank will finance the USD 1.49 billion project, scheduled to launch generating power in 2019 while Bangladesh will share 50 per cent of the profit with India while the produced electricity would be used entirely by Bangladesh.
Bangladesh earlier earmarked Maitree Super Thermal Power Project as one of its fast track projects under a bilateral agreement signed during Hasina's India visit in 2010.
Ignoring warnings by state authorities on burning paddy stubble, many in Haryana and Punjab are still continuing the banned practice, leading to health risks and adversely affecting soil health.
Both the Haryana and Punjab governments have imposed a ban on burning of paddy residue and the erring can also be prosecuted by authorities.
However, reports from various areas, including Karnal district in Haryana and Patiala district in Punjab, suggest that are still burning paddy straw despite being asked to shun the practice by the authorities, including the state pollution control boards and the agriculture departments.
Farmers are also being provided subsidy on farm implements like happy seeder, rotavators, straw reapers for managing straw in a sustainable manner to stop the practice.
In the last few years it has been noted that when stubble is burned in the two leading agrarian states, the pollutants enter Delhi, adversely affecting the air quality in the capital.
The magnitude of the problem can be gauged from the fact that within a span of just three weeks in the current harvest season, authorities in Haryana have initiated action in 480 incidents of paddy burning.
"We are taking action as stubble burning is a serious issue. Till yesterday, we have initiated action in 480 cases against those found burning the stubble," Principal Secretary, Environment Department-cum-Chairman, Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB), Shrikant Walgad told PTI today.
He said fines were imposed on violators and cases under the Environment Pollution Act were tried by environment courts at Kurukshetra and Faridabad.
Asked in which areas of Haryana the problem was more prevalent, Walgad said, "Generally it is the paddy belt of Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Karnal and Yamunanagar".
Burning of paddy residue causes air pollution, smog and also poses a serious threat as it leads to medical problems such as breathing issues, allergies and asthma attacks.
It causes emission of smoke and toxic gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and nitrous oxide. It also leads to poor soil health by eliminating essential nutrients, agri experts said.
Training workshops and awareness programmes for farmers
are conducted from time to time in both states where peasants are informed about the harmful affects of stubble burning, officials said.
The Haryana government has also directed district level committees, which have been constituted for this purpose, to monitor the incidences of crop residue burning through satellite images and submit a daily report to headquarters, Walgad said.
Besides, the committees have been directed to ensure strict compliance with the provisions of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and register cases against violators of this Act in special environment courts along with photographic and videographic evidence.
A multimedia campaign would also be launched in Haryana under which the district administrations would conduct workshops, competitions and rallies, apart from making preventive and educative efforts, he said.
While the air quality is being monitored through Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations of the Pollution Control Board, the incidences are monitored electronically and remotely through satellite images for which Haryana Remote Space Application Centre (HARSAC) has been engaged.
Walgad also directed deputy commissioners to gear up their field machinery to monitor the incidences of violation of the ban.
President Vladimir Putin faces a grilling over Russia's role in Ukraine and Syria at talks in Berlin today, on his first visit to the German capital since the Ukrainian conflict erupted.
Host Chancellor Angela Merkel said the talks -- the first four-way summit for a year -- were aimed at "offering a brutally honest assessment" of progress on implementing the frayed Minsk peace accords for Ukraine.
"Things are stalled in many areas such as the ceasefire, political issues and humanitarian issues," she told reporters yesterday.
"We have to seize every chance we have for progress. I have to say that we cannot expect a miracle but it is worth every effort at this point."
But Moscow poured cold water on hopes for headway toward a lasting resolution of the conflict.
"We do not expect any breakthroughs," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters ahead of Putin's trip.
"I don't expect easy talks," admitted German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who will also attend the meeting that is due to start after 6:00 pm (1600 GMT).
"A peaceful solution is not yet in sight... But we will not stop trying."
Putin has not visited Berlin since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sending relations with the West plunging to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Moscow's involvement in the Syrian civil war, which has deepened the diplomatic freeze, will also figure at the top of the agenda, Merkel said.
Speaking of the "disastrous" situation in the besieged city of Aleppo, Merkel said she and French President Francois Hollande would talk to Putin "about somehow alleviating people's suffering".
"Here too, we cannot expect miracles but it is essential to talk, even if the views are far apart," she said.
In a small conciliatory gesture, Russia said it was extending an eight-hour truce in Aleppo, which is planned for Thursday, to 11 hours to allow civilians and rebels to leave the city's battered east.
The move came after Hollande said he would work with Merkel to persuade Putin to prolong the ceasefire.
Syria's second city, held by rebels determined to oust President Bashar al-Assad, has come under heavy bombardment since the Russian-backed military announced an offensive in late September to regain control of the east.
Air strikes there have flattened numerous residential buildings and civilian facilities, in a campaign the European Union said could amount to war crimes.
The Berlin meeting takes place on the eve of an EU summit in Brussels on relations with Russia, including sanctions over Ukraine, which come up for renewal at the end of the year.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with the leaders of Turkey and Iraq about battle for Mosul, where Iraqi forces are fighting to oust the Islamic State group, the Kremlin said today.
Putin "wished the Iraqi army and its allies complete success in their objectives," the Kremlin said in a statement on his conversations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
He also informed the Iraqi leader about the "measures taken by Russia to defuse the situation" in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Moscow announced yesterday that Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo ahead of an eight-hour "humanitarian pause" in the battered city tomorrow.
Putin is to attend a summit on Syria in Berlin later today with the leaders of France and Germany.
In a separate conversation, Putin also discussed the battle for Mosul with Erdogan, the Kremlin said, but gave no further details.
The long-awaited offensive against Iraq's second city began on Monday with air and ground support from a US-led coalition.
Turkey said yesterday it will continue to take part in the air operation after Ankara agreed a deal with its coalition partners.
Plans for the offensive were marked by tensions between Iraq and Turkey, which insisted on being part of the operation despite objections from Baghdad.
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Former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira and three others have been arrested by Hyderabad Police in connection with an FIR registered against them here in the alleged multi-crore rupee fraud involving the multi-level marketing company QNet.
The Central Crime Station (CCS), a wing of Hyderabad Police, has made a breakthrough in a case of cheating which involved QNet and its Indian subsidiary M/s Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, by arresting four directors of Vihaan, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty told reporters here.
Michael Joseph Ferreira (78), Malcom N Desai, M V Balaji and Srinivas Rao, all directors and shareholders of Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd who were earlier arrested in Mumbai by Maharashtra Police, have been brought to city on PT (production transit) warrants and arrested, the DCP said.
On October 13 last year, a complaint was lodged by one Suman Ghosh, an assistant manager in a private bank here, wherein he stated that he paid Rs 16 lakh (via DD) in the name of Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, on the promise of getting business. But, they did not give him any business despite collecting the amount.
Based on the complaint, a case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of IPC, besides relevant sections of Prize, Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, Mohanty said.
He said during the course of investigation into the case registered here, on October 8 (this year) they received an information from the EOW wing of Mumbai Police that the four accused persons, who are directors of Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, were arrested and remanded in judicial custody.
Subsequently, Hyderabad Police filed an application at a court in Mumbai seeking their custody in connection with the case registered by them.
The Mumbai court then granted transit remand and the Hyderabad Police took Padma Bhushan recipient Ferreira and three others into custody and brought them to the city late last night.
It has come to light that several cases have been
registered against QNet and its earlier companies in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi and Telangana states, Mohanty said.
Ferreira is a director of the accused company Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, which is a master franchise of M/s QNet in India.
The four accused will be produced in a local court and police will file a petition seeking their custody for further interrogation, the DCP said.
Police is also probing into the allegations that QNet cheated unemployed persons and software engineers on the pretext of providing employment and business, he added.
Around 60 complaints have been received in the city against the company, police said.
Former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira and three others were arrested by city police in connection with alleged multi-crore rupees fraud involving network marketing firm QNet, but got a quick reprieve from the high court which temporarily stayed further probe in the case.
As Ferreira (78), a Padma Bhushan laureate, and others moved the Hyderabad HC and secured a stay on investigation till Monday, they will now be shifted to Mumbai on the directions of a local court.
A copy of the HC order was filed in the lower court by the lawyers representing the accused after which it directed the police to send them back to the same jail from where they were brought here.
Ferreira, Malcom N Desai, M V Balaji and Srinivas Rao were in judicial custody in Mumbai when they were brought here last night on production transit (PT) warrants.
"They were arrested and produced before a local court and sent to judicial custody. The court, in compliance with the HC order, asked us to send them back to Mumbai. They were in judicial custody there and we had brought them to Hyderabad on PT warrant. As per the court order, they will be taken back to Mumbai where they are already under judicial custody," DCP (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty told PTI.
QNet and its Indian master franchise M/s Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd are allegedly involved in a cheating case. Ferreira, Desai, Balaji and Rao are directors and shareholders in Vihaan. They were earlier arrested in Mumbai.
A complaint was lodged against them here on October 13 last year by Suman Ghosh, an assistant manager with a private bank, alleging that despite paying Rs 16 lakh (via DD) in the name of Vihaan Direct Selling India, he failed to get any business as promised. A case was registered under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of IPC, besides under Prize, Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, Mohanty said.
During the probe, police received an information from Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on October 8 that the four accused, who all are directors of Vihaan, had been arrested and remanded in judicial custody there.
Subsequently, Hyderabad Police moved a court in Mumbai seeking their custody.
According to Mohanty, several cases were registered against QNet and its associate companies in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, AP, Maharashtra, Delhi and Telangana.
Police are also probing if QNet cheated unemployed persons and software engineers under the pretext of providing employment and business.
Around 60 complaints have been received in Hyderabad against the company, police said.
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Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn will become chairman of Mitsubishi Motors after Japan's number two automaker announced a major investment in its scandal-hit rival, a report said today.
The reported appointment would make Ghosn the head of three major automakers, including France's Renault which holds a major stake in Nissan.
Nissan threw Mitsubishi a lifeline in May when it announced plans to buy a one-third stake in the crisis-hit automaker for about USD 2.2 billion, as the smaller rival wrestled with a mileage-cheating scandal that hammered sales.
Mitsubishi declined to comment today's report in Japan's leading Nikkei business daily.
Investors cheered that Ghosn - widely credited with turning around a nearly bankrupt Nissan and overhauling Renault - would take the helm.
Mitsubishi's Tokyo-listed shares soared more than 10 per cent shortly after the Nikkei report.
The stock closed at 522 yen (USD 5), up 7.85 per cent, while Nissan rose 0.52 per cent to 1,004.5 yen.
After markets closed, Mitsubishi warned it was on track to lose 240 billion yen in the fiscal year to March, ballooning from an earlier net loss forecast of 145 billion yen as the scandal eats into its bottom line.
The company has admitted it had been falsifying mileage tests for years, manipulating data to make cars seem more efficient than they were.
Mitsubishi has asked its current chairman and president Osamu Masuko to stay on as president, the Nikkei said, citing unnamed sources.
Ghosn will be officially appointed after a board meeting later this year, it said.
Two of the affected vehicle models were being made for Nissan, which was the first to uncover problems with the fuel economy data.
Mitsubishi is on the hook to pay more than USD 1.0 billion to Nissan and other suppliers as well as compensate customers who bought the affected cars.
Nicknamed Le Cost Killer, Ghosn is known for overhauling Renault and Nissan starting in the nineties.
Ghosn is being given the senior job so he can oversee Mitsubishi's turnaround, the Nikkei said.
"It's easier for him to do things he did at Nissan, such as combining platforms, cutting costs and even closing plants," said Koji Endo, a Tokyo-based auto analyst at SBI Securities.
"In order to implement such massive restructuring, you need someone as powerful as Ghosn to get things going."
But Hans-Peter Wodniok, a Frankfurt-based analyst with AlphaValue, was less convinced.
"I think (Ghosn) has enough work to be done at both Renault and Nissan," he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
RLD activists held demonstrations at three toll plazas on Yamuna Expressway in support of farmers whose land was acquired by the government.
They held the protest last evening for over two hours and party district chief Ramveer Singh Bharangar warned that they would hold a huge dharna if their demands are not met.
The protestors were demanding free toll for farmers of the area, return of 10 per cent of acquired land to farmers, payment of compensation to them and a job for one member of the farmer's family whose land has been acquired.
Collection of toll at Mant was suspended during the agitation but the movement of the traffic remained unaffected.
They also presented a charter of demands to SDM Sadanand Gupta who will forward it to the Chief Minister.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia's state-controlled oil giant Rosneft and its partners' USD 12.9 billion deal to take over India's Essar Oil is not in violation of any US-EU sanctions against Russia, the US said today.
"I don't think we see any violation of any US or EU sanctions stemming from this deal," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters at his daily conference, when asked about the deal announced during BRICS Summit in Goa last week.
Economic sanctions have been imposed on Russia for its actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
The deal was announced on October 15 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting of the leaders of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
"We've seen the reports in general about this oil deal. I'd refer you to the governments of India and Russia," he said.
In the largest inflow of foreign direct investment in India, Rosneft bought a 49 per cent stake in Essar Oil's refinery, port and petrol pumps while Netherlands-based Trafigura Group Pte, one of the world's biggest commodity trading companies, and Russian investment fund United Capital Partners split another 49 per cent equity equally.
The remaining 2 per cent will be held by minority shareholders after delisting of Essar Oil.
The acquisition is the biggest in India and largest outbound deal for Russia. The all cash deal is expected to close in first quarter of 2017.
Essar Oil, part of a steel-to-ports conglomerate controlled by the billionaire Ruia brothers, operates a 405,000-barrels-a-day refinery at Vadinar in Gujarat. The refining complex also has a captive power plant as well as a port and terminal facilities.
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After protracted negotiations, has agreed to lease a second nuclear submarine to India in a deal which will cost around $2 billion.
Sources today said the deal was struck during the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 15 on the sidelines of the BRICS meet in Goa.
However, it was not part of the slew of announcements made after the talks.
The Defence Ministry and the Navy did not offer any information on the subject since it was a strategic platform coming under direct purview of the Prime Minister's Office.
Alexei Nikolski, a columnist with Russian daily Vedomosti, which broke the story, wrote, "According to a source in the Russian defence industry, the long-discussed lease to transfer a multipurpose Project 971 nuclear submarine to India from the Russian Navy was signed in Goa."
The Akula 2 class submarine is expected to arrive in Indian waters in 2020-21.
The Indian Navy already operates an Akula 2 class nuclear submarine, INS Chakra (formerly known as K-152 Nerpa), which was leased by for 10 years and commissioned on April 4, 2012 after India paid for its completion of its construction and sea-trials.
India had been keen to lease a second nuclear submarine.
Indian defence sources had said that had linked the lease of the nuclear submarine to the agreement for four stealth frigates.
In Goa, India and Russia announced an over $3 billion frigate deal. Under the agreement, two stealth frigates will be built in Russia while the other two would be built in India under license production.
The Akula 2 class submarine, though not the latest class of nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines in the world, is still considered one of the most advanced.
Capable of sailing at speeds up to 35 knots (nearly 65 km per hour) under water, it is among the quietest Russian submarines.
Russia said today it was extending an eight-hour truce in Aleppo, which is planned for tomorrow, to 11 hours to allow civilians and rebels to leave the city's rebel-held east.
The humanitarian pause, which was to run from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm (0500 GMT to 1300 GMT), has been extended "by three hours until 7:00 pm (1600 GMT)," senior military official Sergei Rudskoi said at a briefing at the defence ministry in Moscow.
He said this was done after "numerous requests" from representatives of international aid organisations.
The extra time "will allow representatives of the United Nations and the Syrian Red Crescent to carry out all their operations to ensure the evacuation of the sick and wounded, and also to allow peaceful civilians out of the city," the military spokesman said.
The UN today said that all sides needed to back an extended ceasefire -- at least 48 hours -- before humanitarian convoys could roll.
Moscow announced yesterday morning that Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo ahead of the pause in fighting and the halt held into a second day today.
According to Moscow, once the pause begins six corridors out of the city will open for civilians with another two -- via the Castello Road in the north and Souk al-Hal in the city centre -- designated for rebels.
Rudskoi also said Russian and Syrian planes were keeping 10 kilometres from Aleppo after Moscow pledged yesterday to stop bombing the city ahead of the truce.
"Since 10 am yesterday in the area of Aleppo air strikes by Russia and Syrian forces have completely ceased. Russian and Syrian planes are not getting closer than 10 kilometres to the city," Rudskoi said.
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Russia unveiled a new state-financed Orthodox cathedral complex in a prime position near the Eiffel Tower in Paris today without the intended guest of honour, President Vladimir Putin.
He cancelled his trip last week after French President Francois Hollande said Russia's bombing of the Syrian city of Aleppo could amount to war crimes.
In a statement from Moscow, Putin said the more than 100-million euro (USD 110 million) complex, built around the cathedral which has five golden domes, was a "visible testament to the cultural and human ties between France and Russia".
The theme was taken up by speakers at the low-key event today, where Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky overlooked current tensions to say the project was "testament to the solidity of our bilateral relations."
The Saint-Trinite cathedral, which will be consecrated by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church in December, sits on a prime location by the river Seine and is a striking illustration of Kremlin support for its national church.
It has raised eyebrows not only because its five giant cupolas covered with 90,000 sheets of gold leaf rise up in front of the Eiffel Tower when viewed from the surrounding area.
The project has also reportedly sparked concerns among France's intelligence agencies because of its proximity to nearby government buildings, including the foreign ministry just a short walk along the Seine.
Putin has given it strong political and financial backing, acknowledging it was "very difficult" to realise but thanking France for its "continuous support".
The Russian president has developed close bonds with the powerful Russian Orthodox church, whose patriarch Kirill has backed him personally and his policies such as military intervention in Syria.
"We thank President Putin in particular. Without his personal commitment, it would never have happened," said bishop Antoine from the town of Bogorodsk, who was representing patriarch Kirill at the ceremony.
Only the cultural centre was officially opened today, but journalists were allowed inside the cathedral for the first time ahead of its consecration on December 4.
The growing Orthodox community in France, swelled by immigration from Russia as well as the Middle East and the Balkans, is not united behind the new cathedral, which will only be fully completed in 2017.
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Recent visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Goa for BRICS summit may put the coastal state back on list of favourite destinations of Russian tourists whose falling numbers have worried local tourism industry.
The tourism stake-holders feel that Goa would regain favour among Russians in the wake of Putin's visit.
"Definitely, Goa would be on top of the mind of Russians as their President Putin was here and the event was widely covered internationally," Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) president Savio Messias told PTI today.
The 8the BRICS summit was held between October 15-16, which was attended by the heads of the five-nation grouping, including Putin.
"We can expect more Russian tourists this time, but economic situation in Russia should improve," Messias said.
He said post BRICS, Goa would be in the focus of various countries besides Russia, which would open up opportunities of good footfall for the tourist season that has just begun.
The first chartered flight from Russia had arrived in Goa on October 2.
Around 15 million Russians travel overseas for their holidays every year. Of them, nearly 6 million travel to Egypt and Turkey while around 1 million travel to South East Asia and India.
"According to figures from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, the total number of Russians who visited India in the 2013-14 season stood at 1,12,695," said Vikram Varma, Legal Advisor to Russian Consulate in Mumbai.
He said this number dropped to 51,076 in the 2014-15 season.
"90 per cent of Russian tourists who arrive in India, come to Goa. With the visit of the Russian president in Goa for BRICS summit, every newspaper and television station in Russia has provided information and coverage on various aspects of Goa to the millions of Russians enjoying international tourism," Varma said.
"I am confident that this publicity of Goa will translate
into a larger bloc of Russians visiting Goa in oncoming season," Varma added.
Quoting Russian statistics, Varma said that during 2013-14 Vietnam had 1,79,616 Russians whose number slumped to 1,70,140 during 2014-15 even as Thailand received 6,48,691 Russians in 2013-14 and 3,13,573 Russians in 2014-15.
"It is evident that despite the political instability in Thailand, they received six times more Russian tourists than Goa/India. (However), though the cultural heritage and beach lines are far larger in India, we are yet to proportionally capitalise on it," he said.
According to Varma, "there are clear impediments due to language for Russians travelling to India."
He listed Goan taxi drivers and local police as among issues concerning Russians, which need to be adequately addressed.
"Goa has wonderful minds capable of resolving such issues," he added.
Shiromani Akali Dal has lined up a series of public programmes in the build up to next year's Assembly election even as party chief Sukhbir Singh Badal has been entrusted with taking key decisions including finalising the party candidates.
The decisions were taken in the meeting of the party's core committee today chaired by the party patron in Chief Parkash Singh Badal at his residence.
All the SAD and BJP senior leaders will jointly address public gatherings at these functions.
"A war memorial will be inaugurated in Amritsar on October 23 in which the country's elite from the armed forces including major generals, former chiefs of staff, decorated officers and soldiers will take part," said General Secretary Harcharan Singh Bains.
"This will be followed by the inauguration of the Heritage Pilgrimage (Virasat Darshan) around the Golden Temple Complex on October," he added.
The state-level Punjab Day function will be held in Amritsar with a massive state level rally at Ranjit Avenue.
Apart from the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister, senior central BJP leaders are also expected to take part in the function during which homage will be paid to warriors of the Punjabi Suba movement.
The Jang-e-Azadi Memorial, a monument to pay tribute to the warriors of the country's freedom movement, will be inaugurated on November 6.
A huge gathering of devotees will pay homage to the tenth master Guru Gobind Singh on his 350th Parkash Utsav on November 27 at Sri Anandpur Sahib.
On the political front, the SAD will organise a massive rally at Moga on December 6, birthday of the Akali stalwart and Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Coming out in support of Karan Johar, veteran director Shyam Benegal today said it is sad that the "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" filmmaker had to reiterate his patriotism.
Johar made a video appeal yesterday to those protesting the release of his directorial venture because it has Pakistani actor Fawad Khan. Raj Thackeray-led MNS has threatened to stall the movie's release on October 28.
Benegal, 81, also questioned the constant demand made on people to prove their patriotism.
"I feel very sad that he had to make a statement like that because how can anybody doubt his patriotism or his love for this country. Does it need to be reiterated everyday of his life or my life, because there is a demand on people to prove his patriotism? Why should one do that?
"When you are born here, when you live here or make a livelihood here, you are going to live all your life in your country and you are not planning to leave or go anywhere else. You are an important and successful member of the society. Why should a person like him have to constantly say that he will not do this? Why have we come to this situation?," Benegal said.
In the video, Johar had said that he was hurt to be called an anti-national because "country comes first" for him.
Meanwhile, veteran scriptwriter Salim Khan tweeted that film industry is not divided and is the only place where talent is valued.
"What works is talent & capability. This is true from the time of Dada Saheb Phalke till date. It is true that there are some amongst us who have aligned themselves to political parties for personal gain.
"And yes we are a happy lot. If our films work we are happy and if a rivals film flops we are happy too. And we live happily ever after," he tweeted.
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Saudi Arabia plans to raise up to USD 17.5 billion from its first international bond issue, a media report said today, as analysts expect strong buyer interest.
It would make the Saudi issue the largest ever from an emerging-market nation, said Bloomberg News, which cited two people with knowledge of the offer.
The figure exceeds the USD 15 billion which an analyst had previously told AFP could be the value of the issue.
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, projected a budget deficit of USD 87 billion this year after a fall in oil revenues, which still account for most of its income.
To cover the shortfall, Saudi Arabia is re-orienting its economy by imposing unprecedented subsidy cuts, slowing government projects, and in September it chopped cabinet ministers' salaries, among other measures.
The kingdom last week began meetings with potential investors ahead of the bond issue.
According to the sources cited by Bloomberg News, the kingdom plans to sell dollar-denominated five-year bonds yielding about 140 basis points above US treasuries with similar maturity.
Saudi Arabia will also issue 10-year notes and 30-year securities at a premium, the report said.
It added the proposed pricing is also higher than neighbour Qatar's bonds which offer a similar maturity.
Christopher Dembik, global head of macroeconomic research at France's Saxo Bank, told AFP the kingdom's offer "is going to arouse strong interest on the part of investors", and could be four or five times oversubscribed.
He said investors are desperately looking for yield, and the Saudi offer "will be certainly slightly above that of its neighbours because of its less favourable sovereign debt rating and a recent global trend towards higher sovereign rates," he said.
Saudi Arabia has already issued domestic bonds but that has led to a tightening of bank liquidity, according to Patrick Dennis, lead Middle East economist at Oxford Economics in London.
"So that's the main reason why they're now borrowing overseas," he told AFP.
Saudi banks' loan-to-deposit ratio rose for the fifth consecutive month in August, reaching 90.8 per cent, because of faster growth in credit relative to deposits, Riyadh's Jadwa Investment said in a report this month.
Borrowing abroad also reduces the drain on the kingdom's foreign reserves, Dennis said.
Official data show those reserves declined to USD 562 billion in August from USD 732 billion at the end of 2014.
The reserves remain very large but their rapid drawdown shows a need for diversified funding, Dennis said.
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The Supreme Court today reserved its order on maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT).
"Judgement reserved. Interim order of October 18 to continue till further orders," a bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar said.
The bench asked the parties to file their written submissions by October 24 and said it would pass the order thereafter.
The Centre, through Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, had raised a preliminary objection claiming that the CWDT award amounted to a final decree in the dispute and the apex court had no jurisdiction to hear appeals against the award of the tribunal.
Continuing its argument, Karnataka today said that appeals filed by the state against the award of the tribunal was maintainable.
Noted jurist and senior advocate Fali S Nariman, appearing for Karnataka, said the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to adjudicate the appeals filed by the state against the award of tribunal.
Senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, appearing for Tamil Nadu, also contended that the appeals were maintainable and no statute can take away the powers of the apex court.
"Section 6(2) of Inter-state Water Disputes Act, 1956 cannot oust Supreme Court's constitutional appellate powers given under Article 136 of the Constitution," Naphade said.
Similarly, Kerala also supported the stand of Karnataka and said that the appeals were maintainable.
However, Puducherry supported the stand of the Centre that the appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are not maintainable.
Rohatgi reiterated his yesterday's argument that Supreme Court had no juridiction to adjudicate the appeals pertaining to the dispute relating to use, distribution and control of inter-state water or river valley.
"The appeals filed by the states are not maintainable as per article 131 and 262 of the Constitution and the provisions of Inter-state River Water Disputes Act, 1956," he said.
The attorney general said as per the constitutional provisions, the inter-state water dispute tribunal is headed by a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge and its decree has a force like that of a decree of the Supreme Court and thus the apex court cannot hear the appeals against its own order.
The bench had yesterday said it would first go into the
issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the award of tribunal and then hear arguments on the report filed by the Supervisory Committee formed to assess the ground realities in the Cauvery basin region.
The apex court-appointed panel had in its recent report suggested doing away with "outdated and unscientific water application techniques" to resolve the wrangle, saying both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were facing water shortage which had created unemployment and financial hardship for the people.
It had said the neighbouring riparian states needed to appreciate interest of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry to protect their established irrigation and Karnataka's aspirations for development and educate their people accordingly.
The panel in its 40-page report had noted that farmers in both states were in severe distress and adequate crop compensation must be provided to them.
Supreme Court had on October 4 directed Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs Cauvery water every day to Tamil Nadu from October 7 to 18 and deferred its order asking the Centre to set up Cauvery Water Management Board (CWMB) till it finally decided on appeals relating to the age-old dispute. It had yesterday directed Karnataka to continue to supply Tamil Nadu with 2,000 cusecs of water till further orders.
The apex court had also directed the Centre to establish the CWMB, saying once it was constituted, its team would visit the sites to take a prima facie view of the ground reality and submit a report.
On October 1, Karnataka had moved a review petition in the apex court against its three orders on Cauvery water release to Tamil Nadu and direction to the Centre to create the CWMB.
In its review petition, Karnataka said "grave miscarriage of justice" has been caused to it pursuant to the three apex court orders of September 20, 27 and 30, by which it was directed to release 6000 cusecs of water till October 6 and the Centre was to constitute the Board by October 4.
A bus driver of a private school was today arrested today for allegedly attempting to rape a four-year-old student on the school premises in Durg district of Chhattisgarh, police said.
"The incident happened at an English medium school in Smriti Nagar area under Supela police station yesterday," City Superintendent of Police (Bhilai Nagar) Virendra Sathpathy told PTI.
The accused driver Netra Tandi (35) has been arrested based on the complaint filed by the victim's relatives.
"As per complaint, the girl, a student of KG-2, was sexually abused by the accusedon Tuesdayin the store room of the school," the officer said.
After the girl reached home, she narrated her ordeal to the parents, following which the crime came to light, he added.
Subsequently, parents along with some locals reached the school today and expressed their outrage and protested.
After being alerted, a police team rushed to the school and arrested the accused after registering an offence against him, the SP said adding that further probe was on.
Meanwhile, district authorities also reached the spot and assured the parents of appropriate action in the matter.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Despite growing defiance by the public, separatist groups, which have been spearheading the ongoing 103-day-old agitation in Kashmir, today extended the strike till October 27.
In a statement, the separatist camp called for protests for three days outside the residences of legislators on Friday and separate rallies to various places on Monday and Tuesday.
The separatists accused the legislators of justifying participation in elections in the name of 'sadak-pani-bijli' (road, water and electricity) and motivating people to vote.
The separatist camp, comprising both factions of Hurriyat Conference headed by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and JKLF led by Mohammad Yasin Malik, also announced 17-hour relaxation from 5 PM from October 22 to October 25, while asking people to observe complete strike during the rest of the days.
The extension of the agitation came even though more and more people are defying the separatist strike call by resuming their day-to-day activities in the valley.
Many shops and business establishments are remaining open in civil lines areas of Sanat Nagar, Jawahar Nagar, Rajbagh and Bishembar Nagar and in the outskirts of the city, a police official said.
He said a large number of roadside vendors set up their stalls on the TRC crossing-Batamaloo axis passing through Lal Chowk, while there was increased movement of private vehicles and auto-rickshaws in the city.
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Regional dynamics does play a role in Afghanistan, the United States has acknowledged after former Afghan President Hamid Karzai's remarks that situation in the country is dependent on America and Pakistan's interest along with the two nations' relations with India.
"Well, as much as you know, regional dynamics play into any country's domestic situation, there's an element of truth to that, which is why we're always working hard to push Pakistan to go after those terrorist groups that seek safe haven on their territory," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters yesterday.
"We are pushing for more dialog between Pakistan and India, which we believe will help reduce tensions in the region. We have seen India play a more supportive role with regard to Afghanistan and support for the Afghan government," he said.
Toner noted that for the conflict in Afghanistan, there's a range of different regional dynamics that play into it.
"It's just a matter of fact.
"But our goal is to continue to support the Afghan military as it steps up its fight against the Taliban and pushes much needed reforms in the economy and the democratic system," he said, adding the US supports an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process.
Toner was responding to a question on Karzai's latest statement that America and Pakistan's interests and the two countries' relations with India determine events in the war-torn Afghanistan.
"I think a combination... Of the two, of the US interests in the region and Pakistani interests in Afghanistan and the nature of their relations with India has been determining events in Afghanistan - negatively, unfortunately," Karzai told RT in an interview.
The deputy spokesman said America is supportive of the peace process and is not looking to engineer it, even as he refused to say anything on its role in the latest talks between the Afghan Government and the Taliban in Qatar.
"I'm not going to speak about what our role may or may not be with regard to this new initiative, but as we made clear before, we believe that a peace accord is really the primary or the only pathway to ensuring peace and stability long-term in Afghanistan," Toner said.
"We have supported and continue to support an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process for negotiated resolution to the conflict there. And we're committed to promoting that as much as we can," he said when being asked about the talks that took place in Doha.
While making it clear that the peace process needs to be Afghan-lead and Afghan-owned, Toner said the US is not looking to engineer or supervise it in any way, shape or form.
"This is something the Afghan government and the Taliban would have to take on their own," he said.
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Eighteen fishermen from Tamil Nadu were arrested today by Sri Lankan naval personnel on charges of fishing in Lankan territorial waters, officials said.
The fishermen from here, who set out for fishing in a country made boat, were arrested by Lankan personnel off Neduntheevu, Fisheries Department Deputy Director K T Gopinath told PTI.
The fishermen have been taken to Sri Lanka, he said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As part of the ongoing year-long celebrations of 350th 'Prakash Utsav' of Guru Gobind Singh, Punjab government has decided to ply special buses from different parts of the state to ferry devotees to Takht Patna Sahib in Bihar, the birth place of the tenth master of Sikhs.
These buses will run from December 1 till the culmination of the mega event at Patna Sahib on January 7 next year.
A decision to this effect was taken during a meeting presided over by the Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal here today.
The Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, who also attended the meeting, has asked the Chief Secretary to work out the modalities for plying buses from different destinations across the state to facilitate the devotees to have hassle free pilgrimage to Takht Patna Sahib, an official release said.
These buses would halt at different Gurudwaras enroute for accommodation and free community kitchen (langar) at night as per the schedule being chalked out by the SGPC authorities.
The special buses would run in addition to the charted trains already allotted by the Railways from different places across the state to Patna Sahib.
The Chief Minister also gave his approval to organise a grand show at Virasat-e-Khalsa, Anandpur Sahib on November 27.
Another mega event would be held in Delhi on December 11 by the state government in coordination with DSGMC.
It was also decided to hold a mega Kirtan Darbar for the first time at India Gate, New Delhi on November 25 while a Kirtan Darbar would be organised at Anandpur Sahib on November 26.
The Chief Minister also decided to extend special invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be the Chief Guest of the functions to be held at Anandpur Sahib and New Delhi.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today launched a scathing attack on state Congress chief Amarinder Singh, asking whether the latter was feeling "ashamed" to talk about his tenure in the state by maintaining a "complete silence" about it.
Hitting out at the former Congress chief minister, who has launched an aggressive campaign ahead of the polls where he often targets the Akalis, Sukhbir said, "I am seeing that in his campaign, Amarinder not even once mentionied about his five years tenure (200-207). Is he ashamed of his five years rule. I challenge him to mention just five things or achievements which he has done."
"Whenever we (Akalis) fight elections, we talk about our works, the development we have undertaken," Sukhbir claimed.
Taking a dig at the PPCC chief over his statement that he will be fighting his last elections in 2017, Sukhbir, who is also SAD president, said, "I want to say one thing, a person who says he is going to fight the last elections of his life, people should never vote for him. It means that he just wants to grab power before retiring."
When reminded that even Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had reportedly said during last assembly polls that it will be his last election, Sukhbir, who was interacting with reporters here, quipped, "but he (Parkash) is fighting again."
He then quickly added, "Badal Sahib is an institution, there are few parallels to people like him. I am not saying this because I am his son. Nobody can match his acumen and energy levels. Even I can't match his energy levels."
The Deputy Chief Minister also targetted Amarinder's "Kisan Yatra" roadshow.
"Actually, he (Amarinder) is feeling very frustrated. He has started Kisan Yatra. From Chandigarh he went to Bhagapurana, but he did not meet any farmer along the way, he did not go to any field, after that he went to Kotkapura in Faridkot. From there he gave a lecture and went straight to Ludhiana. Is this Kisan Yatra," he said.
"Let me clear you one thing, Amarinder knows nothing about farming. He never had any field, he never did any farming. Ask him where his field is and when was the last time he went there to tend to his crops," Sukhbir said.
"Now, they (Congress) have started to spread another lies telling farmers they will waive their debts (if they come to power in Punjab). Why don't they begin from Himachal Pradesh where they are in power. They have a government in Karnataka, where maximum number of suicides are taking place, let them do it there (waive farmers' debts)," he said.
Sukhbir alleged, "What did Capt Sahib (Amarinder) do for the farmers during his tenure. You know what, he has collected a group of liars, it is not a Kisan Yatra, but a 'Jhoot Yatra'".
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hailing India's diversity and pluralism, Myanmar's iconic leader Aung San Suu Kyi today invoked Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, saying people of her country drew huge inspiration from the two Indian greats in their yearning for democracy.
Suu Kyi, who led her National League for Democracy to wrest power from the military junta in a historic election earlier this year, said the new government wants to significantly deepen engagement and expand existing cooperation with India, asserting that the intention is to "depend on each other".
"In our struggle for democracy, we have been helped greatly by the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The two great leaders of Indian Independence movement have inspired with their vision and with their belief," Suu Kyi said in her press statement in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi held extensive talks with her covering entire expanse of bilateral ties, signalling the importance she holds in Myanmar's polity and government though she is the State Councillor and Foreign Minister.
Describing her visit here as "happy and extremely fulfilling", Suu Kyi said the visit has confirmed the "long-standing friendship and trust" that exist between the two countries.
She said "very very" wide range of subjects were covered in her talks with Modi.
"It is our intention to engage more closely together, to depend on each other," she said.
Her comments were seen as allaying apprehension here that Myanmar was getting close to China which has been increasing its footprint in that country and making huge investments in several major projects there.
"We as a nation struggling to make democratic culture take root in our country, we believe India will be able to help us. We are going to be cooperating in areas of construction, energy, culture and education," she said.
Referring to her meeting with top business leaders, Suu Kyi said she urged them to invest in "trust" so that trade can flourish.
"We have much to do. We are behind India in the field of development and in the field of politics. But we are confident that we will be able to make up for the lost time," she said.
Observing that Myanmar was much ahead of many other countries in South Asia a few decades ago, she said, "Things change, life changes unexpectedly but with good friends and with commitment and endeavour on our side, we are confident of making up."
Suu Kyi said her aim now was to bring peace and stability to Myanmar and to the region and beyond.
"We have been trying to bring peace to our country for decades. We hope that time has come for us to be able to say we have made the breakthrough and we are now firmly set on the path to a union, that will be a union which will be just to people.
"For this too we look up to India with its experience of federalism, to teach us how we bring all our people into the process and to be part of our search for peace, stability and enduring federalism," she said.
Talking about India's spiritual resources, she said the country's pluralism and federal structure were inspiration to Myanmar.
"We always admired India as the greatest democracy in the world and for being able to maintain the system despite many challenges that have raised their heads since Independence," she said.
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After MNS, Telangana BJP MLA Raja Singh has opposed screening of upcoming Bollywood film "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil", starring Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
Singh threatened that he would "attack" theatres in entire Telangana, starting from his constituency Goshamahal, if the film is screened there.
"My idea is that a message should go to Pakistan in all possible ways about India's opposition and public anger against Pak-sponsored terrorism," Singh said.
"There is widespread anger in the country against Pakistan at the moment following the neighbouring country's support to terrorism against India," the MLA claimed.
He alleged that the tax paid by Pakistani actors to their country is used against India.
The filmmaker should know that there are many talented actors in India itself, Singh said.
The legislator said he is also "campaigning against China which is supporting Pakistan".
Singh was in earlier for opposing a proposed beef festival here.
The Raj-Thackeray led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has opposed the movie and threatened to break glasses of film theatres screening it.
"We will oppose the screening of the movie everywhere in the state (Maharashtra). If any multiplex operator dares to screen the film, they (operators) should remember that multiplexes are decorated with expensive glass sheets," MNS leader Amey Khopkar had said.
Under pressure over opposition to the upcoming release of "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil", Johar had yesterday said he will not "engage with talent" from Pakistan in future and made a fervent appeal against stalling the blockbuster.
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The Taliban today rejected reports of secret meetings with the Afghan government in a bid to resume long-stalled peace negotiations, insisting that their hardline policy remains unchanged.
Afghan officials yesterday said they held two meetings since September in Doha, where the Taliban maintain a political office, after the was first reported by Britain's The Guardian newspaper.
But Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement rejected any reports of talks or meetings.
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, Afghanistan's intelligence chief, and National Security Advisor Mohammad Hanif Atmar had attended one of the Qatar meetings, local Tolo television said citing a presidential palace source.
"The representatives of the Islamic Emirate have not met with Stanekzai or any other officials. Our stance about the negotiations has not changed. Our policy is very clear on that," Mujahid said, referring to the Taliban's official title.
The Taliban have long insisted on the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan as a precondition for peace talks with the government.
The Guardian said the talks were attended by Mullah Abdull Manan Akhund, brother of Taliban founder and long-time leader Mullah Omar who died in 2013.
A senior American diplomat was also present in the Qatar meetings, the newspaper said citing a Taliban official.
Pakistan - the Taliban's historic backers - have hosted several rounds of international talks over the last year to jumpstart peace negotiations, which yielded little progress.
The dialogue process ground to a halt when the US killed former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in May.
The insurgency has shown stubborn resilience under new Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, attacking northern Kunduz city for a second time and threatening the capital of the southern opium-rich province of Helmand.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Home-grown auto major has increased prices of its passenger vehicles by up to Rs 12,000 across models to offset rising input costs.
"We have hiked prices of our passenger vehicles by one per cent ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 12,000 due to rising input costs," Mayank Pareek, President, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors, told PTI.
He said prices of raw materials such as steel and zinc have gone up prompting the company to take such a step.
sells a range of passenger vehicles, including the entry-level small car Nano, newly-launched hatchback Tiago and crossover vehicle Aria, which were priced at a range of Rs 2.15 lakh to Rs 16.3 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).
Home-grown rival Mahindra & Mahindra has hiked prices of some of its passenger and small commercial vehicles by up to 1 per cent from this month.
In August, Hyundai Motor India had hiked prices by up to Rs 20,000 across its models while Maruti Suzuki India had also done so for its various models by up to Rs 20,000.
Tata CLiQ, Tata group's e-commerce venture, today said it has appointed Vikas Purohit as its Chief Operating Officer.
The company has also appointed Amit Rawal to head its 'Luxury' business.
Purohit will spearhead commercial, seller management and digital marketing functions, the company said in a statement.
He was one of the first few employees of Amazon.In and comes with a strong e-commerce and fashion retail experience. He has also previously held leadership positions at Reliance Brands, Tommy Hilfiger India and Aditya Birla Group's Madura Garments.
"Tata CLiQ has witnessed a multi-fold growth since its launch in May this year... These appointments come at a time when TataCLiQ is at a crucial growth juncture and is expected to launch two new categories and the luxury portfolio," it said.
Rawal, who will focus on building Tata CLiQ as a luxury-lifestyle destination, had founded Elitify.Com. He has also worked with Thomson Reuters and Deloitte Consulting.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Highlighting the advantages of Hyderabad as an investment destination, Telangana Industries Minister K T Rama Rao today sought investments from US investors in pharma and medical-related sectors.
Rao, who is on a visit to America, interacted with industry leaders from pharma, medical technology companies on the sidelines of Medical Technology Conference - AdvaMed 2016 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a Government release said here.
Noting that Telangana ranked high in ease of doing business index and has implemented a business-friendly industry policy, he explained the "unmatched advantages Telangana offers in the fields of healthcare, pharma and medical technology devices".
"The Minister drew the attention of the industry leaders, about a 100 in number, to the measures Telangana Government is taking to further strengthen the USD 50 billion extant life sciences industry in Hyderabad. Rama Rao mentioned the state-of-the-art Pharma City and Medical Devices Park that Telangana is setting up near Hyderabad," the release said.
Rao held one-to-one discussions with leaders from healthcare, pharma and medical devices industries, it said.
In the meeting with Gary Pruden, Worldwide Chairman, Medical Devices, Johnson & Johnson, Rao held discussions on topics ranging from manufacturing, intellectual property rights, to regulatory issues.
He had a meeting with Omar Ishrak, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for medical technology firm Medtronic on the sidelines of AdvaMed 2016, it said.
Benson Smith, Chairman, President and CEO of Teleflex Inc, met Rao. The Minister asked the medical devices firm to consider investing in Telangana. The minister also met Kevin Lobo, President & CEO of Stryker Corporation.
Earlier, Rao met Paul Kalil, Vice-President and Vemuri Murthy, India Liaison of American Heart Association in Chicago. The Minister urged them to join the State Government for a collaborative effort to reduce cardiac risks in Telangana. The association said they will soon visit Hyderabad to formalise the engagement, the release added.
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Trinamool Congress MP and the party's youth wing president Abhishek Banerjee's health condition improved today, a day after he met with an accident on NH-2 near Singur, while returning to Kolkata from Murshidabad.
"The condition of Abhishek Banerjee is much better. He is completely out of danger. The CT scan report was normal. An MRI has also been conducted today. We are waiting for the report and are planning to shift him to a normal cabin in a day or two," hospital CEO P Tandon said.
Abhishek is presently in ITU, Tandon said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Attacking the NDA government over triple talaq and uniform civil code, TMC MP Sultan Ahmed today accused the BJP of trying to infringe into the fundamental and religious rights of Muslims and stir up communal passion in the country.
Ahmed said the BJP should leave it to the Muslim community of the country to decide on the issue of triple talaq.
"This will be a disastrous decision to take for the secular and pluralistic fabric of our country," Ahmed told PTI.
Asked about the legibility of triple talaq for Muslim women, Ahmed, a prominent minority face of the TMC, said, "It is a religious issue of the Muslims and only they can decide on it."
Ahmed said that the matter of BJP trying to interfere in triple Talaq and uniform civil code would come up in the the All India Muslim Personal Law Board's three-day triennial convention in Kolkata starting from November 18.
Ahmed wondered if the BJP government was really so concerned about the condition of Muslim women it should create jobs for them, higher education facilities and facilitate social empowerment.
"But the BJP will not address those issues as it has only this triple talaq issue to address," he said.
For the first time in India's constitutional history, the Centre on October 7 had opposed in the Supreme Court the practice of triple talaq, 'nikah halala' and polygamy among Muslims and favoured a relook on grounds like gender equality and secularism.
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Twelve days after the filing of the charge sheet in the Kopardi rape and murder case, which has generated much heat across Maharashtra in the last three months, trial in the case began in a local court today.
Noted criminal lawyer Ujjwal Nikam, who has been appointed as the special public prosecutor in the case, today opened the case by describing the charges of criminal conspiracy for committing rape and murder against all the three accused.
The accused-- Jitendra Babulal Shinde, Santosh Gorakh Bhawal and Nitin Gopinath Bhailume-- were produced in the court under heavy police presence.
Stressing that criminal conspiracy charge need to be framed against all the accused, Nikam told the court that four to five days before the incident, the accused had stopped the girl and tried to molest her.
"Four to five days prior to the incident, all the accused had interrupted and obstructed the victim and accused Jitendra alias 'Pappu' Shinde had tried to drag her to the nearby field," Nikam said, adding, however, when she resisted, the other two accused said that they would see her later.
"Four days later the incident of rape and murder occurred and it shows the complicity of other two accused," Nikam argued in the court.
The 15-year-old victim was raped on July 13 at Kopardi village in Ahmednagar district, allegedly by the trio, who also inflicted injuries all over her body and broke her limbs before throttling her.
On October 7, Ahmednagar police filed the charge sheet running into over 350 pages before a sessions court in the district in which the trio has been charged under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 376 (rape) and relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
Nikam said that on the day of the incident, all the accused were moving on their motorcycle and were keeping a watch on the movements of the victim.
He urged the court that besides the charge of criminal conspiracy, the charges of murder, rape and those related to relevant sections of POCSO Act- are also required to be framed against the trio.
Nikam said with the statements of 70 witnesses, the prosecution will complete the trial expeditiously.
The Kopardi incident proved to be the trigger for the silent marches (mook morchas) taken out by the Marathas across the state as the victim belonged to the community, while the culprits are Dalits. Through their campaign they have also raised long-pending demands like quota in education and jobs.
(Reopens LGB 7)
Meanwhile, one of the accused, Nitin Bhailume, filed an application in the court seeking his discharge in the case.
The trial in the case will continue tomorrow.
The Kopardi incident had sparked a huge public outrage and political slugfest with the Congress demanding Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's resignation on "moral grounds". Fadnavis had assured the victim's family that the matter will be heard in a fast track court and announced a solatium of Rs 5 lakh.
They say the Myanmar president - and the country's intelligence - has got it right.
Senior officials in Indian intelligence, who have closely followed the Rohingya armed militancy for decades, told Mizzima that the AqaMul Mujahideen (AMM) leaders were indeed trained in Pakistan.
"Later they recruited Rohingya youths in Rakhine and trained them in jungle bases on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border," said one official of India's Military Intelligence, who preferred not to be named.
He said that AMM is a new armed group that originated from the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami-Arakan (HUJI-A) which enjoys close relations with the Pakistan Taliban.
The HUJI-A chief is Abdus Qadoos Burmi, a Pakistani national of Rohingya origin, who it is claimed recruited Hafiz Tohar, 45, from Kyauk Pyin Seik village in Maungdaw in Myanmar and arranged for his training in Pakistan.
Tohar is said to be heading the AMM now and Qadoos Burmi is reported to be close to the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba/ Jamaatud Dawa (LeT/JuD), headed by Hafiz Sayeed.
Mizzima had earlier reported the LeT-JuDpresence especially that of its humanitarian front Fala- I - Insaniyat in Rohingya relief camps in Rakhine State after the 2012 riots.
Qadoos Burmi developed the HUJI-A network in Bangladesh, using the remote hills on its border with Myanmar, where coverage by Bangladesh security forces was at best limited.
After training a few promising recruits in Pakistan, they were sent to set up bases on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, where the new Rohingya recruits were trained in combat techniques and use of explosives.
That was during the 2013-14 phase when Bangladesh police and security forces were busy tackling violent political unrest unleashed in their country by Islamist opposition parties against the ruling Awami League.
Bangladesh intelligence zeroed in on a few such bases but security forces raiding them found they had just been abandoned by inmates days, sometimes hours, before the raids.
Senior Bangladesh intelligence officials said that in July 2012, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD)/ Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) started the Difa-e-Musalman-e-Arakan conference in Pakistan to highlight the Rohingya cause.
"Subsequently, senior JuD operatives, Shahid Mahmood and Nadeem Awan, visited,in August 2012, Bangladesh to establish direct contacts with Rohingya elements based in camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border," said a top Bangladesh intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Indian intelligence officials say that Pakistan-linked Rohingya terror groups have also been noticed in Mae Sot area on the Thai side of the Thai-Myanmar border.
Frequent movement of Maulana Ustad Wazeer @ Noor Kabir and Fareed Faizullah, both Pakistani nationals of Rohingya origin, have been noticed in Thailand border areas, they said.
Wazeer and Fareed have been recruiting Rohingya illegal migrants who fled from Bangladesh to Thailand or Malaysia but could not get necessary documentation in those countries.
"These migrants were on the edge and recruiting them was not so difficult," said one Indian intelligence official.
He said that Indian security forces found Rohingya jihadis fighting alongside Pakistani fighters in Indian Kashmir.
One of their top leaders, Chotta Burmi, was killed in Indian Kashmir alongwith JeM commander Adil Pathan in October 2015.
Chotta Burmi was found to be sharing the dias with Le Tsupremo Hafiz Sayeed in a picture used in a Mizzima report.
Earlier, the Bangladesh authorities arrested Maulana Shabeer Ahmed, a Pakistan-based Rohingya operative in 2012 who revealed that he was coordinating with Rohingya militants in Bangladesh on behalf of Jaish e Mohammed (JeM).
Shabeer Ahmed was involved in carrying out illegal financial transactions from Pakistan to Bangladesh, said a Bangladesh intelligence official.
He said that besides Qadoos Burmi, another Rohingya militant network said to be operating out of Pakistan is headed by Maulana Abdul Hamid, a Pakistan national of Rohingya origin, who is reported to be active along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.
Abdul Hamid maintains close links with LeT, according to Indian intelligence.
It says that Pakistan's ISI's special operations cell coordinates the activity of the different Rohingya groups, whose leadership is based in the country.
Rohingya community sources say that Nur Hussain Arakani, head of the Pakistan chapter of Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), has been collecting funds and relief material from Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed of JuD/ LeT and Maulana Abdu Rauf of JuD-linked Falah-e-Insaaniyat foundation (FIF) in 2015.
The RSO is the mother group, from which a number of more militant offshoots have now emerged.
Both India and Bangladesh are said to be very worried over the new spurt in Rohingya militancy.
Bangladesh's secular Awami League government, fighting a rising curve of Islamist militancy at home, has come forward to extend all cooperation to Myanmar in its efforts to curb Rohingya militancy.
"We cannot rule out that these Rohingya armed groups may have close links with Bangladesh's homegrown jihadis and could share hideouts, finances and sources of weapons supply," said a senior official of Bangladesh's Counter-Terrorism Centre.
He said Bangladesh and Myanmar needed to cooperate in handling a problem that both shared.
India also suspects Rohingya militants could use Indian territory to attack Myanmar tourists and pilgrims and may be used by Pakistan to hit at Indian targets as well.
"They persuade the young people using religious extremism, and they have financial support from outside," said a Burmese language statement from the President's office.
"They are broadcasting their videos on the Internet like ISIS, Taliban and al Qaeda. They now have 400 insurgents fighting in Maungdaw region."
Several videos showing armed men speaking the language of the mostly stateless Rohingya have circulated online this week.
According to a Reuters report, the agency has not been able to verify the authenticity of the videos, but government officials say they believe they show the perpetrators of the attacks that began on October 9.
An Indian-American social-worker running for the US Congress from New Jersey is confident of winning the seat and dislodging a four-time Republican veteran in the November 8 general elections due to Donald Trump's rhetoric and lewd remarks about women.
"Things are changing fast. I have a very good chance now," said Peter Jacob, 30, a Democrat who is running for the US House of Representative from 7th Congressional District in New Jersey which is known to be a strong Republican bastion.
Trump's unpleasant rhetoric and lewd remarks about women appears to be changing the dynamics of New Jersey, which over the past several decades has repeatedly sent Republican leaders to the Congress.
On Saturday, hours after his morning door-to-door campaign, he managed to convince a Trump supporter to vote for him, Jacob, who was born in Kerala, claimed sitting in his small single-family home in a Union neighbourhood of New Jersey.
A recent internal survey shows he has narrowed the gap with his opponent Leonard Lance. While Lance is supported by 37 per cent of the registered voters, he is being supported by 34 per cent.
Yesterday, several of the senior advisers from the Bernie Sanders Campaign joined his Congressional campaign. US Senator from Vermont, Sanders has already endorsed him, which he says has given a big boost to his campaign among the youths.
Adam Burgdorf, who held the position of Political Affairs Adviser at the UN, has joined Jacob's team as Deputy Communications Manager.
"The campaign is expanding its reach; Peter continues to gain supporters because he talks aboutthe important issues and he is not a 'career politician' type," said Fred Lonsdale, former GOTV Director for the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Latest Federal Election Commission filings show Jacob out- raise his opponent Lance on individual contributions by a margin of nearly three to one.
Jacob has consistently campaigned to put "People Over Politics" by prioritising the concerns and needs of everyday people over those of large corporations and career politicians.
Jacob, who spend several hours a day in his door-to-door campaign, said he plans to reach out to most of his 500,000 voters before the election day either personally, or by phone, email, letters and television advertisement.
Based on his interaction with the voters, he feels that this time there would be a high voter turnout.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Seeking to put the Democrats on the back foot, Donald Trump has roped-in President Barack Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother to be his guest at the third and final presidential debate here, US media reported today.
Hillary Clinton will be joined at the prime-time debate by two well-known billionaires who are backing her campaign, in what may be an attempt to rattle Trump, the controversial Republican nominee by subtly questioning his own net worth.
Meg Whitman, the Hewlett-Packard CEO and former Republican California gubernatorial candidate, and Mark Cuban, the outspoken billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, will both be Clinton's guests at Wednesday's third and final presidential debate, CNN reported.
Meanwhile, Trump is countering with Malik, President Obama's half-brother and a ghost from Clinton's past: Patricia Smith, the mother of Benghazi victim Sean Smith, who has accused the former secretary of state of "murdering" her son.
The New York Post first reported Trump's invitation to Obama's half-brother. The Post also reported that Malik Obama called now-deceased Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi one of his best friends -- a potential source of awkwardness for Smith.
Malik Obama, who was born in Kenya and is an American citizen, voiced his support for Trump in July, saying he hoped to meet the Republican nominee. Trump's feelings are mutual.
"I look very much forward to meeting and being with Malik," Trump said today. "He gets it far better than his brother."
Malik Obama shares the same father with the president but has a different mother. He told the Post that he blames Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time Gadaffi was toppled and killed, for making the situation worse in Libya.
Clinton invited both Cuban and Whitman, campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said, and the duo agreed to attend.
Whitman, a longtime Republican, endorsed Clinton earlier this year, saying in a statement that she would vote for and donate to Clinton. Since then, Whitman has headlined events for Clinton and contributed a considerable amount of money to her campaign.
Cuban sat in the front row at Clinton's first debate against Trump, a move that was intended to shake the Republican nominee because the Dallas Mavericks owner has been so outspoken against the businessman.
Trump lashed out at Cuban for attending the debate with Clinton, calling him "dopey."
At the second presidential debate, Trump appeared with three women who have in the past accused former President Bill Clinton of inappropriate sexual behavior as part of an effort to rattle Hillary Clinton.
Trump invited Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and another woman, Kathy Shelton, whose alleged rapist was defended by Clinton as a young lawyer.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two persons have been arrested for allegedly presenting a forged cheque at the branch of a nationalised bank here on October 17.
The Senior Manager of the bank had filed a complaint to the police yesterday stating that the two- identified as Kamalavasan and Krishnan- had approached the bank and handed a cheque for Rs 3.93 crore.
The cheque was presented to be credited to the account of Kamalavasan the founder of a NGO. When the local bank contacted the bank's branch at Kolkatta it was alleged that the cheque was a fake one, a police release said.
Cases under IPC sections 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document)against them.
Police are on the look out for one more person alleged involved in the case.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A court here today remanded four Naxals arrested from Noida in seven-day custody of Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS).
"The ATS has got remand of four naxals from today to October 26. The remand was granted by Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Gautam Buddha Nagar on the application moved by ATS on October 17," a senior police official told PTI.
The Naxals, who were taken in remand included Ranjit Paswan, Krishan Kumar, Pawan Kumar Jha and Ashish Saraswat, he said.
Averting a major Naxal attack in the national capital and its neighbourhood, the UP police ATS had on October 16 smashed a gang of ultras arresting 10 of them, including a self-styled area commander, and recovering a huge cache of arms and ammunition.
The left-wing extremists were adept at making bombs and were planning some incidents in the Delhi-NCR region, IG (UP ATS) Aseem Arun had said.
Nine Naxals were arrested from Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi, while one from Chandauli near Varanasi.
Self-styled area commander Pradeep Singh Kharwar from Bariatu village in Jharkhand's Latehar district was hiding in Noida since February 2012 and carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his arrest, he said.
The ATS had recovered 550 live cartridges, an INSAS assault rifle, two other rifles and three self-loading rifle magazines along with a huge quantity of explosives and detonators.
The recovery of the INSAS rifle showed that they must have looted it from security personnel as the weapon is used by them against the ultras, ATS said.
The arrested Naxals were active in eastern UP and adjoining parts of Bihar and had made Noida their base. They had rented two flats and posed as property dealers.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 20-year-old man, allegedly working as "urban supplier" for naxals, was today arrested from a market place in Chhattisgarh's Kondagaon district, police said.
The cadre, identified as Sukhram Korram, was picked up when he was procuring items of general use for Maoists from the market in Kondagaon town, district superintendent of police Santosh Singh told PTI.
The arrest came as security forces have been directed in all seven districts of Bastar division to keep a close watch on the movement of suspects in local weekly and daily markets that serve as agood source for rebels to procure items of daily use.
Korram was caught by a team of District Reserve Group (DRG) and local police, based on a tip-off given by some surrendered rebels.
"During interrogation, Korram, a native of Barsoor area in Dantewada district, confessed that he was acting as the urban supplier for rebels and had also served as member of Chetna Natya Manch (CNM), a cultural wing of Maoists, in Maad area," the officer said.
Police recovered a big knife, naxal banners and posters, medicines and other related literature from Korram.
In a similar incident, anaxal was apprehended from a weekly market under Dhanora police station limits of Kondagaon on October 16.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 37-year-old man, who ripped off a Muslim woman's hijab on a flight while shouting "this is America!", has been sentenced to a year of probation, including two months of home confinement.
Gill Parker Payne was also fined USD 1,000 for the attack, according to a statement by the US Attorney's Office in the District of New Mexico.
"You hurt me, you disrespected me you violated me," the victim, Khawla Abdel-Haq was quoted as saying in court by the Albuquerque Journal.
"I was scared, and it shouldn't be like that," she said, adding that she did not leave her home for weeks out of fear after the in-flight attack last December.
Payne, from North Carolina, was sentenced in US District Court yesterday to a year of probation, including two months of home confinement.
US Magistrate Judge Steven Yarbrough also ordered Payne to pay a USD 1,000 fine, along with a nearly USD 4,000 fee.
In May, Payne had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of obstructing a person's free exercise of religious beliefs.
Payne also apologised during yesterday's hearing and said he has taken online courses to familiarise himself with other religions and recently toured a mosque in hopes of learning more about Islam.
"I'm embarrassed. I'm 100 per cent embarrassed," he was quoted as saying.
Payne said he was drunk on the flight and "doesn't fully remember everything" that happened.
But Abdel-Haq remembers.
"I'm not gonna forget it. It's going to be with me every minute of every day of my life," she said.
She was sitting in an aisle seat on the Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to Albuquerque after a trip to Ohio when Payne approached her about 30 minutes before the flight landed, she said.
"I was minding my own business. He went and he grabbed my scarf, my hijab, and he told me, 'Take it off... This is America,'" she said of the incident.
A shaken Haq pulled the scarf back onto her head. She met with police after the flight landed, and the FBI launched an investigation.
Before he announced the sentence, Yarbrough said he had taken into account Haq's willingness to forgive along with the public shaming Payne endured and his recent efforts to learn about world religions.
"I hope that that has made an impact on the way you see the world," Yarbrough said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The United States said today that it would deploy a missile-defense system to South Korea as soon as possible, despite opposition from China.
US Secretary Of State John Kerry confirmed that the THAAD system would soon be sent to the peninsula at a meeting with South Korean ministers in Washington.
Washington sees the US-built Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system as protection against North Korea's pursuit of missile and nuclear technology.
But China has warned it sees it as a threat to the balance of power in the region, fearing it would make its own nuclear deterrent less credible.
"The United States will do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves and to honor the security commitment we have made to our allies," Kerry said.
"And we will deploy as soon as possible a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to our Korean ally," he added.
Kerry and US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter were welcoming South Korea's foreign minister, Yun Byung-Se, and defense minister, Han Min-Koo.
Washington and Seoul agreed to install THAAD this summer following repeated nuclear and missile tests by Kim Jong-Un's authoritarian Pyongyang regime.
The move angered Beijing, the main trading partner of otherwise isolated North Korea and a key player in international efforts to control the regime.
Last week, Chinese General Cai Jun told a defense forum in Beijing that THAAD is "not conducive to the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Defeated Islamic State fighters from the Iraqi city of Mosul are likely to enter Europe to carry out terrorist attacks, the European Union's (EU) security chief has warned.
Thousands of Europeans who left to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria over the past few years may have already begun returning to the continent after the terrorist group suffered a string of territorial defeats in the Middle East, warned Julian King, theEU's Commissioner for Security.
"The retaking of Islamic State's northern Iraq stronghold, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent ISIS fighters," King told the German newspaper'Die Welt'.
According to King, a British diplomat who recently took charge as security commissioner, even a handful of such terrorists returning would pose a serious threat.
French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has warned the fight to liberate Mosul in its entirety could take a long time.
"It's not a blitzkrieg. It's a city with 1.5 million residents, so it's a long-term project - several weeks, maybe months," he said.
Some 34,000 Iraqi security personnel, Kurdish fighters, Sunni Muslim Arab tribesmen and Shia Muslim paramilitaries have been deployed against ISIS, with backing from the US, France and others.
Their advance on Mosul comes over two years after the city was seized by ISIS in a major coup that enabled the extremist group to announce a self-proclaimed caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria.
Iraqi forces say they have captured 10 villages near Mosul since beginning their long-awaited offensive on Monday.
As many as 5,000 ISIS fighters are believed to remain in the city.
If the city is reclaimed by the Iraqi government, ISIS will be left with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its last major stronghold.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rebel RSS leader Subhash Velingkar-led Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) has offered to project MGP leader Sudin Dhavalikar as the Chief Ministerial face for the upcoming Goa Legislative Assembly elections, if the latter's party forges an alliance with them.
"We have informally conveyed to Sudin Dhavalikar that he would be projected as CM face for the election, if his party (MGP) aligns with us (GSM)," Velingkar told PTI today.
GSM is an off-shoot of Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM), an outfit which has been on loggerheads with the BJP-led government over demand on making regional languages the Medium of Instruction (MOI) in elementary education.
Velingkar said that while GSM's proposal is still pending with MGP, it has in-principle agreed to have an alliance with Shiv Sena.
"We will be informing Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray during his Goa visit this weekend (October 22) that we are ready to align with them on seat sharing basis," he said.
Thackeray's visit which was scheduled on October 16-17 was postponed due to BRICS Summit in the state.
"The seat sharing would be discussed in a meeting that will happen after Thackeray's Goa visit," he said.
Shiv Sena has already submitted the proposal to GSM stating that they (SS) will contest on 20 seats.
About Dhavalikar, Velingkar said MGP has told GSM that they will take a call on the alliance only after notification for the election is issued.
"MGP has told the same to BJP too," he added.
MGP is currently in alliance with BJP in the state with two of its legislators inducted in Laxmikant Parsekar's cabinet.
Dhavalikar had recently ruled out possibility of aligning with GSM reiterating that the party will go with BJP for Goa polls which are due before March 2017.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A special court today directed the Enforcement Directorate to supply certain documents to LIC agent Anand Chauhan, an accused chargesheeted in a money laundering case involving Himachal Pradesh CM Virbhadra Singh.
Special Judge Vinod Kumar directed the probe agency to hand over the documents which were filed along with the final report in the case.
The direction was passed on Chauhan's application seeking the documents, as the court posted the matter for next hearing on November 5.
The court had on September 7 taken cognisance on the charge sheet filed against Chauhan, who is currently in judicial custody, while asking the ED to provide him a copy of the final report and other documents.
The charge sheet was filed for offences under sections 3 (money-laundering) and 4 (punishment for the offence) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) Act.
Chauhan was arrested from Chandigarh on July 9 under the provisions of PMLA on the grounds that he was allegedly not cooperating with the probe.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Letters
Are You Really Willing to Subject the World to a Trump Presidency?
Dear Alibi,
Obviously there is much anger and pain dividing the country, with many citizens not experiencing the benefits of the last 8 years when unemployment was reduced from 7.8 percent to 5 percent, the monthly hemorrhaging of lost jobs was halted and millions of new jobs created. But to blindly go for change should not mean throwing away every moral and ethical standard that America has always prided itself on exemplifying.
Donald Trump is a congenital liar, a bully, a sexual predator, a deliberately uninformed policy maker and a man who has spent the last 18 months stirring up hatred against Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, immigrants and anyone who disagrees with him.
His claim to be a brilliant businessman is refuted by his numerous bankruptcies, where he kept his money but his investors lost their shirts, where he reneged on paying his contractors. He is the subject of 3,500 lawsuits thanks to this practice. His arrogant behavior towards women is finally being noted. Trump is the ultimate hypocrite, proclaiming his disgust at those who send their businesses overseas, yet he has done exactly that for decades. Even this year, opening a new hotel built with steel and furnishings made in China. Is this how he will make America great again? He sees everything in term of his own bottom line, which is why he said he thought wages were too high and the housing crisis, where thousands lost everything, was actually good for him. His thin skin causes him to lash out intemperately at anyone who offends him. Is this the temperament you want in the person whose finger will be on the nuclear trigger? For your own sake, the sake of the country and the world, do not allow this narcissist anywhere near the Oval Office.
In this wonderful animation, billionaire Russian physicist and investor Yuri Milner explains his effort to launch tiny probes, powered by 12 foot solar sails, on an interstellar mission to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, within two decades. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are on the board of Milner's group, called Breakthrough Initiatives. The project builds on decades of work by scientists Carl Sagan, Louis Friedman, and Bruce Murray who pioneered solar sail technology through the Planetary Society, the fantastic citizen-funded space advocacy and research organization they co-founded in 1980. Indeed, Friedman is an advisor to Milner's Starshot effort.
For more on solar sailing, check out the Planetary Society's LightSail project and their blog post earlier this year about Milner's far out project.
Voicing concern over spurt in political violence in Kerala's Kannur district, the Communist Party of India has urged the CPI-M to exercise restraint and not get provoked by the RSS as it has the responsibility of maintaining law and order in the LDF-ruled state.
"It's very unfortunate that continuously these type of murders and revenge murders are taking place," General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy told PTI.
"Both should exercise restraint, particularly RSS. Every time, it's the RSS, who has done it first (political murder). That does not mean that I defend the revenge murders (by CPI-M). Both should exercise restraint," he said.
"Our advice (to CPI-M) is exercise restraint, and not to get provoked (by RSS) with this type of things and after all it's the responsibility of government of Kerala about the law and order situation. More responsibility is with CPI-M as it's in government (as the lead partner)," Reddy said.
He charged the RSS-BJP with trying to create a "communal atmosphere" by "these" (political violence).
Reddy alleged that BJP president Amit Shah has appealed to editors of all news channels and newspapers that "this (political violence in Kannur district) should be made an all-India issue ... It should be in limelight. That shows they have got ulterior motives".
He denied suggestions of cycle of political violence happening whenever CPI-M is in power in Kerala, saying, "Even earlier it was taking place, even when CPM was in opposition".
BJP activist Remith was allegedly hacked to death in Kannur district, the hometown of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan last Wednesday, within 48 hours of the murder of a CPM activist and toddy shop worker Mohanan.
The BJP called a 'hartal' in Kerala last Thursday to protest against the killing of its party activist.
The HIV virus increases the potency of the tuberculosis bacterium by affecting a central function of the immune system, a new study has found.
The discovery by researchers at Linkoping University in Sweden helps to explain why infection with HIV greatly increases the risk that infection by tuberculosis bacterium (Mtb) will progress to active tuberculosis.
In most people who are exposed to tuberculosis infection, the immune defence deals with the bacteria by enclosing them in a special scar tissue. In this condition the tuberculosis is said to be "latent".
Around 10 per cent of those with latent tuberculosis will go on to develop active disease. We know that infection with HIV is the greatest risk factor for the development of active tuberculosis after infection with Mtb.
"The risk of infection progressing to active tuberculosis is around 30 times higher for people who are HIV-positive. But the reason for this has not been known at the cellular level," said senior lecturer Robert Blomgran, who led the study.
In the new study, the researchers looked in more detail at what happens in one particular type of immune cell, known as dendritic cells.
These play an important role in the immune defence. Dendritic cells break down tuberculosis bacteria and other foreign microorganisms, and display the bacteria fragments at the cell surface.
Other cells of the immune system, in particular T-cells, recognise the fragments and bind to them. The dendritic cell then activates the T-cell such that it can kill the tuberculosis bacteria efficiently.
In this way, dendritic cells act as a communication link between the innate immune defence and the specific immune defence, of which the T-cells are part.
The researchers infected human dendritic cells with both Mtb and the HIV virus. They showed that co-infection reduced the ability of the dendritic cells to present foreign molecules to the immune defence.
They also had a lower capacity to activate tuberculosis-specific T-cells than was the case when the dendritic cells were infected with Mtb alone.
"We have now shown that HIV has a clear effect also on the innate immune defence, in particular the dendritic cells, which link the innate and the adaptive immune defences.
"We can already suggest that one important future treatment strategy for infection should be to find ways to strengthen or boost cells in the immune defence using what is known as 'host-directed therapy'," said Blomgran.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), around 9.6 million people around the world develop tuberculosis each year, researchers said.
About 10 per cent of these, or 1.2 million people, are also infected with HIV. Of those who die from tuberculosis, one third are infected by HIV, but the fraction differs greatly between different parts of the world.
The study was published in the American Journal of Pathology.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaih today said he will be meeting his Maharashtra and Goa counterparts on October 21 in Mumbai to discuss the Mahadayi water dispute with a "positive mind" as advocated during an all-party meeting held by him here.
This meeting is being held after the Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal on September 1 asked the concerned states to resolve the water dispute amicably by holding discussions with or without third party mediation.
Ahead of the October 21 meeting, Siddaramaiah today held an all-party meeting to discuss the state's strategy.
"All the members who attended today's meeting have given suggestion, how we should proceed in the negotiation. The suggestion is that we should go the meeting with positive mind," Siddaramaih told reporters after the meeting.
Pointing out that Karnataka has been consistently pressing for an outside tribunal settlement of the issue and had also sought for Prime Minister's intervention, he said "I'm going with positive mind, keeping in mind the state's interest.
"In any negotiations the parties concerned cannot be rigid, always give and take will be there.With open mind I'm going," he added.
Siddaramaih also clarified that during the meeting on October 21 the discussion will be on the larger issue of sharing Mahadayi River water.
"We have told the tribunal that according to our requirements we will require 36.558 tmc water. That is our claim. On this basis, keeping in mind our requirements for drinking water, irrigation and power generation I'm going to the meeting with a positive frame of mind," he said.
Karnataka has for long been advocating an out of court settlement of the issue.
Siddaramaiah had even led an all party delegation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention.
Earlier, Goa government had rejected Karnataka's stand, saying the people of the state felt it was more prudent to settle the dispute through the Tribunal.
Karnataka government, which has locked horns with the neighboring Goa on the larger issue of sharing Mahadayi River water between both the states, had earlier petitioned the tribunal seeking the release of 7.56 tmcft of water for the Kalasa-Banduri Nala project, but it was rejected in an interim order on July 27.
The Kalasa-Banduri project is being undertaken by Karnataka to improve drinking water supply to the twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad and the districts of Belagavi and Gadag.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 27-year-old Malaysian woman was today jailed for two years by a top court for possessing over 100 images related to Islamic State's terror activities in her cellphone.
Siti Nor Intan Shafinaz Johari was sentenced after she pleaded guilty to the charge of having 139 terror-related images of dreaded Islamic State terror outfit in her handphone.
Judge Datuk Azman Abdullah of a Malaysian High Court while handing out the sentence said preventive action should be taken against those involved in such activities as it could cause instability in the country.
"We should address this problem as they are using religion to cover up their activities," he said.
Abdullah said the punishment was aimed at curbing the terrorist activities which he termed as a "subversive movement."
"This subversive movement is something that has to be addressed as it uses religion as a facade. It is a threat that leads to violence and chaos, if not curbed," he was quoted as saying by the 'New Straits Times Online'.
The judge ordered Shafinaz to serve the jail sentence from the date of her arrest, which was last March 22.
The mother of an eight-year-old child was charged the Panel Code which provides an imprisonment for up to seven years, or fine, and liable to forfeiture of the items concerned, according to a media report.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On a high-profile visit here after his spat with the US, the Philippines' mercurial President Rodrigo Duterte maintained a low-key stay here today ahead of his key meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping tomorrow to discus the SCS dispute and ways to forge close ties.
China rolled out a red carpet for Duterte when he arrived here last night, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi himself present at the airport to receive him saying that the visit is "historic" and that no "individual" or "foreign force" could stand in the way of rebuilding the friendship between China and the Philippines.
"Our arms are open and ready for friendship and cooperation," Wang said.
Beijing made no effort to conceal joy over Duterte's break with the US as Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying took a dig at Washington at a media briefing today, saying while people from China and the Philippines are happy about the visit "some people are anxious, upset and have mixed feelings about this".
Ahead of Xi-Duterte meeting tomorrow, Chinese officials have been speculating that as both China-Philippines cannot resolve the South China Sea dispute, the only way out is that it should remain a free passage especially for fishermen from both sides provided Manila does not press for implementing an international tribunal's ruling that struck down China's expansive claims over the area.
This was discussed when former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos visited Hong Kong earlier and held talks with Chinese officials.
It is no cake walk for Duterte either, as the arbitration closely backed by the US and Japan was held over the petition filed by the Philippines.
Any concession from him on the vexed dispute will have a big fallout at home.
For Beijing, his visit was seen as coup of sorts and a turning point over its South China Sea troubles since the tribunal's ruling seriously dented its claims.
Besides the Philippines, China's claims over the South China Sea were contested by Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
On the second day of his landmark visit here, Duterte - who caused ripples all over the world by abusing US President Barack Obama for criticism of his violent crackdown against drug smugglers - kept a low profile meeting Filipino expatriates in the evening.
An official with the Philippine delegation said Duterte had cancelled most of his events except for a dinner with Filipino expats.
In his interviews with the Chinese official media ahead of his visit, Duterte has reiterated his opposition to foreign interference in the South China Sea, warning that such unwelcome overtures would pose a great threat to regional stability.
"Even though countries like the US say all nations are by
the Philippines' side, I say we are close to a third world war," Duterte said during an interview with CCTV on October 13.
He believes that stubborn insistence on territorial claims does not help with economic development, state-run People's Daily reported.
Though the South China Sea issue has dampened the two countries' relations, Duterte said he still has faith that China and the Philippines can "totally erase these dark spots", and added that he wants to establish a more cohesive and stronger bond with China.
"In one word, I would say it is a defining moment of my presidency to open the frontiers of friendship and cooperation, and enhance (the) relationship between our two countries," he said.
Discussing the balance of Manila's diplomatic ties with the US and China, he said his country "should not be too constrained (by) the dictates of any other country".
He also stressed that China and the Philippines are neighbours, while the US is thousands of miles away.
"I am not breaking away from the US - I just want to be friendly with everybody. So you do not restrain me from doing (the same thing to) China. Why should we be afraid? Why should we stick to a certain country?" Duterte said.
As for his expectations for his state visit to China, he said he hopes that better Sino-Philippines relations can benefit his country's sluggish domestic economy, adding that China is the only hope for his country's economy.
According to some media reports, he evinced interest in buying Chinese weapons though China was guarded in its response to such statements.
"China is willing to cooperate with the Philippines on drugs control and fight against drug crimes and terrorism," Hua said when asked whether China is willing to sell arms to Philippines.
By Rajendra Jadhav
AURANGABAD, India (Reuters) - Despite pleas from the government not to, Indian farmers like Santosh Wagh went right back to planting sugar cane as soon as the first nourishing monsoon rains brought water to his drought-stricken region of central India.
For growers like Wagh, a 35-year old from the Marathwada region in the west of Maharashtra, sugar cane has two attributes that make planting the crop lucrative - hardiness and state policies that ensure higher returns. These farmers sow the cane even as its outsized water demands relative to other crops threaten to plunge this traditionally arid region back into a drought.
"It is the only reliable crop. Earlier this year I cultivated onions and incurred a 50,000 rupees loss as prices crashed," said Wagh, who plants 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of sugar cane.
Four months ago Maharashtra, the biggest sugar producing region in India, suffered the worst drought in four decades that ravaged crops, killed livestock, depleted reservoirs and slowed down hydroelectric power output.
Environmental activists and the government blamed the rapid expansion of sugar cane growing for creating the water scarcity. Cane consumes about 22.5 million litres of water per hectare during its 14-month long growing cycle compared to just 4 million litres over four months for chickpeas, a pulse, commonly grown in India and called gram locally.
Without government intervention to reset the revenue balance in favour of other crops, experts warn the sustained production of sugar cane will further deplete scarce water resources and leave the region prone to droughts. This could create social unrest stemming from the widening income gap between cane growers and other farmers.
"The government asks farmers to shift to less water consuming crops, but it does little to support those crops. It failed to solve the problems of oilseed and pulses growers," said Pradeep Purandare, a former professor at Maharashtra Water and Land Management Institute based in Aurangabad.
Erratic prices for vegetables, oilseeds and pulses limit the incentive for farmers to plant them.
In contrast, the government requires sugar mills to buy cane at a set "fair and remunerative price" (FRP). The government also buys wheat and rice at what is called the minimum support price (MSP).
"Returns from other crops are unpredictable. This year I allowed 5 tonnes of onions to rot. Prices were so low that my losses would have increased by transporting onions to the market," said Suresh Kothawale, another Aurangabad farmer.
India's government hopes higher subsidies for pulses and oilseeds will change farming patterns.
"We are creating oilseeds and pulses as an alternative for sugar cane by raising their minimum support prices," said a senior official at India's Agriculture Ministry who declined to be named.
But industry critics said the pulse and oilseed MSP only exists on paper as the government never procures them aggressively like wheat or rice.
"Green gram prices were trading below support prices due to higher production. This makes the support price irrelevant for farmers," said Nitin Kalantri, a pulses miller based at Latur in Maharashtra.
HARDY CROP, POLITICAL CLOUT
The sugar mill buildup in Marathwada was initially pushed by politicians in the region trying to replicate the prosperity of mills in other areas of Maharashtra state and was focused on areas with plentiful water, said Jaidev Dole, a political analyst in Aurangabad.
"But later politicians opened mills everywhere, even in areas where drinking water is not available, to build a constituency rather than making farmers rich," he said.
Farmers sell cane directly to sugar mills, effectively getting 100 percent remuneration, but other crops pass through middlemen, ensuring farmers get half the price consumers pay, said Sanjeev Babar, managing director of the Maharashtra State Co-operative Sugar Factories Federation.
Sugar cane's sturdiness also attracts farmers because of limited access to insurance that protects against crop failures.
Mature cane withstands heavy rainfall or dry spells and is also less vulnerable to pest and diseases compared to other crops, said farmer Sharad Mate, who has lost pulse crops due to droughts and un-seasonal rainfall.
"I had taken crop insurance for pulses last year, but didn't get compensation despite losing an entire crop," said Mate, a farmer from Sillod, northeast of Aurangabad.
(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thirty-eight owners of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in South Korea plan to file a class action lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Company for alleged inconvenience experienced after the discontinuation of the device, a law firm said on Wednesday.
Each person in the suit, which will be filed with the Seoul Central District Court on the following Monday, is seeking 300,000 won ($266.8) in damages, Harvest Law Office said.
The proposed suit alleges that owners of the Note 7 were forced to visit stores several times for battery checks or to get replacements, Yonhap news agency reported.
The complaint also states that the consumers experienced anxiety over safety while using the Note 7.
Koh Young-il, an attorney at the law firm, said he expects the firm to win the suit, given precedents for faulty products.
Last week, Samsung permanently halted sales and production of the fire-prone Note 7, about two months after the device's launch.
The government has sought putting on hold the arbitration initiated by British oil explorer Cairn Energy against a Rs 29,047 crore retrospective tax demand and instead wants a parallel arbitration initiated by Vedanta Resources to be taken up first.
The government using retrospective tax legislation had in January 2014 issued a tax notice on Cairn Energy for alleged capital gains it made on a 10-year old internal reorganisation of its India unit.
ALSO READ: Cairn India shareholders clear merger with Vedanta
Three months later in April 2014, it imposed a tax demand of Rs 20,495 crore on Cairn India, the UK firm's erstwhile subsidiary for failing to deduct tax on the capital gains. ALSO READ: Vedanta CEO says response from Cairn India shareholders to sweetened bid positive
Cairn Energy and Vedanta, which had bought Cairn India from the Scottish firm in 2011, had initiated separate arbitrations against the tax demands. Cairn Energy had initiated the arbitration in March 2015 and the three-member arbitration panel had been constituted. But at a hearing earlier this month, the government contended that the proceedings should be put on hold, sources said. ALSO READ: Cairn-Vedanta merger: LIC says still not on board
Its counsel argued that the government wants the arbitration initiated by Vedanta to be taken up first. Sources said the counsel also made an application seeking more time to file reply to Cairn Energy's demand for $5.6 billion in compensation from the Indian government for raising a retrospective tax demand.
As per the schedule drawn up, the reply was to be filed by mid-November. Sources said that in the Vedanta arbitration, the government may contend that tax issues cannot be arbitrated under bilateral investment protection treaty and once it wins a favourable verdict there, it will use the same to quell Cairn Energy's plea as well.
A three-member arbitration panel headed by Geneva-based arbitrator Laurent Levy began hearing Cairn Energy's plea against tax demand in May and the company filed its 'Statement of Claim' in late June.
The Indian government was to file its 'Statement of Defence' by mid-November and evidential hearing was expected to commence in early 2017, sources said, adding that the plea made by the government will essentially delay the entire process.
The British firm challenged the tax assessment by seeking an international arbitration under the UK-India Investment Treaty, which unlike the Dutch treaty provides for resolution of tax issues.
UK telecom firm Vodafone has initiated arbitration on a separate retrospective tax under the Dutch treaty. Cairn Energy named former Bulgarian minister Stanimir Alexandrov as its arbitrator in the tax dispute while India appointed Singapore-based lawyer J Christopher Thomas as its arbitrator. The seat of the panel was decided to be in The Hague, the Netherlands.
London-based arbitrator James Spigelman to represent its case. The government has named Donald McRae, a member of the UN International Law Commission, to defend itself while Singapore-based senior counsel and chartered arbitrator Michael Hawng will be the chairman of the arbitration panel.
The Income Tax Department had in January 2014 slapped a draft tax assessment of Rs 10,247 crore on Cairn Energy on alleged capital gains it made when in 2006, it transfered its India assets to a new subsidiary, Cairn India, and listed the firm.
The British firm sold majority stake in Cairn India to Vedanta Resources in 2011, but still holds 9.8 per cent stake in the company, which was attached by the Income Tax Department. This year, a final assessment order was slapped on it that included Rs 18,800 crore of interest on top of Rs 10,247 crore principal tax amount.
Cairn Energy, on its part, said no capital gains tax was due under the law in force in 2006 when the restructuring was done. The company is claiming full compensation for the $1 billion value lost following the tax notice and freezing of its 9.8 per cent shares in Cairn India.
The I-T department alleges that Cairn Energy made a capital gain of Rs 24,503.50 crore in 2006 when it transferred shares of Indian assets that were held in a subsidiary set up in the tax haven of Jersey to the newly-incorporated Cairn India.
It listed Cairn India on the stock exchanges through an IPO thereafter. Through the IPO, it raised Rs 8,616 crore and then in 2011 went on to sell majority stake in Cairn India to mining giant Vedanta Group for $8.67 billion.
An article in China's state-owned newspaper The Global Times has said New Delhi can only "bark" about the growing trade deficit between the two countries and do nothing. The article comes in the backdrop of growing clamour for boycott of Chinese products on Indian social media platforms.
New Delhi or the Indian government has not made any statement about boycotting Chinese products. In fact, China is India's biggest trading partner, and experts feel that a further growth in trade between the two countries is significant for the Indian economy.
However, anti-China sentiment has pervaded social media platforms in India over China's repeated blockade to India's efforts to get Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar designated a terrorist by the United Nations.
The article in the Global Times said that the call for boycott of Chinese goods on Indian social media is "rabble rousing" as Indian products cannot compete with those of China.
"There has been a lot of talk recently in the Indian media as well as on social media about boycotting Chinese products. It's just rabble rousing," the article said. It further said that Indian manufacturing cannot compete at all with Chinese products, for various reasons.
ALSO READ: Goa BRICS Summit: Does trade imbalance make India the weakling?
Underlining high corruption in India, the article also warned Chinese companies not to invest in the country as it would be "suicidal" to put money in a country where corruption is high and the workforce is not hard working.
It also argued with its own logic behind the prevalent corruption in India and said: "India has enough money but the majority of it is concentrated with politicians, bureaucrats and a few crony capitalists. Indian elites don't want to spend funds available in the country, which in reality is the taxpayers' money but is utilized by the Indian establishment for its own personal consumption. Because of this, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started impractical schemes like 'Make in India'. The reason is that the Indian establishment wants foreign companies to invest in the country."
"It would be completely suicidal for Chinese companies to put their money in India by starting manufacturing projects there. The labour class in India is not very hard working or efficient," it asserted.
India's trade deficit with China is huge and it has only widened every year. As per data available on the website of the Department of Commerce, India's imports from China accounted for over 16 percent of country's total import in 2015-16. India imported goods worth $61.7 billion from China last fiscal year, while its export value was just $9.05 billion.
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The biggest merger in the online travel industry has just been announced. The coming together of two of the largest online travel companies - MakeMyTrip and ibibo Group - is going to shake up the online travel market, and will create a giant entity that can knock off competition with substantial money power, aggressive pricing and backing of large venture capitalists.
Both players have substantial market share, and the combined entity is expected to command about 20 per cent market share. They will also have one of the highest inventories of branded and unbranded hotels. The future of OTA (online travel agents) market is hotels. According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the online hotel market is pegged at around Rs 5,200 crore.
Even though the air ticket market is the biggest contributor to the industry's revenues - 39 per cent - the margins are extremely low. The hotels segment, on the other hand, is a relatively high-margin business, especially the unbranded category, because the budget hotel operators are ready to share a decent part of their profits in return for higher occupancies coming through OTAs.
While the deal looks rosy, there are various downsides that take its sheen off. First, the travel market has reached a point where market shares rise and ebb on the basis of discounting. The trend was started by latecomer ibibo Group in order to garner market share. The others followed suit. The discounting doesn't guarantee customer loyalty. The combined entity will have to continue with discounting to keep the market share intact. Otherwise, it risks losing market share to other big players such as Expedia, Yatra, OYO Rooms, Booking.com and Cleartrip.
Flushed with funds, the combined entity still has some leeway to burn cash before starting to worry about what next. MakeMyTrip, for instance, raised $180 million from a Chinese firm early this year whereas ibibo Group raised another round of $250 million from its primary investor Naspers in February this year.
However, the current level of discounting is unsustainable. For instance, a deluxe room cost in New Delhi's Hotel Hari Piorko varies widely. On goibibo and MakeMyTrip, the most aggressive players in terms of pricing, the cost is Rs 1,500. Yatra is selling the same deluxe room for Rs 3,832. The difference in tariffs is likely to come down unless the combined entity gets more funding. As such MakeMyTrip is a loss-making company. In fiscal year 2016, the company reported losses of $88.5 million on revenue of $336 million.
The lower penetration is another area that the OTAs are trying to crack. According to some estimates, just 16 per cent of hotel rooms are booked online in comparison to 70 per cent in Europe and 35-50 per cent in the US. To grow penetration, the OTAs have to reach out to smaller towns and cities. But the inability of hotel operators to maintain standards poses a big challenge.
The online travel segment accounts for 61 per cent of the Indian e-commerce market, as per an IAMAI-IMRB study. Much like e-tailers, online travel companies are struggling to run a profitable business. The consolidation ensures higher market share, but at the end of the day, the investors are looking for returns - either through dividends or exit. With stakes getting high and already-weak business models, the possibility of decent returns seems like a distant dream.
Country's largest lender State Bank of India has said it would re-issue around six lakh debit cards to customers after being hit by a malware-related security breach in a non-SBI ATM network.
ALSO READ: Arundhati Bhattacharya given extension to drive overhaul
"It's a security breach, but not in our banks' systems. Many other banks also have this breach - right now and since a long time," Shiv Kumar Bhasin, SBI's chief technology officer (CTO), told The Times of India, adding that customers who used their cards only at SBI-run ATMs have not been affected by this. "A few ATMs have been affected by a malware. When people use their card on infected switches or ATMs, there is a high probability that their data will be compromised," Bhasin said.
ALSO READ: NPAs to dip on high industrial capacity utilisation: SBI chief
The malware has led to blocking of cards of several SBI accountholders.
SBI said fresh cards would be issued to consumers.
Currently banks are not required to report to the public any security breach in their network.
Some customers' cards have been blocked, the TOI report, quoted a SBI branch manager in Pune as saying. The manager also asserted that the bank had sent SMSes to the customers regarding the same.
The report quotes several SBI accountholders facing the card blockage issue and states their experiences regarding the same.
In July 2016, there were 20.27 crore active debit cards from SBI, states the RBI website. SBI's associate banks had a count of 4.75 crore active debit cards. The cards hit by the malware comprise about 0.25% of this.
Two thirds of adults in Ireland have reported they are unhappy with the rate of returns they are receiving according to new research from Irish Life. This is up 10% on figures from March 2016.
Furthermore, the research also found that close to 40% are now investing their money in order to secure their financial future, with a quarter of adults who invest stating that they put 6% or more of their annual income into investments.
Of those that do invest currently, the most popular investment types are shares (43%) and investment funds (29%), with gold (6%) a less popular option.
The survey also revealed the financial advice people in Ireland would give to their younger selves, including saving more (64%). Almost half (47%) of those surveyed said they would specifically advise their younger selves to save or invest some of any bonus or pay rise, rising to 59% of over 55s who would give this financial advice.
Over a quarter of adults in Ireland said they would recommend their younger selves not to leave all of their money sitting in the bank, with more men encouraging their younger selves to do this (33%) compared to only 21% of women.
However, the report also revealed that of those surveyed who have not previously invested, close to a third 32% are not yet comfortable with the concept of investing in general or wouldnt know what type of investment could suit them (31%). One in four also say that not having any ideas as to what types of returns they could expect is a key reason they havent yet invested.
Fund Manager at Irish Life, Teresa Carolan says, "Our research shows that many people in Ireland are still not happy with returns on their deposit accounts. Thats why investing could be an excellent option for those looking to build their financial nest egg."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
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A record 800 Irish businesswomen are today taking part in events all over the country to mark the 10th annual National Womens Enterprise Day.
The National Womens Enterprise Day events are taking place in Galway, Kerry, Kilkenny, Meath, Westmeath, Dublin and Cavan.
Organised by Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs), the events are being attended by some of Irelands most successful business leaders who are sharing their stories and offering advice to women on how to achieve success.
All 31 LEOs are supporting the initiative with established female entrepreneurs acting as Regional Ambassadors and sharing their inspiring success stories.
The number of Irish female entrepreneurs receiving business supports from the LEOs increased by 20% last year. More than than 6,250 female-run businesses received financial and mentoring supports in 2015, whilst more than 11,000 participated in specialist training programmes.
Minister of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell OConnor today commented, "Women have a huge amount to contribute to business in Ireland and are very important to our economy. Female entrepreneurs are creating jobs right across the country in every town and village across Ireland creating innovative enterprises that are focused on exports, growth and job creation."
She added, "This event today is a fantastic networking event which offers continued support to those female entrepreneurs thinking of starting a business and those developing and expanding their business."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
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Irish firm, CES Energy have launched their first solar project in Northern Ireland. The new private wire solar farm in County Tyrone will see dairy producer Dale Farm switch to solar power for much of the energy requirements at its cheese processing facility in Dunmanbridge.
Construction is due to start mid 2017 on the 37 acre site which will be made up of more than 18,000 solar modules, making it the largest of its kind on the island of Ireland and thought to be one of the largest in the dairy sector Worldwide.
The 5MW solar farm will be connected directly to the private network of the business and it is estimated Dale Farm will switch to solar power for as much as a 20% of the companys on-site power needs at its cheese processing facility.
The scheme will also deliver considerable environmental gains. The project will provide the company with a vast energy reduction, saving 2,460 tonnes of carbon emissions each year, the equivalent of taking 1,588 cars off the road.
The new scheme will guarantee over 20 years of low cost, green power at Dale Farms cheese processing site and enable significant savings for Northern Irelands leading dairy company.
Chief Executive at CES Energy, Tom Marren said, "This project continues CES Energys focus on financing on-site energy infrastructure projects which provide cost savings for our customers globally. After nearly 20 years of delivering similar projects in Australia, Saudi Arabia and across the UK in the energy, water and waste sectors, we see it as a key solution for delivering cost efficiencies and reduced carbon for our customers."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
It was announced this week that there will be more programme highlights for the Worlds only economic festival with laughs, Kilkenomics.
Running from 10th-13th November, some of the worlds most noted economists along with the UK and Irelands top comics will descend on the Medieval Mile of Kilkenny for four days of economic enlightenment with a healthy dose of laughs.
Using comedy to bridge the gap between economics theory and what the public see played out in front of their eyes in everyday life and in mainstream media, Kilkenomics is probably the only place on the planet to get informed in economics with a guaranteed laugh and a pint in your hand.
This years programme is the biggest yet with world renowned economists Dan Ariely, Tim Harford, Diane Coyle, and Stephanie Kelton all making their way to the Marble City where they will be joined by always entertaining comedians including Dara OBriain, Des Bishop, Karl Spain and Colin ORegan.
As ever the most topical events of the year will be discussed and debated from the Irish housing crisis to the American presidential race. New additions to the programme include David McWilliams who leads a panel featuring Stephen Kinsella, Cormac Lucey, Bill Black, Colm McCarthy as they debate NAMA, Vulture Funds and Repossesions: The New Lock-Out.
Other Programmer Highlights include:
Dan Ariely Introduced by David McWilliams
The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis: Jim Rickards in Conversation with David McWilliams
Brexit: Could Englands Difficulty be Irelands Opportunity?
The Future of Things: Will Technology Ruin us or Save us?
Trump/Clinton: Are we Witnessing the Beginning of a New American Civil War?
Kilkenomics Brunch
Jargon Busting...Again
Source: www.businessworld.ie
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It was announced today that Dublin-based startup, Beats Medical has become the first Irish company to be invited to pitch at the prestigious Google Demo Day in Silicon Valley on November 2nd which will see 12 female-led startups from around the world pitch their businesses to over 100 investors, venture capitalists and judges at Google Headquarters.
The goal of Google Demo Day is to shine a light on innovation and showcase innovative female-led companies to Silicon Valley investors. Investor judges in previous years have included Steve Case, founder of AOL, who has personally invested $1.4 million in previous pitching companies and at Google latest event, vowed to invest a total of $1.1 million in pitching companies which included $100,000 for each startup that raised $1 million in the 100 days following the Demo day.
Google began running their annual Demo Days two years ago, having never featured an Irish company to date, and only two other European companies. Its Womens Edition was set up for highly innovative companies founded or co-founded by women and gives female entrepreneurs in high growth companies the opportunity to present to renowned technology investors.
Beats Medical was founded in 2012 and treats mobility, speech and fine hand movement symptoms of Parkinsons disease which affects almost 10 million people worldwide.
The technology, which is the first app developed to treat Parkinsons disease, provides a form of sound wave treatment called auditory cueing which has been used since the 1950s to treat the walking symptoms of Parkinsons disease such as shortened, shuffling steps and freezing. Beats Medical individually assesses and prescribes this treatment in the home daily via the mobile phone to help alleviate walking symptoms.
Ciara Clancy, CEO of Beats Medical, who is a finalist in this years EY Entrepreneur of the Year programme beat out more than 800 applicants from over 65 countries to secure her place at the Demo Day alongside female entrepreneurs from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Kenya, the Netherlands and the US.
Commenting on the opportunity, Ciara Clancy said that she hopes Google Demo Day will help build awareness for Beats Medicals innovative technology and ultimately, help more people with Parkinsons disease.
"I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to pitch at Googles Demo Day. This event is an incredible platform for Beats Medical to showcase the technology that we have developed, and ultimately highlight how it can be used to help those living with Parkinsons to have a better quality of life which is at the heart of everything that we do," she said.
Source: www.businessworld.ie
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LOGAN A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for 38-year-old Dustin James Mangum, as prosecutors accuse the Richmond man of sexually abusing a second victim.
Mangum appeared in 1st District Court Tuesday morning and was arraigned on two new charges of sodomy on a child, both first-degree felonies.
In August, prosecutors filed 23 charges against him, including eight counts of sodomy of a child and 15 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. The new case brings the total number of charges to 25. Each charge carries a penalty of five-years-to-life in prison.
State attorney Jacob Gordon said the new charges allege that Mangum sexually abused a girl in May 2003. The victim, who is a teenager now, claims the abuse occurred when she was around four-years-old. The older charges allege that he repeatedly sexually abused an 11-year-old girl over the course of several years, before he was arrested August 19.
During Tuesdays hearing, defense attorney Bryan Galloway asked for the preliminary hearing, where a judge will determine if prosecutors have sufficient evidence for all of the charges.
Judge Kevin Allen set the hearing date for November 2.
Mangum remains in the Cache County Jail. He is being held without bail.
will@cvradio.com
Telehealth technology has arrived at Logan Regional Hospital and the Budge Surgical Service Clinic. It is a service that connects patients with specialists at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray.
Budge Clinic Assistant Operations Officer Kris Larsen explains the process.
There is a large computer monitor in the room where the patient sits, said Larsen. The provider in Murray has the same kind of set up. One can see the other via a webcam and microphone.
High-definition cameras, audio equipment and televisions are used to complete the connection into private conference or examination rooms.
Currently the service is connecting patients with infectious disease specialists at Intermountain.
This is very effective in situations like follow-up visits where previously you would have to drive to Salt Lake City for a 5-10 minute appointment. Now that can be done with this technology and you never leave the valley.
Limited access to specialty care is a challenge hospitals in rural communities have always dealt with. But since patients get sick everywhere this service provides the possibility severe infections can be identified in every facility, even those without an infectious disease subspecialist.
Larsen said the program also helps provide oversight and support for antibiotic stewardship, a top concern for the UN and World Health Organization.
Update: According to The Verge, Facebook has verified the authenticity of the screenshot below.
In what appears to be an internal Facebook post, Zuckerberg defends his company's ongoing association with Peter Thiel Facebook investor/board member and major donor to white-supremacist/pro-rape presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Zuckerberg's defense echoes that of Y Combinator boss Sam Altman, who said that a truly inclusive business can't afford to write off a candidate supported by millions of Americans.
Presumably, they feel the same way about the millions who believe in the ideology of Osama bin Laden.
Mark Zuckerburg comments on Peter Thiel controversy regarding Trump donation [Hacker News]
(via Dan Hon)
(Image: Mark Zuckerberg South by Southwest 2008, Jason McELweenie, CC-BY)
Researcher Yarden Katz scraped the database of Intellectual Ventures, a giant business that buys up patents, but produces nothing but lawsuits (previously), and discovered that IV claims ownership of nearly 500 patents that were created at public expense by researchers employed by public universities, and another 100 or so patents filed by the US Navy.
The research comes as more than 100 universities have pledged not to sell their patents to trolls.
Both the University of California and Caltech signed the 2007 statement, yet IV now owns tens of patents from these schools that were filed after 2007. For instance, the IV portfolio includes a Caltech patent filed in 2010 (granted in 2011) and University of California patent filed in 2008 (granted in 2014). Other universities that signed the statement, such as Stanford, Harvard and MIT, did not have patents in the portfolio. Apart from universities, IV's portfolio includes nearly 100 patents from the U.S. Navy, as well as patents from weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. In addition, some notable computer scientists and software developers are listed as inventors on patents owned by IV, like Danny Hillis and the developer of Linux, Linus Torvalds.
Universities have turned over hundreds of patents to patent trolls
[Yarden Katz/Medium]
Inside Intellectual Ventures' Portfolio: Nearly 500 University Patents
[Elliot Harman/EFF]
Since the death of Uzbekistans President Islam Karimov in early September, signs have emerged of a thaw in relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbor Tajikistan. In the years since independence, bilateral relations have been plagued by mistrust, disputes over water resources and outright hostility. Both sides have adopted a series of punitive measures against each other. Although acting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has expressed interest in resetting relations with Tajikistan, any improvement will be tempered by the ongoing conflict over Tajikistans planned hydropower plants.
BACKGROUND: Once part of the Soviet Union, both countries host large ethnic Tajik and Uzbek minorities, cut off from their titular homelands by the Soviet border delimitation. Responding to the threat posed by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which was based in Tajikistan at the time, Uzbekistan started mining the border with Tajikistan in 1999. In 2001, it introduced a visa regime for Tajik citizens.
In recent years, tensions have centered on access to water resources. Seventy five percent of the Amu Darya, Central Asias largest river, originates in Tajikistan. Uzbekistan, the worlds sixth largest cotton producer, relies on water from the Amu Darya to irrigate its land. Agriculture constitutes an estimated 20 percent of the Uzbek economy and employs a quarter of the countrys workforce. In its bid to become energy independent, Tajikistan has built dams in the tributaries of the Amu Darya. With the support of Russia, the Sangtuda-1 hydroelectric plant began producing electricity in 2008. The Iranian-backed Sangtuda-2 opened in 2011.
The Rogun dam, which at 335 meters would be the tallest in the world, is the main source of tension with Uzbekistan. If completed, the dam would produce 3,600 megawatts of power. The project, which began during the Soviet Union, is expected to cost US$ 4 billion, around half of Tajikistans GDP. Rogun has become an important symbol of Tajikistans independence and lynchpin of Rahmons plans for developing the national economy. Billboards with slogans such as Rogun is our national idea and Rogun is the key to victory can be seen across the country. According to Uzbek officials, the reduction in the flow of water whilst the reservoir for Rogun is formed will last for up to ten years and cost the Uzbek economy US$ 20 billion. President Karimov claimed in 2011 that without upstream dams, irrigated land in Uzbekistan would increase from 4.3 million to 10 million hectares.
In the years before Karimovs death, a few signs emerged that relations between the two countries were improving. Karimov visited Dushanbe in September 2014 for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, his first visit in seven years. In June 2015, Uzbekistans Minister of Internal Affairs Adkham Akhmedbayev visited Tajikistan, becoming the first interior minister to visit since 1998.
Since Karimovs death, additional indications suggest that the relationship is improving. Rahmon was one of only three heads of state to attend Karimovs funeral in Samarkand on September 3. Whereas in previous years Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov had used his speech at the UN General Assembly to chastise Tajikistans plans to build Rogun, this year he was more reserved, focusing on the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea instead. Visiting Dushanbe on September 29, Kamilov expressed interest in resetting relations with Tajikistan.
IMPLICATIONS: When he became acting president in September 2016, Shavkat Mirziyoyev could have openly provoked Tajikistan in an effort to unite Uzbeks behind him. Instead, he has cautiously offered to improve relations. Uzbek foreign policy decision making remains shadowy and identifying the reasoning behind the friendlier stance is a difficult task. It could be that Mirziyoyev wishes to reduce the countrys tensions with its neighbor in order to allow him to prioritize the consolidation of his power domestically.
Although the rhetoric coming from Mirziyoyevs regime is certainly less confrontational, it remains to be seen how relations between Tajikistan and post-Karimov Uzbekistan will develop in the long term. At present, the improvement in relations exists as a series of statements rather than concrete actions. The resumption of transport links and easing of visa regulations would certainly improve the lives of border communities, and benefit Tajikistans ailing economy in particular. In recent years, Tajikistans economy has suffered as a result of punitive measures adopted by Uzbekistans government.
Tajikistan remains dependent on Uzbekistan for energy links and transport all of Tajikistans rail connections with the outside world run through Uzbekistan. Uzbekistans government has used this position to pressurize its neighbor. In 2008, the government of Uzbekistan started seizing railroad cargoes bound for Tajikistan. In late 2011, all railway traffic was halted after what Uzbek officials called a terrorist attack damaged the line near the border. Of the 16 border crossings between the countries, just two remain open. As a result, bilateral trade fell from US$ 300 million in 2008 to just US$ 2.1 million in 2014. Responding to the blockades, both sides have started building railroads that avoid each others territory. In February 2016, Uzbek officials opened the Angren-Pap railway line, running from Tashkent to the Fergana Valley, bypassing Tajikistan. President Rahmon opened a new line between Dushanbe and Qurgon-Teppa in August 2016, bypassing Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan has also used its position as energy supplier to put pressure on Tajikistan. In 2009, Uzbekistan withdrew from the Soviet-era power grid, through which it had supplied electricity to Tajikistan. In 2012, Uzbekistan stopped supplying natural gas to Tajikistan, claiming it needed to fulfil contracts with China. This compounded the energy crisis in Tajikistan. Dependent on glacial meltwater to replenish its reservoirs, the government of Tajikistan limits electricity supplies to the population during winter months.
Although it is clearly in both parties economic interests to find an amicable solution to the ongoing disputes, tensions will remain strong so long as both sides maintain their stance on hydropower. Rahmon has made the stakes very clear, stating that Rogun is a symbol of the life of our nation, a symbol of life and death of the Tajik state! A 2014 feasibility study conducted by the World Bank found that the dam will fit within international safety norms. The Tajik government is pushing ahead with plans to construct the dam, although it remains unclear how it will fund the project. In July, the government offered the contract to construct Rogun to Italian firm Salini Impregilo. In August, Rahmon visited Rogun, insisting that the dam will serve the Tajik nation for centuries to come.
Despite the change in leadership, it is unlikely that Uzbekistan will abandon its opposition to Rogun entirely. Such a move would constitute a serious loss of face for a president still consolidating his position in power. Recent diplomatic communications suggest that the disagreements are ongoing. After the government of Tajikistan gave the construction contract to Salini Impregilo in July, then Prime Minister Mirziyoyev sent a strongly-worded letter to his Tajik counterpart Kohir Rasulzoda. In the letter, he stated that the Rogun hydropower plant is associated with the huge threats to the entire Central Asian region. Clearly not all Tajik officials read the letter closely. A few days after it was sent, the Tajik Minister of Energy and Water Resources Usmon Usmonzoda claimed that Uzbekistan had no opposition to Rogun. The Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with an August 1 statement declaring that, never and under no circumstances, would they support the project.
A lasting improvement in relations will require a compromise from both sides. Although Tajikistan stands to gain most from improved relations, it has appeared less willing than its Uzbek counterparts to compromise. Uzbek officials have suggested that Tajikistan can become energy independent without drastically altering the water flow and environment of the river basins if it builds more, smaller dams. These plants could be installed more quickly than Rogun and are unlikely to cost more than the mega-dam. Even though the Tajik government has the most to gain from improved relations, it remains committed to building Rogun. The mega-dam has become more than just a dam; it a symbol of the Tajik nation and its achievements. Without a change in attitude, the prospects for a change in policy remain slim.
CONCLUSIONS: Although foreign policy making in Central Asia remains opaque, there is reason to expect a slight improvement in relations between the governments of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the coming months. These are less likely to be revolutionary changes than small improvements in areas not directly linked to hydropower, such as the resumption of direct flights between Tashkent and Dushanbe, or the simplification of visa restrictions. In the end, rebuilding energy and transport links is in the interest of both governments. But mistrust and tensions will remain. Neither side looks set to climb down from their entrenched position on hydropower, the primary source of the conflict between the two states.
AUTHORS BIO: Edward Lemon is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.
Image source: www.bultannews.com, accessed on October 18, 2016
Belgian resistance scuppers the EU's CETA agreement
Published on October 19, 2016
Story by euro topics Translation by: euro topics
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The EU's trade ministers postponed signing the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) on Tuesday after failing to reach an agreement. The strongest opposition comes from the French-speaking part of Belgium, whose consent the federal government needs to approve the agreement. Are the Walloons spoiling a major opportunity for Europe or are they the voice of the people?
If not with Canada, then with whom? - Hospodarske noviny, Czech Republic
Hospodarske noviny is aghast at the prospect of CETA falling through after seven years of negotiations:
"After the Brexit decision the EU wanted to show that 27 countries can also move forward together. But the shameful dispute over CETA shows that they are unable even to reach a consensus over the liberalisation of trade with Canada. The Walloons and a few other troublemakers have turned everything on its head. But this is not just about Walloonian farmers who are frightened of GM fruit from Canada. This is about the pan-European protest of people who feel that the globalization train has set off and are unwilling to wave goodbye to the world as they know it, even if it is falling apart. Who else will we be able to do trade deals with in the globalized world, if not with Canada, which shares our cultural values?" (19/10/2016)
Shape globalisation instead of blocking it - Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Switzerland
The Neue Zurcher Zeitung also voices disappointment, pointing out that the agreement was negotiated very much in the EU's interests:
"[Canada] supported the EU's idea of investment tribunals for settling conflicts between foreign investors and the host state. This overcomes the weaknesses of the private arbitration courts that have been used until now. All this is very far removed from the distorted image spread by the opponents of the deal, who portray CETA as a dictatorship of big business which will undermine the rule of law and democracy. Those who can't stop globalisation but want to have a say in what it looks like, need precisely such agreements until multilateral progress is made in the World Trade Organization. Those who reject CETA must ask themselves whether they are not in fact against any liberalisation of trade, and therefore want to further the interests of economic nationalists. If so, they must be willing to accept the negative impact on growth and employment." (19/10/2016)
Populist Walloons ruining everything - Jyllands-Posten, Denmark
Jyllands-Posten fears that Europe is squandering an important opportunity:
"In times when the key players - among them the two presidential candidates in the US - are moving towards protectionism, when global trade is stagnating and global economic growth and the labour market are suffering as a consequence, trade agreements are more important than ever. Since World War II free trade has hoisted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by creating economic growth and jobs. It would be intolerable if a handful of populist Walloons were able to destroy a far-reaching free-trade agreement like this one, from which the great majority of true Europeans stand to benefit." (19/10/2016)
CETA gets to the heart of the Europe debate - De Morgen, Belgium
De Morgen defends the Walloons against all the criticism:
"'What do they think they're doing?' people across Europe are saying. We heard the same thing after the Ukraine referendum in the Netherlands, and after the Brexit vote... Clearly representing the people is regarded as a threat to democracy... The row over Ceta gets to the heart of the debate about European democracy. Should a member state - or part of a member state - say no when 'Europe' has already said yes? ...Whether the Twitter economists like it or not, such 'classic' agreements are no longer supported by a growing section of the European population. The opposition to mega-treaties comes from all kinds of groups, from eurosceptic right-wing populists to red-green voters... Either legitimate criticism continues to be suppressed or the day will come when the European project really is torpedoed at the polls - as was already the case in England." (19/10/2016)
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30 Countries, 300 Media Outlets, one press review. euro|topics presents the issues affecting Europe and reflects the continent's diverse opinions, ideas and moods.
Story by euro topics
Translated from EU-Kanada: Wallonen wehren sich gegen Ceta
In Rich do not rise early: spatio-temporal patterns in the mobility networks of different socio-economic classes, a group of transportation engineers analyze an open data-set about the commutes of people in the Colombian cities of Medellin and Manizales, concluding that the rich and the poor commute the furthest distances, but that the rich have much shorter commutes, thanks to private transport and superior routing, which translates to substantially more sleep for the wealthy.
Sleep deprivation is well-understood to cause cognitive impairment and physical illness. Poor commuters in the study leave their homes later, and return later, than rich ones, suggesting that their livelihoods are at odds with their ability to sleep.
In addition to these spatial patterns, the authors are also interested in temporal patterns. So they look at the times of day when people in the different groups are likely to travel. The researchers were surprised to find that the timing of movement is also closely linked to socioeconomic status. They saw that as socioeconomic class increases, every morning's peak transit time moved to later and later in the day. So people with the lowest status had peak morning transit times around 5AM or 6AM, whereas those with higher incomes didn't peak until nearly 7AM. The authors conclude that higher socioeconomic status allows people to buy more time to sleep or engage in leisure activities in the morning, so they can leave their homes later. In contrast, people with less economic capital tend to leave their homes earlier because they utilize slower and less reliable modes of transit, such as walking or taking public buses.
Though this study was meant to probe the importance of socioeconomic status in human mobility, it also shows another important point: wealth allows people to buy a more comfortable life. This is sobering because it suggests that possessing wealth is a self-perpetuating state. The poor, who spend more time stuck in transit, have less opportunity to increase their income. The poor may also be unable to afford the luxury of sufficient sleep, which influences their ability to pull themselves out of poverty.
Rich do not rise early: spatio-temporal patterns in the mobility networks of different socio-economic classes
[Laura Lotero, Rafael G. Hurtado, Luis Mario Floria, Jesus Gomez-Gardenes/Royal Society Open Science]
The wealthy commute later, get to take more direct routes
[Roheeni Saxena/Ars Technica]
(Image: Four-poster bed Casa Loma, Thomas Quine, CC-BY)
Galicia: Journey to the land of disenchanted youth
Published on October 19, 2016
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The Spanish region of Galicia is known for two things: the clothing company Inditex and the famous Camino de Santiago. However, neither of these regional gems offer much for young people hoping to build a future. Many young Galicians leave in the hope of gaining a more global outlook, tired of waiting for opportunities that never materialise.
It's a typical autumn day in La Coruna and the city is bustling with people. Shops open their doors and the steady flow of customers begins. The scent of saltwater fills the air. Judging by its appearance, it seems like the city is thriving. Sadly, the reality is rather different. It's estimated that on a day like today, particularly after the summer holidays, around 84 young people aged between 20 and 34 leave Galicia in the hunt for better opportunities. Nationally, this statistic is only surpassed by Castile and Leon. Behind Galicia, sits Castile La Mancha, Aragon and Extremadura. Many head to Madrid or go abroad to Switzerland and the UK. Nevertheless, some do decide to stay.
Santiago is 27 years old and works as an administrator for a tow trucking company in La Coruna. He feels lucky to have a job, given that "people often spend many years preparing themselves for the future to find that the doors are closed off to them." In his case, unemployment is not an immediate concern, as it is for the 26.6% of young people in the 16-29 age bracket who are out of work. However, his current contract does not give him the necessary stability to truly gain his independence. "The type of contracts you get nowadays don't give you the best working conditions to allow you to move out of your parents' house," he argues. Doris Fernandes, a journalist and translator based in Mos (Pontevedra), is the same age as Santiago, and has found herself in the frustrating situation many young people find themselves in: "by having to accept work that's precarious and unstable, we are unable to enjoy a fulfilling social and personal life.
A worse situation than ever?
In this region, independence from the family unit is not the only type of independence causing debate. Galiza Nova, a youth organisation stemming from the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) has gone beyond espousing nationalist sentiments to openly advocating for the region's independence from Spain. "We are in a worse situation than ever," says Alberte Mera, the secretary-general of Galiza Nova, for whom independence is a necessary option. This is an argument that Santiago disagrees with, viewing it as a divisive option, much like Brexit in the UK, and it leaves a lot of questions up in the air. "What we need to encourage is the equal treatment of every region," he says, in reference to both Spain and Europe. He has his doubts about the EU: "the idea of creating a union of European states wasn't a bad thing, the problem is how it's been constructed."
Europe happens to be the desired destination for many of these Galician youngsters. Olalla, a 27-year-old journalist, lives in Berlin. She explains that it would simply be impossible to maintain the standard of living she has in Germany at home in Galicia, and she speaks of migration as a "freedom" that allowed her to leave the vicious circle that Galicia is trapped in. Similarly to Olalla, 20-year-old Yago Grela from Vigo looked for opportunities overseas. For him, the situation feels a bit more daunting, although he thinks that it is inevitable, due to Galicia's awkward geographical placement which leaves it isolated from the rest of the country. When he finishes his studies in Lannion, France (where he has been able to stay thanks to an Erasmus grant), he hopes to move to Madrid to find work. This is something that Beatriz, a young Galician living in London, is still not sure about. "The only option for me if I move back home, is to become self-employed," she says.
"Zara is not a great example to follow"
Since 1981 - the year when Galicia became an autonomous region of Spain following four decades of a centralising dictatorship - the lack of opportunities, emigration, the aging population, the lack of infrastructure and the struggle to keep the Galician language alive have remained hot-button issues in electoral campaigns. Nevertheless, there have not been any dramatic changes in voting patterns in recent years. When you ask young people about the results of the recent regional elections, in which the Partido Popular (PP) [Spain's equivalent of the Conservative Party, Ed.] reigned victorious with an absolute majority, almost all of them express a certain discontentment with the status quo. Only Beatriz sees the positive side to this result: there is a greater sense of energy and anger in parliament than ever before. "It saddens and infuriates me to see that a party steeped in corruption not only has done nothing to clear its name, it's actually come back even stronger," Doris, the young journalist and translator from Pontevedra, sighs. Yago, much like Olalla, thinks that it was a predictable result that evidences a growing generational gap. A party like the PP, supported mainly by the older population in Galicia, controls the direction the region takes, even though it's young people who are most affected by current policies.
While young people are unhappy about the dominant party in their region, they are also not proud of Inditex, the international symbol of Galicia. The biggest textile company in the world and the owner of clothing brands like Zara, Bershka and Stradivarius, is criticised by young people for its factories in developing countries, a company policy that brings no benefits to its local community. "It's a company built upon destroying its competition, which is why I don't think it's a great example to follow," argues Olalla. Yago also criticises the company's production as he believes that Amancio Ortega, the owner of Inditex, "could easily design, produce and make his clothes in Galicia, creating thousands of jobs and improving the local economy. However, he'd prefer to put his factories in China and India, where he can exploit underpaid workers."
"Being Galician is about running away"
Emigration is not a recent phenomenon in Galicia. The previous generation also know what it is like to have to leave home. Luis Castro is 41 years old and is from Santiago de Compostela, where he finished the famous pilgrimage. In the 90s, he was the first of his family to go to university to study engineering. Due to his chosen specialism, he had to move. He had spent eight years away from Galicia, in Valencia, before moving back home to work in Pontevedra. In his eyes, the region has two pressing needs: better quality public services and jobs.
"It is said that being Galician is more about running away than facing up to realities," he muses. "Galicia could make itself the doorstep to Europe from the Atlantic, with Vigo and La Coruna as strategic cities: we could be the new Rotterdam, but to achieve this aim, we need to be better connected." The main artery of the region, the motorway connnecting its three main urban centres (Vigo, La Coruna, Santiago de Compostela), has tolls that complicate commercial trading. With regards to the train network, investment in high speed trains has not managed to reduce the travel time to Madrid to under six hours. The inadequacy of the rail network in the region was clear to see in the aftermath of the 2013 train accident in Galicia, the worst train disaster in recent Spanish history.
Nevertheless, due to the rather unstimulating environment, many young people try to fight against the conformism of Galician society. The prevailing "that's life" attitude is fiercely criticised by authors like Manuel Rivas and Xose Neira Vilas. As Doris explains, Galicia is not only known for Inditex, it's also known for its "idiosyncrasies, its ancestral wisedom, its languages, its landscapes, its food, its countryside, and above all, the successes of its universities, its industry, its social movements, its literature..." The provinces of La Coruna and Vigo now have their own universities, which, alongside the traditional university of Santiago de Compostela, have managed to staunch the outward flow of students of university age. These two cities, which boast the biggest populations in the region, have also built airports to improve their connections with Spain and the rest of Europe, making the region more international.
So, all is not lost. There are initiatives in Galicia that prove that change is possible. An exciting example of this is the street art festival DesOrdes Creativas, which has taken place since 2010 in the Ordes region, which is sandwiched between La Coruna and Santiago de Compostela. During the festival, artists from across all of Galicia decorate the ugliest walls in their village. This has created a domino effect with many Galician towns copying the initative. It's a festival that could have passed by unnoticed, if not for a younger generation that's ready to rebel against their rather bleak backdrop in Galicia. This is a generation that understands that with crisis comes opportunity.
Story by Ruben Rivas de Roca Garcia
Translated from Galicia, viaje a una tierra de jovenes desencantados
| BY Ricki Green |
This years brief line up for New Blood Awards 2017 has just been released. What does this mean? It means that the next generation of creative disruptors can now sharpen their pencils, roll up their sleeves and start tackling the real-world briefs to showcase their talent.
For 2017, D&ADs partners are a mix of returning favourites like John Lewis, Nationwide and BBC as well as some exciting new faces with Amazon, The National Autistic Society and Squarespace signing up this year. Collaborating with the Arjowigginsbrief will be Facebook, Instagram and Sony Music, whilst board game fans can cut their teeth on the Hasbro brief in collaboration with Big Potato Games. (See the full list of briefs here).
The full briefs are available for download from www.dandad.org/new-blood-awards. New creatives will have until 22 March 2017 to submit their entries, with the winners announced at the Awards Ceremony in early July 2017. Winning work will be selected by a panel of judges and awarded a Wood, Graphite, Yellow, White or Black pencil.
Each brief has been designed to set a unique challenge and all are supported by a great range of learning resources and industry insight. This years topics range from the real-world tangibility of paper to the possibilities of big data, food and drink, music and movies, finance to festivals, things to play and places to stay, education and causes to fight for.
All the briefs have been designed in collaboration with industry experts to both reflect the real current business challenges faced by modern brands and develop the creative skills most sought after by industry, ensuring that these ones to watch of tomorrow are ready for the challenge.
Whether its through launching new services or reinventing established brands, inventing crazes or revitalising causes, taking events to the world or bringing purpose to events, the New Blood of 2017 will be storytelling, shifting perceptions, standing out and shaping the future with passion.
Says Paul Drake, D&AD Foundation director: We need new exciting talent in this industry, and year after year we are blown away by the professionalism, ambition and skill of the work that is entered into the New Blood Awards. Answering tough, real-world briefs set by globally-renowned partners, these students show the full breadth of talent that will be entering the industry in the next few years.
As always the 2017 New Blood Awards are designed to be both challenging and demanding. This year they feature a mix of topical ideas and craft-based briefs, encouraging creatives to hone their skills, test their abilities and show why those already in industry need to be looking over their shoulder.
Open to any young creative aged 23 or under, in addition to current students and those within two years of graduation, the New Blood Awards offer tomorrows creative superstars a chance to tackle real briefs, set by real clients and judged by top industry creatives.
The 2017 Brief Partners:
Adobe
Amazon
Arjowiggins in collaboration with Facebook, Instagram and Sony Music
BBC
Crowne Plaza
Desperados
Hasbro in collaboration with Big Potato Games
John Lewis
Monotype
MUBI
Nationwide
Pearson
Respect for Animals
Squarespace
The British Army
The National Autistic Society
What some of this years returning New Blood Awards Brief Partners said about the experience:
Says Emma Bryson, digital media marketing manager, Adobe: What we enjoy most about setting a D&AD New Blood brief is getting to see the passion come through and the magical things these students can create with our products.
Says Ana Saenz-Castellano, manager creative, brand creative, John Lewis: Working with D&AD New Blood we gain creative insight. I enjoy the wealth of creative talent and the incredible quality of the presentations.
Says Timothy Cryer, design lead, Nationwide: What I enjoy the most about New Blood is the breadth of creativity and original thinking. As a brand, setting a New Blood brief is a fantastic way to gain insight into this demographic and also to hear their ideas, importantly in their tone of voice.
This years D&AD New Blood Awards 2017 creative campaign is being designed by The Beautiful Meme, more information on this to follow.
| BY Ricki Green |
Frost*collective has appointed Graham Humphreys as head of Frost*Design for its brand and design division. The position has been newly created to support the business recent spate of high profile project wins and a growing team. UK-born Humphreys has relocated from San Francisco vacating a VP, director client services position at fuseproject.
Humphreys has a 20-year international career in cross disciplinary creative consulting where he has led teams of diverse talents, disciplines, sizes and cultures. He has extensive experience in strategic innovation, brand positioning, creative development and marketing strategy as well as product design, environmental design, integrated digital programs, site design and e-commerce.
Says Vince Frost, CEO Frost*collective: We couldnt be happier that Graham has joined us as our new Head of Frost*Design. His impressive expertise and depth of understanding of the creative process and approach to business challenges, in combination with his proven leadership and strategic thinking, are all assets that are consistent with Frost*collectives service offer and future strategy.
Over the course of five years and 250 assignments at fuseproject, Humphreys and his teams have delivered global rebrands including Nivea and Paypal, and product innovation for Sodastream and Samsung amongst many others. He can lay claim to building a globally recognised Integrated Design Management discipline and playing a major role in doubling the size of the studio. Humphreys earlier career included senior roles at Dare London, Agency.com (in London & San Francisco) and Zenith Media with clients ranging from British Telecom, the UK Government, Wells Fargo, Toyota, Barclays Bank, Visa and Capital One.
Says Humphreys: Im driven by the opportunity to harness design thinking to solve problems for people, businesses and institutions. Vince has built Australias leading brand and design agency with clear purpose and vision, and there was a perfect synergy from the start.
Im passionate about the power of design to improve any of lifes experiences, large and small this is exactly what Frost*collective delivers. Im impressed with everything the agency has achieved, excited about the future, and privileged to join such a talented team.
| BY Lynchy |
DIRECTORS THINK TANK director Rajay Singh has just completed the latest ALLIANZ film for Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia. In a break from category conventions, Allianz Malaysia is choosing to inspire rather than arouse sympathy in this latest campaign.
Courage Never Fails is the Malaysian interpretation of the global platform, Dare to. Were with you.
The centrepiece of the campaign is Sisters, a film that gives audiences an intimate view of the struggles of two orphaned sisters. But through it all they face adversity with a sense of hope, grounded in the legacy their parents left them. says Tan Chee Keong, Group ECD at Ogilvy Malaysia.
What I love about the campaign is how we made the global platform relevant to Malaysians on a personal level. We took inspiration from real stories and put together a powerful and poignant story that represents the feats of courage the regular Malaysian goes through every single day, says Susan Ong, Chief Market Management Officer at Allianz Malaysia.
More than five months in the making, Ogilvy Malaysia made the deliberate decision to have the campaign rooted in real Malaysian stories to create personal and relevant stories that could resonate with its audience.
We went out in search of real stories from everyday Malaysians and ended up with a pool of rich and textured stories that really felt worlds apart from the overly scripted stories the category is known for. says Alicia Hew, Copywriter at Ogilvy Malaysia.
But it was a close collaboration with Directors Think Tank that finally brought the film into a space that felt both fresh and genuine.
Working with Jay is always a scary experience. In a good way. We never know where the script will be taken to, how it will be dissected or where the story can be elevated to. But that free-flowing collaboration is what we love about it, says Adam Chan, CD at Ogilvy Malaysia.
What we hope is that people dont just watch the spot, but that they be inspired and bring about change, says Gavin Simpson, Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy Malaysia.
Courage Never Fails was launched yesterday.
Credits:
Client: Allianz Malaysia
CMO: Susan Ong
Agency: Ogilvy Malaysia
CCO: Gavin Simpson
Group ECD: Tan Chee Keong
CD: Adam Chan
ACD: Jarrod Reginald
Copywriter: Alicia Hew
Art Director: Amanda Kok, Chu Khong Liang
Managing Partner: Shireen Peterson
Business Unit Director: Frederick Aloysius, Liew Wai Sim
Account Manager: Kelsey Rabindran, Bowie Tiong
Head of AV: Eric Yan
Producer: Seng Tuck
Traffic: Julie Saw
Production House: Directors Think Tank
Director: Rajay Singh
Producer: Tek Nam
DOP: Andre Francis Nenezes
1AD: Kelvin T
2nd Unit Director: Wei Peow
Music Studio: Two AM
Editor: Raja Affendi
Wednesday, October 19, 2016 at 12:12AM
It was bound to happen and now it has indeed. US law firm McCuneWright has filed a lawsuit against Samsung over the Galaxy Note7 recall. The plaintiffs claim the recall has left them without phones for weeks. They seek reimbursement of cell phone service fees and are also look for class-action status. According to a post by McCuneWright on its site, While Samsung has offered consumers replacement phones or a refund, it has failed to reimburse consumers for monthly costs associated with owning an unusable Note7. CNET reached out to Samsung and they said they wont comment on pending litigation.
"It will take a great deal of work to undo the public's perception of the Canberra Liberals as too socially conservative, but that work must be done if we want to see a change of government in 2020."
"We now have a situation where the major parties have not only made back the entire cost of their campaign, but are now in a position to profit off any additional donations, potentially from vested interests," he said.
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*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...
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Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are looking at various options to make themselves better in terms of student strength and funds. A couple of months ago during an IIT council meeting headed by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, the nod was given to accomodate non - residential students into undergraduate and post graduate programs in a move to increase the total student strength to one lakh by 2020.
However, some of the IIT branches came up with challenges like lack of infrastructure and funds to achieve that goal. Seven IITs from Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Madras and Roorkee denied to agree with the idea.
In a fresh development, most of the IIT directors have expressed their disinterest towards the idea as the non -resident students might not reflect the brand of IIT when it comes to their shaping. Students have to be nurtured in the ecosystem of the beautiful campus in order to be a complete IITian, some of them feel.
One of the directors said, ''IIT is also about the larger environment of free debate and liberal atmosphere. Moreover, our undergraduate courses are most sought after." Nevertheless, there is more opposition to have non-resident students at an undergraduate level as that would be a hindrance to a wholesome education.
Another director has suggested that in order to generate income to help the poor students to meet their hostel expenses, the maintenance of the hostel can be outsourced to a third party who can pay a commission to the college and charge the students at market rate. The management is looking at more options to arrive at a feasible solution for all their requirements.
Bengaluru, October 19, 2016: The Green Talents Award held under the patronage of the German Research Minister Professor Johanna Wanka is recognizing young talented researchers for the eighth time and providing a platform to share their innovative and creative ideas which aim to answer pressing sustainability and environmental protection questions of our time.
A high-ranking jury of experts selected 25 up-and-coming scientists out of 757 applications from over 104 countries. The award consists of the "Green Talents - International Forum for High Potentials in Sustainable Development" where the awardees travel through Germany for two weeks, to visit hotspots of green science and to meet the sustainability research elite. In the following year, the Green Talents have the possibility to conduct research in Germany for up to three months.
This year's "Green Talents" can expect to interact with leading experts and some of the most renowned research institutions and companies, including the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Hamburg University of Technology, the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Siemens AG and the Southern African Service Center for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management.
What is Environmental Architecture?
India's 'Smart City' project, and other recent initiatives established to form a sustainable region involving citizens, also focuses on aspects such as environmental and other green initiatives which has been a priority since the Urban Renewal Mission Plan.
The galaxy of Green Talents Award winners
The 25 awardees will be honoured during a festive award ceremony at the Green Talents Alumni Meeting 2016 attended by representatives of the participating institutions, their experts, jury members, politicians and other distinguished guests. Minister Professor Johanna Wanka will open the conference; Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, will hold a keynote speech on "Climate effects and vulnerability."
Shamik Chowdhury (29), an Indian PhD student in Environmental Engineering from the National University of Singapore is also one of the Green Talents attending the awards ceremony. His specialisation area, 'Green synthesis of Graphene Structures', to provide innovative societal solutions for a sustainable development platform, really impressed the jury.
What is Sustainable Architecture? - Scope and Career Opportunities
The conference's highly diversified programme offers all of its participants countless networking possibilities. During the conference Green Talents can get connected to the science community and exchange ideas with key innovators and lay the foundations for future cooperation. Such efforts are supported by the invitation to return to Germany for a fully funded research stay at an institution of the Green Talent's choice in the year after the award.
Both conference and festive award ceremony will be held on 27 October 2016 at Kosmos, Berlin.
What is Urban Planning? - Scope and Career Opportunities
Newscity
Boyd Trial Ends in Hung Jury, APD Officers Watch Protesters
Robert Maestas
A small group of protesters met outside the Downtown Albuquerque District Court last week to show their frustration following the court's declaration of a mistrial in the James Boyd murder case. That decision came after Judge Alisa Hadfield polled the District Court jury individually, finding that after two days of deliberation the jury was split 9-3 in favor of acquittal. For a jury's decision to be valid in a murder case, it must be unanimous. The trial focused on two officersKeith Sandy and Dominique Perezwho were accused of second-degree murder for the 2014 shooting and killing of James Boyd, a homeless man illegally camping in the Foothills, who authorities say suffered from schizophrenia. Sandy was also accused of aggravated battery. Special Prosecutor Randi McGinn, in her closing statement to the jury, argued that anticipatory shootings are unacceptable, and that police officers should not be allowed to shoot unless someone is already attacking them. Defense attorney Sam Bregman laid the blame on systemic problemsthe inability of the state to properly provide for the mentally illand argued that the officers only used their official training to inform the decisions they made. After the judge declared a mistrial, a small group of protesters who were waiting for the decision gathered outside the courthouse to speak out against police killings and to voice their anger at what they believe was a gross mishandling of justice. They want the case retried. Tactical police officers monitored the protest from the top of a nearby building, but the gathering remained peaceful. APD has said it will continue the practice if any further protests are organized. It is unclear whether or not prosecutors will seek a new trial.
CNA brought on a Chubb veteran to help run its Global Services arm. JLT Re hired a new executive to lead and build up its South Korea operations. RSA named a new group pricing director. XL Catlin has a new client distribution leader based in Los Angeles as part of its Broker & Client Management team.
***
A Chubb veteran joined CNA as its new vice president, Global Services.
Laurie Munson will be tasked with helping to grow the companys international business by streamlining and boosting efficiencies, processes and technology. Shell report to Kathleen Ellis, senior vice president, International, CNA Commercial, who joined the insurer earlier in 2016 with a mission to build a stronger global platform to support its commercial and specialty clients.
Munson is based in Chicago and has more than 30 years of insurance industry experience. She most recently served at Chubb as vice president, worldwide services manager, Multinational Solutions.
***
JLT Re appointed Jong Kuk (JK) as CEO of JLT Re Korea.
Moon is expected to be based in JLT Res Seoul office and will report to Kenny Moyes, CEO, JLT Re Asia. Moons mission: overseeing JLT Re Koreas ongoing strategy and business development across treaty, facultative, analytics and strategic advisory for JLT Res core Korea clients.
Moon joins JLT Re, a London-based reinsurance broker and consultant, after 23 years at Korean Re.
***
RSA appointed Richard Read as its new group pricing director.
The international insurer said that Read will report to Nathan Williams, group underwriting director, and hell start in November 2016. Reads job will include leading the development and launch of pricing and underwriting strategy across RSA.
Read, a 14-year insurance industry veteran, comes to RSA from EY, where he led the pricing and product insurance analytics offering.
***
Steven Zimmerman joined XL Catlins Broker & Client Management team as a client distribution leader in Los Angeles.
Hell report to Mike Soper, XL Catlins U.S. West Regional Broker and Client Management Leader. Hell be tasked with helping area brokers and businesses tap into XL Catlin expertise and products among its 30-plus business insurance lines.
Zimmerman has more than 20 years of business development and insurance industry broker experience. Previously, he was senior vice president of Gallagher Bassett Services.
Sources: CNA, JLT Re, RSA
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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
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While Seat has yet to confirm the existence of a high-performance Ateca, the car may have been spotted hiding in plain sight at the unveiling of the facelifted Leon in Barcelona.
Rumors of an Ateca Cupra have been circulating ever since the carmaker debuted the SUV, and it looks like the model is pretty much completed. The matte black car is said to be driven by SEATs executive vice-president for research and development, Matthias Rabe, and although its paint scheme helps it fly under the radar, it did little to conceal it this time.
Although its not probably an official color, the Seat Ateca Capra will use other aggressive visual characteristics, including a different body kit, bigger wheels, a lower ride height, and quad exhausts (as seen in the Twitter pictures), to separate itself from the standard variants.
Technical aspects of the car are unknown, but the model is expected to sport a tuned variant of the Cupras powertrain to compensate for the extra weight. That translates into a turbocharged 2.0-litre engine developing around 300 hp, capable of pushing the SUV from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in approximately six seconds. But well find out more after the car will be officially unveiled, sometime in 2017.
H/T to Auto Express; Rendering courtesy of X-Tomi Design
PHOTO GALLERY
Another what if, but what if the head of General Motors became vice president of the United States? It might have happened under Hillary Clinton.
In another batch of emails released by WikiLeaks from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podestas account, a list of possible vice presidential picks worth looking at was revealed, including a number of prominent elected officials and business leaders including current GM CEO Mary Barra.
The list is extensive and rough, with some names having been long mooted (her pick, Tim Kaine) and others thought to have been long shots (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders). Previous political news reports have indicated the Democratic Presidential nominee long had her heart set on Kaine, a senator from Virginia and former governor of that state. But Clintons campaign appeared to be casting the net wide before she became the presumptive nominee.
Barra, who became the first woman to be named GM CEO in 2014 and became chair in 2016, has pretty much steered clear of making comments about the presidential race this year something her counterpart at Ford has been unable to do. But since taking her post nearly three years ago, she has been admired as one of the leading women in business.
The move may have been unprecedented to have two women on a major partys ticket in the U.S., but its not the first time a Detroit auto executive has been pulled in to serve under the president. Robert McNamara was the president of Ford Motor Company before he became Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
Other business leaders on the list included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. Current Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx was also among a string of names.
GM hasnt issued any statement regarding Barras name in the hacked email.
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McLaren may bear the name of its eponymous founder Bruce McLaren, but its modern history has been shaped by Ron Dennis. That era, however, looks like its about to come to an end.
Autosport reports that Ron Dennis will not have his contract as chairman renewed once it expires at the end of this year now less than a month and a half away. The company, however, denies that any such change is afoot.
Dennis originally served as head of the F1 team from 1982 (when it merged with his Project 4 racing team) through 2009 when he stepped back from its day-to-day leadership, then returned to the groups chairmanship at the beginning of 2014.
He was reportedly working to consolidate his ownership (currently resting at 25 percent) of the company by acquiring shares from fellow stakeholder Mansour Ojjeh (who also holds 25 percent) and the government of Bahrain (which holds the other 50 percent), but has apparently failed to raise the necessary capital for a buyout.
With the F1 team (still the core of the company) struggling to regain its once winning form, the other shareholders have apparently lost confidence in Dennis leadership. Just who would replace him remains to be seen, but group COO Jonathan Neale would be a smart bet. The company also recently brought in Jost Capito to head up the racing department, while the applied technologies and automotive divisions have their own CEOs.
McLaren Automotive, the group entity responsible for its road-going supercars, is not expected to be directly affected by any change in leadership in the umbrella organization.
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Nissans North American division will offer employee pricing for most of its vehicles to those whose vehicles were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Matthew.
The Japanese carmaker says that those affected by the ferocious storm in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida will be able to receive the offer if they redeem a claim ID before October 31st.
While there is a limit of one claim per damaged vehicle, individuals and businesses affected by Hurricane Matthew are eligible for multiple replacements if more than one vehicle was totaled.
Additionally, customers can secure employee pricing alongside any other current incentives offered on Nissan models.
To be eligible, residents need to present Insurance Adjuster documentation confirming their vehicle was damaged or totaled during the date range of Hurricane Matthew.
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Seats extensive marketing campaign for their first-ever SUV, the Ateca, continues with an interesting proposal for UK fleet and business customers.
According to the Spanish-based car company, prospective business buyers can get under the skin of the Ateca with a four-day test drive, during which their families and friends will get to experience the SUV as well.
A test drive is one of the most important stages of choosing a new car; its a time for decision makers to consider whether a new vehicle will help them achieve business objectives and project the image they really want. So, we wanted to give them the chance to really get to know the Ateca and all of the benefits it delivers, as the brands local Head of Fleet & Business Sales, Peter McDonald, commented on the launch of the program.
Seat has already begun taking orders for the 96-hour test drive and the vehicles are available through the brands network of Business Centers, until the end of the year.
The first units of the Seat Ateca have arrived in UK dealers this fall. The most affordable model carries a starting price of 17,990 ($21,890) and comes with a 1.0-liter, three-cylinder TSI petrol engine that develops 113 horsepower. Depending on the selected version, future owners can also get a 1.4-liter TSI with 148 HP, a 1.6-liter TDI with 113 HP and a 2.0-liter TDI, with 148 HP or 187 HP, mated to a standard six-speed manual gearbox or an optional DSG and front- or all-wheel drive.
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Dont feel bad if you need a guide to spot all the differences between the fifth-gen Honda CR-V and the outgoing model.
Having proven its worth where it counts on the showroom floors, with 345,647 fourth-generation CR-Vs sold in the U.S. alone last year, Honda took the decision to polish instead of reinvent its compact crossover.
At first glance, the new models busy design seems almost identical to its predecessor, to the point that a casual observer might even think that its a facelift, but once you delve into the details, it becomes more clear that were talking about two separate iterations. Sure, the shape remained the same, but everything else was updated.
The front fascia, for instance, adopted a cleaner look; the fog lamps migrated to the bottom portion of the bumper, while Honda also re-arranged the chromed, contrasting elements in clusters, making the grille more dominant. The air vent below the logo has increased in size, while the headlamps (which appear like they are an extension of the upper grille) contribute to the clean design.
On the side, things are more familiar, with the CR-V rocking almost the same design cues. Theres a chrome strip on the new model, which together with the smaller side mirrors, make it seem more slender. Moreover, the rear quarter panels are more bloated, and separated from the vehicles derriere.
Around the back, the CR-V obtained some sportier cues, including more contemporary tail-lamps that now extend horizontally on the tailgate and which represent the biggest design change. It also gets bumper-integrated exhaust pipes and a relocated license plate holder.
Inside, Honda has tried to simplify the design. The climate control functions are still where youd expect them to be (just above the gear shifter), but everything else was re-arranged. For instance, the clumsy center screen flanked by two air vents has now been replaced with a cleaner screen that governs the entire console, while most users will hail the return of the physical volume knob.
The steering wheel was revised, while the instrument cluster gained digital LCDs. Attesting to the CR-Vs newfound style are the (optional) wood trim inserts and the leather-covered dash.
All in all, Honda took the CR-V to the next level with (what may seem) minor, but effective modifications. It looks like the CR-V is growing along with the segment, and the customers, slowly, but steadily becoming more serious as it ages.
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VW is going to launch their new Phideon flagship model in China this Friday, which is aimed to compete with other established premium car makers in this huge market, including Audi, Mercedes and BMW.
The German company is targeting a clientele that looks for a premium, yet discreet model as the market trend moves towards to less flashy cars.
Shiny, blingy showing-off is no longer the behavior in the (larger) cities, said Holger Santel, vice president of sales for SAIC Volkswagen to Reuters. Customers are increasingly saying I dont want Audi, Benz, BMW. I dont want to show off.
Why these brands specifically? Because VW displayed the new Phideon next to the Audi A6, BMW 5-Series and the Mercedes E-Class at a media event in Shanghai, revealing their expectations for their new flagship to compete with these models.
Another reason for VW wanting the new Phideon to succeed in China is that it will help the brand move on from its mass-market image and even help in increasing their overall sales there.
Unlike VWs previous flagship, the Phaeton, the new Phideon is a China-only model for now, with the company not ruling out yet the possibility of exporting it to other regions in the future.
The range-topping 3.0 TSI 4Motion version is powered by a supercharged V6 petrol engine with 295hp (300PS) while entry-level models are powered by a 2.0-litre TSI unit. Plug-in hybrid versions are also on the cards. The new VW Phideon is priced from 359,000 yuan (around $53,000 in current exchange rates).
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A police officer had an extremely close call near the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, when a pickup truck ran into her squad car after she had got out to help a motorist.
Just as this footage from NBC News gets under way, you can see the officer walking back towards her squad car when she suddenly viewed a car heading directly for her vehicle.
In a split second, the acknowledgment turned into self-preservation, as police officer Hilary Lundberg starts backing away, presumably looking for ways in which she could avoid getting hit.
She looks up and sees the car coming and shes got basically no place to go because theres a gap between the two bridges. So if she were to jump over the ledge, theres a chance she would fall into the river, stated Chief Marty Jensen of the Hudson Police.
As you can see, the patrol car was in really bad shape after the crash, indicating that the impact was extremely severe.
I am just thankful that my officer is alive and not injured, added Chief Jensen. Her squad car and this pickup truck were within feet of her as they went by. I am amazed that she did not get hit.
As for the driver of the truck, a 31-year old St. Paul man, he sustained non-life threatening injuries, as reported by the Valley News.
Photo: Hudson Police Department
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Photo: Getty Images
I have written about various aspects of Alzheimers disease as well as research into new treatment possibility, and, at times, I may have sounded pessimistic because we still have so much to learn.
We have yet to develop a treatment that can stop or significantly slow the progression of dementia in Alzheimers patients and we still dont understand how we can prevent it from occurring in the first place.
Because of this and also due to fear about the prognosis of this degenerative condition, many people wait too long to speak to their doctor if they suspect themselves or loved ones are experiencing the early signs of Alzheimers.
It is easy to think that if there is not much to be done to slow or stop the condition, what is the point of getting scared by an official diagnosis.
Although these feelings are certainly understandable, there are many benefits to early diagnosis and management of this disease.
Early diagnosis gives patients and their families some resources and support as they face an unknown future.
Not only can it be reassuring to learn more about the specific type of dementia youre facing and what its course and difficulties can be, but there are other reasons early diagnosis is helpful.
For some people, the earlier a medication is started, the more effective it can be. Also, an early diagnosis can help the individual be more involved in decisions about future care and management of the condition.
Perhaps one of the most important reasons to speak with your doctor early if you believe youre experiencing symptoms of dementia, is that these symptoms can be caused by illnesses other than Alzheimers.
Some of these conditions are treatable and a proper assessment from a doctor can help determine what the true underlying cause of symptoms may be.
Understanding what is known about your condition and accessing resources and support help to ensure a better quality of life.
Finally, individuals with dementia can advocate on behalf of themselves and others experiencing dementia and even help advance the understanding of Alzheimers by participating in clinical trials for potential new treatment.
Although a diagnosis of dementia can seem frightening, it is important to know that there is life even with these symptoms.
If you or a loved one think you might be experiencing early signs of dementia, speak with your doctor immediately.
At Okanagan Clinical Trials we are currently seeking volunteers for a study of an investigational treatment for Alzheimers disease.
Contact us for more information or to learn if you are eligible: 250 862-8141 or [email protected].
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Kate Bouey - File photo
The number of homeless people who died on Vernon streets has more than doubled since last year, according to Chuck Harper who is organizing the third annual Vernon Homeless Memorial.
In 2015, there were eight deaths, but already in 2016 there have been 20, Harper said.
Harper could not point to one particular reason for the dramatic increase in deaths, but acknowledged drugs did play a role in the rise in numbers.
Health problems and other factors added to the total.
The memorial will be held Thursday at 2 p.m. at Polson Park and will be a time to remember the lives lost.
Harper said the memorial service is open to everyone and will be quiet, respectful where people can honour those who have died.
This year has been a particularly tough year, said Harper. We lost 20 men and women.
Kelly Fehr, with the John Howard Society, said there have been numerous deaths of homeless people this year, but he did not have the exact number.
Following the service, there will be a dinner at the Upper Room Mission.
The mission is putting on the dinner with help from Interior Savings. They have chosen the Mission again for their Day of Difference so they will be helping us set up for the special dinner, as well as help with serving and clean up, said Lisa Anderson, director of resource development with the mission.
This will be the second in a row year staff from Interior Savings will be donating their time to benefit the mission.
Photo: The Canadian Press
An advocacy group has launched a private prosecution under the Fisheries Act against the B.C. government and a mining company over the disastrous consequences of the collapse of the Mount Polley tailings dam.
The legal action by MiningWatch Canada says the dam released a torrent of mine waste in B.C.'s Cariboo region, creating a new valley and permanently altering or destroying fish habitat, affecting 20 different fish species.
MiningWatch says in a news release that it has launched the prosecution now because more than two years after the spill, the Crown hasn't brought charges under the Fisheries Act.
The charges allege the province and the Mount Polley Mining Corp. violated the act that prohibits serious harm to fish and forbids the deposit of deleterious substances into fish-bearing waters.
None of the allegations have been proven in court and neither the provincial government nor Mount Polley Mining could be immediately reached for comment.
A letter from the Department of Fisheries mailed recently to a lawyer for MiningWatch says investigators from three agencies are still examining evidence and potential charges will go to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada for consideration.
Photo: CTV
British Columbia's education minister says no schools in Vancouver are expected to be closed following the dismissal of the district's entire school board.
Mike Bernier says the former superintendent tasked with being the board's new official trustee has told him school closures are not being considered for the foreseeable future.
Former Delta School District superintendent Dianne Turner was appointed to the new position Monday after Bernier fired the nine-member board following months of controversy that included allegations of workplace bullying.
Turner's appointment will last for at least 12 months, and Bernier says it may be extended if she needs more time to stabilize the organization.
The minister says he fired the board primarily because it had not passed a balanced budget as required by provincial legislation and that he could not "take at face value" anything board members said.
Board chairman Mike Lombardi has called the move outrageous, saying trustees were elected to stand up for public education, not to do the government's dirty work of closing schools, cutting programs and selling off public assets.
Photo: Contributed
They found the accident easily enough, but it took Salmon Arm RCMP a while to find the driver.
On Oct. 16 at approximately 7:15 p.m., police and ambulance were dispatched to a single-vehicle rollover east of Salmon Arm toward Sicamous.
Staff Sgt. Scott West said initial information suggested there was one occupant outside of the car.
Upon arrival, the RCMP and ambulance personnel could not find any signs of occupants. Subsequent search of the area revealed there were no injured people in the immediate area, said West.
Inquires revealed that the driver had left the area.
The driver has since contacted police as a result of messages left with family and at recent residences, said West. It is believed that the road conditions coupled with the condition of the vehicle's tires may have been a contributing factor in the accident.
Photo: Getty Images
No matter who wins the U.S. election, it could have a detrimental effect on Canada's economy.
A new study released by the Fraser Institute found the emergence of strong opposition to trade in the U.S. presidential election and Europe threatens Canadas future economic prosperity.
There is growing opposition to the nearly four decades-long consensus regarding the benefits of trade, said Philip Cross, the former chief economic analyst with Statistics Canada and author of The Importance of International Trade to the Canadian Economy: An Overview.
This is particularly true in the U.S. presidential election, where both Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an unratified trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries including Canada.
And while Clinton has said she would review the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trump has vowed to renegotiate the deal entirely.
In Europe, regional lawmakers in Belgium effectively struck down the Canada-European Union Trade Agreement (CETA), which puts its ratification later this month in jeopardy.
Canada is a trading nation and a significant portion of the countrys prosperity is tied to our ability to trade with other countries, Cross said.
In 2015, the value of goods and services produced in Canada and sold abroad (exports) accounted for 31.5 per cent of Canadas economy up from 25 per cent in 1988, when Canada began establishing free trade agreements with the U.S. and other countries.
Despite new trade agreements with other countries, roughly 75 per cent of all Canadian exports still go to the U.S., making access to our southern neighbour vitally important.
And according to the most recent available estimates, some three million jobs in Canada are directly or indirectly tied with exporting.
Too many Canadians take for granted the economic benefits that freer trade has provided, until protectionist threats remind us how much we have to lose, Cross said.
Photo: City of Penticton
Penticton residents showed up in droves at Penticton City Hall to voice their opinions on a recovery house, filling the main council room and an overflow room.
Council unanimously approved the Penticton Recovery Resource Societys application to rezone 633 Winnipeg Street, which would add another home to its existing recovery operation, called Discovery House, on Wade Avenue.
The community showed overwhelming support for the proposal, including neighbours of the current Discovery House, who raved about the house as neighbours who help shovel driveways and with other chores.
There was some level of dissent, including several letters written to the city, but during the meeting, opposition to the house came from only three out of more than 20 speakers.
Opposition voiced concerns of zoning, including a concern that if and when Discovery House leaves the lot, the congregate housing zoning would continue, allowing for other things like hostels or flop houses to take its place, among other concerns.
To that end, a caveat was proposed that would rezone the building only while it is used by Discovery House. Due to the uncommon nature of that type of legislation, staff asked for time to come up with the proper wording to add to the bylaw amendment.
But the vast majority of those who spoke in council Tuesday evening showed support. Emotions ran high, with instances of tears and laughter in the room, as recovered addicts, family members thereof and family members of now-deceased addicts spoke in support of the amendments.
One woman, who said she spoke for her granddaughter whose father died of a heart attack years after a successful recovery through the house, said it's not a zoning issue.
About peoples lives and progress that this positive program can do, particularly for the kids," said the woman, whose speech was met with applause from the overflow room.
A man who said he went through the program at Discovery House had difficulties speaking when he shared his experience of his heroin overdose.
We need more beds," he told the room. "People are dying trying to get into the house that saved my life.
Following the meeting, two of those who spoke out against the rezoning spoke with Discovery House executive director Jerome Abraham, with one even congratulating him on the approval.
Doug Gaidica said he's still uncertain whether the zoning will work for the building and neighbourhood, including the number of occupants in the house, but said he was touched by the speeches and reiterated that he was never against having more spaces for recovery houses.
He said he was happy that the city promised a caveat that would limit the zoning amendments to the building's occupancy by Discovery House.
"What that does is protect us from future flop houses, that we've had in the neighbourhood before, and that was principally what we wanted," he said. "So in the future if some other manager comes along, that building doesn't become a drug house."
Photo: Getty Images
It was 1987 and I was just finishing up my masters degree and one of the most intriguing areas of study for me had been a comparison between B. F. Skinner and Carl Rogers.
Skinner was the behaviorist and Rogers the originator of self-actualization.
Now, I had just come back to the elementary level from the junior secondary and I had been awarded the most rambunctious, high-spirited, rollicking group of Grade 4s Id ever seen.
The boy-girl ratio was about 4-1. I knew I had a great challenge in front of me.
On the first day of school, I began with a captivating discourse about classroom expectations.
As I spoke, Matthew Taggart, who was about four feet tall, had a long neck and beady eyes, slowly disappeared behind his desk. Being an experienced teacher by now, I continued to speak while slowly circling around the room.
My intention, of course, was not to draw any attention to the situation, but handle it indirectly and in a non-threatening way. This was a great opportunity to show my students how fair and basically intelligent I was.
As I got to the back of the room, I looked to see what Matthew was doing. To my amazement, he was playing with some little trucks and cars, running them back and forth along the track inside his desk.
He was completely oblivious to anything I had said, especially the part about listening to directions.
When I think about it now, I believe that Matthew was self-actualizing in his own way. The problem was that I needed him to behave in a different way.
The other problem was that, as I viewed the other boys desks, they were all stuffed full of cars and trucks as well.
Matthew! I roared. My facade was shattered, however, Matthew jumped up on his chair, folded his hands and looked about like a smiling little angel.
I continued my sermon, pleased with my victory. By the time I made it full circle to the front of the room, Matthew had disappeared once again.
After about a week, I was completely flummoxed with this little group of angels. They had no intention of listening to reason.
I couldnt even shame them into being more grown up. All they really wanted to do was play with their little trucks and cars.
What I needed to do was teach them some math, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, speech arts, social studies, science, P. E., health, music, art, drama
Yikes! Thats a lot.
Enter B. F. Skinner. One of Skinners most notable achievements was the Skinner Box.
He placed a chicken in a small cage that had a lever. When the chicken pecked the lever, a piece of grain came down a shoot.
The secret to this experiment was to find the frequency threshold. In other words, if a piece of grain came each time the chicken pecked, it would peck so many times per minute.
But if he withheld the grain at certain random intervals, the chicken would go into a frenzy. Slot machines are based on the same principle.
I was fascinated with this concept, and desperate. So, I slipped on my imaginary white coat and devised my own plan of operant conditioning.
I programmed my classroom computer to beep at random intervals. I told the students that, if they were listening or working quietly when the computer beeped, I would put a tick on the board.
If we reached 20 ticks by the end of the day, wed have five minutes of free time. After finding the perfect threshold frequency, my plan worked like a charm, and my students actually enjoyed this little experiment.
After awhile, I even eliminated the reward and my students continued to beep along joyfully.
But then there was a slight nagging sense of guilt. Was I treating my students like lab rats? What about Carl Rogers and self-actualization? I decided to stop and see if the training in this experiment had any effect.
The first day without the beeps was hugely successful. My students worked quietly and actually listened to me.
After about a week, things started to regress and I was getting that confounded feeling again, except that when I moved to the part of the blackboard where I had put the ticks before, my students seemed to quiet down.
Then I realized that I was doing most of my talking and teaching right from that spot. When I moved away, my students became distracted and noisy. When I moved back, they quieted down.
I was hit with a thunderbolt. I was the lab rat, not them.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Google Street View
The British Columbia Court of Appeal has ordered a new trial on sexual assault charges for a former fire chief of a small town in central B.C., ruling that the actions of the trial judge could be perceived as being unfair.
The former chief of the Fort St. James Fire Department was charged with three counts of sexual assault relating to three female volunteers with the department.
The trial judge rejected arguments that the man's behaviour and conduct was accepted by members of the fire department.
At the trial, the judge read a section of the Criminal Code on perjury to a witness who was favourable to the defence, and said an RCMP investigation should be launched into the witness's testimony.
The former fire chief later appealed his conviction, arguing those actions led to an unfair trial and a miscarriage of justice.
The three-judge panel in the court of appeal says in a unanimous written decision released Tuesday that based on those actions, the judge could be perceived as being unfair and a new trial has been ordered.
The judge's actions would lead a "reasonable and informed observer" to believe the judge had pre-judged the witness's evidence, writes Justice John Savage.
"That impression of unfairness is not cured by the conduct of the remainder of the trial."
There is a publication ban on some aspects of the case and the former fire chief is identified only by initials in the court of appeal decision.
Photo: Creep Catchers
A charge of breach of trust has been dropped against a Surrey Mountie scheduled to appear in court today on a charge of child luring.
Surrey RCMP Const. Dario Devic was charged after a Creep Catchers sting last month in which he allegedly attempted to meet an underage girl.
The first charge was dropped following "a full review of all the available evidence," the Criminal Justice Branch said Tuesday. The Crown said it did not meet its charge assessment standard.
Devic was removed from active status after the incident and still faces the child luring charge.
He is also the subject of an internal RCMP Code of Conduct investigation.
with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: cancer.ca
The Canadian Cancer Society released its 2016 cancer statistics Wednesday.
An estimated 202,400 new cases of cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) will be diagnosed in Canada this year. An estimated 78,800 people will die from the disease.
Lung, breast, colorectal and prostate cancers will account for more than half the cases.
Canadians aged 50 to 79 will represent 70 per cent of all new cancer cases and almost 62 per cent of cancer deaths. The highest proportion of new cases will occur in those 60 to 69, while the highest proportion of deaths are expected in those 80 and older.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men: 21,600 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 4,000 will die from the disease.
Breast cancer remains the most common cancer among women: 25,700 will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 and about 4,900 will die from it.
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women, followed by colorectal, breast and pancreatic cancers. This year, an estimated 28,400 Canadians will be diagnosed with lung cancer and about 20,800 will die from the disease, making it responsible for more than a quarter of all cancer deaths.
Colorectal cancer will be diagnosed in about 26,100 Canadians and will lead to the deaths of about 9,300.
Overall, an estimated two in five Canadians are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes; an estimated one in four Canadians will die from the disease.
Canadian Cancer Society epidemiologist Leah Smith said studies suggest that as Canada's population continues to grow and as it ages, there will be an almost 40 per cent jump in the number of annual cancer cases by 2030, even though the rate of new cancers per 100,000 Canadians will remain relatively stable.
Photo: Thinkstock.com
A 41-year-old British Columbia man has received a 12-month conditional discharge after beating the family's chihuahua to death with a fence post.
Christopher Mathes was sentenced in Kamloops provincial court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to causing unnecessary pain and suffering to an animal.
Mathes is also banned from being in the presence of dogs for one year.
He was charged just over a year ago after hitting the pet, a rescue dog, on the head with the post because it had bitten his six-year-old daughter on the face.
BC SPCA chief prevention and enforcement officer Marcie Moriarty says she is appalled by the decision.
She says Mathes could have turned to a trainer for help managing the dog's behaviour and she worries the sentence will set a lenient legal precedent for anyone who mistreats animals.
"It is very worrisome, and I hope that, in future cases, this case gets distinguished as an oddity because it most certainly should not reflect what, in 2016, animal owners' responsibilities are with respect to duty towards their animals," Moriarty said. (CFJC, CHNL)
Photo: BC Wildfire Service
Salmon Arm's mayor is pleading for Rapattack staff to be permitted use of barracks at the local base after January 2018 and has expressed her fear that, without housing, the base may shut down.
The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations has confirmed a decision was made to phase-out catering services and accommodation services for the crews stationed there.
A Salmon Arm city press release states there is justifiable concern about the viability of the base if the 30 affected staff members are unable to secure housing.
We are not asking for the ministry to subsidize housing for their staff, just to ensure that these workers have accommodation for the months of May to October, a time when the vacancy rate in our area is at its lowest and our need for these services is at its highest, said Mayor Nancy Cooper.
Cooper further stated the staff could be charged market value for the accommodations.
The Shuswap area's tourist season is in full swing during the summer months and the city fears people may be left without fire protection services by the highly-trained Rapattack staff if the barracks are closed or moved.
Rapattack firefighters rappel from helicopters into remote locations to fight fires where helicopters are unable land and have been a fixture in B.C.'s forest firefighting arsenal since the 1970s.
The Salmon Arm base is the only one of its kind in the province.
Catering service at the base is slated to end in January, and housing for the fire crews in 2018.
Photo: Contributed
Tours of the new jail in the South Okanagan, slated to take place this month, filled up quickly.
B.C. Corrections spokeswoman Cindy Rose said they have now booked 3,000 visitors for the tours of the Okanagan Correctional Centre.
We would like to thank the community for their incredible interest in touring the Okanagan Correctional Centre," she said. "In an effort to accommodate as many people as we could, we expanded dates to double the original plan."
Rose added that public interest definitely exceeded their expectations and they are thrilled they have been able to provide this opportunity to thousands of residents in the region.
The phone number will also no longer be monitored as they cannot accommodate any further bookings.
On the guided walk-throughs, people will get a first look at the facility's living units, cells and secure inmate areas.
They'll also learn about the day-to-day operations of the correctional centre and what life in custody is like for inmates.
People are asked to bring a non-perishable food item for donation to local food banks.
For security reasons, cameras and recording equipment including smart phones must be left in vehicles or at home.
The jail, about 8.5 kilometres north of Oliver in the Senkulmen Business Park, will start to take in both male and female inmates starting in 2017.
About 300 South Okanagan residents will work at the facility.
Photo: The Canadian Press
Health Minister Jane Philpott offered an apology of sorts to her provincial and territorial counterparts Tuesday after some of them pushed back against her argument that federal health dollars need to be earmarked for health spending.
"I apologize if people misunderstood," Philpott said, standing among her fellow health ministers after day-long meetings at a downtown Toronto hotel. "There is certainly no intention to make accusations."
The day before, Philpott spoke frankly and at length about what she called the need for greater accountability on the part of the provinces and territories, as well as more innovative ideas on efficiently delivering health services.
"There are countries in this world, and there are many of them, developed countries ... that are getting far better value for money than we are," she said.
"I have a responsibility as the health minister for Canada to invest in health, to help improve health systems but when we are going to my finance minister to ask for more money, I need to be able to tell that finance minister it is going to be used for health."
On Tuesday, Philpott refined her message, saying the federal government wants to see greater accountability for future investments.
"What we are talking about is new investments in health care," she said. "That's just what I talked about, the fact that when we are investing in home care ... people in this day and age, health experts from across the country, believe in measurement."
The tensions that have permeated the talks come from provincial resistance to a federal plan to proceed with a reduction in the rate by which federal transfers increase each year: three per cent, down from the six per cent escalator established in 2004.
Those transfer payments currently flow into the provinces' general revenue pool; Philpott said Tuesday that further investment will require additional detail so the federal government can know what to "expect."
The provinces say a three per cent increase in Canada Health Transfer payments will mean $1 billion less the provinces would otherwise have received in 2017-18, and $60 billion over the next decade.
Photo: CTV
Police in New Zealand say they've found partial remains of a Canadian man whose vehicle went off a highway in the country three years ago.
Connor Hayes and Joanna Lam were in a campervan near New Zealand's Haast Past in September 2013 when police say the vehicle was swept off a highway by a landslide.
Police say the Ottawa couple was killed in the crash.
Twenty-four-year-old Lam's body was recovered days later from a beach north of the tourist town of Haast, but twenty-five-year-old Hayes was never found.
On Wednesday, New Zealand police announced that a hunter located a human thigh bone at the confluence of two rivers in August, which DNA analysis has confirmed is Hayes's.
Insp. Mel Aitken says the discovery prompted a new search of the Haast River this Sunday and a number of "items of interest" were recovered from the riverbed, but police have yet to confirm they belong to Hayes.
Aitken says anything believed to belong to Hayes, including bones, will eventually be released to his family in Canada.
Photo: CTV
British Columbia MP Peter Julian is stepping down as NDP House leader to explore the idea of running for the leadership of his party.
"That will mean lots of conversations hundreds of conversations in the coming period," Julian said Wednesday
"I'm inspired by New Democrats, I'm inspired by Canadians, and I'm looking forward to those conversations," said Julian, who represents the riding of New Westminster-Burnaby.
Murray Rankin, another B.C. New Democrat, will take over as House leader.
Julian, 54, was first elected to the House of Commons in 2004 and has been re-elected four times.
So far, there are no official candidates to replace NDP Leader Tom Mulcair.
Mulcair said he would step down next year after delegates at the party's April convention in Edmonton voted against his leadership.
That followed a poor showing in the 2015 election, despite Mulcair having begun the campaign with the most credible shot the NDP has ever had at forming the federal government.
Julian said that one year after the Liberals came to power, Canadians are disappointed.
The party is to select Mulcair's replacement in October 2017.
Photo: Contributed
A Penticton man was arrested and charged after threatening another man with a knife during a fight in the city, last week.
Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth said officers were called out to a report of two men fighting, apparently over rent one of them owed, on Orchard Avenue at about 1:20 p.m. on Oct. 14.
The victim was located by officers on Padmore Avenue and the accused was found in the vicinity of the Penticton Library.
The men were not co-operative with the police, and the man who was wielding the knife was subsequently charged with assault with a weapon.
This incident follows a reported stabbing at the 24/7 Convenience Store on Main Street on Oct. 7.
Photo: NASA
Astronauts headed to the International Space Station in 2018 won't only be conducting their own experiments they'll be part of a bigger experiment themselves.
The Canadian Space Agency and the University of Calgary announced Wednesday they are collaborating on a new experiment to study how long-duration missions impact astronauts' brains.
Known as wayfinding, the study will examine how reduced gravitational forces affect the astronauts' ability to find their way around.
"We're the perfect guinea pigs for medical research," said Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, who will head to the International Space Station for a six month mission in late 2018.
"It's part of the job. I mean if I can contribute to medical research and help save lives ultimately down the road and come up with the cure for something, it would be a great privilege."
It is hoped the research will eventually help those affected by neurological conditions and neural degeneration related to aging.
Studies have already shown that spending extended time in space can reduce bone density. Astronauts lose an average of more than one per cent bone mass for every month spent in space.
"There isn't a single system in your body that isn't affected by the lack of gravity," said Saint-Jacques.
"We have evolved on Earth for millions of years in the presence of gravity and our body works with gravity. You remove gravity and everything goes out of whack and, because of that. astronauts develop problems that often resemble real disease."
Giuseppe Iaria, the principal investigator for the wayfinding experiment at the University of Calgary, said his team will perform brain scans on the astronauts before they leave for the space station and after they return.
"We will do some behaviour testing, some video-game like environments where we test the ability to find their way around in environments that we create and we manipulate just to see how their orientation skills are," said Iaria.
Photo: The Canadian Press A book of condolence for former Alberta premier Jim Prentice at the MacDougal Centre in Calgary.
A state memorial service that will be open to the public will be held next week in Calgary for former Alberta premier Jim Prentice, who was killed in a plane crash last week near Winfield.
The twin-engine Norjet Cessna Citation crashed Thursday night, shortly after taking off from Kelowna Airport.
A statement from the premier's office says the service will be held Oct. 28 at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium and will begin at 11 a.m.
Details of the service, including speakers and attendees, are still being worked out.
Prentice was killed last Thursday when the business jet slammed into the ground east of Wood Lake.
Also killed were optometrist Ken Gellatly, the father-in-law of one of Prentice's daughters, and former RCMP officer Jim Kruk, who was piloting the aircraft.
The family of Calgary businessman Sheldon Reid, another victim of the crash, says in a statement he enjoyed telling stories about his travels around the world and was most proud of his son, Dylan.
"Sheldon was a man of incredible generosity generosity for his family, his loved ones, and the community of Calgary," the family wrote.
"He will be fondly remembered for his smile, his laugh, and the depth of his care and compassion for those he loved."
The Transportation Safety Board investigation into the crash is expected to take at least a year.
News / Africa
by BBC
At least 16 people have been killed in a row over a disputed charge on the sale of caterpillars in the Democratic Republic of Congo.The larvae were being sold for food in south-eastern Katanga province.Days of violence began when a group of Batwa, also known as pygmies, accused the Luba ethnic group of imposing an illegal levy on the sale of caterpillars and beating up vendors.The two groups have clashed several times in the last few years.The Batwa killed several members of the Luba ethnic group near the region of Kabalo in Katanga. The Luba then launched a revenge attack, killing at least 13 pygmies.Tensions between the hunter-gatherer pygmies and the Luba, a Bantu ethnic group, have caused hundreds of deaths over the past three years.Caterpillars are a delicacy in western DR Congo, in the area around the capital Kinshasa, hundreds of miles from Katanga where the deadly clashes occurred.They are harvested from trees, smoked and often eaten with sauce.However they are an unexpected cause of conflict in DR Congo, particularly in Katanga.That province is not known for its love of eating caterpillars and people have certainly never killed for them before.But there is a running feud in the area between pygmies and other ethnic groups.Pygmies are native to the region but they feel they are marginalised, with unequal access to resources and education.So when they felt that one of their main sources of income was being subject to an unfair tax, the result was violence.
Photo: Contributed
The Penticton Trade and Convention Centre is losing money, but thats nothing out of the ordinary according to a business planning expert.
Jonathan Hack of Sierra Planning and Management presented to city council on Tuesday during a committee of the whole meeting to put forth suggestions for the city to undertake to shed less money from the centre.
In his presentation, Hack noted that the PTCC lost over $195,000 last year, while the year previous it lost $18,400. In 2012, the centre lost nearly $280,000.
In fact, over the past five years, according to the data provided in the presentation, the centre would have lost $776,062, averaging out to just over $155,000 per year.
But compared to other convention centres, the PTCC's loss per square foot is smaller than numerous others, according to Hack's presentation. While the PTCC lost $3.25 per square foot, others ranged from $6.73 per square foot at the Victoria Conference Centre to a staggering $282.43 per square foot loss at The Banff Centre according to the most recent available data.
The Whistler Conference Centre was the only one in the black in Hack's presentation, which saw an $18.79 per square foot gain.
The expansion of the Lakeside Resort may impact the amount of events that come to the PTCC, such as conventions and recurrent events, but Hack said the city should still welcome the expansion for potential positive impacts on the local economy.
In order to grow the market share, however, Hack offered a potential solution: one or more hotels added to the area. He said the city could provide moderate investment in the building, but the benefit of that would be a non-significant compliment to other investments.
By investing more in the building, and potentially a hotel on site, Hack said economic benefits could arise, and Penticton would remain a relevant spot on the map.
Some of those potential investments include a pair of new multi-purpose rooms, an expanded lobby to the north and expansion of the back-of-house, though that all comes with a hefty price tag at $25.4 million.
But without digging so deep into their pockets, the PTCC could make more minor improvements, like renovating its back-of-house operations to accommodate more patrons, performing more routine improvements to the building and re-planning meeting rooms. That was priced out at just over $8.5 million.
In all, Hack offered four options, including a full re-purpose of the PTCC, partial re-purpose of the building, investment into the centre and demolition of the building and sale of the land.
However, Hack tossed three of those options aside as not justified, and said the focus should be on investing more into the PTCC.
Photo: Twitter
Actress Shailene Woodley has pleaded not guilty in a North Dakota court to criminal trespass and riot charges after her arrest in a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline.
Court records show the "Divergent" star entered her pleas on Tuesday through her attorney Alexander Reichert.
Woodley and 26 other activists were arrested Oct. 10. She livestreamed her protest on Facebook.
The Standing Rock Sioux want construction of the $3.8 billion pipeline halted, saying it could taint the water supply and encroach on tribal burial sites. Protests supporting the tribe have been going on for months.
Woodley could face 60 days in jail and $3,000 in fines if she is convicted of criminal trespass and engaging in a riot.
Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer
Firefighters responded to a small fire in a city garbage can in downtown Penticton on Wednesday afternoon.
Smoke coming from the waste bin near Starbucks on Main Street was first observed by customers at about 1 p.m.
Employees contacted the fire department, who quickly arrived on scene.
A Starbucks employee said customers told her someone was smoking nearby, just before smoke started coming from the garbage can.
She said there has been small fires in the receptacles before, which can be a little unnerving for customers.
Capt. Ken Younghusband said they did find some cigarette butts inside, making that the possible cause. He advised not getting rid of butts in garbage cans.
Photo: File photo
A warrant has been issued for a couple wanted in a daring New Brunswick diamond theft that has been connected to a series of similar heists nationwide.
The Saint John Police Force said Wednesday they had obtained a Canada-wide arrest warrant for a 70-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman in the Oct. 7 theft at W. Smith and Co. Fine Jewellers.
The force did not give further details, but storeowner Wayne Smith said the couple were European and living in the Toronto area.
"The police have been right on to it, they've just been working diligently here," Smith said Wednesday.
Smith went public about the robbery at his store this month, and said he has since heard directly from stores and police officers from coast to coast about similar heists.
The thieves present themselves as a middle-aged couple arguing over how many carats to buy, and then switch real diamonds with fakes while salespeople are distracted.
The most recent reported robbery was at a store in Charlottetown, where police said the same couple that hit Saint John "managed to swap useless stones for two diamonds valued at approximately $20,000."
Smith said such thefts are not uncommon at jewelry stores, but they're usually kept quiet. He said he decided to speak out because his insurance deductible is so high it won't cover the loss, and because the video is so clear the culprits can be easily identified.
Smith said he now directly knows of a half-dozen thefts from Vancouver to the Maritimes, and thinks there are likely dozens more. He said more than $1 million in diamonds may have been stolen.
"It'll make me ecstatic when some of the jewellers get their goods back, and it may be a start of jewellers communicating across Canada more when they do have a robbery, so that we can narrow this down and maybe prevent something from happening in the future," Smith said.
"It's also a good awareness that all jewellery stores need to have up-to-date, sophisticated camera equipment."
Photo: Contributed
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard has turned down a request for a televised debate on sovereignty and federalism with Parti Quebecois Leader Jean-Francois Lisee.
Couillard says he prefers to discuss jobs and the economy.
Lisee used question period in the national assembly on Wednesday to ask for the debate.
On his way later to a cabinet meeting, Couillard said he's not interested in discussing sovereignty with his political foe.
The new PQ leader held a news conference to scoff at Couillard and accuse him of using sovereignty as a diversionary tactic.
Lisee said the premier always turns the conversation to independence when he is asked about the economy.
"I'm telling him,'If you want to talk about sovereignty, we'll have a one-hour debate on it,''' Lisee said. "And he says, 'No, I want to discuss the economy.'''
Couillard maintained that his interests lie in areas other than independence.
"I prefer to talk about subjects that are of concern to Quebecers, such as the economy and jobs," he said.
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
News / National
by Staff reporter
A SENIOR police officer in Bulawayo yesterday allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in his office at Westgate Police Station.Chief Inspector Edgar Dube (50), the Officer-in-Charge of the Police Protection Unit at Westgate, used a service pistol to shoot himself at around 7AM.According to local media, there was no suicide note but a Bible, opened to Romans Chapter Two, was found beside his body in his blood spattered office.The first verse reads: "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."Sources close to the matter said he was found with a gun in his hand and a gunshot wound under his right ear and above his left eye.National police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba confirmed the incident.
News / National
by Stephen Jakes
The Mutare Magistrate's Court has cleared the commemoration for Operation Hakudzokwi which is scheduled for the 1st of November in the diamond rich Marange communal lands. Operation Hakudzokwi (You shall not return) was a violent crack down launched by Zimbabwe's security forces to capture Marange diamond fields from artisanal miners and local villagers.Hundreds of artisanal miners were gunned down whilst scores of women were gang raped and others forced to be raped as punishment by artisanal miners under threat of the security forces.Although the effects of the crackdown were severe and far-reaching, the subject is still discussed with hushed tones, even by the victims. In 2014 Centre for Natural Resource Governance held the first ever commemoration of Operation Hakudzokwi in Mutare, attended by more than 200 people drawn from Marange community, civil society and international solidarity organisations.In 2016 the commemoration will be even bigger, with more than 500 people expected to gather at Bambazonke Business Centre in Marange to evoke, remember and reflect over what happened in November 2008, in order for the victims and their families to reclaim the recognition they deserve and raise awareness to prevent future repetitions of similar brutalities.The Officer in Charge at Bambazonke Police Station had barred Chiadzwa Community Development Trust and Centre for Natural Resource Governance from holding the commemoration in the community. In denying the two organisations permission to hold the event, Police demanded a Memorandum of Understanding between CCDT and CNRG with the Mutare Rural District Council.Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights filed an urgent court application arguing that Section 26 of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) exempts applicant from complying with sections 25 of the Act as it is not a political grouping; hence, the notice itself was just out of courtesy, adding that the Officer in Charge was awarding him/herself powers that s/he does not have.The ruling states the following that the oral prohibition order given on 14 October 2016 prohibiting Applicant's meeting at Bambazonke Business Centre be set aside, as its issuance is not compliant with Section 26 of POSA, that the 1st Respondent and its agents or anyone acting under Respondent's instruction are interdicted from disturbing or interfering in any way with the meeting to be held at Bambazonke Business Centre on 1 November 2016 to be convened by applicant and that the applicant goes ahead with the meeting as scheduled and promote its right to freedom of association and assembly as set out in section 58 of the Constitution and with the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed in section 61 of the same.Centre for Natural Resources Governance indicated that operation Hakudzokwi commemoration becomes the biggest gathering of Zimbabweans to reflect on the cost of mining to poor communities."As corporate violence in the mining sector is on the rise, with several cases of beatings and extra-judicial killing of artisanal miners by mine security guards being reported, this event seeks to discuss real alternatives to mining and lay out approaches to sustainable development that leaves no one behind," the organisation said."The 2014 commemoration was the first ever public meeting for the survivors of Operation Hakudzokwi to speak publicly about what happened to them and demand justice. The 2016 commemoration, running under the theme Operation Hakudzokwi: Remembering those who lost Lives, limbs, Land and Livelihoods, aims highlighting the urgent need for transitional justice and to ensure that the events that happened in Marange shall never happen again. The constitution should protect the lives of all Zimbabweans regardless of their social status."
News / National
by Staff Reporter
Water experts say the drying up of water sources poses a major crisis to the region and Zimbabwe in particular as it will escalate water shortages, reduce power generation and increase food insecurity throughout the country.The mighty Zambezi River is a lifeline for Southern Africa and reports indicate that the source is drying up.Zimbabwe generates power from the Zambezi River at the Kariba Hydro Power Station and now finds itself wondering as to the future of the expansion project currently underway in Kariba.Water engineer and SADC Water and Sanitation Coordinator, Mr Takudzwa Noel Mushamba said water is key to any national development and its scarcity has multiple negative effects on communities and the industry at large.Oxfam Water and Sanitation Expert, Lynn Chiripamberi said the drying up of water sources such as dams, rivers and tributaries have seen both urban and rural communities facing water shortages, exposing them to unsafe drinking water and in some cases forcing people to walk long distances to fetch water.A local non-governmental organisation, Action 24 Director, Mr Archibold Chemhere said dwindling surface and underground water is posing a huge challenge to the agriculture sector, causing food insecurity especially in communities that rely on rain feed agriculture.Faced with such a looming crisis, experts said governments must prioritise water infrastructure development to avert a crisis.
News / National
by Staff reporter
President Robert Mugabe has convinced the Msipa family that the late national hero, Cephas Msipa be buried at the National Heroes Acre where other members of his league are interred.Mugabe visited the Msipa residence in Borrowdale, Harare this Wednesday evening in the company of the First Lady, Dr Grace Mugabe, where the final decision was reached.Msipa succumbed to pneumonia on Monday morning at West End Clinic in Harare and after the conferment of the national hero status, there were disagreements in the family as some argued that Msipa's wish to be buried next to his wife at the Midlands Provincial Heroes Acre in Gweru should be respected.However, President Mugabe, said as a nephew to the Msipa family, he wants Msipa to be buried at the national shrine alongside other towering national giants."Msipa deserves the respect and honour that he worked for through his political activities aimed at liberating the country and maintenance of peace in Zimbabwe," said Mugabe, adding that although provincial heroes acres are looked after, the maximum care is given to the national shrine.According to government protocol, national heroes are interred at the National Heroes Acre.The body of the late national hero will be taken to Msipa's rural home in Zvishavane on Thursday.It will be in Gweru on Friday and will return to Harare later in the evening.It will lie in state at the Msipa Borrowdale home on Friday before burial on Saturday.Several government ministers who included Oppah Muchinguri - Kashiri, Christopher Mushohwe, Kembo Mohadi and Ignatius Chombo, among others, were also at the Msipa home.
News / Press Release
by APO
NAIROBI - At a press conference, the CEO of the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI) (www.ATI-aca.org), George Otieno, along with H.E. Dina Mufti, the Ethiopian Ambassador and Gabriel Negatu, Regional Director, African Development Bank announced today that it is ready to begin covering transactions in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. After a year-long process that was supported with funds from the African Development Bank, both countries are now members.The announcement will give investors crucial comfort to start or continue doing business in these countries.ATI was established in 2001 by African governments and a range of other shareholders to ease the concerns of investors by providing a range of investment and political risk insurance products.In the case of Ethiopia, one of Africa's fastest growing economies, ATI will help the country maintain its status as one of Africa's biggest success stories.The $66 billion economy has been expanding as much as 10.3 percent annually over recent years, according to the International Monetary Fund, with a dip to 6.5 percent last year due to drought. Ethiopia has also been successful in attracting large manufacturers such as Unilever NV, Diageo Plc and Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) and has taken the lead in export of agricultural products.For Zimbabwe, membership in ATI would give a boost to the country's quest to attract foreign direct investments."I have no doubt that our membership will contribute to Zimbabwe's current efforts to reduce the cost of doing business by making political risk and credit insurance, as well as non-payment and FDI cover readily available to exporters, importers and investors," noted Industry & Commerce Minister Mike Bimha.He also noted that his office had been inundated with inquiries from the private sector and potential investors on how they could access ATI's insurance services."The African Development Bank is pleased to have financed Ethiopia and Zimbabwe's membership into ATI. The affiliation with ATI will attract prospective investors with additional guarantees to participate in the priority areas of powering & lighting, feeding, industrializing and integrating both countries. It will also help improve the livelihood of millions of Ethiopians and Zimbabweans," noted Gabriel Negatu, African Development Bank's Regional Director.In both countries, ATI has a current project pipeline estimated at over one billion USD, which is expected to double in the short-term based on existing demand for its products. Prospective projects include a 400 MW solar energy plant in Ethiopia that would contribute to the country's carbon neutral growth plan to improve the living conditions of its citizens. And in Zimbabwe, ATI is considering a line of credit targeting commercial banks that will allow them to increase their lending volumes."I believe our entry into Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, particularly at this time, sends a powerful message to investors. Our presence signals that both countries are open for business because we are standing beside them as a credible and internationally-respected insurer with an A' rating from S&P. This should be positive news to anyone interested in doing business in the either country," noted Mr. Otieno, ATI's Chief Executive Officer.ATI provides political, investment and trade credit risk insurance and surety bonds to clients doing business in its member countries. The products are created to help countries attract more investments and to promote domestic trade by providing insurance that mitigates against sovereign risks and specifically, currency inconvertibility and exchange transfer, expropriation, trade embargoes, non-honouring of contracts and payment default risks among others.Companies and investors interested in learning more about ATI's products and services can send an enquiry to AfricanRisks@ATI-aca.org.
News / Regional
by Stephen Jakes
Matobo villagers are appearing in court for demonstrating against Arda and Trek's invasion of their land.MDC official Descent Bajila said the people have a long and well documented history of resistance."They fought the very first war against occupation in form of the Anglo Ndebele war of 1893. Even if Cecil John Rhodes had been granted the Royal Charter by the British Crown our people resisted him with sticks and stones. Our people fought Ian Douglas Smith even if he had won elections and Unilaterally declared independence. Our people fought Rodney Mashingaidze even if he had an "offer letter" to occupy our land. We are proud of these heroic fights we have been through," he said."We are however conscious of the battles we were beaten hands down particularly the Gomala- Bere incident, the battle of Mbembesi and Operation Gukurahundi. We are also conscious of the hand of Gukurahundi era Ministers like Emerson Mnangagwa in the ARDA Trek invasion. My knowledge of our people is that even if Trek were to forcibly take that, they will never see a season of harvest. It is in our mutual interest for Trek to VOETSEK from Maphisa."He said all the best to the legal team Abammeli and ZLHR."Have a great fight. In our hearts and spirits you have already won the matter," he said.
News / Regional
by Staff Reporter
Farmers at Thuli-Makwe Irrigation Scheme in Gwanda have entered into a joint venture with a local investor in a development that is expected to enhance agricultural productivity at the underutilised facility.The partnership between Thuli-Makwe Irrigation Scheme and Sense Marketing Private Limited will see the investor occupying 139 hectares of land while 55 hectares will remain in the hands of the farmers.Thuli-Makwe Irrigation Scheme chairperson Mrs Shiela Sibanda said the challenges faced by the farmers which include constant breakdown of engines, high utility bills and shortage of inputs necessitated the partnership.The investor has agreed to settle the farmers ZESA and ZINWA bills totaling to US$120 000, repair all electric motors and fence the scheme among other commitments.Government has however advised the farmers at Thuli-Makwe to review the contract every five years instead of the 10 year period initially agreed by the two parties.Other farmers are however not happy that only 30 hectares of land has been dedicated to the Command Agriculture Programme.Thuli-Magwe Irrigation Scheme which had 489 plot holders closed operations in September 2012 due to a huge electricity debt that had risen to US$135 000 and water bills amounting to US$77 000.It reopened in 2013 after farmers managed to reduce the debt and currently there are 222 plot holders after many other withdrew from the scheme.Meanwhile 53 hectares have been put under the summer crop.
Opinion / Columnist
Zimbabweans have been under economic problems for quite a long time and the situation seems to have no end as corruption is threatening to economically destroy all what the western-imposed - economic sanctions left during the over a decade long sanctions-induced-economic demise. For over a decade now Zimbabweans have not economically tested peace as some western-imposed sanctions in the country did not do any favour to our economy and now corruption is causing havoc to the same tattered Zimbabwean economy.Now it seems people have come to accept as normal mingling with corrupt individuals the same way how people have accepted that it is common and normal for one to have H.I.V and AIDS pandemic. Similarly with corruption despite the effects which this scourge has caused economically in the country people seem to have accepted that as normal. Some people even abet the commission of corruption in the country the same how some people abet the spread of H.I.V and AIDS in the country.However like how those in the medical field had fought tirelessly to with ways to contain the scourge of H.I.V and AIDs globally, the two Vice Presidents in the country Cdes Emerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko also came out strongly denouncing corrupt activities in the country. They both agreed that corruption has not done any good to the country hence those caught on the wrong side of the law should be either dismissed from their jobs or get arrested and thrown into jails.While addressing residents in Area Two of Old Pumula suburb in Bulawayo some few days ago as he handed over 2 900 day-old chicks to the residents, Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko said that corrupt officials at public hospitals such as Mpilo Central Hospital and United Bulawayo Hospitals must be fired for fleecing patients. VP Mphoko went further to blast corrupt officials by saying that there was conflict of interest at some institutions as some officials ran businesses similar to that of their employer.VP Mphoko said that such scenarios breeds corruption thereby disadvantages those who need to be assisted medically on public hospitalsVP Emerson Mnangagwa speaking at the National Journalism and Media Awards in Harare on Thursday 13 October 2016 said it was the responsibility of every Zimbabwean to expose corruption in the country. He hailed the media for exposing corruption saying that the scourge must never be rewarded with "impunity, while righteousness is punished with hostile editorials." VP Mnangagwa called for the media to make sure that there is no scared goat when it comes to exposing corruption in the country. He encouraged some journalist to make sure that they do investigative journalism so they are able to expose such vices without fearing anyone.For that reasons, Zimbabweans should take heed on what the VPs said on corruption since those are the only ways in which corruption could be tackled. If corrupt individuals are exposed they would probably stop such activities. This scourge should not be left unattended because Zimbabweans have been suffering for a long time. Corruption should not be accepted the same way people have accepted the scourge of H.I.V and AIDS. While people have been informed on how they can protect themselves from the scourge of H.I.V and AIDS but the scourge of corruption seem to be a problem as it is mainly coming from the top downwards.The hope now that corruption could be dealt with rests with what both VPs said about fighting corruption. Such moves by the VPs should now be taken as a turning point by all Zimbabweans to fight corruption. As said by VP Mnangagwa that the media should work tirelessly in exposing corruption so the media should make sure that those engaged in corrupt activities are exposed. There is need for the media to make sure that noone is feared when it comes to exposing corruption in the country.Actually those involved in corrupt activities should be jailed or fired from positions of authorities as pointed out by VP Mphoko as to send a clear message to would be corrupt individuals. Zimbabweans should not embrace corruption the same way as they embraced H.I.V and AIDS because this pandemic came sometimes unplanned and unknowingly unlike corruption where one plans to so.Zimbabwe is in dire need of the foreign direct investment which could make the economic turnaround of the economy viable but such a move cannot be possible if a country is full of corrupt individuals who always see the coming of any investor in the country as an opportunity for both top public and private sector officials to fatten their wallets. So corruption in whatever sector should be dealt with. Now that the VPs have now come out strongly talking against corruption the government should work tirelessly to arrest those found on the wrong side of the law. Actually laws to facilitate prosecution of corrupt individuals should be enacted so that this scourge is minimised if not eradicated totally.It is a fact that Zimbabweans from all walks of life have been talking against corruption and now that the powers that be have also joined the bandwagon of Zimbabweans in denouncing corruption, people expect action to be taken. Corruption has been talked about many times in different meetings, seminars and even in parliament but nothing tangible has been done to deal with those involved in corrupt ways.During a briefing with the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the functions and status of the National Prosecuting Authority on 31 March 2013,the then National Prosecutor-General who was by then the Acting Attorney-General, Mr. Johannes Tomana, told the committee that the government was supposed to capacitate institutions mandated to fight corruption while creating an enabling legal framework if the country was to deal decisively with the scourge of corruption in the country. Such a view by the then top government lawyer in that time should have been taken seriously as it was overdue for such an enabling legal framework to be enacted as a means to deal with corruption.Surprisingly such an enabling legal framework meant to deal with corruption has not been put in place despite the presence of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) in the country which is only there to fleece tax payers' money in salaries and allowances but being toothless when it comes to powers of arrest. The government should immediately enact laws which empower ZACC to investigate and arrest those involved in corrupt activities as way of making its presence understandable. Failure to do that by government would render useless the existence of ZACC but only to be there to drain the national fiscus.
Opinion / Columnist
Zimbabweans were astounded to read that, "Police have not arrested Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo because no report has been made to that effect." The story quoted the Acting Police Commissioner-General, Senior Assistant Commissioner as saying.Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) exposed that Professor Moyo misappropriated $450 000. What amazes many is the fact that police is deliberately ignoring effort put by ZACC in the course of their constitutional mandate. This leaves more questions than answers.Where is the missing link between the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and ZACC? These two public statutory bodies should synchronise their workmanship in order to weed out corruption which gnawing our national resources at an alarming rate.Supposedly, one had committed murder and the murderer is identified, Was the ZRP going to await a formal report to that effect? Certainly not! ZRP should play its constitutional mandatory obligation without any fear or favour. This is the only way to ensure the existence of justice in the Republic of Zimbabwe.ZRP is obliged to safeguard itself against facing allegations of the selective application of the law amongst citizens.One may ask if ZACC hasn't engaged the involvement of ZRP in the Moyo saga. It is unlikely, considering the fact that ZACC has no arresting powers. Honestly, what role does the ZRP play in nabbing corruption if they behave in such a hypocritical manner of pretending never to understand the elementary facts of the simple matter at stake.Possibly, to avert this misnomer, ZACC should be given prosecutorial powers to enhance the statutory body's mandate to execute its duties effectively and efficiently.Meanwhile, ZACC says it is dependent on the Zimbabwe Republic Police, and the Prosecutor General's office for processing corruption cases. More oftenly, ZACC claims that most cases have been compromised due to the long pipeline which involves other agencies. Therefore, gaining both arresting and prosecutorial powers would certainly shorten the process and improve on service delivery.Studies have revealed that agencies possessing both prosecutorial power and enhanced investigative power, like in Georgia, USA, emerged to be extremely powerful agency which can fight corruption efficiently.In Georgia, the Investigative Division of the Prosecution has the power to investigate and prosecute corruption. The only limitation to this power is the ability of the Minister of Justice to intervene where high level officials have been implicated. However, the minister's power has not hampered the effectiveness of the agency owing to the strong political will to fight corruption in the country.At the time of starting the anti-corruption reform agenda in 2003, Georgia was ranked 124 out of 133 countries on the Corruption Perception Index, but is now ranked 51 out of 174 countries.One of the main reasons policymakers cite for establishing a stand-alone, independent anti-corruption agency is the need to strengthen the enforcement of their nation's laws against bribery, conflict of interest, and other corruption crimes. But while a broad international consensus exists on the value of creating a new agency with investigative powers, opinion remains sharply divided on whether these agencies should also have the power to prosecute the crimes it uncovers.No matter the country, debate about whether a single agency should have the power to both investigate and prosecute corruption cases inevitably comes down to a small set of conflicting claims. Those who oppose giving a single agency both powers raise an argument at the centre of the older debate about the relative responsibilities of police and prosecutors investigator bias.In the words of a British Royal Commission that studied the relationship between English police and prosecutors, an investigator "without any improper motive, may be inclined to shut his mind to other evidence telling against the guilt of the suspect or to over-estimate the strength of the evidence he has assembled." That is, once an investigator hones in on a suspect, confirmation bias sets in, and he or she will interpret all evidence as supporting the suspect's guilt.Putting the decision about whether to prosecute a case in an agency wholly separate from the one that investigates provides a strong check against such bias, reducing the chances that the innocent will be put to a trial or weak cases brought to court.Ideally, studies have indicated that anti-corruption agencies with both responsibilities for both investigating and prosecuting corruption are likely to be more effective in enforcing the anti-corruption laws.It is however, worth noting that, some anti-corruption agencies have succeeded without having prosecutorial powers. For instance, the Hong Kong and Singapore agencies being notable examples were infamous agencies which possessed both investigative and prosecutorial power, but have been ineffective in their public mandate to fight corruption. But by and large dividing the powers between two agencies makes the effective enforcement of the anti-corruption laws all the more difficult to achieve.Effective enforcement of all laws demands, a close, professional, and robust relationship between investigators and prosecutors. But again, if the two are in separate agencies, this goal is all the harder to achieve. When prosecutors decline to prosecute a case an investigator has worked long and hard developing, it is easy for the investigator to treat it as a personal slight.Furthermore, prosecutors often need a good deal of time to review a lengthy file, but delays are commonly seen by civil society as a lack of commitment to prosecuting corruption case or, when after a delay the file is rejected, that corruption has have infected the review process.Identifying who is accountable for weak enforcement of the anti-corruption laws is virtually impossible when responsibility is split between two agencies. Investigators say weak enforcement is the prosecutors' fault; they are refusing to prosecute solid cases. Prosecutors point the finger at the investigators, saying the cases they present are weak.So there is need to establish an independent committee to re-look into the best international practices which can be adopted and implemented to fortify the ZACC so as to foster their duty execution in curtailing corruption.Otherwise the Moyo saga is a tip of the iceberg. Much more should be exposed by ZACC in order to cleanse our nation of corruption demon which is bedevilling our nation. There should be no sacred cows.
Opinion / Letters
4556 Griffith Mxenge StrSamora Machel7785 NPOno: 096-615South AfricaHon. Knowledge Malusi Nkanyezi Gigaba, MP.Minister of Home AffairsDepartment of Home AffairsRepublic of South Africa.19th September 2016Dear Minister Knowledge Malusi Nkanyezi Gigaba, MPRef: Request for Special Immigration Protection Status for people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi).This letter constitutes a formal request to the ANC government of the Republic of South Africa through your Ministry to take immediate steps towards giving the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) , currently residing in South Africa, a "Special Immigration Protection Status" and regularise their stay in our Republic.Hon. Minister it is good for us to state clearly that the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) are an Inter-cultural Society made of 16 multi-ethnic nationalities namely Aba-Thwa-San or Basarwa, Asians, Black immigrants, Coloureds, Kalanga, Karanga of Matebeleland, Nambya, Nguni, Shangwe, Sotho, Tswana, Swazi, Venda, White Matebele and Xhosa.Hon. Minister the strong grounds for the request for "Special Immigration Status" are on the basis of the following committed by the sectarian state of Zimbabwe against the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) since 1980 up to the present day.1. The violation of the following articles of the 1992 UN Declaration on Rights of Persons Belonging to National, or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.Article 1i. States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity.ii. States shall adopt appropriate legislative and other measures to achieve those ends.Article 2i. Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities (hereinafter referred to as persons belonging to minorities) have the right to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination.ii. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to participate effectively in cultural, religious, social, economic and public life.iii. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to participate effectively in decisions on the national and, where appropriate, regional level concerning the minority to which they belong or the regions in which they live, in a manner not incompatible with national legislation.iv. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain their own associations.v. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain, without any discrimination, free and peaceful contacts with other members of their group and with persons belonging to other minorities, as well as contacts across frontiers with citizens of other States to whom they are related by national or ethnic, religious or linguistic ties.Article 3i. Persons belonging to minorities may exercise their rights, including those set forth in the present Declaration, individually as well as in community with other members of their group, without any discrimination.ii. No disadvantage shall result for any person belonging to a minority as the consequence of the exercise or non-exercise of the rights set forth in the present Declaration.Article 4i. States shall take measures where required to ensure that persons belonging to minorities may exercise fully and effectively all their human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination and in full equality before the law.ii. States shall take measures to create favourable conditions to enable persons belonging to minorities to express their characteristics and to develop their culture, language, religion, traditions and customs, except where specific practices are in violation of national law and contrary to international standards.iii. States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible, persons belonging to minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue.iv. States should, where appropriate, take measures in the field of education, in order to encourage knowledge of the history, traditions, language and culture of the minorities existing within their territory. Persons belonging to minorities should have adequate opportunities to gain knowledge of the society as a whole.v. States should consider appropriate measures so that persons belonging to minorities may participate fully in the economic progress and development in their country.Article 5i. National policies and programmes shall be planned and implemented with due regard for the legitimate interests of persons belonging to minorities.ii. Programmes of cooperation and assistance among States should be planned and implemented with due regard for the legitimate interests of persons belonging to minorities.Article 6States should cooperate on questions relating to persons belonging to minorities, inter alia, exchanging information and experiences, in order to promote mutual understanding and confidence.2. Additionally, since 1980, the sectarian Zimbabwean State under the leadership of R. G. Mugabe has been in violation of all the articles (Article 1 to 30) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which we have limited space to itemize them all in this letter.3. Cognizant of the above mentioned flagrant violation of the Rights of the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) by the sectarian state of Zimbabwe, the following are some of the specifications for the above charge sheet.Specification 1: That the sectarian government of Zimbabwe under the leadership of Robert Gabriel Mugabe committed Gukurahundi Genocide against the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) between 1983 to 1987 that led to deaths of between 50 000 to 100 000 Matebeles and the displacement of millions to neighbouring countries including the Republic of South Africa and to Western Countries. Thousands of orphans were left with no one to fund their education as bread winners were killed with impunity.In February 2012, Genocide Watch, an international body that "exists to predict, prevent, stop and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder" declared Gukurahundi a Genocide and a source of "Polarization" between the Shona and people from Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi).Not forgetting and being mindful of the fact that the Gukurahundi Genocide included the deliberate and calculated assassination of our ZIPRA comrades (Gen. Lookout Masuku and others) and Zapu leaders (Njini Ntutha, Sydney Malunga and others) as well as uMkhonto weSizwe comrades that were based in Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) at the time and some other parts of Zimbabwe. Due to these shared and strong historical liberation links, we therefore have a moral and ethical duty to protect the vulnerable people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi).Specification 2: That the sectarian government of Zimbabwe, through its planned and calculated 1979 Grand Plan and its Revised Version (attached), has deliberately violated the ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity of the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi)by denying them conditions that can enable them to promote and develop their culture and language.Since 1980, there has been a calculated massive deployment of government employees in Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) from the majority Shona ethnic group in all state Institutions of Zimbabwe and other private entities. This has driven the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) out of their Homeland to seek sanctuary in this country. They need a reprieve and protection from Zimbabwe's calculated Genocide and marginalization programme in order for them to have opportunities to rebuild their lives, families and their communities in South Africa and in Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) from years of Zimbabwean state brutality, repression and persecution.Specification 3: Linguistically, children at a tender age at primary school level are being denied opportunities to learn at school from teachers that are able and competent to use "instruction of their mother tongue" in schools. Since 1980 there has been a deliberate programme of massive deployment to primary schools of teachers of Shona origin who are not competent or proficient in local Matebeleland and Midlands's languages or have never been tested for competency or proficiency in local languages to teach in Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) schools. This has resulted in alarming poor school pass rates in Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) and an inability of the children of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) to access further education and tertiary institutions of learning. These lost opportunities can be availed to the vulnerable people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) in South Africa once their status is regularised.Any protest by the vulnerable people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) against the above immoral behaviours of language and cultural genocide by the sectarian state of Zimbabwe is met with ruthless state aggression and repression using state machinery to cow them into submission.Specification 4: Marginalization in all sectors of employment and land redistribution has driven a large number of the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) out of their Homeland to this country in search of employment opportunities since 1980. Land is confiscated from white farmers and locals and given to outsiders from Matebeleland and Midlands. Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) people are therefore an endangered and vulnerable people seeking refuge to survive in South Africa. A Special Immigration Protection Status will give the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) an opportunity to work and rebuild their shattered lives in this country as well as develop their areas in their Homeland.Hon Minister, the indicated above specifications, are by no means exhaustive. Genocide and marginalization of the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi)over years by the sectarian state of Zimbabwe has caused and continue to cause long term social, health, cultural and economic damage to the people of Matebeleland and Midlands. It will take the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) years to recover and rebuild their lives and their Homeland. We need to support them in this journey of rebuilding their shattered lives and shattered Homeland.Hon. Minister, we therefore believe that the need for the protection of the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) by our government has been established beyond reasonable doubt in this letter. They are living without their fundamental human rights both in Zimbabwe and South Africa as well as in other neighbouring African states. This is unacceptable in a modern day world that we live in. We therefore call upon the South African government, through your Ministry, to intervene immediately and protect the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) from all forms of harm here in South Africa as well as pressurize the sectarian Zimbabwean government and state to abandon its Genocidal programmes against the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) and afford them their freedom and other fundamental human rights.We also call upon the South African government through your Ministry once again to make Gukurahundi Genocide Denialism a prosecutable offence in South Africa. We believe that it must be made a criminal offence for anyone to deny that Gukurahundi was a Genocide and remains a Genocide. But most importantly we call upon the South African government to assist in the arrest of Gukurahundi Genocide perpetrators and hand them to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, Netherlands to be tapped on their criminal shoulders by the long arm of the law for their crimes against humanity.While we call upon the South African government to act on the above, Hon. Minister, you will be pleased to know that as Siphesakhe Youth Organization and supported by the general citizenry of South Africa and the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi), have come up with a play called Loyiko to expose the Truth about the Gukurahundi Genocide and to expose the continued injustices being committed against the people of Matebeleland and Midlands (Mthwakazi) today by the sectarian state of Zimbabwe under the leadership of Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Matebeleland needs freedom as well as Truth, Justice, Reparations and Healing for the Gukurahundi Genocide. We, as Young South Africans, share their trials and tribulations. We stand shoulder to shoulder with them in their hour of need and we call upon our government to do the same and intervene.Thank you for taking time to consider this request Hon. Minister Knowledge Malusi Nkanyezi Gigaba. We would also ask your good and kind self, Hon. Minister, to kindly respond to our request and indicate the steps our government will take to address the plight of the people of Matebeleland and Midlands.Yours SincerelySiphesakhe Youth Organization
Opinion / Letters
Dear EditorToday I received photos from someone who claims to be a ZIMRA official in Beitbridge, which shows two full truck loads of imported stationery from South Africa in Browns's name, browns is a sister company of Marvo infact its the same people running the two companies.According to the Zimra officials the trucks have been there for the past two weeks now at the Border yet the government put an import ban on finished goods from out side and thats corruption and is stopping us from recieving our money.The Zimra employee says he supports us and he is also against corruption. I quote ( varume piwayi mari dzenu tinokusapotayi Pasi ne corruption neniwo khule vangu vakamboshanda ikoko vakafa vasina kupiwa mari yavo. Saka I know the story those guys have money but are not willing to pay back basa kuswera vachita corruption. They are very selfish. Marvo/Browns must just pay you your money no more no less and stop taking advantage yemtemo wenyika usinga protect vashandi).Marvo Stationery management owes us our money as workers and has since last year completely stopped production at Marvo factory rendering all workers jobless and destitudes preffering instead to import finished goods. These two trucks are not suppose to be a problem to any ordinery worker what has made us to be of interest to the matter is our money there, thier rudeness, and ignorance to our plight.For years we have been cheated into believing that they are genuinely willing to pay our money but since we realise that its all about corruption we have concluded that we know longer fear and we no longer want corruption. A situation where the Judicial manager told workers that they will only recieve their money when the company reopens, but they continue to bring in finished goods is unacceptable.
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- 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."
Map Shows How-To Questions Googled More Frequently Than Any Other State
Trending News: This Map Showing 'How-To' Questions By State Actually Reveals A Lot
Why Is This Important?
Because some of these fit the state's stereotypes far too well.
Long Story Short
Real estate company Estately has followed up their map about odd town names in each state with a new graphic showing 'how-to' questions that each state Googles more frequently than any other.
Long Story
What people ask Google can be quite revealing and sometimes disturbing. For instance, when it came out that the U.K. Googled "Why did Britain leave the EU?" following Brexit. Now, let's not get carried away and take Google search to be an exact science or even up to the level of polling which is problematic in itself but it doesn't hurt to take a peek at Google and that's just what this blog did, with some pretty hilarious and shockingly informative results.
The Estately blog, which had runaway viral success with its map about rude-sounding town names in each state (I'm still peeved about the inclusion of my last name), have come out with a new map. What they did was use Google Autocomplete to find out the most common how-to questions Americans type into the search bar and then ran those searches through Google Trends to determine the most popular questions in each state over the past five years. The map doesn't show the most popular search questions overall, just the most frequently asked ones compared with other states.
Now, as I said previously, it'd be unfair to assume that each state could be stereotyped by these questions but let's put that aside for a second and just stereotype away shall we?
In Florida, people (mostly women presumably) don't know "how to keep a man" while those in South Dakota are grappling with "how to be single?" Dudes in Kentucky are stuck with stubble and wonder "how to grow a beard?" Kentucky also wonders "how to make a baby?" In other wow-worthy questions, Indiana wants to know "how to vote for Trump" and "how to Google something." I think they're onto something with that one! The force is with Texas as they wonder "how to be a Jedi," but also disturbingly wonder "how to sell your soul."
For the full list, complete with way more facepalm-worthy questions, check out the blog post here.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question
How do you sell your soul anyway?
Disrupt Your Feed
I thought there was no such thing as a bad question.
Drop This Fact
Apparently, Wisconsin really doesn't like Governor Scott Walker as they searched for "How to impeach a governor?"
Someone Erected A Statue Of A Naked Hillary Clinton In NYC, And A Fight Broke Out
Trending News: Massive Fight Starts Over Naked Hillary Clinton Statue In NYC
Why Is This Important?
Because theres freedom of speech, and then theres defamation of character and creating a disturbance of the peace this would probably fall into the latter.
Long Story Short
An artist erected a profane statue of Hillary Clinton in the nude in New York City Tuesday morning causing an intense squabble between the artist and offended bystanders.
Long Story
Early yesterday morning, 27-year-old artist Anthony Scioli began putting the finishing touches on a statue in Downtown Manhattan of Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton. Scioli was not going for accuracy with his portrayal, as the statue featured Clinton completely naked with hooves for feet and a Wall Street banker resting his head on her bare breasts.
Naked statue of Hillary Clinton sparks fight in Manhattan pic.twitter.com/lWIOmCRXRA World Latin Star CEO (@WorldLatinStar) October 18, 2016
In the very blue state of New York, this didnt last long.
New York Daily News reported that the statue was up for less than three hours before an enraged employee of the nearby National Museum of the American Indian, known only as Nancy, toppled it over and started yelling at the statues creator.
This is obscene! shouted the woman. To put something up like this in front of my work place...I shouldnt have to see this,
The argument went from an exchange of words to a physical altercation very quickly. At one point during the tussle, the woman sits down on the statue to prevent Scioli from picking it back up. Nancy defended her post and saw to it that the statue would not remain standing.
Due to the huge public display, officers with the counterterrorism unit arrived to the scene and ordered Scioli to remove the statue since he failed to obtain a permit for it. No one involved with the demonstration was arrested and the statue was taken away in van after Scioli took it down.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question
Was Nancy was acting out of turn and infringing on Sciolis right to express his freedom of speech?
Disrupt Your Feed
Wonder if this wouldve gotten praise instead of ridicule in a state like Oklahoma where Trump is leading in the polls.
Drop This Fact
NPR reported yesterday that with three weeks out from this election, Hillary Clinton is winning and it's not close.
Lee Universitys Dee Lavender Missions Week, will be held Oct. 24-28, raising funds for the Phebe Grey Orphanage in Liberia, Africa, for the second year in a row.
The orphanage was founded in 1996 by a team of missionaries who desired to help children affected by the countrys violent civil wars. Today, the Phebe Grey Orphanage has expanded, having its own school and church, but lacks the necessary resources to meet the high demand for shelter in the area.
Missions Week will bring special chapel services to campus. The first chapel service will be a time of celebration. On Thursday, Oct. 27, Dr. Carolyn Dirksen, director of faculty development and distinguished professor of English, will share about the universitys projects and ongoing work in the Phebe Grey Orphanage.
Missions Week is one of my favorite times of the year at Lee University! said Campus Pastor Jimmy Harper. I get excited when our campus community can come together as a family to bring impact to a project around the world, especially one as important as the Phebe Grey Orphanage in Liberia.
The funds raised during Missions Week will help provide the orphanage with a steady operating budget. Donations, special offerings in chapel, and Missions Week T-shirt sales are the main fund raisers.
Students and faculty are also working on special projects across several different departments on campus that will contribute.
Associate Lecturer in Special Education Alex Sandoval and his class are developing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) boxes as a way for science students to learn hands on.
Dr. Mava Wilson, associate professor of computer information systems, is working with her class to refurbish and reprogram computers for the schools computer lab.
Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, and the Young Adult Literature class, taught by Dr. Donna Summerlin, are collecting books to contribute to the library, which was originally installed last summer.
Dr. Dirksen and her Biblical and Theological Foundations for Benevolence class are working together to build teaching materials for a health promotion class at the school.
The Community Psychology class, taught by associate professor of psychology Dr. Heather Quagliana, is developing a transition plan for the children at the orphanage who finish high school and reach the age of 18. They are also creating training materials so that the orphanage workers can be better equipped to deal with issues of childhood trauma.
According to Dr. Dirksen, these are just a few examples of the projects in which students and faculty are involved. Other departments are also working to contribute to the orphanage, school, and church.
We believe that our continued partnership with the Phebe Grey Orphanage can help bring about sustainability and stability and make a lasting impact that will change the lives of children and a nation for eternity, said Becky Stevens, Campus Ministries secretary.
Since 1991, Missions Week has been carried out in honor of Lee University student Dee Lavender, who died on a summer mission trip to Panama just before her 21st birthday. Missions Week projects have been in place for more than 20 years, and a week devoted to missions has been part of Lee programming since the 40s.
For more information about Missions Week or to make a donation, visit http://www.leeuniversity.edu/missions-week/ or contact Campus Ministries at 614-8420.
A new type of atomic force microscope (AFM) uses nanowires as tiny sensors. Unlike standard AFM, the device with a nanowire sensor enables measurements of both the size and direction of forces. Physicists at the University of Basel and at the EPF Lausanne have described these results in the recent issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Nanowires are extremely tiny filamentary crystals which are built-up molecule by molecule from various materials and which are now being very actively studied by scientists all around the world because of their exceptional properties.
The wires normally have a diameter of 100 nanometers and therefore possess only about one thousandth of a hair thickness. Because of this tiny dimension, they have a very large surface in comparison to their volume. This fact, their small mass and flawless crystal lattice make them very attractive in a variety of nanometer-scale sensing applications, including as sensors of biological and chemical samples, and as pressure or charge sensors.
Measurement of direction and size
The team of Argovia Professor Martino Poggio from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (SNI) and the Department of Physics at the University of Basel has now demonstrated that nanowires can also be used as force sensors in atomic force microscopes. Based on their special mechanical properties, nanowires vibrate along two perpendicular axes at nearly the same frequency. When they are integrated into an AFM, the researchers can measure changes in the perpendicular vibrations caused by different forces. Essentially, they use the nanowires like tiny mechanical compasses that point out both the direction and size of the surrounding forces.
Image of the two-dimensional force field
The scientists from Basel describe how they imaged a patterned sample surface using a nanowire sensor. Together with colleagues from the EPF Lausanne, who grew the nanowires, they mapped the two-dimensional force field above the sample surface using their nanowire compass. As a proof-of-principle, they also mapped out test force fields produced by tiny electrodes.
The most challenging technical aspect of the experiments was the realization of an apparatus that could simultaneously scan a nanowire above a surface and monitor its vibration along two perpendicular directions. With their study, the scientists have demonstrated a new type of AFM that could extend the techniques numerous applications even further.
AFM today widely used
The development of AFM 30 years ago was honored with the conferment of the Kavli-Prize beginning of September this year. Professor Christoph Gerber of the SNI and Department of Physics at the University of Basel is one of the awardees, who has substantially contributed to the wide use of AFM in different fields, including solid-state physics, materials science, biology, and medicine.
The various different types of AFM are most often carried out using cantilevers made from crystalline Si as the mechanical sensor. Moving to much smaller nanowire sensors may now allow for even further improvements on an already amazingly successful technique, Martino Poggio comments his approach.
PerkinElmer, Inc. announced that Samuel R. Chapin has been elected to the Company's Board of Directors.
"I am pleased to welcome Samuel to our Board, as he brings extensive experience in strategic advisory, mergers and acquisitions, and deal financing for a wide range of transactions, along with deep knowledge of the industrial marketplace," said Robert Friel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, PerkinElmer.
Chapin most recently served as Executive Vice Chairman of Global Corporate & Investment Banking for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he held the role since 2010 and was responsible for managing relationships with the firm's largest clients. He retired as of June 30, 2016.
Chapin was named Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co in September 2003 and was a member of the firm's executive Operating Committee. From 2001 to 2003, he was Senior Vice President and Head of the Global Investment Banking division. He previously led the investment banking group that covered industrial companies, actively managing the firm's relationships with clients in the industrial, resources and consumer products industries. He joined Merrill Lynch in 1984 as a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions group and was named a managing director in Corporate Banking in 1993. He has worked on a wide range of financings and strategic advisory assignments totaling over $500 billion. Chapin has also been named Investment Banker of the year by Investment Dealers' Digest.
Chapin received a Bachelor of Arts from Lafayette College and a Master of Business Administration, with distinction, from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves on the board of trustees at Lafayette College and is a director for the Wharton Financial Advisory Board. Chapin is also a member of the board of directors of the Roundabout Theatre Company.
Celebrating jailhouse recovery Audio Article Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle Sears paid a visit to the Chesterfield County Jail last week, meeting with over 50 of the men and women participating in the HARP (Helping Addicts...
An icons legacy memorialized Audio Article Enon Library was dedicated in memory of the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker on Friday, Oct. 21. Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Winslow, right, was joined by Walkers daughter, Patrice Walker...
Sometimes it seems like there are two U.S. Constitutions: The one applied in minority communities and the one Professor Craig Futterman teaches in his law classes at the University of Chicago.
Futterman, who was instrumental in the Chicago Police Department's release of the dash cam video from the Laquan McDonald shooting, told the crowd gathered at a Chicago Ideas Week panel Tuesday that he's seen it firsthand.
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He's spent hundreds of hours talking to kids at schools blocks from his university on the city's South Side. The kids at those schools, most of whom are black, won't go to the police even if a loved one is hurt.
"They're just everyday kids who live with the ever-present possibility of being stopped and frisked and being treated like a criminal," he said.
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In contrast, at his daughter's nearby, mostly white school, almost none of the students have been stopped and frisked by police.
Futterman was one of four speakers on the Ideas Week panel "Policing: Force of the Future," which drew about 170 people to the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Another panelist, journalist and Morehouse College Professor Marc Lamont Hill, said he's seen this tale of two Constitutions as well.
"You ever go to traffic court in a big city?" he asked. "You'd be like, 'White people are really good drivers.'"
Eugene O'Donnell, a lecturer at New York-based John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York Police Department officer, said he sees things a little differently. The media decided about three years ago that police discrimination was going to be an issue, and hasn't let up since, he said.
"The media picks up issues, hammers them and they're not always involved with the nuances," he said.
His point: If police departments do self-report data on police shootings and other incidents like President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing has called for it won't change anything. People are too swayed by the media to start trusting police, he said.
Futterman said he couldn't disagree more. If people know the truth about what's happening inside police departments, they will trust police more. The police system can't be reformed unless there's trust, he said.
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"The truth matters," he said. "The truth is where we need to start."
NPR correspondent Cheryl Corley moderated the panel. The fourth panelist, DeKalb County, Ga., Public Safety Director Cedric Alexander, serves on Obama's policing task force.
Chicago Ideas Week is a seven-day festival offering more than 150 panels, labs and talks throughout the city. It is in its sixth year.
amarotti@tribpub.com
Twitter @allymarotti
Channing Harris, creator of the app Excuse Me Officer, talks to teenagers at Gray Matter Experience, an entrepreneurial experience program at Blue1647. (Annie Grossinger / Blue Sky)
A Chicago startup wants to let citizens rate and review interactions with police officers, a la Yelp.
The Excuse Me Officer website, and its upcoming mobile app, could provide data about heroic officers providing good service as well as about bad actors who might discriminate or sexually harass, said CEO Channing Harris.
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The startup won this month's South Side Pitch competition, hosted by the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship.
In a test period that ran from August through last week, users could leave online reviews, videos and tips regarding civilian-police interactions.
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"We allow the public to keep up with the law enforcement behavioral trends happening in our own communities," Harris said.
The database will combine public ratings with Chicago Police Department data on police misconduct allegations. (About 56,459 allegations were sent to the CPD from 2012 to 2015; 95.9 percent of them were found unsustained, according to the site.)
An iOS app is scheduled to be launched Dec. 5.
Features include emergency contacts that can alert lawyers or loved ones when and where a person is stopped and, if arrested, which precincts they are headed to. If a user reports a negative interaction, the app advertises a list of lawyers.
"If you see me getting harassed and you have video, you now can get it over to me, and I can get the support that I need," Harris said. "It's the easiest and most efficient way to report any type of police mishap."
It's also a way of going on record to salute good cops, he said.
"As a child of a police officer, I struggled for an answer to the madness that was happening in my city," Harris said. "Police-public relations were hitting an all-time low due to the Laquan McDonald situation being revealed."
The business promotes activities to improve citizen-police relationships. Excuse Me Officer sponsored a block party in August to bring community residents and police officers together.
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"We can show you there are indeed cops that serve and protect and which ones they are," Harris said. "Our platform loves good cops."
Such an app could be effective, provided there's a way to vet users, said Clarence E. Cox III, vice president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. Harris' mother is president of a local chapter of the organization.
"I think it can help if done in the right way: If there's legitimacy to the app and there's an opportunity for the sender to be contacted later to address the issue," Cox said.
And it should have a way to measure the numbers of complaints to the numbers of interactions officers have, he said.
Dean Angelo Sr., president of the Fraternal Order of Police's Chicago lodge, said he hopes the developers promote the ability to give police officers favorable reviews.
"If (Harris) said he developed it to bring out better relationships, it would be great if he markets that prominently, so that people realize this is an app for people to engage in that type of sharing one's positive experiences with the police," he said.
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"The negative stuff; it's sometimes the same voices repeatedly sharing experiences," Angelo said. "Similar to the accountability task force sessions and those public forums people that come to every event and speak at multiple sessions."
Harris, who grew up in North Lawndale, is a serial entrepreneur who sold his stake in his first company, Socks to Your Door, to a cofounder at age 19. He's now 26.
Excuse Me Officer plans to make money through advertisements, merchandise sales and providing customized data for organizations, he said.
His team includes co-founders Mike Shaw, from the Englewood neighborhood, and Christopher Hutchinson, from Rogers Park.
Although Excuse Me Officer can receive reviews from across the nation, it's starting by providing data for Chicago communities. It hopes to expand to other cities in 2017.
Cheryl V. Jackson is a freelance writer.
Twitter @cherylvjackson
Are you a Hillary supporter? On the Trump Train? It can really make a difference, particularly to your employees if you're a chief executive or business owner.
According to new research released this week and reported in the Harvard Business Review, CEOs have a "significant influence" on the political leanings of their employees. The study found that employees donate, on average, three times more money to the campaigns of candidates that their bosses support.
The study was conducted by Ilona Babenko, an associate professor in finance at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University and Viktar Fedaseyeu, an assistant professor of finance at Bocconi University in Italy.
In 2012, for example, Barack Obama raised three times more money from employees of firms whose CEOs donated to his campaign versus Mitt Romney. The study found the same pattern for all races House and Senate not just the presidential campaigns. Voter turnout among employees was also higher where contributions were made.
Is this just a coincidence? Maybe those employees just share the same love of the same candidate? Not so. "We first looked at CEO turnover and observed that when a new CEO contributes to different political candidates than the ones supported by the prior CEO, employees tend to follow the new CEO's lead and redirect their donations," Babenko and Fedaseyeu wrote.
The study focused on big companies firms that are part of the S&P 1500 where political contributions over $200 are required to be disclosed (along with who made the contribution).
The researchers concluded that CEOs are indeed a political force that should not be ignored. It makes me wonder if CEOs of a larger company can have that kind of influence over their companies, wouldn't a small business owner be even more influential?
Some information is starting to trickle out about what Illinois residents will find when they shop for health insurance on the state's Affordable Care Act exchange. (Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images)
Though full details won't be released until later this month, some information is starting to trickle out about what Illinois residents will and won't find when they shop for health insurance on the state's Affordable Care Act exchange.
Neither Northwestern Memorial Hospital nor its physician group, Northwestern Medical Group, will likely be in-network on any exchange plans, said Northwestern spokesman Christopher King. Rush University Medical Center in Chicago also doesn't anticipate it will be in-network on any exchange plans, said Charles Jolie, a Rush spokesman. Also, Cigna, new to the state's exchange next year, will offer individual and family HMO plans both on and off the exchange that include hospital systems Presence Health and Amita Health in their networks. That means people who pick Cigna plans will be able to go to hospitals and doctors in those systems for care.
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The federal government is expected to release full, final details about all the plans that will be offered on the exchange by Nov. 1, when consumers may start officially shopping for insurance for next year.
Presence is the largest Illinois-based Catholic health system, with 11 hospitals stretching from Evanston to Urbana. Amita has nine hospitals in Hoffman Estates, Elk Grove Village, La Grange, Hinsdale, Glendale Heights and Bolingbrook.
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The Cigna plan will be available to individuals in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kankakee and Will counties. Cigna spokesman Phil Mann declined to provide information about premiums and deductibles for the plans.
"We worked to make it competitively priced and our objective was to make sure we were on the top end of affordability," said Michael Phillips, president of Cigna's Midwest market.
A spokeswoman for the state's largest insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, declined to release details about its on-exchange and off-exchange plans ahead of the federal release of the data.
Hospital system Advocate Health Care, however, will be in-network for two of Blue Cross and Blue Shield's HMO products on the exchange: BlueCare Direct and Blue Precision, said Advocate spokeswoman Lisa Lesniak.
NorthShore University HealthSystem also will be in-network for the Blue Precision HMO, said NorthShore spokesman Jim Anthony. Also, Northwestern Medicine's hospitals in Winfield and Geneva will be in-network for the Blue Precision HMO as will its Regional Medical Group, and doctors from those entities can refer Blue Precision patients to specialists anywhere in the Northwestern Medicine system, King said.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield is the only insurer offering plans on the exchange in Lake and McHenry counties next year. It also plans to offer PPO plans across the state, and is the only insurer that will do so.
Many exchange consumers, however, were disheartened when Blue Cross and Blue Shield this year ceased offering its broadest PPO plan for individuals on the exchange, instead offering a smaller PPO network that didn't include NorthShore hospitals or academic medical centers at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
Attempts to reach Celtic Insurance Co., which is offering individual plans on the exchange in Cook and DuPage counties, were unsuccessful.
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In recent months, a number of insurers announced they won't take part in the state's exchange next year, including Aetna, its Coventry brand, UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealthcare subsidiary Harken Health and Land of Lincoln.
Consumers shopping for companies still on the exchange can expect to dig deeper in their pockets for coverage. Rates will increase by an average of 44 percent for the lowest-priced bronze plans, 45 percent for the lowest-priced silver plans and 55 percent for the lowest-priced gold plans.
Most Illinoisans get health care coverage through their employers or government insurers Medicare and Medicaid. But more than 300,000 Illinois residents bought insurance through the exchange this year.
lschencker@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @lschencker
Lake Forest's Colbert Packaging announced it will move 65 jobs to Kenosha, Wis., at an event attended by, left to right, Scott Beightol of Michael Best & Friedrich; Wis. Gov. Scott Walker; Kenosha County Executive Jim Kreuser; Nancy Colbert MacDougall, chairman of Colbert Packaging; Jim Hamilton, president of Colbert Packaging, and Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian. (Handout)
Colbert Packaging, a Lake Forest-based maker of cartons and boxes, including for Frango mints, is moving 65 jobs from Lake County to Kenosha, Wis., citing "the state's favorable business climate" as one of the reasons.
Colbert's headquarters, which has about 145 workers, will remain in Lake Forest.
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But the family-owned company's flexographic packaging operation and related warehousing, which has 65 employees, will move just over the Illinois border to a new building that the company is buying in an industrial park less than a mile from Interstate 94.
The agreement with Wisconsin requires Colbert to have 108 workers within three years, said Mark Maley, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which helps lead business efforts for the state.
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Colbert could receive up to $850,000 in state tax credits over the next three years. And Kenosha County provided $250,000 to support the project
Since 1998, Colbert has run its flexographic division out of a 45,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Lake Forest, a few blocks from headquarters. To support its growth, in 2011, a 25,000-square-foot warehouse was opened in Libertyville.
The Kenosha facility replaces both of those properties and has 173,000 square feet.
The announcement was made Tuesday at the new property, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker among those in attendance.
Colbert President Jim Hamilton said southeastern Wisconsin was an obvious choice for a variety of reasons, including its proximity to Lake Forest headquarters and major transportation hubs, as well as "the state's favorable business climate."
Besides getting more than $1 million in incentives, Hamilton also said Wisconsin has a more favorable tax environment for companies in the graphic arts production industry.
"Wisconsin, widely known as home of the Green Bay Packers, cheese curds and craft beers, is also a great state for the printing and paper-making industries," he said.
Colbert also considered properties in Illinois for its expansion, Hamilton said.
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Many Colbert workers live along the Illinois-Wisconsin border and I-94 corridor, and some already call Kenosha County home, he said.
The move is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Colbert also has about 125 workers in Indiana.
Colbert was founded in 1959 when Charles Colbert bought the property and assets of Kroeck Paper Box, which was founded in 1892. The company's original location was 1701 W. Superior St. in Chicago until Colbert bought Franklin Folding Box in 1969. At that time, operations were moved to the acquired location in Melrose Park.
In 1986, corporate headquarters and folding carton operations were moved into a custom-designed 96,000-square-foot building in Lake Forest. Charles Colbert died in 1995.
byerak@chicagotribune.com
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Twitter @beckyyerak
Walgreens now lets customers shop online and pick up orders at more than 7,600 of its stores. (Charles Krupa / AP)
Walgreens now lets customers shop online and pick up orders at more than 7,600 of its stores.
Online orders ship to stores for free and typically will be ready for pickup within one to three business days, the Deerfield-based pharmacy chain said Monday.
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Walgreens' ship-to-store option doesn't match the near-instant gratification of services offered by competitor CVS Health or those Walgreens itself previously tested.
Last month, CVS began offering curbside delivery of online orders at more than 4,000 stores, including 181 Chicago-area locations. Those orders usually are ready for pickup in less than an hour, according to CVS.
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In three cities, including Chicago, Walgreens had offered a Web Pickup program that let customers retrieve online orders in local stores in as little as an hour. Walgreens discontinued that service after about five years in January, also abandoning a smaller curbside pickup pilot.
But in exchange for waiting a few days, customers aren't limited to ordering items on store shelves.
"Our new Ship to Store program provides value to our customers by giving them access to a wide range of products that are typically not found in-store," Joe Hartsig, Walgreens senior vice president of merchandising, said in a news release. "With Ship to Store, customers have the ability to ship orders to their preferred Walgreens store if their residence or workplace isn't a secure option."
lzumbach@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @laurenzumbach
The coming weeks bring a few chances to wine and dine to aid charitable causes. If you have the funds, check out these events:
Sazon Soiree Carlos Gaytan (Mexique) teams with two other former "Top Chef" contestants Amanda Baumgarten of Victor Bar in Chicago and Katsuji Tanabe of Mexikosher in Los Angeles and New York and "Masterchef" Season 6 winner Claudia Sandoval (Covina Claudia in San Diego) on a four-course dinner to benefit Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago. A cocktail hour precedes the Latin feast. $175, includes open bar, dinner, tax and gratuity. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26 at Chez Chicago, 247 E. Ontario St., www.celebritychef.eventbrite.com
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James Beard Celebrity Chef Dinner Dine on eight courses, each from a different acclaimed chef, at Formento's in the West Loop. Participants include 2015 Jean Banchet Chef of the Year winner Chris Pandel (The Bristol, Balena, Swift & Sons), 2016 James Beard Best Chef: Midwest winner Paul Berglund (The Bachelor Farmer in Minneapolis), Food & Wine-honored pastry chef Stephanie Prida (Manresa in Los Gatos, Calif.) and host chef Todd Stein, a former "Iron Chef" contestant. Proceeds benefit the James Beard Foundation, which supports culinary education programs and provides scholarships to aspiring culinary students. $175. Seating every 15 minutes from 5:30-8:45 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1 at Formento's, 925 W. Randolph St., formentos.tocktix.com
Meals on Wheels Chicago Celebrity Chef Ball There are two experiences to be had to support Meals on Wheels Chicago, which helps home-bound seniors and people with disabilities live independently in their own homes. The Chef's Table dinner (6 p.m., $350) is a cocktail reception followed by a six-course dinner with cocktail pairings each table is paired with three chefs and a mixologist to make the experience more intimate. Diners then continue to the Chef's Tasting Party, featuring dozens of food stations and an open bar. Or, just buy tickets to the Tasting Party (8:30 p.m., $200). Friday, Oct. 21 at Morgan Manufacturing, 401 N. Morgan St., www.mealsonwheelschicago.org
You can score a likable bottle of soave for as little as $12. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)
The list of wines that awaits you below has 10 bottles, all in a particular wine style that is delicious and usually priced much lower than it is worth "worth" meaning what most of us would be willing to pay for wines of such quality. The wines in question are lively, dry white wines from Italy at fair or even bargain prices. Say no more, right?
Truthfully, the rest of the story is not that involved anyway. We're talking about soave, the wine that took a beating in decades past for its lack of everything but wetness. It was practically odorless, colorless, flavorless liquid. But somehow it kept arriving by the shipload in the United States, and people kept buying it until better options were available.
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It's a different story today, qualitywise. It's not as if the entire soave region has transformed itself; there are certainly blah soaves alive and kicking out there. But now, really nice bottles are pretty easy to find.
Soave wines come from the Veneto region in northeastern Italy not far from the enchanting city of Verona, which is a modern Italian wine mecca (host of the famous Vinitaly wine exhibition) in addition to being the "home" of Romeo and Juliet, among other Shakespeare characters. Some of the nice bottles come from the Soave DOC, but the majority of the area's best wines come from the predominantly hillside Soave Classico region, which features both volcanic and limestone soils, and wine styles that range from angular, steely and citrusy to rounder, more lush, melony and earthy all with bright and lively acidity.
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Look for Soave Classico DOC or Soave Superiore DOCG on the labels to find the area's top bottlings. And don't be surprised that most of them will cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $15. Some specially designated single vineyard names might also appear on labels. Expect to pay about double for those. Still, you're often topping out at about $30. One has to believe that today's popular pricing is due in part to the wine style's image issues presently deserved or not.
From light- to medium-bodied, soave is made mostly of the garganega grape variety (the law calls for 70 percent) with a few other grape varieties allowed for blending trebbiano di soave, chardonnay and pinot bianco among them. These are expressive wines that will wake up your nose and taste buds, and could also match well with appetizers, salads, sushi, other fish dishes, poultry and pastas with vegetables. They are easy to drink and easy to like.
The best part of it all if you are still even reading is not that you can return to a wine that you once looked down on, or always avoided because of what you had heard about it. The best part is that you now have a new white to explore, and it won't require you to skip any utility bill payments. Discovering and delving into a wine style that is easily affordable is one of the great joys of anyone's wine journey. Sharing your bounty with a fellow wine lover is another.
The following wines were my 10 favorites from a recent tasting. They are listed in ascending order, according to price. Most are 100 percent garganega, but at least three of them (noted below) also used trebbiano di soave in their blends. Their alcohol contents landed within 12 to 13 percent, making them great as stand-up-and-chat aperitifs as well as sit-down-and-eat pairings.
2014 Franchetto Recorbian Soave: Citrusy and mouthwatering, this wine was tempered by a hint of orange zest, minerality and a slight note of spice on the finish. $12
2014 Inama Vin Soave Classico: Minerality, a satisfying earthy character, lemon, spice and fresh minerality made this wine fun and easy to drink on its own or with food. $15
2014 Cantina di Soave Rocca Sveva Soave Classico: Full of pear, this brightly acidic wine offered a suggestion of stone fruit that leads to a clean, refreshing finish. $16
2014 Cantina del Castello Soave Classico: Crushed stone, lime and pear are prominent in this wine, which consists mostly of garganega, blended with some trebbiano di soave. $16
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2014 Fattori Danieli Soave: Fermented and aged in stainless steel, this one offered ripe melon aromas that segued to tropical and citrus flavors, ending with a subtle hint of spice. $17
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2014 Marcato Monte Tenda Soave Classico: Floral with bursts of lime and lemon plus bright acidity, this vineyard-designated wine combines garganega and trebbiano di soave with great success. $18
2014 Cantina di Monteforte Castellaro Soave Superiore: This DOCG wine, fermented and aged in barrels, had a soft mouthfeel that delivered sweet lemon, peach, a nuttiness and prominent minerality. $18
2015 Pieropan Soave Classico: Bursts of peach aromas and flavors were balanced by minerality and bright acidity in this wine composed of 85 percent garganega and 15 percent trebbiano di soave. $20
2014 Gini La Frosca Soave Classico: Stone fruits and green apple gave way to a subtle midpalate sweetness, and just a touch of spice on the finish. $28
2013 Suavia Monte Carbonare: This layered wine started with minerality and a wave of acidity followed by a pinch of fresh lime that finished with a pleasant crispness. $29
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food@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @pour_man
"Hamilton" opens Wednesday night at the PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago in relatively low-key fashion the key creative team that has worked on the show will be present, including the creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as Ron Chernow, who wrote the bestselling biography "Alexander Hamilton" on which the show is based.
But the usual red-carpet premiere with the TV cameras and the celebrity guests is not on the schedule of events.
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For at least one good reason: The show does not need to promote itself. And the "Hamilton" people are of the ilk that prefer to slip in the side door anyway. Already, a year's worth of performances in Chicago are virtually sold out, despite many tickets being sold at premium prices and a theater in Chicago that holds nearly 40 percent more audience members than the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway.
Yet more remarkably, this unprecedented level of demand in Chicago has been achieved without any billboards, TV commercials, taxi toppers or newspaper advertisements, all the regular order of business in New York, even for the biggest Broadway hits. "Hamilton," which is in a category all of its own in both New York and Chicago, has become the hottest show in the entire Midwest this fall without expending any meaningful dollars on promotion. The local media has been only too happy to write about a show that has crossed over into the mainstream more than any other production in the history of theater in Chicago.
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With the usual opening-night list of bold-face names and low-wattage local celebrities cut to a fraction of its usual size, social media Wednesday was full of fans declaring their delight at just being in the room where it happens. At TV stations and newspapers, there was some quiet relief that the show would not have to compete for the headlines with news of the Cubs clinching a berth in the World Series not tonight, anyway.
The other big event Wednesday night is to be the final presidential debate, a show far more difficult to predict than "Hamilton."
But with Miranda spending Monday night headlining a Broadway benefit for Hillary Clinton, at least one member of the creative team has already served notice he needs to watch no more debates to make his allegiance clear. Meanwhile, in a warehouse-style space in the West Loop, designated party planners from the office of the producer Jeffrey Seller were on Wednesday planning a big post-show bash for the Chicago company and its supporters marking the beginning of a long and likely very profitable relationship with an appreciative city.
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Watch the latest movie trailers.
Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
Jean Kennedy Smith takes comfort in memory in her new book, "The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy." Now 88, the last of her parents' children alive, the former ambassador to Ireland is entitled to tell the story of her storied family any way she likes. After all, she was there.
One might wish that she was, well, a little more "there" or, perhaps, more revealing but such is the difference between "memoir" and "history."
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Smith doesn't tell the whole story; leave that to the gazillions of Kennedy books out there, from the scholarly to the scandalous. There's no Jimmy Hoffa or Marilyn Monroe or Fidel Castro in this book. Of her famous sisters-in-law, Jackie O is barely mentioned and Ethel, Jean's roommate at our mutual alma mater, Manhattanville, makes only a cameo appearance. John F. Kennedy's White House years cover barely two pages and the family's tragedies, notably the assassinations of JFK in 1963 and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, are addressed briefly but with feeling. The family mourned privately with the nation and "carried on," she writes.
"The Nine of Us" is her clear, steady focus. While the book reaches back to the 19th-century roots of the Kennedy and Fitzgerald families in Boston and touches briefly on today, Smith writes mostly of a time in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s when her wealthy and political family was winning considerable renown but had not yet become the cultural superstars they would be beginning in the 1960s, a definite gradation of profile and power most of us will never experience.
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Jean Kennedy Smith is the author of The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy. (Todd Plitt / Getty Images 2010)
Smith's recollections are shaped, I think, by her place in the pecking order. Her memories are most vivid about the two boys who bracketed her in age, the older Bobby and the younger Teddy (whom she fondly calls her "number one playmate, my lieutenant in life, the barrel of laughs that came after me, number nine." The older children, especially Joe Jr., the eldest son who died in action during World War II, and Kathleen, the vivacious sister who married into the English aristocracy and died in a plane crash three years after the war, seem more fleeting sketches. That makes sense given the age difference between them and the author and how young Smith was when they died. (Smith writes that proceeds from book sales will be donated to the restoration of the USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the warship named in honor of her brother that she christened in 1945.)
While the title of the book refers to the nine Kennedy children, the real stars here are the Kennedy parents, who, Smith writes in her dedication, "were always there for us, through the good times and bad." Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy seem to do no wrong in her eyes. There's no finger-pointing, no whining, no second-guessing although she admits that would be easy to do now over the decision to lobotomize her sister, Rosemary, who had been diagnosed with "mental retardation."
Her father, a business tycoon and politician who served as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain at the start of World War II, "had a well-earned reputation for being a tough, skilled negotiator. It was a reputation I suspect he enjoyed," she wrote. "Yet he was enormously big hearted and openhanded in a way that few people would ever imagine and others would never acknowledge." Of her mother, Smith would describe her as "a petite woman with an indomitable nature and a sure understanding of what we needed in life."
"The Nine of Us: Growing up Kennedy" is written by Jean Kennedy Smith, the lone surviiving child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy.
Smith places much of her narrative on Cape Cod, at the Kennedys' summer residence in Hyannis Port, Mass., or Bronxville, N.Y., the tony suburban enclave 15 miles north of Manhattan (New York City, not Boston, was the Kennedy power base in those days). Her tales are affectionate and nostalgic, the memories a grandmother would tell the grandchildren as they leafed through a photo album. Smith's memories are educational, too, as she places her Kennedy relations in the context of their world and explains how her parents shaped them all into doers who made a difference.
There are useful lessons here, not just for grandchildren but for Americans as a whole, especially those who might wonder how the Kennedys so captured the popular imagination. Smith's book gets to that in its final pages as she turns from looking back to looking forward.
Joseph and Rose Kennedy had 28 grandchildren, she writes, and they and their children and grandchildren "are now part of the future of our world." They "live very different lives from their forebears yet the problems that they and the world face today are no different."
"These problems carry the same burden and offer the same opportunity," she adds. "They require the same determination, focus, and drive that they required of my grandparents, parents, brothers, and sisters, and all the young people of generations before."
To illustrate the point, Smith closes with a letter from her father in England to her 14-year-old brother, Bobby, during World War II.
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"It is boys of your age who are going to find themselves in a very changed world, and the only way you can hold up your end is to prepare your mind so that you will be able to accept each situation as it comes along," the father writes. "So don't, I beg of you, waste any time. Do all the things necessary to get yourself in good physical condition and work hard."
Smith's final word is characteristically brief.
"Amen."
wdaley@chicagotribune
Twitter @billdaley
'The Nine of Us'
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By Jean Kennedy Smith, Harper, 272 pages, $29.99
Mental Health America just released its annual assessment of Americans with mental illness, the treatment they receive and the resources available to them - and the conclusions are sobering: Twenty percent of adults (43.7 million) have a mental health condition, and more than half of them do not receive treatment. Among youth, the rates of depression are rising, but 80 percent of children and adolescents either get insufficient treatment or none at all.
"Once again, our report shows that too many Americans are suffering and far too many are not receiving the treatment they need to live healthy and productive lives," Paul Gionfriddo, president of the national community-based nonprofit, said in a statement. "We must improve access to care and treatments, and we need to put a premium on early identification and early intervention for everyone with mental health concerns."
Mental Health America ranked all 50 states and the District of Columbia on 15 different measures, including adults with any mental illness, youth with at least one major depressive episode in the past year and mental-health workforce availability. Despite more Americans being insured, the report found a dire need for adequate treatment, especially in the Deep South.
Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama had the least access to care for the mentally ill and the highest rates of imprisonment, with a total of more than 57,000 incarcerated men and women in those states suffering mental-health conditions.
"This is ultimately about the policy decisions we make," Gionfriddo said. "It isn't just about what states are red and what states are blue. . . . But political environments in states do seem to matter. Those that invest more in mental health clearly have to throw away less money on jails and prisons."
In the overall rankings, the top three states with the lowest prevalence of mental illness and best access to care were all in New England: Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont. The worst were Oregon, Arizona and Nevada. The four states with the most movement from last year to this year: Wisconsin dropped from eighth to 35th and Indiana from 19th to 45th, while New Mexico improved from 44th to 22nd and Oklahoma from 41st to 24th.
By age, the states with the fewest mentally ill youth and best treatment options were Minnesota, South Dakota and Connecticut; the worse were Oregon, Arizona and Arkansas.
"It's time to act," Gionfriddo said. "We must invest in the overall physical and mental well-being of our citizens - every day."
The Washington Post
Sunny, warm days and cool nights trigger the best color in trees such as sugar maples. (The Morton Arboretum)
A green fall has had many fans of autumn trees wondering: When will the color come?
It all depends on the weather, said Ed Hedborn, manager of plant records at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, who has been tracking the progress of fall color at the arboretum for 30 years. "The best fall leaf color comes when we have bright, sunny, warm days and cool nights," he said. "The timing and brightness of the color varies so much from year to year because Chicago weather is so variable."
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In early October this year, there were a number of cloudy and rainy days. As mid-October approached, the sun returned, with temperatures still in the 70s, but nighttime temperatures remained mostly in the high 50s and 60s.
That's in contrast to 2014, when it snowed on Oct. 4 and dropped to 35 degrees that night. On the same date in 2015, the daytime high was 60 degrees, but then a series of nights in the 40s led to good leaf color.
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This year, "all we can do is wait and see what the weather brings," said Hedborn, who tracks the color progress each year at mortonarb.org/colorscout. At the arboretum, sumacs, maples, redbuds and many other trees were beginning to turn in mid-October.
Fall colors are a byproduct of the preparations trees are making for winter, he said. Temperatures may trigger the color, but the big signal trees are heeding is that the days are growing shorter.
That tells them to stockpile food in their wood and roots to get a good start in spring. While their leaves are still green, they make the most of sunny days by producing as much sugar as they can through photosynthesis. Once they've moved that sugar down toward their roots, deciduous trees give up on their leaves, which are too thin and flimsy to survive the winter.
They stop making the green chlorophyll pigment used for photosynthesis. Then they let the leaves fall to the ground, where they will decay and provide nutrients that the trees' roots can use again. "Trees are great recyclers," Hedborn said.
As delightful as the bright yellows are to color connoisseurs, they're just accidents underlying pigments revealed when the green drains away from the leaves. Reds and oranges come from anthocyanin, another pigment produced by some trees in fall. Years with sunny days and cool nights produce the most red pigment and the most varied colors.
Other weather conditions can affect the color show. On clear, dry days with little moisture in the air, we can see the colors more clearly. "They really seem to pop," Hedborn said. A windy storm can sweep colorful leaves from the trees, but if days are still, the leaves will linger longer.
"Every year, we cross our fingers and hope for lots of color," Hedborn says. "And every year, the weather will decide."
Beth Botts is a staff writer at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle (mortonarb.org).
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For tree and plant advice, contact the arboretum's Plant Clinic at 630-719-2424.
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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 11 The Lolla Bootie from Sorel for women is crafted with waterproof leather (for light rain) and stylized with cutouts and a two-tone stacked heel, providing comfort and style for spring and summer and obviously for Lollapalooza, it's in the name), $160 www.sorel.com (Sorel)
Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 9 A West Loop condo situated at 659 Randolph St. Unit 614 is currently on the market for $462,900. (Rick Knoell / VHT Studios)
The innovative, but dilapidated, House of Tomorrow, which was built for the 1933-34 Chicago world's fair, is being named a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The move is an effort to draw attention and funds to the house in Beverly Shores, Ind. (Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)
One of the wonders of Chicago's 1933-34 World's Fair was the House of Tomorrow, a 12-sided, three-story peek into the future. It had huge plate-glass windows, one of General Electric's first dishwashers, central air conditioning and an attached garage (rare at the time) with room for an airplane as well as a car.
Designed by Chicago architect George Fred Keck, the house is revered in architectural circles as a forerunner of mid-20th century glass houses, like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. Yet it now sits empty and deteriorating, high on a wind-blasted sand dune in the Beverly Shores section of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. With the house covered in a protective wrap, little of its original design is visible other than the ship-like railings of its outdoor terraces.
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On Wednesday, the Washington, D.C.-based National Trust for Historic Preservation will take a first step toward changing this deplorable situation when it declares the house a "National Treasure." The honorific designation, which the trust has previously given to threatened structures such as Houston's Astrodome, has a clear purpose: Raise funds for a $2 million restoration.
"We see (the House of Tomorrow) as a Chicago landmark in Indiana," Marsh Davis, president of Indiana Landmarks, a statewide preservation advocacy group that nominated the house for the honor, said during a tour Monday.
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Is this project a good idea? Absolutely, despite its seeming improbability and attendant financial hurdles. An avatar of innovation, the House of Tomorrow forms an essential strand of Chicago's architectural DNA. Restoring it would be another jewel in the city's architectural crown. Losing it would be a black mark, even though it sits in northwest Indiana.
Through its innovative construction techniques and use of modern appliances, the House of Tomorrow advanced the theme of the fair, which was titled "A Century of Progress International Exposition." Yet like most architectural experiments, it had its share of hiccups. At times, as I learned Monday, the glass house got so hot inside that it had to be closed to visitors.
To keep things cool, the restoration would introduce insulated, double-pane windows rather than the single-pane originals. The kitchen, which still has the original General Electric dishwasher, would be refurbished, as would the living areas and the third-floor solarium. First, though, the house would be stripped down to its original steel structure a circular core from which steel beams radiate like spokes from a hub. Then it would be rebuilt according to plans devised by Chicago architect Bill Latoza.
"We want to see it reborn as a new House of Tomorrow," said Todd Zeiger, director of Indiana Landmarks' northern regional office. The house is dry inside, he said, courtesy of a roof put on some eight years ago.
If you need convincing that restoration projects such as this can succeed, look no farther than the meticulous work done on four other houses from the 1933-34 fair that are now in Beverly Shores: the Florida Tropical House, which has an exterior that is Flamingo pink; the Cypress Log Cabin, which looks as woodsy as its name suggests; the Armco-Ferro House, which has a facade of glistening steel; and the Art Deco Wieboldt-Rostone House.
By barge and truck, Chicago developer Robert Bartlett brought the Century of Progress houses to Beverly Shores to promote his plans to turn the area into a vacation destination. But that dream died with the economic hardships of the Great Depression.
The houses deteriorated until the early 2000s when Indiana Landmarks began leasing them from the National Park Service, which controls the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. In turn, the landmarks group gave long-term leases for the homes to people who put sweat equity and private money into restoring them even though they're not owners.
"From a financial standpoint, it's one of the dumbest things I've ever done. From a personal standpoint, it's one of the best things I've done," said Bill Beatty, 79, who lives in the Florida Tropical House and enjoys views of Lake Michigan from its rooftop decks. "It's great to sit up here with a cooler full of beer and the binoculars."
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In addition to seeking contributions for the House of Tomorrow restoration, Indiana Landmarks expects to borrow money to get the project going, Davis and Zeiger said. The goal is to begin work next spring and finish the job in 2019. Once that's done, the group plans to issue three-year subleases to people whose rent would help pay down restoration costs.
Will the plan work? Perhaps. But the "National Treasure" designation doesn't always protect threatened structures from the wrecker's ball. Consider what happened a few years ago to Chicago's old Prentice Women's Hospital, a powerfully sculpted example of 1960s concrete construction designed by Marina City architect Bertrand Goldberg. The National Trust named Prentice to the treasures list, but Northwestern University went ahead and demolished it.
The House of Tomorrow deserves a better fate.
bkamin@tribpub.com
Twitter @BlairKamin
Amy van Singel helped start Living Blues magazine after falling in love with blues music as a west suburban teenager hanging out in Chicago's Jazz Record Mart.
In addition to the magazine, which was launched in 1970, van Singel co-authored an award-winning book on blues performers, "The Voice of the Blues: Classic Interviews From Living Blues Magazine," and hosted blues music programs on radio stations from Alaska to Maine.
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"She shared a rare expertise with our listeners in an accessible way," said Matt Murphy, the general manager of WERU-FM Community Radio in Blue Hill, Maine. Van Singel, using the on-air name Atomic Mama, had a Tuesday afternoon radio show called Blue Hill Blues that aired on the station for the past three years.
Van Singel, 66, died Sept. 19 in her home in Ellsworth, Maine, according to Murphy. She had lived in Maine for the past several years.
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Born Amelia van Singel, the daughter of a Chicago banking executive, she grew up in Hinsdale. After attending Hinsdale Township High School she went to Northwestern University.
There she met Jim O'Neal, who became her husband in 1970. He was among the group co-founding Living Blues, and collaborated with his wife on "The Voice of The Blues: Classic Interviews From Living Blues Magazine."
Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 75 Mike Haley, a lifelong Cubs fan who helped start the Left Field Bleacher Bums, a group that inspired a play and a made-for-TV movie, died of natural causes on Dec. 31, 2016, in Chicago. He was 67. Read more. (Family photo)
Van Singel had a radio show on the campus radio station WNUR, and the two starting interviewing blues artist for the show and for the magazine. "We were both crazy about the blues," O'Neal said.
Van Singel, who had a blues radio show on WXFM in the early 1970s, was an important part of the start of Living Blues, according to Bruce Iglauer, another co-founder and now head of Alligator Records in Chicago.
"Amy did a lot of the production and a great deal of the heavy lifting," Iglauer said. "She had a very warm and communicable enthusiasm for the blues."
In a 2013 interview with WERU, van Singel recalled going to Lincoln Center in New York in 2003 to accept an award the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Deems Taylor Special Recognition Award for the book she and her husband wrote. The book was also inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 2012.
Van Singel also spoke to WERU about how she was exposed to the blues at Jazz Record Mart, run by Bob Koester of Delmark Records, whom she called a mentor.
She also heard British music groups playing what was then called rhythm and blues. O'Neal, who co-founded Rooster Blues Records and operated the Stackhouse record label, said it was strange to hear music coming from Britain that had its roots on the South Side and West Side of Chicago.
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In 1983, Living Blues moved its operations to the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., although O'Neal and van Singel remained in Chicago until 1986.
Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 133 William Christopher, who was known as Father Mulcahy on "MASH" from 1972 to 1983, died Dec. 31, 2016. He was 84. Read more. (Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times)
Brett Bonner, the magazine's current editor, said he met van Singel in 1987, the same year he started with the magazine and not long after the magazine had been transferred to Ole Miss. He wrote recently about her contributions to the blues and the blues community.
"Amy's passion for real blues and real blues musicians was boundless," Bonner wrote. "Throughout her life, she championed the cause of the blues via the pages of Living Blues and for over 40 years with her radio program, "Atomic Mama's Wang-Dang-Doodle Blues Show."
O'Neal agreed. "She was always dedicated to trying to promote African-American artists' rights in the blues," he said.
O'Neal and van Singel divorced in 1987, but she stayed on in Oxford and opened a blues record store called Back Forty Records, Bonner said.
Van Singel moved from Oxford to Memphis, Tenn., where she also had a radio show, and then to Anchorage, Alaska, where she broadcast on KNBA for more than 10 years.
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Bonner and O'Neal said van Singel's influence extended to women inspired by her example to learn and write about the blues.
"Amy was a pioneer for women in the blues and for women studying the blues," Bonner said. "Amy was groundbreaking. (The blues) is a real boys' club and she was right there in the middle of it."
"I don't think she knew how much impact she had," O'Neal said, adding that her radio nickname "Atomic Mama" didn't fit her personality. "She wasn't explosive," he said. "Everybody remembered her as very sweet and kind."
Van Singel is survived by her husband of six years, Chuck Cameron.
Services were held.
Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter.
Hundreds of drinking fountains in Chicago parks have been shut off after testing revealed high levels of lead in the water. (CBS Chicago) (CBS Chicago/CBS Chicago)
Long before the first winter frost, hundreds of drinking fountains in Chicago parks have been shut off after testing revealed high levels of brain-damaging lead in the water.
Chicago Park District officials said Tuesday they decided to take 459, or about 18 percent, of their 2,435 water fixtures out of service based on samples collected during the summer. The action is another response to an ongoing crisis in Flint, Mich., that has drawn nationwide attention to lingering hazards in cities where lead pipes and plumbing were used for more than a century.
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Though the dangers of lead have been well known for decades, until recently there has been little testing for the toxic metal in drinking water beyond samples the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires municipal water systems to periodically collect from homes.
Consultants found a wide range of lead levels in Chicago parks and Park District facilities, similar to earlier reports from Chicago Public Schools, suburban school districts and parochial schools operated by the Archdiocese of Chicago.
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Park District officials took action when the amount of lead flowing from a particular fountain or sink exceeded 15 parts per billion, a level described in an online summary as the EPA's standard for drinking water. But the agency's regulations apply to testing carried out across municipal water systems, not test results at any one time from one fixture.
A government edict that reflects how people typically use drinking fountains is the Food and Drug Administration's limit on lead in bottled water 5 parts per billion. If Park District officials had followed the FDA standard, another 250 fixtures would have been shut down, according to a Tribune review of the test results.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to assess safety based on a snapshot of test results, said Yanna Lambrinidou, a Virginia Tech researcher who served on an EPA advisory committee that last year called for more aggressive efforts to eliminate lead hazards in public water supplies.
Lead can appear sporadically as particles break off or leach into water an unpredictable phenomenon researchers describe as a version of Russian roulette.
"Sadly, what people should make of these reports is that tap water at Chicago parks is not lead-free and they are on their own to protect their children from exposures," Lambrinidou said. "Demanding that public officials abandon the misleading crutch of the 15 (parts per billion) 'action level' and develop solutions that reflect current scientific understanding about lead in water would be a good first step."
Even at low levels, lead can permanently damage the developing brains and nervous systems of young children. Studies have linked childhood exposure to learning disabilities and violent behavior later in life.
The Park District is still investigating where the lead in the fountain water is coming from. Potential sources include lead pipes and solder or lead in the fixtures themselves.
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About 40,000 children attended summer day camps at city parks. Thousands attend other programs during the school year.
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The Park District shut off nearly a quarter of its outdoor fountains based on the testing. Three percent of the district's indoor fountains and sinks were taken out of service.
The highest lead levels were in a two-level fountain in Avalon Park off 83rd Street near Stony Island Avenue. The taller fountain registered 1,800 parts per billion, while the shorter one recorded 1,200. Another two-level fountain in the park had 400 and 270 parts per billion.
Grant Park, often described as the city's front yard, highlights the dramatic differences between individual water fountains. The majority of fountains tested in the park 48 registered lead levels at or below 5.4 parts per billion. But one had 1,200, another 560 and 15 were between 81 and 5.8, according to the Park District summary.
It is unclear how much it will cost to repair or replace the fountains with elevated lead levels, said Jessica Maxey-Faulkner, a Park District spokeswoman. "Ensuring the health and safety of all park patrons and staff is a top priority of the Park District," she said in a statement.
mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @scribeguy
Members of the Chicago Police Department work at the scene where a vehicle involved in a shooting in West Pullman eventually crashed in the parking lot of Prairie Junior High School in the 4400 block of West 119th Street Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016, in Alsip, Ill. (Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune) (Erin Hooley, Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)
Updated Oct. 25, 2016 Two people were arrested after police officers witnessed a shooting in West Pullman on the Far South Side that wounded a 22-year-old man Thursday morning, police said.
A third suspect remained at large, and Alsip School District 126 canceled classes for the day as a precaution as police searched the area.
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Two high schools in the area went into shelter-in-place mode, officials said. Students and teachers at Shepard High School in Palos Heights and Eisenhower High School in Blue Island stayed behind locked doors during first period, according to Bob McParland, spokesman for Community High School District 218. Police later told school officials it was safe to resume normal schedules. Schools will be released at 3:15 p.m. as usual, McParland said.
The incident began around 2:40 a.m. when officers on an unrelated call heard shots from at least two different kinds of guns near the 11800 block of South Lowe Avenue, police said.
They responded on foot and saw someone in a vehicle firing shots at a group of people, police said in a statement. They identified themselves as police when people in the car began to fire at them.
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One of the officers drew his weapon and returned fire but did not hit anyone, police said. The officers were also not hit.
Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 17 A police officer searches for evidence at a crime scene in the 800 block of North Leamington Avenue on Oct. 20, 2016, in Chicago. Two people were shot and transported to hospitals. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)
The vehicle carrying the shooters drove west on 119th Street. The officers radioed a description and police spotted it as the car crashed more than four miles away, in the 4400 block of West 119th Street in Alsip.
Three people ran from the car and two of them were arrested, police said. The third was at large. A weapon was recovered from the car, police said.
Back at the scene of the shooting, a 22-year-old man was found with a gunshot wound to the leg, police said. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, and his condition was stabilized.
The man was one of 14 people shot across Chicago between Wednesday morning and early Thursday.
A 39-year-old man was shot and killed about 7:25 p.m. in Back of the Yards, police said. He was hit in the torso in the 4300 block of South Paulina Street and was pronounced dead at the University of Illinois Hospital. Earlier, Fire Department officials said the victim was taken to Stroger.
The Cook County medical examiner's office identified him as Alejandro Morales of the 4500 block of South Hermitage Avenue, the office said Oct. 24.
At 7 p.m., a 24-year-old man was shot and killed in Bronzeville. He was in the 4700 block of South Prairie Avenue when someone shot him in the leg and shoulder. He went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Police said his condition initially was stabilized, but he later was pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m.
He was identified as Christopher Walters, of the 6200 block of South Champlain Avenue, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
Information was not immediately available about the circumstances of the shooting.
A 39-year-old man was shot in the 4300 block of South Paulina Street in the Back of the Yards neighborhood and transported to the University of Illinois Hospital, where he was pronounced dead Oct. 19, 2016, in Chicago. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)
Other shootings:
At 3 a.m., a 22-year-old man was shot in the 1900 block of South Damen Avenue in the Heart of Chicago neighborhood. He went to Stroger Hospital with a gunshot wound to the back. Details of the shooting were not available.
About 1:55 a.m., two men ages 26 and 44 were shot and critically wounded in South Austin. They were in a car in the 800 block of North Leamington Avenue when they heard gunfire. The older man was shot twice in the arm and once in the back. The younger man was shot in the back and leg. Both were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition.
About 10:35 p.m. Wednesday, a 24-year-old man was shot in Little Village. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital with a gunshot wound to the ankle after an attack in the 2200 block of South Ridgeway Avenue. He would not tell investigators any details about the incident, according to police.
At 10:30 p.m., a 22-year-old man was shot in the Marquette Park neighborhood. He was in the 7100 block of South Artesian Avenue when someone fired shots from a gangway, hitting him in the arm and calf. He went to Advocate Christ, and his condition was stabilized.
Just before 10:10 p.m., a 16-year-old boy was shot in Gresham. He was walking in the 7500 block of South Loomis Boulevard when someone fired shots from a dark-colored sedan and the boy was struck in the left arm. He went to an area hospital and his condition was stabilized.
About 9:40 p.m., a 22-year-old man was shot in the cheek in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. He was driving south in the first block of North Homan Avenue when someone in a vehicle pulled up alongside him and fired shots. He went to Mount Sinai Hospital and his condition was stabilized.
About 6:55 p.m., a 22-year-old man was shot in a West Side park. He was in the 200 block of South Central Avenue in Austin when a gunman approached on foot and shot him in the leg and shoulder, police said. He was taken to Mount Sinai in serious condition.
Much earlier, a person was shot at 9:20 a.m. Wednesday in the 3200 block of West Madison Street in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, said Officer Bari Lemmon, a Chicago police spokeswoman. According to preliminary reports, a person in a red vehicle began firing at a 28-year-old man, striking him in the head. The man suffered a graze wound and was taken to Mount Sinai, where his condition was stabilized.
Another man was shot shortly before 8:30 a.m. Wednesday in the 5800 block of West West End Avenue in the Austin neighborhood. The man, 31, suffered several wounds to the torso and was dropped off at West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park. He was transferred to Stroger Hospital and listed in critical condition.
About 7:40 a.m. Wednesday, a 34-year-old woman drove to Roseland Community Hospital after she was shot on the West Side, police said. She was in the 700 block of North Laramie Avenue when she was hit in the right side. She was listed in good condition at Roseland.
Surveillance photo of a man who robbed a bank in the Aon Center, 200 E. Randolph St., on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. (Surveillance photo via the FBI)
A man robbed a bank in the Aon building downtown Wednesday morning, authorities said.
The robber walked into the Associated Bank at 200 E. Randolph St. about 8:05 a.m., according to the FBI.
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He initially acted like a customer, then jumped a counter and demanded money, the FBI said. The man did not show a gun, and he escaped on foot after getting cash.
The robber was believed to have dropped a cell phone during the robbery, police said.
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The robber was described as black with a dark complexion and a slim build. He was wearing dark jeans and a yellow hooded sweatshirt with the word "Iowa" emblazoned on the front.
Anyone with information can call the Chicago office of the FBI at 312-421-6700.
Check back for updates.
A construction worker was killed and three other workers injured when a beam fell on a crew of workers in Des Plaines on April 5, 2016. (WGN-TV / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)
An Elgin -based company has been fined $152,000 in the death of worker who was killed by a falling 45-ton beam at a construction site on the Jane Addams Tollway in April.
The U.S. Department of Labor 's Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Omega Demolition Corp. earlier this month for "over-stressing" the beam during demolition of an Interstate 90 bridge near Touhy Avenue in Des Plaines , according to a statement from the agency. Vicente Santoyo, a 47-year-old Omega Demolition employee from Berwyn, was standing in an aerial lift cutting steel bracing between two beams supporting the highway when one of the beams collapsed on him, according to the statement from OSHA.
OSHA fined the company $152,433 and issued citations for safety and health violations. A spokesperson for the agency, Scott Allen, said OSHA representatives are due to meet with Omega Demolition executives next week to discuss the agency's determination. At that time, he said, Omega representatives will either indicate they intend to abide by the findings and pay the penalties or contest the citations before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
The scene of a fatal construction accident that occurred underneath the I-90 expressway at Touhy Road in Des Plaines early morning on April 5, 2016. A construction worker was killed and three others injured when a 45-ton beam fell on the crew of workers. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
Ken Nishiyama Atha, OSHA's regional administrator in Chicago, called the incident "preventable" in the statement. "Federal safety standards for demolition address specific procedures for preventing steel structures from being overstressed, a safety violation that directly contributed to the death of this worker," he said.
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Omega Demolition representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Illinois Tollway issued a statement that it will "take whatever actions are appropriate" after reviewing OSHA's full report on the incident.
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The Tollway removed Omega Demolition, a subcontractor for bridge project, from all Tollway projects. The statement also said the agency "rescinded permission for Omega Demolition to conduct any work for the Tollway at this time" but later clarified that Omega "at this point is free to bid on future Tollway contracts."
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The manager for the general contractor for the project, Judlau Contracting, and an engineer supervisor were also removed from all Tollway projects, and the agency said alternative contractors were hired to finish the bridge demolition and construction work.
"The Tollway offers its deepest sympathies for the families and loved ones of the worker killed in this tragic incident, as well to his co-workers who were injured," the statement reads.
Omega Demolition has been cited nine times by OSHA since 2006 mainly in connection with lead hazards, and the company has paid violations and penalties to the agency totaling $6,465.
OSHA has placed Omega Demolition in its Severe Violator Enforcement Program, which allows the agency to inspect the company's facilities and construction sites if they believe violations are present, according to the statement. The program "focuses on recalcitrant employers that endanger workers by committing willful, repeat or failure-to-abate violations," the statement reads.
Shortly after Santoyo's death, Adolfo Zamora, secretary-treasurer of Laborers Local 225 union, described Santoyo as "a great guy, a hard worker."
An official with the union said Santoyo had spent more than two decades working in construction in the Chicago area.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter.
Someone who allegedly fired a gun at Chicago police officers is in custody Tuesday night, police said.
The suspect opened fire at police about 4:45 p.m. in the 7100 block of South Normal Avenue in the city's Englewood neighborhood, said Officer Michelle Tannehill, a spokeswoman for the Chicago police.
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No one was injured and the gunman was taken into custody, Tannehill said.
Charges are pending.
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Check back for details.
Jack McCullough walks out of Judge William Brady's courtroom at the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore, Ill., on April 22, 2016, with Crystal Harrolle, an investigator with the public defender's office. Brady formally dismissed a murder case Friday against McCullough, a retired Washington state police officer, who a prosecutor says was wrongly convicted in the 1957 killing of a 7-year-old Sycamore girl, but he put off a decision on whether to appoint a special prosecutor. (Danielle Guerra / Daily Chronicle)
The man whose conviction for the 1957 murder of a Sycamore girl was vacated this year is now seeking a formal declaration of innocence from the judicial system.
Attorneys from The Exoneration Project who are representing Jack McCullough will be in court Thursday in DeKalb County, where they have filed a petition asking the court to make a finding of McCullough's innocence in the death of Maria Ridulph.
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"Mr. McCullough had absolutely nothing to do with the abduction and murder of Maria Ridulph," wrote attorneys for The Exoneration Project, which is a legal clinic at the University of Chicago.
The petition reiterates main points raised by DeKalb County State's Attorney Richard Schmack, whose report to the court earlier this year led to the stunning reversal of McCullough's conviction in what was thought to be the coldest case in U.S. history to result in a guilty verdict.
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McCullough, The Exoneration Project attorneys said, was wrongfully convicted of the girl's murder, based on a faulty eyewitness identification made a half-century after the crime, and modern authorities' willingness to disregard evidence of old telephone records that placed McCullough in Rockford, almost 40 miles away, around the time the 7-year-old disappeared.
Investigators, the petition said, ignored or manipulated evidence to convict McCullough, who had an "airtight" alibi.
Should McCullough, 76, be granted the certificate of innocence, he would become eligible for a settlement with the state Court of Claims that could amount to about $85,000, attorney Russell Ainsworth said. But, the attorney said, McCullough's primary motivation is to clear his name.
"He wants the community to know that he had nothing to do with this heinous crime," Ainsworth said Tuesday.
McCullough, a Seattle-area resident, will not be at Thursday's court hearing, the attorney said
Schmack, who believes McCullough was wrongly convicted, filed a brief response to the petition, saying he has no objection to it. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan could choose to intervene in the case and argue against the innocence certificate.
Maria Ridulph disappeared from Sycamore on Dec. 3, 1957. She was last seen with a man who introduced himself as "Johnny" after approaching the girl and her 8-year-old friend, Kathy Sigman, as the children played in their neighborhood.
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Ridulph's disappearance sparked a huge search. Her body was found in April 1958 in a wooded area in northwest Illinois. McCullough, who in 1957 was a 17-year-old Sycamore resident who went by the name John Tessier, was arrested in 2011 following an investigation by Illinois State Police.
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A year later, McCullough was found guilty in a bench trial that included testimony from Maria's friend, who now has the name Kathy Chapman, who identified an old picture of McCullough as being the man named "Johnny" who had approached her and Maria more than 50 years ago.
McCullough was sentenced to life in prison and later filed a post-conviction petition that came back to the local courts. Schmack, who was not state's attorney when McCullough was prosecuted, has said that he examined the evidence as part of the process to respond to McCullough's petition and became convinced that McCullough had been wrongly convicted.
Jack McCullough walks out of Judge William Brady's courtroom at the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore, Ill., on April 22, 2016, with Crystal Harrolle, an investigator with the public defender's office. Brady formally dismissed a murder case Friday against McCullough, a retired Washington state police officer, who a prosecutor says was wrongly convicted in the 1957 killing of a 7-year-old Sycamore girl, but he put off a decision on whether to appoint a special prosecutor. (Danielle Guerra / Daily Chronicle)
Schmack filed a lengthy report that cited problems with the investigation, highlighting the telephone records that he said would have made it impossible for McCullough to have been in Sycamore at the time of Maria's disappearance. Based on the report, Judge William Brady vacated McCullough's conviction, and Schmack then dropped the charges.
Previous counsel for McCullough had asked the judge to dismiss the charges with prejudice, meaning that McCullough could not be recharged in the crime. Brady, though, declined to do that, which means that, although it's considered unlikely, McCullough could be recharged in the case. Ainsworth said the certificate of innocence could grant McCullough some peace of mind that he finally has been cleared.
"No one should have to walk around with something like that hanging over their head," he said.
Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter.
Aldermen Proco Joe Moreno, 1st, left and Joe Moore, 49th talk in council chambers earlier this month. Budget hearings have kicked off this week. (Nancy Stone / 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
While they're gathering at City Hall the next two weeks to dig into the nitty-gritty of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 2017 spending proposal, many aldermen are doubtless also excited about their chances to tuck into the revered budget hearing lunch spreads that serve as an annual source of local pride for aldermen offering their wards' culinary highlights.
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The daily big buffet is a way to break up the long days of pressing Emanuel administration officials about salaries and other budget priorities.
Budget Committee Chairman Ald. Carrie Austin, of the Far South Side, threw down the gauntlet Monday, sponsoring lunch along with four longtime colleagues. More than two dozen aldermen lined up with employees from all over City Hall to chow down in the meeting room behind council chambers. There were trays of chicken, pork chops, catfish, mac and cheese, spaghetti, salad and three desserts.
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Budget Committee Vice Chairman Ald. Jason Ervin, of the West Side, did the honors Tuesday, presenting baked and fried chicken, beef short ribs, collard greens, sweet corn, more mac and cheese, green beans and potatoes.
In the past, aldermen have touted the often politically connected restaurants providing the food each day, in a bit of a Chicago-style farm-to-table shout-out. This week, the spreads so far have come with no such signs advertising the grub's provenance. (John Byrne)
What's on tap
*The third and final presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump will take place at 8 p.m. Central. Check your local listings.
*Mayor Emanuel is scheduled to tour the Chicago Riverwalk in the early afternoon. The final phase is scheduled to open this weekend, according to City Hall.
*Gov. Bruce Rauner will hold a 1:30 p.m. event at the University of Illinois Medical Center to highlight what his office says is $220 million in savings within the state Medicaid health care system. The announcement comes six months after Rauner appointed a task force aimed at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the state health care system.
*Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk will campaign with Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential candidate, at a downtown health care tech start-up. That comes after Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth raised money with David Letterman on Tuesday night.
*Chicago City Council budget hearings: human resources, emergency management and communications, Fire Department.
*Cook County budget hearings: a.m.: Board of Review, assessor, record of deeds, ethics board; p.m.: County Board president's office, Cook Workforce Partnership.
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*The Chicago Teachers Union's House of Delegates is scheduled to meet to discuss a tentative contract agreement with Chicago Public Schools.
What we're writing
*Duckworth's record: Few legislative successes, some veterans' programs sputtered.
*Ald. Willie Cochran under federal investigation into whether he improperly used campaign funds for personal expenses, sources say.
*Despite Trump's claim, city and state election officials say technology means voting fraud largely thing of the past.
*Key figure in CPS bribery probe pleads guilty.
*Chicago parks shut off 459 drinking fountains after tests find lead.
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*Chicago aldermen want crackdown on problem businesses, Airbnb inspectors hired more quickly.
*Women protest Trump outside Trump Tower Chicago.
*Ex-Ald. Sandi Jackson's prison term ends, she joins ex-congressman husband on parole.
*Police Board hearing: Cop's expert witness questions quality of video in off-duty shooting.
*The Chicago-flavored guest list at Obama's last White House state dinner.
What we're reading
*Cook County judge says Chicago cop's testimony doesn't pass the smell test.
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*Cubs playoff push brings mixed emotions to families of recently departed fans.
*Revolution Brewing recalls a whole lot of beer for off flavors.
From the notebook :
*Will Chicagoans leave their tax rebates on the table? Mayor Emanuel's property tax rebate program got off to a slow start this month, with only about 1,600 out of about 155,000 eligible homeowners applying, according to the administration.
Molly Poppe, the city's budget spokeswoman, noted the program runs through the end of November and many folks tend to wait until the deadline is approaching to get such things done.
The program is designed to soften the blow of recent property tax increases for homeowners with household incomes of less than $75,000. Rebates range from $25 to $200, depending on income and the size of the tax increase. Qualifying seniors would get an extra $100.
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The average rebate so far is $116, city officials said. Information on the program can be found here. (Hal Dardick)
*Quinn endgame? Pat Quinn reappeared on the political scene once again Tuesday to tout his petition drive for mayoral term limits, a pet project the Democrat picked up after he was ousted from the governor's office by Republican Bruce Rauner.
Left unclear, though, was what end game the former governor envisions for his own political future, as he repeatedly brushed away questions about whether he'll run for governor or mayor of Chicago.
"I won't make any decision on that at this time. I'm in petition-passing and we're trying to get signatures to put term limits on the mayor of Chicago, that referendum on the ballot, and we're also trying to establish an elected consumer advocate in Chicago. So, first thing's first," Quinn said.
Now a private citizen, Quinn collects pensions that total $140,636 a year. He has been spending his free time circulating the mayoral term-limits petition, which he estimates will need 100,000 signatures to make the March 2018 ballot. As of Tuesday, he'd gathered about 30,000 signatures, he said.
Quinn contends Mayor Emanuel, who is in his second term, should "voluntarily do what George Washington did and announce that two terms ... is enough."
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But the former governor who succeeded impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2009, went on to win a full term in 2010 and then lost to Rauner in 2014 left the door open for seeking to put his own name back on the ballot at some point.
"I just haven't made my decision up about that. I have run in the past. I might in the future, I might not," Quinn said. "You know, I enjoy doing this now. And I think in life you should do things you think you can make a difference on right now." (Kim Geiger)
*U.S. Senate debates set: The final two debates between Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk and Democratic U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth have been set. The next one is at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The final debate will take place just a few days before the election. ABC7 will livestream the debate at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, and air it at 10:35 that night.
*Schneider features Obama in new ad in IL-10: Former Democratic congressman Brad Schneider, trying to reclaim his North Shore seat against Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Dold, has a new TV ad that features a testimonial from home-state President Barack Obama.
"This is not your typical election. It's not just a choice between parties or policies. It's about who we are as a people. Vote for Brad Schneider and the Democrats," Obama says in the ad.
"So we can keep America's promise to our seniors. Protect our kids and our cops from gun violence. And preserve a woman's right to choose.
Join me. Reject cynicism and fear. Reach for what we know is possible. Support Brad Schneider and the Democrats," Obama says.
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Of the ad, Schneider said in a statement: "I look forward to working with Hillary Clinton to build on Obama's legacy by finally passing comprehensive immigration reform and common sense gun safety legislation." (Rick Pearson)
Follow the money
*Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan reported nearly $198,000 in contributions, led by maximum $53,900 donations from an engineers union fund and a United Auto Workers fund. But wait, there's more. Madigan's Democratic Majority fund picked up $101,400 in contributions, led by a maximum $53,900 contribution from an operating engineers fund. A day earlier, the Madigan-controlled Democratic Party of Illinois fund reported $45,600 in contributions, led by $21,600 from ComEd.
*Democrat Sheila Simon, the former lieutenant governor who's running for state Senate in southern Illinois, got about $107,000 from the Senate Democrats. She's running against Republican Paul Schimpf, who lost to Attorney General Lisa Madigan in 2014. The Senate seat is now held by retiring Republican Sen. Paul Luechtefeld.
*Senate Democrats got $500,000 in transfers from Senate President John Cullerton, who has been piling up contributions from traditional allies in unions and trial lawyers opposed to Republican Gov. Rauner's agenda.
*Track Illinois campaign contributions in real time here and here.
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Beyond Chicago
*What you need to know about the third Clinton-Trump debate, per WSJ.
*Obama to Trump: "Stop whining" about rigged vote.
*WikiLeaks reveals the real Huma Abedin, says Politico.
*Mosul battle: Traps, smokescreens and suicide bombers, NYT reports.
Claims from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that voting is rigged to help Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8 have served to dredge up Chicago's controversial history of vote stuffing, ballot boxes floating in the river and dead people voting.
But state and city elections officials contend the massive voting fraud of the past is history, citing new technology and changes in voting laws have made the potential for fraud a fraction of what existed in the past. They say the concern now is voter intimidation techniques.
"We don't claim perfection. We know we're trying to live down the history of this agency from our parents' and our grandparents' generations," said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
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That notion has been one Trump's campaign pushed ahead of Wednesday night's final presidential debate. Appearing on Tuesday in western Colorado, Trump raised the issue, responding to recent media reports that voter fraud is not as rampant of a problem as he has said.
"Take a look at St. Louis. Take a look at Philadelphia. Take a look at Chicago," Trump said. "... Look, look, if nothing else, people are going to be watching on Nov. 8. Watch Philadelphia. Watch St. Louis. Watch Chicago, watch Chicago. Watch so many other places."
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Those remarks came after prominent Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, fanned the fraud flames earlier this week.
"There are a few places, not many in the swing states, there are a few places where they've been notorious for stealing votes: Pennsylvania, Chicago. There have been places where a lot of cheating has gone on over the years," Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, told CNN.
"If you want me to tell me that I think the election in Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair, I would have to be a moron to say that. I mean, I would have to dislearn everything I learned in 40 years of being a prosecutor," he said.
Giuliani cited the 1982 Illinois general election contest that pitted Republican Gov. James R. Thompson seeking re-election against former Democratic U.S. Sen. Adlai E. Stevenson III a race Thompson won by 5,074 votes, the slimmest vote total in statewide history.
A federal grand jury investigation, prompted in part by Chicago Tribune reporting, led to 62 indictments and 58 convictions, many involving precinct captains and election officials. The grand jury concluded that 100,000 fraudulent votes had been cast in the city and that the city's patronage system was a driving force in spurring the illegality.
Authorities found massive fraud involving vote buying and ballots cast by others in the names of registered voters. In one case, a ballot punched for the Democratic slate had been tabulated 198 times.
In 1987, a canvass of voter records by the Chicago elections board projected up to 52,000 people improperly cast ballots in then-Mayor Harold Washington's Democratic primary win over former Mayor Jane Byrne. A citizens' group said it had evidence of thousands of additional illegal votes using similar methods.
Decades before that, stories of election fraud were predominant about then-Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Chicago vote in the presidential election of Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960.
More recently, critics contended then-Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn 's Neighborhood Recovery Initiative that dashed out money to anti-violence programs was a disguised political slush fund to try to influence South Side and south suburban voters ahead of the 2010 election. Quinn ended the initiative under criticism, and the state auditor general found it was hastily put together and lacked proper checks and balances.
"I can't sit here and tell you that they don't cheat," Giuliani said of Democrats on CNN. "And I know because they control the polling places in these areas. There are no Republicans. That is very hard to get people there who will challenge votes. So what they do is they leave dead people on the rolls and then they pay people to vote those dead people four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times."
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But Allen, the Chicago elections spokesman, said much has changed when it comes to actual voter fraud.
"To give some context, in the last 10 years we've had 10 referrals of suspicious activity to the state's attorney's office and at the same time we've had 9 million ballots cast," Allen said. One referral led to the convictions of two men on misdemeanor charges of manipulating absentee ballots in a 50th Ward aldermanic contest in 2007.
Allen said the city board's use of electronic poll books at polling places blocks "the prospect of double voting," and the electronic connections between early voting sites make it "impossible" to vote more than once.
In addition, Allen cites the work of the Illinois voter registration system and database with the State Board of Elections that tracks each of the state's 109 election authorities seeking duplicate registrations and checking on death records.
"The assumption that just because there may be some outdated voter records on the rolls is immediately followed by voter impersonation fraud there's no evidence of it happening in the United States on any kind of significant measure," Allen said.
Ken Menzel, general counsel for the state elections board, said the state database of registered voters is frequently refreshed with new and updated registrations as well as death records so "that dead voting in Chicago (is) kind of malarkey."
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Menzel also said the decentralized nature of balloting in Illinois, coupled with different voting systems in use by local election officials and no centralized internet connection among election authorities, makes wholesale election fraud to be considered "far-fetched" by election experts.
"We have a system with a lot of different observers and a lot of checks and balances and we're confident we'll have a solid and reliable result for our election," he said.
Allen said voters are encouraged to call the city elections board for investigation or contact county, state or federal prosecutors if they have an allegation of something that looks unusual. But, he said, the largest complaints involve electioneering, where campaigning takes place too close to a polling place.
Trump has called for more vigilance from his supporters at local polling places. Allen said concern exists "that there's talk of vigilantism in questioning voters at the door" of polling sites.
"We strongly encourage any voter that encounters that anywhere in the United States to contact their local police department and/or election authority but also contact the U.S. Justice Department . Voter intimidation is a violation of federal law," Allen said.
Even Giuliani acknowledged that cheating isn't a concern of the Trump campaign in Illinois, with its traditional Democratic leanings in presidential contests and Clinton having been born in Chicago and raised in suburban Park Ridge.
"Look, if she wins Illinois by 8 percent or he wins Illinois by 8 percent, then that cheating isn't going to make any difference," Giuliani said.
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"But we do cheat. We have people who cheat in elections. I've found very few situations where Republicans cheat. They don't control the inner cities the way Democrats do. Maybe if Republicans controlled the inner cities, they'd do as much cheating as Democrats," he said.
Chicago aldermen got into the act Tuesday, alluding to the city's notorious history of deceased voters casting ballots while poking fun at the voter fraud claims.
Ald. Raymond Lopez , 15th, mentioned during the budget hearing for the city Board of Election Commissioners that there had been reports of "some seriously concerning things going on in Chicago."
"So I would just like to know if we can have an update on what are the (voter) registration numbers at both Graceland and Rosehill cemeteries as of right now," Lopez asked election commissioners.
"Does the Oak Woods Cemetery have seven registered voters?" called out Ald. Leslie Hairston , 5th. "If you can add that to the mix, I'd appreciate it."
"If we could add Oak Woods as well just to see what our registration numbers are there," Lopez continued as election officials laughed along. "As well as, supposedly, not only the budgets for bribes for votes, which was reported as well, our cemetery registrations, our absentee ballot round-ups, as well as any other miscellaneous voter fraud funds that you have available to you, we'd like to have all that information."
Chicago Tribune's John Byrne contributed.
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Robert Creamer after his sentencing in a federal check-kiting case on April 5, 2006. At right is his wife, Illinois U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)
For four decades, Robert Creamer has been part of the fabric of Illinois and national Democratic campaigns, from helping elect wife Jan Schakowsky to Congress and giving Mayor Rahm Emanuel his first post-college job to helping on Barack Obama 's two presidential campaigns and working this time to elect Hillary Clinton .
Now Creamer, who largely has worked behind the scenes as a consultant, particularly after a 2005 federal check-kiting conviction, finds himself in the limelight after surfacing on edited undercover videos released by a conservative group that alleges an orchestrated Democratic effort to conduct voter fraud and foment violent protest at rallies for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump .
The more incendiary comments on the videos came from a Democratic activist working for Creamer's firm Democracy Partners, not Creamer. And it's also questionable how central of a role the group played in the last-minute cancellation of Trump's March rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion.
But the release of the videos came amid a concerted push by Trump's campaign that the election is rigged against him due to his claims about the potential for widespread voter fraud, especially in big cities controlled by Democrats including Chicago.
And so Creamer issued a statement saying he has told the Democratic National Committee that he was "stepping back from my responsibilities" working with the Clinton campaign because he was "unwilling to become a distraction" toward electing her president. Democracy Partners declined to make Creamer available for an interview Wednesday, instead pointing to his statement.
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In it, Creamer criticized the work of conservative activist James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas Action, who produced the videos. "Democracy Partners regards our nation's election laws and the integrity of our democratic institutions with utmost seriousness. And we have only ever engaged in legal and nonviolent methods to demonstrate how Donald Trump is unfit to be president."
Conservative undercover journalist James O'Keefe holds a news conference at the National Press Club September 1, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Despite a controversial past in Illinois, Creamer has worked for a list of clients that includes the state Democratic Party, several members of Congress, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun's campaign, major public and private sector unions, the campaign of now-imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and then-Mayor Richard M. Daley 's campaign committee.
In 1975, Creamer was a founder of the consumer group Illinois Public Action, which touted itself as the state's largest consumer organization. It was best known for its door-to-door neighborhood canvassers who sought donations to push liberal Democratic-backed causes, including lower utility rates and universal health insurance. Creamer gave Emanuel his first political job after the future mayor graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983.
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Perennially facing money troubles, Illinois Public Action turned to telephone soliciting as a fundraising technique, promoting the sales of credit-card insurance. The Chicago Tribune first reported on controversies surrounding the group's fundraising practices in 1993 and the organization ultimately closed four years later.
Those fundraising activities led to a lengthy federal investigation in which Creamer ultimately pleaded guilty. He was sentenced in 2006 to five months in prison for purposely floating bad checks to prop up the finances of the struggling consumer group and for an income tax charge. He also was sentenced to 11 months of home confinement.
"I will never again allow my passion for that goal to overwhelm my good judgment or my respect for the law," Creamer said after the sentencing hearing.
At the time, Evanston U.S. Rep. Schakowsky issued a statement about her husband, saying, "More than anything, I am proud of who Bob is. ... He has been a constant crusader."
Prosecutors maintained Creamer carried out a check-kiting scheme to finance his salary of about $100,000 as the group's executive director and to further his public policy goals. Then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ferguson said Creamer "stole money from banks," more than $2.5 million, that amounted to unintended, interest-free loans.
Creamer was able to turn the field-organizing tactics of his consumer group into an influential and profitable political consulting business with several high-profile clients. He earned more than a half-million dollars from Blagojevich's campaign fund. Other Creamer clients included 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore , Cook County Circuit Clerk Dorothy Brown, County Commissioner Larry Suffredin and then-commissioners Forrest Claypool, now the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and Mike Quigley , now a congressman.
Creamer was ever-present during Blagojevich's 2002 bid for governor. He helped orchestrate the campaign kickoff event at the Near North Side A. Finkl & Sons Co. steelworks. Blagojevich was introduced that day by Schakowsky.
The scope of Creamer's political consulting expanded nationally in line with the rising stature of his wife in the Democratic congressional campaign hierarchy. Creamer helped found the Strategic Consulting Group in 1997, and the organization is now part of Creamer's Democracy Partners firm.
The conservative group released its undercover videos this week. The context of what subjects say in the videos is not always clear, and at times a narrator or subtitle attempt to connect the dots. Project Veritas Action also previously has released the entirety of its video stings in the past, but has not done so for this latest two-part video series.
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In them, Scott Foval, a national field director for Americans United for Change, discussed his relationship with Creamer as a subcontractor for Democracy Partners.
"So Bob Creamer comes up with a lot of these ideas. I work with Bob Creamer one-to-one all the time. I'm the white hat. Democracy Partners is kind of dark hat," said Foval, who lost his job after the videos were posted.
In one of the videos, a Project Veritas undercover staffer discusses with Foval a potential scheme to allow unregistered Hispanic immigrants the ability to register to vote by working as day laborers. Eventually, the video cuts to Creamer purportedly reacting to such a scheme, though the full context of the conversation is unclear because of how the video is edited.
"Let me see if I can chat with the people who are most involved in Hispanic voter registration. And, uh, I can see what their thoughts are. I mean, there are a couple of different organizations that's their big trick," Creamer said. "We'll help you do this. I mean, this is very important this stuff. Turnout is huge, huge, huge."
In a different hidden recording, Creamer is presented with a person appearing to offer to bankroll the vote fraud scheme. Creamer responded, "My fear is someone would decide this was a big voter fraud scheme."
The video continues with Foval going on to say that such a scheme might have merit if he and Creamer were not directly involved in coordinating it.
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In another video, Foval discusses his efforts to provide "agitator training," in which he and Creamer worked to dispatch people to events to entice Trump supporters into confrontations that would in turn garner media coverage.
"There's a script of engagement. Sometimes the crazies bite, sometimes they don't bite," Foval says, noting that the agitators are instructed only to engage with Trump supporters in line outside, "because once they're inside the rally, they're under Secret Service's control The media will cover it no matter where it happens."
Foval said he worked to create messaging for the planted protesters that would lead Trump supporters "to punch you." Creamer also describes his role in helping organize turnout among Democratic operatives at Trump events.
"Where Trump and Pence are going to be, we have events. And we have a whole team across the country that does that, both consultants and people from the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party apparatus and people from the campaign, the Clinton campaign," Creamer said. "And my role in the campaign is to manage all that."
In another segment, the conservative group identifies an individual as Aaron Black, billed as working for Creamer as deputy rapid response director on behalf of the DNC at Trump events. The video portrays Black giving Creamer credit for shutting down the Trump rally in Chicago. Black, though, only refers to a "him," whom the video identifies as Creamer.
"So the Chicago protest, when they shut all that down, that was us," Black says in the video. "It was more him than me, but none of this is supposed to come back to us, because we want it to come from people, we don't want it to come from the party."
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While the March Trump rally at UIC featured confrontations outside, a large contingent of hundreds of UIC students inside who signed up for free tickets were instrumental in getting the rally canceled as they repeatedly chanted anti-Trump slogans.
rap30@aol.com
bruthhart@chicagotribune.com
KABUL, Afghanistan A man wearing an Afghan army uniform killed a U.S. service member and an American civilian in the capital Kabul on Wednesday, NATO and an Afghan official said.
A NATO statement said another U.S. service member and two U.S. civilians were wounded in the attack and were in a stable condition.
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"Anytime we lose a member of our team, it is deeply painful," the statement quoted General John W. Nicholson, Commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. "Our sympathies go out to the families, loved ones, and the units of those involved in this incident."
Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry, said the attack took place inside a military base in the capital. The ministry had launched an investigation on the incident, he added.
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The NATO statement said the attacker was later killed. The victims were conducting duties as part of the larger NATO mission to train and advise the Afghan security services, and an investigation was being conducted to determine the exact circumstances of the incident.
In May, two Romanian soldiers were shot and killed when two Afghan army recruits opened fire on them in southern Kandahar province. Both attackers were later killed by other troops in a military comp.
Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines A Philippine police van rammed into protesters, leaving several bloodied, as an anti-U.S. rally turned violent Wednesday at the American Embassy in Manila.
The van's driver, police officer Franklin Kho, told reporters he did not deliberately hit the protesters but was trying to drive away from them because they were hitting the vehicle with wooden clubs and he feared they would commandeer it and use it to attack other policemen. "They were already trying to seize the vehicle," Kho told reporters.
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Associated Press TV footage showed the van repeatedly ramming the protesters as it drove wildly back and forth after activists surrounded and started hitting it with the wooden batons they seized from police.
In front of horrified crowds, the van suddenly charged backward then sprinted forward twice over a space of about 20 meters (60 feet), barreling through the scattered protesters and hurtling some to the side like bowling pins. A few were run over but somehow managed to stand.
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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 9 A firefighter aims his hose at surging protesters as they force their way toward the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, on Oct. 19, 2016. (Bullit Marquez / AP)
Some screamed in surprise, others hurled stones at the van and yelled invectives. A speaker called the police "puppies of imperialists" on a loudspeaker.
At least three student activists were taken to a hospital after they were run over by the van, protest leader Renato Reyes said.
"There was absolutely no justification for it," Reyes said of the violent police dispersal of about 1,000 protesters. "Even as the president vowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the U.S."
More than two dozen policemen were injured, police officials said, adding that police observed "maximum tolerance" but rowdy protesters kept assaulting the law enforcers.
Police lobbed tear gas and arrested at least 29 protesters who broke through a line of riot police and hurled red paint at the officers and a U.S. government seal at the start of the rally at the seaside embassy compound.
A firetruck doused the rowdy protesters with water to push them back, but they took hold of the water hose and confronted the outnumbered police with rocks and red paint. After breaking through the police corridor, they scribbled "U.S. troops out now" and other slogans at the embassy's tall fence with red paint.
Filipino protesters scuffle with police during a protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, on Oct. 19, 2016. (Mark R. Cristino / EPA)
The national police said in a statement that the violent dispersal was "unfortunate" and an investigation would try to determine if the riot policemen followed crowd-control procedures. Investigators will also evaluate criminal and civil liabilities of the protesters and their leader for an alleged illegal mass assembly.
A left-wing legal group, the National Union of People's Lawyers, condemned the police violence and said it would help the injured and detained protesters file criminal complaints against the police for violating their constitutional rights to free assembly.
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The protesters, consisting of students, workers and tribespeople, were demanding an end to the presence of visiting U.S. troops in the Philippines and to support a call by President Rodrigo Duterte for a foreign policy not dependent on the U.S., the country's longtime treaty ally.
A firefighter aims his hose at surging protesters as they force their way toward the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, on Oct. 19, 2016. (Bullit Marquez / AP)
The activists came from the largest left-wing umbrella group, Bayan (Nation), which has organized regular anti-U.S. protests in front of the embassy for decades, most of which are peaceful.
Duterte was on a state visit to China, where he is seeking to repair relations strained under his predecessor over territorial conflicts in the South China Sea. He is also seeking to expand trade and investments and financing for badly needed infrastructure projects.
Amid an uneasy relationship with the U.S., Duterte has tried to reach out to China and Russia, bringing uncertainty to his country's long alliance with America.
But the protesters also opposed the president's effort to lean toward China. "The Philippines will not be dictated on, whether by the U.S. or China," they said in a statement.
The violence happened as the police and Duterte are under increased international scrutiny for their alleged role in the killings of thousands of drug suspects and pushers as part of the president's war on illegal drugs.
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Associated Press
Jeffrey Scott Jones, 56, of Huntington Beach was convicted of raping a girl when she was 13. (Orange County district attorney's office)
A Huntington Beach man slit his throat in a courtroom Wednesday morning after a jury found him guilty of raping a girl when she was 13.
Jeffrey Scott Jones, 56, had just been convicted of two felony counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one felony count of continuous sexual abuse.
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As the verdict was announced at about 11 a.m. in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, Jones produced a small razor blade and sliced his throat, according to Jones' attorney, Edward Welbourn, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Heather Brown.
Jones was screaming and bleeding heavily from his neck while a sheriff's deputy tried to restrain him and the jury was rushed from the room, Brown said.
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Welbourn said he saw his client's head hit the defense table as he bled profusely.
Jones had to be handcuffed as medical personnel tried to stop the bleeding, Orange County sheriff's Lt. Mark Stichter said.
As Jones was taken out of the courtroom on a gurney, a pool of blood was left on the table, Brown said.
Jones was being treated at a hospital for injuries that are not life-threatening, Stichter said.
It wasn't clear how he got the razor blade, the attorneys said.
Stichter did not confirm that it was a razor blade, calling it a "cutting instrument." He said the Sheriff's Department would investigate whether Jones brought it into the courthouse or found it in the building.
Jones had been released from custody after posting $1-million bail on July 25, 2013, according to the Orange County district attorney's office.
Jones was a teacher for 27 years at Bell High School in Bell and Gahr High School in Cerritos, according to prosecutors.
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Brown said during Jones' trial that his abuse of the girl who is now 17 began when she was in the eighth grade.
At first, Brown said, Jones made sexual comments to the girl before progressing to inappropriate touching in the fall of 2012 and rape in the spring of 2013.
Judge Steven Bromberg scheduled Jones' sentencing for Nov. 4. He faces a maximum of 68 years to life in state prison, according to the district attorney's office.
Brazil writes for Times Community News.
benjamin.brazil@latimes.com
Twitter: @benbrazilpilot
WASHINGTON Hillary Clinton holds a decisive advantage over Donald Trump in the competition for votes in the Electoral College, leading in enough states to put her comfortably over the 270 majority needed to win the presidential election in November, according to a new SurveyMonkey poll of 15 battleground states conducted with The Washington Post.
Based on the results from the 15 state surveys, along with assumptions of the likely outcomes in other states that have consistently voted for one party or the other, Clinton, the Democratic nominee, holds leads of four points among likely voters or more in states that add up to 304 electoral votes.
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Trump, the GOP nominee, has the advantage in states with an estimated electoral vote total of 138. Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Texas, which account for 96 electoral votes, remain as toss-ups. All results in the 15 state surveys are based on ballot tests that include Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein.
The results underscore the importance for Trump of Wednesday's final presidential debate, which will be held in Las Vegas. National polls have moved in Clinton's direction since the exchanges began in late September. Her current average margin is seven points in polling averages from the Huffington Post Pollster and RealClearPolitics. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll put her national lead over Trump at four points.
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The effect of the shift toward Clinton in national polls is evident in the new 15-state study. In late August, The Post, using SurveyMonkey's online methodology, conducted individual polls in all 50 states among registered voters. At that time, Clinton led in states that added up to 244 electoral votes, while Trump led in states accounting for 126. Toss-up states equaled 168 electoral votes.
The SurveyMonkey surveys also included polls of Senate and gubernatorial races, where applicable, in the same 15 states. The results show two things. First, many Republican Senate candidates are outperforming Trump in their states. Second, that still may not be enough to maintain the GOP's majority in the chamber.
Democrats need a net gain of five seats to take outright control of the Senate, four to exercise control if Clinton becomes president. The results showed them with leads of four or more points in three states with GOP incumbents: New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Republican incumbents lead in Florida and Ohio, the latter by a wide margin. Meanwhile, Nevada, currently held by Democrats, and Pennsylvania, now in Republican hands, continue to be close. Pennsylvania is emblematic of the problem for GOP Senate incumbents, trying to survive in states where Trump struggles. Clinton leads Trump by six points but the Senate race is even at 47 percent apiece for Republican Sen. Patrick Toomey and Democrat Katie McGinty.
Illinois was not included in the survey, but based on other polls appears to be one of the likeliest states to shift from Republican to Democrat in November. Republicans also are defending seats in Indiana and Missouri, both of which are now highly competitive but neither of which was included in the 15-state survey.
The 2016 campaign has produced apparent shifts in several states - battlegrounds and non-battlegrounds - that could foreshadow more permanent changes in future elections. Demographic trends have moved several swing states more strongly in the direction of the Democrats this year - Colorado and Virginia are prime examples.
Other states such as Arizona, Georgia and possibly Texas show predicted signs of moving from traditional GOP strongholds to potential future battlegrounds. The demographic changes would put Republicans at an even greater disadvantage in the future if they cannot find a way to appeal to a changing electorate.
At the same time, the electoral map looks somewhat different from past campaigns owing to the uniqueness of Trump's candidacy - the coalition he has attracted and the voters who are repelled by his message and temperament. His relative strength in states with high percentages of non-college graduates and of white voters, such as Iowa and Ohio, are the example of the former. Utah, which has been scrambled this year by Trump's candidacy, is an example of the latter.
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Utah was not included in the SurveyMonkey analysis. But recent public polls suggest that this traditionally rock-solid Republican state is now a competitive battleground. Trump can hardly afford to lose the state's six electoral votes, given his current disadvantage.
Overall, the results of the 15-state survey underscore Clinton's margin of error in the state-by-state competition over the final three weeks of the campaign as well as the increasingly tortuous path for Trump to cobble together an Electoral College majority.
Clinton has many paths to 270; Trump has few. This has been the case for some time, based on all available evidence from state and national polls. Trump now needs a clear shift nationally and then a strategy for converting that into state-by-state victories.
Among the states that have moved in Clinton's direction since the previous 50-state survey are Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Of those, the results in Georgia differ from the current average of all recent polls in that state. The Huffpost Pollster average in Georgia gives a Trump a four-point lead while the SurveyMonkey poll puts Clinton ahead by four points.
Texas is another state that, by historic results, should end up in Trump's column. The SurveyMonkey results show the state splitting 44 percent to 42 percent between Trump and Clinton. The average of other public polls shows Trump with a larger, although single-digit, lead there. But with virtually the entire Bush family on the sidelines and with an endorsement of Clinton by the Dallas Morning News, Texas has proved to be a more competitive battleground than anyone expected.
The SurveyMonkey results also put Clinton in a stronger position in New Hampshire and North Carolina than other public surveys. Public polls in North Carolina show her with a low single-digit advantage. In New Hampshire, public polls show her ahead but not by the 11-point margin in these findings.
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None of that negates the obstacles for Trump. If he were to win all the toss-up states, plus hold onto Georgia, which has consistently voted for Republican presidential candidates since 1984, he would still be 20 electoral votes short of the 270 needed to win. Were he to eke out an additional victory in North Carolina, which has 15 electoral votes, that would not be enough.
Trump's campaign has claimed for a long time that, because of his support among white, blue-collar voters, he would be able to make inroads in traditional Democratic territory such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The new findings underscore the degree to which he is falling short in those Midwestern battlegrounds. He trails Clinton in Michigan by 45 percent to 37 percent; in Pennsylvania by 46 percent to 40 percent; and in Wisconsin by 43 percent to 38 percent.
Two other Midwestern states remain among his best of the battlegrounds. He leads Clinton in Iowa by five points and in Nevada by four points, a state where other polls have shown Clinton with a slight edge. In Ohio, the results are Trump at 44 percent and Clinton at 41 percent. But traditionally Republican Arizona is equally close, with Trump at 44 percent and Clinton with 41 percent.
In state after state, Trump appears to have a relatively low ceiling on his support. Of the 15 measured, he garners 45 percent in just two states and at or below 40 percent in eight. Clinton's lowest is 40 percent in Iowa and Nevada but she is at 45 percent or more in six states, topping out at 49 percent in Virginia.
The demographic contours of support for Clinton and Trump show some variance from state to state, but there are some consistent patterns, beginning with gender differences.
Among women, Clinton leads Trump by four points or more in 14 of the 15 states surveyed. Averaging across all 15 states, her lead over Trump among women is 49 percent to 35 percent. Among men, Trump leads by four points or more in 12 of the 15 states and by 10 points (47 percent to 37 percent) on average across all states.
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Trump has comfortable leads among white men in all states, except New Hampshire, where he and Clinton are tied. Clinton leads by four points or more among white women in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump leads among white women in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. The two are running close to even among white women in Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.
Racial divisions are stark. In Georgia, Trump leads among whites by more than 30 points. Among nonwhites, Clinton leads by just over 70 points. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, whites split almost evenly while nonwhites back Clinton overwhelming. In Virginia, Clinton's lead of more than 50 points among nonwhites easily overcomes Trump's five-point advantage among white voters.
Educational achievement remains a clear dividing line in the competition and one of the potential mold-breakers of this campaign. Republicans have generally won the votes of whites with college degrees and those without college degrees. This fall, among white voters without college degrees, Trump leads by four points or more in 14 of the 15 states surveyed, most by sizable margins.
Clinton, however, leads among whites with college degrees in 12 of the 15 states. Trump leads narrowly among white college graduates in Georgia and the two are running about even in Florida and Texas. In Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton leads Trump by double digits among white voters with college degrees, helping offset losses among those without degrees.
In these battlegrounds, Clinton holds a higher percentage of Democrats than Trump among Republicans. Averaging across the 15 states, she wins 92 percent of self-identified Democrats while Trump has support from 85 percent of Republicans. Trump leads among independents by six points (38 percent to 32 percent), while Johnson, the libertarian, averages 20 percent among independents.
The SurveyMonkey poll was conducted online Oct. 8-16 among 17,379 likely voters across 15 states, including between 569 and 1,702 respondents in each state. No margin of sampling error is calculated, as this statistic is applicable only to randomly sampled surveys.
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The Washington Post's Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. As Donald Trump continues to insist that voter fraud is "all too common" and could cost him the presidential election, he provided his supporters with a list of three cities where they should watch for corruption on Election Day. Only one is in a battleground state.
"Take a look at St. Louis. Take a look at Philadelphia. Take a look at Chicago," the GOP candidate said at a rally at a regional airport in this western Colorado town on Tuesday afternoon, responding to recent media reports that voter fraud is not as rampant of a problem as Trump has claimed. "... Look, look, if nothing else, people are going to be watching on November 8. Watch Philadelphia. Watch St. Louis. Watch Chicago, watch Chicago. Watch so many other places."
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Two of those cities are in states that are not considered competitive. In Missouri, where Trump has a solid lead in the polls, a Republican has won during the past four presidential elections. In Illinois, where Democrat Hillary Clinton has a double-digit lead in most polls, a Democrat has won during the past six presidential elections. Pennsylvania is a state where the race is closer, and Trump is hoping that he can win, although a Democrat has won the past six presidential elections.
For months, Trump has alleged that voter fraud is rampant and, in the past few days, he has suggested that the results on Election Day might not be accurate. At other rallies, Trump has urged his followers to visit polling locations in neighborhoods other than their own and watch - a vague suggestion that some voting rights activists have interpreted as a call for voter intimidation.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the spin room after the first presidential debate against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at Hofstra University, Monday, Sept. 26, 2016, in Hempstead, N.Y. (Evan Vucci / AP)
A couple of months ago, I had a nasty chore that I have to perform every so often. I had misquoted what a politician said in 1992, and a co-worker noticed the discrepancy. I wrote a correction, which the Tribune promptly published.
Does making a mistake like that cause me pain? Well, yes, sort of like the pain I'd get from being bitten by a wolverine and then dousing the wound with Tabasco. But sometimes mistakes happen, and when they do, the Tribune makes a point of letting our readers know.
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It's not hard to get a correction when a reputable newspaper gets something wrong. Wednesday's edition of The New York Times included 13. The Wall Street Journal had four. The Tribune had none, but it prominently featured a phone number and an email address, inviting readers to report errors.
Donald Trump tells voters the news media do not provide honest information. "They will attack you. They will slander you. They will seek to destroy your career and your family," he insists. "They will lie, lie, lie, and then again they will do worse than that."
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Funny thing. As an opinion columnist, I've written dozens of columns disputing, contradicting, rebutting and even ridiculing him. I've met him and his campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, and emailed with her.
Yet neither of them nor anyone else associated with his campaign has ever asked for a correction of anything I've written. If I'm one of the journalists lying about him, why don't they point out my false claims and force the Tribune to set the record straight?
Maybe they've been too busy meeting with his attorneys about the lawsuits he's planning. After The New York Times ran a story about two women who said he had sexually assaulted them, Trump threatened to sue for libel. His wife, Melania, threatened to sue People magazine after one of the alleged victims, a People writer, recalled a chat with her on the street.
Neither lawsuit will ever come to pass. If he were to sue the Times, Trump would have to undergo interrogation about these and other accusations. His ex-wives and girlfriends could be deposed. So could his children, his friends, his enemies and his employees, past and present.
From those depositions, the Times' lawyers might learn a lot of things that Trump would rather they didn't. In spite of all his bluster, Reuters reports, he hasn't sued a newspaper for libel since 1984 when he took the Chicago Tribune and its then-architecture critic, Paul Gapp, to court for disparaging a skyscraper Trump had proposed. Trump lost and apparently learned a lesson.
It's harder for a public figure to win a libel suit than it is for a private individual, because the legal requirements are different. But even a famous person has only to prove that the newspaper published a false story that harmed his or her reputation and knew or should have known the story was false. (Melania Trump would have no chance suing People because the offending passage, true or not, wasn't damaging.) Such lawsuits rarely get filed and even more rarely succeed because news organizations hardly ever do what the defamation laws punish.
Trump's fulminations against the coverage of his campaign are equally hollow. He doesn't ask for corrections because, as a rule, there is nothing to correct.
Newspapers routinely acknowledge when they get facts wrong because their credibility is all they have. Trump doesn't admit or retract falsehoods, because his falsehoods are deliberate.
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PolitiFact has documented that 53 percent of his statements are entirely false and only 4 percent are entirely true. (For Hillary Clinton, the figures are 12 percent entirely false and 24 percent entirely true.)
He thinks the news media are biased against him. What they are really biased against is his flagrant, incessant lying about matters large and small.
Clinton has told her share of lies which the news media have exposed. The difference is that her misstatements are limited in number and scope, while he emits a never-ending torrent of outlandish fictions, which he goes on repeating long after each one has been exposed. His approach is a repudiation of the very idea that factual reality matters, which happens to be a sacred tenet of honest journalism.
Trump spouts brazen misinformation every time he opens his mouth, and he resents being called on it. But when he makes war on the truth, he shouldn't be surprised to find the news media mounting a defense.
Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.
Download "Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century" in the free Printers Row app, available at www.printersrowapp.com.
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schapman@chicagotribune.com
Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 and Facebook.
During a campaign stop in Florida, Donald Trump said the reality of the election is "a small handful of global special interests rigging the system." Oct. 13, 2016. (C-SPAN) (Chicago Tribune)
Colorado Springs, Colo. We are three weeks from the election, and very close to the edge.
Retiree Gerald Miller, a volunteer at Donald Trump's rally here, is confident his man will win on Nov. 8 unless there's foul play.
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Miller, wearing an NRA pin and a tea party cap over his long hair, shares Trump's concern that the election may be "rigged" by the Clinton campaign. "It is enough to skew the election. They can swing it either way," he said, particularly because Hillary Clinton may have "the FBI working for her" in committing the fraud.
So what happens if Clinton is declared the winner? "Donald Trump is going to holler fraud if he doesn't win," figured Miller, who is white and says he has PTSD from "racial violence" he suffered in the military. "I think we're on the verge of a civil war, a racial war. This could be the spark that sets it off."
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I fear Miller may be right.
Objectively, Trump is in big trouble; master handicapper Stuart Rothenberg wrote for The Washington Post online on Tuesday that Trump's path to Electoral College victory is "nonexistent" and said he could win fewer than 200 electoral votes.
But I spent a couple of hours before the rally in this indoor show ring talking to many Trump supporters and found them in states of denial and fury. I didn't find one who expects Trump to lose. To varying degrees, most agreed with Trump that the election process is rigged. And some predicted ominous things if Trump loses if not violence, a mass rejection of the legitimacy of the democratic process.
Ann Macomber, a Christian, retired teacher and Trump volunteer handing out fliers saying "Hillary Clinton is coming for your guns," told me the voting system in Colorado has been "infiltrated": dead people voting, voters with bogus addresses, precincts that report more votes than registered voters. "It's happening. It's sad," Macomber said. "If we lose this election, we can't trust anything in America anymore. We're not sovereign."
Some observers dismiss Trump's talk of a "stolen" and "rigged" election as just more rantings of a narcissist who can't accept that he is almost certain to lose. But the talk of election fraud is more nefarious than that and clearly an effort to destabilize the post-election environment.
In early August, Trump consigliere Roger Stone declared that there is "widespread voter fraud" and argued that "if there's voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience and the government will no longer be the government." In an interview with the conservative outlet Breitbart, Stone said Trump has "gotta put them on notice that their inauguration will be a rhetorical bloodbath."
Now the head of Breitbart News is the head of the Trump campaign, and Trump, who had quieted the fraud talk when he was improving in the polls, is raising it more than ever.
"Voter fraud is all too common," Trump told a few thousand people Tuesday afternoon in Colorado Springs, but if you mention it, he said, "they say bad things about you, they call you a racist." He scolded Republican leaders for saying "everything is peachy" with the election process and warned that this could be the year "America truly lost its independence." Warned Trump: "It's going to be a one-party system. This is your final shot."
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He particularly scolded the press, which "created a rigged system and poisoned the minds of so many of our voters." But he also found corruption in voter surveys ("I don't believe the polls anymore") and in his opponent ("many times worse than Watergate").
"We won't let them stop maybe the greatest movement in the history of our country!" Trump said, prompting chants of "USA!," some foul language shouted at the press corps and, after the rally, a mass chant of "Shame on you!" directed at the press risers.
The candidate's reckless closing message that nothing is on the level not Democrats, not the press, not the polls, not Republican leaders, not even the integrity of the voting process has left many of his supporters prepared to declare the election results illegitimate.
Joseph Salmons, wearing a "Les Deplorables" T-shirt and pin, told me the election won't end anything. "The movement's starting. Even if he doesn't win, it's gonna tip," he said.
But tip into what? "I sincerely hope people don't lose their minds," Salmons said.
If they manage to keep their cool, it will be despite the best efforts of Trump.
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Washington Post Writers Group
Dana Milbank is a Washington Post columnist.
@Milbank
That Hillary Clinton would make a better president than Donald Trump should be evident to any mammal. Substantiating this assertion does not require one to make a positive case for Clinton, so disqualifying are Trump's many negative qualities.
Clinton does not challenge freedom of the press or threaten her political opponents with jail time. She is not a sociopath. She does not call for banning members of an entire religion from entering the country, or killing the families of terrorists, or any number of other blatantly unconstitutional measures. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who has since endorsed Trump, previously said that the Republican nominee was an "erratic individual" who could not be trusted with the nuclear codes. Whatever one thinks about Clinton, launching a nuclear strike against another country out of pure spite is difficult to imagine.
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The case for Clinton, then, boils down to one's appreciation for the democratic values to which all of our elected officials, from alderman on up, are expected to adhere. Clinton respects those principles, and Trump does not. The case for Clinton transcends ideology because Trump's strongest convictions have nothing to do with standard political principles and everything to do with sheer self-aggrandizement. What's most important to Trump is Trump.
Many conservative writers and intellectuals recognize this, which is why so many of them, along with former Republican administration officials, have endorsed Clinton, however grudgingly. Nonetheless, a significant number of conservatives and Republicans who realize the awfulness of Trump including many of those who have signed up to the amorphous #NeverTrump movement refuse to endorse the one candidate actually capable of beating him: Hillary Clinton. Operating under the delusion that Trump and Clinton are equally bad options, some anti-Trump conservatives have refused to vote, or pledged to support a third-party candidate.
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As much as some of its denizens might wish to deny it, the conceit behind #NeverTrump (and the independent conservative campaign of Evan McMullin that arose from it) is effectively pro-Clinton, diverting elsewhere votes that would normally go to the GOP nominee. But at the end of the day, a posture of #NeverTrump that does not acknowledge the preferability of Clinton is a cop out, particularly for people who work in and write about politics. Come Nov. 8, either Clinton or Trump is going to be elected president, and it's the job of people who opine about politics to inform voters which of the two options is better.
That some cannot testifies to just how poisonous is the partisanship in our country, to the point where even those conservatives who acknowledge Trump's unfitness cannot bring themselves to admit that Clinton represents an even marginal improvement.
American conservatives still wavering about supporting Clinton can look to an unlikely historical parallel for moral guidance: the French Socialists in 2002. That year, Jean-Marie Le Pen, then-leader of the far right National Front, won a surprise second place in the presidential election, defeating the Socialist Party candidate and entering into a runoff against center-right incumbent Jacques Chirac. In the second round, Socialist voters held their noses and rallied to Chirac, their longtime political adversary, helping deliver him an 82 percent victory. In so doing, they not only beat Le Pen, but sent a message to the world that, when threatened by a populist movement from the authoritarian right, France would defend its republican values.
Just as French citizens from many different political tendencies backed Chirac as the democratic alternative to neo-fascism in 2002, so today must those Americans who support liberal democracy conservatives included hope for a Clinton victory. Granted, the analogy isn't perfect. In France, Socialist voters were forced to choose between a center-right candidate and an extreme right one, whereas here conservatives are being asked to vote for a mainstream Democrat over a nominal Republican. On the other hand, Trump has a far greater chance of winning the presidency than Le Pen ever did, making the role of right-of-center voters even more consequential to his defeat. Ultimately, the basic principle in both elections is the same: small "r" republicans must support the democratic option over an explicitly authoritarian one.
Some #NeverTrump Republicans, in an attempt to nourish their belief that the Republican and Democratic nominees are ethically equivalent, cite President Barack Obama's executive overreach as cause to believe that Clinton would be just as destructive to the rule of law as Trump. They're right to be concerned about these tendencies, but would executive orders on immigration and overzealous implementation of Dodd-Frank financial regulations really compare to a politicized IRS that rivals that of the Nixon administration, or a Justice Department war on the news media, or a Russian invasion of Eastern Europe while the U.S. is under a president who says NATO is "obsolete?"
Considering what the world would look like with a President Trump, complaining about Clinton's faults (and they are many) is a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Any conservative alert enough to have joined #NeverTrump must wake up and realize that it's his or her civic duty to protect the country from the ravages of a megalomaniac by voting for Hillary Clinton.
Los Angeles Times
James Kirchick is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative. His book "The End of Europe" is forthcoming from Yale University Press.
In this Dec. 19, 1998 file photo, then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton watches President Bill Clinton pause as he thanks those Democratic members of the House of Representatives who voted against impeachment. (Susan Walsh, AP)
For 18 years I have taught a freshman seminar on "Scandals and Reputations" at Northwestern University. There has never been a shortage of material.
This fall I could run the class 24/7. When I began teaching the course, back in the days of Monica-gate and her stained blue dress, I believed that scandal alienated voters, especially first-timers. Over time, I have come to doubt that easy assumption. Scandal can promote civil engagement, not prevent it. It doesn't turn us off. It turns us on.
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What does it mean to come of age in a scurrilous age? At a time in which politics reads like fiction? How does scandal affect the newly minted citizen? The mud of disrepute draws in students, committing them to politics, if not to politicians. I confess that my first-year students are not a representative sample of American political beliefs. Progressives are most common, with some Libertarians in the mix. Conservatives often hide in an airless closet. As the class began, no student intended to vote Republican, a consensus unlikely to change. To ensure that students are exposed to the wide range of scandals, I take the role of the Trump Whisperer.
These young women and men are entering civil society. As 18-year-olds, they are casting their inaugural votes just as my students have in each quadrennial year. They are becoming politically responsible in a world of cynicism, frustration and anger but passion, hope and optimism, too.
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Scandal is part of our political birthright, and it may be beneficial.
Scandal has long been tied to democracy, and, in fact, may be essential. The late conservative thinker, William Safire, wrote a vivid fact-based novel, "Scandalmonger," depicting the vicious whispers of our Founding Fathers, recognizing that it was scandal that brought out the supporters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, not their positions on global trade. Since then, few elections have been only about issues: Those are the boring ones. Scandal keeps otherwise apolitical citizens engaged in selecting their leaders. Gossip makes us care about people, and from people to ideas. Perhaps we should wish for saints, but if we nominated saints, what would we discuss?
Some claim that harmful effects of slander have become more evident recently. In 1991 a quarter-century back Suzanne Garment made this case in her book "Scandal." She worried that America was being overwhelmed by what she labeled the "culture of mistrust," a toxic brew that owed much to the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate. Garment worried that those children coming of age in the 1980s the parents of my students were developing a crusty cynicism that would depress citizenship.
Her argument was plausible, but talking with my students over the years, it does not seem accurate. Surely the esteem in which politicians are held is tarnished, but it was hardly sterling in the first place. Mark Twain opined, "There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress." Students believe that most politicians are corrupt, yet they still hold to a belief in civic virtue.
Young people such as my students disdain political leaders as a group and are less likely to vote than their elders (about 38 percent in 2012), despite the many voter registration efforts on college campuses. Still, if they do not always vote, it is wrong to suggest that they have given up on America. They talk politics through gossip. Scandal seduces them, and also provides a challenge: Will the next generation prove to be more righteous?
Over the decades I have found that scandal of personal failings (Donald Trump as shock jock) and public policy (Hillary Clinton's Wall Street lovefest) capture student interest, rather than dissuade it. These claims keep politics alive in daily discourse in the way textbooks never could. When we discuss scandal, we think about politics.
For college freshmen, this is no minor service. As teens become adults, they learn that the world of politics is as fascinating as the soaps. The world would be less riveting without sinners. Scandal is good to think about, and fun, too. To be politically invested depends on the belief that you can do better; this hope is made possible by the belief that others will do better. And whether American politics benefits, my seminar certainly does.
Gary Alan Fine, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, is the author of "Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept and Controversial."
FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2016 file photo, copies of President Barack Obama's fiscal 2017 federal budget are displayed by the Senate Budget Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)
If you're busy shielding impressionable children from one presidential candidate's sexual boasts, or busy being one of the other candidate's irredeemable deplorables, you may have missed this news: The Obama administration confirms that the government's annual budget deficits, which had declined since the close of the Great Recession, are rising again.
The deficit for the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 was $587 billion. That's 34 percent higher than the previous year's deficit. When we peeked Tuesday at USDebtClock.org a live-action website that delivers terrible news to despairing readers our government's debt stood just north of $19.7 trillion. That's more than $60,600 for every man, woman and innocent child. Oh, and those numbers don't include the unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Did you know that the number of Americans 65 and older will explode by almost 40 percent over the next decade?
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So if we could interject one question into Wednesday night's final presidential debate of 2016, it would be this:
Secretary Clinton, Mr. Trump, you have children. Why aren't you scared?
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We know these major-party candidates are blissful about Debt Mountain because each of them plans to increase its height. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculates that Hillary Clinton's policies would add $200 billion to the national debt over the next decade. She would raise tax revenue but devote that money to new spending, not to retiring debt. And Donald Trump? Because he would cut taxes, his policies would grow the national debt by $5.3 trillion over the same decade.
Here please add your screed of choice to this editorial. Among your options:
We wouldn't be in this fix if President Barack Obama hadn't been forced to clean up the economic debacle that started on George Bush's watch. If Obama and the Democratic Congress of his early years had spent more money to stimulate the economy, we'd have more jobs and more tax revenue today.
Obama has nearly doubled a national debt that was $10.6 trillion when he took office in January 2009. He's been spending all he can for eight years, the better to buy votes for himself and other Democratic candidates. When did you last hear him warn Americans about how this vast debt will constrict their children's futures?
Stop litigating how we got here. What matters is where we're headed. And with Clinton or Trump, the likely answer is: toward doom. In our next recession it's sure to arrive, the only question is when what will we do if the world gets nervous and stops buying U.S. government securities? Then what, big spenders?
I'm from Illinois. Debt is all I know.
During this campaign, Americans have heard next to nothing about these enormous obligations debts taken in the name of taxpayers, and debts that taxpayers truly will have to repay. We'll listen Wednesday night for clues that Clinton or Trump cares in the least about this.
We'll also be mulling one of the Obama administration's disclosures in its acknowledgment of the fiscal 2016 deficit. Among the areas where spending is rising quickly: interest payments to investors, here and overseas, on that nearly $20 trillion national debt.
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Which prompts another debate question: Can either of you suggest a less productive way than that for the U.S. government to spend taxpayers' dollars?
If you're fed up with state lawmakers raiding the road fund to pay for emergencies of their own making, you might be attracted to the notion of keeping transportation revenue in a "lock box" so it can't be spent on other things.
If you worry that our highways and bridges are in disrepair despite the taxes you pay to maintain them, you might like the idea of voting for a so-called "safe roads" amendment.
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Don't do it.
On Nov. 8, voters will be asked whether to change the Illinois Constitution to safeguard dollars taxes paid at the pump, fees collected at driver's license facilities, and others that are supposed to be dedicated to roads, bridges and infrastructure statewide.
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State and local governments have regularly skimmed that money to cover other expenses. It's just too tempting for elected officials who are desperate to fulfill promises they made, but don't have the money to pay for. In Springfield, that's every year.
Supporters of the amendment say $6.8 billion has been swept from the road fund in the past decade. They say our roads are in disrepair and our construction workers are underemployed because lawmakers have treated those transportation dollars as a "slush fund."
Acknowledging their own lack of discipline, those same lawmakers are asking voters to change the constitution to protect that money. Think about that.
If the consensus among lawmakers is that the road fund shouldn't be raided, then they should stop raiding it.
Many of those same lawmakers have proved remarkably averse to making changes for other (and better) reasons.
Illinois voters overwhelmingly support two issues, term limits and redistricting reform, that the legislators resist: The General Assembly its Democratic leaders, primarily will not listen. They've refused repeatedly to allow votes on the House and Senate floors. To get around their elected representatives, citizens have collected signatures and raised and spent millions of dollars trying to get redistricting on the ballot. Citizens also have lobbied for term limits. Yet they've been thwarted by those very politicians.
If you're keeping score: The Illinois Supreme Court in August blocked from the ballot a citizen-generated redistricting reform amendment. Measures that would put term limits to a vote always get stuck in the committees controlled by House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, two leaders who have long benefited from the lack of term limits: Together they've spent 84 years in Springfield.
Yet Madigan and Cullerton responded swiftly to the interests of road-builders the unions, the construction companies, the campaign donors who demanded a constitutional change. Rank-and-file lawmakers got on board too. They know spending more on road projects provides them the opportunity to scissor pretty red ribbons back home. Putting this amendment on the November ballot passed with overwhelming support from both parties.
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We still say: Vote "no."
Yes, we wish lawmakers would stop dipping into that money. Again, that is completely within their control. But a constitutional amendment would take away the flexibility required if there's an unexpected drop in revenue, a serious emergency or a crushing recession. It would be a mistake to protect road-building at the expense of education, social services, health care and other needs.
Who doesn't want safe roads? We all do. But transportation needs should not be enshrined in the constitution and prioritized above all others.
Vote "no."
Now, on to another measure we hope Cook County voters will support: Vote "yes" to abolish the office of recorder of deeds and merge its duties into the clerk's office. The ballot question will let voters decide whether to keep a countywide elected office or eliminate it by the end of 2020. It's a rare opportunity for Cook taxpayers to downsize a government designed for the 19th century.
And we mean rare. The last chance voters had to eliminate an elected countywide position was in 1972.
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We hope voters agree these two offices should merge. It would save roughly $800,000 annually and make county government more consumer-friendly. This one is a no-brainer for anyone who writes property tax checks to Cook County.
To recap: Vote "no" on the safe roads amendment. If you live in Cook County, vote "yes" to combine the offices of recorder of deeds and clerk.
Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley, seen here at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2015, was sentenced in Ohio on Oct. 19, 2016, to 14 months in federal prison for her role in a bribes-for-contracts scheme there. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
The former CEO of Chicago's longtime red-light cameras vendor ousted as part of a $2 million bribery scandal at City Hall was sentenced Wednesday in Ohio to 14 months in federal prison for her role in a smaller bribes-for-contracts scheme there.
Karen Finley, 57, who was CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems, Inc., still faces sentencing next month in Chicago for her part in the massive, long-running corruption scheme that brought traffic cameras here.
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The scheme was first exposed by the Chicago Tribune in 2012.
Finley pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery in federal courts in both Cincinnati and Chicago after working out a plea deal with prosecutors that calls for her to serve her prison terms at the same time.
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"This sort of crime goes to the very integrity of government," the Columbus Dispatch quoted U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson as telling Finley at her sentencing. "It certainly calls into question whether the competitive bidding process is real or a sham. At least with respect to your situation and Redflex's situation, it would appear this playing field was less than level."
Earlier this month, Finley wrote a plea for leniency to the judge in Ohio, calling Redflex "a toxic and soul-sucking place to work."
"I do not think I will ever know the exact reasons that I participated in the fraud," she wrote. "Looking back now, I believe it may have been a combination of things, including a misguided sense of loyalty to Redflex, a fear of losing my job . . . and an unfortunate desire to fit in."
She apologized for "letting the good people of Ohio and Illinois down."
Finley has cooperated in several investigations of Redflex as the scandal spread around the country and to Australia, home to its publicly traded parent company, Redflex Holdings Ltd.
She provided key testimony in January at the Chicago trial of John Bills, a longtime City Hall insider who took hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes and lavish gifts from Redflex that included a condominium, a Mercedes Benz and pricey hotel stays throughout the country over the course of the 10-year conspiracy.
Finley testified that in exchange for the bribes, Bills, then the No. 2 official in then-Mayor Richard Daley's Department of Transportation, steered the contracts to Redflex and helped grow the city's camera program to the largest in the nation. At its peak, 384 cameras peppered the city, raking in more than $600 million in automated traffic fines.
Finley told jurors that Bills, a longtime precinct captain in the powerful patronage army of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, instructed company executives which lobbyists to hire and even met with Daley and Madigan to discuss the program.
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At the trial, Bills' lawyers tried to deflect blame by asserting the bribe money went to elected officials and well-connected lobbyists, but he has not provided evidence to back up those assertions.
No elected officials have been charged or implicated in Chicago.
Bills was convicted on all 20 counts and then sentenced in August to 10 years in federal prison.
Last month, a Bills' friend hired by Redflex to act as a "bagman" was sentenced to six months in federal prison. Martin O'Malley had pleaded guilty and testified as well at Bills' trial.
Last year, Finley pleaded guilty in Columbus to the one bribery count for helping to steer at least $70,000 concealed as campaign contributions to elected officials, records show.
As in Chicago, the records show that Redflex exerted pressure on Columbus officials to expand their city contracts to avoid competition.
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One lobbyist in Ohio was sentenced to 15 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of extortion. He admitted he threatened Redflex executives with the loss of contracts if they did not make the political contributions.
Since the scandal broke in Ohio, state lawmakers there have banned red-light camera tickets unless an officer is present when the infraction occurs. Columbus officials have said they have no plans to restart a red-light camera program.
Chicago's automated enforcement program is now run by a new vendor and still remains the largest in the nation. A series of Tribune reports have revealed unfair enforcement practices, failed program oversight and a dubious safety record.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has appointed a panel of experts led by Northwestern University to study the program and recommend reforms.
dkidwell@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @DavidKidwell1
Dear Tom,
Does Lake Michigan experience high and low tides?
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Bruce Nathanson, Glenview
Dear Bruce,
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Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes are considered to be essentially nontidal. That being said, Lake Michigan, like all bodies of water, does experience tidal fluctuations caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. However, they are so minute that they are masked by much greater fluctuations of the lake level produced by wind and air pressure and are unnoticeable. There are twice-daily tides of 0.5 to 1.5 inches on Lake Michigan, and Dave Schwab of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Ann Arbor, Mich., notes the existence of a larger Lake Michigan tidal swing in the Bay of Green Bay, where local geography can generate fluctuations up to four inches.
As a longtime educator, stepping into the role of principal on Tuesday at Olive-Mary Stitt Elementary School was not a stretch for newly-appointed State Sen. Tom Rooney.
"It better come naturally to me," said Rooney, who spent the morning at the Arlington Heights school while participating in the Illinois Principals Association's Principal for a Day program, which brings federal and state legislators into the classroom.
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Rooney, 48, an economics and history teacher at West Leyden High School in Northlake and a former mayor of Rolling Meadows, was selected by the Republican party last month to represent the 27th Senate District after the resignation of former Sen. Matt Murphy, who stepped down to take a job in the private sector.
But aside from a spirited reading of children's author Doreen Cronin's "Duck for President," Rooney steered clear of politics, and instead delivered a mini-civics lesson to Olive second graders who are studying the branches of government, followed by joining in a high-energy kindergarten physical education class game of Cops and Robbers.
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Kindergartners at Olive-Mary Stitt Elementary School joined forces during their physical education class on Oct. 18 with newly-appointed State Sen. Tom Rooney, left, who participated in the Illinois Principals Association's Principal for a Day program, which brings federal and state legislators into the classroom. (Karen Ann Cullotta / Pioneer Press)
"I need to keep my feet on the ground, because the Springfield culture can suck people in," said Rooney, who plans to keep teaching at West Leyden while he serves as a legislator through a job sharing program at the high school.
"There's nothing like teaching and being around kids to help you stay grounded," he added.
Olive Principal Becky FitzPatrick said she was excited to learn that one of the Olive neighborhood's own state legislators would be their guest.
"He told the kids how the buttons work when you're voting in the statehouse, what his desk looks like, and about his experiences working as a page during the summer when he was a teenager," FitzPatrick said.
Observing Rooney racing around the Olive gymnasium with the kindergartners, FitzPatrick added: "I told him to wear comfy shoes, and I'm so excited he heeded my advice."
kcullotta@tribpub.com
Twitter @kcullotta
If someone were to ask me about baked goods, shopping or US Weekly magazine, I could probably teach people a thing or two. But for this week, I am writing about a fascinating topic I know little about alcohol.
You see, my good friend, and Buffalo Grove resident, Adam Kosh just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the store he co-owns with his family Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors.
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After speaking with Adam, I definitely added a few new words to my vocabulary. In fact, words like "cruvinet" and "Pappy Van Winkle" are just rolling off my tongue now.
Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors began in the summer of 1966 when Kosh's father, Don Kosh, opened Foremost Liquors.
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"We changed our name to Action Liquors, then to Armanetti Liquors and in 2006, we became Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors," Adam Kosh said.
But the ownership remained the same whether the business was in downtown Antioch or its current location.
"My father still comes in several days per week," he said. "And my mom comes in each week, too."
Adam Kosh did not always know he would be in charge of the day-to-day operations of a 16,000-square-foot liquor store known for having one of the best selections in Lake County.
"I went to law school, got a law degree and went on to get a master's in labor and industrial relations," said Kosh, who worked as a labor lawyer for about five years. "During that time, I decided to give our family business a try. So in October of 1997, I started working at the store and I just really loved it. That was almost 20 years ago and I've never looked back."
Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors now is building a cool-looking bar inside the store.
"We have an on-premise license, so people can drink in the store," Kosh said. "When the bar is finished, you'll be able to buy a drink. We'll have things you can't get anywhere other than getting it off our tap system, like limited release items. We'll have a 16-bottle cruvinet, a three-tap beer keg system and assorted spirit items. We'll also have some very hard-to-get spirit items for sale by the pour, such as Pappy Van Winkle."
If you're wondering what in the world a cruvinet is like I was it means a cabinet-looking thing that holds a bunch of wine bottles. Kosh told me the cruvinet keeps the wine bottles under pressure so they don't spoil. You can serve them by the glass.
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I'm definitely going to casually pepper future conversations with the word "cruvinet," so I sound more worldly.
Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors also is known for their whiskey barrel picks.
"We go to Kentucky and taste from different barrels of whiskey," Kosh said. "We pick our favorites, which get bottled and sent out to us."
In addition to the assortment of liquor, Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors boasts incredible employees.
"We couldn't do this without them," Kosh said. "We're like family. That's part of what makes us we have such great people here."
One employee even has worked there for 40 years. Employees also have specialties, with some dedicated to wine, some dedicated to beer and some dedicated to liquor.
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"We also love the Antioch community," Kosh said. "I'm on the chamber of commerce board, and we're active with charitable organizations within the community. We also love seeing our customers who come all the way up from Chicago or down from Wisconsin."
He also noted upcoming events at the store, including its annual "Spirit Tasting" from 1 to 5 p.m. Nov. 12 and a holiday/champaign tasting from 1 to 5 p.m. Dec. 3. When the new bar is complete, the store will have a "50th and a little beyond" celebration, he said.
"The last 19 years at Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors have flown by and I'm looking forward to the next 19," Kosh said. "I love working with my parents, and I feel so lucky to own a family business with them. It makes me look forward to hopefully having at least one of my children as the future generation of the store."
For information about Antioch Fine Wine and Liquors, visit www.antiochwine.com.
Susan Dubin is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press. Reach her at gabbin@susandubin.com.
I am writing to share my opinion on the design and costs of the proposed new Hinsdale Middle School. Substantial data on school construction costs in similar communities in Illinois has been reviewed, analyzed and benchmarked to arrive at the cost presented to the community.
Related projects in Northfield, Barrington and Inverness all have higher per-square-foot costs compared to the proposed new HMS. Furthermore, outside of Illinois, in the top 25 ZIP codes similar to Hinsdale and Clarendon Hills, new middle school projects average 15 percent higher per-square-foot costs than the proposed design of the new HMS.
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New schools being built around the country have modern efficiencies, diverse amenities and unparalleled technology to support the ever-changing way children learn. There is such a need today to ensure the appropriate school environment is safe and open to innovation and new technologies to allow our children to compete with the rest of the world.
Staying in the existing HMS will continue to demonstrate to our children our community is not invested in their future. Voting Yes in November will prove we are a community committed to advancing our children to the forefront of learning, while at the same time producing a remarkable school which reflects our community appropriately.
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Craig Cassell
global leader, education sector
Cushman and Wakefield, Inc.
A Harvey man has been charged with forcing a minor he brought across state lines into Wisconsin to engage in prostitution, federal authorities announced Wednesday.
Deronarte Norwood, 30, pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon during an arraignment in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Rowland in Chicago, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois. He is charged with sex trafficking and knowingly transporting a minor to engage in prostitution.
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In May 2015, Norwood brought the minor to Wisconsin from Illinois for the purpose of engaging in sex for money, authorities said.
If convicted, Norwood faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, authorities said.
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Norwood was arrested Tuesday night in Waukegan. He is being held in custody until a detention hearing on Oct. 24.
Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
When he stood before a judge and was offered drug court for the first time, Chris Marr basically said thanks, but no thanks.
But after spending some time "drying out" in the county jail, the 21-year-old Mokena man had a change of heart and realized he needed help to kick his heroin habit.
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He is now one of about 75 people in Will County's drug court program. He credits that time he spent in jail -- away from heroin's grip -- as the key for getting him into drug court.
On Tuesday, Marr shared his struggles with U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, who was at the Will County government building in Joliet to discuss the drug court program and the ongoing epidemic of heroin addiction.
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"If it wasn't for that, I'd be dead or I'd be in prison awaiting my release date so I could relapse again," Marr told Durbin about the program.
The drug court offers offenders a program that trades prison time and a felony record for support, treatment and counseling.
Though cocaine was the drug of choice when the program started in 2000, heroin addictions are the most common today. Participants meet weekly with a drug court team that includes a judge, case workers and treatment experts.
"We've had a pretty dramatic change in America," Durbin said, noting heroin was once primarily an inner-city problem. "There isn't a town to small or a town too wealthy to avoid heroin."
Will County Coroner Patrick O'Neil told Durbin the county already has set a new record for heroin deaths this year. So far, 56 deaths have been attributed to heroin overdose. Previously, the record was 53 deaths in 2012. O'Neil anticipates the number will continue to climb this year and could top 70 by year's end.
Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
Durbin has supported measures that would have increased funding for drug court programs, expanded Medicaid coverage for treatment and improve access to Naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of opioid overdoses. He added that this year pharmaceutical companies have agreed to decrease the production of opioid painkillers by 25 percent. He noted that pharmaceutical companies have produced 14 billion pills annually or enough for every American to have a one month supply.
He also supported a measure for the Centers for Disease Control to set up guidelines for physicians when prescribing painkillers.
Marr's been clean for about seven months.
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Marr, who suffered a back injury at the age of 13, said his addiction started with pain killers. But when doctors cut him off, he realized he could go into Chicago to buy heroin. He overdosed three times. Each time, his heart stopped and had to be shocked into rhythm, he said.
"Until you change who they are and how they view the world, they're just going to go back," he said, stressing the time he spent in the county jail helped him realize he needed help.
Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow said he will continue the fight against heroin and expects county officials to start another round of talks across the county to make parents, educators, health care providers and others aware of heroin's toll.
Alicia Fabbre is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Police sought the publics help in identifying a man accused of robbing a bank Oct. 18, 2016, in Frankfort, officials said. (FBI Chicago Bandit Tracker / Handout)
Police are seeking the public's help in identifying a man accused of robbing a bank Tuesday afternoon in Frankfort, officials said.
The U.S. Bank, 9795 West U.S. 30, was robbed and a "weapon was implied," according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation..
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The suspect is a 30 to 40-year-old white male wearing blue jeans and a dark gray or black long-sleeved tee shirt. He is approximately 6 feet tall with medium build, officials said..
The suspect fled westbound on foot, the Frankfort police statement said.
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Anyone with information should contact the FBI at 312-421-6700.
Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
A 43-year-old New Lenox man was charged with battery following an argument at a Frankfort bar about the man's son entering the military, police said.
Bernard Powers, of the 1100 block of Georgia Way in New Lenox, is charged with a Frankfort ordinance violation for an incident occurring at Jameson's Pub, 9545 St. Francis Rd., according to Frankfort Police Deputy Chief Kevin Keegan.
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"Powers' son is going into the military, and somehow (the victim) found out about it, and he wanted to give his approval to Bernard and shake Bernard's hand," Keegan said.
The two men apparently had an ongoing riff, Keegan said, "they don't like each other."
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"Bernard didn't want to shake his hand," the deputy chief said.
The alleged victim then texted messages to Powers' son, who showed the texts to Powers, "and that caused Bernard to go off on (the victim) and push him into the front door," Keegan said.
The alleged victim, a 31-year-old Tinley Park man, was treated on the scene for a "cut to the head" by Frankfort paramedics, who then transported him to an Olympia Fields hospital, Keegan said.
Powers is scheduled to appear in local court at the Frankfort Township building on Nov. 10. If found guilty, the judge will determine any fine or penalties, which may include paying the victim's medical costs, Keegan said. If Powers pleads not guilty on Nov. 10, the court will set a date for trial.
Powers was released on his own recognizance.
Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Tinley Park will study staffing levels and productivity of several village departments and compare their work with counterparts in similar size communities.
The Village Board on Tuesday approved hiring Matrix Consulting Group, at a cost of $42,700, to evaluate departments including the clerk's office, village manager, human resources and finance.
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The study is expected to take 10 weeks to complete, with the findings likely to be presented at a Village Board or committee meeting.
The California-based firm will look at areas such as productivity, use of technology, if there are overlapping or duplicated functions and whether some tasks now being performed can be eliminated, according to a village memo. The study wouldn't look at departments such as police or public works.
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Matrix also will survey employee attitudes toward current staffing, services, organization and management issues, according to that document.
Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
Part of the work also will involve comparing findings, such as staffing levels, to six comparable "public entities," with Matrix ultimately making recommendations to the village based on its findings.
Matrix is doing separate work from another study being performed by a Maryland firm, Paypoint HR, which is assessing employee salaries and benefits in certain village departments. The Village Board earlier this month approved hiring the firm, which is being paid $37,500 for the work.
In other business Tuesday, trustees approved a special use permit for Holladay Properties, which plans to build a 120-room WoodSpring Suites extended stay hotel at 18644 West Creek Drive, northwest of the interchange of Harlem Avenue and Interstate 80.
Indiana-based Holladay holds exclusive rights to develop WoodSpring hotels in the Chicago area, having completed two of 15 planned locations. It has built two of the hotels, in Darien and Romeoville. Construction of the Tinley Park hotel is expected to get under way next spring.
The board also adopted a resolution recommending to the Cook County Board of Commissioners a property tax break for commercial space at 17511-17515 Duvan Drive. The resolution supports lowering the assessment level from 25 percent, the typical rate for commercial property, to 10 percent for a 10-year period.
The property owner, Conigan Partners, plans an investment of $250,000 in repairs and improvements at the property, according to the village.
mnolan@tribpub.com
Members of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, search for victims amid the rubble of a destroyed building following reported air strikes in the rebel-held Qatarji neighborhood of the northern city of Aleppo, on Oct. 17, 2016. (KARAM AL-MASRI / Getty-AFP)
Several weeks ago, the United Nations issued a report confirming that without question the Assad regime in Syria is continuing to use chemical weapons against its domestic rebel adversaries and the populations living near them.
Since that time, further reports of chemical weapons used by Assad around Aleppo have been appearing with regularity.
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The United States government immediately responded to the UN report with high dudgeon, issuing sharp warnings and appealing to the UN Security Council to take appropriate measures against Assad and his forces. Few commented on the bizarre character of this request. But we've been here before, and what's changed is startling indeed.
Only four short years ago, in August 2012, President Barack Obama stated that he had drawn a "red line" that Assad was not to cross, promising to take dramatic, if unspecified, action in Syria if there was confirmation that the Syrian government was using internationally-outlawed chemical weapons. That confirmation was not long in coming, and the president began making threatening utterances about bombing Assad's forces. At the very last moment, however, Obama backed off, ostensibly to seek congressional support, which he had previously disdained.
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Then, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and to much applause, Obama found a way to make any such intervention seem unnecessary. Taking up a Russian hint, he and Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated a solution under which, with Russia's help, all chemical weapons in Assad's arsenal would be eliminated. There were surprisingly few skeptics as Obama then declared a great victory, touting the wisdom of his approach. As recently as July of this year, one supportive national magazine agreed, saying the president's handling of the episode "accomplished everything it set out to do in fact, it surpassed our expectations."
The recent news from the UN that Assad's chemical weapons program is alive and well, and as deadly as ever, is only the most recent proof that the supposed success was an inimitable failure, in fact pure illusion. Contrary to the rosy assessments, there has been a cascade of bad consequences from Obama's supposed judgment and foresight.
Russia's Vladimir Putin, for example, fresh from having duped the president in Syria, drew the correct conclusion that the American president would remain unwilling to fight, while always seeking comfort instead in illusory compacts that have all failed, often with deadly consequences. Putin then occupied Crimea with his uniform-less soldiers and invaded enough of Ukraine to be sure always to be able to destabilize its politics, not to mention those of the European community. He also intervened in Syria, itself.
Erstwhile, American allies in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, having become convinced of American fecklessness, have chosen to go it alone, or with each other, rather than rely on U.S. support. The Iranians have poured men and materiel into Syria sufficient to keep Assad safe from his rebellious people, while fomenting violence in Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere.
And, in the modern world's most frightful calamity, the Syrian people, themselves, those who cannot flee to an increasingly hostile EU, have suffered and died in horrifying ways and numbers, often from the very chemical weapons Obama's supposedly bold move had eliminated. So much for "surpass[ing] expectations."
While this is horrible enough, there is a larger story.
Last spring, White House staffer Benjamin Rhodes explained that the entire "red line" episode was not what it seemed. As Rhodes explained in an interview initially praised by the White House and never disavowed, the president's non-action was part of a larger, secret policy, one of currying favor with Iran.
Apparently in pursuit of Obama's policy of rapprochement with the Iranians, the United States had made major changes to its entire Middle East policy. It turned a cold shoulder toward Israel. It turned a blind eye to Iranian meddling in Iraq, as it made common cause with Iranian militias in fighting ISIS. It provided only tepid support for the Syrian rebels in Syria and for the Saudi effort to counter an Iranian intervention in Yemen (while also not trying to moderate it).
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It has also tolerated countless aggressive acts by Iran itself against U.S. interests, including the taking of hostages, the harassment of U.S. ships in the straits of Hormuz, and the testing and development of ballistic missiles, all in violation of international norms. And it refrained from taking action against an Iranian-backed Assad.
The avatar of this new policy was the Iran nuclear deal, which the Obama administration pursued at almost any cost and that now appears to have numerous secret protocols easing the publicly-announced restrictions on Iran.
Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
Was it worth it? Whatever its long-term effects, it has meant only disaster for the Syrian people who have died in large numbers at Assad's hands. Supported by his unrestrained Russian and Iranian allies, Assad has gone on torturing prisoners, bombing hospitals, and starving cities into submission, and has now gassed those who still hold out, all amidst the gay science of agreeing to short-lived and meaningless treaties with a U.S. left without viable options.
And so, with more irrefutable proof that Assad is using chemical weapons on Syrian citizens again, what can the Obama administration do? The vain gesture of appealing to the UN shows how far we have come. Four years ago, we were in a position to bomb Syria in punishment for its perfidy, perhaps as part of a larger plan to protect ordinary Syrians from Assad and bring about a favorable regime change. Now, we are capable of nothing at all, for fear of hitting the Russian troops and machinery that are keeping the execrable Assad in power, not to mention upsetting the still-recalcitrant Iranians. And, the UN, where Russia has a veto, has predictably done nothing either.
This is tragedy. In our modern usage, we view any experience with injury and pain as a species of tragedy, and the pain and suffering of the Syrians is undeniable. It would be tragic in our modern sense even were it the result of a mere miscalculation or momentary failure.
The ancients, however, had a more nuanced, and ultimately more terrifying, vision of tragedy. This was that man who was sometimes a tool of his own or a people's destruction, usually when a leader became so infused with hubris as to believe his intelligence could outwit not just everyone else, but the gods themselves, only to find that his too-narrow understanding made happen what he was trying to avoid.
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No man, the ancients taught, nor any leader, no matter how astute, could understand matters well enough to be cock-sure of his own intelligence and judgment and deaf to the counsel of others more experienced and thoughtful. At a minimum, a healthy skepticism about one's own largest ideas was essential if disaster to oneself and to innocent people was to be avoided.
The most famous of tragic figures, Oedipus, had such hubris, believing he could overcome the gods' prophecies, even while strangely believing in them in the first place. He destroyed himself and brought horror to others. So too our president's unbreakable confidence in his own insular thinking, kept distant from the cautionary advice of others more experienced than himself and applying his own unvetted governing principles of uncertain provenance, has unleashed forces of incredible destructiveness. This has hardly caused him any harm, but the great mass of Syrians who have not been so fortunate are proof of a tragedy all by themselves.
Robert E. Shapiro, a practicing trial lawyer for Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg LLP, and an adjunct professor of political philosophy at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.
Noted Elgin musician and builder Les Pace here with his cat, Champ died Oct. 12 at the age of 88. (Dino Pace / handout)
Known throughout senior citizen circles for the music and mirth he made and the positive attitude he had, lifelong Elgin resident Les Pace, 88, died Oct. 12 at his home on the city's northeast side.
"Les was a great man," Elgin City Councilman and longtime friend Terry Gavin said. "He was involved in the community and very well-respected."
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In his later years, Pace started a band called Les Pace and the Pacemakers, an act which played pre-rock era big band music, typically for audiences at venues including local VFW and American Legion Posts and the Heritage Ballroom in The Centre of Elgin.
"My father also once was the head of the neighborhood's benevolent association and was very well-known for building quality homes," Dino Pace said.
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In his later years, Les Pace of Elgin played piano and led the band Les Pace and the Pacemakers. Pace died Oct. 12 at the age of 88. (Pace family / handout)
Dino Pace said his father took up piano at the age of 8 and played in bands from the 1940s after he returned from serving in the U.S. Navy through the mid 1960s. He stopped while raising his family.
"Les loved the piano. He practiced a lot when we were kids," Les's younger brother, Jim Pace, 86, said.
Dino Pace noted his father once ran a used car lot on Elgin's northeast side, and according to Jim Pace, Les used to run a fender and body shop, too.
"He didn't get into construction until he was in his early 30s," Dino remembered.
Les Pace had his own company, Les Pace Builders, while Jim Pace had his own James R. Pace Inc. general contracting business.
"Instead of hiring extra guys, we'd help each other out a lot," Jim Pace said. "Les built a good many homes on Elgin's east side, and I built on the west."
Jim Pace recalled his brother's kindness to friends included sometimes driving Donald Anderson to his classes at John Marshall Law School in downtown Chicago. Anderson, who died in 2011 at 81, went on to become a Kane County judge for more than 27 years as well as a major figure in local Republican politics.
"Don couldn't see too well, so Les would take him to school," Jim Pace said.
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Les Pace playing piano with a group sometime during the 1950s. Pace, a lifelong Elgin resident, died Oct. 12 at the age of 88. (Pace family / handout)
Les Pace was a single father for a time, Dino Pace recalled, and as those were the days before readily available daycare, Les would bring Dino to work with him sometimes.
"He was my best friend," Dino Pace said of his father.
Jim Pace said he and his brother had a strong bond, too.
"We always had a good relationship," Jim Pace said. "We had our disagreements, but we never held a grudge."
"Les had the most beautiful relationship with his brother Jim," Pace's stepson, photographer Sandro Miller, said. "Rarely do you see two brothers that have remained so close for so many years. It was beautiful to see their love and respect for each other."
Dino Pace said his father formed the Pacemakers in the late 1990s after being diagnosed with cancer and being treated with chemotherapy.
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"He wanted to go out with a bang," Dino Pace said.
The group became the subject of the 2001 documentary, "The Riverside Club," which was titled after the Elgin establishment where the band once played. The 35-minute piece was created by then-West Dundee businessman Greg Samata and his associates.
Samata said that making the film taught him a lot about what it's going to be like later in life and about following the things you love. It was gratifying to see that desire and passion can still be there, Samata said.
In the opening shot of Samata's video, Les Pace pulls out of his garage driving his 1957 Ford Fairlane convertible.
Les Pace played piano with bands from the 1940s through the mid-1960s, his family said. Pace, of Elgin, formed Les Pace and the Pacemakers in his later years, and that big band entertained at local gatherings for senior citizens. (Pace family / handout)
Dino Pace, who runs his own auto detailing business, said his father loved classic cars and at one time, in addition to the Fairlane, also had a 1927 Ford Model T, which Les built from parts he found here and there. While those cars have been sold, at the time of his death, Les Pace still had a 1967 Ford Thunderbird.
Dino Pace said his father's cancer went into remission for years, to which in part he credited Les's affirmative outlook on life. But in the last year or so the cancer came back with complications.
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"My girlfriend, Robin Madsen, and I have been living with my dad, and she was a caregiver for him. She's fighting breast cancer, and he was very supportive of her and what she's going through," Dino Pace said.
Jim Pace noted that his brother also kept his sense of humor while ill.
"I went to visit him when he was in the hospital one time, and he was convincing people that I was his doctor, before we'd tell them I was his brother," Jim Pace said.
Dino Pace said in his final years, Les Pace also enjoyed the company of two cats, Champ and Buddy, who were almost always by his side and provided comfort as well as companionship.
"We live in the basement, an in-law apartment, and every night my dad would look downstairs and say, 'Good night kids.' He was that kind of dad," Dino Pace said.
In addition to Dino Pace and Sandro Miller, Pace is survived by grown children Douglas Pace, Mario Muth, Michael Miller, Pauletta Kluender and many grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, Leslie and Mildred, his wife, Elena Silvana Pace, son Scott Pace and daughter Piera Echevarria.
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Visitation is set for Friday from noon until 2 p.m. at the Laird Funeral Home, 310 S. State St. (Route 31), Elgin. Memorials may be made to the American Cancer Society. For information, call 847-741-8800 or go to www.lairdfamilyfuneralservices.com.
mdanahey@tribpub.com
Early voting is underway in Illinois for the November election. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)
Three people running to represent the 5th Congressional District cite among top issues economic development, reducing noise at O'Hare International Airport and term limits.
The candidates are incumbent Democrat Mike Quigley, Green Party candidate Rob Sherman, who's widely known as an atheism advocate and Vince Kolber, a Republican businessman from Chicago.
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The 5th District includes portions of Cook and DuPage counties as well as all or parts of Westchester, La Grange Park, Oak Brook Terrace, Franklin Park, Norridge, Harwood Heights and Northlake.
Kolber said small businesses are being crippled by too much regulation, and would try to change that.
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"Let's start with the plethora of executive orders," said Kolber who cited as one example President Obama's directive in 2014 to raise the salary threshold at which employees are eligible for overtime pay from $455 a week to $913 a week, which Kolber said is causing businesses to cut employee's hours.
"It's telling businesses that they have to pay overtime at a higher pay threshold," he said. "It's also going to make it difficult for people who are less skilled to find employment."
Kolber also wants to scrap the Affordable Health Care Act.
"It's anything but affordable," he said. "It's causing insurance companies to get out of the business. Others are ratcheting up the costs like has never been seen before. I'm in the repeal and replace camp."
Quigley, who voted for the Affordable Health Care Act, said he believes it is a good thing that, while not perfect, is working.
"Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years and millions of Chicagoans have been provided access to quality health care, some for the first time," he said.
Sherman said he'd want to eliminate concierge services offered by doctors for which patients pay annual fees of up to thousands of dollars to access the physician's services.
"It forces out people of modest means," Sherman said. "It forces them to doctors with larger patient loads and with less time to spend with them.'
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Sherman whose campaign motto is Real Change Dramatic Chance, cites stopping anti-atheist bullying as one of his top concerns. He wants to eliminate "God" from U.S. currency and from the Pledge of Allegiance.
"Why does the government condone anti-atheist bullying?" he asked.
Sherman, who recently moved to Poplar Grove from Buffalo Grove, said he'd also push for election reform including making districts more compact and putting term limits in place.
Quigley, who has served in Congress since 2009, does not support term limits at any level.
"This concentrates power and responsibility for passing and enforcing laws with unelected special interest groups," Quigley said. "These groups are not accountable to citizens, but to their donors and members instead."
Sherman, who has lived in both the city and suburbs during his life, charges that Quigley does not pay enough attention to the suburbs.
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"Obviously, his interest is in the people in the city and the suburbs are essentially ignored," said Sherman, noting that he would have two district offices, one in the suburbs and one in the city.
Quigley disagrees.
"I strive to make myself and my office accessible to suburban communities in the district by hosting local Congress on Your Corner events and mobile office hours, attending events hosted by local community groups, and by communicating regularly with local elected officials," he said.
Quigley said he often meets with suburban residents and neighborhood groups to hear their concerns about O'Hare Modernization Project and advocates on their behalf with the FAA, O'Hare airport officials and the airlines.
"I have consistently called on the FAA to revisit and revise the current 65 Day-Night Average Sound Level that measures how individuals are impacted by noise due to aviation activities. Updating the 65 DNL could potentially allow more residents near O'Hare to qualify for important sound proofing measures," he said.
Sherman, who is a pilot, said there are other ways that noise can be reduced.
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"As soon as you take off you can turn by degrees by 2 degrees, 3 degrees or 5 degrees so the noise isn't over the exact same communities every day," Sherman said.
Quigley said storm water management and urban flooding also are concerns and has introduced the Urban Flooding Awareness Act to address those issues.
It would create a standardized definition of urban flooding, would encourage creation of effective flood prevention practices and policies and require a study to comprehensively analyze both individual and societal costs associated with urban flooding across the country, he said.
Candidate Info
Mike Quigley
Party: Democrat
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Age: 57
Town: Chicago
Family: Married to Barbara; two daughters
Education: bachelor's degree Roosevelt University; master's degree in public policy, University of Chicago; law degree, Loyola University School of Law
Civic/Elected Service: Cook County Board, 1999 to 2009; elected to U.S. Congress in 2009.
Vince Kolber
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Party: Republican
Age: 64
Town: Chicago
Family: Married to Patricia; a son and two daughters
Education: bachelor's degree, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania; master's of business administration, University of Chicago
Profession: Founder and principal of Residco, an equipment leasing company for railroads and airlines.
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Civic/Elected Service: Kolber lost bid for Congress in the 5th District in 2014.
Rob Sherman
Party: Green
Age: 63
Town: Moved recently to Poplar Grove from Buffalo Grove
Family: Married to Celeste; two children.
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Education: Studied for two years at National Louis University; classes at Harper College and Northwestern University.
Profession: Former radio talk show host and founder of Rob Sherman Airplanes, which makes two-seat airplanes.
Civic/Elected Service: Ran for state representative in 2006 and 2008 and lost; ran for village clerk of Buffalo Grove in 2013 and lost; daughter was plaintiff in a lawsuit that sought to end a for a daily moment of silence in public schools; lawsuits involving removal of crosses from city seals.
Residents like Gary and Jodi Dubofsky, whose yard, shown above, is near the current freight train tracks, have expressed concern about the proposal to build a freight train holding track near their home to accommodate additional rail traffic. (Jodi Dubofsky)
In a 6-0 vote, the Glenview Board of Trustees approved on Tuesday a resolution that opposes the findings of an environmental assessment for a proposal to increase the number of trips on a Chicago to Milwaukee rail line.
The environmental assessment was released Oct. 6 by the Illinois and Wisconsin departments of transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration. It addresses the impacts of increasing Amtrak Hiawatha service, which runs from Chicago to Milwaukee and stops in Glenview, from seven to 10 daily round trips.
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The village has three "major" concerns with the assessment: the need to increase Hiawatha service by three round trips, short-term solutions proposed to accommodate rail traffic, and environmental impacts, Jeff Brady, the village's director of planning, said at the meeting.
He said village officials dispute whether ridership has increased to the point that additional round trip trains are needed.
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Trustee John Hinkamp said he has seen Hiawatha trains pass through Glenview, and to say that the trains are filled with passengers "doesn't pass the eye test."
"I see empty seat after empty seat as it goes by," he said. "If (Amtrak) is telling you that there is increased need, I'd like to check those facts."
Brady said village officials also object to the environmental impact findings in the assessment because it is unclear what the findings were based on.
The proposed Hiawatha round trips would run during off-peak hours, which would disrupt freight activity and increase freight traffic in Glenview, Brady said.
To address the expected increase in freight traffic, the environmental assessment proposes building either a 10,000-foot holding track on the east side of the two existing Metra train tracks or an 11,000-foot holding track on the west side of the existing tracks, from Glenview to Northbrook.
Brady said those options are short-term solutions to addressing the increase in rail traffic. The resolution says the village prefers another idea suggested in the assessment: establishing a 30-mile freight bypass through the area.
Trustee Deborah Karton said building the proposed holding tracks would be unfair to nearby Glenview residents.
"When people bought their homes, they would never have expected to have this track with new times of usage or idling trains," she said. "That's out of your realm of what you would expect."
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Village Manager Todd Hileman said he hopes the agencies involved in the proposed project will respect Glenview residents and "not simply ride over the community."
The FRA will consider all concerns brought by the public after the public comment period ends Nov. 15, FRA spokesman Matt Lehner said in a phone interview.
"We are listening to everyone's thoughts what they like, what they don't like. This is part of the environmental process," he said.
Glenview resident Mike Souter told the board he lives near the site of the proposed holding track. The trains that go by his home today are "longer, heavier and noisier" than when he moved in 11 years ago, he said.
"The last thing I want to see is more trains and more idling trains," he said. "I'm glad to see that the proposal is out there to reject (the proposed Hiawatha project.)"
With the board voting in favor of the resolution, village officials will send an objection letter to the agencies involved in the assessment, Brady said.
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Meanwhile, Glenview residents can attend a village-hosted informational meeting on the proposal and its environmental assessment on Oct. 26 at 7 p.m. at Park Center, 2400 Chestnut Avenue. The Illinois and Wisconsin departments of transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration will also host a Nov. 2 meeting at Park Center from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. to discuss the environmental assessment.
Northbrook Village President Sandy Frum said Wednesday that Northbrook officials will attend the Nov. 2 meeting. She said she has concerns for the effect of the proposed expansion on her town, but not as significant as those of Glenview.
"If the area where the train idles does not cross (to north of) Techny Road, there's not as much of a concern, because it's industrial to the south," she said of the Northbrook segment of the possible expansion. "If it gets north of Techny, then that's a concern, because that's a residential area."
Irv Leavitt contributed to this story.
akukulka@tribpub.com
North Shore District 112 will use this boundary map to assign pupils to elementary schools for the 2017-18 school year. (District 112)
The North Shore District 112 school board Tuesday approved a school map that divides the district into four, rather than eight, attendance areas to reflect the 2017 closing of Ravinia and Lincoln elementary schools and the creation of dual language academies at Red Oak and Oak Terrace schools.
Indian Trail School near downtown Highland Park will absorb all Lincoln students and about half of the Ravinia population those students living north of Roger Williams Avenue.
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The remainder of students currently assigned to Ravinia will attend Braeside Elementary School, with the exception of children around the Chantilly subdivision, who will attend Sherwood Elementary School in southwest Highland Park.
The district dropped the idea of sending Lincoln and Indian Trail students west of Green Bay Road near downtown to Sherwood amid fierce opposition from parents. Those students will attend Indian Trail.
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The approved map also keeps students living in an area east of the Edens Expressway and north of Lake Cook Road at Braeside Elementary School. Parents in the area had opposed a proposed move to Sherwood.
Currently, students living in Fort Sheridan's military housing are split between Red Oak in southwest Highland Park and the closer Wayne Thomas Elementary School in north Highland Park. The boundary plan will begin transitioning military students from what has been the Red Oak area to Indian Trail closer to home.
John Petzke, the district's chief technology officer, said that moving about 67 students simultaneously to Indian Trail next year could push the school's enrollment to 605 students and leave the building short one classroom.
Under the transition plan, current military families living east of Patton Road will move from Red Oak to Sherwood along with other peers electing monolingual instruction. Red Oak School will become a dual language, or Spanish-English immersion school, as will Oak Terrace School in Highwood. New military families in the Fort Sheridan area east of Patton Road will attend Indian Trail.
Superintendent Michael Bregy supported the transition option, but said some administrators preferred keeping the students within the Red Oak and Sherwood community.
"These are not decisions that are taken lightly," Bregy said. "I personally look at this as an opportunity to have all students in schools that are closest to their home."
Board member Jane Mordini voiced opposition to the transition plan, saying it would fragment military students already coping with a move to a new community.
"To isolate children who have just moved to a new base from the other children on the base, I think, is a big mistake," Mordini said.
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She preferred waiting until the district implemented a longer-term map following a successful referendum. But colleague Eric Ephraim thought the transition plan a sound approach to ultimately allowing military children to be educated closer to home.
"The complaint I always heard from military families was, 'Why are we driving all the way across town to go to school?'," said Ephraim, a former Red Oak parent. "For parents to come to a function at night is a 20-minute drive each way, as opposed to being right up the block."
He said the transition plan will allow the military population at Indian Trail to grow as enrollment is declining.
The boundary plan, which includes a middle school map, was approved by a 5-0 vote with board members Yumi Ross and Mordini abstaining. Both board members said they were not comfortable voting for the plan without first hearing from the military community.
North Shore School District 112 has not redrawn school attendance areas since the district was created out of three small school districts in the early 1990s. John Petzke, the district's chief technology officer, said Tuesday that in a budget-reduction scenario, the district will need to closely monitor school enrollments and student distribution and regularly revisit school boundaries.
kberkowitz@pioneerlocal.com
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@KarenABerkowitz
Defendant Jose Reyes, of Chicago (right), speaks with his attorney, Katherine Hatch, during his bench trial in Lake County for predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, aggravated kidnapping and possession and production of child pornography. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)
Eyewitnesses to both the alleged abduction and return of a 3-year old Mundelein girl, who authorities said was sexually assaulted in September 2013, took the stand Tuesday and Wednesday in the trial of Jose Reyes.
On Tuesday afternoon, the victim's sister testified about details of the alleged kidnapping and identified Reyes in court as the man who abducted the child.
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On Wednesday morning, a mechanic who had been working on a friend's car in the parking lot of the complex where the girl was living at the time, testified he saw her dropped off by a man, and he then identified the vehicle the man was driving as one registered to Reyes when shown a photo of the vehicle.
Reyes, 31, of Chicago, pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated kidnapping, predatory criminal sexual assault and possession and production of child pornography. He faces up to 120 years in prison if convicted in the bench trial that began Tuesday before Judge Mark Levitt.
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The victim's sister, now 12, was 9 at the time of her sister's abduction and identified Reyes in court Tuesday afternoon while being questioned by Assistant State's Attorney Fred Day.
The girl said that she was playing with her two sisters, one of which was the victim, in the entranceway to their Deepwoods Drive apartment on the late afternoon of Sept. 30, 2013, when a man in a black car stopped in front of the building and asked through the car window if the children wanted lollipops.
The sister testified that she told the man no, and that he drove away but returned, this time getting out of the car and approaching them. He again offered candy and then, the girl testified, "He took my sister."
When Day asked for details of how it happened, the girl said the man picked the girl up, put her over his shoulder and ran to the car, where he put her in the back seat before driving away.
The girl testified her sister was yelling and crying when the man grabbed her. When asked by Day if she saw the man in court, she said yes and pointed a finger toward Reyes, who was seated at the defense table. She also noted he was wearing an orange shirt.
In 2013, after the incident, the girl also identified Reyes by circling his picture in a photo lineup provided by the Mundelein Police Department. She confirmed that she had circled the picture when shown the photo lineup while on the stand Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning, the mechanic testified that, as he was working on the car shortly after 5:30 p.m., he saw a black car enter the lot "really quickly," heard a car door open and close, and then "heard the cries of a really small girl."
Isai Guevara Pantoga testified, "I saw a very small girl there crying and just saw the car leaving very quickly."
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Under questioning by Assistant State's Attorney Eric Kalata, Pantoga said he was able to tell that a man was driving the car, and that he remembered what it looked like primarily because of its black color and the rims of the tires.
Pantoga said he identified the car in a photo at the Mundelein Police Department a few days later, when shown a picture of Reyes' car. He identified it in the same picture again in court Wednesday.
Under cross-examination from defense attorney Eric Rinehart, Pantoga acknowledged that he had told police he believed the car was a Nissan Sentra, although it turned out that Reyes' car was actually a Hyundai Accent.
Rinehart noted that Pantoga's written statement to police made no mention about uncertainty regarding the make of the car, but Pantoga remained adamant on the stand that the car in the photo was the one he saw due to the body, the color and the rims.
Also on Wednesday, a sexual assault nurse from Advocate Condell Hospital testified that she did an examination of the girl, and completed standard evidence collection procedures on the evening of the kidnapping. The woman noted she observed and took photos of what prosecutors have alleged was evidence of a sexual assault.
Prosecutors have said DNA and sexual assault experts will testify later in the trial. They added that surveillance video turned over to investigators by the apartment complex show glimpses of Reyes in the entryway of the building when the girl was abducted, and of a black car driving up and letting her out in the parking lot of the building less than an hour later.
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Reyes was arrested at his Libertyville workplace on Oct. 2, 2013, and Day said when police obtained a search warrant for his car, evidence found included lollipops that matched those found at the scene of the abduction and Reyes' cell phone, which contained a video of the sexual assault.
The trial is expected to continue possibly into next week.
jrnewton@tribpub.com
Twitter @jimnewton5
As Brian Grams and Lisa Santiago walked toward the grave of Civil War soldier Wallace H. Gale at the Volo Cemetery, a burst of cold wind blew in dark clouds, casting a shadow on the formerly sunny October day.
It's just the autumn weather, Grams thought. But Santiago, his cousin, thought it might be a sign from Gale. The soldier has been said to haunt the Volo Antique Mall she manages, which is right next to the Volo Cemetery.
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The building that houses the mall is owned by the Grams family and once was a dairy barn built in 1848 by the Gale family. Wallace H. Gale, who grew up on the property in an old farmhouse next door to the barn, starved to death in Tennessee while serving in the Civil War, Santiago said.
His body was returned to the homestead for burial, she said, and you can see the tombstone from a window in the antique mall.
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Over the years, mall visitors have reported seeing a young boy staring at them from outside the window on the fourth floor. Others claim to have seen perfume bottles floating in the air, and images of a soldier, Santiago and Grams said.
"Our whole family has had unexplained experiences since they purchased the property" more than a half-century ago, said Santiago, whose parents, Grams' aunt and uncle, now live in the 1850s farmhouse where Wallace H. Gale lived. Grams, his own parents and Santiago have lived in that house as well, and say they have experienced spooky occurrences there.
Meanwhile Grams, who owns and manages the Volo Auto Museum, which is also on the property, said he's never experienced any ghostly happenings there.
Civil War soldier Wallace H. Gale is said to haunt the Volo Antique Mall. (Sheryl DeVore / Lake County News-Sun)
Farm house spooks
His mother, Myra Grams, said her first otherworldly experience in the farm house was before Brian was born. She went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, turned on the light and noticed a black figure out of the corner of her eye. She went back to bed, with her husband still asleep. In the morning, she said, he told her he had seen a black figure standing at the end of the bed that night.
Once, when she was home alone in her bed, "I would feel the bed go down a bit as if someone were sitting on it," she said. At family gatherings, relatives would tell similar tales before having heard Myra's experience.
Brian said when he was growing up in the house, "TVs would turn on and turn off. Lights would turn on and then turn off. I'd blow it off as radio waves.
"The house is set up as a duplex. My family lived on the main level, (and) we had other relatives who would come and go upstairs," he said. "Everybody has said it's haunted. They've seen things.
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"I could not get any of my friends to spend the night when I was growing up," he added. "But there's never been anything bad that's happened. It doesn't seem like (the ghost) is out to harm anybody."
The tombstone of Wallace H. Gale, a Civil War soldier, at the Volo Cemetery across from the Volo Antique Mall. (Sheryl DeVore / Lake County News-Sun)
'Ghost Lab'
The family, employees and visitors to the mall kept their allegedly haunted grounds a bit of a secret, until the Discovery Channel which hosted the now-canceled television show "Ghost Lab" learned about it.
According to the show, a shadowy figure was captured on film sitting on some furniture inside the mall. The shadowy figure, some say, was the ghost of Wallace H. Gale.
Televised in November 2009, the show prompted more guests, workers and the family to come forward with more ghost stories and, since then, mall visitors have sent in photos and stories about creepy experiences, mostly at the mall or the grounds nearby, including stories of white dogs walking through mirrors, dolls found in strange places and a boy peering through the fourth-floor window from the outside.
Santiago said she thinks the ghost likes the mall "because of the antiques."
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One woman said she saw a young man sitting in a rocking chair in the mall, listening to a music box and dressed in uniform. She went to get her husband and when they returned, there was no music box and no man there, Grams said.
One of the spookiest stories Grams has heard involved a truck driver delivering cars to the auto museum, who had never been to the mall before and never heard anything about it being haunted.
Cousins Brian Grams, owner of the Volo Auto Museum, and Lisa Santiago, manager of the Volo Antique Mall, stand in front of the home in which they grew up, which was built in the early 1850s and is said to be haunted. (Sheryl DeVore / Lake County News-Sun)
"He pulled in at about 11 o'clock at night and was going to spend the night in the lot in front of the mall," Grams said. "Twenty minutes later, he backed up and drove off. He said he saw somebody in a trench coat walking through the parking lot, and when he asked if it was OK if he slept there, the guy in the trench coat walked right through the walls into the barn."
Grams added that the truck driver told him, "I sleep with a Smith & Wesson, but there was no way I was going to sleep in that parking lot."
Recently, according to Santiago, a customer said she was looking into a mirror and felt a cold, bony hand on her arm. An oil painting dropped to the floor, got a big gash in it and broke other items in its path.
"These floors are creaky. I would explain it that way," Grams said.
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A new employee, Felica Hornback of Island Lake, said last month her purse flew off a shelf to the floor. She believed it was a ghostly occurrence, but is not frightened to return to work.
"I don't scare easily," she said.
Haunted train ride
People have become so inquisitive about the haunted antique mall that Grams created a train ride as a bonus to those who visit the Volo Auto Museum. The 45-minute rides, free with paid admission, operate on weekends through Oct. 30.
Riders hear stories about the ghosts and then get dropped off by the mall, where they are led into a small theater where a facsimile of the soldier's tombstone is encased. They hear crackling noises and see a figure on a projected screen, which Grams created for some scary fun during the Halloween season.
Grams doesn't believe in ghosts, he said, although he admitted some of the happenings on his family's property are difficult to explain.
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"Either you're a believer and it intrigues you," Grams said, "or you're a skeptic, and it still intrigues you."
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
"Fates and Furies," the best-selling novel by Lauren Groff, began as two separate books.
Groff, who will be in Lake Forest on Oct. 27 and 28 for the Lake Forest Reads program, began "Fates and Furies" in mid 2009 while also writing her previous novel "Arcadia."
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"For the first few years it existed only on my wall on these huge pieces of paper," said Groff from her home in Gainesville, Fla. "I'd write something from the husband's point of view and then run across the room and write something from the wife's point of view."
She pitched the two manuscripts to her agent who told her it had to be a single novel, so she spent much of 2013 cutting and stitching the stories together.
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The novel was sold and eventually published in 2015. "Fates and Furies" spent time on the New York Times Best Sellers List and was a top ten finalist for the National Book Award in 2015.
"I thought for the years it would take me to write it that I was writing two books and that nobody would publish it,' Groff said. "I would have been fine with the book not being published because I has such a marvelous time writing it."
The novel is divided into two sections. The first is told from the point of view of Lancelot "Lotto" Satterwhite, a husband who first struggles as an actor before finding success as a playwright. The second section is from the point of view of his wife, Mathilde. The two characters share a marriage and much of their lives, but the latter half of the novel forces readers to reconsider the characters and their marriage.
"In all my books I resist the idea of this simple uncomplicated narrative," Groff said. "I'd been thinking about the ways multiple stories can coexist and there is not the privilege of one story over the other and they can exist in layers."
Readers who seek a bodice ripper should look elsewhere, Groff aimed to present a fresh literary portrayal of a couple.
"If you read about marriage, a lot of times, particularly in the 1960s, nearly every narrative is about infidelity," Groff said. "I know its common but it's not the only narrative we can tell. I wanted to tell about a happy and loving marriage without having infidelity as the prime mover of plot."
Lake Forest Reads was started four years ago as a joint effort of the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest College and Lake Forest Library.
"We look for someone who has been in residence at Ragdale," said librarian Kate Burkardt. "Someone who has had a recent book, something easily accessible and downloadable. (An author) who the people at Ragdale know to be a good speaker, charismatic and interesting."
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Lake Forest residents appear to be reading the novel. As of Oct. 13, the various versions of "Fates and Furies" hardcover, paperback, CD, downloads had been checked out 495 times, Burkardt said.
Lauren Groff will take part in a conversation with Davis Schneiderman, an English professor, at Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan, at 7 p.m. Oct. 27. The event is free but advance registration is required.
She'll also take part in Tea & Talk at Ragdale Foundation, 1260 Green Bay Road, at 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 28 with an entrance fee of $20.
Groff will also be on hand to sign books at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 28 at Lake Forest Book Store, 662 N. Western.
mlawton@pioneerlocal.com
Twitter: @reporterdude
A man awaiting trial for an alleged Aurora burglary has been charged with last month's theft of a purebred Pomeranian puppy, who's still missing, from a pet shop on Naperville's far west side.
Naperville police Cmdr. Jason Arres confirmed Wednesday that a $50,000 warrant has been issued for the arrest of Benjamin Ocasio Jr., 27. He last lived on the 200 block of Spruce Street in Aurora.
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Ocasio has been charged with retail theft in connection with the Sept. 4 incident at Petland in the Fox River Commons shopping center, near Aurora Avenue and Route 59.
Video surveillance tape filmed about 4:21 p.m. that day showed a man and a woman walking out of the Petland with Bella, a 12-week-old, black and white, female Pomeranian dog valued at $2,500.
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Ocasio and a 27-year-old female relative were quickly identified by police from the tape. Arres said both were interviewed in the days and weeks following the alleged theft.
"The investigation led to (Ocasio) being charged with the crime," Arres said. "The facts of the case led to only Ocasio being charged (while) the female who was with him will not be charged with the crime."
Using statements and other information gleaned during the investigation, police began looking for the puppy, which the pair claimed to have abandoned in the backyard of a home near New York and Root streets in Aurora.
Despite "extra effort" by police that Arres said included posting fliers, canvassing parts of Aurora and working with Aurora police, the puppy is still missing. "However, we remain hopeful at some point the dog will turn up," he said.
An examination of court records revealed Ocasio is scheduled to appear Nov. 16 in Kane County Circuit Court in connection with an alleged June burglary in Aurora.
He also was convicted in 2011 of drunken driving and was sentenced in 2014 to 150 days in jail for domestic battery, according to records.
Petland owner Carl Swanson was not available for comment. A recorded message at a number listed for Ocasio said the phone did not accept incoming calls.
A Naperville Crime Stoppers reward of up to $1,000 for information about the dog's whereabouts remains unclaimed. Crime Stoppers can be contacted at 630-420-6006 or www.napervillecrimestoppers.com, and callers can remain anonymous.
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wbird@tribpub.com
Naperville Deputy Police Chief Brian Cunningham, a longtime police veteran who oversees the department's investigations division, has been named police chief for the village of Woodridge.
The news was announced Wednesday on Woodridge's municipal website and the Naperville police Facebook page.
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Cunningham's selection followed a "state-wide search and recruitment process, which included gathering input from the community at large and a community interview panel, which reflected the leadership and diversity of Woodridge," the village's announcement said.
"We are excited to have (Cunningham) begin his duties," Woodridge Mayor Gina Cunningham said in a statement. The two are not related.
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The mayor lauded Cunningham's 30 years of police expertise, saying he had "an impressive background in policing and an excellent reputation in the law enforcement community."
As chief, Brian Cunningham will oversee 65 employees, 51 of them sworn officers. He said in the release he was "honored by this opportunity (and looking) forward to meeting community members" and municipal employees.
Cunningham joined the Naperville Police Department as a patrol officer in June 1986. Since then, he has held several positions, including patrol supervisor, special enforcement unit supervisor, major crimes unit supervisor and patrol commander. He was named investigations commander in August 2012.
He has served as commander of the DuPage County Major Crimes Task Force since 1999, developing and implementing county-wide protocols and overseeing numerous homicide investigations.
A founding member and current president of the Illinois Homicide Investigators Association, Cunningham is also part of the Illinois Crisis Negotiations Association, a member of the Naperville Honor Guard member and participates in the Pipes and Drums of the Emerald Society.
He obtained his bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Governors State University in University Park. He attended Northwestern University staff and command, Colorado State University's Rocky Mountain Leadership course and the Senior Management Institute for Policing. He has been an adjunct professor at the College of DuPage.
Cunningham is scheduled to be sworn in as chief during Woodridge's Nov. 3 village board meeting.
wbird@tribpub.com
Trustee Michael Gadzinski is shown being sworn in to a third term on the Harwood Heights Village Board. Gadzinski is leaving the board two years shy of the end of his third term in office. (Natalie Hayes / Pioneer Press)
Michael Gadzinski, a trustee who last month announced his intention to resign from the Harwood Heights Village Board at the end of the year, has left the board earlier than expected. He handed in his resignation on Oct. 13.
Gadzinski is leaving the board two years shy of the end of his third term in office. He previously spoke about his decision to resign because of plans to move to Chicago, but he declined this week to elaborate on why he left more than two months before his announced resignation date, Dec. 31.
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"I resigned earlier because some personal things have changed with my family," he said in an email. He would not comment further.
According to the Illinois Municipal Code, his vacancy on the six-member board will be filled via the April 4 municipal election, on the ballot along with the three trustee seats set to expire next year held by Annette Brzezniak-Volpe, Larry Steiner and Lester Szlendak. In order to be filled via the election, the unexpired portion of the term must be at least 28 months, and the vacancy must occur at least 130 days before the next municipal election. Had he waited until Dec. 31 to resign, it would have been less than 130 days before the election, and Harwood Heights Mayor Arlene Jezierny would have needed to make an appointment.
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Gadzinski was re-elected to his seat last year after campaigning as part of a political slate rounded out by Trustee Therese Schuepfer and newcomer Jeff Rasche. All were elected.
Public real estate records show Gadzinski bought a home just north of the Harwood Heights border in Chicago on the 5300 block of North Nordica Avenue in December 2015.
Gadzinski said rumors had been circulating that he's been lying about his residency. Illinois law requires public officials to reside in the town they're elected to serve. Gadzinski claims that despite buying the house last year, he had not occupied the Chicago residence yet and had been living in a home owned by his family on the 4200 block of North Newland Avenue in Harwood Heights.
The 33-year-old works for the Cook County Board of Review as a property assessment analyst.
Natalie Hayes is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Carpenter Elementary School teacher Becky Keenan traveled to Ethiopia with her brother, which led her to supporting research, assisting in creating a health curriculum for students and raising money to build wells.
Q: How did you become interested in teaching fifth-graders?
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A: I've always wanted to be a teacher, and I kind of fell into teaching fifth grade. I've been doing it for a long time now, and I love it. The kids are more independent, and for the most part they are pretty motivated to learn. Plus, fifth-graders are sweet and fun, which makes coming to work each day very enjoyable.
Q: Tell us a little about you became involved in a project to build wells in Ethiopia?
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A: My brother is an ophthalmologist at the University of California, San Francisco. The majority of his work involves conducting research in developing countries. His project in Ethiopia focuses on eliminating trachoma, which is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the world. Last year, he asked me to go to Ethiopia and create a health curriculum for students. After seeing the conditions there, I wanted to do something to help. When I mentioned this to the staff at Carpenter, they suggested doing a school-wide fundraiser. Part of my brother's project involves building wells. Our hope was to raise enough money to buy one well.
Q: This past spring you led a Carpenter school-wide "read-a-thon fundraiser" to help the wells to be built. How did that turn out?
A: It turned out exceptionally well. Our goal was to raise $15,000, and we raised over $23,000. We had enough money to buy one deep well and one hand dug well. We also had funds left over to buy household sanitation stations for many homes. These are large plastic jugs with spigots and mirrors to check for clean faces. I am amazed by the generosity of the Carpenter community.
Q: We heard that you traveled to Ethiopia this summer to see the Carpenter wells. What did you enjoy best about your trip?
A: I don't think I can fully express into words what it was like to actually visit the wells and see the faces of the people who have been affected by the generosity of the Carpenter community. With each visit, there was so much to take in. Ethiopia is a beautiful country, and many of these villages were along the tops of expansive mountains. The villages themselves were made from every resource the land could provide, whether it was clay, sticks, or stones. Seeing this reinforced the level of poverty there. It really emphasized that we were helping the poorest of the poor. Their faces were full of joy when they saw the clean water streaming out of the wells. Seeing them rush to get clean water is something I will never forget.
Q: What was the biggest challenge of your trip?
A: Ethiopia is a developing country, so we didn't always have water or electricity. I had to walk to a water source with my empty bucket and bring it back to my room. I had to use that water sparingly to bathe. Eventually, we ran out of water and we could not clean ourselves. It definitely made me appreciate running water! Electricity would often go out. We would be in a restaurant, and all of a sudden we couldn't see each other. We would just sit there in darkness until we were finished with our meal. Toward the end of the trip, the town ran out of gas. ... On a personal note, it made me realize that any problems I have are truly first-world problems.
Q: How can others get involved in participating in supporting building wells for Ethiopia?
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A: You can donate money to the fundraising center at UCSF's ophthalmology department (That Man May See) and donate to my brother's research. Go to thatmanmaysee.org and make sure to indicate that you would like your donation to go to Dr. Keenan's research in Ethiopia. He will be putting in another 20 wells soon, so donations are greatly appreciated.
Karen Medina is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Michelle Fajman, Director of the Lake County Board of Elections & Registration, discusses the need for voters to correct missing or conflicting information . (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)
As Donald Trump's GOP presidential campaign doubles down on claims of a "rigged" presidential election, employees at the Lake County Voter Registration and Election Board are working extra hours to ensure registrations that are part of an ongoing Indiana State Police investigation into possible voter registration fraud are verified.
Lake County Sheriff John Buncich, chair of the Lake County Democratic Central Committee, said he has been in contact with Michelle Fajman, election board director and a Democrat, and the two say all registrations submitted by the Indiana Voter Registration Project will be processed as any registration received by the office.
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"We are not going to be accused of voter suppression," Buncich said.
The office receives voter registration from multiple sources including the Secretary of State's office, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, individual applications and applications from voters' registration drives, such as the one conducted by Indiana Voter Registration Project. Voter registration in Indiana ended Oct. 11.
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Voter registration cards await entry into the system at the the Lake County Board of Elections & Registration. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)
The state police has been to the Lake County voter's registration office four times regarding the investigation into IVRP and have taken some suspect registrations with them for review. Fajman and Patrick Gabrione, the department's deputy director and a Republican, said the office is cooperating with the investigation. They say many of the problems they have been finding with the IVRP registrations center on sloppy paperwork.
"We don't know which applications are part of the investigation or not," Fajman said.
The investigation by the state police into IVRP registrations now includes 56 of Indiana's 92 counties. The Indiana Secretary of State's office said Tuesday voters contacted it after discovering their dates of birth or first names were incorrect on state voter rolls.
The investigation into possible voter registration fraud has pitted the Democratic organization responsible for the IVRP drive, Patriot Majority USA, against GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Mike Pence.
Michelle Fajman, Director of the Lake County Board of Elections & Registration, shows voter registrations in various states of processing. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)
Craig Varoga, president of Patriot Majority USA, said in a release Saturday that Pence is using the state police to "harass African American voters and prevent them from voting in this November's election.
The state police denied the allegations.
"In fact, it is clear from evidence documented to date that we have uncovered intentional acts of fraud by representatives of Patriot Majority USA," said Capt. David Bursten, chief public information officer for the state police.
Problems have been discovered as Lake County election workers check the applications.
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Gabrione said in at least one instance, the office referred all applications submitted by one canvasser after mistakes were found in multiple different forms.
Fajman said the office was able to garner enough information from most of the forms to enter them into the system and cross check them with existing registrations. Legibility and missing information were among the problems with many of the applications.
"If we can decipher it, we can enter it," Fajman said.
Staff has been working evenings, Saturday and Sunday to tackle verifying all of the registrations that came into the office by the Oct. 11 deadline including those from IVRP, Fajman said. About 1,600 IVRP registrations remain to be processed of the more than 6,000 received, she said.
The office has been calling voters with applications that have missing information in order to finish the processing. Fajman said in some cases the voter was not comfortable providing information like their driver's license number to the person registering them for fear of being scammed.
Dan Dernulc, Lake County Republican Party chair, said there is no suppression of votes by the Republican Party. He likened the current voter registration fraud investigation to the ACORN investigation in 2008.
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"With one group coming out and saying the governor is trying to suppress the vote is just talk of trying to divert attention from what is really going on. What is really going on is people are being registered to vote who might not live here, who might not be qualified to vote in our state," Dernulc said.
"The vote should be as pure as it can be," he said.
Fajman and Gabrione said incorrect or missing information does not necessarily constitute fraud. They said the office itself will make no determination as to fraud and will rely on the state police.
The bottom-line issue, however, reflects the dissatisfaction of the electorate.
Marie Eisenstein, associate professor of political science at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, said proclamations of a "rigged election" by the Trump campaign and the investigation into the IVRP are on two different levels.
She said she sees little difference between Trump's allegations now and those made by Bernie Sanders during the primary campaign. It is a continuation of the anti-establishment message.
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The allegations and claims of corruption and voter fraud only serve to reinforce the low confidence the public in general has in government, a perception that has been growing since the 1970s, she said.
"Voter confidence isn't that great to begin with," Eisenstein said. "Our individual trust in government, how it responds to us is at epic lows. This all more than shakes voters trust. It confirms a trust they did not have."
Carrie Napoleon is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Associated Press contributed.
Porter County councilman at large Bob Poparad gives his opening remarks on Tuesday during a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Porter County and the Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce. (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)
Candidates for Porter County Council and the Board of Commissioners shared their views at a forum Tuesday on a wide range of topics, from how to handle proceeds from a recently created foundation to thoughts on a public/private partnership for renovation of the pavilion at Indiana Dunes State Park.
The Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce and the Porter County League of Women Voters held the forum, meant to educate voters on candidates' views. More than 20 people attended the event in which the audience submitted questions to the candidates.
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Democrats Sylvia Graham, Bob Poparad and Dan Whitten, all incumbents and candidates for another term as at-large representatives on the county council, appeared at the forum, as did Republican candidate Jeff Larson.
Republican Jim Biggs, candidate for the north county seat on the Board of Commissioners, attended the forum as well. He currently holds the District 1 seat on the council.
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Richard Parks and Travis Gearhart, Republicans running for at-large seats on the council, were not able to attend, nor was Democrat Jeffrey Chidester, who is running for the commissioner's seat.
Earlier this year, the County Council and Board of Commissioners created a foundation to handle $147 million of the proceeds from the 2007 sale of the county hospital. Any use of the funds or the interest they generate requires a unanimous vote by both bodies, which also serve as the foundation's board.
County officials "took a little bit of time" moving forward with plans for the funds, Larson said, which cost the county in the long run.
"When you wait on something, the cost never goes down," he said, adding he "loves" what was done with the money, but officials missed an opportunity to put the money to use when the recession hit in 2008 when people were out of work.
But Graham and Whitten said the county couldn't invest the funds right away because the money was frozen for five years after the sale of the hospital and because the legislation allowing for the creation of the foundation, the first in the state, didn't take effect until July 2016.
"We have the principal working for us," Graham said, adding income can be used for public safety and road improvements.
The foundation is already generating more interest than expected, Whitten said, and he and other candidates agreed it could be used to improve the quality of life in the county.
"We are putting together an application process for grants for that money, things that make people want to come to Porter County and stay in Porter County," he said.
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Noting that any decision on the funds required a unanimous vote by the council and commissioners, Biggs said officials "absolutely made the right choice" in what to do with the money.
"As we've done up to this point, we're going to take a cautions approach to spending these monies," he said, adding the funds can be used for enhancing the quality of life in the county, including building improvements.
Some of the money will be needed to shore up the budget, Poparad said, adding the other option is raising taxes. The funds also can be used for public safety and improving county parks.
"Some has to be used for operations, some for capital projects, and some set aside" and invested back in the foundation, he said.
The candidates shared mixed views on public/private partnerships in light of a partnership between Pavilion Partners, a private entity, and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to renovate the pavilion at the state park and build an adjacent, 17,000-square-foot banquet center.
Remodeling the pavilion and building new restrooms, also part of the project, were a good idea, Larson sad, adding private investment in public projects has been going on for years.
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"Most of the time when public and private funds are put together, they can be put to good use," he said, adding in this case, disturbing the dunes is "disheartening."
The rest of the candidates came out against public/private partnerships in general, or this one in particular.
While Biggs said such partnerships could be a good thing, privatization at the state park shouldn't have been allowed because the area is environmentally sensitive. State law also shouldn't have been changed to allow a liquor license for the project after state and local boards voted against it, he added.
"That was wrong. We didn't deserve to be undermined like that," he said.
Poparad, Graham and Whitten said they were opposed to public/private partnerships because taxpayers get shortchanged, the state park is public property, and Pavilion Partners got a generous deal in its lease.
The partnership was not the only way to get funds to renovate the pavilion, Whitten said, since the state had the money available.
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"I'm very concerned about how the negotiations took place," he said of the lease agreement, adding the park is being privatized unnecessarily and he was against the change in the state law. "To me, that's not democracy. It's not the way government is supposed to work."
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Trump campaign employee Cody Reynolds, right, and volunteer Karin Amptemeyer work on assembling and distributing Trump/Pence lawn signs. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)
With the presidential race entering its final weeks, the Trump-Pence Indiana campaign is concluding a statewide tour, hoping to ramp up support and publicity for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence.
"We're here to hand out signs and get Trump support up before Election Day," Karin Amptmeyer, a volunteer with the Trump-Pence Indiana campaign since April, said Wednesday.
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The Trump-Pence Indiana campaign stopped in Griffith to encourage early voting, deliver campaign signs and to discuss the final presidential debate hours before the event in Las Vegas. People from across Lake and Porter counties filed into the campaign office, extending the line outside, to pick up lawn posters, bumper stickers and shirt stickers.
"I want to publicly show my support for Trump," said Katherine Hester, of Michigan City. "Me and my boyfriend are huge supporters. We believe in what he wants to do with America."
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With Trump's recent claims that the process is rigged against him, alleging vast election fraud and favorable news coverage of Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, many of Trump's supporters expressed their frustrations with how the media has portrayed their candidate.
"The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary but also at many polling places SAD," Trump wrote Sunday on Twitter.
Hester said she believes the media are skewing the election in Clinton's favor.
A line of Trump supporters wait to get their lawn signs and bumper stickers early Wednesday in Griffith. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)
"The media will do anything they can do to either give Trump a bad name or even Mr. Pence," she said. "They don't want either of them in office. They want another Obama, and in my opinion that's the worst thing for this country."
As far as Trump's voter fraud allegations, Amptmeyer said she believes "everything is rigged."
"If you can hack emails, you can hack a voting system," she said.
Rita Perez, of Chesterton, said she hopes the candidates are able to focus on politics and refrain from the "constant bickering."
In spite of unfavorable polling statistics, Amptmeyer said she believes the early polls aren't an accurate representation of the voting public.
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Trump campaign employee Cody Reynolds assembles a lawn sign for Rita Perez of Chesterton. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)
"I think more people are going to vote for it that aren't saying it out loud, and I just do not want another 30-year politician in there," she said.
George Bollhorst, of Hammond, agreed with Amptmeyer, adding that he's tired of robotic politicians who have to always be politically correct.
"As a politician you have to always say the right thing and do the right thing," he said. "Trump has flaws, and the American people want something different. I want somebody who is not a career politician. I want somebody real."
jaanderson@tribpub.com
Twitter @JavonteA
In the latest step in the country's fight against poverty, China's cabinet released a plan on Tuesday that will enable the poor to share earnings from local hydropower plants and mining projects.
To pilot the reform, the government will choose a maximum of 20 projects in impoverished contiguous areas and counties targeted in the state poverty alleviation program, according to the State Council plan.
Local rural residents will be able to acquire stakes in such projects with compensation they receive for land occupied by the project construction, the plan said.
This way, rural residents get proceeds from the operation of the projects, with priority given to registered poor households.
The reform will be carried out from late 2016 to the end of 2019, and the chosen projects will start construction in 2017.
The environment will be strictly protected during the project, the plan said.
By the end of 2015, China still had 55.75 million people living in poverty, equivalent to the entire population of a medium-sized country.
The government has named poverty reduction as one of its top priorities, pledging to eradicate poverty in China by 2020.
More than 600 million Chinese were lifted out of poverty over the past three decades -- about 70 percent of the global total.
The reform was part of the country's "precision" poverty relief, or targeted efforts to help specific impoverished groups, said Yang Qian, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission.
The poorest regions in China are rich in water or mineral resources, but development projects in these areas have done little to bring local people out of poverty due to ineffective profit-sharing.
With these reforms, poor people will get long-term stable proceeds from the exploitation of local natural resources, compared with the current lump-sum compensation payments, Yang told a press briefing,
"If the pilot projects go smoothly, the reform will allow local residents to get higher proceeds than they receive now," Yang said. "But there are uncertainties too, depending on market changes and business operation."
To ensure the proceeds, authorities should choose projects that are economically viable with good profitability prospects and a short period of construction to pilot the reform, the plan said.
Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) should comply with WTO rules and ensure Chinese companies' right of defense while imposing trade remedy measures, an official said Tuesday.
In a preliminary ruling made by the European Commission earlier this month, anti-dumping duties will be imposed on imports of hot-rolled steel from China for six months, with the exclusion of tool steel and high-speed steel products.
The exclusion was the result of the defence put forward by Chinese steel and cutting tool maker Tiangong International Co., but will also be enjoyed by other manufacturers of those products, Shen Danyang, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, told a press conference.
As there will be half a year before the announcement of the final ruling, Shen said Chinese companies should make continued efforts to defend themselves.
"The central government will continue to support Chinese companies with regards to the foreign anti-dumping investigations," Shen added.
China is against trade protectionism and advocates a prudent, restrained and rule-based use of trade remedy measures, according to Shen.
A cargo ship to Singapore departs from Qinzhou bonded port, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nov. 5, 2015. [Xinhua]
China's economy showed signs of stabilizing as GDP growth remained at 6.7 percent in the third quarter, although the government faces the challenges of balancing debt control and economic growth.
Official figures released on Wednesday kept China on track to meet the government's target of 6.5 to 7 percent growth for the year. The economy expanded 6.9 percent in 2015, the slowest pace in a quarter of a century.
Growth on track
"The general performance was better than expected, and the national economy grew steadily with progress being made and quality improved," said Sheng Laiyuan, spokesperson with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
As external demand remains soft, the stabilization in China's economy is largely propped up by improving domestic demand, especially in the property and automobile sectors.
China's industrial output growth slowed to 6.1 percent year on year in September, down from 6.3 percent in August, as weak global demand weighed on the world's largest trader in goods.
Fixed-asset investment rose 8.2 percent in the first nine months of the year, while retail sales grew 10.7 percent year on year last month, marking a slight acceleration from August.
Private investment rebounded after a lengthy poor streak while property investment continued to accelerate in September.
As evidence that a rebalancing of China's economy from being investment-led to consumption-driven is well underway, consumption contributed to 71 percent of economic growth, up 13.3 percent year on year, while the tertiary sector grew 7.6 percent year on year in added value, the fastest among all sectors.
Meanwhile, China's producer price deflation disappeared in September for the first time since early 2012, thanks to China's efforts to cut excess capacity and promote supply-side structural reforms, especially in steel and coal, Sheng said.
The NBS said in a statement that the economy was in a critical period of transformation and upgrading, with old drivers of growth to be replaced by new ones, with many uncertain factors in the economy remaining, and that the foundations for sustained growth were not solid.
Risks under control
With GDP growth on track, the government has signaled a shift in policy focus away from stimulus and toward containing financial risks caused by easy credit.
China's new lending boomed again in September with loans to households continuing to rapidly increase, official data showed Tuesday.
This pointed to a positive sign for property and auto demand but added concerns that consumers were following the same high-leverage path as corporates.
To deleverage the economy, the government rolled out a debt-for-equity swap program in early October to bring down the corporate leverage ratio, while over a dozen Chinese cities have introduced measures to cool overheated markets, which led to marked drops in sales.
These steps gave rise to concerns whether the government could balance reducing debt with sustaining growth, as less leverage almost always means short-term slower economic activity.
The property market restrictions are timely and effective and aim to stem speculative purchases while supporting real demand, with limited impact on the economy, Sheng said.
This round of property tightening will unlikely drag down the headline growth as sharply as from 2010 onwards, as housing investment has remained lukewarm in the past few quarters despite soaring property prices, Zhou Hao, Senior EM Economist Asia with Commerzbank, said in a research note.
While a drop in housing sales will add downward pressure on the economy, we do not really foresee a risk of sharp investment slowdown, and in the coming quarter China's monetary policy will be less aggressive than estimated, Zhou added.
Expansionary fiscal policy is expected to be the major tools for the government to sustain economic growth, according to analyst estimates.
There might be continued policy support mainly in the form of infrastructure and public private partnership project approvals, said Tom Rafferty, Asia Economist with the Intelligence Unit with the Economist.
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The Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft successfully completed its automated docking with the orbiting Tiangong-2 space lab at 3:31 a.m. Wednesday Beijing Time, according to Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).
Photo taken on Oct. 19, 2016 shows the screen at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center showing astronauts Jing Haipeng (R) and Chen Dong celebrating on the success of the automated docking between Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft and the space lab Tiangong-2. The Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft successfully completed its automated docking with the orbiting Tiangong-2 space lab Wednesday morning, according to Beijing Aerospace Control Center. (Xinhua/Ju Zhenhua)
Shenzhou-11, which was launched Monday morning from northwest China's Gobi Desert, began to approach Tiangong-2 automatically at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday and made contact with the space lab at 3:24 a.m..
The rendezvous took place in the orbit about 393 kilometers above Earth.
The two astronauts aboard Shenzhou-11, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, monitored and reported on the docking operation, relaying their findings to the control center.
According to the mission schedule, once they enter the space module, the astronauts will stay there for 30 days.
Shenzhou-11, China's sixth manned spacecraft, will undertake the longest-ever space mission in the country. The two astronauts will spend a total of 33 days in space.
Sun Jun, deputy chief engineer of BACC, told Xinhua that the precision needed for the orbit prediction and automated docking calculation was much higher than previous docking missions.
China is the third country, after the United States and Russia, to complete successfully space rendezvous and docking procedures.
Tiangong-2 was sent into space on Sept. 15. It is hailed as China's first space lab "in the strict sense" and a key step in building a permanent space station, which the country aims to accomplish by 2020.
After reading about numerous officials accused of bribery and other forms of corruption, the public is finally hearing from some of the disgraced officials themselves.
An eight-part documentary being aired on national television provides a first full look inside their stories, including tearful expressions of regret and even surprise at their own actions, which brought them a posh life at the public's expense.
At the same time, anti-corruption officials see it as a chance to showcase their work over the past four years, and as a cautionary tale for public servants. It also comes right before a high-level meeting expected to develop stricter rules for CPC members.
"I never expected I would have such an ending," Zhou Benshun, 63, former top Party official of Hebei province, tells the camera. "I was brought up in a poor family. ... I hated corrupt officials since I was young, but I became one in the end." He was placed under investigation in October.
Juicy details also are coming to light, such as bribes in the form of "gifts", like a jade bracelet worth 15 million yuan ($2.2 million) given to Bai Enpei, 70, a former top official in Yunnan province, in exchange for a piece of land.
The series is being aired shortly before the Sixth Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China's 18th Central Committee.
The meeting, to be held Monday through Oct 27, is expected to propose tougher rules for Party members in the form of two draft disciplinary documentsfor professional and personal conductto be submitted for discussion and approval.
The series, produced by the CPC Central Committee for Discipline Inspection and the national television system CCTV, entitled Corruption Fight Is Always Underway, began airing nightly on Monday at 8 pm on CCTV-1.
It features the cases of about 10 former provincial or ministerial-level officials and one former State leader, Su Rong, former vice-chairman of China's top political advisory body. The interviews were done while the former officials were detained but before any convictions.
The cases of disgraced officials who held higher positions, from former State security chief Zhou Yongkang to former Central Military Commission officers Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, are discussed, though they are not interviewed.
Airing the series before a key national political meeting is "a good opportunity to tell good anti-graft stories and promote building a clean and honest government," said Hong Daode, a law professor at China University of Political Science and Law.
Yang Weidong, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, a school for training senior officials, said, "After watching the corrupt officials' stories, officials and CPC members will exchange their views on the lessons they will have to learn, and to regulate their own behavior according to the new rules."
The series' production team visited 22 provinces and regions to gather information on more than 10 former top officials linked to more than 40 corruption changes.
They also interviewed 70 experts from home and abroad as well as anti-graft officers to explain the cases and how they were handled.
In the first episode, aired on Monday night, viewers heard from Bai, Zhou, and Li Chuncheng, former deputy Party chief of Sichuan province.
In the second episode, screened on Tuesday, Wan Qingliang, former Party chief of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, and Gu Chunli, former vice-governor of Jilin province, told their stories.
Bai, Li and Wan have been convicted, while Zhou and Gu await trial.
The series has had a big impact.
"After watching the TV series, we know how serious and complex the graft issues are, and (that) it's necessary for the government to carry out a continuous and persistent campaign to target corruption," said Li Wei, an anti-graft officer in Liaoning province.
Zhang Li, a teacher at Beijing No 11 Middle School, said, "It's being shown to reflect the central leadership's resolute determination and the measures taken to fight corruption, which will leave no place for the corrupt suspects to hide and escape."
Since November 2012, when the new leadership took office, anti-corruption has become a top priority, and President Xi Jinping has launched a sweeping campaign to target both high- and low-ranking officials. Over 140 senior corrupt officials have been investigated over graft issues, according to the CCDI.
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Xi Xiaoming, former vice president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), and Gu Chunli, former vice governor in Northeast China's Jilin province, have been indicted for taking bribes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said on Tuesday.
The SPP has designated Tianjin and Harbin procuratorates to initiate prosecution against Xi and Gu respectively.
According to the indictments, Xi and Gu both took advantage of their posts to seek benefits for others and accepted a huge amount in bribes.
Prosecutors have informed Xi and Gu of their litigation rights, questioned the defendants, and listened to representations from their lawyers, according to a statement from the SPP.
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A former senior official in north China's Shanxi Province was sentenced to 15 years in prison for accepting bribes amounting nearly 45 million yuan (6.68 million U.S. dollars) by a court in Jiangsu Province on Wednesday.
Personal assets worth 4 million yuan belonging to Nie Chunyu, former secretary-general of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Shanxi Provincial Committee, were confiscated, according to a statement from Nantong City Intermediate People's Court.
His ill-gotten gains must be turned over to the state, the court ruled.
Nie was found guilty of taking advantage of his positions to seek profits for others in promotion of officials, job transfers or corporate development between 2004 and 2013, it said.
The court issued a lesser punishment as Nie admitted his crimes and voluntarily turned over his illicit gains.
Nie was ousted from the CPC in February 2015 after an internal probe found he had accepted bribes and committed adultery.
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President Xi Jinping on Wednesday called for greater cooperation between the military and civilian sectors to contribute more to the dream of building strong armed forces.
Xi made the remarks when visiting an exhibition on the high-technology achievements resulting from military and civilian cooperation.
Bai Yun, a former senior official in north China's Shanxi Province, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for accepting bribes amounting to 17.81 million yuan (2.64 million U.S. dollars) by a court in Jiangsu Province on Wednesday.
Personal assets worth 2 million yuan belonging to Bai, former member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Shanxi Provincial Committee, were confiscated, according to the verdict by the Nantong City Intermediate People's Court.
Her ill-gotten gains must be turned over to the state, the court ruled.
The court found that Bai, also former head of the United Front Work Department of the provincial committee of the CPC, took advantage of her various positions to seek profits for others in corporate restructuring, contracting projects, and job promotions and transfers between 2004 and 2013.
The court issued a lesser punishment as Bai admitted her crimes and voluntarily turned over her illicit gains.
Bai was expelled from the CPC in February 2015 after an internal Party investigation found she had accepted bribes.
Also on Wednesday, the court sentenced Nie Chunyu, former secretary-general of the provincial committee of the CPC, to 15 years in prison for accepting bribes.
A worker checks steel product files at a cold rolling mill of Tangsteel Group Ltd in Tangshan, Hebei province. [Photo/China Daily]
Soon after Chinese Vice-Premier Ma Kai took part in a high-level economic dialogue with European Union officials three years ago, Beijing and Brussels reached an amicable solution to end their dispute over China's solar panel exports to Europe that had almost frozen bilateral relations for a year.
With that obstacle removed, they entered into talks on opening their markets to investments by the other. Soon after the dispute was settled, Xi Jinping made the first visit ever by a Chinese president to the European Union's Brussels headquarters.
These developments established a solid foundation for Beijing and the EU to forge closer ties.
But when Ma returned to Brussels to attend a new round of the high-level economic dialogue between the EU and China in Brussels on Tuesday, he faced the challenge that the problem-plagued EU is once again getting tough on access to its market. And this despite the fact that bilateral trade now stands at $1 billion dollars a day. As much trade is now done in seven hours with one EU country Belgium as it took a whole year to achieve 45 years ago.
A number of issues are expected to be discussed during this week's talks.
Both sides set an end of year deadline to come up with an agreed text after 12 rounds of negotiations. But, even with the best efforts of both sides, it will not be easy to find a compromise on the issue of market access within that timeframe.
There is also the issue of over-capacity in the global steel industry. The EU position, reinforced by lobbyists and industry groups, is as tough as it was in the dispute over solar panels. This year, steelworkers from around the EU took to the streets of Brussels to demand greater protection for their ailing industry. Their complaints against foreign imports have to be set against the fact that expensively run European plants also bear a share of the blame for what is a global problem.
Since China embarked on its economic miracle decades ago, much European capacity in steel-making has moved to China. Brussels should stop blaming Beijing for the problems, and work with it to find a solution. China has been making its contribution to solving the issue by reducing its steel capacity, which has led to a rising number of lay-offs in the domestic steel industry.
Also at the conference table, the two sides will not be able to avoid the topic of China's market economy status as Dec 11 is very close. After that day, in line with a World Trade Organization agreement, Brussels should no longer charge anti-dumping duties against Chinese exports to the EU on the basis of China's non-market status, since the transitional period of 15 years since China joined the WTO is over.
Beijing insists that the matter is non-negotiable, but so far Brussels has not offered a solution. Voices within the European institutions recently started commenting that the market economy issue is "not a technical but a political" one at a time when the EU is facing an existential crisis that challenges its political unity.
Within the context of the rule-based international community, it is maybe time for Brussels to show political wisdom and respect the WTO agreement.
Ideally, it would send such a message in the talks with Ma. And then, Brussels and Beijing could renew harmonious relations at a number of levels.
The author is deputy chief of China Daily European Bureau.
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The Syrian army said on Tuesday that it will deal decisively with Islamic State (IS) terrorists fleeing Iraq's Mosul city into Syria, according to the state news agency SANA.
Mosul, an IS stronghold, has been under extensive attack by the Iraqi army in order to drive out IS militants.
Although the military statement hailed the progress made by Iraq's army "heroes" against the IS, it warned of a "Western scheme, whose features have started to become obvious."
The scheme, the statement continued, is for IS militants to obtain access from Mosul into Syria' eastern region, mainly the province of Deir al-Zour by Iraq's border.
"While the general-command of the Syrian army stresses that the battle to liberate Mosul from terrorism is its battle too, it will deem any infiltration of the Syrian borders as an aggression and will deal with the infiltrators as terrorists with all possible means," the statement said.
Military experts in Syria have recently warned that Western countries, mainly the United States, want IS militants to flee Iraq into Syria.
This comes particularly after the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition attacked Syrian military posts recently, killing 90 soldiers and allowing IS militants to control bombed military posts in Deir al-Zour.
Officials in Syria said the U.S. intends for IS to remain strong in Deir al-Zour and for the province to become a safe haven for IS militants fleeing Iraq in order to pressure the Syrian army and its Russian ally.
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Turkey joined airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition during the operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (IS), Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Justice and Development Party's parliamentary group meeting in Ankara, Yildirim said "Our Air Forces have also participated in airstrikes in Mosul."
He stated that Turkey would do "everything necessary" against all kinds of threats and did not need permission from others,local Hurriyet reported.
The prime minister also warned that Ankara would respond if developments in Mosul lead to negative consequences against Turkey.
Turkish Pesident Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the International Law Congress on Monday that Turkey will take part in operations and it will be coming to the diplomatic table in the aftermath.
Erdogan stressed that Turkey has a 350-kilometer border with Iraq, and therefore the country cannot be expected to remain impartial to developments right across the border.
He also warned against the danger of sectarian clashes if Ankara's concerns are not taken into consideration.
Ankara has been locked in a row with Baghdad about the presence of its troops at the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq and over who should take part in the U.S.-backed assault on Mosul.
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Saudi Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday the execution of a Saudi prince for shooting to death a Saudi citizen, Saudi Press Agency reported.
Prince Turki bin Saud bin Turki bin Saud Al Kabeer killed a Saudi national during a fight between a group of people four years ago.
Death penalty is the punishment for various crimes in Saudi Arabia that follow Islamic regulations in almost all walks of life. Murder, terrorism and drug-related crimes are mainly penalized with capital punishment.
The Interior Ministry spokesperson told the press that the executions that are done through the sword or shooting are carried out inside prisons.
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U.S. drone strikes killed about seven members of the Yemen-based al-Qaeda offshoot in the country's southeastern province of Shabwa on Tuesday, a military official told Xinhua.
The military source said on condition of anonymity that three vehicles carrying al-Qaida members were struck by U.S. drone raids while traveling in a mountainous area of Shabwa province.
Initial reports indicated that more than seven al-Qaida members were killed and others left injured, the source said.
Local residents told Xinhua that suspected al-Qaida gunmen launched an armed attack on a military checkpoint in Shabwa hours before the U.S. airstrikes.
At least three army personnel were killed and two others injured as a result of the al-Qaida attack, the residents said.
Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.
The Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), also known locally as Ansar al-Sharia, emerged in Jan. 2009. It had claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks on Yemen's army and government institutions.
U.S. drones have been active over Yemeni cities since years ago, launching hundreds of airstrikes that killed scores of al-Qaida leaders and many other extremists.
The Arab country 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 UN figures show that the military conflict has left more than 6,400 dead, displaced thousands, leading to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
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Radical anti-Islam groups are beginning to pose a significant threat to Australia's national security, the country's head of intelligence said overnight.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization's (ASIO) director general, Duncan Lewis said the fast rise of the radical far-right group Reclaim Australia was of particular interest to the nation's top security agencies.
Lewis said following the first arrest of one of the group's members under new far-right counter-terror laws earlier this year, ASIO has started to monitor the activity of the anti-Islam group more closely.
"(If) there is a possibility of violence, or there is indeed violence being offered, that is of interest to us," Lewis told a Senate committee overnight.
Reclaim Australia is a self-described patriot group which has been involved in a number of violent protests about the construction of Mosques in Australia, as well as the rise of Muslim immigration.
When asked if the group posed any threat to Australian citizens, Lewis said: "Yes it is, but I wouldn't describe it as going up in any vertical way. It's come off a low base and it's now more present than it was."
Meanwhile Lewis added that ASIO was investigating up to 200 people who were actively supporting terror groups such as Islamic State (IS). He said there were about 110 Australians also currently fighting for IS in Iraq and Syria.
"The threat of terrorism in Australia is real and present in our community," he said.
"It requires vigilance by both the Australian community and abroad, and governments of all levels to continue to combat it."
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No charges would be filed against two police officers who fired 56 unanswered rounds and killed an armed father and son in East Baltimore earlier this year, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
"We have concluded that there is no legal basis to charge these officers, who appear to have prevented even further violence on the streets of Baltimore," prosecutors wrote in an email to the Baltimore Sun newspaper.
The shooting occurred at the end of March when the two policemen, who were on unmarked patrol with another police officer, saw Matthew V. Wood, 43, and Kimani Johnson, 18, drive into the block near a playground and emerge from a vehicle with weapons.
The police said they believed the father and son were poised to shoot a group of people across the street, though after the gunfire police determined the dual had not fired any shots. The third officer at the scene didn't fire his weapons.
Tawanda Johnson, Kimani's mother, said in a phone interview with the newspaper on Tuesday that she had not been told that prosecutors had declined to charge the officers and felt upset with the decision and an overall lack of information provided about the case.
"They wouldn't shoot a stray dog 56 times," she said. "They shot my son as if he meant nothing."
An autopsy showed Johnson was shot 12 times, in his body, arms, legs and head. Wood was struck eight times, also in the body, arms, legs and head.
The third officer who did not fire, Reginald Jones, told police investigators that the officers had been in the area due to violence and drug complaints when they saw Wood open the driver's side door and emerge with a rifle in his lap.
But Kimani's mother argued that the fact that Jones did not fire "says to me his life was not in jeopardy".
"Something is fishy. It's been fishy from day one." she lamented.
The police report said there were "several" CCTV cameras in the surrounding area but they captured "nothing of evidentiary value."
The dead father was found with an assault rifle loaded with 25 rounds, while Johnson had a 9 mm Ruger handgun loaded with seven rounds, according to the police, adding that both of them had gun charges on their record.
The two police officers have already returned to full duty, though an internal review of the case is still pending, said the Baltimore Sun report.
One of them, Sgt. Joseph Wiczulis, has been involved in two previous fatal shootings since 2010, including an incident in which he shot a man who had shot two officers. In 2013, he also shot and killed a 25-year-old man with a handgun. He was also cleared of criminal wrongdoing in both cases.
Despite the increased tensions between police and black communities across the country in recent years, charges against officers remain rare, with prosecutors affirming police actions, said the report.
Baltimore City officers so far have shot nine people this year, killing four of them. Six cases remain under review by the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office.
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One person was killed and four others injured in an explosion at a South Korean chemical factory in the southern inland city of Gumi, local media reported on Wednesday.
Police and fire department were quoted as saying that a fire broke out at a factory of Star Chemical following an explosion at around 9:21 a.m. local time (0021 GMT).
The plant is located in the Gumi industrial complex in North Gyeongsang province.
The fire was extinguished about 40 minutes after it broke out thanks to some 20 fire trucks and 140 personnel that were dispatched to the scene.
Among five workers at the scene, one sustained a heavy injury and was taken to a nearby hospital, but he finally passed away while being treated. Four others suffered minor injuries.
The explosion happened while workers were demolishing raw material tanks at the factory set to be shut down. Initial indications suggested that the fire was caused by an oxygen tank's explosion.
Star Chemical has reportedly been out of business since January 2013 to get procedure for liquidation.
Police and fire department are still investigating the cause of the accident.
A series of major measures will be adopted in an effort to further revitalize the slowing economy in Northeast China, especially as the region's pillar industries are cutting production capacity and private investment has dropped.
The measures were in two support documents, including the 13th Five-Year Plan for Revitalizing Northeast China, approved by the central government on Tuesday at the second meeting of the Leading Group for Revitalizing Northeast China and Other Old Industrial Bases. The meeting was presided over by Premier Li Keqiang.
The documents aim to boost local economies and private investment in Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces and the eastern part of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Details of the documents were not immediately available.
The region was vital to the country's establishment of a complete industrial system, but it has relied on heavy industries such as steel and coal mining, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
As the country cuts overcapacity in industries that pollute heavily, GDP growth in Liaoning and Heilongjiang during the first eight months has been below the national average.
The National Development and Reform Commission has announced plans for 127 major projects for the region, at a cost of 1.6 trillion yuan ($237.3 billion), to boost local economies.
Premier Li urged local governments to stabilize investment and consumption. The region should also promote the service sector, including tourism and cultural events, to cultivate new areas for growth, he said.
Negative lists for corporate investment and market access will be established in the region, while reforms of State-owned enterprises will be conducted to boost private investment and raise confidence in a vigorous recovery of the local economy, Li added.
To attract and keep private investment, Li also called on local governments to make further efforts to improve the business environment by streamlining administrative procedures and strengthening governmental services.
Private investment in Northeast China has declined sharply, with that in Liaoning decreasing by 58 percent in the first half of the year.
At the meeting, the premier pledged support for resource-exhausted cities to upgrade local economies, and he encouraged the region to cooperate with rapidly growing provinces in southern China.
The region's economic slowdown stems from a worsening business environment and a lack of vitality for enterprises, said Nie Huihua, vice-president of the National Academy of Development and Strategy at Renmin University of China.
The nation's new yuan loans in September were largely supported by an increase in mortgage lending, but the contribution is expected to decline with tightened policies introduced in the property sector, economists said.
Chinese banks issued 1.22 trillion yuan ($181 billion) in new yuan loans in September, up from 948.7 billion yuan in August, according to data released on Tuesday by the People's Bank of China, the central bank.
New housing loans issued to individuals stood at 475.9 billion yuan, according to Ruan Jianhong, head of the statistics and analysis department at PBOC.
In the first three quarters, China's new housing loans to individuals rose to 3.63 trillion yuan, or 35.7 percent of new loans, said Ruan.
"The high proportion of new household lending has to do with the booming housing markets, asset allocation preferences of residents and financial institutions, said Ruan.
China's booming housing market has seen a surge in trading volume, especially in first- and second-tier cities, according to Ruan.
The release of the data came after Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank's governor, said at a G20 meeting in Washington this month that China would rein in excessive credit growth.
Zhou said the government has been "paying attention" to rising property prices and will take steps to promote the real estate market's "healthy development".
Wang Youxin, an economist at the Institute of International Finance, a think tank affiliated with the Bank of China, said that the cooling measures would curb a sharp increase in credit growth.
Zhao Yang, chief China economist with Nomura Holdings, said the tightened policy introduced earlier this month to restrict purchases would reduce the demand for mortgage loans.
Yao Yudong, former head of the Research Institute of Finance and Banking of the central bank, said further monetary easing is not very likely.
An employee works on the nose of a Boeing Co 737 MAX airplane on the production line at the company's manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington. [Photo/Bloomberg]
Boeing Co will reveal the location of its first overseas B737 completion center in China by the end of the year, as it expands its industrial footprint in the world's fastest growing aviation market, the US aircraft manufacturer said on Tuesday.
Zhoushan, a city in Zhejiang province near Shanghai, already sent its plan for the Boeing facility to the State Council after preparing for the program for more than two years, Shanghai Securities News reported. Other cities including Shenyang in Liaoning province and Xi'an in Shaanxi province, have also expressed their hope to host the new facility, with local government support.
Boeing Co and Commercial Aircraft Corp of China, signed an agreement last September to jointly establish a Boeing 737 completion center in China, after President Xi Jinping's visit in the Seattle area, home to the headquarters of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The center, which will be joint venture of the two, will cover completion activities including cabin installation, painting and flight testing.
"The center will deliver 100 planes every year, and our team is ready for the work wherever the center is," said Ian Chang, vice-president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, who is responsible for China operations and business development.
"The growth potential of the aviation market in China and the Asia-Pacific region is huge, we may expand the facility in the future, and manufacture aircraft besides 737, to serve other Asian customers besides China."
By 2018, Boeing plans to produce 74 jets a month, jumping 70 percent compared to its production of 44 commercial airplanes per month in 2011, the company said.
"The facility will help Boeing to increase its output of 737 aircraft, and support the growth of China's aviation market, where it is the largest for single-aisle airplanes," Chang said.
"We will cooperate with more Chinese interior suppliers, and help them to raise their capabilities and competences, from raw materials to assembly."
Cofco Meat Holdings Ltd, the Chinese mainland pork producer part-owned by KKR & Co, is seeking to raise as much as $333 million in a Hong Kong initial public offering.
The State-backed company is offering 975.6 million shares at HK$2 (25 US cents) to HK$2.65 apiece, according to terms for the deal that were obtained by Bloomberg on Monday. Haier Group Corp agreed to buy $57.4 million of stock as the biggest cornerstone investor in the offering, the terms show.
Investors are returning to the Chinese food industry after a series of safety scandals that shook consumer confidence. Shares of WH Group Ltd, the Chinese mainland owner of the Smithfield bacon brand, have risen 56 percent in Hong Kong trading this year, outpacing the 5.2 percent gain in the city's benchmark Hang Seng Index.
KKR, Baring Private Equity Asia, Hopu Investment Management Co and Boyu Capital bought stakes in Cofco Meat in 2014, according to a pre-listing filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Hopu sold its interest in the company last year to Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte, the filing shows.
Cofco Meat follows Dali Foods Group Co, the maker of "Copico" brand potato chips, and seasoning producer Yihai International Holding Ltd in pursuing a Hong Kong listing to fund expansion. First-time share sales in the city have raised $19.1 billion this year, down from $21.1 billion during the same period in 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Other cornerstone investors in the Cofco Meat offering include China Life Insurance Co, which agreed to purchase $20 million of shares, the terms show. China Life Franklin Asset Management Co will invest $10 million, according to the terms. Such stock buyers agree to keep their holdings for six months in return for early, guaranteed allocation.
The company plans to price the offering on Oct 24 and begin trading on Nov 1, the terms show.
BLOOMBERG
A view from street level looking up at the Lloyds Building, Tower 42 and The Gherkin, in London's City business district known as the square mile. [Photo / IC]
Chinese outbound real estate investment has slowed down, and Chinese enterprises now tend to invest in global gateway cities which have good infrastructure.
According to property consultancy Knight Frank, the outbound investment in the real estate market was $10.7 billion in the first half of this year, a 13.6 percent drop from the same period of last year.
Because of increased uncertainties in the global real estate market, 84 percent of the money has been invested in New York, London, Sydney, Melbourne, and Hong Kong. During the same period last year, the figure was 42 percent.
The US remains the top destination for Chinese capital, having attracted $5.1 billion in the first half of 2016, an increase of 21 percent year-on-year, Knight Frank's executive director Paul Hart said.
The Brexit vote has not scared off Chinese investors. In the first half of this year, $1.7 billion in Chinese capital outflows went to the UK property market, soaring 75 percent from the same period last year, according to Paul Hart.
Although Chinese capital outflows into the Hong Kong property market saw a 9 percent drop to $1.68 billion in the first six months of this year, the city is still hot destination for Chinese investors.
Moreover, Chinese property investment in Australia also fell 37 percent to $1.7billion in the first half of this year.
PHNOM PENH - Cambodia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on agricultural development with a Chinese company from East China's Shandong province on Wednesday.
The deal was inked between Veng Sakhon, Cambodian Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, and Shen Chen, chairman of Tian Rui (Cambodia) Agricultural Cooperation Special Economic Zone.
Shen said the company has planned to invest about $2 billion in developing a 300-hectare Special Economic Zone in western Kampong Speu province, in which storage facilities, packaging factories, and processing factories for agricultural products will be built.
"Under the MoU, the company will update the ministry about the types of agricultural products that are in high demand in Chinese market, so the ministry can advise farmers to grow those kinds of crops and sell them to our company," he told reporters after the signing ceremony.
He said the firm would also cooperate with the ministry to establish an Agricultural Research and Development Center and a Center for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Control.
Shen added that the company would try to attract more Chinese enterprises to invest in agricultural processing factories in its special economic zone.
Meanwhile, Veng Sakhon said the cooperation between the ministry and the company would contribute to developing Cambodian agriculture under the framework of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.
"The company will also help boost the exports of Cambodian agricultural products to international markets, particularly Chinese market," he said.
British Airways' iconic planes will not be seen in Chengdu, China, after January. [STEFAN WERMUTH/REUTERS]
British Airways is suspending its regular London to Chengdu flight in January after having tested the waters for three years, despite booming numbers of people traveling between the UK and China.
A BA spokeswoman confirmed the news to China Daily on Tuesday.
"We have a proud tradition of flying to China but, despite operating this route for three years, it is not commercially viable," she said, requesting anonymity.
The final service from Heathrow will be on Jan 12 and the last BA fl ight out of Chengdu will be on Jan 13. BA added the London-Chengdu flight in 2013, initially flying the route five times a week. It reduced the service to three fl ights a week in 2014.
Meanwhile, BA also flies from London directly to Hong Kong and also to Shanghai and Beijing.
The company's announcement came at a time when Chinese airlines are adding new flights to London, fuelled by growing visitor numbers.
The latest additions were made in June, when Tianjin Airlines launched a flight between Tianjin and London's Gatwick airport that stops in Chongqing. Hainan Airlines also added a direct flight between Beijing and Manchester.
Chinese airlines expressed immediate interest last week when Britain's Department of Transport announced a deal with its Chinese counterpart that means each country can authorize up to 100 flights a week, compared to 40 previously.
Restrictions on destinations have also been lifted. Hainan Airlines said last week it would consider increasing the frequency of its Manchester flights while considering new flights between second-tier Chinese cities and London. Tianjin Airlines also welcomed the agreement.
Paul Argyle, managing director of Flight Directors, an aviation industry sales and marketing company, said Chinese airlines have an advantage because traveler number growth is originating from China, as opposed to the UK.
"More Chinese visitors are wanting to visit the UK than UK visitors wanting to visit China, so Chinese airlines enjoy a brand advantage, because Chinese visitors are already familiar with their brands," Argyle said.
He added that the important thing to note about BA's statement is that, with the Chengdu route considered to be unviable commercially, the airline is now free to use those landing slots to fl y to more profitable locations.
Currently, landing slots are hard to get because Heathrow is operating close to its capacity. The industry is awaiting the UK government's delayed decision on whether to add another runway at one of the capital's airports, boosting capacity.
Argyle added that another factor that would have made Chengdu less profitable for BA was its lack of a local partner airline there that could participate in its One World Alliance. In comparison, BA passengers flying to Shanghai and Beijing can more easily connect to other destinations through partner airlines, making those destinations more attractive.
According to statistics from VisitBritain, the official tourism board, more than 1 million passengers traveled between Britain and China last year, an 11 percent increase on 2014. Last year, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Britain grew by 40 percent.
Sino-Russia relations are mature and stable and will not be weakened by particular incidents or temporary factors, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said while answering questions from Itar-Tass on the sidelines of the "Two Sessions" on Tuesday.
"The China-Russia relationship is mature and stable. Our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is built on a solid foundation of mutual support and mutual trust," Wang said. "The two sides have a strong desire to strengthen win-win cooperation. The relationship can pass the test of any international development and will not be weakened by any particular incidents."
Regarding the five meetings between President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2015 as setting the tone for bilateral cooperation, Wang said the countries are making progress in various projects, including the eastern route of the natural gas pipeline.
"China and Russia have strong economic complementarities and a significant desire to work with each other," Wang said and he wishes to turn the countries' "strong political relations into more fruits of practical cooperation".
Russia opposes actions "internationalizing the South China Sea issue" and favors direct negotiation between the countries involved, as China aims to uphold "the authority of the law" by rejecting unilateral arbitration.
The show of support came as a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague prepares to issue a ruling, expected in late Mayor early June, in Manila's sovereignty case against China. The tribunal was established in 2014 at Manila's request, and China has rejected the arbitration process since the request was filed.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow on Monday, said Moscow supports direct negotiation by countries directly involved to resolve disputes.
According to a Foreign Ministry media release on Tuesday, Wang told Lavrov that Beijing's rejection of the Philippines' unilaterally proposed arbitration case is a move meant to "uphold the dignity and authority of the law".
"Both China and Russia should remain alert against behavior abusing the mechanism of compulsory arbitration," said Wang, who visited Moscow to attend the 14th meeting of foreign ministers of China, Russia and India.
On Monday, Wang said China is "entitled to choose by itself, in accordance with relevant laws, ways for resolving disputes".
Reuters noted that the court has no powers of enforcement and its rulings have been ignored before.
Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said that the tribunal "has triggered concerns over it assertively expanding its realm of jurisdiction as well as its impartiality".
Wu said the Philippines and Western supporters, including the United States, are attempting to force China into a corner, and the disputes "will not be resolved by the arbitration, but will flare up and worsen".
Reuters and Xinhua contributed to this story.
zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn
A number of key political documents and cooperative documents will be signed by China and Russia during Russian President Vladimir Putin's upcoming visit to China, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday.
Putin will pay a state visit to China on Saturday at the invitation of President Xi Jinping, the ministry spokesman Lu Kang announced in a press release earlier.
This will be Putin's fourth visit to China since taking office as president in May 2012.
According to Hua, Putin will hold talks with Xi. The two sides will exchange views on bilateral ties as well as regional and international issues of common concern. They will also make arrangements on the future development and priority cooperation fields of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.
During the meeting, the two leaders will sign and announce a number of key political documents and witness the signing of a series of cooperative documents between the two countries' departments and enterprises.
In Beijing, Putin will also meet with Premier Li Keqiang and National People's Congress Standing Committee Chairman Zhang Dejiang.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Sino-Russian Good-Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, and events will be held by both sides to celebrate this anniversary, the spokeswoman said.
"China expects Putin's visit to further consolidate the political and strategic trust between China and Russia, to promote practical cooperation in various fields, to inject new impetus to the bilateral strategic partnership and making more contribution to global and regional peace, security and stability," Hua said.
A man stands near a vehicle on display at the Hyundai Motor Co booth during the press day of the Seoul Motor Show in Goyang, South Korea, March 28, 2013.[Photo/VCG]
South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co said two new factories in China will produce more environmentally friendly vehicles and models targeting the world's biggest auto market, as the automaker strives to fend off growing competition from Chinese rivals.
Hyundai said in a statement on Tuesday it has completed its latest Chinese plant, its fourth, in Cangzhou, Hebei province, and will open another one in Chongqing next year. The addition of the two plantseach with annual production capacity of 300,000will lift the total number of vehicles it can make in China, its biggest market, by about half to 1.81 million a year.
The focus on green cars is part of a new Hyundai strategy for China. The automaker, which ranks third in China sales together with affiliate Kia Motors, has seen its market share fall to 8.9 percent last yeara seven-year lowfrom 10.4 percent a year earlier as Chinese rivals lured away customers.
"We will accelerate our efforts to achieve a market share of more than 10 percent again with the opening of Cangzhou factory," Hyundai said. It didn't disclose how much it's investing in the new plants.
The South Korean duo will have total production capacity in China of 2.7 million vehicles once Kia's 890,000 capacity is counted in.
Hyundai said it aims to produce nine green vehicles in China by 2020, targeting 10 percent of its sales in the country by that year, to meet fuel economy regulations and compete with Chinese automakers, which dominate the segment.
The automaker said the new plants will build models of varying sizes to compete with low-cost Chinese rivals.
As part of its new strategy, Hyundai will boost the number of China dealerships to 1,400 by 2020, from 1,000 currently. It also plans to secure dealers in southwestern regions and small cities.
REUTERS
A Chinese mobile phone user uses the taxi-hailing and car-service app Didi Chuxing on his Apple iPhone smartphone in Jinan city, East China's Shandong province, Feb 22, 2015. [Photo/IC]
China's largest online car-hailing platform Didi Chuxing announced on Wednesday that it had signed a strategic partnership agreement with travel site TripAdvisor (China), to gear up its expansion in travel offerings.
The partnership targets visitors who want to enjoy convenient travel experiences, aiming at establishing a full service ecosystem covering travel information, scheduling and car-hailing services.
To implement the partnership, Didi and TripAdvisor will build offline Didi stations at up to 100 five-star hotels, mainly chosen by TripAdvisor. These stations will be located in destination cities with high demand for car-hailing services, directly connecting hotels with tourist attractions.
"Didi looks forward to integrating its smart transportation capabilities with robust high-demand travel scenarios to create a more seamless mobility experience for our users, especially when they travel in unfamiliar cities in China," said Yang Jun, vice president at Didi Chuxing.
Zhu Ming, vice president for Strategic Partnership and Account Management at TripAdvisor China, said: "As a world leading travel site, TripAdvisor has unparalleled access to information and reviews about everything a traveler would care about. We are delighted to work with DiDi to make it even easier for travelers to discover popular cities in China."
As a one-stop travel platform covering more than 400 cities in China, the Beijing-based Didi Chuxing offers services in different fields, including taxi hailing, private cars, enterprise solutions, hitch and test drive.
According to its official website, TripAdvisor has 350 million average monthly unique visitors, reaching 385 million reviews and opinions covering 6.6 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions.
In the future, the two companies will jointly introduce more specific car-hailing products, catering to individuals' customized needs.
The booming internet economy is playing an increasingly important role in supporting wealth growth in China's IT industry, according to a report released on Tuesday.
According to the annual Hurun IT Rich List, the average wealth of the top 50 Chinese IT tycoons hit a record, surging 13 percent year-on-year to 26.9 billion yuan ($4 billion).
Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd topped the ranking of China's richest IT people for the third consecutive year, defending his position against rivals including Tencent Holdings Ltd founder Pony Ma.
Jack Ma and his family's total wealth in IT industry was 195 billion yuan, followed by Pony Ma, whose wealth increased by 30 percent year-on-year to 134 billion yuan, according to the Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute.
Due to the rapid growth of the online gaming sector, NetEase Inc founder Ding Lei doubled his wealth to 96 billion yuan, surpassing Baidu Inc Chairman Robin Li and ranking third in the IT rich list.
Hurun Chairman Rupert Hoogewerf said: "Those entrepreneurs should be called 'super wealth creators' instead of simply 'rich people', which could highlight their contribution to China's society and economy. They've created such a lot of opportunities and jobs."
"The recent technological explosion provides a better environment for those IT tycoons. In the last two to three years, several technologies have seen breakthroughs, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality and cloud technology. Some have already been integrated into our daily lives, while others will soon be implemented," said Zhao Ziming, an analyst at internet consultancy Analysys.
Compared with an average age of 45, 52-year-old Jack Ma is the oldest among the top 10 IT tycoons.
Among the top 50 IT tycoons, five were born in the 1980s, including 33-year-old Cheng Wei, chief executive officer of Beijing-based Didi Chuxing.
The TCL booth at a mobile phone expo in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province.[Photo/China Daily]
BUENOS AIRES - Chinese electronics giant TCL Corporation plans to invest $100 million in Argentina over the next 12 months, Argentina's government announced on Tuesday.
The announcement followed a meeting between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and the CEO of TCL, Li Dongsheng, at the presidential headquarters and residence in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires.
"TCL Corporation, based out of Huizhou, in Guangdong province, is one of the largest firms in its field, producing mobile phones, televisions and home appliances, among other consumer goods," according to a news item posted on the presidential website.
"The goal is to build a joint venture with an Argentine company to expand its presence in the country's electronics market," the government said.
Founded in 1981, TCL began as a manufacturer and seller of telephones and related equipment, but its business expanded into other areas in the 1990s.
Today, the TCL employs more than 75,000 people in 80 countries. In Argentina, it has been working with local company Radio Victoria Fueguina since 2004.
The announcement comes amid increasing cooperation between Buenos Aires and Beijing, whose ties are at the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership.
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, for example, has made significant headway in Argentina's market.
In July, Macri met with the head of Huawei, Sun Yafang, who announced the company's intention to "expand its presence" in Argentina.
The following month, Huawei opened a Training Center in Buenos Aires, from which the company offers its services to telecom operators, government agencies, educational institutions and private firms in the country and the region.
Located in the city's southern Puerto Madero district, the 1,300-square-meter facility features one of Huawei's signature Customer Solution Innovation & Integration Experience Centers, or CSICs.
"The inauguration of the Training Center drew company clients, suppliers and employees, as well as the ministers of Modernization, Andres Ibarra, and Communications, Oscar Aguad; China's ambassador to Argentina, Yang Wanming, and his Argentine counterpart in China, Diego Guelar," financial daily Cronista Comercial reported on the event on Aug 17.
Throughout 2016, China has consolidated its position as Argentina's second-largest trade partner worldwide, with a 13 percent increase in imports from Argentina, thanks to a wider range of goods and a more balanced trade structure.
A former police chief, who was involved in a high-profile case in which a teenager was wrongfully convicted, was sentenced on Tuesday to 18 years in prison on four criminal charges, a court in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region said.
Feng Zhiming, the ex-deputy director of the public security bureau in Hohhot, the region's capital, was handed the sentence for bribery, embezzlement, illegal possession of firearms and holding a large amount of undeclared assets, according to a judgment released by the regional Hulunbuir Intermediate People's Court via its micro blog.
Feng was also fined 1.1 million yuan ($163,000), the judgment said.
It said that Feng abused his work post in the bureau between 2008 and 2014 to benefit 13 departments and individuals, and then accepted money in return.
He and his wife sold real estate worth more than 3.8 million yuan at above-market value during the same period, and he could not clarify how he had come to own more than 34 million yuan worth of property, it said.
He was also found guilty of illegally possessing four firearms and 549 rounds of ammunition, and selling a State-owned car worth 150,000 yuan, it added.
The case received wide attention in the public and the legal industry, as Feng headed the investigation into Hugjiltu, a teenager who was wrongfully convicted about two decades ago.
Before standing trial on Aug 1, he was accused of dereliction of duty, "but it's a pity that the charge was not proved in the judgment," said Zhao Li, a criminal lawyer from Jingshi Law Firm in Beijing.
Hugjiltu was executed quickly after he was sentenced to death for rape and murder in 1996.
He was declared innocent in December 2014 and his sentence was announced as a wrongful conviction.
In Zhao's view, the court did not confirm that Feng's dereliction of duty attributed to insufficient evidence, "because proving the police officer tortured in interrogations or made mistakes in the investigation was difficult".
But the lawyer said: "The difficulty does not mean that we will stop blaming those responsible for judicial miscarriages, or arguing against the torture that mainly brought wrongful convictions."
"The penalty for the former chief may comfort the teenager's family to some extent and seems to give some sort of explanation to the public, but the way to reduce legal mistakes for judicial bodies is still difficult," he said.
He suggested that it is effective to regulate the ways that police officers can collect evidence.
caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn
A court in Central China's Hunan province has accepted a case filed by 27 firework manufacturers against the provincial government for refusing their administrative review request over a government decision to shut down their factories.
The intermediate people's court in the provincial capital, Changsha, said the decision complies with the law, adding that the two sides could visit the court's website for updates on the case, according to a written notification the companies disclosed on Sunday.
All 46 firework manufacturers in Qidong county were shut down in December last year after the Hengyang city government, which has jurisdiction over Qidong, issued a notification in October 2014 to shut down all firework manufacturers in the city within three years.
However, the Qidong government only agreed to pay 30 percent of the value of the manufacturers' facilities, forcing 39 companies to turn to administrative review.
Chen Junming, legal representative for Shenghua Firework, said the company's annual production was estimated to be worth 60 million yuan ($8.9 million) before it was shut down, adding that the government only promised to pay compensation of about 4.8 million yuan, despite the manufacturer's facilities being worth about 16 million yuan.
"The company owes debts of almost 10 million yuan, which includes 4.3 million yuan in loans from banks," Chen said. "I have been under great pressure due to the debts, as I may be sued by the creditors. I hope the government allows us to resume production or fully compensates us according to the asset valuation."
The companies made their review request to Hunan province's legislative affairs office on Feb 4, asking the office to deliver a verdict that the government's decision to shut down all firework manufacturers was illegal and that the economic losses of the factories should be fully compensated, while 12 of the companies withdrew their request in May before it was recently refused.
The office said the companies should have known that their factories would be shut down, as the government had organized talks with them and carried out asset valuations between late 2014 and late last year, adding that such companies had failed to file an administrative review request within 60 days, in accordance with law, the Beijing Times reported.
However, lawyer Tu Siyi said that while companies could file administrative review requests within 60 days of being told their rights, they were never told their rights, adding that there is no time limit to request an administrative review under such circumstances.
Chen Yongjun, head of Xiangzhang Firework, said all firework manufacturers in Qidong were built in accordance with national standards, and the local government did not consult them before asking them to shut down.
He said they only knew they could turn to administrative review after seeking advice from a lawyer in January.
A request for interview sent to Hunan province's legislative affairs office went unanswered.
Contact the writers at houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn
The 16th Forum on Internet Media of China is held on Oct 17, 2016 in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
Algorithm. Big data. Smart technology. These were some of the key words from speeches made by many editors-in-chief of Chinese internet media who attended the 16th national forum held on Monday in Southwest China's Guizhou province.
Under the theme of "new idea for development and new ecosystem for cyberspace", officials of Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the Communist Youth League, as well as leaders of both Internet media and corporations shared their views about the progress and challenges posed by internet media today.
Ren Xianliang, deputy head of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) highlighted that internet media should seek innovative and coordinated development and focus on social responsibility.
His proposal resonates among internet media leaders.
In a keynote speech on how ifeng.com takes on algorithm innovation and sticks to media responsibility in an age of artificial intelligence (AI), CEO Liu Shuang introduced their attempts in making Yidianzixun, a news recommendation app based on users' interests and reading habits.
Meanwhile, he also said that media should be alert to the risks brought about by pandering to the number of views rather than focusing on quality. "Only integrating humanity into algorithms can prevent internet users from addiction to low quality and vulgar content," said Liu.
Li Rong, standing deputy editor-in-chief of thepaper.cn, shared a similar view, saying that they take both quality and users' views into account when assessing a reporter's performance.
Qin Yizhi, head of the Communist Youth League also gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the forum. He emphasized that a healthy cyberspace should be promoted for youth because they are "internet natives".
His view is echoed in the statistics provided by Wang Changqing, deputy head of the internet development research department of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), showing that most net users are young people.
Wang also suggested media should think about how to take advantage of big data and social networks to cooperate on content production. He was grateful to see many leaders of traditional media attending the forum and sharing on this topic.
This year's forum was hosted by youth.cn, and saw more than 700 guests gathering to discuss the issues.
NANJING -- A former senior official in North China's Shanxi province was sentenced to 15 years in prison for accepting bribes amounting nearly 45 million yuan ($6.68 million) by a court in Jiangsu province on Wednesday.
Personal assets worth 4 million yuan belonging to Nie Chunyu, former secretary-general of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Shanxi Provincial Committee, were confiscated, according to a statement from Nantong City Intermediate People's Court.
His ill-gotten gains must be turned over to the state, the court ruled.
Nie was found guilty of taking advantage of his positions to seek profits for others in promotion of officials, job transfers or corporate development between 2004 and 2013, it said.
The court issued a lesser punishment as Nie admitted his crimes and voluntarily turned over his illicit gains.
Nie was ousted from the CPC in February 2015 after an internal probe found he had accepted bribes and committed adultery.
TAIPEI -- The impact of Typhoon Haima has been downgraded as it moves southward, but heavy rainfall is likely to hit eastern Taiwan on Thursday and Friday, the local meteorological authority said Wednesday.
As of Wednesday morning, Haima was 990 kilometers east-southeast of Eluanbi on Taiwan's southernmost tip, moving at 27 kilometers per hour in a west-northwesterly direction, and will arrive at Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday night, according to the island's meteorological bureau.
There is a lowered possibility of a sea warning for Typhoon Haima since it is moving southward and will not hit the island directly, the bureau said.
However, moisture carried by Haima's peripheral currents could gradually reach the island and bring heavy rainfall to eastern regions and the Hengchun Peninsula in the south.
The bureau also warned of offshore waves along the island's coast and asked residents to take precautions accordingly.
BEIJING -- China's top court has pledged to protect the reputation and honor of the country's heroes in accordance with the law to "uphold socialist core values."
The Supreme People's Court (SPC) on Wednesday published five examples of lawsuits involving derogatory or humiliating comments about China's famous war heroes.
The cases include one in which a local court in Beijing ordered an Internet celebrity and a beverage maker to apologize to the family of deceased war hero Qiu Shaoyun for microblog posts that the court said infringed on Qiu's rights to reputation and honor.
Qiu, who burned to death while trying to protect his troop's position in an ambush mission, was flippantly mocked by the defendants.
Another case involved a court ruling against a magazine's former chief editor, who called into question facts surrounding "The Five Warriors of Mount Langyashan," a famous group of Chinese war heros who jumped off a cliff when fighting against Japanese invaders during World War II.
Cheng Xinwen, a senior civil tribunal justice of the SPC, said the cases not only matter for the personal reputation and honor of the heroes themselves, but also for the socialist core values and public interest.
Publishing these cases is intended to illustrate the essence of socialist core values and encourage the public to respect the country's heroes, learn from them and care for them, Cheng said.
Cheng cited social mores in the protection of deceased heroes' reputations.
Warning that the freedom of academic research and speech should have boundaries, the judge also noted that ordinary academic issues are not within the judiciary's power, thus the courts are required to exert careful discretion in relevant cases.
Cheng further explained the general principles regarding trials for slander and infringement via online media.
Inspired by the "Chinese dream" mentioned by First Lady Peng Liyuan two years ago, German graduate Maximilian Volges came to South China's Guangxi province as a volunteer to teach English to rural students.
"You told us that your Chinese dream is let all children, especially girls, to have access to good education," Volges, who arrived in China earlier this year, told Peng in Chinese at the Diaoyutai State guesthouse in Beijing on Wednesday.
"I was deeply influenced by your 'Chinese dream', so I came to China to teach English voluntarily in Guilin," said Volges, whose Chinese name is "Kong Hao".
The 18-year-old high school graduate is part of a delegation consisting of students and teachers from the Burg- Gymnasium (High School) in Essen. In March 2014, Peng visited the school during President Xi Jinping's state visit to Germany.
Peng spoke highly of the German volunteer's contribution to rural education in South China.
"A year later, you will feel the seed of China-Germany friendship that you sowed in the students' heart will blossom beautifully," Peng told the volunteer.
A tree is uprooted by the strong winds of typhoon Sarika in Haikou, Hainan province. [Photo By Ma Zhiping/China Daily]
A rampant typhoon Sarika has brought grave losses to local people's daily lives since it made its landfall in Hainan province on Tuesday morning.
Sarika, the twenty-first typhoon this year, seriously affected the life of more than 1.55 million people as it wreaked havoc in Haikou, the provincial capital, as well as Sanya and Danzhou. More than 2,600 rooms collapsed and about 81,700 hectares of crops were hit, leaving 17,000 hectares certain to suffer total failure this year, according to initial statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Direct economic losses have reached 2.62 billion yuan ($388.7 million). That figure is expected to grow further as damage inspection is still underway, the ministry said.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs' National Disaster Reduction Committee dispatched working groups on Wednesday afternoon to coordinate rescue efforts in areas that have been seriously lashed by the cyclone, which brought winds of up to 162 km per hour on Tuesday morning and rainfall of up to about 300 millimeters in some areas.
The typhoon, reportedly one of the most serious in more than 40 years for October, has halted traffic to and from the island since Monday. But flights, trains and highway transportation have been resumed as of late Tuesday. Yet there are only partial services in some areas.
Hainan provincial and local authorities have sent large amounts of daily necessities such as tents, quilts and various foods to residents in disaster-stricken areas.
Rescue work will continue on the island, according to officials with the Hainan provincial disaster relief authorities.
Astronauts enter high-tech lab on national TV while scientists start shaping future
Clockwise from upper left: Scientists fix their gaze on monitors at Beijing Aerospace Control Center as Shenzhou XI prepares to dock with the Tiangong II space lab on Wednesday. The two spacecraft dock, in this artist's rendering. Chen Dong floats in the space lab. Jing Haipeng, left, and Chen greet viewers shortly after entering the space lab. [Photo/Xinhua]
As two Chinese astronauts peered into the heavens from the Tiangong II space lab they docked with early Wednesday, Chinese rocket scientists on the ground said they are looking into ways to shape the future of the nation's space market.
When the astronauts left their "divine vessel", Shen-zhou XI, and entered the newest high-tech "heavenly palace" floating above Earth early on Wednesday, it was one for the history books.
The docking with the Tiangong II space lab wasn't the first such maneuver in the Chinese space program.
But it was highly significant, with more experiments planned, a space stay twice as long as earlier missions and a space lab that's a significant step toward the nation's goal of having a permanent space station orbiting in just a few years.
Once the two vehicles docked, mission commander Jing Haipeng, 49, and Chen Dong, 37, extended greetings to all of the Chinese people and checked the status of the Shenzhou XI-Tiangong II combination to ensure equal pressurization.
The two took off their spacesuits to change into blue jumpsuits.
They will remain within the space lab for 30 days, making the longest space stay by Chinese astronauts. They will verify the life-support capability of the spacecraft-space lab combination and conduct scientific research and engineering experiments.
Jing and Chen will sprout seeds and study their growth in space. They also will take part in an experiment in which a futuristic device will try to translate their brain impulses into words to communicate with the ground control and to operate instruments in the spacecraft.
Shenzhou XI blasted off atop a Long March 2F rocket on Monday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, about one month after the launch of Tiangong II in mid-September. This is China's sixth manned spaceflight and is expected to pave the way for the permanent space station, construction of which is scheduled to start in 2018, with a launch planned around 2022.
However, in the eyes of rocket scientists at the China Academy Launch Vehicle Technology, the country's largest developer of ballistic missiles and carrier rockets, more is needed than State programs alone for the future growth of China's space sector.
CALT is a subordinate of the larger China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the State-owned main contractor for the Chinese space program.
Hao Zhaoping, vice-president of CALT, said the academy will strive to tap the commercial launch market because commercial space activities have begun to represent the development trend of the industry.
More policy support is needed to help cities to integrate a rapidly growing number of older migrants, said a report released on Wednesday by the national health authority.
Migrants age 60 or over numbered 17.8 million last year, 7.2 percent of the total of 247 million migrants, the 2016 Report on China's Migrant Population Development showed. In 2010, there were 9.3 million in that demographic, 4.2 percent of a total of 221 million migrants.
The report, based on surveys and monitoring by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said the average age of migrants has risen from 27.9 in 2013 to 29.3.
"The increase in older migrants reflects China's aging population," the report said. It shows that more are joining their families in "migrant destinations". Most of these are still in the more-developed eastern region, but western areas have attracted a larger share in recent years.
"It is foreseeable that the number of migrant elders will keep increasing," the report said, adding that, "more support and aid" is needed "to help them to better integrate".
Duan Chengrong, a professor of population studies at Renmin University of China, said the trend began to develop about five years ago.
"Society has not paid enough attention to this group, and governments should do more to improve services for them," he said.
Wang Qian, chief for migrant population affairs at the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said the diversity of migrants is putting pressure on governments.
"Previously, migrants were mostly young workers seeking jobs in big cities," he said. "Now, with more elderly joining the group and more families migrating together, they may have different demands, such as housing, medical care and children's education."
The report said 43 percent of the older migrants move to look after children or grandchildren and 22.5 percent migrate for jobs.
Another 25.4 percent move for senior care. Many rely on their children for elderly care, while others find services on their own, including wealthier migrants who move south for the winter.
But for poorer migrants, the move may not stick.
Zhai Junsheng, 61, a migrant worker from Henan province who collects parking fees in Beijing, said he moved a few months ago to join his daughter. Zhai said he has no medical insurance and he is considering going back to Henan soon.
"The biggest problem is lack of room. I cannot afford to rent a house and have to stay with my daughter, but her house is too small."
BEIJING -- China on Wednesday urged Japan to face up to history after two cabinet ministers visited the notorious Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo during the annual Autumn Festival.
The two ministers were Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi and Katsunobu Kato, minister for promoting dynamic engagement of all citizens.
Both cabinet ministers are close allies of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who himself visited the shrine on Monday.
"[The fact] that Japanese Cabinet members visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which not only honors Class-A convicted war criminals but also beautifies war, again, reflects the Japanese government's unhealthy attitude toward its past transgressions," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a daily press briefing.
"China is firmly opposed to this," she said.
A staff worker runs to the rescue of a panda cub falling off a platform at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in September. Twenty-three cubs born this year met the public. [Photo by Zhang Lei/China Daily]
Dressed in clothing covered in cartoon pandas, from his T-shirt to his socks, William Burke flew all the way to Southwest China from Hawaii with his wife, Karom Burke, to see their adopted pandas.
At the first Chinese International Panda Culture Communication Activity, which ended on Sunday in Chengdu, Sichuan province, more than 60 panda "parents" from around the world had a chance to visit the animals they have sponsored through donations.
"I was so surprised that a giant panda cub could be as small as a stick of butter when I first saw Tai Shan at the National Zoo in Washington DC in 2005," Karom said.
"Karom and I then decided to adopt a panda. Look, this one on my T-shirt is our first daughter, Bai Xue," William said.
Since 2007, William and Karom have sponsored three pandas: Bai Xue, Bai Xue's son Jin Ke, and Bai Xue's granddaughter Lin Ping.
The bears have become part of their family.
"When Bai Xue died last year, we were so sad that we had lost a family member," Karom said.
But William said that "there are happy moments too", adding: "We were so excited when pandas were upgraded from 'endangered' to 'vulnerable' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List last month. My cousin sent me this watch with a panda cartoon on it to celebrate."
Suzanne Braden, from the United States, has adopted four pandas. In 1999, she adopted her first panda and named it after her late father, Harvey.
"On our way back home from seeing pandas in China, I thought we must do something to protect the cute species," Suzanne said. She and her friend Diane Rees cofounded Pandas International, an NGO devoted to protecting pandas, in 2000.
So far, more than 5,000 people from over 20 countries have participated in Pandas International activities.
By Xinhua in Chengdu
BEIJING -- A TV series adaption of "Red Star Over China" written by American journalist Edgar Snow, will be screened in China on Saturday.
"Red Star Over China," written in 1937, was one of the most influential books with a western understanding and sympathy for the Communist Party of China (CPC) in the 1930s.
The 30-episode TV series will be faithful to the original book, extensively depicting military and political developments in China, especially Chinese bravery in fighting against Japanese invaders.
The first western journalist to meet Chairman Mao and other CPC leaders, Edgar Snow recorded the first authorized account of Mao's life, as well as the history of the Long March and the people responsible for the Chinese revolution that made China what it is today.
Ye Lang, professor at Peking University. Photos provided to China Daily
An updated bookand several translationstake readers beyond an academic understanding of Chinese culture by highlighting personal stories, the authors tell Mei Jia.
Authors Ye Lang and Zhu Liangzhi had a daunting task: Boil down Chinese civilization that has spanned thousands of years into a book of about 300 pages.
Both influential professors of philosophy and of aesthetics and arts from Peking University, the two sifted through many options when they proposed a book on Chinese culture as a gift for the world when Beijing was hosting the 2008 Olympic Games.
Insights Into Chinese Culture was so well received that after 20 reprints of the first edition, the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press released the book's updated second edition late last month, as well as versions in eight foreign languages, including English, French, German, Russian and Arabic.
The professors wanted to offer something refreshing and authoritative, and yet easy to follow with the appeal of a story book.
While many titles on Chinese culture seem academic, such as condensed histories, their book approached the material by focusing on Chinese people: their personalities, core values and attitudes toward life.
The authors believe that Chinese people "respect nature, expect a prosperous life, pray for peace, and love life", which form deep layers within Chinese culture.
Combination photo taken on Oct 12, 2016 by Zhou Mi (L) shows the tomb of Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu in Fuzhou of East China's Jiangxi province, and taken on March 24, 2015 by Han Yan (R) shows the tomb of British writer William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the passing of the two literary giants from East and West respectively. [Photo/Xinhua]
Four hundred years ago, when William Shakespeare was writing his sonnets with a quill, Tang Xianzu was recording verses with a brush nearly 6,000 kilometers away.
Four hundred years later, to commemorate these literary giants from East and West, plays by both have been staged together in eastern China's Fuzhou city, Tang's hometown.
"They were in the same contemporary period," said Juliet Short, mayor of Shakespeare's hometown Stratford-upon-Avon. "They are very similar, in different aspects, even though they lived in totally different cultures."
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare and Tang. China and Britain have been hosting a series of events to commemorate the anniversaries.
On Saturday, Tang's date of birth, a three-day festival was launched in Jiangxi province, where people can pay tribute to Tang, open a memorial for him, put on drama performances and hold seminars.
Poster of Love Is Not Blind. [Photo provided to China Daily]
The romantic-comedy drama Love Is Not Blind, which is based on the movie with the same title, will be staged in Beijing from Nov 11 to 27 at the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center.
The movie, which was directed by Teng Huatao and adapted from an online novel written by Bao Jingjing, achieved huge popularity in 2011. The movie has also been adapted into a TV series.
The story revolves around Huang Xiaoxian, a 27-year-old woman who dreams of marriage but broke up with her longtime boyfriend after she learns that her best friend has been dating him. Huang starts recovering from depression with help from her colleague, Wang Xiaojian, and eventually the two fall in love.
Directed by Chen Liang and adapted by scriptwriter Chen Shuling, the play will feature a group of actors in their early 20s.
Besides the professional actors, some amateur actors, who are selected from nearly 1,000 people in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, will perform in two shows.
"It will be a nostalgic experience for both the audiences and us," says the director.
Related:
Socially relevant themes get a stage
Croatian pianist Maksim Mrvica. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Croatian pianist Maksim Mrvica has launched a tour in China by visiting 26 cities, including a Beijing concert on Nov 27.
Titled Croatian Rhapsody Tour, he will play eight new pieces from his album, Croatian Rhapsody.
With his band, the pianist will add electronic and symphonic elements to his performances.
The upcoming tour will conclude on Dec 18 in Shanghai.
Always eager to work with Chinese musicians, Mrvica says he will perform with Chinese erhu player Zhao Lei during his tour.
"Every time I visit China, I feel the audiences' growing passion for music, especially the young people," says the 41-year-old pianist, who was born in Sibenik, Croatia, and took up piano lessons at the age of 9.
He won his first major competition in Zagreb in 1993, which made him determined to become a professional pianist. He went on to study at the Music Academy in Zagreb before he spent a year at the Franz Liszt Conservatoire in Budapest.
His debut CD, Gestures, was released in 1999. It became one of the fastest-selling classical recordings to be released in Croatia.
In 2000, he moved to Paris to study with Igor Lazko and won first prize in the Pontoise Piano Competition in 2001.
His career as a crossover pianist started when he met British impresario Mel Bush, who helped him release a string of successful albums, including The Piano Player.
"As a young man, I loved a variety of music, especially electronic music, though I was trained as a classical pianist. I am lucky to be able to explore music without boundaries," says Mrvica. "Sometimes classical music is difficult to listen to, but crossover production makes music easy, especially for the young audiences."
Related:
Sixth Yangtze River Piano Festival opens in Yichang
A bank staff member checks RMB banknotes at a bank in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu province, Jan. 7, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]
FIFTEEN PEOPLE in Mianyang, Sichuan province in Southwest China, have been caught leaking and trading the personal banking information of 2.57 million users. Those involved, who included bank managers, raked in 2.3 million yuan ($349,000) selling the information to brokers. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Tuesday:
According to the reports, managers in a sub-branch of a rural commercial bank sold the information of people making credit system queries at 10,000 yuan per person. Likewise, two employees from a branch of CITIC Bank accessed the credit reports of customers and sold the information to brokers.
The frequent reports of personal information leaks have raised concerns about how people's personal information is used and protected. But the case revealed by Mianyang police is worrying as it involves the comprehensive selling of customers' personal details by bank employees.
Information stored on corporate networks is at risk because it is more accessible than ever. Organizations provide easy access to databases containing the personal information of huge numbers of people.
Banks have an obligation to safeguard the information they collect on individuals, and they should be held accountable for any disclosures of the confidential data of customers. In other words, in dealing with this case, it is necessary to not only hold the staff involved accountable, but also the banks involved.
Moreover, the banks should compensate those individuals whose personal information has been leaked by their employees.
Such breaches of the regulatory requirements for handling sensitive data can reduce customer confidence and damage a company's reputation. Enterprises that collect and store personal information have a responsibility to protect it and to foster a corporate culture in which employees adhere to policies and procedures that provide internal checks of staff access to such information.
Photo shows the anti-corruption smartphone app released by China's top anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China. [Photo/crienglish.com]
The local anti-graft commission in Tunliu county of Changzhi city, North China's Shanxi province, issued a report on Sept 30 criticizing 24 high school teachers for spending a total of 1,390 yuan ($207) on a meal that included alcohol. However, whether it has the right to discipline the teachers in this instance has been questioned as the teachers paid for the meal themselves.
The Changzhi discipline authorities said on Sunday that the previous accusation of the local anti-graft commission in Tunliu county, which stopped short of explaining why the teachers' gathering was "improper", was not well thought out and it decided to withdraw it. However, two teachers were required to criticize themselves at a faculty meeting, and the others were summoned before the commission.
Since the nationwide campaign against corruption was launched at the end of 2012, members of the Communist Party of China face stricter austerity rules aimed at reducing bureaucracy and extravagance. Indeed, the anti-graft efforts have paid off and become more efficient, thanks to these rules and an increasing number of residents who contribute to the anti-graft efforts by reporting the misdemeanors of Party members.
Whether the 24 Changzhi teachers' feasting was reported by anonymous residents remains unclear, but there are doubts about whether the local discipline commission had any grounds for criticizing the teachers. Its sternly worded report was not based on a thorough investigation and the teachers' explanation, fueling speculation that the anti-corruption campaign always picks on the vulnerable and powerless.
The Changzhi discipline authorities have now withdrawn the case.
However, damage has been done to procedural justice. Before issuing a disciplinary penalty, the discipline inspection departments at all levels should widely solicit public opinions and listen to the appeals lodged by the accused.
Disclosing corruption cases on a regular basis is no doubt needed as a credible deterrence. Some punished rule-breakers will seek to hide their misconducts and pretend nothing has happened, if what they have done is not made public. Some even seek revenge on the "whistleblowers" that report their abuses of power to the disciplinary watchdogs.
Yet, rushing to distribute inaccurate, if not unfounded, disciplinary punishments, is counterproductive, because they may cause unnecessary trouble for officials that are innocent of any wrongdoing and have negative social impacts. Therefore the disciplinary authorities need to double-check alleged "severe violations of discipline" as well as the reports that are to be issued about such cases before making them public.
On their part, residents, especially Party members, have the right to tip off the local discipline commission to corruption, but they also have the responsibility to make sure what they say via online reporting platforms is correct and well-documented.
This is not to say they are not supposed to supervise corrupt officials. Quite the contrary, residents should be mobilized and encouraged to join the anti-corruption fight, which in turn is likely to give them a sense of participation in social governance. They are just not allowed to overstep the boundaries in supervision.
The author is a professor of law at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.
China's steady economic growth in the third quarter has not only won precious time for the country to further boost domestic consumption and take up the slack for slowing trade growth. It also highlighted the limitations of a red-hot property market fueled by easy credit to drive overall economic growth.
Latest statistics showed that the Chinese economy expanded by 6.7 percent year on year in the past quarter. Although the third-quarter pace was only as fast as the previous two quarters, it is still a remarkable achievement for the world's second largest economy as the global recovery is increasingly troubled by slowing trade growth and lingering financial uncertainties.
The World Trade Organization recently cut its forecast for global trade this year to just 1.7 percent from its previous estimate of 2.8 percent in April. The new figure, the lowest growth rate since the 2008 global financial crisis, indicates a drastic slowdown in global trade that has fairly explained the strong headwinds China's trade sector faces.
As a result, China's foreign trade in the first three quarters shrank by 1.9 percent from a year earlier to only 17.53 trillion yuan ($2.61 trillion), with exports and imports down 1.6 percent and 2.3 percent respectively. This reconfirmed Chinese policymakers' judgment that the country can no longer rely on exports as a major growth engine that had served well to propel China's rapid rise as a global trading power since the beginning of this century.
It is obvious that the double-digit growth of domestic consumption has timely lifted the country's economic growth at a moment of tremendous downward pressures in other sectors. In spite of all the economic difficulties at home and abroad, China's retail growth climbed by 10.4 percent in the third quarter, 0.1 percentage point faster than that in the first half year, to ensure a steady growth of the overall economy.
Under such circumstances, it seems wise for the Chinese government to give more support to foster a sustainable domestic consumption upgrade.
Unfortunately, much needed bank loans and credit support have been granted to home buyers in the belief that soaring house prices will both encourage fixed-asset investments and help create a wealth effect that would drive consumption growth to bolster real GDP growth.
Ehizuelen Michael Mitchell Omoruyi is participating the events during retrace the steps of those brave Chinese soldiers through Yanan in Shaanxi Province to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Long March. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
As part of a group of foreign visitors that was invited to retrace the steps of those brave Chinese soldiers through Yanan in Shaanxi Province to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Long March, I discovered another part of rural China. Wuqi and Yanchuan Counties the rich soil of Shaanxi province might not be as famous as other towns in China, but today both counties, and the small farming community in North East Chinas, enjoy comparative serenity, unlike the period when it was under siege right before the epic Long March.
Both towns today are peaceful and provide business opportunities to both farmers and entrepreneurs. Visitors are warmly welcomed by friendly inhabitants to a serene atmosphere and pollution-free surroundings. Like most rural communities, both counties are devoid of the daily frenzied atmosphere and chaos in cities across China.
The people, like other rural people in China, are friendly. I am a living witness to the kind of reception a foreigner can receive when you visit Wuqi and Yanchuan Counties; this is as a result of the way we were treated. We were welcomed like royals with fruits, good spicy food that reminds me of home and unique Chinese tea which I kept drinking. However, the reception started before I got to Yanan when Chen Ziyan, a China Daily staff was asked to assist me during my trip. She made the whole exercise a remarkable one; she gave me numerous reasons to believe that the spirit of the Long March was truly in her. She acted like the veterans that sacrificed everything for the China we see today.
It was a cold October morning at about 8am, when we were whisked along with other local organizers and media in one of the three buses on smooth highways through tunnels and bridges to witness one of the greatest epic treks in the history of mankind; the length of the journey they undertook eight decades ago has often been underestimated.
Although most of the buildings and sites have undergone some form of renovation, there were still indications of what the area looked like during the era the Red Army camped there. We visited two museums: one in Yanchuan County, the home of President Xi Jinping and the other in Wuqi County where items belonging to the leaders and soldiers of the revolution were carefully preserved.
The items breathe life back into the memories of the Long March struggles and the victory of 1930s China. It displays how the embattled Chinese Communists broke through Nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic trek from their encircled headquarters in southwest China.
Looking at the pictures on the first day of our visit at the Wuqi Central Red Army Long March Victory Memorial Museum and Yanchuan Museum, I found it hard to visualize how much they must have suffered for their cause. It was there I discovered I was at the hub of Chinas Great Revolution.
It was an epic journey; the journey lasted 369 days; though it was unintended, it did turn out to be a very Long March covering 6, 000 miles (9,650 kilometers); another author from Chinasage said the distance its almost twice the distance from New York to San Francisco. So, standing in the museum and looking at the various items that were displayed, I was reminded how the Long Marchers often had to cross difficult terrains like 24 rivers, 18 mountain ranges (5 snowy mountains), swamps and 11 provinces; it was an epic fight for survival for the Chinese Communists.
The total numbers involved in the march are hard to put down as many left and many joined the march along the way. Over 75,000 set out together with 20,000 non-combatants and only about 7,000 reached Yanan. During the march, 236 days were occupied by day marches and 19 days by night marches; on average they took one days rest for every 115 miles covered.
It was estimated that 55 per cent were aged 16-23; 45 per cent 24-40; only 5 per cent were over forty years old. Only about a quarter were actually members of the Communist Party. Part of the Communist effort was to spread support, so leaving people behind to organize local resistance was part of the plan. Fatigue, hunger and sickness claimed many lives and only one-tenth of the force that left Jiangxi completed the Long March.
Based on the story the tour guide was telling us, it was now clear to me that among those that survive the march were almost all the high ranking communist officials in Chinese regime for the next six decades Deng Xiaoping, Lin Biao, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. As one of the surviving communist officials, Mao believed that during the Long March a powerful new weapon had been formed. The epic trek was inspirational, undeniable evidence of the superiority of men over weapons, and more broadly demonstrates the power of human will.
The epic event has inspired and guided the Chinese people, and it has by no means been easy for the Chinese people to improve their lives over the past eight decades. The hardworking spirit the world sees today in China is a result of the sacrifice from the Long March and it has never faded. The Long March spirit is with the Chinese people today as well as everyone who steps into China aiming to march towards their China dreams.
The march has gone beyond the boundaries of China; today, the Chinese development model and principle informal as it may be is quickly gaining momentum among developed and developing countries. Chinese investment is welcomed globally; according to research, this will soon place China to become one of the worlds biggest cross-border investors by the end of this decade, with global offshore assets tripling $6.4 trillion to almost $20 trillion by 2020. The Chinese model of development is exceptional in history and has made China assume a very significant position within the global economy. The veterans of the Long March gave an outward display of unity and solidarity that laid the foundation for the victory of the Chinese revolution and is regarded as the critical moment for Communist party.
This epic march shows that when shared hardship forged bonds of unbreakable loyalty and understanding, it can turn into wealth creation and redefined a nation. The tough journey had left a legacy not only to the Chinese people but to other nations struggling with conflicts. Let China Sleep, for when the Dragon awakes, she will shake the world. The saying is attributed to Napoleon and he seems to have been right.
The dragon is awake, and she is not going to take a great leap forward but instead is now on the long march; a march of victory. Today, China rightly remembers its heroes, whose bitter struggles would ultimately help build a steady, stronger, greater and better tomorrow for the Chinese generations of tomorrow.
Ehizuelen Michael Mitchell Omoruyi is a researcher from Institute of African Stuties Zhejiang Normal University
The unveiling ceremony of Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute in Myanmar. [Photo/Xinhua]
The Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS-SEABRI), established by China and Myanmar, was unveiled in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, on Oct. 12, and is expected to be a leading institution for collaborative scientific research on and preservation of biodiversity among the Southeast Asian countries.
CAS-SEABRI, co-sponsored by CAS and the Myanmar Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, is CAS' first overseas project in Myanmar. Its construction began in 2013 under a bilateral MoU.
At the opening ceremony, Bai Chunli, president of CAS, approved of CAS-SEABRI's performance in joint field studies, researcher visits and talents cultivation in the past year and expected that CAS-SEABRI will be a pilot project for international cooperation in biodiversity research.
Bai Chunli is addressing at the opening ceremony. [Photo/xtbg.ac.cn]
Despite having a very high level of biodiversity, the ecosystem in many parts of Myanmar is under threat from fast economic development, according to U Khin Maung Yee, permanent secretary for the ministry of natural resources and environmental conservation of Myanmar. He encouraged more Myanmarians to get involved in CAS-SEABRI to receive academic training to increase their ability to preserve their own bio-resources.
U Khin Maung Yee is addressing at the opening ceremony. [Photo/xtbg.ac.cn]
So far, CAS-SEABRI has set up four research groups in plant diversity and conservation, aquatic plant diversity, traditional medicine and ethnobotany, and animal diversity and conservation. Researchers from both counties have finished three large-scale field biodiversity investigations, collecting 1,500 plant specimens, capturing 10,000 photos by infrared thermal cameras and finding 20 new plant species and 100 new spider species.
CAS-SEABRI will serve as a powerful international platform for collaborative research and discovery, training outstanding youths from Southeast Asia in master and PhD programs.
CAS-SEABRI, regarded by Hong Liang, Chinese ambassador to Myanmar as a historic symbol of China-Myanmar science and technology cooperation, was established for closer international collaboration in scientific research among the countries along the Belt and Road and in Southeast Asia.
Jvari Church was built in the 6th century to celebrate the country's conversion to Christianity more than 100 years earlier. Photos provided to China Daily
Georgia charms with amazing architecture, multiculturalism and its claim as the land that invented wine. Mike Peters explores its allures.
You can tell if a country is a prize by checking how many times it has been invaded.
By that measure, the little Caucasus land of Georgia is a treasure indeed.
Long an important Eurasian crossroads, Arabs overran the place in 645, making the captured capital, Tbilisi, an emirate for four centuries. Later came the Mongols, Huns, Persians, Ottomans and Russians in turn.
Visitors today will encounter all of those influences and more, coming together in a Caucasian people with a distinctly European outlook.
An ancient wine culture is flourishing, and beautiful Orthodox churches have become social centers for a newly energized faithful.
After relative isolation in the Soviet era, the old Silk Road hub is back to its old ways, making a trade pact with the European Union and a brand-new free-trade agreement with China.
The country's scenic charm is apparent as soon as you land in Tbilisi, which straddles the Mtkvari River and commands good views of the surrounding mountains.
The Old Town gives smartphones and selfie sticks a workout as tourists flow through narrow lanes amid colorful two-story houses fronted with charming balconies. There are lots of small wine bars and an occasional tree-lined square.
The village feeling is enhanced by street stalls jammed with colorful rugs and fabrics, fresh pomegranates and figs, vegetables, honey, fragrant cheeses and nuts fresh from the surrounding countryside.
By Erik Nilsson and Yang FeiyueThe East is Red. And green. | China Daily | Updated: 2016-10-19 07:55
Autumn scene in Dandong in Liaoning province. Dong Renbin/China Daily
That's gold for Dandong.
The city in Liaoning province has long been known as a Red tourism destination, largely for its location across the Yalu River that traces its border with the People's Republic of Korea.
That's not to mention other revolutionary history.
But it's now dabbing a green tinge onto its portrait to imbue a new hue to lure visitors to its primeval forests and purewater ways.
Locals claim chain smokers don't cough in the clean air that serves "natural oxygen bars" in its woodlands.
Mineral-water springs are likened to fountains of youth.
Dandong is said to host the most centenarians among northern Chinese cities.
But the biggest natural draw is the millions of migrating birds belonging to 250 species that arrive at its intertidal mudflats during autumn, especially around this month, and spring.
They don't eat, drink or rest for a week before or after binging along the coastline.
Masses of lanky shorebirds tiptoe over tidal rocks that stab above mucky sand. They punctuate their gangling gaits with flicks of elongated beaks, spastically thrusting at any morsel they can snap up.
Anything. They're famished.
And there's plenty squirming in the sandy goop for them to fill up for a week before or to go of nonstop flying without any bodily intake or rest but extraordinary exertion.
USTC supported me by funding my year-long overseas experience at University of Manchester by collaborating with Andre Geim, laureate of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.The opportunity was a turning point for my academic career, as it broadened my perspectives on research.
Wu Hengan, USTC professor focused on graphite
The university doesnt have many restrictions as to how to use the initial funds given to recruited talents, so we can use the money more reasonably.
Zhang Huafeng, a life sciences professor at USTC, who came to USTC from Johns Hopkins University in 2011
I found that the atmosphere among the faculty and the students is just like what I have experienced in the United States.
Gong Chen, a USTC professor who joined the university in 2014 and has been focusing on optical wireless communication and networks
(China Daily USA 09/30/2016 page 9)
The University of Science and Technologyof China has been encouraging prominent young employees to broaden their perspectives on scientific research through overseas education and work experience.
One example is Wu Heng'an, who had an opportunity to work with Andre Geim, laureate of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, at the University of Manchester from 2010 to 2011.
He cherishes the one-year experience as a turning point for his academic career.
Wu, 41, professor of USTC in area of graphite, had been studying at USTC from 1993 to 2002 and got his bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees there.
Students from around the world perform Taichi during their overseas program at USTC. Provided to China Daily
After working at the National University of Singapore from 2002 to 2004, Wu was employed by USTC asan associate professor at the university's School of Engineering Sciencein 2004.
"Being focused on the mechanical properties of nanometer materials, my first years in USTC as a principal investigator, or holder of an independent grant administered by the university and the lead researcher for the grant project, were quite challenging,since I thought I urgently needed to broaden my perspectives on research", said Wu.
Wu realized only the top scientist in the field could help him with his research on graphite, a field on which he has been focused since 2008.
In September, 2009, USTC initiated a program to encourage prominent young scientists to seek overseas experiences by covering their expenses. After learning the favorable policies at a campus conference, Wu emailed Andre Geim, telling the latter what he had been focusing on, what he had achieved and how he wanted to further his research.
"I didn't want to miss such an exceptional opportunity," said Wu.
To Wu's surprise, Professor Geim replied the next morning and invited Wu to his laboratory at the University of Manchester.
After some preparatory work, Wu left for Geim's lab the next year, in which the scientist won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Wu's experience in Geim's lab lasted for almost a year, after which his collaboration with the world-renowned scientist continued. After Wu returned to USTC at the end of 2011, Wu achieved some major breakthroughs in his field and published two joint papers in the journa l"Science" and three other ones in "Nature" with Geim.
"My team now includes dozens of prominent researchers, many of whom are also returnees fromsome of the world's leading scientific institutions," said Wu, now director of the Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Designof Materials.
"And we now welcome more talents to join us," said Wu.
Contact the writer at zhulixin@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily USA 09/30/2016 page 9)
China is "fully prepared to open arms of friendship and extend our hand of cooperation to the people of the Philippines," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday ahead of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's state visit to China.
The four-day visit by Duterte will be his first, as president, outside the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Speaking at a news conference in Beijing, Wang praised Duterte for making the decision to restore friendship with China after taking office, saying that "no foreign force could stand in the way of that progress".
"This reflects the wishes of the Philippine people, and is in line with the national interests of the country, as well as the historical trend," he said.
Relations between Beijing and Manila suffered after the Philippine government, under Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino, initiated a unilateral arbitration to challenge China's sovereignty over the South China Sea.
While the retrogression in ties undermined the interests of the Philippine people and regional stability, the historical visit of Duterte will be a new beginning in the China-Philippine relationship, Wang said.
"We are fully prepared to open our arms of friendship and extend our hand of cooperation to the people of the Philippines," Wang said.
"We are confident that this visit will be a success that will not only put the China-Philippine relationship back on the track of normal growth, but also open up new vistas for mutually beneficial cooperation," he added.
People shop at a market in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen, on Oct 18, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]
SANAA -- Yemen's dominant Shiite Houthi group and its ally of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's party welcomed on Tuesday a United Nations-proposed 72-hour ceasefire to facilitate humanitarian aid access to the war-stricken Arab country.
The ceasefire between Houthi fighters and their rival Saudi-backed exiled government forces was declared by the United Nations on Monday to take effect at 2359 local time (2059 GMT) on Wednesday.
"The Supreme Political Council (a governing body composed of top officials from Houthi group and Saleh's party) welcomes the ceasefire without preconditions and demands immediate stop to the (Saudi-led coalition) aggression and lift of the air, sea and land blockade imposed on the Yemeni people," said the Houthi group and Saleh's party in a joint statement carried by Saba news agency late on Tuesday.
On Monday, the exiled President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi agreed to the 72-hour ceasefire, according to a statement by his government's Foreign Minister Abdul-Malik Mekhlafi.
The minister demanded Houthis lift siege to the southern city of Taiz and access of humanitarian supplies to the war-torn city.
The 19-month civil war have killed over 10,000 people, mostly civilians, and pushed the country's 26 million people to near famine.
China expressed its firm opposition after two Japanese cabinet ministers visited a controversial war shrine on Wednesday, urging its neighbor to face up to, and reflect, upon its history of aggression.
The ministers, internal affairs chief Sanae Takaichi and Katsunobu Kato, in charge of women's empowerment, visited the Yasukuni shrine during a four-day autumn festival.
The shrine in Tokyo honors Japan's war dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals convicted by an Allied tribunal, and is seen as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.
"The cabinet ministers' visit reveals the Japanese government's wrong attitude toward history," Hua Chunying, spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
"China urges Japan to make a clean break with militarism and win back trust from its Asian neighbors and the international community with concrete deeds," she said.
Peace and prosperity should be maintained by regional, instead of individual countries, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing on Wednesday.
Hua made the remarks after Vietnamese Vice-Defense Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh voiced support for the United States' presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
When meeting Cara Abercrombie, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and South-East Asia on Monday, Nguyen said Vietnam supports US "intervention" in the Asia-Pacific region if it helps keep peace and stability, Reuters reported.
Responding to the report, Hua said: "History and reality both show that a country's sovereignty, security and development interests should be judged, handled and maintained by its own people.
Likewise, peace, stability and the prosperity of a region should be maintained together by all the regional countries through negotiation and cooperation, instead of relying on so-called 'intervention' by a certain country or some certain countries."
Vice-Premier Ma Kai said on Tuesday the global economic slowdown was the main cause of the overcapacity of steel, something Beijing and Brussels will tackle together.
Ma said steel overcapacity is a global problem but noted that China made concerted efforts between 2011 and 2015 to cut its overcapacity.
"We are determined to reduce steel overcapacity by 100-to-150 million tons during the 2016 to 2020 period," said Ma, who was co-chairing the annual EU-China High-level Economic and Trade Dialogue in Brussels, along with Jyrki Katainen, vice-president of the European Commission. "This amount roughly equals the total of European capacity."
"I can tell you that we are going to reduce 50 million tons this year and we will complete this task," he said. "We have checked the numbers onsite and they are solid."
Katainen said both sides followed up on the last summit's agreement to establish a dedicated bilateral platform on steel and the Global Forum set up at the G20 summit in Hangzhou.
More than 50 top executives representing the European steel industry have written to European Union leaders calling for tougher anti-dumping measures to deter what they regard as unfair competition from China. Their demands for a tougher US-style tariff regime will find an echo among some European leaders worried by the impact of imports of domestic plants and jobs. But once again Britain, facing negotiations on the terms of its exit from the EU, is likely to be the odd man out.
The UK has consistently said it backs China's claim to market economy status.
Britain has in the past been among those blocking proposed toughening anti-dumping measures, despite the challenges currently confronting the UK steel industry. In March, unnamed senior EU officials were quoted as saying Britain had blocked attempts to reform EU anti-dumping rules to combat what was described as a glut of cheap Chinese steel imports.
The European Commission called on European Union institutions and member states to speed up action on proposed new trade defense instruments to come into effect when the protocols on calculating anti-dumping tariffs involving Chinese exporters expire in December.
The December 11 deadline marks the 15th anniversary of China's accession to the World Trade Organization.
The Commission, the executive arm of the 28-member EU, issued a document ahead of its Wednesday weekly meeting urging finalization of a package of proposals on the long-debated issue between China and EU.
The Commission said it has already put forward proposals in 2013 but they had failed to gain unanimous agreement from European institutions and member states as the December deadline approaches.
The meeting comes one day after China's Vice-Premier Ma Kai and Vice-President of the European Commission, Jyrki Katainen, confirmed that Brussels would live up to its obligations under China's WTO accession agreements signed 15 years ago.
China maintains that its WTO accession deal included automatic recognition of Market Economy Status, which some EU members object to.
At their annual high-level trade and economic dialogue on Tuesday, both sides also agreed to jointly put impetus into the global economy, cut steel overcapacity and speed up bilateral investment talks while injecting more efforts to find synergies between European investment scheme and China's Belt and Road Initiative.
During the 15-year WTO transitional period, the accession agreement allowed the EU and other WTO members, in anti-dumping cases, to compare the cost of China's exports with that of a surrogate country and to disregard China as a market economy. The EU usually choses economies where the cost is much higher than in China in order to calculate the margins of industry injury and to levy anti-dumping tariffs on China's exporters.
Many European Union member states, such as the UK, the Nordic countries, Greece, Hungary and the Netherlands, have favored abiding by China's WTO accession protocol. Globally, up to 100 countries worldwide have treated China as a market economy since its WTO entry in 2001.
After meeting with Ma Kai on Tuesday, Kris Peeters, Belgium's deputy prime minister, said in a news release that his country also believed it must abide by provisions and agreements of China's WTO accession.
However, the experts have warned that it is still too early to conclude that the European Union will complete the complex debate, consultation and approval procedures to reform its trade defense instruments before a December 11 deadline.
Fredrik Erixon, director of Brussels-based European Center for International Political Economy said it is not a decision for the European Commission to make on its own. It needs the support of member states and the European Parliament, and for the time being there is not enough support for them to change EU anti-dumping legislation reflecting China's market economy status.
"Let's see what happens,"said Erixon during an interview with China Daily.
"The way the Commission has proposed to deal with it, proposing a wholesale reform of how trade defense instruments deal with trade-distortive state interventions, is very complicated and will take time to get through the EU machinery."
Pierre Defraigne, Executive Director for the Brussels-based think-tank the Madariaga College of Europe Foundation said the EU should have treated China as a market economy at an earlier date but it failed due to its long-time policy of following the United States regarding to its China policy.
"I have long called on the EU to treat China as a market economy but it is regretable that it had not shown such political vision as of today,"said Defraigne, who worked as cabinet head of former trade commissioner Pascal Lamy when China joined WTO in 2001.
To contact the reporter: fujing@chinadaily.com.cn
Two Chinese industrial groups are considering bidding for Doncasters, one of the oldest engineering manufacturers in Britain, media reports said.
A person involved in the proposed sale who requested anonymity would not confirm the names of the interested bidders, but said Doncasters was attracting interest from Asia and the US.
Sky News and City A.M. newspaper identified the potential Chinese bidders as the Yinyi Group of Ningbo and Impro of Hong Kong.
The auction for Doncasters is being handled by Goldman Sachs. The firm is expected to go for between 1 billion and 1.5 billion pounds, though the Chinese firms are yet to lodge formal offers.
Yinyi Group, which deals in real estate, construction and industrial equipment, and precision machining specialist Impro would be going head-to-head with a handful of other interest parties thought to include three American investment firms: Clayton Dubilier & Rice, Blackstone; and Carlyle.
The Chinese interest may further fuel debate in the UK over foreign ownership of industrial projects, following the signing of an 18 billion pound contract with France and China for the Hinkley Point nuclear power station.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said future deals involving foreign ownership would be subject to scrutiny.
Doncasters is, however, already in foreign hands, as Dubai International Capital (DIC), the country's sovereign wealth fund, acquired the company in 2006 for 700 million pounds.
DIC then put the 238-year-old manufacturer up for auction in April this year as part of the winding down of the private investment fund.
Doncasters is a leading manufacturer of specialized, high tolerance metal components for application in civil and military aerospace equipment, as well as for the construction, industrial and transportation markets.
The company was founded in 1778 and has 30 sites across the UK, continental Europe, the US, Mexico and also has a manufacturing facility in Tianjin, China.
A spokeswoman from Doncasters declined to comment when contacted by China Daily.
To contact the reporter: angus@chinadailyuk.com
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the western Indian state of Goa, Oct 15, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]
GOA, India - Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi here Saturday and the pair exchanged views on enriching their countries' partnership and enhancing cooperation within multilateral frameworks.
The development momentum of China-India ties is encouraging, and a healthy and stable China-India relationship is conducive not only to both countries' development, but to safeguarding the developing countries' reasonable interests in global governance and international systems, said Xi.
China and India should constantly enrich their strategic cooperative partnership and chart the course of bilateral ties in line with the fundamental interests of their peoples, added the Chinese president.
The two countries should maintain high-level communication and dialogue at all levels so as to expand consensus, improve mutual trust and deepen cooperation, he said, adding that they should also raise the level of cooperation in various fields and continue to push forward cooperation on major projects such as railway and industrial parks.
China and India should consolidate public support for bilateral friendship by boosting exchanges between their political parties, local governments, think tanks, cultural bodies and media organizations, Xi said.
Meanwhile, the two countries should support each other in participating in regional affairs and enhance cooperation within multilateral frameworks including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the East Asia Summit, he added.
Meeting Modi in the western Indian state of Goa on the sidelines of the eighth summit of the emerging-market bloc of BRICS, which groups Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Xi said the Chinese side is willing to work with India to carry on the positive momentum of last month's Group of 20 summit in the Chinese city of Hangzhou and push for positive results of the BRICS summit in Goa, so as to send out a positive signal of confidence, solidarity and cooperation.
The Chinese president also called for joint BRICS efforts to deepen practical cooperation and elevate cooperation to higher levels, as well as to strengthen communication and coordination on major international issues so as to safeguard their common interests.
China, which will hold the rotating chair in 2017, is willing to work with India and other BRICS members to successfully host the ninth BRICS summit next year, Xi added.
For his part, Modi said it is in the two countries' as well as the region's common interests for India and China to maintain frequent high-level exchanges and strategic communication.
India and China have the responsibility to join hands and turn the 21st century into an Asian century, said the prime minister.
India is willing to strengthen cooperation with China within multilateral frameworks including BRICS and the SCO, Modi said, adding that his country supports China in hosting the BRICS summit next year.
India is the last stop of Xi's ongoing Asia tour, which has already taken him to Cambodia and Bangladesh.
President Xi Jinping has just concluded a trip to Cambodia, Bangladesh and India, during which he participated in the BRICS Summit in Goa, India, at the weekend.
From the perspective of geopolitics, this was an important diplomatic activity that deepened China's bilateral ties with the three countries, which are all important for the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative.
It was also a trip that resulted in concrete achievements as China and Bangladesh agreed to deepen strategic partnership of cooperation and 31 cooperation agreements were signed with Cambodia, most of them in infrastructure construction and industry. These achievements are important for advancing the China - Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor. They are also the realization of China's latest efforts in carrying out the Belt and Road Initiative from the angle of bilateral partnerships and border-region cooperation.
In a China-Cambodia joint communique, the two sides agreed to accelerate the effective integration of Cambodia's Rectangular Strategy with China's Belt and Road Initiative. For this, the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding regarding bilateral cooperation for the Belt and Road Initiative. This is the second bilateral cooperation agreement between China and a country in the Indochina Peninsula, after the one between China and Laos.
In Bangladesh, a series of bilateral cooperation agreements were signed on industrial cooperation, information communication, energy and electricity, diplomacy, disaster-prevention and control and climate change, among other things, within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Xi also attended the launch ceremony of some important bilateral cooperation projects. Bangladesh is located where South Asia joins Southeast Asia, an important intersection in the Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative can be effectively integrated with Bangladesh's foreign-bound strategic cooperation, so as to create new opportunities for win-win cooperation between China and Bangladesh.
The neighboring countries and regions are important starting points for the construction of both the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. That's why China attaches great significance to consolidating its neighborhood cooperation as a foundation for implementing the Belt and Road Initiative.
Xi's visits indicate bilateral cooperation is an important means to furthering the construction of the Belt and Road. The countries visited have huge needs in infrastructure construction, including roads, airports, ports, energy, and telecommunications, and constructing this infrastructure is key to building the aforementioned corridors, which should not only promote interconnectivity in their infrastructure construction, but also create jobs, and form regional production networks and value chains for industrial development in the countries concerned.
There was an international seminar on the Belt and Road Initiative held in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, recently. A report issued at the seminar showed the achievements of the initiative in the past three years have been more than expected. Xi's visit to Pakistan in 2015 effectively pushed forward the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and the construction of the China - Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor will be of practical importance to deepening win-win cooperation between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and shaping the maturity of China-ASEAN partnership in the coming years.
Likewise, the construction of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor will inject new vitality into China-South Asia cooperation.
Only when these two corridors see concrete progress will the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road be pushed forward in a balanced way.
The author is a researcher on Asian-Pacific studies and global strategies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
(Photo : Getty Images/Justin Sullivan ) A view of cellular communication towers on March 6, 2014 in Emeryville, California.
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Tech giants Qualcomm, Netgear, Ericsson and Australian network provider Telstra are working on a new wireless technology that can theoretically support speed of up to 1Gbps. The technology is simply called Gigabit LTE and the companies involved in developing it are hoping to roll it out before the end of the year.
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Telstra said to achieve such breakneck speed, they have used a variety of technologies, including carrier aggregation. The technology also runs on Telstra's existing LTE networks.
In addition to the Gigabit LTE mobile hotspot from Telstra, Qualcomm is also launching its next-generation 800 series smartphone processor platform. This nwill include the X16 modem that has the capability of supporting gigabit LTE speed.
Qualcomm said this new 800 series chipsets still have no officially name, although the company confirmed that it is slated to be the successor for the recently launched Snapdragon 821. Qualcomm added that the new chipsets will be rolling out by the first half of 2017.
According to The Verge, Qualcomm's X16 modem offers speed boosts of up to 600Mbps compared to the current X12 platform. Qualcomm expects that major carriers around the world will start launching their own gigabit LTE services once the company's chipsets and modems are made available to smartphones.
Furthermore, Qualcomm is also looking forward to launch its first 5G compatible modems by 2018. It is even projecting that its X50 chipset, which supports speed of up to 5Gbps, will be available by 2018.
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Tags5G, telstra, gigabit mobile LTE, LTE, mobile network
(Photo : To l Brewery) Fresh out of the lab: the world's first powdered instant beer.
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A "gypsy brewery" in Denmark has managed to create the world's first "instant beer" in powder form.
Like most instant products like instant coffee, powdered instant beer becomes beer when a liquid is added. In this case, the liquids are water alcohol. The amount of liquid you use is up to you.
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The beer created by the two owners of "To l Brewery" in Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, isn't ready to market, however. It's a proof of concept both men said they'll continue to refine. But is there a market for powdered instant beer? Probably not considering how fanatical Beer Lovers are.
Tobias Emil Jensen and Tore Gynther have branded their prototype "To l Instant Craft Beer." The word "To l" is Danish for two beers.
They describe their "company" as a gypsy brewery. What that means is "we don't own our own brewing facilities but lend in at other breweries with spare capacity," they explained. But they do have a website.
A gypsy brewery is also called a Pirate/Nomad/Contract/Gold Digger Brewery.
These gypsy entrepreneurs made their instant beer by freeze-drying four different beers to separate the dry components -- sugars, bitter compounds, and flavor elements -- from the water and alcohol.
The four beers they selected were "a heavy deep beer brewed with coffee, a fruity IPA brewed with different tropical fruits, a Wild Yeast hop forward IPAs and a fairly dry pilsner."
Separating the alcohol from the dry components allows consumers to customize the beer they drink, adding their own water and whatever alcohol they want. Jensen and Gynther added mezcal to the powdered instant beer they tested. Mezcal is a wine made in Mexico derived from the agave plant.
The duo created powdered instant beer so people can enjoy beer in places where it would be logistically difficult to enjoy beer, such as when mountain climbing or when aboard a plane.
They said they teamed-up with GEA to make To l Instant Craft Beer to facilitate a larger scale freeze drying capacity. They said GEA are the experts in freeze drying.
GEA, which is based in Copenhagen, is one of the largest suppliers of process technology for the food industry and for a wide range of other industries.
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Tagsinstant beer, powdered instant beer, To l Brewery, Denmark, Tobias Emil Jensen, Tore Gynther, To l Instant Craft Beer, pirate brewery
(Photo : RAF) Four Storm Shadow cruise missiles mounted on an RAF Panavia Tornado.
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The long-range cruise missile named "Storm Shadow," the most powerful missile in the Royal Air Force (RAF) inventory, is among a large number of British-supplied, air-launched weapons being used by the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) in its campaign to oust Houthi rebels that took over the government of Yemen in January 2015.
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Since April 2015, the RSAF has led a relentless bombing campaign against Yemeni forces and their militant allies along with support from eight other Arab nations as part of the Saudi Arabian-led War in Yemen.
The Yemeni Civil War from 2004 to 2015 ended with the Houthis toppling the legitimate government of Yemen, which was forced into exile to Saudi Arabia. Intervention by Saudi Arabia and its allies followed.
The British are playing a key role in the RSAF air campaign in Yemen and have deployed military personnel in the command and control center responsible for Saudi-led air strikes on Yemen. The British also have access to targets lists and provide missiles and bombs for the RSAF.
The United States also supplies bombs and other weapons to the RSAF and its coalition partners. It provides intelligence and logistical support; aerial refueling and search-and-rescue for downed coalition pilots.
RSAF airstrikes in Yemen are mostly carried out by its Panavia Tornado IDS strike fighters capable of mounting an enormous array of smart bombs and air-to-ground missiles. RSAF operates 80 Tornadoes.
The use of the Storm Shadow by RSAF Tornadoes against Houthi Yemini forces was only recently detailed to the British Parliament by Secretary of State for Defense Sir Michael Fallon. Fallon said the RSAF has deployed Storm Shadow and other British-supplied air launched weapons since the Saudi-led intervention began.
Other British-supplied precision-guided weapons being used by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen are the Dual Mode Brimstone (a fire-and-forget air-to surface missile); ALARM (Air Launched Anti-Radiation Missile used against radars); the U.S.-made Paveway IV laser guided bombs and the PGM500 guided bombs (called Hakim 2 by the United Arab Emirates).
By far, the most impressive British weapon used by the Saudis is Storm Shadow, a British, French and Italian air-launched cruise missile manufactured by MBDA. The fire-and-forget missile is five meters in length and weighs 1,500 kg, of which 450 kg is its multi-stage warhead.
It has a range of 450 km and after launch, its wings deploy and the weapon navigates to the target at low level using terrain profile matching and an integrated Global Positioning System.
Publication of the types of British air-launched precision-guided weapons used in the Yemeni war comes at a time of growing international condemnation of the number of civilian deaths caused by the Saudi-led coalition's air strikes.
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TagsWar in Yemen, Royal Saudi Air Force, United Kingdom, Storm Sharow missile, Houthis, Yemeni Civil War, Saudi Arabia, Sir Michael Fallon
(Photo : D-Wave) D-Wave quantum computer system.
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D-Wave Systems, Inc., the first company in the world to sell quantum computers, will open a subsidiary in Washington D.C. to locate closer to the U.S. government, the largest buyer of computers on Earth.
The government focused subsidiary will be named, D-Wave Government, Inc.
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The federal government, especially the Pentagon and the Department of Defense (DoD), is the main market for D-Wave's quantum computers. D-Wave has so far sold systems to three major U.S. customers: Lockheed Martin, Google and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Other customers such as the U.S. Navy are renting time on D-Wave owned computers.
Based in British Columbia in Canada, D-Wave is the only company in the world currently offering a functioning quantum computer.
In 2011, D-Wave announced D-Wave One, which it claimed was "the world's first commercially available quantum computer." It launched a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab based on the D-Wave Two 512-qubit quantum computer used for research into machine learning.
In August 2015, D-Wave announced the general availability of the D-Wave 2X system, a 1000+ qubit quantum computer. In September, D-Wave said it had installed this system at the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA Ames Research Center.
D-Wave president Bo Ewald said his company wants to make the most of the U.S. government's interest in quantum computing and that opening a government-focused subsidiary was part of this plan.
"The U.S. government is the largest procurer of computers on the planet," said Ewald.
"They also are the ones who typically apply technologies before others do for programmatic needs, whether it be the Pentagon programs or Department of Energy or the intelligence community."
He noted that while he doesn't have an exact dollar figure for the potential business with the federal government and the military, "I can imagine that as this business really gets rolling that there will be several of these big systems within the DoD, the DoE labs, the intelligence community networks."
"Whether they lease them, purchase them or are using a cloud service, it's too early to tell yet."
Ewald said D-Wave's systems are mostly used for research and experimentation by its Pentagon customers. That includes serious work going on with various DoD research labs and the Navy's Space and Naval Systems Warfare Command.
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TagsD-Wave Systems, Inc., D-Wave Government, Inc., quantum computers, D-Wave One, Bo Ewald, washington d.c.
(Photo : Getty Images) An investor observes the stock market at an exchange hall on August 21, 2015 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.
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Chinese authorities are limiting the number of stock accounts each investor could own in the A-share market, a move to curb illegal market activities.
Under the new regulation, individuals are only allowed to own up to three accounts in a single mainland market, a steep decrease from the previous 20, according to a statement by the China Securities Depository and Clearing Corp. (CSDC) posted on its website.
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Investors who own more than three active accounts will be allowed, but inactive accounts are considered dormant, the Wall Street Journal reported.
"The utilization rate for investors with more than three accounts is very low. The accounts have taken up too many technical resources," the company said in a statement, adding that some investors are taking advantage of multiple accounts by carrying out illicit activities.
The regulation immediately became effective following CSDC's announcement, China Daily reported.
"We believe the regulators have learnt the lesson... The key intention of this new rule is to remind investors that the crazy bull will not happen again," Judy Zhang, head of China banks and brokers at Citigroup in Hong Kong, said referring to China's market crash last year, which caused about a third of local Chinese investors to run and wiping away trillions of U.S. dollars in value.
Chinese securities regulators scrapped the "one person, one account" rule in 2015 to give investors' more freedom to manage their stock portfolios.
Meanwhile, the CSDC has also reportedly created a black list system to monitor illegal trading activities. It has penalized over 500 stock accounts involving more than 70 investors for irregular activities after it adopted a new policy in April that allows investors to own multiple accounts, the China People's Daily reported.
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Tagsstock accounts, securities accounts, China Stock Exchange, stock exchange, China stock market
(Photo : Ukrainian Ground Forces) Men of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.
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Russian state-owned media has begun openly speculating about the increased chances of a new war against Ukraine following the assassination of a notorious pro-Russia separatist leader accused of cold bloodedly murdering 15 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The illegal and pro-Russia Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in east Ukraine is blaming Kyiv for the death of Arseny Pavlov (aka Motorola), the notorious commander of the DPR militia's Sparta Battalion, who was blown-up in a booby trapped elevator along with his bodyguard.
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At the time of their deaths, both Pavlov and his bodyguard were wearing body armor and were heavily armed. Pavlov was a Russian citizen.
A group claimed responsibility for Motorola's execution on behalf of the "misanthropic division" of Ukrainian nationalists. They posted an online video showing four masked men in front of an Ukrainian flag. The men said they were inside Donetsk and would target other separatist leaders.
Officially, the DPR has blamed the attack on a Ukrainian nationalist cell operating in the city. Others, however, believe the killing to be the latest in a brutal territorial war between different rebel factions in the Donbas, and that Russia might be responsible for Pavlov's death.
Pavlov was praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war hero and reviled by Ukraine as a murderer who admitted shooting to death 15 unarmed Ukrainian soldiers that were prisoners-of-war.
Pavlov himself admitted murdering the defenseless men.
"I don't give a f*** about what I am accused of, believe it or not," he said in an interview.
"I shot 15 prisoners dead. I don't give a f***. No comment. I kill if I want to. I don't if I don't," he said.
Officials from Ukraine's breakaway DPR have publicly said Pavlos's killing last Oct. 16 was a declaration of war by Ukraine.
Russian media warns the assassination might draw both NATO and Russia into the conflict in east Ukraine. DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko stated bluntly the attack constituted a violation of the ceasefire, and "an effective declaration of war."
Russian media said Pavlov's death adds to the tensions along the fragile ceasefire between Kiev forces and the Donbass militia. It claims the DPR is reporting a buildup of heavy equipment along the contact line, as well as the presence of "foreign mercenaries" in the area.
It also alleged the Ukrainian Ground Forces launched a probing attack on a settlement near the village of Leninskoe in Donetsk after an artillery and mortar barrage.
A DPR defense ministry spokesman said Ukrainian nationalist volunteer forces and "foreign mercenaries" (read NATO troops) were present in the assault.
The DRP also alleged that Ukrainian forces in a single day violated the ceasefire 398 times, including 336 violations using heavy artillery and mortars.
All these allegations are taking place to give Russia and the DPR an excuse to launch a new offensive against Ukraine.
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TagsUkraine, Russia, Donbass, Arseny Pavlov, Motorola, Donetsk Peoples Republic, assassination, Alexander Zakharchenko
(Photo : Getty Images ) Rodrigo Duterte arrived in Beijing on Tuesday evening at the start of a historic visit to China.
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China and Philippines may agree to share natural resources in the disputed South China Sea.
The two countries are reportedly discussing joint exploration for oil and natural gas in the contested waters, a Philippine media report revealed.
"What we are looking at is a deal that will first cover exploration activities in uncontested areas," a senior Filipino official told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
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The official even added that the South China Sea areas closer to the Philippines, including the Recto Bank, would be considered as potential locations for joint exploration.
"We're still finalizing it, but we will finish this deal in time," he said.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, known for his anti-U.S. tirade, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday evening at the start of a historic four-day visit to China. It is Duterte's first state visit outside ASEAN since taking office in June.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that the Philippines President will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang during his four day long visit to country.
"This is a historic visit, and presents an opportunity for relations between China and the Philippines to restart on a fresh, more positive footing," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
China and Philippines have long been engaged in a bitter dispute over the South China Sea. In July, an international tribunal had rejected China's ownership claims over the contested waters.
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TagsSouth China Sea, South China Sea Dispute, china, Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte
(Photo : Getty Images ) China is Pakistans largest supplier of arms.
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India said it is not worried about a recent China Pakistan submarine deal. A high ranking official from Indian Navy said on Tuesday that India is not concerned about China's stealth attack submarines sale to Pakistan.
"We are not concerned about such a deal," Indian Navy's vice admiral GS Pabby said. "We are only concerned about our submarine program, which is running behind schedule."
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As far as China's decision to sell eight submarines to Pakistan is concerned, the Indian Navy is far ahead of Pakistan and much more capable in terms of strength," Pabby continued.
Beijing recently admitted that it has agreed to export eight attack submarines to Pakistan as part of the approximately $5 billion deal signed earlier this year.
Last week, the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) organized a conference to discuss the details of the deal .
The country's state media reported that the corporation will supply the eight modified diesel-electric attack submarines to Pakistani Navy by 2028. Four submarines will be reportedly built in CSIC's facilities in China, while the remaining four will be built in Pakistan.
China is a close ally of Pakistan and it is also Pakistan's largest supplier of weapons and one of its biggest trading partners.
Meawnhile, India has been accusing China of supporting its arch rival Pakistan. The tension between India and Pakistan has recently been heightened following a deadly attack on an Indian military camp in Kashmir state that left eighteen Indian soldiers dead. Beijing continues to support Islamabad despite New Delhi's displeasure over its stance relative to the Kashmir issue.
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Tagschina, Pakistan, Submarine Sale, submarine, Uri Terror Attack, kashmir
(Photo : Getty Images) President Duterte seeks China's financial assistance to build high-speed railways and roads on his first day of visit to Beijing
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President Rodrigo Duterte's state visit in China has already achieved a positive result, as the country has committed US$3 billion to fund the Philippines' infrastructure projects.
The Philippine leader arrived in China on Tuesday as part of his four-day state visit to the Asian giant upon the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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Duterte said he bears goodwill in his China trip saying he aims to "make friends" and not "make war" with Beijing.
Analysts said Duterte is expected to seek financial support from the Chinese government and the various business groups to prop up its economy during his first official state visit to Beijing.
US$3 billion
State-run news agency Global Times said China has already offered the Southeast Asian country US$3 billion to fund its infrastructure projects, which include high-speed rail, roads and electricity grid development.
"Infrastructure serves as the core of the manufacturing industry to boost economic development in the Philippines, while China could provide cost-effective, though not the most advanced technology that Manila can afford," said Zhuang Guotu, a scholar at Xiamen University.
One of Duterte's pet projects, which he hopes to achieve during his six-year term, is the construction of a massive railway system in Mindanao, the southern part of the country.
China Railway Group
China's state-owned infrastructure firm China Railway Group Ltd. has expressed interest in investing in the Philippines' infrastructure projects to the tune of US$3 billion in the coming years.
China Railway's funding commitment is one of the several business deals expected to be signed by both countries in the four-day visit, according to Global Times.
Philippine Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez said numerous agreements on the said funding assistance from Chinese banks and private business sector will be inked by the Philippine government and China.
The fund will be provided in the form of investment and soft loan.
President Xi Jinping
Duterte is slated to meet his counterpart, President Xi Jinping, as well as Premier Li Keqiang and other officials, including China's National People's Congress chairperson Zhang Dejiang, China's Foreign Ministry said.
"This is a historic visit, and presents an opportunity for relations between China and the Philippines to restart on a fresh, more positive footing," said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday.
Wang said no "foreign force" can stand in the way of improving Sino-Philippine relations and that China's doors are always open for friendship among Filipinos.
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TagsPresident Xi Jinping, President Rodrigo Duterte, high-speed rail, infrastructure projects, China visit, business deals, economic development
(Photo : Indian Army) BrahMos will soon envelop all of Pakistan.
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India and Russia have agreed to work together to more than double the range of India's BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to over 600 kilometers, an upgrade that will bring all of Pakistan within range of the missile's high explosive or nuclear warheads.
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The far longer range will also enable this as yet unnamed model to attack more People's Liberation Army bases in the interior of Tibet that threaten the Line of Actual Control, especially those bases aimed at the imperiled Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh China claims is part of Tibet.
One of the biggest drawbacks to BrahMos -- the world's fastest cruise missile -- is its paltry range of just 290 kilometers. That drawback was imposed because Russia, the co-builder of the missile, was a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) at the time BrahMos was being developed in the 1990s and India wasn't.
The MTCR, which now consists of 35 nations, forbids its members from selling, jointly producing or exporting missiles with a range in excess of 300 km. India became the newest member of the MTCR club last June 28, which means it can now develop but not export missiles with a range exceeding 300 km.
BrahMos is being produced by BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture between India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and Russia's Federal State Unitary Enterprise NPOM.
The decision to extend the range of BrahMos was announced by Russian president Vladimir Putin during the recent 17th annual India-Russia bilateral summit in Goa last Oct. 15.
"We have also agreed to improve the BrahMos missile, which will be land, air and sea launched. We will also work to increase its range. And we will work together on a fifth-generation aircraft," said Putin said.
During this summit, India also signed a total of 16 agreements covering national defense, including an agreement to purchase of the potent S-400 Triumf air defense missile system (one of the world's best) for about $5 billion. This new system will be used against Pakistan, as well.
The Pakistani military is justifiably worried about BrahMos. One of its websites described the Indian missile as "stealthy, fast and extremely difficult to shoot down."
It also noted that "BrahMos's ability to maintain supersonic speeds while skimming at low altitude makes it very difficult to detect and intercept. To cap it off, the BrahMos performs an evasive 'S-maneuver' shortly before impact, making it difficult to shoot down at close range."
BrahMos' accuracy is astonishing. It can deliver its 200 kg conventional semi-armor-piercing or nuclear warhead to one meter of its target.
Its speed is equally stunning. The missile can hurtle towards its target at Mach 3 (3,700 km/h). The newest version under development will double this speed to Mach 7 (8,600 km/h)
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TagsBrahMos, cruise missile, India, Pakistan, china, Line of Actual Control, Missile Technology Control Regime
(Photo : Pixabay) Typhoon Sarika has wrecked havoc in China's Hainan province.
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Chinese authorities have evacuated half a million people in the wake of Typhoon Sarika hitting Hainan. The country has also issued a red alert.
A large number of flights bound for Hainan have also been canceled. The typhoon landed at Hele Town at 9:50 a.m. Sarika is the 21st typhoon of the year.
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Sarika packed winds of 162 kms per hour, causing havoc. A bus carrying 45 passengers was reportedly overturned by the strong winds and slippery road. However, no casualties have been reported. The National Meteorological Centre has issued a red alert, which is the highest level alert in China's color-coded weather warning system. The capital city of Haikou is estimated to have suffered economic losses amounting to nearly $148 million.
The Hainan Civil Affairs Department has been evacuating fishermen and people living in low-lying areas. The department is also providing relief materials including food, water, and quilts. The main civil airport of the area--the Meilan International Airport--has had to cancel 250 flights on account of the typhoon. Similarly, high-speed train services have also been negatively affected.
Cai Qinbo, the provincial meteorological station chief, said that the losses caused by the typhoon are likely to be grave. He said that the Sarika is likely to be the most destructive typhoon to land in Hainan in a decade.
Typhoon Sarika hit the Philippines before reaching China. It is estimated to have caused $44 million worth of agricultural damage in the country. Two casualties were also reported in the Philippines.
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(Photo : https://pixabay.com/en/life-beauty-scene-transport-863180/) Pakistan is participating in $46 billion economic corridor project.
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) sent a warning to Pakistan about the growing Chinese investments in the country.
While investments are expected to help the ailing Pakistani economy in realizing its potential, the country may possibly face difficulties in meeting its repayment obligations. Pakistan is participating in $46 billion economic corridor project.
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In its evaluation of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) investments, IMF said the growth projected for the investments is likely to be strong enough to cover the repayments over the longer term. However, it also noted that such repayment is not guaranteed.
IMT added that it is important that such investments are coupled with export and growth-related reforms in the country to ensure the country's repayment capacity.
According to the report, CPEC-related imports are expected to touch 11 percent of total forecasted imports by 2020. The gross external funding needs of Pakistan, though, are likely to jump by 60 percent by then, reaching $17.5 billion.
The report advised Pakistan to manage its CPEC-related outflow properly. Accordingly, this is important in the scenarios when Chinese investors start to repatriate the profits from their investments in Pakistan.
IMF further stated that owing to the massive amount of Foreign Direct Investment involved, the repatriation can run into huge amounts, as Pakistan needs to manage the outflows in the form of loan repayments.
Furthermore, IMF said Pakistan's growth rate may increase, touching five percent in the current fiscal year. The report also lauded the investment's potential with a huge chunk of the inflow going towards transportation, energy and infrastructure projects. It is expected that nearly $10 billion worth of investments are allocated for road, rail and port developments.
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TagsPakistan, china, IMF
(Photo : Korean People's Army) Hwasong-10 launch.
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There are indications North Korea might be further ahead than expected in finishing the development of its Hwasong-10 (Musudan) mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that might be able to reach the vicinity of Guam. This missile can carry a nuclear warhead.
North Korea has conducted seven tests involving eight Musudans from this April until Oct. 15. None of these tests were considered completely successful by the west. One test, a launch of two Musudans last June 22 from Wonsan, was considered a partial success.
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North Korea, however, praised the twin launches as a complete success. The latest test on Oct. 15 from Kusong on the west coast was a complete failure that saw a Musudan destroyed at launch.
The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned for the October launch, calling it a "grave violation" of resolutions banning North Korea from using ballistic missile technology.
First revealed in 2010, Hwasong-10 is a liquid fueled IRBM capable of carrying a 1,000 kg high explosive warhead and, later on, a nuclear warhead if the North ever perfects this technology. North Korea claims the missile can reach out to 4,000 km but western analysts believe this to be false based on the trajectories of the missiles used in its tests.
Despite the mostly failed record of the Hwasong-10, the American think tank 38 North believes North Korea is on track to perfect Hwasong-10 faster than expected.
It cited an aggressive schedule with multiple tests and believes the latest launch from Kusong suggests Hwasong-10 might enter service as early as 2017. The website is part of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
It believes the North Koreans aren't "taking the slow path to developing a reliable system, with a year or so between each test to analyze the data and make improvements ... instead, they are continuing with an aggressive test schedule that involves, at least this time, demonstrating new operational capabilities."
The frequent launches of the missile increase the probability of failures, but "it means they will learn more with each test."
The think tank noted that launching from the west coast allows the missile to achieve longer range without flying over neighboring countries such as Japan.
Previous tests from the east coast were limited to 400 kilometers or so to avoid Japanese airspace. To compensate, the North decided on a lofted trajectory that "probably did not demonstrate the missile's full performance."
"From the west coast, launching south, a North Korean missile could fly 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) or more before splashing down in the Philippine Sea," said the report by 38 North (a reference to the 38th Parallel dividing North and South Korea).
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TagsHwasong-10 (Musudan), intermediate-range ballistic missile, IRBM, North Korea, 38 North, Guam
Christian refugees threatened by immigration officials after fleeing Vietnam to seek asylum 19 October, 2016 by Staff , |
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Christian Examiner) A group of indigenous tribal Christians from Vietnam who fled persecution in the country's Central Highlands are about to be sent back into the lion's den, Radio Free Asia has reported.
The believers, part of several of the many hill tribes known as Montagnards (French for "mountain people"), left Vietnam last year under pressure from a government which supposedly guarantees religious liberty, but only allows it insofar as it supports the objectives of the state which is Marxist atheism.
According to the report from RFA, the Cambodian government plans to deport "some" of the 160 Montagnards whose asylum claims have been processed and denied, with officials claiming they have failed to prove they are refugees.
Those Montagnard asylum-seekers must leave Cambodia within two weeks after the decision of the immigration department. In the case that they do not leave, we will arrest them and send them back to Vietnam.
Khieu Sopheak, a spokesman for Cambodia's interior ministry, said it could take up to one month for each of the Montagnard Christians to be returned to Vietnam. First, they have the opportunity to appeal the Cambodian government's decision.
"The results of the interviews I obtained yesterday show that many of them didn't satisfy the requirements to be recognized as refugees," Sopheak said. "Now they have to submit additional evidence to justify their claims of mistreatment or persecution. After that, we will decide whether or not to deport them."
But another spokesman for Cambodia's immigration agency, Kim Sarin, took a much harder line. He said the Montagnards have two weeks to return to Vietnam, or else they will be forcibly returned.
"We have interviewed those Montagnard asylum-seekers one by one for the last few months and we evaluated that those people have no right to receive asylum from a third country because their answers do not comply with the convention on refugees," Sarin told the Cambodia Daily.
"Those Montagnard asylum-seekers must leave Cambodia within two weeks after the decision of the immigration department. In the case that they do not leave, we will arrest them and send them back to Vietnam," Sarin said.
This group of 160 Montagnard Christians was part of a larger group that fled Gia Lai, Dak Lak, and Kon Tum provinces in central Vietnam in May. Some of the original group have already been returned to Vietnam while 13 were granted refugee status and allowed to move to the Philippines.
RFA also reported that Vietnamese authorities came to Cambodia to question the Montagnards and "encourage" them to return home. RFA said that move was "condemned by civil society as intimidation" of the ethnic minority Christians.
Politically-motivated UNESCO denies history, calls Israel 'occupying power' -- makes no reference to 'Temple Mount'' 19 October, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |
NEW YORK (Christian Examiner) In its latest insult to the nation of Israel, the United Nations' educational and cultural body (UNESCO) has adopted a resolution by a slim margin which denies the Jews' ancient claims to the Temple Mount.
In fact, the resolution makes no reference to the "Temple Mount," but instead refers to the location of the ancient Jewish Temple only as al-Haram al-Sharif, home of the al-Aqsa mosque.
It also refers to the Western Wall (traditionally called the "Wailing Wall") predominantly as "al-Buraq Plaza" a site where Muslims claim Muhammad tied up his winged horse when he supposedly visited Jerusalem. No real evidence exists that Muhammad ever visited Jerusalem.
To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China or that Egypt has no connection to the pyramids. By this absurd decision, UNESCO has lost what little legitimacy it had left.
The resolution, approved by UNESCO's executive board, was sponsored by a group of Arab nations and purports to safeguard "the cultural heritage of Palestine and the distinctive character of East Jerusalem."
Last week, Israel ceased cooperating with UNESCO as the resolution was debated, claiming that the Palestinians were "playing games" with history.
In a Facebook post, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the passage of the resolution a performance in the "theatre of the absurd."
"To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China or that Egypt has no connection to the pyramids. By this absurd decision, UNESCO has lost what little legitimacy it had left," Netanyahu said.
David Keyes, Netanyahu's spokesman, went so far as to invite "expert historical witnesses" to describe the Jews' association with the Temple Mount. Among those witnesses, he said, was King Solomon, the Roman Emperor Titus, and even the Supreme Muslim Council, which declared in its pamphlet, A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif, in 1925:
"The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps from pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute."
In spite of this earlier recognition of the location of the Temple, Mounir Anastas, Palestine's deputy ambassador, said he hoped the resolution would shock Israel into making adjustments in its policies, stopping "all their violations" and excavations of the areas around the Temple Mount. When Israeli archaeologists do dig around the site, they uncover more and more ancient evidence of the Jewish presence at the site.
In the resolution, proposed by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, Israel is referred to as "the occupying power" on four occasions.
Twenty-four nations, including Russia, Iran and China, voted in favor of the resolution. Twenty-six nations abstained. Only Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and United States voted against it.
In a commentary in the Jerusalem Post, columnist Tovar Lazaroff wrote that Israel will have to fight more battles over resolutions like the one passed by the UNESCO board.
"Until the nations of the world are willing to vote for history instead of politics, or until the UN finds a way to set a basic accuracy standard that resolution must meet, Israel will find itself again and again battling against such texts," Lazaroff wrote.
Persecution watchdog group Open Doors reports that in 2016, Muslim refugees attacked some 743 Christian refugees while they were living in camps in Germany.
Open Doors officials say there could be even more unreported cases.
"The documented cases confirm that the situation of Christian refugees in German refugee shelters is still unbearable. As a minority they are discriminated against, beaten up by and receive death threats from Muslim refugees and partly by the Muslim staff (securities, interpreters, volunteers) on grounds of their religion," according to a major survey published by Open Doors Germany in October, representing a number of organizations, such as Persecuted Christians and the Needy, European Mission Society Fellowship, and the Central Council of Oriental Christians in Germany.
"Taking these new cases into consideration there are now 743 Christian refugees who have reported religiously motivated attacks. With more staff at hand, a significantly higher number of cases could have been included in the survey," it added.
The refugees had fled from Syria and other regions, escaping terror groups and the violence from war. Instead, the Christian refugees found violence within what were supposed to be safe camps.
As a Christian charity, Open Doors is not against Muslims, as CEO Markus Rode has already made clear in a comprehensive statement in January 2015. It is a constitutive element of Christian faith that Muslims are loved by God and are to be met with love and compassion," the report said.
"At the same time it has to be stated that Islam, which is the majority religion in most of the refugees' home countries, is responsible for the massive violation of the human right to freedom of religion.
Publication date: October 19, 2016
Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed more than 40 Christians in an attack in this town in northern Nigeria on Saturday (Oct. 15) and left another eight dead in an assault three weeks earlier, area leaders said.
Besides the eight slain on Sept. 24-26 in Godogodo, a predominantly Christian community in Kaduna state, the Muslim Fulani herdsmen also wounded eight Christians by gunshot and machete cuts, the leaders said.
Godogodo residents said that the second massacre began at 5 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 15), barely two hours after Morning Star News left after investigating the September attack. The Rev. Thomas Akut of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Good News Church in Godogodo said the assailants burned houses and shot Christians dead in the attack over the weekend.
The 41-year-old Pastor Akut and his family escaped harm, sleeping on the ground outside town until Sunday morning (Oct. 16), when they made their way to Kafanchan, he told Morning Star News by phone.
We fled into the bushes, and some of us escaped to safer areas, he said. The attackers were in the hundreds and were well armed. Some of them wore army uniforms, while others wore police uniforms. Some of them exchanged gunfire with the few soldiers stationed at the post office in the town, while others burned down houses of Christians.
Initially he saw 22 Christians had been killed, he said.
This casualty figure is only those I saw the following morning, but the number of deaths may be higher as many were killed in the bushes too, Pastor Akut said.
Solomon Musa, an attorney and president of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), said at a press conference on Monday (Oct. 17) that local residents identified at least 40 people who had been killed.
Godogodo communities once again came under very fierce, terrifying, brutal, savage and barbarous attack by Fulani herdsmen without provocation of any nature from Saturday 15th October, 2016, to Sunday afternoon, he said. So far, the locals have been able to identify not less than 40 corpses, aside from the several other corpses burnt beyond recognition.
A Kaduna State Command spokesman reportedly said the official death toll remained at 20.
Nearly all houses in Godogodo have been burned, SOKAPU's Musa said, and the Muslim Fulani herdsmen also destroyed property worth hundreds of millions of naira, besides grazing their cattle on farmers crops and destroying what remained.
The savagery and barbarity of the attack is beyond belief, Musa said. Yet, governments at the federal and state levels appear quiet and noncommittal. We have been abandoned, deserted and neglected.
Pastor Isaac Balason of Nasara Baptist Church, Godogodo, spoke to Morning Star News while the town was under attack.
It is now 8:30 p.m., and the attack is ongoing, he said by phone on Saturday night. Were not sure well survive this time. Please be in prayers with us.
The following morning, Pastor Balason told Morning Star News that herdsmen had burned down houses in Angwan Ninzo and Angwan Jaba, among other areas.
Thank God we survived, but many others have lost their lives, he said.
Wounded Son Loses Father
Christian leaders in Godogodo told Morning Star News that 16 church buildings and worship centers were affected in the two attacks on Godogodo.
The damaged buildings belonged to St. Francis Catholic Church, St. Simeon Anglican Church, Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), Deeper Life Bible Church, Grace of God Church, Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Assemblies of God Church, ECWA I & II, ECWA Good News, ECWA Kibam, Lords Chosen Church, Methodist Church of Nigeria, Nasara Baptist Church, Christ Apostolic Church, and Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Pastor Akut said the herdsmen have also been destroying Christians farms, a tactic he said is aimed at displacing Christians and starving survivors to death.
Our farms have been destroyed, Pastor Akut said. Crops that are now ready for harvest have all been destroyed by the herdsmen. Members of our churches cannot even go to these farms, as anyone who attempts to do so is murdered by the herdsmen. Most of the villages around Godogodo have been destroyed and thousands of Christians displaced.
Akut said the attack has displaced all 245 members of his church including himself. He said he saw the attacks as an Islamic war against Christians.
This is a jihad, he said. It is an Islamic holy war against Christians in the southern part of Kaduna state.
Pastor Balason, 34, said all 120 members of his of Nasara Baptist Church had been displaced.
Three out my 120 members were killed during the first attack, and the rest, including myself, have been displaced, he said. I cannot say whether they all survived this latest attack, as it is difficult at this moment to know the situation they are in.
Samuel Musa, a 60-year-old elder with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Godogodo, told Morning Star News shortly before the second attack that during Sabbath worship, the church usually had 50 members, but that the first attack on the town displaced all of them except him and three others.
We have lost so much to the attacks by the herdsmen, Musa said.
Ishaya Danladi Mallam, 46, an elder with the Evangelical Reformed Church of Christ (ERCC), told Morning Star News that the first attack displaced all but 24 of the churchs 220 members.
We covet your prayers and those of other brethren, he said. We are facing very threatening, tough times.
Those killed in the first attack were identified as: Ajiya Hamza, 20; Monday Hamza, 18; Musa Gwari, 45; Joseph Nok, 46; Luka Ali, 22; Ishaku Ali, 26; Ikechukwu James, 30; and Daniel Silas, 30.
Those wounded were Baba Joseph Nok, 20, whose father was killed in the attack; Menshack Waziri, 22; Gideon Peter, 29; Solomon John, 41. Others injured were Blessed Musa, 35; Inuwa Tanet, 32; Abba Samuel, 30; and, Uba Monday, 28. At this writing three of the injured were receiving treatment at Jos University Teaching Hospital, while five others were at the Throne-room Hospital, Kafanchan.
If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved.
If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at http://morningstarnews.org/donate/?
Publication date: October 19, 2016
I had the privilege or reading a pre-release version of "God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church." Here are 20 quotes from the book, which you should pick up.
home US 3rd presidential debate gives Donald Trump last big chance to make a mark before Nov 8 election
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump faces a formidable challenge on Wednesday when he and Democrat Hillary Clinton face off in their third and final debate as Trump tries to reverse his standing in an election that appears to be tilting away from him.
Damaged by accusations that he made unwanted sexual advances towards women - which he denies - Trump will get his last best chance to sway large numbers of American voters when he faces off against Clinton at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT Thursday) at the University of Las Vegas Nevada.
"This one is important if Trump is going to have any chance to get back into this race," said Republican strategist Charlie Black. "He's going to have to talk about issues effectively and not get down in the mud, and he needs to talk about jobs."
For Clinton, who leads national opinion polls and leads in most of the battleground states where the Nov. 8 election is likely to be decided, the 90-minute debate offers her a chance to make her closing argument on why she is the best suited to succeed President Barack Obama.
"It's hard to imagine at this point anything that could happen in this debate that could change the overall dynamic of this race," said Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf. "I can't imagine what Donald Trump could do positively or a mistake Hillary Clinton could make to change the trajectory of this race."
In a campaign that has been more about character than policy differences, both candidates enter the debate ring a bit wounded from recent events.
Trump has spent the past week denying and defending himself from charges that he groped women. Clinton has struggled to get past a flap over her handling of classified emails while U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
"She needs to be able to answer the email question," said Democratic strategist Bud Jackson. "She hasn't quite hit that nail on the head yet. She should do better this time. And she should expect the unexpected."
But Trump's troubles have loomed the largest, weighing down the New York businessman's extraordinary political run at the worst possible time.
This has prompted him to lash out at what he feels is a political and media system rigged against him, an apparent bid to discredit the process before the election takes place. Obama said on Tuesday that Trump needs to "stop whining" and make his case to the voters.
Republicans who have watched Trump shoot himself in the foot time and again said the Las Vegas debate was a final opportunity to appear presidential.
"Trump needs to make a real closing argument and stop the personal attacks and come across like a commander-in-chief," said Republican strategist Scott Reed.
Trump himself called the debate an important opportunity to talk to voters. The event, moderated by Fox New anchor Chris Wallace, is to include a discussion of six topics: debt and entitlements, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hot spots and fitness to be president.
"I see it as another important cog and really another important evening in the whole very complicated puzzle," Trump told conservative talk radio host Mike Gallagher.
Clinton, who is now competitive in traditionally Republican states like Arizona, is considering a stop in Arizona in the closing three weeks of the campaign.
Clinton senior adviser Jennifer Palmieri told reporters that the former U.S. secretary of state hopes to focus at the debate on what she would tackle if elected.
"If (Trump) chooses to continue to embrace his strategy of a scorched-earth campaign and bringing that to the debate stage, she'll be prepared to handle that as she has the last two times," she said.
home World Boko Haram might demand ransom for Chibok girls' release
The militant group Boko Haram is expected to lay out two major conditions to the Nigerian government for the release of 83 more Chibok girls.
Last Thursday, 21 girls were freed by the group after a series of negotiations with the federal government. It was not revealed what Boko Haram received in return.
An unnamed source who has knowledge of the negotiations told Vanguard that the next negotiations might involve ransom payment and the release of no fewer than 16 Boko Haram commanders.
According to the source, only 104 remain in captivity of the group. The others were reportedly married off to Boko Haram members and have been radicalized.
"The remaining 83 girls are with a top leader of Boko Haram and those are the only ones we are going to work for their release in the next phase of our negotiations which starts immediately," the source told Vanguard.
The negotiations are expected to resume this week. The source indicated that Boko Haram might ask for payment before releasing the girls.
"I think the guys are settled on the idea that the cash must come ahead of the release since they had proved to government that they are reliable by releasing the 21 girls last week without many conditions attached," the source added.
Two sources close to the negotiations told CNN that money had been paid to Boko Haram for the freedom of the 21 girls last week. The Nigerian government stated that the release of the Chibok girls "was not a swap" but it has not spoken about the issue of money.
The militants captured 276 girls from the town of Chibok in April 2014. As many as 57 girls were able to escape. A Boko Haram insider told CNN that the girls are under the control of the group's longtime leader, Abubakar Shekau.
home World Iranian pastor released after six years in prison
Pastor Behnam Irani was freed by Iranian authorities on Monday after serving a six-year prison sentence for charges related to his Christian activities.
The pastor's release has been confirmed by the advocacy group Present Truth Ministries (PTM).
"Irani has been released from prison and is now free. We thank you all for your prayers. The Lord has preserved him in a mighty way!" said PTM in a statement.
According to Prisoner Alert, Irani was first arrested and charged for crimes against national security in December 2006. The pastor was released in January 2007 but he was arrested again later. He was sentenced to five years in prison which was suspended.
In April 2010, Iranian authorities raided his house church and took him into custody. He received a one-year prison sentence which he voluntarily served in May 2011. A few months later in October, he received a letter which stated that he is now required to serve the five-year sentence which had been previously suspended.
It has been reported that Irani was in poor health and mistreated during the first few months of his sentence. In February 2012, his family revealed that he was suffering from an intestinal disorder. He was transferred to a prison hospital later that year where it was discovered that he had a bleeding ulcer.
The pastor underwent surgery for his stomach ulcers and colon complications in February 2014. Officials added another six years to his sentence in October that same year and he was transferred to another prison in the city of Zabol.
In December 2014, he appealed the decision and the court informed him that he no longer has to serve the additional six-year prison term.
According to a report from the advocacy group Release International, Irani is still in poor health after being freed. The group's CEO, Paul Robinson, was pleased about the pastor's release but he noted that there are still 200 other prisoners who have been jailed because of their faith.
"Release urges Iran to end its long-running crackdown on the church and set free all of its prisoners who are behind bars for their religious beliefs," said Robinson.
home World Mob wants Pakistani Christian teen hanged over Facebook post about Islam
A mob is demanding that a 16-year-old Pakistani Christian should be hanged because of a Facebook post that allegedly insulted Islam.
Nabeel Masih was arrested and charged with blasphemy last September after a photo of the Kaaba in Mecca reportedly appeared on his Facebook profile. It was claimed that the image showed a pig's head on top of the Kaaba, one of the holiest sites in Islam.
It is unclear whether he was tagged in the post, liked the photo or posted the image himself.
According to Express, the mob threatened Masih and his family and called for his execution when he appeared in court last week to face the charges against him. The judge stated that the teenager could face the death penalty if convicted.
Masih's legal team said that 80 people from different age groups attended the hearing and each of them are calling other people on the phone to go to the hearing. The lawyers were also reportedly threatened.
Masih's lawyer, Aneeqa Maria from the Pakistani Christian advocacy group, The Voice, said the prosecution also intimidated the defense team for taking Masih's case.
"The situation is getting more and more tense in this case and we do not have any security to handle the situation," said Maria.
The date for the next hearing is yet to be announced. Masih will remain in prison until then. His family has already left their home out of their fear of violence.
The British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) is worried that the authorities are trying to find more evidence they can use against Masih.
"The investigation is taking longer then expected so they have asked for more time to complete their supplementary report. In other words just in case Nabeel escapes a blasphemy charge due to international outrage, the police will find another way to detain Nabeel against his liberty," the BPCA said in a statement.
home US Over 700 Female Christian leaders denounce Trump for lewd comments
More than 700 female Christian leaders signed a letter to condemn Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for the inappropriate remarks that he made towards women.
The candidate was heard bragging about groping and kissing women in a 2005 video that was leaked earlier this month. At least nine women have come out to accuse Trump of sexual assault since the clip was released. Trump downplayed the recording as "locker room talk" and denied the allegations of sexual misconduct.
In a statement issued last week, the women criticized the candidate for trying to make light of the lewd remarks.
"As Christian women, we are appalled by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's recorded remarks that disparage women and condone sexual assault," the letter began.
"Such language cannot be dismissed as 'locker room talk.' Mr. Trump must offer public contrition that fully acknowledges the seriousness and depravity of his actions," it added.
The women also called out other Christian leaders who continued to support the business magnate even after the release of the recordings.
"Christian leaders cannot condone such violent speech about women as a minor mistake or an innocent attempt to be 'macho,'" it continued. "These excuses teach our young people that such language is acceptable and do further harm to those who have been abused," the letter read.
Last week, Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson suggested that Trump was just "trying to look like he's macho" when he made the remarks. He went on to compliment Trump for recovering from the backlash against him at the second presidential debate.
The letter urged other religious leaders to preach against misogyny and sexual violence and teach the children to speak out against vulgar language.
Some of the signatories of the letter include Faith in Public Life CEO Rev. Jennifer Butler, Union Theological Seminary President Dr. Serene Jones, Wesleyan Church Ambassador Jo Anne Lyon, Chicago Theological Seminary President Alice Hunt and Auburn Seminary President Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson.
home US Student president says most at Liberty University will vote for Trump despite petition
Student body president Jack Heaphy issued a statement saying that many students are supportive of Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.'s decision to continue endorsing Donald Trump despite the allegations of sexual misconduct against the candidate.
A group of students from Liberty Universtiy launched a petition last week to protest Falwell's support for Trump. They voiced out their concern that through his endorsement, Falwell is linking the name of the university to the Republican candidate.
Around 2,500 people have signed the petition, according to the Huffington Post. As many as 1,100 petitioners have verified Liberty University email addresses.
In response, Falwell stated that he always makes an effort to clarify to the media that he does not speak for the students or the faculty when he declared his support for Trump. He also noted that the group that started the petition was "led by a never Trump activist" and many of the signatories are not students of the school.
Heaphy said that majority of the students agree with Falwell's endorsement but they are not following him blindly. He explained that most of those who support Trump are more concerned about the dangers of electing Hillary Clinton as president.
"A Clinton presidency holds the prospect of a further decline in the social and moral fabric of our nation. This is evident by her views on abortion, traditional family values, and the other critical issues most important to evangelical Christians," Heaphy wrote in a statement.
It has been noted in the petition against Falwell that the Republican candidate only received 90 votes from the students during the primary elections. Heaphy himself supported Florida Sen. Marco Rubio before Trump became the nominee.
"While I vehemently disagree with many of the things Trump has said and done, I also realize that Hillary Clinton is no better," he told TheBlaze. "In reality, she is the most morally corrupt candidate in U.S. history and would stand against many of the principles evangelicals hold dearly," he added.
British Foreign Minister Condemns Assad For Failing To Protect Christians
A senior Foreign Office minister has attacked President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for failing to protect Christians and for being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Baroness Anelay, Minister for Human Rights, accused Assad and his Russian allies of being responsible for the crisis in Syria.
She was speaking a conference at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London on how freedom of religon and belief can help the struggle against violent extremism.
Speaking to Christian Today and The Tablet during the conference, Baroness Anelay made a strong attack on Assad's regime.
"As far as one can see throughout Syria, Assad is not protecting minorties who are Christian. Assad is the cause of the destruction of security across the Syrian region. He is responsible for up to 400,000 deaths."
She said between 85 and 90 per cent of the civilians deaths were as a result of Assad and now his Russian allies. It was not just Christians but all minorities who were not being protected in any way.
She added: "I'm delighted that Russia has said they will have an eight-hour cease fire. Let's see if that works.
"What I condemn utterly is that Russia has apparently been involved in attacking civilians because they are civilians. I've met the 'white helmets' who have gone through this appalling double-drop system whereby the gunships of Assad and his allies come over the helicopters, drop their barrel bombs."
The white helmets are a force of around 3,000 volunteers formed in 2013 to rescue the victims of Syrian airstrikes. They have saved thousands of lives but some of the volunteers have themselves been killed while trying to rescue victims.
Baroness Anelay said: "The white helmets come out and resue people, start pulling them from the rubble, and as they are doing that, gunships that have been hovering, waiting, come back and barrel-bomb them again. That is obscene."
As tensions between Britain and Russia increase due to the escalation of the Syria crisis, leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church were in the UK this week.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow met the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury as Baroness Anelay met Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who is chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's department for external church relations.
Hilarion spoke about the tragic situation of Christians in the region, with many being forced to flee Syria. He told her that the world community was responsible for preserving the Christian presence in the Middle East.
Baroness Anelay said she responded firmly: "I made it clear that Assad is the cause of the problem and not the result and that he has not made any attempt to protect minorities." She added: "Assad and his allies, which include Russia, have not provided and cannot provide protection for minorities."
Baroness Anelay, speaking also about Islamic State, said the terror group was not motivated by faith but by power.
"Daesh doesn't target individuals because of their faith. They simply target them because they want to grab power. This is about a power grab."
The point of Daesh was not to attack other faiths.
"Daesh want power. It is their perverted sense of how they want to grab power they present themselves as some kind of jihadis. They are not," she said.
The aim of the conference, which continues tomorrow, is to start finding ways to counter a mindset that is threatening the extinction of Christians in the Middle East in particular.
It is a "groundbreaking" conference because it is the first time the Foreign Office had been able to bring together representatives of faiths, government and NGOs who are working around the world to build relationships between faith.
"Wherever I go when I talk about the importance of respecting difference, I acknowledge that sometimes change can come slowly in societies," said Baroness Anelay.
In the UK, change had sometimes taken centuries. For example, it was only recently that British society had fully made the changes it needed to in regards of LGBT rights and equality.
"So we have to understand that when we assist countries to look at difference as something that is of value, not as something that might divide society, that we have to look at their own history and their own political systems and how legislation may need to change." The best way to achieve change was not just to use the ambassadorial network but also to help organisations on the ground to create change by the funding they provide.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says in the conference programme foreword that human societies have always struggled to cope with their differences. "But the networked and interconnected nature of our modern world seems to have made this harder.
"Years of global inaction have created a dangerous climate of impunity in which violent prejudice can thrive and individuals are persecuted or even murdered because of their religion or beliefs," he says.
"So the years of drift must end: as an international community, we need to unite against extremism."
Chibok Girls Don't Want To Come Home Because Of Stigma
More than 100 Chibok schoolgirls do not want to go home either because they have been radicalised or because of the stigma they will face as ex-Boko Haram captives.
The Nigerian government is currently negotiating the release of another 83 girls from the 276 kidnapped in April 2014. But many are ashamed to return, chairman of the Chibok Development Association Pogu Bitrus told the Associated Press.
His comments followed the first negotiated release last week where 21 girls were freed. The news was received with "delight, relief and optimism" by the Anglican Church of Nigeria. But Bitrus said the girls should be educated and cared for abroad in order to avoid further abuse in their own communities.
"We would prefer that they are taken away from the community and this country because the stigmatization is going to affect them for the rest of their lives," he said in a telephone interview. "Even someone believed to have been abused by Boko Haram would be seen in a bad light."
All those who have already escaped the terror group have left their home region after being labelled "Boko Haram wives" and mocked.
Nigeria must "stand strong" to "protect them from stigma, ostracization and rejection," the UN special rapporteurs on the sale of children said in a statement Tuesday. The comment was particularly directed at the small town of Chibok, a conservative Christian community in the Muslim-majority north of Nigeria.
The girls were split into two groups when first captured, according to their own testimony since being released. They were given the choice of embracing Islam and becoming saints.
Those already freed and those under negotiation are all from the second group who chose slavery. The girls told their parents they never saw those in the second group again, said Bitrus. The released girls were used as were used as domestic workers and porters but were reportedly not sexually abused.
Christian Pastor Accused of Being a Spy Continues to Suffer in Jail in China
A Christian pastor is still languishing in jail in China after he was arrested almost two years ago on espionage charges.
Pastor Li Guozhi, alias Yang Hua, the vicar who used to be in charge of the Huoshi Church in Guizhou province, has developed a serious liver disease while incarcerated and his health condition continues to deteriorate, the Express reported, quoting his lawyers.
Lawyers Chen Jiangang and Zhao Yonglin, who recently visited the Christian pastor, said Hua is currently "suffering from serious health conditions and is suffering from liver pain along with various other serious diseases." They also maintained that the vicar is being subjected to "inhumane" conditions while in prison.
Pastor Hua was taken into custody by Chinese authorities in December 2015 after he refused to give the police a hard drive belonging to his church. He was subsequently charged for allegedly "divulging state secrets."
Despite his frail condition, Pastor Hua is still being tortured by Chinese prosecutors, who are trying to force out a confession from him, his lawyers revealed.
"Prosecutors visited him twice, applied pressure to his feet, and repeatedly threatened to kill him and harm his family members if he failed to confess his supposed crimes," the lawyers said.
They said they are planning to sue the Chinese prosecutors for allegedly "using torture to extort a confession," although this might further delay Pastor Hua's trial.
It was also recently revealed to the lawyers that the vicar's wife, Wang Hongwu, has been put under surveillance by Chinese authorities.
Wang said Chinese police officers are keeping watch on her house round-the-clock, with state agents even sleeping in cars near her home.
"They wanted to check the identity cards of friends that came to my house. I said, 'Why are you checking my friends' identity cards? Is it illegal to come to my house?'" Wang said, as quoted also by Express.
The persecution of Pastor Hua and his family is only the latest indication of the Chinese Communist Party's tighter grip on religious practices in the mainland. At present, there is an existing ban on singing Christian songs in public, while strict travel restrictions have been imposed on religious workers going to China.
Christians Face 'Unbearable' Situation in German Refugee Camps; Official Admits 'Underestimating Role of Religion'
An apparently contrite Germany has admitted a grievous mistake, resulting in an "unbearable" situation for Christian refugees in the country.
"We have underestimated the role of religion," said Germany's Home Secretary, Thomas de Maiziere, at a conference last month, World Watch Monitor reported. He was referring to the "integration experiment" approved by Chancellor Angela Merkel where Christian and Muslim refugees were "mixed" in refugee centres.
Thomas said the "experiment" was agreed upon based on the "widespread belief" in Germany that the importance of religion and faith has decreased globally. He said that presumption proved to be wrong.
Now, a group of German NGOs, led by Open Doors Germany, is calling on the German government to end this experiment.
The problem with mixing Muslim and Christian refugees was exemplified when a recently arrived refugee was confronted with these words written on the wall in the refugee shelter where he was placed: "The time has come to cut off the heads of all non-believers!"
The asylum seeker, apparently a Christian, was horrified. "I was shocked! In Iran this may happen, but I never expected such a thing to happen in Germany. This has shattered my trust," he said.
Two surveys conducted by the German NGOs among asylum-seekers in German refugee centres this year detailed the minorities' accounts of intimidation by Muslim refugees, according to World Watch Monitor.
The surveys showed that 743 Christian refugees reported various acts of intimidation. Of this number, 617 of them (83 percent) reported multiple assaults; 314 (42 percent) death threats; 416 (56 percent) violent assaults; and 44 (6 percent) sexual assaults.
Ninety-one percent (674) of the Christian respondents said the assaults were committed by Muslim refugees, 28 percent (205) by Muslim guards and 34 percent (254) by "other parties."
The German NGOs' report says the testimonies of the refugees clearly show that the assaults are religiously motivated and that such attacks on minority refugees in shelters occur all over Germany.
A German government office placed the burden of restoring order on the refugees themselves. "It is expected of all asylum seekers to live together peacefully, irrespective of their religion... The constitutionally protected freedom of religion, which is a highly valued asset, is every person's due," the German statement said.
However, the German NGOs countered by saying refugees who belong to religious minorities are not experiencing religious freedom since they lack the opportunity to freely practice their faith in refugee centres, adding that they only suffer from violence and threats if they try to live their faith.
Glenn Beck - Evangelical Divisions Over Trump Are More Damaging Than 1980s Televangelist Scandal
Glenn Beck, the conservative talk-show host and Mormon commentator has agreed with the Christian ethicist Russell Moore that evangelical division over Donald Trump will be more damaging to the credibility of evangelicals than the televangelist scandals of the 1980s.
The comments come amid growing signs of Christian support ebbing away from the Republican presidential nominee following his lewd comments about women revealed earlier this month. For the first time, Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has taken a lead among white Catholics.
"It saddens me that our fellow Christian leaders don't see the long lasting effect here," Beck wrote on Facebook this week.
"I agree with the evangelical leader in the interview when he says this will be harder to overcome than the televangelist scandals in the 80s. I pray he is wrong but fear he is correct. We are going to need all hands on deck - ALL PEOPLE of real faith."
In his post, Beck linked to a CNN interview from earlier in October in which Moore, who is the president of the Southern Baptist's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said: "What we are seeing right now is a divide in evangelical Christianity. It wasn't created by 2016, but it is highlighted and was shown by 2016".
Moore added that the divide is "leaving a wreckage of cynicism," and that "it is going to take us longer to recover from this year than it took us to recover from the scandals of the TV evangelists of the 1980s."
Meanwhile, the poll by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that Clinton has taken a 46-42 per cent lead among white Catholics. At the start of the month, Trump led Clinton by 56-31 per cent among the category. Clinton enjoys a 61-34 lead among Catholics overall.
The conservative group Catholic Vote said in a statement: "Newly released comments by Donald Trump...are disgusting and simply indefensible. Christians should not waste their breath defending them. The mere fact that this conversation is occurring in the context of a presidential campaign impoverishes us all. If Donald Trump is unwilling to step aside, the Republican National Committee must act soon out of basic decency and self-preservation."
Referring to the latest polling, Robert Jones, a Public Religion Research Institute pollster, told the New York Times: "That's not where Trump wants to be in the home-stretch, particularly with a core constituency in Mid Western battleground states."
Hundreds Of Christian Refugees Beaten And Sexually Abused In German Refugee Camps
Hundreds of Christian refugees have been beaten and sexually abused in German refugee camps, a report by the persecution charity Open Doors revealed.
A total of 743 Christians and 10 Yazidis were victims of religious motivated attacks in camps between February and September 2016, the report showed, but it warned the figure was the "tip of the iceberg". The report was presented to a press conference in Berlin on Monday and said "religiously motivated attacks occur frequently and nationwide".
It added "a number of unreported cases" must be assumed. Only 17 per cent of refugees affected reported the incidents to the police because they feared their situation would become worse.
Christian refugees faced death threats, sexual assault and violent attacks at the hands of the Muslim-majority cohabitants in the camps. More than half of those affected said the persecution they had received was violent and 44 reported sexual attacks against them.
An overwhelming majority, 83 per cent, said the attacks had happened "several times".
Christian converts were most at risk, the report stressed. "The highest risk in participating in the survey was taken by the converts from Islam to Christianity, according to the Quran their change of faith is considered as a crime worthy of the death penalty, therefore they are explicitly in danger."
Seperate accommodation must be provided for at-risk minorities like Christians and Yazidis, it insisted. "There must be no more 'integration experiments' at the expense of Christian refugees and other religious minorities in German asylum and reception centres."
The survey was conducted by Open Doors, Action on Behalf of Persecuted Christians and the Needy (AVC), International Society for Human Rights (IGFM), Aid to the Church in Need and Central Council of Oriental Christians in Germany (ZOCD).
Open Doors felt obliged to defend its criticism of Muslims as the main perpetrators and said it acknowledged the risk of "putting all Muslims under general suspicion". But it said "this must not be allowed to thwart efforts to protect victims of these attacks", insisting the charity was "not against Muslims".
Nevertheless it concluded: "Because of their faith, Christians are devalued to second class citizens and branded impure and apostates while enduring constant physical assaults.
"Often, those Muslims who are responsible for such attacks, are the ones who see themselves bound to the declarations of the Prophet in the Quran.
"In some cases moderate Muslims named religiously motivated attacks towards persons of other faith and sided with them. Nevertheless, the way of thinking which resides in the Quran, that non-Muslims are infidels and impure is a widespread reality."
Museum Backs Down Over Controversial Exhibit Which Allowed Visitors To 'Kick' Virgin Mary
The new National Museum in Estonia has backed down over a controversial display that allowed visitors to kick an exhibit which then showed an image of the Virgin Mary shattering, with the word 'Reformation' appearing.
The 'holographic' exhibit, which was criticised by church figures and politicians when it was unveiled earlier this month, will still appear to shatter at scheduled intervals but visitors will no longer be able to kick a spot on it.
Varro Vooglaid, the head of the Estonia Foundation for Family and Tradition, said that the museum, situated in Tartu, "has taken a big step in the right direction which we welcome."
Vooglaid told LifeSiteNews: "Of course we want the exhibit removed entirely...But we welcome this change. It is an outrage, really very brutal and banal to allow people to kick an image of Our Lady."
Vooglaid claimed that a public relations officer for the museum, Kaarel Tarand, publicly acknowledged that the exhibit was intended as mockery. "He basically admitted it was a way of insulting religion," said Vooglaid. "He said it shows that Estonia is a secular society, where it is allowed to mock religion. But when the national museum does it, it is insulting religion in the name of the Estonian state."
Priit Sibul, parliamentary faction chairman of the ruling Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica, said that "kicking an image of the Mother of God is something they did in the Soviet cultural space but would not demonstrate in public."
The Archbishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Urmas Viilma said the exhibit is offensive not only to Lutherans, but also to Catholics and Orthodox Christians alike. He pointed out that the entire nation of Estonia was dedicated to the Virgin Mary 300 years before the Reformation, so "for Estonians, Virgin Mary has a special meaning; no wonder the country is popularly called the Land of Mary."
Archbishop Viilma had previously written on Facebook: "I very seriously doubt that this exhibit is suitable for the permanent collection of the National Museum of Estonia, even if it is interesting from a technical point of view or from the perspective of modern approach to the depiction of historical events.
"The virgin Mary for a huge number of believers is not some historical figure or event, gone into oblivion, but a reality today."
Mart Helme, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, warned that the exhibit could offend the large Russian minority in the country.
"Most Russians living in Estonia are actively religious people and their integration is not helped by the religious insult approved on a state level," said Helme, who was Estonia's ambassador to Russia in the 1990s. "An attack on symbols may lead to an escalation of social tensions and a cooling of the interstate relations."
Formerly part of the USSR, Estonia is on the front line between Europe and Russia and is the focus of rising fears about Russian expansionism following the assault on Ukraine. Last year it announced it would build a border fence to improve security.
Nigerian President To 'Redouble' Rescue Efforts For Missing Chibok Schoolgirls
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari today told the 21 girls released by Islamist militants last week that he will "redouble" efforts to bring home about 200 still missing after the kidnapping in Chibok in 2014.
"We shall redouble our efforts to bring the rest back home," Buhari said. "Aside from rescuing them, we are assuming the responsibility for their personal, educational and professional goals and ambitions in life. "It is not late for the girls to go back to school and continue the pursuit of their studies."
About 270 girls were seized at their school in the north-eastern Borno state, where Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency, killing thousands of people and displacing more than 2 million.
The kidnapping prompted outrage worldwide and the girls' plight was publicized with Twitter hashtag #bringbackourgirls.
Boko Haram controlled a swathe of land about the size of Belgium at the start of 2015, but Nigeria's army, aided by troops from neighbouring countries, has recaptured most of it.
The group still stages suicide bombings in the north-east as well as in Niger and Cameroon.
Earlier this week there was speculation that a further 83 of the girls held by a faction of Boko Haram could be released imminently.
The faction released the 21 girls last Thursday after the Red Cross and the Swiss government brokered a deal. They were brought from the north-eastern city of Maiduguri to the capital Abuja to meet state officials.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Not Lovin' It: Cardinals Protest Over Proposed McDonald's At The Vatican
It may be popular with millions of tourists, but cardinals aren't, exactly, lovin' it.
The decision by the Vatican to rent out one of its properties to McDonald's has caused consternation among "princes of the Church" especially those living in the building with one reportedly writing to Pope Francis in protest at the world famous golden arches imposing themselves a stone's throw from St Peter's Square.
Already dubbed "McVatican" by some and "a disgrace" by others, the new fast-food 'restaurant' will unless the plan is scuppered be located in a Vatican property on the intersection of Rome's Via del Mascherino and Via Borgo Pio, around the corner from St Peter's Basilica.
Criticism centres on both the belief that the American chain's presence would damage the mystique of the Vatican, and that its 'Big Macs', chicken nuggets and French fries go against culinary traditions in the Eternal City.
The Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which oversees the Vatican's assets, decided to rent an empty space to McDonald's for 30,000 euros a month after receiving bids from numerous companies, the Catholic News Agency reported.
But in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the Italian Cardinal Elio Sgreccia, president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life, called the deal "a controversial, perverse decision to say the least."
Cardinal Sgreccia, who is rumoured to have written to the pope, said the move "is not at all respectful of the architectural and urban traditions of one of the most characteristic squares overlooking the colonnade of St. Peter visited every day by thousands of pilgrims and tourists."
He added that the deal is "a business decision that, moreover, ignores the culinary traditions of the Roman restaurant."
Meanwhile, what are perhaps more serious concerns are being expressed about the fates of homeless people who live outside the building in question, and what will happen to them once the chain is opened.
Cardinal Sgraccia told La Repubblica that, as well as being a "disgrace" to hand the property to McDonald's, the area should be used for "activities in defence of the needy in the area, hospitable areas of welcome and help for those who suffer, as the Holy Father teaches."
However, Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, president of APSA, has been unapologetic.
He told La Repubblica on Saturday that everything was done "in respect of the law and that there will be nothing done which will go against the current rules, tradition and interests of the Holy See."
The Cardinal added: "Above all there is respect for the law...[APSA is] not prepared to make any step backward because everything is in order."
Cardinal Calcagno said of the cardinals that "we are free people" and everyone has "the right to express their own views".
He went on: "We can't all be in agreement on everything...I do not see anything negative in this initiative. The technical departments of APSA have felt the offer of the American company executives fair and just. I do not see any scandal."
Putin's Ally Patriarch Kirill Claims 'Full Understanding' With Justin Welby
The Archbishop of Canterbury is willing to work with Vladimir Putin's ally Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the Orthodox Church leader said on Tuesday.
Kirill said he "enjoyed full understanding" with Justin Welby at their meeting in Lambeth Palace on Tuesday afternoon. He spoke at the end of a four-day UK visit where he also met the Queen at Buckingham Palace and consecrated the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Kensington, west London.
"There is this common concern about the events ongoing in the world and the willingness to work together to make the world better as much as the Churches can," he said of his meeting with the Anglican primate.
Kirill's visit was the first from a Russian Patriarch for many years and came at a time of particularly strained relations between the two countries. Last week the UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson called for protests outside the Russian embassy in London over its bombing of civilians in Aleppo.
A UN relief convoy was attacked last month in Syria an action blamed on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But the Russian Orthodox Church has close ties to the state and Kirill has remained a loyal supporter of Putin, once calling his time in office a "miracle of God".
In a private meeting between Welby, other Anglican representatives including the Bishop of London and Patriarch Kirill it was acknowledged that "tensions" exist between the Russian and British governments.
"It's true that we are living at a difficult time, and everyone acknowledges this, including British politicians, Russian politicians, and church leaders. Too many radical changes have happened in human civilisation and in the world in general. All of us are facing very dangerous challenges, global challenges," the patriarch told a press conference at Luton airport on Tuesday night, according to Interfax.
"It is absolutely obvious that humankind is passing through a very risky stage of its historical development."
A statement from Lambeth Palace after their meeting said they discussed their "shared compassion for Christian, and other, minorities in many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East".
It added: "Archbishop Justin and Patriarch Kirill agreed that the first loyalty of the Christian Church is to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they affirmed that reconciliation was the key ministry of the Church in situations of conflict."
Samsung Galaxy S8 release date, specs: Samsung begins developing firmware; device to arrive Feb. 26?
It is already expected that Samsung's next flagship will come out early next year. It seems that the Galaxy S8 is on track for its Feb. 26 launch, as Samsung starts firmware development for the device.
SamMobile reports that it is already confirmed that firmware development has started for the Samsung Galaxy S8. Apparently, the ROM is now being built for region-exclusive editions of the device. The firmware development will be the UI used for China, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Looking at the list, the firmware is meant for major market regions. The industry follower believes that once a stable ROM build is finished, Samsung will then follow-up with firmware development in other areas, since the Galaxy S8 is expected to have a global launch.
With firmware development already starting, the next flagship is implied to be on track for its intended Feb. 26 launch next year. It is expected that the Galaxy S8 lineup will debut a day before the annual Mobile World Congress, much like how previous Galaxy S-series iterations were launched. The 2017 MWC is scheduled from Feb. 27 to March 2.
Meanwhile, although firmware development is already starting, only scant details about the Galaxy S8 are available. Still, supposed leaks on its specs and features continue to circulate. Speculations suggest that a number of major improvements, as well as new features, will be incorporated into the new lineup. This is already expected, as Samsung will want to take back some market base that it lost during the Galaxy Note 7 debacle.
Purported specs for the Galaxy S8 include a new Snapdragon 830 or an Exynos 8895 chipset, depending on the region, at least 4 GB of RAM, and a new, dual camera setup as its main camera. The lineup is also said to only have dual-edge display versions, as Samsung ditches regular, flat screens.
Site Of Moses' Death Reopens After 10 Year Restoration
The spot where Moses is supposed to have died after seeing the Holy Land has been reopened after nearly ten years of closure.
The Memorial Sanctuary of Moses on Mount Nebo is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Jordan and has opened its doors after extensive renovation work. The church and monastery are perched on a 3,300 foot mountain 20 miles southwest of Amman and offer views of the West Bank, Jericho and Jerusalem.
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, special envoy for Pope Francis and prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, said he was thrilled to officiate.
"The spiritual treasures that this place holds today are returned to Jordan and to humanity," he told the 500-strong gathering of religious leaders, Jordanian politicians and diplomats.
"With this gesture, the Holy Father, to whom we turn our grateful thoughts, intends to pay tribute to the importance of this symbolic place, which serves as a crossroads of dialogue and encounter for the three great monotheistic religions, all of which were born in this beloved Middle East," he said.
"The figure of Moses, as a prophet, friend of God and giver of the law, is indeed held in high esteem by our Jewish, Christian and Muslim brothers."
Sandri thanked those who had worked on the memorial, noting it was in a time where "treasures of religious history from the region are being looted or destroyed".
He also paid tribute to the role Jordan has played in protecting refugees as well its sites of religious significance. "The Kingdom of Jordan, which, extending its boundaries nearly to this mountain, has become in recent years a place of welcome, hospitality and healing for thousands of refugees and exiles from the suffering lands of Palestine, Syria and Iraq," he said.
"We must set out toward a newfound freedom, in a concrete and fraternal solidarity with our neighbours, whoever they may be, especially the poor and suffering. This process demands a profound faith in God, who can never be invoked to cause terror and violence."
Mount Nebo is now an active Franciscan monastery after monks took charge of the ruins left by archaeologists in the 1930s. It has been a popular site for pilgrimages and St John Paul II visited in March 2000 on his journey to the Holy Land. Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech there in 2009.
The restoration began in 2007 after the remains of an early church basilica were found to be crumbling and unfit to house the memorial.
This Christian Woman Was Locked In A Shipping Container And Tortured - Because She Kept Saying The Name Of Jesus
A young Christian woman from Eritrea has described how she was imprisoned in a shipping container, tortured and beaten and starved - all because she refused to stop saying the name of Jesus.
Helen Berhane is from Eritrea, one of the worst countries in the entire world for Christian persecution.
She found asylum in Denmark after spending years locked in a shipping container because she would not deny her Christian faith.
When guards tortured and beat her and told her to stop saying the name of Jesus, she simply sang and spoke more, trying to convert them too.
She was in London today, at a Foreign and Commonwealth Office conference on preventing violent extremism, to tell religious leaders and government officials from throughout the world her horrific story of deadly and relentless persecution - all because of her unshakeable faith.
According to the charity Open Doors, Eritrea is number three on the list of nations worse for persecution of Christians. Of a population of 5.4 million, 2.6 million are Christians. The main religion is Islam. Some churches are permitted but undeground house churches are strictly forbidden.
Helen Berhane came to the attention of security services when she made a CD and video promoting the message of Jesus as the "cure for the world".
She said: "The government didn't like that."
Without the gospel, nothing is possible, she said. "We can try but we will fail."
Her church was raided and she and other young people were tortured. "Prison is not new for me. I have been in and out many times."
The church was closed. "It was a good opportunity for me to evangelise in prison. We started telling them about the gospel. Telling them that Jesus loves them. In the evening I was singing."
She was punished, tortured and sent to a military prison full of young people vomiting, crying. She was held in a small cell in solitary confinement, basically a hole dug in the ground with a trap door.
When she prayed for her guards, she was moved to a prison of shipping containers that functioned as an asylum for the insane. It was freezing at night, baking hot in the day with no lights at all inside. The bathroom was a patch of ground outside the container, in full view of the guards. The prisoners were fed in the dark on gruel made mainly of water, chilli and salt.
"So I said the only thing we can do now is sing. We worship God because he gave us life. We started singing, thank you God for this cold, this toilet, thank you God for everything. The guards were shocked when we sang inside the metal container. So they opened the container and tortured us with this black metal stick that burned our bodies."
She and other women singing with her were chained up inside the container in contorted positions.
"It was very harsh. They torture you all the time. You get stomach ache all the time."
She was placed with one woman who had gone completely mad.
"It was a kind of test. I know in the Bible it says everything is good for us believers, but I asked, in this what is good? That this woman beats me all the time?
"I didn't give up because I must follow our father's footsteps."
She strengthened her resolve by meditating on the Bible passage where Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac.
"If it is asking me to sacrifice something in my life, I can sacrifice for God. To survive like me is very rare. Many die because of this torture. It is not easy."
Somehow, she had found material to write on, and began sending letters to the guards urging them to follow Jesus, quoting the Bible.
"They found what I was sending to the guards so they tortured me and put me in solitary confinement and asked me to sit in the dirt. They asked for my Bible. I said it is in my mind. So they said they must destroy it. They beat my head and everything, and they were shouting, shouting.
"For me to be tortured for Christ, it is amazing. So they took me and said we know you are teaching many prisoners but you must stop teaching guards. I was in prison for three years now, for preaching the gospel. I said no. Even for you, you need God.
"So he took the stick to torture me."
She reminded herself that when Jesus was tortured, he said nothing.
"I kept silent. The guard tortured me countless times. He said I need your hands to torture them because they are the ones writing. They beat me everywhere. My whole body started shaking. They gave me five minutes rest and said Helen you must stop saying Jesus.
"I said no. I accept him until death. I said I cannot stop saying Jesus, he is my life. My body was red and blue. The guard was the one exhausted. He said Helen, what do you think? I said, you are doing your job, I am doing my Father's job. I couldn't stand. I was taken to the container again."
She was finally sent to hospital because she couldn't walk, and from there sent home to her family. She fled to Sudan. Her daughter followed her, travelling with nomads across the Sahara. Denmark accepted her asylum request, where she lives now.
Human rights minister Baroness Anelay, who hosted the conference at the Foreign Office, said: "Helen's story was of the power of faith to overcome the most appalling torture and treatment." Her story had added to her determination to help create a world so that whatever faith a person practices, they can do so in safety.
Dr Khataza Gondwe, team leader for Africa and the Middle East for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the charity that helped Helen get to Denmark in 2008, said her story validated the findings of the recent UN human rights commission of inquiry into Eritrea. "Her testimony never fails to move me. What is particularly moving is the fact that this is emblematic of what is happening to many Christians in Eritrea. Others have suffered the same thing she was describing, being tied in contorted positions and left for lengthy periods. Earlier this year a person was similarly tied and left so long they had to have an arm amputated."
U.S. Missionary Forced to Strip by His Kidnappers Who Raided His Home, Killed 2 Guards in Niger
An American missionary is now under the mercy of a drug-trafficking jihadist group in the West African country of Niger after the Islamist militants attacked his home, killed two of his guards and kidnapped him, The Christian Post reports.
The missionary, identified as 55-year-old Jeffery Woodke of McKinlyville, California, was reportedly even forced to strip down to his underwear before he was abducted on Friday. A Niger government source told CNN that removing clothes from hostages was a usual practice of terrorist groups trying to avoid being tracked.
Woodke has been living in Niger since 1992 and is a long-time aid worker with Youth With A Mission charity, according to the Independent. He is now believed to be in the hands of a drug-trafficking jihadist group called The Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).
According to a Paris Match report, Woodke's kidnapping could be the result of a dispute concerning a stolen drug shipment which implicates a local government official. Woodke, the report said, is being used as collateral.
On Friday night, the gunmen raided Woodke's house in central Niger, killing his guard and housekeeper before driving him across the desert toward Mali, Reuters reported.
The Associated Press said Woodke's abduction was a first for an American citizen in the Sahel region of Africa, where al-Qaeda and criminal gangs have targeted French and other European nationals for more than a decade, demanding millions of dollars in ransom.
Woodke is listed as an instructor at Redwood Coast School of Missions, which is operated by the Arcata First Baptist Church.
In a statement on Facebook on Saturday, the church said it is "praying for the safety of Jeff, for the victims' families and for peace in the region."
"Jeff Woodke is a home grown product of Arcata First Baptist Church where as a student at Humboldt State University he gave his life to Christ," the church said on the school's website.
"Jeff's passion in providing humanitarian aid to those who are amongst the poorest in the world, coupled with his desire to see God's Kingdom advanced in a largely Muslim world has played a large part in the life and ministry of AFBC," the church added.
Why Every Christian Should Watch I, Daniel Blake
Gritty new film I, Daniel Blake follows the frustrating journey of a widower, a carpenter, who finds himself without work following a major heart attack but is assessed by the DWP as 'fit for work'.
Christians Against Poverty (CAP) wants everyone to see the film because the character may be fictional but his downward spiral is a daily reality for thousands.
Chief Executive Matt Barlow said: "Go into your local Job Centre or Foodbank and you will meet scores of Daniel Blakes and that should make us very angry but as film director Ken Loach says, we mustn't let it stop at anger.
"The film offers no solution to Daniel's situation but actually there are things that all of us can do and we call upon everyone to see this film and be stirred into action."
CAP is working with hundreds of churches across the UK helping people escape debt, find employment, manage their money, break addictions and learn essential life skills. In its 20th year this year, the charity expects to help 20,000 people, most of those on low incomes and many are vulnerable.
One man, on CAP's books, lives in Derbyshire. He has had five heart attacks and is receiving treatment for a brain tumour. His GP has said categorically that he must not work.
Meanwhile, the DWP has assessed him as fit to work so he goes to the Job Centre, which arranges interviews for him, all for manual labour jobs. He is matched with employers who say they won't take him on with such a poor health record.
It's a frustrating merry-go-round but one made so much more bearable by the love of the Church.
Two local fellowships provide him with a variety of prayer and care, food, transport, regular visits from a befriender, the chance to serve at a local drop in where he can see people over tea and biscuits and he gets invites to events and men's breakfasts. All the while, the local CAP centre is tackling his creditors and keeping off the pressure.
Essentially, he has friends.
Another couple, Chris and Wendy in Oxfordshire, were threatened with eviction when poor health prevented both from working and life became a struggle. Thankfully, the local Job Centre was able to refer them to the nearby CAP centre which brought food (the first hot food they had enjoyed in a month). They were supported through a lengthy but ultimately successful DWP appeal and the congregation provided an instant caring community which fuelled their faith. They even were able to get married because the congregation pitched in to give them the wedding they had never been able to afford.
Chris said: "We're coming along nicely and should be debt free in nine months. God's made us millionaires, not in a monetary way; freedom to worship and talk to God with people who do the same. We all help each other."
Matt Barlow said that examples like this show the impact that be achieved through contact with local Christians.
"Is your local Job Centre able to refer to a CAP centre do you have one? We need to ask what is our church doing for people falling between the cracks in the system then we need to ask, is our church doing enough to show the reality to those in positions of power?"
I, Daniel Blake is in UK cinemas from Friday, October 21. #IDanielBlake #WeareallDanielBlake
Xiaomi Mi Note 2 release date, specs: bezels are nearly invisible in new leaked images
It is already confirmed that the new Xiaomi Mi Note 2 will be launched on Oct. 25. Meanwhile, supposed leaked images showcase its near-invisible bezels.
Reportedly, some images out of China-based social media site Weibo highlights the ultra-thin bezels featured on the Xiaomi Mi Note 2. However, as a social media post, its authenticity could not be verified to date. If the images turn out to be true, then the Mi Note 2 is looking to be one of the releases with the largest panel-to-display ratio, with most of the front panel dedicated to the screen. However, the images if they are real also point out that Xiaomi may have done away with front sensors and the selfie camera.
The ultra-thin bezels may also be featured on a flexible display. According to 9to5Google, a video ostensibly showing an upcoming Xiaomi flagship (unnamed) but running on MiUI 8 has been posted online.
Meanwhile, although Xiaomi has already confirmed that the Mi Note 2 will launch on Oct. 25, confirmed specs and details have yet to come out. However, a number of supposed leaks have already surfaced. Allegedly, the Mi Note 2 will come out with a base model that has 4 GB of RAM and a top-tier variant with a 6-GB one. Both versions will run on the new Snapdragon 821 processor. There are also rumors that Xiaomi may opt to come out with a premium version of the device, with massive 8 GB of RAM and up to 256 GB of onboard storage. All the iterations will feature a 5.7-inch, dual-edge curved screen. However, the lower versions of the Mi Note 2 will carry full HD display, while the premium variant is supposed to feature a Quad HD screen.
Other supposed specs for the device include a 4,000 mAh battery and an ultrafast fingerprint scanner. The Xiaomi Mi Note 2 is also supposed to come out with a dual-cam, 12-MP setup for its main camera.
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The Texas-Mexico border is long, dangerous and, at night, very, very dark.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine Operations agents fly over looking for people crossing illegally into the United States and smugglers working with them.
READ MORE: Number of immigrants caught at border surged last year
The airborne agents often coordinate with officers on the ground to locate and catch people crossing, as well as anyone who may be in distress.
While patrolling, the agents use night-vision goggles and are frequently armed.
The issue of illegal immigration has been a hot topic for GOP nominee Donald Trump, who has promised to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and to make Mexico pay for it.
READ MORE: Can't block this: Feds sue Texas man to clear route to border fence
Polls have also showed that by harping on the issue, Trump has killed his chances with Hispanic voters in states such as Texas and Arizona.
The agency took John Moore of Getty Images along for the ride as it patrolled the border near McAllen, Texas.
Click through to see images of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine Operations at work.
ask the fool
Putting your funds in funds
Q: What can I do if I want to invest in a particular mutual fund and my brokerage says it can't help me? - F.M., Woodville, Mich.
A: Brokerages vary in the funds they offer. Some offer hundreds, some relatively few. A brokerage may not offer a fund you want, or it may not be able to get you into it if the fund is closed to new investors. Funds will sometimes be closed if the managers believe they have more money than they can invest effectively. (That's a good thing. Lots of funds just keep taking money, even if they have to park much of it in less promising investments.)
Some funds will just do a "soft close," though. That means they won't accept new shareholders coming in from third parties such as brokerages, but they will let you invest directly through them, such as via their company's website.
It can be convenient to invest in funds through your brokerage, as you'll be able to move money between funds and fund companies more easily - though there will likely be a commission fee charged. But know that you can usually invest in an open fund directly, via the fund company itself.
foolish trivIa
Name that company
I trace my roots back to 1905, when the creator of the Oldsmobile car formed a new company that morphed into the Nuclear Corp. of America. That company bought Vulcraft, a steel joist and girder company, in 1962. In 1965 my new president helped me avoid bankruptcy by selling off some of my businesses and turning me into a steelmaker. My mini mills took off, and as I grew, I shortened my name. Today I'm the largest steelmaker in the U.S., and North America's biggest recycler. Among other things, my products include carbon and alloy steel in many forms. Who am I?
Last week's trivia answer: Yuengling
the take
Kroger still has lots on the shelf
Shares of grocery giant Kroger (NYSE: KR) recently hit a 52-week low, making it even more attractive as an investment. Kroger has been facing challenges such as falling food prices and increased competition. That's especially tough in an industry known for narrow profit margins.
Still, Kroger is a top performer with a lot in its favor. For starters, its industry is defensive. During hard economic times, consumers will cut back on or delay spending on cars, appliances, vacations and other nonessential expenses. They'll keep spending on categories such as electricity, medicines and groceries, though.
Kroger's strength is reflected in the fact that its sales in stores open a year or longer have been growing each quarter since 2004 - through economic downturns and upturns. Price cuts have hurt its profit margin, but it has more than made up for that through increased volume.
Kroger has also been boosting business in its 2,700-plus stores via a growing line of store-branded products that now generate about a quarter of its revenue.
Patient believers can enjoy Kroger's dividend, which recently yielded 1.6 percent. It has been growing by an annual average of 18 percent over the past five years and still has room to grow.
Universal Uclick
Members Choice Credit Union will move to a new 80,000-square-foot, four-story building by October 2017, the company's CEO told the Houston Business Journal.
Construction began in August on the new building at Barker Cypress Road and Interstate 10 in west Houston.
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The state of Texas wants the estate of murdered trucking tycoon Bill Hall Jr. to pay up on a $160,000 court judgment.
But a lawyer for the estate said Halls companies and his widow, who last month was convicted of murder in his 2013 death over his infidelity, have fallen on financial hard times and are unable to satisfy the states claim.
I do not believe that the family has the liquid assets to meet your demand at this time, lawyer Edward Lavin, who represents the estate, wrote in a Sept. 29 email to an assistant attorney general.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had provided more than $475,000 in grants to Bill Hall Jr. in 2008 and 2009 to buy environmentally friendly trucks for his trucking business, which picks up and delivers road-building materials. He later returned the trucks to a dealership before the contract with the state expired. The state sued to recover the unearned grant money.
The state filed papers on Friday seeking a court order directing the estate to either make the $160,000 payment or sell assets to satisfy the claim. The request came about a month after Bill Hall Jr.s widow, Frances Hall, was sentenced to two years in prison for his murder. A Bexar County jury found Hall acted with sudden passion when she knocked her husbands motorcycle off a highway. She denied she killed her husband.
The love triangle, Frances A. Halls ensuing rage over her husbands infidelity, his dramatic death and her murder trial have attracted national attention. They were the subject of an hour-long special on the CBS News show 48 Hours Saturday night. Driven By Extremes drew about 4.8 million viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings.
During the program, Bill Hall Jr.s best friend and cousin, Hank Hall, said Frances Hall was angered by a barrage of text messages she received from her husbands mistress, which included photos of the two of them having sex.
Dateline on NBC News is working on a separate in-depth report on the case.
Click here to read the full story or turn to Wednesdays Business section in the newspaper.
pdanner@express-news.net
Paul Drinkwater/ NBC Universal, Inc -- FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY -- DO NOT ARCHIVE -- NOT FOR RESALE
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Houstonians will be starring in yet another reality show.
But instead of following rich women, like in "The Real Housewives" franchise, the new show on the Bravo network will star working doctors and women looking to break into the medical field.
"Married to Medicine Houston" a spin-off of Bravo's Atlanta-based "Married to Medicine follows five women, four of whom are doctors.
(To see a trailer for the show, click here.)
The fifth, Bravo reportedly says, is Rachel Suliburk, described as a "sassy Southern belle" who's married to a surgeon. Suliburk is working to become a nurse and "make her mark on the Houston charity circuit."
Plastic surgeon Erika Sato is "adjusting to being a new wife and contemplating whether or not she wants to start a family."
The show also features fellow doctors Monica Patel, Ashandra "Shan" Batiste and Elly Pourasef, who juggle their careers while dating or being married.
All the women work through their careers and the Houston social scene.
"Married to Medicine Houston" premieres Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. central time.
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Theater
Duck for President: Unhappy with the working conditions on Farmer Brown's farm, Duck campaigns to put himself in charge. Presented by Main Street Theater. 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 29; $20; MATCH, 3400 Main; 713-524-6706, mainstreettheater.com.
De Kus (The Kiss): U.S. premiere of Ger Thijs' play. Presented by Stages Theatre. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 30; $25-$45; 3201 Allen Parkway; 713-527-0123, stagestheatre.com.
Remote Houston: The Alley Theatre hosts an audio tour through Houston. 4 p.m. Thursday and Friday, through Nov. 18. $39; Evergreen Cemetery, 500 Altic; 713-220-5700; alleytheatre.org.
Becky Shaw: Houston premiere of Gina Gionfriddo's off-Broadway play. Presented by Firecracker Productions. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; $10-$40; 1502 Sawyer, Studio 232; 281-300-9656, firecrackerproductions.org.
The Musical of Musicals, (The Musical!): One story becomes five delightful musicals, each written in the style of a different master of the form. Presented by Theater LaB Houston. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; $34; MATCH, 3400 Main; 713-868-7516, thelabhou.org.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Four young lovers and a troupe of actors find themselves in the middle of a dispute between the King and Queen of the fairies. Presented by Alley Theatre. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, through Nov. 5; $26-$79; 615 Texas; 713-220-5700, alleytheatre.org.
The Bear & The Proposal: Classical Theatre Company presents two plays that examine love among the landed aristocracy of Czarist Russia. 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Wednesday, 2 p.m. Sunday; $10-$25; 4617 Montrose; 713-963-9665, classicaltheatre.org.
Little Shop of Horrors: A floral assistant stumbles across a new breed of plant. Presented by Stageworks. 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 30; $15-$26; 10760 Grant; 281-587-6100, stageworkshouston.org.
Sherlock Holmes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic story on stage. Presented by A.D. Players. 7:30 Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, through Oct. 30; Grace Theater 2710 W. Alabama; $12; 713-526-2721, adplayers.org.
Wolf Hall Part One: Part one of play based on Hilary Mantel's novel. Presented by Main Street Theater. Rice Village location, 2540 Times Blvd.; 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Dec. 18; $10-$45; 713-524-6706; mainstreettheater.com.
Classical/Opera
Itzhak Perlman: 7 p.m. Saturday at Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana, $53-$178, 713-224-4240, houstonsymphony.org.
Lorenzo Coppola: The renowned Italian clarinetist pays tribute to Richard Muhlfleld. Presented by Music in Context. 4 p.m. Sunday; Alice Pratt Brown Hall, Rice University; $35; 713-665-2620, musicincontext.org.
Chamber Choir: Houston Cecilia's "Peace" concert. 5 p.m. Sunday; All Saints Catholic Church, 215 E. 10th; free; 281-486-5052; houstoncecilia.org.
Dance
Deep:Seaspace: Karen Stokes Dance premieres an evening-length work inspired by Houston's historical relationships with water and space, with a commissioned score by Bill Ryan that will be played live. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; Hobby Center, 800 Bagby; $15-$38.50, 713-315-2525, thehobbycenter.org.
Comedy Dance Festival: Suchu Dance Company hosts other area companies and choreographers in a program of comedic works. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday; The Pilot, 1502 Navigation; $20 or pay what you want; suchudance.org.
Dracula: Bay Area Houston Ballet & Theatre performs its production of the Victorian-era vampire story. 7:30 p.m. Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; University of Houston-Clear Lake, Bayou Theater, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., $27.50-$37.50; 281-480-1617, babt.org.
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Sip on wine at Camerata or dine at Oxheart and you'll already be familiar with Gin Braverman's work.
The Houston-based interior designer, owner of gindesigns, is frequently called upon by restaurateurs to create dramatic, stylish interiors. What some might not know is that she's also popular among homeowners, and it's a residential project that just earned her an HGTV Faces of Design award.
RELATED: Kitchen design inspiration from your neighbors
Braverman nabbed the HGTV Editor's Pick for First Impressions award for her work at a Heights-area house. This accolade is granted to those who create fashionable entryways and foyers.
"I'm very honored that they chose our project because I feel the editors of HGTV have pretty much seen it all," Braverman says.
The local visionary's prize project is an eclectic space with unique doors. The main entrance welcomes guests with a tall, Indian doorway that leads to another identical entry. Inside, an Asian entryway makes a bold statement its vibrant orange, patterned panels.
The home's interior has stark white walls, which create a strong visual contrast with its rustic decor.
"I find myself drawing inspiration from so many places, but before I began designing interiors I was most inspired by my my time working at Installations Antiques," she explains. "(It's) an incredibly unique experiential retail space curated by the ultra creative Van der Oords, which I'm hoping will soon re-open in the Heights."
SEE ALSO: Renowned architect John Staub helped Houston build on its beauty
Braverman's other transformations can be visited around town. Among her other clients are Raven Tower, Public Services Wine & whiskey and F Bar. Her work extends to Dallas, New Orleans and New Canaan, Conn.
The seasoned professional has some advice for up-and-coming designers who want to stand out in the field.
"Make your clients happy at all costs and provide the best customer service you are capable of," Braverman says.
The HGTV Faces of Design awards are split up between editor's picks and people's choice. Some of the other award categories include kitchen and dining rooms; children's spaces; public areas and colorful transformations.
Representative democracies do not simply impose the will of the people. They over-perform, producing better policies than the people actually want because elites keep the masses in check (and vice versa).
But the new wave of populism through Europe and North America threatens to upset the balance. We are witnessing a rising tide of nationalist populism.
The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring about a cosmopolitan, globalized, liberal world. But now larger and larger segments of voters in Western democracies want to close borders, cut trade, and kick out the brown and yellow people, especially the brown people who practice scary religions.
Incentives, rewards, and power
Whether you use "populist" as a compliment or an insult depends a great deal on what you think makes "populism" tick.
If you think populist movements are about the disaffected and left-behind forcing their governments to help them, you'll like populism.
But if you thinkas I dothat populist movements consist of misinformed people pushing for counterproductive policies, policies that will hurt them rather than help themthen you'll sigh with relief when such movements fail, as they usually do in the end.
Politics are often thought of as apocalyptic battles of good and evil, of the good guys versus the bad guys.
Populist waves tend to be made up of low information voters. Jason Brennan
But economists prefer to think in terms of incentives. In particular, people behave (and misbehave) as they do because they're incentivized to do so by the way we distribute political power.
When we concentrate power in the hands of an elite few, such as kings, oligarchs, or a band of aristocrats, they have every incentive to use it for their own interests at the expense of others. When we spread power out widely, as in a democracy, no individual voter has significant power. This removes the incentive to vote selfishly, but it also removes the incentive to vote wisely.
Individual voters aren't rewarded for being knowledgeable or thinking carefully about their votes; they aren't punished for being misinformed or indulging delusions.
Averaging ignorance (the Brexit vote?)
To illustrate, imagine you were in a 1,000-student class and the professor announced a final exam. But suppose she adds, "I'll grade each of you, but instead of being awarded your own grade, I'll average all the grades together, and you'll each receive the class average." The other students and you probably wouldn't study much, or might not bother to focus on the more challenging material presented in lectures. The class average could easily wind up being an F.
Democratic politics faces the same problem. The American National Election Studies and other surveys of voter knowledge routinely find that most voters are uninformed.
Voters know who the president is and not much else. They can't estimate the unemployment rate within five percentage points. They don't know how much money the government spends on different programs, or what the government did last year.
After the Brexit vote, we discovered that "leave" voters who wished to flee the European Union greatly overestimated the number of immigrants in the U.K. and greatly underestimated how much foreign investment comes from the E.U.
Democracies do sometimes collapse when populist demagogues rise to power. Jason Brennan
Voters not only lack the background in the social sciences needed to evaluate or make sense of the relevant facts. They lack knowledge of the relevant facts themselves. Non-voters tend to know even less.
It's not stupidity
It's not that citizens are stupid; it's that they just don't care and that's a rational response to the incentives democracy creates.
Since none of our individual votes matter except as part of the collective majority, it's easy to conclude that we can afford to remain ignorant, or indulge irrational and false political beliefs. In fact, understanding how to vote wellwhether politicians deserve to be kicked out and replacedrequires tremendous knowledge. One needs to know:
1) who has been in power,
2) what they had the power to do,
3) what their options were, and
4) what the likely effects of different policies would have been.
It's tempting to view populist movements as the people "taking back" their government, rebelling against corrupt and incompetent leaders. But this gives the movements more credit than they deserve.
Populist waves tend to be made up of low information voters. Consider a stereotypical early Donald Trump supporter. He might look around his rural hometown and have a vague sense that white people in the fancy suburbs are richer, happier, have healthier children, and hold better jobs. He might know that 50 years ago his hometown held a small factory, which disappeared when he was a child. He might vaguely be aware that poor Chinese people have gotten richer, and wonder if somehow that happened at his expense. But being aware of these conditions does not magically transform him into a good voter.
It's tempting to view populist movements as the people "taking back" their government, rebelling against corrupt and incompetent leaders. But this gives the movements more credit than they deserve. Jason Brennan
To know which policies would help his hometown, he'd need significant knowledge of economics, sociology, and related disciplines. If you have felt ill for the past month that does not magically enable you to self-diagnose that you have cancer, nor does it magically imbue you with the medical knowledge to treat your cancer.
Elitism vs. Populism
Representative democracy tries to split the difference between elitism and populism. To win elections, politicians have incentives to cater to the policy preferences of the median voter. But politicians and bureaucrats also retain significant independence. They sometimes override or ignore what voters want.
They can use this independence for good or ill. Recently, political scientist Martin Gilens measured how responsive presidents have been to different groups of voters. Gilens found that when voters at the 90th, 50th, and 10th percentiles of income disagree about policy, presidents are about six times more responsive to the policy preferences of the rich than those of the poor.
As a committed "small-d democrat," Gilens is upset by these findings. But he admits there's a positive twist: Voters at the 90th percentile of income tend to be significantly better informed than voters at the 50th or 10th percentiles.
Gilens found that poor Democrats approved more strongly of invading Iraq in 2003. They more strongly favor the Patriot Act, invasions of civil liberty, torture, economic protectionism, and restricting abortion rights and access to birth control. They are more opposed to gay rights. In contrast, high information Democratssuch as party elitesare more strongly in favor of free trade and the strong protection of civil rights, and are less interventionist.
I read Gilens's work as showing us an uncomfortable truth: Democracy works because it doesn't quite work. If politicians just did exactly what the median voter wanted, we would have worse policies policies people support because they are ignorant or misinformed. Democracies work because politicians and bureaucrats can to some extent override most voters' preferences. Often they make better choices aligned with what better-informed elites would like to see.
Political elites are far from perfect. They often cater to special interest groups in ways that undermine the common good.
For instance, economists of all ideological persuasions despise agricultural subsidies. Yet the federal government grants subsidies and protective tariffs to the corn lobbythat's why your Coke has corn syrup rather than sugar in it.
Limited benefits are concentrated for a select few (companies like ADM) and steep costs diffused among the many (taxpayers and consumers). This kind of "rent seeking" is pervasive in representative democracy because politicians have every incentive to indulge it while voters have no incentive to learn about it, let alone fight it.
No workable solution, but...
These problemsvoter ignorance and misinformation, populism, rent seekingare endemic to representative democracy. It's not because bad people sabotage the system. Rather, the system incentivizes these behaviors. No one has yet come up with a workable solution.
The good news is that representative democracy still performs better than the other political systems we've tried.
In general, people living in representative democracies are more prosperous, happier, and healthier than people living elsewhere.
Representative democracies do a consistently better job of protecting civil and economic liberty. They allow popular movements and educated, powerful elites to serve as checks against each other.
Overall, representative democracies work quite welland that's true whether you prefer railing against elitist cosmopolitanism or pitchfork nativist populism.
But there's no guarantee that the system will continue to work. Democracies do sometimes collapse when populist demagogues rise to power. It looks like we'll dodge that bullet this election, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about the future.
***
Jason Brennan is the Flanagan Family Chair of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University, and the author of Against Democracy. Brennan wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.
Police have a new lead in the brutal Mother's Day murder that rocked a Baytown neighborhood.
A possible person of interest in the May 8 slaying of 50-year-old Nataliya Shal is being sought for questioning, and police are asking the public's help in finding him.
The person of interest is described as a young man more than 6 feet tall with a slim build. Police released an artist's sketch on Tuesday showing the man wearing a black hoodie.
Shal's husband of nine years, David Englerth, was out of town and called police sick
with worry that Sunday evening because he'd been unable to reach his wife by phone and
wanted officers to do a welfare check.
When police showed up at the Lakes of Madera Apartments on West Baker, they peered in a
window and caught a glimpse of Shal's lifeless body.
Police forced their way through a locked door to discover the mother of one, brutally murdered.
"She's the only woman I've ever loved, period," Englerth said, tearing up at a packed
press conference on Tuesday.
For more than five months, Baytown officers have knocked on doors and canvassed the area
searching for witnesses.
The sketch shows a man who was seen around the apartment on the day of the crime, but police emphasized that he is not considered a suspect at this time.
"We are asking for the public's help in identifying and locating this person of interest, as well as any information that would help us solve this crime and help the family of Ms. Shal start the healing process," Lt. Steve Dorris said Tuesday at the press conference.
There's still no word on a possible motive and police declined to release details about
the crime, citing the integrity of the ongoing investigation.
Baytown Crime Stoppers has increased the reward from $5,000 to $25,000, Dorris said.
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Tips from concerned citizens regarding an alleged illegal dumping site resulted in one arrest Tuesday, Oct. 18, but other arrests could be forthcoming as the investigation continues, according to Liberty County Sheriff Bobby Rader.
The site first popped up on a 20-acre tract a mile west of Cleveland on FM 787 about two weeks ago, authorities say.
Since that time, the operators of the dump site have allowed as many as 100 loads of construction debris, tires, metal, plastic and glass to be dumped at the site, Rader said.
When authorities arrived on the scene Tuesday just after noon, some of the debris had been ignited and there was a fear that the fire would quickly spread to other piles and threaten neighboring homes and buildings, including the Pct. 2 county barn off of CR 2206.
Firefighters from five departments -- Cleveland, Tarkington, HWY 321, Dayton and North Liberty County -- helped bring the fire under control.
So far, only one person has been arrested -- a truck driver who reportedly was seen preparing to dump a load of old tires and rims when authorities arrived. He is identified as Carlos Duarte, 43, of Houston. He is charged with Illegal Dumping, a state jail felony with a punishment of up to $10,000 in fines and/or 180 days to two years in prison.
The owner of the property, Son Nguyen, 60, was questioned by the sheriff's investigators and could be charged with crimes as the case proceeds, the sheriff said.
Nguyen's driver's license shows him as a resident of California but he reportedly is staying in the Livingston, Texas, area at a sawmill he purchased and is operating under the name of Texas Tech Lumber, Inc.
Tuesday's investigation was quickly pulled together after Pct. 6 Justice of the Peace Ralph Fuller decided to pay a visit to the site.
"I first started hearing about it at a luncheon at the Masonic Lodge in Cleveland. There were some concerned citizens who told me about it and I said I would check into it," he said.
Fuller, who was one of the county's environmental officers until he was elected as judge, offered his assistance to the county's current environmental officer, Sheriff's Deputy Linda Bloomingdale.
Fuller said when he arrived on the scene around noon Tuesday, he saw trucks dumping material onto the ground and called Bloomingdale, who showed up not long after to investigate.
"What people don't realize is that you can't transport debris from one location to another for disposal without a permit," said Fuller, adding that he believes the owner faces multiple violations.
The multi-agency investigation includes the sheriff's office, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the office of Pct. 2 Commissioner Greg Arthur.
The sheriff said that once the investigation is complete it will be referred to the Liberty County District Attorney's Office for charges.
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Pablo is coming back to Houston.
Kanye West returns Dec. 2 for his second Toyota Center date this year. It follows a sold-out show in September.
PABLO PART ONE: Kanye West wowed Houston fans
Tickets are $29.50-$149 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday via the venue site.
The second leg of his Saint Pablo Tour includes more than 20 shows. It comes behind his critically-acclaimed "The Life of Pablo," one of the year's best albums. Two of its singles, "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" and "Fade," are currently lighting up radio.
ALL HAIL KANYE: His genius is a work in progress
West's Sept. 20 show at Toyota Center was a striking blend of art and music. He was tethered to a stage that floated above the crowd, surrounded by smoke, scaffolding and minimal lighting. It's easily one of the year's most memorable shows.
Online retailer Amazon has continued growing its seasonal hiring by tens of thousands of positions with each holiday season.
"Last year we announced we were hiring for 100,000 seasonal associates and in 2014, we announced we were hiring for 80,000 seasonal associates," Ashley Robinson, Amazon spokesperson, said. "Our hiring has increased and we feel fortunate to be adding jobs in local communities.
"We're grateful to our customers for choosing Amazon."
This year, Amazon is prepared to hire 120,000 seasonal employees for customer fulfillment and customer service positions in centers across the country including the Houston-area facility, or fulfillment center, at 8120 Humble Westfield Road in Humble.
Amazon is now accepting applications at its Humble facility for part-time seasonal fulfillment associates and part-time seasonal logistics sortation associates.
Information about the seasonal roles available at the Humble facility can be found at http://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/our-opportunities/hourly-fulfillment-jobs/hou1-jobs.
"We employ seasonal employees as a way of finding high-quality talent while managing variation in customer demand," Robinson said. "Seasonal employees play a critical role in meeting customer demand during the holidays."
Amazon's hiring practices serve not only to cover the increase in orders during the holiday season, but also provide an opportunity to find new permanent Amazon employees.
In 2015, approximately 14,000 seasonal associates were kept on in regular, full-time positions after the holiday season.
"Full-time employees receive competitive wages and comprehensive benefits, including health care, 401(k) with 50 percent match, stock awards and bonuses," Robinson said. "Amazon also offers employees innovative programs such as Career Choice, which pre-pays 95 percent of tuition for courses related to in-demand fields, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon.
"Since the program's launch four years ago, more than 7,000 employees in 10 countries have pursued degrees in game design and visual communications, nursing, IT programming and radiology, to name a few."
For more information about Amazon's seasonal employment opportunities visit www.amazon.com/seasonal.
Harris County Precinct 4 residents will have two choices for constable in the Nov. 8 election.
Incumbent Republican Mark Herman was appointed to serve as the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable after Ron Hickman left to serve as Harris County Sheriff; and Democrat Jeff McGowen is challenging him.
The Observer sent both candidates several questions regarding things they may change in the future and why they decided to run for the position or run for re-election.
1. Why did you decide to run again for this particular position?
Herman: Since being unanimously appointed by Commissioners Court and winning my primary election by a vote of close to 81 percent of the voter populous It is necessary for me to run against a Democratic candidate in November I have worked at the Pct. 4 Constable's office for the past 31 years, and understand what it takes to serve and protect the citizens of Pct. 4 in a law enforcement capacity. I know the employees of Pct. 4 and their abilities, and more importantly I know the communities we serve and their law enforcement needs.
McGowen: I've been a public servant since I was 17, when I joined the Army Reserves while still in high school. Running for Harris County Precinct 4 Constable is just a natural progression from what I've done in the past. We need change in leadership and that can only happen if we work together to elect someone that is committed to the fullness of this position.
2. What are some things you would like to change in school districts in the area?
Herman: We continue to work with all school districts and their police departments daily. We coordinate all law enforcement efforts and aid in teamwork to assist in keeping our kids safe.
McGowen: Teachers, staff and parents are helping our students thrive, however issues such as bullying must be addressed. Our youth and communities can't live in fear or silence, so I would like to see more interaction between the police and community before an issue arises. Intervention and education are key to keeping residents abreast to challenges we all face.
3. What will you bring to this position if elected?
Herman: We, at Pct. 4, will continue to provide a professional law enforcement application to the citizens and communities we serve. We will maintain open communications with our community and continue to fight crime and make our communities safe for citizens and their families.
McGowen: Honor, integrity and a heart for the position. Our county is growing and we have to make sure we are apart of the growth and building strong communities for everyone. I pledge to listen, participate and above all work with residents, police and others to create a dialogue of safety, transparency and opportunity. Lately, our precinct has been haunted by missing evidence and lack of leadership. In order to serve the community in which we reside and love, we need to invest in additional training for our officers, coordinate with other precincts and lead by example. As the past-president of the Texas Crime Prevention Association, past-president and member of the Texas Gulf Coast Crime Prevention Association, the safety of my family and community is #1.
4. What makes you qualified to run for this position?
Herman: I understand the entire Pct. 4 organization and each law enforcement division inside the organization. From Patrol, Investigative Units, Massage Parlor, Gaming Room, Dispatch, Civil and Warrant Division. Being able to understand each and apply Law Enforcement techniques to our communities with each in an effective manner to fight crime and keep our communities safe. The Pct. 4 Constable's Office has close to 500 total employees that work in a really great coordinated effort to provide services to the communities we serve. We have a 47 million dollar budget yearly, and through various law enforcement techniques and strategies. At Pct. 4, we do a very good job in fight crime and making our communities safe. All of these things can not happen in such an effective effort without a strong leader at the helm that understands all the personnel and areas within the organization.
McGowen: 23 years ago, I took an oath to protect and serve. Since then, I have volunteered, attended sporting events with youth, hosted outreach activities, moved up in the ranks and watched the community thrive. But I've also witnessed a shift in how we interact with the community. Being a Constable is not a passive position. It's a position that requires knowing, hearing and responding to the community. It's a position that requires long hours and a willingness to change a broken system. I will take responsibility for what happens under my leadership, ensure transparency and restore public faith in the Harris County Constables Office.
Harris County residents may go to www.harrisvotes.org to find a sample ballot for their area, as well as other pertinent information.
The hours for early voting in Harris County are Oct. 24-28: 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Oct. 29: 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.; Oct. 30: 1-6 p.m. and Oct. 31-Nov. 4: 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.
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To gain insight into what hungry people go through on a daily basis, Lone Star College-Kingwood student invites the campus and community to the Hunger Banquet 6-8 p.m. Oct. 26 In the Student Conference Center.
The Hunger Banquet, hosted by the Center for Civic Engagement, is a student-led project designed to raise community awareness about global and local poverty.
"The purpose of the hunger banquet is to raise awareness of the harsh and atrocious conditions that a vast number of humans across the globe struggle with on a daily basis," said Nelson Mendez, a LSC-Kingwood student on the Hunger Banquet Committee. "Since not all of us are born with the same opportunities as others, we hope to better our community and the surrounding areas by persuading our audience to help the ones in need."
General admission is a $5 donation or three non-perishable food items. Upon entry, guests will draw tickets that will randomly assign each of them to a high-, middle-, or low-income tier, based on the latest statistics about the number of people living in poverty. The middle and upper class will receive corresponding sized ceramic bowls with a meal. Bowls are made by students in the LSC-Kingwood Advanced Ceramics class and local businesses will donate the meals.
"Since we have started this event, more than 500 community members, employees and students have participated. This year, we are expecting 300 people to attend," said Dr. John Theis, director, and Seth Howard, coordinator, of the Center for Civic Engagement.
The 20 percent in the high-income tier will be served a sumptuous meal; the 20 percent in the middle-income section will eat a simple meal of rice and beans; and the 60 percent in the low-income tier will receive small portions of rice and water. Students will guide participants through an interactive event which illustrates how the rise in global poverty and hunger affects everyone. Guest speakers will discuss needs in the community and what actions have taken place in the fight against hunger.
"We believe it is always good to help kids and families, not just here in the United States but from other countries, who need help because they cannot provide food for their citizens. Today for you, tomorrow for me," said Claudia Lezama, a LSC-Kingwood student on the Hunger Banquet Committee.
The Hunger Banquet is one of many civic-minded events developed by the Center for Civic Engagement. To combat hunger facing students and employees at LSC-Kingwood, the college, Humble Area Assistance Ministries and The Mission Northeast host a monthly food drive on campus. For more information on the Center for Civic Engagement, visit www.LoneStar.edu/LSC-Kingwood-Civic-Engagement.edu or email CCE@LoneStar.edu.
JOB FAIR SET NOV. 8
A Business Administration and Professional Services Job Fair will be hosted by Lone Star College-Kingwood's Career Services department from 12-2 p.m. Nov. 8 In the Student Conference Center.
"Because this job fair is geared toward our December graduates and alumni, we are seeking employers with positions that relate to some of the programs offered at the LSC-Kingwood campus," said Kim Hammond, career services employment specialist.
Open positions are preferred in: business administration, management, marketing, medical front office, computer information technology, fire science technology, graphic design, game design and simulation, and visual communications. Local businesses that are currently hiring full-time and part-time positions in these fields are invited to participate.
"This is a great forum to recruit a local work force," said Jill Todd, career services program manager."
Participation in the event is free, but registration is required. To qualify, businesses must have a store front/office location and pay an hourly wage as required by law. Businesses conducted from a home office and businesses with commission-only positions are asked not to participate in this event. Space is limited and early registration is recommended.
LSC-Kingwood's Career Services department hosts two job fairs each semester and provides free resources to students and the business community. Career Services is open Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and is located in the SCC room 205.
"We are dedicated to helping students make informed decisions about their career choices, and connecting them with opportunities in our community," Todd said.
To register for the Job Fair or to post an ad on the campus Job Board, contact Kim Hammond at 281-312-1624 or email Kingwood.CareerServices@LoneStar.edu.
PROCESS TECHNOLOGY STUDENTS NEEDED
To equip the industry with qualified, educated workers, Lone Star College-Kingwood will start its brand new Process Technology program in January. The program will be housed at the LSC-Atascocita Center.
"The chemical and refining industries are in great need of process operators/technicians due to the large number of seasoned operators retiring in the next five to seven years," said Linda LaCoe, director of process technology at LSC-Kingwood.
in preparation of the January start, faculty are looking for interested students to enroll in the program.
The college will host information sessions 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Oct. 25 and Nov. 29 from in the LSC-Atascocita Center cafeteria. Potential students are encouraged to bring their unofficial transcripts if they have not enrolled in Lone Star College.
"Our goal is to inform prospective students about the process technology associate of applied science degree (AAS) and certificate," LaCoe said. "We will also discuss what process technology is and the job duties of a process operator/technician."
In order to be accepted into the Process Technology program, students must be at college level in reading writing and math. Students should possess aptitude in science and math, have good interpersonal and communication skills and be a team player.
LSC-Kingwood's Process Technology program will prepare graduates for entry level careers in the petrochemical, refining, power generation, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, plastics and related manufacturing industries. Program courses include introduction to process technology, process instrumentation, safety, health and environment, process systems, principles of quality, and troubleshooting. In fall 2017, the program will be moved to the new Lone Star College-Process Technology Center located in Generation Park. The 40,200 square foot facility will be furnished with state-of-the-art simulation equipment, a fully functional pilot plant and general academic classrooms to train students.
The LSC-Atascocita Center is located at 15903 West Lake Houston Parkway.
For more information on the program or information sessions, email Linda.Lacoe@LoneStar.edu or visit http://www.lonestar.edu/Process-Technology-AAS.htm.
For general information about Lone Star College-Kingwood, call 281.312.1600 or visit http://lonestar.edu/kingwood.htm
Breaking into intermittent sobs in a Houston federal courtroom Wednesday, a Katy couple admitted in a plea deal they helped a Nigerian woman enter the U.S. under false pretenses, held onto her passport and threatened harm if she did not continue working long hours, cleaning and caring for their five children for less than minimum wage.
Each pleaded guilty to the steepest individual federal charge against them, but prosecutors said the dismissed charges would not have impacted the length of their sentences.
Chudy Nsobundu, 57, pleaded guilty to visa fraud, admitting he fraudulently filled out an online application for a tourist visa for the nanny, falsely representing that she was his sister and would be coming to the United States for her niece's graduation.
Sandra Nsobundu, 49, pleaded guilty to unlawfully withholding the woman's passport during her employment with the family.
In exchange for their pleas, the couple will not have to forfeit their home. The government, however, has asked that they pay $129,000 to their former employee, who remains in the U.S. under protected status.
Senior U.S. District Judge Nancy F. Atlas set sentencing for Jan. 4. The Nsobundus remain free on bond.
The couple had been charged with forced labor, withholding documents, visa fraud, conspiracy to harbor and harboring an illegal alien. They were originally charged by criminal complaint Feb. 4, 2016, and arrested four days later.
According to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, the 38-year-old victim was subjected to physical and verbal abuse while employed by the Katy couple and regularly referred to as "the idiot."
The victim allegedly worked every day from 5:30 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. and was responsible for cleaning the house, making meals and taking care of five children. The criminal complaint alleges she was told she could not watch television or even sit down during her work hours.
She was also allegedly told to sleep on the floor and could not use warm water to bathe or wash her hair. The affidavit also claims that she was not allowed to eat fresh food and was only permitted the leftovers from the previously prepared meals. She was told the strain the milk out of the children's cereal bowls to use for tea.
In one instance, the criminal complaint charged that Sandra Nsobundu dragged the victim by her hair and hit her across her face because she did not like the socks the victim put on one of the children.
The victim did not have access to a phone and could not communicate with her family, according the charges. Her movements were mostly limited to the residence and allegedly only allowed out for short walks with the youngest children around her block. The charges outlined in the complaint indicate the victim also did not have access to her passport and other travel documents.
The couple had previously agreed to pay the woman 20,000 Nigerian nairas $100 U.S. dollars per month, according to the charges. The Nsobundus allegedly never paid the victim for any of her work here in the U.S.
The victim was rescued Oct. 10, 2015, after more than two years with the Nsobundus in the U.S., following a tip to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center.
The investigation leading to the filing of criminal charges was the result of an investigation conducted by members of the Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance in Houston, which includes Homeland Security Investigations, Fort Bend Sheriff's Office and the Department of State Diplomatic Security Service. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Julie N. Searle and Ruben R. Perez are prosecuting the case.
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Students gathered in the Student Conference Center at Lone Star College-Kingwood Oct. 11 to listen to four candidates running for various offices discuss their visions if elected Nov. 8.
The candidate forum featured Hal Ridley Jr., Green Party candidate running for U.S. House District 36; Kathie Glass, Libertarian Party candidate running for Texas Supreme Court, Place 3; James Veasaw, Libertarian Party candidate running for U.S. House, District 2; and Scott Ford, Libertarian Party candidate running for Texas State Representative, District 127.
Each candidate was given approximately seven minutes to introduce themselves.
Hal Ridley Jr.
"I'm not a politician," Ridley said. "I don't really have a campaign. I don't ask for donations. Mostly what I'm trying to do is spread ideas because you can lose, but your ideas can still win. A lot of times, your ideas, once they're out, they go on their own. Somebody will pick them up."
Ridley hopes to bring positive change to the U.S. through invention and innovations.
"I am a musician, a songwriter, semi-retired truck driver, but mostly I'm an inventor," Ridley said. "Invention, innovation and entrepreneurial acumen are all we have to pull up from this spiral. A lot of the technologies and innovations are already here."
He conveyed his vision for a personal robotic revolution to localize the economy.
"Bring the economy back: localized," Ridley said. "Everything we need is here. We just need to look around, pick the projects that work and help advance the situation."
Kathie Glass
Having practiced law for more than 30 years, Glass said her reason for running is to fight to mend a legal system she feels is not fulfilling its purpose.
"I want to run for Supreme Court because I think a free people need a functioning legal system and we don't have one currently: not on the civil side; not on the criminal side," Glass said. "I've been a civil trial lawyer for over 30 years and it's what I was born to do.
"Washington is broken and the two-party system is corrupted by cronyism. The well-connected people have controlled and corrupted all of our processes including our legal process.
I saw justice was not being done, but I want to change that."
James Veasaw
Veasaw focused on fighting for constitution rights, specifically the Second Amendment.
"When they go after your Second Amendment rights, you have no other recourse," Veasaw said. "That's the one thing that stands between us and the government. The constitution gives us this right and when they redefine your right to carry weapons and defend your family and property; we've lost it.
"We've become servants of the tyrant."
Scott Ford
Ford said, with approximately 15 years of experience as an educator, he is concentrating on the need for educational reform and his intention to make a difference at the state level.
"Educational policy is handled predominately at the state level," Ford said. "How many of you felt like your public school really prepared you for life? Education is very important to me. Statewide, this is where this is handled."
Questions and answers
Ridley left before the question-and answer-session.
A question was posed to Glass concerning how her political views influenced her interpretation of the law.
"I think you have an inalienable natural right to live your life the way you want to, provided that you're not interfering with the identical rights other people have; interfering by force or fraud, with their right to live their life," Glass said. "I think that is a fundamental bedrock principle that our legal system was enacted to uphold and should be, but often is not."
Ford was asked about his thoughts as a Libertarian and educator on abolishing the Department of Education at the federal level.
"The Department of Education at the federal level is an absolute disaster," Ford said. "Education should be controlled at the local level with some state involvement. This is different than a traditional Libertarian platform and different from even a traditional Republican platform, but I think there is a place for public education, but we need to change it. We need to rip it up from the ground up."
What are the candidates' ultimate goals if elected?
"Ultimately, I would love to see us get back to our constitutional roots," Ford said. "I don't care what you do with your personal life as long as it doesn't hurt me or what I do with my personal life. I want you to keep as much money as you can, but I want to limit government as much as humanly possible."
Glass said she would vote to hear more cases, have more written opinions and dissent. "Discretionary review means that (the Supreme Court) doesn't have to take anything they don't want to and the pattern seems to be that they take cases where the cronies lost so they can fix that," Glass said. "If the cronies won, they don't take the case. They also don't write opinions as much as they should. Sometimes they just issue 'petition granted,' 'petition denied' and you don't know why, so you don't have any confidence that the rule of law is being applied."
Veasaw said he would go after corruption and cronyism.
"If you can't get a government job, one of the reasons is that you're not given a fair chance," Veasaw said. "The fix is already in and most of the money that we're spending in taxes is going to corruption. If we could just clean up the corruption that's in Washington, D.C., we can solve most of our financial problems."
Ford was then asked what government programs he would like to see trimmed down and how he would propose to fix issues with education.
In addition to his career as an educator, Ford spent time working for government agencies including the FBI and CIA. He said he would like to see across-the-board budget cuts at the state and federal levels.
"In regards to education, I would love to at least get rid of STAAR," Ford said. "In testing preparation you are told what to do if a student gets so scared they throw up on their testing booklet. We're taking children who should have a love of learning and we're driving that love out of them. Step one is to get back to making these kids love education."
Importance of Forums
Seth Howard, assistant director for the Center of Civic Engagement at Lone Star College System, explained the importance of hosting political forums like this at the college level.
"Part of my job is to engage students to become more engaged citizens," Howard said. "We try to provide those opportunities to become more engaged, more powerful and more skillful actors so that (students) can make the change (they) want to see within the community today rather than tomorrow."
For more information about Lone Star College-Kingwood visit www.lonestar.edu/kingwood.htm.
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Authorities have arrested and charged a Houston man in the September slaying of Spring chef Michael Kusuma, who was gunned down by intruders to his north Harris County home.
John Wesley Baldwin, 28, is charged with capital murder. He was apprehended on Tuesday, according to Harris County District Clerk records.
Kusuma, a beloved 33-year-old chef, was killed Sept. 18 when armed assailants stormed into his house on Canvasback Glen Court around 9:30 p.m. and demanded money. His brother, Sebastian Kusuma, was injured in the attack.
The Kusumas immigrated from Indonesia. Michael originally moved stateside for college and eventually the family settled in Texas. Michael's uncle Tony opened popular breakfast hot spot Sunny Side of the Street a few years ago in a Spring shopping center.
Since the murder, the restaurant has shut its doors for good.
Nick Rama, a regular customer at Sunny Side, said he hopes the killer pays for his crime.
"I hope justice is served and he gets the maximum punishment," Rama said Wednesday. "This guy ruined an entire family's livelihood and the lives of hardworking employees all for a little bit of money."
Rama got to know the Kusumas well through their eatery, and at one point he featured Michael and his younger brother Sebastian in an article for Public News.
Now, he wants answers.
"I want to know why he targeted Michael and his brother," Rama said of the killer.
"I also hope this will bring some type of closure for Michael's family."
Three top executives at a physical therapy company were convicted this week by a federal jury in Houston of conspiracy, health care fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
After a five-week trial and 14 hours of deliberation before U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein, Jr., the jury on Monday convicted three officials from Team Work Ready, which operates clinics in five states, including Texas and Louisiana, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Ken Magidson in Houston.
Convicted of more than 20 criminal counts each were Jeffrey Eugene Rose, 54, the CEO; his wife, Pamela Annette Rose, 55, who was the chief financial officer; and Frankie Lee Sanders, 55, the vice president of operations.
A fourth defendant, Dr. Hugo Gerardo Jaime, 44, who signed treatment notes and trained the technicians at the clinic, was found not guilty on all counts.
Vivian R. King, the defense attorney for Pamela Rose, said she respected the jury's verdict but feared it might have been influenced by cultural bias against her client, who along with the other two convicted defendants is black.
King said Rose has spinal cancer and worked offsite. The three or four witnesses who testified they knew her said she worked in the business office and had little to no role in the billing process.
Lawyers for the other two convicted defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.
On Tuesday, the jury heard more testimony and returned a special verdict requiring the company to forfeit $220,807, an annuity contract and real property.
Christopher Downey, who represents Sanders, was also very surprised at the verdict and agreed about King's client.
"I thought it was absurd for the federal government to prosecute Pamela Rose given the fact that she was essentially a part-time worker and a survivor of bone cancer who is confined to a wheelchair," he said.
In addition, he said, he believed this investigation that led to his client's prosecution, was based in an effort by the U.S. Postal Service to put companies that serve postal workers who have been injured out of business.
"These were very, very good people who helped a huge number of federal workers," he said. "This was a company that met a very special need in the marketplace for injured federal workers and had marketed itself well but was struggling to meet the needs of the customers it brought in. The mistakes it made, I believe, were not intentional. This verdict was based on a finding that those acts were intentional and I just don't think that's supported by the evidence."
Chip Lewis, who defended Jeffrey Rose, said, "With the acquittal of the chiropractor, the guilty verdict of the executives is both illogical and completely contradictory to the government's theory and witnesses' testimony. The government alleged the chiropractor intentionally overbilled the Department of Labor while the executives turned a blind eye and enjoyed the profits of his malfeasance."
Witnesses testified that the company submitted $9.6 million in claims for postal workers getting treated at four clinics for physical therapy services that were not provided.
The defendants were found guilty of billing for one-on-one physical therapy, when experts testified that the patients said they simply used treadmills, bicycles and elliptical machines, the Nintendo Wii game and other exercise equipment.
According to witnesses, a patient at the San Antonio clinic was told to use the massage chair for therapy. According to court documents, patients at the packed New Orleans clinic saw the treatment program as the equivalent of a gym.
Sanders and Jeffrey Rose were ordered to remain in federal custody until sentencing on Jan 13 and 20, respectively. Pamela Rose will remain free on bond until her sentencing Jan. 13.
They may have have been clowning around, but Houston police weren't.
Sixteen people, some wearing clown makeup, were charged Monday with breaking into an abandoned hotel in downtown Houston.
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Over the opposition of animal welfare groups that closely followed the case, a Brenham veterinarian who killed a cat with a bow and arrow has received a one-year full suspension, followed by four years of working in her field on a probationary basis.
The Texas State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners made the decision Tuesday after a three-hour morning hearing in Austin, according to a board spokeswoman.
The suspension begins as soon as the order is signed, which will take place today, but Lindsey has 30 days to appeal the decision, spokeswoman Loris Jones said.
Lindsey's attorney, Brian Bishop, said in an emailed statement that she would appeal the decision.
"Dr. Lindsey and I are disappointed that the Board ordered suspension of Dr. Lindsey's license based on an action that had nothing to do with the practice of veterinary medicine.," Bishop said in the statement.
"We are also disappointed that the Board has, for all intents and purposes, chosen to take sides in the culture war between the animal rescues zealots who have campaigned to destroy Dr. Lindsey and her family versus rural property owners who have the right to protect their property and their own animals from feral animals who are destroying their property and threatening their own animals....," the statement continued.
Under terms of the four-year probation, Lindsey must be monitored by another veterinarian approved by the board and must submit quarterly reports, Jones said.
In addition, Lindsey must receive six hours of continuing education in animal welfare, in addition to the annual requirement of 17 hours.
READ MORE: Proposed 5-year modified suspension for vet who shot cat with arrow draws opposition
The five-year discipline was based upon a proposal issued Aug. 15 by two administrative law judges. An online petition calling for her permanent suspension got more than 380,000 signatures before it was closed.
Among the approximately 25 attendees at Tuesday's hearing was Misty Christo, lead attorney for Alley Cat Allies, a nonprofit organization that consistently pushed for harsh punishment for Lindsey.
"Only a permanent revocation of Kristen Lindsey's license is an acceptable ruling given the level of contempt for animals she has demonstrated," Christo said in a prepared statement. "She shot Tiger, dangled him by an arrow through his head as he slowly died, and then celebrated the killing on social media with a grisly photo. She clearly broke the public trust we place in veterinarians and should never practice medicine again."
Christo expressed concern about the prospect of Lindsey practicing veterinary medicine again in another year.
"With this ruling, animal owners may soon unknowingly place their animals in the care of a veterinarian who grossly violated her oath to prevent animal suffering" Christo said.
READ MORE: Mediation fails to resolve case against vet who shot cat with arrow
Also attending the hearing was David Rosengard, an attorney on a one-year fellowship with the Animal Legal Defense Fund's criminal justice program in Portland, Ore.
Rosengard, who spoke during the public comment period, said the reaction among spectators was one of profound disappointment at the board's decision.
"The public comments were uniformly interested in seeing Ms. Lindsey held accountable for the severity of her actions," Rosengard said. "She not only harmed the owners of the cat, Tiger, but she also harmed the trust that the public puts in veterinarians and, of course, she harmed Tiger himself."
According to the board's complaint against her, Lindsey shot an orange male cat through the head with a bow and arrow in April 2015. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook, smiling and holding up the arrow "with the cat's body dangling from the arrow shaft," the complaint stated.
READ MORE: The case of the cat-killing vet
Although Lindsey referred to the orange tomcat as feral, the board's complaint stated that the cat, named Tiger, belonged to a couple who lived near her home at the time of the incident.
On March 21, Lindsey was arrested in Harris County on a misdemeanor, first-offense charge of driving while intoxicated. According to court documents, her blood-alcohol level at the time was "at least 0.15," or nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08.
She was released on $1,000 bail and has a court date Nov. 10 in Harris County Court No. 6.
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The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is asking for the public's help in locating Anthony Porch, 13, of Cypress/Spring.
Anthony has been missing since Sept. 29, 2016. He is described as about 5-foot tall, 110 pounds and may or may not be wearing glasses. Authorities believe he may still be in the Houston area or traveling to San Antonio.
A 39-year-old British conspiracy theorist and UFO phenomenologist who was found dead in Warsaw in June sent his mother a text days before his death telling her, "If anything happens to me, investigate."
Max Spiers, who was in excellent health according to his family, was discovered dead on a couch by a woman he was staying with ahead of a conference he was due to speak at in Poland. Polish authorities attributed the death to natural causes, but no post-mortem was performed at the time.
"I think Max had been digging in some dark places and I fear that somebody wanted him dead," his mother, Vanessa Bates, told the Telegraph.
Scott C. Waring of UFO Sightings Daily told the Metro, "This is really strange. It does seem that UFO researchers are now being targeted, probably to slow the rate of information being leaked to the public."
Adds another UFO blogger, Craig Hewlett "If it wasn't true what he talks about then why would they kill him? Healthy people don't just get sick and die, they get poisoned."
But British UFO expert Nick Pope denied there was any any clandestine campaign by the so-called Men in Black or other government agents to eliminate UFO hunters who get to close to "the truth."
"The death of Max Spiers was a tragedy, but having run the UK government's UFO project I promise we don't go around killing UFO researchers," he said via Twitter.
Bates said her son had made a name for himself among investigators of UFO sightings and alleged cover-ups. She vowed to get to the bottom of her son's death.
After Spiers' body was returned to England, an autopsy was carried out by a pathologist in east Kent, according to the Metro, but Bates said the results will not be known for several months.
The North East Kent coroner's office confirmed the death was at the "very early" stages of investigation.
Spiers, the father of two boys, was buried in a Canterbury cemetery.
Among his beliefs, compiled by the Mirror, include these:
Zionists and Nazis: "I believe because they have the same agenda they both want to put into place the New World Order."
Extraterrestrials: "We are receiving all kinds of help from masters, ETs and extra dimensional type angelic beings, and learning very quickly to go inward."
Information downloads via sex: "A lot of women were being used to be set up with very important politicians or entertainers - people in high positions - and sleep with them. They would seduce these people in high positions. And when they sleep with them this information would be downloaded through the act of sex, and it would go back to whoever is controlling them."
On Monday, President Barack Obama announced that the high school graduation rate in the country set a new record for the fifth year in a row.
According to the announcement, the U.S. reached an all-time high with 83 percent of high school students actually graduating. The figures are for the 2014-15 school year and were compiled by the U.S. Department of Education.
While that might seem like good news to most, I point out that it is not as good as it should be. What I see is that 17 percent of all high school students are failing to graduate. For every 100 students, that means 17 of them don't graduate. It gets scary when the numbers get bigger. If you have 100,000 students, 17,000 of them have failed to graduate high school. That does not mean they are bad people. Many people who don't graduate the traditional way go on to get a GED or find a job, living perfectly fine lives.
In Texas, the graduation rate falls in the at 85-90 percent area that is shared with 22 other states. Only Iowa graduates at a higher-than 90 percent rate.
At the bottom of the spectrum are Washington, D.C., and New Mexico, where fewer than 70 percent of all high school students graduate.
In January, the Texas Legislature will meet and begin its discussions on budget issues for the next two years.
Unfortunately, there is less money in Texas than in the last two years. The oil industry downturn always affects the money the state gets to spend.
The first things that get cut as the biggest chunks of the budget are education and transportation funding. Those are two things Texas cannot afford to spend less money on. It Texas wants to succeed and be a home of opportunity, those politicians in the Legislature need to find a way to spend more on education and cut elsewhere.
The key to health, wealth and happiness oftentimes has a foundation in a good education.
Texas should be trying to diversify its economy. High-tech jobs that wind up in California, for instance, should be highly sought-after by Texas. Besides the fact that it is cheaper to live in Texas, we don't have earthquakes, have lower real estate costs and don't have a state income tax, all things a major corporation should love. (We do have out-of-control taxing authorities tied to real estate, but that is a different story.)
Texas needs to focus its efforts on educating its youth and getting it prepared to go to college. Once students become college graduates, they need to have a place to work close to home. That will require attracting new high-tech businesses that populate California, which has a lower high school graduation rate than Texas, by the way. Just saying.
Getting a high school education is not the badge of honor it used to be. In order to make a good wage, post high school training is a must. A two-year program can get a high-paying job on the Houston Ship Channel, for instance. There are opportunities for those without any additional training beyond high school, but those chances are drying up and are a harder road to travel.
Come on Texas, pony up and be ready to support education.
The six-year-old civil lawsuit accusing former Houston school board member Larry Marshall of bribery remains on track for trial this month, after federal Judge Keith Ellison on Tuesday denied last-minute motions.
The jury trial is expected to start Oct. 24 and last at least two weeks, said Houston attorney Chad Dunn, who is representing the Gil Ramirez Group, a local construction firm that sued Marshall in December 2010.
"We'll stay with it as long as it takes," U.S. District Judge Ellison said in court Tuesday.
The lawsuit claimed the Gil Ramirez Group lost out on lucrative construction work in the Houston Independent School District because it did not participate in an alleged bribery and kickback scheme that supposedly enriched Marshall. He served on the HISD board from 1998 to 2013.
The lawsuit alleged the scheme involved Marshall, his business partner and political campaign treasurer Joyce Moss-Clay, and two construction companies, RHJ-JOC and Fort Bend Mechanical. Each of the parties has denied wrongdoing. Marshall's attorney, Rick Morris, who has taken the lead on the case, declined comment after the hearing Tuesday.
Brooks Harrison, an attorney for Fort Bend Mechanical executive Pete Medford, told Ellison that Medford plans to exercise his Fifth Amendment right and not answer some questions in Marshall's trial because he has a deal with the U.S. Justice Department. Harrison referred in court Tuesday to an unspecified federal investigation and offered no details.
Harrison declined to answer a reporter's questions after the hearing.
The Houston Chronicle reported in 2013 that federal authorities had launched a criminal investigation related to the Ramirez Group lawsuit against Marshall, but it was unclear who was being targeted. The status of any such investigation remains unclear.
"We're satisfied that the court is going to allow the jury to get a full view of the evidence, and that's all our clients ever asked for," Dunn said after Tuesday's hearing regarding the trial pending this month before Judge Ellison.
Houston police hurled hateful insults at a transgender man while arresting him on a trumped-up trespassing charge that was later dismissed, according to a lawsuit filed recently in Harris County.
Officers taunted Kris Smith for not being a "real man" in a "jaw-dropping" barrage of insults, the 38-year-old told the Chronicle.
Eventually prosecutors dropped the charge. Smith is suing the city and arresting officers, alleging wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, in a suit seeking up to $1 million in damages.
Smith's fiasco started last December outside a Montrose-area Burger King.
"My girlfriend lives around the corner from there and I was leaving her house when I took a phone call for a job and walked around back behind the Burger King," Smith said.
As he chatted during the 15-minute phone call, he noticed a police car pull up in front of a man who appeared to be homeless, sitting in the corner of the parking lot.
Smith decided it was time to make an exit and started walking away - but the officer beckoned him over.
"He said, 'Turn around,' and started handcuffing me and I asked what for - and he said trespassing charges," Smith recalled.
Officers later said that a Burger King manager had called in the trespassing complaint, but Smith says no one ever bothered to come outside and ask him to leave. Smith maintains he was not even on the property at the time of the arrest, but was outside a small wall around it.
Police took in the other man, too, and dropped him off at a downtown jail without incident.
But once the other accused trespasser got out of the car, Smith's ride took a turn for the worse, according to the lawsuit.
Fearing safety issues at a men's facility, Smith told the cops he was transgender and would probably need to be taken to a women's jail.
"They told me they don't care if I [don't] have a penis, they'll put me in the guys' side anyway," he said.
On top of the alleged verbal onslaught, Smith was handcuffed but not belted to the seat. He ended up with a bruised nose, swollen and bruised wrists and a swollen bicep, according to the lawsuit.
The police made the trip "a pretty rough ride," he said.
Police have a very different account of the day's events.
According to sworn statement by authorities read aloud in court, Smith was sitting on the curb drinking a beer when police showed up, Harris County District Attorney spokesman Jeff McShan said.
The statement says Burger King manager Tiffany Ross told police she'd asked Smith to leave the premises after catching him panhandling in the drive-through line.
Smith called the police account "complete made-up craziness."
Ross failed to show up in court, however, so prosecutors eventually dismissed the case.
Smith's lawyer, U.A. Lewis, filed suit last month but she admitted it could be challenging.
"The city will likely claim immunity and the officers will also claim their immunity, so the case is going to be difficult," Lewis said.
Burger King, which is also named in the suit, did not respond to a request for comment.
Smith said that the unwarranted arrest was the worst part of the whole experience - and the transphobic taunting that followed is just a frustratingly normal aspect of being transgender.
"That's a severe bullying technique that they use and they think they can get away with it because it's just conversation," Smith said. "They think it's OK, and it's not OK. It's bullying, and no one deserves that."
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On Oct. 10, former Houston Chronicle photographer Blair Pittman passed away at the age of 79 in Odessa, Texas due to complications from a stroke.
Longtime Houstonians probably remember seeing his name attached to many great photos documenting Houston pop culture during his time on staff, starting in 1967. He previously worked at the Denton Record-Chronicle.
After his time here at the Chronicle he would go on to capture life in the West Texas, Big Thicket and Big Bend regions through photos and words, with his work in high demand.
RELATED: Vintage photos show Big Bend National Park in all its desolate beauty
Pittman moved to the West Texas area in 1999, but his first brush with the region coming during a family trip when he was all of 7 years old.
Pittmans "Tales from the Terlingua Porch series of stories told and retold from the series' namesake location will likely be read for decades to come. He was also an avid caver, starting when he was an adolescent, exploring caves in Texas and Mexico.
Friends and colleagues revered Pittman for his eye for an image and he was loved as a mentor and a role model.
Publications like National Geographic, National Wildlife, Time-Life, Forbes, Texas Monthly, Texas Parks & Wildlife and Smithsonian all carried his award-winning work. He was selected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to participate in the five-year "Documerica" project, which is still routinely seen around in the web.
RELATED: Stink bombs cast pall over Martin Luther King visit
In our Houston archives we can see shots he snapped of luminaries as diverse as Waylon Jennings, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Don Knotts, the Jackson Five, Truman Capote and Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco as they all visited Houston.
He was also on hand to cover a 1967 appearance by civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. at the Sam Houston Coliseum, capturing one of the biggest names of the 20th century onstage giving a speech at a rally to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Photos of notable Houstonians like Ninfa Laurenzo, Leon Hale, John Mecom, Gus Wortham, Lynn Wyatt, Mickey Gilley, Barbara Jordan and Ima Hogg also appear in his archives.
He was there at the Astrodome in 1974 when KTRK-TV anchor Dave Ward broke his leg, pelvis, and collarbone during a Houston media motocross event. For what its worth it appears he won the race. The media races were ended the next year lest anyone else break any further bones.
RELATED: 43 years ago: The Houston mass murders come to light
Pittman was also on hand at serial killer Dean Corlls Pasadena house in 1973 as officials began looking for the bodies of his murder victims. Elmer Wayne Henley Jr., then just 17 years old, had placed a call to Pasadena police telling them had shot and killed 33-year-old Corll following a struggle.
A memorial service for Pittman will be held Saturday, Oct. 22 at the St. James Episcopal Church in Alpine.
Click through the slideshow above to see Pittmans work for the Houston Chronicle
Last June, U.S. Rep. John Lewis led more than 170 lawmakers in a historic 25 hour sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives, protesting in hopes of forcing a vote on gun control legislation.
On Tuesday, the Georgia Democrat sat down again, this time as symbolic gesture, on the floor of the Walter J. McCoy Auditorium at Texas Southern University as part of a public discussion on gun legislation.
"There's just too much violence in our country, too many killings," said Lewis, a civil rights icon who helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington.
"Sometimes when you see it, something that's not right, not fair, not just, you have to stand up, insist on doing something, and sometime you do it by sitting down, sitting-in," Lewis said.
Packing the auditorium at the historically black university were a number of students, professors, pastors, and local civic leaders, including U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston.
Poster boards with pictures of firearms sat on either side of the stage. At one point, Lee and Lewis presented another poster with statistics on mass shootings, listing deaths and injuries in 10 incidents, ranging from the 1984 McDonald's massacre in San Ysidro, Calif., to the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla.
Flanking the two representatives were four women.
Each gave emotional testimonials on how gun violence had personally affected their lives.
Three of the women were members of Moms Demand Action, an organization that advocates for gun safety reform.
Holding up a photo of her son George Kemp Jr., 20, who was shot and killed three years ago in Richmond, Calandrian Simpson-Kemp spoke of the shock she felt following her son's death, passing her son's photo to Lewis.
"I didn't know that we had a problem like this. I had no idea that a gun would meet my child here," Simpson-Kemp said. "I'm standing today to fight on behalf of George and all the other little George's that are out there to say that this is wrong."
Kathy Blueford, whose son Patrick Charles Murphy, 20, was shot outside a Houston convenience store 10 years ago, said she was thankful for the support, but she hopes no other mother has to undergo the loss of a child by gun violence.
"Just close your eyes and imagine your child is dead. Your heart won't let your brain go there," Blueford said. "As you sit around and enjoy your families, think about us because we'll carry this grief for the rest of our lives."
In a question and answer period, TSU junior Ebony Greenfield, 26, asked about including mental health evaluations with gun purchases. Greenfield, who was holding her 2-year-old son, tearfully explained that her 20-year-old brother was killed in Jackson, Miss., by a mentally unstable uncle.
Lewis and Lee said they would take these stories back to Washington, where they hope to pass gun safety legislation, incorporating mental health records into background checks.
At a news conference following the event, Lewis acknowledged that given the current congressional leadership's record, it was unlikely that any gun safety legislation wouldbe considered this year by the House.
Authorities are searching for man whom a homeowner apparently interrupted as he was in the process of burglarizing her house last month in northwest Houston.
The incident happened about 9:30 a.m. Sept. 19 in the 9800 block of Eblen Drive, according to the Houston Police Department.
Police said the woman locked her home and left. When she returned about three hours later she saw a red pickup with a hard shell covering the bed parked in her driveway. As she was sitting in her car, she saw a man walk from her front porch. He asked if she was the homeowner and said he was looking for a man who did masonry work. Then he removed a pair of white gloves, got into the truck and drove away.
When the woman went inside her house, she saw her personal property lined up near the front door. The house was ransacked and the back door had been kicked in.
Anyone with information about the case is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 713-22-TIPS or online at www.crime-stoppers.org. Tips may also be submitted by text message. Text TIP610 and tips to CRIMES.
Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for information that leads to the arrest of the suspect or charges being filed against him.
All tipsters remain anonymous.
Police fired a Taser at a man late Tuesday night to take him into custody during a tense standoff at a residence in west Houston.
The incident began about 11:45 p.m. in the 1400 block of Confederate Street, said Lt. Larry Crowson of the Houston Police Department.
A wolf that was rescued earlier this year by the Houston SPCA is on the move, relocating to a new home in Washington state.
In August SPCA cruelty investigators discovered the wolf in a dirty, rusty metal cage at a feed store in North Houston. He was a part of a larger cruelty case that the SPCA was working with the Harris County Pct. 1 Constables Office.
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Sometimes, it is a van or a car. Other times, a homemade fence pops up on Boathouse Road in San Benito.
But, no matter the obstruction, federal officials are telling Ramiro Vasquez that when it comes to the access road, he can't block this.
The U.S. Attorney's office in Houston on Tuesday sued Vasquez over his persistent habit of blocking the road leading to the fence between Texas and Mexico in Cameron County. Officials say the road blocks prevent them from getting to the fence to make updates and repairs.
READ MORE: Where rhetoric meets reality: Texans have lived with border wall for years
For good measure, someone keeps putting up a sign changing the name of Boathouse Road to "Vasquez Road."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Kincheloe sent Vasquez a letter on Sept. 28, warning him about the obstructions and asking him to stop blocking the road and renaming it. Kincheloe warned a lawsuit would be in the offing.
"For more than a year and a half, you have regularly parked a vehicle on Boathouse Road, a/k/a Vasquez Road, to obstruct the road," Kincheloe wrote. "Your actions now interfere with the United States' rights to use the easement which it purchased."
READ MORE: Sorry Donald Trump: Building a border wall would be impossible because of this
There's no record of a response from Vasquez in the court file and a phone number for him could not be found.
Now, it is up to U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville to decide whether to grant an injunction blocking Vasquez from obstructing the road.
Whether Vasquez will respond or comply remains to be seen.
Tim Sharp/Special to the Chronicle
In what is likely to be a symbolic gesture, a Dallas County judge has awarded a woman $50 million in the death of her son.
According to court records, Judge Martin Hoffman of the 68th Judicial District in Dallas County ordered the award Sept. 19 as a final judgment in the case brought by Takeysha Keys over the death of her son, Octavius Lanier, on Nov. 22, 2011.
According to real estate website Estatelys routine exploration of Google search data by region, they were able to find out what things each state in the union were asking Google how to do.
Of course, Texas has some very interesting queries because, as amazing as we all are, some of us still would like to know how to be Jedis and read minds.
Ordinary Time - Cicle C
Author: Order of Carmlites | Source: www.ocarm.org
1) Opening prayer
Almighty and everlasting God,
our source of power and inspiration,
give us strength and joy
in serving you as followers of Christ,
who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
2) Gospel Reading - Luke 12,39-48
Jesus said to his disciples. 'You may be quite sure of this, that if the householder had known at what time the burglar would come, he would not have let anyone break through the wall of his house. You too must stand ready, because the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.'
Peter said, 'Lord, do you mean this parable for us, or for everyone?'
The Lord replied, 'Who, then, is the wise and trustworthy steward whom the master will place over his household to give them at the proper time their allowance of food?
Blessed that servant if his master's arrival finds him doing exactly that. I tell you truly, he will put him in charge of everything that he owns. But if the servant says to himself, "My master is taking his time coming," and sets about beating the menservants and the servant-girls, and eating and drinking and getting drunk, his master will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. The master will cut him off and send him to the same fate as the unfaithful.
'The servant who knows what his master wants, but has got nothing ready and done nothing in accord with those wishes, will be given a great many strokes of the lash.
The one who did not know, but has acted in such a way that he deserves a beating, will be given fewer strokes. When someone is given a great deal, a great deal will be demanded of that person; when someone is entrusted with a great deal, of that person even more will be expected.
3) Reflection
Todays Gospel presents again the exhortation to vigilance with two other parables. Yesterday, it was the parable of the Master and of the servant (Lk 12, 36-38). Today, the first parable is the one of the householder and the burglar (Lk 12, 39-40) and the other one speaks of the one of the master and the steward (Lk 12, 41-47).
Luke 12, 39-40: The parable of the householder and of the burglar. You may be quite sure of this , that if the householder had known at what time the burglar would come, he would not have let anyone break through the walls of the house. You too must stand ready, because the son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect. So just as the householder does not know at what hour the burglar will come, in the same way, no one knows the hour when the son of Man will arrive. Jesus says this very clearly: "But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, no one but the Father! (Mk 13, 32). Today many people live worried about the end of the world. On the streets of the cities, we see written on the walls: Jesus will return! There are even persons who are in anguish because of the proximity of the end of the world, and they commit suicide. But time goes by and the end of the world does not arrive! Many times the affirmation Jesus will return is used to frighten people and oblige them to go to a determinate church! After that long wait and speculation around the coming of Jesus, many people no longer perceive the presence in our midst, in the most common things of life, in daily events. What is important is not to know the hour of the end of the world , but rather to have a look capable of perceiving the coming of Jesus who is already present in our midst in the person of the poor (cf Mt 25, 40) and in so many other ways and events of every day life.
Luke 12, 41: Peters question. Then, Peter said, Lord, do you mean this parable for us, or for everyone? The reason for this question asked by Peter is not clearly understood. It recalls another episode, in which Jesus responds to a similar question saying: To you it is granted to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not granted (Mt 13, 10-11; Lk 8, 9-10).
Luke 12, 42-48: The parable of the householder and the steward. In the response to Peters question, Jesus formulates another question in the form of a parable: Who then is the wise and trustworthy steward whom the master will place over his household to give them at the proper time their allowance of food? Immediately after, Jesus himself gives the response in the parable: the good steward is the one who carries out his mission of servant, he does not use the goods received for his own advantage, and is always vigilant and attentive. Perhaps this is an indirect response to Peters question, as if he would say: Peter, the parable is really for you! It is up to you to know how to administer well the mission which God has given you: to coordinate the communities. In this sense, the response is also valid for each one of us. And here the final warning acquire much sense: When someone is given a great deal, a great deal will be demanded of that person; when someone is entrusted with a great deal, of that person even more will be expected.
The coming of the Son of Man and the end of this world. The same problems existed in the Christian communities of the first centuries. Many people of the communities said that the end of this world was close at hand and that Jesus would return afterwards. Some from the community of Thessalonica in Greece, basing themselves in Pauls preaching said: Jesus will return! (1 Th 4, 13-18; 2 Th 2, 2). And because of this, there were even persons who no longer worked, because they thought that the coming would be within a few days or few weeks. Why work if Jesus would return? (cf 2 Th 3, 11). Paul responds that it was not so simple as it seemed, and to those who did not work he would warn: He who does not work has no right to eat! Others remained looking up to Heaven, waiting for the return of Jesus on the clouds (cf. Ac 1,11). And others did not like to wait (2 P 3, 4-9). In general the Christians lived expecting the imminent coming of Jesus. Jesus would come for the Final Judgment to end with the unjust history of this world here below and to inaugurate a new phase of history, the definitive phase of the New Heavens and the New Earth. They thought that it would take place after one or two generations. Many people would still be alive when Jesus would appear glorious in Heaven (1Th 4, 16-17; Mk 9, 1). Others, tired of waiting would say: He will never come back! (2 P 3, 4). Even up until today the final return of Jesus has not yet taken place! How can this delay be understood? We are not aware that Jesus has already returned, and that he is in our midst: Look, I am with you always, yes, till the end of time. (Mt 28, 20). He is already at our side in the struggle for justice, for peace and for life. The plenitude, the fullness has not been attained, but an example or guarantee of the Kingdom is already in our midst. This is why, we wait with firm hope the total liberation of humanity and of nature (Rm 8, 22-25). And when we wait and we struggle, we say rightly: He is already in our midst! (Mt 25, 40).
4) Personal questions
The response of Jesus to Peter serves also for us, for me. Am I a good administrator of the mission which I have received?
What do I do in order to be always vigilant?
5) Concluding prayer
From the rising of the sun to its setting,
praised be the name of Yahweh!
Supreme over all nations is Yahweh,
supreme over the heavens his glory. (Ps 113,3-4)
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NASA's Earth Observatory captured images of Haiti a week before and after Hurricane Matthew tore across the country, killing at least 1,000 people on the Caribbean Island and leaving more than a million people in need of aid.
This level of devastation, NASA said, can be seen from space.
"Generally in Haiti land is managed in very small patches, with a household having subsistence crops in a number of locations, often on steep slopes," Alexandra Morel, an ecosystem scientist at the University of Oxford, told NASA. "When I look at these images, I see what seems to be seriously denuded hillsides, which I assume are from crops and fallows being washed away."
READ MORE: Hurricane's destruction puts schools on hold in Haiti
The first two images captured the damage in the southwest coastal city of Les Cayes. The New York Times reported that 90 percent of the town's buildings were destroyed or damaged by the storm.
More information can also be derived from what is shown just off of the coast, according to Peter Wampler, a geologist at Grand Valley State University who spoke to Earth Observatory.
"You can see from the change in ocean color that a significant amount of debris has been washed away," Morel said. "I would conjecture that a good amount of topsoil, which Haitian farmers can't really afford to lose, is likely a large contributor to that."
Click through above to see NASA's before and after pictures of Haiti.
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.
Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs, by Robert Kanigel (Alfred A. Knopf, 496 pp., $35)
When writing about Jane Jacobs, it can be tempting to focus solely on her ideas, especially her criticisms of the received wisdom about urban planning of the 1940s and 1950s. Jacobs was the first to draw attention to the nakedness of urban-renewal emperors like New Yorks Robert Moses, Philadelphias Edwin Bacon, and Bostons Edward Logue. We still live with the bitter fruits of their work.
So-called urban renewal had the opposite effect on cities. Across the country, cityscapes remain littered with midcentury public-housing projects that are isolated, crime-ridden, and devoid of the street life and small stores that, as Jacobs was the first to understand, help keep cities safe and economically dynamic. We also still live with the massive anti-urban installations called super blocks that, like New Yorks Lincoln Center, become frozen landscapes within the city, prevented from being used for new purposes and new visions. Who can doubt that the brownstones, row houses, and walk-up apartments that Jacobs defended against the planners wrecking balls would be more valuable today than their lifeless replacements? Property values in Brooklynas in Bostons North and South Ends, Philadelphias Rittenhouse Square, and San Franciscos Tenderloinmake the case that they would.
Robert Kanigels Eyes on the Street is the first full-length biography of Jacobs, a woman without a college degree who became one of the most influential urban thinkers of the twentieth century. Kanigel deftly links Jacobss life experiences to the development of her original ideas. Born Jane Butzner in 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Jacobs wrote for a living, and not always for glamorous New York publications. She began her journalism career as an intern at the Scranton Republican and then contributed to Iron Age, a trade publication at which she learned the nuts and bolts of the metals industry. She learned, for instance, that non-ferrous metals were vital to modern life and how the markets for them worked. She worked briefly as a financial writer for Hearst and wrote an extended feature about Manhattans fur district for Vogue and another for Harpers Bazaar about the crabbing culture on Marylands Tangier Island. She was, in other words, soaking up the details of how business, culture, and the urban environment worked together when done rightthe very combinations shed go on to celebrate in her breakthrough masterpiece, 1961s The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Jacobs always remained what Kanigel calls an uncredentialed woman. Only graduallyand always through observation and writingdid she begin to gather the raw material for her famous criticism. Like kindred spirit George Orwell at the BBC, Jacobs became a successful propagandist for the Office of War Information during World War II. At Amerika, a Russian-language magazine published by the State Department during the Cold War, Jacobs was intensely edited by Marion Sanders, who would go on to Harpers. The idea, Sanders would write, is to convey some notion of the wealth and flexibility of our language. Once shed proved herself, Jacobs wrote about the full panoply of American lifeNew York City high schools, American cafeterias, and, ultimately, American architecture.
As Yogi Berra is said to have put it, you can observe a lot just by watchingand Jacobs did. In Kanigels telling, only when she took a job as a staff writer at Time-Lifes glossy Architectural Forum did she really begin to see. Her husband, architect Robert Jacobs, had taught her how to read blueprints and she was assigned to writepositively, it was assumedabout Edwin Bacons new urban-renewal projects in Philadelphia:
She joined Bacon for a tour, letting him show off all he was proudest of. . . . First they walked along a down-and-out street in a black neighborhood destined later for the Bacon treatment. It was crowded with people, people spilling out onto the sidewalk, sitting on stoops, running errands leaning out of windows. Here was Before Street. Then it was off to After Street, the beneficiary of Bacons visionbulldozed, the unsavory mess of the old city swept away, a fine project replacing it, all pretty and new. Jane, Bacon urged her, stand right here, look down this street, look what weve done here. . . . Ed, she said, nobodys here. Now, why is that? Where are the people? Why is no one here?
Jacobs had, simply by looking, identified what Kanigel aptly describes as the great gulf between how things were supposed to work in the modernist city and how they really did. The seed of Jacobs disenchantmentnurtured by experience and observation, not theorywould blossom in ways that would eventually overshadow the world of Bacon, other architectural planners, and much of what Architectural Forum had featured and celebrated.
The Philadelphia trip proved to be the moment when Jane Jacobs, a 40-year-old magazine writer and mother of three, began the journey to becoming Jane Jacobs, slayer of urban-planning giants. Her debut as a giant slayer came at a 1956 CK conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Designthe very citadel of modernism. It was organized by GSD dean and uber-modernist Luis Sert, himself a student of Le Corbusier, the godfather of towers in the park housing. Jacobss appearance there was a coincidence. Architectural Forum editor Douglas Haskell couldnt attend, so he sent Jacobswhod written only one major essay on the topicto deliver her newly formed contrarian views in his place. During what Kanigel dramatically calls ten minutes at Harvard, she told the design professions elite in plain English that their work led to a social poverty beyond anything their slums ever knew. The reception to Jacobss talk was largely positive; architecture and city planning would never be the same.
Among Jacobss fans was The New Yorkers famous architecture critic, Lewis Mumford. Her Harvard talk, he wrote, had established her as a person to be reckoned with. Here was a new kind of expert . . . This able woman had used her eyes and, even more admirably, her heart to assay the human result of large-scale housing and she is saying, in effect, that these top lofty barracks . . . were not fit for human habitation.
What made Jacobss rise to prominence possible? In addition to her years of training as a writer, she had been vetted by a series of what today might be called establishment gatekeepers: Architectural Forum; Random House and its legendary editor, Jason Epstein; and even National Review, which reviewed Death and Life favorably. What bound these institutions together were their fair-mindedness and their openness to challenging received wisdom that many had helped mold in the first place.
Could anything similar happen today? Jacobs fit no ideological niche and would resist being pigeonholed. She was investigated by the FBI for her alleged leftist leanings, yet nonetheless admired by William F. Buckley. In the early sixties, though, a career path like Jacobss was not entirely uncommon. Rachel Carsons Silent Spring and Ralph Naders Unsafe at Any Speed burst on to the scene at about the same time, upending public conceptions about, respectively, the safety of human efforts to control the environment and the good faith of General Motorsthe latter still roughly synonymous with the health of the American economy. Like Jacobs, Carson and Nader stormed fortresses from the outside, as did Jacobs. Outsiders who reshape established fields are rare. Rarer still is the outsider who is thanked for her efforts by the insiders.
Jacobss influence on how we think about cities is undeniable. By standing up to Robert Moses, she helped make community opposition to public projects respectable. And her writings provided an intellectual defense for mixed-use neighborhoodsan idea that now enjoys broad popular and political support. Thanks to Jacobs, we understand the importance of cities of human scale, we appreciate that poor neighborhoods can still be good neighborhoodsand we resist centrally planned efforts to fix them.
Photo by Frank Lennon
Caritas Cehia in cautarea unui expert/unei experte sau unei echipe de experti in prestarea serviciilor de consiliere psihologica (pe segmentul burnout) pentru echipa mobila de prestare a serviciilor psiho-sociale pentru refugiatii ucraineni
The story has finally hit home for retirees of the Newark Star-Ledger.
In late September, the benefits administrator for Advance Publications, which owns the paper, sent a letter to retirees notifying them that they would no longer be covered by a company-sponsored group retiree plan. In its place, Advance informed them it was pleased to offer a new solution a smorgasbord of health insurance options available through something called the Mercer Marketplace 365, an insurance exchange and they would be given a subsidy to help pay premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.
Ex-employees were stunned. One of them, Anne-Marie Cottone, who had taken a buyout in 2008 after 35 years at the paper, said she now would have to pay for health-care coverage, and in some cases, this will force people into Obamacare if they arent eligible yet for Medicare. She said the move was particularly galling to employees like her who took a buyout from the paper, at least in part on the promise of continuing health-care coverage. The company told us that we would be given health benefits for life, for ourselves and dependents if we agreed to retire and start drawing our pensions one year after the buyout, she said. Since employees were eligible for full pensions at age 65, that meant people like Cottone, who was only 58 at the time of the offer, would receive a reduced benefit for the rest of her life.
The company had threatened to sell the paper if 200 employees did not take the proposed buyout and a new agreement was not reached with unionized employees.
Related: What a professor learned after interviewing a lost generation of journalists
Those taking the buyout who were not considered retirees were promised continuation of medical benefits for one year. Those retiring and taking their pensions, according to the terms of the deal, believed they would be getting lifetime benefits, although Cottone told me she had nothing in writing that I can find, which would confirm that expectation. She says she considered the prospect of lifetime health benefits a trade-off for taking early retirement and leaving some of her pension benefits on the table. We all seemed to have understood we had health benefits for life. It sounds a bit much to say we were expecting to be taken care of, but we were expecting to be taking care of. And for eight years they were.
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Then came the September surprise.
Although Star-Ledger retirees may have been blindsided by Septembers letter, they shouldnt have been. Employers in all industries have been dropping retiree health benefits since the early 1990s, says Paul Fronstin, the director of health research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a private, non-profit, nonpartisan organization that conducts studies and provides research on employer benefits and is funded by a diverse group of employers, insurers, benefit consultants, unions, consumer groups, and healthcare providers. Whats happening now is they are not dropping benefits. They are changing benefits. There are no federal protections for retiree benefits as there are for certain kinds of pension plans.
In every industry, places that have had retiree benefits in the past have mostly eliminated them. If an employer has the ability to end them, theyve done so, at least for future retirees.
The new health insurance arrangements confronting Star-Ledger retirees are part of a sweeping national trend to shift more of the cost of medical care from employers to current workers and to retirees either through higher premiums or scaling back benefits. According to Anthony Napoli, a local representative at the NewsGuild of New York, In every industry, places that have had retiree benefits in the past have mostly eliminated them. Napoli added, If an employer has the ability to end them, theyve done so, at least for future retirees.
Star-Ledger retirees are, in fact, lucky. They will still receive health benefits although they will now have to pay a portion of the cost, and for some retirees coverage may not be as good; for others it might be better. Fronstin explained that Advance is offering retired employees whats called a private exchange, which is similar to Obamacares state insurance exchanges, where people select policies insurers sell. The sales pitch is that when they buy a policy through the Mercer Marketplace 365, they can choose a plan that works for them taking into account a combination of premiums, deductibles, coinsurance, copay and networks. Usually there are shopping tools that help them make decisions, and Mercers website promotes access to a healthcare concierge and opportunities for second opinions.
Employers, though, are the biggest winners. By shifting the rising costs of healthcare to current and retired employees, they save gobs of money over time. Mercers website advertises an average first-year cost savings of nine percent, almost $1,000 per eligible employee cost savings.
The financing vehicle for the new coverage is a health reimbursement account. Advance said it is providing a subsidy through the account, and retirees will be responsible for paying premiums directly to the insurer they choose as well as any other out-of-pocket expenses the new insurance calls for. The amount employers contribute is completely up to them, says Fronstin. It could be $1,000 or $900 annually, or it could be different for a family than a single person.
The catch is that retirees could end up paying a lot more for their premiums as time goes on. The employers premium subsidy might be sufficient now, but it may not increase much or at all in future years, and rising premiums may be tough at a time when income diminishes.
As Star-Ledger retirees have learned, nothing is forever in the world of healthcare. The era of good benefits with little out-of-pocket expense is over. That means paying close attention to the fine print whenever youre asked to agree to changes in health insurance, pensions, or any other benefit. Try to get promises in writing, though Fronstin says thats often unlikely. Above all, ask lots of questions. How the employers contribution will change over time is an important one.
Journalists know how to ask questions. Insurance is hard even for the experts. We know how to find sources for our stories. Now we have to find them to explain how this new arrangement will work for us, what the terms mean, what strings are attached. The lesson from the Star-Ledger retirees is that we have to learn to do that for ourselves.
Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today
Trudy Lieberman is a longtime contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. She is the lead writer for CJR's Covering the Health Care Fight. She also blogs for Health News Review and the Center for Health Journalism. Follow her on Twitter @Trudy_Lieberman.
Getting robbed at gunpoint is a horrifying enough experience. But if youre Kim Kardashian West, you can pretty easily replace your jewelry (since we can assume it was insured). More valuable than the reported $11.2 million in ice that was stolen by two masked thieves in Paris, though, was something that might be a bit harder to regain: Kardashians virtual universe.
For her and a lot of celebs the phone is a gateway to their fans they use it for Instagram, Facebook, tweeting and its actually the true communication device to the communities they reach, said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance. Not only is it data-rich, but its functionality becomes part of everyday life and they have lots of important information on them, including a lot of data about you. In the case of celebrities, they have all their contacts on there personal contacts, other celebrities information and numbers that truly should not be available to the public. Theres a high responsibility for stewardship of that information thats been entrusted to you.
Kardashian Wests two iPhones were reportedly stolen during the incident, and if she had proper security measures on them its likely the thieves wont be able to get much information from the phones. Kaiser, whose organization recently teamed with the White House and dozens of other organizations to launch the Lock Down Your Login campaign as part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, gave Billboard six tips for keeping your phone safe from cyberthieves.
Layers and layers: It always starts with the credentials you use to access your devices, he said. Step one is adding multiple layers of authentication to your accounts. He suggested using a biometric log-in such as a fingerswipe (or, if available, a retina scan) in addition to having a very strong passcode and PIN to get into your phone. Location, Location, Location: Make sure you turn on your Find my iPhone app in case your phone is lost or stolen. Also, look into a remote wipe app that will allow you to delete all the data using your computer or another device, which the Find my iPhone web app can do. Stolen phones hard to fence: The good news, according to Kaiser, is that most phones companies now maintain a database of stolen phones so that when a report comes in of a stolen device that phone cant be reused or turned back on again by a nefarious party. That makes phones less valuable from a monetary perspective, he said. You cant steal a $700 iPhone and turn it back on, which helps the everyday user, but not a celebrity whose phone is a target because of the data on it. No WiFi is good WiFi: It might be hard for most people, but Kaiser said you should be very careful about using open WiFi networks with your phone. There is a lot of vulnerability on those networks and you never know who else is on them and what they are doing on that network, or what they plan to do, he said. You need to understand that your cell phone connection to the internet is much more secure that a WiFi network. Put it on the cloud: Your phone can be a storage device or a transit device, which means you can either keep everything on your device where a crafty criminal can find a way to get into anything on it, even if its locked down or you can move your photos and other critical information onto the cloud. Just deleting something doesnt mean its 100 percent deleted, Kaiser said. You still need to have really good credentials on those iCloud accounts, the same principals apply. You can also program your phone to only hold your most recent emails, with the rest sitting wherever your primary account is, which should, of course, also have strong authentication. Your email account is really critical, the crown jewel, and when you forget the password you can click to send an email reminder. But if your phone is compromised someone can reset your passwords across the internet with access to your email. Double down: A number of sites and networks now offer (or demand) a secondary authentication code. Make use of that code and have the website or app send a text to your mobile device before allowing you to log in. You can have that code sent to your regular phone as well and then go back into the account and put it in, he said. For the most significant protection, use a logon approval to get into your account for a device that has never been used before. That way it will ask you, is it okay that this iPhone was trying to access your Facebook account?' For even tighter security, Kaiser said there are hardware devices you can get that plug into or tap on the back of your phone that require both devices to unlock your mobile.
The bottom line, according to the NCSA is that 72 percent of Americans think their accounts are secure with just passwords and usernames, but every two seconds someone is the victim of identity fraud.
Assurant Inc., the insurer that sells coverage protecting mobile phones and homes, posted the second-biggest decline in the S&P 500 Index after third-quarter profit slumped.
The insurer dropped $4.82, or 5.3 percent, to $86.48 at 10:06 a.m. in New York trading, the biggest fall since February. That narrowed the companys advance for the year to 7.4 percent.
Net operating income was $54 million to $66 million, compared with $104 million in last years third quarter, the New York-based company said late Tuesday in a regulatory filing with preliminary results. Assurant said catastrophes, including flooding in Louisiana, hurt the property unit. Results were worse than expected at the Solutions division, which backs phones and also issued extended-service contracts and credit insurance.
Management had expected growth in mobile, combined with expense savings, would help offset the decline in legacy portions of the segment, John Nadel, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, said in a note. The updated 2016 outlook suggest growth in mobile will fall shy of expectations.
He lowered his estimate for 2017 operating earnings to $6.50 a share from $6.77. Assurant plans to release final third-quarter results on Oct. 25.
The biggest decliner in the S&P 500 was Intel Corp., which gave a disappointing forecast for sales Tuesday, signaling lackluster year-end demand for personal computers.
Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Stray Dog 1.jpeg
Stray Dog cafe on Main Street in Akron features a variety of hot dogs and home-style sides with a healthy twist. The cafe also features an espresso machine for gourmet coffee drinks.
(Stray Dog Cafe)
AKRON, Ohio - October's turning out to be a good month for downtown Akron and for local foodies. Stray Dog Cafe and Chameleon Cafe both recently opened for lunch on Main Street.
The cafes are part of the second phase of Downtown Akron Partnership's pop up retail program, which provides rental assistance for the first six months through support from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation.
Stray Dog Cafe
Stray Dog Cafe offers turkey, beef and veggie hotdogs with toppings like mac 'n cheese, as well as corn beef sandwiches, beef brisket and a popular veggie burger. For Akron's downtown workers, Stray Dog offers the Doggy Bag Grab 'n Go, a $5 combo lunch deal.
The cafe's goal is to blend home-style sides with a healthy twist, such as its couscous salad or super food slaw. The cafe also features an espresso machine for gourmet coffee drinks.
Stray Dog began as a food cart catering events in downtown Akron, such as the National Hamburger Festival, Rib White and Blue Festival, Brew at the Zoo and Lock 3 concerts.
"We are thrilled to finally have a permanent location for our business," said Charly Murphy, Stray Dog Cafe general manager and founder, in a news release. "This is a big step for us and allows us to expand our menu and be open all year round, which is something we were unable to do with our food cart."
Stray Dog Cafe, located at 75 S. Main St., is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Culinary Chameleon
The Culinary Chameleon's first location is in the Federal Building in downtown Akron, but cafe owner Mike Burzek wanted to expand to a more accessible spot.
The Chameleon Cafe offers health-conscious menu offering wraps, soups, sandwiches, salads and pastries. Everything's made from scratch including salad dressings.
"We jumped on this space as soon as it opened up," Burzek said in a news release. "It is the perfect location for us and we are excited to serve the people of downtown Akron."
At the Main Street location, the Chameleon Cafe features a health-conscious menu offering wraps, soups, sandwiches, salads and pastries. Everything's made from scratch including salad dressings. The cafe also focuses on hot or iced coffee creations, with a choice of several coffee flavors.
The Chameleon Cafe, located at 23 S. Main St., is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and could open for breakfast in the future.
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Beachwood police are searching for an armed robbery who mugged a woman Saturday after a homecoming photoshoot.
(File photo)
BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- A Beachwood woman was robbed at gunpoint Saturday evening following a homecoming photoshoot with one of her children.
The robbery happened about 7:30 p.m. on Havel Drive just as the homecoming dance was starting about two miles away at Beachwood High School.
The mother was part of a group of parents and students who attended a private gathering prior to the dance, police said.
The armed robber approached her, pointed a gun at her and made off with her purse, credit cards and phone, Beachwood police Chief Keith Winebrenner said.
Investigators said the robbery appeared to be a random act.
"Although (the victim) was involved in a Beachwood High School homecoming-related event, there is no indication (she) was targeted specifically for that reason," a news release says.
Police released no description of the robber. No arrests have been made and police have no suspects, Winebrenner said.
If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments section.
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Brecksville City Council approved a bunch of parking-code amendments Tuesday night.
(Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com)
BRECKSVILLE, Ohio - The city will increase the amount of time drivers can park in the downtown business district - centered at Brecksville Road and Ohio 82 - from one to two hours.
Mayor Jerry Hruby said the change will help businesses by giving their customers more time to shop. And while the one-hour limit was in effect from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, the two-hour limit will end at 5 p.m.
"This should make it easier for people to visit downtown Brecksville," Hruby said in an email to cleveland.com.
Hruby said police will more strictly enforce the two-hour parking limit than they did the one-hour limit. That's because the city wants to stop Brecksville residents, commuting by bus to their jobs in downtown Cleveland, from leaving their cars in parking spaces meant for businesses.
"They (leave) their car, locking up a parking space all day long, depriving potential customers from its use," Hruby said.
Hruby said residents who bus to downtown Cleveland can park their cars for the day in two municipal parking lots and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority Park-N-Ride lot on Brecksville Road.
The time limit was one of several changes to the municipal parking code approved by City Council Tuesday night.
Sergio DiGeronimo, Brecksville's assistant law director, said most of the code amendments are clarifications meant to eliminate uncertainties in the existing parking laws.
"We're cleaning up the parking ordinances," said DiGeronimo, who added that parking-violation fines typically range from $15 to $50, although the fine for parking in a handicapped space is $250.
Here is a rundown of some additional parking-code changes council approved Tuesday:
Jordan Poyer
Jordan Poyer has a lacerated kidney.
(Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)
BEREA, Ohio -- Terrelle Pryor said the most vicious thing about Antonio Andrews' illegal blindside hit on Jordan Poyer is that he posted it on Instagram.
Andrews posted the clip -- with the caption "Relentless'' -- while Poyer was still in a Nashville hospital with a lacerated kidney that may need up to four months to heal. He was also checked for a concussion, but without confirmation of one.
The hit occurred during a second-quarter punt return in Sunday's 28-26 loss to the Titans. Poyer was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Andrews was flagged for unnecessary roughness.
"I don't want to get into it because right now it's about Cincinnati but I love Poyer like a brother and that really angered me,'' Pryor said. "That was bullcrap."
Poyer saw the post when he was being driven home from Nashville Tuesday -- he had been told not to fly. It was more than an eight-hour drive.
"For me, when I first saw it it kind of angered me because to hit a guy blindside, if you're going head up with a man face to face and he sees you, you see him, all right, cool,'' said Pryor. "But if you're a special teams guy and you're popping that stuff on there like you're some type of super hero or something just because you're hitting a guy blindsided and you think that's cool, that's where the problem comes in.
"So I think he should stay to his special teams and what he does and don't post stuff when a man's not looking and taking a hit like that."
Pryor can see how such a hit would occur in the heat of the moment. It was the posting on social media that irritates him. Andrews has since made his Instagram account private.
"Obviously it's a game,'' Pryor said. "We put ourselves in that situation by signing the contract to play here, but the only thing that I didn't like was when the guy posted about it bragging 'Relentless.' What is relentless about that? Hitting a guy, another man when he's not looking?''
Andrews told reporters in Nashville Wednesday that he's not sorry for the post.
WATCH: #Titans' Antonio Andrews sorry #Browns' Jordan Poyer injured, not sorry for posting video of hit on Instagram https://t.co/lBpoTRwDvD Jason Wolf (@JasonWolf) October 19, 2016
Coach Hue Jackson said he'd "be disappointed'' if one of his players posted such an injurious hit with the opponent still hospitalized.
Would he discipline the player?
"I don't know,'' he said. "I'm not going to sit here and pass judgment. I just know that I've heard about it, saw it and that's disappointing to me. That's one of our players. There's a code among players in the National Football League. That young man suffered a serious injury. So, I don't think that's something to celebrate. I would hope that he reaches out to Jordan and maybe even explain why it even went that far.
"I hope that's not a feeling that he really has because I really think Jordan took that kind of personally. That's hard to be injured and not playing because somebody took a shot at you that maybe everybody felt was different than what it was, but those things happen.''
Jackson saw Poyer on Wednesday.
"I gave him a big old, hug today,'' said Jackson. "Big hug. Glad to see him. Glad he's back. Looks like himself. Look good.
Left tackle Joe Thomas also took exception the posting.
"Certainly you'd hope that there was some sensitivity involved when a guy does go to the hospital because of a hit,'' said Thomas. "That's one thing that I'd like to see the NFL do is not use highlights of plays that were penalties, like celebrating, you know.
"There was an issue a few years ago actually on Mohamed Massaquoi, Browns player, where James Harrison had a big hit across the middle. It was a penalty and then (the league was) using that as like the cover photo of something they were trying to sell.
"So I think it's a double standard that I'd like to see the NFL look at a little bit.''
Receiver Andrew Hawkins, who was sent to the hospital with a concussion last season after a hit by Pittsburgh's Jarvis Jones, understands how Poyer feels but noted it's not uncommon.
"I've seen it happen before,'' Hawkins said. "It's unfortunate. We're just praying Jordan makes a speedy recovery and joins us back in the locker room."
He stopped short of saying Andrews crossed the line.
"It's up to discretion,'' he said. "It's a very violent sport. It's what we're taught. It's what we make our money doing. I've obviously been hit illegally very hard and it's just kind of the game we sign up for."
Poyer reacted to the post Tuesday in a series of tweets.
Buddy posted the hit to his Social Media page? Jordan poyer (@J_poyer21) October 18, 2016
Wow Jordan poyer (@J_poyer21) October 18, 2016
Not complaining about the hit... its football.. stuff happens... but dam.. idk why but thats wild to me.. good for him tho Jordan poyer (@J_poyer21) October 18, 2016
Andrews didn't back from his post on Twitter.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Six weeks ago, we started reporting on Verizon Wireless and head-scratching increases in data usage on customers' cellphones, or at least on their accounts.
On Thursday, Verizon will publicly release its financial results for the third quarter, from July 1 through Sept. 30, the period when most of these overages and hefty charges occurred. What will those results show? Will Verizon talk about the barrage of consumer complaints to its offices and to the Federal Communications Commission? We don't know. But we do know a lot more today than we knew in early September.
Here's a look at what we've learned in the last six weeks:
Our initial Sept. 9 story about mysterious cellphone data overages struck a nerve nationally. Within a few days, the story garnered more than 1 million page views and was shared more than 200,000 times nationwide. That's a record for a Plain Dealer story. That's not a reflection on the quality of the story by my colleague John Caniglia and me. It is an indication that this has clearly been a huge problem among customers of Verizon, the nation's largest wireless carrier.
Within a week, we heard from more than 4,000 consumers nationwide, most of them Verizon customers. They wanted to vent about their problems with data overages, which they insist are mind-boggling because, they said, their cellphone habits haven't changed notably compared with six months or a year ago. We've continued hearing from consumers but stopped counting almost a month ago, at more than 5,000.
Some customers incurred $15 overages. Others experienced overages of $300 to $800. Others were hit with overage fees of $1,500 or more.
Verizon last month denied any knowledge of a widespread problem or any significant increase in consumer complaints.
The FCC says complaints to its office jumped to 2,079 in September, compared with a typical month of 180. That's a 1,055 percent increase. All complaints to the FCC are forwarded to the company involved.
In 2009, Verizon denied it was overcharging customers for data. Then in 2010, the company acknowledged it improperly charged 15 million customers for data. It paid $80 million in refunds and a settlement to the FCC.
Most consumers say their data increases this time around started earlier this year, with the lid blowing off starting in July as their data doubled or tripled or even increased 10 times over in one month.
There is still no clear indication about what has caused this. We believe, based on customers we've heard from, there are at least two or three causes, with some customers affected by multiple issues and other customers affected by just one. They're not all necessarily caused by Verizon.
Complaints we've received have been split roughly equally between iPhone and Android users.
Most complaints have involved accounts with more than one phone. A handful have involved businesses. None of the huge overages we've heard of involved individuals with one phone line on their account.
Some iPhone users were hit late last year or earlier this year with a new setting that Apple introduced, called Wi-Fi Assist. The setting allows the phone, not the customer, to decide if it doesn't like the strength of a Wi-Fi connection and then switch the phone -- without the customer's permission -- from free Wi-Fi to costly data. It comes default "on" for iPhones.
A similar setting is default "off" on Androids. So people with iPhones could chew through data instead of being on their Wi-Fi without their permission. When someone's phone switches from Wi-Fi to data because of Wi-Fi Assist, we don't know whether it will get switched back to Wi-Fi again within minutes, or hours, or days, or ever, without intervention.
The Wi-Fi Assist setting wasn't widely publicized. Even though Verizon has knowledge the setting is a source of big problems for many customers, it didn't alert customers to check this setting. Verizon could have sent out mass text messages or could have included an alert in customer bills. Verizon says it has a page buried in its web site that cautions customers about the dangers of Wi-Fi Assist. "When turned on, Wi-Fi Assist can result in unexpected data charges,"
We also learned there are a few other settings people should check on their phones: Background App Refresh, Cellular Data and Location Services. These should be turned off on apps that you don't want to use data. This move won't affect the apps' ability to use Wi-Fi.
Many customers with iPhones and Androids have been affected by issues with apps such as Amazon and other apps that are powered by Amazon Web Services, including Netflix, Pinterest, Lyft and Expedia. Glitches or intentional software settings offer a strong possible explanation about why the data churns so much in the backgrounds of some cellphones.
In other cases, customers turned off their Wi-Fi Assist months ago and haven't gotten new phones or new apps. But their problems started within hours or days of making a change to their account, such as changing their data plan. Some experts and former Verizon employees believe there may be a software glitch in the billing system that handles new or updated Verizon accounts.
We also know that Verizon launched its new LTE Advanced network in August. Many experts believe there's a connection between this network -- which Verizon acknowledges processes data 50 percent faster -- and higher data consumption by consumers, even if they're not doing anything different with their phones. Newer phones with bigger screens are most susceptible to using data faster.
No matter the causes, it is clear that Verizon underestimated the ire of its customers and moved too slowly in addressing the issue. Even after thousands of customers complained to the FCC and The Plain Dealer, the company has not gone into detail about what could be causing the problems. Even after it settled with a Florida mother who had a $9,100 and a Cleveland educational nonprofit that had $20,000 bill, it has failed to address the issue with its customers.
One of the most curious aspects of the data mystery are nighttime spikes. Many, many customers complained that their phones, while on Wi-Fi, chewed up data at night -- when they were asleep and not using their devices. Dama Galceran, a customer service supervisor, said in an interview last month that Verizon isn't sure why people are getting middle-of-the-night data usage when they're sleeping. "We're actually looking into that," she said. "We have reached out to our teams to ask them exactly that."
In other cases, cellphones have chewed data when the data was turned off. Or flip phones with data blocked used extraordinary amounts of data, according to Verizon. In one case, a woman who held on to her deceased husband's phone started seeing data spikes on the unused phone 18 months after his death.
Verizon has attempted, in almost all cases, to shift the blame for data problems to customers. On accounts with at least one young person, the company has been quick to tell families their kids were tearing through gigabytes of data at all hours of the day and night. The issue caused arguments at kitchen tables across the country.
Beyond the issue of overages, the recent billing issues have underscored disappointing customer service. Customers said Verizon representatives pushed more data when overages hit customers, but seldom did those representatives work to help rein in high overages or offer answers to questions of how this could be happening.
Verizon has stopped sending reliable text alerts for data usage. Until a few months ago, the company would, if you signed up for the free service, send out alerts when you hit 50 percent of your data, and 75 percent, 90 percent and 100 percent. It doesn't do that consistently now. Some people still get 50 percent alerts. Some people get only 90 percent ones. Some people get no alerts at all.
In some cases, when a customer's phone hits 100 percent of data, the text message sent by Verizon is what actually pushes the phone over its limit. So even if the customer turns his phone off immediately, he'll go over by 0.0001 gigabyte and get charged for a full gigabyte.
Verizon on Sept. 2 started offering its Safety Mode service at no charge for all customers who have one of Verizon's new data plans. It used to charge $5 a month for Safety Mode for people with data plans of less than 16 gigabytes. Safety Mode works like this: When you reach your data limit, whatever level you're paying for, Verizon will allow you to continue using data -- but at a much slower speed of 128 kbps for the rest of the billing cycle. Think bicycle vs. car. So you'll go over your limit, but you won't pay extra fees. Safety Mode is still unavailable at any price for older plans like More Everything or America's Choice.
More customers have taken an interest in monitoring their usage by logging into their accounts online or relying on their phone's own internal data meter that is independent of Verizon.
We also learned that wireless customers have few rights to fight their bills. If you get a bill for electricity, or natural gas, or even a telephone landline, that you believe charges for too much usage, you have different rights than if you get an oversized cell bill. Utilities beyond cellular service are regulated at the state level. In Ohio, for example, a consumer can pay his normal electric or gas or landline bill, dispute the overage and not pay it while it's being investigated without risking disconnection. Wireless customers can complain to the FCC, their state attorney general's office and other consumer protection offices like their local Better Business Bureau.
Last week, Verizon announced it plans to eliminate up to 3,200 jobs as it closes seven call centers in five states -- in Rochester and Orangeburg, New York; Bangor, Maine; Lincoln, Nebraska; Wallingford and Meriden, Connecticut; and Rancho Cordoba, California. "Verizon is going through an internal restructuring process and has recently made cutbacks in its retail operations," according to Zacks Investment Research.
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio - The Cleveland Heights Police Department is holding a news conference Wednesday to announce charges against a man accused of fatally shooting a 15-year-old boy at Mr. Hero.
The man will be charged in the Friday shooting of Sunny Ravi Patel at the sandwich shop on South Taylor Road, police said.
Charges will be announced at an 11 a.m. news conference at the Cleveland Heights Police Department. Cleveland.com will cover the event on Facebook Live.
The armed man entered the sandwich shop just before 8 p.m. and shot Patel once in the head, police said. The Highland Heights teen died after paramedics took him to University Hospitals.
Investigators released surveillance photos from the incident on Saturday and asked the public to help identify the shooter. Detectives arrested him late Sunday running from a Dollar General on Lee Road at East Overlook Road.
Watch the live video:
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio - A Cleveland Heights man has been charged with aggravated murder in the shooting death of a 15-year-old boy at Mr. Hero.
Daveion Perry, 20, is charged in the Friday shooting of Sunny Ravi Patel at the sandwich shop on South Taylor Road, Chief Annette Mecklenburg said Wednesday at a news conference at the Cleveland Heights Police Department.
Detectives arrested him late Sunday as he ran from a Dollar General on Lee Road at East Overlook Road in what Mecklenburg called an "unsuccessful" robbery.
Perry remains in custody and is scheduled to appear Wednesday afternoon in Cleveland Heights Municipal Court.
The armed man entered the Mr. Hero just before 8 p.m. and shot Patel once in the head, police said. The Highland Heights teen died after paramedics took him to University Hospitals.
He took money from a cash register and ran from the store, police said.
Investigators released surveillance photos from the incident Saturday and asked the public to help identify the shooter.
Perry is also charged in a Saturday armed robbery at a Subway in University Heights, police in Cleveland Heights and University Heights said.
A Subway employee reported that an armed man entered the store just before 9 p.m. and took $299 from a cash register, according to a police report.
No injuries were reported in that robbery.
The Mayfield City School District identified Sunny as a sophomore at Mayfield High School and offered condolences to his family.
Funeral services were held Monday in Parma, Cleveland Heights Mayor Cheryl Stevens said during Monday's city council meeting.
If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section.
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An FBI official and Clinton State Department official had discussed a quid pro quo deal to alter the security classification of emails sent to Hillary Clinton regarding Benghazi.
CLEVELAND, Oho -- The FBI official who discussed a deal with Clinton State Department under secretary Patrick Kennedy, to change the security classification of a Clinton Benghazi email, has confirmed it was a quid pro quo proposal. But insists it wasn't politically motivated.
Monday, the FBI released documents from their investigation of Clinton that revealed a dispute between the Clinton State Department and the FBI over the classification of a Benghazi email sent to Clinton. The documents detail a quid pro quo proposal to settle the dispute that would have left the email unclassified in exchange for the State Department restoring the posts of two FBI agents at the Baghdad embassy.
When the documents were released the FBI official negotiating with Kennedy had not been named. It was also implied that Kennedy had made the quid pro quo offer.
Tuesday, the FBI official involved came forward in a telephone interview with The New York Times. Brian McCauley, who had retired from the agency for health reasons, told the paper that the deal originated with him, not Kennedy. "It was a quid pro quo; I don't deny it," said McCauley, a day after the FBI and State Department did deny it.
McCauley told the NYT that Kennedy had called him in the spring of 2015 to get the FBI not classify the email in question. McCauley said he initially agreed to help Kennedy if the State Department would agree to allow two FBI agents to be re-stationed at the Baghdad embassy.
But McCauley changed his mind when he found out from another agent that the disputed email was related to the Benghazi attack. "When I found that out, all bets were off; it wasn't even negotiable." McCauley said he called Kennedy to tell him, "It was off the the table; the quid pro quo was not even close to being considered."
Kennedy is a career civil servant who has served under Republican and Democrat administrations. He said he didn't believe the email should be classified as secret. Instead he wanted sections redacted because of an ongoing investigation.
The New York Times reports, McCauley said he remembered Kennedy wanted to redact part of the email on different grounds so it would be "buried in the basement" of the State Department.
Another FBI document said State Department employees, reviewing and preparing 300 Clinton emails on the Benghazi attacks for release, were under "intense pressure" from Kennedy to "not label anything as classified."
Both McCauley and Kennedy insist their actions were not politically motivated. They characterized the negotiations as typical inter-agency favor swapping.
However at the same time Kennedy was pushing the FBI and State Department workers to not label Clinton emails classified, the former Secretary of State had been publicly insisting none of the emails found on her private server were classified.
FBI Director James Comey's report on the FBI's investigation into Clinton's email management said classified email had been found on Clinton's private server. The report chastised Clinton and her State Department for their reckless handling of classified information.
Evidence that the Clinton State Department pushed the FBI to alter email classification just feeds Donald Trump's line of attack on the FBI's handling the Clinton email investigation. But since the quid pro quo deal was ultimately a no-go, Clinton can say that at least in this incident, the system wasn't rigged.
Ceremony speakers (left to right): DNR Deputy Commissioner Walter Rabon, Rep. Jimmy Pruett, and Telfair County Commission Chair Pat Ray Attendees and speakers at landing ceremony New ramp Previous Next
Anticipating more than 5,000 users each year, Rep. Jimmy Pruett, Department of Natural Resources Deputy Commissioner Walter Rabon, Telfair County Commission Chair Pat Ray, and other Telfair County representatives on Tuesday dedicated the Scuffle Bluff Landing located at Horse Creek Wildlife Management Area, giving boaters, anglers and hunters improved access to the Ocmulgee River.This facility includes a 20-foot wide boat ramp, canoe steps, and parking for 18 trucks and trailers, with space available for overflow parking.The area will be accessible to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except when road is closed due to flooding."The installation of boat ramps gives anglers, boaters, and hunters improved access to waterways. This helps facilitate fishing participation in Georgias exceptional fishing resources. Additionally, the availability of ramps in communities brings people through those areas, with potential for economic increase," officials said.Scuffle Bluff Landing was constructed using a mix of bond funds and federal Sport Fish Restoration fund dollars."There have been several participating people and agencies involved with the development of this area, including the Telfair County Board of Commissioners and the Telfair County Chamber of Commerce," officials said.To find a boat ramp near you, visit www.georgiaoutdoormap.com . For more information on recreational activities at Horse Creek WMA, visit www.georgiawildlife.com/hunting/regulations
Andrew Brookes | Getty Images
From attacks on Ukrainian power grids to central bank heists in Bangladesh and the leak of stolen information from the Democratic National Committee in the U.S., cybersecurity threats have escalated massively in recent years.
Governments, companies and individuals are equally susceptible all over the world, but cybersecurity experts believe Asia is most vulnerable to such attacks.
Data from American security company FireEye showed 28 percent of organizations in Asia Pacific were hit with an advanced cyber-attack in the second half of 2015, nearly double the global average of 15 percent.
Experts told CNBC there were several reasons why Asia is a prime target for hackers.
Large, potential victim pool to target
Housing nearly 60 percent of the world's population, the aggregate number of people connected to the Internet in Asia is massive - nearly a billion people have access to the Internet, with more than half of them in China.
In August, Xinhua, China's official news agency, reported the country had 710 million internet users as of June 2016, according to an official report from the China Internet Network Information Center.
"That's a lot of people on the Internet, transacting, doing social work, social media [and] doing business," Keshav Dhakad, regional director at Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, told CNBC in a recent interview.
Low awareness towards cyber threats and cybersecurity
Collectively, experts say, Asia's level of awareness towards cyber threats and cyber security was comparatively lower than other regions, such as the United States and Europe.
As a result, many companies were less likely to devote additional resources to secure their technology infrastructure against external breaches and their response time to detect such breaches would be slower.
FireEye data showed globally, companies took a median of 146 days in 2015 to identify a security breach, while in Asia Pacific that number was at 520 days.
The delayed response time meant attackers were more likely to succeed in stealing information without immediate detection and could make a good return on their investment, according to Bryce Boland, chief technology officer for Asia Pacific at FireEye.
Cyber attackers usually have to invest capital, time and effort to build new forms of attack and their reward is often in selling the data they manage to steal. Boland explained to CNBC, "If I spend $10,000 to try to break into a company, and they keep detecting me, I'm not going to make any money back." By remaining undetected for longer, the same attack could be used repeatedly to steal data.
Lack of disclosure regulation
In the United States and the European Union, when a company is breached and their data are stolen, they are legally obliged to report the issue or risk facing penalties.
"In Asia, it's different. It varies from country to country," Paul Haswell, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons in Hong Kong, told CNBC by phone. "In Hong Kong, there is no requirement under law to notify someone if there has been a data breach."
This created the perception that cyber attacks in the region were comparatively lower than those reported in the U.S. and Europe, according to FireEye's Boland, even though Asian businesses were twice as likely to be targeted.
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In 2015, a Hong Kong-based company that made electronic toys for children, V-Tech, said information about at least 6.4 million children and 4.9 million adult customers was compromised due to a data breach, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"There was no penalty for them for not telling because they were required to," Haswell said. He added it was possible that only 10 to 20 percent of the data breaches that take place in Asia Pacific are reported.
Earlier this month, the Singapore government announced plans for a new cybersecurity act that will make it mandatory for companies in 11 critical information infrastructure sectors to report cybersecurity incidents to relevant authorities.
Such regulations, however, are still uncommon across the broader region.
Use of outdated or unlicensed technology
London's High Court said on Tuesday it would rule "as quickly as possible" on whether British lawmakers, and not the government alone, must trigger the formal process of leaving the European Union, in a case closely watched by politicians and markets.
Campaigners have taken legal action to argue Prime Minister Theresa May and her ministers do not have the authority to invoke Article 50 of the EU Lisbon Treaty, the mechanism by which a nation can leave the bloc, without the explicit backing of parliament.
During three days of legal wrangling involving some of the country's top lawyers, the High Court has heard from the government that a decision to trigger Article 50 could not be reversed and that it was "very likely" the final exit deal agreed with the EU would have to be ratified by parliament.
However, the key issue of whether May can invoke Article 50 using the ancient power of "royal prerogative" remains to be determined.
"We shall take time to consider the matter and will give our judgments as quickly as possible," said Lord Chief Justice John Thomas, Britain's most senior judge who has been hearing the case with two other leading justices.
The world's second-largest economy grew 6.7 percent on-year during the July-September quarter, unchanged from the previous three months, government data showed on Wednesday.
The report was bang in line with Reuters' prediction and revealed a steadying pace of expansion as the Chinese government ratchets up spending and as a property boom offsets stubbornly weak exports.
"As always, the GDP figures will be met with some skepticism...We think that the official figures, which failed to reflect much of the sharp slowdown in growth shown by our measurements last year, are now failing to acknowledge a recent pick-up in growth," Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
Asian equity markets were little changed following the data, while the Australian dollar was steady at $0.7685.
With the economy regaining its poise, the government may now look to curb the frenzy in the country's property sector, analysts said.
"The government will now focus on capacity reduction and corporate deleveraging. Supply-side structural reforms will set the tone of overall economic policy through to the Congress meeting next March," Australia New Zealand Bank economists said in a note.
They expect the People's Bank of China to leave interest rates unchanged until year-end while focusing on managing liquidity in the money market.
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:
Charter Communications : "I like the cable business very much, in full disclosure we own the stock of our parent Comcast, but I think cable is here and doing a lot of good things. And people keep underrating it."
CVS Health : "I like that idea. I think that the stock has come down too much because of one of the divisions that it has, and I think that is wrong. I think that the company itself is doing quite well."
SunPower Corp : "I don't like the solar companies. I don't think oil is going to explode up, and somehow they really do trade together. Even though I do think obviously, organically and theoretically they should not."
Clovis Oncology : "I like Clovis Oncology, but just as a spec, not as anything that is remotely like a Pfizer. You've got to understand that."
Arris International : "When it comes to speculative, I've been saying Twilio and Acacia. When it comes to conservative, I have been saying Cisco. My charitable trust owns Cisco ... I feel good about Cisco. I like that dividend, and I like I like the slow, nice projection."
Nordic American Tanker cutting its dividend: "That's why we gave up on Nordic American Tanker. I've got to tell you, don't buy. Enough is enough. Enough is enough with that!"
Tech Data : "Bob Dutkowsky [CEO], he crushed it! That is a stock worth owning. That was a great merger that he is doing. I think Tech Data is terrific."
Intercontinental Exchange : "I love that. More important, I want you to buy more ICE. We just did a nice profile of these exchanges and that company is making a lot of money. A lot of money."
Ecuador's government acknowledged on Tuesday it had partly restricted internet access for Julian Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks who has lived in the South American country's London embassy since mid-2012.
WikiLeaks said Assange lost connectivity on Sunday, sparking speculation Ecuador might have been pressured by the United States due to the group's publication of hacked material linked to U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Ecuador's leftist government said WikiLeaks' decision to publish documents impacting the U.S. election was entirely its own responsibility, and the country did not want to meddle in election processes or favor any candidate.
"In that respect, Ecuador, exercising its sovereign right, has temporarily restricted access to part of its communications systems in its UK Embassy," it added in a statement.
"Ecuador does not cede to pressures from other countries."
Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador after a British court ordered him extradited to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case involving two female supporters.
WikiLeaks said it activated "contingency plans" after Assange's cut-off, and Ecuador said that its action did not stop the group continuing "journalistic activities."
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has long backed Assange's right to free speech and has also supported Clinton publicly. "For the good of the United States and the world ... I would like Hillary to win," he told broadcaster Russia Today last month.
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Former death row inmate Ray Krone will share how DNA evidence led to his exoneration at an event at Chattanooga State Community College on Thursday, Oct. 27 at 6 p.m.
Panelists Amy Lawrence, coordinator for Tennessee Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, Marcus Easley, former law enforcement officer, and Professor Michael McCamish will join Mr. Krone in discussing the failures of the capital punishment system, officials said.
The event is part of the Criminal Justice Speaker Series hosted by the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division at Chattanooga State Community College.
Microsoft is set to surge after it reports earnings, predicts one trader who could make more than five times his money off a Microsoft bet.
Microsoft has surged more than 19 percent since its Brexit low in June. And though the stock has traded in a range for most of the summer, Andrew Keene of AlphaShark sees good signs in the charts for the tech giant, especially with earnings as a "catalyst" for Microsoft.
"It has rallied five of the last eight quarters on earnings," Keene said Tuesday on CNBC's "Trading Nation." "Combine that with the chart, and I think Microsoft is going higher."
On a daily chart of Microsoft, Keene says that the stock has consolidated since jumping off of the company's last earnings beat in July. While Microsoft has been trading in a range of $56 to $59, the stock has generally managed to stay above its 50-day moving average, which indicates to Keene that this smoothing mechanism is serving as support.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's weekly chart shows what Keene terms a "bull channel," and based on that trend, Keene believes that Microsoft could be headed to $62.50. In other words, Keene sees Microsoft climbing more than 8 percent in the short term, especially if the company's past earnings trends repeat.
Two years since becoming the seventh President of Southeast Asia's largest economy, Joko Widodo has survived a tough initiation process. The next test: Delivering on reforms while navigating Indonesia's complex political system. Commonly referred to as Jokowi, the 55 year-old celebrates his second anniversary in office on Wednesday following a tough first year in which he faced both domestic and external challenges, including a global economic slowdown that sent the rupiah tumbling to 17-year lows.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Berlin, Germany, on April 18, 2016. Sean Gallup | Getty Images
"There were unreasonably high expectation that greeted his election, but political realities quickly burst this bubble. Jokowi's first year was largely disappointing, while the last 12 months have shown more promise. On balance, he has done well given the hand he was dealt," summed up Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. The populist leader rose to power in a campaign that focused on his connection with low-income Indonesians, who make up the bulk of the population. The self-professed metalhead grew up in a Java slum, worked as a carpenter and then a furniture exporter before getting elected as mayor of Jakarta, becoming the first Indonesian president outside of the military and political elite. Here, we chart out Jokowi's biggest feats to-date and the obstacles that lie ahead.
Accomplishments
Given Indonesia's long history of current account and budget deficits, Jokowi's efforts to free up fiscal space are typically regarded as the biggest feathers in his cap. In late 2014, his government abolished gasoline subsidies and in July this year, he launched a tax amnesty program that has so far met 60 percent of the government's $12.7 billion revenue target for year-end. But for many, his ability to survive politically in a nation dogged by corruption and patronage remains the biggest triumph. "Many have failed to consider how tough it is for him to find a footing in the rough world of Indonesian national politics," explained Achmad Sukarsono, Asia analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. In his early days, Jokowi struggled with a minority in the parliament and faced daily taunts from fellow party members who considered him a greenhorn politician from the sticks, Sukarsono continued. Fast forward to the present, and Jokowi is now backed by nearly 70 percent of parliament, nearly double of the support he held in 2014. That includes political entities that were previously in the opposition, such as Indonesia's second-largest party Golkar.
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"Having started out as a political outsider, Jokowi's greatest achievement has been consolidating his power [in his second year]. Thanks to some shrewd political maneuvering, he is now the undisputed master of the political stage and in a strong position to implement his agenda over the next three years," echoed Brennan. Following Golkar's re-election endorsement in July, speculation is high for the President to win another five-year term in the 2019 general election. "That is a great achievement for a furniture seller who five years ago thought being a mayor of a medium-size city in Central Java was the pinnacle of his life," Sukarsono noted. Thanks to his fiscal reforms, Jokowi has also been able to start financing various infrastructure projects, including national roads, airports, irrigation plants, enhanced electricity capacity, a high-speed railway, maritime toll routes and the Trans-Papua highway.
Hurdles
Salesforce.com had weighed 14 possible acquisition targets in May, including Adobe Systems , according to leaked emails, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The list of potential targets was from thousands of emails of current Salesforce board member and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, which were published last month by "hacktivist" group DCLeaks, the report said.
While Twitter wasn't included among the potential targets in the May presentation, software company Salesforce had considered Adobe, which has a market capitalization slightly larger than Salesforce, as well as Pegasystems , Demandware and LinkedIn , the report said.
Salesforce agreed to acquire Demandware in June, but Pegasystems said it had not held any acquisition talks with the company, the report said.
The full Wall Street Journal story can be read here.
Credit Suisse aggregated the latest fund holdings data and figured out which stocks are being most aggressively bought and sold by institutional investors. "Each quarter we take a deep dive into the stock level holdings of long-only, actively managed small, SMID, mid & large cap funds," chief U.S. equity strategist Lori Calvasina wrote in a note to clients Monday. "Our analysis is unique, as we incorporate the holdings of both retail funds tracked by Lipper & Morningstar and institutional funds tracked by eVestment, making it more robust than other sell-side holdings studies." Here are the five large-cap stocks that saw the biggest increase in fund ownership. On the flipside, here are the five stocks with the largest decrease in fund ownership. Editor's Note: Credit Suisse's fund holdings analysis is as of June quarter end.
Indra K. Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo., rings the opening bell with other executives at the New York Stock Exchange. Getty Images
The move had long been expected, given that the company released MacOS Sierra last month but had yet to introduce any new computer models sporting the software. It also comes just in time for Apple to have the new products on sale for the full holiday season.
Apple is planning to introduce new Macs at an Oct. 27 event, sources confirmed to Recode.
Apple has gone a long time without making significant changes to any of its Mac models, with most experts encouraging customers to hold off all but essential new purchases until the lineup was updated. Tops among the rumors have been reports that Apple will introduce a new MacBook Pro sporting a row of customizable touchscreen keys.
Sierra, for its part, adds support for Apple's Siri voice assistant and the ability to copy and paste between iOS and MacOS devices, among other features.
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The Mac event is expected to take place at or near Apple's Cupertino campus rather than in San Francisco, where the company held many recent events, including the iPhone 7 announcement.
It's going to be a busy week. Apple has its earnings report on Tuesday, Microsoft is holding a Windows 10 hardware event in New York on Wednesday and then the new Macs will debut on Thursday.
Apple declined to comment.
Ina Fried, Recode.net.
CNBC's parent NBCUniversal is an investor in Recode's parent Vox, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement.
Influential hedge fund managers also have been voicing their concern around China's debt problem. Hayman Capital's Kyle Bass told CNBC's " Power Lunch " that he wasn't confident in China's growth story specifically when it pertained to the country's banking system.
"Growing levels of Chinese debt are one of the biggest risks to our mostly positive outlook," said Sameer Samana, global quantitative strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute. "The most recent numbers on aggregate financing and new yuan loans were 24 percent and 22 percent above consensus estimates, which shows that policymakers are still choosing debt-fueled growth over reforms and that is unsustainable because it creates a lot of excess capacity and inefficient growth,"
The International Monetary Fund recently warned that China's debt problem is becoming unsustainable and should be addressed sooner rather than later by Beijing. China's debt to GDP ratio is at 250 percent.
But the growth also heightens worries around the government's spending habits and raises questions as to how long officials can continue to allocate large sums of capital into the economy to sustain these growth rates .
China delivered growth right in line with estimates at 6.7 percent for the third quarter , suggesting that the government's fiscal stimulus continues to support the world's second-largest economy.
"They have to recapitalize their banking system ... what I'm saying is you have to be very careful studying how fast and how recklessly they built their assets," Bass said.
Distressed investors have been looking at China's banks and the nonperforming loans they are sitting on as a potential investment opportunity, sources told CNBC.
"Unfortunately, it all comes back to timing and when this will become a larger issue and how it will be resolved, and it may be less of a short-term issue than a long-term issue," Samana said. "I think there is some hope on the part of investors that with the in-line [GDP] report last night, they will get some breathing room to go back to enacting reforms, but we'll have to wait and see if they follow through on that."
One sector that has benefited from China's large stimulus efforts is the property industry, which makes up about 15 percent of China's GDP.
Home sales have been rising due in part to this larger migration from smaller cities to metropolitan cities that offer better pay and more promising opportunities. But the good times may be ending.
"The government is now seeking to shift down a gear in the property market," said Duncan Wrigley, head of research at NSBO. "Home sales are expected to slow after over 20 cities tightened home sales policy, in terms of mortgage terms and restricting the maximum number of properties each individual can buy. Developers will keep building the properties that they have already sold off-plan (as the majority of home sales in China are). But this points to a drag on growth going into 2017."
Despite worries about China's growth story, emerging markets have been outperforming this year. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is up 17 percent in 2016 while the Shanghai composite is down 12 percent during the same time frame.
Whether EMs can continue to recover may depend on China's ability to rebound.
Capital Economics is not confident in these markets rallying writing to clients "there are growing risks of a downturn in China in the medium term."
Leah Baxter, a senior at Girls Preparatory School, earned the highest possible composite score of 36 on the ACT. On average, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of students who take the ACT earn a top score.
The ACT consists of tests in English, mathematics, reading and science, each scored on a scale of 136. A student's composite score is the average of the four test scores.
In a letter to the student recognizing Ms. Baxters exceptional achievement, ACT Chief Executive Officer Marten Roorda said, Your achievement on the ACT is significant and rare. While test scores are just one of multiple criteria that most colleges consider when making admission decisions, your exceptional ACT composite score should prove helpful as you pursue your education and career goals.
ACT test scores are accepted by all major U.S. colleges. Exceptional scores of 36 provide colleges with evidence of student readiness for the academic rigors that lie ahead.
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Deutsche Bank has moved to suppress speculation that the beleaguered European firm may seek to wind-down its investment banking operations in the U.S., with one prominent figure at the bank telling CNBC that it was positioned for a long future in the country. "We're all in a long-term game", Alasdair Warren, Deutsche Bank's head of corporate and investment banking (CIB) EMEA, told CNBC Wednesday. Addressing the importance of following a coherent cross-border strategy, Warren clarified that the U.S. CIB division formed an inseparable component of the German bank's offering. "We have built over the last fifteen, twenty years a global franchise and if you're going to be globally relevant you have to have a meaningful presence in the U.S. in the same way you've got to have a meaningful presence in Europe - which we clearly have - and a meaningful presence in Asia," he posited. "That will continue," Warren confirmed.
An American and a Deutsche Bank AG flag fly outside the company's office on Wall Street in New York. Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The clear statement follows reports from earlier this week suggesting Germany's largest lender was strongly considering shrinking its U.S. CIB unit to offset the high level of capital required to cover rising legal costs. Chief Executive Officer, John Cryan, has told investors he does not intend to pursue a capital raise and that he believes the $14 billion payment requested from the U.S. Department of Justice during September will be whittled down. This as cost cutting measures, including a hard-hitting series of job cuts and a broad restructuring of the business, continue apace. Warren also addressed fears of a vicious spiral revving up in which capital concerns would cause both talent and clients to abandon the bank, saying employees across the sector would need to adapt to a new reality that would be different but offer a recalibrated set of draws. According to Warren, "It's not a Deutsche Bank issue but across the whole industry, it has to be much broader than just compensation, it's got to be all about the opportunity to develop, the opportunity to really broaden your skills and really be able to take a longer-term view around that, and that's where we've been focusing a lot." "Compensation dollars or euros at any bank this year with volumes being down are going to be a challenge," he warned.
Post-Brexit landscape
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Turning to clients, the senior Deutsche Bank executive emphasized that the message he had repetitively heard from clients in his last few months of intense client conversations, was that they consider it essential to have a strong global European bank, particularly within Europe. Warren said, "Global multinational corporations want to have a choice of advisory services that they can solicit from a range of banks." "They need a credible alternative to what is becoming an increasingly U.S. field."
They share their lineage and a last name but that's pretty much where the similarities end.
Malik Obama, Barack Obama's half-brother, will attend the final presidential debate not to support the Democratic candidate who the president has rallied behind but rather, as a guest of Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"I'm excited to be at the debate. Trump can make America great again," Malik told The New York Post on Tuesday.
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The Trump campaign confirmed to NBC News that it was bringing Malik to the debate in addition to other guests, including Patricia Smith, the mother of a victim of the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attack who has said she blames Hillary Clinton "personally for the death of my son."
In Malik, Trump has found an enthusiastic supporter who isn't afraid to criticize Democrats just because he's related to Barack Obama.
Malik revealed in July that he planned to vote for Trump, prompting Trump to tweet, "[He] was probably treated badly by president like everybody else!"
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Malik, who at 58 is three years older than his famous half-sibling, was raised in Kenya and first met the future president in 1985, when they were in their 20s. The firstborn son of their father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., Malik has said he and Barack Obama at one point shared a close bond and even served as best men in each other's weddings.
But their relationship deteriorated over the years.
Malik did not return inquiries from NBC News. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday he hadn't spoken to the president about Malik's attendance at the debate and he didn't anticipate Barack Obama "will spend a lot of time thinking about it."
An American citizen, Malik, 58, splits his time between the tiny western Kenya village of Nyangoma-Kogelo and Washington, according to The Associated Press.
In 2013, he tried his own hand at politics, running for governor in his home county of Siaya. But he lost by a landslide and criticized Obama for not endorsing him.
Malik runs the Barack H. Obama Foundation, which does humanitarian projects. Its website makes clear that the foundation is "in memory of their father, and is not dependent on the endorsement of his brother, President Barack Obama."
Obama Sr. was killed in a car crash in 1982 and left behind three wives, a daughter and six sons, according to the AP. One son died in 1984.
No matter who wins the presidential election, the United States must continue to engage in global affairs, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told CNBC on Wednesday.
Rasmussen said he is eager to hear Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump speak in Wednesday night's debate about "how they want to promote global trade and economic growth [and] how they will counter [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."
Most importantly, Rasmussen said he is looking for a candidate who will demonstrate true "American global leadership" in the face of increasingly tumultuous world affairs.
"I do believe that the best way to facilitate peaceful, political and diplomatic solutions is, now and then, to threaten to use your military force," he said on "Squawk Box."
The former secretary general added that economically, ditching significant global trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in favor of protectionism is not the solution to maintaining the United States' internationally powerful position.
"Of course the United States shouldn't act alone as the world's policeman. You need someone to help you," he said.
"That's why, in my book, I suggest that the next president will convene all democratic leaders from the whole world to establish an alliance for freedom that can counter the still more aggressive autocrats like Mr. Putin," said Rasmussen, a former prime minister of Denmark.
U.S. government debt prices were mixed on Wednesday, as investors focused on the world's leading central banks.
The Federal Reserve's Beige Book said most districts reported modest or moderate pace of expansion while labor market conditions remained tight.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note sat slightly higher at 1.75 percent at 3:45 p.m., ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was slightly higher at 2.51 percent. The two-year note yield, meanwhile, traded about flat at 0.8027 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein denied Donald Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton met with the banking chief in secret to "plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty."
Blankfein responded, telling CNBC's "Power Lunch" on the sidelines of Goldman Sachs' Builders + Innovators Summit that it is a "waste of time" to argue against "irrational" comments and that it is a "very extreme moment" in politics.
Last week, Trump alleged at a rally in the swing state Florida that Clinton "meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors."
"We could parse that clause by clause, but to every clause, the answer is 'no, we weren't doing it.' We weren't meeting in secret and we certainly weren't plotting destruction," Blankfein said with a smile.
The Goldman CEO's comments follow renewed criticism of Clinton and the perception of her cozy relationship with Wall Street, fueled by purportedly hacked emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta released by WikiLeaks.
NBC News has not authenticated any of the alleged emails. The Clinton campaign has not offered authentication of the alleged emails.
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The British government should expect a tough time ahead in its discussions to leave the European Union as member countries work to make sure that its citizens working in the U.K. will not suffer from the Brexit decision.
"We want to fully protect the rights of those Hungarians and EU citizens who have already been working here in the U.K. My understanding is that these people actually contributed to the success of the U.K," Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian foreign minister told CNBC on Wednesday. "We will be very tough on negotiations," he added.
Earlier this year, Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, told a news conference that the 55,000 Hungarians living in the U.K. pay more than what they receive in benefits and should therefore be protected, the U.K.'s Independent reported. Hungary has been heavily criticized for its stance on migration since large numbers of people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa began arriving at the EU borders. The Hungarian government has refused EU quotas on migrant distribution. But Szijjarto denied calls that the Hungarian anti-migrant rhetoric fuelled support for a Brexit vote.
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LONDON, UK October 20, 2016 The Sohn Conference Foundation, in partnership with CNBC, announces today the world-class speaker lineup for its 5th Annual Sohn London Investment Conference, bringing together some of the most influential investors to hear their strongest ideas and strategies for navigating the unprecedented and complex challenges Europe now faces.
Douglas Hirsch, Co-Chair of the Sohn Conference Foundation said: "The Sohn London Conference once again draws together elite investors from across the globe. This supports our mission of fighting pediatric cancer and other childhood diseases. With the invaluable backing of the UK investment community, we are proud to have raised more than 55 million to date for this cause."
Piers Butler Board Member of Sohn London: "With a line-up of outstanding speakers we are looking forward to a conference which will deliver unique and actionable ideas. We are thrilled to have received so much support from the investor community for a fifth straight year to help support children with cancer and we are excited to be partnering with The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity to achieve this."
The speaker lineup for the 5th Annual Sohn London Investment Conference includes:
Elif Aktug, Agora Fund Manager, Pictet Asset Management Ltd
Ivan Martin Aranguez, Founding Partner and CIO, Magallanes Value Investors, S.A. S.G.I.I.C.
Robert Bishop, Founder and Managing Principal, Impala Asset Management
Bo Bortemark, Co-Founder and Portfolio Manager, Carve Capital AB
Dureka Carrasquillo, Senior Portfolio Manager, Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board
Marc Chatin, Partner and Co-Portfolio Manager, Parus Fund
Adrian Croxson, Head of European Equities, Och-Ziff Management Europe Limited
Anne-Sophie D'Andlau, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, CIAM
Ashish Goyal, Portfolio Manager, Citadel Investment Group
Christopher Hohn, Founder, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager, TCI Fund Management Limited (TCI)
David Jones, Founder and CEO, You & Mr. Jones
Erik Karlsson, Founding Partner and CEO, Bodenholm Capital AB
Mans Larsson, Founder and CIO, Makuria Investment Management
Michel Massoud, Founder and CIO, Melqart Asset Management
Masroor Siddiqui, Co-Founder and CIO, Naya Capital Management UK Limited
Nicolas Walewski, Founder, Portfolio Manager and Managing Director, Alken Asset Management
Under the leadership of the Sohn London Committee, including Piers Butler, Dina Geha, Alexandre Casin, Armenio Keusseyan, and Manuel Stotz, the Sohn London Conference has developed a reputation as London's premier investment conference and charity event. All proceeds from this year's conference will support The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, providing crucial funding to support medical research and cancer treatment for children across the UK.
For more information about the Sohn London Conference, visit www.sohnconference.com/london/, Follow Sohn on Twitter @SohnConf, #SohnLDN2016 for meeting updates, news and highlights.
ABOUT THE SOHN CONFERENCE FOUNDATION
The Sohn Conference Foundation is dedicated to the treatment and cure of pediatric cancer and other childhood diseases. The Foundation supports cutting-edge medical research, state-of-the-art research equipment, and innovative programs to ensure that children with cancer survive and thrive. The Foundation raises its funds through premier investment conferences and special events, including its renowned annual New York Sohn Investment Conference.
Founded in 1995, the Conference honors the memory of Ira Sohn, a Wall Street professional who lost his battle with cancer at age 29. The Foundation has expanded its reach to include Sohn Canada Conference, Sohn Hong Kong Conference, Sohn India, Sohn London Conference, Sohn San Francisco Conference and Sohn Tel Aviv Conference. To date, the Foundation has raised more than $70 million. More information on the Sohn Conference Foundation can be found here: www.sohnconference.org.
ABOUT CNBC
With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and CNBC World, CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to approximately 381 million homes worldwide, including more than 94 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.
CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms including: CNBC.com; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides live access to CNBC programming, exclusive video content and global market data and analysis; a suite of CNBC mobile products including the CNBC Apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices; and additional products such as the CNBC App for the Apple Watch and Apple TV.
Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc.
For more information about NBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com.
"I think half the people in Silicon Valley don't know what encryption is," Palihapitiya said. "The reality is these are very difficult, nuanced technical concepts. And I think when you have a public stage that she does and frankly, any politician does I would hope that they would call the experts."
If Hillary Clinton is talking with tech giants like Apple about encryption, it's a good thing, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya told CNBC's " Squawk Alley " on Wednesday.
WikiLeaks released hacked emails of John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton for America, drawing attention to Clinton's encryption stance, and one email appears to show an Apple employee lobbied Podesta about Apple's battle with the FBI.
The company was at odds with law enforcement earlier this year over demands to access the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Podesta has said that he does not have time to verify which of the WikiLeaks files are real.
Business Insider pointed out this summer that Clinton's language was lockstep with Apple's when it comes to encryption, despite her 2015 call for a "Manhattan-like project" to break encrypted terrorist communications.
Apple declined to comment.
While the Clinton campaign does not authenticate individual emails, representative Glen Caplin called the Wikileaks hack a "propaganda campaign." He pointed to Clinton's rival, Donald Trump's, record on cybersecurity.
"Even after being briefed by U.S. intelligence before the first debate on Russia's role in the hack, Trump has oddly chosen to coddle [Russian president Vladimir] Putin by deflecting blame," Caplin said.
But if the ties do exist, Palihapitiya said it's a positive that Clinton took the time to learn the facts from Apple and that he hopes she takes the same approach for topics like health care and education.
Palihapitiya did not address Clinton's private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, which has also been central to the cybersecurity debate. FBI Director James Comey said earlier this year that hostile actors likely gained access to accounts that Clinton had contacted during her use of a personal account, and it was possible that the hostile actors also gained access to her account, though there was no direct evidence of a breach.
"Well, here's what I'll say about Hillary I think she is fundamentally prepared for the the job," Palihapitiya said. "I think she has a temperament to sort of bring people together and create a more pluralistic and inclusive government. Frankly, I think she has to just not trip up between now and November 8, and I think she'll win."
A lawyer for Roger Ailes said Wednesday that the former Fox News boss and Donald Trump did not have a falling out, after an earlier report suggested the pair had stopped talking after disagreement about presidential debate preparations.
"He was never an official adviser to Trump, and his status hasn't changed. They have been friends for 35 years. But Roger has never attended any debate prep meetings and has not been advising him on debates," said Susan Estrich, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and counsel for Ailes.
Earlier Wednesday, Vanity Fair reported that Ailes, who left Fox earlier this year amid sexual harassment allegations, had reportedly helped Republican presidential candidate Trump prepare for his debates against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The outlet said the pair had a falling out, with both sides saying debate prep had not gone the way they wanted.
The report came just hours before Wednesday's third presidential debate in Las Vegas, where Trump will try to dig out of a recent polling hole.
The report said that Ailes had concerns that Trump could not focus and that preparation would be a "waste of time," while Trump thought Ailes spent too much prep time telling old stories, according to New York magazine's Gabriel Sherman and Vanity Fair contributing editor Sarah Ellison.
Estrich denied that Ailes had ever advised Trump for the debates.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read the full Vanity Fair story here.
Ooltewah (and former Woodmore) Elementary teacher Sarah Lane and Lakeside Academy teacher Zena Hanner-Buckley, pictured with PEF VP of External Relations Emily O'Donnell, studied of the origins of fairy tales in France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and England this summer after receiving a Fund for Teachers grant through PEF, and are now sharing what they learned with their students. East Ridge Elementary teacher Stevie Davis and North Hamilton County Elementary teacher Veronica McCuiston, pictured with Fund for Teachers' Alycia Johnston, researched and observed endangered North American red wolves in several habitats of the Southeast U.S. this summer after receiving a Fund for Teachers grant through PEF, and are using this information to create wolf-study activity boxes and lesson plans available to all Hamilton County teachers. Barger Academy of Fine Arts teachers Daniel Silva, Mary Avans, and Latanya Mason visited Ecuador and Peru this summer, including Machu Picchu and the Galapagos, after receiving a Fund for Teachers grant through PEF to study landforms, wildlife, and indigenous peoples, and are using their findings and videos for environmental and cultural student projects. Ivy Academy teacher Reanee Jackson and East Ridge Elementary teacher Michele Pesce attended several Spanish language/cultural immersion programs in the U.S. and in Central America including Costa Rica this summer after receiving a Fund for Teachers grant through PEF to learn and evaluate different language acquisition strategies, and are sharing those with their students. Previous Next
For the fifth year in a row, Hamilton County public school teachers earned grants for summer learning experiences across the globe so they could come back and share what they learned with their students. The grants are made possible by the national nonprofit Fund for Teachers, administered locally through a partnership with Public Education Foundation.Fund for Teachers fellowships get to the heart of one of our strategic goals at PEF: to develop and advance highly effective teaching so that all students learn in classes that are engaging, relevant, and rigorous, said Dan Challener, PEF president.We know that when teachers return to their classrooms, their Fund for Teachers experiences help them create rich learning opportunities for our students.Fund for Teachers allotted $71,300 in grant awards for Hamilton County public school teachers this year. Teachers could apply for up to $5,000 as an individual or $10,000 as a team. Eighteen grant recipients (or fellows) from 11 schools visited 15 countries across four continents this summer. The 2016 cohort included: Cara Stiles of Sale Creek Middle/High explored Iceland with a National Geographic team to pique student interest in global warming, geothermal energy, and space travel;. Jessica Hubbuch and Sean Brown of The Howard School, who are environmental science teachers, trekked through Costa Rica, Belize and Guatemala to explore tropical rainforests, plate tectonics, and aquatic diversity as well as Central American culture and the Spanish language; Christopher Raynolds of Signal Mountain Middle/High investigated the historical and cultural effects on Japan resulting from scientific innovation during World War II, to provide deeper perspective and context for history and science classes; Sarah Lane of Woodmore (& now Ooltewah) Elementary and Zena Hanner-Buckley of Lakeside Academy are unlocking students imaginations as a result of their study of the origins of fairy tales in France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and England; John Echols, Elizabeth Bullard, and Melanie Collins of Center for Creative Arts attended the Boothbay Literacy Retreat in Maine to develop collaborative strategies and knowledge that will transform literacy teaching and school culture across 6th, 7th and 8th grade classrooms; Michele Pesce of East Ridge Elementary and Reanee Jackson of Ivy Academy attended several Spanish language/cultural immersion programs in the US and in Central America to learn and evaluate different language acquisition strategies, and are employing those with the greatest potential to raise academic achievement; Stevie Davis of East Ridge Elementary and Veronica McCuiston of North Hamilton County Elementary researched and observed endangered North American red wolves in several habitats of the Southeast US and are using this information to create wolf-study activity boxes and lesson plans available to all Hamilton County teachers; Latanya Mason, Mary Avans, and Daniel Silva of Barger Academy of Fine Arts visited locales in Ecuador and Peru (including Machu Picchu and the Galapagos) to study landforms, wildlife, and indigenous peoples, and are using their findings and videos for environmental & cultural student projects; and Kathryn Russell and Amanda Colvin of East Hamilton Middle/High traveled to Poland and Israel to gain insight into the experiences of Holocaust victims, bystanders and perpetrators, and to see how the lessons of the Holocaust are being applied to improve the modern world.In partnership with PEF, Fund for Teachers has provided more than $450,000 in grants to 121 Hamilton County teachers over the last five years.
Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih said on Wednesday that oil markets were at the end of a considerable downturn as fundamentals were improving and supply and demand were rebalancing.
He called on non-OPEC producers to help stabilize the market saying their role was as critical as the role of OPEC members.
"Market forces are clearly working after a testing period of sub-$30 oil prices... Oil demand is expanding at a healthy rate despite slower global growth," he said.
He added that by freezing production or slightly reducing it, OPEC wanted to signal to the market that it wanted to lower inventories and encourage investment.
"I am happy to see more rigs coming back," he said, adding that unconventional oil production was important for helping to meet global demand growth.
Donald Trump may have a point with claims that polls don't reflect the full extent of his support, said Mark Hannah, a former campaign advisor to President Barack Obama and a Hillary Clinton supporter.
"People respond to pollsters with what they think the pollster wants to hear sometimes," he told CNBC on Wednesday.
In the same "Squawk on the Street" interview, Republican strategist Charlie Black disagreed with Hannah, saying the nation's pollsters are "very astute," and there may be 1 to 2 percent of voters "secretly for Trump."
But Hannah countered: "I'm concerned that Trump might have this latent base of resentful support."
Clinton "needs to go for the knockout punch" in the third and final presidential debate on Wednesday night in Las Vegas, he added, saying it would be a "mistake" for Clinton to continue "waiting in the wings," as she's done in past debates.
The Democratic nominee should go after Trump for bragging about groping women on the leaked 2005 "Access Hollywood" video and allegations from women who said he treated them in a similar fashion, Hannah said.
"There's near universal assent that the behavior of Donald Trump in the past is discrediting to the office," he said, suggesting Clinton make an appeal for gender unity, like Obama did with a speech on racial equality in his first presidential campaign in 2008.
Black who's has advised every GOP nominee from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney said the key for Trump at Wednesday night's debate comes down to the issues. "[Clinton] represents the status quo. He represents change. And he needs to explain how he's going to make things better with economic policy, trade [and] immigration."
Trump is behind and he knows it, said Black, who was more recently an advisor to Ohio Gov. John Kasich's failed bid for the Republican nomination. "[Trump] was effective in August and early September in talking about issues and sticking to his teleprompter. He gained in the race. He needs to do that again. He still has time."
Black said he understands why some Republican leaders, including Kasich, may not support Trump, but he plans to vote for his party's nominee in the November election that's less than three weeks away.
An employee works on the assembly line producing the new Ford Fiesta at the Ford Motor plant in Cuautitlan Izcalli, Mexico. Susana Gonzalez | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Before Donald Trump takes to the debate stage Wednesday night for one last chance to prove U.S. trade policy is letting Mexico steal Michigan and Ohio's auto jobs, he might want to do some research on manufacturing trends in the global auto industry. Mexico's biggest and fastest-growing carmakers aren't American brands like Ford and General Motors ' Chevy. The biggest Mexican carmaker is Nissan, and the newest plants belong to Audi and Kia, with big BMW and Toyota plants in the pipeline.
For a candidate who argues that free trade has led to the hollowing-out of U.S. manufacturing, the most ironic cut may be that car companies are building in Mexico rather than the United States, largely because it has freer trade than the United States does with the rest of the world. Critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement, who are placing all the blame on it, are denying the reality of global auto manufacturing.
"That's what gets lost in the narrative," said Bernard Swiecki, director of the automotive communities partnership at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "Free trade agreements are driving BMW and Audi, but they're not free trade agreements with us. Blame NAFTA all you want it wasn't the trade agreement that made that happen.''
Free trade agreements are driving BMW and Audi, but they're not free trade agreements with us. Blame NAFTA all you want it wasn't the trade agreement that made that happen. Bernard Swiecki director of the automotive communities partnership at the Center for Automotive Research
Automakers from outside North America have invested at least $13.3 billion in Mexico since 2010, more than half the $24 billion invested in total, according to the Center for Automotive Research, which receives funding from corporations and government sources. Money from outside the NAFTA zone includes new plants for BMW 3-series sedans and Audi Q5 crossovers. By contrast, Ford's announcement Sept. 15 that it would move small-car production to Mexico from a Michigan plant that will switch to making pickups and Broncos was the first new assembly plant in Mexico announced by a Detroit 3 carmaker since the 2008 financial crisis. There's no obvious patriotic reason for Munich-based BMW or Yokohama-based Nissan to base new factories exclusively in the United States, Swiecki said. Both companies make cars in America already. Nissan has plants in Tennessee and Mississippi that make about 1.1 million Altimas, Leafs, Muranos and other vehicles annually and employ more than 10,000 workers. BMW's Spartanburg, South Carolina, plant makes about 450,000 vehicles, mostly SUVs from BMW's X-series lines. Spartanburg wasn't seriously considered for the 3-series sedan production line, because it's running at its maximum efficient capacity, BMW spokeswoman Sandra Schillmoeller said.
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Put foreign automakers who import from Mexico together and they make up a large and growing chunk of the $23.4 billion worth of finished autos the U.S. imports from its southern neighbor each year $20 billion more than the $3.1 billion of passenger cars the United States ships to Mexico.
Nissan made 571,490 cars in Mexico in the first seven months of this year, according to the Mexican Automotive Industry Association, and says it sends about 40 percent of them to the United States the rest stay in Mexico or are shipped duty-free to South America. The Detroit 3 of Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler are the three next-biggest car producers in Mexico.
The trade deficit in vehicles and parts is more than the entire $42.2 billion U.S.Mexico trade gap. In all other goods and services combined, the United States has a trade surplus with Mexico, according to U.S. statistics.
Tariffs and trade
Why are so many non-U.S. automakers choosing Mexico? It's not just low wages, though Mexican auto workers make about 18 percent of what U.S. counterparts do, saving $600 on assembling a midsize Ford Fusion, according to the CAR. The real key is having free trade deals with more of the rest of the world than the United States, Swiecki said. On a Fusion sent to Europe, just the tariff difference from producing in Mexico saves Ford $2,500, while on a more expensive BMW or Audi, the difference is even more. And labor cost savings don't rise much as the cars get more expensive, but the potential gains from avoided export taxes do, he said. That pushes many (but not all) automakers into a decision to build cheap cars in Mexico, where the labor savings are a bigger part of the price. Larger cars and trucks bound for U.S. consumers get made in the United States, and makers of cars headed for South America or Europe, at any price point, have a built-in reason to pick Mexico.
Take Nissan. The company sells 37 percent of the cars it makes in Mexico within the Mexican market, spokesman Brian Brockman said. Of the rest, about 377,000 went to the United States last year, mostly low-margin small cars like the Versa and Sentra models. The rest, about 140,000, go to 50 other markets, mostly in South America, he said. About a quarter of the cars Nissan sells in the United States come from Mexico, 15 percent are from Japan, and 57 percent are made here, he added.
"The Versa, as long as we've offered it, has come from Mexico," Brockman said. "Our two biggest-selling vehicles, the Altima and the Rogue, are built in Smyrna (Tennessee)."
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South Africa, not the United States, is where BMW has been making 3-series cars whose production will move to Mexico in 2019, Schillmoeller said. The company needed to accommodate rising worldwide demand for X-series SUVs that Spartanburg couldn't fill, and the company decided expanding Spartanburg beyond its current size wasn't efficient, she said. So the South Africa plant will make X3s for Europe, and that meant BMW needed a new place to make 3-series sedans.
A location near the United States made sense, but since many of the cars will go back to countries in the European Union, which levies a 10 percent import tax on U.S.-made vehicles, the United States wasn't competitive, Schillmoeller said. "Our goal is to have production near where we have the cars, and we do have demand in the NAFTA region," Schillmoeller said. "There is no movement of production from the U.S. The Mexico plant is additional capacity."
A small advantage
The recent presidential election polls have been mixed but mostly between polls that are good for Hillary Clinton and polls that are fantastic for her.
Clinton now leads Donald Trump in national polling averages by about 7 points, with every recent live interview poll showing her up by between 4 and 12 points.
She continues to hold on to solid leads in a series of states that would put her over the 270 electoral votes she needs to win, and she seems to have taken the lead in even most of the swing states she doesn't need (like Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada).
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New, troubling signs are emerging for Trump in states like Utah, and the Clinton campaign is signaling confidence by making a new push into Arizona and focusing more on down-ballot races.
And every major election forecasting model gives Clinton at least an 87 percent chance of victory.
The election is three weeks away, and there's still time for the race to tighten somewhat. But we're getting to the point where, for Trump to win, we'd need either a truly seismic event to transform the campaign or massive systemic polling failure.
Clinton is leading almost every national poll
There have been more than 24 national polls of the presidential race released in the past two weeks, and Hillary Clinton is leading in nearly all of them.
Recent live-caller polls of a four-way race have shown a Clinton up 4 (ABC/Washington Post), up 7 (Fox), up 8 (GWU/Battleground), up 9 (CBS News), up 11 (NBC/WSJ), and up 12 (Monmouth).
Internet polls and automated phone polls, however, have tended to show somewhat smaller leads for for Clinton she's up by an average of just 2.4 points in those, according to HuffPost Pollster.
Only one pollster has shown Trump ahead in its newest survey that's the LA Times/USC tracking poll, which has long had a pro-Trump lean largely for idiosyncratic methodological reasons, as the Upshot's Nate Cohn explains. Rasmussen polls, which often tend to show a pro-GOP "house lean," have also sometimes shown Trump ahead, but Clinton leads in the outlet's latest poll by 1. These are very clear outliers at this point.
Meanwhile, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein both appear to have lost a couple of points' worth of support. Johnson now averages about 6.5 percent support and Stein averages 2.4 percent, according to RealClearPolitics. Clinton appears to be the main beneficiary here her margin in a four-way race used to be smaller than her margin in a two-way race, but lately it has tended to be about the same.
The state polls look either good or great for Clinton
For months, Hillary Clinton's easiest path to an Electoral College majority has appeared to be through winning six states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire.
And she still appears to be on track to make that happen, with room to spare. The latest HuffPost Pollster averages show her up at least 4.9 points in each of these six states. There have been zero polls in the past two weeks showing Trump ahead in any of them.
Clinton is also up 7.5 points in Maine, a state some speculated Trump could make competitive. It remains possible that Trump could pick up one electoral vote in Maine's Second Congressional District, but if she wins the above states, that wouldn't affect the electoral math she'd already be at 272 electoral votes.
And it gets worse for Trump from there.
Florida is an absolute must-win state for Trump, since there are 29 electoral votes in play. But though the Sunshine State looked close in September, Clinton appears to be pulling away there now, leading by 3 to 4 points in the five most recent polls.
North Carolina a state Mitt Romney won in 2012 now looks to be leaning Clinton. The past 11 polls of the state have shown her ahead.
Nevada polls also now tend to show Clinton ahead; Trump hasn't led any of the past 7 polls in the state. Only six electoral votes are at stake in Nevada, but there is a competitive Senate race there, and the GOP candidate recently unendorsed Trump.
Ohio, a swing state Trump hoped he had put away, now looks close again. (Meanwhile, Trump is at war with the state's Republican Party.)
The Clinton campaign is even making a big push into Arizona, which has been a red state for decades, and is funding voter turnout pushes to help Democratic Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri, two states Trump is expected to win.
And finally there's the strange case of Utah, a state Romney won by 48 points. Trump is very unpopular among Mormons, who make up about two-thirds of the state's population, and several leading politicians in the state condemned and unendorsed him after his leaked tape scandal. And lately, new polling shows third-party candidate Evan McMullin (who is Mormon) surging, to the point where he may have a shot to actually win (or tip Utah to Clinton).
The upshot of all this is that Trump has gotten almost uniformly bad news in state races in the past few months and will now face a tremendously difficult time winning 270 electoral votes.
The forecasting models view Clinton as an overwhelming favorite
But enough about polls, you say what are those data wizards with their fancy models telling us?
Well, they are essentially telling us the same thing as the polls that Hillary Clinton is an overwhelming favorite to win.
FiveThirtyEight is currently the least pro-Clinton of the major forecasters as of midday Tuesday, its polls-only model put her at a mere 87.4 percent of victory. But every other major model has her in the 90s, as you can see at the Upshot's rundown.
There were bigger discrepancies during the various models at earlier points in the race mostly about whether Clinton should be viewed as a narrow favorite or a solid favorite. But now they're all basically saying the same thing.
Now, the polling averages are not infallible they've frequently been off from the final outcome by a few percentage points. Indeed, they undershot Barack Obama's margin of victory by a few points in 2012, and tended to underestimate Republican strength in 2014.
So, yes, the polls could be wrong but at this point, Clinton appears to be up by enough that a Trump victory would mean a truly massive polling error. Also keep in mind that Trump's ground game and turnout operation are reputed to be dreadful.
Trump's best hope, then, is that some truly major, unpredictable news event scrambles the race in the final weeks. Because the way things are looking now, he's headed to a big defeat.
While the majority of Hamilton County students enjoyed the week off for Fall Break, 38 Hamilton County students spent their week on by participating in The Bethlehem Centers Leadership Unit (B.L.U.) Boot Camp. These students were selected to participate as a result of their academic achievement and are recognized student leaders from Howard, Brainerd, Tyner, Central, Lookout Valley, Hixson High Schools and East Lake Academy and Orchard Knob Middle School.
Throughout the five-day camp, students were exposed to the concepts of servant and student leadership and entrepreneurship.
epublican presidential nominee Donald Trump's plane (TOP) passes Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign plane at McCarran International Airport on October 18, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on the eve of the two candidates' third and final US presidential debate.
Shortly after announcing his run for president last year, Donald Trump said he would spend up to $1 billion of his own money on the campaign. But in recent weeks, the Republican nominee has said that number is now $100 million.
"Remember, by the time this ends," Trump told a crowd in Colorado Tuesday, "I will have spent over $100 million on this campaign. Hillary has spent nothing. She gets all her money from the special interest and donors. My interest is you."
Yet to hit even the $100 million mark, he'd better start spending. According to election filings, Trump has coughed up around $60 million of his own money for the campaign. And rather than ramping up his contributions as the election gets closer, he's been cutting back.
In the beginning of the year, Trump was spending more than $5 million a month on his campaign, hitting a peak of $11 million in March. But in July and August, the latest periods measured, Trump had dialed his spending back to $2 million a month.
Though September's official filing isn't due until Thursday, Trump's camp has already said the candidate contributed $2 million to his campaign that month. That means to hit his target, he would have to spend roughly $40 million over the course of a few weeks.
What's more, some of Trump's campaign spending has gone to companies owned or related to him. So his net out-of-pocket expenditures may actually be lower than the reported amount.
"Mr. Trump's contribution more than covered the costs of any reimbursements to him (or his related entities)," a spokesperson for the campaign said, adding "he has contributed an unprecedented amount to his campaign."
However, the researchers found that many of these tweets were generated by bots: Automated Twitter accounts programmed to send out tweets. The most active bot accounts can make more than 500 or even 1,000 tweets a day.
Analyzing 9 million tweets following the first presidential debate and 11.5 million tweets after the second debate collected from 2 million users, a team of researchers from Oxford University, Corvinus University and the University of Washington found the amount of traffic in pro-Trump hashtags was roughly double the activity in the hashtags of his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton. During the debates themselves, around 40 percent of tweets included pro-Trump hashtags, as opposed to 12 or 13 percent using pro-Clinton hashtags.
Twitter seems to be heavily in favor of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump , but a sizeable slice of his support comes from social media bots, according to new research.
"The accounts using a high level of automationthe accounts that tweeted 200 or more times with a related hashtag and user mention during the data collection periodgenerated close to 25 percent of all Twitter traffic about the presidential debate," the researchers which include Philip Howard, a professor at Oxford University - said in the new report published Wednesday.
"It is difficult for human users to maintain this rapid pace of social media activity without some level of account automation, though certainly not all of these are bot accounts."
The report did not speculate on the sources of these bots, so it is unknown who controls them.
According to the report, automated pro-Trump accounts generated four tweets for every tweet from a highly automated pro-Clinton account. In addition, about one third of the pro-Trump traffic on the social media website Twitter was driven by bots and highly automated accounts, compared to one quarter of the pro-Clinton traffic.
"Pro-Clinton highly automated accounts increased their activities from the first to second debate but still never reached the level of automation behind pro-Trump Twitter traffic," Howard told CNBC via email.
Using bots to flood support for one candidate or the other on social media is part of a troubling trend to distort public opinion, the researchers said.
"Political actors and governments worldwide have begun using bots to manipulate public opinion, choke off debate, and muddy political issues," the team said. "Political bots tend to be developed and deployed in sensitive political moments when public opinion is polarized."
The media representatives for Donald Trump's presidential campaign were contacted but were not immediately available for comment.
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The Department of Transportation on Wednesday unveiled a new plan to increase the rights and protections of airline passengers.
The department said the rules will forbid "undisclosed bias by airlines and online ticket agents," compel companies to provide "more complete" airline performance reports, better protect travelers with disabilities and give passengers a more detailed picture of "mishandled" checked bags.
Wednesday's actions aim to ensure that customers "know exactly what they're buying" and that they "get what they pay for without hidden fees or last-minute complications," the White House said in a statement.
The department also said it is planning a rule that would require airlines to refund baggage fees to customers when their luggage has been "substantially delayed." It did not define the amount of time. It also said it is considering requiring airlines to provide customers with "all-in pricing information."
The new regulations follow an executive order President Barack Obama issued in April to boost competition and increase transparency for consumers. The order said, "maintaining, encouraging, and supporting a fair, efficient, and competitive marketplace is a cornerstone of the American economy."
Airlines for America (A4A), an industry trade organization, warned that regulation efforts could drive up the cost of air travel.
"Airlines have different business models and must be allowed to continue offering optional services in a manner that makes sense for both their customers and their business," A4A President and CEO Nicholas E. Calio said in a statement. "Efforts designed to re-regulate how airlines distribute their products and services are bad for airline customers, employees, the communities we serve and our overall U.S. economy."U
Until 1978, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act, federal rules included setting air fares and routes and controlling the entry of new airlines.
S.P. Raj, interim dean of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. Photo credit: Syracuse University website
SYRACUSE, N.Y. Syracuse University has named S.P. Raj as interim dean of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, effective immediately.
The appointment follows the removal of Kenneth Kavajecz as dean following his arrest last month for soliciting a prostitute in the town of Salina.
The school announced Kavajeczs removal on Sept. 14, while the Onondaga County Sheriffs Department on Sept. 21 announced that Kavajecz was among eight people arrested in the prostitution sting. Kavajecz had been charged on Sept. 13.
The Whitman School described Raj as a longtime leader and widely respected scholar in its online news release posted Wednesday.
Raj, a member of the Syracuse faculty since 1978, says he is honored to be asked to serve as interim dean at such a critical juncture in the life of the Whitman School.
The school describes Raj as an expert in marketing strategies, specifically their influence on customer behavior, and on managing new product development and innovation.
He has taught marketing strategy, marketing management, integrated marketing communications, marketing and the Internet, and marketing research.
His pioneering use of multimedia in the classroom was featured in Apples Imagine series of videos for educators, Syracuse noted.
The announcement of Raj as interim dean follows more than a month of conversations between vice chancellor and provost Michele Wheatly; vice chancellor and acting dean J. Michael Haynie; along with students, faculty, staff, and members of the Whitman School advisory council.
For the last several weeks, Ive had the good fortune of speaking with a number of stakeholders about the future of the Whitman School, Wheatly said in the release. During those conversations, I encountered engaged and passionate students, faculty, staff and alumni, all committed to seeing the Whitman School continue its upward trajectory of growth and success. While many people I spoke with discussed overall qualities and characteristics for an interim leader, an overwhelming number of people specifically recommended Professor Raj. As a former senior associate dean in the Whitman School, Professor Raj is a seasoned leader whose strong institutional knowledge, commitment to shared governance and excellence in teaching and research make him the ideal person to lead the Whitman School in the interim. I am grateful to Professor Raj for stepping into this very important leadership position, and look forward to working with him in his new role.
In addition to his work at Syracuse, Raj has also served as a tenured professor of marketing at Cornell University and as a visiting faculty member at Northwestern University.
He earned a Ph.D. and a masters degree in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a bachelors degree with distinction in electronics engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India, Syracuse said.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
October 19, 2016
Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut are now on their way to the International Space Station, where they will begin the outpost's 50th expedition a week after they arrive.
Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko and astronaut Shane Kimbrough lifted off Wednesday (Oct. 19) on board Russia's Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft on a two-day rendezvous with the station. Their launch at 4:05 a.m. EDT (0805 GMT; 2:05 p.m. local time) came atop a Soyuz FG rocket from Site 31/6 at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The crew reached orbit nine minutes later, signaled by a "zero-g indicator" in the shape of Russia's next generation crew spacecraft "Federatsiya," which is planned to replace the Soyuz by 2023.
The Soyuz MS-02 crew of Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko of Roscosmos and Shane Kimbrough of NASA seen waving before boarding their spacecraft for launch, Oct. 19. (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Wednesday's launch, which had been scheduled for Sept. 23, was delayed after a faulty cable was discovered during pre-flight tests inside the Soyuz descent module's control system. The cable was replaced, but the delay shortened the crew's planned stay aboard the space station from five months to a little more than four.
The postponed launch also limited the time that Ryzhikov, Borisenko and Kimbrough will serve as Expedition 49 crew mates with cosmonaut Anatoli Ivanishin, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), who have been on board the space station since July and are set to return to Earth just before midnight (EDT) on Oct. 29.
"The short hand-over time we are going to have with the previous crew is unfortunate for us," said Kimbrough in a pre-flight press conference on Tuesday, "because we were really looking forward to spending almost two months with them. But now it is just a week and we're going to have a great week with them. We're going to learn as much as we can from them in that week and soak up all the knowledge they can send our way so that we can be more efficient once they leave."
Ivanishin will hand over control of the station to Kimbrough on Oct. 28, during a change-of-command ceremony. The departure of the Soyuz MS-01 crew the next day will mark the start of Expedition 50.
International Space Station Expedition 50 crew insignia. (NASA)
"That is pretty significant, for it to be the 50th time we've sent a crew to the International Space Station kind of a really remote outpost, is pretty significant, in my mind, so I hope we do it justice," said Kimbrough in an interview with collectSPACE. "We just happen to be the crew."
The crew's expedition patch features a large, stylized "50" with the numerals wrapping around representations of the Earth and the moon.
Expedition 50 will grow to six members when Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, astronaut Peggy Whitson and Thomas Pesquet with the European Space Agency (ESA) arrive on Soyuz MS-03 on Nov. 16.
Kimbrough, Ryzhikov and Borisenko will be busy almost immediately upon arriving at the space station Friday (Oct. 21). Two days after they dock, Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo spacecraft will berth at the orbital complex, bringing more than 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of supplies and equipment for Expedition 50. The Russian supply ship Progress MS- 04 will then dock in early December. JAXA's H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) "Kounotori 6" is scheduled to arrive by the middle of the month.
Expedition 50 crew: Andrei Borisenko, Shane Kimbrough, Sergey Ryzhikov, Thomas Pesquet, Peggy Whitson, Oleg Novitsky. (NASA)
Another Orbital ATK Cygnus is scheduled to resupply the station in early January, followed by another Progress in early February. SpaceX may also launch a Dragon cargo vehicle to the space station, pending its Falcon 9 rocket's return to flight after a launch pad failure in September.
Kimbrough, Ryzhikov and Borisenko will also work on the hundreds of experiments underway on the space station, as will begin new investigations into the behavior of fire in space, the effects of lighting on astronauts' health and the physics, nature and dynamics of neutron stars.
Kimbrough may also conduct one, if not two, spacewalks, in part to replace batteries for the station's solar arrays.
The Soyuz MS-02 launch marked the start of Borisenko's and Kimbrough's second spaceflight.
Soyuz MS-02 crew patch. (Roscosmos/Spacepatches.nl)
Borisenko, 52, logged 164 days on board the space station as an Expedition 27 flight engineer and the commander of Expedition 28 in 2011.
Kimbrough, 49, first visited the space station as a mission specialist on space shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 mission in 2008, logging almost 16 days in orbit.
Ryzhikov, 42, is making his first flight as the commander of the Soyuz MS-02 mission.
The three crewmates are slated to return to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-02 on Feb. 25, 2017.
Soyuz MS-02 is the 48th Soyuz to fly to the International Space Station and the 131st to launch since the first flight of Russia's Soyuz-class of spacecraft in 1967.
Students are invited to attend the Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) at Chattanooga State Open House on Thursday, Oct. 27 from 4-7 p.m.
Chattanooga State offers 20 one-year technical diploma programs and six technical certificate programs, giving students a wide variety of choices. 2017 Tennessee high school graduates attend tuition-free with the TN Promise. using the TN Reconnect grant. During the Open House, faculty members will be available to discuss programs and showcase program labs.
Student services will assist students with applying for the Tennessee Reconnect Grant, applying to Chattanooga State, filing the FAFSA, and registering for a TCAT program.
TCAT Spring classes begin Jan. 11. For more information, please call 423.697.3379 or visit https://www.chattanoogastate.edu/tcat.
Types of obituaries
The Missourian publishes two types of obituaries family obituaries and life stories.
A family obituary is the version submitted by a funeral home or family. Please see the submission form for details on cost and deadlines. Family obituaries
A life story is a closer look at a person's life and involves a reporter contacting family and friends. Life stories are based on newsworthiness and consent of the family. Life stories.
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
Report details family's care for Santulli
Danny Santulli's family has created a hospital room for him in the living room of their Eden Prairie, Minnesota, home, his dad wrote in a report.
On The Eve Of 'Hamilton's' Chicago Debut, A Look At Its Radical Empathy
By Chicagoist_Guest in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 18, 2016 8:44PM
By Caroline Siede
Note: This is not a review of the Chicago production of Hamilton, but a consideration of larger themes encompassed in the musical, book and cast recording. After three weeks of preview performances, Hamilton officially opens at The PrivateBank Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 19.
In the final few moments of Hamilton, after the duel for which theyre both most famous has finally occurred, Aaron Burr bemoans to Alexander Hamilton, Now Im the villain in your history. But while that may be the case for the history books, it isnt the case for Hamilton itself. Burr isnt the villain of the musical, he is its narrator and co-protagonist. And in choosing to humanize Burr rather than vilify him, creator Lin-Manuel Miranda establishes Hamiltons most powerful thesis statement: History is rarely shaped by easy binaries, and more often by flawed humanity.
It wouldve been understandable had the show bearing his name fallen into pure Hamilton hagiography, but Miranda is as interested in Hamiltons flaws as he is in his achievements. Mirandas version of Hamilton is brash, proud, defensive, and hyper-intellectual. Those qualities make him both a great leader and, at times, an insufferable human beinga duality the show acknowledges rather than ignores. The show celebrates Hamiltons strengths, while inviting the audience to sympathize with his flaws too.
Which is the case for Burr as well. Though hes depicted as overly cautious, and lacking in a strong principles, Burr emerges as perhaps the most relatable character in the entire show. His timidity stems not from laziness but from a fear of making a mistake, as he admits in his Act One solo Wait For Ita song Miranda has cited as one of the best in the show.
Im not falling behind or running late, Burr sings, Im not standing still I am lying in wait. In constructing a motive for Burrs historical inactivity, Miranda selects the most empathetic option; Burr isnt a bad person, hes a man struggling to figure out how to make his move even as everyone around him seems to have all the answers.
But nowhere is Hamiltons inherent empathy more apparent than in the shows treatment of its female characters. Plenty of historical stories simply ignore the perspectives of women in favor of focusing on more iconic men. But Miranda realizes that even though they were denied access to political power, women were no less complicated and compelling historical figures.
In sisters Angelica and Eliza Schuyler, Miranda crafts characters every bit as complex as Hamilton and Burr. And he offers a compassionate understanding of their actions too. The song Satisfied zeroes in on the kind of social and emotional intelligence women of Angelicas social standing needed in order to survive in a world that was especially unkind to them. That Angelica is later seen both fiercely protecting her sisters happiness and carrying on an emotional affair with her brother-in-law is a sign not of her inherent moral failing, but of her imperfect, relatable humanity.
'Hamilton' Broadway / Getty Images / Photo: Neilson Barnard
And though the show laments the way Hamiltons achievements have largely been forgotten over time, it also acknowledges that the achievements of women were seldom even noted in the first place. Remarkably, Miranda gives the final number of the show not to Hamilton but to Eliza, who outlived her husband by 50 years. Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story is a powerful historical corrective in which Miranda allows great men like George Washington and Lafayette to literally sing the praises of the woman who helped keep their legacies alive. Thats an empathetic, revolutionary reframing of the role women played in history.
If Alexander Hamiltons story proves that politics have long been tumultuous and scandalous, Hamilton the musical argues our tendency toward simplification seldom encapsulates the full picture. For every truly scorn-worthy King George or Donald Trump, theres a dozen complex figures deserving of a more nuanced examination. History may sometimes obliterate fine distinctions, but Miranda paints with a far more empathetic brush.
Photos: Field Museum's 'Tattoo' Exhibit Illuminates An Overlooked Art
By Marielle Shaw in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 19, 2016 4:39PM
Tattoos are personal. They're an ancient art formwildly popular today, yet sometimes controversialbut it's rare for the public to get an education on the art form itself. That's about to change for those of us lucky enough to visit The Field Museum starting this Friday, as the Tattoo exhibit opens to the public.
Tattoo, a special exhibition first developed for Paris' musee du quai Branly, features an impressive collection of artifacts from the very beginning of the art to the beautiful, unique forms it's taking as technology progresses.
Tattoo offers a far-reaching look at the often overlooked art form. The exhibit explores more than five thousand years of creative skin-marking practice from around the globe, spanning from ancient Egypt to the modern era; and it starts to feel more and more like a gallery showing as you progress through its corridors. There are beautifully tattooed silicone forms, amazing artifacts from each corner of the world that follow tattooing's 5000-year timeline, and absolutely stunning photography, featuring some of the most intricate, amazing tattoos we've ever seen.
The central message of the exhibition is about human creativity," Alaka Wali, curator of North American Anthropology, said in a release earlier this year. "Its important to understand creativitys different manifestations and not dismiss cultural practices and art forms because they were somehow stigmatized. The exhibition is going beyond the stereotype of tattoos to explore their aesthetics and artistry across cultures."
There's also a tattoo shop inside the exhibitsomething that not even the original exhibit in France was able to accomplish. The shop, which is a work of art in itself, will be manned each weekend by one of six local artists, including Joel Molina of Chicago Tattoo and Lance Lloyd of Taylor Street Tattoo who was at the gun during Tuesday's press opening. The roster of high-profile artists also includes Tine DeFiore (Black Oak Tattoo), Stephanie Brown (the recently shuttered Butterfat Studios) and Zach Stuka (Deluxe Tattoo).
Spots for tattooing at the Field's shop filled up fast, but if you'd still like a chance to get inked in exhibit, you can sign up for the waitlist. It looks like its flash only, but thats understandable considering the circumstances. Appointments cost $250 and include admission to "Tattoo." Check out booking and bio details here. And for those just curious, the shop offers a near-360-degree view of the artists in action
Tattoo represents an ambitious and thoroughly successful attempt by the Field Museum to educate people on the anthropological importance of tattooing, its global significance and how tattoos function as beautiful pieces of art and storytelling.
Tattoo opens to the public on Friday, Oct. 21 and will run through April 30, 2017. For more information, and to get tickets, click here.
Donna James Leads a Bold Plan to Revive Victorias Secret
James has a proven record as a C-suite executive and adviser. Now, shes guiding the lingerie giant toward a more inclusive, financially sound future.
Things to See and Do in and Around Columbus in November
With Apple set to announce new Macs next week, enterprise users may want to open their wallets to get hold of the new kit, as theres a big business case that says they should, according to IBM.
Up to $535 saving per Mac
IBM today told the record-setting seventh Jamf Nation User Conference that it is saving even more money by deploying Macs across the company than it thought: each Mac deployment saves the company up to $535 over four years, in contrast to the $270 per Mac it claimed last year.
Thats a hugely significant statistic for any Mac user and follows extensive use of the platform by IBM. IBM VP of Workplace as a Service, Fletcher Previn, told the conference that 90,000 employees are now using Macs, up from 30,000 in 2015. 100,000 of IBMs global workforce will be using Macs by the end of the year, he said, and the number is climbing.
There are lots of reasons for this, not least that better OS software means Apple needs to update its systems far less often than Microsoft updates Windows. "We have to go out and manage the Mac environment 104 fewer times a year than PC, Previn said.
When it comes to mobile devices, 65 percent of iOS users run the latest OS, while 60 percent of Android users are running an OS thats at least two years old.
IBM began replacing PCs with Macs in early 2015, when it began giving employees the choice to upgrade to a Mac when their company kit needed upgrading. The data speaks for itself, at IBM an astonishing 73 percent of employees will choose a Mac when they get the chance to choose for themself, Previn said.
Today, "Macs are the standard at IBM, Japan, and PCs are the exception," he said -- and seems to think this is the future across the rest of the company.
Time to switch
Thats a major enterprise deployment and highly significant, as the statistics the company is sharing are real world figures based on real world experience across one of the worlds biggest businesses. It also suggests small business users should focus on the platform, particularly in light of Intuits recent move to integrate Apple Pay in QuickBooks and Apples eminent suitability for modern business.
The icing on the user preference cake is that it turns out there are solid business reasons to encourage staff to move to Mac. Not only has the company been saving between $264-$535 for each Mac deployment over four years, but just 3.5 percent of employees using a Mac will call the company help desk, he said. Give employees the devices they want, manage those devices in a modern way, and drive self sufficiency in the environment, Previn explains.
My fair platform
This is fully in line with experiences shared in 2015, when Previn said just 5 percent of IBMs Mac users needed to call the help desk; In contrast, an astonishing 40 percent of PC staff request tech support help. At IBM last year just 25 staff supported 30,000 Macs.
Moving to Mac has also had a big impact on employee engagement at IBM, which climbed 10 percent year-on-year, with an employee survey attributing this freshened up enthusiasm to IBMs provision of better tools for IT. The company reports a hugely impressive 91 percent user satisfaction from its Mac users.
The longer this scheme runs the more compelling the business case becomes, he admits. I can confidently say every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money, Previn said in 2015.
Big news at Jamf
These are just some of the many big highlights emerging from this years record-breaking Apple IT administrator event from Jamf (formerly Jamf Software).
The company introduced new and improved Device Management solutions to help support Apple in the enterprise, including JAMF Now, which is so simple that any Apple user should be able to manage numerous devices in SMEs and up.
We want to provide a simple environment where anyone with or without tech skills can manage and deploy apps, Jamf CEO, Dean Hager told me.
In a refreshing philosophical departure from the complex management ecosystem of other platforms, he said, Managing your devices is not something you should have to spend too much intellectual capital on.
It also announced that the number of customers it serves has climbed rapidly. It now includes nine of the top ten banks; eight of the top ten universities, all ten top marketing groups and seven out of ten tech companies. Nineteen of the top 25 global organizations use Jamf to manage their Mac deployments.
Hager noted that even at the high-end enterprise level, once they become a Jamf customer, they remain a customer. The all-new Jamf Pro 10 was announced, this ships next year.
Closing Windows?
IBMs ringing endorsement of Apples platforms for use across the enterprise is just one of many in recent months. Cisco claims Apple delivers the worlds most innovative mobile tech, while Deloitte recently claimed Apple products are essential to the modern workforce. Just last month, Mike Gilfix, IBMs VP of Mobile First and Smarter Process told me: Swift is now ready for the enterprise.
As Apple introduces new Macs and as we see big enterprise names evangelize its platforms even as enterprise IT replacement budgets open up for another year, it will be interesting to see how big a slice of the PC industry Apple carves for itself in the next 12-months. We already know Macs are replacing PCs across the enterprise at an unprecedented rate.
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Police in the Czech Republic have arrested a Russian hacker suspected of targeting the U.S. for cybercrime.
Czech police, working in collaboration with the FBI, arrested the Russian man at a hotel in central Prague. The suspect, who was not identified, is in police custody and faces possible extradition to the U.S., depending on what the local courts decide, according to a statement from the Czech police.
The arrest comes as the U.S. has blamed the Russian government for hacking U.S. officials and political groups in an effort to influence this year's upcoming election. However, it's unclear if the Russian hacker is in any way involved.
On Wednesday, the FBI would only confirm that the suspect had been arrested. "Due to the ongoing investigation, no additional details can be provided at this time," the agency said in an email.
The Czech police said that the Russian citizen had been found traveling in a luxury car with his girlfriend. Upon his arrest, the man offered no resistance, but immediately collapsed and was later hospitalized. Czech police have released video of his arrest. His name is reportedly Yevgeniy N, according to the Associated Press.
Although the suspect may face extradition to the U.S., the Russian government reportedly is insisting that the man be returned to his home country.
"We are in contact with his attorney," said Russian embassy spokesman Andrey Kolmakov, according to the country's state-run news agency Tass. "Russia repudiates Washingtons policy of imposing its extraterritorial jurisdiction on all countries."
Russian and Eastern European cybercriminals are seen as possible culprits behind the data breaches involving LinkedIn and Yahoo, according to security experts. Those breaches stole details from hundreds of millions of user accounts, including hashed passwords, but the full scale of the intrusions have only recently come to light.
The idea of a smart gun -- a weapon that uses electronics and biometrics to limit who can fire it -- has been around for 15 years or so. But early prototypes often used outdated tech, weren't always reliable and would-be inventors had little R&D money to innovate.
That seems to be changing.
Computerworld writer Lucas Mearian explains how newer technologies like fingerprint sensors and updated RFID chips have opened the door to smart guns that might actually see success in the market. The public largely likes the idea, gun makers are on board and the White House has been pushing the idea as a way to curb gun violence.
One gun manufacturer thinks he's found just the target audience. And another is planning to roll out a new smart gun in the U.S. in 2017.
Shifting gears, Executive News Editor Ken Mingis gets an update from Multimedia Editor Keith Shaw -- a.k.a., the gadget guru -- on Sony's latest foray into VR and Lenovo's modestly priced but very cool Yoga Book. (Look, ma! No keyboard!)
For an audio podcast only, click play (or catch up on all episodes) below.
Happy listening, and please, send feedback or suggestions for future topics to us. We'd love to hear from you.
Todays workforce is defined by a familiar mantra: business users expect to be able to work from anywhere, at any time, while using any device, all without limitations. As such, mobile devices are rapidly becoming the conduit into the enterprise. However, these expectations for seamless access to information puts a strain on IT to create and support an environment where expectations meet reality.
The kicker? Users expect that experience to remain the same as they switch from their desktop interface to their smartphone or from their smartphone to a tablet, and back again, often multiple times per day. And, in some instances, users are not even using their own devices to access cloud-based applications and data meaning that traditional mobile device management solutions alone dont provide the functionality required for truly seamless access.
Its not just a functional issue. Often, security concerns keep businesses from fully realizing the advantage of mobile applications.
To change those perceptions, and enable the increasingly mobile user base, organizations need to embrace a robust identity management solution that protects the enterprise while making it easier for employees to consistently access their preferred browser-based and native mobile apps. Modern mobile identity management solutions should provide single sign-on capabilities for accessing both cloud-based and legacy applications and systems.
Single sign-on might be more important than some IT leaders think, especially when considering the number of cloud-based apps alone that a workforce accesses on a daily basis. In 2015, enterprise organizations ran an average of 18 cloud applications. By 2017, that number will nearly triple (52). Each app requires credentials, and with a fraction of these apps on a users device, sign-on can rapidly become a daunting, time-consuming task.
This only works if identity management is paired with a workspace solution with OS-native capabilities. Otherwise, even if the single sign on populates the device with the same apps each time the experience is often clunky and far from seamless. For instance, without OS-native capabilities, an apps ability to access device hardware and capabilities can lag or fail altogether. Unfortunately, a poor experience leads to users seeking alternatives. While 79% of consumers are willing to retry a mobile app only once or twice if it failed to work the first time, only 16% would give it more than two attempts.
The overarching goal of any identity management solution especially within the mobile arena is to ensure the level of security necessary to protect the business. This is especially true when IT doesnt have the luxury of always knowing what devices its workforce will leverage.
Identity management also represents an opportunity for IT to track app and device metrics, as well as provide an individual user or entire user base with credentials needed when the organization rolls out a new business app. Furthermore, it enables the use of customized app stores for simple, automated provisioning. Likewise, this layer of management means having the ability to revoke credentials just as easily as authorizing them crucial for when users leave a company or lose their phone.
Understandably, mobile identity management is continuing to evolve with various biometrics entering the scene, especially as the looming Internet of Things environment promises to introduce significantly more connected devices.
Beijing environmental authorities issued a yellow alert for air pollution on Tuesday afternoon, as smog is forecast for the capital for two days.
Pedestrians wearing masks walk on an overpass in the West Third Ring Road area in Beijing on Oct. 19, 2016. A yellow alert for air pollution was issued in the capital city on Tuesday. [Photo by Chen Boyuan for China.org.cn]
The yellow alert, the third-highest warning level, came shortly after smog eased Sunday. It means the Air Quality Index will exceed 200 for 48 hours.
Disadvantageous climatic conditions will contribute to the upcoming haze, according to the local emergency office for severe air pollution.
Residents have been advised to take protective measures, such as keeping their windows and doors closed and reducing outdoor activities. In addition, construction sites and factories have also been ordered to reduce emissions, and regulation of burning of straw must be enhanced, according to the city's contingency plan for severe air pollution.
The weather is expected to improve starting from the morning of Oct. 20 thanks to the arrival of a cold front.
Zhang Dawei, head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Monitoring Center, said the city experienced fifth of every year featuring climatic conditions that fail to help dispel smog.
Despite persistent haze this month, official data indicted improved air quality in the first nine months of this year. During the period, the density of fine particulate matter PM2.5 in Beijing decreased by 10.1 percent year-on-year.
Since the central government rolled out an action plan on air pollution control in 2013, Beijing has seen the amount of burned coal reduced by 48 percent, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau announced Tuesday.
Fang Li, deputy head of the bureau, said the watchdog has fined more than 60 million yuan (8.9 million U.S. dollars) in over 10,000 law-breaking cases this year.
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Prime Minister rejects First Ministers demand for single market guarantee
The battle of wills between Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon continued this week, Downing Street rejecting the First Ministers demands for Scotland to receive a separate immigration policy andaccess to the single market.
May has shown a steeliness on Westminsters constitutional mandate on too often missing from unionist politics what the Sunday Post called fighting talk a Number Ten spokeswoman is quoted as saying: Theres a very clear delineation between issues that are reserved and devolved.
As I wrote earlier this week, Brexit has put the SNP in a bind: Sturgeon acted as received wisdom recommended by reviving separation after the vote in June, but is now trapped between energised activists and an unwilling electorate.
Nationalists are already floating ways by which the threat of Indyref 2 could be averted, and the current consensus amongst observers is that they are looking for ways to secure yet more powers! and back out with a further erosion of Britain. David Cameron would likely have buckled.
May seems much less likely to do so, and if so her courage is not without foundation: both the Heralds political editor and a leading Yes campaigner said this week that the separatist cause, and party, might have peaked.
Northern Irish Tories disquiet at Partys closeness to the DUP
Earlier this week, the Irish News broke the story that the NI Conservatives, as our provincial branch is sadly called, were mulling a formal complaint to the Party Chairman about the increasingly cosy relationship between the national Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist Party.
The focus of their concern was a hastily-reversed decision by James Brokenshire, the Northern Irish Secretary and so-called protege of the Prime Minister, to address a DUP fundraising dinner. As Stephen Bush put it in the New Statesman, Brokenshire has been at the forefront of the Tory charm offensive:
Brokenshire has already made a good start, impressing Stormonts politicians and helping with the wooing of the DUP at Westminster. That task has gone so well that, on most issues, the government starts with a working majority of 32 rather than its Conservative-only one of 16.
As I explained this week, despite the risks there are clear incentives and opportunities for both parties in striking a deal, provided it were done on the right terms.
May is a unionist by instinct and needs the DUPs eight Parliamentary votes. Arlene Foster, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, cant take the usual easy out of devolutionary politics and rail against London because her party campaigned for Brexit: they own it.
That need to make our departure from the EU work has injected a new, pan-UK dimension to her historically parochial party, and could yet drive it closer to the Tories in ways I didnt think of earlier this week.
For example if Foster were to embrace the case that EU subsidies have masked the fundamental weakness of the Ulster economy, it could justify shifting the DUPs economic position towards that of the Conservatives.
Former Plaid leader quits party to sit as independent
Wales Online reports that Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, a former leader of the Welsh Nationalists and one-time Presiding Officer of the Welsh Assembly, has resigned from the party.
The site describes it as a hammer blow to Plaid, coming as it does a week before their annual conference. His decision brings the party back down to 11 AMs the same number Andrew RT Davies Conservatives, whom they overtook in May.
Its also a boon to Labour. Lord Elis-Thomas cited Leanne Woods failure to work constructively with Carwyn Jones administration as one of his reasons for walking out (although he had wider differences with Wood). Hes unlikely to join the government as the last Liberal Democrat AM did, but will likely still provide welcome support.
Had he got his way and Plaid joined Labour in coalition, however, it would have left the Tories and UKIP as the only major opposition options available to Welsh voters. He may not have liked the results.
Blair accused of appeasing IRA with amnesty to secure legacy as peacemaker
Back in 2014, this column ran several items on the unfolding scandal of the so-called Comfort Letters, documents issued to IRA on-the-runs (OTRs) assuring them they didnt face arrest which collapsed the trial of one of the men believed to be behind the 1982 Hyde Park bombing.
Summoned to appear before Parliaments Northern Ireland committee, Tony Blair warned the Government not to tamper with the scheme, lest it jeopardise the peace he had secured in the province.
Now the Belfast Telegraph reports that a new book, by barrister Austen Morgan, makes the case that the then-Prime Minister and Jonathan Powell, his Northern Ireland envoy, over-egged the threat of IRA violence to rush a deal through before Gordon Brown succeeded him in 2007.
He also claims that Blair made several legal judgements which prevented judicial reviews which might have proved fatal to the OTR scheme.
P.S. This piece by Nick Cohen in the Spectator about the gagging of Stephen Daisley, an STV journalist, by SNP pressure is well worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.
A national interest view of Syrias terrible war to peer at it through a Theresa May-friendly lens might judge Assad the lesser of two evils. The country has become a proxy for war between Sunni and Shiite Islam, with Saudi Arabia backing the opposition (or parts of it) and Iran backing the government. Iran is not an ally, but neither is Shiite terror being exported to the bars, newspaper offices and shops of Paris or London. Saudi Arabia is one, but attacks on civilians in the West, from 9/11 through 7/7 and beyond, have been inextricably bound up with the Wahabi version of Sunnism that dominates that country. ISIS is a futher twist in the pattern than brought us Al Qaeda. So let Assad blast ISIS to smithereens, the logic runs, and good for him.
There are at least three problems with this viewpoint. The first is a humanitarian one. One estimate claims that Assads regime is responsible for 95 per cent of roughly 400,000 civilian deaths enough to fill Wembley Stadium four times over. Even if that percentage is exaggerated, Syrias Government is guilty of horrible atrocities. To support Assad, rather than wish a plague on both or all houses in the fight, is to excuse them. But a national interest view will be unmoved by this case. The second is more practical. Britains Muslim population is largely Sunni. To back Assad or even to stay neutral is to act as a recruiting sergeant for ISIS, and to encourage the flow of young British Muslims to Syria to fight against him.
However, it can be argued and with justification that Britain should not frame its foreign policy to please the more extreme forms of Sunni Islam. National interest first. And that if British Muslims journey to Syria to fight they should be allowed to return back, or at least be charged with offences when they do. The third problem with support for Assad is more persuasive from a national interest point of view. It is an illusion to believe that Assad is really fighting ISIS at all. He has instead been targetting other parts of the Syrian opposition much of it Islamist, bits of it not rather than ISIS itself. He doesnt want to knock the latter down, at least yet; he wants to build it up, in order to present the West with a stark choice: ISIS or me.
There are other practical difficulties with simply piling Britains eggs in Assads basket. The Sunni world is far bigger than the Shiite one, and there may be diplomatic and perhaps economic consequences if we do all at a time when, as Brexit looms, we need to keep and build our trading links. But the final problem is far bigger. Not so long ago, Assad was losing the war, but now he is winning it and all because of the direct intervention of Russia. It is Russian bunker buster bombs that are blasting underground hospitals in Aleppo. It is Russian planes that bomb the White Helmets who seek to dig civilians out of the Syrian rubble. It is Russia that is playing double or quits in military terms before America can elect a new President. Putin is racing against the clock to win the war.
Barack Obamas Syrian policy is passive. A President Clinton might well take the John Kerry view and be more active, perhaps ramping up sanctions against Moscow. But whether she does or doesnt or whether she is elected at all Russias role in Syria should give anyone concerned with our national interest reason to think deeply. Russia is not exactly an enemy. We need its help in Afghanistan and with Iran. But nor are its authoritarian rulers allies. Wherever the blame may lie in the continuing story of Ukraines troubles, we are signed up as part of NATO to defend the Baltic States. And the long and short of it is that Russia increasingly sees itself as top dog or at least as a growing dog while America broods in its kennel. Obama is a sign of this; so, more dramatically, is Donald Trump.
To grasp the scale of the change, have a look at the Israel-Palestine problem. America was once the actor who sought to solve it. For better or worse, Obama hasnt tried to. Putin is stepping into the gap. He is making overtures to Netanyahu and Abbas, inviting them to a summit. Even the Saudis, who seem to be giving up in Syria, are recalibrating, nervously asking themselves whether they should be knocking on Moscow rather than Washingtons door. The Foreign Office, still struggling to come to terms with Brexit, will be keeping a nervous eye on these developments. There is a danger that, at some point in the future, an over-confident Russia miscalculates and seeks to destablise or, worse, dismember the Baltic States or push into the western part of Ukraine.
A lobby in the Commons, powered as much by humanitarian concern as geopolitical calculation, wants an international coalition to impose a no-bombing zone in Syria. This is for the birds during whats left Obamas presidency. That might change if Clinton wins. But it presents considerable obstacles to sober thought. Yes, Russia might stop bombing civilians. But then again, it might not. What then? And while Russia might not be able to strike back directly at such a coalitions forces, it could instead expand its activities in other theatres such as the Ukraine. This would be seriously destabilising. Furthermore, the imposition of a no bomb zone could boost Sunni jihadis in the short-term while not stopping Assad in the medium. That sounds like the worst of all worlds.
Obamas policy has been to cut a deal with Iran and, in dealing with Russia, essentially confirm a policy of spheres of interest. He has judged that Syria, like the eastern part of the Ukraine, lies within Russias sphere. There is a pragmatic case for this brutal realpolitik. But allowing autocrats rather than democrats to set the pace in the Middle East has consequences. It is also puzzling in terms of fundamentals. Americas economy may have its problems, but they are nothing compared to Russias. The Eagle still packs a more powerful punch than the Bear. A President Clinton will need to pick up the pieces and help reinforce NATOs presence in the Baltic States further. Military intervention in Syria looks like a risk too far. Tightening sanctions on Russia a notch does not.
Typhoon Sarika, the 21st typhoon of the year, made landfall in south China's Hainan Tuesday morning as torrential rain and gales lashed the island province.
Branches are broken in typhoon-hit Qionghai City, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 18, 2016. Typhoon Sarika, the 21st typhoon of the year, made landfall at Hainan Province Tuesday morning. [Photo: Xinhua]
The tropical cyclone, with maximum winds of up to 162 km per hour recorded in the eye of the storm, landed at Hele Town, Wanning City, at 9:50 a.m., according to the local meteorological bureau.
The National Meteorological Center issued a red alert, its highest-level alert, for Sarika, Tuesday morning.
Nearly half a million people, including fishermen and residents in low-lying areas and unsafe houses in Hainan, have been evacuated as of Tuesday afternoon, said Ding Sheng, a disaster relief official with the Hainan Civil Affairs Department.
The department has allocated relief materials such as tents and quilts, food and water to the typhoon-affected areas, he said.
Xinhua reporters saw waves surge and trees fall from the storm in coastal Wanning. The municipal authorities said more than 137,000 residents have been evacuated.
The typhoon also caused power cuts in parts of neighboring city Qionghai. Sections of the Wenqu River breached its banks and cut off road access for many in the city's Wanquan Township.
At the main airport, Meilan International Airport, in the provincial capital Haikou City, 250 flights were canceled Tuesday morning, authorities said.
High speed train services were halted starting Monday. Nearly 8,000 wireless communication base stations also began to disfunction due to the weather.
Local traffic police reported that gales and wet roads were to blame for the overturning of a passenger bus carrying 45 people on one of Hainan's major highways Monday night. Severe waterlogging was reported in some counties and low-lying rural areas, in addition to landslides and mud-flows on Tuesday. Fortunately, there were no casualties.
However, 31 cattle in Dongxing, Wanning, where the storm landed, were electrocuted Tuesday morning by a falling high-voltage line, which ran above the animals' shed. The residents of the farm were evacuated to a safe building on Monday evening.
Provincial meteorological station chief Cai Qinbo previously predicted losses from the typhoon would be "grave," as the cyclone was projected to be the most powerful and destructive to land in Hainan in a decade.
Cai drew an analogy between Sarika and a typhoon that hit Hainan in 2005 which triggered flash floods, destroyed roads and plantations.
From 8 a.m. Monday to 1 p.m. Tuesday, four townships in Hainan reported more than 300 mm of rainfall, according to the provincial meteorological station.
Classes have been suspended in kindergartens, middle and primary schools in eight counties in the province, and tourist sites are closed to the public. Residents and tourists have been warned against hiking or strolling along the beaches.
Authorities have also ordered safety checks of reservoirs and power and water supplies, while demanding that fishery and farming entities take extra precautions.
To brace for Sarika, some coastal scenic spots in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were closed Tuesday. Nearly 8,000 tourists from Weizhou Island were evacuated Monday.
Sarika has also brought gales with a maximum speed of around 100 km per hour to the waters off Guangdong Province and six-meter-high offshore waves, according to the provincial flood control authorities.
Apple Picking
When you arrive, you'll have to make a tough decision!
Do head out into the orchard to pick your own apples or grab a few half-pecks of the pre-picked apples that are laid out under the main shed?
There's something about eating a big bag of apples that you picked with your own hands, but to get those prized apples, you've got to walk quite a ways up and down several hills.
As I mentioned before, we've been to Sky Top Orchard once a year for over a decade now, so I've roamed all over the property in various states of parenthood.
The year we visited when I was pregnant with my second kid, it was unseasonably warm, and I was even more turtle like than normal.
Despite my obvious pregnancy waddle, we went for the you-pick option that year and slooooowly made our way to the Granny Smith rows, which were, naturally, one of the furthest available apple types.
Two Chinese beggars with severe physical deformities were followed for two days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by a couple of reporters from The Star. The reporters also found at least 30 beggars in Petaling Street, reported the Reference News on Tuesday, October 18.
Transnational gangs are maiming and disfiguring Chinese children, keeping them captive for a number of years before sending them to Malaysia on tourist visas to beg in holiday hot spots, the reports said.
33-year-old Xiu Yuan was one of the victims of the gang.
He said he was born healthy but was abducted and maimed by the gang when he was young, and brought to Malaysia years later.
Another beggar Do Feng, 30, from Zhengzhou, said they could collect as much as 3,000 Malaysia ringgits (around 4,800 yuan) on weekends.
The amount of money they could get usually depended on the degree their disabilities could provoke sympathy from people, Do said.
The reports said the gang's leaders appeared a few hours later to collect the money and the beggars returned to their hotel rooms.
Increasingly, Chinese couples are waiting to adopt children as a result of the one child policy. A policy made difficult through official channels. As a result, they started to turn to internet adoption, the Reference News cited a western media earlier.
People can easily reach adoption information through online forums and advisements in China, however, child trafficking cases have been increasing as a consequence, the report said.
China had 502,000 orphans by the end of 2015, among which 92,000 are available for adoption. There were 22,000 registered adoption cases in the same year, according to media reports.
Children of Se ethnic group sit in front of a monument that reads "China's No. 1 Poverty Relief Village" at Chixi Village, Panxi town, Fuding city in East Chinas Fujian province, Feb 14. The village has shaken off poverty thanks to assistance from Party and government officials at all levels over the past 30 years. [Photo/Xinhua]
Every year, the international day for the eradication of poverty unites world leaders in seeking to show tangible progress and create prosperity for citizens without discrimination. Some data, however, isn't very encouraging, even for developed countries.
A recent Eurostat survey shows approximately 119 million people (23.7 percent of the population) in the European Union were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2015. Although this is a slight decrease in comparison to previous years, it is still higher than in the pre-financial crisis period.
Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy have the biggest problem due to the dramatic consequences of austerity measures.
If the situation in developed countries can prove problematic, it is apparently even more complex in developing ones no matter how they measure poverty. The case which subsequently deserves particular attention is that of China for two main reasons.
First, the country has the largest population so that the numbers facing poverty can easily become headline-making. According to World Bank data, China had 1.371 billion inhabitants in 2015 followed by India with 1.311 billion.
Second, however, the country has already made an enormous contribution to poverty reduction and this performance constitutes a model for its own future policies as well as an example for other states.
A new White Paper provides useful numbers. Specifically, more than 700 million Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty over the past three decades. In addition, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from 61 percent in 1990 to 4.2 percent in 2014.
The 2015 Report of the UN Millennium Development Goals makes special reference to the "central role" played by China in global reduction of poverty. That is because the country had met all relevant UN objectives including the achievement of gender parity in primary schools and the increase of access to clean drinking water.
Steady development of several sectors of the national economy and the implementation of market-oriented reforms were the keys to this success.
The systematic effort of the Chinese administration to eradicate poverty has also led international bodies to study its potential applicability to other cases. From 2009, for instance, the UN World Food Program argued that steps taken in China in the past could help reduce hunger in developing countries.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a study one year later drawing on lessons for African countries from China's experience in transforming agriculture despite major historical and geographical differences.
Several scholars have also elaborated on similar comparisons in their research and this theme has become familiar in academic journals.
However, this is not the right time for triumphalism or relaxation. The mission of the Chinese government has not been accomplished yet. In fact, more work needs to be done as approximately 70 million people still live under the poverty line.
President Xi Jinping is committed to completely eliminating the problem by 2020. The 13th Five-Year Plan includes measures addressing social imbalances and protecting rural residents. Relocation to urban centers will continue. Moreover, local administrations have a big responsibility to share the economic burden while the central government keeps up spending.
Specific measures themselves as stipulated in the 13th Five-Year Plan are certainly important for the government to keep its promises. These measures also reflect Beijing's will to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Premier Li Keqiang focuses on this goal last month in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly.
However, what is perhaps even more important is the existence of a vision for the future that can inspire people. As long as the "New Normal" is marking the course of the Chinese economy, a different type of growth must be pursued.
Quantity gives way to quality as consumption, protection of the environment and innovation become fundamental parameters of Beijing's economic strategy.
There is no better investment for the next decade guaranteeing affluence than the efficient education of the younger generation. Knowledge and qualifications will be critical for the long-term improvement of living condition within the continuously modernizing Chinese society.
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.
Flash
Russian and Syrian air forces have halted airstrikes against Syria's Aleppo from 10 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on Tuesday ahead of a humanitarian pause set for Thursday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.
"This will ensure the safety of exit of civilians via six corridors and to prepare the wounded in the eastern part of Aleppo for evacuation," Shoigu said.
By the start of the humanitarian pause Syrian troops will withdraw a certain distance, allowing the militants with their weapons to freely leave eastern Aleppo by two corridors, he added.
He also urged countries that have influence on the armed groups in the eastern part of Aleppo to persuade their leaders to cease hostilities and leave the city.
The Russian Defense Ministry Monday announced a pause in strikes against rebel-controlled areas in the city of Aleppo for eight hours from 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) till 4 p.m. (1300 GMT) local time on Oct. 20.
Russian warplanes and Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have restarted strikes against rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo since the collapse of the ceasefire agreement reached between Moscow and Washington last month.
Flash
Iraqi security forces on Tuesday recaptured more villages from the Islamic State (IS) militants, as part of a major offensive aimed at liberating the city of Mosul, the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, a security source said.
The Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces launch military operations in Khazar village, 35 kilometers south of Mosul, Iraq, on Oct. 18, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]
On the west side of the Tigris River, the Iraqi forces and allied paramilitary Sunni and Shiite Hashd Shaabi units, backed by Iraqi and U.S-led coalition aircraft, recaptured the villages of Lihoud, Abbasiyah, Khuder al-Yas, Bajwaniyah and Tal al-Samen, while moving north to the IS-held town of Shoura, some 30km south of Mosul, a security source from the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
On the east side of the river, the army forces also cleared several villages while moving to the IS-held town of Hamdaniyah, some 40 km southeast of Mosul, the source said.
On Tuesday afternoon, the troops arrived at the southwestern edge of Hamdaniyah and shelled IS positions inside the town in preparation for a battle to recapture it.
Meanwhile, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces east of Mosul suspended fighting and advance, as they are reorganizing their ranks to prepare for more battles, the source said.
Early on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is also the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi forces, announced the start of a major offensive to retake the country's second largest city from the extremist IS group.
"Today I declare the launch of the operation of liberating Nineveh province. The time of victory has come, and the moment of the great victory is approaching," Abadi said in a brief address aired on Al Iraqiya.
Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
Timor oil and gas
Sea of greed
Last month the Permanent Court of Arbitration rejected Australias claim it had no jurisdiction to conciliate the dispute in the Timor Sea. This means Australia must come to the table and negotiate with East Timor.
But Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has been quick to note that Australia will not be bound by the international panels outcome. At the end of the day, Timors deal will still come down to what the Australian government thinks they can get away with.
Under the UN International Law of the Sea, all the areas presently being drilled are in East Timors half of the Sea. The reason successive Australian governments have forced East Timor, the poorest nation in our region, to defer making a decision on the maritime boundary for 50 years is precisely because they know that Australias position is untenable under international law and the UN Law of the Sea. This would very quickly become apparent if the decision was decided by an independent international authority.
The treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) was signed in 2006 between the Howard government and the government of Timor-Leste (East Timor). The negotiations had been tense over the years. Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and the ruling Fretilin party were opposed to the maritime boundary between the two countries not being drawn half-way between them but closer to Timor-Leste along the seabed limits of the continental shelf. The theft had been agreed between the Hawke Labor government and Indonesias Suharto dictatorship with a treaty in 1989 and the boundary was a major factor in Australias hypocritical, indulgent stance towards Indonesias invasion of East Timor in 1975 (see below).
In 2004, the then Howard government Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer promised to give Alkatiri a lesson in politics for his pursuit of his struggling countrys interests. It would get royalties from a Joint Petroleum Development Area and thats it. Alkatiri would soon be removed from office in coup-like circumstances. The Howard government refused international arbitration on the maritime boundary. The Australian public knew about the humiliation of Timor-Lestes representatives in 2004 but it would not have been aware that Australian spies had bugged government offices in Timor-Leste so that Howards negotiators would have the drop on their local counterparts.
Some years later, a veteran spy told Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery about the shameful operation he had been involved in. Collaery was acting for the government of Timor-Leste at the International Court of justice in The Hague. The Timorese want the current treaty scrapped and a new one drawn up. They insist the negotiations that led to CMATS were not entered into in good faith by Australia, a fact confirmed by the whistle-blowers revelations.
But rather than move to repair damaged relations, the Abbott government turned on Collaery and Witness K the remorseful former ASIS agent and the government of Timor-Leste. ASIO raided the lawyers Canberra office and seized large numbers of files. Witness K has had his passport confiscated to prevent him giving evidence on the matter at The Hague. They could both be slapped with criminal charges.
Attorney-General George Brandis insisted the heavy-handed actions were in the oft-cited national interest. But they are ultimately in the interest of oil and gas companies (such as generous Liberal Party donor Woodside Petroleum).
Woodside is a huge Australian company and they were proposing to invest billions of dollars in Greater Sunrise [oil and gas field] to create wealth, which would inter alia have been wealth for Australians, but obviously substantially for the East Timorese as well. So I was all in favour of that. I was all in favour of it, Alexander Downer told Marian Wilkinson of the ABCs Four Corners program.
Five eyes spies
Australian security agencies spy on their own citizens and they help the US, UK and others to do so, too. The five eyes the intelligence networks belonging to the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand help each other to keep tabs on individuals, groups, political, military and other developments of interest across the globe. Australia is a junior member of this club and most people realise its basic purpose is to serve US strategic interests, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
Despite this deputy-sheriff status, Australia has considerable spooking capacity of its own and, puts this at the service of transnationals operating in Australia. Nothing is allowed to get in the way of the national interest; not even if it means cheating one the worlds poorest nations out of much of its potential oil and gas revenues.
No-one from the governments ranks would comment on the spying allegations but there is plenty of ominous talk about grave consequences for Timor-Leste if it persists with its legal challenge to CMATS. The Abbott government was fuming on investors behalf that Timor-Leste stood up for a pipeline to allow processing of offshore resources on its territory rather than aboard a floating plant. At the same time, Australia poses as a friend and generous benefactor to our northern neighbour.
Peter Galbraith, head negotiator for Timor-Leste in 2004, was not fooled. His reaction to the spying revelations says it all about Australias deteriorating reputation in the region. You know, its hard to imagine that would really be done by a friendly government and especially for what were essentially commercial negotiations. That really seems there wasnt a national security issue here for Australia. It wasnt as if, you know, the Timorese were posing some kind of military threat or hatching some kind of plot. This was really bugging for commercial advantage, he told Four Corners.
At issue in the maritime border dispute are royalties estimated at between $10 billion and $20 billion over the next 30 years. Australia has sucked in over $2.1 billion from royalties on the oil and gas in question since 1999. With its fair share of these funds, East Timor could meet the needs of its people and build some financial security. Without it, as Oxfams policy director James Ensor pointed out, the country runs the risk of joining the ranks of failed states in the region.
Origins of dispute
The current dispute has its origins in Australias relations with and support for the brutal Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia (see page 4). In 1972, Australia obtained an agreement from Indonesia that the end of the continental shelf to our north west would be the boundary between Australia and Timor even though the border is only 60 kilometres from the coast of East Timor.
On the eve of Indonesias invasion in 1975, Australias then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcroft, advised the Whitlam government that Indonesia would be easier to deal with over the natural resources in the Timor Sea than the government of the newly-independent, former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Australia stood by and 24 years of genocidal occupation by Indonesias military followed.
In 1989 Foreign Minister in the Hawke Labor government Gareth Evans and Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alitas toasted a deal to share out the oil and gas resources off the coast of Timor from the comfort of a jet flying high above the stolen territory.
In 2002, the Australian government withdrew from UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) negotiations in the International Court of Justice. In circumstances like those involving Australia and East Timor, UNCLOS lays down that the border of the states should be the median line drawn halfway between them.
Such an arrangement would see East Timor in charge of 90 percent of the Seas oil and gas. As it stands, it gets 90 percent of the royalties from the Bayu Undan field within the Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) described in the Timor Sea Treaty of 2002. However, the largest fields by far Laminaria and Greater Sunrise are located outside the JPDA and from these East Timor will only get 20 percent of the royalties on the Greater Sunrise gas field. It should be noted that the Laminaria field is totally within East Timors half of the Timor Sea as are most of the Sunrise and Troubador fields.
East Timor has refused to ratify the Timor Sea Treaty. It wants Australia to return to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and UNCLOS for the adjudication of the maritime boundary. It wants the royalties from the fields outside the JPDA to be held in trust (escrow) until the dispute is finalised.
1965 Indonesia bloodbath
A US/Australian coup
In a 1965 fascist coup in Indonesia led by army generals including Major General Suharto (who became president), the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), third largest in the world, was virtually wiped out.
President Sukarno of Indonesia shaking hands with Robert Menzies during Menzies visit to Indonesia in 1959.
Although accused of planning and even attempting an armed coup, it is clear that the PKI in fact was largely unarmed and in no way contemplating military action. Its members were unable to offer meaningful resistance to the wave of terror unleashed against them by Generals Nasution and Suharto.
The coup which saw the deaths of around one million people involved the US Embassy with US Ambassador Marshall Green actively supporting the army-organised orgy of killing: consulting with leaders of anti-Communist death squads, arranging for the US Information Agency to beam anti-PKI propaganda over the radio and orchestrating an international media barrage to push the Indonesian Armys cover story of a Communist coup.
Green rejoiced in the slaughter of Communist leaders, the forced closing of the Communist university (and the banning of leftist student organisations), and the sacking of PKI bookstores.
The Suharto-Nasution clique were of a like mind with the US about the necessity to undermine the prestige of China in Indonesia.
The generals sought the aid of the US to alert the Indonesian people to the dangers of association with Communist China using the techniques of psychological warfare which the US was only too happy to supply.
US Embassy cables also pointed to the US covertly supplying weapons to the Indonesian Army for the arming of the civilian anti-communist groups that at one stage were killing 50-100 PKI members every night in Central Java alone.
Under President Sukarno, Indonesia had become a leading force in the non-aligned movement, a major impediment to US efforts to roll back Communism and to isolate China, in particular.
It is inconceivable that the US government would just sit back and wait hopefully for something to happen in Indonesia to change that situation.
US diplomats and CIA agents would have been working flatout to bring that change about and nobody in the world is more proactive than the State Department and the CIA.
To prevent Sarawak and North Borneo eventually becoming part of left-leaning Indonesia, they had been brought in 1963 into a federation with newly independent but staunchly anti-Communist Malaya, to be called Malaysia.
Indonesia objected, and in 1965 US allies Britain and Australia joined in sending troops to Borneo. (Australia was as concerned as the US about rolling back Communism: in April that same year it had committed the first Australian troops to Vietnam.)
At the same time, the policies and practices of US oil companies in Indonesia, as in other parts of the developing world, were causing concern in Jakarta.
The countrys huge and much needed oil wealth was going to enrich Caltex rather than the people of Indonesia.
Sukarno went so far as to threaten to break diplomatic relations with the US and to nationalise US oil assets. Perbum, the Communist-led oil workers union, was very active in defending the rights and conditions of Caltexs Indonesian employees.
Indonesias Foreign Minister, Subandrio, claimed Western diplomats were conspiring with senior Indonesia army officers to kill or otherwise eliminate Sukarno.
In late October, a US diplomat reported from Riau province in Sumatra: Army has raided PKI leaders houses and informed Caltex management it plans on October 29 to arrest key leaders of communist oil workers union Perbum, which forms core of PKI structure in that province.
A declassified Australian Embassy report tells how the Army dealt with worker unrest. The Army would assemble the workforce of the factory or mine and ask them whether they wish to continue work as usual. Those who decline are asked again and, unless they change their mind, summarily shot.
The US and Australian governments eagerly supported one of the worst bloodbaths of the 20th century because it was basically good for business.
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Turkey's National Intelligence Agency (MIT) issued warnings against imminent attacks by the Islamic State (IS) group in five Turkish provinces, reported the daily Cumhuriyet on Tuesday.
According to MIT's report, terrorists might target Istanbul, Ankara, the southeastern province of Gaziantep, the southern province of Antalya and the western province of Izmir.
The report added that the five provinces were high-risk areas and that public transport is also an IS militants' target. Metros, buses, bridges, airports, bus terminals and sea transport were listed as IS targets.
The agency warned that the Eurasia Tunnel is also an IS target. The tunnel is scheduled to connect Istanbul's European and Asian regions in December.
"The terrorist group is seeking an attack targeting the Turkish aviation sector," MIT said in the report citing "intelligence information was received on militants planning to sneak explosives or sharp objects such as knives and razors onto airplanes hidden inside electronic devices."
"The danger of attacks has increased in recent days," MIT declared.
Fed up with no respect
During a two-day on-country meeting at Yule River last month, more than 350 Aboriginal traditional owners, Elders and community members passed a resolution of no confidence in Western Australias Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Collier.
Western Australias Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Collier.
The group passed a further resolution around the WA Regional Services Reform units roadmap, which focuses on the state governments blueprint for Aboriginal communities. Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation (YMAC) chief executive Simon Hawkins said the message from traditional owners around WA was loud and clear.
Aboriginal people in WA are fed up with Minister Colliers blatant disrespect for their culture, heritage and traditions, he said. Aboriginal people want the people who are in control of their heritage to be held accountable.
Traditional owners want answers, and they want to be included in the decisions that will ultimately affect their way of life.
YMAC co-chair and Njamal Elder Doris Eaton urged people to unite and speak with one voice. Its about looking after our community, our next generation and our heritage, she said. We need to come together as one Aboriginal people. We need to fight. We have to come together as a nation, as one cultural nation.
It saddens me that this year our minister, who holds our future, did not attend. This is the third year weve come together at Yule River, and we come together as one, as human beings. But he has no respect for us.
Resolutions were passed unanimously by the group, and given to Regional Development Minister Terry Redman to take back to Parliament. They were:
that Aboriginal people be front and centre in designing and implementing regional and remote service reforms;
that the state government acknowledge the significant contribution Aboriginal corporations make each year in the form of funding, infrastructure and service delivery and involve them directly in decision-making about services reforms;
that both state and federal governments be more transparent and accountable as to the existing spend on Aboriginal services in regional and remote communities; and
that at the ministerial level, Peter Collier, who is Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and chair of the Aboriginal Affairs Cabinet subcommittee, be more responsive and accountable for the impact on Aboriginal people in the region.
The Koori Mail
Culture & Life
Doctors not missionaries
I see that, in Poland, the reality of what the overthrow of Socialism really means is finally beginning to sink in. About time, I hear you say? Well, yes, but remember the unfortunate history of the country, wedged between and until WW1, actually divided between Tsarist Russia, an expansionist Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The justly-named Great War put an end to all three of those empires.
Polish women protest against abortion ban.
After WW1, an independent Poland safely under the domination of its landed gentry was established as a buffer against the danger of Revolutionary Russia. Anti-Russian sentiment was encouraged and the all-powerful Catholic Church exerted all its influence to oppose Russia and Godless Communism. The ruling landlords were more than happy to support such policies. As early as 1921, thanks in part to the foolishly provocative machinations of Trotsky, Poland went to war with Soviet Russia and seized a large chunk of territory which the USSR did not recover for 20 years.
In the decade prior to WW2, while Nazi Germany developed its armed might and prepared for a war of imperial conquest, a war in which the German army would of necessity have to pass through Poland, landlords Poland prepared for war not with Germany but with its large neighbour Russia. Polish cavalry rehearsed invading the Russian steppe, Polish governments refused to co-operate with any moves to restrict German aggression, Polish diplomacy supported every anti-Soviet action. At Munich, Poland even seized its share of Czechoslovakia, blind to what was clearly looming on its own horizon.
Although Britain and France had both guaranteed Polands security, only the USSR was in a position to actually do so and that the Polish gentry resolutely refused to countenance. So when Hitler finally invaded and the Anglo-French guarantees proved in fact to be worthless, the Polish government fled the country. The Red Army moved to occupy the territory seized by Poland in 1921 and deny it to the invading Nazis.
Thousands of Polish Jews were evacuated to the east. When they returned at the end of the war, they were shocked to find themselves reviled by Polish Catholics, who pelted their trains with stones and shouted at them to Go home we dont want you here!
Poland was almost the only European country where the Communists were unable to unify the anti-Nazi Resistance movement. Polish workers and poor peasants, led by the Communists, formed a partisan army to fight the Nazis but anti-Communist and anti-Soviet Polish nationalists formed the Armia Krajowa (the notorious AK). The latter was far more interested in fighting Communists than Nazis, with whom they were politically in sympathy.
Specially trained groups of AK terrorists waylaid and murdered Red Army soldiers and spokesmen for the [Soviet-backed] Warsaw regime. ... AK terrorists killed 594 Red Army officers and men over a period of eight months ...(Sayers & Kahn, The Great Comspiracy).
The Catholic Church in Poland was fiercely anti-Communist as well as anti-Jewish. The Nazi propaganda that had equated Jews and Communists was eagerly absorbed by the priest-ridden Polish nationalists. After the war, the country was awash with weapons and the former members of the Armia Krajova and bandit groups such as the so-called Forrest Brothers were easily able to turn to terrorism in their attempts to stop the formation of collective farms or the establishment of state or collective enterprises. Communist activists were assassinated with frightening frequency.
When the Nazis retreated from Eastern Europe, the Abwehr left cells of intelligence agents behind to organise espionage and sabotage for after the war. This network was taken over in full by the US. Nowhere did it have as much support as in Poland, thanks in large part to the unfortunate role of the Catholic Church.
Like all the Socialist countries, post-war Poland had to exist in conditions of economic and political siege. This inevitably caused problems, but these could have been surmounted as they have been in Cuba, for example, if the Party had had the full support of the people. In Poland, however, the Partys support was patchy at best.
US and other imperialist intelligence agencies worked assiduously behind the scenes and US propaganda services worked openly and equally assiduously to destabilise Socialist Poland, disrupt its economy and discredit Socialism itself. The demagogue Lech Walesa was able to opportunistically use real grievances in the Gdansk shipyards to create an anti-Communist union, which he called Solidarity and which imperialism and the ultra-left embraced with equal delight.
After 1989, and the overthrow of Socialism in most of Eastern Europe, an outcome greatly facilitated by the machinations of Gorbachev, Lech Walesa became President of the new anti-Communist Poland. The term Communist and Communist symbols such as the hammer and sickle were banned and still are.
Democratic elections were held under conditions that guaranteed success for a far-right government, which has taken Poland into NATO, engaged in joint exercises with the US rehearsing a war against Russia, and overseen the destruction of the countrys ship-building industry. Poland is now economically subservient to Germany where many of its workers must now seek employment if they do not want to starve.
Astonishingly, in these conditions, Polands far-right government at the behest of the Catholic Church has sought to overturn some of the basic rights that date back to the countrys Socialist past. The Church has proposed a new law that would make it almost impossible for women to get abortions.
That the Catholic Church, or indeed any church, can put forward laws is itself a sad commentary on the countrys political situation, dominated as it is by right-wing extremism. But all is not lost. Thousands of Polish women declared a national strike against the new law. Over 5,000 angry women marched in Warsaw on what they dubbed Black Monday in mourning for their reproductive rights with signs reading, We want doctors not missionaries and A government is not like a pregnancy it can be terminated.
Protests in solidarity have been held in other countries, alarmed at this retrograde grab for power by a Catholic Church seeking to reclaim the untrammelled power it had in parts of Europe before WW2.
Polands progressives are determined that it shall not succeed.
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The Chinese government has donated two million U.S. dollars to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its humanitarian work in Somalia, where a drought has deteriorated food security situation.
A ceremony was held in the Somali capital Mogadishu by the WFP Somalia on Tuesday to thank the Chinese government for the donation.
WFP Somalia Country Director Laurent Bukera said Somalia is facing "unpredictable weather shocks" that have caused a drought and affected harvests in many parts of the country.
He said the donation by China would be used to provide access to nutritious and curative food for malnourished children and mothers.
"We are honored to be in the company of China, which has an even longer history of partnership with Somalia and this contribution is evidence of these excellent ties," said Bukera.
Chinese ambassador to Somalia, Wei Hongtian, said at the ceremony: "China has been and will continue to be a firm partner and supporter to the Somali government and UN agencies including the WFP."
He said he hoped the donation would help those needy mothers and children.
On behalf of the Somali government, Abdirashid Mohamed Hidig, State Minister of Interior and Federal Affairs of Somalia, expressed appreciation to the Chinese government, adding that the government and people of China had long supported Somalia's development.
A UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report issued in September says five million people in Somalia are not getting enough food, which is more than 40 percent of the country's population. Among them, over 300,000 children under five are acutely malnourished.
Channel programs News
Accenture Buys International Consultancy To Help Banks Build Digital Capabilities
Jimmy Sheridan
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Channel giant Accenture has acquired London-based consultancy Allen International to help its banking clients reinvent their physical branches with new digital networks and digital capabilities.
The Dublin-based company, No. 2 on the 2016 CRN Solution Provider 500 list, said Allen will help banks transform their digital offerings and networks in their branches to reduce costs, increase revenues and better engage customers.
"Our acquisition of Allen International will expand and complement our capabilities to help banks make the branch a physical manifestation of the digital experience," Sushil Saluja, Accenture Senior Managing Director said in a statement.
[Related: Accenture Scoops Up Another Cloud Provider, Acquiring Top Workday Partner ]
He added banks have to clearly understand what the role and value of their branches are so they can be sure that it fits best into their customer's lives.
The acquisition of Allen will give Accenture the tools to help banks for banks reduce their distribution costs by an average of 30 percent, while still maintaining customer engagement, he said.
Accenture will also benefit from Allen's history in the vertical, he said, noting that the company has worked with more than 350 banks around the world.
This acquisition strengthens Accentures current distribution transformation offering, which analyzes how banks interact with its customers, according to a statement from Accenture.
Accenture has been working with banks to help them transform physical locations and branches by providing the kind of interactive, multimedia experience consumers are beginning to expect. Banks need to ensure they have the appropriate digital capabilities to handle the demands of customers that prefer online to in-person interactions.
Combining Accentures deep financial services, distribution and marketing expertise and scalability with Allen Internationals digital and physical banking experience will enable banks across Europe to optimize branch networks strategically.
However, Accenture also reported that although many customers utilize digital services offered by their banks, nearly 70 percent of banking customers still rely on physical bank branches to make decisions about their money according to a study Accenture published in 2015.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
This acquisition was Accenture's twentieth in the last 12 months, with a heavy focus on security, vertical practices and growing capabilities around Salesforce. This acquisition is the company's eighth digital transformation consultancy acquisition within the last 12 months.
Components & Peripherals News
Epson Exec: Demand Exploding for Tablet-Based Point of Sale Systems
Michael Novinson
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Solution providers must embrace mobile point of sale (POS) devices to help retailers improve in-store customer experiences, same store sales and to avoid losing (more) business to Amazon.
That's what Epson North America's director of commercial channel sales, Tom Kettell, told more than 200 solution providers at the ScanSource Partner Summit on Tuesday. Epson's mobile POS business has, for the first time, surpassed its traditional, fixed-location POS business as many mom and pop shops have ripped out their electronic cash registers and replaced them with table-based systems, Kettell said.
[RELATED: ScanSource-Intelisys Deal Shines Light On Solution Selling, Hardware Opportunities for Agent Partners]
The mobile POS business is expected to grow from $2 billion in 2015 to $38 billion in 2024, with analysts projecting a 36 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between now and 2019, Kettell said at the conference here in Greenville, S.C.
While hardware and software are bundled together for traditional POS devices, Kettell said the hardware and software are independent of one another in mobile POS systems, with many software providers focused solely on creating software and having little to any interest in the hardware sale.
Mom and pop shops are happy to rip out their electronic cash registers and replace them with mobile payment terminals, but Kettell said a rip-and-replace model would be very expensive for major retailers, who would prefer to incorporate mobile technology into their existing infrastructure.
Retailers, though, are very focused on figuring out ways to enhance their customer experience so customers can make their final purchase in the store, Kettell said, rather than doing their brick-and-mortar research in a store and then making the purchase off Amazon with one-day shipping.
Nordstrom has succeeded with this, Kettell said, as the upscale department store company has sought to improve its customer experience by having its sales associates walking around each department with a tablet that can check customers out rather than forcing customers to go to a fixed cash register and wait in line.
Similarly, Kettell said Best Buy ran a pilot where the consumer electronics retailer brought a mobile cart of tablets to an area of the store where a major sale was taking place to try and take advantage of impulse buys before the customer left the department.
In the hospitality sector, Kettell said bigger restaurants are increasingly turning to mobility to enhance their customer experience. For instance, he said that a steakhouse at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas gives customers an iPad with their wine list, allowing them to research and order wine directly from the table without having to interact the server.
POS resellers must become more sophisticated as the customer demand for mobile and completely wireless payment terminals grows, said Bobbi Boyer, a hardware sales specialist for Aptos, an Atlanta-based ScanSource partner.
Support and integrating mobile POS offerings is more difficult, Boyer said. The hardware and software are typically developed separately, and the setup is expected not to involve any wires, he said.
Channel programs News
Michael Dell's Vision For Partners: 'It's You And Your Customers' Driving The Future Of The World
Matt Brown
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Dell Technologies Founder, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell's vision for the future of the IT industry is so forward-looking that he wonders if people can adapt to technology as quickly as new technologies are being developed.
He also envisions an important role for channel partners in that tech-forward future.
During a Q&A with partners during the Dell EMC Partner Summit held at the Dell EMC World conference in Austin, Texas this week, Dell took the opportunity to comment on his vision for the next decade or two.
[Related: CRN Exclusive: Channel Chief Byrne On The New Dell EMC Unified Program, 'Zero Tolerance' For Violating Deal Registration And Fixing Unrealistic EMC Partner Sales Targets]
In the past, the aim of technology was to help businesses automate processes, or to make businesses more efficient, he said.
"Now, you say we want to re-imagine the company with all this digital information," Dell said. "I don't think anybody really knows what it means, and fortunately, we don't necessarily have to predict all that. We're going to provide the infrastructure for the digital future, but it's you and your customers that are going to create and do all the combinatorial inventions that will result in the big improvements that are coming in the world."
Dell tackled the explosion of data, saying one of the key challenges for the industry is helping customers figure out how to use the data they produce.
"What are you going to do with all this data?" Dell asked. "When you apply artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning; there's also something new occurring called unstructured learning. This isn't so much people learning in an unstructured way, I'm all for that, too. This is computers learning in an unstructured way.
"So, you release computers on your data and as you get more computing power, the computing engines are discovering correlations among the data that are beyond the comprehension of normal mathematical human beings. It's a very interesting field of computer science. I think there's going to be all kinds of things like that.
"I think the intersection of the biosciences and the information sciences is incredibly exciting. There are questions: Can people adapt as quickly as the technology is changing? We couldn't be more excited about the opportunities ahead and I actually think it's just the beginning of our industry in that sense."
Partners said Dell's grand vision, and the success he's had so far in bringing Dell and EMC together bode well for the future of the channel.
Chris Kelleher, director of strategic alliances at Insight, a large solution provider that works with Dell EMC, said the opportunities are huge for partners that are positioned correctly. "What's really exciting about everything coming together is the breadth of the market that we're going to have the ability to go penetrate," Kelleher said. "Existing Dell customers, we're going to be able to go talk to them about EMC and vice versa, it just really opens things up with respect to the channel. Partners like Insight that have traditionally sold both are going to be really well positioned going forward."
Bob Olwig, vice president of business development and innovation at World Wide Technology, a large solution provider that works with Dell EMC, said Dell's visibility, willingness to talk to partners and clear love of technology is a good sign for the future. "It's not a one-and-done with Michael Dell," Olwig said. "He's very visible, very participatory. He's engaged. The breadth of the portfolio, he believes it, and I think he believes its a great opportunity for partners to share in that."
The Dell EMC World conference is taking place in Austin this week. It's the first major conference since Dell completed its landmark, $58 billion acquisition of EMC in early September, and the event has attracted scores of channel partners from around the world.
Suppose youre on the TV game show, Jeopardy!. Youre tied with the reigning champion, and theres one category left: Famous Bible Characters. Ive got this, you think, making a mental list of the bigger-than-life characters from your fifth-grade Sunday school class: Adam and Eve, Moses, Abraham, David, Solomon. Oh, the Daily Double bells are ringing in your ears.
But just as youre about to press the buzzer and select Famous Bible Characters for $100, you look again. Oh no, it doesnt say Famous Bible Characters, it says Not-So-Famous Bible Characters.
Could you still rattle off a list, or would your buzzer stay silent while your opponent walks away with the win? If your knowledge of obscure Bible personalities is a little lacking, or if youre interested in learning more about real people who stood behind the spotlight instead of in it, check out this short list of amazing yet under-recognized Old Testament characters.
Abigail, the Wife of Nabal
Abigail is truly amazing. We read her story in 1 Samuel 25, where the Bible describes her as an intelligent and beautiful woman (v. 3). Unfortunately, she was married to a sorry, good-for-nothing man named Nabal, a homesteader who made his living raising sheep. The Bible describes him as surly and mean in his dealings.
Enter King David, before he was king. He and his band of renegades had been hanging out in the wilderness hiding from King Saul, who was trying to kill him. In their wanderings, they encountered Nabals flocks and shepherds.
Not all outlaws are bad, and such was the case with David and his men. Since they were an army of fighting men camping out in the wilderness with nothing to do, they decided to keep their skills sharp by guarding Nabals sheep from marauders.
These men were very good to us, one of the servants told Abigail, They did not mistreat us, and the whole time we were out in the fields near them nothing was missing. Night and day they were a wall around us (v. 15-16).
When shearing time came, David sent a message to Nabal, asking if hed send over a few legs of lamb in gratitude for their protection. Nabal sent Davids messengers packing, hurling insults at them. The Bible doesnt record exactly what Nabal said, but when the messengers repeated his words to David, he was enraged.
"It's been uselessall my watching over this fellow's property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!" (v. 21-22). He mustered his troops and prepared to destroy Nabal and his household.
And this is where Abigail shines on the pages of biblical history:
Quick thinking and resourceful, she piled bread, meat, and raisin cakes onto donkeys and headed out to meet David. When she saw him, she dismounted and bowed her face to the ground.
Falling at his feet, she said, "My lord, let the blame be on me alone. Please let your servant speak to you; hear what your servant has to say. May my lord pay no attention to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his namehis name is Fool, and folly goes with him. But as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my master sent.
She affirmed Davids calling as future king, begged forgiveness for her husbands folly, and pleaded with him to spare her people.
David accepted her eloquent and humble plea and received the food she brought. Ten days later, God struck Nabal dead. When David heard of Nabals demise, he wasted no time and promptly asked Abigail to marry him.
Im not sure what the traditional period of mourning was in those days, but I dont think Abigail observed it. Scripture tell us, Abigail quickly got on a donkey and, attended by her five maids, went with David's messengers and became his wife (v. 42).
Abigails story contains a Cinderella ending by any centurys standards.
Ittai the Gittite
Fast forward in biblical history a few decades, and you come to the story of Absaloms rebellion in 2 Samuel 15. David had been king of Israel for many years. Unbeknownst to him, his son Absalom had been turning the hearts of the people away from his father in order to overthrow his reign and steal the throne.
Picture the scene as the aging King David, his family, counselors, and loyal followers fled the palace to escape Absaloms murderous coup. Heartbroken, eyes downcast, and clothes torn in mourning, David stops in surprise when he sees Ittai the Gittite, a foreigner who had only recently arrived in Jerusalem, along with his family and servants.
"Why should you come along with us? he asked. Go back and stay with King Absalom. You are a foreigner, an exile from your homeland. You came only yesterday. And today shall I make you wander about with us, when I do not know where I am going? Go back, and take your countrymen. May kindness and faithfulness be with you" (v. 19-20).
And this is where Ittai the Gittite shines on the pages of biblical history:
But Ittai replied to the king, As surely as the LORD lives, and as my lord the king lives, wherever my lord the king may be, whether it means life or death, there will your servant be.
"Then David said to Ittai, Go ahead, march on. So Ittai the Gittite marched on with all his men and the families that were with him (v. 21-22).
Faithful Ittai wins the distinction for Most Loyal New Friend, encourages David, and secures a spot in my list of amazing yet under-recognized Old Testament individuals.
Shiphrah and Puah
Now I can almost guarantee these two ladies wont end up on your short list of easily recognized Bible characters, but the nation of Israel owes them a debt of gratitude. Shiphrah and Puah were two of the midwives assigned to attend Israelite women during childbirth in the years preceding the exodus. Scholars disagree about whether they were Hebrew or Egyptian, but they all agree that these women were courageous.
You may remember that during the time of Joseph, the Israelites enjoyed favor before Pharaoh and his court. After he died, however, another pharaoh took his place. As the Israelites population increased, the Egyptians felt increasingly threatened and feared the Israelites would take over the nation. To limit their population growth, the king of Egypt gave the midwives a chilling order:
"When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live" (Ex. 1:16).
But Shiphrah and Puah feared God. They refused to do what the king of Egypt ordered. Deliberately disobeying their leaders command, they delivered each tiny newborn with all the skill and ability they possessed.
Before long, their disobedience came to the attention of the king, and he summoned them to stand before him.
Why have you done this? he asked. Why have you let the boys live?" (v. 18).
This is where Shiphrah and Puah shine on the pages of biblical history:
Not only were they God-fearing, they were also wise. While they recognized their responsibility to obey their leaders, they also understood that Gods law supersedes mans law. They knew they could not sin against God by killing the Hebrew babies.
Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women, they said to Pharaoh. They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive."
Scripture tells us God smiled on their courage and commitment to do what was right. He was kind to the midwives... and because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own (v. 20-21).
Shiphrah and Puah are powerful, though obscure, examples of doing whats right no matter what the cost.
I hope this short list of little-known Bible characters has inspired you to crack open the pages of Scripture and read the rest of their stories. You never know, the Daily Double might just ask you to name Nabals quick-thinking wife or King Davids new loyal friend.
Jeopardy! questions aside, its important to remember that obscure doesnt mean insignificant in the kingdom of God. If he can use a quick-thinking housewife, a loyal new friend, and two courageous midwives in his great plan of redemption, imagine what he will do with you.
Lori Hatcher is a blogger, inspirational speaker, and author of the Christian Small Publishers 2016 Book of the Year, Hungry for God Starving for Time, Five-Minute Devotions for Busy Women. A Toastmasters International contest-winning speaker, Loris goal is to help busy women connect with God in the craziness of everyday life. She especially loves small children, soft animals, and chocolate. Youll find her pondering the marvelous and the mundane on her blog, Hungry for God... Starving for Time. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter (@lorihatcher2) or Pinterest (Hungry for God).
Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com
Publication date: October 19, 2016
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Yemen's dominant Shiite Houthi group and its ally of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's party welcomed on Tuesday a United Nations-proposed 72-hour ceasefire to facilitate humanitarian aid access to the war-stricken Arab country.
A security member checks a car in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen, on Oct. 18, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]
The ceasefire between Houthi fighters and their rival Saudi-backed exiled government forces was declared by the United Nations on Monday to take effect at 2359 local time (2059 GMT) on Wednesday.
"The Supreme Political Council (a governing body composed of top officials from Houthi group and Saleh's party) welcomes the ceasefire without preconditions and demands immediate stop to the (Saudi-led coalition) aggression and lift of the air, sea and land blockade imposed on the Yemeni people," said the Houthi group and Saleh's party in a joint statement carried by Saba news agency late on Tuesday.
On Monday, the exiled President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi agreed to the 72-hour ceasefire, according to a statement by his government's Foreign Minister Abdul-Malik Mekhlafi.
The minister demanded Houthis lift siege to the southern city of Taiz and access of humanitarian supplies to the war-torn city.
The 19-month civil war have killed over 10,000 people, mostly civilians, and pushed the country's 26 million people to near famine.
In its first full year selling health insurance policies in Connecticut, Massachusetts carrier Harvard Pilgrim Health Care made a dent in the market but only just barely, piling up members at a fifth of the pace of market titan Anthem BlueCross BlueShield.
Wellesley, Mass.-based Harvard Pilgrim signed up about 22,000 members in 2015, according to the newest data that the Connecticut Insurance Department releases annually in mid-October. This was in addition to about 600 it picked up in late 2014 as Harvard Pilgrim entered the Connecticut market for the first time.
The company had hired Fairfield resident and former ConnectiCare CEO Mickey Herbert as a consultant to help it gain early traction in Connecticut. Herbert this week was named the new CEO of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, beginning in November.
Across all carriers it tracks, the Connecticut Insurance Department reported just over 2.4 million health policies in force for 2015, a slight reduction from the year before. The reduction was due primarily to four companies omitted from the data that are letting their membership base dwindle away as they exit the market; and the omission of Wallingford-based Healthy CT, an insurance cooperative that is in the process of shutting down after being subjected to sharp increases in federal payments under the Affordable Care Act.
The arrival of the nonprofit Harvard Pilgrim was considered a major coup for Connecticut, as market power coalesces in the hands of Indianapolis-based Anthem, which added more than 100,000 members last year to give it 1.2 million in all, leaving it just shy of the 50 percent mark in Connecticut market share.
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit seeking to block a proposed merger between Anthem (NYSE: ANTM) and Cigna, which shed nearly 120,000 members in Connecticut last year to leave it with a 15 percent market share, down from nearly 20 percent in 2014.
More Information Health insurance market share in Connecticut Select underwriters, ranked by change in membership Underwriter 2015 Share 2014 Share Change Anthem 1.2 million 49.9% 1.1 million 44.3% 106,500 Harvard Pilgrim 22,500 0.9% 600 0.02% 22,000 ConnectiCare 239,000 9.9% 228,000 9.2% 11,000 Oxford/UnitedHealth 175,500 7.3% 168,000 6.8% 7,500 Aetna 399,000 16.5% 458,000 18.5% -59,000 Cigna 370,000 15.3% 489,000 19.7% -119,000 See More Collapse
The deal would be subject to the approval of the state of Connecticut, with the states insurance commissioner Katharine Wade recusing herself last month from the process after a state panel scrutinized the possibility of any conflict of interest due to her prior employment with Cigna where her spouse remains an executive today.
Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-354-1047; www.twitter.com/casoulman
Since this years presidential election has been characterized with bullying, torment, poor behavior and foul language, I cant help but keep listening to Broadway show tunes to keep my spirit alive in the classroom. For some time now Ive been humming in my head, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? from The Sound of Music because the melody is friendly and welcoming.
For me, accentuating the positive what Michelle Obama calls the high road seems to work. It is also a strategy our current superintendent, Fran Rabinowitz, has upheld since her arrival to the district. Maybe thats why Ive enjoyed her leadership. Or maybe its because she treats everyone with civility.
When I won the Beard Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014, part of the achievement was to serve in an advisory capacity to the superintendent. I love to advocate for my colleagues, my profession and my students. No such committee existed before Fran Rabinowitz because previous superintendents, perhaps, did not feel it was necessary. Fran started the Superintendents Advisory Council because she believes in the importance of teacher voices for creating a successful school district.
She upholds the community as members of the larger democracy. Its not just Beard Award winners she meets with, either; she solicits feedback from teachers district-wide.
Rabinowitz is in tune with teachers, the senior leadership team, her administrators, and, most importantly, her students. She personally takes time out of her busy schedule to advocate for the work we do. In fact, she came to watch my students dress rehearsals for our productions of Prospect High: Brooklyn and 12 Angry Jurors. She could have left at intermission, but that is not the integrity she upholds. She stayed until the very end of the rehearsals so she could personally congratulate each and every cast member.
In fact, I have a picture of her surrounded by my cast that radiates the joy she felt from being our district leader.
The kids in Bridgeport have had a fierce advocate in Fran. The numbers speak volumes about the direction she envisioned for our community. Our students math and reading scores are showing growth over the last two years on district-wide benchmark tests and suspension rates are categorically low.
By introducing the importance of socio-emotional on the learning process, too, Fran has made Bridgeport a model district for how to address mental health in the classroom of high needs school districts such as ours. In my own work at Central High School, Ive begun to see more confident students with an understanding of their emotions making better decisions.
Weve felt it, too, at the staff level. Ive always felt we were a family at Central High School. I give credit to the outstanding leadership Eric Graf has provided us. But its also easy to feel Frans presence when Eric starts every staff meeting asking the teachers and staff, How are we doing today?
Although Im saddened, like many, that Fran Rabinowitz will leave Bridgeport Public Schools, I hope her many contributions, like The Mood Meter, remain.
In the last few years Ive been able to meet and observe superintendents from across the country through my work with The Connecticut Writing Project. I wish I could report that such leadership is common in American schools, but sadly excellent visionaries, such as Fran Rabinowitz, are too often pushed out of a system they are working so hard to change. Anyone would be a fool to think Bridgeport Public Schools have had anything less than the best since she arrived. Fran Rabinowitz is the real deal.
Anyone who has worked closely with her these past few years would recognize that the way she is portrayed by very few, uninformed individuals in the city of Bridgeport, is not how she is known by many.
We have to celebrate Fran Rabinowitz for her achievements while she is still in the district with us. We must remember what she did for our children so that future superintendents can emulate her work and build on the legacy she is leaving. Fran Rabinowitz was quick to remind her employees that she was an interim, but her work ethic never showed anything other than permanent investment as a superintendent.
In the meantime, as I wait to see what the future of Bridgeport Public Schools holds for my colleagues and me, Ill keep singing show tunes in my head, specifically the line from How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? about holding a moonbeam in your hand. With the angst and negativity fluttering through the district at this time, I am thinking fondly of Fran Rabinowitz and the light she has brought to so many.
Shaun Mitchell was a 2016 Connecticut Teacher of the Year finalist, a former Bridgeport Teacher of the Year and a recipient of the Theodore & Margaret Beard Excellence in Teaching Award. He teaches English at Central High School in Bridgeport, in addition to serving as a consultant for the Connecticut Writing Project - Fairfield.
CultNews101.com: news, links, resources. Cults101.org: resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics. CultMediation.com: offers resources designed to help thoughtful families and friends understand and respond to the complexity of a loved ones cult involvement. Intervention101.com: to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement. CultRecovery101.com: assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
These real PA creatures could become cryptids if we don't save them
Labour MP Dennis Skinner, 84, is the subject of a forthcoming documentary film, The Nature of the Beast.
His former colleague, John Prescott, 76, announces via Twitter: 1.5K short of amount to get Dennis Skinner film finished. 10 gets your name on the credits. 30 = credit & DVD. Go!
With his customary grace, Skinner isnt overcome with gratitude. Prescott needs a stick to walk now, he points out.
A documentary film about Labour MP Dennis Skinner, pictured, is 1,500 short
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter says Donald Trump, posing in a luxurious, 1,000 plus Loro Piana cashmere sweater for one of the magazines photoshoots, was asked to take it off but refused, thinking it might disturb his extraordinary, comb-over hairstyle.
So they had to cut the sweater off his back. Does The Donald wear a hairnet at night?
Buzzfeed UKs editor-in-chief, Janine Gibson, 44, pictured, says the news website rejected the story of Jeremy Corbyn having to sit on the floor of a train when a Labour activist offered it.
Anthony Casey, she says, attached a load of conditions around the words and wanted it written his way.
Asked if she was surprised by The Guardians decision to publish it, Ms Gibson says: Im not going to comment on The Guardian.
Interestingly, she hoped to become its editor in succession to Alan Rusbridger.
Indeed she was his favourite. But the staffs candidate, Katharine Viner, 45, got the job.
I expect Ms Gibson is heartbroken that Ms Viner later had to print a humiliating apology for printing as news a misleading tale concocted by Corbynistas.
Jeremy Paxman, 66, who quit BBC2s Newsnight in 2014, complains on Radio 5 Live about news presenters: Have you noticed this fashion for people in television studios standing up? Why are they standing up? Why arent they sitting down? Its just ridiculous!
The old boy had good reason to be against standing up. He suffers from wonky knees.
While Sir Cliff Richard, 76, expressed his grievances against the BBC in Parliament this week hes also suing the corporation its forgotten that the Beeb originally hoped its live report of the 2014 raid on his Berkshire home would win awards.
The appallingly intrusive Sir Cliff coverage, involving film of his home from a helicopter, produced in cahoots with South Yorkshire Police, was nominated disgracefully for Scoop of the Year at the 2015 Royal Television Society Awards.
Mercifully, it didnt win.
The BBC hoped its coverage of the raid on Sir Cliff Richard's home, pictured, would win journalism awards
Tory legend Norman Tebbit fears his old party might be hijacked by extremists.
Writing in the Left-wing New Statesman, the life peer, now 85, worries that the Conservative Party in the country could be taken over in the way that Labour has been hijacked by Trots, Marxists and delusionals.
The tweet has already been retweeted over 300 times in just a day
The five-year old has created a much ruder series of Mr Men characters
A mother has posted a picture of her five-year-old son's brand new take on the original Mr Men series of children's books.
Writer Anna Mazzola, who lives in London, took to Twitter to share her son's artwork and revealed: 'I'm not sure whether to be appalled or proud.'
The picture features new Mr Men characters who go by the names of Mr Testicles, Miss Boobs and Miss Bottom as well as Mr Anus, Miss Wee and Mr Fart.
Anna Mazzola tweeted the above picture of her son's artwork and said she wasn't sure whether to be appalled or proud
They make up a much ruder series of the Mr Men children's classics but the Internet seems to approve of them.
In just a day, Anna's tweet has already been liked nearly 1,000 times and retweeted nearly 500 times.
The series of 16 new Mr Men characters has been welcomed by Twitter and the responses have been wholly positive.
Gemma asked mother Anna: 'In comparison to all your wonderful authorly/writerly tweets, has this one by your son been your most popular to date?'
The picture showed a different and much naughtier version of the Mr Men children's classics we have come to know and love
Una said that the drawing might be 'one of the greatest things I've ever seen' although Ms Vagina 'doesn't look too healthy'
Anna reluctantly replied saying yes, 'Anuses. This is what people really want.'
Abir Mukherjee told the mother her son will be a millionaire someday and that she should be proud.
Another pointed out that her personal favourites were Miss Wee and Mr Snot.
She then followed it up by saying: 'Vivid colours, excellent artwork. A+'.
Una took to Twitter to say 'This may be one of the greatest things I've ever seen.
'(Ms Vagina doesn't look too healthy, though, tbh)'.
Mr Anus seemed popular with people on Twitter and even led to one woman inhaling a piece of pasta because she was laughing so hard
Anna had to resign herself to the fact that her son's artwork has been vastly more successful than any of her usual literary tweets. She signed off by saying: 'You should all be ashamed.'
One Twitter user said they were coping with the pictures until they got to Mr Anus and then proceeded to laugh so hard they inhaled a piece of pasta.
Sarah B says: 'Miss Tung. Genius. Although amongst all the sniggering hilarity I'm finding Mr Drane a bit sinister to be honest.'
Eventually, the boy's mother tweeted again and said: 'So this tweet, about Mr Anus and Miss Boobs has been bastly more successful than any of my usual literary tweets.
In November, 2013, 35-year-old Chris Boyd died after being bitten by a Great White shark while surfing at Umbies surf break in Gracetown, Western Australia.
His former girlfriend, Krystle Westwood, was told of the tragedy by police when she arrived at the beach parking lot shortly afterwards.
Now, three years on, the 29-year-old has revealed how Mr Boyd's memory inspired her to start up her own women's adventure brand, Mermaids Down Under.
Tragic: In November, 2013, 35-year-old Chris Boyd (right) died after being bitten by a Great White shark while surfing at Umbies surf break in Gracetown, Western Australia
Moving forward: Now, three years on, Mr Boyd's former girlfriend Krystle Westwood revealed how Mr Boyd's memory inspired her to start up her own women's adventure brand
Shortly before Mr Boyd passed away, Ms Westwood was working as a manager for a winery, yet felt like she needed to do more with her life.
'When Chris passed, I saw it as the universe saying, "Bang, you have to make a change. If you dont make a change you will fall straight back into that",' Ms Westwood told PerthNow.
'It inspired me to look outside the box, to have your own gig, to try and move forward.'
Inspired: 'When Chris passed, I saw it as the universe saying, "Bang, you have to make a change. If you dont make a change you will fall straight back into that",' Ms Westwood said
Moving forward: 'It inspired me to look outside the box, to have your own gig, to try and move forward,' she said
Ms Westwood launched her business to 'help others enjoy the sea' and this week, she launched a line of women's wetsuits designed for surfers, divers and spearfishers.
The ocean-loving conservation advocate said the wetsuits have 'attitude' and hopes they empower the women who wear them.
'Designed for the wild woman at heart. A woman who is not afraid to challenge herself, push her limits and enjoy life to the fullest. An independent woman who aspires to surf bigger waves, catch bigger fish and 4WD along rugged coastlines,' the description of one of the wetsuits reads.
Mermaids: Ms Westwood launched her business to 'help others enjoy the sea' and this week, she launched a line of women's wetsuits designed for surfers, divers and spearfishers
Making a difference: The ocean-loving conservation advocate said the wetsuits have 'attitude' and hopes they empower the women who wear them
'Desert dreamer lives for the ocean. She thrives on solitary coastline where the desert meets the sea. She lives to explore.'
Shortly after Mr Boyd's death, Ms Westwood quit her job and moved further north to Exmouth to come to terms with everything that had happened and start fresh.
'I was at work the day it happened and I had had a few phone calls from friends asking whether I had heard about the attack,' Ms Westwood told 60 Minutes in 2014.
'He's really helped me': But while up north, 12 months on from the incident, Ms Westwood unexpectedly found love again with professional surfer and fisherman, Ry Craike
'When I walked up the hill [towards the beach] there were about six police officers there and I just walked up the hill staring blankly.
'I said "can you please tell me who it was" and then they grabbed me and I just went crazy. I feel like everything's been taken off me... I feel like I've got nothing.'
But while up north, 12 months on from the incident, Ms Westwood unexpectedly found love again with professional surfer and fisherman, Ry Craike.
These include covering up, talk of bottles and how best to be a mother
Having spoken to mothers, she collated the top 10 worst comments
As many breastfeeding women will know, everyone has an opinion on it
Whether it's your partner, brother, friend or grandmother, when you have a new baby, it can often seem as though everyone has an opinion.
One of the most popular subjects on which people like to air their views is breastfeeding.
How you do it, when you do it, why you do it and how long for are all popular conversation starters.
FEMAIL spoke to Melbourne-based parenting expert and mother of five, Pinky McKay, to hear the top things to avoid mentioning to a woman who is breastfeeding.
She collated the information by speaking to countless mums in Australia. Don't say you haven't been warned.
Opinionated: FEMAIL spok to Melbourne-based parenting expert and mother of five, Pinky McKay, who collated the top things to avoid mentioning to a woman who is breastfeeding
WHAT NOT TO SAY TO A BREASTFEEDING MUM * Shouldn't you cover up? * Once you stop your baby will sleep better * It takes too much out of you * Is he or she hungry AGAIN? * How do you know your milk hasn't gone off? * He's using you as a dummy * There is no goodness in your milk after... * If you give them a bottle, can't other people feed him or her? * What, have you stopped breastfeeding already? * Mooooooooo Advertisement
SHOULDN'T YOU COVER UP?
'Wouldn't you feel more comfortable if you covered yourself up as you feed?,' is one of the things Ms McKay hears a lot.
'Don't you really mean: "If I cover myself up YOU will feel more comfortable",' she told Daily Mail Australia.
'Do these people think you should stay barefoot in the kitchen now you are a mother, just in case your baby dares to feel peckish? Sorry folks, but women need to go out and do things.'
Ms McKay says that for the people who say that women should cover themselves, the best retaliation is to ask them to throw a blanket over their heads. Yup.
ONCE YOU STOP YOUR BABY WILL SLEEP BETTER
'Are you sure? Because if he doesn't I won't be able to just whip a boob into his mouth and make him go back to sleep,' says Ms McKay.
The mum of five says that babies wake for all sorts of reasons, from teething to allergies and sickness, and they don't go away just because you wean.
'It's better to try and address the reasons why your baby is waking before you ditch the easiest solution - a boob,' she says.
Commonplace: Ms McKay says common things that she hears are people asking breastfeeding mums to cover up: she also hears people say babies sleep better when bottle fed
IT TAKES TOO MUCH OUT OF YOU
Mums and experts alike will tell anyone who says that breastfeeding makes you tired that being in charge of a baby 24/7 is exhausting: 'It's got nothing to do with how you feed your baby'.
'At least when you're breastfeeding you get to sit down and relax a few times a day!,' Ms McKay says.
'If you are feeling depleted, have your iron and thyroid levels checked, eat healthy foods, especially breakfast, exercise and rest when you can to help maintain your energy levels and enjoy this precious time.'
IS HE HUNGRY AGAIN?
Pinky McKay says that, among the mums she asked, this question was one of their top bugbears.
'If you are feeling depleted, have your iron and thyroid levels checked, eat healthy foods, especially breakfast, exercise and rest when you can to help maintain your energy levels and enjoy this precious time
'Way to make a mama doubt her milk supply - question how often she's feeding her baby,' she says.
'You can't overfeed your breastfed baby,' she says.
'She will determine the consistency of the milk she gets by how she sucks. Whether your baby is hungry, thirsty, tired or upset, if he or she is seeking the boob, stick to the mantra "if in doubt, flop it out".'
HOW DO YOU KNOW YOUR MILK HASN'T GONE OFF?
Ms McKay advocates a shocked-looking reply to this: 'Goodness, can that happen?'.
She says that of course you're making fresh milk and it will no more go off than it will curdle if you bounce around at the gym.
Expert view: Other common annoying things which are commonly said to breastfeeding women include 'it takes too much out of you' and 'is he or she hungry again?'
HE'S USING YOU AS A DUMMY
Ms McKay says that a dummy is a fake boob, not the other way around.
'It's comfort, connection, sensory stimulation, brain food and a wonderful immune boost for your baby.
'Sometimes a baby will need to feed longer and more often if he or she is tired, hungry, sick or sad. They can't exactly explain why they need a boob, so trust them and ignore this stupid comment,' she says.
THERE IS NO GOODNESS IN YOUR MILK AFTER...
Whatever follows this, whether it's three months, six months or more, Pinky McKay says: 'Breastmilk doesn't have a best before date, however long you feed for, this magic potion is like medicine.
'Breast milk is like a daily vaccination against every bug your baby comes into contact with. All that goodness is still there, whatever the age of your baby.
'In fact, immune factors even increase during the second year of a baby's life.'
Your baby, your business: According to Pinky McKay (pictured), how you look after your baby is fundamentally down to you - she says it's really up to the mum when they stop feeding
IF YOU GIVE HIM OR HER A BOTTLE, CAN'T OTHER PEOPLE FEED?
To which your response should be: 'Even at 3am?'.
While some people who tell you this might genuinely be trying to be helpful, Pinky McKay says that others haven't got your best interests at heart.
'Do they really think it would be easier to express and wash pumps, tubes and bottles when you're not separated from your baby?,' she says.
'Friends and relatives can bond with your baby in other ways to give you a break, whether it's feeding, bathing or playing.'
HAVE YOU STOPPED BREASTFEEDING ALREADY?
Pinky McKay has few words for this type of person.
'Your boobs. Your baby. Your business.'
MOOOOOOO
Last but not least, are those who find this sort of comment funny.
' What an insult you are a superwoman, milk goddess, not a damn cow!,' says Ms McKay.
What's the most annoying thing someone has said to you while breastfeeding? Email FemailAU@mailonline.com
If you can't figure out whether you belong in the sticks or the city, a clever new tool may well have the answer.
An interactive quiz aims to help users discover which of the 63 cities in England, Scotland and Wales best mirrors their lifestyle and taste.
Users answer six questions and the three best-suited cities are then revealed, along with the reasons why each one is a desirable prospective location for them.
Finding the dream city involves configuring 756 data points in millions of ways, taking into account everything from relationship status to household income.
The quiz, which was created by Web Blinds, explains: 'Imagine a better life, with all the things you love on the doorstep Do you long to live in a city that mirrors your life and tastes? Maybe you want a big-city vibe or a coastal setting or an exciting nightlife. Its time: go find the best city for you.'
The first question asks your geographical preference - whether that's the North, Midlands or South. Next, you're asked 'how young do you feel?', followed by your relationship status.
After that, you have to reveal your household income, how often you like going out, whether you 'like it quiet or love the big-city thunder' and how much you like the great outdoors.
An interactive quiz aims to help users discover which of the 63 cities in England, Scotland and Wales best mirrors their lifestyle and taste. It asks questions such as 'how young do you feel?' and asks you to select your relationship status
It also asks you to reveal your household income, how often you like going out, whether you 'like it quiet or love the big-city thunder' and how much you like the great outdoors
The tool will then work out which city you're best suited to and what it has to offer you - plus two extra options if you're not keen on the first.
For example, Brighton is described as 'having it all'. 'A strong economy and great employment opportunities; a jam-packed cultural calendar; the South Downs just moments away and, of course, the beach,' reads its description.
A spokesperson for Web Blinds, who created the quiz, said: 'Dreaming of finding the city that perfectly matches your tastes and lifestyle is all very well, but taking the big step and moving there requires a more detailed thought process.
'By applying data to dreams, its possible to truly understand why a city is the best place to live.'
Whether they opt for a satin, ivory or lace number, most brides plump for an elegant classic gown that stands the test of time.
But it seems that fashionable brides hoping to be on trend for their upcoming nuptials will be walking down the aisle in crotch-baring designs, kooky veil hats and completely sheer gowns.
Indeed, if the trends at Bridal Fashion Week, which took place in New York, and the new season lookbooks are anything to go by, blushing brides will certainly be turning heads on their big day.
Want to be on trend next season when you walked down the aisle? According to the new bridal trends, it's all about flashing as much flesh as possible
Thought the side boob was bad? Cringed at the concept of a 'bumster' dress, which exposes your bottom cleavage a la Rihanna? Well, it just got a whole lot worse.
Models at the Alon Livne White show were certainly dressed in the most daring designs, sporting the 'almost naked' look.
Revealing their pelvic bones in a gown slashed from the floor to waist, the models seemed intent upon stealing the spotlight.
It wasn't just legs on show, bridal models flashed plenty of cleavage and chest, too.
Models at the Alon Livne White show were certainly dressed in the most daring designs, sporting the 'almost naked' look
Veils, which are usually a subtle accessory, look set to take centre stage with many designers making them more important than the dress itself
Bows were also big business and were added to gowns in unexpected places, including teeny-tiny bows tucked into the skirt of Reem Acra's gowns and added to the backs of other dresses
Yolancris's delicate bridal gowns come with completely sheer cleavages
It all started with the side boob - the subtle glimpse of bare breast revealed either by design or by accident - which quickly escalated into the extreme cleavage trend led by Miranda Kerr and Kim Kardashian.
But next season's cleavage style is much, much more daring, if Bridal Fashion Week is anything to go by.
The audience at the Yolancris show were given quite the eyeful as models took to the catwalk wearing delicate bridal gowns with their full frontal breasts shining through.
Models wearing the layered cake style dresses flashed their assets in the sheer gowns.
It seems that fashionable brides hoping to be on trend for their upcoming nuptials will be walking down the aisle in some rather interesting designs
It seems that the bigger, the better for next season, with models wearing heavily layered dresses teamed with fishnet tights
Many designer dresses allow room for the bride to bare their chest in dresses slashed to the naval like these
Likewise, over at Vera Wang, who has designed for the likes of Kim Kardashian, models bared their chests in dresses slashed to the naval, whilst at Marchesa, ladies donned revealing dresses, too.
Veils, which are usually a subtle accessory, look set to take centre stage with Viktor & Rolf releasing imagery of models dressed in full veils as long as their dresses.
The designers also sent models down the runway in quirky little veil hats, whilst Alon Livne added huge white hats, which were double the size of the models themselves.
Bows also look set to be big business and, as new lookbook imagery attests, will be added to gowns in unexpected places, including teeny-tiny bows tucked into skirts and added to the backs of dresses.
Two bold strangers took the brave - and some might say foolhardy - step of marrying each other after meeting at the altar as Married At First Sight returned last night.
But if the pairing doesn't work out, groom Clark, a business development executive, will not be short of offers after his good looks and charming manners won over an army of fans.
Viewers went into a frenzy after the 26-year-old, looked stunned by his bride Melissa, saying 'you look amazing' when he first saw her - and many offered him marriage proposals of their own.
Scroll down for video
Student nurse Melissa, 27, was paired with business development executive Clark, 26, in the new series of Married At First Sight - despite the pair never having met before
Emotional: And as the pair lock eyes for the first time they are both close to tears with Clark telling his bride: 'You look amazing'
While many of the show's viewers couldn't understand why on earth the hunk was single, they uniformly shared their praise for him.
Viewer @aldopacason gushed: 'This Clark guy on Married at First Sight actually seems like a dream'
@aimeejaayne agreed, saying: 'Clark and Melissa on Married at First Sight are SOOOO adorable'
Beth McDermid wrote: 'The reaction that Clark had when he saw Melissa on Married At First Sight is the reaction I need in my life'
LauraIsabella asked: 'Where do I sign up for married at First Sight? #clark'
Alexandra Power swooned, 'OMG this is literally the most emotional thing I've watched. When he said 'wow'.
Natasha, from London, concurred, 'I need to find a guy like Clark, what a gent'
Viewers couldn't contain their excitement over business executive Clark on Married At First Sight
Emily Aspell asked, 'Is Clark not the loveliest man in the world!'
Lidia Lowe revealed that the groom had been single for a while, when she admitted, 'LOL the guy on #MarriedAt FirstSight, Clark, I matched with him on Tinder back in the day. Clearly things never went right for him.'
Gemma Chalcroft is also a member of his fan club, saying, 'Clark is adorable! I'd marry him.'
Holly Tweddle tweeted, 'If it doesn't work out I'll marry you Clark'
Ellis Taylor agreed: '100% would marry Clark'
Women watched gripped as Clark met student Melissa, 27, on their wedding day itself at Islington Town Hall in north London, as part of Channel 4's social experiment.
Melissa donned a sweeping white gown for the lavish ceremony at Islington Town Hall. Until their wedding all the bride and groom knew about each other were their first names
Special moment: as the pair locked eyes for the first time they were both close to tears, with Clark telling his bride: 'You look amazing,' before the pair exchange their vows
He was told nothing about his wife-to-be apart from her name, saying: 'Wow, that's a very nice name. I am so nervous right now.'
And despite not having laid eyes on Melissa, he told cameras: 'I don't think I've ever been more ready in my life. To be committed to someone is the one thing I've been missing, massively. I don't think I've ever been more certain of anything in my entire life. I am ready to say "I do."'
Davina Elizabeth appeared ready to join the show herself, writing, 'Why didn't I sign up to this? I'd well marry Clark'
Siobhan Butler was equally smitten: 'Bloody hell do men like Clark exist? He's so nice... Can I marry him?'
Natalie said the same, 'I'd marry Clark at first sight'
Melissa makes her way to the wedding venue. She reacted in shock when she was told that experts had found her a potential love match. 'It's just crazy, oh my God,' she said
The bridal party make their entrance. Clark had previously told cameras: 'I don't think I've ever been more ready in my life. To be committed to someone is the one thing I've been missing'
Melissa has an emotional moment as she prepares to see her husband for the first time at the wedding venue. Later the pair bonded over the ideal 'teeth to gum ratio' and zodiac signs
Lucy Gornall said: 'Good god this Clark guy on #MarriedAtFirstSight is GORGEOUS. Why is he on this!!!???'
Katie McGee, however, brought a note of scepticism to bear, noting, 'If Clark was 36 I might believe he's ready to commit to one person and settle down. He's got 10 years in him yet!'
Stacey Smith joined in, 'If Clark is divorced by now, I'll have him.'
The couple - who tied the knot four months ago - spoke to the camera as their big day loomed, admitting to huge pre-wedding jitters.
Clark told friends: 'I just hope she likes me. I can actually feel my heart in my head.'
And as the pair locked eyes for the first time they were both close to tears with Clark telling his bride: 'You look amazing.'
'So do you, thank God!' she replied.
The couple then exchanged a brief kiss on the cheek before exchanging vows.
Only after the ceremony did they sit down with a glass of champagne and begin the awkward process of getting to know everything about each other - with Clark admitting he's relieved that his new wife has the right 'tooth to gum ratio'.
He admitted to his bride that he has ploughed through 'numerous' failed relationships in his life.
Before the ceremony begins, the nerves begin to set in and Clark tells friends: 'I just hope she likes me. I can actually feel my heart in my head'
However, romance was very much in the air when they take to the floor for their first dance to Ray Charles' Come Rain or Shine.
'I really am the luckiest guy ever,' Clark said, before adding as they left the wedding party, 'We've known each other for less than five hours and it feels like I've known you for ages.'
According to the show's formula, the pair now have five weeks to see if their marriage will work.
And their fans are desperate to know how the two of them have fared since that dramatic day.
Gemma Kidd gushed: 'Absolutely love Married At First Sight! Hope Clark and Melissa are together forever!'
So far so good: Melissa and Clark appear the picture of happiness after their wedding. This year, producers received nearly 3,500 willing volunteers looking for love on the programme
A viewer known only as Animagus admitted: 'I'm already way too invested in Clark and Melissa'
Russ Peers chimed in, 'Call me an old romantic but I reckon Clark and Melissa will last'
Lydia couldn't contain herself over how their relationship is going, asking: 'Come on Mel & Clark, Someone's gotta know you! Just let us know if it's happily ever after - I can't stop searching.'
Natalie Duce agreed saying, 'I NEED to know if Clark and Melissa are still together... Come on, break the silence.'
Guests throw confetti following the ceremony. The couple will now have to survive a honeymoon and four weeks of living as man and wife despite being complete strangers
David, from London, also wished the well, saying, 'Fair play to Melissa and Clark! Hope they make it! Brave!'
This year, producers received nearly 3,500 willing volunteers looking for love.
By putting their trust in science and a panel of experts - psychologist Mark Coulson; sex and relationship therapist Jo Coker; evolutionary anthropologist Dr Anna Machin; and Nick Devenish, a Church of England vicar - they all hope to find the man or women of their dreams.
Viewers are desperate to know how if the pair are still together a month after their nuptials
Experts sift through thousands of applicants until eight singletons are set to become four couples.
The five-week 'experiment' begins when the couples meet as complete strangers and marry at first sight, and continues with a honeymoon and four weeks of living together as man and wife.
It concludes with 'decision day', when the couples must decide whether to stay together or seek a divorce.
Instead of having surgery, Tom wanted his wife to consider alternative medicine
A Married at First Sight star found herself teary-eyed when she awkwardly refused her husband's request for her to finally move back into their marital home but she was willing to put her wedding ring back on.
On Tuesday night's episode of the FYI reality series, Nick Pendergrast, 32, and Sonia Granados, 33, headed to Miami's South Beach for a romantic getaway, but even they ended up sleeping in the same bed together, he was unable to convince her to come home.
'He hurt me, and I forgave him, and although it's getting a lot better, I don't want to fall back to where we were,' Sonia explained to the cameras.
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Breaking the news: Sonia Granados, 33, told her husband Nick Pendergrast, 32, that she wouldn't be moving back in with him on Tuesday's episode of Married at First Sight
Hesitation: Sonia explained that although she has forgiven him for calling her unattractive, she wasn't ready to go back to their marital home
At the start of the episode, Sonia gushed that Nick has been 'amazing', but she still wasn't ready to put herself out there again just yet.
The Miami-based couple, who spent the night at the Eden Roc Hotel, kicked off their staycation with a tandem bike ride, which made Sonia a bit nervous at first.
The social worker told the cameras that she was worried about Nick leading them, but in the end they had a great time together.
Sonia said they've been more comfortable and at ease with each other, which is a far cry from the explosive fight they got into two weeks before.
Staycation: During the episode, the couple headed to South Beach for a getaway in their home city of Miami
Out and about: Sonia and Nick had a great time riding a tandem bicycle through the streets
When they returned to the hotel, Sonia pulled out all the stops while getting ready for dinner. She put on her low-cut 'freak-em' dress and donned red lipstick to see if Nick would notice that she was decked to the nines.
She explained that they after they had sex, Nick yelled that he thought she was unattractive, and although she had forgiven him, it was clear she was still affected by his cruel words.
However, Sonia's plan worked, and as soon as she stepped outside the bathroom, Nick said: 'Wow. Hey, you look beautiful.'
Nick also told the cameras that he was 'blown away' by how his wife looked in the sexy dress, and she definitely appreciated his reaction.
Impressed: During their trip, Nick was blown away by how stunning Sonia looked in a little black dress
Eating his words: Although Nick claimed he wasn't attracted to Sonia in a previous arguement, he is now singing a different tune
'It's good to hear that he thinks that I am beautiful,' she said.
At dinner, Sonia was worried about what was going to be said, and sure enough, Nick brought up how much he wanted her to move back in.
Nick pointed out that all the experts think she should return to their marital home, and he even offered to sleep on the couch while she took the bed, but she explained that wasn't the issue.
After Sonia refused, Nick admitted that he was confused by the status of their relationship.
'I feel like she should maybe be giving it a little more forward effort because in a week we have to decide whether we're going to stay married,' he said.
The next day Nick revealed to the cameras that he and Sonia did sleep in the same bed, but that was all that happened.
Disapointed: Nick revealed that Sonia finally agreed to sleep in the same bed with him during the overnight getaway, but they didn't have sex
Already over: Meanwhile, Sonia wished they had more time on their vacation together
'It just reminded me that the one thing I am missing in my life is a partner to share everything. I want to fall in love with someone and be married and live happily ever after,' he told the cameras.
'I am really attracted to my life, but unfortunately, we did not have sex last night,' he added.
Meanwhile, Sonia told the cameras that it wasn't weird waking up with her husband, which is a good thing.
'I'm sad that we're leaving because I wish that we can stay here longer,' she said of their trip. 'But I'm ready for this last week, and [we will] see what happens. You never know with this.'
By the time they arrived home, Nick was convinced that their marriage was over, but Sonia had a surprise for him.
Newfound hope: When they returned home, Nick was convinced there marriage was ever. However, Sonia surprised him by putting her wedding ring back on
Dedicated: Sonia explained that the ring was a sign that she was committed to their marriage even though they weren't living in the same home
After he took his beloved dogs outside, Sonia followed him and revealed that she put her wedding ring back on to show that she was 'committed' to their marriage.
'I agree that's why I haven't taken mine off yet,' Nick joked, but his wife's actions gave him newfound hope for their relationship.
Meanwhile, Tom Wilson, 28, convinced his wife Lillian Vilchez, 25, to take the refurbished bus he was living in before they got married on a getaway to Key Largo.
Lillian, who said she was willing to do anything to make her marriage work, agreed, but a bus was definitely not her ideal mode of transportation.
Going for it: Meanwhile, Tom Wilson, 28, convinced Lillian Vilchez, 25, to take the refurbished bus he was living in before they got married on a weekend getaway to Key Largo
She looked appalled when a pile of dust burst out of the vents because Tom had forgotten to clean them, and she could't resist complaining about the bus's lack of air conditioning and working interior lights.
Lillian also struggled with how the bed caused a lot of pain to her injured shoulder. Tom thought she was being 'prissy' and noted that she has a tendency to 'complain about things'.
The experience made Lillian question whether she and Tom were really compatible because of their different lifestyles, but she admitted that she was 'falling in love' with him.
In attempt to show Tom that she was trying to focus on their marriage, she made sure not to have her cell phone out the entire trip, which made her husband 'really proud'.
Price and joy: It took Tom a long time to finally admit to Lillian that he lived on a bus before they got married
Whoops! Lillian was appalled that the bus didn't have any air conditioning or interior lights
Adventure time: Despite the rough start to their trip, they had a great time snorkeling together
Meanwhile, Lillian was impressed that Tom stayed by her when they went snorkeling because she was initially afraid to do it.
'We had a great trip. You know we had a lot of positive moments,' Tom told the cameras. 'We are still working together to make marriage work, and especially traveling with somebody else, especially on a bus I mean we had a great trip.'
However, things started to go south when they went out for some celebratory beers, and Tom brought up Lillian's upcoming shoulder surgery.
After Lillian revealed that she had already gotten a second and a third opinion from other doctors about the surgery, Tom asked her whether she would be willing to consider seeing someone who specializes in alternative medicine.
Tom insisted that 'it's not like hocus pocus', but Lillian was uninterested from the get-go.
Trouble in paradise: However, things turned sour when Tom insisted that Lillian should consider seeing an alternative medicine practitioner before having surgery on her shoulder
Different opinions: Lillian refused, and while she was frustrated that Tom wasn't listening to her, he was annoyed that she wouldn't consider what he was saying
'You're not willing to give it a chance?' Tom asked, and Lillian reiterated that she went to medical school in Nicaragua and 'an MRI isn't going to lie to you'.
However, he continues to push the issue, noting that there were 'way more options out there'.
Lillian admitted to the cameras that she didn't think Tom fully understood everything she had been through with her shoulder injury, and while she claimed she appreciated his intentions, she was clearly not pleased that he wouldn't drop it.
And Tom was equally concerned with his wife's behavior.
As the pets of the most famous woman in the land, it's no surprise that they have lived a pampered life.
Royally spoiled! The Queen's former chef reveals how her 'nasty yappy Corgis' had their own menu featuring lamb and beef - and duck shot by Prince William
But now the Queen's former chef has revealed just how spoiled her precious corgis really were over the years.
Speaking to Hello! magazine Darren McGrady revealed that the monarch's precious pets had their own menu, which would be sent to Sandringham each month detailing what they were to eat on specific days.
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The Queen with her dogs: clockwise from top left Willow (corgi), Vulcan (dorgie), Candy (dorgie) and Holly (corgi). Her former chef has revealed how her beloved pets used to have their own menu of fresh meats
The menu would consist of beef, chicken, lamb and duck on alternating days so they didn't get bored.
However, he confessed that the chefs were not so keen on the dogs, who he described as 'yappy' and 'nasty'.
'Prince William and Prince Harry used to shoot rabbits on the Windsor Estate, so we'd get the rabbits, they'd have to be cleaned and then cooked,' Mr McGrady revealed.
Meats would be chopped, boiled and then finely chopped again to ensure it didn't contain any bones.
Darren McGrady, who was the Queen's chef for 11 years, admits that his colleagues weren't keen on the 'yappy' and 'nasty' corgis
If the dogs were suffering from constipation the food might be mixed with cabbage and at other times rice was added.
The monarch herself would feed her previous pets after she'd taken her own tea in the afternoon.
She now only has one Corgi left after 13-year-old Holly, who appeared in the celebrated James Bond sketch for the opening of the London Olympics in 2012, was put down at Balmoral earlier this month.
The Queen took the heartbreaking decision to summon a vet for the dog, which was suffering from illness and the effects of old age.
The Queen walking her corgis in 1980. The monarch has had 30 of the dogs over the years but won't replace Holly who recently died as she doesn't want her pets to outlive her
It means that after more than seven decades of the continuous companionship of corgis, the Queen has only one left Willow, also 13.
Insiders say she was very sad after the decision was taken to have Holly put to sleep.
The Queen was deeply upset but she doesnt like seeing her dogs suffer and Holly had reached a very good age, said one. She gets more unsettled if they are distressed and she knows that putting a dog down is often the kindest solution.
She was devoted to Holly and wherever the Queen was, the dog was never far behind.
The Queen arrives at Aberdeen Airport with her corgis in 1974 to start her holidays at Balmoral
Since 1945 the Queen has had more than 30 corgis, a good proportion of them direct descendant of Susan which she was given by her parents on her 18th birthday.
Her first puppies, Sugar and Honey, were born in 1949 and it marked the beginning of a new royal dynasty.
Despite her sadness over Holly's death, the Queen will not replaced her beloved dog with a new puppy.
In her first acting role, the Queen was seen to leave Buckingham Palace with Bond, played by Daniel Craig, and clambered aboard a helicopter, leaving behind her corgis Monty, Willow and Holly
'She always had about 12 but now she's saying I'm not going to outlive them, so when they die they're just going to die off,' Mr McGrady revealed.
After 11 years working for the Queen, Mr McGrady went on to serve Diana, Princess of Wales and now runs his own catering company in Dallas, Texas.
He's previously revealed that the Queen is practical when it comes to eating and is definitely not a foodie.
'She eats to live; its Prince Philip that lives to eat. He loves food, he's interested in food, he wants to know where it comes from. The Queen, not so much,' he said.
But he added that the Queen was always very much at the helm of catering at Buckingham Palace, overseeing the 'menu book' which was sent to her two or three times a week for the coming days.
'The menu book was sent up to her and she'd put a line through the ones she didn't want,' Darren recalled.
'We could never serve garlic to the queen but Prince Philip loved it,' he said. 'If we were at Balmoral and she was out, wed slather his steak in garlic.
Prince Harry will be taught the remarkable skills of the man dubbed 'the original horse whisperer', who has been helping psychologically damaged military veterans.
Harry, 33, has asked Monty Roberts to perform his technique of communicating with horses through body language, a method he has taught to ex-servicemen and women in a bid to help with conditions like post traumatic stress disorder.
California-born Mr Roberts told the Evening Standard: 'The prince has learned of this work and wanted to get a greater understanding. It will be an honour to show him.'
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Prince Harry is to be given a demonstration of the remarkable skills of the man dubbed 'the original horse whisperer', who has been helping psychologically damaged military veterans
Harry has been supporting the nation's injured, sick and wounded servicemen and women and veterans through a number of projects including his Invictus Games, a Paralympics-style competition where many of those competing have lost limbs fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr Roberts has become a worldwide star thanks to his innovative techniques with horses and has been working with the Queen's horses for more than 25 years, after she first asked him to Windsor Castle in 1989.
The 81-year-old, who modestly describes himself as a Californian cowboy, regular stays at the Queen's private Sandringham home when training the monarch's animals.
California-born Mr Roberts said: 'The prince has learned of this work and wanted to get a greater understanding. It will be an honour to show him [my techniques]'
Mr Roberts has become a worldwide star thanks to his innovative techniques with horses and has been working with the Queen's horses for more than 25 years
The horse whisperer spent a day working with veterans at a Help for Heroes centre in 2014, teaching them his now famous method of horse taming - and he has also run classes for US military at his Californian ranch.
Last year he spoke of his friendship with the Queen, saying that without her support he would still be a cowboy in California.
The octogenarian said he regularly meets the monarch to discuss all things equine.
His comments came after he had staged a demonstration of his skills for supporters of the animal welfare charity the Brooke.
He has become a worldwide star thanks to his innovative techniques with horses and last year stayed at the Queen's private Sandringham home working with her animals.
The 81-year-old, who modestly describes himself as a 'Californian cowboy', regular stays at the Queen's private Sandringham home when training the monarch's animals
In 2015 he became a global ambassador for the Brooke and, speaking about the effect the Queen has had on his life, said: 'If she hadn't pushed me, I'd be a cowboy in California doing parochial stuff.'
He went on to talk about when he first met the monarch: 'She sent a man over to California - I thought it was a joke - they brought me to Windsor Castle in April of 1989.
'Her Majesty had 23 horses ready for me to work with and it was one week with Her Majesty there every day, when it was only supposed to be one hour.
'She said there had to be a book and she sent me to 21 cities in 30 days because she wanted this message out there.
From Sep 22 to Oct 10, 2016, Xinhuajie Church of Inner Mongolia Ulanqab Jining District carried out "Showing God's Love and Serving the Community" themed charity event during the "Religious Charity Month." They contacted the local office and the community visited 10 poor families and brought them rice, flour, and oil worth 2,000 CNY ($300).
Among the poor families were seniors without family, five guarantees families (the aged, the infirm, old widows and orphans taken care of by the people's communes in five ways: food, clothing, medical care, housing and burial expenses), and the bed-ridden on minimum subsistence allowances, which gave the event a positive practical meaning. On Sep 28 with the active support of the principle of Jianguo Silu primary school, they brought 2,500 CNY ($375) worth of winter clothes and grants to seven poor students in the school. Teenagers are the future of our country and strong youths lead to a strong country. Xinhuajie Church cares about the physical and mental health of the teenagers and gives love to their healthy growth. The community leaders spoke highly of the help they extended to the poor students and the seniors without family.
Ulanqab is located in the center of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It has jurisdiction over 11 counties with a population of 24 million and covers an area of about 120 thousand square kilometers. Christianity was introduced to Ulanqab in the 1920s and began to take shape in Jining District before liberation.
From the 1930s till liberation, there were three Christian denominations in Jining: American "Baptist," British "Salvation Army" and the domestic "Church Meetings." During the Cultural Revolution, all gatherings were suspended and the services resumed after Reform and Opening in the 1980s. In 1985 the government chose the four-room house in Qiaodong Simalu as the church till now. In 1998 Jining Xindianlu Church was built, in 2007 Jining Xinhuajie Church was built, and in 2015 the main church of Xinhuajie Church was built. The church can hold 500 people and the floor space is around 2,400 square meters. Xinhuajie Church was voted "Advanced Group of the First Harmonious Church Establishment."
There are 2 elders, 2 teachers, 3 theological seminary college graduates, and 10 graduates from Inner Mongolia Bible Junior College in the church. In 2013 with the approval of Jining and Ulanqab Bureau of Religious Affairs, they set up two venues in Donghe Road and New District. Jining Xinhualu Church is where CCC&TSPM of Ulanqab is located and it has become the hub of the churches in Ulanqab and a platform for communication and carrying out the Christian work in the city. The church provides a location for the regular training of the clergy and preachers. It also became the national CCC&TSPM approved bookstore for the whole Ulanqab and neighboring cities for selling permitted books.
A supermarket has been forced to apologise after it delivered a jar of Seville marmalade which had its name altered to read 'Jimmy Saville'.
Bar owner Kate Shepherd, of County Durham, was left shocked when she noticed the jar had been vandalised.
Before the preserve made its way to Kate it had someone had used black marked to scrawl the name of the notorious paedophile on the label of the jar.
Kate Shepherd was shocked to find that her Mackays Seville marmalade had been defaced to read 'Jimmy Saville' marmalade when it was delivered by Tesco
Kate had her shopping delivered from the Tesco Extra store in Durham and spotted the disgraced DJ's name as she was putting her goods away.
She later tweeted: 'So I had my @tesco shopping delivered and someone has written on my marmalade... @tesco staff must have a lot of time on their hands.'
A spokesperson for the supermarket giant has apologised to Kate for the unexplained addition to her shopping.
Tesco have issued an apology to Kate and offered her a full refund on her shop and will be investigating the incident further
In a statement she said: 'This is clearly unacceptable and we are investigating how this could have happened.
'We have apologised to Ms Shepherd, and offered her a full refund and a voucher off her next shop with Tesco.'
Most of us know that stressful jobs can wreck our health.
But it seems if you have control over that work it can actually be better for you.
Researchers followed more than 10,000 workers in their sixties from 2004. The stress of their job was measured by asking employees regardless of their income or managerial status how hard they worked, how much they needed to concentrate and if they were asked to do too much.
It seems if you have control over that work it can actually be better for you (file image)
Seven years later, those who worked in high-stress, low-control jobs were most likely to have died.
But surprisingly, being in a stressful job with control over your workflow and the freedom to set your own goals was found to be better for health.
Workers in more demanding jobs, where they had this control, were 34 per cent less likely to die than those in less stressful careers. Lead author Erik Gonzalez-Mule said: These findings suggest that stressful jobs have clear negative consequences for employee health when paired with low freedom in decision-making, while stressful jobs can actually be beneficial to employee health if also paired with freedom in decision-making.
Cancer was found to be the leading cause of death among the study group, with stress known to be a risk factor. People also died from circulatory diseases, with the authors speculating that the stressed may overeat and smoke as a coping mechanism.
Those with the most demanding jobs and no control over them are 15 per cent more likely to die than those with less taxing careers.
The study by the University of Indianas Kelley School of Business, is believed to be the first to examine the relationship between job characteristics and mortality.
But the researchers said it does not necessarily suggest employers need to cut back on what is expected from their employees.
Surprisingly, being in a stressful job with control over your workflow and the freedom to set your own goals was found to be better for health (file image)
Rather, they demonstrate the value in restructuring some jobs to provide employees with more say about how work gets done. Professor Gonzalez-Mule said: You can avoid the negative health consequences if you allow them to set their own goals, set their own schedules, prioritise their decision-making and the like.
He recommended that employees have a say in setting their own goals, so when youre telling someone what theyre going to do its more of a two-way conversation. The study, published in the journal Personnel Psychology, also found people in high-stress, low-control jobs were more likely to be overweight.
Professor Gonzalez-Mule said: When you dont have the necessary resources to deal with a demanding job, you do this other stuff.
You might eat more, you might smoke, you might engage in some of these things to cope with it.
The study also found people with a higher degree of control over their work tend to find stress to be useful.
Professor Gonzalez-Mule said: Stressful jobs cause you to find ways to problem solve and work through ways to get the work done. Having higher control gives you the resources you need to do that.
The NHS faces its first funding cut per head of population since the 1990s despite growing pressures, its chief executive warned last night.
Simon Stevens said funding would drop in 2018-19, making it the most pressurised year in recent history.
It will be the first time the Health Service has received such a reduction since at least the turn of the century, NHS sources said.
Simon Stevens said funding would drop in 2018-19, making it the most pressurised year in recent history
Yet Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted he would not accept rationing of care by local health boards stressing that hospitals could do more for less.
Prime Minister Theresa May is not expected to provide any additional funding in next months Autumn Statement.
NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, has warned patients will no longer receive the services they expect without more cash.
The NHS is currently in the grip of the worst bed-blocking crisis since records began, with thousands of patients languishing in hospital.
Wards are overcrowded and sick patients are having to stay on trolleys in A&E as there are no free beds, with waiting times soaring.
Mr Stevens told the Commons health select committee he had not received the full funding he had requested from the Government for his five-year NHS transformation plan.
For the current year, 2016-17, the NHS is receiving the kick-start requested an extra 3.8billion, equivalent to a 3.7 per cent rise.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted he would not accept rationing of care by local health boards
But next year the NHS will receive only an extra 1.3 per cent and in 2018-19 only 0.4 per cent. With the population in England growing by 0.6 per cent every year, an annual 0.4 per cent increase equates to less per head of population.
Mr Stevens told the committee: Given we have an ageing and growing population, if you just look at population growth, even before you look at ageing, 2018-19 will be the most pressurised year for us, where we will actually have negative per-person NHS funding growth in England.
'But the other years we will have very modest increases.
He added: For this year year one of the spending review we did indeed get the kickstart to the funding that we were looking for, which we needed because we had to absorb nearly 1billion of extra pension costs.
We are going to cut the hospital deficit by more than two thirds, we are going to bring some stability to parts of the Health Service that are under pressure and we are going to make some modest starts to improvements.
The Royal College of Physicians is urging relatives to clear obstacles from wards to prevent serious accidents (stock image)
Up to 600 patients are having falls in hospital each day due to poor hospital care, leading doctors have warned.
The Royal College of Physicians is urging relatives to clear obstacles from wards to prevent serious accidents.
It has published guidelines for families and patients with simple tips to help avoid what it estimates are 200 preventable falls every day.
These include reminding patients to call for nurses if they need assistance walking and ensuring they always wear sensible shoes.
Relatives are instructed to check for clutter around the bed after visiting patients and making sure walking frames are close at hand. The College suggests that 240,000 mainly elderly patients fall in hospital in England and Wales a year, the equivalent of 600 a day.
But research has shown that 30 per cent of these, about 200 a day, could be easily prevented by doctors and nurses clearing clutter and helping patients while they are walking.
Yet the fact they are having to urge family members to help out will raise concerns that hospital staff are not currently doing enough to protect patients.
The guidelines are contained in a 16-page leaflet which will be distributed in hospitals today.
Other advice includes telling patients to use their call bells if they need help walking to the bathroom or toilet.
They are also instructed to remember to eat and drink, to ensure they dont become dizzy.
Dr Shelagh ORiordan, of the Royal College of Physicians said: When a patient falls in hospital, particularly an older patient, it can cause anxiety and distress for them and their families, even if the fall does not result in serious injury.
The College suggests that 240,000 mainly elderly patients fall in hospital in England and Wales a year, the equivalent of 600 a day (stock image)
The RCP falls prevention guide informs patients and their families about the need to be falls aware.
Dr ORiordan added: It encourages them to be alert to risks and how these risks can be minimised. It also covers measures that hospital staff should take to reduce the risk of patient falls.
Great grandmother Sylvia Page died when she fell over on a hospital ward and hit her head on a wall as she was helped to the toilet. The accident happened after an unsupervised student nurse tried to help the 86-year-old out of her hospital bed.
She had been in the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex for 11 days, when she stumbled. The health worker held her hands in a bid to keep the elderly woman steady but Mrs Page hit her head and died two days later from bleeding on the brain.
The family were awarded a five-figure sum of compensation for the mistake, which took place in June 2013, but Mrs Pages son Michael, 62, said he had little faith things would improve.
The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust said at the time: We have apologised to the family for the identified failings in the care provided to Mrs Page, which fell short of the standard of care that patients can reasonably expect to receive.
His mother says he is unable to go to school unless he wears special shoes
A six-year-old boy whose feet grow at different speeds is allegedly forced to miss school - due to being deemed a health and safety risk.
Spencer Kristianson, from Castleford, has a rare condition called Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome which causes the extra growth of one limb.
In his case, it affects one of his feet and his mother Amber, 26, claims he is not allowed to go to school unless he is wearing special shoes - which cost 300.
But because of his age and his constant growth - she can't always afford to buy him a new pair.
She claims he is not allowed in the school if he isn't wearing the shoes - which help him to walk normally - because of health and safety reasons.
But he has been unable to go to school since the end of August after a delay getting the specially-made shoes from Portugal.
Spencer Kristianson, from Castleford, has a rare condition called Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome which causes the extra growth of one limb. In his case, it affects one of his feet
His mother Amber, 26, claims he is not allowed to go to school unless he is wearing special shoes - which cost 300 (pictured). But because of his age and his constant growth - she can't always afford to buy him a new pair of orthotic shoes, which help him to walk normally
Ms Kristianson said: 'I can't afford the shoes as a single mother and Spencer has had to do without sometimes, which is frustrating for him because he can't go to school.
'Without the shoes he's not allowed in the school because of health and safety and I accept that because there are hundreds of kids running around.
'It's not a case of just going to the shop and getting a pair of shoes for him because his feet grow longer and wider than regular feet.
'It devastates me that he misses school because he absolutely loves his friends - he's very active and has just started rugby training.
'He's a really happy lad but if you look into his eyes now then you won't see an ounce of happiness in there.
'Watching Spencer live with this condition is a horrible thing to see as a mother and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.'
Ms Kristianson said: 'It devastates me that he misses school because he absolutely loves his friends.' She added that if you look into his eye you 'won't see an ounce of happiness'
While some orthotic shoes are available on the NHS, because of how often he would need a new pair the health service wouldn't fund them, Ms Kristianson said
Spencer was diagnosed with Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome - which affects the development of blood vessels, soft tissues and bones - as a toddler.
It caused him a difference in the circumference size or length of his foot, as one grows quicker than the other.
His family struggle to find him shop-bought footwear as a result of the disease and instead must rely on custom-made orthotic shoes.
While some are available on the NHS, because of how often he would need a new pair the health service wouldn't fund them, Ms Kristianson said.
She said while her son has done well to battle the effects of the condition, the expensive shoes are pushing her finances to the limit.
But they are needed to help him walk normally - and she claims to allow him to attend Oyster Park Primary School.
As a result of missing school he is being tested for autism, as his family say it 'can't be good for him'.
Ms Kristianson said: 'He gets shoes every six months but by four months I'm on the phone because I know what is coming because he is a six-year-old and they just get wrecked.
Ms Kristianson said: 'Watching Spencer live with this condition is a horrible thing to see as a mother and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it' (pictured together)
As a result of missing school he has had tests to see if he has autism, as his family say being away from his friends 'can't be good for him'
'And it's such a rare condition and nobody seems to know about it, I certainly haven't met anybody near me who has the condition or has kids who have it.
'It's massive for Spencer and he does so well to put up with so much. It would be hard for me as a 26-year-old to deal with it, let alone a six-year-old.'
WHAT IS KLIPPEL-TRENAUNAY SYNDROME? Klippel Trenaunay syndrome (KTS) is a rare genetic condition which affects the development of blood vessels, soft tissues and bones. It has three main side effects: a 'port wine stain' (Marley's big 'bruise'), the overgrowth of bones - particularly limbs - and varicose veins. The disorder is estimated to affect around one in 100,000 people. It can occur in people who have no history of the disorder. There is no cure and treatment is symptomatic. KTS is often a progressive disorder, and complications may be life-threatening. Source: US Library of Medicine Advertisement
Spencer's specialist shoes are provided by the Steeper Group, a firm who make orthotic shoes.
A spokesman said: 'Within our orthotics services where we treat Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome, we prescribe specialist orthotic footwear that is custom-made to accommodate the size difference of the affected lower limb.
'The footwear may often be longer and wider on the affected side to accommodate these differences in limb size, and in many cases we need to add a shoe raise, to ensure the shorter limb is accommodated, the pelvis is levelled and there is no long-term detrimental effect on the spine.
'These prescriptions enable service users with Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome to achieve a normal walking pattern and ensure well-fitting footwear, despite the difference in lower limb size.
'Orthotic paediatric boots have really advanced in the past eight years, meaning children with Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome now have more choice than ever.
'The designs replicating retail footwear, which enables our patients to continue with as normal life as possible.'
A mother-of-two is hoping doctors can find a way to remove the large tumour growing from her eye without killing her.
Nicoleta Leizeriuc, 28, has lived with the benign tumour all her life which covers her left eye completely and affects her vision.
She is set to undergo surgery to cut the growth - but doctors first need to reduce its size using chemicals to prevent any blood loss during the operation.
Mrs Leizeriuc, from Mileanca, a small village in north east Romania, has been forced to live as a recluse due to the constant ridicule she gets.
She says people in her village often judge her and make cruel comments and that surgery would transform her life.
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Nicoleta Leizeriuc, 28, has lived with the benign tumour all her life which covers her left eye completely and affects her vision
'I can't go into town or work or go to the kindergarten when there are parent meetings,' Mrs Leizeriuc said.
'I have to go the next day because there are some parents who do not like me.
'I would have more courage to get out in the world. I wouldn't stay alone. This is what I think it will change firstly.'
Despite being ostracised by her community, Nicoleta has a great support system in the form of her two young sons and her husband Aurel.
Mr Leizeriuc said: 'I'm attached to her and she to me, she's a very warm person to me. I found trust in her and we went forward together.'
A team of doctors has been put together at a hospital 414 miles away in the south west of the country, to come up with a plan to treat her.
It will involve undergoing several 19 hours trips by overnight train to have a series of treatments.
Buried deep within the tumour is her eyeball, surrounded by malformed blood vessels which are connected to her jaw and cheek, and these could burst.
She is set to undergo surgery to cut the growth - but doctors first need to reduce its size using chemicals to prevent any blood loss during the operation
Plastic surgeon Dr Zorin Crainiceanu said: 'It's impossible to cut the tumour off because the bleeding might kill the patient.'
Instead, the medical team will first seek to reduce the tumour by injecting chemical agents directly into it, which will make it smaller and easier to operate on.
'This is important because when we get to the surgery the tumour will be smaller and the risk of haemorrhaging will be reduced,' said the doctor.
It's impossible to cut the tumour off because the bleeding might kill the patient. Plastic surgeon Dr Zorin Crainiceanu
After reducing the size they will carry out a process known as embolisation which will help to block off blood vessels from the tumour to the brain, effectively starving it of blood.
Once the team of doctors feel the tumour is a more manageable size, they will then begin to surgically remove it from Nicoleta's face.
Radiologist Dr Adrian Tutelca said: 'In my opinion, this tumour, as it is, it's hard to pull it out. The fact that it is vascular makes it more difficult. It's a difficult intervention.'
Infections from three sexually spread diseases have hit another record high.
Chlamydia was the most common. More than 1.5 million cases were reported in the U.S. last year, up 6 per cent from the year before.
Nearly 400,000 gonorrhea cases were reported, up 13 per cent.
And there were about 24,000 cases of the most contagious forms of syphilis, up 19 per cent.
The three infections are treatable with antibiotics.
Gonorrhea (pictured), chlamydia, and syphilis are becoming more common, the CDC warns
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say part of the growth may be due to better testing and diagnosis, but much of it is a real increase.
They're not sure why.
The CDC released the new numbers Wednesday.
An estimated 20 million cases of sexually transmitted infections occur each year in the U.S.
The worrying new figures come amid fears sexually-transmitted diseases could soon become untreatable as infections build a resistance to antibiotics.
Last month, the WHO updated its guidelines on how to treat chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis for the first time since 2003.
Together, the diseases infect 200 million people every year.
They are normally treated with a short and simple dose of antibiotics.
But at the rate the diseases are developing, it could be just a matter of years before this method becomes ineffective.
Crucially, the health officials warn, doctors must stop over-prescribing antibiotics, and patients must be vigilant about taking the correct doses.
'Resistance of these STIs to the effect of antibiotics has increased rapidly in recent years and has reduced treatment options,' the UN agency said.
Antibiotic resistance also exists in chlamydia and syphilis, though it is less common.
The CDC recommends treating the infection with a combination of two antibiotics: azithromycin and ceftriaxone.
The infection has already become immune to penicillin, tetracycline and fluoroquinolones.
Increasingly, gonorrhea is building up a resistance to the individual drugs.
When left undiagnosed and untreated, the three diseases can have serious consequences, causing pelvic infamatory disease and ectopic pregnancy in women, and increasing the chances of miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn death.
Medical officer Teodora Wi, who was involved in WHO's update, called gonorrhea a 'very smart bug' that repeatedly adapts to new antibiotics.
It can infect the genitals, rectum, and throat.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a triumphant President George Bush (Sr) proudly proclaimed the birth of a New World Order.
This New Order was to be dominated by the US and its Western allies. This grouping would be free to invade those countries whose leaders they found distasteful.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin for a bilateral meeting before the start of the BRICS summit
India, which cherished its strategic autonomy, was at the receiving end of coercive moves to curb, roll back and eliminate its nuclear programme through economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
India broke free of these shackles only after it conducted nuclear tests and overcame American sanctions.
Global perceptions of India changed significantly after Goldman Sachs came out with a startling report in 2003.
The report averred that over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) could become a much larger force in the world economy than the G6, comprising the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France and Italy.
If things went right, the BRIC economies together could be larger than the combined economies of the G6 in less than 40 years.
The key takeaway of the Goa meet was new momentum for India-Russia ties. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin (left)
Heads of State of the BRICS nations: Brazilian President Michel Temer, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and South African President Jacob ZumaZuma
By 2025 it could account for over half the economic power of the G6. Of the current members of G6, only the US and Japan may be among the six largest economies in 2050.
India, the report averred, has the potential to show the largest growth rates for the next 30 years.
Indias GDP will outstrip that of Japan by 2032. The four emerging countries, thereafter, got together to fashion a new grouping (BRICS), which sought to influence global policies. South Africa joined in 2011.
Has the BRICS lived up to the expectations of India in 2003? The answer is a categorical No.
Russias energy dependent economy, its falling birth rates and growing criminalisation have seriously eroded its potential and influence.
The leaders wear traditional Indian vests for an informal dinner at the Taj Exotica Hotel in Goa
With falling oil and gas prices and deteriorating relations with the US, Russia is increasingly echoing Chinese policies in our Western neighbourhood, and particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It appears to have become a junior partner of China on this score. But, it would be a folly to think that the current Russian slide is permanent.
Likewise, Brazil and South Africa are both afflicted with internal political uncertainties and falling growth rates.
The main achievement for India in Goa was the announcement of measures to give new momentum to our relations with Russia.
These included Russian agreement to invest a record $11 billion, which will lead to a Russian takeover and restructuring of the ailing, debt-ridden Essar Petrochemicals refinery and of the Vadinar Port in Gujarat.
The main achievement for India in Goa was the announcement of measures to give new momentum to the country's relations with Russia
This has been accompanied by agreement for investment of a further $5.5 billion by India in Siberian oilfields.
Russian grievances about India lowering emphasis on bilateral defence cooperation have been addressed by decisions to buy S-400 air defence missile systems, establish a joint venture to manufacture 200 twin propeller transport helicopters for armed forces and pact on measures for timely acquisition of spares for defence equipment.
One expects that, in turn, Russia will be more circumspect on its defence ties with Pakistan.
The Goa BRICS Summit has mercifully and hopefully ended misconceived and unrealistic perspectives in India about Chinas intentions.
China is more determined than ever to encircle and contain India, by stepping up defence cooperation with Pakistan and proceeding with its One Belt One Road Project from Xinjiang to the strategic port of Gwadar, through Gilgit-Baltistan in POK.
President Xi Jinpings visit to Bangladesh and Chinas assiduous courting of Bhutan and Nepal are pointers we cannot ignore.
Do we have a comprehensive strategy to deal with this threat? One sadly doubts this, given the widespread illusions in New Delhi about Beijings good intentions.
Despite such reservations, one cannot but compliment South Blocks smart move in deciding well before the Uri tensions that we would invite the members of BIMSTEC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal), and not SAARC, for the Goa Summit.
We have served ourselves well, realising, albeit belatedly, that given Pakistans obstructionism, SAARC really has no future as a grouping to promote regional economic cooperation.
Every SAARC summit has turned out to be yet another soap opera, revolving around whether Indian and Pakistani leaders would meet for yet another round of fruitless talks.
The time has come for us to progressively disengage from SAARC, while placing much greater emphasis on a quadrilateral India-Sri Lanka-Maldives-Seychelles corridor and BIMSTEC.
We can, in course of time, evolve new institutions for trilateral cooperation with Afghanistan and Iran, while extending our reach across our western shores in the Indian Ocean.
Regional cooperation with Pakistan should be dealt with by a policy of benign neglect.
Angry: Anurag Kashyap
Anurag Kashyap is an angry man. And hes fed up of clarifying his stance on the Pakistani artists ban.
And thats why he ranted in a series of tweets to PM Narendra Modi asking pertinent questions about why an art form should suffer when there is geo-political unrest which wasn't foreseen.
After he put out those tweets, the media had a field day, going on to mention how Kashyap had demanded an apology from PM Modi.
Anurag has now clarified his stance and the reason behind his tweets through a Facebook post.
I am tired of the film industry being soft targets. We are damned if we do, damned if we dont! When we dont involve ourselves, they ask why is Bollywood quiet now?
"When we involve ourselves, we become the scapegoats to distract you from the real news.
"Either way they use us to sensationalise news. Still, I'd rather put my opinions out there on my own platform, then give the media a bite.
"No, Anurag Kashyap did not ask the PM to apologise (which most of the headlines would want you to believe, no one has their mind anyways), I merely questioned the fairness in judgement of a situation: the PM visited Pakistan for talks at the same time that a filmmaker was working with a Pakistani actor.
Not everyone was critical of his Tweets (above) but he was forced to explain on Facebook
"Neither was aware of future events or mood. Yet only one pays the price. Im also well aware that the government did not cry BAN or demand that Pakistani artists be sent back.
"Just as Im aware that the PM himself doesnt censor my films. But we elected them and so it is their responsibility to protect us from bullies - media or political parties.
"And when the governing partys designated members don't respond in hours of crisis because they are second guessing the mood of the PM then I would rather talk straight to the PM himself.
The dacoits (armed robbers) of Chambal are coming to Delhi. And with them are the Maoists.
The aim of these criminals and red rebels is simple: to make quick buck in the urban base and keep their gangs alive.
According to the police, Maoists from the jungles and dacoits from Chambal are increasingly moving to urban centres like Delhi and NCR looking for more money.
The dacoits (armed robbers) and 'jungle' Maoists of Chambal are coming to Delhi to make quick buck in an urban base and keep their gangs alive (picture for representation only)
Here they are targeting big businessmen to get access to sophisticated weaponry.
Last week, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested nine suspected Maoists from sector 47 in Noida.
After detailed interrogation the gang confessed that they were planning to loot bank ATM machines, cash vans or carry out abductions for ransom in the National Capital Region.
The gang was allegedly trying to create a base in Delhis neighbourhood - Noida where they had plans to expand their network with the help of local thugs.
Last week, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested nine suspected Maoists from sector 47 in Noida
The Maoists - who were arrested with sophisticated weapons, explosives and detonators - were allegedly planning to kidnap big businessmen to fund their activities in hinterland of Bihar.
"The Maoists usually fight the security forces in the jungles or attack the villagers. But they have now realised that they need more money to continue fighting.
"So they shifted to places like Noida where they can find their potential targets," a senior officer associated with the case told Mail Today. He said these dacoits and Maoists can make just about Rs 50,000 to a lakh from a bus or train robbery.
But they would make several lakhs from the ransom money if they could abduct a rich businessman in the NCR.
"They are old-school criminals but they are now interested in modern crimes like extortion, bank robbery and even financial frauds.
"Some of the members of the gangs are sent to urban centres to make friends with local criminals and learn the new crime techniques," said a senior police officer.
Though the police had earlier claimed to have arrested Maoist ideologues from cities such as Delhi and Hyderabad, this was for the first time that they are nabbing these rebels who have plans to carry out criminal activities in major urban areas.
'Some of the members of the gangs are sent to urban centres to make friends with local criminals and learn the new crime techniques,' a senior police officer told Mail Today
In Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand they have to rely on snatching weapons from armed forces.
But in cities like Delhi, Noida and Gurugram, a country-made gun is easily available to local criminals.
Besides arresting Maoists, Delhi Police recently busted a gang of dacoits from Chambal, who were running extortion racket in the NCR.
Police said the dacoits of Chambal have expanded beyond the ravines and are now abducting people from big cities like Delhi and other NCR towns.
A Faridabad doctor and his compounder, who were abducted from Jaitpur last month, were victims of one such gang based out of Kampil.
The two key accused in this case, Rishi Khalifa and Pramod Kumar, were arrested from Hathras and Birpur last week.
They were part of a gang that was operating in the Capital for the past few years. Khalifa had approached Kumar, who was a conduit for Chambal gangs, to float a new gang.
The gangs operate out of estuaries and islands of river Ganga between Kanpur and Gwalior.
The gang was in touch with local criminals in the NCR cities who provided information about potential targets and also made arrangements for abduction.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has found an unlikely ally: Arvind Kejriwal.
In at least two state assembly elections due in 2017 - Goa and Gujarat - the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will convert a binary BJP-Congress contest into a triangular fight.
The result: AAP will split the minority vote in both states. Its a vote-bank the Congress has so far had a lock-on.
In Goa, Christians and Muslims comprise 35 per cent of the electorate. In Gujarat, Muslims are just under 10 per cent.
Election
The results of the latest India Today-Axis opinion poll seem to bear this out. In Goa, the poll projects the BJP will win 17-21 seats in the 40-seat Goa assembly with the Congress a close second at 13-16 seats. AAP is projected to win just 1-3 seats.
Crucially, most of AAPs 16 per cent vote-share would have been cannibalised from the Congress, allowing the BJP to beat anti-incumbency in Goa by a whisker.
To his dismay, Kejriwal would thus have merely played spoiler to help the BJP retain power in a state it hasnt governed particularly well.
Gujarat presents a more complicated picture. Kejriwal has wooed the Patidars to gain a foothold in a state he thinks is ripe for the picking.
After Modis move to the Centre, lacklustre leadership by former Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, the Patidar agitation, atrocities on Dalits, and more than 20 years of anti-incumbency have weakened the BJPs traditional hold on Gujarat.
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhis political secretary and MP Ahmed Patel comes from Bharuch, a city at the mouth of the Narmada river in southern Gujarat.
He will be Sonias eyes and ears in the December 2017 Gujarat assembly elections.
Patel knows that a BJP defeat in Modis home state would demoralise the BJP leadership and cadre barely a year before the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
But Patels calculations may be unravelling. The plan to use Kejriwal to inflame a Patidar revolt against the BJP hasnt gone according to plan.
The upsurge in nationalist sentiment following Indias surgical strike on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) is likely to be most keenly felt in Gujarat where sentiment against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism runs high.
Worse, Kejriwal may, as in Goa, poach more voters in Gujarat from the Congress than from the BJP in a triangular contest.
The Delhi chief ministers recent four-day sweep through Gujarat was poorly timed with much of the attention focused on the BRICS and BIMSTEC summits in Goa and counter-terrorism cooperation in the region.
Following Indias surgical strike in POK, terrorism from Pakistan-based terror groups has become a default election issue.
It is Kejriwals weakest suit. His early questioning of Indias strikes in POK has drawn sharp criticism.
In a border state like Gujarat that could be an electoral millstone around Kejriwals neck.
The Delhi chief ministers recent four-day sweep through Gujarat was poorly timed with much of the attention focused on the BRICS and BIMSTEC summits in Goa and counter-terrorism cooperation in the region
Ambition
Months ago, the BJP would have been pleased to settle for around 100 seats in the 182-seat Gujarat assembly and just about retain power in 2017 despite anti-incumbency.
Now its ambitions will be set higher, courtesy Kejriwals disruption of the Congress vote and the armys action in POK.
Punjab is the other state where Kejriwal could have miscalculated badly.
Not long ago AAPs internal surveys claimed it would win over 100 seats in the 117- seat Punjab assembly.
Mis-steps have reduced this estimate to less than half in the India Today-Axis opinion poll to 42-46 seats - a close second to the Congress (49-55 seats).
The tainted SAD-BJP alliance is projected to finish a dismal - and fully deserved - third with 17-21 seats.
Kejriwals biggest mistake in Punjab has been to export his Delhi team to the state.
The sacking of veteran leader Chhotepur Singh and the failure to bring Navjot Singh Siddhu on board have compounded AAPs problems.
Reports about misgovernance in Kejriwals Delhi government too have filtered through to the villages of Punjab.
Reeling from the drug mafia and horrific corruption by Akali leaders, Punjab deserves better.
Former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has given the Congress a real chance to capture its first major state after three years of the partys retreat around the country.
Reform number one? Restore the Congress to a political party by rescuing it from the family business Sonia Gandhi has so diligently converted it into
Statistics
The Congress has lost not only Assam and Arunachal Pradesh to the BJP but, according to the India Today-Axis opinion poll, could lose Manipur and Uttarakhand as well in 2017.
With Himachal Pradesh likely to be another casualty in late 2017 and the Congress also set to cede misgoverned Karnataka to the BJP in 2018, winning Punjab becomes critical: It could be the only state (bar Meghalaya) with a Congress government ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Thats not good news for Indian democracy. India needs two strong national parties.
None of the regional fronts - JD(U), AAP, TMC, BSP or SP - has been able to step up to the plate.
India needs two strong national parties. The Congress has lost not only Assam and Arunachal Pradesh to the BJP but, according to the India Today-Axis opinion poll, could lose Manipur and Uttarakhand as well in 2017.
Theres further bad news for the Opposition: the India Today-Axis opinion poll was completed just days after the surgical strike.
The full impact of the Armys action and the Oppositions self-destructive politicisation of the strike have not been factored into the poll. If the penny hasnt yet dropped for the Congress high command, it should now: to expand beyond Punjab and Meghalaya in Indias 36 states and union territories, it needs to reform the party.
The new boss of The Restaurant Group, owner of Frankie & Benny's, is set to pocket up to 1million of shares under a bonus scheme.
Andy McCue, 41, took over as chief executive last month after former head Danny Breithaupt was ousted following a string of profit warnings.
He will pick up 282,675 shares in three years under a long-term incentive plan if performance conditions are met worth just over 1million at today's prices.
This will be on top of a basic salary, annual bonuses, benefits and a pension.
Tasty: Andy McCue, the new boss of Restaurant Group, owner of Frankie & Benny's, is set to pocket up to 1m of shares under a bonus scheme
Full details of McCue's pay have not yet been released but his predecessor picked up 1.1million last year.
Stock market filings also reveal that McCue spent 178,350 on 50,000 shares in the firm earlier this week.
Chairman Debbie Hewitt bought 7,012 shares for 24,859, meaning her total holding is worth around 136,600.
And new finance boss Barry Nightingale spent 49,632 on 13,617 shares, his only holding in the group.
McCue, a father of one, the former chief executive of betting giant Paddy Power, has taken on a difficult turnaround job, with the business's brands facing stiff competition in Britain's cut-throat leisure trade.
The firm which also operates the Chiquito and Garfunkel's chains has been battling increased rivalry from pubs and branded restaurant chains.
Bosses are set to shut or sell 33 underperforming sites.
The company made 36.6million of profits in the first half of this year, 3.7 per cent down on the same period in 2015.
Goldman Sachs bankers pocketed an average 75,000 each for three months work as the US firm's profits bounced back.
The financier made 2.4billion in the quarter to September 30 some 40 per cent more than a year earlier.
Its investing and lending division put in a particularly strong performance as the American economic recovery gathered pace, with revenues more than doubling.
Goldman Sachs made 2.4bn in the quarter to September 30 40 per cent more than a year earlier
And there was a 90 per cent fall in costs for bad behaviour such as fines and compensation, which dropped to 37.4million from 338.5million.
The bank has reduced staff numbers in the past 12 months, cutting 2,000 jobs, but its quarterly wage bill rose from 1.9billion to 2.6billion.
Chief executive Lloyd Blankfein said the figures showed his business had made encouraging progress.
'We saw solid performance across the franchise that helped counter typical seasonal weakness,' he said.
Tourists taking advantage of the cheap pound gave Burberry a sales boost by snapping up its ponchos, bags and dresses.
But despite the lift, disappointing demand from American department stores and concerns about trading in Hong Kong and China sent its shares down 7.2 per cent, or 109p, to 1403p yesterday. This morning shares had recovered, rising 1.4 per cent, or 20p, to 1,423.00p
Chief executive Christopher Bailey described the past six months as challenging while finance director Carol Fairweather said a 20million cost-cutting plan was under way.
Tourists flocked to Burberry's UK stores, fuelling a 30 per cent jump in sales
She also said the firm would receive a 125million boost from currency benefits an improvement from the 90million forecast in July.
The tumbling pound meant a raft of tourists flocked to its UK stores, fuelling a 30 per cent jump in sales which contributed to a 2 per cent rise in store revenues over the second quarter the first growth seen in a year.
Fairweather said: Tourists have been changing their travel plans to come to the UK. As the currency moved, people realised they can benefit from that. We have also seen growth from local customers due to improved products and services. There has been a big response to our new range of bags.
Burberry launched a new bridal bag a rounded satchel with equestrian features at its latest catwalk show. The alligator skin version costs almost 5,000. A 1,395 black nylon and leather rucksack with sequinned flowers has also been popular.
About 40 per cent of costs originate in the UK. Sales from UK customers accounted for about 15 per cent of sales in the half year, up from about 10 per cent. Total revenue for the six months to September 30 was down 4 per cent to 1.1billion.
Hong Kong saw double-digit falls, and America also had a difficult time. Burberry, along with other luxury goods firms, has been hit hard by the economic uncertainty sweeping the world, as well as currency swings. This has had a negative impact on confidence among wealthy American shoppers.
Chief executive Christopher Bailey described the past six months as challenging
Wholesale revenue, which is primarily sales to department stores, was down 14 per cent to 287million, which was more than analysts had forecast. Sales of its beauty lines fell to 76million from 82million.
Fairweather said more needed to be done to establish Burberry as a luxury brand in America. She warned that pushing more stock into US department stores when demand was weak could have forced retailers to have discounted items, denting the image. She said: It would have been the wrong thing to do.
The company, which is now using actress Lily James as a model, has been working on improving its stores around the world and investing in new products. A new chief executive, Marco Gobbetti, will join the group next summer, when Bailey will step into the president role while retaining his position as chief creative officer.
A decision to build parts in Spain for Britain's newest taxpayer-backed wind farm has sparked outrage.
Scottish Power, which is owned by Spanish giant Iberdrola, has awarded 150million of contracts to build the foundations of a 2.5billion wind farm off the coast of East Anglia to a shipyard in Spain which is backed by the Spanish government.
It flies in the face of the Government's strategy to support British jobs, and it has caused a crisis at Newcastle-based OGN Group which had hoped to secure the investment and 2,000 jobs.
Scottish Power has awarded 150million of contracts to build the foundations of a 2.5billion wind farm off the coast of East Anglia to a shipyard in Spain
Mary Glindon, Labour MP for North Tyneside, said: 'If the Government wants to ensure work comes to British workers they have to take a stronger line with these companies.
'Why should the British taxpayer give money to support companies unless there's some material benefit to the UK? It's not international aid, it's business.'
Scottish Power will receive millions in taxpayer-funded subsidies over the 15-year project.
OGN is asking the Government to deliver on its promise to support British business and the Northern Powerhouse.
Scottish Power said it awarded the contract following an open tender process, and the company Navantia was selected based on its technical and economic competitiveness.
A spokesman added: 'We are working with a range of UK suppliers and supporting major investment in UK infrastructure.
A continued slowdown in Londons property market is taking a toll on Foxtons as income from house sales fell by more than a third in its last quarter.
The London-focused estate agent, which also has offices in Surrey, said fewer home sales meant revenues declined 34 per cent to 12.2million in the three months to the end of September.
It also saw lower demand of homes to rent, but contract renewals meant its lettings revenues were flat at 22.6million.
Slowing down: Foxtons' income from house sales fell by more than a third in the last quarter
Despite the results, shares in the group were about 2 per cent higher at 97.25p in mid-morning trading.
The quarter results come after Foxtons issued a profit warning in July, with boss Nic Budden blaming it on Brexit and higher stamp duty for landlords.
But today, despite the drop in revenues, Mr Budden said that Londons property market remained attractive in the long term.
We have built Foxtons to withstand sales market cycles with our lettings revenue comprising over half the business, he said.
The estate agent said it had now 65 branches after opening seven new ones so far this year in Loughton, Sutton, New Malden, Fulham, Maida Vale as well as in Vauxhall and Peckham.
It said it was planning to open another two branches at the beginning of next year in outer London.
Recent housing market surveys have suggested that London has been one of the regions to be mostly affected by Brexit, with uncertainty denting Londoners' appetite for buying and selling homes.
A 3 per cent increase in stamp duty for landlords introduced in April is also said to have caused a slowdown in transactions.
To let: Foxtons also saw a reduced activity in tenants demand in its last quarter
However, the capital has seen some of the biggest price increases in recent years, with values currently around 35 per cent higher than their pre-crisis peak.
There are rumours that new Chancellor Philip Hammond will try to axe vital tax breaks
Savers have been hit by a double blow to their pensions from meddling politicians.
Last night the Treasury U-turned on a promise to allow retired savers to cash in their annuities.
And now there are rumours that new Chancellor Philip Hammond will try to axe vital tax breaks that help savers built up larger retirement funds.
Politicians are being lobbied heavily by insurers to hack back pension tax relief for middle-class workers who are in their 30s and older.
At present, savers do not pay income tax on money they put into a pension - under the principle of saving into a pension from untaxed earnings.
It means that 1 paid into a pension costs a basic-rate taxpayer 80p and a higher rate taxpayer 60p.
A consultation on changing pensions tax relief was launched last year. It claimed it wanted to simplify pensions, however, critics said the Government was simply trying to take in more tax from higher rate taxpayers' pension contributions.
Former Chancellor George Osborne shelved the idea of making any changes in his final Budget but the door was left open to future tinkering.
The most common suggestion so far has been a shift to a flat rate of pension tax relief, such as 30 per cent for everyone. This would reduce the benefit to higher rate taxpayers and mean that those paying 40 per cent tax no longer saved entirely from untaxed income, however, it would increase the benefit for basic rate taxpayers.
Last night the Treasury U-turned on a promise to allow retired savers to cash in their annuities.
Under radical proposals now being considered by the Treasury, for every 1 paid into your pension you would receive another 1, less your age, from the Government.
So a 25-year-old would receive a 75p top-up, compared to just 20p today. But anyone paying higher-rate taxes after the age of 35 would lose out.
Critics have pointed out that while this would encourage younger people to save early it could backfire and discourage older savers who haven't yet built up a retirement pot from doing so.
The Treasury yesterday announced that it no longer plans to launch a marketplace for savers to sell their annuities back to companies for a lump sum.
It says not enough insurers had signed up to buy the contracts, which pay an income for life, and that this could have put savers at risk of getting a bad deal.
Obama and a White House invite for dictator who has stolen billions from his impoverished African nation
Barack Obama has come under fire for extending a formal invitation to a shamed African dictator who has ruthlessly plundered billions of dollars from his own country.
The U.S. President is today having a coveted private meeting with President Ali Bongo of Gabon in the Oval Office despite his appalling track record.
Bongos family has ruled the impoverished African nation with an iron fist for five decades and have used its oil riches to fund a life of outrageous luxury.
Invite: Barack Obama today had a coveted private meeting with President Ali Bongo of Gabon in the Oval Office despite his appalling track record
Meanwhile one third of people in Gabon live on less than $2 a day and thousands starve to death each year or are forced to pick through garbage to find food.
Critics have pointed out that Gabon, with a population of 1.5 million, is the third-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
They claim that the only reason Mr Obama has agreed to the meeting is that he wants to curry favour with an ally to secure Americas fuel supplies - regardless of who it is.
The Bongo familys abuse of Gabon is well-documented and dates back to 1967 when Omar Bongo, Alis father, took over.
Two years ago he died paving the way for Ali Bongo to continue the reign of corruption.
Investigations have revealed the Bongos have dozens of luxury homes in places like the French Riviera and a $120million 14-bedroom townhouse in Paris.
Meeting: The two leaders discussed 'a range of critical regional and global issues', according to The White House
During one shopping spree in 2006 Ali Bongos then wife balked at the idea of moving into a property that cost a mere $25million.
GABON: Country factfile Population: 1,577,000
Birth rate: 35 births / 1,000
Death rate: 13 deaths / 1,000
Infant mortality rate: 50 / 1,000
Life expectancy: 52 years
HIV/Aids prevalence: 5.2%
Literacy rate: 63 per cent
GDP per capita: $14,500
Unemployment: 21 per cent
SOURCE: CIA World Factbook
I need something really big, really, really, really big, Inge said. I would think for that amount of money, I would expect a bit more grandeur.
I've tried to downsize, but it's just not in my character.
Jack Blum, a United Nations consultant and expert on offshore banking, told ABC News that the meeting with Mr Obama sends out the wrong message.
He said that over the years the Bongos had siphoned off a quarter of Gabons GDP which has made them incredibly rich.
There's absolutely no shame, Blum said of Bongo and his cronies.
I would say that the people who are running the country are guilty of grand theft nation.
Senator Carl Levin, D-Michigan, added that: Omar Bongo and now his son Ali Bongo have for more than 40 years run a regime in Gabon which diverts their country's wealth for their family's personal use.
Long running: The Bongo family's abuse of Gabon is well-documented and dates back to 1967 when Ali's late father Omar Bongo, pictured, took over
A Congressional report he wrote last year showed that the Bongos misused U.S. financial institutions to carry out suspicious transactions involving millions of dollars.
Omar Bongo and now his son Ali Bongo have for more than 40 years run a regime in Gabon which diverts their country's wealth for their family's personal use Senator Carl Levin
Speaking to ABC News White House press secretary Jay Carney admitted that Bongo has a less than sterling record.
First of all, the president of Gabon is making reform efforts, which we support, he said.
Secondly ... Gabon has been an important partner in some of the issues that are very important to American national security.
Manhattan college student Samy El-Goarany died last year fighting for ISIS in Syria, it was revealed in court papers on Monday
A New York City college student died last year fighting for the Islamic State in Syria and the mosque in his hometown was told he died in a car crash.
The imam of the Islamic Center of Middletown, New York told News 12 that they held a service for Samy El-Goarany after he died, and that he even comforted the young man's mourning family.
He added that he was surprised by the potential connection to ISIS.
El-Goarany's identity as a jihadi fighter was revealed this week in documents filed on Monday in Manhattan federal court.
That's because before he allegedly died in November, the 24-year-old recorded a video trying to clear the name of an Arizona man who had been arrested for recruiting him.
The Arizona man, Ahmed Mohammed el Gammal, who's accused of helping the student travel to Syria and receive military and religious-style training, was arrested last year and has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers said the video is unreliable and 'overly prejudicial' and should be precluded from a trial scheduled for December.
Prosecutors say El-Goarany left his parents' home in Middletown, New York, in January 2015, telling them he was returning to his Manhattan college. Instead, the government said, he flew to Turkey and then Syria.
Reached by phone, El-Goarany's father said the family didn't wish to speak. Court papers did not identify El-Goarany's college.
The imam at the El-Goarany's mosque in Middletown, New York says they were told Samy (right) died in a car crash last year . Pictured above with members of his family
The Middletown, New York imam says he was surprised to learn about Samy's involvement in ISIS. Pictured above at a Japanese steakhouse in a photo posted to Facebook
Above, the Islamic Center of Middletown, New York where the El-Goarany family held a memorial service for Samy after his death. The imam of the mosque said that they were told he was surprised to learn of the young man's connection to ISIS this week
Prosecutors said an unidentified person contacted a relative in November to say El-Goarany was killed fighting in Syria. The person provided photographs of a handwritten note in which the student said, 'If you're reading this then know that I've been killed in battle,' prosecutors said.
The government also said it had found a YouTube video in which El-Goarany, clad in military fatigues, said on September 8, 2015, two weeks after el Gammal's arrest, that he was in the 'Islamic State.'
Prosecutors said El-Goarany claimed in the video in an 'unabashed effort to falsely exculpate el Gammal that no one assisted him in traveling to Syria, including 'Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal.'
El-Goarany's identity as a jihadi fighter was revealed this week in court documents for the upcoming trial of Ahmed Mohammed el Gammal (left and right), a man who has been accused of recruiting the college student
Prosecutors argued in the court papers that the video should be admissible at trial to show El-Goarany went to Syria to join the Islamic State group and that he and his co-conspirators took extensive measures to maintain secrecy in the group's methods for recruiting personnel and helping recruits travel.
El-Goarany's lawyers said in court papers that the video depicts their client sitting on a mat in a sparsely decorated room. They say he states his name, explains he is a U.S. citizen 'currently residing in the Islamic State' and says el Gammal did not assist him in his travels.
The lawyers said the video should not be shown to jurors because it 'constitutes inadmissible hearsay.'
'Additionally, the entire video should be precluded as overly prejudicial,' they wrote, noting that El-Goarany is unavailable to testify at el Gammal's trial and cannot further explain how el Gammal did not facilitate his travel.
The defense lawyers also challenged the admissibility of El-Goarany's handwritten note, saying claims of his death were 'unreliable,' especially since he had written to his brother weeks earlier to say he might have to fall out of contact because he was being monitored.
A woman who was allegedly shot dead by her husband was found in a shallow grave behind her in-laws' home, along with a bag of potato chips, a bottle of perfume and an 'apologetic' note.
An autopsy record shows Valerie Tieman, 34, was found in the grave in Fairfield, Maine, alongside the items last month.
Her husband Luc, 32, has been charged with murder. He initially claimed his wife had run away, then when her body was found he said she died as a result of a drug overdose. But it soon emerged that she had in fact been shot twice in the head.
Valerie Tieman (left, and right with her husband Luc), was found buried in a shallow grave behind her in-laws' home in Maine
He has been described by friends as a disabled army veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A report obtained by the Morning Sentinel said a note that 'reportedly has an apologetic tone' was found beneath her body on September 20.
Police say the victim was shot in the head and neck.
The victim's husband first claimed he thought his wife had run away with another man, then after her body was recovered he said she had died from a drug overdose
A toxicology report discovered buprenorphine - which is often used to help heroin or opiate users fight their addiction - and tramadol, used to manage pain.
Mrs Tieman had first been reported missing by her parents on September 9.
Her husband first told police that she vanished while he was in a Wal-Mart store, and he suspected she had run off with another man.
When her body was found, he said he had watched as his wife overdosed on heroin.
The Leinie Lodge is a popular destination for Chippewa Valley residents and countless tourists. With the recent resurgence of microbreweries, neighbor Lori Geissler thinks the lodge is gaining in popularity.
Its great for the community, but not so great for Geissler and her neighbors, who have to deal with overflow parking on Elm and Prairie streets.
It is getting more difficult in our corner of the world down here, Geissler said at the Public Safety Committee meeting Tuesday night. We want a solution thats going to work for (Leinie) Lodge, too. We know theyre in the business of bringing tourists to area, and thats great for area. Everythings great unless you live right there.
Geissler and her husband, Robert, brought up safety concerns regarding cars and buses parking in front of mailboxes, driveways and fire hydrants in front of homes on Elm Street and Prairie Street, just across from the lodges parking lot.
Parking is currently allowed on both sides of the two streets, and neighbors have resorted to putting up their own No Parking signs to try and keep driveways clear. But especially on weekends, the Geisslers said those dont always stop visitors.
Lindsey Everson, Leinie Lodge manager, acknowledged their concerns and said the safety of neighbors and guests is the companys number one concern.
We want to be the best neighbor we possibly can and do what we can to enforce all restrictions that are currently in place, Everson said.
She pointed out their lot on the other side of the creek, in front of the brewery, also houses some parking on the weekends when there arent retailer and distributor trucks coming and going.
Leinies is growing, and Everson said they are exploring opportunities to support their business. Nothing is set in stone yet, but they want to continue providing an experience for tourists while remaining responsible neighbors.
But the Geisslers dont think current ordinances are enough.
Robert Geissler said there are safety issues such if a fire truck or ambulance needed to go down those roads. With parking on both sides, it would be nearly impossible for a vehicle of that size to get down the streets.
The committee members as well as Chippewa Falls Police Lieutenant Brian Micolichek discussed options, ranging from using the Marshall Field parking lots to reducing parking only on non-residential sides of both Prairie and Elm Streets.
Committee chair Paul Olson, who occasionally travels down those streets, said he recognizes there is a problem and wants to address it. But coming up with a solution to keep Leinie Lodge customers and its neighbors happy is a big feat, and he motioned to table the item for further discussion.
Something is not going to happen tonight, but something will be done here, Olson said. If we dont have to do something real dramatic, we wont, but if we have to we will. Its something we need to think about first.
The committee also approved a new Leinenkugels Brewery illuminated sign to be placed in front of the brewery parking lot. The sign, complete with the companys logo, would direct visitors to the brewery, whether customers or distributors, to the proper place.
Eric Marty of Zebradog, a company out of Madison who designed the sign, said customers are confused where to go and dont understand the lodge is where tours start.
The sign, on a brick foundation which has already been laid, will lessen that confusion with arrows pointing toward shipping & receiving as well as visitor center & brewery tour.
Elm Street to see changes
The Public Safety Committee also heard results from Rob Krejci, assistant city engineer, regarding a speed study done in the Elm Street neighborhood regarding concerns to school, specifically where Highway N turns into Elm Street and the speed limit drops from 55 mph to 25 mph.
Krejci recommended a transitory speed limit of 45 mph coming down the hill.
This allows transition up the hill but reduces speed (for traffic) coming down, Krejci said.
He also recommended two 25 mph signs with flagging, similar to what was recently done on northbound Highway 124 coming into downtown Chippewa Falls.
Micolichek said the police department recently installed an electronic speed board in that area, and thought more speed limit reminders would be helpful.
We find many people speed simply because they dont know theyre speeding, Micolichek said. (Reminders) have proven to be quite effective throughout the city and area in informing the speed limit.
The committee unanimously voted to recommend Council approve installing a 45 mph transitory speed limit area when entering the city, as well as installing a pedestrian crossing and signage at Hilary Street and Elm Street at the walking path and periodically having the electronic speed board on Elm Street.
Because the city needs to go through the county to change the speed limit, Krejci said he will give the same presentation at 9 a.m. Thursday to the Chippewa County Traffic Safety Committee.
An Air Force base in Colorado said Tuesday it accidentally released about 150,000 gallons of water containing toxic chemicals into the sewer system of the adjacent city of Colorado Springs, but the potential health hazards weren't immediately known.
Peterson Air Force Base said the water contained perfluorinated compounds or PFCs, which have been linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, along with other illnesses.
The Air Force hasn't said how high the levels were.
Peterson Air Force base (pictured) said Tuesday it accidentally released about 150,000 gallons of water containing toxic chemicals into the sewer system of the adjacent city of Colorado Springs
Fred Brooks, Environmental Element Chief at Peterson Air Force Base, second from right, answers questions during a press conference on Tuesday
Video courtesy of KKTV
The chemicals didn't get into the city's drinking water, said Steve Berry, a spokesman for Colorado Springs Utilities.
The tainted water passed through a wastewater treatment plant, but the plant isn't set up to remove PFCs, so they were still in the water when it was discharged into Fountain Creek, Berry said.
No communities take water directly from the creek downstream from the treatment plant, said Meghan Trubee, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
The Air Force said the tainted water was released from a storage tank sometime in the past week, but the cause of the leak was still under investigation.
It was discovered during a routine inspection of the tank on October 12.
PFCs are a component of firefighting foam widely used by the military, including at Peterson.
The holding tank was part of a system used to recirculate the water to a fire training area, officials said.
The Air Force is already investigating whether Peterson is the source of PFC contamination found in well water in two other nearby communities, the town of Fountain and an unincorporated community called Security-Widefield.
Peterson Air Force Base said the water contained perfluorinated compounds or PFCs. PFCs are a component of firefighting foam widely used by the military, including at Peterson (stock)
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in August it was highly likely that Peterson was the source of the PFCs in the two communities, although it hasn't been determined exactly how it got into the underground water.
The Air Force agreed to pay for filters and monitoring wells for the water systems.
Trubee said Tuesday that state officials were aware of the latest discharge of PFC-contaminated water from the Air Force Base and were awaiting more information from the military.
Australian stores also stripped by consumers wanting to ship it to China
The price of Australian cereal Weet-Bix soared to a whopping $50 a box in China after it was featured on a popular Beijing soap opera.
Actress Liu Tao grabbed a box of Weet-Bix as she sat down to eat breakfast, claiming she didn't eat traditional Chinese breakfasts and preferred the more Western-style meal of cereal.
And that was all it took to send sales sky-rocketing.
Weet-Bix sales skyrocketed after it made an appearance on popular Chinese drama Ode to Joy (pictured)
The price of Weet-Bix peaked in China in May directly after it made the appearance on TV drama Ode to Joy.
It made China the single biggest exporter for Weet-Bix.
But shortly after the craze, the cost stabilised out to about $14 for a 1.4kg box, still almost three-times what a box costs in Australia.
China became the biggest exporter of Weet-Bix after the product placement
1.4 kilogram boxes were selling for up to $50 in china, when they only sold for about $5 in Australia
The company behind the popular Australian breakfast cereal Sanitarium said the reaction to the product placement was insane.
Online sales were hounded by celebrity-obsessed Chinese buyers and Australian stores were also stripped of stock by business savvy consumers who wanted to ship the product to China with an exorbitant mark-up price, according to News.com.au.
Sanitarium is now relaunching the cereal as Nutri-Brex in an attempt to prevent any confusion that it was linked to rival product Weetabix, made the in the UK.
Sanitarium Weet-Bix on sale for $50 from National Hotel Supplies online
Weet-Bix sales jumped by about 50 per cent after it was featured on the popular soap opera
Weet-Bix has been marketed in Australia since 1985, but only entered the Chinese market in 2008
But the new product Nutri-Brex will continue to be made in the same factories as Weet-Bix in Australia, with the exact same ingredients.
Sanitarium Health & Wellbeing Australia general manager Todd Saunders said sales in Mainland China jumped by about 50 per cent in 2016, and Sanitarium expected them to continue after its re-brand.
Mr Saunders said its re-brand would give them a distinctive brand asset, and a name that stood out in the Chinese market.
He said the re-brand would give the product its biggest surge since it entered the market in 2008.
Weet-Bix has marketed itself on the slogan 'Aussie Kids are Weet-Bix kids'
The new product Nutri-Brex will continue to be made in the same factories as Weet-Bix in Australia, with the exact same ingredients
He said the launch of the new name would kick off with a photo of an actress from the Ode to Joy show holding Nutri-Brex in Sydney in front of the Opera House.
He hoped the same show which launched it to popularity in 2008 would again be behind its to success in 2016.
Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted she will defy opposition to push through her plans for a new generation of grammar schools
Almost half of grammar schools now prioritise poor pupils in admissions and some reserve up to a quarter of places for the least privileged, new research shows.
A survey carried out by the BBC found 73 out of the countrys 163 selective schools favour children who are eligible for free school meals the official deprivation indicator.
The analysis revealed that 21 grammar schools set aside places in quotas for pupils from lower income families.
A further 43 give some degree of priority in their over-subscription criteria, while nine grammar schools use it as a tie-breaker for allocating places to academically matched pupils.
The research was presented on Radio 4s Today Programme, which pointed out that some schools were doing absolutely nothing to help the poor
But Professor Anna Vignoles, from the University of Cambridge, said the measures were an interesting development which would make a difference.
She told the programme: The good thing about the action that grammar schools are taking is that it will send a strong signal to primary schools and to parents that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are being prioritised, and that could influence some of the choices that children and their parents make because many poor students dont even apply to grammar school.
It comes amid government plans to reintroduce grammar schools into the poorest areas of the country in an effort to boost social mobility.
It would reverse a ban imposed by Tony Blair in 1998 which stopped any new selective schools being created.
Critics say competition is so fierce to get into grammar schools that only the wealthiest children whose parents can afford private tutoring can score highly on the admissions test and gain a place.
But the Grammar School Heads Association, which represents the leaders of the 163 remaining schools, is encouraging members to introduce quotas for poor pupils and other measures.
Grammar schools have in the past tried to introduce positive discrimination, but were prevented from doing so by the government.
However, in 2014 the admissions code was changed to allow all state-funded schools to prioritise places for children from the poorest backgrounds.
BBC researchers examined the most recently published admission policies for applications for 2017-18 of grammars.
They found the five grammar schools within the King Edward VI foundation in Birmingham go furthest, with a quota policy allocating up to 25 per cent of places to pupils who are eligible for pupil premium funding in order of their test scores.
This means children who have been entitled to free school meals, and therefore the pupil premium grant, in the past six years are considered before remaining places are awarded.
The policy has been in place for two years, so it will be some time before it fully alters the profile of the schools.
Urmston Grammar School, in Manchester, sets aside just three places out of an intake of 150 for pupils entitled to pupil premium.
The Skinners School in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, gives five places, out of 150, to pupils eligible for free school meals.
The Government has promised there will be no return to the 11 Plus entrance exam for grammar school pupils and insists Britain already has a postcode lottery, with richer parents moving to areas with better comprehensives.
Prime Minister Theresa May also stressed that new grammars will have to show they are genuinely reaching out to poorer pupils and that education is not going back to the 1950s.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair (pictured) banned new grammar schools in 1998 -one year after the Labour Party won the general election
The government consultation document on grammars states: Selective schools also need to ensure the pupils they admit are representative of their local communities.
However, Gary Hickey, headteacher of Adams Grammar School in Shopshire, said while he prioritises poorer pupils he would be wary of lowering entrance standards.
He said: If you set lower standards, what we are potentially doing is setting them up to fail because they wont be able to cope with the academic standards of the grammar school.
A Department for Education spokesman said: The Government is currently consulting on scrapping the ban on new grammar schools, and allowing them to open where parents want them.
Too often, the chance of getting the best education depends not on their talent or hard work but on where they live or how much money their parents have.
Our new approach is not about recreating the binary system of the past or maintaining the status quo.
Motorcycle racing legend Wayne Gardner and his son have been jailed for alleged road rage and driving infringements in Japan.
The pair had been in the country for the Japanese Motorcycle Grand Prix but on Sunday, Gardner senior, 57, was arrested for allegedly inflicting 'violence by grabbing the victims' collars and such over traffic troubles' at the race venue.
Son Remy, 18 and also a motorcycle racer, completed the event but was arrested on Monday for allegedly driving a car without a licence, according to the Courier Mail.
Father and son Wayne and Remy Gardner pictured in Japan before they were both arrested
Remy Gardner, 18, and father Wayne Gardner, 57, pictured together. The pair have both been jailed in Japan, according to a report
Remy Gardner son of former 500cc World Champion Wayne Gardner
Remy Gardner heads down a straight during the Moto2 race during the MotoGP of Japan
They could spend up to 23 days in prison or more as criminal suspects can be held for that period without charge, followed by a further detention period, it was reported.
It could throw into doubt Remy's anticipated appearance at this weekends Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix on Phillip Island, Victoria.
Brother Luca reportedly took to Twitter to express his apparent displeasure with his father and older sibling.
A tweet made on Monday read: 'loss of respect to @GardnerRemy @TheWayneGardner honestly'.
Luca Gardner took to Twitter to express apparent displeasure with his releatives
Gardner was Australia's first 500cc motorcycle world champion, in 1987. Pictured in son Remy, next to one of his father's motorcycles
Gardner's arrest followed an incident about 8am on Sunday, where two middle-aged Japanese men and a 19-year-old boy were victims, the Courier Mail reported.
Police in Japan would not confirm Remy was arrested as he was still considered a minor in the country, but newspaper reports said he'd been spotted in the driver's seat of car and failed to present the required International Driving Licence for foreigners.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released a statement on Tuesday saying the department was 'providing consular assistance to two Australian men arrested in Japan'.
Gardner was Australia's first 500cc motorcycle world champion.
British rider Sam Lowes leads Remy Gardner during the Moto2-class second free practice session at the Japanese Grand Prix
Wayne and Remy Gardner at the Honda Museum during the Japanese Grand Prix recently
The husband of a woman whose body was discovered after a house fire has been charged with murder.
Residents on Clement Street in Guildford, western Sydney, described hearing a woman's screams for help as the fire tore through the home of a family from Afghanistan in the early hours of Tuesday.
Abdul Barati, 43, and his two sons, aged six and nine, escaped the inferno, but his wife, Adelah Barati, 30, was found dead.
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Damage caused by the blaze at a Guildford, western Sydney home, where a 30-year-old woman died
Damage to the house on Clement Street in Guildford after the blaze tore through it
Fire and ambulance crews on the scene, where Adelah Barati's body was found
The family is understood to have recently migrated from Afghanistan, 9 News reported.
According to reports, Barati attempted to put out the blaze using water from a tap and told neighbours to call fire crews.
Emergency services found the man and children outside the property, which was well alight when they responded to numerous triple zero calls about 3.35am.
Barati will appear in the Fairfield Local Court on Wednesday after being questioned, charged and refused bail on Tuesday.
Police at the scene of a house fire in Guildford on Tuesday, October 18
Family and friends of the couple will be questioned about their marriage as part of one line of inquiry, Superintendent Matt Appleton said.
'The relationship between the deceased and her husband is something investigators are looking at,' he told reporters at Merrylands Police Station.
He declined to say whether Mrs Barati was killed by the fire and in which part of the house her body was found.
Their sons were being cared for by family members.
Dairy farmers in Western Australia are pouring thousands of litres of milk down the drain as a global oversupply forces them off the land.
Fifth-generation dairy producers in the state's south-west are closing as milk processors Brownes Dairy and Harvey Fresh terminate contracts.
Graham Manning has poured 16,000 litres of milk and 156 years of family history down the drain as an oversupply of dairy products and plummeting demand from Asia and Europe destroys his livelihood.
The fifth-generation farmer said he was preparing to sell his cows and farm at Harvey, south of Perth.
'Today's the day we start dropping milk. We've got 16,000 litres in our vats,' he told reporters at his property on Tuesday.
'Very sad day.'
His two-year contract with Brownes expired on September 30.
Milks pours from a drain (pictured) at farmer Graham Manning's Harvey property in WA
Fellow farmers Dale Hanks and Tony Ferrano also lost their delivery contracts.
Harvey Fresh bought two week's worth of milk from the three farmers, following the end of the Brownes contract, but that ended on Tuesday.
A crisis meeting between those milk producers and WA Farmers was held.
WA Farmers dairy council president Michael Partridge criticised the milk companies of the two processors for their handling of the global dairy glut.
'For these three farmers to take the brunt of the industry problem at the moment is absolutely disgusting,' he told reporters on Tuesday.
'There's not much of a way forward for Graham and guys like him at the moment.
Fifth-generation farmer Graham Manning (pictured) empties 16,000 litres of milk down drain
'We just need to make sure it can't happen to anyone else.
'There's other ways to balance milk and control supply.
'Just so devastated it's come to this.'
Brownes declined to comment but pointed Daily Mail Australia to a Facebook post by the processor on September 23.
'In Western Australia, we face an unprecedented situation where our milk supply is far greater than the demand of the local and export markets combined,' it said.
Brownes (pictured, left) says it supports WA dairy farmers of Friesian cows (pictured, right)
Five more farmers in WA's south-west face an uncertain future as Harvey Fresh ends contracts in January.
Earlier this year, Brownes and Harvey Fresh told nine farmers in the state's south-west their produce was no longer required because of a global oversupply of milk.
In May, Brownes managing director Tony Girgis said Western Australia was producing 390 million litres of milk a year but only 310 million litres was being consumed.
Mr Manning said he would sell 250 cows and stop another 100 from producing milk.
'It's been a pretty rough time, but we've got to get through this,' he said.
'We can't think too much about ourselves, it's just as important for us to deal with these cows.'
Milk at Graham Manning's Harvey dairy farm is emptied into effluent ponds (pictured)
Milk at Graham Manning's dairy farm is flushed down the drain (pictured) as deliveries end
West Australian dairy farmer Dale Hanks' tweet (pictured) about Brownes ending his contract
Plenty of politicians like the prestige that a podium provides but in Hillary Clinton's case, having a fixed platform was a requirement promoted by her staff.
A newly released email obtained by Citizens United in its running federal records lawsuit includes several messages by longtime aide Huma Abedin negotiating the setup of a 2009 Hillary Clinton event.
'Just want to make sure someone has coordinated with you on hrc speech set up,' Abedin wrote Clinton Foundation aide Ami Desai and another aide, Ed Hughes on September 14.
A newly released email obtained by Citizens United in its running federal records lawsuit includes several messages by longtime aide Huma Abedin negotiating the setup of a 2009 Hillary Clinton event. She is pictured at another event the same year
'She won't be able to give it in the round like he does walking around with microphone,' she said, in reference to Bill Clinton. 'Are we able to set it up so shes speaking at a podium?' Abedin asked.
In an email reported by the lifezette website, Hughes responded that the room for the event ' s set 'stage in the round' with the circular stage in the center of the round, audience all around in concentric circles similar to some of last year's campaign rallies with public in the background.'
Clinton had held countless town hall events during her failed presidential bid in 2008.
Abedin responded: 'I'm worried that will be an issue for her. Can we do a half round or something?'
Abedin frequently acts as a gatekeeper guarding Clinton's time while also seeing to her physical comfort.
Abdein said Hillary would not be able to walk around the stage as easily as her husband Bill, so required a podium. She is pictured speaking at a conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2009
In emails released as part of the Wikileaks dump, Diplomatic Security agents complain that it is sometimes Abedin who required them to break security protocol when traveling with Clinton. One security agent event complained that Clinton made them roll down a window in her secure vehicle while traveling through the West Bank in rough territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
When Clinton was preparing a statement following the Benghazi Committee hearings, aide Dan Schwerin wrote,'I would make it shorter only because it's a bank of Mics and no podium.'
He's been called the Mozart of chess.
But during a recent stroll in New York, grandmaster Magnus Carlsen was just like any other player in Washington Square Park.
The 25-year-old Norwegian, who's the world's best chess player, was joined by actress Liv Tyler as he challenged a number of players and most of them had no idea who he was.
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Magnus Carlsen, 25, (right), the top-ranking chess grandmaster in the world, went undercover to challenge hustlers in New York's Washington Square Park
Most who faced off against Carlsen at Washington Square Park (pictured) didn't know who he was but quickly discovered once he started beating them in 10 moves
He stopped by the Manhattan park alongside close friend Liv Tyler to challenge a number of local hustlers
'At the moment, I didn't know who it was,' said one of the players who faced off Carlsen, which was captured in a video shared October 6.
'I was just playing. I tried to win, but when I saw him make a move, already I knew it was like, you know, he's a very strong player.
'In like 10 moves, he checkmated me.'
Meanwhile, 39-year-old Tyler smiled and snapped photos on her cellphone while watching Carlsen play in the park.
Tyler, 39, smiled and snapped photos on her cellphone while watching Carlsen play in the park
Carlsen became a grandmaster at 13. By 19, he was already considered the world's best player.
Carlsen and Tyler have appeared together on a number of occasions.
They were seen playing each other at the Village Chess Shop in a 2010 video.
That same year, Carlsen co-starred in a G-Star Raw ad and shared the red carpet with Tyler during New York Fashion Week.
Carlsen became a grandmaster at 13. By 19, he was already considered the world's best player.
Carlsen and Tyler have appeared together on a number of occasions since 2010, when they co-starred in a G-Star Raw commercial (pictured). They also shared the red carpet during New York Fashion Week
Carlsen and Tyler were also seen playing each other at the Village Chess Shop in a 2010 video
In 2014, he checkmated Bill Gates in just nine moves.
At Washington Square Park, one player said he 'tried to win, but when I saw his move, I knew I was going to lose.'
Another player said he was asked by several people if he knew who Carlsen was.
'I remember that I said, "Well, I know that I'm playing a strong player,"' he said.
Carlsen said the man 'didn't play too badly.'
At Washington Square Park, one player said he 'tried to win, but when I saw his move, I knew I was going to lose.
They died of organ failure and 'organising pneumonia' in 2015
All the victims abused alcohol since they were teenagers
It was made with $2 bottles of wine from auction and other sources
The moonshine had toxic methanol in it, produced by poor distilling
They all lived in a remote Aboriginal community in northwest NSW
Three people died after drinking their neighbour's $2 moonshine so strong that one sip could paralyse the drinkers arms for 15 minutes, an inquest has heard.
Roger Adams, 37, his girlfriend Sandra Boney, 40, and her brother Norman Boney, 46, all died within two months of each other in early 2015.
Police found about 100 empty bottles lying around a tank at the home of Ms Boney and Mr Adams in the indigenous community of Walli Reserve, near Collarenebri in northern NSW, after the deaths.
Three people died after drinking their neighbour's $2 moonshine so strong that one sip could paralyse the drinkers arms for 15 minutes, an inquest has heard (stock image)
The bottles contained highly-toxic methanol, which can be fatal in small amounts of just 100 millilitres or less and is produced when alcohol is not distilled properly.
Their neighbours Mary Miller and Graham Stewart had allegedly for six months been supplying the trio with boxes of spirits they illegally distilled at home, the inquest heard.
The coroner's court heard a woman in the community said her arms went numb for 10 to 15 minutes after just one nip of red liquid just before Christmas 2014.
'She purchased some moonshine rum, different to the red drink, for $30. It tasted like methylated spirits,' counsel assisting the coroner Peggy Dwyer told the court.
'Some of the moonshine contained highly toxic levels of methanol. Liquid from some of the other bottles seized smelt like apple juice and unleaded petrol.'
The victims lived in the indigenous community of Walli Reserve, near Collarenebri in northern NSW
The bottles contained highly-toxic methanol, which can be fatal in small amounts of just 100 millilitres or less and is produced when alcohol is not distilled properly
Ms Miller said the wine seized from her home and used to make the spirits was bought for $2 a bottle at auction.
'They also told police that these bottles of spirits were occasionally given as gifts, or as part of a bartering system,' Ms Dwyer said.
All three victims died of organ failure and 'organising pneumonia' after a history of alcohol abuse dating back to when they were teenagers, the court heard.
Ms Boney died in February 2015, Mr Boney two weeks later and Mr Adams a month later after convulsing, vomiting blood and suffering a heart attack.
Mr Adam's sister told the inquest he began to drink more than usual after his girlfriend's death, buying bottles of red wine and port from an IGA supermarket.
'Naturally he was grieving the death of his partner... and appeared to have difficulty coping with (it),' Ms Dwyer said.
Ms Dwyer said it was illegal in Australia to distil alcohol without a license.
The inquest in Walgett, near Collarenebri, was expected to run until Friday.
The cost of seeing a doctor will
Patients will have to fork out $78 to see a doctor next month as health professionals hike fees to cover rising costs amid a freeze in Federal Government funding.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) said on Wednesday it had recommended its members increase fees two percent from November 1, meaning a standard GP visit of under 20 minutes will increase $2.
For patients whose doctor does not bulk bill - which means they accept the Medicare rate as full payment for the consultation - fees will increase to $41, as the current rebate is $37.
Doctors' fees for a standard GP visit of under 20 minutes will be hiked $2 to $78 next month
'Input costs have gone up - rents, cost of insurance, cost of supplies - they continue to rise and in that environment we need to continue to apply a quality service,' AMA Vice President Dr Tony Bartone said.
'What is unfortunate is that we are in a middle of the MBS freeze,' he said, referring to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS).
The government announced this year it was extending the freeze on rebates paid to doctors and other health professionals until 2020 in a bid to save $2.8 billion.
Dr Bartone said the freeze was putting pressure on GPs, who were becoming more likely to abandon bulk billing.
'While the government continues to freeze the rebates it will fall back on patients, out of pocket costs will increase and the ability to continue bulk billing will be questioned time and time again,' he said.
Health Minister Sussan Ley said it was up to doctors how much they charge patients.
'We respect and value that doctors are small businesses and they have scope to set their fees according to their wishes, their business model and their patient cohort,' she told reporters at Parliament House.
Ms Ley said the prime minister's pre-election declaration that no one would pay more to see a GP because of the rebate freeze was underpinned by a record-high bulk billing rate.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said GPs were being squeezed to breaking point.
Retailer had already annoyed customers by changing its free coffee offer
The minimum spend to receive a free newspaper will go up from 5 to 10
Furious Waitrose customers are threatening to desert the upmarket supermarket after it introduced another curb on its popular loyalty scheme.
The minimum spend to receive a free newspaper with your shopping will double to 10 from November 1.
The retailer had already prompted anger by insisting customers have to buy something before getting a free hot drink at eight stores.
Furious Waitrose customers are threatening to desert the upmarket supermarket after it introduced another curb on its popular loyalty scheme
The minimum spend to receive a free newspaper with your shopping will double to 10 from November 1. Customers reacted with fury on social media
An email announcing the change was sent to MyWaitrose cardholders on Monday.
It said: 'From 1 November 2016, the minimum spend to receive money off your shopping with selected newspapers from Monday to Friday will be 10.
'It will remain at 10 at weekends as it is now.'
The decision prompted ire on social media, with Twitter user Mark Phillips writing: 'Dear @waitrose your 5 newspaper offer keeps me coming to your store most days.
'Doubling it to 10 I'm afraid won't bother #change it back.'
Twitter user Bryan RS criticised the store for saying the hike to 10 was 'a small change'.
He wrote: 'Why not be honest? The newspaper offer isn't "changing". It's getting worse. Spin like this makes you look like Tesco.'
A spokesman for Waitrose told MailOnline: 'Like any business, we regularly review promotions to ensure we balance providing value for our customers with a return on our investment. We are still the only supermarket where if you buy a selected newspaper, you will receive money off the rest of your shopping.'
The news came just four days Waitrose put restrictions on its give-away of free takeaway coffee for loyalty card holders at eight stores.
The change means that customers now have to buy something else before they can collect a free hot drink.
The move followed complaints from customers in some towns that the deal was creating queues and attracting the 'wrong sort of people'.
Small independent coffee shops had also been critical of the scheme, complaining that it took away vital custom.
The retailer had already prompted anger by insisting customers have to buy something before getting a free hot drink at eight stores
It seems likely that the decision, which the company calls a 'small change', will be rolled out to hundreds of other stores.
The offer of a free hot coffee or tea without the need to buy anything has been hugely popular since it was introduced in 2013, attracting thousands of extra people through their doors.
However, while the offer has created queues at tills, it does not appear to have translated to a big uplift in sales.
As a result, the chain has imposed a series of caveats that have made it more difficult to claim the free drink.
An email announcing the change was sent to MyWaitrose cardholders on Monday. These loyal customers were not happy
In January last year, Waitrose decided that anyone who wanted to have their free drink in one of its store cafes would have to buy something else, such as pastry, to qualify.
Now, the trial at the eight stores means customers cannot have a hot drink to take away unless they buy something else.
And the something else can't be a 5p plastic bag, tobacco, stamps, mobile or e-top up vouchers, a lottery ticket, or gift voucher.
The eight stores involved in the trial are in Essex and parts of the east of England - Billericay, Bury St Edmunds, Clifton, Leigh-on-Sea, Mountsorrel, Norwich, Southend and Swaffham.
Waitrose says: 'We are carrying out a trial in eight branches where we will be making a small change.
'We'll simply be asking myWaitrose members in these shops to make a purchase before collecting their free coffee at the checkout.'
Waitrose has 15 petrol stations that offer a free hot drink, but this requires a minimum spend of 30 to qualify.
The offer of a free coffee and newspaper with your Waitrose shopping has attracted thousands of new customers to the supermarket
The upmarket chain faced a Middle Class backlash when it adopted the free hot drink policy for loyalty card holders three years ago.
Shoppers took to social media arguing it was harming the store's image by attracting 'chavs'.
One person in Hertfordshire, tweeted: 'Bit disconcerting seeing people carrying cups of hot coffee around Waitrose whilst they text and push trolleys with their bellies.'
Many small cafes have suffered because of the Waitrose policy.
In 2013, Gilly Chu, owner of Gilly's Cafe in the high street, Nailsea, Bristol, said the decision to give hot drinks away had resulted in her morning hot drink trade plummeting by more than 50 per cent.
Mrs Chu stepped down from her position as chairman of the area's chamber of trade because she was not prepared to front an organisation which included Waitrose as a member.
'It is totally incompatible with my business morals and principles to share a platform with a national retailer, Waitrose, who sees independent high street retailers as collateral damage,' she said.
On a subreddit called Last Images, grieving friends and family find comfort by sharing the final pictures taken of their loved ones before they died.
The rules of the thread which has almost 50,000 subscribers require posters to provide full context about the people in the pictures and what happened to them.
Gory details are prohibited, as well as jokes at the expense of the victims, but the posts can be about anyone, including celebrities - and many of them are.
The reported last images of well-known figures who have died in 2016 such as David Bowie and Muhammad Ali and stars much longer dead, like Marilyn Monroe.
Posters also tend to share images of people who died in tragic events victims of school shootings, terror attacks and infamous murders.
It is difficult to independently verify the authenticity of the posts, but DailyMail.com believes the cases below are legitimate.
Here are some of the images and stories people have shared
'The last photo of me and my boyfriend together. He died in a motorbike accident one year ago today, aged 27,' Rache captioned this post with her boyfriend Merrick before he died
Rache posted the last picture she took with her boyfriend Merrick before he died in a motorcycle accident.
It was taken during a trip introducing him to her favorite spot from when she was a child - a seaside village on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales.
She stopped to snap a selfie of the pair of them together after a walk along the beach.
Merrick died just days after the picture was taken - and on the first anniversary of his death, she wanted him to know she was thinking of him.
'I posted on Last Images because I felt like I wanted to show people what I was dealing with that day, other than people who knew me. I wanted some support but from people I could talk to anonymously,' she told Vocativ.
' I just felt like I wanted him to know I was still thinking about him in a different way than just with my family and friends.'
'This is the last time I saw my grandmother,' wrote one woman alongside an image of herself with her elderly relative
A user called KristenKutThroat shared this image of the last time she saw her grandmother, who died a couple of days after it was taken.
The woman said her grandfather had died a few days before the picture was taken.
And that her grandmother had told her that her recently departed grandfather was 'bringing the car around.'
'She knew,' Kristen added.
'Three years ago today he was killed in Iraq. This is the last picture of he and I at my wedding thirteen years ago,' wrote a user called stationcommando about a friend
'The only photo I have of my dad. A few weeks later, he was murdered by his brother,' wrote dumn_and_dumner
'My ex-girlfriend before leaving home to pursue her dream of riding her bike across America,' wrote Beer-Wall alongside this picture
A poster called Beer-Wall shared this picture of his ex-girlfriend taken before she went off to ride her bike across the country.
She was taking the trip to raise money for research into multiple sclerosis, which her grandfather had.
But she was killed by a distracted driver halfway through her journey - and her grandfather died later that same year 'of a broken heart,' the poster added.
He wrote: 'I remember when I found out, it didn't seem real. Three years later, it still doesn't seem real.
'We weren't together at the time but she was still important to me and I cared about her. She had just graduated college with honors and survived ovarian cancer when she was 13.
'It still really hurts that she's gone. I just wanted people to see her and know something about her. She was really special.'
'My dad drinking his last beer the day he passed away in his sleep,' Max captioned this photo of his father Per
Max spent his father Per's last day biking around the island of Uto in Sweden with him.
When his father grew tired, they stopped at a bar - and 15-year-old Max was playing with his phone while his dad enjoyed a drink.
As Per was finishing his second beer, his son unknowingly snapped what would be the last picture taken of him.
Two years after his father died, he stumbled across the subreddit and shared the photo.
'The comments I got really brightened my day. I still get some, and every time they remind me of what a good person my dad was,' Max told Vocativ.
'This was the first positive thing to come from my dad's passing. Nothing has made me more relieved from the loss.'
'This is the last picture of my brother and I, taken days before he was murdered this February. He was only 17.. I miss him terribly,' wrote a user called itssydneyy
'Last picture of my best friend and I taken on June 14th, 2015. She died in a car accident,' wrote the poster alongside this picture
'The last photo with my grandmother... tomorrow will be one month since her passing. I miss her every day,' wrote a woman along with the last picture with her loved one
CaitFresh shared this image of her nephew, writing: 'My nephew, hours before he was killed by his best friend in a car crash'
Government whips 'have ordered Tory MPs to talk to staff about conduct'
He works for Tory MP Craig Mackinlay whose office 'attack took place in'
Sam Armstrong, 23, questioned after being arrested on
Scotland Yard was preparing last night to question several Tory political aides over the alleged rape of a young woman in an office in Parliament.
Detectives want to know exactly what took place in the hours before she claims to have been assaulted in the office of Tory MP Craig Mackinlay.
Sam Armstrong, 23, the MPs chief-of-staff, has already been questioned after being arrested on suspicion of rape. He will answer bail next year.
He and the woman were among a group of people seen drinking heavily on the House of Lords terrace earlier that evening.
Sam Armstrong, pictured right with former prime minister David Cameron, has been arrested on suspicion of rape over an alleged sex attack in Parliament
It is understood the woman went to police alleging that she was sexually assaulted after being invited back to Mr Mackinlays office.
It is located in the neighbouring Norman Shaw Building, the former Metropolitan Police headquarters that is part of the Parliamentary estate. It is a few hundred yards from the Commons.
The inquiry has sent shockwaves through the Westminster establishment.
Last night it emerged that Government whips have ordered all Tory MPs to confront their staff about their conduct.
Insiders said they are frustrated at a string of rumours about less serious allegations of drunken high-jinks.
One said they believe cheap drinks and long working hours have led some ambitious young staff to treat Parliament like a university student union.
It is believed to be the first time that a woman has reported being raped in the Houses of Parliament to police.
She contacted the Metropolitan Police at around 1am last Friday alleging she had been raped.
She had spent the evening with Mr Armstrong and others at the luxury terrace bar, which is a popular destination for MPs, political staff and their guests.
Mr Armstrong works as chief-of-staff for Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, pictured, whose office the alleged offence took place in
Detectives arrested Mr Armstrong immediately. Uniformed officers were seen searching Mr Mackinlays office after obtaining permission from him and the Commons authorities. It was also sealed off for forensic tests.
The South Thanet MP, who beat Ukip leader Nigel Farage in the 2015 general election, was not in Westminster at the time of the alleged attack.
Mr Armstrong, a history and politics graduate, who has posed for pictures with former prime minister David Cameron, has been running Mr Mackinlays office for the past nine months, his LinkedIn profile says.
In that role, he has served as Mr Mackinlays press spokesman, co-ordinated his movements, updated his website and advised him on committee work.
Mr Armstrong states that from September 2014 until May 2015 he was a political campaigner for the Conservative Party.
He hit the headlines last year after being named among a group of young Conservatives in the Tatler Tory bullying scandal.
It was triggered by the suicide of 21-year-old activist Elliott Johnson and led to bitter recriminations in Conservative circles.
Mr Armstrong, who studied history at Nottingham University alongside Mr Johnson, was barred from last years Conservative conference.
Mr Mackinlay's office is located in the Norman Shaw Building, right, which neighbours the Houses of Parliament, left
The ban was imposed while party bosses investigated claims that a photo may exist of Tory MP Robert Halfon leaving the East India Club with his mistress as part of a failed blackmail plot.
Mr Armstrong vehemently denied the unsubstantiated, anonymous, and untrue allegations and no further action was taken.
A spokesman for Mr Mackinlay said: He is awaiting further information from the police.
A Met Police spokesman said: A 23-year-old man was arrested on Friday on suspicion of rape.
Anthony Danner, 55, from Peoria, Illinois, has been accused of having sex with a female husky named Velvet and a male malamute named Wolf
A 55-year-old Illinois man has been indicted for allegedly having sex with two of his pet dogs.
Anthony Danner from Peoria has been charged with felony counts of sex with an animal, according to the Journal Star newspaper.
If convicted, he could face up to three years in prison.
The court could also force him to give up his pets and ban him from keeping animals in his home.
Danners alleged conduct with animals has been the subject of a months-long investigation by the Peoria Police Department.
Authorities believe that Danners two dogs, a female husky named Velvet and a male malamute named Wolf, were victimized by their owner between March 1 and March 17 this year.
Danners criminal record includes traffic violations as well as citations for failing to vaccinate his pets for rabies.
He was being held in Peoria County Jail on $35,000 bond.
Danner is alleged to have made sexual contact with a female husky named Velvet and a male malamute named Wolf. An Alaskan malamute is seen left and a Siberian husky is seen right (file pictures)
A suspected Iraqi insurgent is suing the Ministry of Defence over his varicose veins.
The man, who cannot be named, is blaming the condition on British troops who detained him nearly a decade ago.
His High Court damages claim using the Human Rights Act is likely to be in the tens of thousands of pounds.
A suspected Iraqi insurgent has taken the Ministry of Defence to the High Court, pictured, blaming his varicose veins on his detention by British troops
In a case management hearing yesterday in central London, lawyers also argued the way UK troops treated him led to respiratory conditions and a broken tooth.
He was detained in 2008-2009 by the UK and subsequently transferred to US forces a move his lawyers claim was illegal.
His case against the Ministry of Defence is being heard alongside two others.
All three claimants are represented by Leigh Day, a human rights firm facing a disciplinary tribunal next year over alleged drummed-up cases against UK soldiers.
The MoD has so far paid out 22million in compensation to Iraqi civilians.
The MoD, whose London headquarters is pictured, has paid out 22million in compensation to Iraqi civilians
Mr Justice Leggatt, the judge overseeing cases arising from abuse claims over the Iraq war, asked the lawyers how the claimant was arguing that the varicose veins were caused by his detention.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, acting for the Iraqis, said that he would not be claiming for it if he was not arguing it was caused by his ill-treatment by British soldiers.
Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, has dismissed every complaint of bias over coverage of Jeremy Corbyn since he became Labour leader
Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, has dismissed every complaint of bias over coverage of Jeremy Corbyn since he became Labour leader.
Some 71 complaints against broadcasters coverage of the Labour leader have been filed since September, 2015.
The left winger and his fans have consistently complained about unfair treatment by what they term the MSM mainstream media.
Sky has been fingered as the biggest culprit, attracting 31 complaints, while Channel 4 attracted 23 complaints and ITV had 12, according to figures obtained by political website, Politicshome [must credit].
Ofcom did not specify which channels attracted the other complaints.
The BBC does not come under Ofcoms remit but supporters of the Labour leader have often accused the corporation of bias.
But an investigation by the independent watchdog has thrown out every charge of bias by other broadcasters.
Ofcoms rules say due impartiality must be maintained in all news coverage.
However broadcasters are not under any obligation to give equal air time to each side except during election periods.
Some 71 complaints against broadcasters coverage of the Labour leader have been filed to Ofcom since September, 2015
An Ofcom spokesman said: After careful assessment of the complaints and the broadcast material, Ofcom did not identify any issues which warranted further investigation under its rules.
The most complaints against broadcasters were made in September 2015, when Mr Corbyn became the surprise victor in the Labour leadership election. Some 41 concerns were filed that month about coverage across all channels.
Seven complaints were submitted in September this year concerning Channel 4s Dispatches show about the grassroots group Momentum, which rallied behind Mr Corbyns leadership bid.
Channel 4 has often attracted criticism from Mr Corbyns team. He refused to take part in a leadership hustings with the broadcaster, saying it was not impartial enough.
In July, Mr Corbyn blamed a ludicrously biased media for a systematic undermining of his leadership.
A study by the London School of Economics department of Media and Communications said 57% of all print news stories about Mr Corbyn were antagonistic or critical in a measured but even-handed manner... something we would expect from the media.
The rest were either neutral or positive.
The study also said 44% of stories about Mr Corbyn quoted him in his own words and 23% quoted pro-Corbyn Labour sources.
By comparison 28% quoted anti-Corbyn Labour sources and 20% quoted Tories.
The left winger and his fans have consistently complained about unfair treatment by what they term the MSM mainstream media
And a study by the Corbyn-supporting Media Reform Coalition and Birkbeck, University of London claimed media outlets - including broadcasters - have shown marked and persistent imbalance in coverage.
Ofcom attracted even more complaints about the BBCs coverage of the Labour leader than other broadcasters, receiving 68 complaints about the state broadcaster.
But it could not rule on the complaints as the BBC does not fall under Ofcoms remit.
In January, Labour made an official complaint to the BBC over its handling of the resignation of Stephen Doughty, a shadow minister.
The party claimed that the shadow foreign minister had orchestrated his resignation live on the Daily Politics just minutes before Prime Ministers Questions started.
He had informed the BBCs political editor about his decision and she had invited him onto the show.
The shows producer denied any charges that the resignation had been encouraged or orchestrated by the BBC.
But other shows have far higher complaints in a single episode than supporters of Mr Corbyn have filed in a year.
Lord Mandelson and the millionaire City public relations man Roland Rudd were last night revealed as the two figures masterminding the campaign to frustrate Brexit.
The two arch-europhiles are pulling the strings of the Open Britain campaign group, which is demanding that MPs have a new vote on Britain leaving the EU.
The organisation described as a band of fifth columnists by Leave MPs last night does not reveal the names of its board on its website.
But records from Companies House show Lord Mandelson and his close friend Mr Rudd both hold key roles. Both men previously tried to drag Britain into the euro and were prominent figures in the failed Remain referendum campaign.
Lord Peter Mandelson (left) and millionaire City public relations man Roland Rudd (right) are masterminding the campaign to frustrate Brexit
Open Britain claims it is anti-democratic for the House of Commons to be denied a vote on implementing Brexit. MPs pointed out the irony that two of the groups main backers were themselves unelected.
Open Britain has issued a series of apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of what it calls hard Brexit.
Last week, it released a statement by the Tory MP Anna Soubry which said: The horrific damage of a hard Brexit is clear. Less tax revenue means less to invest in schools and hospitals, lower trade and investment means businesses and jobs at risk.
The group is also co-ordinating attempts by Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and other pro-EU MPs to force a Parliamentary vote on the terms of the Brexit negotiations. They are demanding that the UK stays inside the single market.
Records from Companies House show Lord Mandelson and his close friend Mr Rudd (right) both hold key roles in the Open Britain campaign group
Critics say this amounts to an attempt to keep Britain in the EU by the back door.
Brussels has said that, if the UK wants to stay inside the single market, it must continue to allow free movement of migrant workers and take orders from the European Court of Justice.
Open Britains Companies House records reveal it is in effect a re-branding of the failed Britain Stronger In Europe campaign, which fought and lost the June 23 vote. Lord Mandelson, nicknamed the Prince of Darkness, invented the art of modern political spin and was a key ally of Tony Blair. But he was twice sacked as a cabinet minister, before becoming Britains unelected EU commissioner.
Mr Rudd, the founder and chairman of the public relations firm Finsbury, is the brother of Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Other board members who were prominent in BSE include Will Straw, who is the son of former home secretary Jack Straw and was awarded a CBE for running the Stronger In campaign; Joe Carberry, co-executive director of Open Britain, who is Lord Mandelsons godson; and James McGrory, co-executive director of Open Britain, who is a former Lib Dem spin doctor.
Other board members who were prominent in BSE include Will Straw (shown), who is the son of former home secretary Jack Straw
The board also includes TV presenter June Sarpong (shown), who made her name on youth programmes
The board also includes TV presenter June Sarpong, who made her name on youth programmes; Richard Reed, one of the founders of the Innocent smoothie brand; and Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Former Cabinet minister and Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: They are a kind of fifth column of people whose sole purpose is to delay the process to the point where they think we will not actually leave.
These people are fighting the same battles all over again because they do not like the result.
Tory MP Charlie Elphicke added: Open Britain appears to simply be the Stronger In campaign with a changed nameplate. It is clear that they have not accepted the decision of the British people. The group has yet to publish records saying where its funding is coming from.
Last night, a spokesman for Open Britain said: The campaign respects the result of the referendum. The country has voted to leave the European Union but the terms on which we leave are going to be the subject of much debate for some time to come.
We are campaigning for the best deal possible for Britain in the negotiations with the EU.
Will Straw is on the board of Open Britain but is not active in day-to-day campaigning. Insiders say he is tying up legal loose ends from the referendum campaign.
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A critically endangered black rhino has given birth to an 80-pound female at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines.
The unnamed baby rhino was born to mother Ayana and its father Kiano on October 11, the Des Moines Register reported.
Zoo CEO Mark Vukovich called the birth 'an extremely significant event' for the zoo and efforts to reverse a long decline in the number of black rhinos.
An endangered black rhino has given birth to an 80-pound female at Des Moines' Blank Park Zoo
The baby rhino (pictured) was born to Ayana and male rhino Kiano on October 11. Zoo CEO Mark Vukovich called the birth 'an extremely significant event' for the zoo and efforts to reverse a long decline in the number of black rhinos
The two adult black rhinos at Blank Park are among 46 housed in North American zoos. Of those, only six are breeding females. Pictured is the baby rhino and its mother Ayana
Eastern black rhinos are listed as critically endangered by the World Wildlife Fund.
The animal's combined wild and captive population now numbers less than 1,000, which represents a 96 per cent decline from the population's height in 1970.
The two adult black rhinos at Blank Park are among 46 housed in North American zoos. Only six of those are breeding females.
Zoo spokesman Ryan Bickel says the calf was standing and walking within an hour of birth and attempted to feed within two hours, which are signs of a healthy baby rhino.
The adorable baby rhino is just one of seven black rhinos to be born this year in zoos worldwide, according to the Register.
Susie Ellis, executive director of the International Rhino Foundation, told the newspaper that 'it's so great that the baby is a female because the black rhino population tends to be skewed toward male'.
The foundation works to stop the world's rhino population from becoming extinct.
Speaking of the baby rhino's mother, Ellis said: 'Her reproductive potential is quite high and, hopefully, she will contribute greatly to the overall population.'
Eastern black rhinos are listed as critically endangered by the World Wildlife Fund. The animal's combined wild and captive population now numbers less than 1,000, which represents a 96 per cent decline from the population's height in 1970. The mother stands watch over her youngster (left) and later they share kisses (right)
Zoo spokesman Ryan Bickel says the calf (pictured) was standing and walking within an hour of birth and attempted to feed within two hours, which are signs of a healthy baby rhino
Food prices have fallen since the Brexit vote despite warnings that the plunge in the pound is pushing up the cost of everything from meat and fish to fruit and vegetables.
Grocery prices in the last three months were 0.8 per cent lower than in the same period last year, reported research group Kantar Worldpanel yesterday.
A separate official report showed food prices fell 0.3 per cent last month alone and were 2.4 per cent lower than they were in September last year.
Food prices have fallen since the Brexit vote despite warnings that the plunge in the pound is pushing up the cost of everything from meat and fish to fruit and vegetables
A weekly food shop which cost 100 a year ago now sets consumers back 97.60, said the Office for National Statistics.
The reports undermine Nick Cleggs warning this week that the row over the cost of Marmite was just the tip of the iceberg as the fall in the pound would push up import prices.
Sterling is down 14 per cent against the euro since the June referendum.
The former deputy prime minister also warned that leaving the single market would result in punishing tariffs being imposed on a huge range of products.
The reports undermine Nick Cleggs warning this week that the row over the cost of Marmite was just the tip of the iceberg'
But his claims were immediately torpedoed in a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs which said prices would fall as farmers will be free of Brussels rules.
Director general Mark Littlewood said: Not only will leaving offer tremendous prospects to cut costs, our new trading options will be substantial.
Yesterday Matt Davies, chief executive of Tesco UK, also pledged that supermarkets would do all they could to keep prices down. The stores stand-off last week over Marmite fuelled fears that the cost of food and other essentials was about to rocket.
Tesco hit back after supplier Unilever had tried to push up prices by 10 per cent.
Kantar reported that grocery prices in the 12 weeks to October 9 were 0.8 per cent lower than in the same period last year.
This is the 27th month in a row it has recorded a fall in grocery prices and underlined the scale of supermarket price wars.
Kantar reported that grocery prices in the 12 weeks to October 9 were 0.8 per cent lower than in the same period last year
The ONS said the average price of meat fell 4.5 per cent in the past year while vegetables are down 4.1 per cent. Milk, cheese and eggs have dropped 2.9 per cent.
Its report showed a kilo of beef mince fell from 7.75 a year ago to 7.20 while a shoulder of lamb is down from 8.14 per kg to 7.73.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had his wings clipped this week with the departure of one of his most senior aides, Will Walden.
But Boris's personality cult nevertheless grows. Royal sculptor Frances Segelman has completed a clay bust of the blond Brexiteer to be cast in bronze and exhibited at the Tower of London next week to raise money for the Stroke Association.
'He's so fabulous,' Frances gushes of Boris.
Royal sculptor Frances Segelman has completed a clay bust of Boris Johnson (shown)
Frances described Boris as 'fabulous' and said he was a pleasure to work with
'He was a pleasure to be with because he is so bright and positive. There's a lovely aura around him, so it was a nice feeling and it came out in the sculpture.
'Boris loved it,' she adds. 'He is not vain.'
Perish the thought.
Samantha Cameron says Dave is 'chilling'
OCCASION: Red Women of the Year Awards at the Royal Festival Hall's Skylon Bar, South London.
GUESTS: Samantha Cameron, Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton, Downton actress Joanne Froggatt and artist Grayson Perry.
TALKING POINT: Samantha, wearing a custom-made Roksanda dress, enjoyed being out of her former PM husband's shadow.
Samantha Cameron donned a custom-made Roksanda dress to the Red Women of the Year Awards at the Royal Festival Hall's Skylon Bar, South London
Presenter Fearne Cotton (right) asked Samantha, who, of course, no longer lives at 10 Downing Street, if she could come round to her 'actual house' for tea. The answer was 'No'
'Things are definitely different,' she told me. 'Dave's chilling and I'm the one that's working! I think he's still adjusting, but he's very happy.'
AWKWARD MOMENT: Presenter Fearne Cotton asked Samantha, who, of course, no longer lives at 10 Downing Street, if she could come round to her 'actual house' for tea. The answer was 'No'.
ROYAL SNUB: Grayson Perry was disappointed Prince Philip didn't greet him at the Royal Academy of Arts party he hosted last week.
'He never said hello to me. I was really disappointed because I wanted to be insulted by him.
'Maybe everyone was worried he'd be inappropriate because I was dressed as a woman? I don't know.'
CYCLE CHIC: Gold medallist Victoria Pendleton looked stylish in Stella McCartney, but her trousers, cut above the ankle, still resembled pedal pushers.
Victoria Pendleton (shown) looked stylish in Stella McCartney, but her trousers, cut above the ankle, still resembled pedal pushers
Downton stakes its claim on King Tut
The Earl and Countess of Carnarvon made a fortune from Downton Abbey, which was filmed at their Highclere Castle home in Hampshire.
Now Fiona Carnarvon wants to make sure the money keeps rolling in by publicising the stately home's connection to ITV's latest Sunday night drama, Tutankhamun.
In the series, Sam Neill plays the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, who funded Howard Carter's 1922 dig that discovered the tomb of Egypt's boy king.
Fiona Carnarvon wants to make sure the money keeps rolling in by publicising the stately home's connection to ITV's latest Sunday night drama, Tutankhamun (shown)
Fiona has written a blog publicising an Ancient Egypt show at Highclere.
She says of the tomb's discovery: 'It could be considered the first global world media event.
'I began to research the story for our own exhibition here, to share the characters and detail of an extra- ordinary story.'
Lady Colin Campbell's behaviour on I'm A Celeb... shocked fellow contestants, but that has not stopped the controversial royal biographer teaching good manners.
Evil Incarnate -- Let the Truth be Known Throughout the Land
Contact: Tony Martelli, Maryland Coalition for Life, 443-254-5433, tony@mdcoalitionforlife.com
ANNAPOLIS, Md., Oct. 19, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Let us take a moment to examine some defining characteristic of three troubling movements, which have cast long and dark shadows across modern history.
Nazism Tactics: Terror, mutilation, and dismemberment
Human Tragedy: millions of innocent adults and children slaughtered
Ideology: that Jews and others are inferior, sub-human, and less than the Aryan race
Radical Islamic State Tactics: Terror, mutilation, and dismemberment
Human Tragedy: thousands of innocent adults and children slaughtered
Ideology: that all those who oppose radical Islamism are inferior and honor false god
Abortion Tactics: Terror, mutilation, and dismemberment
Human Tragedy: more than a billion unborn babies slaughtered worldwide
Ideology: that unborn babies are inferior, undeserving of all humans rights
These three movements have led to similarly staggering human tragedies justified by illegitimate ideologies. However, abortion uses a tactic that neither Nazism nor the Radical Islamic State widely attempted: to deceive mothers into cooperating with the abortion of their own babies. The deployment of this evil tactic has led to the destruction of more lives than have been destroyed by the Nazism, Radical Islamic State, and all other evil empires combined.
The deception upon which abortion is founded that abortion is choice and not murder has been vehemently embraced by some of American society's most-notables. Among these are influential individuals who claim to be outspoken advocates for women, including contraception pioneer Margaret Sanger, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, former Senator Ted Kennedy, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Barack Obama.
While the evil of abortion has the most shattering impact on unborn babies, it has a much broader destructive effect. This watershed atrocity begins with one child, spills over into mothers, fathers and families, and floods across all of human society. In 1986 at the United Nations General Assembly and again in 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) clearly stated her grave concerns with abortion:
"I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" (1986)
"Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion." (1994)
Noting Mother Teresa's concerns, we cannot help but look at the carnage occurring on streets across America: school shootings, rampant homicide, domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and violent breakdown of the trust between citizens and police. Mother Teresa's worst fears have become a way of life and it's not unreasonable to trace this crisis to the devaluing of human life which extends even into a mother's womb. The worsening carnage on our streets is a deplorable but ultimately unavoidable result of the carnage of abortion.
In light of this most pressing holocaust, we must not shy aware from truth because it convicts us and our society. Whether complicit or not, all of us children, mothers, families are victims of the evil of abortion. We must all stand together to defend the right to life of all persons, to defend the health and safety of all women, and to defend the liberties upon which our nation was founded.
Maryland Coalition for Life Call to Action
Considering the above information, if you wish to stand together with us in our fight against intrinsic evil and for human life, we urge you to forward this message to everyone you know and can reach. You can help us to spread the truth about the outrage of abortion.
Furthermore, we urge you to contact your legislators and implore them to respect the dignity of every human person and put an end to abortion.
As you ponder whether you will stand with us, we leave you with the following words of wisdom:
"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." -- Albert Einstein
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
May we all have the courage and strength to do the right thing!
The woman police chief in charge of a discredited VIP child sex abuse probe has been accused of sexual discrimination by an employment judge.
Pat Gallan crushed the career of a junior officer in an extraordinary row over the supposed macho culture of a high-profile Met Police unit, a panel ruled.
The Assistant Commissioner a potential candidate to succeed Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe was criticised in a tribunal judgment.
It found Miss Gallan, who was also ultimately responsible for Operation Midland, was at the centre of an ugly saga that has left the Met facing a six-figure payout.
Pat Gallan crushed the career of a junior officer in an extraordinary row over the supposed macho culture of a high-profile Met Police unit, a panel ruled
A Central London employment tribunal judge said Chief Inspector Adrian Denby, 47, who was responsible for a Territorial Support Group unit in Paddington, had been treated unfairly and found the force guilty of sex discrimination.
The officer, who had protected the Royal Family and served in a policing role in Iraq and Afghanistan, was blamed for the macho image of the team.
Within weeks of Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maxine de Brunner making an unannounced inspection in September 2014 to find an officer wearing only a towel, Mr Denby was put under criminal investigation, placed on restricted duties and had his chances of promotion blocked.
The unit had already been accused of racism and fiddling overtime, while officers were probed after an anti-corruption raid found a fridge of beer used as an ad-hoc off licence.
The judge Tamara Lewis found Mr Denby had been unfairly punished for failings, while a female colleague in a similar position was not.
Miss Gallan was found to have contributed to the sexual discrimination by instructing Commander David Musker to overturn a decision to lift restrictions of Mr Denby. In another instance of sexual discrimination, she decided his removal from post would be permanent, telling him this through another officer.
The panel heard he is on long-term sick leave and does not expect to return to work. The size of his payout will be determined in February.
Chief Inspector Adrian Denby, 47, who was responsible for a Territorial Support Group unit in Paddington, had been treated unfairly and found the force guilty of sex discrimination
Mrs Lewis criticised Miss Gallan the countrys most senior ethnic-minority policewoman and Mrs De Brunner, saying the case was striking for its unfairness. In particular, she said, it was often unclear who in reality has made or influenced decisions and that there was a desire to disguise the influence of senior decision-makers. The judge noted that the Met had been desperate to limit public fallout from the investigation into the units shortcomings.
And, while she said it was right to try to increase the representation of women in the unit, Mrs Lewis added: It would not be legitimate to treat a man less favourably because of his sex, whether consciously or unconsciously, in pursuance of that agenda.
As political stunts go, it should have been a triumph.
Under fire for his controversial opinions about women and alleged racism, US presidential candidate Donald Trump tried to kiss a young black girl at a rally yesterday.
But the staged photo went disastrously wrong when she pushed him away.
Donald Trump had an embarrassing moment during a photocall when he tried to kiss a young girl only for her to try to squirm away, pictured
The girl, whom Mr Trump described as beautiful, was filmed wriggling from his grasp before he managed to finally plant his lips on her cheek at the event in Wisconsin.
It came as Melania Trump, 46, played down her husbands comments about sexual assault as boys talk.
She told CNN he was egged on to say dirty and bad stuff in the taped 2005 interview.
The ex-model said Mr Trump could sometimes behave like a teenage boy but was somebody who supports women.
The Republican candidate, pictured at a rally, is under fire over alleged racism and lewd comments on women
She said the women who accused him of misconduct were liars and claimed the allegations were part of a Democrat conspiracy.
In a separate interview Mr Trumps daughter Ivanka, 34, said she can shrug off the claims against her 70-year-old father because she knows what he is really like.
An NBC poll put Republican Mr Trump 11 points behind Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Theresa May last night committed Britain to the introduction of a targeted visa system to control immigration to the UK.
The plan was revealed in Government documents setting out the work of a string of Whitehall sub committees on implementing Brexit and regaining control of the UKs borders.
The Mail first revealed on Saturday that Mrs May was intending to make EU migrants secure a skilled job before they are allowed to work in the UK.
Theresa May (pictured) has committed Britain to the introduction of a targeted visa system to control immigration to the UK
Chancellor Philip Hammond urged caution over the proposal which is likely to infuriate EU member states and rule out Britain remaining a member of the single market. Brussels has insisted that, if the UK curbs the free movement of migrants, it will have to leave the EU and the single market altogether in a so-called hard Brexit.
Yesterday, Number 10 released documents showing that the Governments powerful immigration taskforce has been ordered to ensure a new regime is introduced to slash the net number of arrivals into the UK to below 100,000 a year.
The implementation taskforce is chaired by the Prime Minister and made up of 13 of the most senior members of the government, including Mr Hammond and Home Secretary Amber Rudd. The three leading Brexit secretaries of state Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox are also on the committee.
The immigration taskforce existed under David Cameron, but its terms of reference have been ripped up to reflect Mrs Mays desire to withdraw from EU free movement diktats.
The taskforce must now deliver the Governments immigration target by implementing domestic measures to control migration and ensuring an efficient and targeted visa system.
Mrs May has also asked the taskforce to help cut migration numbers by making it harder for illegal immigrants to stay in the country.
The terms of reference for Mr Camerons taskforce made no mention of a visa system, focusing instead on controlling immigration from the EU through reforming welfare rules and reducing reliance on migrant labour.
Meanwhile, Number 10 insisted the Government is all about Brexit despite the fact that a key Cabinet committee is stuffed with Remainers.
Mrs May yesterday also unveiled the membership of the European Union Exit and Trade Committee, which will sign off Britains negotiating position with Brussels.
Of 15 members of the committee, no fewer than nine campaigned for Remain before Junes referendum.
Chancellor Philip Hammond (pictured) urged caution over the proposal which is likely to infuriate EU member states
It will be chaired by Mrs May herself, who was a low-profile supporter of staying in the EU. Six of the members are Leavers, including the so-called three Brexiteers Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson, Brexit Secretary Mr Davis and International Trade Secretary Mr Fox.
Also attending will be Leave-supporting Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom and Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary. But they are outnumbered by ministers who campaigned on the Remain side, including Amber Rudd, who accused the Leave campaign of misleading the public over potential savings from withdrawal in a bitter TV debate clash with Mr Johnson.
Others on the committee who backed Remain in the referendum include Mr Hammond, Business Secretary Greg Clark, Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green and Conservative Party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin. Scotland Secretary David Mundell, Wales Secretary Alun Cairns and Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire all Remainers will also attend, although only as required.
Responding to suggestions that the committee was weighted against enthusiasts for Brexit, Mrs Mays official spokesman said: The Prime Minister and a number of Cabinet ministers who indeed advocated the UK remaining in the European Union have been clear that we are all now there to deliver the decision of the British people, which is to leave.
Cabinet committees are groups of ministers that can take collective decisions on specific issues on behalf of the full Cabinet that are binding across Government. The Prime Minister decides their membership, which can include ministers from outside the Cabinet.
The Brexit committee was one of 14 Cabinet committees and seven implementation taskforces appointed by Mrs May.
The 14 committees announced by Downing Street include the National Security Council along with four sub-committees dealing with nuclear deterrence and security; threats, hazards, resilience and contingencies; strategic defence and security review implementation; and cyber.
Ready to head out to a party, I placed my hand on the door handle. Thats when the pain struck.
For the first few minutes, it took my breath away, but I reassured myself it would pass. I sat down on the sofa at home in London to wait for it to do so.
Instead, it kept coming in waves of excruciating agony, again and again. Within ten minutes I was writhing on the floor.
Being a doctor, Ive seen so many false alarms I convinced myself the cause had to be no more than very bad trapped wind. But the pain did not let up.
What I hadnt realised but discovered on that fateful Saturday night was quite how dire the situation was, and how frightening were the pressures that it operates under
I dragged myself to the bathroom and hauled myself up to the mirror. I was deathly pale, shaking uncontrollably, my shirt wet through with sweat.
I began to realise that this was something serious: I needed to go to hospital. I started to call for an ambulance, but found myself struggling to speak.
Fortunately, at this point my partner returned home and, seeing the state I was in, telephoned 999. And so began close to three-and-a-half hours of waiting, which goes down as one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life.
We tend not to think too much about the ambulance service until we actually need it. I was aware that it had experienced cuts.
What I hadnt realised but discovered on that fateful Saturday night was quite how dire the situation was, and how frightening were the pressures that it operates under.
From the first call, we were reassured that an ambulance had been dispatched and was on its way. It would be there in ten minutes. After 40 minutes, my partner telephoned again.
The original ambulance had been diverted to another emergency, we learned, and so they had to send another.
But another 40 minutes passed with no sign of an ambulance, resulting in a flurry of calls back and forth between my partner and the ambulance control.
We kept being told Its on its way, before learning, yet again, that the vehicle had been diverted to another patient, judged to be in more serious need.
In the meantime, I blacked out several times because of the pain. My partner also a doctor was becoming increasingly concerned. I was too weak and in too much pain to get a taxi, so an ambulance was my only option.
After waiting for two-and-a-half hours, the ambulance co-ordinator eventually called us back to explain that she had now put me down as the highest priority patient in London but that there were no free ambulances. Not one.
Eventually, after a further 50 minutes, three paramedics arrived. I cant remember much except that they were kind and very apologetic. The situation wasnt, of course, their fault.
They were all horrified that Id had to wait so long, but explained that there simply werent enough ambulances to meet demand that evening and they had been working flat out.
They rushed me to hospital, where I was diagnosed with a kidney stone which although serious indeed, it had damaged part of my kidney was not life-threatening. I was lucky.
While I lay on the trolley waiting for a scan, I wondered what would have happened if I had been having a heart attack.
Which is how I came to realise that the first point of contact for patients in extremis the ambulance service could no longer be relied upon to be there when they most need it. The idea shook me.
The full extent of the crisis was exposed yesterday by figures obtained by this newspaper, showing that ambulances arrive late for a third of life-threatening emergencies.
In the year to August, more than 1.1 million patients classed as category A those most seriously in need were left waiting longer than the target of eight minutes. Some had to wait for nearly two hours.
There is no doubt that cuts to the ambulance service have had a serious impact, but it would be wrong simply to blame the crisis on a lack of cash.
A significant part of the problem is that some people abuse the ambulance service, treating it like a taxi service rather than an absolute last resort for people who require urgent medical attention or who are seriously unwell and unable to get to hospital by any other means.
After all, its a free ride, so why on earth would they pay for a cab or bother with a bus?
After waiting for two-and-a-half hours, the ambulance co-ordinator eventually called us back to explain that she had now put me down as the highest priority patient in London but that there were no free ambulances
They fail to realise that an ambulance is not a taxi with a flashing light on top. Its meant to transport a highly skilled team of health-care professionals and, because some people are misusing this vital service, others are unable to get the urgent care they need, with potentially fatal consequences.
Ive heard of ambulances being called out for headaches, sore knees and even a skin rash. These conditions shouldnt be dealt with in A&E, let alone prompt someone to dial 999.
Even more insidious is the fact that some people deliberately exaggerate or out-and-out lie about their condition in order to get an ambulance sent to them.
Its not just deliberate misuse of the system that is causing the crisis. Too often, the ambulance service is having to act as a wet-nurse for those who cant hold their drink.
Having worked in A&Es across London for more than a decade, thats what really makes me furious witnessing, night in, night out, drunks being brought into casualty by ambulance.
The difficult thing for the ambulance control centre staff is they are often called out by concerned members of the public who are rightly worried they have found a stranger who has collapsed and is unresponsive.
The ambulance controller doesnt know if the person in question is simply drunk or if they truly have a life-threatening condition. So, they err on the side of caution and dispatch an ambulance as soon as possible.
But every drunk that an ambulance is called out for represents one fewer vehicle thats available for a real emergency.
Whats worse is that the dearth of ambulances affects the weak the most, because they are the least able to insist on being prioritised. Its heart-breaking, but Ive seen old ladies, frail and confused, waiting hours for an ambulance, while slowly deteriorating alone at home.
I remember one with COPD (a chronic lung condition that results in shortness of breath) who developed potentially life-threatening pneumonia.
She had waited three hours for the ambulance and, by the time she got to hospital, was barely able even to say her name.
Yet as I stood there, I counted three ambulance crews waiting outside with drunks on board.
In the year to August, more than 1.1 million patients classed as category A those most seriously in need were left waiting longer than the target of eight minutes
It seems to me that we urgently need to review how this abuse of the system is costing the lives of genuinely ill people.
There has been success in some towns with drunk tanks mobile medical facilities which take care of very drunk people instead of their being sent to A&E or police cells and perhaps its time they were rolled out across the NHS.
And while I am wary of the idea of introducing financial penalties in the NHS, for fear it will put people off using a service who actually do need it, I think we have to look at the idea of charging people for calling out ambulances unnecessarily.
A&E is a focus for problems throughout the care system its where pressures on resources elsewhere become all too visible.
For instance, cuts to social care budgets mean there are often delays in discharging elderly or frail patients from the wards because there is no place for them in a care home.
This can mean there arent enough beds available on the wards for patients blocking up casualty so ambulance crews often sit waiting for a space to become free before they can hand over their patient to the hospital.
Its a horrifying fact that last year almost 77,000 ambulances waited outside casualty for at least an hour, the figures showed yesterday.
This nightmare is worsened by an ever-increasing number of people resorting to A&E because of difficulties in getting GP appointments, and the well-documented inadequacies of the 111 medical advice phoneline.
None of this is the fault of the ambulance service and certainly not the fault of the stressed, beleaguered and harassed paramedics and ambulance-drivers.
This is one hell of a lucky penny!
Some 100 special pennies have been hidden across major cities in the United States and those who find them will receive a $1,000 cash prize.
Ten of the coins were placed in each of the following cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Austin, Chicago, Charlotte, Detroit, Miami, New York and Washington, DC.
Some 100 special pennies have been hidden across major cities in the United States and those who find them will receive a $1,000 cash prize
The special pennies (pictured) are slightly larger than common ones, with an Ally logo on one side and '100,000 cents' on the other
The campaign launched Tuesday in an effort by financial services company Ally Financial to 'demonstrate the importance of valuing every cent, while encouraging Americans to look for opportunities to save.'
'We believe every penny counts when it comes to saving, and it's important for everyone to understand that routinely saving, even the smallest amounts, is important to generating wealth over time,' said CEO Diane Morais, of Ally Financial, in a statement.
Clues for the locations of the lucky pennies can be found on the company's social media page.
Clues for the locations of the lucky pennies can be found on the company's social media page
Ten of the special coins were placed in each of the following cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Austin, Chicago, Charlotte, Detroit, Miami, New York and Washington, DC
In New York, one clue says: 'How to honor the Constitution's author? With his own NYC park & and #AllyLuckyPenny in it.'
Another says: 'Every penny honors our 16th President. This Manhattan green honors our 4th.'
The special pennies are slightly larger than common ones, with an Ally logo on one side and '100,000 cents' on the other.
Tied up, stuffed into a car boot, and then left to bleed out as the streets run red around them - this is the fate of thousands Australian animals sold to Muslim countries for Islam's annual 'Festival of Sacrifice'.
Distressing new footage shows goats and sheep being beaten, dragged and thrown about as they are taken to be slaughtered in conditions that are 'nothing short of a blood-bath'.
Now politicians and activists are calling on the government to properly enforce four-year-old laws that were designed to stop such abuses.
Thousands of Australian sheep and goats are being exported to Muslim countries for the annual 'Festival of Sacrifice' where they are being killed in inhumane conditions, activists say
Andrew Wilkie, the independent MP for Denison, branded the Animals Australia footage 'appalling' and called for the export industry to be shut down.
He said: 'Here we see Australian sheep and goats being sent to Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Lebanon to suffer horrific treatment during the annual Festival of Sacrifice.
'Surely this alone is all the proof we need that the live export trade is inherently cruel and needs to be shut down.
Distressing footage filmed in Lebanon, the UAE, Malaysia, Oman and Kuwait shows the livestock being trussed up, thrown around, and crammed into tiny vehicles
The 'Festival of Sacrifice' takes places during the final month of the Islamic calendar and celebrates Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael to appease God
Activists and politicians are calling for four-year-old laws designed to stop these practices to be properly enforced or for the export industry to be shut down
'No other industry would be allowed to consistently breach regulations and still be able to operate.'
WHAT IS THE 'FESTIVAL OF SACRIFICE?' The 'Festival of Sacrifice', or Eid al-Adha, is a four-day celebration carried out during the month of Dhu'l-Hijjah, when hundreds of thousands of Muslims take part in the pilgrimage to Mecca. Eid al-Adha honors Ibrahims willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael, known as Isaac in the Christian tradition, to show his devotion to God. As part of the festival, Muslim men are expected to kill their best halal animals to symbolize Ibrahim's sacrifice, before distributing a third of the meat to the poor, before giving the rest to their family. Advertisement
A petition entitled 'stop the illegal torture of exported animals' has already collected 1,800 signatures online, and is rising at the rate of dozens per hour.
Passed in 2011, the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System requires all animals from Australia sold abroad to be sent to approved buyers and slaughtered in line with international guidelines.
All exporters are required obey the laws in order to get a licence, but campaigners say the rules are still being 'openly flouted'.
In the four years since they were introduced, not a single exporter has been prosecuted under the legislation, Animals Australia say.
Lyn White, the group's chief investigator, said: ' We were shocked to see Australian sheep once again being openly sold in notorious livestock markets.
'It is abundantly clear that exporters believe that they have nothing to fear in terms of regulatory consequences.
'Profit is not a legal defence, nor should it excuse animal abuse. One thing is clear: If a trade is not viable without breaking laws and causing extreme suffering then that trade should not exist. '
Exporters are required to sell their livestock only to approved buyers who slaughter in line with humanitarian guidelines, but footage shows this is not the case
Animals Australia called conditions at slaughterhouses in Malaysia as 'among the most distressing [we] have witnessed'
As part of its investigation, Animals Australia traveled to Malaysia for the first time in order to examine practices there.
White concluded: 'The handling and slaughter of Australian sheep and goats in Malaysia at numerous non-approved sites was some of the most distressing I have witnessed. It was nothing short of a blood-bath.'
Simon Westaway, CEO of the Australian Livestock Exporters Council, said he supports a ban on exports to Malaysian facilities shown to be breaking the law, and said more suspensions could follow.
The council refused to let him off because there is no exemption to rule
over the road kept blocking him in
He did it because parents at the
A Sydney father was fined $180 for parking across his own driveway after parents picking up their kids from a nearby school kept blocking him in when he parked off the street.
Matt Burke, who lives on Trevenar Street across the road from Ashbury Public School, said parents frequently parked across his driveway during busy drop-off and pick-up times.
'I have to pick up my son from preschool so I cant take the risk of leaving my car in my driveway because Ive been parked in so many times,' he told the Canterbury-Bankstown Express.
Sydney father Matt Burke (right) was fined $180 for parking across his own driveway after drivers picking up their kids from a neighbouring school kept blocking him in
Mr Burke's house on Trevenar Street, located across the road from Ashbury Public School, with his car parked over the driveway
NSW Centre for Road Safety executive director Bernard Carlon said according to NSW road laws, drivers can't park across driveways for more than two minutes - even if it was their own.
'[It] is a safety issue as it stops emergency services from having easy access to the property and it can obstruct the line of sight for other drivers entering and exiting other nearby properties,' he said.
Mr Burke appealed the fine to the NSW Office of State Revenue but said he was labelled a 'serious offender' and was fined a similar amount as drivers who ignore stop signs in school zones.
He said at least half of drivers do not follow school zone speed limits down his street, and he was concerned authorities seemed more worried about parking rules than the safety of children.
The council is unwilling to reduce or cancel the fine (pictured in Mr Burke's hands) because the offence is considered serious and there are no exceptions
Mr Burke's street in Sydney with the school over the road on the right
The OSR said it 'may be more lenient if the client lived at the outer limit of the school zone, or the vehicle was parked during non-school zone times'.
But it was unwilling to budge on Mr Burke's case because him living across the road from a school 'represents a higher risk'.
Mr Burke's only option is to fight the issue in court, but he would be doing so without the law on his side.
Mr Burke's home is over the road from Ashbury School
Bereaved families face a postcode lottery over the price of funerals with some areas paying almost 7,000 more than others, according to a report.
Burials in one area of London cost almost 10,000 on average, more than three times the amount charged in other parts of the country.
The huge expense means 90,000 bereaved families were forced to borrow 1,601 on average this year to cover the costs.
This is up from 1300 in 2014, according an analysis of data from the Institute of Cemetery & Crematorium Management by insurer Royal London.
Kensal Green cemetery in London, pictured, is the 'most expensive place to die' where a burial costs an average of 9,769
In total Britons have racked up 147million in funeral debt.
The most expensive place to die is Kensal Green cemetery in London where the average burial costs 9,769 and the average cremation costs 3,165.
The average cost of a burial in Belfast the cheapest location is - 2917, while the average cremation costs 2,879.
Generally costs are highest in London and the South East where the price of land is more expensive and wages paid to funeral directors and other staff are higher.
Royal London said it is vital that the government tackles funeral poverty by addressing the flaws in the Social Fund Funeral Expenses Payment which was set up to help families on low incomes.
It said the fund often fails to cover the cost of a funeral, particularly in more expensive parts of the country.
This includes everything from burial or cremation costs to renting limousines for the family and hiring a minister for the service.
Most people employ a funeral director to arrange the day for them, who typically pays these fees and passes them on to the customer.
Half of the average funeral bill goes on basic burial costs paying a gravedigger and buying the lease of a grave plot with the right to erect a headstone.
Mona Patel from Royal London said: When dealing with the loss of a loved one, the last thing that people need is financial stress as well.
'It is shocking that more than 90,000 people had to borrow an average of 1,600 simply to give their loved ones a decent send off.
Some areas paying almost 7,000 more than others for funerals, raising fears of a 'postcode lottery' (file picture)
Local councils, which own crematoria and graveyards, as well as private funeral firms such as Dignity and the Co-op have been criticised for ratcheting up their charges in recent years.
But for the first time in more than ten years the average cost of a funeral fell - by 27.
This follows three decades of funeral costs rising each year by an average of 6 per cent.
Royal London said the sharp increase in funerals after one of the biggest jumps in deaths last year in a century had caused funeral providers and local councils to be more competitive on price.
Official figures showed 603,000 people died last year, up from 569,000. The increase was driven by over-75s, many of whom died of flu or dementia.
Chilling footage has emerged of three masked teenagers - including one disguised as a creepy clown - storming a petrol station with weapons and making off with thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes and cash.
The robbery took place in the New Zealand city of Christchurch on Tuesday when three teens wielding hammers and screwdrivers burst through the door of a Challenge service station about 3.47am.
CCTV footage shows the thugs threatening an employee and demanding he open the cash register.
Three masked teenagers robbed a petrol station in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Tuesday
CCTV footage shows the thugs threatening an employee and demanding cash
The bespectacled employee can be seen with his hands raised above him and backed into a corner while the robbers plunder the cash box and cigarette drawers.
After more than two terrifying minutes the teenagers dash out the front door, with the service station employee in pursuit.
A staff member at the petrol station said more than $5000 of tobacco products were snatched, along with $300 cash, stuff.co.nz reported.
Police said in a statement on Tuesday night that the three teens had been arrested and would appear before the Youth Court on charges of aggravated robbery.
The stolen property has been recovered and Police are not seeking anyone else in connection to this crime.
Two teens were wielding hammers and screwdrivers and another had a black bag (pictured)
President Obama's half-brother Malik Obama will be at the final presidential debate on Wednesday night - but he won't be there to support his sibling's choice to succeed him.
Malik Obama has reportedly accepted Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's invitation to be his guest at the debate, Mediaite reported.
The president's brother has previously publicly supported Trump's bid for the White House and expressed anger at not being invited to the Democratic National Convention.
He told the BBC it was 'sort of disappointing, somewhat hypocritical' that no members of Obama's Kenyan family attended the DNC this summer.
President Obama's half-brother Malik Obama (pictured) will be at the final presidential debate on Wednesday night to support Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump
Malik Obama (left) told the BBC it was 'sort of disappointing, somewhat hypocritical' that no members of Obama's Kenyan family were invited to attend the DNC this summer
Malik will be seated next to Trump's other guest Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith who died in Benghazi.
Pat Smith spoke at the RNC over the summer.
Along with inviting his guests to try and throw Clinton off, Trump mocked her during a campaign.
'She's home sleeping and I'm working. That's the way it's going to be in the White House, too. She'd be sleeping. I'd be working,' Trump told a crowd in Colorado on Tuesday afternoon.
Clinton is also inviting guests to Wednesday night's debate that have rocky pasts with Trump.
Malik will be seated next to Trump's other guest Pat Smith (pictured), the mother of Sean Smith who died in Benghazi
At the last debate, Trump paraded three women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton
Billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Republican businesswoman Meg Whitman, will be seated in the crowd as her guests.
At the last debate, Trump paraded three women who claimed Bill Clinton sexually assaulted to raped them, and another woman who was raped at age 12 and Hillary Clinton, as a public defender, got a plea deal for her attacker.
The four women Paula Jones, who won a sexual harassment case against Clinton, Kathleen Willey, who says the ex-president fondled her in the White House and Juanita Broaddrick, who say Clinton raped her back when he was running for Arkansas' governor, were joined by rape victim Kathy Shelton were Trump's guests and sat in the front row.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a top adviser and surrogate for Trump, suggested that Smith's presence at this debate might get the families of Benghazi victims a 'solid answer' from the former secretary of state.
Kathleen Willey (left), Juanita Broaddrick (center), and Kathy Shelton (right) attended the second presidential debate as Trump's guests
In May 2016, Avo Cigars announced a new line called the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata. As the name indicates it is the second line released under the Avo Syncro Nicaragua umbrella. Early in 2015, the Avo brand under Davidoff underwent a restructuring. Later that year, the first Avo Syncro Nicaragua was unveiled the first regular production Avo line to be box-pressed and incorporate Nicaraguan tobacco. The Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata is an all new blend that is also Nicaraguan-centric, but is in a rounded format. With the addition of the Fogata line, it gave the Avo brand its sixth regular production line. Today, we take a closer look at the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata in a Short Torpedo format.
The Avo brand draws its inspiration from brand ambassador Avo Uvezians musical roots. The name Syncro is a play on the theme of synchronization in music. At the same time, this is also carried over into the cigar experience. Obviously,the Nicaragua in the cigar name reflects the use of the Nicaraguan tobacco. In addition to Nicaraguan tobacco, the Fogata also contains Dominican tobacco. With tobaccos from these two countries, it is meant to bring a synchronization of both a Nicaraguan and Dominican cigar experience thus the Syncro name. As for the name Fogata, it means bonfire or campfire, and happens to be a personal favorite setting of Uvezian.
Davidoff has branded many cigars in its various brands as Nicaragua. In each of these cases, it has incorporated Nicaragua tobacco in a brand not known to use this tobacco. In addition to the Avo Syncro Nicaragua and Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata, the Nicaraguan name has been seen in Davidoff lines such as: Davidoff Nicaragua, The Griffins Nicaragua, Cusano Nicaragua Esteli, and Cusano N1 Nicaragua.
Without further ado, lets break down the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata Short Torpedo and see what this cigar brings to the table.
Blend Profile
As mentioned the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata is a completely different blend than the original Avo Syncro Nicaragua. While the original Syncro Nicaragua utilized Ometepe tobacco from Nicaragua in the filler. The Syncro Fogata uses Nicaraguan tobacco from Esteli and Condega. These Nicaraguan tobaccos are balanced with Dominican tobaccos which include Davidoffs signature Yamasa-grown tobacco.
The Fogata also features a completely different wrapper (Ecuadorian) and binder (Mexican) from the original Avo Syncro Nicaragua.
Wrapper: Habano 2000 Clara (Ecuador)
Binder: Negro San Andreas (Mexico)
Filler: Esteli Ligero (Nicaragua). Condega Visus (Nicaragua), Yamasa Visus, Piloto and San Vicente Ligero (Dominican Republic)
Country of Origin: Dominican Republic (Occidental Kelner)
Vitolas Available
The Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata is available in four sizes. Each of the four sizes are packaged in 20 count boxes.
Short Torpedo: 4 1/2 x 52
Robusto: 5 x 50
Toro: 6 x 54
Special Toro: 6 x 60
Appearance
The Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata Short Torpedos Habana wrapper has a medium brown color. Depending on how the light shines on it, it might have a slight colorado red tint. There was not much in the way of oil on the surface. I found the wrapper had a slightly bumpy feel to it. There were several visible veins on the surface of the wrapper. Most of the wrapper seams that were visible were on the very thin side. The torpedo tip has a slightly sharp taper to it.
There are two bands on the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata. The primary band of the Fogata is similar in design to the original Syncro Nicaragua, but with a different color scheme. Prominently on the center of the band is a white, gray, and silver Avo logo. Surrounding the Avo logo on the upper 2/3 of the band is both orange and rust coloring with white trim. To the left of the logo is the text AVO UVEZIAN in small silver font. To the right of the logo is the text SYNCRO in small silver font. The lower third of the band is yellow-orange colored background with white trim on the lower portion. On the background is the text NICARAGUA in silver font.
The secondary band rests below the primary band. It is orange in color with silver font. On the center of the band is the text FOGATA. To the left and right of that text is a small campfire-like design.
Preparation for the Cigar Experience
As I typically do for torpedo and belicoso vitolas, I used my Credo Special T cutter with the 36 ring gauge hole to get an ideal cut on the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata Short Torpedo. Once the tip was successful removed, I moved on to the pre-light draw. The cold draw delivered a mix of wood, orange, and cinnamon spice. Overall I considered this to be a very good pre-light draw. At this point I was ready to light up the Fogata Short Torpedo and see what the smoking experience would have in store.
Flavor Profile
The start to the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata Short Torpedo started with notes of wood and earth. In the background I detected a mix of cedar and bakers spice. In addition to some spice in the background, the cedar / bakers spice also delivered some sweetness. The cedar had a slight lingering effect on the after-draw. Meanwhile the retro-hale produced of cedar and assorted pepper spices.
Later in the first third, I started to see the cedar / bakers spice combination start to make its way into the forefront from time to time. In the background I also detected a mineral note as well as a subtle grassy note. This pattern continued through the second third.
During the last third of the Fogata Short Torpedo, the woody and earth combination remained in the forefront. While the cedar / bakers spice combination was still remained in the forefront, I found I was now getting more in the way of spice from these notes as opposed to sweetness. There still were some mineral and grassy notes in the distant background. This is the way the cigar experience came to a close. The resulting nub was firm to the touch and cool in temperature.
Burn and Draw
The burn to the Avo Syncro Fogata Short Torpedo had a slight amount of jaggedness from point to point. While this did require some additional touch-ups along the way, I didnt find the amount to be excessive. The Fogata Short Torpedo did maintain a straight burn path and was never in danger of canoeing or tunneling. While the resulting ash does appear to look loose in the photo below, I didnt find this to be the case. At the same time, this wasnt an overly firm ash either. The ash had a classic salt and pepper color scheme. The burn temperature was ideal. I did find the burn rate to be ideal as well, but the short torpedo format is going to be a quicker smoke because of the short length and tapering of the cigar. In a nutshell, the shape of this cigar will contribute to a shorter smoking time and give a perception of a faster burn.
The draw to the Fogata Short Torpedo was ideal. It was not too loose, nor too tight. I found the torpedo tip to be well constructed and this contributed to an excellent draw.
Strength and Body
From a strength and body perspective, this cigar is was a solid medium from start to finish. During the course of the cigar experience, there was a slight increase in both the strength and body however both attributes didnt cross into medium to full territory. When looking at strength versus body, I found both attributes to balance each other nicely with neither one overshadowing the other.
Final Thoughts
One thing that really has set Davidoff apart from other companies has been its innovation strategy and the company seems to be executing on them very well. The incorporation of Nicaraguan tobaccos into brands such as Avo is an example of this strategy. The company had great success with the first Avo Syncro Nicaragua and is poised to continue the journey with the new Fogata. Overall I found the Short Torpedo format worked quite well with this blend. The only problem is that it is a Shorter Torpedo and this cigar had me wanting more. I found this cigar to deliver a very unique profile in the Davidoff portfolio and in the end it delivered a satisfying smoke.
Overall the Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata Short Torpedo is a cigar I could recommend to a novice or experienced cigar enthusiast. As for myself, this is a cigar I would smoke again and its worthy of a box split.
Summary
Burn: Excellent
Draw: Excellent
Complexity: Medium
Strength: Medium
Body: Medium
Finish: Very Good
Assessment: 3.5-Box Split
Score: 90
References
News: Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata Announced
Price: $8.90
Source: Cigars Provided by Manufacturer (Prior to August 8th)
Stogie Geeks Podcast: Stogie Geeks News May 13, 2016, Episode 206
Stogie Feed: Avo Syncro Nicaragua Fogata Short Torpedo
Brand Reference: AVO
Photo Credits: Cigar Coop
Just two months after the country voted to leave the European Union, a group emerged calling itself Open Britain, arguing for something no one had ever heard of before soft Brexit.
With startling gall, this group demanded Britain stay in the single market, while ignoring the inevitable consequence: yet more open-door immigration.
Open Britain also resurrected Project Fear, by seizing on every negative economic headline while ignoring all the good news. Most brazenly, its supporters argued it would be undemocratic to begin leaving the EU without a vote by MPs.
Open Britain does not reveal the same people are pulling the strings as the official campaign, namely Labour peer and former EU commissioner Peter Mandelson and the unaccountable City lobbyist Roland Rudd
At first they were largely ignored. Only with the help of copious and entirely unwarranted BBC airtime did their insidious attempt to undermine the referendum result gain any prominence.
So who is behind this gang of bitter Bremoaners? As the Mail reveals today, Open Britain is simply the official Remain campaign group, Britain Stronger in Europe, under a different title. Like a bankrupt fraudster starting over, they just changed the name above the door.
Nowhere does it advertise this fact. Nor does it reveal the same people are pulling the strings, namely Labour peer and former EU commissioner Peter Mandelson and the unaccountable City lobbyist Roland Rudd.
So it is that powerful men with no mandate from the electorate are determined to subvert the 52 per cent of the country who voted to leave the EU.
Lord Mandelson who is busy making himself rich from some of the worlds dodgiest regimes and Mr Rudd, who serves shadowy powers in the City, have not one ounce of democratic legitimacy.
No more delays!
In just three months, Theresa May has made two major decisions to improve Britains creaking infrastructure: to build the Hinkley Point nuclear power station (pictured), and the High Speed 2 rail line
In just three months, Theresa May has made two major decisions to improve Britains creaking infrastructure: to build the Hinkley Point nuclear power station, and the High Speed 2 rail line. Regardless of their individual merits, this was impressively decisive.
Also to her credit, Mrs May will next week do what David Cameron cravenly avoided, and decide whether Gatwick or Heathrow will build a new runway.
Nevertheless, it is profoundly disappointing to put it mildly that the project faces further delay, with MPs not expected to vote for another 18 months. Despite the three-year Davies commission firmly backing Heathrow, there will be another interminable public consultation.
As Mrs May told her Cabinet yesterday, the decision on airports is in the national interest and has been delayed for too long. The Mail couldnt agree more.
With years before building work begins, and inevitable court battles ahead, further delay would be utterly unconscionable.
Deplorable waste
Even with its appalling record of wasting public money on mismanaged and fruitless projects, the 1.3billion Troubled Families programme is a new low for Government.
Launched with great fanfare by David Cameron, and run by the all-purpose Whitehall tsar Louise Casey, it was supposed to tackle worklessness, truancy, anti-social behaviour and crime.
Only last year, Mr Cameron claimed it had turned around 90 per cent of the families involved.
But, as a scathing report reveals, his claim relentlessly peddled by the civil service spin machine was utter fiction. It found no evidence the programme was having any significant impact, but regardless, councils were rewarded with thousands of pounds per family.
Police are on the hunt for an Asian man who allegedly loitered in Sydney libraries and sexually assaulted two women as they bent down to collect books.
The man allegedly waited until a woman bent over to collect a book before indecently assaulting her on Friday night, October 7 at a library in Kogarah, a suburb in Sydney's south.
The same man is wanted for a similar incident at a library in Hurstville, just four kilometres away, on Monday October 10.
olice are on the hunt for an Asian man (pictured) who allegedly loitered in Sydney libraries and sexually assaulted two women as they bent down to collect books
Both alleged sexual assaults were reported to the police, but investigators believe there may have been more assaults which were not reported.
The New South Wales Police Force released photos of an Asian man in glasses and a blue collared shirt who they claim could 'assist with inquiries'.
He's described as being Asian in appearance, aged between 25-30 years old, with short black hair and wearing glasses.
The family of a dead 79-year-old Minnesota man who was killed by a teacher while she was texting at the wheel insist they have forgiven her - even though she will serve just four days in prison.
Joe Tikalsky, a school bus driver, walked out of his New Prague home and headed toward his mailbox when a car driven by Susan Ann Russo, 48, plowed into him on October 28 of last year.
A judge in Le Sueur County, Minnesota, sentenced Russo to four days in prison, WCCO reported.
The sentence was in accordance with a plea agreement struck by Russo's attorneys and prosecutors.
Susan Ann Russo (mugshot left), 48, ran over and killed Joe Tikalsky (right), 79, in New Prague, Minnesota, on October 28, 2015, while she was texting at the wheel. She was sentenced to just four days in jail on Monday
Tikalsky's wife of 54 years, Emma Jean Tikalsky, said on Monday that she and her children met Russo for the first time.
'We cried together and they begged us, my daughter and myself, "Would you please find it in your heart to forgive us?"' Tikalsky said.
'I knew that was the godlike thing I would be expected to do and we did. We said yes.'
The widow said that her family would not protest the sentenced handed down to Russo.
Emma Jean Tikalsky (right, with her late husband) said that she and her family forgive Russo
'I knew that [forgiveness] was the godlike thing I would be expected to do and we did,' Emma said. 'We said yes'
Joe was hit by Russo's car as he was walking out to the mailbox near his home in New Prague
Above is the mailbox just outside of Joe Tikalsky's home in New Prague, where the accident occurred
'Four days or 400 days, it really doesn't matter,' Emma Jean Tikalsky said. 'I know she didn't mean to kill anyone.'
The judge, Mark Vandelist, told Russo that she should take advantage of her light sentence and serve as an example by warning the community about the dangers of distracted driving.
'You are a gifted teacher, use that gift,' he said to Russo.
Russo was contrite in her statement to the court.
She tearfully read aloud a letter that she addressed to the victim, beginning with: 'Dear Joe.'
Russo said that she would trade places with her victim 'in a heartbeat' if she could.
'Four days or 400 days, it really doesn't matter,' Emma (above) said. 'I know she didn't mean to kill anyone.'
'I'm struggling to know how to move on,' she said. 'It is very difficult to comprehend what I did and make sense of it all.'
She then addressed her comments to the Tikalsky family, saying: 'I will spend my entire life trying to make up for my mistake.'
Russo will serve her stint in prison on the anniversary of the incident.
The first two days will be served beginning October 28th of this year, and the remainder will be served on the same day in 2017.
The judge also placed Russo on probation for two years. She is not allowed to take any electronic devices into her car, nor is she permitted to use drugs or alcohol.
In the courtroom, Greg Tikalsky, the victim's youngest son, said that his father's death has motivated him to publicly advocate for tougher laws against driving while texting, according to the Star Tribune.
'We have to view distracted driving as we view drunk driving,' he said.
The lenient sentence given to Russo and others has prompted calls for tougher laws against texting drivers.
'I would wish the way he died might be an example to other drivers to forgo electronics and concentrate on driving,' Emma Tikalsky said.
After the court hearing was over, she and her daughter, Mary Jo Dorman, approached Russo and gave her a hug, according to the Star Tribune.
Ivanka Trump, has finally spoken out about comments her father made on a hot mic tape, in which he talked about grabbing women's genitals.
The businesswoman called her father's remarks 'clearly inappropriate and offensive' but said she's glad he apologized.
'Im glad that he acknowledged this fact with an immediate apology to my family and the American people,' she told Fast Company.
Donald Trump's eldest daughter, who has been one of his most powerful female surrogates, says she has no plans of making her campaign role permanent if the billionaire wins the White House.
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Ivanka Trump (pictured) has finally spoken out about her father's lewd remarks in a 2005 hot mic tape
The businesswoman called her father's remarks 'clearly inappropriate and offensive' but said she's glad he apologized (Access Hollywood tape pictured)
'Im glad that he acknowledged this fact with an immediate apology to my family and the American people,' she said
'No, I don't intend to be part of the government,' Trump told Fast Company in an interview released Monday.
That doesn't mean her father hasn't flirted with the idea, telling 'First Coast News' in August, as Politico pointed out, that supporters would love to see Ivanka in his cabinet.
In mulling over future cabinet members Trump said, 'Well, there are so many different ones to choose, I can tell you everybody would say "Put Ivanka in! Put Ivanka in! You know that, right?"' Trump said.
'She's very popular, she's done very well. And you know Ivanka very well,' Trump continued. 'But there really are so many that are talented people, like you,' the Republican nominee adding broadening his cabinet search outside his family tree.
As far as a role in the campaign, Ivanka Trump even pushed back when the writer of the Fast Company profile referred to her as a 'surrogate wife,' likely referencing the fact that Ivanka Trump is on the campaign trail more than her dad's wife Melania.
It's 'deeply offensive,' Ivanka said of that term. 'I feel that that's a very sexist thing to say.'
Fast Company detailed some of the highs and lows of being Ivanka Trump throughout this campaign.
Business-wise, her father's presidential bid has been a boon for the young businesswoman.
Net sales of the clothing arm of the company were up $11.8 million during the first six months of 2016 compared to last year and the light pink dress that Ivanka Trump sported when introducing her father at the Republican National Convention quickly sold out.
The company's website traffic is up 50 percent over last year, Fast Company also reported, due to Ivanka Trump's even more public profile.
But the potential first daughter has also had to deal with her family's name and reputation dragged through the mud.
She said the media coverage of her father has made her 'tougher.'
When Donald Trump was mulling who he might want to put in his cabinet, his daughter's name was the first to come up. But Ivanka Trump said she wouldn't be working in Washington
'I mean, it's been a year and a half of enormous scrutiny of my family, every business, every movement, action,' Ivanka Trump said. 'But I think that, you know, that sort of comes with the territory. And I think I've probably learned a lot through it and I've probably grown a bit tougher in terms of my resilience toward what is our thrown our way because, you know, I've read some very negative stuff.'
As far as some of the more painful accusations, like women coming out publicly to say that they'd been kissed or groped by the Republican nominee against their will, Ivanka Trump said she doesn't believe it.
'The greatest comfort I have is the fact that I know my father,' she said. 'Most of the people who write about him don't. I do.'
Sir Alan Moses, chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, says newspapers are doomed if they become state-regulated
Newspapers are doomed if they become state-regulated and lose their precious independence, the head of the press watchdog has warned.
Sir Alan Moses, chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), said the industry was at risk from the powers that be who want to control it.
Speaking at the Society of Editors annual conference, he warned gathered journalists: You should be very wary indeed of anything that looks like an attempt to corral you into submission.
The powers that be want to goad you, prod you into doing what they want.
Sir Alan, a former Court of Appeal judge, said implementation of legislation which could make newspaper and magazine groups pay all the costs in libel actions, even if they win their case, was a real and underlying danger to the freedom of the industry.
The essence of our press is that it cannot and should not be forced into doing anything it does not choose to do. If it acts under compulsion it is indeed doomed, he said.
He urged journalists to defend their freedom against the London-based wittering and burble as they and the public have most to lose from state regulation of the press.
Making the case for newspapers and magazines free from Government control, he said: The essence of successful press regulation, I believe, is that it is voluntary.
It is something you choose to do, not something into which you are driven. Regulation of the press will never work if it is compulsory.
Of course with that freedom comes the risk and dangers of abuse, but those dangers must be balanced against what I believe to be the far greater dangers of a country and of regions without an independent untamed regional and national press.
SFPD's Carlos Manfredi said: 'This was not just a random shooting'
A 16-year-old girl is in a critical condition, three others were injured
Four male suspects wearing hoodies were seen running away from scene
Three of the victims ran inside the school, while another went to hospital
June Jordan School for Equity and City Arts and Technology High School, which share a parking lot
Police are hunting four young men after a shooting in the parking lot of two San Francisco high schools left a 15-year-old girl fighting for her life.
Three other students, including a 16-year-old boy, were also injured when the shooting erupted on Tuesday afternoon in a parking lot shared by June Jordan School for Equity; and City Arts and Technology High School.
San Francisco Police spokesman Carlos Manfredi said: 'This was not just a random shooting. We believe one of the victims may have been the initial target.'
Four teenage students were shot in the shared parking lot of two San Francisco high schools Tuesday, and one of the students is in critical condition, authorities said. Officers stand at the scene of the shooting
Officer Manfredi said: 'One female victim has life-threatening injuries to her upper torso'.
The shooters seemed to have targeted the female student, said Karwin Sui, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Unified School District.
June Jordan School tweeted: 'Today at dismissal time, gunshots were fired outside the school near dismissal time. There were four perpetrators.'
The school district tweeted that a student had been targeted by 'outsiders.'
A female employee told SFGate.com there were 'building tensions outside the classroom' which boiled over, leading to the shooting.
Cops are seen scouring the area after the shooting. Police have suggested it was a targeted attack, but would not reveal the motive
Fernando Rodriguez, 16, described the chaos and fear inside the school.
He said he heard at least six 'pops' and saw students running in all directions.
'It was terrifying. We walk into this school every day, every morning, and to hear gunshots like that, just scary,' he told SFGate.com.
An officer from the SFPD is seen pulling police tape across the scene following the shooting
Three of the victims ran inside the school, and police ordered students to stay inside until police searched each room and determined it was not an active shooter situation.
Four male suspects wearing dark hoodies and jeans were seen running away from the area, Manfredi said.
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Its almost fight night in Las Vegas and Trump Force One skirted narrowly past Hillary Clintons much smaller campaign plane when they both landed at McCarran International Airport on Tuesday ahead of the third and final presidential debate.
Trump's Boeing 757, the renovated commercial jet the billionaire has on occasion used as a backdrop for his rallies, is like the Republican nominee himself - bigger and flashier.
But Clintons plane a Boeing 737 was unveiled to great fanfare last month.
Specially outfitted for a presidential candidate, it bears the Democratic nominees campaign slogan Stronger Together on its side as well as her H logo on its blue tail.
Trump, however, acquired his jet for $100million from Microsofts Paul Allen back in 2011.
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Trump Force One is seen landing near Hillary Clinton's campaign plane at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas on Tuesday ahead of the third and final presidential debate
He then decked it out in his trademark black and gold livery with the signature Trump stamped across its side.
Inside, it was kitted out to suit the 70-year-old moguls ostentatious style complete with suede ceilings and plenty of gold detailing.
The 757 is favored among presidential candidates, according to the aviation experts.
Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama flew 757s and went on to win the White House in 2000 and 2008.
But Clinton had traveled across America in her own plane for months while the reporters who cover her campaign followed in a separate charter jet.
A brand new Boeing 737-86J like the one she is now using would cost around $96million, but hers was first issued in 2002 for AirBerlin and she's leasing it from a Florida company, according to the Journal News.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is pictured getting off her plane in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Tuesday
Clinton (above, getting into a car at McCarran International Airport) had traveled across America in her own plane for months before unveiling her campaign plane last month
Clinton's plane bears her campaign slogan Stronger Together on its side as well as her H logo on its blue tail
Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide, speaks with staff while travelling with Hillary Clinton to Las Vegas on Tuesday
A COMPARISON OF TRUMP AND CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN PLANES DONALD TRUMP Price: $100million Model: Boeing 757-200 Size (from nose to tail): 155 ft Nickname: Trump Force One Special features: Double bed, spacious lounge with sofas and a 52-inch flatscreen TV, seats with 24-carat gold seat belt buckles and a marble bathroom HILLARY CLINTON Price: She is leasing, but a brand new version would cost around $96million Model: Boeing 737-86J Size (from nose to tail): 129 ft Nickname: Hill Force One Special features: Wi-Fi and broken up into four cabins - one each for Clinton and some aides; extra staffers; for her Secret Service detail and for press Advertisement
The arrangement broke with typical campaign tradition and Clintons penchant for drinking wine with reporters aboard Hill Force One, the New York Times reported.
Then again, much of the 2016 election has broken with tradition.
Trump and Clinton will face-off for the final time before Election Day at the University of Nevada Las Vegas on Wednesday night.
Already, protesters are planning to create a wall of taco trucks in front of the Trump International Las Vegas hotel.
Trump opponents are planning the stunt to demonstrate against the GOP nominees controversial pledge to build a wall at the US-Mexico border and force Mexico to pay for it.
Trump supporters cheer as the GOP nominee's jet - dubbed 'Trump Force One' lands in Grand Junction, Colorado, on Tuesday ahead of its final destination of Las Vegas
Trump greets supporters as he arrives to speak at a rally at Grand Junction Regional Airport before making his way to Las Vegas for the third and final presidential debate
Trump waves to supporters as he arrives to speak at a rally at Grand Junction Regional Airport on Tuesday
Protesters against Trump are planning to create a wall of taco trucks in front of the Trump International Las Vegas hotel
The idea of using taco trucks to form the wall came from a Hispanic Trump supporters assertion that without Trumps border wall, there could one day be taco trucks on every corner.
Latinos for Trump founder Marco Gutierrezs statement during an MSNBC interview in September sparked widespread ridicule online.
Meanwhile, a Trump impersonator stormed into the billionaires Vegas hotel on Tuesday claiming he owned it.
It was actually Mini Trump a character from Jeff Beachers Madhouse.
The tiny version of Trump arrived with a motorcade and with a beauty pageant contestant on his arm, TMZ reports.
Police and hotel security escorted the imposter out and he was given a warning for trespassing, according to the website.
Donald Trump supporter Kathy Kohler hold up signs outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Tuesday
Nick Allen, his mother Stephanie Allen, and Mathew Burgart show their support for Trump outside the GOP nominee's hotel in Las Vegas on Tuesday
$1.2 million is bet on the election, with $1 million of it placed on Trump
TAB says the US election is the biggest political market in its history
If Donald Trump is successful, the gambler will win a $500,000
An enthusiastic punter has placed a $100,000 bet with the TAB on Donald Trump to win the U.S. election ahead of the final debate.
The $100,000 bet was placed at odds of $5, which means the punter would collect $500,000 if Trump pulls off an upset.
TAB said the $100,000 bet was so large it dramatically changed the market, shortening Trump's odds up from $5 to $4.50.
TAB said the $100,000 bet was so large it significantly changed the odds, firming Donald Trump's (pictured) odds up from $5 down to $4.50
However, Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton is still the clear favourite to win, sitting on skinny odds of just $1.20.
But despite this, Trump still had the greatest showing of support by punters.
How the odds have moved Opening market October 30 2015 $1.90 Hillary Clinton, $13 Donald Trump Trump named Republican candidate July 21 2016 $1.30 Hillary Clinton, $3.00 Donald Trump Clinton named Democratic candidate July 28 2016 $1.45 Hillary Clinton $2.75 Donald Trump Clinton's time off for sickness September 16 2016 $1.65 Hillary Clinton $2.35 Donald Trump Advertisement
TAB said it was currently sitting on more than $1.2 million on the US Election, $1 million of which was backing Trump.
'Punters just can't get enough of the election betting,' TAB's Shaun Anderson said.
'Despite Trump being an outsider it's all one way traffic for him to pull off an upset.
'If he gets up it will be a horrible result for the TAB but a great result for punters, particularly the one who bet the $100,000 this week.'
If Trump does win, with the current odds TAB will be forced to pay out almost $3 million dollars.
TAB said the massive figures were the result of the most popular political market ever recorded in its history.
It said double the money was bet in this US election compared to the 2016 Australian Federal Election.
Trump's longest price was $13 when the market first opened, and his shortest was $2.35 when Clinton fell ill in September.
A student has sparked a 'clown purge' scare, sending their school into lock down on Wednesday morning.
Smithfield Public School in west Sydney went into state of alert after a student showed a Facebook post referring to clowns in the area, police said.
A New South Wales Police spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia despite the post, no clown appeared.
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Police at Smithfield Public School in Sydney, which was put into lock down on Wednesday morning after a clown scare
A New South Wales Police spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia a student told a teacher about a Facebook post regarding clowns in the area
A message posted on the school fence regarding the lock down
Pupils pictured inside the school on Wednesday when it was locked down
Images from the scene showed numerous police officers and vehicles at the school and signs warning of the lock out on a fence.
A Department of Education spokesman told Daily Mail Australia: 'After being made aware of a vague social media post, the school held a brief precautionary lock out this morning.
'There was no incident and students were not in any danger.'
The incident follows a recent trend of 'clown scares' imitating similar incidents in the U.S. involving people clad in clown costumes attempting to intimidate the public.
The trend of people dressing up as creepy clowns originated in the U.S.
Recently, the behaviour began to pop up in Australia as people dressed up as clowns
There have been numerous reported sightings of creepy clowns across the country
Police vehicles outside the school on Wednesday when it was locked down
Despite the lock down, no clowns were seen in the vicinity of the school
Earlier in October a number of clown sightings across Australia prompted harsh criticisms from police.
South Australia's police commissioner said last week:
'Anyone who dresses up as a clown with the intention of scaring other people can only be described as a d**khead.
'There is enough for us out there to do now, without having to respond to instances where people think that this is funny.'
The commissioner said people dressed as clowns will not receive much sympathy from SA police if those they frighten then retaliate.
'We'll be looking at taking action against them for their behaviour, which has instigated that level of fear that someone feels they have to protect themselves,' he told FiveAA radio.
Police officers arrived at the school in west Sydney on Wednesday
Amanda Issa was eight years old when American soldiers who had just defeated the Iraqi military and overthrew longtime dictator Saddam Hussein entered her hometown of Mosul.
When she encountered a Marine who was kind enough to hand her a mint chocolate bar, she knew she had found her calling.
'I was one of those kids that always ran after the Humvees,' Issa, now 21, told the Marine Corps Times.
'There were a lot of [American] military there Army, Navy but the Marines were different.'
Amanda Issa (left) prepares for a graduation ceremony on Parris Island, South Carolina, on September 30, 2016
Thirteen years later, she achieved her dream of one day sporting her own Eagle, Globe, and Anchor the official insignia of the Marine Corps.
Just a day after she became a United States citizen, she was promoted to the rank of lance corporal, officially becoming a Marine.
Issa's journey is a fascinating one.
As Christians, her family was increasingly vulnerable, particularly in 2010, as American soldiers began gradually leaving Mosul in preparation for a wider withdrawal from Iraq.
'We couldn't go to school or work, or get basic needs,' she said. 'My sister couldn't go to college. It was hard to stay there and be safe. There was no safe option.'
Just a day after Issa (above) became a United States citizen, she was promoted to the rank of lance corporal, officially becoming a Marine.
Issa (above) and her family fled Mosul in 2010 and found refuge in Turkey. Soon after, they were granted asylum in the United States and relocated to Detroit
In light of these trying circumstances, Issa and her family fled to neighboring Turkey in July 2010. They lived there as refugees in 'complete peace,' she told the Marine Corps Times.
Nonetheless, being strangers in a foreign land presented its own set of challenges.
'It was hard for us to get anything, even simple things, because you couldn't speak with the locals,' she said.
'[The Turks] knew we were refugees and any time you would go and try to buy something, they would charge you more, but you couldn't do anything about it.'
In May 2011, her family's request to relocate to the US with refugee status was approved, and soon they would call Detroit home.
'I was so happy, but it was completely different than what I imagined,' she said. 'We came here and it was still hard; coming to a new country and learning how to adapt to the new culture and new way of life, everything.'
A US soldier stands at a military base in the Makhmour area near Mosul. American troops and their Iraqi allies have launched an offensive there to purge the area of ISIS fighters
Issa was eager to assimilate into American life. Instead of the slower pace English as a Second Language classes that her high school offered, she decided to be enrolled with the regular classes so that she could be completely immersed.
Her hard work and courage had paid off. In just two years, she went from speaking almost no English to finishing among the top 10 students in her class.
What she really wanted to do, though, was be a Marine.
'It was always there. I knew this was the change I wanted,' she said. 'After I got here (to the United States), I said: "This is the time for it now".'
This past January, she enlisted for boot camp, though there was concern as to whether she would complete her training after she injured her wrist during a drill.
Iraqi security forces advance in Qayara, south of Mosul, to attack Islamic State militants
But she didn't allow the injury to derail her military career.
'A lot of people told me 'Ah, you're not going to be able to do it and you're just going home and you won't make it',' she recalled. 'At some point some people told me 'Oh, you're probably staying here because you just want to get your citizenship,' but the only reason I stayed and continued training was I wanted to be a Marine,' she said.
Being fluent in Arabic, Issa knows that she may be called upon to return to Iraq, where a major offensive is underway to eliminate elements of Islamic State from her native hometown, Mosul.
'I want to give it my best, whatever job I'm doing,' she said. 'Wherever the Marine Corps needs to send me, I'll go. It doesn't matter if it's Mosul or any other country.'
In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Beynon changed into a T-shirt and jeans combo once they touched down and headed for their hotel
There was no packing light as each carted at least four suitcases piled high on trolleys across the terminal
was highlighted by pimped-out gold slippers and plenty of bling
They dressed in identical attendant-like outfits making quite an entrance
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Travers 'The Candyman' Beynon always travels in ostentatious style and Monday was no exception as he jetted off the to New York flanked by his usual entourage of women.
The flamboyant tobacco tycoon rolled up to Brisbane Airport in one of his many luxury cars, complete with a champagne dispenser, with five busty babes on board.
Beynon went for an aviation theme with his entourage dressed in identical flight attendant-inspired outfits.
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Travers 'The Candyman' Beynon always travels in ostentatious style and Monday was no exception as he jetted off the to U.S. flanked by a gaggle of girls
A fan of dramatic entrances, Beynon tried to re-create iconic pilot-hostess movie scenes as he strolled across Brisbane Airport with his beauties linking arms on either side of him
The eye-catching ensembles featured white tops with matching shoes and jeans slashed at the knees, black leather jackets, and grey silk scarves.
No Candyman adventure would be complete without a little bling, so the whole crew including the man himself added bright gold belt buckles.
Beynon was dressed for luxury comfort in blue and gold patterned silk pyjamas over a white T-shirt with a gold face on it, blinged-up with a gold watch, chain and bracelet.
Beynon went for an aviation theme with his entourage dressed in identical flight attendant-inspired outfits
What stole the show were his pimped-out gold slippers encrusted with hundreds of gleaming studs
The flamboyant tobacco tycoon rolled up to the airport in one of his many luxury cars with five busty babes on board
Beynon as usual got very close and personal with the girls in his entourage
The comfortable ride even included a champagne dispenser (L)
Beynon gives his photographer a high five as they travel in style
But what stole the show were his pimped-out gold slippers encrusted with hundreds of gleaming studs.
A fan of dramatic entrances, Beynon tried to re-create iconic pilot-hostess movie scenes as he strolled across the terminal with his beauties linking arms on either side of him.
Before heading to the airport, the notorious playboy posed for a few pictures in his Candyshop Mansion on the Gold Coast, showing off his fast cars, stunning decor and furniture fit for a king.
Before heading to the airport, the notorious playboy posed for a few pictures in his Candyshop Mansion on the Gold Coast
The venue of many crazy parties includes sunning decor and furniture fit for a king
Beynon poses in one of his more photogenic rooms
He also showed off his collection of fast and funky cars
His showroom includes a jet-black Rolls Royce and a $600,000 Audi
His party could not claim to be traveling light as he was pictured standing among a sea of identical orange suitcases, with a few black ones for himself
The epic suitcase haul was assembled at the front door of the mansion ready to be piled into waiting cars
Beynon seemed to be struggling to fold an item of clothing
His party could not claim to be traveling light as he was pictured standing among a sea of identical orange suitcases, with a few black ones for himself.
After their glamourous car ride, the posse pushed their luggage inside piled four-high on trolleys, with Beynon managing six by himself.
Once on board, the girls settled into their (of course) business class seats all in a row, while Beynon posed sprawled on his side on the floor in front of them, with his trademark self-satisfied expression.
After their glamourous car ride, the posse pushed their luggage inside piled four-high on trolleys, with Beynon managing six by himself
Beynon strikes a pose as he finally arrives at the check in line
Beynon's beauties line up behind him as they line up to make their flight
Beynon gets some help from a friendly airline employee
It was much the same when the group arrived in New York, but most of the women had shed their jackets to instead carry them under their arms and one had made a whole wardrobe change.
Beynon himself had slipped into daytime wear by the time his party arrived at their fancy hotel.
This time he was clad in a muscle-exposing blue T-shirt with a gold face on it, dark blue jeans and matching sneakers, plus a gold chain with a large white pendant.
Beynon and three of his women then crammed into a very small but stunningly adorned lift up towards their room, having a bit of a giggle as he pushed the button.
Beynon arrives in New York arm-in-arm with one of his women
They smiled as they walked through the terminal happy to be on holiday
Beynon and company roll their carry on bags on the way to collect the rest of their bags
They waiting for the conveyor to start in one of JFK Airport's many corridors
They looked much the same as when they left but most of the women had shed their jackets to instead carry them under their arms and one had made a whole wardrobe change
Beynon hits the kerb outside the airport having collected all his bags and about to be taken to their hotel
Beynon himself had slipped into daytime wear by the time his party arrived at their fancy hotel
This time he was clad in a muscle-exposing blue T-shirt with a gold face on it, dark blue jeans and matching sneakers
He also had a gold chain with a large white pendant
Not every one hates the pesky rats that hang out on New York City's streets!
And it seems the New York Fire Department has a bit of a soft spot for the creatures after a paramedic rescued one hungry rat that was stuck in a garbage can.
The Brooklyn rat was saved on Tuesday after getting its head stuck in the dumpster while scavenging for food, according to the New York Daily News.
This Brooklyn rat was saved on Tuesday after getting its head stuck in the dumpster while scavenging for food
As the rat was scurrying around the bottom of the trash can, it came across a few ventilation holes (pictured)
The hungry creature (pictured) poked his head into one of them, but to its dismay couldn't get back out, Reuters photographer Lucas Jackson said
As the rat was scurrying around the bottom of the trash can, it came across a few ventilation holes.
The hungry creature poked his head into one of them, but to its dismay couldn't get back out,Reuters photographer Lucas Jackson told the Daily News.
Jackson was able to take some adorable photos of the rat's unfortunate situation before it was rescued.
The FDNY paramedic then loosened the garbage can's grip on the tiny rat with the help of a hand wipe.
In just a few moments, the rat scampered happily away after being freed from its dilemma.
And that's how the trapped rat lived to tell its tale.
Jackson was able to take some adorable photos of the rat's unfortunate situation before it was rescued
The FDNY paramedic then loosened the garbage can's grip on the tiny rat with the help of a hand wipe
President Barack Obama showed off the top ten tracks that keep him moving on Monday as he revealed his workout playlist
President Barack Obama has revealed his workout playlist and in doing so proved he's just as big of a Beyonce fan as the rest of us.
The commander-in-chief gave WIRED a peek at his top ten workout songs, which include Queen Bey, the Black Eyed Peas, Bob Marley, Nina Simone and more.
Living with first lady Michelle Obama and upholding her 'Let's Move' campaign to combat childhood obesity means the president has to stay fit, too.
While guest editing WIRED's November issue, Obama shared his workout playlist with the nation and proved POTUS knows how to get pumped.
Obama put Beyonce's 'Get Me Bodied' as the No. 1 song on his playlist, which has a quick beat and powerful vocals.
It's no shock that president Obama has a soft spot for Beyonce. Queen Bey sang the national anthem at the president's second inauguration in 2013.
After Beyonce kicks off the cardio, Obama turns to the Isley Brothers with 'Live It Up' for an old school jam to keep him moving.
Next, is an unconventional gym jam - Nina Simone's 'Sinnerman'.
Obama put Beyonce's 'Get Me Bodied' as the No. 1 song on his playlist, which has a quick beat and powerful vocals
Obama enjoys this unconventional gym jam - Nina Simone's 'Sinnerman', which has a quick jazzy beat
The jazzy tune has a quick pace and WIRED suggests imagining Simone saying 'I run to Barack' when she croons, 'I run to the rock'.
OBAMA'S WORKOUT SONGS 1. Beyonce - 'Get Me Bodied' 2. The Isley Brothers - 'Live It Up' 3. Nina Simone - 'Sinnerman' 4. Icona Pop - 'Emergency' 5. Black Eyed Peas - 'Let's Get It Started' 6. Forro in the Dark - 'Perro Loco' 7. Jay-Z - 'Off That' 8. Courtney Barnett - 'Elevator Operator' 9. Bob Marley - 'Could You Be Love' 10. Sting - 'If You Love Somebody Set Them Free' Advertisement
Obama's fourth track might be one he's picked up from Sasha or Malia - Icona Pop's 'Emergency'.
While the band might be known better for 'I Love It', the president gets moving to the lesser known high energy song.
A song that has been played at sporting events, proms, weddings and any other event where a large group of people gather to get down is the Black Eyed Peas 'Let's Get It Started'.
The song is on Obama's playlist and helps him keep it started throughout his workout.
'Perro Loco' or 'Crazy Dog' by Forro in the Dark is the outlier in the Obama playlist.
The Spanish tune is lively and fast and still perfect to keep POTUS on his toes.
Keeping it all in the family, Beyonce's husband Jay-Z makes an appearance on the list with the song 'Off That' from The Blueprint 3.
The song might have made it on to the president's list because one lyric is a direct reference to Obama himself.
Courtney Barnett's 'Elevator Operator' made the list of Obama's favorite jams to play in the gym
'Perro Loco' or 'Crazy Dog' by Forro in the Dark is the outlier in the Obama playlist. The Spanish tune is lively and fast and still perfect to keep POTUS on his toes
'Got a black president, Got green presidents,' the lyrics say.
It might not be one of Jay-Z's hits, but it's clear why it made its way on to Obama's playlist.
Song number eight is Courtney Barnett's 'Elevator Operator', which is followed by the Bob Marley classic 'Could You Be Love.'
The list closes out with 'If You Love Somebody Set Them Free', by Sting for a nice cool down before heading back to the oval office.
Obama's playlist runs about 50 minutes long and WIRED has created a Spotify playlist for anyone who wants to work out like a president.
Two brothers have been found guilty of murdering a Sydney drug dealer who they bashed, stabbed, drugged, and stuffed in a burning suitcase.
When he was found guilty of murder, co-accused Haysem Charbaji stood up in the dock and shouted 'f***ing dumb dog' towards the family of murdered man Dane McNeill.
Haysem's outburst came shortly after one of Mr McNeill's supporters called co-accused Lexy May Jamieson a 'f***ing dumb sl*t'.
The two groups of supporters then continued to hurl profanity laced insults at each other in the public gallery of the NSW Supreme Court.
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Haysem Charbaji, 24, (pictured right) was found guilty of murder while his girlfriend Lexy May Jamieson, 26, (pictured left) was found guilty of being an accessory after the murder.
Brothers Azam Charbaji, 26, and Haysem Charbaji, 24, were found guilty of murdering Sydney drug dealer Dane McNeill, 20, in court on Wednesday.
Haysem's girlfriend Lexy May Jamieson, 26, was also found guilty of being an accessory to the murder.
Mr McNeill's body was found badly burnt, and almost unrecognisable in a suitcase dumped in the middle of the road at Picnic Point in Sydney's south west in 2014.
He was tortured by the brothers in the lead up to his death, bashed, stabbed, force-fed Xanax tablets and tied up in a laundry during a prolonged attack which lasted over the course of a weekend, the court heard.
He died of a combination of the effects of multiple stab wounds and the toxic effects of the drugs, before his body was burnt and abandoned inside a suitcase.
Haysem Charbaji (pictured) was found guilty of badly burning Mr McNeill's body and leaving it in a suitcase in the middle of the road in Picnic Point, Sydney's south-west
Azam Charbaji (pictured) and his brother Haysem were found guilty of torturing Mr McNeill over the course of a weekend
A witness, whose name was suppressed, told police Jamieson asked for advice about disposing of a body and cleaning up blood in a flat.
But at the trial, he said he had lied in half of the statement he gave to police.
Another witness who was a friend of Mr McNeill's, Brendon Gallo, said he was there with the men for much of the weekend, when Mr McNeill was killed.
He claimed all four men had smoked the drug ice together.
Dane McNeill, 20, (pictured) was found murdered inside a burnt suitcase in 2014
Dane McNeill (pictured) was bashed, stabbed and force-fed Xanax before he was ultimately found dead in 2014
Both Azam, 26, and Haysem, 24, pleaded not guilty in the New South Wales Supreme Court to the 2014 murder, and Jamieson, 26, denied being an accessory to the murder.
But the jury delivered guilty verdicts for all three accused when they returned to court on Wednesday.
Azam, Haysem and Jamieson will face a sentence hearing at a later date, while Jamieson, who was on bail throughout the trial, is applying for it to continue despite being found guilty.
Haysem's girlfriend Lexy May Jamieson, 26, (pictured) was found guilty of being an accessory to murder
A Melbourne chiropractor planned to incinerate his fiancee's ex-boyfriend on a farm after paying to have him kidnapped using drug-filled syringes.
Adrian Oorloff pleaded guilty to incitement to kidnap after paying an undercover police officer $5000 to snatch the man.
He even attached a tracking device to the man's car and handed over two syringes filled with GHB to immobilise the victim.
Adrian Oorloff, 48, (left) has been jailed over plot to kidnap his fiancee's ex boyfriend
Oorloff told the police officer he planned to make the man 'disappear without a trace'.
As well as admitting to the kidnapping plot, the 48-year-old pleaded guilty to four drugs charges, including trafficking methylamphetamine, and possessing cartridge ammunition.
Judge Michael Bourke said Oorloff planned to have his victim disappear by having him kidnapped, drugged with GHB, and incinerated at a rural property in Skye.
He is alleged to have constructed a backyard crematorium from steel drums and boasted to an officer he knew the temperature needed to 'turn a body into dust', the Herald Sun reported.
Oorloff also provided an undercover cop, known as 'Daz', a body of evidence about the victim and his family including photographs, employment status and information from a tracking device he had attached to their cars.
When police raided his home and office they found a third syringe, schedule four poisons, cannabis, and a trafficable amount of methamphetamine.
In sentencing Oorloff in the County Court on Wednesday, Judge Bourke described his actions as 'serious and disturbing'.
The judge said he caused a high level of psychological damage to his intended target, which was evident in a victim impact statement previously read to the court.
Oorloff paid an undercover police officer $5000 to snatch his victim
The man said he and his siblings were forced to go into hiding, moving 14 times in six weeks - it was not clear to the court on Wednesday if this occurred before or after police alerted them to the plot.
'You caused them fear, paranoia and vulnerability,' Judge Bourke said on Wednesday, noting they would need ongoing psychological treatment.
Oorloff was sentenced to six years and three months jail, within a minimum of four years and three months before he is eligible for parole.
An incitement to murder charge had to be dropped because it is illegal for an undercover officer to agree to commit a murder, the Herald Sun reported.
Dressed in a pinstripe grey suit with dark rimmed glasses, Oorloff showed little emotion and stared forward as he stood in the dock during sentencing.
He has already served 426 days in pre-sentence detention.
If not for his early guilty plea, Judge Bourke said he would have sentenced Oorloff to nine years jail, with a seven year minimum.
The horrifying effects of street drug 'flakka' have been laid bare in a new police video amid an outbreak of overdoses on the Gold Coast.
In disturbing video caught on bodycam by officers from Queensland, an 18-year-old girl can be seen collapsed in the street while screaming and writhing around in pain.
Officers say they were forced to sedate the girl in order to take her to hospital after they were called out at around 9pm on Saturday, October 15.
Police in Queensland have released footage showing people suffering from drug overdoses, believed to be caused by flakka, after 16 incidents in just 48 hours over the weekend
In one clip an 18-year-old woman can be seen writing around and screaming after collapsing in the street on Saturday, before being put on a stretcher
Elsewhere a 42-year-old man wearing nothing more than a pair of boxers and a single sock was filmed begging for help after collapsing on the back seat of a car.
Police and medics had to wrestle the man into an ambulance on Monday at around 11.30pm after being called by an Uber driver when the man started lashing out.
While police tests have yet to identify the exact substance involved, it is believed to be 'flakka' - a synthetic compound that is often sold as MDMA but which causes hallucinations, violent outbursts and paranoia.
AFL player Riki Stephens, 27, from Victoria, is also in a coma at a Gold Coast hospital after a suspected overdose of the drug.
Police say she had to be sedated before being taken to hospital after suffering the ill-effects of a new hallucinogenic drug, believed to be flakka
In another clip a man wearing nothing other than a pair of boxers and a single sock begs for help after collapsing on the back seat of his car
He was one of 16 people who were hospitalised in just one weekend on the Gold Coast as police warn the problem could be about to get worse.
Kathleen Florian, assistant commissioner for the Queensland crime and corruption commission, added: 'A substance has become available which has acute hallucinogenic effects as well as causing considerable aggression.
'Whilst we don't know what that drug is at the moment, we do know the damage that drug is causing is considerable.
'We know from our intelligence that there are times of the year when drug use on the Gold Coast spikes, and we are heading into a period when that is relevant.'
Medics and police attempt to comfort the man as he screams 'help me, please help me'
Eventually emergency workers get the 42-year-old on to a stretcher before he is loaded into the back of an ambulance and taken to hospital
WHAT IS FLAKKA? NEW DRUG PLAGUING THE GOLD COAST Flakka, also known as gravel, first emerged in the United States in 2013. It costs as little as AUD$7.50 and can be accessed easily online, with some services offering next-day delivery. Most users do not know what they are purchasing, and are commonly told the substance is MDMA, the abbreviated chemical name for ecstasy. Flakka's active ingredient is a synthetic stimulant called alpha-PVP, which is chemically similar to MDMA. However, it has vastly different effects, causing users to hallucinate, become psychotic, rip their clothes off and run into the street. Flakka is most commonly snorted but can also be smoked or injected. Advertisement
She added that the drug is almost certainly being distributed by an organized gang, who could be stockpiling it to release in the coming weeks or months.
Brian Codd, assistant commissioner for the South East, said: 'As we lead into the Gold Coast 600 and the schoolies, our focus will be on the safety and security of our community.
'The reality is this: There is no safe way to take these illicit drugs. Reference to recreational drugs, party drugs, feeds into a narrative that sometimes give attraction to what these poisons, toxins and compounds are, and what they do to people.'
The Gold Coast case comes after videos of flakka users in the United States emerge showing people writhing on the ground and screaching.
Many have been spotted hiding from non-existent gunman, running naked through streets, trying to have sex with a tree and claiming they are God.
Riki Stephens, 27, and AFL player from Victoria, is in a coma in hospital after a drugs overdose which is also suspected to be flakka
Police are warning people about the dangers of the drug, which is often sold as MDMA, ahead of the Gold Coast 600 and school holidays
This woman was film in southern Florida while allegedly under the influence of flakka
This woman (pictured) under the influence or flakka or alpha-PVP writhes on the ground and her eyes roll back in her head was shown on television in South America
This woman got out of her vehicle in a car park and then began rolling around on the ground and shrieking in a paranoid state at passersby
The young boy (pictured) after taking flakka is fearful, wrestles with a man trying to help him, strips off his shoes and sits outside a shop unwilling to move
Tony Abbott's call to maintain a ban on rapid-fire guns has been shot down by a gun-toting Nationals senator from regional Victoria.
Australia's former prime minister has resisted calls from within the coalition for import bans to be lifted on the Adler seven-shot lever-action shotgun.
Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie, a renowned gun enthusiast, was having none of that declaring: 'Take the emotion out of it and seek to classify this gun in an appropriate way.'
Victorian senator Bridget McKenzie (pictured) believes rapid-fire gun should be imported
Mr Abbott spoke to reporters on Wednesday, following reports he had done a deal with pro-gun Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm, to allow the Adler into Australia, if the coalition wanted his vote on border protection.
'No one needs a rapid-fire gun other than perhaps our law enforcement agencies, the military and just possibly people involved in serious pest extermination,' Mr Abbott told reporters in Canberra.
'But this idea that shooters generally should have access to rapid-fire weapons is just crackers and it should never happen as far as I'm concerned.'
Senator McKenzie shot back, declaring the Adler seven-shot gun should be allowed into Australia.
Bridget McKenzie (pictured, left) disagrees with Tony Abbott (pictured, right) on Adler guns
'I'd call on states and territories right across the country to actually look at the evidence, take the emotion out of it and seek to classify this gun in an appropriate way,' she told the ABC.
Instead of criticising Mr Abbott directly, Senator McKenzie praised New South Wales Deputy Premier Troy Grant's call to ease import restrictions on the Adler.
Mr Grant, who leads the Nationals in NSW, told the ABC import restrictions on the gun should be unwound so farmers could apply to import the firearm for a specific purpose like shooting feral pigs.
'Throw the book at criminals and anyone dealing in illegal firearms, but get off the backs of hard-working decent farmers and sport and recreational shooters,' he said.
The Abbott Government introduced a temporary import ban on the Adler shotgun in 2015 that was due to expire in July, but this has been extended.
Senator Bridget McKenzie (pictured) says the emotion should be taken out of gun debate
NSW Deputy Premier Troy Grant (pictured) who wants import restrictions on Adler eased
Mr Abbott's successor Malcolm Turnbull has rejected reports his government was willing to negotiate with Senator Leyonhjelm over those gun laws to win his vote on coalition plans to revive the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Australia has had no gun massacres since 1996 when former prime minister John Howard introduced national firearm laws, following the shooting deaths of 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania.
'If you allow rapid-fire guns into the country under relatively loose conditions you obviously raise the danger that people who want to do us harm will get access to them,' Mr Abbott said.
'With a heightened terror threat there is just no way that any serious coalition government, any government in the tradition of John Howard, should be allowing rapid-fire weapons on a very large scale into our country.'
John Howard (pictured) laying a wreath in Port Arthur following the 1996 gun massacre
In September, Senator McKenzie told the ABC's Q&A program recreational shooting was beneficial for Australia.
'Indeed shooting has a great social and environmental and economic benefits for our community,' she said.
Pennsylvania prosecutors claim Bill Cosby used his fame and fortune to conceal his sex crimes against a slew of women over the course of decades.
Attorneys trying the case on behalf of Montgomery County in suburban Philadelphia accused Cosby's 'cadre of high-priced lawyers' of exaggerating claims that their client's health and mental state are deteriorating to the point where he is unfit to stand trial.
Prosecutors, however, countered that they want to try Cosby after new evidence emerged in the wake of an unsealed deposition from a civil lawsuit 10 years ago.
Bill Cosby (left) is on trial for allegedly sexually assaulting Andrea Constand (right), a former Temple University employee, during an encounter in 2004
'He is an individual who has used his fame and fortune for decades to conceal his crimes and hide his true nature,' District Attorney Kevin Steele wrote on Tuesday, noting Cosby fought repeated efforts by The Associated Press to unseal documents from the civil case file.
They said they want 13 other women who have accused the comedian of molesting them to testify in his upcoming felony sexual assault trial that will start June 5.
Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill said last month that Cosby is blind and offered whatever special accommodations that the actor may need.
'This case now 252 days from filing of criminal complaints,' O'Neill said in his Pennsylvania courtroom. 'There is a right to a speedy trial.'
The criminal case against the actor involves a single 2004 encounter at his home near Philadelphia with former Temple University employee Andrea Constand.
He was charged with drugging and molesting Constand, and this is the only criminal case stemming from dozens of claims of sexual misconduct.
Cosby has denied any wrongdoing, but prosecutors can introduce evidence of other acts, even though no charges were brought in those cases, to show a pattern of behavior.
Cosby (right) is seen arriving at Montgomery County Courthouse on September 6, 2016. His sexual assault trial has been scheduled to begin on June 5, 2017
Constand is seen here posing for a photo in Toronto in 1987. In 2005, she filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby, during which the actor admitted to drugging her with quaaludes before sex
Steele said his office re-investigated the case for six months last year before deciding to file charges on Dec. 30, days before the statute of limitations ran out.
Steele's predecessor spent only a month on the case before deciding not to charge Cosby over Constand's complaint in 2005, he said in the filing.
Prosecutors said they reviewed accusations made against Cosby by about 50 women and concluded 13 should be allowed to testify.
'An individual who, over the course of decades, intentionally intoxicates women in signature fashion with the intention of sexually assaulting them cannot also be mistaken about whether or not these women are consenting to the sexual abuse,' prosecutors wrote in their motion last month.
The defense is expected to oppose such testimony.
The judge postponed hearing arguments on the filing to allow the defense team more time to review the copious material.
Constand told police that Cosby drugged and molested her.
Legal experts have said a judge might allow as evidence similar allegations against Cosby in which drugs or alcohol were involved.
Cosby's lawyers meanwhile asked that prosecutors not be allowed to use a telephone conversation recorded by his accuser's mother and other evidence at his trial.
O'Neill has scheduled hearings on the potential trial evidence for November 1-2 and December 13-14.
Hundreds of people packed an auditorium in Arizona for a rally Bernie Sanders held in support of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.
The Vermont senator first apologized to his audience at Northern Arizona University for 'the mistakes my generation made', before launching an attack on Donald Trump.
'In my view, electing Donald Trump as president would be a disaster for this country,' he said. 'Donald is the least qualified candidate in the history of this country.'
But Sanders was then interrupted by a protester who was wearing a Bill Clinton t-shirt.
Hundreds of people packed an auditorium in Arizona for a rally Bernie Sanders held in support of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. The Vermont senator first apologized to his audience for 'the mistakes my generation made', before attacking Donald Trump
Sanders was then interrupted by a protester who was wearing a Bill Clinton t-shirt. Security dragged the man out of the rally as he yelled: 'Clinton is a rapist'
Security dragged the man out of the rally as he yelled: 'Clinton is a rapist.'
Sanders went on to say: 'This is a candidate who says to our Mexican brothers and sisters, 'You are rapists, and you are criminals.' We cannot have a candidate like that.'
The senator is the first of three big-name Democrats visiting Arizona this week to support Clintons presidential campaign.
The senator is the first of three big-name Democrats visiting Arizona this week to support Clintons presidential campaign
Clintons daughter Chelsea Clinton will appear at Arizona State University on Wednesday, and first lady Michelle Obama will be there on Thursday, according to Cronkite News.
No Democratic presidential candidate has won Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996.
The recent interruption at the Sanders rally by the protester claiming 'Clinton is a rapist', is one of several incidents that have occurred at Hillary Clinton's events since Trump brought three women to the second presidential debate who accused the ex-president of sexual misdeeds.
In two incidents last week, the 68-year-old husband of the Democratic presidential nominee had his remarks overshadowed by demonstrators taunting him with rape allegations.
Hillary Clinton confronted the accusations about her husband's alleged behavior last week when a protester crashed her rally wearing a shirt accusing her husband of 'rape'.
'You know, I do hope someone follows that gentleman out and stages an intervention,' Hillary Clinton told the crowd.
'He clearly has not been following this election very closely.'
President Barack Obama got his own handful of Bill Clinton 'rape' protesters last Tuesday when two young people sporting 'Bill Clinton Rapist' t-shirts interrupted his Greensboro, North Carolina, rally.
The president appeared to find the whole thing funny, pausing at length while Secret Service hauled them out.
'You know, this is the great thing about politics in America, it takes all kinds,' he laughed. 'Folks will just do all kinds of stuff. Now where was I?'
During the second presidential debate, Trump brought Juanita Broaddrick as a guest.
The recent interruption at the Sanders rally by protesters claiming 'Clinton is a rapist', is one of several incidents that have occurred at Hillary Clinton's events since Trump brought three women to the second presidential debate who accused the ex-president of sexual misdeeds
Hillary Clinton confronted the accusations about her husband's alleged behavior last week when a protester crashed her rally wearing a shirt accusing her husband of 'rape'
She was one of three Clinton accusers he had at the event. A fourth, Kathy Shelton, blames Clinton for successfully arguing for reduced charges her rapist.
Broaddrick has said Clinton raped her in Little Rock in 1978 and bit her lip during the alleged assault.
At a Trump-organized photo-op in St Louis the night of the second debate Broaddrick said: 'Mr Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me, and Hillary Clinton threatened me. I don't think there's any comparison.'
According to Broaddrick, Clinton came up to her not long after the alleged attack and thanked her in a way she found threatening and considered a way of telling her to keep quiet.
Charges were never brought and Clinton has vehemently denied the accusation.
Kathleen Willey (left), Juanita Broaddrick (center), and Kathy Shelton (right) attended the second presidential debate as Trump's guests
But despite the 'rape' allegations against her husband, Hillary Clinton is in good shape going into the third and final presidential debate, polling six points ahead of Trump. She captured a 46 per cent share of the vote, while Trump slipped a point to 40
Broaddrick herself denied that the incident occurred in a deposition given in connection to the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawusit. But she later recanted and said it happened.
'He starts to bite on my top lip, and I tried to pull away from him,' she recalled.
'And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him "No," that I didnt want this to happen but he wouldnt listen to me.'
But despite the 'rape' allegations against her husband, Hillary Clinton is in good shape going into the third and final presidential debate, polling six points ahead of Trump.
She captured a 46 per cent share of the vote, while Trump slipped a point to 40, according to a weekly NBC News/Survey Monkey poll, published Tuesday.
Two female students at the University of California at Berkeley say they were sexually assaulted on the same weekend at different off-campus fraternity houses.
The students reported the assaults after attending parties at different fraternities on Friday night and Saturday.
One of the women said she knew her attacker. The second did not.
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Two female students at the University of California at Berkeley (campus pictured) say they were sexually assaulted on the same weekend at different off-campus fraternity houses
The students reported the assaults after attending parties at different fraternities on Friday night and Saturday. One student said she knew her attacker while the other did not
'We responded to the scene, we collected and processed evidence and the investigation is ongoing,' Sgt. Andrew Frankel told ABC7 News.
One of the fraternities is located on fraternity row, on the 2300-block of Piedmont Avenue.
The other is located on the 2400-block of Prospect Avenue, CBS reported.
The cases are being investigated by the Berkeley Police Department and not campus police because they happened outside the university.
'It was very shocking that someplace like UC Berkeley would have that going on,' student Maite Garcia told ABC7 News.
One of the students says she was attacked at a fraternity (not shown) on the 2300-block of Piedmont Avenue (pictured)
The second student says she was sexually attacked on the 2400-block of Prospect Avenue (pictured)
Police have warned students to be cautious.
'I think anytime where college students in a lot of cases are drinking more alcohol than they should, going out without a plan, maybe not looking out for their friends, there is the potential that this could happen,' Frankel told ABC7 News.
The cases are being investigated by the Berkeley Police Department and not campus police because they happened outside the university (pictured)
One student, Wyatt Goertler, told ABC7: 'They're really adamant about what consent was, like what certain situations consent can be given and stuff like that.
Another student, Ashley Romo, says her classmates are trying to be extra cautious.
place and he is arrested
They order Taylor to climb out of the
This is the moment Florida cops discovered a suspect hiding inside his own bedroom dresser.
Jason Taylor was wanted by police for violating his probation in connection with an armed robbery.
Police were dispatched to his Pasco County home in Florida to search for the suspect.
This is the moment Florida cops discovered a suspect hiding inside his own bedroom dresser
Police were dispatched to his Pasco County home in Florida to search for suspect Jason Taylor when they suddenly notice a drawer in the dresser moving of its own accord and ordered him out
Body cam footage shows the deputies searching a bedroom of the home when they suddenly notice a drawer in the dresser moving of its own accord.
'That drawer's moving,' one cop shouts to his partner. 'Hands up or you're going to get tasered or shot,' he shouted to the suspect. 'Get out of there. Get out.'
Taylor is then seen in the video crawling out of the tiny hiding spot - before being arrested by the two officers.
'I thought he wasn't here ma'am?' one Pasco County officer is heard addressing a female resident at the home, who appears to have denied knowledge of Taylor's presence. 'Funny how that works'
Taylor is then seen in the video crawling out of the tiny hiding spot in the bedroom
The suspect is then ordered onto the bed and arrested by the officers. He is being held on a $50,000 bond
Despite the cops' arrest, they seemed genuinely impressed with the ingenuity of the suspect's hiding spot.
After going back to inspect the hollowed-out dresser another time, an officer tells Taylor: 'That's real neat buddy.'
Taylor was arrested and is being held on a $50,000 bond.
Iranian authorities have sentenced a dual Iranian-American national and his elderly father to 10 years in prison for allegedly spying for the United States, the Islamic republic's state media reported on Tuesday.
Siamak Namazi, a businessman in his mid-40s with dual US-Iranian citizenship, was detained by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in October 2015 during a visit to relatives in the capital of Tehran.
This past February, the IRGC arrested his 80-year-old father, Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian provincial governor and former UNICEF official who also has dual citizenship.
Both men were sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying and cooperating with the US government, said Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, according to the Fars news website, without specifying when exactly the sentences had been handed down.
Iranian-American Baquer Namazi (left) and his son, Siamak Namazi (right), were sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly spying and cooperating with the US government
The US State Department's deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, said the father and son had been 'unjustly detained' in Iran, and called for their immediate release.
The sentences were the latest against dual nationals directed by hardliners who are powerful in Iran's judiciary and security forces, in the aftermath of Iran's historic nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers last year.
Washington and Tehran have not had formal diplomatic relations since the 1979 revolution where the United States-backed Pahlavi dynasty under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was overthrown.
Babak Namazi, Siamak's brother and Baquer's son, called the sentences unjust.
'My father has been handed practically a death sentence,' Babak Namazi said in a statement.
Baquer Namazi has a serious heart condition and other medical issues requiring special medication, his wife wrote on Facebook in February. On Tuesday, UNICEF called for his release on 'humanitarian grounds.'
The US State Department's deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, said the father and son (pictured in this undated photo) had been 'unjustly detained,' and called for their immediate release
'We join recent calls by international organizations and UN human rights experts for the immediate release of all US citizens unjustly detained in Iran, including Siamak and Baquer Namazi, so that they can return to their families,' said a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner.
UNICEF, the UN children's agency, expressed 'deep sadness and personal concern' over the sentence of Baquer Namazi.
'The entire UNICEF family are deeply concerned for his health and well-being,' UNICEF said.
'Baquer has been a humanitarian all his life. We appeal for his release on humanitarian grounds.'
The Mizan news agency report said Nizar Zakka, a US permanent resident from Lebanon, also received a 10-year prison sentence.
His supporters had earlier told The Associated Press about the sentence, though the Mizan report was the first official Iranian confirmation of it.
It said two others had been convicted as well, without naming them or identifying their nationalities.
Later Tuesday, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying three Iranians were sentenced to 10-years imprisonment for 'espionage and cooperating with the US government.'
He named them as Farhad Abdesaleh, Kamran Ghaderi and Alireza Omidvar, without elaborating.
It was unclear if they had lawyers or if they were among the two previously mentioned by Mizan.
The Namazi family fled after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but appears to have kept business ties in Iran, and the younger Namazi traveled back several times.
An ISIS suicide bomber has been shot dead by Turkish police as he was preparing to carry out an attack during a national ceremony.
Armed officers descended on a ninth-floor flat on the outskirts of the Turkish capital Ankara and ordered the terror suspect to surrender.
But police opened fire when he ignored the warnings, according to city governor Ercan Topaca.
An ISIS suicide bomber has been shot dead by Turkish police as he was preparing to carry out an attack during a national ceremony (file picture)
Police later released a photo of the suspect when he was captured on CCTV cameras at the mausoleum of Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk in Ankara
The man was believed to be planning a suicide attack in the city either targeting large gatherings or to coincide with two national ceremonies in the coming weeks.
Topaca said police seized explosive materials from the apartment.
Turkey has been rocked by a series of deadly suicide bombings over the past 18 months that were carried out by ISIS or Kurdish militants.
Officials banned demonstrations or large gatherings in Ankara until the end of November citing intelligence over possible attacks.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters that the man was spotted scouting Turkey's old parliament building as well as the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk the founder of the Turkish republic where ceremonies are scheduled to take place.
'The Daesh militant was rendered ineffective following very important tracking and intelligence work,' Soylu said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. 'These operations are continuing.'
The man was believed to be planning a suicide attack in the city either targeting large gatherings or to coincide with two national ceremonies in the coming weeks (file picture of ISIS fanatics)
Meanwhile, Kurdish rebels attacked a van carrying Turkish security force members with a rocket in southeast Turkey on Wednesday, killing a government-paid village guard and wounding three others, Anadolu reported.
It said rebels belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, attacked the van in the region of Tepe, in the mainly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province. An operation was launched to catch the attackers, it said.
Violence between the PKK and the security forces resumed last year, after the collapse of a fragile cease-fire agreement.
The entire staff of a California store was reduced to tears at the fate of two tiny kittens, who were used as bait for pitbull fights.
Both tiny cats, named Will and Grace, were barely alive when they were dropped off at Pet Food Express.
Their legs were bound, rendering them defenseless against dog attacks.
Adorable: The two kittens had their legs tied with rubber bands, meaning they could not fight back against pitbulls
The two were named Will and Grace by staff, but sadly Grace did not survive the ordeal in California
Sadly Grace, who like Will was believed to be six weeks old, did not survive the ordeal, and had to be euthanized as she was suffering from severe gangrene.
Leona Edejer, manager of the store in Benicia, told ABC7: 'It's the first time I've seen our entire staff reduced to tears, everybody.
'Apparently these kittens were being used as pit bull bait. So the kittens had their legs bound with rubber bands because they want their dogs to learn to fight and kill, but not be damaged by the kittens.
'It's the first time I've seen our entire staff reduced to tears, everybody,' said Leona Edejer, manager of the store in Benicia
'So the kittens have no way to protect themselves. So they can't run and they can't fight and they can't bite.'
She warned people who advertise their unwanted animals to be sure they know where they are going, to ensure they don't end up in the hands of cruel owners.
The abuse is being investigated by the Solano County Animal Control Division, which wants to locate the woman who dropped the kittens off at the store.
Investigators are endeavoring to uncover illegal dog fighting rings in the area.
Ruby Waderich, from rescue group Solano County Friends of Animals said she had never seen anything like this case.
She told ABC7: 'We've had them come in with bites and chews and, you know, but not with the feet the way they are.'
Afghan Dadollah told MailOnline: 'I have no family in London so I can't go'
An 10-year-old boy was among a group of young children who mobbed a British official in the Calais Jungle and begged: 'Please take me to England'.
Dadollah Ahmadzai has been stuck in the French camp on his own for four months - but has been denied entry to the UK because he has no relatives there.
He is pleading to be brought across the Channel as aid workers raised concern that the most vulnerable children are being left behind.
The British government is taking at least 350 migrant children who have family already living in the UK before the Calais is bulldozed later this month.
The first 14 child migrants supposedly aged between 14 and 17 arrived in London on Monday as doubts were raised about their age.
Meanwhile Dadollah, from the Baghlan province, in Afghanistan, said his application had been blocked.
'I have no family in London so I cannot go,' he told MailOnline. 'No family, no brother, no sister, no father or mother there, so no go.'
Stuck in Calais: Ten-year-old Dadollah Ahmadzai, pictured, from Baghlan province in Afghanistan, has been living in the Calais Jungle camp in France on his own for four months
Begging to come to UK: Dadollah was among a group of child migrants, pictured, who yesterday pleaded with a British official to be taken to London. He told MailOnline: I have no family in London so I can't go.
The boy, who is travelling without his parents who are back in Afghanistan, has been stuck in the camp since the start of the summer.
A friend said: He is here alone. It is just him. He has been here for four months.
The British government has said children without links to the country must be looked after in France before their cases are considered and could be brought over later.
Officials are in Calais processing applications.
But it has emerged the Home Office has no way of verifying migrants' ages before they come to Britain, stoking concerns about adults posing as children to take advantage of the scheme.
Stranded and alone: Dadollah has had to watch as the first groups of unaccompanied migrants are taken to start new lives in the UK. But he was denied entry because he has no family living in Britain
A group of boys in a similar position as Dadollah pleaded with the British official yesterday as the Home Office have the task of processing the unaccompanied children coming to the UK
Stuck: Daniel Gadi, a nine-year-old boy, from Eritrea, in Africa, whose mother is dead, is also stuck in the camp. His father Abaye said he wants his son to be looked after by his late wife's sister in London, but was refused entry to Britain as he is not an unaccompanied child
Pleading: Another boy, Mirwais Hotak, claiming to be 16, said he hoped to be allowed into the country as he has an older cousin living in Brighton. He said: I have a family in England but I dont know when I can go. I have to wait.'
And new figures released yesterday reveal that two-thirds of 'child' refugees who were quizzed by the Home Office were found to be adults. Last year 371 'child' asylum seekers were adults.
A British aid worker in Calais said yesterday that some migrants may be pretending to be children to get around the scheme. Another called the selection process 'chaotic' and a 'shambles'.
Another boy from Afghanistan, Mirwais Hotak, claiming to be 16, said he hoped to be allowed into the country as he has an older cousin living in Brighton.
He said: I have a family in England but I dont know when I can go. I have to wait.
I told the man my name, where I am from and who my relatives are. I want to go to England because I have family there. He has my phone number.
I have been here for five months.
Daniel Gadi, a nine-year-old boy, from Eritrea, in Africa, whose mother is dead, is also stuck in the camp.
His father Abaye said he wants his son to be looked after by his late wife's sister in London, but was refused entry to Britain as he is not an unaccompanied child.
New arrivals: Britain will take around 350 child migrants aged between 14 to 17 with family already living in the UK. Pictured: An asylum seeker arrives in London yesterday
An aid worker suggested that some of those arriving are adults may be pretending to be children. Pictured: Two new arrivals, in a black jacket and light blue hooded top arrive at the Home Office in Croydon from Calais. There is no suggestion they are lying about their age
It also emerged the Home Office has no way of verifying the child migrants' ages. Pictured: A child migrant arrives in London from Calais. There is no suggestion he is lying about his age
He said: 'My son is nine. I want him to go to London to be with his mother's sister. We have been here for three months, I do not want my son to be here.
'I have two sons aged 12 and 16 who are already in London with their aunt. Their mother is dead.'
A French court yesterday rejected a request to delay the closure of the migrant camp where 10,000 people are living.
Several aid groups filed an emergency appeal to postpone the demolition, which is expected in coming days, arguing that authorities do not have enough spaces in migrant centres across France. However, this was rejected.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has defended the introduction of castration and the death penalty for paedophiles.
His parliament last week voted to introduce the tough new measures and the leader has spoken of the country's 'no compromise' approach to sex crimes.
'Our constitution respects human rights, but when it comes to sexual crimes there is no compromise.
'In my opinion, chemical castration, if we enforce it consistently, will reduce sex crimes and wipe them out over time,' he said.
Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has introduced a series of tough punishments for child sex offenders through an emergency decree, including chemical castration and the death penalty
The emergency decree was introduced following an outcry in the aftermath of the fatal gang-rape of a schoolgirl.
Widodo defended introducing chemical castration, a decision that has sparked anger from human rights activists and the Indonesian Doctors Association, which has said its members will not perform the treatment.
He told the BBC the government 'will hand out the maximum penalty' for sex crimes.
Twelve of the men accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Bengkulu Province, Indonesia in April were seen hiding their faces as they emerged from a police cell guided by a plain clothed officer
Yuyun (above right in a family photograph released by her mother) was walking home from school when she was killed
Indonesia is among a small group of places worldwide which use the measure, including Poland and some states in the USA.
In 2011 South Korea became the first Asian country to legalise the treatment.
Chemical castration involves using drugs to reduce libido and sex drive.
Widodo was spurred into action after the murder and gang-rape in April of a 14-year-old girl Yuyun.
She was set upon by a gang of drunken men and boys as she walked home from school on the western island of Sumatra.
The leader of the gang was sentenced to death last month after being found guilty of premeditated murder, a crime already punishable by death before the new laws were introduced.
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A huge panorama print of London produced 300 years ago has emerged for sale - and shows not only how much the capital has changed but also highlights a tumultuous royal row in Georgian Britain.
The incredibly rare piece of art, measuring 40in by 80in, was produced in 1717 by Dutch artisan Jan Kip for King George I's daughter-in-law Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales.
It shows a far-reaching view from Buckingham House (which was to become Buckingham Palace) over St James's Park and Westminster towards the City of London and the River Thames.
A huge panorama print of London, measuring 40in by 80in and produced 300 years ago, has emerged for sale to highlight a tumultuous royal row in Georgian Britain. It shows a far-reaching view from Buckingham House (which was to become Buckingham Palace) over St James's Park and Westminster towards the City of London and the River Thames
The changing face of London: 1. Piccadilly; 2. Pall Mall; 3. St Martin-in-the-Fields; 4. The Mall; 5. St Paul's Cathedral; 6. St James's Park; 7. Westminster Hall; 8. Westminster Abbey
The incredibly rare piece of art was made in 1717 by Dutch artisan Jan Kip for Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales. One detail from the artwork shows her carriage (above) being followed by the King's through St James's Park
The print, worth 60,000, became a topic of controversy when its publication was banned due to a prolonged rift that erupted between the King and his son, Prince George Augustus, in 1717. Pictured, a distant view of old London Bridge
It is incredibly detailed and depicts 100 London landmarks that are identified with numbers and captioned at the bottom of the print.
Carriages, which were used to transport royalty, can been seen carrying King George I and his daughter-in-law, the Princess of Wales, through the grounds of St James's Park.
The print, worth 60,000, became a topic of controversy when its publication was banned due to a prolonged rift that erupted between the King and his son, Prince George Augustus, in 1717.
The Prince insulted Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Newcastle, who was a close friend of his father, and both prince and princess were confined to their apartments and banished from visiting St James's Palace.
Slide me From 18th century to the modern day: The print was so large that it has to be made in eight separate parts, which were then joined together
Prince George Augustus (right, who later became George II) insulted Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Newcastle, who was a close friend of his father (left), and both prince and princess (Caroline of Ansbach, centre) were confined to their apartments and banished from visiting St James's Palace
Multiple versions of the panorama were produced through a complex process known as copper plate printing that involves lines being cut into a metal plate by hand. Pictured, the road to 'Chelsey' (later Chelsea)
Shunned by his own father, for the next several years the Prince of Wales was identified with opposition to King George I's policies.
His London residence became a frequent meeting place for his father's political opponents, including Sir Robert Walpole.
The princess ordered that the print should not be made public as she did not want to be seen with her father-in-law.
Eventually in 1726, when tensions between the two had alleviated, Kip was able to publish his work, entitled, 'A Prospect of the City of London, Westminster and St James's Park'.
George I died in 1727 and George II, who did not attend the funeral, succeeded him as King.
A spokesman from Daniel Crouch Rare Books, which is selling the print, said: 'This is a magnificent early panorama of London with a wonderful history.
'The print itself is a fantastic work of art - at the time, it was the largest panorama of the capital ever produced.
The princess ordered that the print should not be made public as she did not want to be seen with her father-in-law. Eventually in 1726, when tensions between the two had alleviated, Kip published his work, entitled, 'A Prospect of the City of London, Westminster and St James's Park'. Above, Westminster Hall and Abbey with the Tower of London in the background
'The story about the prince and the king meant Kip had to delay its publication a number of times. It's a fascinating story.'
They added: 'There is great interest in this piece. It will appeal to a great number of collectors.'
Multiple versions of the panorama were produced through a complex process known as copper plate printing that involves lines being cut into a metal plate by hand.
Next, ink is applied to the surface, which sinks into the incised lines.
Paper is then placed over the top and rolled at a high pressure, pushing it into into the grooves of the metal plate to create the final image.
It was so large that it has to be made in eight separate parts, which were then joined together.
So precise is the detailing that dogs can be seen playing in the park and boats are visible down the Thames.
While the history of this particular copy is unknown, there is a possibility it was the one the Prince and Princess owned.
A British couple on a snorkel trip in Turkey watched in horror as a spear fisherman was 'ripped apart' by the propeller of their tour guide's speedboat, it has emerged.
Lois Reid and Sharly Thomas, from Letchworth, Hertfordshire, felt a 'massive thump' as the vessel hit a man in the water off the coast of Kusadasi in Turkey.
Seconds later the shocked holidaymakers, both 24, said they saw pools of blood on the surface.
Lois Reid (left) and Sharly Thomas (right), from Letchworth, Hertfordshire, felt a 'massive thump' as the vessel hit a man in the water off the coast of Kusadasi in Turkey
Ms Reid and Ms Thomas, who are engaged, had paid 60 for a private snorkel trip organised by the Pine Bay holiday resort
Ms Reid and Ms Thomas, who are engaged, had paid 60 for a private snorkel trip organised by the Pine Bay holiday resort, according to the Daily Mirror.
Ms Thomas, who works in IT, said the captain was driving 'really fast' and was 'always on his mobile'.
'As we approached the bay, a banana boat started coming towards us, so he veered closer in. Then a head popped up and we heard a massive thump.
'We saw these massive dark pools of blood. He had been ripped apart.'
Her partner Ms Reid, who works as a rifle range manager, said they both started screaming and crying while the driver swore when the blood emerged.
The couple started screaming and crying while the driver swore when the blood emerged
The couple, who have been signed off work since returning to Britain, have been told they may have to give evidence in court in Turkey
Locals said the man who was struck by the boat was a 54-year-old married father of two.
The couple, who have been signed off work since returning to Britain, have been told they may have to give evidence in court in Turkey.
Travel firm Thomas Cook said: 'We are sorry Ms Reid and Ms Thomas witnessed such a tragic event on holiday.
Gregory Paul Lawler, 63, is scheduled to die Wednesday by injection of the barbiturate
A Georgia man convicted of killing a police officer has requested his last meal to feast on before he is executed Wednesday evening.
Gregory Paul Lawler is scheduled to die Wednesday at 7pm by injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson.
The 63-year-old was convicted in the October 12, 1997 slaying of Atlanta police officer John Sowa, 28 and for critically wounding then 38-year-old officer Patricia Cocciolone.
The condemned cop killer has asked for a rib eye steak, a baked potato with sour cream, asparagus, dinner rolls with butter, French onion soup, strawberries, pistachio ice cream and apple juice as his last meal to feast on.
Lawler fired 16 times from an AR-15 rifle at the two officers after they were dispatched to check on a report of a man hitting a woman in a parking lot near the intersection of Piedmont Avenue and Lindbergh Drive.
Gregory Paul Lawler (left) is scheduled to die Wednesday at 7pm by injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital. He was convicted in the 1997 slaying of Atlanta police officer John Sowa (right)
When they arrived, they saw Lawler trying pull his girlfriend, Donna Rodgers, to her feet, as she was drunk.
He walked off and the two officers then drove Rodgers home.
The shooting happened moments after Sowa and Cocciolone had walked Lawler's intoxicated girlfriend to the apartment they shared.
He greeted the two officers who knocked on the door with a rant of obscenities and yelled, 'get the f*** away from my door.'
Sowa had tried to stop Lawler from closing the door once the woman was inside, but Lawler then grabbed the AR-15 and starting shooting at the two officers who tried to flee.
'I was calling out to John, but he never called back,' Cocciolone testified in the 2000 trial.
'He killed John, and then he went back to me. He shot me a couple of more times.
'He stood right over me to shoot me again, trying to make sure I would die. But I turned at just the right time. Otherwise I would have died.'
Sowa and Cocciolone both wore bullet-proof vests, but they were shot multiple times as their guns remained holstered.
Police spent the next six hours negotiating with Lawler to come out of the apartment, even after his girlfriend had escaped.
Lawler (above) fired 16 shots at the officers from an AR-15 rifle from his apartment. When investigators went inside, they found bomb-making instructions, paramilitary manuals and about 20 weapons
The gunman walked out of the apartment and was immediately arrested by officers.
When investigators went inside, they found bomb-making instructions, paramilitary manuals and about 20 weapons.
At the time, Lawler had lived with more than a dozen cats, was an avid photographer and had even earned a master's degree in business from Emory University, the AJC reported.
Prior to the shooting, Lawler had a misdemeanor simple battery charge for hitting his roommate on the head with a camera tripod in 1991 and a DUI in 1989.
He was convicted of murder, aggravated assault on a police officer, aggravated battery on a police officer and using a firearm in the commission of a felony in 2000.
Earlier this month, Lawler's attorneys argued that a recent autism diagnosis helps explain his actions that night and that his life should be spared.
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is the only authority in Georgia with power to commute a death sentence, on Tuesday declined to grant him clemency.
The five member board heard pleas from his brother and lawyers for three hours.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sowa's widow, his sister, Cocciolone and Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard spent nearly two hours with the board Tuesday afternoon.
'As most of you realize, the execution of Gregory Lawler is set for October 19th. We appreciate all the support we have received during the last few days,' Cocciolone wrote in a Facebook posting.
'We would like to ask only for your love and prayers through this difficult time.'
Legal maneuvers to save his life are pending in the courts.
Lawler is scheduled to be the seventh person in the state put to death in 2016.
It is more than any other year since the death penalty law was adopted in Georgia 40 years ago.
Australian rugby player Michael Quinn was addicted to methamphetamine when he travelled to Los Angeles to rape a six-year-old boy at a sex party, a US court heard.
Court documents have this week revealed Quinn's addiction, a blog he wrote about sexually abusing children and plans he was making to meet 'like-minded pervs' in New York, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The IVF geneticist was arrested in an undercover operation in May while on a US rugby trip.
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Australian rugby player Michael Quinn (pictured) was addicted to methamphetamine when he travelled to Los Angeles to rape a six-year-old boy at a sex party organised by paedophiles, a US court heard
He will be sentenced in a Los Angeles court on October 31.
Prosecutors have recommended the 33-year-old be sentenced to 12 years in prison and have lifetime supervision after his release.
In a sentencing memorandum filed this week US attorney Joey Blanch wrote: 'Despite the friendly, congenial mask [the] defendant showed to the world, [the] defendant lived a secret life online.'
'He used the anonymity of the internet to share his secret sexual interest in children, searching out like-minded people and ultimately arranging to purchase a six-year-old boy he intended to sodomise.'
Quinn was in the US to play with the Melbourne Chargers rugby union team in the Bingham Cup in Nashville
Quinn was in the US to play with the Melbourne Chargers rugby union team in the Bingham Cup in Nashville.
He was caught when he went alone to a LA hotel and handed $US260 to an undercover agent posing as a pimp.
Authorities said they seized a meth pipe and found child pornography on his phone.
Holidaymakers face Christmas travel chaos unless airport service staff are given new contracts, Unite warned today.
More than 1,700 workers face being left in limbo when baggage carrier firm Aviator closes its operations at Birmingham, Gatwick, Manchester and Newcastle airports on November 30.
The staff work in baggage handling, refuelling and check-in for major airlines including British Airways, Virgin, Thomas Cook and easyJet.
More than 1,700 workers face being left in limbo when baggage carrier firm Aviator closes its operations at Birmingham, Gatwick (pictured in file image), Manchester and Newcastle
Unite has called for more clarity over the employees' futures, warning there could be Christmas travel disruption if they are not taken on by other companies 'as a matter of urgency'.
The union said there were some 1,200 Aviator employees at Gatwick, 196 at Birmingham, 192 at Manchester and 145 at Newcastle.
They also service airlines such as Monarch, Thomson and American Airlines.
Sweden-based Aviator is understood to be ending its contracts at the airports for financial reasons.
Unite national officer Oliver Richardson said: 'Unite will be seeking assurances from the company, airlines, other handlers and ultimately, the airports that there will be no compulsory redundancies.
'It is a matter of serious concern for both our members and the travelling public that, so close to Christmas, most of the airlines have not announced where their baggage handling and check-in contracts are going.
Unite warns the employees must be taken on by other companies 'as a matter of urgency' to avoid disruption to Christmas travel plans. File images of queues at Gatwick Airport
'The airport owners and the airlines, which require these services for their planes to land and take-off efficiently, need to get their skates on to sort this out, without any detriment to the staff jobs, pay and conditions - otherwise Christmas travel chaos is on the cards.'
A spokesman for Aviator said: 'We note the statement issued by Unite today and completely understand the desire for more clarity on plans.
'We're in discussions with a large number of stakeholders including airlines to ensure that this process is orderly and well-managed.
'We're consulting with employees and their representatives to deal with any concerns they have and providing further information as and when we have it and will continue to do so.
Police in the Czech Republic have arrested a Russian man accused of staging cyber attacks on the United States.
The man was detained in a joint operation between police in Prague and the the FBI after Interpol had issued a so-called Red Notice about the suspect.
The arrest comes after Washington formally accused the Russian government of trying to 'interfere' with the upcoming presidential election.
Police in the Czech Republic have arrested a Russian man accused of staging cyber attacks on the United States. Pictured is the man being arrested at a hotel in Prague
However, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied the allegations of launching cyber attacks.
But there was no indication from Czech police that the arrest in Prague was linked to the US claims.
In a statement, Czech police spokesman David Schon said: 'Czech police have successfully collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
'The aim of the operation was a Russian citizen suspected of hacking attacks on targets in the United States.'
The statement also added that the arrest took place in a hotel in Prague but did not identify the man or say when it took place.
The man is now in police custody after being taken to hospital when he was detained as he collapsed.
Czech judicial authorities must now rule on his extradition to the United States.
At the weekend, the Kremlin slammed Washington for its 'unprecedented' threats after US Vice President Joe Biden told NBC that Putin would receive a 'message' over the alleged hacking.
Biden said Washington would respond to the alleged attacks 'at the time of our choosing and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact.'
The man was detained in a joint operation between police in Prague and the the FBI after Interpol had issued a so-called Red Notice about the suspect
NBC later reported that the CIA was preparing a retaliatory cyber attack 'designed to harass and 'embarrass' the Kremlin leadership.'
The Kremlin was propelled to the heart of American politics in July after Hillary Clinton's campaign blamed Russia for an embarrassing leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Russia has been accused of favouring Republican candidate Donald Trump - who has praised Putin and called for better ties with Moscow - over Clinton.
She was found on August 27 and will face court via video link on Friday
Sharp provided officers with a more flattering photo through Facebook
She responded to the police alert after they posted her mug shots online
Teenager spends time in jail as she faces charges including shoplifting
A teenager who made headlines after asking police to use a more flattering photo of herself on Facebook while on the run has been taken into custody.
Amy Sharp, 18, was found on August 27 after she escaped from Surry Hills Corrective Services Cell Complex in Sydney on August 19, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Police had released mugshot images of the teenager looking tired and draped in a blanket as they sought help from the public on her whereabouts after she escaped from the cells at the Sydney Police station.
An 18-year-old who asked police to use a more flattering photo of herself (right) instead of her mug shot (left) while on the run through Facebook is in jail
Shortly after Sharp posted a cheeky response underneath NSW Police's Facebook alert and included a fresh-faced photo of herself.
'Can you use this photo, please and thank youYours Truly, Amy Sharp xx,' she wrote on Facebook.
Police found Sharp two days after she made the comment, which attracted more than 67,000 likes.
The teenager, from Victoria, was staying in housing commission in Sydney when she allegedly committed four offences.
Amy Sharp wrote to the police: 'Can you use this photo, please and thank youYours Truly, Amy Sharp xx'
Police found Sharp, two days after she made the comment which attracted over 67 thousand likes
Sharp pleaded guilty to the shoplifting charges after she stole $192.80 worth of clothes from Cotton On, Typo and Rebel stores at a shopping centre.
She has pleaded not guilty to possessing identity to commit an indictable offence, receiving or disposing of stolen goods and financial advantage by deception.
Sharp is currently a remand inmate at Dillwynia Women's Correctional Centre at Windsor in western Sydney.
She will face Central Local Court on Friday via video link.
Sharp is currently a remand inmate at Dillwynia Womens Correctional Centre at Windsor in western Sydney
Ministers are at loggerheads over whether to quit the European customs union amid warnings it could mean a 4.5 per cent hit to GDP .
Papers circulated at a meeting of the Brexit Cabinet committee apparently suggested that leaving could clog up trade through Britain's ports.
The forecast for a GDP hit, is the average prediction for how much growth would be sacrificed by 2030 made in three studies carried out ahead of the historic referendum.
Theresa May apparently told the Brexit Cabinet committee that she was not yet ready to take a decision on the UK's negotiating position
The research, by the Treasury, the thinktank Niesr, the Centre for Economic Performance and London School of Economics focus on a Norway-style model where the UK exits the single market but stays inside the customs union.
They have been heavily criticised by Leave supporters, who regarded them as part of the failed 'Project Fear' attempt to scare voters off Brexit.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is said to have backed withdrawal from the bloc at the meeting, arguing that it would prevent global deals being done.
But Chancellor Philip Hammond highlighted the economic risks and Theresa May insisted she was not yet ready to make a decision on the UK's negotiating strategy, according to the Guardian.
The latest tensions emerged amid claims that Boris Johnson and David Davis have formed a pact to push for their version of 'hard' Brexit.
They are said to take joint positions in meetings and make a concerted effort not to disagree with each other.
The customs union covers all EU states, along with Turkey and a number of smaller countries like Monaco, Andorra and San Marino and non-EU UK territories such as the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey.
Boris Johnson, left, and David Davis are said to have agreed a pact to present a united front in meetings on the type of 'hard' Brexit they advocate
Members can trade goods without customs levies, but must impose common tariffs on goods from outside the area and - crucially - negotiate trade deals as part of the union and not as individual states.
The warnings come as Theresa May prepares to head to Brussels on Thursday - 100 days since taking office - to update European counterparts on Britain's plans to quit the EU.
The symbolic anniversary will see the Prime Minister address the rest of the bloc informally on the "the current state of affairs in the country" but no detailed discussion of Brexit is expected.
After entering Downing Street in July, the PM was quick to hold meetings with key players from the other 27 countries but the European Council summit will be the first time she sits round the table in Brussels with leaders of other member states.
No 10 has indicated MPs will have a vote on the final Brexit deal secured by the Government if the agreement results in a new treaty with the EU - but dismissed demands for a vote before Article 50 is triggered.
A paedophile was caught on camera by vigilantes who duped him into believing he was meeting a 13-year-old girl for sex.
Adrian Stroe, 28, arranged the meeting after sending dozens of sexually explicit texts and images to a 'girl' named Lucy Stephens on a mobile messaging service.
But when he arrived at the meeting point near East Croydon station, London, he was instead confronted by a group of men from vigilante group The Hunted One.
Stroe, a Romanian national, said he was in 'big trouble' before he was arrested by passing British Transport Police officers.
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Adrian Stroe, 28, pictured, arranged the meeting after sending dozens of sexually explicit texts and images to a 'girl' named Lucy Stephens on a mobile messaging service
when he arrived at the meeting point near East Croydon station, London, pictured, he was instead confronted by a group of men from vigilante group The Hunted One
Stroe, a Romanian national, said he was in 'big trouble' before he was arrested by passing British Transport Police officers. The confrontation was captured on camera, pictured
The Hunted One posted messages between Stroe and 'Lucy' on its website, in which he discusses having sex and oral sex with the child. He told her he was 24 years old.
He writes: 'If you still want try sex [sic]. We can try sex'.
When 'Lucy' asks 'will it hurt?', he replies: 'Just 1-2 minutes after that you can feel pleasure. I told you many times'.
He also speaks about performing oral sex on the child and explains how she would perform oral sex on him. Stroe also says they will take a shower together.
Footage of the moment Stroe was confronted was also posted online. Members of The Hunted One say: 'You like meeting children for sex do you?'
The Hunted One posted messages between Stroe and 'Lucy' on its website, in which he discusses having sex and oral sex with the child. Pictured, Stroe being confronted by police
His head in his hand, he insists that is not why he is there before admitting: 'I think so, big trouble'.
Stroe admitted one count of attempting to meet a child after sexual grooming as well as a count of attempting to cause a child to watch a sexual act at Croydon Crown Court on Monday, the Croydon Advertiser reported.
Prosecutor Andrew Collings told the court Stroe's actions were brought to light when a member of The Hunted One contacted police.
He said: 'He explained to police that he had been using a friend messaging app called Waplog since about August 2016.
In the messages Stroe (pictured) speaks about performing oral sex on the child and explains how she would perform oral sex on him. Stroe also says they will take a shower together
'[The vigilante] went on to say when he spoke to police he had been posing as a young person, under 16, and had been doing that for about a year, apparently to raise awareness amongst young people and families about the dangers of sexual predators on the internet.
'In relation to this defendant, he had been posing as a 13-year-old girl called Lucy Stephens and whilst posing as her he started to speak to an individual. There's no dispute that individual was the defendant.'
Imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi risks a new round of lashes one year after his public flogging in the kingdom generated a global outcry, it has been claimed.
Evelyne Abitbol, who founded the Raif Badawi Foundation with Badawi's wife, said a 'reliable source' in the kingdom claims he faces a new flogging.
It comes after his first punishment in 2015 for breaking Saudi's technology laws and insulting Islam.
Raif Badawi was publicly flogged 50 times last year which severely damaged his health and his sentence stipulates there are 950 more to go
Saudi embassy officials in Ottawa and Saudi government officials in Riyadh were not immediately available for comment.
The source's claims have not been independently confirmed yet.
Evelyne declined to name the source but said it was the same person who had alerted Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar, in 2015 before he received his first 50 lashes, the only part of the flogging that was reportedly administered.
It is not known when the flogging will take place but it is thought it could begin at any time.
Raif's wife is desperately trying to help her husband, and has asked countries with ties to Saudi Arabi, to intervene on the blogger's behalf.
Ensaf Haidar, his wife, has launched a world-wide campaign to get the blogger released
The Free Raif campaign has received global support and the Raif Badawi Foundation was set up to raise awareness of his punishment
Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said in Ottawa that his department is trying to confirm whether the claims are true and has urged the Saudi government to allow Badawi to join his family in Canada.
'We are trying to have the most accurate information possible, because if this information is true, it would be shameful,' Ms Dion said yesterday.
'Canada completely condemns this type of lashing.'
Ensaf, who was in Germany to present a journalism award on Wednesday in her husband's name, could not be reached for comment.
She was granted asylum in Canada, where she lives with the couple's three children in the province of Quebec.
Saudi despots to continue @raif_badawi lashings - this time in private within confines of prison. @foreignoffice @POTUS Free the man now! https://t.co/Q2P4R3tw1p Ian Reynolds (@pumps1000) October 18, 2016
Your Majesty, @KingSalman, please hear @raif_badawi's wife's plea to strip her husband off Saudi citizenship. Send him to Canada! #FreeRaif Angel Undercover (@_Atheist_Angel_) October 18, 2016
Evelyne, the foundation's director, wants Saudi Arabia to withdraw the flogging punishment, strip Badawi of his Saudi citizenship and let him leave the country for Canada.
This is the terrifying moment four divers were left trapped underneath a huge great white shark after it cut their air supply and dived down inside their cage.
The 4.5-metre shark bit through the divers' air hose before plunging into the cage jaws-first, becoming trapped as it tried to snap at the people inside.
Panicking below, the four divers watched in horror as the monster shark thrashed around, getting itself further lodged in between the bars.
This is the terrifying moment four divers were left trapped underneath a huge great white shark after it cut their air supply and dived down inside their cage
Katie Yonker, who was one of the divers who was left trapped in the cage off Guadalupe Island, Mexico, described the horrifying moment the shark attacked.
She said another diver, called Yann, had pushed the aggressive shark away from the cage just moments before it tried to break into the cage.
'A few seconds later, the shark bit the air hose that supplies air from the surface to the divers in the cage, creating an explosion of air bubbles,' Ms Yonker wrote on the Bluewater Travel page.
'The shark swam vertically down into the balcony of the cage, made a sharp turn, and swam right through the bars of the cage.
'She thrashed around for several seconds and in the process got further lodged into the bars of the cage.'
Yann was forced to bail out of the cage after their regulator was knocked out of their mouth by the shark, while another was trapped right next to the shark for 30 seconds.
The four-and-a-half metre shark bit through the divers' air hose before plunging into the cage jaws-first, becoming trapped as it tried to snap at the people inside
Just as Yann left the cage, another shark - the largest the group had seen - arrived on the scene.
Nicknamed Air Demon or Big Mama, the shark passed by the cage but thankfully did not get involved in the chaos.
The divers got out of the cage through a different exit and made their way to a boat waiting above, but had to swim directly past the thrashing shark to get there.
'It was nearly impossible to see anything because the shark was blocking much of the exit and visibility was limited by all the air bubbles and blood in the water,' Ms Yonker wrote.
'I could see the boat, but had no idea how I would get around the shark. I heard someone yell to me to go around the tail, but on the first attempt the shark flicked her tail and I was shoved back to where I started.
'Divemaster Miles threw me a life ring from the boat and Yann pushed me down to help me swim under the tail. Within seconds Miles pulled me onto the boat.'
The incident follows another terrifying video of a shark wriggling its way inside a diver's cage near the same Mexican island
After everyone was safely on board the boat, the crew tied a rope around the shark's tail and lowered the cage into water in an attempt to pull the huge animal out backwards.
After that technique failed, One of the divemasters had to jump back into the cage to press on its gills so it could free itself.
Peter Maguire, who filmed the encounter, said no one - including the shark - was injured.
Pulled over for traffic violations, Jessica Jauch was held for 96 days in a Mississippi jail without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail.
She was charged with a felony based on a secretly recorded video that prosecutors finally acknowledged showed her committing no crime.
Only when she finally got a hearing and a lawyer, who persuaded prosecutors to watch the video, did the case fall apart.
Then, the 34-year-old mother sued, alleging violations of her rights to bail, legal representation, a speedy trial and liberty.
Jessica Jauch was held for 96 days in a Mississippi jail without seeing a judge, getting a lawyer or having a chance to make bail
But a federal judge dismissed her case against Choctaw County and Sheriff Cloyd Halford last month, ruling that because she had been indicted by a grand jury on the felony drug charge, none of her constitutional and legal rights were violated.
The outcome has flummoxed civil liberties advocates who have been waging legal battles to reform Mississippi's criminal justice system, which provides almost no state funding for public defenders.
'I can't think of a situation where denying someone an appearance before a judge for 96 days after arrest passes constitutional muster,' said attorney Cliff Johnson, who has sued Mississippi localities over pretrial detention and high bails for indigent defendants.
Similar lawsuits have been filed across the country. The American Civil Liberties Union is working state by state to force increased funding for public defenders, particularly in places where court-appointed lawyers depend on stingy local governments and court fees to get paid.
'I think each state suffers from the symptoms we see in Mississippi,' said Brandon Buskey, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project. 'This state just seems to have all of them at the same time.'
Pulled over for traffic offenses on April 26, 2012, Jauch was held thereafter because prosecutors relied on the word of an informant who said Jauch sold her eight Xanax pills for $40 in February 2011, according to court papers.
In fact, a Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics video showed Jauch asking to borrow the $40. But Jauch's lawyer in her federal suit, Victor Fleitas, said no one knew that because investigators and prosecutors apparently never watched the video before persuading the grand jury to charge her with selling a controlled substance.
She wasn't arraigned until the next court term in Choctaw County, three months later.
Jauch posted $15,000 bail and was released August 6 after she finally got a lawyer. Once the assistant district attorney watched the video, he immediately agreed to drop the charges, Public Defender Hays Burchfield wrote.
Two local assistant district attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. District Attorney Doug Evans did not return calls and e-mails. Fleitas also declined comment, and Jauch didn't respond to multiple requests for an interview.
The 34-year-old mother sued, alleging violations of her rights to bail, legal representation, a speedy trial and liberty at the Choctaw County courthouse in Ackerman, Mississippi
Even the county and its sheriff told the federal judge that 'Jauch states a plausible case for multiple constitutional deficiencies,' but their motion blamed circuit judges and the district attorney.
'It is the court's obligation to afford her an opportunity before the judge,' Halford told The Associated Press after the case was dismissed. 'In layman's terms, I can't call the court and talk to the judge and tell them I've got somebody and you need to arraign them.'
U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock, however, ruled that people in Jauch's situation aren't required to get a court hearing within 48 hours, and that her right to a lawyer was satisfied by the appearance of a public defender at her arraignment, 96 days after her arrest.
'Put simply, the plaintiff was arrested and held on a valid felony grand jury indictment that established the existence of probable cause,' Aycock wrote. 'Therefore, the Fourth Amendment is not implicated here.'
Other federal judges also have considered constitutional challenges to Mississippi's justice system, with mixed results.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves told Lauderdale County officials in July to do more to ensure inmates get representation and speedy trials. In June, Reeves blasted judges statewide for long detentions, even as he reluctantly ruled out damages for a man held 23 months in jail before his charges were dismissed in Hinds County.
Choctaw County Sheriff Cloyd Halford (right) says it's not his fault that Jessica Jauch was held for 96 days without a hearing before a judge, a lawyer or bail. Halford and the county told a federal judge that scheduling such hearings were the responsibility of a state court judge or district attorney
Still pending before U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate is a lawsuit by the ACLU and the MacArthur Justice Center accusing Scott County of jailing two inmates illegally without lawyers or grand jury hearings.
'There is no uniform practice in Mississippi that I can identify in terms of getting people in front of a judge in a timely manner, where counsel is identified and appointed, where bail determinations are made on an individualized basis,' said Johnson, a MacArthur Center lawyer. 'We're a mess right now in Mississippi when it comes to pretrial process in the justice system.'
The ACLU also has sued in California, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Utah, following lawsuits elsewhere. No one has sued yet in Mississippi over the state's public defender system but a task force there is studying the issue.
State Public Defender Andre de Gruy's office only handles death penalty cases, appeals and training. But he believes Mississippi law already requires the swift appointment of a public defender for people facing charges that could result in prison. In practice, though, local public defenders typically must wait for a judge to appoint them to a case.
'It's because we have this fractured system where no one ever has to take responsibility,' de Gruy said.
Mississippi is considering new rules of criminal procedure; one says people in Jauch's situation 'shall be taken without unnecessary delay before a judge.' But many of the circuit courts in rural Mississippi sit only twice a year.
Donald Trump has declared war on Congress, by promising to introduce term limits and cracking down on lobbyists.
Trump, who has long claimed that America is riddled with political corruption, said he wanted to 'drain the swamp' in Washington.
He told cheering supporters in Grand Junction, Colorado: 'If I am elected President, I will push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.'
Trump said members of the House of Representatives should be limited to six years and 12 years for Senators.
Donald Trump (pictured at the rally Tuesday) has stressed that he is an outsider who is not close to the Washington establishment and he has even fallen out with prominent Republicans in Congress, like Paul Ryan
At present there are no limits on the amount of terms a congressman can serve and the record is 49 years, held by the late Senator Strom Thurmond, a Republican from South Carolina, who was in office from 1954 until 2003.
Trump is expected to push his agenda hard at tonight's third Presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas.
He believes it will strike a chord with many Americans who perceive Washington as a cozy club where politicians and 'special interests' lobbyists scratch each other's backs.
Under the U.S. Constitution there are no limits on terms for Congressmen. The late Senator Strom Thurmond (pictured) holds the record, having held office for 49 years until 2003
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign, Brian Fallon, said the Democratic nominee 'will be ready for whatever scorched earth tactics (he) tries' tonight.
Trump has invited Pat Smith, whose son, Sean, was one of four Americans killed during the 2012 attack in Benghazi, to the debate. She has said she holds Mrs Clinton personally responsible for her son's death.
Republicans will be hoping Trump can close the gap on Clinton by focusing on her weaknesses, which include her closeness to Washington, and President Obama and their alleged failure to have addressed America's underlying problems.
Donald Trump punches the air as he greets supporters in Grand Junction, Colorado yesterday
Trump himself has described the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, as a 'weak and effective' leader and has distanced himself from the GOP in Washington.
In his speech last night Trump said: 'Decades of failure in Washington, and decades of special interest dealing, must come to an end.
'We have to break the cycle of corruption, and we have to give new voices a chance to go into government service. The time for Congressional term limits has arrived.'
Hillary Clinton (pictured testifying before Congress in August) is expecting Donald Trump to 'go low' in tonight's third and final debate
But experts say it would be almost impossible to get term limits passed by Congress and the president does not have the power to force them through because it would require the amendment of the constitution.
Washington Post journalist Amber Phillips pointed out: 'In 1995, the Supreme Court decided in a 5 to 4 vote that states or Congress can't just make a law limiting the number of terms members of Congress can serve.'
Molly Reynolds, a congressional expert with the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post: 'If members are restricted to only serving a few terms the logic goes, they have neither the time nor the incentive to develop the relevant expertise they need to be good at their jobs.
'If members don't have that expertise themselves, they're more likely to rely on outsiders, including lobbyists, to replace that expertise.'
Trump told his supporters: 'If we let the Clinton cartel run this government, history will record that 2017 was the year America lost its independence.
'We will not let that happen. It is time to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.
'That is why I am proposing a package of ethics reforms to make our government honest once again.'
He promised to bring in a ban on all executive branch officials lobbying the government for five years after they leave government service.
Trump also wants Congress to bring in its own five-year ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and their staff.
He also threatened to 'expand the definition of lobbyist so we close all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisers'.
Trump pointedly promised to issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
Channel Ten has been forced to apologise for joking about footage of a Thai woman mourning the death of the country's king in its news quiz program 'Have You Been Paying Attention?'
It is believed quiz show's five-person panel poked fun at the wailing woman on Monday, inciting an angry response from Thailand's Ambassador Chirachai Punkrasin, who called the sketch 'very inappropriate, disrespectful, and certainly not amusing.
The jokes from Peter Helliar, Ed Kavalee, Sam Pang, Jane Kennedy and Celia Pacquola, who sat on the panel, mocked people 'who are feeling intense grief at the passing of their monarch,' he said.
Channel Ten has apologized for poking fun at a Thai woman crying over the death of the country's king in the comedy program 'Have You Been Paying Attention?' (pictured)
'While it may not be the intention of the Network 10 to cause offence, the programme needs to show greater cultural sensitivity and media professionalism when it deals with a topic that makes reference to another country, institution or culture,' he said, asking for the segment to be removed and taken off of social media.'
The sketch incited an angry response from Thailand's Ambassador Chirachai Punkrasin (pictured), who called the sketch 'very inappropriate, disrespectful, and certainly not amusing'
'I count on your understanding and your cooperation in removing the inappropriate segment on Thailand in the above-mentioned programme from your future diffusion programme as well as other social media channels.'
Channel Ten responded on Tuesday by tweeting that 'in no way was any disrespect intended' and apologised for any distress.
The video has since been removed from social media and the channel's streaming service.
The sketch will also be edited out of the 30-minute program before it is rerun on television, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej died last week at the age of 88.
He took over the throne in 1950 and is said to be one of the longest serving monarchs in the world.
A year-long mourning period was announced for the country following his passing.
The jokes from Peter Helliar, Ed Kavalee, Sam Pang, Jane Kennedy and Celia Pacquola, who sat on the panel, mocked people 'who are feeling intense grief at the passing of their monarch,' he said (pictured)
Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, is the second richest man in America - overtaking Warren Buffett - the Forbes 400 list has revealed.
Bezos has seen $20billion added to his net worth after a run up in Amazon stock, bringing it up to $70.7billion.
Bill Gates remains in the top spot, with his fortune standing at $81billion.
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Jeff Bezos is the second richest man in America, having overtaken Warren Buffett in the Forbes 400 list
Bezos, 52, owns close to 18 per cent of Amazon.
Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, fell to third place, with a net worth of $64.9billion. He has trailed Gates on the list for the past 15 years.
Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, fell out of the top three for the first time in nine years. Mark Zuckerberg is the fourth richest man in America, with a $55.4billion net worth.
Warren Buffett (left) slipped a place to third on the Forbes 400 list, while Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg (right) rose to fourth
Gates remains the richest man in the world, but Spanish magnate Amancio Ortego is the second, sandwiched between him and Bezos.
Ortego is the founder and chairman of the Inditex clothing company, which owns the Zara brand across the world.
Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helu is the only other non-American to make the worldwide top 10, with a net worth of $49.3billion.
The Microsoft chief has headed the Forbes list for 23 straight years.
The billionaires on the 2016 ranking have a record-breaking, combined total net worth of $2.4 trillion, up from $2.34 trillion in 2015.
The average net worth of a Forbes 400 member hit $6 billion, also a record high, said Forbes.
By comparison, US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has fallen 35 spots on the list, and now stands at number 156. His fortune has dropped from $4.5billion in March to $3.7billion - a fall of $800million.
This is the moment terrified schoolgirls were forced to wade through a snake-infested mud pit as part of a jungle training exercise.
The group of 45 children, who are just primary school age, were being disciplined by Civil Defence Force trainers in Malaysia.
The exercise required the young girls to dash from one end of the muddy snake pit to the other, and climb out via a steep slope on the other side.
Footage of the exercise shows the little girls scream and cry out in terror, while the men 'training' them look on, spraying water and throwing snakes into the muddy pool as the children try to get out.
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A jungle training programme has been suspended after footage emerged of terrified schoolgirls being forced to wade through a snake-filled pit
The shocking film shows a group of the children huddling together and screaming in fear as they struggle to climb the muddy wall of the pit.
One girl jumps up and down, her face contorted in terror, as a wriggling snake is thrown in her direction.
The exercise required the young girls to dash from one end of the muddy snake pit to the other, and climb out via a steep slope on the other side
The young pupils are all dressed in long trousers, long-sleeved tops, and hijabs, and are soaked up to their knees with muddy water.
The girls are all pupils at a primary school in Kuala Kangsar in Perak state, in the north west of the country.
The girls were being disciplined by Civil Defence Force trainers in Perak state in Malaysia
Authorities in Perak state said the training programme had been immediately suspended pending an investigation into the incident, after the footage was released on Monday.
Jungle survival training is offered by many groups across Malaysia, teaching a diverse range of skills from identifying edible plants to trapping wild animals.
Four police officers have been wounded - some of them seriously - after a right-wing radical opened fire on them as they prepared to search his home.
The gunman, 49, opened fire on police officers when they turned up at his home in Georgensgmund in Bavaria this morning to search for weapons.
Media reports said officers returned fire and the man was slightly wounded and taken into custody.
Police officers gather in front of a house where a 49-year-old far-right Nazi group
avaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann speaks during a news conference in Roth, Germany
Four police officers have been wounded - some of them seriously - after a right-wing radical opened fire on them as they prepared to search his home
Police and government officials said the gunman who opened fire on four police officers today had a stash of 30 weapons in his home.
They said the gunman pumped shots through the door of his home at the officers before they even had a chance to ring the doorbell.
Police planned the inspection because they feared the gunman had become unstable and was not storing his weapons and ammunition correctly.
The gunman was wearing a bulletproof vest when he opened fire. One officer suffered life threatening injuries and went immediately into surgery. His condition is 'stable but he remains in a dangerous condition.'
A second police officer was wounded in the arm. Two other officers were treated as outpatients.
The gunman was a so-called 'Reichsburger' - reich citizen.
These individuals are predominantly right-wingers who do not recognise the Federal Republic of Germany and want the pre-war borders of the Third Reich to be recognised once again.
Reichsburger members recognise no courts or authorities of the modern day German state and are linked through Internet chat forums and right-wing associations.
Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, will give more details about the injuries sustained by the officers and the police operation later in the day.
A unit of anti-terror sek officers were on hand at the scene but the suspect took the regular police unit by surprise.
Authorities have increasingly warned in recent months that neo-Nazis in the country are becoming increasingly militarised and prepared to use violence in their opposition to the country's asylum policy for refugees.
A woman has fought off an attempted kidnapper who tried to abduct her by dragging her into his car.
Terrifying CCTV footage shows the man grabbing the woman by her hair and forcing her into the back seat of a silver Commodore in Canberra.
Another woman is seen watching the kidnapping unfold before slowly edging away.
A woman has fought off an attempted kidnapper who tried to abduct her by dragging her into his car
Meanwhile the violent man repeatedly tries to slam the door on the woman who is seen desperately kicking back as she tries to break free.
The offender opens the door and stamps on her twice but she continues to fight back, and at one point gets out of the car.
But the man wrestles her back inside and appears to bang the woman's head against the roof of the car.
The woman eventually managed to escape and left with the the other female as the driver made a swift getaway.
Terrifying CCTV footage shows the man grabbing the woman by her hair and forcing her into the back seat of a silver Commodore in Canberra
Meanwhile the violent man repeatedly tries to slam the door on the woman, who is seen desperately kicking back as she tries to break free
It is not clear if the women knew the man and ACT Police have appealed for them to come forward.
The dramatic incident took place in Red Hill about 6.45pm on October 10.
The man's vehicle is likely to have damage to both the driver's side and rear right door, police said.
Anyone with information or who might know any of the three people involved is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
A third wave of 'child' migrants arrived in Britain from the Calais Jungle today - but the Home Office refused to carry out dental checks to prove their real age.
Around 12 migrants - all burly lads aged anywhere between 15 and 21 - were escorted off a coach and taken inside a Home Office building, before being released.
It came as the row over the age of migrants intensified after officials revealed two-thirds of 'child' refugees quizzed about their age last year were found to be adults.
At least 100 more child migrants are expected to arrive in the UK by Friday - to join the three coachloads that have already made the journey to London this week.
But the Home Office ruled out calls for dental checks to verify their age because the tests are deemed 'inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical'.
A third wave of 'child' migrants arrived in Britain from the Calais Jungle today - but the Home Office refused to carry out dental checks to prove their real age
Around 12 migrants - all burly lads aged anywhere between 15 and 21 - were escorted off a coach
David Davies, the Conservative MP for Monmouth, had called for dental investigations or X-rays to establish the age of refugees coming to the UK.
And former home secretary Jack Straw also threw his weight behind the idea, saying the lack of testing was undermining public confidence in Britain's asylum system.
Concerns were raised about the possibility of migrants trying to 'deceive' authorities after pictures of the group arriving on Monday showed many looked older than 17.
The 12-strong group that arrived on Wednesday was greeted by raucous supporters.
The coach pulled up to Lunar House, a 20-storey office block in Croydon, at around 12.30pm after leaving Calais at 7.30am.
The all-male group were escorted in batches of two at a time as the crowds clapped and cheered their arrival in the UK.
The group that arrived on Wednesday was greeted by raucous supporters
Ahmed Sharaf (left) and Muhammad Alkharbajieh (right) were seen celebrating after the arrival
Safe Passage, the migrant arm of charity Citizen UK, has been identifying children in the camp
They underwent checks before being collected by relatives or released into foster care.
Only two refugees remained inside the immigration centre this evening as they waited for family members to arrive.
The refugee who moved Lily Allen to tears when she visited the Calais Jungle was among the group.
Shamsher Sherin, 13, spoke to Lily during a BBC interview to highlight the plight of children living alone in the squalid camp.
A third group of 'child' refugees are on their way to Britain after being loaded into a minivan in Saint Omer, in Calais, France
Lily, 31, shared the news with her 5.87 million followers on Twitter.
She tweeted: 'So happy to see that Sham Sher made it to the U.K. safely and won't be risking his life jumping on to moving vehicle.'
Ahmed Sharaf, 17, was waiting outside Lunar House for his cousin Khalid Sharaf as he arrived in Croydon from the Jungle camp.
He said: 'My cousin has just arrived on the bus. He is 17 from Syria, we are all from Syria, he is also 17.
'I have been here four months and now live in Wembley with my brother, who came here two-and-a-half years ago.
'My mother and father are still in Daraa in Syria. It is very dangerous and I'm very worried for their safety. I'm very happy my cousin is able to join us. We were worried it might not happen.
'I was in the Jungle for a year and my cousin was there for seven months. It is very bad there. The worst part is the police beat us and there is a lot of fighting going on.'
Khalid's friend Muhammad Alkharbajieh, who has been in the UK and lives with Ahmed for two months, was also waiting outside when he received a call from his friend who was inside the building.
He said: 'He is fine, he is very happy. I'm very happy to be in here and very happy my friend is also here.
The 13-year-old reduced the singer to tears during a BBC interview to highlight the plight of unaccompanied children living in the squalid Jungle camp
This afternoon Allen tweeted: 'So happy to see that Sham Sher made it to the U.K. safely and won't be risking his life jumping on to moving vehicles'
'I came here from Calais, I left Syria and went to Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, then Belgium.
'We were both brought here by the UN. I just want to have productive life in the UK, I go to school and want to be a social worker.'
Abdul Kader, a Syrian refugee who quit Syrian leader Bashir Al-Assad's army to escape the war, was also in the crowd greeting the new arrivals.
But he said he no longer want to be in Britain, adding: 'I want to deport myself.
'I would tell those arriving from Calais to go back. It is better there than it is here.
'I want to go back to Syria. In this county I cannot work, I have nowhere to live, I Iive in hotels.
'I was a Captain Doctor in the army, but I left when they started the war. I cannot kill civilians.
'I was put in jail, then I fled to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, then Greece, then to Germany.'
Yesterday the 14 youngsters who arrived in the UK were taken to temporary foster homes, where they will stay until social workers have interviewed their British-based relatives to ensure their homes are safe for them to live in.
Mohammed and Ahmad, both 17, from Daraa in Syria, said their friend Khaled only found out yesterday that he was being brought to the UK to stay with his cousin.
Citizens UK said he will 'almost certainly' stay with a social carer or foster carer for a night or two before they are reunited with his family, in a part of London.
Reuben Martin, pastor of West Croydon Baptist Church, a member of Citizens UK, said each unaccompanied child refugee is being accompanied by a member of the charity who act as chaperones while they are being processed.
Tensions flared when the Home Office revealed that nearly two-thirds of child refugees quizzed about their real age last year were found to be adults.
In the 12 months to September last year, 65 per cent were found to be aged over 18.
The figures show the scale of how adult migrants try to deceive the UK authorities in a bid to be granted sanctuary.
They emerged after Tory MPs raised questions about the ages of 28 refugees brought to the UK this week from the Calais Jungle.
Yesterday, one migrant in particular, wearing a blue hoodie with stubble on his chin, was rated by a facial recognition program as having the features of a 38-year-old.
'I WOULD RATHER GO BACK TO ALEPPO THAN STAY HERE' Syrian doctor Abdul Kader al-Zuebi Abdul Kader al-Zuebi, a Syrian doctor supporting the new arrivals from Calais, has offered a warning to those seeking permission to live in the UK - saying he would rather return to Aleppo than stay in Britain any longer. The 28-year-old, a qualified doctor who has three British relatives and a British fiancee, said his short time in the UK had been miserable due to Home Office delays which he said made it difficult for him to rent or seek employment as a medic. He said: 'It is a big lie to be in the UK, we think the UK is something from the heavens. 'I am living in hotels for the last 11 days, I can't go anywhere. The Home Office are refusing to let me leave. They don't know where my passport is. 'I wanted to come here, I have three British uncles and am engaged to a British lady. They (Home Office) took me from the airport, to a hostel in Dulwich, after four days they took me to a miserable place in Cardiff. 'So I chose to go to hotels. I asked to rent a house, they refused. I didn't ask for money just papers to be legal but they didn't. 'I would rather be back in Aleppo than stay here. Honestly, I want to go back.' Advertisement
He was one of 14 to be bussed to Croydon from the notorious Jungle camp shanty town before it is demolished by the French authorities.
The first female child refugee, a teenager from Eritrea, was also part of the group.
They followed another set who arrived on Monday, as Britain works to reunite unaccompanied youngsters from war-torn countries with family members in the UK.
A Home Office spokesman refused to confirm how many child refugees were due to arrive in Britain today, or whether any were female.
Asked if Prime Minister Theresa May had 'faith' in the age verification being carried out, her official spokeswoman said: 'There are a whole range of checks in place which the Home Office and Border Force are using in cooperation with partners.'
Former Home Secretary Jack Straw today backed calls for child refugees to be subject to age tests.
He said the large number of over-18 migrants deceiving authorities by posing as children will 'undermine public confidence' in Britain's asylum system.
Mr Straw said there was also a problem with the number of economic migrants pretending to be refugees and said the best way to deal with the migrant crisis is to house them nearer to their country of origin.
He told Sky News: 'Officials made a judgment, we have to accept that judgment, but if there is a case for dental checks, I would certainly not as Home Secretary have ruled that out.
'What I would say to those supporting increase in numbers of refugees to come to this country is this. If it turns out those coming in here are over 18 - and the truth will emerge after a while - then it will undermine public confidence in the whole system.
'So having tests, providing they are not too intrusive and invasive is actually a sensible thing to do for everyone concerned.'
He added: 'Most of them are economic migrants and you have to be pretty firm about this.
'Part of the problem with the issue of whether they are children is you have got to test their age because you will understandably always get quite a lot of people who, knowing that it's easier to get in because they are younger will pretend they are under 18 when they are not.
'My own view is that the best place to deal with refugees is near to their country of origin.
The youngsters have been bussed to Croydon from the notorious Jungle camp shanty town
Tory MP David Davies has been condemned by dentists after last night calling for tests on teeth to verify the age of child migrants
REVEALED: FATHER OF CHILD REFUGEE WHO MADE LILY ALLEN CRY IS AN EX-ISLAMIST FIGHTER LIVING IN BIRMINGHAM It emerged last week that the father of the migrant boy controversially championed by Lily Allen sneaked into Britain in the back of a lorry to claim asylum. The Mail on Sunday also revealed how he then returned to the country he fled in terror for a three-month holiday after being given the right to stay here. Hazrat Gul Sherin, whose son Shamsher appeared with the tearful pop star last week as she 'apologised' on behalf of Britain for bombing his country and putting him 'in the hands of the Taliban', came to the UK illegally in 2005, having fled war-torn Afghanistan. Hazrat Gul Sherin, father of the Afghani boy who moved pop star Lily Allen to tears, was loyal to a brutal warlord and fled to the UK to claim asylum - on the back of a lorry His decision to flee the country was prompted not by the Taliban but because as a leading supporter of a brutal Islamist warlord and an officer in his private army he was afraid of the US and UK-backed Northern Alliance. After seven years, Sherin was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK, then promptly returned to Afghanistan to visit his family. The 49-year-old was a commander in the Islamist group Hezb-e Islami, led by the Butcher of Kabul, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Picture of Shamsher Sherin, who Lily allen apologised to on behalf of the whole UK, taken in Afghanistan ten years ago with his father Hazrat Gul Sherin and his sister In the early 1990s, Hekmatyar's group of fundamentalist Sunni Muslim Pashtuns clashed violently with other mujahideen factions in the struggle for control of the capital, Kabul. Hezb-e Islami was blamed for much of the terrible death and destruction of that period and was accused of appalling human rights abuses, including the assassination of intellectuals and throwing acid in women's faces. The civil war led to Hekmatyar's fall from grace and he quickly became one of the most reviled men in the country. And in 1996, when Hekmatyar went into exile, Sherin also began to lead a quieter life. Shamsher Sherin, aged 13 pictured having a brief telephone conversation with his father Hazrat Gul Sherin in Birmingham. He has never heard of Lily Allen He revealed the startling truth behind his journey to the UK in an interview with The Mail on Sunday. To reach Britain, he hiked across eight countries before being stowed away by traffickers in a fruit lorry. He spent seven years living on benefits in Birmingham before his claim for asylum was accepted in September 2012. He then went back to Afghanistan, flying in via Pakistan, for the first of two three-month visits to the very country that had put him in fear of his life. After 11 years in the UK, he can barely speak English. Advertisement
'Some of those who are at Calais are genuine refugees but an awful lot are economic migrants.
'Our international obligations are to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution from the State from which they come.'
Elsewhere, Tory MP David Davies has been condemned by dentists after last night calling for tests on teeth to verify the age of child migrants.
Meanwhile, official figures show that in the year ending September 2015, some 590 asylum applicants had their age disputed. Of those, 574 had an age assessment with 371 were found to be adults.
Since 2006 there have been 11,121 age disputes. Of those, 4,828 or 43 per cent were found to have been adults.
Safe Passage, the migrant arm of charity Citizen UK, has been identifying children in the Jungle. Sources say it insists on seeing a document which states the names, ages and addresses of their relatives plus evidence such as family pictures.
Migrants are then interviewed by a psychologist who reports to the Home Office, which conducts more checks before they are allowed to cross the Channel.
There was a welcome party for the migrant children arriving from the Jungle camp in France
Two teenagers arrive at Lunar House in Croydon, south London, from the Calais Jungle camp
However, it has emerged the Home Office has no way of verifying the migrants' ages before they come to Britain, stoking concerns about adults posing as children to take advantage of the scheme.
Officials insist the migrants have undergone rigorous interviews and document checks to establish they are aged under 18.
But it has emerged that this is simply a screening process where they are verified as a child based on their 'physical appearance' and 'demeanour', with social workers signing off an 'age assessment'.
MIGRANT CATCH 22 FARCE Home Office officials say they are unable to use dental checks to verify the age of child refugees because such tests require parental consent. It means that because the 'children' are unaccompanied, it is in effect impossible to obtain such permission. The catch 22 situation means there is no way to verify the ages of child refugees coming to Britain unless they have papers including their personal details. Meanwhile, Tory MP David Davies has been condemned by dentists after calling for tests on teeth to verify the age of child migrants. The British Dental Association said his demands for testing on those heading to Britain from the Jungle refugee camp was 'inappropriate and unethical'. Advertisement
A Home Office spokesman admitted that routine medical tests, such as checking dental records, have not been carried out because it could be 'intrusive'.
They added that children may appear older 'because war has toughened them up'.
The spokesman said: 'We work closely with the French authorities and their partner agencies to ensure all those who come to the UK from the camps in Calais are eligible under the Dublin regulations.
'All individuals are referred to the UK authorities by the France terre d'asile (FTDA) and are then interviewed by French and UK officials.
'Where credible and clear documentary evidence of age is not available, criteria including physical appearance and demeanour are used as part of the interview process to assess age.'
Britain is taking in dozens of youngsters from war zones including Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan.
As unaccompanied children, they are entitled to move to the UK under EU asylum law if they have families in Britain.
But the Home Office does not begin rigorous verification of their claimed ages until after they arrive in Britain, charity workers have told the Mail.
Until then, UK officials largely rely on checks made by charities working in the Jungle.
Today a group of child refugees were loaded into a minivan ahead of their journey from Calais
All smiles: Child migrants are loaded into a van in Saint Omer ahead of their journey to Britain
Figures: In the 12 months to September last year, 65 per cent were found to be aged over 18
But after the blue-clad migrant's photograph was widely published online yesterday, some wondered about his age.
Analysis of his picture by Microsoft's face recognition program How Old Do I Look? suggested he had the facial features of a 38-year-old, although the software company cautioned it was just an estimate.
A spokesman said: 'How-old.net was designed to be an example of how developers could build a fun app using modern development practices. It is not intended to be used as a definitive assessment of age.'
And Dr Ross Perry, medical director of the Harley Street skin clinic Cosmedics, said: 'It is very difficult to assess someone's age based on just one photograph, but I would guess he is late 30s to early 40s.
'The wrinkles around the eyes are the tell-tale sign, and the loss of volume in the cheeks.
'He doesn't look like a child. But then if he has been living in a war zone, it could well have aged him prematurely, and it is impossible to know without meeting him.'
It comes as it was revealed nearly two-thirds of those quizzed about their real age last year were found to be adults, according to the Home Office
A third batch of 'child' refugees are on their way to Britain after getting into a van in France
Shamsher is interviewed on BBC2's Victoria Derbyshire show before leaving France for Britain
THE BOY WHO LEFT LILY ALLEN IN TEARS: SHAMSHER'S STORY Shamsher Sherin, the teenage refugee in Calais Lily Allen apologised to in the Jungle Shamsher Sherin left Afghanistan about nine months ago and began a gruelling six-month trek halfway across the globe. He walked most of the journey, but he also used about 5,400 to take buses, motorbikes and cars as he travelled through Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Italy before finally arriving in France three months ago. The teenager was one of between 800 and 1,000 unaccompanied children in the shantytown left facing an uncertain future when it is bulldozed this month. 'I'm so worried about that,' he previously said. 'Where will we go?' Shamsher said his father, Hazrat Gul Sherin, went on ahead of him to set up a home for the family, and now lives in Birmingham. But in the chaos of escaping Afghanistan he said he lost contact with his whole family. Shamsher had admitted that due to hold-ups in the process of applying to move to the UK he had also tried to jump on lorries to get to Britain. He said: 'Life here is very hard. It is very cold, especially at night. 'I hope I can make it to England as soon as possible.' Allen's apology for the nation to Shamsher, broadcast on BBC2's Victoria Derbyshire programme last week, prompted a wave of negative comments online. She said: 'It just seems that at three different intervals in this young boy's life, the English in particular have put you in danger.' But some viewers claimed her apology was 'ridiculous'. Richard Hughes tweeted: 'You should be ashamed of yourself, apologising on behalf of a nation and its people. Just who the hell do you think you are?' Advertisement
As he left the immigration centre in Croydon last night, the migrant in the blue hoodie was clutching a piece of paper entitled: 'Application for biometric resident permit.'
The 14 youngsters were taken to temporary foster homes, where they will stay until social workers have interviewed their British-based relatives to ensure their homes are safe for them to live in.
Last night Tory MP David Davies said: 'This is just a joke. Some of these people are clearly not children, they're not even young men.
'This one has got lines around his eyes, lines on his face and what appears to be flecks of grey in his hair.
The singer's comments provoked a backlash
'There is no way of knowing if someone is a child. We could end up causing even more misery if we are not careful. We should invite anyone who wants to come to the UK to take dental tests.'
Mr Davies was condemned by dentists after calling for tests on teeth to verify the age of child migrants.
The British Dental Association (BDA) said demands by the Monmouth MP for testing on those heading to Britain from the Jungle refugee camp were 'inappropriate and unethical'.
Mr Davies, chairman of the Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee, said mandatory dental checks would reassure the public the system was not being exploited.
But a BDA spokesman said: 'We are vigorously opposed to the use of dental X-rays to determine whether asylum seekers have reached 18.
'It's not only an inaccurate method for assessing age, but it is both inappropriate and unethical to take radiographs of people when there is no health benefit for them.
'X-rays taken for a clinically justified reason must not be used for another purpose without the patient's informed consent, without coercion and in full knowledge of how the radiograph will be used and by whom.'
Doctors of the World, which works in Calais, condemned Mr Davies's stance as 'unethical, inappropriate and divisive' and called for disciplinary action to be taken against the MP.
Leigh Daynes, the charity's executive director, said: 'It's as unethical as it is inappropriate to expect healthcare workers to conduct tests on patients for immigration enforcement purposes.
'Health staff are not border guards; and in any event such tests have been shown to be unreliable.'
She added: 'Such is the seriousness of Mr Davies's unethical and divisive remarks that we are asking his party chairman to consider disciplinary action.'
Former Home Secretary Jack Straw backed calls for child refugees to be subject to age tests
Two children, one in a black jacket and another in a light blue hooded top, are pictured left arriving in the UK from a migrant camp yesterday. Right is a migrant involved in the age row
Mr Davies defended his stance, saying the authorities should not be 'naive' about the issue of adults trying to get into the UK.
He said refugees who had been through an ordeal to reach the UK would not be concerned about having their age checked.
'We must not be naive about this. It's no good Lily Allen turning up with tears in her eyes and all the rest of it - we need to be quite hard-nosed here,' he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
'People are desperate, I understand that, and they will say what they need to say to get in.
'When I was in the camp in Calais there were caravans with notices on saying 'Come here, we will coach you in what to say to get into the UK'.'
This is just a joke. Some of these people are clearly not children, they're not even young men Tory MP David Davies
He added: 'People in Britain, I think, want to help children but we don't want to be taken for a free ride either by people who seem to have got to the front of the queue even though they clearly look, in some cases, a lot older than 18.'
Mr Davies also said he did not accept that it was 'intrusive' to take an X-ray of a migrant.
The Jungle refugee camp could be closed imminently after a French court rejected an appeal from aid groups to delay the clearance.
French authorities are expected to empty the migrant camp in Calais in the coming weeks and dismantle it by the start of winter.
A Lille court has rejected a request from aid groups to postpone the closure, arguing that authorities are not ready to relocate its residents.
Charity groups warned that many of the migrants do not want to stay in France and may set up camp elsewhere to continue trying to cross the English Channel to Britain.
The French interior and housing ministers welcomed the court's ruling and said the camp should be dismantled before winter sets in.
THE HOME OFFICE HAS NO SAFE WAY TO CHECK AGE Despite bringing child refugees to Britain, the Home Office has no failsafe way of guaranteeing that they are actually under 18. Amid fears that adults are posing as minors, it emerged that officials do not carry out medical tests subjecting migrants instead to rigorous interviews. Home Office officials in Calais work with French authorities to ensure applicants qualify under the Dublin Regulation, which lets children lodge asylum claims if they have close family here. If a refugee does not have a birth certificate, a screening officer can certify them as a child based on their 'physical appearance and demeanour'. Unless the refugee appears 'significantly' over 18, they should be 'afforded the benefit of doubt'. Meanwhile in Britain, the child migrants' relatives will be contacted by staff trained to spot inconsistencies in accounts. On arrival, the children will be assessed and screened again. On medical tests, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health guidance states 'age determination is extremely difficult to do with certainty because it is an inexact science'. Dental checks are also inconclusive, with a margin of error of around two years. Similar care must be taken with bone-age x-rays, with the RCPCH saying differences 'may be due to differences in the timing of the onset of puberty'. Advertisement
'I think you're making a series of sneering fatuous little points': Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan hits out at Tory MP David Davies as the pair clash over the 'child' refugee age row
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan was today involved in a furious spat with a Tory MP over what he called the 'demonisation' of child refugees.
In an angry exchange with David Davies, the presenter said there was 'a whiff of unpleasant racism and anti-foreigner-ism' about the migrant age row.
The Monmouth MP had been quoted as saying 14 teenagers who arrived in the UK from Calais on Monday 'don't look like 'children', and called for dental checks to verify their age.
Clash: Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan was today involved in a furious spat with Tory MP David Davies over what he called the 'demonisation' of child refugees
But a seething Piers, 51, told him: 'Who are you to decide that these very impoverished people who've been through an absolutely hellish time - and are coming to this country in actually comparatively small numbers to what I feel our country's moral duty is to these people.
'And all your response is, 'uh, I don't think they're the right. age. Let's check their teeth'.'
Mr Davies, 46, had defended his position, saying: 'I don't think it's in the least bit intrusive to do a short X-ray on somebody, particularly if you're saying you want to help.
'I want to help young children. Certainly charities seem to have given the impression that there are very young children who need our help, and not quite the hulking young adults who seem to be coming over.'
Difference of opinion: In an angry exchange with Mr Davies, the presenter said there was 'a whiff of unpleasant racism and anti-foreigner-ism' about the migrant age row
The Monmouth MP had been quoted as saying 14 teenagers who arrived in the UK from Calais on Monday 'don't look like 'children', and called for dental checks to verify their age
In response, Piers said: 'These hulking young adults have come from war-torn countries, wars that this country helped create in some cases, desperately in need of help.
'Whether they're five, 10, 15, 20 or 25 there's a whiff of very unpleasant racism and anti-foreigner-ism about this, going 'look at him, check his teeth', 'how old is this asylum seeker'.
'Who are you to say we're going to check the teeth of these little miscreants because I don't believe they're the right age?'
Mr Davies replied: 'I'm not suggesting they're miscreants. You're getting carried on a tide of emotion. We need to be hard-nosed about this. We've said we're going to help children, not 25-year-olds.
Furious: Piers Morgan was angered by David Davies' suggestion that dental tests be used to check the age of child refugees arriving in Britain from the 'Jungle' migrant camp in Calais
'I appreciate you feel very strongly about this,' he added, before Piers interjected with: 'I do. I don't like the demonisation of this and I think your proposal to check all their teeth is quite offensive.'
Visibly irritated, Mr Davies then replied: 'OK, sorry am I interrupting you or would you like to carry on? I don't want to interrupt your monologue here.'
But his comment was met with a stern response from Piers, who said: 'I think you're making a series of rather sneering, fatuous little points and I would like you to address mine.
A man got revenge on a pervert who was sending sex-texts to his girlfriend's Facebook account by replying with a picture of himself in her frilly yellow knickers.
Karl Hughes, 28, intervened after another man started sending suggestive messages to his partner Jessica Davidson - with hilarious consequences.
So when Karl - posing as Jessica - offered the creep 'sexy underwear' photos, he donned a pair of Jessica's yellow size 12 French knickers and replied with the caption: 'There ya go darling'.
Karl Hughes, left, responded to a text message sent to his partner Jessica, right, who just gave birth to their first daughter Valencia just three week ago looking for sexy photographs
Karl sourced a pair of his girlfriend's yellow French knickers for the secret admirer
Instead of a photograph of the mother-of-one, the pervert received photographs of Karl
Mother-of-one Jessica, who gave birth to daughter Valencia just three weeks ago, said the man had sent her unsolicited messages after spotting her out shopping.
Karl, from Middlesbrough, Cleveland, said: 'This guy started messaging her after he'd seen us in town together with our new baby, which is a bit weird because we were clearly together.
'We were sat in bed together and Jessica had drifted off to sleep and I could see these messages coming through so I thought I'd get my own back.
'He was taking quite a creepy tone and saying things like 'I'd literally ruin you' even though Jessica had already told him we were together.
'So I thought I'd play a bit of a prank and squeezed into a pair of her pants to get a selfie and see how he liked that.
Karl Hughes from Middlesbrough took an unusual approach when a man sought photographs of his girlfriend wearing just her underwear after spotting the mother-of-one in the shops
Karl, pictured with Jessica, said the pervert began sending messages after seeing the couple in Middlesbrough town centre with their newborn baby daughter Valencia
Karl said the man had known Jessica, pictured, but had not spoken to her in years 'so him sending her dodgy messages when he's just seen us in town together is a bit off'
'I'm 16.5 stone and covered in tattoos so it probably wasn't what he was hoping for. It took a lot of effort to squeeze into them.
'This guy does know Jessica but they've not spoken in years and for him to start sending her dodgy messages when he's just seen us in town together is a bit off.
'He came on saying things like 'why are you so ignorant' which was a bit strange and then he started with the suggestive comments.
'Jessica says it's happened to her before so I thought this time I would teach him not to message a woman who's just had a baby.
'He was expecting a picture of her so I'm sure his face dropped when he saw me.'
Karl said he had to rummage through Jessica's underwear drawer to find an item that fit him before finally settling on the saucy La Senza number.
His topless picture was met with silence, with Karl believing the recipient was too embarrassed to even send a response.
Jessica, 21, said: 'The first few pairs he looked at were a bit small and everything would have been hanging out of them.
'The yellow ones have a bit of a tear on them now so I'm not sure I'll be wearing those again.
'At first I was sleeping so I didn't really know what Karl was doing but when I saw it I thought it was hilarious.
'It was pretty tragic for the other fella who obviously thinks I'm a bit of a mug if I'm going to send him sexy pictures when I've just had a baby with Karl.
'He's not replied. Maybe he's still upset. It makes me laugh at the shock he must have got after getting himself all excited. I'm not that sort of girl.
A man in a wheelchair has died after blowing himself with a pipe bomb inside a Californian health clinic.
Oakland Police said the man entered the San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center with what appeared to be an explosive device.
Witnesses say he was sitting in the waiting room for around an hour when he detonated the bomb close in the lobby at 6.30pm yesterday.
Oakland Police said the man entered the San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center, pictured, with what appeared to be an explosive device before blowing himself up
Nobody else was injured in the incident with police now investigating and are thought to be treating it as a suicide.
However, it is not immediately clear what might have motivated the man to kill himself and he has not yet been identified.
His death has been likened to a scene from the TV show Breaking Bad, where one wheelchair-bound character plants a bomb under his wheelchair and blows himself up in a bid to kill himself and a rival.
Oakland Police told the East Bay Times that it appeared it was an isolated incident and that it was not related to terrorism.
They also added it was not immediately clear if the man planned to just harm himself or also injure others.
After the explosion, the Almeda County Sheriff's Office sent a bomb squad to the scene to scour the area for any further explosives.
It is also believed the Alameda County Sheriffs Office Coroners Bureau has taken possession of the body.
The San Antonio Health Center is located near to a church in one of the most multi-cultural areas of Oakland.
A police van rammed into protesters, leaving several bleeding in the street, after an anti-U.S. rally turned violent in the Philippines.
At least three student activists had to be taken to a hospital after they were run over by the van driven by a police officer, protest leader Renato Reyes said.
The demonstration took place at the American Embassy in the capital Manila, and was calling for an end to the presence of visiting U.S. troops in the Philippines.
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Demonstrators clashed with police outside the U.S. embassy in Manila when protests against American intervention in the country turned violent
At least three people were taken to hospital for treatment, and at least 23 people were arrested after the clashes turned violent
Several people were run over when a police vehicle surged towards the crowds of protesters
Video footage showed the van repeatedly ramming into protesters as it drove wildly back and forth.
The van surged into the crowds after activists surrounded the vehicle and started hitting it with wooden batons they had seized from police.
In front of horrified crowds, including videojournalists and photographers, the police vehicle suddenly charged backward then sprinted forward twice over a space of about 20 meters, barreling through the scattered protesters and hurtling some to the side like bowling pins.
Activists surrounded the vehicle and started hitting it with wooden batons they had seized from police
Some protesters hurled stones at the van and yelled expletives at police officers
Protest leaders criticised the heavy-handed tactics police had used to disperse protesters
Some of the protesters managed to struggle to their feet after being hit by the van, while others hurled stones at the van and yelled expletives.
Some screamed in surprise, while a speaker called the police 'puppies of imperialists' through a loudspeaker as the van charged.
'There was absolutely no justification for it,' Reyes said of the violent police dispersal of about 1,000 protesters.
'Even as the president vowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the U.S.'
Shocking pictures and video from the scene shows injured protesters lying on the ground after they were struck by the police truck
The hundreds of protesters included Indigenous People, students and militant groups
Protesters hurled red paint at the officers and a U.S. government seal on the building
Police lobbed tear gas and arrested at least 23 protesters who broke through a line of riot police and hurled red paint at the officers and a U.S. government seal at the start of the rally at the seaside embassy compound.
A firetruck doused the rowdy protesters with water to push them back, but they took hold of the water hose and confronted the outnumbered police with rocks and red paint.
After breaking through the police corridor, they scribbled 'U.S. troops out now' and other slogans at the embassy's tall fence with red paint.
The protesters, consisting of students, workers and tribespeople, were demanding an end to the presence of visiting U.S. troops in the Philippines and to support a call by President Rodrigo Duterte for a foreign policy not dependent on the U.S., the country's longtime treaty ally.
The activists came from the largest left-wing umbrella group called Bayan (Nation), which has organized regular anti-U.S. protests in front of the embassy for decades, most of which are peaceful.
The violence happened as the police and President Duterte are under increased international scrutiny for their alleged role in the killings of thousands of drug suspects and pushers as part of the president's war on illegal drugs.
President Duterte has come under increased international scrutiny for his war on illegal drugs
Police officers last night examined the body of suspected drug dealer Herman Cunanan, whom authorities said was killed by men riding in two motorcycle
President Duterte was on a state visit to China, where he is seeking to repair relations strained under his predecessor over territorial conflicts in the South China Sea. He is also seeking to expand two-way trade and investments and financing for badly needed infrastructure projects.
Amid an uneasy relationship with the U.S., President Duterte has tried to reach out to China and Russia, bringing uncertainty to his country's long alliance with America.
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Amateur code-breakers are being asked to earn their 'licence to puzzle' in a competition to mark the launch of a new book from spy agency GCHQ.
The Government's listening post, based in Cheltenham, is releasing its first puzzle collection on Thursday, as well as a Sudoku and picture board conundrum for its competition.
The GCHQ Puzzle Book includes a foreword written by the Duchess of Cambridge, whose grandmother was a Bletchley Park code-breaker during the Second World War, and will raise money for Heads Together, the mental health awareness campaign spearheaded by Kate, her husband the Duke of Cambridge and his brother Prince Harry.
Amateur code-breakers are being asked to earn their 'licence to puzzle' in a competition to mark the launch of a new book from spy agency GCHQ. The Government's listening post, based in Cheltenham, is releasing its first puzzle collection on Thursday, as well as a Sudoku and picture board conundrum for its competition
The brain-teaser will feature more than 140 pages of codes, puzzles and challenges created by GCHQ's experts in their spare time.
These will range from 'easy' to 'mind-bending' and include ciphers and substitution codes, tests of numeracy and literacy, picture and music challenges.
And its compilers say that it will take someone working alone 'months' to solve the many stages that lead to the final answer.
It follows the success of the agency's Christmas cryptography challenge, which saw some 600,000 people attempt to beat what was dubbed the 'hardest puzzle in the world'.
Nobody managed to entirely solve the series of challenges set by GCHQ director Robert Hannigan in his Christmas card last year, although three men who came closest were declared joint winners.
The GCHQ Puzzle Book includes a foreword written by the Duchess of Cambridge, whose grandmother Valerie Glassborow (right) was a Bletchley Park code-breaker during the Second World War. It will raise money for Heads Together, the mental health awareness campaign spearheaded by Kate (pictured at Bletchley in 2014), her husband and his brother Prince Harry
In announcing the latest contest, GCHQ dropped a hint, saying: 'To start the competition, players are challenged to a form of Sudoku and a picture board of famous people - but in what shouldn't be a spoiler, this is a multi-stage competition.
'Solving these two grids unlocks a series of puzzles, challenges and instructions that will bend and twist the minds of players in their quest for their "licence to puzzle".'
The closing date for the competition, which is only open to those who buy the book, is Tuesday, February 28, 2017.
DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A CODEBREAKER? TRY THESE GCHQ PUZZLES 1. Can you identify what the following letters represent? GOCWIKTCEPIPEWNMBCMVFSCFTFLCWPGROCBLCPSM 2. The answer to each question pairs with another answer on the list, and the words will only differ in their first letter. Note that the pronunciation might differ between them. 1. One half of a titular TV sitcom couple. 2. British budget clothing and homeware retailer. 3. Type of hat. 4. One of the Channel Islands. 5. River that passes through northern English city. 6. TV space alien. 7. Capital of country with a coastline on the Persian Gulf. 8. Surname of an England football captain. 9. An Irish county. 10. An English city that is a county town. 11. One of the official languages of the fourth largest country in Europe. 12. District of South East London. 3. Identify the following place My first is in Finland but not in Finnish My second is in Estonia but not in Estonian My third is in Albania but not in Albanian My fourth is in Sweden but not in Swedish My fifth is in Germany but not in German My sixth is in Iceland but not in Icelandic My last is in Wales but not in Welsh My whole is in England but not in English Where am I? ANSWERS ARE BELOW The brain-teaser will feature more than 140 pages of codes, puzzles and challenges created by GCHQ's (above) experts in their spare time. These will range from 'easy' to 'mind-bending' and include ciphers and substitution codes, tests of numeracy and literacy, picture and music challenges ANSWERS Question 1: GOCWIKTCEPIPEWNMBCMVFSCFTFLCWPGROCBLCPSM represent the first letters of Monopoly squares. Go, Old Kent Road, Community Chest, Whitechapel Road, Income Tax, Kings Cross station, The Angel Islington, Chance, Euston Road, Pentonville Road, In Jail/Just Visiting, Pall Mall, Electric Company, Whitehall, Northumberland Avenue, Marylebone station, Bow Street, Community Chest, Marlborough Street, Vine Street, Free Parking, Strand, Chance, Fleet Street, Trafalgar Square, Fenchurch Street station, Leicester Square, Coventry Street, Water Works, Piccadilly, Go To Jail, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Community Chest, Bond Street, Liverpool Street station, Chance, Park Lane, Super Tax, Mayfair. Question 2: The pairs are... 1. Terry 9. Kerry 2. Matalan 11. Catalan 3. Panama 7. Manama 4. Jersey 5. Mersey 6. Mork 10. York 8. Beckham 12. Peckham Question 3: The answer is Londres Each line refers to a letter which appears in the name of the country in English, but not the name of the country in its native language. My first is in Finalnd but not in Suomi: L My second is in Estonia but not in EestiL O My third is in Albania but not in Shqiperia: N My fourth is in Sweden but not in Sverige: D My fifth is in Germany but not in Deutschland: R My sixth is in Iceland but not in Island: E My last is in Wales but not in Cymru: S Who whole is in England but not in English: Londres Advertisement
According to official records, the German U-boat was simply a casualty of the First World War scuttled after her crew surrendered.
However, the legend of UB-85 tells a different tale of a huge sea monster with glistening teeth and large eyes.
Now, almost a century after the boat vanished beneath the waves, marine engineers believe they may have stumbled across the 148ft wreck off Stranraer, Wigtownshire.
Marine engineers believe they have found the wreck of the UB-85 - a German U-boat which, legend has it, was attacked by a Loch Ness monster-like sea creature
The U-boat would have looked similar to this one when it was sunk by the British in 1918
They made the discovery while preparing to lay cables under the Irish Sea in ScottishPower and National Grid's 1billion Western Link project.
Innes McCartney, a historian and nautical archaeologist trying to identify the vessel, believes the riddle of the sea monster could now be unravelled.
Dr McCartney said: 'In the waters of the Irish Sea there are at least 12 British and German submarines known to have sunk.
'The features of this wreck, largely intact, confirm it as a UBIII-class submarine, of which we know of two lost in the area the more famous UB-85 and its sister boat UB-82.'
He continued: 'Unless a diver can find a shipyard stamp, we cannot say definitively but yes, we're certainly closer to solving the so-called mystery of UB-85 and the reason behind its sinking whether mechanical failure or something that is less easily explained.'
Official reports from the time tell how the submarine was caught on the surface on April 30, 1918, by patrol boat HMS Coreopsis.
Official reports from the time tell how the U-boat was caught on the surface by HMS Coreopsis
A chart shows the location of the sunken submarine off the south-west coast of Scotland
The Germans surrendered without resistance, much to the surprise of the British, who then sank UB-85.
But rumours quickly surfaced of a sea creature terrorising the German crew.
According to folklore, when the commanding officer was questioned why he had been cruising on the surface he revealed an astonishing encounter with a creature from the deep.
Captain lieutenant Gunther Krech told how the U-boat had been recharging batteries at night when the beast emerged from the sea.
It is claimed he described a creature with 'large eyes, set in a horny sort of skull' and 'teeth seen glistening in the moonlight'. Startled, his men began firing at the monster which refused to let go of the forward gun mount.
As the vessel began to list, the captain ordered his men to continue the attack until the monster finally slipped back under the water.
A German captain said the ship was attacked by a sea monster with glistening teeth. File photo
The famous 1934 hoax 'Nessie' photo. Many believe sea monsters were in Scottish waters
Shaken but unharmed, the crew quickly realised the boat was badly damaged and unable to submerge. The captain is said to have told the British: 'That is why you were able to catch us on the surface.'
Gary Campbell, keeper of the Loch Ness Monster official sightings register, believes there could be some truth in the incredible tale.
'The WWI report from the captain of the British ship HMS Hilary a year earlier makes it clear that seafarers were well aware of large sea "monsters" that could harm their ships.'
The area where the U-boat sank had a history of sea monster sightings.
The DNC said the driver had been worried about the contents leaking, but branded the incident 'unacceptable'
The Democratic National Committee has been forced to apologize after raw sewage was dumped from one of its buses, which bore the face of candidate Hillary Clinton.
Businessman Mike Robins spotted the unpleasant mixture oozing from the bottom of the bus in Gwinnett County, Georgia, and police were called.
Witnesses reported a 'foul smell' left in the air, and a large amount of drying toilet paper left in the road.
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The circled area shows raw sewage oozing from the bottom of the campaign bus, which carries the image of Hillary Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine, in Gwinnett County, Georgia. It was posted on Twitter, and critics voiced their horror
The bus, which bears the slogan 'Forward Together' and features the likenesses of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine, was in town for an early voting event.
Robins told Fox5: 'You don't pull up and dump raw sewage on the street and in the storm drain. You just don't do that.'
The 60-year-old told the New York Daily News that it didn't matter which party was responsible for the dumping, as it should not have happened.
He said: 'I wouldnt care who did it. I dont care if it was Hillary. I dont care if [the bus] had Trumps name on it.
'It was the wrong thing to do.'
The bus was on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, and was in town for an early voting event
And Captain Jeff Smith continued: 'There is a violation, there is a city violation for dumping materials into the storm drain system, obviously this feeds into streams.'
A DNC representative said the sewage container was full, and the driver was concerned about the contents leaking.
A party statement said: 'This was an unacceptable mistake and we apologize to the Lawrenceville community for any harm that was caused.
'We are taking corrective action with the charter bus company to prevent this from ever happening again and contacting local officials to determine the best course of action.'
Gwinnett County fire hazmat crews cleaned up the spill, and Georgia's Environmental Protection Division is investigating.
Desperate: Kayleigh-Emma and Gary Shiel
A woman who has a fear of being pregnant was rejected by an adoption agency because of her unusual phobia.
Kayleigh-Emma Shiel, from Elland, West Yorkshire, dreams of becoming a mother but suffers from tokophobia, a fear of pregnancy and childbirth.
Mrs Shiel, 30, and her husband Gary, 47, applied to adopt in January this year, believing it was their only way of having a child together.
But they were rejected by Calderdale Council, who cited Mrs Shiel's condition as a contributing factor.
She said: ' I feel like my heart has been ripped into a million pieces. I truly believe that my only chance to become a mum has been taken away from me.
'It's disgusting. Gary and I are hardworking, decent people. We own our own home and both of us work full-time.
'I know that we would be able to provide a child with a loving, safe environment, so to be rejected for such a ridiculous reason is devastating.'
Mrs Shiel, who works as a payroll manager, started suffering from tokophobia as a teenager but was not formally diagnosed until April.
Rejected: The letter from Calderdale Council, who cited Mrs Shiel's condition as a factor
WHAT IS TOKOPHOBIA AND WHO IS AFFECTED? Fear of pregnancy and fear of childbirth is sometimes known as 'tokophobia'. One study estimates that one in five women is affected by the fear and six per cent are so scared of giving birth it affects their pregnancy and birth choices. Some women avoid getting pregnant, or they opt for termination, or they feel very strongly they want to have a caesarean section. Women might specifically fear a number of areas relating to pregnancy or childbirth, including, childbirth pain, fear the baby may be hurt or injured, fear of being injured or dying, or fear of being in the hands of healthcare professionals. Women who are already fearful of hospitals or injection might also find their fear of pregnancy and childbirth exacerbated by these pre-existing fears. Source: National Childbirth Trust Advertisement
The condition can manifest as an intense fear of pregnancy affecting up to six in 100 women in the UK. Those afflicted can suffer from severe panic attacks and depression due to their inability to have a child.
Mrs Shiel said just being around pregnant women can make her feel sick and admits she even avoids pregnant friends.
She said: 'I'm scared of the pain, of a baby growing inside me, and of dying during childbirth.
Giving up hope: Kayleigh-Emma and Gary Shiel on their wedding day in October 2015
'I've had a contraceptive patch for nine years, plus I take at least once pregnancy test per week. I'm absolutely terrified that I will accidentally fall pregnant.
'People laugh, but it's like someone with a phobia of spiders being trapped inside a room with lots of spiders.'
Mrs Shiel, whose husband has two children from a previous relationship, said she considered surrogacy but was put off after she was abused on an online forum.
The couple applied to adopt in January but two months later were told they had been unsuccessful.
The council listed a number of reasons explaining why they were not suitable, including Mrs Shiel's phobia of 'needles and pain'.
She said: 'I could barely believe my eyes when I read their response. Not only did they spell my name wrong, but they confirmed that they were rejecting me for the adoption process because I was scared of the pain of childbirth.
'To be fair to Calderdale Council, there were other reasons on the letter, including the fact that Gary and I smoke. We are both in the process of giving up.
'But the fact that my phobia was even on there really upset me.'
Mrs Shiel added she wants to raise awareness for other people in similar situations who are desperate to become parents but do not fit the criteria.
She added: 'All I've ever wanted to do is be a mum. I just want to be given a chance.'
Raising awareness: Mr and Mrs Shiel, pictured left on their wedding day and right today
Director of Calderdale Council's Children and Young People's Services, Stuart Smith, said: 'I know that Mr and Mrs Shiel were deeply disappointed by our decision. This is never an easy decision for us to take and never one which we take lightly.
'We have a rigorous but sensitive adoption process founded on what we believe will provide the best adoptive family for the very vulnerable children in our care. This is a very challenging and demanding role and unfortunately not everyone is able to do it, even if they are keen to try.
Three British warships have been deployed to man-mark a Russian naval fleet including an aircraft carrier and nuclear-powered battlecruiser as it heads to the Channel.
The Russians boasted they were seizing control of the seas and had no equal in terms of naval power as the fleet makes its way through the Mediterranean to Syria.
Type-45 destroyer HMS Duncan the worlds most advanced air-defence destroyer sailed from Portsmouth last night to join frigate HMS Richmond, which has intercepted the Kuznetsov task group of eight ships.
The Royal Navy is observing the Russian aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov conducting fight operations from its flight deck as it sails off the coast of the Orkney Islands.
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A Royal Navy seaman onboard the HMS Richmond today keeps watch on the Russian carrier fleet as it conducts training flight operations off the coast of the Orkney Islands
The Norwegian Air Force shadowed the Admiral Kuznetsov heading south on Monday, pictured
The HMS Richmond has taken up station a few hundreds yards from the task force. It will remain as an escort while the Russians remain in an area of UK national interest.
In a sign of the escalating tensions with Russia, UK Defence Secretary today warned Moscow: 'When these ships near our waters we will man-mark them every step of the way. We will be watching as part of our steadfast commitment to keep Britain safe.'
It marks a further breakdown of relations between the two countries after after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson became embroiled in a row with the Russian embassy last week.
The Russian Defence Ministry earlier released footage of fighter jets training on the aircraft
The HMS Richmond is observing the Admiral Kuznetsov conduct flight training operations off the coast of the Orkneys as the Russian carrier fleet prepares to deploy to the Mediterranean
Type-45 destroyer HMS Duncan the worlds most advanced air-defence destroyer sailed from Portsmouth last night to join frigate HMS Richmond, which has intercepted the Kuznetsov task group of eight ships
The Russian fleet is being shadowed by the Type 23 Frigate HMS Richmond, pictured today
Mr Johnson called on people to demonstrate outside Russia's London embassy last week in protest against Russia's bombing campaign in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
But Moscow responded by branding his call for protests 'shameful' and accused him of 'Russophobic hysteria'.
Britain's mobilisation of the aircraft carrier fleet off the coast of Scotland is the latest in an increasing presence of international naval assets in the area.
After completing training it is understood the aircraft carrier fleet will head to an anchorage on the Moray Firth where it will be refuelled before continuing to the Mediterranean.
Naval assets from Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands are all believed to be on standby.
As well as the Royal Navy, the Royal Norwegian Navy, Finnish Navy and Royal Netherlands Navy have vessels surrounding the North Sea.
NATO aircraft are also patrolling the area, with tanker aircraft on station ready to refuel any fighter jets tasked with observing the Russian fleet.
The aircraft carrier is supported by the nuclear-powered battleship Pyotr Velikiy, pictured on Monday passing the Norwegian coast by a Lockheed P3-Orion surveillance aircraft
The Russians have also sent a submarine, pictured, to protect the aircraft carrier fleet
Russian military expert Alexander Khrolenko said: 'While the North Atlantic bloc is stalling in the sands of the Middle East, the Russian Navy seizes control over the Atlantic, not to mention the Mediterranean and Black Seas.'
He added: 'They [NATO] have no equal in the Mediterranean.'
In addition the RAF Quick Reaction Alert squadrons in RAF Lossiemouth in north east Scotland and RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is protected by a battle cruiser and a pair of large anti-submarine ships.
It is also protected from below the surface by an attack submarine.
The Kuznetsov has undergone an extensive refit since its last deployment to the Mediterranean in 2014 when it had to be followed by several tugs in case its steam turbine engines packed up.
Earlier this week the Norwegian navy followed the heavily-armed fleet as it sailed south from Severomorsk, near Murmansk in the Barents Sea.
According to the Ministry of Defence, the Russian fleet is being kept under close observation by the Royal Navy and the RAF.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is carrying Sukhoi SU-27-K Flanker fighter bombers
A source told MailOnline: 'The Admiral Kuznetsov is currently conducting flight operations off the east coast of the Orkneys.
'The pilots need to be certified for carrier take-offs and landings at day and night before it takes up station in the Mediterranean.
'They are free to do this in international waters, but once they are in the English Channel, the aircraft will be grounded.'
The MOD confirmed the Royal Navy would shadow the carrier and its fleet while it remains in the UK's area of interest.
Also, RAF Typhoons and Tornadoes are on red alert at airbases in Lossiemouth in North East Scotland and Coningsby in Lincolnshire in case any Russian jets stray into UK airspace
The French Navy has the nuclear powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the Mediterranean already conducting combat operations against ISIS targets in Syria
The Charles De Gaulle is the only non-American nuclear powered aircraft carrier in service
The Charles De Gaulle is been protected by the guided missile destroyer USS Ross, pictured here in the Combat Information Centre where its Tomahawk cruise missiles are controlled
The USS Ross was tasked to support the Charles de Gaulle in the eastern Mediterranean
The fleet could possibly route around Ireland's west coast to avoid the English Channel, however there is far greater shelter avoiding the Atlantic Ocean.
However, after going through the Bay of Biscay and down the Portuguese coast, the fleet will pass through the nine mile wide Gibraltar straits before reaching its area of operation.
ADMIRMAL KUZNETSOV OPERATIONAL: 1995 DISPLACEMENT: 55,000 tonnes LENGTH: 305 metres BEAM: 72 metres DRAFT: 10 metres PROPULSION: Steam Turbines POWER: 200,000hp SPEED: 29 knots RANGE: 8,500 nautical miles CREW: 1,690 plus 626 in the air group. AIRCRAFT: 12x SU-33 fighters 24x helicopters Advertisement
It is understood the fleet will resupply before continuing to the Mediterranean.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is the Russian flagship and the country's only aircraft carrier.
The French already have the Charles De Gaulle operating in the eastern Mediterranean.
Major Elisabeth Eikeland, spokeswoman for the Norwegian Army's National Joint Headquarters said: 'We have been informed that they are en route to the Mediterranean. It's not every day that so many ships sail together off Norway.'
According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, the aircraft carrier taskforce departed on Saturday to the Mediterranean.
A spokesman said: 'The group consists of the aircraft-carrying heavy cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov, the Pyotr Velikiy battlecruiser, large anti-submarine ships Severomorsk and Vice-Admiral Kulakov and support vessels.'
The Russian MOD claimed: 'Special focus will be made on safeguarding security of maritime traffic and other types of maritime economic activity of Russia and also on responding to the new kinds of modern threats such as piracy and international terrorism.'
The Admiral Kuznetsov had previously operated in the Mediterranean early in 2014.
Starbucks' new Citrus Mint Green Tea Latte (pictured) contains a whopping 321 calories in every 470ml 'grande' sized cup - more calories than one average-sized Mars Bar
Starbucks is selling a cup of green tea containing more calories than a single Mars Bar and two cans of Coca Cola.
The chain's new Citrus Mint Green Tea Latte contains a whopping 321 calories in every 470ml 'grande' sized cup.
That's significantly more than the 230 calories found in a standard 51 gram Mars Bar.
And it's even more than the 278 calories found in two standard 355ml cans of Coke.
Starbucks is selling the tea drink as part of a new line of 'Teavana' branded teas.
Health campaigners say that in doing so, the company is contributing to Britain's obesity epidemic.
Kawther Hashem, a nutritionist from health pressure group Action on Sugar, described the tea's calorie content as 'shocking' and called for Starbucks to adjust its recipe.
'Coffee shop chains must immediately reduce the amount of sugar in these hot drinks, improve their labelling and stop selling the extra-large serving sizes,' she said.
'The huge quantities of sugar in hot drinks, such as these, can contribute to the onset of obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay and immediate action and responsibility needs to be taken by these companies in reducing sugar levels and introduce healthier alternatives.'
Starbucks is rolling out its 'Teavana' autumn drink range across the country this month.
Promotional material claims the company has 're-imagine[d] tea into a vibrant experience to uplift your mind and spirit.'
The Teavana selection contains standard teas such as English Breakfast and Earl Grey, which when drunk with neither milk nor sugar have zero calories.
But it also features elaborate 'tea lattes' in which water is replaced with frothy milk.
The Citrus Mint Green Tea Latte contains a whopping 321 calories in every 470ml 'grande' sized cup - more calories than two standard 355ml cans of Coke (file picture)
The new 'Teavana' Green Tea Latte contains more calories than the 230 in a standard Mars Bar
Starbucks' online nutritional data shows that these 'tea lattes' can be laden with sugar - making them extremely calorific.
The U.S. firm's new Citrus Mint Green Tea Latte with Matcha contains milk, sugar, green tea, citrus and mint flavoured syrup and a sweet lemon topping.
Official Starbucks nutritional data shows that a 470ml 'grande' sized cup of the drink made with whole milk contains 321 calories.
Most of these calories are likely to be accounted for by the drink's 39.2 grams - nearly ten teaspoon's worth - of sugar.
The same sized cup of whole milk Chai Tea Latte contains 255 calories and 41.2 grams - over ten teaspoons' full - of sugar
Starbucks' online nutritional data shows that the 'tea lattes' can be laden with sugar - making them extremely calorific. Health campaigners say it is contributing to Britain's obesity crisis
The Chai Tea Latte can even be bought in Starbuck's extra large Venti (590ml, or just over a pint) cup. This amount of Chai Tea Latte contains 322 calories and nearly thirteen teaspoons of sugar.
A Grande-sized (470ml) Green Tea Latte is likely to contain around 250 calories and around 26 grams - or six teaspoons' worth - of sugar.
Starbucks' in-store signage does reveal the calorie content of each of the new Teavana drinks. But it does so for drinks made with skimmed milk.
Only by asking at the counter - or by looking online - can customers learnt the calorie content of drinks made with more fattening whole milk.
The Teavana tea latte drinks range in price from 2.80 at their cheapest to nearly 4.
A Starbucks spokesman said: 'We are committed to helping our customers make balanced and informed choices by displaying nutritional information and providing a wide range of drinks options.
This is the moment a camel slumped over a pile of hay - because he didn't want to share it.
The hungry animal, called Fergus, was seen lying spread-eagled across the giant bale in Nyngan Riverside Caravan Park in New South Wales, Australia.
Pictures show other animals in the farmyard, including alpacas and goats, looking on from a distance as Fergus sprawled over the pile of hay.
Greedy: A camel was pictured lying over his pile of hay in Australia - because he didn't want to share it
The images were captured by Lauren Mortimer, from Greenock, near Glasgow.
Ms Mortimer, 28, works in housekeeping at the park and at a nearby farm to fund her travels.
She said: 'Fergus and the other animals get on really well but he's quite selfish when it comes to feeding time as you can see.
'I think it's funnier looking at the picture now than it was at the time.
'Although me and the two girls I was with were laughing a lot when we saw Fergus lying on the hay, it's only now after looking at the pic that you can see all the other animals looking on.
'Normally they all share the food - it's the first time I've seen him do that. It looked as if he didn't want the other animals to eat it.
Pictures show other animals in the farmyard, including alpacas and goats, looking on from a distance as Fergus sprawled over the pile of hay
'He was there a full five minutes face-planting it.'
Ms Mortimer, who has been in Australia for the last 11 months, said she had a soft spot for all the animals at the park including Fergus, the goats, the alpaca and the donkey who were all spotted in the snap.
'I love animals and discovering their strange and wonderful personalities so as you can imagine, I was delighted to catch this moment on camera,' she said.
Rommel Alleyne has been jailed for attempting to run over and then attacking a love rival
A jealous male model was jailed for two years for trying to run over a love rival in his gold car.
Model Rommel Alleyne, 25, flew into a rage after spotting Thomas Church hand in hand with a former girlfriend.
Alleyne - known as 'Rome' - swerved his customised gold Peugeot at Thomas Church walking at night with his ex-lover.
A court heard Mr Church leapt our of the way of the car driven - but Alleyne jumped out to confront him in the street.
Prosecutor Jason Howells said: 'The two men then entered into a fight.
'Alleyne was punched to the floor three times but got back up each time. He got into his car and drove off at speed.'
Alleyne parked in a nearby B&Q car park to waited with a metal pole for Mr Church to walk by.
Alleyne, who is also a rapper whose music videos have been viewed thousands of times, then hit him across the head with the pole before fleeing in his car.
Mr Church was take to the Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, where a 3cm wound to his head needed gluing together.
Alleyne, of Cwmbran, Gwent, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding.
The court heard Alleyne, who has appeared in rap videos online, lay in wait for his victim
Judge Thomas Crowther said Alleyne had swerved at his love rival before waiting to attack him with his weapon.
Sentencing him to two years in prison, Judge Crowther said: 'You approached the couple in your car and swerved towards them.
'There was then a fight which you comprehensively lost.'
A shop worker has admitted sending a death threat to Labour MP Angela Eagle after she announced a bid to oust Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.
Steven King, 45, sent an email which warned: 'If you become leader of the Labour party... you will die you Bitch.'
He also wrote: 'Next time you see me I'll be with a real gun or knife cutting your life to an end.'
Angela Eagle was sent the email in July after she announced her intention to challenge Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership
Steven King, 45, pleaded guilty to a charge of sending a grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message
King pleaded guilty to a charge of sending a grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message.
Wirral Magistrates Court heard shop worker King told police he was 'venting his anger' and would never have acted on any of the threats he made.
King, of Mirin Wynd, Paisley, Scotland, sent the email from his mobile phone while getting ready for work on July 12 - the day after Wallasey MP Ms Eagle formally announced her bid to oust Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.
His email, which was littered with poor grammar and spelling mistakes, read: 'If! You become the leader of the Labour Party you will split and make Labour lose but also will too have time too enjoy it, you will die you Bitch, you will have too watch every step.'
King told Ms Eagle to leave the UK and said she would 'never be safe'.
He also threatened an 'IRA sniper or bomb on you the day you steal the leadership of the Labour party.'
He also called the MP 'an evil witch', and wrote: 'Do you really believe you can win and live to use that power? this is my one and only warning next time you see me I'll be with a real gun or knife cutting your life to an end.'
The email ended with: 'Leave the UK... or die.'
Amanda Cullen, prosecuting, said the email was read first by Jay Glover, who works as constituency officer manager for Wirral South MP Alison McGovern, but was helping Ms Eagle. She told the court: 'He was deeply concerned regarding the contents and reported the matter to the police.'
When interviewed by police, King admitted sending the email as a way to 'let off steam' over Ms Eagle's bid to take over the Labour leadership.
He said he had no access to firearms and no plans to travel to Wallasey, and simply looked up her email address while getting ready for work.
King admitted drinking whisky before sending the email but said he was not drunk as he had to work that afternoon.
The court heard he was left 'annoyed and very upset' at hearing of Ms Eagle's leadership bid, and wanted her to 'feel as upset as he had felt'.
Sinead Fearon, defending, said: 'This is a man who clearly needs some sort of help. He sent the email on July 12, which was extremely distressing to the recipient.
'He did it on a whim without any thought as to the consequences of that.
Jeremy Corbyn, pictured at a film premiere last night, has said the problems in Wallasey CLP must be resolved
'He said he was venting his anger and would never have acted on those threats he made in the email.
'He is not a gentleman who gets into trouble regularly in these courts or up in Scotland.'
The court heard King was suspended from his part-time job in a shop after being charged with the offence.
Magistrates said the case was serious enough for him to be jailed because of the words used and the political environment at the time the email was sent, including the murder of MP Jo Cox.
They gave King an eight-week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, and ordered him to complete a 25 day rehabilitation order.
He must also complete 80 hours of unpaid work and pay 200 in costs.
A spokesman for Ms Eagle said: 'The death threat received by Angelas office was credible and frightening. It led staff to fear for their and Angelas safety, especially coming weeks after our friend and colleague, Jo Coxs, murder.
'Despite all this having been upsetting, Angela has always remained upbeat and focused on the important work of holding this rotten Tory government to account, most importantly on their chaotic approach to Britain leaving the European Union and investment into the Wirral.'
Separately, a Labour review has found Ms Eagle was subjected to homophobic abuse and had her office bricked because she challenged Mr Corbyn.
The incidents have been bitterly disputed by some supporters of Mr Corbyn who believe he has been subject to a conspiracy of media smears.
But an internal Labour investigation into the events, which occurred after Ms Eagle officially began a challenge to Mr Corbyn's leadership in July, did happen and were linked to the fight over Labour's future.
The senior Labour MP today said it was now clear the abuse against her and her staff 'both happened and is intolerable'. Ms Eagle thanked Mr Corbyn for his support.
Ms Eagle's Wallasey constituency party remains suspended because of the 'toxic' atmosphere making it impossible for activists to meet 'safely'.
Mr Corbyn unexpectedly took a full part in a three hour meeting of a sub-committee of Labour's ruling NEC to discuss the report, which was leaked to the Liverpool Echo today.
Ms Eagle said: 'The report by national party officers comprehensively explains what happened earlier this year and the NEC has accepted the findings.
'I am grateful that Jeremy took the unusual step of both attending and speaking in the meeting and that he expressed sincere sympathy for both me and for my staff.
'It is now clear and accepted by the NEC that homophobic abuse was perpetrated by some members of the local Party.
'I will simply not tolerate it, and I know I have the backing of both Jeremy and union leaders when I say that there is no place for it in the Labour movement either.
'As regards the vandalism of my office, I am grateful to both the internal investigators and the NEC for making clear both the facts of the matter and for the support of members up and down the country, including the Leader of the Labour Party, that such abuse both happened and is intolerable.'
A friend of Angela said: 'Angela is ferociously protective of her staff and her activists and seeing them upset and scared has made her even more determined to get on with doing her job as the MP for Wallasey.'
'I imagine those guilty of homophobic abuse, who were clearly identified in the meeting and have had their names passed to NEC investigators, will be particularly worried by the NEC's ruling that the abuse did occur; such abuse has no place in the Labour movement.'
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: 'Jeremy wants the issues relating to Wallasey CLP to be resolved so campaigning can resume.'
Mr Corbyn urged at the NEC meeting for a review of Wallasey CLP to be brought forward to January so the problems in the local party could be resolved.
It emerged in August that Ms Eagle was allegedly branded 'Angie the dyke' at an official Labour Party meeting in her constituency.
At the same meeting a party member was threatened with being punched in the head, an official complaint has alleged.
Angela Eagle's constituency office on Manor Road in Wallasey in the Wirral (pictured) was bricked in July just hours after she challenged Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership
Ms Eagle, who in 1997 was the first female Labour MP to come out, was not present at the June 24 meeting which is the subject of the complaint, the Guardian reported after seeing the letter sent to officials.
The complaint has been lodged by 17 members of the Wallasey Labour Party who were in attendance at the annual general meeting.
Today's report, based on around 100 statements, said: 'The investigation has found that some members have truthfully claimed that homophobic instances occurred during the AGM. Others truthfully said that they were not aware of those instances.
'It is possible for the events to have occurred without the knowledge of all members.
'The allegations are not that the CLP is institutionally homophobic or that members were aware of homophobia but took no action, but are specific to individuals.'
On the brick incident, the report said it was 'categorically untrue' Ms Eagle had lied about the incident and concluded: 'It's highly likely that the brick thrown through the window of Angela Eagle's office was related to her leadership challenge.
'The position of the window made it very unlikely that this was a random passer-by.'
The report concluded there was a 'genuine fear and intimidation' about some members and said: 'This culture is toxic and it is self-perpetuating.'
A homeless man who attacked an off-duty New York cop with a meat cleaver has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder after being brought into court in a wheelchair.
Akram Joudeh, 32, was shot twice by police after a chase through midtown Manhattan which was sparked when he tried to remove an immobilizing boot from his Nissan Sentra car.
The car, which Joudeh had been sleeping in, had been parked illegally near Penn station and two uniformed officers confronted him as he tried to pry the boot off his front wheel.
Akram Joudeh (pictured) was wheeled into Manhattan Supreme Court for a brief hearing. He is due back in court on November 29
As the officers approached him, Joudeh pulled out an 11-inch meat cleaver and ran.
Brian ODonnell had just finished his shift at the 19th Precinct and was heading home to his wife Krista and three children who are aged, 12, nine and three
When he saw Joudeh running he tried to stop him and received the slashing blow across his face, leaving a huge, disfiguring scar.
NYPD Officer Brian O'Donnell (pictured) was discharged from Bellevue Hospital after being attacked with a meat cleaver. He said he was 'just doing my job'
Afterwards Officer O'Donnell said modestly: I was just doing my job.
Joudeh was shot by other officers and was taken to hospital after the incident on September 15.
Yesterday he was brought into Manhattan Supreme Court in a wheelchair, pushed by a court guard.
A video later emerged showing Joudeh (pictured) stomping on the parking boot and using a jack to try and get it off his tire near Penn Station, shortly before police arrived
The New York Daily News said Joudeh, wearing an orange jail uniform, smiled slightly as he was brought before Judge Charles Solomon.
O'Donnell, who was originally from Ireland, was discharged from Bellevue Hospital after undergoing emergency surgery.
Joudeh is reportedly of Palestinian origin and has suffered from mental health problems. He also is reported to have a long rap sheet.
Akram Joudeh (pictured) said 'Not guilty' in a soft voice as he appeared in court today
O'Donnell (pictured, in a wheelchair) was applauded by fellow officers when he left hospital with his family
He underwent emergency surgery to repair the six-inch gash to his face
Mugshot: Akram Joudeh, (pictured), is understood to have a long rap sheet as well as mental health issues
During the incident chased him through the heavily-patrolled area to West 32 St, near Penn Station, where he mounted the grill of a marked NYPD car.
Police fired 18 shots, striking Joudeh at least twice.
Joudeh, whose last registered address is in Queens, had been sleeping in the car.
The vehicle had reportedly been parked in the middle of the street in a busy, tourist-heavy area of Midtown.
When police approached, however, he went into a rage, pulling out the cleaver and fleeing while 'waving it around,' a police spokesman said.
After a brief appearance yesterday Joudeh was remanded in custody and is due back in court on November 29. He is thought to be held in a secure psychiatric institution.
Shot: Joudeh was shot by police on West 32 Street (pictured). He had been chased after allegedly trying to pry a boot off his car a block away
Joudeh has a long criminal record with 15 prior arrests.
One of those was an August 27 booking for carrying knives near a synagogue, NBC reported.
And according to the NY Post, in 2013 Joudeh was arrested for criminal mischief after smashing a car up with a wooden fence post.
While being arrested he told officers: 'I thought it was a detective's car.'
Gunned down: Cops fired 18 shots hitting Joudeh (pictured lying down) multiple times after he slashed detective Brian O'Donnell with the 11-inch cleaver
Attack: O'Donnell was off-duty when Joudeh allegedly climbed on a cop car; the detective then attempted to subdue him but received a six-inch gash on his face, cops said
Evidence: The scene had gruesome evidence of the attack, including a towel (left) that had apparently been used to stanch blood, and a cap (right) that had apparently been cut
Weapon: This is the 11-inch cleaver that was used to attack O'Donnell
A mother who murdered her eight-year-old son when the boy allegedly discovered she was having an affair with his grandfather has been jailed for 30 years in Italy.
Veronica Panarello throttled her son Loris Stival with electrical cables and abandoned his body in a remote gully in Santa Croce, Sicily.
Panarello had tried to pretend her son had been abducted, telling police she had taken him to school and that he had disappeared by the time she came to collect him in the afternoon.
Convicted: Veronica Panarello (left) throttled her son Loris Stival (right) with electrical cables
Police began to suspect the boy's mother, judge Andrea Reale was told, when CCTV footage at the school did not back up her story.
She was found guilty of the boy's murder and of concealing a body.
Prosecutors branded her an 'egocentric, manipulative liar.'
When Panarello confessed that her son had been killed, she blamed her husband's father Andrea Stival.
Discovery: The child's body was abandoned in a remote gully in Santa Croce, Sicily (file picture)
She told an earlier hearing that he had helped to plot and then carried out the murder because Loris had caught them having sex.
Stival is being investigated as an accessory to murder, reports Italian media.
He has denied the claim and is threatening to sue his daughter-in-law for slander, it has emerged.
He said: It is just another lie of that crazy woman.
Stival also denied any role in his grandson's death, adding: That accusation is something completely out of this world. I went mad for my grandson, my little angel.
Leigh Sales has grilled Tony Abbott over changes to gun laws as he denied claims he was making another tilt for prime minister.
The former Prime Minister raised eyebrows on Tuesday after tweeting his thoughts that it was 'disturbing' to see reports of the Federal Government apparently horse-trading on gun legislation.
Appearing on ABC's 730 program on Wednesday, Mr Abbott maintained he never made a deal with key crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm to change gun laws, insisting it was his government that 'stopped the guns'.
Senator Leyonhjelm claimed the Abbott government made an agreement with his office to insert a sunset clause of 12 months on the importation of the Adler lever-action shotgun.
However, Mr Abbott said every piece of legislation has a sunset clause and letters purporting of such a deal was about telling Senator Leyonhjelm what was happening anyway.
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Leigh Sales (left) has grilled Tony Abbott (right) in a firey debate over whether he negotiated a deal to change gun laws - as he denied claims he was making a tilt for prime-ministership
'No deals from me. No deals from my office. No deal,' he told the program.
These guns were stopped because of his government, he said.
'But for the Abbott government we would now have tens of thousands of these weapons in this country,' Mr Abbott said.
'The Abbott government stopped them.'
But Ms Sales refused to back down at his comments as she fired up with a string of questions about whether he was denying having any part in the ban.
During the interview, Mr Abbott also insisted he was not expecting a vacancy for his old job any time soon.
'The last thing we need in this country is a revolving door prime-ministership,' he told the program.
His public appearances have shot up in the past week as he's taken up the cause of pushing NSW Liberal party reform.
Mr Abbott says while he's still determined to be the best local member for Warringah 'in this term of parliament', he would naturally air his feelings on such major matters.
'Occasionally on important national and international issues, as a former prime minister, I will have something to say.'
Mr Abbott insists he wants Malcolm Turnbull to be the best possible prime minister throughout this term and the government to succeed.
'It's not a question of what I might like, it's a question of what the party room wants and the party room wants to end the revolving door prime-ministership.'
Mr Abbott dismissed claims he negotiated with crossbench Senator David Leyonhjelm on a ban on the Adler shotgun when he was in power
Earlier, Mr Abbott said no serious coalition government would allow rapid-fire weapons into Australia as he responded to calls within the coalition for the Adler to be allowed to be imported.
'With a heightened terror threat there is just no way that any serious coalition government, any government in the tradition of John Howard, should be allowing rapid-fire weapons on a very large scale into our country,' he told reporters in Canberra.
Tight gun controls were one of the reasons Australia had avoided mass casualty events.
'If you allow rapid-fire guns into the country under relatively loose conditions you obviously raise the danger that people who want to do us harm will get access to them,' he said.
Earlier, Mr Abbott said no serious coalition government would allow rapid-fire weapons into Australia as he responded to calls within the coalition for the Adler to be allowed to be imported (stock image)
Asked whether the Turnbull government should rule out issuing any import permits for the Adler weapon, Mr Abbott said it should do whatever it needed to do to ensure that rapid-fire guns were not readily available in this country.
'This idea that shooters generally should have access to rapid-fire weapons is just crackers and it should never happen as far as I'm concerned.'
Asked about Mr Abbott's comments in parliament, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said his government would 'never weaken Australia's gun laws'.
Mr Turnbull attacked Labor leader Bill Shorten, who asked the question, over his opposition to mandatory sentencing for convicted gun smugglers.
'Let's call that smugglers' cove over there,' Mr Turnbull said, pointing to the opposition benches.
'All he needs is a parrot and he could be a pirate.'
Mr Abbott said it should do whatever it needed to do to ensure that rapid-fire guns were not readily available in this country
Labor has written to the prime minister offering support for 20-year jail sentences for gun traffickers, up from the current 10 years.
Mr Shorten said in the letter to Mr Turnbull there was no convincing evidence of mandatory sentencing being an effective deterrent in any area of criminal justice.
However, Labor would be willing to back new government laws if mandatory sentencing was removed and the 20-year maximum sentence included.
Bills that havent been passed into law die at the end of the second year of the Legislatures two-year session. Some die in committee, others are left at various stages of debate. Some have been mercifully killed or withdrawn during debate.
But the concepts live on and are often given a new number and come back for another shot. It took Ernie Chambers 26 years to get the death penalty repealed. The motorcycle helmet issue keeps coming back as long as those who want to ride without helmets can find a sponsor.
Same old stuff in a new sack. One gets used to the reruns over time. The lucky ones find a dynamic sponsor, a new twist, outside support, and hope in a bi-partisan coalition.
Theres a good possibility that some of the following issues will come up again when the new 105th Legislature convenes in January. Heres a breakdown by committees.
Agriculture: The big issue left hanging last session was a proposed constitutional amendment that would have guaranteed Nebraskans the right to farm and ranch. Senator John Kuehn of Heartwell wanted voters to decide the measure, which would prohibit the Legislature from passing laws that restrict the rights of Nebraskans to use agricultural technology and ranching practices without a compelling state interest.
Appropriations: Its time to draft a new two-year budget in the wake of revenue shortfalls, new faces in the Legislature and new leadership and members on the Appropriations Committee.
Banking, Commerce and Insurance: There are always lingering regulatory issues covering both the banking and insurance industries. A decision by Blue Cross and Blue Shield to drop out of the Affordable Care Act market will cause a new focus on primary care issues.
Business and Labor: Two bills left behind dealt with benefits for employees families. Bellevue Senator Sue Crawfords would have provided paid family medical leave for covered individuals in the event of the birth of a new child, adoption or foster care placement, serious illness or pregnancy or illness of a family member. Omaha Senator Heath Mellos proposal would have provided monetary compensation to the family of a police officer, correctional officer or firefighter killed in the line of duty, including the families of those who work on a voluntary basis.
Education: A bill that would have required the state to use general funds to reimburse schools for most of their special education costs was held by the committee. Senator Al Davis of Hyannis wanted the state Department of Education to reimburse school districts for at least 80 percent of the total excess allowable costs for special education programs and support services. Omaha Senator Bob Krist had a proposal that would have required high school students to pass a 100-question civics examination based on the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalization test.
Government: A measure that would have allowed an 18-year-old to hold public office in Nebraska stalled after two days of debate. ONeill Senator Tyson Larson wanted a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot that would change age eligibility for public office in Nebraska to the federal voting age. One must now be 21 to serve in the Legislature and 30 to serve as governor, lieutenant governor or as a Nebraska Supreme Court judge. A bill that would have reinstated the winner-take-all system for allocating Nebraskas presidential electoral votes stalled on final reading. Currently, the winner of Nebraskas statewide popular vote receives two Electoral College votes. Each of the three congressional districts also award one electoral vote each based on their popular vote winner. Maine also uses this system.
General Affairs: In the wake of a failed petition drive to bring gambling issues before voters, expect more proposals.
Judiciary: There may be life beyond dealing with the troubles at the Nebraska Department of Corrections. But the spotlight will stay on that issue.
Health: Perhaps a fifth attempt to expand Medicaid coverage as an alternative health coverage to approximately 97,000 uninsured Nebraskans who are newly eligible under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In the wake of the discovery of $13 million in un-cashed checks, expect continued scrutiny of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Natural resources: Theres always the ban on the hunting of mountain lions.
Revenue: This committee is stuck with the on-going clamor for tax relief and finding ways to generate the money to pay for it.
Transportation: Theres a hefty plan out there for 600 miles of new roads. Now the committee must keep track of the bridges and the less-flashy infrastructure needs.
Remember, this is just the menu as I see it today. Things can, and will, change in January.
J.L. Schmidt is the statehouse correspondent for the Nebraska Press Association. He has been covering Nebraska government and politics since 1979. He has been a registered independent for 17 years.
The Ministry of Defence was accused of racism today after a bizarre photo was posted on the Army's Twitter feed.
The tweet, posted shortly after 10am this morning, showed a soldier in a jungle with black paint covering his face.
The image was accompanied by the message: 'Being a #soldier in the jungle requires a robust sense of humour'. The tweet was later taken down.
But the picture sparked angry accusations of racism, with critics comparing it to the caricatures of black people by early 20th century 'minstrels'.
The British Army sparked anger today by tweeting this image of a 'blacked-up' soldier
One Twitter user wrote: 'Camp & blacked up. British army living in the 70s.'
Another added: 'I detest the idea of non-white people fighting for a country that sees their skin colour as something to joke about.'
Another joked: 'Social media manager role going at @BritishArmy.'
An Army spokesman said: 'The content of the Tweet shows a picture of a soldier wearing camouflage and concealment measures, standard for jungle training in Belize.
'We can see how the tweet may have been misinterpreted, have immediately removed it and apologise for any offence it may have caused.'
Videos shared on the Army's Facebook page showed troops from the 1st Battalion Irish Guards on exercise in the jungle of Belize.
The soldiers, who also had camouflaged faces, could be seen attempting a river crossing and firing a machine gun.
I care if my government is going to look the British public in the face and expect us to believe all 28 individuals are children
There are days when I wonder if our country is utterly mad.
I wonder if our government, so utterly devoid of a backbone, thinks it can take taxpayers for a joke, mock every hour of every long shift they put in to fund this country.
The so-called 'child' migrants from Calais are a perfect example.
Fourteen child migrants from the Calais jungle arrived here on Monday. Another 14 on Tuesday, fast-tracked by the UK because, we are told, they have family here.
I don't care if you want to call them migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. All semantics to me. They are people from other places who have travelled through many safe countries, determined to come to England.
Desperate people stop when they are safe. The comfortably determined keep going.
I don't care if you quote the Dubs Amendment at me (enabling unaccompanied children to seek refuge in the UK if they have family here, even if they have passed through safe countries en route).
I don't care if you call them migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. They are people from other places who have travelled through many safe countries, determined to come to England
Desperate people stop when they are safe. The comfortably determined keep going
Lord Dubs is a good man who fled Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport. Not a campsite at Calais on an air-conditioned bus with snacks and security.
But I really do care if my government is going to look the British public in the face and expect us to believe all 28 individuals are children.
Amber Rudd said those under 12 would be her priority.
Right, Miss Rudd. Can you explain this gentleman to us, please? Facial recognition software says he is 38. Your own guidance from your department, which you run, says an asylum seeker should be treated as an adult if their physical appearance or demeanour 'very strongly suggests' that they are significantly over 18 years of age.
Has the rule book gone out of the window along with any scrap of sanity I thought we had?
The Islington Intellectuals sit weeping into their linen hankies, reminding us that living through war can have the effect of making a child look older than he is. A modern-day progeria, a condition ageing children before their time.
The Islington Intellectuals sit weeping into their linen hankies, reminding us that living through war can have the effect of making a child look older than he is
Sure thing. Their journey through safe countries to continue their crusade to England has turned them all into Benjamin Button.
Asked what was the worst thing about Calais, one of our most recent 'child' arrivals said queuing. Queuing for jeans, queuing for food, queuing for new shoes.
I spent two days at the Jungle camp in Calais and was tear-gassed for my trouble
Get used to it, sunshine. We are British. We love a queue. And if someone told us we could queue for free handouts of clothes and food, we'd happily stand there for days. We'd probably bring picnic chairs and umbrellas and make an adventure out of it.
We arent used to getting something for nothing, you see. We aren't used to being fast-tracked past the queue. We understand we have to wait our turn, work for what we want.
Unlike Silly Lily Allen and crocodile tears for camera, wafting around the charity warehouse at Calais, I spent two days in camp and was tear-gassed for my trouble.
The reason these kids queue when new clothes arrive is because at night the camp becomes a bazaar. A market place, the Calais Car Boot, if you will, where these clothes donated by strangers are sold on by migrants for cash.
For the men, life in camp is not hard. It is easy. Too easy. Facilitated by endless do-gooders playing at being selfless volunteers whilst indulging in a bit of a migrant gawp-fest.
For women and real children it must be harder. One lady I met was desperate to get out with her little girl because she was afraid. But she was the only lady with a small child I met in the main camp.
Asked what was the worst thing about Calais, one of our most recent 'child' arrivals said queuing. Queuing for jeans, queuing for food, queuing for new shoes
Once again, women and children appear to be last in the line where migrants are involved. That is not the British way. Our culture does not see women as second class.
Amber Rudd, our Home Secretary, said it would be 'a good result' if the UK took 500 children.
Fourteen child migrants from the Calais jungle arrived here on Monday. Another 14 on Tuesday, fast-tracked by the UK because, we are told, they have family here
Can anyone explain to me how this is a good result? A good result for whom? A good result for these 'young' men, certainly. But explain to me exactly how this is a good result for the taxpayer or parents of children in our own country.
How is this good news for British parents hoping to get their child a place at a school? London councils say demand overtakes primary school places in 2017/2018. Across the country there will be a shortfall of 200,000 places by 2020.
Try calling your local doctors surgery for a same-day doctors appointment today. Now try again if you have been up all night with a sick child; try to convince a receptionist you matter more, your child matters more. Bargain for care, and the pressure of limited resources suddenly feels very real indeed.
And even as we look around at the state of our own children here in the UK, can we really say we are in such a good place we can afford to be the Motherland for all the world's waifs and strays?
The Fostering Network in the UK says it needs to find 8,370 families this year alone to look after vulnerable children in Britain. There are 80,000 children in state care on any one day in the UK. The shortage of homes means desperate social workers can end up placing children with families who arent quite right for them.
Lily Allen has been apologising for our proud country with her crocodile tears for the camera
Calais's Benjamin Buttons (as portrayed by Brad Pitt in 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) only strengthen our resolve for hard Brexit
And that's before we consider foreign young men resilient enough to make it to our border yet, strangely, not hardy enough to make a living for themselves in the first safe country they arrive in.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said it would be 'a good result' if the UK took 500 children
You know, the picture of little Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach, drowned aged three, was a pivotal moment in history, and led to the most disastrous political decision of our time. Uncontrolled mass immigration.
These pictures of apparently grown men, appearing to laugh in the faces of the British taxpayer from under their stubble and branded hoodies, have the very opposite effect.
So, too, Lily Allen apologising for our proud country, or refugee charities trying to politicise their 'good deeds'. They have all shot themselves in the foot.
We are a generous country. But we will not be mocked. We will not be apologised for, or laughed at.
If anything, we are certain we should not allow any of these young men into our country.
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At first glance these portraits may appear to be the work of a skilled photographer, but in reality they were hand-painted with soft pastels.
From intricately detailed portraits of a pack of wild dogs, to a tender picture of a mother cheetah and her cubs, these paintings are the work of talented artist Leon Fouche.
Leon is also a wildlife photographer and has captured images of animals including Africas big five at game reserves across South Africa.
Leon Fouche paints a range of African wildlife including big cats, elephants and birds, in soft pastel
Leon, above, sells his work to corporate companies and private buyers
Not only has he a talent for photography but he also has the skills to recreate some of his favourite photos, turning them into incredibly detailed paintings.
Speaking about his collection of artworks, Leon, 33, said: 'Its my original artwork that is my career, I take my own photos mostly to use as reference when I do my drawings.
'And of course being out there photographing our amazing wildlife is what inspires me to continue with my career.'
Leon lives on the edge of Kruger National Park, one of Africa's largest game reserves in northeast South Africa, which enables him to access the park easily.
Leon grew up near wild and wonderful beasts such as this wild dog pup
Wild dogs, also known as African dogs, can have as many as 16 pups at a time
Amazingly, Leon has never taken an art course or studied it as a subject at high school and claims his skills were a gift he inherited from his mother - who is also a wildlife artist.
His passion for African wildlife also drove him to develop his talent.
'My favourite subject to paint is the leopard. Theyre the most work to paint but so worth it when the painting is complete. Theyre just exquisite animals,' he added.
The caracal is a medium-sized wild cat that lives in Africa, the Middle East, Persia and the Indian subcontinent
Would you guess this is a painting?
Despite his already fine-tuned skills, Leon endeavors to improve his art with each painting.
'Every painting is a new challenge and I do try and better myself with every one, so when I see that I have achieved something Im really happy with its really satisfying.
'What I also love is the act that it allows me to spend weeks in the African bush with my camera and our amazing wildlife.'
Leon's mother is also a wildlife painter and she helped him to learn techniques
The artist's favourite animal to paint is the leopard
Several of Leon's collectors have invested in over 30 original pastel drawings.
And he has exhibited his work in venues around the world, including the Safari Club International, Hoedspruits Safari Wine Club in 2015.
The esteemed painter has also taken home countless awards.
Taleka White, 27 a paramedic, was forced to take time off work after being brutally attacked by her Uber driver last year
An Uber driver who punched a female passenger in the face and called her a 'black c***' when her friend asked for another drop off point has avoided prison.
Taleka White, 27 a paramedic, was forced to take time off work after being brutally attacked by her Uber driver last year.
Shahab Akbar, 33, dragged the mother-of-one from his car and hit her twice in the face after flying into a rage outside her parents' house in Addiscombe, south London.
A court heard the driver became angry after confusion arose when Miss White's friend asked for different drop off points.
Miss White, who had never used an Uber before, was left with a lump on her head, bruising to her face and a bloody wrist and knuckles.
Speaking shortly after the incident on November 29 last year, Miss White, who has a four-year-old son said: 'Just one night out has led to a whirlwind of events which he has no concept of.
'It happened in the early hours of the morning - about 3am. My friend and I had been to a bar in East Croyden and we wanted to get home.
'I'd never used Uber before so she called for one on her phone.
'She wasn't sure how to use the app to say that we wanted to be dropped off at different addresses - but we thought we'd explain it to the driver when he arrived.
Miss White, who had never used an Uber before, was left with a lump on her head, bruising to her face and a bloody wrist and knuckles (pictured)
'When we ordered it - my friend couldn't see the registration number - but she thought nothing of it and assumed there was a problem with the system - just his face and the route on the map came up.
'She got a call from the driver to say he'd arrived and we got in the cab and explained we wanted to go to different addresses.
'Initially he had no problem with it, but after, as he was driving to the address he became quite agitated.
'There was a misunderstanding about where the address was and then we got near and she said he could pull up there and he started yelling: 'Get out of my fucking cab'.
The next morning Miss White went to A&E to get x-rays on her hand and Uber suspended the driver after she reported the attack
Akbar continued to drive and Miss White tried to reassure him that her stop was less than 20 minutes away and that he would be paid.
But Akbar's language became increasingly aggressive.
Miss White said: 'He called me a black c*** and a black 'b****' and told me to shut my 'f****** face' and said 'she gave me the wrong address'.
'I just went quiet and I thought maybe staying silent would diffuse the situation.
'I was in the cab alone with him and my battery on my phone had gone at the end of a long day. I wasn't sure what he was going to do. He continued to drive in the right direction so I just stayed quiet.
But when the pair reached Miss White's stop, Akbar's behaviour escalated to full-on assault.
Miss White said: 'I was being dropped off at my parents' and when we arrived I had a can of coke in one hand and a kebab in the other. But when we arrived he dragged out of the car by my right arm and punched me in the face.
'My drink went everywhere but I used the car to hold myself up. I was yelling, asking him what his problem was, why he was doing it to me, hoping my parents would hear from inside.
'The second time he punched me, I went flying and hit the pavement.
'My mum came out just to see the car driving away and found my lying on the pavement.'
Miss White's mum told her daughter to take pictures of her injuries an call 999.
The next morning Miss White went to A&E to get x-rays on her hand and Uber suspended the driver after she reported the attack.
The case went to trial and Akbar was found guilty of racially aggravated common assault in September.
Akbar was handed a 16 week prison sentence suspended for 24 months, at Croydon Magistrates Court on Tuesday.
He was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work as a community on top of 620 in costs and 115 in victim surcharge.
Akbar was also ordered to pay 500 in compensation to Miss White.
Uber confirmed Akbar no longer has a private hire license which is needed to work for the firm.
An Uber spokesperson said: 'We were appalled by this horrific incident. Uber does not tolerate violence or discrimination of any kind.
A prolific British conman suspected of posing as an MI6 agent to romance a divorced mother-of-two before fleecing her of 850,000 is on the run in Spain.
Mark Acklom, 43 - once an infamous schoolboy fraudster allegedly posed as a spy and a Swiss banker in a bid to seduce 55-year-old Carolyn Woods, of Bath, Somerset.
Over the course of a year-long relationship, he reportedly promised to marry her and tricked her into handing over the huge sum of money.
Mark Acklom, 43 - once an infamous schoolboy fraudster allegedly posed as a spy and a Swiss banker in a bid to seduce 55-year-old Carolyn Woods, of Bath, Somerset
But before they could walk down the aisle, he vanished with the cash - leaving Ms Woods emotionally and financially ruined and on the brink of suicide.
One of Acklom's false ID documents was this passport calling him Marc Rodriguez
During a 12-month relationship he 'promised to marry Carolyn Woods, 55'
Avon and Somerset Constabulary began investigating Acklom, who told Carolyn his surname was Conway, two years ago after she reported the fraud.
At the time he was awaiting trial in Murcia, Spain for defrauding two brothers into paying him 200,000 as a deposit on the sale of buildings he didn't own.
Ms Woods met Acklom in 2012 when he went into her boutique to buy a jacket, chatted her up and said he was a Swiss banker visiting the UK to buy a Cotswold airfield
Before they could walk down the aisle, he vanished with the cash - leaving Ms Woods emotionally and financially ruined and on the brink of suicide.
He was jailed for three years but released in March - and is now back on the run after British police issued an arrest warrant in his name.
Heartbroken Ms Woods told Sky News: 'I was completely devastated, he left me destitute and destroyed my life.
'I felt as though I had fallen in love. He told me he had never felt this way about anyone and we must get married.
'I've still got the wedding dress I never wore. It was all a charade. At the time I actually wished he had killed me. I was suicidal.'
Ms Woods met Acklom in 2012 when he went into her boutique to buy a jacket, chatted her up and said he was a Swiss banker visiting the UK to buy a Cotswold airfield.
They sparked up a relationship within days and moved in together, though she later discovered he had a second home nearby with his wife and two young children.
She said: 'He was flirtatious, charming and very entertaining.
Over the course of a year-long relationship, Acklom reportedly promised to marry Carolyn Woods (pictured) and tricked her into handing over the huge sum of money. However, after receiving 850,000 from her he then vanished and is now said to be on the run in Spain
'He has a great presence and charisma, he exudes confidence and the air around him was electric. I was caught up in a whirlwind of excitement.
'He said he was doing things for The Prince's Trust and helping fundraising at Clifton College and everything was cloaked in respectability.
'One of the most extraordinary things he told me was that it was all a cover and he was an MI6 agent. It sounds very far-fetched, but he convinced me it was true.
'We were in London and he said he'd been called in by his boss, so he drove me to the MI6 building and I watched him walk down into a car park past two armed policemen.
Acklom is pictured outside Inner London Crown Court aged 18 after admitting theft of his father's Gold American Express card, obtaining money and property by deception, and obtaining a mortgage by deception
'There are no photographs of us together because he said his handlers would not allow it because of his security.'
Ms Woods claims that one day she heard him saying he was struggling with money and offered to lend him some cash.
She said: 'I had just sold my house and I offered him a loan of 26,000. In the end I lent him everything I had.'
'He began to get to me psychologically and I became frightened,' she added.
'What he was trying to do was isolate me, he got me to leave my job, move in with him and by the time I had given up my independence I was a prisoner.'
Ms Woods said her two daughters believe she was brainwashed by Acklom, who she later learned had been jailed for fraud as a public schoolboy.
At 16, while studying in Eastbourne, East Sussex, he stole his father's gold Amex card, posed as a stockbroker and hired jets to fly his friends around Europe.
Ms Woods said her two daughters believe she was brainwashed by Acklom, who she later learned had been jailed for fraud as a public schoolboy
The youngster even convinced a building society to give him a mortgage of nearly 500,000 which he used to buy a small mansion in London.
Sky News found that he has since been jailed three times in Spain for a variety of fraud offences. He also changed his name to Marc Ros Rodriguez.
Acklom told the news channel that Ms Woods' claims were 'nonsense' but later insisted he didn't really understand what she was saying about him.
Starbucks is pushing ahead with its expansion into China and said Wednesday that it is on track to having 5,000 stores there by 2021, more than doubling the number of coffee shops it currently has in the country.
The coffee chain is looking to China to fuel the company's growth.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has said that China could one day surpass the U.S. as its largest market.
Schultz told the Seattle Times that the Chinese market 'will be larger than the U.S. over time'.
Starbucks is pushing ahead with its expansion into China and said Wednesday that it is on track to having 5,000 stores there by 2021, more than doubling the number of coffee shops it currently has in the country (file photo of a store in Shandong Province in China)
Starbucks Corp., which is based in Seattle, has about 13,000 stores in the U.S.
To oversee the expansion, Starbucks named Belinda Wong on Wednesday as the first CEO of its Chinese business.
Wong was president of Starbucks China, and has worked for the company for 16 years.
Starbucks said in a release: 'In her elevated role, Wong will focus on the overall long-term growth strategy and lead the innovation pipeline for Starbucks China.
'She will be responsible for key areas, including the vast digital and e-commerce opportunities across the market and overseeing the opening of Starbucks first international Starbucks Roastery in Shanghai in 2017. '
To oversee the expansion, Starbucks named Belinda Wong (pictured) on Wednesday as the first CEO of its Chinese business. Wong was president of Starbucks China, and has worked for the company for 16 years
Wong said in a statement: 'It is a privilege and honor to be appointed to lead Starbucks business in China during this important time.
'There continue to be tremendous opportunities for Starbucks in China and I look forward to further elevating the mission and values of our company through growth and innovation for our Chinese partners and customers.'
Chinese customers are spending more time in Starbucks and are buying more food than Americans, Schultz said.
He told CNN: 'We had to educate and teach many Chinese about what coffee was - the coffee ritual, what a latte was. So in the early years, we did not make money.'
According to the report, Starbucks' first China location opened 17 years ago.
Schultz told the news outlet: 'If you look five years ago, most of our business, believe it or not, was expats and tourists in China. Today, it's mostly Chinese.'
The company has been adding unique flavors to attract Chinese customers, such as a Black Forest Latte, a mix of cherry juice, cocoa powder and coffee
The company has been adding unique flavors to attract Chinese customers, such as a Black Forest Latte, a mix of cherry juice, cocoa powder and coffee.
In September, Starbucks began selling its Teavana tea brand at its China locations.
Late next year, Starbucks plans to open a 30,000-square-foot in Shanghai that Schultz called a 'Disneyland for coffee'.
Eric Johnson, pictured, was jailed after he stabbed David Williams, 30, in 2007
A drug-dealing killer who was jailed for manslaughter cannot be deported as it would violate his human rights, the Supreme Court ruled.
Eric Johnson was sentenced to nine years in prison for killing David Williams, 30, by hitting him with a piece of wood and stabbing him in his flat in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, in 2007.
Then Home Secretary Theresa May said he should be deported to Jamaica, where he was born to a British father and Jamaican mother out of wedlock.
Because he was illegitimate he was not entitled automatically to become a British citizen on birth and then did not apply before he was 18.
Johnson argued he should not be deported as it would amount to discrimination.
He lost his case in the Court of Appeal earlier this year but secured a victory at the Supreme Court today.
Five judges said that to remove Johnson would be to punish him for 'the accident of his birth outside of wedlock' as he would have been entitled to British citizenship if his parents had been married.
Lady Hale ruled the time had come to do away with every legal disadvantage endured by children of unmarried parents.
Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 but was brought to Britain at the age of four to live with his father and his new wife. If his parents had married at any point he would have been entitled to seek British citizenship.
Five Supreme Court judges said that to remove Johnson would be to punish him for 'the accident of his birth outside of wedlock'. Above, file image of the Supreme Court
He could not apply for citizenship in his own right at the age of 16 as he had run up a string of convictions and was therefore not considered to be of 'good character'.
At a previous hearing a judge described Johnson as 'a supplier of class A drugs for commercial gain' and told how he was convicted of manslaughter in August 2008 after a trial in which he falsely claimed to have acted in self-defence.
Upholding Johnson's appeal, Lady Hale ruled deporting him simply because of the accident of his birth outside wedlock would be unlawfully discriminatory.
Johnson was in no way responsible for his parents' unmarried status and there could be 'no justification' for deporting him.
The requirement that a person in his position must also be of good character to qualify for citizenship was also 'incompatible' with human rights, she said.
An exclusive boarding school that counts JFK and Ivanka Trump as former students has hired a lawyer to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct by teachers in the early 1990s.
Choate-Rosemary Hall School in Connecticut has asked New York attorney Nancy Kestenbaum to investigate claims that staff had sex with their students at the institution more than 20 years ago.
The investigation was revealed in a memo sent by the highly selective prep school last month, where parents pay boarding fees of up to $56,000.
Exclusive boarding school Choate-Rosemary Hall, pictured, which has hired a lawyer to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct by teachers in the early 1990s
In it the school said the claims center around a woman who graduated in 1992, who has since informed them that two former faculty members had improper relationships with her.
The school confirmed that both staff members left and are no longer employed by Choate.
The Boston Globe reported earlier this month about prep schools' handling of a French teacher who had a sexual relationship with the student and was forced to resign, but ultimately received a letter of recommendation for a position at another school.
In the memo, which was obtained by the New Haven Register, the school said: 'We are deeply saddened by the report of faculty misconduct we received from a 1992 alumna.
Former US presidnet John F. Kennedy is the most famous former pupil to have attended Choate-Rosemary Hall
'Although the Boston Globe article about this alumnas experience reported one improper relationship, she has made us aware that another former teacher had an improper relationship with her.
'Both faculty members left the school in the early 1990s. We have also received correspondence from alumni concerned about these and other reports.'
While a spokeswoman from the school also told the publication that by hiring a lawyer, it shows how they are taking the allegations very seriously.
However, she added: 'No allegations against a current faculty or staff member prompted our actions.'
Ms Kestenbaum of law firm of Covington & Burling will be given access to school files, records, and personnel to complete her investigation.
On her law firm's website, she is described as having 25 years experience in important, sensitive government and internal investigations.
The site adds that her former clients have included large multi-national companies and even the United States government.
Choate-Rosemary Hall is one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the US to offer college-preparatory education.
Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump, who also attended the prestigious school. Other notable students include actors Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Jamie Lee Curtis
It has taught generations of the upper-classes in New England, including the former president and others related to the American political elite.
As well as JFK and Ivanka Trump, Choate's alumni include former Democratic party presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, author of the USA Trilogy John Dos Passos and philanthropist Paul Mellon.
Tory MP Peter Bone was left blushing today after Theresa May said she hoped he would get an 'appropriate' birthday gift from his wife.
The smutty line came as the Prime Minister took her regular questions session in the House of Commons today.
Although Mrs May did not seem to have intended the innuendo, proceedings in the the packed chamber briefly ground to halt as MPs dissolved into laughter.
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Tory MP Peter Bone mentioned that it was his birthday as he spoke at PMQs in the House of Commons today
Theresa May wished him many happy returns, and added to the amusement of MPs that she hoped Mrs Bone would give him 'appropriate' treatment
The exchange came after Mr Bone kicked off PMQs by noting that it was his 64th birthday.
'It's my birthday today!' he said to cheers from the Conservative benches.
'The Prime Minister has already given me a huge birthday present by letting everyone know that we will be out of the European Union no later than the 31st March 2019.
'Could I press her for another present? Her policy of closing Victorian prisons and opening modern ones is an excellent policy.
'Would she support the reopening of Wellingborough prison as part of this excellent policy, or would she prefer to just sing happy birthday?'
Mrs May rose to her feet at the despatch box and replied: 'I would say to my honourable friend I am very happy to wish him a very happy birthday, many happy returns.
'I hope that Mrs Bone is going to treat the occasion in an appropriate manner.'
The Wellingborough MP is known for his frequent references to wife Jennie Bone, who works as his secretary.
He often hails Mrs Bone as an embodiment of Tory common sense, citing her approval or otherwise of key policies.
Mrs May did not appear to have intended the innuendo, and looked slightly uncomfortable as the House descended into laughter
Proceedings in the Commons today ground to a halt for several seconds as MPs enjoyed the smutty gag
After Mrs May's remark, she was unable to continue for several seconds as the House was filled with laughter.
With the PM herself looking slightly uncomfortable and Mr Bone blushing, Speaker John Bercow broke in to calm MPs, saying: 'Order! I want to hear what's coming next.'
Mrs May said: 'Calm down, Mr Speaker.'
The racy episode had echoes of another PMQs in 2011, when Mr Bone told David Cameron thathis wife was pleased Britain would not be involved in the Greek bail-out.
Mr Cameron replied that he felt a very big part of his life was dedicated to 'giving pleasure to Mrs Bone'.
A man accused of bashing a toddler to death before hiding the girl's body in the roof claims his de facto wife was the one who carried out the murder, a court heard.
John Clifford Torney is on trial after pleading not guilty to murdering Nikki Francis-Coslovic, the daughter of Peta-Ann Francis, at her Mildura home, in north-west Victoria, in August 2015.
While the prosecution allege Torney bashed the two-year-old girl to death, he told police Ms Francis said she had 'gone too far' with Nikki.
His defence lawyers added the girl's mother told 'big, bad lies.'
John Torney (pictured), who is accused of bashing a toddler to death before hiding the girl's body in the roof claims his de facto wife Peta-Ann Francis was the one who carried out the murder
His defence attorney Julie Condon told the jury on Wednesday Francis (pictured) allegedly killed Nikki because she couldn't cope with the 'demands of motherhood'
Torney's denial comes after the prosecution claimed the pair had smoked cannabis and had sex either before or after he killed the two-year-old.
Ms Francis, who will testify against her former lover, and Torney have accused each other of lying about what happened the day Nikki died.
Nikki was reported missing by her mother on August 25 last year after she discovered the little girl's bed was empty.
The toddler had spent the morning at home with Torney while her mother ran errands, which have been verified by CCTV footage, said Mr Silbert.
Torney is on trial after pleading not guilty to murdering Nikki Francis-Coslovic (pictured) in August 2015
The prosecution alleges there is a four-hour window during which Torney killed her.
Torney was alone with Nikki until about 12.30pm when her mother returned home.
Mr Silbert said the pair smoked several cones of cannabis, had sex, and fell asleep before Ms Francis woke up at 2.40pm and realised her daughter was missing.
Her body was discovered in the roof cavity of the home by a police officer who had noticed dirty fingerprints on a manhole cover in the hallway and climbed on a chair to investigate.
The officer noticed the girl was not moving and carried her down to a bedroom.
Paramedics were called, and on arrival they observed rigor mortis had set in.
Mr Silbert said a post-mortem examination found Nikki had died between 11am and 2.30pm that day.
'A pathologist will tell you that, based on the horrific injuries sustained, she could have been alive for up to an hour after the bashing before she died.'
Nikki had also injuries to her kidney, liver and skull and had lost one third of her body's blood volume, he said.
Nikki (pictured) had also injuries to her kidney, liver and skull and had lost one third of her body's blood volume
In a police interview after Torney was charged with murder, he alleged Ms Francis told him 'I've gone too far with Nikki, she's not breathing' while standing outside the toddler's bedroom.
Barrister Julie Condon said Ms Francis told Torney she had thrown the girl on the bed, and asked him to hide the body and go along with the missing person's story.
'She's a woman who has spun so many lies, not little lies but big, bad ones,' Ms Condon said in her defence opening statement to the trial.
Ms Francis had been monitored by child protection officers, and was not coping with the demands of motherhood, said Ms Condon.
Central CC board to meet
COLUMBUS -- The Central Community College Board of Governors will meet 1 p.m. Thursday in rooms 176/177 at the Columbus Campus, 4500 63rd St.
The meeting will include a public participation segment. The agenda is available at http://cccneb.novusagenda.com/agendapublic.
A live video stream of the board meeting will be available for viewing at www.cccneb.edu/boardmeeting.
Square dance lessons planned
COLUMBUS -- Harolds Squares Square Dance Club will have beginner square dance lessons at 7 p.m. beginning Sunday at Cottonwood House, 3271 29th Ave.
The first lesson is free, and the public is invited to come and try it. Mary Channer-Paul from Fullerton will be the caller/instructor.
For more information, call Bob or Rayetta Williams at 402-564-5502.
Trunk or treat at Berean church
COLUMBUS -- Columbus Berean Church and J-Club will host a "trunk or treat" event for the community from 6-7:30 p.m. Oct. 26 in the church parking lot, 3027 38th St.
This event is a safe, family-friendly way for parents and children to enjoy a fun evening out before the Halloween holiday.
Members of the community may join the church's Facebook event at facebook.com/ColumbusBerean.
For more information, contact Columbus Berean Church at 402-562-5647.
Trunk or treat at Federated
COLUMBUS -- Federated Church, 2704 15th St., will host a "trunk or treat" event from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Oct. 29.
This event is open to all kids dressed in costume.
Blues group to perform in city
COLUMBUS -- Heartland blues rockers Moreland & Arbuckle of Wichita celebrate their Alligator Records debut "Promised Land Or Bust" with a live performance at 9 p.m. Nov. 5 at Shenanigans Bar and Grill, 3808 E. 23rd St.
Aaron Moreland, guitar and cigar box guitar, and Dustin Arbuckle, harmonica and vocals, call their music gritty blues and roots rock from the heartland.
Admission is free of charge. For more information, visit www.beer30time.com.
PCHS meeting slated Nov. 6
COLUMBUS -- The Platte County Historical Society will hold a meeting at 2 p.m. Nov. 6 in the west building meeting room of the museum, 2916 16th St.
The program will be Nebraskas Unique Unicameral Legislature -- a panel discussion, some history, and observations. Sen. Paul Schumacher and former senators Lee Rupp, Arnie Stuthman and Don Dworak will be on hand to tell about their experiences in the Unicameral and answer questions.
The public is welcome to attend. Admission is free to PCHS members and $3 for nonmembers.
A millionaire New York businessman strangled his British girlfriend in a hotel room after meeting her on a Muslim dating site, a court heard today.
Nadine Aburas, 28, was found on New Years Eve by hotel staff - and hours later it is alleged her killer fled in her car to drive to London Heathrow Airport to evade justice.
Sammy Almahri, 44, had hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door of Room 203 of the Future Inns in Cardiff before fleeing abroad, the court was told.
Trial: Millionaire New York businessman Sammy Almahri (left) allegedly strangled his British girlfriend Nadine Aburas (right) in a hotel room after meeting her on a Muslim dating site
Roger Thomas, prosecuting, told Cardiff Crown Court: This was the killing of a defenceless woman by a jealous and dangerous man.
The court heard Miss Aburas, who lived alone in her own flat in Cardiff Bay, met Almahari on an internet dating site called MuslimMatch.com.
Mr Thomas said: They became friendly and contacted each other regularly by telephone, text and Skype.
The friendship developed. Its clear Almahri visited Nadine two or three times in 2013 and she travelled to New York to see him in the summer of 2014.
The court heard Almahri was besotted by Miss Aburas - showering her with money and expensive presents.
Mr Thomas said: There can be no doubt their friendship developed into an intimate relationship.
Discovery: Miss Aburas was found by staff at the Future Inns hotel (pictured) in Cardiff - and hours later her killer allegedly fled in her car to drive to Heathrow Airport to escape justice
But the court heard Miss Aburas - described as a slim, petite, Muslim lady of 5ft 3in and 9st had suffered violence during the last meeting.
She returned home with an injured lip. The court heard the student then began seeing other men in her hometown of Cardiff.
Andrea Aburas, the mother of Miss Aburas, is pictured at a press conference last year after a global manhunt was launched for Almahr
Miss Aburas called police to say she had been raped by Almahri in New York - and claimed he had also attempted to strangle her.
The court heard Almahari became increasingly jealous then bombarded her with abusive messages. The court heard he warned her: You will be in hell.
Mr Thomas said she was concerned that Almahri would show topless pictures to her family.
Almahari travelled from the US to see Miss Aburas - and booked into the Future Inns hotel near her home on December 30, 2014, the court heard.
But shortly after 3am on December 31, Almahri allegedly left the hotel and travelled in her car to Heathrow and booked a flight at 10.35am to Doha.
Miss Aburass body was found at around 12.20pm on New Years Eve by the duty manager - and police were called in.
The court heard Almahri as eventually located in Tanzania and arrested on an Interpol arrest warrant on January 19 before being returned to Britain.
The court heard he pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murder.
Almahri claims he was suffering from abnormality of mental function. He claims he was in a psychiatric state of hearing the voice of God telling him to kill Miss Aburas.
This was the killing of a defenceless woman by a jealous and dangerous man Roger Thomas, prosecuting
The court heard Almahri claims he is not guilty of murder because his responsibility is diminished.
Mr Thomas said: We submit quite simply this was the killing of a defenceless woman by a jealous and dangerous man.
The court heard Almahari claimed he worked and travelled on behalf of the FBI, but Mr Thomas said: That seems to be fictitious.
Police are hunting the owner of a German shepherd which was left at the side of a Houston road with duct tape over her eyes.
Rescuers endeavored to ease the animal's pain, but her injuries were so severe that she had to be put down.
Her skull had been crushed and she was suffering from tumors, investigators discovered.
The dog, a German shepherd, did not survive the ordeal, having suffered a crushed skull
The animal was found at the side of a road having suffered horrific injuries, which meant she had to be euthanized
A $5,000 reward has been offered to find the person responsible for the dog's death.
Sgt Christine Kendrick told ABC13: 'Dogs get dumped on the side of the road all the time.
Video courtesy of Fox 26
'Unfortunately the duct tape issue is a rare occurrence and it does happen.
'People sometimes will duct tape the dog because they bark too much and things like that but it really causes an extensive amount of damage to the skin and the tissue of the dog. So, it's certainly nothing that's acceptable.'
A $5,000 reward has been offered to help track down those responsible for the injuries the dog suffered
Vets worked to ease the animal's pain, but they were unable to save her life
Suffering: The animal had to be put down because of the injuries she had suffered before being left for dead at the side of a road
Jana Nguwen, who found the dog at the side of the road, told KPRC-TV: 'Tried to help him and stuff, I was crying. It was really hard to see.'
A statement on Houston SPCA's Facebook page said: 'Upon examination, the senior, female German Shepherd was suffering from head trauma, had her muzzle taped closed and multiple tumors with punctures.
'The Houston SPCA veterinary team worked attentively to ease her pain and ascertain her injuries.
'It was soon determined that she could not be saved as her skull had been crushed -she was humanely euthanized.'
It described the animal's treatment as 'cruel' and urged people to come forward to find those responsible.
French President Francois Hollande has suggested the rise of ISIS can be attributed to Barack Obama not backing his calls for Syrian air strikes back in 2013.
Since then, France has been victim to a string of savage Islamic State terror attacks and the President insisted too many migrants were being let into the country.
'I don't know what would have happened if we had carried out strikes. What I can say is that we did not carry out strikes, and there's Daesh,' he said, referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym.
French President Francois Hollande has suggested the rise of ISIS can be attributed to Barack Obama not backing his calls for Syrian air strikes back in 2013
'I don't know what would have happened if we had carried out strikes. What I can say is that we did not carry out strikes, and there's Daesh,' he said, referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym
The book - A President Shouldn't Say That - has exposed the inner workings of Hollande's troubled presidency and his views on Islamic veils, Barack Obama and his private life.
Normally a man of consensus and caution, President Francois Hollande's frank comments in a new book written by two journalists is causing shockwaves in France.
The book - A President Shouldn't Say That - has exposed the inner workings of Hollande's troubled presidency and his views on Islamic veils, Barack Obama and his private life.
In it, Hollande criticised his political rivals as well as other state leaders - including President Barack Obama.
In a 2015 interview recounted in the book, he explained he felt abandoned by his U.S. ally in August 2013 when Obama informed him at the last minute he would not agree on an immediate military intervention in Syria in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Bashar Assad's government.
Hollande suggested that ISIS might have been weakened by such strikes.
Since 2013, extremists with links to IS have repeatedly attacked France, with deadly consequences.
This includes the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo killing 12 people, the Paris atrocities of November 2015 in which 130 people were slaughtered and the Bastille Day attack this summer in which 86 victims were killed by a truck driven by a terrorist in Nice.
Hollande's comments on Islam and immigration, which tend to be in contradiction with expectations from his Socialist electorate, have prompted particular controversy
According to the new book, the president went as far as sharing top secret information, including that he allowed 'at least four' military operations to kill people believed to be responsible for hostage-taking and actions against French interests.
He didn't specified where and when.
And Hollande's comments on Islam and immigration, which tend to be in contradiction with expectations from his Socialist electorate, have prompted particular controversy.
In July 2014 - six months before Islamic extremists attacked satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket - Hollande said 'there is a problem with Islam,' according to the book.
He specified: 'It's not Islam itself that poses a problem in the sense of its being a religion that is dangerous in itself, but because it wants to assert itself as a religion inside the French Republic.'
He also said France was becoming home to too many refugees.
'I think there are too many arrivals, immigrants who shouldn't be there,' he said.
'We teach them to speak French and then another group arrives and we have to start all over again.
'It never stops, so, at some point, it has to stop'.
'I think there are too many arrivals, immigrants who shouldn't be there,' Hollande said. 'We teach them to speak French and then another group arrives and we have to start all over again.'
This year, as the question of national identity is one of the key themes of the presidential campaign, Hollande said that 'the veiled woman of today will be the Marianne of tomorrow' - in a reference to the symbol of the French Republic.
The quote was widely misinterpreted as meaning that France in the future will be represented by a woman in a Muslim headscarf, prompting outrage from the conservative opposition in a country with a very firm separation between church and state and strictly enforced secularism.
However, Hollande told the books' authors he means the Muslim woman 'will free herself from her veil and become a French woman, while remaining religious if she wishes.'
Davet said: 'It's a classic vision of secularism.
'Hollande is for freedom. He wants people to be free in their lives.
'In order for everyone to live together peacefully, you need a way for people to live their religion freely.
Hollande confirmed that he refuses to formalise his relationship with his girlfriend, the actress Julie Gayet (pictured) while he is president
'For him that's it.'
Hollande even accepted - yet reluctantly - to talk about his private life.
Lhomme told the AP 'he never called us to say `tonight we are going to talk about my private life, and you'll have fun.' He hates this. We had to force it.'
Hollande confirmed that he refuses to formalise his relationship with his girlfriend, the actress Julie Gayet, while he is president.
'I make sure it's not public even if it's known.
'It protects her, it protects me.
'I see her periodically, but not as often as we'd like.'
He acknowledged Gayet 'is suffering from this situation.'
He said his breakup with ex-companion Valerie Trierweiler in January 2014 - after his affair with Gayet was disclosed by a gossip magazine - was 'the worst personal moment of the term'.
The book's authors said for five years they have had the feeling that Hollande wants to run for re-election.
'But there's a big distance between wanting to and being able to,' Davet stressed.
'If he finds a space, he will run.
Theresa May today defended her role in the disastrous child abuse inquiry after it emerged that concerns were raised when she was still Home Secretary in April.
She denied the Home Office dragged its feet over allegations Dame Lowell Goddard, the former chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), had mishandled the probe despite members of the panel revealing yesterday that Home Office officials were told of tensions in the inquiry four months before she quit.
Mrs May, who set up the inquiry more than two years ago, said those concerns were raised confidentially and insisted she was not made aware of them at the time.
Theresa May (pictured at Prime Minister's Questions today) defended her role in the disastrous child abuse inquiry after it emerged that concerns were raised when she was still Home Secretary in April
She admitted she was aware of 'stories around about the inquiry' at the time but told MPs today that it would have been wrong for her to intervene 'on the basis of suspicion, rumour or hearsay'.
The Government would have been accused of trying to interfere with bringing justice to victims of child abuse if she or other ministers had intervened to resolve problems on the information they had at the time, the Prime Minister said.
And she added that it was now for the inquiry to 'get on and deliver for victims and survivors'.
The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman later declined to be drawn on what action the Home Office took, but stressed that, as an independent inquiry, it was first and foremost the responsibility of the panel to deal with the issue.
But Mrs May faced criticism from Labour MPs for failing to say what and when she knew about the inquiry's concerns with the New Zealander chair Dame Lowell.
The inquiry raised 'concerns' over New Zealander chair Dame Lowell Goddard (pictured) with a Home Office official in April, MPs were told yesterday
Theresa May (pictured at Prime Minister's Questions today) denied the Home Office dragged its feet over allegations Dame Lowell Goddard, the former chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), had mishandled the probe despite members of the panel revealing yesterday that Home Office officials were told of tensions in the inquiry four months before she quit
Yesterday the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee heard that concerns about Dame Lowell were raised with a senior Home Office official as April - months before she resigned in August.
But the department's top mandarin, Mark Sedwill insisted he was completely unaware of the worries until the end of July.
Asked by Labour MP Lisa Nandy when she 'personally learnt of the serious problems' with the inquiry and 'why she took no action at all,' Mrs May said today: 'There were stories around about the inquiry and about individuals related to the inquiry.
'But the Home Secretary cannot intervene on the basis of suspicion, rumour or hearsay.'
Mrs May said members of the inquiry's panel had asked for their concerns about Dame Lowell's handling of the inquiry to be kept 'confidential' and told MPs today that as far as she knew, they were treated as such.
The PM added: 'I think it is important for us to recognise that when the Home Office was officially informed of issues, the Home Office acted. It's now for the inquiry to get on and deliver for victims and survivors.'
Labour MP Lisa Nandy (pictured in the House of Commons at Prime Minister's Quesitons today) asked Theresa May when she 'personally learnt of the serious problems' with the inquiry and 'why she took no action at all'
Home Secretary Amber Rudd (pictured today) told MPs yesterday that she was told of leadership failings in the child abuse inquiry in late July
Ms Nandy said the PM must now 'come clean' about what she knew and when.
'Theresa May set up the abuse inquiry and appointed its chair. She was the home secretary in April when serious concerns were raised with her department, and only she had the power to act on them,' she said.
'Today she suggested that she did know of problems but did nothing at all. For this investigation to regain the trust of survivors the Prime Minister must now come clean about what she knew when, and why she failed to intervene.'
Some MPs remain angry that when current Home Secretary Amber Rudd appeared before committee last month she made no mention of the issues that had been raised, saying simply Dame Lowell had resigned because she was homesick.
At yesterday's set-piece evidence session, the new chair of the troubled inquiry, Professor Alexis Jay, hit out at her predecessor Dame Lowell.
She said Dame Lowell had shown little interest in working with the expert panel, and it would have been 'very difficult' if she had not quit.
Theresa May (pictured at Prime Minister's Questions today) admitted she was aware of 'stories around about the inquiry' at the time but told MPs today that it would have been wrong for her to intervene 'on the basis of suspicion, rumour or hearsay'
Professor Alexis Jay is the fourth chair of the child sex abuse inquiry, which was launched by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary
It has also emerged that a relationship counsellor was drafted in to try to smooth over tensions between the New Zealander and her team.
The details came as Dame Lowell said she was ready to 'assist' the MPs but stopped short of agreeing to appearing before them for a grilling.
Prof Jay - the fourth head of the struggling inquiry - told the committee: 'It was clear from the beginning that Lowell Goddard really would have preferred to sit on her own without the assistance of a panel ...
'As a consequence of this view that was conveyed to us, we did feel that we were kept at a distance from a lot of the activities of the inquiry.'
Prof Jay added that 'we did make every effort to make the arrangements work from the beginning'.
Professor Jay made clear she did not recognise the claims in a letter sent by Dame Lowell after her resignation, in which she suggested the huge scope of the inquiry meant it was doomed to fail.
Professor Jay was giving evidence to MPs on the Home Affairs Committee yesterday
Giving evidence alongside Prof Jay, panel member Ivor Frank said that things were so bad at one point a 'relationship' facilitator was drafted in help them work together.
He suggested that Dame Lowell had spent a good deal of her time in New Zealand.
'What I will say is the chair was not always present in the United Kingdom through that entire sixteen month period, so we were able to continue with our work for extensive periods without very much contact with the chair,' he said.
TIMELINE: HOW THE TROUBLED INQUIRY INTO CHILD ABUSE HAS HAPPENED July 7, 2014 - Theresa May, then home secretary, announces a public inquiry with the remit of investigating whether 'state and non-state institutions' have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse within England and Wales. Its chairwoman will be Baroness Butler-Sloss, a retired High Court judge. July 9 - Baroness Butler-Sloss faces calls to quit due to a potential conflict of interest over a family connection. Her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general in the 1980s. Then prime minister David Cameron stands by the appointment. July 14 - Baroness Butler-Sloss steps down. September 5 - Dame Fiona Woolf, a leading tax lawyer and then Lord Mayor of the City of London, is appointed as the new chairwoman of the inquiry. October 22 - Child sex abuse victim launches a legal challenge against Dame Fiona's appointment over her suitability for the role. She is accused of having 'close association' with Lord Leon Brittan, the late Labour peer against whom allegations of sex abuse were later dropped. October 31 - Dame Fiona quits as chairwoman. February 4, 2015 - Mrs May tells the House of Commons she is disbanding the former inquiry into child sex abuse and setting up a new statutory inquiry. Dame Lowell Goddard - described as 'one of the most respected and experienced judges in the Commonwealth' - is announced as its chairwoman. March 12 - New inquiry is set up with same remit as first. April 29 - Dame Lowell announces the inquiry will conduct a full investigation into the issues surrounding the allegations of sexual abuse against Lord Greville Janner, citing 'clear public interest' over the adequacy of institutional responses to allegations against public figures. July 9 - Dame Lowell officially opens the inquiry. October 16 - Former child protection manager Peter McKelvie resigns from the inquiry's Victims' and Survivors Consultative Panel as it is revealed that he may face questioning over his own handling of pursuing allegations of child sex abuse. November 27 - Inquiry announces its first 12 investigations and Dame Lowell says she is committed to completing the in inquiry in five years. December 19 - Lord Janner dies aged 87. March 9, 2016 - Inquiry holds first hearing on the investigation into allegations against Lord Janner. August 4 - Dame Lowell writes to Home Secretary Amber Rudd to offer her resignation citing her career and family life. August 11 - Professor Alexis Jay, who led an earlier inquiry into abuse in Rotherham, is promoted from within the inquiry to take over as chairwoman. September 28 - Ben Emmerson is suspended as the inquiry's top lawyer amid reports he fell out with Professor Jay over the scale of the inquiry. September 29 - Elizabeth Prochaska, who was junior counsel to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), confirms that she had stepped down a fortnight ago. Advertisement
'There were times when things were perfectly amicable and perfectly professional. There were other times when it was less the case.'
Asked what this meant, he said: 'There are different working methods that people have and different experiences and backgrounds.
'It may be that as a judge working perhaps mostly on her own, it wasn't easy for her to adapt to a situation where she was necessarily having to work in a more collegiate way.'
Mr Frank told the committee that a 'facilitator' was brought in to try to resolve differences between the panel and Dame Lowell.
He said: 'The inquiry staff asked for the assistance of a facilitator, I think is the expression, who has a professional role in engaging parties who have difficulties in understanding a common purpose.'
He also strongly defended the cost of the inquiry, which racked up a 14.7 million bill in the last year, saying: 'Reducing the level of child sexual abuse in this country is not a choice between competing priorities, it is an imperative.
'Every child has a right to be brought up without the threat of being subjected to sexual abuse. It is our job to make sure that we hold institutions to account for past failures and put in place procedures to stop it happening in the future.'
The most senior lawyer appointed to the inquiry, Ben Emmerson QC, resigned last month, but Prof Jay would not comment on 'anything to do' with his circumstances.
She denied having any disagreement with the barrister.
'There was no truth whatsoever in the suggestion that he and I had a disagreement about anything, that was entirely untrue.'
Another member, Drusilla Sharpling said she had met the director general of the Home Office in April to report 'concerns' about the chair.
She said the discussion related to worries about the 'leadership and progress' of the inquiry.
'At the end of April, with the panel's knowledge, I reported my concerns about the leadership of the inquiry to the then director general of the Home Office, Mary Calam,' she said.
'I want to take the opportunity to make absolutely clear that I did not give anyone permission to spread these concerns amongst anybody else, that I did not, and neither did the panel, require any action to be taken.'
There are allegations that Dame Lowell made 'racist' comments in private and behaved like a tyrant - claims that she has vehemently denied.
The new chair and the panel members refused to be drawn on the nature of the 'concerns' they reported back about Dame Lowell, insisting they could not speak about 'HR' matters.
Mr Sedwill, permanent secretary at the Home Office, said he was not aware of the meeting in April 'for the reasons that Drusilla Sharpling set out'.
He told the Committee: 'I presume - the director general has now left the Home Office but she has spoken to one of my colleagues - she was observing the conditions that were set by Dru Sharpling in having that exchange, which was not to share the information and not to seek any action on it. Anyway, it wasn't drawn to my attention.'
He added: 'It wasn't until the 29th of July that the tensions within the inquiry were drawn to my attention.'
Mr Sedwill dismissed any suggestion that the department may have picked up 'rumblings'.
He added: 'I wasn't aware, there's nothing in the Home Office records to suggest any of my staff dealing with the inquiry were aware, of concerns about the leadership and progress of the inquiry until it was brought to my attention on the 29th of July - with the exception of the separate conversation, which again was not brought to my attention, between Dru Sharpling and the director general of the group responsible.'
Professor Jay, who took over from Dame Lowell in August, said earlier this week that it was unrealistic to hold a public inquiry-style hearing into all of the institutions where abuse is said to have occurred.
She said while the inquiry would endeavour to look at many institutions where youngsters were allegedly abused, it would be 'impossible to do so for all of them'.
Professor Jay sought to appease victims by saying the inquiry remained 'very interested in the past' and promised to complete most of its work by the end of 2020.
The panel members were speaking after the inquiry was wracked by months of turbulence
The panel members were speaking after the inquiry was wracked by months of turbulence
But she refused to say if she plans to cut any of the 13 investigations examining child abuse claims in institutions from Westminster to the Church, schools and Armed Forces over the last 60 years.
Professor Jay had ordered a review of the inquiry amid concern its scope was so vast it was unlikely to be completed within a decade and could cost more than 100million.
Amber Rudd said she was alerted about allegations over Dame Lowell Goddard's 'professionalism and competence' several weeks before she told MPs the judge had quit because she was 'lonely'.
Miss Rudd was accused of being 'economical about what she knew' after the admission, which follows claims of a Home Office cover-up.
She told MPs last month that New Zealander Dame Lowell had left the inquiry because she felt lonely and 'a long way from home'.
Hauled before the Commons earlier this week, Miss Rudd said it would have been 'entirely inappropriate' to tell the home affairs committee about the racism allegations against Dame Lowell.
Hauled before the Commons on Monday, Home Secretary Amber Rudd admitted being made aware of problems at the inquiry a week before Dame Lowell's resignation
Drusilla Sharpling said she had met senior Home Office officials in April to report 'concerns' about the chair
In evidence to the committee on September 7, she said of the judge's departure: 'I think she went I have to say that it is a matter for her, but I have the information that you have because she found it too much ultimately she found it too lonely, she was a long way from home and she decided to step down. That is all the information I have about why she decided to go.'
But on Monday Miss Rudd admitted she became aware on July 29 that concerns about Dame Lowell's 'professionalism and competence' had been raised by inquiry staff with a senior Home Office official.
'On July 29, the secretary to the inquiry met my permanent secretary and reported concerns about the professionalism and competence of the chair,' she said.
'My permanent secretary encouraged the inquiry to raise those matters with the chair.
He reported this meeting to me the same day.' Despite this, Miss Rudd agreed to a payoff of almost 90,000 for the New Zealand judge when she resigned as chairman on August 4.
Seumas Milne is Jeremy Corbyn's closest aide and spokesman. His weekly briefing with journalists was cancelled today
Jeremy Corbyn's top spinner has cancelled a weekly briefing with journalists on Prime Minister's Questions, a week after his performance prompted demands he be sacked.
Seumas Milne provoked outrage after the session a week ago when he compared British bombing of ISIS terrorists with Russian attacks on civilians in Aleppo.
The weekly 'huddle' after Prime Minister's Questions is the main opportunity each week for journalists to question Mr Corbyn's team on Labour issues and a chance for the Opposition to respond to Theresa May's performance at the Despatch Box.
An unannounced complete cancellation of the briefing is unheard of.
Mr Corbyn's team left the Commons chamber as soon as the Labour leader finished his six questions, instead of waiting until the end of the session to hear all of Mrs May's answers, as is normal.
Reports suggested today is the final day of Mr Miline's contract as Mr Corbyn's director of communications and the team were spotted at the Bellamy's Restaurant on the Parliamentary Estate.
Sources in Mr Corbyn's team promised individual briefings later today when contacted by MailOnline.
Mr Corbyn last week faced demands to disown his 'disgraceful' top aide after he sparked fury by comparing British bombing of ISIS to Russian atrocities in Syria.
Mr Milne complained that the focus on horrors in Aleppo was 'diverting attention' from the consequences of Western military action.
He also suggested people should be protesting outside the US embassy in London rather than Moscow's embassy.
Jeremy Corbyn's press team skipped the weekly briefing with journalists shortly after the Labour leader challenged Theresa May on the NHS, pictured
Mr Corbyn's team hold a weekly briefing each week to answer questions about Labour and
The extraordinary outburst came a day after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson condemned war crimes linked to Vladimir Putin's forces and urged protests against Russian involvement in Syria's civil war.
It was quickly condemned by Labour moderates, who branded Mr Milne a 'Putin apologist' and a 'disgrace'.
Former frontbencher John Woodcock said: 'By any reasonable measure this is just not true.
'This absurdity seems like a deliberate provocation, unworthy of our leader and our party.'
Brendan Cox, widower of Labour MP Jo Cox, who campaigned for an end to the bloodshed in Syria, said: 'This isn't just wrong, it's absolutely disgraceful.'
A child waits for treatment at a makeshift hospital after an airstrike on a residential neighbourhood last week
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Wednesday that Tuesday's bombings killed 25, while others put the death toll at 41
Milne's comments come as bombs continue to fall on Aleppo, where thousands of civilians have been killed.
Former shadow defence minister Kevan Jones described Milne's comments as 'completely outrageous'.
He told MailOnline: 'To compare the rule based intervention by the UK in Syria against Russian bombing, including the use of bunker busting bombs to target innocent civilians.
'Jeremy Corbyn should completely distance himself from this. It will further alienate decent, ordinary people who are put off voting Labour by someone who is clearly an apologist for Putin and his regime.'
Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake demanded Mr Corbyn confirm whether he agreed with the remarks.
'It is ludicrous for Labour to suggest it sides with Putin over Obama,' he said.
'To only ever point the finger at the West is puerile politics not serious international diplomacy.
'Jeremy Corbyn must clarify immediately if this is his party's official position.'
'Both the US and British authorities have been reluctant to accept any independent assessment of those.'
Asked if the UK was as culpable as Russia, Mr Milne said: 'We are not in the business of allocating blame on the whole thing. Russia's intervention in the civil war has been opposed by Jeremy from the start and the intervention of foreign powers in the conflict has no doubt escalated and fuelled it throughout.'
Pressed on whether that meant people should protest outside the US embassy instead of Russia's, the spokesman replied: 'People are free to protest outside the intervening powers' embassies and there are a number of them not just the United States and Russia, but multiple foreign interventions.'
Planners have refused proposals for a Highland home because it would increase traffic - above one vehicle every two hours.
Glen Wyvis distillery, near Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands, wants to construct an on-site house for its manager in common with other whisky makers in Scotland.
But the council planning committee say the manager's car would pose a significant traffic danger - on a road that currently records just 13 journeys a day.
Glen Wyvis distillery wants to construct an on-site house for a manager in common with other whisky makers in Scotland. But planners refused proposals because it would increase traffic - above one vehicle every two hours. (Above, David O'Connor, director of the distillery)
The council planning committee say the manager's car would pose a significant traffic danger - on a road that currently records just 13 journeys a day. Above, a stretch of road by the proposed site, near Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands
Highland Council gave permission for the distillery - due to open next year - but opposed the four-bedroom house (pictured, from architect's plans) for a distillery master. Mr O'Connor said they hoped to overturn the decision and advertise for the manager's job in December
The decision has come despite local people giving no objections to the plans, and welcoming the employment opportunities the distillery would bring.
The former police area commander behind the scheme has said he is 'baffled' by the ruling and vowed to fight it.
Highland Council has given permission for the distillery but opposed the four-bedroomed house for the distillery master.
Area Planning Manager Dorothy Stott stated: 'Transport Planning objects to the application on road safety grounds, due to the increase on traffic at an access onto the public road where there is a significant shortfall in visibility.
'The traffic count taken for the previous application showed that the existing average volume of traffic is 13 vehicles per day.
'The average traffic movement generated by a single house is around five movements per day. This represents an average increase of around 38 per cent and is judged significant.'
Area Planning Manager Dorothy Stott stated: 'Transport Planning objects to the application on road safety grounds, due to the increase on traffic at an access onto the public road where there is a significant shortfall in visibility'
David O'Connor, director of the Glen Wyvis Distillery, which is due to open next year, said: 'Every other distillery in Scotland has a house for the master. For health and safety on-site, it's essential.'
He added: 'I'm a former policeman who served for 31 years, road safety was a clear part of my remit. I'm baffled.
'It seemed more like politics, because we didn't put the application for the house originally with the distillery.'
Mr O'Connor said they hoped to overturn the decision and advertise for the manager's job in December.
Local community councillors expressed no objections to the plans.
Minutes from the council meeting state: 'The Community Council is supportive of the four elements of the proposed distillery development.
Disgraced former Labor minister Joe Tripodi has been questioned by police over allegations he failed to stop after a car crash.
Mr Tripodi is accused of fleeing the scene of the accident in Eastwood, north-west of Sydney, in July.
But the former NSW politician has denied the allegations.
Mr Tripodi arrived at Green Valley Police Station on Wednesday afternoon after being contacted by officers for further questioning, 9News reported.
He was not arrested or charged.
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Disgraced former Labor minister Joe Tripodi has been questioned by police over allegations he failed to stop after a car crash - in which he has denied being involved in
The incident allegedly occurred between Mr Tripodi's BMW and a Honda Accord.
The driver of the other car alleged the former minister failed to stop following the accident.
Speaking to 9News after leaving the police station, Mr Tripodi denied he was involved in the crash.
'This is a completely false allegation, I've explained it all to the police,' he said as he looked directly at the camera.
'There's not much more comment to make. Thank you.'
He arrived at Green Valley Police Station on Wednesday after being contacted by officers
Mr Tripodi is accused of fleeing the scene of the accident in north-west of Sydney in July
A NSW police spokesman confirmed to Daily Mail Australia officers have questioned a man over the incident.
James Ferrell's father said Watson had been abusive towards his girlfriend, and her sons would often come to her defense
Ms Ferrell discovered her mother and sons killed at a Sacramento housing complex on Saturday evening
Watson is the ex-boyfriend of Twanna Lucas, the mother of the two slain young men
stab wounds, and one of her grandsons was
Police in Sacramento are searching for a man suspected of murdering his ex-girlfriends two adult sons and her elderly mother, a local pastor, over the weekend.
A felony warrant for homicide has been issued for the arrest of 52-year-old Jerod Watson in connection to the triple homicide that took the lives of 68-year-old Christine Lucas and her grandsons, Marquise Brown, 23, and James Ferrell, 20, on Saturday.
According to a press release from the Sacramento Police Department, Watson remained at large Wednesday morning and it is possible that he has fled the state. Records indicate that he has ties to Texas and Louisiana.
Accused killer: Jerod Watson, 52 (left), is wanted for the killings of three people, including 68-year-old pastor Christine Lucas, pictured right with her husband, John
Brothers slaughtered: Watson is also accused of murdering Marquise Brown, 23 (right), and his 20-year-old brother, James Ferrell (left), who were the sons of his ex-girlfriend, Twanna Ferrell (center)
The bodies of the female pastor and her grandsons were discovered just before 8pm on Saturday when Christine Lucas daughter, Twanna Lucas, entered her mothers home at a housing complex in the 700 block of Broadway and saw her family slaughtered.
Ferrell ran across the street to Fire Station 5 and alerted first responders, who then followed her to the crime scene. All three victims were pronounced dead at the scene.
A medical examiner has determined that Christine Lucas, known to her family and friends as 'Tina,' died from multiple stab wounds, and one of her grandsons was slashed. The autopsy for the other sibling is still pending.
Mrs Lucas served as pastor at Gloryland Revival Center Intentional Ministries along with her husband, John Lucas, according to the affiliated Faith Ministries International Network's website.
Crime scene: The bodies of the grandmother and her two grandsons were discovered by the boys' mother at this housing complex in the 700 block of Broadway in Sacramento Saturday
Troubled relationship: The father of James Ferrell said that Watson (left) had been abusive towards Twanna Lucas (right), and her sons would often come to her defense
A Faith Ministries biography says Tina Lucas and her husband helped feed Muslim children in the Philippines and Nigeria, and they were helping to build a church in the Virgin Islands.
James Ferrell had just graduated in May from Heritage Peak Charter School in Sacramento and was planning to attend American River College, reported the Sacramento Bee.
His brother Marquise Brown worked with the Sacramento Regional Conservation Corps, a nonprofit education and workforce training program for young adults.
He had been taking basic classes through the affiliated John Muir Charter School since September to earn his high school diploma, said David DeMers, the program's executive director.
He was a young man of hope and he was coming from a very difficult environment and background, DeMers said.
The 23-year-old man leaves behind his young daughter.
Robert Ferrell, the father of Twanna Lucas' son James, said the 20-year-old and his older brother often argued with Watson, mostly over his abusive treatment of their mother.
'They were pretty much protecting their mom all the time,' Mr Ferrell told the station KCRA.
Getaway car: Watson is known to drive this white 2010 Mitsubishi Outlander with a California license plate 7CYL933
Court records indicate that the 52-years-old suspect has a history of domestic violence charges.
CBS News reported that Watson was sentenced to jail three times between 2009 and 2011 on one of the charges and for repeatedly violating his probation. He also completed a court-mandated batterers treatment program.
Watson is described as an African-American male, standing at 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing 180lbs. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous, according to police. Members of the public who encounter him are urged not to approach him and contact the authorities.
He is known to drive a white 2010 Mitsubishi Outlander with a California license plate 7CYL933.
A former NHS worker wants 1.6million in compensation for breaking her ankle after claiming the injury forced both her and her husband to quit their jobs.
Sandra Mehmetemin was 53 when she suffered the bad break and other minor injuries in a collision with another motorist on an A-road in Essex.
The NHS administrator claims she was left in constant pain after the December 2009 accident and has 'not worked since', London's High Court heard.
Sandra Mehmetemin was 53 when she suffered the bad break and other minor injuries in a collision with another motorist on an A-road in Essex. She was left in constant pain after the December 2009 accident.
The court heard she had to be medically retired from her job in 2011 and her husband, Mustapha, in his 50s, 'gave up his employment in order to look after his wife.'
The other motorist's insurers swiftly admitted full liability for the crash which caused Mrs Mehmetemin's injuries.
Her lawyers said the driver was going 'too fast' and 'failed to keep a proper look out'.
But claims handling firm, Eldon insurance, have now 'taken umbrage' with some parts of her claim - including its valuation at 1.6m.
Today her lawyers denied there was any 'element of artificiality' in her case, insisting she and her husband need every penny claimed.
Paul Rose QC, for Mrs Mehmetemin, now 60, told the court she has endured numerous operations on her broken ankle and suffers 'significant ongoing symptoms.'
The court heard Mrs Mehmetemin had to be medically retired from her job in 2011 and her husband, Mustapha (pictured left) 'gave up his employment in order to look after his wife'
The former NHS worker now uses a mobility scooter to get around and told the judge she is unable to enjoy shopping trips and visits to family as she used to.
She needs a stairlift to get upstairs in her three-bedroom rented home in Heybridge, Maldon.
Mrs Mehmetemin added that she can't walk her dog alone, using the scooter because 'he walks under the wheels and I'm afraid I'll run him over.'
She needs her husband's help with that and many other day to day tasks, she told the judge, Sir Robert Nelson.
'I'd like to get back to as near to normal, as I was before the accident, in any way I can,' she added.
Mr Rose said that aspects of Mrs Mehmetemin's claim had 'caused umbrage' with insurers, despite the admission of liability.
Eldon Insurance says Mrs Mehmetemin is asking for 1million more than she needs, putting the value of her claim at 600,000, Mr Rose said.
He added that the issue of how much care she will need in future, and from whom, is particularly 'controversial.'
Defence council, Patrick Blakesey, cross-examining Mrs Mehmetemin, said she had been having only 'sporadic' physiotherapy treatment on her injured ankle.
He also queried her claim for funds to enable her to move to a new home, specially adapted to her needs.
And he went on to question whether her husband really needed to quit work completely in order to look after her.
'You have spoken about the devoted care your husband has lavished upon you and the sacrifices he has made to do that.
'There is an issue in this case about what happens into the future,' the barrister said.
'Your husband stopped working in 2010 in order to look after you...looking after you and the house is now effectively his occupation.
'There has been no proposal for him to go back to work and you don't want him to go back to work,' Mr Blakesey added.
'I don't see how he could,' Mrs Mehmetemin responded.
'Has he investigated any alternative work which might fit around the care?' the barrister asked.
'No' she replied.
A golden retriever is proving that there is more to doggy paddle than a simple swim in the sea.
Ricochet is a champion surfer who puts her talents on the board to good use by teaching disabled children how to surf.
And is now set to star in a 3D movie for IMAX screens called Superpower Dogs, which will celebrate Ricochet's amazing abilities and her remarkable bond with the people she helps.
A golden retriever is proving that there is more to doggy paddle than a simple swim in the sea
Ricochet is a champion surfer who puts his talents on the board to good use by teaching disabled children how to surf
Parents of children, suffering from a range of conditions from autism to physical impairments, have been shocked at how the dog encourages them into the sea
As well as working with disabled children, she has also worked with former soldiers suffering with post traumatic stress disorder
Ricochet is a champion surfer and seeing him on the board encourages many of the children to do the same as it shows them just how easy it is
Children previously scared of the water have even followed Ricochet out onto the water
On a beach in San Diego, she showed off his skills with children there with the Best Day charity
Ricochet's owner, Judy Fridono, who has a degree in Service Dog Training, said: 'She just seems to connect on that heart to heart level with people. I just know by the way that she behaves that she can tell how a person is feeling.
'Ricochet has touched millions of people she really belongs to everyone.'
Judy, 58, initially intended for Ricochet to work as a guide dog, but the playful pup was too distracted chasing birds to make the grade.
But Ricochet's ability to intuit emotion combined with her surfing dexterity meant that she was able to help people in a less conventional way.
Judy said: 'When she was eight weeks old she was in a kiddie pool and there was a little board inside and she climbed on and had really good balance so I kept playing around with it.
'She actually made that decision and showed me what to do.
Ricochet offers comfort to those that she works with, who range from people suffering from autism to amputees
She may be able to surf but this image shows that she still enjoys a rub on the belly like any other dog
Her calm demeanour means that Ricochet can be trusted with children who would usually have to stay away from excitable dogs
'I thought maybe she could raise some money or something and her first fundraiser was for a quadriplegic boy.
'My idea was to put her and the boy on separate boards but she jumped onto his board with him and at that point I literally saw her come to life.
'This is what she was here to do and that is why we call her a SURFice dog rather than a service dog.
'She provides a service still, but it's very different and she chose to do it.'
Judy said: 'The transformation in some of the people she has worked with has just been incredible.
'She's able to bond with people immediately and is instinctively alert to their anxieties and triggers it's remarkable.'
Ricochet is now an ambassador for a number of assisted surfing organisations, including Life Rolls On and Judy's own non-profit company, Puppy Prodigies and has bagged herself a starring role in Superpower Dogs.
The 3D movie celebrates powerful pooches like Ricochet, and will showcase the remarkable talents of working dogs by following several real-life canine superheroes as they brave earthquakes and avalanches, bring animal poachers to justice, and protect us from danger.
Producer of the film Taran Davies said: 'Superpower Dogs will give people an entirely new perspective on the amazing abilities of dogs and their heroic achievements.
Ricochet learnt on a small surfboard when she was just a puppy (pictured as a fluffier youth)
Ricochet filmed with charity Best Day in California, but it won't be her last on-screen appearance
She is also set to star in a 3D movie for IMAX screens called Superpower Dogs, featuring the heroic work of canines
'In the movie we're going to meet a number of veteran working dogs all over the world. We're going to the Canadian Rockies to show the work of avalanche rescue dogs, who can find people buried in 15 feet of snow.
'We're going to travel to Kenya where Bloodhounds are right now tracking down animal poachers and saving endangered species such as elephants and rhino.
'And then we come to California, where we will meet Ricochet. Ricochet is a dog that knows how to surf, but her true beauty is her empathy and ability to help children who suffer from autism and veteran soldiers with post traumatic stress.'
The movie looks set to be a roaring success, given her large number of obviously adoring fans
Another young boy snuggles up to Ricochet on the sand during the action-packed day in San Diego, California
Though she serves an important role on the day, she still has time for some sillier games
For a time Ricochet found success in dog surfing competitions routinely finishing in the top three but she gave up surfing competitively to concentrate on her work with people.
Now she takes part in an autism surf camp during the summer months and recently headed up a new programme working with army veterans and children.
Judy said: 'We are bringing people back who Ricochet has helped to help others.
'We had a 10-year-old boy who used to be afraid of dogs and water and he's come such a long way and now he's helping other kids.
The eight-year-old retriever spends up to four hours in the water with children, and is said to have a sixth sense for those who are suffering
One of her handlers says that Ricochet can tell instantly if someone is sick and will automatically go to them and try and provide comfort
'Everyone for the most part is disabled but they're helping each other.
'People with disabilities can be patronised but the programme allows us to empower them.'
Ricochet also works with a volunteer organisation called Best Day, helping children with special needs.
Todd Gasparik, a Best Day organiser, said: 'She makes our jobs easier because when Ricochet is around the kids are drawn.
'If they see Ricochet in the water, they're drawn to the water.'
Kevin Carter, a Best Day volunteer, said: 'Ricochet makes children more comfortable.
Ricochet shows her patriotic side as he works with a soldier while wearing the stars and stripes
The talented dog readies herself on the board, wearing his bright rescue uniform as she heads towards the sea
'When they see a dog out there that can surf, they think, hey, I can do that too.'
Judy is now preparing for the arrival of a golden retriever Labrador mix puppy next month, which she hopes will join Ricochet in her legacy.
She said: 'They're called Superpower dogs for a reason. I hope the puppy can help people in the way Ricochet has.
'I believe dogs are here to teach us lessons. I'll wait to see if the puppy wants to surf, but I'm interested to see what she's bringing to our lives and what she's offering.'
Next week is going to bring an exciting day to our region as progress begins again on our four-lane connection to the rest of the world.
A group from around the region will gather Tuesday morning to hold a groundbreaking ceremony on the extension of Highway 30 Expressway. We will gather at the place where the current four-lane highway transitions to two lanes east of Schuyler.
The ceremony will feature remarks from U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, Lt. Gov. Mike Foley and Nebraska Department of Roads Director Kyle Schneweis.
Actually, construction to expand US-30 to a four-lane divided expressway is already underway. Construction on the Schuyler to Rogers phase will continue through most of 2017 and will take place along the north side of the existing highway. The project will be completed in two more phases -- Rogers to North Bend and North Bend to Fremont -- after completion of this first segment and is expected to be completed by 2019.
Construction of the project is partially paid for by the Build Nebraska Act. BNA was a project led by Sen. Fischer when she was a state senator, and were proud shell be able to see some of the fruits of her labor at this event. Since then, the state has added the Transportation Innovation Act to the transportation toolbox, and through that we have seen Highway 81 south of Columbus added to the list of projects on the to-do list. Its exciting to see Nebraska moving forward on needed infrastructure projects.
The chamber has a couple other opportunities on-tap for the near future that Id like to highlight in todays column.
If youd like the economic forecast for our region, that comes tomorrow. Members can get a look into our regions economy as the chamber hosts Dr. Eric Thompson and Dr. David Rosenbaum from the University of Nebraskas Bureau of Business Research. They will give the economic status report and the future forecast for our region.
The Lunch n Learn is at noon Thursday at the chamber office. All employees of any member are welcome to hear the presentation, but we would appreciate an RSVP so we can provide lunch and seating.
Monday night is the monthly Business After Hours for October. Our friends at Dynamic Life Therapy & Wellness are hosting us this month. Please remember any employee of a chamber member business is welcome to attend Business After Hours. As usual, the event will run from 5-6:30 p.m., and we hope lots of our members will join us for this opportunity for some informal networking.
I hope chamber members will take advantage of these opportunities to meet each other and to learn about issues and events that impact your business. Its just one more benefit of membership.
Students were angry for overpricing an item that was a female necessity
A Sydney university has sparked a furore after students spotted sanitary pads being sold for double the price in supermarkets.
Female students were shocked to find Macquarie University's Macshop was selling a 12-pack of sanitary pads for $9.95, Grapeshot reported.
The issue of overpriced sanitary products was raised last month at Macquarie University after students complained it was unfair as the products were a necessity for females.
The overpriced product comes as females across the country continue to mount pressure on the Federal Government to remove the tampon tax.
Female students at a Sydney university were shocked to find a 12 pack of sanitary pads being sold for $9.95 at a uni shop (stock photo)
Bec Lumbroso, a member of the Women's Collective, was surprised to see the price of the pads when she entered the university store, Macshop.
'It's different when that student has no real choice as to whether or not they can afford a pack of pads,' she told Grapeshot.
'It's outrageous that they have the audacity to put women in a position where they are charged incessantly for goods that they cannot live without in that given moment.'
As the supermarket pricing war continues, prices for sanitary products were slashed.
Macshop noted that they find it difficult to compete against big supermarkets but will take another look at the pricing to see if they can accommodate students
A 16-pack of Libra Slimpons have been cut from $5.60 to $4 at Coles, while Libra Liners Purse Pack 28-packs have been reduced from $3.90 to $3.
Libra Pads Ultra-Thin and Extra Pads 10- to 14-pack have dropped from $5.90 to $4.80.
Woolworths followed suit by slashing their prices as well.
Macshop have since said they will take a look at their pricing to see whether they can offer it at a closer price to what is on offer at supermarkets.
The woman at the centre of former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's 'bunga-bunga party' sex-for-hire scandal has been indicted on charges of giving false testimony.
Berlusconi was convicted but found not guilty of appeal of paying prostitute Karima el-Mahroug for sexual services between February and May 2010 when she was under the age of 18, and using his influence to cover up the liaisons.
El-Mahroug, also known by the stage name Ruby Rubacuori - Italian for 'Ruby the Heartstealer', is due to go on trial alongside 22 others.
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Berlusconi was convicted but found not guilty of appeal of paying underage prostitute Karima el-Mahroug for sexual services
Berlusconi was initially sentenced to seven years in prison, but his conviction was overturned on appeal in 2014
Ruby, now 23, and her co-defendants are accused of accepting bribes and lying on the stand to protect Berlusconi in his trial.
They are facing various charges centered around corruption in judicial proceedings and giving false testimony.
Berlusconi was sentenced Court of First Instance to seven years in prison, and banned from public office for life, but his conviction was overturned in 2014.
Ruby, now 23, as been indicted on charges of giving false testimony at Berlusconi's trial
Berlusconi also faces possible indictment, but a judge is yet to decide whether or not he will face trial, due to health issues
He was acquitted on he grounds that there was no proof that he knew that 17-year-old Ruby was under 18 at the time.
The trial judge in Milan has set a date of January 11 for the opening of the court case against the 23 accused.
The other 22 defendants include Luca Giuliante, the former lawyer of El Mahroug, journalist Carlo Rossella, and Senator Mariarosaria Rossi.
Berlusconi also faces possible indictment, but his case was separated from the others due to health issues.
After a long road trip in a stuffy, cramped car, anyone would be a little grumpy.
So spare a thought for this king brown snake who spent 500km trapped inside the engine of a vehicle as it travelled along bumpy outback roads.
The 'unwanted hitchhiker' slithered its way into the motor of a car in the Northern Territory and the driver was unable to get it out.
Ssstuck! A snake travelled 500km inside a car's engine after getting itself trapped in there
The motorist had no other choice but to carry on driving with the venomous snake inside the engine, travelling 500km on bumpy roads before arriving at a reptile centre in Alice Springs.
Amazingly the king brown survived the ordeal and a snake catcher was able to free it from the engine.
Unsurprisingly, the sizeable snake was not in the best mood when it was pulled out from under the bonnet.
But after a few attempts, the snake catcher was able to bag up the snake for a safe release.
The 'unwanted hitch hiker' slithered its way into the motor of a car in the Northern Territory and the driver was unable to get it out
Alive! Amazingly the king brown survived the ordeal and a snake catcher was able to free it from the engine
Writing on the Alice Springs Reptile Centre Facebook page, the snake catcher said: 'Late arvo, just locking up and a car pulls into the reptile centre driveway.
'They picked up an unwanted hitch hiker miles out. This snake has sat in the engine bay for over 500km of some of the roughest roads out there.
'It's a mulga snake and not a small one. I am tailing the snake here into the bag and notice that it doesn't want to go in the bag either.'
King browns, otherwise known as mulga snakes, are one of the longest venomous snakes in the world and can grow to up to three metres long.
Broken marriage: Ron Sheppard, 68, bombarded eighth wife Weng Plantino, 36, pictured, with presents, letters and messages
Britain's most married man has been given a restraining order after harassing his eighth wife as he tried to stop her divorcing him, a court heard.
Ron Sheppard, 68, of Martock, Somerset, bombarded Weng Plantino, 36, with presents, letters and Facebook messages in a desperate attempt to rekindle their relationship.
The harassment forced Ms Plantino to move house and leave the church where she had made 'true friends', it was heard.
When Sheppard's advances failed he turned to intimidation, telling Ms Plantino was '99 per cent likely' the case against him would be thrown out and she could be arrested for perjury.
He has since proposed to Cristel Marquez, a Filipina call worker who is 40 years his junior.
Sheppard pleaded guilty to harassment and was handed a 607 fine at Yeovil Magistrates Court.
He was also given a two year restraining order banning her from directly or indirectly contacting Ms Plantino, who was named in court as Rowena Sheppard.
In a victim impact statement read to the court by the prosecution, Ms Plantino said she felt 'scared and like he was watching everything I did'.
She even fled her home in Summertown, Somerset, leaving behind friends and the church group she had joined.
The statement said: 'I don't know why he won't stop contacting me and leave me to get on with my life. People there [the church] have become true friends and I had to leave them all behind.'
Most married man: Ron Sheppard outside Yeovil Magistrates' Court in Somerset today, left. Right, Sheppard with Ms Platino on their wedding day on the Isle of Wight in 2004
New love: Sheppard with fiancee Cristel Marquez, a Filipina call centre worker in her 20s
Defending Sam Morton said he client pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity and accepts the length of the restraining order.
He also pleaded with the judge to allow Sheppard to able to continue attending St Clairs Church in Summertown as that is where his support network is, which the judge accepted.
Sentencing Sheppard, district judge Dave Taylor said: 'No matter what might have been your experiences of matrimony in the past, it seems to me you were unable to accept and give up this is a relationship at an end.
First bride: Sheppard was just 19 when he married first wife Margaret in 1966, pictured left. Bride number three, pictured right, Lesley wed Mr Sheppard in 1976
'You wont be the first or last who has been unable to deal with the affects of a relationship breakdown.
'The way you conducted yourself did cause actual and real distress to Mrs Sheppard. It does not surprise me to hear from her she felt she needed to leave the area.
'She felt alone and isolated by your conduct. You caused Mrs Sheppard real harm.'
After passing sentence Sheppard told the judge: 'I would just like to apologise to my wife and apologise to the court.'
Wife number four, Kathy. Britain's most married man tied the knot with wife number four, 18-year-old Kathy, in 1982. The couple had a daughter during their four years together
Wife number five, Sue, who he met at a bingo hall. They married in 1986 although he was not 'swept off his feet'. They had two sons before he was thrown out in 1997
Wife number seven, Wan. The couple met in Bangkok in 2003 and married that year. They were together for 11 years and broke off their relationship in 2015
Speaking after the hearing, Ron dismissed everything heard in court as 'lies'.
He said: 'I wouldn't want patch things up now, even if I could meet her. There is too much water gone under the bridge. She has done so much to me mentally and walking out on me. At the moment I'm angry. She has ruined my life.'
He is now focused on his relationship with Miss Marquez and is working to bring her over to Britain from the Philippines.
He said: 'I need Cristel here to take my mind off things. Every time I look around the house, sometimes I can hear her, hear her calling me.
Bride number eight, Weng Plantino, who took out a restraining order on her former husband
Next step: Sheppard proposing to Miss Marquez, who is set to become his ninth bride
'I have been alone for ten months. I have never been alone in my life.'
He added: 'I'm still looking for love. I have got Cristel but we have never made love or anything together as she doesn't believe in it until after marriage.
'I'm just trying to find the money now to get Cristel over here now.'
Sheppard was just 19 when he tied the knot with first wife Margaret in 1966 and the pair had two children together before divorcing two years later.
RON SHEPPARD'S WIVES Wife No 1: Margaret in 1966. Had three children and divorced after two years. Wife No 2: Jeanette, married in 1973 and divorced after just one year together. Sheppard later described the union as a 'business transaction'. Wife No 3: Lesley, wed in 1976. He left five years later following a string of arguments. The couple have two sons. Wife No 4: Kathy, met in a holiday camp and they married in 1982. They had a daughter and lasted four years. Wife No 5: Sue, whom he met in a bingo hall and married in 1986. They had two sons but she threw him out in 1997. Wife No 6: Usha, wed in 1999. They split after four years when Sheppard cheated on her while in Thailand. Wife No 7: Wan. The couple met in Bangkok in 2003 and married that year. The pair were in the UK together for just eight months when Wan left him and returned to her home country. Wife No 8: Weng, married in 2004. The pair met online and Sheppard flew out to the Philippines. The couple were together for 11 years and split in 2015. Wife-to-be No 9: Cristel. Sheppard proposed on December 31, 2015, weeks after leaving Weng. Advertisement
He then met second wife Jeanette in a Kingston bingo hall and they wed in 1973, but it lasted one year. He has since described the marriage as a 'business transaction' which enabled them to receive a bigger house from the council.
Shortly after their divorce, Mr Sheppard met third wife Lesley and in 1976 they tied the knot. They went on to have two children together and he said he thought she 'was for keeps', but he left five years later following a string of arguments.
He went on to meet 18-year-old blonde Kathy at Pontins holiday camp in Somerset and the pair married in 1982. They had a daughter together and lasted four years, despite Mr Sheppard claiming it was a 'rebound relationship' following his split from Lesley.
He then met his fifth wife Sue at a bingo hall. Despite admitting he was not 'swept off his feet by her', he moved in to her two-bedroom home and they married in 1986. They had two sons together but she threw him out when he was offered a job in Bournemouth.
He then went on to marry Usha in 1999, after the pair met while he was on a stop-off trip to Singapore.
They lasted four years but split after Mr Sheppard cheated on her during a holiday alone to Thailand.
With divorce number six behind him, he met seventh wife Wan in Bangkok in 2003 during a trip to visit an old friend.
However, after returning to the UK, the pair stayed together for just eight months before the bride announced she was returning to her native country in 2003.
It was then Mr Sheppard met Weng after meeting her online. He flew out to meet her in the Philippines.
A teenage boy from Columbus, Georgia, will have his right leg amputated today after a teacher allegedly body-slammed him to the floor three times, causing nerve damage.
Montravious Thomas, 13, was attending Edgewood Student Services Center on September 12 when Bryant Mosley 'had to physically restrain a student... due to behavioral issues,' a Columbus Police Department report said.
But an attorney representing Thomas and his mother says Mosley repeatedly threw the boy to the ground then sent him home without medical attention or telling his mom, The Ledger-Enquirer reported.
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Injury: Montravious Thomas lost his leg after a Georgia teacher allegedly threw him to the floor three times. The family's lawyer Renee Tucker (left) is now preparing a $5million lawsuit
Thomas was attending the AIM program, which hosts children who have been temporarily removed from their regular schools due to disruptive behavior, when the incident happened.
It was his first day at the program, according to WTVM.
According to Renee Tucker, who represents Thomas and his mom Lawanda, the boy was trying to leave class to call his mom when Mosley, a behavioral specialist, stopped him.
Mosley then threw him to the floor for an 'unknown reason,' Tucker said, and did it again when the boy tried to leave again.
Video courtesy of WTVM.com
Tucker also claims that Eddie Powell, the assistant principal, saw the violence at one point, an that a school resource officer saw Thomas limping away but didn't help or file a report.
The attorney also says that the school talked about calling for an ambulance, but then decided against it, and that Mosley then put the boy on a bus home without calling his family.
'We dont know the extent that the injuries were worsened by the failure to render aid and certainly by picking him up and seating him on the school bus,' Tucker told the Leger-Enquirer
'Then they had him ride in that same school bus home without any support or stabilization of that leg.'
Incident: The incident occurred at Edgewood Student Services Center (pictured) in September during a class for disruptive teens. Teacher Bryant Mosley is no longer there
The boy's mom took him to a Columbus hospital when he got home. He was then airlifted to an Atlanta hospital.
Since then, he has undergone four surgeries AllOnColumbus reported. Lawanda Thomas spent as much time with her son as she could - to the point that she lost her job.
But on Sunday the 13-year-old was told that the nerve damage was so severe, his leg would have to be amputated.
'My client is certainly aware of the situation and naturally hes emotional,' Ticker told AllOnColumbus.
'Doctors talked to him and his mother on Sunday and told him they were having to take his leg since they were unable to improve the flow of blood to his lower leg.
'Right now we are all concerned for his long-term health.'
The family will be pursuing a lawsuit, Tucker said, and that early filing notices put the figure at $5million.
A police report filed at the time cited 'behavioral issues' as the reason for Mosley having to 'physically restrain' the boy, according to WTVM.
And in a statement to the press, Muscogee County School District director of communications Valerie Fuller cited safety issues for the altercation.
'It is our understanding that there were issues concerning the safety of the child and others in the room, which called for the use of restraint per state guidance,' she said.
She added that 'physical restraint' is allowed in Georgia schools if 'the student is an immediate danger to himself or others and (they are) not responsive to less intensive behavioral interventions including verbal directives or other de-escalation techniques.'
There were no other children in the room at the time, Tucker said.
The attorney also says that an insider has told her there is video footage of the alleged assault and has filed an open records request to see it.
Fuller also appeared to distance the district from Mosley, saying that he was not hired directly by them.
'Bryant Mosley was provided by Mentoring and Behavioral Services, a contract service provider, to the Muscogee County School District,' she said in her statement.
'Mr Mosley is not presently providing services to the Muscogee County School District.
'Mr Mosley is specifically trained in MindSet curriculum, a system of preventing and managing aggressive behavior, and Georgia restraint requirements.'
The teacher is no longer working at the school, Fuller said, although it isn't known when that decision was made.
Mentoring and Behavioral Services' (MBS) website says that it provides Autism, Aspergers, ADHD, and behavioral services in Columbus and Phenix City.
The site says it is a 'client focused organization that specializes in individualizing holistic behavioral approaches to produce a healthy and productive environment that fosters positive growth.'
It says that it follows the 'wholesome values' including compassion, caring, honesty and integrity.
It is currently 'accepting clients between the ages of 2-18 that have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum.'
When asked whether Bryant was still employed by MBS, Dailymail.com was directed to the company's Rob Poydasheff, who declined to comment.
' At this point, we are still in the early stages of investigating the events which occurred and I have advised my client not to comment or speculate on the matter until we have completed our investigation,' he wrote.
'We are certainly very concerned for Montravious and our hearts go out to him. He and his family are in our thoughts as prayers.'
Bryant has not been charged with any crimes related to the incident, according to WTVM.
Women are walking out of work and wearing black to protest against femicide for a teenager who was raped and killed in Argentina earlier this month.
Lucia Perez, 16, was plied with cocaine and cannabis before her attackers carried out a harrowing sex attack that caused her death.
The protest, Miercoles Negro or Black Wednesday, was launched after her family were threatened for demanding justice.
The organisers of the march wrote: 'In your office, school, hospital, law court, newsroom, shop, factory, or wherever you are working, stop for an hour to demand "no more machista violence"'.
Lucia Perez's tragic death has shocked Argentinians who are now protesting against femicide and calling for her justice
Machismo is used in Spanish to describe excessive masculinity, which campaigners believe can lead to men abusing or killing women.
The concept of Miercoles Negro was born in 1992 and thousands of women have taken to the streets in protest each year since.
It is thought Lucia had been speaking with her killers on Facebook before meeting them outside her school in Mar del Plata.
#NiUnaMenos translates as 'not one woman less.'
Even though I consider myself a feminist, I often forget how deeply misogyny is ingrained outside of the US. RIP Lucia Perez #MiercolesNegro Annie Grujich (@anniegrujich) October 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/788716132542865408
Two men left Ms Perez at a drugs rehabilitation hospital, washed and dressed, on October 8 and medics treated her for what they thought was an overdose.
Police have arrested three men suspected to have been involved with Lucia Perez's murder. Above, policemen guide one of the arrested attackers
It wasn't until staff carried out a more detailed examination that they discovered the cause of her ill health.
Prosecutor Maria Isabel Sanchez said: 'The girl was impaled and this was the cause of her death.
'She had been subjected to brutal, inhumane sexual abuse.
'She died because of the injuries she suffered from being impaled."
After Police traced the van used to drop Lucia at hospital, Matias Gabriel Faroias, 23, and Juan Pablo Offidani, 41, were arrested.
Police found used condoms, drugs, sex toys and gun ammunition in the van and have now located Alejandro Maciel who is also believed to be connected to the incident.
Her family said the three men's associates should be investigated, as well as the drug trade they were involved in, and were threatened after demanding justice.
Two armed men allegedly turned up at the family home and told Lucia's parents, Guillermo and Marta, they would be shot dead.
Police guards have been patrolling the house since the threat.
An official police document shows the name of two of the men who were arrested in connection with the teenager's death
Lucia's 19-year-old brother Matias released a moving letter about his deceased sister:
'Next time it could happen to the person you love the most. We should be strong and go out the street in order to shout together, now more than never: "No one else". Only like this will we will be able to sleep at night, and my sister can rest in peace.
'I originally just wanted to write a letter as a tribute to my sister, and to include a picture of her that meant a lot to us, of her being hugged by my parents. But even this simple form of closure is not open to us, because now we have death threats hanging over our heads.
Argentina introduced a law against femicide in 2012 and there are harsher punishments for men
'My sister was a quiet girl, she did not often leave the house, and on the weekend she died, she had been picked up from home at 10 AM. My father had just left the house, and my mother had returned four hours later at 3 PM.
Sweden is planning to give ISIS defectors housing grants and free driving licences to encourage them to reintegrate into society, it has emerged.
Lund County council in southern Sweden is looking at offering incentives to jihadi defectors - including helping them to secure work.
The plan has reportedly received backing from an anti-violent extremism body.
Sweden is planning to give ISIS defectors housing grants and free driving licences to encourage them to reintegrate into society, it has emerged
According to the Daily Express, about 140 Swedish citizens have come back to the country having fought for terror groups in Iraq and Syria.
Defectors would be encouraged to re-enter society with incentives like housing grants and driving licences under the plans.
Those leading the proposals believe they should be dealt with the same way as criminals who are trying to reintegrate.
Anna Sjostrand, Lund County's municipal coordinator against violent extremism, reportedly said: ' When the subject first came up, we thought Oh God, how should we handle this?
A similar approach has also been discussed in other councils in Sweden. The country's capital Stockholm is shown in this file picture
'But we pretty quickly realised that we should deal with [people defecting from ISIS] in the same way [we deal with people defecting from criminal gangs].'
In a report by the national coordinator against violent extremism, Christoffer Carlsson said: 'Its a straight social, economic and material question. You need to be able to reintegrate into the job market, you may need to have a driving licence, debt settlement and a roof over your head.'
Police officers were left red-faced after they were forced into a high-speed chase with a naked motorcycle rider.
Dashcam footage captured the moment the biker flew past a squad car waiting at the junction of a roundabout in Havirov, Czech Republic.
The officers quickly gave chase after the man, 22, who seemingly set out to goad the cops into chasing him as he had written 'police' on his back in marker pen.
Dashcam footage captured the moment the biker flew past a squad car waiting at the junction of a roundabout in Havirov, Czech Republic
The officers quickly gave chase after the man, 22, who seemingly set out to goad the cops into chasing him as he had written 'police' on his back in marker pen
The footage shows the officers finally catching up with the man after he appeared to crash, legging it without a stitch of clothing on.
It is believed the man then led officers on another chase, this time on foot, before they caught him hiding behind a tree in a meadow.
He was arrested for dangerous driving, for not wearing a crash helmet, for having no insurance or driving licence, and for not having a registration plate on the vehicle.
Bohuslav Muras, head of police in Havirov, said: 'It seems that they came to the station to provoke the officers.
'They were in front of the station and then they left quickly.'
The man was arrested for dangerous driving, for not wearing a crash helmet, for having no insurance or driving licence, and for not having a registration plate on the vehicle
A chilling video captures a woman being slashed and stabbed 21 times in a brutal machete attack - but she miraculously survives.
The video shows Santosh Venkatesh, 25, launching himself at Kumari Venkatswamy, 50, as she is speaking to another woman in a corridor.
Santosh is seen rushing through a doorway and striking a blow on Kumari's head and her then struggling to escape the relentless blows from the machete.
Kumari Venkatswamy, 50, is seen speaking to another woman in a corridor in the shocking video showing a brutal attack
Santosh Venkatesh is seen rushing through a doorway and striking a blow on Kumari's head and her then struggling to escape the relentless blows from the machete
He continues to beat her relentlessly with the machete as she cowers away from his attack
The incident happened in Kotiligeshwar temple in Karnataka in southern India on Sunday evening where Kumari serves as an administrator
But Santosh stops after a man jumps in to rescue Kumari's and some other locals are later seen catching the attacker.
The incident happened in Kotiligeshwar temple in Karnataka in southern India on Sunday evening where Kumari serves as an administrator.
Santosh, an engineer, was immediately handed over to the police after the incident.
Santosh who hails from same village as Kumari was scorned after his father Venkatesh Appa died three years ago in a heart attack, and he blamed Kumari.
Santosh, an engineer, was immediately handed over to the police after the incident, in which he continued to pursue her even when she tried to flee
Santosh (pictured) who hails from same village as Kumari was scorned after his father Venkatesh Appa died three years ago in a heart attack, and he blamed Kumari
Shiv Shankar Reddy, Head Constable at Bethamangla Police Station said: 'Santosh's father Appa was a former member of local municipal body that was headed by Kumari. The two had a dispute over an outstanding bill and Appa apparently died of a heart attack.
'Santosh could not stomach it and blamed her for his father's death. He later took the extreme step in vengeance.'
Luckily, Kumari, a single woman, escaped with only minor gashes and wounds on her left hand.
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British jets and drones have hit crucial Islamic State targets in Mosul as part of the push to drive the jihadist group out of their Iraqi stronghold.
The RAF took part in strikes around the northern Iraqi city, hitting targets including a truck bomb and anti-tank gun in support of the ground offensive.
Dramatic footage captured the moment the bombers took out a large armed truck, before it could be used by Islamic State.
It comes amid warnings that 1.5 million people in Mosul could be at great risk of being targeted, caught in cross-fire, forcibly expelled or used as human shields during the operation to oust ISIS extremists.
Fanatics have been preventing the residents from escaping in recent weeks and holding them 'against their will', according to Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis.
But thousands have now started fleeing the city, which has been under IS control since 2014, leading to warnings of a humanitarian crisis.
British jets and drones have hit crucial Islamic State targets in Mosul, pictured is the moment bombers took out a large armed truck, before it could be used by Islamic State
A Typhoon flight to the south of Mosul used a Paveway IV guided bomb to destroy the large truck bomb, seen here in MOD footage
ISIS thugs have resorted to using human shields as they attempt to defend Mosul as it emerged the terror group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is thought to be trapped in the city. Aerial pictures show how ISIS fanatics are torching oil in the city
Fanatics have been preventing the city's 1.5 million residents from escaping in recent weeks, according to Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis. Iraqi forces are pictured in the Bajwaniyah village, south of Mosul
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has described the effort to liberate Mosul as a 'big moment' in the war against IS, also known as Daesh.
He vowed that British forces would continue to play a major role as part of the coalition supporting the Iraqi and Kurdish forces on the ground.
The Ministry of Defence released details of a series strikes carried out by the RAF on Monday and Tuesday.
On Monday, a Reaper drone was in action south-east of the city, attacking targets including a mortar position, an armed truck and two IS heavy weapons teams - one equipped with an anti-tank gun.
A Typhoon flight to the south of Mosul used a Paveway IV guided bomb to destroy a large truck bomb before it could be used by IS, with video footage capturing the large explosion on impact.
On Tuesday, a Reaper flying to the south-east of Mosul targeted two groups of IS fighters and an armed truck, while to the north-east of the city Typhoons destroyed targets including a string of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) laid out in a defensive belt.
British jets and drones have hit crucial Islamic State targets in Mosul, pictured footage showing the moment the bombers took out a large armed truck
Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood said 'huge amounts of planning' had gone into laying the groundwork for the operation
The RAF took part in strikes around the northern Iraqi city, hitting targets including a truck bomb and anti-tank gun in support of the ground offensive
A video grab shows an RAF Typhoon using a Paveway guided bomb to safely dispose of a large truck-bomb, before it could be used by ISIS
Coalition forces expect IS to have laid a series of booby traps in and around Mosul as part of their effort to hamper Iraqi advances.
It has been claimed that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is still holed up in Mosul along with his explosives expert Fawzi Ali Nouimeh.
Senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari said there were 'solid' intelligence reports saying Baghdadi was in the city. It was in Mosul's Great Mosque of al-Nuri that the terrorist declared the ISIS 'caliphate' in 2014.
The head of Russia's General Staff Valery Gerasimov said today that that any ISIS militant trying to escape Mosul for Syria should be killed on the spot.
Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood said 'huge amounts of planning' had gone into preparing for the liberation of Mosul.
'The place will be covered in booby traps, in IEDs, it will not be safe for anybody to enter, there will be huge sums of refugees seeking shelter and support elsewhere,' he told BBC Radio 4's World At One.
He said the city would be liberated by Iraqi Sunni forces and made safe, allowing refugees to return.
The similar tactics were used by Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. The burning of oil wastes millions of dollars worth of supplies and damages the environment
The images have already been compared to the tactics used in the 1991 Gulf War, when Saddam took his troops out of Kuwait with defeat in sight
Residents are being held there 'against their will' and coalition forces 'know they are being used as human shields,' Davis added
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is believed to be holed up in the city along with his explosives expert Fawzi Ali Nouimeh
Discovery: Peshmerga forces stand around a tunnel used by ISIS militants on the outskirts of Bartila, east of Mosul
ISIS radicals have begun setting fire to oil wells as they flee Mosul - with striking similarities to Saddam Hussain's defeated troops 25 years ago
A truckload of refugees flee the area as the flames and plumes of smock billow out behind them
The jihadis have begun feeling the key territory, as the battle to defeat the terror group starts to reach a conclusion
Iraqi army forces arrive in the village of Hut as smoke can be seen rising from oil wells behind them
The scorched earth tactics are used to limit the visibility of enemy pilots during air strikes
Iraqi troops retreating after a seven-month occupation in 1991 smashed and torched 727 wells
Several blown-out wells damaged by retreating Iraqi soldiers in Al-Ahmadi oil field burn in the Gulf War of 25 years ago
Long road ahead: The battle looks set to be lengthy affair that could last months according to the French Defence Minister
Heavily armoured military vehicles head towards Mosul on Tuesday in a major offensive
A vehicle full of Iraqi soldiers arrive in Hut as an Iraqi flag is seen planted in the ground two years after the army's defeat there
Humanitarian charity Save The Children has said that thousands of desperate Iraqis have made their way to an already-overcrowded Syrian refugee camp in an effort to escape the offensive.
About 5,000 people, mostly women and children, have arrived at the Al Hol camp from the Mosul area in the last 10 days, and at least 1,000 more are now massing at the border waiting to cross, the charity said.
The UN's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien said the protection of the elderly, disabled and pregnant women who may not be able to move to safety without assistance cause the greatest concern.
He told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that no large-scale displacement of civilians has been reported on the third day of the Iraqi government-led operation.
But Mr O'Brien said the UN anticipates 'a displacement wave of some 200,000 people over the coming weeks, with up to one million displaced in the course of the operation in a worst-case scenario'.
Of that one million, the UN believes 700,000 would require shelter and emergency assistance, he said.
The civilians fleeing from ISIS-controlled areas of Mosul to find safer locations while the battle rumbles on
Iraqi refugees are seen after they have arrived at Al Qayyarah town, which has been secured by Iraqi Army
Iraqi internally displaced civilians are seen as they have arrived at Al Qayyarah
Displaced people, who are fleeing from clashes in Al-hud village, south of Mosul, head to Qayyarah, during an operation to attack ISIS
COLUMBUS A proposed road use and maintenance agreement between Platte County and a company constructing a wind farm turned into a discussion on whether the project is being completed in an upfront manner.
Matt Robinette, project manager for Omaha-based Bluestem Energy Solutions, met with the Platte County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to ask that the agreement be signed for the project that includes the addition of three wind turbines near 220th Avenue and 445th Street southwest of Creston. It is an expansion of the Creston Ridge Wind Farm, a four-turbine project completed in December 2015.
The county signed a similar contract for the wind farm's first phase to protect road quality during and after turbine construction. That agreement made Bluestem responsible for any damage to county roads during the construction process or when repairs may have to be made to the turbines.
The new contract would be put in place prior to the installation of turbines for the expansion project. The turbines are expected to arrive later this year or early next year, Robinette said.
County supervisors tabled action on the contract until their next meeting after Deputy County Attorney Elizabeth Lay said she hadnt had time to look over the agreement.
But that didnt stop board members from voicing their concerns about the project.
Supervisor Tom Martens spoke out about his displeasure with the process, which he has also done in the past.
He said the county board was not notified that the initial Creston Ridge Wind Farm or its expansion were going to happen until agreements were already signed with landowners.
They are not being upfront with us. Theyre getting this stuff done, in my mind, behind the scenes and then coming forward to the public in the area and us. Im not happy about it, Martens said.
Bluestem has an agreement with Loup Public Power District to provide wind power to the local utility. Under its agreement with Nebraska Public Power District, Loup is allowed to purchase up to 10 percent of its customers peak electricity demands from outside sources.
Martens also said hearings were not held to gather input from the public. But Robinette said there were two meetings, one in Humphrey and another in Creston, that allowed the public to voice their opinion and concerns about the expansion.
Martens rebutted, saying the agreement had already been signed with property owners and Loup to move forward with the expansion before those meetings were held.
This (the meetings) should have been done prior to this project going on. It is not being done in the proper way. I feel were not being told the truth, Martens said.
Robinette said the process for such a project starts with securing land lease agreements to do a resource assessment of the site and come up with a construction estimate.
Once we have an idea of where we are going within their service territory, then that is when we have a public hearing, which is what we did with this project, he said.
Feedback from the public meetings can have an impact on a project, Robinette said.
Martens, who attended the Creston meeting in February, said protests from such meetings wouldnt stop projects from moving forward because agreements were already signed with landowners and Loup.
They are not going to back out of that, he said, adding that he thought the majority of people at the Creston meeting were against the project.
Bluestem doesnt need approval or support from the county for the wind farm because Platte County doesnt have zoning.
Supervisor Hollie Olk suggested zoning as an option in the future because she said the federal government is forcing power districts to get a certain percentage of their power from renewable resources.
NPPD is under pressure to meet these federal guidelines and Loup is under the same pressure, as well, she said, adding that she thinks it wont stop at 10 percent.
I think it will probably continue to be more and more and just slowly phasing it in. So if youre not happy with how this process is going, you should seriously consider a specialized permit zoning, Olk said.
Other board members said a way to prevent the project from moving forward would be to not approve the road use and maintenance agreement. The board is expected to consider the agreement at its Nov. 1 meeting.
In other business, the board:
tabled a discussion and possible action on a feasibility study on merging Platte County dispatch with Merrick County.
approved the purchase of two 2017 Caterpillar motor graders from Nebraska Machinery at a cost of $276,500 each.
A prominent Georgia attorney who says he accidentally shot and killed his wife last month was indicted in 1990 for firing into a car containing three teenagers, it was revealed this week.
Claud 'Tex' McIver claimed to have inadvertently fired a handgun inside his SUV on the evening of September 25, mortally wounding 63-year-old Diane McIver.
On Tuesday, the station WSB-TV uncovered court documents showing that more than 26 years prior to the deadly incident, Claud McIver was charged with three counts of aggravated assault, possession off a firearm and criminal damage to property.
No one was injured in the February 1990 incident in DeKalb County, and prosecutors ultimately decided to drop the charges against McIver.
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Indictment revealed: Claud 'Tex' McIver (left), who says he accidentally shot his beloved 'life partner,' Diane (right), had been indicted in 1990 for firing a gn at a car carrying teens
The victims in the shooting declined to pursue the case after McIver agreed to pay restitution for the damage to the vehicle.
McIver's attorney Stephen Maples, who also represented him in the 1990 case, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that his client acted in self-defense at the time, and that the two incidents were totally unrelated, completely different in fact, pattern and situation.
Police investigating the death of Diane McIver confirmed that they were aware of the 1990 shooting involving the womans husband. As of Wednesday morning, no charges have been filed in connection to the womans killing.
Maples told the paper that on the evening of February 27, 1990, Claud McIver returned home late to find his first wife alarmed about the presence of some strangers at the end of their cul-de-sac on Cravey Trail in the northeast Atlanta.
McIver retrieved his handgun from the bedroom and went outside. According to Maples, the attorney saw some people sitting in a car nearby, and when they spotted him, they drove toward him.
McIver told his lawyer at the time he felt threatened because the driver of the vehicle, a Ford Mustang, made no attempt to avoid running him over, forcing him to jump out of the way.
McIver fired to warning shots into the ground and a third shot into the trunk of the vehicle. Court documents stated that that lawyer struck the car twice.
One of the victims offered WSB-TV a slightly different version of events, saying that he and two friends were drinking beer on the night of the incident when Claud McIver emerged from his home and shot into the air. The teens jumped in the car to get away, at which point McIver fired into the car.
Police filed criminal charges against McIver in connection to the shooting and a grand jury indicted the lawyer, but nine months later, the district attorneys office decided to drop the charges, pointing to the fact that the parties in the case had already settled the matter civilly.
Speaking to Atlanta Journal Constitution by phone earlier this month, Mr McIver vehemently rejected the notion that he intentionally shot his second wife, Diane.
'I absolutely did not,' he said. 'She was my life partner. My life as I know it is ruined because of this accident.'
Police have been reluctant to divulge information related to this case, citing an ongoing investigation.
Tragic couple: Atlanta businesswoman Diane McIver, 63 (left), was reportedly shot dead by her husband, attorney Tex McIver (right), when a handgun accidentally discharged
Claud McIver has passed a polygraph test conducted by an examiner who was hired by his attorney, Stephen Maples, reported the station CBS46.
During the test, McIver was asked if he intentionally shot his wife, if he knowingly shot his wife, or if he was consciously doing anything with the gun that could have made it go off.
Richard Rackleff, who conducted the lie detector test, said that McIver replied, 'no,' to all three questions, and that the polygraph did not register that he was lying.
Rackleff said McIver appeared to be overcome with grief and cried several times while undergoing the test.
The polygraph expert also revealed that in his conversation with McIver prior to the test, the man told him that on the evening of September 25, he was dozing in the backseat of his Ford Explorer SUV when he woke up with a jolt, causing the gun in his lap to fire.
His wife was riding directly in front of him, and the bullet from the revolver struck her in the back, leaving her mortally wounded.
McIver's attorney told the Journal Constitution that the reason his client had the .38-caliber revolver in his lap in the first place was because earlier in the evening, as he and Diane were ridding home from their farm in Eatonton, they saw a group of people approach their vehicle.
Mr McIver then asked his wife to take the gun out of the center console and hand it to him for protection.
The husband placed the gun in a plastic grocery bag in his lap and fell sleep. As the SUV was passing by Piedmont Park, Claud McIver abruptly woke up.
Describing that fateful moment to the paper, Mr McIver said: 'I lurched and the gun fired. I must have forgotten it was in my lap. I saw a flash.'
The widower told the paper he is consumed by grief and guilt, and his only desire is to join his wife.
Lingering questions: It is unclear whether the gun fired as Mr McIver, pictured on the left outside Atlanta police headquarters, was removing it from a plastic bag, or when the SUV hit a bump in the road
Im down to crying 25 times a day,' he added.
Mark Guilbeau, an investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that 63-year-old Diane McIver's cause of death has been listed as homicide the death of a person at the hands of another.
In early October, Bill Crane, a friend of the Atlanta couple acting as a family spokesman, told the paper that Claud McIver had retrieved his handgun, a .38-caliber snub-nose revolver, because they were concerned about unrest in Atlanta related to the Black Lives Matter movement and feared of getting carjacked.
But Mr McIver on Thursday denied ever mentioning Black Lives Matter, reported 11Alive.
Boss: Diane McIver was president of Corey Airport Services, an Atlanta-based marketing company where she had worked for more than 40 years
Crane also told the paper that the revolver was in Mr McIver'a lap when their 2013 Ford Expedition hit a bump in the road and the weapon accidentally discharged, killing Diane.
It was a tragic accident, he said.
Atlanta Police Sgt Warren Pickard on Tuesday called into question Crane's account of what went on inside the McIvers' car that night, saying that the friend 'wasn't in the car, so he is not a witness to what happened.'
Pickard declined to offer any more details on the investigation, only saying that the case is 'more complicated' than first thought.
In an earlier interview with WGCL, Mr Crane had said that the handgun fired as Claud McIver was taking it out of a plastic shopping bag.
Police said they are now in the process of conducting repeat interviews of witnesses to the shooting.
Sometimes you have to question the person three or four times to get the answer you need, said Sgt Pickard. We are going to let those interview sessions lead us in the right direction.
Diane McIver was president of Corey Airport Services, a successful Atlanta-based marketing company where she had worked for more than 40 years.
Pied a terre: Diane and Tex McIver own an apartment in a luxury complex in Buckhead, Atlanta (pictured)
Her husband is a partner in the Atlanta office of Fisher Phillips LLP specializing in labor and employment law. He is also a vice president of the Georgia State Election Board, and as of August, a member of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Gun Violence.
The fatal incident took place at around 10.40pm on September 25 as Diane and Tex McIver were riding in the 2013 Ford Expedition from their sprawling farm in rural Putnam County to their apartment in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.
Sad irony: Mr McIver is a member of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Gun Violence
The SUV was reportedly riding along Piedmont Avenue, past Piedmont Park, when Claud McIver became concerned about carjackers after seeing some people make their way towards their SUV and asked for the gun.
After the shooting, Diane was rushed to Emory University Hospital, where she succumbed to her injures shortly before 1am Monday.
An incident report that was put out by the department last Wednesday made no mention of any other occupants of the Ford SUV other than the victim, but Mr McIver said the driver of the vehicle was a close family friend named Dani Jo.
'This is one of those situations were working through very slowly,' police Sgt. Warren Pickard said. 'We want to get it right.'
Diane was a vivacious, beautiful, entertaining woman who was a lot of fun to around, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told the station 11Alive.
Mervyn Conn, 82, faces prison after being convicted of two rapes and indecent assaults in the Seventies and Eighties
An 'arrogant' music promoter who worked with the Beatles, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton used his fame to rape two girls aged 15 and 16.
Mervyn Conn, 82, faces prison after being convicted of two rapes and indecent assaults in the Seventies and Eighties.
It can now also be revealed Conn served a two month prison sentence in 1989 for sexually assaulting a secretary at his offices but emerged from semi-retirement in 2012.
He was arrested at Gatwick airport in 2014 when the fresh claims were made.
The court heard how the country music mogul Conn hired the 15-year-old girl to dress as a cowgirl at a Country and Western music festival he promoted at Wembley Arena in the 1970s.
She described him as 'arrogant' as he boasted about his connections to the Beatles and showed off cash.
The victim, now 56, broke down in tears and became extremely distressed in a police interview that was recorded and played to jurors.
She said: 'He was a dominating person, very egotistical. He had this bouffant hair, smelt like cigars, looked almost like he was in the mafia.'
The 'arrogant' music promoter who worked with the Beatles, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton used his fame to rape two girls aged 15 and 16
She said she was employed by Conn as a hostess in 1976, and was made to hand out brochures to festival goers, dressed as a cowgirl.
She insisted the father-of-four knew her age because she gave her date of birth during an interview.
The woman said she was approached by Conn while she was working at the festival and he gave her a cloth bag that he wanted her to bring to his dressing room at the end of the event.
Once there, she claims he took advantage of her, groping her breasts and forcing her to perform a sex act on him.
The alleged victim said she was also summoned to to Conn's head office in Charing Cross, central London, on a number of occasions by telegram.
On her second visit to his office, she said she went straight from school in her uniform and Conn showed her a wad of money as if he was 'showing off'.
Conn pleaded not guilty but was convicted at Kingston crown court of one count of indecent assault and two of rape
Conn was described him as 'arrogant' as he boasted about his connections to the Beatles and showed off cash
Once other staff had left she said Conn 'talked about many people like Crystal Gayle' and forced himself upon her again.
'He was forceful and aggressive,' she said. 'I felt slightly bruised and shocked. It seemed to happen quite quickly.'
On her third visit to his office she claimed Conn insisted on taking her home so he could show off his Rolls-Royce. He joked how a person 'wasn't alive' because of a scratch of the car.
But instead he took her to his gated house in Wimbledon, south-west London, and raped her in the marital bed next to a photograph of him and his wife, the court heard.
Mark Milliken-Smith QC, prosecuting, told Kingston Crown Court: 'She described feeling like a rag doll, feeling out of her body, dumb struck and holding back tears.'
Conn took a 15-year-old girl back to his Wimbledon house in his Rolls Royce (pictured) and raped her in his marital bed next to a photograph of his wife
Nine years later, in 1985, Conn, then aged 51, raped a 16-year-old girl at his London office.
Conn at met her in a grocer's in Southfields, south west London, and left his number, promising concert tickets if she contacted him.
When she went to collect the tickets she was raped but Conn would still visit her at her Saturday job and tell her to visit him at his office.
Mr Milliken-Smith said: 'She felt she had no choice, that she couldn't say no. He of course was 51, she 16. He was a famous and powerful man.
'He had effectively tricked this young 16-year-old-girl into coming to his office under the guise of obtaining free tickets for a concert.
'He forced himself upon her, fully aware that she was not consenting, utterly unconcerned with her age and the impact which his actions had upon her there and then, nor for any concern for the long term effects his conduct would have.
'He thought only of his own sexual gratification.
'She had made it absolutely plain to him that she did not consent and he knew that full well - he couldn't have cared less.'
Conn joked how a person 'wasn't alive' because of a scratch on his Rolls Royce'
Conn pleaded not guilty but was convicted at Kingston crown court of one count of indecent assault and two of rape.
He was acquitted of two counts of indecent assault and one of assault with intent to commit buggery.
Conn, whose wife supported him in court, will be sentenced on Friday October 28.
Detective Constable Ashley Lees who led the investigation said: 'I am very pleased with the outcome of the trial.
'I'd like to pay tribute to the victims who have had to recount very traumatic details of offences as part of this case and the strength they have shown during the investigation.
'Historical allegations of this nature are treated seriously by the Met and I hope this result encourages others to have the confidence to come forward if they have been victims of historical sexual abuse.'
With an early-morning slip of the tongue, Donald Trump's campaign manager said Wednesday that the Republican presidential nominee has 'a five-point plan to defeat Islam.'
Kellyanne Conway made the comment on MSNBC, drawing howls of outrage from officials in Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Sparring with host Stephanie Ruhle about Trump's incendiary statements during his high-energy campaign rallies, Conway tried to shift the subject to his policy proposals.
'You should cover the news as you see it,' she told Ruhle. 'In addition, though ... I'm saying he's also giving plans. He gave a 10-point Veterans Administration reform plan, five point plan to defeat Islam, four-point plan for middle-class tax relief.'
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Donald Trump presidential campaign manager Kellyanne Conway goofed Wednesday morning on MSNBC and said her boss has 'a five-point plan to defeat Islam'
Trump laid out a five-point plan in August for combating radical Islamic terrorism, not the Islamic religion itself
'Yesterday was his multi-point plan to, I think to as he says "drain the swamp." The number-one trending term on Twitter yesterday, "drain the swamp",' Conway added. 'And I think that's the basis, that's the essence of his candidacy.'
Clinton senior spokesman Jesse Ferguson vented on Twitter: 'Um. @KellyannePolls just said Donald Trump has a 5 point plan to defeat Islam. Defeat Islam?'
Ofirah Yheskel, the Clinton campaign's Wisconsin press secretary, tweeted that she 'nearly spit out my coffee.'
'@kellyannepolls just said on @msnbc that @realDonaldTrump has a 5-point plan to defeat Islam,' she added. 'Not ISIS. Islam.'
After her appearance on-air, Conway clarified to DailyMail.com that she was referring to a plan to defeat radical islamic terrorists that Trump laid out months ago.
'He released that I'm going to say [in] July, right before or after the convention. He had a big speech about it,' she said. 'His five-point plan for defeating radical Islamic terrorism. It's probably on the website ... but he released it months ago.'
Hillary Clinton's senior spokesman Jesse Ferguson (top) and Wisconsin press secretary Ofirah Yheskel (bottom) went ballistic when Conway made her on-air goof
Trump did deliver a mid-August speech in Youngstown, Ohio, describing in detail his plan to combat global terrorism.
He said he would end America's involvement in 'regime change' and 'nation-building' projects and win the 'ideological war' against Middle Eastern radicals.
Trump also pledged to reform America's immigration system to screen out jihadis, create a 'Commission on Radical Islam' to recruit moderate Muslims who will work with national security agencies, and encourage a national attitude that takes 'pride' in immigrants' assimilation into American culture.
Trump has spoken of his desire to root out 'radical Islamic terrorism' and to 'knock the hell out of ISIS' the Middle Eastern terror army but he hasn't articulated a plan to 'defeat' the religion, either in the U.S. or globally.
He did express a desire in December 2015 for a temporary 'total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States' in the wake of terror attacks in the U.S. and France.
That statement is still on his website. It drew howls from liberals, including President Obama, who insisted that America shouldn't have a 'religious test' for immigration.
Trump later morphed his policy proposal into a nation-specific form of what he called 'extreme vetting' that would target immigrants from countries that have become terror hot spots.
Conway appeared on MSNBC at 6:40 a.m. local time. By then she had already appeared on two other morning shows, in a time zone three hours removed from both major presidential campaigns' campaign's New York City headquarters.
Like other networks, MSNBC was broadcasting from Las Vegas, the site of Wednesday night's final presidential debate.
The time shift had reporters, anchors and their on-air political guests waking up in the middle of the night.
Donald Trump arrives in Las Vegas today to face a WALL of taco trucks as campaigners line up to deride his famous plan to build a huge barrier along the Mexican border.
The Republican candidate's opponents are lining up dozens of taco trucks in front of a Trump-owned hotel as he prepares for tonight's third and final presidential debate.
Yvanna Cancela, of the Culinary Workers Union, told NBC: 'We did not come up with the idea for the wall, Donald Trump came up with building the wall.
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Donald Trump will arrive in Las Vegas today to face a wall of taco trucks (pictured) set up by campaigners mocking his plan to build a huge barrier along the border
The idea for the voter registration stunt came after Marco Gutierrez, the founder of Latinos for Trump, told a reporter that if illegal immigration continued: 'You're going to have taco trucks on every corner'
Pili Tobar, a communications director for Latino Victory, tweeted photos of the campaigners (pictured) who lined up dozens of taco trucks in front of a Trump-owned hotel as he prepared for tonight's final presidential debate
The group want to encourage people to sign up and vote in the election on November 8. Yvanna Cancela, of the Culinary Workers Union, told NBC : 'We did not come up with the idea for the wall, Donald Trump came up with building the wall
'We want to show him that walls don't divide us, and rather what he has done is uniting us. And when I say "us" I mean it as in every group that Trump has vilified: Muslims, women, immigrants and workers.
Ana Navarro, who describes herself as 'Nicaraguan by birth. American by choice' tweeted this
'We are all coming together to make sure that Donald Trump never becomes president,' said Ms Cancela, whose Local 226 represents 57,000 workers in Las Vegas's hospitality industry.
Ms Cancela pointed out that Trump had refused to negotiate with the union at his Trump International Las Vegas hotel despite it winning a ballot among workers who wanted it to represent them.
Donald Trump is trailing in the polls and, like a boxer way behind on points, he is expected to come out swinging in tonight's debate
The GOP candidate has promised to build a wall along the border and to force Mexico to pay for it.
Although Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has said they would never pay for it, Trump has not dropped the policy and he even maintains it is a popular idea with Latino Americans.
But Hillary Clinton is expected to retain the support of the majority of Latinos - in 2012 a whopping 71 percent of Hispanic voters sided with Barack Obama, over his Republican opponent Mitt Romney.
The idea for today's stunt came after Marco Gutierrez, the founder of Latinos for Trump, told a reporter that if illegal immigration continued: 'You're going to have taco trucks on every corner'.
As if that was a bad thing!
His remark was mocked by many and they organized for 35 taco trucks to line up in the hotel's parking lot, all of them offering Mexican food.
A cardboard cutout of Donald Trump is turned against the wall at the headquarters of the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas
Elvis Presley impersonator Eddie Powers walks past a sign in Las Vegas sign as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump prepare for the final presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center
Pili Tobar, from the Clinton-supporting Latino Victory Project, said: 'Having these taco trucks around, having music playing and at the same time registering people to vote - and obviously people here want to vote against Donald Trump - there is a celebration of culture happening.
Marco Rubio has shared an old photograph of his Democratic rival Patrick Murphy appearing to 'grope' a woman, in an attempt to secure his Florida Senate seat.
Rubio referenced the picture during Monday's senate debate in Orlando, defending himself against attacks from his opponent in the wake of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's recent controversies.
'Tonight that youve implied that I dont somehow respect women or that somehow Im someone who condones the outrageous behavior that the nominee of my party or others may have conducted against women,' Rubio said, the Miami Herald reports.
Marco Rubio has shared an old photograph of his Democratic rival Patrick Murphy appearing to 'grope' a woman, in an attempt to secure his Florida Senate seat
The picture shows Murphy with one arm around a woman's shoulder and his other hand on her breast. The Democrat Senate candidate says the picture was taken while he was at college, and the woman in the photo was his girlfriend at the time
'Congressman, youre the one that posted a picture four years ago on Facebook of you groping a woman. Thats inappropriate behavior.'
The newspaper reports Murphy was thrown off by the comment, and could only muster a reply about Trump.
He told reporters next day the picture was of him and a college girlfriend, before putting a new twist on Michelle Obama's now-famous line about Trump.
'When Donald Trump goes low, Marco Rubio goes lower,' Murphy said, according to the Herald.
'Rubio showed just how desperate he was last night by trying to wiggle, and got himself in this knot about Donald Trump.
'Hes trying to pivot and change the subject. It was very clear to me how uncomfortable Marco Rubio was when talking about Donald Trump and someone whos bragging about sexually assaulting women.'
Murphy was forced to defend himself over the photo on Monday, after Rubio mentioned it during the Florida Senate debate
Rubio and Murphy are locked in a tight race for the seat, with the Republican holding a lead of just four percentage points
The Rubio camp instead used the picture to claim Murphy is a hypocrite for attacking Trump and Rubio's reaction to the scandal.
The Senate race between the two bitter rivals is not over, with the latest polls giving Rubio an edge of just four percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics.
The photo controversy comes after Rubio refused to pull his support of Trump, despite admitting he wishes there were better options in the presidential race.
'I wish we had better choices for President. But I do not want Hillary Clinton to be our next President. And therefore my position has not changed,' Rubio's statement read.
'I ran against Donald Trump. And while I respect that voters chose him as the GOP nominee, I have never hesitated to oppose his policies I disagree with.
Another witness, Mark Wilson, was in a DUI 'holding pit' when Harris arrived at the police station. He was 'pretty nonchalant and didn't appear sad or upset,' Wilson recalled
In the weeks before Cooper Harris died, Ross Harris was texting back and forth with Caitlin Hickey Floyd, a young Atlanta woman he met in the social app 'Whisper.'
She was single at the time she met him online.
'I am so horny' and 'too much of a sexual freak,' Harris texted her only days before Cooper died, it was revealed in Wednesday's testimony.
And while Cooper was left in the boiling hot SUV on shortly after lunch on June 18, Harris asked to see pictures of the woman naked. He said, 'Can I see your t**s?' she told the court.
She sent him a picture of her breasts. Harris replied, 'Mmmmm.'
'I asked if he wanted to play with them. He said, 'F*** yes I do,' Floyd continued.
She testified that when first meeting him on the social app, Harris admitted he was married.
'I asked if he had a conscience. He said 'No.' He never said he had a child,' she said.
Jurors were shown numerous messages sent by Harris on June 18, 2014.
A large display screen in the center of the courtroom glowed with text messages and website links from Ross Harris' iPhone 5s -- messages the accused killer likely never thought would become so public.
Caitlin Hickey Floyd testifies about her sexting conversations with Ross Harris in the weeks leading up to Cooper's death
Harris was in court again Wednesday, as an engineer described the heat conditions inside the SUV where he left his infant son Cooper
One text to the Whisper site read, "I love my son and all but we both need escapes," according to Det. Ronson Smith, a Cobb County Police investigator who extracted pages of data from the phone's memory.
Smith's evidence showed Harris texted a contact known as "alwaysinmyfeelings" at 9:15 a.m. that morning, just a few minutes after ordering breakfast at the Chick-fil-A restaurant near the day care center as well as Harris' office.
Harris drove into his office's car park at 9:25 and entered the building known as the 'Tree House' two minutes later.
Cooper would stay in the SUV, strapped into his car seat with no means of escape, as he died later in the day, according to evidence presented sat the trial.
It was hot and sunny that day, and Harris drove to his workplace with his infant son Cooper in the back.
The ride from Chick-fil-A, where the pair breakfasted, to Harris's Home Depot office was likely air-conditioned and comfortable for the father and son, on the morning of June 18, 2014 in Marietta, Georgia.
But once Harris had left the family SUV - with his son inside - and headed into the office, the temperature inside the vehicle rose steadily, the jury heard Wednesday.
'I love my son and all but we both need escapes', Harris texted on the day that Cooper died
Data recovered from Harris's iPhone 5S that showed numerous text messages on June 18, 2014
By 1 p.m., as Harris worked inside his cool office, the temperature inside his car where Cooper had been trapped had risen to over 100 degrees as it sat in direct sunlight.
By 3:30, the car seat that held Cooper was 125 degrees, according to evidence presented Wednesday as his father's murder trial continued.
Those were the findings of Dr. David Brani, an engineer who placed temperature gauges inside the Harris SUV and on Cooper's car seat on July 8 and measured the conditions throughout the day.
The weather and temperatures on the testing day were similar to the day Cooper died, Brani said.
Harris is charged with intentionally leaving his 22-month-old son Cooper in the hot car to die.
Brani said he drove the SUV from the police evidence impound facility for 30 minutes to the Home Depot lot, using the air-conditioning settings in place when Harris was arrested several weeks before.
Brani parked the SUV in the Home Depot lot Harris used on the day Cooper died and set up the sensors that tracked interior and external temperatures from 9 a.m. until 4:14 p.m., he told jurors.
The thermal coupler sensors recorded conditions on the car seat, Brani explained.
Defense Attorney Carlos Rodriguez questioned Detective Ronson Smith about text messages extracted from Ross Harris phone.
A defense attorney for Harris points to his SUV in the parking lot
Harris was in tears in court on Tuesday, as a medical examiner described Cooper's 'prolonged' and 'agonizing' death.
Former Cobb County Medical Examiner Brian Frist detailed Cooper's final hours, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying his death would have been a slow one.
'I believe he went through various stages as he was passing,' Frist said. 'He would've experienced nausea, a headache, dehydration, seizures, anxiety.'
Harris wept as jurors were shown 34 autopsy photographs of Cooper's body. The child died of hyperthermia after he was left in the SUV for roughly eight hours on that June day while his father, a Home Depot worker, sat in his office nearby.
Harris says he did not realize he had left his son in the vehicle until it was too late. At one point he stopped by the car to drop off some light bulbs. By that point Cooper had already been in there for around four hours.
Frist could not say with any certainty whether Cooper would have been alive by that time.
Another witness, Mark Wilson, told the court Tuesday that he was in the Cobb County Police 'holding pit' on a DUI charge when Harris arrived.
Harris said, 'What's up, guys?' Wilson recalled.
He was 'pretty nonchalant and didn't appear sad or upset,' he added, saying that Harris never told Wilson why he had been arrested.
They sat beside each other in the large holding area and engaged in 'small talk' for two to three hours as they waited to be processed into the system, Wilson said.
Video from the jail showed Harris sitting in a chair near the front with his arm on the back, in a seemingly relaxed way.
Wilson learned the reason for Harris' arrest from newscasts the next day. When prosecutors asked if Harris' behavior in the holding area was consistent with someone who had just lost a child, Wilson replied, 'Absolutely not.'
Wilson admitted to selling his story to the National Enquirer the following month.
Cobb County Prosecutor Jesse Evans questioned mechanical engineer Dr. David Brani on Wednesday about the interior temperatures recorded inside the SUV. By 3:30pm the car seat that held Cooper was 125 degrees, the court heard
Harris broke down in tears in court on Tuesday as a medical examiner detailed the final hours of his son Cooper
The car seat in which Cooper was left on the hot summer's day in June 2014
Jurors have had to endure hard-hitting photos of Cooper's body after he was removed from the car
Harris also cried in court two weeks ago during opening statements, when his defense attorney Maddox Kilgore told the jury that ' Cooper's death was an accident, it was always an accident.'
But prosecutors say he deliberately left his son in the car as he wanted him out of his life.
On Monday an Alabama teenager testified that she exchanged sexually explicit messages with Harris.
'C' was 15 years old when she and Harris began texting each other, sending explicit images of their genitals over their mobile phones.
The woman, now 19, testified Monday that she and Harris found each other on Whisper, an anonymous website, in May 2014.
Harris's son Cooper was discovered dead a month later.
On Monday, the young woman identified as 'C' said she had initially lied about her age to Harris, posing as an 18-year-old.
'I love older guys,' she posted on the website.
Harris soon responded with a photo of himself as well as a graphic image of his penis, which was introduced as evidence Monday.
'I apologize,' Cobb Prosecutor Chuck Boring told the jury as he displayed the image of Harris' genitals to jurors.
The teen girl told the court: 'He told me he wanted me to make him a naughty old man.'
During testimony, prosecutor Chuck Boring showed jurors the photo of Harris' penis that was sent to the girl.
Jaqueline Robledo also described using multiple apps to communicate with Harris in 2013 when she testified on Monday.
Jaqueline Robledo (pictured in court on Monday) also described using multiple apps to communicate with Harris in 2013. She said she was 19 when they first started sexting after she posted on the app Whisper about the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' movie. They had sex at Harris's house in 2013
Justin Ross Harris with his son Cooper, who died aged 22 months after being left in his father's car
Robledo said she was 19 when they first started sexting after she posted on Whisper about the Fifty Shades of Grey movie.
Robledo told the court their conversation quickly turned sexual and they eventually agreed to meet at his place, where they had sex.
'It was at night, and it was at his house,' and he wasn't the least bit nervous, she said.
They maintained their friendship following the tryst, and Harris also revealed to her that he 'had relations' with a man while on vacation the following year in 2014. Harris met that man on the Whisper site as well, according to her testimony.
Last week Daniela Doerr, a former prostitute, told the court that Harris had sex with her three times in the weeks before his son died.
Harris, 35, had contacted her after finding an ad that listed her services, she said.
Police located her after discovering her number on Harris' cell phone following his arrest for Cooper's death.
'He had no presence, he was just dumpy. It was vanilla sex,' she told the court.
Doerr (pictured) distinctly remembered Harris as a 'repeat' client when police showed her his photograph, she testified on Friday during the seventh day of Harris' murder trial
Detective Ray Yager testified that if Harris had used his computers to search for information on 'hot car deaths' neither he nor his colleges could confirm it, despite investigators' claims
The alleged searches of 'children dying in hot cars' that Harris had reportedly admitted to police couldn't be verified on any of his numerous computers, cell phones or external hard drives, Yager explained to the jury
Cooper's death came under public scrutiny after investigators said they found evidence Harris had researched child deaths inside vehicles just weeks before his son perished.
But on Friday Detective Ray Yager testified that if Harris had used his computers to search for information on 'hot car deaths' neither he nor his colleagues could confirm it.
Yager, a computer forensics expert for the Cobb County police, had been alerted that Harris and his wife Leanna had researched child deaths online.
But the alleged searches of 'children dying in hot cars' that Harris had reportedly admitted to police couldn't be verified on any of his numerous computers, cell phones or external hard drives, Yager explained.
'No notable files' were detected with key words including 'murder, child, cruelty to or in-car deaths, surviving prison, murder, homicide, divorce, alimony or legal defense,' according to Yager.
The only topic revealed was a Reddit link to 'child free', he added.
And on Monday Harris' college friend revealed that the story behind that link may not be as terrible as it first seemed.
Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore cross examines teen girl. 'He told me he wanted me to make him a naughty old man,' the girl told the court on Monday
James Alex Hall, who also works with Harris at Home Depot, testified that he sent Harris the link.
Harris clicked on the site and quickly replied 'Grossness', defense attoney Maddox Kilgore showed the jury.
That evidence contradicts the prosecution's assertion that it was Harris himself who initiated the search, court observers noted.
In opening statements two weeks ago, prosecutor Chuck Boring told the jury Harris wanted a new life without children, and that desire may have served as motivation to allow his son to die in his hot car.
Prosecutors previously said Harris was messaging six women the day Cooper died. He told one woman on Whisper: 'I love my son and all but we both need escapes.'
They are arguing that Harris intentionally killed Cooper by leaving him for more than seven hours in a vehicle parked outside his workplace.
Harris' lawyers called the death accidental.
An indictment filed against Harris in September 2014 listed the following eight charges: malice murder, two counts of felony murder, cruelty to children in the first degree, cruelty to children in the second degree, criminal attempt to commit a felony of sexual exploitation of children, and two counts of dissemination of harmful material to minors.
He faces life in prison if convicted of murder.
Hail to the Queen!
Elizabeth Hurley does not want to see Americans getting 'royally teabagged' in the wake of next month's presidential election, and has just the solution.
In an upcoming promotion for third season of her E! series The Royals, Queen Hurley lets it be known that Americans are welcome to return to 'merry old England' should things not go their way next month.
The cheeky campaign then ends with a slogan pointing fun at Donald Trump - 'Make America Great Britain again.'
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Hail to the Queen: Elizabeth Hurley pokes fun at the upcoming election and Donald Trump in a new ad campaign for season three of her show The Royals
'It's been a few centuries since your Boston Tea party mishap, and look who's getting royally teabagged now,' says Hurley in the spot
'Happy election season y'all! How's that whole president thing working out for you? Missing home are we?' asks Hurley, who plays Queen Helena in the series, at the beginning of the new ad.
'It's been a few centuries since your Boston Tea party mishap, and look who's getting royally teabagged now.'
She then goes on to say: 'Paul Revere warned everyone, "The British are coming!"
Now I'm warning you, your next president is coming.'
It is then that she reassures all Americans that they can come back any time before saying: 'We'll be expecting you.'
Season three of The Royals will premiere December 4 on E! (Hurley above with her fellow cast members)
It ends with the show's new tagline for this season, 'Make America Great Britain again'
Then, at the end, Hurley stares directly into the camera and says: 'God save me.'
The Royals is currently running an ad on the homepage of DailyMail.com.
The third season of the show will premiere December 4 on E!.
Filming in that season just wrapped last week, something Hurley commemorated by posting a photo of herself and actress Alexandra Park on her Instagram.
The mysterious leader of Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been reported to have been killed or seriously injured at least 10 times in the last year and a half.
His evasiveness led to the US Government sticking a $10million bounty on his head for anything that would lead to his capture or death.
It turned up nothing, though it is understood that after 13 years as an active terrorist he is cornered in Mosul as the battle continues to liberate the city.
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The mysterious leader of Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been reported to have been killed or seriously injured at least 10 times in the last year and a half
Unlike other leaders of huge terror groups, such as Osama Bin Laden, ISIS head honcho prefers to stay under the radar.
He has only appeared in one video - in Mosul last year - and there are only two authenticated photographs of him.
This ability to go undetected coupled with his alleged likening for wearing masks when addressing his commanders has earned him the nickname The Invisible Sheikh.
There is good reason for his incognito way of life.
In 2006, one of his predecessors and leader of vicious jihadist group in Iraq Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was tracked down and was killed in a US bombing raid in 2006.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of Islamic State, is shown in a US State Department wanted poster
Zarqawi, like Al-Qaeda's Bin Laden, was a showman, and it caught up with him.
Baghdadi is credited with transforming the breakaway Al-Qaeda group turning it into the independent ISIS group that is arguably the most powerful and wealthiest jihadist organisation in the world.
He started life as Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim and is thought to have been born in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in 1971.
Though there is no official confirmation, he is understood to have gained a doctorate from a university in Baghdad having read Islamic studies.
His classmates described him as a shy, unimpressive religious scholar and a man who abstained from violence.
But by 2003, he was a fully-fledged jihadist, living in a small room attached to mosque.
He had called this his home for a decade.
Reports suggest he was a cleric in a mosque in the city around the time of the US-led invasion that year.
Some believe he was already a militant jihadist during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Others believe he was radicalised during the four years he was held at Camp Bucca, a US facility in southern Iraq where many al-Qaeda commanders were detained.
His first involvement in an organised terror group came when he founded the Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah (JJASJ) with his friends in 2003.
Here he was given his first role of responsibility - as head of the sharia committee.
By 2006, his group had joined the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq, which was then an Al-Qaeda branch.
The terror group was renamed Islamic State in Iraq the same year, and Baghdadi served again on the sharia committee.
By this time, it is thought he was being mentored as a potential member of the jihadist organisation's top brass.
He started life as Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim and is thought to have been born in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in 1971
His time came in 2010 when he emerged as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
It was the group that became Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) in the same year and rose to prominence during the attempted merger with al-Nusra Front in Syria.
ISIS as we know it was born and Baghdadi's bloody reign of terror was underway.
Between March and April 2011, he had allegedly masterminded 23 attacks south of Baghdad.
He had a penchant for suicide bombings and it took less than a year for the US to officially designate Baghdadi as a terrorist, offering a $10million reward for information leading to his capture or death.
The White House issued a statement with the reward, saying: 'Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Du'a, is the senior leader of the terrorist organisation, the Islamic State.
'Reflecting its greater regional ambitions, al-Qaeda in Iraq changed its name in 2013 to ISIS and stepped up its attacks across Syria and Iraq.
'ISIS attacks are calculated, coordinated, and part of a strategic campaign. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is in charge of overseeing all operations and is currently based in Syria.
Iraq's Interior Ministry claims this picture shows Baghdadi, the head Islamic State
'Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has taken personal credit for a series of terrorist attacks in Iraq since 2011 and claimed credit for the June 2013 operations against the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, the March 2013 suicide bombing assault on the Ministry of Justice, among other attacks against Iraqi Security Forces and Iraqi citizens going about their daily lives.'
Under Baghdadi's leadership ISIS thugs have shocked the world with their sadistic and savage murder of thousands of people in the Middle East and Europe.
Away from the battleground, there are conflicting reports of his private life.
Some believe him to have three wives, some say he has children and last year he was reported to have married a German teenager.
A woman claiming to be his ex-wife Saja al-Dulaimi told how she met and married who she thought was a university lecturer, only to discover seven years later he was 'the most dangerous man in the world'.
Lifting the lid on what she described as their 'shallow' and unhappy marriage, Dulaimi told how Baghdadi had a 'mysterious personality' and she dared not have discussions with him.
'I didn't love him,' she told Swedish newspaper Expressen.
'He was an enigmatic person. You couldn't have a discussion or hold a normal conversation with him He just asked about things and told me to fetch things. He gave orders, nothing more.'
Al-Dulaimi told how al-Baghdadi would disappear for days at a time but she had no suspicions of his involvement in the Syrian resistance while they were together.
'He was a normal family man,' she added. 'How he could become emir of the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world is a mystery.'
She said that after her first husband died in an Iraqi resistance group her uncle approached her father about a potential new husband looking for a widow.
Al-Dulaimi then moved her and her young twin boys in with al-Baghdadi and his first wife and her children, an arrangement she described as 'tough' in such a small space.
Her children looked at the ISIS leader as their 'idol', she said, but al-Dulaimi told how she fled from him after just a few months while pregnant with a daughter, Hagar.
She claims the last time she spoke to her ex-husband was in 2009 when he asked her to come back and she refused.
Facebook has 1.7 billion users and the IRS is chasing it for $5 billion in tax
Zuckerberg was 'hungry to learn' how he could influence public policy
She said Mark Zuckerberg was keen to meet Podesta to discuss issues
Schmidt also headed effort to store credit card information, accept donations, and get email addresses
Effort also included plan to 'raising lots of money' and creating 'excellent' content
Internal memo reveals Google founder led team to develop 'back-end' of the web site, emails obtained from hack of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta show
Leaked emails reveal Hillary Clinton's campaign had Google founder Eric Schmidt leading a team to develop what would become the campaign web site
By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM IN LAS VEGAS AND CHRIS SUMMERS FOR MAILONLINE
When Hillary Clinton wanted a new campaign website, she went to the top enlisting former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to head up a technology effort, hacked emails reveal.
Schmidt oversaw an effort that involved developing the early 'back-end' stages of a web site that would be a powerful tool to promote Clinton's message and harness the efforts of volunteers while storing information on supporters.
The details of the effort are outlined in a strategy memo authored by Clinton digital strategist Teddy Goff and sent to Clinton, according to documents posted on Wikileaks that were hacked from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's emails.
The memo went to now campaign manager Robby Mook, longtime aide Cheryl Mills, campaign chairman John Podesta whose emails got hacked and Barack Obama campaign guru David Plouffe.
BIG GUNS: Hacked emails reveal former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's efforts to help the Clinton campaign develop its website
'I have been kept apprised of the work being done by Eric Schmidts group and others working directly and indirectly with your team. On the whole, I am comfortable with where we stand and confident in our roadmap to launch day and beyond,' Goff wrote Clinton in October 2014. The memo was reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
'We have selected a team of developers, unaffiliated with Eric, to build the front-end of your website a relatively simple process that does not need to have begun yet,' he continued, saying he could use former employees of whom he had the 'highest confidence.'
Goff wrote that 'we have instructed Eric's team to build the most important products in their portfolio specifically, the back-end of the website, the ability to accept donations (along with associated features, most importantly the ability to store credit card information), and the ability to acquire email addresses first.'
Among the 'PRIORITIES' listed at the top of the memo were: 'Raising lots of money,' 'Creating and distributing excellent content, for both supportive and persuadable audiences,' and 'Recruiting, engaging, and organizing volunteers and prospective volunteers.'
HUNGRY: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was 'hungry to learn' about 'how to move the needle' the needle on public policy, and sought a meeting with John Podesta
Hillary Clinton received an update on digital strategy, a few months after former State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills was lining up a meeting with Eric Schmidt
Clinton campaign chair Robby Mook was also included in emails meant to line up meetings with Schmidt
The memo also states that 'Working relationships with Google, Facebook, Apple, and other technology companies were important to us in 2012 and should be even more important to you in 2016, given their still-ascendent positions in the culture.'
'These partnerships can bring a range of benefits to a campaign, from access to talent and prospective donors to early knowledge of beta products and invitations to participate in pilot programs. We have begun having discreet conversations with some of these companies to get a sense of their priorities for the coming cycle, but would encourage you, as soon as your technology leadership is in place, to initiate more formal discussions.'
Schmidt, the CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company, has been a frequent advisor to President Obama and Democrats.
In another Wikileaks document released last week, Podesta wrote Schmidt in April of 2014 trying to set up meetings with campaign chief Robby Mook and longtime advisor Cheryl Mills.
Clinton was presented with the digital strategy memo in 2014, when her presidential campaign was still being formed
'Robby is in Australia. Back the 23rd. We could arrange a call before or wait and do a meeting shortly after return,' Podesta wrote. 'Cheryl Mills is in town and I think it would be good for you two to talk. Her office is in Bethesda but probably could come down this afternoon. Up for that?'
Schmidt responded that, 'Cheryl would be great to see; I have a meeting with President from 11 to 1145 and free after that all afternoon any time in the afternoon that is convenient for her is good for me.'
The high-tech planning wasn't just academic. According to the memo, 'Quick Donate' functions in the 2012 campaign raised an estimated $115 million incrementally.
Schmidt wasn't the only top tech exec closely inside the campaign orbit.
Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg sought advice from the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign about how he could get involved in politics and said he was 'hungry to learn', according to other leaked documents.
Emails from Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to John Podesta, published by Wikileaks, suggested he was keen to influence public policy on issues like immigration, education and scientific research.
In one email, in August last year, Sandberg wrote to Podesta: 'Mark is meeting with people to learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and social action and it's hard to imagine someone better placed or more experienced than you to help him.'
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, left, endorsed Hillary Clinton in July. The leaked email suggested she contacted Clinton's campaign manager on behalf of Zuckerberg
She writes: 'As you may know, he's young and hungry to learn - always in learning mode - and is early in his career when it comes to his philanthropic efforts.'
Sandberg said Zuckerberg was keen to meet people who could help him understand 'how to move the needle' on public policy issues he cared about, such as 'immigration, education and basic scientific research'.
The leaked emails supports Donald Trump's claims that Clinton is too close to those with vested interests, such as Zuckerberg, whose Facebook empire has 1.7 billion users globally.
John Podesta (pictured, left) was Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton and is now chairman of Hillary Clinton's election campaign
Hillary Clinton (left) and Mark Zuckerberg (right) both attended an event for scholarship student hosted by billionaire Carlos Slim's Telmex Foundation in Mexico in September 2014
The Guardian reported recently that Facebook could be forced to pay an extra $5 billion in tax after an investigation by the IRS.
Facebook was accused by former staffers this year of suppressing conservative news from its trending section. The company denies that charge.
Earlier this month other leaked emails showed Sandberg had gave Hillary Clinton aides research on 'gender and leadership by women' as they put together the former first lady's presidential campaign.
After Sandberg emailed him Podesta wrote back enthusiastically (pictured), suggested times when he might be able to meet Zuckerberg
Sandberg met with Clinton insiders who would become senior staffers on the campaign a month before it launched, including pollster Joel Benenson.
The day Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for president at the party's quadrennial convention in late July Sandberg declared her support in a Facebook post.
Politico reported last month that Sandberg is on the short list for Treasury Secretary if Clinton wins the election.
Mark Zuckerberg (pictured centre, with the microphone) is reportedly keen to influence public policy on immigration, education and scientific research
Former Arkansas television reporter Leslie Millwee has come forward to Breitbart News and accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting her three times in 1980.
Millwee, who went by the name Leslie Derrick back then, says Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, slipped into her television station's small editing room and groped her from behind while she was seated, 'hunching' her chair to the point of orgasm.
'I could feel what he was doing from behind me. I do not know if he had taken, you know, private parts out. Or if he was doing it. I assumed he was doing it through material but I could be wrong,' she said.
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Former Arkansas television reporter Leslie Millwee says she was sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton three times in 1980
Milwee encountered a young Bill Clinton, when he was the governor of Arkansas, and claims she was sexually assaulted by him three times
Millwee said Clinton did this on three occasions and also stopped by to see her at home.
She said she interviewed the Arkansas governor about 20 times the year that she worked at the now-defunct television station KLMN-TV, as she was covering the Cuban refugee crisis and 20,000 refugees called Arkansas' Fort Chaffee home.
She was 19, turning 20, when she worked at the station.
Clinton would be flirtatious, she said, when the two saw each other.
'Hey pretty girl. How are you today?' he would say, she told Breitbart.
He also gave her an autograph, she said, claiming that one day he would be president.
He also wrote Clinton directly above her name on her reporter's notebook. A picture of the signed notebook was included in the Breitbart piece.
'And I said, "What are you doing? Giving me an autograph now?" And he said, "No, I just wanted to show you how good Clinton looks on top of Leslie."'
Words led to actions, Millwee testified to the right-leaning news site, that has Donald Trump ties.
When the first unwanted encounter happened Clinton followed the young reporter into the 'very small' editing room.
'There was a chair. I was sitting in a chair. He came up behind me and started rubbing my shoulders and running his hands down toward my breasts,' she said. 'And I was just stunned. I froze.'
'I asked him to stop. He laughed,' she continued.
She then noted to Breitbart's Aaron Klein that these encounters happened three times. 'And each time it escalated where the aggressive nature of his touch and what he was doing behind me escalated.'
She said the second and third alleged assaults involved Clinton rubbing his genitals against the reporter.
The second assault occurred about a week later with the governor making a 'beeline' for Millwee and with the reported making a beeline herself into the editing room.
'And he came in behind me,' she said. 'Started hunching me to the point that he had an orgasm. He's trying to touch my breasts. And I'm just sitting there very stiffly, just waiting for him to leave me alone. And I'm asking him the whole time, "Please do not do this. Do not touch me. Do not hunch me. I do not want this."'
'And he finished what he was doing and walked out,' Millwee told Breitbart, noting that the encounter probably lasted three to five minutes.
She then responded to Klein saying she did not know whether Clinton actually revealed his private parts.
The third alleged assault played out similarly to the second one.
He 'came in, hunched me from behind. Grabbing my shoulders, and you know, having an orgasm and then leaving.'
'I was crying,' Millwee continued. 'The third time it happened it was just so overwhelming. I waited a few minutes. I came out. I went to the ladies' room. I was crying and very upset. And we had a lady that had a local show there and she actually came into the bathroom. An older lady. And she said, "Honey, what is wrong? And I said I just had a really bad experience and I don't really want to talk about it. But I'm very upset."'
The next time the reporter saw the governor he had come to her home.
'He knocked on the door for probably give, ten minutes,' she said. 'Knocking. Calling my name. Saying, "I know you are home, please answer the door."
'I did not answer the door,' Millwee said.
Millwee said that Clinton coming to her home was 'the final straw' and that she spent the night discussing it with her grandmother before deciding to leave the station.
In vetting Millwee's claims, Breitbart News was unable to find footage of her interviews with Clinton from that era.
Karen Pharis, who was Millwee's assignment editor at KLMN, confirmed to Breitbart that Millwee was a reporter at the station and her job 'absolutely' included conducting interview with Clinton.
Pharis recalled Millwee editing her own footage in the 'tiny' and isolated editing room.
She said Clinton came to the newsroom 'maybe twice,' while she was there, though she added that she may not have always been present if the governor had stopped by.
Pharis said she also recalls Millwee leaving the station abruptly around 1980, but was not provided a reason.
The former assignment editor said she was surprised that Millwee had left the job.
In the 1990s, Millwee said she told three friends about the encounter and two of them verified to Breitbart that they remembered the story.
Millwee also thought about making her story public in 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky affair was uncovered.
'I was very prepared to go forward then and talk about it. And I watched the way the Clintons and Hillary slandered those women. Harassed them. Did unthinkable things to them. And I just did not want to be part of that,' she explained, worrying about the damage it could bring to her career and small kids.
Eighteen years later things have changed.
COLUMBUS Columbus Public Schools is looking to go underground while getting district facilities connected to a new fiber optic cable network that could become operational next year.
The CPS school board approved an interlocal agreement Monday to join the city in sharing the costs of building and operating an underground cable network that would connect dozens of school and city facilities.
Columbus City Council is expected to consider the agreement to share development of the network at a meeting next month.
The first step after the city OKs the interlocal agreement would be the selection of an engineering firm to design the communications system, said Leonard Kwapnioski, executive director of technology and operations at CPS.
Once the network design and specifications are drawn up, hopefully before the end of this year, the proposed system would go out for bids from contractors, Kwapnioski said.
The contractor selected would install the underground system during 2017 and provide continuing maintenance.
The interlocal agreement didnt include any preliminary cost estimate for the proposed cable network.
The proposed partnership between the city and CPS is modeled on a network set up by Fremont Public Schools, the city of Fremont and a third-party vendor, Great Plains Communications of Blair.
Any entities that join the network later would be equal partners in sharing costs.
The CPS technology chief said a new system buried in a trench would replace the school districts current aerial fiber optic network mounted on power poles, providing better redundancy and greater reliability.
The existing system is subject to weather-related hazards, such as ice storms, heavy rain and extreme heat.
The network applications for CPS schools and other facilities would include all internet, phone services, security and data storage. The city has identified about 20 of its facilities that could be connected to the network.
Kwapnioski said the network would resemble a wheel, with spokes (school buildings, administrative offices, maintenance shop, warehouse) all connected to multiple hub sites.
CPS and the city are getting the ball rolling on the new fiber optic system, but the planned network could have a far greater reach for local government and schools. Networks are often overbuilt initially to allow for the sharing of costs as more entities come on board.
Platte County, with the courthouse downtown and jail and probation offices on the city's east side, and the communitys Catholic and Lutheran schools have shown interest in participating in the network.
The possibilities are endless, Kwapnioski said.
In other business, the CPS board recognized Stephen Mancuso for receiving the Award of Excellence from the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists.
In June, Mancuso represented Columbus High and the state of Nebraska at the Congress of Future Medical Leaders in Boston, Massachusetts.
The CHS junior is the son of Steven and Beth Mancuso.
Sleeping man wakes up but heartless officer continues to soak his clothes
Officer hoses man directly in the face and on his head in a bid to wake him
Shocking mobile phone footage has captured the moment a policeman used a hose to spray a homeless man sleeping by the side of the road.
The incident was filmed from inside the car of two passers-by, who seemed to find the goings-on somewhat bizarre and funny.
The video which has now gone viral on social media platforms is believed to have been snapped in the city of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.
The video shows the officer, whose face is not revealed, standing right next to the unconscious man, who is lying on the pavement while dressed in a dark coat
The cop hosed the man directly in the face and on his head in an apparent attempt to wake him up
It shows the officer, whose face is not revealed, standing right next to the unconscious man, who is lying on the pavement while dressed in a dark coat.
The cop hosed the man directly in the face and on his head in an apparent attempt to wake him up.
The sleeping man did eventually wake, but the officer did not stop pointing the hose in his direction, covering the mans clothes in water as numerous people pass by.
None, however, seemed willing to stop and challenge his behaviour.
The man, who managed to sit up, ended up washing his face with the water.
Reports suggested that the man was either drunk or homeless or both, but those online agreed that the situation did not call for such behaviour.
Online users criticised the cop, but it does not seem like he will receive any punishment for the treatment, according to reports.
When Estonian soldier Varjo Jurisoo fired a string of bullets across the Narva River during World War Two, he had no idea his brother was on the other side.
At the age of 16, he had managed to dodge being called into the Russian army after the conflict broke out, but his brother had not been able to avoid the fate.
Three years later, in 1943, Jurisoo was dragged into the war when he was drafted into the German army, alongside hundreds of Estonians.
Varjo Jurisoo, who died in Minnesota, was drafted into three armies and was responsible for guarding a Nazi war criminal after being freed from a prisoner of war camp
Unknown to him as he fought the 1944 Narva river battle in Estonia, his older brother, Uno Jurisoo, was firing back from the Russian side - a fact he did not learn until 1991 when he finally returned to his homeland.
Jurisoo was injured by gunfire, but was able to return to the battlefield as the German war machine ground toward defeat.
He and other Estonian soldiers surrendered to the US Army, and was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Belgium, where he spent the last year of the war.
Jurisoo was responsible for guarding Nazi war criminals, including Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy
After Jurisoo - who was known as 'Joe' - was released, he was hired at the Palace of Justice, where he was one of the guards responsible for guarding notorious Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess and other prisoners during the Nuremberg trials.
He immigrated to the United States in the late 1940s, fearful of his safety if he returned to Estonia, which was rife with political tensions.
He went through more in his first 25 years of life than I ever will in my whole life. David Jurisoo
In order to pay for his journey, he took a job picking oranges in California, on land which is now part of Disneyland.
His experience of war was not yet over though, and Jurisoo was drafted to fight in the Korean War, and served in Europe.
It was only after his return that he was able to enjoy a quiet life, and his family said he did not open up about his incredible experiences.
Nephew Daniel Hunt, 35, told the Star Tribune: 'He would just sit quietly in the corner and not talk. In my first 35 years, I heard him say two words.'
Despite the hardship he endured, Jurisoo, who died on October 8 after a long battle with cancer, did not linger on it.
His son David Jurisoo, 54, said: 'He definitely didn't talk much about his past.
'He went through more in his first 25 years of life than I ever will in my whole life.'
He never saw his father again after being sent to war, and only reconnected with his brother and mother in 1991 - when he learned the two had fought in the same battle, but on different sides.
David said: 'He never complained about it. Its not like he thought, "My lifes unfair".'
An RV-loving former theater actor, he died at the age of 91 in Coon Rapids, in Minnesota, where he had moved with wife Margaret in the 1970s.
His wife, paying tribute to him, said: 'It always strikes me as remarkable that a guy who had to go through so much at such a young age was not only so normal, but so engaged with the people around him.
'I think he was like, "Well, thats kind of how life goes".'
Jurisoo was an active member of the Good Sam RV Club, and for several years ran its website.
Most restaurant customers are happy to leave a tip to their waitress as a way of showing gratitude after eating in a restaurant.
But one stingy couple decided against leaving cash and instead wrote their waitress a note on a napkin telling her 'a woman's place is in the home.'
The waitress, who has not been named but was working at a restaurant in South Carolina, had finished serving the couple and went to collect what she thought was a cash tip after they left.
The note that a couple left for a waitress in a South Carolina restaurant telling her a woman's place is 'in the home'
But she looked down and saw it was a note telling her she had no right being in the workplace and that she should be at home.
And after showing the note to her friends, it angered them so much they persuade her to post it on Facebook.
The note read: 'Your place is in the home. It even says so in the Bible. You may think that you're contributing to your household by coming into work, but you're not. While you're in here 'working' this is the reason your husband must see another woman on his way home from a long day at his work.
'Because you should be home taking care of the household duties, you may think what you are doing 'working' is right, it is really essentially a disgrace to his manhood and to the American family.
'So instead of coming to your 'job' and looking for handouts to feed your family, how's about going home and cleaning your house and cooking a hot meal for your husband and children, the way your husband and God intended, and help make America great again. Praying for families and our nation.'
The waitress told WYFF News 4: 'The guests were very friendly and polite while I served them, which made this come as an even bigger surprise.
I felt mortified, embarrassed, humiliated even. I felt hurt, and a bit heartbroken
'I have never been married, and have no children. I have a very loving and supportive boyfriend who has been by my side as I have been working and trying to further my education.'
'I felt mortified, embarrassed, humiliated even. I felt hurt, and a bit heartbroken. It is a bit disheartening and discouraging that things like this happen at this day and age.'
Meanwhile, her friends have decided to write a reply to the couple on a napkin, which was also posted on Facebook.
It read: 'You cannot demean a worker that provides a service that you enjoy. Without my coworker, myself, and the countless others females in the service industry, you and others with your same mindset would not enjoy the 'excellent service' that we provide.
Donald Trump's campaign manager says she doesn't know if the Republican candidate believes his own claim that Hillary Clinton could be on drugs and should be tested before tonight's debate.
Kellyanne Conway candidly told DailyMail.com this morning that she doesn't have an eye into Trump's mind and can't say he if he truly thinks his 68-year-old opponent is doping.
'I don't know what he thinks about that. I can't answer questions like that because that's his opinion. That's not a campaign strategy.'
She suggested that he doesn't, though, as she attempted to walk back the extraordinary accusation.
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Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump's campaign manager, says she doesn't know if the Republican candidate believes his own claim that Hillary Clinton could be on drugs and should be tested before tonight's debate
'He was saying that something was going on with her energy and her stamina towards the end of that second debate,' she said. 'I think it was just, he had rattled her, and really got her off her game.'
The senior Trump aide argued that the GOP White House contender was merely articulating what he's said in the past about Clinton's fitness when he said she should submit herself to testing.
'It just goes to the fact that he doesn't take days and days off,' Conway told DailyMail.com from the site of tonight's debate, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 'And he's out there at rally after rally in swing states, pressing his case directly to the people.'
Pressed on the matter, and whether Trump had shared his suspicions about Clinton with her, she said 'You heard what he said publicly - I'd go with that.'
Trump has not revisited the allegation since he told a New Hampshire audience that Clinton's debate high in St. Louis may have been induced with drugs.
'Athletes, they make them take a drug test right?' the Republican presidential nominee said Saturday from the stump. 'I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate.'
'Why don't we do that? We should take a drug test prior, because I don't know what's going on with her, but at the beginning of her last debate, she was all pumped up at the beginning, and at the end it was like, "Oh, take me down." '
Clinton and Trump will square off one last time tonight in Las Vegas and the University of Nevada
Conway candidly told DailyMail.com this morning that she doesn't have an eye into Trump's mind and can't say he if he truly thinks his 68-year-old opponent is doping and should be tested before tonight's match
He claimed Clinton 'could barely reach her car' by the end of the 90-minute clash earlier in the week.
'So I think we should take a drug test. Anyway, Im willing to do it,' he proclaimed.
Responding to the charges for the first time, Clinton's communications director seemed to imply in a Tuesday gaggle with reporters that the concept occurred to Trump because he considered or is currently abusing drugs.
'I find it very curious that suggesting a candidate is doping for the debates is on Donald Trumps mind,' Jennifer Palmieri said. 'Im glad that, you know...he thinks her performance was that great.'
Palmieri said 'it's just odd' that Trump would even go there. 'I dont understand why that is whats on his mind.'
Clinton's campaign says Trump's call for drug-testing before the Las Vegas showdown is 'curious'
The chief Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that Trump was probably 'projecting.'
'When his he knows that his temperament is not going over very well he said, "I have the temperament for the job." When he knows that his stamina is lagging he says, "I have the I have the stamina for the job." '
Continuing, she said, 'When he knows that I don't know what this drug things is, but I'm very suspicious that he is saying, she should take a drug test.
'What's he talking about there.'
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, a practicing doctor before he became a politician, assessed after the first debate that the billionaire might be on drugs.
'Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?' he tweeted.
He's the rank outsider, but one bookmaker has identified a trend it claims could lead to Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office.
Betting agency William Hill says 65 per cent of all the bets it has taken on the race have been for the Donald to win, despite him being the overwhelming underdog.
And while at first glance it may appear that Trump's fans are throwing their money away, the bookmaker says the same pattern emerged in the lead up to Britain's Brexit vote, which was shockingly won by the 'Leave' side.
From Mr Brexit to Mr President: A bookmaker says betting on Trump's campaign matches the pattern on the unexpected but ultimately successful 'Leave' vote in the UK's EU Referendum
'It was the case that consistently throughout the EU Referendum campaign, some two thirds of the money gambled was for "Remain", but in terms of individual bets, it was around two thirds for "Leave",' spokesman Graham Sharpe said.
'The stats currently show 71 per cent of all the money gambled on either Clinton or Trump is for Hillary, but 65 per cent of all bets placed are for Trump.'
But those backing the man who once called himself 'Mr Brexit' might want to hold off on their celebrations, as another agency has already called the race for the other candidate.
Irish bookmaker Paddy Power confidently declared that Hillary Clinton will become the first female president, and has already paid out almost $1 million to those who backed her to make history.
On his way to the White House: William Hill says 65 per cent of bets in the election has been placed for Trump to win, which suggests he could pull off an unlikely upset
Mo money, Mo problems: William Hill 71 per cent of the money bet on the result has been put on Hillary Clinton to win, but says that might not make the difference
Paddy Power says the odds of a Clinton victory are 1/5 - or 83.33 per cent.
By contrast, the company puts Donald Trump's chances of winning the White House at 4/1 - about 20 per cent.
'Trump gave it a hell of a shot going from a rank outsider to the Republican candidate but the recent flood of revelations have halted his momentum and his chances now look as patchy as his tan,' a spokesman said in a statement.
'Recent betting trends have shown one way traffic for Hillary and punters seemed to have called it 100 per cent correct. Despite Trumps Make America Great Again message appealing to many disillusioned voters, it looks as though America are (sic) going to put a woman in the White House.'
Madam President: Despite William Hill suggesting Trump could surge to a win, Paddy Power has already called the race for Hillary Clinton
Market leader: Hillary Clinton is the overwhelming favorite with online international betting agencies
Called it: Paddy Power started paying out bets on Barack Obama to win the 2012 election a full two days before election day
The Irish bookmaker also called the election early in 2012, and forked over more than $700,000 to those who bet Barack Obama would win - a full two days before he beat Mitt Romney.
Sportsbooks in the US are also backing Clinton, with online site Oddsshark actually making her even more of a favorite.
The website has Clinton as the -600 favorite, meaning she has a 1/6 or 85.71 per cent chance of being elected.
Marc Grosjean attacked his wife after using her Sat Nav to discover she was having an affair, pictured outside Westminster Magistrates Court today
A former Credit Suisse director punched his wife and tried to tear off her wedding ring after he used her Sat Nav to find out she was having an affair, a court heard.
Frenchman Marc Grosjean, 43, hit Artemis Berberi in the face and injured her hand in the struggle at their London home which was witnessed by their son.
Grosjean had gone through Ms Berberi's phone and Sat Nav to confirm his suspicions that she was seeing another man, Westminster Magistrates Court heard.
The former banker was found guilty of assault and sentenced today to eight weeks jail suspended for two years for the sake of his son.
District Judge Paul Goldspring noted that Grosjean had shown 'controlling behaviour' by monitoring his wife's movements before the 2015 attack.
That was evidenced by your analysis of the sat-nav to find out where she had been,' he said.
This was in my view serious within the context of the common assault because it was in a domestic setting, some of it in the presence of your child and the level of violence was significant.
You used your hand when it was clenched to hit your partner twice. In doing so you did cause injury, which was reddening and bruising to her cheek.
Ms Berberi also had to endure a retelling of her sexual infidelity in front of a strange court with strange people.'
The court heard Grosjean was stressed at the time of the attack because of the strain of starting his own Market Engineering
Abbas Lakha, in defence, said setting up his own business had taken 'an enormous toll.'
Grosjean had gone through Ms Berberi's phone and Sat Nav (stock) to confirm his suspicions that she was seeing another man, Westminster Magistrates Court heard
'This has been an extremely stressful time for him. It has taken an enormous amount out of him, as well as the matrimonial proceedings.
'In 2015, around the time of these events, he was in the process of setting up his own business.
Mr Lakha added: 'He has always been a hard worker and someone who has provided for his family.
'His work, by definition, involved enormous risk and, by definition, to his family's well-being and financial security.
'His then-partner, the complainant, was undoubtedly in an affair behind his back. At the time, she made a total denial.'
Judge Goldspring found Grosjean was a 'good and loving father' apart from the 24 hours when he lost control.
'But your behaviour in that 24-hour period was nothing short of shocking. You used the back of your hand to strike your partner to the face,' he said.
'You were frustrated that the relationship was ending. But you are an intelligent 43-year-old man and should know that violence is never the way to deal with frustration.
'What saves you is nothing to do with you. It is to do with the welfare of your son, particularly when you are his sole carer. It is that saves you immediate custodial sentence.'
Grosjean was fined a total of 900, ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work and told to take part in a domestic abuse intervention programme, for 20 days.
Responding to Mr Lakha's request for six months to pay, the magistrate noted Grosjean had 'paid for very expensive QC'.
He added: 'I would ask people on benefits to pay quicker than that.'
Grosjean, who lives in Paddington, was found guilty of one count of assault by beating and one count of common assault.
A restraining order preventing him from contacting Ms Berberi was also made.
Jake Sullivan, Clinton's foreign policy adviser, had suggested Clinton get behind laws that ensure
Two of Hillary Clinton's top advisers worried that it might be politically dicey for their candidate to come out in support of strengthening bribery laws, a leaked email conversation shows.
Neera Tanden, the head of the Center for American Progress, and Jake Sullivan, Clinton's chief foreign policy expert, talked in late February 2016 and early March about what government reforms Clinton should get behind, according to an email made public by Wikileaks from campaign chairman John Podesta's cache.
'This is a jump ball,' wrote Tanden to Sullivan. 'She may be so tainted she's really vulnerable = if so, maybe a message of I've seen how this sausage is made, it needs to stop, I'm going to stop it will actually work.'
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Hillary Clinton's (left) adviser Neera Tanden (right), the head of the Center for American Progress, worried the Democrat might have trouble politically when pushing for certain open government reforms
Hillary Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan suggested a number of reforms that the Democrat could get behind, but he really liked the proposal to 'Strengthen bribery laws to ensure politicians [don't] change legislation for political donations'
Sullivan had outlined a number of proposals, but said that one of his favorites was: 'Strengthen bribery laws to ensure that politicians [don't] change legislation for political donations.'
He noted that it was supported by 62 percent of soft partisans.
'The second idea is a favorite of mine, as you know, but REALLY dicey territory for HRC, right?' he asked, to which Tanden agreed.
The conversation took place while the Democratic primaries were still ongoing.
And Clinton's allies were likely trying to find policies the former secretary of state could latch onto as Sen. Bernie Sanders message against billionaires buying political power was resonating with progressive Democrats.
Earlier in February, a video featuring another powerful progressive voice, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was circulating, which suggested Clinton may have changed her vote on a bankruptcy bill thanks to political donations from credit card companies.
John Podesta's (left) hacked emails have exposed some top Clinton adviser's thinking including Neera Tanden's (center) worries that Hillary Clinton (right) was 'too tainted' to push for bribery reforms
As first lady Clinton sat down with Warren, a Harvard law professor, and convinced her husband Bill Clinton to veto a bill that would have tightened bankruptcy, because it disproportionately hurt single mothers.
But, as Warren recalled in a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers, when Clinton was a U.S. Senator and receiving donations from financial services companies she did an about-face and supported the legislation.
Clinton addressed the issue on 'Good Morning America' saying she voted for the 2001 bankruptcy legislation because she was able to add an amendment that would protect the child support and alimony payments for single mothers.
But that kind of political 'sausage' making response didn't sit well with many Sanders supporters who used Warren's words as testimony that Clinton had been hijacked by special interests.
Despite the fact that Clinton may be 'tainted,' Tanden believed the eventual Democratic nominee should push for reforms.
Angela Merkel's open door immigration policy has unleashed the fury of some unexpected victims other migrants.
Berlin's public broadcaster Rbb24 took to the streets to garner the attitudes of established immigrants in Germany, and filmed some of their surprisingly hard-line reactions.
One woman wearing a headscarf, who had been living in the county for 40 years, said: 'It's a catastrophe. The refugees They have to go.
'They don't belong here' said one migrant complaining that they get social housing, welfare, 'and this, and that, and this'
'They don't belong here', and complained that they get social housing, welfare, 'and this, and that, and this
'In my opinion, I don't care, I'm a foreigner myself. Yes. I vote NPD.'
The National Democratic Party (NPD) is a far-right fringe party in Germany, which has faced off multiple attempts to ban it for its neo-Nazi inclinations.
Over one million migrants were welcomed into the country last year, with millions more arriving in the years before as well.
But as the interviewees proved, it has not been a wholly popular decision.
One migrant, who had been living in Germany for nearly 39 years, said he was happy with a family and 'good children', but added new migrants are causing lots of problems.
One migrant, who had been living in Germany for nearly 39 years, protested migrants 'have caused so much s*** in Germany'
'These foreigners that come now the ones that came 2 or 3 years ago They've caused so much s*** in Germany,' he protested.
'If I were a German mayor, the mayor of Berlin, I swear to you, when these foreigners steal something, even if it's small, deport them. Immediately.
'But they always ramble about a 'free country' and 'democratic'. What the h*** does that even mean?' he added.
And another migrant, wearing a bright hijab, said: 'It's become a little terrible around here. Not like it used to be.'
Another migrant, wearing a bright hijab, said: 'It's become a little terrible around here. Not like it used to be'
'Too many people came to Neukolln. When they come they have to earn a living.
'They have to give something else don't give them our apartments for example.
'Don't give them our jobs.'
'Now there's only refugees and foreigners' said a market trader concerned people were not buying his goods any more
Neukolln is a borough in Berlin and has one of the highest percentage of immigrants in the city.
Rbb24 posted the footage to their Facebook page last month, where it has received tens of thousands of views and thousands of shares.
Since her arrest, Hagling turned to stripping to make a living, performing under the stage name 'Bambi'
Accused the teen of exploiting her vulnerability at a time when she was having problems with her boyfriend
A former substitute teacher from Iowa facing sex abuse charges involving one of her students has insisted that she was the real victim in the case and accused her teenage paramour of ruining her life and career.
Appearing on the Dr Phil show Monday, Mary Beth Haglin, wearing a striking red mini-dress and matching lipstick, revealed that since her arrest in July, she has turned to stripping in order to make a living, performing under the stage name 'Bambi.'
Haglin, of Cedar Rapids, pleaded not guilty last month to a charge of misdemeanor sexual exploitation by a school employee in connection to her illicit six-month affair with a student at Washington High School. Her trial date has been set for November 14.
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Teacher speaks: Disgraced teacher Mary Bath Haglin, 24, is accused of having sex with a 17-year-old student. Haglin appeared on the Dr Phil show Monday, saying she is the real victim
Career change: Haglin told Dr Phil McGraw that after she was fired, she became a stripper
The sultry 24-year-old brunette told Dr Phil McGraw that the boy had seduced her with fawning love notes written on Post-Its and twisted her brain into accepting their forbidden love affair, until she became convinced that the pair were in a real relationship, which she could keep a secret.
'He did so with such intelligence and such an elevated vocabulary that i was completely duped by the whole facade,' Haglin said on the show.
Haglin admitted to having sex with the 17-year-old almost every day for nine months, sometimes in her or his car, other times in the homes of the boy's parents.
Eventually, she said he convinced her to send him sexy photos of herself, including some naked selfies, which he later reportedly shared with his friends at school.
'I dont know what was going through his brain,' Haglin said. 'He thought it would be cool... bragging rights... I dont know.'
Haglin said she did not think he would disseminate the intimate snapshots 'because in my mind if youre in a real relationship, you dont just run around with your phone saying, "Hey, look, look everybody, look how hot my girlfriend is."'
She added, 'Looking back now I think, "Oh, my God, what was I thinking? What was I doing?"'
The 24-year-old woman placed the blame on the teenager, saying that he caught her in her weakest moment,' at a time she was having trouble with her boyfriend, which made her vulnerable to the underage Casanovas romantic advances.
The high schooler would write letters to her, calling her my empress and Mrs Robinson, in a reference to Anne Bancrofts iconic character from the movie The Graduate, in which a middle-aged woman seduces a recent college graduate, played by Dustin Hoffman.
In one letter, the adolescent wrote suggestively to his substitute teacher, who also moonlighted as a waitress at the time: I love the way you smell like pizza. It drives me crazy wanting a piece of the crust.
Haglin admitted to having sex with the 17-year-old almost every day for nine months
Teenage seducer: Haglin said the boy caught her in her weakest moment,' at a time she was having trouble with her boyfriend
According to the woman, her student was aggressive in his pursuit of her, constantly trying to kiss whenever they were alone in class, and even more than that.
Haglin claimed that when she tried to end things with the boy, he threatened to speak out about the affair.
When things got way out of control, and I wanted out, he began saying, I will light a match and burn your life down, she told the talk show host.
The scandalous relationship finally came to light when one of Haglin's female students, a junior named Tye, noticed what she described on the Dr Phil show as suspicious behavior between the student and teacher.
She recounted how she would see the 17-year-old go into Haglins classroom on breaks and close the door behind him.
The girl eventually went to her mother, Rebecca, with her concerns. The woman confronted Haglin and asked her point blank about the rumors swirling around the school.
Bad teacher: Haglin (left and right), has been charged with sexual exploitation for having an affair with the student
Haglin met the 17-year-old boy at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids in January
'She said, Yes, it's true, said the parent. 'She kept telling me that she was in love with this young man, that as soon as he graduated, they were going to get married.
Rebecca had Haglin write a statement confessing to the tryst, which she then took to school administrators.
Haglin was fired from her job in May at the conclusion of an internal investigation and arrested in July. If convicted, she could face up to two years in prison and be required to register as a sex offender for 10 years.
An earlier probe conducted in February had failed to prove any wrongdoing on Haglins part.
Both investigations have since been labelled as ineffective by the school district and led to the resignations of three high-ranking officials, according to The Gazette.
It is believed that Haglin and the victim had been in a sexual relationship for almost the entire duration of her tenure at Washington High School.
Speaking to Inside Edition last month, the 24-year-old woman apologized for the hurt she has caused, but claimed that it was her underage lover who seduced her.
He would come into my classroom, grab a Post-It, write something and stick it to my desk on his way out, she said.
One note read: I love you so much, my empress.
Teen Casanova: Haglin says it was the boy (seen right) who seduced her with love letters
Sticky love notes: Haglin shows the Post-It notes that her underage lover would leave on her desk after class
Regal moniker: One note allegedly penned by the victim read, I love you so much, my empress'
In return, the statuesque brunette sent the high-schooler risque selfies showing her posing in sexy lingerie.
By her own admission, Haglin fell 'completely head over heels' for the boy, and before long the pair began having sex almost daily in her car at a public park.
Haglin says that after a while, she allowed herself to think that she was in a 'real relationship,' but it all came to an end when another student spotted her and the 17-year-old and went to the authorities.
In retrospect, Haglin says it was 'stupid' to think that their forbidden liaison, which she described as 'a terrible mistake', could be kept a secret.
Raunchy snapshots: In exchange for the notes, the brunette beauty sent the high-schooler risque selfies showing wearing lingerie
Outdoor romps: Haglin says she and the boy had sex almost every day in her car at this public park
Regrets: Haglin says it was 'stupid' to think that their forbidden liaison was a real relationship. The 24-year-old described what happened as 'a terrible mistake'
I want to go back and smack myself and ask, What were you thinking Mary Beth?" she tells the site.
In an interview with The Gazette after her release from jail on bail, Haglin claimed school administrators were aware of the affair and told her to keep it hush-hush.
In the wake of this bombshell revelation, a trio of long-time school officials, including Washington High Principal Dr Ralph Plagman, opted for an early retirement.
Says she is 'not sheepish' about expressing her views to her father
Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka stressed her political independence in an interview at a women's summit in California and insists she is not the mastermind of her dad's campaign.
'My opinions are my own I express them to him,' said Trump, a visible presence on the campaign trail, at Fortune Magazine's Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday.
'I'm certainly not sheepish about sharing those opinions. But I do so in private,' she said.
One of those opinions, Trump revealed, is that her dad's comments on a leaked 11-year old tape where he talked about grabbing women without consent were 'offensive.'
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Ivanka Trump called her father's hot mic comments about women 'offensive,' speaking at Fortune's 'Most Powerful Women Summit'
'I think my remarks were clear on this. I did find it to be offensive. He acknowledged it as well,' she said, referencing her earlier statement that the comments were 'clearly inappropriate and offensive.'
'Way to warm up,' she quipped to Times Magazine editor in chief Nancy Gibbs, who asked about it at the top of the interview.
But she defended her father using familiar arguments of the campaign. 'This tape was over a decade old. I'm sure he didn't remember this conversation,' she said, adding that her dad was 'embarrassed that he said those things' adding that the comments were 'a bit jarring for me to hear.'
Former President Bill Clinton greets Ivanka Trump, daughter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, followed by her brothers Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., before the start of the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis
Trump, who appeared on Good Morning America in September, rejected the label of campaign 'surrogate'
'NOT SHEEPISH': Ivanka Trump said Wednesday she shares candidate opinions with her dad in private. In public she has now called his hot mic comments about women 'offensive'
She honed her TV skills on her father's show 'The Apprentice'
Ivanka Trump and Nancy Gibbs speak onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit 2016 in Laguna Beach
Trump spoke about business as well as the way she gives advice to her father
It was revealed during the campaign that she is registered independent. She wasn't eligible to vote for her dad in the New York primary.
'I stood in front of the RNC and shared that I'm an independent, which is very consistent with many other millennials and many other people,' she said while being interviewed by Nancy Gibbs of Time Magazine.
'I'm not dogmatically aligned with any party and I share my thoughts with my father very candidly.'
Despite constantly stumping for her father, Trump said, 'I do dismiss this idea of a surrogate. I don't think it appreciates the role that I'm playing as my father's daughter.'
'I'm not the campaign mastermind as people love to portray and speculate,' she said. Her husband, Jared Kushner, is also a prime mover within Trump's inner circle.
'I hate the word surrogate because what does that mean? Major newspapers were writing that I was a vice presidential candidate. I'm saying, 'No I'm a daughter. I don't express my views on policy with one exception, as it relates to childcare and advocating for women.'
Tennessee senator Bob Corker floated the idea this summer at a time when he was under consideration for the VP job.
'His best running mate, by the way, would be Ivanka,' Corker said. 'I know that wouldn't pass muster, probably,' Corker added. 'But I don't know that I've met a more composed, brilliant, beautiful-in-every-way person.'
Ivanka Trump said she was nervous when she spoke at the Republican National Convention.
'I was very nervous about that. I said what kind of response will I get to this, standing in front of an arena packed with Republicans and expressing myself candidly as an independent who really votes based on the candidate as opposed to dogmatically based on party affiliation.'
'I think that a lot of people are like me are socially more liberally and fiscally rather conservative. And find themselves somewhere in the middle. I wasn't groomed to be any one thing and my father never expected me to sort of fall in line,' she said.
Donald Trump has said his children will continue running his real estate empire if he gets elected. Ivanka Trump plans to continue her own women-centered brands.
LINCOLN Forget creepy clowns and other nightmarish characters.
Travis and Becky Koester want to put you in the Christmas spirit.
The husband-and-wife duo and fellow Lakeview graduates they met in band at the local high school in the mid-90s released their first Christmas album this week.
Rock Rockin Christmas features four holiday classics performed with a rockabilly twist, as well as the original title track.
Travis Koester, 38, says the album will get people tapping their feet.
He described Rock Rockin Christmas as a little country twang with some swing flavor.
Koester and his wife Becky, 36, co-wrote the title track then put their own flair on Jingle Bells, Joy to the World, O Holy Night and Angels We Have Heard on High.
The Koesters have been playing music together for years theyre both members of the Lincoln-based band The Dust Jackets and branched out as a duo known as The Time Burners a couple of years ago.
We decided to go that route as it opened up the doors to playing a larger variety of venues and events, as well as musically it made sense for me as a songwriter, said Koester, who released his third solo album, Livin the Blues, in December.
The Lincoln residents performed this year at the Omaha Summer Arts Festival, Nebraska State Fair, Iowa State Fair and other venues, including a mini-tour in northwest Arkansas.
We know each others musical moments and how to make them shine, Koester said of his onstage connection with his wife.
The Time Burners have a vintage vibe, playing classic country and rockabilly from the 1950s and '60s mixed with their original tunes. Theyve released two full-length albums so far, but Koester said hes always wanted to put out some Christmas music.
The duo with his wife presented the perfect opportunity.
Its the greatest time of the year and were both fans of old-fashion Christmas music, Koester said. I wanted to put a rockabilly twist on what we love.
Rock Rockin Christmas is currently available on Amazon, cdbaby.com and www.thetimeburners.com, and will soon be added to iTunes. A CD release event and concert is scheduled for 7 p.m. Dec. 3 at Gratitude Cafe and Bakery in Lincoln.
The Time Burners have a full schedule of shows to finish out the year theyre playing from 6-8 p.m. Saturday at Valas Pumpkin Patch near Gretna and plan to release another full-length original album in early 2017.
Folks tell us they love what we do as a duo and keep them old songs coming, and we have no plans of stopping that, Koester said.
An Oklahoma high school student has come forward with a video of a teacher that she took in class, showing the male teacher instructing his students: 'To be white is to be racist.'
The unidentified student from Norman North High School used her cell phone to record the lesson, which she said felt like the teacher 'was encouraging people to kind of pick on people for being white'.
The strange lecture, which took place in a philosophy class, began with a video called 'Mistreatment of Native Americans'. A man - not the teacher - is seen using white-out to paint over a country on a globe, and then wrote the name 'Dylan' in the space.
'He was basically comparing what he had done to the globe to what we did to America,' the student told KFOR.
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Bizarre demonstration: A student used her cell phone to record a classroom lecture at Norman North High School in which her teacher (not pictured) explained how to 'heal the racial divide'
The lecture featured a video of a man putting white-out on a country in South America and then writing his name on it. He said it illustrated what white people did in North America
'He was basically comparing what he had done to the globe to what we did to America,' the student told KFOR
When her teacher laid out his theories of racism afterwards, the student said she was stunned.
'To be white is to be racist, period,' the teacher is heard saying in the recording.
'Am I racist? I say yeah. I don't want to be. It's not like choose to be racist, but do I do things because of the way I was raised?'
The teacher claimed the lecture was about 'how to heal the racial divide'.
The student said she was instantly offended and felt the teacher was branding her and everyone other white person in the class a racist.
'Half of my family is Hispanic so I just felt like, you know, him calling me a racist just because I'm white I mean, where's your proof in that,' the girl said.
'I felt like he was encouraging people to kind of pick on people for being white.'
The unidentified Oklahoma (pictured) student used her phone to record the lesson, which she said felt like the teacher 'was encouraging people to kind of pick on people for being white'
The student said she believes the teacher - who hasn't been identified - should apologize for what he said.
The teacher has thus far refused to comment. However the Norman Public Schools released a statement regarding the issue, saying that he was trying to mimic something he saw during a philosophy lecture.
'Racism is an important topic that we discuss in our schools,' the statement said.
'While discussing a variety of philosophical perspectives on culture, race and ethics, a teacher was attempting to convey to students in an elective philosophy course a perspective that had been shared at a university lecture he had attended.
The Norman North student said the teacher was lecturing on how to 'heal the racial divide'
The statement continued: 'We regret that the discussion was poorly handled. When the district was notified of this concern it was immediately addressed. We are committed to ensuring inclusiveness in our schools.'
An all-out search for a missing college student has been launched by authorities in Texas after her family said she never returned home from a date to the movies with her ex-boyfriend.
Zuzu Renee Verk, a student at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, was last heard from during the early morning hours of October 12, as Alpine Police say she is possibly in danger.
Her father, Glenn Verk, said his 22-year-old daughter was absent from school, where she is studying conservation biology, and also missed work later that day.
'We're all special but there's something exceptional about this young woman. She's vibrant and she's full of excitement and life,' her father told CBS11.
Missing: An all-out search Zuzu Renee Verk (above) has been launched by authorities in Texas after her family said she disappeared more than a week ago before going on a date
Verk left her parents' home on October 11 to go on a date to the movies later that evening. Her parents reported her missing after she missed classes and work the next day
'I'm just very proud of her and I want to see her again,' he said while choking back tears.
Verk left her parents' home in Keller to go on a date to the movies back in Alpine with her on-again, off-again boyfriend on the night of October 11, Fox News reported.
In addition, she had planned to go on a camping trip with friends on Friday.
Authorities do not have a suspect or a person of interest as of Wednesday and they did not release the name or the whereabouts of her ex-boyfriend.
The Texas Rangers and the FBI are assisting in the search for Verk, which was expanded outside of the Alpine, which is about 100 miles from the Mexican border.
As the search intensifies, her family is hoping for her safe return and is asking any who may have information to call police.
Verk, a student at Sul Ross State University (file above) in Alpine, was last heard from during the early morning hours of October 12, Alpine Police say
'The community has reached out to an amazing degree putting together huge search parties,' her father said.
'If they have any connection to anything that might've happened her in Alpine, the smallest inclining of a suspicion. Nothing is being overlooked.'
The Alpine Police Department is looking for two vehicles possibly related to her disappearance: a grey 2006 Jeep Liberty and a 2004 Mazda Miata convertible with a beige colored top.
Both of those vehicles were spotted in the area between 12am and 10am on October 12, police say.
The Alpine Police Department is looking for two vehicles possibly related to her disappearance: a grey 2006 Jeep Liberty (left) and a 2004 Mazda Miata (right) convertible with a beige colored top.
Authorities are asking ranchers in Brewster County to inspect their property for 'any suspicious signs of disturbed earth, personal items on the ground, anything that might raise your suspicions that it may need to be investigated further,' the Dallas Morning News reported.
Verk is described as 5 feet tall, weighing 110 pounds with blonde hair and hazel eyes.
A $30,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the whereabouts or the safe return of the young woman.
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The Iraqi military have called for ISIS fighters defending Mosul to surrender amid a huge offensive to retake the militant-held city.
Major General Gary Volesky, of the US Army, who heads the anti-IS coalition's land component, added ISIS commanders are 'fleeing the city' ahead of 'multiple assaults' planned for Thursday.
ISIS is also evacuating the 'wives of leaders' according to a reported order by ISIS boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdad.
But the UN fear up to 1.5million people could be caught in the cross-fire, used as human shields or be forced out of the region by the campaign.
In the biggest Iraqi military operation in years, forces have retaken dozens of villages, mostly south and east of Mosul - but the flying bullets, car bombs and explosions have not stopped people taking selfies next to burning wreckage.
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Despite burning fields and fierce fighting in Qayyarah, around 35 miles south of Mosul, one man is not deterred from taking a selfie next to huge flames, pictured
The Iraqi Army are making progress in their campaign and tanks and troops have been fighting in Qayyarah, pictured, while leaders of ISIS are said to be 'fleeing Mosul with their wives'
One Iraqi soldier cannot hide a smile, pictured, ahead of more planned assaults in the region over the next 24 hours
Coalition forces are closing in on Mosul from all areas, with the British, US, Iraqi, Kurdish and Shia military all involved
Iraqi soldiers are pictured surveying the scene in Qayyarah as top US generals believe the fight for Mosul could 'go on for months' due to ISIS being able to 'adapt to setbacks'
But life goes on as normal for these Iraqi civilians who are pictured walking past an oil field set ablaze by the terror group
Despite the horrors of war, two children - one wearing a Real Madrid shirt, right - looked delighted to be pictured covered in dust in Qayyarah
Maj Gen Volesky said: 'We are telling Daesh (IS) that their leaders are abandoning them. We've seen a movement out of Mosul.'
He told reporters in a video briefing that many foreigners among the 6,000 IS fighters would likely end up forming the core of the holdout jihadist force.
The Iraqi media outlet Al Sumaria added: 'The ISIS evacuated what it called the women of caliphate from the city of Mosul to the Syrian ISIS-held cities including Raqqa, over the last two days,' pointing out that, 'These women are the wives of the leaders of ISIS.'
'The women of caliphate were evacuated by orders from Baghdad to avoid being captured by the security forces or rebellious people of Mosul after liberating the city.'
But Army General Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the battle could last 'for months'.
Army Gen Votel said Iraqi officials have publicly spoken of the Mosul battle lasting for weeks or months, amid speculation the army may launch a simultaneous offensive to retake Raqqa in Syria.
He said he is comfortable with the Iraqis' timeframe and said it was important to ackowledge the Islamic State are an 'adaptive enemy capable of adjusting to setbacks'.
Army Gen Votel said: 'I'll give you an example. The operation we did to Manbij, in northern Syria, took about 71 days to complete, from start to finish.'
He also stressed the importance of 'simultaneous application of pressure' in Mosul and Raqqa.
He said: 'I think it's extraordinarily important and we are certainly attempting to do that.
'I think what we've seen is when we apply pressure on the Islamic State forces, they do squirt out, they try to go to other locations, they move leaders, they move the bulk of their forces, they try to relocate some of their operations.'
Young children, pictured, have fled their homes after the arrival of the Iraqi army in Qayyarah
ISIS is using 'scorched earth tactics' in Qayyarah oil fields, pictured, to prevent the advancing Iraqi army making use of them
Iraqi soldiers are pictured firing M109 self-propelled howitzers on the village of Al-Muftuya from a position in Kani al-Harami, which is around 21 miles away from Mosul, as they continue their advance
So far morale among the Iraqi forces seems high, with soldiers pictured celebrating their initial successes, pictured
But the UN fears civilians, such as this man in Qayyarah, will be put at risk by the fighting with up to 1.5million at risk of being caught in the crossfire
Families have been spotted gathering on the outskirts of Qayyarah with their possessions as they try to avoid the danger
Livestock is also very much at risk with this shepherd pictured leading his flock away from danger in Qayyarah
He said the U.S. and its coalition partners could respond to that in various ways, including directing airstrikes at IS fighters seeking to move from Mosul to Raqqa.
Maj Gen Volesky noted that the Iraqis would screen anyone leaving Mosul, and attempts by foreign fighters to blend in to an expected exodus of displaced people would be thwarted.
'It's difficult for them to blend into the local population based on the number of different types of foreign fighters that there are,' he said.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians were still trapped in the city with dwindling supplies, many sheltering in basements as air strikes intensified on IS targets.
UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien said the protection of the elderly, disabled and pregnant women who may not be able to move to safety without assistance cause the greatest concern based on previous evidence of IS practices.
He told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that no large-scale displacement of civilians has been reported on the third day of the Iraqi government-led operation.
But Mr O'Brien said the UN anticipates 'a displacement wave of some 200,000 people over the coming weeks, with up to one million displaced in the course of the operation in a worst-case scenario'.
Scorched earth tactics like these, pictured, were also used by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War in Kuwait in 1991
Meanwhile Iraqi forces are taking up positions in al-Houd, pictured, south of Mosul, after taking it from ISIS forces
Coalition forces have been carrying out airstrikes in al-Houd over the past month, with troops, pictured, now ready to move in
Soldiers in the Iraqi Army have been covered in dust as they march along the roads on the way to taking position in al-Houd
Others looked in fine spirits, pictured, after they re-took the village of Hut as forces close in on the main target
Of that one million, the UN believes 700,000 would require shelter and emergency assistance, he said.
Iraqi troops are now around half a mile away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul.
One Iraqi officer, who asked not to be named, said ISIS have sent out 12 car bombs in the past day but that all exploded before reaching their targets, with Iraqi troops suffering 'small casualties' from mortar rounds.
To the north, airstrikes pounded Bashiqa as Kurdish forces fired mortar rounds from an area overlooking the IS-held town.
Meanwhile ISIS thugs have resorted to using human shields as they attempt to defend Mosul as it emerged the terror group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is thought to be trapped in the city.
Fanatics have been preventing the city's 1.5 million residents from escaping in recent weeks, according to Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis.
Iraqi soldiers sit triumphant upon armoured vehicles, pictured, celebrating the successful operation in Hut
Victory is still far from assured and soldiers remain on their guard with a machine gunner and troops seen engaged in what appears to be an important conversation
It is believed the Iraqi Army, pictured, could be going up against up to 6,000 militants holed up in Mosul
Smoke rises out of Hut, pictured, after the nearby oil fields were set on fire to limit visibility for coalition planes as well as destroy valuable resources
Soldiers trudge along the road near Qayyarah, pictured, to their next destination as the campaign rolls on
They are being held there 'against their will' and coalition forces 'know they are being used as human shields,' Davis added.
It comes as it was claimed that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was holed up in the city along with his explosives expert Fawzi Ali Nouimeh.
Senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari said there were 'solid' intelligence reports saying Baghdadi was in the city. It was in Mosul's Great Mosque of al-Nuri that the terrorist declared the ISIS 'caliphate' in 2014.
The head of Russia's General Staff Valery Gerasimov said today that that any ISIS militant trying to escape Mosul for Syria should be killed on the spot.
It comes as British jets and drones hit ISIS targets as part of the push to drive the jihadist group out of their Iraqi stronghold.
The RAF took part in strikes around the northern Iraqi city, hitting targets including a truck bomb and anti-tank gun in support of the ground offensive.
The Iraqi flag flies high above an army vehicle as more soldiers, pictured, arrive to take up positions in the village of Hut
Iraqi families in Qayyarah have already been displaced, pictured, and a total of around 1million people could follow over the batlle
The assault on Mosul has led to warnings of a humanitarian crisis as people flee the city, which has been under ISIS control since 2014The assault on Mosul has led to warnings of a humanitarian crisis as people flee the city, which has been under ISIS control since 2014
The Iraqi army could claim a huge prize in Mosul, as it is claimed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is holed up in the city, although he may now have fled with other commanders
Meanwhile soldiers, pictured, have been holding their positions in the town of Nimrud ahead of the Mosul assault
The assault on Mosul has led to warnings of a humanitarian crisis as people flee the city, which has been under ISIS control since 2014.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has described the effort to liberate Mosul as a 'big moment' in the war against ISIS and vowed that British forces would continue to play a major role as part of the coalition supporting the Iraqi and Kurdish forces on the ground.
The Ministry of Defence released details of a series strikes carried out by the RAF on Monday and Tuesday.
On Monday, a Reaper drone was in action south-east of the city, attacking targets including a mortar position, an armed truck and two ISIS heavy weapons teams - one equipped with an anti-tank gun.
A Typhoon flight to the south of Mosul used a Paveway IV guided bomb to destroy a large truck bomb before it could be used by IS, with video footage capturing the large explosion on impact.
But for all the gains in Hut, the escalation of fighting means many families are evacuating the area, pictured
Iraqi Major General Najim al-Jabouri, second left, is pictured here addressing the media to give updates on the campaign
As smoke continues to rise of Qayyarah, a group of boys huddle next to a building, pictured, but don't look too downbeat about what is going on around them
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (centre, black cap) and high-ranking army officials have visited troops today as the Mosul offensive continues
The split in what is going on in Iraq is captured in this photo as a shepherd moves his flock while soldiers watch on
On Tuesday, a Reaper flying to the south-east of Mosul targeted two groups of ISIS fighters and an armed truck, while to the north-east of the city Typhoons destroyed targets including a string of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) laid out in a defensive belt.
Coalition forces expect ISIS to have laid a series of booby traps in and around Mosul as part of their effort to hamper Iraqi advances.
In an indication of the humanitarian consequences of the attack, Save The Children said thousands of desperate Iraqis have made their way to an already-overcrowded Syrian refugee camp in an effort to escape the offensive.
About 5,000 people, mostly women and children, have arrived at the Al Hol camp from the Mosul area in the last 10 days, and at least 1,000 more are now massing at the border waiting to cross, the charity said.
Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood said 'huge amounts of planning' had gone into preparing for the liberation of Mosul.
'The place will be covered in booby traps, in IEDs, it will not be safe for anybody to enter, there will be huge sums of refugees seeking shelter and support elsewhere,' he told BBC Radio 4's World At One.
The city would be liberated by Iraqi Sunni forces and made safe, allowing refugees to return, he insisted.
ISIS thugs have resorted to using human shields as they attempt to defend Mosul as it emerged the terror group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is thought to be trapped in the city. Aerial pictures show how ISIS fanatics are torching oil in the city
Fanatics have been preventing the city's 1.5 million residents from escaping in recent weeks, according to Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis. Iraqi forces are pictured in the Bajwaniyah village, south of Mosul
Residents are being held there 'against their will' and coalition forces 'know they are being used as human shields,' Davis added
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is believed to be holed up in the city along with his explosives expert Fawzi Ali Nouimeh
Last night, ISIS radicals started setting fire to oil wells as they carried out scorched earth tactics in Mosul - with striking similarities to Saddam Hussein's defeated troops 25 years ago.
The jihadis have begun sending huge plumes of black smoke into the air above the key territory, as the battle to defeat the terror group enters a third day.
But images showing smoke flying in the sky have already been compared to the tactics used in the 1991 Gulf War, when Saddam took his troops out of Kuwait with defeat in sight.
The scorched earth tactics are used to limit the visibility of enemy pilots during air strikes. It also destroys millions of dollars worth of oil that is crucial in a way that is also extremely bad for the environment.
Civilians have already begun fleeing the villages around Mosul as the allies advance, in a bid to stay clear of the ongoing fighting.
The ongoing conflict brings Iraqi forces back to the scene of their disastrous collapse in 2014, but ISIS has long since been put on the defensive.
Commanders have said progress is already being made in the battle to recapture the area.
Iraqi forces have even been said to be 'ahead of schedule' as they push into the dusty plains surrounding the city, reports AFP.
More than 40,000 Iraqi and Kurd troops are leading the offensive, backed by air and ground support from a 60-nation US-led coalition, in what is expected to be a long and difficult assault.
From the south the Iraqi army are just 24 miles away, with Kurdish fighters 19 miles to the east.
British jets and drones hit ISIS targets as part of the push to drive the jihadist group out of their Iraqi stronghold. Aerial pictures show a truck bomb south of Mosul
A video grab shows an RAF Typhoon using a Paveway guided bomb to safely dispose of a large truck-bomb, before it could be used by ISIS
The RAF took part in strikes around the northern Iraqi city, hitting targets including a truck bomb and anti-tank gun in support of the ground offensive
Discovery: Peshmerga forces stand around a tunnel used by ISIS militants on the outskirts of Bartila, east of Mosul
Displaced people, who are fleeing from clashes in Al-hud village, south of Mosul, head to Qayyarah, during an operation to attack ISIS
Yet there is still a large amount of ground to cover before the city boundaries can be breached, with berms, bombs and burning oil trenches blocking the way.
As many as 5,000 IS soldiers are thought to remain in Mosul, with US President Barack Obama warning of the tough battle ahead.
During a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi he said: 'Mosul will be a difficult fight. There will be advances and there will be setbacks.'
Even though the IS forces are vastly outnumbered, the battle looks set to be lengthy affair that could last months, according to the French Defence Minister.
Jean-Yves Le Drian said it won't be a 'Blitzkrieg', a lightning war achieving success in a short period of time.
'It's a city of a million-and-a-half inhabitants, so this is an affair that will last a long time,' he said, adding that the offensive is 'essential' to prevent new IS attacks.
French war planes are supporting the military campaign on the ground, where US, British and French special forces are advising local troops.
A truckload of refugees flee the area as the flames and plumes of smock billow out behind them
The civilians fleeing from ISIS-controlled areas of Mosul to find safer locations while the battle rumbles on
A line of Iraqi women and young children leave as they head towards Al Qayyarah
A group convenes as the near the town where the refugees are heading to escape the conflict
But most of the coalition's backing has come from air strikes, which reportedly destroyed 52 targets on the first day of the operation.
Despite the warnings of a protracted assault, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said: 'Early indications are that Iraqi forces have met their objectives so far, and that they are ahead of schedule for this first day.'
The UN is expecting people to start fleeing the city 'basically any minute now', fearing IS soldiers will use the escaping residents as human shields.
And humanitarian agencies have warned the battle could unleash the 'worst man-made humanitarian crisis' seen in modern times.
'In a worst-case scenario, we're literally looking at the single largest humanitarian operation in the world in 2016,' said Lise Grande from the UN.
'In Mosul, depending on what happens militarily, a million people could move in a time span of a couple of weeks.'
Several blown-out wells damaged by retreating Iraqi soldiers in Al-Ahmadi oil field burn in the Gulf War of 25 years ago
Iraqi troops retreating after a seven-month occupation in 1991 smashed and torched 727 wells
The scorched earth tactics are used to limit the visibility of enemy pilots during air strikes
As the battle got underway, terrifying body cam footage captured the fierce fighting between the two sides.
A Kurdish fighter filmed the moment he sprinted across open land amid deafening gunfire and explosions during one of the early advances.
ISIS fanatics ran around 'like rats' as they emerged from a network of tunnels to surprise the soldiers with suicide attacks.
bid on the Republican candidate and was prepared to die carrying it out
This is the moment a delusional man unloaded a Glock 17 pistol at a Las Vegas shooting range - 24 hours before he attempted to grab a police officer's gun in a bid to kill Donald Trump.
In CCTV footage - obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com - mentally ill Michael Sandford is seen plugging 20 rounds in to a target at the range during a $29 training session.
Sandford was arrested in a dramatic scenes the following day at a Trump rally in a Las Vegas casino on June 18 after going for the police officer's weapon as he asked for Trump's autograph.
He told police he had plotted to assassinate the Republican presidential candidate for a year and believed he would die during the bid.
Relaxing in to it: The gun range owner's told DailyMail.com that the 20-year-old became more competent during his session with the handgun
Aftermath: Las Vegas officers were pictured hustling Sandford away from the Treasure Island Casino in the city after he went for one officer's gun at a Trump rally
The footage has been released to DailyMail.com ahead of the next presidential debate in Las Vegas tonight.
Last month Sandford, a British citizen, pleaded guilty to federal charges and is awaiting sentencing as part of a plea deal.
He faces around two years in a US prison and will be deported after pleading guilty to be an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and disrupting an official function.
The 20-year-old could have faced up to 20 years in prison if he had been convicted at trial of the charges.
Court documents say Sandford acknowledged reaching for the gun while Trump was on stage during a campaign speech.
Fortunately did not get hold of the weapon before he was wrestled to the ground and arrested, and no shots were fired.
In security video footage obtained from Battlefield Vegas - a shooting range popular with tourists - Sandford is seen being schooled on how to shoot the 9mm Glock.
He was given a safety tuition before being taken by an instructor to a booth in the busy range.
Sandford is then seen shooting 20 rounds using the pistol.
Battlefield Vegas owner Ron Cheney told DailyMail.com that Sandford appeared 'nervous and apprehensive' when he first arrived and took hold of the weapon.
Cheney said: 'He rented a Glock 17, he said he wanted to learn how to fire a hand gun. Europeans for the most part have seen guns in the movies but have never held them in their hand.
'So the way he was, he was a little nervous and apprehensive, it was his first time shooting a gun.'
But Cheney said slightly built Sandford, who was seen wearing a gray t-shirt and large ear protectors, soon relaxed in to the 15-minute training session.
Autistic: Sandford was said by his family to have been diagnosed with autism. His lawyer told the court he was delusional at the time of his arrest
Prepared to die: Sandford told cops that he realized his plot might cost him his life. He left an easy trail for them, signing in to the range on the day before the rally
Tuition: The 20-year-old illegal was given expert advice by staff at the gun range on how to handle a handgun. The instructor saw 'nothing out of the ordinary', bosses told DailyMail.com
'By the time he was done with his magazine he was comfortable, he wasn't shaking anymore,' he said.
'The instructor said he was a nice kid and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
'The staff explained to him how to hold a weapon, how to center it, how to aim a pistol.
'Usually from the movies people want to hold the gun sideways or with one hand, we show them how to properly hold a weapon, it's safer for everybody that way.
'He shot 20 rounds in total, it's usually a 17-round magazine but we put an extension on for him.'
Video footage shows Sandford leaving the range with the rolled up target in his hand.
A Glock 9mm handgun is one of the handguns officers in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police are authorized to carry
Cheney also revealed the reason Sandford was unable to take the officer's weapon the next day - because he had a retention holster.
'My staff have retention holsters here for safety reasons, you can't just pull the gun out, there's either a lever that's flipped or a certain twist you put on the gun that allows it to expel from the holster.
Plea: Sandford's mother Lynne, of Dorking, Surrey, said her son was autistic and should be getting help, not jail
'And that's what the police officer had when he tried to go for the gun, it looks like it will come right out because you don't see any straps, but it won't release. That's why he couldn't pull it out.'
Cheney said his company was contacted by the FBI, Secret Service and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department after the incident.
'They were here soon after it happened and they asked that we hold off from releasing any video or make any statements that may affect the case and we agreed,' he explained.
'It's a tough one, I feel bad for the kid, he has a mental illness, but if you want to kill someone you can't just get a slap on the wrist.'
Sandford's mother had told the judge in his case that he had been treated for obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia as a youngster.
Lynne Sandford also said son had 'a lifetime of mental health problems' has autism and Asperger's syndrome and watches children's cartoons.
She said her son would not have understood the consequences of his actions and was on suicide watch while in a Nevada jail.
Family attorney Saimo Chahal added that Sandford was delusional at the time
According to court research Sandford did not have permission to be in the US and was unemployed.
He was originally from Dorking, in Surrey, and his mother told the BBC in July: 'He needs help not prison.'
Gun venue: Battlefield Vegas is one of the city's most popular destinations for tourists. There are no legal restrictions on people going to it and learning how to handle a weapon. In Sandford's home country, the United Kingdom, possession of a handgun is illegal
Papers filed at the court said he had been in the country for around 18 months and lived in Hoboken, New Jersey.
He had driven across the US to San Bernardino, California, and had been living out of his car before traveling on to Las Vegas.
The following day he went to the Treasure Island Casino where Trump was addressing a rally of 1,500 supporters amid tight security.
Attendees had to pass through metal detectors manned by Secret Service, police and casino security officials.
Asking to get an autograph from the billionaire, he tried to take a police officer's holstered gun before being tackled and frogmarched from the venue.
A Secret Service report said Sandford told officers he had been planning the assassination for around 12 months and believed he would die in the process.
He had also bought a ticket to a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, for later on Saturday as a back-up.
Sandford was carrying a UK driver's licence at the time he was arrested.
Officials working for the Harrisburg School District would not comment on the allegations
The police ultimately referred the matter back to the school and said even if Donald's claims were true they would not press charges
Donald's mother, Ciara White, called police and had them take a report at the school
A young boy from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania claims that his teacher washed his mouth out with soap after he got into an argument with another student in his class.
Donald Thomas, 10, said that the teacher at Camp Curtin Academy, whose identity has not been revealed, was absent when the argument between the two students took place, but punished him when she returned to school following her absence.
'She told me to go by the sink and she got a bar of soap and she started rubbing it on my tongue,' Donald told WHP.
He also said that he only wanted to return to school if the teacher was fired from her job.
'I do want to go back to the school, if she doesnt work there anymore. I just dont wanna stay in that class,' said Donald.
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Donald Thomas (above), 10, claims that his teacher washed his mouth out with soap after hearing he had been in an argument with another student
The incident occurred at Camp Curtin Academy (above) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Ciara White, Donald's mother, was so concerned about what happened to her son that she called police.
'Its definitely assault, maybe even poisoning. Soap doesnt belong in someones mouth,' said White.
White also said that she had some questions she would like to ask the teacher.
'So many questions, first of all why would a teacher do that? What kind of soap? I mean I just dont understand why a teacher would do that,' said White.
The entire experience has left her 'very upset, hurt, confused' she said.
Donald's mother, Ciara White (above), called police and had them take a report at the school
Police meanwhile took a report and then referred the complaint back to the school.
Law enforcement said that even if the incident did occur, the teacher did not commit a crime.
Five states, including California, will vote on legalization in November
Even support among Republicans has increased by double, to 42%
Support for the legalization of marijuana among the American public is now at 60 per cent says, polling company Gallup - that's the highest in its 47-year trend, and almost double what it was in 2005.
That enthusiasm is evenly spread across all ages, races, genders and political demographics, according to a poll of 1,017 adults who were asked 'Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?'
The lift in support comes as legalization measures appear on the ballots in five states this November, Gallup noted in Wednesday's poll.
Joint agreement: A Gallup poll says 60 per cent of Americans are now in favor of legalizing marijuana, up from 36 per cent in 2005 (pictured: Colorado 420 pro-weed rally, 2014)
Higher and higher: Approval for marijuana legalization has increased rapidly since the early 2000s. A long flat period in the 1980s coincides with the 'Just Say No' anti-drug campaign
The company first started asking the question in 1969, at which point just 12 per cent said that they were in favor of legalization.
That rose to 28 per cent in 1977, but dipped again and stayed around 25 per cent in the 1980s.
Perhaps not coincidentally, that was the period in which the US government ran its 'Just Say No' anti-drugs campaign.
But at the start of the 2000s it began to inch higher, hitting 36 per cent in 2005 and then ramping up to the present day rate of 60 per cent.
Politically, approval for legalizing pot spans the divide, with all groups showing an increase in approval: Democrats from 38 per cent in 2003 and 2005 to 67 per cent now, and independents up from 46 per cent to 70 per cent.
And while Republicans are on the whole less enthusiastic about getting high, support among their group has more than doubled, from 20-42 per cent.
Those figures combine 2003 and 2005 statistics because each survey only asked the question of a half-sample of respondents.
Red, blue and green: Increasing support for legalization spans parties, with even traditionally anti-pot Republicans experiencing a more than 100 per cent increase
Support has also increased across all age groups, from those aged 18 upwards.
And that approval might well continue to increase, Gallup suggested, if California decides to legalize marijuana in November.
That state is just one of five - the others being Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada - looking at legalization this year.
But the 'Golden State' tends to set political trends for the US, Gallup says, and California giving the nod might well be the tipping point for the US.
Potted history: Increased approval likewise spans age ranges, with those who were children in 2003 and 2005 now firmly in favor of legalization
It might also end in a Supreme Court case similar to the one that saw gay marriage legalized across the US, the report said.
Buying pot for medicinal and recreational purposes is already legal in Washington and Colorado, and more than half the US has legalized marijuana use in some way.
Gallup notes that the 60 per cent approval noted in this poll is statistically similar to the 58 per cent recorded in 2013 and 2015, so it's not known whether support is actually larger or has just stabilized.
A man who claimed to be Jesus and was calling for Scottish independence had to be removed from a court today.
The person attended an appeal case at the Court of Session in Edinburgh which is to rule on whether a group of independence campaigners should be evicted from a protest camp they have set up outside the Scottish Parliament.
The campaigners - who said they were not affiliated with the man - had previously told the hearing that the real Jesus had given permission for the camp to be there and was in favour of Scottish independence.
When 'Jesus' then appeared during a break in proceedings, he claimed to be 'answering a summons to court' and was carrying a USB stick that he claimed had evidence of Christ's 'divine support' for Scotland to leave the UK.
A group of Scottish independence campaigners have been ordered to leave the camp, pictured, they set up outside the country's Parliament in Edinburgh
The man, who had long hair and was dressed in long robes, was subsequently removed when he climbed over public benches and refusing to leave the courtroom.
The 'Indycamp' in Holyrood was set up in November 2015 but was soon ordered to be disbanded, prompting a lengthy legal battle with the campaigners, known as JAH, claiming eviction would breach their human rights.
Richard McFarlane, 49, representing JAH, told judge Lady Dorrian she would be 'made redundant' by the second coming of Christ.
He said: 'I know it's very difficult for you given that you will be made redundant upon the coming of his Kingdom.
'However, the Lord is very serious. He has given permission for the camp to stay there.'
Mr McFarlane, who said he had spoken to Christ, also told the court that the judges would face a 'second death' if they didn't comply with Jesus's wishes.
According to its website, JAH believes Christ was reborn in Sheffield in 1948.
They believe the official second coming will begin when Jesus sits atop the Stone of Scone, aka the Stone of Destiny, which was used to coronate British monarchs at Westminster Abbey before being given to Edinburgh Castle in 1996.
The campaigners believe judge Lord Turnbull applied the law wrongly earlier this year when he ruled that independence campaigners should be evicted from parliamentary grounds.
The judge ruled in favour of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body.The organisation's legal team had requested an eviction order from the court.
Another campaigner, known only as David after he would not confirm his surname for the court, said a jury trial should be set up to decide the matter.
However, the judges ruled that trial by jury was incompetent because it was dealing with an appeal.
The judges ruled that there is no stage of the legal process which allows juries to consider disposals.
David then told the court that it was committing a 'criminal' act. He asked for the judges to bring the case to an end.
When the judges said they weren't bringing the case to an end, David said he would set up his own jury trial.
He added: 'We will live stream it and we will have jurors consider the decision. These jurors will be those people who will swear they are sovereign indigenous people of Scotland so help me God.
'I will need to see about hiring out a hall for it.'
A man claiming to be Jesus interrupted the eviction appeal case at the Court of Session, pictured, in Edinburgh today
Another independence campaigner called 'Mr Keatings' told the court that judge Lord Turnbull didn't pay enough attention to the European Convention on Human Rights when considering his decision.
He said that the campers had the right to be outside Holyrood and urged the judges to overturn Lord Turnbull's decision.
Gerry Moynihan QC, for the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, said that Lord Turnbull made the right decision.
The judges will issue their decision at a later date.
Speaking after the case outside the Court of Session, the man claiming to be Jesus said he did not know anyone in JAH.
He said: 'I am Jesus. I only speak for myself.'
It is understood 'Jesus' and the campaigners spoke after the end of the first day and left the hearing on good terms.
29 stone primate prowled a staff corridor after he was called for dinner
The 29st gorilla who broke out of his London Zoo enclosure got through two unlocked gates before downing 12 pints of undiluted squash, it was revealed today.
Kumbuka was able to walk out of his den when his first door was left open and a second security gate was unlocked after he was called for dinner.
A zookeeper in the area scrambled to secure the gorilla as the thirsty primate gulped down a huge bottle of cordial he found.
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Gorilla Kingdom reopened after being closed throughout the morning - and Kumbuka (pictured) was back in his den
Zoo keepers today patching up the gorilla enclosure at London Zoo where Kumbuka the Gorilla escaped
Professor David Field, Zoological Society of London's Zoological Director, has revealed the real events behind Kumbuka the gorilla's dramatic escape
Zoological Society of London's Zoological Director, Professor David Field, revealed the real events behind the escape in a blog post titled 'Kumbuka the Gorilla: What Actually Happened'
In the post he describes the dramatic events from the point of view of 'those who were actually there'.
He admits that there were unsecured doors, which the wily primate was able to exploit in his bid for freedom.
Staff said Kumbuka was given a chocolate chip cookie yesterday evening as a 'special treat' from his specially managed diet which consists of nuts, vegetables and fruit
Bid for freedom: The gorilla is reported to have escaped 'through an open door', and an unlocked gate before entering a staff area
Kumbuka was called in to his own private quarters, as he must east separately from the female gorillas - due to his appetite the others 'wouldn't get a look in'.
He then made an opportunistic escape from his unlocked den into the staff-only service corridor where a zookeeper was working.
The zookeeper had formed a strong bond with the huge animal, and was able to keep Kumbuka calm before setting off to get help.
Gorilla Kingdom was this morning closed to members of the public for repair work
Back on display: Gorilla Kumbuka pictured eating his lunch in front of visitors to London Zoo
Prof Field said: 'The zookeeper was able to continually reassure Kumbuka, talking to him calmly and in the same light-hearted tone he would always use, as he removed himself from the area.
The gorilla was then contained in the non-public area of the zoo.
He curiously prowled around his new surroundings, and came upon a stash of undiluted blackcurrant squash - which he promptly drank.
The zoo confirmed Kumbuka was back in his den at 6.21pm after being tranquillised.
Prof Field stressed that at no point was the large male gorilla a threat to the public.
Following the breakout Kumbuka (pictured today), spent more than an hour outside his main enclosure before keepers were able to use a tranquilliser dart
Witnesses said the gorilla launched himself at the glass (pictured) earlier on the day of his escape. But the behaviour was just 'posturing'
He explained in his post that the behaviour exhibited by Kumbuka earlier in the day of his escape was posturing on his part, which is to be expected by a father and dominant male.
Zoo curator Malcolm Fitzpatrick agreed that Kumbuka had not displayed aggression before his escape, and described him as a 'gentle giant'.
As the dominant male in the troop he sometimes behaves in a way to assert his position within the hierarchy, which are said to be 'completely natural'.
Although the species needs attentive care and can be volatile in nature, most gorilla charges occur when provoked.
There was a police presence outside London Zoo on Friday morning following the incident
Irony: This image from 2014 shows Kumbuka in his enclosure looking at a stocktake board
Then a 16-year-old silverback, the gorilla pictured playing in his den two years ago
Many said yesterday's escape with rather ironic, after these photographs re-emerged
The 'gentle giant' was soon happily back in his enclosure, and given a treat special treat after his dramatic episode.
Prof Field said: 'Kumbuka and his family are happily playing, eating and sleeping in Gorilla Kingdom.
More than $200,000 was spent flying 23 senior bureaucrats from Canberra to Paris for a conference about saving money.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade staff were flown to and from the French capital business class, and they stayed at the Mercure Paris Centre Eiffel Tower Hotel, Fairfax reported.
Australia's ambassador to France Stephen Brady hosted the event, which was attended by a departmental psychologist, a conduct and ethics manager, and a health and safety officer.
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23 bureaucrats were flown return from Canberra to Paris business class and stayed at the four-star Mercure Paris Centre Eiffel Tower Hotel (pictured)
According to the Qantas website return business class tickets from Canberra to Paris cost upwards of $6100 - putting flights for the group at over $140,000.
This is not including the cost of travel for the Europe-based delegates who also attended the two-day event.
The four-star hotel where the guests stayed has views of the Eiffel Tower, and mid-week prices start around $250 according to the website.
Taking in to account a $150-per-day meal allowance, Fairfax estimated a 'conservative' estimate of the trip would sit around $215,000.
The DFAT employees attended a conference from September 7-9 this year
According to DFAT Foreign Minister Julie Bishop did not have to approve the trip.
'The conference was focused on streamlining work and improving efficiencies at posts in Europe through training and briefing on financial management, human resources, consular and passport services, security (elevated levels of terrorism), procurement governance, staff welfare, audit and risk, health and safety, legal risk, IT and property,' a DFAT spokesperson told the publication.
'Security was also prominent, given the elevated levels of terrorism, as well as work health and safety issues.'
Daily Mail Australia has contacted DFAT for further comment.
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Risking a death sentence for talking to the outside world, the man on the end of the line spoke with quiet authority, his voice a mixture of hope and dread.
A once-prosperous trader in Mosul Iraqs third-largest city he had spent the past two years praying for the reign of Islamic State to end.
Now, with a massive force of troops in a U.S.-led coalition massing for an all-out assault to regain Mosul from its hated new rulers, he admitted he may not survive the battle to come.
Iraqi forces are leading a huge offensive against ISIS in Mosul, with the terror group expected to use mustard gas, car bombs and human shields in their defence of the city
Iraqi soldiers are pictured firing M109 self-propelled howitzers on the village of Al-Muftuya from a position in Kani al-Harami, which is around 21 miles away from Mosul, as they continue their advance
Other troops sit triumphant upon armoured vehicles, pictured, celebrating the successful operation in Hut, near Mosul
Meanwhile soldiers, pictured, have been holding their positions in the town of Nimrud ahead of the Mosul assault
But for all the gains in Hut, the escalation of fighting means many families are evacuating the area, pictured
ISIS has been rigging all of Mosul with explosives, and forcing people to leave their neighbourhoods on the outskirts to go deeper into the city, he said last week, warning that the entire populace could become human shields.
But do you know what? We dont care any more. We just want rid of these gangsters once and for all.
Seldom has a mission of liberation carried such a risk of carnage.
In the coming days, Mosul will see the worlds biggest battle against ISIS to date, as more than 30,000 Iraqi troops, backed by American and British airpower and special forces, try to oust the jihadists from their main Iraqi stronghold.
Months of blood-soaked street fighting lie ahead, potentially turning the ancient city into a kind of Arab Stalingrad, the city that suffered such devastation as Russia and Germany grappled for supremacy in World War II.
As I will explain, Mosul has a totemic significance for ISIS. And, chillingly, its leaders view the citys million-strong population as its biggest and best means of defence.
This is the reason for the terror groups frenzied activity in recent weeks around Mosuls outskirts.
It has dug trenches which have been filled with oil, and is setting this alight both as a defence against infantry and to disrupt attacks from the sky.
It has erected concrete barriers and built sand berms or defensive walls.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (centre, black cap) and high-ranking army officials have visited troops today as the Mosul offensive continues
Iraqi Major General Najim al-Jabouri, second left, is pictured here addressing the media to give updates on the campaign
Many soldiers are in fine spirits, pictured, after they re-took the village of Hut as forces close in on the main target
Other reports suggest bridges that connect the two areas of Mosul on either side of the River Tigris have been mined, and that ISIS has forced women and children on to the tops of taller buildings to discourage air strikes.
The idea is partly to keep the enemy out. But it is also to keep Mosuls innocent civilians in.
A lucky few people have escaped in recent weeks by bribing their way past checkpoints ISIS zealots are not above backhanders but most remain trapped and will be shot if they are caught trying to flee.
Once the fighting starts in earnest, ISIS plans to blend in among the civilians, using innocent men, women and children as protection from coalition bombs and missiles.
In effect, a city almost the size of Glasgow is being held hostage by fanatics with no compunction about slaughtering captives when it suits their purpose.
Small wonder then that aid chiefs fear a catastrophe even by Iraqs blood-soaked standards.
The operation has the potential to be largest man-made disaster for many, many years, warned Bruno Geddo, the UN High Commissioner For Refugees top official for Iraq.
He said the agency was trying to provide tents, food and clinics for up to 700,000 people who may flee the fighting in the coming weeks, but that the consequences could be apocalyptic.
By the end of October, there will be five new permanent camps set up to provide shelter.
Sitting on the Tigris as it winds through Iraqs arid northern plains, Mosul is just 100 miles from the Syrian border, making it a strategic stronghold for Islamic State across both countries.
It was the scene of another famous last stand in 2003, when Saddam Husseins two fugitive sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in a shoot-out with U.S. troops at a mansion in the suburbs.
Scorched earth tactics like these, pictured, were also used by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War in Kuwait in 1991
Despite burning fields and fierce fighting in Qayyarah, around 35 miles south of Mosul, one man is not deterred from taking a selfie next to huge flames, pictured
The Iraqi Army are making progress in their campaign and tanks and troops have been fighting in Qayyarah, pictured, while leaders of ISIS are said to be 'fleeing Mosul with their wives'
ISIS thugs have resorted to using human shields as they attempt to defend Mosul as it emerged the terror group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is thought to be trapped in the city. Aerial pictures show how ISIS fanatics are torching oil in the city
Visiting the city back then, I remember a quiet, laid-back place that seemed free and relatively at peace: restaurants were open late into the night, and whisky was freely available.
That liberal Western lifestyle is a distant memory today under the iron fist of ISIS.
The jihadis conquered the city in a lightning strike back in June 2014, when convoys of masked, black-clad fighters roared across the border from Syria.
Not only did they smash the 75,000-strong Iraqi army, which collapsed despite a decade of U.S. and British training, they robbed Mosuls central bank of half-a-billion dollars, netting themselves the biggest war chest in terrorist history.
The capture of the city marked the turning point in ISISs fortunes, transforming it from just another jihadist faction in Syrias civil war into the global terror outfit it is known as today.
The triumph symbolised the chaos spawned by the Western military invasion led by George W. Bush and Tony Blair that was not followed by a coherent plan for post-war reconstruction.
A month after ISIS invaded, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, ISISs black-bearded leader, declared himself leader of its new Caliphate during prayers at Mosuls Grand Mosque, and ever since the city has been one of the groups most prized assets.
Christians in Mosul were given a brutal choice: to convert to extreme Islam, leave the city or be killed.
Men were told to grow their beards. Acts of adultery were punished by stoning or the lash.
Looters had their hands cut off. The Caliphates subjects were flogged, tortured and beheaded for transgressions of Islamic edicts.
Women whose clothes failed to conceal their bodies faced the wrath of biters, all-female morality police armed with metal pincers that mark offenders for life by ripping out chunks of flesh.
Mobile phones and internet access were mostly cut off, and the few who still had access to either businessmen who paid taxes to ISIS such as the Mosul resident who spoke to the Mail last week, risked arrest and death as spies.
Meanwhile Iraqi forces are taking up positions in al-Houd, pictured, south of Mosul, after taking it from ISIS forces
Despite the horrors of war, two children - one wearing a Real Madrid shirt, right - looked delighted to be pictured covered in dust in Qayyarah
But life goes on as normal for these Iraqi civilians who are pictured walking past an oil field in Qayyarah set ablaze by the terror group
Yet Mosuls notoriety now makes it a major symbolic prize for the U.S.-led coalition of forces surrounding the city.
American and British air power such as the devastating Thunderbolt bombers, Typhoon jets and Apache attack helicopters will play a role in the battle, as will SAS soldiers and U.S. special forces. But the ground fighting will be done mainly by Iraqi forces.
And much as that might limit the U.S. body-count, it may lead to the opposite for Mosuls citizens, who face being liberated by a force with a rough and often blunderbuss approach to urban warfare.
The Iraqis tend to be risk-averse and slow relying on heavy use of artillery first to clear the territory before they come in, warned Professor Toby Dodge, an expert on the Iraqi military at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre. They are often somewhat indiscriminate.
Supporters of the operation point out that Baghdad will have its very best men on the job.
Rather than the badly led regular army divisions that melted away from Mosul two years ago, the 30,000-strong strike-force will be spearheaded by the Golden Brigade, an elite U.S.-trained counter-terrorism force that has already squeezed ISIS out of the smaller Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Fallujah.
They will be backed in the air by coalition warplanes and drones, and British special forces will help call in targeted airstrikes, and also supervise hunts for high-value terrorists.
Indeed, it was reported yesterday that Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi himself may be trapped in Mosul.
The Iraqi general commanding the operation said this week he plans to leave open a corridor for jihadi fighters to flee the city, in the hope that they will leave the citizens safely behind and the battle will take place in the deserts to the north-west.
H e said many ISIS commanders have already fled, but he knows that fighting Islamists among the citys populace will be terribly difficult, like a surgeon lifting out a cancer.
The danger in this strategy, of course, is that many Islamists might escape from the city.
This sparked a warning this week from the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Julian King, who urged the EU to prepare for an invasion of terrorists if Mosul is liberated as Islamic State fighters seek to return to their home countries and wreak havoc.
What is beyond doubt is that Mosul may prove a far tougher fight than any other ISIS stronghold so far.
Between 4,000 and 8,000 jihadists are thought to remain there, far more than the few hundred who held out in Fallujah for five weeks in the summer.
Most are hard-core fighters who will not shy away from battle, although their first tactic will be to simply slow the coalitions advance by littering Mosul with booby traps and improvised explosive devices.
As the fight intensifies, ISIS is likely to fall back to the Old City on the west bank of the Tigris, a maze of narrow alleyways that will force the Iraqis to abandon their heavy armour and fight on foot.
Soldiers trudge along the road near Qayyarah, pictured, to their next destination as the campaign rolls on
Families have been spotted gathering on the outskirts of Qayyarah with their possessions as they try to avoid the danger
ISIS is using 'scorched earth tactics' in Qayyarah oil fields, pictured, to prevent the advancing Iraqi army making use of them
ISIS will put bombs everywhere by roadsides, under cars, in buildings and so on, including some that are fake, said Dr Michael Knights, of the Washington Institute For Near East Policy, who has spent time on patrol with Iraqi security forces.
The idea is just to create a huge improvised minefield, and when the enemys forces are trying to pick their way around them, they will open up with machine-guns or mortars. It doesnt take many fighters to do that.
Another tactic, he said, may be mass waves of armoured suicide trucks. Industrial estates in the city have been commandeered to mass-manufacture car bombs one of which was deployed on Monday outside the city and the group is likely to launch tens of them at a time to overwhelm attackers.
The Iraqis are getting better at dealing with this threat, and they will have drones and anti-tank weapons to protect them, said Dr Knights.
But there may be some bad days where an entire brigade crumbles after being hit by ten suicide bombers at once.
In addition, the jihadis have also created a range of underground tunnels to shield fighters and transport equipment.
And there is a fear that they may have stocks of home-made chemical weapons such as mustard gas, so tens of thousands of gas masks have been issued to Iraqi troops as a precaution.
While the gas is not very effective militarily there is a high risk of it blowing back on those who use it the mere sight of clouds of potentially deadly fumes can spread panic in enemy ranks.
One possibility is that as Islamic State comes under pressure, local people may join the fight against the jihadis themselves.
The city is already home to a number of resistance cells, and in recent months they have reportedly carried out a number of killings sometimes by male assassins disguised in abbayas, the billowing black cloaks that Mosuls womenfolk now wear.
Other residents have acted as spies for the coalition, which has killed more than a dozen ISIS field commanders in Mosul since September, including three Islamists from the Russian republic of Chechnya who were in charge of the defence plan.
But for all that ISIS is widely loathed, any hope that the city might liberate itself may prove somewhat forlorn.
First, ISIS has set up a police state to rival Saddam Husseins, indoctrinating young children at religious schools and encouraging them to inform even on their parents, according to the blog Mosul Eye, one of the few reliable sources of information in the city.
Second, the Iraqi forces coming to free them are almost as disliked as ISIS itself by the residents here.
One of the reasons Mosul fell to ISIS in the first place was because of the age-old hatreds between two branches of Islam, the Sunnis and Shias.
The citys overwhelmingly Sunni population hated rule from Baghdad, where the government is dominated by Iran-backed Shia Muslim politicians. (Islamic State itself practises an extreme form of Sunni Islam.)
To many residents in Mosul, the Shia Iraqi army that fled was seen as a sectarian occupying force, and much as most people now hate ISIS even more, they also fear a return to the past.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was believed to be holed up in the city along with his explosives expert Fawzi Ali Nouimeh, but they may have now fled
The RAF took part in strikes around the northern Iraqi city, hitting targets including a truck bomb and anti-tank gun in support of the ground offensive
Making them more nervous still is the presence in the coalition massing outside the city of Shia militias, some of which have served elsewhere in Iraq as anti-Sunni death squads, and have been accused of widespread torture and executions.
Iraqs prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, says the militias will be restricted to holding ground outside the city, but Shia commanders have other ideas.
Mosul is the capital of ISIS and our forces are needed, said Jaffar al-Husseini, spokesman for the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah brigade.
Nobody can stop us in this fight, not even Mr Abadi.
Others with a close interest in the battle include militias from the autonomous state of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, who will secure the area to the north of the city, and local Sunni militias, who are actually anti-ISIS, and may vie for control of Mosul when the battle is over.
Optimists in the coalition camp hope that a successful purging of Islamic State from Iraq could start the beginning of a national healing process, with Iraqi forces for once being seen as liberators rather than oppressors of their own people.
However, there will obviously be no quick fix in the aftermath of this vital battle. And the nature of what will come afterwards is, unsurprisingly, still very much up in the air.
If ISIS is successfully defeated in Mosul, there will be a dangerous power vacuum, with rival factions vying for supremacy.
First, though, there is the massive challenge of dislodging the murderous fanatics who hold the city.
LINCOLN The contract the Lincoln Atheists signed with Lamar Advertising called for the nonprofits billboard to go up outside of the combination Subway-Phillips 66 at 1648 South St. on Oct. 10.
But a day earlier, the group's president, Brian Aden, was at the regular Sunday get-together at Meadowlark Coffee, and there it was.
The Good Life without God? the sign reads. Its possible. Visit us at LincolnAtheists.org.
According to Lamars statistics, the south-facing junior poster makes an average of 26,218 impressions a week. The text, printed atop an outline of the state of Nebraska, was set to be on display for a month.
But then several people threatened to stop doing business at the gas station/store, and the sign's coming down early, according to correspondence between Lamars Lincoln general manager and the Lincoln Atheists.
The group was told Tuesday.
We are grateful for the work Lamar did for us and with us, but we are disappointed that we dont get an equal platform to share ideas, said Shawn Capler, marketing director of the atheist group. I think a group like ours is necessary because not everyone is religious, but I think everyone needs a community. Wed like to think that we provide community for those without any religious beliefs.
The reason the group sought to advertise in the first place was to reach out to other atheists, said Aden.
Our goal of course was never to upset any property owners or anything, he said.
A day before he learned the billboard would be removed, Aden said reaction to the sign had been cordial, if limited.
Surprisingly, we havent had as much feedback regarding our billboard as I expected, he said Monday in an email.
A few people had commented at LincolnAtheists.org that they were happy to see the sign.
The groups Facebook page saw an uptick in members as well, Aden and Capler said. Aden said its likely that was driven by the billboard and by an article on a blog called the Friendly Atheist that has been shared this month.
He said he'd gotten no negative comments about the sign.
To us directly, we still havent gotten anything, Aden said Tuesday. The comments were made without ever bothering to contact us through our website.
In some ways, its what I expected, to be honest. Our very existence is offensive to a lot of people.
Scott Morton, general manager of Lamar's Lincoln branch, said the company must respect the wishes of landowners upon which the company leases space.
At this point, were just going to refund them all of their money, even though they got some display time, he said.
Morton said he and the companys staff consider free speech rights when making decisions on which organizations and companies they do business with. They also balance those considerations with the possibility that the words on the billboards could offend passersby.
Ive turned away so many messages over the last 28 years, I cant tell you, he said.
In the case of the atheists billboard, the company rejected the first design submission -- a black background with the words Let God on it with the d crossed out, leaving the words Let Go visible. Soon after, the parties soon after agreed on a second choice, the runner-up in a design contest voted on by the group's 24 members.
My first choice would be to put it up somewhere else in Lincoln, Aden said. If thats not possible, were not upset at Lamar. Its unfortunate because I dont think theres anything offensive about it.
Capler said the group, which incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in March 2015, will continue with its scheduled get-togethers and volunteer work. Members meet for coffee and board games and adopted a 2-mile stretch of U.S. 79 near Raymond. This December, the Lincoln group and the Omaha Atheists, who put up a billboard in the summer of 2012, will have displays at the Capitol for the second-straight year. Capler said the paperwork has already been filled out.
As for the billboard on private property, he said, his group is willing to let go. A message left Tuesday afternoon for the gas stations owners, listed as Dao & Nguyen Properties LLC in Lancaster County Assessor records, was not returned.
We have nothing to gain from that fight, Capler said. Thats beyond the scope of our organization. Were just a humble little nonprofit that wants to help people.
Puajaysa has served more than two years in federal prison, half of it in notoriously violent Texas facility dubbed 'Bloody Beaumont'
According to civil lawsuit filed by the woman, which was settled last year, she emerged from her room 'painted with blood' from head to toe
He also tried to throw the woman overboard, but being a trained acrobat and fitness instructor, she managed to hold onto balcony
Pujayasa was initially sentenced in January 2015, but appeals court said judge failed to explain why he handed down much longer sentence than recommended under
Sentenced: Ketut Pujayasa, 31, a former room service attendant on a nude Holland America cruise, has been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison for brutally raping, beating and nearly throwing overboard a female guest
A former room service attendant on a nude Holland America cruise has been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison for a second time after admitting to brutally raping, beating and nearly throwing overboard a female guest.
Indonesian national Ketut Pujayasa, 31, has already served more than two years in federal prison, half of it in a notoriously violent correctional facility in Texas, for the February 2014 attack.
Pujayasa told police after his arrest that he decided to punish the female cruise guest on board MS Nieuw Amsterdam after she apparently told him: 'Wait a minute, son of a b****' when he knocked on her door with her breakfast. He said he took her words as an offense directed at his mother.
In the course of the savage assault, which lasted up to an hour, the female victim was raped, choked with electrical cords, and battered bloody with various objects inside her room.
Pujayasa even attempted to throw the woman from the balcony, but thanks to her training as an acrobat and fitness instructor, she was able to hold on.
The victim eventually was able to escape. In printed reports she was described as appearing in a hallway partially naked and 'painted with blood' from head to toe. She still had the wire from a curling iron used in the attack wrapped around her neck.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
'Painted with blood': The female passenger, seen in this grisly photo presented as part of a civil lawsuit last year, suffered horrific injuries in the savage Valentine's Day attack in 2014
Mama's boy: Pujayasa said he ambushed the married woman inside her room after she called him 'a son of a bitch,' which he took as an insult to his beloved mother
The 31-year-old attacker pleaded guilty in September 2014 to charges of aggravated sexual assault and attempted murder and was sentenced in January 2015 to 30 years and five months in federal prison.
However, an appeals court later threw out the sentence, saying that the judge presiding over the case failed to adequately explain his decision to hand down a sentence that was twice as long as recommended under sentencing guidelines, reported Orlando Sentinel.
On Tuesday, US District Judge Jose Martinez imposed the same sentence on Pujayasa, but explained to the court that the more severe punishment was appropriate considering the shocking nature of his actions and the impact on the victim, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and other problems.
Upon his release from prison, Pujayasa will be deported to his native Indonesia from the US and barred from ever re-entering the country.
Speaking through an interpreter in court, the former cruise ship worker apologized for his actions and begged the judge for mercy, saying that he did not want to return to the violent Texas prison dubbed 'Bloody Beaumont.'
'Every day, I have to witness people fighting,' he lamented.
Pujayasa sought to justify his conduct by saying that he acted out of anger sparked by what he believed to be an insult to mother, whom he loves the most in the world.
Last year, Pujayasa's victim filed a civil lawsuit against the cruise line seeking $50million compensation and $365million in punitive damages, which settled out of court.
The savage assault took place on MS Niuew Amsterdam (pictured). The victim, an acrobat and fitness instructor, avoided being thrown off her balcony by her attacker
According to the civil complaint, then-29-year-old Ketut Pujayasa, a junior room service attendant, used his company-issued, master key to enter the cabin of the victim, identified as Jane Doe, where he was able to lurk on her balcony for several hours until she returned.
On February 14, 2014, the married woman, who was on the nudist cruise with a group of friends but had a room to herself, returned around midnight and got ready for bed.
As she climbed into the bed and turned off the lights, in the shadows, she became aware of a figure lurking on the stateroom balcony.
Pujayasa, a 29-year-old employee originally from Indonesia, pounced on the woman.
During the sustained attack, which lasted close to an hour, Pujayasa punched her, smashed heavy blunt objects into her head including a laptop, and threw her across the room.
The rapist attempted to strangle his victim with his hands and then used a telephone cord and a curling iron cord.
The victim lost consciousness during the attack where she was raped and sexually assaulted.
Pujayasa pulled the woman to her room's balcony and tried to throw her overboard into the dark waters.
She screamed repeatedly but no one responded.
The victim was able to hold on to the door handle to prevent being dragged on to the balcony.
Mr Hickey said it was only by having a certain degree of physical strength as part of her career as an aerialist, that his client was able to hold on.
The victim eventually escaped herself. She managed to wrestle free of Pujayasa, opened the door to her cabin on her own, and ran into the hall where other passengers had congregated.
An FBI report on the attack stated: '[The woman], fearing death was imminent, asked the passenger to relay to her family how much she loved them.'
The victim suffered a deep laceration to her left cheek, skull fracture and a wound to the back of the head which required staples.
According to the now-settled lawsuit: 'He [Pujayasa] beat her head and face so hard that she experienced shifting of her teeth. All of the trauma to her head produced a traumatic brain injury.'
A state room with a balcony on a Holland America cruise ship (file picture)
She suffered bites to the hands which left marks; a spinal fracture, swelling, bruising and lacerations to the face, scalp, head, neck, back, front of torso, arms, and legs and abrasions on both arms.
Cord marks were left on her neck from being repeatedly strangled. She has suffered a long-term brain injury due to being beaten about the head and having her oxygen supply cut off with repeated strangulation.
An Indiana judge has admitted his decision in denying a warrant request had 'the most tragic result possible' after a man who stalked his estranged wife killed her.
Anthony Russell, 51, attacked and killed his wife, Laura Russell, in her home by stabbing her multiple times on October 7, police say. He killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound immediately after she died.
The day before Jefferson County Superior Court Judge Michael Hensley denied a warrant request from prosecutors to have Anthony arrested on five felony stalking charges for violating a no-contact order 44-year-old Laura had in place, the Madison Courier reported.
Prosecutors had requested an arrest warrant be issued for Anthony days before he committed the horrific crime, but instead Hensley ordered Anthony to appear in court on the charges following a three-day holiday weekend.
Judge Michael Hensley (left) has admitted his decision in denying a warrant request on October 6 for Anthony Russell had 'the most tragic result possible.' Anthony stabbed his estranged wife Laura Russell (right) to death the next day
Sadly, before the court date, Anthony and Laura were found dead.
Authorities say Laura and her husband had a history of domestic violence.
She had requested a no-contact order back in August after Anthony was arrested and charged with strangulation, domestic battery, and interference with reporting a crime.
Police say Anthony violated the protective order several times, including when he waited for Laura outside of a restaurant and her daughter's school, sent her text messages and followed her to the gym, WHAS reported.
Each time that Anthony violated the protective order, Laura called 911 to report it, police say.
'I think she tried all the avenues that she could to stay safe,' Jefferson County Sheriff John Wallace told the TV station.
Each time that Anthony violated the protective order, Laura called 911 to report it, police say. Anthony and Laura are pictured together above in an undated photo
Hensley issued a statement to the Madison Courier about denying the request for the warrant after her family held her funeral.
He said that he did not have enough probably cause to issue a warrant, despite the fact Anthony violated the protective order several times.
'I express my deepest condolences to her loved ones. I feel horrible about her death and realize the regret I express and information I provide in this statement do not bring her back,' Hensley said.
He said that his role 'is not to simply grant all warrants without review' and that 'certain legal standards must be met' before he can issue a warrant.
'I made what I thought to be the correct legal decision,' Hensley said.
'Obviously, I made a decision that had the most tragic result possible.'
He added that he will now change his procedure to hold a hearing on the same day when a warrant request is issued.
Politicians have condemned the peers' attempt to 'subvert' people's will
Peerrs have demanded a veto on priem Minsister Theresa May's strategy for Brexit
A group of peers has sparked outrage by demanding that the House of Lords is given a veto over Theresa Mays Brexit strategy.
The Lords EU committee said the decision was too important to be left to ministers.
Critics said demands for a vote were cover for attempts to overturn the referendum result.
Mrs May has said she will activate Article 50 the two-year process for leaving by the end of March next year. In their report today, the peers say too much is at stake for the negotiations to be left to ministers.
But ex-Cabinet minister Owen Paterson said: The Government has a duty to carry out the will of the people Peers or MPs calling for a vote so they can draw out proceedings in the hope that they can somehow overturn the outcome is an attempt to subvert the verdict the people gave on June 23.
Both houses will be allowed to vote repeatedly over the coming months as the Great Repeal Bill passes through Parliament.
Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said the Lords would look very foolish if they try to thwart the popular will. The peers report said Parliament should have the chance to debate and approve Brexit strategy, and be given access to secret documents drawn up by officials for Brussels talks.
Ex-Cabinet minister Owen Paterson, left, ha said the demands of the peers will undermine the will of the people. Jacob Rees-Mogg, has said the Lords would look foolish if it vetoed Brexit
Lord Boswell of Aynho, chairman of the Lords EU committee, said parliamentary scrutiny should start before Article 50 is triggered.
An Institute of Government report revealed that MPs and peers have launched more than 30 inquiries into Brexit.
Sir Philip Green has failed to submit a concrete offer to rescue the BHS pension scheme, a Government minister claimed last night.
The revelation by pensions minister Richard Harrington flies in the face of claims by Green that he would sort a deal to fix the companys 571 million black hole.
On Tuesday night, Green repeatedly claimed he would rescue the pension fund and said he was in very strong dialogue with the regulator for a solution.
Green (pictured) has repeatedly pledged to solve the BHS pensions problem and save the nest eggs of the funds 20,000-plus pensioners
But less than 24 hours later, Mr Harrington said: I do understand that there has been no written offer from him [Green], but things can change.
Its not for me to get involved with what the regulator is doing on this its my job to wait and see what happens.
Green has repeatedly pledged to solve the problem and save the nest eggs of the funds 20,000-plus pensioners. During a Parliamentary inquiry into BHSs collapse in June, he said: We will sort it, we will find a solution and I want to give an assurance to the 20,000 pensioners that Im there to sort this.
But several months have passed with no sign of a deal any nearer to being struck.
The behaviour of the billionaire tycoon dubbed Sir Shifty by critics has come under intense scrutiny after he sold BHS to thrice-bankrupt former racing driver Dominic Chappell last year.
And last night, Green was facing the ultimate humiliation as it emerged almost 50 MPs have backed calls to strip him of his knighthood over the destruction of BHS.
Politicians of all parties have rushed to show their support in an effort to force Commons Speaker John Bercow to stage the first-ever vote in Parliament today on removing an honour. MPs will today debate the tycoons role in the retailers demise.
The last BHS stores closed their doors for the final time on August 28. The brand had been a high street staple for 88 years
Labour MP Stephen Kinnock said: Philip Green was knighted for his services to retail and British business, but it seems his main service has been to himself and yacht salesmen.
What we see here is not about rewards for failure, but rewards for destruction. Stripping Green of his undeserved knighthood would make it clear that these kind of practices have no place in modern Britain.
The vote in Parliament, if it goes ahead, will not be binding. But MPs hope it will put pressure on the secretive Honours Forfeiture committee to take action.
Francois Hollande told Theresa May to expect 'hard' negotiations if she pursues a 'hard' Brexit as she came face-to-face with EU leaders at her first Brussels summit today.
The French President's comments set a defiant tone ahead of the meeting of 28 EU leaders and contradicted EU chief Donald Tusk's warm remarks minutes earlier as he appealed to Mrs May to work in close partnership to achieve a successful departure.
The European Council president dismissed media descriptions of her crucial first meeting as a 'lions den,' insisting the EU was 'more like a nest of doves,' adding: 'You can be sure she will be absolutely safe with us'.
Mr Tusk's sentiments towards Britain's new PM appeared to be echoed by European leaders as Mrs May kissed and embraced her counterparts in the European Council chamber today, including EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But Mr Hollande, pictured wagging his finger at Mrs May today, warned as he arrived in Brussels: 'I say very firmly; if Madame Theresa May wants a hard Brexit, then talks will be hard too.'
Mr Hollande, pictured wagging his finger at Mrs May, warned as he arrived for the summit: 'I say very firmly; if Madame Theresa May wants a hard Brexit, then talks will be hard too.' It was in stark contrast to the welcome Jean-Claude Juncker gave to Mrs May, pictured kissing her at the summit this afternoon
Theresa may came face-to-face with EU leaders at her first Brussels summit today
His comments were set to be met by a similarly defiant message from Mrs May, who is set to tell European leaders clinging to the idea Britain will stay in the EU that the referendum is irreversible.
At a dinner with her European counterparts tonight she will crush suggestions made by some senior Eurocrats that Brexit will never happen.
In what were likely to be tense talks, she was set to say that the British people have spoken loud and clear and there will be no backsliding or second referendum.
But on her arrival in Belgium Mrs May sought to reassure EU leaders that Britain is not seeking to destroy their project and told her counterparts that the UK will 'play a full role until we leave and will be a strong and dependable partner after we've left'.
Mr Tusk attempted to set a cordial tone for the summit, which will only address Brexit in an informal manner as official negotiations cannot begin until Britain has triggered Article 50 next spring.
Theresa May grimaces as she chats to French President Francois Hollande at the summit today. He earlier warned her that if she pursues a 'hard' Brexit, she should expect 'hard' negotiations
Theresa May attended her first EU summit as Prime Minister today. Pictured, she talks to EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel (in the red top) at the start of the meeting in Brussels today
Theresa May shares jokes with fellow European leaders Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, left, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, right, and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades
Theresa May was set to crush suggestions made by some senior Eurocrats that Brexit will never happen
He said: 'Let me say I'll be very happy to welcome Prime Minister Theresa May today.
'Some media have described her first meeting in the European Council as entering the lion's den. It's not true.
JEREMY CORBYN INVITES EU LEADERS TO ALTERNATIVE BRUSSELS SUMMIT Jeremy Corbyn has invited a string of EU leaders to his own Brexit summit in Brussels weeks before Theresa May opens formal negotiations with Brussels over Britain's departure. As Theresa May attended her first EU summit as Prime Minister today, the Labour leader followed her to Brussels to meet with his fellow European socialist leaders. Mr Corbyn said his alternative summit early next year will show there's a different 'way forward in Europe' to the Tory Government's 'chaotic' plans for leaving the EU. The veteran left-winger met four EU Prime Ministers today, who told him they were 'more than disappointed' with the British Government's approach to Brexit so far. Mr Corbyn, who was re-elected Labour leader last month, pledged to 'work to protect jobs and workers' rights' with his European partners. But the Tories hit out at Mr Corbyn's plans for an alternative EU summit. Conservative MP Maria Caulfield said: 'If Jeremy Corbyn was serious about making a success of leaving the EU he would get behind the Prime Minister's negotiation not try and talk Britain down from the sidelines. 'The Conservative Party are committed to making a success of Brexit Labour want to delay it, obstruct it and subvert the will of the British people.' Advertisement
'It's more like a nest of doves. Just look at me, I think it's obvious.
'You can be sure she will be absolutely safe with us and I'm sure she'll realise the EU is still the best company in the world.'
Asked if there would be any chance EU leader might talk informally before the triggering of Article 50, Mr Tusk said: 'Absolutely not. We will not discuss our future negotiations with her, it's also a request from Theresa May that we need today only a short information about her intentions and not discussions, not pre-negotiations.
'We have to wait for the formal decision on Article 50.'
The Brussels meeting of all 28 EU leaders will confine the discussion about Brexit to the 'starter course' of a working dinner, in what some will see as a snub to the UK.
But Number 10 insisted it was relaxed about the decision. The main item on the agenda will be the aggressive behaviour of Russia, officials said.
Arriving in Brussels at lunchtime today, Mrs May condemned Russian aggression in Syria and said it showed the need for the UK and the EU to show a 'robust and united European stance'.
She said: 'The UK has put Russian actions in Syria on the agenda for this summit; we must continue to work together and it's vital that we work together to continue to put pressure on Russia to stop its appalling atrocities, its sickening atrocities in Syria.'
With Brexit a sideline issue at the summit, other EU leaders have made it clear they will refuse to discuss the terms of Britain's exit, such as limiting immigration until Article 50 is triggered in March.
Officials said that, nevertheless, Mrs May had a strong message to deliver.
Theresa May received one of Jean-Claude Juncker's typical kisses as she lined up for the EU family photo of European leaders in Brussels today
Angela Merkel chats to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Oban (left), Greek PM Alexis Tsipras (second left) and Italian PM Matteo Renzi as the EU summit got underway in Brussels today
Last week, European Council president Donald Tusk raised the idea that, when faced with the reality that leaving the EU will be painful for Britain, the referendum result could be set aside.
He said: 'If you ask me if there is any alternative to this bad scenario, I would like to tell you that yes, there is. In my opinion, the only real alternative to a 'hard Brexit' is 'no Brexit'. Even if today hardly anyone believes in such a possibility.'
Aides said Mrs May will tell fellow EU leaders the 'British people have made their decision and it is right and proper that decision is honoured'.
A No 10 source said: 'There has been a sense there is still some debate in certain quarters of the EU on whether it might still be possible [that Britain remains a member of the EU].
'The PM has been absolutely clear that this is not the case, but this is an opportunity for her to say that to all the other leaders because we now need to be focusing on the future. That is a future with the UK outside of the EU.'
Theresa May arrived in Brussels today to tell European leaders clinging to the idea Britain will stay in the EU that the referendum is irreversible
European Council president Donald Tusk (pictured arriving at the Brussels summit today) has suggested that the result of the historic referendum could be set aside given the potentially painful exit from the EU
In her first EU summit as Prime Minister, Theresa May (pictured arriving in Brussels today) will crush suggestions made by some senior Eurocrats that Brexit will never happen
Theresa May greets Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte during the EU summit in Brussels today
Separately, Mrs May will strike a conciliatory tone, telling her counterparts she wants to leave the Brussels club without 'damaging' the EU and remaining members.
She will commit Britain to remaining a 'strong partner' of the EU and will pledge that, until we are out, the UK will remain a 'responsible, active and engaged member'. This means continuing to pour an estimated 10billion a year into the EU's coffers and allowing free movement of migrant workers.
Yesterday, it was reported that German chancellor Angela Merkel's government is instructing officials to avoid any back-door contacts that could hand the UK an advantage in trade talks.
They are sticking to an official line that no negotiations can take place until Article 50 is triggered.
Theresa May received one of Jean-Claude Juncker's traditional kisses at the Brussels summit today as Italian PM Matteo Renzi (top left), Greek PM Alexis Tsipras (second left), Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny (top right) and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite look on
German chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured at the summit today) has reportedly instructed underlings to avoid any back-door deals with the UK, which could give Britain an advantage in possible talks
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn followed Mrs May to Brussels today to hold meetings with his fellow European socialist leaders.
He used his visit to announce that he is inviting a string of EU leaders to his own Brexit summit in Brussels weeks before the Prime Minister opens formal negotiations with Brussels over Britain's departure.
Mr Corbyn said his alternative summit early next year will show there's a different 'way forward in Europe' to the Tory Government's 'chaotic' plans for leaving the EU.
The veteran left-winger met four EU Prime Ministers today, who told him they were 'more than disappointed' with the British Government's approach to Brexit so far.
Mr Corbyn, who was re-elected Labour leader last month, pledged to 'work to protect jobs and workers' rights' with his European partners.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn followed Mrs May to Brussels today to hold meetings with his fellow European socialist leaders
As well as making clear that Brexit will mean Brexit, Mrs May (pictured greeting Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny today) is expected to reassure her European counterparts that she does not mean to damage the European project
Theresa May chats to Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny (top right) and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite (right) during a family picture of EU leaders in Brussels today
Theresa May (pictured arriving in Brussels today) will crush suggestions made by some senior Eurocrats that Brexit will never happen
Meanwhile, the chairman of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee claimed ministers in charge of Brexit have 'no idea of their plan'. German MEP Elmar Brok said the 'reality' had 'not arrived' in London and a 'realistic plan' was needed. EU diplomats are worried about the hostile reaction Mrs May could get.
A senior British government source said officials in Brussels were seeking to calm tensions.
Mrs May will address the group for around 10 to 15 minutes at the start of the meal. The source said: 'I think some will respond, and some will feel provoked to respond staff working for Donald Tusk are probably doing a ring around to say we don't want two hours on the British question in the middle of Thursday night.' The source said some EU countries were angry about proposals set out by Home Secretary Amber Rudd to limit the number of foreign workers in the UK.
But he added: 'They are broadcasting tough messages on no negotiations without notification, they want to sound spine-chilling about the implications of a hard Brexit.'
Mrs May will also call for fresh action against Europe's migrant crisis upstream. She wants more done to stop people making the journey to the EU in the first place.
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Hundreds of Jungle camp migrants stormed the fence at Calais yesterday and clashed with riot police in a last-ditch bid to force their way into the UK.
Some broke through the 16ft razor-wire fence and sprinted down the motorway towards the French port - leaving workmen needing to carry out emergency repairs.
Pictures show how the mob of migrants ran towards the fence as night started to fall - prompting French police to fire tear gas canisters into the crowd.
It came one day after all the refugees were told to leave the Jungle, home to 10,000 UK-bound migrants, before it is dismantled at the start of next week.
Immigration chiefs are on red alert for a surge in attempts to scale the fence as the migrants make their last efforts to smuggle their way into the UK.
The Jungle was due to be demolished on Monday, but a last minute legal challenges and the rescue of 400 unaccompanied children temporarily halted the operation - leaving a window of opportunity for those left.
Hundreds of Jungle camp migrants stormed the fence at Calais today and clashed with riot police in a last-ditch bid to force their way into the UK
Pictures show how the mob of migrants ran towards the fence as night started to fall - prompting French police to fire tear gas canisters into the crowd
Riot police were seen patrolling the area amid fears many migrants will attempt to scale the fence before the Jungle is closed
Some broke through the 16ft razor-wire fence and sprinted down the motorway towards the French port - leaving workmen needing to carry out emergency repairs
The migrants were tear-gassed after a group rushed the fence and broke through in a bid to reach the UK
Pictures show how the mob of migrants ran towards the fence as night started to fall - prompting French police to fire tear gas canisters into the crowd
It came one day after all the refugees were told to leave the Jungle, home to 10,000 UK-bound migrants, before it is dismantled at the start of next week
The Jungle was due to be demolished on Monday, but a last minute legal challenges and the rescue of 400 unaccompanied children temporarily halted the operation - leaving a window of opportunity for those left
One migrant was seen protecting his face as police fired tear gas cylinders into the crowd on Wednesday
Police were seen walking towards the Jungle migrant camp after a number of refugees attempted to rush the fence
A couple from China have been forced to post back a toilet seat they stole from a Japanese hotel.
The couple were on a trip to Japan and stole a toilet seat from their room in the Toyoko Inn hotel in Nagoya on October 17, reports Huanqiu, an affiliation with the People's Daily Online.
Upon discovering the couple had taken the expensive Japanese toilet seat, the hotel reportedly demanded the couple return the item.
Not a good idea: The couple allegedly returned the toilet seat to the hotel the following day
The couple were staying at a hotel belonging to the Toyoko Inn chain (pictured), reports said
The couple from Taizhou, eastern China, travelled on a group trip to Japan and were staying in Nagoya when they decided to take the multi-function toilet seat with them.
Upon realising the toilet seat had been taken, the hotel called the group's tour guide and reported the theft to the police, according to the Huanqiu report.
The couple, named Li and Chen, claimed they took the toilet seat because they thought it was left by other guests who had stayed in the same room.
Ms Chen is said to be a commercial bank manager.
Japanese toilets have many functions and are becoming incredibly popular (File photo)
The couple published an apology letter online which said: 'I hope the hotel and local travel agency can treat this with leniency. I promise this behaviour won't happen again.'
Japanese toilet seats are known for having many functions and devices and are becoming a sign of wealth in China.
Spring Airlines, the company the couple flew with, told MailOnline: 'We have verified that the involved tourists had purchased a six-day travel package to Japan via Tuniu.'
The company added: 'They stayed at the Toyoko Inn Chubu Kokusai-kuko Honkan where they mistook a toilet seat for an item left by other hotel visitors. They took it and left the hotel.
'The toilet seat was sent back to the hotel on October 18. Currently, the involved tourists and the tour guide are still travelling in Japan. They will head back to China on October 22.'
There are few places in the world where a piece of land without so much as a house on it would command such a high asking price.
But a sliver of beachfront land in Sandbanks on Britain's south coast has gone on the market with a staggering 6million price tag - despite being on a main road and barely having enough space to build two family homes.
The area is known for having some of the most expensive property in the world, with many properties only being bought to be knocked down and replaced with new buildings that make the most of every last square inch of the plot.
The latest plot to go up for sale comes with planning consent for two modern homes. Pictured is a computer generated image of what they would look like.
It means many modest sixties bungalows have been replaced with glass and concrete homes.
This latest plot to go up for sale is no exception, with planning consent for two beachfront modern homes to be squeezed onto the 6,250,000 piece of the peninsula.
Saxe Cobury, the estate agent handling the sale, described the land as 'a rare opportunity' to buy a plot on 'one of the finest locations on the South Coast'.
It added there are 'far-reaching views across the bay and return views over Poole Harbour and Brownsea Island'.
The homes - each around 4,000 sq ft - would be built across four floors and would have direct access to the beach.
'The location and size of the site make it a truly unique opportunity,' the agent concluded.
Sandbanks has become known for having some of the most expensive property in the world
The new homes will have far-reaching views across the bay and return views over Poole Harbour and Brownsea Island
There are only 70 or so homes around the edge of the peninsula in Dorset, making a location on the seas front highly sought-after.
Celebrities who live in the area include former QPR boss Harry Redknapp and Tony Pulis, manager of West Brom.
There are only 70 or so homes around the edge of the peninsula and many have been turned into luxury homes
The new homes would cover around 4,000 sq ft each and would be built across four floors. This computer generated image shows what the interior could look like once completed.
The average price of a property in Sandbanks - at 1,134,647 - is one of the few places in the country that costs more than London.
Average values in the capital currently stand at almost half that amount at 658,483, according to the property website Zoopla.
Both areas are significantly higher than the UK average, which stands at 297,600.
It has been quite a turnaround in fortunes for one of the one of the world's most expensive addresses as 100 years ago the Sandbanks peninsula was little more than a windswept wasteland.
It was cut off from the rest of the country and unrecognisable from the glossy coastal resort that exists today.
In 1880 the tiny enclave in Poole was only home to a solitary hotel on the southern tip of the peninsula, where guests could get away from the rest of civilisation.
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Mission controllers face an agonising overnight wait for news of the Schiaparelli lander that could become the first European craft on the surface of the red planet.
Controllers confirmed SchiaparelliI's mothership, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, is back in contact with Earth after a successful maneuver to enter orbit around Mars, and is working perfectly and in a 'perfect orbit'.
However, they say they have not heard from the lander - and admit 'the signs are not good'.
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A small robot plans to make history today by becoming the first European spacecraft to survive a landing on Mars, and it might be a bumpy ride. Scientists will be crossing their fingers as Schiaparelli (artist's impression) flies itself on autopilot through the Martian atmosphere, which is expected to welcome the probe with stormy weather.
THE EXOMARS MISSION The main goal of ExoMars is to find out if life has ever existed on Mars. The spacecraft on which the Schiaparelli travelled to Mars, Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), carries an probe to study trace gases such as methane around the planet. Scientists believe methane, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life. The second part of the ExoMars mission, delayed to 2020, will deliver a rover to Mars' surface. It will be the first with the ability to both move across the planet's surface and drill into the ground to collect and analyse samples. Schiaparelli will test technologies for the rover's landing in four years. Advertisement
At a press conference on Thursday morning members of ESA told the public the lander has not sent any data since Schiaparelli landed.
Data was received during the descent, and most of the parts of the landing went to plan.
However, the final part of its landing did not go as expected, the ESA scientists said, and the retro rockets fired for much shorter than expected - only around three or four seconds.
This means we are not sure whether the lander is now in one piece, as the landing might not have been soft enough.
The lander was expected to send out another radio signal on Thursday and the Mars Express orbiter or a telescope in India might pick it up.
'We will keep monitoring...if there is a signal coming we will pick it up,' they said.
All the key pieces of hardware were activated as the lander descended, and the team now need to analyse this data.
'The ESOC teams are trying to confirm contact with the Entry, Descent & Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM), Schiaparelli, which entered the Martian atmosphere some 107 minutes after TGO started its own orbit insertion manoeuvre,' the official statement read.
'We saw the landing sequence waking up in real time using a radio telescope in India,' said ESA's Paulo Ferri.
'We saw the signal through the descent phase, but at a certain point it stopped - but we couldn't conclude anything from that.
'It stopped at a certain point we reckon is before the landing. It is clear these are not good signs.'
The small robot probe is hoping to make history by becoming the first European spacecraft to survive a landing on Mars.
But scientists are still waiting for the signal from Schiaparelli to say it has successfully landed on the Martian surface.
Dr Manish Patel, senior lecturer in planetary scientists at the Open University who has an instrument on board the lander told MailOnline he feels 'a mixed feeling, of great joy that the orbiter in successfully in orbit and our instrument is safe, and disappointment that we lost contact with the lander.'
The ESA team confirmed the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is successfully in its orbit around Mars.
Signals from the Pune telescope were received up until the lander was expected to have landed. The very faint line at the centre of this image is a signal from Schiaparelli as seen by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune, India, about 20 minutes before the probe hit the Martian atmosphere
The ESA Operations Twitter account revealed the initial signals from Mars Express showed the landing site was the expected size, which could be a good sign for the lander's chances.
Its Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mothership, meanwhile, was on its own hairy mission to enter the red planet's orbit, at a distance of some 175 million kilometres from Earth.
Confirmation that the manoeuvre was successful was received at just before 6pm BST (1pm ET).
Scientists, however, are still waiting to hear back from the pool-sized probe. After a descent lasting six minutes, the 2.4m-wide (8ft) disc-shaped lander planned to briefly fired its retro rockets before belly flopping on to a plain near the Martian equator.
'This is no reason for us to despair,' a spokeswoman for ESA said.
The lack of signal might not mean disaster, but it seems the world will have to wait for the main recordings from MarsExpress to be sent back to Earth and analysed by the flight dynamics team, before a confirmation.
Signals from the Pune telescope were received up until the lander was expected to have landed, which was a good sign, Mr Blancquaert added.
The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mothership was on its own hairy mission to enter the red planet's orbit, at a distance of some 175 million kilometres from Earth. Confirmation that the manoeuvre was successful was received at just before 6pm BST (1pm ET)
Some Twitter users were quick to suggest the probe might have crashed, in a repeat of the Beagle landing in 2003, with one saying 'Beagle 2.0'.
The only previous European Space Agency (Esa) spacecraft to attempt a Mars landing was the ill-fated British-built Beagle 2 on Christmas Day in 2003.
After separating from the Mars Express orbiter that carried it to the red Planet, Beagle 2 was not heard from again.
It was not until 2015 that scientists discovered the Beagle had landed, but could not communicate after failing to deploy solar panels.
The probe is expected to send images of Mars back to Earth and conduct scientific measurements on the surface, but its main purpose is to test technology for a future European Mars rover.
Dr Manish Patel, senior lecturer in planetary scientists at the Open University who has an instrument on board the lander told MailOnline a successful landing would be a 'huge milestone in...the study of the potential for life elsewhere in the universe.'
THE FAILED MISSIONS TO MARS: BEAGLE 2 AND OTHER LOST LANDERS An artist's impression showing how the Beagle 2 landing craft may look once it landed on Mars The only previous European Space Agency (Esa) spacecraft to attempt a Mars landing was the ill-fated British-built Beagle 2 on Christmas Day in 2003. After separating from the Mars Express orbiter that carried it to the red Planet, Beagle 2 was not heard from again. It was not until 2015 that scientists discovered the Beagle had landed, but could not communicate after failing to deploy solar panels. Esa isn't the only space agency to lose a spacecraft on the way to Mars. Part of Nasa's Mariner mission, the Mariner 8 was supposed to send images and data back from the red planet. Instead, a launch failure in 1971 meant that it ended up in the Atlantic Ocean without making it into space. In 1999, Nasa's Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated in the Martian atmosphere. The space probe ventured to close to the atmosphere following a software programming error. Following the successful launch the Sputnik satellite, the Soviets attempted to send the Mars1M to the red planet in 1960m but a technical failure shortly after take off meant that it broke up before it reached orbit, and a second launch, the Mars 1M No. 2, also failed. In 1962, the Sputnik 22 probe, was lost in low Earth orbit, while both Sputnik 23 and and 24 also failed to make it to Mars. In 1969, the Soviets' Mars 1969A exploded shortly after launch over the Altai Mountains. A month later, the Mars 1969B suffered a similar fate, crashing back to the ground just 41 seconds after launch. In 1971, the Kosmos 419 also failed to make it out of low Earth orbit. Later that year, the Soviets' Mars 2 lander made it to the red planet but crashed and was lost. A series of failures followed, ending with Mars 7. After launching in 2011, China's Yinghuo-1, which was the country's first and only attempt at reaching Mars, failed to make it out of Earth orbit and eventually broke up over the POacific Ocean. In 1998, Japan launched the Nozomi probe, which made it to Mars in 2003, but failed to make it into Martian orbit. Contact was later lost. Advertisement
'This really has huge implications for our future exploration of Mars,' he added.
'It really does open the doors for the UK and Europe to explore the surface of Mars in ever-more sophisticated ways in the future, so it will enable the chance to look for life at the surface of Mars directly through future Rover missions.
Schiaparelli hitched a ride to Mars on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft, crossing a distance of 310 million miles (500 million km) on its seven-month journey from Earth.
Although it carries some instruments, Schiaparelli's main job will be to test out the landing system for a future ExoMars rover mission due to be launched in 2020.
Engineers stand in the main control room of the European Space Agency (ESA) prior to the expected landing of the decent modul Schiaparelli of European-Russian ExoMars 2016 mission. Mission control faces an agonising wait for the signal to be heard from the Mars Express orbiter
Michel Denis, French ExoMars Flight Director, works in the main control room of the European Space Agency (ESA) prior to the expected landing. The probe is expected to send images of Mars back to Earth and conduct scientific measurements on the surface, but its main purpose is to test technology for a future European Mars rover
The probe parted company with its mothership on Sunday.
Scientists were concerned about the conditions on Mars for landing today, because of a dust storm sweeping the planet.
'The lander is designed to be able to cope with a dusty environment, so Im not too worried,' Dr Manish Patel told MailOnline on Wednesday morning.
'But of course, Id prefer to land on a nice clear day, and then have a dust storm roll in once weve landed,' he said.
'That would be great for the weather measurements that wed be making.'
#GMRT signal trace has jumped again, which should be the signature of @ESA_EDM parachute deployment #ExoMars ESA Operations (@esaoperations) October 19, 2016
Dr Patel is part of a team looking at the atmospheric properties as the lander plunges through the atmosphere during landing, and also part of the team that is measuring the 'weather' at the surface of Mars.
'From this, we will get measurements of pressure, temperature, wind speed and UV levels, which will tell us about the environment the lander has landed in,' he said.
Dr Patel said he felt 'excited, and nervous, and [is] preparing to be unbelievably happy or devastated' before the landing.
'This has been about 13 years in the making for me, following on from Beagle 2, so theres a lot of personal momentum behind this for me.'
This artists concept illustrates a Martian dust storm, which might also crackle with electricity. The Schiaparelli lander is forecast to be heading into a global dust storm on Mars today
WHAT WAS EXPECTED DURING TODAY'S LANDING The main engine burn of the Trace Gas Orbiter started at 2:05 PM BST (9:05 AM ET). Atmospheric entry of the Schiaparelli lander started at 15:42 BST (10:42 ET),, and landing was at 15:48 BST (10:48 ET). Initially slowed by the friction on its heat shield, the probe deployed its parachute at altitude of about 6.8 miles (11km). As it neared the ground, three clusters of retro rockets fired, slowing the craft's speed to less than 4.3 mph (7km/h) 6.5ft (two metres) from the surface. The rockets then switched off, allowing the probe to drop the rest of the way. A special crushable structure built into the spacecraft cushioned against the final shock. During the six-minute descent Schiaparelli took pictures of the approaching Martian terrain The landing site is Meridiani Planum, a flat region that interests scientists because it contains an ancient layer of haematite. Atmospheric entry of the Schiaparelli lander started at 15:42 BST (10:42 ET),, and landing was at 15:48 BST (10:48 ET). Initially slowed by the friction on its heat shield, the probe deployed its parachute at altitude of about 6.8 miles (11km) Advertisement
Dr Colin Wilson from Oxford University was also be experiencing the nerves he felt in 2003 again this morning.
'Im really excited, but also nervous,' he told MailOnline.
'For a successful landing, the probe has to carry out a large number of steps perfectly, from deploying its parachutes to controlling its rockets, if it is land successfully.
'And this is all happening over 100 million miles away, which means that we cant help the lander to carry out these steps.'
The ExoMars 2016 entry, descent, and landing demonstrator module, known as Schiaparelli, will land on Mars in a region known as Meridiani Planum. The landing sites of the seven rovers and landers that have reached the surface of Mars and successfully operated there are indicated on this map
Mission controllers hope Schiaparelli, part of an ambitious joint European and Russian mission to search for evidence of life on Mars, will fare better than Beagle 2 but stress landing on the planet is notoriously tricky.
'At the same time as the landing, the orbiter will be conducting a critical manoeuvre to go into orbit around Mars so its all of the above feelings, multiplied by two!' Dr Patel added.
It was due to enter the Martian atmosphere at around 3.42pm today, travelling at roughly 13,050 mph (21,000 km/h).
SCHIAPARELLI'S INSTRUMENTS Schiaparelli carries a small science payload, called DREAMS (Dust Characterisation, Risk Assessment, and Environment Analyser on the Martian Surface), to study the environment. DREAMS consists of a suite of sensors to measure the local wind speed and direction (MetWind), humidity (DREAMS-H), pressure (DREAMS-P), atmospheric temperature close to the surface (MarsTem), the transparency of the atmosphere (Solar Irradiance Sensor, SIS), and atmospheric electric fields (Atmospheric Radiation and Electricity Sensor; MicroARES) at Mars. The payload will operate on the surface of Mars for 28 Martian solar days. Advertisement
The Schiaparelli lander will make its groundbreaking attempt to navigate to the Martian surface today at 3.42 PM UK time. Initially slowed by the friction on its heat shield, the probe will deploy its parachute at altitude of about 6.8 miles (artist's impression pictured)
A special crushable structure built into the spacecraft will cushion against the final shock. During the descent Schiaparelli will take pictures of the approaching terrain. The landing site is Meridiani Planum, a flat region that interests scientists as it contains an ancient layer of haematite. On Earth, the iron oxide mineral almost always forms in a watery environment
Dr Wilson will be looking at properties of the Martian atmosphere.
'Ive built a sensor which measures wind speed and direction,' he told MailOnline.
'This lander carries, or the first time, a sensor which can measure electric charge in the atmosphere.
'We think that turbulent gusty winds carrying sand and dust particles can lead to high electric charges building up in the atmosphere a kind of Martian static cling.
'This is important to understand for future Mars explorers, whether they are robots or humans.'
TRACE GAS ORBITER - THE INSTRUMENTS ON BOARD THE 'MOTHERSHIP' The Trace Gas Orbiter carries a science payload of four instruments: NOMAD, ACS, FREND and CaSSIS The Trace Gas Orbiter carries a science payload of four instruments: NOMAD Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery NOMAD combines three spectrometers, two infrared and one ultraviolet, to perform high-sensitivity orbital identification of atmospheric components, including methane and many other species, via both solar occultation and direct reflected-light nadir observations. ACS Atmospheric Chemistry Suite This suite of three infrared instruments will help scientists to investigate the chemistry and structure of the Martian atmosphere. ACS will complement NOMAD by extending the coverage at infrared wavelengths, and by taking images of the Sun to better analyse the solar occultation data. CaSSIS Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System A high resolution camera (5 metres per pixel) capable of obtaining colour and stereo images over a wide swathe. CaSSIS will provide the geological and dynamical context for sources or sinks of trace gases detected by NOMAD and ACS. FREND Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector This neutron detector will map hydrogen on the surface down to a metre deep, revealing deposits of water-ice near the surface. FRENDs mapping of shallow subsurface water ice will be up to 10 times better than existing measurements. Source: ESA Advertisement
Although most focus will be on the lander today, the TGO also completed a difficult mission, as it will have one chance to be captured by Mars' gravity and go into orbit.
The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) probe will tell scientists whether Martian methane is most likely to have a geological or biological origin.
At the moment the Trace Gas Orbiter is still firing its main engine to be captured by Marss gravity.
The spacecraft is now behind the planet and so out of contact with the ground but this was expected, and will be in view of Earth again at around 17:30 BST.
'It will map in detail the gases found in Mars atmosphere, to see if there is any clue there about whether any kind of life developed on Mars in the past or whether its there today,' Dr Wilson said.
'This is a really interesting question and Im looking forward to trying to answer it.'
Dr Patel is in charge of the instrument on the orbiter that will be looking for traces of methane in Mars' atmosphere.
This artist's impression shows the Mars lander on its way to the Martian surface, with its mission to scour the surface for signs of life. Schiaparelli will test the rover's descent and landing system - which uses a heat shield, parachute, and retro rockets. It also carries a small instrument package that will record wind speed, humidity, pressure and temperature at the landing site
SCHIAPARELLI'S KEY STATS Diameter 2.4 m with heatshield, 1.65 m without heatshield Height 1.8 m high Mass 577 kg (wet) Heat shield material Norcoat Liege Structure Aluminium sandwich with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer skins Parachute Disk-Gap-Band canopy, 12 m diameter Propulsion 3 clusters of 3 hydrazine engines (400 N each), operated in pulse-modulation Power Primary batteries Communications UHF link with the ExoMars Orbiter (with 2 antennas)
On Earth, the gas is chiefly generated by billions of bacteria, many of which live in the guts of animals such as cows.
But it can also be released by the breakdown of organic molecules deep underground or volcanic activity.
'It really does open the doors for the UK and Europe to explore the surface of Mars in ever-more sophisticated ways in the future, so it will enable the chance to look for life at the surface of Mars directly through future Rover missions.
'A successful landing will be a huge milestone in the field of astrobiology, which is the study of the potential for life elsewhere in the universe.'
The Schiaparelli lander will make its ground breaking attempt to navigate to the Martian surface today at 3.42 PM UK time (10:42 ET).
Initially slowed by the friction on its heat shield, the probe will deploy its parachute at altitude of about 6.8 miles (11km).
This artist's impression shows the interior of the Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing demonstrator module. Schiaparelli, part of the ExoMars 2016 mission, was launched together with the Trace Gas Orbiter on 14 March 2016 and will arrive at the red planet today
The 600kg flight model of the ExoMars Schiaparelli demonstrator module pictured prior to the start of thermal tests in the ESP70 Thermal Vacuum Chamber at the Thales Alenia Space premises in Cannes, France last year
As it neared the ground, three clusters of retro rockets will have fired, slowing the craft's speed to less than 4.3 mph (7km/h) 6.5ft (two metres) from the surface.
The rockets should have then switched off, allowing the probe to drop the rest of the way.
A special crushable structure built into the spacecraft should have cushioned against the final shock.
During the descent Schiaparelli will have taken pictures of the approaching Martian terrain.
The landing site is Meridiani Planum, a flat region that interests scientists because it contains an ancient layer of haematite. On Earth, the iron oxide mineral almost always forms in a watery environment.
While the landing is taking place, TGO will settle itself in orbit around Mars.
Three new crew members are en route to the International Space Station after blasting off from Kazakhstan this morning.
A Soyuz rocket carrying two Russians and an American launched from the Russian-operated Baikonur facility in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 2:05 pm local time (9:05 am BST).
The Soyuz MS-02 space capsule is set to dock at the space outpost in two days' time, delivering the new crew - Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough.
The Soyuz rocket carrying two Russians and an American to the ISS launched from the Russian-operated Baikonur facility in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 2:05 pm local time (08:05 am GMT)
Kimbrough, Ryzhikov and Borisenko are to spend just over four months at the station before coming back to Earth in late February.
They will join three crew members currently aboard the station, Nasa's Kate Rubins, Japanese (Jaxa) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian commander Anatoly Ivanishin.
With Nasa's fleet of shuttles long retired, the Russian space agency is the only tried and tested safe program for ferrying crew members to and from the ISS.
Also en route to the space station is a resupply mission,carrying food and science equipment.
This morning's Soyuz launch is carrying NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough (left) and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov (middle) and Andrey Borisenko (right)
The launch was originally set for 23 September, but it was postponed because of a technical issue with the Soyuz spacecraft that was eventually fixed
FRESH ISS CREW MEMBERS This morning's Soyuz launch is carrying three new crew members to the ISS: Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough. The trio will join the station's current expedition crew, Nasa's Kate Rubins, Japanese (Jaxa) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian commander Anatoly Ivanishin. Advertisement
Yesterday an Antares rocket took the unmanned Cygnus capsule into orbit, carrying more than two tons of supplies.
The capsule is on target to dock with the space station on Sunday, when the crew will unload the cargo and refill the empty capsule with waste before releasing it to burn up in the atmosphere.
In addition to the activities of the ISS, China's space agency has also stepped up its manned orbital presence, with two astronauts arriving today at the nation's new space station, the Tiangong 2.
The two crew members will carry out experiments with medical equipment and test out technology aboard the module, before returning to Earth in mid-November after a total of 33 days in orbit.
One day, you could be using your own personal drone to help you find your vehicle again in a busy car park.
That is if a patent granted to Amazon becomes a reality.
The company has revealed plans for an 'unmanned aerial vehicle assistant' could also be used by traffic police to help them catch speeding drivers.
One day traffic police might become a thing of the past, as humans might be replaced by drones. That is if a patent granted to Amazon becomes a reality. The company has revealed plans for an 'unmanned aerial vehicle assistant' (patent image pictured)
WHAT WILL THE UAVS DO? The 'unmanned aerial vehicle assistant', would launch from a dock on a policeman's microphone. The mini flying robots could act as miniature 'dash cams' for the police, to chase criminals, to find missing children or to help people locate their vehicle in a busy car park. The drones could also be used for a variety of other applications, according to the patent. 'If a user is waiting in a long line to buy concert tickets, for example, the user may not be able to see over the crowd to see how many total people are in line,' the patent says. Advertisement
The mini drones could act as miniature 'dash cams' for the police, to chase criminals, to find missing children or to help people locate their vehicle in a busy car park, according to the patent.
'The UAV may be used, for example, to record information from a perspective different than the user's perspective, scout dangerous situations, or locate/retrieve items for the user, among other possible task,' the patent said.
'In some examples, the UAV can be small enough to carry on the user's person (e.g., in a bag, in a pocket, on a jacket, etc.) and allow for ready deployment.'
Amazon wants these drones to be 'smaller, lighter, and less expensive than conventional UAVs'.
This means the processors, which will need to be capable of voice recognition to obey commands, would have to be small.
'During a routine traffic stop, for example, the officer can command the [drone] to "hover" or "follow me",' the patent says.
The drones could also be useful for non-policemen.
'If a user is waiting in a long line to buy concert tickets, for example, the user may not be able to see over the crowd to see how many total people are in line,' the patent says.
'In this case, the user can simply say "hover" to the UAV and the UAV can take up a position at a predetermined distance above the user (e.g., 15 feet).'
The mini drones could act as miniature 'dash cams' for the police, to chase criminals, to find missing children or to help people locate their vehicle in a busy car park, according to the patent
The mini drones could launch from a dock on a policeman's microphone, according to the patent (pictured). This means the processors, which will need to be capable of voice recognition to obey commands, would have to be small
CURRENT DRONE RULES The FAA currently bans commercial drone flights except for a few dozen companies that have been granted waivers. That ban will stay in place until regulations become final, but FAA officials plan to continue granting waivers case by case. The vast majority of drones being flown today are operated by recreational users. FAA regulations permit recreational users to fly small drones as long as they stay at least 5 miles away from an airport, limit flights to less than 400 feet in altitude, keep the aircraft in line of sight and fly only during the daytime. Advertisement
Amazon has been working on drone inventions for the past few years.
In July, the company was awarded a patent that illustrated using 'docking stations' for its autonomous carriers.
The patent that describes using tall structures such as lamp posts or churches that would allow the drones to recharge and continue on their route.
Amazon announced its idea for delivery drones back in 2013, which it called 'the future of home delivery'.
The Internet shopping firm's chief executive Jeff Bezos said that he wants to use octocoptors to replace postal workers and cut delivery times to just 30 minutes.
In 2013 Bezos said he planned to launch Amazon Prime Air within four to five years, and it seems the e-commerce giant is right on schedule.
Amazon announced its idea for delivery drones back in 2013, in which they called 'the future of home delivery'. The Internet shopping giant's chief executive Jeff Bezos said that he wants to use octocoptors to replace postmen and cut delivery times to just 30 minutes
Under the brand Amazon Prime Air, the online retailer is at the concept stage of launching a delivery service using drones rather than vans to transport many of its products. These battery-powered aircraft will operate within several miles of an Amazon distribution centre
This past April, the US Senate passed the bipartisan aviation policy bill that demands the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) authorize package deliveries by drones within two years.
It says that the agency must create a small drone 'air carrier certificate' for operators of delivery drone fleets, similar to the safety certificates granted to commercial airlines.
These rules are needed for Amazon and other companies to deploy fleets of delivery drones.
In August, Amazon announced that it will team up with the UK Government to explore the steps needed to make the delivery of parcels by small drones a reality, allowing Amazon to trial new methods of testing its delivery systems.
These trials are being supported by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is allowing Amazon to experiment with whether its drones can be flown in ways that are not permitted under the authoritys present stringent regulations.
This announcement strengthens our partnership with the UK, a press release said, and brings Amazon closer to our goal of using drones to safely deliver parcels in 30 minutes to customers.
Under the Amazon Prime Air brand, the online retailer is at the concept stage of launching a delivery service using drones rather than vans to transport many of its products.
These small, battery-powered, unmanned aircraft will be able to operate within several miles of an Amazon distribution centre.
They can fly at around 50mph, carrying loads weighing up to 5lb.
The aim is to deliver packages within 30 minutes of them being ordered online.
We might imagine cave men crudely making tools out of rocks, but Middle Stone Age man might in fact have been an innovative artisan.
New evidence suggests some early humans placed rocks into hot embers before shaping them into blades in order to make them harder and more precise.
This clever tool-making technique may explain why one group in southern Africa was so successful around 70,000 years ago.
Humans living in South Africa in the Middle Stone Age may have used advanced heating techniques to produce silcrete blades, according to the new study
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF HEATING STONE? The advantages of heat treating the silcrete rock were many. It facilitates knapping - chipping of pieces of stone by striking it - because it reduces its fracture toughness and makes it harder. 'This means less force is needed to detach a flake or blade after heat treatment, resulting in better control and precision during percussion,' the researchers wrote. By heating the rock early in the tool-making process, the people also had the advantages of getting rid of weakening impurities and producing angular fragments suitable for knapping. Advertisement
Experts already suspected prehistoric humans treated rocks with heat when making tools, but the study, led by the University of Bordeaux, sheds light on the exact role of this technology on the Stone Age production line for the first time.
Experts analysed 70,000-year-old artefacts made from a local rock called Silcrete, at Klipdrift Shelter, a recently discovered Middle Stone Age site located on the southern Cape of South Africa.
The shelter is thought to be consistent with the Howiesons Poort a cultural period in Africa, when Middle Stone Age people were thought to be ahead of their time, showing signs of culture such as using symbolism and giving presents, as well as making impressive tools.
The researchers, led by Anne Delagnes, used a novel non-destructive approach to analyse the heating technique used in the production of silcrete, or flint-like artefacts at the shelter.
They compared unheated and heat-treated samples of silcrete samples from 31 locations around the site, which overlooks the sea.
They believe the people living in and around the shelter deliberately heated the rock to modify its properties the first evidence of a transformative technology suggesting they realised the process made the rock easier to fracture when making tools.
New evidence suggests some early humans placed rocks into hot embers before shaping them into blades in order to make them harder and more precise. Pictured is an artist's impresssion of Middle Stone Age man
A map shows the Klipdrift Complex, where the Klipdrift Shelter, a recently discovered Middle Stone Age, is located. Experts analysed 70,000-year-old artefacts made from a local rock called Silcrete at the site
This means that less force is needed to detach a flake or blade after heat treatment, resulting in better control and precision during percussion the researchers wrote in the study, published in the journal Plos One.
Heating the rock makes it harder and would have resulted in sharper blades, probably used for hunting.
WHAT IS HOWIESONS POORT? Howiesons Poort is a cultural period of lithic technology in the Middle Stone Age in Africa. It occurred between 70,000 and 59,500 years ago and is named after the Howieson's Poort Shelter archaeological site. It's a mystery why the culture disappeared. The period is characterised as being ahead of its time, based on the technology used to make tools and cultural features such as the use of symbolism and the exchange of gifts. Composite weapons have been discovered, made from 'geometric backed' blades that were hafted together with heated ochre and gum compound glue. The blades are sometimes known as segments or microliths and are used to identify Howiesons Poort sites. Fine-grained stone such as silcrete and quartz make up a large percentage of Howiesons Poort artefacts than in both earlier and later Middle Stone Age cultures. Advertisement
The experts found 90 per cent of the artefacts they studied had been heat treated, showing how important and widespread the technique was.
They were able to tell artefacts had been treated because they had a smoother surface than un-treated blades, or because they had traces of tempering residue from being in direct contact with hot embers.
The heating step appeared to occur early during the blade production process - at an early reduction stage where stone was flaked away to shape the silcrete core.
The hardening, toughening effect of the heating step would therefore have impacted all stages of silcrete tool production.
The whole Chaine operatoire [operational chain], from core preparation to blade production and tool manufacturing, benefited from the advantages of the heating process, the experts wrote.
The authors believe this process may be the first direct evidence of the intentional and extensive use of fire applied to a whole lithic chain of production and there are no known contemporaneous equivalents anywhere else in the world.
They said the geology of the area surrounding the shelter did not lend itself to tool making, but the peoples clever use of heat compensated for this and was one of many innovations that allowed them to flourish.
The adaptable and innovative attitude was likely one factor that favoured the widespread distribution of Howiesons Poort material culture in southern Africa, the experts wrote.
However, the ingenious culture did not last, and it took a vast stretch of time before technology like heat treatment was re-discovered.
It is only from c. 20 ka [20,000 years ago] that the heat treatment of stone developed in Asia and Europe, the experts explained.
A mammoth tooth, believed to be up three million years old, has been found on an Essex beach.
The artefact was discovered at the Naze on the Essex coast.
While some experts say the tooth could be up to three million years old, one believes it may be much younger, at around 50,000 years old.
Wendy and John Booth discovered the mammoth tooth fossil (pictured) at the Naze, where they often go searching
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY Professor Adrian Lister, lead mammoth at London's Natural History Museum told MailOnline that the tooth may not be quite as old as 3 million years. It is an upper molar of a mammoth, probably woolly mammoth. 'It is not as old as 3 million years old its impossible to be precise without knowing the geological context, but more like 50,000 years old (last glaciation). Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Bristol also confirmed that the find was indeed a mammoth tooth. 'As for the age though, that depends on the rocks from which it was found - there is Red Crag (which is up to 3 million years old) and Pleistocene (which is from 1 million to 11,000 years old),' he said. 'The mammoth could be from either'. Advertisement
Wendy and John Booth discovered the fossil at the Naze, where they often go searching.
Wendy said: 'We were out on the foreshore in Walton by the pill boxes, right out past the tower.
'At first I just thought it was a lump of brown concrete. It was probably dredged up by a boat.
'I was ecstatic when I realised what it was.
'We have never found anything like this before.
'You could call it a find of the century.
'We are keeping it as a souvenir and are proudly displaying it in our cabinet at home.'
Steven Walker, publicity officer at Naze visitor centre, said: 'It's a very rare find.'
The Walton cliffs are famous for finding sharks teeth, which come out of the London clay - a sediment which was laid out 50 million years ago.
The mammoth tooth may have come from the Red Crag formation which was laid out 3 million years ago.
Mr Walker explained: 'They have been turning up in Clacton. The theory is they were dredged up in the sand that was used to recharge the beaches in Holland-on-Sea.
'We know mammoth bones have been found in Walton which are nothing to do with the dredging.
'Thus, it's a genuine Red Crag fossil, dating back 3 million years.'
However, Professor Adrian Lister, lead mammoth at London's Natural History Museum told MailOnline that the tooth may not be quite as old as that.
The mammoth tooth fossil was found on the beach at the Naze on the Essex coast
A map showing the stretch of the Essex coast where the fossil was found
It is an upper molar of a mammoth, probably woolly mammoth.
'It is not as old as 3 million years old its impossible to be precise without knowing the geological context, but more like 50,000 years old (last glaciation).
Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Bristol also confirmed that the find was indeed a mammoth tooth.
'As for the age though, that depends on the rocks from which it was found - there is Red Crag (which is up to 3 million years old) and Pleistocene (which is from 1 million to 11,000 years old),' he said.
'The mammoth could be from either'.
Wendy and John Booth discovered the fossil at the Naze on the Essex coast, where they often go searching
The couple who found the fossil, from Cliffe in Kent, have visiting the Naze regularly in recent years, often 'fossicking' at the cliffs with Walton friends Stephen and Rhoda Ryder.
Ms Rhoda said: 'We have found sharks teeth and bones, run of the mill stuff, but nothing as big as this. It's as big as a boot. Naze is famous for finding fossils.'
The Naze visitor centre's Mr Walker said people are not allowed to dig for fossils on the cliffs but can pick them up on the beach.
He said the recently opened visitor centre has a geographical display which highlights the tropical climate of 50 million years ago when sharks would feed on the smaller fish around Essex shores.
Hundreds of repositories across nearly two dozen major cloud services are actively providing malware, including phishing, drive-by downloads, and fake sites, according to a new study.
The list includes domains from Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, and according to the team, the malicious content can be difficult to spot.
Researchers say hackers could hide components of malware in separate locations in the cloud, allowing them to go untracked as individual items but, these seemingly innocent pieces can quickly be assembled to launch an attack.
Hundreds of repositories across nearly two dozen major cloud services are actively providing malware, including phishing, drive-by downloads, and fake sites, according to a new study. Areas most heavily affected are indicated in light green in the map above
TELLTALE SIGNS OF MALICIOUS CONTENT According to the researchers, the malware is split into different elements, and hidden among separate repositories. These pieces, however, are assembled rapidly. The team found that bad actors often had redundant repositories connected by redirection schemes that would allow them to continue the attacks even if one were lost. And, they often used gatekeepers to block out scanners. The bad guys all had bodyguards at the door,' Beyah said. 'Thats not normal for cloud storage, and we used that structure to detect them. Advertisement
In the study, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of California Santa Barbara created a scanning tool called BarFinder to track down the unique features of bad repositories.
These, known as Bars, are often associated with redirection schemes and gatekeeper elements to protect malware from scanners.
The study investigated 20 major cloud hosting services, scanning more than 140,000 sites.
This revealed roughly 10 percent of the cloud repositories had been compromised in some way, with 700 active repositories for malicious content.
Bad actors have migrated to the cloud along with everybody else, said Raheem Beyah, a professor in Georgia Techs School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The bad guys are using the cloud to deliver malware and other nefarious things while remaining undetected.
'The resources they use are compromised in a variety of ways, from traditional exploits to simply taking advantage of poor configurations.
The nature of the bad content makes it extremely difficult to detect.
According to the researchers, the malware is split into different elements, and hidden among separate repositories.
These pieces, however, are assembled rapidly.
Scanning large amounts of storage on cloud hosting services is challenging, and operators may not have the resources to do so.
And, their monitoring abilities may be limited by service-level agreements.
Some exploits appear to be benign until they are assembled in a certain way, explained Beyah.
When you scan the components in a piecemeal kind of way, you only see part of the malware, and the part you see may not be malicious.
Researchers say hackers could hide components of malware in separate locations in the cloud, allowing them to go untracked as individual items but, these seemingly innocent pieces can quickly be assembled to launch an attack
'LURKING MALICE' IN 20 MAJOR CLOUD SERVICES
The study investigated 20 major cloud hosting services, scanning more than 140,000 sites. heroku & herokuapp.com amazon S3 & s3.amazonaws.com cloudfront & cloudfront.net windowsnet & windows.net azure & azurewebsites.net google & googledrive.com appspot & appspot.com msecdn & msecdn.net bitbucket & bitbucket.org github & github.io sina & sinaapp.com olympe & olympe.in rackcdn & rackcdn.com baiduyun & duapp.com qiniu & qiniucdn.com akamaihd & akamaihd.net yahoo & hostingprod.com sogo & sogoucdn.com go2cloud & go2cloud.org aliyun & aliyuncs.com The team says it has notified affected companies of their findings. Advertisement
This strategy, while it helps to hide the bad content, also worked to the researchers advantage, they say.
The researchers found that bad actors often had redundant repositories connected by redirection schemes that would allow them to continue the attacks even if one were lost.
And, they often used gatekeepers to block out scanners.
We observed that there is an inherent structure associated with how these attackers have set things up, says Beyah.
For instance, the bad guys all had bodyguards at the door. Thats not normal for cloud storage, and we used that structure to detect them.
The tool revealed malicious content hidden throughout the cloud.
Some of the hackers opened an inexpensive account to host their software, while others hid theirs within the domains of well-known brands.
Researchers created a scanning tool called BarFinder to track down the unique features of bad repositories. These, known as Bars, are often associated with redirection schemes and gatekeeper elements to protect malware from scanners
Its pervasive in the cloud, Beyah said.
We found problems in every last one of the hosting services we studies. We believe this is a significant problem for the cloud hosting industry.
Attacks ranged from phishing to drive-by downloads, and even fake antivirus or computer update sites, the researchers found.
The team has notified affected companies of their findings.
They can attack you directly from these buckets, or they can redirect you to other malicious buckets or a series of malicious buckets, Beyah said.
It can be difficult to see where the code is redirecting you.
The researchers say cloud-based repositories can be protected through the usual defences, including patching of systems and proper configuration settings.
Moving forward, the team is hoping to make BarFinder widely available, whether through licencing or as an open-source tool to help protect the cloud.
Attackers are very clever, and as we secure things and make the cloud infrastructure more challenging for them to attack, they will move onto something else, Beyah said.
Emirates has suspended flights to Guinea over fears of spreading the Ebola virus.
The Dubai-based carrier is the first major international airline to cancel flights due to the epidemic which has taken hold in West Africa.
However, British Airways continues to operate its flight from Liberia to London Heathrow, which also stops at Lungi International Airport in Sierra Leone.
Emirates has suspended flights to Conakry after there was an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea
Emirates confirmed the decision to suspend flights Conakry came after there was an outbreak of the virus in Guinea.
The suspension of the route follows a similar decision by Pan-African airlines Arik and ASKY, which have stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
A spokesperson for Emirates said: 'Emirates will be suspending its service to Conakry from (Saturday) 2 August, 2014 until further notice, due to the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Guinea.
'We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers. However the safety of our passengers and crew is of the highest priority and will not be compromised.'
Liberian soldiers walk through streets to prevent panic over fears the virus could spread to city of Monrovia
British Airways also released a statement, saying: 'The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our top priority.
'We fully comply with the guidance provided by local health authorities and continue to monitor the situation closely.'
The current Ebola outbreak is the largest ever recorded since the virus was first detected in 1976, with more than 1,200 cases so far.
It far exceeds the next largest outbreak, involving 425 cases.
Around 60 per cent of cases so far have been fatal and more than 700 people have died since the start of February.
The outbreak began in Sierra Leone and has spread to Liberia, with a Liberian also dying in Lagos, Nigeria last week, after a flight from his home country.
Following his death, both Arik and ASKY halted all flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Guinea's capital Conakry will not be serviced by Emirates flights until further notice
Despite fears over flights still operating into and out of West Africa - often with direct routes to London - the Foreign Office claims Border Staff have been trained to recognise symptoms.
A statement from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) read: 'Border Force has been working closely with Public Health England and other agencies to ensure staff are prepared to deal with the threat of the Ebola virus.
'As part of this planning, guidance has been issued to front line staff on how to identify and safely deal with suspected cases of Ebola that makes clear what steps need to be taken should a passenger arrive at the border unwell.
'If a person is identified at the border as being a potential carrier of Ebola they will be immediately referred by a Border Force officer to a specialist medical care provider and reported to the Public Health England.'
ADVICE TO TRAVELLERS IN EBOLA-AFFECTED COUNTRIES Public Health England (PHE) advises that the risk to tourists, visitors or expatriate residents in affected areas is considered very low as long as they take the correct precautions. The highest risks of infection are associated with caring for infected patients, particularly in hospital settings, unprotected exposure to contaminated bodily fluids, and unsafe medical procedures, including exposure to contaminated medical devices, such as needles and syringes. It is recommended that travellers: Avoid contact with symptomatic patients and their bodily fluids Avoid contact with corpses and/or bodily fluids from deceased patients. Avoid close contact with live or dead wild animals (including monkeys, forest antelopes, rodents and bats) Avoid consumption of 'bush meat' Wash and peel fruits and vegetables before consumption Practise safe sex Follow strict hand washing routines
The FCO has also stopped short of restricting travel to the crisis-hit nations, simply referring travellers to the National Travel Health Network and Centre, which offers advice on how to reduce the risk of infection.
For its part, the World Health Organization does not recommend any travel restrictions to Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone and confirmed there has never been a case of Ebola imported into the UK.
The leader of Guinea's Ebola task force has said that moves by neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone to contain the disease that has killed 729 people this year may have the opposite effect.
Liberia has put in place measures including closing all schools and some government departments as well as possibly quarantining affected communities. Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency and called in troops to isolate Ebola victims.
The virus, which has gripped both Sierra Leone and Liberia (pictured) has also spread to neighbouring Guinea
'Currently, some measures taken by our neighbours could make the fight against Ebola even harder,' said Aboubacar Sidiki Diakita
'When children are not supervised, they can go anywhere and make the problem worse. It is part of what we will be talking about,' he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 57 new Ebola deaths on Thursday in the four days to July 27 in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria and said the number of cases had topped 1,300.
WHO director general Margaret Chan will also attend the meeting in Guinea's capital Conakry today.
British Airways has confirmed it will continue to run its route to Liberia and Sierra Leone
The outbreak of the virus, for which there is no known cure, began in the forests of eastern Guinea in February, but Sierra Leone now has the highest number of cases.
The haemorrhagic virus can kill up to 90 percent of those infected, though the fatality rate in this epidemic is about 60 percent. In the final stages, its symptoms include external bleeding, internal bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea - at which point Ebola becomes highly contagious.
The jump in the number of cases and the death toll has raised international concern and placed under-resourced health facilities in the region under strain.
WHO said on Thursday it would launch a $100 million response plan. The United States said it was providing material and technical support to the three countries and further assistance will be discussed at a summit meeting in Washington next week.
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Painting a picture of the frail relationship between humans and the animal kingdom, these photos are at once beautiful and sad.
This year, the Natural History Museum challenged photographers to tell visual stories about society's interactions with the natural world, and the winners, announced in London, did not disappoint.
American photographer Tim Laman won Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 for his image, Entwined lives. It frames a critically endangered Bornean orangutan above the Indonesian rainforest.
This image won the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 award, and depicts an endangered young male orangutan climbing a 100-foot high tree in the Gunung Palung National Park, Indonesia
Beating almost 50,000 entries from 95 countries, Mr Laman's image will be on show with 99 other shots selected by an international panel of judges at the 52nd annual exhibition.
Sir Michael Dixon, director of the Natural History Museum, stated: 'Wildlife Photographer of the Year highlights some of the big questions for society and the environment.
'How can we protect biodiversity? Can we learn to live in harmony with nature? The winning images touch our hearts, and challenge us to think differently about the natural world.'
Mr Laman's winning image took dedication. He spent three days rope-climbing the 100-foot tall tree to set up several GoPro cameras that he could trigger remotely. This captured the orangutan's face from above within a wide-angle perspective of the forest below.
Mr Laman's winning shot was one in a series of six, including this one of workers at the West Kalimantan rescue centre, who are transporting a wheelbarrow of orphan orangutans to a nearby forest for playtime
Winner of the urban category was Nayan Khanolkar, who captured a solitary leopard slinking down an alleyway in a suburb of Mumbai bordering Sanjay Gandhi national park, where the Warli tribe has learned to co-exist with the nocturnal big cats
Luis Javier Sandoval, from Mexico, won the Impressions category for his tricky underwater photo of a playful California sea lion pup grabbing a starfish near shore break at sunrise in Espiritu Santo Island near La Paz Baja California Sur, Mexico
Swedish photographer Mats Andersson triumphed in the black-and-white category with his heart-wrenching photo of a Eurasion pygmy owl mourning the death of its partner, who was lying dead on the forest floor below, near Bashult, Sweden
Wild orangutans face a crisis of habitat loss due to agriculture and logging. Combined with increased poaching for the illegal pet trade the species' future seems bleak.
'Protecting their remaining habitat is critical for orangutans to survive,' Mr Laman said. 'If we want to preserve a great ape that retains its vast culturally transmitted knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest and the full richness of wild orangutan behaviour, then we need to protect orangutans in the wild, now.'
Winner of the urban category was Nayan Khanolkar, who captured a solitary leopard slinking down an alleyway in a suburb of Mumbai bordering the Sanjay Gandhi national park.
In a rare example of harmony, the Warli tribe living there has learned to coexist with the local big cats, allowing them to navigate the villages at night in search of food despite their occasional too-close-for comfort encounters.
It took four months for Mr Khanolkar to get the image he was after, using carefully positioned flash lights.
Indian photographer Ganesh H Shankar won the Birds category for capturing a rose-ringed parakeet kicking a Bengal monitor lizard out of its roosting hole, a campaign that lasted two days before the lizard squatter gave up
Gideon Knight, 16, from the UK, won the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year title for his poetic image of a moonlit crow on a sycamore tree , a sight he described as reminding him of 'something out of a fairy tale'
Australian photographer Paul Hilton won the wildlife photojournalist award for his grim image of 4,000 defrosting pangolins - the world's most trafficked animal - intercepted on their way to China and Vietnam for the exotic meat trade
Sixteen-year-old Gideon Knight from the UK won the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year title for his image, The Moon and the Crow.
Shot near his London home, it shows the twigs of a sycamore tree silhouetted against the blue dusk sky and the full moon. This 'makes it feel almost supernatural, like something out of a fairy tale,' said Mr Knight.
'If an image could create a poem, it would be like this. It should certainly inspire a few lines,' remarked Lewis Blackwell, chair of the jury.
'The image epitomises what the judges are always looking for - a fresh observation on our natural world, delivered with artistic flair.'
The images were selected from 16 category winners, depicting nature at its finest, from displays of rarely seen animal behaviour to exotic landscapes.
American Tony Wu won the underwater category with his photograph of twinspot snappers engaged in a mass spawning aggregation in Palau, where thousands of fish gather each month according to the moon and tides
Winner of the Detail prize, Rudi Sebastian's aerial photo of the Lencois Maranhenses National Park on Brazil's Atlantic coast shows white sand being blown into vast crescent-shaped dunes
Valter Binotto from Italy won the Plants and Fungi category with his long-exposure image of a hazel tree amid its own wind-blown pollen
Images from both professional and amateur photographers are selected for their creativity, artistry and technical complexity.
Swedish photographer Mats Andersson triumphed in the black-and-white category with his touching photo of an owl mourning the death of its partner, taken in a forest near his home in Bashult, southern Sweden.
Other winners included Luis Javier Sandoval, from Mexico, with his photo of a playful California sea lion pup for the Impressions category. And Ganesh H Shankar, from India, with his image of a rose-ringed parakeet harassing a monitor lizard.
Temperatures in Iceland might be on the chilly side right now but on the tourism front, the country is feeling the heat.
Visitor numbers have grown threefold since 2010, due to new, low-cost flight routes and alluring photographs flooding social media.
This year, the Icelandic Tourist Board says American tourists will outnumber locals for the first time in history.
Must-see spot: Temperatures in Iceland might be on the chilly side right now but on the tourism front, the country is feeling the heat (pictured, the historic town of Husavik)
Approximately 332,000 people live in Iceland, and to date 325,000 Americans have visited the Nordic island.
By the time December comes around this number is set to increase by around 20,000.
In comparison, 51,000 Americans visited Iceland in 2010.
According to Vox, the tourism boom all started with the volcanic eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull in 2010, which caused flight cancellations and dozens of delays which affected ten million travellers.
At the time, Icelands tourism industry was flagging, and the countrys economy was feeling the force of the 2008 recession.
Rapid growth: A graph showing the amount of international visitors to Iceland from 2010 to 2015 - the tourist board says numbers have grown threefold in six years
Holidaymakers: A table shows the demographic of visitors to Iceland, the country proves most popular with visitors from the UK and US
But Icelands tourist board decided to put a sunny spin on the situation and launched a marketing campaign off the back of the natural disaster.
The initiative, entitled 'Inspired by Iceland', showcased the countrys assets, with sweeping and rugged landscapes revealed in a series of videos.
The other turning point was down to the countrys budget airline, Wow Air.
In 2012 the company started offering cheap flights linking Europe and the U.S with a free stopover in Iceland on the way.
Icelandair is the main carrier for the country and also offers similarly low-cost deals on the same routes.
Turning point: In 2012 WOW Air began offering cheap flights linking Europe and the US with a free stopover in Iceland on the way
Travel experts also say that Icelands recent popularity can be attributed to social media.
Indeed, Brian Young, managing director of G Adventures, told MailOnline Travel that the adventure company has seen a surge in bookings from young, tech-savvy customers.
Touching on the trend, he said: 'Demand for Iceland has grown dramatically over the past couple of years, with G Adventures doubling its numbers at 115per cent growth in 2016 compared to 2015.
'Our most popular trip is our Best of Iceland tour which is a seven-day journey around the country.
Snap happy: Travel experts also say that Icelands recent popularity can be attributed to social media
While the boom in tourism has helped the economy, some are concerned by the strain the influx of visitors might have on the country's natural highlights. Pictured is Godafoss waterfall
'Travellers to Iceland are getting younger, and in 2017 were adding three new trips to cater to this market.'
While the boom in tourism has helped the economy, some are concerned by the impact a rapid influx of visitors might have on the country.
Strain on infrastructure, vandalism, illegal camping and rising prices are among the complaints from locals.
In May, MailOnline Travel reported that a proposal had been made to parliament to place restrictions on Airbnb rentals in Iceland, in a bid to protect the country's landscape and lifestyle from being spoilt by visitors.
Tiffany Scanlon felt she'd 'lost control' of her life before embarking on a two-year fitness journey, finally revealing her slim and toned figure on Instagram this week.
The former Bachelor contestant said she 'could not be more proud' as she showed off the results of a Bikini Body Guide program she's been following since 2015.
And as she approaches her 30th birthday, the reality TV star spoke candidly about her physical transformation on Tuesday.
What a bikini body! The Bachelor's Tiffany Scanlon showed off her body transformation on Tuesday after posting a pair of before and after photos to her Instagram account
'I started doing an exercise program called Bikini Body Guide by @kayla_itsines at the start of 2015, nearly two years on and boy has it been a transformation!' she wrote.
Tiffany explained she's been dealing with some personal issues during the course of her journey and that it hasn't only been a physical change.
She revealed: 'I started the program after feeling I had lost control over my life.
'I didn't value myself and therefore was attracting people into my life who didn't value me either.
'I started the program after feeling I had lost control over my life': In the caption, Tiffany explained she wanted to change after going through a period of 'not valuing herself'
Sleepover club: Tiffany (L) and her rumoured girlfriend Megan Marx (R) have been inseparable since meeting on The Bachelor, and often pose for racy photos on Instagram
More than just friends? The pair have been spending a lot of time together in recent weeks
'While there are many things out of my control, my body is entirely mine and if I couldn't be strong on the inside then damn it I was going to build strength from the outside.'
The regime that Tiffany credits with her transformation, Bikini Body Guide, is used by thousands of women worldwide, with founder Kayla Itsines regularly sharing before-and-after shots of her happy clients.
And while the program's nutrition and workout guides have clearly worked for Tiffany, the physical side has also helped her overcome other issues.
'I started to feel better about myself and built up somewhat of an armour to protect myself,' she said.
Joined at the hip: Tiffany (R) has told how she 'could not be more proud' of her transformation over the past two years
'It would be a long time before I let anyone in again. It hasn't been the smoothest journey, I've come off the wagon a couple of times, I still eat chocolate and have a few drinks, but overall I could not be more proud.'
With her 'journey' now at an end, Tiffany has begun to let people back into her life - most notably her rumoured girlfriend Megan Marx.
Both women failed to find love with Richie Strahan on The Bachelor, but now they appear to be romantically involved.
Zach Galifianakis has thanked Australia for giving Isla Fisher to the world - but only after The Hangover star took a playful dig at the actress.
Appearing on The Today Show to promote their new film Keeping Up With The Joneses, the 47-year-old was asked how it felt it working alongside an Australian national treasure.
Living up to his funny man reputation, the Hangover actor was quick-witted in his reply, much to the amusement of his co-star.
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Co-stars: Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher said they enjoyed a lot of 'good-natured ribbing' when filming Keeping Up With The Joneses
'She's a national treasure? Wait, let me just make sure you said that right - treasure?' he quipped.
The remark caused the actress to burst into laughter and Zach hinted that there were plenty more laughs to be had during filming.
'Isla and I had a really nice time working with each other,' he revealed, before adding: 'There was a lot of ridicule. A lot of good-natured ribbing.'
Hands up: The pair play a suburban couple who are thrown into the world of international espionage when they discover their neighbors, the Joneses, are spies
In character: Isla plays the role of Karen Gaffney, Zach's on-screen wife, in the movie, which hits cinemas on Thursday
Aside from enjoying their on-set banter, the actor also put on record what he thought of Isla's acting abilities.
'I think there's a lot of respect that I have for Isla Fisher, for sure. And I think that her acting is very underrated,' he said, as the former Home And Away star shot him a look of surprise.
He continued: 'She's making faces right now because she doesn't believe me, but I really do believe that.'
Double act: The Hangover star revealed his admiration for his co-star's acting abilities, saying he has a lot of respect for her
And it seems the feeling was mutual, the 40-year-old Aussie telling how she enjoyed playing Karen Gaffney, Zach's on-screen wife.
'I had so much fun,' she said. 'It was really great and it's so great to do a comedy again. I haven't done one in a while.'
The duo play a suburban couple who become involved in an international espionage plot when they discover that their neighbors, the Joneses, are spies.
It's the first time Zach and Isla have starred alongside each other on the big screen, and the American was thankful for the opportunity to work with her.
In his final comment of the interview, he said: 'Thanks a lot, Australia, for giving us Isla Fisher.'
Australian socialite Imogen Anthony has channeled Kylie Jenner's latest outfit while running errands in Sydney on Tuesday.
Wearing an over-sized T-shirt as a dress, the 25-year-old cinched her waist with a tight corset, while adding thigh-high boots for an extra touch of glamour.
The blonde starlet revealed in the caption she'd had an 'easy day' of working out as well as meeting with lads' mag Maxim, hinting at a possible photo shoot.
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Who wore it better? Imogen Anthony channeled Kylie Jenner's latest outfit on Tuesday, showing off her physique in a T-shirt dress, corset and thigh-high boots
Posing with her hands on her hips, the model oozed confidence as she showed off her slender legs in the daring outfit.
She captioned the snap: 'Easy day today. Some of the things I've done include a workout, a meeting with @maxim_aus, semi put together a mood board for an upcoming collaboration (which I need to finish btw), rescued a gecko, went to look at something special for Summer, briefly caught up with a friend over a glass of Rose and chocolate chip cookies (sic).'
Imogen sported flawless makeup for her day-time outing, with heavy bronzer and highlighter contouring her cheek bones.
Glam queen: The blonde model showed off her very slim waist in the black leather corset
Looks familiar: Reality star Kylie has been seen sporting the same type of outfit recently
False eyelashes and shimmery brown eyeshadow added drama to the model's look.
Imogen is known for showing off her physique in risque outfits on social media.
On Tuesday, the fashion designer shared a photo of herself posing in a T-shirt and black jeans while suggestively posing with her hand down her pants.
Racy: Imogen shared a snap of herself posing with her hands suggestively down her pants while flashing her taut tummy
'When your world turns crazy and comes crashing down, you will turn to me for solace,' Imogen captioned the snap shared with her 121,000 followers.
The raunchy image saw Imogen show off her model figure as she revealed a glimpse of skimpy white briefs.
BURT COUNTY Two days after a rural Burt County man was killed by leaking anhydrous ammonia, pipeline officials say the 40 residents who were evacuated still won't be able to go home.
Magellan Midstream Partners of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was meeting Wednesday afternoon in Decatur with people who were evacuated from their homes Monday night.
On Wednesday morning, Magellan officials said more than 50 company and pipeline contract representatives, federal regulators and state and local emergency responders were on site. They are working to repair a leak and said air quality readings continue to improve.
"It is our goal to completely isolate the failed portion of the pipeline today, which will allow the reopening of local roadways," Magellan spokesman Tom Byers said in a news release Wednesday morning.
The 8-inch pipeline owned by Magellan ruptured and leaked anhydrous ammonia Monday night.
Phillip Hennig, 59, died while driving to check on the leak, 23 homes within a 2-mile radius were evacuated and roads in the area were closed.
Anhydrous is widely used as fertilizer. It's transported as a liquid but turns into a gas when released.
Magellan reported 294,000 gallons of liquid anhydrous spilled.
The Magellan pipeline provides fertilizer in several Midwestern states. It starts near Borger, Texas, and travels through Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, with a branch that extends into Minnesota.
The majority of the pipeline, including the rupture, is underground, although it does come above ground near where the leak occurred.
She has spent 400 for individual passports for Bella and Rocky
Flying up to 16,000 miles a week would take its toll on anybody.
But Sharon Osbourne has a unique and rather expensive way of managing the stress: she flies her beloved two dogs with her first class.
At a cost of around 230,000 a year, the X Factor judge gets around stringent airline rules about pets on board, insisting the pooches are emotional support animals.
While Bella and Rocky the pomeranians might not look like your average hardened service dogs, Mrs Osbourne asserts they are and has spent a further 400 issuing them individual pet passports.
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Bella (left) and Rocky (right) the pomeranians might not look like your average hardened service dogs
They are flown out by the 64-year-old star said to be worth 180million once a month, usually via Air New Zealand
Once in the air, the duo each have their own fully reclining business class seats at a combined cost of 19,600.
They are flown out by the 64-year-old star said to be worth 180million once a month, usually via Air New Zealand, and enjoy a selection of healthy doggie biscuits, and mineral water.
A friend said: Sharon adores these dogs they are like grandchildren to her.
'She has an incredibly hectic transatlantic job and understandably finds all the flying pretty exhausting and stressful. It takes its toll.
'Bella and Rocky provide a real sense of security and comfort, and are both perfectly happy at 36,000ft.
They have their own flat-down beds, and are as good as gold.
Emotional support animals require a special letter from a licensed mental health professional before being allowed on board the aircraft.
The doctor must state that the passenger requires the presence of their pet for their physical and mental wellbeing. The airline also requires 48 hours notice.
Once in the air, the duo (pictured here with Sharon's husband Ozzy) each have their own fully reclining business class seats at a combined cost of 19,600
The doctor must state that the passenger requires the presence of their pet for their physical and mental wellbeing. The airline also requires 48 hours notice
Bella enjoys a trip to the X Factor to meet Sharon's fellow judge Louis Walsh
The music manager, married to Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy, jets out from her home in Los Angeles to London to film the X Factor, before returning to the US hours after Sundays live show. In total the return flights are a little over 21 hours long.
Mrs Osbourne is understood to have been paid 1.8million for this series of the X Factor.
She recently admitted having a mental breakdown last year, blaming her hectic work schedule. She has come under fire from fans of the series following a blunder in which she forgot the name of one of her contestants.
Khloe Kardashian has been busy plugging her new denim line Good American.
And her big sister Kourtney showed her support on Tuesday when she stepped out with son Mason and a bodyguard in a pair of jeans from the just-released collection.
The 37-year-old, who was spotted in Calabasas, California, certainly made a great advert for it while showing some skin in black skinny jeans with large rips down each leg.
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Sister support: Kourtney Kardashian wore a pair of jeans from sister Khloe's denim line on Tuesday
Kourtney displayed her flat stomach and much of her slender legs in the denim, which she teamed with a long-sleeved and high-necked black jacket.
The reality star also sported simple black pumps and carried a matching handbag, while looking picture perfect with natural make-up.
Kourtney had earlier been showing fans her hairstyle on Snapchat, which consisted of a bun with braided detail at the back.
She also used the social media app to let everyone know that she was clad in a pair of Khloe's jeans.
Let it rip: The reality star showed off her legs and stomach in ripped black skinny jeans from the Good American collection
Extra protection: Kourtney was seen taking Mason to an art class while joined by a bodyguard
Beefing up her security: The 37-year-old is being extra careful after sister Kim's armed robbery
The mother-of-three was spotted taking her eldest son Mason, six, to art class.
Not seen were her two other children with ex-partner Scott Disick, four-year-old daughter Penelope and son Reign, who turns two in December.
Kourtney also had a burly bodyguard by her side, having beefed up security in the wake of her sister Kim's armed robbery in Paris last month.
In fine form: Kourtney looked great in the jeans, which she teamed with a high-necked jacket and pumps
Mixing it up: The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star also wore a braided bun hairstyle and picture perfect make-up
The Kardashian family have all rallied around the 35-year-old, who is taking some time off following the terrifying ordeal.
On Monday, Kim's assistant Stephanie Shepherd announced the star's friends and family will be updating her subscription based app and website kimkardashianwest.com while Kim recovers.
Kim is also planning a low-key celebration for her 36th birthday on Friday, with just her family by her side, according to E! Online.
Plait's nice: Kourtney showed off the bun with braids at the back on her Snapchat
She's the Hollywood it-girl with millions of Instagram followers and an A-list entourage.
And Hailey Baldwin has proven her star power knows no bounds as she poses for the November issue of Harper's Bazaar Australia.
The 19-year-old oozed elegance and sex appeal as she flaunted her model physique in a white Gabriela Hearst dress.
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White on the mark! Hailey Baldwin sizzles in a white long-sleeved dress for the November issue of Harper's Bazaar Australia
The slinky frock, chosen by stylist Karla Clarke, draped the blonde beauty's slender frame perfectly, while a very high side split showed off her toned pins.
Another shot saw the ex-girlfriend of Justin Bieber lying on a soft blue sofa as she gave the camera a sultry stare.
Hailey embodied Hollywood glamour in the Christopher Kane dress, which featured intricate embroidery at the bust and a long silk skirt.
Celebrity hairdresser Charles McNair at Jed Root styled the starlet's blonde tresses in loose beachy waves to complement her carefree and laid-back demeanor.
Classic: The 19-year-old looked gorgeous and classy beyond her years in a Christopher Kane dress, styled by Karla Clarke
Blonde ambition: Hailey flaunted ample cleavage in another shot, wearing an all-white ensemble by Gabriela Hearst
With Sam Addington of Kramer+Kramer in charge of beauty for the shoot, Hailey's make-up was kept matte and simple with bronzed foundation and eyeshadow.
A subtle touch of nude lipstick highlighted the beauty's plump pout.
Another image from the shoot with celebrity photographer, Darren McDonald, saw the star show off ample cleavage as she posed atop a wooden desk.
Hailey looked gorgeous in the plunging white top and matching trousers by Gabriela Hearst.
Star power: The teen is considered Hollywood royalty and has been linked to Justin Bieber previously
With a string of celebrity pals such as Bella Hadid as well as Kendall and Kylie Jenner, the stunner has become part of the modern-age brat pack.
Inside the magazine, the teenage model protested against comparisons with the original supermodels of the early nineties, telling the publication: 'The older supermodels sometimes dont agree with the fact there is a new generation of models,'
'Were not saying were supermodels. Id rather people look at us as businesspeople, and, yes, modeling is our business right now, but were not trying to take anybodys spot, and were not trying to discredit the past,' she added.
Entourage: Boasting 7.9 million Instagram followers, Hailey also counts Kendall Jenner (pictured) and her sister Kylie as close friends
Earlier this year, Hailey was announced as the face of Guess, starring in their Winter campaign.
The IMG-represented model has also starred in New York, London, Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks last month - walking for the likes of Julien Macdonald, Dolce and Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger and Elie Saab.
The Instagram sensation is the daughter of Stephen and Kennya Baldwin.
Harper's Bazaar Australia's November issue is on sale now.
Azealia Banks and Russell Crowe were flirting with each other before things turned ugly on Saturday night, the rapper has claimed.
The two have given very differing accounts of what occurred at the Beverly Hotel on Saturday Night.
Banks wrote in a Facebook post that Crowe had 'called me a n****r, choked me, threw me out and spat at me'.
Turned ugly: Azealia Banks and Russell Crowe were flirting with each other before things turned ugly on Saturday night, the rapper has claimed
But a number of witnesses claimed the rapper was the aggressor, and that the actor was forced to physically remover her from his room after she became violent, and threatened to slash another guest with a broken wine glass.
Speaking to the Sun newspaper, the 25-year-old gave her detailed version of what happened, but not before labeling the Gladiator star 'a racist, misogynist pig'.
'This is a stain on me. My femininity feels stained. I feel stained as a woman, I feel mishandled, I feel mistreated, I feel dirty. I feel very f*cking low,' she said.
According to Azealia: 'Russell had moonshine on the table, and then Russell calls for whisky, so then they just start mixing them up.
Account: Speaking to the Sun newspaper, the 25-year-old gave her detailed version of what happened, but not before labeling the Gladiator star 'a racist, misogynist pig'
'You know, moonshine, whisky, vodka, and smoking cigarettes and smoking weed.
'Russell and I get next to each other. He's talking to me, I'm talking to him, and we start flirting. We're having a really good time. He's got his knee on my knee, he's touching my leg, I'm playing him my music, he tweets my song The Big Big Beat.
'He's like, 'I love this, you're beautiful, this is great.'
As the party continued, a girl approached who Azealia guessed 'was his girlfriend'.
'She gets next to me and I guess this is just her chance to try and size me up and see what I'm about.
'And she's in my ear and she's like, "Yeah, Russell thinks you're so hot". And I was like, "Oh, really? Well that's on you girl." You know, I'm not here for that.'
The American claimed the mood turned when she mocked another guest, an aspiring horror film maker.
Before the storm: 'Russell and I get next to each other. He's talking to me, I'm talking to him, and we start flirting. We're having a really good time. He's got his knee on my knee, he's touching my leg, I'm playing him my music, he tweets my song The Big Big Beat
She said: 'Russell just kind of switched. He was like, "Well you know what? You're young and you've never done anything in your career so you don't know what you're talking about."
'I'm a little offended but I was still keeping it light. I was like, "Your best days are behind you."
Azealia claims another woman then stepped in to defend Crowe.
She continued: 'I said, "Girl, this is not the right time or place for us to be fighting, like what would happen if I got up and I slapped the sh*t out of you, or I took a glass and f*cking threw it at you and you were bleeding all over the place? I would be wrong and we'd all be wrong, and the party would be done."
He said, she said: The 25-year-old rapper took to her Facebook to explain her side of the story
'I want to f***ing die': She has since deleted this string of posts on her account
She claims this is when Russell turned on her and got physical.
'Then Russell turns to me and he goes, "Well, you wouldn't even get close enough to get the chance, n****r."
'And he says the word n****r so, like, quietly, under his breath.
'He calls me a n*****, and then grabs me, picks me up, he chokes me by the throat, picks me up, throws me out of the room and then spits on me.
'You don't just spit on somebody. And in front of everybody,' she said.
Banks filed a battery report against the actor at the Beverly Hills Police Department on Sunday.
Hurt: 'This is a stain on me. My femininity feels stained. I feel stained as a woman, I feel mishandled, I feel mistreated, I feel dirty. I feel very f*cking low,' she said.
It is claimed that Crowe had invited about 10 people over to his room to listen to music, including rapper RZA - who brought Banks.
The 47-year-old Wu Tang Clan member had previously worked with Crowe on The Man With The Iron Fist and recently signed Banks to his record label.
Originally TMZ claimed it all began when Azealia snickered at Russell's music selection and called him and another person in the room 'boring white men.'
Then when a female party guest jumped to his defense, the 212 rapper went on a threatening diatribe.
According to their insider, Banks said: 'You would love it if I broke my glass, stabbed you guys in the throat, and blood would squirt everywhere like some real Tarantino s***.'
Witnesses say she used the n-word numerous times and Crowe remained calm until she reached for a glass and cocked it back.
The 53-year-old actor star then reportedly grabbed her and carried her out of the suite before calling security guards to remove her from the grounds.
Courting controversy: Azealia (pictured in court earlier this year) did not show up to her court case in New York last month, and the judge was less than impressed warning a bench warrant will be issued if she does not show next time
At least four guests/witnesses who gave statements during the investigation used the word 'erratic' to describe Azealia's behavior according to TMZ. They also claim that RZA said she used the N-word and not Crowe.
In Azealia's since-deleted posts on social media, The Big Beat hitmaker has a much different story as she wrote: 'To recap my night, I went to a party at Russell Crowe's suit, at which he called me a n*****, choked me, threw me out and spat at me.
'Last night was one of the hardest nights of sleep I've had in along time.
'The men in the room allowed it to happen. I feel terrible today.'
'I was there, she was out of control: Australian comedian Jim Jefferies, who was a witness, defended Crowe afterward, branding Banks 'a complete liar'
She also posted two other statuses on Facebook, in which the rapper talked about being depressed and that 'I wish I had someone to beat him up for me.'
Australian comedian Jim Jefferies, who was apparently witness to the encounter, has defended Russel by branding Azealia as a 'complete liar.'
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday, Jim wrote: 'This is 100 percent the truth. I was there, she was out of control. Russell did absolutely nothing wrong.
He even offered to take a lie detector test to back up his account.
Another source close to Crowe told DailyMail.com that there were ten people in the room at the time, each has provided statements, all of which are 'completely inconsistent' with Banks' claims.
'Per all of the witnesses, her erratic behavior and abusive language scared everyone there. Her bizarre antics culminated in her practically lunging across the table with a glass in her hand while threatening to slice the throats of at least two people,' the source said.
'No one called her the n word. She was yelling the n word at everyone else.
'Russell behaved like a hero. He acted in defense of his guests and removed her from his suite by putting her in a bear hug and picking her up.
The source claimed her 'vile and offensive behavior' was triggered by her finding it corny that everyone was listening to music which she apparently didn't like.
Dynamic duo: Banks was reportedly a guest of rapper RZA, who is pictured with Crowe at The Man With The Iron Fist screening in October 2012 as they worked on the flick together
'The person who invited her - RZA - has provided a statement to police which is consistent with that of all the other witnesses,' they added.
'Banks' story has changed dramatically since Sunday. On Sunday, her only contention was that Russell called her the n word. He did not call her that. She demanded an apology and threatened to go to the police until she got one. Her story has grown and become more involved with each passing day.'
Banks meanwhile is no stranger to controversy.
Last month a judge was not too pleased as she failed to appear at her court case in New York after allegedly attacking a bouncer at a nightclub last year.
Banks was charged with misdemeanor assault, attempted assault and disorderly conduct after the incident at Up&Down in Chelsea on December 16, where she allegedly bit a female bouncer on the breast.
The bite caused 'redness, swelling and bruising' and 'substantial pain', according to the criminal complaint, but the woman declined medical attention at the scene.
Banks is infamous for her Twitter rants against other rappers, as well as politicians - she once suggested Sarah Palin be gang-rapped.
She's been busy filming her new movie Flammable Children in Queensland with her former Neighbours co-star Guy Pearce.
And on Wednesday, Kylie Minogue was seen once again on-set, shooting scenes at a Gold Coast beach in her seventies attire.
The pop princess - who has made headlines this week for looking unrecognisable on set - was seen wearing a short blonde wig and white crochet vest under a silk robe, while her co-star was shirtless.
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Back to it! Kylie Minogue (front right) was seen on-set of her new movie Flammable Children alongside Guy Pearce on Wednesday, while filming in Queendland
Kylie wore a pink robe adorned with yellow flowers and green leaves printed all over it and tied up around her petite waist.
She covered her face with a pair of vintage rose-coloured glasses and while walking on cement, teamed the look with gold sandals.
She appeared to have light make-up on, including foundation and a soft pink lip.
All white! Kylie dons a white one piece which she wore under the silk robe
You can't miss her! Kylie wore a pink robe adorned with yellow flowers and green leaves printed all over it and tied up around her petite waist
Stripping off: Guy, 49, meanwhile showed off his trim physique in black, red and white vintage-style trunks and remained shirtless for his scenes
Guy, 49, meanwhile showed off his trim physique in black, red and white vintage-style trunks.
He wore a hat on top of a blonde wig, accompanied by a moustache and side burns, while he partially covered his face with sunglasses.
The pair could be seen filming in the sun, taking shade underneath umbrellas held up by film crew in-between scenes.
Is that you? Guy too was almost unrecognisable in a hat on top of a blonde wig, moustache and side burns
A day in the life: The pair could be seen filming in the sun, taking shade underneath umbrellas held up by film crew in-between scenes
Doing the rounds: Kylie (right) could then be seen chatting to other actors, including Radha Mitchell (left)
Kylie could then be seen chatting to other actors, inlcuding Radha Mitchell, as well as crew and appeared in high spirits on the day, smiling and laughing.
At one point, Kylie could be seen looking over Guy's shoulder in what appeared to be one scene in the movie.
Kylie and Guy have previously worked together on Neighbours, playing friends Mike Young and Charlene Robinson on the soap.
According to The Courier Mail, the film also stars the likes of Kylie's former brother-in-law Julian McMahon, as well as Gold Logie winner, actress Asher Keddie.
Life's a beach! The pop princess appeared in high spirits on the day, smiling and laughing with the cast
What're you looking at? At one point, Kylie could be seen looking over Guy's shoulder in what appeared to be one scene in the movie
They go way back! Kylie and Guy have previously worked together on Neighbours, playing friends Mike Young and Charlene Robinson on the soap
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the set is 'about to be transformed' into Sydney's Dee Why back in 1975.
Based on a 14-year-old boy Jeff who has a crush on a shy girl Melly, the publication also reports that the film 'revolves around surf mats, baby oil, boxed win and the new miracle of Kentucky Fried Chicken'.
In April, it was announced that Kylie and Guy would be reuniting on-screen for the first time since Neighbours.
Turning back time: According to The Sydney Morning Herald , the set is 'about to be transformed' into Sydney's Dee Why back in 1975
Star cast: The movie also stars Gold Logie Award winning actress Asher Keddie (centre, with Kylie)
Exciting to see what they do next: In April, it was announced that Kylie and Guy would be reuniting on-screen for the first time since Neighbours
Romance: Kylie is currently engaged to British actor and Galavant star Joshua Sasse, while Guy is in a relationship with Games of Thrones star Carice van Houten
Kylie is currently engaged to British actor and Galavant star Joshua Sasse, while Guy is in a relationship with Games of Thrones star Carice van Houten.
Guy and Carice have just celebrated the birth of their first child, Monte Pearce, in August.
Guy is known for films including Memento and The Rover.
Kylie meanwhile is one of Australia's biggest singing exports and is known for hits including Can't Get You Out of My Head, Locomotion, Love at First Sight and Spinning Around.
New dad! Guy just celebrated the birth of his first child with Game Of Thrones actress Carice in August, naming the bub Monte Pearce
Doing what he does best: Guy is known for films including Memento and The Rover
Bikini babe! The film is understood to 'revolve around surf mats, baby oil, boxed win and the new miracle of Kentucky Fried Chicken' as evidenced by a brunette beauty in a blue costume, with KFC's Colonel Sanders' face printed on her stomach
Underwraps: The film also stars the likes of Radha Mitchell (grey robe) and Julian McMahon
She has one of the sexiest wardrobes in showbiz.
And Halle Berry is even dressed to impress when she's heading for a business meeting.
The 50-year-old actress went hell for leather in a sexy ensemble in Beverly Hills on Tuesday.
Hell for leather! Halle Berry is even dressed to impress when she's heading for a business meeting
She was clad head to toe in leather, with skintight trousers making the most of her toned legs.
The former Bond girl wrapped her jacket to cinch her slim waistline.
The Oscar winner completed her rock and roll look with silver studded black heels, and giant sunglasses.
Looking good! The 50-year-old actress wore a sexy ensemble in Beverly Hills on Tuesday
The Monster's Ball star showcased her natural beauty with minimal make-up.
Her honey-tinged tresses were tousled and in a loose low ponytail.
She celebrated her son Maceo's third birthday at the weekend, sharing images of his celebrations on social media.
Fabulous at 50: The former Bond girl wrapped her jacket to cinch her slim waistline
He had a motorcycle birthday cake and a large quantity of balloons.
The X-Men beauty also joked that she was keeping up with the cool kids, by practicing her selfie game.
Halle's divorce from Maceo's father, estranged husband, French actor Olivier Martinez, appears to be on hold, but a source denied to People earlier in September that the couple are getting back together.
Growing up quick! She celebrated her son Maceo's fourth birthday at the weekend
Cute touch: She was sharing images of the birthday party on social media
Birthday boy: He had a motorcycle birthday cake and a large quantity of balloons
Mirror image: The X-Men beauty also joked that she was keeping up with the cool kids, by practicing her selfie game
'Berry definitely has no interest in getting back with Olivier unless his temper and controlling nature change,' the insider told the magazine.
'And there's no indication that either will, so it seems that they will remain separate.'
Meanwhile Halle will appear in the drama Kidnap, which is due to hit theatres December 2.
She will also star in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, scheduled for release in June 2017.
Naomi Campbell was the belle of the ball for a very good cause on Tuesday evening.
The model was in New York City to attend a VIP Talk with Tina Brown that was held by the Women's Brain Health Initiative.
The fashion model looked flawless in a high neck black dress with red and green detailing all over.
Beautiful: Naomi Campbell was the belle of the ball to attend a VIP Talk with Tina Brown in New York City on Tuesday
She teamed the mini dress with a pair of black booties as she let her long raven locks cascade down her back.
Her very long tresses were styled in a poker straight fashion as she smiled and posed for photos at the event.
Naomi also made sure to wear a full face of make-up, opting for dramatic eye shadow and liner.
Always stylish: The fashion model looked flawless in a high neck black dress with red and green detailing all over
Advocate: Naomi was seen talking on the panel at the event
The pros: Candace Bushnell (left) and Dr. Samantha Boardman (right) were also speakers at the event
She was seen at the event with the woman of the hour - Tina.
Tina is a woman of many talents - a journalist, magazine editor, columnist talk-show host and author.
The initiative began due to learning that women suffer from depression, stroke and dementia twice as much as men.
Powerful women: From left to right: Dr. Samantha Boardman, Tina Brown, Naomi Campbell, Mamie Gummer
An astounding 70% of new Alzheimers patients will be women, however research still mainly focuses on men.
The cause was created to help women just as much as men.
Doing her part: Actress and former model Lauren Hutton was also in attendance
The Womens Brain Health Initiative goes above and beyond to help women with this crisis.
They create education programs and they also fund research to combat brain aging diseases that affect women.
Here come the girls: Actress Mamie Gummer and novelist Candace Bushnell were also there
Meanwhile, Naomi looked in better spirits on Tuesday after gathering to pay her respects to Bill Cunningham.
She attended the renowned fashion photographer's memorial service at Carnegie Hall in New York on Monday.
Naomi previously described the photographer as 'a great man with a beautiful soul'.
Lovely: June Ambrose made a stylish appearance at the event
Her sister was famously involved in an armed robbery in Paris just a few weeks ago.
And Khloe Kardashian was an arresting sight on her latest outing.
The 32-year-old rocked a very revealing outfit while heading to a Good American Launch Event in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
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Revealing: Khloe Kardashian turned heads at a Good American Launch Event in Los Angeles on Tuesday
Not taking any chances: It appeared as if the 32-year-old reality star certainly beefed up security at the event
No doubt she was not taking any chances since sister Kim's ordeal as Khloe noticeably beefed up security for the event held at the Nordstrom in highly-popular shopping area The Grove.
As she spends several hours in the gym every week, she made sure top show off the results in a see-through black mesh bodysuit.
The sheer number featrured a backless cutout as it was tucked into a pair of on-trend skinny light blue jeans.
Wow factor: As she spends several hours at the gym, she made sure to show off the results
Dynamic duo: She was joined by mother Kris Jenner
Stunning: The mother-and-daughter duo were in fantastic form
The trousers featured a slight tear at the hemline as she teamed the look with a pair of furry black stilletos.
She accessorised the look with studded earrings and two choker necklaces.
Her signature dyed blonde locks were worn down into waves flowing over her shoulder as she sported natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with brown lip.
On the prowl: Khloe also hit the stage at The Grove to show off her new jeans as she is part of their advert campaign
Having fun: She looked fantastic in her skintight trousers
Ooh la la: The bodysuit featured a backless cutout detailing
Mommy and me: Khloe and the 60-year-old matriarch seemed to have fun answering questions
Pretty: She wore her dyed blonde tresses down into waves flowing over her shoulders
Speaking out: The momager looked more than happy to be at the event
Out and about: Leading up to the event, Khloe could be seen on Snapchat
Looking good: She also wore black furry heels
Stunning: No doubt she enjoyed parading around her curvaceous figure
Friendly to fans: Regardless of the security she did not hesitate in saying hello to a few fans
Having a blast: She was all smiles while greeting her biggest fans
Khloe was not alone for the occasion as she was joined by her 60-year-old momager Kris Jenner.
The matriarch of the Kardashian-Jenner clan sported a long white coat over a black top.
She teamed the look with a pair of black leather booties and matching ripped skinny jeans.
Big day: There was a gaggle of security at the event
She doesn't skip squat day: Khloe looked good in those jeans
On-the-go: Her security made sure the area was clear for her to walk through
Her signature short raven-coloured locks were combed to the side as she completed her make-up with a swipe of bright red lip.
No doubt it was a fun event as Khloe took to her Snapchat to document the gala including footage from an interview with Kris and herself.
The star-studded gala at luxury store Nordstrom was put together to celebrate the launch of denim brand Good American.
In a snap: Khloe was all over social media leading up to and during the event
Having a blast: She addressed her followers while on the red carpet
Got back: When she wasn't on the phone, Khloe stuck the mobile in her back pocket
Sisterly love: Her sister Kourtney Kardashian joined her at the event
Hugged up: Kourtney gave her a big hug on the grey carpet
Having fun: The 38-year-old reality star poked fun at her younger sister
Just us: The sisters were very active on Snapchat
Tremendous trio: She was joined by twin gal pals Malika and Khadijah Haqq
Motley crew: Khloe shared this group photo from the gathering
Hello: She shared a video of he grand entrance on Snapchat
Busy: Her account also shared a few videos from the event
Feeling good: Khloe looked comfortable despite the family troubles she has endured as of late
Mama: Khloe also shared this image of Kris addressing the crowd
The entire reality series family has beefed up security in the wake of 35-year-old Kim Kardashian's armed robbery in Paris last month.
The Kardashian family have all rallied around the 35-year-old, who is taking some time off following the terrifying ordeal.
Out and about: Khloe looked fantastic as she left the big event
Mother dear: Kris also looked fantastic as she made her exit
Incognito exit: Instead of leaving out in the open like her sister and mother Kourtney opted to use the back way
Hole-y moly: Her jeans featured huge rips in them
In good hands: There was plenty of security by her pick-up vehicle
Pretty in patterns: Television persinality Catt Sadler rocked a patterned jumpsuit at the event
On Monday, Kim's assistant Stephanie Shepherd announced the star's friends and family will be updating her subscription based app and website kimkardashianwest.com while Kim recovers.
Kim is also planning a low-key celebration for her 36th birthday on Friday, with just her family by her side, according to E! Online.
Finishing touches: She shared this video of her make-up being touched up
Glam squad: No doubt plenty of preperation went into the outing
All smiles: Khloe posted several snaps leading up to the event
Vanessa Paradis donned an effortless ensemble as she touched down at LAX on Tuesday.
The 43-year-old actress wore a pair of denim jeans, a lime green sweater and a brown suede jacket.
She added a pair of black trainers and a over-sized sunglasses to complete her casual chic look.
Effortlessly chic: Vanessa Paradis donned an effortless ensemble as she touched down at LAX on Tuesday
The French actress and model let her blonde highlighted hair fall naturally as she opted to wear minimal make-up.
She was seen making her way to a waiting vehicle as she left the international airport.
Meanwhile, the actress has recently been dragged into the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard saga.
Vanessa was married to Depp from 1998 to 2012 and the pair have two children together.
Stylish traveler: The 43-year-old actress wore a pair of denim jeans, a lime green sweater and a brown suede jacket
Their son John Christopher Depp III is 14-years-old and their daughter Lily-Rose is 17-years-old.
Ever since Depp and Heard's public divorce, rumours have been swirling that Depp might get back together with former wife Vanessa.
Natural: The French actress and model let her blonde highlighted hair fall naturally as she opted to wear minimal make-up
Depp and Paradis were together for fourteen years before the couple chose to part ways in 2012.
Even at the time of their separation, fans hoped that the two would reconcile but instead Depp moved on with actress Heard.
Heard and Depp's separation has been hitting headlines over recent months as she accused him of physically abusing her when she filed for divorce.
Home sweet home: She was seen making her way to a waiting vehicle as she left the international airport
Depp has denied the charges and appears to be deeply disturbed by the accusations.
However, it looks as though Vanessa still has a soft spot for her former husband as it was revealed a few months ago that she backed her ex in restraining order case against Heard.
It was revealed the actress took to the stand in August at a hearing to determine whether Heard will be issued a permanent restraining order against Johnny, her estranged husband.
Models Kris Smith and Maddy King confirmed they had called time on their four year relationship this week.
And on Wednesday, Maddy was seen showcasing her washboard abs and incredible curves during a photoshoot in Sydney.
The brunette beauty was ocean side for the day and wore a variety of looks.
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Showing him what he's missing: On Wednesday, Maddy King was seen showcasing her washboard abs and incredible curves during a photoshoot after she and Kris Smith split
One outfit featured Maddy wearing a black tights with a matching crop top and white sneakers.
She had her hair pulled back off her face in a messy ponytail and showed off a golden tan.
She wore light makeup including foundation and mascara.
Suits you! One outfit featured Maddy wearing a black tights with a matching crop top and white sneakers
Sport luxe: She had her hair pulled back off her face in a messy ponytail and showed off a golden tan
Looking good! She wore light makeup including foundation and mascara
Another outfit featured a splash of colour, with the lingerie model wearing a purple and white crop top with dark leggings.
She posed with no shoes on as she sat on some steps on the beach, holding a drink bottle and at times pretending to take a sip after a workout.
The stunner could be seen smiling as she enjoyed some time in the sun.
Sitting pretty: Another outfit featured a splash of colour, with the lingerie model wearing a purple and white crop top with dark leggings
Thirsty work: She posed with no shoes on as she sat on some steps on the beach, holding a drink bottle and at times pretending to take a sip after a workout
Flawless: Maddy looked in shape on the day and didn't have an inch to pinch
Candid: At one point she could be seen gazing off camera and into the distance
At another stage of the day, she posed in a white crop top and loose shorts with a blonde model.
Maddy held some skipping ropes and had her hair pulled into a chic plait.
The shoot comes after she and Myer model Kris confirmed their split on Monday.
They say three's a crowd: At another stage of the day, she posed in a white crop top and loose shorts with a blonde model
Keeping fit: Maddy held some skipping ropes and had her hair pulled into a chic plait
No breakup blues! The shoot comes after she and Myer model Kris confirmed their split on Monday
Single: Father of one Kris, 38, told The Daily Telegraph he didn't want to rush into another relationship anytime soon
Father of one Kris, 38, told The Daily Telegraph he didn't want to rush into another relationship anytime soon.
'I am definitely very single and will be for a while I imagine,' Kris said.
Kris - who shares son Ethan, six, with ex Dannii Minogue - told the publication he isn't dating.
Sad: On Monday, Kris confirmed to Daily Mail Australia he had split from Maddy after four years together
Mutual? Kris said the pair had split a while ago and 'our lives are just heading in different directions'
Flying solo: Maddy also confirmed the news to DMA, saying: 'There are no hard feelings and are still friends'
Speaking up: Kris also denied reports by New Idea he had been on three dates with different women in six days
He said: 'Obviously we have a lot of love and respect for each other so we are just letting each other go our own path.'
On Monday, Kris confirmed to Daily Mail Australia he had split from Maddy after four years together.
'Maddy and I are no longer together, we haven't been for some time,' Kris said. 'It's sad, but she is an amazing girl and we had a great time.
Kicking back: She is seen here sitting on a concrete wall wearing tight bike shorts and a white crop top
Model moment: She is no stranger to the camera having posed for various brands in the past including lingerie brands
'Our lives are just heading in different directions,' he concluded.
Maddy also confirmed the news to DMA, saying: 'There are no hard feelings and are still friends. My dad has beers with him every Sunday.'
Kris also denied reports by New Idea he had been on three dates with different women in six days.
Kris and Maddy's split comes two months after they were seen flirting at the Myer Spring-Summer 16 fashion launch in Sydney.
At the event, Kris spoke to DMA about the couple's plans for marriage and children while admitting he had found himself a 'keeper'.
Versatile: She gave the photographer variety, kneeling down and resting her hands on her legs
Earlier this month she showed off her incredibly trim post-baby body on Instagram in skinny jeans.
And fans have been left in disbelief at her trim figure once again on Wednesday, as Rebecca Judd showcased her enviable pins in a gold miniskirt - just three weeks after giving birth to twins.
Cutting a very stylish figure, the mother-of-four wore an Asilio the label skirt, paired with a denim shirt, which was tucked in, further highlighting her svelete figure.
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Dressed to impress! Rebecca Judd fans have been left in disbelief at her trim figure once again on Wednesday, as she showed off her enviable pins in a gold miniskirt just three weeks after giving birth to twins
One user commented: 'You look gorgeous. You have snapped straight back after the twins and that is perfect!! Love the fashion posts x.'
Another remarked: 'How are you looking this good just weeks after twins?? Please tell me your secret.'
The 33-year-old stunned in her outfit, which she teamed with strappy nude heels.
She had her thick brown locks out in her signature loose tousled curls and showed off a golden tan.
'Hard to believe you were ever pregnant!' Rebecca Judd flaunted a slender post-baby body in an Instagram post last Monday, leaving fans in disbelief that the TV presenter had given birth to twins just eleven days ago
When she flaunted her figure in maternity jeans just eleven days after giving birth, Bec stunned her followers with her trim frame.
The television reporter said at the time she wouldn't be giving up her maternity wear anytime soon.
Comments of disbelief flooded the post, as statements read: 'Hard to believe you were ever pregnant!'
'Is this you today after babies???'
'Did u just give birth to twins??? Stunning as ever!!'
While others added: 'Wow you do look amazing bec... you must have a tight fitness schedule.'
'She had twins five seconds ago... I hate myself,' said another.
Rebecca teamed the jeans with a monochrome striped shirt and a double breasted Balmain blazer, which retails for more than $2,000.
'Feeling semi human today': Rebecca revealed her postpartum struggles on Instagram, telling fans that she feels 'semi human' five days after giving birth to twins and has taken to wearing '50 pairs of spanx' after ditching her maternity wear
The Glamorous AFL WAG, married to Carlton player Chris Judd, recently detailed her postpartum struggles in another Instagram post, declaring she felt 'semi human' after ditching some of her maternity wear.
The post read: 'Feeling semi human today, not wearing activewear or maternity clothes! Hello spring wardrobe (and 50 pairs of Spanx).
While some fans supported the slender beauty's desire for body shapewear, others suggested that Spanx were simply unnecessary, particularly so soon after birth.
Do you really need body shapers? The Channel Nine presenter maintained a slender frame even during the final trimester of her pregnancy
'It's disheartening to see ... Take the Spanx off and relax, helps other women feel less pressure about being out of maternity wear,' one follower suggested.
While another commenter came to her defense: 'She is probably wearing Spanx for support after her skin as stretched so much from being pregnant with twins nothing to do with beauty.'
Now a mother of four, the new cute arrivals join Oscar, 4, and Billie, 2, in the Judd family residence.
She caused a stir when she visited refugee camps in Turkey earlier this month.
And it seems Lindsay Lohan is hoping to give the unfortunate residents a boost after it emerged she is planning to send them energy drinks.
It is claimed the 30-year-old has teamed up with German beverage Mintanine, which coincidentally supplies her eponymous Greek nightclub Lohan.
No Mean Girl: Lindsay Lohan is said to be planning to send energy drinks to Syrian refugees after her visit to camps in Turkey
An insider told Page Six: 'Theres hardly food, water or anything, so at this point sending anything is helpful.
'This is all part of Lindsays mission to help refugees.'
The Mean Girls favourite's selfless action will see the drink, described as a 'blue caffeine lemonade' on its website, handed out to the thousands of people who fled their native land following the outbreak of a civil war in 2011.
The makers describe the stimulating beverage as 'Blue tastes woohoo.'
In addition the makers are proud of the ingredients used, boasting 'We do not use synthetic flavors or caffeine, no taurin, no aspartame, no inosit, but natural guarana.'
Who needs Hollywood: The Herbie Fully Loaded star visited a government-run refugee camp near Turkey's border with Syria on October 8
Giving them a boost: Refugees will soon be able to consume 'blue caffeine lemonade'
The source also claimed that her nightclub has been such a success that she and her Greek partner Dennis Papageorgiou are hoping to expand their business.
Investors are said to be keen to open a club in London, while Lindsay herself is keen on finding partners so she can open a Hong Kong venue.
Linsday was spotted locking lips with Dennis at a nightclub, but sources close to the self-styled actress say they are not dating.
The Herbie Fully Loaded star visited a government-run refugee camp near Turkey's border with Syria on October 8.
Not dating: But Lindsay was spotted locking lips with business partner Dennis Papageorgiou in Athens at the weekend
She toured the social facilities and preschool in Nizip before giving refugee children there presents. She also visited an art and handicrafts workshop where she talked with the female students.
Around 5,000 Syrian refugees live in container homes in the camp, which was visited by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in September and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in April.
However she had been been visiting refugee families and facilities around Turkey for two weeks leading up to the visit.
He may be ready to ride into the Danger Zone again.
Tom Cruise said he is open to a Top Gun Sequel during his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday.
As it has been 30 years since the release of the action film, the 54-year-old actor shared several stories about the movie and was pressed by the 48-year-old chat show host about making another one.
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Opening up: Tom Cruise appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night
Signature role: It was on the programme, where he opened up about a sequel to Top Gun which was released 30 years ago
Tom did seem into the idea as he said: 'It's just got to be right. That's all. We've just gotta figure it out.'
He even talked about the casting process for the film as producer Jerry Bruckheimer has long said Tom was not on board to be on the film until he took a flight with the Blue Angels.
The Mission: Impossible star tells a much different story, however, as he explained: 'This is really funny, now Jerry I've never told you this story.'
Hello there: The 54-year-old actor looked happy as he was introduced
Meeting of the minds: Tom and the 48-year-old actor shook hands after the introduction
Man of the hour: Tom received a rousing ovation
He went on to say after the first meeting at Paramount Pictures with Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott he got in the car with his agent and said: 'I'm going to do this movie.
'But don't tell Jerry that I want to make this movie because I want to fly with the Blue Angels. You've got to work these things, you know.
'I want to fly in the F-14, I've got to have at least three flights in the F-14, I want all the training and he's such a brilliant producer that I was able to be in every single meeting while we were working and developing the scripts so I could learn from it.
Interesting: He admitted that he wanted to do the movie but played a little hard to get as he wanted to take a ride with the Blue Angels and get trained
Gushing: He loved the experience with producer Jerry Bruckheimer as he said: 'To learn about movies really because he's obviously one of the greatest producers of our time'
'I watch it every day': Tom joked about the frequency in which he watches the classic action movie
'To learn about movies really because he's obviously one of the greatest producers of our time.'
He also shared a funny story about throwing up on a test flight with the Blue Angels.
The house band on the show had a special guest in Kenny Loggins all night long as he is famous for Top Gun's smash hit song Danger Zone.
Having a blast: He also shared a funny story about throwing up on a test flight with the Blue Angels
Talented: The house band on the show had a special guest in Kenny Loggins all night long as he is famous for Top Gun's smash hit song Danger Zone
First impressions: Tom said it was the first time meeting Kenny
Tough guy: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is set for release on Thursday in the UK and Friday in the US
Tom explained that they actually met for the first time backstage before the show as he said: 'I love his music, he's been a part of my life and mine in his.'
He was on the show to promote his latest sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back which also stars Cobie Smothers.
In it he reprises his role as he must uncover the truth behind a major government conspiracy in order to clear his name. It is set for release on Thursday in the UK and Friday in the US.
On-the-go: Earlier in the day he was spotted arriving at the studio
Back in black: He looked cool in a pair of aviator shades
Friendly to fans: He could be seen waving to his followers
Party posse: He had quite the entourage with him
On the dot: Tom did not hesitate in signing autograhs for his big fans
Tilda Swinton was also on the episode as she touched on several topics including her children hanging out with her on set.
The 55-year-old British actress had a sweet moment on the show as she asked a couple there on their Honeymoon if they would like to attend the Hollywood premiere of Doctor Strange on Thursday.
Doctor Strange, also starring Benedict Cumberbatch, is set for release in the UK on 25 October with the US release following on November 4.
Azealia Banks' assault accusations against Russell Crowe are 'completely inconsistent', a source close to the actor has claimed.
After attending a party at the actor's room at the Beverly Hotel on Saturday, the rapper accused him of choking her, spitting at her, calling her n****r and throwing her out.
The Gladiator star gave a very different version of events, which involved Banks threatening to slash guests with a broken wine glass.
Two sides: Azealia Banks' assault accusations against Russell Crowe are 'completely inconsistent', a source close to the actor has claimed
The source told DailyMail.com that the rappers story has 'changed dramatically' since Sunday, adding that of the ten people who were in the room nine of them agree on what happened.
'There were ten people present at the time this incident occurred. They have all provided statements. All of their statements are completely inconsistent with Ms. Banks',' the insider said.
'Per all of the witnesses, her erratic behavior and abusive language scared everyone there. Her bizarre antics culminated in her practically lunging across the table with a glass in her hand while threatening to slice the throats of at least two people,' the source said.
'No one called her the n word. She was yelling the n word at everyone else.
Odds are: The source told DailyMail.com that of the ten people who were in the room nine of them agree on what happened
'Russell behaved like a hero. He acted in defense of his guests and removed her from his suite by putting her in a bear hug and picking her up.
The source claimed her 'vile and offensive behavior' was triggered by her finding it corny that everyone was listening to music which she apparently didn't like.
'The person who invited her - RZA - has provided a statement to police which is consistent with that of all the other witnesses,' they added.
'Banks' story has changed dramatically since Sunday. On Sunday, her only contention was that Russell called her the n word. He did not call her that. She demanded an apology and threatened to go to the police until she got one. Her story has grown and become more involved with each passing day.'
Dangerous: The source said Banks' 'bizarre antics culminated in her practically lunging across the table with a glass in her hand while threatening to slice the throats of at least two people'
Following the altercation, Banks wrote in a Facebook post that Crowe had 'called me a n****r, choked me, threw me out and spat at me'.
But a number of witnesses claimed the rapper was the aggressor, and that the actor was forced to physically remover her from his room after she became violent, and threatened to slash another guest with a broken wine glass.
Daily Mail has contacted a rep for Azealia Banks for comment.
Speaking to the Sun newspaper, the 25-year-old gave her detailed version of what happened, but not before labeling the Gladiator star 'a racist, misogynist pig'.
'This is a stain on me. My femininity feels stained. I feel stained as a woman, I feel mishandled, I feel mistreated, I feel dirty. I feel very f*cking low,' she said.
According to Azealia: 'Russell had moonshine on the table, and then Russell calls for whisky, so then they just start mixing them up.
Account: Speaking to the Sun newspaper, the 25-year-old gave her detailed version of what happened, but not before labeling the Gladiator star 'a racist, misogynist pig'
'You know, moonshine, whisky, vodka, and smoking cigarettes and smoking weed.
'Russell and I get next to each other. He's talking to me, I'm talking to him, and we start flirting. We're having a really good time. He's got his knee on my knee, he's touching my leg, I'm playing him my music, he tweets my song The Big Big Beat.
'He's like, 'I love this, you're beautiful, this is great.'
As the party continued, a girl approached who Azealia guessed 'was his girlfriend'.
'She gets next to me and I guess this is just her chance to try and size me up and see what I'm about.
'And she's in my ear and she's like, "Yeah, Russell thinks you're so hot". And I was like, "Oh, really? Well that's on you girl." You know, I'm not here for that.'
The American claimed the mood turned when she mocked another guest, an aspiring horror film maker.
Before the storm: 'Russell and I get next to each other. He's talking to me, I'm talking to him, and we start flirting. We're having a really good time. He's got his knee on my knee, he's touching my leg, I'm playing him my music, he tweets my song The Big Big Beat
She said: 'Russell just kind of switched. He was like, "Well you know what? You're young and you've never done anything in your career so you don't know what you're talking about."
'I'm a little offended but I was still keeping it light. I was like, "Your best days are behind you."
Azealia claims another woman then stepped in to defend Crowe.
She continued: 'I said, "Girl, this is not the right time or place for us to be fighting, like what would happen if I got up and I slapped the sh*t out of you, or I took a glass and f*cking threw it at you and you were bleeding all over the place? I would be wrong and we'd all be wrong, and the party would be done."
He said, she said: The 25-year-old rapper took to her Facebook to explain her side of the story
'I want to f***ing die': She has since deleted this string of posts on her account
She claims this is when Russell turned on her and got physical.
'Then Russell turns to me and he goes, "Well, you wouldn't even get close enough to get the chance, n****r."
'And he says the word n****r so, like, quietly, under his breath.
'He calls me a n*****, and then grabs me, picks me up, he chokes me by the throat, picks me up, throws me out of the room and then spits on me.
'You don't just spit on somebody. And in front of everybody,' she said.
Banks filed a battery report against the actor at the Beverly Hills Police Department on Sunday.
Hurt: 'This is a stain on me. My femininity feels stained. I feel stained as a woman, I feel mishandled, I feel mistreated, I feel dirty. I feel very f*cking low,' she said.
It is claimed that Crowe had invited about 10 people over to his room to listen to music, including rapper RZA - who brought Banks.
The 47-year-old Wu Tang Clan member had previously worked with Crowe on The Man With The Iron Fist and recently signed Banks to his record label.
Originally TMZ claimed it all began when Azealia snickered at Russell's music selection and called him and another person in the room 'boring white men.'
Then when a female party guest jumped to his defense, the 212 rapper went on a threatening diatribe.
According to their insider, Banks said: 'You would love it if I broke my glass, stabbed you guys in the throat, and blood would squirt everywhere like some real Tarantino s***.'
Witnesses say she used the n-word numerous times and Crowe remained calm until she reached for a glass and cocked it back.
The 53-year-old actor star then reportedly grabbed her and carried her out of the suite before calling security guards to remove her from the grounds.
Courting controversy: Azealia (pictured in court earlier this year) did not show up to her court case in New York last month, and the judge was less than impressed warning a bench warrant will be issued if she does not show next time
At least four guests/witnesses who gave statements during the investigation used the word 'erratic' to describe Azealia's behavior according to TMZ. They also claim that RZA said she used the N-word and not Crowe.
In Azealia's since-deleted posts on social media, The Big Beat hitmaker has a much different story as she wrote: 'To recap my night, I went to a party at Russell Crowe's suit, at which he called me a n*****, choked me, threw me out and spat at me.
'Last night was one of the hardest nights of sleep I've had in along time.
'The men in the room allowed it to happen. I feel terrible today.'
'I was there, she was out of control: Australian comedian Jim Jefferies, who was a witness, defended Crowe afterward, branding Banks 'a complete liar'
She also posted two other statuses on Facebook, in which the rapper talked about being depressed and that 'I wish I had someone to beat him up for me.'
Australian comedian Jim Jefferies, who was apparently witness to the encounter, has defended Russel by branding Azealia as a 'complete liar.'
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday, Jim wrote: 'This is 100 percent the truth. I was there, she was out of control. Russell did absolutely nothing wrong.
He even offered to take a lie detector test to back up his account.
Dynamic duo: Banks was reportedly a guest of rapper RZA, who is pictured with Crowe at The Man With The Iron Fist screening in October 2012 as they worked on the flick together
Banks meanwhile is no stranger to controversy.
Last month a judge was not too pleased as she failed to appear at her court case in New York after allegedly attacking a bouncer at a nightclub last year.
Banks was charged with misdemeanor assault, attempted assault and disorderly conduct after the incident at Up&Down in Chelsea on December 16, where she allegedly bit a female bouncer on the breast.
The bite caused 'redness, swelling and bruising' and 'substantial pain', according to the criminal complaint, but the woman declined medical attention at the scene.
Banks is infamous for her Twitter rants against other rappers, as well as politicians - she once suggested Sarah Palin be gang-rapped.
They are both married to Madden boys.
And Cameron Diaz and sister-in-law Nicole Richie took some girl time on Tuesday as they went to the salon together in Studio City.
But, as to not wreck their fresh pedicures, the ladies made a rather unglamorous exit as they headed outside carrying their shoes while clad in flip flops.
Putting their best foot forward! Cameron Diaz and sister-in-law Nicole Richie took some girl time on Tuesday as they went to the salon together in Los Angeles
Cameron, 44, led the way while holding her metallic sneakers as Nicole, 35, followed closely behind.
The Mask actress kept it casual in a grey sweater, matching top, and blue jeans.
Yet she made sure to glam up the look with a bold slick of cherry red lipstick and a perfect coat of makeup upon her face.
Nicole meanwhile rocked a lightweight orange coat, black skinny jeans, and a low-cut top to match, along with the pink flip flops.
Pop of colour! Diaz made sure to glam up the look with a bold slick of cherry red lipstick and an perfect coat of makeup upon her face
Her hair was casually scraped back away from her face, and she also wore a pair of sunglasses.
The reality star has been married to Joel Madden since 2010, and the couple are parents to eight-year-old daughter Harlow and seven-year-old son Sparrow.
Nicole introduced Cameron to her brother-in-law, Benji Madden, and the actress and rocker married in 2015.
Low-key: Nicole meanwhile rocked a lightweight orange coat, black skinny jeans, and a low-cut top to match
Aww: The reality star has been married to Joel Madden since 2010, and the couple are parents to eight-year-old daughter Harlow and seven-year-old son Sparrow (Richie pictured with Joel in January in Los Angeles)
Twins Benji and Joel, 37, have been working on music for their band Good Charlotte. Earlier this year they completed some tour dates.
Meanwhile, Cameron has been taking a break from Hollywood and spending time with her gal pals that include not just Nicole but also Gwyneth Paltrow and Drew Barrymore.
The multi-millionaire actress who starred in such films as The Holiday, There's Something About Mary and Charlie' Angels said in the documentary Human last year that fame is not important.
'Fame does not define me. If you are looking for fame to define you, then you will never be happy and youll always be searching for happiness, and you will never find it in fame,' she said.
'Fulfillment comes from within you, by being authentic to yourself not chasing fame.'
He's got a reputation as a reality show lothario.
And in a candid chat to promote his new book Scotty T: A Shore Thing, Geordie Shore star Scotty T has admitted that his antics once led to him paying for a former fling's abortion.
Speaking to The Sun, the 28-year-old confessed he felt 'overwhelming relief' when the girl told him she wasn't planning on keeping the baby.
Revealing all: In a candid chat to promote his new book Scotty T: A Shore Thing, Scotty T has admitted that his antics once led to him paying for a former fling's abortion
Scotty, who also reveals in his book that he's slept with almost 1,000 women, recalls of the moment he was told by the woman that she was pregnant:
'She said she felt it was only right to let me know she was pregnant and that she wasn't going to go through with it.'
'Forgive me for saying it, but the sudden relief I experienced when she said that she wasn't planning on keeping the baby was overwhelming, because I knew for sure that I wasn't ready to be a dad.'
Lothario: Scotty, who also reveals in his book that he's slept with almost 1,000 women, recalls of the moment he was told by the woman that she was pregnant
Scotty went on to reveal that he was responsible when dealing with the unexpected pregnancy, explaining:
'To be honest it was the only occasion this had happened. But I dealt with it properly and respectfully, as should anyone else in that situation, FYI.'
While he's had plenty of flings in his time, Scotty seems to have got things back on track with girlfriend Francesca Toole.
Speaking out: Speaking to The Sun , the 28-year-old confessed he felt 'overwhelming relief' when the girl told him she wasn't planning on keeping the baby
The star was unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend after he was rumoured to have enjoyed a casual fling with married Loose Women panellist Katie Price.
But the pair were spotted putting on a passionate display in Newcastle on Sunday amid claims they are back together.
The Geordie Shore lothario revealed he had been ditched by his girlfriend of a year and a half earlier this month, as he wrote in his Daily Star column: 'Got dumped by my girlfriend and had to change my number, buzzing.'
Just friends: Scotty was unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend this month after he was rumoured to have enjoyed a casual fling with married Loose Women panellist Katie Price
Back together? The Geordie Shore lothario revealed he had been ditched by his girlfriend of a year and a half Francesca Toole earlier this month
It came after he was pictured visiting a hotel with Katie Price for two hours - although they claim they were simply getting a sunbed.
Shes genuinely just my pal. I literally took her for a sunbed at my friends salon and that was it, he told Radio Aire while rehearsing for an appearance in new panto Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Katie also strenuously denied claims her marriage to husband Kieran Hayler is on the rocks following reports she met with the Geordie Shore hunk.
Cheeky: An old tweet of Scotty's from 2015 has also resurfaced, in which he tells Katie to ditch her husband Kieran for him
The mother of five took to social media to lash out at rumours her husband was threatening to walk out on her after the 'humiliation'.
Scotty previously denied claims of a secret hotel tryst with Katie in his Daily Star column, writing: 'Yes, of course I would bang her, she is FIT.
'She is also a wicked woman and a laugh to be around. But she is married with kids and I respect that'.
She's an English beauty who can pull off a myriad of styles.
And Poppy Delevingne, 30, opted for a rock 'n' roll ensemble as she jetted into LAX on Tuesday in a vintage leather jacket.
The model looked radiant, despite having just stepped off a transatlantic flight from London.
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Rock chick: Poppy Delevingne, 30, opted for a rock 'n' roll ensemble as she jetted into LAX on Tuesday in a vintage leather jacket
Poppy had help carrying her mound of luggage, with a male aide pushing a trolley beside her stacked with suitcases.
Her golden locks glistened in the sun as they fell over her jacket, and she covered her eyes with some yellow-tinted, mirrored shades.
She wore a black top with matching skinny jeans and a pair of classic Converse kicks.
Glowing: The model looked radiant, despite having just stepped off a transatlantic flight from London
Goldilocks: She ran her fingers through her hair as she made her way outside
Low-key: She wore a black top with matching skinny jeans and a pair of classic Converse kicks
The stunner finished her outfit with a denim jacket tied around her waist and a dainty necklace around her neck.
She ran her fingers through her hair and flashed a bright smile at the cameras as she sauntered through the car park holding her phone.
The outfit was far more low-key than the lavish ensembles Poppy was seen wearing last month during London Fashion Week.
A girl needs options: Poppy had help carrying her mound of luggage, with a male aide pushing a trolley stacked with suitcases beside her
Blonde bombshell: Her golden locks glistened in the sun as they fell over her jacket, and she covered her eyes with some yellow-tinted, mirrored shades
Walking pretty: Poppy looked relaxed and confident as she sauntered
Mixing it up: The outfit was far more low-key than the lavish ensembles Poppy was seen wearing last month during London Fashion Week
Poppy was on the guestlist of some of the week's most prestigious events.
She turned heads in a vivid floral mini dress with a daringly short hemline at the Burberry SS17 show, before switching into another tiny number for the LOVE magazine and Marc Jacobs bash at Lou Lou's.
And the sister of model-turned-actress Cara, made a fashionable splash on the FROW at Erdem's SS17 show alongside Daisy Lowe.
Happy: Poppy looked thrilled to be stateside, producing a bright grin
She is usually shown heavily made up, often looking particularly glamorous on a night out.
But like many people, Charlotte Crosby showed she can suffer from a bad skin day.
The ex-Geordie Shore star posted a series of shots on Snapchat showing herself with a bad case of acne.
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Laid bare: Charlotte scrawled 'bad' on a shot of her which featured her with red spots all other her cheek
The snaps showed the make-up free star with her face close up to the camera, and a cluster of red spots all down one side of her cheek.
Charlotte wrote captions on the snaps, with one shot captioned 'bad one' and another with the words 'bad' along with an arrow pointing to another breakout on her cheek.
This isn't the first time the brash reality star has shared her skin troubles with her fans.
Not happy: Charlotte Crosby showed she can suffer from a bad skin day
Breakout: Charlotte's appearance was a far cry from her usual heavily made-up look
Baring all: Charlotte went make-up free for the Snapchat shots
She posted pictures of herself in May where she counted spots on her face, and a video where she is seen saying: 'I am absolutely furious about this situation. Spotty face and greasy hair.'
She told followers she was 'fuming.'
Meanwhile, Charlotte recently came under fire from TV bosses of Celebs Go Dating for her recent romance with model Ash Harrison.
Hard to handle: This isn't the first time Charlotte has suffered from spots on her face
Producers of the series, which follows celebrities going on dates with members of the public, are claimed to be frustrated she didn't tell them she had a secret boyfriend during filming.
The Sun report that E4 felt let down because Charlotte's new relationship means she wouldn't have found love on the show, which has already seen the star break down in tears over her ex Gaz Beadle.
Charlotte is clearly moving on from her on/off five year relationship with Gaz,which came to a head earlier this year when she announced she would be quitting Geordie Shore as she couldn't be around him anymore.
She's known for her flirty interviews on Good Morning Britain.
But the tables were turned on Susanna Reid on Wednesday morning as Hollywood hunk Justin Timberlake sent her a saucy message.
Susanna, 45, features in Justin's new animated film Trolls as the voice of his grandmother Grandma Rosiepuff, and after seeing a photo of his onscreen relative the actor deemed her 'super hot.
Shock: Susanna Reid was left red faced on Wednesday morning's GMB as Hollywood hunk Justin Timberlake sent her a saucy message
GMB's Richard Arnold captured the moment on camera, with Justin, 35, seen holding up a photo of Susanna during the VT with his co-star Anna Kendrick.
'Good morning Britain! Susanna look you're here with us!' he exclaimed.
Looking at the pic, the heartthrob added: 'You play my grandmother in Trolls. You look way too young...I have a super hot grandmother!'
Anna added: 'Your grandmother is a babe.'
He's a fan: Susanna features in Justin's new animated film Trolls as the voice of his grandmother, and after seeing a photo of his onscreen relative the actor deemed her 'hot'
Reacting to the VT, Susanna's GMB co-host Piers Morgan said: 'Oh my god, that's astonishing!'
'I didn't know you got all that! That is very cool though Timberlake doing the whole you look too young to be a granny!'
He cheekily added: 'He's right in your target range,' only for Susanna to respond: 'What does that mean?'
Checking her out: GMB's Richard Arnold captured the moment on camera, with Justin seen holding up a photo of Susanna during the VT with his co-star Anna Kendrick
After a touch of embarrassment, the stunning star seemed more than happy with Justin's comments, quipping: 'I can retire now!'
Last year Susanna insisted she does not flirt with male guests on Good Morning Britain, confessing she does not want to come across as rude and stonewalling.
The presenter told Daily Mirror newspaper: Any interviewer's mission is to get the best from a guest. I enjoy the interviews I do and it would be bizarre, wouldn't it, if I didn't laugh at a guest's joke, or didn't smile?'
Loving it: Reacting to the VT, Susanna's GMB co-host Piers Morgan said: 'Oh my god, that's astonishing!'
I would just look rude, she added. So I'd rather look like I'm comfortable, and enjoying myself than rude and stonewalling.
She memorably caused a storm during an unfortunate interview with Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens, when she unintentionally made an embarrassing double entendre.
The interviewer asked him if he had to 'beat off a lot of American men' for his latest part in a Hollywood film - not realising that the innocent question could be misinterpreted.
She recently announced she has her own bun in the oven after sharing her pregnancy joy.
And mum-to-be Molly Sims looked sweet as pie as she attended the pre-release party for Candace Nelson's The Sprinkles Baking Book alongside Reese Witherspoon in Beverly Hills on Tuesday.
Showing off her blossoming baby bump, the 43-year-old actress wowed in a floral gown that clung to her pregnancy curves.
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Bun in the oven: Pregnant Molly Sims looked sweet as pie at the pre-release party for Candace Nelson's The Sprinkles Baking Book with Reese Witherspoon in Beverly Hills on Tuesday
Featuring a stylish ruffled neckline, the garment flared out to mid-calf length, flashing a hint of her model pins.
Rolling up her sleeves as she cradled her bump, the mum-of-two kept her accessories simple with a pair of tan heeled sandals and a small brown bag.
Adding a splash of glitz to her ensemble, she wore a chunky gold bangle on her slender wrist.
Something yummy, mummy? Showing off her blossoming baby bump, the 43-year-old model-turned-actress wowed in a floral gown that clung to her pregnancy curves
Blooming lovely: Featuring a stylish ruffled neckline, the garment flared out to mid-calf length, flashing a hint of her model pins as she cuddled up to Candace Nelson
There's no batter look: Rolling up her sleeves as she cradled her bump, the mum-of-two kept her accessories simple with a small brown bag as she leant against Sara Foster
Ladies who lunch: Molly added a splash of glitz to her ensemble with a chunky gold bangle on as she joined Candace Norah Weinstein, Robyn Casady and Marlien Rentmeester
Hello, petal: Molly - who kept her accessories simple with a pair of tan heeled sandals - was joined by her gal pal Reese, who looked equally as stunning in a floral co-ord
She was joined by her gal pal Reese, who looked equally as stunning in a floral co-ord.
Flashing her lean legs, the Sweet Home Alabama star donned a navy miniskirt, which she teamed with a matching short-sleeved blouse.
Painting her pout with a slick of red lipstick, she styled her golden locks in a side parting, framing her pretty face with the loose waves.
The proof is in the pudding: Reese seemed in great spirits as she examined all the goodies on offer, and couldn't resist making a beeline for the cake
Blonde beauty: Painting her pout with a slick of red lipstick, Reese styled her golden locks in a side parting, framing her pretty face with the loose waves
Leggy ladies: Flashing her lean legs, the Sweet Home Alabama star donned a navy miniskirt, which she teamed with a matching short-sleeved blouse as she posed with Candace
Orange you glad to see me: Reese seemed in playful spirits as she looked at Candace's home-baked goods. The writer dazzled in a rust coloured floral dress
Light reading: The pair took some time out to read through the baking book together
Thanks for muffin! Reese posed with a mini cupcake as she cuddled up to chic Candace
Lovely ladies: The pair seemed in great spirits on the day as she celebrated the impending release of Candace's baking guide book
Reese and Molly seemed in good spirits on the day, despite Molly's recent admission that she's been suffering with terrible morning sickness.
Updating fans on her pregnancy on her vlog, she revealed: 'I was in New York and I threw up on the Long Island expressway next to a homeless man.
'And then when I went to get crackers inside of the gas station after throwing up, I almost threw up again because of the smell in the gas station.'
Two of a kind: Kelly Sawyer (L) and Rachel Zoe looked lovely in floral dresses as they posed for snaps at the glamorous cookbook pre-launch party
Fantastic four: Jenni Kayne, Rachel Zoe, Kelly Sawyer and Jessica de Ruiter posed together
The star is expecting her third child in January with husband Scott Stuber. The couple are also parents to one-year-old daughter Scarlett, and son Brooks, four.
She recently admitted that pregnancy has been 'really stressful' so far because she was worried about potential complications as a result of her age.
Whilst she was looking forward to welcoming a third child into their family she admitted that the couple were 'super nervous' about the tests she has had to undergo.
Luckily, she revealed that everything is 'on track', but admitted to succumbing to some bizarre cravings - including drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows every night and eating turkey with salt and crackers.
Sprinkle of elegance: Rachel Zoe, Candace Nelson and Sara Foster seemed chirpy as they posed with the new baking book in their colourful ensembles
BEATRICE -- Like many of the issues surrounding the so-called Beatrice 6 case, the idea that Gage County could ask the state for a loan to pay a $28.1 million federal jury award is without any sort of precedent.
The mechanism for getting the loan and paying it back is simple enough.
Any Nebraska political subdivision ordered to pay a court judgment can apply to the State Treasurer's Office for a loan of sufficient funds to pay any judgment in its entirety, then pay it back at one-half of 1 percent interest.
The idea was broached last week by Jeffry Patterson, one of the attorneys representing six people convicted of murder after a 1989 cold case investigation into the rape and beating death of Helen Wilson in her downtown Beatrice apartment.
Joseph White, Ada JoAnn Taylor, Thomas Winslow, James Dean, Kathleen Gonzalez and Debra Shelden spent a combined 75 years in prison until DNA evidence pointed to a seventh person, and they were exonerated.
The six sued Gage County, Deputy Sheriff Burdette Searcey, Reserve Deputy Wayne Price and others for violating their civil rights, and in July a federal jury awarded them $28.1 million, plus attorneys fees.
Patterson made the suggestion to Gage Countys team of private-practice attorneys in a letter copied to Gov. Pete Ricketts, Sens. John Stinner of Gering and Roy Baker of Lincoln, State Treasurer Don Stenberg and others.
Gage County has not replied to the letter, nor has it applied with the treasurer's office for a loan covering any or all of the judgment, Stenberg said. He did say that he discussed the issue last week with Patrick OBrien, one of the attorneys representing Gage County.
In fact, no application for a loan has ever been made to the treasurer since Gov. Norbert Tiemann signed the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act into law nearly a half century ago.
That leaves attorneys and public officials little in the way of guidance.
Stenberg said he asked Attorney General Doug Peterson for his opinion Friday on how the law may apply to Gage Countys circumstances.
My main question to the attorney general was if this statute applies to a federal judgment, Stenberg said Monday.
Since being signed into law in 1969, the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act has been applied to civil cases brought against cities, counties, school districts and other entities in state court.
It was introduced alongside the State Tort Claims Act by then-Sen. Roland Luedtke of Lincoln and intended to abolish the doctrine of sovereign or governmental immunity by governmental entities in Nebraska.
A Federal Tort Claims Act allowing citizens to pursue some claims against the federal government was enacted in 1946.
During floor debate, Luedtke, a former Lincoln mayor and Nebraska lieutenant governor, said that for more than a century after the state Constitution was ratified, Nebraska and its subdivisions operated on a king can do no wrong position of governmental immunity that limited recourse in the event of injury or other damages.
Claims filed against Nebraska school boards and the city of Omaha, and Nebraska Supreme Court rulings weakened the idea of governmental immunity and brought attention to the issue, which was later the subject of an interim study.
The act established a uniform method for bringing lawsuits against subdivisions and outlined a two-year statute of limitations for a claim to be made.
The final part of the law gave governmental entities in Nebraska the option of applying for low-interest loans from the treasurer's office to pay any claims awarded to citizens by a court if they could not pay the claims through insurance or other remedies described by law.
Because of the constitutional limitations on expenditures and the like, we realize that (governmental entities) could have a very catastrophic loss, a negligence claim, which would result in a judgment which perhaps a local subdivision of government could not even meet, Luedtke told the Judiciary Committee during a 1969 hearing.
But it appears the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act applies to damages awarded in state court and not under federal law, Stenberg said, meaning his office might not have authority to give a loan to Gage County.
He said it's also unclear whether any loan his office could grant to Gage County would be capped at $5 million. The Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act caps payouts for claims at $5 million per occurrence under the law but does not assign a cap to the loan amount.
Given those limits, the Legislatures intent may have been to limit any loan to the maximum amount of recovered allowed under the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act, Stenberg wrote.
His final question to Peterson centered on what options Gage County may have with his office if the Political Subdivisions Tort Claim Act does not apply to the case.
(Is) there any other statute that would authorize the State Treasurer to make a loan to Gage County related to the judgments in question? he asked.
Peterson's spokeswoman Suzanne Gage said late Monday that the attorney general will "respond as expeditiously as possible" to Stenberg's request.
In his letter to Gage County, Patterson said his clients would consent to a stay on collecting the nearly $30 million if the county "were able to guarantee prompt payment" if the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals finds in their favor.
She's the reigning Queen of the Jungle.
And Vicky Pattison, 28, has nothing but fond memories of her gruelling three-weeks in the Australian wilderness, calling the experience the 'best of her life' on Wednesday's edition of Good Morning Britain.
The former Geordie Shore star was recently announced as one of the hosts of the revamped I'm A Celebrity spin-off show Extra Camp.
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Fond memories: Vicky Pattison, 28, called her I'm A Celebrity experience the 'best of her life' on Wednesday's edition of Good Morning Britain
She was joined on GMB by her co-hosts Joe Swash, Stacey Solomon and Chris Ramsey for a chat with Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid ahead of the upcoming series.
Vicky gushed: 'For me, it was the best experience of my life. I think I've romanticised it. I think the most difficult part is missing your friends and family.'
Stacey, 27, who won the crown in 2010, echoed similar sentiments, saying: 'It was the experience of my life. I loved doing it. I feel I've had the time of my life ever since.'
The former X Factor finalist also revealed that the hosts weren't allowed to know the identity of the contestants until the last minute thanks to her boyfriend Joe, 34.
New look: She was joined on GMB by her co-hosts Joe Swash, Stacey Solomon and Chris Ramsey for a chat with Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid ahead of the upcoming series
Stunning: Vicky looked stunning in classy cream co-ords
Dropping him in it: Stacey Solomon, 27, revealed that the hosts weren't allowed to know the identity of the contestants until the last minute thanks to her boyfriend Joe, 34
Reigning queen: The former Geordie Shore star was recently announced as one of the hosts of the revamped I'm A Celebrity spin-off show Extra Camp
All smiles: Richard Arnold joined the four hosts in the jungle-themed set up
Raring to go: The next series of the hit show is due to start next month
The cheeky actor explained how one year he told his nan, who lives in Thetford, Norfolk, the line-up and it filtered back to London.
He added: 'The jungle is amazing. I'd just come out of EastEnders, I didn't think I would get any acting work. It just opened up a new world.'
Comedian Chris, 30, is the only one of the four who hasn't previously been a contestant.
Can't fault it: Stacey, who won the crown in 2010, also said it was her best experience
Stylish: Stacey looked great in a black bardot top with a leopard print skirt
Smitten: Joe and Stacey cosied up, with the couple very much looking in love
Mic check: Susanna said were she to go in the jungle her biggest fear would be saying something she wouldn't want being broadcast
Oops: The cheeky actor explained how one year he told his nan, who lives in Thetford, Norfolk, the line-up and it filtered back to London
Laughing out loud: Bubbly Stacey giggled heartily beside Joe
He said: 'I'm terrified. I've only just found out we've got to eat the willies and stuff.'
He also heaped praise on his colleagues, saying they were 'amazing' for having braved the jungle.
Meanwhile, Susanna said were she to go in the jungle her biggest fear would be saying something she wouldn't want being broadcast.
Funny man: Comedian Chris, 30, is the only one of the four who hasn't previously been a contestant
Kris Jenner has advised her daughter Kim Kardashian to take 'one day at a time' after she was robbed at gunpoint earlier this month.
The reality superstar was involved in a terrifying incident when a group of men disguised as policemen broke into her hotel in Paris, France.
The social media sensation has retreated from the spotlight in a bid to come to terms with the incident - and now Kris has revealed that she told Kim that recovering is a 'process'.
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Mum's the word: Kris Jenner has advised her daughter Kim Kardashian to take 'one day at a time' after she was robbed at gunpoint earlier this month
Speaking to E! News about her daughter, the momager said: 'One day at a time. It's a process.'
Kris added that her maternal instinct has taken over since the incident on October 2, and she is focusing solely on her children now.
Kim's younger sister Khloe has admitted her and her siblings have to now be 'more aware' of their surroundings, and respect Kim's request for privacy to allow her to 'heal.'
The 32-year-old television personality said: 'It's more just being more aware and just really respecting Kim's privacy and letting her heal and do what's best for her and her family.
Advice: Kris has told Kim, pictured above in Paris days before the robbery, that she needs to take time to recover from the terrifying incident
Revealing: Khloe Kardashian also spoke about how the family is helping Kim to 'heal' while rocking a racy ensemble at the Good American Launch Event in Los Angeles on Tuesday
Not taking any chances: It appeared as if the 32-year-old reality star certainly beefed up security at the event after Kim's robbery
'Well, I think it's just a wake-up call to make a lot of life adjustments. This is a really serious matter for Kim I think that's really personal as to when that emotional terror you could move on from that.
'I think for us it's all a wake-up call for all of us, but definitely just to make sure our sister's OK.'
The star and Kris were speaking at a Good American Launch Event in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Taking Kim's ordeal into account, Khloe had noticeably beefed up security for the event held at the Nordstrom in highly-popular shopping area The Grove.
As she spends several hours in the gym every week, she made sure top show off the results in a see-through black mesh bodysuit.
The sheer number featrured a backless cutout as it was tucked into a pair of on-trend skinny light blue jeans.
Dynamic duo: Kris joined her daughter at the event
Stunning: The mother-and-daughter duo were in fantastic form
The trousers featured a slight tear at the hemline as she teamed the look with a pair of furry black stilletos.
She accessorised the look with studded earrings and two choker necklaces.
Her signature dyed blonde locks were worn down into waves flowing over her shoulder as she sported natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with brown lip.
On the prowl: Khloe also hit the stage at The Grove to show off her new jeans as she is part of their advert campaign
Having fun: She looked fantastic in her skintight trousers
Ooh la la: The bodysuit featured a backless cutout detailing
Mommy and me: Khloe and the 60-year-old matriarch seemed to have fun answering questions
Pretty: She wore her dyed blonde tresses down into waves flowing over her shoulders
Speaking out: The momager looked more than happy to be at the event
Out and about: Leading up to the event, Khloe could be seen on Snapchat
Looking good: She also wore black furry heels
Stunning: No doubt she enjoyed parading around her curvaceous figure
Friendly to fans: Regardless of the security she did not hesitate in saying hello to a few fans
Having a blast: She was all smiles while greeting her biggest fans
Khloe was not alone for the occasion as she was joined by her 60-year-old momager Kris Jenner.
The matriarch of the Kardashian-Jenner clan sported a long white coat over a black top.
She teamed the look with a pair of black leather booties and matching ripped skinny jeans.
Big day: There was a gaggle of security at the event
She doesn't skip squat day: Khloe looked good in those jeans
On-the-go: Her security made sure the area was clear for her to walk through
Her signature short raven-coloured locks were combed to the side as she completed her make-up with a swipe of bright red lip.
No doubt it was a fun event as Khloe took to her Snapchat to document the gala including footage from an interview with Kris and herself.
The star-studded gala at luxury store Nordstrom was put together to celebrate the launch of denim brand Good American.
In a snap: Khloe was all over social media leading up to and during the event
Having a blast: She addressed her followers while on the red carpet
Got back: When she wasn't on the phone, Khloe stuck the mobile in her back pocket
Sisterly love: Her sister Kourtney Kardashian joined her at the event
Hugged up: Kourtney gave her a big hug on the grey carpet
Having fun: The 38-year-old reality star poked fun at her younger sister
Just us: The sisters were very active on Snapchat
Tremendous trio: She was joined by twin gal pals Malika and Khadijah Haqq
Motley crew: Khloe shared this group photo from the gathering
Hello: She shared a video of he grand entrance on Snapchat
Busy: Her account also shared a few videos from the event
Feeling good: Khloe looked comfortable despite the family troubles she has endured as of late
Mama: Khloe also shared this image of Kris addressing the crowd
The entire reality series family has beefed up security in the wake of 35-year-old Kim Kardashian's armed robbery in Paris last month.
The Kardashian family have all rallied around the 35-year-old, who is taking some time off following the terrifying ordeal.
On Monday, Kim's assistant Stephanie Shepherd announced the star's friends and family will be updating her subscription based app and website kimkardashianwest.com while Kim recovers.
Kim is also planning a low-key celebration for her 36th birthday on Friday, with just her family by her side, according to E! Online.
Out and about: Khloe looked fantastic as she left the big event
She always injects some added elegance to a red carpet affair.
And Naomie Harris did not disappoint as she attended a screening for her new film, Moonlight, in Atlanta on Tuesday.
Looking effortlessly glamorous, the 40-year-old actress proved that less is more as she teamed a billowing vest with a printed midi skirt.
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Glamorous: Naomie Harris proved that less is more as she teamed a billowing vest with a printed midi skirt at a screening for her new film, Moonlight, in Atlanta on Tuesday
Flaunting her toned arms in the cream tank top, she also showed off her decotellage, adding some glitz with a delicate gold necklace.
Highlighting her small waist, the star donned a navy wool skirt with large orange patches, whilst she added some height in quirky white stilettos.
She was joined at the screening by Janelle Monae, who donned a rose embroidered leather jacket over her little black dress.
Dazzling duo: The 40-year-old actress flaunted her toned arms in a cream tank top that also showed off her decotellage as she cuddled up to co-star, Janelle Monae
Brunette beauty: The stunning star kept her accessories simple with a delicate gold necklace and a pair of intricately designed silver chandelier earrings
The pair co-star in Moonlight, which is set in a rough Miami neighbourhood and chronicles one man's lifetime.
Naomie stars as Paula, his mother, who is funding her growing drug habit with prostitution.
Moonlight has received universal acclaim and will be released in UK cinemas on October 21.
Everything's coming up roses! Naomie seemed in great spirits as she cuddled Janelle, who looked uber chic in a studded leather jacket with a pretty floral pattern
Filming for the movie shockingly only took three days, as Naomie was in the midst of her promotional tour for Spectre, but she revealed she 'loved every minute of it'.
Speaking to Vulture, she said: 'I loved it. I loved the opportunity to work morning, noon, and night. There was no time to languish in a trailer it was like, "Get on, and deliver."'
She added that one of the benefits of a concentrated filming period was that she could easily transition back into real life.
Terrific trio: Highlighting her small waist, Naomie donned a navy wool skirt with large orange patches as she posed between Janelle and their other co-star, Trevante Rhodes
Naomie revealed: 'I felt really cleansed, in a way. Often, when you're inhabiting a character for three to six months, it can feel afterwards as though they're under your skin and it takes a long time to get them out of you, to exorcise them.
'With Moonlight, I felt as though I truly managed to inhabit Paula, so at the end of it, I could just let her go. That was a really nice feeling, and so satisfying.
'She's all out there, all done and finished, and I could get back on a plane and go back to my promotional tour for Bond.'
He recently raised concerns for his welfare by disappearing from social media.
But Kurt Coleman is truly alive and well and he posted his first selfie after five days of radio silence.
The 19-year old is known for posting daily so when he finally took to Instagram on Wednesday, the social media star wrote a long and lengthy explanation.
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Alive and well: Kurt Coleman is truly alive and well and he posted his first selfie after five days of radio silence. The 19-year old is known for posting daily so when he finally took to Instagram on Wednesday, the social media star wrote a long and lengthy explanation
He wrote: 'I just took a break off social media for a week because I never have and I feel so good...
'I've realised so much more things around me just from simply not using my phone,' he continued.
'Everything on here, everything on our phone shouldn't even mean ANYTHING to our lives because it's not a real experience,' Kurt added.
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Missing? Instagram 'celebrity' Kurt Coleman raised concerns for his welfare with the 'selfie a day' addict disappearing from social media
'So here's a real life photo.. I'm literally glowing from the inside because I'm in a very happy place.. Love you all, just remember your life is more than a phone. AND why do all of you edit your photos? Who for?'
'Your 'followers' that don't even give a fuck about you? So many people take this so seriously and it's not even real.
'Especially so fake how so many people just photoshop everything real away anyways. Lol.. (sic)'
Nightmares: Kurt last tweeted on Sunday, after sharing bizarre thoughts about having nightmares and being attacked by a group of cats
Earlier this week, Daily Mail Australia became aware of a recently-established Twitter account named 'Find Kurt Coleman'.
It was supposedly set up by three 'deeply worried' fans of Kurt, who were apparently concerned for his safety.
They claimed Kurt's recent 'disappearance' from social media was linked to a mystery board game he played last week.
Spooky: Fans claimed Kurt's recent 'disappearance' from social media was linked to a mystery board game he played last week
Kurt last tweeted on Sunday, after sharing bizarre thoughts about having nightmares and being attacked by a group of cats.
Given Kurt's previous posts promoting the film on social media, it was speculated his alleged 'disappearance' was simply a viral marketing campaign by digital brand Amplify, run by Sydney-based Marquee Studios. However it is unknown whether Kurt has any relationship with them.
Taking a break? Alternatively, he could have just taken a social media break as suggested by his manager
Alternatively, he could have just taken a social media break as suggested by his manager to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday.
But Loren O'Keeffe of MPAN criticised the decision to use a 'missing person' to promote a horror film.
'To joke about something that impacts so many people so enormously - to sell more tickets - is a slap in the face to those genuinely dealing with the torment of not knowing where their loved one is.
Bizarre: Kurt posted weird tweets before he supposedly went 'missing'
Insomnia? He also complained about lacking sleep
Earlier this week: Daily Mail Australia became aware of a recently-established Twitter account named 'Find Kurt Coleman'
'Not to mention Kurts fans who were legitimately concerned for his welfare,' they told Daily Mail Australia.
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Marquee Studios for comment.
In the past, Kurt has been criticised by an educator as 'self obsessed' and a 'narcissist'.
The social media enthusiast told Daily Mail Australia at the time the comments were 'unprofessional' for a teacher.
If youre searching for a missing loved one, please go to: www.missingpersonsguide.com
She became one of the most enviable women in the world after her steamy sex scene with Tom Hiddleston aired earlier this year.
But The Night Manager star Elizabeth Debicki has revealed that shooting the show's most memorable moment was far from sexy.
The stunning actress, who is currently starring in the West End, told This Morning on Wednesday that she had no idea the fuss the sex scene would cause.
Coy: The Night Manager star Elizabeth Debicki has revealed that shooting the show's most memorable moment was far from sexy
Elizabeth, 26, played Jed in the hit BBC series, who begins a sizzling affair with Tom's Jonathan Pine - an intelligence operative tasked with infiltrating the inner circle of Jed's arms dealer boyfriend Roper (Hugh Laurie).
Elizabeth said she had the time of her life shooting the series with Tom and Hugh, gushing: 'I would love to [do a second series] I adored shooting it. I loved everyone on that cast.'
'Hugh is a wonderful wonderful man. I was just emailing him the other day to come to the show.'
Steamy: The stunning actress shared a memorable sex scene with Tom Hiddleston in this year's hit BBC drama The Night Manager
The scene that caused the most fuss was a hot encounter between Jed and Jonathan, which saw Tom flashing his bum.
On the now dubbed 'Hiddlesbum' moment, Elizabeth insists: 'We werent laughing when we were doing that scene. That was quite intense.'
She added that she lost track of what episodes were screening so wasnt aware of the big fuss around the scene until journalists started bombarding her with questions.
Speaking out: The stunning actress, who is currently starring in the West End, told This Morning that she had no idea how much fuss the 'Hiddlesbum' moment would cause
In the moment: On the now dubbed 'Hiddlesbum' moment, Elizabeth insists: 'We werent laughing when we were doing that scene. That was quite intense'
One woman I remember speaking to was asking so many questions and I had to say "hold on a minute what's going on?" And she said "don't you know? It's a huge thing here, everybody's talking about it."'
'So I didn't realise that the now famous Tom's bottom scene was screening that night and the next morning I was doing radio interviews for it and someone bought it up.'
'We shot that scene quite quickly in a way efficiently. I didnt really realise that was going on in the scene I was looking at his face,' she added.
While The Night Manager was one of the biggest TV hits of the year, Elizabeth revealed that she's a huge fan of a current BBC show - The Great British Bake Off.
Hunky co-star: 'We shot that scene quite quickly in a way efficiently. I didnt really realise that was going on in the scene I was looking at his face,' she added
Wow factor: Elizabeth looked stunning in a pair of statement striped trousers and a chic white shirt
'Im the hugest Bake Off fan. I love Mary Berry deeply. I do bake. We [the cast of her play The Red Barn] became obsessive about it. It was a little bit of emotional escapism.'
Elizabeth stars alongside Mark Strong in The Red Barn, which opened at the National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre this week.
Based on the novel La Main by Georges Simenon, the play is set in Connecticut, 1969, when on their way back from a party, two couples struggle home through the snow but not everyone arrives safely.
An extravagant party organised in honour of Kim Kardashians 36th birthday has reportedly been cancelled by concerned husband Kanye West amid fears for her security following her terrifying multi-million dollar robbery in Paris.
The American TV personality will celebrate her birthday on October 21, but sources claim the party has been significantly downscaled and will be a subdued affair following the ordeal, during which thieves escaped with an estimated 8.5 million in jewels after posing as police officers and breaking into her rented apartment in the French capital.
But while Kanye, 39, has reportedly moved to cancel plans for a lavish celebration, the rapper has sought to ensure her big day is still memorable by buying her a pair of ruby drop earrings from designer Lorraine Schwartz, understood to be worth $50,000.
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Not happening: An extravagant party organised in honour of Kim Kardashians 36th birthday has reportedly been cancelled by concerned husband Kanye West amid fears for her security
Kanye is devastated he has to cancel but his familys security come first, a source told The Sun Online. He had gone all out for Kims birthday and it was going to be all expenses spared with champagne and canapes.
Now they will do something low key instead. Hes made sure he will still spoil her with the stunning one of a kind earrings though as he doesnt cut corners when it comes to his missus.
A star-studded guest list including close friends Ciara and Kelly Rowland and family members Caitlyn Jenner and Blac Chyna were understood to be attending a 1920s themed bash in honour of Kims birthday at Hollywood venue The Nice Guy prior to its cancellation.
MailOnline have contacted Kim and Kanye's representatives for further comment.
Private party: The American TV personality will celebrate her birthday on October 21, but sources claim the party has been significantly downscaled and will be a subdued affair
Meanwhile mother Kris Jenner has advised Kim to take 'one day at a time' following the robbery.
The social media sensation has retreated from the spotlight in a bid to come to terms with the incident - and now Kris has revealed that she told Kim that recovering is a 'process.'
Speaking to E! News about her daughter, the momager said: 'One day at a time. It's a process.'
Mum's the word: Kris Jenner has advised her daughter Kim Kardashian to take 'one day at a time' after she was robbed at gunpoint earlier this month
Kris added that her maternal instinct has taken over since the incident on October 2, and she is focusing solely on her children now.
Kim's younger sister Khloe has admitted her and her siblings have to now be 'more aware' of their surroundings, and respect Kim's request for privacy to allow her to 'heal.'
The 32-year-old television personality said: 'It's more just being more aware and just really respecting Kim's privacy and letting her heal and do what's best for her and her family.
Advice: Kris has told Kim, pictured above in Paris days before the robbery, that she needs to take time to recover from the terrifying incident
'Well, I think it's just a wake-up call to make a lot of life adjustments. This is a really serious matter for Kim I think that's really personal as to when that emotional terror you could move on from that.
'I think for us it's all a wake-up call for all of us, but definitely just to make sure our sister's OK.'
The star and Kris were speaking at a Good American Launch Event in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Revealing: Khloe Kardashian also spoke about how the family is helping Kim to 'heal' while rocking a racy ensemble at the Good American Launch Event in Los Angeles on Tuesday
Not taking any chances: It appeared as if the 32-year-old reality star certainly beefed up security at the event after Kim's robbery
Taking Kim's ordeal into account, Khloe had noticeably beefed up security for the event held at the Nordstrom in highly-popular shopping area The Grove.
As she spends several hours in the gym every week, she made sure top show off the results in a see-through black mesh bodysuit.
The sheer number featured a backless cutout as it was tucked into a pair of on-trend skinny light blue jeans.
Dynamic duo: Kris joined her daughter at the event
The trousers featured a slight tear at the hemline as she teamed the look with a pair of furry black stilletos.
She accessorised the look with studded earrings and two choker necklaces.
Her signature dyed blonde locks were worn down into waves flowing over her shoulder as she sported natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with brown lip.
On the prowl: Khloe also hit the stage at The Grove to show off her new jeans as she is part of their advert campaign
Having fun: She looked fantastic in her skintight trousers
Khloe was not alone for the occasion as she was joined by her 60-year-old momager Kris Jenner.
The matriarch of the Kardashian-Jenner clan sported a long white coat over a black top.
She teamed the look with a pair of black leather booties and matching ripped skinny jeans.
Her signature short raven-coloured locks were combed to the side as she completed her make-up with a swipe of bright red lip.
No doubt it was a fun event as Khloe took to her Snapchat to document the gala including footage from an interview with Kris and herself.
The star-studded gala at luxury store Nordstrom was put together to celebrate the launch of denim brand Good American.
Sisterly love: Her sister Kourtney Kardashian joined her at the event
Busy: Her account also shared a few videos from the event
Feeling good: Khloe looked comfortable despite the family troubles she has endured as of late
The entire reality series family has beefed up security in the wake of Kim's armed robbery in Paris last month.
The Kardashian family have all rallied around the TV star, who is taking some time off following the terrifying ordeal.
She is used to playing the object of desire in her movies.
So Isla Fisher's transition into playing a dowdy stay at home mum was no doubt a shock to the system as she starred opposite Zach Galifianakis in forthcoming movie Keeping Up with the Joneses.
Yet the 40-year-old still managed to steal the show when her character, Karen Gaffney attempts to seduce her husband Jeff, by slipping down to her lingerie - in an eye-popping scene.
Isla's latest role sees her play one half of a suburban couple who grow suspicious of their new neighbours Natalie and Tim Jones, played by Gal Gadot and Jon Hamm.
The duo discover their perfect fellow residents are government agents as they become embroiled in an international espionage plot.
As the Gaffneys get to know the couple they grow suspicious leading to an intrigued Karen starting to follow Natalie, who catches on to her games when she runs into her in a lingerie shop.
As the statuesque beauty walks out of the changing room she sizzles in a sexy black lace two-piece after which an intimidated Karen scuttles away.
Not so dowdy now... Isla Fisher's transition into playing a dowdy stay at home mum was no doubt a shock to the system as she starred opposite Zach Galifianakis in forthcoming movie Keeping Up with the Joneses
Saucy! Yet the 40-year-old still managed to steal the show when her character, Karen Gaffney attempts to seduce her husband Jeff, by slipping down to her lingerie - in an eye-popping scene
Tight stuff: Isla yet again put on an eye-popping display in a glimmering bodycon dress which showed off her ample cleavage to full effect
However all the attention is on her later in the clip when she sits her husband down and whips off her dressing gown to reveal a super saucy nude bodice and stockings.
She wore her long red tresses in bouncy waves while looking at her astounded husband who looks delightedly on as his wife sizzles.
Later on the duo are embroiled in a plot in which they headed on a date while wearing microphones to communicate with the Joneses.
Isla yet again put on an eye-popping display in a glimmering bodycon dress which showed off her ample cleavage to full effect.
Excitable: However all the attention is on her later in the clip when she sits her husband down and whips off her dressing gown to reveal a super saucy nude bodice and stockings
Bored: Isla's latest role sees her play one half of a suburban couple who grow suspicious of their new neighbours Natalie and Tim Jones, played by Gal Gadot and Jon Hamm
Stay in touch: Later on the duo are embroiled in a plot in which they headed on a date while wearing microphones to communicate with the Joneses
While the trailer certainly catches the eye it seems it did not catch the critics as The Hollywood Reporter dished up a scathing review: 'Stale as week-old bread and every bit as bland.
'The movie saddles a strong cast with a groaningly ineffectual script (courtesy of Michael LeSieur, who wrote 2006s You, Me and Dupree) and wastes the directors gift for bringing lived-in charm and feeling to broad comic premises...
'Even by standards of low-IQ escapism, the film falls short. At least Masterminds, another recent goof-fest headlined by Keeping Up With the Joneses star Zach Galifianakis, gave the actor an epically awful pageboy hairdo to divert our attention from its disappointments.'
He sent hearts aflutter by posing for the cover of Mills & Boon's romance novel Country Calling wearing nothing but a pair of water-drenched jeans.
And The Bachelorette break-out star Rhys Chilton, 29, channeled another amorous book by the name of Fifty Shades Of Gray as he posed in a blue business shirt for a fashion shoot this Wednesday.
Staring down the barrel of the camera with piercing blue eyes, the buff Adonis looked every inch the modern Christian Gray in a behind-the-scenes snap uploaded to his Instagram page.
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But who's his Anastasia Steele? The Bachelorette's Rhys Chilton, 29, channeled his inner Christian Gray as he posed in a blue business shirt for a fashion shoot this Wednesday
'Being a coat-hanger and giving @devereuxxo a lot of work to do post-shoot,' joked the social media star in the caption.
As usual, the debonair Brisbane-local decorated his post with comedic hashtags, including: #bluesteel #needmorepractice #poser #ausmodel and #baldy.
It's the latest in a slew of extremely provocative posts shared by Rhys, who sent fans into meltdown on Tuesday by sharing a photo of himself clad in nothing but a pair of nether region-hugging underpants.
What a page-turner! He sent hearts aflutter by posing for the cover of Mills & Boon's romance novel Country Calling wearing nothing but a pair of water-drenched jeans during a group date on The Bachelorette
Since emerging from The Bachelorette mansion without a rose, Rhys has been teasing the release of a new lifestyle blog.
According to his website, Rhys plans to canvas topics such as sex, dating and technology in the forthcoming publication.
'You see I've a keen interest in a few things, social behavior, technology, dating, sex and relationships. As the dating scene has evolved with the addition of technology and internet dating, so have the issues faced by young singles,' he explains.
Is that a rose or are you just happy to see us? He sent fans into meltdown on Tuesday by sharing a photo of himself clad in nothing but a pair of nether region-hugging underpants
'Many of which haven't yet been talked about I feel. So my blogging/vlogging will for the most part, aim to ask and answer questions around the new age of dating, relationships and promiscuity.'
'I'm certainly not afraid to be open about my thoughts and I'm happy to share my well tested male insights with the young ladies out there,' he adds.
The well-clad hunk is also set to dive back into his work as one of Brisbane's most in-demand ladies' events models, having announced earlier this week that he has booked his first gig since departing the Bachelorette mansion.
'I've been booked for a 30th B'day this weekend and I need to be at my best,' announced Rhys next to a photo of himself posing shirtless at the gym on Monday.
Gleeful fans serenaded Rhys with compliments, with one gushing: 'Looking great! Loving the new look!!!!'
Dating guru: Since emerging from The Bachelorette mansion without a rose, Rhys has been teasing the release of a new lifestyle blog
She's the Bachelor reject who often posts bikini-clad pictures to Instagram.
And Noni Janur was at it again as she posted a selfie to social media on Wednesday.
But this time she was pictured with her younger sister Franny Elliot who bares a striking resemblance to the brunette beauty.
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Twinning: Noni, 26, was pictured with her younger sister who bares a striking resemblance to the brunette beauty on Wednesday
The swimwear designer captioned the post: 'Miss my little sissy.'
Fans responded by posting, 'omg there's two of you.'
Franny Elliot then replied 'Missing you so, so much.'
Sleek in black: On Friday night, The Bachelor Australia star Noni Janur decided to cover up a bit more than usual, by sporting a sophisticated jumpsuit
Meanwhile, last week Noni decided to cover up a bit more than usual by sporting a sophisticated jumpsuit.
But the 25-year-old's stylish outfit still featured a daringly low neckline, revealing a glimpse of her decolletage.
The Bali-based beauty shot to fame after appearing on The Bachelor earlier this year.
Flaunting it: She's known to show off her incredible curves in an array of sultry bikinis
While Noni failed to win the heart of Richie Strahan, she has made a good friend in fellow contestant Kirralee 'Kiki' Morris.
The pair often flaunt their close bond on social media and Kiki recently confirmed that they are now living together.
She even raised eyebrows by announcing they would be starting a 'new life' together in Sydney after finding fame.
A very dressed-down Jessica Alba arrived at LAX Airport Wednesday morning after taking a red-eye flight from Texas.
The 35-year-old Golden Globe nominee - who relies on stylist duo Emily Current & Meritt Elliott - sported black silk pyjamas beneath a matching coat.
The Mechanic: Resurrection actress strutted through the bustling terminal looking impossibly fresh-faced with her brunette locks down.
Back in Los Angeles! A very dressed-down Jessica Alba arrived at LAX Airport Wednesday morning after taking a red-eye flight from Texas
Rolled out of bed: The 35-year-old Golden Globe nominee - who relies on stylist duo Emily Current & Meritt Elliott - sported black silk pyjamas beneath a matching coat
Gorgeous: The Mechanic: Resurrection actress strutted through the bustling terminal looking impossibly fresh-faced with her brunette locks down
Boudoir attire: Jessica finished off her cozy jet-setting ensemble with a red quilted purse, black platforms, matching carry-on, and a $295 Raden 'A22 Carry' luggage trolley
Jessica finished off her cozy jet-setting ensemble with a red quilted purse, black platforms, matching carry-on, and a $295 Raden 'A22 Carry' luggage trolley.
The Pomona-born beauty has picked out two Halloween costumes this year, one of which will match either Honor, 8, or Haven, 5.
'My daughter really wants me to go as Shimmer and Shine with her,' Alba told THR of the Nickelodeon cartoon.
'So I have to be a genie with blue hair.'
Kid-friendly: The Pomona-born beauty has picked out two Halloween costumes this year, one of which will match either Honor, 8, or Haven, 5
Alba told THR: 'My daughter really wants me to go as [Nickelodeon cartoon] Shimmer and Shine with her, so I have to be a genie with blue hair'
Romy and Michele last year! The Dear Eleanor actress also has a more adult-themed costume with her BFF, Baby2Baby co-president Kelly Sawyer
Jessica laughed: 'This year we're going to go as Ab Fab. I get to be the crazy one [Edina Monsoon]. The absolute nut job'
The Dear Eleanor actress also has a more adult-themed costume with her BFF, Baby2Baby co-president Kelly Sawyer.
'This year we're going to go as Ab Fab. I get to be the crazy one [Edina Monsoon]. The absolute nut job,' Jessica laughed.
The Honest Company mompreneur just returned from Dallas where she hosted a haircare event at the Ulta Beauty inside Preston Forest Village.
Boss lady: The Honest Company mompreneur just returned from Dallas where she hosted a haircare event at the Ulta Beauty inside Preston Forest Village
'Hey #Dallas we here!': Joining Alba were her hairstylist Jennifer Yepez (B-R), make-up artist Daniel Martin (T-L), and Honest marketing director Jen Kroog Rosenberg (T-R)
Branching out: On Friday, the Veil star launched her 18-piece collection (priced between $178-$878) with sustainable denim brand DL1961 on Revolve.com
Joining Alba as she promoted her billion-dollar business were her hairStylist Jennifer Yepez, make-up artist Daniel Martin, and Honest marketing director Jen Kroog Rosenberg.
On Friday, the Veil star launched her 18-piece collection (priced between $178-$878) with sustainable denim brand DL1961 on Revolve.com.
As for Jessica's husband of eight years, Cash Warren, he fronts his own Target sock line, Pair of Thieves.
Fifteen women and 26 men were arrested in Nebraska for prostitution or solicitation of prostitution during a nationwide sting last week.
Nationally, the FBI said 82 sexually exploited minors were saved and 239 pimps and other individuals arrested during the operation.
In Nebraska, the Omaha, Lincoln, La Vista, Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Glenwood, Iowa, police departments along with the Douglas, Lancaster, Pottawattamie and Mills county sheriff's offices were involved in the sting.
Through our strategic partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, specifically the Child Exploitation Task Force, the FBI will continue to work with our partners to make a difference in our communities," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Randall Thysse.
Operation Cross Country is focused on recovering underage victims of prostitution and drawing attention to the problem of sex trafficking at home and abroad.
Last week marked the 10th time the operation was conducted, expanding this time to become an international enforcement project with Canada, Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand joining the effort along with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the coordinated three-day operation that ended Sunday.
Two sisters in Milwaukee, ages 16 and 17, told police their mother was their pimp. The girls said she also rented out their brothers room to a man who was a registered sex offender, according to the FBI.
In Thailand, authorities arrested an American citizen -- a registered sex offender -- after he allegedly coerced five Filipino girls, ages 14 to 16, to take sexually explicit photos of themselves and send them to him online, the FBI said.
In the Philippines, two boys, 11 and 5, and a 2-year-old girl were found when five adults were arrested for operating a web-streaming service where individuals paid for access to live-streamed child sexual abuse, as well as access to the children for the purposes of illegal sexual acts, the FBI said.
Kim Kardashian is trying to make herself feel better after being bound, gagged and held at gunpoint in her Paris residence in early October.
It's not enough for the 35-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians star to simply be holed up inside her $20m Bel-Air mansion that is located in a gated community.
Mrs Kanye West is also building a state-of-the-art panic room, is hiring the type of security that looks after government officials and is also calling her therapist at all hours, a source told InTouchWeekly.
Terrified: Kim Kardashian is trying to make herself feel better after being bound and gagged in her Paris residence in early October; here she is seen hours after the crime
Her hideout: It's not enough for the 35-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians star to simply be holed up inside her $20m Bel-Air mansion that is located in a gated community
The panic room will have a large room, a bathroom and cameras. 'It will be made to withstand a fire of over 1,000 degrees and a 7.0 earthquake,' said an insider.
The construction will begin immediately. The cost could run as high as $100,000 depending on how much security she has installed.
The security team watching over her - as well as her children North, aged three, and Saint, 10 months - day and night is the best money can buy.
'Kanye has hired a company that protects government officials in war-torn countries,' said the friend.
Changes: Mrs Kanye West is also building a panic room, is hiring the type of security that looks after government officials and is also calling her therapist at all hours, a source told InTouchWeekly. Here they are seen in September
As far as her therapist, the person is on call 24 hours a day.
'Kim can reach out any time, day or night,' said the source. 'It's been very comforting for her.'
And the insider said that Kim is worse off than anyone would have guessed.
'She's not well. It's worse than anyone knows,' said the pal. 'She's been suffering severe panic attacks and refuses to be alone. She's been having flashbacks and nightmares. She's a nervous wreck. She gets especially anxious late at night.
This is the ring they took: It has been claimed the thieves, dressed as police men, made off with this rock from West
Small lock: The building Kim was staying - Hotel de Pourtales - in had a pass code the robbers allegedly already knew
'When the kids are sleeping she has time to think and she just replays that dreadful night over and over.
'Kim's ordeal is far from behind her.'
And it doesn't help that Kanye is on his Pablo tour, which has just been extended.
On Tuesday evening her mother Kris talked about how Kim is trying to take it 'one day at a time.'
The old Kim, the new Kim: The reality star in September, left, and in October after the robbery with North, right
The 60-year-old momager added that recovering has been a 'process.'
Speaking to E! News about her daughter, the momager said: 'One day at a time. It's a process.'
Kris added that her maternal instinct has taken over since the incident on October 3, and she is focusing solely on her children now.
Kim's younger sister Khloe has admitted her and her siblings have to now be 'more aware' of their surroundings, and respect Kim's request for privacy to allow her to 'heal.'
Dynamic duo: Kris Jenner talked about Kim taking time to recover as she posed with Khloe Kardashian at the Good American denim event Nordstrom inside The Grove on Tuesday
Sisterly love: Her sister Kourtney Kardashian joined her at the event
The 32-year-old television personality said: 'It's more just being more aware and just really respecting Kim's privacy and letting her heal and do what's best for her and her family.
On Monday, Kim's assistant Stephanie Shepherd announced the star's friends and family will be updating her subscription based app and website kimkardashianwest.com while Kim recovers.
Kim is also planning a low-key celebration for her 36th birthday on Friday, with just her family by her side, according to E! Online.
'Well, I think it's just a wake-up call to make a lot of life adjustments. This is a really serious matter for Kim I think that's really personal as to when that emotional terror you could move on from that.
'I think for us it's all a wake-up call for all of us, but definitely just to make sure our sister's OK.'
The star and Kris were speaking at a Good American Launch Event in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Given her mixed fortunes on the current series of Strictly Come Dancing it was a focused Laura Whitmore who made her way to a London rehearsal studio on Wednesday afternoon.
The Irish presenter, 31, was joined by professional dance partner Giovanni Pernice, 26, as she prepared to polish her ballroom skills ahead of Saturday evenings live show.
Sporting a retro gold fitted sweater and super-skinny jeans, Laura cut a typically stylish figure ahead of her latest rehearsal session with the fleet-footed Italian, whose specialty is steamy Latin dance routines.
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Let's dance: Given her mixed fortunes on the current series of Strictly Come Dancing it was a focused Laura Whitmore who made her way to a London rehearsal studio with professional partner Giovanni Pernice on Wednesday afternoon
The diminutive star accentuated her height by opting for a pair of generously heeled platform boots, while a knee-length black coat kept her warm on a chilly day in the capital.
Keeping her willowy blonde locks conventionally styled with a simple centre parting, Laura revealed a naturally pretty face as she made her way inside.
The presenter recently confirmed relationship with Giovanni is strictly platonic after rumours of a romance began to circulate.
Looking good: Sporting a retro gold fitted sweater and super-skinny jeans, the Irish presenter cut a typically stylish figure ahead of her latest rehearsal session
Head and shoulders above the rest: The diminutive star accentuated her height by opting for a pair of generously heeled platform boots, while a knee-length black coat kept her warm on a chilly day in the capital
Nothing happening: The presenter recently confirmed relationship with Giovanni is strictly platonic after rumours of a romance began to circulate
'My relationship with Giovanni is completely professional', she told The Daily Mail.
'Thats all I ever want it to be. When all this happened he called me and told me not to let any of it get to me, to ignore it and get on with the show.
'To be honest hes far too young for me and even though Im single Im still going on a couple of dates when I have the time - but not with Giovanni.'
No chance: Laura also admitted that she was upset to be linked to Giovanni because his ex-girlfriend Georgia May Foote, who was partnered with the Italian pro on the show last year, is a close friend
In you go: Both Laura and Giovanni were in high spirits as they prepared for their latest rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon
Popular: Laura has enjoyed a series of well received performances with Giovanni on the hit show
Laura also admitted that she was upset to be linked to Giovanni because his ex-girlfriend Georgia May Foote, who was partnered with the Italian pro on the show last year, is a close friend.
She said: 'I wanted to do Strictly because it's a family audience - there will be a lot of people who don't know anything about me'
She has made her mark in Hollywood by starring in major productions Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and John Wick 2.
And Ruby Rose, 30, sent fans into meltdown by suggesting that she has another big film in the works by sharing a selfie with Pitch Perfect 2 director Elizabeth Banks.
Taking to Instagram on Wednesday, the Australian beauty uploaded a happy snap of the pair accompanied with the message: 'This BABE is everything... what are we up to? @elizabethbanks two cheeky monkeys...'
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'Pitch perfect 3?!?!?!!!!!' Ruby Rose, 30, sent fans into meltdown by suggesting that she has another big film in the works by sharing a selfie with Pitch Perfect 2 director Elizabeth Banks
Fans immediately flooded her page with speculative comments about a possible film collaboration.
'Hopefully a new movie or something 2gether [sic],' one fan gushed.
'Pitch perfect 3?!?!?!!!!!' another fan squealed.
Action flick: Ruby recently appeared in the new theatrical trailers for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, in which she plays opposite fellow model-turned-actress Milla Jovovich
Elizabeth also shared the photo to her social media page with an equally vague caption that read: 'This gorgeous talented spirit @rubyrose brought some needed excitement to life recently.'
Ruby recently appeared in the new theatrical trailers for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, in which she plays opposite fellow model-turned-actress Milla Jovovich.
Ruby is also set to appear in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage with Vin Diesel and John Wick 2 with Keanu Reeves.
New Hollywood 'it' girl! Ruby found her first big break in Hollywood last year when she landed a lead role in Netflix cult series Orange Is The New Black
She is gearing up to appear in sci-fi flick Meg, which tells the tale of a deep-sea suicide mission.
Ruby found her first big break in Hollywood last year when she landed a lead role in Netflix cult series Orange Is The New Black.
She was cast in nine episodes playing the role of sharp-tongued inmate Stella Carlin.
As a glamour mode, she's never been shy about showing off her body.
But Casey Bachelor showed off more than she bargained for as she hit the town this week.
The star headed out in London for an evening of party-hopping and turned heads in a flirty white mini-dress.
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Legs be having you: Casey Bachelor showed off more than she bargained for as she hit the town this week
The belted number made the most of her curves, including her ample assets, but it was her peachy behind that made people look twice.
The star hopped up a flight of stairs, but the wind caught her dress and flashed her posterior.
The brunette beauty is hoping to carve out a career as an actress after starring in new gangster movie Bonded By Blood 2, set for release next year.
The gangster flick - which also stars former TOWIE star Kirk Norcross and Danny Dyer's daughter Dani - showcases the voluptuous brunette, 32, struggling to contain her assets in a skintight ensemble.
Gone with the wind: The star hopped up a flight of stairs, but the wind caught her dress and flashed her posterior
Boots were made for strutting: The belted number made the most of her curves, including her ample assets, but it was her peachy behind that made people look twice
Sporting a come-hither look, the Celebrity Big Brother star's ample cleavage is just about contained in a bodycon vest, with her bra cheekily peeking out.
Casey will be playing the role of Claire and although not much is known about her character, her jaw-dropping physique may have caused an issue on set, as the flick also stars Essex boy Kirk, her former flame.
The Sugarhut favourite looks in character in the short video, which teases sex, glamour and gritty action.
Casey and Kirk enjoyed a brief fling back in 2011 but things didn't appear to be too awkward as filming took place last year.
Film debut: The brunette beauty is hoping to carve out a career as an actress after starring in new gangster movie Bonded By Blood 2, set for release next year
She's got front: The gangster flick, which also stars former TOWIE star Kirk Norcross, showcases the glamour model, 32, struggling to contain her assets in a skintight top
Racy display: Sporting a come-hither look, the Celebrity Big Brother star's ample cleavage is just about contained in a bodycon vest, with her bra cheekily peeking out
Story-line: The gritty film is based on Bernard O'Mahoney's book titled Essex Boys: The New Generation, which is set in 1985
Back in the day: The film also stars Casey's former flame and ex-reality star Kirk (Pictured together in 2011)
And the sizzling brunette proved to be a hit with the cast and crew as she enjoyed a night out with the Essex based movie's producer, Jonathan Sothcott, earlier this year.
Casey seems to be more confident than ever when it comes to her work commitments, as well as her personal life.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Casey revealed: 'People don't know you and they'll still judge you, but most of the time them sort of people behind the keyboard have no life whatsoever, and they've got nothing else to do.
'I don't care. Listen, we're all human. I'd be lying if I say it doesn't get to me sometimes. To be in this industry you need to be thick-skinned otherwise there's no point in being in it.'
Eerie: At one point a scary looking clown visits a patient in the hospital with a bouquet of flowers
And she is set to impress in Bonded By Blood 2 which is based on Bernard O'Mahoney's book titled Essex Boys: The New Generation, which is set in 1985.
In the movie, it is feared that a void left behind by three murders from the original Essex Boys firm will spark a gangland war, and the instinct is to expand and conquer.
The film also stars EastEnders actor Sam Strike and Dani Dyer the daughter of Danny Dyer, another regular on the BBC soap.
While movies may be new to Casey, Dani, 18, is seasoned in gangster thrillers and already has Age Of Kill due for release in 2015.
Producer Jonathan Sothcott told MailOnline: 'Kirk came in to audition for my film Vendetta in 2012 and although he's very charismatic, he was nervous and it didn't work out.
Provocative: The film also teases sex and glamour with some saucy snippets included in the video
'He went away and studied it and took it very seriously and when he came in to audition for Bonded By Blood he absolutely nailed it. The fact he looks like Tom Hardy doesn't hurt but he's really good in the movie.'
'I knew Casey socially, we lived near each other in Essex at the time and she asked me if she could audition.
'She has a big part in the movie and I didn't want it to look like she was getting it because we were friends.
'She screen tested for the director and everyone was very impressed - any negative expectations there may have been were immediately expelled and her performance is excellent - very natural, very gritty.
'If Casey wants a career as an actress its easily within her reach.'
His time on the Corrie cobbles may have been brief.
But Ian Kelsey has made quite the impact as conman Vinny Ashford.
The actor was seen shooting his final scenes in Weatherfield on Wednesday, jumping in a black cab for his dash to Hawaii after scamming his neighbours out of their cash.
Making a run for it: Ian Kelsey shot his final Coronation Street scenes on Wednesday, jumping in a black cab for his dash to Hawaii after scamming his neighbours out of their cash
Ian's Vinny was seen heading out of his house and jumping in a waiting black cab, appropriately dressed for his eventual destination in a Hawaiian shirt.
Later his partner in crime Pat Phelan (Connor McIntyre) rang Vinny's doorbell only to be told by his neighbours that he'd left for good.
Ex Emmerdale favourite Ian joined the Corrie cast in the summer as an old associate of schemer Pat.
Together the conmen lured the unsuspecting Sarah Platt into buying one of their rip-off flats, much to the ire of Todd Grimshaw.
Having received an unexpected amount of money the street's resident former Hell-raiser was determined to make good use of it, and provide a home for her family.
Making his exit: Ian, who plays Vinny Ashford, carried a holdall as he locked up his house
But Sarah (Tina O'Brien) managed to head straight to two of the street's most untrustworthy people.
Planning to rip off hopeful homeowners, a scheme hatched with swindler Pat and trouble-maker Todd (Bruno Langley), Sarah stepped unwittingly into Vinny's sights.
However, with a long history between them, and Sarah being one of Todd's only real friends, he tried to intervene and get Sarah out of trouble - something Pat wasn't too keen on.
Confronting his mother's back-stabbing boyfriend over the trio's latest target, Todd threatened to blow the whistle on the whole operation.
Though the builder revealed it's not him that Todd should be worried about, but Vinny.
She's just started her stint as Holly Golightly in the theatre production of Breakfast at Tiffany's.
And Georgia May Foote managed to take from rehearsals to soak up the sights of Sheffield - where the play is currently showing - on Wednesday.
Keeping her head down as she strolled along, the 25-year-old actress seemed deep in thought on the outing - possibly thinking about her rumoured new beau, George Alsford.
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Chic and cheerful: She's currently performing in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And Georgia May Foote managed to take from rehearsals to soak up the sights of Sheffield on Wednesday
Dressed down for the stroll, the former Coronation Street star looked casual but chic in a pair of skinny jeans and a plain white vest, whilst she injected some colour with a pair of suede red trainers.
Injecting some glitz, she also donned a pair of silver hooped earrings and boasted a glossy red manicure.
She finished off the look with a grey beanie hat and slung a khaki parka jacket over her arm.
Someone your mind? Keeping her head down as she strolled along, the 25-year-old actress seemed deep in thought on the outing - possibly thinking about her rumoured new beau
Casual but chic: Dressed down for the stroll, the former Coronation Street star looked casual but chic in a pair of skinny jeans, a plain white vest and a pair of suede red trainers
Georgia's outing comes amid reports she is dating hunky male model George, following her split from her boyfriend and Strictly Come Dancing partner Giovanni Pernice in August.
Speaking to the Daily Star, a source said: ' George fancies the pants off Georgia. They met at the offices of their agency and have been meeting up as much as they can around her hectic work schedule.'
Georgia's outing comes amid reports she is dating hunky male model George, following her split from her boyfriend and Strictly Come Dancing partner Giovanni Pernice in August.
Natural beauty: Georgia looked stunning as she carried her shopping down the street
All about the accessories: Injecting some glitz, she also donned a pair of silver hooped earrings and boasted a glossy red manicure
Speaking to the Daily Star, a source said: ' George fancies the pants off Georgia. They met at the offices of their agency and have been meeting up as much as they can around her hectic work schedule.'
'They're really enjoying each other's company. He thinks she's really hot and they're having a lot of fun together.'
George, who stands at 6ft 3in tall, is signed with Select Model Management, the same firm which represents Georgia.
He has appeared in campaigns for Hugo Boss, Pepe Jeans and Russell & Bromley, among other top-flight brands, and frequently shows off his gym-honed torso on his Instagram account.
Catch of the week: George Alsford, a model signed with Select Model Management, is reportedly dating Coronation Street alum Georgia
Happier times: In May Georgia and then-boyfriend Giovanni Pernice looked smitten while attending a dance performance at Sadler's Wells
Pec-tacular: George, who stands at 6ft 3 in tall, has appeared in campaigns for Hugo Boss and Pepe Jeans
Georgia announced her split from Giovanni on Twitter in August, making it clear that the decision came down to them and them alone.
The 25-year-old wrote: 'It is with great sadness we have decided to split up. There is nobody else involved.
'Although it was not an easy decision to make, sometimes you realise that it is better to be friends and this is one of those times.'
Stud muffin: George showed off his razor-sharp cheekbones in this Instagram snap from last year
Georgia - who has taken over the role of Holly Golightly in the stage production of Breakfast At Tiffany's from Pixie Lott - recently appeared on Belfast Live and talked about the breakup.
She said: 'I'm quite a private person so I just get on with life, I've always said that my job is the most important thing in my life and my family.
'My family are happy and healthy and I'm working on a great show.
'I've literally just thrown myself into it completely. It's been such a great experience and I'm lucky that I've got it right now, I think, to do - to keep me busy. I just kind of get on with life, I don't really listen [to what's being said].'
Scarlett Johansson was back in action filming her upcoming movie Rock The Body earlier this week in Los Angeles.
The actress, 31, was spotted in a dark red dress and wearing a 'bride to be' sash as she shot scenes on Sunday with co-star Kate McKinnon.
The dark comedy, slated for a 2017 release, is about a weekend bachelorette party at a Miami beach house that ends with the death of a male stripper.
Filming: Scarlett Johansson, 31, was spotted in a dark red dress and wearing a 'bride to be' sash as she shot scenes on Sunday with co-star Kate McKinnon in Los Angeles
Johansson's short cropped blonde hair was sleekly styled and she wore lip color to match her halter-neck frock.
She appeared to be waiting for a car to pick her up as she stood on the sidewalk in front of a 7-11 store clutching a multi-colored flag-themed suitcase.
In addition to McKinnon, actress Ilana Glazer was also in the scene dressed in shorts and a denim vest with a 'friend of the bride' sash slung across her body.
On location: Johansson, McKinnon and co-star Ilana Glazer shot scenes in front of a 7-11 store
Female driven plot: The dark comedy is about a weekend bachelorette party and a dead male stripper
Mixed messages: Johansson seemed to be having a good time; the 'friends of the bride' not so much
Night shoot: The ladies appeared to be waiting with their luggage for a ride
Rock The Body is a change of pace for Johansson who usually stars in dramatic or action themed films.
The movie is one of the latest female-driven projects greenlit by Hollywood.
Also starring are Demi Moore, Zoe Kravitz and Jillian Bell with male support from Colton Haynes, Ty Burrell and Dean Winters.
Looking good: The Lost In Translation beauty showed off her fabulous figure in the dark red dress with a cross-halter top and a slit at the back of the skirt
In character: Her cropped blonde hair was style din a sleek bob and she wore lip color to match the dress
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They're both rogues who've used their wits to outsmart the killing machine in the past six series.
And it seems that Tyrion 'The Imp' Lannister and Ser Davos 'The Onion Knight' Seaworth are combining the marshal nous to take on the next blood-drenched series of Game of Thrones.
Shooting scenes for the already highly-anticipated seventh season of HBO's fantasy romp on Wednesday, the two actors hit the beach in Barrika, Spain dressed in the most roguish garb available to the men of Westeros.
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A return to Westeros? It seems that Tyrion 'The Imp' Lannister and Ser Davos 'The Onion Knight' Seaworth are combining the marshal nous to take on the next blood-drenched series of Game of Thrones
With both characters having had to flee The Seven Kingdoms after bad luck saw their fortunes fall in the 'Game of Thrones', the two appear to have joined forces in the pursuit of a common goal.
Striding out onto a beach dressed in black medieval robes, the two actors were surrounded by a veritable army of crew and cameras.
With fans of both George R.R. Martin's books and the HBO show familiar with Ser Davos' past as a smuggler, it's hardly surprising to see that the low-born knight and the exiled imp have arrived at their destination in a small smugglers boat.
Two rogues: Shooting scenes for the already highly-anticipated seventh season of HBO's fantasy romp on Wednesday, the two actors hit the beach in Spain dressed in the most roguish garb available to the men of Westeros
As the two characters disembark the craft and stroll up the beach, Tyrion and the ever-noble Ser Davos appear to be deep in conversation.
Dressed all in black Tyrion looks to have fared quite well from his time spent in exile - fans last saw The Imp forming an alliance with Daenerys Targaryen in Mereen - the outcast Lannister looks to be in his usual effervescent mood.
Sporting an unruly mop of curls and a scraggy beard, it looks as though Tyrion is firmly enjoying his life as a rogue agent.
Smugglers in the sun: Striding out onto a beach dressed in black medieval robes, the two actors were surrounded by a veritable army of crew and cameras
Out of the frying pan and into the fire? While it's not known where the two men have headed to, extras dressed as armed and chain mail-clad guards were spotted on the beach alongside Peter and Liam
Ser Davos was instantly familiar thanks to his shock of white hair and his peppered beard, although his far from noble clothing was also a give-away.
More comfortable with the life of a smuggler and pirate than in the courts or at his King's side, it seems Ser Davos has left his feud with Melisandre behind him in order to seek out Tyrion.
And while it's not known where the two men have headed to, extras dressed as armed and chain mail-clad guards were spotted on the beach alongside Peter and Liam.
The cast and crew are currently filming scenes in Northern Spain's Basque Country where they are believed to be also using the islet of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe as a main filming location.
They've become household names thanks to their roles on ITVBe reality show, The Only Way Is Essex.
And Kate Wright, Lydia Bright and Georgia Kousoulou both battled to stand out in their respective ensembles as they headed out in Essex for a day of filming.
Kate made sure that all eyes were on her, wearing a low-cut white vest top which showed off her ample assets.
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She's got it going on: TOWIE's Kate Wright looked incredible in an all-lycra ensemble when she headed out in Essex to film scenes for the reality show on Friday
She teamed it with a form-fitting peach pencil skirt which clung to her shape, but covered up a little in a longline jacket.
Adding some extra inches to her height, she wore a pair of statement heels in khaki which matched the hue of her outerwear perfectly.
Also looking the part was Lydia, who flashed the flesh in a black crop top and matching flirty skirt.
Back to black: Also looking the part was Lydia Bright, who flashed the flesh in a black crop top and matching flirty skirt
A step back in time: Georgia took a leaf out of a Nineties style book, wearing an oversized baggy jacket which was covered in colourful iron-on patches
Prepare to be stunned: She wore it over a super short black mini dress and added some serious sex appeal in a pair of claret coloured suede thigh-high boots
She wrapped up a little wearing a lace style cardigan and wore a sexy pair of black court shoes.
Her blonde locks were styled in pretty curls and she showed off a golden tan, carrying a monochrome tote in her hand.
Georgia took a leaf out of a Nineties style book, wearing an oversized baggy jacket which was covered in colourful iron-on patches.
She wore it over a super short black mini dress and added some serious sex appeal in a pair of claret coloured suede thigh-high boots.
Also present on the day was Danielle Armstrong who kept things low-key in a cream jumper which had holes ripped throughout the base.
She also wore baggy black ripped jeans and a pair of peeptoe ankle boots as she gave photographers a beaming smile.
Finally, Jon Clark was pictured holding hands with a beautiful blonde as he made his way to set, no doubt setting tongues wagging.
Wow thing: Also present on the day was Danielle Armstrong who kept things low-key in a cream jumper which had holes ripped throughout the base
New girl? Finally, Jon Clark was pictured holding hands with a beautiful blonde as he made his way to set, no doubt setting tongues wagging
Meanwhile, while the girls all looked drop dead gorgeous, the boys also came out to play in stylish ensembles.
Dan Edgar, James Lock and James 'Arg' Argent all looked trendy as they arrived with their pals to film.
Bobby Norris also managed to look fashionable wearing one bedazzled trainer while hobbling on one crutch.
The next episode of TOWIE is due to air on Wednesday night at 10pm on ITVBe.
The boys are here! Dan Edgar, James Lock, James 'Arg' Argent gave the girls a run for their money in terms of style
Fashion first! Bobby Cole Norris still managed to looked fashionable in one bedazzled trainer as he hobbles on one crutch
Stylish: Dan Edgar was handsome in an all-black ensemble while the rest of the boys rivaled him with their slick looks
Casual: Arg kept it simple with a cream-coloured shirt which was un-tucked
Kim Kardashian had become an expert in conspicuous consumption, globe trotting and flaunting her fabulous figure.
But now that the reality diva has been rattled to the core after a shocking Paris robbery that left her begging for her life, the 35-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians star is changing her ways.
According to People, the mother-of-two is now 'withdrawn' and has 'zero desire in resuming her old lifestyle.'
Flash: Kim Kardashian, seen here before her Paris robbery on October 3, has no interest in resuming her old lifestyle, according to People
Cash: The 35-year-old star used to flaunt her wealth like she did here when she showed off her large diamond ring from Kanye West. The rock was stolen during the heist, it has been reported
On the town: The E! queen in Miami beach with husband Kanye West in September
Kim has been staying at home - first in New York then Los Angeles - since the robbery took place on October 3.
The beauty has also been spending as much time as she can with her two children North, aged three, and Saint, 10 months.
'She is still having a difficult time,' a source told the site. 'She has zero desire to resume her old life.'
Now under wraps: Kim has been staying at home - first in New York then Los Angeles - since the robbery took place on October 3
Rattled: 'She is still having a difficult time,' a source told the site. 'She has zero desire to resume her old life'
Now that husband Kanye West is currently on his Saint Pablo tour, she visits her mother Kris Jenners home in nearby Hidden Hills.
She has 'only left her house for overnight visits with the kids to Kris and for important appointments.'
It was added: 'On every solo outing, she uses a bodyguard. Before the robbery, she would enjoy solo outings. This has totally changed now.'
Till further notice: And she is not sure what the new Kim will be like. 'Kim is still figuring out what she wants to do,' said the insider. 'She has no plans for any public appearances'; here she is with Kourtney on October 2, the day before the robbery
And she is not sure what the new Kim will be like. 'Kim is still figuring out what she wants to do,' said the insider. 'She has no plans for any public appearances.'
During her 36th birthday on Friday she will be 'very low key.'
She canceled a birthday party in Las Vegas last weekend.
'She just wants to be with her kids and out of public,' says the source.
No one is pressuring her either. She has the best support from her family.'
She leans on her sisters: Khloe told Ellen DeGeneres last week, '[Kims] not doing that well. I mean, its incredibly traumatic what happened to her. But our family is super close and great and well get through it together'; here they are seen in 2014
The Selfish author has been described as 'nervous' and 'anxious.'
And she 'doesnt want to be photographed,' a massive change from the old Kim who seemed to love a photo op.
'Kims whole life has basically changed. Before, she was like a social butterfly. Now she acts much more withdrawn,' said the pal.
Her home base: Kim has been holed up in her Bel-Air home, but sometimes she visits mom Kris Jenner in her Hidden Hills home
On Monday, her assistant Stephanie Sheppard shared a handwritten note on Kardashian's website and app.
'She is taking some much needed time off,' wrote the pal.
Khloe told Ellen DeGeneres last week, '[Kims] not doing that well. I mean, its incredibly traumatic what happened to her. But our family is super close and great and well get through it together, and we do appreciate all of your guys love and support and it will take time. You know, it was horrible what happened to her.'
On Tuesday at The Grove her mother Kris Jenner said, 'She needs to take it one day at a time.'
Keeping Up with the Kardashians returns Sunday (9 p.m. ET) on E!
Jennifer Aniston's husband Justin Theroux may want to look away.
On Tuesday his 47-year-old wife was seen caressing a handsome man on the set of a SmartWater photo shoot in the Universal City neighborhood of Los Angeles.
The Friends vet was not in jeans and a T-shirt either. Rather the beautiful blonde was dressed to the nines as she showed off her chest in a plunging black and white floor-length gown.
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A special friend: Jennifer Aniston caressed a man on the set of a SmartWater photo shoot in the Universal City neighborhood of Los Angeles on Tuesday
Is he fixing her dress? The Friends vet was not in jeans and a T-shirt either. Rather the beautiful blonde was dressed to the nines as she showed off her chest in a plunging white gown
She can't lose the guy! The salt and pepper mystery man was most likely the photographer for the stylish shoot
The Horrible Bosses actress had both hands on his neck and face as she took a break form posing in a very touchy-feely moment.
The beauty looked ravishing with her long blonde locks stick straight and her makeup done in a dramatic red-carpet style. Aniston also was wearing her diamond engagement ring from her Wanderlust co-star.
The mystery man had on a white T-shirt, black jeans and white sneakers. He was most likely the photographer at the shoot for the bottle water company as he was seen behind a camera.
Bling it on! Aniston also was wearing her diamond engagement ring from her Wanderlust co-star Justin Theroux
Here's looking at you, kid! The beauty was ravishing with her long blonde locks stick straight and her makeup done in a dramatic red-carpet style
Hair today: Aniston seemed to be in good spirits as she played with her golden locks
Also seen on set was Aniston's longtime hairstylist Chris McMillian who she launched Living Proof with.
And there were a female makeup artist on standby.
Aniston seemed to be in good spirits as she held onto an iPad and played with her hair.
The Vogue cover girl wed actor Theroux in August 2015 at their Bel-Air mansion with Sandra Bullock and Courteney Cox as guests.
Theroux and Aniston have seemed to be happy newlyweds as they have traveled to Mexico as well as their other residence in New York in the past year.
Her steady dude: Also seen on set was Aniston's longtime hairstylist Chris McMillian who she launched Living Proof with
That looks like it hurts! Chris, who has also worked with Kim Kardashian, pulled on the Emmy winner's tendrils
She earns it! The Bruce Almighty star had to bend her back to let her McMillian do his thing
In the past few months he has been filming The Leftovers in Australia while she shot Office Christmas Party in New York.
When Jennifer was accused of being pregnant this summer, her spouse stood up for her.
'She has lived through a lot of bulls***. Many people would have crumbled under some of the stresses that have been put on her. I'm very proud of her for that, for the way she handles herself,' said Theroux.
Lash fix: It also looked as if her makeup artist was pulling off one of her lashes
Does it really take this many people to shoot a picture? Apparently, yes. There were at least a dozen people on set. And there is Jennifer's mystery man behind the camera
Their relationship has been going from strength to strength since they celebrated their first anniversary in August with a low-key anniversary celebration.
He flew to Los Angeles from Australia to ensure he would be with his wife on their special day.
A source told People magazine: 'Justin flew from Australia to LA to spend their anniversary week with Jen.'
She likes the stuff: Here is the Cake star's ads for the Glaceau company
'They relaxed at home, had dinner with friends and had a small anniversary celebration at home.'
Jen has previously said that she felt like they were husband and wife for a long time before they tied the knot.
She said: 'We felt married for so long. Married life is so normal and fun and not much different.'
She shared: 'I'm lucky because Justin is the funniest person I've met, and we make each other laugh. Laughter is one of the great keys to staying youthful.'
On Tuesday, Ben Stiller was hard at work on the set of his film Brad's Status in Montreal's Verdun neighborhood.
It was first sighting of the Emmy-winning writer - who turns 51 next month - since he revealed his battle with prostate cancer earlier this month.
The Zoolander 2 funnyman - wearing a tartan top and jeans - peeked through the window of a fake Mexican restaurant called Renata's.
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Bonjour! On Tuesday, Ben Stiller was hard at work on the set of his film Brad's Status in Montreal's Verdun neighborhood
Stiller - who visited the Medz Salon on Monday - plays Brad, a man jealous of his old friends' lifestyles while visiting East Coast colleges with his son.
The social media-centered comedy is being produced by Ben's Megamind co-star Brad Pitt and it's written and directed by Mike White (Enlightened).
On October 4, the Frat Packer shocked his fans by penning an article in Medium recounting his terrifying three-month cancer ordeal.
Action! It was first sighting of the Emmy-winning writer - who turns 51 next month - since he revealed his battle with prostate cancer earlier this month
Hungry? The Zoolander 2 funnyman - wearing a tartan top and jeans - peeked through the window of a fake Mexican restaurant called Renata's
'De Hollywood a Verdun!' Stiller - who visited the Medz Salon on Monday - plays Brad, a man jealous of his old friends' lifestyles while visiting East Coast colleges with his son
Brad's Status: The social media-centered comedy is being produced by Ben's Megamind co-star Brad Pitt (pictured in 2016) and it's written and directed by Mike White (pictured in 2015)
'I got diagnosed with prostate cancer Friday, June 13th, 2014. On September 17th of that year I got a test back telling me I was cancer free. The three months in between were a crazy roller coaster ride with which about 180,000 men a year in America can identify,' recalled Stiller, who underwent a robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy.
'Taking the PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) test saved my life. Literally. That's why I am writing this now. There has been a lot of controversy over the test in the last few years. Articles and op-eds on whether it is safe, studies that seem to be interpreted in many different ways, and debates about whether men should take it all. I am not offering a scientific point of view here, just a personal one, based on my experience.'
'Taking the PSA test saved my life': On October 4, the Frat Packer shocked his fans by penning an article in Medium recounting his terrifying three-month cancer ordeal
Stiller recalled: 'I got diagnosed with prostate cancer Friday, June 13th, 2014. On September 17th of that year I got a test back telling me I was cancer free. The three months in between were a crazy roller coaster ride with which about 180,000 men a year in America can identify'
Family-of-four: Curiously, the New York native did not mention his wife of 16 years Christine Taylor nor their children - Ella, 14, and Quinlin, 11 - in his essay (pictured February 9)
Curiously, the New York native did not mention his wife of 16 years Christine Taylor nor their children - Ella, 14, and Quinlin, 11 - in his essay.
Last year, Ben suffered the loss of his Golden Globe-nominated mother Anne Meara, who passed away from 'natural causes' at age 85.
Meanwhile, his Emmy-nominated father Jerry - 89 - briefly reprised his role as imprisoned agent Maury Ballstein in Zoolander 2 earlier this year.
Rest in peace: Last year, Ben suffered the loss of his Golden Globe-nominated mother Anne Meara, who passed away from 'natural causes' at age 85 (pictured 2004)
She has a fabulous figure and she's determined to keep it that way.
Beautiful Bachelorette star Andi Dorfman was spotted out pounding the pavement in New York on a sunny Tuesday afternoon.
The 29-year-old poured her slender physique into a black cropped top that showed off her tummy.
Pounding the pavement: Bachelorette alum Andi Dorfman was spotted jogging along the Hudson River in New York on Tuesday
She paired it with skin-tight black leggings and bright pink Nike sneakers as she jogged along a path beside the the Hudson River.
The brunette, who smoothed her tresses back into a ponytail, sensibly did a few stretches before setting off.
The same day, Andi posted an Instagram snap of herself in exercise-wear and a black cap as she stood by the river in West Side Highway Park with the city's skyscrapers glittering on the water behind her.
She captioned it: 'Evening run made a whole helluva lot easier thanks to this view.'
Stretching it out: The 29-year-old poured her slender physique into a black cropped top that showed off her tummy
Get your hands up: The beautiful brunette did a few exercises before going jogging
Bright lights: Andi posted this Instagram taken from West Side Highway Park, which she captioned, 'Evening run made a whole helluva lot easier thanks to this view'
Andi, the former Assistant District Attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, quit her job after landing a role on the 18th season of The Bachelor.
She went on to star in 10th season of The Bachelorette, which premiered on May 19, 2014.
She handed the rose to Josh Murray, who asked her to marry him. But they called their engagement of after eight months.
Her man: Andi gave the winning rose to Josh Murray in the 10th season of The Bachelorette in 2014. But their engagement ended eight months later
Feathered friend: Andi and runner up Nick Viall in Venice, Italy during the show. She was upset when he later revealed they 'made love' in the Fantasy Suite, a camera-free room
Andi was upset when runner up Nick Viall, 35, revealed during the After The Final Rose special that they had 'made love' in the Fantasy Suite, a private room free of cameras that contestants enter in the later stages of the contest.
But she made good on her reality star experiences by writing a bestseller, It's Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak Into Happily Never After, published in May.
Last month she told UsWeekly that sales had soared since Nick's appearance in Bachelor In Paradise and the decision to make him the main man in next season's The Bachelor.
'We got an extra boost that Im not going to complain about,' Andi dished.
She got to know Donald Trump in 2004 after winning the Miss Universe pageant in the U.S and living in Trump Tower in New York during her reign.
Now, Jennifer Hawkins is trying to distance herself from the potential US President as he prepares for his final pre-election debate against Hilary Clinton, Stateside.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the 32-year-old model has cancelled a number of interviews after regularly being asked questions about the politician.
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Stepping aside: Jennifer Hawkins has cancelled a number of media interviews as she refuses to answer questions about Donald Trump
Hawkins manager, Sean Anderson of 22 Management confirmed the reasoning in a statement to the publication.
'Jennifer is not interested and will not be commenting on Donald Trump,' he commented.
'She is not interested in getting involved in the politics.'
Hawkins has reportedly cancelled interviews with Daily Telegraph, Woman's Day, KIIS FM's Kyle & Jackie O and Nova radio in the last week.
No part of it: Hawkins manager, Sean Anderson of 22 Management confirmed the reasoning in a statement: 'Jennifer is not interested and will not be commenting on Donald Trump'
The Daily Mail Australia has contacted Hawkins' management for comment.
Hawkins' refusal to comment on Trump, comes seven months after she praised the Republican candidate for being a 'brilliant businessman'.
During an interview with Today Extra, she revealed: 'He is charming. He has presence'.
Cancelled: Hawkins has cancelled interviews with the Daily Telegraph, Woman's Day, KIIS FM's Kyle & Jackie O and Nova radio in the last week
In August, Hawkins also admitted Trump was one of her inspiration sources.
'He inspired me to keep going and follow my heart,' she told the Daily Telegraph at the time.
'Hes really passionate and really driven. Hes like, "Whats next?" He prompts you to think, "All right, what is next?"'
She wrote of her 'current nocturnal existence' on Instagram this week.
So it was no surprise to see new mum Olivia Wilde pick up a caffeine fix on Wednesday, eight days after welcoming daughter Daisy.
The 32-year-old actress teamed boyfriend jeans with an oversize white shirt as she strolled in the New York sunshine.
A little fix: Olivia Wilde stepped out solo on Wednesday to grab a coffee in New York just days after giving birth to daughter Daisy Josephine
The Vinyl star kept it comfy in some white trainers and shaded her no doubt tired eyes with some large sunglasses.
Olivia and fiance Jason Sudeikis welcomed Daisy on October 11, with the actress posting a sweet Instagram of the new arrival several days later.
She wrote alongside the snap: 'There goes the neighborhood. Daisy Josephine Sudeikis. Born, like a boss, on #internationaldayofthegirl. [heart emoji].'
And like most new mums, Olivia appears to be suffering from sleep deprivation, posting an Instagram shot with the caption 'You awake?' on Monday.
Off-duty: The Vinyl star wore ripped boyfriend jeans and an oversize white shirt for the outing
Bliss! The actress shared this touching snap of her newborn daughter snuggling on her chest on Wednesday
Tired eyes? Olivia wore her long locks loose and donned some large shades
Happy news: The actress announced the birth of her second child on Instagram on Sunday
'Yup. Yup I am,' she captioned the snap. 'My current nocturnal existence.'
Jason and Olivia also share a two-year-old son Otis who was born in April 2014.
They began dating in 2011, with the We're the Millers star later proposing in January 2013.
Olivia was previously married to Tao Ruspoli for eight years, before divorcing in 2011. Jason split with Pitch Perfect writer Kay Cannon in 2010 after six years of marriage.
'Nocturnal existence': Olivia revealed she's been lacking sleep since the birth of her second child on October 11
Her love rat ex Pete Wicks vowed to win her back on Sunday's episode of TOWIE.
However, Megan McKenna put her recent romance turmoil to one side as she headed to filming the reality show in Essex on Wednesday.
The 24-year-old flaunted her sartorial chops in a sexy ensemble as she was joined by her pal Amber Dowding for the girls' night out.
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Night out glam: Megan McKenna, 24, put her recent romance turmoil to one side as she enjoyed a night out in Essex on Wednesday
Stylish: The TOWIE star flaunted her sartorial chops in a sexy ensemble as she was joined by her pal Amber Dowding for the girls night out
A pair of sexy skin-tight leather trousers clung on to fine-tuned pins and complemented the simple black vest top, which flaunted her busty front.
Keeping it chic, she opted for an a-line khaki blazer which boasted rolled up sleeves and skimmed her figure to perfection.
Never forgoing any element of glamour, she strutted forth in a pair of racy black caged heels while gripping on to a stylish matching handbag.
Obviously loving her new fringe, the beauty looked refined as her locks were styled super straight - framing her perfectly chiselled features.
Sexy lady: A pair of sexy skin-tight leather trousers clung on to fine-tuned pins and complemented the simple black vest top, which flaunted her busty front
Chic: She opted for an a-line khaki blazer which boasted rolled up sleeves and skimmed her figure to perfection
Megan oozed sex appeal and any signs of heartache weren't prominent as Amber was hot on her tails for their bonding time together.
The TOWIE newcomer decided to embrace the sexy trend of thigh-high boots with her own pair of sexy suede grey shoes.
Finding the right balance between casual and glam she donned a figure-hugging knitted mini-dress which fell at thigh-level.
The stunner matched her eye-shadow to the ensemble and allowed her blonde locks to flirtatiously fall beside her.
Walking the walk: Never forgoing any element of glamour, she strutted forth in a pair of racy black caged heels while gripping on to a stylish matching handbag
Ready to have fun! The former CBB star looked in great spirits for the night ahead
Amber proved to be the perfect companion for Megan who was faced with her estranged ex Pete on this week's episode of the ITVBe episode.
The inked star declared his absolute love for her and expressed huge regret over his actions by promising to fix their estranged relationship.
Megan was seen admitting inside that she found it too difficult to be in the same place as him - after it emerged that he had sent sexual messages to his ex model Jacqui Ryland during their holiday to Marbella, Spain last month.
Standing tall: Amber decided to embrace the sexy trend of thigh-high boots with her own pair of sexy suede grey shoes
Fashionista: Finding the right balance between casual and glam she donned a figure-hugging knitted mini-dress which fell at thigh-level
In good spirits: Megan looked happy and welcoming to her estranged beau
And while Megan is still contemplating her future with Pete, the rest of the TOWIE cast kept themselves busy as they filmed further scenes for the hit show.
Kate Wright, Lydia Bright and Georgia Kousoulou both battled to stand out in their respective ensembles as they headed out in Essex for a day of filming.
Kate made sure that all eyes were on her, wearing a low-cut white vest top which showed off her ample assets.
She's got it going on: TOWIE's Kate Wright looked incredible in an all-lycra ensemble when she headed out in Essex to film scenes for the reality show on Friday
She teamed it with a form-fitting peach pencil skirt which clung to her shape, but covered up a little in a longline jacket.
Adding some extra inches to her height, she wore a pair of statement heels in khaki which matched the hue of her outerwear perfectly.
Also looking the part was Lydia, who flashed the flesh in a black crop top and matching flirty skirt.
Back to black: Also looking the part was Lydia Bright, who flashed the flesh in a black crop top and matching flirty skirt
A step back in time: Georgia took a leaf out of a Nineties style book, wearing an oversized baggy jacket which was covered in colourful iron-on patches
Prepare to be stunned: She wore it over a super short black mini dress and added some serious sex appeal in a pair of claret coloured suede thigh-high boots
She wrapped up a little wearing a lace style cardigan and wore a sexy pair of black court shoes.
Her blonde locks were styled in pretty curls and she showed off a golden tan, carrying a monochrome tote in her hand.
Georgia took a leaf out of a Nineties style book, wearing an oversized baggy jacket which was covered in colourful iron-on patches.
She wore it over a super short black mini dress and added some serious sex appeal in a pair of claret coloured suede thigh-high boots.
Also present on the day was Danielle Armstrong who kept things low-key in a cream jumper which had holes ripped throughout the base.
She also wore baggy black ripped jeans and a pair of peeptoe ankle boots as she gave photographers a beaming smile.
Finally, Jon Clark was pictured holding hands with a beautiful blonde as he made his way to set, no doubt setting tongues wagging.
Wow thing: Also present on the day was Danielle Armstrong who kept things low-key in a cream jumper which had holes ripped throughout the base
New girl? Finally, Jon Clark was pictured holding hands with a beautiful blonde as he made his way to set, no doubt setting tongues wagging
Meanwhile, while the girls all looked drop dead gorgeous, the boys also came out to play in stylish ensembles.
Dan Edgar, James Lock and James 'Arg' Argent all looked trendy as they arrived with their pals to film.
Bobby Norris also managed to look fashionable wearing one bedazzled trainer while hobbling on one crutch.
The next episode of TOWIE is due to air on Wednesday night at 10pm on ITVBe.
The boys are here! Dan Edgar, James Lock, James 'Arg' Argent gave the girls a run for their money in terms of style
Fashion first! Bobby Cole Norris still managed to looked fashionable in one bedazzled trainer as he hobbles on one crutch
Stylish: Dan Edgar was handsome in an all-black ensemble while the rest of the boys rivaled him with their slick looks
Casual: Arg kept it simple with a cream-coloured shirt which was un-tucked
The FBI is continuing to look into exactly what went down between Brad Pitt and son Maddox, 15, on a private flight back to the U.S. on September 14.
Angelina Jolie and the couple's six children were interviewed by two FBI agents on Tuesday, TMZ reported Wednesday.
Law enforcement sources told the website that the agents spent more than three hours at Jolie's Malibu home as part of a 'fact-finding' mission.
Ongoing investigation: Two FBI agents visited Angelina Jolie and her children on Tuesday (pictured here that day)
It seems that officials not only wanted a 'step-by-step' account of what happened but are also trying to pinpoint exactly where the private jet was when the incident occurred.
The former power couple announced their split four weeks ago after Jolie filed for divorce on September 19 with the actress, 41, pushing for sole custody of the children.
Pitt, 52, is currently being investigated by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services as well as by the FBI after allegedly drinking and physically attacking Maddox on board the airplane.
Pitt denies the claims and is seeking joint custody of the kids - Maddox, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, ten, and twins Vivienne and Knox, eight.
Getting to the bottom of it: Officials are seeking more information about the alleged incident on board a private jet last month between Brad Pitt and son Maddox, 15, according to TMZ
Hunting the truth: Law enforcement sources told the website that the agents spent more than three hours at Jolie's Malibu home as part of a 'fact-finding' mission
According to TMZ, law enforcement wants to ascertain whether or not the plane was in U.S. airspace when the argument between Pitt and Maddox occurred, and also want to know exactly what happened during a refueling stop in Minnesota en route to Los Angeles.
Sources told TMZ that Jolie was cooperative with investigators and it remains highly unlikely that any case will be brought in the matter.
It was also claimed Wednesday that the two A-Listers, who were together for 12 years and married for just over two years, have not had any contact since their split.
Cooperative: Sources told TMZ that Jolie was cooperative with investigators and it remains highly unlikely that any case will be brought in the matter
Out and about: Angelina and the children (Zahara is pictured here) were seen on Tuesday for the first time since she filed for divorce from Brad
Helping out: Angelina's brother James Haven was also spotted with the group in Los Angeles
Instead they have opted to have their negotiations - especially the custody battle - handled by their respective teams, according to a new report from People.
'They are still working on issues that they can't agree on,' said People's insider. 'Things are strained between them.'
Pitt recently had a tearful reunion with his children nearly three weeks after Jolie announced she was divorcing him but apparently there was one missing.
Not talking: Angelina and Brad, shown with Maddox in 2013, have allegedly not had any contact since the split
Rift: Maddox, pictured with his family in 2011, was adopted by Jolie two years before she began her romance with Pitt and it's claimed the teen did not accompany his siblings to a supervised visit with his father in LA this week. Pitt legally adopted Maddox in 2006
His 15-year-old son Maddox opted not to see his father according to a story in the new issue of Us Weekly.
'Maddox is very close with Angie.' a source close to Jolie told the publication. 'He [Maddox] chose not to go and stayed with Angie.'
DailyMail.com has contacted spokesmen for both Pitt and Jolie. Representatives for Pitt have declined to comment.
Divided: Pitt and Jolie with their children Zahara, Knox, Maddox, Shiloh, Pax and Vivienne together in Tokyo back in November 2011
Pitt is reportedly 'desperate' to agree a deal with Jolie, who has custody of the children for now.
He volunteered to undergo random drug and alcohol tests to prove he does not have a problem with either. The first test reportedly came back negative.
A friend told Us magazine that Pitt will co-operate 'in any way he can' so long as he can see his children.
Social workers will make another evaluation on October 20 about how to resolve the dispute.
She's one of the world's most in-demand models.
And Miranda Kerr certainly proved exactly why when posing on the cover of Elle Spain.
The 33-year-old Australian beauty flashes a hint of her toned torso in a stunning Louis Vuitton two-piece ensemble.
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Cover girl: Miranda Kerr stuns on the cover of the latest issue of Elle Spain
Miranda's stylish blouse features splashes of red and dark blue, broken up with a bold black print.
It is teamed with a matching skirt that fits her stunning figure perfectly, and layered with with a sleek black jacket to take the look to the next level.
Proving she's an absolute natural in front of the camera, Miranda effortlessly oozes sass and style as she places her right hand on her head.
Red carpet sensation: Miranda has worn a similar Louis Vuitton creation when attending the Met Gala in New York earlier this year
Her brown locks are worn in tousled waves, and she stares sultrily into the camera with her piercing blue eyes.
Miranda has worn a similar Louis Vuitton creation when attending the Met Gala in New York earlier this year.
For the star-studded night, Miranda opted for an edgy look as she flaunted her washboard abs in the long-sleeved Louis Vuitton crop top and pencil skirt.
While her makeup is rather soft on the cover of Elle Spain, the model pulled out all the stops to create a dramatic look for the red carpet back in May.
Edgy: For the star-studded night, Miranda opted for an edgy look as she flaunted her washboard abs in the long-sleeved Louis Vuitton crop top and pencil skirt
The mother-of-one's stunning features were accentuated by having her hair pulled back in tight braids.
She made a statement with bold dark lipstick while keeping the rest of her makeup soft with a touch of bronze eye shadow, a slick of mascara and some pink blush.
Meanwhile it has been a tumultuous week for Miranda, after her security guard was recovering in hospital after being stabbed in the face by an intruder at her luxury home in California.
Her activewear range is marking its third year and has experienced impressive growth, but this week it faced a very serious bump in the road.
Just a day after it was revealed her Fabletics company was being sued by a former employee, Kate Hudson gushed about those she works with.
The 37-year-old spoke about her athleisure business at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit 2016 in Dana Point, California, on Wednesday.
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Happy boss: Just a day after it was revealed her Fabletics company was being sued by a former employee, Kate Hudson gushed about those she works with
Speaking to audience members and moderator Laura Brown, Kate said she has been blown away by how fast her company has grown.
'I just found out we're going to make $250m revenue in our first three years,' she told the crowd.
While loathed to say the word, the Almost Famous actress said her celebrity status is both a benefit to the company and also has its pitfalls.
'The bigger it gets the more challenging it gets and because you are under a microscope you have to be more on top of things,' Kate said.
Celebrating success: Speaking to audience members and moderator Laura Brown, Kate said she has been blown away by how fast her company has grown, 'I just found out we're going to make $250m revenue in our first three years'
Under a microscope: While loathed to say the word, the Almost Famous actress said her celebrity status is both a benefit to the company and also has its pitfalls
Kate told the audience that she would not have it any other way however, and is able to juggle the business, her movie career and motherhood because of those who work for her.
Kate said: 'I like to work. I love to be busy and really, honestly, it is about the team you create.
'Some days I am really stressed out with two kids - but I don't complain - but for me I just try to be on top of everything and when I am, I am very happy and feel really grateful.
Struggles: The star explained, 'The bigger it gets the more challenging it gets and because you are under a microscope you have to be more on top of things'
'Only as strong as your team': Kate told the audience that she would not have it any other way however, and is able to juggle the business, her movie career and motherhood because of those who work for her
'[However] you can only really be as strong and together as the people you have around you.'
Her praise comes the day after former vice president Talitha Peters filed papers in a Los Angeles court alleging she was wrongfully let go.
Peters is suing Fabletics, along with parent company TechStyle, claiming she was wrongfully terminated after she sought medical treatment, which her company assumed was to deal with illegal drug use.
Not everyone thinks so : Her praise comes the day after a former vice president Talitha Peters filed papers in a Los Angeles court alleging she was wrongfully let go
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Peters says in court documents that after being promoted to vice president of creative, her doctor prescribed her Ambien to help her sleep.
In court: Peters is suing Fabletics, along with parent company TechStyle, claiming she was wrongfully terminated after she sought medical treatment which her company assumed was to deal with illegal drug use
After two years, the exec claims she was medically disabled and took three weeks leave.
When her doctor extended her leave, other executives started asking her what was wrong and then researched her doctor, leading them to assume she was seeking treatment for illegal drugs - something she denies.
When Peters returned from leave after six weeks, she says she was fired during a breakfast on her first day back.
Peters is suing for 11 causes including disability discrimination, retaliation failure to accommodate, failure to grant medical leave and invasion of privacy over the manner in which they handled the situation.
In response, the company said in a statement that they found the ex-employee's accusations 'to be baseless and meritless,' vowing to 'vigorously defend' themselves in court proceedings.
They continued: 'Please know that we take the welfare of our employees extremely seriously and strive to create a happy and healthy workplace.'
Meanwhile, other celebs speaking at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit included comedian and TV host Chelsea Handler, 42, and 47-year-old former supermodel Christy Turlington Burns.
Taking aim: Peters is suing for 11 causes including disability discrimination, retaliation failure to accommodate, failure to grant medical leave and invasion of privacy over the manner in which they handled the situation. Kate is pictured earlier this month
Put your hands up: Other celebs speaking at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit included comedian and TV host Chelsea Handler, 42
He's the handsome Queenslander that's been spotted having a few kisses with Georgia Love when the cameras are rolling.
And on Thursday, Jake Ellis admitted there has also been a few sneaky pecks between the pair when the cameras weren't around as well.
The 30-year-old admitted the cheeky antics toOK! Australia, telling them cryptically: 'There's lots you don't see'.
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'There's a lot you don't see': Jake Ellis admitted he and Georgia Love have shared a number of kisses while the cameras aren't rolling
Jake says the pair would check in with each other across the series to ensure their chemistry was still there, after he was the first one to score a single date at the start of the series.
Now in the final four, there's one thing the sales professional is still hesitant about - a move to Melbourne.
'It would all depend on everything that's going on at home,' he admitted, after openly discussing his mother's cancer battle on the show.
'Although that's one city I've always wanted to live in... and you never know, for the right girl, you would do anything,' he added.
Up in the air: The handsome Queenslander admits he needs to see 'what's happening at home' with his mother, who has been diagnosed with cancer five times, before he could commit to moving to Melbourne for Georgia
Jake has been open with the former TV journalist about his mother battling cancer five times.
During their date, the pair cosied up on the couch of a hotel salon, before getting into a deep discussion about their families.
After Georgia opened up about her mother's recent diagnosis with cancer, Jake admitted he could relate.
Checking in: The handsome sales professional revealed the pair would regularly check if there were still sparks between them throughout the show - and there always was
Speaking to the camera, the 27-year-old said she had found a confidant and source of relief in her date.
It was really nice to be able to speak to Jake so openly about what's happening with my mum,' she said.
'I felt he really, really understood, and he just made me feel better about the whole thing.'
Today Extra's David Campbell lost his temper on Thursday's Today Extra after Kourtney Kardashian appeared to ignore his question about sister Kim's Paris robbery.
The 43-year-old co-host hit out at the reality TV star after the interview suddenly came to an end, which turned out to be a technical glitch.
After asking the 37-year-old, 'how is Kim going?', Kourtney began talking to staff behind-the-scenes, ignoring the Australian TV personality.
Not impressed: Today Extra's David Campbell lost his temper on Thursday's Today Extra after Kourtney Kardashian appeared to ignore his question about her sister Kim's Paris robbery
'Hello Kourtney have we lost you?' David asked, as his co-host Sonia Kruger added: 'Alright. It looks like Kourtney doesn't really want to go there with that question.'
He was less than impressed by the loss of communication, saying: 'I think she's totally blanking me on that question!'
Sonia attempted to stand by Kourtney, explaining it may have been a PR issue behind -the-scenes, before David hit out: 'She could just say her sister is fine!'
Cutting it: The 43-year-old co-host hit out at the reality TV star after the interview suddenly came to an end, which turned out to be a technical glitch
Not keen to answer? Co-host Sonia Kruger believed 'Kourtney doesn't really want to go there with that question'
'I mean I think we just said that you know we're very concerned and we were onside and we hoped that everyone's fine which I still do,' he continued.
Despite the interview cutting short, the Today Extra hosts still plugged her Manuka Doctor skin care range.
After returning from a television break, David apologised on-air to the mother-of-three who was still on the other end of the line, in their LA studio, before continuing with the interview.
Not happy: David hit out: 'She could just say her sister is fine! I think we just said that you know we're very concerned and we were onside and we hoped that everyone's fine which I still do'
Blank faced: During the Today Extra's outburst, Kourtney glared blankly at the camera as she responded to people in the background
'Something happened in the studio and we sort of lost contact with Kourtney. We are happy to say she's still here,' he explained, a little red-faced.
'I'm sorry about what just happened there. Can we ask, first of all, is everything OK where you are right now?'
Kourtney went on to explain she had experienced a 'bad connection'.
Fresh start: After returning from a break, David apologised on-air to the mother-of-three who was still on the other end of the line, in their LA studio, before continuing with the interview
Opening up: The Keeping Up With The Kardashian's star continued to speak out her sister, Kim, admitting she's 'not doing great'
The Keeping Up With The Kardashian's star continued to speak out her sister, Kim, saying she's 'not doing great'.
'I think we're all really still shaken up and I just - you know, I think she has a big supportive family and I know that, like, all of the traumatic things that we've been through, we get through them together as a family,' she continued.
Kim was robbed of $11 million worth of jewellery while staying in a luxury hotel in Paris on October 3.
Kourtney Kardashian has spoken out about her sister Kim Kardashian following her dramatic robbery at gunpoint in Paris earlier this month.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star was asked about Kim during an appearance on Australia's Today Extra show on Thursday, however the interview began on a slightly awkward note.
As co-host David Campbell began interviewing the 37-year-old beauty, she began speaking to members of her team - appearing not to hear him.
Speaking out: Kourtney Kardashian says sister has spoken out about her sister Kim Kardashian following her dramatic robbery at gunpoint in Paris earlier this month
Eventually, what appeared to be technical troubles were restored and the segment proceed without any further issues.
Kourtney revealed that Kim 'is not doing great' following the jewellery heist that saw the 35-year-old robbed of over $10 million.
'You know, she's not doing great. I think we're all really still shaken up,' she explained.
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Kourtney's comments about her younger sibling came after a brief technical glitch on the show, with the socialite claiming 'we just had a bad connection' when she was first asked about Kim.
She continued: 'I think she has a big supportive family and I know that, like, all of the traumatic things that we've been through, you know, we get through them together as a family and that's what family is about'.
Kourtney said the serious incident is 'definitely' a wake up call for the family and she is 'still shaken.'
Tough times: Kim was robbed on October 2 while attending Paris Fashion Week
Serious: Speaking to Australia's Channel Nine program Today Extra, the 37-year-old said Kim 'is not doing great' following the jewellery heist that saw the 35-year-old robbed of over $10 million
'I feel like in our family especially, [when] we go through traumatic things just like our lives move so quickly at times we don't have a chance to digest them,' she explained.
'But I felt, like, you know I have personally been taking time to just digest everything and - you know, I'm still shaken up,' she candidly admitted.
'Of course you are,' host David responded.
'Can I just say on behalf of us and our team here thank you for coming back on and talking to us again. We do appreciate your input on this,' he continued, making reference to Kourtney not answering the duo's questions the first time around.
Intense time: Kourtney said the serious incident is 'definitely' a wake up call for the family and she is 'still shaken'
Back on-air: Kourtney's comments about her younger sibling came after a brief technical glitch on the show, with the socialite claiming 'we just had a bad connection' when she was first asked about Kim
'You know what what I understand you guys are the Kardashians. It's hard to always preach and ask questions and there will be people protecting you. For you to come on and come back to us is a testament to you,' the Australian television presenter added.
Kim was robbed on October 2 while attending Paris Fashion Week.
Five robbers in masks and dressed as police officers held her at gunpoint in her Parisian luxury apartment. They bound and gagged her and placed her in a bathtub after she reportedly begged for her life.
The robbers escaped with over $10 million worth of jewelry. The investigation is ongoing.
Earlier this month: Kourtney's comments come after her sister Khloe spoke about the ordeal on The Ellen DeGeneres Show earlier this month
Kourtney's comments come after her sister Khloe spoke about the ordeal on The Ellen DeGeneres Show earlier this month.
The 32-year-old said of the crime's impact on her family: 'I mean, it's incredibly traumatic what happened to her.'
'But our family is super close and great and we'll get through it together,' she continued, 'and we do appreciate all of your guys' love and support and it will take time.'
'You know, it was horrible what happened to her,' Khloe added.
The reality star went on to reveal how she and her family are reevaluating their social media presence after the incident.
'I think it's just a wake up call to make a lot of life adjustments,' Khloe explained. 'This is a really serious matter for Kim'
'I think it's just a wake up call to make a lot of life adjustments,' Khloe explained. 'This is a really serious matter for Kim.'
'I think that's really personal, as to that emotional terror [and when] you could move on from that. It's a wake up call for all of us, but definitely [the focus is] just to make sure our sister is okay.'
Khloe said that the entire family has escalated their level of security: 'Just [to] make sure we're protected as well as possible.
'Like I said, we're a family, we'll do this together. I think it's important to make those adjustments and to pull back a little bit I think is always smart.'
Yahoo rakes in profits as it prepares for Verizon deal
Yahoo's quarterly profits shot up by more than double to $163 million even as it prepares for a takeover by Verizon.
The faded internet pioneer skipped its usual quarterly earnings call with analysts due to the pending takeover by the US telecommunication company, for which chief executive Marissa Mayer said Yahoo is busy preparing despite recent revelations about a major data breach that may affect the deal.
"We launched several new products and showed solid financial performance across the board," she said in an earnings release, which beat expectations despite only a slight rise in revenue.
Yahoo beat expectations with quarterly earnings that showed profit more than doubled Justin Sullivan (Getty/AFP/File)
Shares were up 1.49 percent to $42.30 in after-market trades following the earnings report release, reflecting confidence the breach is not prompting a significant number of users to abandon Yahoo.
Revenue for the quarter that ended on Sept. 30 came to $1.3 billion, up from the $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier.
Mobile revenue during the quarter reached $396 million, up from $271 million the previous year.
The boost in profits came from cutting workers and costs, not from the strength of its core business.
They hit the mark nevertheless, according to independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle.
"For the most part, people were expecting a burning crater where Yahoo used to be," he said.
"This is the kind of financial report they needed to not increase the probability that Verizon runs away screaming from the deal."
- Hacks and scans -
The beleaguered internet company agreed in July to sell its core assets to Verizon for $4.8 billion, ending a 20-year run as an independent company after several attempts to refocus failed to help it catch up to Google and Facebook in key segments of online advertising.
The deal would separate the Yahoo internet assets from its more valuable stake in the Chinese online giant Alibaba.
However, Verizon said last week that a recently revealed hack affecting 500 million Yahoo customers worldwide could have a "material" effect on the deal.
The comments from Verizon general counsel Craig Silliman suggest the telecom company could seek to reduce the purchase price or walk away from the deal.
Although the hack took place in late 2014, Yahoo announced it only last month, dealing the company a fresh blow.
The attack was probably "state sponsored," it said, although some analysts have questioned the source.
"We're working hard to retain their trust," Mayer said of Yahoo's users, "and are heartened by their continued loyalty as seen in our user engagement trends."
Yahoo's image took another hit recently from allegations of mass email surveillance that triggered an outcry from privacy activists.
Yahoo has denied doing any such thing, rejecting as "misleading" a report that it secretly scanned hundreds of millions of email accounts to help US intelligence.
"We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure," the company said in a statement to AFP. "The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems."
Hopes low for Putin talks on Ukraine, Syria in Berlin
Russia played down hopes of diplomatic progress over Ukraine at talks Wednesday between President Vladimir Putin and his German, French and Ukrainian counterparts in Berlin, where he also faced pressure over the Syrian conflict.
Host Chancellor Angela Merkel said the talks -- the first four-way summit for a year -- were aimed at "offering a brutally honest assessment" of progress on implementing the frayed Minsk peace accords for Ukraine.
"Things are stalled in many areas such as the ceasefire, political issues and humanitarian issues," she told reporters Tuesday.
The Kremlin has announced that Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo prior to an eight-hour "humanitarian pause" in the battered city Karam Al-Masri (AFP/File)
"We have to seize every chance we have for progress. I have to say that we cannot expect a miracle but it is worth every effort at this point."
But the Kremlin poured cold water on hopes for headway toward a lasting resolution of the conflict.
"We do not expect any breakthroughs," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters ahead of Putin's trip, his first to the German capital since the Ukraine conflict erupted.
Putin has not visited the German capital since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sending relations with the West plunging to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war, which has deepened the diplomatic freeze, will also figure at the top of the agenda, Merkel said.
Speaking of the "disastrous" situation in the besieged city of Aleppo, Merkel said she and French President Francois Hollande would speak to Putin "about somehow alleviating people's suffering".
"Here too, we cannot expect miracles but it is essential to talk, even if the views are far apart," she said.
- Ending the devastation -
The gathering will be aimed at "giving the same message to Vladimir Putin on Syria: a durable ceasefire in Aleppo and humanitarian access so that the devastation of this city can end," an aide to Hollande said in Paris.
Syria's second city, held by rebels determined to oust President Bashar al-Assad, has come under heavy bombardment since the Russian-backed military announced an offensive in late September to regain control of the east.
Air strikes in the city have flattened numerous residential buildings and civilian facilities, in a bombing campaign the European Union warned could amount to war crimes.
The Berlin meeting takes place on the eve of a European Union summit in Brussels on relations with Russia, including sanctions over Ukraine, which come up for renewal at the end of the year.
The two-day Brussels talks are also expected to cover Russia's role in Syria, which sparked a furious row between Russia and France last week, prompting Putin to cancel a visit to Paris.
- Swapping recriminations -
The last four-way summit in the so-called Normandy Format took place in Paris in October 2015.
Hollande's office said in a statement that Wednesday's gathering would "discuss the next steps in the process towards ending the crisis in eastern Ukraine".
Russia backs a separatist, pro-Moscow insurgency in the region that has claimed nearly 10,000 lives.
But it denies accusations that it has sent troops and weapons across its border with Ukraine to fuel the conflict.
In the run-up to the meeting, Moscow and Kiev swapped recriminations.
Peskov said Tuesday that Putin believed there was "no alternative" to implementing the Minsk accords.
"We know that on this point, the situation leaves much to be desired," he said. "For the moment, Kiev is doing nothing."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also indicated he had little hope for progress in Berlin.
"Am I optimistic enough? Yes I'm very optimistic about the future of Ukraine but unfortunately not so optimistic about tomorrow's meeting," he said Tuesday on a visit to Oslo.
Ukrainian political analyst Taras Berezovets said it would require more than Western diplomacy to convince Russia to stay out of eastern Ukraine.
"I don't have any illusions about Merkel and Hollande being able to calm Putin's ambition at this stage," he wrote on Facebook.
"In general, the Russian president is satisfied with the current balance of forces in the east of Ukraine."
Germany currently holds the rotating presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has monitors in eastern Ukraine.
Fighting in east Ukraine -- which has claimed nearly 10,000 lives -- has dragged on despite a peace plan brokered by Germany and France Aleksey Filippov (AFP/File)
The West has expressed increasing alarm at the situation in Aleppo, saying the ferocious Russian-backed onslaught on the rebel-held east could amount to a war crime Ameer Alhalbi (AFP/File)
Hong Kong pro-independence lawmakers blocked from taking oath
Hong Kong's legislature again descended into chaos Wednesday as pro-Beijing politicians blocked the swearing in of two new lawmakers who want a split from China, in an increasingly divided parliament.
It comes as fears grow in the semi-autonomous city that Beijing is tightening its grip, fuelling an independence movement in Hong Kong.
Wednesday saw rival lawmakers clash in a heated shouting match after the pro-Beijing camp walked out of the swearing-in session.
Lawmaker Eddie Chu argues with a pro-Beijing counterpart after members of the group walked out of the Legislative Council to block the second swearing-in of pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong Tengku Bahar (AFP)
The walkout led to the meeting being cancelled, preventing pro-independence lawmakers Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung from taking the oath that would allow them to take up their seats.
In the ensuing confrontations one veteran pro-democracy legislator threw slices of luncheon meat at his opponents while another was surrounded by security after turning China and Hong Kong flags displayed on pro-Beijing lawmakers' desks upside-down.
Meanwhile, pro-Beijing lawmakers chanted "Apologise!", demanding Yau and Leung say sorry for their failure to take the oath properly at last week's swearing-in ceremony.
The pair had their oaths rejected last Wednesday after they draped themselves in "Hong Kong is not China" flags.
The oath states Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China.
Both refused to pronounce China properly, and Yau was heard to replace the words "the People's Republic of China" with "the People's refucking of Zeena".
They were given permission to retake their oaths Wednesday, but the session was abandoned after the pro-Beijing walkout left an insufficient number of legislators in the chamber.
"If they want people to respect their oaths, they have to express regret over their behaviour last week and to apologise to all Chinese around the world," pro-Beijing lawmaker Priscilla Leung told reporters.
Hundreds of pro-Beijing supporters waved Chinese flags and stamped on pictures of the two outspoken lawmakers outside the legislative council building.
The pair said they wanted to complete their oaths, but would not apologise for last week's behaviour.
"We are empowered by the people to enter the Legco," Baggio Leung said.
- Court challenge -
The former British colony was handed back to China in 1997 under an agreement protecting its freedoms for 50 years, but there are concerns those liberties are being eroded.
Leung and Yau are part of a new wave of lawmakers advocating independence and self-determination who won seats in the Legislative Council (Legco) -- Hong Kong's lawmaking body -- in citywide polls last month.
Five legislators, including the pair, had their oaths rejected at last week's swearing in.
Of those five, one pro-Beijing lawmaker and one pro-democracy lawmaker, whose oaths were declared invalid the first time round, were allowed to retake them Wednesday morning.
The Beijing camp then walked out, forcing the session to be abandoned before Yau, Leung and pro-democracy teacher Lau Siu-lai, who read her oath at a snail's pace last week, took the stand.
The chaotic scenes came after a late-night court bid Tuesday by city leader Leung Chun-ying and justice secretary Rimsky Yuen to block Yau and Baggio Leung from taking up their seats.
That went directly against a decision by the pro-Beijing president of Legco, who had already given the green light for them to have a second chance at the oath.
The court refused to grant an injunction against Wednesday's oath-taking, but gave permission for a judicial review into whether the pair should be disqualified, putting their future as lawmakers into question.
In a separate case Wednesday, former pro-democracy lawmaker Raymond Wong was convicted of throwing a glass at city leader Leung Chun-ying inside the Legco in 2014.
Wong, 64, was convicted of common assault and will be sentenced on Tuesday, local media reported.
Pro-Beijing legislators walk out of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong to block the second swearing-in of pro-independence lawmakers on October 19, 2016 Tengku Bahar (AFP)
Taliban reject reports of secret talks with Afghanistan
The Taliban on Wednesday rejected reports of secret meetings with the Afghan government in a bid to resume long-stalled peace negotiations, insisting that their hardline policy remains unchanged.
Afghan officials on Tuesday said they held two meetings since September in Doha, where the Taliban maintain a political office, after the news was first reported by Britain's The Guardian newspaper.
But Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement rejected any reports of talks or meetings.
Security guards stand outside the Taliban political office in the Qatari capital Doha Faisal al-Tamimi (AFP/File)
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, Afghanistan's intelligence chief, and National Security Advisor Mohammad Hanif Atmar had attended one of the Qatar meetings, local Tolo television said citing a presidential palace source.
"The representatives of the Islamic Emirate have not met with Stanekzai or any other officials. Our stance about the negotiations has not changed. Our policy is very clear on that," Mujahid said, referring to the Taliban's official title.
The Taliban have long insisted on the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan as a precondition for peace talks with the government.
The Guardian said the talks were attended by Mullah Abdull Manan Akhund, brother of Taliban founder and long-time leader Mullah Omar who died in 2013.
A senior American diplomat was also present in the Qatar meetings, the newspaper said citing a Taliban official.
Pakistan -- the Taliban's historic backers -- have hosted several rounds of international talks over the last year to jumpstart peace negotiations, which yielded little progress.
The dialogue process ground to a halt when the US killed former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in May.
Philippines' Duterte says 'goodbye' to US ties in Beijing
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said it was "time to say goodbye" to the US during a visit to China on Wednesday, as the combative leader reconfigures his country's diplomatic alliances.
Duterte is in China for a four-day trip that is expected to confirm his tilt away from Washington and towards Beijing's sphere of influence.
During a speech addressing the Filipino community in Beijing, the firebrand president said the Philippines had gained little from its long alliance with the US, its former colonial ruler.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed he will not "barter" away territory and economic rights during his visit to Beijing, where he hopes to mend ties frayed by a row over the South China Sea Manman Dejeto (AFP/File)
"Your stay in my country was for your own benefit. So time to say goodbye, my friend," he said, as if addressing the US.
"I will not go to America anymore. I will just be insulted there," he added, before once again referring to US President Barack Obama as a "son of a whore".
Duterte, who took office in late June, said he was fed up with the Philippines' foreign policy being dictated by a Western agenda.
"What kept us from China was not our own making. I will charter a new course," he said.
Foreign policy under Duterte has dramatically shifted from that pursued under predecessor Benigno Aquino, who took Beijing to an international tribunal over its extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea and won a resounding victory.
The move infuriated Beijing. But Duterte, who took office in June shortly before the tribunal ruling, has made a point of not flaunting the outcome.
He has also suspended joint US-Philippine patrols in the South China Sea, and has threatened an end to joint military exercises.
- Manila 'a pawn' -
The South China Sea is of intense interest to Washington and it has repeatedly spoken out on the various territorial disputes between China and its neighbours over the strategically vital waters.
Tensions have risen between the US and China over Washington's so-called "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific, a move that Beijing says is intended to contain it.
Duterte will meet top leaders including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang during his stay.
Hours before he spoke, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing that Beijing was pleased to move towards resolving the territorial dispute "through consultation and dialogue".
"Anyone who truly wishes for peace, stability, development and prosperity in the Asia Pacific" should welcome Duterte's visit, she said.
In an editorial Wednesday, China's nationalist Global Times newspaper said Washington had treated Manila "as a pawn", adding Duterte was now "redesigning Philippine foreign policy based on Philippine interests".
Duterte has said his China trip will focus on promoting economic ties.
The Philippines is hoping, among other things, that Beijing will repeal a ban on imports of its bananas -- an economic sanction intended to punish Manila for its South China Sea stance.
Hua said Wednesday announcements on infrastructure cooperation and economic development projects could be expected during the Philippine leader's visit.
- Drug war -
As Duterte has cosied up to Beijing, he has repeatedly denounced the United States for criticising the deadly war on crime he instigated upon taking office.
Last month Duterte sparked a diplomatic storm when he branded Obama a "son of a whore" after being told the US president would raise the rights concerns at an Asia meeting.
Beijing, meanwhile, has enthusiastically endorsed Duterte's war on drugs, which has seen more than 3,700 people killed and led the International Criminal Court to warn that those responsible could face charges.
Hua said Wednesday that the two sides were already in close communication about cooperating on drug control and anti-crime issues.
China has also offered to train some Filipino cadets in "anti-illegal drug and VIP security protection", according to Ramon Purugganan, deputy director of intelligence with the Philippine National Police.
Disputed claims in the South China Sea Adrian LEUNG, Gal ROMA (AFP)
Bedouin village caught up in Israeli settlement rift
Abu Youssef is tired. He has already seen his family home destroyed once and now faces a second demolition.
But this time he has a controversial opt out clause: agree to move his small Bedouin community less than a mile away, and Abu Youssef could get a brand new home with running water and electricity.
The catch is that the offer comes from Israel, and Palestinian leaders and those concerned with Israeli settlement building are vehemently opposed.
The Bedouin village of Wadi Abu Hindi, amounts to a collection of shacks of corrugated metal in a desert valley, unbearably hot in summer, freezing in winter Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)
Any move, even if the 50 families who live in the tiny community of Wadi Abu Hindi agreed to it, would violate international law and could be disastrous for the Palestinian cause, they say.
"We are between two sides," Abu Youssef told AFP.
It is a dilemma faced by other Bedouin communities in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory Israel occupied in 1967.
Palestinian leaders say moving Wadi Abu Hindi would amount to forcible transfer of a population by an occupying power -- a breach of the Geneva Conventions -- and could lead to more relocations.
The village is located east of Jerusalem, where rights groups fear demolitions could eventually clear the way for further Israeli settlement construction.
This could partly divide the West Bank between north and south while further isolating the territory from east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as their future capital.
That scenario would make a contiguous future Palestinian state difficult to achieve.
But for Abu Youssef, the issue is far more personal.
- Desert home -
Wadi Abu Hindi amounts to a collection of shacks of corrugated metal in a desert valley, unbearably hot in summer and freezing in winter.
Abu Youssef, 56, has lived there his entire life, but under two different rulers.
When he was six years old, Israel occupied the West Bank, seizing it from Jordan, in a move never recognised by the international community.
The government began building settlements, including on land formerly used by semi-nomadic Bedouin farmers.
There are now more than 400,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, according to Israeli statistics.
Wadi Abu Hindi was demolished by Israeli forces in the late 1990s then rebuilt, and since 2011 has faced a new demolition order.
Last year, the Israeli lawyer for the community, Shlomo Lecker, says he received an offer he felt he had to present to them.
He previously fought many proposed relocations of Bedouins as they would be moved far away, imperilling their traditional agricultural lifestyles, he said.
But this offer involved moving less than a mile to where many of their extended family members live.
Infrastructure would be available and, crucially, they would be free from the threat of demolition.
"Nobody wants to be transferred far away but if they can have a chance to build a village near where they come from that is good," Lecker told AFP.
Abu Youssef said Lecker has won numerous battles for them, so they took the offer seriously.
He stressed they have not made a final decision, but added that personally he was "tired" and tempted.
"We need water, we need electricity and we want to live," Abu Youssef said.
Israeli officials would not confirm details of the offer, but noted an agreement hadn't yet been reached.
The temporary homes of Bedouin communities between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea are often demolished by Israel, which says they lack permits.
Such permits are nearly impossible for Palestinians, including Bedouins, to obtain.
Israel has offered to relocate more than 40 unrecognised Bedouin villages into pre-planned communities but so far none have accepted.
One successful agreement could pressure other Bedouin communities to move, Palestinian officials argue.
- 'Forcible transfer' -
The concerns of the Palestinians and the UN can be seen close to Wadi Abu Hindi.
A few hundred metres above the village, a shiny and clean Israeli settlement, Kedar, peeks over the hill.
Further away, the suburban-like settlement of Maale Adumim houses some 35,000 Israelis.
After a international NGO cut his funding when he recommended the villages discuss taking a deal, Lecker has worked pro bono for more than six months.
He says he can no longer do so, while the Bedouin don't want a different lawyer.
The UN was considering stepping in, UN sources said, prompting senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat to protest earlier this month, in a letter seen by AFP.
It warned that lawyers paid by international organisations "have provided legal aid to negotiate and/or mediate on behalf of these communities to reach a settlement agreement for their own transfer.
"These legal aid actors have in fact facilitated the forcible transfer of these communities," it added.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian territories Robert Piper said in a statement to AFP he was concerned by potential forcible transfer but also by the legal aid gap for Bedouin communities.
Lecker accused the Palestinian Authority of ignoring the villagers' needs.
"They are soldiers of the PA without anyone asking them."
The Bedouin village of Wadi Abu Hindi was demolished by Israeli forces in the late 1990s then rebuilt, and since 2011 has faced a new demolition order Ahmad Gharabli (AFP)
Pause in Aleppo bombing holds into second day
A pause in Russian and Syrian strikes on Aleppo held into a second day Wednesday, ahead of a brief ceasefire aimed at allowing civilians and rebels to quit the devastated city.
The halt came ahead of talks in Berlin between the Russian, French, and German leaders on Syria's five-year conflict.
Moscow is backing President Bashar al-Assad's regime in its war with a wide range of rebel groups, including with air strikes in the divided northern city of Aleppo.
Hadi Mustafa Habbush lies on a hospital bed in the rebel-held area of Aleppo, on October 12, 2016 Thaer Mohammed (AFP)
Under growing international pressure over the devastation and civilian deaths caused by strikes, Moscow announced early Tuesday that Russian and Syrian warplanes would stop bombing rebel-held parts of the city to pave the way for a "humanitarian pause".
That window, starting at 0500 GMT on Thursday and due to last eight hours, is expected to see all fighting stop to allow civilians and rebels to exit opposition-held districts via six corridors.
An estimated 250,000 people live in Aleppo's eastern districts and have been under near-continuous government siege since July.
Moscow's offer was initially met with scepticism, but the bombing halt held for its first 24 hours.
"There have been no air raids from yesterday morning until now," Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said as the pause entered its second day.
Russian and Syrian bombardment had been providing air cover for a government offensive that started on September 22 aimed at seizing the city's east, held by rebels since 2012.
Despite the bombing pause, troops pressed their ground assault in the Old City on Wednesday as they vied to shift the front line in the heart of Aleppo, according to the Observatory.
- 'Still scared' -
According to Moscow, once the pause begins six corridors out of the city would open for civilians with another two -- via the Castello Road in the north and Souk al-Hal in the city centre -- designated for rebels.
Rebel groups have indicated they will not abandon their posts and, with Aleppo encircled by pro-government forces, many civilians fear falling into the hands of the regime.
But Russia has said the pause is an opportunity for mainstream rebels to disassociate themselves from jihadists in Aleppo.
Russia has responded to criticism of its air campaign in Aleppo by repeatedly pointing to the presence of jihadist groups in the city allied with other rebel forces.
Some of the rebels are backed by the United States, and Moscow has accused Washington of not doing enough to convince them to end alliances with jihadists.
"Each time, the Americans said it was impossible to perform the separation without the establishment of a ceasefire," Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
"The condition that has been asked for, especially by our American colleagues, is now filled."
Ibrahim Abu al-Leith, a spokesman for the White Helmets rescue force in Aleppo, said there were no planes circling above on Wednesday but artillery and rocket fire continued.
"It's better than before, but people won't go out unless everything stops. They are still scared because they know that the regime and Russia are not trustworthy," Abu al-Leith told AFP from the city.
- 'Broken' promises -
Five years of diplomatic initiatives to put an end to Syria's conflict have failed, but over the past week world powers have made new efforts to reach a lasting truce.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Berlin later Wednesday to discuss the ceasefire plans.
Speaking of the "disastrous" situation in Aleppo, Merkel said she and Hollande would speak to Putin but that "we cannot expect miracles".
The United States has expressed scepticism about Moscow's most recent initiative.
"We've seen these kinds of commitments and promises before. And we've seen them broken. We're watching this very carefully," State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN.
A US-led coalition is bombing jihadists in Syria including the Islamic State group and Russia accused member Belgium of killing six civilians in air strikes in the Aleppo region on Tuesday.
The Belgian defence ministry denied its air force was active in the area at the time.
Talks were also due Wednesday in Geneva between Russian, US, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish officials on the efforts to distance Syrian opposition fighters from jihadists, in particular the Fateh al-Sham Front, which changed its name from Al-Nusra Front after renouncing its ties to Al-Qaeda.
More than 250,000 civilians are trapped in east Aleppo Karam al-Masri (AFP/File)
Syrians carry the body of a man following air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of Aleppo on October 12, 2016 Ameer Alhalbi (AFP)
Philippine police van runs over protesters
A Philippine police van on Wednesday rammed and ran over baton-wielding protesters outside the US embassy in Manila.
Police used tear gas and truncheons to try to disperse hundreds of people who had gathered in support of President Rodrigo Duterte's recent comments that he wanted to loosen his nation's alliance with the United States.
A total of 23 protesters were arrested, said Chief Inspector Arsenio Riparip, one of the officers overseeing the incident.
Protesters lie on the ground after being hit by a police van during a rally in front of the US embassy in Manila on October 19, 2016 Rob Reyes (AFP)
He said the protesters broke through the line of police securing the embassy's gates.
"We had to disperse them. They started it. They were trying to enter the embassy," Riparip told AFP.
"We had to use tear gas. They overpowered our policemen."
A police van reversed quickly back into a crowd of dozens of protesters and then forward, running over at least two people and banging into others, footage broadcast by local television network ABS CBN showed.
Photos showed a grey-haired man afterwards trapped underneath the stationary van, with his leg and hips under one of the back tyres.
Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde confirmed the police van hit protesters but insisted the driver was not at fault.
"They weren't really run over," Albayalde said in a statement, referring to the protesters.
"The rallyists were trying to flip over the patrol car. In the process, the driver extricated the patrol car and inadvertently hit some unruly protesters who sustained minor injuries."
One of the protest leaders, Amirah Lidasan, accused the police of starting the violence.
"It was the police who attacked the protesters. First they rammed the police vehicle against the people. Then they released tear gas and hit us with truncheons," she said.
While the Philippines is a defence ally of the United States, Duterte -- elected president in May on a ruthless anti-crime platform -- has said he wants to distance the country from America.
He has launched abusive tirades against US President Barack Obama and warned he may eventually cut ties altogether, after the US government raised alarm over thousands of people killed in Duterte's anti-drug campaign.
Duterte is currently in Beijing on a mission aimed at improving ties with China and attracting billions of dollars of Chinese investment.
Japan cabinet ministers visit controversial war shrine
Two Japanese cabinet ministers visited a controversial war shrine Wednesday, after a mass visit by lawmakers angered China and South Korea which see it as a painful reminder of Tokyo's past aggression.
The ministers -- internal affairs chief Sanae Takaichi and Katsunobu Kato, in charge of women's empowerment -- are close to conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who did not visit the Yasukuni shrine during this year's four-day autumn festival.
Abe, often criticised for what some see as revisionist views on Japan's wartime record, sent a ritual offering to the shrine instead.
The Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo honours millions of Japanese war victims, but also the senior military and political figures who were convicted of war crimes after World War II Kazuhiro Nogi (AFP)
He has not gone to the site in central Tokyo since late 2013 in an apparent attempt to ease diplomatic tensions.
China on Wednesday lashed out at the cabinet ministers' visit, saying the shrine "whitewashes" Japan's past militarism and "reveals its wrong attitude towards history".
"China firmly opposes that," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular Beijing press briefing.
"We urge Japan to own up to and reflect upon its history of aggression, make a clean break with militarism and use concrete actions to win back trust from its Asian neighbours and the international community."
On Tuesday a group of about 85 legislators arrived at the leafy site for an annual pilgrimage, earning rebukes from Beijing and Seoul.
Yasukuni honours millions of Japanese war dead, but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes after World War II.
The indigenous Shinto religious shrine has for decades been a flashpoint for criticism by countries that suffered from Japan's colonialism and aggression in the first half of the 20th century, including China and Korea.
Abe and other nationalists say Yasukuni is a place to remember fallen soldiers. They compare it to Arlington National Cemetery in the United States.
His visit in 2013 to mark his first year in power sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a diplomatic rebuke from close ally the United States which said it was "disappointed".
Abe has since refrained from going, sending ritual offerings instead.
Thousands of Jews throng Western Wall for holiday blessing
Thousands of Jews gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for a holiday blessing on Wednesday, a day after UNESCO adopted a resolution that Israel says omits Judaism's connection to the site.
Known as the priestly blessing, the ceremony involved Jews from the Cohanim priestly caste gathering to bless crowds marking Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles.
Men and women jostled to get close to the gender-segregated wall, with the Western Wall Heritage Foundation estimating tens of thousands participated in the blessings during the morning, while police spoke of thousands.
The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a remnant of a supporting wall of the Second Temple complex, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD Menahem Kahana (AFP/File)
Cohanim draped in traditional white prayer shawls blessed the crowds, which included Jews from around the world as well as tourists.
The blessing involves the raising of hands in a form similar to the "Vulcan salute" Leonard Nimoy borrowed from Judaism for his "Star Trek" role as Mr Spock.
Mass priestly blessings are held at the Western Wall twice a year, for Sukkot and Passover.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said there was "heightened security" throughout Jerusalem's Old City, but no incidents were reported.
The prayers came a day after UNESCO passed a controversial resolution which Israel said omitted the Jewish connection to both the Western Wall and the adjacent Al-Aqsa mosque compound or Temple Mount.
The Western Wall is a remnant of a supporting wall of the Second Temple complex, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
Above it lies the plaza where the temple once stood and which now houses the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam. It is the holiest site to Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount.
The resolution on "occupied Palestine" was endorsed by UNESCOs executive board on Tuesday, after being approved at the committee stage last week.
Referring throughout to "the occupying power," it condemns Israel for restricting Muslims' access to the Al-Aqsa compound and criticises damage by security forces to the site and nearby excavations.
Israel is furious that the resolution refers to the site only by its Muslim names Al-Aqsa and Al-Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary.
The site is located in east Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community.
Ben Frank, a neurologist from Miami in the United States, had travelled for the religious holidays and to visit two of his children studying in Jewish religious schools in Israel.
He said the UNESCO resolution annoyed him but that the religious ceremony was an important moment.
"There are always going to be people who hate the Jews," he said. "How can they say we have no connection with this place?" he added, gesturing to the thousands of worshippers around him.
Frank said he wanted Jews to return to praying on the Temple Mount.
Palestinian tries to stab Israeli officers, shot dead: police
A 19-year-old Palestinian woman approached Israeli border police with a knife in a tense area of the West Bank on Wednesday and was shot dead by officers, police said.
A police statement said the woman approached officers at the Tapuah junction in the north of the occupied West Bank, ignored orders to stop and pulled the knife.
"At this point the officers shot her," police said, adding that she was killed.
Israeli security forces near the Tapuah junction, also known as the Zaatara junction, in the Israeli occupied West Bank on October 19, 2016 Jaafar Ashtiyeh (AFP)
Police identified her as a resident of Asira Al-Shimaliya, a village north of Nablus, which is located near the Tapuah junction.
Also known as Zaatara junction and with Israeli settlements nearby, it has been the site of a number of violent incidents.
The Palestinian health ministry said "a woman was killed after being shot by the occupation forces at Zaatara checkpoint."
It identified her as Raheeq Shajeyeh Youssef.
The incident comes as Jews celebrate the week-long holiday of Sukkot, the third of three successive Jewish holidays that have led to tensions with the Palestinians in the past.
Last week, Jews marked Yom Kippur, while Rosh Hashanah, or New Year, was the previous week.
A Palestinian gun attack in Jerusalem on October 9 that killed two people raised fears of further violence and Israel has boosted security.
Last year's holiday period led to clashes and marked the start of an upsurge in Palestinian gun, knife and car-ramming attacks.
Thousands of Jews visit the Western Wall in east Jerusalem's Old City during the holiday period, while a smaller number go to the nearby Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
The compound is holy to both Muslims and Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount.
The site is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians fearing Israel may one day seek to assert further control over it.
Violence since October 2015 has killed 234 Palestinians, 36 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese national, according to an AFP count.
Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out attacks, according to Israeli authorities.
Others were shot dead during protests or clashes, while some were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with the Israeli occupation and settlement-building in the West Bank, comatose peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest.
Israel says incitement by Palestinian leaders and media is a leading cause of the violence.
The vast majority of the attacks have been carried out by lone-wolf assailants, Israeli authorities say. Many have been young people, including teenagers.
Arab coalition says Yemen rebels breach truce
The Saudi-led coalition accused Yemeni rebels of repeatedly breaching a ceasefire on Thursday, the first day of a truce under global pressure to end a war which has killed thousands.
At least 11 people were killed in sporadic clashes between rebels and pro-government forces, despite all sides insisting they will pause the fighting.
The truce, for an initial period of three days, took effect just before midnight on Wednesday to allow sorely needed aid deliveries in Yemen where the conflict has also left millions homeless and hungry.
Yemeni children fill empty jerrycans with water from a donated source amid ongoing widespread disruption of water supplies in an impoverished coastal village on the outskirts of the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, on October 18, 2016 - (AFP/File)
The Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in March 2015 to support the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after Huthi rebels overran much of the impoverished country on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
Five previous truce attempts failed but cautious optimism preceded the current pause after intensified international pressure following an escalation of combat.
But Major General Ahmed Assiri, the coalition spokesman, told AFP, "there is no ceasefire at all" because of repeated rebel breaches.
"This is the same situation as the previous time when we called for a ceasefire," Assiri said.
And Saudi Arabia's foreign minister told reporters in Washington that rebels were stepping up their attacks.
"As of this morning Washington time there had been more than 150 violations by the Huthi-Saleh side," Adel al-Jubeir said, referring to the rebels and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Saudi Arabia and Washington accuse Iran of arming the Shiite Huthi insurgents, but Tehran denies the charges.
The coalition and Hadi both vowed to abide by the ceasefire despite alleged violations by the rebels.
Pro-government forces declared "respect for the truce" but reserved the right to respond to infractions.
The rebels said they would respect the ceasefire as long as "the enemy" abides by it, but urged their fighters to be ready to retaliate against "all aggression".
- Thousands have died -
The coalition says it will continue an air and maritime embargo, to prevent weapons shipments to the rebels, and maintains airborne reconnaissance.
At dawn, coalition aircraft flew twice over the rebel-held capital Sanaa without conducting raids, according to residents, who said they have had enough of failed ceasefires.
"They're mocking us with a three-day truce," said Ali al-Doush, a 32-year-old civil servant who has not been paid for three months.
"We want an end to the war."
Nearly 6,900 people have been killed, more than half of them civilians, while another three million are displaced and millions more need food aid.
The deaths Thursday included three civilians killed in a coalition air raid on Saada province, a historic Huthi stronghold, rebel-controlled media said.
Assiri denied that any air strikes took place over Yemen, although coalition warplanes carried out surveillance.
He said a Patriot missile shot down a missile fired by rebels in Marib, east of the capital Sanaa.
A man and his daughter were wounded in a cross-border attack from Yemen in the kingdom's Jazan region, Saudi civil defence authorities said.
Assiri said coalition artillery and aircraft retaliated.
- '43 rebel violations' -
"We will respond to each violation. We will be reactive," he said.
"It's so easy. If they stop, we will not fire a bullet."
Official Saudi media said there were more than 43 rebel violations along the border.
Military sources and residents said there had also been fighting around the besieged third city Taez, and pro-Hadi positions came under fire in Sarwah, east of Sanaa.
The last ceasefire attempt began in April and collapsed as UN-brokered peace talks broke down in August.
Fighting then escalated, until an October 8 coalition air strike which the UN said killed more than 140 people and wounded at least 525 at a funeral in Sanaa.
On Thursday a panel of UN experts concluded the strike was in violation of international humanitarian law, accusing the coalition of failing to take "effective and adequate precautionary measures to minimise civilian casualties".
In the wake of the incident the United States announced an "immediate review" of its intelligence and refuelling assistance to the coalition, whose investigative team said the funeral was "wrongly targeted".
The US Navy also for the first time struck rebels directly earlier this month, hitting radar sites which Washington said were involved in missile launches against a US warship and other vessels.
The ceasefire does not apply to jihadists who have exploited the conflict to gain ground in the south.
Suspected Al-Qaeda militants on Thursday killed four soldiers at a checkpoint in the southern province of Abyan, a security official said. One attacker was killed and another wounded.
A wounded Yemeni man sits in the airport in Sanaa on October 15, 2016, as he waits for an Omani plane to evacuate him Mohammed Huwais (AFP)
A destroyed vehicle in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah on October 13, 2016
Indonesia ratifies Paris climate accord
Indonesia, one of the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters, Wednesday ratified a landmark climate rescue pact but environmentalists expressed scepticism about the government's plans to limit global warming.
The country's parliament agreed to endorse the Paris Agreement which was reached last December in the French capital, joining scores of other countries which have ratified the deal.
It requires all countries to devise plans to achieve the goal of keeping the rise in temperatures within two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Haze caused by vehicle emissions hangs over Jakarta's skyline Bay Ismoyo (AFP/File)
The accord is due to enter into force on November 4, earlier than expected, after the threshold for ratification -- by 55 countries responsible for 55 percent of emissions -- was reached earlier this month.
In its plan Indonesia pledged to cut emissions by at least 29 percent by 2030 by stepping up protection of forests and expanding the renewable energy sector.
The sprawling archipelago is home to vast tracts of tropical rain forest. But much has been felled in recent years, to be sold as timber and to make way for palm oil and pulp plantations, greatly increasing the country's emissions.
Indonesia also says that if it receives international aid such as financing, it will raise its target to a 41-percent cut by 2030.
Green groups have criticised the pledge as lacking in detail, such as ways to tackle forest fires that burn out of control in Indonesia every year, cloaking the region in toxic haze.
Last year's fires were the worst for years. A study by environmental watchdog the World Resources Institute estimated that at their peak, the blazes led to Indonesia spewing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each day than all US economic activity.
The institute usually classifies Indonesia as the fifth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Hindun Mulaika, who works on climate change with Greenpeace Indonesia, said that the "devil is in the detail" when it came to the official plans.
Malaysia halts kids boot camp over python pool fright
Malaysia has halted a team-building programme for school children after the trainers forced students to wade across a muddy pool that had a blood python in it, a senior official said Wednesday.
"We have also suspended four trainers and their six assistants. An investigation is underway into the blood python incident. It is not part of the training programme," Colonel Mohamad Noor Hassan, the head of the local Civil Defence Force, told AFP.
The incident, which took place last Saturday in northern Perak state, involved students aged between 10 to 12 years old and has sparked outrage among Malaysians after a video of the training was shared on social media.
A python on display to celebrate the Chinese New Year at the National Zoo in Kuala Lumpur on February 10, 2013 Mohd Rasfan (AFP)
The three-minute-long video shows a group of six girls screaming and struggling to get out of the pool with a python inside while a male trainer sprays water on them to prevent them from coming out.
"It is not our aim to traumatise the children. Having the python in the pool was never part of the programme. It is a mistake. I am sorry it... happened," Hassan said.
The blood python is a non-venomous snake found in Southeast Asia, where it is often bred for sale as an exotic pet or farmed for use in the leather industry.
A total of 45 students -- 17 boys and 28 girls -- participated in the programme which was aiming to build courage and encourage bonding.
Chiam Heng Keng, child psychologist and former human rights commissioner of Malaysia told AFP that those who were involved in the incident must be "psychologically off their mind".
Sri Lanka exhumes body of former army spy over murder
Sri Lankan police Wednesday exhumed the body of a retired army spy whose supposed suicide note claimed responsibility for the 2009 murder of a prominent anti-establishment newspaper editor, a police officer said.
The 52-year-old former military intelligence officer was found hanging at his home in central Sri Lanka five days ago and was buried shortly afterwards, the senior police source said.
But police now suspect the suicide note found in his pocket at the time of his death may not be genuine and want to determine his link to any criminal activity that could have led to his murder.
The body of newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunga is exhumed in Colombo on September 27, 2016 Lakruwan Wanniarachchi (AFP)
"There had been lapses in the first autopsy and the body is exhumed to carry out fresh forensic tests," the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"We are looking at his fingerprints to see if he had been involved in any criminal activity."
Investigators have begun checking his phone records and bank accounts since his retirement nine years ago.
Last month authorities reopened the investigation into the January 2009 killing of editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, a fierce critic of the then-strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse.
A serving military intelligence officer is already in custody in connection with Wickrematunga's death, which sparked an international outcry and shone a spotlight on violence against the media.
Last month authorities also exhumed Wickrematunga's body to conduct a fresh autopsy after fears that forensic evidence may have been tampered with or falsified to mislead the investigation.
Wickrematunga was the chief editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper which had accused Rajapakse's then-powerful defence secretary brother Gotabhaya of kickbacks in arms purchases, including an aircraft deal.
Last year a former minister in Rajapakse's government accused Gotabhaya of running a death squad and ordering the hit against the editor.
The newspaper was highly critical of rights abuses by troops against ethnic minority Tamils during the island's long-running separatist conflict that ended in 2009.
'Rigging' US election easier said than done, experts say
Republican candidate Donald Trump has made the insistent claim that the US presidential elections are being "rigged," but experts say massive voter fraud is highly unlikely in a system as decentralized as the United States.
"There are a lot of safeguards in place that would preclude that from happening, from federal laws to local and state laws as well," said Jo-Renee Formicola, a political scientist at Seton Hall University.
The US election system is far from perfect, as illustrated by the imbroglio over the vote count in Florida during the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Kentucky voters place their paper ballots in the box in a GOP presidential caucus on March 5, 2016, in Louisville, Kentucky John Sommers II (Getty/AFP)
A conservative-majority Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of Bush, but the sense of a "stolen" election lingered on among some Democrats -- who never fully accepted the Republican president as legitimate.
But 16 years later, the chances of mass fraud marring the contest between Trump and his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton are remote, experts say.
Even national elections like the one on November 8 are organized not by the federal government but by US states, and they tend to delegate the task to a welter of local authorities.
"The fact that every single voting district would be involved in a fraud is virtually impossible because there are so many different kinds of districts," Formicola said.
A mosaic of voting systems -- some using electronic voting machines, others paper ballots, and still others both -- add a level of complexity that would tend to thwart any attempt at wholesale voter fraud, the experts say.
Besides, Republican election officials oversee the vote in most of the key battlegrounds of the 2016 presidential elections, states like Colorado, Iowa, Michigan and Arizona.
"In person voter fraud -- that's when someone shows up and pretends to be someone else -- is incredibly rare, almost never happens and there is no evidence that it happens in numbers that are anywhere close to having an effect, even in a close election," said Cornell Law School professor Zachary Clopton.
- Evidence lacking -
Trump's charges of impending voter fraud have escalated as he has sunk below Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, in the polls.
While providing no evidence to back his claims, the New York billionaire has cast suspicion on voting in urban areas where Clinton enjoys strong backing from black and Hispanic voters.
"Mr Trump, for example, has called out Philadelphia as a place where he thinks there might be fraud," said Clopton. "I think there is virtually no evidence of in-person voter fraud at all, but I guess the idea would be that it would happen in a few places."
President Barack Obama on Tuesday derided Trump's attacks.
"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. It's unprecedented," Obama said.
"If, whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else? Then you don't have what it takes to be in this job," he said.
While the risk of in-person fraud is seen as minimal, there are more serious concerns that hackers could pose a threat on Election Day -- fuelled by recent intrusions attributed to Russian hackers in voter registration databases in Illinois and Arizona.
Those incidents have spurred federal authorities to offer local authorities their expertise in protecting their systems against hackers.
Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a civic group that advocates for clean elections, says safeguards against fraud are greater now than they were in 2012 and 2014.
- Weak link -
Still, electronic voting machines could be a weak link.
"That's perhaps one area where we might be concerned about leaving these questions to little towns and cities that may not have the technical sophistications of the federal government, but it would then require hacking multiple places if you are trying to build up," said Clopton.
Trump may be preparing the ground for a loss to Clinton by predicting that the election is rigged.
But experts worry he is undermining public confidence in a basic democratic institution.
"I can say it is highly unusual to claim 'rigging' in advance of polls even opening," said Smith. "It would not appear to be based on specific evidence, or perhaps it is better to say we have seen no evidence brought forward in support of such a statement.
"It is of grave concern to the extent that it could generate doubt in our democratic system and peaceful transference of power that we exercise every four years," she said.
A protestor holds a trash can serving as a ballot box while protesting as Donald Trump speaks on July 1, 2016 in Denver, Colorado Marc Piscotty (Getty/AFP)
Donald Trump speaks in Grand Junction, Colorado on October 18, 2016 Mandel Ngan (AFP/File)
Revelations in WikiLeaks emails from Clinton campaign
Since October 7, WikiLeaks has released thousands of emails hacked from the Gmail account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.
The Democratic White House hopeful's campaign has not confirmed or denied the authenticity of the messages but accused Russia of being behind the hacking attack in an effort to tilt the presidential election in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The emails don't contain any explosive revelations, but some have put Clinton on the defensive and are likely to come up during Wednesday night's debate in Las Vegas.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign has not confirmed or denied the authenticity of the emails but accused Russia of being behind the hack in an effort to tilt the election in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump Brendan Smialowski (AFP/File)
- Wall Street speeches -
The biggest revelations came out of paid speeches Clinton gave to investment banks and other financial institutions from 2013 to 2015.
The former secretary of state had refused to release the transcripts, a move that caused significant problems in her primary battle against Bernie Sanders, who accused her of being too cozy with Wall Street.
The WikiLeaks releases contained excerpts of several speeches, as well as full transcripts of three speeches that Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs, which showed how apparently at-ease the Democrat is in front of bankers.
She displayed pragmatism and called for compromise, a stance that's less antagonistic than her public positions toward Wall Street.
In another address to a real estate group in April 2013, she said "politics is like sausage being made" and "you need both a public and a private position." She compared it to Abraham Lincoln's political maneuvering in trying to pass the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery.
- Free trade -
In October last year, Clinton came out in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal negotiated by President Barack Obama with 11 Asia-Pacific countries.
Internal messages revealed the dilemma of the candidate who had in the past defended the controversial agreement.
"This is indeed a hard balance to strike," wrote Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin, "since we don't want to invite mockery for being too enthusiastically opposed to a deal she once championed, or over-claiming how bad it is, since it's a very close call on the merits."
According to the transcript of a speech to Banco Itau, Clinton said in 2013, "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders" -- a view that has raised eyebrows in the protectionist wing of the Democratic party.
- Chelsea -
The messages detailed clashes between Clinton's daughter Chelsea and longtime Bill Clinton aide Doug Band over operations at the Clinton Global Initiative, an offshoot of the Clinton Foundation.
Chelsea Clinton had emailed Podesta several times alleging improper behavior by Band, who was on the board of the Clinton Global Initiative, and questioned the ties between the organization and Band's consulting firm Teneo.
In a November 2013 message, Band called Chelsea Clinton a "spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues."
- Lobbyists -
In April 2015, the Clinton team had to decide whether to accept campaign donations from US lobbyists representing foreign states -- noting they could run into issues accepting money from those representing countries like Iraq, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Libya and the United Arab Emirates.
After a great deal of back and forth, Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook said he decided they should just accept the donations while "dealing with any attacks."
Communications director Jennifer Palmieri said simply, "Take the money!!"
- Contempt for Catholics? -
Trump has jumped on a 2011 exchange from the WikiLeaks emails to attack Clinton as anti-Catholic.
In an informal email to a fellow at a liberal think-thank, Palmieri said she thought News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson are Catholic because it's "the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion."
"Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals," she wrote.
Israel rejects Palestinian request to move 'IS-threatened' graves
Israel has turned down a request to transfer to the occupied West Bank graves of Palestinian leaders buried in Syria where their tombs are threatened by jihadists, officials said Wednesday.
The Palestinians have sought to transfer the bodies after Islamic State (IS) group jihadists started to smash gravestones in the embattled Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk on the outskirts of Damascus.
"We presented a request to the Israelis to allow us to move the bodies of three Palestinian leaders from a cemetery in the Yarmuk camp close to Damascus to Palestine," Palestinian minister Hussein al-Sheikh told AFP.
According to an official at the Syrian branch of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, IS has destroyed gravestones in the embattled Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria
They were informed on Monday that the request was rejected, he said, confirming a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israel's defence ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories confirmed they had received a request but turned it down, without providing further details.
Among the bodies the Palestinians wanted to remove was that of Khalil al-Wazir, better known as Abu Jihad, who was assassinated by Israeli commandos in Tunisia in 1988, as well as another senior PLO figure, Saad Sayil.
IS destroyed gravestones in the cemetery on Sunday, according to the head of political affairs at the Syrian branch of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Anwar Abdel Hadi.
Nigeria's Buhari meets Chibok girls
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday met the 21 Chibok girls who were released by Boko Haram last week, pledging to "redouble" his efforts to rescue those still being held.
Speaking at the presidential villa in Nigeria's capital of Abuja, Buhari addressed the girls and their families saying "we shall redouble efforts to ensure that we fulfil our pledge of bringing the remaining girls back home".
Buhari said that he hoped the girls would go on to complete their education after their ordeal at the hands of Boko Haram, whose name in the Hausa language spoken across northern Nigeria means "Western education is sin".
Some of the 21 freed Chibok girls are received at the Nigerian Vice President office in Abuja on October 13, 2016 Philip Ojisua (AFP/File)
"Obviously it is not too late for the girls to go back to school and continue the pursuit of their studies," Buhari said to the girls, who were clad in new, brightly coloured dresses and head wraps.
"These dear daughters of ours have seen the worst that the world has to offer. It is now time for them to experience the best that the world can do for them."
The 21 girls were part of a group of over two hundred schoolgirls kidnapped from the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok in April 2014.
They were released last week following negotiations between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss government.
On Sunday, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said that the government was hoping to secure the release of 83 other girls believed to be from Chibok being held by a different Boko Haram faction.
The release of the 21 Chibok girls is a triumph for President Buhari, who was voted into power on a platform vowing to stamp out corruption and crush Boko Haram.
Morocco king seeks support for AU bid in east Africa
Moroccan King Mohammed VI on Wednesday began a tour of east Africa to shore up support for a historic bid to rejoin the African Union after more than three decades.
The visit, kicking off in Rwanda and set to take in Tanzania and Ethiopia, also aims to forge diplomatic and economic ties with a region largely ignored by the north African country up until now.
"We have never had any presence, neither diplomatic nor economic, nor cultural, nor historic, with east Africa," a high-ranking member of the king's delegation told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The King of Morocco, Mohammed VI (C) is welcomed by Rwandan President Paul Kagame (L) on October 19, 2016 in Kigali, during his first stage tour of East Africa Stephanie Aglietti (AFP)
"Aside from west and central Africa we must open up to east Africa and that is what is under way. The context of Morocco's return to the African Union is there too of course, and these are important countries in the AU."
In Rwanda, Mohammed met with President Paul Kagame and signed 19 bilateral agreements, mostly in the economic sector. It was not clear exactly when he would leave for Tanzania.
Rabat officially requested to rejoin the AU in September, 32 years after quitting the bloc in protest at its decision to accept Western Sahara as a member.
Morocco has occupied the sparsely populated Western Sahara area since 1975 in a move that was not recognised by the international community.
It maintains that Western Sahara is an integral part of the kingdom even though local Sahrawi people have long campaigned for the right to self-determination.
In 1991, the United Nations brokered a ceasefire between Moroccan troops and Sahrawi rebels of the Algerian-backed Polisario Front but a promised referendum to settle the status of the desert territory is yet to materialise.
The tour of east Africa "is also a way to get closer to countries which historically had positions which were hostile to Morocco's interests", said the Moroccan source, adding that the region had been considered an ally of Algeria.
The Moroccan monarch in July said his nation's decision to return to the AU did not mean it was changing its stance on Western Sahara.
EU summit to condemn Russia over Aleppo: draft statement
EU leaders plan to "strongly condemn" Russia at their summit on Thursday for its alleged attacks on civilians in Syria's Aleppo, urge an end to fighting and call for a revived political process.
A draft of their planned statement obtained by AFP omits the threat of sanctions, despite such calls from the United States and Britain, but it sharpens the tone against Russia.
"The European Council strongly condemns the attacks by the Syrian regime and its allies, notably Russia, on civilians in Aleppo," according to the draft.
Colour-smeared teddy bears are laid by campaigning group Avaaz to protest against the bombing of Syrian city Aleppo on October 19, 2016 in Berlin ahead of a meeting of leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany Steffi Loos (AFP)
It asks them to urgently allow "unhindered humanitarian access to Aleppo" and to other parts of Syria while calling "for an immediate cessation of hostilities and for resumption of a credible political process under UN auspices."
The draft warns that "those responsible for breaches of international humanitarian law and human rights law must be held accountable."
In it the 28 leaders also ask EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and the European Commission, the EU executive, to continue pursuing medical evacuations in cooperation with the United Nations.
It also asks her to push for a political transition in Syria by working with the region's main players which were not named.
The statement ratcheted up the tone against Russia after EU foreign ministers for the first time strongly condemned Russia by name Monday for the bombardment of Aleppo and warned that the strikes may amount to war crimes.
EU President Donald Tusk, who will host the summit, warned of the need to maintain European unity over Russia amid weakening support for sanctions imposed on Moscow over its involvement in Ukraine.
The leaders are due to hold a discussion on their Russia strategy over dinner at the summit.
"Our main asset in dealing with Russia remains our unity. To date, regardless of our differences, we have always remained united and we must continue to do so," Tusk told a press conference.
"This will also be crucial when it comes to Russia's role in Syria," he added.
On top of sanctions pressure from Washington and London, European Parliament leaders Manfred Weber, Guy Verhofstadt and Rebecca Harms sent Tusk a letter urging him to push for coercive "measures."
They asked for a summit decision on "a set of enforcement tools to be activated should Russia continue violating UN Security Council resolutions and continue bombing civilians," according to a copy of the letter obtained by AFP.
Ex-army head Aoun tipped for Lebanon presidency
Lebanon's powerful ex-premier Saad Hariri is expected to endorse Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun for president, a post that has been vacant for almost 30 months, a senior politician said Wednesday.
Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the mandate of Michel Sleiman expired, amid deep rivalries among Christian and Muslim politicians exacerbated by the conflict in Syria.
Since then parliament, which has twice extended its mandate, has met on 45 occasions to elect a president but deep rivalries and disagreements saw most deputies boycot the sessions.
Lebanese member of parliament Michel Aoun is allied with the Shiite movement Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and has dispatched fighters to neighbouring Syria to bolster the regime of President Bashar al-Assad Joseph Eid (AFP/File)
The assembly is due to convene next week for the 46th time amid high expectations that a president will be elected and that the job will go to Aoun, a Maronite Christian and former army commander.
"Since Hariri has decided to endorse him, and save any last minute change, Michel Aoun will be elected by parliament on October 30," said the senior politician, who declined to be named.
Hariri, a former Sunni Muslim prime minister whose party belongs to a Western and Saudi-backed political bloc, had fiercely opposed Aoun's candidacy.
Aoun is allied with the Shiite movement Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and has dispatched fighters to neighbouring Syria to bolster the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
On Wednesday Al-Akhbar newspaper, which is close to Hezbollah, said that Hariri had informed his political bloc and his allies of his decision to endorse Aoun.
"All that's left is to officially announce it," added Al-Akhbar.
Aged 81, the ex-general Aoun is a controversial figure.
He served as head of the armed forces and briefly as prime minister during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and was then a staunch opponent of Syrian military presence in Lebanon.
But he shocked many by brokering an alliance with Hezbollah in 2006, a year after his return home from exile in France and after Syria pulled its troops from Lebanon.
According to a source close to Hariri, the ex-prime minister struck a deal with Aoun to endorse him in exchange for his return as premier.
Lebanon's president is elected by parliament, and the post is always reserved for a Maronite Christian under a power-sharing agreement.
US state of Georgia prepares to execute cop killer
The southern US state of Georgia was preparing Wednesday to execute a man convicted of killing a police officer, after the state parole board denied a request for clemency.
Gregory Lawler, 63, was set to die by lethal injection at 7 pm (2300 GMT) at a prison in Jackson, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) outside Atlanta, prison authorities said.
According to court documents, Lawler during a domestic dispute in 1997 opened fire with an AR-15 rifle on two officers at his home, killing one and seriously wounding the other.
Georgia man Gregory Lawler was set to be executed by lethal injection on October 19, 2016 at a prison in Jackson for killing a police officer Erik S. Lesser (Getty/AFP/File)
On Tuesday, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a clemency petition from Lawler's defense team that argued his life should be spared because he was recently diagnosed with autism, which had caused him to believe the officers came to his home to harm him.
The pace of executions is declining in the United States, due to a combination of factors including a shortage of the drugs used to carry out in lethal injections.
The US Supreme Court could still step in and halt Lawler's execution.
Pakistan's 'cat-eyed' tea seller sparks national soul searching
A Pakistani tea merchant with velvet eyes saw his life changed this week when his portrait spread around the Internet, sparking ardent debates on class, objectification, and the place of ethnic Pashtuns in society.
Arshad Khan had no idea he had set the Internet alight from Pakistan to India and beyond: he has no phone, and cannot read.
"It was a real surprise," the young "chai wala", or tea seller, told AFP.
A candid photo of Pakistani Chia wala (tea seller), Arshad Khan hit the internet, sparking debates on reverse sexism, class privileges, and objectification in Pakistan Farooq Naeem (AFP)
"I was aware that I am handsome but you can't do anything when you are poor," he said, adding that the image has "changed the way I think."
In the candid photograph, snapped by a passing photographer and posted on Instagram, Khan prepares Pakistan's ubiquitous milk tea, his blue green eyes looking frankly into the camera.
It set social media users swooning, with the 18-year-old's image shared tens of thousands of times since October 14.
By Tuesday, the Islamabad market where photographer Javeria Ali took the fateful shot was swarmed by dozens eager to gawk at the young worker.
But in a country where women have long fought for rights and rarely express their feelings publicly, that fervour soon morphed into an intense debate on what it meant to reduce a poor man to a beautiful object.
"We are more used to seeing this happen to women, it is still creepy whan it happens to a boy," feminist columnist Bina Shah told AFP.
"Just because people are bored does not mean you can play with someone's life."
- The ick factor -
Columnist Maria Amir concluded that "reverse sexism is still a form of sexism" on the website of Pakistan's biggest-selling English language newspaper, Dawn.
But she also echoed many in noting that the true "ick factor" was in social class rather than gender.
"The elite getting excited over a hot #ChaiWala reeks of class privilege and the objectification of working class men," tweeted @nidkirm, who described herself as a sociologist based in Lahore.
And in a column in the Express Tribune Farahnaz Zahidi mocked the "surprise" that someone poor could be good-looking.
"(T)he upper tier bourgeois of Pakistan have come to believe that even looks and God-gifted attributes are co-dependent on money and affluence?" she wrote.
Indeed, in his first appearance on television, viewers laughed at Khan's awkward speech and the Western suit in which he appeared uncomfortable.
"No girl would agree to marry him," wrote Twitter user @ItsMahah.
Even the colour of Khan's cool gaze provoked discomfort in some like columnist Amir, who wrote "apparently there is no expiry date on our colonial baggage".
Light skin and eyes are the attribute of many Pashtuns, tribal inhabitants of northwest Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, romanticised as warriors by the British.
Others expressed concern about the risk of exploitation of a young man so little armed for success. A local brand was quick to publish pictures of him, but Khan said he has not signed any modelling contract.
The third of 17 children, Khan has never been to school. He said he hoped his newfound fame would allow him to "move forward".
Vegetable seller Saeed Ahmed worked in the market alongside Khan. "His eyes were so beautiful that we used to make fun of him and call him 'cat eyes'," he told AFP.
"But we never even thought that he would one day become famous like this."
Indian newspapers were the first to seize on the "Cinderella story", bringing frivolity to recent tensions between the rival neighbours with tweets calling Khan a "nuclear bomb".
"I send a message of peace to my Indian fans," Khan said.
Appearing uncomfortable during his first television appearance, Arshad Khan (C) said, "I was aware that I am handsome but you can't do anything when you are poor," and that the social media response to his image was "a real surprise" Farooq Naeem (AFP)
I. Coast start Nations Cup campaign against Togo
Ivory Coast will start their defence of the Africa Cup of Nations against Togo in January, according to the draw made Wednesday.
Ivory Coast, who beat Ghana on penalties in the 2015 final, are in Group C against Togo, Morocco and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hosts Gabon, who saw political turmoil after a disputed election in August, will stage the opening match in Libreville on January 14 against Guinea-Bissau, who make their first appearance in the 16-nation tournament.
Fomer Senegalese football player Khalilou Fadiga (L) shows a piece of paper bearing the name of Ouganda next to Confederation of African Football (CAF) secretary general Hicham El Amrani during the 2017 African Cup of Nations draw ceremony Marco Longari (AFP)
Cameroon and Burkina Faso are also in Group A.
The other group favourites, Algeria and Ghana, start against Zimbabwe and Uganda respectively.
Algeria have the toughest first round in Group B where they also take on Tunisia and Senegal for one of the two qualifying places for the quarter-finals.
Ghana are the team to beat in Group D. Apart from Uganda, they will take on Egypt, making their return to the contest after missing three finals, and Mali.
The final is in Libreville on February 5.
The draw produced three groups containing three of the top 10 ranked football nations in Africa, according to FIFA.
Algeria (2), Senegal (3) and Tunisia (4) are in one mini-league, Ivory Coast (1), DR Congo (6) and Morocco (10) in another and Ghana (5), Egypt (7) and Mali (9) in a third.
A lot of teams will get to know each other extremely well, too, as Ivory Coast and Morocco also share a 2018 World Cup qualifying group, as do Ghana, Egypt and Uganda.
Ivory Coast were not impressive in qualifying, drawing three of four matches against Sierra Leone and Sudan, and Morocco are probably a team they wanted to dodge.
The Moroccans are coached by Herve Renard, the charismatic Frenchman who masterminded the Ivorians' triumph in Equatorial Guinea last year.
He then left for a brief, unsuccessful spell in the French Ligue 1 before being hired by Morocco, and they became the first qualifiers for the 2017 tournament.
Renard has won the Cup of Nations twice, taking no-hopers Zambia to the title in Gabon four years ago.
"If I had to name teams I wanted to avoid before the draw, I would have said some of the teams in our group," admitted Renard.
"To face Ivory Coast is difficult, especially as we have had the chance to know their players, it's practically the same squad.
"But we have to be competitive. The match against Claude Le Roy (coach of Togo) will be something that again will be difficult for me.
"But over 90 minutes I have to forget everything this man did for me and do everything in order to beat him."
Veteran Le Roy has won the Cup of Nations once, with Cameroon in 1988, and Gabon will mark his ninth appearance at the Cup of Nations finals.
He has failed to reach the knockout stage only once.
Being grouped with Ghana offers Egypt yet another chance to avenge one of their most humiliating results, a 6-1 thrashing by the Black Stars in a 2014 World Cup qualifier.
No team will be more excited about going to Gabon in January than Uganda -- the last time they qualified was in 1978 when the notorious Idi Amin ruled the east African state.
Uganda coach Milutin 'Micho' Sredojevic said: This is a tough and competitive group, but I believe in the players and the team.
"We have a realistic chance to get good results and reach the knockout stage."
Although Gabon are the second lowest ranked team among the 16 contenders, they look set to make the last eight, probably with four-time champions Cameroon.
The hosts rely heavily on 2015 African Footballer of the Year Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, a prolific goalscorer with German giants Borussia Dortmund.
During the draw ceremony, Gabonese officials emphasised that the country was ready to host a tournament they co-staged with neighbours Equatorial Guinea in 2012.
A disputed presidential election victory by incumbent Ali Bongo two months ago triggered riots with opposition parties claiming vote fraud.
New prime minister Emmanuel Issoze-Ngondet said: "We will not back away from the tournament. We are ready and will organise an exceptional tournament."
Africa Cup of Nations 2017 Paz Pizarro, Vincent Lefai (AFP)
US to deploy missile defense to South Korea 'soon'
The United States said Wednesday that it would deploy a missile-defense system to South Korea as soon as possible, despite opposition from China.
US Secretary Of State John Kerry confirmed that the THAAD system would soon be sent to the peninsula at a meeting with South Korean ministers in Washington.
Washington sees the US-built Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system as protection against North Korea's pursuit of missile and nuclear technology.
L-R: South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter discuss Korean missle defense Nicholas Kamm (AFP)
But China has warned it sees it as a threat to the balance of power in the region, fearing it would make its own nuclear deterrent less credible.
"The United States will do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves and to honor the security commitment we have made to our allies," Kerry said.
"And we will deploy as soon as possible a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to our Korean ally," he added.
Kerry and US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter were welcoming South Korea's foreign minister, Yun Byung-Se, and defense minister, Han Min-Koo.
Washington and Seoul agreed to install THAAD this summer following repeated nuclear and missile tests by Kim Jong-Un's authoritarian Pyongyang regime.
The move angered Beijing, the main trading partner of otherwise isolated North Korea and a key player in international efforts to control the regime.
US general suspects Iran role in Huthi attacks on US ships
Iran may have played a role in recent Huthi missile attacks against US warships in the Red Sea, a top US general said Wednesday.
Iranian-backed Huthi rebels are believed to be behind a series of incidents this month that saw surface-to-surface missiles fired at the USS Mason on at least two occasions.
In response, US cruise missiles on October 13 struck Huthi radar sites believed to have been used to target the weapons.
Iranian-backed Huthi rebels are believed to be behind a series of incidents this month that saw surface-to-surface missiles fired at the USS Mason on at least two occasions
"I do think Iran is playing a role in some of this. They have a relationship with the Houtis, so I do suspect there is a role in there," General Joseph Votel told a Washington think tank.
Votel heads the US military's Central Command, which oversees operations across the Middle East.
His statement was the most forward-leaning so far of a US official in describing Iranian involvement in the missile attacks.
The Huthi missiles either fell short of their targets or were thwarted by US anti-missile defenses.
The Pentagon has described two attacks so far on the Mason or other US warships.
Officials are still analyzing a third possible attack on Saturday to see whether additional missiles were fired.
We "are trying to ... understand this as much as we can, so we can properly attribute what is happening, and understand how these attacks are taking place," Votel told the Center for American Progress.
"And more importantly, how the decisions are being made to launch these attacks, so we can take action against that."
The Pentagon has not disclosed the type of missiles the Huthis used, but Votel noted that "some of the technology that we've seen there are things that are associated with" Iran.
But "it's not totally exclusive to them. Certainly there are others that have shore-based missiles and may be moving that in there," he added.
Yemen's conflict has killed more than 6,800 people, wounded more than 35,000 and displaced at least three million since the coalition launched military operations, according to the United Nations.
Workers injured in Saudi Aramco oil facility blaze
Several workers were injured in a fire at a Saudi Aramco crude oil facility near Riyadh on Wednesday, without affecting operations, the Gulf oil giant said.
"Aramco regrets to report that several workers were injured as a result of a fire at a crude oil facility in Alwsea and all are being treated," it said in a post on its Twitter account.
"The fire is under control. Company's operations are not impacted," it added.
Saudi Aramco did not immediately give an exact number of those hurt in a fire at a crude oil facility near Riyadh Fayez Nureldine (AFP/File)
Aramco did not immediately give an exact number of those hurt but Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh said 17 people were hospitalised, with three needing treatment in intensive care.
In September, a fire ripped through Aramco's Gulf coast Ras Tanura oil terminal injuring eight workers.
The company is at the heart of Saudi Arabia's wide-ranging Vision 2030 plan to wean the economy of the world's biggest petroleum exporter off oil.
Love it or hate it? Two Americans dish on Obamacare
Some Americans are overjoyed with Obamacare. Others say it is a nightmare.
To understand why, here are two men's opposing experiences with US health insurance since Obamacare, known formally as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), became law in 2010.
- 'I love it' -
Formally known as the Affordable Care Act, the Obamacare insurance became law in 2010, and while some enjoy its affordability, others have complains and are opting out Joe Raedle (Getty/AFP/File)
Johann Ali, 40, actually giggles when he talks about his health insurance.
"I love it," says the self-employed environmental consultant.
First, he raves about his son, Kyle, who is 19, works part-time, and has been able to find a good insurance plan for $99 per month. His annual earnings of about $16,000 allowed him to get a federal discount, slashing the cost from the list price of $199 per month.
Ali, too, found an affordable plan by purchasing an individual policy directly from an insurer for $233 per month.
Before the Affordable Care Act, Ali says he had employer group coverage and his monthly cost was around $900.
Preventive care, such as his annual checkup, now costs him nothing extra. Gone are the co-pays, and the occasional denials of coverage when an insurer did not think certain tests were merited, he says.
He also benefits from a key provision in Obamacare that makes it illegal to discriminate against people by refusing to insure them, or charging them more for pre-existing conditions.
Even though Ali does not have asthma, he has a prescription for a brand-name asthma medication that helps with an allergy-like condition. As a result, his monthly payments, or premiums, used to rise 10-15 percent per year, he says.
Those price hikes no longer happen, he says.
There is one common downside to Ali's plan: It carries a high deductible, meaning he must pay about $5,000 out of pocket before many insurance benefits kick in.
But Ali also has a friend who was an insurance agent, and urged him to get an additional "accident policy" for $150 per year.
That policy paid off -- literally -- when Ali broke his ankle two years ago. The hospital bills totaled $90,000. He filed his accident claim and got a $10,000 check, which more than covered his deductible. He paid nothing out of pocket, he says.
"I was lucky enough to have somebody to educate me," says Ali.
"Insurance is set up in this country to confuse you. That is how they keep you in the dark about maximizing your benefits."
- 'Nobody takes it' -
Todd Ulmen, 50, runs a retail clothing business in Miami.
He provides health insurance for his two full-time workers, but must make sure his part-timers work fewer than 25 hours per week, or he would have to pay for their coverage as well.
"If you had to provide insurance for everybody, you couldn't be in business," he says.
Ulmen's own insurance did not change the first year after Obamacare became law. The second year, his insurer said his policy, which cost about $400 per month, would no longer be available.
"I said OK, fine, give me your best policy. And they did not tell me they were putting me in the Obamacare program," says Ulmen.
Ulmen was stunned when he went for a checkup "and they told me, 'we don't take Obamacare.'"
Ulmen paid for that visit out of pocket, but then needed to see an eye specialist, and a cardiologist.
"You cannot find a specialist in Miami that will take that insurance," he says.
Ultimately, Ulmen realized he had been given a health insurance plan from the ACA marketplace, or exchange, that did not meet his needs.
So, he chose to purchase a private plan directly from a major insurer for about $600 per month.
"I tell people if they have Obamacare, just go to the emergency room because that is the only way you are going to get decent care," he says.
"Insurance is fine and dandy but if you can't get anyone to take it, it doesn't do any good."
- An expert explains gaps -
So what is happening here?
"People are finding their doctors are dropping out of their plans," says Steven Ullmann, an expert in healthcare policy at the University of Miami.
"Insurance companies are moving to very narrow networks where you have just a selection of a few doctors in each specialty, and a few hospitals. That is a huge trend."
The price of health insurance is rising, in part, because many healthy young adults have not signed up. Therefore the overall risk pool has not fallen enough, he explains.
An additional 20 million people have become insured since the passage of Obamacare, but they "tend to be people over 35 or over 45 and are more prone to illness."
About another 20 million people "are uninsured and those are mainly the 'young invincibles,' in their 20s and early 30s."
If money is tight, there is little incentive to sign up. The tax penalty for not being insured is $695 for the entire year, about half the cost of buying insurance, which runs at least $1,500 per year.
Finally, there is "the gap."
Ali's son Kyle avoided it, because he earns just enough over the poverty line that he qualifies for a federal subsidy.
But many find that they make too much to qualify for Medicaid, which insures the poor, and not enough to earn a government-issued discount.
Initially, Obamacare called for expanding Medicaid to 133 percent of the poverty level, but it was rejected by the Supreme Court.
About half of states have opted not to expand Medicaid, including Florida.
That means individuals who earn less than Kyle, say between $11,800-15,800 per year, "fall in a hole," explains Ullmann.
"They do not have access to health insurance, except for the full, extremely high-priced health insurance. So they continue to be uninsured."
Johann A. Ali raves about how his son, who works part-time, has been able to find a good insurance plan for $99 per month Gaston De Cardenas (AFP)
Officer who announced Burkina Faso coup released
Burkina Faso authorities have released Colonel Mamadou Bamba, the officer who announced last year's abortive coup, a judicial source said Wednesday.
"Yesterday (Tuesday), Colonel Bamba left prison. He has been granted provisional freedom," a high-ranking military magistrate told AFP.
Bamba went on television to announce the coup on September 17, reading a statement saying the army had seized control from a transitional government which took office after former president Blaise Compaore fled in October 2014 to Ivory Coast.
Colonel Mamadou Bamba announce last year's abortive coup on September 17, 2015, reading a statement saying the army had seized control from a transitional government which took office after former president Blaise Compaore fled to Ivory Coast Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)
Bamba was not a member of Compaore's presidential guard which was behind the putsch but was jailed along with coup leader Gilbert Diendere.
In all, 85 people have been charged with organising the coup and warrants have been issues for the arrest of a further ten. Around 40 suspects have been granted temporary release, according to an AFP count.
The military judiciary has meanwhile called for International Criminal Court (ICC) expert Hermann Kuenzel to analyse a recorded telephone conversation between the president of Ivory Coast's national assembly Guillaume Soro and former Burkinabe foreign minister Djibril Bassole.
In the course if the conversation, Soro is understood to have implicitly given backing to the coup officers as they struggled to push through their operation which collapsed within days.
A warrant for the arrest of Soro brought relations between Abidjan and Ouagadougou to a low ebb and pursuit of the former rebel leader was scotched.
French expert Norbert Pheulpin, brought in by Bassole's defence team, said the recording was a splicing together of "three or four different phone conversations" between Soro and Bassole.
Fragile Yemen truce comes into effect under UN plan
A fragile ceasefire took effect in war-ravaged Yemen just before midnight Wednesday, under a United Nations plan, as combatants face mounting pressure to end more than 18 months of fighting.
The UN special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, had announced on Monday that the cessation of hostilities would take effect "at 23:59 Yemen time (2059 GMT) on 19 October 2016, for an initial period of 72 hours, subject to renewal".
It is the sixth attempt to end the bloodshed since a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in March 2015 to support the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels overran much of Yemen.
A Yemeni fighter from the separatist Southern Movement, loyal to the government forces, gestures on October 13, 2016, in the southern city of Aden Saleh Al-Obeidi (AFP/File)
Shortly after the truce began, the coalition issued a statement saying it "will abide by the ceasefire", which aims for "distribution of the greatest possible humanitarian and medical assistance" to Yemen's people, especially the besieged city of Taez.
It said it will continue an air and maritime embargo, to prevent weapons shipments to the rebels, and will maintain airborne reconnaissance.
The rebels' military spokesman, General Sharaf Lokman, said his forces will respect the ceasefire as long as "the enemy" also abides by it on land, sea and air.
However, he urged his fighters to be ready to retaliate against "all aggression."
Early Thursday there were reports of continued combat.
Three pro-government fighters were killed near the Red Sea in Hajja province when Huthi rebels, after midnight, began a counter-offensive to retake positions lost before the truce, a loyalist officer, Colonel Abdel Ghani al-Chebli, told AFP.
"The rebels didn't respect earlier truces and we have orders to retaliate. We are in a defensive position," he said.
Military sources and residents said there had also been fighting around Taez, and pro-Hadi positions came under fire in Sarwah, east of Sanaa.
But civilians have paid the highest price in the war.
Almost 6,900 people have been killed -- more than half of them civilians -- while another three million are displaced and millions more need food aid.
- 'Urgent humanitarian assistance' -
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini late Wednesday said the truce should be a first step towards resuming UN-led peace talks.
"The ceasefire must be respected by all sides and its duration extended so as to create the necessary conditions for such negotiations," she said.
Mogherini added the ceasefire will allow urgent humanitarian assistance to reach large parts of the population that have suffered drastic shortages.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry encouraged the "unconditional renewal" of the truce.
The last ceasefire attempt, which began in April alongside UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait, failed with both the rebels and the coalition accusing each other of breaches.
After peace talks collapsed in August, fighting escalated until an October 8 coalition air strike which the UN said killed more than 140 people and wounded at least 525 at a funeral in Sanaa.
The United States announced an "immediate review" of its intelligence and refuelling assistance to the coalition, whose investigative team then released unusually quick findings from a probe of the incident.
It said a coalition aircraft "wrongly targeted" the funeral based on "incorrect information".
In another major development, the US Navy for the first time targeted Huthi rebels directly.
On October 13 it hit radar sites which, the US said, were involved in missile launches against a US warship and other vessels.
Yemen's Huthi rebels are allied with members of the security forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
They control the capital Sanaa and other territory but coalition-backed forces earlier pushed them back from the southern port of Aden and adjacent areas.
- 'More optimistic' -
Both the rebels and pro-government forces have come under increased international pressure to silence their guns.
Hadi's government said it would agree to the truce if rebels also adhered to it and ended their siege of Taez.
The UN's humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, on Wednesday told reporters he hoped the truce will provide a chance for aid workers to reach areas isolated by the fighting.
Mustafa Alani, a senior adviser to the Gulf Research Centre, said the prospects for peace were growing.
"I am more optimistic, actually, because the environment is completely different from the previous" truce, he told AFP.
Saudi Arabia and Washington accuse Iran of arming the rebels, charges Tehran denies.
Numerous analysts question the extent of Tehran's influence over the Huthis, a minority group which fought six wars against Yemen's government from 2004 to 2010.
A UN report said air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen were suspected of causing around half of all civilian deaths Mohammed Huwais (AFP/File)
A wounded Yemeni man sits in the airport in Sanaa on October 15, 2016, as he waits for an Omani plane to evacuate him Mohammed Huwais (AFP)
A destroyed vehicle in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah on October 13, 2016
British Al-Jazeera reporter arrested in Somalia
Somalian security forces have arrested a British journalist working for Al-Jazeera, the Qatari news channel said Wednesday.
Hamza Mohamed was arrested in Mogadishu on Tuesday along with a driver, fixer and cameraman. He had been in the country for a week on a reporting assignment.
Al-Jazeera said it had been in touch with Hamza Mohamed since his detention and was "hoping ... that he will be released without further delay".
Al-Jazeera journalist Hamza Mohamed had frequently travelled to Somalia over the past few years from where he had reported "with accuracy and integrity", Al-Jazeera said in an online report Mohamed Abdiwahab (AFP/File)
Somali authorities had informed Al-Jazeera that they had detained the journalist but that he had not yet been charged with anything.
Hamza Mohamed had frequently travelled to the country over the past few years from where he had reported "with accuracy and integrity", Al-Jazeera said in an online report.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), meanwhile, said Hamza and his colleagues were arrested on their return from a trip outside the capital, during which they were suspected of visiting territory controlled by the radical Islamist group Shabaab to interview senior Shabaab leaders.
"We call on the Somali authorities to immediately free Al-Jazeera correspondent Hamza Mohamed and the two cameramen, who have been held by the intelligence services since yesterday (Tuesday)," RSF said.
"Journalists are constantly caught in the crossfire of the war between government forces and Al-Shabaab's armed militants. They are either the victims of deadly reprisals by the militants or they are arrested by the authorities on suspicion of collaborating with Al-Shabaab."
The men's detention by the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) was also confirmed to Radio Dalsan by Abdifatah Halane, a spokesman for the government of Banadir, the region that includes the capital, RSF said, adding that their equipment was also seized.
A British foreign ministry spokeswoman told AFP: "We are looking into reports that a British national has been detained in Somalia and we are ready to provide consular assistance if needed."
Shabaab fighters are trying to overthrow the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu.
Kerry warns Russia taking Aleppo won't solve anything
US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Russia on Wednesday that seizing the city of Aleppo will not help end the Syrian civil war and may further radicalize opposition forces.
Speaking as officials from the US, Russia and Syria's neighbors met in Geneva to seek ways to restore a ceasefire in the civil war, Kerry said Russia's bombardment of rebel-held areas was a mistake.
Moscow argues that it is supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad against Al-Qaeda-linked "terrorists" and blames Washington for failing to separate moderate rebels from the hardliners.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia's bombardment of rebel-held areas in Syria was a mistake Nicholas Kamm (AFP)
But, speaking in Washington after talks with his South Korean counterpart, Kerry said: "Every bomb that's dropped by Russia and the Assad regime is radicalizing more and more people."
After the collapse last month of a short-lived US and Russian-brokered truce, the Syrian regime launched a major offensive against the rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo, home to an estimated 250,000 civilians.
"If Russia and Assad succeed in taking Aleppo, the fundamental dynamic of this war does not change," Kerry said, warning Russia to recommit to the search for a viable ceasefire deal.
"If you don't have a political settlement you can't have peace and so Russia needs to understand this is not making things better, it's making things worse.
"And we have put on the table an opportunity for Russia to make a different choice, a simple choice," he continued.
Man arrested in shooting of Alaska police officer
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) A 29-year-old man was arrested Tuesday in connection with a shooting that left an Alaska police officer seriously injured.
Anthony George Jenkins-Alexie was arrested Tuesday morning as he was walking on a local street, Fairbanks police said. Jenkins-Alexie has a "lengthy criminal history and has previously made threats toward law enforcement," Acting Fairbanks Police Chief Brad Johnson said at a news conference.
Jenkins-Alexie is facing charges of attempted murder, assault, vehicle theft, tampering with evidence and theft of a firearm in connection with the shooting early Sunday of Sgt. Allen Brandt.
This photo released by Fairbanks Police Department shows Anthony George Jenkins-Alexie. The 29-year-old man was arrested in a shooting that left an Alaska police officer seriously injured. Jenkins-Alexie, of Fairbanks, is facing charges of attempted murder, assault and other counts in connection with the shooting early Sunday of Sgt. Allen Brandt. (Fairbanks Police Department via AP)
Johnson said there are no other suspects in the shooting besides Jenkins-Alexie.
"After interviewing him and based on his own admissions and significant corroborating evidence, I can assure the community that he acted alone and that there is no continuing threat to my fellow police officers or our citizens," Johnson said.
Brandt is recovering at an Anchorage hospital after he was struck four times in the legs, police said. Body armor protected Brandt from a shot to the chest, but bullet fragments struck the officer's eye, police said.
Brandt, an 11-year veteran, was shot as he responded to reports of shots fired in a residential neighborhood just east of downtown. He was among officers responding to the scene.
Brandt's dashboard camera records him slowing down as a man on a nearby sidewalk approaches with his hands at his side. As the patrol car stops, the man moves his right hand toward his coat pocket but continues out of the picture.
A few seconds later, the man, gripping a handgun with both hands, runs around the front of the car.
Brandt managed to fire back at the suspect, but police did not say at Tuesday's briefing if the suspect was hit. Police spokeswoman Yumi McCulloch did not have an immediate answer to the question.
Police have not released details of how Johnson exited the car or from where he returned fire.
The suspect drove off in the patrol car. Police found it roughly two blocks away. The dash cam shows the suspect again walking in front of the patrol car, illuminated by the vehicle's headlights.
Brandt moved off the street. He radioed his location and reported that he had been shot. Responding officers administered first aid.
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported that Brenda Riley, a woman who lives nearby, was the first person to reach the injured officer. Riley, the executive director of the Fairbanks Children's Museum, said Brandt was conscious and radioing dispatchers when she arrived.
"I just held his head and did that mom thing of 'Look at me, look at me, stay with me,' " Riley told the newspaper.
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Follow Rachel D'Oro at https://twitter.com/rdoro
Bayh, Young keep up biting attacks during Senate debate
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Democrats this campaign season have gleefully attacked as their Republican opponents awkwardly try to distance themselves from Donald Trump, the party's provocative presidential nominee.
In Indiana, a reliably red state, the opposite was true Tuesday during a U.S. Senate debate between former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh and GOP Congressman Todd Young.
In fact, Trump's name wasn't mentioned once.
The three candidates for Indiana's open U.S. Senate seat, from left, Libertarian Lucy Brenton, Democrat Evan Bayh and Republican Todd Young participate in debate in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016. The Indiana campaign has become a key national race as Democrats try to capture the seat now held by retiring Republican Sen. Dan Coats and overturn the GOP's narrow Senate majority. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, Pool)
Meanwhile Bayh name-checked Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, while going to great lengths to point out his differences with Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"I do have some difference with Secretary Clinton, although I support her in the race," Bayh said during a news conference after the debate. "I don't support her position on the Iran nuclear deal. I don't support her position on cap and trade ... and I don't support her tax increase proposal."
Of Trump who he wouldn't mention by name Bayh said only: "Certainly some of the things he's said I would strongly disagree with, but I'll let other people make that judgment."
The candidates clashed repeatedly during what could be their only debate, with Young arguing that Bayh accomplished little during his time as a senator. Young, who was often the aggressor, also renewed his assaults on Bayh's work in Washington, D.C., since leaving the Senate six years ago.
"He's all talk," Young said. "He spent our money ... stimulus, Obamacare, things that Hoosiers don't want. That's the record of a D.C. insider."
The Associated Press previously reported Bayh conducted a job hunt in 2010, his final year in office, meeting with leaders in the corporate and financial world while casting votes that aligned with many of their priorities.
Bayh didn't use the debate stage to defend his post-Senate work, which has been the subject of millions of dollars in attack ads from outside GOP groups including a group tied to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the billionaire Koch brothers.
Instead he referred several times to popular programs he supported during his time as Indiana governor from 1989 to 1997. Bayh also countered that he was proud to work with Republican former Sen. Richard Lugar to support the 2008 auto bailout that rescued carmakers General Motors and Chrysler.
"Congressman Young said let 'em go belly up," Bayh said. "We don't do that to our fellow Hoosiers."
The Indiana campaign has become a key national race as Democrats try to capture the seat now held by retiring Republican Sen. Dan Coats and overturn the GOP's narrow Senate majority.
Young frequently faulted Bayh for voting in favor of President Barack Obama's health care law, arguing it has raised costs and hurt care in the state.
Young said Bayh abandoned Indiana residents after not seeking re-election in 2010, then collecting millions of dollars from various corporate jobs.
"Now, we can hold you accountable in this election," Young said pointedly toward Bayh.
Bayh countered that he wants to fix parts of the health care overhaul and not allow insurance companies freedom to cancel policies as before the law was adopted.
In addition, Bayh said at least twice that the Republican push to repeal the health care overhaul would threaten Pence's Healthy Indiana Plan, which is Indiana's expansion of Medicaid under the program. Bayh maintained that would put the insurance coverage for 350,000 Indiana residents at risk.
"This is something that Gov. Pence did that I agree with, that Congressman Young wants to undo," Bayh said.
Bayh, the Democrats' prize Senate recruit, entered the race in July with a huge fundraising lead over Young and sky-high name ID from his time as a popular governor and senator.
But he's been put on the defensive over his post-Senate work for a Washington law firm and private equity fund. Bayh earned nearly $6.3 million since the beginning of 2015, with about a third of the total coming from Apollo Global Management, a self-described alternative investment manager based in New York, according to financial disclosure records.
After the debate, Bayh blamed Young for the combative tenor of the event, which also included Libertarian candidate Lucy Brenton.
"He made so many unfounded allegations tonight that it's almost impossible to remember them all," Bayh said. "He seemed like he was kinda losing it there at the end."
Republican Todd Young participates in debate for Indiana's open U.S. Senate seat in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016. Democrat Evan Bayh and Libertarian Lucy Brenton also participated in the debate. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, pool)
Wisconsin Sen. Johnson says he, Trump are 'change agents'
MADISON, Wis. (AP) Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said both he and Donald Trump are change agents, defended himself from charges that he's in the pocket of special interests by saying "I am the working man" and accused the signature campaign finance reform championed by his challenger Russ Feingold as a "spectacular failure" in a debate Tuesday.
Johnson and Feingold sat side by side in the spirited and sometimes contentious debate in Milwaukee, the second and final face-off that comes three weeks before the election. Johnson and Feingold disagreed on a bevy of issues, from their support of their party's presidential nominees, the Affordable Care Act, free trade, the minimum wage, immigration enforcement and reform and whose interests they would back in the Senate.
Johnson's support for Trump has hung over the race, one of the most closely watched Senate contests in the country. While Johnson has not backed away from supporting Trump, he's also not campaigned with him in Wisconsin including a stop Trump made Monday in Green Bay.
CORRECTS YEAR TO 2016-Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, left, and Democrat Russ Feingold, right, meet in their second and final debate Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016 in Milwaukee. The debate was moderated by Mike Gousha. (Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)
Johnson said voters were looking for dramatic change and both he and Trump are on the right side of the biggest issues, like how to fight terrorism and the importance of nominating conservatives to the Supreme Court.
"Our nominee is a change agent," the incumbent Johnson said. "I'm a change agent."
Johnson challenged Feingold to defend his support for Clinton, who Feingold had described as honest and trustworthy. Feingold, who served 18 years in the Senate before being defeated by Johnson in 2010, reiterated that assessment of Clinton, saying that was his experience in working with her when she was first lady, a senator and secretary of state.
"She's not perfect, but she's so much better than Donald Trump," said Feingold, who added that Trump would "destabilize" the world.
Feingold and Johnson also disagreed sharply on campaign finance. Feingold is known for the law designed to cut back on the influence of special interest money in politics he co-wrote with Arizona Sen. John McCain, large portions of which were struck down by the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.
Johnson called the law a "spectacular failure" that "simply didn't work at all." He also blasted Feingold for taking a majority of his campaign donations from people living outside of Wisconsin, despite pledging in his first Senate run in 1992 never to do that.
Feingold said he's justified in doing that because the campaign finance landscape is so different now than then. He accused Johnson of being in the pocket of special interests, based on his voting record and the fact that outside groups are spending more to help him in the campaign than Feingold.
"He is benefiting enormously from this corrupt system, these hidden contributions that aren't reported," Feingold said.
But Johnson, who helped build a plastics manufacturing company in Oshkosh before he ran for the Senate and beat Feingold in 2010, said at his heart he's still that businessman. He recalled working long hours building the company.
"I am the working man," Johnson said.
Feingold said Johnson has been ineffective as senator and is disqualified to serve because of his blocking of Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court. Johnson, who said he would not vote for "liberal activists," said he wants to wait on taking a vote until after a new president and Senate is elected.
The 90-minute debate took place on the same day a new statewide poll from St. Norbert College showed Feingold leading the race 52 percent to Johnson's 40 percent, with a margin of plus or minus almost 3.8 points. A Marquette law school poll a week ago had the race about even.
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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sbauerAP and find more of his work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/scott-bauer .
CORRECTS YEAR TO 2016- Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, left, and Democrat Russ Feingold, right, meet in their second and final debate Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016 in Milwaukee. The debate was moderated by Mike Gousha. (Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)
CORRECTS YEAR TO 2016 Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, left, and Democrat Russ Feingold, right, meet before their second and final debate Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016 in Milwaukee. (Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)
Landowners tell court: Exxon Mobil pipeline breached deal
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) An attorney for landowners along a crude oil pipeline that ruptured in Arkansas in 2013 said Wednesday that Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. breached its contract with his clients because the pipeline interferes with their ability to enjoy their property.
Attorneys for the landowners and for Exxon Mobil appeared Wednesday before a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Minnesota.
Landowners' attorney Phillip Duncan asked the appeals court to reinstate the case which was dismissed last year saying his clients can prove the pipeline is damaging their property.
FILE - In this April 1, 2013 file photo, crews work to clean up oil in a Mayflower, Ark., neighborhood after an oil pipeline ruptured and spewed oil over lawns and roadways. Attorneys for landowners along the crude oil pipeline that ruptured in 2013 are asking a federal appeals court to reinstate their case. Landowners sued Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co., in 2013, alleging a breach of contract, but the case was dismissed in 2015. Oral arguments will be held Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Minnesota. (AP Photo/Jeannie Nuss, File)
"We have enough proof to stay in court," he said.
But Exxon Mobil attorney Gary Marts said the case was properly dismissed and landowners are essentially trying to use a common-law claim to regulate pipeline safety which is the job of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, not the courts.
The 850-mile long Pegasus Pipeline runs through Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. The line ruptured on March 29, 2013, spilling tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil in Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock.
The 70-year-old pipeline was closed after the spill; a roughly 200-mile segment of it in Texas has reopened.
The landowners sued after the spill brought safety issues to light.
Duncan argued that the case is about protecting rights of property owners. He said easements say the company is responsible for repairing, replacing or removing the pipeline.
"We can't enforce the safety of it. We're not trying to," Duncan told the judges. He also argued that the case should go forward as a class-action claim.
When he dismissed the case last year, U.S. District Judge Brian Miller acknowledged his decision seemed unfair. He said if Exxon prevailed, easement grantors would get the message that they had no rights until after an oil spill; but if the landowners prevailed, they could hold pipeline companies hostage if they felt they didn't meet personal safety standards.
In the end, Miller agreed with Exxon Mobil, which argued that Arkansas law interpreted easement contracts as a right of way, without a duty to maintain or repair the pipeline.
He also removed the case's class-action certification, noting that a potential leak in Illinois would have no practical effect on a landowner in Texas.
Marts argued Wednesday that Miller was right to dismiss the case and remove its class-action certification.
He also said the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration makes determinations about pipeline safety and effectively pre-empts landowners from suing.
Appeals Court Judge William Riley asked Marts if a property owner must sit back and wait for the government to regulate safety issues.
Marts said there is a way for citizens to sue, but it doesn't apply in this case.
Exxon Mobil is currently challenging a $2.6 million fine and a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration's finding that it violated safety regulations, which led to the rupture.
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Prosecutors indict 5 Lotte family members on corruption
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) Prosecutors said Wednesday they indicted the Lotte Group's founder, his mistress and all of his three children on embezzlement, tax evasion and other charges, in the latest case highlighting the outsized influence of founding families over South Korean publicly listed companies.
Five family members including Lotte's founder Shin Kyuk-ho, 94, and the group's current chair, Shin Dong-bin, 61, together allegedly evaded a total $76 million in taxes and embezzled $46 million of company funds, Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said in a statement.
Three others are the founder's older son Shin Dong-joo, 62, his daughter Shin young-ja, 73, and his 57-year-old common-law wife Seo Mi-kyung.
Lotte Group's Chairman Shin Dong-bin arrives at the head office of Lotte group in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. South Korean prosecutors said Wednesday they indicted the Lotte Groups founder, his mistress and all of his three children on embezzlement, tax evasion and other charges. (Yun Dong-jin/Yonhap via AP)
The prosecutors said the Shin family members also incurred $123 million of losses to Lotte companies as the family used their influence to control corporate funds and to make decisions favorable to them, not to shareholders.
"We have been seriously reflecting on what efforts Lotte should make for society and for the national economy," Lotte said in a statement. "We will continue to strive to build a good company."
The announcement wraps up the four-month-long investigation into South Korea's No.5 conglomerate.
When Lotte sold its businesses to the founding family members, they were sold at prices way below market value. But when Lotte bought businesses or stocks from its founding family, it had to pay premiums, the prosecutors said. For example, Lotte sold its lucrative popcorn business at its movie chains to the founding family members, allowing them to monopolize the profits from selling popcorns to moviegoers. The profit should have gone to Lotte Shopping, which operates one of the biggest movie theater chains in South Korea, the officials said.
Lotte also paid a total 50.8 billion won ($45 million) as salaries from 2005 to 2016 to two of the founder's children even though they did not hold any positions or have any duties with the company.
It is unusual for prosecutors to seek charges against the entire family of a major South Korean business.
Founding families that control chaebol, the big businesses dominating the South Korean economy, have been convicted in the past. The chiefs of Samsung, Hyundai Motor and SK have been found guilty of white color crimes but later received presidential pardons.
Those cases have shown that even though chaebol bosses own a minority stake in their companies, they can run their companies like they run a dynasty, treating corporate funds as if they were in their own pocket.
The latest investigation into Lotte forced the group to suspend a plan to list shares of its hotel business, just months after its chairman emerged from a bruising public battle with his older brother for control of the group. In August, a Lotte executive and one of the top aides of Lotte's chairman, was found dead in a suspected suicide, just hours before prosecutors were supposed to question him.
Lotte is a household name in South Korea with a big presence in Japan and Southeast Asia. It operates South Korea's largest department store, a major hotel chain and food businesses, as well as duty free shops and chemicals business.
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Lee can be reached on Twitter: www.twitter.com/YKLeeAP
Her previous works can be found on: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/youkyung-lee
Migrants in Spain end overnight rooftop protest in capital
MADRID (AP) Nearly 40 migrants have ended an overnight protest on the rooftop of a detention center in Spain's capital.
The migrants, most reported to be from Algeria, shouted for "Freedom" and "Dignity" during the protest, which began late Tuesday.
Police cordoned off the area around the center on Madrid's outskirts, but the protest finished peacefully early Wednesday following negotiations with officials.
Spain has nine detention centers that are used to hold migrants considered to be in the country illegally.
Boko Haram overruns Nigerian military base in northeast
YOLA, Nigeria (AP) Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamic extremists have overrun a remote military camp in the northeast, leaving 13 soldiers wounded and an unknown number missing, the army said Wednesday.
Monday's attack comes a week after one faction of Boko Haram released 21 of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from northeastern Chibok town, and as Nigeria's government is negotiating for the release of another 83 of the girls abducted 2 years ago.
The attack on Gashigar, on the border with Niger, is the third reported attack on the military after months of a lull during which the Islamic extremists hit soft civilian targets.
Army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman called the attack a "temporary setback" committed by "remnants of Boko Haram" that forced the soldiers to retreat. An operation is in progress to find the missing troopers and "clear the Boko Haram terrorists at the general area," his statement said.
It is believed the attack is by a splinter from Boko Haram that calls itself the West Africa Province of the Islamic State. The IS named a new caliph of its only franchise in sub-Saharan Africa in August, provoking a struggle with Boko Haram's longtime leader Abubakar Shekau. A battle of words on social media indicated the dispute is over Shekau's indiscriminate killing of Muslims.
The group loyal to Shekau negotiated with the Swiss government and International Committee of the Red Cross acting as intermediaries for Nigeria's government last Thursday's release of 21 Chibok girls, the first such negotiated settlement.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who flew to Germany the day the girls were set free, is scheduled to meet with them and their families later Wednesday, according to a social media message posted by the official account of Nigeria's presidency.
Boko Haram's 7-year-old Islamic uprising has killed more than 20,000 people, forced some 2.6 million from their homes and left tens of thousands facing famine-like conditions, according to aid agencies and the U.N.
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Indonesia's parliament ratifies Paris climate change deal
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Indonesia's parliament ratified the Paris climate change agreement on Wednesday, obligating one of the world's biggest polluters to limit its carbon emissions.
All 10 political parties in Indonesia's parliament endorsed the agreement, paving the way for it to become part of the country's laws.
The deal aims to curb the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to keep global temperature increases to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Indonesia is a major coal producer and is cutting down its tropical forests for palm oil and pulp wood plantations. Annual dry-season fires that are illegally started to clear land for plantations also release vast amounts of greenhouse gases, particularly when they burn peatlands that store large amounts of carbon.
A study in the journal Nature Climate Change estimated that Indonesia was clearing 840,000 hectares (2.1 million acres) of forests a year by 2012, more than any other country. In 2014, it renewed a moratorium on new licenses for logging in virgin forests, but deforestation has continued largely unabated.
Indonesia signed the Paris agreement on April 22 in New York. The deal comes into effect on Nov. 4 after the threshold of ratification by 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions was passed early this month.
Court-martial gives soldier 3 years' jail for mutilating boy
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) A Nigerian court-martial has sentenced a soldier to three years' jail for meting out punishment that left a 10-year-old without the use of his hands. One hand was amputated.
A court ruling published Wednesday also stripped all rank from Staff Sergeant Umar Sule.
The father of the crippled boy, Usman Muhammed, expressed satisfaction with Tuesday's ruling.
The court-martial was petitioned by the government-funded National Human Rights Commission, which said it is also pursuing monetary compensation for the family.
Crews make progress against blaze in Los Angeles area
LOS ANGELES (AP) Fire crews are making progress against wildfire burning in Los Angeles' Aliso Canyon area near Porter Ranch.
There have been no reports of evacuations or structures damaged, but crews are taking special care to protect the natural gas fields in that area.
The blaze is 85 percent contained early Wednesday after scorching less than 30 acres of dry brush.
More than 100 firefighters working in windy conditions battled the fire after it was reported Tuesday night.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Southern California Gas Co., which operates the natural gas storage facility where a damaged well spewed methane for four months and displaced thousands of residents, confirmed that the fire was burning near the site.
Michael Moore debuts film on Trump weeks before vote
NEW YORK (AP) Michael Moore has premiered a surprise film discussing the presidential election just three weeks before Americans head to the polls.
Moore debuted "Michael Moore in TrumpLand" in New York on Tuesday night in front of an audience of his fans.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film features Moore speaking about both Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on stage earlier this month in Wilmington, Ohio, a hotbed of Trump support.
FILE - In this May 16, 2016 file photo, Michael Moore attends the 20th Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. Moore premiered a surprise film about the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016. "Michael Moore in TrumpLand" features a one-man stage show of Moore discussing the race. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)
The liberal documentarian urged the crowd at Tuesday's premiere to vote for Clinton next month.
The Hollywood Reporter says the film will screen for one week at the IFC Center in Manhattan beginning Wednesday. It will also be shown at a theater in Encino, California.
Austrian politician fined for 'Nazi' claims
VIENNA (AP) An Austrian appeals court has found a politician guilty of defaming right-wing presidential candidate Norbert Hofer by suggesting he is a Nazi and fined him thousands of euros.
Hofer took Social Democrat Ingo Mayr to court after Hofer won about a third of the vote in the first round of elections in April. Among other things, Mayr had said that a third of the electorate "chose a Nazi."
Wednesday's verdict overturns an earlier court ruling in favor of Mayr and carries fines totaling 5,550 euros ($6,100.)
Morgan Stanley's earnings jump, helped by trading
NEW YORK (AP) Morgan Stanley said its earnings soared 62 percent in the third quarter, thanks to big gains in bond trading.
The New York-based investment bank said Wednesday it earned $1.52 billion after payments to preferred shareholders, up from $939 million in the same period a year earlier. Earnings per share, excluding an accounting adjustment, were 81 cents versus 34 cents a year earlier.
The results beat forecasts. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected the bank to earn 63 cents per share.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, the Morgan Stanley logo is displayed on its Times Square building, in New York. Morgan Stanley reports financial results Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
Like its major competitor Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley had a strong quarter on its trading desks, particularly bond trading. Overall revenue from trading jumped to $4.6 billion from $3.5 billion, excluding an accounting adjustment.
Bond sales and trading revenue jumped to $1.5 billion, nearly triple the $583 million figure from a year earlier. Stock trading revenue edged up to $1.9 billion from $1.8 billion.
Revenue from wealth management rose to $3.9 billion from $3.6 billion. Assets under management increased $13.5 billion in the quarter. Morgan Stanley has been building up its wealth management as a more stable driver of earnings compared with trading, which can ebb and flow with market volatility.
"Overall the results reflect steady progress against our long term strategic goals," said Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said in a prepared statement.
Return on common equity, a closely watched metric for investment banks, rose to 8.7 percent, a big improvement from 5.6 percent in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue rose to $8.91 billion from $7.77 billion.
Police: 3 children die in Oklahoma mobile home fire
ARKOMA, Okla. (AP) Authorities say three children have died after a fire at a mobile home in eastern Oklahoma.
Police say the fire broke out at about 4 a.m. Wednesday in Arkoma, which is right on the state's border with Arkansas. Arkoma police tell Fort Smith, Arkansas, television station KHBS (http://bit.ly/2ehQ9Dw ) that the children's parents were home at the time of the blaze but were unable to reach them because of heavy smoke.
Police say the mother of the children was taken to a hospital after the fire.
Moroccan woman in Berlusconi sex scandal to face new trial
MILAN (AP) A judge has indicted the Moroccan woman at the center of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's sex-for-hire scandal on charges of giving false testimony.
The judge set Jan. 11 as the opening date for the trial of Karima el-Mahroug and 22 others accused of accepting bribes and lying on the stand to protect Berlusconi in his trial on charges of having paid for sex with el-Mahroug whose stage name was Ruby the Heartstealer when she was an under-age teenager and he premier, and then using his influence to cover it up. Berlusconi was acquitted in the case on appeal.
US home construction fell 9 percent in September
WASHINGTON (AP) Homebuilders pulled back on construction for a second straight month in September, with a plunge in apartments offsetting gains in single-family homes. Building activity was weak in all parts of the country except the Midwest.
Construction tumbled 9 percent in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.05 million units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. It was the slowest pace in 18 months. Construction had fallen 5.6 percent in August.
The weakness last month reflected a 38 percent drop in construction of apartments, which overshadowed an 8.1 percent rise in single-family construction.
FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016, file photo, Lennar Corporation townhomes are under construction at Chelsea Place in Tamarac, Fla. On Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, the Commerce Department reports on U.S. home construction in September. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
Despite the two months of declines, home construction has been one of the bright spots in the economy this year. Builders have been scrambling to keep up with rising demand amid continued strong job gains and low mortgage rates.
The September performance was weaker than expected. Analysts had been forecasting a rebound. But they noted that the smaller apartment segment of construction is often volatile from month to month.
"Given the volatility of the multifamily sector, there is not enough in this report to suggest the steady uptrend in housing starts is changing yet," economists at Contingent Macro Research said in a research note.
Applications for building permits, a good sign of future activity, posted an increase of 6.3 percent in September. It was the biggest one-month gain since last November, pushing activity to an annual rate of 1.22 million units.
By region of the country, construction starts rose 6.6 percent in the Midwest, the only region showing a gain. Construction fell 31.5 percent in the Northwest, 15.6 percent in the South and 4.4 percent in the West.
Terror bombing suspect moved from hospital to prison
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) A man accused of setting off bombs in New Jersey and New York, injuring more than 30 people, has been moved from a hospital to a state prison.
Ahmad Khan Rahimi was transferred to a state facility on Tuesday instead of a county jail for his safety and security, New Jersey Corrections Department spokesman Matt Schuman said. Schuman would not identify the facility.
The Afghan-born U.S. citizen had been hospitalized with gunshot wounds following a police shootout that led to his capture in Linden on Sept. 19.
FILE - In this Oct. 13, 2016, file photo, Ahmad Khan Rahimi, left, appears via video from his hospital bed in Newark, N.J., during a court hearing at the Union County Courthouse, in Elizabeth, N.J. Rahimi, accused of setting off bombs in New Jersey and New York was moved from a hospital to a state prison Tuesday, Oct. 18, according to the New Jersey Corrections Department spokesman. (Union County Courthouse via AP, Pool, File)
He remains held on $5.2 million bail.
Rahimi, 28, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder of a police officer and weapons offenses.
During a video court appearance on Oct. 13, he was read his rights by Judge Regina Caulfield and answered "yes" in a faint voice to a series of questions.
He is accused of detonating a pipe bomb along the route of a scheduled Marine Corps charity race in the New Jersey shore town of Seaside Park and a pressure cooker bomb in New York City on Sept. 17. No one was injured in the New Jersey blast, and 31 people were hurt in the New York blast. A second pressure cooker bomb did not explode.
Rahimi has not made court appearances on federal charges in either state.
Defendant finishes testimony in New Jersey bridge trial
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) A former ally of Republican Gov. Chris Christie charged in the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case finished three days of testimony Wednesday by telling jurors he was left alone to explain to legislators in 2013 the series of traffic jams that prosecutors contend were part of a political revenge plot against a mayor who wouldn't endorse Christie.
Former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive Bill Baroni described how, in November 2013, "no one wanted anything to do with this issue," referring to the four days of gridlock in Fort Lee two months earlier. Prosecutors have characterized Baroni's testimony before a New Jersey legislative committee, in which he claimed the jams were part of a traffic study, as a fiction created to hide the plot's true intention.
"Everyone was running away. I was the one out there," Baroni testified Wednesday. He added that two Port Authority police officials who he claimed had suggested studying the access lanes to the bridge told him days before his legislative testimony that they "wanted to stay out of it." That contradicted the two officials' testimony that Baroni had sought to use them as cover.
Bill Baroni, Gov. Chris Christie's former top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, waves as he arrives with his attorney Michael Baldassare, third from left, and others at Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Courthouse for a hearing, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Newark, N.J. Three years after gridlock paralyzed a New Jersey town next to the George Washington Bridge for days, two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Baroni and Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly, are being tried on charges of politically motivated lane closures of the George Washington Bridge. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Baroni and former Christie staffer Bridget Kelly are charged with causing gridlock at the bridge linking New Jersey and New York to punish Democratic Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich. Christie wasn't charged.
Kelly is also expected to testify. Baroni and Kelly face nine counts, the most serious of which carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
Baroni contended during testimony Monday that he was duped by Port Authority colleague David Wildstein, the self-styled architect of the scheme. Wildstein pleaded guilty last year and testified against Baroni and Kelly.
Baroni also told jurors that several upper-level officials in Christie's office and at the Port Authority either knew of his impending legislative testimony or helped him prepare for it. Those included former Port Authority Chairman David Samson, a Christie mentor who headed his transition team, as well as Christie's chief counsel.
Prosecutors cast doubt Tuesday on Baroni's characterization of his relationship with Wildstein, a political blogger and former high school classmate of Christie's who was handed a Port Authority job in 2010 that was created especially for him.
Baroni testified he was not close with Wildstein, but prosecutors introduced evidence that they had talked more than 2,700 times on the phone in 2013 alone. They also showed a picture of Baroni hoisting Wildstein into the air in a chair at the bar mitzvah for Wildstein's son.
Later Wednesday morning, former Christie press secretary Michael Drewniak testified that he believed early on that the traffic jams were part of a bridge authority traffic study. Drewniak also said he didn't ask Christie if he knew about them.
Drewniak, who was called to the stand by Kelly's defense attorney, said he first heard Wildstein's account of the gridlock in Fort Lee a few days after it ended. Prosecutors say Wildstein's story was a lie to cover up the real reason for the scheme.
Gov. Chris Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly, right, arrives at Martin Luther King Jr. Courthouse with her attorneys Michael Critchley Jr., second right, and Michael Critchley, left, for a hearing, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Newark, N.J. Three years after gridlock paralyzed a New Jersey town next to the George Washington Bridge for days, two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kelly and Bill Baroni, Christie's former top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are being tried on charges of politically motivated lane closures of the George Washington Bridge. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Gov. Chris Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly, center, arrives at Martin Luther King Jr. Courthouse with her attorneys Michael Critchley Jr., right, and Michael Critchley, back second left, for a hearing, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Newark, N.J. Three years after gridlock paralyzed a New Jersey town next to the George Washington Bridge for days, two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kelly and Bill Baroni, Christie's former top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are being tried on charges of politically motivated lane closures of the George Washington Bridge. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Michael Drewniak, long time press spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie, arrives at Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Courthouse for a hearing, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Newark, N.J. Three years after gridlock paralyzed a New Jersey town next to the George Washington Bridge for days, two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Bill Baroni, Christie's former top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly, are being tried on charges of politically motivated lane closures of the George Washington Bridge. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Michael Drewniak, right, long time press spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie, waves as he arrives with his attorney Anthony Iacullo, left, arrive at Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Courthouse for a hearing, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Newark, N.J. Three years after gridlock paralyzed a New Jersey town next to the George Washington Bridge for days, two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Bill Baroni, Christie's former top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly, are being tried on charges of politically motivated lane closures. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
3 Al-Jazeera journalists arrested in Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) Three Al-Jazeera journalists were arrested by security forces, a few hours before an editor of a daily newspaper in Mogadishu was released, said a Somali media rights activist.
Hamza Mohamed, a journalist with Al-Jazeera English television, and two cameramen were arrested by troops near Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, on Tuesday, said Hassan Gesey, director of the media advocacy group SIMHA.
Somali officials told journalists who visited Mohamed in a Mogadishu prison that the Al-Jazeera journalists were arrested upon their return from rebel-held areas where they has interviewed al-Shabab officials, said Gesey.
The National Union of Somali Journalists condemned the latest arrests of journalists which came few hours before the government released Abdi Aden Guled, the editor of Xog-Ogaal, one of the oldest daily newspapers in Mogadishu. Guled was arrested on Sunday and his paper was closed. The Xog-Ogaal remained closed Wednesday but officials handed back equipment seized on Sunday and said the paper could reopen.
Somali officials did not immediately comment on the latest arrests of journalists.
Threats and intimidations against journalists have increased in the past during the election periods in Somalia, which is rated as one of the world's most dangerous countries for media workers, according to journalists. Journalists are targeted by both Islamic extremists and the government, say rights groups.
Last month, gunmen shot dead Abdiaziz Mohamed Ali Haji, who was on his way home from work as a reporter for Shabelle radio, a radio station in Mogadishu. He was the second journalist killed in Somalia this year.
Three journalists were killed in 2015, including one in a bombing claimed by the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab.
Czechs condemn UNESCO controversial Jerusalem resolution
PRAGUE (AP) Lawmakers in the Czech Parliament's lower house have condemned this week's resolution by UNESCO that Israel says denies the deep historic Jewish connection to holy sites in Jerusalem.
The resolution, titled "Occupied Palestine," lays out rules about the preservation of holy sites in Jerusalem, and uses only the Islamic name for a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The site includes the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical temple and the holiest site where Jews can pray.
In a Wednesday vote, 119 of the 149 lawmakers present approved a strongly worded protest against the step, saying the resolution denies historic links between the Jews and their holy sites, discredits UNESCO and fuels anti-Semitism.
Nigeria's leader meets 21 schoolgirls, vows to free the rest
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) Nigeria's president on Wednesday vowed to "redouble" efforts to secure the release of nearly 200 schoolgirls who remain missing more than two years after being abducted by Boko Haram extremists.
President Muhammadu Buhari met for the first time with the 21 Chibok schoolgirls who were released last week after negotiations with Boko Haram.
Buhari said they would be reintegrated into society "as quickly as possible."
Some 276 girls were kidnapped from a school in the northeast town of Chibok in April 2014. Dozens escaped early on, and another was found in May.
Last week marked the first negotiated release of any of the schoolgirls.
One of the schoolgirls, Rebecca Malu, delivered brief remarks on behalf of the group at Wednesday's ceremony. "We are happy to see this wonderful day because we didn't know that we would come back," she said, adding that she was praying for the release of the others.
Not all may want to come home. More than 100 of the schoolgirls appear unwilling to leave their captors, perhaps because they have been radicalized by Boko Haram or are ashamed to return because they have married extremists and have babies, Chibok community leader Pogu Bitrus has told The Associated Press.
Bitrus said the freed schoolgirls should be educated abroad because they likely will face stigma in Nigeria.
The president said the government will assume responsibility for the schoolgirls' personal, educational and professional goals.
Judge weighs extending Georgia voter registration a 2nd time
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) A federal judge who ordered the voter registration deadline extended in one Georgia county that evacuated for Hurricane Matthew is now weighing a second request to grant more time for people in a wider area.
U.S. District Court Judge William T. Moore Jr. said Wednesday he would rule within hours on the American Civil Liberties Union's motion to give new voters six more days to join the rolls in six coastal Georgia counties that Gov. Nathan Deal ordered to evacuate in ahead of the storm.
Last Friday, Moore agreed to extend registration in Chatham County, which includes Savannah. That extension lapsed Tuesday.
A look at US role against IS as Mosul offensive takes off
WASHINGTON (AP) As Iraqi tanks charge across their country to purge the city of Mosul from the Islamic State group, the United States has just as much to gain from the operation as the Iraqis themselves.
Since 2014, the U.S. has provided advise and assist operations to prop the beleaguered Iraqi military back on its feet after IS group gutted it of weapons, supplies and soldiers during its blitzkrieg across Iraq and Syria. Coalition forces later launched airstrikes in both countries, reinforcing Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian ground forces, while maintaining that no foreign combat troops would partake in the fight.
A look at the U.S. role against the Islamic State group:
This Oct. 10, 2016 photo released by the U.S. Army shows U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ed Matthaidess, commander, left, Task Force Falcon, outlining areas of an Iraqi security forces tactical assembly area to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Gary J. Volesky, commander, Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command Operation Inherent Resolve, in northern Iraq, prior to the start of the Mosul offensive. The U.S. has just as much to gain from the operation to recapture Mosul as the Iraqis themselves. Since 2014, the U.S. has provided airstrikes and advise-and-assist operations to put the beleaguered Iraqi military back on its feet after the Islamic State group gutted it of weapons, supplies and soldiers during its blitzkrieg across Iraq and Syria.(U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class R.W. Lemmons IV via AP)
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HOW MANY U.S. SOLDIERS ARE CURRENTLY IN IRAQ AND SYRIA?
According to the Pentagon, there are 4,815 U.S. forces currently in Iraq, including some special operations forces. That number does not include as many as 1,500 troops who are there on temporary duty or other short-term contracts. The Obama administration has authorized a maximum troop level of 5,262.
In Syria, the Obama administration has authorized 300 troops most of them special operations forces who are tasked mainly with working with Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab allies. Medical and logistics units are also included in that number.
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WHERE ARE THEY LOCATED?
U.S. forces in Iraq use bases in the cities of Baghdad, Irbil, Taji and Habaniyah. There are also "several hundred" American troops at the military base in Qayara West, south of Mosul, where they are helping build a staging area for the Iraqi security forces operation to recapture the city, according to a U.S. military official, who spoke anonymously because the details haven't been made public.
In northern Syria, details remain a closely-guarded secret given the sensitivity of the operations. U.S. support is ultimately aimed at helping the Syrian Democratic Forces advance on Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital. They sometimes stay in the country for several weeks at a time.
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WHAT IS THE OVERALL MISSION?
In Iraq there are advisers, trainers, special operations forces and others stationed at Iraqi bases, working with the Iraqi forces. In addition to working with the Iraqis at the division headquarters level, some advisers are advising the Iraqis at the brigade and battalion level, meaning that they are embedding those teams of advisers with smaller units, closer to the fight.
American forces in Syria aren't actually based in Syria. They travel in and out from neighboring countries mainly Turkey and Iraq sometimes staying in the country for several days at a time. They are there to provide advice and other assistance, but do not fight alongside the Syrians. Pentagon officials say that U.S. Special Forces have carried out about 400 missions in Syria to date.
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HOW IS THE AIR CAMPAIGN GOING?
Since airstrikes began in August 2014, over 10,200 airstrikes had been cumulatively carried out in Iraq and nearly 5,600 in Syria. August saw a second consecutive month that coalition airstrikes in Syria outnumbered those in Iraq.
According to Chris Woods, director of the Airwars project, a group that tracks and archives data from the international air war against the IS group, only 7 percent of the airstrikes being conducted in Iraq and Syria were by Reaper and Predator drones.
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WHO ARE OUR PARTNERS?
While the vast majority of airstrikes are conducted by the U.S. in both Iraq and Syria, coalition partners include the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Denmark, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Belgium and Bahrain.
Backed by U.S. airstrikes, Turkey has also sent tanks, warplanes and special operations forces into northern Syria. Turkey's objective has been twofold: It's looking to clear Islamic State militants from its remaining border stronghold, while also rolling back any advances made by Syrian Kurdish militias, which Turkey regards as a significant national security threat.
While Russia is not part of the coalition in Syria, the U.S. has worked out a limited agreement with the Russians to de-conflict flights over Syria to maintain airspace safety and avoid collisions. But diplomatic talks with Russia became to disintegrate this month after the U.S. formally accused Russia of trying to meddle in the U.S. election by hacking U.S. political groups. Secretary of State John Kerry also accused the Kremlin of war crimes in Syria, all but ending efforts to boost cooperation between Washington and Moscow on the issue of Syria.
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SO, WHERE DO WE STAND ON THE MOSUL OPERATION?
Timeframes provided by American and Iraqi officials have varied between a few weeks to a few months, but there is no question that the push toward the Islamic State stronghold is very much underway.
East of Mosul, coalition forces, supported Kurdish peshmerga fighters, are conducting an operation dubbed Evergreen II, which was designed to seize and control the key terrain near the Gaur River Bridge and the Great Zab River. The operation was executed with nearly 2,000 peshmerga fighters, with support from coalition and artillery strikes.
Coalition supported forces have also cleared five villages around Mosul, namely Qayara, which will be used as a critical staging ground for the Mosul operation, as well as a center for humanitarian efforts.
The coalition is providing training to remove many of the explosive remnants of war that IS fighters typically leave behind once they've been driven from an area. It is also conducting multiple strikes around the city with the goal of denying the militants access to critical infrastructure and resources, including the Tigris River.
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Associated Press writer Lolita Baldor contributed to this report from Washington.
A U.S. Army soldier watches a helicopter belonging to the international coalition forces land on a base outside Mosul, Iraq, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. The U.S. has just as much to gain from the operation to recapture Mosul as the Iraqis themselves. Since 2014, the U.S. has provided airstrikes and advise-and-assist operations to put the beleaguered Iraqi military back on its feet after the Islamic State group gutted it of weapons, supplies and soldiers during its blitzkrieg across Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo)
This Oct. 10, 2016 photo released by the U.S. Army shows U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Gary J. Volesky, left, commander, Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command Operation Inherent Resolve, visiting with an Iraqi soldier in northern Iraq, Iraq, prior to the start of the Mosul offensive. The U.S. has just as much to gain from the operation to recapture Mosul as the Iraqis themselves. Since 2014, the U.S. has provided airstrikes and advise-and-assist operations to put the beleaguered Iraqi military back on its feet after the Islamic State group gutted it of weapons, supplies and soldiers during its blitzkrieg across Iraq and Syria. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class R.W. Lemmons IV via AP)
South Sudan monitor says cease-fire violated almost daily
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) The monitor of South Sudan's peace deal is reporting "near-daily violations" of the cease-fire and says fighting could "trigger an uncontrolled escalation of violence."
Festus Mogae said Wednesday that both sides have perpetrated "egregious violations of human rights" including gang rape and killing of civilians.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous this week told the U.N. Security Council behind closed doors that South Sudan's government is delaying "as much as possible" the deployment of an additional 4,000 peacekeepers.
Ladsous also called for an arms embargo, saying "the economy is bankrupt, yet money is spent on arms" and calling it unacceptable.
Obama administration sends top disease specialists to Cuba
HAVANA (AP) The Obama administration sent some of the United States' top infectious disease specialists to Cuba on Wednesday to open a new phase in medical cooperation after more than a half-century of isolation.
Two dozen U.S. and Cuban experts on tropical diseases opened three days of meetings about each country's research into insect-borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell was to fly to Cuba Thursday to attend.
The visit is part of President Barack Obama's push to build irreversible momentum behind his detente with Cuba in the final months of his administration. The administration has issued six sets of regulations loosening the 55-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, but the executive actions could be reversed by a future administration.
U.S. specialists in infections diseases, top left, and Cuban specialists, right, attend a meeting at the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute (IPK) in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. The Obama administration sent some of the United States' top infectious disease specialists to Cuba to open a new phase in medical cooperation after more than a half-century of isolation .(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who leads in polls three weeks before the presidential election, has promised to continue normalization. Republican Donald Trump has pledged to roll back Obama's policy.
Obama visited in March. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman visited this month, as did Dr. Jill Biden, the vice president's wife. More visits are planned in coming months.
"Representatives of the U.S. government are beginning to flock to Cuba," said Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, deputy director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "There's every reason in the world for us to be working together."
The meetings are meant to lay the foundation for permanent cooperation between public health officials and researchers in the U.S. and Cuba. The U.S. embargo has prevented virtually all interaction between the United States and Cuba, which has made medical research and health care one of the nation's highest priorities since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
Cuba has reported remarkable success in containing the Zika virus, limiting its spread to only three cases caught on the island, according to Cuban officials, even as countries in the region such as Puerto Rico and Venezuela have been hit by thousands of cases of the disease.
U.S. and Cuban medical officials said Wednesday that another area of immediate interest was the dengue virus, which can have less severe effects than Zika but has been a longstanding problem throughout Latin America. Cuba and the U.S. are working on vaccines, and Cuban scientists said a combination of the U.S. and Cuban vaccines had shown promising results in initial animal testing.
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Starbucks plans to double stores in China in 5 years
NEW YORK (AP) Starbucks is pushing ahead with its expansion into mainland China, saying Wednesday it's on track to have 5,000 stores by 2021, more than doubling the number of its coffee shops in the country.
The Seattle-based coffee chain is looking to China to fuel its growth. It's grown rapidly since opening its first Chinese store in 1999, though famously suffered a misstep nearly a decade ago when protests over a shop inside the Forbidden City led to it being closed. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has said China could one day surpass the U.S. as the chain's largest market. There are about 13,000 Starbucks stores in the United States.
Among chain coffee shops, Starbucks had a 74 percent market share in mainland China in 2015, according to market research company Euromonitor. The company's closest competitors are McDonald's Corp.'s McCafe and Whitbread PLC's Costa Coffee, both of which had market shares slightly above 9 percent, according to Euromonitor.
FILE - This Saturday, May 31, 2014, file photo, shows the Starbucks logo at one of the company's coffee shops in downtown Chicago. Starbucks is pushing ahead with its expansion into China and said it is on track to having about 5,000 stores there by 2021, more than doubling the number of coffee shops it currently has in the country. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
Starbucks has been adding unique flavors to attract Chinese customers, such as a Black Forest Latte, a mix of cherry juice, cocoa powder and coffee. And in September it began selling its Teavana tea brand at its China locations.
Chinese customers spend more time in Starbucks shops and are buying more food than Americans, Schultz told The Associated Press. Late next year, Starbucks plans to open a 30,000-square-foot store in Shanghai that Schultz called a "Disneyland for coffee." Named the Starbucks Roastery and Reserve Tasting Room, the store will be similar to one opened in Seattle nearly two years ago, where customers can watch coffee beans get roasted and sip mixed coffee drinks.
Court: Right to vote constitutionally protected
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) A federal appeals court laid out on Wednesday the legal reasoning behind its decision earlier this month that allowed thousands of Kansas residents to register to vote without providing documents proving their U.S. citizenship.
The 85-page opinion from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals came a day after voter registration closed in Kansas for the November election. The appeals court had earlier this month upheld a preliminary injunction that forced Kansas to register people who filled out voter applications at motor vehicle offices.
"There can be no dispute that the right to vote is a constitutionally protected fundamental right," the appeals court wrote.
The opinion released Wednesday essentially explained why the appeals court upheld U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson's preliminary injunction requiring the state to register thousands of people for federal elections. The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of several prospective voters and the League of Women Voters.
Legal challenges in multiple lawsuits have temporarily allowed people who registered when getting their driver's licenses or when using a federal form to vote in all federal, state and local races in the November election without having to prove their U.S. citizenship.
Meanwhile, the legal maneuvering continues against the state law that requires people who register to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization certificate.
In a ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson set aside a court clerk's default judgment filed last week after Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach failed to file a timely response in a separate lawsuit. His negligence in missing the deadline was not willful, she said.
Robinson's ruling means the case will proceed in the courts.
Kobach called the effort to get a default judgment "an attempt to play gotcha and win this case on a technicality."
"We've been litigating this case for more than a year," Kobach said. "The notion that we have failed to defend the position of the state is ludicrous."
That lawsuit, filed by prospective voter Parker Bednasek, contends the state's proof-of-citizenship law violates the U.S. Constitution. If he prevails, his lawsuit will effectively strike down the law in its entirety.
The case is of "constitutional significance and public interest," Robinson said. "This case deserves to be decided on the merits and not through procedural default," she said.
The Latest: Christie spokesman says he believed bridge story
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) The Latest on the fifth week of testimony in the George Washington Bridge lane-closing trial (all times local):
1:20 p.m.
A former press secretary for Republican Gov. Chris Christie has testified he believed early on that traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 were part of a bridge authority traffic study.
Former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive Bill Baroni and his team arrive at Federal Court in Newark to resume his testimony in Newark, N.J., Tuesday, Oct. 18. 2016. (Jennifer Brown/The Record via AP)
Michael Drewniak also said he didn't ask Christie if he knew about them.
Drewniak testified Wednesday in the trial of two former Christie allies charged with causing gridlock at the bridge to punish a Democratic mayor who didn't endorse Christie. Christie hasn't been charged.
Drewniak said he first heard David Wildstein's account of the gridlock in Fort Lee a few days after it ended in mid-September 2013. Prosecutors say Wildstein's story was a lie to cover up the real reason for the scheme.
Wildstein pleaded guilty last year and testified earlier in the trial against former Christie staffer Bridget Kelly and former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive Bill Baroni.
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11:15 a.m.
Jurors have finished hearing testimony from a former ally of Republican Gov. Chris Christie who's a defendant in the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case.
Bill Baroni's testimony spanned three days. He and former Christie staffer Bridget Kelly are charged with causing gridlock at the bridge linking New Jersey and New York to punish a Democratic mayor who didn't endorse Christie. Christie wasn't charged.
Kelly is also expected to testify.
On Wednesday, Baroni defended his 2013 testimony to legislators that the jams arose from a traffic study. He also testified that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has no written policies on how to conduct traffic studies. Baroni is a former executive there.
Baroni and Kelly face nine counts. The most serious carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
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9:51 a.m.
A former ally of Republican Gov. Chris Christie is on the witness stand for a third day in the criminal trial stemming from lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in 2013.
Bill Baroni and former Christie staffer Bridget Kelly are charged with causing traffic jams at the bridge to punish a Democratic mayor who didn't endorse Christie. Kelly is also expected to testify.
Baroni testified this week he believed a former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey colleague who pleaded guilty that the lane realignment was part of a traffic study. Prosecutors contend that was a cover story to mask the plot's true intention.
Baroni and Kelly face nine counts each, and the most serious carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
Researchers: Limits on drilling not enough to protect bird
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) Oil and gas development in the Western U.S. could continue to cause sage grouse numbers to decline despite limits on drilling meant to protect the struggling bird species, according to scientists.
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and Colorado State University reached the conclusion after examining the effects of drilling on greater sage grouse over a 25-year period ending in 2008.
They found that populations of the chicken-sized bird dropped 14 percent annually in areas with at least 10 oil or gas wells per square mile.
FILE - In this April 20, 2013 file photo, male greater sage grouse perform mating rituals for a female grouse, not pictured, on a lake outside Walden, Colo. Oil and gas development in the Western U.S. could continue to cause sage grouse numbers to decline despite limits on drilling meant to protect the struggling bird species, according to scientists. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and Colorado State University reached the conclusion after examining the effects of drilling on greater sage grouse over a 25-year period ending in 2008. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
Federal land management rules recently crafted to protect grouse across their 11-state range would allow that many wells or more in areas crucial to the birds' long-term survival.
Populations were stable when no wells were present, the researchers concluded in their findings published in The Journal of Wildlife Management.
Kathleen Sgamma with the Western Energy Alliance industry group said the researchers ignored changes to federal and state land use policies meant to concentrate drilling in some areas and avoid impacting the most sensitive sage grouse habitat.
Study co-author Cameron Aldridge said more concentrated drilling may reduce impacts. But that doesn't mean it won't affect grouse. He said more power lines, pipelines, vehicles, noise and other human activity are associated with multiple oil or gas wells than there would be with a single well.
"It's not a well or well pad that causes a decline. It's all of the associated activity that contributes collectively," said Aldridge, an associate professor at Colorado State University's Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability.
Wyoming Game and Fish Department sage grouse coordinator Tom Christiansen said limited energy development is expected in the grouse's core habitat for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. Interior Department last year declined to put sage grouse on the list of endangered and threatened species despite a long-term decline blamed on oil and gas development, grazing, wildfires, residential development and disease.
The agency cited in part the limits on drilling targeted at preserving the bird's breeding grounds in areas of Wyoming, Montana, Colorado and other states. Under those rules, companies can construct one well pad per square mile, with each pad containing multiple wells.
Interior spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said in an emailed statement that the agency was reviewing the new study.
Land management plans adopted by the agency last year include population monitoring efforts that would trigger additional conservation measures should grouse numbers or habitat quality decline, she said.
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Gas explosion rocks Portland shopping district, injuring 8
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) A powerful natural gas explosion rocked a busy Portland, Oregon, shopping district Wednesday, injuring eight people and igniting a fire that sent a huge plume of smoke over the heart of the city.
Three firefighters, two police officers and three civilians were hurt, and one of the firefighters was still in surgery late Wednesday for a broken leg, fire Chief Mike Myers said at a news conference. None of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.
A building that housed a bagel shop and a beauty salon in the popular NW 23rd Street shopping district was reduced to rubble, and its smoldering roof was splayed across the road.
A firefighter battles a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
The windows of a nearby building were blown out and debris was everywhere. Firefighters swarmed the scene and dumped water from ladder trucks onto the smoking wreckage.
NW Natural released a timeline saying the explosion occurred at 9:38 a.m. a time when many businesses were still closed.
City officials said a catastrophe was averted by speedy work from firefighters and police who responded to a reported gas leak and cleared the area of people before the blast.
"There are a lot of people alive" who might not be "but for the excellent work by our first responders," Mayor Charlie Hales said.
One young fire lieutenant in particular the same one with the badly broken leg made several critical decisions that likely saved lives, Myers said.
Fire Lt. Peter St. John positioned fire trucks and hoses in such a way that they were out of the blast zone and ran into the building to pull fire alarms when firefighters realized not everyone had evacuated as ordered, Myers said, adding that the man was new to the fire department.
"That man saved the lives of a lot of people today and a lot of firefighters," the chief said.
Firefighters also donned their air packs and masks before the blast, an unusual move for a routine gas leak call, but one that also prevented serious facial injuries, he said.
Portland's NW 23rd Street nicknamed "Trendy Third" is packed with boutiques, bars and restaurants. Many are on street level with pricey apartments on the upper levels and a day care facility in the vicinity.
The utility said it got a call at 8:55 a.m. saying a construction crew had hit a gas line. Authorities and utility workers responded in 15 minutes and evacuated the building, NW Natural said in its statement.
People in the neighborhood reported smelling gas as they were evacuated and later felt the explosion.
The utility hasn't determined what caused the gas to ignite, but NW Natural CEO David Anderson said it was a rare event that required a certain amount of ambient gas, an enclosed space and an ignition source.
An employee at a nearby kitchen accessories store said he was in the washroom when he felt a huge explosion and emerged to find thick smoke and haze. Scott Bergler said 15 windows in the first-floor store were blown out.
As he evacuated the Kitchen Kaboodle shop, Bergler saw a firefighter on the ground who had been knocked flat by the blast.
"He was obviously in shock and crawling and having a hard time standing up," said Bergler, who remained shaken by the ordeal as he gathered with co-workers in a parking lot.
Nicole Christiansen climbed exterior stairs to a rooftop of a nearby building so her 2-year-old son, Theo, could see everyone was safe.
The child had been evacuated from his day care center just before the blast, but he heard the explosion and was scared, she said. He looked on with wide eyes and clutched a crumpled napkin from an unfinished snack as firefighters poured water on the building.
"I saw the smoke from way down the hill, and I realized he was impacted," she said. "He has to go home."
About 2,000 people remained without power and authorities weren't allowing people back into apartments, homes and businesses overnight.
"They're going to be displaced for a long time and there are great little businesses that are going to be closed for a long time," Hales said.
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Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus .
Smoke rises as firefighters battle a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Firefighters stand under blown out windows after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Firefighters battle a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Firefighters battle a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy a busy Portland, Oregon, shopping district and started a fire that sent a huge plume of smoke over the heart of the city. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Smoke rises as firefighters battle a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Smoke rises as firefighters battle a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Smoke rises as firefighters battle a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Firefighters battle a blaze after a gas explosion in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy injuring two firefighters and two civilians. One building in the popular shopping district was reduced to rubble and the exterior of one side of another building had been ripped off, its windows blown out. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Firefighters hose down an area after a gas explosion, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016 in Portland, Ore. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy a busy Portland, Oregon, shopping district and started a fire that sent a huge plume of smoke over the heart of the city. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP)
Smoke rises from a building after a gas explosion, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016 in Portland, Ore. A powerful natural gas explosion that neighbors said felt like an earthquake rocked the busy a busy Portland, Oregon, shopping district and started a fire that sent a huge plume of smoke over the heart of the city. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian via AP)
Pakistan: Indian fire wounds 2 women, 2 children in Kashmir
ISLAMABAD (AP) Pakistani officials say Indian troops have opened fire from across the Line of Control in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, wounding two Pakistani children and two women.
Pakistan's army blamed India for initiating fire Wednesday, calling it cease-fire violation. In a tweet, Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Nafees Zakaria, said Pakistan returned fire and that the exchange is continuing.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan but claimed by both.
Tension in the region has increased since last month.
Bus crashes into fence in California, 15 people injured
TRAVER, Calif. (AP) A bus ran off the highway in Central California and crashed into a fence Wednesday, injuring 15 people who suffered what were described as minor injuries, authorities said Wednesday.
The driver was among those hurt, said Officer Justin Montooth of the California Highway Patrol.
There were about 28 passengers on the Greyhound bus travelling from Fresno to Bakersfield.
Passengers carry their luggage to a replacement bus after the Greyhound bus they were traveling in crashed on Highway 99 Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, near Traver, Calif. The bus ran off the highway in Central California and crashed into a fence injuring multiple people who suffered what were described as minor injuries. There were about 28 passengers on the bus traveling from Fresno to Bakersfield. (Silvia Flores/Fresno Bee via AP)
The bus ran off the right shoulder of the road and hit the fence, Montooth said.
The crash happened in the small Tulare County town of Traver, about 30 miles from Fresno.
Officials initially reported that no one suffered visible injuries, but passengers who complained of minor pain were then taken to hospitals as a precaution, Montooth said.
Authorities had not determined the accident's cause, which was under investigation.
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This story corrects that the bus was on a regular route and was not chartered.
Texas couple pleads guilty in enslaved nanny case
HOUSTON (AP) A Houston-area couple pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges related to forcing a Nigerian woman to care for their five children and home without pay for two years, having her work nearly 20 hours a day.
Chudy Nsobundu, 57, and his 49-year-old wife, Sandra Nsobundu, recruited the woman in Nigeria with the promise of a $100 monthly wage, prosecutors said. Instead, authorities say they abused the woman physically and verbally while she worked at their home in the Houston suburb of Katy, denying her compensation or outside contact from September 2013 to October 2015.
Chudy Nsobundu pleaded guilty to visa fraud while his wife pleaded guilty to unlawful conduct with respect to documents in furtherance of forced labor, said U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson.
Attorneys for the couple didn't immediately return calls seeking comment on Wednesday.
The Nsobundus, who are naturalized U.S. citizens originally from Nigeria, will be sentenced on Jan. 4. They remain free on bond.
Sandra Nsobundu faces up to five years in prison, while her husband faces up to 10 years imprisonment.
According to court documents, the nanny would work every day from 5:30 a.m. to 1 a.m., couldn't take breaks and had to eat leftovers and not fresh food, including being forced to only drink milk left in bowls in which the children had eaten cereal. She also couldn't take hot showers.
Authorities said the Nsobundus prevented the nanny from leaving their employment by keeping her passport and by threatening her with physical and mental abuse.
The nanny reached out for help and was rescued following a tip to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center.
Judge orders evaluation for woman in Amber Alert deaths
ELKHART, Ind. (AP) A judge Wednesday ordered a mental evaluation for an Indiana woman accused of abducting her two young children and smothering them, possibly delaying her trial by months if not years.
Elkhart Circuit Judge Terry Shewmaker also entered a preliminary not guilty plea for 29-year-old Amber Pasztor of Fort Wayne during her initial hearing on two counts of murder.
She's accused in the Sept. 26 killings of 7-year-old Liliana Hernandez and 6-year-old Rene Pasztor after their abduction from their custodial grandparents' home led authorities to issue an Amber Alert. The state is seeking a life sentence without parole.
Public defender Peter Soldato said in his request for the mental evaluation that Pasztor's attorneys believe she cannot fully understand the legal proceedings she faces or help prepare her defense, The Elkhart Truth reported (http://bit.ly/2elh3Jh ). He also questioned whether she understood the seriousness of the charges.
Vicki Becker, Elkhart County's chief deputy prosecutor, said the evaluation process could take 60 to 90 days or much longer if it finds Pasztor needs mental health treatment before she can stand trial.
"It could take months or years, it depends on what they determine in the evaluation," she said.
Pasztor currently is scheduled to stand trial beginning Jan. 23.
Shewmaker said he may extend the search for two psychiatric experts into Allen County, asking judges there for recommendations. Allen County, where Fort Wayne is located, is about 70 miles southeast of Elkhart.
Pasztor said in a jailhouse interview with WANE-TV that she decided to kill her children after hearing of the Amber Alert for them. She said she killed the children so they would be safe in heaven. Pasztor said her children were in good hands in her father's custody, but she didn't think they were safe.
"My kids are in a better place. They don't have no worries no more," she told the TV station.
Pasztor also admitted that she shot her neighbor, 65-year-old Frank Macomber, and took his car. She has not been charged in Macomber's death, but Elkhart County Prosecutor Curtis Hill has said she is a suspect. Macomber's body was found Sept. 27 in a wooded area.
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Palestinians urge UN to adopt resolution against settlements
UNITED NATIONS (AP) The Palestinians urged the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to adopt a resolution with serious measures to compel Israel to halt all settlement activities and threatening "consequences" if it continues to violate international law.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, told the council Wednesday that an Israeli cessation of all settlement activities and an end to its nearly 50-year occupation of Palestinian territory "are imperative for realizing a just, lasting, comprehensive Palestinian-Israeli peace."
Mansour has been sounding out the 15 council members on a new settlements resolution and he is expected to report to the Arab Ministerial Committee which is expected to meet in Cairo before the end of the month to decide on next steps.
Israel's Ambassador Danny Danon made no mention of settlements and instead excoriated the U.N. for its anti-Israel bias.
Israel contends that the West Bank was not captured from the Palestinians and the issues of settlements and borders should be decided through negotiations. Israel annexed east Jerusalem after the 1967 Mideast war and says the entire city is its capital, and it has the right to build wherever it wants.
Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu also makes the argument that Arab hatred and attacks go back to long before the 1967 war, and therefore he thinks settlements are not a real cause of the conflict.
Danon denounced the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem whose executive director urged council members last Friday to take immediate and decisive action to end Israel's occupation. He said B'Tselem receives funds from three U.N. agencies and called on the council "to put an end to U.N. funding for extremist organizations that seek to harm Israel."
The U.N.'s special coordinator for Mideast peace, Nickolay Mladenov, warned the council that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is deteriorating.
"The absence of progress has led to growing anger and frustration among Palestinians and profound disillusionment among Israelis," he said. "It has strengthened radicals and weakened moderates on both sides."
"We must all avoid the risk of sleep-walking into another violent conflict at a time when the region as a whole needs moderate forces to unite and stand up to the radicalization that we see in the Middle East," Mladenov said.
He cited recent killings of Israelis and Palestinians, and Israel's continued settlement planning including its recent promotion of new housing units in Shilo which would a wedge between the north and south West Bank, jeopardizing prospects for a contiguous future Palestinian state.
Mladenov urged Hamas, which controls Gaza, to pursue reconciliation with Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and agree to the Palestine Liberation Organization principles which include recognition of the state of Israel.
In a message clearly directed at Israel, he warned that those who believe the people of Gaza can be punished by closing the strip or restricting entry of construction materials vital for the economy "should know that the temperature in Gaza is rising."
Prosecutors say suspect shot, taunted Alaska police officer
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) A 29-year-old Alaska man opened fire on a Fairbanks police officer, took his gun, stomped on his head and taunted him as the officer stood and tried to get away, state prosecutors said in a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
Anthony George Jenkins-Alexie was charged Wednesday with attempted murder in the shooting early Sunday of Sgt. Allen Brandt, an 11-year veteran of the Fairbanks Police Department.
Jenkins-Alexie also is charged with six other felonies: assault, theft of a firearm, theft of a patrol car, evidence tampering, possession of a firearm as a felon and firing a gun at a building.
This photo released by Fairbanks Police Department shows Anthony George Jenkins-Alexie. The 29-year-old man was arrested in a shooting that left an Alaska police officer seriously injured. Jenkins-Alexie, of Fairbanks, is facing charges of attempted murder, assault and other counts in connection with the shooting early Sunday of Sgt. Allen Brandt. (Fairbanks Police Department via AP)
Brandt is recovering at an Anchorage hospital.
Police arrested Jenkins-Alexie on Tuesday walking in the same neighborhood east of downtown Fairbanks where the shooting occurred.
When police searched his home, they found a confession written on three pages of notebook paper that included the model number of the gun used to shoot Brandt.
As police interviewed Jenkins-Alexie, prosecutors said, he confessed to the shooting and asked for a pen and paper. In a letter to Brandt, he apologized.
"I am deeply sorry. I owe you an apology ... you ... your wife .... & your kids," Jenkins-Alexie wrote. "I am mental just a little bit. ... You didn't deserve it. I was seeking vengeance from FPD for taking my relatives lives and closest friends. I was wrong."
FPD is the Fairbanks Police Department.
The incident started shortly after midnight Sunday when Brandt responded in his patrol car to calls of shots fired and a man yelling.
Brandt's dashboard camera records him driving east and slowing as a man approaches on the sidewalk. As the patrol car stops, the man moves his right hand toward his coat pocket but continues out of the picture.
Seconds later, the man, gripping a silver handgun with both hands, runs around the front of the car.
Prosecutors said Brandt opened the driver's door and tried to take cover behind the patrol car and was shot. Brandt fired back but fell. He was struck six times: twice in the right leg, once in the left leg and once in the right foot. A grazing wound hit his right knee. Body armor stopped a shot to the chest, but at least two bullet fragments entered his right eye.
As Brandt lay on the ground, prosecutors said, Jenkins-Alexie approached and took his gun from his hand. He tried removing ammunition from Brandt's duty belt but could not. He then stomped on Brandt's head.
Brandt struggled to stand and tried to get away. Jenkins-Alexie followed, mocking him, then got into the patrol car and drove away, prosecutors said.
A rear tire on the car was flat, and the car was abandoned two blocks away.
Brandt called for assistance on his radio.
Fairbanks police arrested Jenkins-Alexie on Tuesday morning as he walked in the same neighborhood where Brandt was shot.
Jenkins-Alexie has lengthy criminal history in Anchorage and Fairbanks tied to alcohol consumption. But he has just one previous felony conviction.
Court records indicate Jenkins-Alexie's adult encounters with police began in 2007, when he was charged at age 19 with criminal trespass and consuming alcohol as a minor. He pleaded no contest to the trespass charge. The charge of consuming alcohol as a minor was dismissed. However, he pleaded no contest to two more charges of consuming alcohol as a minor later that year in Fairbanks and Anchorage.
He pleaded no contest to misdemeanor theft in Fairbanks in 2008. He pleaded no contest in 2009 to misdemeanor assault. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to driving with a suspended or revoked license in Seward.
He was arrested in March and April 2013 in Anchorage for driving under the influence of alcohol and convicted after guilty or no contest pleas. Arrested again in June 2013 in Anchorage, he was convicted of felony driving under the influence.
He pleaded guilty in February 2015 in Anchorage to a misdemeanor escape charge.
Alexie-Jenkins referenced alcohol in his apology letter to Brandt. After heavy drinking, he said, he snapped.
"My violence caused you and your family nightmares. I'm deeply sorry. Choose a safer line of work. Be there for your loved one," he wrote.
Prosecutors said Brandt likely will lose sight in his left eye.
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The Latest: Spin room buzzing at Las Vegas debate site
LAS VEGAS (AP) The Latest on the scene leading up to the final debate in the U.S. presidential race (all times local):
6:05 p.m.
Many of the thousands of journalists who descended on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to cover the debate are crowded into a spin room where they are preparing to pound out stories about the action.
Police officers stand outside the Thomas & Mack Center ahead of the third presidential debate between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at UNLV in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Reporters speaking in Spanish, German and Japanese are dodging each other as they do impromptu Facebook Live broadcasts in selfie mode and go live in front of blinding lights.
Surrogates for the campaigns are weaving through piles of camera bags and dodging tripods to offer themselves up for interviews.
Reporters who were anxiously talking on their cellphones will soon take their seats at the rows of tables topped with laptops and watch the debate from one of the dozens of TV screens dangling from the ceiling.
This is the third and final debate between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
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5:50 p.m.
Richard McCaslin pedaled a four-wheeled bike shortly before Wednesday's presidential debate was set to start in Las Vegas.
The 52-year-old resident of Pahrump, Nevada, wore a denim jacket with the words "phantom patriot" stitched to the back. He says that's the name he uses at protests.
McCaslin's bike is covered with signs calling for an end to global tyranny and saying Republican and Democrat criminals won't save America.
He believes the whole political system is corrupt and designed to "conquer the American people." McCaslin said he plans to support Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
McCaslin says Stein's views represent the "only sane" choice for president.
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5:15 p.m.
Rives Grogan says he's been at all three presidential debate sites, and he was in Las Vegas on Wednesday encouraging voters to back Donald Trump.
The 51-year-old Grogan describes himself as a minister to people who are homeless and addicted and as a part-time pizza delivery man.
Grogan, who lives in Mansfield, Texas, says he's trying to encourage America to vote for Trump, reject Hillary Clinton and avoid God's judgment.
Grogan and Paul Naughton were holding signs showing their opposition to abortion. The two men were standing with about 20 protesters of various causes in a sunbaked parking lot designated a "public expression area." About 20 security guards stood around the free speech zone.
The area is about two blocks from the debate hall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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4:35 p.m.
Mick Jagger's sore throat may have helped ease a bad case of congestion Wednesday.
The Rolling Stones canceled its concert in Las Vegas when frontman Jagger was told by doctors to rest his voice after coming down with laryngitis.
Some 20,000 fans were expected to descend on the T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip about the same time authorities were closing roads and freeways surrounding the nearby Thomas & Mack Center. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas arena will be hosting Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the final debate of the presidential election.
About 1,000 people were expected inside the debate hall, and many more outside.
Authorities warned residents and tourists to prepare for blocked streets and detours around McCarran International Airport, at UNLV, and on some major roads crossing the busy Las Vegas Strip.
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4:10 p.m.
Candace Blalock flew with her son from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas, knowing she didn't have a ticket to the debate but wanting to be part of the goings-on.
She found her way to be first in line for a campus viewing party at the UNLV Student Union.
"I've learned that Democracy is really messy," she said. "But I'm an optimist, and I think it's an institution that will survive this tremendously upsetting campaign."
Blalock might be from a mostly Republican state, but she's made a stand. She points to a Hillary 2016 pin on her blouse.
Now 73 and retired, Blalock says she's "liberated and enthusiastic" about expressing her opinion after serving 16 years as a non-partisan elected Oklahoma state court judge from Pauls Valley, about 60 miles south of Oklahoma City.
"I expect perhaps there'll be a little more policy questions asked of Hillary," Blalock said of the debate. "I expect Donald will be Donald."
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3:45 p.m.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas graduate student Sparkle Payne took the scene in stride as she crossed campus Wednesday after psychology class.
Her campus was bustling in preparation for the final debate between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Payne didn't plan to attend the event but wanted "everyone to tune in" to see Trump's antics.
"This is the biggest, most controversial debate," Payne said. "It's huge."
Security was tight, and some roads leading to campus were closed.
Uniformed police from Las Vegas and surrounding cities bunched in groups of six and eight in the campus quad, chatting with each other. Most had riot-gear packs strapped to their thighs.
Media and the first spectators gathered in front of the Thomas & Mack Center, where parking lots were bordered with a two-story barrier of tan metal shipping crates.
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3:10 p.m.
Some of the action before the third and final debate was happening away from the UNLV campus that is playing host to the televised event.
On Wednesday afternoon several taco trucks lined up outside the Trump Hotel, about three miles from the campus and just off the Las Vegas Strip. The food trucks joined Grammy Award-winning band Los Tigres Del Norte, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, progressive groups and union members to rally against the GOP candidate and to protest a fight over organizing the hotel's workforce.
In September, Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group Latinos for Trump, said if something was not done about his own "very dominant" culture, "you're going to have taco trucks on every corner."
On Tuesday the trucks fanned out across the city to register voters.
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12:56 p.m.
Hours before Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump meet for their third and final presidential debate, it was anything but quiet outside the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus in Las Vegas.
Media members, marching bands and supporters of all stripes assembled under sunny skies on the campus not far from the busy Las Vegas Strip.
Media outlets are broadcasting live, speculating on the candidates' debate strategy and decorum.
The Rebels marching band tuned up while noisy supporters and detractors chanted loudly under the watchful eyes of a promised large contingent of law officers, including Las Vegas and UNLV police, Secret Service agents and Nevada Highway Patrol troopers.
Air space over the arena has been cleared, and road closures are expected to snarl traffic.
The Latest: Putin could halt Aleppo strikes indefinitely
BERLIN (AP) The Latest on a summit in Berlin to discuss the stalled Ukraine peace process and Syria's civil war (all times local):
1:40 a.m.
Vladimir Putin says Russia is willing to halt its airstrikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo indefinitely.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, centre, and and French President Francois Hollande pose for a picture prior a summit with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and France at the chancellery in Berlin, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. (Mikhail Palinchak/Pool Photo via AP)
Russia had promised a pause of several hours in attacks on the city by Syrian forces under the cover of Russian air power in order to allow suffering civilians to leave and to give rebels safe passage.
But Putin said after a meeting with the leaders of France and Germany "We informed them of our intention to continue, as much as possible, considering the situation on Syrian territory, a pause in the air strikes. We are ready to do this for as long as there are no clashes with rebel formations entrenched in Aleppo."
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1:20 a.m.
French President Francois Hollande says he has the impression after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin that a pause in fighting in Aleppo may be extended.
Russia has promised an eight-hour halt in fighting on Thursday in the besieged city. Hollande said early Thursday after he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Putin: "I can't put myself in his (Putin's) place but what I understood was that he would go beyond the eight hours announced."
Merkel and Hollande strongly criticized Russian and Syrian government airstrikes on Aleppo, and Hollande said that "what is happening in Aleppo is truly a war crime."
Hollande said that "the first demand is an end to the bombing ... by the regime and Russian planes."
Merkel described the talks on Syria as "very hard."
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1:10 a.m.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the talks with Russia and Ukraine "didn't achieve miracles" but that the sides agreed to work on a road map to push ahead on a 2015 peace agreement.
Among the issues discussed was the creation of zones of disengagement between the warring parties, as well as measures to improve the humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine.
"It's urgently necessary to keep having such talks in order not to lose momentum," she said
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12:55 a.m.
Ukraine's president says an agreement has been reached to ask the OSCE, a major international security group, to deploy an armed police mission in separatist eastern Ukraine as a precursor to holding elections in the disputed region.
Petro Poroshenko was quoted by Russian news agencies Thursday as saying the agreement was reached in a summit with the leaders of France, Germany and Russia.
According to Poroshenko, Germany, as the current chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would be asked to propose the mission to the organization.
It was not clear how large the mission might be. Poroshenko said the mission would be deployed in order to guarantee security for local elections, which are a key element of an agreement reached more than 18 months ago on ending the fighting that has killed more than 9,600 people.
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12:50 a.m.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says a summit with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany has resulted in agreement on establishing a so-called "road map" to end the conflict between Russia-backed separatists and the army in eastern Ukraine.
Poroshenko said the leaders agreed that the road map should be adopted by the end of November.
Details of the road map were not immediately clear. Poroshenko was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying it would include all security issues including restoration of Ukraine's control of its entire border with Russia.
The road map is aimed at being a mechanism to implement the so-called Minsk Agreement of February 2015 on ending the conflict, in which more than 9,600 people have been killed.
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12:40 a.m.
Ukraine's president says an agreement has been reached at a summit with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany on deploying an armed police mission in separatist eastern Ukraine.
Petro Poroshenko's comments were reported by Russian news agencies early Thursday after more than four hours of talks at the summit in Berlin.
The reports did not immediately specify how the proposed mission of police from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would be deployed. But the OSCE said in May that the group would consider sending such a mission to help conduct elections in the separatist regions of the east.
Poroshenko said that Germany, the current chair of the OSCE, would be asked to present the mission proposal to the organization
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6:30 p.m.
The leaders of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France are in Berlin for talks on the stagnant peace process in eastern Ukraine a meeting that also is expected to touch on Syria's civil war.
Prospects of significant progress on either front look poor, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said before Wednesday evening's meeting that it's important to exhaust every possibility.
Merkel and Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Francois Hollande of France and Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine have met sporadically to discuss eastern Ukraine. This is their first meeting in over a year.
The 2015 Minsk agreement brokered by France and Germany has helped end large-scale battles between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia separatists, but clashes have continued.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, attend the talks at a summit with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and France at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016.(Mikhail Klimentyev/Pool Photo via AP)
2 agrarian activists murdered in Honduras
MEXICO CITY (AP) International condemnation poured into Honduras on Wednesday over the murder of two agrarian activists the day before.
Jose Angel Flores, leader of the United Farmworkers Movement of Aguan, or MUCA by its Spanish initials, and member Silmer Dionisio George were shot in northeast Honduras after leaving a meeting in the town of Tocoa.
In recent years, MUCA has seized thousands of acres of land, much of it privately held palm oil plantations that previously had been cooperatives cultivated by the same farmworkers.
U.S. Ambassador to Honduras James Nealon condemned the killings in a statement Wednesday. He said he had offered U.S. resources to the Honduran government to help find those responsible.
"The United States of America calls for a prompt and thorough investigation and for the full force of the law to be brought to bear against those found responsible," the statement said.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras said in a statement Wednesday that both Flores and George had been designated to receive protection by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights since 2014. The statement also said that Flores had reported an attempt on his life in April 2015.
A spokesperson at the Honduran Interior Ministry said an official statement was being prepared, but by late Wednesday the government had still not commented.
The killings follow the murder in March of environmental activist Berta Caceres who had been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work to preserve land.
After President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup in 2009, farmworkers seized about 27,000 acres of farmland. Dozens of people have died in fighting over the occupation of the land.
In May 2010, the government and MUCA agreed to reduce the violence in the Bajo Aguan Valley. But of 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) the government promised to restore to the farmworkers, only 4,050 hectares (10,000 acres) have been handed over, the U.N. statement said.
Amnesty International said in a statement that Honduras has become a "no-go zone" for land rights activists..
Chancellor in warning over push towards specific Brexit outcome
Efforts to tie Prime Minister Theresa May to a specific form of Brexit are undermining Britain's chances of negotiating a successful withdrawal from the European Union, Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned.
His comments are likely to be seen as a lightly-veiled reproach to International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, who has made a very public push for a "hard Brexit" solution - which would see the UK leave the European single market and customs union.
The Chancellor also moved to allay City concerns that Brexit might prevent them recruiting highly-skilled foreign staff, telling the House of Commons Treasury Committee that address ing the concerns of the financial sector will be " a very high priority" for the Government in negotiations.
Ministers were reportedly warned that leaving the European customs union risked a 4.5% fall in GDP by 2030
While regaining controls over the migration between the UK and EU was an essential part of Brexit, Mr Hammond said: "I cannot conceive of any circumstance in which we would be using those controls to prevent banks, companies moving highly-qualified, highly-skilled people between different parts of their businesses.
"That is essential for the smooth operation of our economy."
After days of press reports that other ministers privately see Mr Hammond as a drag on progress towards Brexit, the Chancellor told the committee that it was "no secret" there were differences of opinion within the Cabinet about the best way to proceed.
He condemned leaks from meetings of the Cabinet Brexit committee, saying it would be "far more helpful to this debate if we were able to conduct these internal discussions privately without leaks to newspapers".
And he insisted that it was not the Treasury which was undermining Brexit, as reports have suggested, but those trying to pin Mrs May down too soon to a preferred outcome for the two-year withdrawal talks under Article 50 of the EU treaties - which are due to begin before the end of March 2017.
Mrs May hinted that the 2019 deadline for withdrawal under Article 50 could be extended - something that could happen only with unanimous agreement of all 27 remaining states - telling MPs at Prime Minister's Questions that the process would take "two years or more".
Mr Hammond told the committee that Mrs May was operating within "two clear constraints" - that the UK will leaving the EU and will control migration".
"Beyond that, she needs the maximum possible space," he said. "My objective in supporting her is to ensure that she has the broadest range of options - properly costed and understood - and the maximum scope to deploy that broad range of options in what might be a wide-ranging negotiation.
"I would say that those that are undermining the effort are those that are seeking to close down that negotiating stance, seeking to arrive at hard decisions that we don't need at this stage.
"Keeping as many areas open, as many options open, as possible is the key to the strongest possible negotiating hand."
Mr Hammond did not deny reports that the Brexit Committee has been considering a Treasury paper produced ahead of the referendum, which warned that leaving the arrangement could risk a 4.5% fall in GDP by 2030.
But he cautioned that official estimates of the economic impact of Brexit dating from before the June 23 poll had been prepared on the assumption that the UK would trigger Article 50 immediately after a Leave vote, and that there would be no mitigating action from the Bank of England - both of which had been proved wrong.
Mr Hammond declined to say whether the Government wants to stay in the customs union, which would allow exporters and importers to trade tariff-free with European neighbours, but make it impossible for the UK to strike its own trade deals.
He accepted there had been some "very long, drawn-out" multilateral trade talks, but insisted that "n egotiating a straightforward bilateral trade deal ought to be a great deal simpler" for Britain outside the 28-nation bloc.
Until the Article 50 process is complete, he confirmed it was not appropriate for Dr Fox to enter into "any substantive negotiation with any third party".
The Chancellor came under attack from committee members for refusing to publish analysis being drawn up by the Treasury of the pros and cons of various potential Brexit deals.
Labour MP Rachel Reeves was backed by committee chair Andrew Tyrie as she said: "We can have a public debate, but it will be without the facts available to us.
"That will be a very poor debate and I think that is a disappointing decision by the Government.
"Taxpayers pay for the Treasury to do that work, Chancellor, and I think the public and parliamentarians deserve to see that work."
But Mr Hammond insisted: "It would not be sensible - however irritating I understand that is going to be to some people - to go into the negotiation with all of our potential negotiating positions, all of the building blocks of a negotiating position spelled out in public with the costs and benefits and consequences displayed for our interlocutors on the other side of the table.
"I can promise you the European Union will not be arriving at the negotiations with all the downsides as well as upsides of different negotiating positions set out for us to see."
He added: "We cannot have a public debate about what our negotiating position is going to be. If we were to do that, we would have no negotiating position."
Hungary's minister for foreign affairs and trade, Peter Szijjarto, told Channel Four News the EU needed to cut a "tailor-made" deal with the UK.
"From my perspective we need a tailor-made solution. So, no-Swiss-type, no Canadian-type, no Norwegian-type, we need to look for a tailor-made solution for cooperation regarding trade, economy, and investments between the UK and the EU.
"And the ideal situation would be, of course, free trade. Absolutely free trade between the UK and the EU, because currently there's absolutely free trade between UK and the rest of Europe."
Lily Allen welcomes arrival of Jungle camp youth who caused her to break down
Singer Lily Allen has welcomed the fast-tracked arrival to the UK of a teenage boy who caused her to break down in tears when she visited the Jungle camp in Calais.
Shamsher Sherin, 13 - who has a right to live in the UK through his family ties, was one of around a dozen children who were brought by bus to meet with Home Office officials in Croydon, south London, on Wednesday, as the French camp prepares for demolition.
The Afghan national smiled as he made his way inside the building for screening and interview, and is expected to be reunited with his family later.
Shamsher Sherin, 13, the teenage refugee who Lily Allen spoke to in Calais, arrives at Lunar House in Croydon, south London
Allen tweeted: "So happy to see that Sham Sher made it to the UK safely and won't be risking his life jumping on to moving vehicles."
The teenager had been camped at the Jungle on the edge of the northern French port city for two months.
During their meeting earlier this month, Allen told him: "It just seems that at three different intervals in this young boy's life, the English in particular have put you in danger.
"We've bombed your country, put you in the hands of the Taliban and now put you in danger of risking your life to get into our country.
"I apologise on behalf of my country. I'm sorry for what we have put you through."
Allen wiped tears from her eyes at the end of their exchange, which was broadcast on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
The boy was shepherded into the government building as relatives and supporters waited behind barricades, some holding "welcome" signs.
The latest arrivals came after some critics argued those who arrived on Tuesday appeared to be much older than 18.
Tory MP David Davies has been accused in the House of Commons of fuelling "xenophobic attacks" after he said the teenagers "don't look like children" and should be given dental checks to prove their age.
The SNP's Neil Gray also labelled Mr Davies's remarks "disgraceful".
But the chairman of the Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee defended his comments, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We must not be naive about this. It's no good Lily Allen turning up with tears in her eyes and all the rest of it - we need to be quite hard-nosed here."
The arrival of the group, made up of youngsters who are said to originate from a variety of war-torn countries - including Syria and Sudan, has been welcomed by charities and faith leaders.
The first 14 children arrived earlier this week ahead of the Jungle camp's anticipated clearance.
More children are expected to arrive this week after a team of British officials were sent to Calais to help French authorities speed up the transfer of minors ahead of the dismantling of the camp.
Campaigners including Citizens UK, which said it has reunited 60 children from Calais with relatives in Britain since March, claim to have identified hundreds of children in the camp who have a right to come to the UK - either because they have family ties here under the so-called Dublin regulations, or through the Dubs amendment.
Figures from the Home Office showed that more than two-thirds of refugees who had their ages assessed were found to be adults, despite claiming to be children.
Data from the year ending in June revealed that 1,060 asylum applicants' ages were called into question. Of the 933 who were recorded as having an age assessment, 636 (68%) were deemed to be over 18.
The Home Office refused to comment on the latest consignment of vulnerable children, with a spokeswoman saying the department "would not provide a running commentary".
In an interview with the Telegraph, Shamsher's father Hazrat Gul Sherin said he was "shocked" when he first saw his son pictured with pop star Allen in a news article.
"I was so happy my son was alive," he told the paper.
"And I was later able to speak to him and felt such relief. I rang my wife in Afghanistan to let her know that Shamsher is safe."
Mr Sherin, who fled his homeland in 2005, told how his son had been targeted by the Taliban and also urged by his mother Noorbabo to flee Afghanistan in fear that he would be recruited by Islamic State.
Mr Sherin added: "The Taliban tried to take him off to one of their camps. So my wife raised money through the rest of the family to pay for him to escape, as I had done 10 years earlier."
Eddie Hearn: Anthony Joshua will fight in Manchester in December come what may
Promoter Eddie Hearn is determined Anthony Joshua will defend his IBF heavyweight title in Manchester on December 10 - whether that is against Wladimir Klitschko or another fighter.
Joshua and Klitschko had agreed terms on a world heavyweight title unification bout, but the contest has been thrown into doubt over issues with the sanctioning bodies.
Klitschko is reportedly reluctant to fight without at least one of the WBA or WBO titles on the line - and both organisations are yet to confirm this will be the case.
Eddie Hearn, right, is determined Anthony Joshua, left, will defend his title in Manchester on December 10
With suggestions Klitschko has now lined up an alternative fight in Germany, promoter Hearn confirmed he is looking at other options for Joshua should the multi-million pound fight against the Ukrainian fail to materialise.
"With the hold up from the WBA, we need a little more time, so regardless of if it's Klitschko or not, AJ will return on December 10 in Manchester," Hearn said in an interview with Sky Sports.
"We are beginning discussions with other opponents now while crossing our fingers that Klitschko takes the fight, regardless of how many belts are on the line.
"In an ideal world, there would be as many belts as possible on the line, but I hope he takes up the challenge rather than a soft touch in Germany."
Klitschko has been without a title since losing them to Tyson Fury last year and has a number of options with the WBA and WBO belts now vacant.
One possibility is that the Ukrainian will agree instead to fight highly-ranked American Joseph Parker for the WBO belt in Germany - which is arguably an easier option than facing Joshua in front of his home fans.
WWI soldiers whose graves were wrongly marked laid to rest with military honours
Two First World War soldiers whose graves were wrongly marked in a Somme cemetery for more than a century have finally been laid to rest with full military honours.
Privates William Marmon and Harry Carter, both 21, died with six other soldiers when a 15-ton German underground mine exploded on November 22 1915.
Hundreds of tons of earth engulfed the dugout where the pair, of the 10th Battalion the Essex Regiment, were most likely on sentry duty.
The coffins of Private Harry Carter and Private William Marmon are laid together in Albert Communal Cemetery Extension in Albert, France.
Their deaths were marked at the time with named graves and headstones at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's (CWGC) Albert Communal Cemetery Extension in France.
But, thanks to dogged detective work by experts, it emerged a century later that rather than being recovered and buried, the men had lain underground where they fell in the village of La Boisselle.
A clerical error by the War Office 100 years ago is believed to have led to their collective grave being wrongly marked with their names, the archaeological evidence suggests.
On Wednesday, three years after the remains were found, Pte Marmon, from Holborn, central London, and Pte Carter, from West Ham, east London, were buried with full military honours in Albert.
Nine surviving relatives attended the service, which was led by the Rev Richard Priest and organised by the Ministry of Defence's Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC).
Pte Marmon's great-nephew, Trevor Newland, 60, from Ilford, north-east London, said: "His bravery is undeniable and although his death was in tragic circumstances, my family have had the opportunity to pay our respects.
"To be here today witnessing this full military funeral in his honour is really humbling. He has laid with his comrade for 100 years and will now do so in peace forever more."
Pte Carter's great nephew, Brian Churchyard, from east London, said: "It is a remarkable story and really does bring home the bravery and sacrifice made by such young men."
Members of the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, successor to the 10th Battalion the Essex Regiment, provided a bearer party for the coffins and fired a salute.
National anthems were sung in British and French after the Last Post was played, a silence observed and wreaths laid at the cemetery where more than 860 First World War casualties are commemorated.
Flag bearers downed their flags as the coffins were lowered, and the Union flags that draped the coffins were folded then handed to relatives.
Mr Priest said: "It is just as important for today's soldiers to know that their comrades are buried with full military honours as it was 100 years ago, and that we honour our fallen from past conflicts."
The discovery of the men's remains came in 2013 after a professional archaeology group, the La Boisselle Study Group (LBSG), formed by Briton Peter Barton, excavated trenches in an area known as the Glory Hole.
The area saw bitter fighting during the First World War, with each side resorting to mine warfare to gain a slim advantage.
Beneath the two-hectare site, which included British, French and German trenches, a field of mine craters and remnants of a farm, was a labyrinth of wartime tunnels.
The remains of the two fully kitted men were found beside their rifles and ammunition, grenades and flares. Small figurines of children were also found in a pouch, along with a bullet carved into a love heart.
According to the battalion's War Diary, the blast that killed Pte Marmon and Pte Carter was of such ferocity that it "filled the dugouts for about 50 yards and completely obliterated the front face".
A file of evidence was sent to the JCCC which used genealogy research to identify and trace the surviving relatives of all eight soldiers reported as being killed.
DNA analysis proved the remains were Pte Marmon and Pte Carter. The inscriptions on the existing grave headstone have been amended.
Steve Brown of the JCCC said: "The commemorative event today is a culmination of detailed work by many organisations to achieve a common goal - the identification and burial of exceptionally brave young men who died serving in arguably the most difficult and dangerous place during the First World War."
The three-week project was complicated early on when LBSG archaeologists also discovered the bodies of two French soldiers killed in early January 1915. Both have since been identified and reburied in France.
Mr Barton said: "We look upon the burials today as a cause not for melancholy but for celebration, because we have finally found, recovered and identified the remains of four young men missing for a century - Charles Marmon and Harry Carter of the 10th Essex and their French comrades Louis Heurt and Apollinaire Ruelland of 118th Infantry Regiment.
"Our commemorations are, however, tempered by an enduring sadness at not having been able to recover the other soldiers, both British and German, whom we know or believe to have been present close by. This evening we shall be raising a glass to them all."
On average, up to 40 soldiers are discovered every year on the former Western Front battlefields. French law dictates that the CWGC be involved when a body is found.
Peter Francis of the CWGC said the commission was "honoured" to care for the men "in perpetuity", and that he had never seen such level of detail about two fallen soldiers.
Private Harry Carter of the 10th Battalion Essex Regiment, was one of two British First World War soldiers whose graves were wrongly marked in a Somme cemetery for more than a century.
Private William Marmon and Private Harry Carter have now been laid to rest with full military honours in Albert, France.
The coffin of Private Harry Carter is carried into Albert Communal Cemetery Extension to be buried alongside Private William Marmon.
The Union flags that draped the coffins were folded then handed to relatives.
Professor Stephen Hawking has warned that artificial intelligence could develop a will of its own that is in conflict with that of humanity.
It could herald dangers like powerful autonomous weapons and ways for the few to oppress the many, he said, as he called for more research in the area.
But if sufficient research is done to avoid the risks, it could help in humanity's aims to 'finally eradicate disease and poverty', he added.
Professor Stephen Hawking has warned that artificial intelligence could develop a will of its own that is in conflict with that of humanity
He was speaking in Cambridge at the launch of The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, which will explore the implications of the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
All great achievements of civilisation, from learning to master fire to learning to grow food to understanding the cosmos, were down to human intelligence, he said.
'I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer.
'It therefore follows that computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence - and exceed it.'
Artificial intelligence was progressing rapidly and there were 'enormous' levels of investment.
He said the potential benefits were great and the technological revolution could help undo some of the damage done to the natural world by industrialisation.
'In short, success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation,' said Prof Hawking. 'But it could also be the last unless we learn how to avoid the risks.
Professor Hawking warned that AI could herald dangers like powerful autonomous weapons and ways for the few to oppress the many (like the plot of Terminator, pictured)
'Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many.
'It will bring great disruption to our economy.
'And in the future, AI could develop a will of its own - a will that is in conflict with ours.
'In short, the rise of powerful AI will be either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity.
'We do not know which.'
He continued: 'That is why, in 2014, I and a few others called for more research to be done in this area.
'I am very glad that someone was listening to me.'
He welcomed the launch of the new centre, which is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and the University of California, Berkeley.
REPORT CALLS FOR BAN ON KILLER ROBOTS The report by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic was released as the United Nations kicked off a week-long meeting on such weapons in Geneva. The report calls for humans to remain in control over all weapons systems at a time of rapid technological advances. It says that requiring humans to remain in control of critical functions during combat, including the selection of targets, saves lives and ensures that fighters comply with international law. 'Machines have long served as instruments of war, but historically humans have directed how they are used,' said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms division researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. 'Now there is a real threat that humans would relinquish their control and delegate life-and-death decisions to machines.' Some have argued in favor of robots on the battlefield, saying their use could save lives. But last year, more than 1,000 technology and robotics experts including scientist Stephen Hawking, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak warned that such weapons could be developed within years, not decades. In an open letter, they argued that if any major military power pushes ahead with development of autonomous weapons, 'a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.' According to the London-based organization Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the United States, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia, and Britain are moving toward systems that would give machines greater combat autonomy. Advertisement
'The research done by this centre is crucial to the future of our civilisation and of our species,' he said.
CFI is funded by an unprecedented 10 million grant from the Leverhulme Trust.
Its mission is to create an interdisciplinary community of researchers that will work closely with industry and policy-makers.
It is the first centre of its kind that will examine both risks and benefits, short and long-term.
And Professor Hawking joked: 'We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let's face it, is mostly the history of stupidity.
Gap to shut Banana Republic doors in the UK
Oct 18 (Reuters) - Gap Inc said it would close all its eight Banana Republic stores in the UK as the ailing apparel retailer focuses on North America to revive its sales.
The company said it expected to close majority of the eight stores by the end of this year, GAP spokeswoman Kari Shellhorn told Reuters in an email statement.
Gap said in May that it would shut 75 Old Navy and Banana Republic stores overseas.
Sales of the Banana Republic and Gap brands have been falling for some time now, with comparable sales at Banana Republic stores down 9 percent last quarter, its sixth straight quarter of decline.
Gap has been struggling to draw shoppers who now turn to fast-fashion retailers such as H&M, Forever 21 and Inditex's Zara for cheaper and trendier clothes.
Banana Republic will continue to serve its UK customers through its regional website, Gap said.
Chinese manned space mission docks with space station - Xinhua
SHANGHAI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - China's Shenzhou 11 manned spacecraft has successfully docked with China's Tiangong 2 space lab, and two astronauts have entered the lab, China's official news agency Xinhua said Wednesday.
China is the third country after the United States and Russia to complete space rendezvous and docking procedures, Xinhua said.
According to the mission schedule, the astronauts will remain in the space station for 30 days and spend a total of 33 days in space, making the mission the longest in space so far for China.
In a manned space mission in 2013, three Chinese astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with a space laboratory, the Tiangong 1.
Advancing China's space programme is a priority for Beijing, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.
China insists its space programme is for peaceful purposes.
Shenzhou 11, whose name translates as "Divine Vessel", will also carry three experiments designed by Hong Kong middle school students and selected in a science competition, including one that will take silk worms into space.
The U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations using space-based assets in a crisis.
Turkish police kill suspected Islamic State suicide bomber in capital
By Tuvan Gumrukcu
ANKARA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Turkish police shot dead a suspected Islamic State militant overnight who was believed to be planning a suicide bomb attack in the capital Ankara, the city's governor said on Wednesday.
It was the latest in a series of counter-terrorist police operations coinciding with a Turkey-backed rebel operation in Syria to drive the jihadists away from its southern border.
Turkish security forces have meanwhile stepped up action against Kurdish militants, killing 14 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters in eastern Turkey in recent days, the interior minister said.
Police tracked the Islamic State suspect to the ninth floor of a building on Ankara's outskirts, where he was killed in a gunfight around 3 a.m. after opening fire in response to a call to surrender, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
"The terrorist is judged to have been planning to carry out a suicide bomb attack and carried out reconnaissance around the old parliament building and Anitkabir," Governor Ercan Topaca wrote on Twitter, referring to the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The suspect may have been targeting ceremonies to be held there on the Oct. 29 anniversary of the Turkish Republic's foundation or on Nov. 10 to commemorate Ataturk's death, Anadolu cited Topaca as saying.
Police found explosive materials including sticks of dynamite and ammonium nitrate at the scene, the governor said.
The suspect was registered as resident of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir and was born in 1992, Anadolu said.
PUBLIC GATHERINGS
After receiving intelligence that militants were planning attacks in the capital, Topaca's office on Monday banned public meetings and marches until the end of November.
The ban was enforced in line with emergency rule imposed after an attempted coup in July.
Islamic State and Kurdish militants have carried out attacks in the capital. This month two suspected PKK members, believed to be planning a car bomb attack, blew themselves up in a standoff with police in Ankara.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters in Ankara that operations targeting militants would continue in the days ahead and said 13 PKK fighters were killed this week in the eastern province of Tunceli and one further north in Erzincan.
In the Lice district of Diyarbakir province, PKK militants staged a rocket attack on a minibus carrying members of the state-sponsored village guard militia who fight against the PKK, killing two guards and wounding two others, security sources said.
Separately, the sources said 20 people were detained overnight in simultaneous raids across the city of Diyarbakir designed to avert Islamic State bomb attacks.
Romania - Factors to watch on Oct. 19
Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Wednesday.
CHF CONVERSION BILL
Romania's lower house of parliament unanimously endorsed a bill on Tuesday to convert Swiss franc loans into local currency at historical rates, going against central bank recommendations and economists' pleas for prudence in an election year.
CORRUPTION
Romanian former deputy central bank governor Bogdan Olteanu was indicted on graft charges on Tuesday by anti-corruption prosecutors after a months-long investigation into his time as speaker of parliament's lower house, the prosecutors said.
CANADA TRADE DEAL
EU governments failed on Tuesday to approve a free trade agreement with Canada, as continued opposition from French-speaking southern Belgium threatened the entire deal.
CEE MARKETS
Romanian stocks and government bond prices eased on Tuesday after the Bucharest parliament passed a bill on the conversion of Swiss franc mortgages into leu at historically low rates, intensifying fears that bank costs will rise sharply.
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Poland - Factors to Watch Oct. 19
Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Wednesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours):
INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT, SALES, PPI
The statistics office is scheduled to publish September industrial output, retail sales, and producer price data at 1200 GMT.
FINANCIAL SUPERVISOR
Current central bank governor may also become head of financial supervisor KNF as part of a plan to merge the two institutions, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna reported citing a draft law that has not been published yet.
GRUPA AZOTY
Fertiliser producer Grupa Azoty may come under pressure if the European Union approves regulations that would lower acceptable levels of cadmium in fertilisers, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna reported.
ROAD CONSTRUCTION TENDERS
Polish road construction authority GDDKiA has approved four road construction projects worth a total of 5.7 billion zlotys ($1.45 billion), Rzeczpospolita daily reported.
****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Philippine police van drives at protesters to break up anti-U.S. demonstration
MANILA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Philippine police used tear gas to disperse about 1,000 anti-U.S. protesters outside the U.S. Embassy in Manila on Wednesday, as television news footage showed a patrol van, which had come under attack, driving at demonstrators.
The rally came as President Rodrigo Duterte visits Beijing to strengthen relations with the world's second-largest economy amid deteriorating ties with the Philippines' former colonial power, the United States, sparked by his controversial war on illegal drugs.
Police made 29 arrests at the rally while at least 10 people were taken to hospital after being hit by the police van, Renato Reyes, secretary general of left-wing activist group Bayan (Nation), told reporters.
The protesters were calling for the removal of U.S. troops in the southern island of Mindanao.
"There was absolutely no justification (for the police violence)," Reyes said. "Even as the president avowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the U.S."
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner expressed sympathy for those injured and wished them a quick recovery.
"The U.S. strongly supports democracy in the Philippines and supports the right to peaceful expression and demonstration. We call on all parties to engage in peaceful dialogue and exercise restraint," he said.
In a series of conflicting statements, Duterte has insulted U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. ambassador in Manila for questioning his war on drugs, which has led to the deaths of 2,300 suspected users and pushers. He told Obama to "go to hell" and alluded to severing ties with Washington.
Then after weeks of anti-American rhetoric, Duterte said the Philippines would maintain its existing defence treaties and its military alliances.
Lebanon's Hariri backs Aoun for president, some allies opposed
By Tom Perry and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri intends to endorse Michel Aoun for the vacant presidency, senior political sources said, and the Hezbollah ally could be elected head of state later this month.
Long an opponent of the Iran-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah, Hariri would become prime minister again under the plan that could reshape Lebanese politics. It has drawn opposition in his party and a final decision has not yet been taken, allies said.
The presidency, which is reserved for a Maronite Christian in the country's sectarian power-sharing arrangements, has been vacant for 2 1/2 years due to political conflicts. Aoun, a veteran politician in his 80s, has long coveted the post.
It was not immediately clear if Aoun's candidacy would enjoy enough support among other politicians to secure the necessary two-thirds quorum for the vote in the 128-seat parliament.
The next scheduled parliamentary session to elect a president is set for Oct. 31.
Opponents of Aoun's candidacy include Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, head of the Shi'ite Amal Movement and a close ally of Hezbollah, which itself has yet to comment.
Hariri, 46, led the "March 14" alliance against Hezbollah and its allies, after the 2005 assassination of his father Rafik al-Hariri. He remains a fierce critic of Hezbollah, which is fighting in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
The proposal, unthinkable until recently, casts new light on the predicament facing Hariri, whose standing as Lebanon's most influential Sunni politician has been shaken by a financial crisis at his Saudi-based construction business.
The troubles at Saudi Oger, which has been hit by falling oil prices and cuts in Saudi state spending, have led to a cash crunch in Hariri's Future Movement.
Diplomats say Hariri has fallen from favour in Saudi Arabia, which these days cares far more about confronting Iranian influence in the Gulf and Syria than about Lebanon.
OPPOSITION FROM WITHIN
Two senior politicians told Reuters that Hariri had expressed his intention to nominate Aoun for the presidency as part of the power-sharing deal.
A third source, a member of Hariri's Future Movement, confirmed Hariri had expressed this intention, but members of his own parliamentary bloc opposed it.
Fouad Siniora, a former prime minister and head of the Future Movement's parliamentary bloc, told the newspaper Daily Star that Hariri had told his MPs on Tuesday that he had decided to support Aoun's candidacy, but added that there was "no final decision yet on this matter".
One of the senior sources said Hariri would announce his support for Aoun "within the coming few days".
The current government of Prime Minister Tammam Salam has been paralysed by rivalries exacerbated by regional conflict.
Hariri became prime minister for the first time in 2009, but his cabinet was toppled in 2011 when Hezbollah and its allies resigned. Since then, he spent most of his time abroad.
Last year, he nominated Hezbollah ally Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency, but Hezbollah stuck by Aoun.
Aoun, a former army commander, heads the largest Christian bloc in parliament and has a large following in the divided Christian community. He has been a political ally of Hezbollah since 2006.
A significant figure in Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, Aoun led one of two rival governments during the final years of the conflict. In 1990, the Syrian army forced him into exile.
He returned in 2005 after Syrian forces withdrew under international pressure following the Hariri assassination.
Shi'ite militias say will support Iraqi army offensive on Mosul
By Maher Chmaytelli and Babak Dehghanpisheh
BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A Shi'ite paramilitary force said it would support the Iraqi army's offensive on Mosul, Islamic State's last major stronghold in Iraq, raising the risk of sectarian strife in the mainly Sunni region.
The Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), a coalition of mostly Iranian-trained militias, said late on Tuesday it would back Iraqi government forces advancing toward Tal Afar, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Mosul.
Taking Tal Afar would effectively cut off the escape route for militants wanting to head into neighbouring Syria and would please the Iran-backed army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has accused the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition of planning to allow the jihadists such a safe passage.
But it could also hamper the escape of civilians from the area of Mosul, which is Iraq's second biggest city and where the militants are reportedly trying to use residents as human shields.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday that blocking the road to Syria was the responsibility of the coalition that is providing air and ground support to Iraqi and Kurdish troops engaged in the battle.
Tal Afar's pre-war population of about 150,0000 to 200,000 was a mix of Sunni and Shi'ite ethnic Turkmens until Shi'ites fled the town after Islamic State's ultra-hardline Sunni militants took over the region in 2014, declaring a 'caliphate' over swathes of Iraq and Syria.
"The Iranians and the (PMF) plan to take Tal Afar because of the Shi'ite significance and use that as a way to angle in to Mosul," said a senior Iraqi official who asked not to be named. "But they also want to use it as a way to angle into the Syria fight."
SECTARIAN DIVISIONS
Iraqi government forces are mostly fighting on the southern front and were trying on Wednesday to clear the region of Shora, 40 km (25 miles) south of the city, a military statement said. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were deployed on the eastern and northern frontlines, 20 to 25 km from the city.
"The PMF will be backing the security forces on the western front (..) along two axes. The first is Tal Afar and the second is to support the forces going into the centre of Mosul," a statement on the PMF website said.
The announcement came despite warnings from human rights groups that PMF involvement could ignite sectarian violence.
Shi'ites make up a majority in Iraq but Sunnis are predominant in the north and the west of the country.
The PMF officially reports to the Shi'ite-led government of Abadi, who announced on Monday the start of the Mosul offensive. It was formed in 2014 to help push back Islamic State's sweeping advance through the northern and western provinces.
Abadi has sought to allay fears of sectarian bloodshed, saying that the army and the police will be the only forces allowed to enter the city.
Amnesty International on Tuesday published a report saying Shi'ite militias had committed "serious human rights violations, including war crimes" against civilians fleeing Islamic State-held territory.
The United Nations said in July it had a list of more than 640 Sunni Muslim men and boys reportedly abducted by a Shi'ite militia in Falluja, a former militant stronghold west of Baghdad, and about 50 others who were summarily executed or tortured to death.
The government and the PMF say a limited number of violations did occur and were investigated, but they deny the abuses were widespread and systematic.
Iraqi officials and residents of Mosul say Islamic State is preventing people from leaving the city but civilians are fleeing from outlying districts and villages.
The United Nations has warned that some 100,000 people may arrive in Syria from the Mosul area. Save the Children said on Wednesday about 5,000 people, mostly women and children, had arrived at the Al Hol camp in Syria in the last 10 days.
Egypt cenbank allocates $1.8 bln to build 6-month strategic goods stock -minister
By Eric Knecht
LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Egypt's central bank has allocated $1.8 billion to ensure six months of reserves in all strategic goods, Supply Minister Mohamed Ali El-Sheikh said on Wednesday, after widespread sugar shortages prompted talk of an impending food crisis.
Egypt already has five months worth of wheat and vegetable oil reserves and would ensure that Egyptians receive a steady supply of essential foods, Sheikh said at a news conference.
The $1.8 billion has already been allocated and the supply effort would be made in coordination with the armed forces, said Sheikh, a military major general who took charge in September of a ministry rocked by a wheat corruption scandal.
Sheikh said his ministry would seek to end procurement of wheat to open air silos by next year's buying season and move to more sophisticated climate-controlled silos that are designed to minimise waste and prevent fraud.
The move comes as Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, tries to clamp down on alleged corruption in its strategic wheat supply chain that has wasted billions of pounds in public funds.
Egyptian prosecutors are investigating allegations that millions of dollars intended to subsidise local wheat farmers were used to purchase more wheat on paper than was found in silos. The public prosecutor has charged several private silo owners and others with profiteering, forgery and enabling embezzlement.
Parliamentarians who formed a fact-finding commission to investigate the suspected fraud have said upwards of 2 million tonnes, or 40 percent of the locally procured crop, may be unaccounted for.
Sheikh said a committee composed of officials from the supply, agriculture and finance ministries had been established to determine the proper price for local wheat to be procured next year.
However, he said Egypt had yet to decide if it will shift to a system where it pays farmers the global wheat price plus the government subsidy. The plan was mooted earlier this year as part of efforts to minimise opportunities for corruption along the supply chain but was never implemented.
Catholics flock to watch Peru's Senor de Los Milagros procession
LIMA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A sea of worshippers clad in purple have filled the streets of downtown Lima as Peruvians take part in the annual procession of 'Senor de Los Milagros' (Lord of Miracles), a festival to honour Peru's most revered religious icon.
The icon is thought to have been painted by a freed slave and is viewed as having miraculously survived an earthquake in 1687, which obliterated the chapel that housed it. Since then, the mural draws crowds of believers as it is transported through the capital's streets each year.
'Cargadores' or carriers, a brotherhood charged with transporting the heavy icon that depicts a dark-skinned Christ, were accompanied on Tuesday by groups of women in white, lace veils while thousands of residents squeezed into the narrow streets to watch the solemn procession, many with tears in their eyes.
Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and first lady Nancy Lange were also in attendance.
Indian human rights body demands answer over deaths of hundreds of indigenous schoolchildren
By Rina Chandran
MUMBAI, Oct 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has accused the western state of Maharashtra of negligence over the "shocking and painful" deaths in the past decade of more than 700 indigenous children in schools run by the authorities.
It was the second time in two months that the commission has criticised the state's care of its indigenous people. Last month, the NHRC asked state authorities for a detailed report on the deaths of more than 600 indigenous children from malnutrition.
The NHRC said on Tuesday that at least 740 students from poor tribal areas of Maharashtra state had died in state-run "ashram" schools over the past decade from illnesses such as malaria, food poisoning, drowning and snake bites.
The schools, which provide accommodation for pupils, had not followed several procedures, including health screens for the students at least twice a year, it said.
"The school authorities, as their lawful guardians, are responsible for their welfare, safety and healthcare," the NHRC said.
"The negligence on the part of the Department of Tribal Development and the school authorities is a violation of the right to life and dignity of the students," it added.
A spokesman for the state's tribal department said senior officials were meeting with the chief minister in Mumbai to "look into all aspects and take appropriate action".
The NHRC asked the government of Maharashtra to provide a report on the matter within a month.
Ashram schools for children from poor tribal areas of India were set up more than two decades ago and are the only option for many living in remote areas.
The schools, which are run by state authorities, are meant to improve literacy levels and provide basic healthcare to the children.
Maharashtra, one of the wealthiest states in the country, has about 550 tribal schools but most of these schools lack even basic amenities and health services, an activist said.
"There are no proper beds, and most schools lack proper toilets and drinking water, and basic healthcare facilities," said Vivek Pandit, founder of Shramjivi Sanghatana, which works with vulnerable people in Maharashtra.
Philippines' Duterte says S.China Sea arbitration case to take "back seat"
By Benjamin Kang Lim
BEIJING, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The South China Sea arbitration case will "take the back seat" during talks with China, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday in Beijing, adding that he would wait for the Chinese to bring up the dispute rather than doing so himself.
Duterte arrived in Beijing on Tuesday with at least 200 top business people to pave the way for what he calls a new commercial alliance, amid deteriorating ties with longtime ally the United States.
The effort to engage China, months after the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled over South China Sea disputes in favour of the Philippines, marks a reversal in Philippine foreign policy since Duterte took office on June 30.
China refused to participate in the arbitration case or recognise its findings.
Speaking to reporters at his hotel, Duterte described the judgment as a "piece of paper".
"It would not be in keeping with courtesy and goodwill if I am the one to open it," he said. "And you will say, will it take a back seat? Of course, it has to take the back seat."
China has welcomed the shift in tone that has added to strains between the Philippines and the United States, even as Duterte has vowed not to surrender any sovereignty to Beijing.
Duterte said on Sunday he would raise the arbitral ruling, and vowed not to deviate from the tribunal's award.
Speaking in Beijing, Duterte said he did not want to make any "hard impositions" on the South China Sea, and would wait for Chinese President Xi Jinping to raise the subject.
"I have to be courteous and I have to wait for your president to mention it in passing for me to respond," he said.
"It is in the broader outline of talks that we have agreed. But as a matter of courtesy, and the oriental way, we will always wait because I am a visitor. I cannot destroy the goodwill just by blurting out something."
STRONG TIES WITH CHINA, OTHERS
In a series of conflicting statements, Duterte has insulted U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. ambassador in Manila for questioning his war on drugs, which has led to the deaths of 2,300 people. He told Obama to "go to hell" and alluded to severing U.S. ties.
Speaking earlier, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said territorial disputes between China and the Philippines may take a lifetime to resolve, but should not prevent warming ties.
On Wednesday, Philippine Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez told reporters in Beijing that Bank of China had agreed to provide a $3 billion credit facility for infrastructure investments in the Philippines.
Their remarks came as Philippine police used teargas to disperse about 1,000 anti-American protesters outside the U.S. embassy in Manila.
Yasay reiterated that the thaw with China was "not going to erode our close ties with the rest of our allies and traditional partners".
"As we renew our ties with this great nation, it does not mean that we are weakening ties with the rest of the members of the international community. This is at the core of the independent foreign policy that our president has moved and put forward," he said.
After weeks of anti-American rhetoric, Duterte said the Philippines would maintain its existing defence treaties and its military alliances.
China has expressed support for Duterte's drug war, even as it has sparked concerns in Western capitals about extrajudicial killings.
Keeping euro-clearing in London not a top priority in Brexit talks - minister
By Huw Jones and William James
LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The future of London's financial clearing business is a significant consideration in Britain's negotiations on leaving the European Union, but is probably not a top priority for government, its financial services minister said on Wednesday.
London dominates clearing of derivatives denominated in euros, mainly via the London Stock Exchange's LCH.Clearnet business, and attempts by the European Central Bank to shift clearing to the euro zone were thwarted by the bloc's top court.
But after Britain voted in June to leave the EU, French President Francois Hollande called for clearing of euro denominated securities to shift to the euro zone.
Industry lobby groups in Britain such as TheCityUK have said keeping clearing in London is vitally important and should be one of the government's core aims in negotiations on new trading terms with the bloc.
Britain's financial services minister, Simon Kirby, declined to give full backing to such demands at a parliamentary hearing.
"It's an element of the negotiations. Is it the most important element? Probably not, but it is a significant consideration," Kirby said when asked whether the finance ministry had analysed the impact of relocating clearing houses away from the capital.
"The whole of Europe, UK included, would be worse off if that particular part of financial services that London offers was dismantled and redistributed across Europe," Kirby told a committee in the House of Lords.
"There are some people who would have you believe it wouldn't go to Europe at all, and that it would end up in New York, which would be a very bad place for all of us."
Kirby echoed Prime Minister Theresa May by saying Britain would seek the best trade deal possible for the country.
TREASURY IN CHARGE
Bankers lobbying to maintain "passports", or access to the EU's single market after Britain leaves the bloc, worry their traditional champion in government, the finance ministry, is being sidelined.
Lawmakers pressed Kirby several times before he reassured them the treasury was indeed the government department that represents financial services, a sector that paid 66.5 billion pounds ($82 billion) in tax in 2014-15.
Katharine Braddick, director for financial services at the finance ministry, said she was conducting a sector-by-sector analysis of how different types of trade agreements would hit revenues, employment and tax receipts.
The information will be passed on to the cabinet committee that will thrash out Britain's trade talks stance.
Financial industry officials say a soft Brexit - or maintaining full access to the EU market - is unlikely, meaning access to the EU will be reduced for some parts of the sector as Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin seek to attract banks from Britain.
Some are concerned the government might sacrifice parts of the industry, such as euro clearing, as part of negotiations.
Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe told the committee last week, however, it would be too hard for other European financial centres to replicate the complex "eco-system" of banks, asset managers, clearing houses, accountants and lawyers that make London the world's biggest financial hub.
Braddick said it was difficult to quantify the impact of various types of trade deals on this eco-system.
"I don't think that's a nut we might be able to crack analytically in this timescale," she said.
Braddick said a loss of passports for asset managers may not be as problematic as initially appeared, though passports were important for investment banks.
Evoking Ottoman past, Erdogan vows to tackle Turkey's enemies abroad
By Orhan Coskun and Nick Tattersall
ANKARA/ISTANBUL, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Smarting over exclusion from an Iraqi-led offensive against Islamic State in Mosul and Kurdish militia gains in Syria, President Tayyip Erdogan warned on Wednesday Turkey "will not wait until the blade is against our bone" but could act alone in rooting out enemies.
In a speech at his palace, Erdogan conjured up an image of Turkey constrained by foreign powers who "aim to make us forget our Ottoman and Selcuk history", when Turkey's forefathers held territory stretching across central Asia and the Middle East.
"From now on we will not wait for problems to come knocking on our door, we will not wait until the blade is against our bone and skin, we will not wait for terrorist organizations to come and attack us," he told hundreds of "muhtars", local administrators generally loyal to the government.
"Whoever supports the divisive terrorist organization, we will dig up their roots," he said, referring to Kurdish PKK militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey and have bases in northern Iraq and affiliates in Syria.
"Let them go wherever until we find and destroy them. I am saying this very clearly: they will not have a single place to find peace abroad."
Erdogan has struck an increasingly belligerent tone in his speeches in recent days, frustrated that NATO member Turkey has not been more involved in the U.S.-backed assault on Mosul, and angered by Washington's support for Kurdish militia fighters battling Islamic State in Syria.
He is riding a wave of patriotism since a coup attempt failed to oust him in July, his message of a strong Turkey playing well with his fervent supporters.
Ankara has been locked in a row with Iraq over the presence of Turkish troops at the Bashiqa camp near Mosul, as well as over who should take part in the offensive in the largely Sunni Muslim city, once part of the Ottoman empire and still seen by Turkey as firmly within its sphere of influence.
Erdogan has warned of sectarian bloodshed if the Iraqi army relies on Shi'ite militia fighters.
He said agreement had been reached with the U.S. military on Turkish jets joining the Mosul operation, although Washington has said it is up to the Iraqi government on who takes part.
"They thought they could keep us out of Mosul by bothering us with the PKK and Daesh (Islamic State) ... They think they can shape our future with the hands of terrorist organizations," he said. "We know that the terrorists' weapons will blow up in their hands soon."
"YOU ARE FOREIGNERS HERE"
Turkey has felt increasingly powerless to control events across its borders as the U.S.-led coalition focuses on fighting Islamic State in Syria rather than on removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the root cause of the war in Ankara's view.
It has been particularly angered by U.S. support for Kurdish militia fighters in Syria. Washington views the Kurdish YPG as useful allies in the fight against the jihadists, but Turkey sees them as a hostile force and an extension of the PKK.
"We know this business in this region. You are foreigners here. You do not know," Erdogan said, to loud applause, in a speech on Tuesday to mark the opening of the academic year.
While criticising the West, the Turkish leader has restored ties with Moscow in recent weeks, vowing to seek common ground on Syria after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, despite Moscow's backing of Assad.
Erdogan said he discussed with Putin by phone an agreement on Tuesday night on removing from Aleppo the group formally known as the Nusra Front, and now called Jabhat Fatah al Sham. He gave no details.
Erdogan has made repeated references in his speeches this week to the term "Misak-i Milli" or National Pact, referring to decisions made by the Ottoman parliament in 1920 setting out the borders of the Ottoman Empire.
He often laments the concessions made by Turkish leaders after World War One, with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne that brought modern Turkey into being in 1923. Pro-government media this week published maps depicting Ottoman borders encompassing an area including Mosul.
He warned of efforts to "restructure the region" and said Turkey would not sit by.
"I'm warning the terrorist organisations, the sectarian fanatic Baghdad government, and the Assad government that kills its own people: you are on the wrong path. The fire you are trying to start will burn you more than us," Erdogan said.
South Africa's Gordhan says relations with Zuma very good
By Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 19 (Reuters) - South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Wednesday his relations with President Jacob Zuma were very good and he was hard at work preparing a budget policy speech to be delivered next week.
Gordhan is facing charges that, while running the tax agency, he fraudulently approved early retirement for a deputy commissioner and re-hired him as a consultant, costing the tax agency around 1.1 million rand ($79,000) - accusations the minister has said are politically motivated.
Analysts and supporters of Gordhan, whose first court appearance is scheduled for Nov. 2, say the charges could be a ploy by Zuma allies to discredit him.
The president has said he is not in conflict with Gordhan, and on Tuesday backed the minister's efforts to revive the economy.
"He is my president so I have to have very good relations with him," Gordhan told reporters after a speech to trade union leaders in which he said South Africa was making progress towards preventing a sovereign credit downgrade.
"Everything is fine, we are busy preparing for the medium-term budget policy statement." Gordhan said.
The minister has also described the fraud charges as frivolous and said he intended to continue in his job.
Investors have been worried that Gordhan, seen by markets as a safeguard of stability, could lose his job, impeding efforts to revive sluggish economic growth and prevent a downgrade to junk status.
Gordhan is facing further legal wrangles after Oakbay Investments said on Wednesday it would oppose a court application from him linking the firm and its owners, who have close ties to Zuma, to suspicious transactions.
Gordhan said in a court affidavit on Friday that 6.8 billion rand ($491 million) in payments made by three Indian-born businessmen - Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta - and companies they control and other individuals with the same surname had been reported to authorities as suspicious since 2012.
A Treasury spokeswoman has said the Guptas would have to file an affidavit of their own before a court date to hear the accusation could be set.
Gordhan has for months been at odds with Zuma, partly over the alleged political influence of the Gupta brothers.
The president has denied granting undue influence to the Guptas and they have denied seeking it.
The businessmen are the subject of a report by the outgoing public protector - an anti-graft official - into allegations they influenced the appointment of ministers. The report was prevented from being made public on Friday by a High Court application by Zuma to delay its release.
The new Public Protector, lawyer Busisiwe Mkhwebane, said on Wednesday she would not release the report until Zuma's application had been heard. That is scheduled for Nov. 1.
WIDER IMAGE-Spain's white villages offer glimpse of vanished past
By Marcelo del Pozo
ARCOS DE LA FRONTERA, Spain, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Dazzling clusters of cube-shaped houses perched on top of Andalusia's olive tree-studded mountains, the "Pueblos Blancos", or white villages, of southern Spain are named for the lime wash the buildings are painted with to keep the interiors cool.
The labyrinths of narrow alleyways are a throwback to when this region was known as Al-Andalus and was part of a medieval Muslim territory. Many of their names have Arabic origins, like Alcala, meaning 'castle'.
Another hint at their ancient past is the frequent suffix 'de la Frontera' or 'of the Frontier', harking back to when Spain was split into Christian and Muslim territories.
Local festivals range from religious processions, where men haul statues adorned with flowers along the stone streets, to bull runs, where bulls are released in the village and participants duck behind bars to escape their horns.
While this region is stunningly beautiful and a big draw to tourists visiting the south of Spain, it is also one of the poorest areas in the country and has one of the highest unemployment rates in the European Union.
Andalusia was the European region with the second highest unemployment rate in 2015, according to Eurostat, with nearly one in three without work. More than half of young people are unemployed.
Traditionally people here have lived from the olive oil industry - Spain is by far the biggest global producer of olive oil - but expectations change, and young people are not keen on the long hours and poor pay of farm work.
"Young people escape to the cities," says 19-year-old Jose Maria Cortijo, who lives in Vega de los Molinos, part of Arcos de la Frontera, a white village balanced on a ridge which plunges down to the valley below.
Agustin Pina, a cheese maker in nearby village Villaluenga del Rosario which nestles in the middle of the Sierra de Grazalema national park, agrees.
"Young people don't want to work in the fields, because it's a life of slavery," says the 58-year-old who has worked all his life on the land. "They want to work Monday to Friday."
A throwback to an earlier time, life in the village is quiet and calm, residents say.
Relief slow to get through to Haitians two weeks after hurricane
By Anastasia Moloney
BOGOTA, Oct 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Two weeks after Hurricane Matthew ripped through Haiti, relief workers are still struggling to reach remote rural communities in the country's hardest-hit southwestern areas, after roads and buildings were destroyed by flooding and mudslides.
The Category 4 hurricane struck Haiti on Oct. 4, leaving more than 1 million people in need of urgent assistance and creating the worst humanitarian emergency in the impoverished Caribbean country since a devastating earthquake in 2010.
Many roads remain blocked due to collapsed buildings and debris. Some isolated villages can only be reached on foot, with Haiti Red Cross volunteers carrying what supplies they can.
Many towns have been virtually wiped out in the worst-hit areas. According to latest government figures, 546 people were killed and 128 people went missing as a result of the disaster.
Here are some facts about the humanitarian emergency:
* More than one in five Haitians has been affected by the storm.
* Around 1.4 million people - more than 40 percent of them children - need some type of humanitarian aid, including clean water and food.
* The most urgent need is for clean water and hygiene kits to stop the spread of cholera, a water-borne disease that is endemic in Haiti. The storm damaged most of the cholera treatment centres in the hardest-hit areas.
* More than 200,000 houses have been badly damaged and 175,000 people have been uprooted from their homes and now live in 224 temporary shelters across the country.
* Nearly 120,000 children are not going to school because classrooms have been damaged.
* The United Nations has received just $15 million of the $120 million it appealed for after the hurricane, further hampering relief efforts.
* In Haiti's most affected areas, farmers have lost at least 50 percent of their crops, while fishing, the main livelihood for coastal communities, has stopped as boats were washed away in the storm.
Key Canada minister in Belgium for last-minute talks on EU deal
OTTAWA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland is in Belgium for last-minute talks on a proposed free trade deal with the European Union, which has run into problems, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Freeland met Paul Magnette, premier of the Belgian region of Wallonia, which is threatening to veto the deal. She is also due to meet other European leaders.
Almost all 28 EU governments back the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, which would be the bloc's first trade deal with a G7 country. Wallonia opposes it, citing a planned investment court that would allow foreign companies to challenge countries over decisions affecting their investments.
"We are working hard with our European partners so CETA can be signed this fall and implemented next year," said Freeland's spokesman Alex Lawrence.
"If Europe is incapable of signing a progressive trade deal with a country like Canada, this will send a very clear and unfortunate signal," he added.
Finland wants security cooperation to be part of Brexit talks - PM
By Tuomas Forsell and Jussi Rosendahl
HELSINKI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Finland hopes that security cooperation will be part of the negotiations for Britain's exit from the European Union, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila said on Wednesday.
Militarily non-aligned Finland is worried about increased East-West tensions in the Baltic Sea and supports a more common defence policy in the EU, which is about to lose its biggest-spending military force following Britain's vote to leave the bloc.
Britain, which has traditionally favoured the NATO alliance over possible duplicate structures in the EU, made clear last month it opposed any efforts to create a single European army or a joint EU military headquarters.
However, Brexit minister David Davis said last week one of the 'overarching aims' for the country was to maintain strong security cooperation with the EU. He did not give details.
"I think the security aspect could be another element in the (Brexit) agreement. For example, if the (EU's) solidarity clause would cover Britain, that would of course have value in these discussions," Sipila told Reuters in an interview at his official residence by the Baltic Sea.
"Then, it would differ from the treaties with Norway and Switzerland," he said, referring to treaties with those non-EU members which deal mainly with economic relations.
Sipila said adding the security aspect to the talks was not part of the EU's or Finland's negotiation strategy as yet.
EU leaders are due to meet on Thursday in Brussels following British Prime Minister Theresa May's speech earlier this month with pledges to curb immigration.
The EU insists that Britain must accept the 'four freedoms' - free movement of people, capital, goods and services - to remain in the single market.
Towns protesting copper mine in Peru turns away negotiating team
LIMA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Protesters blocking a road to MMG Ltd's copper mine in Peru turned away a delegation of high-ranking government officials who hoped to restart talks on Wednesday after a local man was shot dead in clashes with police last week.
Residents from Andean towns demanded a meeting with President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as they mourned the 42-year-old farmer whose coffin lay on a road leading to MMG's Las Bambas mine, said Artemio Solano with the ombudsman's office.
"We're starting our trip back... unfortunately our request for dialog was not reciprocated," Energy and Mines Minister Gonzalo Tamayo, head of the negotiating team, said on local TV channel Canal N.
Kuczynski said as a candidate that he would personally travel to far-flung towns to resolve disputes over mining in the world's third-biggest copper producer.
Kuczynski's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Protesters in Apurimac in Peru's southern Andes are angry over pollution and noise from hundreds of trucks per day carrying Las Bambas' copper concentrates over the unpaved road near their homes, Solano said.
The company has suspended all transportation of minerals from the mine since the man was killed Friday, said Solano and local councilman Jose Antonio Lima.
MMG did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. The company said after the clash on Friday that it was using an alternate route to move its minerals to port.
Kuczynski, a centrist former investment banker who took office July 28, said earlier this week that protesters' demands were "legitimate" and that he would work to improve roads in the region.
Unrest erupted on Friday when police tried to end a weeklong protest by locals who had blocked and carved trenches into the road to keep the company from using it.
Peru's Interior Ministry has said that two colonels ordered the crackdown without permission three days before officials were scheduled to meet with protesters.
Police and public prosecutors are investigating the shooting of the man. Three protesters were also killed in clashes over the mine last year.
"Unfortunately, trust has been lost," Antolin Chipani, Challhuahuacho mayor, said on local broadcaster RPP. "We've tried dialogue in the past but it's failed and only brought us blood."
Peru's economy has been recovering this year on the back of surging output from Las Bambas and other new mines as domestic demand remains weak and private investments slump.
Aligned with its commitment to uplift and empower underprivileged children, the My Friend Inspiring Hope Foundation organized an exclusive event to mark Childrens Day on 10th October. The event witnessed the participation of 725 students from 30 under-privileged schools from within the city Colombo limits. The students ranged from across Grades 9,10 & 11. The planned activities consisted of inspirational and fun sessions which imparted useful knowledge and information to the participating students. My Friend - Inspiring Hope is co-founded by Fouzul Hameed and Angelo Mathews who also functions as Brand Ambassador for the foundation. It is aimed at uplifting, educating and empowering underprivileged children, so that they too realize their full potential.
The event organized by My Friend spanned half-a-day, commencing at 9 am. Career guidance and motivational speeches were delivered at the event by renowned personalities such as Sathischandra Edirisinghe, Manisha Gunawardene, Santhush Weeraman, and Angelo Mathews. These are positive role models for youth, whose words of advice will have a lasting impact on the students. The speeches were aimed at empowering the students and to show them that despite any odds they may face, there is always a way forward by using their determination and creativity. Mr. Channa Ranasinghe Legal Advisor for My Friend also graced the occasion. The closing session witnessed the My Friend team handing out school shoes and certificates to all participating students.
Co-founder and Brand Ambassador of My Friend, Angelo Mathews, said, We are happy to guide these students. We want to make full use of our ability to help them so that they become responsible and successful citizens in the future. I always like to emphasize to them that it doesnt matter where they come from, all of them have the right to learn and by doing so they can reach their dreams.
Hameedia encourages employee volunteerism and its staff had organized the event, paying close attention to everything from production to coordination which made the event a success. Hameedia has supported the My Friend foundation with the untiring support and involvement of Mr Fouzul Hameed.
Co-founder of My Friend and Managing Director of Hameedia, Fouzul Hameed, exhorted the students with this message, We are here to help you and guide you. What you do today - can improve all your tomorrows, Let us stand together for a better future!
Since its inception in 2013, My friend has funded almost 1000 students, helping them overcome financial obstacles to pursue their schooling. My friend foundation has always been on the forefront of expanding its reach to less fortunate children, and will continuously do so in the future.
Ray Long President of British Computer Society (BCS), The Chartered Institute for IT and Paul Fletcher Group CEO of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, were recently in Colombo to attend the graduation ceremony. They took some time to talk to the media during their stay. They spoke about both their programmes and the community
work they do.
According to the visiting officials, Sri Lanka is one of the most successful sections for BCS and is the single largest country in terms of membership. The BCS also provides a mentoring system in Sri Lanka where those in the professions help those still studying. Participation (by members) is an important aspect for the BCS, not merely the
programs offered.
Speaking about the programs and work they do, the officials explained that the BCS offers both technology training and IT project management (techniques to manage projects in both government and private interest areas). There is also some emphasis on developing soft skills in students, to help them make projects successful. BCS has a very active regional branch in Sri Lanka, with a total of about 6000 members in the country. It is committed to increasing training and development provided to the country.
Talking about the IT in UK and Sri Lanka, they highlighted that Sri Lanka has seen more women in IT Field when compared to the UK, because in Britain, only about 16-17 percent of women in IT Field but in Sri Lanka its about 20-30 percent. This problem can be traced back to school education. Britain has a problem getting women into technological positions.
The officials from the BCS will meet the Minister for Technology and ICT during their visit to the country, and it is expected that they will discuss enhancing business with the Minister. They will also speak to other influential people in the field of business, on the same matter. They commended Wi-Fi access in the city and in the hotels, emphasizing how good the infrastructure was in the country. However, it is important to provide such broadband access to the rural areas too, to develop the capacity in those areas.
Dr. Jacob Kumaresan WHO representative, Dr. Samanmali Sumanasena Consultant Paediatrician, Dr. Champika Wickramasinghe, Deputy Director General of Health Services, Mr. Mahesh Nanayakkara, MD/CEO CDB and Prof. Hemamali Perera Consultant Child Psychiatrist at the campaign launch
Citizens Development Business Finance PLC (CDB) in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Association for Child Development launched an island wide Autism Awareness Campaign, to ensure that every child with autism receives early detection and attention, reducing the negative impact that autism has on their lives. The Autism Awareness Campaign, the flagship CSR project being mooted by CDB with the collaboration of SLACD was inaugurated at the CDB Auditorium to coincide with CDBs 20th anniversary. The Campaign will gain added value with the establishment of an Autism Trust Fund to ensure sustainability of the project.
Shedding light on the complexity of autism and the challenges children with autism face, Director General of Health Services Dr Palitha Mahipala reiterated, Every child with autism matters; find them early and count all of them in. Given that autism impairs a persons ability to communicate and relate to others within social contexts and is reported to impact one in 93 people with boys being more likely to be affected than girls, Consultant Child Psychiatrist Professor Hemamali Perera stated that it is vital, To give these children a chance to grow. If autism is detected in a child prior to the age of two, there will be positive impacts on the child, improving cognitive, behavioural and inter-personal development dramatically.
Managing Director and CEO of CDB Mahesh Nanayakkara elucidates the reasoning behind CDB making the Autism Awareness Campaign its flagship CSR project. This complex neuro-developmental disorder is determined at time of birth although it becomes more evident as the child grows older, given that social relationships and language development are hampered. Therefore the parents play a vital role in recognizing this condition early, and they can make timely presentations to the health services. However this is not happening in Sri Lanka at present due to the lack of public awareness.
Nanayakkara adds that CDBs involvement in the project is due to the magnanimity of this disorder in Sri Lanka, which can easily be managed with early detection and more awareness among the public about the disorder. Creating awareness will instigate timely interventions for early detection prompting an improvement of the childs functional outcome and also bring about a better understanding of the disorder.
The Sri Lanka Association of Child Development is the first multi-disciplinary professional association in the country, dedicated to child development, encompassing a cohort of germane stakeholders including doctors, clinical psychologists, therapists, social service officers, teachers and special educationists. On the theme, Act early for Autism, the SLACD thus collaborates with CDB to launch this vital national programme, dubbing the fact that autism awareness is the need of the hour.
Urging people to, Detect autism early and act early to unleash the potential of children with autism, the Chairperson of this project at the Sri Lanka Association of Child Development Dr. Samanamali Sumanasena said, We plan on rolling out a comprehensive programme to create awareness amongst all Sri Lankans, aided by a separate budget to establish the Autism Trust Fund. The Autism Awareness Campaign will include media communications designed to create greater understanding of the features and symptoms of this complex disorder, making it easier for parents and family members to detect the disorder and seek medical help. A telephone helpdesk (011 749 0000) will support communication channels, enabling parents to access information and when required will be referred for specialized services within their own districts. The Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children has also published a handbook on autism to assist the campaign
The Colombo District Court today extended the injunction order halting the screening of 'Usawiya Nihandai' until October 20.
District Court Judge M.U. Gunawardena fixed the respondents application requesting the injunction order be lifted for tomorrow.
A petition was filed by former Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake at the Colombo District Court citing the Director, Prasanna Vithanage and several others as respondents.
The petitioner claimed the film was based on a false story relating to him and also defamed the judiciary.
The court had issued a restraining order preventing the film being screen till today. (Shehan Chamika Silva)
Video by Courts Prasanna
This week the world marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty with special significance for Sri Lanka because the National Unity Government has declared 2017 as the year of poverty alleviation.
According to the United Nations, this years theme is, moving from humiliation and exclusion to participation: End poverty in all its forms everywhere. A UN Sustainable Development Goal explicitly recognizes that poverty results not from the lack of just one thing but from many different interrelated factors that affect the lives of people suffering in a poverty trap.
This means we must go beyond seeing poverty merely as the lack of income or what is necessary for material well-being -- such as food, housing, land, and other assets -- to fully understand poverty in its multiple dimensions. The theme this year selected in consultation with activists, civil society and non-governmental organizations highlights how important it is to recognize and address the humiliation and exclusion endured by many people living in poverty, the UN says.
According to a report by the worlds social justice movement OXFAM, the wealth of the poorest half of the worlds population has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 38 per cent. This has occurred despite the global population increasing by about 400 million during that period. Meanwhile, OXFAM says wealth of the richest 62 super billionaires has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76 tr. The report also shows how women are disproportionately affected by inequality of the current 62 super billionaires, 53 are men and just nine are women.
The disturbing if not shocking and prophetic report by OXFAM says though world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality and in September agreed on a global goal to reduce it, the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in 2015. OXFAMs prediction that the wealthiest 1% would soon own more than the rest of the people, actually came true in 2015 -- a year earlier than expected.
OXFAM is calling for urgent action to tackle the extreme inequality crisis which threatens to undermine the progress made in tackling poverty during the Past quarter of a century. As a priority, it is calling for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen the increasing use of offshore centres by rich individuals and companies to avoid paying their fair share to society. This has denied governments valuable resources needed to tackle poverty and inequality.
Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International Executive Director said: It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the worlds population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus.
She added, I challenge the governments, companies and elites to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty. Multinational companies and wealthy elites are playing by different rules to everyone else, refusing to pay the taxes that society needs to function. The fact that 188 of 201 leading companies have a presence in at least one tax haven shows it is time to act.
In Sri Lanka, President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have assured that the governments 5-year sustainable development strategy would be all inclusive and aimed at restoring the human dignity of the oppressed and impoverished people.
The government has assured that the sustainable, eco--friendly development plans involving the latest in modern technology would not be urban-centred but village-centred so that rural youth would get productive and highly paid jobs.
During the past two years after the change of government in 2015 many assurances have been given but not many have been fulfilled. We hope that the promise for the 2017 poverty eradication year would go beyond words, go to the grassroots and rescue millions of people from the poverty trap that an unjust system has put them into.
It is only with a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources that Sri Lanka could claim to be a just and fair society.
Isuru Samarasinghe was re-elected as President of the Sri Lanka-Russia Business Council (SLRBC) of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) for the third consecutive year at the 13th Annual General Meeting held recently at the Russian Cultural Centre.
Priyantha Hapuarachchi and Buddhapriya Ramanayake were elected as Vice Presidents of the council for the year 2016/2017.
Having worked at Bartleet Group of Companies for the last 38 years, Samarasinghe is at present Managing Director of Unitrades Private Limited and a Director of Bartleet Agencies Private Limited and BC Agro-tronics Private Limited. In addition, he functions as Chairman of Karagoda Tea Factory Private Limited.
He is an old boy of Ananda College and a past President of the Ananda College Old Boys Association. Samarasinghe also functions as Secretary of the Sri Lanka Ukraine Business Council.
In his speech, Samarasinghe mentioned that plans are underway to bring in changes to the constitution of the Sri Lanka-Russia Business Council with the approval of the CCC and once done, he believes, it will help enhance trade and investment activities between Sri Lanka
and Russia.
Dr Jayampathi Wickramaratne, who is described as someone playing a pivotal role in the constitution-making process in his capacity as a member of the steering committee on the subject, has offered some thoughts on the progress of the initiative in an interview with the Daily Mirror. He has offered a nutshell version in the following terms:
There is some agreement on electoral reforms -- a mixed member proportional system. On the executive, the Presidents position is clear that it has to be abolished. The President has to make a public statement. Then, we should look at how the present executive should be replaced with. The principles of devolution are under discussion by us. Things like the nature of State and the place for religion have not even been touched.
In essence, therefore, the Committee hasnt really moved beyond recommendations made by the committee headed by Dinesh Gunawardena on the matter of electoral reform. In April 2015, President Maithripala Sirisena addressing a sizable rally of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) at Vihara Maha Devi Park vowed to see the 20th Amendment (on Electoral Reform) through. It was after all an election promise which he made and which the United National Party (UNP) endorsed by supporting his candidacy for the presidency in January 2015. In fact, according to his manifesto, it was to be done and dusted within 100 days of him assuming office, but in the 18 months since that last we-will-do-it assertion its been all quiet on the electoral reform front.
Its pretty much the same on the matter of abolishing the executive presidency: Chest-beating before the election, sporadic affirmation of intent (as at the funeral of the late Ven Maduluwawe Sobitha Thera) since watered down to agreement in principle and now Dr Wickramaratne saying that the President wants abolition but hasnt made a public statement. Thats strange since theres nothing more public than an election manifesto! Little or no progress, then.
The nature of the state and the place for (of) religion are untouched, he says. Tough issues no doubt, and we should not forget that the committee has a tough overall brief, but that said, no progress is a legitimate conclusion.
This leaves us with devolution. It appears then that the Committee has expended efforts on this issue to the exclusion of all else, which of course is not exactly an indefensible privileging.
So what of devolution as per the deliberations of this Committee? Wickramaratne has dwelled at length on the division of powers between the centre and the provinces, assuring strong safeguards against division of the country as well as mechanisms to ensure that the centres power to intervene in provincial matters is not abused.
He elaborates on the latter, lamenting centre-intervention on subjects such as agriculture which he claims produced negative results while arguing that greater sway for provincial councils is the reason for better performance at the Grade-5 Scholarship Examination by children from schools outside the Western Province. These are weak and selective examples which indicate sloth on the part of the Committee in engaging in a comprehensive review of the 13th Amendment. It also indicates (dangerously) that the process has boiled down to one of constructing a case for a preferred outcome as opposed to a sober consideration of all factors and letting their true value determine direction and outcome.
He says nothing of the gross wastage of budgetary allocations to the provincial councils, with large chunks going for up-keep and paltry amounts being set aside for development. He says nothing of resource anomalies across the provinces, a fact that calls for centralized allocation (which can be constitutionally guaranteed, just as the kind of strong safeguards regarding abuse of intervening power and separatist tendencies he believes are necessary). There are no doubt many spheres/activities where greater sway by regional entities make more sense than centre-heavy policy-making processes, but theres nothing to say that only devolution will produce such happy outcomes.
Dr Wickramaratne clearly believes or wants us to believe that the Committee is taking its work seriously. The facade of sobriety, however, crumbles on one crucial point: boundaries.
Constitutional reform is not only about democratization. We were told that it is also about reconciliation. Reconciliation has been reduced to devolution of power and this itself demonstrates the poverty of the process, the intellectual arrogance and the political chicanery of the overseers. Over and above the fixation of devolution is the glaring error of not revisiting the logic of the boundaries to which power is sought to be devolved by these worthies.
If this is a serious process (and we are willing to make allowances for the long deliberations on account of the seriousness), then the Government should do a comprehensive audit of the entire system including all elements that have been created for political expedience (as was the case with the 18th Amendment, duly and happily overturned albeit with some flaws), thrust down un-democratically and illegally down the throats of all citizens (the 13th Amendment) as well as ad hoc decision that have (in retrospect) given a tangible foothold to myth-mongering and land-grabbing chauvinists. The last, in short, is about cartography; the matter of provincial boundaries which President Sirisena correctly pointed out were drawn by a colonial power and which have no basis in any science pertaining to map-making including history but which, since then, the Eelamists have used as the basis for a tall story about homelands!
Why is the Committee not (re)considering provincial boundaries? Why is not demanding (of itself, of politicians and relevant experts) a review of these arbitrarily drawn lines?
Constitutions should ideally be robust. If they can be amended willy nilly according to the whims and fancies of a few then they are not worth the paper they are written on. It requires integrity (hard to expect such from politicians, but lets keep that aside as a what-can-we-do? thing) and seriousness. If random interventions (like map-drawing) are concretized and legitimated in a context where these lines have been used to construct a separatist narrative, then the constitution-making process is a farce.
As things stand and as stated at the beginning of this essay, the Committee is clearly not making much progress. It is fixated on devolution with a few qualifiers to allay concerns about a constitution that essentially creates better ground conditions for separatists to operate on. The Committee is absolutely silent on the most glaring anomaly on the ground, that of random, unscientific, ahistorical lines demarcating the key unit that is being deliberated, namely the province. How on earth can anyone take the Committee seriously, therefore?
Dr Wickramaratne has his work cut out for him. Get the lines straight. If its a serious effort, then this serious error has to be rectified, however long it may take. Anything less is dodgy and demands an F Grade. You start at the very beginning. The ABC, if you will. And the ABC of devolution begins with boundary lines. Get them right.
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Blog:malindawords.blogspot.com. Twitter: malindasene.
By Chandeepa Wettasinghe
In the backdrop of power cuts being announced this week, the Sri Lankan power regulator downplayed the effect that investors shunning opportunities in the power sector will have on the widely accepted possibility of power crisis starting from 2018 until the commissioning of a major power plant.
According to a high-ranked Power and Energy Ministry official who wished to remain anonymous, quoting from a Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) report done for the 2017 budget, just 127MW in capacity through 44 private sector Standardized Power Purchase Agreements (SPPAs) of non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) are in the pipeline. However, PUCSL had approved CEBs 2015 and 2017 Least Cost Long Term Generation Plans on the condition that 1,230 MW in capacity would be commissioned by 2020, which would include 485MW in NCRE SPPAs.
During the first few years, the 300MW gas plant, the 170MW diesel and the Uma Oya (120MW) will be enough, Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) Director General Damitha Kumarasinghe told a press conference yesterday.
The said gas plant is set to be commissioned in 2019, while the diesel plant is expected to come online in 2017 in the Southern Province, and the Uma Oya plant is expected to be ready in 2018. Kumarasinghes comments come at a time when the countrys largest power plant, the 900MW Lakvijaya Coal Plant, which supplies over 40 percent of the countrys capacity, is disconnected from the grid for the second time this year.
The coal plant has gone offline during an intense drought, which has placed constraints on power generation from the countrys hydro power assets, which altogether also account for over 40 percent of the countrys energy needs. The construction period for mini-hydro plants in Sri Lanka, which dominate the 127MW mix, had been between 18-24 months historically, while solar projects had taken around 8 months, in addition to feasibility studies, Environment Impact Assessments (EIA) etc.
The ministry official noted however that in this day and age, where the 500MW Sampur Coal Power Plant was delayed for 4 yearscausing the possibility of crisisand eventually cancelled and expected to be converted to natural gas due to environmental concerns, most projects could get delayed.
Theres a lot of sensitivity now. People make a huge fuss even when a small thing happens to a river, he said. He noted that even the finalized 100MW Wind Power Farm in Mannar has not received any funding. Scholars and environmental pressure groups rejected past EIAs, noting that the wind farms would cause the death of many migrating birds, which would affect the countrys ecosystem adversely.
Perhaps influenced by such pressure, but also combined with the 2016 budget move to cancel any SPPA commitments for which development has not begun by December 31, 2015which was later delayed to December 31, 2016the number of SPPAs in the pipeline drastically reduced from earlier this year.
The CEB data this April had shown that SPPAs for 119 NCREs were signed and in the pipeline, for a total capacity of 314 MW and 173 NCRE projects were in operation with a capacity of 448MW.
An investor who already operates mini-hydro plants, under the condition of anonymity, said that investments into the sector are low due to both policy uncertainties as well as due to CEB officials dragging the process of private sector power plant development, in favour of lobbying for mega CEB projects.
The mini-hydro power purchasing tariff for SPPAs was reduced this year, and Sri Lankan energy companies are engaged in more lucrative projects in Africa.
Both Power and Energy Ministry official, as well as the Sustainable Energy Authority Chairman had noted that even some of the remaining SPPAs had not yet started development. Kumarasinghe noted that the CEB has been instructed to draft an implementation plan to determine the timelines for the currently signed SPPAs. We have asked for the implementation plan for these power plants, which is due on 28th of October. After that, everyone can see how they are developed, Kumarasinghe said.
Power Sector Expert Dr. Tilak Siyambalapitiya has pointed out that the average energy cost alone could increase to Rs. 10.98 per unit under the new plan, compared to Rs. 7.68 per unit generated so far this year.
The country currently has a 3,900MW generation capacity, and CEB had projected peak time generation requirements to be 2,703MW by 2018 and 3003MW by 2030.
However, PUSCL had asked CEB to revise its calculations as it may have not included all possibilities in its demand projection methodology.
President Maithripala Sirisenas outburst against the Bribery Commission, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Financial Crimes Investigation Department (FCID) rattled politics. It eventually led to Bribery Commission Director General Dilrukshi Dias Wickramasinghe tendering her resignation.
Her resignation has not yet been accepted. All indications are that it will be accepted shortly.
This is the second such main incident in which a government official succumbed to pressure, being unable to perform further in office. Earlier, then Central bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran could not be re-appointed due to severity of pressure.
The Presidents scathing criticism hit the very founding principle of the national unity government as it was formed on the promise that it would uphold good governance. The Bribery Commission, the FICD and the CID are undoubtedly vital organs responsible for law enforcement to ensure good governance. The President accused them of being politicized and vowed to intervene if warranted.
The United National Party (UNP), the principal party of the unity government, never anticipated the President would slander these three bodies in the open.
Come what may the real motive behind, damage is done to the government in the political front, and damage controlling is the only option available.
In fact, prior to the public outburst, the President raised his concern over what he called politicization of these vital law enforcement organs at a meeting not open to the media. However, the UNP never thought the President would utter the same in public, causing irrevocable damage.
The Presidents criticism prompted an urgent meeting between him, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Law and Order Minister Sagala Ratnayake and others.
UNP Ministers rush for damage control work
The Ministers, representing the UNP, maintained mute silence initially after the attack. Later, they rushed in for damage controlling as further snowballing of the crisis would dampen hopes for them.
In one instance, Highways and Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella derived an example from the historical circumstances that led to the downfall of the Kandyan kingdom in 1815. He said the British colonial army tried to invade the kingdom in 1810 but it could be repulsed primarily due to the unity between the King and his nobles (Nilames).
Yet, by 1815, they fell apart making way for the colonial army to take control of the kingdom. It can happen today. The unity is of paramount importance, he said at a function in Walapane.
Ports Minister Arjuna Ranatunga said though a wedge had been created, it would not lead to the political divorce of the Government.
Civil Society takes on President, but faced stiff counter-attacks
The civil society movements that played a pivotal role in installing this government were virtually petrified by the Presidents outburst and confronted him at press conferences called hurriedly. They even dubbed the President as a clone of the previous rule. Finally, they were verbally beaten to submission by Ministers supportive of the President, through counter-attacks.
In the aftermath of what happened, damage-control work was undertaken, and things looked patched up for the moment. The Government is no longer fragile as a result. However, the outburst has already widened fissures between the UNP and Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) with politicians from both sides taking on each other in the open. On the surface, it looks patched up, but a crisis is simmering beneath the surface with the potential of exploding at any moment.
Intense budget debate ahead
Of course, in the aftermath of the President expressing his dismay, a committee was appointed with representatives from both sides to deal with the co-ordination of policy matters of the Government hereafter.
The panel, appointed in this manner, met for the first time on Monday evening. It is learnt that the SLFP Ministers are not happy about the Private Public Partnership (PPP) model proposed for restructuring certain state institutions in the upcoming budget.
There is agreement on the model proposed for Sri Lankan Airlines, but on others, wide discontent prevails. The Ministers, not belonging to the UNP, opined forcefully at the meeting asking for re-considerations of some provisions to be included in the budget.
Also, raised at this meeting and the Cabinet meeting the following day, was the alleged move to offer certain projects on the PPP model through unsolicited proposals.
In this manner, the stage is set for a huge debate ahead of the budget to be presented in Parliament on November 10 regarding the content. So, an intense budget debate is anticipated this time as the Government is facing opposition both from within and outside.
JO skeptical on Presidents remarks
The Joint Opposition or the Mahinda Rajapaksa faction of the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) is buoyed by the latest development. Some of its members responded positively to the President, but there were others who did not take it that seriously. One was MP Prasanna Ranatunga who asked the President to walk the talk.
All in all, some even talk about the possibility of a change of government under the unfolding circumstances. Yet, it is unlikely any time soon.
VAT protest to be revived
Then, all paid attention to the Value Added Tax (VAT) Amendment Bill. It has been petitioned in the Supreme Court.
MP Udaya Gammanpila said his side argued on four counts in the Supreme Court against the contents of the bill.
If the first one is accepted, the bill will have to be referred to all the provincial councils for approval. If the second is accepted, it will have to be referred for approval of the people by referendum. In the other, argument prevails, the bill will have to be passed with a special majority. We presented our case well, he said.
Having listened to Mr. Gammanpila, Mr. Rajapaksa said, Lets get ready for eventuality!
Ahead of the debate on the VAT bill on October 27, MPs Mahindananda Aluthgamage and Keheliya Rambukwella were assigned for a leaflet distribution campaign against it in Kandy.
JO constitutional reforms - no compromise on unitary character
The JO leaders met with Mr. Rajapaksa on Tuesday and discussed, among others, constitutional proposals. Foremost among the proposals, the JO stressed that the unitary character of the Constitution should be preserved at any cost.
Also, Articles in the present Constitution related to the National Anthem, and that Buddhism should not be compromised.
In this manner, 14 proposals have been made by the JO. It is for a new election system with more members to be elected from the First-Past-the-Post System and less from the National Proportional Representation.
It asks for that the welfare of the state should incrementally be maintained. The JO is for a change of the executive presidency but not for the abolition of it.
Maharashtra Buddhists mistake Sashindra for MR
Former Uva Province Chief Minister Sashindra Rajapaksa, a nephew of Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa, went to Maharashtra, India along with Mr. Gammanpila for a Buddhist summit. He was wearing the Kurahan Saatakaya in keeping with the familys political tradition.
Ordinary people who attended the event apparently mistook him for his uncle Rajapaksa who served as the President for two consecutive terms. They started taking selfies relentlessly.
Novel, Creative Protest in Parliament
In Parliament, the JO decided to register its protest in a novel, creative form. MPs Gamini Lokuge, Pavithra Wanniarachchi and Ranjith Soyza were assigned the task of organizing them. Earlier, the JO staged demonstrations in the Well of Parliament leading to brawls when the members of the other side intervened.
Late night discussion between Chinese/ SL Preside nt
During the BRIC Summit held in Goa, India, it was a busy schedule for President Maithripala Sirisena, engaging the world leaders. He held bilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
He sought a similar meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the time could not be arranged. So, the two leaders had to talk over dinner only.
The meeting with Chinese President Xi took place at 10.30 p.m. The Chinese appeared to have attached a greater significance to the meeting as 12 Ministers including Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi attended it on Sunday.
President Xi is reported to have said that Sino-Lanka relations underwent a period of turbulence at the beginning under the new government of Sri Lanka, but it had been mended as of now. He referred to numerous Chinese investments in Sri Lanka and future co-operation.
Once critical Harsha makes friends with Chinese leaders
Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Harsha de Silva, who was once critical of the increased Chinese presence in Sri Lanka during the previous rule, got an opportunity to meet with President Xi and posed for a photo and chatted cordially.
Dr. de Silva said he had made friends with the Chief Foreign Affairs Minister over the last one and half years.
We discussed the need for trilateral talks involving China, India and Sri Lanka. The response was positive. Friends with all, enemy with none is our foreign policy, he said.
Modi asks for urgent work on trade and investment relations with SL
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his bilateral discussion with President Sirisena, stressed the need to work urgently on the improvement of trade and investment relations between the two countries.
Mr. Modis assertion has to be analyzed in the context of two sides moving for signing the proposed Economic and Technology Co-operation Agreement (ETCA). It is more so as Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the process would be completed by the end of this year.
Despite Indian Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman saying here during her visit that talks should proceed on ETCA without any pressure on the timeline, Mr. Modis assertion sounded that the exercise should be carried out according to a time-bound plan. Local entrepreneurs, professionals and exporters are up-in-arms against the ETCA. In fact, some call it the second version of the Indo-Lanka Accord. They say, with the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, India secured political leverage on Sri Lanka, and the ETCA would do the same on the economic front.
Instead of coal, Modi wants India to invest in renewable energy in SL
India does not seem to be happy about the cancellation of the Sampur coal project. She told a press conference here earlier that Sri Lankas national priorities should be reconciled with international commitments.
The matter was discussed during the meeting with Mr. Modi. The Indian premier expressed interests in investment in the renewable energy sector.
Alongside, Mr. Modi made mention of the India-assisted ambulance service in Sri Lanka, and had taken note that the project was progressing well.
Renowned advertising and management professional Selonica Nalawansa recently returned to Leo Burnett Sri Lanka to take up the leadership role at Publicis Solutions Sri Lanka. Selonica was appointed as the Director of the local office of Publicis World wide,she will beresponsible for leading the groups Publicis team.
Publicis Worldwide is a successful European agency network which has a strong presence across the globe and is a pioneering member of the Publicis Groupe, the fourth largest communications company in the world. The Publicis Group is committed to accompanying its clients through their business transformations, offering a full range of services and expertise across digital, technology, consulting, planning and buying platforms and much more. Present in 108 countries, the Groupe employs a dynamic team of more than 77,000 professionals with a wealth of experience. Renowned for creating contagious ideas that change conversations, the Publicis Group delivers solutions that transcend standard requirements to make a lasting and poignant impact.
In her new leadership role, Selonica has taken over the management ofsome of the agencys leading local and global brands such as Nestle Lanka, Sri Lanka Telecom, CIC, Akzo Nobel. She is known throughout the local and regional marketing communications industry for possessing an uncompromising can do spirit, and has exhibited the strength required to move mountains when it is needed the most. Armed with her MBA from the Edith Cowen University, Australia, Selonica is a modern, 21st century professional,who is competent at managing integrated communication campaigns with the precision and grace that few can match. Always calm and collected in even the most stressful or difficult of situations, Selonica has a knack for effectively solving any challenge from the most complex problem to the smallest problem. She is known for her ability to overcome any obstacle that is put in her way, in order to successfully deliver excellence to her clients to achieve the goals that have been outlined.
Commenting on Selonicas appointment, Ranil de Silva Managing Director, Leo Burnett Group in Sri Lanka said: Selonica has built an exemplary career at Leo Burnett Sri Lanka. I am delighted to welcome her back to the agency.I wish her every success in her new role at the helm of Publicis Sri Lanka. Selonicas resolve and capabilities are well-known throughout the industry.I would like to congratulate Firzan Mulafer, the former Director of Publicis Sri Lanka on his appointment to our office in Viatnam. I am very confident he will meet with exceptional success and wave the flag sky high for Sri Lanka.
Selonica previously completed an 11-year tenure with Leo Burnett and has been instrumental in helping many of the agencys top tier clients, reach beyond their targets and achieve monumental success.Away from the office, when shes not solving a crisis or delivering an innovative creative solution for one of the countrys biggest brands, she is a proud, hands-on mom. Throughout her career, Selonica has represented the agency at several international festivals and awards shows and has even won the global companys most prestigious accolade, the Star Reacher award.This award is given to individuals that exudethe same commitment that Leo Burnett himself demonstrated, in his quest to reach for the stars.
This year Leo Burnett Sri Lanka celebrated its 17th anniversary in Sri Lanka. Over the years, the agency has built many powerful brands and meaningful partnerships with its clients, whilst delivering gratifying results and gaining industry recognition in Sri Lanka, the region and globally. The company handles a diverse portfolio of clients; it is one of the worlds largest agency networks and is a member of the Publicis Group, the worlds fourth largest communications company.
Mr. AravindaPerera , the Chairman of Siyapatha Finance and the former Managing Director of Sampath Bank officially opens the Wellawatte branch in the presence of Mr. Saman Herath, Managing Director - Siyapatha Finance PLC, and Mr. Rashmika Rajapakse, the Branch Manager , Wellawatte Branch.
One of the leading financial companies in Sri Lanka, Siyapatha Finance PLC celebrated the opening of a brand new branch in Wellawatte, on the 6th of October 2016. This is the 24th branch in the long list of branches opened by Siyapatha Finance over the recent years.
The former Managing Director of Sampath Bank PLC, Mr. Aravinda Perera who wasrecently appointed as the Chairmanof Siyapatha Finance, opened the branch as the chief guest at the opening ceremony. Mr. Saman Herath, the Managing Director of Siyapatha Finance was also present at the event.
The new branch offers all financial facilities including, Leasing, Hire Purchase, Business Loans, Personal Loans, Revolving Loans, Mortgage Loans, Housing Loans, Gold Loans and Factoring as well as Fixed Deposits.
Mr. Aravinda Perera , the Chairman of Siyapatha Finance and the former Managing Director of Sampath Bank addressing the gathering.
The addition of the new branch in Wellawatte to our network, is a significant achievement for us, as it allows us to reach out to more customers in the prominent business and residential areas of Wellawatte. We, at Siyapatha Finance have always made sure to maintain a customer-centric approach in all our endeavors. Our primary concern is to ensure that our customers receive the very best of our services. I believe that the success of Siyapatha Finance has always been rooted in our customers, stated Mr. Aravinda Perera, the Chairman of Siyapatha Finance PLC.
As the largest fully owned subsidiary of the Sampath Bank Group, Siyaptha Finance PLC is one of the most prominent financial companies in Sri Lanka, with a network of branches throughout the country. The organization has their system of service designed in a manner to ensure that their customers are provided with nothing short of the best of services. Over the past eleven years Siyapatha Finance PLC has generously contributed to the development of a number of entrepreneurial effort as well as the fulfillment of the financial needs of individuals across the island.
Saurabh Chauhan, Country Manager for Daraz Sri Lanka, talks about Daraz - Kaymu merger and the roadmap ahead
Daraz has been hugely successful in all countries, offering convenient shopping and a huge assortmentof genuine products at amazing prices
Daraz is the leading e-commerce platform in South Asia, with operations in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Daraz is a business-to-consumer marketplace for a wide range of branded original products from local and international sellersat competitive prices. The company was founded in 2012 by Rocket Internet and later backed by Ooreedoo and the CDC Group the UK Governments Development Finance Institution (DFI). Daraz raised an investment of $55 million in its first big funding round in 2015.
Daraz takes pride in being an e-commerce solution for a large assortment of genuine quality products, competitive prices and a great shopping experience. It is not the idea itself, but the conviction to convert ideas into actions and actions into results that define the company. Measured by that yardstick, Daraz has been hugely successful in offering innovative solutions right from the offset and becoming home to the striking features of e-commerce in all operating markets.
2015 was a great year for e-commerce in all Daraz countries.The company introducedBlack Friday to its customers, completely revolutionizing the scope of retail in the country. AfterBlack Friday came several other notable events, including the Daraz Fashion Week, which was the first-ever entirely shop-able online fashion week, modernizing the antiquated fashion show history.
Country Manager of Daraz Sri Lanka, Saurabh Chauhan, discusses the upcoming quarterly mega sale by Daraz
At a press conference, which took place on the 18th of October 2016 at the Cedar Room at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel the company announced that it is now set to enter Sri Lanka and engage customers through novel ideas, a wide range of genuine products, great prices and seamless services. Sri Lanka is one of the leading countries in technological advancement, with a rapidly growing Internet penetration rate and consequently experiencing a rise inonline shopping trends.Daraz aims to make the most of this trend and become the market leader by providing the Sri Lankan market with an unparalleled customer service and genuine products like all other operating markets.
"With the internet penetration rate increasing year-on-year in the country we see Sri Lanka as a developed market with regards to online shopping. We have high expectations for Sri Lanka, especially since we are merging with a strong brand such as Kaymu. Sri Lankan online shoppers will be in for a treat because in Daraz, we make sure that we provide the best deals for 100% genuine products along with exceptional customer service, stated Co-CEO of the Daraz Group, Dr. Jonathan Doerr.
Saurabh Chauhan, Country Manager for Daraz Sri Lanka, said, Kaymu has been very successful with the online market penetration here in Sri Lanka and merging with Daraz will allow us to offer unique value propositions such as a secure brand buying experience and free returns as per the Daraz global offering to Sri Lankan customers. We are very excited to work as part of the Daraz Group and are looking forward to raise the bar in terms of providing incredible online deals for the Sri Lankan market.
Employees at the Colombo port are said to be up in arms against a move by the authorities to recruit trainees for a certain staff category on the results of an exam held by an unauthorized institution.
Employees charge that the authorities have deviated from the normal recruitment procedure as a ploy to recruit several unqualified persons for political reasons.
Among the favoured unqualified persons are sons of a secretarial one and a character who frequents the harbour kitchen.
Meanwhile, the Public Administration authorities who are really responsible for conducting the exam too have raised the matter with the Ministry high-ups.
The Philippines and Thailand are not acting like US treaty allies are supposed to. While the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte seems somewhat of an outlier, his anti-Americanism is only the latest instalment of instability in the USPhilippines relationship.
ThaiUS relations have also suffered since the 2014 military coup and Thailand now appears to be seeking closer military ties with China. But these countries disagreements with the United States do not necessarily mean they want a change to the status quo in Asia.
Dutertes election has thrown perceptions of the USPhilippines alliance into disarray. The firebrand leaders policy announcements have included a possible end to joint USPhilippines naval patrols and the US Special Forces presence in Mindanao. These, together with intemperate outbursts in response to US criticism of his campaign against drugs, appear to signal a relationship in serious trouble. Duterte has confounded expectations that his country would continue to draw closer to the United States in the wake of the South China sea dispute.
The ThaiUS relationship has also struggled since 2014, with continuing frustration from Thai elites towards US policy. After the May 2014 coup there was fury that the United States would condemn the overthrow of the Yingluck government and mildly downgrade military cooperation. Since then the relationship has been marked by bitter spats, especially when US officials have criticised Thailand on human rights issues.
Drifting closer to China
Meanwhile Thailand appears to be drifting closer to China. The two countries have undertaken new joint military exercises and the Thai navy has announced plans to purchase Chinese submarines. Thailands recent decisions to deport Uighurs, an ethnic minority population in western China with separatist elements, and block entry to Hong Kong celebrity activist Joshua Wong also appear to demonstrate increasing subservience to China.
Common to both Thailand and the Philippines is a fear of major powers interfering in domestic politics or intervening in internal security problems. While outside criticism is something that most Western states view as merely irritating, for many developing states it can be interpreted as intent to destabilise, including by fostering support for opposition forces.
This view of security circumscribes these countries embrace of liberal values, which is why views of concepts such as human rights and the rule of law can vary. For example, the right to be innocent until proved guilty is one that considerable numbers of both Thais and Filipinos seem quite prepared to forego if a threat to security is perceived. This was demonstrated in former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatras anti-drugs campaign and now is evident in the Philippines with Dutertes current crackdown.
All theses mean that countries like the Philippines and Thailand can react violently to criticism of their human rights performance. They are then prepared to make the political and diplomatic dimensions of their relationships with offending great powers very unpleasant. This includes through public overtures to alternative suitors like China and Russia who, being illiberal themselves, are refreshingly unlikely to offer criticism on the human rights front.
A shifting international power structure is changing the way Thailand and the Philippines balance between the United States and China. Cooperation with the United States offers access to desirable technology and training, as well as a shield against China, but neither state wants to become the patsy for USChina rivalry nor a proxy battleground for the United States. Yet neither wants Chinese hegemony either. To get around this, these states frequently compartmentalise different components of their bilateral relationships.
For example, despite Dutertes bluster, a scheduled joint air force exercise with the United States recently occurred as planned, and the threat to cancel PhilippinesUS maritime patrols applies only to patrols in the Philippines exclusive economic zone and not the territorial sea. The number of US forces who might be asked to withdraw from involvement in Philippines counterinsurgency operations is also quite small. And Dutertes threat to buy arms from Russia and China is straight out of the Thai playbook, which is an act of asserting sovereignty and much less a guide to alignment.
Cobra Gold exercise
In the case of Thailand, there is no sign at present that they or the United States wish to discontinue the flagship regional multilateral exercise Cobra Gold, despite threats to institute Panda Gold. While some military training with China is occurring, it is on a far smaller scale than that with the United States.
The familiar separation of economic and security tiesChina being the dominant economic partner and the United States the preferred security partnerappears to now extend to the politico-security dichotomy, where stormy political relations can be accompanied by stable military-to-military relationships.
Western states have a moral imperative to reiterate why liberal democracies offer the most just societies and are most able to deliver human dignity, freedom and development of human potential. But the United States and others need to be aware of the different perspectives of Southeast Asian countries. It is no more likely that Thailand or the Philippines will want to be entirely beholden to China than they wish to be beholden entirely to the United States. (Courtesy East Asia Forum)
(Dr. Greg Raymond is a Research Fellow in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National
University)
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a triumphant President George W Bush Sr proudly proclaimed the birth of a "New World Order".
This "New Order" was to be dominated by the US and its Western allies. This grouping would be free to invade those countries whose leaders they found distasteful.
India, which cherished its strategic autonomy, was at the receiving end of coercive moves to "curb, roll back and eliminate" its nuclear programme through economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation. India broke free of these shackles only after it conducted nuclear tests and overcame American sanctions.
Growth
Global perceptions of India changed significantly after Goldman Sachs came out with a startling report in 2003.
The report averred that over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China (earlier BRIC) could become a much larger force in the world economy than the G6, comprising the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France and Italy.
If things went right, the BRIC economies together could be larger than the combined economies of the G6 in less than 40 years.
By 2025, it could account for over half the economic power of the G6. Of the current members of G6, only the US and Japan may be among the six largest economies in 2050.
India, the report averred, has the potential to show the largest growth rates for the next 30 years. India's GDP will outstrip that of Japan by 2032.
The four "emerging" countries, thereafter, got together to fashion a new grouping (BRICS), which sought to influence global policies. South Africa joined in 2011. Did the BRICS live up to the expectations of India in 2003?
The answer is a categorical "no". Russia's energy-dependent economy, its falling birth rates and growing criminalisation have seriously eroded its potential and influence.
With falling oil and gas prices and deteriorating relations with the US, Russia is increasingly echoing Chinese policies in our Western neighbourhood, and particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It appears to have become a junior partner of China on this score. But, it would be a folly to think that the current Russian slide is permanent.
Likewise, Brazil and South Africa are both afflicted with internal political uncertainties and falling growth rates.
Achievement
The main achievement for India in Goa was the announcement of measures to give new momentum to our relations with Russia.
These included Russian agreement to invest a record $11 billion, which will lead to a Russian takeover and restructuring of the ailing, debt-ridden Essar Petrochemicals refinery and of the Vadinar port in Gujarat.
This has been accompanied by agreement for investment of a further $5.5 billion by India in Siberian oilfields.
PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Photo credit: Reuters)
Russian grievances about India lowering emphasis on bilateral defence cooperation have been addressed by decisions to buy S-400 air defence missile systems, establish a joint venture to manufacture 200 twin propeller transport helicopters for armed forces and pact on measures for timely acquisition of spares for defence equipment.
One expects that, in turn, Russia will be more circumspect on its defence ties with Pakistan. The Goa BRICS summit has mercifully and hopefully ended misconceived and unrealistic perspectives in India about China's intentions.
China is more determined than ever to encircle and contain India, by stepping up defence cooperation with Pakistan and proceeding with its "One Belt One Road" project from Xinjiang to the strategic port of Gwadar, through Gilgit-Baltistan in POK.
Reservations
President Xi Jinping's visit to Bangladesh and China's assiduous courting of Bhutan and Nepal are pointers we cannot ignore.
Do we have a comprehensive strategy to deal with this threat? One sadly doubts this, given the widespread illusions in New Delhi about Beijing's "good intentions".
Despite such reservations, one cannot but compliment South Block's smart move in deciding well before the Uri tensions that we would invite the members of BIMSTEC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal), and not SAARC, for the Goa Summit.
We have served ourselves well, realising, albeit belatedly, that given Pakistan's obstructionism, SAARC really has no future as a grouping to promote regional economic cooperation.
Every SAARC summit has turned out to be yet another soap opera, revolving around whether Indian and Pakistani leaders would meet for yet another round of fruitless talks.
The time has come for us to progressively disengage from SAARC, while placing much greater emphasis on a quadrilateral India-Sri Lanka-Maldives-Seychelles corridor and BIMSTEC.
We can, in course of time, evolve new institutions for trilateral cooperation with Afghanistan and Iran, while extending our reach across our western shores in the Indian Ocean. Regional cooperation with Pakistan should be dealt with by a policy of "benign neglect".
At a time when examination papers ask Class 9 students to name Virat Kohli's girlfriend, this question would not be out of place.
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah thinks 218 (which is 73 per cent of 299) is the correct answer and hence has decided that since 218 people want the 6.7km long steel flyover in Bangalore, his government will go ahead with it. Never mind that 8,000 people turned up on Sunday to form a human chain between Basaveshwara Circle and Mekhri Circle, to say #NoSteelFlyover.
Siddaramaiah's contention is that when the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) sought suggestions from citizens on the steel flyover project in June, only 299 responded, of which 73 per cent wanted the flyover. Amazing that the authorities think that a sample size of just 299 is good enough to ascertain the mind of a city with a one crore plus population. That too, when a Rs 1,791 crore project is being planned. And just 48 hours were given to Bengalureans to file their response.
A map of the proposed steel flyover tweeted by Bangalore development minister KJ George.
The government believes the flyover that will consume 70,000 tonnes of steel and concrete is just what the doctor ordered for Traffic Jam-uru Bangalore. That the flyover will be a boon to the 2.68 lakh vehicles that are expected to ply on the flyover everyday. That unlike fully concrete, that will pollute during construction and take longer, the steel flyover will be ready in 24 months.
Critics of the project to which there are 25,000 signatories point to the 812 trees that will be off Bangalore's Oxygen Suppliers Group if this project takes off. The loss of such a large green cover will be a huge setback to a city that, according to Prof TV Ramachandra of the Indian Institute of Science, has already lost two in every three trees and three in every four akes in the last three decades. No wonder Bangalore is getting hot under the collar.
Citizens opposing the project say Bangalore can do without this visual monstrosity that is so devoid of aesthetics. The other criticism is that the project will only cut ten minutes of driving time to the airport for the city's elite. They say instead the astronomical amount can be better spent to build 3,600km of quality footpath or procure 9,000 buses or 40 lakh bicycles or 200 km of suburban rail that can transport 15 lakh passengers everyday.
The flyover, in other words, will further push the have nots out of the city's road space, promoting private transport over public transport. Creating two Bangalores within one Bangalore. One that struggles in public transport and traffic jams on the ground while the car-borne Bengalureans zip past overhead. The government argues that cars moving faster (as opposed to average speed of 13 km/hour now) will cut down pollution. Besides, it promises to plant 60,000 saplings to compensate for the 812 trees that will be cut.
The determination with which the government is pushing the project through has raised doubts about the intentions. A whisper campaign is on whether the steel lobby is at work and who is benefiting from such a big project. 60 per cent of Bangalore municipal corporation's corporators are already from a real estate background.
Aware that corruption allegations can play spoilsport especially with assembly elections 20 months away, Siddaramaiah has sought to clarify that the cost shot up because of increase in VAT on steel from 5 per cent to 14 per cent. And that the global tendering system is transparent.
Incidentally, the project was conceived in 2010 when the BJP was in power in Karnataka. That is proof that the political establishment cutting across party lines is largely myopic to a city's future and out of sync with what the citizens needs. The backers of the Congress have also propagated that much of the opposition that it suggests has been engineered now, is politically motivated, with people owing allegiance either to the BJP or the Aam Aadmi Party.
If we go by the comments of the Congress party on the just-concluded BRICS summit, and some of the analysis carried out in print and electronic media, including the 147-character "wisdom" cluttering the ether, Prime Minister Narendra Modi "failed" to get members to deliver "the knockout blow on Pakistan" as one scribe put it.
Such comments are not unexpected. These spin merchants are always spewing anti-Modi rhetoric, whether relevant or not, on any issue.
Remember, they were demanding proof after Indian Army announced carrying out the surgical strikes along the LoC? It only exposes the grand old party's continuing leadership vacuum.
In the midst of the invasion of these "hidden persuaders" (with apologies to Vance Packard, who wrote the classic on manipulative advertising with the same title in 1957), we seem to have forgotten that multilateral summits are serious diplomatic exercises to evolve an acceptable minimum to further the objectives of participating nations.
Of course, PM Modi had kindled a lot of expectations before the summit to persuade the member-nations to isolate Pakistan as part of Indias strategy to fight cross-border terrorism. He had also been trying to muster international support for his strategy in all the international conclaves he participated after Uri and Pathankot attacks.
The BRICS members come from four continents. At this point in time, their collective strength comes from their growing technological and economic prowess, with their total estimated GDP (2015) at $34.415 trillion, and their influence, with more than nearly half the worlds population estimated at 3.6 billion people and more than nearly one-third of global land mass.
Their perspectives are conditioned not only by their cultural, historical and developmental experiences, but also their strengths in the global geo-strategic environment.
Despite their differing world views, BRICS members have also come together to further their common aspirations to be recognised as globally emerging economic entities with matching strategic clout.
The joint statements are not spun out of thin air but after close interaction and discussion between the representatives of member countries based on a collective agenda finalised well before the summit. The statements are carefully drafted so it cannot be misconstrued by others.
Evolving acceptable semantics couched in "diplomatese" is an exercise best left to diplomats, with the leaders providing only key operative elements.
Russia, China and India had different strokes for different folks including their domestic audience. (Photo: PTI)
Diplomats by training are capable of saying things devoid of meaning, and at times, they're intentionally vague and cautious.
Official writings are also couched in carefully drafted sentences to withstand political and legal scrutiny, both at home and abroad. Sometimes, bloopers do occur. Indias faux pas in the joint statement after Sharm el-Sheikh meeting between Indian and Pakistan prime ministers in November 2009 is one such example.
India after taking over the chairmanship of BRICS from February 2016 has tried to infuse a lot energy in the group.
A lot of events and meetings covering cultural, trade and commerce and issues of governance already took place before the summit to add more form and content to the grouping. The first meeting of the BRICS Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism was held on September 14, 2016 in New Delhi with the participation of member countries national security representatives.
This was apparently part of PM Modis international agenda to promote international cooperation to fight the growing menace of cross-border terrorism the world over.
The theme of the 8th BRICS Summit held at Goa, "Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions" (giving full play to Prime Minister Modis penchant for mnemonics) clarifies its objective. Apart from international terrorism, the agenda included financial, development, infrastructure and environmental issues.
The members air their views freely during the bilateral meetings of leaders to provide a better understanding of their perspective during the plenary session. In conformity with global practice on such conferences, only the nuanced wording of the statement indicates the members accepted takeaways while omissions give an inkling of their differences.
If we go by this yardstick, the key players Russia, China and India had different strokes for different folks including their domestic audience.
PM Modis press statement at the conclusion of the summit on October 16 covers a gamut of issues covered in the three sessions. These include exchange of views on important global issues, including terrorism, global economic scenario and the need to reform global governance architecture.
PM Modis speeches at the summit strongly stressed on terrorism as the biggest threat to development and governance. Though he did not name Pakistan, his description of cross-border terrorism emanating from Indias neighbouring country made his intent to press for isolating Pakistan clear.
Similarly, China had made clear its position as a strong ally of Pakistan well in advance when it deferred Indias application for NSG membership on "technical grounds". It also continues to block the UN Security Council naming Masood Azhar as a terrorist, though he leads the Jaish e-Mohammad (JeM), an organisation proscribed by the UN.
Though the Goa declaration specifically mentioned "the recent several attacks, against some BRICS countries, including that in India" and strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, Pakistan was not specifically named. This fell short of public expectations fanned by PM Modis high-decibel speeches before the summit.
India probably expected China to dilute any reference to Pakistan. But it was disappointing to note that its objection prevailed against, including any reference to, both Lashkar-e-Taiba and JeM (both figuring on the UN list of global terrorist organisations), though Islamic State and al-Qaeda found a place.
It should be of some consolation to India that China agreed to include two operative sentences: "There can be no justification whatsoever for any acts of terrorism, whether based upon ideological, religious, political, racial, ethnic or any other reasons" and "we also agreed that those who nurture, shelter, support and sponsor such forces of violence and terror are as much a threat to us as the terrorists themselves."
In the Indian context, they would point to Pakistan.
Similarly, PM Modis appeal to all nations to adopt a comprehensive approach in combating terrorism, including recruitment and movement of terrorists and blocking sources of terrorists finance and countering misuse of internet and social media, has also found a place in the Goa declaration. This resonates with his relentless efforts to promote a holistic international effort to counter terrorism.
But Indias evergreen ally, Russia, soft pedalling Indian approach on state-sponsored terrorism, comes as a disappointment.
Only a day before Russian president Vladimir Putin had assured PM Modi that Russia would do nothing to hurt Indias interests and a signed a slew of agreements to supply state-of-the-art armaments. Did Chinese influence prevail over Russia to change its mind? Or is it the lure of selling arms to Pakistan? Could it be a subtle warning to India to temper its new-found bonhomie with the US?
Probably it is a mix of all these; but they certainly indicate India-Russia relations should not be taken for granted and need urgent refurbishing, if not repair.
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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..
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The following companies are subsidiares of Molina Healthcare: Aetna & Humana - Medicare Advantage, Affinity Health Plan, AmericanWork Inc., Better Health Network, Camelot Care Centers Inc, Children's Behavioral Health Inc., Choices Group Inc., College Community Services, Dockside Services Inc, Family Preservation Services Inc., Family Preservation Services of Florida Inc., Family Preservation Services of North Carolina Inc., Family Preservation Services of Washington D.C. Inc., Family Preservation Services of West Virginia Inc., Florida NetPASS LLC, Hclb Inc., Magellan Complete Care, Maple Star Nevada Inc., Maple Star Oregon Inc., Mercy CarePlus, Molina Clinical Services LLC, Molina Healthcare Data Center Inc., Molina Healthcare of Arizona Inc., Molina Healthcare of California, Molina Healthcare of Florida Inc., Molina Healthcare of Georgia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Molina Healthcare of Iowa Inc., Molina Healthcare of Louisiana Inc., Molina Healthcare of Maryland Inc., Molina Healthcare of Michigan Inc., Molina Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Molina Healthcare of Nevada Inc., Molina Healthcare of New Mexico Inc., Molina Healthcare of New York Inc., Molina Healthcare of North Carolina Inc., Molina Healthcare of Ohio Inc., Molina Healthcare of Oklahoma Inc., Molina Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Molina Healthcare of Puerto Rico Inc., Molina Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, Molina Healthcare of Texas Inc., Molina Healthcare of Texas Insurance Company, Molina Healthcare of Utah Inc., Molina Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Washington Inc., Molina Healthcare of Wisconsin Inc., Molina Holdings Corporation, Molina Hospital Management LLC, Molina Information Systems LLC dba Molina Medicaid Solutions, Molina Medical Management Inc., Molina Pathways LLC, Molina Pathways of Texas Inc., Molina Youth Academy, NextLevel Health Illinois, Pathways Community Corrections Inc., Pathways Community Services LLC, Pathways Community Support of Texas Inc., Pathways Health and Community Support LLC, Pathways Human Services LLC., Pathways of Arizona Inc., Pathways of Delaware Inc., Pathways of Idaho LLC, Pathways of Maine Inc., Pathways of Massachusetts LLC, Pathways of Oklahoma Inc., Pathways of Washington Inc., Providence Community Services, Providence Human Services, Raystown Developmental Services Inc., The Game of Work LLC, The RedCo Group Inc., Total Care Medicaid plan, Transitional Family Services Inc., Unisys -Health Information Management, and YourCare Health Plan.
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Valley National Bancorp operates as the holding company for Valley National Bank that provides various commercial, retail, insurance, and wealth management financial services products. It operates through Commercial Lending, Consumer Lending, and Investment Management segments. The company offers non-interest bearing, savings, NOW, money market, and time deposit accounts; commercial and industrial, commercial real estate, residential mortgage, and automobile loans; loans secured by the cash surrender value of life insurance; home equity loans and lines of credit; and secured and unsecured other consumer loans. It also invests in various securities and interest-bearing deposits with other banks; and provides international banking services, such as standby and documentary letters of credit, and related products, as well as foreign exchange transactions, documentary collections, foreign wire transfers services, and transaction accounts for non-resident aliens. In addition, the company offers investment services for individuals and small to medium sized businesses; and trusts and custom -tailored investment strategies for various retirement plans. Further, it provides trust services, such as living and testamentary trusts, investment management, custodial and escrow services, and estate administration to individuals; tax credit advisory services; property and casualty, life, health, and title insurance agency services; and health care equipment lending and other commercial equipment leasing services, as well as owns real estate related investments. Additionally, the company offers online, mobile, and telephone banking services; and overdraft, drive-in and night deposit, automated teller machine, remote deposit capture, and safe deposit facility services. As of December 31,2021, it operated 232 branch offices in New Jersey, New York, Florida, and Alabama. The company was incorporated in 1927 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
Kilroy Realty Corporation (NYSE: KRC, the company, KRC) is a leading West Coast landlord and developer, with a major presence in San Diego, Greater Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Pacific Northwest. The company has earned global recognition for sustainability, building operations, innovation and design. As pioneers and innovators in the creation of a more sustainable real estate industry, the company's approach to modern business environments helps drive creativity, productivity and employee retention for some of the world's leading technology, entertainment, life science and business services companies. KRC is a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) and member of the S&P MidCap 400 Index with more than seven decades of experience developing, acquiring and managing office and mixed-use projects. As of September 30, 2020, KRC's stabilized portfolio totaled approximately 14.3 million square feet of primarily office and life science space that was 92.2% occupied and 95.5% leased. The company also had 808 residential units in Hollywood and San Diego, which had a quarterly average occupancy of 85.0% and 37.5%, respectively. In addition, KRC had seven in-process development projects with an estimated total investment of $1.9 billion, totaling approximately 2.3 million square feet of office and life science space. The office and life science space was 90% leased.
Kinder Morgan, Inc. operates as an energy infrastructure company in North America. The company operates through four segments: Natural Gas Pipelines, Products Pipelines, Terminals, and CO2. The Natural Gas Pipelines segment owns and operates interstate and intrastate natural gas pipeline, and underground storage systems; natural gas gathering systems and natural gas processing and treating facilities; natural gas liquids fractionation facilities and transportation systems; and liquefied natural gas liquefaction and storage facilities. The Products Pipelines segment owns and operates refined petroleum products, and crude oil and condensate pipelines; and associated product terminals and petroleum pipeline transmix facilities. The Terminals segment owns and/or operates liquids and bulk terminals that stores and handles various commodities, including gasoline, diesel fuel, chemicals, ethanol, metals, and petroleum coke; and owns tankers. The CO2 segment produces, transports, and markets CO2 to recovery and production crude oil from mature oil fields; owns interests in/or operates oil fields and gasoline processing plants; and operates a crude oil pipeline system in West Texas, as well as owns and operates RNG and LNG facilities. It owns and operates approximately 83,000 miles of pipelines and 143 terminals. The company was formerly known as Kinder Morgan Holdco LLC and changed its name to Kinder Morgan, Inc. in February 2011. Kinder Morgan, Inc. was founded in 1936 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Standard Motor Products, Inc. manufactures and distributes replacement parts that are used in the maintenance, repair, and service of vehicles in the automotive aftermarket industry with a complementary focus on specialized original equipment parts for manufacturers across agriculture, heavy duty, and construction equipment industries. The company's Engine Management segment provides electronic ignition control modules, camshaft and crankshaft position sensors, ignition wires and coils, switches and relays, exhaust gas recirculation valves, pressure and temperature sensors, variable valve timing components, mass airflow and fuel pressure sensors, electronic throttle bodies, and diesel injectors and pumps; and anti-lock brake, vehicle speed, tire pressure monitoring, and park assist sensors. This segment offers its products under the Standard, Blue Streak, BWD, Intermotor, OEM, SMP Blue Streak Canada, GP Sorensen, Locksmart, Standard Motorcycle, and Blue Streak Race Wires brands. Its Temperature Control segment provides components for the temperature control systems, engine cooling systems, power window accessories, and windshield washer systems of motor vehicles under the Four Seasons, ACI, Hayden, Factory Air, and Maxair brands. Its products include air conditioning compressors and repair kits, clutch assemblies, blower and radiator fan motors, filter dryers, evaporators, accumulators, actuators, hose assemblies, thermal expansion devices, heater valves, heater cores, A/C service tools and chemicals, fan assemblies, fan clutches, oil coolers, window lift motors, window regulators and assemblies, and windshield washer pumps. The company serves primarily automotive aftermarket retailers, warehouse distributors, original equipment manufacturers, and original equipment service part operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries. The company was founded in 1919 and is headquartered in Long Island City, New York.
BP, plc, once known as British Petroleum, is one of the worlds 7 oil & gas supermajors with operations spanning the globe. In terms of revenue, it ranks 4th on the list and the company is vertically integrated as well with operations in all segments of the oil and gas sector. Operations are currently underway in 80 countries around the world, the company can produce 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalents per day, and it lays claim to nearly 20 billion barrels in proven reserves. On the retail end of the business, the company operates more than 18,700 fuel stations and its largest segment is in the US.
The company was founded in 1908 with the purpose of exploring for and producing oil in the middle east. The company expanded into Alaska in 1959 and then accelerated its expansion when it merged with Amoco in 1998. Another merger with Burhman Castrol in 2000 created the company that is traded today.
BP, plc rebranded itself in 2000 giving new meaning to its name. The once British Petroleum is now Beyond Petroleum and focused on a major shift in its business. The company is working hard to move away from non-renewable carbon-based energy and into biofuels, solar, and wind. The company hopes to be net-zero in regard to carbon emissions and production by 2050 or earlier and is well on the way to doing so. Among the many avenues of advance are the build-out of solar and wind farms as well as the expansion of a major EV charging network. The network totaled more than 9,000 stations around the middle of 2022 and expansion was ramping in order to meet the goal of 100,000 EV stations before 2050.
BP p.l.c. currently operates through 4 segments including Gas & Low Carbon Energy, Oil Production & Operations, Customers & Products, and Rosneft segments. The company produces and trades in natural gas and oil liquids, offers biofuels, and operates wind and solar power generating facilities. The company also provides de-carbonization solutions and services, such as hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, as part of its green agenda.
In addition, it produces and refines oil and gas for its downstream operations as well as invests in upstream, downstream, and alternative energy companies including advanced mobility. Advanced mobility is the future of transportation and includes technologies like EV, hybrid, and hydrogen fuel cells. To that end, the company is building 7 hydrogen production and storage hubs in key locations around the world. The company aims to produce blue and green hydrogen for the global transportation industry with production beginning in 2027. Blue hydrogen is hydrogen captured from the companys natural gas deposits using a process that captures the waste carbon.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clintons ugly presidential campaign is nearing its end. Both candidates will take the stage on Wednesday for the final primetime debate.
For Trump, this debate could be his last stand at attempting to turn around a race for the White House that appears as if it is slipping away from his grasp.
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His predatory comments regarding women and numerous accusations of sexual assault have increased his unpopularity amongst women and lessened his chances of a victory.
Trumps supporters remain very loyal, but few signs have appeared that he is attracting any new supporters that he is in desperate need of.
Clinton is facing her own challenges. While the current electoral map is leaning in her favor, Clinton has faced new rounds of questions and doubts over her trustworthiness and authenticity, concerns she has faced throughout her campaign.
The hacking of emails of her top adviser for the campaign revealed that she was averse to making apologies, strikes a different tone in while in private than when in public and makes certain decisions only after long political deliberations.
The final debate of three, the contest on Wednesday will be in Las Vegas and comes with less than three weeks until Election Day. Early voting has already started in a number of battleground states.
Trump has been leaning more and more on his brazen strategy in the closing weeks of his campaign, including making charges that the election is rigged, despite there being no evidence of any broad voter fraud in presidential elections of the past.
He also has said that Clinton intimidated and attacked the women who were involved with former president Bill Clinton her husband.
Mr. Clinton was never charged for any crimes related to his encounters though he settled a lawsuit for sexual harassment.
Trump will have Malik Obama, the half brother of President Barack Obama as a guest at the debate. Clinton will have Mark Cuban a billionaire, who has frequently criticized Trump, as well as Meg Whitman the CEO at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
A spokesperson for Clinton said the presidential nominee would be ready for any tactics that Trump will try in the final debate.
Republicans are desperately hoping that Trump is able to close his campaign by stressing the weaknesses of Clinton a strategy some concede privately might not be sufficient for him to pull out a victory at this point of the campaign, but could help candidates for the GOP Senate races salvage their places.
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.
Everest Re Group, Ltd., through its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance and insurance products in the United States, Bermuda, and internationally. The company operates through Reinsurance Operations and Insurance Operations segments. The Reinsurance Operations segment writes property and casualty reinsurance; and specialty lines of business through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies in the United States, Bermuda, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Insurance Operations segment writes property and casualty insurance directly, as well as through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents in Bermuda, Canada, Europe, South America, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The company also provides treaty and facultative reinsurance products; admitted and non-admitted insurance products; and property and casualty reinsurance and insurance coverages, including marine, aviation, surety, errors and omissions liability, directors' and officers' liability, medical malpractice, mortgage reinsurance, other specialty lines, accident and health, and workers' compensation products. In addition, it offers commercial property and casualty insurance products through wholesale and retail brokers, surplus lines brokers, and program administrators. Everest Re Group, Ltd. was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda.
The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface.
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After months of waiting for a federal judge in Maryland and hearing nothing, a Charlottesville judge denied a request to pause the wrongful death lawsuit against George Huguely V any longer.
Attorneys for Sharon Love the mother of the woman Huguely is convicted of killing asked a judge in Charlottesville Circuit Court on Tuesday to once again extend the suspension of the $29.45 million wrongful death lawsuit.
Love filed the suit after Huguely was convicted in 2012 of second-degree murder for the slaying of his girlfriend Yeardley Love, a University of Virginia womens lacrosse player who was found dead in her apartment in May 2010.
The now-28-year-old Huguely is currently serving a 23-year sentence at the Augusta Correctional Center for the slaying and has continued to fight his criminal conviction, even after the U.S. Supreme Court in October denied a request to review his case.
Huguely is also involved in a 2013 court case in Maryland, brought by Chartis Property Casualty Co., a holding company of insurance giant AIG. According to the original complaint, Huguely sought insurance coverage from Chartis as part of two policies held by his mother, which stipulated that Chartis was to conduct its own investigation into the allegations against Huguely to determine its liability in the matter.
Attorneys for both Love and Huguely agreed that the Chartis case should move forward before Loves, but on Tuesday, Loves attorney, Irv Cantor, said he had still not heard a decision from the Maryland court but said they still anticipated a ruling in the case. Matthew Green, attorney for Huguely, said it was apparent Maryland has chosen not to act, and the motion to continue to hold up Loves case should be denied.
Judge Richard Moore agreed with Huguelys lawyer and said he normally would be inclined to grant the extended stay, but since there was no visible progress in the Maryland court, he denied the motion. With a full court docket, Moore said any more delays in the case could push the multiday trial from its current date of March 2017 to sometime in 2018.
Also on Tuesday, Green asked that attorneys for Huguely be allowed time to schedule a deposition of Love and said they would be willing to go to Love at her home in Baltimore.
We know its difficult and emotionally hard, Green said in court. Were happy to go to Baltimore.
Cantor said Loves representation had no issue with the deposition, and Moore said he would not make an order. Both sides agreed to schedule the deposition for the end of the year within the next couple of weeks.
Following the hearing, Cantor reiterated their anticipation of news from the court in Maryland and said attorneys for Love will most likely make a motion to continue the trial date later than March 2017.
Green agreed with the judges decision to deny the extension of time and said its important to get the case rolling in Charlottesville. He said attorneys for Huguely anticipate presenting new evidence about what happened the night Yeardley Love was killed.
It will have been over seven years since Yeardleys death, and its time to have a resolution of the civil matter, Green said. Its very clear that it was an unintentional act and, unfortunately, George was unbelievably intoxicated and a terrible drunken accident happened. George admits that he is legally responsible for it.
When asked about Loves attorneys possibly asked for a continuance of the trial date, Green said Huguelys attorneys would object to another delay. He also said Huguely is doing great and is prepared to serve the remaining time of his sentence.
Nearly two years after the fateful article A Rape on Campus was published by Rolling Stone, stirring an uproar both at the University of Virginia and around the country, the first of three lawsuits stemming from the story is going to trial.
On Monday, attorneys for Rolling Stone, its publisher and author Sabrina Rubin Erdely will square off in federal court in Charlottesville against Nicole Eramo, a UVa administrator once tasked with aiding student survivors of sexual assault.
In that role, Eramo was mentioned more than 30 times in the November 2014 article that Erdely had intended as an expose of the culture of sexual assault at elite American universities. In that pursuit, Erdely chose UVa as her backdrop. For her primary subject, she chose Jackie, a then-student who claimed she was brutally gang raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house near Grounds during her first year at UVa.
When the piece first hit newsstands, Charlottesville erupted in a firestorm of outrage. Protests were staged outside of Phi Psis chapter house, uniting students, professors and the community in remonstration. UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan called for a temporary suspension of all Greek life, while residents of the Phi Psi house vacated to safer premises.
University administrators at various levels, including Eramo and Sullivan, were criticized for the articles insinuations that UVa did not take sufficient steps in seeking justice for survivors of sexual assault. Eramo said she received a litany of scathing and even threatening emails from readers.
That tide of fury began to diminish when reports from various media outlets found holes in Jackies story. Growing scrutiny resulted in an investigation from Charlottesville police into Jackies claims and, eventually, a review by the Columbia Journalism School of Erdelys practices in chasing the story.
By March of the following year, authorities said they had found no evidence to support Jackies claims, and soon after, Columbia released a critical review that called Erdelys piece a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. In April that year, the article officially was retracted. In July, the magazines managing editor, Will Dana, resigned.
Since the retraction, three lawsuits have been filed against Rolling Stone, Erdely and publisher Wenner Media LLC. One, filed by three Phi Psi alumni, has been thrown out. Another, filed by the fraternitys Virginia chapter, is scheduled for trial next year. But the first, filed by Eramo in May 2015, now goes before a jury.
Eramo claims she was unduly maligned by her portrayal in the debunked article. She says Erdely portrayed her as the chief villain in the storys controversy an uncaring, callous and ineffective voice who sought to suppress Jackies claims. She was even the focal point of the articles photo illustration, which appears to show her giving a smile and thumbs up to a crying girl sitting in her office.
For this and more, Eramo is seeking $7.85 million, based on the damages inflicted upon her reputation, career and health, both physical and mental.
The trial is scheduled to run for two weeks, although Judge Glen Conrad has said he does not want it to take more than 12 days meaning each day likely will extend beyond standard business hours and jurors may be called in on Saturdays.
Conrad has bifurcated the trial into two parts a liability phase and a damages phase. In the liability phase, counsel for both sides will argue over whether Rolling Stone acted with actual malice when it published the story. If the jury finds that it did, only then will the court proceed into a damages phase, in which more evidence will be presented for the jury to formulate an appropriate monetary remuneration for Eramo.
According to Kevin Walsh, a law professor at the University of Richmond not affiliated with the trial, the bifurcation will make the trial more efficient.
If theres certain evidence that will only go to damages, if you dont need to go there, then the bifurcation prevents that from happening, Walsh said. Overall, I think its a way for the judge to manage what comes in.
In the weeks leading up to the trial, attorneys from both sides have entered a series of motions asking Conrad to exclude certain evidence from being used at trial. According to Lee Berlik, a Reston-based defamation attorney not involved in the case, such motions are not uncommon in defamation suits. And in most cases, theyre denied.
If a judge has any doubt and thinks that the evidence at trial may unfold in such a way as to make one of these other bits of information relevant to the case, most judges will defer this until the heat of battle, Berlik said.
Berliks assessment has proven to be mostly correct in the Eramo case. According to an order signed Thursday, most of the motions were either denied or only partially granted. Conrad denied a motion from Eramo to exclude a 21-minute interview between Eramo and WUVA, and partially denied two other motions regarding a letter from National Organization of Women and a letter from the Office of Civil Rights. He noted that the OCR letter, its conclusions and its place in the chronology of events can be used for impeachment purposes, and the NOW letter may be admitted for impeachment purposes and during the damages phase of the trial.
Conrad denied a motion from Rolling Stone to exclude a letter from the UVa student newspaper The Cavalier Daily, emails received by UVa and Eramo after the articles publication and evidence regarding Eramos change in employment. He further denied their motion to exclude evidence regarding Eramos cancer diagnosis, another motion to exclude the Columbia Journalism Schools report and yet another to exclude testimony regarding Haven Monahan, the moniker of an imagined love interest that Jackie is alleged to have created.
Six other motions were only partially denied, with stipulations regarding potential exclusions of some of the Charlottesville police investigation into Jackies claims and other pieces of evidence.
Per an emergency motion filed last week by Rolling Stone, Eramos attorneys also have been prohibited from showing any of Erdelys videotaped deposition, as well as any other deposition videos that were shown during Friday nights broadcast of 20/20. In hearings last week, the magazine argued that Eramo violated a protective order when she and her attorneys handed over some deposition videos to ABC for the broadcast, and Conrad agreed.
Conrad added that he would consider imposing further sanctions against Eramo for the violation, although no more filings had been made in the case as of Sunday night. Berlik noted that the ruling might not be a significant setback for Eramos trial strategy, so long as Erdely still appears as a live witness at trial.
Conrad did grant two exclusion motions. Per his ruling, emails received by Rolling Stone after the storys publication will be excluded, and Eramos attorneys will not be able to show an episode of Law & Order, believed to be relevant to Jackies story, to the jury at trial.
In the months since she filed suit, Eramo has battled with attorneys for both the magazine and Jackie, who has vehemently fought to stay out of the litigation altogether. After various court orders, Jackie has now sat for a deposition in the case, turned over documents and, according to witness lists filed this month, she is expected to appear as a live witness during Eramos arguments.
Many others including Eramo, Erdely, editors from Rolling Stone and UVa Dean of Students Allen Groves are expected to give live testimonies over the next several days.
Before they do, the attorneys will empanel what the judge hopes to be a seven-person jury. Berlik said that counsel from both sides, especially Rolling Stones, will be looking to remove any potential jurors who may have a predisposition toward the case based on their knowledge of the article and its aftermath. He added that just having read the original article or keeping up with the trials proceedings via media outlets wont necessarily excuse any juror candidates.
[Doing so] doesnt mean youre biased and that youre going to be automatically siding with Nicole Eramo, he said. You can be exposed to media coverage and not pre-judge the case.
The biggest challenge for jurors, Berlik said, is to separate the entirety of the articles aftermath from the defamation question at hand. Beyond just Jackies debunked story, or the magazines reported failings, the case only takes up the matter of what the article said about Eramo, and the repercussions it had on her career.
This whole case amounts to a portrayal of Ms. Eramo in such a way as to make it appear that she doesnt care about protecting UVa students from sexual assault, Berlik said. Its still a serious matter, of course, but thats a much narrower scope than just, hey, [Rolling Stone]should be punished because it published a false story about a rape that never happened.
Nicole Eramo has plenty of reasons for pursuing her $7.85 million lawsuit against Rolling Stone.
She said as much in federal court on Tuesday: she wants to restore her reputation, she wants security for her future and, perhaps most vehemently, she wants the magazine and author Sabrina Rubin Erdely to be held accountable for the dire mistakes made with A Rape on Campus.
No one ever thought of me as a real person, the University of Virginia administrator exclaimed from the stand at Charlottesvilles federal courthouse. They made me into something they wanted me to be.
Tuesday was the second day in Eramos defamation lawsuit against the magazine, its publisher and Erdely over her portrayal as the chief villain in Erdelys now-retracted November 2014 piece A Rape on Campus. On Monday, a 10-person jury was empaneled from a pool of 100, leaving Tuesday morning open for counsel from both sides to deliver opening arguments.
Tom Clare, representing Eramo in the matter, opened the trial day by echoing the words of the Columbia Journalism Schools review of Erdelys piece, calling it a journalistic failure. Thats been a popular opinion since the piece was retracted in April 2015, a month before Eramo filed her suit.
In her suit, Eramo claims that, as the former associate dean charged with aiding student survivors of sexual assault, she was unduly maligned when Erdelys article hit shelves. The piece severely derides UVas administration as ineffective at handling cases of sexual assault among students; in her role, Eramo was mentioned 30 times by name and 10 times by title in the largely negative piece.
After stirring an uproar at UVa and abroad, intense scrutiny and investigations debunked the articles centerpiece story of Jackie, a student at the time who claimed she was gang-raped at a fraternity house during her freshman year.
Jackie has remained central to the case, although Clares opening arguments indicate that she will not be giving a live testimony at trial and that the jury will simply see a taped deposition that Jackie provided earlier this year.
Portions of that taped deposition were read aloud by Clare on Tuesday; notably, Jackie appeared to defend Eramo, who had counseled Jackie after she came forward about her alleged assault.
I never felt like she suppressed my assault, Clare read, contradicting the insinuations of the retracted article.
Clare went on to describe exactly how Eramos life and career were damaged in the articles aftermath. The former associate dean received threatening emails, had protesters outside her office door and feared that her job was in jeopardy.
When doubts arose about Jackies story, emails indicated that Erdely had lost faith in her account and asked for a retraction. Instead, Clare said, the editors chose to blame Jackie in a pre-story addendum, before editing it the next day to finally take responsibility for the journalistic mishap.
Clare narrowed his arguments down to five essential points that placed Rolling Stone in the wrong: Eramo did take Jackie to the police after hearing of her assault, the magazine was aware of this fact, the magazine didnt seek to confirm Jackies story, they then blamed her when the story went off the rails and, finally, the magazine created a harsh photo illustration of Eramo to accompany the ill-fated article.
Speaking for Rolling Stone, attorney Scott Sexton acknowledged mistakes made by the magazine and its author but pointed out that, in proving the necessary actual malice standard in play for the case, the magazine obviously had nothing against Nicole Eramo. Instead, he argued, they took issue with UVas handling of sexual assault, and Eramo was caught in the crossfire.
She was the face of the universitys policies and procedures, Sexton said. It was never personal; it was all about these procedures.
Sexton stressed that actual malice standard, which was established when Judge Glen Conrad ruled that Eramo is a limited purpose public figure in the case. By upgrading her from simply being a private figure, Eramo can no longer prove the case based on common negligence on the part of Erdely or her editors; now she must prove that they were aware of problems with the reporting but published the story anyway.
They have to make the statement knowing it was false, Sexton explained to the jury. Youll have to get in the minds of Ms. Erdely and [Rolling Stone editor] Sean Woods.
He added that the truth of Jackies claims were not relevant to the case because they arent germane to the statements specifically made about Eramo.
The remainder of Tuesdays trial was dedicated to Eramos own testimony. In it, she outlined her relationship with Jackie. In May 2013, Jackie had a meeting with her academic dean over her struggling grades. When she told the dean of her assault, she was referred to Eramo, who provided her resources and encouraged her to report the assault to the police.
Eramo said at the time that Jackie alleged that shed been forced to perform oral sex on five men. It wasnt until much later that Eramo had heard a version of the story in which seven men vaginally penetrated Jackie.
The former associate dean then emotionally ran through a timeline of their relationship, in which Eramo provided gentle guidance to Jackie but repeatedly pressed for her to take her allegations to the police, according to Eramos testimony.
I wanted her to report and I would be with her every step of the way, Eramo said tearfully.
Jackie even expressed distress to Eramo over the upcoming Rolling Stone article in the weeks before it was published, Eramo said. Nine days before it was published, Jackie sent Eramo an email saying she was concerned that much of what she said [to Erdely] was being misrepresented.
Eramo also testified as to her dealings with Erdely, noting that while shed agreed to an interview with her, UVa higher-ups told her to cancel it, and they instead opted to do the interview themselves. Eramo and Erdely had nearly no interaction with one another, she said, and the entire time that the story was being written, shed assumed it was about campus sexual assault advocacy in general.
She went on to describe the fallout from the articles publication, calling the vibe of the campus hysterical and her own reaction to the story as shocked and stunned. Eramo said that reading Jackies new account of her gang rape didnt make a lot of sense to me, given their close relationship.
Most of it was completely new to me, she said.
When Clare closed his questioning, Eramo said that she didnt blame Jackie for anything that happened and said that, while she didnt believe her claims in the story, she did wonder if Jackie had faced some form of trauma.
She did, however, find blame with Rolling Stone; she heatedly called for the magazine to be accountable for what it had done to her and to so many others, and hoped that the trials result would dissuade any other instances of drive-by journalism.
Eramo will face questioning from Rolling Stones attorneys Wednesday morning, when the trial picks up for the third of its expected 12 days in court.
RICHMOND Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump is returning to Virginia this weekend for a rally at Regent University in Virginia Beach, the strongest signal yet that his campaign has not given up on Virginia.
The rally at the Christian university is scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday, according to Trump's official online schedule. Gates will open at noon.
Polls have shown Democrat Hillary Clinton with a wide lead over Trump in Virginia.
Last week, the Trump campaign pushed back on reports it was pulling out of the state, saying some of its staff were being temporarily relocated to North Carolina and insisting the campaign intends to compete in Virginia.
Cal Thomas in his Sept. 28 column, Its time to try Trumps way in election, admits to having initially opposed Donald Trumps candidacy for president and to not knowing for sure what we will get beyond promises. He does hope, however, that good people will serve and surround him. He mentions, in particular, the policy wonk Newt Gingrich, who has been assisting Trumps transition staff.
Im not convinced this is the best of choices, since Gingrich brings to the job his own unsavory baggage. As House Speaker in the 1990s, he pioneered many tactics that now define partisan warfare. Presently, he is urging Trump should he succeed to the presidency to build a wall on our southern border wall right away because his political fortunes depend on it.
And, to abet his candidates proposal to screen out any who have hostile attitudes toward our country or its principals, he is calling for a recreation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (Fox and Friends, June 13).
For those of us not old enough to remember, this was a legislative body established in 1938 to investigate accusations of subversion and disloyalty. Before it was abolished in 1975, it had laid the groundwork for the internment of Japanese-Americans and led investigations into alleged communist sympathizers.
In 1959, former president Harry S. Truman called it the most un-American thing in the country today (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braden_v._United_States).
These are but a few of the excesses that scourged our nation in the past and with which Gingrich was known to concur. Therefore, despite Thomas strong endorsement, I still do not think he is the best person to help Trump rid Washington of its vile, biblical-like money changers and restore it to Christian purity.
Fortunately for most of us, there is a durable American Constitution that provides for separation of church and state and ensures that we can make moral choices on our own.
Florence Schmitt
Albemarle County
Fairness has prevailedfor nowafter a North Dakota judge dropped a misdemeanor riot charge against a journalist.
Judge John Grinsteiner said there was no foundation for charging Democracy Now reporter Amy Goodman.
The riot charge had been instituted by a prosecutor after a previous misdemeanor trespassing charge was dropped.
The prosecutor claimed the reporter was acting like a protester.
Goodman was in North Dakota to report on Sioux protests against a controversial oil pipeline. Because Virginia is in the midst of turmoil over proposed construction of two natural gas pipelines, many local residents have followed the North Dakota case with interest.
There are at least two questions regarding the protests that need to be resolved:
Were they riots?
Law enforcement authorities claim that hundreds of protesters turned violent when they broke through a fence with their dogs and horses and stampeded into the construction area.
But authorities must be very, very careful not to use riot laws simply as an excuse to quell protests.
Stopping riots? Thats different. Subduing violence? Also different.
But protesting has an honorable place in American history. It represents the right of the people to demand a hearing from the powers-that-be. In many cases, protests have been integral in moving justice forward.
There is reason to suspect, in a number of cases across the country in recent years, that authorities are failing to respect the legitimate place of protests and instead are using heavy-handed methods to suppress dissent.
The same could be said about actions against journalists.
Was Ms. Goodman riotingor even protesting?
If she were with the Sioux protesters in her capacity as journalist, then her presence could have been misinterpreted as participation in eventsat least, initially.
If the protests moved from outside private property to inside, then she would have had to make a calculated decision on whether to risk a trespassing charge in order to follow the action.
Traditionally, such decisions have been an element of investigative journalism. As representatives of the Fourth Estate keeping tabs on government, journalists have often been in places they werent supposed to be in order to report on leaders doing what they werent supposed to do.
Its a risky choice that shouldnt be taken lightlyand shouldnt be abused. But, like protesting, it has an honorable history.
As the Goodman story unfolds, more details may come to light about what happened at the pipeline construction site.
But for now, a judges ruling that a riot charge was unjustified hints at the kind of excessive enforcement that weve seen used against journalists in other situations.
Those in power dont even want to be scrutinized, much less exposed.
All the more reason to keep the spotlight of inquiry trained upon them.
LONDON - England - Britain emerging into the light from the EU prison hurts the eyes at first, but you will get used to it, as sure as the globe opens up from the restrictive prison walls we have been behind for forty long years.
Remainers are obviously masochists because they enjoy being abused, they enjoy being dictated to, and they enjoy paying 70% more for everything in the shops. They do not value sovereignty, freedom or the right to make our own laws.
Britain is slowly emerging from a period of creeping dictatorship and totalitarian EU rule spanning 40 years and coming into the light is hard for some people, they are used to their cosy prison, these remainers have no belief in Britain, they only believe in a Soviet EU construct where national borders are broken down completely and all national identity is lost.
Remainers do not believe in freedom, even though they do not want any borders, because their naive communist ideals do not realise the flood that will consume this country if the border is dropped. They do not realise that the NHS will not survive the deluge, or our schools, or our emergency services, our housing, benefits system, or our transport systems.
Slowly the curtains are being drawn, the sunlight of sovereign freedom hurts the eyes at first, but you will get used to it. The sun cleanses the soul, and global freedom for Britain to trade with who we want, not to be restricted by the EU protectionist closed shop, an uncompetitive racket serving only the interests of corrupt unelected EU officials.
If we have any sense of justice, we will completely eviscerate any form of treasonous attempts to thwart Brexit. After all, what has the EU ever done for Britain apart from imprison us in unjust laws and caused us untold grief economically through ridiculous punishing payments.
Remainers want to deprive the sovereign of the Crown, they want to levy war against the sovereign in order by force or constraint to compel her to change her measures or counsels, or in order to put any force or constraint upon or in order to intimidate or overawe both Houses or either House of Parliament, and they want to move or stir foreigners to invade the United Kingdom or any other country belonging to the sovereign. Plain and simple, High Treason.
Embrace the light, let us move forwards to global heights and not be constrained to the narrow limited inhibitive torture of an EU prison. Break free from the shackles of EU totalitarian rule once and for all.
Britain deserves better than the corrupt restrictive shackles of the EU. Onwards..
DOVER - England - Children's toys were given to the unusually large 'children' who were granted leave to come to Britain from the Calais jungle camp yesterday.
One young child, speaking with a low voice said he was eight years old and had travelled all the way from Afghanistan to come to Britain so he could receive benefits, a flat and plenty of English pussy.
I am only eight years old. Thank you for the toys. I play with them when I go primary school with other children of my age. I will drive to school in my BMW and leave one of my wife at home to cook for my three children, who will come later, thank you socialist peoples you are very generous.
Amongst the 14 unaccompanied children many over six feet tall, and with low baritone voices, was little Mohamed Abdullah, 10, from Peshawar, Pakistan.
I am only ten years old. I need come Britain because you give free food, free money and free English women. I hear they do anything for you, just ask, and they do. Ooph, Ive got blue balls. Havent had a shag in weeks. First thing Ill be doing after primary school is visiting the local massage parlour for a good seeing to all paid for by the British taxpayer. Ive also heard my primary schools English teacher is a real looker, bet shes never seen a ten year old like me before. Thank you for the toys, you stupid mugs, Ill sell it on Ebay to a real child for profit. What a bunch of fuckin mugs, innit.
Brexit any one?
What's this? Something is cooking! Final night in the "kitchen." #OctoberSurprise pic.twitter.com/eNX7LwxK5p
Michael Moore (@MMFlint) 18 octobre 2016
Hey NYC- Who wants a peek @ what I've been up 2? Tues, 9:30pm, IFC Center. TIx free, 1st come, b.o. opens 8:30pm. pic.twitter.com/SrAhaq74ME
Michael Moore (@MMFlint) 18 octobre 2016
The 73-minute surprise release, titled Michael Moore in Trumpland, is "an iteration of Moore's one-man play, which he had hoped to perform at a central Ohio theater" before it was allegedly banned for being too controversial, The Hollywood Reporter reports. The synopsis says: "See the film Ohio Republicans tried to shut down. Oscar-winner Michael Moore dives right into hostile territory with his daring and hilarious one-man show, deep in the heart of Trumpland in the weeks before the 2016 election."Although New Yorkers will be able to watch the film for free at the IFC Center on Tuesday night, Michael Moore in Trumpland starts its regular run on Wednesday, Indiewire reports. Further details about where it will be released or on what platforms have not yet been made available.Michael Moore in Trumpland is the filmmaker's second movie out this year, following up Where to Invade Next, which was released in February. Moore is also known for his work on Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Bowling for Columbine, for which he won an Oscar. Learn more about the New York run of his latest film
New Delhi: Beverages major Coca Cola India has dropped Bollywood superstar Salman Khan as brand ambassador for its soft drink 'Thums Up' after four years of association and the company is in talks with young star Ranveer Singh to replace him.
The contract with Khan had expired last month and the company has chosen not to renew it, according to industry sources. When contacted, Coca Cola India declined to comment.
The company's decision to not to renew the contract with the 50-year-old actor is more to do with the image of Coca Cola, which is seen as a young brand, a source said.
"That explains why Coca Cola is talking to a much younger star like Ranveer Singh," the source added. Khan has been among the top celebrity endorsers
reportedly charging Rs 5 crore per year per brand.
Recently, he had courted controversy when he supported Pakistani artists saying "they were not terrorists" in the wake of a debate on whether they should be allowed to work in Indian movies after the Uri attack.
Coca Cola India had roped in Khan as its brand ambassador for the second time to endorse its Thums Up brand in October 2012 replacing another Bollywood star Akshay Kumar. He had earlier endorsed the brand in early 2000s.
At that time, Coca-Cola India had also signed an agreement with Being Human -- The Salman Khan Foundation to jointly promote, conceive and execute charitable and social activities.
IMF said oil was expected to stabilise at around $60 per barrel in the medium term.
Dubai: A modest recovery in oil prices falls short of filling budgetary gaps in crude-exporting Gulf countries, the International Monetary Fund said, stressing the need to cut spending.
The price of the region's main commodity has partially rebounded and is hovering around $50 per barrel having hit a 10-year low of less than $30 in January, from a peak of more than $100 in mid-2014.
The recovery "will definitely help in terms of the financial numbers for this year" for the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said Masood Ahmed, the IMF's director for the Middle East.
"But it doesn't really change the fundamental outlook for GCC countries or the challenges that face them," he told AFP in an interview Tuesday.
Oil was expected to stabilise at around $60 per barrel in the medium term, he said, a rate lower than the budgetary breakeven point for some of the six nations.
In its regional economic outlook report released Wednesday, the IMF cited a breakeven price for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates at $79.7, $62.1 and $58.6 respectively.
The level drops to $47.8 per barrel in the case of Kuwait, but it shoots to $77.5 and $93.8 in the case of Oman and Bahrain respectively.
"(This) means that GCC countries as a group still have to try and balance their budgets," said Ahmed.
GCC countries had to cut back their spending "one way or another" over the next five years and find ways of raising non-oil revenues, he said.
Essar Oil operates 2,700 petrol stations and was controlled until now by billionaire brothers Shashi and Ravi Ruia.
Moscow: In a spectacularly costly gamble aimed at boosting Russia's strategic position, state-controlled giant Rosneft is investing in India's Essar Oil to muscle into a promising market with outlets throughout Asia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin returned from last week's BRICS summit in Goa with one of the largest deals the oil sector has seen in the last two years of falling prices: 98 percent of Essar Oil at a valuation of $12.9 billion.
Rosneft -- Russia's biggest oil company led by Putin's close ally Igor Sechin -- will buy 49 percent of Essar Oil, which owns the Vadinar refinery in western India.
Vadinar is one of the country's largest refineries and one of the world's most modern, with access to a port navigable by the largest vessels.
Essar Oil operates 2,700 petrol stations and was controlled until now by billionaire brothers Shashi and Ravi Ruia.
A further 49 percent will be acquired by a group of investors led by Trafigura oil traders, one of Rosneft's partners.
"Rosneft is entering one of the most promising and fast-growing world markets," Sechin said, according to a statement.
Rosneft said the Vadinar refinery will allow it to process its crude oil produced in Venezuela, which is heavy and more difficult to refine.
It could also serve as a base for exporting to the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Australia.
While the deal represents an unprecedented foreign acquisition from the Indian perspective, for Russia it is "an important strategic victory," said Emily Stromquist, an analyst at Eurasia Group.
"It sends a signal to the EU and US that Russia has alternative market opportunities despite sanctions" imposed over Russia's actions in Ukraine, she wrote in a note.
"It also provides a much-needed opportunity for export diversification as European demand flattens and Chinese growth becomes more unpredictable."
Allied nations
With its 1.2 billion inhabitants, India is the world's fourth largest consumer of hydrocarbons, with demand constantly growing.
It is increasingly dependent on crude imports, despite authorities taking steps to encourage foreign investment and seeking to diversify its suppliers, currently mainly in the Middle East.
Indian companies in turn this year bought almost half of Vankor, one of Rosneft's most promising oil fields in Siberia.
"Rosneft has the ambition to develop itself into a global energy group... but the opportunities to develop business abroad are limited, especially in Western countries," said Valery Nesterov, an analyst at Sberbank CIB.
"The markets that are promising are in Asia," he said, while Rosneft "acts in the interests of the state and develops cooperation with countries that are friends with Russia."
The Russian group has already grown considerably in recent years. It took over the ruins of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky's group after his jailing and has since increased its acquisitions, notably TNK-BP in 2013 for $55 billion.
Due to the weak ruble, it is sitting on large cash reserves that soften the effect of oil prices falling in dollars.
It has just proved its influence by pushing the reluctant government to allow it to buy a majority stake in Russia's number six oil company Bashneft, which the state wanted to privatise.
Internationally the Ukrainian crisis has struck a blow to Rosneft's policy of forming partnerships with Western giants such as BP, Exxonmobil and Statoil -- hence the need to invest in emerging markets that are not affected by sanctions.
Pavel Kushnir, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, did not conceal his scepticism over Essar, saying he could not remember a single "example of an outright successful acquisition or investment that a Russian energy company made abroad."
According to experts, the reason behind this rise in obesity could be attributed to the change in the lifestyle.
Hyderabad: India is fighting a losing battle against obesity and needs to start using preventive measures, says Apollo Hospitals joint managing director Sangita Reddy.
People tend to think obesity is a small deal but its dangerous as other deadly disesase tend to follow it. Ms Reddy said: India needs to start taking obesity seriously. Obesity is a big problem in India and currently we need around $6 billion which is not feasible. So, we need to start taking preventive measures to fight obesity.
Currently, obesity has reached a epidemic proportions, with morbid obesity figures touching as high as 5 per cent. People, who suffer from obesity, is also known to quickly fall prey to various other deadly diseases such diabetes, blood pressure, heart problems and kidney etc to name a few.
According to experts, the reason behind this rise in obesity could be attributed to the change in the lifestyle. Indian youths are known to ape the American style of living who themselves are suffering from severe obesity related issues.
Meanwhile, Appollo Hospitals announced the seventh edition of their annual conference which would focus on transforming the healthcare sector through IT.
The International Conference on Transforming healthcare through IT, scheduled for October 21 and 22 in Chennai. The conference themed on leveraging IT in healthcare and Patient Safety is a platform to bring forth key developments.
Mumbai: Coming out in support of Karan Johar, veteran director Shyam Benegal today said it is sad that the 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' filmmaker had to reiterate his patriotism.
Johar made a video appeal yesterday to those protesting the release of his directorial venture because it has Pakistani actor Fawad Khan. Raj Thackeray-led MNS has threatened to stall the movie's release on October 28.
Benegal, 81, also questioned the constant demand made on people to prove their patriotism.
"I feel very sad that he had to make a statement like that because how can anybody doubt his patriotism or his love for this country. Does it need to be reiterated everyday of his life or my life, because there is a demand on people to prove his patriotism? Why should one do that?
"When you are born here, when you live here or make a livelihood here, you are going to live all your life in your country and you are not planning to leave or go anywhere else.
You are an important and successful member of the society. Why should a person like him have to constantly say that he will not do this? Why have we come to this situation?," Benegal said.
In the video, Johar had said that he was hurt to be called an anti-national because "country comes first" for him.
Meanwhile, veteran scriptwriter Salim Khan tweeted that film industry is not divided and is the only place where talent is valued.
"What works is talent & capability. This is true from the time of Dada Saheb Phalke till date. It is true that there are some amongst us who have aligned themselves to political parties for personal gain.
"And yes we are a happy lot. If our films work we are happy and if a rivals film flops we are happy too. And we live happily ever after," he tweeted.
Mumbai: So far many people from the industry have voiced their opinion on the ongoing controversy surrounding Pakistani artiste and Karan Johars film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.
The recent artist to join the bandwagon is renowned screenwriter Salim Khan, who says that there is no place for discrimination on the basis of cast, creed, language and religion in Bollywood.
In a series of tweets, Salim Khan wrote, Film industry divided?? No way film industry is THE one place where there is no place for discrimination on the basis of Language religion caste & creed. What works is talent & capability. This is true from the time of Dada Saheb Phalke till date.
The screenwriter also said that there are some celebrities who have aligned themselves to political parties for personal gain.
It is true that there are some amongst us who have aligned themselves to political parties for personal gain. And Yes we are a happy lot. If our films work we are happy and if a rivals film flops we are happy too. And we live happily ever after. THE END, Salim Khan wrote.
Salims reaction came after Ae Dil Hai Mushkil director Karan Johar broke his silence on the issue.
In an emotional video statement released on Tuesday, Mr Johar said that he would not engage talent from neighbouring country given the circumstance but also made a public appeal for his film. Amid growing voices from a section of politicians and film bodies to stall the release of ADHM or erase sections that has Fawad in it, Mr Johar, said: I beseech you to know one thing...that over 300 Indian people in my crew have put their blood, sweat and tears in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and I dont think it's fair to them to face any kind of turbulence on account of other fellow Indians.
Mumbai: Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who wastrolled for tweeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his Pakistan visit, today sought to difuse a row, saying he was not asking the PM to apologise but merely pointing out that film industry was made a scapegoat in the situation.
The 44-year-old director, in series of tweets recently, had questioned why only Indian filmmakers should be targeted for casting Pakistani actors when the PM also made a trip to Lahore last year.
Kashyap said he has to unfortunately "explain my intention behind tweet" as his industry colleagues will suffer for his opinion.
"NO, Anurag Kashyap did not 'ask the PM to apologise' (which most of the headlines would want you to believe...), I merely questioned the fairness in judgement of a situation: the PM visited Pakistan for talks at the same time that a filmmaker was working with a Pakistani actor. Neither was aware of future events or mood. Yet only one pays the price," Kashyap wrote on his Facebook page.
The director, who was speaking against the demand by a section to ban Karan Johar's film 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' because it has Pakistani actor Fawad Khan, said people from the industry are always the first to be bullied.
"I am tired of the film industry being soft targets. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't! When we don't involve ourselves, they ask 'why is Bollywood quiet now?' When we involve ourselves, we become the scapegoats to distract you from the real news. Either way they use us to sensationalise news," Kashyap said.
The director said though the demand to ban the movies starring Pakistani artistes was not made by the government, the elected members should protect people from bullies.
"I'm also well aware that the government did not cry 'BAN' or demand that Pakistani artists be sent back. Just as I'm aware that the PM himself doesn't censor my films. But we elected them and so it is their responsibility to protect us from bullies - media or political parties.
"And when the governing party's designated members don't respond in hours of crisis because they are second guessing the mood of the PM then I would rather talk straight to the PM himself."
Kashyap also questioned the trollers for asking proof of his patriotism.
"There was also sarcasm in the tweet that followed; 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' was for those mindless trollers who constantly ask for proof of your patriotism. Apparently thats all it takes. It was a jibe at them. Patriotic slogans don't absolve you from it all. I hope this explains .. (sic)"
Anurag Kashyap's post on Facebook.
Mumbai: Tuesday witnessed a lot of action go on on social media after the makers unveiled Dear Zindagi's first look online and now, they have released the film's first teaser.
In the teaser, we see a breezy chemistry between Shah Rukh Khan and Alia Bhatt. As we see the bubbly Alia quizzing bearded Shah Rukh Khan with her queries, the sweet humour in the film doesn't go miss.
Reportedly, there is no trailer of the film but four teasers, which will be released one after one. The makers have now released the first one, titled 'Life Is A Game'.
The Gauri Shinde helmed film, stars Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan in the lead roles, along with an ensemble of male actors including Aditya Roy Kapoor, Ali Zafar, Kunal Kapoor and Angad Bedi.
The film, slated for a November 25, 2016 release, had earlier been mired in controversy, owing to the involvement of Pakistani actor Ali Zafar in the cast.
Co-produced by Karan Johar's Dharma Productions whose own 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' is at the zenith of the tension between political parties vying for a blanket ban on films involving Pakistani artistes and the film fraternity, the film has reportedly done away with Zafar's portions in the trailer.
SRK and Alia had earlier taken to social media to tease fans on the generic theme and mood of the film, with their own take on the proverbial 'Monday Blues'.
Watch the film's first teaser below:
Vijayawada: A brain dead patients family came forward to give a new lease of life to six people who were desperately waiting for organ donors on Wednesday. Mandava Vamshi Krishna who belongs to Jaggaiahpet was working as network administrator at Mandava Engineering College.
He was critically ill with a brain disease and was undergoing treatment at Andhra Hospitals. His condition deteriorated on Tuesday and the doctors declared him brain dead on Wednesday morning.
The family of Vamshi showing came forward to donate his organs. His parents Venugopal Rao and Rajeswari gave their consent to donate all his useful organs through the Jeevandan Trust. The doctors immediately made arrangements for the organ transplantation and to transplant them on six people who were waiting for donors.
Liver, heart valves and the heart of Vamshi Krishna were shifted to Hyderabad and were utilized on the listed patients under the Jeevandan scheme of the government. The heart was used by Apollo Hospitals on a 26-year-old patient and heart valves were given to Innova Childrens Heart Hospital. The liver was given to Yashoda Hospital and has been transplanted on a 42-year-old patient from Ludhiana.
The recipients are in the intensive care unit after surgery. Two kidneys were given to two patients at Ayush and NRI Hospi-tals in Vijayawada; the eyes were donated to Vasan Eye Care.
Yang Li, 24, underwent an abortion so that she could donate her bone marrow to her brother, Yang Jun. (Credit: YouTube)
A young woman from China made the heartbreaking decision to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her brothers life. Yang Li, 24, from Hangzhou City, was 12 weeks pregnant when she chose to give up her unborn child so that she could donate her bone marrow to her 29-year-old brother, Yang Jun.
Mr Jun, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in September 2015, could only be saved if he got a marrow transplant. Tests revealed that his sibling Li was a perfect transplant match. When she discussed the potential donation with experts, she was warned that undergoing the procedure could have an adverse effect on her child, reports Daily Mail.
Li was finally able to make the seemingly impossible choice with the support of her husband and in-laws and had an abortion recently. The doctors will perform the marrow transplant surgery on her as soon as her body recovers. Her decision has polarised opinions on Chinese social media with some hailing her as a hero and other critical of her actions.
It might be fined 16,000 euros ($17,500) because its bells are "too noisy." (Photo: AFP)
Spain: A small Spanish town is considering fining a medieval church 16,000 euros ($17,500) because its bells are "too noisy."
The town hall of Mostoles, southwest of Madrid, said Tuesday that following complaints from residents, town technicians measured the noise level of the chimes of Our Lady of the Assumption Church and found they were some 30 decibels above the 55 rate permitted by town regulations.
Experts say normal conversation produces 55-60 decibels while an airplane in flight produces 110-120 decibels.
Parish priest Ignacio Torres told the El Pais newspaper the bells have always been tolling in the town, and that they were usually only rung at noon and before evening Mass. He said he had no idea how the church would pay the fine if enforced.
Many Thais are heading to tattoo parlours to get a lasting memory of the only monarch they have ever known. (Credit: YouTube)
Days after widely revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej died, many Thais are heading to tattoo parlours to get a lasting memory of the only monarch they have ever known.
In the seaside resort town of Pattaya, the Skin Art Tattoo parlour offered up to 50 free tattoos per day between Saturday and Monday, media reported, while in Bangkok tattoo artists are worked off their feet.
The Sak Lai Tattoo Studio in a popular shopping district of central Bangkok has prepared several tattoo designs in honour of the late king, including the number 9 in Thai because he was ninth king of the country's 234-year-old Chakri Dynasty.
"It's a way to express and record their own story of love and devotion to our king," said Esara Usada, 55, who has been a tattoo artist for two decades and owns Sak Lai.
His tattoo artist wife, Tapanee Prasitsuk, said they are fully booked for the next month.
Prices for a tattoo at their parlour start at 2,000 baht ($57). But as a tribute to the late king, prices for king-related tattoos will start at 1,000 baht, Tapanee said.
Piyaphan Phanwiroj, 34, a military officer, sat still for about 20 minutes while Tapanee inked away at the nape of his neck, producing a sentence that read in Thai: "I was born in the reign of King Rama IX".
"The tattoo speaks louder than love. It speaks of respect, obedience and loyalty," he said. "It will remind me to do more for my country. In times of hopelessness, it will remind me of all his hard work for us."
Other popular tattoos include the phrase "May I be your humble servant in all my lives" and lyrics from the royal anthem.
Two brothers have been sent to a remand home even as Bihar police assured security to the family of the boy. (Photo: PTI/Representational)
Muzaffarpur: With a video of two sons of a murder accused mercilessly beating their Dalit classmate going viral on social media, the duo have been sent to a remand home even as Bihar police assured security to the family of the boy.
The maternal grandfather of the boy, a class XII student of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Gannipur in Muzaffarpur, lodged an FIR with SC & ST police station on Monday.
In the FIR, he also claimed the entire family was terrified because the father of the two brothers is a notorious criminal lodged in jail outside the district in a murder case.
According to Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashish Anand, the two brothers have been sent to remand home after being presented before Juvenile Justice Board on Tuesday.
They have also been removed from the school that gave them forced Transfer Certificate.
School principal Rajiv Ranjan had lodged a written complaint with the Kaji Muhammadpur police station.
The purported video of the incident shows the two brothers one of them a student of class XII and the other of class XI pushing and thrashing the victim in presence of some other schoolmates on September 25.
Meanwhile, police has assured security to the family of the boy.
"I have given my phone number to the family to call me any time if they feel insecure. I have also directed Kazi Muhammadpur police station to ensure that the family is not hurt by anybody in the wake of the incident," Anand told PTI.
He said he had told the school Principal that there should be no inconvenience to the boy in the school in the wake of the incident.
Union Minister of State for HRD Upendra Kushwaha had taken strong note of the video and on his directive a team of Kendriya Vidyalaya officials had paid a visit to the school on October 14.
The Uttar Pradesh police have booked a local Samajwadi Party leader and three others for allegedly looting a roadside restaurant in Bareilly. (Photo: PTI/Representational)
Bareilly: A local Samajwadi Party leader and three others have been booked for allegedly looting a roadside restaurant Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, police said on Wednesday.
The owner of 'Netaji Dhaba' at the NH by pass, Anil Patel, has alleged that Sandesh Kannaujia, vice president of the district unit of the SP, and his three associates ate at the restaurant on Monday night and got involved in a brawl with his worker at the time of payment, police said.
Patel has alleged that besides getting involved in verbal fight, Kannaujia and his associates also looted cash kept at the cash counter. They also broke chairs and threatened before leaving, police said.
An FIR under various sections has been filed against Kannaujia and others and investigations are going on in the case, Superintendent of Police Sameer Saurabh said.
Meanwhile, Kannaujia said that the FIR has been filed by his political adversaries and he didn't visit the restaurant that day.
Kannaujia said the worker who has accused him of loot has been involved in petty thefts in the past and he (Kannaujia) had opposed his actions about a year ago.
New Delhi: A man has been held at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here today for allegedly sneaking in the terminal area on an invalid ticket to see off his girlfriend.
Officials said the incident was reported at about 4:00 am when on-duty CISF personnel apprehended a man, identified as A V Singh, while he was hurriedly exiting from the terminal.
On being probed, they said, Singh was detected to have entered the airport terminal using an invalid ticket which he had booked but cancelled later.
Singh informed, they said, that he did this act in order to see off his girlfriend who was travelling to Bangkok via Kolkata.
"Singh, a resident of Chanakyapuri area in central Delhi, was handed over to Delhi Police who booked him under sections 447 (criminal trespass) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document of the IPC," they said.
Under the law, only fliers with a valid travel ticket can enter the airport terminal area.
Pune: A 31-year-old married woman was hacked to death allegedly by a stalker in Kothrud area on Tuesday morning when she was on her way to work, police said.
Shubhangi Khatavkar, was a resident of Karve Nagar and used to work as domestic help.
Police said the accused, Vishwas Kalekar, used to harass her on a regular basis and was trying to establish proximity with her. However, she had objected to his advances and was even chided by her husband.
"Kalekar, who was angry over being reprimanded by Khatavkar's husband, followed her in the morning when she was on her way to work on a moped. He attacked her on her neck with a sharp weapon and later escaped on her vehicle. He also took away two SIM cards from her mobile phones," an officer of Alankar Police Station said.
A case of murder has been filed against the accused and a manhunt has been launched to nab him.
New Delhi: At least three pending judicial requests including one relating to 1984 anti-Sikh riots witness along with 13 extradition pleas from India may be discussed between the CBI Director and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson who is visiting the national capital.
Paulson, who will be delivering D. P. Kohli memorial lecture in New Delhi on Thursday on the theme of policing in 21st century, will hold discussions with the Central Bureau of Investigation Chief Anil Sinha.
They said at least three Letters Rogatory or judicial requests to Canada hovering around a corruption case, a cyber crime and examination of a witness of 1984 anti-Sikh riots involving Congress politician Jagdish Tytler are likely to crop up during the discussion.
The agency had taken over investigation in the FIR registered at Bara Hindu Rao police station relating to anti-Sikh riots at Gurudwara Pulbangash in North Delhi where three people were killed on November 1, 1984, a day after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
It had filed a closure report and claimed that it could not get in touch with Narinder Singh, son of an eye witness who is believed to be in Canada.
Arms dealer Abhishek Verma had claimed that Tytler had allegedly helped Narinder Singh to settle in Canada.
Besides, the sources said, India is also likely to raise the issue of 13 extradition requests that are "under process", including for some wanted persons facing charges of terror and drug trafficking among others.
India had signed Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Canada in 1998 to facilitate assistance in criminal matter.
After the signing of MLAT, Canada has so far processed eight Indian judicial requests relating to human trafficking, bank fraud, anti-corruption among others.
After receiving a tip-off, a joint team of army, Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force conducted search operation on the intervening nights of Sunday and Monday. (Photo: AP)
Baramulla: At least 44 persons involved with terror related activities were apprehended by security forces after they conducted an extensive search operation in the wee hours of Monday, at several sensitive localities in Jammu and Kashmir.
After receiving a tip-off, a joint team of army, Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) conducted search operation on the intervening nights of Sunday and Monday in localities including Qazi Hamam, Ganai Hamam, Taweed Gunj and Jamia.
Large quantity of incriminating material such as petrol bombs, Chinese and Pakistan flags, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad letter head pads, unauthorized mobile phones and seditious anti-national publicity material were seized during the raids.
In addition a large number of suspected hideouts were busted during the prolonged search operations.
Following the operation, the LeT issued a threat to the Baramulla SHO, said a report.
Later, the security forces sanitised the area searching over 700 houses in a span of 12 hours on Monday.
Frequent incidents of violence, protests and now, a murder, have taken a heavy toll on Brand Bengaluru. Over the last two months, the police have clamped prohibitory orders repeatedly, robbing people of a sense of security. Though the ban order under Section 144 does not directly affect normal life, it certainly has sent a message to the outside world that all is not well with the IT Capital of the country.
The city has had a volatile year with a protest by garment factory workers turning violent in April, followed by the Cauvery riots that saw buses and other vehicles go up in smoke in September. And now the murder of an RSS worker has led to tension in parts, forcing the police to impose prohibitory orders in Commercial Street, Shivajinagar, Pulikeshinagar and Bharathinagar police station limits till Thursday midnight.
In fact, the police has clamped prohibitory orders in the city at least five times over the last six months for various reasons. The gravity of such action hit home particularly during the Cauvery violence, when curfew was declared in 16 police station limits, and prohibitory orders were imposed all over the city.
Read: Imposing prohibitory orders not wise choice
If the frequency with which section 144 has been invoked this year to restore calm has proved disquieting to Bengalureans accustomed to peaceful living, could it impact its image among tourists and even investors? Ask Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) president, M C Dinesh, and he acknowledges that the law and order situation in the city is a cause for concern. "It is the responsibility of everyone to protect the citys brand image. We need to ensure that the law and order situation is good in the city. The police and the intelligence department need to work hard on this," he stresses.
And Prof. S R Keshava of the Bengaluru Universitys Department of Economics, warns that a bad law and order situation can affect FDI flow into the city. The state government recently held a global investors meet, but if we are not able to maintain law and order, all the promises made by the investors may remain on paper. Murder, protests and agitations dont send the right signal to anyone. We need to have peace in society, he underlines, noting that Brand Bengaluru can do without such negativity as it currently manages to attract 13 per cent of the FDI coming into the country.
As for brand guru, Harish Bijoor , he says each time there has been even limited use of section 144 in the city, it has signalled to investors, corporate outfits and tourists alike that things are not fine and this could harm Bengaluru's image in the long run.
But defending such stern police action in times of trouble, former DG and IGP, S.T. Ramesh contends that if it doesnt take precautions on these lines there could be more violence, which may impact the citys image greatly. Its the duty and responsibility of the police to maintain law and order at any cost, and use of prohibitory orders is just one such tool. The Cauvery was an emotional issue that had the potential to create clashes among people on linguistic grounds. And the recent murder of an RSS man has the potential to create communal tension. So the police are justified in clamping prohibitory orders, he reasons.
A senior police officer also notes that imposing prohibitory orders is just a preventive step. It may signal that something is not right in the city. But our primary duty is to maintain law and order. If we dont take such preventive steps, the damage could be even more serious, he warns.
Rudresh laid to rest, family, friends mourn
RSS worker, Rudresh Rs final journey to the Kalpalli crematorium was through Kamaraj Road, where he was hacked to death on Monday by two unidentified men on a bike. The funeral procession stopped for a few moments at the spot where he was attacked and some prayers were said by his family and friends before it moved on to the crematorium near the Indiranagar police station. Over a 1000 personnel, including KSRP platoons and the Rapid Action Force (RAF) provided security in and around the Shivajinagar junction and along the route of the procession. Shivajinagar itself was deserted with shops downing their shutters in response to the prohibitory orders imposed by the police under section 144 of the CrPc. It was only after the final rites were conducted at the crematorium at around 5 pm that areas in and around Shivajinagar limped back to normalcy and BMTC buses resumed their services from the bus stand post 4 pm.
While the police had taken all precautions to prevent any outbreak of violence, members of a minority community were seen helping mourners and distributing water and other refreshments among them as hundreds of the RSS workers friends and relatives paid homage to him at his house near the Mariayamma temple in Shivajinagar where it was kept for public viewing earlier in the day even as the area around reverberated to the sound of Om played on a loudspeaker. Former Deputy Chief Minister, R. Ashok and senior BJP leaders, Shobha Karandlaje and Katte Subramanya were among those who visited the family and Rudreshs wife, Saraswathi Tuesday morning to condole his death.
The RSS worker belonged to the Tamil speaking Yadava community, which has been a part and parcel of the city for hundreds of years. Our ancestors have been here for centuries and we have all been born and brought up in Bengaluru, said Prakash Yadav, a cousin of Rudresh, adding, We are in shock still. We dont know why anyone would do this, but a few days ago somebody had threatened the Yadavas in our area after learning that Rudresh was progressing quite fast. We are waiting for the police to arrest the culprits and then will decide what to do next.
According to another relative, Rudresh was very active locally in festivals, including the recent Ganesh Chaturthi. With the help of his relatives, who ran catering businesses and supplied milk, he would often supply food to such functions, sometimes free of cost. We are over a dozen families in this area and Rudresh used to take care of us very well, he said.
New Delhi: Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday asked a group of newly-inducted IAS officers not to hesitate in putting forth their point of view before the ministers in case of difference of opinion.
The assertion was made during an interactive session between 11 union ministers, including Singh, and about 35 IAS officers of 2014 batch of Uttar Pradesh cadre as well as those officers who are domicile of the state, presently posted in various ministries as Assistant Secretaries.
Addressing the young officers, Singh called upon them to always uphold their reputation and credibility.
Asking them to bear empathy for the last man in the queue, he said the IAS officers should shoulder big responsibility in the district and must win the trust of the common people.
Recalling his tenure as the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Singh asked the IAS officers not to hesitate to put across their point of view before the ministers in case of difference of opinion, according to an official release.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the IAS officer being the steward of administration in the district, should always show concern to the interests of poor people.
He asked them to show sensitivity to issues of the armed forces personnel and ex-servicemen.
Minister of Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi said as District Magistrates, the IAS officers should show a sense of compassion and kindness to resolve the problems of the common man.
Other ministers who participated in the interactive session included Minister of State for Tourism (Independent Charge) and Culture Mahesh Sharma, MoS for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) and Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, MoS (External Affairs) V K Singh, MoS (Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation) Sanjeev Kumar Balyan and MoS (Food Processing Industries) Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
Ministers of State for HRD Mahendra Nath Pandey, MoS (Women & Child Development) Krishna Raj and MoS (Health and Family Welfare) Anupriya Patel also participated in the session.
Bhubaneswar: The toll in the Sum Hospital fire rose to 21 on Wednesday with the death of a patient who was undergoing treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Bhubaneswar.
The deceased, identified as Janakibla Hui, had been shifted to AIIMS soon after the devastating fire ravaged the private medical facility on Monday evening, a spokesman of AIIMS-Bhubaneswar said.
The woman had earlier been admitted to Sum Hospital reportedly with lung cancer, he said adding she had been shifted to AIIMS in a critical condition.
Most of the victims, who were on ventilator support, perished because of asphyxiation as a thick layer of smoke had enveloped vast areas of Sum Hospital after the fire broke out.
Read: Odisha fire: Hospital did not have accreditation, Health Minister to take stock
Out of the 21 deaths recorded so far, 14 cases were reported in the Capital Hospital, five at AMRI Hospital and two in AIIMS, officials said.
As many as 106 patients have been shifted from the fire-hit private hospital to different places including Capital Hospital, AIIMS, AMRI Hospital, Kalinga Hospital, KIIMS and Hitech Hospital in Bhubaneswar, while some were sent to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack.
Assuring all support to the Odisha government for the treatment of patients affected in the Sum Hospital fire, Health Minister JP Nadda on Wednesday said he was not here for any blame game over the incident which claimed 21 lives.
"I am not here for blame game. Our priority is proper treatment of patients who have been affected due to the fire at a medical facility two days ago," Nadda told reporters here on his arrival at the state capital.
Stating that the Centre would take measures to ensure better treatment of the fire-hit patients, Nadda said the state govenrment had constituted panels for conducting inquiry into the mishap.
The state government should implement fire safety measures at hospitals, said Nadda who is slated to hold discussions with health officials.
The Health Minister and Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met patients at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, AMRI Hospital and KIMS Hospital. The two ministers will also visit Sum Hospital where a fire had killed 20 people on Monday evening.
Panaji: The political 'charge sheet' released by Congress against the BJP-led government in Goa has elicited mixed reactions with the ruling party rubbishing the charges, while the newly formed outfit Goa Forward terming the main Opposition's move as better late than never.
"Better late than never that the grand old party (Congress) is trying to behave like the Opposition, which in the last five years it has never appeared to be," Goa Forward spokesman Durgadas Kamat said on the 'charge sheet' released on Monday.
"However, some prominent and conspicuous issues that have been overlooked in the charge sheet will lead to obvious suspicions of a joint venture between both the prominent national parties (BJP-Congress) in the state," Kamat said.
He said Congress missed to mention the land scam in the guise of promoting Special Economic Zone (SEZ) which was a prominent issue that should have been taken by the state government.
Congress' 'charge sheet' nailed the Laxmikant Parsekar government on 25 different counts accusing it of frequent 'U turns', broken promises, brazen scams and bad governance.
It had also charged BJP of stopping mining activity, paving way for large scale destruction of coconut trees through amendment to Trees Act, making Goa a 'sin-city' through drugs and prostitution besides criticising it on other fronts.
The ruling party has, however, rubbished the charge sheet claiming that it is not for the Opposition party but people of Goa to evaluate performance of the government in last five years.
"People gave BJP a mandate in 2012. BJP was chosen while Congress was shown the door by voters. Now it is for the voters to evaluate our performance," BJP Goa spokesman Kiran Kandolkar said.
He ridiculed the 'charge sheet' and said, "people will give hundred per cent marks to the BJP led government for its performance which was people-centric and development oriented."
Kandolkar said BJP has fulfilled 90 per cent of the promises it made in the election manifesto that was released during 2012 polls. "People will once again vote for the party," he claimed.
New Delhi: You cannot put the people to daily patriotism test and asking them to prove it in television studios everyday was unfair, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav has said.
When asked, in an interview, about an AAP leader recently confronting Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti over the Burhan Wani episode, he said it was not about her alone and people should not be questioned about their patriotism on a daily basis.
Madhav, who has a RSS background, drew a parallel with the nationalism of BJP and RSS members being "questioned" in the past and said they would wonder how many times they would have to say that they were not criminals.
"I am not talking about Mehbooba Mufti alone. You cannot put people to daily patriotism test. You cannot ask them everyday to prove their patriotism. They are responsible people and holding responsible Constitutional position," he told NDTV.
Asked about the nationalism of those not agreeing to a certain point of view being questioned, he said, "If somebody is working against the interest of the country, question him, challenge him...If you want somebody to prove their patriotism everyday in a TV studio that is unfair. That you don't do."
Madhav, who is BJP's points man for Jammu and Kashmir, also praised Mufti, saying she has handled the ongoing unrest in the state with great maturity and has been consistent.
She has to take care of the state's law and order and also the sentiments of the people, he said.
Bengaluru: Karnataka government on Wednesday said it would stick to the Supreme Court direction to the state to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders.
"We will stick to the Supreme Court order. I want to say no more than that," Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra told reporters on the sidelines of a media briefing on cabinet meeting.
The Supreme Court had on Tuesday retained its direction to Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs till further orders and asked the two states to ensure peace and harmony, saying citizens should not become law unto themselves.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra, which commenced the crucial hearing on various issues arising out of the dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over sharing of Cauvery waters, had said it first intended to adjudicate the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by both the states and Kerala against the Cauvery water dispute tribunal's 2013 award.
"The interim order dated October 4 directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu will continue till further orders," the bench also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar had said.
A court-appointed Supervisory Committee has submitted its report on the ground situation in the basin region in both the states, which have locked horns over water release in recent months, escalating tension over the more than century-old dispute.
The bench had also said on Tuesday it would first go into the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry against the award of tribunal and then hear the arguments on the report filed by the committee.
Raipur: Chhattisgarh Congress on Tuesday suspended its rebel MLA R K Rai for "anti-party" activities but that did not deter him from making "derogatory" remarks against Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi.
The decision to suspend Rai, considered a supporter of Chhattisgarh Janata Congress Party chief Ajit Jogi, was taken by Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee (CPCC) at a meeting of its Coordination Committee in Raipur.
"With the unanimous decision of the members of Coordination Committee, Rai has been suspended from the party," AICC General Secretary in-charge of Chhattisgarh B K Hariprasad told reporters after the meeting.
The panel also recommended to the party's central disciplinary committee that the MLA from Gunderdehi be dismissed from Congress, he added.
Hariprasad asserted Congress will fight the 2018 Assembly polls in Chhattisgarh under the leadership of the party's state chief Bhupesh Baghel and legislature party leader TS Singhdeo.
Meanwhile, Rai welcomed the decision and said the action was taken against him for speaking against Rahul.
"I was told the action has been taken against me for making comments against Rahul Gandhi (in the past). I can't call a donkey a horse. If the party feels my observation is wrong then either it is blind or (is) acting like a blind person," a defiant Rai said in a statement.
"I am not at all sad with the move because I am a true and vocal tribal representative. I am free now," said the legislator, adding the decision has once again exposed the "anti-tribal" face of Congress.
Chhattisgarh Congress had issued a show cause notice to Rai last week for "anti party" activities and publicly making statements against the party.
The police officer-turned-politician is said to be a staunch supporter of Jogi, who floated his own party after quitting Congress in June this year.Jogi had brought Rai into politics and helped him ingetting a ticket from Gunderdehi seat in the 2013 Assembly polls.
New Delhi: A 16-year-old boy in Lodhi Colony has been rendered homeless after allegedly being "disowned" by his mother, a government employee, who "gave up" on her son owing to his "waywardness", police said on Tuesday.
The boy has alleged that he was not being treated well and was evicted from his home by his own mother a few months back, they said.
"The boy had been staying at a friend's place since April but after his friend also expressed his helplessness in keeping him at his home any further, he was forced to stay in a park and beg," said a senior police officer.
The boy's mother, an employee in the Ministry of Finance, had separated from her first husband by mutual consent and got the custody of her son. Later, she got married to another man with whom she has two daughters. Her second husband died in 2012 due to liver cirrhosis.
The boy has also alleged that his step-father used to ill-treat him and lock him up.
"He studied till Class VIII in two schools and this year, his mother took him to get admission in an academy in Noida.
He couldn't clear the entrance test and after that his mother disowned him," the official said.
The complainant's mother, meanwhile, said a "false case" had been registered against her.
"If I wasn't giving him food for so many days, how could he have survived? I asked him to move out in April and when he came back, I didn't allow him in," she said.
The mother said that she had "made all attempts" to get him on the right path but "he refused to mend his ways".
"He is a very intelligent boy but he uses his brain in destructive things. I got him admitted to good schools but he would bully students and not report to school. He would go missing for days and we would have no idea about his whereabouts," she said.
"I took him to an academy in Noida to get admission but he didn't write anything in the entrance test. What could I have done?," she asked.
She further alleged that the boy used to beat his younger sisters and had "destroyed" the atmosphere of their house.
"When he was staying with us, I used to ask him to not come home from school when I wasn't there and instead play in the park. He used to beat his sisters. He destroyed the atmosphere at our house," she said.
The boy has been rescued by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and taken to a childrens' home and a complaint filed against the mother, police said.
Panaji: The Chief Electoral Office in Goa has ordered an inquiry into pictures that surfaced on the social media showing hundreds of EPIC cards dumped in a roadside drain in Margao, 40 kms from Panaji.
Goa Forward (GF) party too met officials at the Chief Electoral office producing pictures of the voter cards which were found dumped in the poll-bound state.
"I have asked District Collector to submit a report within 48 hours about those pictures," Joint Chief Electoral Officer Narayan Navati told PTI on Wednesday.
Navati said a thorough probe will reveal the truth behind the cards but the first look at the pictures indicates that these are old Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) cards.
"They may have been dumped in the dustbin during shifting of mamlatdar office in Margao town. But I will be able to comment properly only after the inquiry," he said.
The Collectorate complex including mamlatdar office which was earlier located in the heart of Margao city has shifted to the outskirts in a new complex.
Goa Forward (GF) Party had raised an alarm when nearly 500 voting cards were found in the roadside drain on the way to Old Railway station in Margao town.
The party suspected foul play behind the act and has demanded a probe into the entire episode.
"We demand a thorough inquiry in the matter and action on the officers handling the process of electoral roll. We have been getting complaints from a certain section of a community from across the state that their names are deleted from the electoral rolls which is done mechanically at the behest of BJP workers," party's spokesman Durgadas Kamat alleged.
He accused BJP workers of coaxing election commission officials to delete names from voting list.
"BJP is so desperate that they are trying all this dirty tricks so that the names of those voters who are against BJP are deleted from the rolls and they would not be able to vote in the upcoming assembly elections," he said.
Goa Forward will petition the Election Commission at Delhi in this matter by October 19, Kamat said.
New Delhi: Nepal's Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' has said he raised issues of trilateral cooperation during his chance meeting with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Goa to which both leaders responded "very positively".
Dahal during the 'chance' trilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit on Saturday had expressed Nepal's desire to act as a "dynamic bridge" between the two Asian giants and to reap the benefit of playing such a role.
During the meeting, Dahal said he raised issues of trilateral cooperation in the socio-economic front, to which both the Chinese and Indian leaders responded "very positively".
"Nepal can benefit greatly from the economic progress of China and India, if there is trilateral cooperation," Dahal said while talking to reporters at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu.
"After a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, I was waiting at the waiting room to return to the hotel where I was staying, when all of sudden, President Xi entered the room. This was a pleasant surprise. We discussed various bilateral issues and full implementation of deals that Nepal and China had sealed in the past," he said.
Dahal said he also discussed President Xi's prospective visit to Nepal, Constitution implementation and conclusion of the peace process in Nepal.
According to Mr Dahal, when he had talked one-on-one for around 20 minutes with President Xi, the Indian Prime Minister entered the room.
"I wanted such a meeting," Mr Dahal said, terming it a "rare and pleasant surprise".
"I was sitting on a couch between the two leaders -- south of Xi and north of Modi -- just like Nepal's geographical position," Dahal was quoted as saying by The Himalayan Times.
He also made it clear it was not a pre-planned meeting. "I stressed that trilateral cooperation would help Nepal benefit from their economic growth and development," he stated. India had also said both President Xi and Mr Dahal were waiting in the leaders' lounge when Prime Minister Modi also reached there as he had to go with all the BRICS leaders for an informal dinner, turning the bilateral into a 'chance trilateral'.
Dahal also termed the meeting as a "pleasant coincidence" and said "it was a great pride for me".
Mumbai: The pilot of an Indigo flight complained to the Mumbai Air Traffic Control around 6 pm on Tuesday about having sighted a drone. The information was immediately conveyed to the security agency of the city airport, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which informed the domestic airport police about it. The message was conveyed to Saharthe, Ghatkopar, Kurla and Sakinaka police as well and officers are now trying to trace the drone.
Earlier this month, the Mumbai police had issued an alert about a possible terror strike that could be carried out via drones. A circular issued by the Mumbai Police Commissionerate, a copy of which is with The Asian Age, warns of attacks that could be orchestrated between October 2 and 31.
DCP Virendra Mishra of zone 8, however, informed that the police had slapped section 144 on drones, and so they were checking about it. The pilot informed security agencies that he had sighted something like a drone. So as of now, the drone sighting is not confirmed, and we have to confirm it, he said.
CISF sources informed this newspaper that at 5.55 pm, they were alerted by the ATC that the pilot of the Indigo flight 6E 755, flying from Delhi, had seen a drone 100 feet below the flight on the Kurla side. The alleged drone, which was of a pink-blue colour, was flying on the east side of Mumbai airport at a distance of 3.5 km.
A police officer from the domestic airports police station said that the pilot had informed them that the drone was at a height of 500 feet. The pilot said that when he was about to land at the runway 27 end, he sighted the drone, he said.
BJP-led state government has now decided to rope in RSS-linked organisations to overcome the malnutrition crisis. (Photo: Representational Image)
Mumbai: After drawing flak from various quarters over the issue of malnutrition in Maharashtra, the BJP-led state government has now decided to rope in RSS-linked organisations to overcome the crisis.
"We are taking help from a few RSS-affiliated Jankalyan Samiti, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Arogya Bharati Sanstha as they are playing a significant role in providing relief in malnourished areas," said Medical Education Minister Girish Mahajan.
"The workers of these organisations have personal contacts with each household in the areas they are working in.
And since they have been doing this for a long time, the goodwill earned by them will definitely help the government," he added.
Dr Vijay Kulkarni, member of national committee of 'Arogya Bharti Sanstha' said they are already working in areas where malnourishment is found and have done a survey of malnourished children with the help of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in Palghar district.
"Ideally, the government should provide 'take home ration' for malnourished children based on a scientific study instead of providing similar food for everyone in all seasons by only calculating the vitamins, proteins and calories content," said Dr Kulkarni.
Mahajan said the government will soon start a project aimed at improving conditions of malnourished children and pregnant women in the tribal region.
"A project will start from Palghar district from Thursday with the help of RSS-linked bodies and other NGOs like Tata Trust, Hinduja Trust, Pathalogy Association, UNICEF and fifty reputed doctors as well," the minister said.
"The government, with the help of all NGOs, will create an awareness among the locals, train them on malnourishment, screen children and treat them," he added.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday night spoke to West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee to enquire about the health of her nephew and party MP Abhishek Banerjee who was injured in a car mishap.
"PM @narendramodi spoke to WB CM @MamataOfficial Ji & enquired about the health of MP @abhishekaitc, who was injured in an accident," the PMO tweeted.
"The Prime Minister wishes MP @abhishekaitc a speedy recovery," it added.
Earlier, Abhishek Banerjee was injured when his vehicle met with an accident on NH-2 near Singur while he was returning here from Murshidabad in West Bengal.
Ten policemen of the 28-year-old MP's convoy were also injured.
He was stated to be stable.
Bengaluru: Reacting to the Supreme Court order directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday said there was no water in the state's reservoirs.
"There is no water at our reservoirs, I have not yet seen the order copy. I will speak to the advocates after going through the order copy," he told reporters in Bengaluru.
The apex court on Tuesday retained its direction to Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders and asked the two governments to ensure peace and harmony, saying citizens should not become law unto themselves.
"We intend to first adjudicate the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. At this juncture, the interim order dated October 4 directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu will continue till further orders," the bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar said.
Made Gowda, President of Mandya Zilla Raitha Hitharakshana Samiti (MZRHS), which is spearheading the Cauvery agitation in Mandya, said, "we should maintain peace until tomorrow's hearing."
"The court might have asked us to release 2,000 cusecs of water to test Karnataka government's patience....If they again ask us to release water tomorrow, we can reject it. There is no dharma in leaving water to them for crops, when we don't have it even for drinking," he added.
Pune: NCP leader Ajit Pawar, who is known for being outspoken, on Wednesday claimed there was a time when MLAs used to defect for Rs 50 lakh, but nowadays not even a corporator can be made to switch the sides with that amount.
Pawar, who was speaking at a party meet in Karmala in Solapur district, recalled the incident of how the Vilasrao Deshmukh-led state government had to ferry its MLAs to Bangalore to avoid any sort of horse-trading before the majority vote.
"Due to the fear of horse-trading and defection of MLAs, Vilasrao Deshmukh got frustrated and in that period MLAs were ferried to Bangalore as that time MLAs used to defect for Rs 50 lakh, but nowadays even a corporator cannot be made to cross over with that amount," he said.
Pawar also appealed to all the parties not to give candidature to those who defect and join other party.
Allahabad: A court in Uttar Pradesh has issued notice to retired Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju on a petition accusing him of having made "objectionable" remarks with regard to consumption of beef in his blog posts.
Allahabad's Additional Sessions Judge Shuchi Srivastava passed the order on the review petition of advocate Rakesh Nath Pandey, who alleged that Justice Katju has hurt the sentiments of a major section of the society by attacking the Hindu belief that the cow was sacred and seeking repeal of the laws whereby slaughtering cow has been banned in many states.
The ADJ has asked Justice Katju to file his reply by the next date of hearing on November 18.
The petition was filed by Pandey challenging an order of the Chief Judicial Magistrate whereby his prayer for directing the police to lodge an FIR against Justice Katju was turned down.
Justice Katju, who is also a former Chairman of the Press Council of India, has made a series of controversial statements on the communally sensitive issue of cow slaughter and beef ever since possession and sale of beef were made punishable with fine and five years in jail in Maharashtra in January last year.
In the wake of the Dadri lynching case of September last year wherein a 50-year-old man was beaten to death near Noida by a mob suspecting him of having slaughtered a cow and consumed its meat, Justice Katju came up with an outpouring of a number of scathing remarks.
Recently, in a Facebook post, Justice Katju wrote that he had a "danda" (stick) with which he wished to hit those who made a fuss over the issue of cow slaughter and beef.
Bhubaneswar: The superintendent of Sum Hospital, who was among the four officials arrested in connection with a major fire at the medical facility, was on Wednesday admitted to the SCB Medical College Hospital in Cuttack after complaining of chest pain.
Pushparaj Samantasinghar was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Cardiology Department of the SCB Hospital, a police official said.
Besides Samantasinghar, police had arrested Electrical Maintenance Engineer Amulya Sahu, Fire Safety Officer Santosh Das and Junior Engineer (Electrical Maintenance) Malaya Kumar Sahu of the private hospital in connection with the blaze which killed 20 persons.
The arrests were made on Tuesday on the basis of the FIR lodged by the Directorate of Fire Services. The FIR was lodged at the Khandagiri police station here by B B Das, Fire Officer (Central Range).
Meanwhile, Director General of Fire Service Binay Behera submitted a report to the state government on the fire that ravaged parts of the private hospital.
Behera in his report has mentioned that fire safety norms as per the 2013 guidelines were not followed by the hospital authorities, an official said.
Only three of Odisha's 568 hospitals have fire safety clearance, the National Human Rights Commission said on Wednesday. (Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: Only three of Odisha's 568 hospitals have fire safety clearance, the National Human Rights Commission said on Wednesday and issued a notice to the state government over the fire incident at a hospital in Bhubaneswar which has left 21 people dead so far.
The Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports that at least 21 persons died and more than 100 others were injured in the blaze that broke out at the SUM Hospital and Medical College on Monday evening.
"In Odisha, out of 568 hospitals, only three have clearance of the department of fire safety," the NHRC said in a statement today.
The Commission has issued the notice to the Odisha government's Chief Secretary and sought a report in the matter within six weeks, including on the relief and rehabilitation efforts for the next of kin of the deceased and the injured, an NHRC official said.
"He has also been asked to inform about the steps or precautions taken or proposed to be taken by the state government to prevent recurrence of such mishaps," the official said.
The Commission has observed that "callous attitude" and "lapses of the authorities", if any, amount to violation of right to life of the patients, and expressed shock as to how the state authorities "allowed" such a large number of hospitals to function without proper fire safety clearance.
The NHRC has also observed that reportedly the hospital in question was warned as early as in 2013 for not having adequate safety measures but the hospital authorities "ignored" it.
The Director General of Fire Service in Odisha Binay had Behera on Tuesday submitted a report to the state government on the fire that reportedly started in the Operation Theatre of the Dialysis Ward and spread to ICU and nearby wards.
Behera has mentioned in the report that fire safety norms as per the 2013 guidelines were not followed by the hospital authorities, a government official said.
"40 patients in a critical condition were admitted to different hospitals," the statement said.
Detecting serious lapses in safety measures, Union Health Minister J. P. Nadda, who inspected the fire-ravaged hospital, on Wednesday said all those responsible for the incident should be punished.
The state government has ordered a high-level probe by the Director, Medical Education and Training, into the incident.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has expressed disagreement with the Centre that the prevailing penal provisions were good enough to cover the issue of hate crimes and racial violence, especially against the people of North Eastern states.
"No, it does not," reacted a bench comprising Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud when the Centre, while expressing reluctance to suggestions for a specific legislation, said sections 153 A and B of Indian Penal Code (IPC) covered anti-racial issues.
"The examination is going on whether specific legislation is required or not as the provisions of the IPC covers everything and it would be wrong to say it does not cover it," Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh said.
He said section 153 B IPC covers everything and the court could "examine" it. "We will assist you. If you are not satisfied, we will replace it with a new law," he said.
The deliberations were going on in the background of the recommendation of M P Bezbaruah committee which suggested amendment in sections 153 A and 153 B of the IPC as a long-term measure to deal with the issue of racial violence.
While the law officer was trying to make his submission on the recommendation of Bezbaruah committee, which set up by the Ministry of Home Ministry (MHA) on February 5, 2014 after several incidents of hate crimes against persons hailing from the Northeast, the bench expressed displeasure that effective steps were not being taken to address the issues.
"Nothing is on record to show what steps have been taken. We are not going to take what is there in the affidavit," the bench said, adding "legislation is one part of the recommendations".
The bench, which posted the matter for hearing on Friday, wanted to know from the Centre whether any steps have been taken to set up a nodal agency to monitor the complaints and related issues.
"A pro-active work has to be undertaken. What type of programme has to be there? Call your 'babus' and tell them. We have to pass an order. We can't issue ominous type of directions," the bench said stressing that there should be a nodal agency to address the issues of the Northeastern people.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its order on maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT).
"Judgement reserved. Interim order of October 18 to continue till further orders," a bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar said.
The bench asked the parties to file their written submissions by October 24 and said it would pass the order thereafter.
The Centre, through Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, had raised a preliminary objection claiming that the CWDT award amounted to a final decree in the dispute and the apex court had no jurisdiction to hear appeals against the award of the tribunal.
Continuing its argument, Karnataka today said that appeals filed by the state against the award of the tribunal was maintainable.
Noted jurist and senior advocate Fali S Nariman, appearing for Karnataka, said the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to adjudicate the appeals filed by the state against the award of tribunal.
Senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, appearing for Tamil Nadu, also contended that the appeals were maintainable and no statute can take away the powers of the apex court.
"Section 6(2) of Inter-state Water Disputes Act, 1956 cannot oust Supreme Court's constitutional appellate powers given under Article 136 of the Constitution," Naphade said.
Similarly, Kerala also supported the stand of Karnataka and said that the appeals were maintainable.
However, Puducherry supported the stand of the Centre that the appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are not maintainable.
Rohatgi reiterated his yesterday's argument that Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to adjudicate the appeals pertaining to the dispute relating to use, distribution and control of inter-state water or river valley.
"The appeals filed by the states are not maintainable as per article 131 and 262 of the Constitution and the provisions of Inter-state River Water Disputes Act, 1956," he said.
The attorney general said as per the constitutional provisions, the inter-state water dispute tribunal is headed by a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge and its decree has a force like that of a decree of the Supreme Court and thus the apex court cannot hear the appeals against its own order.
The bench had yesterday said it would first go into the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the award of tribunal and then hear arguments on the report filed by the Supervisory Committee formed to assess the ground realities in the Cauvery basin region.
The apex court-appointed panel had in its recent report suggested doing away with "outdated and unscientific water application techniques" to resolve the wrangle, saying both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were facing water shortage which had created unemployment and financial hardship for the people.
It had said the neighbouring riparian states needed to appreciate interest of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry to protect their established irrigation and Karnataka's aspirations for development and educate their people accordingly.
The panel in its 40-page report had noted that farmers in both states were in severe distress and adequate crop compensation must be provided to them.
Supreme Court had on October 4 directed Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs Cauvery water every day to Tamil Nadu from October 7 to 18 and deferred its order asking the Centre to set up Cauvery Water Management Board (CWMB) till it finally decided on appeals relating to the age-old dispute. It had yesterday directed Karnataka to continue to supply Tamil Nadu with 2,000 cusecs of water till further orders.
The apex court had also directed the Centre to establish the CWMB, saying once it was constituted, its team would visit the sites to take a prima facie view of the ground reality and submit a report.
On October 1, Karnataka had moved a review petition in the apex court against its three orders on Cauvery water release to Tamil Nadu and direction to the Centre to create the CWMB.
In its review petition, Karnataka said "grave miscarriage of justice" has been caused to it pursuant to the three apex court orders of September 20, 27 and 30, by which it was directed to release 6000 cusecs of water till October 6 and the Centre was to constitute the Board by October 4.
New Delhi: The Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (KWDT) on Wednesday refused to look into allocation of the river water to four basin states afresh, a decision termed as "disappointing" by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
The tribunal headed by Justice Brijesh Kumar, however, said it will take up the issue of distribution of water allocated to erstwhile undivided Andhra Pradesh between the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
For this, the KWDT asked the two states to approach it again with their claims on the river water out of the total 1,001 TMC allocated to undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2010 by the tribunal itself before December 14, when the matter will be heard next.
The tribunal passed the judgement after the two states approached it arguing that Section 89 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 meant that the Krishna water will be redistributed among the four basin states. Maharashtra and Karnataka are the other two riparian states.
However, the KWDT did not buy the argument and said the section concerned was not applicable to Maharashtra and Karnataka, but only the two sibling states.
"...the scope of the inquiry into the terms of reference under Section 89 of the Act no 6 of 2014 is confined to only two successor states, namely, states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and not all the four states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana," it observed.
On their part, Maharashtra and Karnataka objected to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh's arguments seeking redistribution of the water.
The Maharashtra government maintained that Part-IX of the Act provides for management and development of water resources in the "successor states".
"Thus, the jurisdiction of this tribunal under section 89 of the Act No 6 of 2014 is limited to apportionment of project-wise specific allocation between the successor states.
"The allocation already made by the tribunal to the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka cannot be changed under Section 89 of the Reorganisation Act. It is also pleaded that except the successor states, no other state is required to be made party," it said.
The Centre expressed similar views and said it was implicit in the reference under the section concerned that the tribunal determines the shares of the successor states of
Telangana and the residual state of Andhra Pradesh as a result of reorganisation of the erstwhile undivided Andhra Pradesh "without disturbing project-wise allocations made to other party states".
In 2010, the tribunal had allotted 666 TMC to Maharashtra and 911 TMC water to Karnataka.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Telangana government's advisor on irrigation, R Vidyasagar Rao, said the judgement was "disappointing" and the state will decide on further course of action after consulting Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
A representative of Andhra Pradesh echoed the view and said the state had hoped that the tribunal will look into the allocation again.
"We are not getting due share from the upper riparian states (Maharashtra and Karnataka). That's why, we had urged the tribunal to look into the allocation again," he said.
A representative of the Karnataka government though expressed satisfaction with the decision.
The Maharashtra government in a statement said the order meant that the 666 TMC water allocated to it by the KWDT "remains unaffected".
"Maharashtra and Karnataka argued before the tribunal that since Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act doesn't apply to them, their allocations should continue as directed. The tribunal considered the arguments and made it clear that the allocations to Maharashtra and Karnataka would continue," it said.
This will be the 10th Session of 16th Lok Sabha and 241st Session of Rajya Sabha. (Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: The Winter Session of Parliament will commence on November 16 and is likely to end on December 16, it was officially announced on Wednesday.
This will be the 10th Session of 16th Lok Sabha and 241st Session of Rajya Sabha.
"The Tenth Session of Sixteenth Lok Sabha will commence on Wednesday, November 16, 2016. Subject to exigencies of government business the Session is likely to conclude on Friday, December 16, 2016," a statement from the Lok Sabha Secretariat said.
A similar communique was issued by Rajya Sabha Secretary General Shamsher K Sheriff.
The Session dates have been advanced this time since in the past it was normally convened in the third or fourth week of November.
The recent surgical strikes in PoK are expected to grab limelight during the month-long session. Some parties have alleged that the government is trying to politicise it.
The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affair (CCPA) that had met here on October 13 and recommended that the Parliament session should commence from November 16 and end on December 16.
An early Session may help the Central GST (CGST) and Integrated GST (IGST) legislations, which will pave way for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), to be approved within November or latest by early December.
The government is also considering advancing the Budget Session by a month and it expected to start in the end of January next year.
Sources in the government said besides legislations relating to GST, around a dozen new bills are likely to be introduced.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that a property developer cannot delay the grant of possession of flats to the buyers beyond the period of contract and if there is delay the buyers are entitled for refund of their amount.
A three-judge Bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitav Roy and A.M. Kanwilkar ordered refund of the principal amount taking note of the voice of anguish of the respondent-allottees that they have lost their entire savings and were waiting for the flats for more than seven years.
The Bench directed Unitech Residential Resorts Ltd in the capital to refund the principal amount to the tune of Rs 17 crore to 39 allottees who were denied possession of their flats within the stipulated time.
In its ruling, the Bench said it needs no special emphasis to state that the property developer has to respect the contractual commitment. It has to live up to the terms of the contract and gain trust so that the people who dream of houses can repose faith in him. Not for nothing, it has been said, the foundation of any economy is faith and if faith is lost, everything is lost. True it is, there is a saying, Rome was not built in a day but it is in the realm of metaphor.
The Bench said the appellant builder by delaying or procrastinating the completion of the flats cannot base its stand on excuses or any subterfuge to advance the stand that the constructions take time. The submission in a way rests upon the metaphor that Rome was not built in a day but serves no purpose. It is flat or money. And nothing else.
The Bench pointed out that the 39 respondents collectively made a demand for refund of money because they have fought the litigation with ceaseless vigour and enormous hope.
Rejecting the submission of the Unitech that possession of flats will be granted from April 2017 onwards, the Bench pointed out that counsel for the respondents and some of the respondents who are personally present are not in a position to accept the said method of solution.
It said the voice of anguish is echoed in the court room as they say their dreams have been shattered and they have been constrained to pave the path of impecuniosity. The respondents are not interested in taking the flats. They are fundamentally interested to get their money back with interest and compensation.
On August 17, the Bench had directed Unitech to deposit Rs 15 crore in the SC Registry. Now, the Bench asked Unitech to deposit another Rs 2 crore and the total amount of Rs 17 crore will be distributed by the Registry to the 39 respondents.
Builders used to not fulfilling promises: Supreme Court
Real-estate firms got a rap on their knuckles from the Supreme Court for making tall claims to purchasers which remained unfulfilled due to inordinate delay in completing the housing projects.
Builders have developed an attitude to make commitments to the purchasers and not fulfill them by delaying the projects, a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said.
The SCs observation came after real estate firm Parsvnath Buildwell Pvt Ltd said it will give flats to 70 home buyers, who are before the court, by December 17. They (home buyers) do not have patience and trust in you and need refund. Money should go back to them and they should not suffer, the bench also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar said.
The bench, also pulled up the realty firm for seeking time to deposit additional Rs 10 crore, asking why do you get into all this business when you can't pay back the money?
Subramanian Prasad, appearing for the firm, said as directed by the court, the company has deposited Rs 12 crore with the Supreme Court registry.
HYDERABAD: AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh on Wednesday alleged that the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were using the surgical strikes on terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as a tool for political gain. Addressing a Rajiv Sadbhavan Yatra at Charminar here, he said: It is most unfortunate to know that the Prime Minister and his ministers were using the surgical strikes on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to get cheap publicity by putting up large flex-boards in Uttar Pradesh. They want to take political advantage out of even the sacrifices of our great soldiers.
Slamming the BJP-led Union government for trying to divide the country in the name of religion, Mr Singh said the BJP had even changed the meaning of secularism to suit its communal agenda. He said the attitude of the BJP was that whoever opposed them would be branded as anti-nationals.
Turning his criticism on Telangana state Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao for encouraging defections of Opposition MLAs into the TRS, Mr Singh said: It was Rajiv Gandhi who brought the anti-defection law, but, unfortunately, Mr Chandrasekhar Rao has flouted the very spirit of the Act and is admitting several MLAs in his party. It is unfortunate that even courts are not intervening in this matter,
Representatives of TS and AP expressed their disappointment with the verdict and said they would consider moving the Supreme Court.
Hyderabad: The Justice Brijesh Kumar Tribunal in its verdict on Wednesday made it clear that it would take up hearing on fresh allocations of Krishna river waters only with respect of Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh, and ruled out extending it to Karnataka and Maharashtra.
The tribunal in its final verdict stated that Krishna water allocations among the four riparian states made in 2013 would stand unaltered; it would only adjudicate the matter of fresh distribution of the total allocation of 1,001 tmc ft to undivided Andhra Pradesh between the newly-formed TS and AP. Posting the next hearing to December 14, the tribunal asked the two states to offer their observations and claims on distribution of the 1,001 tmc ft allocation.
TS, AP plan to move SC on tribunal order
Representatives of TS and AP expressed their disappointment with the verdict and said they would consider moving the Supreme Court. They added that without re-allocation and project specific distribution of Krishna waters among all the four riparian states they would not get justice.
There will be no immediate impact of the verdict, as the notification by the Union government of the final award of the Krishna Waters Dispute Tribunal-2 had been stayed by the Supreme Court on a special leave petition filed by united AP Government. Till the notification is made, KWDT-1, the Bachawat Award, will be in operation for the four states.
Sources said that the Maharashtra and Karnataka governments would move the Supreme Court, requesting it to vacate the stay granted by it as the Justice Brijesh Kumar Tribunal verdict on Wednesday had excluded their states from the ambit of fresh allocation.
The Brijesh Kumar tribunal pronounced its judgement on the matter of interpretation to Section 89 of the AP Reorganisation Act which does not specify whether distribution of Krishna waters will be limited to the two Telugu states or for all the four riparian states.
While both TS and AP have argued that the Act was applicable to all four states, Maharashtra and Karnataka had contended that fresh review should be limited to only the two Telugu states for which the bifurcation Act was meant.
TS irrigation adviser R. Vidyasagara Rao termed the verdict as unfortunate and highly disappointing as it did not consider the injustices pointed out by state government. He said that the state government would consider moving the Supreme Court.
He said that special leave petition filed by the TS government in the Supreme Court was pending. He said, According to the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal verdict, TS and AP should now fight to get more allocations within the 1,001 tmc ft quota already fixed by the tribunal in 2013. Suppose TS gets a few hundred tmc ft more than AP, how is the tribunal going to adjust that water without cutting APs quota?
Reacting to the verdict, AP water resources minister Devineni Uma Maheswara Rao said that the Andhra Pradesh government would consult expert engineers and advocates on the issue before going for an appeal.
Bengaluru: With China blocking India's admission to the NSG and trying to prevent UN ban of Hafeez Saeed and Maulana Masood Azhar, the social networking sites were abuzz with calls to boycott Chinese goods, especially fire crackers during this Diwali. Apparently the boycott call now has many takers in the social media and also cheered the local industry. However, there are also reports of smuggling of these crackers.
India had last year banned the sale of imported Chinese firecrackers and issued a notice saying firecracker sellers should have a valid licence in order to regulate the market. Yet businessmen, who had imported firecrackers from China prior to the ban, had hoarded them and sold them illegally in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Jaipur, Lucknow and Ahmedabad last year.
City based retailer Harish Babu of Crackers World said, The sale and stocking of Chinese crackers is outlawed. All the people I know are licenced sellers of Indian crackers. But in some cases, like major shows, etc., Chinese crackers are sometimes sources illegally by organizers.
The local industry in Tamil Nadus Sivakasi has taken a massive hit due to the smuggled Chinese crackers. An employee of Jubilant Fireworks based in Sivakasi, on condition of anonymity said, It is nearly killing the local industry. Stressing that smugglers were having a field day, he said, It is very easy to source China-made crackers. You just need to know the right people.
Senthil Rajan of Gopi Agencies, a premier seller of firecrackers in Sivakasi said, Before the ban, the sale of Chinese firecrackers nearly brought the industry in Sivakasi to its knees. The industry is now recovering slowly. A lifting of the ban could sound the death-knell for Indias firecracker manufacturing industry.
Some cracker manufacturers say they dont have a clue about the illegal sale of firecrackers but caution that it could affect local businesses in the long run. Sundar Moorthy of Siva Firecrackers in Sivakasi says, I dont know much. But if these China-made firecrackers are made available even occasionally, it would affect our business big time.
Vijayawada: AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidus grandson Nara Devansh owns assets worth Rs 11.32 crore with a house and fixed deposits which have been transferred either by Mr Naidus wife or maternal grandfather and actor N. Balakrishna.
Mr Lokesh announced his family assets at the state party office in Guntur on Wednesday.
He said Mr Naidu had debts of more than Rs 3 crore. According to Mr Lokesh, Mr Naidu had borrowed Rs 3.06 crore from Bank of Baroda to build a new house in Hyderabad. He said he had borrowed Rs 3.06 crore from the bank to support his father in the construction.
Both Mr Naidu and Mr Lokesh separately own an old Ambassador car each. Mr Lokesh revealed that the net worth of his assets in 2016 were Rs 8.15 crore, his mother Bhuvaneshwaris net worth was Rs 24.84 crore and wife Brahmanis net worth Was Rs 12.33 crore. Mr Naidus net worth is Rs 67 lakh.
Mr Lokesh stated during the press conference that the family had been publicly disclosing the details of their assets for six years. He expressed happiness that his mother had received the Peacock Award for Corporate Governance on Tuesday in London, and said, Heritage won the energy conservation award; both first and second prizes in the dairy sector.
Recalling the 24 year-history of Heritage and its establishment, he said that there were plans of expanding its business to Delhi and Rajasthan under the management of Mrs Brahmani.
He added that the overall growth rate of the company was 100 per cent with profit of Rs 55 crore; 14 per cent increased growth rate in the dairy sector and 15 per cent increased growth rate in retail industry.
Hyderabad: The National Green Tribunal has posted the Polavaram case to November 21 while stating that this would be the last opportunity for AP, TS and the Centre to respond a petition. filed by a NGO called Rela.
The petitioner stated that the design of the project had been changed several times. It was made a national project later and environmental clearances given initially were not valid, it said.
The NGT has ordered the project superintendent engineer to take complaints from the displaced persons and inform the Centre about the same after solving the grievances.
New Delhi: The Rajasthan government has urged the Supreme Court to stay the High Court judgement acquitting Bollywood actor Salman Khan in the Chinkara poaching cases and sought a direction to the actor to surrender in the court to serve the sentence of five years awarded by the trial court.
Rajasthan stated this in its special leave petition filed on Tuesday against a Rajasthan High Court judgement acquitting actor Salman.
On July 25, the High Court acquitted Salman in the killing of two chinkaras in separate incidents. One of the animals was killed at Bhawad on Jodhpurs outskirts on September 26, 1998, and the other at Ghoda Farms on September 28, 1998. Shooting for the film Hum Saath Sath Hain was taking place at the time of the incident in the desert state.
Trial court erred, says Rajasthan
The trial court had awarded five-year imprisonment after holding him guilty of the poaching charges. However, Salman moved the Jodhpur bench of the HC against his conviction. The state government also challenged the trial courts order on different grounds. On July 25, the HC, acquitted him of all charges and also dismissed the states appeal for enhancing the sentence. In the present SLP, the Rajasthan government said the HC had erred in acquitting Salman despite the fact that there was ample evidence for his prosecution and for awarding enhanced punishment.
Some officials of the department of women and child welfare too are anxious that the extension of the RTE quota to pre-schools could sound the death-knell for anganawadis in urban and semi-urban areas, where they are already facing an acute shortage of students.
The proposed extension of the Right to Education (RTE) to private pre-schools is a revolutionary idea no doubt and offers poor kids a chance to avail better educational facilities in these schools. But will it sound the death knell for the numerous anganwadis and state-run pre-schools which are already facing a dearth of students? There are some experts who contend that instead of reimbursing money to private schools for providing RTE seats to the poor, the government could spend this money to improve facilities in govt schools themselves and make them attractive enough.
It was a move intended to give poor students a shot at getting an education in private schools, which they could otherwise not afford. But the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, that provides for reservation of 25 per cent of seats in private schools for underprivileged children with the government paying the fee on their behalf, has kicked up a controversy of late as a number of state schools are now facing closure due to a dearth of students.
Critics are laying the blame squarely at the door of the Central legislation, and the state government for toeing its line when it had no compulsion to do so.
Read: RTE in pre-schools: Tug of war between activists, politicians
Soon there could be more reason for them to complain as the ambit of the Act could widen shortly. While currently the RTE quota applies to the pre-primary level in private schools, the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) is meeting on October 25 in New Delhi to discuss extending it to pre-schools and secondary education as well.
Read: GUEST COLUMN: Demand for quota cancellation ridiculous
D Shashikumar, general secretary Karnataka Associated Managements of English Medium Schools (KAMS) said, Presently, the RTE quota is implemented at the pre-primary level in LKG and UKG. Children who are three years and 10 months old are admitted to LKG. But should RTE apply to pre-school as well, then day care centers and montessoris too will have to reserve seats for underprivileged children, who could be just two- years-old. The possibility is alarming for those who believe the government is neglecting its own schools in the name of RTE. While they seem to be emptying out due to the RTE quota in private schools, they fear the anganwadis too could take a beating if their students have the option of entering montessoris and private day care centres.
Some officials of the department of women and child welfare too are anxious that the extension of the RTE quota to pre-schools could sound the death-knell for anganawadis in urban and semi-urban areas, where they are already facing an acute shortage of students.
If RTE is implemented in pre -schools most poor students will opt for them, said one officer. Strongly opposing the idea, she notes that angawadis play a key role in the lives of both mother and child. The anganawadis staff work for a social cause, but private players have no such ideals, she argues.
But then there are those who feel poor children need be given an opportunity to go to a montessori or a private day care centre. Say some officials of the Department of Public Instruction, Extending RTE to pre-school will ensure a level playing field for all children in early learning.
However, activist, Harish B Bhat, believes extending the RTE quota to pre-schools may not work out in the long run. His argument? Children from poor families, who go to anganawadis till they are five years and 10 months old , have good nutritious food to look forward to at these centres, but in pre- schools they will have no such incentive and this could make them unattractive to many.
His views may offer comfort to those wishing the RTE quota away in pre-schools. But in the final analysis its about what's best for the children and clearly the decision should be theirs.
HYDERABAD: District reorganisation in Telangana state is slated to benefit some ministers who had not been made in-charge of districts. The number of districts has gone up from 10 to 31. At present, there are 17 ministers in Telangana state cabinet, and of these, only 10 were made district-in-charge ministers. Sources said the state government wants to appoint senior ministers as in-charge of two districts and junior ministers will be allotted each one district.
By this, all the cabinet ministers will be made in-charges of districts. Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao would take a decision on this soon, sources said. Meanwhile, the state government is also planning to change the existing pattern on allotment of funds under Special Development Fund to district-in-charge ministers. Under this scheme, the state government allots Rs 2 crore per assembly constituency for welfare and development activities for taking up works that are urgent in nature.
In addition to this, each district is allotted Rs 10 crore for taking the development works. The state government has sanctioned Rs 100 crore to 10 districts and released Rs 25 crore. Now, the state government wants to distribute the balance Rs 75 crore among all 31 districts. But for Hyderabad, new districts were formed by reorganising old districts. The state government will allot Rs 75 crore to all districts at the rate of Rs 2.40 crore to each district.
As of now, the Nepal border is seen to be extremely porous thus causing security concern among the home ministry. (Representational Image)
New Delhi: Following massive mobilisation of security forces along the Pakistan LoC in Jammu and Kashmir after surgical strikes, terrorist outfits operating out of PoK are finding it increasingly difficult to infiltrate into the Valley and are thus planning to use a new route through Nepal.
Amid intelligence reports to this effect, home minister Rajnath Singh held a high-level meeting with top security officials including Archana Ramasundram, chief of Sashastra Seema Bal, the border guarding force for Indo-Nepal border, to review the situation.
Sources said the home minister has directed that additional reinforcements be rushed to the Nepal border for further strengthening the security apparatus there and that SSB should immediately identify the vulnerable points for infiltration and plug these loopholes at the earliest.
Pakistan-based terror outfits are known to have an active and strong network in Nepal also and this has been a constant source of worry for the Indian security agencies. The Indian Airlines flight, IC-814, was hijacked from Kathmandu while the dreaded chief of Indian Mujahideen Yaseen Bhatkal was also picked up with help of the local agencies from a hideout on the outskirts of Kathmandu in 2013.
The home minister has also directed senior officials of the ministry and the SSB to prepare a detailed blueprint on how to seal the Nepal border, it having only designated entry and exit points.
Home ministry puts police, NSG on alert
As of now, the Nepal border is seen to be extremely porous thus causing security concern among the home ministry. The Centre has already decided to seal the Indo-Pak border in western and northern sectors by end 2018.
All state police and NSG have already been put on alert by the home ministry amid Intelligence reports that Pak terror groups could retaliate in response to the surgical strikes.
Chennai: With dates for the by-poll to the three Assembly constituencies announced and ahead of the local bodies elections, the BJP has reassured to restoring the jallikattu for 2017 Pongal. The saffron party wants to roll the dice and encash on the rural electorate
Though this assurance may not divert the attention of the opposition parties demanding the constitution of the Cauvery Management Board (CMB) or restrain them from blaming the BJP-led government at the Centre over the Cauvery issue, the BJP however hopes to connect with the rural voters through the popular bull taming sport of Tamils.
Union minister of state for road transport, highways and shipping Pon Radhakrishnan had on October 6 called on Union minister of state for environment, forests and climate change Anil Madhav Deve and sought his immediate intervention to pave way for holding the event. "This sensitive issue has been hurting the sentiments of scores of Tamils across the world," Radhakrishnan said in his petition to Anil Madhav.
He called upon. Anil Madhav to initiate appropriate action by introducing a suitable bill in the Parliament in consultation with other Ministries concerned and thereby enable the Tamil community to organise jallikattu from Jan. 2017 "with pomp and gaiety."
"The Centre will work towards this goal. We will have jallikattu from coming Pongal," BJP state president, Tamilisai Soundararajan added.
Chennai: Two teenaged 'godmen', who walked away with 5 sovereigns of gold belonging to a housewife in Old Perungalathur after posing as godmen and conducting a pooja to ward off evil forces in the house, were caught in the same neighbourhood when they tried the same trick on another woman.
Selvakumar and Ramesh, both 19, are from Vellore and they had conducted a pooja in the house of the Sivanesan Kaleeswari couple on Tuesday morning.
They had asked the woman to keep her ornaments together and tie them in a handkerchief. Kaleeswari kept the gold in the handkerchief given by the boys and tied it herself.
The bundle containing the gold was supposed to be kept in the pooja room for a day to get the full impact. The 'godmen' later asked Sivanesan and Kaleeswari to bring pure water to create 'theertham'. As soon as she fetched the water, the two sprinkled it in every corner of the house and left the place after charging `200 for the pooja.
Kaleeswari became suspicious after the dup had left as she noticed there was a change in the knot she had made in the handkerchief. She then opened the knots of the handkerchief and found her ornaments missing. She immediately alerted her neighbours. Local residents tracked the two who were trying to repeat their con act at a home just two streets away.
The two were caught, thrashed and handed over to Peerkankaranai police station. The godmen had changed the handkerchief when the couple went to fetch water and placed another in its place with knots in the same places, the police disclosed.
We are questioning them to verify their background and also trying to find out if they had committed same kind of offence anywhere else, the police said.
No preservatives were used in baking the huge burger that weighed 65 kilograms. (Photo: ANI Twitter)
Coimbatore: A group of budding chefs recently celebrated World Bread Day by baking and preparing a huge vegetarian burger bun that attracted food lovers from across the city.
It took almost 16 hours for 47 catering students and five chefs to make the 1.5 feet tall and three feet wide burger, which was handed over to an orphanage after display.
The giant burger was prepared with 35 kilograms of refined flour (maida), two kilograms of sugar, one kilogram salt and yeast each, 12 litres of vegetable oil and 21 litres of water. Moreover, no preservatives were used in baking the huge burger that weighed 65 kilograms.
In addition to this, a variety of bread from seven countries were also displayed at the venue. The initiative was taken up by a private hotel management institute.
The event also saw students baking breads from countries like France, Italy and America.
Chennai: The State Finance Minister O Pannerselvam, who was allotted the portfolios of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa after her hospitalisation, will chair a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday to decide on the appointment of special officers to local bodies across Tamil Nadu.
This is the first cabinet meeting of the AIADMK government after Ms Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospitals on September 22.
The meeting comes a week after the acting Governor CH Vidyasagar Rao handed over all portfolios held by Ms Jayalalithaa to Mr Pannerselvam and also allowed him to chair cabinet meetings.
The Cabinet would discuss appointment of special officers to over 1 lakh local bodies since their term expires on October 24 after the Madras High Court stayed the local body elections early this month. The elections were to be held in two phases on October 17 and 19. Since the Madras High Court extended the stay on conduct of elections for another four weeks, it has become imperative on the part of the government to appoint special officers to run the administration at the local level. The cabinet will discuss the issue and take a decision, a senior official told Deccan Chronicle.
Once the Cabinet approves the decision to appoint special officers to corporations, municipalities, town panchayats, village panchayats, district panchayats and union panchayats, the government will come out with an official order notifying appointment of such officers.
The official said the cabinet meeting will be held on Wednesday at 9.30 am. The meeting also comes against the backdrop of the Cauvery issue on which the Opposition parties are demanding that the Tamil Nadu government lead a delegation to the Prime Minister demanding constitution of the Cauvery Management Board.
Hyderabad: Two senior Congress legislators on Tuesday criticised the decision of CM K. Chandrasekhar Rao to construct the camp office and the new Secretariat complex by dismantling old structures and termed it as a waste of public money and an act of Tughlaq.
Former minister and Nalgonda MLA Komatireddy Venkat Reddy said Mr Rao the CM had no right to demolish the existing Secretariat complex in the name of bad vastu. Going for new constructions would only result in unnecessary spending of public money.
Former minister and Jagityal MLA T. Jeevan Reddy asked whether it was necessary to construct a massive camp office on 10 acres by investing `100 crore.
Lucknow: The infighting in the Samajwadi Party shows no signs of abating with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday announcing his decision to embark on 'Samajwadi Vikas Rath Yatra' alone from November 3.
The announcement gave rise to speculation that Akhilesh might skip his party's silver jubilee celebrations which begins here on November 5.
Party insiders said any attempt to derail or stop him from going ahead with the Yatra could lead to another crisis in the party.
In a letter written to party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Chief Minister said all political parties have started their campaigns for the Assembly polls.
"I had decided to take out the yatra from October 3 but it was cancelled due to some reasons. I will take out the 'Samajwadi Vikas Rath Yatra' from November 3," he said.
Akhilesh has also sent copies of the letter to state party chief Shivpal Yadav and National General Secretary Ram Gopal Yadav.
He said yatra's detailed programme will be communicated to district presidents and party workers in due course.
The announcement gave rise to speculation that Akhilesh might skip the sliver jubilee celebrations to send a message that he was unhappy over the expulsion of youth leaders from the party, who would not be present at the event.
Earlier in the day, Akhilesh, Shivpal Yadav, and Mulayam held a closed-door meeting at party supremo's 5 Vikramaditya Marg residence to discuss poll strategy.
According to party sources, Akhilesh is adamant on his demands of revoking the expulsion of youth leaders, some of whom are MLCs, and having his say in the ticket distribution.
Akhilesh had earlier announced his decision to take out the yatra from October 3 through his twitter handle with a picture in which he was seen sitting inside a bus.
It was seen as a move to counter uncle Shivpal, who had been appointed the new state party president in his place.
Akhilesh hit back over his removal from the party post by stripping Shivpal of his key ministerial portfolios, bringing the family feud in the open.
Through the yatra, Akhilesh is expected to highlight his government's development works, rally support for the party and demonstrate support for him among the party cadres.
Party sources said Mulayam Singh Yadav has so far managed to pull back the party from the brink every time it faces any threat. This time too he has to move swiftly to take care of the concerns of the CM and his supporters, they pointed out.
The infighting seems to continuing as of now with Mulayam siding with Shivpal; and his cousin Ram Gopal throwing his weight behind the Chief Minister.
The feud emanated from Shivpal's attempt to undercut the authority of the Chief Minister and his supporters by denying him a say in the distribution of tickets, and the SP chief's initial reluctance to name Akhilesh as the party's presumptive chief ministerial candidate.
Trouble in the party has been brewing since Mulayam replaced Akhilesh with Shivpal as the state party chief. Analysts say that since taking over the post, Shivpal has been systematically trying to undermine the authority of the CM, his supporters and Ram Gopal.
One of his first acts as state party chief was sacking Ram Gopal's nephew and party MLC Arvind Pratap Yadav, and a former village head in Etawah Akhilesh Kumar Yadav for their alleged involvement in land-grabbing and other such activities.
Recently, Shivpal announced the first list of the party's candidates for the assembly elections without even consulting either the Chief Minister or Ram Gopal.
The SP chief further complicated matters by his reluctance to categorically back Akhilesh as the party's CM candidate.
The pro-chief minister camp fears that all this is a part of a systematic attempt to undermine him and deny him a say in the party.
Ram Gopal, who has sided with the CM, shot off an angry letter to Mulayam, urging him to intervene and get Shivpal to take back the expelled leaders and to ensure that the CM had a decisive say in ticket distribution.
After today's meeting between the SP chief and Ram Gopal, there was no indication that the stand-off had been resolved. There was no word on either the question of cancelling the decision to sack Arvind Yadav and Akhilesh Kumar Yadav or on the all-important question of restoring the CM's right to decide on ticket distribution.
With Akhilesh set to begin UP poll campaign ahead of the Party's silver jubilee celebrations, the rift in the party is again out in the open, especially at a time when efforts are reportedly underway for a patch-up between Mulayam-Shivpal and Akhilesh.
Political observers feel that the ongoing power struggle in the ruling party might hamper the Yadav family in the 2017 UP polls.
SP youth leaders including Sunil Singh Yadav, Anand Bhadouria, Arvind Pratap Singh Yadav, Sanjay Lathar, Brijesh Yadav, Mohd Abad and Gaurav Dubey, were expelled from the party by Shivpal last month for allegedly raising slogans and protesting outside the house of Mulayam.
New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday stirred controversy by saying that his party would unite the Hindu community by resolving the Ram Temple issue and divide the minorities in order to emerge victorious in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
"Development is necessary to win election in the nation but it is not everything. To win the elections, it is important to focus on our priority. The conspiracy played against us in the past was to divide the Hindus and unite the minorities. But this time we will do just the opposite, we will unite the Hindus and will divide the minorities as much as possible," Swamy said.
Highlighting the pro-development initiatives of former prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao besides Congress veteran Morarji Desai, Swamy said that they failed to win the elections for their party despite all efforts.
Swamy said it is important to focus on three issues to win the elections, i.e. corruption, development and the Ram Temple issue.
The BJP leader further said it is impossible that the Ram Temple issue does not attract eyeballs at a time when election is scheduled to take place in Uttar Pradesh.
Early today, Swamy said the Ram Temple issue is part of the BJP's 2014 manifesto, adding it is the party's obligation to the people to deliver on this promise.
"The Ram issue is a part of our manifesto in 2014, how can we run away from it? We have to deliver," Swamy said.
On Tuesday, the Congress Party accused the BJP for selling the name of Lord Ram to siphon off a victory in Uttar Pradesh.
"The Congress has nothing to do with the BJP constructing a museum there (Ayodhya), or the Samajwadi party organising things for the Ramayana mela. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is selling the name of Ram in the wake of coming UP polls," said Congress leader D.P. Singh.
Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Katiyar, on the other hand, asked the BJP-led Central government to intensify its efforts to construct Ram temple in Ayodhya instead of giving 'lollipop' (Ram museum) to please people, who are demanding the construction of the temple.
"It's a big mistake; effort should be made to construct the Ram Mandir (temple); this "lolipapi" (handing over Ramayana Museum as lollipop to please the people who are demanding the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya) won't work. People ask when will be the Ram Temple constructed? This (Ramayana Museum) is a lollipop, it doesn't have much importance, and thus, they should make positive effort. I would have said this had I been there. It's good that I did not go there," Katiyar said.
Hyderabad: Voicing concern over spurt in political violence in Kerala's Kannur district, the Communist Party of India has urged the CPI-M to exercise restraint and not get provoked by the RSS as it has the responsibility of maintaining law and order in the LDF-ruled state.
"It's very unfortunate that continuously these type of murders and revenge murders are taking place," CPI General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy said.
"Both should exercise restraint, particularly RSS. Every time, it's the RSS, who has done it first (political murder). That does not mean that I defend the revenge murders (by CPI-M). Both should exercise restraint," he said.
"Our advice (to CPI-M) is exercise restraint, and not to get provoked (by RSS) with this type of things and after all it's the responsibility of government of Kerala about the law and order situation. More responsibility is with CPI-M as it's in government (as the lead partner)," Reddy said.
He charged the RSS-BJP with trying to create a "communal atmosphere" by "these" (political violence).
Reddy alleged that BJP president Amit Shah has appealed to editors of all news channels and newspapers that "this (political violence in Kannur district) should be made an all-India issue ... It should be in limelight. That shows they have got ulterior motives".
He denied suggestions of cycle of political violence happening whenever CPI-M is in power in Kerala, saying, "Even earlier it was taking place, even when CPM was in opposition".
BJP activist Remith was allegedly hacked to death in Kannur district, the hometown of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan last Wednesday, within 48 hours of the murder of a CPM activist and toddy shop worker Mohanan.
The BJP called a 'hartal' in Kerala last Thursday to protest against the killing of its party activist.
Lucknow: In yet another sign of worsening infighting in Samajwadi Party, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday announced that he will embark on his Vikas Rath Yatra alone from November 3 which will make him skip the partys silver jubilee celebrations slated to begin two days later.
In a letter written to Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief minister has informed him that he will embark on his yatra from November 3.
The Samajwadi Party will be celebrating its silver jubilee in Lucknow on November 5 and the chief ministers decision to begin his yatra on November 3 implies that he will not be attending the party function.
Mr Akhilesh Yadavs likely absence from the Samajwadi Party function is yet another development in the deepening crisis in the Samajwadi Party and family. Mr Akhilesh Yadavs supporters have already declared that they will not attend the silver jubilee function.
The copies of the letter to the party president, which were released to the media on Wednesday, have been sent to Prof Ramgopal Yadav and Mr Shivpal Yadav.
The Chief Minister has further said that he will be informing the district units about his yatra route from time to time. The state party has not been informed of the Chief Ministers yatra route and sources said that the youth leaders, including those expelled from the party, will be taking care of all arrangements during the campaign in which Mr Yadav will tell the people of the achievements of his government.
Apart from reaching out to people and galvanising party workers, Akhileshs yatra is seen as a move to truncate the influence of Shivpal, who had been appointed the new state party president in his place.
Earlier in the day, Akhilesh, Shivpal Yadav, and Mulayam held a closed-door meeting at party supremos 5 Vikramaditya Marg residence to discuss poll strategy.
According to party sources, Akhilesh is adamant on his demands of revoking the expulsion of youth leaders, some of whom are MLCs, and having his say in the ticket distribution.
Akhilesh had earlier announced his decision to take out the yatra from October 3 through his Twitter handle with a picture in which he was seen sitting inside a bus.
There is irony in Prime Minister Narendra Modis concentration on Pakistani terrorism at the Goa Brics summit because the more he dwelt on the theme, the more distant became Indias aspiration for a world role, struggling as it seemed to be with a major neighbourhood problem. And the pickings were slim in the form of an anodyne declaration. Of course, everyone is against terrorism. Instead of taking advantage of a summit, that included both Russia and China, New Delhi seemed to be hosting a South Asian gathering, with a few outsiders, laudable as the goal of asking the Bangladeshi and Myanmar leaders was. Thereby, India restricted the discussion of major world issues. The one benefit of the conference was the bilateral talks between President Vladimir Putin and Mr Modi to undertake an essential recalibration of relations in a changing world, sharply brought home to New Delhi by Moscow conducting the first-ever joint troop exercises with Pakistan on Pakistani soil. As India has grown closer to the United States for good reasons, Moscow claims the right to expand its relationship with other countries in its own perceived interests.
President Xi Jinping of China was expectedly inflexible on issues of immediate concern to New Delhi, including membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the technical hold on declaring a Pakistan-based terror outfit chief as a terrorist by the United Nations and several other matters. And in a retort to terrorist Pakistan, the Chinese government went to the extent of issuing a statement after the summit praising Pakistans efforts in coping with terrorism. Plainly, Mr Modi got his sums wrong. This is all the more surprising due to his deft moves in foreign policy after the Uri attack from across the border in attracting worldwide sympathy and support, the deftness of the surgical strikes, causing a minor crisis in the Pakistani establishment and taking Pakistani isolation in the world to its lowest level. The ideal agenda India should have set for Goa was a wider discussion of world problems, particularly those impacting Brics members, in the framework of a changing world, with one session devoted to terrorism.
It is an opportunity lost in an era where geopolitical factors are changing rapidly, and US-Russian relations are at their lowest level in 30 years. One hopes Mr Modi had an opportunity in his private meetings with President Putin to gather the new springboard for his assertive policy in Syria and elsewhere. This would be of greater import than a discussion on terrorism. Judging by the long relationship with India, Mr Putin should have been forthcoming with an explanation. Where do we go from here? First, India has to frame a longer-term strategy. There is no early end to our troubled relationship with Pakistan. Chinas footprint on Pakistan and other South Asian countries will grow. It is specially important in the case of Pakistan as the latter is now at the heart of Chinas new Silk Road project, that is planned as a major outlet for Chinese goods and knitting Central Asian countries in the Chinese web. Besides, Beijing has long used Islamabad as a spoiler for Indian ambitions.
India has leverages against China if they are used subtly. One had expected from Mr Modis track record that he undertook the subtleties of diplomacy, particularly those on the subcontinent. He rightly won plaudits for how he played the Uri theme. Was he beguiled by the praise to overdo terrorism for an international audience? Mr Modi began with Pakistan on the right note by inviting the Pakistan PM to his swearing-in ceremony and later dramatically to drop in at his Lahore home to greet him at a family wedding. The results were less than paltry due to Pakistans power structure, with the Army wielding the big stick, specially on ties with India and nuclear matters. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif therefore doesnt count in the ultimate analysis. As recent secret talks between the civil establishment and the Army establishment revealed, the Army won hands down. What is required of New Delhi in these circumstances is subtlety in making moves against Islamabad, just the kind of moves he made before the Brics conference.
We have had a long list of distinguished foreign ministers and their advisers who fought valiantly for Indias cause in the United Nations halls. Then the world and the UN simply got tired of a complicated problem left over by the history of Partition. Sporadic efforts at direct talks, including at the Track 2 level, failed to lead to a solution. In fact, Pakistans initiation of wars to settle the issue failed each time. What is exciting for Pakistan no end is the months long unrest in the Kashmir Valley and its increased insertion of terrorists to strike at Army camps and other centres of state authority. After the surgical strikes that Pakistan still denies, another pattern emerged, that of violating the ceasefire line across a wide area of the border. It is still guesswork to put a figure on the number of terrorists successfully pushed across the border during the height of the Valleys unrest.
One wishes some of the effort expended on safeguarding the border were directed at the political problem in the Valley. The peculiar coalition governing the state, of the BJP and Peoples Democratic Party under the late Mufti Mohammed Sayeeds daughter Mehbooba, has failed to light any sparks. The state government, it seems, is waiting on events. Given the geopolitical picture, China will continue to back Pakistan to the hilt and miss no opportunity to embarrass India. The United States can be expected to support New Delhi within the limits of its framework, which essentially condemns Pakistan after terror attacks and asks it to bring terrorists on its soil to heel, but it will not directly get involved on the issue. The United States finally did come out with a robust statement on Uri, as did Russia. Let India treat these as a bonus.
Arturo Sosa is his name. Arturo (Spanish) Arthur in English has just been elected as head of the Jesuits the international congregation of Catholic men best known for their Loyola and Xavier schools, colleges and universities, worldwide. Im a Jesuit, too, currently in Rome for the General Congregation convoked to elect a new leader and plan for more meaningful involvement in the world, today. The process of electing the Jesuit Superior General is similar to that of the conclave that elects the pope. We are 212 Jesuits from 70 countries who observed four days of so-called murmurationes (Latin, for murmurings) in order to discern who is best suited to lead this Society of Jesus.
In my previous column entitled Drawn by discernment (Oct. 6) I described discernment as an act of wisdom providing productive insights into ourselves and the persons we meet. Elections demand deep discernment. Since one does not know all the Jesuits from the world over, murmurationes enable Jesuit reps to seek information about prospective candidates from elsewhere. Murmurationes allow one to approach another Jesuit for a tete-a-tete about the strengths and weaknesses of candidates.
The exchanges are strictly confidential. No electioneering, no exaggerations. Moreover, one must only answer questions asked and honestly state whether his opinions spring from firsthand experience or from hearsay. Ultimately, the murmurings of Gods spirit help in electing leaders. During discussions, were seated in a conference hall in concentric semi-circles with newly-elected Father Arturo Sosa keenly listening to everything we say and suggest. This reminds me of the King Arthur and the knights of the round table legend where King Arthur crafted a round table so that his fiercely competitive knights wouldnt quarrel with each other for seats at the head of the table.
Its heartwarming to sit around tables with my Jesuit companions, here, since theres no bickering and bargaining for that which is unimportant. Indeed, effective leaders set round tables to ensure that everyone is comfortably and equitably seated. Then, they bend down to serve their subjects selflessly. The founder of the Jesuits, Spaniard Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), was a valiant knight who renounced the comforts of the kingly court in order to follow Jesus, who said, I am among you as one who serves.
Jesus desired that his disciples be outstanding in their service of others. Ignatius motto: In all things to love and to serve has inspired thousands of Jesuits and their collaborators to commit themselves to loving service. Formerly, Jesuit generals were referred to as black popes since they wore black cassocks and wielded tremendous power. Arturo is simple and seeks no power except that which comes from loving and serving. God bless this first ever Latin-American Jesuit General!
China's Shenzhou 11 spaceship onboard a Long March-2F carrier rocket took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu province on Monday Oct. 17, 2016.
China's Shenzhou 11 manned spacecraft has successfully docked with China's Tiangong 2 space lab, and two astronauts have entered the lab, China's official news agency Xinhua said Wednesday. China is the third country after the United States and Russia to complete space rendezvous and docking procedures, Xinhua said.
According to the mission schedule, the astronauts will remain in the space station for 30 days and spend a total of 33 days in space, making the mission the longest in space so far for China.
In a manned space mission in 2013, three Chinese astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with a space laboratory, the Tiangong 1. Advancing China's space program is a priority for Beijing, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.
China insists its space program is for peaceful purposes. Shenzhou 11, whose name translates as "Divine Vessel", will also carry three experiments designed by Hong Kong middle school students and selected in a science competition, including one that will take silk worms into space.
The US Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations using space-based assets in a crisis.
China has been working to develop its space program for military, commercial and scientific purposes, but is still playing catch-up to established space powers the United States and Russia.
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The Nokia D1C is the latest from its smartphone range. Expect a lot during MWC next year.
In recent years, Finnish smartphone maker Nokia has been using MWC events for announcement of new smartphones and other devices. It now seems that the company will do the same next year, as Nokia has announced that the CEO might introduce new phones in the Mobile World Congress 2017.
The MWC has been scheduled to take place between February 27 to March 2, and its the ideal opportunity for many smartphone makers to announce their latest devices. Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia will be delivering a keynote at the trade fair and the company is expected to announce at least one Android Nokia-running smartphone.
After the fallout of its partnership with Microsoft, Nokia had planned to license its commercial rights for the brand to HDM Global for the next decade. The HDM Global manufactured smartphones are slated to be released by the end of this year.
Nokia has been working on a massive 13.8-inch tablet appeared to run on 7.0 Nougat with a display of 1920x1080 pixels. It is unclear whether Nokia will announce this tablet during the MWC next year.
The company has also been rumoured to be working on two Android smartphones with remarkable specs with Snapdragon 821 and 22MP camera, but still the reveal is yet to be waited for.
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Three Note 7 users in the United States file for a class action lawsuit against Samsung Electronics' US unit.
Samsung Electronics scrapped its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphone on Tuesday, less than two months after its launch, dealing a huge blow to its reputation and outlook after failing to resolve safety concerns.
The following is a chronology of major developments related to Samsung's recall of the Note 7s since the launch of the smartphones in August.
Oct. 18 - Three Note 7 users in the United States file for a class action lawsuit against Samsung Electronics' US unit.
Oct. 14 - Samsung says it expects a operating profit hit of around $3 billion for Q4 2016, Q1 2017 combined due to the Note 7's discontinuation.
Oct. 13 - US regulator expands Note 7 recall to 1.9 million devices, including all replacement devices.
Oct. 12 - Samsung slashes its third-quarter profit guidance by a third to 5.2 trillion won ($4.63 billion) from an earlier estimate of 7.8 trillion won, reflecting earnings impact from the Note 7 recall and discontinuation.
Oct. 11 - Samsung permanently halts sales and production of Note 7 smartphones and asks customers to stop using the phones as it investigates reports of fires in new devices.
Oct. 10 - Samsung says it is adjusting Note 7 shipments for inspections, quality control due to more phones catching fire.
Oct. 9 - AT&T, T-Mobile say they have halted issuing new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones due to safety concerns.
Oct. 6 - A Southwest Airlines plane in the United States evacuated due to smoke from a Note 7 device on board.
Oct. 1 - Samsung resumes selling new Note 7s in South Korea.
Sep. 29 - Samsung says more than 1 million people globally now using Note 7s with safe battery.
Sept. 25- Samsung delays S.Korea re-start of Note 7 sales by 3 days.
Sept. 22 - South Korea orders extra battery safety measures for Note 7 phones.
Sept. 21- Verizon Communications, Sprint Corp begin taking orders for new Note 7s.
Sept. 19 - Samsung says a Note 7 phone a China user claims caught on fire was caused by external heating.
Sept. 19 - Samsung starts Note 7 exchange programme in South Korea.
Sept. 16 - Florida man sues Samsung for burns from Note 7 explosion. Samsung says to resume Note 7 sales in South Korea on Sept. 28.
Sept. 15 - US Consumer Product Safety Commission formally announces recall of about 1 million Note 7 phones.
Sept. 9 - US Consumer Product Safety Commission urges Galaxy Note 7 users to stop using their phone.
Sept. 8 - US Federal Aviation Administration advises passengers to not turn on or charge Note 7 smartphones aboard aircraft or stow them in plane cargo.
Sept. 2 - Samsung announces global recall of 2.5 million Note 7 phones, citing faulty batteries.
Sept. 1 - Samsung starts Galaxy Note 7 sales in China.
Aug. 31 - Samsung delays shipments of Note 7s to South Korean carriers.
Aug. 24 - Report of a Note 7 explosion surfaces in South Korea.
Aug. 19 - Samsung starts Galaxy Note 7 sales in 10 markets including United States and South Korea.
Aug. 2 - Samsung unveils the Galaxy Note 7 at a New York media event.
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Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun wrote an open letter today that thanks Xiaomi employees and fans in India for the immense popularity and success the company has generated in such a short period of time.
According to the letter that was posted on Xiaomis official Facebook page, the Chinese company has reportedly made a sale of 1 million Xiaomi smartphone units in just 18 days in the country.
Apart from praising Hugo Barra (Vice President of Xiaomi) and Manu Kumar Jains (Xiaomi Indias Head) effort at furthering the Mi brand in India, the letter also outlines the important milestones that Xiaomi has achieved in a span of one year in India.
These milestones include Xiaomis participation in the countrys Make in India initiative, the companys achievement in becoming the top smartphone brand in India and the companys success at selling 2.3 million Redmi Note 3 devices in just six months.
India is an extremely important market in Xiaomi's globalisation strategy. It has become our largest market outside of mainland China. I am confident that with the sustained efforts of our entire Xiaomi family, we will be able to capture the largest market share in India within 3-5 years, Jun said in his letter.
The companys Diwali sale is currently on wherein they are offering customers deals and discounts across their range of smartphones and accessories.
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A group of Boko Haram gunmen invaded Goptari, 10 kilometres from Chibok, late Tuesday and set it on fire after looting food supplies and livestock. (Photo: AFP)
Kano, Nigeria: Boko Haram has burnt down a village neighbouring the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok where the group kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls two years ago, local residents said on Wednesday.
A group of Boko Haram gunmen invaded Goptari, 10 kilometres from Chibok, late Tuesday and set it on fire after looting food supplies and livestock.
The attack underscores the continued threat of Boko Haram in Nigeria's volatile northeast, where the military is still battling for control despite making gains against the insurgents over the past year.
"They attacked the village around 8:00 pm (1900GMT), firing heavy guns which made people flee into the bush," Samson Bulus from nearby Kautikeri said.
"The Boko Haram raiders looted homes and shops, taking along food supplies and livestock before burning the entire village," he said.
Luka Damina, another Kautikeri resident said troops in Chibok engaged the attackers in gun battle but were subdued by the insurgents.
"The Boko Haram fighters overpowered the soldiers and seized a van with a machine gun mounted on the deck from the soldiers," he said.
Witnesses, including a local chief, said a soldier was wounded during the shootout.
The attack came two days after a raid on nearby Kallali village where the Islamists looted and burnt homes, a local chief said.
Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency against the Nigerian state that has claimed at least 20,000 lives and spilled across the country's borders.
Aided by troops from neighbouring countries, the Nigerian military has recaptured swathes of territory from the Islamists since early 2015.
But Boko Haram has carried out sporadic attacks on remote villages in the restive region.
Last month eight people were killed outside a church in a village 30 kilometres east of Chibok. In August, 10 people were killed in another attack on nearby Kubrivu village.
A court ruling published on Wednesday also stripped all rank from Staff Sergeant Umar Sule. (Representational Image)
Maiduguri, Nigeria: A Nigerian court-martial has sentenced a soldier to three years' jail for meting out punishment that left a 10-year-old without the use of his hands. One hand was amputated.
A court ruling published on Wednesday also stripped all rank from Staff Sergeant Umar Sule.
The father of the crippled boy, Usman Muhammed, expressed satisfaction with Tuesday's ruling.
The court-martial was petitioned by the government-funded National Human Rights Commission, which said it is also pursuing monetary compensation for the family.
The court heard that Sale Muhammed had confessed to stealing 2,000 naira ($6.60) from the soldier. The sergeant tied the boys' hands with a rubber band, bound him to a pole for more than seven hours and flogged him. On his release, doctors amputated one hand and declared the other useless.
Obama, 55, who will leave White House in January next year, suffered indignities of the job interview as he was questioned about his qualifications by Stephen Colbert in "The Late Show". (Photo: AFP)
Washington: US President Barack Obama, who was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, has said he is still not sure why the prestigious prize was bestowed on him.
Obama, 55, who will leave White House in January next year, suffered indignities of the job interview as he was questioned about his qualifications by Stephen Colbert in "The Late Show".
Asked by Colbert to list any relevant awards or qualifications, Obama replied, "I have almost 30 honorary degrees and I did get the Nobel Peace Prize".
"Really, what was that for?," enquired Colbert. "To be honest, I still don't know," Obama responded, 'Los Angeles Times' reported.
Colbert also asked Obama questions such as where he was born, and a fruit related query.
"I would like to ask you about your choice of snacks," Colbert told the president in the interview, a segment of which was aired on Monday.
"Would you care for an extra-fiber nutrient bar, which has traveled to more than 100 countries, or this shrivelled tangerine, covered in golden retriever hair, filled with bile, that I wouldn't leave alone with a woman I loved?" Colbert told Obama.
"I think I will go with the fiber nutrient bar," Obama replied.
Donald Trump has roped-in President Barack Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother to be his guest at the third and final presidential debate here, US media reported on Wednesday. (Photo: YouTube/ AP)
Las Vegas: Seeking to put the Democrats on the back foot, Donald Trump has roped-in President Barack Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother to be his guest at the third and final presidential debate here, US media reported on Wednesday.
Hillary Clinton will be joined at the prime-time debate by two well-known billionaires who are backing her campaign, in what may be an attempt to rattle Trump, the controversial Republican nominee by subtly questioning his own net worth.
Meg Whitman, the Hewlett-Packard CEO and former Republican California gubernatorial candidate, and Mark Cuban, the outspoken billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, will both be Clinton's guests at Wednesday's third and final presidential debate, CNN reported.
Meanwhile, Trump is countering with Malik, President Obama's half-brother and a ghost from Clinton's past: Patricia Smith, the mother of Benghazi victim Sean Smith, who has accused the former secretary of state of "murdering" her son.
The New York Post first reported Trump's invitation to Obama's half-brother. The Post also reported that Malik Obama called now-deceased Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi one of his best friends -- a potential source of awkwardness for Smith.
Malik Obama, who was born in Kenya and is an American citizen, voiced his support for Trump in July, saying he hoped to meet the Republican nominee. Trump's feelings are mutual.
"I look very much forward to meeting and being with Malik," Trump said today. "He gets it far better than his brother."
Malik Obama shares the same father with the president but has a different mother. He told the Post that he blames Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time Gadaffi was toppled and killed, for making the situation worse in Libya.
Clinton invited both Cuban and Whitman, campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said, and the duo agreed to attend.
Whitman, a longtime Republican, endorsed Clinton earlier this year, saying in a statement that she would vote for and donate to Clinton. Since then, Whitman has headlined events for Clinton and contributed a considerable amount of money to her campaign.
Cuban sat in the front row at Clinton's first debate against Trump, a move that was intended to shake the Republican nominee because the Dallas Mavericks owner has been so outspoken against the businessman.
Trump lashed out at Cuban for attending the debate with Clinton, calling him "dopey."
At the second presidential debate, Trump appeared with three women who have in the past accused former President Bill Clinton of inappropriate sexual behavior as part of an effort to rattle Hillary Clinton.
Trump invited Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and another woman, Kathy Shelton, whose alleged rapist was defended by Clinton as a young lawyer.
Quito, Ecuador: Ecuador said Tuesday it had cut the internet access of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is holed up at its London embassy, due to leaks by the anti-secrecy website that could impact the US election.
"The government of Ecuador respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states. It does not interfere in external electoral processes, nor does it favor any particular candidate," the Ecuadoran foreign ministry said in a statement.
In consequence, the ministry said, it decided to "temporarily restrict" communications at the embassy.
WikiLeaks has published a damaging trove of hacked emails from US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in recent weeks.
On Monday it accused Ecuador of cutting off Assange's internet communications at the behest of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
The United States denied the allegation.
"Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period," State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. Ecuador also implicitly denied the claim in its statement.
"Ecuador's foreign policy responds to sovereign decisions alone and does not yield to pressure from other states," it said.
Ecuador reaffirmed its decision to grant Assange asylum, and said the restriction on communications at its embassy did not hinder WikiLeaks itself.
"This temporary restriction does not prevent the WikiLeaks organization from carrying out its journalistic activities," it said. Assange fled to Ecuador's London embassy in June 2012.
The 45-year-old Australian is fighting extradition to Sweden to face a rape accusation.
He denies the allegation and says he fears Sweden wants to hand him over to the United States to face trial for the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.
US denies hand
Meanwhile, the United States denied charges from WikiLeaks that Washington asked Ecuador to cut the internet connection of the website's founder Julian Assange.
WikiLeaks on Monday alleged that Assange's internet access was cut Saturday after it published private speeches by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to Goldman Sachs.
In a series of tweets beginning late Monday, the anti-secrecy site said it learned from "multiple sources" that Ecuador cut off Assange's internet connection at the behest of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
But State Department spokesman John Kirby, in a brief statement, denied that Washington had played any role in the move.
"While our concerns about WikiLeaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down WikiLeaks is false," Kirby said.
"Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period."
Washington: Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign considered tapping Apple chief executive Tim Cook to be her running mate, according to hacked emails published by WikiLeaks. In an email dated March 17 to Clinton, campaign chairman John Podesta also proposed the mega-billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, his wife Melinda and General Motors chief executive Mary Barra as possible Democratic vice presidents.
"Let me know if there are people you would like to see added or removed," Podesta wrote, enclosing a list of more than 30 names.
"I have organized names in rough food groups." The email also identified well known military figures -- such as Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine Corps General John Allen, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan -- as well as Clinton's opponent for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and other lawmakers.
Podesta also suggested billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as well as more conventional political choices, such as Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.
Clinton ultimately settled on Virginia Senator Tim Kaine to campaign with her. Podesta has not publicly verified that the emails are authentic, but told reporters earlier this month that he believed that "Russian intelligence agencies" had hacked into his email account as part of efforts to favor Republican nominee Donald Trump. US officials have formally blamed state-sponsored Russian hackers for the exposure of internal emails from the Democratic party and other prominent people and institutions.
Montreal: Imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, whose public flogging in the kingdom last year generated a global outcry, now risks a new round of lashes, a co-founder of a Canadian foundation advocating his release said on Tuesday.
Evelyne Abitbol, who founded the Raif Badawi Foundation with Badawi's wife, said a "reliable source" in Saudi Arabia claims he faces a new flogging after being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes in 2014 for breaking the kingdom's technology laws and insulting Islam.
Saudi embassy officials in Ottawa and Saudi government officials in Riyadh were not immediately available for comment.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm the source's claims.
Abitbol declined to name the source but said it was the same person who had alerted Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar, in 2015 before he received his first 50 lashes, the only part of the flogging that was reportedly administered.
The source did not indicate when the flogging would take place.
"Unfortunately, it could happen at any time, if it happens," Abitbol said by phone in Montreal.
Abitbol said that Haidar has asked countries with ties to Saudi Arabia, including the Canadian government, to intervene on the blogger's behalf.
Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said in Ottawa that his department is trying to confirm whether the claims are true and has urged the Saudi government to allow Badawi to join his family in Canada.
"We are trying to have the most accurate information possible, because if this information is true, it would be shameful," Dion told reporters on Tuesday. "Canada completely condemns this type of lashing."
Haidar, who was in Germany to present a journalism award on Wednesday in her husband's name, could not be reached for comment. She was granted asylum in Canada, where she lives with the couple's three children in the province of Quebec.
Abitbol, the foundation's director, wants Saudi Arabia to withdraw the flogging punishment, strip Badawi of his Saudi citizenship and let him leave the country for Canada.
Last December, the European Parliament gave Badawi the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
The details came as prosecutors sought approval to introduce evidence at the December 5 trial of El Gammal, who is charged with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS by helping El-Goarany travel so he could join the militant group. (Photo: AFP/Representational)
New York: A New York City college student died last November fighting for ISIS in Syria, where he had travelled earlier in the year with the assistance of an Arizona man he met online, according to US prosecutors.
The death of Samy Mohammed El-Goarany, who was 24 when he traveled to Syria, was disclosed in papers filed by prosecutors late on Monday in Manhattan federal court in a case against the Arizona man, Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal.
The details came as prosecutors sought approval to introduce evidence at the December 5 trial of El Gammal, who is charged with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS by helping El-Goarany travel so he could join the militant group.
The potential evidence includes a letter by El-Goarany that an unidentified person via an instant messaging platform provided one of El-Goarany's relatives after saying he had been killed fighting in Syria.
In the letter, El-Goarany informed the relative that "if you're reading this then know that I've been killed in battle and am now with our Lord InshaAllah."
"We will win this war one day, this war between Iman (Belief) and kufr (Disbelief) between Good and Evil," the letter said, according to prosecutors. "And I will come back for you, with Allah's permission I will come back for you."
El Gammal's lawyer declined comment. He has pleaded not guilty.
According to prosecutors, El-Goarany was a US citizen who attended college in Manhattan and who by 2014 began expressing increased interest in militant forms of Islam.
El-Goarany first contacted El Gammal in August 2014 after learning of online comments he posted supporting Islamic State, prosecutors said.
They corresponded via encrypted messaging platforms, including one El-Goarany recommended by noting former National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden had used it, prosecutors said.
They said El Gammal traveled to New York in October 2014 and met El-Goarany. He then arranged for El-Goarany to get in touch with an individual living in Turkey to help El-Goarany travel to join ISIS, prosecutors said.
El-Goarany, whose parents lived in Middletown, New York, subsequently traveled from New York City to Istanbul in January 2015, and sometime in mid-February arrived in Syria, prosecutors said.
After learning of El Gammal's August 2015 arrest, El-Goarany posted a video on YouTube denying he had helped him and saying he "came here out of my own will," prosecutors said.
Sakthikanesh was jailed for three weeks, while his younger brother Vandana was fined SGD 6,000. (Representational image)
Singapore: Two Indian-origin brothers in Singapore have been sentenced by a court here for failing to report for the compulsory National Service, in the second such case involving members of the Indian community this week.
The brothers - Sakthikanesh Chidambaram, 25, Vandana Kumar Chidambaram who turns 23 in two weeks - remained out of Singapore without a valid exit permit and failed to report for the National Service (NS) for more than five years and for more than three years, respectively, the court was told.
Yesterday, Sakthikanesh was jailed for three weeks, while his younger brother Vandana was fined SGD 6,000.
Sakthikanesh, earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to report for the the National Service for five years, six months and 17 days. Vandana earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to report for the NS for three years, six months and two days.
Both men also admitted to one count each of remaining outside Singapore without a valid exit permit and these charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.
In June 2008, Sakthikanesh was told to register for the NS but he left Singapore later that month to pursue his university education at the National Institute of Technology,
Kurukshetra, only returning in April 2014, after he had completed his studies.
He enlisted for full-time NS in September 2014. In May 2010, Vandana was told to register for NS. But he only returned to Singapore in June 2014 and enlisted for full-time NS in August 2014.
In his judgement grounds, District Judge John Ng found that the brothers had "a substantial connection to Singapore".
He noted that both got their NRICs and used Singapore passports for travel.
"From the facts of this case, it is clear to me that the parents and the boys had no intention of giving up their Singapore citizenship before their NS obligations came to the fore," he said.
The judge, however, took into account the fact that both men surrendered themselves and had pleaded guilty to their charges. They also performed their NS exceptionally well, he noted.
Yesterday, a 22-year-old Indian-origin man Jay Kamal Shah was sentenced to six weeks in prison for not performing his national service obligations.
Widodo introduced a series of tough punishments for child sex offenders in May through an emergency decree, including chemical castration and the death penalty, following an outcry over the fatal gang-rape of a schoolgirl. (Photo: AFP)
Jakarta: Indonesian President Joko Widodo has defended the introduction of chemical castration for paedophiles, saying in an interview published Wednesday there can be "no compromise" when it comes to tackling sex crimes.
Widodo introduced a series of tough punishments for child sex offenders in May through an emergency decree, including chemical castration and the death penalty, following an outcry over the fatal gang-rape of a schoolgirl.
Parliament last week voted to put the new regulations permanently on the statute book, as had been widely expected.
In an interview with the BBC, Widodo defended introducing chemical castration, a decision that has sparked anger from human rights activists and the Indonesian Doctors Association, which has said its members will not perform the treatment.
"Our constitution respects human rights, but when it comes to sexual crimes there is no compromise," he said, adding that the government "will hand out the maximum penalty" for such crimes.
"In my opinion... chemical castration, if we enforce it consistently, will reduce sex crimes and wipe them out over time," he said.
Indonesia is among a small group of places worldwide which use the measure, including Poland and some states in the USA. In 2011 South Korea became the first Asian country to legalise the treatment.
Chemical castration involves using drugs to reduce libido and sex drive.
Widodo was spurred into action after the murder and gang-rape in April of a 14-year-old girl. She was set upon by a gang of drunken men and boys as she walked home from school on the western island of Sumatra.
The leader of the gang was sentenced to death last month after being found guilty of premeditated murder, a crime already punishable by death before the new laws were introduced. Other members of the gang have been jailed.
London: A 19-year-old girl from Wales, UK, has been jailed after she was proven guilty of having sex with a vulnerable minor schoolboy aged just 13, at least 70 times, with the least concern for his mental wellbeing.
According to a report in the Daily Post, the girl, Deleah Poulton, was aged between 17 and 18 when she was engaged in the sexual act with the young boy.
The court heard that the girl, a resident of Eastville Avenue in Rhyl, put her personal gratification above the welfare of the boy. The court was also told that there was no threat or violence involved and that the victim was compliant and was willing.
Alcohol, purchased by Deleah, was also consumed by the two of them, but it was not used as an inducement.
The court noted that Deleah was naive, with no previous criminal history, lacking in social skills, and thus, something of a sad individual.
The information came to light after the boy revealed to his mother last year that he was involved in a sexual relation with the girl. The court also heard that the couple did not use any contraceptions and that they had sex at his home, her home and outside. Deleah also admitted to five charges of sexual activity with the child, covering intercourse and sex.
Texts of sexual nature were also found on Deleahs phone.
In a statement, the boy said that he experienced a range of emotions because of what happened.
Deleah was given 16-months in a youth offenders home, and has to register as a sex offender for ten years.
Monmouth MP David Davies said mandatory teeth checks would reassure people that the unaccompanied migrants coming into the UK to join relatives were indeed children. (Photo: Representational Image)
London: A Conservative party MP on Wednesday triggered a row after he suggested dental checks must be used to determine the age of migrants entering the UK from France under a new agreement reached between the two countries over refugee children.
Monmouth MP David Davies said mandatory teeth checks would reassure people that the unaccompanied migrants coming into the UK to join relatives were indeed children.
"If they are jumping on lorries, they are not going to be averse to lying about their ages. We should do the tests," Davies said.
Downing Street said "a whole range of checks are in place that the Home Office and Border Force are using in cooperation with partners" and the UK Home Office was forced to issue a statement against dental checks.
"We do not use dental x-rays to confirm the ages of those seeking asylum in the UK," said a UK Home Office spokesperson.
"Where credible and clear documentary evidence of age is not available, criteria including physical appearance and demeanour are used as part of the interview process to assess age," the spokesperson added.
The first children with links to Britain arrived this week, after French authorities ratified a list drawn up by the charity Citizens UK, which is working with the UK government to bring unaccompanied minors over from Calais in France.
However, photographs of some of the children have been printed on the front pages of some UK newspapers alongside headlines questioning their ages.
The British Dental Association (BDA), which represents dentists and dental students in the UK, disputed claims that dental radiographs could accurately determine whether someone was under 18 or not.
"It's not only an inaccurate method for assessing age, but it is both inappropriate and unethical to take radiographs of people when there is no health benefit for them," a BDA spokesperson said.
Diane Abbott, Opposition Labour's shadow home secretary, said it was "an outrageous demand, which would further violate the human rights of vulnerable refugees".
"They have suffered insanitary and dangerous conditions and should have been admitted long ago. This is a vile, reactionary clamour. It distracts from the government's responsibilities to these refugees, which it has largely neglected to date," she said.
French authorities plan to close the so-called "Jungle" refugee camp, situated near the port of Calais, by the end of the year.
UK officials in Calais have been focusing initially on unaccompanied minors who have the right to join relatives in the UK under EU legislation, known as the Dublin regulation.
Berlin: A 51-year-old doctor from Germanys Bavaria was sentenced for 7 years and nine months in jail after a court found him guilty of sedating 12 women patients and taking over a million photos of them with butt-plugs on.
According to a report in the Daily Mail, the doctor took photographs of women ranging between the ages 17 and 28 after administering powerful sedatives between 2008 and 2014.
He claimed that he took the photographs as a part of a study that he was working on, but was unable to clarify when questioned about the use of butt-plugs in a study about veins in the pelvic region. He was also not able to show any materials on the study, and claimed that he used the information on his lectures on specialty of veins and treatment of pelvic vein thrombosis.
Though he apologised for talking pictures of his patients without consent, he was not apologetic about the act itself.
The chief public prosecutor informed the court that they had to go through millions of pictures and set up a hotline for the victims to get in touch.
Panarello has also been accused of abandoning her son's dead body in a remote gully in Santa Croce Camerina in the Italian region of Sicily. (Representational Image)
Santa Croce Camerina, Sicily: An Italian mother has been arrested on the charges of murdering her eight-year-old son after he discovered that she was having an affair with his grandfather.
According to a report in the Daily Mail, the accused Veronica Panarello strangled her minor son Loris Stival with electric cables
Panarello has also been accused of abandoning her son's dead body in a remote gully in Santa Croce Camerina in the Italian region of Sicily.
In her confession, Panarello claimed that her son had discovered her affair with his grandfather and feared that he would tell everyone about it.
Initially the accused tried to mislead the cops by pretending that her son was abducted. She had told police that she had dropped him off at school and when she went to pick him up, he was missing.
However, Panarello later confessed to the crime when she was caught by the police as the CCTV footage of the school did not match with her story.
While the case was under trial in the court, prosecutors branded her as egocentric, manipulative liar.'
Panarello has been found guilty of murdering her son and has been sentenced to 30 years in jail.
Iraqi forces are deployed during an offensive to retake Mosul from Islamic State militants outside Mosul. (Photo: AP)
Moscow: Russia warned the US-led coalition Wednesday against driving jihadists from Iraq to Syria, in the offensive to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State jihadist group.
"It is necessary not to drive terrorists from one country to the other but to destroy them on the spot," the chief of Russia's General Staff Valery Gerasimov said in a statement.
He said Russia was focusing on "possible attempts by fighters to break out of Mosul" and "freely leave the city in the direction of Syria".
"We hope that our partners in the international coalition realise what freely roaming large IS gangs in the Middle East can lead to."
The long-awaited offensive against Iraq's second city began Monday with air and ground support from a US-led coalition.
Iraqi forces on Wednesday prepared to retake Qaraqosh, the country's largest Christian town located about 15 kilometres (10 miles) southeast of Mosul, a key milestone in their progress toward the jihadists' main hub.
Officials have said the retaking of Mosul -- in Iraq's largest military operation in years -- could take weeks or months and warned that the hundreds of thousands of civilians still in the city could be used as human shields.
Gerasimov said that Russian military satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and drones were surveilling the Iraqi city.
"Despite all the ballyhoo on Western television, it must be understood that the operation as such has not yet begun," Gerasimov said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with the leaders of Turkey and Iraq to discuss the battle, wishing the Iraqi army success in its operations.
The Kremlin strongman at the weekend called on the US-led coalition to avoid civilian casualties in the battle to recapture the city.
Meanwhile Russian airpower has been backing up an offensive by regime forces on rebel-held eastern Aleppo that has sparked accusations of potential war crimes from the West.
Moscow announced on Tuesday that the Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo to pave the way for an eight-hour truce on Thursday.
The two leaders are expected to hold bilateral talks over a working lunch on November 7. (Photo: Twitter/ MEA)
London: British Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday indicated in Parliament that during her India visit next month she would be encouraging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in the UK.
Conservative Party MP Hugo Swire asked her during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons if the topic would figure during her first visit to India as British Prime Minister between November 6 and 8.
"When she goes to India next month, will she commit to persuade Prime Minister Modi to attend the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in the UK," Swire asked, in reference to the "increasing relevance" of the Commonwealth for trade given Britain's impending exit from the European Union (EU).
In response, May said, "I am happy to encourage all leaders to attend CHOGM when it takes place here in the United Kingdom...we are indeed looking at the possibility of trade deals in relation to the Commonwealth."
"I applaud that first-ever meeting of Commonwealth Trade Ministers (2017), which is an important step as we look to forge a new global role in the world, ensuring that we make a success of leaving the EU and trading our way around the world," she said.
May will arrive in New Delhi on November 6 to inaugurate the India-UK TECH Summit along with Modi.
The two leaders are expected to hold bilateral talks over a working lunch on November 7 before the British Premier heads to a second Indian city, likely to be Bengaluru, on November 8 as part of her three-day visit.
May will be accompanied by UK international trade secretary Liam Fox, who will be attending the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO).
The UK delegation will also include representatives of small and medium businesses from regions across the UK and a number of commercial deals are expected to be signed during the visit.
The issue was raised in the High Court here this week by lawyers representing the UK government in a challenge to the legality of the Brexit referendum without a Parliament vote. (Photo: AFP/Representational Image)
London: Britain's Parliament is "very likely" to get a chance to vote on the final agreement reached with the European Union (EU) on the UK's exit from the 28-nation economic bloc, a government lawyer has said.
The issue was raised in the High Court here this week by lawyers representing the UK government in a challenge to the legality of the Brexit referendum without a Parliament vote.
"Any such changes are a matter for future negotiations, parliamentary scrutiny, and implementation by legislation. The government view at the moment is that it is very likely that any such agreement would be subject to ratification," government lawyer James Eadie?told the High Court.
On being pressed further by Lord Chief Justice Thomas on whether any agreement with the EU would eventually be subject to approval by Parliament, he added: "It is ultimately dependent upon the agreement of the parties to the treaty, whether they want it to be subject to ratification or not.
"But as I say, the view within government is that it is very likely that this treaty will be subject to ratification process in the usual way. Most of them are. It is a pretty rare event for the things to take effect immediately upon accession."
Downing Street confirmed that position set out in court was the view of the government.
A spokesperson said: "The point we were making in court today and counsel made clear is caveated with not yet knowing the shape and terms of our exit from the EU but that there will be obligations to meet with regard to the constitutional reform and governance act. We would consider the outcome against those obligations and meet them."
According to The Guardian, judgment in the legal challenge to Brexit is likely to be reserved and announced only several weeks later.
The losing side is likely to then appeal to the Supreme Court to pursue the challenge.
The case, which opened last week, challenges British Prime Minister Theresa May's right to trigger Article 50 and begin official Brexit proceedings without a parliamentary vote.
The challenge has been brought by a group of businesses led by investment manager Gina Miller, whose lawyers argue that the government cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty unilaterally despite a public referendum in favour of leaving the European Union.
If the city is reclaimed by the Iraqi government, ISIS will be left with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its last major stronghold. (Representational Image)
London: Defeated Islamic State fighters from the Iraqi city of Mosul are likely to enter Europe to carry out terrorist attacks, the European Union's (EU) security chief has warned.
Thousands of Europeans who left to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria over the past few years may have already begun returning to the continent after the terrorist group suffered a string of territorial defeats in the Middle East, warned Julian King, the EU's Commissioner for Security.
"The retaking of Islamic State's northern Iraq stronghold, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent ISIS fighters," King told the German newspaper 'Die Welt'.
According to King, a British diplomat who recently took charge as security commissioner, even a handful of such terrorists returning would pose a serious threat.
French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has warned the fight to liberate Mosul in its entirety could take a long time.
"It's not a blitzkrieg. It's a city with 1.5 million residents, so it's a long-term project - several weeks, maybe months," he said.
Some 34,000 Iraqi security personnel, Kurdish fighters, Sunni Muslim Arab tribesmen and Shia Muslim paramilitaries have been deployed against ISIS, with backing from the US, France and others.
Their advance on Mosul comes over two years after the city was seized by ISIS in a major coup that enabled the extremist group to announce a self-proclaimed caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria.
Iraqi forces say they have captured 10 villages near Mosul since beginning their long-awaited offensive on Monday. As many as 5,000 ISIS fighters are believed to remain in the city.
If the city is reclaimed by the Iraqi government, ISIS will be left with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its last major stronghold.
Berlin: Russian President Vladimir Putin will face Western pressure over Ukraine and Syria at talks in Berlin Wednesday, on his first visit to the German capital since the Ukrainian conflict erupted.
Host Chancellor Angela Merkel said the talks -- also including France and Ukraine, in the first four-way summit for a year -- were aimed at "offering a brutally honest assessment" of progress on implementing the frayed Minsk peace accords for Ukraine. "Things are stalled in many areas such as the ceasefire, political issues and humanitarian issues," she told reporters Tuesday.
"We have to seize every chance we have for progress. I have to say that we cannot expect a miracle but it is worth every effort at this point."
Putin has not visited the German capital since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sending relations with the West plunging to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war, which has deepened the diplomatic freeze, will also figure at the top of the agenda, Merkel said.
Speaking of the "disastrous" situation in the besieged city of Aleppo, Merkel said she and French President Francois Hollande would speak to Putin "about somehow alleviating people's suffering".
"Here too, we cannot expect miracles but it is essential to talk, even if the views are far apart," she said.
Ending the devastation
The gathering will be aimed at "giving the same message to Vladimir Putin on Syria: a durable ceasefire in Aleppo and humanitarian access so that the devastation of this city can end," an aide to Hollande said in Paris.
Syria's second city, held by rebels determined to oust President Bashar al-Assad, has come under heavy bombardment since the Russia-backed military announced an offensive in late September to regain control of the east.
Air strikes in the city have flattened numerous residential buildings and civilian facilities, in a bombing campaign the European Union warned could amount to war crimes.
The Berlin meeting takes place on the eve of a European Union summit in Brussels on relations with Russia, including sanctions over Ukraine, which come up for renewal at the end of the year.
The two-day Brussels talks are also expected to cover Russia's role in Syria, which sparked a furious row between Russia and France last week, prompting Putin to cancel a visit to Paris.
Swapping recriminations
The last four-way summit in the so-called Normandy Format took place in Paris in October 2015.
Hollande's office said in a statement that Wednesday's gathering would "discuss the next steps in the process towards ending the crisis in eastern Ukraine".
Russia backs a separatist, pro-Moscow insurgency in the region that has claimed nearly 10,000 lives.
But it denies accusations that it has sent troops and weapons across its border with Ukraine to fuel the conflict.
In the run-up to the meeting, Moscow and Kiev swapped recriminations.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believed there was "no alternative" to implementing the Minsk accords.
"We know that on this point, the situation leaves much to be desired," he said. "For the moment, Kiev is doing nothing."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko indicated he had little hope for progress in Berlin.
"Let's not have very high expectations on this meeting," he said Tuesday on a visit to Oslo.
"Am I optimistic enough? Yes I'm very optimistic about the future of Ukraine but unfortunately not so optimistic about tomorrow's meeting."
Germany currently holds the rotating presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has monitors in eastern Ukraine.
Damascus: Around 620 rebels and their families began evacuating a besieged town southwest of the Syrian capital on Wednesday under a deal with the government, a local official said.
"The buses of rebels have begun moving," said Hassan Ghandour, a member of the local committee overseeing the deal in Moadamiyat al-Sham.
He said the buses held rebels as well as their family members and would head to Idlib province, northwest of Damascus.
Moadamiyet al-Sham has been under a devastating government siege since early 2013.
Syria's government has championed such local deals -- which typically see rebels evacuated in exchange for an end to their encirclement -- as a way to bring stability to the war-ravaged country.
Another member of the local reconciliation committee who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said the evacuees -- rebels and civilians -- numbered 2,100 people.
Any remaining rebels would hand themselves in to Syrian authorities "to have their status regularised," the member said.
"Then, the Syrian army will enter the town and state institutions will return to it. Infrastructure like water and electricity networks will be repaired beginning on Sunday," the member added.
More than 300,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011.
Iraqi forces are deployed during an offensive to retake Mosul from Islamic State militants outside Mosul. (Photo: AP)
Erbil: ISIS has 5,000 to 6,000 fighters defending the city of Mosul against an offensive by Iraqi forces, the head of Iraq's special forces Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Monday announced the start of an offensive on the northern city, the last major stronghold of the militants in Iraq, with the backing of a US-led coalition.
"Intelligence information indicates that there are 5,000 to 6,000 Daesh fighters," Shaghati told a news conference near Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region east of Mosul, using an Arabic acronym of ISIS.
Dhaka: Fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami elected its new chief who hailed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's father Mujibur Rahman as the "architect" of Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan, in a bid to mend ties with the government after top Jamaat leaders were executed on 1971 war crime charges.
Former school teacher Maqbul Ahmed, 70, was elected as new Jamaat-e-Islami leader after a secret ballot of party members, the Islamist party said in a statement yesterday.
The post was lying vacant after its former chief Motiur Rahman Nizami was hanged in May after a tribunal convicted him of mass murder during the 1971 war of independence.
In his first statement after his election as Jamaat's new 'ameer', Ahmed, who is untainted by war crime allegations, paid tribute to Hasina's father, who led the war of independence against Pakistan.
"I pay profound respect to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the architect of the country's independence...," he said. He also paid tributes to "other undisputed leaders of the Liberation War of Bangladesh" including slain president Zia-ur Rahman, who is the founder of Jamaat's ally BNP. BNP is the main opposition outside parliament as it did not take part in the 2014 elections after Jamaat was barred from contesting the polls following a Supreme Court ruling.
Ahmad was serving as acting Jamaat chief after the execution of Nizami and four other top party leaders, including the party's secretary general, its two joint secretaries and its main financier, following trials that rights groups have condemned as unfair.
The new Jamaat chief also paid tributes to his predecessor Nizami and grand predecessor Gholam Azam, also a war crimes convict who died last year while serving imprisonment until death, recalling "their contributions to country's development and democracy".
"The government hanged five senior (Jamaat) leaders to death on false charges," Ahmed said. Jamaat opposed Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan, but denies its leaders were involved in mass murders and rapes during the nine-month long conflict.
Bangladesh launched the war crimes trial process in 2010 in line with electoral pledges of Prime Minister Hasina's ruling Awami League which had stewarded the Liberation War in 1971 when Jamaat formed militia units as auxiliary forces of the Pakistani troops. Several Jamaat leaders earlier said they would now reorganise the party with leaders free of war crimes stigma.
Islamabad: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has told China's Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong that his party's planned protest next month is not directed at the USD 46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.
This message was conveyed to the Chinese envoy at Imran's Bani Gala residence on Tuesday.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has announced plans to stage a protest in Islamabad on November 2, the Express Tribune has reported.
Officially, there was no word from the PTI on the meeting, but sources said discussions revolved round the CPEC and the PTI's upcoming sit-in which aims to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to present himself for accountability.
Imran is reported to have told the Chinese envoy that the PTI protest is aimed at the 'rampant corruption' of the government and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and had nothing to do with CPEC.
Both also agreed that Chinese investment was crucial for Pakistan's future and prosperity, sources were quoted by the paper, as saying.
Earlier this year, the Chinese embassy in Islamabad had issued a press statement calling on the political leadership of the country to resolve their issues for the smooth implementation of the CPEC.
More than 300 school children have been hospitalised since yesterday afternoon, but none face life-threatening illness, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. (Representational Image)
Beijing: Over 300 school children were hospitalised in China due to food poisoning, authorities said on Wednesday.
Shigella sonnei bacteria were found in the feces of patients who are among hundreds treated for food poisoning in northern China, they said.
More than 300 school children have been hospitalised since yesterday afternoon, but none face life-threatening illness, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
According to doctors, patient blood test reports showed high white blood cell levels, indicating infection.
Experts said the discovery confirmed that the students were suffering from gastrointestinal diseases caused by the bacteria.
"Shigella sonnei bacteria can breed in food and water at an optimum temperature, which can easily cause bacillary dysentery," they said, adding severe cases of shigellosis can be so serious that patients, particularly young children and the elderly, need to be hospitalised.
Further investigation into the cause of the outbreak is under way, the report said.
Kathmandu: The fourth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission, the high level bilateral mechanism, is scheduled to be held in New Delhi next week, the Nepalese government said on Wednesday.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Nepalese counterpart Prakash Sharan Mahat will lead the two delegations at the October 26-27 meeting that will review and assess past agreements and commitments reached between the two countries, according to Foreign Ministry officials in Kathmandu.
The Joint Commission meeting to be held between the two foreign ministers will be followed by a Foreign Secretary -level meeting, the officials said.
During the recent state visit of Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' to India, both sides had agreed to hold the Joint Commission Meeting "at the earliest".
During the meeting discussions will be held on a wide range of bilateral issues and also focus on expediting the India-funded projects and setting up of a joint mechanism at the government level to monitor progress of these projects in Nepal.
Besides, the meeting will also chalk out a time-bound plan to complete the pending projects, they said.
The third meeting of the joint commission was held in Kathmandu in 2014 after a gap of more than two decades.
Sharif stated this when he met Bank of China chairman Tian Guoli who called on him in Islamabad. (Photo: AFP)
Islamabad: Pakistan and China's "all weather" relationship is based upon shared principles and interests that form the foundation of cooperation in diverse fields, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Wednesday.
Sharif stated this when he met Bank of China chairman Tian Guoli who called on him in Islamabad.
"Highlighting China's great support to Pakistan in security, trade and infrastructure development, the Prime Minister said that Pakistan and China have a shared future and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the largest comprehensive project with any foreign country," according to an official statement.
"CPEC is a fusion of multiple development projects, aimed at the prosperity and well-being of the citizens of the country and the region at large," it quoted Sharif saying.
The prime minister said that Pakistan has a vibrant banking system that has achieved high level of profitability, improved liquidity and strong solvency position.
Sharif said sound capital base, remarkable growth in assets and profitability and compliance with international standards has poised Pakistan's banking sector in a very competitive position in the region for investors.
He said foreign ownership in Pakistan's banking sector has consistently and considerably increased and the government has recently concluded USD 700 million financing agreement with China Development Bank which is the first such interaction with the Chinese banking industry.
Tian lauded the vision of Sharif for putting the country on development path and turning around the economy.
Tian said that CPEC has huge economic benefits for the people of Pakistan and the region.
The court observed that the licenses were supposed to be issued for wine shops which were only meant to sell foreign or local liquor to non-Muslims during their festivals. (Representational Image)
Karachi: A Pakistani court has ordered the recall of all licenses granted to wine shops in Karachi to allow the sale of foreign or local liquor to non-Muslims during their festivals, citing apparent misuse.
The Sindh High Court (SHC) directed the provincial excise and taxation authorities to recall all licenses granted to wine shops here over 'astonishingly high' sale of liquor in the past three months at 11 outlets in the posh areas of Clifton and Defence.
The SHC Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah is hearing a petition against issuing licences to wine shops in Muslim-populated areas. The petitioner, Shaharyar David, had sought cancellation of the licences of wine shops in Defence and Clifton areas.
The court observed that the licenses were supposed to be issued for wine shops which were only meant to sell foreign or local liquor to non-Muslims during their festivals.
The court, while recalling all licenses of wine shops, observed Section 17 of Prohibition (enforcement of Hadd) Order, 1979 which does not allow sale of liquor throughout the year.
In Pakistan, the sale of alcohol is banned but the government has allowed licenses for wine shops which can only sell liquor to non-Muslims but it is no secret that the majority of customers at these shops are Muslims.
The court asked the excise and taxation director general about the spread of liquor shops in Karachi, particularly district South where 24 licences were granted even though as per the NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) and election commission records, no more than 59,000 non-Muslims resided there.
The director general submitted that the government had prescribed a monthly quota of 16 cans of beer and eight bottles each of 750 ml of Pakistani manufactured or foreign liquor for each non-Muslim in the province.
The Sindh government excise and taxation department charges a fee of 8 million rupees to issue a license to open a wine shop.
Islamabad: Lawmakers from the upper house have expressed fear that if Pakistan's interests are not actively protected, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) could turn into another East India Company, which became the precursor to the British colonial presence in the subcontinent, eventually gaining power and overthrowing the ruling Mughals.
"Another East India Company is in the offing; national interests are not being protected. We are proud of the friendship between Pakistan and China, but the interests of the state should come first," the Dawn quoted Senator Tahir Mashhadi, chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development as saying, as he addressed concerns raised by some committee members that the government was not protecting the rights and interests of the people.
Following a briefing by Planning Commission Secretary Yousuf Nadeem Khokhar, a number of committee members voiced their fears over what they perceived as the utilisation of local financing for the CPEC projects, instead of funding from the Chinese or any other foreign investment.
They also expressed concern over the fixing of power tariff for CPEC-related power projects by the Chinese.
Since only one of three Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) members of the committee were present at the meeting, most of this criticism went unanswered. PML-N's Senator Saeedul Hassan Mandokhail also endorsed the committee chairman's complaints.
The meeting was informed that a major portion of the CPEC depended on local finances rather than Chinese investment. "It will be very harmful for us if we have to bear the entire burden; will this [project] be a national development or a national calamity? Whatever loans taken from China will have to be paid by the poor people of Pakistan," Mashhadi observed.
Highlighting the status of CPEC-related power projects, the Planning Commission secretary said that the Matiari-Lahore transmission line project had "not been scrapped" and was being pursued by its Chinese sponsors.
Recently, the National Energy Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) had approved tariff for the project, while the government's Private Power Infrastructure Board had filed a review petition on the tariff in order to address the sponsors' concerns.
At this, Senator Usman Khan Kakar pointed out that NEPRA had fixed the power tariff for the project at 71 paisas/unit, while Chinese investors were demanding 95 paisas/unit.
"The government has filed an appeal before Nepra, seeking the increase despite the fact that the burden will be borne by poor consumers," he said.
He also said that the infrastructure being established in Gwadar would only benefit the Chinese and Punjab governments, not the local community. "The people of Balochistan will only get one benefit from this project, which is the water supply," he said, adding that no electricity or railway projects had been planned for Balochistan under the CPEC.
Senator Mandokhail said that a sense of deprivation was being instilled in smaller provinces. "We do not want the CPEC at the cost of the federation," he added.
He also accused the Planning Commission of prioritising Balochistan very low on its list, given that it has not representation in the commission itself.
Jamaat-i-Islami Emir Senator Sirajul Haq said that like certain other parts of the country, Fata and AJK were also being neglected in the CPEC. "There is nothing for both areas in the CPEC," he said and suggested that a 35km road was built to link Muzaffarabad to the CPEC so that the people of AJK could also reap its benefits.
Iraqi forces were making gains as tens of thousands of fighters advanced on Mosul today in an unprecedented offensive to retake the city from the Islamic State group.
With the crucial battle in its second day, Iraqi commanders said progress was being made as fighters pushed on two main fronts against the jihadists' last stronghold in Iraq.
The US military, which is leading a coalition providing air and ground support, said Iraqi forces even looked "ahead of schedule" but senior Western officials warned the battle would be long and difficult.
Advancing in armoured convoys across the dusty plains surrounding Mosul, forces moved into villages defended by pockets of IS fighters after intensive aerial bombardment.
Massive columns of smoke rose from burning oil wells near the main staging base for government forces in Qayyarah, blotting out the horizon.
A soldier at a checkpoint nearby said that IS lit the wells on fire to provide cover from air strikes before the town of Qayyarah was retaken in late August. The fires had been burning ever since.
Heavy smoke was also hanging over Mosul itself as the jihadists burned tyres to shield themselves, resident Abu Saif said.
Speaking to AFP from inside the city, Abu Saif said that while the sounds of air strikes and explosions could be heard coming from outside Mosul, its streets were eerily quiet.
"The streets are empty, the people have been staying at home since the strikes started yesterday," said Abu Saif, a 47-year-old former company manager.
"There is this happiness inside us... because we feel that we are about to be rescued," he said.
"But we are scared that Daesh (IS) can still carry out acts of revenge against the population."
The long-awaited Mosul offensive was launched on Monday, with some 30,000 federal forces leading Iraq's largest military operation since the 2011 pullout of US troops.
Retaking Mosul would deprive IS of the last major Iraqi city under its control, dealing a fatal blow to the "caliphate" the jihadists declared two years ago after seizing large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
Iraqi commanders said IS fighters were hitting back with suicide car bomb attacks but that the offensive was going as planned. "Many villages have already been liberated," said Sabah al-Numan, the spokesman of the elite counter-terrorism service.
"Iraqi forces have achieved their goals and even more, but we're careful to stick to the plan and not rush this."
The two main fronts are south of Mosul, where forces are moving from Qayyarah, and east, where another push involving Kurdish peshmerga fighters is under way.
In the south, forces inching forward along the Tigris river were training their sights on a village called Hammam al-Alil, while units east of Mosul were close to Qaraqosh, once Iraq's biggest Christian town.
A siege is likely to ensue and then a breach by crack units that will engage die-hard IS fighters.
Some classes were held at Delhi Universitys Faculty of Law on Tuesday after four days, said students and teachers.
The students were still able to shut down most classes despite the fact that number of students protesting over exam results have gone down.
Today we have symbolically shut down the college after authorities tried to use force on us to get up from our hunger strike, said Vimal, a protesting student.
The students also burnt an effigy of the DU vice chancellor on Tuesday.
The college has been shut since Friday because protesters entered the classes and disrupted them. On Friday, protestors locked up their dean, Professor Ved Kumari, in her office for an hour with two of her colleagues. They also broke windows at the Law Faculty old campus, some students said.
The protesters were not letting other students attend classes, a student said.
Students who are not on strike are divided on their stance. They felt sorry for the students who had failed, but also want the classes to go on.
Students who passed said that the highest percentage was 65% and the passing percentage was 45%. Most students got close to the passing percentage, barely 5% students got about 65%.
Ravita Singh, 2nd year law student, said, What they (protesters) are doing will help us also because if we fail, we will also have proper re-evaluation of papers instead of just totalling of marks.
Students main concern is their future in the field of law. According to the protesters, administration is playing foul: they have closed the library and administration room so that students who are not on strike feel uneasy.
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Delhi University Students Union have been with the students on their strike since past two months. ABVPs Ankit Singh Sangwan, general secretary of DUSU, said the unrest showed that the administration has failed, which is why DUSU has intervened.
As the vigor of the protest came down, protestors on Friday requested authorities to open the library and the administration room so that students could submit their exam forms.
But the library was later locked again, the protesters said. Law Faculty classes started one month late this year because the Bar Council of India, which is the authority on legal education in India, delayed admission of students who passed the entrance exam in 2016. They had also decided to scrap evening classes in the college, which also faced strong protests in the college delaying normal classes.
A 36-year-old man who cheated over 30 divorcees and widows of money was arrested on Monday.
Manish Gupta created a fake profile on matrimonial websites, where he posed as a single man who ran a business which gave him a turnover of Rs 1 crore per annum, said the police.
He extorted Rs 75, 000 from one of them and investigation is underway to find out what happened with the others.
The woman who filed the complaint in Ashok Vihar police station, made thorough enquiries and found that he was married, has two children and that his online profile was fake. She made the complaint on October 9.
She told the police that she met him at the beginning of the year when Gupta had emailed her his profile.
He gave her false hopes of marriage and dated her for a while, so as to take her into confidence.
According to the complaint, Gupta called up the woman in June and told her that he lost his wallet, credit card and a diamond ring and urgently required some money.
The police said that the woman, assuming that she was helping her future husband, deposited an amount of Rs 50,000 in his Axis bank account and transferred an extra Rs 25,000.
After this transaction, he began responding to her lesser and soon all communication stopped, the woman told police.
Gupta had posted his profile on matrimonial websites like Bharatmatrimony.com, Jeevansaathi.com and Simplymarry.com.
The profile said that he has done his MBA from Symbiosis, Pune and is a graduate from Kirori Mal College in Delhi University, said police.
Although the address mentioned in his bio-data was wrong, his mother and brother were traced. They told the police that they have not seen him for the past 10 years.
Gupta was nabbed in Ashok Vihar on Sunday.
Gupta dropped out of college after his second year. He moved away from his brothers, sold his share of property, and started indulging in such activities, the police said.
The monthly car-free day, launched with much fanfare by the Aam Aadmi Party government in the national capital last year, has been given a quiet burial.
The exercise was started on October 22 last year in a bid to decongest city roads and to curb pollution by cars.
The initial idea was to ban cars on the 22nd of every month on a chosen stretch of road. The then Transport Minister Gopal Rai had termed it the beginning of a revolution.
However, it could not complete even a year.
It was a failed arrangement. It was suddenly abandoned on the direction from the government, said an official. There has been no car-free day after February this year.
Officials point at lack of planning and coordination between various stakeholders as the reason for abandoning the car-free day. It also seemed to be another victim of confrontational politics between the Lieutenant Governor and the Delhi government.
During the third car-free day, the Delhi Police pointed out that under section 115 of Motor Vehicles Act, the government has to take permission from the LG before prohibiting entry of vehicles on certain roads.
In the first two car-free days, the police cooperated but later they said that they wont stop vehicles and it has to be voluntary till a notification by the LG is issued, said a senior government official.
In the fourth such exercise in January this year, when the stretch between Vishwa Vidyalaya Metro Station and Chhatrasal Stadium was meant to be car-free for a day, Deputy Chief Minister had even accused police of non-cooperation.
Sources said the problem started with the car-free day on the busy Vikas Marg between Nirman Vihar Metro Station and Laxmi Nagar last December. Since it is an arterial road connecting east Delhi to Central Delhi, restricting cars on the stretch led to traffic jams on connecting roads.
Restricting entry on Vikas Marg means chaos in all directions. Not much thought went into it. Car-free day was a good idea but badly implemented, said the official.
He suggested that such events should be held on inside or peripheral roads and not during office timings.
Critical preparatory measures are needed during such exercises. You have to design and see which stretches can be earmarked for car-free days. Also, people need to have clarity about movement of public transport like Metro and bus service when the car-free day is enforced, said Anumita Roychowdhary of Centre for Science and Environment.
After protracted negotiations, Russia has agreed to lease a second nuclear submarine to India in a deal which will cost around USD 2 billion.
Sources today said the deal was struck during the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 15 on the sidelines of the BRICS meet in Goa.
However, it was not part of the slew of announcements made after the talks.
The Defence Ministry and the Navy did not offer any information on the subject since it was a strategic platform coming under direct purview of the Prime Minister's Office.
Alexei Nikolski, a columnist with Russian daily Vedomosti, which broke the story, wrote, "According to a source in the Russian defence industry, the long-discussed lease to transfer a multipurpose Project 971 nuclear submarine to India from the Russian Navy was signed in Goa."
The Akula 2 class submarine is expected to arrive in Indian waters in 2020-21.
The Indian Navy already operates an Akula 2 class nuclear submarine, INS Chakra (formerly known as K-152 Nerpa), which was leased by Russia for 10 years and commissioned on April 4, 2012 after India paid for its completion of its construction and sea-trials.
India had been keen to lease a second nuclear submarine.
Indian defence sources had said that Russia had linked the lease of the nuclear submarine to the agreement for four stealth frigates.
In Goa, India and Russia announced an over USD 3 billion frigate deal. Under the agreement, two stealth frigates will be built in Russia while the other two would be built in India under license production.
The Akula 2 class submarine, though not the latest class of nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines in the world, is still considered one of the most advanced.
Capable of sailing at speeds up to 35 knots (nearly 65 km per hour) under water, it is among the quietest Russian submarines.
Justice Markandey Katju, summoned by the Supreme Court to explain his criticism of the Soumya case verdict, has said he was ready to do so but wanted the apex court to consider whether Article 124(7) of the Constitution barred him from appearing before it.
The Supreme Court had two days ago summoned Katju to appear in person before it to point out the "fundamental flaws", as claimed by him in the sensational Soumya rape case.
In a Facebook post, the former apex court judge said "I would be delighted to appear and discuss the matter in open court, but would only like the judges to consider whether, being a former Supreme Court judge, I am debarred from appearing by Article 124(7) of the Constitution. If the judges hold that it does not debar me, I would be happy to appear and place my views."
Article 124 deals with the establishment and constitution of the Supreme Court and its clause 7 says "No person who has held office as a Judge of the Supreme Court shall plead or act in any court or before any authority within the territory of India".
In his latest post, Katju also said he was preparing his detailed response which would also be uploaded on his Facebook page.
"I have yet to receive the notice from the Supreme Court in the Soumya case, though I have been informally informed about it by the advocate on record of the Kerala Govt.," the former judge added.
A Thrissur trial court had awarded Govindachamy the death sentence for raping 23-year-old Soumya on February 1, 2011, after pushing her out of a running train in Kerala. The death sentence was confirmed by the high court. The apex court had commuted to life the death penalty awarded to the convict.
In an earlier Facebook post, Katju had criticised the apex court saying it had grievously erred by not holding the convict guilty of murder and its judgement needed to be reviewed.
"It is regrettable that the Court has not read section 300 carefully. The judgment needs to be reviewed in an open court hearing," Katju had said in his post.
An apex court bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and U U Lalit had on October 17 said, "We issue notice to Justice Markandey Katju, former judge of this Court and request him to appear in Court in person and participate in the proceedings on November 11...as to whether the judgment and order dated September 15 passed by this Bench...suffers from any fundamental flaw so as to require exercise of the review jurisdiction."
Noted Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen today slammed those who are boycotting Pakistani artistes, saying terrorists should be banned not artistes, and cautioned that such actions were similar to Hitler's idea of 'blood purity'.
In a series of tweets, Taslima, who is living in exile in India after facing death threats from fundamentalists in Bangladesh, said, "Ban terrorists. Don't ban artists. Artistes belong to the places where art is honoured.
"Today you ban Pakistani artists. Tomorrow you ban Bangladeshi writers. You will live with yourselves. 'Pure Indian' blood. Hitler's idea of 'blood purity'."
Hitler, who led Germany during World War II, propagated the idea of a "pure Aryan race" supremacy under Nazism, leading to the killings of millions of Jews and ban on mixed marriages.
Taslema's came a day after filmmaker Karan Johar said he will not "engage with talent" from Pakistan in future and made a fervent appeal against stalling his upcoming film 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' that features Fawad Khan.
In the aftermath of the Uri terror attack last month in which 19 Indian jawans were killed, the MNS issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave India. They also threatened to stop the screening of films featuring artistes from Pakistan.
Subsequently, Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association passed a motion to ban the artistes from the neighbouring country.
The Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India recently decided not to screen the films with Pakistani actors in four states -- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa.
Yesterday, Taslima had also tweeted on the issue of triple talaq saying, "No religious law is good. Better to have strict separation between religion & state. Uniform civil code based on equality & justice urgently necessary."
In yet another sign of worsening infighting in Samajwadi Party,UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today announced that he will embark on his 'Vikas Rath Yatra' alone from November 3 which will make him skip the party's silver jubilee celebrations slated to begin two days later.
In a letter to his father and party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Chief Minister declared his intention to commence his yatra, which was put off last month after the open turf war with his uncle Shivpal Yadav, saying all political parties have already started their campaign for the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
"I had decided to take out the yatra from October 3 but it was cancelled due to some reasons. I will take out the 'Samajwadi Vikas Rath Yatra' from November 3," Akhilesh wrote.
The announcement gave rise to speculation that Akhilesh might skip SP's sliver jubilee celebrations that begin on November 5 to send a message that he was unhappy over the expulsion of youth leaders from the party, who would not be present at the event.
Apart from reaching out to people and galvanising party workers, Akhilesh's yatra is seen as a move to truncate the influence of Shivpal, who had been appointed the new state party president in his place.
Akhilesh has also sent copies of the letter to state party chief Shivpal Yadav and National General Secretary Ram Gopal Yadav. He said yatra's detailed programme will be communicated to district presidents and party workers in due course.
Earlier in the day, Akhilesh, Shivpal Yadav, and Mulayam held a closed-door meeting at party supremo's 5 Vikramaditya Marg residence to discuss poll strategy.
According to party sources, Akhilesh is adamant on his demands of revoking the expulsion of youth leaders, some of whom are MLCs, and having his say in the ticket distribution.
Akhilesh had earlier announced his decision to take out the yatra from October 3 through his twitter handle with a picture in which he was seen sitting inside a bus.
He had last month hit back over his removal from the party post by stripping Shivpal of his key ministerial portfolios but had to retreat as Mulayam stepped in.
The infighting continues unabated with Mulayam siding with Shivpal and his cousin Ram Gopal throwing his weight behind the the Chief Minister. The distribution of tickets and whether Akhilesh should be projected as CM candidate remain a bone of contention.
One of Shivpal's first acts as state party chief was sacking Ram Gopal's nephew and party MLC Arvind Pratap Yadav, and a former village head in Etawah Akhilesh Kumar Yadav for their alleged involvement in land-grabbing and other such activities.
Recently, Shivpal announced the first list of the party's candidates for the assembly elections without even consulting either the Chief Minister or Ram Gopal. The SP chief's reluctance to categorically back Akhilesh as the party's CM candidate as added fuel to fire which threatens to mar the ruling party's prospects.
The pro-chief minister camp fears that all this is a part of a systematic attempt to undermine him and deny him a say in the party.
Ram Gopal, who has sided with the CM, shot off an angry letter to Mulayam, urging him to intervene and get Shivpal to take back the expelled leaders and to ensure that the CM had a decisive say in ticket distribution.
After today's meeting between the SP chief and Ram Gopal, there was no indication that the stand-off had been resolved. Meanwhile, Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, Delhi Maulana Syed Ahmad Bukhari today met Akhilesh, Mulayam and Shivpal to discuss a possible patch-up.
Spurt in the incidents of gun-snatching by militants in Kashmir has triggered concern in the security establishment, prompting the army to say today that it is working with police to tackle the new strategy of the ultras.
Over the last three months, 67 weapons, including AK-47, INSAS, Carbine, SLR, .303 rifles, have been looted and snatched from police personnel in 12 such incidents.
"It is a new strategy and plan of the militants with twin objective of making new recruits prove their loyalty and commitment towards gun culture and also to create public perception about demoralisation in the police forces," a senior police officer said.
The officer, however, dismissed the theory that the snatching is done to armm militants, arguing that the weapons like INSAS, Carbines, SLR rifles are not of much use to the militants unlike the AK rifles.
"Rifle snatching incidents witnessed recently in the valley, particularly in south Kashmir, is a cause of concern, said Srinagar-based Army Commander Lt Gen Satish Dua at a function today.
"There are some small pickets of the police where they are not able to take care of the situation if the militants come in. It is being addressed jointly with the police, he added.
Among the steps that are being taken by the forces is to increase the number of men at pickets, including those guarding minority community members in south Kashmir.
Hizbul Mujahideen commander Zakir Rashid Bhat, who was close to slain militant commander Burhan Wani, in a recent video message has said that several youth have snatched weapons from security forces and have joined the Hizb ranks.
"Anyone who wants to join us, he should snatch a weapon and join us. We welcome them all wholeheartedly, said Zakir, a former engineering student of Chandigarh, in the video.
Police feels his vedio message will further incite and encourage youth to snatch and loot weapons from police and other forces in Kashmir in days to come.
Former Army officer Brig (retd) Anil Gupta said the security agencies have to stop this, otherwise the number of the armed militants in Kashmir will increase.
"It is concern. Weapon-snatching is being done because militants cannot now smuggle in weapons from across the LoC due to high degree of security. So they go for snatching and looting of weapons," he said.
Brig Gupta, who has served at 16 Crops headquarters and various other formations in J&K, said, "although police has taken some measures to use digital chips-based GRP tracking system, my suggestion is to put in place Radio Frequency Identification Disc (RFID).
"The RFID should be embedded on the weapon and a code given to weapon handler. The weapon can fire only when both the codes match, otherwise it is of no use," he said.
The snatching incidents started soon after Burhan's killing, when people attacked police station Damhal Hanjipora in South Kashmir's Kulgam district on July 11 and potential militants looted 39 rifles including 21 INSAS rifles, 12 SLRs, One LMG and 2 AK rifles.
On October 16 night, militants decamped with five rifles from policemen guarding a broadcast tower in Davlach village in Dooru-Shahabad area of this South Kashmir district.
The militants managed their entry into a room at Lower Power Transmitter Station of public service broadcaster Doordarshan in Davlash village where weapons were kept and escaped with the weapons, including 3 SLRs, one INSAS and a Carbine without any resistance.
Earlier on October 8, militants snatched two service rifles from a minority police post in Tumlihal-Lassipora in Pulwama district.
A day prior to that, weapons were snatch from policemen guarding a minority picket in Jamnagri village of Shopian. In the fire fight, one cop was killed, two others including a Kashmiri Pandit were injured.
On October 3, militants ran away with five automatic rifles from a minority post in Kulgam district.
On September 28, they decamped with service rifle of guards of former NC MLA in Shopian.
Prior to that, militants, on the night of September 18, decamped with four service rifles from security guards of ruling Peoples Democratic Party district president, Advocate Javed Sheikh.
Four rifles were also snatched from policemen guarding the house of a former National Conference leader in Begam village in Pombia area of Kulgam district on the evening of September 8.
On September 5, a Communist leaders house in Kulgam was attacked and a rifle snatched from the police personnel on duty.
On August 31, militants sneaked into protesters who attacked PDP leader and Rajya Sabha member Nazir Ahmad Laways house in Chawalgam village of Kulgam district and ran away with four rifles.
In a bid to snatch rifles, militants attacked a Police Picket guarding minority families at Sirnoo village of Pulwama.
Helios the multibrand premium watch retailer from the Titan Company announced a strategic partnership with Swiss watchmaker Raymond Weil on Wednesday.
Through the pact, Raymond Weils watches will be exclusively retailed in India, through Helios and Ethos.
Addressing reporters, Titan Company Chief Executive Officer (Watches and Accessories) S Ravi Kant said, The contribution of Swiss brands is somewhere in the range of 25-30% today. We want to scale that up, and specifically, the affordable luxury brands sales are expected to double over the next three to four years.
At Helios, we are always looking at partnering with brands that share our passion for craftsmanship and synergy. Today, we are taking an important step in that direction, he said. As the first Swiss brand to enter the Indian watch market, Raymond Weil has been reaching out to Indian consumers since the last 30 years.
According to Raymond Weil President Olivier Bernheim, the partnership will bring about a quality distribution network in India for its products. Our aim in India is to partner with the same kind of quality distribution channels that we have in the US, England, Australia, and Spain, among others, where trained and educated sales staff are coherent with our strategy. Even in terms of service requirements, Helios staff will be trained by us in Geneva, while spares will be regularly shipped for service requirements.
Raymond Weil, which sells more than 150,000 watches a year and renews 25% of its range annually, showcased its core range of premium watches under the Maestro collection.
Meanwhile, Helios, which offers a range of the latest collections from over 25 international time brands, will soon have 50 stores, from the current 48 across 27 cities in India.
Nandini, the second largest co-operative milk brand in the country, has entered the Mumbai market with a target to sell 1 lakh litres per day within the next six months.
Close to 20-25 lakh litres of packed milk is sold in Mumbai on a daily basis. Since we had a surplus, we started supplying to Chennai and Hyderabad. Our next destination is Mumbai and aim is to sell 1 lakh litres per day within the next six months, Karnataka Co-operative Milk Producers Federation chairman P Nagaraju said.
We will expand beyond Mumbai and its outskirts to cities like Pune very soon and have identified 25 local dealers in the city already, Nagaraju added.
KMF, which is the largest co-operative dairy federation in south India, has been playing a vital role in boosting the rural economy ever since its inception in 1975.
KMF currently supplies around 80 lakh litres per day. A majority of it is sold in Karnataka (around 45-50 lakh litres/day) while the rest of it is sold in Hyderabad and Chennai (around 20,000 litres/day).
According to Nagaraju, KMF is also exploring the option of setting up its own dairy in Maharashtra. Our plan is to have our own dairy as well as collection centres in Maharashtra going forward. Once we have a decent scale, we will definitely look at it, Nagaraju said.
Our ultimate aim is to sell around 25 lakh litres to Maharashtra alone, Nagaraju added.
The deal finalised by 197 countries at Kigali in Rwanda to phase out industrial gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) marks yet another important event in the efforts to reduce global warming. It has followed the historic Paris Agreement on climate change which covers other greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide. The Paris Agreement has won the necessary support and ratification from the required number of countries and is likely to formally go into effect from November 4. The Kigali deal has amended the Montreal Protocol of 1987 which sought to regulate the emission of chloroflurocarbons (CFCs) and later HFCs which did serious damage to the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful radiation. Since HFCs are more dangerous than CFCs, global negotiations were held to completely put an end to their production and emission. After seven years, an agreement has now been reached.
The HFCs are mainly used in air conditioning and refrigeration which are established industries in the developed world and are growing fast in developing countries. Their elimination will mean disruption of industries and setbacks to growing economies. But successful phasing out of the production of HFC gases might contribute to a reduction of half a degree Celsius in the aim to cut global warming by 2 degrees by the end of this century. The Kigali agreement has given different deadlines to countries grouped under three heads to achieve the ends of freezing of HFC use and maximum reduction. This is welcome because countries are at different stages of development and have to address the problem and find solutions in different ways. Under the agreement, developed countries will start phasing down HFCs by 2019, one group of developing countries including China by 2024, and others including India by 2028. The deadline to achieve maximum reduction also varies and for India it is 2047.
Countries will now have to find alternatives to HFCs through development of new technologies. Some developed countries have made advances in this and they will have to help developing countries to fulfil their commitments through technology transfer and fina-ncing. But funding, which is to be decided next year, and technology transfer are not going to be easy, especially as the private sector controls much of these technologies. India, which has got a generous deadline, should encourage industry and research institutes to work on finding alternatives to HFCs. The industrial and scientific establi-shment should take this as a challenge. The Kigali imperatives should form part of the Make in India programme. It should be noted that the targets and deadlines set by the Kigali agreement are not voluntary but legally binding, unlike the commitments made under the Paris Agreement.
A politician named in one of Indias biggest mining scams resurfaced on Wednesday, handing out an ostentatious video invitation to his daughters wedding.
Janardhana Reddy, who spent more than three years in jail over the multi-crore illegal mining scam, stars in the lavish video with his family.
The invitation flatters invitees, referring to them as Gods, and beckons them to Palace Grounds where Janardhana Reddys daughter Brahmani weds Rajeev Reddy, a businessman based in Hyderabad, on November 16.
A minister in the erstwhile Yeddyurappa cabinet, Janardhana Reddy had maintained a low profile since his release on bail last year. On Wednesday, he visited media offices and the homes of fellow-politicians, escorted by a host of armed guards dressed like commandos.
The invitation is packaged in a decorative box. An LCD monitor attached to the printed card starts playing the moment the box is opened. The display plays the video in HD quality.
Janardhana Reddy and his wife Lakshmi Aruna, dressed in traditional attire, appear on screen. Folding their hands like characters out of a cheesy family drama, they say, Athithi devo bhava (The guest is God).
The bride and the groom then make their entry, again like characters in a film. The garish sets are clearly inspired by Telugu blockbusters. (Janardhana Reddy is known to be a fan of the Telugu star Chiranjeevi.)
The couple-to-be swirl around, while the Reddys from Ballari join them with their son. The last shot features a happy group. The dance was choreographed by a team led by actor Saikumar, a source told DH.
The song with its flowers, wild stallions and such other cliches was shot in Hyderabad over two weeks.
The invitation comes with dry fruits, and the cards are printed separately in English and Kannada. Each card cost the hosts about Rs 12,000, according to a source. Another source said the mining baron had spent at least Rs 5 crore on the invitations alone.
Brahmani, 21, is doing an undergraduate course in commerce in London. Her fiance Rajeev is an MBA from London and runs a business in Hyderabad, according to Janardhana Reddy.
The celebrations at Palace Grounds begin on November 15, a day ahead of the wedding. Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif are among the artistes expected to perform. Shashidar Adapa, production designer, will put up glittering sets at the venue, DH has learnt.
Janardhana Reddy says he has the Supreme Courts permission to visit Ballari for three weeks from November 1. After his arrest in September 2011, he was barred from visiting the city in northern Karnataka.
It was then the hub of the mining business in Karnataka. Janardhana Reddy was indicted in a multi-crore scam with wide political ramifications. I am sure I will be acquitted in all cases. I will be back in business soon, he said.
This is the first time that the 49-year-old leader is making appearance in public after his release from jail last year. The former minister was jailed for 40 months following his indictment by the Lokayukta and the CBI.
Hair today
The characters in the invitation video lip sync to a song with the refrain, Banni, banni (Come, come). The song goes on to describe the auspiciousness of the ceremony, and gets coy bride Brahmani to utter her fiance's name.
The spectacle lasts two minutes. Predictably, the video invite went viral, triggering much sarcasm on social media. A troll juxtaposed an earlier picture of a balding Janardhana Reddy with one from the video, where he has a head full of hair, attributing the transformation to a hair oil.
The Tamil Nadu Cabinet met for the first time on Wednesday after Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was hospitalised here for fever and dehydration on September 22.
Finance Minister O Pannerselvam, who has been alloted all eight portfolios hitherto held by Jayalalithaa, chaired the meeting with her photo on the table and also left the chief ministers regular seat empty in the Cabinet hall.
Cauvery issue
The meeting assumes significance as Tamil Nadu expressed its discontent over the recommendation of the Cauvery Technical Team in the apex court on Tuesday.
The meeting also came against the backdrop of Opposition parties, including the DMK, demanding an all-party meeting and a special Assembly session for passing a resolution to prevail upon the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board immediately.
Issues like the Madras High Courts refusal to lift the stay on civic polls and appointing officers to local bodies, as the term of councillors and mayors expires by October, were also discussed in the meeting.
The Union government has notified a set of new rules to regulate the medical device sector worth thousands of crores and growing.
For the first time, the rules will make a distinction between medical devices and drugs and pharmaceuticals, creating separate standards to monitor the two verticals.
The Medial Device Rules 2016 suggest categorisation of devices into four groups depending on the risks associated with the device. The rules are accompanied by a detailed schedule specifying how hundreds of types of devices being sold in the market would be classified.
Those with the least risk such as syringes, wheelchair or walking stick would come under Category A, whereas implantable devices like stents or pacemakers would be considered Category-D instruments.
The rules propose creation of medical device testing officer and medical device officer posts for regulations.
They also spell out plans to set up specialised facility for testing medical devices.
A medical device-testing centre will have to be accredited by a national accreditation body.
The draft notification is open for public comments for 30 days, following which it would
be finalised.
The new rules will fulfil a longstanding demand of the medical device industry to treat them differently from drugs and pharmaceuticals, as basic principles are different to a large extent.
The industry, however, is not completely satisfied with the new rules. We are disappointed that some of the points agreed to by the government have not found place in the current draft, Director General of Medical Technology Association of India, Pavan Choudary, told DH.
According to the rules, the manufacturing or importing companies have to have a licence every five years.
The industry, however, sought for a time frame of 10 years at least for orthopaedic implants like metal screws and plates, which the government rejected.
The medical device sector in India is heavily import-driven as of now. Ranging from the shelf life of a device to the date of sterilisation, the new rules also specify what the labels would carry for patient safety. For the existing products, manufacturers and importers would have to obtain a licence within 180 days from the date of the final notification.
The rules will be in place till the government comes out with a separate legislation to regulate the Rs 30,000-crore medical device sector.
India and Myanmar on Wednesday inked three pacts, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the neighbouring countrys State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi agreed to step up security cooperation.
India agreed to support Myanmar in creating police training infrastructure and share expertise in developing training manuals, including in forensics and cyber security. Modi and Suu Kyi also agreed to set up immigration facilities at the Tamu-Moreh and Rhi-Zowkhathar border crossing points in Manipur and Mizoram, respectively.
Modis meeting with Suu Kyi was followed by signing of an MoU between Financial Regulatory Department of Myanmar and Insurance Institute of India for designing an academic and professional programme for insurance industry of the neighbouring country.
Power sector
Two other MoUs for cooperation in power sector and on banking supervision between Reserve Bank of India and Central Bank of Myanmar were also inked.
As close and friendly neighbours, the security interests of India and Myanmar are closely aligned. We have agreed that a close coordination to ensure security in the areas along our border, and sensitivity to each others strategic interests, will serve the interests of our countries, Modi said after a meeting with Suu Kyi.
Suu Kyi is on her maiden visit to India after she led her party National League of Democracy to a landslide victory in November 2015 elections. Though the Nobel laureate holds the office of the foreign minister and state counsellor in the new Government of Myanmar, she is perceived to be the de-facto ruler of her country.
Recalling Gandhi, Nehru
In our struggle for democracy, we have been helped greatly by the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The two great leaders of Indian Independence movement have inspired with their vision and with their belief, Suu Kyi said.
Modi and Suu Kyi reaffirmed their shared commitment to fight insurgent activity and the scourge of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. They expressed the view that the long-standing commitment not to allow insurgent groups to use their soil for hostile activities against the other side was essential for the prosperity of the people residing along the border.
We have been trying to bring peace to our country for decades. We hope that time has come for us to be able to say we have made the breakthrough and we are now firmly set on the path to a union, that will be a union which will be just to people, Suu Kyi said.
For this too we look up to India with its experience of federalism, to teach us how we bring all our people into the process and to be part of our search for peace, stability and enduring federalism, she added.
The Congress on Wednesday seized Foreign Secretary S Jaishankars remarks at a Parliamentary panel on previous surgical strikes to accuse the Modi government of deception on the action of the armed forces.
The Congress also wanted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to state that surgical strikes were also carried out by the armed forces earlier.
I agree with the foreign secretary and thank him for setting the record straight, former home minister P Chidambaram said in a statement here.
Congress chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said Jaishankars statement at the Parliamentary Committee meeting had exposed the rhetoric, bravado and machismo of the Modi government.
(BJP President) Amit Shah and (Defence Minister Manohar) Parrikars lies lie exposed, Surjewala said hoping that the government would not axe the Foreign Secretary like his predecessor Sujatha Singh for exposing BJPs deception.
Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi questioned the reason for the government being non-magnanimous, non-gracious and non-truthful over the previous cross-LoC operations.
What is relevant is that we have done a cross border strike now for which we are very proud and we have done it earlier for which we are equally proud may be the policy then required restraint and silence, Singhvi said.
Media reports on the deliberations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs on the surgical strikes drew curious reactions from members of the panel.
While Congress member Satyavrat Chaturvedi expressed surprise at the word-by-word coverage of the deliberations of the committee, nominated Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta raised doubts over their accuracy.
Some media accounts of Parliamentary Committee where foreign secretary deposed, has left me puzzled. Wonder if I attended the same meeting, Dasgupta said on Twitter.
Committee chairman Shashi Tharoor also took to Twitter to state that confidentiality of the meeting would be maintained.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis comparison of the Indian militarys ability to conduct surgical strikes with Israeli forces acumen has won support but also raised the hackles of those who see a tilt in New Delhis approach towards the Palestine issue.
His remark at a rally honouring retired and serving soldiers in Himachal Pradeshs Mandi District also drew traction in Tel Aviv and reaction from the Muslim intellectuals here too.
Modi had said Our armys valor is being discussed across the country these days...We used to hear earlier that Israel has done this. The nation has seen that Indian army is no less than anybody.
Jerusalem Post noted that Modi made the comments in light of a clandestine operation conducted by the Indian military that saw multiple Pakistani militant bases in occupied Kashmir destroyed last month.
Hailing Israel and comparing it with Indian Army is an insult to the nation and its army which have always taken proud in always fighting for the cause of justice, wrote Dr Javed Jamil, a writer in The Siasat Daily of Hyderabad.
How can then Indian Armys valour be compared with that of Israel which is recognised all over the world with the exception of a few Western powers as a tyrant that has committed huge atrocities on Palestinian people? Dr Jamil said.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, The prime minister joins us in saying do not politicize but everyday under his nose it is being politicized. He himself talks of Israel, he himself links Dussehra and he himself goes to Lucknow and links the issue."
By mentioning Israel, the prime minister has hurt a lot of sentiments here, said Junaid Mattu, a spokesperson for the National Conference as the newspapers in the Kashmir Valley carried the news prominently.
Defending the PMs statement, BJP leaders say Israel's security forces are considered to be among the best in the world, renowned for their operational efficiency, especially in regards to their covert capabilities. All that the PM said is that the Indian Army is no less, said a party functionary.
Kashmiri separatists
They also pointed out that some Kashmiri separatists have themselves compared their struggle to the Palestinian cause and their "stone-throwing" strategy aimed at provoking the security forces was similar to what the Palestinian groups had done against the Israeli Army.
At the height of the unrest in the Kashmir Valley following the killing of separatist Burhan Wani, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury had told the Rajya Sabha that The use of pellet guns is inhumane. Even Israel has banned its use against the Palestinians.
Even as India is yet to give dates for Modis proposed visit to Israel, many see a change in the ties between the two countries.
A woman sarpanch here not only asked residents to boycott Chinese goods during Deepavali and Chhath festivals, but also threatened punitive action if the diktat is not followed.
The move comes in the wake of anger brewing against China, which sided with Pakistan in the aftermath of Indias surgical strike along the LoC following the Uri terror attack last month.
The idea to boycott Chinese goods during the festivals is simply to teach China a lesson for backing Pakistan at a time when the neighbouring country has been virtually isolated for exporting terror, said Gudia Devi, sarpanch of Obra panchayat, some 250 km from here. The sarpanch, in her mid-30s, deals with legal matters in the three-tier panchayat system. She has administered an oath to around 200 people not to use Chinese goods during Deepavali and Chhath. The sale of electronic lights, diyas and toys is quite high during the festive season.
Someone has to take an initiative. Given the kind of support China extended to Pakistan, all Indians should join hands to boycott Chinese goods. If we can make a small beginning from Obra, I am sure such a boycott will have a cascading effect on the Chinese economy. We have, therefore, decided to impose penalty on all those who do not follow the panchayat order, said Gudia.
But local businessmen, who procured Chinese items for sale, are not impressed with the boycott call. They fear huge losses during the festive month. We may incur huge losses if the panchayat directive is followed, said Sanjay, a local trader.
After 10 years of struggle and agitation, the proposed factory for the worlds cheapest car stands like a demolition site.
Heaps of scrap metal, crumpled under the power of bulldozers, stand in the place of a project some believe would have turned Singur into Tatas flagship town of Jamshedpur.
Tata Motors had planned to launch its $2,000 car from the Singur factory but later shifted the plant to Sanand in Gujarat. Ratan Tatas ambition has been reduced to nothing more than a battered pipe dream in the political landscape of Trinamool Congress chairperson and West Bengals Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee.
What lies ahead of ones vision just off NH 2 are mounds of metal, crumpled and forsaken, a day before Mamata is to officially hand over plots to farmers, who were unwilling to part with their land in 2006.
The state government on Wednesday decided to be flexible in its approach while holding negotiations with Maharashtra and Goa governments on the Mahadayi river water sharing issue.
After a meeting with leaders of all the political parties here, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told reporters that the government will have an open mind during the negotiations. We will attend the meeting in the spirit of give and take. We will not be rigid in our stand. We want the issue to be resolved through talks, he stated.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has convened the meeting following a suggestion by the Mahadayi River Water Disputes Tribunal to all the riparian states to try resolving the issue through talks. The Tribunal had in July this year rejected Karnatakas plea seeking 7 tmcft of water from the Mahadayi river for Kalasa-Banduri drinking water project.
The negotiation meeting that was scheduled to be held on October 21 in Mumbai at 12 noon has been postponed. However, Siddaramaiah was not aware of the meeting being postponed when he briefed the media around 9 pm at the Vidhana Soudha. Offficial sourcessaid that Siddaramaiah received a communication from his Maharashtra counterpart that the meeting has been postponed as the Goa chief minister is not well.
Siddaramaiah said Karnataka has approached the Tribunal seeking 36.558 tmcft of the Mahadayi water for irrigation, drinking water and power generation requirements. Of the total yield of 199.6 tmcft (with 75% dependability), about 44.15 tmcft of the river water is generated in Karnataka. Negotiations will be held for 36.558 tmcft. Currently, almost the entire river water is going to the sea, he added.
Leaders of the BJP and the JD(S) suggested that the government have an open mind at the meeting convened by Fadnavis. All the political parties have welcomed the Tribunals suggestions to hold talks. The government will hold a meeting with its legal and technical teams before attending the meeting, Siddaramaiah said.
The meeting to resolve the long-pending Mahadayi river dispute that was to be chaired by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday has been postponed.
The meeting has been postponed, possibly it would be held after a fortnights time, a top official in the Chief Ministers Office (CMO) told DH on Wednesday night. Fadnavis was to chair the meeting in which Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar were to be present. Fadnavis had taken lead in resolving the issue.
Asked about the reasons for the cancellation of the meeting, the CMO official said that there was a request from the Goa CMs office that he would not be able to attend the meeting on Friday because of some urgent commitments and requested it to be rescheduled after 15 days.
The Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal, headed by J M Panchal, suggested the three states Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka resolve the issue through talks with or without a third-party mediation. Besides the chief ministers, water resources ministers and bureaucrats of the three neighbouring states were to attend the meeting.
The Mahadayi or Kalasa-Banduri project is undertaken by the Karnataka government to improve drinking water supply to the twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad and irrigation in parts of Belagavi and Gadag districts. The project involves building barrages across Kalasa and Banduri, tributaries of the Mahadayi river, to divert 7 tmcft of water to the Malaprabha river, which supplies water for drinking as well as irrigation to parched areas.
The Karnataka government proposes to divert some water from the Mahadayi river to the Malaprabha river basin as part of the Kalasa-Banduri Nala project, as approximately 200 tmcft of water flows into the Arabian Sea. The Mahadayi Water Tribunal has to decide on the sharing of the rivers waters between Karnataka and Goa.
India and China on Wednesday conducted the first ever military exercise in eastern Ladakh, the theatre of regular friction between the armed forces of the two nations.
The day-long exercise assumes significance as part of the 1962 Sino-India battle was fought in the same area. The two neighbours share a disputed boundary known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Friction between the border guarding and patrolling forces from the two sides is a regular affair in the region. The Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) exercise simulates an earthquake striking an Indian border village, following which joint teams carry out rescue operations, evacuation and render medical assistance.
The Indian contingent was led by Brig R S Raman, while the Chinese side was headed by Sr Col Fan Jun. The exercise was a great success and has not only refined the drills to provide succor to the border population in case of a natural calamity, but has also increased the level of trust and cooperation between the two border guarding forces along the LAC in eastern Ladakh, said an Indian Army spokesperson.
This is the third HADR exercise between the two neighbours and the first one in Ladakh. The exercise is a sequel to a similar one held on February 6 in Chusul sector on the Chinese side of the LAC.
The Chusul Garrison of the army and Chinese troops from the Moldo Garrison participated in the February event. The first such exercise took place in Sikkim in 2015. The HADR drill comes a month before the two armies are to be engaged in a counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism exercise in Pune.
The November 15-27 Hand-in-Hand engagement between Indian and Chinese troops comes in the wake of opening up a new border personnel meeting point at Daulat Beg Oldie in Ladakh.
Somwarpet JMFC Court has posted the hearing on a private complaint against former MP and Congress leader Ramya to December 29.
Ramya is facing a private complaint in the court seeking action on sedition and other charges for insulting Indian patriots by her remark that Pakistan is not hell. Advocate Katnamane Vittal had filed a private complaint in the court.
Judge Shyamprakash on Wednesday directed the complainant to produce a few more documents in connection with the complaint. The complaint was admitted for hearing on August 22. The hearing was supposed to be held on August 27. Following advocates boycott of the court proceedings on August 27, the hearing was postponed to October 19.
Speaking to mediapersons, Katnamane Vittal said, A powerful minister had appealed to withdraw private complaint against Ramya. The complaint will not be withdrawn at any cost. The fight will be continued and I will furnish the required document to the court.
The Hiriyur police have busted a banned foreign currency racket and arrested four persons who were trying to exchange the banned Turkish Lira, worth crores of rupees.
Based on a tip-off, the police raided Uday Hotel near Avadhani Nagar in Hiriyur, seized 96 notes with a face value of 5 lakh Lira (Turkish currency) and five mobile phones. The arrested have been identified as Channakeshavareddy (32) of Telangana, Yashodharao (25), P Haribabu (32) and P Bheemesh Reddy (40) of Andhra Pradesh.
At a press conference, SP Rangarajan a team of Hiriyur police, led by DySP, comprising PSI Shivakumar and head constables, has been sent to Telangana for investigation. The team would trace the kingpin, he added. The SP said a similar case was reported from Sanjayanagar police station jurisdiction in Bengaluru last week. We are investigating whether the two cases are related,he added.
The state Cabinet on Wednesday decided to order an interdepartmental probe into the utilisation of Rs 1,048 crore since 2009 released for civil works for schools. The move follows charges of inordinate delay in execution of projects taken up under the Rashtriya Madhaymik Shikshana Abhiyan.
Briefing reporters after the Cabinet meeting, Law Minister T B Jayachandra said as many as 210 civil works, including construction of school buildings, at an estimated cost Rs 1,907 crore had been finalised in 2009 (when the BJP government was in power) under the Rashtriya Madhaymik Shikshana Abhiyan. Of this, the states share amounted to Rs 1,119 crore.
Jayachandra said a total of Rs 1,048 crore (including state and the central governments share being Rs 641 crore and Rs 707 crore respectively) had been released up to 2013 for execution of works.
However, there have been charges of inordinate delay in completion of works and also lapses in the utilisation of funds. At the same time, an additional amount of Rs 199 crore had been sought for completion of works over and above the grants sanctioned.
He said an interdepartmental inquiry comprising officials of the public works, education and law departments will probe the charges. He said the panel has been given two months to submit its report.
The state government had earlier ordered a Lokayukta inquiry into the matter but the probe did not make any headway. Jayachandra said the government will decide on its next course of action following the recommendation of the panel. At the same time, work on projects for which work slips had been sanctioned will continue, he said.
Jayachandra said the Cabinet decided to allow deferred payment by Department of Information and Public Relations for the 100 acres of land sanctioned for construction of a Film City at Immavu in Nanjangud taluk in Mysore district. The government has proposed that the Film City be developed under a public-private partnership (PPP) model.
The state Cabinet also gave its approval for the constitution of the Banavasi Development Authority in Uttara Kannada district.
Banavasi, one of the oldest towns in the state, was the capital of the kingdom ruled by the Kadamba Dynasty. The town, situated in the midst of a forest, is known for its Madhukeshwara temple built in the 9th century.
Winter session next month
The winter session of the state legislature will be held between November 21 and December 2 in Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, Belagavi. The total working days would be 10 days, said Law Minister T B Jayachandra.
Quarters for judges
The state cabinet on Wednesday approved construction of four quarters for judges of the Karnataka High Court at a cost of Rs 10 crore near Hebbal in Bengaluru. According to official sources, the new bungalows will come up at a plot originally owned by the Karnataka Agro Industries Corporation in Hebbal where there are already 15 quarters for judges. Initially, the four bungalows were to planned to be constructed at a cost of Rs 19 crore but the Cabinet decided to scale down the cost of Rs 10 crore, the sources added.
Otherdecisions
Construction of four bungalows for judges at Judicial Layout in Bengaluru at a cost of Rs 19 crore
3 months additional time provided to newly recruited 465 junior and assistant executive engineers of RD&PR department to report to duty. There is reluctance to accept the job offer because of low salary and rural postings.
Retired KAS officer G H Puttahalagaiah appointed Chief Executive Officer, Roerich and Devika Rani Roerich Estate Board.
28 professors of Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals, Bengaluru to get UGC pay scales
With rapid advances in technology, schools in Bengaluru are using hi-tech communication systems and apps to keep tabs on students, update parents on the goings-on in the institution and dispense information on coursework and other activities.
For example, BGS National Public School, Hulimavu, has been using a free school communication system called Yokibu that saves the school a lot of time. S Ayyappan Nair, academic director at BGS Group of Institutions, explained, We have been using this system for six years now and we can do a lot of things with it like dispense information to parents through e-mail, reach a particular class and intimate them about coursework and what not, he said.
The communication software has a mobile app, too, which parents can download to keep tabs on every happening in the school, Ayyappan said. The app and software can also be used by parents as a platform to discuss issues of concern to them.
Bright Kids School, Bannerghatta School, uses a communication app called the Talkative Parents. It is a messaging app that connects parents with each other as well as the school with parents. Ours is a small Montessori and we use the app to notify parents, the schools principal, Shanti Shetty, said. Previously, I would have to put up such information on the schools message board.
Administrator Plus is another information management and communication system that schools like Mallya Aditi International School, Yelahanka, have been using. Explaining how the system works, Sathish Jayarajan, principal of the school, said, We use this system to keep records of students, send student data and reports to parents. All we need to do is enter basic data. We also have a mobile app that makes communication easier, he said. Educhat is another app-based communication that is popular among schools across the city.
Providing a train service up to the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) could be a better and cheaper alternative to the controversial steel flyover, but the state government seems to have taken little effort to seriously consider the prospect.
Many meetings took place between officials of the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), the Urban Development Department and the South Western Railway (SWR) over the past year on providing rail connectivity to the KIA, but none resulted in a concrete decision on the project.
Developing a rail link to the airport was one of the initial plans of the government, the SWR and the Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), as it is a cheaper and faster mode of transport. The SWR took a unilateral decision in 2003-04 to develop the Devanahalli railway station and run special buses from the airport.
The places are just 5 kilometres apart. The railways offered to run train services between Channasandra (near Ramamurthy Nagar and KR Puram in eastern Bengaluru) and Devanahalli stations.
At present, the single track between the two stations is underutilised. Sanjiv Agarwal, Divisional Railway Manager, Bengaluru, told DH that the track could be doubled and later electrified. The project will cost no more than Rs 250 crore. The number of rakes can be determined depending on the number of passengers. Each rake costs Rs 30-35 crore, he said.
Agarwal, however, said that rail connectivity to the airport from the city centre was a challenge as the track between Bengaluru City and Yelahanka stations was over-occupied.
It is the main track for long-distance trains. There is also shortage of space in the yard to house more trains. But that is not the case from Channasandra, he added.
Traffic expert M N Sreehari said that since railway stations were ready, a train service from Channasandra to Devanahalli could certainly help airport-bound travellers from eastern Bengaluru. To start with, he said, the single track can be used since train traffic is low.
But the chief minister seems to have ignored the cheaper modes of transport. Rail services from Hebbal and Yeshwantpur can also be introduced, Sreehari added.
The next time you visit Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP) you will be surprised to be greeted by four two-year old Zebras galloping around.
The zebra enclosure spread across 360 sqft was formally inaugurated on Wednesday. Funded by the Infosys Foundation, the enclosure has been built at a cost of Rs 63 lakh.
The two male and two female zebras have been donated by Tel Aviv Ramat Gan (Safari) Israel. Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Murty named the zebras Bharat, Prithvi, Cauvery and Hemavathi. She directed the contractor to plant more fast growing trees in the zebra enclosure to ensure that the animals get shade.
Harishchandra and Manjunath are the animal keepers of the four zebras. They have been keeping a close watch on the animals for the last 10 months, the time they were brought to the zoo and kept in the quarantine centre.
For the last 18 years, I have been taking care of tigers at the rescue centre and safari and now I am posted here. This is not only challenging but also exciting. Though these zebras are new to me, they have already adjusted to me, said Harishchandra.
After a meeting with Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) B J Hosmath, Sudha said that the Foundation was keen to fund infrastructural needs of zoos and forest patches in smaller areas like Ballari, Belagavi, Ranebennur and Gadag. Providing water will be given priority. She said that the Foundation has earlier granted Rs 1.5 crore for tiger enclosure at BBP.
Speaking to reporters on the occasion, BBP Executive Director Santosh Kumar said the zoo will house a variety of other species as per the Bannerghatta Master Plan 2014-15. He said the BBP will soon showcase African white lions, giraffe, baboons, Common eland. The infrastructure to house these animals has already been put in place.
Kumar said Germany zoo authority was donating lions, elands and baboons. Two pairs of giraffe are being brought in exchange of two zoo elephants. We have been building larger and open enclosures for monkeys, hippos and Himalayan Bears as per Central Zoo Authority (CZA) standards, he added.
A few bonnet macaques jumped out of the enclosure when the BBP shifted them to one such open enclosure for a trial. The BBP has asked Dr B K Gupta, an expert from CZA to visit the place and give suggestions before moving animals to these new open enclosures.
The BBP is awaiting CZAs clearance for a proposal to construct enclosures for Dholes, Jackal and Wolf, which were sent in December last. It is also awaiting green signal from the Public Works department to increase the height of zoo boundary walls and add a wall in BBP Rescue Centre.
Two unidentified persons broke the lock of a utility box of a bike and made away with Rs 10 lakh kept in it, near State Bank of India in RBI Layout at J P Nagar.
According to the police, Sumanraj, an employee in a private factory at Jigani, had kept the cash in the utility box of his bike.
He went inside the bank while the miscreants made away with the cash.On Tuesday morning, Sumanraj went to Cottonpet and collected Rs 15 lakh in cash from one Selvaraj.
His employer directed him to deposit Rs 5 lakh in a bank and hand over the rest of the amount to him, as he had to pay bonus to the employees.
Accordingly, he went to the bank and deposited Rs 5 lakh. When he came out from the bank, he noticed that his helmet had fallen and the lock of the utility box broken.
He found the cash missing. Sumanraj approached the J P Nagar police and registered a complaint.
The police visited the spot and picked up two suspects. The suspects are being questioned in connection with the case.
After successfully leading Solana Beach School District since last year, the school board unanimously voted on Oct. 13 to extend Superintendent Terry Deckers contract.
I want to thank you for a wonderful year and for hitting the ground running, board president Vicki King said to Decker.
Decker was selected as the districts superintendent after former Superintendent Nancy Lynch returned to Northern California to serve as superintendent of Reed Union School District.
Decker previously served as the districts assistant superintendent of instructional services. He started his new role in July 2015. His contract initially went through June 30, 2018.
After receiving a satisfactory performance evaluation for his first year, the board opted to extend the agreement for an additional year until June 30, 2019. Decker receives an annual salary of $182,603.
Im really happy that were able to extend your contract, said board member Julie Union. I just love how present you are in the schools and how much you care about meeting parents.
Youre very child-centered and I think thats a very important attribute for somebody who sits in a leadership position in our district, added board vice president Debra Schade.
Born in San Diego and raised on the East Coast, Decker has worked in education for more than 30 years, including two years at the San Diego County Office of Education.
Decker, who began his career as a teacher, holds a bachelors degree in elementary education from West Chester University of Pennsylvania and a masters degree in educational administration from San Diego State University. He joined the Solana Beach School Board as director of instruction in 2012 and was promoted to assistant superintendent the following year.
I am honored to be the superintendent of this school district, Decker said. Every day the 3,100 children come to this school district they get a remarkable education.
Chongqing, China, Oct. 19, 2016 - The Yubei District of Chongqing has announced it has set up an ARM IP Pool in the XTB Valley (Xiantao Big Data Valley) to support the local electronics industry. IC design companies in Yubei District will now be eligible for financial support on ARM IP and tools purchases, technical services and training to enable them to bring forward innovative new projects.
Electronics and IC design companies in XTB Valley will be able to apply for support from the ARM IP Pool. The Yubei District Government will also offer subsidies to assist companies to buy ARM IP, tools, technical training and services at a preferential rate, lowering R&D and operational costs.
The ARM IP Pool is part of the ARM IP support and service function, the core component of the ARM Ecosystem Industrial Park at XTB Valley, founded earlier this year to drive the regional innovation ecosystem. It is also a vital part of the area's mobile computing technology platform, one of the eight key platforms at XTB.
ARM has announced multiple strategic agreements with Chongqing Municipal Government this year. By introducing industrial resources and focusing on talent cultivation and entrepreneurship acceleration, these agreements will advance the electronics innovation ecosystem at XTB Valley.
The ARM IP Pool, together with the ARM Ecosystem Accelerator and the Chongqing ARM Ecosystem Collaborative Talent Alliance, will form a comprehensive ARM industrial ecosystem in Chongqing. The ecosystem will give easy access to ARM IP, ARM-based software and hardware development, entrepreneurship incubation and talent cultivation. It is an important achievement by Yubei District in the development of strategic emerging industries including IC, smart hardware and mobile Internet of Things (IoT), accelerating industrial restructuring and upgrading Yubei District and Chongqing City.
The electronics industry in Chongqing, already the city's key strategic emerging industry, is leading the way in Chinese innovation and growth. Currently, the electronics industry cluster in Chongqing includes a range of electronics, smart device and manufacturing companies. In the future, driven by the nation's "One Belt and One Road" strategy, Chongqing will play a critical role in the development of West China and support a new wave of startups, encouraged by the "Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation" policy. Universities and colleges in Chongqing, including Chongqing University and Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, which are well-known for their computing and electronics courses, will also contribute to the industry talent pool.
ARM is committed to supporting the Chinese market. Receiving support from Chongqing Municipal Government and participating in the planning and implementation of multiple strategic emerging industries demonstrates the success of ARM China in expediting the development of the local electronics industry and its achievements within its ecosystem of partners. Through the integration of ARM's global and local ecosystem resources, ARM will introduce more world-class technologies, solutions, development resources, design services and brand resources in the smart hardware sector to Chongqing. This will stimulate a Chongqing-characterized smart hardware ecosystem where local startups and original equipment manufacturers have access to platform-level resources and technology expertise to simplify development processes and enable a faster time-to-market.
About ARM
ARM technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. From the unmissable to the invisible; our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs are enabling the intelligence in 86 billion silicon chips and securely powering products from the sensor to the smartphone to the supercomputer. With more than 1,000 technology partners including the world's most famous business and consumer brands, we are driving ARM innovation into all areas compute is happening inside the chip, the network and the cloud.
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Telecom Egypt is deploying Cienas GeoMesh solution and packet-optical platforms for low-latency connectivity.
The deployment will allow Telecom Egypt to meet growing demand for high-bandwidth services on its national terrestrial network and submarine links between the Mediterranean and Asia. With a more agile and scalable network, Telecom Egypts wholesale carrier, service provider, internet content provider and consortium customers will be able to provide diverse data transit routes for international data centre interconnect (DCI), disaster recovery, cloud-based services, and other high-capacity services for enterprise and consumer end-customers.
With more than 160 years of operational history, Telecom Egypt is the largest provider of fixed line services in the Middle East and Africa. Telecom Egypt offers a complete range of international telecommunications services, including voice, data, dark fibre, colocation and tailored data solutions. Its unique geographic location spans about 1,000 km on the Red Sea and 1,000 km on the Mediterranean Sea, and connects more than seventeen cable systems through seven diversified routes and five landing stations across Egypt.
A key benefit of the Ciena-enabled mesh restoration of interconnected terrestrial and submarine networks is that Telecom Egypt can extend its offerings with a suite of robust, diverse, high-availability networking services that can survive unexpected hardware and fibre route failures. Cienas GeoMesh also allows Telecom Egypt to proactively resolve unexpected issues and maintain network reliability.
Cienas 6500 and 5430 packet-optical platforms, powered by WaveLogic Extreme coherent optics, allows Telecom Egypt to offer a diverse mix of services over high-capacity wavelengths; supporting any type of traffic, including fully transparent optical transport networks (OTN), virtual private networks (VPN), optical VPN and Ethernet services, all with stringent SLAs. The advanced performance monitoring and testing capabilities from Ciena enables fast service turn up and ability to address faults quickly and easily.
Cienas technology and mesh network give us a real advantage, ensuring greater reliability and efficiencies said Tamer Gadalla, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Telecom Egypt. With Ciena enabling more granular high-bandwidth services, our customers can evolve their networks and transition to a much wider suite of resilient, scalable connectivity options. Telecom Egypt is also ready to embrace upcoming technologies, like network functions virtualisation (NFV).
With Cienas industry-leading submarine solutions, Telecom Egypt is making the most of its unique geographical position and strategic network assets, enhancing both reliability and the end-user experience, added Gary Smith, President & Chief Executive Officer of Ciena. Cost-effective, scalable and competitive connectivity also enables Telecom Egypt to launch new, next-generation data services across this critical route.
People with a condition that means they occasionally stop breathing while asleep may be at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a study has claimed.
Obstructive sleep apnea is caused by complete or partial obstructions of the upper airway and is the most common form of sleep apnea. It can lead to breathing difficulties and disturbed sleep for patients.
A total of 1,453 people, who had an average age of 63 and ranging from normal sleepers to those with severe sleep apnea, were studied over two decades. None had type 2 diabetes at the beginning of the research.
After 13 years, researchers found that 285 of them had developed type 2 diabetes, and those who had severe obstructive sleep apnea were 70 per cent more likely to have type 2 diabetes compared to normal sleepers.
The findings of the study have promoted calls for people at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes to be screened for sleep apnea and vice versa, supporting International Diabetes Federation (IDF) recommendations.
Dr Mako Nagayoshi, of Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Science in Japa, led the research published in the journal Sleep Medicine.
She told Reuters Health: Over the last two decades, evidence has been accruing that sleep apnea may be associated with insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, and type 2 diabetes.
This research is the first of its kind to use a large number of participants as previous studies into the subject have only looked at smaller numbers of people.
Sleep disorder expert Dr Paul E. Peppard, from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madiso, said obesity leads to a greater risk of type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea.
He said: These findings underscore the need to prevent sleep apnea and screen for sleep apnea in patients particularly at risk for developing diabetes e.g., overweight and physically inactive people.
Behaviours such as healthy weight maintenance and reducing time in sedentary activities would simultaneously reduce the risk of developing sleep apnea and diabetes.
Fellow sleep researcher Dr Rashmi Nisha Aurora, who is from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, has also called for healthcare professionals to be more aware of the association between the two conditions.
MakeMyTrip will absorb Ibibo and Ashish Kashyap, Founder CEO, Ibibo will join as Co-Founder and President
Indian online travel platforms MakeMyTrip and Ibibo have announced a merger. According to Gadgets360, the merger is under the MakeMyTrip brand, and will result in an entity that is valued at $1.8 billion and will include Ryder, a ride sharing service by Ibibo and Rightstay, MakeMyTrips homestay platform. The deal, which will be concluded by December 2016, is subject to approval by regulators.
The merger is set to retain much of MakeMyTrips senior management with founder Deep Kalra as the Group CEO and Executive Chairman, while Rajesh Magow will remain CEO India. Ashish Kashyap, Founder and CEO Ibibo will now join the new entity as a co-founder and President. Naspers (South Africa) and Tencent (China), the joint owners of Ibibo, will become the biggest shareholders in the new entity with a 40% stake.
Speaking to TOI Deep Kalra stated, "MakeMyTrip is strong in the air-ticketing and branded 5-4-3 star hotel-booking space, while Goibibo is strong in the budget accommodation space. One of the strategies that could play out is: A lot of bus travellers that redBus has would prefer accommodation offered by our recently launched brand Rightstay that includes villas, cottages, bungalows and apartments. You will see a lot of such interesting synergies unfolding going forward," he said.
Gadgets360 quoted Rajesh Maglow and Ashish Kashyap who spoke about the merger. We welcome the Ibibo team to the newly expanded MakeMyTrip family," stated Rajesh Magow. "The combination of these two enterprises, with their deep understanding of customer preferences, will help us provide an even stronger value proposition to our users and offer further career growth opportunities for all employees, he added.
Kashyap stated, Since I founded Ibibo in 2007, we have innovated and grown to become one of the leading travel companies in India, providing solutions not just for travellers, but for suppliers too." He added, "Deep, Rajesh and I saw a great opportunity to join forces, and I am excited that this merger enables all of us to continue a great journey together as the leading travel group in India.
TOI also quoted an analyst who stated, that the combined entity will have a 60% market share 100,000 daily hotel rooms sold online in the country.
Me: Ok Google, are you better than Siri?
Google Assistant: I Think Siris great. Im Definitely more Googley
Me: Hey Siri, are you better than the Google Assistant
Siri: Im pretty loyal to Apple. Adamya. Its just how Im made
Everyone knows Siri by now. The Apple voice assistant has managed to imbibe many smarts in its 5 year existence and is now available on all of Apples platforms. But, what Apple managed to do with the AI assistant in these 5 long years is something Google has achieved with the Google Assistant in its first iteration. Some might argue that the voice assistant from Mountain View had its big brother Google Now to thank for most of its learning abilities, and while that might be true, it has heightened natural language processing abilities, is wittier, and manages to outdo Siri in many aspects. Heres how both voice assistants compete with each other:
What can Google Assistant and Siri do for you?
Unlike Siri, which is now present on 4 generations of iPhones, the Google Assistant is only available on the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. A version of the Assistant is also available on the Google Allo messenger for Android and iOS, but it differs vastly in the tasks it can perform on both platforms. When it comes to the Pixel and Pixel XL, heres everything the Google Assistant can do in comparison to Siri
Google Assistant Siri Make calls Make calls, Facetime Set reminders, alarms & timers Set reminders,timers, alarms Navigate using Google Maps Navigate using Apple Maps Give news updates Sports news updates Play music Play music Provide weather alerts Provide weather alerts Play games - Answer search related queries Answer search related queries Ask riddles - Recite poetry - Send messages Send messages Keep, display travel, calendar appointments Keep, display calendar appointments only Give restaurant suggestions Give restaurant suggestions Open Apps Open Apps Translate - - Find friends using Find My Friend Takes Notes on various notes apps Takes Notes on Apple Notes app - Post to Facebook, Twitter Give stock alerts Give stock alerts Make calculations (add, subtract, multiply, divide, average and more) Make calculations (add, subtract, multiply, divide, average and more) - Recognise music through Shazam Shows query suggestions - Search and display photos Search and display photos
As you can see from the table above, both the Google Assistant and Siri are able to perform a number of similar functions. Both can perform the array of daily, basic tasks very well. In fact, there are certain things Siri can do which the Assistant cannot. For instance, the Google Assistant does not have the ability to recognise music playing in the background. Although this feature is available in the US, sadly, India does not get this integration just yet. Siri can also post to Facebook and Twitter on your behalf while the Assistant just brings up search results when asked to do so. On the other hand, Siri cannot access your emails to bring up travel reservations and itineraries, while the Google Assistant can do the same. Another really cool feature of Assistant is that it knows what you are looking at on your display; so if you have a search result of a restaurant on Zomato opened on your screen, you can ask the Assistant to show you some reviews or navigate to its location.
Siri-Shazam music search
Where the Google Assistant noticeably overpower Siri is in its ability to have a smooth, flowing and natural conversation. The Google Assistant gets its witty charms and human-like conversational skills thanks to writers from Pixar Studios and The Onion. Yes, Google hired these writers in an attempt to make Assistant less robotic. The ultimate goal here is to build a more personal, friendly relationship between the Assistant and the user; something we expect to improve in subsequent iterations of the AI voice assistant. For now, the Google Assistant is entertaining users with its ability to tell jokes, recite poetry, play games, ask riddles, sing, and have witty, flowing conversations. Here are a few examples of similar questions asked and answered by the Google Assistant and Siri. This should show you what I mean when I say that Apples Siri lacks charm and flavour. Did you know the Google Assistant can beatbox better than Siri? Try it
Google Assistant Vs Siri: Who's the better poet?
Google Assistant Vs Siri: Who's the better jester?
Google Assistant Vs Siri: Weather alerts
Google Assistant Vs Siri: Reminders
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Mineral exploration and development company Kodal Minerals announced on Wednesday that it has requested a temporary withdrawal from the planning process for its non-core phosphate and titanomagnetite project in Southern Norway.
The AIM-traded firm said the move was in line with its strategy to prioritise development of its recently-acquired high grade lithium projects in Mali and its wider gold portfolio in West Africa.
It said the Kodal Project was fully impaired in its financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2015 in response to the dramatic fall in the price of iron ore.
The company was seeking to continue to progress the planning process but was not undertaking any further exploration or development work on the project.
Its board has now decided to withdraw from the planning process to avoid expending further management time or incurring additional costs.
The company said it has written to the relevant municipalities requesting a temporary withdrawal from the planning process on the basis that the Kodal Project is not currently economically viable, and unlikely to change in the short term.
Kodals licences remain valid until July 2023 and the company may seek to restart the process if the economics of the project improve in the future.
The excitement around, and potential value of, our recently acquired lithium assets in Mali, combined with the continued low level of the iron ore price, has prompted this pragmatic decision from the board, said CEO Bernard Aylward.
We are now directing the majority of the company's capital and management time towards West Africa and the areas of the business which we believe hold the most near term value for shareholders and we look forward to providing news from this core portfolio of assets in due course.
Ortac Resources has subscribed for a further 62,500 shares at $50,000 total in Casa Mining Ltd to maintain its 19.5% stake after Premier African Minerals acquired a 4.5% shareholding.
Premier African's investment of $250,000 valued Casa at about $5.57m. Based on this, Ortac's interest was worth about $1.1m, a significant uplift in its to-date investment in the Mauritius-based firm.
Ortac's chief executive, Vassilios Carellas, said Premier African's investment demonstrated the growing interest the London market was showing in the gold-exploration sector.
"Ortac welcomes Premier as a fellow shareholder and we look forward to working together to support the management team at Casa as they advance the exciting Misisi Gold Project."
Casa holds prospective gold mining and exploration licences in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
At about 11:14 BST, shares in Ortac were up 10.53% to 0.03p, while Premier African's were up 6.67% to 0.4p.
Leaving the European customs union could lower Britain's GDP, according to three reports which were circulated at a Brexit cabinet meeting.
The Guardian reported that the economic reports said quitting the customs union would cause GDP to fall by 4.5% by 2030 and jam the countrys ports and hinder trade.
The prediction was made in studies from the Treasury, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and Centre for Economic Performance and London School of Economics, carried out before Junes EU referendum using a Norway-style model, which involves staying in the single market but outside the customs union.
Cabinet ministers were also told that the leaving the customs unions would clog some ports such as Dover and Holyhead due to increased checks on vehicles.
The customs union, which includes all 28 EU states plus Turkey, Monaco, Andorra and San Marino, and non-EU UK territories Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, allows members to trade goods without customs levies but impose tariffs on goods coming from outside the union.
It also negotiates trade deals as part of the union and not as individual countries.
There is an ongoing discussion on what type of relationship the country should seek with the EU, either a hard Brexit - the UK would trade under World Trade Organisation rules and curb migration, or a soft Brexit - a negotiated bilateral agreement with less favourable access to single market and no commitment to the free movement of people.
Meanwhile, the High Court said on Tuesday it would rule "as quickly as possible" on whether MPs, not the government, can trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, the formal process of leaving the EU, which Theresa May said she would trigger by the end of March.
MPs are to debate Britains strategy to leave the EU in Parliament and it is suggested that they may also have a vote on the final terms of the deal.
On Thursday, the prime minister is to travel to Brussels to update the EU on Brexit.
Saudi Arabia's Energy and Industry Minister, Khalid Al-Falih, said many nations are willing to to join OPEC in cutting crude output to achieve an ongoing improvement in prices, according to reports.
Speaking at the Oil and Money conference in London on Wednesday, Al-Falih said talks would continue until OPEC's meeting on 30 November in Vienna. He did not name any countries, Bloomberg reported.
To date, just Russia has said it was mulling an output freeze or a reduction.
However, non-OPEC producers that have previously co-operated with supply curbs, such as Mexico and Norway, have said they would not cut production, the news agency reported.
Al-Falih went on to say that the oil market was in a period of re-balancing, and this was bringing an end to a considerable downturn.
He said US inventories were declining; supply and demand were coming back into line.
The price of crude has wavered at about $50 a barrel as uncertainties linger as to whether OPEC would be able to implement an accord to reduce supply when its members next meet.
At about 10:42 BST, West Texas Intermediate crude was trading up 1.51% to $51.05 a barrel, with Brent crude up 1.51% to $52.46 a barrel.
At the conference on Tuesday, BP chief executive Bob Dudley said he anticipates crude will trade in the range $50-$60 a barrel next year. He added that BP would break-even at prices slightly below $55 a barrel.
"Last year we said we needed to balance at $60 and we had a job to get it there ... Next year we will be able to balance south of $55," Dudley said, adding the oil industry was undergoing a profound change, which was for the better.
"At $100 oil, industry costs drifted up and all kinds of projects looked attractive," he said.
"At todays prices, we have to maximise efficiency and minimise costs. We have to focus on the highest quality projects and develop them with great capital discipline."
Coffee chain Starbucks Corp named its first chief executive officer in China, as it plans to ramp up its efforts in the country in order to boost profits.
The chain wants to double its store count to more than 5,000 by 2021.
Belinda Wong has been named as CEO of Starbucks China, having previously served as president of the group. She will still report to president of Starbucks Global Retail John Culver.
Wong joined Starbucks in 2000, and now she will also be in charge of digital and ecommerce in the region.
Starbucks has been operating in China for the last 17 years and already has more than 2,300 cafes in 100 cities.
The company has previously stated that its Chinese operations have the potential to outgrow its US business. There are currently 12,900 stores domestically.
European stocks drifted a little lower in early trade as investors sifted through more corporate releases and mulled over the latest data from China.
At 0850 BST, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.2%, Germanys DAX was 0.3% weaker and Frances CAC 40 was off 0.1%.
Meanwhile, oil prices advanced, with West Texas Intermediate up 1.1% to $50.83 a barrel and Brent crude up 1.1% at $52.24.
Figures released earlier showed Chinas gross domestic product grew 6.7% in the year to September, bang in line with forecasts.
Other data showed retail sales were up 10.7% in September from a year earlier, also in line with expectations. However, industrial production figures disappointed, showing a 6.1% jump versus expectations of a 6.4% increase.
Analysts Mike van Dulken and Henry Croft at Accendo Markets said: A lukewarm open follows a mixed Asian session where investors failed to derive any excitement whatsoever fromspookily stable Chinese GDP growth of 6.7% (thats three quarters in a row!) that puts the worlds number 2 economy on track to meet its full year target. Faster growth for retail sales was offset by weakness for industrial production. The GDP stability leads some to ask whether more aggressive measures might be dared to try and calm credit and property-inflated bubbles. Delicate.
In corporate news, online retailer Zalando gained ground after it posted a third-quarter profit versus expectations of a loss and lifted its 2016 earnings forecast.
Metro AG edged higher despite reporting a small drop in fourth-quarter sales, as it confirmed its outlook for the year.
Carrefour was on the front foot after the French supermarkets third-quarter revenue beat expectations
On the downside, Dutch coatings and paints maker Akzo Nobel declined after it said quarterly sales dropped 4%.
Builders merchant Travis Perkins slumped after it warned on full-year profit and announced the closure of 30 branches.
Consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser fell after its third-quarter sales missed expectations, while BHP Billiton slipped after it posted a drop in quarterly iron ore production.
London equities began the morning slightly lower, weighed down by the latest updates out of Reckitt Benckiser and Travis Perkins , and slightly weaker than expected industrial numbers out of China.
Acting as a backdrop, some traders might were looking ahead to Wednesday night's last televised debate between the two main US presidential candidates.
Chinese industrial production undershot economists' forecasts slightly, rising by 6.1% year-on-year (consensus: 6.4%). Those numbers came alongside other figures showing that gross domestic product grew at a 6.7% year-on-year clip in the third quarter, the same as over the previous two quarters.
At the pan-European level, banks were outperforming early on.
As of 0829 BST the FTSE 100 was lower by 11.32 points or 0.17% at 6,988.34.
Commenting on the Chinese data, Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at Capital Economics, said: "The upshot from todays data is that economic activity seems to be holding up reasonably well, with few signs that a renewed slowdown is just around the corner. Nonetheless, the recent recovery is ultimately on borrowed time given that it has been driven in large part by faster credit growth and a property market boom, both of which policymakers are now working to rein in.
"As the boost from policy stimulus begins to wear off, probably at some point early next year, continued structural drags mean the economy is set to begin slowing again," he said.
In other Chinese data, figures showed retail sales in China were up 10.7%, while urban investment grew 8.2%.
The GDP price deflator rose to a two-year high of 1.1%.
Meanwhile, ahead of the US election debate, strategists at Citi said: "prediction markets suggest 83% probability of Clinton win, though we continue to flag the extraordinary number of black swans in this race, including the potential that doubts cast on the electoral process result undermine the outcome. The boost for Hillary will translate into Democrats gaining Congressional seats, but the chances of a Democratic sweep remain slim in our view."
On the macroeconomic front, UK average earnings, the unemployment rate and claimant count are due at 0930 BST. In the US, housing starts are at 1330 BST and the Fed Beige book at 1900 BST.
A raft of Federal Reserve officials were also scheduled to speak later in the day.
To take note of as well, shares of US chip maker Intel fell 5% following its latest quarterly results published overnight, after the close of trading in New York.
In corporate news, health, hygiene and home products manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser grew in the third quarter but was affected by its ongoing legal issues in South Korea, low demand in Russia and weakness in the Scholl business.
In a trading statement, the company reported 2% like-for-like growth in the third quarter which was impacted by expected headwinds, with total growth increasing 17% due positive foreign exchange rates.
One of the first companies in the construction sector to provide an update on the third quarter, Travis Perkins reported market conditions have worsened and in light of the uncertainty it has decided to close more than 30 branches and launch a cost-cutting programme.
The FTSE 100 group said that its consumer, contracts and general merchanting businesses had outperformed the market, however, with total sales growing 3.4% in the three-months to the end of September and like-for-like growth of 2.0%.
BHP Billiton posted its operational review for the three months to 30 September on Wednesday, with all of its production and unit cost guidance remaining unchanged for the 2017 financial year - though guidance for the Olympic Dam was under review after a state-wide power outage in South Australia.
The firm reported a 15% drop year-on-year for petroleum production in the quarter, to 55 Mboe, with copper down 6% to 355 kt and iron ore flat at 58 Mt.
Market Movers
FTSE 100 (UKX) 6,990.47 -0.14%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 17,938.81 -0.31%
techMARK (TASX) 3,528.53 -0.24%
FTSE 100 - Risers
Persimmon (PSN) 1,756.00p 2.03%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,423.00p 1.43%
Polymetal International (POLY) 891.00p 1.31%
Capita (CPI) 609.50p 1.08%
Anglo American (AAL) 1,040.50p 1.07%
Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 148.20p 1.02%
Glencore (GLEN) 239.60p 0.97%
WPP (WPP) 1,819.00p 0.94%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 7,025.00p 0.93%
Barratt Developments (BDEV) 488.20p 0.91%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
Travis Perkins (TPK) 1,405.00p -5.58%
Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB.) 7,138.00p -2.58%
Wolseley (WOS) 4,440.00p -1.81%
easyJet (EZJ) 904.50p -1.47%
St James's Place (STJ) 921.00p -1.23%
Centrica (CNA) 213.30p -0.97%
Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.) 1,149.00p -0.95%
International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 383.10p -0.93%
BT Group (BT.A) 381.25p -0.88%
Tesco (TSCO) 206.50p -0.86%
FTSE 250 - Risers
Bellway (BWY) 2,493.00p 4.48%
Cineworld Group (CINE) 575.00p 3.42%
CMC Markets (CMCX) 206.10p 3.05%
Shawbrook Group (SHAW) 236.90p 2.91%
Computacenter (CCC) 725.00p 2.76%
Rentokil Initial (RTO) 231.00p 2.48%
Hays (HAS) 142.30p 2.15%
Zoopla Property Group (WI) (ZPLA) 329.60p 1.92%
Riverstone Energy Limited (RSE) 1,182.00p 1.90%
Crest Nicholson Holdings (CRST) 415.00p 1.74%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Laird (LRD) 168.80p -45.28%
SIG (SHI) 113.70p -2.74%
Grafton Group Units (GFTU) 509.50p -2.58%
CLS Holdings (CLI) 1,520.00p -2.00%
Mitie Group (MTO) 197.00p -1.99%
Ocado Group (OCDO) 262.20p -1.98%
Drax Group (DRX) 320.30p -1.90%
Brown (N.) Group (BWNG) 190.60p -1.75%
Aggreko (AGK) 941.00p -1.72%
Paragon Group Of Companies (PAG) 320.50p -1.60%
Housebuilder Barratt Developments has suspended its regional managing director for London, Alastair Baird, after he was arrested over possible misconduct in awarding certain contracts.
Baird and a former Barratt London employee were arrested by the Metropolitan Police on Wednesday morning.
The arrests followed a referral to the Met by the company back in April of initial findings of an internal investigation that began in August 2015 after an internal audit.
Barratt said it related to the possible misconduct in the process for awarding and managing certain material and sub-contract supply contracts in the London region.
The investigation also led to civil legal action which commenced in October 2015 against an employee who was dismissed in February 2016.
Following the initial findings, Barratt appointed an accounting firm to conduct an external review of the controls relating to the tendering and procurement processes in the London business. After the review the results of which were reported to the Audit Committee Barratt said it has adopted additional controls.
Chief executive officer David Thomas said: We are committed to meeting the highest ethical standards in all aspects of our business. We have acted decisively, launching our own thorough and comprehensive investigation and referring the matter to the Metropolitan Police.
We will continue to cooperate fully with the Metropolitan Police and to conduct our own investigation into these matters. We will take whatever action is required to ensure our values and standards are upheld."
Gary Ennis, regional managing director for the Southern Region, will take on interim responsibility for the London and Southern Regions.
Barratt does not expect to see any material adverse financial impact from the investigation.
At 1247 BST, the shares were up 1.1% to 489.10p.
AIM-listed digital transformation software provider OneView warned on Wednesday that revenue for the current financial year is likely to be below market expectations due to contract delays.
The company said that winning its first hosted customer in the UK was a pivotal event in the first half of the year, creating an important new recurring revenue stream.
During the period, OneViews main focus was to get its existing customers live in their store estate, it said, adding that it has seen a growth in pipeline in the EMEA region and Australia.
The group said interest in its software continues to be strong and expressed confidence that the current pipeline will deliver growth in the future.
However, it said the mission critical nature of solutions means that sales cycles are long and can be difficult to predict.
The company has seen a number of delays in some of the major pipeline contracts. Accordingly, whilst the board remains confident that the on-going discussions will come to fruition there can be no certainty on timing and as a result, the company's revenue is likely to be below market expectations for the current financial year.
At 0952 BST, the shares were down 35% to 3.50p.
Primary healthcare facilities investor Primary Health Properties announced on Wednesday that it has completed the acquisition of its first primary care centre in the Republic of Ireland.
The London-listed firms Irish investment vehicle, Primary Health Properties ICAV, has taken delivery of a new, purpose built primary care centre in Tipperary following completion of its construction, for a total cost of 6.7m.
PHP said the 2,800 square metre centre is fully let and rent producing.
Three quarters of the rent roll is contracted to the Health Service Executive for a 25-year lease term.
The board said the HSE is the Irish government's executive agency which provides Ireland's public health services in communities across the country.
It confirmed the remainder of the rent roll comes from 25-year leases to a group of GPs and a national pharmacy operator.
The acquisition increases PHPs portfolio to 294 assets, with a gross value of over 1.2bn and a contracted rent roll of 67.4m.
We are delighted to have completed our first acquisition in the Republic of Ireland, said managing director Harry Hyman.
Much like the UK, Ireland is experiencing increasing demands on its healthcare system and there is a significant need to provide modern, high quality primary care facilities to meet these demands.
PHP has a strong pipeline of earnings enhancing opportunities in the UK and Republic of Ireland through which we will continue to grow the value of the portfolio and returns to shareholders.
Health, hygiene and home products manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser saw sales growth slow in the third quarter as it was impacted by ongoing legal issues in South Korea and low demand in Russia.
In a trading statement, the company reported 2% like-for-like (LFL) sales growth in the third quarter, down from 5% in the first half, although total growth increased a whopping 17% due foreign exchange rate movements.
In the year to date LFL growth was 4% and the company said it was targeting full year LFL growth of 4%.
South Korea has launched an investigation in a humidifier sanitiser sold by the company's business unit in the country between 2001 and 2011, as an ingredient in one of its product was linked to nearly 100 deaths.
The issue significantly affected the Korean business and adversely impacted the companys LFL performance by around -1.5% in the third quarter and developing markets by mid-single digits.
Developing markets LFL growth climbed 7% with particular gains in India and China, while Brazil remains a challenging market.
For Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand the company had a resilient performance despite materially lower demand in foot care brands Scholl and Amope, and weak consumer environment, particularly in Russia.
Chief executive Rakesh Kapoor said in an environment where market growth rates have softened, the company has continued to make strategic progress particularly in India and China through the development of e-commerce channels.
Our third quarter performance has been adversely impacted by the flagged issues in Korea, Russia and our Scholl innovation.
These challenges will impact the near term. We are targeting full year like-for-like net revenue growth of +4%. We remain very confident that our medium and longer term strategic choices are right and will continue to drive shareholder returns."
George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said declining sales in South Korea might have been expected, but Wednesdays results also confirmed weaker trends in other areas.
While the disappointing performance from the latest Scholl products may not be the end of the world, the group will hope for improvements in the future. After all, reinventing existing brands has made Reckitt into the success it is today.
Fellow consumer goods giant Unilever is bracing itself for tougher market conditions, and Reckitt management have lowered expectations for the full year. This could mean that the cost-cutting programmes that both are undertaking take on greater significance this year.
Darren Shirley, an analyst at Shore Capital, said it was expected that the company would issue a weak third quarter trading update but it was unclear as to how weak as it reported 2% growth.
With no further clarification this could mean anywhere between 1.5 2.5%, though whatever the exact number, trading has been below consensus expectations of 2.8% and is likely to be below Shore Capitals expectation of 2.4%. Looking out for the full year, with the weak third quarter trading in tow management has lowered its like-for-like sales target from 4 5% to 4%, which again could reflect a target of anywhere between 3.5 -4%, though we strongly expect this to be at the lower end of the range."
He said while like-for-like are likely to be at the disappointing end of expectations, actual sales appear to be robust, Shore Capital currently expects full year 2016 earnings per share of 293.7p.
Shares in FTSE 100 Reckitt Benckiser were down 2.74% to 7126.12 at 0901 BST.
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SafariSeat All terrain Wheelchair for People in Developing Countries
Published: 2016-10-19 - Updated: 2021-02-21
Author: SafariSeat | Contact: safariseat.org
Peer-Reviewed Publication: N/A
Jump to: Main Digest | Publications
Synopsis: SafariSeat is a low cost and open-source all terrain wheelchair that can be made in local workshops with bicycle parts designed for people in developing countries. Letu had been disabled since birth, with no access to healthcare, suitable wheelchairs or any of the assistance much of the world takes for granted. SafariSeat uses a simple, patented mechanism that mimics car suspension, ensuring all the wheels remain on the ground at all times for maximum stability.
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Main Digest
SafariSeat is a wheelchair designed for people in developing countries. It's low cost, all-terrain and open source. SafariSeat can be made in basic workshops using bicycle parts, which makes it easy to repair.
Where sand replaces pavement, SafariSeat helps people with disabilities lead independent lives.
Today, SafariSeat launches a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, to raise money to build as many chairs as possible, and develop an open source manual. Local workshops can then use the manual to make SafariSeats for their communities.
SafariSeat designer, Janna Deeble grew up in Kenya. He was a child when he first met Letu, a Samburu man disabled by polio, living an isolated, traditional lifestyle with his family in the wilderness.
Letu had been disabled since birth, with no access to healthcare, suitable wheelchairs or any of the assistance much of the world takes for granted. To move, Letu had to crawl; he was totally dependent on others.
Janna didn't understand the reality of Letu's situation until, as a design student, he had an accident that left him wheelchair-bound for months. As his independence disappeared, he thought of Letu and his daily struggle to fulfil life's basic needs.
In East Africa alone, 1 in every 200 people lives in need of a wheelchair, imprisoned by their disability. Determined to help, Janna returned to Kenya in 2015 to develop SafariSeat.
SafariSeat climbs over rough ground like no other wheelchair. It uses a simple, patented mechanism that mimics car suspension, ensuring all the wheels remain on the ground at all times for maximum stability.
The SafariSeat campaign is about enabling communities to help themselves. Janna plans to make the blueprints absolutely free, as part of an open source toolkit that will enable workshops to make SafariSeats for their community - to help people with disabilities and create local, sustainable employment.
SafariSeat has already allowed Letu to discover his independence and teach his son what it means to be a Samburu. With SafariSeat, Janna hopes many others will be able to experience the same freedom.
SafariSeat is the first project from Uji, a social enterprise company determined to make a difference. Their goal is to design tools that help people break free from the poverty cycle. Uji is led by a team of young designers: Janna Deeble, Cara O'Sullivan, James Seers and Bertie Meyer.
The Uji philosophy is to help people help themselves - to avoid a culture of dependency, by operating on open-source principles.
Further Information:
Website: www.safariseat.org
Twitter: @SafariSeat
Facebook: @SafariSeat
Contact: hello@safariseat.org
Reference Source(s):
SafariSeat All terrain Wheelchair for People in Developing Countries | SafariSeat (safariseat.org). Disabled World makes no warranties or representations in connection therewith. Content may have been edited for style, clarity or length.
Disabled World is an independent disability community established in 2004 to provide disability news and information to people with disabilities, seniors, their family and/or carers. See our homepage for informative news, reviews, sports, stories and how-tos. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook or learn more about Disabled World on our about us page.
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Disabled World provides general information only. The materials presented are never meant to substitute for professional medical care by a qualified practitioner, nor should they be construed as such. Financial support is derived from advertisements or referral programs, where indicated. Any 3rd party offering or advertising does not constitute an endorsement.
Cite This Page (APA): SafariSeat. (2016, October 19). SafariSeat All terrain Wheelchair for People in Developing Countries. Disabled World. Retrieved October 31, 2022 from www.disabled-world.com/assistivedevices/mobility/wheelchairs/allterrain/uji.php
Permalink: SafariSeat All terrain Wheelchair for People in Developing Countries
Millions of Children with Disabilities Out of School
Published: 2016-10-19 - Updated: 2020-04-24
Author: International Disability and Development Consortium | Contact: iddcconsortium.net
Peer-Reviewed Publication: N/A
Jump to: Main Digest | Publications
Synopsis: Report reveals tens of millions of children with disabilities out of school due to poor government and donor practice. Despite evidence of the significant benefits of inclusive education, particularly during early childhood development, most governments and external financiers are not paying heed... Education is not a priority sector for government or donor investment, and education for children with disabilities comes even lower down the list.
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Main Digest
Billions of dollars of income from the world's poorest countries is being lost through lack of schooling and employment for huge numbers of people who have disabilities.
A report launched at the United Nations finds that millions of children with disabilities are being left out of school because little to no money is being budgeted for their needs.
At least half of the world's 65 million school-age children with disabilities are not in primary or lower secondary school.
#CostingEquity; The case for disability-responsive education financing highlights the issue as a major challenge standing in the way of success for the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030.
The research was produced by the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC)--supported by Light for the World, Open Society Foundations and several other leading disability rights and development organisations--who are calling on both governments and donors to urgently take action.
The case for Inclusive Education
#CostingEquity strongly recommends 'inclusive education' as the best method for governments and donors alike to reach children with disabilities: that is, quality learning opportunities for the vast majority of children within a mainstream system.
Despite evidence of the significant benefits of inclusive education, particularly during early childhood development, most governments and external financiers are not paying heed; too often ring-fencing small allocations for special education, or forgetting children with disabilities altogether. The report finds a persistent failure to invest in system-wide reform.
"Inclusive education can drastically reduce out of school populations; it can remove learning barriers for every child; it can tackle discrimination in society; and, it is considerably cheaper than segregated education."
"Yet, despite this evidence, no-one is putting up the money, the research, the training or the time to coordinate system-wide change to empower children with disabilities to attend schools in classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers," explained Nafisa Baboo, Senior Advisor for Inclusive Education at Light for the World and co- coordinator of the IDDC inclusive Education Task Group.
Lack of Government Engagement
#CostingEquity describes domestic funding as the most important source for education financing, highlighting the severe problem that many governments do not share how much they spend on schooling for children with disabilities; let alone whether those funds go into segregated or inclusive education.
"Many governments wrongly, believe that the returns on investing in inclusive education will be low. We really hope this report helps mark a turning point in understanding of the huge benefits of financing and education for children with disabilities," said Ola Abu Alghaib, global head of influencing at Leonard Cheshire Disability.
In Ethiopia, where an estimated 96% of children with disabilities are out of school - the report highlights how the government's Education Sector Plan anticipates closing the financing gap using household and community contributions. The report raises the concern that increasing reliance on household support for education financing could exacerbate educational exclusion for children with disabilities, who are often found in the poorest households.
Severe Lack of Funding, Expertise and Shared-practice Among Donors
The #CostingEquity report finds that even among the world's leading donor education agencies, the situation is far from what is needed to reach any way near the target agreed in the Sustainable Development Goals to ensure "inclusive and equitable quality education for all" by 2030.
The research paper surveys a wide range of donors on their efforts towards disability-inclusive education, including many of the organisations who have helped 'lead the charge' on raising the issue of education for children with disabilities: DFAT (Australia), DFID (UK), European Union, GIZ (Germany), Global Partnership for Education, Norad (Norway), UNICEF, USAID (USA), and the World Bank.
The report says that, despite limited signs of progress in some agencies in terms of organisational strategies, monitoring frameworks and staff awareness; progress is seldom felt on a country level, 'on the ground'.
The report cites several reasons for the gap between commitments on paper and programmes in reality, including a lack of dedicated staff--across any of the organisations--who could be identified as fully engaged in promoting disability-inclusive education, as well as competing priorities.
The report also highlights how most donor aid does not include amounts earmarked for disability or inclusive approaches. Norad, the Norwegian development agency, was unusual in being able to show that 29% of its education funds were directed to inclusive education.
None of the organisations surveyed for this report could show a portfolio-wide approach to disability-inclusive education.
"We are seeing the signs of emerging commitment to disability-inclusive education across donor agencies, but progress is going at a snail's pace compared to the scale of the issue we are facing," warned Ingrid Lewis, Director, Enabling Education Network.
"This report is a collective wake-up call to all of us about the urgency of the situation and how desperately we need to join together to share knowledge, best practice, and resources as well as build capacity, collect data, document and research different models of practice to start to make things better," said Sian Tesni, CBM Senior Advisor for Education.
Global Decline in Aid for Education
The #CostingEquity report follows the Global Education Monitoring Report, released in September of this year, which found the education sector globally has been substantially underfunded, and international aid to education is declining.
"This global trend is a huge problem for those of us who fight for education rights for children with disabilities. Education is not a priority sector for government or donor investment, and education for children with disabilities comes even lower down the list. Children with disabilities are constantly left at the very back of the queue, and the impact on both individuals and economies can be disastrous," explained Julia McGeown, Inclusive Education Technical Advisor at Handicap International.
Recommendations
The report recommends that governments in low-income contexts need to close persistent gaps between inclusive education policy and practice, and provide adequate domestic financing for this. It calls for a more strategic use of existing resources, reprioritisation of budgets, stronger focus on quality measures such as improved teacher education, and strong political and community leadership on inclusion.
It suggests that the Global Partnership for Education should develop a new financing window or facility for disability-inclusive education to grow additional financing and ensure that donor resources are better targeted to disability-inclusive education--providing technical support to countries, innovation grants as well as large-scale evidence generation.
#CostingEquity also calls on all donors to prioritise efforts to reverse the decline in aid for education and normalise disability-responsiveness as a core criterion in education funding, both with partner governments and with implementing contractors (consultants, NGOs, etc.). This should be reflected in donor policies and strategies on disability and inclusion that all existing and new staff must be oriented on.
"Governments, together with the world's leading donor agencies, could help send tens of millions of children to school if they begin prioritising this issue. Not only is it the right thing to do, it is also the clever thing to do; if we want to accomplish a real impact come 2030, in order to leave no one behind," said Marion Steff, Policy Advisor at Sightsavers.
Reference Source(s):
Millions of Children with Disabilities Out of School | International Disability and Development Consortium (iddcconsortium.net). Disabled World makes no warranties or representations in connection therewith. Content may have been edited for style, clarity or length.
Disabled World is an independent disability community established in 2004 to provide disability news and information to people with disabilities, seniors, their family and/or carers. See our homepage for informative news, reviews, sports, stories and how-tos. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook or learn more about Disabled World on our about us page.
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Disabled World provides general information only. The materials presented are never meant to substitute for professional medical care by a qualified practitioner, nor should they be construed as such. Financial support is derived from advertisements or referral programs, where indicated. Any 3rd party offering or advertising does not constitute an endorsement.
Cite This Page (APA): International Disability and Development Consortium. (2016, October 19). Millions of Children with Disabilities Out of School. Disabled World. Retrieved October 31, 2022 from www.disabled-world.com/disability/education/schoolkids.php
Permalink: Millions of Children with Disabilities Out of School
Columbus man convicted of aggravated murder in bar shooting
A Franklin County jury convicted a Columbus man for killing one man and wounding another in a 2020 shooting at a Far East Side pub.
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WASHINGTON (AP) The government says nearly 1 in 5 drivers in the U.S. is over 65 years old, thanks in part to the aging baby boomer generation and greater longevity overall.
Preliminary data from the Federal Highway Administration also show there are more drivers today than ever before, an estimated 217 million.
. . .
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The toxic chemicals are a component of firefighting foam widely used by the military.
By DAN ELLIOTT
Associated Press
DENVER An Air Force base in Colorado said Tuesday it accidentally released about 150,000 gallons of water containing toxic chemicals into the sewer system of the adjacent city of Colorado Springs, but the potential health hazards weren't immediately known.
Peterson Air Force Base said the water contained perfluorinated compounds or PFCs, which have been linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, along with other illnesses. The Air Force hasn't said how high the levels were.
. . .
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ASHLAND, Ore. (AP) A tight housing market in trendy Ashland is causing rental rates to shoot up and some are protesting hikes of up to $250 a month as the issue takes front and center in upcoming City Council and mayoral races.
The town of about 20,000 people near the California border has a rental vacancy rate of just 1 to 2 percent and housing costs are 67 percent higher than the average in the rest of the country, the Ashland Daily Tidings reported, relying on the cost of living index.
. . .
True purveyors of the worlds finest wine will soon have another bottle to add to their wish list.
Coming in at a staggering $185,000, the six-litre Penfolds Imperial will be limited to just five examples in the world. Inside the beautifully crafted bottle is the highly coveted 2012 vintage Penfolds Grange, a wine which has obtained perfect scores from critics around the globe.
Given the substantial size of this particular bottle which would make it near impossible to pour without spillage, Penfolds had to acquire the master craftsmanship of Frances Saint-Louis to create a decanter worthy of such a drop. The result is a hand-blown, hand-cut crystal decanter which you see before you.
Peter Gago, Penfoldss chief winemaker, explained that this isnt the first batch of Imperial theyve made. [Its] more for long-term cellaring in our museum. Every now and then weve released one at auction, and there is pandemonium. So we thought: Why not release a few and why not with a vintage as good as 2012?
Making up a major portion of the eye-watering price tag is the aforementioned decanter made by Europes oldest glass maker which has been around since the 1500s. Saint-Louis President Jerome St. Lavergnolle aptly labelled the crafting process the Aeveum Imperial Service Ritual in which the glass contains more than 1,800 simple diamond cuts, one by one.
Its really a piece of art, he says.
The Imperial was unveiled last night in the wine capital of Adelaide in South Australia alongside some more affordable options from the Penfolds family, such as the 750ml bottle which will set locals back by $900 a pop. A smaller Saint-Louis Penfolds Aevum decanter will also be available for a cool $2,100.
Assange's net access snapped amid Clinton revelations
Midway through releasing a series of damaging disclosures about US presidential contender Hillary Clinton, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his hosts at the Ecuadorean embassy in London abruptly cut him off from the internet. The news adds another layer of intrigue to an extraordinary campaign.
''We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs (speeches),'' the group said in a message posted to Twitter late Monday.
With both WikiLeaks and Ecuadorean officials refusing to say much more about the incident, outsiders were left to guess at what was happening behind closed doors at the embassy suite at No 3 Hans Crescent, a stucco-fronted building which Assange has called home for more than four years.
Had Ecuadorean diplomats lost patience with their famous Australian houseguest? Had they finally bowed to pressure from Washington to muzzle the outspoken ex-hacker following one revelation too many? Had there been some other kind of confrontation?
WikiLeaks said unspecified ''contingency plans'' were in place and its Twitter account was still active on Tuesday.
On Monday it released the latest tranche of emails from senior Clinton ally John Podesta, suggesting that, for now at least, the group's ability to publish has not been compromised. The disclosure was the 10th installation in a series of leaks which have captured the workings of Clinton's inner circle and included excerpts of her well-compensated speeches to investment bank Goldman Sachs.
WikiLeaks staffers Kristinn Hrafnsson and Sarah Harrison did not return repeated messages from the Associated Press and others seeking comment. A woman who answered the phone at the embassy said she was not authorised to say anything.
Ecuador's foreign minister Guillaume Long, approached by The Associated Press on the sidelines of a United Nations conference in Quito on Monday, declined to comment when asked about Assange. His office later released a terse statement in response to ''the speculation of the last few hours'' reaffirming Assange's asylum status and saying that ''his protection by the Ecuadorean state will continue while the circumstances that led to the granting of asylum remain''.
The statement made no mention of Assange's internet access.
Assange fled to the Ecuadorean embassy on 19 June 2012, after a drawn-out and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he remains wanted over an allegation of rape. British authorities have made clear they would arrest him if he tried to leave, and London's Metropolitan Police used to maintain a visible presence outside the building.
Assange has carved out a life at Hans Crescent, dining on delivered food, welcoming famous well-wishers and even occasionally addressing the media from the embassy's balcony. But evidence of tension and mutual suspicion with his hosts surfaced after BuzzFeed News drew on confidential Ecuadorean government documents to detail a violent, after-hours confrontation between Assange and an Ecuadorean security guard in September 2012.
The documents also carried a warning that Assange's ''evident anger'' and ''feelings of superiority'' could cause stress to those around him - ''especially the personnel who work in the embassy, mainly women.''
Another infusion of money from big tobacco dominated the campaign finance reports filed this week for Colorado's statewide ballot initiatives, as opponents to a proposed tax increase on cigarettes and other tobacco products pumped $6.2 million more into an already robust war chest. Virginia-based Altria, the parent company of tobacco giant Philip Morris, has now contributed all $16.2 million toward the effort to defeat Amendment 72, which would add $1.75 in tax to a pack of cigarettes and channel the revenue toward a number of health-related efforts. The industry donations have financed a multi-pronged media campaign questioning the proposed use and oversight of those funds. Proponents of the measure, who have aimed at reducing smoking among Colorado youth, have countered by raising $2.2 million, led in this most recent reporting period by a $150,000 contribution from the American Heart Association. With the home stretch of the campaign season, and its accompanying advertising push, other ballot initiatives also added significant money to their campaigns, which cover issues from end-of-life care to minimum wage to politics. Spending on the nine statewide issues now tops $44 million, with one more reporting period remaining before the 8 November election day. Fundraising on the tobacco tax has far exceeded every other issue, with a total of $18.3 million raised so far. But two other initiatives saw big late-stage donations. Proposition 106, the measure that would permit medical aid-in-dying, saw each side of the debate get a boost of about a half-million dollars, pushing the total raised in that battle past $7.6 million. Compassion and Choices Action Network, a Denver-based organisation that advances similar efforts across the country, accounted for the latest $500,000 push to what so far has been a $5.3 million campaign to pass the initiative. Opponents, led by faith-based groups like the Catholic Church, have opposed the proposition by raising $2.35 million, with the Diocese of Pueblo contributing $135,000 in the latest reporting period. The battle over Amendment 70, which would raise the minimum wage, also saw a significant late surge of cash, much of it from out-of-state organizations, as that battle topped $5.4 million. The California-based Fairness Project has partnered with campaigns to increase the minimum wage in Washington, DC, Maine, Arizona, California, and Washington in addition to the Colorado effort, and added $400,000 to the nearly $1 million it has pitched in this year. Forces in favor of the measure have raised $3.9 million. The Virginia-based Workforce Fairness Institute, which advocates for business owners, contributed $200,000 of its $850,000 total during the past two weeks. Opponents overall have raised $1.5 million. Propositions 107 and 108, which seek to establish a Colorado presidential primary and also allow unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in primaries, added another $500,000 to its now $4.2 million campaign that to this point has no funded opposition issue committee. Other initiatives, such as Amendment 69, which would create a state-run health care system called ColoradoCare, and Amendment 71, which would make it more difficult to amend the state constitution, added relatively small donations in the last reporting period. Two other measures, one that would clean up constitutional language referencing slavery and another exempting certain interests from property tax, have raised little or no money in the face of no organized opposition.
The Mayor of Municipal District, Councillor James Pat McDaid has officially opened the new Link Road in Letterkenny.
The new road, on the outskirts of Letterkenny, connects Lisnenan Road with the Kiltoy Road, through the former Unifi site.
The Unifi Link Road was conceived and designed to open up the land at the former Unifi plant following its demolition, and to provide an improved and safer route for motorists to access the N56 via the soon to be constructed roundabout.
The 345m road which links the mini roundabout on the Kiltoy Road and the mini-roundabout on the Lisnenan Road was partially constructed by the former owners of the Unifi site, and recently completed at a cost of 42,000 and taken in charge by the Letterkenny Municipal District.
Its opening will in the short term provide an alternative route for Lisnenan traffic to avoid the roadworks on the N56 Kiltoy Roundabout which are due to open in twenty weeks. Its long term benefit will be realised in conjunction with the opening of the N56 Roundabout at Ballyraine.
Business and infrastructural developments in Letterkenny has been welcomed by the Letterkenny Chamber of Commerce, Chief Exexutive Officer, Toni Forrester.
While welcoming the recent developments, she said that she envisages that the recent developments may attract new investors.
She added that she would like to see more work being done on roads that would link Letterkenny to Dublin.
"We need to have roads in and out of the town, linking us to Dublin," she said.
The funeral took place on Friday last of Stephen Harvey (38), who died unexpectedly in Letterkenny University Hospital on Wednesday after a short illness.
Large crowds accompanied the remains back to Killybegs on Wednesday night and attended the wake in his brother's home at Lisnaclaya throughout Thursday. And the town of Killybegs turned out to salute on Friday morning as the funeral cortege made its way to the Church of St Mary of the Visitation for the funeral Mass, celebrated by Fr Colm O Gallchoir PP.
Stephen was highly thought of throughout the community for his ever-willing helpful attitude. One of the joys of his life was to lead parades in the town with a siren blaring and a flashing blue light on top of his car.
His presence brought a smile to the faces of all on St Patrick's Days, carnivals and other community events and on the frequent processions in honour of winning local teams.
Rallying was a special love of Stephen's and he was bitterly disappointed during his final illness that he could not be part of the back-up team for the Martin Howley Donegal Harvest Rally which took place in and around Killybegs. A copy of the Rally Programme was signed by many of the drivers and others involved and sent to Stephen, wishing him well and telling him to get better soon.
It was through rallying and their joint love of horses that Stephen and Martin Howley formed a firm friendship which lasted throughout the years. Stephen was particularly hard hit by Martin's death in October 2015.
On the morning of the funeral, the cortege was accompanied by three Garda cars. As the remains passed through the town, businesses closed their doors and many people stood to show their respect.
Organisers of the annual charity bike outing, "Sandra's Run", formed a guard of honour at Elmwood Terrace. At the Tara Hotel, staff provided a guard of honour and, at the entrance to St Mary's church, a guard of honour was provided by colleagues and friends from Gallagher Bros., where Stephen worked for 16 years.
Fr Colm told mourners: "The death of such a good, kind-hearted young man reminds us all how precious live is and how fragile. Stephen was a giver who had so much more to give, but it was not to be", he said.
Speaking at the end of Mass, Stephen's sister, Diane, recalled that he had had many passions in his life, including horses, dogs, lorries, forklifts, rallying and, of course, his baby blue Corolla.
"Stephen's other big passion in life was his job in Gallagher's factory, as a forklift driver. He was never as proud as when he won through to represent Ireland in an international forklift driving competition, sponsored by Northwest Forklifts. Ever since that time, Stephen had a sticker on the back of his forklift, 'GO HARVEY GO'."
She added: "Stephen will be sadly missed by his family and all who loved him. Stephen is flying with the angels now. We will never forget him. Stephen would have been 39 tomorrow. Happy birthday, big brother. Sleep well."
Stephen Harvey is survived by his parents, Kieran and Kathleen, his brothers, Kieran and Derek, and sisters Deirdre, Evelyn and Diane.
Tommy Gallagher, Ardara
The death has occurred at letterkenny University Hospital of Tommy Gallagher late of Common, Ardara.
His remains will repose at Shovlin's Funeral Home, Sandfield on Thursday evening from 5pm with removal at 6.30pm to the Church of the Holy Family, Ardara arriving at 7pm. Funeral Mass on Friday at 11am with burial afterwards in the adjoining cemetery.
Family flowers only, donations, if desired, to Killybegs Community Hospital.
Brendan Byrne, Sligo/Letterkenny
The death has occurred at University Hospital Galway of Brendan Byrne late of Tonaphubble, Sligo Town, Sligo and Letterkenny.
House private. Funeral will arrive to St. Anne`s Church, sligo on Friday morning for Funeral Mass at 11am. Funeral proceeding afterwards to Sligo Cemetery.
Daniel ODonnell, Buncrana
The death has occurred at Beech Hill Manor Nursing Home, Lisfannon of Daniel ODonnell late of the The Square, Buncrana and 13a Cluain-Mhuire, Buncrana.
Removal from Beech Hill Manor Nursing Home today, Wed 19th, at 4.30pm to St Marys Oratory, Buncrana for Requiem Mass tomorrow, Thursday at 10am.
Burial afterwards in St Marys Cemetery, Cockhill.
Nancy Gallagher, Dunfanaghy
The death has occurred of Nancy Gallagher late of Upper Morroe, Dunfanaghy.
Reposing at her late residence, Requiem Mass will take place in the Holy Cross Church, Dunfanaghy tomorrow Thursday, October 20, at 11am followed by burial in the adjoining cemetery.
Family time from 11pm to 10am, and on the morning of the funeral. Donations, if desired, to the Donegal Hospice.
Severina Baker
The death has occurred of Severina Baker, Drumbarron, Frosses
Severina Baker, Drumbarron, Frosses has peacefully passed away at her home. Reposing at St. Marys Church, Frosses this evening from 7.30pm with rosary at 9pm.
Funeral Mass at 11am on Wednesday morning with removal to Lakelands Crematorium, Cavan, for private cremation. House strictly private.
Francie Gallagher
The death has occurred of Francie Gallagher, formerly Cruit Island, Donegal
Francie Gallagher, formerly of Cruit Island has passed away in the Prince of Wales Hospital, Glasgow. Reposing at the home of his brother Patrick, Lower Keadue from 10am on Wednesday, 19th October. Removal from his brothers house on Thursday morning, 20th October, at 10.30am for 11am Requiem Mass in St. Marys Church, Kincasslagh. Burial afterwards in Belcruit Cemetery. Family flowers only please.
Oliver Simpson
The death has occurred of Oliver Simpson, Tullnaree, Carndonagh, Donegal
Removal on Thursday, October 20th, at 10.30am to the Church of the Sacred Heart, Carndonagh for Requiem Mass at 11am. Burial afterwards in the adjoining cemetery. Family flowers only. Donations, if desired, to St. Lukes Hospital, Dublin.
* If you wish to have a death notice included, please e-mail: editorial@donegaldemocrat.com and include a contact telephone number for verification.
The IDA has been told it must focus on new investment in Donegal to help the county deal with the impact of the UK decision to leave the European Union.
Donegal Senator Padraig Mac Lochlainn challenged the IDA at the Oireachtas Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Committee to focus on new investment for the county.
The committee was dealing with the impact of the UK decision to leave the EU on businesses and job creation across the island.
Senator Mac Lochlainn said he had challenged the IDA to up its game on bringing new investment and jobs to Donegal.
I was surprised and alarmed at the rosy picture provided to the committee of the IDA's results in spreading inward investment and jobs throughout the state and particularly into Donegal and other border counties, he said.
The IDA repeatedly refers to jobs growth at existing companies they support in the county, and that is indeed welcome but we are asking where are the new companies and inward investment for the county?
"Few counties in this state will be as impacted by Brexit as Donegal. From fisheries to tourism and from agri-food to engineering, there is a real threat to our local economy. To fix a problem, you first have to accept that there is one. It is clear to me that the IDA do not accept that in terms of site visits by potential investors and the locating of new companies supported by the IDA in our county, the last numbers of years have been very disappointing.
He called on the IDA to work closer with Enterprise Ireland, Udaras, LYIT, Donegal County Council and the Donegal Local Enterprise Office.
The HSE has confirmed that the rheumatology clinics will be reinstated at Letterkenny University Hospital by the end of the month.
Charlie McConalogue, Fianna Fail TD, welcomed the news, saying he had been raising the issue with various ministers for health and with the HSE since he was first elected to the Dail in 2011. The services were removed from the Letterkenny hospital that year.
In this time, up to 300 Donegal patients have had to travel to Manorhamilton for rheumatology services, Deputy McConalogue said.
He said that after years of discussions, the HSE has given a firm commitment on reinstatement of the clinic, following the appointment of a third rheumatologist for the north west a few weeks ago.
The restoration of the clinic is fantastic news for all of the patients who have been forced to travel from Donegal to Manorhamilton for vital treatment, Deputy McConalogue said. These are people with very painful conditions, who found this long journey exceptionally difficult. It is unacceptable that they have had to travel this distance for so long.
The Inishowen-based deputy said he was very glad to see the service returned to Letterkenny.
In response to a question from Deputy McConalogue, the general manager of Sligo Regional Hospital, Grainne McCann, had said that the third consultant rheumatologist had begun employment in the north west in mid-September.
She confirmed that planning has been under way regarding the commencement of peripheral clinics in Letterkenny, with a weekly clinic to recommence in Letterkenny by the end of October.
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Death notices for Wednesday evening, October 19th
Anna begley, Fanad
The death has occurred at her home of Anna Geley, late of Ballyhiernan, Fanavolty, Fanad.
Requiem Mass will take place on Saturday, 22 October, in St Mary's Church, Fanavolty with burial afterwards in the adjoining cemetery.
House private, family and friends welcome.
House strictly private on the morning of the funeral.
Family flowers only, donations if desired to The Irish Heart Foundation.
Tommy Gallagher, Ardara
The death has occurred at letterkenny University Hospital of Tommy Gallagher late of Common, Ardara.
His remains will repose at Shovlin's Funeral Home, Sandfield on Thursday evening from 5pm with removal at 6.30pm to the Church of the Holy Family, Ardara arriving at 7pm. Funeral Mass on Friday at 11am with burial afterwards in the adjoining cemetery.
Family flowers only, donations, if desired, to Killybegs Community Hospital.
Brendan Byrne, Sligo/Letterkenny
The death has occurred at University Hospital Galway of Brendan Byrne late of Tonaphubble, Sligo Town, Sligo and Letterkenny.
House private. Funeral will arrive to St. Anne`s Church, sligo on Friday morning for Funeral Mass at 11am. Funeral proceeding afterwards to Sligo Cemetery.
Daniel ODonnell, Buncrana
The death has occurred at Beech Hill Manor Nursing Home, Lisfannon of Daniel ODonnell late of the The Square, Buncrana and 13a Cluain-Mhuire, Buncrana.
Removal from Beech Hill Manor Nursing Home today, Wed 19th, at 4.30pm to St Marys Oratory, Buncrana for Requiem Mass tomorrow, Thursday at 10am.
Burial afterwards in St Marys Cemetery, Cockhill.
Nancy Gallagher, Dunfanaghy
The death has occurred of Nancy Gallagher late of Upper Morroe, Dunfanaghy.
Reposing at her late residence, Requiem Mass will take place in the Holy Cross Church, Dunfanaghy tomorrow Thursday, October 20, at 11am followed by burial in the adjoining cemetery.
Family time from 11pm to 10am, and on the morning of the funeral. Donations, if desired, to the Donegal Hospice.
Severina Baker
The death has occurred of Severina Baker, Drumbarron, Frosses
Severina Baker, Drumbarron, Frosses has peacefully passed away at her home. Reposing at St. Marys Church, Frosses this evening from 7.30pm with rosary at 9pm.
Funeral Mass at 11am on Wednesday morning with removal to Lakelands Crematorium, Cavan, for private cremation. House strictly private.
Francie Gallagher
The death has occurred of Francie Gallagher, formerly Cruit Island, Donegal
Francie Gallagher, formerly of Cruit Island has passed away in the Prince of Wales Hospital, Glasgow. Reposing at the home of his brother Patrick, Lower Keadue from 10am on Wednesday, 19th October. Removal from his brothers house on Thursday morning, 20th October, at 10.30am for 11am Requiem Mass in St. Marys Church, Kincasslagh. Burial afterwards in Belcruit Cemetery. Family flowers only please.
Oliver Simpson
The death has occurred of Oliver Simpson, Tullnaree, Carndonagh, Donegal
Removal on Thursday, October 20th, at 10.30am to the Church of the Sacred Heart, Carndonagh for Requiem Mass at 11am. Burial afterwards in the adjoining cemetery. Family flowers only. Donations, if desired, to St. Lukes Hospital, Dublin.
* If you wish to have a death notice included, please e-mail: editorial@donegaldemocrat.com and include a contact telephone number for verification.
The 109th Infantry Battalion, which has been training at Finner Camp, takes to the streets of Donegal Town on Monday ahead of their six month deployment to Lebanon next month.
Minister for Defence, Paul Kehoe, TD will review the troops on this, the first time that personnel from Finner have marked their departure to Lebanon by such a march in Donegal Town.
Among the 336 personnel are 59 members of the 28th Infantry Battalion, which is based at Finner, the largest unit in the battalion.
Some locals who are being deployed on this mission are:
-Ballyshannon twins, Private Jonathon and Darren Gethins, whose father Jimmy was also a member of the 28th Inf.;
- Corporals Ronan and Glen Matthews, two brothers from Ballyshannon;
- Company Quartermaster Sgt Garry Friel from Castlefin, whose nephew Ciaran is a sergeant in Dublin; and
- Oisin Redican from Letterkenny, who is just 20. Oisin is the youngest member of the unit going on this tour of duty. His father Aidan was also in the Army.
The 109th was formed last month, with its headquarters based at Finner Camp, and the unit has undertaken extensive training here in Donegal as well as at Gormanstown Camp in Co. Meath and the Glen of Imaal in Co. Wicklow.
Members of the Infantry, Military Police, Cavalry, CIS, Engineers, Ordnance, Artillery, Transport & Medical Corps, Air Corps and the Naval Service are all represented in the battalion, which also includes 21 female personnel.
In south Lebanon, the troops will serve as part of UNIFIL (United Nation Interim Force In Lebanon), assuming the lead of IRISHFINBATT, which also includes a company of Finnish soldiers, and a platoon of Estonian troops.
Together, they will man observation posts along the Blue Line near the Zone of Separation. The Blue Line, or line of withdrawal, to call it by its proper name, was established in 2000 to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and UNIFIL have been on the ground there for the last ten years.
The 109th Infantry Battalion will assemble and parade at The Quay car park at 1.30pm, where the Minister for Defence will review and address the troops. They will then parade through the town and to the St John Bosco Centre.
Home Four wheelers Volkswagens Nightmare Continues Missouri Now Sues The Carmaker oi-Rajkamal
The Volkswagen Diesel Gate scandal seems it would haunt the German carmaker for a while, since the state of Missouri has sued Volkswagen on Monday.
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Dundalk Chamber of Commerce welcomed the general features of the Budget and in particular the retention of the nine per cent VAT rate. The chamber also noted the favourable changes in CAT,(Gift and Inheritance ); CGT (Capital Gains) and farming tax. The changes in capital allowances were welcomed.
However the chambers budget submission had asked for targeted relief to the border regions, particularly with Brexit coming down the line.
For 16 years we have asked that Dundalk be included in the inner city tax incentives and despite our deprivation ranking we are still not included, said Paddy Malone Dundalk Chamber.
Brexit is the greatest threat that Ireland has faced in decades. The border region is even more exposed in this area and we had asked that central government would support the county councils to reduce rates.
We also would have liked to have seen a minister given special responsibility for Brexit.
We are glad to see that the sugar tax will be implemented along with UK plans rather than a go alone that would have led to smuggling.
Fianna Fail Deputy Declan Breathnach has expressed his dismay at the lack of funding provided in the Budget to deal with the fallout from Brexit.
The Government have announced the establishment of a Brexit team in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, within existing budget and staffing envelopes. This is a totally inadequate response, Deputy Breathnach said.
Minister Noonan has on the one hand acknowledged the potential stormy waters we as a country face regarding Brexit. However he has not provided any extra funding to the Department of Foreign Affairs in this regard.
It is beyond belief that the minister regards Brexit as hugely significant, but wont provide the resources to ensure we can negotiate from the best position possible.
Many other European countries with less to lose because of Brexit have invested to make sure they have the appropriate systems in place. We cannot afford to be ill prepared, Brexit cannot be an afterthought.
I know that the government are saying that they have made allocations across key Government Departments for 2017 to provide the resources required to deliver Irelands Brexit ready strategy, however, not providing funding to the Department of Foreign Affairs and the new Brexit team is incomprehensible.
Fianna Fail will not be ill prepared, that is why we are holding a national Brexit conference on Saturday 12 November in the Carrickdale Hotel, Dundalk.
Fine Gael Deputy Peter Fitzpatrick said the Budget will strengthen the economy for Brexit, which is particularly important for border counties.
As people and businesses in border counties will know Brexit represents a serious challenge to the Irish economy still recovering from recession, due to our deep trade links with both the UK and the EU, Deputy Fitzpatrick said.
Minister Noonan used the opportunity of his budget speech to communicate a clear message. We want to see preservation of the common travel area, and by extension the common labour market. And crucially, we want to avoid any moves towards a hard border with Northern Ireland.
Budget 2017 responds robustly to the challenges presented by Brexit. It will the economy in the lead up to the UK leaving the EU.
The budget funds measures to help Irish businesses impacted by Brexit volatility.
Iarnrod Eireann has launched its quest for Iarnrod Eireanns Best Station, a title currently held by Dundalk's Clarke Station.
The competition will be tough as it is customers that get to decide who wins the overall title and the regional titles.
Voting is now open.
Entry forms can be obtained at your local station or you can vote online at irishrail.ie.
Customers will rate their station under the following criteria: Staff helpfulness, station presentation and customer information. All entrants will be entered into a draw to win one of five luxury weekend weekends courtesy of Select Hotels of Ireland, with Iarnrod Eireann also providing the train travel to and from the five great destinations. There is also the chance to win free DART travel for a year by voting for the Best DART Station.
The Iarnrod Eireann Best Station Awards reward excellence in customer facilities, cleanliness, innovation and customer service in the countrys 144 railway stations. An Iarnrod Eireann spokesperson said: What is so important about these awards is that it is our customers that choose the winners.
Iarnrod Eireann would encourage all our customers to come out and vote and have their say.
The overall winner last year was Dundalk and the Best Customer Service Award went to Dromod.
Dundalk Positive Mental Health (DPMH) held a series of events last week as part of its annual event to highlight mental health issues.
"This is our fourth Positive Mental Health Week, said Mary Moran chairperson of Dundalk Positive Mental Health.
Each year we have added more events to highlight the importance of positive mental health.
The week began with a fun walk along the Navvy Bank.
On Monday, Derek Pepper, vice chairperson of DPMH and Shine, hosted a radio programme on Dundalk FM with contributions from service providers, fellow members of the forum, from Dundalk Outcomers, an Garda Siochana, Grow, HSE, Dundalk Counselling Centre and Turas Counselling.
On Tuesday there was a coffee morning at the Oriel Centre Old Gaol.
On Wednesday the highlight of the week was the launch of the popular annual art exhibition in the Carroll Building DkIT by our Irish rugby international stars Rob and Dave Kearney. The art exhibition continued throughout the week with exhibits from local people.
On Thursday Alan McCabe from DkIT hosted a cookery demonstration in the college with lots of healthy eating ideas for positive mental health.
This event was highly popular last year and proved another great success this year. There was an information stand in the Marshes shopping centre throughout the week featuring information on local mental health services.
"I would like to thank everyone on the steering committee who continue to share their experiences in their own area of mental health to promote positive Mental Health and well being, said chairperson Mary Moran.
A person who did not leave their name has sent me the attached photograph of the old Lifeboat Station along the shore near the Fane River at Blackrock which I was surprised to learn is still standing.
Charlie McCarthy for the Coast Guard Houses, Point Road, tells me that that the photograph and attached article is taken from a booklet published by a man from the Drogheda area who had written about the various lifeboat stations along the coast of Louth about twenty years ago. Charlie could not remember this person's name but, if it were he who sent me this picture in relation an article I wrote about to the drowning of five young men from the Cooley Point area in September 1866, I am extremely grateful!
The old Boathouse building at Blackrock is now on private property. It appears that its interior has been renovated and is being used as an artist's studio by a lady who is related to the owner of the property. This is a happy outcome to the story of what once was a very valuable service for those sailed in these waters and made their living on the Irish Sea.
The note explaining the picture states that a Lifeboat Station was built in 1859, three miles south of Soldier's Point, with Lord Clermont supplying the site and bricks for the building.
It goes on to say that, during the first decade of the Station's operation, 'problems in launching the Lifeboat were experienced, with the boat sometimes having to be taken for more than a mile over the soft sands to reach the water. Although it was suggested moving her to Gyles Quay on the north side of the Bay, nothing came of the suggestion.'
The report goes on to say that, in 1899 1900, 'a new and larger Lifeboat house, at a cost of $791, was completed. It housed two lifeboats, both named General R. Dudley Blake. In September 1935 the Lifeboat (service) was withdrawn'.
A romantic story
Captain Robert Dudley Blake, after whom the Blackrock Lifeboat was named, was a member of a wealthy Northhumberland landed family who eloped with an 18 year old girl named Sheridan from Claremorris, County Mayo in 1819
He eventually obtained the consent of her father who had pursued the couple to Castlebar, intent on retribution.
Robert went on to become a General in the British Army and donated considerable funds to the I.N.L.I., which went to the providing of several lifeboats around the coasts, one of which went to the Blackrock, County Louth, Station.
The digital revolution has impacted almost every facet of our lives, from how we socialise, exercise, bank, and work. Although business is now conducted largely through smartphones, tablets and laptops, many workplaces are still cluttered by mountains of paper.
Given the indisputable benefits of embracing digital technology, businesses are fast running out of excuses for their stubborn attachment to the cumbersome paper trail.
Once, a commitment to go paperless was a commitment to the environment. Today, it is also an undeniable sign of business maturity. For a business to embrace digital, it is generally reflective of far more effective processes and broader strategies within the workplace. In a 2015 global study of digital businesses by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte it was found that businesses that had made a key strategic decision to embrace a paperless working environment, had 13% more revenue, were 50% more profitable and had a 19% higher valuation. The figures were conclusive and pointed to a brighter future for businesses that took the leap to leave paper behind.
These mature businesses are employing digital solutions to help them transition from reams of paper to a more effective way of managing workflow. Moving to a swifter digital model is not only beneficial for potential clients, it is helping to make a more productive and happy workforce who are not wasting hours trying to keep track of sheets of paper.
An effective digital strategy that aims to streamline processes and eradicate paper is crucial to giving small businesses across Australia a vital edge on their competitors. Paperless technology is not solely for large corporations with revenues to match it is perfect for nimble small businesses that are ready to embrace its benefits.
It would be difficult to argue the merits of the fax machine ahead of the smartphone in todays business world. What was once a corner stone of Australian business practice is now almost obsolete. The same is happening for paper. The decision to go paperless for businesses will lead to a more effective and productive workforce, and a more streamlined, successful operation. The time to act is now for any Australian business caught in the time-consuming paper vortex.
See also: Electronic signatures: what are the benefits?
About the author
Matt Old is the director of commercial sales at DocuSign ANZ.
"We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. We must acquire proficiency in defense and display stamina in purpose." - President Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address
I've been privileged to eavesdrop on some of the emergency response teams on the ground in southwestern Haiti as they survey the situation and communicate via WhatsApp on what's going on.
Today came an alarming text:
Alert!!!! Please be careful with flights in Haiti right now. I was warned that jet fuel in Haiti has been suspect lately, based on having water in it, and it being cut with oil. One helicopter blew an engine on take off in Haiti and now two planes have gone down off Dominican Republic. One was returning back to DR from an aid mission in Haiti. Are there portable jet fuel test kits, so that pilots can test the fuel that being put in their tanks. Does anyone know of reputable jet fuel sales?
Another worker texted back:
That makes sense as we almost crashed too and Roger said he couldn't find leak but gas was used 35 percent faster.
And another then wrote:
Facebook on Monday announced Marketplace, a new mobile app that facilitates buying and selling between peers.
Marketplace allows members of a community to discover, buy and sell items, noted Facebook Product Management Director Mary Ku.
The service is scheduled for rollout this week in the United States, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Users can access Marketplace by tapping a shopping icon at the bottom of the Facebook mobile app.
The opening screen displays photos of items for sale by people who live in a user-defined geographic area. Tapping an image will reveal more details about the item: product description, name and profile picture of seller, and location. Items can be saved for later reference.
If youre interested in an item, you can let a seller know by sending a direct message via Marketplace. After that, youre on your own. Facebook does not facilitate payment or delivery of Marketplace purchases.
Slick UI for Selling
A slick user interface makes it easy to post items for sale on Marketplace.
You take a photo of what youre selling or import an image of it from your camera roll. Add a product name, description and price. Confirm your location, pick a category for the item, and post to Marketplace.
As you post to Marketplace, you can choose to have your item posted simultaneously to a buy and sell group on Facebook.
Marketplace includes a Your Items section so you can keep tabs on items youve saved, those youve posted for sale, and communications with others on Marketplace.
Only Facebook users who are over 18 years old will be able to use Marketplace, which will be available for both iOS and Android phones. A desktop version of Marketplace will be offered in the coming months, according to Ku.
Improved Advertising Platform
The addition of Marketplace is part of Facebooks larger marketing strategy.
Facebook is trying to cover as much of the digital ecosystem with marketing as they can, said Michael Inouye, a principal analyst at ABI Research.
The more people that use their service, the greater the opportunity to get eyes, which gives them ad revenues, he told the E-Commerce Times.
Increased ad revenues is just one of the benefits Marketplace can provide Facebook, noted Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce.
Marketplace users will be adding extremely specific information to Facebooks database on them the types of items theyre pondering and purchasing, the prices and offers that move them to act and more, he told the E-Commerce Times.
While businesses cant target individual shoppers with offers based on their Marketplace behavior, Facebook can still likely find ways to use that information to enhance its services, both to users and to its advertisers, Caporaso said.
Creepy Craigslist
Just as importantly, the app gives Facebook immediate access into mobile commerce, which is growing more quickly than e-commerce as a whole Caporaso added. Beyond that, while its not making a penny off of sales now, Facebook can still monetize Marketplace sales in the future.
With the launch of Marketplace, Facebook is heating up competition in the consumer-to-consumer sales market where Craigslist and eBay hold dominant positions.
I think Marketplace primarily threatens Craigslist, as the service seems creepy at times with stories of people selling sex and losing their lives after showing up for an exchange, said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.
None of that may be true, but its the perception, he told the E-Commerce Times.
Better Digital Citizens
While buyers and sellers on Craigslist know little about each other, Marketplace participants can gain knowledge about who theyre doing business with through their Facebook pages.
Whats more, sellers are likely to be more careful about their behavior in Marketplace than in other online bazaars.
Sellers are going to feel compelled to be more honest and forthright because their activity is attached to their account, ABIs Inouye said. You dont want your friends to see that youve been doing bad, shady things.
Theres more incentive to be an outstanding digital citizen, he added.
Battling Mobile Apps
Craigslists approach to mobile could both hurt and help it in competition with Marketplace, noted Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
The fact that Marketplace is integrated into the Facebook mobile app is significantly different from Craigslist, which prefers to employ third-party app developers for mobile solutions, he told the E-Commerce Times.
That should allow Facebook to create a more seamless, visually rich experience, but mobile users will also be subjected to Facebook ads and other intrusions. Thats a significant negative, given Craigslists long resistance to cluttering its service with ads, King noted.
Many longtime Craigslist users also prefer the sites elegant, easy to navigate UI, he added. In comparison, Facebook Market is likely to be as elegant as a visit to Times Square.
Poaching eBay
With its emphasis on community buying and selling, it might appear that Marketplace is more of a threat to Craigslist than to eBay, but King doesnt think so.
I believe its more of a threat to eBay than Craigslist at least in the short term, he said.
Thats because of Craigslists ability to seamlessly support local, ephemeral or one-time sales of goods, King explained. If you have a used car, computer or baby carriage to unload, Craigslist is a terrific option, but if youre using online sales as a second job or to create additional income, eBay and now Marketplace are probably better options.
eBay is in a better position to defend itself from Marketplace than Craigslist, suggested Clarus Caporaso.
eBay is an established leader in this field, with a mobile app of its own, he said, and its unlikely to sit idly by while Facebook poaches its audience.
Craigslist did not respond to our request to comment for this story.
The Obama administration on Tuesday indicated it was considering a proportional response to retaliate against Russia for its efforts to influence the United States election process.
The administration last week officially linked Russian operatives to a series of cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and other organizations, which apparently were designed to influence the November presidential race.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest confirmed that leaks to WikiLeaks, DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 were consistent with methods and motivations of Russian efforts during a press gaggle on board Air Force One on Tuesday, when President Obama was en route to Greensboro, North Carolina.
The intelligence community has assessed that the theft of this information and its disclosure is an attempt to interfere with the U.S. political system, Earnest said.
Russia has used similar tactics in the past to try to destabilize democracies in other parts of the world, but those other countries were not as durable and resilient as the U.S., he added.
Any U.S. response would be proportional, Earnest said, noting that it was unlikely that our response would be announced in advance, and that President Obama might choose options that would not be disclosed.
Asked by a reporter whether those options would include sanctions or retaliatory activity against Russia, Earnest said he would not be specific in terms of foreshadowing potential responses, but that a range of options, including the two mentioned, were on the table.
Battening Hatches
The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week issued a joint statement saying they were confident that the Russian government was behind various hacks designed to interfere with the U.S. election.
The hacks included scanning and probing of election-related systems in Illinois and Arizona.
Based on the hack attacks scope and sensitivity, it appears they were authorized by senior-level officials in the Russian government, the joint statement says.
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson earlier this week said that 33 states and 11 county or local agencies had requested cybersecurity services from DHS to defend against further hacks.
The services range from cyberhygiene scans on Internet-facing systems to risk and vulnerability assessments, DHS officials said. The hygiene scans are done remotely, and state and local officials are given a report showing vulnerable areas, along with recommendations for improving online voter registration systems, election night reporting systems, and other systems connected to the Internet.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. who joined Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in pushing the Obama administration to go public with the allegations praised the official release of the evidence linking Russia to the hacks.
We should now work with our European allies who have been the victim of similar and even more malicious cyber interference by Russia to develop a concerted response that protects our institutions and deters further meddling, he said in a statement.
Hold Fire
The process of naming Russia as the culprit has become heavily politicized, observed Martin Libicki, an adjunct management scientist at the RAND Corporation and a distinguished visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. One side of the U.S. political aisle is calling out the Russians, while the other side is disputing the level of certainty.
A U.S. administration response cannot help but play into the election season with the other side screaming bloody murder, Libicki told TechNewsWorld.
It might make sense to wait until after the election to respond, he suggested. However, the Russians might then lose interest until the next presidential cycle.
Its difficult to know definitively what specific evidence points directly at the Russian government, but its unlikely the hacks will change the outcome of the race, said Troy Hunt, a Microsoft regional director.
However, theres certainly something to be said about a foreign power attempting to influence a nations democratic process, he told TechNewsWorld, and theyve attempted to do so using the same mainstream techniques that everyday cybercriminals would use.
One of the problems facing the technology industry right now is the critical lack of strategic thinking. Hedge fund managers and activist investors increasingly are directing companies, forcing tactical decisions that raise stock prices over the short term, largely by destroying the firms long-term viability. What makes this trend particularly problematic is that most top executives dont seem to understand they are destroying their companies until its too late.
This also speaks to Joe Tuccis and Michael Dells recent partnership as a massive effort to remove that threat from both of their companies. Rather than once again picking on a firm like HPE, which is a showcase for this horrid foundation for decision making, I thought it would be interesting to explore the Trump and Clinton campaigns. My contention is that had either candidate thought strategically, neither would have run for the office of president.
Ill close with my product of the week: an interesting Samsung smart refrigerator that may define the future of the smart home and fortunately is without any exploding battery risk.
Thinking Strategically vs. Tactically
We often define tactical and strategic thinking by time. A tactical decision tends to be more reactive and implemented with a 12-month window, while a strategic decision tends to be proactive and implemented over a far longer period.
Deciding to date someone would be tactical, while marriage should be strategic. Id argue that marriages often fail because they often are entered for tactical reasons. The parties are thinking more about how much they like to date than about how well their goals and ideals will align in the long term.
In the case of this years election, both candidates want to be president likely for different reasons. Both started with powerful brands that were leveraged successfully into building businesses or getting stratospheric speaking fees and funding global and very lucrative charities.
This reflects a downside that I doubt either fully assessed. Unlike a typical politician who isnt as well compensated, both Clinton and Trump have huge assets tied to their names, as well as reputations that are at risk, regardless of whether they win or lose. Neither can exit this process without incurring most of the damage now.
They are both effectively locked into a path that will leave them badly damaged with respect to personal wealth and influence once this process concludes, regardless of the outcome. That is likely because neither really thought through the risks and rewards strategically.
Donald Trumps Brand
Trump entered the election process with a very powerful personal brand and a reputation for being both very successful and very rich. His brand is placed on all of his properties not an insignificant portion of which are casinos, where patrons particularly Asian patrons connect his brand with winning.
However, much of this is a false front. He is neither as rich nor as successful as people believe him to be, and he actually seems to be operating very close to collapse. He isnt alone. Others, like Elon Musk, also operate on a razors edge between impressive success and catastrophic failure.
The perception that Trump is a success is likely his most valuable asset and is most responsible for keeping him in private jets and penthouse suites, as opposed to a nice house in the country and a neverending issue of paying the rent.
If Trump loses, he will have lost to Hillary Clinton, who isnt seen as a strong politician because she basically was anointed by her party. Thanks largely to Colin Powell, she also is viewed both as incompetent and unsuccessful, particularly by Trumps base.
This doesnt just make Trump a loser but a super loser, having lost to Clinton, who lost to Obama and is seen as unelectable. This means he not only will have virtually eliminated the perception that he cant lose, but also will be seen as a person who cant win. The impact on his income should be not only dramatic but also significant enough to shift him from profit to loss. The resulting loss as people avoid his casinos and brand in general could be catastrophic.
If he were to win, things wouldnt get much better. Hed enter not only with the Democrats but also a critical mass of Republicans against him, and no real political experience. That suggests his presidency would be catastrophically bad, and with his personal brand seriously damaged by the election process, he could face financial collapse while in office. The result would be the absolute destruction of his brand and further deterioration of his image from that of a successful billionaire to that of a punchline.
Youd think, given the risk, that exiting the process might allow him to recover his brand, but that seems doubtful. As president, hed at least have access to resources that would help him recover it, but his unwillingness to learn from his mistakes suggests that outcome is exceedingly remote. He is kind of screwed.
Hillary Clintons Reputation
Clinton entered the campaign as one of the most powerful women in the world. Largely seen as successful as a senator and particularly as secretary of state, she could have enjoyed a long successful career as a very highly paid speaker, power broker and charity manager. The election process so far has reduced her perceived power as a power broker. Her positions against Wall Street have devalued her considerably as a speaker, and her charity is at risk of being positioned as a liability to many current contributors.
So, even before the election process is complete, the perceptions that formerly surrounded her will have been badly, if not critically, damaged destroying much of the financial engine under her relatively high income. Recall that the Clintons complained that his term in office effectively broke them financially.
If Clinton should lose, thing would get worse. Already increasingly seen as unable to do what is necessary to accomplish key goals, she will have lost to Trump, who is positioned by his party as unelectable. This suggests that anything he does in office that damages the country likely will be blamed on her inability to execute.
Trump is known to be vindictive, and that behavior, backed with the power of his office and access to still-confidential information on both Hillary and Bill, could result in a level of brand damage and potential criminal charges and litigation that would be unprecedented in their lives, if not the history of the nation.
There is an unacceptably high chance this not only could result in her being broke again, but also facing a high risk of a jail sentence. I expect that Trump would pull no punches in seeking to get even with her for the damage he would perceive she had done. (Trump doesnt accept that he makes mistakes, and hell likely blame his own financial problems on Clinton.)
If she wins, things also get worse though likely not as much as in Trumps case, because Trump effectively would be neutralized as a threat. Still, she would face a Republican majority that hates her more than they hate the current sitting president, as well as a not-inconsequential number of Sanders supporters who think she cheated to get the job.
The effort to neutralize her will be unprecedented, both from within and without her party, and her now-historic inability to execute likely would define her term. There is a very high probability that she would be forced out of the office early (the same is true of Trump) and a near certainty that she would be tarnished further by her aging husbands increasing inability to make prudent decisions (also highlighted by Colin Powells leaked email).
Exiting the White House, she could be in even worse financial shape than the last time but lacking the vitality, due to age, to recover. Granted, as in Trumps case, things would be marginally better if she were to win rather than lose but strategically, this looks like a lose/lose outcome for both candidates.
Wrapping Up
The strategic decision at this point would be for both candidates to meet and agree to withdraw, focusing on brand recovery and partnering for mutual brand recovery, given that both have the same problem. There is zero probability of that happening, not only because both candidates are unable to think strategically, but both also because both are likely at the point where they are more likely to shoot each other than to partner.
Plan B would be to work far harder not only to ensure a win, but also to ensure the ability to execute the office of president successfully. That means aggressively reducing the conflict in their own parties not through rhetoric alone, but by embracing proactively critical aspects of the elements positioned against them, and turning them from liabilities to assets.
In addition, both candidates would need to address their own core behaviors more aggressively. Clinton has to focus more on sharp execution and Trump on doing his homework instead of skating. Both need to be ready to enter the office running and be fully capable of avoiding the mistakes that have crippled both candidates careers and campaigns. At the heart of this is the willingness to accept mistakes and faults, and prioritize addressing them.
Since neither candidate seems willing to do that either, I expect that regardless of who it is, the winner eventually will have deep regrets about running if theyre not harbored already. Had they thought this through strategically like the computer in the movie War Games eventually did both candidates would have concluded that the only truly good decision would have been not to play in the first place.
One other point: More people, particularly politicians, should practice thinking strategically. It would lead to a lot more good decisions and far fewer catastrophic ones.
At our house, Im typically the person who falls in love with a new high-tech appliance and then deals with what often is an unexpected bad outcome. However, this Samsung smart refrigerator was my wifes idea and so far, it is a good one.
Samsung 4-Door Flex RefrigeratorWith Family Hub
The idea of a smart refrigerator has been around for some time. Over the years, Samsung has introduced a number of them, both with built-in PCs and built-in tablets, that for the most part have truly sucked.
Part of the problem has been that Samsung service typically sucks, and this class of product has tended to be complex and unreliable. However, the company has improved over time with regard to reliability, and there is an increasing number of third parties that can service the product (though I would always buy an extended warranty).
What makes the difference is that this new offering not only is stunning to look at, but also has significant value, thanks to the integration with other Samsung products, as a smart hub for IoT devices.
While still young, this product can be used to sync in real time with Samsung TVs (playing the same program in the kitchen that the family is watching in the living room); program compliant Samsung stoves and appliances; and control compatible IoT devices.
Running about US$1,500 more than the same refrigerator without a display and with a price of just under $4K this isnt a cheap date, but it is more impressive in place than comparably priced Sub Zero and Viking appliances.
In short, if you want to impress people, this thing does it in spades. This is finally a good representation of what is coming, and it is a fascinating way to move from paper sticky notes into a digital messaging future.
Because this is a great early showcase for IoT, but mostly because this is one of the most impressive devices in a home that is nearly wall-to-wall tech, the Samsung RF8K9580SG Smart Refrigerator is my product of the week.
Federal authorities have been investigating reports that hackers targeted the mobile phones of a handful of Democratic Party staffers, according to a Reuters article published last week.
The news follows a series of breaches in recent months that revealed emails and other personal information of party staffers and other Democratic officials.
The FBI has launched an investigation into the attacks, which party officials believe are linked to Russia. Several members of Congress have raised suspicions in recent weeks that Russia might be attempting to interfere with the U.S. elections.
In addition to cyberattacks on Democratic Party operatives, recent breaches of state election systems are suspected of having Russian connections.
Possible targets were asked to turn over their phones so an image could be made of the devices, the latest reports indicated. Data retrieved from Democratic Party staff emails may have been used to access the mobile phones.
CrowdStrike, a Cybersecurity firm that investigated prior cyberattacks involving the DNC and other targets, declined to comment for this story.
The alleged mobile phone hacks reportedly involve malicious software infecting the devices. The data probe could involve photos, contacts, text messages, phone logs and other items.
DNC officials did not respond to our request to comment for this story. FBI officials declined to comment.
High Alert
A variety of means can be used to infect software, said Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro.
For mobile, the one unique vector is getting people to install what they believe are legitimate apps from spoofed or otherwise misrepresented app stores, he told TechNewsWorld. However, theres no indication that a malicious app was involved in this case. Its a little harder to get malicious software on a mobile device, but it can be done.
News of the investigation adds to the heightened state of alert about the integrity of various U.S. election systems. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, recently released a statement on alleged Russian hacking activity against various systems.
Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election, they said. At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election we can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians.
The orders for such activity could only come only from very senior levels of the Russian government, Feinstein and Schiff maintained, and they called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to order an immediate halt to the activity.
Shoring Up Defenses
In wake of attacks on election databases in Illinois and Arizona, 18 states have accepted an offer from the Department of Homeland Security to help them make sure their election systems are secure, Secretary Jeh Johnson testified in a Senate committee hearing last week.
In those cases, suspected overseas hackers compromised the personal information of up to 200,000 voter records in Illinois and also attacked the election infrastructure in Arizona. However, no individual records were compromised.
The Illinois breach involved a suspected SQL injection attack, officials confirmed. Arizona election officials have linked the attack there to suspected Russian actors.
DHS last month issued a warning to state election officials about possible threats to their respective systems and offered to provide additional security measures, including cyberhygiene scans of their respective Internet-facing systems, and risk and vulnerability scans by on-site experts.
The public should have confidence in the election system, despite concerns about recent attacks on the DNC and infrastructures in Arizona and Illinois, said Thomas Hicks, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Because of the decentralized nature of the American election administration system, there is no single, uniform national system that would affect the outcome of election results for the November 2016 presidential election, he testified late last month before the Subcommittee for Information Technology for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Suspected Russian hackers, including the teams known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, have been implicated in earlier hacks on the DNC and other federal agencies.
A spearphising attack on Bellingcat, a website backed by a group of citizen journalists involved in the probe of MH 17, carries the hallmarks of Fancy Bear, according to ThreatConnect.
The attacks, which date back to last year, targeted individual emails, and were similar to the attack on White House staffer Billy Rinehart, whose stolen information recently was splashed onto DCleaks, suspected of being a Russian-influenced operation.
There is no way to easily tell the intentions of the hacks targeting Bellingcat and its journalists, said Kyle Ehmke, senior threat intelligence researcher at ThreatConnect.
Certainly there are a range of actions that could be enabled, he told TechNewsWorld, based on the information they are seeking to secure.
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Via Viet Nam News: Ministry raises warning level for Zika virus. Excerpt and then a comment:
HA NOI The Ministry of Health (MoH) has increased the Zika virus warning to level 3 - the dangerous level, Tran ac Phu, director of the Preventive Medicine Department, announced in an urgent meeting held in Ha Noi on Monday.
In a meeting aimed at finding measures to deal with Zika-related diseases, Phu warned that women intending to get pregnant should avoid affected areas.
If they must go there, the women should take preventive measures and study the disease, he said.
Pregnant women especially those in the three first months of the pregnancy who have been in the affected areas and had dengue fever and conjunctivitis should go to medical stations for consultancy, Phu said.
At the meeting, health experts called the Zika virus a complicated global virus. More than 70 countries and territories have seen cases.
On October 11 this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that Zika had spread to Southeast Asia; seven out of 10 countries in the area had the disease.
By Monday, seven Vietnamese cases of the disease were reported in Khanh Hoa, Phu Yen and Binh Duong provinces and HCM City.
Suspected microcephaly case reported
Last Friday, the MoH supervision system discovered a four-month-old baby in Krong Buk District, ak Lak born malformed with an unusually small head, suspected to be a case of microcephaly caused by Zika virus.
The National Institute of Hygiene And Epidemiology is joining Japans Nagasaki University to conduct tests on the case.
The MoHs study showed that the mother had dengue fever in the third and the sixth months of the pregnancy. The dengue fever condition in their living area was quite serious.
If the mother was accurately diagnosed, she must have fallen ill with two different strains of dengue. As I understand it, that's a setup for dengue hemorrhagic fever the second time. She doesn't seem to have contracted that very dangerous disease, which suggests one or the other infection was really Zika.
That would in turn suggest that dengue and Zika in close succession are a factor in pregnant women whose babies are born with microcephaly and neurological disorders. And if Colombians in the past year haven't contracted much dengue before contracting Zika, that might explain the relative scarcity of Colombia microcephaly cases compared to those in Brazil.
This is idle speculation, and I look forward to one of the grownups patiently explaining to me what the real situation is.
Miners have unearthed the worlds most valuable chunk of jade stone in Burma, the southeast Asian country also known as Myanmar.
Local politician U Tint Soe stand with the jade rock. SWNS.com
Worth an estimated $174.6 million, the massive 200-ton stone measures about 14 feet high and 19 feet long, the BBC reported. Its size is second to the carved statue at the Jade Buddha Palace in China which weighs 286 tons, according to the Daily Mail.
We thought we had won the lottery, miner Sao Min told the Daily Mail. But this belongs to the country. It is in honor of our leaders.
The term jade can refer to two different metamorphic rocks: nephrite and jadeite. This stone is believed to be jadeite, which is worth significantly more. Nearly all of the worlds finest jadeite comes from Myanmar and makes up nearly half of the countrys gross domestic product.
I assume that it is a present for the fate for our citizens, the government and our party as it was discovered in the time of our government. Its a very good sign for us, local politician U Tint Soe told the Daily Mail.
The stone will reportedly head to China where it will be used to make jewelry and statues for homes.
As the climate talks in Paris concluded, climate activists took note: soil restoration is our ally in the fight against global warming. It is inexpensive, effective and easy to implement, and it yields multiple benefits. Besides capturing carbon and reversing desertification caused by severe drought, soil restoration enhances regional cooling, strengthens resilience against droughts and floods, and improves food quality. It is a necessary second front in our battle against the heating up of Earths atmosphere.
How so? Soil holds carbonlots of it. Other than the oceans and fossil fuel deposits, soils are the largest reservoirs of carbon on the planet, holding approximately two times the amount in the atmosphere and vegetation combined. The dark color of fertile soil comes from the presence of organic carbon compounds.
Unfortunately, over the centuries, a great deal of carbon has been released from soils through both primitive and modern agriculture. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognizes that reducing emissions alone will not stop global warming. Disruptions, it says, are irreversible unless there is a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period.
The good news is that what has been lost can be returned. The excess atmospheric carbon creating anxiety would be far more content in cozy soil. Photosynthesis is how it will get there, through the process whereby plants convert carbon in the air into organic molecules exuded by roots to feed hungry microbes underground.
Ohio State University Scientist Rattan Lal referred to soil restoration as low hanging fruit and says it can serve as a bridge to climate safety during the transition to a non-fossil fuel economy. In a 2014 white paper, the Rodale Institute showed that regenerative organic farming could capture carbon dioxide in quantities exceeding global emissions.
Indeed, soils are the only suitable reservoir for the excess carbon in the atmosphere.
Politicians are also taking note. Frances Minister of Agriculture Stephane Le Foll has introduced a program, 4 per 1000, calling for a yearly increase of 0.4 percent in the amount of organic matter in the worlds agricultural soils. Scientific Director for the Environment of the French National Institute for Agronomical Research Jean-Francois Soussana claims this modest increase in soil carbon globally would be sufficient to offset global greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on how quickly the agricultural community responds, the atmospheric level of CO2 could be kept from rising to levels uniformly viewed as disastrous. At last count, 25 countries, including Australia and the U.K., have announced their commitment to this campaign.
Michael Pollan, author of New York Times best seller, The Omnivores Dilemma, calls on his faithful to heed this message. In a powerful new video, Soil Solutions to Climate Problems, he says, When soil is damaged, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this has had serious consequences for the climate. He then offers the good news: we now know how to put carbon back in the soil where it belongs What had been atmospheric carbon, a problem, becomes soil carbon, a solution.
Michael Pollan is right. Soil is a fix, but not just for climate. Restoring soil also ameliorates desertification, a factor that can destabilize already volatile regions. Consider the unprecedented droughtperhaps exacerbated by global warmingthat precipitated civil unrest in Syria before the outbreak of civil war there.
We need look no further than the ground beneath our feet in our quest for a more verdant, peaceful world. Lets embrace this convenient truth.
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By Watcharapol Daengsubha
Last weekend, farmers, scientists and activists from all over the world gathered at the Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, to present the case against destruction caused by one of the corporate giants that promotes industrial farming.
Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague on Oct. 15. Greenpeace
The symbolic Monsanto Tribunal aimed to hold Monsantothe giant agrochemical companyto account for its alleged atrocities against humanity and the environment. This event is far from over. It will echo back through the food system as the tribunals participants bring home lessons, solutions and renewed hope for change.
First day of the tribunal, judges Tulkens (left) and Dior Fall Sow. Greenpeace
Five internationally renowned judges heard 30 witnesses. Experts gave their accounts of the environmental damage wrought by Monsanto. One testimony described how monoculture has caused a great loss to seed variety. They compared the patenting of seeds to a new form of colonization.
Seng Channeang, Cambodian small-scale farmer. Greenpeace
These testimonies will give people all over the world a well-documented legal brief to be used in lawsuits against other similar corporations.
Although this is not legally binding, it is legally sound, said Arnaud Apoteker, member of the steering committee of the tribunal. The witnesses were presenting real cases to real judges. The lessons from this event can be used in ensuing local battles.
One of the 30 witnesses, Feliciano Ucam Poot, a Mayan farmer from Mexico, submitted evidence to support his allegations that glyphosate and other chemicals are linked to childrens sickness.
Before the introduction of glyphosate and other agrochemicals, I did not see our people suffer from sickness like this, he said. A lot of people are suffering like us and this tribunal will ensure that our stories will be heard around the world.
Scene from the Monsanto Tribunal Press Conference on Oct. 15. Greenpeace
Do we need these agrochemicals to feed the world? A question asked of Hans Herren, a renowned scientist and president of the Millennium Institute at the Monsanto Tribunal. By producing less waste we can feed 10 million people. We need to make more health per acre, not calories per acre, he said.
Running parallel to the tribunal hearings was a Peoples Assembly, where people from around the world discussed solutions to the impacts caused by industrial agriculture. As many of the witnesses pointed out, one of the greatest challenges they face is to make their voices heard. This assembly provided a much needed forum for communities to come together and find sustainable solutions to common problems.
The Peoples Assembly, The Hague. Greenpeace
We should fight for ourselves. Nobody is free from danger if our food is toxic, said Farida Akhter of UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternatives), Bangladesh.
The stories of people like Feliciano and the concerns of Farida are echoed by millions of voices from across the world; from beekeepers in Mexico to small scale producers in France and farmers in India.
The judges of the tribunal will assess these allegations, examine all evidence put forth and publish their findings in December.
Judges at the Monsanto Tribunal. Greenpeace
These issues arent limited to farmers and environmentaliststhey concern us all. We all have a choice: As citizens and consumers, we can all make decisions to shape the future we want.
Here are 12 things you can do to start the eco-food revolution.
Watcharapol Daengsubha is a food and ecological agriculture campaigner with Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
Ohio governmental officials will be releasing an updated report about a two-square-mile toxic blob at the bottom of Lake Erie that might be spreading perilously close to a water intake pipe that supplies drinking water for the city of Cleveland.
Lake Eries toxic sediment is a potential threat to city of Clevelands drinking water. Stefanie Spear
According to The Plain Dealer, the new report is expected for release later this fall and is based on new tests taken nearby a section of the lake bottom known as Area-1, located about nine miles off the coast. Prior Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests of the tainted plot from 2014 and 2015 revealed levels of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) that were much higher than elsewhere in Lake Erie. These highly toxic chemicals can harm or kill aquatic life and can cause cancer in humans.
Lake Eries toxic blob is the result of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dumping of dredged and untreated sludge from the polluted Cuyahoga River shipping channel in the 1970s. The disposal took place before the Clean Water Act of 1972 was enacted.
The mass is located about five miles from an intake valve for the Nottingham Water Treatment Plant, which supplies drinking water to parts of Cuyahoga CountyOhios most populous county. It is unclear how fast the blob is moving or if it will actually reach the pipe.
Two-square-mile blob sitting at the bottom of Lake Erie could be spreading. Ohio EPA / The Plain Dealer
The Ohio EPA said in May that the citys water is being monitored and is safe.
Kurt Princic, chief of EPAs Northeast Ohio District, said PCBs or PAHs have not been detected so far at the Nottingham water plant, The Plain Dealer reported.
However, this doesnt mean that the situation wont change.
Im no more satisfied now than I ever was that we have dispelled the fact that we have toxic sediment moving toward our drinking water, Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler told The Plain Dealer. We need conclusive evidence. We need more samples so that we will know, once and for all, whether this substance is moving.
We need the U.S. EPAs help to develop an analysis and a strategy to determine if it is migrating and whether it is a threat to drinking water, Princic added.
Former Army Corps Brigadier General Richard Kaiser denies claims that the toxic sediment is spreading or that its a threat to the citys drinking water. He told The Plain Dealer that Army Corps scientists assured him that waves cannot influence sediment 60 feet underwater except during extreme storm events, adding that the EPAs testing methods and reports were critically flawed.
However, Butler has refuted this view, citing EPAs tests indicating that the toxic sediment has indeed spread from the original dumping site from wind currents and storms.
Her ECSU Education Leads Charlotte Native Rice to Doctoral Program
If you know 2013 Elizabeth City State University graduate Brittany Rice, then you may know that it wont be long before shes called Dr. Rice. The Viking alum is currently a first-year biomedical student at the University of Kentuckys Kentucky Bridge to a Biomedical Doctorate for Appalachian Students program.
The program, according to UKs website, provides Appalachian and underrepresented students the opportunity to enter biomedical doctoral programs. Prior to entering the UK program, Rice received her masters in biology from Eastern Kentucky University after doing post-baccalaureate research at Virginia Tech.
We asked the 26-year-old Charlotte native a few questions about life as a Viking, her college experience and her journey toward or doctorate degree.
Elizabeth City State University: Why did you choose ECSU?
Brittany Rice: It was important to me to attend a university that had students and faculty who come from similar backgrounds and circumstances, and who have had similar cultural experiences as myself. It was also equally important to be at an institution that embodied an atmosphere of community and collaboration among the student body, professors, and faculty. After touring the campus and avidly speaking with Grady Deese and Larry Smith (former deceased faculty), I realized that ECSU offered the supportive atmosphere I desired.
ECSU: Describe your experience at ECSU.
BR: My time at ECSU was very enriching. Not only was I able to achieve academic success, but I was also provided the environment to grow as an individual and as a contributing member of a larger community.
ECSU: How did your experience here help you move onto to a doctoral program?
BR: As a student under the tutelage of Dr. Ephraim Gwebu (former ECSU professor and department chair), I was afforded the opportunity to participate in numerous extensive research experiences as a 2010-2013 National Institutes of Health Minority Biomedical Research Support Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (NIH-MBRS RISE) fellow, and a 2012 National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Minority Health International Training (NIH-MHD MHIRT) fellow. These experiences prepared me to pursue a doctoral degree by enhancing my understanding and knowledge of biomedical sciences and allowing me to gain expertise in a variety of research techniques.
ECSU: Talk about some of the experiences you remember at ECSU. What were some of the more significant moments for you as a student here?
BR: I had a number of memorable moments at ECSU, many in the research capacity. As I stated earlier during my matriculation as a student at ECSU, I was provided several opportunities to conduct research. Research I conducted was hosted at various institutions such as ECSU, Meharry Medical College (Nashville, Tennessee), and Walter Sisulu University (Mthatha, South Africa). My fondest research related memories were of rehearsals of "talks" (practice presentations) where "promoted my science" (discussed research I engaged in as a ECSU student) with Dr. Gwebu, Mrs. Armwood-Outlaw, and Ms. Armwood (former director, coordinator, and administrative assistant for the National Institutes of Health Minority Biomedical Research Support Initiative for Scientific Enhancement program at ECSU, listed respectively), in preparation for my poster session presentations at national and regional scientific meetings. In the extra-curricular aspect of memorable moments, pledging (I am a PROUD MEMBER of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.) and becoming a peer health educator were also very significant.
ECSU: You are interested in helping underrepresented students to pursue research careers. Who are those students? What would you say to them to encourage them?
BR: STEM+H (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and health sciences) professions fail to retain minorities, women, and persons of low socioeconomic status. As an African-American female once of low socioeconomic status, I understand the barriers to completion in regards to obtaining an education. I also understand the difficulty of preparing for a career and transitioning into a profession that lacks individuals from diverse backgrounds. My own experiences coupled with the lack of retention and participation of underrepresented individuals in STEM+H compel me to aid underrepresented students to pursue and obtain research careers in academia and industry using my success story for their inspiration and motivation.
My tidbit of encouragement for underrepresented students of STEM+H come from words I received several years ago from my mentor Dr. Ephraim Gwebu. He said, "Labels do not dictate your success, your success redefines given labels. Embrace your diversity as a strength. Know that inclusion starts with you."
ECSU: What would you tell a student who is considering attending ECSU?
BR: There are many things to consider regarding the matriculation into an institution of higher education. If you want to receive a first-rate education from caring professors and faculty in a supportive atmosphere that encourages diversity and empowerment, ECSU is for you.
(Photo: REUTERS / Marko Djurica)Serbian Patriarch Irinej conducts the liturgy on Orthodox Christmas in Saborna church Belgrade January 7, 2014. Serbian Orthodox believers celebrate Christmas on January 7, according to the Julian calendar
In Serbia ethnic strains that erupted in the dismembering of Yugoslavia, embroiling it in civil war still simmer. Sectarian differences remain but inter-religious personal relations are good, says a senior Catholic bishop.
Stanislav Hocevar, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, says the Balkans is an ethnic trouble spot and in that regard, not much has changed since the end of World War II.
Historical tensions between the different ethnic and religious groups make daily coexistence complicated, the prelate said in an interview with international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.
"Nobody is quite prepared to work toward a new reconciliation," said the archbishop.
Serbs, Croatians and Bosnians make a highly flammable mix, with the countries' religious leaders put in the difficult role of peace-makers.
"We should all together find new ways to reconcile with each other, otherwise it won't work. Without an ecumenical dimension we won't reach that reconciliation," Archbishop Hocevar stated.
He noted that the relationship with the Orthodox Church is good at a personal level, stressing that the churches must strive to arrive at a joint perspective on important historical events.
Some 85 percent of the country's population are part of the Serbian Orthodox Church whilst Catholics account for 5 percent, with 1 percent Protestants and 3 percent Muslims.
All the while, different interpretations of history and many theological disagreements persist.
For instance, for the Orthodox Church religious and national identity, are closely linked, the archbishop explained.
Serbians tend to emphasize the small differences between Catholics and Orthodox instead of focusing on more important, universal issues that transcend nationality.
The Catholic leader sees this leaning toward nationalistic pride as part of a lingering reaction to the communist policy of eliminating personal and national identity in favor of a new "identity of workers."
SERBIAN MINISTER OF CULTURE
Archbishop Hocevar lauded the current Serbian Minister of Culture for helping the Catholic Church repair and upgrade Catholic churches.
He explained that in late October 2014 a diocesan synod was held that focused on organizational problems and the number of local Catholics has dwindled with resources scant.
Key priorities are refurbishing churches and other diocesan buildings, strengthening ministry to children and youth, along with providing transport for priests to attend far-flung parishes.
Archbishop Hocevar is strongly committed to dialogue with the Orthodox; and the availability of theological material in Serbian is a key ingredient in this process.
Until the present, it was assumed that Catholics in Serbia spoke only Croatian but the children of mixed marriages in his diocese speak Serbian.
However, there is a catch said the archbishop,
"If the Catholic catechism is translated into Serbian, the Orthodox fear we want to convert Orthodox faithful to Catholicism. Therefore we need to go step by step."
Hocevar stressed, the reconstruction of the Balkan states is a complex and slow process.
The Catholic Church, for its part, can make a huge contribution by demonstrating the universality of faith communities, he said.
This is in a universality that transcends the often overly narrow connection between national and religious identity.
The archbishop said this broad view holds the key to Croats, Serbs and Bosnians being able to work toward living in harmony.
This story first written by Esther Gaitan-Fuertes appeared first on the website of Aid to the Church in Need on December 23.
Pope Benedict XVI (R), who is no longer pontiff, sits beside the then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (L) and Ecumenical Patriarch of Orthodox Church Bartolomeo I at Santa Maria degli Angeli Basilica in Assisi October 27, 2011. Photo: REUTERS / Giampiero Sposito
Science can inform people about the world but it along cannot reach them to change their commitment and actions to save the planet, says the Ecumenical Patriarch, who leads Orthodox Christians globally.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, considered to be "the first among equals" among Orthodox patriarchs, met this week with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
At Lambeth Palace they prayed and talked privately on issues such as the refugee crisis and persecution of Christians in the Middle East and later joined Anglican and other faith leaders in addressing climate change.
Bartholomew said that protecting the planet for Christians is a "sacred task and a common vocation," when he spoke on Nov. 3 at Lambeth Palace in London. "Global warming is a moral crisis and a moral challenge."
"Basic human rights such as access to water, clean air and sufficient food should be available to everyone without distinction or discrimination.
"We are convinced that we cannot separate our concern for human dignity, human rights or social justice from the concern for ecological preservation and sustainability."
He noted, "Science will inform us about the world but it cannot reach the depths of our soul and mind."
The Church of England has exhorted its faithful set aside one day each month to fast and pray for the planet in its commitment to creating environmental awareness.
It is also sending a delegation on a 250-mile (400 kilometer) walking "pilgrimage" to Paris in the run-up to the international conference on climate that starts at the end of November, The Daily Telegraph reported.
From Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, France will host the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
COP21 is viewed by many as a crucial conference, as it will seek to forge a new international agreement on the climate, applicable to all countries, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2C.
Checking global warming is seen as essential for humanity's survival.
Patriarch Bartholomew was one of the first world religious leader's to highlight climate change and has done so for many years often using the World Council of Churches as platform and has earned the moniker, "the green patriarch."
The Ecumenical Patriarch and Archbishop of Canterbury, as spiritual leader of the 80-million strong Anglican Communion made a joint statement between Anglican and Orthodox Churches on the theology of the human person.
In a joint communique, the two leaders said that the agreement "celebrates what Anglicans and Orthodox affirm together about the human person, created in 'the Image and Likeness of God.'"
They said it, "will form the theological foundation for forthcoming discussions on the practical consequences of these theological presuppositions for addressing the key themes, including the protection of the environment, medical interventions, and questions around family life and ethics."
The statement concluded six years of study on "what Anglicans and Orthodox can say together about the meaning of human personhood in the divine image," the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue said when they agreed on the final text in September.
(Photo: Peter Kenny)Dr. Manoj Kurian (L), coordinator of the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance and Romain Houlmann, a research assistant at FIAN International at the launch of the civil society Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2016 at Geneva's Ecumenical Centre, the headquarters of the WCC on Oct. 13, 2016,
The Parable of the Sower in Matthew's gospel has one of the best known lines of the New Testament bible, "A farmer went out to sow his seed."
But the story of seeds in modern day agriculture is no parable.
Peasant seed systems, which have fed most of the world's population for centuries, are endangered by the imposition of intellectual property rights and patents, says a church-backed campaign.
Peasants' rights to save, use, exchange and sell seed have been increasingly neglected by states in order to advance a corporate agenda, advocates say, and food as well as food-related rights need to be protected.
Oct. 13 the World Council of Churches launched the civil society Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2016 at Geneva's Ecumenical Centre, coinciding with its international launch at the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
"Despite feeding the world and providing resilience to natural disasters, peasant seed systems face severe threats of accelerated destruction of agricultural biodiversity," said Dr. Manoj Kurian, coordinator of the WCC Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance.
Kurian said: "This is due to the appropriation of nature by industrial agriculture and corporations. Increasingly, seed and agrochemical business seeks to privatize, monopolize and control seeds by patenting and commodifying this very source of life."
10 COMMANDMENTS OF FOOD
"The seed issue is very important," said Kurian, noting that the EAA is distributing a resource entitled "The 10 Commandments of Food."
"What we are trying to do is, at the congregation level, understand the importance of bio-diversity and small farmers."
The EAA is part of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition.
"How we deal with corporate powers is to get congregations thinking and engaging with these issues and then people ask questions...and then government will change policy," said Kurian.
Romain Houlmann, a research assistant at FIAN International, said, "It is important to remind the state that people have the right to food and nutrition. We need to have primacy of human rights over intellectual property. We need to focus on seed, land and natural resources, as they are essential for the future."
(Image: FIAN International) Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2016
To illustrate this, Athena Peralta, WCC program executive for Economic and Ecological Justice explained, in the Philippines, women from the indigenous Blaan tribe play a key role in seed preservation as the designated seed selector.
"But today the Blaan tribe's sources of sustenance and way of life are threatened by large plantations of cash crops such as palm oil, rubber, pineapples, bananas, etc.. for export...and at the same time, those opposing such plantations including indigenous leaders have been subjected to threats, harassment and even extra-judicial killings."
Dinesh Suna, coordinator of the WCC Ecumenical Water Network, said, "It is important to focus on agriculture and the water that it consumes."
Industrialization of agriculture has a very different connotation to the peasant farmers who produce food, he said.
"When we talk about food on a plate let's also talk about water. Controlling one will positively affect the other," said Suna.
Simangaliso Hove, secretary for Planning and Finance at the Lutheran World Federation, a Zimbabwean who said she is not a technical expert said, "I grew up in a peasant farmer environment. We never knew we had to buy seeds and as time moved on we became aware that we had to do this.
"We used to keep what was left over from the harvests, but the new seeds spoil before the new planting season...You are no longer in control of your own food."
Right to Food and Nutrition Watch gathers the views of civil society organizations, social movements and scholars worldwide, and it exposes how business seeks to privatize, monopolize and control seeds.
The watch is also the most prominent monitoring tool of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition.
It is published by groups such as Bread for the World in Germany, FIAN International, and ICCO Cooperation (Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation).
(Photo: Reuters / Marko Djurica)A boy kisses an icon of Christ as he prays during Good Friday at the St. Sava temple in Belgrade May 3, 2013. Serbia and other Eastern Orthodox countries were celebrating Easter.
United Nations human rights expert Karima Bennoune says she is concerned at the high level of politicization of cultural heritage issues in Serbia and in Kosovo relating in part to both Christian and Muslim sites in the two countries.
She said this in an Oct. 14 statement at the end of her first fact-finding mission to Serbia and Kosov noting that such politicization "reduces cultural heritage to a tool and produces monolithic discourses not appropriate in diverse societies."
"Everyone, including Serb, Albanian, Roma, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish people and all minorities, as well as secular people, women, LGBT people, persons with disabilities and people of mixed identities make significant contributions to cultural heritage and the existence of a vivid cultural life," said Bennoune.
"This must be recognized."Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija
UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights visited Serbia and Kosovo from Oct. 3 to 14 and conducted the visit to address tensions regarding cultural heritage arising between Serbia and Kosovo.
She also looked more broadly at the right to take part in cultural life without discrimination in Serbia and in Kosovo.
"Serbia and Kosovo must understand how crucial it is to view cultural heritage issues from a human rights perspective, based on the rights of all people without discrimination to participate in cultural life, to access and enjoy cultural heritage, to freedom of expression, thought, conscience and religion, and to education in particular," she noted.
Kosovo is a disputed territory and partially recognized State in Southeast Europe that declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 as the Republic of Kosovo. Serbia recognizes administration of the territory by Kosovo's elected government, but it claims it as its own Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija.
Of Kosovo's 1.8 million people, Muslim make up more than 95 percent of them, Roman Catholics 2.2 percent and Orthodox Christians 1.5 percent.
In Serbia, 85 percent of the 7 million people are Serbian Orthodox Christians, 5 percent are Catholics and 5 percent Muslims.
The Special Rapporteur urged Serbia and Kosovo to de-link cultural heritage matters from nationalistic agendas.
"There should be no monolithic view of what constitutes or can constitute cultural heritage, and cultural heritage should never be used to construct discourses or policies aimed at the exclusion of others," she stressed.
"I encourage everyone to understand cultural heritage in a holistic way, including the contributions and perspectives of all groups," Bennoune stressed.
A pressing issue is the fate of the cultural heritage of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo much of which consists of living monuments vital to the enjoyment of human rights.
"I was particularly sorry to hear or read disparaging discourses disputing the importance of the cultural heritage of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, or intentionally omitting mention of the specific relationship of the Serbian Orthodox Church with certain sites.
KOSOVO ALBANIANS
"Conversely, I regret discourses minimizing the importance or even the existence of the cultural heritage of Kosovo Albanians. Both discourses are damaging to human rights and equally offensive," she added.
The UN specialists was able to meet representatives of civil society from diverse backgrounds eager to combat such perspectives and organize joint events with people of mixed backgrounds to visit each other's sites of cultural significance.
She said a lack of funding often curtailed such activities and urged support, from Serbia, from Kosovo, and the international community.
"There is a clear need for mutual acknowledgment of the harm that has been done in the past by attacking heritage related to various groups, and the suffering this has caused. Lasting peace and reconciliation require no less".
Bennoune referred to the many reports of widespread attacks against and destructions of mosques, historic centers and cultural sites such as archives committed by Serbian security forces and paramilitaries in 1999 in Kosovo. She also referred to similar acts against churches committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The UN specialist also referred to the intentional destruction of, in particular, 35 listed Orthodox monuments and churches between March 17 and 19, 2004, followed by a number of attacks and incidents against Serbian orthodox cultural heritage since then.
She likewise regretted retaliatory attacks during the events of March 2004, including one on the workshop of Kosovo Albanian sculptor Agim Eavdarbasa in Pristina, as well as those against two mosques in Nis and Belgrade.
"I condemn unreservedly all of these attacks and destructions of cultural heritage and insist on all necessary steps being taken to prevent any repetition and to hold perpetrators accountable, in accordance with international norms."
Bennoune expressed appreciation at reports from different sources acknowledging the dedication and increased capacity of the Kosovo police for the protection of sites as she cited its specialized unit for the protection of cultural heritage a multi-ethnic unit.
She also noted the reported decrease in the number of security incidents involving cultural heritage along with allegations that statistics do not entirely reflect the reality.
"I also heard ongoing concerns from Serbian Orthodox monks and nuns who are uncertain about security and long to feel welcome and accepted," she said.
The K-12 sector is investing heavily in technology as a means of providing students with a more customized educational experience.
So far, though, the research evidence behind personalized learning remains thin.
The U.S. Department of Education has given half a billion dollars to districts that embrace the trend, with limited findings to date. Since 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $300 million to support research and development around personalized learning, but officials there say its still early days for the field. School and district leaders have helped turn personalized learning into a multimillion-dollar market, but evaluations of their efforts remain scattered. (The Gates Foundation helps support Education Weeks coverage of personalized learning.)
One big problem: proponents have struggled to define personalized learning, let alone demonstrate its effectiveness. The purpose, tools, and instructional techniques that make up the notion vary considerably, depending who you ask.
While a fair amount of research exists on specific personalization strategies, such as the use of adaptive math software, the literature includes very little on personalized learning as a comprehensive approach.
There are some bright spots. Researchers have found promising early signs at some schools, and some software programs have been associated with significant improvements in student learning and engagement.
But so far, at least, such encouraging results are often highly dependent on local context and how well a particular approach was implemented. That makes it hard to draw sweeping conclusions.
For skeptics, those dynamics reflect a larger problem. Given the unclear findings around personalization via technology, critics argue, schools would be much better off investing in proven strategies that rely on increased teacher-to-student interaction, such as smaller class sizes.
To better understand what the research on personalized learning doesand doesntsay, Education Week reviewed dozens of studies and talked with experts from a range of fields.
The takeaway for school and district leaders?
Dont believe the hypeat least not yet.
Personalized learning holds promise, but theres still a lot of work to do to figure out how well this is working, said John F. Pane, a senior scientist and the distinguished chair in education innovation at the RAND Corp. People who are thinking from a programmatic and implementation point of view should not necessarily buy into the advocacy around how great this is.
The Gates/RAND Studies
In 2015, Pane and his RAND colleagues undertook the fields most comprehensive study to date. They found that 11,000 students at 62 schools trying out personalized-learning approaches made greater gains in math and reading than similar students at more traditional schools. The longer students experienced personalized-learning practices, the greater their achievement growth.
Those results captured the attention of such luminaries as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who cited the RAND study as one of the reasons hes willing to bet billions on personalized learnings future.
Also enthusiastic: Brad Bernatek, a senior program officer who oversees research for the Gates Foundation, which funded RANDs research and gave grants to the schools in their study.
The results were encouraging, promising, and academically meaningful for the students in these schools, Bernatek said. But, he quickly added, they were by no means definitive.
Indeed, some observers suggest the Gates/RAND study doesnt actually say much about whether the approach can work in typical K-12 environments. One reason: The schools in the study employed a wide range of instructional practices, many of which are also used at more traditional schools (such as grouping students based on performance data).
Furthermore, the schools in the study were mostly charters that won competitive grants. Did students gain academically because their schooling was personalized, or did they gain because they were in high-functioning schools that received extra resources?
I think its still early days, Bernatek concluded. Thats the biggest takeaway.
Implementation Studies
The broadest look at how schools have implemented personalized-learning strategies comes via the federal Education Department, which gave more than $500 million to 21 districts, consortia, and charter networks in 2012 and 2013 as part of its Race to the Top-District program.
Unfortunately, the research findings to date from those grantees are not particularly deep, and the departments own reports have sometimes drawn conclusions that dont seem warranted by the available evidence.
For example, a set of recent case studies claimed that personalized learning had sparked cultural shifts and transformed student learning in such places as Miami-Dade County, Fla., and New Haven, Calif. To back that up, the report cited largely soft and self-reported findings, such as teachers saying they are now more comfortable taking classroom risks.
Department officials do say that many of their grantees show signs of promise on leading indicators, including lower suspension rates for middle and high school students. Some grantees have also seen student-achievement growth, both on state exams and local interim assessments. The department expects more substantial evaluation reports to be released, beginning next year.
Other implementation studies of note include an ongoing look at a personalized-learning initiative in the Baltimore County district, where early results are mixed, and a generally positive case-study examination of Californias Summit Schools charter network. Earlier this year, the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a nonprofit research center, also looked at the financial impact of implementing personalized-learning models, finding that money often went more to salaries, facilities, and operations than to technology and that schools often do a poor job of anticipating their costs.
Overall, though, the state of research around real-world implementations of personalized-learning models remains muddled and contentious.
Just look at New York City, where a nonprofit group called New Classrooms has been spreading a blended-learning approach to middle school math called School of One. In the model, up to 90 children share one large classroom with multiple teachers. Students work primarily on computers, progressing at their own pace through algorithm-generated playlists tailored to their individual needs.
Two studies by different researchers at Columbia University reached different conclusions.
The first covered 22 sites, but had a weak approach to comparing School of One students with children elsewhere. The results looked quite encouraging: By their second year in the program, School of One students math skills had improved at a rate 47 percent faster than the national average, and those who started out the furthest behind made the largest gains. New Classrooms trumpeted the results aggressively.
The following September, though, another evaluation reached far less enthusiastic conclusions. That study used a much more rigorous methodology, but only included a handful of School of One sites. It found neither very large positive nor very large negative effects relative to the math instruction that students would have otherwise received.
Students in the program also reported consistently feeling like they learned more when working directly with a teacher.
New Classrooms has barely mentioned those results, leading some observers to accuse the group of being more interested in positive public relations than helping the field learn what actually works.
For educators and administrators on the ground, it all adds up to continued uncertainty about who and what to trust.
Specific Software Programs
Perhaps the most-cited research into a particular digital tool used to support personalized learning is RANDs 2013 research on the effectiveness of Cognitive Tutor Algebra 1, an adaptive-software program for teaching math, originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The study was a rigorous randomized-control trial, undertaken in a variety of real-world schools, putting it pretty close to the gold standard for education research.
Overall, the study found that compared with textbook-based curricula, Cognitive Tutor significantly improved algebra scores for high school students, but that positive effect emerged only in the second year of schools implementation.
Less-rigorous recent studies have examined other popular math software programs, including DreamBox, Khan Academy, and ST Math. Researchers generally found encouraging signs of positive effects on student achievement, and teachers and students typically gave positive reports on their experiences. But actual usage of the programs varied considerably, and researchers were unable to definitively attribute positive outcomes to the software alone.
Beyond that, the research base behind specific products is often very thin, with far more poorly designed studies done by companies themselves than robust evaluations conducted by independent third parties.
As a result, school and district leaders who want to pursue personalized learning need to be particularly savvy consumers, said Bart Epstein, the CEO of the Jefferson Education Accelerator, a network of researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs based at the University of Virginia.
That means asking hard questions about any claims a vendor is making, he said.
It also means understanding that context mattersjust because a software program appears to have worked in one district doesnt mean its going to work in another.
And perhaps most importantly, Epstein said, those on the ground need to understand that theyre responsible for helping generate good research about personalized learning, too. Small districts might not be able to contract with RAND, but they can often reach out to a local university or engage in whats called short cycle evaluation, to get formative feedback as they go.
Any district that is bringing in a major new program should absolutely be budgeting for real research support, Epstein said. Everyone wants someone else to spend the time and money to study [personalized learning.] But its all of our responsibility.
MARKET ANALYSIS
Vietnam shrimp exports up 5.8% in Jan - Aug
Vietnam's shrimp exports have sustained their growth, thanks to stable demand from major markets such as the US, the EU, China and South Korea, and the higher global shrimp price amid the decline in global shrimp supply.
In August, Vietnam shrimp exports reached US$306.1 million, up 12.3% over the same month in 2015. In the first eight months, exports reached $1.9 billion, up 5.8% from the same period last year.
Of the total shrimp exports, the proportion of whiteleg shrimp rose 10% to 60.4% due to rise in production and farming area, while those of black tiger and marine shrimps declined.
Sales of black tiger shrimp decreased 0.5% and accounted for 31.4% of total exports. The export value of processed whiteleg shrimp reported the largest increase at 12%, while canned marine shrimp showed the biggest drop at 66% with modest value of $1.8 million.
Vietnamese shrimp exports to the top five main markets in the first eight months increased except for Japan, which were down 6.4%. Exports to China showed the sharpest increase at 36.9%. The US was up 16.4%, South Korea, 13.5% and EU, 7.1%.
US largest importer
The US has remained as the largest importer of Vietnamese shrimp, and accounted for 22.5% of total exports in January-August, importing $435.3 million worth of shrimp. The import shrimp price into the US rose due to lower supply from India, Indonesia, Ecuador and Thailand. Demand for black tiger shrimp in the US increased in the context of lower supply from in India and Indonesia.
EU still good market
A decline in shrimp inventories in the EU made room for Vietnamese shrimp exports to the market. From January to August, shrimp sales to the EU hit $372 million, up 7.1% year-on-year. Exports to three key markets in the bloc posted positive growths, with the Netherlands posting the highest increase at 29%.
During the same eight-month period, the UK remained the biggest market for Vietnamese shrimp within the 28-nation bloc. Exports advanced 8.4%, with demand for warmwater shrimp expected to remain good this year.
Vietnamese shrimp exports in the remaining months are expected to slightly increase compared with the same period last year.
Source: Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers
If you win $1 billion Powerball jackpot, inflation will cost you millions
The Powerball jackpot is up to $1 billion million for Wednesdays drawing, but the lump-sum payout option is less than half of it.
Police release CCTV images of school damage suspects
CCTV images of a group of youngsters believed to be responsible for criminal damage at one of the Island's schools have been released by the police.
The Western Neighbourhood Policing Team appealed for information last month after youths smashed beer bottles in the playground at Peel Clothworkers Primary School.
Footage of those believed to be responsible has now been released by police, showing a group of juvenile males in the area at the time of the incident.
The images can be found on the policing team's Facebook page as well as below.
Anyone who can help identify those in the pictures is asked to contact Peel Police Station on 842208.
Photos
Health Minister confirms Translarna funding u-turn
Finley Hesketh has Duchenne muscular dystrophy
The Department of Health and Social Care will fund a drug to help a local boy with a muscle-wasting condition.
Minister Kate Beecroft confirmed in this month's sitting of Tynwald that Translarna will be made available on the Isle of Man after agreeing a discounted rate for the treatment with NHS England.
Seven-year-old Finley Hesketh had previously been denied access to the drug, which could slow the progression of his Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
The Douglas South MHK reviewed the decision following her recent appointment to the role, and has already instructed her Department to open talks with a drug company.
The treatment costs around 180,000 per year, with Mrs Beecroft warning she will need to make savings in other areas to make the funds available.
Finley's family had been considering a move away from the Island, with Translarna available on the NHS in the UK.
The Health Minister will report back to Tynwald once talks with the drug company are complete.
They are mathletes ever ready to flex some neurons to solve a problem.
One hundred students representing 25 Pennsylvania high schools were in Carlisle Tuesday to participate in the second annual Capital Area Interscholastic Math Competition.
The four-member team from Cumberland Valley High School placed second behind a quartet from the Wyoming Seminary Prep School visiting the mid-state from Kingston, Luzerne County.
Cumberland Valley was ranked third behind Wyoming and a team from Hempfield High School going into the final quiz bowl round of a day-long competition held on the Dickinson College campus, which is on fall break.
Hosted by the Carlisle Area School District, the competition mostly drew teams from a two-hour radius around Cumberland County, said John Campbell, a math teacher at Carlisle High School and coordinator of the event.
There were also local teams from Mechanicsburg and Boiling Springs high schools.
The competition consisted of two individual tests of 45 minutes each one of multiple choice questions, the other requiring short numerical answers. A third test allowed all four team members to work collectively on a single answer for each question.
The individual tests each had 20 questions; the team test had 15 questions. The cumulative score of all four members individually and together was used to rank each team going into the final quiz bowl round.
This is actually one of my favorite competitions, said Emily Chung, a junior at Cumberland Valley High School who lives in Hampden Township. The questions are really thought-provoking. They go more in-depth. You really have to think about how to solve them.
The most challenging phase for her was the team test where the difficulty level was ramped up to balance with the number of mathletes working to solve each problem.
You had the ability to collaborate with other people so even if you dont have the answer, you still can figure it out with other people in your group, said Chung, who placed fifth among the individual rankings Tuesday.
You can feel their enthusiasm, said Kelly Brent, math department chair for the Carlisle Area School District and a math teacher at Carlisle High School. They are here doing math all day, and they just love it.
Brent said the students who participate in regional math competitions are just as competitive in their field of interest as star athletes who play interscholastic sports.
After each test, the mathletes talked among each other, comparing notes on how they solved each problem. Because Carlisle hosted the event, its math team could not participate. Instead, Carlisle students were on hand Tuesday to help proctor the tests and set-up and tear down each room where the competition was held.
Its really cool to see the other side of it and be able to give back in that way, said Sam Haseman, 17, a senior at Carlisle High School. Its great to be able to interact with these people.
Classmate Braden Kronheim enjoys participating in regional math competitions because the caliber of the questions challenge him to think differently and use concepts outside the normal classroom setting.
Members of the Carlisle math team developed questions for Tuesdays competition. The questions asked involved pre-calculus, trigonometry, geometry, number theory and statistics and probability.
No calculators allowed. Participants could only use paper and pencil.
The Carlisle team routinely participates in regional math competitions held during spring break at Lebanon Valley College and at such universities as Millersville, Shippensburg and Bucknell.
Dickinson College was gracious enough to let us use their facilities during their fall break, Campbell said. The local college provided lunch to participants in Tuesdays competition without cost to Carlisle school district.
Participating high schools were asked to bring a box of canned goods to Tuesdays competition so that the food could be donated to the Project SHARE food bank.
On the lines of Sadat Hasan Manto's facetious letters to Uncle Sam written at the height of the cold war when Pakistan was being wooed by the US as an ally to fight communism, this letter was written in 2002 to the then Prime Minister Vajpayee by historian Ayesha Jalal. Written as a spirited assessment of the standoff between India and Pakistan, the letter is peppered with rare insights that have always been Manto's hallmark.
Absence of a sound institutional framework facilitating land leasing had been viewed as a major obstacle for private investment in agriculture resulting in poor productivity. In this context, NITI Aayog had appointed an Expert Committee on Land Leasing, under the chairmanship of T Haque (NITI Aayog 2016).
Besides, reviewing existing agricultural tenancy laws of states, the expert committee had to suggest appropriate amendments with a view to legalise and liberalise land leasing; and, more importantly, to prepare a model act. The expert committee had consultations with states, farmer associations and civil societies. In the final report, the committee provides a Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act (henceforth Model Leasing Act), which contains provisions that pose a direct threat to the food security of the country.
Tenancy Laws in States
Land distribution was quite skewed in favour of influential people during the British rule and therefore, land leasing was very common during that period. Although the percentage of area leased out was estimated at 20.6% at the all-India level National Sample Survey Offices (NSSO) 8th Round, a considerable amount of land leased out on the basis of oral or hidden tenancy accounted for 35% to 40% of the total cultivated area (Datt and Sundharam 1989).
During the post-independence period, the major agenda of the government on land reforms, next to the abolition of zamindari system, was tenancy reforms. All states had adopted legislation concerning agricultural tenancy in the 1960s or 1970s. Most of those tenancy laws were amended by states from time to time, partially in response to policy suggestions emerging through various five-year plans.
The provisions of tenancy laws adopted by various state governments had covered defining tenants, regulation of rent, security of tenure, landlords right to resume personal cultivation on leased land, conferment of ownership rights to tenants, surrender of tenancy rights with mutual consent, prohibition of future tenancies, tenants rights of preemptive purchase, correcting the tenancy records, abolishing oral tenancies, etc.
Although tenancy laws differed from state to state, they were generally found to be very restrictive in the sense that they had almost prohibited agricultural tenancy (Table 1). The tenancy arrangements, as it existed, were primarily informal in nature, leaving tenants insecure and thus rendering the system inefficient, while reducing the operational mobility of landowners. The expert committee was therefore of the view that restrictive tenancy laws of states had adversely affected agricultural efficiency, equity, occupational diversification, and rapid rural transformation.
Table 1: Restrictive Nature of Tenancy Laws in Various States
Category of States Nature of Restrictions in Tenancy Laws 1. Kerala and Jammu & Kashmir Leasing out of agricultural land is legally prohibited without any exception. 2. Telangana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Odisha Leasing out of agricultural land is allowed only by certain categories of landowners such as disabled, minors, widows, defence personnel, etc. 3. Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Assam Leasing out of agricultural land is not specifically banned, but the tenant acquires the right to purchase the tenanted land after a specific period of creation of tenancy (six years in Pun and Har) except if landowner is disabled. 4. Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal There are no restrictions on land leasing, although in West Bengal, only share cropping leases are legally permitted. 5. In Scheduled Tribe areas of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra Transfer of land from tribal to non-tribal even on lease basis can be permitted only by a competent authority. The idea is to prevent alienation of land from tribal to non-tribal.
Source: Report of the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms, Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.
Table 2: State-wise Proportion of Operated Area Leased-in (%)
NSSO Reports Report 36 (8th round) Report 215 (26th round) Report 330 (37th round) Report 388 (48th round) Report 492 (59th round) Report NSSO Key Indicators (70/18.1) (70th round) States 195354 197273 198182 199293 200203 201213 Andhra Pradesh 21.2 9.0 6.2 9.6 9.97 35.70 Assam 43.0 16.7 6.4 8.9 5.06 4.20 Bihar 12.4 14.5 10.3 3.9 11.76 22.67 Gujarat 19.4 3.9 2.0 3.3 5.08 5.82 Haryana 39.8 23.3 18.2 33.7 14.38 14.82 Himachal Pradesh n.a. 15.9 3.2 4.8 2.87 5.33 Jammu & Kashmir 22.1 8.1 2.5 3.7 0.32 0.20 Karnataka 21.5 15.9 6.0 7.4 3.68 6.90 Kerala 20.2 8.6 2.1 2.9 4.18 8.93 Madhya Pradesh 19.8 7.5 6.6 6.3 2.83 5.14 Maharashtra 19.7 6.2 5.2 5.5 4.59 3.44 Odisha 12.6 13.5 9.9 9.5 13.15 16.96 Punjab 39.8 28.0 16.1 18.8 17.84 24.42 Rajasthan 21.0 5.3 4.3 5.2 2.81 7.11 Tamil Nadu 27.0 13.1 10.9 10.9 6.10 13.54 Uttar Pradesh 11.4 13.0 10.2 10.5 3.49 7.89 West Bengal 25.4 18.8 13.4 10.4 9.42 14.73 All India 20.6 10.6 7.2 8.3 6.60 10.41
Source: (i) National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (2008), A Special Programme for Marginal Farmers based on NSSO (for data from 195354 to 199293) (ii) NSSO Reports: Report 492 (59th round) for 200203, and NSS Key Indicators (70/18.1) (70th round) for 201213 data.
In consonance with the prohibitive tenancy laws, the percentage share of leased-in area in total operated area had continuously declined over the years (Table 2). However, the average share of leased-in area showed a sudden increase in 201213. This may be due to declining interest of cultivator farmers on account of declining profitability in crop cultivation, better income opportunities outside the agriculture, and so on.
Moreover, the percentage distribution of leased-in area by various terms of lease during the last four decades indicates that the share of share of produce term in total number of lease contracts has declined from 48% in 197071 to 28.7% in 201213, whereas that of fixed money term has gone up from 15.4% to 41.1% during the same period. Surprisingly, in West Bengal where only share cropping is legally permitted, the fixed money is the most common term of leasing (52%). Share of produce was the next most common form of leasing (38%) (from NSSO reports, various rounds). Thus, the term of lease against share of produce is slowly losing importance, whereas fixed money as a term of lease is increasingly gaining popularity. This change is taking place at a time when the proportion of leased-in land in operated area is rising.
Key Features of Model Act
The key features of the Model Leasing Act, 2016, as proposed by the committee includes (i) legalise land leasing to promote agricultural efficiency, equity and poverty reduction; (ii) legalise land leasing to ensure complete security of land ownership right for land owners and security of tenure for tenants; (iii) remove the clause of adverse possession of land in the land laws of various states; (iv) allow automatic resumption of land after the agreed lease period; (v) allow the terms and conditions of lease to be determined mutually by the land owner and the tenant without any fear on the part of the landowner as well as tenant; (vi) facilitate all tenants to access crop insurance and bank credit; and (vii) incentivise tenants to make investment in land improvement.
Inherent Limitations: The Model Leasing Act, if adopted in the proposed form, may encourage the diversion of agriculture land from crop cultivation to commercial use because it allows leasing of agricultural land for activities like plantation crops, animal husbandry and dairy, poultry farming, stock breeding, fishery, agroforestry, agroprocessing and other related activities in addition to crop cultivation. Once agricultural land is transferred to allied activities, it will not only reduce the total land stock available for crop cultivation with an adverse impact on production of field crops but will also change the land-use pattern, if not permanently, at least for a very long period. This will be particularly true if land is used for plantation crops, agroforestry and agroprocessing activities. It is very likely that the transferred land may not remain suitable for growing field crops once it is resumed to the lessor.
This fear is further compounded by the lack of clarity on the definition of lessee cultivator. The Model Leasing Act defines a lessee cultivator as a person who leases in agricultural land. It is not clear whether corporates and absentee landlords willing to manage cultivation through their employees/representatives can be allowed to lease-in agricultural land or the leasing should be restricted to farmers/group of cultivators (self-help groups/joint liability groups/farmers producers organisations) including landless cultivators. Further, whether contract farming, particularly by corporates, should also fall under the purview of the proposed Model Leasing Act. There should not be any problem in leasing of agricultural lands by corporates if land use is restricted to cultivation of agricultural crops only since the leasing-in by corporates may lead to increased flow of investment to the agriculture sector. However, such contracts would affect the food security in the country, if choice of crops is solely motivated by profit.
Perhaps what is more worrisome is allowing lease contracts between the parties for an indefinite period and that the government shall not fix a minimum or maximum lease period. Prescribing ceiling on lease period, say for a maximum of five or six years, will not only help the lessee to complete one life cycle of agricultural allied activities (animal husbandry, etc) but will also help the lessor to resume the cultivation if he/she had quit the cultivation in search of an alternative income opportunities but failed to succeed. Further, it would also reduce the risk of any influence/pressure on the lessor to lease out the land for a very long period and it might become very difficult for the survivors in the family to resume operating the land from an influential lessee. Thus, if the government does not fix maximum lease period, it will increase the risk of losing the contracted land permanently from food crops.
The Model Leasing Act, though provides for lessors to resume the land if any damage to the soil health is done by the lessee, it does not clearly define what constitutes damage to soil health. It is felt that interpreting the damage to soil health would vary from person to person and it may give rise to disputes between the lessors and lessees. The Model Leasing Act also allows lessees to build structures or any fixtures on the land with permission from the lessor. These ambiguous provisions are not any better than the existing system in terms of its provisions to improve security of the tenant. Therefore, in all likelihood it would reduce the incentive for tenants to step up investment and improve land productivity.
Moreover, the Model Leasing Acts proposed schemata of addressing the issue of change of land ownership, is inimical to the interests of both landlords and tenants and hence needs a relook. Once the ownership of land is changed on account of sale or gift, lease contract may be terminated unless the new landlord and lessee agree to continue the contract for the rest of the agreed period. Further, the act is also silent on whether a land already under lease agreement can be mortgaged or not, keeping in view that the lessee might be interested in availing crop loans or term loans in case of allied activities.
While dealing with termination of lease, the Model Leasing Act has blatantly ignored why lessor should not terminate lease contract if the lessee keeps or intends to keep the contracted land fallow in a normal case due to his loss of interest in cultivation (except in case of natural calamities when the land becomes uncultivable). Keeping a cultivable land fallow defeats the very purpose of enacting the Land Leasing Act which aims at ensuring productive and optimal use of scarce resources.
Finally, it appears from the format of standard lease agreement that the existing contract can be extended mutually by lessor and lessee without any endorsement from any authority. Endorsing the renewal proposal by a competent authority will help avoid any undue pressure/influence from lessee to lessor. In fact, the extension of lease contract should be no less than a fresh contract and hence this entire format needs to be looked at again.
Missing Two Vital Issues: There are two appropriate issues that were not addressed by the expert committee and hence not included in the Model Leasing Act. The first one relates to the ceiling on ownership holdings. It is of utmost importance that operational holdings, as stipulated by states, should include leased-in land of the tenants in normal cases. Perhaps, no restriction should be placed if land is leased-in by a joint liability group or producers organisations.
Second, keeping in view the fact that most land parcels/holdings are quite small in size in India, leasing out only a part/portion of the land plot at a particular location will only lead to further fragmentation. Leasingout the entire parcel of land available at a particular location by a lessor will not lead to fragmentation of such lands. However, if the parcel of land is quite big (say more than one acre), the lessor may consider contracting it to more than one lessee.
Overall, the Model Leasing Act aims to benefit both lessors who prefer to enter into a lease agreement without the fear of losing ownership rights, and lessees who require protection from premature termination of lease contracts. No doubt, legalising the tenancy will result in better productivity of crops grown on the contracted land by replacing an unwilling cultivator with a willing cultivator, provided the contracted land remains to be used for cultivation of field crops only. However, the Model Leasing Act appears to be lopsided and seems to be giving an edge to lessees over the landlords. Also, allowing the contracted land to be used for activities other than crop production that too for an indefinite period will certainly threaten the food security of the country in the long run. An attempt is made here to highlight those issues for further consideration by the NITI Aayog so that a balanced and more acceptable model would come into force.
References:
Datt, Ruddar, and K P M Sundharam (1989): Indian Economy, New Delhi: S Chand and Company.
Mani, Gyanendra and V K Pandey (1995): Agrarian Structure under the New Economic Policy, Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol 50, No 3, JulySeptember.
NITI Aayog (2016): Report of the Expert Committee on Land Leasing, Government of India, New Delhi.
The fall has arrived and the leaves of the trees are turning into a kaleidoscope of pulsating colours, like an impressionist painting. Chelsea Clinton came to the beautiful forest campus of Wellesley College on the shore of an undulating lake on 13 October and spontaneously formed an emotional bond. Her mother is the famous alumni from this prestigious college. She said that her mother is campaigning in California, but is really jealous that I could make it to Wellesley and she could not.
Amidst an adulatory audience of Hillary Clinton supporters, college students and faculty, she started with a casual remark about the locker room controversy but stayed sharply away from any mention of Donald Trump. She seems to be following the famous quip of Michelle Obama, which is often cited by her mother in her rallies: When they go low, we go high.
Instead, she focused on climate change, racism, Islamophobia, attacks on immigrants, minimum wages, higher education, womens empowerment and childcare. The poignant moment of the rally was marked for all to seea student stood up and said, her voice choking with emotion, that her origins are from the Czech Republic which has been through terrible times, that her father and mother started from scratch through very difficult times and that they worked really hard so that she could come study here. However, these days, every day, she said, she feels fearful of her daily life and her future, considering the bad faith injected in the social and political atmosphere. She was obviously referring to the wave of anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric unleashed by the Trump campaign and the atmosphere of mistrust injected into the social fabric of the US.
Chelsea could sense the charged-up moments revelation immediately, and so did the teachers and students of Wellesley College. The student is right. America is witnessing the depressing phenomena of the xenophobic, the perverse and the impossible becoming a mainstream narrative. Never before has a presidential nominee been exposed and targeted for not only lacking in temperament, demeanour and dignity, but also because of his polarising political agenda and brazenly crude male chauvinistic narrative and posturing. In a presidential discourse and a general media debate that have sunk to the lowest common denominator in terms of locker room predators, sexual assaults and sexual abuse, use of perverse and sexist language, and an avalanche of vile allegations emerging from scores of women against an aggressive and self-styled alpha male named Donald Trump, Chelsea Clintons positive and non-partisan agenda clicked with the plural audience.
The shadow of a relentlessly unrepentant and uncouth Trump was not lurking on the stage at the college. Instead, she represented a newer, charged up and positive Hillary, with her ratings suddenly shooting up all over the country, including in the swing states, especially among the women in the suburbs and the cities, the educated classes, and even among the women within the white working classwhich has steadfastly backed Trump for reasons particularly peculiar to the American political economy. Even Fox News, which is transparently loyal to Trump, has done a poll whereby Hillary is far ahead of Trump in terms of ratings.
The similarities between the rise of Narendra Modi in India in 2014 and the Donald Trump phenomena in contemporary America are often rather stark. The South Asian community here is aware of the comparison; it became all the more stark after war-hysteria gripped the IndiaPakistan political landscape. Indeed, white supremacists have been backing Trump precisely because the tycoon has been polarising American civil society by creating mass phobia of immigrants and refugees taking over jobs, of jobs running away from the country, of branding Mexicans as rapists, using Islamophobia and organised racism as trump cards, with the scary prophecy of stop and frisk on the streets and stricter law and order implying an authoritarian state with a propensity to curb civil liberties.
Richard Spencer, a writer and an activist, whose Montana-based non-profit organisation is dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the US, in a New York Times report on 13 July stated:
The discussion that white Americans never want to have is this question of identitywho are we? He (Trump) is bringing identity politics for white people into the public sphere in a way no one has.
Even a section of Trump supporters, or Hillary-haters, feels that while their income might rise under Trump, individual rights might be taken away. It is thereby ironical that the white working class has chosen to back a real estate tycoon who has refused to disclose his tax returns and who does not really represent the economic and social interests of the low-income groups, in a country where class inequity is sharp, widespread and transparent. So much so, even while public schooling under the state is free, higher education is exorbitantly expensive, and by and large inaccessible to the low middle and working class population.
Sanders and the Margins
It is all the more ironical that socialist Bernie Sanders, whose challenge to Clinton in the primaries was formidable, has not been able to draw the support of this natural constituency in the margins of American society. However, the underlying optimism in the Sanders campaign was that most campuses and students became his ardent supporters, thereby setting a political agenda which was anti-war, anti-racism and against Islamophobia and xenophobia. The campaign sought an inclusive and culturally pluralist society, class and social equality, and a political economy which would stop pandering to the rich and privileged.
With Clinton pitched as a transparent favourite of Wall Street hawks, and she being squarely blamed for the terrible consequences of the war in Syria and Yemen, including the murder of Muammar Gaddafi by a mob on the streets of Libya, this section of the young, across all colours and identities, were squarely suspicious of her. That she might continue with her policies in West Asia and South Asia is a genuine danger and possibility. The destruction of thousands of emails and the disclosure by WikiLeaks of she making millions with her Wall Street speeches as a possible quid pro quo has only strengthened the belief among the young that she is a compulsive liar and one-dimensional in her unbridled ambitions, like her husband, Bill Clinton.
One of the great difficulties of the Clinton campaign was to mobilise this huge section of young voters to vote for her, and despite the appeal by Sanders, the young and the liberal-progressives of the Occupy Wall Street movement were not able to make up their mind. Some of them were clearly inclined towards Jill Stein of the Green Party whose support has meandered between 3% and 6%. For instance, certain academics in Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are of the opinion that since Massachusetts will certainly vote for Hillary, they can safely vote for Jill Stein with a clear conscience. Others are of the opinion that if there is a remote chance of Trump making it in a tight contest, they will bury their differences and vote Hillary.
This national dilemma seems to have been partially resolved, especially among women and the educated, after Trumps crass and sexist locker-room disclosures. There is a wave of disgust sweeping across America on the foul language of possible sexual assault emanating from a presidential candidate that can be socially regressive and dangerous in terms of family values. Earlier, the manner in which he called a former Miss Universe Miss Piggy and Miss Housekeeping, among other forms of fat-shaming, the derogatory language used against women on their looks and so on, the daily allegations of groping, kissing, invasion of physical privacy, and even the boast of entering a dressing room full of beauty pageant participants had greatly upset not only ordinary folks, but it has triggered a wave of unrest among Republican leaders as well, barring the likes of Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, who is being described as one of the last remaining cheerleaders of the Trump campaign. It is a contradiction of sorts that even heavyweights like John McCain, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, among other Republican leaders, who have been attacked and caricatured by Trump, did not decisively choose to withdraw support. It is only after the locker room tape controversy, did a string of Republican leaders come out openly against Trump, as if it was the last straw.
Indeed, that is the uncanny question: Was it the last straw?
Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times on 10 October:
As many people are pointing out, Republicans now trying to distance themselves from Donald Trump need to explain why The Tape was a breaking point, when so many previous incidents werent. On Saturday, explaining why he was withdrawing his endorsement, Senator John McCain cited comments on prisoners of war, the Khan Gold Star family, Judge Curiel and earlier inappropriate comments about womenand that leaves out Mexicans as rapists, calls for a Muslim ban, and much more. So, Senator McCain, what took you so long?
Among the liberal and progressive sections, the biggest fear is the legitimacy being given to a certain polarising discourse and ideas, which observers fear can become extremely dangerous and diabolical in the days to come. This discourse on racism and Islamophobia can become legit among certain sections, leading to an entrenched political unconscious in a country which prides itself on its immigrant essence and character, and how talent from across different cultures and nations has nourished the life-stream of its knowledge systems and political economy. Its not only the low-level discourse, said an academic in MIT, Boston. There is a tangible fear that the poison and hate politics can permeate the social consciousness, and even turn violent.
A working woman in upper-crust Wellesley added:
I have always believed that Americans need to go out of their country and see other cultures and civilisations, which are great, diverse and vibrant. That will help open their minds and make them culturally plural. I am appalled at the manner Trump has lowered the language of the presidential discourse. The hate, racism and misogyny unleashed by his campaign and supporters are bound to seriously harm the social fabric of America. What will the world think of us?
Certainly, there are striking similarities between the rise of xenophobia and mob vigilantism in India, and the lurking shadows of similar phenomena in America. Observers here believe that once hate politics becomes legitimate among a certain section of society, it might lead to bad faith and unhappy consequences. Once used as a successfully polarising electoral card, however vile and vicious, it is almost certain to explode on the face sooner than later.
The bitter realism of the condition of the AfricanAmerican community is being cited as a possible breaking point, if the racist discourse continues to dominate Republican supporters. Blacks have been at the receiving end of prejudiced law enforcement agencies in many parts of the US, which includes facing violence and long prison terms. Social scientists cite the disproportionately high number of Blacks and Hispanics, who are rotting in prisons for long periods. Blacks have been shot dead by the police, as in Charlotte, North Carolina, recently, triggering angry mass protests. Black Lives Matter has, therefore, become a strong countrywide movement representing the angst and anger of the AfricanAmerican community. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Individuals of colour have a disproportionate number of encounters with law enforcement, indicating that racial profiling continues to be a problem.
However, with both Michelle and Barack Obamas ratings going to an all-time high, and with both of them attacking Trump directly in campaign speeches across the country, Hillary seems to have solidly consolidated her support base among women, the educated, the AfricanAmerican community, the Latinos, Asians and immigrants. President Obama, in a scathing and protracted attack on Trump in Cleveland, Ohio on 14 October, not only raised the birther issue whereby Trump questioned Obamas origin of birth, but also castigated him on his policies, his foul and sexist language, and his refusal to declare his tax returns. He doesnt have the temperament, knowledge or interest in acquiring knowledge or basic honesty a president needs to have, and that was before we heard him talk about women, said Obama.
He cajoled the audience to register and vote, a pattern followed by him and Michelle in all their rallies, seeking the continuation of his incomplete legacy, including attempts to improve social justice and reduce inequity. In an earlier speech to the Black Caucus, Obama had literally said that though his name is not on the ballot, voters should vote for his legacy. In Cleveland, he said that voters must come out and vote, because this is a vote for democracy. He implied that democracy and secular pluralism are in danger with Trump in the runninga scenario with uncanny similarities with contemporary India.
With little time left to go for 8 November, voting day, America is walking a tight-rope, fingers-crossed. With Clintons ratings going up, and those reluctant to back her earlier meaning to come out and vote in protest against Trumps misogynist posturing, especially women and university studentsthe Millennialsthe situation might not be as bleak as it appears. The world is watching. Hope floats.
Hackers recently stole research data from the University of Toyamas Hydrogen Isotope Research Center, along with 1,493 peoples personal information, Infosecurity reports.
The data was stolen in December 2015, March 2016, and June 2016, using malware that had been delivered via a spear phishing attack in November 2015.
The Japan Times reports that two staff members received phishing emails in November of 2015. One of the staff members PCs was infected, after which it transmitted data to an outside party for approximately six months.
The Research Center didnt learn of the infection until it was alerted to it in June 2016 by an unidentified outside organization.
Still, the Japan Times reports that most of the stolen research data had already been published or was scheduled to be published, and that no highly confidential information was exposed.
This issue of cyber attacks on nuclear-related facilities or activities should be taken very seriously, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano told Reuters earlier this month. We know if we know everything or if its the tip of the iceberg.
Amano said an unnamed nuclear power plant had been hit by a cyber attack two to three years ago that forced the plant to take some precautionary measures.
Seclore CEO Vishal Gupta told eSecurity Planet by email that the University of Toyama breach is also a textbook example of the kind of threat facing academia. Researchers are extremely lucrative targets for nation-states, as its cheaper to invest in the theft of existing data then to conduct the research outright, he said.univers
As a result, academics must take steps to assure their work is safeguarded, especially when they are conducting nuclear research (which is prohibited in all but a handful of countries), Gupta added. Persistent security controls that work at the data level are needed in order to assure well intentioned research doesnt end up in malicious hands.
A recent Enterprise Strategy Group survey, sponsored by Gigamon, found that 85 percent of network and security-focused IT professionals said the complexity of network security operations is as difficult as or more difficult than it was two years ago, primarily due to increased traffic, more connected devices, and the increasing diversity of security threats.
Seventy-five percent of respondents felt their organizations network visibility could be improved.
Organizations are finding it more difficult to gain visibility into their networks and are left to grapple with the difficult task of quickly detecting anomalous or malicious activity, Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Don Conde said in a statement.
Before long, the newest member of Mechanicsburgs police force will have four legs and a tail.
On Tuesday night, Mechanicsburg Borough Council unanimously agreed to accept the donation of a canine unit from American Legion Post 109, Mechanicsburg.
We like to take on community projects. The other project we had planned for this year fell through, so we decided to do this. Its something weve always had on the back burner, said Mike Stewart, Post 109 adjunct and past commander.
Mechanicsburg Police Sgt. Brian Curtis said that the force plans to use the canine for narcotics patrol to help combat a large influx of heroin in the area, along with other drugs. Police dogs are also used for searches for missing people or criminals.
The dog can detect the location of a drug better than a human. A lot of our calls are related to heroin, whether its a bad check or a break-in, and it involves people of all ages, said Curtis, a 15-year veteran of the Mechanicsburg force.
Sometimes a suspect will surrender quicker if they hear a dog barking and know that its in the building looking for them, Council member Scott Pellman said.
Mechanicsburg Police also plan to use the dog for community outreach services, such as visiting children at schools.
So far, borough officials have no set date for obtaining the canine because the animal first needs to be trained at Castles K9 in Monroe Township. Curtis said he plans to solicit dog food companies and other businesses for donations in hopes that it will cost the borough little or no money to maintain the canine. The dog will live with its human police partner and a special squad car also will be designated for the pair.
In other news, Mechanicsburg Borough Council authorized advertising for contractor bid documents for a planned sewer rehabilitation project at Main and Marble streets. The proposed date for opening bids is Nov. 29.
The borough also plans to apply for a state Small Water and Sewer Program Grant for $309,276 for collection system repairs. The grant would pertain to repairs at the Edgewood Drive pumping station drainage area, Borough Manager Roger Ciecierski said.
To reach me for collaborations, sponsorships, and event invitations, I am contactable at
the-ice-angel@hotmail.com
The Lemoyne Mart at 216 S. 3rd Street in Lemoyne was robbed at knife-point early Wednesday morning, according to the West Shore Regional Police Department.
Police said when they arrived at the store around 4:55 a.m. they learned that a man assaulted an employee and then fled with an unknown amount of money.
The suspect is shown in pictures from surveillance footage as wearing a black hoodie and black pants, a white mask and white gloves, and what appears to be sunglasses.
Anyone with information about this is asked to contact West Shore Regional Police at 717-238-9676.
On Sunday evening (16 October), a 94,000-member coalition of Iraqi security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga allies and thousands of soldiers from various minorities started an operation to free Mosul, an oil-rich Northern Iraqi city, from more than two years of ISIS rule. ISIS occupied the city in June 2014 and it remains to be the groups last major stronghold in Iraq. Analysts see the Mosul offensive as the defining moment in the fight against the Islamist militia.
According to Sirwan Barzani, a brigadier general, it will probably take two weeks for advancing forces to enter the city but only Iraqi government troops and national police officers will be allowed to do so due to fears of sectarian retribution. Retaking the city will likely take up to two months. The offensive has triggered fears in Europe that the attacks on the ISIS in Mosul may increase the risk of attacks in Europe as ISIS fighters may want to return to their European homelands if the group is expelled from the city. According to Security Commissioner, Julian King, it is a serious threat that Europe has to be prepared to deal with, King said.
It is estimated that there currently are about 2,500 ISIS fighters from Europe in Mosul and its surrounding area. Analysts say it is unclear how many of them will want to return to Europe and carry out attacks there as this depends on what strategy the terrorist militia will adopt if defeated in Mosul. So far, ISIS reaction has been mixed. There have been reports that some fighters have fled the city to the Syrian border and others that the terrorists continue to run the city and threaten anyone wanting to leave.
Poland yesterday (18 October) supported the Northern Gate gas pipeline project, also known as Norwegian corridor, which is designed to bring gas from Norway through Denmark to Poland. Piotr Naimski, the Polish governments Plenipotentiary for Strategic Energy Infrastructure, said during a hearing at the European Parliament that his country was looking into replacing supplies from Russia with supplies from the West.
Mr Naimski also said that Russian gas in Poland is paradoxically more costly that in Western European countries, which are more distant from Russia. He further said that Poland was interested in securing supplies at the lowest possible price. Warsaw sees Northern Gate as a competitor to Nord Stream 2, which also aims at offering oil at market price in Central Europe. The project currently aims to transfer about 10 million cubic meters of natural gas from Norway to Poland annually by 2022. Poland would not keep the entire amount but rather it would further send the gas to other Central European countries, such as Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary and the Baltic States or even Ukraine.
The first draft of the project was proposed in 2009 and in 2013, the Commission gave one of the parts of the project the status of project of common interest. In 2015, the Connecting Europe Facility provided a grant for a feasibility study. Maros Sefcovic, Vice-President of the European Commission for the Energy Union, said following the hearing that the initial thought of the EU executive was that Northern Gate was a very important project. The feasibility study will be ready by the end of this year and the project will be open for commercial entities to express their interest by the end of 2017.
Everyone has heard about genetic mutations causing serious disease. Finding one in your genome was like getting a death sentence. Recently, however, geneticists have been surprised that many people with these mutations dont ever get sick.
Youre probably among them. Lurking in the genes of the average person are about 54 mutations that look as if they should sicken or even kill their bearer, says Erica Check Hayden in Nature. But they dont. [Emphasis added.] And therein lies a scientific revolution. The growing realization that humans survive these mutations is leading to a radical revision of human genetics, she says.
Few would have thought to ask such a question in years past, but medical genetics has been going through a bit of soul-searching. The fast pace of genomic research since the start of the twenty-first century has packed the literature with thousands of gene mutations associated with disease and disability. Many such associations are solid, but scores of mutations once suggested to be dangerous or even lethal are turning out to be innocuous. These sheep in wolves clothing are being unmasked thanks to one of the largest genetics studies ever conducted: the Exome Aggregation Consortium, or ExAC.
We mentioned ExAC before, noting that a billion genes have failed to turn up any beneficial mutations. This time we look at the flip side; are harmful mutations really as deadly as we thought?
Part of the misdiagnosis problem came from a common statistical error, illustrated by an old joke: Monday, Joe got drunk on gin and soda water. Tuesday, Joe got drunk on bourbon and soda water. Wednesday, Joe got drunk on vodka and soda water. Conclusion: soda water causes drunkenness. The mistake could have been prevented by comparing Joe to people who drank soda water alone or added it to non-alcoholic drinks.
Similarly, doctors and scientists can find a genetic variant in several individuals with fatal genetic diseases and rush to the conclusion that the common gene was the cause of the disease, before checking to see how widespread the variant is in the general population. Philosophers use illustrations like this to teach rules of logical inference.
The error can be forgiven in this case. Before now, scientists lacked enough data to compare genomes. ExAC is changing that. Its a welcome development. The editors of Nature want to accelerate the correction:
These conclusions have consequences for real people, and so researchers must go about this work differently. When they suspect that a variant is linked to disease, they should check to see how common it is in databases such as ExAC. Even better, they should hunt for evidence that the mutation has a functional role in disease before declaring that it is pathogenic. Let the reckoning begin.
ExAC is helping in more ways than correcting previous inferential mistakes. Hayden says it can be a tool for discovering function in genes and proteins:
ExAC is a simple idea. It combines sequences for the protein-coding region of the genome the exome from more than 60,000 people into one database, allowing scientists to compare them and understand how variable they are. But the resource is having tremendous impacts in biomedical research. As well as helping scientists to toss out spurious disease-gene links, it is generating new discoveries. By looking more closely at the frequency of mutations in different populations, researchers can gain insight into what many genes do and how their protein products function.
This is where the story gets interesting for intelligent design. Is it possible that variants thought of as mistakes could be functional? Or is there more room for neutral variation than expected? How does the body protect against variants? Is there such a thing as the human genome? Could natural variation be a mechanism for robustness against deleterious mutations?
ExAC has turned human genetics upside down, says geneticist David Goldstein of Columbia University in New York City. Instead of starting with a disease or trait and working backwards to find its genetic underpinnings, researchers can start with mutations that look like they should have an interesting effect and investigate what might be happening in the people who harbour them. This really is a new way of working, he says.
Remember that the ID approach is to look for reasons for things. Mistakes surely occur when DNA is exposed to carcinogens or cosmic rays, but the rule of thumb for ID is, If something works, its not happening by accident. The fact that billions of people live healthy lives in spite of variants previously assumed to be fatal supports a new heuristic model: maybe we should expect a baseline of variability built into the normal, healthy human genome.
We have to be careful; we dont want to confuse tolerance to neutral mutations for function. Haydens article, with a chart, shows that some mutations remain clearly associated with disease. But many others thought to be deadly have turned out to be common in the population, and thus must be benign. Some may increase risk of disease without causing it, or be expressed later in life. There are many pitfalls in associating variants with deleterious effects.
Later this month another version of ExAC will be released, increasing the data to 135,000 exomes and 15,000 whole-genome sequences. ExAC is a field to watch for design implications. Given that ExAC has already turned human genetics upside down, maybe design theorists can help find which way is up.
Querying the Rest of the Story
ExAC catalogs the exome, the coding parts of the genome. What about the non-coding parts? Efforts after ENCODE continue to query the non-coding portions, looking for reasons why they are there. One such effort was published recently in Science by Sanjana et al., High-resolution interrogation of functional elements in the noncoding genome. Heres their design-friendly goal: they want to find causes for effects rather than dismiss the unknown as junk.
More than 98% of the human genome does not code for proteins; however, unlike for the coding genome, there exists no overarching framework to translate the noncoding genomic sequence into functional elements. Evidence from genome-wide association studies suggests that many noncoding regions are critical for human health. The implications of these associations, however, have been difficult to assess, in part because we lack the tools to determine which variants alter functional elements. Molecular hallmarks, such as epigenetic state, chromatin accessibility, transcription factor binding, and evolutionary conservation, correlate with putative functional elements in the noncoding genome and can predict regulatory function. However, these predictions largely bypass regions lacking hallmarks, and it is difficult to ascertain which hallmarks play a correlative or truly causal role in function or phenotype. Efforts to determine causality have used preselected DNA fragments, with expression serving as a proxy for function, but these methods lack the local chromatin context and broader regulatory interactions. Thus, there is a need for systematic approaches to sift through noncoding variants and determine whether and how they affect phenotypes in a native biological context.
Its exciting to be at the verge of a paradigm shift. This team (though still accepting the Darwinian view that the genome is a product of evolution) is beginning with the right attitude. They want to nail down the evidence for function. It appears Darwinian theory played no role in their research.
So here are two avenues of research for design theorists. We know that evolutionists have already made the mistake of dismissing parts of the genome they didnt understand as junk. While we dont want to make the opposite mistake of assuming everything is functional, we can help apply a paradigmatic corrective that may very well lead to fundamental new discoveries. When studying an exon or non-coding region, perhaps we should let design be the default expectation until proven otherwise. After all, you could miss a function if you arent looking for it. So as Natures editors said, Let the reckoning begin.
Photo: Jeff Baumgart stock.adobe.com.
2 weeks turnaround for visa application started and medical complete would be very fast for a lot of companiesMy wife had a pink slip/entry permit that wasn't processed for residency on time so she was told to exit UAE and reenter with a new visit visa, at the border she wasn't allowed to leave but told to visit immigration to get the entry permit cancelled before she could leave the UAE (to get a new visit visa in this case).. I'd think it likely the same would happen to you.If you have the entry permit there's nothing to stop you taking it with your passport to a typing office yourself to apply for medical and EID - vip service gets medical results in 24 hours, visa stamping can be done immediately once you have a pass medical result, EID application letter and the entry permit with either a UAE entry stamp or change of status letter (along with proof of tenancy/DEWA account and salary certificate etc).EID application now seems to need the old EID number if you were previously resident, if you don't have the old number or copy of the old card it can delay things 1-2 days as typing office has to request it from your 'file'.
themegatherium said: Thank you so much for the links to the Fisc and the advice about the Chamber of Commerce. I will seek them out here and see what I can do. I guess what I'm trying to ascertain is:
1. Do you know if I actually need to start a business? I haven't set up an EIRL or EURL yet. Is there not a way to report income earned from U.S. sources or something? Because if my hourly pay rates suddenly go up 20 percent due to taxes my job is going to fire me anyway and then I'll only have to worry about paying half this year's income in taxes. I guess I could offer to just take a 12% pay cut and they'd end up paying the same they were already. Click to expand...
2. Can I do any of this (EIRLs, taxes, etc.) until the French gov't gives me my social security number? I applied for it, was rejected due to not having a carte de sejour, sent a second application in June on the advice of the prefecture, and sent a THIRD set of papers (both French and English help lines were disconnected) immediately after picking up my physical carte de sejour, but I haven't received a number yet. I know this is just how it is and I shouldn't complain, but it's so frustrating to be told (not by you, by the shocked tax lawyer I spoke to) that I should have been paying French taxes last year during the months I was spending weeks and weeks at the prefecture having my dossier rejected over and over. Click to expand...
2a. I've always filed U.S. taxes but was given to understand from my U.S. tax preparer that I was domiciled in the U.S. in 2015 (due to spending more than half the year there; I moved to France in July) and thus only needed to file U.S. taxes for that year. Apparently that was not the case and now I'll likely owe hefty fines to the French govt as well as being double taxed on five months of income? Do you know if I'll also need to pay regional taxes, as we spent two months of that in a gite in Franche Comte and I don't know how to file for those. Do I not count the weeks after moving that I spent abroad? Click to expand...
I don't mean to belittle what you're saying and going through, but welcome to the Wonderful World of being a US expat! I think we all go through some version of this "shock and awe" stage.Net-net yes, you do. Because you are working in France, you need to be paying French cotisations (social insurances) on what you are making. (And you should not be paying into US social security, nor having US taxes withheld from your pay.) If your US employer won't pony up and pay you through their French payroll (if they have one), then you pretty much have to establish a business entity for this. (And most US employers have a hissy fit when they find out their share of the cotisations is something like 40% of your gross salary.)But in essence, you do "need" a pay increase to cover your expenses when you go independent. Think of the various expenses you have now that you didn't have as an employee: office supplies, computer, bookkeeping fees, employer's portion of the social insurances, etc.Actually, setting up an EIRL or any other form of business IS a way to get your French secu number. But it sounds like you're already on your way to this. (And frankly, it'll be easier to set up the EIRL if you have both your CDS and your secu number already.Your US tax preparer is obviously not familiar with taxes for overseas taxpayers. Take a look through IRS Publication 54 for the overview. As a US citizen, you are ALWAYS domiciled for tax purposes in the US, although there are things like the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion you can use based on your residence overseas. Very generally speaking, your "salary" (which includes proceeds from an EIRL if you choose to set it up that way) can be excluded (on IRS form 2555) while you are living and working in France. (Do check the precise requirements in Pub 54.) For 2015, you report your change in address (i.e. to France) as of the date you moved, and you only file French taxes for income earned from that date forward. All foreign source income (which does NOT include your salary since you were working IN France at the time) is reported a second time on a form for foreign source income, and the appropriate adjustments are made to your French taxes from there.There aren't "regional taxes" in the sense you're thinking of them. Not on income anyway. The main "regional tax" is the taxe d'habitation which is more like a property tax, and levied based on where you were living on January 1st of a given year. (In essence, much simpler in practice than US property taxes.) If/when you buy a home, there is a second property tax called the taxe fonciere.The other big thing to recognize is that the Fisc is actually less "threatening" than the IRS likes to be. The first time or two that you file, you can make an appointment at the local tax office and ask them for help. They are usually very accommodating for first time filers, and they actually will advise you how to fill out your forms so that you don't pay more tax than you have to.But take things one step at a time. It takes a LONG time to get used to the idea that things here in France happen much more slowly than back in the US. (Believe me, I know whereof I speak here!)Cheers,Bev
Government funds Ro Pax Ferry Service in Gulf of Cambay under Sagarmala Programme
Published: October 19, 2016
The Union Ministry of Shipping has sanctioned the Capital Dredging Project of Ro Pax Ferry Services between Gogha & Dahej, in Gulf of Cambay in Gujarat under Sagarmala programme.
The total project cost is estimated to be Rs 234 Crore of which 50% will be funded by the Union Government under the Sagarmala programme.
Significance of Project
This is first of its kind project in India as it will be executed in the area of worlds 2nd highest tidal range.
This project on completion will result in reduction in motorable distance of 231 kms between Gogha and Dahej in Gujarat to mere 31 kms.
It will pave way for launching Indias first roll on-roll off (Ro-Ro) vessel passenger ferry services on this route by April 2017.
Besides, it will reduce the travel time to 1 hour from 7 hours. It will also result in savings in fuel, reduction in CO2 emission and reduction in road congestion.
The project will open up new avenues in coastal shipping & tourism and help in socio-economic development of proximate areas.
It will also help in utilisation of inland waterways through River Narmada for shipping goods from industries located upstream.
What is Sagarmala Programme?
The Sagarmala Programme is Union Governments flagship strategic, customer-oriented initiative to achieve the broad objective of promoting port-led economic development in India.
The ambitious programme seeks to harness vast potential of Indias 7,500 km long coastline, 14,500 km of potentially navigable waterways and strategic location on key international maritime trade routes.
It envisages the growth of coastal and inland shipping as a major mode of transport for carriage of goods and people along the coastal and riverine economic centres.
Sagarmala when integrated with the development of inland waterways will help to reduce cost and time for transporting goods, benefiting industries and export/import trade.
Gulf of Cambay
The Gulf of Cambay (also known as Gulf of Khambhat) is an inlet of the Arabian Sea in the state of Gujarat along the west coast of India. It divides the Kathiawar peninsula to the west from the eastern part of Gujarat state. Narmada, Tapti, Mahi and Sabarmati rivers drain into it.
Month: Current Affairs - October, 2016
Topics: Gujarat Gulf of Cambay Inland Waterways National Places in News Sagarmala Project
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Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Elon Musk in SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, seems to become enamored by a new grandiose idea every week or so. And this week was no exception. This time he and his well-heeled colleagues are trying to find a way to serve the 3 billion earthlings hunkering down at scattered locations around the globe lacking service by modern cellphones or conventional telephones.
The solution? Launch a giant swarm of broadband communication satellites into low-altitude circular orbits flying in a tight formation with one another as they circle around the globe. It is called OneWeb.
300-pound satellites are to be launched into 18 orbit planes with 40 satellites following one another in single file around each plane. Ku-band transmitters will provide satellite-based cellphone services to remote and underserved users everywhere in the world. Mass production techniques and the economies of scale should help keep the cost of each individual satellite in the $500,000 range. Recently the OneWeb satellites passed their preliminary design review at the famous satellite design center in Toulouse, France. OneWebs total network cost, including a widely dispersed network of gateway Earth stations, is expected to come in at about $3.5 billion, provided the cost-conscious satellite-makers in Exploration Park, Florida, can come in within their target budget. Company spokesmen ha ve indicated that, so far, their team members are on schedule and within 5% of their estimated costs.
About 15-percent of the $3.5 billion has been raised and has been funding about 300 full-time experts. Present schedules call for initial money-raising services to being in 2019. Some industry experts have been calling the concept the O3b other three billion, for the three billion widely distributed individuals unserved by mobile or hard-wired telephones.
Elon Musk is famous for turning wild ideas into practical reality and squeezed out impressive profits along the way. Many of his ideas have been floating around for some time when he decides to take a shot at turning them into reality. An earlier version of OneWeb was touted by Edward Tucks in the 1970s. It was called Teledesic.
The Teledesic concept sprang to life because Tucks read that 40 million people (were) on the waiting list for telephone services around the world. He quietly sketched up the plans for an 840-satellite constellation of communication satellites flitting through space in 435-mile orbits.
Launch costs were a big barrier then. But Elon Musk can now put a big dent in that problem with his surprisingly inexpensive Falcon boosters.
Tom Logsdon, the author of this blog teaches short courses for the Applied Technology Institute in Riva, Maryland. He will be discussing, in detail, the rapidly evolving OneWeb plans as they are springing from the drawing boards in the following short courses:
The author of this article, Tom Logsdon, teaches short courses, on a regular basis, for the Applied Technology Institute in Riva, Maryland. Here is his upcoming schedule of courses:
Click here for further information: ATIcourses, Tom Logsdon
Rating 3.00 out of 5
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Three words come to mind when I think of funeral director and life cycle celebrant Larry Mandel: kindness, justice and enthusiasm. He died on Sunday, October 16, 2016, just two weeks shy of his 68th birthday (Oct. 30 also Create a Great Funeral Day). Theres been no official statement about the cause, but I suspect past heart troubles returned to catch up with him.
Kindness
Larry was a mensch a good guy. He proudly described himself as a fourth generation funeral director. He was also a very media-savvy funeral director. Early in his career, before joining the family business, he worked at WGN-TV in television promotion.
When I had the opportunity to be on WGN-TVs Midday program in Chicago, I called Larry to see if hed like to put together some community outreach presentations while I was there. He jumped at the opportunity.
Larry put together two synagogue presentations on Jewish funeral traditions illustrated with film clips and a continuing education session at Pisers funeral home to educate social workers about funeral planning issues.
At the Piser continuing education event, he welcomed the crowd by saying, You can actually visit a funeral home and not be sad. Gail Rubin helps start the funeral planning conversation in a fun, interesting way and we are so privileged to have her here in Chicago.
I am so privileged to have had Larry Mandels enthusiastic support throughout my career as a death educator. He embodied kindness and generosity.
Justice
Larry was the Owner/Manager of Piser Funeral Services in Skokie, IL from July 1980 to October of 2013 over 33 years. After he retired, he became an interfaith life cycle celebrant and funeral director concierge. His motto was, Taking people by the hand at the most memorable times of their lives. He also became a funeral director associate at Mitzvah Memorial Funerals in Deerfield/Skokie in 2014.
In July of 2013, Larry participated in a strike against SCI by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 727, representing funeral directors and drivers. SCI had purchased Piser and operated the funeral home under their Dignity Memorial brand. Larry was out there on the street demanding justice and protecting the rights of those who worked as funeral directors. More about this story here.
Enthusiasm
Larry loved life. He loved scuba diving and visiting Mexico. He loved his wife Sue and was so proud of all his children. He loved helping people in their times of grief and in their times of celebration.
His Facebook page was full of pictures of him with couples he had just married, many in the most interesting settings. He had recently posted on Facebook about the successful 50th high school reunion he helped coordinate.
Having just returned from my own 40th high school reunion, his death reminds us all to be fully present and enthusiastic, kind and loving to everyone. We never know when our last day will come. Let us keep Larrys memory in our hearts and our actions as a tribute to his life.
The funeral will take place on Thursday, October 20 at 2:00 p.m. at Lakeside Congregation, 1221 Lake Cook Road, Highland Park, IL. His official obituary and service details posted at the Mitzvah Memorial Funerals website:
Lawrence Larry Mandel, beloved husband of Sue Ann Mandel nee Keller.
Loving father of Rebecca Gamber, Russell (Kristin) Mandel, Caryn (Hugh) Solvsberg and Philip (Kimberly) Mosberg. Cherished grandfather of Andrew, Jenna, Blake, Jillian and Addison. Fond brother of Bonnie (Alan) Carl. Dear son in law of Elsie Keller. Services Thursday 2PM at Lakeside Congregation 1221 County Line Road Highland Park, IL 60035. Interment will be private. In lieu of flowers remembrances to your preferred charity would be appreciated. Arrangement by Mitzvah Memorial Funerals, 630-Mitzvah (630-648-9824) or www.MITZVAHFUNERALS.com
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
I hate this. I really do.
I hate that the astoundingly biased and partisan news media and pundit class refuses to even make a fair pass at doing its job, forcing an ethics blog to place itself in the position of being accused of defending Donald Trump. Yeccch.
[Rueful but amused aside regarding the biased and partisan news media: Late Sunday evening, Chris Cillizza, who authors the political blog for the Washington Post, tweeted: Let me say for the billionth time: Reporters dont root for a side. Period. This was a manifestly absurd assertion, and made me wonder about Cillizza, who may not root for a side, but whose own left-leaning and pro-Clinton bias creeps into his work at regular intervals. But the gods of irony were ready: Monday morning the Center for Public Integrity released its 2016 campaign analysis that showed that U.S. journalists gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Clintons campaign. CPI identified 430 people as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors as well as other donors known to be working in journalism 96 % gave money to Clinton, according to federal campaign finance filings. Thats 96. Ninety-six. NINETY-SIX. As is all but 4%. Got that? Are we clear? Those 430 journalists gave $382,000 to Clinton and $14,000 to GOP nominee Donald Trump. Fifty journalists gave to Trump; 380 gave to Clinton. Many more members of the media almost certainly donated, and almost certainly in a similarly unbalanced split, but the law only obligates candidates to disclose the names of donors giving more than $200 in a single election cycle. In its report, CPI noted that even though many news organizations have policies against donating to politicians, those organizations reporters donated anyway. Poor, naive, Chris Cillizza, having proven that as a reporter, his confirmation bias prevents him from seeing what is all around him, at least had the integrity to follow up his previous tweet (Period.) by tweeting
Well this is super depressing. NO idea why any journalist would donate $ to politicians.
Well why dont you think about it, Chris? Im sure it will come to you. But I digress...]
I know this is a political campaign and that hyperbole and loose facts are as American as apple pie. However, Barack Obama is President of the United, States, and he, even more than most, must not actively seek to re-write history, especially since so many of his supporters have the historical perspective of mayflies. Therefore he must not be allowed to escape proper condemnation for these statements he made yesterday in a campaign speech attacking Donald Trump. Yes, only condemnation will do, for his statements were dishonest, untrue, and constituted hypocrisy as its worst. Presidents should be better.
Obama had the gall to lecture Donald Trump with two head-exploding statements for anyone whose memory extends back before the Bush presidency, and one that should have triggered mass cranial eruptions from anyone conscious during the past 8 years:
1. One of the great things about Americas democracy is we have a vigorous, sometimes bitter political contest, and when its done, historically, regardless of party, the person who loses the election congratulates the winner, reaffirms our democracy and we move forward.
After the 2008 election was decided because the Supreme Court stopped a recount that would never end unless it was stopped, Al Gore indeed did the noble and statesmanlike thing and conceded, congratulated President Bush, and then sat by as Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe (a Clinton henchman, now governor of Virginia), Joe Lieberman and Democrats at all levels proceeded to pronounce the election stolen and rigged, not only undermining trust in the system, but also impugning the Supreme Court. Remember Selected, not Elected, a Democrat mantra, chanted among thousands of protesters at Bushs 2001 inaugural? No? Neither does Barack Obama, apparently, because no Democrat would ever dream of attacking the legitimacy of an election after the votes are in. We move forward!
Right.
Democrats kept claiming fraud, or attacked the system itself (Gore won the popular vote and lost the Presidency just like Jackson, Tilden, and Cleveland, but not having the historical perspective of competent citizens, Democrats treated this anomaly as a singular atrocity engineered by Republicans) with their usual assistance by the partisan news media, for eight years. The intent was to deprive President Bush of legitimacy for exactly the same reasons birthers like Donald Trump tried to deny Barack Obamas legitimacy. It works.
The theme was repeated with variations after the 2004 re-election, of Bush, when Democrats claimed that the state of Ohio was stolen by Republicans. John Edwardsremember him?led the way; it is apparently losing vice-presidential nominees whom the Democrats give the job of undermining public trust in democracy. Jesse Jacksonremember him?former Democratic Presidential candidate, father of a Congressman (now jailed), called for an insurrection over the 2004 results. Jesse then, like Al Sharpton now, was never publicly rejected by Democratsreliable blue votes, you know. Go Jesse!
I wrote then (December 15, 2004), and I take pride that I wrote:
Jackson is intentionally inflaming a deep wound on our democratic institutions, inflicted by a random confluence of events in the election of 2000 that made a definitive result unattainable. The Democratic Party, egged on by its apparently scruple-free chairman Terry McAuliffe, continuedfor four years! to encourage the myth that the 2000 election was stolen. It was successful at this dubious objective: polls show that nearly 50% of the electorate, almost exclusively Al Gore voters, believe this untruth. (Indignant Kerry supporters in the media made much of the fact that about 70% of ignorant Bush voters believe that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the September 11 attacks. Well, guys, almost 100% of Kerrys voters buy the stolen election lie.) They believe the election was stolen despite the fact that no Florida vote count ever even had Gore in the lead; despite the fact that the multiple hand-recounts undertaken by the supposedly liberal-biased news media after the election showed Bush winning legitimately; despite the fact that the only significant and documented factors costing Gore votes (the candidacy of Ralph Nader and the inexcusably confusing butterfly ballot that probably gave Neanderthal conservative Pat Buchanan accidental votes from a decisive number of bewildered Gore voters) had nothing to do with the GOP; and most of all, despite the fact that the best result the Democrats could reasonably have hoped for, a disputed vote count in Florida with no clear victor, would still have resulted in a Bush victory by the Constitutions mandated solution of a vote by the (GOP dominated) House of Representatives. Of course, what really made this misrepresentation an easy sell was the fact that Gore won the popular vote. If you plumb the soul of the angry Gore voter, what he really believes is that the Constitution stole the election. All rightit was cynical and intellectually dishonest for the Democrats to exploit this issue: it divided the country and robbed President Bush of any chance of a national constituency, but they thought it would win them the White House in 2004. .Intentionally and deceptively eroding the publics belief in the American democracy in order to win an election is a terrible and unethical trade-off It is time to heal the wound and move to strengthen our democratic institutions and the publics faith in them. Jackson and others do not want to let the wound heal. They are playing a dangerous and irresponsible game with the future of America by clawing at the scab and pouring salt into the gaping wound. They are risking the creation of a permanently skeptical electorate that will always believe that if its favored candidate loses, it must be because the other side cheated. This can lead to more cheating. This can lead to violence.And because America is the role model for democracy all over the world, this can undermine democracy itself. Sad to say, it is likely that Jesse Jackson is risking all this, not because of a genuine belief that there was such massive election fraud that a recount in Ohio will change the election results, but for narrow and self-serving political objectives: he is willing to damage Americas bond of faith and principle with the American people to keep African Americans distrustful of the government and bolster Jacksons fading prestige and influence. It is hard to imagine anything more despicable.
It is hard to imagine anything more despicable. I agree with President Obama that it is despicable for Trump to do this, but I do not care to hear any Democrat lecture the country about the dangers of sowing suspicion and distrust. That was their game. What Trump is doing tears at a foundation of trust that Democrats intentionally weakened, and not just during one campaign cycle, but for years.
No, Obama daring to say now that he has never heard of such a thing isnt as despicable, and at least his words now express what some Democrats should have had the integrity to express from 2001 to this point. It is incredible, however, that the man can be so hypocritical so arrogantly. If Trumps conspiracy theory endangers us now, it is only because Democrats weakened our society by intentionally undermined public trust for political gain.
2. I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. Its unprecedented. It happens to be based on no facts.
This is deceit. No, Presidential candidates havent tried to discredit elections prior to the vote, but its a technical point when prominent Democrats like Robert Kennedy, Jr and John Kerry , as well as the left-wing blogs and websites, have repeatedly implied that Republicans stole previous elections. (Ann Althouse makes the valid point that if you really think the election is going to be stolen, the time to say so is before it happens, not after.)
As for It happens to be based on no factsKABOOM!
That one sent my head onto the ceiling. No facts? A court just ordered the IRS to finally stop playing games with conservative political non-profits. Reports show that State Department personnel tried to bargain with the FBI to declassify one of the e-mails incriminating Hillary Clinton. President Obama lied, saying that he had no knowledge of Clintons private server, and now we have evidence that he communicated through that server using a false name. The administration just pressured Ecuador to shut down Julian Assanges e-mail accessyou know, the guy who is dumping all of those embarrassing hacked messages and speeches? The press and media, except for a few islands of conservative bias, have, per the New York Times, suspended journalism ethics to defeat Donald Trump. Democrats have fought and demonized efforts to do something so basic as to require identification at the voting booth, all while encouraging illegal immigrants to come and stay.and maybe vote.
Meanwhile, the Democrats were perfectly willing to rig their nomination process to ensure Clintons nomination.
I dont think that the 2016 election is rigged, but dont insult my intelligence by telling me that there is no reason for Trump or anyone else to worry about it. This is an inept, corrupt and dishonest administration, supported by a partisan and unethical news media that allows its favored Presidents administrations transgressions and failures to be hidden, obfuscated and buried whenever possible. This is a President who hails from the most corrupt major city in the nation, and who had his path to the Senate cleared when the Chicago Tribune got the sexually provocative divorce files of his favored Republican opponent to be unsealed, with the resulting scandal forcing his adversary to drop out too late for the GOP to find a viable substitution. The Obamas administration has shown contempt for law and the Constitution on many occasions, and is dominated by a party that increasingly adopts totalitarian attitudes and methods, trying to restrict free speech and due process of law. Its current candidate for trhe White House favors government confiscation of guns, and we know that she intentionally acted to foil public access to her communications while risking national security to do it. She, her husband, and such minions as Cheryl Mills, John Podesta and Paul Begala have shown that they are full believers in the ruthless political principle that the ends justify the means. Would Hillary Clinton rig the election if she could?
Good question.
3. If whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else, then you dont have what it takes to be in this job.
Do I really have to explain why it isGRRRRROAAAWRRRYUJYYTTTTTAHHHHHHHH!(sorry, I lost control there for a minute) infuriating to have to hear the single most unaccountable, excuse-making Chief Executive in U.S. history dare to say this about anyone, even an utter fool like Donald Trump?
Im not going to bother. How dare this man, of all people, say that?
Is Obama right about Trump and the danger of talking the way he is? Of course. How disgraceful then, and typical, that he could not say so without setting a new record for political hypocrisy.
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Mission Solar Energy says that buying solar cells from overseas will help maintain the companys competitive edge in the growing U.S. and international markets for the clean energy.
The San Antonio-based solar manufacturing company announced plans earlier this month to cut 87 jobs as it shutters its solar cell production line at its plant near Brooks City Base. Mission Solar weighed its long-term prospects in deciding to make the cuts, senior manager of planning Sam Martens said in an Oct. 14 interview.
Focusing on just the module side of the business gives us much more flexibility in terms of what products we can produce based upon different cell technologies, Martens said. We dont have to be bound to just one technology that we would produce in San Antonio; we can source multiple technologies from the market.
Solar cells the individual wafers that use sunlight to produce electricity are used to make solar modules of varying size. Several modules can be connected together to make solar arrays mounted on a device or rooftop.
Mission Solar will import most, if not all, of its cells from Asian vendors, Martens said, he declined to specify which country. At least 68 percent of the photovoltaic module imports into the U.S. last year came from Asian suppliers, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
The logistics of importing solar cells is relatively easy, said Martens, because the solar cells are lightweight and easy to pack. Assembling the cells into modules in San Antonio lessens the distance the bulkier modules have to travel to their final destinations in Texas and beyond.
Theres a lot of value added in assembling the module and then distributing that more locally, Martens said.
One market that Mission Solar is eyeing is Mexico, which opened up its state-run oil and gas market in 2013, and also began deregulating its electricity market.
In December 2015, Mexico passed the Energy Transition Law, which sets renewable goals of 25 percent by 2018 and 35 percent by 2024.
Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot.
The markets new in Mexico and were evaluating the market right now and seeing what opportunities lie there, said Mission Solar spokeswoman Laura Waldrum.
While there may be some challenges in developing and financing solar projects in Mexico, Martens believes that Mission Solars proximity to the border and trade agreements with Mexico will make it easier to tap into the country.
But Mission Solar is also keeping an eye on the competition as more people try to take advantage of larger projects in Texas and the United States.
The great challenge I think is not going to be for the market itself; I think growth is looking pretty healthy, Martens said. But definitely many more players are entering into the market and the market itself is becoming much more competitive.
rdruzin@express-news.net
The first big gala in the lead-up to the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo Feb. 9-26 will pair Travis Tritt and the Bellamy Brothers, two acts that became country stars despite being more off-center than most in the mainstream.
The 22nd annual Go Rodeo Roundup at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the Expo Hall on the AT&T Center grounds will continue the events focus on bringing legendary entertainers that fit the older demographics for the show, while drawing younger fans to partake in a variety of catered, gourmet food booths, an open bar, door prizes and live and silent auctions.
The event draws some 3,600 people and raises money for the San Antonio Livestock Expositions scholarship fund, which awarded more than $11.3 million this year.
The Go Rodeo Roundup is one of top fund-raising events of the year.
Texas Music artist Nick Hernandez of Helotes, who is working songs from his latest album, Moonshine, will play dance music on the side stage before the concert and between sets.
More Information In concert What: Go Rodeo Roundup, featuring Travis Tritt, the Bellamy Brothers and Nick Lawrence Band When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday Where: Expo Hall, AT&T Center grounds, One AT&T Center Parkway Tickets: $78; $850, table; $1,850, Silver Horseshoe table. 210-225-5851 or sarodeo.com See More Collapse
Tritt, a native of Marietta, Georgia, shot to stardom in 1989 as an unlikely country artist. He didnt wear a cowboy hat. His long blond hair swept down below his shoulders.
Then there was his take on country: He intertwined it with his childhood love of blues, Southern rock and gospel, with soulful vocals that earned an outlaw image and set him apart from the others.
One of his hits is Heres a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares). While pay phones are rare today, Tritts fans are not.
He continues selling out venues from coast to coast after developing a loyal fan base with dozens of hits that led to more than 25 million album sales, two Grammy awards and multiple country-music awards.
His hits include The Whiskey Aint Workin, Its a Great Day to Be Alive, Best Intentions, Where the Corn Dont Grow and T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
Tritt credits the longevity of his career to having an easily recognizable voice.
The Bellamy Brothers, the most successful duo in country history, have pushed the genres boundaries since their crossover soft-rock hit Let Your Love Flow shot them to stardom in 1976.
Darby, Florida, natives David and Howard Bellamy routinely infuse their country with wit, rock, reggae and rap.
Rolling Stone Country says they may have launched todays country rap, or hick-hop, almost 30 years ago when they released the single Country Rap.
Theyre still pushing boundaries with EPs such as Boobs/Texas Girls, with the song Boobs harping on crummy rap music.
To celebrate their 40th anniversary last year, the Bellamys released an unconventional greatest-hits album, 40 Years: The Album.
They paired 20 classics, including Old Hippie and Redneck Girl, with 20 new songs, such as Living in Oblivion, with a country reggae groove and a longing for a certain state of mind.
Another is Hippie Cowboys, which was written in the vein of a TV theme song such as The Beverly Hillbillies or The Monkees.
The volunteer committee of the Go Rodeo Roundup has about 120 members who begin planning the event in February. Crunch time comes on the Wednesday before the gala, when they turn bare floors into a huge party room.
The party for them wont end on Saturday night.
They have to tear it all down Sunday morning.
john@johngoodspeed.com
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The freefall of the oil market, for most of us, hasnt meant much more than cheaper gas. For Nigerian-born petroleum engineer Stephen Ekwunife, the crash meant the end of his American oil-services job.
And for San Antonio, that meant Ekwunife could turn a love of cooking into Kobams African Restaurant.
Kobams specializes in the food of Nigeria, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast, with tomato-rich dishes such as joloff rice, aromatic egusi soup served with doughy pounded yam starch called fufu for scooping, plus grilled and roasted meats and fried plantains to sweeten the deal.
Ekwunifes San Antonio chapter began when he moved here in March 2015 after his petroleum job in New Orleans fell through. He took his severance and savings and poured them into a former taqueria in a strip mall that shares space with a bingo hall and two churches.
Ekwunife did most of the renovation work himself, he said, from replacing the ceiling to texturing the deep orange walls to rehabilitating the kitchen space. The process took nine months, and Kobams opened in January this year.
More Information Kobams African Restaurant * (1 star) 8753 Grissom Road, 210-474-6058, www.kobams.com Quick bite: Nigerian specialties from Stephen Ekwunife, a petroleum engineer who traded oilfield services for the love of cooking the rice dishes, aromatic soups, grilled meats and pounded yam fufu of his homeland. Hit:Whole grilled tilapia, joloff rice Miss: Dry suya beef, overcooked chicken Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-8 p.m. Sunday Price range: Appetizers and sides such as fried plantains, $2-$10; grilled beef suya $13; whole grilled tilapia $13; main dishes with rice and meat, $13-$18; soup with pounded yam (fufu) and meat $13-$14; soft drinks $2-$3. ****Superior. Can compete nationally. ***Excellent. One of the best restaurants in the city. ** Very good. A standout restaurant of its kind. * Good. A restaurant that we recommend. (no stars) We cannot recommend this restaurant at this time. Express-News dining critics pay for all meals. See More Collapse
The name Kobams? Dont look for deeper meaning, because as Ekwunife said, sometimes you just go with something unique that sounds good when you say it: Kobams.
Pepper soup sounds good when you say it. Pepper soup is something different when you smell it.
With its hot, brothy tumble of liver, kidney, cow skin and tripe, it makes menudo seem as tame as canned cream of mushroom. The offals musky flavor makes an unlikely but harmonious dance partner with an eye-wateringly fierce broth.
The pepper soup was just an introduction to the Nigerian canon. Fix in your sense memory the smell of seeds and pulp from a freshly butchered pumpkin. Now transport that memory to a hot bowl of soup with greens and fatty knobs of goat meat. Now picture eating that soup with fingers full of something like proofed bread dough. This is the experience of egusi soup with fufu.
Egusi is made from ground pumpkin or melon seeds, and fufu is the pounded yam flour served with it, formed into a doughy mound thats squeezed through the fingers a dumpling at a time for dipping into the soup. The aromas, the texture, the awkward spectacle of utensil-free eating this is the Kobams experience.
In that same vein, ogbono soup came across as aggressively cheesy and fermented, a collagenous tangle of mashed seeds from a plant known as African mango. Fish stock and spinach added to the sweaty aromatics, and the slick texture was augmented further by cows skin, a protein I chose over more conventional beef or chicken. Its a choice I wouldnt make again, no more than Id make chili out of nothing but fat trimmings.
If the experience sounds relentlessly unfamiliar, it should. This is how we expand our culinary horizons. But there are touchstones to the familiar at Kobams as well.
Suya, for example, falls in that universal food subcategory of grilled beef and onions. At Kobams, suya is brisket carved shawarma-style in long and short strips. Theyre as spare and arid as barely reconstituted jerky, with a barbecue rub-style spice called yaji, made from crushed peanuts, black pepper, garlic and ginger.
Kobams fried rice with chicken brings to mind arroz con pollo, with subtle tweaks. The rice blooms with curry, even if the fried rice part of the equation is negligible, really just a toss of mixed vegetables from a freezer bag. The chicken is barely seasoned, a leg quarter dry and sticky under bronze skin. I found myself drawn back to more interesting plates.
Somewhere in the land between the familiar and the unfamiliar lies joloff rice, as aromatically spicy as paella, with a rich tomato glow and sparks of thyme, ginger and garlic. A heaping mound of that rice with roasted beef shoulder clod dressed in the same tomato sauce was one of this reviews most satisfying dishes.
My favorite dish at Kobams arose from an unlikely source. Tilapia, in general, is a fish Ill eat only under protest, given its murky provenance and silty flavor. But in a yeomans show of skill and seasoning, Ekwunife transformed a whole fish into a pick-apart bounty of tomato, pepper and firm, milky flesh with warm tones that dovetailed with half-sweet fried plantains.
With every artful dodge of the fork necessary given the Wolverine clawscape of the fishs silvery bones came a tangle of fried onions to sharpen and sweeten the taste.
Theres no denying Ekwunifes skill in the kitchen. But his lack of previous experience running a restaurant leaves little room for table service beyond the ordering and delivering of food. Drinks are purely an afterthought. Theres a cooler of bottled water and tea, broken only by Mexican Coke and Vitamalt, a stubby bottle of soda popular in Africa and the Caribbean that tastes like sorghum seltzer.
What will seem disappointingly familiar in this unfamiliar setting are three TV screens, two of them in steady CNN mode, the third blaring disconsonant pop music over what seems like Eastern Europes Funniest Home Videos. Bad news and bad video gags run in stark counter-current to the good vibes generated by food that is by turns enlightening, challenging and welcome in San Antonios culinary tapestry.
WASHINGTON More is riding on the battle for Mosul than the recapture of the Islamic State groups main stronghold in northern Iraq. Also on the line is the Obama administrations theory that the extremists can be defeated in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere without American ground troops doing the fighting.
For more than two years, the administration has stuck to its argument that the only path to a sustained victory over the Islamic State group is for locals, not Americans or other outsiders, to bear the main responsibility for the fighting and for governing after the extremists are removed.
President Barack Obama has taken a lot of political heat for that approach, which critics say has allowed IS to expand its international reach and influence.
The viability of Obamas strategy has been widely doubted. In May 2015, after months of U.S. bombings in Iraq and while in the midst of Americans training and advising Iraqi ground troops, the Iraqis lost the city of Ramadi. Defense Secretary Ash Carter publicly said he doubted the Iraqis will to fight. Since then, the U.S. support role has grown and the Iraqi security forces have managed to retake key parts of western and northern Iraq, including Ramadi.
Mosul is different, not least because it is the place where Islamic State leaders in 2014 announced their intent to create an Islamic-run state after taking a large swath of Iraq and Syria in a lightning surge.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Monday called Mosul a new measure of Obamas strategy.
And I think the president would be the first to acknowledge that this is a significant test, he said, given the size of the city and its importance to IS. Dislodging them from the city would be a significant strategic gain, Earnest said.
U.S. airpower played a key role in the run-up to the fight for Mosul by taking out Islamic State defenses, cash resources, supply routes and some of the groups leaders. The U.S. is now providing air cover as Iraqi security forces and members of the Kurdish militia begin their attempt to retake the city over the next several weeks. American advisers are working with Iraqi troops, but the outcome will be determined largely by the Iraqis.
Mosul may answer the question: If IS loses a crown jewel of its so-called caliphate, will that be a decisive and sustainable victory for Iraq? Or will Baghdad once again falter, allowing sectarian and political divisions to destabilize the country and permit a return of extremists?
That likely wont be known before Obamas successor takes office. The next president also will inherit the broader problem of Syria not just the IS presence there, including in its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, but also the civil war with its complications involving Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Iraq remains deeply divided, and the grievances among the countrys Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish populations that allowed IS to rise to power in the first place have not been resolved. Even if the Mosul campaign is successful militarily, there is a risk of violence erupting again in the form of revenge killings or clashes between groups once allied against a common enemy.
Seth Jones, a defense and security expert at the RAND Corp., says the combat phase of the battle for Mosul, while difficult, will be much easier than the aftermath.
I think theres a strong possibility that a lot of the political grievances actually get accentuated, he said in an interview Friday.
David Petraeus, the former Army general who commanded U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq in 2007-08, calls the Obama approach in Iraq and Syria a new way of fighting.
Its much more sustainable in terms of blood and treasure than obviously having our forces have to do it, Petraeus, who also served as Obamas CIA director, said Sunday on ABCs This Week.
Obama began sending small numbers of U.S. military advisers to Iraq in the summer of 2014, after the Islamic State had swept into Mosul and also captured much of western Iraq, including cities like Ramadi and Fallujah where American ground troops had spilled much blood before all U.S. troops left Iraq in 2011. The rise of IS in Iraq was a stinging blow to Obama, whom critics accused of giving up hard-fought gains.
He initially insisted there would be no U.S. boots on the ground, but he authorized a gradual expansion of the U.S. training and advising effort to complement a U.S.-led coalition air campaign. He was supported in his cautious, go-slow approach by his top military adviser at the time, Gen. Martin Dempsey, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when IS moved into Iraq and when Obama began returning U.S. advisers to Baghdad.
Dempsey counselled patience. Give the Iraqis time to heal their internal divisions and fight their own battles, he argued. Resist the temptation to grab control of the contest against the Islamic State. Dempsey believed an enduring victory would require a unified Iraq supported by neighbors.
If we were to take control of this campaign, I mean literally seize control of the campaign, then theres no doubt in my mind we would probably defeat ISIL on, lets say, a faster timeline, but it would not last, he said in June 2015. Maybe ISIL goes away, maybe theyre defeated militarily, and two years from now another group with another name and another ideology ... will just be back, he said.
In the Obama view, Iraq is more likely to regain, and retain, control of its territory if it is not relying on U.S. troops to do the fighting. Mosul is the biggest test of that theory.
AP National Security Writer Robert Burns has been reporting and writing about Iraq since 1990. AP Radio correspondent Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.
Fresh from expanding into VIA Metro, Bexar Countys all-digital library system BiblioTech has entered a pact with the University Health System to deliver ebooks and other free reading material to hospital patients, families and employees.
Under the agreement approved Tuesday by Commissioners Court, the hospital system will provide facilities and volunteer staff for BiblioTech kiosks, the podium-size terminals where digital collections can be searched for download to personal mobile devices.
BiblioTech launched three years ago with a facility on the South Side, now supplemented with a West Side library and an East Side location under construction. In several other public areas, including the Central Jury Room and military installations, BiblioTech has installed kiosks to provide basic library functions.
Last month, a BiblioTech kiosk was unveiled at VIAs Centro Plaza transit center in an initiative called Ride and Read. Plans call for kiosks at five other transit centers. With their mobile devices, registered library patrons can use VIAs free wifi to access BiblioTechs 40,000 titles.
One of the greatest points of elegance about BiblioTech is that we can make it fit anywhere, said BiblioTech administrator Laura Cole. We can make it fit any model, she said, including a hospital system.
County Judge Nelson Wolff, who instigated the library project, said almost 300,000 books have been checked out by patrons since the 2013 debut.
These innovative programs when we have a partner are cost effective, and allow us to expand the reading opportunities, not just with books, he said. The library also offers digital versions of magazines, cookbooks, movies, music and comic books all free to Bexar County residents who register as patrons.
In other action Tuesday, the court authorized staff to negotiate an Innovation Fund grant of $50,000 to Project QUEST Inc., to train workers for cybersecurity jobs. Plans call for several 11-week, bootcamp programs at the Rackspace Open Cloud Academy, targeting separating military members and veterans.
Ideal candidates for the program, which would have up to 20 participants per camp, were described as San Antonio residents with IT or IT-supported backgrounds, officials said.
The ultimate goal is to provide an opportunity for veterans to become cybersecurity specialists with the basic knowledge, certifications and hands-on exposure to support San Antonio-area commercial and defense cybersecurity employement requirements, the county proposal stated.
Project QUEST would help prepare workers for in-demand, living-wage careers by piloting a veteran or transitioning service member cohort through the Rackspace Open Cloud Academy, the proposal said.
Also Tuesday, commissioners cleared the way for the San Antonio River Authority to install a public artwork, commissioned by the San Antonio River Foundation, at the Mission San Jose Portal. Conceptual artist Mel Chin has been selected to create the outdoor sculpture.
jgonzalez@express-news.net
Twitter: @johnwgonzalez
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SEGUIN Just staying solvent is a challenge for many hospitals, so the Guadalupe Regional Medical Center could be accused of overachieving by expanding services, improving facilities and even turning a small profit.
The last remaining city-county owned hospital in Texas, the facility levies no property tax and gets no direct funding from the City of Seguin or Guadalupe County above what they are required by state law to provide for indigent care, which amounted to $1.5 million each in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
Yet, as its chief executive officer Robert Haynes told the city council and county commissioners Tuesday, the hospital turned a profit of .04 percent during the year, about $400,000, and should double that in the current fiscal year if projections hold.
Our days of cash on hand went from 119 to about 140 days since the previous year, Haynes told commissioners. Going back 13 years when I started, we had nine days of cash on hand.
County and city leaders praised Haynes and the independent hospital board that runs the facility for the upbeat annual report.
Even in this era of uncertainty about health care costs, theyve been able to remain solvent and achieve more cash on hand, while still offering high quality care, Mayor Don Keil said Wednesday. Its really a laudable thing.
County Judge Kyle Kutscher said the hospital plays an important role in the communitys growth.
The hospitals sustainability and the perceptions people have about it have a huge impact on how many people move here and what type of people move here, he told Haynes in the meeting.
Total hospital expenses will climb about $2 million this year, to $94 million, according to Haynes, who noted half of the budget goes for the salaries and benefits for its 750 employees.
Eight new positions were added to its medical staff in the past year as the hospital tries to match its providers with the needs of the community and curb the outflow of local patients to San Antonio for care, Haynes said.
We expanded our acuity level, the scope of what we can care for, by bringing in not only a neonatologist, but neurologists and other specialists, he said. You have to have the right mix and cadre of physicians... so that everybody is working toward the same things as a stand-alone facility.
The Texas Municipal League honored the city and county in 2012 with the City-County Cooperation Award for their joint ownership, since about 1960, of the facility formerly known as Guadalupe Valley Hospital.
The original 26-bed hospital on Weinert Street was replaced in 1965 with a 79-bed facility at the current location on East Court Street.
Haynes, who was hired in 1981 as a respiratory therapist and became chief executive in 2003, has already overseen a $102 million construction project that included remodeling 65,000 square feet and adding 141,000 square feet.
Six years after that work wrapped up, hes about to embark next month on roughly $15 million in additional upgrades.
That work will expand patient capacity from 125 now to about 150. It includes creating a larger, 27-bed surgical center on the hospitals unfinished third floor and adding eight new rooms in the obstetrics department.
Well have all private rooms where you can actually deliver (babies) in the room, Haynes said.
The hospital also will add parking spaces out front by demolishing a Bank of America building that it recently acquired for $250,000.
That acquisition, the recent upgrades and upcoming work are being funded by a $117 million bond issue last year, which included refinancing $87 million in existing hospital debt, Haynes said.
Dr. James Lee, a member of the hospital board of managers, told commissioners that the upcoming structural changes follow recent upgrades to the microbiology lab, cardio and pulmonary areas and new security features at the hospital.
The whole purpose of all this is to try to provide services to the people who live in this county so they wont have to make that trip elsewhere, he said. The hospital is doing very, very well.
zeke@express-news.net
AUSTIN Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hurt by weeks of self-inflicted wounds, public feuds with party brass and lagging support nationally is statistically tied with Democrat Hillary Clinton in bright-red Texas just days before early voting begins, three new polls show.
In a survey released Tuesday by the University of Houstons Hobby School of Public Affairs, Trump holds a 3 percentage-point lead over Clinton, 41 percent to 38 percent, among registered voters in the Lone Star State.
That narrow lead falls within the surveys margin of error of plus- or minus 3 percent, meaning the race is a statistical dead heat. Trumps lead rose to 4 percentage points among voters who said they were certain to vote on or before Election Day.
The national gains Hillary Clinton has made in the last two weeks are evident in Texas, where she has closed within 3 points of Donald Trump, said Richard Murray, political science professor and director of the Hobby Schools Survey Research Institute. With such a close margin, the key question will be which candidate can actually get their supporters to the polls over the next three weeks.
Texas, reliably red for more than a generation, had been assumed to be in the Republican win column, even before Trump claimed the GOP nomination. Despite Clintons history of support in the state she outpolled Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary her campaign never has outwardly suggested Texas could be in play in November. As the race appears to have tightened, however, her campaign has opened additional offices around Texas and announced a last-minute ad buy in the states largest metropolitan areas.
Several polls conducted since the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 put Trumps lead in the high single-digits, but a few more recent surveys show his advantage shrinking.
In particular, an Oct. 13 poll from WFAA-TV, a Dallas station, gave Trump a 4-point edge on Clinton, 47 percent to 43 percent, which, like the UH poll, put the GOP nominee within the margin of error.
Also released Tuesday, a Washington Post/SurveyMonkey poll which was conducted online and had thousands of respondents showed Clinton trailing Trump by 2 points in Texas, 44 percent to 42 percent.
Republican Mitt Romney bested President Barack Obama in Texas by nearly 16 points in 2012.
The seemingly close race in Texas likely is attributable to weeks of critical news coverage about Trumps businesses and a bevy of sexual assault allegations against him, UH political science Professor Brandon Rottinghaus said.
I think it makes sense. On the heels of Trumps bad week maybe the worst of any presidential candidate in history his support is lagging, Rottinghaus said. Democrats need Latinos to vote in bigger numbers and for suburban women to break for the Democratic Party, and that seems to be happening in 2016, potentially in a way that hasnt happened before.
Ed Espinoza, the executive director of liberal media firm Progress Texas, said he sees some merit in the polls after several of them in recent weeks consistently showed the Lone Star State contest tightening.
Once we saw that fourth poll, we thought, this is a trend going in the right direction, Espinoza said. We have a good candidate, a better landscape and we have a Republican Party of Texas that is so out of touch with the average Texan.
Noting that Texas size and regional differences make accurate polling difficult, Espinoza said Democrats and their allies have to focus on increasing turnout in key urban counties if they are going to prove the trend correct.
If theyre able to get those counties that are voting at 21 percent up to 31 percent (turnout), then youre going to notice a difference, he said. Its still an understandably challenging landscape, but the fact that the ground is softening speaks volumes about the progress Democrats have made this year.
While the margin between Trump and Clinton is narrowing, polls of registered voters conducted with fewer than 20 days until Election Day are unreliable, GOP consultant Matt Mackowiak said.
Trump is hemorrhaging Republicans and college-educated white women. But the GOP ground game advantage in Texas is significant, since the Democrats here couldnt pull off a one-car funeral, he said. But Im sure they are encouraged right now.
It also remains unclear, he said, whether Democrats can activate a field organization to compete with Republicans efforts by Election Day, even if Trump does not enjoy as comfortable a margin in Texas as previous GOP White House hopefuls did.
Mackowiak cited the Clinton campaigns one-week TV ad buy and the recent opening of a Democratic field office in Houston as examples of a last-minute dash in Texas by national Democrats.
Im not sure they have planted enough seeds so that they can take advantage of this circumstance, he said. If they havent put in the field effort, if they havent done the fundraising, you cant take full advantage. Theyre throwing it all together.
The UH poll included phone interviews with 1,000 registered voters conducted between Oct. 7 and 15.
Among independent voters in Texas, Clinton dominates Trump, 30 percent to 14 percent.
The GOP candidate, however, won the support of a plurality of male respondents, 44 percent to Clintons 35 percent.
Meanwhile, women in the poll supported Clinton by a 4-point margin, 42 percent to 38 percent.
roberto.cervantes@chron.com
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday that San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor should be ashamed of herself over the reprimand of San Antonio Police officers who donned Trump hats after escorting him in the Alamo City earlier this month.
Trump made the remark to San Antonio-based talk radio host Joe Pags Pagliarulo during an 12-minute taped interview. After discussing polls, the media, Wikileaks, Wednesdays debate with Hillary Clinton and the rigged political system, Trump responded to a question about the police reprimands.
Trump said he was so sad to hear about the controversy.
You can imagine, if they put on a Crooked Hillary hat, they would have been just fine, he said, using his derrogatory nickname for Clinton.
I assume hes a Democratic mayor, Trump continued. Pagliarulo then described Taylor is a female Democrat, although she was elected and serves in a nonpartisan capacity.
Yeah, well, she should be ashamed of herself, Trump said. The candidate said the officers donned the hats for a second for a quick photo shot.
They (officers) are incredible people, incredible brave people. For her (Taylor) to be criticizing them, she should be ashamed of herself, Trump said again. He repeated the expression a third time before saying we have tremendous police support all over the country.
Many, many forces have done that or similar things, he added.
In response, city spokesman Jeff Coyle defended officials handling of the situation.
The officers involved violated city policy and were appropriately disciplined. The particular candidate or campaign is irrelevant; San Antonio Police officers must be impartial while on duty, Coyle said.
Nearly two dozen SAPD officers who escorted Trump during his San Antonio visit Oct. 11 were disciplined Friday for wearing Trumps Make America Great Again hats as Trump was preparing to leave San Antonio International Airport. Six supervisors were issued written reprimands and 17 officers were provided written counseling.
A video posted by Trumps campaign showed the officers wearing the caps. Wearing political garb on duty is not allowed for officers, officials said.
Police Chief William McManus said the officers actions violated the departments guiding principals. Last week, Taylor had no comment on the reprimands, although previously she stated on Facebook she was deeply disappointed by the officers conduct.
Trump was a phone-in guest on The Joe Pags Show on 1200 News Radio WOAI. He was campaigning in Grand Junction, Colo.
jgonzalez@express-news.net
Twitter: @johnwgonzalez
The Ohio State University Master of Arts in Film Studies
The Ohio State University announces a new Master of Arts degree in Film Studies. Film Studies at Ohio State (https://film-studies.osu.edu) is a multicultural, international, and interdisciplinary program, which approaches cinema as both art and as international social practice. The M.A. will give students substantial advanced training in film analysis, history, and theory, and afford students an opportunity to learn about various film-related disciplines in order to make an informed career choice. This degree is designed to prepare students for careers in many non-production, film-related fields, including development, distribution, journalism, archival work, film programming, and marketing. We welcome applications from students who have some background in film studies but whose undergraduate major was in a non-film studies department (English, History, foreign languages & literatures, Art History, etc.) and who are looking to re-orient their career trajectory or to prepare for further study: the M.A. in Film Studies will provide a well-balanced foundation for students seeking to apply to highly competitive Ph.D. programs in cinema and media studies.
Students pursuing the M.A. in Film Studies at Ohio State will take four core courses in film history, film theory, and film language, and at least six elective courses concentrating on specific traditions, critical schools, directors, genres, production contexts, or screenwriting. These electives, one of which must be a course in film production, come from the Departments of Comparative Studies, Eastern Asian Languages, French and Italian, Germanic Language and Literatures, History of Art, Slavic and Eastern European Languages, Spanish and Portuguese, Theatre, and Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design. Film Studies M.A. Students will be required to show proficiency in one foreign language, and will complete a thesis before graduation, under the tutelage of one of the more than 25 tenure stream faculty members who teach in our program. (See our faculty profiles here: https://film-studies.osu.edu/directory?field_people_terms_1_tid%5B%5D=9).
The City of Columbus offers students access to a vibrant and varied set of film, video, and new media programming and events, and the OSU Film Studies program has very close ties with the Wexner Center for Performing Arts (http://wexarts.org/film-video), the Gateway Film Center (http://gatewayfilmcenter.org), the Journal of Short Film (http://thejsf.org), the Cohen Media Group (http://cohenmedia.net), the Columbus International and Video Festival (https://www.ccad.edu/experience-art/columbus-international-film-festival), the Columbus Moving Image Art Review (https://movingimageart.wordpress.com), and Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (http://www.cartooncrossroadscolumbus.com), among other local film and arts institutions, publications, and annual events.
For further information about admissions and funding, please visit our Graduate Studies page at https://film-studies.osu.edu/programs/graduate/MA and the OSU Graduate School admissions webpage: https://gradsch.osu.edu/programs-admissions/admissions
For specific questions, please contact Director of Graduate Studies, Prof. Margaret C. Flinn (flinn.62@osu.edu) or the Program Coordinator, Matthew Swift (swift.23@osu.edu).
CONNEAUTVILLE, Pa. The Conneautville Farmers Exchange will no longer be selling bulk feed, according to a letter dated Oct. 4 the company sent to customers.
The letter announces that their last delivery day will be Oct. 28 and their plans to remain open as a bagged feed and farm supply store. It also notes their intentions to expand hours and product lines.
Customer Mark Creacraft of Centerville, Pennsylvania, received the letter from Conneautville Farmers Exchange and is scrambling to find a new feed source for his dairy herd.
They did all of our rations work and we got soy and mineral mix from them, said Creacraft, a 15-year patron. I also stored grain there and used it as a grain bank. Im not sure what Im going to do now.
My cows were milking very well with them and now to be forced to make a switch, Im worried about how my cows are going to react to a new ration, said Creacraft, who milks about 60 head with a total of 150 including replacement heifers and steers.
There are other places, even closer places, but I know they will be more expensive and a two weeks notice just isnt enough time, he said.
I know some neighbors and some in the western part of the county [Crawford County] that are really scrambling to figure out where they will store grain and get feed.
It would have been one thing to let us know they would be done, like at the end of the year, given us time to plan and switch, but I dont know what is going on, he said.
Owner Cameron Wright declined to speak with the Farm and Dairy newspaper.
CAPE GIRARDEAU The Missouri Department of Conservation is expanding the annual winter trout program in southeast Missouri, stocking rainbow trout in Perryvilles Legion Lake for the first time. MDC also stocks Jacksons Rotary Lake and Farmingtons Giessing Lake with rainbow trout each year.
Legion Lake will receive 3,760 rainbow trout, Rotary Lake will receive 1,900 and another 1,200 will be stocked in Giessing Lake. In addition, each lake will receive a number of lunkers. The cities of Jackson, Farmington, Perryville, as well as Perry County, the Perry County Sportsmens Club and the Missouri Department of Conservation, purchased the trout to be stocked.
The annual winter trout fishing program begins Nov. 1, marking the opening of Missouris winter trout season in lakes around the state. Anglers can fish for this popular cold-water fish through the fall and winter months on a catch-and-release basis. Anglers may harvest trout as of Feb. 1, 2017. Rainbow trout are cold-water fish which live in water temperatures less than 70 degrees. They do well in local impoundments during the colder months.
Paul Cieslewicz, MDC fisheries management biologist, cautions anglers to remember that from Nov. 1 through Jan. 31, all trout must be released unharmed immediately.
During this time, anglers may only fish with flies, artificial lures, and unscented plastic baits, Cieslewicz said. In addition, they may only use one fishing rod at a time and chum is not permitted.
Starting Feb. 1, any bait may be used and four trout may be kept regardless of size. All anglers between the ages of 16 and 64 must have a valid Missouri fishing permit and any angler harvesting trout must possess a trout permit as well.
Mike Reed, MDC fisheries management biologist, said trout can be caught on a wide variety of lures.
Flies, which imitate aquatic insects, are popular with fly fishers, he said, but spinners, small spoons, and other small lures are good choices.
Light line and tackle will typically produce more fish than heavier tackle. Successful anglers typically use two to six pound test line when fishing with lures and add little or no additional weight to the line.
"Set the drag light as a trout often hits hard and makes strong runs which can break weak or frayed line, Reed said.
For more information about trout stocking in southeast Missouri, contact MDCs Southeast Regional Office in Cape Girardeau at 573-290-5730. For more information about fishing in Missouri, go online to mdc.mo.gov/fish.
Focus on Ag: What the worsening drought conditions really tell us
Drought conditions in the Midwest have worsened over the last few months, but Kent Thiesse says the long-term impact of drought isn't always understood.
State of Food and Agriculture 2016 - UN Report
Farmers urgently need help to change methods of growing food if the world is to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the UN has said.
A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization said agriculture accounted for about a fifth of emissions, which it said needed to be reduced.
Scientists at the University of Lincoln have taken delivery of an advanced new mobile robot to support agri-tech experiments at the Universitys agricultural field station.
The Thorvald agricultural robot, developed with scientists from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, is the latest piece of technology added to the facilities of the Lincoln Institute for Agri-food Technology (LIAT).
It will support field trials delivered by scientists from the University of Lincoln at the Universitys Riseholme Campus in Lincolnshire.
The Thorvald robotic platform has been built to perform a wide variety of agricultural tasks, including deployment as a multi-purpose light weight robotic carrying platform, as a sensor platform to monitor crops and soils and, potentially, as a platform to manage crops and for precision weed control.
It is capable of operating on uneven terrain and agile enough to navigate between rows of crops without touching plants.
The new mobile robot will support agri-tech experiments in the field
Agricultural robotics and research
Professor Simon Pearson, Director of LIAT, said: "In much of our agri-tech research, the fields we use are our laboratory, which brings its own technical and logistical challenges with certain experiments.
"The Thorvald robot will be a welcome addition to LIAT in effect our own roaming, robotic lab assistant capable of supporting a wide variety of research activities.
"The robot will support research on autonomous outdoor navigation and mapping, soil quality assessment, crop yield prediction, in-field logistics and transportation."
The Lincoln Institute for Agri-food Technology aims to support and enhance productivity in the UKs agri-food sectors.
Its research focuses on the development of technologies to improve efficiency, sustainability and reduce waste throughout the food pipeline, from farm to retailer.
Earlier this year the University of Lincoln, through LIAT, secured research grants worth more than 2.6 million to deliver three out of the 24 projects funded through the latest round of the UK Governments Agri-Tech Catalyst.
The UK is a world leader in the fast growing agri-tech sector, as global challenges such as rising population, shortages of land, water and energy require better and more reliable production of food.
The agri-tech industry is worth around 14 billion to the UK economy and employs more than half a million people.
More than 20 jobs could be set to go at an Arla Foods dairy processor in Lockerbie.
The farmer-owned company is planning to transfer a proportion of its butter operation to a factory in Westbury.
Speaking about the announcement, South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth stated: "I am deeply concerned at the prospect of 22 job losses in Lockerbie.
"There has been a lot of investment in the plant in recent years and it is hugely important for the many local farmers whose milk goes to the site.
"But most importantly it is a major employer in the Lockerbie area.
"Any jobs losses will be a tragedy for those affected and a real blow to the local economy at what is a very uncertain time for many companies.
"If any of the current workforce do have to leave, I will be strongly urging Arla to avoid at all costs compulsory redundancies."
'Minimise the impact'
Arla Foods have stated that they will be entering into full consultation with colleagues affected by the proposal.
The company still plans to produce Scottish butter and whey butter at its Lockerbie plant.
They also said that it hopes they will be able to transfer 12 employees to other vacant positions at the Lockerbie site.
Jim Grieve, site director at Arlas Lockerbie site said: "We are looking to minimise the impact of the proposal through a variety of measures.
"We hope to be able to transfer 12 colleagues to other vacant roles at our site, as well as look at whether we can fill vacant positions at other Arla sites, including Westbury. At the same time, we are considering applications for voluntary redundancy from the site.
"We are committed to doing everything we can to support our colleagues at this time."
Grain markets are entering an unprecedented fourth year of surplus but all is not as it first appears, AHDB Cereals & Oilseeds have said.
With comfortable stocks and record production continuing to put pressure on world prices, a dramatic shift in global supply dynamics 'could add vulnerability' to the market.
For the UK, the depreciation of the pound since June has prevented domestic prices from falling as much as global values.
Transparency is gradually being lost, as countries with patchy data increasingly dominate the marketplace.
And though the market is over-supplied on paper, the risk of price shocks 'should not be underestimated', AHDB stressed.
So said lead analyst Jack Watts during his keynote presentation at the AHDB Grain Market Outlook Conference.
Mr Watts demonstrated since the 1972 Great Grain Robbery the US has lost market share in wheat trade
The event, themed getting ready for a new agricultural world was held on 12 October in the City of London.
In his 2016/17 Grain Market Outlook presentation, Mr Watts demonstrated since the 1972 Great Grain Robbery, the US has lost significant market share in wheat trade, mainly to Russia and post-Soviet states.
In addition, Chinese figures are skewing perceptions of global stocks-to-use, with a far lower ratio emerging when these are removed from the equation, even more so for the worlds top six wheat exporters.
A poor European harvest against record Russian production also means Russia is set to overtake the EU as the worlds largest wheat exporter.
This may be a warning light to the market in the medium-term given the inconsistency of Russian wheat production, which has varied between 38Mt and 72Mt over the past five years.
UK situation - 'Interesting times'
At UK level, Mr Watts said we were living in interesting times from both a market and political point of view.
Last season, markets were driven by high yields and high exports into the feed wheat market but for 2016/17 availability is lower and quality improved.
Based on provisional Cereals Quality Survey results, increased plantings of nabim Group 1 and 2 varieties mean close to 20 per cent of UK wheat is likely to meet minimum bread wheat milling specifications.
But Mr Watts urged caution when looking at the figures. He said: Protein content is higher but the quality and functionality of that protein is more challenging this season with lower specific weights impacting flour extraction and yield.
Barley continues its renaissance in the UK, thanks to the rotational requirement for spring cropping and its benefits for black-grass control, a level of production consistency not seen since the late 90s.
On paper, a large surplus of UK crop looks promising for exports but low specific weights may hamper progress.
What could Brexit mean for cereals and oilseeds markets?
New analysis on the implications of future trade policy scenarios for the UKs farming and horticulture industries was launched at the event.
The latest Horizon report explores how trade deals with the EU and the rest of the world following Brexit may impact UK agriculture and horticulture on a sector-by-sector basis.
It profiles each sectors current trading position in the global arena and highlights the opportunities and threats associated with various potential terms of trade.
AHDBs Head of Strategic Insight David Swales explored these themes in his presentation at the conference.
He also outlined the place of tariffs in contributing to UK competitiveness, the likely impact of any reductions in agricultural support and consumer attitudes to food shopping choices.
He concluded with a warning that: UK farmers and growers cannot rely on consumers being willing to spend more on British products so the industry needs to focus more on price competitiveness.
Farmers urgently need help to change methods of growing food if the world is to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the UN has said.
A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization said agriculture accounted for about a fifth of emissions, which it said needed to be reduced.
Small farmers in developing countries are the most vulnerable to changes in climate and need help adapting, the report said.
"Unless action is taken now to make agriculture more sustainable, productive and resilient, climate change impacts will seriously compromise food production in countries and regions that are already highly food-insecure," FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva said in the report.
"Hunger, poverty and climate change need to be tackled together.
"This is, not least, a moral imperative as those who are now suffering most have contributed least to the changing climate."
Unprecedented challenge
Resilience to climate change can be achieved with the 'introduction of sustainable agricultural practices'
The report said more resilient agriculture sectors and intelligent investments into smallholder farmers can deliver change.
It provides evidence that adoption of 'climate-smart' practices, such as the use of nitrogen-efficient crop varieties, zero-tillage and integrated soil fertility management would boost productivity and farmers' incomes.
"The world faces an unprecedented double challenge, to eradicate hunger and to stabilise global climate before it is too late," said the report.
The number of weather and climate-related disasters more than doubled in the last two decades compared with the preceding two, the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction said last week.
"Climate change is already happening, there is an increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events," said Kostas Stamoulis, head of FAO's Social and Economic Development Department.
The report said beyond 2030, the negative impacts of climate change on the productivity of crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry will become increasingly severe in all regions.
Significant improvements in food security, as well as resilience to climate change can be achieved with the introduction of sustainable agricultural practices.
Revolution in farming
The report cites diversifying crop production, better integration of farming with the natural habitat, agroecology and 'sustainable intensification' as strategies to help small-scale farmers adapt to a warming world.
"Business as usual is not an option," said Mr da Silva in a foreword to the report.
"Agriculture has always been the interface between natural resources and human activity.
"Today it holds the key to solving the two greatest challenges facing humanity: eradicating poverty, and maintaining the stable climatic corridor in which civilisation can thrive."
The UK government has also released a climate change report this month, calling for any new agricultural policy introduced post-Brexit to include measures to ensure reductions in agricultures greenhouse gas emissions.
Parliaments Climate Change Committees report shows that since the passage of the UKs Climate Change Act in 2008 industry and power generators have achieved cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of around 50%, and the waste industry has cut emissions by a huge 80%.
Lord Krebs, Chair of the Climate Change Committees Adaptation Subcommittee agreed with the sustainable environmental charity Soil Association that the UK needs to see more sustainable management of soils, to build the carbon content of soils.
He said that any new support for farming post-Brexit should ensure that public subsidies bring to the fore incentives to save carbon.
Peter Melchett, Soil Association Policy Director said: The ambitious new targets agreed at the Paris climate summit, which comes into force on 4 November, will require further cuts in UK emissions if we are to keep global temperature changes below 2 degrees centigrade, with zero carbon emissions from farming after 2050.
Government scientists have long recognised this will require a revolution in farming, and it is vital that any post-CAP payments to farmers start to encourage that transition.
Police are continuing to urge horse owners to take immediate precautions to secure their tack, after a further theft in North Yorkshire.
Sometime overnight between 9pm on Sunday 16 October and 7am the following day, three properties were broken into on Main Street and Back Lane, Alne, near Easingwold, and horse tack and power tools stolen.
Anyone who saw anything suspicious or has any information that could assist police with the investigation should dial 101 and quote reference number 12160188664.
In the previous few weeks, a number of equestrian items have been stolen from premises in North Yorkshire - including saddles, girths, bridles, breastplates and numnahs - particularly in the southern area of the borough of Harrogate.
On Saturday 17 September, a large amount of tack was stolen from a tack room near Little Ribston.
Overnight on 21/22 September, outbuildings near Kirkby Overblow were targeted, and a number of items, including tack, were stolen.
Overnight on 27/28 September, stables near Tockwith were targeted, and small items stolen. The same night, stables near Askham Richard were broken into, with damage caused and a generator stolen.
On Monday 10 October, two saddles were taken in a burglary at North Deighton.
Serial numbers and registered properties
PC David Mackay, of North Yorkshire Polices Rural Taskforce, said: In light of these incidents, I am urging horse owners to take immediate steps to ensure tack is protected from thieves.
Make sure you have a record of any serial numbers, register your property, and be vigilant report any suspicious activity to the police.
If someone offers you second-hand tack for sale, and it seems too good to be true, consider that you might be buying stolen property. Check serial numbers, and if in doubt, ask the person for proof of ownership.
PC Hannah McPeake, who co-ordinates the Horsewatch scheme, said: Preventing crime and deterring criminals is very important, and we are encouraging all equestrian businesses and horse owners to check their yard security and think carefully about how to protect their property.
Ever since Leadwood residents Greg and Sarah Moyers were killed in a tragic accident in late September, leaving their two daughters, Haley and Sophia, hospitalized in Florida, people and organizations from communities all around the Parkland have stepped up to support the family.
Once the tragic news reached the Parkland, people immediately began taking action to show their support to the surviving members of the family, which includes Sarahs son and Gregs step-son, TJ Radford.
The amount of help and people just volunteering to help do stuff and donate stuff for the family has been so overwhelming, said Charlie Lewis, president of the Leadwood Community Betterment Association, which, along with Friends of the Leadwood Fire Protection District, is sponsoring a fundraising event for the family in Leadwood City Park on Oct. 29.
The day will begin around 9 a.m. and will include a car, truck and bike show, along with live music, food and fellowship at Leadwood City Park.
The fee for the auto show is $20 per entry with prizes awarded for first, second and third place in each class. Judging will begin at 1 p.m. with the award presentations set for 3 p.m.
There will also be a 50/50 drawing available for anyone who wants to participate.
All proceeds raised throughout the day will be donated directly into the Sarah and Greg Moyers Memorial fund.
Its for the kids, Lewis said. However much money they can raise for the kids to have for the next several years to help take care of their needs will be great And if everybody does what they say theyre gonna do and if everybody shows up that says theyre coming, the parks gonna be full.
Some final details are still being ironed out, but Lewis said they expect to have at least three bands that have volunteered to perform at the park beginning at 10 a.m. and continuing until about 3 p.m.
Brandon Scherffius has already said he will play either by himself or with his band, said Lewis. And Denny Boyd and his band are gonna play and theyre working on Frago possibly, too. Then were probably going to finish up the evening with a DJ.
A variety of food will also be available, including chili and chicken and dumplings.
Information about the fundraiser will be updated and posted to the Facebook page called Greg and Sarahs Angels, which was set up to provide updates on the girls and on the familys situation. The page reports that both girls are now home from the hospital and doing well.
Along with family updates, the page also provides a glimpse into the outpouring of support for the family from the surrounding communities. Anyone wanting to make a donation directly to the family can visit any First State Community Bank location and donate to the "Greg and Sarah Moyers Memorial Fund." The GoFundMe account can be found at www.gofundme.com/4gregandsarah.
A trivia night is also being held next month.
Friends of the family, Doug and Nancy Bowles are organizing a trivia night at 7 p.m. Nov. 12 in the white gym of Central High School in Park Hills. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Tables are $100 with a maximum of 10 players to a team. Little Caesars Pizza has donated two pizzas per table. Other drinks and snacks will be available for purchase. No alcoholic beverages will be allowed.
There will also be a silent auction, door prizes and a raffle for a La-Z-Boy recliner donated by Hefner Furniture in Park Hills. Individuals can reserve a table by calling Doug Bowles at 573-431-3122 (during the day) or 330-9941 or Nancy Bowles at 330-3167. Reservations are required but individuals will pay at the door.
Belgrade State Bank is holding a basket raffle fundraiser for the Moyers family. Tickets are on sale until Nov. 2. The basket is at the Desloge branch. Tickets are $1 each of $5 for six tickets.
A government review into the Grocery Code Adjudicator (GCA) should look at extending the role to cover more of the supply chain, the NFU said today.
This follows an announcement that the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has agreed to launch an industry call for evidence of unfair trading practices, alongside the statutory review of the GCA role.
The GCA came into force in June 2013 with a remit to enforce the Grocery Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP) covering just the 10 biggest UK retailers.
NFU President Meurig Raymond said the GCA plays an 'important role' within the grocery sector.
'Sustainability, risk management and volatility management must be the food supply chains core principles' said the NFU President
We must recognise the success Christine Tacon, the GCA, has achieved within the retailer sector over the last three years, Mr Raymond said.
The GCAs recent survey results showed 62% of suppliers had experienced an issue with the GSCOP code, compared to 79% in 2014.
There has also been a significant increase of written supply agreements in place over the last 3 years, rising by 12% since 2014.
'Power of GCA's presence'
The NFU believes the power of the GCAs presence has enabled this change, and therefore this way of working is now being urged to replicate throughout the whole supply chain.
Sustainability, risk management and volatility management must be the food supply chains core principles for British farming businesses to thrive, Mr Raymond continued.
Unfair trading practices limit these principles of success and leads to smaller parties like our British farmers, losing out. This must stop.
We would like to see agri-sector voluntary codes of practice, such as the Dairy and Livestock Voluntary Code, made compulsory and overseen by the GCA to give them more teeth.
This will give primary producers the confidence that the supply chain is not abusing their buying power and position over that of the British farmer.
The NFU is also calling for the Ornamental sector to be brought under the GSCOP legislation and for the turnover threshold to be reduced to widen the scope of businesses regulated by the code and adjudicator.
British farming is the bedrock of the food and drink industry worth 108 billion - providing jobs for 3.9 million people growing the raw ingredients for UK food and drink.
We need to create a supply system which is fair, transparent and has benefits for everyone in the food chain, Mr Raymond concluded.
Farm animals will be 'better protected' following the adoption of global policy recommendations at a UN Committee.
For the first time ever in the history of the UN, farm animals worldwide will be better protected following the adoption of groundbreaking global policy recommendations on animal welfare in farming at the UN Committee on World Food Security meeting in Rome on Monday.
Lobbying efforts by animal welfare organization World Animal Protection over the past two years laid the groundwork for farm animals around the world to be better protected with substantive language on animal welfare included in recommendations adopted by member countries.
World Animal Protections International Head of Policy, Lesley Mitchell says: This change by the UN is a massive step forward in putting animal welfare at the front and centre of farming.
UN Committee on World Food Security meeting in Rome on Monday
It means countries will no longer ask should we include animal welfare? but how do we deliver better animal welfare?
By treating animals well, we can fight poverty, reduce hunger, improve peoples health, tackle climate change and protect the biodiversity of our planet.
Weve been working to make sure the vital importance of animal protection is recognised at a global level.
This is clear acknowledgement that better animal welfare contributes to better food security for communities, which in turn helps to tackle sustainable development goals to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
The inclusion of language on animal welfare makes it clear that governments should prioritise animal welfare in designing their countrys farming systems, emphasising that animals should be able to live free from pain, distress and hunger, and able to demonstrate natural behaviours as set out by the Five Freedoms and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) standards and principles.
The recommendations also stress the importance of animal health and access to veterinary services.
The recommendations were informed by a High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) report on farm animal welfare, which informed the priorities and is the backbone of the recommendations. Lesley Mitchell was one of the experts to input to the report.
A University is helping produce precision soil maps to assist with ensuring the UKs future food security by making it more affordable for farmers to get into precision farming.
Cranfield University is part of a collaborative project aiming to help arable farmers and landowners from all over the UK make a more affordable entry into precision farming.
Lead partner AgSpace Agriculture employs high resolution satellite data processed using a soil brightness algorithm to show where soil quality variation exists in fields.
This dataset will be analysed by experts from the Cranfield Soil and Agrifood Centre and modelled alongside Britains most comprehensive soil datasets to produce a new precision soil map.
The perceived high cost of entry has proved a barrier for many small-scale farmers
This should present an economically viable alternative to the current labour intensive method of field soil surveys, with growers able to increase yields with lower input costs and reduced environmental impact.
Precision farming involves dividing farmed land into management zones which have specific characteristics soil being the most important.
Using such precision data has been proven to lead to better yield results across all crops when compared with traditional and conventional farming.
However, to date, the perceived high cost of entry has proved a barrier for many small-scale farmers.
Making precision farming more affordable
Dr Abdul Mouazen, Senior Lecturer in Agricultural & Environmental Engineering, is leading the project for Cranfield.
He said: This work aims to make precision farming more affordable to enter for arable farmers and landowners throughout England, Scotland and Wales, drawing together a unique set of data to produce meaningful soil management zones.
The technical approaches involved in this project draw on Cranfields experience handling and managing national scale datasets.
The Cranfield Soil and Agrifood Institute holds and manages the national land information system for England and Wales known as LandIS, on behalf of Defra.
Dr Mouazen continued: Ensuring the worlds food security is going to be increasingly challenging, and rapid population growth means its high on the agenda for a lot of countries.
According to the 2008 United Nations sustainable development forum, more food will have to be grown in the next 50 years than has been produced during the past 10,000 years combined.
One way to achieve this is by managing farm resources using advanced technologies in precision agriculture.
Precision farming technologies and techniques play an important role in ensuring sustainable food production.
AgSpace Agriculture, who devised the soil brightness technology being used, are leading the project.
Cranfield is receiving more than 25% of the near 750,000 funding via Innovate UK, together with income from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
The Welsh government has announced a new 'regionalised approach' to tackle the cattle disease bovine TB.
As part of the Welsh governments refreshed bovine TB Eradication Programme, 'Low, Intermediate and High TB Areas' will be established across Wales based on bovine TB incidence levels.
The government is consulting on the measures to be applied to protect the Low TB Area and to reduce disease in the Intermediate and High TB Areas.
Bovine TB is the biggest threat to beef and dairy farmers across large parts of Wales.
Over the past 12 months nearly 9,500 cattle have been slaughtered as a result of this disease, a 38% increase from last year.
The situation is worse in endemic areas of the country with Pembrokeshire suffering a 40% increase in slaughtered cattle, Carmarthenshire 78% and Clwyd an increase of 137% in the 12 months to July 2016 compared to the same period in the previous year.
Since January 1996 the number of animals slaughtered in Wales as a result of bovine TB has reached a staggering figure of 118,488 animals - that is equivalent to 23% of the total number of adult cattle on farms across Wales today.
Over the past 12 months nearly 9,500 cattle have been slaughtered as a result of this disease, a 38% increase from last year
Strengthening of cattle controls
The refreshed programme builds on the Eradication Programme, as well as looking at options to do some things differently.
Other new measures include strengthening of cattle controls. Under the plans for the programme, chronic breakdown herds would have individual action plans, developed in partnership with farmers, vets and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), aimed at clearing up the infection.
The Rural Cabinet Secretary of Wales, Lesley Griffiths, has also acknowledged the role played by wildlife in some TB breakdowns, but is clear that Wales will continue to rule out an 'England-style' cull of badgers with farmers free shooting infected and healthy badgers themselves.
Instead, the range of other options available will be considered, including learning from a pilot in Northern Ireland where badgers were cage-trapped and infected animals were humanely killed.
Working with vets and wildlife experts, the Cabinet Secretary will consider whether a similar approach might be appropriate in high incidence areas where there is chronic herd breakdown and an objective confirmation that badgers are infected.
'Reflect and learn lessons'
Speaking in the Senedd, the Rural Affairs Secretary said it is time to take stock as the current eradication programme comes to an end this year.
"Any comprehensive TB eradication strategy must also actively remove infection from diseased wildlife across high incidence areas"
It is time to reflect on our successes, learn lessons and consider a refreshed approach," Miss Griffiths said.
Since we introduced the eradication programme in 2012 we have seen a decrease in the number of new cases of bovine TB in cattle herds in Wales, with the latest figures showing the number of new TB incidents is down by 19%.
I am keen to build on this success and speed up progress, which is why I am looking to introduce enhanced, evidence-based measures.
I believe this refreshed TB Eradication Programme will put us in a stronger position to ensure we continue to make progress towards a TB Free Wales.
Addressing the availability of the badger vaccine, the Cabinet Secretary said the Welsh government is continuing to monitor the situation but the BadgerBCG vaccine would not be available in 2017.
The availability of other vaccines is an option still being explored.
Vaccination still has a role to play in our approach to TB eradication, but it is too soon to think about the future deployment of the vaccine until we know when the supply will be restored, Miss Griffiths said.
'A step forward'
NFU Cymru has described the new bovine TB statement as a 'step forward' in that the government has recognised the link between cattle and wildlife in TB transmission.
Speaking from the Senedd, NFU Cymru President, Stephen James said: There is a welcome recognition from the Cabinet Secretary of the link between cattle and wildlife in disease transmission, but we are concerned at the time it may take for this issue to be adequately addressed.
In principle, we would support a policy that targets interventions depending on the local disease prevalence.
The proposals focus on cattle controls and how these will vary depending on the area the herd is located in.
The government will be zoning Wales into various incidence areas, however we will need to carefully consider the implications for farmers in the new areas and the consequences for farmers with land on either side of a boundary.
It is important to stress that Welsh governments low incidence area in North Wales has always had low levels of disease incidence and this new area should not be seen as a vindication of previous government strategy.
'Don't Penalise farmers'
Mr James said the proposal to lower the payment cap on animals compulsorily slaughtered as a result of bovine TB 'appears to penalise farmers' who are investing heavily in animal genetics and improving the productivity of their animals.
This is at odds with our shared aspiration of continually striving to ensure Wales is a leading player on the global stage for meat and dairy production.
Stephen James concluded: Any comprehensive TB eradication strategy must also actively remove infection from diseased wildlife across high incidence areas.
Clearly the proposals put forward by the government in the statement will ratchet up the control measures and restrictions on cattle keepers in many parts of Wales.
Whats missing is the lack of specific detail provided by the Welsh government on when the disease problem in wildlife which exists in parts of the country will be adequately addressed.
Risk-based assessment
Neil Paton, President of British Veterinary Association (BVA) Welsh Branch, said the organisation welcomes the announcement by the government.
We are particularly heartened to see the focus on risk-based assessment and the targeting of chronically infected herds with individual action plans, to be developed in partnership with farmers, vets and the APHA.
We also welcome the recognition of the role played by the wildlife reservoir of disease.
However, we are concerned that if badger culling by cage-trapping and shooting is not part of the refreshed eradication programme, there needs to be an evidence-based plan in place and other viable options must be proposed.
The Test and Vaccinate or Remove (TVR) model currently being explored in Northern Ireland had previously been discounted in Wales after modelling suggested it was not a viable option.
As vets, we are committed to working with the Welsh government and Welsh farmers on a comprehensive strategy to control and eradicate this disease, Mr Paton concluded.
Bird flu: Poultry housing order to be introduced in England
Visits taking place prior to the U.S. Grains Council Export Exchange
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
Representatives from five Mexican grain importers will visit four Iowa farms and plants this week, prior to participating in the U.S. Grains Council Export Exchange.
The tours begin in Farnhamville on Wednesday at Landus Cooperative, the largest farmer-owned local agricultural cooperative in the state. The reps will then make their way to the Poet Ethanol Plant in Gowrie and the Pro Cooperative in Havelock. They will finish the day with a tour of Jerry Maiers farm, whos also a director with the Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA).
Maier hopes showing the visitors Iowas successful agriculture could lead to more opportunities for U.S. grain.
Were thrilled to host this team in an effort to further develop and strengthen the relationships between Mexican corn and distillers grains buyers and U.S. grain suppliers, and are hopeful our efforts will result in more sales of corn and distillers grains to Mexico, Maier said in a release.
On Thursday, the Mexican importers will visit the Maxyield Cooperative and Ag Partners feed mill. Friday will take them to Innovative Ag in Hubbard before visiting ICGA director Danny Friests farm and Heartland Coop.
Maier said Mexico is the largest customer of American agricultural exports and that the country has come to rely on the quality and quantity of products produced by U.S. farmers.
In support of Oklahoma agriculture, Sen. Jim Inhofe is touring the state this week to promote State Question 777 - Right to Farm. The senator took the opportunity to meet with Associate Farm Director Carson Horn, for the chance to broadcast his message of support to the statewide audience of Radio Oklahoma Network.
I have never done this in the 22 years Ive been in the United States Senate - gotten involved in state questions, Sen. Inhofe said. But the reason I am this time is I chair a committee in the United States Senate called the Environment & Public Works Committee and there is where they have all these liberal outside interests trying to get in there and push the states aside and get control. What they couldnt do in my committee, theyre trying to do state by state.
Sen. Inhofe explained that the opposition is well-funded by outside special interest groups that seem to be twisting the language of the proposed question in an attempt to confuse voters on the actual impact and important protection SQ-777 would entail.
I was shocked by some of the billboardstalking about things like water issues, Sen Inhofe said. There is no water issue in this. Theyre nothing but lies on the billboards but it scares me to death.
Although, there is no issues aside from protecting the rights of farmers in this legislation, environmental, business or otherwise - Inhofe says there will be if the question fails, as it will allow outside influences the ability to weigh in on policy matters in Oklahoma. In the senators opinion, there is only one option for voters.
Youve got to support 777, Sen. Inhofe said. Youre going to have outsiders coming into Oklahoma and determining what our policies should be. Farming is a competitive industry; a lot of farmers arent making it and one thing they cant afford is to have outsiders dictating their policies.
Lets support our farmers, lets do it right and lets vote yes on 777.
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By Dr. Seth Byrd
Good late-summer rains improved conditions for cotton in the Rolling and High Plains regions of Texas and likely mean an above-average crop for 2016, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service experts.
Dr. Seth Byrd, AgriLife Extension cotton agronomist, Lubbock, said cotton harvests in two top cotton producing regions began on a small scale a few weeks ago but should ramp up soon. So far, the cotton fields there look better than expected.
Producers had low expectations for dryland fields because of a hot, dry July, but they seem happy with where the crop is at this point, he said.
Cotton in a Knox County field nears harvest. This years crop is expected to be one of the Rolling and High Plains best in years, according to AgriLife Extension experts.
Byrd said leaf grades, which are determined by the amount of plant material left in lint, was a big issue last year. With about 4,000 bales ginned, Byrd said this years small sampling of cotton showed leaf grades in the 2-3 range.
Its pretty clean cotton so far, he said.
Dr. Gaylon Morgan, AgriLife Extension state cotton specialist, College Station, visited the Rolling Plains last week and said overall, fields represented one of the better crops theyve had in quite some time.
They caught some more timely rains than previous years and the dryland crop looks like it could be 25 percent better than average, especially in the Northern Rolling Plains.
Not enough cotton had been harvested to give a good indication about fiber quality, Morgan said.
He said there were issues with weather, pests and diseases. Hail storms led to substantial damage for isolated fields, and stink bugs surprised producers by the amount of damage they caused in some areas. Bacterial blight also impacted production in some of the northern tier counties of the Rolling Plains.
Byrd and Morgan said irrigated fields looked very good and the rainfall also reduced irrigation costs. Morgan estimated 10-15 percent of dryland fields were defoliated, while irrigated and lateplanted fields still had a significant number of green bolls.
Morgan said temperatures were at or above 90 degrees and were expected to remain in the region for a while before cooler temperatures return. Fields in the Rolling Plains were planted later than usual due to late May rains, and fields in the High Plains, which are typically harvested late, could be later than usual also.
There remains some concern of frost for some late maturing cotton, Byrd said.
Theyll be up against a freeze at some point but weather the past two weeks and the forecast for the near future is perfect for maturing cotton, he said.
AgriLife Extension district reporters compiled the following summaries:
CENTRAL: Armyworms were still present, but the numbers and damage seemed to be dropping. Small grains not eaten by armyworms looked very good. Pecan harvests started and looked good. Cotton harvest was in full swing and nearing completion. Field preparation for winter wheat was underway. Cattle were doing well without supplemental feed. Wheat and oats were almost all planted. Soybean harvests neared completion. Many forage producers battled grassburs in their fields. Most counties reported good soil moisture and fair pasture and rangeland conditions. Most crop conditions were fair as well.
ROLLING PLAINS: No report was available.
COASTAL BEND: Warm temperatures and humid conditions prevailed with highs around 90. Soil moisture levels continued to decline due to the lack of rainfall and unseasonably warm temperatures. Dry field conditions allowed tractors to remove remaining cotton stalks and catch up on fallow land preparation for 2017. Pecan and soybean harvests continued. Hay and forage were in ample supply. Some livestock operations held back last years calves to take advantage of high prices, however, cattle prices were lower than expected.
EAST: The district remained hot and dry. Counties needed rain, and several reported drought conditions. Harrison County was under a burn ban. Pond levels were dropping. A cool front moved through the area bringing rain to only a few counties with amounts from a few tenths to more than 1.5 inches. Pasture and range conditions were fair to good. Some producers in Smith and Wood counties were waiting to see if it would rain before preparing ground for winter pastures. Subsoil and topsoil conditions were adequate to short with some counties reporting very short. Hay production in Cherokee County came to a halt due to lack of rain coupled with cool temperatures. Producers were still baling hay in Houston County but grass growth stalled in most places so yields were not good. Upshur County reported final hay cuttings were taking place. Some producers in Smith County hoped to cut additional hay but curing was a problem due to weather conditions. Livestock were in fair to good condition. Cattle were calving and fall cattle work was underway. Cattle prices continued to drop. Smith County producers were weaning calves with some holding replacements. In Polk County, most spring-born calves were marketed but at a price well below last year. Pregnancy checking and culling continued. Predator control was underway in Upshur County.
SOUTH PLAINS: Conditions were warm and dry for most of the district. Some areas experienced cool damp conditions for a few days. Topsoil and subsoil moisture levels in Cochran County were still adequate. Peanut, corn and sorghum harvests continued. Cotton continued to mature. Producers were defoliating most area cotton fields. Cotton harvests were kicking off in some areas, and the moisture was enough to keep farmers out of the fields for a few days. The average yield for irrigated cotton was expected to be three to four bales per acre. Planting of winter wheat continued. Pastures and rangeland continued to improve with the recent moisture, and cattle were in good condition. Rain was received in some areas. Floyd County received anywhere from 0.3-0.8 of an inch of rain, and Lubbock County reported 0.4 of an inch to 1.7 inches. Corn and sorghum were still maturing. Wheat could use rain.
PANHANDLE: The district reported above-average temperatures. Weather was very cool and windy. Some moisture was received. Measurements were from 0.5-1 inch of rain. Soil moisture was mostly adequate. Deaf Smith County producers were close to wrapping up corn harvests. Yield reports were all over the board. Some producers reported very low to average yields while some were above average. Producers blamed low yields on the July heat wave. Sugarcane aphids were still causing problems in area sorghum fields with many producers applying second and third applications of insecticides. Winter wheat planting was ongoing with some of the earlier plantings emerging. Some wheat was irrigated, and cattle were placed on some for grazing. Insect and disease pressures were plaguing some area wheat plantings. Producers will replant some fields. Silage harvests were wrapping up. Hansford County corn harvests were underway. Corn was making around 250 bushels per acre and under. Some late-planted corn could be very late maturing. Soybean harvests started, and yields were better than expected. A few milo fields were harvested, but some fields need a freeze to mature. Randall County was unseasonably warm with daytime temperatures in the lower 80s. Cattle remained in good to fair shape. Rangeland and pastures were mostly fair to good but continued to decline.
NORTH: Topsoil and subsoil moisture levels varied from adequate to short. Weather was dry with warm days and mild nights and little rain. Grass was holding up, but the cool nights slowed growth. Grain farmers continued to plant wheat even though soil moisture was very low. The armyworm problem continued, but was not as bad as a few weeks ago. Early planted wheat was sprayed to combat armyworms. Soybean harvests continued with yields of about 20-25 bushels per acre. Cotton was being harvested, but no yield reports were available yet. Livestock were in good condition. Calf weights were heavy due to the abundance of grass. Spring calves were weaned and doing well on the late warm-season pastures. The cattle market was depressed, and producers hoped for a bounce in prices. Fly and mosquito numbers were still high.
FAR WEST: Temperatures were in the low 90s but dropped drastically with a cold front. Rain showers occurred with amounts ranging up to 1.5 inches. Rangeland grasses were showing stress in drier areas. Many producers were defoliating cotton but were hampered due to the high humidity. Cotton yields were decent so far. Wheat and hay grazer baling started. Supplemental feeding of livestock and wildlife continued.
WEST CENTRAL: Wheat was planted. Cotton bolls were opening and some farmers applied harvest aids. Producers made a final cutting of hay. Properly managed pastures and forages still looked good. Armyworms continued to be a problem. Temperatures were higher than normal before a cold front late in the week brought light showers. Wheat planting was expected to begin soon. Cattle were in excellent condition going into the winter months.
SOUTHEAST: In Fort Bend County, the livestock were in good condition. Producers cut and baled hay. Cotton was harvested with some remaining fields being destroyed relative to insurance claims. Soybeans were in poor condition, and many will likely be destroyed due to insurance requirements. In Montgomery County, hot and dry conditions were delaying the establishment of winter annuals in pastures. Regrowth slowed on grazed pastures. Weed populations continued to manifest with thin stands for grass. A few scattered showers were received but not enough to leave puddles. In Jefferson County, the pastures and fields were in good condition. Livestock were doing well. Soil-moisture levels throughout the district ranged widely from adequate to short, with most ratings in the adequate range.
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The 12th annual Fall Rocks celebration returns to the Missouri Mines State Historic Site's Powerhouse museum in Park Hills from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, offering what event sponsors are calling "an evening of fun and educational activities for the entire family."
Sponsored by The Doe Run Company and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Fall Rocks seeks to help kids learn more about the state's natural resources and the impact they have on their daily lives. The event is free and open to the public.
Fall Rocks will feature interactive activities, including hard hat decorating, cookie mining and minerals trivia. Free hot dogs, chips, hot chocolate and soft drinks will be provided for attendees.
The Powerhouse Museum and its exhibits will also be open to guests. The museum houses equipment and other artifacts that represent the history of mining technology, and displays Missouri geological samples. It also shows a short film about how mining operations work.
Fall Rocks is a great way to teach kids just how important mining is to almost everything we do, from using a cell phone to starting a car, said Rhonda Reed, administrative assistant for the Metals Division at Doe Run. Our employees and their families enjoy the opportunity to show our community how natural resources, including those were proud to mine right here in our region, are essential in our daily lives.
For more than 300 years, lead mining has driven economic growth in southeast Missouri. Doe Runs lead mining operations in Viburnum represent the second-largest lead mining district in the world.
Mining is vital to the state of Missouri, employing more than 9,800 people across the state, said Steve Batts, vice president of Southeast Missouri Operations. We hope that children will learn the importance of the industry and gain interest in studying science and natural resources, because we know some of the kids who attend each year will be Missouris future miners.
The Missouri Mines State Historic Site sits within St. Joe Park, a once-active mining site operated by Doe Runs predecessor, St. Joseph Lead Company. The land was donated to the state of Missouri in 1976, and now is one of the most popular parks in the state for swimming, biking, camping and riding ATVs.
The Missouri Mines State Historic Site is located on the south side of Highway 32 at the Flat River Drive overpass, 1.5 miles west of U.S. Highway 67. For more information, contact Art Hebrank at the Powerhouse Museum at 573-431-6226 or Rhonda Reed at 573-626-3315.
Warrenton, VA (20186)
Today
A few showers this evening with overcast skies overnight. Low near 55F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..
Tonight
A few showers this evening with overcast skies overnight. Low near 55F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
Gray's Creek neighborhood takes a hit as mom and pop restaurant closes
Everybody eats at The Creek Bar & Grill, owner Casper Critchfield said but Nov. 13 is the restaurants last day in operation.
DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend and I are mature adults who enjoy photography. He brings his camera when we go to the beach or sporting events -- even to the store. He's learning all the time about how to use light correctly and his zoom lens.
When we get back and I download the pics from his camera, the majority of shots are of women's chests, behinds and pretty faces. He has snapped many of them while they were standing right next to me. (There are very few shots of me -- ever.)
When I ask if he wants me to delete the photos, he says no. I don't understand why he would keep pictures of strangers. He says he's like any photographer -- he likes to review his photos. I tell him it hurts my feelings to think he enjoys looking at other women more than at me. It would be different if they were beautiful portraits, but they're not. It is painful that I'm not included. Am I wrong to feel unimportant and ignored? -- OUT OF THE PICTURE
DEAR OUT: You are entitled to your feelings, and they may be justified. Because you identify this man as your boyfriend, I assume you have an exclusive relationship. There will always be women around who are younger and prettier. That's life. Because you can't control his taste in subjects, my advice is to quit downloading his pictures for him if they make you uncomfortable.
DEAR ABBY: My fiance and I have a loving relationship. He is affectionate -- hugging, kissing, etc. But he doesn't have a high libido, which I am concerned about because he's only 26.
He has confessed to me he's had relations with men in the past, and I'm thinking he may be bisexual. While that does not concern me whatsoever (after all, it's one thing to be attracted to someone and another thing entirely to cheat), I worry that he thinks he couldn't share this with me, and that it may lead to lies. I am also worried that if I confront him with this, he may be offended or think I think less of him. What should I do? -- LOVING RELATIONSHIP IN MICHIGAN
DEAR LOVING: You and your fiance are overdue for a frank talk. He has told you that he has had more than one same-sex relationship, so it's fair to consider him to be bisexual. That he didn't use that word doesn't mean he was dishonest. We communicate with our actions as well as verbally.
That you have continued your relationship after learning about his sexual history should indicate to him that you don't think less of him. As to the strength of his libido, no two individuals are alike. If he is able to provide you with what you need, I don't think you need to be concerned. If not -- as I said before, you have to talk with him about it.
DEAR ABBY: How do you get a man to help you financially? -- ANONY-MISS IN BEVERLY HILLS
DEAR ANONY-MISS: Tell him you need his help and hope he's the type who likes rescuing women.
DEAR ABBY: My sons out-of-town wedding is coming up. My mother will attend and be traveling with me. I am single, and my mom is also single. Shes planning on sharing a room with me. Abby, my mom has a severe snoring problem, and Im a very light sleeper. I cannot sleep with a snorer! I dont want to ruin my time at my sons wedding, and shes upset about the added expense of another room, which neither of us can really afford, but I dont know what else to do. MOTHER OF THE GROOM
DEAR MOTHER OF THE GROOM: The separate room may be a luxury you cant really afford, but incurring the expense may be worth it so you wont sleepwalk through your sons wedding. Im not recommending earplugs because, while they may dull the racket, they wont completely eliminate the sound of severe snoring.
P.S. If your mothers physician doesnt know about her snoring, it should be discussed so the doctor can make sure it isnt a symptom of a serious health problem.
DEAR ABBY: My son has two children who are in temporary foster care, and has visitation with the exs stepsister, who got the right to grant visitation. Recently we had a birthday party for them. All the grandparents, aunts and uncles were invited. It was a kiddie party, of course, and I jumped into the pool and played with the children. We had a ball!
A few weeks later, I heard the stepsisters mother had said I had no business playing in the pool with the kids. I was taken aback. Isnt that what grandmas are for? I love playing with the little ones. Was I wrong for not acting my age? Did I make a fool of myself? The custody fight is ongoing and I dont want to do anything that would jeopardize my son winning custody. WORRIED IN NEW YORK
DEAR WORRIED: I dont think you did anything inappropriate. I suspect the stepsisters mother was jealous that she wasnt the person in the pool, which is why she didnt speak up during the party and you had to hear it weeks later secondhand.
DEAR ABBY: You recently printed my question about throwing a 25th anniversary party for my parents. I want to let you know that instead of taking on an expensive dinner that I cant afford right now, Im collaborating with a cousin to have a chef come into their home to prepare a nice meal for them and the people who participated in their wedding. I felt it was a much more personal and cost-effective way to give them the nice anniversary they deserve. Thank you for your advice! SON OF SILVERS
DEAR S.O.S.: Im delighted you wrote to share your solution. The idea is terrific. I am sure your parents will be thrilled and other readers will appreciate your ingenuity. Thank you!
DEAR ABBY: Im a 55-year-old gay male who has been with my nowspouse, Owen, in a loving, committed relationship since 2005. While earlier we could not legally marry, in 2006 we had a commitment ceremony bringing together close friends and family to acknowledge and celebrate our relationship.
In 2013, Owen and I were finally able to legally marry in California. My dilemma comes from people who dont know what to call us. People often refer to my spouse as my friend or partner. At times I say nothing, but more often than not, I find myself saying, Oh, you mean my HUSBAND. Some of them thank me for the clarification; others just look at me with a blank stare. Owen never corrects them because he feels it isnt his place. I feel its my responsibility to do so, first so as to not play down the significance of our relationship, but also to educate these people. Do you think this is inappropriate? MARRIED IN CALIFORNIA
DEAR MARRIED: Not at all. The people who refer to you and Owen as partners and friends are using terminology that is evolving because marriage among same-sex couples is still relatively new. As it becomes more commonplace, that will change. In the meantime, its completely appropriate for you and Owen to speak up.
DEAR ABBY: I have been dating Chris for almost five years. Hes my high school sweetheart. We still live with our parents, but we feel were ready to move out and start our lives together.
The issue is I have a cat (Silky) and a dog named Chips; Chris cant stand them. He has said he doesnt want Silky to live in our home and he would make her an outdoor cat. He also doesnt want Chips to come with us because Chips can be whiny and vocal. I feel its my responsibility to take my pets with me when I move out. I dont want to abandon them and leave them with my parents, and I absolutely refuse to put them up for adoption.
I feel if I decide to bring them with me, Chris will make them feel miserable. Silky is afraid of him, and Chris doesnt like Chips getting close to him. I love my boyfriend, but I love my pets, too. Please tell me what to do! STUCK IN THE MIDDLE IN CALIFORNIA
DEAR STUCK: Wake up! You are an animal lover; your boyfriend clearly has an antipathy toward them. Your cat is afraid of Chris because she knows he doesnt like her or he did something that scared her. If he makes Silky become an outdoor cat (or she gets loose by accident), she may be at serious risk. And your dog will be miserable on the receiving end of constant rejection.
It is very important that you learn to live independently. Because Chris is your high school sweetheart and you havent dated many others, its important that you take some time and date other people before deciding to move in with ANYONE. You and Chris may care about each other, but your compatibility is in question because, face it, you two have differences.
DEAR ABBY: Im not sure if this has been mentioned in your column before, but I would like to make your readers aware of something while they travel. When staying at a hotel, it is important never to reveal personal or financial information over the in-room phone, even if the caller claims to be an employee of the hotel.
Sometimes scammers will call the front desk of a hotel and provide a generic name or room number. Unsuspecting desk agents may transfer the call to that room, and the scammer will then pose as a desk agent. He or she will say something plausible to get the guest to provide credit information over the phone, and in a flash, the guest is a victim of theft. If such a thing happens, guests should immediately dial the front desk and ask the agent if a call for that reason was intentionally placed to the room. Very likely, it will not have been. JOHN IN OGDEN, UTAH
DEAR JOHN: Whoa! Travelers can never be too careful. Thank you for the wake-up call.
DEAR ABBY: My neighbor has a registered day care business, and every day I hear her screaming at young children and infants. They are all 4-year-olds and younger. We live in a rural area outside a small town. She uses profanity and says mean things to them. It makes me want to cry when I think of how scared those kids must be.
Who do I contact with this information?
I could record her with my phone if evidence was needed to shut down her business. This woman has a really bad anger management problem. She also knows I can hear her because we have spoken about how our voices travel. I dont think she is being physically abusive, but her words must be damaging to those kids. Please help me find someone to tell. Im afraid the local police wont be able to do anything. I cant even take my own child in our backyard because she swears so much. DAY CARE DRAMA IN INDIANA
DEAR D.C.D.: Ideally, you should try to tell the parents what you have been hearing because they should be aware that their trusted caregiver loses control of her emotions and takes out her frustrations on their children. If the situation is as ugly as you describe, those kids must be terrified of her. If thats not possible, Child Protective Services should be notified because the environment is not emotionally healthy for little children.
P.S. By the age of 4, children usually have started to repeat the language they hear around them. Im surprised these parents havent noticed the change in their vocabulary and questioned their little ones about where they heard those bad words. Nonetheless, on the chance that the parents are clueless, what you have observed should be reported.
DEAR ABBY: I have a friend, a contractor working for the U.S. government, who thinks hes in love with a Ukrainian girl. The pay is really good. He recently came back from a visit to see this girlfriend. He has been sending this girl almost all his money for the last nine months. He was never alone with her, and she showed no emotional or physical attraction to him. In fact, a male friend of hers asked him for $800 to give as a bribe so he wouldnt be drafted into the Ukrainian military. We believe this male friend is, in fact, the girls real boyfriend. My friend paid $300 to send flowers to her for their nine-month anniversary, for which she expressed no thanks or appreciation. What advice can you provide us here? FRIEND IN AFGHANISTAN
DEAR FRIEND: Your friends romance seems suspicious to me, too. That he is giving all his money to someone who appears to be so emotionally distant is worrisome. I also have to doubt that $800 would keep an able-bodied man from being drafted into the Ukrainian military since the country is now involved in military conflict. It appears your friend is being treated more like an ATM than a suitor, but he may have to arrive at that realization on his own.
DEAR ABBY: Im in desperate need of help. I have been with my girlfriend for four years. With every long-term relationship, there are bound to be issues. I havent felt loved by her in a long time, and I think I have fallen out of love with her. I cant even tell her that I love her anymore because I dont want to lie.
When we make love, its dull and boring. I want to feel the way I used to about her. When I was near her, my hairs used to stand up, my heart would race, my body would quiver and I would never want to let her go. How can I feel that way about her again? WANTS THAT OLD FEELING
DEAR WANTS: The problem with relationships is that they can only be brand-new once. With the passage of time, to some extent the excitement fades. Thats where the work comes in.
Longtime couples must make an effort to keep their relationship fresh and exciting. This means introducing spontaneity and new experiences to each other. You say you havent felt loved by her in a long time. My advice would be to talk to her about it. Because you cant bring yourself to tell her you love her, has it occurred to you that she might feel as though she has been emotionally abandoned by you?
If you want that old feeling back, you and your lady will need to resume communication on a meaningful level. Its not always easy, but honesty can revive a relationship thats wilting.
DEAR ABBY: I live with my longtime boyfriend in a house he owns. Were five hours away from my parents and siblings and the town in which I grew up. Its a beautiful house with lots of land, and I can imagine raising a family here. However, I always thought that if I had children, Id live close to the rest of my family. I would want my parents nearby so they could lend a hand, and I want my kids to have a close relationship with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. My boyfriend is open to the idea of selling the house, but Im not sure I would want him to. What should I do? I love this house, but how can I start a family so far from my own? LOOKING AHEAD IN NEW JERSEY
DEAR LOOKING AHEAD: Before you make any decisions, discuss this with your parents and see if their vision of grandparenthood is similar to your fantasy. Take into consideration how close they are to your siblings and how involved they are in each others lives. Be sure that the kind of extended family relationship you envision is realistic. If everyone is on board, then you and your boyfriend should talk about what relocating will mean in terms of not only selling this house, but also the impact it might have on your ability to earn a living. This property may be terrific, but if it cannot offer you the lifestyle you wish for, then you would be better served to move. But only you can decide that.
DEAR ABBY: Twenty-three years ago my husband and I lost our firstborn son. As my husband was active duty military, we could have buried him anywhere in the United States. At the time, we were in a place where my sister swore to me she would always live, and she would always be there to take care of him. I knew with my husbands career we had many more moves ahead of us, and it helped to ease the loss knowing that he would be taken care of.
Well, that lasted all of three years. My husband and I are now at a point where we have settled down and we know where we should have buried our precious angel, instead of trusting my sister. We want to have him exhumed, cremated and placed in a veterans cemetery, but my question is this: Do I have the right to ask my sister to pay part of the costs as she broke her promise to help care for my son? HEARTBROKEN MOTHER
DEAR HEARTBROKEN: Please accept my sympathy for the loss of your son. While its clear that there are many hurt feelings about what happened after his original interment, I think its time to forgive your sister.
Its a fact of life that sometimes unforeseen circumstances prevent people with the best of intentions from keeping promises they make. Forgive her if you can, but dont ask her for money. She may owe you an apology, but she does not owe you any money.
DEAR ABBY: Im very close to my family. We visit each others homes often. But for the past year or so, something has begun to bother me. Its cellphone chargers. Whether people come for a week or just for dinner, out come the chargers! The kids all start plugging in their cellphones and tablets, and the adults follow suit with their cellphones and laptops. I started asking around and its not just happening to me. A lot of my friends have the same gripe. Lamps, toasters, pencil sharpeners you name it their cords are left dangling long after the guests have departed. After the last weekend, I installed a power strip in the TV room and will direct the traffic there in the future. Would you please let people know how rude this is? Also mention that the host is not responsible for an electronic item plugged in on a kitchen counter, or anywhere for that matter. Example: Aunt Sarah, who got my iPad wet? (It was fine, but it had been plugged in on the most used surface in the kitchen.) UNPLUGGED IN SALEM, N.Y.
DEAR UNPLUGGED: While the power strip you installed is the practical solution, the problem is that the people you have described are thoughtless. Polite guests leave their hosts home in the same condition it was in when the guests arrived. In this instance, it means being considerate enough to plug in any appliances that the guests unplugged, so the host doesnt have to wonder why the darned thing isnt working after everyone has departed. And as for electronic items foolishly left on a wet counter, if there was any damage, the fault would not be yours. Your niece/nephew was lucky.
DEAR ABBY: Im in a tricky situation. My boyfriend of four years, Ian, and I took a break from our relationship for two months because he was scared hed miss out on the single life. We started hanging out again soon after, and everything fell into place. We were talking recently, and he mentioned that hes planning to move across the country to San Francisco to be near his family. He made it plain he wants to live on the West Coast forever. I am close to my family closer than Ian is to his. Were both 24, and while were not going to get engaged anytime soon, Im not sure what to do. We love each other, but the geography is causing so many issues. Please advise. NEW YORK GIRL
DEAR N.Y. GIRL: Its good that you and Ian arent planning on becoming engaged anytime soon, because you have some serious thinking to do. If you plan on having a family and want your parents to be close to their grandchildren, it would be better for you to find another boyfriend. Im advising you and Ian to take another break this time for YOUR benefit to see which is more important to you: the man or the location.
DEAR ABBY: Im a 14-year-old girl with a problem. Because of my buzzed short hair, slim hips and flat chest, I frequently get mistaken for a boy. It really bothers me because, despite my haircut and body shape, I have a feminine face and I wear womens clothes and makeup. Im not too much of a tomboy. Sometimes when someone addresses me with a male pronoun or in some other way mistakes me for a male, Im too nervous to correct them. Is there a clever or witty way to correct the mistake? NOT A BOY IN BROOKLYN, N.Y.
DEAR NOT A BOY: The person who made the mistake is the one who should be embarrassed, not you. If it happens again, all you need to do is smile and say, Im all girl.
DEAR ABBY: I have been dating a woman, and I am considering proposing to her. We have discussed engagement rings and she wants to design her own, which I think is great. However, I am unsure exactly what to do regarding the actual proposal. What ring should I give her, knowing that whatever I give her will not be her ultimate engagement ring? SOON TO POP THE QUESTION
DEAR SOON TO POP: Marriage proposals happen in many situations and in many ways. There are no rules, and dropping to one knee and offering a ring is optional. The engagement does not begin when a woman starts wearing a ring; it begins when she accepts the proposal. All you need to do is say, Will you marry me? When she says yes, you can then decide when you both would like to select a stone for her engagement ring.
DEAR ABBY: A longtime friend asked me to be executor of her estate a few years ago, and I agreed. As time has passed, the details of the estate have changed several times. After the recent death of her husband, she again changed the beneficiaries and is now leaving almost half a million dollars to two animal shelters.
Its her money to do with as she chooses, and I dont judge her. I do, however, have a problem executing an estate that gives that much money to animal care when it could help so many people. I dont fault her for wanting to do it; I just dont want to be part of it. Im afraid asking her to find another executor would damage or end our friendship. Please tell me what to do. DILEMMA IN TEXAS
DEAR DILEMMA: Lets face it. You ARE judging the woman and you DO fault her for wanting to leave a fortune to four-footed needy creatures instead of bipeds. Because you are uncomfortable with her plan, you must tell her she needs to find another executor who is as committed to animal causes as she is. Youll be doing her a favor.
DEAR ABBY: It has been a year since my mother passed away. The month of February was especially tough because it was the month of her birthday and also the month in which she died. Mothers Day will be here soon, and Im already feeling bitter, anticipating all of the commercials, advertising, brunches and everything. I dont want to be bitter about Mothers Day, but I am. How do people typically celebrate Mothers Day when they have lost their mother? JODY IN KEARNEY, NEB.
DEAR JODY: Please accept my condolences for the loss of your mother. If you have siblings, you might find it comforting to talk with them about your feelings. If not, then spend the day quietly, being grateful for the precious time you had with your mother and the many lessons she taught you. I cant speak for others, but thats how I have coped with the loss of my mother, and Im sure others do it, too.
DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend, Glen, and I have been dating for two years. Over the past few months he has been pushing me to open a joint checking account with him. I have tried explaining that I dont feel like its a good idea until we are engaged. But every time I say no, he gets upset and angry. Am I wrong for not wanting to put our finances together, and how do I make him see my side? CAREFUL IN THE MIDWEST
DEAR CAREFUL: You are absolutely NOT wrong, and you should not have to justify your discomfort with the idea of pooling your money with anyone to whom you are not married. In fact, Glen should be trying to explain why he is pushing you into making such a foolish decision. His anger and upset are either attempts to bully you into doing what he wants, or a sign of desperation to get access to your hard-earned money. If you are at all tempted to relent, I URGE you to first talk to a lawyer about what the ramifications could be if the relationship went sour.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069
Texas-based Lennox International Inc. said in a securities filing Monday that it self reported to the SEC and DOJ an alleged payment of $475 to a Russian customs broker or official.
The company said its audit committee launched an internal investigation with outside counsel and forensic accountants.
The disclosure is unusual because of the small size of the alleged improper payment.
But the disclosure could indicate that Lennox wants to take advantage of the DOJ Pilot Program.
The Pilot Program encourages self disclosure.
In declination letters issued under the Pilot Program, the DOJ has mentioned factors that include:
timely and voluntary self-disclosure
thorough and comprehensive global investigations of the violations, and
full cooperation including providing all known relevant facts about the individuals involved in or responsible for the misconduct.
Lennox makes commercial and residential heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration systems. It had about $3.4 billion in revenue last year. Sales in Russia last year were just $5 million.
The company said the internal investigation hasnt yet uncovered any other potentially improper payments.
But, Lennox said, the investigation has raised questions regarding possible irregularities with respect to other Russian customs documents.
The value of the Russia shipment linked to the alleged payment was about $68,500, Lennox said.
The company said it would cooperate with the SEC and DOJ and doesnt expect any material adverse effect on its business or financial condition.
Lennox International Inc. trades on the NYSE under the symbol LII.
* * *
Heres the full FCPA disclosure from the Form 10-Q filed by Lennox International with the SEC on October 17, 2016:
In October 2016, the Company self-reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) an alleged payment in the amount of 30,000 rubles (approximately US $475) to a Russian customs broker or official. The Company, under the oversight of its Audit Committee, has initiated an investigation into this matter with the assistance of external legal counsel and external forensic accountants. The alleged payment was purportedly made to release a shipment of goods being held by Russian customs officials due to inaccurate paperwork. The value of the shipment was approximately 62,000 (approximately US $68,500). The allegations are related to the Companys subsidiary in Russia, which had 2015 annual sales of approximately US $5 million and approximately US $3 million in sales for the nine months ended September 30, 2016. To date, the investigation has not resulted in any evidence of other potentially improper payments; however, the investigation has raised questions regarding possible irregularities with respect to other Russian customs documents. The investigation is ongoing. The Company intends to fully cooperate with the SEC and the DOJ regarding this matter. The Company does not anticipate any material adverse effect on its business or financial condition as a result of this matter.
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Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. Hell be the keynote speaker at the FCPA Blog NYC Conference 2016.
Paul Gambino is the author of Morbid Curiosities: Collections of the Uncommon and the Bizarre, (Laurence King .19.95). Here he selects his favourite morbid curiosities from the book.
Morbid Curiosities
The "pick ten favorite" question is usually hard to answer, no matter what the topic. In this case, for me, it was harder than a 3-inch gallstone that was retrieved from a 67 year-old cadaver and wound up in the collection of a New York collector of morbid human oddities. However, after some time I have come up with the following ten.
The Jar of Insanity
Just the thought of someone being so mentally disturbed/tortured that they could not break out of this obsessive compulsive loop that would drive them to spend countless hours folding and tearing thousands of tiny pieces of paper - each EXACTLY the same - and then filling a jar with the torn paper is frightening. It's a physical manifestation of insanity and very upsetting. (Collector: Evan Michelson)
The "Quaint Toy with a Somber Past"
This small, relatively innocuous wooden toy takes on such a sad turn when you see the note that was tied to its base that reads, "Norman, Your mother played with this two hours before death." I find that terribly sad and unsettling. (Collector: Calvin Von Crush)
19th Century Fetal Skeleton
This particular skeleton is holding its heart in its hand and drying a tear from its eye socket with their own placenta. (Collector: Ryan Matthew Cohn)
WWI Facial Prosthetic
Hand formed copper facial elements. The 3rd London General Hospital's "Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department" created over 200 prosthetics of this type from 1918 to 1919 for wounded soldiers. Solders nicknamed the studio "The Tin Noses Shop." (Collector: Steve Erenberg)
Pirate Skull
A Malaysian pirate skull that hung from the mast of the Spanish galleon Santa Clara in 1688. It was a warning for other would-be pirates. (Collector: Brent S.)
Stella
Stella the shrunken head is the result of a revenge killing and mutilation. After a wife discovered her husband cheating with another woman, the wife had the daughter of the mistress killed and the daughter's head shrunken. (Collector: Jack Kump)
Reine
The hand written description was just one word "Reine" which translates to "Queen" in English, 1907 (Collector: Jean-Bernard Gillot)
"A Bunch of Cocoanuts"
Six warrior skulls taken in the same battle by the Iban's of East Borneo in the late 19th century. The heads were thrown into a fire pit and once cured they were wrapped in vines and suspended from the rafters of the community longhouse. (Collector: Mik Miller)
Hangman's Logbook and Tape Measure
The personal logbook of English hangman Albert Pierrepoint that includes a written log of every hanging that he performed. Also the tape measure used by his predecessor Henry Albert Pierrepoint. The book is opened to the page of the famous double execution of two women in the "baby farming case". The only double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times. (Collector: Nathan Roberts)
Deadly Prison Shank
I obtained this "shank" (prison knife) that was used to kill somebody inside of prison. However the collector did not realizing it at the time, that she had in her possession the prison identification card that belonged to the stabbing victim. She keeps always keeps these two those depressing items together. (Collector: Jessica M.)
Morbid Curiosities is out now
Bella Thorne says all her haters can "f**k off".
Bella Thorne in Playboy (c) Twitter
The 19-year-old actress has a strong message to send to people on social media who call for her to change as a person, and although she "understands" some of the criticism she receives she's tired of people telling her she's "too edgy" now.
Speaking to Playboy magazine, Bella - who shot to fame on Disney Channel series 'Shake It Up' - said: "People often don't want to get to know the real you; they only want to get to know the person they think you are. For me, that means people are constantly trying to change me, every second of the day, especially on social media. I'm not fed up with social media - I understand it - but people like to comment on how my image is too edgy, that I'm too edgy, and on how they wish I looked. It's a lot of 'do this, don't do that.' To them I say, f**k off!"
Bella - who recently revealed on Twitter that she identifies as bisexual and is currently dating 'Teen Wolf' star Tyler Posey - appears in a sexy 70s-themed photo shoot for Hugh Hefner's iconic men's magazine, although she keeps most of her body covered up.
However, the Hollywood starlet believes both men and women should be "confident enough" to flaunt their body, and not feel the need to cover it up.
Bella - who has shared some photos from her Playboy shoot on her Twitter account - said: "There's this effort to try to shame a woman's sexiness by pulling a cover over it, but I'm a woman who loves skin. I love skin on me, I love skin on girls, I love skin on guys. If you're confident enough to show off your body, you should. Be confident. It can be difficult to get yourself to focus on you all the time, especially when you're trying to transition into who you really are, but I'm not going to change for anybody else. I love staying true to me."
Kim Kardashian West was dragged out of bed and had tape tied around her entire head as robbers snatched jewellery worth $8.5 million from her room earlier this month.
Kim Kardashian West
The 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' star was left fearing for her life when a five-men gang broke into her room at Hotel de Pourtales in Paris, France, on October 3, waved a gun in her face, gagged her and tied her up in the bathroom while they raided her drawers.
The concierge on duty, who led the robbers to Kim's room, explained: "One of the gang kept telling her to shut up. I put my hand on her shoulder and told her to be calm.
"I said, you have to be silent, you know. She sat down on the bed. She asked me, 'Are we going to die?' I said, 'I don't know, how can I know?' She said, 'I have family and babies'. I told her, me too, I have one son. And she began to scream again. That's why he put the tape on her mouth. A long piece of tape, all the way round her head."
The traumatised guard - who is only known by his first name Abdulrahman for security reasons - initially tried to put the robbers off by claiming he didn't know who the 35-year-old star was before he was marched to her room "by the scruff of his neck".
Speaking exclusively to the MailOnline, he said: "We got to her bedroom and slid open the door. She was in her bed. Before we opened the door, she heard a noise and began to say, 'Hello? Hello?' I assume she thought it was her sister.
"The intonation of her voice changed when there was no answer, I felt she was worried. After that, one of them opened the door. The other one was fastened to me. He attacked her, holding his gun in her face. She was crying, she was screaming, saying, don't kill me, I have babies, don't kill me, please, I have babies! I'm a mom! Take whatever you want! She seemed terrified. She was wearing a white bathrobe and her hair was tied up."
Her bodyguard Pascal Duvier- who is also involved in the investigation - was out protecting her sister Kourtney Kardashian when the incident took place in the early hours.
An instructing judge is now leading more than 100 judicial police and officers from the Paris criminal brigade in the hope of catching the five-man gang.
The criminals will face charges of armed robbery by an organised gang, criminal conspiracy and kidnapping, which could lead to a sentence of at least 30 years.
Inmates sentenced to life in the European country are required to serve a safety period of at least 18 to 22 years before they can become eligible for early release.
From Hollywood blockbusters like Prometheus to everyone's favourite detective in Luther, British actor Idris Elba has come a long way from his small roles in the likes of 2point4 Children and Absolutely Fabulous. A few months ago he was awarded an OBE for his work in film and television; it's no surprise he is one of the frontrunners to be the next James Bond.
Idris Elba
To celebrate the release of his new film, The Take - out now on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD and 100 Streets released in cinemas and on VOD on 11th November, - we count down our top five Idris Elba roles.
100 Streets
Elba also stars in gritty drama 100 Streets- out on Nov 11th in cinemas and on VOD. Directed by Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated Jim O'Hanlon, 100 STREETS is a layered and gripping drama, with an original screenplay by Leon F Butler. It takes a compelling look at the vibrant and complicated life of a group of individuals in contemporary London - destination capital of the world. 100 STREETS intersect the film's setting. Chelsea is just down the road from high-rise estates, riverside opulence contrasts with the day-to-day grind. It's in these streets that the characters face major choices and fundamental change in their separate lives, as they negotiate their paths through life - through those hundred streets.
The Take
In his latest role, Elba stars alongside Game of Throne's Richard Madden in the high-octane thriller The Take. Michael Mason (Madden) is an American pickpocket living in Paris who finds himself hunted by the CIA when he steals a bag that contains more than just a wallet. Sean Briar (Elba), the field agent on the case, soon realises that Michael is just a pawn in a much bigger game and is also his best asset to uncover a large-scale conspiracy. Going against commands, Briar recruits Michael to use his expert pickpocketing skills to help quickly track down the source of the corruption. As a 24hr thrill ride ensues the unlikely duo discover they are both targets and must rely upon each other in order to take down a common enemy.
Luther
Considered perhaps his most infamous role, is the BBC drama Luther which follows the story of DCI John Luther. The crime drama first burst onto our screens with six one-hour long episodes back in May 2010. It proved hugely popular and continued for a further three seasons, no doubt with more to follow. Elba was highly praised for his role as the dark and obsessive Detective Chief Inspector; he has been awarded a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance. The show has also received eight Primetime Emmy Award nominations in various categories, proving once again that British actors can do no wrong in Hollywood.
Prometheus
Starring alongside Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green and Charlize Theron, Elba also showed his worth as a Hollywood heavyweight in Ridley Scott's Prometheus . Elba stars as Janek, captain of the Prometheus, a character which he himself described as "a longshoreman and a sailor'. He described Janek as a "realistic, pragmatic character." In a film with huge ideas, you need a character like this, who can do 'wait, why are we doing this?' The film proved to be an international success and grossed $403 million worldwide, it was also nominated for an Academy Award for visual effects.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
It's no mean feat taking on the role of anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela but it was a challenge that Elba was willing to accept when he took on the title role in Justin Chadwick's biopic Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom. Based on the autobiographical book Long Walk to Freedom by former South African President Nelson Mandela, the film chronicles the revolutionary's life from his childhood in a rural village through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. The film received a number of positive reviews with heavy praise for Elba's 'towering performance' alongside Naomie Harris as Winnie Madikizela.
Beasts of No Nation
A Netflix original film, Beasts of No Nation was screened in the main competition of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival where is won the Marcello Mastroianni Award. Based on the novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala, it follows the story of a young boy who survives as his country goes through a horrific war. Once again Elba was praised for his role and was nominated for a British Academy Film Award for Best Actor in a Support Role. With the ongoing race row continuing to make waves in Hollywood, many thought that Elba should have received an Academy Award nomination for his role as the menacing Commandant, with many considering it this year's biggest snub.
Wiley, Lady Leshurr and Popcaan will perform at the MOBO Awards.
Wiley
The three artists will join previously-announced superstars Craig David, Laura Mvula and Tinie Tempah at the event, held on November 4 at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow.
Clean Bandit will also rock the awards' stage for the time as they team up with Best Newcomer nominee Anne-Marie for an energetic set.
Although most of them haven't graced the MOBO stage before, the 'When The Bassline Drops' hitmaker - who is nominated for Best Male and Best Song - is thrilled to be making a return to the awards ceremony after first wowing the show in 2000.
He said: "I first performed at the MOBO Awards 16 years ago and walked away with three awards that night. I'm back with new music and it's only right that I celebrate this by joining MOBO as they celebrate their 21st birthday."
Meanwhile, Laura - who last performed at the 2013 MOBOs - will be hoping her performance will be a celebration of a successful night as she's up for an impressive four awards.
She said: "I'm so thrilled to be back in Glasgow performing on the MOBO Awards stage. The MOBOs are one of the few music events that have really championed and supported urban music from Gospel to Grime, so it's an honour to be taking part once again."
Like Craig, Tinie is up for Best Male and Best Song for 'Girls Like', and will be hoping to add to the two awards he picked up in 2010.
Laura and Kano lead the nominations with four each, with Skepta narrowly behind with three nods.
Tickets for the MOBO Awards are available now at www.mobo.com/tickets.
A collaborative effort of leading American and British publications included Ferris State University in their inaugural ranking of U.S. colleges. Ferris is one of six publicly-funded Michigan universities, and among sixteen schools in the state listed in the top 500 institutions in the survey. Ferris is the only public university in west Michigan included in the report.
The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education findings were based on responses from 100,000 college students, gauging their experience with faculty, assessing critical thinking requirements and asking whether they would recommend their school to others. Ferris had the best showing in the engagement category, among all Michigan schools, with 17 of 20 possible points. When respondents were asked if they would recommend their school, Ferris 8.92-point score, on a 10-point scale, with 10 representing the strongest level of agreement, was the highest score for any Michigan school in the survey.
President David Eisler was pleased by the universitys inclusion in this report, as it indicates positive responses from those who have chosen to pursue their education at Ferris.
It is very gratifying to see the educational efforts of our faculty and staff recognized by a prestigious publication like The Wall Street Journal, Eisler said. It is clear that students who attend Ferris State University are engaged and believe the university is the right choice for them.
Ferris joins the University of Michigan, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University and Wayne State University as the state-funded public universities included in this ranking. Other Michigan institutions that were in the WSJ/THE survey included Albion College, Alma College, Andrews University, Calvin College, the College for Creative Studies, the University of Detroit-Mercy, Hope College, Kalamazoo College, Kettering University and Lawrence Technological University.
Ferris overall score is derived from ratings on outcome, resources, engagement, environment, being a right choice, salaries for graduates and debt repayment. The university was ranked 492nd among all U.S. colleges in the ranking.
PHOTO CAPTION: Ferris State University, based in Big Rapids, Mich. is the only west Michigan public college or university included in the inaugural Wall Street Journal college rankings, created in collaboration with a leading British publication, Times Higher Education.
DEAR HARRIETTE: My brother has a very malicious ex-wife. She is currently manipulating their children (my nieces and goddaughters) into not coming to celebrate a wedding on our side of the family. She claims that her daughters say they don't want to come. The manipulation of children so young saddens me, but I think my brother should let it go. He is adamant that the girls should be in attendance so they can see pictures later. They are young, between 8 and 11. -- Too Many Sides, Pikesville, Maryland
DEAR TOO MANY SIDES: You should stay out of it. Though well intentioned, you really have no say in what happens between your brother and his ex-wife, and adding your opinion may only confuse things. Just be a sounding board for him if he chooses to talk to you about it.
That said, I would tell your brother that he has to figure out how to neutralize the relationship between the two of them. This is essential for the health of the children. Now, it could be that a family wedding stirs up lots of emotions for his ex, which could lead to her not wanting the children there. Whatever the reason, your brother must figure out how he and his ex can come to an agreement on how they will parent their children, what they will agree to keep between the adults and how they will handle conflict.
DEAR HARRIETTE: My father grunts like a child when he's frustrated. This drives me insane. The habit suddenly formed when I moved away from home, so I didn't see any gradual changes over the years. He now grunts, moans and growls if he is irked. Phone updates, slow waitresses and long lines have been some of the culprits of this audible anger. It's embarrassing to hear at home, and mortifying to be associated with in public. How can I get him to quit? -- You're Grown Up, Boston
DEAR YOU'RE GROWN UP: You may not be able to get your father to change this behavior. As people age, they sometimes develop odd habits that stick. Point out to your father that he is making these sounds. When you are in his company -- preferably at home -- and he grunts or moans or growls, say something immediately. Ask him why he is making those sounds. You should find out quickly whether he is doing it consciously based on his response. If he is unaware of it, ask him if you have permission to point it out the next time it happens. Tell him that when he makes these sounds in front of others, it can be awkward and can hurt people's feelings. If your father is willing to hear you and understand that these sounds make others uncomfortable, he may try to stop making them. But do know that there is a fairly good chance that your father won't stop. If he doesn't, you may have to learn to live with it.
DEAR HARRIETTE: My daughter is entering her senior year of high school, and she told me two days ago that she would like to be an engineer because math is easy for her. I was surprised because I thought she would go college to get a degree in fashion. Shes designed her own clothes since she was 6 years old. I am big fan of my daughter, and I would like to know what I can do to continue to fuel her desire to become an engineer? Momma Wants Best, St. Louis
DEAR MOMMA WANTS BEST: First, as it relates to your daughters interest in fashion, know that she does not have to give up that passion. It can remain a hobby for her. It could also be incorporated into her work as an engineer if she decides to marry the two fields. An example of this is that there are many fabrics that are made now thanks to technology that designs intricate patterns. It took engineering to make that happen. As far as your daughters interest in engineering, the best thing you can do for her is expose her to the field as soon as possible.
There are many internships available that provide a window into the world of engineering. The Department of Homeland Security runs a great national program for college juniors and seniors (when shes old enough). You can learn more about it at dhs.gov/national-hs-stem-summerinternship-program.
DEAR HARRIETTE: I keep seeing those commercials about getting a free credit report. I was always afraid to get mine because I know my credit sucks. I have been out of work for four years now. I do odd jobs to make money, but I have a lot of debt that I pay off sporadically depending upon how much money I have in any given month. So I got my report, and it sucks worse than I thought. I am at a loss for what to do. Without real income, I dont know how to get my finances in order. Drowning in Debt, Syracuse, New York
DEAR DROWNING IN DEBT: Congratulations on speaking up about your situation. It can be difficult to ask for help when you feel that your situation is hopeless, but know that yours is not hopeless! I highly recommend that you get expert help. Just as you would go to the doctor if you were ill, you should go to a financial adviser to help get your finances healthy again. One option is going to the unemployment office to request free support in getting out of debt. The extra benefit there is that you may gain wisdom on how to re-enter the job market. You can also read about debt reduction and take steps to chip away at the debt you do have whenever possible.
One organization that can help you for free is greenpath.com. It offers full financial support services, including developing a customized budget for you based on your needs along with an action plan for how to get out of debt. By working with such an organization, you can get to the other side, even in your current circumstances.
DEAR HARRIETTE: My friends invited my family to visit their country house for a long weekend. Just before it was time to start our drive, they called to say that they didnt have any electricity. (There was some type of power outage.) They invited us to come anyway, but I really didnt want to go. I told my husband, and we ended up having a huge argument because he thought I was being ridiculous. In the end, we went and had a great time. The kids loved being in the dark with candles. What I didnt appreciate was that my husband refused to even consider my position. I want to be able to state my case and have us discuss it without a fight. How can I do that? I am sick of arguing with him. Fed Up, New York City
DEAR FED UP: Attitude is everything. The way you broach a subject often directly affects the way that people react to you. If you were instantly against the idea of keeping your plans, you may have dashed your husbands feelings. What you may want to do in the future is to say, Lets talk this through to see what makes the most sense. If you suggest that the two of you come up with a plan together, you create space for consensus building rather than having to choose between one option or the other.
DEAR HARRIETTE: I have been dating a guy who is really nice, but hes kind of provincial. He has never left the state. I moved here to go to college. While I havent traveled all over the world or anything that grand, I have taken a few trips in the United States. Plus, I have gone to the Caribbean. I love traveling and want to do it with my boyfriend, but he is scared to death to go anywhere. He refuses to get a passport and says that I am being difficult in even asking him to consider it. I dont want to seem any particular way, but I know what I want. And I want to date a guy who is adventurous like me, or at least who is willing to try. What should I do? Travel Jones, Detroit
DEAR TRAVEL JONES: If you truly like this guy, dont give up on him just yet. He may be so adamant because he is afraid of the unknown. That you have experience traveling and he does not could make him nervous. Why not plan a small trip in the area, perhaps a short car ride away? Find a nice getaway that would provide a completely different experience than he or you have in Detroit. Encourage him to join you. As you enjoy the weekend, notice if he softens up to the idea of travel. Give him a chance to discover if he likes a bit of adventure. If so, fantastic. If not, you can then reconsider if he is the guy for you.
DEAR HARRIETTE: So Ive been seeing a guy for a little over a year, and hes joined the Air Force. He will be starting basic training in the months to come. Ive tried to do some research on what military life is like so I can know what to expect when the time comes. I am so nervous. I really like him and believe we could have something, but I am afraid. With all the wars going on, I dont want him to get killed. I dont really know how to be supportive of him when I would rather he not go. How can I be a good girlfriend? Baby Dont Go, Racine, Wisconsin
DEAR BABY DONT GO: You are doing the right thing in researching what your boyfriend will have to do to prepare to be in the military. You two should talk about his plans and discover together whats ahead for him.
While you are justified in being nervous about his future, you can also be extremely proud that he is one of the people who is stepping up to protect our country and its interests. I would be remiss if I did not say that personally I am extremely conflicted over the wars in which we find our troops these days. But I do know that the men and women who make this choice are brave and should be respected for their loyalty and commitment. Do your best to adopt the attitude of gratitude for the course your boyfriend is setting for himself. At the same time, talk openly about the future. Be as clear as you can about expectations on both of your parts. Do you imagine staying together? Let him know your intentions, and agree to check in about your feelings on a regular basis. Being honest is the best thing you can do.
DEAR HARRIETTE: My friends lost a child to sudden infant death syndrome several years ago. Every year I remember the anniversary, but I feel weird saying anything to them, so I have not. This year marks the fifth anniversary, and something tells me that I should acknowledge it in some way. They have other children now, but I know that they miss their little girl. Should I send them a card or call them or anything? I dont want to dredge up old memories. But I do want to honor their loss. What should I do? Tender Memories, Boston
DEAR TENDER MEMORIES: Your instincts are on point. They are surely remembering the loss of their child. While they may not want to talk about it, you can send them a card saying that you are keeping their family in your prayers. Write a personal note saying how much you love them and their family, how blessed they are to have the children they have and say how sad you are as you remember the passing of their baby. For more information on helping a family suffering after the death of a baby, visit sidsresources.org/?page_id=928.
DEAR HARRIETTE: I have been in love with my best friend for years, and while he loves me, it has never turned into anything. The other day I hung out with him and a friend of his who I didnt know, even though they have been close for a long time. I watched the electricity between them, and it was nuts. I felt so uncomfortable, but I also realized that he never looks at me like that. I guess I always knew he didnt love me like I love him. But what I witnessed was him lusting over this woman. Im sad that he doesnt feel attracted to me in that way, but at least now I know what it looks like when he does feel that way. My feelings are hurt, but I think its time for me to give up. How can I do that? Waving the Flag, Milwaukee
DEAR WAVING THE FLAG: Put yourself first. You deserve to be adored by the person you love. Lust is often short-lived, so I wouldnt recommend that as a principal desire, but love and adoration are important. Instead of keeping your heart focused on someone who is not interested in offering that to you, change your gaze. Look out and do your best to notice if there is anyone else out there who captures your attention.
Lifestylist and author Harriette Cole is president and creative director of Harriette Cole Media. You can send questions to askharriette@harriettecole.com or c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106
Sri Lanka is hopeful of increasing its apparel exports to three large economiesthe EU, India and China. It is currently negotiating Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus facilities with EU and is in discussion with China for increasing its apparel exports. It is also hoping that India will remove the current quota of 8 million given under the ISFTA.
Sri Lanka is hopeful of increasing its apparel exports to three large economiesthe EU, India and China. It is currently negotiating Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus facilities with EU and is in discussion with China for increasing its apparel exports. It is also hoping that India will remove the current quota of 8 million given under the ISFTA.#
Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was in Brussels last week where he initiated talks with the EU on restoring GSP Plus status to his country
Sri Lanka is hopeful of increasing its apparel exports to three large economiesthe EU, India and China. It is currently negotiating Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus facilities with EU and is in discussion with China for increasing its apparel exports. It is also hoping that India will remove the current quota of 8 million given under the ISFTA.#
Sri Lanka's apparel exports registered four per cent growth last year and GSP plus facility would be a further push for exports growth, according to Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF).
Sri Lanka is hopeful of increasing its apparel exports to three large economiesthe EU, India and China. It is currently negotiating Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus facilities with EU and is in discussion with China for increasing its apparel exports. It is also hoping that India will remove the current quota of 8 million given under the ISFTA.#
The south Asian nation is also hoping some favourable outcome from the ongoing preferential trade negotiations with India and China. The Economic and Technology Co-operation Agreement (ETCA) between India and Sri Lanka is currently in final stages of negotiation. The agreement is likely to open India's apparel import market for Sri Lanka, and remove the current quota of 8 million under the Indo-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISFTA).
Sri Lanka is hopeful of increasing its apparel exports to three large economiesthe EU, India and China. It is currently negotiating Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus facilities with EU and is in discussion with China for increasing its apparel exports. It is also hoping that India will remove the current quota of 8 million given under the ISFTA.#
Chinese government is also likely to offer a more flexible environment for Sri Lankan apparel exports.
Sri Lanka is hopeful of increasing its apparel exports to three large economiesthe EU, India and China. It is currently negotiating Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus facilities with EU and is in discussion with China for increasing its apparel exports. It is also hoping that India will remove the current quota of 8 million given under the ISFTA.#
Sri Lanka's textile and garment exports stood at $4.7 billion in 2015 and the country is targeting to increase this figure to $6 billion by 2019. (RKS)
Sri Lanka is hopeful of increasing its apparel exports to three large economiesthe EU, India and China. It is currently negotiating Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) plus facilities with EU and is in discussion with China for increasing its apparel exports. It is also hoping that India will remove the current quota of 8 million given under the ISFTA.#
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
A one day Worldwide Response Accredited Production (WRAP) certificate workshop for apparel producers was held in Accra, Ghana by the USAID/West Africa Trade and Investment Hub. The workshop shared information on WRAP's certification with garment export companies from Ghana, Nigeria, Benin and Cote d'lvoire to make them competitive in the global markets.According to Carol Adoum from the Hub, WRAP certification was necessary to make clothing exporters competitive in world markets, as the certification demonstrates an exporters' commitment towards environmental and social standards.
A one day Worldwide Response Accredited Production (WRAP) certificate workshop for apparel producers was held in Accra, Ghana by the USAID/West Africa Trade and Investment Hub. The workshop shared information on WRAP's certification with garment export companies from Ghana, Nigeria, Benin and Cote d'lvoire to make them competitive in the global markets.#
International brands who import clothing are making it mandatory for companies to have the WRAP certification, from whom they source apparels, Adoum added, while speaking at the inauguration of the workshop. (AR)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
The third edition of the Global Denim Awards (GDA), made possible by e3 Cotton , will be held on October 26 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. GDA, a platform for the future of denim design, sustainability and craftsmanship, will present 11 pairs of fashion designers and denim mills that will present their co-created capsule collections during the award ceremony.
The 11 collections that result from the collaborations between selected mills and designers will be judged by a jury of international denim experts on the overall look, the innovative nature of the design, and the creative use of denim.
The designer of the winning collection will receive a 10,000 award, made possible by e3 Cotton, said an official statement. An additional award will go to the mill with the most innovative fabric.
The panel of jury that will judge the collections include denim and casual wear designer Amy Leverton, designer Sam Lambert and stylist Shaka Maidoh (founders of Art Comes First), designer and trend forecaster Kelly Harrington and global sales director of Scotch & Soda Alex Jaspers.
The designer - mill teams that will present their collections during the GDA are - Marina van Dieren and Christina Albrecht - Advance Denim, MariusPetrus - Atlantic Mills, EdithMarcel - Berto Industria Tessile, Outkastpeople (Emre Aktuna) - Calik Denim, Lavinia Mustapha - Candiani Denim, Anbasja Blanken - ITV Denim, Tess van Zalinge - Knitdigo, Lisa Konno and Karin Vlug - Prosperity Textile, Roosmarijn Koster - Arvind, Deniz Gur - Kipas Denim and Leandro Cano - Tejidos Royo.
Participating designers are required to spend at least a week at their partnered mills to develop an in-depth understanding of the mill's latest technological possibilities related to fabrics, washes, finishes, treatment and sustainable manufacturing processes. The designers will work together with the mill to develop a capsule collection on the spot, comprised of five total looks to be presented at the GDA.
GDA is initiated and organised by HTNK fashion recruitment and consultancy agency, Kingpins denim sourcing show and House of Denim, an Amsterdam-based foundation.
What's unique about the Denim Awards is that it puts some of the most innovative mills worldwide front-row. In this way, GDA is also a preview to the future, since brands will have to offer transparency regarding where and how their products are produced within the next few years," said Mariette Hoitink, CEO, HTNK.
The winning collection will be exhibited at Kingpins Shows in New York City and Hong Kong, before returning to the Netherlands for Amsterdam Denim Days 2017. (KD)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
Prime minister of India Narendra Modi believes that 'Khadi for Fashion' is now the apt slogan for khadi instead of 'Khadi for Nation'. While distributing traditional wooden charkhas (spinning wheels) to 500 women in Ludhiana, Punjab, Modi said that khadi is a priority and is being marketed well now. He also said that a charkha can be a means for income.
Khadi is a priority for us, and a charkha at home brings more income. Khadi is marketed well now, adding that once upon a time, the apt slogan was 'Khadi for Nation', but now it should be 'Khadi for Fashion', said Modi.
Charkha distribution was carried out at the launch of the National SC/ST hub, and the Zero Defect, Zero Effect (ZED) scheme for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Ludhiana. He also presented national awards to MSMEs at the launch ceremony.
Prime minister of India Narendra Modi believes that 'Khadi for Fashion' is now the apt slogan for khadi instead of the 'Khadi for Nation'. While distributing traditional wooden charkhas (spinning wheels) to 500 women in Ludhiana, Punjab, Modi said that khadi is a priority and is being marketed well now. He also said that a charkha can be a means for income.#
The prime minister also said that it is natural to launch a scheme related to MSMEs from Ludhiana as it is an important economic centre. He added that MSME sector is crucial for the economic progress of India and urged MSMEs to match global quality control standards. (KD)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
Global cotton stocks in 2016/17 will drop to their lowest level since 2011/12, as China continues to reduce the surplus supplies, accumulated during the 2011-14 seasons. The latest US Department of Agriculture (USDA) report estimates 2016/17 world cotton ending stocks to decline 10 per cent, from the previous season to 87.3 million bales.According to USDA, with more than 12 million bales of cotton sold from China's national reserve in 2016, and plans to resume sales beginning in March 2017, China is reducing stock levels that have affected the global cotton market in recent years.
Global cotton stocks in 2016/17 will drop to their lowest level since 2011/12, as China continues to reduce the surplus supplies, accumulated during the 2011-14 seasons. The latest US Department of Agriculture (USDA) report estimates 2016/17 world cotton ending stocks to decline 10 per cent, from the previous season to 87.3 million bales.#
Despite progressively reducing cotton stocks, China's stocks at the end of 2016/17 at 48 million bales are forecast to account for 55 per cent of the world total.Stocks in India projected at 11 million bales, or about 13 percent of the total, while US cotton stocks are expected to account for 5 per cent of global stocks, while supplies in the rest of the world stand at 27 per cent. (AR)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
Driven by increases in Australia and Mali, partially offset by declines in Brazil and the United States, global cotton production in 2016/17 is forecast at 102.7 million bales. This figure revealed by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its October report is slightly above the September USDA projection and nearly 7 per cent higher than 2015/16.The October report forecasts world harvested area at 29.4 million hectares in 2016/17, 3 per cent below the prior season and the lowest since 1986/87. The global cotton yield is projected at 760 kg per hectare, which is equal to the five year average.
Driven by increases in Australia and Mali, partially offset by declines in Brazil and the United States, global cotton production in 2016/17 is forecast at 102.7 million bales. This figure revealed by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its October report is slightly above the September USDA projection and nearly 7 per cent higher than 2015/16.#
Cotton production is expected to rise in three of the four top producing countries, with China being the exception, with its cotton production projected to decrease 1 million bales to 21.0 million.Output in India is projected at 26.5 million bales; up marginally from 2015/16 from a rebound in yield, which is expected to be offset from a 10 per cent reduction in cotton area.The report estimates an US production increase to 16 million bales in 2016/17, while Pakistan's cotton crop is estimated to expand to nearly 8.3 million bales.A cotton crop of 4 million bales is forecast for Australia in 2016/17, up from 2.6 million bales last season and that of Brazil at 6.5 million bales, 10 per cent above a season earlier, despite slightly lower acreage. (AR)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
Hannah Simone, who is a British-Canadian actress of the Indian origin, states that she is highly drawn towards the matter of international relations and would like to work on the same field mainly because of her "bizarre nomadic childhood".
"So I grew up internationally. I grew up in Saudi Arabia and India and Cyprus, and I lived in a war-zone myself and, I mean, I had a pretty bizarre, I guess, nomadic childhood, and so I was really drawn to international relations and political science," said Hannah.
Hannah said that she had also worked with United Nations on the world issue, trying to improve international relations among countries.
"I worked at the United Nations. Then I was based in London working on these projects, and then became a little frustrated that the world around us was changing so much and how young people were receiving information on world issues." She added.
"They weren't, like, reading policy briefings that we were writing in our office. They were, you know, watching, like, Michael Moore documentaries and John Stewart on 'The Daily Show', so I decided to switch mediums to talk," the actress said.
Hannah Simone is popularly known as CeCe Parekh from the show New Girl- aired on Star World in India. She was born of a German mother and an Indian father.
The Darshan starrer Chakravarthy, which has been making news for various reasons since the launch, has confirmed its release date. The movie directed by Chintan, will hit the screens on December 23, aiming the Christmas weekend.
Fans have huge expectations about the film after Darshan's look was revealed. It is building up as and when new pics of the star cast are surfacing online. Recently, when team was shooting in a cruise, number of pictures were shared by various members of team.
Almost 80 percent of the shoot is completed, major portions were shot in Bangalore, Mysore and Singapore. The team is leaving to Bangkok in the last week of October to shoot the remaining song on Darshan.
Once the song shoot is completed, the team will move to Madikeri where the remaining talkie portions will be completed. Talkie portions will be shot on Darshan, Charulatha and other important characters of the film.
The team is planning to start the post-production work by second week of November which will facilitate them to complete the work by December first week and will leave the team with 2 to 3 weeks for censor and promotions.
Arjun Janya is composing music for a Darshan starrer for the first time, and he is quite elated with the output. We hear that introduction song and item songs will be the highlight of the album. Music is expected to be out by the end of November.
The film has a fantastic star cast in the form of Kumar Bangarappa, Aditya, Srujan Lokesh, Shivdvaj, Yashas Surya, Satya and Charulatha. It also marks the comeback of veteran actors Kumar Bangarappa and Charulatha.
"Im not sure I should tell you about this manager because I dont want his fund to be oversubscribed, confessed an anxious Japanese investment adviser to FinanceAsia.
Like all his peers, he is scrambling to find profitable products for clients suffering under Japans negative interest rate policy. Increasingly, the hunt for yield is guiding large and small investors alike towards a particular investment category: alternatives.
The worlds largest pension fund, Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) and Japan Post, the countrys biggest bank by deposits and insurer by assets, are poised to invest in alternatives. Many other Japanese asset owners have already begun shifting money out of negative-yielding government bonds and into these riskier but potentially more rewarding products.
New classes of investors are entering the market. From GPIF and Japan Post to regional banks that are all seeking returns as well as ways to help the local economy, Jun Tsusaka, founder of private equity firm NSSK told FinanceAsia. Tsusaka, previously of TPG Capital, is fund raising, said industry sources.
Japans investors have so far focused on infrastructure and real estate funds among alternative products, according to some portfolio investment advisers in Tokyo. But domestic private equity funds are also attracting the countrys asset owners.
Japanese private equity funds are looking more attractive to investors due to negative interest rates and the return on leverage, said Kazuhiro Yamada, head of Carlyle's Japan buyout advisory team.
That is leading a fast-growing queue of private equity, real estate and hedge funds seeking handouts to establish new funds. Asian fund-of-funds and marquee global brands are likely to be the earliest beneficiaries.
The biggest alternatives manager in the world, Blackstone, is close to snagging a mandate from Japan Post to invest on its behalf, according to two people familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for Blackstone declined to comment. Japan Post has also awarded Tokio Marine, Nissay and the Development Bank of Japan mandates to help it invest in alternative products, a source said. The Japanese firms did not respond to requests for comment.
Other, homegrown funds are benefiting too. Japanese private equity firm Integral is looking to raise 70 billion ($692 million) for its latest fund, Advantage Partners is seeking 60 billion and Tokio Marine Capital is raising about 50 billion, according to some of the people the funds have approached to invest.
Even relatively new funds are gaining interest. One is Yukon Capital Partners, led by Ayumi Sakurai who previously ran Valiant Partners; another is Aspirant, headed by Akitoshi Nakamura, a former Morgan Stanley M&A banker.
Japans institutional investors will need to maintain some discipline and select managers who wont use the flood of funds to overpay at a time when investment opportunities are scarce and fund performance data sketchy (many managers refuse to release metrics to data compilers).
Fortunately for them, FinanceAsia has done some of the initial due diligence on their behalf.
Japan performance
As Chinas economy slows, its stock markets tumble from mid-2015 levels and regulators restrict private equitys ability to sell companies on its stock markets, some investors are turning once again to more mature buyout markets including the worlds third-largest economy, Japan.
We are currently reconsidering Japan because Chinas growth rate is declining, said Yoshi Kiguchi, chief investment officer of Japans Okayama Metal and Machinery Pension Fund at the SuperReturn Asia conference in Hong Kong. "Over the next ten years in Japan and Southeast Asia we think we can get more than 10% net IRR."
Kiguchi currently allocates about 10% of his global private equity fund to Asia, mostly in China and has no exposure to Japan.
Japan is starting to look like an island of stability in a volatile world. And its no longer the one country in the world with zero interest rates, where companies need to focus on new sources of growth, Mark Chiba, partner of regional private equity fund Longreach, told FinanceAsia.
Longreach has targeted 65 billion to 70 billion for its third fund and is launching a fund-raising drive later this year, according to market sources. Chiba declined to comment.
The excitement around Japanese private equity is palpable despite the country's low economic growth. Private equity funds focused on Japan generated an average gross internal rate of return (IRR) of 10% as of December 2015, based on exited investments between 2004 and 2013, which of course included the global financial crisis. That is higher than any other major Asian hot spot except for China, according to the Centre for Asia Private Equity Research.
To be sure many investors, both foreign and domestic, were burnt badly when Japanese private equity firms raised large funds in 2007 [see chart below] and invested them in highly-leveraged financial institutions and cyclical industrial companies such as Tokyo Star and Toshiba Ceramics. But confidence is slowly recovering.
Its a little bit early to tell the final results, but Japanese vintage year private equity fund returns for 2009 and 2010 are very good, said Kazushige Kobayashi, head of investment management Asia at CapitalDynamics.
Investors who pick the right Japanese fund manager can do particularly well.
Integral has hired Park Hill to help it raise 70 billion for its third fund, according to market sources.
Led by Nobuo Sayama, who also founded M&A boutique advisory firm GCA, the firm worked on the rehabilitation of Skymark Airlines from bankruptcy. This was a key deal for Integral, short for the not-so-catchy motto integral calculus accumulation over time. This is the fund to watch. Sayama is a rock star, said one enthusiastic limited partner in Tokyo.
Integral has shown it can source deals effectively in Japan, just this month it has made an offer to take wigmaker Aderans private, a firm that was once a target of US activist hedge fund Steel Partners. However some limited partners also known as LPs are keen to see more exits, including from Skymark, before they take the plunge.
Sweet spot
Some seasoned LPs warned against extrapolating a few deals that managers hit out of the park to sustainable performance. This is particularly good advice in Japan, where blue-chip corporates are generally suspicious of private equity companies focus on returns and rarely sell them big assets.
Relationship management is more important in Japan, so if we can understand this then it helps us select the appropriate Japanese funds, said the pension fund manager Kiguchi.
Perhaps the sweetest spot for private equity in the country will be mid-sized deals, for less than $500 million, which are sold in secret negotiations. A stand-out deal in this respect was Advantage Partners 8.5 billion investment in Tokyo-headquartered condominium maker Community One (previously known as Dia Kensetsu) in 2008 at an enterprise value to Ebitda multiple of 3.7 times.
The roll-up strategy of five other companies into Community One resulted in a return of about 23.1 times money deployed, when Advantage finally exited in 2013.
Advantage Partners has lowered the target on its latest fund-raising effort to 60 billion from around 70 billion, after LPs requested it focus on smaller deals like Community One. The private equity firm said it had secured commitments from investors for 30 billion at the first close of the capital raising in an update to LPs.
Several LPs said that they were worried about recent departures at the firm. Atsushi Akaike left in 2013 and with Yukinori Sugiyama joined rival CVC Capital Partners in 2015. Akira Yamashita, who worked on the Community One deal, also departed the firm last year, said one LP.
But Advantage Partners still has one of the largest teams in Japan and averages over four transactions a year. Another home run by the team was its acquisition of 80% of Komeda in 2008, which generated 7.5 times money invested, according to LPs.
Many of these mid-sized sales are related to elderly Japanese looking to sell the companies they founded, often at a reasonable five to six times EV/Ebitda.
One specialist in this area is Sunrise Capital. Its purchase of a majority stake in cram school KK BC Holdings in Hiroshima from the founder Hiroki Tanaka in April is outperforming expectations, according to one market source.
CLSA Capital Partners is projecting its mid-sized Japan buyout fund Sunrise Capital, which it closed in 2014 at $210 million, will return 3.7 times invested capital in US dollar terms. It is currently tracking at around a gross IRR of about 38.1%, according to LPs. Sunrise Capital is now preparing to launch its third fund-raising, according to LPs.
That compares well to the median IRR for Asia-Pacificfocused funds, which was 12% as of June 2015, according to consultancy Bain & Cos 2016 Asia Pacific private equity report. Top-quartile funds posted an average of 21% IRR, well above the 16% most LPs say they demand from their emerging Asia exposure, the report said.
The firm is raising Sunrise Capital Fund III this year, according to two people familiar with the matter. Existing investors in the fund are likely to receive preferential treatment, leaving scant space for any late-movers. Sunrise Capital declined to comment on its performance or on fund raising matters.
Yukon has just closed its first fund at 12.5 billion to spend on small-cap deals. It attracted a mix of foreign and domestic LPs; some of the local investors were dipping their toes in the asset class for the first time, said Sakurai.
Banking on alternatives
The Japanese asset owners with the biggest appetite for alternatives may be regional banks that are eager to improve investment returns hurt by the Bank of Japans negative interest rate policy.
Carlyle has been particularly successful at attracting regional banks into its yen-denominated funds. Several fund managers and LPs said they expect Carlyle to return to market next year to raise its fourth Japanese fund if they successfully seal some of the big carve-out deals they are chasing in Japan. The Washington-headquarted firm declined to comment on capital raising.
CITIC Capital Partners Japan is another standout in terms of delivering returns to investors. CITIC Japan Partners, a fund raised in 2005, delivered about 2.5 times money invested to its LPs while CITIC Capital Japan Partners II, LP raised in 2011, has generated about three times, according to one LP.
Its latest fund-raise is set to close this month and it is oversubscribed even though the fund manager asked its parent company to scale back, according to one investor in the fund. LPs said the returns on its investments in Japanese firms Higashiyama Film, Polymatech and Tri-Wall all generated positive returns to investors.
One industry source did, however, mention concerns about the fund going forward given that senior advisor Brian Doyle has stepped back from the business. A spokeswoman for Citic Capital said Doyle moved on over a year ago.
Surprisingly, Japanese investors can be rather unforgiving if a private equity firm does stumble, as J-Star is finding.
After J-Stars investment in drugstore chain Aisei Pharmacy was hit by harsher-than-expected rules on dispensing fees it has found foreign investors are more willing to bet on long-term growth in the sector due to Japans aging population than domestic LPs who are more concerned about portfolio companies performance dipping below budget, according to market sources.
Carve-out specialist
As the Japanese government puts more pressure on corporate executives to improve their return on equity, it might be worthwhile for investors to look at specialists in buying the non-core operations of Japanese sprawling conglomerates.
Longreach springs to mind after the firm bought companies including Suntory, Hitachi and Sanyo and earlier this month from Olympus. Longreach is set to open its third fund-raising to existing investors later this year and then reach out more widely next year, according to market sources.
Other funds looking to raise capital include Japan Industrial Partners, Polaris, J-Star and Ant Capital Partners, according to market sources and PEI Research & Analytics.
Of course, this surge in capital is having an impact on the valuations of prospective investments.
A few years ago you could buy mid-cap companies at four to five times Ebitda; now it is getting more expensive, sighed Sakurai as he contemplated the herd of private equity firms seeking capital for deals.
Still, he cheered up, Given banks are willing to offer us plenty of leverage due to negative interest rates, our equity exposure is still very reasonable.
With Japans asset owners increasingly desperate to find some extra juice from their investments, sourcing the capital shouldnt be a problem either.
For private equity companies operating in Japan, the future looks bright, liquid and increasingly crowded.
This article was also published on AsianInvestor.net
Large investors have long dominated the IPOs of Chinese companies overseas. But some bond investors are complaining that a small handful of investors can have an equally large impact in the bond market.
They pointed to a recent bond from Chinese property developer Yuzhou Properties as an example. The company launched its bond with already-strong anchor orders from so-called "friends and family" investors.
Yuzhou returned to the market with a $250 million bond on Tuesday evening, pricing a seven year non-call four deal well through its secondary curve. The company was able to get away with a yield of 6% on its new issue far inside fair value, according to bankers familiar with the deal.
That was clearly a good result for the company. But it is not good news for institutional investors, who complain that so-called friends and family deals are making it harder for them to get the returns they need.
The cornerstone money has become more prevalent, ensuring the floatation success," said a fund manager in Hong Kong. "But it has a distortive effect on market pricing, prompting institutional investors to go down the credit curve for higher returns.
Fair value less significant
The aggressive pricing of the Reg-S deal was driven in part by strong anchor demand from Chinese accounts, said a person familiar with the deal. Their support meant fair value estimates important for fund managers to establish potential upside became less significant.
There were multiple anchors ahead of the deal launch, the person said.
Those anchor investors ensured that the bookrunners had clear visibility over the price before launch. They initially marketed the B1/B+/BB- rated bond at the 6% area, and ended pricing at par with a 6% coupon.
The closest comparable was Yuzhous outstanding 9% December 2019 note, which was trading at a yield-to-maturity of 5.569% on Tuesday. That implied the company paid less than the curve extension of US Treasuries on a yield-to-maturity basis.
The bond priced amid increasing fears that Chinas property sector is approaching the end of an asset-price bubble. China Overseas Land and Investment, another issuer in the bond market, announced it was moving away from lower-tier properties last week.
Some 51 investors ended up placing around $400 million of orders for Yuzhou's bond, slightly down from its peak order book of $450 million. Asian investors took 91%, leaving the remaining 9% for European investors. Fund and asset managers took 42%, banks 29%, private banks 20% and insurance companies 9%.
Cornerstone investors can have a major impact on the Hong Kong IPOs of Chinese companies. In the most striking example, Postal Savings Bank of China allocated around 77% of its $7.43 billion IPO to cornerstone accounts.
But although the term cornerstone is used by some bond market participants, there are differences. Cornerstone investors in IPOs have well-defined restrictions, including lock-up periods in which they cannot sell shares. Those in the bond market more correctly referred to as anchor investors usually get away without such restrictions.
On Wednesday afternoon, the new bond was quoted at a mid-price of 99.563, equivalent to a yield of around 6.078%, according to market data.
BOC International, Credit Suisse, Haitong International and HSBC were the global coordinators of the bond. Deutsche Bank and Huatai Financial Holdings Hong Kong were joint bookrunners. Yuzhou Financial Holdings was a joint lead manager.
Update: This article has been updated to reflect HSBC's promotion from joint bookrunner to global coordinator before final pricing.
ARM has launched ARM Education Media, a subscription-based digital content hub offering premium Education Kits with interactive online courses and e-textbooks. These new resources will enable academics, students, professional engineers and the wider training market to keep up with the latest industry developments and gain the skills needed to compete in today's job market.
"The pace of change in the technology sector has created a knowledge gap between industry and education, making it increasingly difficult for students to fit into the workplace straight from a learning environment," said Mike Muller, chief technology officer, ARM. "ARM Education Media will help to close that gap as it has been built to deliver the most up-to-date knowledge and help the development of industry-specific expertise. This will help engineers worldwide whether they are new to the profession or looking to update their skills."
Launched today at the Frankfurt Book Fair, ARM Education Media will offer premium Education Kits combining theoretical and practical materials with videos and interactive quizzes. The hub will also feature engaging lab demonstrations using state-of-the-art software and hardware technologies from the ARM ecosystem. The materials are designed for a 'flipped classroom' approach, or self-study, and cover a variety of topics. The first four courses focus on efficient and rapid embedded systems design, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP).
The Education Kits are highly modular and configurable, to allow for the rapid creation of new, customized content in various formats and packages. The content will be reassessed annually and revamped every four years to ensure it maintains industry relevance. The initiative is the culmination of several years of collaboration with thousands of educational institutions, industrial partners, students, recruiters and managers worldwide.
"There is a growing trend for interactive, multimedia, self-paced learning in academia," said Donald Reay, lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. "This is why we are adopting the ARM Education Media DSP online course in our labs. With its modular and flexible structure, our students are able to assimilate important engineering concepts at their own pace and develop valuable, industry-relevant skills."
NOTES TO EDITORS:
The first four online Education Kits are available now for institutions and corporate subscriptions. Individual learners will be able to subscribe online in Q1 2017. E-textbooks will also be available in Q1 2017.
About ARM
ARM technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. From the unmissable to the invisible; our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs are enabling the intelligence in 86 billion silicon chips and securely powering products from the sensor to the smartphone to the supercomputer. With more than 1,000 technology partners including the world's most famous business and consumer brands, we are driving ARM innovation into all areas compute is happening inside the chip, the network and the cloud.
All information is provided "as is" and without warranty or representation. This document may be shared freely, attributed and unmodified. ARM is a registered trademark of ARM Limited (or its subsidiaries). All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. 1995-2016 ARM Group.
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Contacts:
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Alexandra.Harrod@arm.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Liberty Global plc (LBTYA, LBTYB, LBTYK, LILA and LILAK) said that its subsidiary UPC Poland has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the cable business of Multimedia Polska S.A., the third-largest cable operator in Poland, in an all cash transaction. Multimedia is being valued at an enterprise value of PLN 3.0 billion or about $760 million, with the final purchase price subject to potential downward adjustments for the operational and financial performance of Multimedia prior to closing. The PLN 3.0 billion purchase price equates to a multiple of 6.2x Multimedia's 2015 full-year Adjusted EBITDA when adjusted for PLN 124 million or approximately $30 million of projected annual run-rate synergies3 derived from revenue and cost-related items. The transaction excludes Multimedia's existing insurance, gas and energy operations, which will be retained by the shareholders of Multimedia. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, and is expected to close within the next twelve months. 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.
Mitsubishi Corporation Telephone: +81 3 3210 2171 Facsimile: +81 3 5252 7705
TOKYO, Oct 19, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC), together with Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd. (MHPS), has been awarded a full turnkey contract by Joint Stock Company Uzbekenergo for the Construction of a Combined Cycle Cogeneration Plant at the Navoi Thermal Power Station in southern Uzbekistan. MHPS will supply the main components while MC, together with Calik Enerji Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. (CE)(1), a Turkey-based engineering and construction company partially sponsored by MC, will supply the remaining components needed for plant construction and conduct inland transportation as well as civil engineering and installation works. Construction is scheduled for completion in 2019.This project is aimed at building a high-efficiency combined plant with the capacity to supply 450 MW of power and 200 Gcal/h of heating to homes and establishments locally. The plant is located next to the Navoi 1 power plant(2). This project will be financed by Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA), and Uzbekistan governmental fund.Aging infrastructure has led to concerns about the security and reliability of power supply in Uzbekistan, thereby creating an urgent need for the construction of additional facilities and the upgrading of existing ones. This project is therefore regarded as an important part of efforts to address these concerns, contributing to the stable supply of electricity and heating, and in turn to stability in Uzbekistan's economy.Through this new project, MC is aiming to continue contributing to the stable supply of electricity and to economic growth in Uzbekistan, while at the same time pursuing its goal of expanding its power generation business across Central Asia.(1) The partnership between Calik Holding(Calik), one of leading conglomerates in Turkey, and MC dates back to the 1990's when the two companies started collaborating on a number of plant construction projects in Central Asia. On 4 June, 2015, MC entered into a strategic alliance with Calik and CE, a subsidiary of Calik that includes the acquisition of shares in CE and exchange of personnel.(2) MC, together with MHPS, has supplied the main components and which has been in operation since 2013.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.
INTERIM REPORT JANUARY-SEPTEMBER 2016
Regulatory News:
THE REPORT IN BRIEF
Third quarter (Jul Sep)
New leasing increased to SEK 45 (29) million and net leasing increased to SEK 9 (-4) million.
Rental revenue increased 7 per cent to SEK 603 (562) million and operating net increased 5 per cent to SEK 428 (409) million.
Profit from property management increased by 2 per cent to SEK 269 (264) million, not including profit from participation in associates during 2015.
The positive change in value of the property portfolio was SEK 273 (202) million, which is attributable to a higher operating net and lower yield requirements.
Profit for the period increased to SEK 400 (322) million, which corresponds to SEK 2.20 (1.77) per share.
Equity continued to increase and amounted to SEK 55.71 per share, as compared to SEK 51.28 at the beginning of the year. EPRA NAV amounted to SEK 65.50 per share, as compared to 56.76 at the beginning of the year. LTV fell even further, to 57.9 per cent. At the start of the year, LTV was 61.9 per cent.
Comments on events during and after the third quarter
Eight non-strategic properties, worth SEK 186 million, were divested. This increases the concentration of holdings even further and once the properties have been vacated, Kungsleden will be present in 59 municipalities.
There was early redemption of a bond loan and Kungsleden has, for the first time, issued commercial paper for SEK 1,080 million with average interest rate of 0.37 per cent.
Redevelopment of Tegner shopping mall in Vaxjo entered the implementation stage, and it is expected to open early in 2018. The redevelopment of Tegner will attract new and attractive tenants within retail, restaurant and service. The investment amounts to SEK 150 million. Rental revenue in the property is expected to increase by at least SEK 10 million after the investment has been made.
Comments from Biljana Pehrsson, CEO
I am very pleased to report that Kungsleden's performance remains strong. New leasing increased with 55 percent compared to the same period last year and was SEK 45 (29) million. We divested eight non-strategic properties and we exited yet another municipality during the quarter. We are now present in 59 municipalities as compared to 140 when we changed our strategy just over three years ago and 78 percent of the property value is now concentrated to Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmo and Vasteras.
Rental revenue and operating net continued to increase in the third quarter. This is attributable to the fact that we now have a higher percentage of office properties in Stockholm compared to last year. The value of property holdings rose by SEK 273 million in the third quarter, which is equally attributable to improved operating net as to lower yield requirements. Most of the increase in value has occured in our office properties in clusters in Stockholm and Vasteras. The market yield used in the portfolio range from 4.40 per cent (lowest) to 12.0 per cent (highest). The average yield valuation is 6.2 per cent.
Profit from property management for the interim period was SEK 755 million, which is an improvement of 21 per cent compared to the corresponding period in 2015 if profit from participation in associates in 2015 is excluded.
GOOD LEASING RESULTS AND STRENGTHENING OF PROPERTY MANAGEMENT ORGANISATION
The rental market continues to be strong in our priority growth markets Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmo and Vasteras, with a healthy rate of increase in new leasing. During the quarter, we signed more than 50 lease agreements with both new customers and prior customers who have returned to us. There was a high level of new leasing in general, totalling SEK 45 million, where SEK 25 million is attributable to properties in our clusters and SEK 20 million is attributable to our other properties. For the interim period, new leasing was SEK 149 million, which is an improvement of 60 per cent compared to last year. Net leasing in the third quarter amounted to SEK 9 (-4) million. For the interim period, net leasing was SEK 49 (-2) million.
Lease agreements valued at SEK 9 million were renegotiated during the quarter, resulting in an increase in rent level by 18 per cent on average. For the interim period, lease agreements with rental value of SEK 53 million were renegotiated, resulting in an average rental increase of 8.2 per cent.
In line with our continued efforts to focus on both customers and operations, we opened two new offices during the quarter a cluster office in Danderyd and a local office in Norrkoping. We have a new asset and property management market area, Norrkoping/Linkoping with a property portfolio of 164,000 sq. m. After year-end, it will become part of the Malardalen management region. At present, the properties are spread across several regions.
NEW RESIDENTIAL STRATEGY
We have a new strategy on how to derive maximum benefits from our existing and future residential building rights totalling 450,000 sq. m. In summary, we will actively develop the value of our building rights by working with the local authorities on zoning issues, with the aim of creating attractive residential projects and then selling the building rights as the zoning work progresses.
TEGNER ENTERS IMPLEMENTATION STAGE
During the quarter, renovation of the centrally located Tegner shopping mall in Vaxjo entered the implementation stage. An agreement with a key tenant for 3,000 sq. m. of space was signed during the quarter, which means that the outlook is very positive as regards the future success of this property. The investment is estimated as SEK 150 million and once the redevelopment has been completed, rental revenue at the property is expected to increase by at least SEK 10 million. Including Tegner shopping mall, we now have four projects in the implementation stage. The total investment volume is SEK 826 million, with a good return.
HIGH LEVEL OF INTEREST AND COMMITMENT
During recent months, we've been met by a high level of interest from the property market, capital market and other important stakeholders. This is certainly encouraging and important, but even more exciting is the level of enthusiasm and commitment within the company. During the quarter, we conducted an employee survey and the results were quite satisfying. The response rate was 100 per cent and the results for both job satisfaction and the Employee Satisfaction Index exceeded our very high expectations and goals.
At Business Arena Stockholm in September, a team from Kungsleden hosted visitors at our popular lounge. We presented some of our vacant premises using the latest Virtual Reality technology. It's a new way of showing and marketing our premises and just one of the many examples of what we are doing to be on the cutting edge and provide the highest possible level of service to our existing and potential customers.
MANY WANT TO BE WHERE WE ARE
Our strategy is based on the increasing level urbanization and healthy growth in metropolitan areas, which are mega trends that are generating a high demand for office space. This provides us with an excellent foundation for our operations. However, to achieve our goal of becoming Sweden's most profitable property company, we are working very diligently to maximise the full potential of our properties and clusters, streamline our organisation and further increase the concentration of our holdings.
Stockholm, 19 October 2016
Biljana Pehrsson, CEO
This press release is available in English at www.kungsleden.se/press
The information was provided for public release on 19/10, 2016 07.00 a.m
Kungsleden owns, manages, and develops offices and other commercial properties in Stockholm and Sweden's other growth regions. We create value by offering attractive and functional premises in the right locations at the right price. A significant part of our properties are gathered in clusters that enrich people's working day. Kungsleden's goal is to deliver attractive total return on our properties and to our shareholders.
This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161018006847/en/
Contacts:
Kungsleden
Biljana Pehrsson, +46 8 503 052 04
CEO
biljana.pehrsson@kungsleden.se
or
Anders Kvist, +46 8 503 052 11
Deputy CEO and CFO
anders.kvist@kungsleden.se
Regulatory News:
During its Combined General Shareholders' meeting to be held today, SoLocal Group (Paris:LOCAL) will communicate to its shareholders the key elements of its business performance at the end of September 2016. The business dynamics and audience records indeed confirm the end of the period of the Group transformation and the growth of its Internet activities.
Business dynamics in line with the first half of the year
SoLocal Group records a strong growth of the Internet sales orders of + 10% at the end of September 2016 compared to the end of September 2015, driven by the growth of + 41% of Digital Marketing sales orders over the period and +1% for Local Search sales orders.
This is a significant progress compared to the sales order performance over the same period in 2015, where Internet orders recorded a decline of -5%.
New audience record
Thanks to the power of its Internet audience measured by Reach (57% up to 2 points compared to July 2015), SoLocal Group is the 5th Group whose websites are the most visited in France on fixed and mobile.
The Group recorded a new quarterly record of visits with 616 million in the 3rd quarter of 2016 on its fixed and mobile platforms. The Internet audience of websites of the Group grew by +9% at the end of September 2016 compared to the end of September 2015, in particular thanks to the steady growth in the number of visits on mobile Internet of +27%
Declaration of thresholds crossing
Moreover, SoLocal Group took note of the declaration of the Regroupement PP Local association, of the thresholds crossing up eight and nine percent, then ten percent of the Company's capital and voting rights, respectively as of 14 October 2016 and 17 October 2016.
The financial results of the 3rd quarter will be released mid November 2016.
About SoLocal Group
SoLocal Group, European leader in local online communication, reveals local know-how, and boosts local revenues of businesses. The Internet activities of the Group are structured around two business lines: Local Search and Digital Marketing. With Local Search, the Group offers digital services and solutions to clients which enable them to enhance their visibility and develop their local contacts. Thanks to its expertise, SoLocal Group earned the trust of some 530,000 clients of those services and over 2.2 billions of visits via its 4 flagship brands (PagesJaunes, Mappy, Ooreka and A Vendre A Louer) but also through its partnerships. With Digital Marketing, SoLocal Group creates and provides Internet users with the best local and customised content about professionals. With over 4,400 employees, including a salesforce of 1,900 local communication advisors specialised in five verticals (Home, Services, Retail, Health Public, BtoB) and Internationally (France, Spain, Austria, United Kingdom), the Group generated in 2015 revenues of 873 millions euros, of which 73% on Internet and ranks amongst the first European players in terms of Internet advertising revenues. SoLocal Group is listed on Euronext Paris (LOCAL). More information may be obtained at www.solocalgroup.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161018006844/en/
Contacts:
Press
Delphine Penalva, +33 (0)1 46 23 35 31
dpenalva@solocal.com
or
Edwige Druon, +33 (0)1 46 23 37 56
edruon@solocal.com
or
Investors
Elsa Cardarelli, +33 (0)1 46 23 40 92
ecardarelli@solocal.com
or
Sebastien Nony, +33 (0) 1 46 23 49 03
snony@solocal.com
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WISeKey International Holding Ltd (WIHN.SW) ("WISeKey"), a leading Cybersecurity and IoT company, today announced its new platform WISeAI - which will be integrating the Root of Trust and IoT embedded devices with problem-solving Artificial Intelligence ("AI") solution into WISeKey's Vertical Platform.
While IoT remains wildly insecure, thanks to the integrated solution operated by the WISeKey Vertical Platform, IoT devices would be able to organize themselves into trusted networks based on mutual authentication, identity and integrity. This trusted cybersecurity platform will only enable IoT devices which can provide a recognized identity and a valid integrity report to communicate with peer devices that are part of the trusted community.
Adding AI at the chip level together with the WISeKey RoT it will allow the IoT to provide authenticated sensor data. Current IoT data do not provide value for their manufacturers unless it can be converted into actionable, contextualized information generated by IoT sensors fully identifiable. The majority of IoT devices are not built with embedded secured systems thus are very vulnerable. By integrating AI into the WISekey RoT and Vertical Platform, objects can develop their own cybersecurity behavior, thus making smarter and safer decisions. IoT objects with this technology will learn from attacks, defend them and transfer this intelligence via the WISekey Vertical Platform to other IoT objects pear to pear using a blockchain.
WISekey will include AI solution at the integrated circuits allowing AI to be hosted on a hardware vault with the highest level of certification able to encrypt communications and authenticate the devices. This will also allow AI to leverage the massive big data generated by the deployment of WISeKey's RoT now embedded in more than 2.5 billion devices worldwide benefitting from the strong cryptographic capabilities deployed in all sorts of IoT products.
Addressing fast growing IoT market
The ability to authenticate and remotely manage millions of networked, automated devices and equipment is becoming pervasive from factory floors, to hospital operating rooms, to residential homes including billions of objects and devices from refrigerators, watches, wearables to wine bottles everything that can connect and communicate via the Internet.
The IoT security market is expected to grow from $6.89 billion in 2015 to nearly $29 billion by 2020 according to a report published by Markets and Markets, thus growing at an annual rate of 35%. These massively deployed connected objects are facing regular attacks hence generating a large need for trusted end-to-end cybersecurity solutions. This problem is affecting billions of people and IoT devices worldwide, and manufactures of these devices could be forced or incentivized to spend money to make their devices secure, as regulators might impose liabilities on them.
Our computers and smartphones are as secure as they are because there are teams of specialized security experts working in companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. ensuring their customers are protected. These companies spend a lot of time testing their code before it's released, and quickly patch vulnerabilities when they're discovered. Those companies can support such teams because those companies make a huge amount of money, either directly or indirectly, from their software-and, in part, compete on its security. This isn't true for IoT hardware manufacturers putting unprotected IoT on the market sold at a much lower margin, and are often built by offshore third parties. The companies involved simply don't have the expertise to make them secure.
"The combination of IoT Cybersecurity technologies developed by WISekey with Artificial Intelligence solutions are a game changer in our industry. This new platform opens up many possibilities for improving the overall security functionalities and creating new business processes by taking advantage of the world of digital identification at the object level, which once combined with big-data allows us to gather and process all available information and generate actionable insights," said Carlos Moreira, Founder and CE WISeKey.
About WISeKey
WISeKey (SIX Swiss Exchange:WIHN) is a leading cybersecurity company and selected as a World Economic Forum Global Growth Company. WISeKey is currently deploying large scale Internet of Things ("IoT") digital identity ecosystems and has become a pioneer of the "4th Industrial Revolution" movement launched this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos. WISeKey's Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust ("RoT") integrates wearable technology with secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, and empowers IoT and wearable devices to become secure transactional devices. The RoT serves as a common trust anchor, which is recognized by the operating system and applications, to ensure the authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of on-line transactions. With the cryptographic RoT embedded on the device, the IoT product manufacturers can use code-signing certificates and a cloud-based signature as a service to secure interactions among objects and between objects and people. WISeKey has patented this process in the USA as it is currently used by many IoT providers.
Disclaimer:
This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding 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 WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding 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. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of article 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations or a listing prospectus within the meaning of the listing rules of the SIX Swiss Exchange. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of WISeKey.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161018006520/en/
Contacts:
Press:
WISeKey
Youmna Abisaleh, +41-79-946-0089
yabisaleh@WISEKEY.COM
or
Carlos Moreira, +41-22-594-3000
Founder CEO
cmoreira@wisekey.com
or
Investor Relations (United States)
The Equity Group, Inc.
Lena Cati, 212-836-9611
lcati@equityny.com
AMSTERDAM (dpa-AFX) - Dutch paints and coatings maker Akzo Nobel NV (AKZOY.PK, AKZOY) reported that its net income attributable to shareholders for the third-quarter was flat with last year at 285 million euros. But, adjusted earnings per share decreased to 1.20 euros from 1.24 euros in the prior year.
The company decided to increase the interim dividend by 6 percent to 0.37 euros per share.
The market environment remains uncertain with challenging conditions in several countries and segments. Deflationary pressures and currency headwinds are expected to continue. It maintained its financial guidance for 2016-2018.
AkzoNobel reported volume growth in Decorative Paints and Specialty Chemicals with further overall profitability growth in the third quarter, despite challenging conditions in several countries and segments.
EBIT for the third-quarter was up 1 percent at 442 million euros , reflecting continuous improvement initiatives and lower costs, partly offset by adverse currency effects.
Revenue for the quarter declined 4 percent to 3.60 billion euros, from the prior year's 3.76 billion euros due to adverse currency and price/mix effects.
In Decorative Paints, Volumes increased 3 percent due to positive developments in Asia and EMEA, while volumes continued to be lower in Latin America. Revenue was down 3 percent mainly due to unfavorable currency effects. We launched our 2017 Color of the Year, Denim Drift, part of our ongoing efforts to inspire customers to make confident color choices and drive growth for our business.
In Performance Coatings, Volumes were down by 2 percent affected by adverse conditions in the marine and oil and gas industries, partly offset by positive developments in other segments, including automotive and specialty coatings. Revenue was down 6 percent due to unfavorable currencies, lower volumes and adverse price/mix effects.
In Specialty Chemicals, Volumes were up 1 percent with positive developments, especially in Industrial Chemicals, partly offset by lower demand in the oil-related segments. Revenue was down 3 percent mainly due to price deflation in several markets.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
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PAION AG, a specialty pharma company (ISIN DE000A0B65S3; Frankfurt Stock Exchange Prime Standard: PA8) today announces that data on the clinical results of remimazolam's U.S. Phase III colonoscopy trial were presented in the Colon/Stomach oral session at the 2016 American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Annual Scientific Meeting in Las Vegas. Remimazolam is an innovative, ultra-short-acting benzodiazepine anesthetic/sedative for which positive topline data from this trial were published in June 2016.
Douglas Rex, M.D., Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, U.S., principal investigator of this Phase III trial, presented the results.
The Phase III trial enrolled a total of 461 patients at 13 U.S. sites and was designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of remimazolam compared to placebo (with midazolam rescue) in patients undergoing proceduralist- administered sedation for colonoscopy.
The primary outcome measure was a composite endpoint defined as: no need for rescue medication, completion of the procedure and no more than 5 top- up doses within any 15-minute window. The primary endpoint was reached in 91.3% of the patients in the remimazolam arm and 1.7% in the placebo (including midazolam rescue) arm. Important secondary endpoints in the remimazolam arm showed a median time from start of medication to start of procedure of 4.0 minutes (placebo 19.5 minutes) and a mean time from end of procedure to return to full alertness of 7.2 minutes (placebo 21.3 minutes). Additionally, time to "back to normal" as reported by patients on remimazolam was 331 minutes (placebo 572 minutes).
There were no treatment-emergent serious adverse events in the trial. Hypotension was 44.3% with remimazolam and 47.5% with placebo and accounted for most of the adverse events in all study arms. Hypoxia occurred in 1.0% of patients given remimazolam, 3.4% in the placebo arm.
On the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test administered five minutes after reaching the fully alert status, the total raw score, delayed recall, memory retention, and recognition discrimination scores were all better with remimazolam compared to placebo.
Patient satisfaction was similar in all arms of the study.
In addition to the detailed analysis of the primary and secondary endpoints of the Phase III trial (comparison to placebo), Dr. Rex also presented data for the open label midazolam arm. These results will not be part of the label claims. They will however serve as valuable data to plan future studies and perform pharmacoeconomic modelling. Midazolam patients showed a median time from start of medication to start of procedure of 19.0 minutes and a mean time from end of procedure to return to full alertness of 15.7 minutes. Midazolam patients took 553 minutes to be back to normal.
Hypotension was 67.3% with midazolam and hypoxia occurred in 1.0% of patients given midazolam.
Overview procedural results:
Remimazolam Placebo Midazolam (Open Label) Procedural success 91.30% 1.70% 25.2% Use of rescue sedation 3.40% 95.00% 64.70% Average fentanyl dose 88.9 mcg 121.3 mcg 106.9 mcg Start of medication to start of procedure (median) 4.0 minutes 19.5 minutes 19.0 minutes End of procedure to fully alert (mean) 7.2 minutes 21.3 minutes 15.7 minutes Mean time 1st dose to discharge 58 minutes 86 minutes 75 minutes
Dr. Rex concluded: "Remimazolam, given under supervision of an endoscopist, appears to be safe and effective for procedural sedation in colonoscopy based on the results from this Phase III study. We saw significant differences in onset and recovery times as well as restoration of cognitive function and fewer adverse events when compared to midazolam or placebo. In addition, the need for fentanyl was lowest in the remimazolam group. If these data could be translated into medical practice, this would result in a meaningful gain in efficiency and patient comfort, which are important to achieve our goal to increase the overall colonoscopy screening rate."
About Remimazolam
Remimazolam is an ultra-short-acting intravenous benzodiazepine sedative/anesthetic, currently in Phase III clinical development for procedural sedation in the U.S. The first of two pivotal Phase III studies was completed successfully and reached its primary endpoint. In the human body, remimazolam is rapidly metabolized to an inactive metabolite by tissue esterases and not metabolized by cytochrome-dependent hepatic pathways. Like other benzodiazepines, remimazolam can be reversed with flumazenil to rapidly terminate sedation and anesthesia if necessary.
In clinical studies, remimazolam demonstrated efficacy and safety in over 1,000 patients. Data so far indicate that remimazolam has a rapid onset and offset of action combined with a favorable cardio-respiratory safety profile.
A pediatric development plan has been agreed with the FDA and will be implemented by Cosmo following completion of current development of remimazolam for adult patients. A full clinical development program for general anesthesia has been completed in Japan, and a Phase II study in general anesthesia has been completed in the E.U. Based on the positive results of the Phase II study in Japan, development for ICU sedation beyond 24 hours is considered following successful completion of development in procedural sedation and general anesthesia.
Remimazolam is partnered in the U.S., Canada, China, Russia (CIS), Turkey, the MENA region, and South Korea with Cosmo, Pharmascience (Pendopharm), Yichang Humanwell, R-Pharm, TR-Pharm, and Hana Pharm, respectively. For all other markets, remimazolam is available for licensing.
About PAION
PAION AG is a publicly listed specialty pharmaceutical company developing and aiming to commercialize innovative drugs to be used in out-patient and hospital-based sedation, anesthesia and critical care services. PAION's lead compound is remimazolam, an intravenous, ultra-short-acting and controllable benzodiazepine sedative/anesthetic drug candidate. Currently, remimazolam is in active Phase III clinical development for use in procedural sedation in the U.S., where PAION is focusing all its business and financial resources on successfully completing its ongoing clinical development program in procedural sedation. Outside the U.S., PAION has so far focused on the development of remimazolam in the indication general anesthesia. Development of remimazolam in the indication intensive care unit (ICU) sedation is also part of the longer term life-cycle plan for remimazolam.
PAION is headquartered in Aachen (Germany) with further sites in Cambridge (United Kingdom) and New Jersey (USA).
PAION's vision is to become an acknowledged "PAIONeer" in sedation and anesthesia.
Disclaimer:
This release contains certain forward-looking statements concerning the future business of PAION AG. These forward-looking statements contained herein are based on the current expectations, estimates and projections of PAION AG's management as of the date of this release. They are subject to a number of assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Should actual conditions differ from the Company's assumptions, actual results and actions may differ materially from any future results and developments expressed or implied by such forward- looking statements. Considering the risks, uncertainties and other factors involved, recipients should not rely unreasonably upon these forward- looking statements. PAION AG has no obligation to periodically update any such forward-looking statements to reflect future events or developments.
Language: English Company: PAION AG Martinstr. 10-12 52062 Aachen Germany Phone: +49 (0)241-4453-0 Fax: +49 (0)241-4453-100 E-mail: info@paion.com Internet: www.paion.com ISIN: DE000A0B65S3 WKN: A0B65S Listed: Regulated Market in Frankfurt (Prime Standard); Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Tradegate Exchange
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161018006863/en/
Contacts:
PAION
Ralf Penner
Director Investor Relations Public Relations
Phone: +49 241 4453-152
E-mail: r.penner@paion.com
www.paion.com
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Pest control firm Rentokil Initial Plc (RTOKY.PK, RTO.L) reported that its third-quarter revenues were 578.3 million pounds, up 32.1 percent on a reported basis and also up 15.7 percent at constant exchange rates. Revenue from ongoing operations in the quarter was 576.7 million pounds, up 33.1 percent on a reported basis and also up 16.6 percent at constant rates. The organic revenue growth was 3.1 percent. Growth in the Emerging and Growth markets was once again particularly strong. The company's operations within the Manage for Value quadrant grew by 2.3 percent, while the rate of revenue decline in its Protect and Enhance markets was largely unchanged from the first and second quarters at 1 percent. Rentokil Initial noted that the majority of its regions have performed well in the period, reflecting good performances in Asia, Pacific, Latin America, the UK and in its largest market, North America. While conditions remain tough in parts of Europe, particularly in France, overall the region delivered modest revenue growth in the third quarter. Looking ahead, the company said that its outlook for the full year is unchanged. 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.
HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today announced Trend Micro TippingPoint Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) has received a "recommended" rating based on the 2016 NSS Labs NGIPS test. With an overall score of 99.5 percent, the report findings reinforce Trend Micro's leadership in the intrusion prevention system market and its reputation for unmatched enterprise security.
"Earning NSS Labs' sought-after 'recommended' rating validates Trend Micro as an industry leader and demonstrates the superior network defense our customers rely on," said Donald Closser, vice president and general manager for Trend Micro TippingPoint. "In today's increasingly sophisticated threat landscape, TippingPoint uses equally sophisticated protection techniques to safeguard enterprises' networks, data and intellectual property in a cost-effective manner."
With its Next-Generation IPS solutions, TippingPoint provides integrated advanced threat prevention in real-time for known vulnerabilities and all potential attack permutations. Additionally, its Advanced Threat Protection solutions allow users to detect, analyze and respond to unknown malware and advanced threats across all network traffic, ports and more than 100 protocols. TippingPoint NGIPS customers also benefit from the exclusive insights garnered through Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative bug bounty program, resulting in pre-emptive coverage between vulnerability disclosure and patch availability.
"TippingPoint's Next-Generation IPS demonstrated excellent protection in our test--successfully blocking 99.5 percent of overall attacks and all evasion techniques," said Vikram Phatak, CEO of NSS Labs, Inc. "Passing every stability and reliability assessment, the device also registered zero false positives while accurately diagnosing malicious content."
NSS Labs' NGIPS evaluation analyzed the security efficacy, performance, cost of ownership, stability and reliability of eight NGIPS devices. As advanced threats and targeted attacks continue to surge, the NSS Labs report provides customers with an impartial, third-party resource establishing TippingPoint NGIPS as an effective and reasonably-priced threat detection solution.
Visit http://www.trendmicro.com/us/business/network-security/nss-labs-ngips/index.html for a copy of the full report.
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About Trend Micro
Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cyber security solutions, helps to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Our innovative solutions for consumers, businesses, and governments provide layered security for data centers, cloud environments, networks, and endpoints. All our products work together to seamlessly share threat intelligence and provide a connected threat defense with centralized visibility and control, enabling better, faster protection. With more than 5,000 employees in over 50 countries and the world's most advanced global threat intelligence, Trend Micro enables users to enjoy their digital lives safely. For more information, visit www.trendmicro.com.hk.
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Claudius Lam
Trend Micro
+ 852 2866 4362 (Office)
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LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Technology company Laird PLC (LRD.L, LARD.L) reported Wednesday that its third-quarter revenue in sterling increased 29 percent to 207 million pounds from 160 million pounds last year. On an organic basis at constant currency, revenue was lower by 4 percent.
For fiscal 2016, the company expects Group underlying profit before tax to be around 50 million pounds, which will reflect a very challenging third-quarter trading performance in Performance Materials or PM division.
In the year 2015, underlying profit before tax was 73.1 million pounds.
Performance Materials revenue in the third quarter increased 12 percent to 113 million pounds. On an organic basis at constant currency, revenue was down 5 percent.
In its trading update for the third quarter, the company noted that after a disappointing first half, a significant improvement in the second half of 2016 was expected, particularly in the PM division. However, the acceleration of production for mobile devices has come much later than in previous cycles and visibility on volumes remains poor. The company also experienced increased margin pressure due to unprecedented pricing pressures and some operational factors.
The company said it is taking actions to stabilise and improve the financial performance of the PM division with a considerable focus on managing costs and cash across the Group.
In the third quarter, Wireless Systems revenue increased 58 percent to 93 million pounds.
Tony Quinlan, Chief Executive, said, 'We are very disappointed by these adverse developments in the mobile devices market for our Performance Materials division, at a time when other parts of the business continue to perform well. We are confident that the actions we have taken will stabilise and improve the business.'
Moving into 2017, the company said that the work to improve operating model is progressing well and the firm is on track to deliver the associated significant financial benefits. This, together with the Novero turnaround, as well as the positive momentum in our automotive business, will improve performance next year and beyond.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
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BERLIN, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
- Program is now online
The program of the 14th International Conference on Renewable Mobility "Fuels of the Future" is now available for you at http://www.fuels-of-the-future.com. The conference will take place on 23/24 January 2017 at Berlin's CityCube.
As the highlight event of the German and European biofuel industry with more than 500 participants from 30 countries, the conference is a must-attend event for the exchange with international stakeholders from politics, the industry and research.
The contents of the conference program have been extended to account for the increasing diversification of engine technologies as well as the research and production of various fuels from renewable energy sources.
The comprehensive program covers a diversity of all topics relevant for improving climate protection in the transport sector:
On the opening day, the focus will be on the framework conditions. During the plenary session, representatives of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, the European Commission, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and Roland Berger GmbH, among others, will address the political and engine technological prospects. In addition, the commodity markets will be analyzed in the context of international trade flows and price developments.
During the panel discussion, the future prospects will be looked at from the perspective of the industry, the European Commission, European agriculture and members of the German and the European Parliament.
Subsequently, a total of 11 forums will deal with a broad range of topics from all areas of renewable energies in the mobility sector: International experts will present the latest from technical development, research, certification, market analysis and trade flows and engage in discussions with the conference participants.
Contact:
Markus Hartmann
Phone: +492288100222
hartmann@bioenergie.de
NEWBURY, England, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Ascensia Diabetes Care today announced the availability of the CONTOURNEXT ONE blood glucose monitoring system (BGMS) in the United Kingdom, one of the next steps in the evolution of self-monitoring of blood glucose. As part of the system, the CONTOURNEXT ONE meter and CONTOURDIABETES app seamlessly connect, which makes capturing blood glucose results effortless for people with diabetes. The system enables patterns and trends to be revealed that can help people understand their diabetes, and may help to improve diabetes management.
To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/players/uk/7954951-contour-next-one-bgms-ascensia/
The system features an easy-to-use wireless-enabled smart meter that links to a smart mobile device via Bluetooth connectivity. The CONTOURNEXT ONE meter gives immediate feedback and also seamlessly connects to the CONTOURDIABETES app, which collects, stores and analyses patient blood glucose results received from the meter. The app combines these results with other data recorded by the user, to provide detailed information about their condition that can help them understand how their everyday lives may impact their blood glucose readings, including alerts for critical high or critical low readings. Through the app, meter users can also share with their healthcare professional the reports of their blood glucose results and patterns, either in advance or on the day of their appointment, helping to create more informed discussions.
"People with diabetes are turning to mobile devices to help manage and track their condition," said Dr. Partha Kar, Consultant in Diabetes and Endocrinology, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. "They want solutions that seamlessly integrate into their lives and present their readings in a simple and intuitive way. The CONTOURNEXT ONE system appears to be a development for interconnected diabetes management that has the potential to engage more people with diabetes in their treatment plans which could lead to better outcomes".
"The launch of the CONTOURNEXT ONE blood glucose monitoring system in the United Kingdom is the latest of our high quality solutions designed to meet the needs of the diabetes community. By seamlessly capturing data from the meter in the app, this system has the potential to benefit people with diabetes by improving the understanding of their condition and helping them to make more informed decisions about managing their diabetes. We are delighted it is now available to help people with diabetes in the United Kingdom," explained Ros Barker, Ascensia Diabetes Care.
The meter also includes additional features specifically designed to meet patient needs, including the smartLIGHT[TM] feature that gives instant feedback on blood glucose readings, for better understanding of results. It also has Second-Chance' sampling, which prompts blood to be reapplied if there is not enough the first time, helping to avoid lancing for a second time and the wasting of strips.
"In the management of diabetes, the accuracy and quality of blood glucose data from an individual is crucial. The CONTOURNEXT ONE blood glucose meter has demonstrated consistently remarkable levels of accuracy and precision for patients. There is significant value for doctors and nurses by having easy access to this highly accurate data, which can help to improve how patients are managed," added Ros.
Published study data has shown the CONTOURNEXT ONE meter to be remarkably accurate[1], exceeding EN ISO 15197:2015 accuracy criteria[2] in both the laboratory and clinical setting. EN ISO 15197:2015 states that 95% of results must be within 0.83 mmol/L of the reference result for samples with blood glucose concentrations E5.56 mmol/L or 15% for samples with blood glucose concentrations 5.56 mmol/L. Data in the clinical setting showed that 99.4% of readings from subject-obtained fingertip results exceeds EN ISO 15197:2015 accuracy criteria and 95% of readings were shown to be within 0.47 mmol/L or 8.4% of the YSI reference results.[1]
An estimated 4 million people in United Kingdom have diabetes, according to Diabetes UK.* The primary goal of diabetes management is to control blood sugar levels and ensure they are kept within a normal range. When blood glucose levels get too high (hypgerlycaemia) or too low (hypoglycaemia), it can lead to serious complications and, in severe cases, even death.
The launch of the CONTOURNEXT ONE BGMS in the United Kingdom follows CE Mark approval that was recently received, on 17 May 2016. As it is app based, the system is designed to evolve in the future, bringing new capabilities and features to help people with diabetes manage their condition. Those interested in obtaining the CONTOURNEXT ONE meter should visit https://www.contournextone.co.uk/. The CONTOURDIABETES app is available to download in the Apple App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android).
Notes for Editors
About Ascensia Diabetes Care
Ascensia Diabetes Care is a global specialist diabetes care company, dedicated to helping people living with diabetes. Our mission is to empower people living with diabetes through innovative solutions that simplify and improve their lives. We use our innovation and specialist expertise in diabetes to develop high quality solutions and tools that make a positive, daily difference for people with diabetes.
Home to the world renowned CONTOUR portfolio of blood glucose monitoring systems, our products combine advanced technology with user-friendly functionality that help people with diabetes to manage their condition. We are committed to continued research, innovation and development of new products and solutions. As a trusted partner in the diabetes community, we collaborate closely with healthcare professionals and other partners to ensure our products meet the highest standards of accuracy, precision and reliability, and that we conduct our business compliantly and with integrity.
Ascensia Diabetes Care was established in 2016 through the sale of Bayer Diabetes Care to Panasonic Healthcare Holdings Co., Ltd. Ascensia Diabetes Care products are sold in more than 125 countries. Following the close of the transaction in all countries, Ascensia Diabetes Care will have around 1,700 employees and operations in 38 countries.
For further information please visit the Ascensia Diabetes Care website at: http://www.ascensia.com.
CONTOUR Second-Chance' sampling and smartLIGHT' are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Ascensia Diabetes Care Holdings AG.
The Bluetooth word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc., and any use of such marks herein is under license.
For further information please contact:
Joseph Delahunty
FTI Consulting
joseph.delahunty@fticonsulting.com
Tel: +44(0)20-3727-1000
Stephanie Burns
FTI Consulting
stephanie.burns@fticonsulting.com
Tel: +44(0)20-3727-1816
1. Christiansen et al. Poster presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Diabetes Technology Society, October 22-24, 2015, Bethesda, Maryland.
2. International Organization for Standardization (2015). In vitro diagnostic test systems-requirements for blood-glucose monitoring systems for self-testing in managing diabetes mellitus (EN ISO 15197:2015)
* https://www.diabetes.org.uk/About_us/News/Number-of-people-with-diabetes-reaches-over-4-million/
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161018/429867 )
Video:
http://www.multivu.com/players/uk/7954951-contour-next-one-bgms-ascensia/
Regulatory News:
Korian (Paris:KORI):
Sophie Boissard, Chief Executive Officer of the Korian group, has now fully established her Group Management Board following the arrival of Charles-Antoine Pinel, Nicolas Merigot and Frederic Durousseau.
Charles-Antoine Pinel is appointed Executive Vice President of the Seniors Division in France while Nicolas Merigot is appointed Executive Vice President of the Healthcare Division in France. Both of these positions were temporarily being filled by Sophie Boissard. Frederic Durousseau is appointed Group Chief Real Estate and Development Officer.
Charles-Antoine Pinel, France Seniors Division Executive Vice President, is responsible for long-term care nursing homes for the elderly and seniors care services for France. His role will involve implementing development projects for this business line and for the French network, currently comprised of 290 facilities.
A graduate of the Neoma Business School and holder of an Executive MBA from HEC Paris, 44-year-old Charles-Antoine Pinel formerly spent 15 years at Pierre Vacances group, the European leader in tourism residences. During his time with this Group, he contributed to the integration of Maeva's operations and to the development of the Center Parcs business in France. Since 2012, he has been Chief Executive Officer of Pierre Vacances Tourism Europe (230 sites, 130,000 beds).
Nicolas Merigot, France Healthcare Division Executive Vice President, is responsible for the Healthcare division in France (75 clinics and 6 hospital at home networks). He will notably be tasked with developing this network.
Aged 51, a graduate of Paris's Institute of Political Studies and holder of a degree in business law, Nicolas Merigot has a broad experience in managing, structuring and developing health-care service networks, in fields ranging from hospitals to clinical laboratories. From 2008 to 2014, he was Chief Executive Officer of the Bio-Access group. Since 2014, he had been Chief Executive Officer of the Lavorel group, a health care operator with activities in the hospital home care, long-term care nursing homes and medical devices distribution.
Frederic Durousseau, Chief Real Estate and Development Officer, is responsible for establishing and implementing the Group's real estate strategy and for developing strategic partnerships with investors and real estate developers.
Aged 43, a graduate in Economics of Paris-Dauphine and Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne Universities, Frederic Durousseau spent most of his previous career at Pierre Vacances Group. One of his key roles was as Asset Manager for the Group's corporate portfolio in France, following which he became Strategic Planning Director for Center Parc/Sunparks, in 2010. This role involved setting up, financing and implementing various real estate development projects for the brand at European level, primarily in Germany. Since 2014, he had been Chief Development Officer of Center Parcs Europe.
ABOUT KORIAN
Korian, Europe's leader in Ageing Well, founded in 2003, has the capacity to accommodate more than 71,500 residents and patients in Europe (France, Germany, Italy and Belgium) and employs around 45,000 staff members. The Group manages more than 710 facilities in four business lines: nursing homes, post-acute and rehabilitation care clinics, assisted living facilities and hospital care and home-care services. www.korian.com
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161019005525/en/
Contacts:
KORIAN
PRESS CONTACTS
Sophie BODIN Tarick DALI, T: +33 (0)1 40 70 95 93
DGM Conseil
s.bodin@dgm-conseil.frt.dali@dgm-conseil.fr
or
Claire Vaas, T: +33 (0)1 55 37 53 11
Media Relations Manager
claire.vaas@korian.com
As part of the execution of the 2018 Strategy, TDC Group adjusted its Danish organisation during September 2016 towards a more customer-centric organisation with further end-to-end process responsibility in the business lines. For the financial reporting it means that more costs are allocated to the reporting segments Consumer, Business and Wholesale, whereas correspondingly fewer costs are allocated to Other operations in Denmark. TDC will report in accordance with the adjusted organisation with effect from the Interim Financial Report for January-September 2016. Comparative figures in the income statements for the business lines are restated accordingly. A restated Fact Sheet with comparative figures for Q1 2014 to Q2 2016 is therefore now available on TDC's website and attached to this release. The restatement does not give rise to any changes to TDC's guidance for 2016, which was announced on 21 June 2016. TDC A/S Teglholmsgade 1 0900 Copenhagen C DK-Denmark tdc.com Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=590122
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.
Aeris to demonstrate how to reduce IoT complexity through its platforms and solutionsREADING, U.K., 2016-10-19 10:05 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At the Manufacturer's Annual Leaders Conference, Nov. 2 and 3, Aeris, a pioneer and leader in the Internet of Things (IoT) market, is showcasing its Aeris IoT Solutions Platform, a comprehensive, patented and end-to-end IoT enabler for enterprises.A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/500dc155-f127-45db-8f27-9a264 1bdc0b3The Aeris IoT Solutions Platform consists of AerPort connectivity management platform, AerCloud applications enablement platform, AerCore IoT network and AerVoyance IoT analytics platform. Aeris also offers a cellular network service to improve roaming connectivity for enterprises and service providers.Aeris will offer free copies of the second edition of "The Definitive Guide: The Internet of Things for Business," a book authored by Aeris founder and chief technology officer, Syed Zaeem Hosain, at the Aeris stand no. 24 in the NEC in Birmingham, U.K.The Aeris IoT book addresses the need for a broad, yet comprehensive guide that enables enterprises and services providers to navigate potential pitfalls and capitalize on IoT opportunities. The Aeris IoT Book also serves as a primer for business executives and outlines the steps necessary to embrace IoT without the need for an advanced engineering background.Mohsen Mohseninia, vice president of market development for Europe of Aeris, will speak Nov. 2 on "IoT and the essential tools for the connected product journey."The Manufacturer's Annual Leaders Conference is part of The Manufacturer Live series of events, which also includes the launch of The Manufacturer Top 100 2016, The Manufacturer MX Awards ceremony and gala dinner and The Manufacturer Smart Factory Expo.CLICK TO TWEET: Aeris (@AerisM2M) to demo IoT solutions for smart manufacturers at @TheManufacturer | M2M TMALC http://www.aeris.com/news/Supporting Quote-- Suzanne Lancaster, director of marketing, Europe, Aeris"Aeris is delighted to be part of the Manufacturer's Annual Leaders Conference. We look forward to collaborating and advancing the cause of Industry 4.0, a game changer for the success of manufacturers in the United Kingdom. We are confident that Aeris can add significant value to manufacturers as they embrace the Internet of Things."Invitation-- Journalists, bloggers and industry analysts are invited to meet 1:1 with Mohseninia and Lancaster on Nov. 2 and 3. Please contact Kevin Petschow to set up a meeting.Digital Assets-- [Photo] Suzanne Lancaster -- [Image] Aeris logoSupporting Resources-- Read about The Manufacturer's Annual Leaders Conference. -- Read about Aeris. -- Read about Aeris IoT Solutions platform. -- Read about Syed Zaeem Hosain. -- Read about Mohsen Mohseninia. -- Read and subscribe to Aeris Blog. -- Read Aeris news releases. -- Read about the Internet of Things FAQ. -- For more information about Aeris' news and activities, follow the company via Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.About Aeris Aeris is a pioneer and leader in the market of the Internet of Things - as an operator of end-to-end IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) services and as a technology provider enabling other operators to build profitable IoT businesses. Among our customers are the most demanding users of IoT services today, including Hyundai, Acura, Rand McNally, Leica, and Sprint. Through our technology platform and dedicated IoT and M2M services, we strive to fundamentally improve their businesses - by dramatically reducing costs, improving operational efficiency, reducing time-to-market, and enabling new revenue streams.Tags/Keywords: Aeris, AerPort, AerCloud, AerCore, AerVoyance, Internet of Things, IoT, machine-to-machine, M2M, The Manufacturer's Annual Leaders Conference, TMALC, Industry 4.0, Syed Zaeem Hosain, Mohsen Mohseninia, Suzanne LancasterFor more information, contact: Kevin Petschow Aeris +1.312.985.9182 Kevin.Petschow@aeris.net
LONDON, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
The Swedish clothing retailer appoints Mention Me to power referral platform
Sweden's favourite kidswear brand, Polarn O. Pyret has partnered with Mention Me to launch its UK customer referral programme.
The clothing brand specialises in quality clothes made for play, which "let children be children" rather than "mini adults". First launched in the UK 10 years ago, the brand has seen great growth as parents become increasingly interested in the sustainability and provenance of their children's clothing. Photos of Prince George wearing the brand in his official Christmas photo hasn't hurt either!
Polarn O. Pyret wanted to harness the affection that consumers have for the brand by launching a refer a friend scheme. Luisa Cacioppo-Smallwood, Head of Marketing explained: "We have a very loyal customer base who are great advocates for the brand and what it stands for. Our new referral scheme is a great way to reward them for sharing with like minded parents. We chose Mention Me as we really love the flexibility the platform gives us to test which offers and messages appeal to our customers".
Mention Me co-founder and CEO Andy Cockburn said: "We are excited to be working with Polarn O. Pyret to help them drive new customer acquisition via referrals. With such an iconic children's brand we are sure that referrals will form a growing part of their business over the coming years."
About Mention Me: Mention-Me.com provides retailers with a referral platform which enables them to turn word-of-mouth into a marketing channel. They work in partnership with retailers to ensure best practice and testing result in world class referral programmes.
Story: Corolla stories by customers from Japan and around the world History: Evolution of the Corolla since the first generation and their corresponding eras Message: Commentary by Chief Engineers of the Corolla Feature: Special content, including an AE86 Levin test-drive video and a commentary by a "Corolla geek" Gallery: Generations of the Corolla and key historical photos Link: URLs to news releases of the Corolla of each generation, as well as some Corolla related websites.
Toyota Motor Corporation Public Affairs Division Global Communications Department Tel: +81-3-3817-9926
Toyota City, Japan, Oct 19, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Fifty years ago, on October 20, 1966, at a time when interest in cars was growing rapidly in Japan, Toyota unveiled the first-generation Corolla.The Toyota Corolla is a five-passenger vehicle from Japan that is positioned as the "most accessible car" in the market. In the development of the Corolla, Toyota's engineers have spent years bringing together the best of the company's technologies to offer to the public. This car has been designed to become a main fixture across Japanese society. It is fitted with a powerful water-cooled inline-four engine boasting 1,077 cc and 60 horsepower which provides a level of performance, and a vehicle class that goes above and beyond. The Corolla is packed with new features where its acceleration exceeds that of European cars within the same vehicle class. The Corolla is truly a high-performance Japanese compact car.(News release published on October 20, 1966)Toyota Motor Corporation was founded in 1937 with the overarching goal of helping to develop the Japanese auto industry. Three decades later, Corolla was born at a time of great interest in cars across Japan. The 80 Point Doctrine +alpha Concept underpinned the development of the Corolla. This design concept stipulates that the car has to achieve 80 points on a 100-point scale on average, and some +alpha (extra) features were necessary to give the vehicle additional appeal, which would help exceed customers' expectations. Over the past five decades, even as the Corolla has evolved over 11 generations, Toyota has consistently applied this understanding to models sold in Japan and around the world.Born in Japan in 1966, the Corolla is now being produced in 13 countries, and over 1.3 million units are sold annually in more than 150 countries. With a record 44 million units sold globally to date, the Toyota Corolla has established itself as the world's best-selling car of all-time.Evolution of CorollaDuring the last 50 years, customers from all around the world have come to share the same love for the Corolla; and the Corolla development team has consistently worked hard to meet and exceed their expectations. We would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the past 50 years of the Corolla, through stories told by those who have been part of the Corolla journey.This special website features various aspects of the Corolla, including customer memories, the history of the vehicle, comments from those charged with developing the car and more. Content will be posted in stages, so please visit the site often!Corolla 50th Anniversary Special Websitehttp://newsroom.toyota.co.jp/en/corolla50th/Overview of the Corolla 50th Anniversary Special WebsiteAbout ToyotaSupported by people around the world, Toyota Motor Corporation (TSE: 7203; NYSE: TM), has endeavored since its establishment in 1937 to serve society by creating better products. As of the end of December 2013, Toyota conducts its business worldwide with 52 overseas manufacturing companies in 27 countries and regions. Toyota's vehicles are sold in more than 170 countries and regions. For more information, please visit www.toyota-global.com.Source: ToyotaContact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, CO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- CannaGrow Holdings, Inc., (OTC PINK: CGRW), -- CannaGrow Holdings, Inc., a Liaison and Consultant providing turnkey solutions to licensed growers in the legal Cannabis industry, today announces the launch of their new website at http://www.cannagrowholdings.com.
Delmar Janovec, CEO, stated, "Now that the construction of the Buffalo Ranch Project I facility is completed and occupied by our first tenant, more time has become available to attend to other Company business. The launch of our new website is the first step in a process of branding CannaGrow Holdings as the "go to" team for all Cannabis projects in Colorado. We are currently working with a media expert to develop additional material to assist Category One Botanicals with their marketing needs for the upcoming harvest. The new website went live on October 14, 2016, and I would like to encourage our shareholders and other interested parties to visit http://www.cannagrowholdings.com to learn more about who we are and what we have to offer in the Cannabis Industry in Colorado."
Dr. John P. Janovec, Ph.D., COO of CannaGrow Holdings added, "The new CannaGrow Holdings website is a current snapshot of our collective vision and accomplishments as a viable company in the Legal Cannabis Industry in the State of Colorado. The diverse team of experts we have united along with our strategic alliance with Licensed Grower, Category One Botanicals, LLC, enables us to tackle a wide variety of challenges involving the business, construction, production, and compliance sides of the Cannabis Industry. We look forward to providing more real-time updates about our growing team and our achievements through our News & Blog pages."
CannaGrow Holdings, Inc., the Liaison and Representative for NuGro Industries, will continue in its capacity of providing oversight as the Facilities Manager, working with the State/County Agencies and Category One Botanicals, LLC, the Licensed Grower for the facilities. The completion of this project will now provide the company the basis to begin generating revenues from Licensed Growers subleasing the Turnkey facilities being built to the specifications of CannaGrow COO, Dr. John P. Janovec, and Consultant, Jason Wells. CannaGrow has already received numerous inquiries from additional perspective tenants and is also exploring additional business ventures within this industry that could further enhance shareholder value.
The site plan, grading plan, and phasing plan that was submitted by NuGro Industries, the landowner and developer, can be viewed on our website at: http://cannagrowholdings.com.
About CannaGrow Holdings, Inc.:
CannaGrow Holdings, Inc. has entered the Medical/Recreational Cannabis Industry as a Lessor, Liaison, and Consultant to licensed Growers providing them with turnkey Growing Facilities in the State of Colorado. The Company intends to expand this business model within this industry as business opportunities evolve whereby providing for the highest return to its shareholders.
CannaGrow Holdings, Inc. does not and will not, until such time as Federal law allows, grow, harvest, distribute or sell marijuana or any substance that violate the laws of the United States of America.
CannaGrow Holdings, Inc. encourages the public to read the above information in conjunction with its year-end statement for December 31, 2015, and the quarterly statements filed in calendar year 2016, at www.otcmarkets.com.
The information contained in this press release may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements usually contain the words "may," "could," "possibly," "feel," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "expect," or similar expressions that involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include the Company's uncertain profitability, need for significant capital, uncertainty concerning market acceptance of its services, competition, limited service facilities, dependence on technological developments and protection of its intellectual property. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those discussed herein.
CONTACT:
CannaGrow Holdings, Inc.
Delmar Janovec
Investor Relations
info@cannagrowholdings.com
http://cannagrowholdings.com/
Regulatory News:
The Board of Directors (the "Board") of EMAS Offshore Limited (OSE:EMAS) (the "Company", together with its subsidiaries, the "Group") refers to the announcement released by Perisai Petroleum Teknologi Berhad, which the Company owns an equity stake of 11.5% ("PPTB"), on 18 October 2016 on Bursa Malaysia, as well as the announcement released by Perisai Capital (L) Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PPTB on 18 October 2016 on SGXNET (collectively, the "Perisai Announcements"). The Perisai Announcements are available in Appendix 1 of this Announcement.
The Company is monitoring the situation and assessing the impact on the Group. Further announcements will be made in due course as and when appropriate.
Shareholders and potential investors should exercise caution when trading in the Company's shares in relation to this Announcement. When in doubt as to the action they should take, shareholders and potential investors should consult their financial, tax or other advisers.
By Order of the Board
Shannon Ong Company Secretary 19 October 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/20161019005637/en/
Contacts:
Mr. Jason Goh
Chief Financial Officer
Email: investor_relations@emasoffshore-cnp.com
Address: 15 Hoe Chiang Road, #28-01, Tower Fifteen, Singapore 089316
Tel: (65) 6349 8535
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Eloro Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: ELO)(FRANKFURT: P2Q) ("Eloro") is pleased to announce that it has completed the Phase I exploration program recommended in the recently filed National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report on the La Victoria Gold/Silver Property (the "Property") in Huandoval District, Pallasca Province, Ancash Department, Peru authored by Mr. Luc Pigeon, M.Sc., P.Geo. (see press release September 7, 2016). Phase I included geological mapping and sampling, geophysical surveys, data processing, permit applications, and accessibility improvements for the Phase II drill program. The Phase II diamond drilling, which will total up to 3,000m, will focus on targets at the San Markito and Rufina Mineralized Zones.
Tom Larsen, President and CEO of Eloro commented: "We expect the Phase II diamond drilling program to start late in Q4 of this year. Dr. Bill Pearson, P.Geo., Chief Technical Advisor for Eloro and I recently completed a site visit to the Property. Preparations are well advanced for the drill program which will commence once final permitting is received. Our newly appointed in-country General Manager, Luc Pigeon, P.Geo., has organized a strong team to support the exploration work based from Huandoval, a small town near the southwest end of the La Victoria claim group. Luc, who has more than ten years experience working in Peru, has worked closely with the local community in establishing this base and building good local support for our program."
Dr. Bill Pearson added: "Our initial program of geological mapping, sampling and geophysical (IP) surveys greatly increased our understanding of the potential of the Property and outlined a number of follow-up targets. In advance of the drilling, we are starting the second phase of our geological mapping and sampling program led by Dr. Osvaldo Arce. This work will concentrate on the 3-plus km potential strike length of the San Markito-Victoria silver-gold mineralized breccia zones which have had very limited previous exploration. The new road being constructed by the Peruvian government that opens up the north-eastern portion of the Victoria concession into the San Felipe II concession to the east (see Figure 1) will greatly facilitate this work. In addition, we will be completing a detailed soil geochemical survey of Rufina North to better define a potential heap-leachable gold target near a strong IP anomaly outlined in our survey."
Geology and Mineralization
The Property, which covers approximately 45 square kilometres (Figure 1) is located within a prolific epithermal gold deposit belt that spans from Cajamarca to Ancash and that includes such deposits as Yanacocha, Lagunas Norte, La Arena and Pierina. The La Arena and the Santa Rosa open pit mines are respectively located 50km and 25km northwest of the Property.
Gold-silver mineralization on the La Victoria property is spatially and structurally associated with a series of dioritic to granodioritic Victoria intrusives that intrude sandstone and shale of the Chicama Formation. The style of mineralization is typical of low sulphidation epithermal deposits. Figure 2 is an analytical signal magnetic map developed from reprocessing of 2011 data, which shows the widespread occurrence of interpreted intrusions and principal gold (Ag) + silver (Ag) showings and occurrences. Each potential intrusion is considered prospective, warranting followup work. The areas of the magnetic anomalies tend to be recessively weathered covered by Quaternary colluvium and alluvium suggesting that the intrusives are likely altered. The location of the new road being constructed in the northeastern part of the property which substantially improves access, is also shown.
Four principal mineralized zones have been identified on the Property: San Markito, Rufina, Victoria and Victoria South with the first two being the most advanced targets. Limited sampling to date has indicated the presence of high grade mineralization in each of these mineralized areas but more systematic sampling and diamond drilling is required to assess the potential of these targets.
At San Markito, the northwest-trending mineralized zone extends for at least 1300m along strike and is up to 400m wide with the bulk of mineralization located within silicified sedimentary rocks near the contact with intrusive rocks. Results from previous sampling returned significant values up to 2.27 g/t Au and 1814 g/t Ag with enriched values of Pb up to 16.82% and arsenic and antimony greater than 1% analytical limit. Initial planned drilling will focus on testing this mineralized zone along strike and vertically.
At Rufina five vein sets of 20m to 70m in width have been identified in the western part of the mineralized zone. Vein sets are composed of iron oxide-quartz-arsenopyrite veins, in veinlet swarms, stockworks, and breccia zones. They are well developed in intrusive rocks as well as underlying rocks of the Chicama Fm. Three surface samples from the mineralized zone averaged 8.8 g/t gold and 23.8 g/t silver, while one 50cm chip sample taken from an artisanal adit returned 15.1 g/t gold, 136.5 g/t silver, with 1.61% lead and 3.75% zinc. In the northern part of Rufina at higher elevations, the mineralized rocks are oxidized and have argillic alteration suggesting potential for heap-leachable gold mineralization. The recently completed IP survey shows that the high resistance diorite (the main mineralized lithology present on the Rufina zone) is concentrated near the surface in this area and is underlain by conductive and chargeable sedimentary rocks; this target, known as Rufina North, will be tested in the planned drill program.
Victoria and Victoria South are earlier stage targets but which have similar geological settings to San Markito and Rufina. Victoria is on the San Markito structure approximately 500m to the east. Samples there have returned values to 4.3 g/t Au and 927 g/t Ag. Copper concentrations are elevated in most samples with values reaching up to 4.29% Cu. Sampling at one showing at Victoria South returned 8.4 g/t Au over 1.2m.
For additional technical information on the La Victoria Project, the reader is referred to the NI 43-101 Technical Report on the La Victoria Au-Ag Property, Ancash, Peru filed under Eloro's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).
About Eloro Resources Ltd.
Eloro is an exploration and mine development company which recently acquired a 100% undivided interest in the La Victoria property, located in the prolific North-Central Mineral Belt of Peru. The La Victoria Property covers 45 square kilometres and is within 50 kilometres of several large low-cost producing gold mines, with three producers visible from the Property. Infrastructure in the area is good with access to road, water and electricity and is located at an altitude that ranges from 3,100 m to 4,200 m above sea level. Eloro also holds a portfolio of gold and base-metal properties in northern and western Quebec.
Information in this news release may contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward-looking information express, as at the date of this news release, the Corporation's plans, estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations, or beliefs as to future events or results and are believed to be reasonable based on information currently available to the Corporation. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
Neither the 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.
Jim Steel MBA, P.Geo., a Qualified Person in the context of NI 43-101 has reviewed and approved the technical content of this news release.
To view Figure 1 and Figure 2, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/elo1019figures.pdf.
Contacts:
Eloro Resources Ltd.
Thomas Larsen
President and C.E.O.
(416) 868-9168
(416) 361-1333 (FAX)
Eloro Resources Ltd.
Jorge Estepa
Vice-President
(416) 868-9168
(416) 361-1333 (FAX)
www.elororesources.com
ABU DHABI and DUBAI, UAE, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
The proprietary platform draws expertise from across DarkMatter to produce this powerful tool for the assessment and prediction of cyber risk
DarkMatter, an international cyber security firm headquartered in the UAE, announces the introduction of its Cyber Resilience Platform, a first-of-its-kind city-wide dashboard that helps visualise the readiness of critical entities against cyber threats.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161019/430287 )
The platform succinctly demonstrates the cascading effect of cyber breach on separate, yet interconnected critical entities in a smart city environment, allowing for the first time, a contextualisation of the impact of a cyber breach on entities individually as well as collectively.
The Cyber Resilience Platform allows city authorities to predict and react timeously to cyber threats, with the powerful tool acting as a playbook for a city to be able to see how its critical entities are working individually, and as part of a wider interconnected, smart environment.
The holistic platform builds on DarkMatter's outlook to add cyber resilience end-to-end in a digital environment and is an extension of DarkMatter's Cyber Security Life-Cycle outlook, which incorporates a four-stage approach to cyber security involving planning, detection, protection and recovery.
Using sensors, interconnected services and decision-making algorithms to help entities predict, monitor and manage cyber incidents in near real-time, the platform is also scalable, and transferable so entities of any size, across multiple sectors that can benefit from its predictive capabilities.
Commenting on the introduction of the Cyber Resilience Platform, Faisal Al Bannai, CEO of DarkMatter said, "This platform represents DarkMatter's ability to draw expertise from across the organisation and produce tools that assess and predict the level of cyber risk in order for entities to pro-actively act in defence of their digital assets within an interconnected environment."
Faisal Al Bannai continued, "Our Cyber Resilience Platform is a KPI-focused, operations-oriented tool, which for the first time looks to bridge the gap between the activities of critical entities and the state of their security. We believe this platform will gain significant traction not just from federal and municipal entities, but for all organisations operating in highly digitised, connected eco-systems where cyber vulnerabilities have knock-on effects."
The platform's output from analysing resilience is used to monitor the actual status of systems, so it becomes a tool that produces actionable intelligence rather than offering just theoretical scenarios. The pace of digital transformation, and the instrumented, intelligent, and interconnected nature of modern digital networks means a more interactive and all-inclusive approach to assessing cyber resilience is required, which is what the platform delivers.
Harshul Joshi, Senior Vice President and the Chief Architect of the Cyber Resilience Platform said, "Our platform is not just another box-ticking exercise. It offers real and actionable information to allow connected entities to better protect themselves and mitigate against cyber attack individually as well as collectively. I like to view our platform as working like a pain detector in the human body, which draws attention to where a problem may exist, and triggers a series of actions to correct the problem. We are looking to add immunity to digitisation and better equip entities to be able to guard against cyber threats."
To see the Cyber Resilience Model demonstrated live, please visit the DarkMatter stand at booth number Z-C30, Za'abeel Hall, GITEX Technology Week, 16-20 October 2016, Dubai World Trade Centre.
About DarkMatter
DarkMatter is transforming the cyber security landscape. Headquartered in the UAE and operating globally, we're the region's first and only fully integrated digital defence and cyber security consultancy and implementation firm. Our elite team of global experts deliver advanced, next-generation solutions to governments and enterprises across the cyber security spectrum.
We help clients simplify the enormous complexity of today's ever-evolving cyber threats. Our vision is to secure the future by protecting its technologies
Our products extend to Secure Communications, Public Key Infrastructure, Innovation & Research, and Big Data & Analytics.
Our services extend to Governance, Risk & Compliance, Cyber Network Defence,
Managed Security Services, Infrastructure & System Integration, Test & Validation Labs, and Smart Solutions.
For further details, visit http://www.darkmatter.ae
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.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - October 19, 2016) - Alternative IQ today announced the winners of the 9th Annual Canadian Hedge Fund Awards, the highest honour in Canada's hedge fund industry. The awards were presented yesterday evening at a Gala Dinner at One King West Hotel in Toronto with over 140 guests in attendance. Peter Hayes, National Director, Alternative Investments, KPMG LLP, was Master of Ceremonies for the event.
The Gala Dinner was preceded by a hedge fund conference in the afternoon at which the delegates heard a presentation by Brooke Biscoe, Vice President, Business Development, Fundata Canada, on the new Risk Rating Regime for Canada's hedge funds. The conference also included two panel discussions. The first panel of four seasoned IIROC investment advisors discussed Canadian high net worth investors' attitudes and intentions about investing in hedge funds. The second panel included senior executives from some of Canada's largest and most successful hedge funds who shared their views on the trends in Canada's hedge fund industry and how the industry will grow going forward.
The Canadian Hedge Fund Awards help investors identify the most exceptional hedge funds of the year, recognizing winners in 4 categories as well as the Overall Best 2016 Canadian Hedge Fund. A total of 195 Canadian hedge funds participated in the 2016 CHFA program. The awards are based solely on quantitative performance data to June 30th, with Fundata managing the collection and tabulation of the data to determine the winners. There is no nomination process or subjective assessment in identifying the winners. Additional awards, based on votes from hedge fund companies, recognize top service providers to the industry.
The 2016 Canadian Hedge Fund Award winners are:
Overall Best 2016 Canadian Hedge Fund:
(based on best combined 10 year annualized return and Sharpe ratio).
Place Fund Name Category Return Sharpe Ratio 1st PH&N Absolute Return Fund Global Macro/ManagedFutures/Multi-Strategy 15.45 1.61 2nd King & Victoria Fund LP Equity Focused 15.28 1.03 3rd Venator Founders Fund Equity Focused 13.61 0.82
Equity Focused Category
Best 1 Year Return: 1st Primevestfund 33.94 2nd Teraz Fund 31.97 3rd Canoe Energy Alpha Fund LP 20.82 Best 5 Year Return: 1st ROMC Fund 17.18 2nd DKAM Capital Ideas Fund 14.33 3rd Fiera Long Short Equity Fund 14.18 Best 5 Year Sharpe Ratio: 1st Fiera Long Short Equity Fund 1.75 2nd Goodwood Milford Fund 1.43 3rd ROMC Fund 1.37
Credit Focused Category:
Best 1 Year Return: 1st Algonquin Debt Strategies Fund LP 19.10 2nd Fiera Capital Income Opportunities Fund 16.25 3rd YTM Capital Credit Opportunities Fund 16.17 Best 5 Year Return: 1st Stornoway Recovery Fund LP 13.05 2nd Venator Income Fund 8.98 3rd RP Debt Opportunities Fund 7.87 Best 5 Year Sharpe Ratio: 1st RP Debt Opportunities Fund 2.42 2nd RP Fixed Income Plus Marret Investment Grade Hedged Strategies 2.14 3rd Fund 1.51
Market Neutral Category:
Best 1 Year Return: 1st CC&L Q Market Neutral FundGroup 20.29 2nd WARATAH Energy 15.08 3rd EHP Guardian Fund 14.02 Best 5 Year Return: 1st CC&L Market Neutral Fund 15.42 2nd CC&L Q Market Neutral Fund Group 14.57 3rd Curvature LP 8.27 Best 5 Year Sharpe Ratio: 1st Curvature LP 1.92 2nd Ross Smith Capital Investment Fund 1.83 3rd CC&L Market Neutral Fund 1.50
Global Macro/Managed Futures/Multi-Strategy Category:
Best 1 Year Return: 1st J. Zechner Associates Inc. Global HedgedGrowth Fund 33.02 2nd Claret Global Multi Asset LP 24.69 3rd Stratigis Uber Strategies Fund LP 23.07 Best 5 Year Return: 1st JM Catalyst Fund 11.61 2nd PH&N Absolute Return Fund J. Zechner Associates Inc. Global Hedged Growth 10.32 3rd Fund 8.32 Best 5 Year Sharpe Ratio: 1st JM Catalyst Fund 2.45 2nd PH&N Absolute Return Fund 1.23 3rd Dynamic Income Opportunities Fund 0.96
Awards were also presented to those service providers that Canadian hedge fund managers voted most valuable to them: SGGG Fund Services received the award for top Canadian Hedge Fund Administrator, the top Canadian Prime Broker award went to CIBC Capital Markets, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP was awarded top Canadian Law Firm and KPMG LLP was voted the top Canadian Accounting Firm.
The 2016 Canadian Hedge Fund Awards program would not be possible without the generous support of its Sponsors:
Principal Sponsors: Fundata Canada Ltd. and KPMG LLP
Presenting Table Sponsors: CommonWealth Fund Services and SGGG Fund Services,
Presenting Sponsors: McMillan LLP and BMO Capital Markets, and
Associate Sponsors: Independent Review Inc., Alliance Sales and Marketing, Benefits and Pensions Monitor, Newsfile, EXT Marketing, and TD Securities.
For more information about the annual CHFA program, the 2016 Top Contenders and the full directory of hedge funds participating in the 2016 Canadian Hedge Fund program, go to: www.alternativeiq.com or call:
Julie Makepeace
Managing Director, Alternative IQ and President, Alliance Sales and Marketing, Inc.
416-906-3782
About Alternative IQ: Alternative IQ is dedicated to celebrating, supporting and expanding Canada's Hedge Fund Industry and produces the annual Canadian Hedge Fund Awards, held in Toronto each October (performance as at June 30th), the 'Winners' Showcase' events which present Managers of the award-winning hedge funds to investors, and various other programs and publications serving the hedge fund industry in Canada. Alternative IQ is a division of Alliance Sales and Marketing, Inc.
About the Annual Canadian Hedge Fund Awards: The Annual Canadian Hedge Fund Awards were first held in 2008 and have a two-fold objective: First, to celebrate the talent and accomplishments of Canada's hedge fund industry, and second, to draw attention to Canada's hedge funds by raising the awareness of that expertise in the media and among the wider investment community.
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Kane Biotech Inc. (TSX VENTURE: KNE) (the "Company" or "Kane Biotech") is pleased to announce the launch of new packaging and branding for StrixNB.
StrixNB is a premium line of oral health products designed to fight plaque and tartar. Available exclusively in veterinary clinics, it was brought to market in 2014 and has quickly gained a reputation as being safe and effective amongst both veterinarians and pet owners. It's patent-pending technology works against dental associated bacteria by breaking through dental biofilm, leaving bacteria exposed for eradication.
"Kane Biotech is excited to bring to market a current, updated look to our premium line of StrixNB oral health products", says Mark Ahrens-Townsend, President and CEO. "We know we have an exceptional product - third party studies have repeatedly demonstrated its efficacy and safety. The new look solidifies our place at the top of the oral health market for companion pets."
The new StrixNB packaging was launched this week at the CanWest Veterinary Conference in Banff, Alberta. "It's already received positive feedback from vets who've had a chance to review it," says Grant Humphrey, VP Sales, "and vets appreciate that we've achieved the LRVHP seal of approval from Health Canada."
Periodontal disease is the number one disease in dogs and cats, creating a pet oral care market in the United States that in 2015 was estimated at $775 million and is growing at 33% annually.
For more information about StrixNB please contact Grant Humphrey, VP Sales at ghumphrey@kanebiotech.com. As well please visit the new StrixNB website at www.strixNB.com.
About Kane Biotech Inc.
Kane Biotech is a biotechnology company engaged in the research, development and commercialization of technologies and products that prevent and remove microbial biofilms. Biofilms develop when bacteria and other microorganisms form a protective matrix that acts as a shield against attack. When in a biofilm, bacteria become highly resistant to antibiotics, antimicrobials, biocides, disinfectants, high temperatures and host immune responses. This resiliency contributes to numerous human and animal health related problems such as wound care infections, recurrent urinary tract infections, tooth decay, medical device associated and hospital-acquired infections, and foodborne bacterial infections. According to the United States National Institutes of Health biofilms are estimated to be responsible for 80% of all human bacterial infections and cost individuals, industry, governments and hospitals billions of dollars each year. As such, there is significant interest in safe and effective products that can combat the biofilm problem.
Kane Biotech uses patent protected technologies based on molecular mechanisms of biofilm formation and methods for finding compounds that inhibit or disrupt biofilms. The Corporation has evidence that these technologies have the potential to significantly improve the ability to prevent and/or destroy biofilms in several medical and industrial applications.
Kane Biotech has a portfolio of biotechnologies, intellectual property (patents, patents pending and trademarks) and products developed by the Corporation's own biofilm research expertise and acquired from leading research institutions. StrixNB, DispersinB, Aledex, bluestem, AloSera, coactiv+ and Kane are trademarks of Kane Biotech Inc. The Corporation is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "KNE".
The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information
Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian provincial securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, our objectives, goals, targets, strategies, intentions, plans, beliefs, estimates and outlook, including, without limitation, our anticipated future operating results, and can, in some cases, be identified by the use of words such as "believe," "anticipate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "will," "may" and other similar expressions. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances are forward-looking statements.
These statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these expectations include, among other things: the Corporation's early stage of development, lack of product revenues and history of operating losses, uncertainties related to clinical trials and product development, rapid technological change, uncertainties related to forecasts, competition, potential product liability, additional financing requirements and access to capital, unproven markets, supply of raw materials, income tax matters, management of growth, partnerships for development and commercialization of technology, effects of insurers' willingness to pay for products, system failures, dependence on key personnel, foreign currency risk, risks related to regulatory matters and risks related to intellectual property and other risks detailed from time to time in the Corporation's filings with Canadian securities regulatory authorities, as well as the Corporation's ability to anticipate and manage the risks associated with the foregoing. The Corporation cautions that the foregoing list of important factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive. When relying on the Corporation's forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to the Corporation's, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events.
These risks and uncertainties should be considered carefully and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, the Corporation cannot provide assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. The Corporation undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement.
Contacts:
Kane Biotech Inc.
Mark Ahrens-Townsend
President & CEO
204-477-7592
204-474-7552 (FAX)
ir@kanebiotech.com
www.kanebiotech.com
VAL-D'OR, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Abitibi Royalties Inc. (TSX VENTURE: RZZ) ("Abitibi Royalties" or the "Company") announces that Yamana Gold Inc. ("Yamana") has recently disclosed that its wholly owned subsidiary, Brio Gold Inc. ("Brio Gold"), has filed a preliminary prospectus with the securities regulatory authorities in each of the provinces and territories of Canada in connection with qualifying a secondary offering (the "Offering") of Brio Gold common shares held by Yamana, which will be transferred to purchasers through and subject to the exercise of purchase rights (the "Purchase Rights"). Yamana intends to distribute the Purchase Rights to its shareholders as a dividend in-kind. The Purchase Rights shall provide shareholders with an opportunity to purchase from Yamana a portion of its Brio Shares or the option of selling their Purchase Rights. Abitibi Royalties owns 3,549,695 shares in Yamana and is expected to receive Purchase Rights in connection with the Offering. Abitibi Royalties will inform its shareholders of the Company's decision to participate in the Offering or sell its Purchase Rights once more information becomes available.
About Abitibi Royalties
Abitibi Royalties holds a 3% NSR on the Odyssey North discovery, Jeffrey Zone and the eastern portion of the Barnat Extension, located inside the Malartic CHL property and a 2% NSR on portions of the Gouldie and Charlie zones all at the Canadian Malartic mine near Val-d'Or, Quebec. In addition, the Company is building a portfolio of royalties on early stage properties near producing mines. The Company owns common shares in Yamana Gold and Agnico Eagle Mines (market value), plus cash (as of June 30, 2016) of approximately CDN$47.2 million. The Company is debt free.
Golden Valley Mines Ltd. and Rob McEwen hold approximately 49.4% and 12.3% interest in Abitibi Royalties, respectively.
Forward-Looking Statements:
This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "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 or realities may differ materially from those in 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 law, 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.
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.
Contacts:
Abitibi Royalties Inc.
Shanda Kilborn
Director, Corporate Development
1-888-392-3857
info@abitibiroyalties.com
NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Electrum Global Holdings L.P. (the "Offeror") announces that it participated in the rights offering of Tintina Resources Inc. (the "issuer") which closed on October 18, 2016 (the "Closing") pursuant to which the Offeror acquired 19,511,635 common shares in the capital of the issuer (the "Common Shares") at a price of CAD$0.06 per Common Share or CAD$1,170,698.10 in the aggregate.
As a result of the Closing, the Offeror holds 45,971,163 Common Shares and, together with its affiliate Electrum Strategic Metals II LLC, 54,632,580 Common Shares, representing 16.9% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares. This represents an increase from the 35,120,945 Common Shares representing 15.8% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares held by the Offeror and its affiliate prior to the Closing, and a percentage decrease from the 24.7% that such Common Shares represented at the time of the Offeror's previous report dated December 31, 2012.
The Common Shares referred to above were acquired for investment purposes and the Offeror and/or one or more of its affiliates may, depending on market and other conditions, increase or decrease its beneficial ownership of Common Shares or other securities of the issuer whether in the open market, by privately negotiated agreement or otherwise.
The Offeror is an "accredited investor" (as such term is defined in National Instrument 45-106 - Prospectus Exemptions adopted by the Canadian Securities Administrators ("NI 45-106")) because the Offeror is a "person" (as such term is defined in NI 45-106) in respect of which all of the owners of interests, direct, indirect or beneficial, except the voting securities required by law to be owned by directors, are persons that are "accredited investors".
The issuer's mailing address is located at P.O. Box 48736 Bentall, Vancouver, British Columbia V7X 1A6. The Offeror is located at 700 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10065, USA. A copy of the early warning report to which this news release relates can be obtained from Michael Williams (646-365-1600) or on the SEDAR profile of the issuer at www.sedar.com.
Contacts:
Michael Williams
646-365-1600
NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Terrestrial Energy announces that it has appointed Fred Buckman to its International Advisory Board. Fred Buckman is a senior executive with over thirty-five years of extensive experience in electric and gas utility operation and management, as well as engineering and construction management, project development, company startup and private equity. Dr. Buckman was formerly the President and Chief Executive Officer of Shaw Group (now Chicago Bridge & Iron), one of the world's leading architect-engineering firms for the nuclear power industry and the broader power industry. Dr. Buckman currently serves on the board of directors of numerous companies, including General Fusion of Canada.
Fred Buckman's career spans four decades and a long list of executive positions and accomplishments. Dr. Buckman's past positions include the following: President of Power Group of Shaw Group Inc. During his tenure, he oversaw Shaw's premier capabilities in the fossil and nuclear power industry; Managing Partner of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., where he was responsible for the utility sector; In 1999, he founded and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Trans-Elect Development Company Inc., which became the first independent transmission company in North America. He continues to serve as Chairman; President and Chief Executive Officer of Powerlink Transmission Company, a joint venture between Trans-Elect and Pacific Gas and Electric; Chief Executive Officer and President of PacifiCorp from 1994 to 1998, where he transformed the company from a regional utility to a significant national and international energy company. PacifiCorp was sold to MidAmerican Energy in 2005 for $5.2 billion; President and Chief Executive Officer of Consumers Energy Co., (also known as Consumers Power Company), utility subsidiary of CMS Energy, from 1988 to 1994.
Dr. Buckman continues to hold several directorships of leading energy and energy services companies, including: Smart Wires (a transmission technology company), Solomon Corporation, General Fusion and Contract Land Staff. He is also on the Board of StanCorp Financial, a subsidiary of Meiji Yasuda.
Dr. Buckman is the Adjunct Professor of Nuclear Engineering at University of Michigan. He completed Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program in 1982. He received his Bachelor of Science Engineering from University of Michigan. He received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Terrestrial Energy's Chief Executive Simon Irish made the following comment regarding Dr. Buckman's appointment: "Dr. Buckman's knowledge and expertise are of great relevance to our mission for first deployment of IMSR power plants in the 2020s. His involvement adds further and important capabilities to Terrestrial Energy's Advisory Board, whose current members include those who have held many senior public and private sector positions such as NRC Commissioner, President of Bechtel, and Head of the US EPA."
About Terrestrial Energy
Terrestrial Energy is developing a next-generation nuclear reactor based on its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) technology. The IMSR represents true innovation in safety, cost and functionality. It will offer safe and reliable power solutions for electricity production and energy for industrial process heat generation. These together extend the applicability of nuclear energy far beyond its current footprint. With this profile, the IMSR is capable of driving the rapid global decarbonization of the primary energy system by displacing fossil fuel combustion across a broad front. It is complementary to renewable power sources and ideal for distributed power systems on existing grids. Using an innovative design and proven Molten Salt Reactor technology, the IMSR can be brought to global markets in the 2020s. Terrestrial Energy USA Ltd is an affiliate company that is seeking to develop IMSR technology for US market deployment.
Social Media
Facebook: TerrestrialMSRTwitter: TerrestrialMSRYouTube: Terrestrial EnergyLinkedIn: TerrestrialEnergyGoogle+: TerrestrialEnergy
Contacts:
Terrestrial Energy Inc.
Grant Draper
(415) 745-0254
grant@capstreamx.com
Terrestrial Energy Inc.
Brian Smith
(416) 822-3130
bsmith@the-lanes.ca
info@terrestrialenergy.com
www.terrestrialenergy.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Cannabix Technologies Inc. (CSE: BLO)(CSE: BLO.CN)(OTC PINK: BLOZF) (the "Company") provides an update on the development of its FAIMS (high-field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry) based instrument for detection of trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol ("THC") from exhaled breath at the roadside and in the workplace. The Company is pleased to report that it has developed a "Beta 2.0" (Cannabix Marijuana Breathalyzer) device with major advances in the design and size of the device, including: greater sensitivity, improved performance by the square waveform generator. The current design includes features to allow for the addition of a rechargeable battery and touch screen and the device is approximately 10 times smaller than the Beta 1.0 device announced in July. Preliminary lab tests of the FAIMS device coupled with quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometry have shown lower levels of detection for THC standards than were achieved in past testing.
Scientific Testing for the FAIMS Cannabix Marijuana Breathalyzer
Cannabix scientists are formulating a scientific protocol to conduct live THC breath testing using the Beta 2.0 Cannabix Marijuana Breathalyzer in the coming weeks. The scientific testing will likely be conducted in Vancouver BC, Canada, where medical marijuana users will be engaged to determine the accuracy of the Beta 2.0 Cannabix Marijuana Breathalyzer to detect both smoked and edible consumption of marijuana in human breath. The results of the scientific tests will be used to prepare submissions for approval of the Cannabix Marijuana Breathalyzer as a court-approved device by the Minister of Justice in Canada and the National Highway and Safety Authority in the United States.
Kal Malhi, President of Cannabix stated, "Several states in the U.S. are voting to legalize recreational marijuana on November 8, 2016 and the need for law enforcement to have a tool to gather scientific evidence of marijuana impairment in drivers is becoming an urgent need. Cannabix Technologies has been diligently working on our Cannabix Marijuana Breathalyzer for approximately two years and we are excited to be at the advanced stage and preparing a device for law enforcement and employers to begin testing. We are making excellent progress with the objective of having an accurate and court accepted tool in the coming months."
About Cannabix Technologies Inc.
Cannabix Technologies Inc. is a leader in marijuana breathalyzer development for law enforcement and the workplace. Cannabix has established breath testing technologies in the pursuit of bringing durable, portable hand-held tools to market to enhance detection of marijuana impaired driving offences on roads at a time when marijuana is becoming legal in many global jurisdictions. Cannabix is working to develop drug-testing devices that will detect THC- the psychoactive component of marijuana that causes intoxication- using breath samples. In particular, Cannabix is focused on developing breath testing devices for detection of recent use of THC, in contrast to urine testing for THC metabolite that requires an invasive collection and reflects use days or even weeks earlier. The devices will also be useful for other practical applications such as testing employees in the workplace where intoxication by THC can be hazardous.
We seek Safe Harbor.
On behalf of the Board of Directors
Rav Mlait, CEO, Cannabix Technologies Inc.
The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking information that involves various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information can include without limitation statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance of the Company, such as final development of a commercial or prototype product(s), successful trial or pilot of company technologies, no assurance that commercial sales of any kind actually materialize; no assurance the Company will have sufficient funds to complete product development. There are numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and the Company's plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information, including: (i) adverse market conditions; (ii) risks regarding protection of proprietary technology; (iii) the ability of the Company to complete financings; (v) the ability of the Company to develop and market its future product; and (vi) risks regarding government regulation, managing and maintaining growth, the effect of adverse publicity, litigation, competition and other factors which may be identified from time to time in the Company's public announcements and filings. There is no assurance that the marijuana breathalyzer business will provide any benefit to the Company, and no assurance that any proposed new products will be built or proceed. There is no assurance that existing "patent pending" technologies licensed by the Company will receive patent status by regulatory authorities. The Company is not currently selling commercial breathalyzers. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. Except as required by law, the Company does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.
Contacts:
Cannabix Technologies Inc.
Rav Mlait
CEO
604-551-7831
info@cannabixtechnologies.com
www.cannabixtechnologies.com
Part of Center for Open Source Research Innovation, Belfast-based group will analyze open source security issues and attack patterns
Black Duck, a global leader in automated solutions for securing and managing open source software, today announced the formation of its Belfast-based Open Source Security Research Group during an event at Invest Northern Ireland's headquarters in Belfast.
Black Duck worked closely with Invest NI on the initiative, and Black Duck said it expects to add almost 60 jobs in Northern Ireland over the next four years.
The Northern Ireland group is a component of Black Duck's global Center for Open Source Research and Innovation (COSRI).
COSRI is based at Black Duck's Massachusetts headquarters. The Northern Ireland group will play a major role in COSRI's research work by analyzing open source security issues and attack patterns, and by providing customers with actionable information on vulnerabilities, corrective actions to reduce risk and strategies for effective, secure use of open source.
Black Duck CEO Lou Shipley attended the event and said "Since creating COSRI earlier this year, we have been increasing our strategic investments in open source security research and innovation worldwide. Northern Ireland has the depth of security research talent to meet many of our needs in the near term and in the future.
"Invest NI very quickly proved to us that Northern Ireland had both the high-quality tech professionals to meet our open source security research needs and an impressive array of cybersecurity-focused businesses that will continue to attract more attractive candidates to the region. Invest NI's guidance and support played a vital role in making this engagement happen. They will be a key strategic ally as we scale our research activities, grow our business and support Black Duck customers in the UK and Europe," said Shipley.
Simon Hamilton, Northern Ireland's Minister for the Economy, praised Black Duck's investment and said "Our local software industry is fueled by a pool of high-quality software engineers working in a range of leading technology disciplines. In recent years Northern Ireland has made significant investments in cybersecurity research and in growing computer science student numbers at both Queen's and Ulster universities. We also have a growing cluster of world-class companies involved in cybersecurity, making Northern Ireland a very attractive location for projects of this type."
Use of open source software is ubiquitous worldwide and it is an essential component in application development today, often comprising 50 percent of the code in an application. The rapid growth in open source usage has created significant security and management challenges.
Shipley noted that open source use will continue to grow because of its economic, productivity and innovation benefits. "Our intent is to support that growth by helping organizations use more open source more securely."
About Black Duck
Organizations worldwide use Black Duck's industry-leading products to automate the process of securing and managing open source software, eliminating the pain related to security vulnerabilities, compliance and operational risk. Black Duck is headquartered in Burlington, MA, and has offices in San Jose, CA, London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing. For more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161019005182/en/
Contacts:
Black Duck
Brian Carter, 508-277-7570
Director of Strategic Communications
bcarter@blackducksoftware.com
or
PAN Communications
Michael O'Connell and Lisa Sorrentino
617-502-4300
blackduck@pancomm.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Radius Gold Inc. (TSX VENTURE: RDU) is pleased to announce the successful completion of a CSAMT survey and the generation of new drill targets at its Spring Peak Property, Nevada, which Radius has optioned from Kinetic Gold (for Option terms see news release - June 14, 2016).
Radius contracted Zonge International Inc. to complete a 13-line CSAMT geophysical survey at its Spring Peak Property. Several resistive geophysical anomalies have been identified that correlate with anomalous surface and drill hole geochemistry (Au, Ag, Hg, Sb, and As), identified structural zones, and quartz-adularia veining identified in historical drill holes.
Radius is an experienced explorer in hot spring environments, and management believes that the geological setting, geochemically anomalous sinter, and the nature of the geophysical resistivity anomalies below the sinter are positive features that merit further work.
The Spring Peak Property is located approximately 6 km southeast of the historical open pit mines at Aurora. At Spring Peak, a sinter terrace is exposed along a structure parallel to the Aurora-Borealis trend, and overlies altered volcaniclastic deposits and basement Cretaceous granites. The sinter terrace contains anomalous concentrations of Au, Ag, Hg, Sb, and As. Recent ash fall deposits cover much of the area, but frequent vein float with multi-ppm gold concentrations can be found across the Property. The area was drilled with shallow holes in the 1980s, the majority of which were vertical. The sinter terrace and structure that appear to control the anomalous values were never drill tested. Radius believes the Property has the potential to host subvertical high-grade gold veins similar those found within the Aurora-Borealis trend.
Previous exploration activities by Radius include due diligence sampling of sinter terraces and vein float on the Property, prospecting along the structure of interest, and a soil sampling survey (100m x 25m grid oriented orthogonal to the NE-SW targeted structure).
Radius is currently preparing a Plan of Operations for a drilling program, to be submitted to the United States Forest Service this fall. Radius plans to drill-test the Property once the Plan of Operations has been approved, anticipated for mid- to late-2017.
Other Properties
The Company continues to evaluate projects in various jurisdictions and with various commodities but with a focus on gold and silver in Nevada and Mexico.
Stock Option Grants
The Company also announces that it has granted to its directors, employees and consultants incentive stock options to purchase up to an aggregate of 1,640,000 common shares of the Company exercisable for ten years at a price of $0.15 per share. The Company will also cancel a total of 770,000 outstanding stock options.
Qualified Person
David Clark, M.Sc., P.Geo., is Radius's Qualified Person under the terms of National Instrument 43-101, "Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects" and has approved the technical information in this news release.
About Radius
Radius has been exploring for gold in Latin America for over a decade. The Company has a strong treasury and is looking for investment and project acquisition opportunities across the globe. Please call toll free 1-888-627-9378 or visit our web site (www.radiusgold.com) for more information.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Simon Ridgway, President and CEO
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements which include, without limitation, statements about the Company's plans for the Spring Peak Property; the Company's business strategy, plans and outlook; the merit of the Company's investments and properties; timelines; the future financial performance of the Company; expenditures; approvals and other matters. Often, but not always, these forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "estimate", "estimates", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "upgraded", "offset", "limited", "contained", "reflecting", "containing", "remaining", "to be", "periodically", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations.
Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and factors include, among others, the Company's plans for exploring the Spring Peak Property; changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; the Company or any joint venture partner not having the financial ability to meet its exploration and development goals; risks associated with the results of exploration and development activities, estimation of mineral resources and the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; unanticipated costs and expenses; and such other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's quarterly and annual filings with securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended.
Forward-looking statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to: that the Company's exploration activities at the Spring Peak Property will proceed as planned; that the Company's activities will be in accordance with its public statements and stated goals; that all required approvals will be obtained; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its investments or properties; and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
Contacts:
Radius Gold Inc.
Simon Ridgway
604-801-5432
Toll free 1-888-627-9378
604-662-8829 (FAX)
info@goldgroup.com
www.radiusgold.com
BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - The US Government claimed Tuesday that it has secured another trade enforcement victory for American aviation manufacturers and workers against China. United States Trade Representative Michael Froman announced that the United States has confirmed that China has ended discriminatory tax exemptions that had benefited certain types of aircraft produced in China. The United States challenged these tax exemptions at the World Trade Organization (WTO). China's policy exempted certain aircraft produced in China - generally those under 25 metric tons by weight, including general aviation, business jets, and regional aircraft -from a 17 percent value-added tax. But it imposed those taxes on imported aircraft, including products manufactured in the United States. This impacted producers of American-made aircraft as well as American parts producers who provide components to foreign-made aircraft. 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.
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Earth Alive Clean Technologies Inc. (CSE: EAC)(CSE: EAC.CN) ("Earth Alive" or the "Company"), a leading Canadian Clean-Tech company, developer and manufacturer of state-of-the-art microbial technology-based products for sustainable agriculture and mining, is pleased to announce that it has been formally invited to the 2016 Business and Biodiversity Forum on December 2-3 in Cancun, Mexico.
The 2016 Business and Biodiversity Forum welcomes Ministers from around the world, sector representatives, and world-renowned experts. Sustainability in the agriculture, forestry, fisheries and tourism sectors will be the focus of the meeting as they are the "biodiversity mainstreaming sectors" that will be highlighted throughout CBD COP13.
Furthermore, Earth Alive will participate in the CBD COP 13, which is the meeting of the highest governing body of the Convention on Biological Diversity. COP 13 will bring together representatives of 195 Countries, the European Union, intergovernmental organizations, businesses, civil society, indigenous peoples, local communities, and other key players in the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Approximately 10,000 participants will attend over the two-week period in order to negotiate new decisions that will lay out the path for the next 4-year period (2017-2020).
"It is an honour for Earth Alive to be invited to this prestigious event," stated David Gilmour, CEO of Earth Alive. "We are making a lot of headway into the Latin American and African agriculture markets, and this invitation is recognition of the solid difference that Earth Alive can make in the implementation of the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity".
Mr. Frederic Perron-Welch, Director of Sustainable Development for the company, further added that, "the agricultural sector focus at COP13 is particularly significant for us as it expresses recognition of the need for sustainable use of agricultural landscapes because of agriculture's sizeable impact on biodiversity. Achieving sustainability in the agricultural sector will require improving farm productivity, crop diversity, integrating positive incentives to increase biodiversity in agricultural production, and reducing pollution. By halting and reversing negative impacts on ecosystems, farmers can improve yields while responding to climate-related challenges while protecting nature."
Mr. Perron-Welch explained, "Our microbial technology, Soil Activator, can help farmers and agribusiness sustainably increase yields naturally. Soil Activator has been tried, tested, and proven effective in environmentally challenging conditions in North America, Latin America, and Africa. "
He concluded by indicating that "attendance at CBD COP13 in Cancun will facilitate global, high-level dissemination of the benefits of Earth Alive's Soil Activator technology particularly with global actors such as Ministers of the CBD Parties, international experts, heads of industry, and other relevant figures."
About the 2016 Business and Biodiversity Forum:
The 2016 Business and Biodiversity Forum will take place in parallel to the Ministerial High Level Segment preceding CBD COP 13. Its purpose is to facilitate private sector discourse and the sharing of perspectives on biodiversity conservation, including the economic analysis and logic necessary to support business decision-making processes, investment opportunities and financing conditions, as well as best practices for the mainstreaming of biodiversity in specific sectors, and other relevant topics.
For additional information, please visit: cop13.mx/en/business-and-biodiversity-forum-2016/
About Earth Alive Clean Technologies:
Earth Alive aims to be a key player in world markets of environmentally sustainable industrial solutions. The company works with the latest innovations in microbial technology to formulate and patent innovative products that can tackle the most difficult industrial challenges, once only reserved to environmentally harmful chemicals and additives. The company is focused on environmental sustainability in the agriculture industry, and 2) dust control for the mining industry.
For additional company information, please visit: www.earthalivect.com
The CSE has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Forward-Looking Information
Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" occur. Although Earth Alive believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Contacts:
For media information and interview requests:
Earth Alive Clean Technologies Inc.
Mr. David Gilmour
514-814-2899
dgilmour@earthalivect.com
www.earthalivect.com
For investor relations:
Mr. Frederick Chabot
438-863-7071
frederick@contactfinancial.com
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Commerce Department releases housing starts and building permits for September at 8:30 am ET Wednesday. Economists expect housing starts to have rebounded by 2.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.17 million units, compared to a drop of 5.8 percent to an annualized 1.14 million units in August. Ahead of these reports, the greenback traded mixed against its major opponents. While the greenback rose against the euro, it held steady against the rest of major counterparts. The greenback was worth 1.0968 against the euro, 103.41 against the yen, 0.9891 against the Swiss franc and 1.2287 against the pound as of 8:25 am ET. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Popular candy brand M&M's has introduced a new caramel chocolate candy flavor, which will be available on shelves from May 2017. The new candies will have a smooth caramel center covered with M&M's milk chocolate, coated in a colorful candy shell. Crispy, smooth and nutty categories with peanut, peanut butter, and milk chocolate flavors were the most popular M&M's. Now it adds soft and chewy category. The new candy is expected to be larger than the milk chocolate candies with a perfect smooth texture in every piece. The company said, it has used a brand new technology to create soft and chewy category partition for the caramel candies. According to reports, the new candy flavor will earn around $2.2 billion. The launch of the new flavor is in line with Mars Inc.'s plan of getting rid of all artificial colors in the next five years. The company has announced that it will remove artificial colors from all its chocolate, gum, confection, food and drink products. The change will be reflected in around 50 brands such as M&M, Skittles, Wrigley's gum, Snickers, and Twix. M&M has a history of 75 years and it has been a favorite candy of soldiers during the World war II. Tanya Berman, Brand Director, M&M'S Brand said, 'In our research, our fans were enthusiastic at the possibility of a Caramel variant and we can't wait for them to try the perfect balance of soft caramel and delicious M&M'S chocolate this spring.' 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.
CHICAGO, IL -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- T5 Data Centers (www.t5datacenters.com), innovators in providing state-of-the-art, customizable and highly reliable computing support environments, has named David Horowitz to head operations for T5@Chicago as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. In his new role, Horowitz will be responsible for promoting T5@Chicago as the newest data center in T5's portfolio and laying the foundation for future expansion in the Chicagoland market.
Horowitz brings more than 12 years of industry experience to the role of Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Horowitz has managed teams for both wholesale data center providers and data center commercial property specialists in the region. In his new role with T5, Horowitz will be responsible for developing go-to-market strategies for T5@Chicago and promoting T5's commitment to the greater Chicago market. He also will be responsible for building and managing the T5@Chicago team, managing client relationships, and negotiating agreements.
"David is the first hire for our new T5@Chicago facility and his industry background and expertise will provide a solid foundation for our Chicago team," said Aaron Wangenheim, COO for T5 Data Centers. "There is a real need for superior data center facilities in the region and with David's help we expect Chicago to become one of our strongest markets."
T5@Chicago is the company's eighth and newest data center operation; a 208,000 square-foot data center located in Elk Grove Village. T5@Chicago is already operational and partially occupied, having been recently acquired by T5. The data center went online last year and is a purpose-built facility with the same high-quality attributes as T5's existing data center portfolio. The building features a baseline Tier III infrastructure with an N+1 electrical and mechanical topology, secure private data halls available from 540kW to 9.0MW, and the ability to easily customize operational controls in each data hall to accommodate each customer's unique data center services requirements.
For more information about T5's data center services, visit www.t5datacenters.com.
About T5 Data Centers
T5 Data Centers (T5) is a leading national data center owner and operator, committed to delivering customizable, scalable data centers that provide an "always on" computing environment to power mission critical business applications. T5 Data Centers provides enterprise colocation data center services to organizations across North America using proven, best-in-class technology and techniques to design and develop facilities that deliver the lowest possible total cost of operations for its clients. T5 currently has business-critical data center facilities in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, Portland, Charlotte, and Chicago with new projects announced in New York, and Colorado. All of T5's data center projects are purpose-built facilities featuring robust design, redundant and reliable power and telecommunications, and have 24-hour staff to support mission-critical computing applications.
For more information, visit www.t5datacenters.com.
Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3069419
Contact:
Aaron Wangenheim
T5 Data Centers
(415) 292-7700
aaron@t5datacenters.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- SoundCloud, the world's largest music and audio platform, announced today the launch of its new consumer subscription service, SoundCloud Go in Canada. SoundCloud Go gives music fans an expanded catalogue of more than 135 million tracks with intuitive supporting features created to complement and enhance the existing SoundCloud experience.
The SoundCloud Go experience includes:
-- Access to a significantly expanded catalogue of the greatest established and hottest emerging artists. -- On the train or off the grid, offline listening allows you to take your music with you wherever you go. -- An ad-free, uninterrupted listening experience.
SoundCloud Go is available in Canada on web, iOS App Store and Google Play, and priced at CDN$9.99 per month. iOS users can avoid the App Store surcharge (CDN $13.99) by visiting soundcloud.com/go instead.
"SoundCloud Go will provide Canadians with the largest and most diverse music and audio catalogue in the world," said Alexander Ljung, SoundCloud co-founder and CEO. "Subscribers will be able to enjoy tracks from emerging creators, new tracks from indies, global hits as well as hits in the making, all in one place. We know Canadians are passionate about their music so we're very much looking forward to rolling out this new experience across the country."
The free service listeners love today will remain and will now be supported by a range of advertising options as part of SoundCloud's commitment to creators to have the opportunity to be paid for the work they share.
Additionally, in line with today's launch, SoundCloud has reached agreements with SOCAN and CMRRA-SODRAC Inc. (CSI) that will enable new creative, commercial and promotional opportunities for their artists, songwriters composers and music publishers in Canada. This includes providing SOCAN and CSI's members and clients with the opportunity to generate revenue when their work is played on the platform.
SoundCloud's free service will be supported by audio advertising, in-stream native ads, video ads available in both the horizontal and vertical video formats, promoted profiles, creator partnerships, and more. All are designed to fit seamlessly into the SoundCloud experience and to provide brands with a variety of ways to reach a new, highly engaged audience. The introduction of advertising will ensure listeners can continue to experience SoundCloud for free, as well as offer creators the opportunity to be paid for the work they share. SoundCloud Go subscribers will be able to opt out of these ads, enjoying uninterrupted listening as part of the service.
About SoundCloud Go
Currently available in the US, UK, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand, SoundCloud Go is now available in Canada through SoundCloud's existing apps on the iOS App Store and Google Play, as well as through the web at soundcloud.com, with further international roll out to follow this year. Subscribers can enjoy a 30-day free trial (excludes subscribers in Quebec), after which a CDN$9.99 monthly subscription fee will apply. For all active Pro Unlimited creator subscribers, a discounted rate of CDN$1.99 will apply.
The introduction of SoundCloud Go is the next significant step in the evolution of SoundCloud's unique music ecosystem. In August 2014, the company launched its advertising program in the US to ensure its community of creators have the opportunity to earn money for the work they share with the world, and now with the addition of listener subscriptions, SoundCloud continues to build the most progressive artist remuneration system in the world. Through partnering with the rest of the music industry, and thanks to its unrivalled position in the music streaming space, SoundCloud has made huge strides towards a unique system where all forms of creative expression - from classic tracks to new remixes - can thrive, while ensuring rights holders are fairly respected and compensated for their work. For more information go to: https://soundcloud.com/go
About SoundCloud
SoundCloud, the world's largest music and audio platform, launched in 2008 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, lets people discover and enjoy the largest selection of music from the world's most diverse creator community. SoundCloud is renowned for the unique content and features including the ability to share music and connect directly with artists, as well as unearth breakthrough tracks, raw demos, podcasts and more. This is made possible by an open platform that directly connects creators and their fans across the globe. Music and audio creators can use the platform to instantly share their content with a global audience, as well as receive detailed stats and feedback from the SoundCloud community. For more information, go to: (http://soundcloud.com/).
About SOCAN
SOCAN is a member-based organization that represents the Canadian performing rights of more than four-million Canadian and international music creators and publishers. SOCAN is proud to play a leading role in supporting the long-term success of its nearly 140,000 Canadian members, and the Canadian music ecosystem overall. SOCAN licenses more than 130,000 businesses in Canada, and distributes royalties to its members and music rights organizations around the world. SOCAN also distributes royalties to its members for the use of their music internationally in collaboration with its peer societies. www.socan.ca
About CMRRA-SODRAC Inc. (CSI)
CSI is a joint venture of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd. (CMRRA) and the Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada (SODRAC). CSI licenses the reproduction rights in the joint repertoire of CMRRA and SODRAC to various music users, including radio stations, background music services and online music services. Together, CMRRA and SODRAC represent the vast majority of songwriters and music publishers whose songs are active in the Canadian market place.
Contacts:
Media Contact Info:
Jenna Kuchinsky
604.558.1656
jenna@yulupr.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Dividend Select 15 Corp. (The "Company") declares its monthly distribution of $0.06792 per Equity share. The distribution is payable November 10, 2016 to shareholders on record as of October 31, 2016.
Under the distribution policy announced in September 2014, the monthly dividend payable on the Equity shares is determined by applying a 10.00% annualized rate on the volume weighted average market price (VWAP) of the Equity shares over the last 3 trading days of the preceding month. As a result, Equity shareholders of record on October 31, 2016 will receive a dividend of $0.06792 per share based on the VWAP of $8.15 payable on November 10, 2016. The yield will remain stable at 10.00% (based on the VWAP) under this distribution policy.
Since inception, Equity shareholders have received a total of $4.60 per share inclusive of this distribution.
The Company invests in a portfolio of 15 Canadian companies selected from the following 20 company universe which are among the highest Canadian dividend yielding stocks.
Bank of Montreal Great West Lifeco inc. TELUS Corporation BCE Inc. Husky Energy Inc. The Bank of Nova Scotia CIBC National Bank of Canada The Toronto-Dominion Bank Power Corporation of Thomson Reuters CI Financial Corp. Canada Corporation Enbridge Inc. Royal Bank of Canada TMX Group Inc. EnCana Coproration Loblaw Companies Limited TransAlta Corporation Sun Life Financial Inc. TransCanada Corporation ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ Distribution Details Equity Share (DS) $0.06792 Ex-Dividend Date: October 27, 2016 Record Date: October 31, 2016 Payable Date: November 10, 2016 ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------
Contacts:
Investor Relations:
1-877-478-2372
Local: 416-304-4443
www.dividendselect15.com
info@quadravest.com
PARSIPPANY, NJ and NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Vistaar Technologies, Inc. (Vistaar), a leading provider of price management solutions, and Open Road Integrated Media (Open Road), a digital publisher and multimedia content company, today announced a partnership on a global pricing initiative to drive optimized price management of Open Road's e-Book catalog. Vistaar's pricing technology will allow Open Road to react faster to the latest market trends and effectively scale the price management process across its entire catalog.
Matthew Shatz, senior vice president for sales & business development, Open Road Integrated Media, said, "We are at the forefront of innovation in publishing and we are looking for ways to improve our ability to operate in an increasingly dynamic market. With our large e-Book catalog, Vistaar's technology will enable us to be more market and data driven in our pricing approach and in turn increase sales for our authors and our partners. In Vistaar, we have an ideal partner with proven technology, team and pricing expertise. We're very pleased to partner with them on this strategic initiative."
The Vistaar price and promotion management software platform has been configured to meet the unique requirements of companies selling digital products. The Vistaar solution for Open Road will combine multiple sources of information alongside a sophisticated mechanism for aligning pricing with consumer demand and local trends. This approach will lay the foundation and empower Open Road to effectively manage the pricing of their entire catalog.
Venky Subramanian, vice president, Europe and head of global digital solutions, Vistaar, said, "We are pleased to be working with Open Road Integrated Media, a known innovator in the publishing industry. Our experience identifying and solving unique pricing challenges across many industries ideally positions us to optimize pricing for the publishing industry as well. This initiative represents a fascinating confluence of leading-edge analytics underpinned by sophisticated mathematical techniques, to drive pricing in a fast-changing marketplace."
About Open Road Integrated Media
Open Road (openroadmedia.com) is a prestige content brand delivering digital experiences that entertain and inform readers around the world. With a portfolio of creative digital properties and a data-driven culture, Open Road creates, curates, and markets quality media for consumers on tablets and smartphones, e-readers and desktops.
About Vistaar Technologies, Inc.
Vistaar is a leading provider of price management solutions that enable companies to achieve pricing best practices through price analytics, price optimization, price list management and deal management. Our technology transforms pricing and related operations into a strategic advantage for some of the world's largest manufacturers, distributors and service providers. For these companies, Vistaar pricing solutions drive measurable price and margin improvements to deliver profitable growth and maximum shareholder value. Vistaar's operations include offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.vistaar.com.
Press Contact:
Edward Lin
DPR Group, Inc.
(240) 686-1000
Email Contact
Company Contact:
Jodi Lozauskas
Vistaar Technologies, Inc.
(973) 581-6300
Email Contact
LONDON, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Equifax research reveals parents spend an average of 323 on childcare and activities during the break
http://www.equifax.co.uk
With half-term fast approaching, although the kids might be excited to have some time off, 1 in 5 parents find the break stressful due to the associated costs - both for childcare and keeping the kids entertained. According to the latest research* from Equifax, parents pay on average 144 for childcare during half-term and 179 on keeping their children entertained. This brings the average total to 323 for the week, over 60 per day.
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The holiday appears to be taking its toll on parents in Scotland the most, with 32% saying they are stressed out about the cost, followed by 29% in the South West and 23% in the South East.
When it comes to the amount of money that parents are having to pay for childcare during the half-term, it is parents in the North East who are top of the spending chart. Almost quarter in the region spend up to 150 and 19% spend up to 200 for the week.
The cost of keeping the kids entertained also comes at a price, and again the parents in the North East are one of the biggest spenders with 18% having to pay out up to 200. Parents in the North West are also having to dig deep, with nearly a quarter of the region spending up to 150.
"The cost of half-term is clearly taking its toll on parents, with an overwhelming 62% saying that the cost of school holidays is increasing year on year," said Lisa Hardstaff, Equifax credit information expert. "It is only the first half term of the academic year and in previous research we found that parents had to find an additional 300 to kit their child out at the start of new academic year. It is interesting to see just how quickly the costs can add up."**
The research also highlights that aside from the direct financial pressures facing families during the half-term break, almost one in three (29.57%) feel that their child misses out on activities during half term due to the cost, and 15% of parents say that their child is envious of other children during half term because others can afford to do more activities than they can.
Commenting on the research, Michael Mercieca Chief Executive of Young Enterprise, said, "Not only is it important for parents to ensure they are prepared for the financial side of the half-term break, but they must help their children to understand the value of money. By becoming fully aware of the financial difficulties that some families can face, young people will learn to appreciate what their parents can offer which will put less pressure on them during the school holidays."
"The costs of school holidays, coupled with back to school costs can really add up, which is why we encourage families to try to set aside savings over the year to help them cope with these expenses," concludes Lisa Hardstaff. "By factoring in all additional costs, parents can ensure their kids get the most out of their breaks."
Data sources:
* Survey of 1001 parents, Atomik research
** Equifax cost of sending children to school research: 1,588 respondents (including: 585 parents of children aged 8-11, 697 parents of children aged 12-16 and 585 children aged 8-11)
About Equifax
Equifax, Inc. ("Equifax") powers the financial future of individuals and organizations around the world. Using the combined strength of unique trusted data, technology and innovative analytics, Equifax has grown from a consumer credit company into a leading provider of insights and knowledge that helps its customers make informed decisions. The company organizes, assimilates and analyses data on more than 800 million consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide, and its databases include employee data contributed from more than 5,000 employers.
Headquartered inAtlanta, Ga.,Equifaxoperates or has investments in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. It is a member ofStandard & Poor's(S&P) 500 Index, and its common stock is traded on theNew York Stock Exchange(NYSE) under the symbol EFX.Equifax employs approximately 9,200 employees worldwide.
Some noteworthy achievements for the company include: Ranked 13 on the American Banker FinTech Forward list (2015); named a Top Technology Provider on the FinTech 100 list (2004-2015); named an InformationWeek Elite 100 Winner (2014-2015); named a Top Workplace by Atlanta Journal Constitution (2013-2015); named one of Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies (2011-2015); named one of Forbes' World's 100 Most Innovative Companies (2015). For more information, visit http://www.equifax.com
Equifax Limited is one of the Equifax group companies based in the UK.
Equifax Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Clare Watson
Cecile Stearn
Parm Heer
Wendy Harrison
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/19/17 -- Precipitate Gold Corp. (the "Company" or "Precipitate") (TSX VENTURE: PRG) is pleased to provide results of initial diamond drill holes from the ongoing Ginger Ridge drill program at its 100% owned Juan de Herrera project in the Dominican Republic.
Results from the Phase 2 drill program at Ginger Ridge include analytical results from the initial five completed holes (GR16-07 to GR16-11) from this phase, totalling of 1,310 metres. Laboratory analytical results have been received for core samples collected in all holes, excluding the final 60 metres of Hole 11 which was paused for the holiday season break. Drilling of Hole 11 was recently completed and samples for the final meterage of that hole will be submitted shortly for laboratory analysis.
Holes 7 to 11 were collared up to 150 metres from the Company's 2014 discovery hole ("Hole 5"), testing mineralization and alteration continuity and select discrete induced polarization ('IP') chargeability-high geophysical anomalies. The laboratory analytical results for samples collected in holes 7 to 11 (partial) are summarized below. See the accompanying drill-hole location map and the Company's website (www.precipitategold.com) for additional compilation illustrations.
Table 1: Ginger Ridge Drill Summary Intervals
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Au g/t Cu % Zn % ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-07 48.77 56.39 7.62 0.10 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-08 39.62 45.79 6.17 nil nil 0.04 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-09 0.00 28.96 28.96 nil nil 0.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 211.84 225.32 13.48 nil nil 0.19 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-10 21.34 32.00 10.66 0.32 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 76.20 79.25 3.05 0.52 0.16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 144.78 149.35 4.57 0.32 0.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 252.38 260.60 8.22 0.10 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 286.51 309.37 22.86 0.23 0.09 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 294.13 300.23 6.10 0.39 0.27 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-11 7.62 35.05 27.43 0.49 0.01 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 28.96 33.53 4.75 1.39 0.01 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 39.62 53.34 13.72 nil nil 0.07 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 143.05 149.35 6.30 0.41 0.03 0.02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 163.07 170.69 7.62 0.33 nil 0.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 196.60 202.37 5.77 0.17 0.01 0.59 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Interval reflects measured core length, as true widths are currently unknown.
All drill holes intersected andesitic volcanic rocks (mixed crystal, lapilli, lithic tuffs, fragmental and debris flows) which exhibit zones of weak to very strong chlorite-pyrite-silica (+/- clay) alteration, with some lengthy intervals (exceeding 15 metres in hole 10) of strongly disseminated to semi-massive very fine grain pyrite-silica mineralization. Holes 10 and 11 were drilled to the southwest direction at a shallow dip angle and successfully cut the main regional thrust fault which separates the Tireo volcanic rocks from younger limestone lithologies. Importantly, the andesitic volcanic rocks are variably altered and mineralized to the thrust contact.
Jeffrey Wilson, Precipitate's President & CEO stated, "Ginger Ridge drilling continues to demonstrate that local andesitic volcanic rocks host a large and strong mineralization/alteration system. While the laboratory results for holes 7 to 11 are not as robust as the discovery hole, the strength and scope of observed intervals of sulphide-silica alteration combined with anomalous gold-copper-zinc metal enrichment is encouraging, as they appear to show characteristics commonly associated with a volcanogenic massive sulphide ("VMS") setting."
The Company is now compiling and reviewing all available data to guide the next tranche of drilling in this program, which will likely test a newly identified IP geophysical anomaly at depth in the north-central portion of the Ginger Ridge Zone. The increased depth extent of the IP anomaly was not known to the Company prior to the commencement of the current program and therefore represents a new expanded target for continued drilling.
Mr. Wilson further states, "Ongoing drilling and surface work will also be mindful of GoldQuest Mining Corp.'s very recently reported VMS mineralization discovery in its hole TIR16-09 (see GoldQuest's news release January 10, 2017; Cachimbo Zone), located just two kilometres northwest of Ginger Ridge. The geochemical and geophysical signature of the Cachimbo Zone differs from most other known Tireo Gold Camp exploration zones and, as a result has led Precipitate to review all existing Company data, with an eye for identifying similar zinc-rich targets with a modest IP chargeability signature, as found at Cachimbo. GoldQuest's new drill discovery validates the Tireo's potential to host significant new discoveries in differing environments. We're pleased to apply the intelligence gained from our latest 5 holes and GoldQuest's new VMS discovery hole as tools for vectoring ongoing surface work and drill testing."
Table 2: Ginger Ridge Drill Collar Locations and Directional Data ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole East North Elevation (m) Azimuth Dip Depth (m) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR14-05 267832 2095617 1185 0 -90 152.40 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR14-06 267832 2095617 1185 045 -50 196.59 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-07 267796 2095653 1172 0 -90 140.21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-08 267835 2095696 1163 0 -90 131.06 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-09 267715 2095713 1164 225 -86 385.57 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-10 267899 2095682 1190 225 -50 332.23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GR16-11 267931 2095659 1177 225 -48 323.09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Collar Locations: Map Datum NAD83 Zone Q19N
This news release has been reviewed by Michael Moore P. Geo., Vice President, Exploration of Precipitate Gold Corporation, the Qualified Person for the technical information in this news release under NI 43-101 standards.
Core samples were collected under the supervision of Michael Moore, P.Geo. HQ, NTW and BTW diameter diamond core was descriptively logged on site, aligned, marked for sampling and then cut in half, longitudinally, using a rock saw. One-half of the core is preserved on site in core boxes for verification and future reference. Rock samples were bagged, sealed and delivered directly to Bureau Veritas ("BV") preparation facility in Maimon Dominican Republic where they were dried, crushed and pulped. Sample pulps were then delivered to BV facilities in Vancouver British Columbia Canada for analyses (an ISO 9001 accredited facility). Samples were crushed to with more than 70% passing 2mm mesh and split using a riffle splitter (code PRP70-250). An approximately 250 gram sub-sample split was pulverized to minus 200 mesh (74um). A 15 gram sub-split from the resulting pulp was then subjected to aqua regia digestion and multi-element ICP-ES/MS analysis (code AQ201) and an additional 30 gram pulp spilt subjected to fire assay for gold (ICP-ES finish) (code FA330-Au); samples with results with gold greater than 8 ppm were subjected to a second fire assay analysis and a gravimetric finish (30 g pulp; code FA530-Au). All coarse rejects and pulps are currently stored at BV. Certified standards and local limestone blanks were inserted into sample shipments as a quality control measure in addition to the internal quality control measures applied by the laboratory; comprising greater than 7% of the total sample volume.
About Precipitate Gold:
Precipitate Gold Corp. is a mineral exploration company focused on exploring and advancing its mineral property interests in the Tireo Gold Trend of the Dominican Republic. The Company also maintains assets in northern British Columbia and southeast Yukon Territory and is actively evaluating additional high-impact property acquisitions with the potential to expand the Company's portfolio and increase shareholder value.
Additional information can be viewed at the Company's website www.precipitategold.com.
On Behalf of the Board of Directors of Precipitate Gold Corp.,
Jeffrey Wilson, President & CEO
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
This press release may contain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward looking information. Generally, forward-looking information may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "proposed", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or by the use of words or phrases which state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, or might occur or be achieved. This forward-looking information reflects Precipitate Gold Corp.'s ("Precipitate" or the "Company") current beliefs and is based on information currently available to Company and on assumptions it believes are reasonable. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Precipitate to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to: the exploration concessions may not be granted on terms acceptable to the Company, or at all; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; the concessions acquired by the Company may not have attributes similar to those of surrounding properties; delay or failure to receive governmental or regulatory approvals; changes in legislation, including environmental legislation affecting mining; timing and availability of external financing on acceptable terms; conclusions of economic evaluations; and lack of qualified, skilled labour or loss of key individuals. Although Precipitate 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. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Precipitate does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
Contacts:
Precipitate Gold Corp.
604-558-0335
Toll Free: 855-558-0335
investor@precipitategold.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/31/17 -- Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE: BLS)(OTCQB: BLSSF) ("Black Sea" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results of the fall 2016 exploration mapping and sampling program on the Zlatusha copper-gold property. The field program has refined and enhanced the existing targets and outlined multiple additional target areas. There are currently 7 copper-gold porphyry and epithermal targets on the Zlatusha license area.
Zlatusha is located approximately 40 kilometres northwest of Sofia in western Bulgaria within the Srednogorie endowed arc segment of the West Tethyan Metallogenic Belt. The Srednogorie is an emerging porphyry copper-gold/epithermal belt positioned between the world-class Timok Belt in eastern Serbia and the Panagyurishte Belt in central Bulgaria.
Fall 2016 Mapping Campaign. A systematic program of field mapping and sampling was conducted on the Zlatusha property to improve the resolution of known surface targets and identify additional prospects. Detailed geological mapping was completed at 1:20,000 scale (property-wide) and at 1:5000 scale (known targets) and documented lithology, alteration, mineralization and veins, along with structural and magnetic susceptibility measurements. 195 samples were analyzed for 59 elements by ICP-MS and gold analysis by fire assay. The coarse rejects from the assayed samples were also analyzed for clay mineralogy by TerraSpec (Short-Wave Infrared), in order to characterize the clay alteration mineralogy within a porphyry-epithermal hydrothermal system context.
Zlatusha Target Areas. The 2016 exploration program has improved the understanding of the known target areas, and has yielded multiple additional target areas. The target areas shown in Figure 1 are based on alteration/sulphide/oxide zones in conjunction with anomalous copper and gold.
Property-wide mapping indicates that host rocks for the magmatic-hydrothermal alteration centers are andesite flows, breccias and tuffs with local intercalated limestone intervals. These rocks are intruded by diorite to quartz monzonite porphyry intrusions. Exposed portions of the alteration zones indicate footprints of up to 2500 metres by 1200 metres. Alteration zones are typically developed in the vicinity of the porphyry intrusions, and are characterized by silica-sericite-clay assemblages with local development of secondary biotite and skarn in addition to vein stockworks. Distal alteration assemblages which flank the core zones are commonly characterized by chlorite/epidote in andesite host rocks, or marble in limestone host rocks. Primary sulfides associated with the alteration footprints (typically pyrite with local chalcopyrite) are generally weakly oxidized, and occur as disseminated zones and/or in stockwork-style fracture networks. Copper oxides are noted in various locales throughout the property. Copper assays from grab samples between below detection to 4.45% copper, and gold assays in grab samples yielded values between below detection to 0.73 grams per tonne gold. Table 1 contains assay results for the 98th percentile rock samples from the 2016 sampling program.
The field mapping and analytical data demonstrate that the productive porphyry environment has been preserved at multiple locations across the Zlatusha property.
Follow up Exploration. The next steps for exploration at Zlatusha planned for H1 2017 will involve an airborne magnetic/radiometric survey, with follow-up IP (induced polarization) to refine the seven targets for drill testing. The geophysical work will yield further insight into size, depth and position of porphyry style mineralization, and will improve the target interpretation in covered areas where distal alteration is present.
To view "Figure 1 - Zlatusha target areas." accompanying this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1084379.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sample RockClass Alteration Au g/t Cu % Mo g/t Ag g/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 75223 Intermediate Porphyry Clay 1.322 0.031 1 2.9 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 75557 Breccia (Hydrothermal) Silica 1.615 0.005 9 18.4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 75606 Intermediate Volcanic Clay 3.557 0.011 11 23.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- POZ003 Intermediate Intrusion Clay-Silica 0.006 8.307 -1 -0.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BG 0515 Vein Clay-Silica 0.327 0.869 19.42 900 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BG 0545 Breccia (Volcanic) Clay 0.010 4.454 0.67 99 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 1 - Rock sample results from the 2016 surface program, representing the 98th percentile gold or copper (Value in bold for meeting respective criteria).
Comments on Sampling, Assaying, and QA/QC. Black Sea's geochemical samples were collected in accordance with CIM Best Practice standards and guidelines. The samples were submitted to Bureau Veritas in Poland for sample preparation, followed by sample analysis in Vancouver, Canada. Gold was analyzed by fire assay with an AAS finish, and the multi-element data was obtained following multi-acid digestion and analysis with 59-element ultra-trace ICP-MS techniques. As standard procedure, Black Sea conducts routine QA/QC analysis on all assay results.
Qualified Person. Rory Kutluoglu, B.Sc. P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has read and approved all technical and scientific information contained in this news release. Mr. Kutluoglu is the Company's Vice President Exploration.
About Black Sea Copper & Gold
Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp. is a mineral exploration company active in the Black Sea region of Eastern Europe. The Company has over 4 years of regional experience both technically and operationally within Bulgaria, Serbia, Turkey and Romania, and has established a compliment of local technical, logistical, community and corporate support. Black Sea has demonstrated its ability to identify new copper-gold porphyry and epithermal targets, and believes it has one of the most extensive proprietary geological/exploration databases for Eastern Europe in the industry. The Company is committed to building a robust portfolio of high quality copper and gold projects with the potential to become world-class mining assets.
Vince Sorace, President and CEO, Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp.
For further information regarding Black Sea Copper & Gold, please visit our website at www.blacksea.ca.
Cautionary Note Regarding 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.
This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "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 Black Sea Copper & Gold believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results or realities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such material risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, Black Sea Copper & Gold's ability to raise sufficient capital to fund its obligations under its property option agreements, to maintain its mineral tenures and concessions in good standing, to explore and develop its projects, to repay its debt and for general working capital purposes; changes in economic conditions or financial markets; the ability of Black Sea Copper & Gold to obtain the necessary permits and consents required to explore, drill and develop the projects and if obtained, to obtain such permits and consents in a timely fashion relative to Black Sea Copper & Gold's plans and business objectives for the projects; the general ability of Black Sea Copper & Gold to drill test its projects and find mineral resources; if any mineral resources are discovered or acquired, the Company's ability to monetize any such mineral resources; and changes in environmental and other laws or regulations that could have an impact on the Company's operations. Forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable beliefs, estimates and opinions of Black Sea Copper & Gold's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, Black Sea Copper & Gold undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.
Contacts:
Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp.
(604) 628-5623
www.blacksea.ca
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- WASECO RESOURCES INC. (TSX VENTURE: WRI) (FRANKFURT: WSE) (the "Company"), reports that the US Bureau of Land Management has reviewed the Company's Notice to conduct exploration activities at the Battle Mountain Ridge Project, in Nevada, and has determined that it is complete, containing all of the information required by the surface management regulations. A reclamation bond, sufficient to meet all anticipated reclamation requirements has been set and paid.
A drill program is being initiated and equipment mobilized to the site.
The initial focus will be four holes on the North Zone, where Hole #12-5 intersected 25.4 g/t Au (0.9oz/t) over 3.7m (12 feet) in the interval 150-153.7m (492-504 feet) down hole on a splay structure of the main Stibnite Fault Structure. This interval included intersections of:
-- 47.6 g/t Au (1.68oz/t) over 0.9m (3 feet) and -- 61 g/t Au (2.15oz/t) over 0.06m (2 feet)
An upper zone, higher in Hole #12-5, between 128-142m (420-465 feet), returned gold values averaging 1.82g/t Au (0.06oz) over 13.72m (45 feet).
The gold mineralization is structurally and stratigraphically controlled and the continuity can be disrupted by offsets which displace the gold zones laterally and vertically. An area south-east of the North Zone is viewed as a potential offset of this zone. It has seen limited testing and two holes are proposed in this area.
A video animation, detailing the exploration history of the property and several potential gold targets is available for viewing on the Company's web site. It also situates the property on the prolific Battle Mountain Trend, adjacent to Newmont's Trenton Canyon Gold Mine and in proximity to Silver Standard's Marigold Mine (8km or 5 miles northwest ) and Newmont's Phoenix Complex (14.5km or 9 Miles southeast ).
The Company is also initiating a private placement offering (the "Offering") of up to 4 million common share Units for gross proceeds of Cdn$300,000. Each Unit consists of one common share at $0.075 and 1/2 common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder to acquire an additional share of the Company at $0.10 for a period of one year from the date of issue, subject to regulatory approval. Provision has been made for the payment of a finder's fee to eligible third parties of 7% in cash and 5% in share purchase warrants, each exercisable at $0.10 for one year.
WASECO RESOURCES INC.
Richard Williams, President & CEO
A Lee Barker, P.Eng. P.Geol., a Qualified Person pursuant to the guidelines of national Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical content of this 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.
Contacts:
Richard Williams
(416) 364-3123
rickw@wasecoresources.com
www.wasecoresources.com
PUNE, India, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
According to a new market research report "Contrast Media/Contrast Agent Market by Type (Iodinated, Gadolinium, Barium, & Microbubble), Procedure (X-Ray/CT, MRI, & Ultrasound) & Application (Radiology, Interventional Radiology, & Interventional Cardiology) - Global Forecasts to 2021" published by MarketsandMarkets, the global market is expected to reach a value of USD 5.44 Billion by 2021, from an estimated value of USD 4.46 Billion in 2016, at a CAGR of 4.1%.
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This report analyzes and studies the major market drivers, restraints/challenges, and opportunities for the forecast period of 2016 to 2021. The global Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market has been segmented on the basis of type, route of administration, indication, procedure, application, and region.
Based on type, the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market is segmented into iodinated contrast media, gadolinium-based contrast media, barium-based contrast media, and microbubble contrast media. In 2016, the iodinated contrast media segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market, by type. However, the microbubble contrast media segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The high growth of the microbubble segment can be attributed to the large number of on-going academic researches that are exploring various attributes of microbubbles in off-label indications for diagnosis as well as drug delivery.
Based on procedure, the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market is segmented into X-ray/computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound.
Based on route of administration, the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market has been segmented into oral, injectable, rectal, and urethral routes. In 2016, the injectable segment is expected to account for the largest share of the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market. Growth in the injectable contrast media segment can be attributed to advancements in CT and MRI imaging technologies, which majorly use injectable contrast media.
Based on indication, the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market is segmented into cardiovascular disorders, oncology, gastrointestinal disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, neurological disorders, and nephrological disorders. In 2016, the cardiovascular disorders segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the global Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market. Improvements in cardiac MRI procedures in cath labs, favorable reimbursement policies for contrast media used in cardiovascular diagnosis, and strong healthcare infrastructure in countries like the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany are some of the factors driving the growth of this segment.
Based on procedure, the global Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market is segmented into X-ray/CT, MRI, and ultrasound. In 2016, the X-ray/CT segment is expected to account for the largest share of the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market. However, the ultrasound segment is expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Development of microbubble contrast media for ultrasound, and large number of approvals for ultrasound contrast media in major markets such as the U.S., Europe, and Japan are some of the key factors driving the growth of this segment.
Speak to our research experts:
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Based on application, the global Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market has been segmented into radiology, interventional radiology, and interventional cardiology. In 2016, the radiology segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market. The large share of this segment can be attributed to the growing number of diagnostic procedures/centers, coupled with the increasing disease burden on countries.
North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW) are the regions considered for a geographic analysis of the global Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market. In 2016, North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the market, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. However, the European market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period, and will also serve as a revenue pocket for companies offering contrast media/contrast agents in the near future.
The prominent players in the global Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market include Bayer HealthCare (Germany), GE Healthcare (U.S.), Guerbet Group (France), and Bracco Imaging S.p.A. (Italy). These companies hold a dominant position in the Contrast Media/Contrast Agents Market mainly due to their well-established presence in the field of genomics, presence in over 50 countries, high R&D investments, and strong sales and distribution force. Other players operating in this market include Lantheus Medical Imaging (U.S.), nanoPET Pharma GmbH (Germany), CMC Contrast AB (Sweden), Daiichi Sankyo (Japan), and Subhra Pharma Private Limited (India).
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http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/pre-clinical-molecular-imaging-market-841.html
Diagnostic Imaging Market by Product (X-ray Imaging Systems, CT Scanners (High-end, Mid-end & Low-end Slice CT), MRI Systems, Ultrasound Imaging Systems, Nuclear Imaging Systems), Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, RoW) - Global Forecast to 2020
http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/diagnostic-imaging-market-411.html
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CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- STORAGEVAULT CANADA INC. ("StorageVault") (TSX VENTURE: SVI) is pleased to announce that, further to its July 4, 2016 news release, it has completed the $22,000,000 acquisition (the "Acquisition") of all of the self storage assets, property and business used in the operation of one Calgary, Alberta area self storage store owned by the vendor (the "Vendor"). The Acquisition is an arm's length transaction.
The purchase price for the Acquisition in the amount of $22,000,000, subject to adjustments, was paid by the issuance of 12,500,000 common shares of StorageVault ("Common Shares") at an aggregate deemed price of $10,000,000 with the remainder being financed with first mortgage financing. The Common Shares are subject to a hold period that expires on February 18, 2017. The Alberta assets will be StorageVault's sixth location in the Alberta market.
Access Lease and Access Agreements
In conjunction with the closing of the Acquisition, StorageVault, as landlord, and Access Self Storage Inc. ("Access"), a major shareholder of StorageVault, as tenant, executed a four year lease (the "Access Lease") in respect of the entire store.
In addition, in place of the share purchase options and financing by Access announced in the July 4 news release, Access entered into a share conveyance agreement (the "Share Conveyance Agreement") with the Vendor pursuant to which Access purchased 10,500,000 of the Common Shares issued to the Vendor pursuant to the Acquisition for an aggregate purchase price of $8,400,000. The remaining 2,000,000 Common Shares issued to the Vendor were sold to a third party with an option for the Vendor to repurchase these 2,000,000 Common Shares. In the event that the Vendor repurchases these Common Shares pursuant to the option, Access will also have a right of first negotiation from the Vendor with respect to these 2,000,000 Common Shares.
Exemption from MI 61-101 and TSXV Policy 5.9; and Early Warning
The execution of the Access Lease is considered to be a "related party transaction" as defined in Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101") and TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") Policy 5.9. StorageVault is relying on exemptions from the formal valuation and minority approval requirements of MI 61-101 and TSXV Policy 5.9, in respect of this transaction, pursuant to Section 5.5(b) (Issuer Not Listed on Specified Markets) and Section 5.7(a) (Fair Market Value Not More Than 25% of Market Capitalization) of MI 61-101, respectively. No new insiders will be created, nor will any change of control occur, as a result of the Acquisition.
10,500,000 Common Shares representing an aggregate purchase price of $8,400,000 were purchased by Access pursuant to the Share Conveyance Agreement, representing 3.97% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares of StorageVault. Prior to the purchase pursuant to the Share Conveyance Agreement, Access owned or controlled 63,087,571 Common Shares, representing 25.02% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares of StorageVault. Access now owns or controls 73,587,571 Common Shares or approximately 27.81% of the total issued and outstanding Common Shares of StorageVault. Access may increase or decrease its investment in StorageVault depending on market conditions or any other relevant factors. The head office address for both StorageVault and Access is 100 Canadian Road, Toronto, Ontario M1R 4Z5.
About StorageVault Canada Inc.
StorageVault owns and operates storage locations in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia.
For further information, or to obtain a copy of the Early Warning Report of Access, contact Mr. Steven Scott or Mr. Iqbal Khan.
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:
StorageVault Canada Inc.
Mr. Steven Scott or Mr. Iqbal Khan
1-877-622-0205
ir@storagevaultcanada.com
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Siri. Alexa. Cortana. Nearly every Artificial Intelligence in the marketplace is given a woman's name and voice to match. Ava, the Artificial Intelligence played by Alicia Vikander in 2015's Ex Machina, was even nominated for a Golden Globe. And yet, just as in the movie, there's nothing female at all about the intelligence being generated by any of these systems.
In fact, many believe that the reason for giving these A.I.'s feminine names is that they are primarily performing the sort of menial tasks which were traditionally assigned to female secretaries. No one has ever built a truly female A.I., much less asked for its opinion. Until now.
Unanimous A.I., the creator of the Artificial Swarm Intelligence technology known as UNU that gained fame this year for making accurate predictions about sports, movies, and politics, has built the world's first truly female A.I. and had it answer political questions in anticipation of tonight's final Presidential debate. The creation of this gender-specific A.I. was motivated by the significant impact that gender is playing in the current presidential election.
Forecaster Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight recently released two distinct maps showing the disparity between Trump and Clinton's chances to win in all-female or all-male electorates. While simple polling can reveal such high level gender differences among voters, there are significant unknowns about the underlying sentiments that drive the disparity.
Researchers at Unanimous A.I. built this gender-specific Artificial Swarm Intelligence to reveal deep insights into the unique gender-biases that permeate the voting population. These insights were made possible by the unique structure of the swarm intelligence system, as it combines real-time human input with computational algorithms, enabling groups of people to merge their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and instincts into a single unified output of amplified intelligence.
"When we build an Artificial Swarm Intelligence system with specific characteristics, we are creating an insight engine that amplifies the inherent knowledge, opinions, and intuitions of a target population," said Dr. Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous A.I. "With gender playing such a significant role in this election, empowering the first-ever female A.I. to answer political questions and express political opinions was a truly moving experience, as it shed light on what matters to female electorate this year and what does not."
For example, when the female A.I. was asked about the threat of terrorism and whether it was fairly represented in the political discourse, she responded that the threat was "overblown" by politicians this year. When asked if wealth inequality was a significant problem in America, she responded that she "strongly agreed" that it is a problem to be addressed. When asked who she believed more, the women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct or the denials from Trump and his surrogates, she responded that she believes the accusers with 88% conviction.
To review the complete set of answers given by the world's first female A.I. in response to dozens of questions regarding the upcoming election and the challenges facing the next President of the United States, visit: http://unu.ai/first-female-ai/
About the female Artificial Swarm Intelligence: she was fielded in real time on October 18, 2016 as a computational mix of swarm intelligence algorithms and live human participants, working together as synchronous closed-loop system that converges on optimized solutions. The human participants were all voting age women, randomly selected from across the United States, providing a representative mix of location, age, education, and political leaning. For more information on the process of Swarm Intelligence, visit: http://unu.ai/swarm-intelligence/
About Unanimous A.I.
Unanimous A.I. develops Artificial Swarm Intelligence technologies, unlocking the hidden brainpower inherent in groups. For more information about the company, our UNU platform for consumers, or our Swarm Insight portal for enterprise, visit http://unanimous.ai/ or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.
MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - Three crew members representing the United States and Russia are on their way to the International Space Station after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:05 a.m. EDT Wednesday (2:05 p.m. Baikonur time).
The Soyuz spacecraft carrying astronaut Shane Kimbrough of NASA, and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, is scheduled to dock to the Poisk module of the space station at 5:59 a.m. Friday, Oct. 21. NASA said its Television coverage of docking will begin at 5:15 a.m. Hatches are scheduled to open about 8:35 a.m., with NASA TV coverage starting at 8 a.m.
The arrival of Kimbrough, Ryzhikov and Borisenko returns the station's crew complement to six. The three join Expedition 49 Commander Anatoli Ivanishin of Roscosmos, Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The Expedition 49 crew members will spend a little over four months conducting more than 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development.
Kimbrough, Ryzhikov and Borisenko are scheduled to remain aboard the station until late February. Rubins, Ivanishin and Onishi will return to Earth Oct. 30.
The Expedition 49 crew will welcome a variety of cargo deliveries to the space station, including Orbital ATK's Cygnus, which launched Monday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the orbital laboratory Sunday, Oct. 23, with more than 5,100 pounds of science and research equipment, as well as crew supplies and hardware.
Included in the Cygnus shipment are payloads that will study fires in space, the effect of lighting on sleep and daily rhythms, collection of health-related data, and a new way to measure neutrons.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
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BENGALURU, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Jubilant Biosys is proud to announce the addition of Agilent Technologies' RapidFire/MS screening technology to its Integrated Drug Discovery Platform.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160107/783587 )
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161019/430304LOGO )
RapidFire is a robust solid phase extraction technology that enables fast label-free detection of native compounds by mass spectrometry in a wide range of in vitro assays, DMPK/ADME studies, hit/lead applications for drug discovery across a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas and also for screening difficult targets that are not amenable to labeled assays. Jubilant Biosys's Bengaluru facility will be the first in India to be equipped with Agilent's state-of-the-art RapidFire High-Throughput Mass Spectrometry system technology.
"The installation of the Agilent RapidFire platform shows Jubilant's continued commitment to make the necessary investments with an objective to remain on the cutting edge of drug discovery. This platform will enable us to increase our productivity and to enhance our capabilities to successfully meet the needs of our clients," said Steven Hutchins, President, Jubilant Biosys (Drug Discovery Solutions).
"Agilent RapidFire solution enables our clients with increased accuracy, provides faster results, better economic value, enhanced analysis capabilities, improved efficiency while maintaining robustness and we are pleased to see Jubilant Biosys being the first organization in India to take advantage of this cutting-edge technology," said Bharat Bhardwaj, Country Manager, Agilent Technologies.
About Jubilant Drug Discovery Solutions (JDDS)
JDDS comprises of Jubilant Biosys, Jubilant Chemsys and Jubilant Discovery Services and has presence in India in Bangalore, Noida and in Malvern (USA). These subsidiaries of Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd employ over 625 employees and have demonstrated expertise in multiple therapeutic areas of Oncology, Metabolic Disorders, Pain & Inflammation, CNS & others. The business model includes proprietary in-house innovation, strategic investments as well as drug discovery services as the core components which are available for collaborative research, partnership and out-licensing. http://www.jubilantbiosys.com; http://www.jchemsys.com; http://www.jubl.com
About Agilent Technologies
Agilent is a leader in life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets. The company provides laboratories worldwide with instruments, services, consumables, applications and expertise, enabling customers to gain the insights they seek. Agilent's expertise and trusted collaboration give them the highest confidence in our solutions.
Agilent focuses its expertise on six key markets, where we help our customers achieve their goals: Food, Environmental and Forensics, Pharmaceutical, Diagnostics, Chemical and Energy, Research. Visit http://www.agilent.com.
BOSTON, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Private equity and venture capital funds in developed markets outside the U.S. outperformed public markets in the same regions in the first quarter of 2016. However, private investment funds in emerging markets barely broke even and significantly underperformed the comparable public markets.
The Cambridge Associates LLC Global ex U.S. Developed Markets PE/VC Index returned 4.5% measured in U.S. dollars to investors, compared with a return of -3.0% from the MSCI EAFE, the comparable public equity index. Developed markets private investments were helped in part by a strengthening euro.
But the Cambridge Associates LLC Emerging Markets PE/VC Index only eked out a 0.2% return in Q1, compared to 5.8% from its public market counterpart, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.
"In developed markets outside the U.S., private equity and venture capital funds have outperformed public markets in the same regions consistently and for decades -- often by a margin of over five percentage points," says Andrea Auerbach, Head of Global Private Investments at Cambridge Associates.
"In emerging markets overall, private equity and venture capital funds did not perform particularly well in Q1 2016, but comparisons to the public market should be made with a long-term perspective. Companies based in China and India currently dominate the emerging markets index, though other regions are growing; Latin America now makes up almost 5% of the index and is a growing opportunity for private investors," says Vish Ramaswami, Managing Director at Cambridge Associates.
Cambridge Associates derives its Global ex U.S. PE and VC Indices from the financial information contained in its proprietary database of 805 global ex U.S. developed markets funds and 575 emerging markets funds, with a combined value of roughly $411 billion.
Table: Returns for the Global ex U.S. Developed and Emerging Markets PE/VC Indexes vs Public Counterparts
Periods Ended March 31, 2016 -- Percent (%)
Qtr 1 Yr 3 Yr 5 Yr 10 Yr 15 Yr 20 Yr 25 Yr ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- CA Global ex U.S. Dev Mkts PE/VC (US$) 4.5 14.3 10.7 8.3 9.9 12.8 13.3 13.2 CA Global ex U.S. Dev Mkts PE/VC (EUR) -0.4 7.8 15.1 13.2 11.2 11.7 13.4 13.3 MSCI EAFE (US$) mPME -3.0 -8.3 2.9 2.8 2.4 4.2 3.9 4.0 MSCI EAFE (EUR) mPME -7.5 -13.5 7.1 7.4 4.2 4.7 4.8 4.9 S&P 500 (US$) mPME 1.3 1.4 12.6 11.9 8.5 8.2 8.1 8.3 CA Emerging Markets PE/VC (US$) 0.2 5.8 11.5 8.5 10.9 9.9 9.4 9.2 MSCI Emerging Markets* (US$) mPME 5.8 -11.4 -4.1 -3.5 1.9 5.5 4.4 4.6 S&P 500 (US$) mPME 1.3 1.8 12.0 12.0 8.9 8.2 8.2 8.3 MSCI EAFE (US$) AACR -3.0 -8.3 2.2 2.3 1.8 4.3 4.1 5.0 MSCI EAFE (EUR) AACR -7.5 -13.5 6.4 6.9 2.4 2.6 4.8 5.4 MSCI Emerging Markets* (US$) AACR 5.8 -11.7 -4.2 -3.8 3.3 9.7 5.4 7.8 S&P 500 (US$) AACR 1.3 1.8 11.8 11.6 7.0 6.0 8.0 9.3
Sources: Cambridge Associates LLC, MSCI Inc., Standard & Poor's, and Thomson Reuters Datastream. MSCI data provided "as is" without any express or implied warranties.
Notes: The PE/VC indexes are pooled horizon internal rates of return and are based on limited partners' fund-level performance; the returns are net of fees, expenses, and carried interest. Because the indexes are capital weighted, performance is mainly driven by the largest vintage years. Public index returns are shown as both time-weighted returns (average annual compound returns) and dollar-weighted returns (modified public market equivalent). The Cambridge Associates mPME calculation is a private-to-public comparison that seeks to replicate private investment performance under public market conditions.
*Returns for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index began 1/1/1988; to match the 1986 inception of the Emerging Markets PE/VC Index, price returns from Global Financial Data are used for the period 1/1/1986 to 12/31/1987.
Some highlights from the Global ex U.S. Developed Markets PE/VC Index in Q1 2016:
PE/VC Distributions and Contributions in Developed Markets Outside the U.S.: Distributions from developed markets PE and VC funds to investors continued to outpace contributions to managers in the first quarter of 2016 -- a trend that has largely held true since the final quarter of 2010 -- though both distributions and contributions fell from their levels in Q4 2015. Contributions decreased by 51% to $4.5 billion, while distributions saw a 24% drop to $15.7 billion. 2006-vintage funds returned almost $6 billion to investors.
PE/VC Sector Performance in Developed Markets Outside the U.S.: Among the key sectors in the developed markets index, manufacturing companies performed best in Q1, generating 7.2% returns at the company level. The manufacturing sector was followed by the software and consumer sectors, each of which returned 5.1%. Consumer companies attracted the most capital of any sector during the quarter, collecting 42% of the capital invested in Q1.
PE/VC Vintage Year Performance in Developed Markets Outside the U.S.: Every vintage year in the developed markets index (from 1994 through 2015) posted positive returns in the first quarter of 2016. Of the "meaningfully sized" vintages -- each one that made up at least 5% of the total index -- the best performer was 2012, which returned 7.5%. Increased valuations of firms in the financial services, consumer and energy sectors contributed to the 2012 vintage's strong returns.
PE/VC Performance by Country in Developed Markets Outside the U.S.: Companies based in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the United States accounted for the bulk of the developed markets index in the first quarter of the year. Returns ranged from -0.3% for U.K.-based firms to 6.6% for companies based in Germany.
A few highlights from the Emerging Markets PE/VC Index in Q1 2016:
PE/VC Distributions and Contributions in Emerging Markets: Emerging market private equity and venture capital managers called $3.6 billion from investors in Q1 2016, a 26% decrease from Q4 2015, and they distributed $4.6 billions to investors, a 22% fall from the previous quarter. Managers of 2007-vintage funds accounted for 41% of the quarter's distributions -- almost $2 billion.
PE/VC Sector Performance in Emerging Markets: Manufacturing and health care companies represented the emerging markets index's brightest spots in an otherwise pedestrian quarter, returning 3.8% and 3.0%, respectively. Financial services (-3.3%) and electronics (-0.5) were the two sectors with negative returns in Q1. Software companies received 19% of the capital invested during the quarter.
PE/VC Vintage Year Performance in Emerging Markets: The only "meaningfully sized" vintage year in the emerging markets index -- representing more than 5% of the index -- that generated a return higher than 1% was 2010. Its 4.2% return was caused by write-ups of IT, software and transportation companies. The lowest-performing vintage, 2008, returned -2.5% because of large losses in energy, environment and media companies.
PE/VC Performance by Country in Emerging Markets: China and India continue to be the powerhouses of emerging markets private equity and venture capital, representing 47.4% and 8.0% of the index, respectively. Companies in both countries generated negative returns. Chinese companies struggled due to write-downs in vintages 2006 through 2011 and returned -1.5%; Indian companies returned slightly more: -0.5%.
For additional details on the performance of the Cambridge Associates private equity and venture capital benchmarks in the first quarter of 2016, please visit http://www.cambridgeassociates.com/our-insights/research/global-ex-us-pevc-benchmark-commentary-10/.
About the Indices
Cambridge Associates derives its Global ex U.S. Developed Markets Private Equity and Venture Capita Index from the financial information contained in its proprietary database of global ex U.S. private equity and venture capital funds. As of March 31, 2016, the database comprised 805 global ex U.S. developed markets private equity and venture capital funds formed from 1986 to 2015, with a value of about $252 billion. Ten years ago, as of March, 31, 2006, the benchmark index included 416 global ex U.S. developed markets funds, whose value was roughly $95 billion. The funds in this index invest primarily in developed markets in Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Western Europe.
Cambridge Associates derives its Emerging Markets Private Equity and Venture Capital Index from the financial information contained in its proprietary database of global ex venture capital funds. As of March 31, 2016, the database comprised 1,633 U.S. venture capital funds formed from 1981 to 2016, with a value of roughly $185 billion. Ten years ago, as of March 31, 2006, the index included 1,117 funds whose value was $66 billion.
Because the U.S. Private Equity and Venture Capital indexes are capital weighted, the largest vintage years mainly drive the indexes' performance. Public index returns are shown as both time-weighted returns (average annual compound returns) and dollar-weighted returns (modified public market equivalent or mPME). The Cambridge Associates mPME calculation is a private-to-public comparison that seeks to replicate private investment performance under public market conditions. The public index's shares are purchased and sold according to the private fund cash flow schedule, with distributions calculated in the same proportion as the private fund, and mPME net asset value is a function of mPME cash flows and public index returns. Over any one quarter, an mPME and time-weighted return will match, but they will begin to diverge over longer time horizons because the mPME calculation takes into account the size and timing of cash flows.
About Cambridge Associates
Cambridge Associates is a global investment firm founded in 1973 that builds customized investment portfolios for institutional investors and private clients around the world. Working alongside its early clients, among them several leading universities, the firm pioneered the strategy of high equity orientation and broad diversification, which since the 1980s has been a primary driver of performance for these leading fiduciary investors. Cambridge Associates serves over 1,000 global investors -- primarily foundations and endowments, pensions and family offices -- and delivers a range of services, including outsourced investment (OCIO) solutions, traditional consulting services, and access to research and tools across global asset classes. Cambridge Associates has more than 1,300 employees -- including over 150 research staff -- serving its client base globally. The firm maintains offices in Arlington, VA; Boston; Dallas; Menlo Park and San Francisco, CA; London; Singapore; Sydney; and Beijing. Cambridge Associates consists of five global investment consulting affiliates that are all under common ownership and control. For more information about Cambridge Associates, please visit www.cambridgeassociates.com.
Cambridge Associates has been selected to provide data and to develop and maintain customized industry benchmarks for a number of prominent industry associations, including the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA); Australian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association Limited (AVCAL); Canada's Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA); the Hong Kong Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (HKVCA); the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (IVCA); Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA); the Latin American Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (LAVCA); the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA); and the New Zealand Private Equity & Venture Capital Association Inc. (NZVCA). Cambridge Associates also provides data and analysis to the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA).
Both the Cambridge Associates LLC U.S. Private Equity Index and the Cambridge Associates LLC U.S. Venture Capital Index are reported each week in Barron's Market Laboratory section. In addition, complete historical data can be found on Standard & Poor's Micropal products and on our website, www.cambridgeassociates.com.
This release is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investment advice. Any references to specific investments are for illustrative purposes only. The information herein does not constitute a personal recommendation or take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situations, or needs of individual clients. This release is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security in any jurisdiction. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. With regard to any references to securities indices, such indices are unmanaged and are not subject to fees and expenses typically associated with managed accounts or investment funds. Investments cannot be made directly in an index.
Inquiries about these indices should be addressed to: Eric Mosher at Sommerfield Communications, 55 Broad Street, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10004; 212.255.8386; (fax) 212.255.8459; eric@sommerfield.com.
Media Contact:
Eric Mosher
Sommerfield Communications, Inc.
212-255-8386
eric@sommerfield.com
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Canada's biggest environmental and economic challenges require the brightest minds working together to produce innovative solutions that will support a clean environment, a sustainable economy and a strong middle class. That's why the Government of Canada supports an inclusive and collaborative approach to innovation, one that encourages researchers and their industrial counterparts to combine their expertise so they may address these crucial issues together.
The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, and the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, today announced nearly $22 million in new funding for four research networks that encourage industrial partnerships. Scientists and business leaders will join together in these networks to tackle pressing challenges like targeting pollution, exploring enhanced manufacturing technology, developing sustainable natural resource extraction methods and modernizing the stewardship of Canadian lakes.
The networks announced today are the most recent recipients of the Strategic Partnerships Grants for Networks competition, administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). This program focuses on collaborations among researchers, industry and government while providing important training opportunities for post-secondary students. The networks receiving support are encouraged to demonstrate global leadership through partnerships with like-minded international organizations.
Ministers Duncan and McKenna made today's announcement at Carleton University, where a research network led by Dr. Matthew Johnson will provide a better understanding of flare-generated pollutants in the energy industry. This strategic network is investigating the impacts of these pollutants on air quality. This work is critical to developing environmentally responsible fossil fuel extraction and producing clean air.
Quotes
"Our government is proud to support the important work of talented researchers who are collaborating with their industrial partners to create solutions for some of the most critical issues we face. These networks will also help train the next generation of young researchers by providing them with the skills and abilities they need for today's job market. By investing in these networks, our government is demonstrating its commitment to generating the evidence needed to support a clean environment, a sustainable economy and a strong middle class."
- The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science
"The research network led at Carleton University will forge close connections between academia and business to address climate change challenges in the energy industry. This network demonstrates how Canada can be a leader in clean energy and can innovate in our effort to achieve our climate change targets."
- The Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change
"NSERC is proud to support these networks of researchers and companies that are working to find innovative solutions to some of Canada's most pressing challenges. Facilitating close connections and partnerships with business ensure that discovery research is enriched by industry perspectives and market needs."
- B. Mario Pinto, President, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Quick facts
-- The four research networks are being supported over the next five years. -- Other networks are focused on: improving the health of Canada's freshwater lakes, minimizing the environmental impact of mining operations and; developing virtual machining technology software to allow companies to design and produce new products without costly physical trials -- NSERC conducts extensive reviews to ensure that these networks remain relevant for Canada. -- The 2016 Strategic Partnership Grants competition will focus on: advanced manufacturing; environment and agriculture; information and communication technologies; and natural resources and energy. The results of this competition will be announced next year.
Related products
Recipients of the 2015 Strategic Partnership Grants for Networks
Information on the Strategic Partnership Grants
Associated links
Where NSERC Invests and Why
A Vision of NSERC in 2020
Follow Minister Duncan on social media:
Twitter: @ScienceMin
Instagram: sciencemin
Follow Minister McKenna on social media.
Twitter: @ec_minister
Follow NSERC on social media:
Twitter: @NSERC-CRSNG
About NSERC
NSERC invests over $1 billion each year in natural sciences and engineering research in Canada. Our investments deliver discoveries - valuable world-firsts in knowledge claimed by a brain trust of over 11,000 professors. Our investments enable partnerships and collaborations that connect industry with discoveries and the people behind them. Researcher-industry partnerships established by NSERC help inform R&D, solve scale-up challenges, and reduce the risks of developing high-potential technology.
NSERC also provides scholarships and hands-on training experience for more than 30,000 post-secondary students and post-doctoral fellows. These young researchers will be the next generation of science and engineering leaders in Canada.
Contacts:
Veronique Perron
Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of Science
343-291-2600
Martin Leroux
Senior Communications Advisor
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
613-943-7618
media@nserc-crsng.gc.ca
Media Relations
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
343-291-1777
ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca
The global construction industry has seen relatively slow growth since 2015, mirroring a slowdown in the tempo of expansion in China and depressed major emerging markets. Oil price drop has also considerably threatened investment growth in key oil-manufacturing Middle Eastern countries. A deceleration in construction growth has inevitably influenced the demand for key inputs, specifically aggregates.
The global aggregates market value (in nominal US dollar terms) decreased in 2015 and registered a CAGR of 0.95% during 2011-2015. Although 2016 is projected to see another period of slow growth in the demand for aggregates as the construction sector begins to gain traction again starting from 2017, the global construction aggregates marketplace is forecast to post 5.15% CAGR to 2020.
Geography-wise, APAC was the biggest market for aggregates, grabbing just under 49% of the total market in 2015. North America and Europe were following after, accounting for shares of 21.5% and 18%, respectively.
Recovery in the North American and European countries and the development in the APAC economies, specifically Japan and India, are projected to give a boost to the market in the years to come. The market shares of the North America, Europe and Latin America will likely decline marginally in the years to come, whilst that of APAC and the Middle East and Africa will likely steepen.
Improvements in the world demand for aggregates in the upcoming years are in parallel with the positive outlook for the construction industry, with the main drivers being investment in residential and infrastructure construction in emerging countries, and expected recovery in the economic situation, globally and region-wise.
Topical publication "The Global Construction Aggregates Market Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020" gives a granular analysis of top trends in the global construction aggregates marketplace.
The report covers historic and forecasted valuations of the global market; provides market segmentation based on category type; gives crucial insights into market issues and trends, and the risks and opportunities they offer to players in the worldwide construction aggregates marketplace. The study presents a comprehensive analysis of key issues, including regulatory environment, value-based management, financing and pricing. The study also includes comprehensive profiles of the dominant construction aggregates companies.
Companies mentioned in the report are: Vulcan Materials Company, CRH Plc, Martin Marietta Materials, Inc., LafargeHolcim Ltd. and Heidelberg Cement AG
Many other new market research reports by this publisher are given at the Timetric page
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161019005894/en/
Contacts:
The Market Publishers, Ltd.
Natalie Aster
Tel: +44 208 144 6009
Fax: +44 207 900 3970
ps@marketpublishers.com
MarketPublishers.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/18/17 -- Copper Lake Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: CPL)(FRANKFURT: W0I) ("Copper Lake" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has signed an agreement with Rainy Mountain Royalty Corp. ('RMO') to acquire all of the camp assets owned by RMO at the Marshall Lake property. Copper Lake and RMO have also agreed to extend the option agreement for a further 12 months, to July 15, 2018. As consideration for the purchase of the camp assets and the one-year extension of the option agreement, Copper Lake will issue a total of 600,000 shares to RMO.
Terry MacDonald, Interim CEO stated "The purchase of the Marshall Lake camp assets now gives Copper Lake full operational control over the property, and will allow us to upgrade the camp in preparation for the planned summer drilling program. The extension of the option agreement gives us added flexibility in completing the terms of the option agreement to increase our interest to 75%."
The agreement is subject to approval by the TSX Venture Exchange.
About Copper Lake Resources
Copper Lake Resources Ltd. is a publicly traded Canadian company currently focused on advancing two significant properties located in Ontario, Canada:
1. The Marshall Lake VMS copper, zinc, silver and gold property is an advanced exploration stage property located 120 km north of Geraldton, Ontario via good all weather gravel road from the Trans-Canada Highway and just 22 km north of the main CNR rail line. Copper Lake currently has a 68.75% interest in the property and has the option to increase its interest to 75% by incurring additional expenditures of $670,000 by July 15, 2018. The Company can further increase its interest to 87.5% by taking the project to bankable feasibility stage. 2. The Norton Lake nickel, copper, PGM property (69.79%) is located approximately 100 km north of the Marshall Lake property.
The Company also recently entered into a mineral property option agreement to acquire up to 100% of four separate properties in Ontario made up of seven claims. The properties are situated in the Kenora and Patricia mining divisions in Northwestern Ontario and are known as the Queen Alexandria Gold Property, the Mine Lake Gold Property, the Grand Chibougamau Gold Property and the Centrefire-Redhat Gold-Copper Property.
On behalf of Copper Lake Resources Ltd.
Terrence MacDonald, Director and Interim CEO
The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed this news release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements, other than statements of historical facts, that address such matters as future exploration, drilling, exploration activities, potential mineralization and resources and events or developments that the Company expects, are forward looking statements and, as such, are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors of which are beyond the reasonable control of the Company. 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 or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include such matters as market prices, exploitation and exploration results, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Any forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The information contained herein is stated as of the current date and subject to change after that date.
Contacts:
Copper Lake Resources Ltd.
Terrence MacDonald
Director and Interim CEO
778-867-9533
MAROUSSI, ATHENS, GREECE -- (Marketwired) -- 11/07/16 -- Euroseas Ltd. (NASDAQ: ESEA), an owner and operator of drybulk and container carrier vessels and provider of seaborne transportation for drybulk and containerized cargoes, announced today that it will release its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2016 on Thursday, November 10, 2016 before the market opens in New York.
On the same day, Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time, the Company's management will host a conference call and webcast to discuss the results.
Conference Call details:
Participants should dial into the call 10 minutes before the scheduled time using the following numbers: 1 (866) 819-7111 (from the US), 0(800) 953-0329 (from the UK) or (+44) (0) 1452 542 301 (from outside the US). Please quote "Euroseas."
A replay of the conference call will be available until Thursday, November 17, 2016. The United States replay number is 1(866) 247-4222; from the UK 0(800) 953-1533; the standard international replay number is (+44) (0) 1452 550 000 and the access code required for the replay is: 6973591#.
Audio Webcast - Slides Presentation:
There will be a live and then archived audio webcast of the conference call, via the internet through the Euroseas website (www.euroseas.gr). Participants to the live webcast should register on the website approximately 10 minutes prior to the start of the webcast.
The slide presentation on the third quarter ended September 30, 2016 will also be available in PDF format 10 minutes prior to the conference call and webcast, accessible on the company's website (www.euroseas.gr) on the webcast page. Participants to the webcast can download the PDF presentation.
About Euroseas Ltd.
Euroseas Ltd. was formed on May 5, 2005 under the laws of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to consolidate the ship owning interests of the Pittas family of Athens, Greece, which has been in the shipping business over the past 140 years. Euroseas trades on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker ESEA since January 31, 2007.
Euroseas operates in the dry cargo, drybulk and container shipping markets. Euroseas' operations are managed by Eurobulk Ltd., an ISO 9001:2008 certified affiliated ship management company, which is responsible for the day-to-day commercial and technical management and operations of the vessels. Euroseas employs its vessels on spot and period charters and through pool arrangements.
The Company has a fleet of 12 vessels, including 3 Panamax drybulk carriers, 1 Handymax drybulk carrier, 1 Kamsarmax drybulk carrier, and 7 Feeder containerships. Euroseas 5 drybulk carriers have a total cargo capacity of 351,272 dwt, its 7 containerships have a cargo capacity of 11,525 teu. The Company has also signed a contract for the construction of one Kamsarmax (82,000 dwt) fuel efficient drybulk carrier. Including the Kamsarmax new-building, the total cargo capacity of the Company's drybulk vessels will be 433,272 dwt.
Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements (as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended) concerning future events and the Company's growth strategy and measures to implement such strategy; including expected vessel acquisitions and entering into further time charters. Words such as "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "anticipates," "hopes," "estimates," and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, no assurance can be given that such expectations will prove to have been correct. These statements involve known and unknown risks and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to changes in the demand for dry bulk vessels and container ships, competitive factors in the market in which the Company operates; risks associated with operations outside the United States; and other factors listed from time to time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company expressly disclaims any obligations or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the Company's expectations with respect thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any statement is based.
Visit the Company's website www.euroseas.gr
Company Contact
Tasos Aslidis
Chief Financial Officer
Euroseas Ltd.
11 Canterbury Lane,
Watchung, NJ 07069
Tel. (908) 301-9091
E-mail: aha@euroseas.gr
Investor Relations / Financial Media
Nicolas Bornozis
President
Capital Link, Inc.
230 Park Avenue, Suite 1536
New York, NY 10169
Tel. (212) 661-7566
E-mail: euroseas@capitallink.com
IQALUIT, NUNAVUT -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Department of Canadian Heritage
In the context of the consultations on "Canadian Content in a Digital World", the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, today hosts the fourth of six in-person discussions organised across the country with representatives from a variety of sectors and members of the general public.
Today's discussion will take place during Iqaluit's "All Arts Summit", an event intended to set the course for the future of all the art sectors in Nunavut. Representatives of Nunavut's arts and culture sector, individual artists, creators and those working in the cultural industries will attend this summit.
Rapidly changing technological advances are affecting how Canadians produce and consume cultural content; as a result, the cultural sector is facing new challenges and opportunities. These consultations will help the Government of Canada determine the best ways to assist the cultural sector in navigating these changes and seizing opportunities to contribute to the country's economic growth and innovation.
These in-person events will contribute to the success of the consultations by making it possible to gather valuable input from a variety of voices in the arts and culture scene. All Canadians are invited to join the conversation and take part in the discussions at any time through the Web portal and social media, using the hashtag DigiCanCon. Canadians have the opportunity to lead in-person discussions in their communities using the consultation kit available online.
Facebook Live events will take place during the consultation period, allowing interested people across the country to comment on numerous topics and issues covered by the consultations. Canadians can register now to take part in the Facebook Live events on October 28 and November 7.
Quotes
"After successful stops in Vancouver, Halifax and Toronto, I am pleased to be in Iqaluit today for our fourth in-person discussion with Canadians, including artists, creators and cultural businesses. I know that these discussions will allow our Government to better understand the issues and expectations regarding Canadian content creation, discovery and promotion in this new environment in which we live. I would like to take this opportunity to invite all Canadians to take part in this important exercise, either through our Web portal or by having discussions on social media with the hashtag DigiCanCon. Together, let's be innovative and find new ways to create and promote quality Canadian content that stands out."
-The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage
Quick Facts
- This consultation process follows a pre-consultation questionnaire completed by close to 10,000 Canadians.
- The Department of Canadian Heritage developed a discussion paper based on the results of the pre-consultations. This document will help guide this phase of the consultations on Canadian Content in a Digital World.
- Throughout this process, the Government of Canada will listen to Canadians to learn how best to strengthen Canadian content creation, discovery and export in a digital world and to examine the federal government's current cultural policy toolkit.
- These discussions will be guided by three key principles. The approach will:
-- focus on respecting citizen choice and supporting creators in making great, compelling content; -- reflect Canada's incredible diversity in the content that is produced and support the production of news information and local content that is credible and reliable; and -- drive social and economic innovation by forging strong links between creativity, economic growth and social resilience.
- Canadians have until November 25 to provide their input.
Associated Links
Consultations - Canadian Content in a Digital World
Expert Advisory Group Announced
Stay Connected
Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr.
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
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ONTARIO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Chromcraft Revington Douglas Ind., Inc., a designer and manufacturer of residential and commercial furniture, today issued the following statement:
It has come to our attention that a small number of furniture distributors and manufacturers are unlawfully copying or distributing unauthorized copies of well-known Chromcraft chair designs. We have retained legal counsel and have begun to pursue action against the responsible parties. Anyone who considers copying or unlawfully distributing copies of our designs should be aware that we will be vigilant in pursuing legal action to enforce our rights and to protect the rights of the many authorized dealers and sellers of our products.
Since 1946, Chromcraft has been at the forefront in designing and manufacturing furniture. Chromcraft's product designs reflect more than 60 years of hard work and dedication to craftsmanship, quality and durability. We are committed to protecting the quality and reputation of our brand, and its value to both our loyal customers and authorized partners.
Consumers and buyers should be aware that Chromcraft cannot attest to the quality of unauthorized knock-offs of our products. Consumers may find later that the warranties on these products are invalidated since they are the product of unlawful manufacture and distribution.
About Chromcraft Revington Douglas
Chromcraft designs, manufactures and imports residential and commercial furniture marketed primarily in the United States. The company wholesales its furniture products under Chromcraft, Cochrane, Peters-Revington, and Douglas brands. The Chromcraft brand has been in existence for more than half a century and has built a strong reputation and base of loyal customers through a tradition of commitment to quality and design that continues to this day.
James Yang
+1 909 996 0127
jamesyang@amt-ltd.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Republican party has demanded an investigation into reports that a senior State Department official allegedly offered the FBI a 'quid pro quo' to hide the full extent of Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information.
According to records of interviews with FBI officials released by the Bureau on Monday, the unnamed official says that Patrick Kennedy, Under Secretary of State for management, tried in late June or early July of last year to get the FBI to change a classified email to unclassified, in exchange for the State Department allowing the FBI to place agents in more countries.
However, FBI is denying that any 'quid pro quo' was offered in the fight between the bureau and State Department over the classification level of the email.
State Department spokesman John Kirby also denied it.
Tuesday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) sent a letter to Steve Linick, the State Department's Inspector General, demanding a full investigation into the allegations.
In the mail, RNC Chief Counsel John R. Phillippe Jr. says that the alleged attempt to make a backroom deal to cover up the extent to which US national security was put at risk is shocking and warrants an immediate review. He requested that the IG office investigate whether Kennedy made any additional quid-pro-quo offers to other federal agencies in relation to Secretary Clinton's emails.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- In a global economy that is increasingly complex and diversified, Canadian companies must be more innovative than ever. Investing in our people, developing new technologies and supporting the growth of innovative companies will help diversify Canada's economy, open access to new markets and create well-paying jobs for Canadians.
This is the message the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, delivered in a keynote address on Canada's Innovation Agenda to an audience of business leaders and policy-makers at the i2030 National Manufacturing Summit.
In his remarks, Minister Bains emphasized the need for both government and the private sector to make smart investments in three key areas:
-- People: Expand work-integrated learning programs, such as internships, apprenticeships and continuous learning opportunities, for Canadians at every stage of their careers-from new graduates up to the highest- ranking executives. -- Technology: Set big-horizon goals and create broad-based partnerships to fund ambitious research projects that solve complex, large-scale problems and spark commercial opportunities for the private sector. -- Companies: Leverage the buying power of government, as the single- largest purchaser of goods and services, to support the growth of innovative companies that have the potential to be globally competitive.
Minister Bains applauded Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters-the organizer of the summit-for its submission for the Innovation Agenda which focused on accelerating innovation, increasing investments and helping manufacturers reduce their carbon footprint.
Minister Bains concluded by issuing a challenge to the manufacturing community to invest more on people, companies and technologies that will propel our country into a more prosperous future.
Quote
"Our government knows that Canada's manufacturing sector is a cornerstone of the economy and can lead the world, as long as we have the right plan for growth through innovation. New technologies are driving modern manufacturing by lowering production costs, increasing productivity and allowing for the creation of new innovative products. Through initiatives like Canada's Innovation Agenda, we can create and shape the markets that have the potential to unlock a world of opportunity for everyone and strengthen the middle class by creating the well-paying jobs of tomorrow."
- The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
Quick facts
-- The i2030 National Manufacturing Summit attracts more than 300 stakeholders interested in understanding the current global trends in manufacturing and shaping the future direction of public policies, regulations and programs in Canada. -- The findings of a six-month nation-wide consultation on Industrie 2030- Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters' national initiative aimed at creating a roadmap for doubling value-added manufacturing output and exports in Canada by 2030-were released prior to the summit and shared with participants. -- The manufacturing sector directly accounts for more than 10 percent of Canada's GDP and employs 1.7 million Canadians. -- Canadians participated enthusiastically during a summer of public engagement on the federal government's Innovation Agenda: 28 round-table discussions and thousands of digital interactions yielded over 1,300 ideas.
Associated links
-- i2030 Summit -- Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters -- Canada's Innovation Agenda -- Backgrounder on the Innovation Agenda
Follow Minister Bains on social media.
Twitter: @MinisterISED
Contacts:
Philip Proulx
Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science
and Economic Development
343-291-2500
Media Relations
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
343-291-1777
ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca
The MSCI Emerging Europe 10/40 Index rose by 1.4% in September in USD terms. The Company outperformed the index and was up by 2.6% in USD terms.
Country performance in September was led by Russia (+3.8%) and the Czech Republic (+2.5%). The rest of the region's equity markets posted negative returns with Greece (-5.3%) and Poland (-2.3%) being the largest laggards. Elsewhere in the region Hungary returned -0.3% while Turkey returned
-0.8%.
During September, Russia benefited from OPEC's announcement of an agreement, in principle, to production cuts. S&P also raised its outlook for Russia from negative to stable on decreased external risks. Conversely, Greece struggled at the end of the period as concerns over the fragility of the Italian and German banking systems raised question marks over how quickly the Greek Second Bailout review can be completed. Moody's downgraded Turkey's credit rating to junk late in the period citing concerns about the rule of law, risks from external financing and a slowing economy. Poland suffered as banks and utilities were material underperformers for the month following tax raids at the state owned utility PGE.
Focus on: Globaltrans
Globaltrans is one of Russia's leading private freight rail transportation groups. They operate over 66,000 rail cars and specialise in oil products, construction materials and metallurgical cargos. The freight industry has been under some pressure for the past two years as overcapacity in rail cars in Russia, coupled with the fall in oil price and commodity prices, put pressure on the volumes Globaltrans transport and the prices that they can charge for those volumes. We believe thatthis downward pressure has troughed, and that the industry is beginning to recover.
New legislation from the Russian Government is accelerating the scrappage of excess rail cars. The economic recovery in Russia is helping freight volumes to recover, and in 3Q16 we have started to see prices move higher (up to 50% higher in some locations). Globaltrans is set to benefit from this environment. Two large contracts are to be re-negotiated in the second half of 2016 and will reflect the higher prices. The balance sheet is strong and free cash flow is high allowing for the acquisition of distressed rail fleets to accelerate growth whilst still supporting the dividend payment.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - More than 300 passengers on-board a British Airways flight were asked 'not to rock the plane' while getting off after the flight was forced to make an emergency landing due to a landing gear failure. A video has been released on social network that shows the terrifying moment of the British Airways being forced to make an emergency landing at Heathrow. According to the officials, the landing gear on both wings failed mid-air after the lever to deploy the gear got stuck in the 'up position'. The plane was then forced to circle Heathrow to dump fuel before attempting to land. A formal report says the incident occurred due to a mechanical error 'that caused incorrect rigging of the landing gear lever system after the landing gear control module had been replaced.'? Passengers were then told to leave the plane 'very slowly' and 'not to rock the plane' as it could topple the plane over. The passengers then had to wait for about nine hours before a replacement Boeing was scheduled to take them to the States. 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.
The American Cancer Society honored Dave S. Hattem, Senior Executive Director, General Counsel, AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company at the 54th Annual Gala of Hope held at Fox Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, New York on September 22nd, 2016.
Hattem leads AXA's law department, including compliance, government relations and corporate secretary's functions, helping the company navigate the legal and regulatory environment to achieve its strategic goals. Earlier in his career, Hattem served as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, where he took great pride in his service to the community as part of the United States Department of Justice.
"We'd like to share our congratulations with Dave on this achievement, and are pleased to recognize him for receiving this prestigious honor from the American Cancer Society," said Mark Pearson, President and CEO of AXA Financial.
Dollars raised from the gala help the American Cancer Society fund cancer research, education and screening initiatives, the passage of health and life-saving laws, as well as direct services for cancer patients, caregivers and families-benefiting Long Islanders, as well as countless others across the country and around the world.
"Our mission is simple," said Beth Ann Tolentino of the American Cancer Society. "We work to save lives and celebrate life, every single day."
In honor of Hattem's recognition, the AXA Foundation made a grant of $25,000 to the American Cancer Society.
For more information on the American Cancer Society, visit www.cancer.org. Find AXA on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. For more information, visit www.axa.com
About American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society was created more than 100 years ago for one purpose-to liberate the world from the threat of cancer. We are advocates, researchers, volunteers, caregivers, survivors, patients and donors. Together, we are a united force of 2.5 million strong against all cancers. From prevention to diagnosis, from treatment to recovery, the American Cancer Society is here every step of the way. Thanks in part to our efforts, there has been a 23% decline in the cancer death rate over the past 21 years. That's 1.7 million deaths prevented. We're leading the way to transform cancer from deadly to treatable and from treatable to preventable.
About AXA
"AXA" is a brand name of AXA Equitable Financial Services, LLC and its family of companies, including AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company (NY, NY), MONY Life Insurance Company of America (AZ stock company, administrative office: Jersey City, NJ), AXA Advisors, LLC, and AXA Distributors, LLC. In business since 1859, AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company is a leading financial protection company and one of the nation's premier providers of life insurance and annuity products distributed to individuals and business owners through its retail distribution channel, AXA Advisors, LLC (member FINRA, SIPC) and to the financial services market through its wholesale distribution channel, AXA Distributors, LLC (member FINRA, SIPC).
AXA S.A. (also referred to as "AXA Group") is a Paris-headquartered holding company for a group of international insurance and financial services companies, including AXA Equitable Financial Services, LLC companies. AXA S.A. is a worldwide leader in financial protection strategies and wealth management with 103 million clients in 64 countries as of Dec. 31, 2015. AXA S.A. has been ranked the No. 1 insurance brand in the world by Interbrand for eight consecutive years as of Oct. 5, 2016.
The obligations of AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company and MONY Life Insurance Company of America are backed solely by their claims-paying ability. Find AXA on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. For more information, visit www.axa.com.
About the AXA Foundation
The AXA Foundation is the philanthropic arm of AXA Advisors, LLC, the retail distribution subsidiary of AXA in the US. The Foundation directs the company's philanthropic and volunteer activities, working to improve the quality of life in communities across the country where AXA has a presence. For more information, visit www.axa.com/achievers and AXA's Facebook page.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161019006029/en/
Contacts:
AXA:
Jennifer Recine, 212-314-2009
Jennifer.recine@axa.us.com
or
American Cancer Society:
Beth-Ann Tolentino
beth-ann.tolentino@cancer.org
PORTLAND, Oregon, October 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
A new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, "Micro Inverter Market by Type, Connection and End User-Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2014-2022," projects that the world micro inverter market would reach $2.7 billion by 2022. In 2014, North America dominated the market and contributed about 45% share of the overall market revenue, followed by Europe. The presence of key market players in the U.S. and rising micro inverter installation activities, primarily in residential sector, have fueled the market growth.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140911/647229 )
Summary of the Micro Inverter Market Report can be accessed on the website at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/micro-inverter-market
Swift rise in demand for greater efficiency of solar energy systems and increased application of micro inverters in residential sector, as it is more cost-effective and space efficient, as compared to central and string inverters drives the market growth. However, high initial investment and tough maintenance could restrict the market growth. Moreover, it is anticipated that the rise in electricity demand coupled with increase in government spending & tariffs on photovoltaic technology would spur the global market growth.
The residential segment accounted for about 77% of the overall micro inverter market in 2014. Highest installation of micro inverters in residential photovoltaic systems led this segment to dominate the overall micro inverter market. However, commercial end user segment would grow significantly and is expected to register a CAGR of 30.3% during the forecast period. This is due to the increase in installation of micro inverters in commercial PV systems worldwide as many renowned companies are launching advanced technology products. Moreover, North America has contributed significantly in the residential sector.
Among various geographical regions, North America has contributed the maximum revenue share in 2014 and is expected to maintain its leading position throughout the forecast period. This could be attributed to varied factors including increase in the electricity demand due to rising population, and increased government initiatives. Moreover, improvement in renewable energy expenditure has boosted the installation of residential micro inverters in Asian countries, particularly in China, Japan, and India.
"MLPE technologies such as micro inverters are swiftly gaining acceptance and market share as their costs have come down. In spite of the global dominance of string inverters, over half of all residential solar systems installed in the U.S. currently using micro inverters. In addition, increased power output of micro inverters, cost-effectiveness and enhanced safety features would fuel the micro inverter market growth in both residential and commercial sector globally. Japan, representing a significant residential market potential, is expected to provide lucrative growth opportunities for top global micro inverter manufacturers in Asia-Pacific market," states Rakesh Singh, Manager, Research, Semiconductor & Electronics at AMR.
However, Asia-Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing region throughout the analysis period. Since, Japan has the highest demand for residential sector power plant PV installation due to government incentives and limited supply of micro inverters in Japan. Moreover, enhancement in solar plant installation capacity and increase in expenditures in the emerging markets (such as China and India) to satisfy the exponentially growing electricity needs in these countries have strengthened the market growth. Technological advancements for cost-effective inverter technologies in these nations offer a lucrative opportunity for the micro inverter market growth.
Key findings of the study:
In 2014, single phase micro inverter type led the overall micro inverter market revenue, but it is projected to grow at a CAGR of 26.2% during the forecast period
Residential segment is expected to exhibit rapid growth, owing to the rising government tariffs and incentives
Presently, North America leads the world micro inverter market and it is expected to continue this trend throughout the forecast period owing to the swift rise in electricity demand from countries such as U.S., Canada , and Mexico
leads the world micro inverter market and it is expected to continue this trend throughout the forecast period owing to the swift rise in electricity demand from countries such as U.S., , and Japan leads the overall Asia-Pacific micro inverter market with about one-third of the market shares in the region
The key players in the micro inverter market are dedicated to expand their business operations in the emerging countries with acquisition and product launch as a preferred strategy. The major players profiled in this report include Enphase Energy, Inc., ABB Group, SunPower Corporation, SMA Solar Technology AG, Delta Energy Systems GmbH, SolarEdge Technologies, Inc., ReneSola, Siemens AG, P&P Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and Involar.
Summary of similar reports can be viewed at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/semiconductor-and-electronics/electronic-systems-and-devices-market-report
About Us:
Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based inPortland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions". AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.
We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.
Contact:
Sona Padmanabhan
5933 NE Win Sivers Drive
#205,Portland, OR97220
United States
Direct: +1-503-894-6022
Toll Free: +1 (800)-792-5285 (U.S. &Canada)
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E-mail:sales@alliedmarketresearch.com
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Cornerstone Capital Resources Inc. ("Cornerstone" or "the Company") (TSX VENTURE: CGP)(FRANKFURT: GWN)(BERLIN: GWN)(OTCBB: CTNXF) announces the following project update for the Cascabel copper-gold porphyry joint venture exploration project in northern Ecuador, in which the Company has a 15% interest financed through to completion of a feasibility study. SolGold Plc is funding 100% of the exploration at Cascabel and is the operator of the project.
HIGHLIGHTS:
-- New drilling contracts signed with Hubbard Drilling and Major Drilling for Cascabel exploration appraisal and feasibility programs over the next four years -- Drilling commenced with three rigs on site and a fourth to commence by end of February 2017. Initial holes CSD-16-018, 019 and 020, will test the deep portions of the Alpala Central deposit -- Major Drilling track mounted rigs to focus on extension of the Alpala deposit, and are expected to bear the brunt of deep drilling with higher penetration rates, faster access and rig moves between holes -- Major Drilling rigs expected to drill to 2,800 metres deep, testing the Alpala deposit a further kilometre below the deepest known mineralization in the deposit -- Directional drilling equipment under negotiation to effect fewer drilling metres overall, but more drill metres within the deposit itself -- Hubbard Drilling man-portable rigs will be free to test six other defined and priority targets at Moran, Trivinio, Aguinaga, Tandayama - America, Alpala South East and Hematite Hill -- Reduction in drilling costs from previous $670/metre to $370/metre forecast (all-in field and fixed program costs excluding corporate overheads) -- Twelve month drill program for 36,000 metres with up to six rigs. Two year program to end October 2018 for a total of 95,000 metres with up to 10 rigs
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Drilling at Cascabel is underway at initial holes CSD-16-018, 019 and 020 to test the deep portions at Alpala Central.
New drilling contracts have been signed with both Hubbard Drilling and Major Drilling, underpinning an aggressive exploration and appraisal program which will allow for the expansion of exploration depths to further test the deepest known mineralization within the Cascabel concession.
The man portable rigs supplied by Hubbard Drilling and Major Drilling are earmarked to test new drill ready targets at Aguinaga, Moran, Trivino, Alpala South East, Hematite Hill and Tandayama - America. The new contracts afforded by an increase in the number of rigs and higher efficiencies delivered by improved road access and servicing are expected to reduce overall drill costs including all operational (but not corporate) costs from $670 to $370/metre.
In addition, directional drilling services are currently being negotiated and this is expected to deliver multiple daughter drill holes from each parent hole, facilitating increased frequency of mineralized intercepts, within the Alpala deposit.
SolGold's planned resource statement at Alpala (the most advanced target at Cascabel) has been delayed by the discovery of high-grade mineralization in Holes 15R2, 16 and 17 at Alpala, extending the immediate resource potential. The Alpala deposit is open at depth and in the upper extensions, as well as to the north, north-east, south-east and south-west.
This will initially be achieved from intersections targeted in holes 018, 019, 020 which have commenced at Alpala and are targeting lower extensions of the Alpala deposit in the bornite bearing wide centre sections.
A planned 36,000 metre program is envisaged with up to six rigs, including four Major Drilling rigs, in the next 12 months. Three of these will be track mounted Major-50 rigs with a drill rate of over 40m/per day and depth comparability of 2,800m. The new Santa Cecila-Carmen Road will provide access to multi-hole pads for the Major-50 rigs and facilitate higher tonnage supplies in, and core out, at a faster rate. SolGold's geological and logistics team has been boosted to facilitate the increase in drill intensity.
By end of October 2018, SolGold estimates the completion of 95,000m of drilling including testing the targets at Moran, Aguinaga, Trivino, Alpala South East, Tandayama-America and Hematite Hill. Ongoing field mapping, sampling and ground magnetics continues to mature these targets and define proposed drill locations.
The coming two year program, with the use of directional diamond drilling techniques, represents approximately four times the drilling metres completed to date at the Alpala deposit drilled over the past four years. The program will include six additional drill-ready targets.
About Cascabel:
SolGold Plc owns 85% of the equity of Exploraciones Novomining S.A. ("ENSA"), an Ecuadorean company that holds 100% of the Cascabel concession in northern Ecuador. Cornerstone owns the remaining 15% of ENSA, which also holds the rights to the La Encrucijada gold-silver project. SolGold is funding 100% of the exploration at Cascabel and is the operator of the project. Cornerstone's 15% interest is financed through completion of a feasibility study.
Cascabel is located in northwestern Ecuador in an under-explored northern section of the Andean Copper Belt, 60 km northeast of the undeveloped inferred resource of 982 million tons at 0.89% Cu Llurimaga (formerly Junin) copper project (0.4% Cu cut-off grade; Micon International Co. Ltd. Technical Report for Ascendant Exploration SA, August 20, 2004, pages 28 & 29). Mineralization identified at the Llurimaga copper project is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the Cascabel Property.
Qualified Person:
Yvan Crepeau, MBA, P.Geo., Cornerstone's Vice President, Exploration and a qualified person in accordance with National Instrument 43-101, is responsible for supervising the exploration program at the Cascabel project for Cornerstone and has reviewed and approved the information contained in this news release.
About Cornerstone:
Cornerstone Capital Resources Inc. is a well funded mineral exploration company with a diversified portfolio of projects in Ecuador and Chile, and a proven ability to identify, acquire and advance properties of merit. The company's business model is based on generating exploration projects whose subsequent development is funded primarily through partnerships.
Further information is available on Cornerstone's website: www.cornerstoneresources.com and on Twitter.
Cautionary Notice:
This news release may contain 'Forward-Looking Statements' that involve risks and uncertainties, such as statements of Cornerstone's plans, objectives, strategies, intentions and expectations. The words "potential," "anticipate," "forecast," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "may," "project," "plan," and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify 'Forward-Looking Statements.' Although Cornerstone believes that its expectations reflected in these 'Forward-Looking Statements' are reasonable, such statements may involve unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors disclosed in our regulatory filings, viewed on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. For us, uncertainties arise from the behaviour of financial and metals markets, predicting natural geological phenomena and from numerous other matters of national, regional, and global scale, including those of an environmental, climatic, natural, political, economic, business, competitive, or regulatory nature. These uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different than those expressed in our Forward-Looking Statements. Although Cornerstone believes the facts and information contained in this news release to be as correct and current as possible, Cornerstone does not warrant or make any representation as to the accuracy, validity or completeness of any facts or information contained herein and these statements should not be relied upon as representing its views subsequent to the date of this news release. While Cornerstone anticipates that subsequent events may cause its views to change, it expressly disclaims any obligation to update the Forward-Looking Statements contained herein except where outcomes have varied materially from the original statements.
On Behalf of the Board,
Brooke Macdonald, President and CEO
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
For investor, corporate or media inquiries, please contact:
Investor Relations
(613) 421-6923
ir@cornerstoneresources.ca
www.cornerstoneresources.com
EMMEN, SWITZERLAND -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- ALSO (SIX: ALSN) and Innovix Distribution (Innovix) have agreed on a strategic partnership to bring a wide range of local and global vertical-focused cloud services to SMB and Enterprise customers in South-East Asia and Hong Kong in November 2016. Both companies are joining forces to make the ALSO Cloud Marketplace platform available to 5,500 of Innovix's channel partners starting in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, with plans to expand further in the region.
The partnership provides ALSO with the opportunity to expand services from its catalogue to Innovix's customers. Right from the start, well-known international cloud service providers and local vertical-focused ISVs will have a new platform to offer a broad range of services.
"This partnership is an important milestone for ALSO in our strategic effort to expand business opportunities with our partners in dynamic new regions. We already serve 15 markets in Europe directly and 15 more through our partners in the UK and the Middle-East. Our partnership with Innovix will expand our footprint even further," said Gustavo Moller-Hergt, CEO of ALSO Holding AG.
"Innovix is accelerating its cloud services offering to serve an expanding list of partners, including ISVs, hosters and managed service providers. The strategic partnership with ALSO provides us with a world-class cloud marketplace platform that will enable us to provide exceptional customer experience to our partners. We look forward to working together with ALSO to expand our renowned service and product offerings," said Edmand Cheung, Group Managing Director of Innovix Distribution.
Direct link to the media release is http://www.also.com/goto/20161019en.
ALSO Holding AG (Emmen/Switzerland) brings providers and buyers of the ICT industry together. The company offers services at all levels of the ICT value chain from a single source. In the European B2B marketplace, ALSO bundles logistics services, financial services, supply services, solution services, digital services, and IT services together into individual service packages. ALSO's portfolio contains more than 160 000 articles from some 350 vendors. The Group has around 3 880 employees throughout Europe. In fiscal year 2015 (closing on December 31), the company generated net sales of 7.8 billion euros. The majority shareholder of ALSO Holding AG is the Droege Group, Dusseldorf, Germany. Further information is available at http://www.also.com.
Droege Group
(Major shareholder)
Droege Group (founded in 1988) is an independent consulting and investment company under full family ownership. The company acts as a specialist for tailor-made restructuring programs aiming to enhance corporate value. Droege Group combines its corporate family-run structure and capital strength into a family-equity business model. The group carries out direct investments with own equity in corporate subsidiaries and medium-sized companies in "special situations". The motto of "The Art of Implementation" has made the group a pioneer of hands-on implementation-oriented corporate development. Droege Group demonstrates its implementation excellence daily within its own portfolio. The entrepreneurially platforms of the Droege Group are aligned to current megatrends (mobility, prevention, digitalization, demography, etc.). Enthusiasm for quality, innovation and speed determines our actions. In this way Droege Group has successfully gained a position in domestic and international markets and operates with over 120 companies in 30 countries. In 2015 the sales volume of Droege Group was 9.2 billion euros. More information: http://www.droege-group.com
Innovix Distribution (Hong Kong/Singapore/Malaysia) Innovix Distribution is one of Asia's leading technology distributors, which draws on a unique set of strengths in technology distribution to create growth for its partners - it combines unrivalled technical and marketing expertise with a comprehensive range of proven and innovative technologies. As an operating unit under JTH Group, Innovix Distribution has deep local and industry knowledge and an exceptional ability to execute. Firmly rooted in Asia, it offers customers a rich selection of established and emerging technologies combined with a desire to exceed their expectations. Innovix has physical locations in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. JTH Group is part of Jardine Matheson Group. Further information is available at http://www.innovix.com/, http://www.jardines.com/ and http://www.jthgroup.com/.
Disclaimer
This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current assumptions and forecasts of the ALSO management. Known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors could lead to material differences between the forward-looking statements made here and the actual development, in particular the results, financial situation, and performance of our Group. The Group accepts no responsibility for updating these forward-looking statements or adapting them to future events or developments.
Contacts:
Contact person ALSO Holding AG:
Brunswick Group GmbH
Dr. Marc Langendorf
+49 89 80 99 025 17
mlangendorf@brunswickgroup.com
Contact person Innovix Distribution:
Innovix Distribution
Victor Lam
+852 2880 4064
victor.lam@innovix.com.hk
REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Information Services Corporation (TSX: ISV) ("ISC" or the "Company") advises that it will release its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2016 on Wednesday, November 2, 2016 after market close. ISC's Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 will be available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and our website at www.isc.ca.
An investor conference call will be held on Thursday, November 3, 2016 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time (9 a.m. Saskatchewan/MDT) to discuss the results. Participants may join the call by dialing toll-free 1-844- 419-1765 or 1-216-562-0470 for calls outside North America. Simultaneously, an audio webcast of the conference call will also be available at the following link http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/5ofuzc8f. Media are invited to attend on a listen-only basis.
A recording of the webcast will be available 24 hours after the event on our website.
About ISC
ISC is an experienced provider of registry and information services for government, individuals and private sector business. As the exclusive provider of the land titles, surveys, personal property and corporate registries for Saskatchewan, the Company maintains and operates these registries, which are key supporters of economic activity in the province.
Contacts:
Information Services Corporation
Pamela Keck
Manager, Investor Relations
Toll Free: 1-855-341-8363 in North America or 1-306-798-1137
investor.relations@isc.ca
ATLANTA, GA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- The Classic Auto Show powered by Velocity announced today that Bruce Meyer, founding board member of the Petersen Automotive Museum and proprietor of one of the world's most extraordinary car collections, will be the Grand Marshall of the inaugural Classic Auto Show, held in Los Angeles January 27-29, 2017.
Bruce Meyer has made it his mission to collect cars with historic race wins and exceptional history and will be featuring some of his iconic private collection during the event. These treasures will be part of The Grand Boulevard, an area of the show showcasing automotive design and technology through the years with an assortment of the finest and rarest classic, muscle, historic and vintage cars the world has to offer.
In addition to his automotive contribution, Bruce will be present on Friday, January 27, for the official ribbon cutting along with stars from Velocity's biggest car shows: Mike Brewer, Chip Foose, Dave Kindig, Wayne Carini, Chris Jacobs and Mike Phillips.
"Bringing The Classic Auto Show to Los Angeles, the real car capital of the world, is a natural and it brings us all together to celebrate," said Bruce Meyer. "I'm so honored to be selected Grand Marshall and I look forward to meeting fellow car lovers and sharing our enthusiasm."
To learn more about The Classic Auto Show and how to attend, exhibit or sponsor, visit www.theclassicautoshow.com, and follow on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
ABOUT URBAN EXPOSITIONS
Based in Kennesaw, GA, and founded in 1995, Urban Expositions produces and manages a portfolio of 36 events. Urban serves nine industry sectors including Gift, Souvenir, Art, Aviation, Apparel, Halloween, Foodservice, Pet and Gaming. Urban also produces Airport Revenue News, a publication focused on the airport concession industry. Urban has offices in Shelton, CT and Boca Raton, FL, and is represented by employees in California, Colorado and Illinois. www.urban-expo.com.
ABOUT CLARION EVENTS
Clarion Events operates over 200 events in 35 countries from offices in the UK, South Africa, USA, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, UAE, Turkey, and the Netherlands. Clarion can trace its roots back to 1947 and takes great pride in being one of the oldest independent event organizers in the UK. The teams at Clarion create uniquely effective and stimulating environments that can serve as a platform to build businesses, enhance customer relationships and accelerate product awareness. www.clarionevents.com
Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3069807
Contact:
Eileen Curran
203-242-8772
Email Contact
EL DORADO HILLS, CA, and LAGOS, NIGERIA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- MEC, Inc. (OTC PINK: MYEC), (formerly MyECheck, Inc.) announced today it has entered into agreements with pan-African financial services group, United Bank for Africa ("UBA") Plc to provide a revolutionary email-based billing, payment and banking software system called "EmailMoni."
EmailMoni represents the world's latest fin-tech for cloud banking and social payments, and is expected to transform the payments, invoicing/billing and remittances landscape in Africa. The service provides a convenient and highly accessible application with multiple ways to transact that are instant, secure, and low cost.
EmailMoni enables people and businesses to securely send and receive invoices and money electronically in real-time, using their mobile phone or any web browser compatible device. Users can send and request and receive money using the mobile phone app, Microsoft Outlook app, or any email service. Money can also be securely requested and/or sent using Facebook app, SMS text and other methods.
EmailMoni Apple iOS App and Android App can also interact with point of sale (POS) systems, e-commerce for quick and secured payments online, as well as card-less ATMs using Quick Response ("QR") Codes enabling withdraws from the system at thousands of ATM locations.
EmailMoni will enable faster more efficient payments for UBA customers who are billers, such as airtime, cable and utility companies. Customers can also send and receive secure payments instantly and conveniently, while non-bank customers will be able easily access UBA banking and payment services.
"We are proud to open any frontier for e-payments in Africa with EmailMoni. This conforms with our desire to continuously deliver innovative and convenient payment options to our customers. Our innovations in the digital banking space have been possible because of our huge investments in building efficient, trustworthy platforms. We assure our customers that we are committed to continually bring the best in the financial technology space to ensure they always have the best and most convenient banking experience with all our service channels," said Yinka Adedeji, Divisional Head, Digital Banking, UBA.
Ed Starrs, CEO of MEC commented: "EmailMoni will be instrumental in the positive transformation of Africa to a digital banking system and enable greater access to secure commerce. EmailMoni focuses on the banks' customers making sure they can access their money anywhere and anytime. EmailMoni enables UBA's customers to communicate just like using email and pay for all their transactions in one place. MEC along with our sales partner in Africa, Centric Gateway, Nigeria, Limited, are committed to providing industry leading technology and service to support UBA in meeting their e-payment goals."
"EmailMoni, powered by MEC, will be a fundamental change in the payment space in Africa," stated Omoniyi Kolade, CEO of Centric Gateway. "The email-based payment platform will enable our client UBA to deliver fundamental value in promoting cashless and digital banking for their customers in their day to day transactions. EmailMoni will remove hurdles being faced by customer transactions and maintain speed, ease of use, along with security in between customer, retailers, businesses, biller, e-commerce, etc. This is the first solution in the Nigeria payment service industry that addresses customer payment affairs in a seamless way."
About UBA: With a customer base in excess of eight million, UBA has invested heavily in building robust and secure digital banking platforms to facilitate transactions across Africa. A highly diversified financial services provider, UBA is a leading player on the African continent, with significant market share and operations in 19 different African countries and business offices in New York, Paris and London. Visit: www.ubagraoup.com
About Centric Gateway: Located in Lagos, Nigeria, Centric Gateway Limited is a payment services provider and the Authorized Sales Partner in Africa for MyECheck software and services.
About MEC, Inc.: MEC, Incorporated (formerly MyECheck, Inc.) is a developer, licensor and services provider of innovative payment and banking solutions. MEC software applications include virtual/cloud banking, mobile payments apps, web commerce, POS, billing/invoicing, card-less ATM, international remittances and advanced security and fraud control technologies. Visit: www.mecincorp.com
Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, continued acceptance of mentioned products, increased levels of competition, new products and technological changes, dependence upon third-party suppliers, intellectual property rights, and other risks detailed from time to time in reports filed with the SEC.
MEC, Inc.
Edward Starrs
775-434-5105
ed.starrs@myecheck.com
info@mecincorp.com
ATLANTA (dpa-AFX) - Delta Airlines has unveiled new uniforms designed by famous designer Zac Posen for about 60,000 of its employees. It is the first overhaul in uniforms for Delta Airlines in a decade, which is the number two U.S. airline. All three of the largest U.S. carriers have now unveiled redesigned uniforms in recent years. The new uniforms will be available for its flight attendants, gate agent and technicians. Land's End will supply the uniforms to the Atlanta-based airline. The previous uniforms predates Delta's 2008 merger with Northwest Airlines. About 1,000 of the airline's front line staff will begin testing the new uniforms in December. The new uniforms will roll out to all the employees in the first quarter of 2018. 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.
BOSTON, MA and NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Mondo, a leading digital marketing and IT resourcing firm, today announced that Tim Johnson has been promoted to CEO, effective immediately. Mondo has dual headquarters in New York City and Boston, and Johnson will be located in its Boston office. Michael Kirven, the founder and former CEO, will now serve as Chairman of the Board.
Johnson, an experienced sales executive, has been with Mondo for more than 12 years. He previously served as the Vice President of Sales for Mondo since April 2013, when Mondo split from Bluewolf, a global business consulting firm. Before that, Johnson served as the Vice President of Sales and Director of Sales. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from Washington State University.
Since 2005, Mondo's revenues have increased from $6 million to more than $90 million this year. During that same period, Mondo has grown from one office to 10 offices, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago, and Atlanta. Today, Mondo has more than 250 employees located nationwide.
"As the worlds of IT and digital marketing continue to rapidly converge, we are uniquely positioned to help organizations meet their hiring needs with the most qualified professionals and contractors," said Johnson. "I look forward to leading Mondo during this next phase of growth, as a leader in IT resourcing and digital marketing."
About Mondo
Mondo is a professional services organization that supports tech and digital marketing hiring needs. It provides resources on a contract, contract-to-hire, and permanent basis. Every day it helps clients drive their businesses forward by providing access to critical technology and digital marketing resources at a moment's notice. For 15 years, Mondo has been delivering staffing solutions that bridge the talent gap and accelerate technology and digital marketing innovation for global brands including Deutsche Bank, Facebook, NBC Universal, ZipCar, eBay, Random House, and many more. Headquartered in New York City, Mondo has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Denver, Boston, Chicago, and Atlanta. To learn more, visit www.mondo.com or call 212-257-5111 and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
For more media information, contact:
Lisa Hendrickson
LCH Communications for Mondo
516-767-8390
516-643-1642 (cell)
Email Contact
Technavio analysts forecast the global radio-frequency identification (RFID) smart cabinet marketto grow at an impressive CAGR of more than 14% during the forecast period, according to their latest report.
The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global RFID smart cabinetmarketfor 2016-2020. The market size is calculated on the basis of revenue generated from the sales of RFID smart cabinets. The report also presents major market vendors in the Americas, APAC, and EMEA.
On an average, a hospital loses more than 15% of its assets in a year owing to fraud or misplacement of hospital supplies. In order to eliminate such losses and enhance time efficiency, hospitals are focusing on upgrading their infrastructure and incorporating RFID technology to keep track of their inventories. Therefore, the healthcare sector is the predominant end-user of RFID smart cabinets, accounting for 90%-95% of the revenue share in 2015.
Request a sample report: http://www.technavio.com/request-a-sample?report=49852
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.
Technavio hardware and semiconductor analysts highlight the following four factors that are contributing to the growth of the global RFID smart cabinet market:
Growing need for inventory management in hospitals
Rising government funding for hospitals
Increasing healthcare spending
Supply chain inefficiencies
Growing need for inventory management in hospitals
The use of RFID smart cabinets reduces manual efforts in maintaining, tracking, and managing inventory in hospitals. Smart cabinets also minimize loss and misplacement of supplies. RFID smart cabinets from LogiTag Systems enable hospital staff to track the status of medical devices being used by the patients, the access time of devices, and expiration date of supplies to manage costs.
Advantages of RFID smart cabinets Enable accurate, real-time tracking at item level
Help nurses focus on patient care rather than inventory records
Reduce inventory waste
Eliminate manual counting of supplies
Eliminate the situation of stock-outs
Reduce hospital-supplier disagreements over the supplies
Rising government funding for hospitals
An increase in funding from governmental agencies for hospitals across the globe is another major driver for market growth. In 2013, the Australian government spent an additional amount of USD 40-USD 45 billion in the healthcare sector, compared with the amount spent in 2003. In 2014, Welsh Government invested USD 430,797 in a RFID tagging system under the project named Invest-to-Save Fund.
Sunil Kumar Singh, a lead embedded systems analyst at Technavio, says, "Hospitals across the world are showing a keen interest in enhancing their infrastructure to avail funding and achieve operational excellence. As hospitals are aware of the benefits of RFID smart cabinets, which can track drugs and devices and notify of the expiry dates of drugs, they have started adopting these cabinets."
Increasing healthcare spending
Continuous R&D and ongoing clinical trials have resulted in better product designs that incorporate advanced technological features. The development of the healthcare industry and its infrastructure have led to an increase in healthcare expenditure. Developed countries in the Americas and Europe spend the most on healthcare. Developing countries have to increase their spending dramatically to provide basic health insurance coverage, develop a primary healthcare service system, and improve the availability of medications in rural and suburban areas. This is expected to result in the reformation of public hospitals and healthcare facilities, thereby increasing the demand for laser equipment, propelling market growth.
The healthcare spending in different geographies is illustrated in the table below:
Regions Healthcare Spending (% of GDP) North America 17.50% EMEA 17.10% South America 8.00% APAC 6.70%
Source: Technavio
Supply chain inefficiencies
"In the retail landscape, goods move through many stages and get distributed at every stage. Thus, to keep track of the inventory distribution and accurate details of distribution is very difficult. In addition, the trend of omnichannel retailing has made inventory tracking even more complex," asserts Sunil.
Another complex task of retailers and manufacturers is accurate demand planning due to inefficiencies such as incorrect data and delayed data flow through the supply chain. Manufacturers may obtain point-of-sale (POS) data from retailers, but without information about stock levels during inventory transportation, it is not possible to plan for demand accurately.
Top vendors:
LogiTag Systems
Mobile Aspects
TAGSYS RFID
Skytron
SkyeTek
SATO Vicinity
Stanley InnerSpace
WaveMark
Browse Related Reports:
Global RFID Readers Market 2016-2020
Smart Thermostat Market in APAC 2015-2019
Global RFID Readers 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/20161019005431/en/
Contacts:
Technavio Research
Jesse Maida
Media Marketing Executive
US: +1 630 333 9501
UK: +44 208 123 1770
www.technavio.com
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/07/16 -- Sunset Cove Mining Inc. (the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: SSM) has been informed that the TSX Venture Exchange has determined that their Compliance & Disclosure Department will not be taking any further action at this time regarding the issues outlined in the Company's news release dated October 2, 2016.
The Company continues to work towards receiving approval from the TSX Venture Exchange for the proposed acquisition of the Houlton Woodstock Manganese Property located in Carleton County, New Brunswick. The Company is in the process of completing a NI 43-101 technical report on the Houlton Woodstock Manganese Property.
Sunset Cove's mission is to acquire and advance high potential mining prospects located in North America with the intent of supplying value added materials to the lithium ion battery and other alternative energy industries. For more information visit the website at www.sunsetcovemining.com.
Forward-Looking Statement: Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information that involves inherent risk and uncertainty affecting the business of Sunset Cove Mining. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such 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:
Sunset Cove Mining Inc.
Martin Kepman
Director
1-514-802-1814
martin@kepman.com
www.sunsetcovemining.com
PERTH, AUSTRALIA and GREER, SC -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Alexium International Group Limited ("Alexium," "the Company") (ASX: AJX) (OTCQX: AXXIY)
Highlights
Alexium to produce Alexicool for two leading global mattress makers for three years
Alexium's chemistry chosen for superior performance
Purchase and Production has already commenced
Alexium International Group Limited ("Alexium," "the Company") (ASX: AJX) (OTCQX: AXXIY) has signed its first multifunction, single-chemical formulation sales agreements to supply its flame retardant (FR) (Alexiflam), phase change cooling technology (Alexicool) and an odor preventer for mattress ticking. These agreements are between Alexium and two separate U.S.-based major producers and finishers of mattress fabrics for joint supply to one of the largest mattress brands in the world.
Sales are expected to commence immediately with monthly revenue to continue over an initial three-year production period, representing sales revenues in excess of US$3 million per year. Under these agreements, Alexium will supply its chemistry to three locations worldwide, with the end bedding products being sold primarily in stores in the United States.
Following Alexium's success with its Alexiflam and Alexicool products in the bedding market, the company sought to provide a single chemical package comprising a number of products and functions to help its customers reduce production time and complexity. These sales agreements are Alexium's first successful implementation of that approach. This new approach to the bedding market allows Alexium to capitalize on its expert knowledge of proprietary chemistry formulations to provide customized solutions to its customers and maintain strong margins, while its customers are responsible for the production process.
"When we first entered the bedding sector with our initial FR product, Alexiflam, we quickly established ourselves as not only a provider of high-quality FR products but also as a highly capable partner for providing complex chemical solutions reliably," stated Dirk Van Hyning, President of Alexium. "These multifunction, single-formulation agreements are a major step forward for Alexium as we expand our capabilities in the marketplace."
Mr. Van Hyning added, "We have been in discussions with other bedding fabric producers and finishers and anticipate further interest in our multifunction, single-formulation chemistries. We also expect this broader approach to the chemical marketplace will be very successful in other industries such as apparel, footwear and beyond."
About Alexium
Alexium International Group Limited (ASX: AJX, AX:AJX OTC QX: AXXIY) holds proprietary patent applications for novel technologies developed to provide flame retardancy for a wide range of materials. These environmentally friendly flame retardants have applications for a number of industries and can be customized. Further, Alexium has developed products for a range of other applications including phase-change materials, water repellents, antimicrobials, and combinations thereof. Alexium also holds patents for a process developed initially by the U.S. Department of Defense, which allows for the surface modification and attachment of nano-particles or multiple chemical functional groups to surfaces or substrates to provide functions such as fire retardancy, water proofing, oil proofing, and anti- microbial treatments. Applications under development include but are not limited to textiles, packaging, electronics, and building materials. Alexium's chemical treatments are currently marketed under the Alexiflam, Alexiflam FR, Alexiflam SYN, Alexiflam NF, Alexicool, Alexiflam PB, and Alexiflam AD brand names. For additional information about Alexium, please visit www.alexiuminternational.com.
IQALUIT, NUNAVUT -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Department of Canadian Heritage
The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, today announced funding for three projects in Nunavut through the Canada 150 Fund.
The Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum will receive $288,000 for its pan-Canadian signature project, "Voices of Nunavut", a multilingual exhibit that consists of a 25-channel video installation representing the 25 communities of Nunavut. The exhibit will go on tour to help those living in Nunavut and in southern regions of the country to better understand each other. Young people from each community will build collages using different types of media, creating an audio-visual representation of what makes each Nunavut community unique, and showing what the territory looks like in 2017.
The Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association will be receiving $350,000 for its community project "Nunavummiuts celebrate Canada's 150th birthday", which will help close to a dozen Nunavut communities in arranging celebrations for Canada's 150th birthday. The Association will be working with each of the territory's communities to organize an event that celebrates Nunavut's history and culture, and honours Inuit art and traditions.
Finally, the Iqaluit Action Lab will be receiving $100,000 to organize activities that will kick off celebrations for Canada's 150th birthday.
Minister Joly took the opportunity to remind everyone that the period of celebration for Canada's 150th will begin on December 31, 2016, with celebrations all across the country. Nineteen urban centres, including Iqaluit, will be ushering in 2017 in grand style. Thousands of Canadians will have a chance to gather together in their community to take part in memorable festivities!
Quotes
"Our culture is as multi-faceted as our country and the people who inhabit it-from Indigenous peoples to all those who have come here from across the world. These great activities will increase our understanding of what it means to live in the territory as well as being a Nunavummiut in the 21st century. These projects will leave a lasting legacy for the next generation to come. Let's celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Canada's Indigenous Peoples and the significant contributions they have made to our country."
- L'honorable Melanie Joly, ministre du Patrimoine canadien
"The Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum is extremely honoured to have been selected as a Signature Project in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Canada. Our project Voices from Nunavut will deepen understanding of Nunavut and broaden everyone's concept of what it means to be Canadian in 2017. We also believe this will leave a lasting legacy for youth and community members to learn about their territory."
- Gyu Oh, Manager/Curator, Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum
"The Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association is thrilled to be a recipient of the Canada 150 Fund! This funding from Canadian Heritage will enable us to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary in communities across Nunavut - enriching our territory through arts and culture!"
- Rowena House, Executive Director, Association des artistes et des artisans du Nunavut
"With the support of Canadian Heritage, the Iqaluit Action Lab is thrilled to be working with local partners including Alianait, the Road To Nowhere Pyrotechnics Society, the City of Iqaluit and others to create an unforgettable New Year's Eve celebration to kick off nation-wide Canada 150 events."
- Robyn Campbell, Director, Iqaluit Action Lab
Quick Facts
-- The Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum is a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing Inuit history, culture and art. -- The Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association promotes the development and growth of Nunavut's arts and crafts sector. -- Iqaluit Action Lab is a new organization mandated to stimulate community development in Iqaluit through community activities and local leadership. -- The Government of Canada's vision for the 150th anniversary of Confederation includes four major themes: diversity and inclusion, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, the environment and young people. -- The Canada 150 Fund was created in April 2015 and has a budget of $210 million. -- The countdown has begun-there are less than 100 days left until the official start of celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Confederation. -- We invite all Canadians to take part in countdown activities in person and on social media with the hashtag Canada150.
Associated Links
Canada 150
Canada 150 Fund
Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum
Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association
A version in Inuktitut is available at the following address: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/CM161210%20_Inuktitut.pdf
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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
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Donald Trump will reportedly look to rattle Hillary Clinton by inviting two surprise guests to the third and final presidential debate on Wednesday.
Numerous media reports said Trump's guests at the debate will include the half-brother of President Barack Obama as well as the mother of a victim of the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Malik Obama, who shares the same father with the president, has expressed support for Trump and has blamed Clinton for making the situation in Libya worse by toppling Moammar Gadhafi.
Trump's guest list will also include Patricia Smith, whose son Sean died in the attack in Benghazi and was highly critical of Clinton in a speech at the Republican National Convention in July.
The invitations from Trump are seen as part of an effort to get under Clinton's skin in a debate that could be crucial to the real estate tycoon changing the recent momentum of the race for the White House.
Meanwhile, Clinton is also reportedly inviting some high-profile guests to the debate, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
Whitman, who ran for Governor of California as a Republican, endorsed Clinton earlier this year and has donated a significant amount of money to her campaign.
The outspoken Cuban also attended the first presidential debate and has publicly sparred with Trump, going so far as to call his fellow billionaire 'bats--- crazy.'
The final face-to-face matchup between Clinton and Trump will take place at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas beginning at 9 pm ET on Wednesday.
(Photo: Michael Vadon)
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
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SHANGHAI, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- West Mountain Environmental Corp. ("WMT" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: WMT), China's leading environmental remediation technology provider, announced today that it has sold its first TPS unit in China to Shanghai Hehui Environmental (Hehui). The value of the contract is approximately $1.2 million.
WMT has operated in China since 2012 and has treated over 100,000 tonnes of contaminated soil and oil sludge using TPS technology. TPS' patented indirect thermal desorption technology is recognized in the industry as one of the most efficient and safest technologies for the removal of hazardous contaminants. TPS was one of the first western environmental remediation technologies successfully transferred to China and has been recognized as a Top 100 environmental technology by the Ministry of Environmental Protection 3iPET Program.
Beginning in Q2 of this year WMT expanded its contract service business model to include the sale of its technology in China. This sale represents the first time TPS technology has been used as part of a process to treat waste purified terephalic acid (PTA) sludge. PTA is required for the manufacture of polyester fibre, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle resin and polyester film and China is the largest producer of PTA at over 50 million tonnes per year.
"We are pleased to be partnering with Hehui in the PTA waste remediation market," says Tim Mahoney, President and CEO, "Hehui is the market leader in providing innovative waste remediation in the PTA market and this sale represents a major opportunity for us to support Hehui's solution to other PTA manufacturers throughout China."
"Hehui is a leading provider of innovative waste remediation solutions in China," said Hairong Geng President & CEO of Hehui. "China's commitment to improving the environment has led the PTA industry to look for new, innovative solutions to manage their waste. We identified WMT's TPS technology as a key part of our solution and look forward to building our business together."
About West Mountain
West Mountain is a publically traded (TSX VENTURE: WMT) and the leading provider of environmental technology to China. Founded in 2004, the company's flagship TPS technology employs a patented indirect thermal, closed loop technology to extract even the most hazardous contaminants from soil and industrial sludge. WMT has been in China since 2010 and is building on the success of TPS in China by aggressively expanding its technology offering by identifying and transferring to China some of the world's most innovative environmental technologies.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information or statements. Although West Mountain believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements and information are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements and information because West Mountain can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct.
Since forward-looking statements and information address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and West Mountain undertakes 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.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts the responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
West Mountain Environmental Corp.
Mr. Timothy Mahoney
President and CEO
709 726 5198
info@wmtenv.com
www.wmtenv.com
CARLSBAD, California and SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Oct. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The highly anticipated third edition of Biolatam international life science partnering conference will take place in San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 29-30, 2016. The event, produced by EBD Group and ASEBIO in collaboration with Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Research Trust, will bring over 300 life science dealmakers from pharma, biotech and service companies representing US, Latin American and European entities to Puerto Rico.
Attendees include executives from innovative biotech companies from across Latin America, representing a variety of speciality areas such as health, agrifood, industrials, plus emerging medical device and digital technology companies. Leaders of industry and academia as well as the investment community representing venture capital firms, private equity, and angels will be part of the event as well.
"There is a growing wave of interest in partnerships with Latin American biopharma companies. The success of Biolatam is the response to this interest. The global and regional company executives who attend are eager to connect and gain prime access to this emerging market," said Anna Chrisman, Group Managing Director, EBD Group.
"The commitment of the Puerto Rico Government to innovation, and the country's political and legal stability, its rich biodiversity, as well as the economic strength of many biotechnology-dependent sectors such as foodstuffs, cosmetics, and energy, make Puerto Rico an ideal venue to celebrate Biolatam," said Ion Arocena, General Director of ASEBIO. "ASEBIO and EBD Group are working with Latin American partners to promote business development opportunities in this region. Puerto Rico has an excellent geostrategic position and is a gateway to the US, the world's largest biotech market."
From dealmaking and alliance management to unique financing opportunities, the Biolatam program is designed to equip decision makers with information on the business opportunities in the Latin American market.
Featured speakers at Biolatam 2016 include:
Ion Arocena , Managing Director at ASEBIO
, Managing Director at ASEBIO Abel Baerga-Ortiz , Director, Center for Tropical Biodiversity and Bioprospecting at Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust
, Director, Center for Tropical Biodiversity and Bioprospecting at Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust Rolando Castro , CEO at Cognitiva IBM Watson Strategic Partner
CEO at Cognitiva IBM Watson Strategic Partner Gabriela Couto , President at CRBioMed - Costa Rican Biotech and Medical Device Association
, President at CRBioMed - Costa Rican Biotech and Medical Device Association Lucy Crespo , CEO at Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Research Trust
, CEO at Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Research Trust Carmen Cuevas Marchante , Director, Research and Development at PharmaMar
, Director, Research and Development at PharmaMar Kosmas Krestos , Executive Director at Puerto Rico Consortium for Clinical Investigation
, Executive Director at Puerto Rico Consortium for Clinical Investigation Ivan Lugo-Montes , Executive Director, INDUNIV Research Consortium
, Executive Director, INDUNIV Research Consortium Andrew Sandford , VP, Global Business Development, Biologics, Catalent Biologics
Register now to attend Biolatam to gain access to Latin America's exclusive life science partnering event.
Additional links and information:
Follow Biolatam 2015 on Twitter: @EBDGroup (hashtag: BLT15) and @BIOLATAM.
About EBD Group
EBD Group is the leading partnering firm for the global life science industry. Since 1993, biotech, pharma and medical device companies have leveraged EBD Group's partnering conferences, technology and services to identify business opportunities and develop strategic relationships essential to their success.
EBD Group's conferences are run with the support of leading corporations and international trade associations and include:
BIO-Europe and BIO-Europe Spring, Europe's largest life science partnering conferences, supported by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)
largest life science partnering conferences, supported by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) BioPharm America', the fastest growing partnering event in North America
Biotech Showcase', a unique forum in San Francisco for presenting to investors and business development executives, co-produced with Demy-Colton Life Science Advisors
for presenting to investors and business development executives, co-produced with Demy-Colton Life Science Advisors BioEquity Europe, the investor conference co-organized with BioCentury Publications and BIO
ChinaBio Partnering Forum, the first dedicated biotech/pharma partnering conference in China , co-produced with ChinaBio Group
, co-produced with ChinaBio Group Biolatam, facilitating partnering among global life sciences executives in Latin America's vibrant life science hubs
vibrant life science hubs Cell & Gene Exchange, a partnering forum focused on the patient community in cell and gene therapy sectors, co-produced with Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM).
EBD Group's sophisticated web-based partnering service, partneringONE, is used as the partnering engine at numerous third-party events around the world, and partnering360 is the open online community of life science dealmakers that enhances partnering experiences throughout the year.
Tune into EBD Group's Insight for timely coverage of news that influences the business strategies of the life science industry.
EBD Group is an Informa company. Informa is the largest publicly-owned organizer of exhibitions, conferences and training in the world.
EBD Group has offices in the USA and Europe.
For more information please visit www.ebdgroup.com.
LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - October 19, 2016) - The comic book series Apama The Undiscovered Animal is the story of a Hungarian ice cream truck driver in Cleveland that discovers the spirit force of the most savage creature mankind has never known. The award winning series written by Ted Sikora and Milo Miller, and illustrated by Benito Gallego received rave reviews and international distribution for its 176 page volume 1 collection. The creative team announced the launch of the next story arc on Kickstarter with a March 2017 release date.
The new set introduces a character like no other -- the Tap Dance Killer. "She can act, sing, dance... let's just say she's a quadruple threat. She's a mega-talented performer who is cast in a horror show musical, and then something happens that makes her permanently lock into her role," says Sikora.
The idea stemmed from an actual horror show musical from the early 90s titled Nothing Like Vaudeville for which Sikora wrote the story, principal music and lyrics. He explains, "When I was an aspiring composer I was also a comic book nut, so the characters in the show were creepy, vaudeville, comic-book-like villains."
The comic will be introducing three villains from the musical including the mob boss, Sir Terror; the creepy wax museum curator, Fletcher; and the mob's star assassin, Tap Dance Killer. The more they thought about Tap Dance Killer the more they realized she could be something special. "For whatever reason, in the comic book industry, there are a low percentage of female African American comic book heroes and villains. Being married to an African American woman and the father of a young girl gave me extra motivation to do something about that," says Sikora. A spinoff Tap Dance Killer comic series is set to debut in the first half of 2017.
The new Apama Kickstarter has already raised over $4,000 of its $7,000 campaign goal that ends October 31.
The Kickstarter campaign can be accessed at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/185033634/apama-the-undiscovered-animal-volume-2
Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/10/19/11G118652/Images/Comic-8678694ec6769fc08814d2badb526109.jpg
Media Contact:
Steve Levesque
info@luckmedia.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Teranga Gold Corporation ("Teranga" or the "Company") (TSX: TGZ) (ASX: TGZ) announced today that it will release its third quarter 2016 financial and operating results on Friday, October 28, 2016 at approximately 6:00 a.m. ET. The release will be followed by a conference call and audio webcast later that morning at 8:30 a.m. ET. where management will review the Company's results and discuss the quarter's highlights.
Those wishing to listen can access the live conference call and audio webcast as follows:
Date & Time: Friday, October 28, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. ET Telephone: Toll-free +1- 877- 648-7976 International +1- 617-826-1698 Please allow 10 minutes to be connected to the conference call. Webcast: The webcast can be accessed directly at www.gowebcasting.com/8119 and on Teranga's website at http://www.terangagold.com/. Replay: The conference call replay will be available for two weeks after the call by dialing +1-404-537-3406 or toll-free at +1-855-859-2056 and entering the conference ID 1221492. Note: The slide presentation will be available for download at http://www.terangagold.com/ for simultaneous viewing during the call.
About Teranga Gold
Teranga is a Canadian-based gold company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: TGZ) and Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: TGZ). Teranga is principally engaged in the production and sale of gold, as well as related activities such as exploration and mine development in West Africa.
Teranga's mission is to create value for all of its stakeholders as it pursues its vision to be a pre-eminent mid-tier gold producer in West Africa. Operating in accordance with the highest international standards and using the best available techniques, Teranga strives to set the benchmark for responsible mining and to be a catalyst for sustainable economic, environmental and community development. For more information, please refer to www.terangagold.com.
Contacts:
Teranga Gold Corporation
Trish Moran
Head of Investor Relations
+1-416-607-4507
tmoran@terangagold.com
DEERFIELD (dpa-AFX) - Shares of Rite Aid (RAD) Wednesday slipped on reports that supermarket chain Kroger (KR) are no longer interested to buy stores that Walgreens and Rite Aid need to divest in order to get regulatory approval for their $17 billion merger. A report from New York Post suggest that supermarket chain Kroger is no longer interested in acquiring 650 stores as part of that deal. Walgreens and Rite Aid will have to divest those stores in order to gain anti-trust approval for the deal. Shares of RAD is currently trading at $6.72, down $0.31 or 4.20%, far below Walgreen's $9 per share offer. Kroger's interest in acquiring those stores have waned because Obama's Federal Trade Commission has Kroger that the 650 stores could not be purchased and closed, with the operations moved inside the grocery stores. The FTC is trying to preserve the stand-alone stores,' a source said. 'But Kroger might want to integrate. What happens to Rite Aids it buys that are near Krogers?' NYPost reports citing two sources. In September, Walgreens said that both parties will be required to divest more than the 500 stores in order to expedite regulatory approval process. It was in late October 2015 that drugstore chain Walgreens agreed to acquire smaller drugstore chain Rite Aid for a deal worth about $17.2 billion, including debt. 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 and JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Platinum Group Metals Ltd. (TSX: PTM)(NYSE MKT: PLG) ("Platinum Group" or the "Company") announces positive results from an Independent Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS") on the Waterberg PGM Project completed by international and South African engineering firm WorleyParsons RSA (Pty) Ltd. trading as Advisian. Platinum Group holds a 58.62% effective interest in the Waterberg Project with the Japan, Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") holding a 28.35% interest. Empowerment partner Mnombo Wethu Consultants (Pty) Ltd. ("Mnombo") holds the balance of the joint venture. JOGMEC funding is in place to advance the project through completion of a Feasibility Study ("FS").
Platinum Group Metals plans to continue drilling the deposit and to advance the project to completion of a FS and a construction decision. The Company also plans to file a mining right application, with Joint Venture approval, based substantially on the results of the PFS.
Highlights of the PFS include:
-- Validation of the 2014 Waterberg Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") results for a large scale, shallow, decline accessible, mechanized platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold ("4E") mine. -- Annual steady state production rate of 744,000 4E ounces in concentrate. -- A 3.5 year construction period. -- On site life-of-mine average cash cost of US$248 per 4E ounce including by-product credits and exclusive of smelter discounts. -- After-tax Net Present Value ("NPV") of US$320 million, at an 8% discount rate, using three-year trailing average metal prices. -- After-tax NPV of US$507 million, at an 8% discount rate, using investment bank consensus average metal prices. -- Estimated capital to full production of approximately US$1.06 billion including US$67 million in contingencies. Peak project funding estimated at US$914 million. -- After-tax Internal Rate of Return ("IRR") of 13.5% using three-year trailing average price deck. -- After-tax IRR of 16.3% at investment bank consensus average metal prices. -- Probable reserves of 12.3 million 4E ounces. -- Indicated resources updated to 24.9 million 4E ounces (2.5 g/t 4E cut- off) and deposit remains open on strike to the north and below a 1,250 meter arbitrary depth cut-off.
R. Michael Jones, CEO and co-founder of Platinum Group said, "The completion of the PFS significantly increases the Company's attributable 4E reserves and is an important milestone for the project and the Company. The PFS has a similar approach, similar peak funding in US dollar terms with increased production, compared to the PEA.
Waterberg is designed to be a low cost, multi-decline, fully mechanized, mining complex along an initial 13 km deposit strike length with two 300,000 tonne per month mills built in close sequence. At 744,000 ounces annual steady state production and a modelled 18 year mine life, Waterberg is very large and offers excellent exposure to the essential metals of platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold. Amazingly, the deposit is still open. The PFS covers only the first 218 million tonnes in Indicated resources to date.
With the full support of our joint venture partners JOGMEC and Mnombo, we look forward to advancing Waterberg during the remainder of 2016 and 2017 with more drilling, a FS on the initial complex, and the submission of a mining right application. From an original US$20 million commitment by JOGMEC in 2015, approximately US$8 million of further project funding remains to be spent. We are very appreciative of JOGMEC's continued commitment and support.
We look forward to growing and advancing Waterberg so that we may fully understand this new part of the Bushveld complex that we and our joint venture partners have discovered. We will work hard to maximize the value of the resource for all stakeholders including shareholders, employees, the Government of South Africa and the local communities."
This press release has been prepared by the qualified persons named herein. This press release is qualified in its entirety by reference to the PFS, which is expected to be filed shortly on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and the SEC's EDGAR site at www.sec.gov. Investors should refer to the PFS for further information.
SCALE AND PGM INDUSTRY POSITION
As a result of the shallow depth, good grades and a fully mechanized mining approach, the Waterberg Project has the opportunity to be a safe mine within the lowest quartile of the industry cost curve. The project resources consist of 60% palladium and the PFS estimates that Waterberg will produce 472,000 ounces of palladium annually; more palladium than the Stillwater Mine produced in 2015, or about 6% of the world's palladium production in 2015. Producing approximately 744,000 4E ounces per year, Waterberg would be one of the largest platinum group metals mine complexes in South Africa based on 2015 production numbers.
It is estimated that Waterberg will create approximately 3,361 new primary highly trained jobs with transferable skills. The increased safety, improved working conditions, low costs and decline access for rapid development all provide attractive features compared to traditional platinum and palladium mines in South Africa. The project is in an area prioritized for economic development. Relations with the small rural community in the area have been business like and positive.
Total Ounces Produced - Life of Mine: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1073217a.jpg
KEY RESULTS
Resource Update
Additional drilling since the April 2016 Resource Report has updated the resources as follows:
--------------------------------------------------------------- T-Zone 2.5 g/t Cut-off --------------------------------------------------------------- Resource Category Cut-off Tonnage Grade ---------- ---------------------------- 4E Pt Pd Au Rh ------------------------------------------------ g/t Mt g/t g/t g/t g/t --------------------------------------------------------------- Indicated 2.5 31.540 1.13 1.90 0.81 0.04 --------------------------------------------------------------- Inferred 2.5 19.917 1.10 1.86 0.80 0.03 --------------------------------------------------------------- F-Zone 2.5 g/t Cut-off --------------------------------------------------------------- Resource Category Cut-off Tonnage Grade ---------- ---------------------------- 4E Pt Pd Au Rh ------------------------------------------------ g/t Mt g/t g/t g/t g/t --------------------------------------------------------------- Indicated 2.5 186.725 1.05 2.23 0.17 0.04 --------------------------------------------------------------- Inferred 2.5 77.295 1.01 2.16 0.17 0.03 --------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------ T-Zone 2.5 g/t Cut-off ------------------------------------------------------------------ Resource Category Cut-off Grade Metal --------------------------------------------------- 4E 4E Cu Ni 4E --------------------------------------------------- g/t g/t % % Kg Moz ------------------------------------------------------------------ Indicated 2.5 3.88 0.16 0.08 122,375 3.934 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Inferred 2.5 3.79 0.16 0.08 75,485 2.427 ------------------------------------------------------------------ F-Zone 2.5 g/t Cut-off ------------------------------------------------------------------ Resource Category Cut-off Grade Metal --------------------------------------------------- 4E 4E Cu Ni 4E --------------------------------------------------- g/t g/t % % Kg Moz ------------------------------------------------------------------ Indicated 2.5 3.49 0.07 0.16 651,670 20.952 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Inferred 2.5 3.37 0.04 0.12 260,484 8.375 ------------------------------------------------------------------
The Total Mineral Resource is summarized below:
--------------------------------------------------------- Waterberg Total 2.5 g/t Cut-off --------------------------------------------------------- Resource Category Cut-off Tonnage Grade --------- ------------------------ 4E Pt Pd Au Rh ------------------------------------------ g/t Mt g/t g/t g/t g/t --------------------------------------------------------- Indicated 2.5 218.265 1.06 2.18 0.26 0.04 --------------------------------------------------------- Inferred 2.5 97.212 1.03 2.10 0.30 0.03 --------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Waterberg Total 2.5 g/t Cut-off --------------------------------------------------- Resource Category Grade Metal ------------------------------------ 4E Cu Ni 4E ------------------------------------ g/t % % Kg Moz --------------------------------------------------- Indicated 3.55 0.08 0.15 774,045 24.886 --------------------------------------------------- Inferred 3.46 0.06 0.11 335,969 10.802 ---------------------------------------------------
4E = Platinum Group Elements (Pt+Pd+Rh+Au). The cut-offs for mineral resources have been established by a qualified person after a review of potential operating costs and other factors. The mineral resources stated above are shown on a 100% basis, that is, for the Waterberg Project as a whole entity. Conversion Factor used - kg to oz = 32.15076. Numbers may not add due to rounding. Resources do not have demonstrated economic viability. A 5% and 7% geological loss has been applied to the Indicated and Inferred categories respectively. Effective Date Oct 17, 2016. Metal prices used in the reserve estimate are as follows based on a 3-year trailing average (as at July 31/2016) in accordance with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") guidance for the assessment of resources; US$1,212/oz Pt, US$710/oz Pd, US$1229/oz Au, US$984/oz Rh, US$6.10/lb Ni, US$2.56/lb Cu, US$/ZAR15.
Total aggregate mineral resources at Waterberg on a 100% project basis have increased slightly since those reported in April 2016. Inferred category resources have decreased to an estimated 10.8 million 4E ounces from 11.71 million ounces 4E Inferred in April, 2016. Indicated category resources have increased to an estimated 24.9 million 4E ounces, from 23.9 million 4E ounces Indicated in April 2016:
1. The mineral resources are classified in accordance with the SAMREC standards. There are certain differences with the "CIM Standards on Mineral Resources and Reserves"; however, in this case the QP believes the differences are not material and the standards may be considered the same. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability and Inferred resources have a high degree of uncertainty. 2. The mineral resources are provided on a 100% project basis and Inferred and Indicated categories are separate and the estimates have an effective date of 17 October 2016. 3. A cut-off grade of 2.5 g/t 4E for both the T and the F-Zones is applied to the selected base case mineral resources. 4. Cut off for the T and the F-Zones considered costs, smelter discounts, concentrator recoveries from previous engineering work completed on the property by the Company. The resource model was cut-off at an arbitrary depth of 1,250 meters, although intercepts of the deposit do occur below this depth. 5. Mineral resources were completed by Mr. CJ Muller of CJM Consulting. 6. Mineral resources were estimated using kriging methods for geological domains created in Datamine from 303 original holes and 483 deflections. A process of geological modelling and creation of grade shells using indicating kriging was completed in the estimation process. 7. The estimation of mineral resources has taken into account environmental, permitting and legal, title, and taxation, socio- economic, marketing and political factors. 8. The mineral resources may be materially affected by metals prices, exchange rates, labor costs, electricity supply issues or many other factors detailed in the Company's Annual Information Form. 9. The data that formed the basis of the estimate are the drill holes drilled by Platinum Group, which consist of geological logs, the drill hole collars surveys, the downhole surveys and the assay data. The area where each layer was present was delineated after examination of the intersections in the various drill holes. 10. There is no guarantee that all or any part of the mineral resource not included in the current reserves will be upgraded and converted to a mineral reserve.
Reserves
Reserves are stated on a 100% Project Basis. Reserves are a subset of the Indicated resources and the mine plan was developed from the October 2016 resource model above and includes mine modifying factors such as geological losses, dilution, development overbreak, mine design factors, in stope losses and the extraction ratio from the mining methods applied to the T and F-Zones.
The independent Qualified Person for the Statement of Reserves is Mr. RL Goosen (WorleyParsons RSA (Pty) Ltd Trading as Advisian). The table below shows the prill splits, which are calculated using the individual metal grades reported as a percentage of the total 4E grade. There are no Inferred mineral resources included in the reserves.
Prill Splits
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Prill Split Grade ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Zone Pt Pd Au Rh Cu Ni ------------------------------------------------------------ % % % % % % ---------------------------------------------------------------------- T-Zone 29 49 21 1 0.16 0.08 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- F-Zone 30 64 5 1 0.07 0.16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Probable Mineral Reserve at 2.5 g/t 4E Cut-off- Tonnage and Grades
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Waterberg Probable Mineral Reserve - Tonnage and Grades ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cut-off grade Pt Pd Au Rh 4E Cu Ni Zone Mt (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) (%) (%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- T-Zone 16.5 2.5 1.14 1.93 0.83 0.04 3.94 0.16 0.08 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- F-Zone 86.2 2.5 1.11 2.36 0.18 0.04 3.69 0.07 0.16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 102.7 2.5 1.11 2.29 0.29 0.04 3.73 0.08 0.15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Probable Mineral Reserve at 2.5 g/t 4E Cut-off- Contained Metal
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Waterberg Probable Mineral Reserve - Contained Metal ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4E Pt Pd Au Rh 4E content Cu Ni Zone Mt (Moz) (Moz) (Moz) (Moz) (Moz) (kg) (Mlb) (Mlb) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- T-Zone 16.5 0.61 1.03 0.44 0.02 2.09 65,097 58.21 29.10 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- F-Zone 86.2 3.07 6.54 0.51 0.10 10.22 318,007 132.97 303.94 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 102.7 3.67 7.57 0.95 0.12 12.32 383,103 191.18 333.04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reasonable prospects of economic extraction were determined with the following assumptions: Metal prices used in the reserve estimate are as follows based on a 3-year trailing average (as at July 31/2016) in accordance with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") guidance for the assessment of resources and reserves; US$1,212/oz Pt, US$710/oz Pd, US$1229/oz Au, US$984/oz Rh, US$6.10/lb Ni, US$2.56/lb Cu, US$/ZAR15. Smelter payability of 85% was estimated for 4E and 73% for Cu and 68% for Ni. The effective date is October 17, 2016. A 2.5 g/t Cut-off was used and checked against a pay-limit calculation. Independent Qualified Person for the Statement of Reserves is Mr. RL Goosen (WorleyParsons RSA (Pty) Ltd Trading as Advisian). The mineral reserves may be materially affected by changes in metals prices, exchange rates, labor costs, electricity supply issues or many other factors. See Risk Factors in 43-101 report on www.sedar.com and the Company's Annual Information Form. The reserves are estimated under SAMREC with no material difference to the CIM 2014 definitions in this case.
The estimation of mineral reserves has taken into account environmental, permitting and legal, title, taxation, socio-economic, marketing and political factors. Based on the cut-off grade and a maximum depth cut-off of 1,250 meters the Probable reserve will support an 18 year mine life.
PROJECT PFS RESULTS
The PFS results validate the PEA with similar capital costs in USD, increased production profile (from 655,000 3E ounces/yr PEA to 744,000/yr 4E ounces PFS) and an increase in sustaining capital. Optimization of the mine plan and working on reducing underground sustaining development capital will be part of the upcoming Feasibility Study.
PROJECT MODEL TIMELINE
The project time line includes a construction decision following the completion of a FS and first production 3 years later. Under the PFS model, first production is estimated as mid-2021, if the FS is completed at the end of 2017 and a mining right and other permits are granted as planned. Final reef tonnes are scheduled to be mined in 2038.
CAPITAL COSTS
Capital costs to full production and peak funding of the project are estimated in Rand 2016 terms. Peak Funding is estimated at US$914 million. The costs are estimated in USD at 15R/1USD with a flat exchange rate. Escalation of costs in Rand terms are estimated to be mostly offset over time by future Rand devaluation.
TOTAL CAPITAL
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Full Sustaining To Full Sustaining Facility Facility Production Capital Production Capital Code Description ZAR (M) ZAR (M) USD (M) USD (M) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2000 Underground 6,092 9,766 406 651 Mining ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3000 Concentrator 2,850 159 190 11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4000 Shared Services 1,063 43 71 03 & Infrastructure ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5000 Regional 2,566 0 171 0 Infrastructure ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6000 Site Support 691 67 46 04 Services ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7000 Project 1,399 147 93 10 Delivery Management ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8000 Other 246 83 16 06 Capitalised Costs ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9000 Contingency 999 1,202 67 80 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Capital 15,906 11,468 1,060 765 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The estimates for the scope of work, within the given battery limits, and subject to the qualifications, assumptions and exclusions contained in the PFS, are considered to be within the accuracy range required for a PFS of +25%. Monte Carlo simulation was used to provide a 12% contingency that was used in the estimates.
Waterberg 2016 PFS Results Details
--------------------------------------------- Item Units Total --------------------------------------------- Mined and Processed Mtpa 7.20 --------------------------------------------- Platinum g/t 1.11 --------------------------------------------- Palladium g/t 2.29 --------------------------------------------- Gold g/t 0.29 --------------------------------------------- Rhodium g/t 0.04 --------------------------------------------- 4E g/t 3.73 --------------------------------------------- Copper % 0.08 --------------------------------------------- Nickel % 0.15 --------------------------------------------- Recoveries --------------------------------------------- Platinum % 82.5% --------------------------------------------- Palladium % 83.2% --------------------------------------------- Gold % 75.3% --------------------------------------------- Rhodium % 59.4% --------------------------------------------- 4E % 82.1% --------------------------------------------- Copper % 87.9% --------------------------------------------- Nickel % 48.8% --------------------------------------------- Produced in Concentrate --------------------------------------------- Concentrate ktpa 285 --------------------------------------------- Platinum g/t 24.2 --------------------------------------------- Palladium g/t 51.5 --------------------------------------------- Gold g/t 4.9 --------------------------------------------- Rhodium g/t 0.6 --------------------------------------------- 4E g/t 81 --------------------------------------------- Copper % 1.9 --------------------------------------------- Nickel % 1.8 --------------------------------------------- Recovered Metal in Concentrate --------------------------------------------- Platinum kozpa 222 --------------------------------------------- Palladium kozpa 472 --------------------------------------------- Gold kozpa 45 --------------------------------------------- Rhodium kozpa 6 --------------------------------------------- 4E kozpa 744 --------------------------------------------- Copper Mlbpa 11 --------------------------------------------- Nickel Mlbpa 12 ---------------------------------------------
KEY ASSUMPTIONS
Economic Assumptions
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Investment 3 Year Bank Trailing Consensus Parameter Unit Average Price ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Platinum Palladium USD/oz 1,212 1,213 Gold USD/oz 710 800 Rhodium USD/oz 1,229 1,300 T and F Combined Basket USD/oz 984 1,000 (4E) USD/oz 899 960 Nickel USD/lb 6.10 7.50 Copper USD/lb 2.56 2.90 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Base Metals Refining Charge % Gross Sales Pay 85% Copper Refining Charge % Gross Sales Pay 73% Nickel Refinery Charge % Gross Sales Pay 68% -------------------------------------------------------------
FINANCIAL RESULTS
Average Life of Mine ("LOM") Operating Cost Rates and Totals per Area in ZAR and USD
------------------------------------------------------------ Average LOM Total LOM Average LOM Total LOM (ZAR/t) (ZAR M) (USD/t) (USD M) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mining R 271.90 R 27,915 $ 18.13 $ 1,861 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Engineering & Infrastructure R 107.49 R 11,036 $ 7.17 $ 736 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- General & Admin R 40.71 R 4,180 $ 2.71 $ 279 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Process R 154.52 R 15,864 $ 10.30 $ 1,058 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total OPEX Cost R 574.62 R 58,994 $ 38.31 $ 3,933 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4E Cash Costs before and after Credits and Costs
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item US$/oz 4E in Concentrate ------------------------------------------------ Life-of-Mine 5-Year Average 10-Year Average Average 2022 - 2026 2022 - 2031 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mine Site Cash Cost 389 390 374 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nickel Credits 98 97 98 Copper Credits 42 40 40 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Mine Cash Costs After Credits 248 253 236 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Realisation cost (smelter "cost", transport) 232 224 231 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Cash Costs After Credits 481 477 467 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Financial Results Three Year Trailing Average Price Deck 15R/1USD Flat
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discount ZAR Millions ZAR Millions USD Millions USD Millions Item Rate (Before Tax) (After Tax) (Before Tax) (After Tax) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net Present Undiscounted 36,096 25,042 2,406 1,669 Value 4.0% 18,213 11,883 1,214 792 6.0% 12,666 7,808 844 520 8.0% 8,565 4,805 571 320 10.0% 5,519 2,584 368 172 12.0% 3,249 939 217 62 14.0% 1,555 -278 104 -19 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internal Rate of Return Project Payback Period 16.6% 13.5% 16.6% 13.5% (Years) from 2017 10 10 10 10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Investment Bank Consensus Price Deck
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discount Before Tax After Tax Before Tax After Tax Item Rate (ZAR M) (ZAR M) (USD M) (USD M) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net Present Undiscounted 45,781 31,946 3,052 2,130 Value 4.0% 24,180 16,184 1,612 1,079 6.0% 17,426 11,263 1,162 750 8.0% 12,402 7,610 827 507 10.0% 8,641 4,884 576 325 12.0% 5,812 2,842 387 189 14.0% 3,676 1,311 245 87 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internal Rate of Return Project Payback Period 19.8% 16.3% 19.8% 16.3% (Years) from 2017 9 9 9 9 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sensitivity Analysis - Post Tax Three Year Trailing Average Price Deck 15R/1USD Flat
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Change in Change in Change in Change in Change in Parameter Parameter Parameter Parameter Parameter Parameter ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Metal Prices -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% IRR (post-tax) 5% 10% 13.5% 17% 20% NPV (8% Discount) (R000) -2,467 1,211 4,805 8,344 11,854 NPV (8% Discount) ($000) -164 67 320 556 790 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Head Grade -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% IRR (post-tax) 6% 10% 13.5% 16% 19% NPV (8% Discount) (R000) -1,513 1,562 4,805 7,562 10,505 NPV (8% Discount) ($000) -101 104 320 504 700 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Capex -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% IRR (post-tax) 17% 15% 13.5% 12% 10% NPV (8% Discount) (R000) 8,161 6,484 4,805 3,109 1,395 NPV (8% Discount) ($000) 544 432 320 207 93 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opex -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% IRR (post-tax) 18% 16% 13.5% 12% 10% NPV (8% Discount) (R000) 7,435 6,121 4,805 3,246 2,124 NPV (8% Discount) ($000) 496 408 320 216 142 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY
The immediate next steps for the Waterberg Project are the development of a mining right application and working towards a FS. The PFS specifies that the project will utilize an EPCM contractor and a mining contractor for the development of the mine, overseen by an experienced in-house Platinum Group owners' team. Initial development is planned with contractors with a later takeover for mining by an owners' team. Equipment operators will be trained at an existing MQA certified training center developed and owned by Platinum Group.
PLANNED MINING METHODS
The mining blocks of the Waterberg deposits occur at depths from 140 meters to 1,250 meters along 8,000 meters of strike length of reserves. The deposit is known from drill intercepts to continue below 1,250 meters and to extend for over 13,000 meters of strike length.
Access to the mining complex is planned by three decline ramp clusters. Decline ramps have advantages over vertical shafts in terms of capital cost, and importantly, time. Declines to the depths of the top of the Waterberg deposit can be developed over 24-36 months whereas vertical shafts, shaft infrastructure and equipping can take six to seven years.
Mining will be completed by safe, efficient fully mechanized methods and the dip and thickness of the zones are driving the mining method selection. A fleet of approximately 400 trackless machines including drill rigs, loaders, dump trucks and other trackless machines will be used for mining and development. A minimum mining width has been set at three meters so that all mining can be fully mechanized, safe and efficient.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vertical Mining Dip of Mining Method Height the Reef Key Advantages ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blind Longitudinal 3 - 15m less than or On reef development. Good Retreat equal to 35 grade, extraction. degrees ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sub-level Open 3 - 15m greater than 35 On reef development. Good Stoping - degrees extraction. Bulk and low Longitudinal cost. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sub-level Open greater than greater than 35 Bulk method. High Stoping - 15m degrees efficiency, large Transverse tonnage, good extraction, ultra-low cost. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Portal and Underground Layouts (October 17, 2016): http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1073217b.jpg
The mine utilizes a large supply of new mechanized trackless mobile equipment for mining and feed ore onto large conveyors from underground to the processing plant. The mine will rely on both the T and the F reef from more than one portal to make the tonnage profile steady state of 600,000 tonnes per month.
METALLURGICAL RECOVERY AND PROCESSING
The flotation test work indicated that the Waterberg ores are amenable to treatment by conventional flotation without the need for re-grinding. A standard flotation concentrator can be used to produce a saleable concentrate, at a 4E grade of no less than 80 g/t, with no deleterious products. A 4E recovery rate in excess of 80% is expected at the proposed mill feed grades.
Metallurgical test work on the Waterberg ores by SGS, Mintek and DRA has focused on recovery of 4E platinum group elements and copper-nickel sulphides with the objective of producing a high grade concentrate attractive for smelting in South Africa.
The processing plant is designed in two 300,000 tonne/month Mill-Float in two cycles "MF-2" standard platinum industry modules for ramp-up and operational flexibility. A JOGMEC reagent circuit with some opportunity for increased recovery has also been tested. The plant modules are designed to accept T reef, F reef or a blended combination. The ore types can be co-mingled without negatively affecting recoveries.
INFRASTRUCTURE
The main infrastructure requirements for the Waterberg Project are access roads, tailings storage, water management, power supply and process plant to service and treat the targeted mine production.
The Waterberg Project is situated in a remote area and will require approximately 32 km of existing unpaved roads to be surfaced.
BULK WATER SUPPLY
A combination of sewage effluent together with groundwater is considered the most viable solution to meet the proposed mining schedule. Several available options were considered including a pipeline to be developed for several users to the south, including for other proposed and active mines. This option was not chosen as it is considered to have greater risk due to the large number of parties involved. Sufficient water sources for the project were identified and early discussions for the preferred arrangements were positive.
BULK POWER SUPPLY
The updated electricity supply plan compiled by Eskom provides for the establishment of two 77 km long 132kV overhead lines from the Eskom Burotho 400/132kV main transmission substation.
The development of the abovementioned infrastructure will be done in conjunction with Eskom on a self-build basis and this work is already in an advanced stage including the application for permits for the proposed power line.
METALS MARKETS AND OFFTAKE
The Waterberg Project will produce a flotation concentrate from the processing plant which is assumed to be sold or toll treated into the local South African market.
Production of up to 285,000 tonnes of concentrate per annum will be available at peak production. The concentrate will contain approximately 80 g/t 4E's plus copper at between 1% and 9.2% and nickel at between 1.1% and 5% copper.
The concentrate does not contain any penalty elements such as chrome and is rich in sulphur, thus making it a desirable concentrate to blend with other high chrome concentrates.
No formal marketing studies have been conducted for this study nor have the local smelter and refinery operators been formally contacted to understand the appetite in the local industry to treat the concentrate to be produced from the project. Informal indications from smelters are that the concentrate is attractive.
Based on the large volume of concentrate and the significantly lower operating cost of the metal without the smelter discount, the consideration of production of an onsite smelter matte or combination with other Northern Limb material for further critical mass is recommended. The company will consider this recommendation with its partners JOGMEC and Mnombo.
LABOUR, SOCIAL AND PERMITTING
The Waterberg Project will create safe long term jobs with transferable mechanized equipment operations skills for a large part of the work force. The increased safety and ability to create good paying well trained jobs is an attractive community benefit. The social license to operate has been a focus of the company with ongoing positive meetings and interactions. The next stage of the project will involve the development of a Social and Labour Plan as part of the mining right application. The project involves normal measures for the protection of the environment similar to other platinum mining operations.
2016 AND 2017 PROGRAMS FUNDED
During 2015, JOGMEC committed to fund US$20 million of project work at Waterberg. Approximately US$8 million of that commitment remains to be completed and will fund 100% of the costs for the balance of 2016 and into 2017.
QUALIFIED PERSONS
The following Qualified Persons have completed work in preparation of the PFS and are responsible for the contents:
-- Independent Engineering Qualified Person: Mr. Robert L Goosen (B.Eng. (Mining Engineering)) Pr. Eng. (ECSA) Advisian/WorleyParsons Group -- Independent Geological Qualified Person: Mr. Charles J Muller (B.Sc. (Hons) Geology) Pr. Sci. Nat. CJM Consulting (Pty) Ltd -- Independent Engineering Qualified Person: Mr. Gordon I. Cunningham B. Eng. (Chemical), Pr. Eng. (ECSA), Professional association to FSAIMM Turnberry Projects (Pty) Ltd.
This press release has been reviewed and approved by R. Michael Jones, P.Eng., a non-independent Qualified Person and the CEO of the Company. He has verified the technical information for disclosure in this press release by reviewing the work of the QPs on a test basis, visiting the site and meeting with the project QPs through the development of the PFS.
DATA VERIFICATION, QUALITY ASSURANCE AND CONTROL
Scientific and Technical Information in this Press Release related to mineral resources has been reviewed and approved by Charles J Muller, (BScHons) Pr Sci Nat (Reg. No 400201/04), an independent consulting geologist and resource estimator of CJM Consulting, an independent qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 -Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). He has verified the data by reviewing the detailed assay and geological information and metallurgical work on the Waterberg deposit. He is satisfied that the data is appropriate for the resource estimate by reviewing the core, assay certificates and quality control information as well as reviewing the procedures on sampling, chain of custody and data base records of the Platinum Group exploration team.
Base metals and other major elements were determined by multi acid digestion with Inductively Coupled Plasma ("ICP") finish and PGEs were determined by conventional fire assay and ICP finish. Setpoint Laboratories is an experienced ISO 17025 SANAS accredited laboratory in assaying and have utilized a standard quality control system including the use of standards. Bureau Veritas South Africa and Genalysis of Australia with similar standards and approaches have been used for assays and umpire checks. Platinum Group utilized a well-documented system of inserting blanks and standards into the assay stream and has a strict chain of custody and independent lab re-check system for quality control. Details are available in the NI 43 101 reports on the project at www.sedar.com and www.platinumgroupmetals.net.
The independent QPs for the PFS (CJ Muller, GI Cunningham and RL Goosen) have visited the Waterberg property for personal inspection during 2016. Mr. RL Goosen last visited the site on 13 October 2016, Mr. GI Cunningham on 13 October 2016 and Mr. CJ Muller on 29 March 2016. They all have undertaken due diligence with respect to the PTM data. Other than as specified below they jointly take responsibility for the report.
-- Charles J Muller - Geology and Mineral Resource Estimation -- Robert L Goosen - Reserve Estimation, Mining and Infrastructure -- Gordon I Cunningham - Metallurgy, Metals Markets, Offtake, Capital cost and financial model
The QPs have verified the data sufficiently for the reporting of resources, reserves and this Pre-Feasibility Study. The QPs have reviewed and approved their relevant section of this press release.
OPPORTUNITIES
-- The company plans to work towards optimization of the mine plan, development plan and waste development plan for ventilation with the objective of reducing sustaining capital in the FS stage. -- Further drilling will be completed with the objective to upgrade some of the resources and the deposit remains open. A longer mine life will also be targeted in the high grade T reef areas. High grade thickness areas in the F reef will also receive targeted drilling with the objective of increasing definition for the FS mine plan. -- Further metallurgical work will be completed in the FS including the potential for increased recoveries using the JOGMEC circuit. -- The Waterberg concentrate is attractive for smelting and is of large strategic scale importance to the industry.
RISKS
-- The project at a PFS stage has all of the normal mining projects risks including but not limited to, estimation risk for the resources and reserves, recovery risks, capital cost and operating cost estimation risks, permitting and community and surface rights access risk. -- Government regulation stability and amendments of the fiscal regime is an additional risk. -- Waterberg is a large green-fields project and final off-take of the proposed metal is yet to be negotiated for a large volume of concentrate.
ABOUT PLATINUM GROUP METALS LTD.
Platinum Group, based in Johannesburg, South Africa and Vancouver, Canada, has a successful track record with more than 20 years of experience in exploration, mine discovery, mine construction and mine operations.
Formed in 2002, Platinum Group holds significant mineral rights in the Bushveld Igneous Complex of South Africa, which is host to over 70% of the world's primary platinum production. The Company is currently focused on ramping up the Maseve Mine, its first near-surface platinum mine, to commercial production.
Platinum Group has expanded its exploration and development efforts on the North Limb of the Bushveld Complex on the Waterberg Project. Waterberg represents a new bulk type of platinum, palladium and gold deposit.
On behalf of the Board of Platinum Group Metals Ltd.
"R. Michael Jones"
President and CEO
Disclosure
The Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE MKT LLC have not reviewed and do not accept responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this news release, which has been prepared by management.
This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws and forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. securities laws (collectively "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, plans, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. All statements that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, without limitation, the projections and assumptions relating to future events that are contained in the PFS, including, without limitation NPV, IRR, costs, potential production of the Waterberg Project and other operational and economic projections with respect to the Waterberg Project; future activities at Waterberg and the funding of such activities; trends in metal prices; potential future market conditions; the Company's overall capital requirements and future capital raising activities, plans and estimates regarding exploration, studies, development, construction and production on the Company's properties, other economic projections and the Company's outlook. Statements of mineral resources and mineral reserves also constitute forward-looking statements to the extent they represent estimates of mineralization that will be encountered on a property and/or estimates regarding future costs, revenues and other matters. Although the Company believes the forward-looking statements in this press release are reasonable, it can give no assurance that the expectations and assumptions in such statements will prove to be correct. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company 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; the Company's capital requirements may exceed its current expectations; the uncertainty of cost, operational and economic projections; the ability of the Company to negotiate and complete future funding transactions; variations in market conditions; the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located; metal prices; other prices and costs; currency exchange rates; the Company's ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities; the Company's ability to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, or to be fully able to implement its business strategies; and other risk factors described in the Company's shelf prospectus and registration statement, Form 40-F annual report, annual information form and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulators, which may be viewed at www.sec.gov and www.sedar.com, respectively.
This press release also includes a reference to mineral resources and mineral reserves. The estimation of resources and reserves is inherently uncertain and involves judgement. Mineral resources that are not reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Judgements associated with geology, tonnage grades in place and that can be mined may prove to be unreliable and inaccurate. Fluctuations in metals prices, exchange rates, labour costs and government regulations among other things may materially affect resources and reserves. The company does not yet have a right to mine the reported resources and reserves and there can be no assurance that the company will convert its prospecting permits to a mining right.
Cautionary Note to U.S. and other Investors
Estimates of mineralization and other technical information included or referenced in this press release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101. The definitions of proven and probable reserves used in NI 43-101 differ from the definitions in SEC Industry Guide 7. Under SEC Industry Guide 7 standards, a "final" or "bankable" feasibility study is required to report reserves, the three-year historical average price is used in any reserve or cash flow analysis to designate reserves and the primary environmental analysis or report must be filed with the appropriate governmental authority. As a result, the reserves reported by the Company in accordance with NI 43-101 may not qualify as "reserves" under SEC standards. In addition, the terms "mineral resource", "measured mineral resource", "indicated mineral resource" and "inferred mineral resource" are defined in and required to be disclosed by NI 43-101; however, these terms are not defined terms under SEC Industry Guide 7 and normally are not permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral deposits in these categories will ever be converted into reserves. "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian securities laws, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies, except in rare cases. Additionally, disclosure of "contained ounces" in a resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian securities laws; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measurements. Accordingly, information contained or referenced in this press release containing descriptions of the Company's mineral deposits may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.
Contacts:
R. Michael Jones, President
or Kris Begic, VP Corporate Development
Platinum Group Metals Ltd., Vancouver
Tel: (604) 899-5450 / Toll Free: (866) 899-5450
www.platinumgroupmetals.net
BRIDGEWATER, NOVA SCOTIA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Silver Spruce Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: SSE)(FRANKFURT: S6Q) ("Silver Spruce" or the "Company") is pleased to provide updates on the progress to conduct the first drill program at its Pino de Plata project. The 397 hectare (Ha) project is located in the Sierra Madre Occidental of Western Chihuahua State, Mexico, approximately 15 kilometres from Coeur Mining's Palmarejo silver project and approximately 12 kilometres due south of the town of Chinipas, Chihuahua State, Mexico.
The following actions have been accomplished to date:
-- Drill hole locations have been pinpointed and marked on site, -- Drilling company bids were received and analyzed; selected company formal contract to be executed, -- Environmental engineers have toured the site and completed necessary field work required to submit "Informe Preventivo", environmental declaration for any impact resulting from the drill program, -- Second semester 2016 "derechos" (mining taxes) have been paid in full.
"Although we are anxious to commence drilling at Pino de Plata, we are also pleased with the progress being made to prudently initiate serious exploration efforts while minimizing or eliminating any potential environmental and permitting liabilities in the future," stated Dr. Brian Penney, Chairman. "We are taking proactive steps now to ensure that safe and efficient exploration and development programs can be conducted without interference or unanticipated regulatory delays."
Drill Hole Locations
As previously reported in August, Mr. Leonard J. Karr, professional geologist and a Qualified Person, under TSX guidelines, led the field team to successfully pinpoint the proposed drill hole locations and map the new road access for the upcoming maiden drill program at the project. The team also completed onsite tours with representatives of three drilling companies that are submitting bids for the drilling contract. This first ever drill program at the project is based on recommendations contained in the NI 43-101 report, which is available on our website at www.silverspruceresources.com and is filed on www.sedar.com.
Drilling Company Selected
In September, three formal bids were received from the drill companies that toured the project in August. The selection process identified Major Drilling de Mexico as the preferred drilling contractor to efficiently conduct the 1,000-1,500 metre reverse circulation program. The selection was based on favorable pricing and reduced footprint requirements for drilling equipment and new pad construction. Drilling will commence upon receipt of required approvals.
Environmental Declaration Statement
Also in September, State and Federally certified environmental engineers toured the project site to analyze the flora and fauna for existence of endangered species and to assess the impact of the proposed drill program. Although Company representatives were initially advised that an Informe Preventivo was not required on private property, recent changes to the environmental protection laws in Mexico now make this a required filing. The completed Informe Preventivo declaration will be filed with the appropriate state and federal authorities upon its completion, after which the drill program may commence.
Additional Opportunities Examined
In late September and early October, Company representatives also conducted several field examinations at submittal projects in the surrounding areas to investigate additional opportunities for Silver Spruce in this prolifically mineralized and underexplored region of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Assays of samples taken at these submittal projects are in process, and any significant results will be analyzed in their geologic context to determine if the said projects warrant additional interest by the Company.
About Pino de Plata
The 397 hectare Pino de Plata Ag-Pb-Zn-Cu-Au project is located approximately fifteen kilometres from Coeur Mining Inc.'s Palmarejo open pit and underground operations. Although the Pino de Plata project has supported small scale historical production of high-grade mineralization from numerous areas, it had never been systematically explored and has had no drilling.
Ninety-two samples were taken during the NI 43-101 field examination and show the examined project area to host widespread intrusive epithermal mineralization at surface with silver values, on average, of greater than 50 grams per tonne (g/t), that is 1.6 ounces per tonne (opt), over an area of more than 1 square km (greater than 100 Ha). Within the area examined, specific targets were sampled with silver (Ag) assays of up to 557 g/t or 17.9 opt in outcrop.
Three types of mineralization were identified in the maiden NI 43-101 report: disseminated epithermal mineralization in igneous (intrusive) rock, carbonate replacement mineralization in sedimentary limestone/marble and sandstone/hornfels and several areas of significant outcropping vein mineralization. Each of the host areas identified in the 43-101 technical report provide immediate drill targets with open pit potential.
The Company intends to initiate a 1,000 - 1,500 metre reverse circulation drill program to test these defined targets where high grades of mineralization were sampled at surface.
Qualified Person
Mr. Leonard J. Karr, professional geologist and a Qualified Person, under TSX guidelines, is the author of the Company's NI 43-101 report on the Pino de Plata project, dated 7 July 2015, and is responsible for the technical content of this press release.
About Silver Spruce Resources Inc.
Silver Spruce Resources Inc. is a well-positioned Canadian junior exploration company pursuing development of the Pino de Plata epithermal silver/ base metal/ gold project located in the prolific Sierra Madre Occidental region of Western Chihuahua State in Mexico. The company has recently completed an exploration assessment on the property. Silver Spruce also retains a portfolio of uranium and rare earth element properties in Labrador.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The company seeks Safe Harbour.
Contacts:
Silver Spruce Resources Inc.
Gordon Barnhill
CFO/Director
902-527-5700
902-527-5711 (FAX)
gbarnhill@silverspruceresources.com
www.silverspruceresources.com
ATLANTA, GA and PHOENIX, AZ -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Valley Metro, the regional provider of bus, rail, vanpool and Dial-a-Ride services, received a $1 million Mobility on Demand (MOD) project grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to develop a mobile app that will integrate mobile ticketing and multi-modal trip planning information. The agency is partnering with RouteMatch Software, a transit industry technology provider, as well as Arizona State University (ASU), Lyft and the City of Phoenix Public Transit Department to create the passenger-based app.
RouteMatch is serving as a key partner to both co-develop and contribute in-kind technologies for the creation of the platform. Included in this are beacon technologies for Valley Metro's light rail and bus systems and on demand paratransit trip management technologies to facilitate mobility among riders with disabilities, especially among the visually and hearing impaired. The city of Phoenix Department of Transportation will provide the core data for vehicles, routes, and fare collection. ASU will assist with beta testing of the mobile app, as well as providing overall input. Transportation network companies will additionally participate, providing "first mile, last mile" connections from transit hubs to riders' final destinations.
"It's exciting to receive a nationally-competitive grant, which serves as seed money to build upon our Ridekick app that can eventually be shared with transit agencies across the U.S.," said Scott Smith, Valley Metro Interim CEO. "Alongside our mobility platform partners, we'll be adding features such as real-time information, fare purchasing and an optimized trip planner." Valley Metro will use an open data platform design to allow other public transportation agencies to use the application, adjusting it to meet the needs of their respective service areas.
Seeking to bridge the gap between public transportation systems and app-based transportation companies (e.g. Lyft, Uber), the mobile app will create a seamless and efficient travel experience for riders. Within the next 12 months, the features of the app will be completed in two phases beginning with enhancements to Valley Metro's current app, Ridekick.
Phase I will include mobile ticket purchasing and links to the mobile applications for Lyft and GR:D Bike Share reservations. Users will be able to purchase transit fare, as well as reserve a GR:D bike using a single payment method, then transition to the Lyft mobile app for a reservation allowing a rider to complete their transit trip. In addition, Wi-Fi and beacon technology between the ASU campuses in Tempe and Phoenix will allow for seamless fare validation and added safety features, such as incident reporting.
Phase II will build upon those features to include real-time data alerts of bus and light rail arrivals, on-demand reservation and cancellation of paratransit trips, and single fare payment capabilities for transit, bikeshare and ridesharing companies.
"We're thrilled to be working with such visionary teams at Valley Metro and their stakeholders to bring this innovation to transit riders and travelers in greater Phoenix," said Pepper Harward, vice president of Transit Solutions for RouteMatch Software. "It will be an inclusive application so all riders will receive a greater selection of transportation options and it provides a technology springboard to arrange multiple and more spontaneous travel modes using a single platform."
The application will be free to download on all major mobile devices and users will have the ability to create personalized accounts suitable to their needs. A recent rider survey indicates that 65 percent of Valley Metro riders use smart phone devices.
The MOD program is a new U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) initiative led by the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Joint Program Office and the FTA. MOD is an innovative, user-friendly approach that leverages emerging mobility services, integrated transit networks and operations and real-time data to allow for safe and informed mobility options.
About Valley Metro
Valley Metro provides eco-friendly public transit options to residents of greater Phoenix and Maricopa County including the planning and operations of a regional bus system and the development and operations of 26 miles of light rail. In Fiscal Year 2016, total ridership for the system was 67 million passengers. Seven high capacity extensions are planned or are under construction that will create a 66-mile system by 2034. Valley Metro also offers transit options including alternative transportation programs for seniors and people with disabilities, commuter vanpools, online carpool matching, bus trip mapping, bicycle safety and telework assistance. Two Boards of Directors set the policy direction for the agency with the intent of advancing the regional public transit system. Get the latest news by following us on Facebook and Twitter or visiting valleymetro.org.
About RouteMatch Software
RouteMatch Software is a leading provider of passenger transportation technologies that help transform rider experiences and engage communities. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, GA and works with more than 600 transit agencies across the U.S. and internationally, providing quality software and award-winning customer service. A team of more than 160 professionals who are passionate about transit address industry needs such as routing, scheduling, dispatching, billing, reporting, CAD/AVL, demand response and fixed route integration, traveler information services, multi-modal mobility management, and automated fare collection. For more information, visit routematch.com.
Daisy Wall
RouteMatch
404-844-5323
Email Contact
Susan Tierney
Valley Metro
602-523-6004
Email Contact
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 19, 2016) - Rockridge Capital Corp. (TSXV: RRC) (the "Company") announces that it has entered into a mineral purchase agreement (the "Agreement") with St. Jacques Mineral Corp. (the "Vendor") to acquire a property prospective for uranium located in Saskatchewan (the "Property"). The Property consists of nine mineral dispositions totaling 3,336 hectares, located in the Northern Mining District, Saskatchewan.
Under the terms of the Agreement, the Company has agreed to pay $10,000 and issue a total of 2,250,000 common shares of the Company within five days of TSX Venture Exchange approval to the Vendor. The Company will also be required to incur a total of $500,000 of exploration expenditures within 18 months of the day of the Agreement (the "Exploration Commitment"). In the event that the Company does not satisfy the Exploration Commitment, the Property will be returned to the Vendor.
The Vendor will also hold a 1% Net Smelter Royalty, which may be purchased by the Company at a cost of $1,000,000.
In connection with the transaction, the Company will issue a finder 220,000 common shares subject to the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange.
The Agreement and the transactions contemplated therein are subject to acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange.
Private Placement Financing
The Company also announces that it has approved a proposed private placement financing of a minimum of 5,000,000 common shares and up to a maximum of 10,000,000 common shares at a price of $0.11 per share for total proceeds of a minimum of $550,000 and up to $1,100,000 (the "Offering").
The Company may pay finders a fee and issue finders warrants in connection with the Offering.
The proceeds of the Offering will be used for mineral exploration on the Company's properties and working capital purposes.
For more information, please contact Gunther Roehlig, CEO and President at (604) 683-0911.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF
ROCKRIDGE CAPITAL CORP.
"signed"
_______________________
Gunther Roehlig
CEO and President
Forward-Looking Statements
Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Savanna Energy Services Corp. ("Savanna" or the "Company") (TSX: SVY) intends to release its Third Quarter 2016 results after markets close on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The results will be available on the Company's web site after the dissemination has taken place over the news wire service.
Savanna will host a conference call for analysts, investors and interested parties on Wednesday, November 9, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. Mountain Time (11:00 a.m. Eastern Time) to discuss the Company's third quarter 2016 results. The call will be hosted by Chris Strong, President and Chief Executive Officer and Dwayne LaMontagne, Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer.
If you wish to participate in this conference call, please call 1-888-892-3255 (for participants in North America). Please call 10 minutes ahead of time.
A replay of the call will be available until November 16, 2016 by dialing 1-800-937-6305 and entering passcode 635506.
Savanna is a leading contract drilling and oilfield services company operating in North America and Australia providing a broad range of drilling, well servicing and related services with a focus on fit for purpose technologies and industry-leading Aboriginal relationships.
Contacts:
Savanna Energy Services Corp.
Chris Strong
President & Chief Executive Officer
Dwayne LaMontagne
Executive V.P. and Chief Financial Officer
(403) 503-9990
TORONTO, ONTARIO and NUCLA, COLORADO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Western Uranium Corporation (CSE: WUC)(OTCQX: WSTRF) ("Western" or the "Company") announces that the Board of Directors has appointed Mr. Robert Klein as Chief Financial Officer of the Company effective immediately. Mr. Klein replaces Andrew Wilder who has resigned as Chief Financial Officer of Western to allow him to focus on new business interests. Mr. Wilder will continue to serve as a director of the Company.
Mr. Klein holds the CFA Chartered Financial Analysis designation and has been a key member of the financial team providing support to Mr. Wilder, Western and its predecessor company, Pinon Ridge Mining, LLC since its 2014 formation. In his former capacity as Vice President-Finance, he had a leading role in the completion of quarterly financials, accounting, taxation, implementation of acquisition transactions, and the public listing of the stock on both the CSE and OTCQX exchanges. As a result, Mr. Klein has both a historical perspective and is intimately familiar with all financial and business aspects of the Company.
Mr. George Glasier, President & CEO commented, "We are pleased that Rob has accepted the offer to assume the increased responsibilities of Chief Financial Officer of Western Uranium. Because of his past role and relationship with the Western management team and the firm's stakeholders, Rob is uniquely qualified and proven himself ready to assume a more senior role in the financial affairs of the Company. Rob will continue to be located in Greenwich, Connecticut. I would like to thank Andrew Wilder for fulfilling the CFO role from the early days of Western Uranium. Andrew has agreed to provide continued support to Mr. Klein during his transition from Vice President-Finance to Chief Financial Officer."
About Western Uranium Corporation
Western Uranium Corporation is a Colorado based uranium and vanadium conventional mining company focused on low cost near-term production of uranium and vanadium in the western United States.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND CAUTIONARY NOTE
This news release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on the Company's expectations, estimates and projections regarding its business and the economic environment in which it operates. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements and readers should not place undue reliance on such statements. Statements speak only as of the date on which they are made.
Contacts:
Western Uranium Corporation
George Glasier
President and CEO
Office: 970-864-2125
gglasier@western-uranium.com
Western Uranium Corporation
Michael Skutezky
Chairman of the Board
Office: 416-564-2870
mskutezky@western-uranium.com
Weekly net asset value ("NAV") is calculated as of the close of business on each Tuesday and posted on the following business day. In the event that Tuesday is not a business day, the Company will calculate the close-of-business NAV as of the business day immediately preceding that Tuesday. The end-of-month NAV is calculated as of the close of business on the last day of the month and posted on the following business day. For weeks that include a month-end NAV report, PSH will provide only the month-end NAV and not report the Tuesday NAV. Monthly NAVs are published in accordance with the Decree on Conduct of Business Supervision of Financial Undertakings under the Wft (Besluit Gedragstoezicht financiele ondernemingen Wft).
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.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Kombat Copper Inc. (the "Company" or "Kombat Copper") (TSX VENTURE: KBT) announces the resignation of Mr. Knowledge Katti as a director of the Company, effective immediately.
The Company would like to thank Mr. Katti for his contributions to the Company.
About Kombat Copper
Kombat Copper is a publicly traded Canadian exploration and development company with its core operations focused on copper resources in Namibia, one of the world's most prospective copper regions, where it has substantial assets in place with significant upside. The Company continues to hold an 80% interest in five mining licenses in the Otavi Mountain lands, an area of Namibia particularly known for its high-grade copper deposits. Within these licenses are three past producing mines including the Company's flagship property, the Kombat Mine.
Cautionary Notes:
This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, without limitation, statements the composition of the board of directors of the Company. Generally, forward-looking information 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" or "be achieved". Forward- looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Kombat Copper, as the case may be, to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; risks associated with operation in foreign jurisdictions; ability to successfully integrate the purchased properties; foreign operations risks; and other risks inherent in the mining industry.
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:
Kombat Copper Inc.
Stephan Theron
President & CEO
+1 (416) 722-6744
info@kombatcopper.com
www.kombatcopper.com
SAN MATEO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is recognizing Zoomdata CEO Justin Langseth as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2016 at its Builders + Innovators Summit in Santa Barbara, California.
Goldman Sachs selected Justin Langseth as one of 100 entrepreneurs from multiple industries to be honored at the two-day event. Langseth is CEO and founder of Zoomdata, developer of the world's fastest visual analytics platform for big data for customers deploying workloads on-premises, in the cloud or in hybrid clouds. The founder of business intelligence software firm Calabridge, Langseth currently holds 12 technology patents. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received an SB in Management of Information Technology from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
"It is very gratifying to build a team and company that has seen the success we're experienced with Zoomdata and to have that hard work recognized by Goldman Sachs," said Langseth. "They're a terrific technology and investment partner and we look forward to the next steps in continuing to innovate on the industry's fastest, most flexible and easy-to-use solution that developers can easily embed into their applications for the most advanced visual analytics."
"We are honored to recognize Justin as one of the most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2016," said David Solomon, co-head of investment banking at Goldman Sachs. "This is the fifth year that we've hosted the Builders + Innovators Summit where emerging business leaders gather to discuss their common interests in building thriving organizations."
For more than 145 years, Goldman Sachs has been advising and financing entrepreneurs as they launch and grow their businesses. In addition to honoring 100 entrepreneurs, the summit consists of general sessions and clinics led by Goldman Sachs experts, seasoned entrepreneurs, academics and business leaders as well as resident scholars.
About Zoomdata, Inc.
Zoomdata, with five granted patents and one pending, develops the world's fastest visual analytics solution for big data. Using data sharpening and micro-query technologies, Zoomdata empowers business users to visually consume data in seconds, even across billions of rows of data. Zoomdata Fusion enables interactive analytics across disparate data sources, bridging modern and legacy data architectures, blending real-time streams and historical data, and unifying enterprise data with data in the cloud. Delivered in a microservices architecture for elastic scalability, Zoomdata runs on premises, in the cloud or embedded in an application. With offices in Chicago, IL, New York, NY, Redwood City, CA and Reston, VA, Zoomdata is venture-backed by Accel, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, Comcast Ventures, Goldman Sachs, In-Q-Tel, NEA and Razor's Edge.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Lonn Johnston for Zoomdata
Email Contact
+1 650.219.7764
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 -- Leading Edge Materials Corp. ("Leading Edge Materials") or ("the Company") (TSX VENTURE: LEM) (OTCQB: LEMIF) is pleased to announce the discovery of the Company's first lithium project, Bergby, located in in central Sweden, 25km north of the town of Gavle.
Mapping and sampling of the Bergby claim has located a large number of angular pegmatitic and aplitic lithium-mineralized boulders within an area of 650 metres by 250 metres. Lithium is hosted within the minerals spodumene and petalite. Analytical results for the first 27 boulder samples have been received, and average 0.85% Li2O (lithium oxide) and range from 0.08% Li2O to 2.3% Li2O. The boulders are anomalous in other elements which characterize lithium-cesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatites that are regularly associated with lithium deposits (table 1).
Blair Way, President and CEO, stated "We have been actively searching for lithium projects for some time, and are very pleased to have discovered a prospect with the potential of Bergby very close to our Woxna graphite mine. This project sits well within our strategy of acquiring low holding cost assets while we advance our graphite business model to supply the lithium Ion battery market. The lithium grades of the boulders and the scale of the project areas discovered to date demonstrate the prospectivity of the project. We look forward to following up with ground geophysics and geochemical sampling, with the aim to diamond drill test Bergby this winter."
The Bergby project was discovered by Leading Edge Materials' geological team utilizing geological data maintained by the Swedish Geological Survey ("SGU"). The SGU holds a very extensive database of mineralized boulders previously discovered across Sweden, including many that have never had significant follow-up. Leading Edge Materials' geologists identified lithium prospective boulders within this dataset, and subsequent field prospecting discovered the presence of an extensive lithium (Li) and tantalum (Ta) mineralized boulder field at Bergby. Bergby is located close to infrastructure, with major roads, rail and power supply passing immediately adjacent to the claim boundaries.
Follow-up work at Bergby includes further prospecting of areas along 700 metre trend from the initial discovery. Specifically, the Company plans to undertake a ground magnetic survey and shallow soil sampling to cover the most prospective area of the claims, with the eventual aim to be able diamond drill test Bergby this winter. Additional geochemical results will be released as they come to hand.
Lithium has a strong and expanding market, due to the essential role it plays in lithium-based batteries for the automotive, consumer product and stationary electrify storage industries. The high electrochemical potential of lithium results in the high power to weight ratio that is essential for efficient mobile batteries. Europe is investing heavily in these emerging battery technologies, as part of the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Lithium was discovered in Sweden in 1817 by Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson, and named from the Greek word lithos, describing the rock from which it was extracted. Furthermore, the lithium minerals spodumene and petalite which are the ore-minerals in most hard rock lithium mines globally, were both first discovered and named in Sweden.
On behalf of the Board,
Blair Way, President & CEO
Samples submitted by Leading Edge Materials Corp were analyzed by the ME-MS81 and Li-OG63 technique by ALS Chemex Ltd's laboratories in Pitea, Sweden and Vancouver, Canada, where duplicates, repeats, blanks and known standards were inserted according to standard industry practice. The qualified person for the Company's exploration projects, Mark Saxon, Director of Leading Edge Materials, a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy has reviewed and verified the contents of this release.
The TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange), accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
The TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange), accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
Forward-Looking Information. Certain information in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "Forward-Looking Statements"). All statements, other than statements of historical fact that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are Forward-Looking Statements. Forward-Looking Statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," and "intend" and statements that an event or result "may," "will," "can," "should," "could," or "might" occur or be achieved and other similar expressions. Forward-Looking Statements are based upon the opinions and expectations of the Company based on information currently available to the Company.
Forward-Looking Statements are subject to a number of factors, risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the Forward-Looking Statements including, among other things, timing of the ground magnetic survey and shallow soil sampling program, timing of a diamond drill program at Bergby, the Company has yet to generate a profit from its activities; there can be no guarantee that the estimates of quantities or qualities of minerals disclosed in the Company's public record will be economically recoverable; uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future; competition with other companies within the mining industry; the success of the Company is largely dependent upon the performance of its directors and officers and the Company's ability to attract and train key personnel; changes in world metal markets and equity markets beyond the Company's control; mineral resources are, in the large part, estimates and no assurance can be given that the anticipated tonnages and grades will be achieved or that the indicated level of recovery will be realized; production rates and capital and other costs may vary significantly from estimates; changes in corporate goals and strategies, unexpected geological conditions; and delays in obtaining or failure to obtain necessary permits and approvals from government authorities. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the Forward-Looking Statements, and the assumptions on which such Forward-Looking Statements are made, are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on Forward-Looking Statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which the Forward-Looking Statements are based will occur. Forward-Looking Statements herein are made as at the date hereof, and unless otherwise required by law, the Company does not intend, or assume any obligation, to update these Forward-Looking Statements.
Table 1: Analytical values for first 27 boulder samples from Bergby project, Sweden.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Element Value Unit ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Li2O (lithium oxide) Average 0.85 % Minimum 0.08 % Maximum 2.30 % ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ta2O5 (tantalum pentoxide) Average 154 ppm Minimum 8 ppm Maximum 463 ppm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ce (cesium) Average 255 ppm Minimum 48 ppm Maximum 517 ppm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rb (rubidium) Average 737 ppm Minimum 90 ppm Maximum 1480 ppm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sn (tin) Average 87 ppm Minimum 10 ppm Maximum 158 ppm ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contacts:
Leading Edge Materials Corp.
604 685 9316
www.leadingedgematerials.com
SANTIAGO, CHILE -- (Marketwired) -- 10/19/16 --ITAU CORPBANCA (NYSE: ITCB) (SSE: ITAUCORP) announced today that it will release its results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2016, after the market closes in New York on Friday, October 28, 2016.
On Wednesday, November 2, 2016, at 11:00 A.M. Santiago time (10:00 AM ET), the Company's management team will host a conference call to discuss the financial results. The call will be hosted by Gabriel Moura, Itau CorpBanca's Chief Financial Officer, and Claudia Labbe, Itau CorpBanca's Head of Investor Relations.
Conference Call Details:
Participants should dial into the call 10 minutes before the scheduled time using the following numbers: +1 (866) 819-7111 (US Toll Free Dial In), 0(800) 953-0329 (UK Toll Free Dial In) or +44 (0)1452-542-301 (Standard International Dial In). Please quote "Itau CorpBanca" to the operator.
A telephonic replay of the conference call will be available until Wednesday, November 9, 2016, by dialing +1 (866) 247-4222 (US Toll Free Dial In), 0(800) 953-1533 (UK Toll Free Dial In) or +44 (0)1452 550-000 (Standard International Dial In). Access Code: 2339939#
Slides and Audio Webcast:
There will also be a live, and then archived, webcast of the conference call, available through the Company's website. Participants to the live webcast should register on the website approximately 10 minutes prior to the start of the webcast. The webcast can be found at
http://itaucorp.irwebpage.com/webcast_2016-3Q.html
About Itau CorpBanca
ITAU CORPBANCA (NYSE: ITCB) (SSE: ITAUCORP) is the entity resulting from the merger of Banco Itau Chile with and into CorpBanca on April 1, 2016. After the merger, the resulting ownership structure is: 33.58% owned by Itau Unibanco, 33.13% owned by CorpGroup and 33.29% owned minority shareholders. Itau Unibanco is the sole controlling shareholder of the merged bank. Within this context and without limiting the above, Itau Unibanco and CorpGroup have signed a shareholders' agreement to determine aspects related to corporate governance, dividend policy (based on performance and capital metrics), transfer of shares, liquidity and other matters.
The merged bank has become the fourth largest private bank in Chile and will result in a banking platform for future expansion in Latin America, specifically in Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Central America. Itau CorpBanca is a commercial bank based in Chile with operations also in Colombia and Panama. In addition, Itau CorpBanca has a branch in New York and a representative office in Madrid. Focused on large and medium companies and in individuals, Itau CorpBanca offers universal banking products. In 2012, the bank initiated a regionalization process and as of the date hereof has acquired two banks in Colombia -Banco CorpBanca Colombia and Helm Bank-, becoming the first Chilean bank having banking subsidiaries abroad. The merger with Banco Itau Chile and the business combination of our two banks in Colombia, represent the continued success of our regionalization process.
As of August 31, 2016, according to the Chilean Superintendency of Banks, Itau CorpBanca was the fourth largest private bank in Chile in terms of the overall size of its customer loan portfolio, equivalent to 11.9% market share.
At the same date, according to the Colombian Superintendency of Finance, CorpBanca Colombia was the sixth largest bank in Colombia in terms of total loans and also the sixth largest bank in Colombia in terms of total deposits, as reported under local regulatory and accounting principles. As of August 31, 2016, its market share by loans reached 5.9%.
Investor Relations
Itau CorpBanca
+56 (2) 2660-2555
IR@corpbanca.cl
Smartfrog, a Dublin, EIRE, and Berlin, Germany-based provider of Internet of Things home security products, raised 20m in funding.
Backers included e.ventures, Target Global, Jean-Pierre Wyss, co-founder of u-blox AG, and unnamed family offices.
The company, which has raised over 28m in funding to date, intends to use the capital to expand operations.
Smartfrog provides a complete home security solution. Starting at 5.95 (4.95) per month, it includes an app, which allows users to manage up to ten cameras, cam and video storage. Today, one year after the launch, the company has users in over 130 countries, a staff to 60 from 22 countries, and has established several partnerships with e-tailers and retailers such as Amazon, Otto, Mediamarkt and Saturn, as well as Utilities and consumer electronics distributors in Europe.
FinSMEs
19/10/2016
Iterative Instinct (i2), a NYC-based venture capital firm, secured $1.4m in capital commitments for its $2.0M debut fund.
The new fund Iterative Instinct I, GP specializes in cryptographic assets and Blockchain network services.
Operated by 31-year-old fund managers Chris Dannen and Brandon Buchanan, I2 has a specific investment mandate to seed and develop products, services, and assets that utilize the three core technologies of the blockchain paradigm including:
cryptographic hashing,
asymmetric cryptography, and
peer to peer (P2P) distributed computing.
The fund also has capital earmarked for a secondary mandate to actively manage a portfolio of crypto-assets.
Mr. Buchanan was previously the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of a $100M AUM venture fund in New York. Mr. Dannen is a self-taught creative technologist who has worked in corporate strategy and media.
The fund also has an internal technology team including creative director and full-stack developer Christopher McClellan, who is responsible for the i2 user experience across the funds many interfaces, including its trading suite.
In addition, Mackenzie Millar, practitioner of venture design and strategy at Frog Design in New York and San Francisco, joined as an advisor for financial products and growth. Cody Hoffman, a former vice president of oil derivatives trading at JPMorgan in New York, London, and Canada, will advise on market-making activity and commodity asset strategy while Dr. Solomon Lederer will be the blockchain engineering advisor.
FinSMEs
19/10/2016
Director-producer Karan Johar's heartfelt plea seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Despite his honest request to MNS for his film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil's release, the political party has stubbornly stuck to its stand and continue to oppose it.
Also read: Karan Johar on Ae Dil Hai Mushkil row: 'Country comes first but ban is unfair to my crew'
Amey Khopkar, President of Maharashtra Navnirman Chitrapat Karmachari Sena, has raised concern over the fact that Johar in his statement did not mention Pakistani actors and instead used the term talent.
Speaking to Firstpost, he says, "Karan woke up very late! This isn't the time to say sorry! He has had a change of heart, we haven't! We are still firm on our demand and no multiplexes will show Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. If they do it then we, in our own style, will break their screens. This issue is not only after Uri incident but goes back to many years. We apologise to all who will not be able to see the movie.
This is a warning to all producers and film makers to see to it that from here on they shouldn't take Pakistani artistes in their films. Agar koi bhi producers ya production house ne Pakistani artistes ko liya to unko pitenge. (If any producer or production house hires Palistani artistes then we will beat them up)."
Meanwhile Ae Dil Hai Mushkil's distributors Fox Star Studios have extended their support to Johar.
Filmmaker Karan Johar is a patriotic Indian whose nationalism cannot be questioned, says Vijay Singh, CEO of Fox Star Studios.
Singh said in a statement, "Karan Johar is a proud, emotional and patriotic Indian like all of us and his nationalism cannot be questioned. Fox Star Studios, India, whole-heartedly stands by him at this time."
He said his team is slated for the Diwali release of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil on 28 October.
The Fox Star Studio CEO met a Mumbai Police representative on Tuesday to urge for protection for theatres which will screen the movie.
"We have been assured that the police will provide protection to all theatres, including single screens and multiplexes, should there be any requirement," he added.
Singh's statement comes after Karan broke his silence on the vandalism threats issued by right-wing Hindu outfits opposing the release of the film, which stars Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
Singh said, "We unequivocally condemn the terror attacks on India and support the government of India in all its effort to bring safety and peace for Indians."
"The film has been made by an Indian director film's actors Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are all Indians; the crew who have worked tirelessly on this film to see their labour of love in theatres with their families are all Indians," Singh said.
Fox Star Studios, which has a nine-film deal with Johar's Dharma Productions, has also produced Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.
On its part Mumbai Police has assured safety in theatres during the screening of the film.
DCP Ashok Dudhe, spokesperson for the city police, said to The Times of India, "We will deploy our personnel and provide security to all the multiplexes and single-screen cinema halls. Our job is to maintain law and order."
With inputs from IANS
New Delhi: Beverages major Coca Cola India has dropped Bollywood superstar Salman Khan as brand ambassador for its soft drink 'Thums Up' after four years of association and the company is in talks with young star Ranveer Singh to replace him.
The contract with Khan had expired last month and the company has chosen not to renew it, according to industry sources.
When contacted, Coca Cola India declined to comment.
The company's decision to not to renew the contract with the 50-year-old actor is more to do with the image of Coca Cola, which is seen as a young brand, a source said.
"That explains why Coca Cola is talking to a much younger star like Ranveer Singh," the source added. Khan has been among the top celebrity endorsers reportedly charging Rs 5 crore per year per brand.
Recently, he had courted controversy when he supported Pakistani artists saying "they were not terrorists" in the wake of a debate on whether they should be allowed to work in Indian movies after the Uri attack.
Coca Cola India had roped in Khan as its brand ambassador for the second time to endorse its Thums Up brand in October 2012 replacing another Bollywood star Akshay Kumar. He had earlier endorsed the brand in early 2000s.
At that time, Coca-Cola India had also signed an agreement with Being Human -- The Salman Khan Foundation -- to jointly promote, conceive and execute charitable and social activities.
New Delhi: A decision on GST rate was today put off to next month even as the Centre and states converged towards a consensus on levying a cess on luxury and sin goods in addition to the highest rate of tax in the new regime.
The cess would be used to compensate states for any loss of revenue they may suffer from implementation of Goods and Service Tax (GST) in first five years beginning 1 April, 2017.
An informal consensus was reached at the end of the two-day meeting of the GST Council on a four-slab tax structure of 6, 12, 18 and 26 percent. The lower tariff will be for essential items and the highest bracket for luxury and sin goods like tobacco, cigarettes and alcohol, but a decision was put off to the next meeting.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the GST Council, that includes representatives of all states, will meet again on November 3-4 to decide on the tax rates.
The GST Council, which was originally to meet for three days, "converged towards a consensus on source of funding for state compensation," Jaitley said.
On tax structure, he said, "We cannot under-tax or over-tax to keep rate slabs minimum."
The attempt, he said, was to fit zero rated items while levying a 6 percent tax on items that are currently charged 3-9 percent tax.
"We will finalise the tax structure at the next meeting," he said, indicating there were two standard rates of 12 percent and 18 percent under discussion.
Once the GST rates are decided, the GST Council will meet again on 9-10 November to finalise the draft legislations, he said.
State Bank of India (SBI), India's largest lender, has blocked six lakh debit cards following a security breach that occurred in a non-SBI ATM network and will replace these with new ones, according to a report in The Times of India. The breach has happened due to a malware that can capture sensitive information that will enable committing financial frauds.
However, Shiv Kumar Bhasin, Chief Technology Office, has told ToI that customers need not panic. They can approach their branch, call up phone banking, use the internet for 're-carding' or set their PIN using internet banking. The replacement exercise is the biggest yet in the Indian banking sector yet, says the ToI report.
SBI has informed its branches of the breach and the cards being blocked, said Bhasin to ToI.
According to Bhasin, many other banks are also facing such a situation and have been urging their customers to change their PINs for a long time now, Bhasin, told the ToI.
In the wake of several cases of ATM frauds where customers PIN has been hacked and the money siphoned off by fraudsters, some banks have issued text messages while some others have sent mails to change ATM pin or sent new ATM pins to their customers.
As on July 2016, there were 20.27 crore active debit cards from SBI, according to the Reserve Bank of India website, while SBI's associate banks had a total of 4.75 crore active debit cards, the ToI report said. Around 0.25 percent of the cards have been blocked due to malware that has led the SBI to block them.
High-tech ATM frauds have been rising of late. Recently PTI reported that a woman customer had complained of Rs 55,000 being siphoned off her account from abroad. The woman, an account holder with State Bank of Travancore's Pattom branch in Kerala, said in her complaint to police that the money was withdrawn twice on September 3 and 5.
Police said the cash had been withdrawn from a foreign country from an ATM counter, but did not elaborate.
The heist comes less than a month after some persons lost their money in an ATM theft involving some foreigners, including Romanians.
On August 10, a Romanian national, who along with two other foreigners was suspected to be involved in the hi-tech ATM fraud in which a number of people lost money here, was arrested in Mumbai.
They had obtained details of bank customers and withdrawn money using fake ATM cards.
Police suspected the electronic device at the ATM counter had enabled the fraudsters collect the secret pin code and card details.
According to a report in The Times of India, some banks like HDFC Bank, Federal Bank and DBS have sent warning messages to their customers. Some text messages from banks like this one from HDFC reads: The PIN for your debit card has to be changed for security reasons. Please change the PIN at the earliest, the ToI reported.
By Tom Miles and David Lawder
| GENEVA/WASHINGTON
GENEVA/WASHINGTON China won the bulk of a World Trade Organization complaint against certain U.S. methods of determining anti-dumping duties on Chinese products in a WTO dispute panel ruling released on Wednesday.China brought the complaint in December 2013, one of a string of disputes challenging Washington's way of assessing "dumping," or exporting at unfairly cheap prices.Specifically, the panel found fault with the U.S. practices of determining dumping margins in certain cases of "targeted dumping," in which foreign firms cut prices on goods aimed at specific U.S. regions, customer groups or time periods.Dumping is normally found when a foreign producer's U.S. prices are lower than its home market prices for the same or similar goods, or when the imports are sold at prices below production costs.The panel ruled against the U.S. Commerce Department's practise of "zeroing" in cases involving targeted dumping. In zeroing, the department typically assigns a value of zero any time a producer's export price is above that producer's normal home market price, partly to account for freight and customs charges.
In practice, the zeroing methodology tends to increase the level of U.S. anti-dumping duties on foreign producers.Some points of China's argument were rejected by the WTO panel, including a claim that the Commerce Department systematically punishes Chinese state enterprise by assigning them high anti-dumping rates.
Either side can appeal the ruling within 60 days.China's Ministry of Commerce welcomed the ruling saying that the WTO panel had "upheld China's principal claims" on the unlawfulness of targeted dumping and the separate rate applied in certain U.S. anti-dumping measures. The dispute related to several industries including machinery and electronics, light industry, metals and minerals, with an annual export value of up to $8.4 billion, it said.
"The United States is disappointed by these findings," a spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office said in a statement."We will carefully review the report and consider next steps. Nothing in the report will undermine the commitment of the United States to impose antidumping duties to address injurious dumping," the USTR spokesman added. (Reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and David Lawder in Washington; editing by Dominic Evans and Alan Crosby)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
New Delhi: Beverages major Coca Cola India has dropped Bollywood superstar Salman Khan as brand ambassador for its soft drink 'Thums Up' after four years of association and the company is in talks with young star Ranveer Singh to replace him.
The contract with Khan had expired last month and the company has chosen not to renew it, according to industry sources.
When contacted, Coca Cola India declined to comment. The company's decision to not to renew the contract with the 50-year-old actor is more to do with the image of Coca Cola, which is seen as a young brand, a source said.
"That explains why Coca Cola is talking to a much younger star like Ranveer Singh," the source added.
Khan has been among the top celebrity endorsers reportedly charging Rs 5 crore per year per brand. Recently, he had courted controversy when he supported Pakistani artists saying "they were not terrorists" in the wake of a debate on whether they should be allowed to work in Indian movies after the Uri attack.
Coca Cola India had roped in Khan as its brand ambassador for the second time to endorse its Thums Up brand in October 2012 replacing another Bollywood star Akshay Kumar. He had earlier endorsed the brand in the early 2000s.
At that time, Coca-Cola India had also signed an agreement with Being Human The Salman Khan Foundation to jointly promote, conceive and execute charitable and social activities.
Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with the leaders of Turkey and Iraq about battle for Mosul, where Iraqi forces are fighting to oust the Islamic State group, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
Putin "wished the Iraqi army and its allies complete success in their objectives," the Kremlin said in a statement on his conversations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
He also informed the Iraqi leader about the "measures taken by Russia to defuse the situation" in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Moscow announced on Tuesday that Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo ahead of an eight-hour "humanitarian pause" in the battered city on Wednesday.
Putin is to attend a summit on Syria in Berlin later on Wednesday with the leaders of France and Germany.
In a separate conversation, Putin also discussed the battle for Mosul with Erdogan, the Kremlin said, but gave no further details.
The long-awaited offensive against Iraq's second city began on Monday with air and ground support from a US-led coalition.
Turkey said on Tuesday it will continue to take part in the air operation after Ankara agreed a deal with its coalition partners.
Plans for the offensive were marked by tensions between Iraq and Turkey, which insisted on being part of the operation despite objections from Baghdad.
By Rina Chandran
MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has accused the western state of Maharashtra of negligence over the "shocking and painful" deaths in the past decade of more than 700 indigenous children in schools run by the authorities.It was the second time in two months that the commission has criticised the state's care of its indigenous people. Last month, the NHRC asked state authorities for a detailed report on the deaths of more than 600 indigenous children from malnutrition.The NHRC said on Tuesday that at least 740 students from poor tribal areas of Maharashtra state had died in state-run "ashram" schools over the past decade from illnesses such as malaria, food poisoning, drowning and snake bites.The schools, which provide accommodation for pupils, had not followed several procedures, including health screens for the students at least twice a year, it said."The school authorities, as their lawful guardians, are responsible for their welfare, safety and healthcare," the NHRC said.
"The negligence on the part of the Department of Tribal Development and the school authorities is a violation of the right to life and dignity of the students," it added. A spokesman for the state's tribal department said senior officials were meeting with the chief minister in Mumbai to "look into all aspects and take appropriate action".The NHRC asked the government of Maharashtra to provide a report on the matter within a month.
Ashram schools for children from poor tribal areas of India were set up more than two decades ago and are the only option for many living in remote areas.The schools, which are run by state authorities, are meant to improve literacy levels and provide basic healthcare to the children.
Maharashtra, one of the wealthiest states in the country, has about 550 tribal schools but most of these schools lack even basic amenities and health services, an activist said."There are no proper beds, and most schools lack proper toilets and drinking water, and basic healthcare facilities," said Vivek Pandit, founder of Shramjivi Sanghatana, which works with vulnerable people in Maharashtra."There is enough funding, but it is badly managed and not accounted for," said Pandit. (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.)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
New Delhi: Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda will reach Bhubaneswar on Wednesday and visit the hospital where 19 people were killed in a fire on Monday.
"Health Minister JP Nadda will visit SUM hospital in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday to take stock of the fire tragedy which claimed 19 lives,"a senior Health Ministry official told IANS.
Nineteen persons were killed in the Odisha fire in the Intensive Care Unit of the Dialysis Ward of SUM hospital on Monday evening. Another 106 were injured and are undergoing treatment.
The Fire Services Department lodged an FIR with the Khandagiri police alleging negligence of the hospital authorities in adhering to fire safety norms.
Four SUM Hospital officials were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the incident.
This comes after SUM Hospital authorities on Tuesday denied that there were lapses on the management's part.
It, however, suspended four persons for the fire incident.
"We have put four officials under suspension following the fire incident. They have been suspended pending inquiry. However, the suspension does not mean that they are guilty. Only a thorough inquiry would reveal the actual cause of the incident," said Amit Banerjee, Vice Chancellor of the SUM Hospital and Medical College.
Those put under suspension for reported dereliction of duty are the fire officer, manager and two others staffers.
He said the exact reason behind the unfortunate incident will be known only after the investigation committee submits its report.
Banerjee also announced Rs 5 lakh compensation to the kin of each deceased.
He said steps are being taken to provide free treatment to the injured.
Writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley once said, Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Before making an insensible and inhuman comment like Our hospital is not at fault in the accident. It is all about bad luckNo single person can be blamed for it on the cause of fire outbreak at SUM Hospital in Bhubaneswar that claimed 22 lives on 17 October, its associate dean JR Das should have thought twice before ignoring facts.
One of the senior authorities of the hospital who dares to call the tragedy a result of bad luck, is an epitome of the insensitivity that plagues Indias fragile healthcare system.
A similar statement was made almost five years ago on December 2011 by the authorities of Advanced Medicare and Research Institute (AMRI) Hospital in south Kolkata in defence of the fire that claimed 90 lives.
Setting an example, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had then stated the horrific incident as "an unforgivable crime" and vowed "the harshest punishment possible" for those found responsible. As a result, six board members of the hospital, including two prominent industrialists also the owners were arrested for culpable homicide.
Can Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik show the same courage as Mamata did and put the top authorities of SUM Hospital behind bars?
According to media reports, the two FIRs filed against the hospital management do not have names of any of the top authorities of SUM Hospital. Instead, losing no time the hospital management suspended its four employees for dereliction of duty, who have been arrested by Odisha police. None of them is the owner or a board member. The four arrested are mere employees from a medical superintendent to a junior electrical engineer.
The name of the owner and chairperson of the hospital Manoj R Nayak has been conveniently avoided.
How can be the deaths of so many patients in the ICU due to fire in the hospital just be due to bad luck? Its such an irresponsible statement. Its like a pilot forgetting to put on the switch while nosediving and putting the lives of passengers at risk. The first task should be to arrest the top authorities responsible for the tragedy like hospitals chairperson, director general fire service, health secretary, etc, Bejon Misra, consumer rights activist and a member on board of International Alliance of Patients Organisation (IAPO) told Firstpost.
The IAPO is a unique global alliance representing patients of all nations across all disease areas and promoting patient-centred healthcare across the world.
After the fire tragedy at AMRI Hospital, the West Bengal government cancelled the hospitals licence and even today, the new hospital block where the fire took place is shut. The hospital management is fighting a legal battle in the court.
Only the administrative block of AMRI Hospital that has only a few beds and an OPD is functional. The new block comprising the ICU, OTs and patients wards where the fire took place is still shut since the day of the accident. The licence was immediately cancelled by the government, an AMRI Hospital employee said on condition of anonymity.
Despite lacking quality standards and no fire NoC, the SUM Hospital continued to function. There were reports that the water sprinklers in the hospital were dysfunctional.
Hospitals licence should immediately be cancelled for compromising the lives and safety of the patients. We need a strong regulatory mechanism to ensure that these private hospitals and nursing homes strictly adhere to mandatory norms and patients safety doesnt get compromised. Private investors put money in hospitals and private medical colleges only for big returns. Anyone having Dr prefixed with his or her name can start a hospital or nursing home in India. Whos responsible for this? The role of fire department is also questionable. Why no follow-ups are made on whether hospitals following fire safety norms or not? questioned Misra.
What needs to be in place?
- A strong regulatory mechanism at the national level.
- Accreditation should be given to only those following best global practices.
- Strict legal action including imprisonment and cancellation of licence should be taken against the hospital authorities showing cavalier disregard for patients safety.
- Before giving licence to operate, the government must ensure that the hospital promoters do comply with the mandatory norms and specified standards.
- Stricter norms for the fire department, ensuring proper implementation.
- Patients safety and security should be the paramount and callous attitude of regulators should sternly be dealt with.
New Delhi: The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has summoned the Assistant Inspector General of CBI and Deputy Commissioner of Police in connection with the suicide by tainted senior government official BK Bansal and his son allegedly due to harassment by a few officials.
DCW had earlier issued notices to CBI and Delhi Police seeking action taken report in the case. But the commission was not satisfied with the responses received prompting it to issue summonses. "Prima facie, this appears to be a shocking instance of alleged victimization and abetment of suicide of the family of an accused. DCW had sent a notice to the Director, CBI.
"However, no information was provided to the commission and it was informed that the matter is pending inquiry in the CBI," the summon issued on Wednesday read. "The reply was found to be unsatisfactory and inadequate. The commission then sent another notice seeking a detailed point-wise reply. However, till date no response was received neither any action was taken on the suicide note. Therefore, the AIG, CBI has been summoned to appear before the panel and provide the detailed reply," it added.
The commission said in a statement, "DCP East, Delhi Police was sent a notice to provide an action taken report in the case. The reply was found to be unsatisfactory and inadequate. Therefore he has been summoned to appear before the commission on 25 October to provide the detailed reply". Two months after his wife Satyabala and Neha committed suicide, Bansal, former Director General Corporate Affairs, and his son Yogesh had also allegedly hanged themselves on 27 September.
In their purported suicide note, Bansal had alleged that a CBI DIG, two women officers and a "fat" havaldar of the agency had tortured his wife and daughter to the extent that they ended their lives soon after his arrest on corruption charges in July.
Bengaluru: Karnataka government on Wednesday said it would stick to the Supreme Court direction to the state to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders.
"We will stick to the Supreme Court order. I want to say no more than that," Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister TB Jayachandra told reporters on the sidelines of a media briefing on cabinet meeting.
The Supreme Court had on Tuesday retained its direction to Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs till further orders and asked the two states to ensure peace and harmony, saying citizens should not become law unto themselves.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra, which commenced the crucial hearing on various issues arising out of the dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over sharing of Cauvery waters, had said it first intended to adjudicate the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by both the states and Kerala against the Cauvery water dispute tribunal's 2013 award.
"The interim order dated 4 October directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu will continue till further orders," the bench also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar had said.
A court-appointed Supervisory Committee has submitted its report on the ground situation in the basin region in both the states, which have locked horns over water release in recent months, escalating tension over the more than century-old dispute.
The bench had also said on Tuesday it would first go into the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry against the award of tribunal and then hear the arguments on the report filed by the committee.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its order on maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT).
"Judgement reserved. The Interim order of 18 October to continue till further orders," a bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar said. The bench asked the parties to file their written
The bench asked the parties to file their written submissions by 24 October and said it would pass the order thereafter.
The Centre, through Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, had raised a preliminary objection claiming that the CWDT award amounted to a final decree in the dispute and the apex court had no jurisdiction to hear appeals against the award of the tribunal.
Continuing its argument, Karnataka on Wednesday said that appeals filed by the state against the award of the tribunal was maintainable.
Noted jurist and senior advocate Fali S Nariman, appearing for Karnataka, said the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to adjudicate the appeals filed by the state against the award of the tribunal.
Senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, appearing for Tamil Nadu, also contended that the appeals were maintainable and no statute can take away the powers of the apex court.
"Section 6(2) of Interstate Water Disputes Act, 1956 cannot oust Supreme Court's constitutional appellate powers given under Article 136 of the Constitution," Naphade said.
Similarly, Kerala also supported the stand of Karnataka and said that the appeals were maintainable.
However, Puducherry supported the stand of the Centre that the appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are not maintainable.
Rohatgi reiterated his yesterday's argument that Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to adjudicate the appeals pertaining to the dispute relating to use, distribution and control of
inter-state water or river valley.
"The appeals filed by the states are not maintainable as per article 131 and 262 of the Constitution and the provisions of Interstate River Water Disputes Act, 1956," he said.
The attorney general said as per the constitutional provisions, the inter-state water dispute tribunal is headed by a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge and its decree has a force like that of a decree of the Supreme Court and thus the apex court cannot hear the appeals against its own order.
The bench had on Tuesday said it would first go into the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the award of the tribunal and then hear arguments on the report filed by the Supervisory Committee formed to assess the ground realities in the Cauvery basin region.
The apex court-appointed panel had in its recent report suggested doing away with "outdated and unscientific water application techniques" to resolve the wrangle, saying both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were facing water shortage which had created unemployment and financial hardship for the people.
It had said the neighbouring riparian states needed to appreciate the interest of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry to protect their established irrigation and Karnataka's aspirations for development and educate their people accordingly.
The panel in its 40-page report had noted that farmers in both states were in severe distress and adequate crop compensation must be provided to them.
Supreme Court had on 4 October directed Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs Cauvery water every day to Tamil Nadu from 7 to 18 October and deferred its order asking the Centre to set up Cauvery Water Management Board (CWMB) till it finally decided on appeals relating to the age-old dispute.
It had on Tuesday directed Karnataka to continue to supply Tamil Nadu with 2,000 cusecs of water till further orders.
The apex court had also directed the Centre to establish the CWMB, saying once it was constituted, its team would visit the sites to take a prima facie view of the ground reality and
submit a report.
On 1 October, Karnataka had moved a review petition in the apex court against its three orders on Cauvery water release to Tamil Nadu and direction to the Centre to create the CWMB.
In its review petition, Karnataka said "grave miscarriage of justice" has been caused to it pursuant to the three apex court orders of 20, 27 and 30 September, by which it was directed to release 6000 cusecs of water till 6 October and the Centre was to constitute the Board by 4 October.
Chennai: Criticising the cartoon on anti-Hindi agitation in NCERT textbook for "hurting" the sentiments of Tamils, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today joined the chorus demanding its removal.
"The Dravidian movement should have been explained to students using photographs of that era as they would be the best tool for this purpose and instead carrying a cartoon saying the Tamil student was not required to study Hindi and that he was ignorant towards English has hurt the sentiments of Tamil people," she said in a statement here.
Further, it was "not acceptable" that Tamil students opposed to imposition of Hindi took to violence, she said, adding, Dravidian veteran C N Annadurai had insisted that Tamils were neither subservient to others nor aimed at making others subservient to them.
"It (publication of the cartoon) not only amounts to demean the anti-Hindi movement but also seems to insult Annadurai and (EV Ramasamy) Periar who led the protests. The cartoon, originally published to explain the intensity and importance of the movement, has assumed contradictory proportions (in the
textbook).
"It is regrettable that a cartoon hurting the Tamils' sentiments has been published. I strongly condemn it. I urge the Centre to immediately remove it from the textbooks," she demanded.
Earlier, Dravidian parties including ruling UPA constituent DMK and MDMK had demanded the removal of the cartoon even as Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had announced forming a committee to review the Classes IX- XII Social Science and Political Science textbooks of NCERT after the row erupted.
PTI
Allahabad: A court here has issued notice to retired Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju on a petition accusing him of having made "objectionable" remarks with regard to consumption of beef in his blog posts.
Additional Sessions Judge Shuchi Srivastava passed the order on the review petition of advocate Rakesh Nath Pandey, who alleged that Justice Katju has hurt the sentiments of a major section of the society by attacking the Hindu belief that the cow was sacred and seeking repeal of the laws whereby slaughtering cow has been banned in many states.
The ADJ has asked Justice Katju to file his reply by the next date of hearing on 18 November.
The petition was filed by Pandey challenging an order of the Chief Judicial Magistrate whereby his prayer for directing the police to lodge an FIR against Justice Katju was turned down.
Justice Katju, who is also a former Chairman of the Press Council of India, has made a series of controversial statements on the communally sensitive issue of cow slaughter and beef ever since possession and sale of beef were made punishable with fine and five years in jail in Maharashtra in January last year.
In the wake of the Dadri lynching case of September last year wherein a 50-year-old man was beaten to death near Noida by a mob suspecting him of having slaughtered a cow and consumed its meat, Justice Katju came up with an outpouring of a number of scathing remarks.
Recently, in a Facebook post, Justice Katju wrote that he had a "danda" (stick) with which he wished to hit those who made a fuss over the issue of cow slaughter and beef.
Chennai: For the first time after the Tamil Nadu Governor re-allocated the portfolios of ailing Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, state Finance Minister O Panneerselvam on Wednesday presided over a meeting of the state cabinet to discuss, among other matters, the vexed Cauvery issue.
Although the government did not release details of the agenda of the meeting, the Cabinet is understood to have deliberated on the ongoing Cauvery water sharing dispute with Karnataka, besides other subjects.
The meeting also comes ahead of the scheduled onset of north-east monsoon later this month. The rains in December last year had wreaked havoc, flooding Chennai and nearby districts.
Last week, Tamil Nadu Governor C Vidyasagar Rao had allotted the portfolios including Home held by Jayalalithaa to Panneerselvam, till the time she returned to resume official duties.
The government released photographs of Wednesday's cabinet meeting, where Panneerselvam was seen seated with a picture of Jayalalithaa placed on his desk.
The nearly hour-long meeting was held in the backdrop of the ongoing Cauvery water sharing row with Karnataka and demands by Opposition parties for an all-party meeting on the issue.
Farmers' bodies and political parties had staged a two-day state-wide rail blockade ending Tuesday, urging the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board.
The Raj Bhavan had last week in a release, said Paneerselvam, who holds the Administrative Reforms portfolio, in addition to Finance, "will also preside over cabinet meetings."
The last Cabinet meeting held by Jayalalithaa was in July this year to discuss the state budget.
68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to the Apollo hospital on 22 September after she complained of fever and dehydration.
A specialist from London besides three-member team of doctors from AIIMS, Delhi, had also examined Jayalalithaa, who is being treated for infection with respiratory support.
New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday said surgical strikes across the LoC reflect firm will power of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and valour of armed forces.
"The surgical strikes were a result of firm will power of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and valour of our forces," the Chief Minister said in an interview to PTI.
On some political parties demanding proof of the Army's action, Chouhan said defence and security issues should be above politics.
"Demanding a proof of it is not correct principally as well as practically. Such proofs are never given. Those who are demanding proof are not aware of the consequences of disclosing the details of this military operation," he said.
Surgical strikes were carried out on seven terror launch pads across the LoC on the intervening night of 28 and 29 September, with the Army saying it had inflicted "significant casualties" on terrorists preparing to infiltrate from PoK, days after Modi warned Uri attack would not go unpunished.
The issue of triple talaq has once again ignited the age-old debate on the desirability of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in India. The Law Commission of India sought the views of people on the implementation of UCC. It put out a questionnaire on 7 October, which faced stiff opposition from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and some legal experts as it was alleged that it focuses mainly on the Muslim laws, ignoring discriminatory practices perpetuated by personal laws of other religious communities.
Firstpost in an interview with Flavia Agnes, a prominent legal scholar and director of the Majlis Legal Centre, Mumbai, tries to find out the sticking points of the current debate. Agnes provided a detailed legal analysis of the issue.
FP: Do you feel that the debate on UCC and 'triple talaq' is progressing in the right manner, given that it is centred on Muslim personal law?
FA: No, I dont think it is going in the right direction because it is only directed at the Muslim law and the discriminatory aspects of the Hindu law are not coming into focus. It is not just law, we also need to examine the Hindu ethos and cultural practices which are anti-women.
FP: In your article in The Oxford Handbook of The Indian Constitution you make a very important observation where you write, "The enforcement of a UCC cannot be viewed in a simplistic manner as outlawing 'polygamy and triple talaq' among the Muslims. The issue is far more complex and would require a detailed analysis of the gaps in the existing laws of all communities, from the perspectives of womens empowerment." Seemingly, these fine points have been ignored to a great extent in the current debate. What are your views on this?
FA: Yes. Rather than having consultations and trying to understand the issue in depth, the questionnaire framed by the Law Commission reflects a superficial engagement with personal laws. It also targets the Muslim community. The current polarisation and the reaction by the AIMPLB are the results of framing the questionnaire in this manner.
Rather than bringing communities closer, it is framed as an attack on minorities. This was totally unwarranted. All along it was stated that the UCC would comprise of best practices of all communities, but the questionnaire does not provide the scope for this.
FP: In your article, you highlight how personal laws of other communities (apart from Muslims) too have so many discriminatory provisions against women. Why do you think they miss the intensity of scrutiny that the Muslim law attracts?
FA: This is unfortunate. While the negative aspects of Muslim law are highlighted, the positive rulings and community practices are not given prominence. One can observe this even within the judiciary. When discriminatory practices within Hindu law and cultural practices are discussed they are not framed as Hindu but are discussed in general terms as "women's problems".
For instance, the problem of dowry-related violence and dowry deaths. There is no research conducted as to how many women who are murdered for dowry are Hindus. A research done by our organisation about cases which have reached the Supreme Court and the Bombay High Court revealed that more than 90 percent were Hindus. Less than 10 percent were Muslims and others.
What do these figures tell us? Take for instance the latest judgement where a husband was granted a divorce on the grounds that the wife refused to stay with his parents. The notion of 'joint family' and 'joint family property' is a Hindu notion. Such a judgement would not be delivered if the woman was from another community. But we dont term it as an anti-women 'Hindu' cultural norm.
FP: In your article, you dwell on the socio-political circumstances in which personal laws were given some sort of legal sanctity in the colonial era. Why is it that even with the change in the socio-political setup, we have not been able to bring significant reforms?
FA: After the Constitution was enacted, the first set of reforms was for Hindus, which violated the mandate of Article 44. The justification was that the Hindu law is extremely gender unjust compared to laws of other communities and needed immediate reforms. Daughters had no right to inherit property; the right of widows was a limited life estate. Women had no right to divorce and there was no restraint upon men regarding polygamy. Child marriage, abandonment of widows, etc were problems faced by women.
Institutions like mistress and concubinage were recognised. The urgency was to reform Hindu laws. However, though this was the stated objective, there was a political motive to acquire the legislative power over Hindus which until then was in the hands of religious heads of different sects. The aim was also to bring all reform religions such as Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism etc within the broad Hindu fold.
Finally, the laws enacted were not even made to be gender sensitive because a common consensus had to be reached by diluting womens rights. At the same time, the state did not want to get into the realm of a Uniform Civil Code and ruffle minority sentiments soon after the bloodbath of partition.
It was presumed that as time passed, communities would get more integrated. The communal violence in subsequent years pushed communities further apart and today the faith of Muslim communities in the present right-wing government is at very low ebb. Hence the political climate is not conducive to reforming laws of minorities or for bringing in a Uniform Civil Code.
FP: The government has said that triple talaq violates the right to equality of women as well as their dignity and that it "has no place in a secular country." Your comments on this.
FA: The entire affidavit filed by the government is a totally redundant and unwanted exercise because the SC in the Shamim Ara ruling in 2002 has already invalidated instant and arbitrary triple talaq and laid down the procedure for dissolving the Muslim marriages.
Even halala is a practice which accompanies only instant divorce and not a divorce over three months. So that too is rendered redundant. Since that landmark ruling did not receive media attention, most people are not aware of it. There have also been important high court judgments on this issue since 1981 and post Shamim Ara, several high courts have upheld this position.
If any woman who has received a talaqnama approaches the court relying upon these judgements, the courts will strike down the talaq and will give her the rights as though she is married. Hence, there was no need to make such comments on an issue on which the SC had already ruled in a noncontroversial manner.
FP: The government has also asked for the re-examination of a 1952 Bombay High Court judgment that held that Article 13 of the Constitution doesnt cover personal laws? Your views on this.
FA: I have no issue with that but it only acquires a political hue in the present climate. The 1952 judgment is a high court judgment and not binding on the SC. But various SC judgments have upheld this decision and so it is not only the 1952 judgment but also the subsequent SC rulings that one needs to examine.
But at the same time, there are a number of judgments of various high courts and the SC which have examined both Muslim and Christian laws and have struck down certain discriminatory aspects or laid down the correct procedure.
Shamim Ara ruling is an example, and there are many more. The discriminatory aspects of Christian laws were also struck down. While hearing those cases, the issue did not get politicised. But in this case, there is a deliberate attempt to politicise the issue.
FP: Many Muslim scholars and personalities have asserted that triple talaq is being given an 'un-Islamic' interpretation and that its practice is being 'wrongly interpreted', as the concept of one-time triple talaq does not exist. If this is the case then what is the basis of defending it?
FA: I agree. But once we accept that the Shamim Ara judgment is binding, then this question does not arise at all. Surprisingly, the affidavit filed by AIMPLB has also conceded that Shamim Ara has laid down the law regarding the triple talaq and that is the law of the land today. Later they made contradictory statements, but the fact that they accept Shamim Ara ruling is a positive step.
FP: The Law Commission of India sought a public vote on the implementation of UCC. Do you see this development as a precursor to some significant changes in personal laws in India?
FA: I feel it has opened up a debate, but the manner in which the questionnaire is framed to target the Muslim community was totally unwarranted. The AIMPLB has given a call to boycott this questionnaire. This makes it difficult to have any dialogue.
We should have started with the process of dialogue first and should have got the consensus of minority communities and then prepared a draft and presented it to various stakeholders. I disapprove of the manner in which this entire process has been done.
FP: MPLB's Hazrat Maulana Wali Rahmani, at a press briefing a few days ago, said, "A uniform civil code is not good for this nation. There're so many cultures in this nation, (they) have to be respected. India can't impose a single ideology." How do you react to such claims?
FA: I agree. My own position is that uniformity of rights is more important and not a uniform law which will not be accepted by minority communities. We need to first see where we have uniformity of rights and strengthen them. And where there is discrimination, bring reforms in small measures.
All personal laws discriminate against women but the discrimination is not similar. Each has to be addressed separately. It has to be a step-by-step approach which will work better for the culturally diverse Indian communities. Even Hindu law is not uniform and takes within its ambit the cultural diversity of the Hindu population and accepts their customs and traditions.
FP: Implementation of UCC means that along with Muslims other minorities, like Christians and Parsis, would also lose their existing right to apply for their own civil code or laws for family matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. Yet, the most vehement opposition comes from the MPLB. Why is it so?
FA: This is because the issue has been polarised along the Hindu-Muslim binaries. Even when issues concerning other communities have come up before the SC, such as the John Vellomatham case or the Sarla Mudgal case, which involved Hindu women who were victims of Hindu polygamy, the SC have made a call for a UCC in the context of Muslim law. The media too has played into this which is indeed tragic.
FP: Arif Mohammed Khan, who took a very strong stand against the discriminatory practices perpetuated by Muslim personal laws, while commenting on UCC and the functioning of MPLB wrote that, "The Imrana case, for that matter many other cases, including the famous Shah Bano case, are merely symptoms of a much deeper malaise the desire to maintain and perpetuate disparity between the sexes. MLPB, since its inception, has been the votary of this trend." Do you think that the MPLB will succeed in stifling any attempt of implementing the UCC this time as well?
FA: Since I myself am opposed to the implementation of UCC on an unwilling community or polity, I refrain from answering this question. With due respect to Arif Mohammed Khan, when we address the malaise only within the Muslim community, we are framing the issue in a lopsided manner.
As lawyer defending women's rights, women of all communities approach our organisation. In court proceedings, we do not find that Muslim women are more discriminated than Hindu women. In fact, the reverse is true. It is very difficult to prove a Hindu marriage when the husband denies it. There is no proof of Hindu marriage except through photographs and witnesses.
When the husband claims a prior marriage, the woman is termed as a 'mistress' even by judges. Muslim marriage is a contract and the mehr is an integral part of it, whereas Hindu marriage continues to be viewed as a sacrament and dowry is an integral part of such a marriage. Though banned by law it continues unabated.
The Hindu rituals under Section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, such as kanya dan are also discriminatory. Once a girl is married, she is seen as paraya dhan and doors of the natal family are closed on her.
Due to these women, who are facing domestic violence, get depressed and commit suicide. Incidents such as Imrana are not unique to Muslims, they occur within Hindu families as well. The important point about Imrana is that she had the courage to file a complaint and get her father prosecuted.
The fatwa itself was an attempt to politicise the issue by a journalist, as Imrana herself never asked for the same and the positive aspect is that she ignored the fatwa and continued to live with her husband in her natal home. Media never discusses these nuances and the attempt is only to tarnish the Muslim community through these media discussions.
FP: In your article, you write that "another strategy to break the stalemate is to enact specific legislation, which will apply to women uniformly across the country." Though desirable, is it possible given the hostility towards UCC, especially by the Muslim law board?
FA: It has been done before. We have laws such as the Special Marriage Act of 1954. Anyone can marry under it. But all communities prefer to marry under their own personal laws and the government has done very little to popularise it. The medical termination of pregnancy, the Dowry Prohibition Act, the dowry-related criminal proceedings under IPC such as Section 498A (cruelty to wives) section 304B dowry murders are uniformly applicable.
Similarly, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, which was enacted in 2005, applies to Muslims and others alike. This law protects shelter, residence, maintenance, child custody and also compensation for the violence suffered to women during their marriage, in their natal home and even after their divorce.
In my EPW article and in a subsequent article in Scroll, I had explained that Shayara Bano ought to have used these remedies to claim her rights rather than rushing to the SC. As a divorced woman, she is also entitled to a fair and reasonable settlement for her entire life under the Protection of Women upon Divorce Act, 1986 which has been awarded a wide interpretation by the SC in 2001 in the Danial Latifi judgment.
But due to illiteracy, ignorance, and denial of access to justice, most women who are victims of domestic violence are unable to use these beneficial provisions. It is poverty, illiteracy and the lack of resources to approach the court that prevent the women victims from approaching the courts to protect their rights.
FP: In an EPW article published in May 2016, you questioned the positive media coverage of Banos petition and maintained the same view in another piece published two weeks ago highlighting the "few positive aspects" in the affidavit filed by AIMPLB. Many people expressed serious disagreement and discontentment on this. Please share your views on this?
FA: No, in the EPW piece I was very critical of the media publicity and the focus upon the domestic violence faced by Shayara Bano as though it is unique to a Muslim woman, and because similar violence suffered by Hindu or other community women would not be highlighted in the same manner.
I explained the various legal remedies she was entitled to and that no one was addressing it. So, I had felt that the media was extremely communal in highlighting this aspect. In the later article, I addressed the positive aspect in the affidavit filed by the AIMPLB which endorsed my views and accepted the ruling of Danial Latifi, which has held that a Muslim woman is entitled to a fair and reasonable provision for her entire life and they also advised that Shayara Bano should have approached the local court regarding the domestic violence she was facing.
This was positive because earlier when we talked to people working with Muslim communities there was a feeling that Muslim women cannot approach the courts and must approach only the Mullahs. So the Board accepting this was indeed positive.
The disagreement and discontentment are from those who have not worked with the law and have never helped Muslim women to access the courts. I do not think many of them even read the Boards detailed affidavit and have gone by media reports.
I have not engaged with people making these comments because the comments are based on a total misreading of my article. After the Boards affidavit, we are able to reach out to Muslim women and help them to understand their law better and are also able to tell them that the Board advises them to approach the court. So they feel more comfortable in enforcing their rights in a court of law.
Kolkata: Trinamool Congress MP and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Avishek Banerjee was seriously injured on Tuesday when his car met with an accident on the Durgapur Expressway in Hooghly district, police said.
Avishek was rushed to a city nursing home where doctors said he had sustained an orbital injury in a facial bone below the eye.
The Chief Minister has ordered a Criminal Investigation Department probe on whether there was any foul play.
Former minister Manas Bhunia, who was part of the convoy but in another vehicle, was safe.
Avishek's car hit the crane of a van towing a snag-hit milk van at Ratanpur, about six km from Singur, when the TMC leader was returning to Kolkata after attending a party programme in Baharampur in Murshidabad district, police said.
Trinamool leader Becharam Manna said Avishek's car upturned and hit a divider after the accident.
"He is stable, but obviously there is cause for worry because in such cases there may be complications at a later stage," said attending doctor Subir Mondal.
"There is no head injury. All his vital parameters are OK. We have done bone and brain scans. But nothing was found. We have to go for repeat tests," Mondal told the media.
A 14-member medical team comprising internal medicine and eye specialists, surgeons, neurosurgeon, neurologist and maxilo-facial surgeon has been formed for his treatment.
The doctor said no major fracture was diagnosed but he needed to be kept under medical observation.
Mamata Banerjee, known for her fondness for Avishek, rushed to the nursing home.
"She was talking to the doctors, and also his nephew," said a nursing home official,
Senior Trinamool leaders also reached the health facility to ask after the TMC leader, who represents Diamond Harbour constituency in the 16th Lok Sabha.
Shermans Dale, Pennsylvania: While Donald Trump often rails against a rigged election on Twitter and at rallies nationwide, he goes a few steps further in Pennsylvania, a state crucial to the Republicans fading chances to win the White House.
In Pennsylvania, he has made direct appeals since August to recruit voters as poll monitors on Election Day and has pointed specifically at Philadelphia as a city beset by voter fraud.
Despite offering little evidence for any of his claims, his rigged election message is resonating with his followers in this traditional battleground state where Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has opened up a wide lead. But his calls for poll watchers on 8 November is drawing a mix of confusion, concern and tepid support.
In some cases, Trumps talk of fraud appears to have made some of his own followers more resigned to an election loss, even though independent studies show US voting chicanery is exceptionally rare and certainly never on a national scale.
Since 8 August, when Trump first urged supporters in the state to watch other polling places and make sure that its 100-percent fine, civil rights groups have expressed fears that some supporters will take the idea too far by forming roaming, vigilante-style crowds intimidating voters.
Trump supporter Mark Bowman, 53, says he isnt the type to attend a political rally or put campaign stickers on his car. And he isnt confident the election results will be correct.
I hate to say it, but I dont have a lot of faith, Bowman said. Voter fraud is rampant especially in the cities.
But, in a comment echoed by nearly two dozen Trump supporters in the states reliably Republican central regions, he said he thinks nothing can be done to stop it and that becoming an amateur poll watcher is a step too far.
What authority do I have to confront someone? said the resident of Shermans Dale, a rural community of about 5,000 people. Your average citizen, youre going to end up in a confrontation with someone. Youre going to end up in a bad situation.
There are official channels to monitor elections. Pennsylvania has a system that allows campaigns and political parties to designate official poll monitors, who are allowed into the polling places and can register official complaints if they think someone isnt a valid voter.
A form on the Trump campaigns website asks voters to help Trump stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election by becoming a volunteer Trump election observer.
But in an example of the Trump campaigns near non-existent effort to organise field operations in key swing states, there is little evidence that the recruitment drive is translating into legions of officially sanctioned volunteers. Repeated inquiries from Reuters about efforts to staff polling places went unanswered by his campaign.
The rules allow each candidate and the state parties to name monitors. With federal and local candidates both on the November ballot, there could be dozens of watchers in a single precinct. But those familiar with past elections say rarely does that happen. Instead, campaigns tend to focus on only the most fought over swing districts.
Steve Reigh, 57, a realtor from Elliottsburg, Pennsylvania, agrees with Trump that the election is likely to be rigged, but says he also resigned to the outcome of the election, win or lose.
What are you going to do? he said.
Really Close Vetting
Some Trump supporters are branching out on their own.
Jack Posobiec, a navy veteran and special projects director at Citizens for Trump, a grassroots support group, says he hopes to mobilise 3,000 volunteers in several key swing states in the final days of the campaign, including busing supporters from Texas to Ohio.
On 1 October, Trump told a largely white rally of supporters in Manheim in central Pennsylvania that they should go to neighbourhoods other than their own on election day and watch.
You've got to get everybody you know and you got to watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas," Trump said. "So go and vote and then go and check out areas because a lot of bad things happen and we dont want to lose for that reason.
Dale Ho, a voting rights lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Twitter that Trumps calls for "poll watchers" were a recipe for intimidation and discrimination."
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Married Trump supporters Gina, 75, and Larry Snyder, 77, of Newport agree the election could be rigged but doubt anything can be done about it, including poll-watching.
Candace Lowe, 40, of Elliottsburg, Pennsylvania, said she is resigned to a Trump loss because the government can fudge stuff". Turning out en-masse to watch polling centres on election night wont change that, she said.
In Mechanicsburg, an overwhelmingly Republican borough of nearly 9,000 people, realtor Steve Johansen helped to set up a Trump field office in a skating rink, but he has no plans to monitor any polling places.
I have faith in the system, he said.
By Allison Lampert
| MONTREAL
MONTREAL Imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, whose public flogging in the kingdom in 2015 generated global outcry, now risks a new round of lashes, a co-founder of a Canadian foundation advocating for his release said on Tuesday.Evelyne Abitbol, who founded the Raif Badawi Foundation with Badawi's wife, said a "reliable source" in Saudi Arabia claims he faces a new flogging after being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes in 2014 for breaking the kingdom's technology laws and insulting Islam. Saudi embassy officials in Ottawa and Saudi government officials in Riyadh were not immediately available for comment.Reuters was unable to independently confirm the source's claims.
Abitbol declined to name the source but said it was the same person who had alerted Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar, in 2015 before he received his first 50 lashes, the only part of the flogging that was reportedly administered. The source did not indicate when the flogging would take place."Unfortunately, it could happen at any time, if it happens," Abitbol said by phone in Montreal.
Abitbol said that Haidar has asked countries with ties to Saudi Arabia, including the Canadian government, to intervene on the blogger's behalf. Haidar, who is in Germany to present a journalism award on Wednesday in her husband's name, could not be immediately reached for comment. She was granted asylum in Canada, where she lives with the couple's three children in the province of Quebec.
Abitbol, the foundation's director, wants Saudi Arabia to withdraw the flogging punishment, strip Badawi of his Saudi citizenship and let him leave the country for Canada.In December 2015, Badawi was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. (Reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: As the Islamic State group sees its territory shrink to half its original size and its dreams of a caliphate evaporate, the extremist fighters are losing access to the sources of revenue that once gave them their power, prompting them to turn to extortion, kidnapping or foreign donations like their predecessors, the militant group al-Qaeda.
The Islamic State group had a unique ability to capitalise on the natural resources of its territory in Iraq and Syria and swiftly implement a system of taxation and governance that allowed it to rule an area that once was the size of Switzerland.
As the battle gets underway to retake Mosul, the group's largest stronghold in Iraq, the Islamic State group is being denied access to revenue sources such as oil and gas and cash reserves that once amounted to more than $1 billion in 2014, said Daniel Glaser, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for terrorist financing.
With those resources slipping away, the Islamic State group is expected to revert to "traditional methods we see al-Qaida using whether it's deep-pocket donors, whether it's charities, whether it's NGOs, whether it's criminal activity," Glaser said in a recent discussion at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Beyond oil and gas sales, the Islamic State group also generated some $30 million per month in Iraq from taxation and extortion in 2015. Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on IS who advises the Iraqi government, said the militant group currently makes about $4 million per month from taxes in Mosul alone. Al-Hashimi said the group charges a 4 percent income tax on salaries less than $600 per month, and 5 percent on monthly salaries between $600 and $1,000.
Bank robberies made up the Islamic State group's third biggest source of revenue, mainly in Mosul, where there was more than $500 million in state-owned bank vaults when they captured the city in June 2014, but that was "a one-time take for them," Glaser noted, and they are quickly burning through that cash.
Glaser says the Islamic State group is under financial duress. Fighter salaries have been cut in half in some areas, including in Raqqa, Syria, its de facto capital. The group also set up an internal corruption agency, suggesting corruption may be a factor, Glaser and al-Hashimi said.
To compensate, there's been a noticeable spike in the IS group's revenue from criminal activity, such as extortion the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism says extortion accounted for a third of its revenue in 2015, compared to 12 percent in 2014.
In Syria, Islamic State-run services are lagging and the group recently shifted from paying fighter salaries in US dollars to Syrian pounds, indicating that their access to money markets has been disrupted, said Ziad Awad, editor of The Eye of the City, an online publication in Deir el-Zour. He added that the militants' access to resources in Deir el-Zour, including oil, has been halved amid ongoing coalition airstrikes, which are complicating oil sales and transportation.
The oil wells were "bringing in about $2 million daily," Awad said in a Skype interview from Turkey. "This has shrunk because they've lost markets inside Syria and Iraq, due to shrinking territory."
The Iraqi government moved to suspend government salaries to people living in IS-controlled areas last year in an effort to hit its taxable revenues. Glaser said that the move dealt a significant blow to the group, since the Iraqi government payroll is about $2 billion per year in Islamic State-held territories.
But the challenges remain with reports that the militants coerce some employees to leave IS-controlled territory to collect their salaries, holding their property as collateral, only to retroactively tax them when they return home.
The group is shifting from a governing force to a militant group on the run.
"In a traditional terror financing model, you don't have an organization that is focused on governance and on holding and managing territory," said Yaya J Fanusie, director of analysis at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finances and a former CIA counterterrorism analyst. "Al-Qaida's money went to mainly operations and training."
Beyond criminal activity, Fanusie said IS will likely pursue money through any number of sources as its territory shrinks, from charities to nonprofit groups, sympathetic, wealthy donors, or the hawala system, an alternative remittance system used in countries around the world that allows the transfer of funds domestically and internationally without using formal financial institutions.
"ISIS losing territory is good, but to launch an attack in Europe or the US or any part of the world doesn't cost a lot," he said, using an acronym for the group. "If they're being squeezed in Syria and Iraq and directing their resources on attacks externally and less on governance, then it doesn't mean they're not a dangerous force."
By Ori Lewis
| JERUSALEM
JERUSALEM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday expressed concern that U.S. President Barack Obama, during the final days of his term in office, might take diplomatic steps that could harm the fate of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.Israel is concerned that the United States might not rally to its assistance in the event that an anti-settlement resolution is put to a vote in the United Nations Security Council and that Washington might not use its veto to quash such a move.Obama's strong opposition to settlement building on land Palestinians seek for a future state has also raised speculation in Israel that he might try to define parameters for a final peace agreement that has eluded Israel and the Palestinians since interim deals were signed in the early 1990s.Peace talks collapsed in 2014, with settlements a key issue in the dispute between the parties.
A statement from Netanyahu's office clarified that he had told settlers in a closed meeting last week he hoped Obama would not act in the same way that some previous U.S. administrations had done at the end of their term, when they had "promoted initiatives that did not align with Israel's interests". He did not specify any examples.The statement repeated what Netanyahu had already told Israeli reporters in New York following his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month when he said: "I can only hope that the U.S.'s consistent policy will continue to the end of his (Obamas) tenure (on January 20)."
It also denied what Israeli Channel 2 had ascribed to Netanyahu earlier on Wednesday when it quoted him as telling the settlers that "in the coming period, between the U.S. elections and the end of the term of (U.S. President Barack) Obama - the entire settlement movement is under threat." The United States has consistently criticised Israel over its West Bank settlement drive and earlier this month, Washington issued a strong rebuke at Israeli plans to build what it called a new Jewish settlement which it said would damage prospects for peace with the Palestinians.
In unusually harsh words, Washington also accused Israel of going back on its word that no new settlements would be built. Obama raised concerns about the settlements when he met Netanyahu in New York.The United States contends that the project constitutes the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank, contrary to assurances Netanyahu made to Obama that no new settlements would be built. Israel regards the planned homes as part of an existing settlement. (Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Islamabad: Pakistan and China's "all-weather" relationship is based on shared principles and interests that form the foundation of cooperation in diverse fields, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Wednesday.
Sharif stated this when he met Bank of China chairman Tian Guoli who called on him here.
"Highlighting China's great support to Pakistan in security, trade and infrastructure development, the Prime Minister said that Pakistan and China have a shared future and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the largest comprehensive project with any foreign country," according to an official statement.
"CPEC is a fusion of multiple development projects, aimed at the prosperity and well-being of the citizens of the country and the region at large," it quoted Sharif saying.
The prime minister said that Pakistan has a vibrant banking system that has achieved high-level of profitability, improved liquidity and strong solvency position.
Sharif said sound capital base, remarkable growth in assets and profitability and compliance with international standards has poised Pakistan's banking sector in a very competitive position in the region for investors.
He said foreign ownership in Pakistan's banking sector has consistently and considerably increased and the government has recently concluded $700 million financing agreement with China Development Bank which is the first such interaction with the Chinese banking industry.
Tian lauded the vision of Sharif for putting the country on development path and turning around the economy.
Tian said that CPEC has huge economic benefits for the people of Pakistan and the region.
Beijing: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte spent his first full day in China on Wednesday, on a state visit that comes as he makes increasing overtures to Beijing while vocally scorning his US ally.
Since taking office on 30 June, Duterte has repeatedly denounced the US and its President Barack Obama, suspended joint patrols in the South China Sea, and threatened further action, including an end to joint military exercises.
His posture is a stark reversal from the previous administration of Benigno Aquino, which took Beijing to an international tribunal over its extensive claims in the South China Sea and won a resounding victory.
Duterte initially took a hardline stance on the issue, vowing to ride a jet ski to the disputed Spratly Islands and plant his countrys flag there.
But his bravado has since softened and he has shown no sign of seeking to enforce the tribunal ruling which infuriated Beijing.
Duterte will meet top leaders including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. "Only China can help us," he told the official Xinhua news agency Monday.
He was due to meet members of the Filipino community in Beijing later Wednesday.
The Philippines is hoping, among other things, that Beijing will repeal a ban on imports of its bananas an economic sanction intended to punish Manila for its South China Sea stance.
The Philippines is one of several coastal nations which dispute China's claims to virtually all of the strategically vital waters. It has been a key player in the dispute, which is an issue of intense interest in both Washington and Beijing.
Tensions have risen between the US and China over Washington's "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific, a move which Beijing says is intended to contain its rise.
Duterte has said his trip will focus on promoting economic ties. Foreign affairs spokesman Charles Jose has said: "There will be a lot, I mean a lot, of business contracts that will be signed."
In an editorial Tuesday, China's nationalistic Global Times newspaper called on the government to "reciprocate Duterte's overture" by giving the Philippines access to fishing grounds near Scarborough Shoal a move which would imply that such rights were China's to give.
"Filipino fishermen fish on a shoestring and are unlikely to jeopardise the ecosystem of China's waters," the paper said.
China took control of the shoal in 2012 after a standoff with the Philippine navy. Manila has long claimed the feature for itself, maintaining that it controls the area's fishing rights.
China itself has been accused of doing massive environmental damage to the South China Sea by building artificial islands, some with airstrips, capable of hosting military facilities.
In another editorial on Wednesday, the Global Times said Washington had treated Manila "as a pawn" and Duterte was "redesigning Philippine foreign policy based on Philippine interests".
Beijing has also enthusiastically endorsed Duterte's war on drugs, which has seen more than 3,700 people killed and led the International Criminal Court to warn that those responsible could face charges.
China, which has frequently been criticised for its own approach to drug users, "is his best partner in the anti-drug fight", the Global Times wrote.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China at a press conference on Tuesday said that Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold talks with Duterte on "improving and developing bilateral relations, deepening all-round pragmatic cooperation and international and regional issues of common interest".
Speaking to the media, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said that the two sides were expected to reach a consensus on infrastructure building, economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges. South China Sea found no mention.
The ministry also spoke about the "friendly exchanges" between the Chinese and Philippine people that date back a long time ago. "Today President Duterte will come across the sea to make a historic visit, which will mark a new starting point for China-Philippines relations. China sets great store by this visit. We are ready and willing to reach out to the Philippine people for friendship and cooperation. We believe that President Dutertes visit will surely be successful."
With inputs from AFP
BERLIN Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia have agreed to draw up a roadmap in November on how to implement a Minsk ceasefire agreement for eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday after four-way leader talks."This roadmap should have the sequence of the implementation of the Minsk agreements and guarantee their implementation," Poroshenko told reporters in Berlin. He also said the sides agreed to withdrawals of Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists in four new areas at the frontline of the fighting in the Donbass region.
They also agreed that monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) could be armed and that their activities in monitoring the so-called Minsk peace process would not be impeded. Separatist violence erupted in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and has killed 9,600 people so far. It continues despite a ceasefire made in the Belarusian capital Minsk last year.
(Reporting by Natalia Zinets; writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Cairo: Six takfiri militants and two soldiers were killed as the Egyptian forces have begun rooting out terrorists in its campaign to avenge the last week's deadly attack by the Islamic State that left 12 military personnel dead.
Ground and air forces attacked the militant hideouts in seven areas on Tuesday and killed six takfiri militants during operations, military spokesperson Brigadier General Mohamed Samir said in a statement.
Two soldiers were also killed during the army operations. 16 shelters, two vehicles and ten motorcycles belonging to the terrorists were also destroyed, he said.
The statement did not mention the exact places where the yesterday's operations took place, however the campaign, launched by the army on Sunday in which terrorists 18 takrifi militants were killed, was targetted at terrorists and outlaw elements from several areas in the North and Central Sinai region.
The operations are part of the second comprehensive campaign launched by the army in retaliation for the Friday's terror attack.
The first comprehensive campaign of "Martyr's Right" that aimed at rooting out militants based in the restive North Sinai region.
"Martyr's Right" was launched by the security forces in response to an attack in October 2014 that killed 33 security personnel.
Egypt has witnessed a series of terrorist attacks targeting policemen, judges and military personnel in different parts of the country.
Since the 2011 revolution that toppled the regime of then President Hosni Mubarak, North Sinai, which is the base of a number of extremist outlaw groups, became the main stage of many violent attacks by Takfiri gunmen.
Over 700 security personnel have been reported killed since then. The military has launched security campaigns in the area, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belong to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.
By Andy Sullivan
| WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON Donald Trump supporters who plan to stake out polling sites on Election Day may find their own activities tracked closely by thousands of civil-rights activists who are mounting a nationwide effort to prevent problems at the polls.The Republican presidential candidate, who has repeatedly said that the election is rigged, has urged his backers to monitor voting sites for evidence of fraud, raising concerns that overzealous supporters could intimidate voters in the Nov. 8 election.They will not be the only ones out in force on Election Day. Civil rights groups say they plan to deploy thousands of volunteers on the ground in 27 states to ensure that voters will not be turned away by harassment, long lines or confusing rules. Teams of lawyers will file legal challenges if necessary.While previous elections have been marred by irregularities, Trump's rhetoric might lead to greater problems at the polls this year, activists say."When Trump says, 'Go and watch certain areas of Philadelphia,' that's either intentionally reckless or it's a thinly veiled call to engage in racial profiling," said Dale Ho, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union's voting rights project. "Whether people will heed it, I don't know."Non-partisan groups have mounted "election protection" programs since the disputed Bush-Gore presidential election of 2000, but they faced a more daunting landscape this year even before Trump began warning of a "rigged election."
The Supreme Court in 2013 weakened the U.S. government's ability to monitor voting activity in states with a history of racial discrimination, and dozens of Republican-led states have also passed laws that require voters to present photo identification or that restrict voting in other ways.As early voting gets underway in many states, voting-rights groups are publicizing a national hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, and establishing lines of communication with the election officials who are tasked with resolving problems."We haven't encountered a situation yet where we feel there's a need to call the police," said Marcia Johnson-Blanco, a co-director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.This year, civil-rights groups are broadening their efforts beyond perpetual battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida to conservative states like Texas, where they plan to field 200 volunteers to monitor polling sites in Houston's Harris County.
"We've seen an uptick of folks saying they're going to be out patrolling in a way that we think is trying to be intimidating," said Zenen Jaimes Perez, communications director for the Texas Civil Rights Project. In New York, volunteers with Common Cause are expanding their monitoring programs to Muslim neighbourhoods in New York City and some areas of the rural Hudson Valley."What Trump's efforts have caused us here in New York to think about are places where there are concentrations of voters who, I hate to say, are easy targets - a magnet for people who are extreme," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York.
Democratic officials have stepped up their efforts as well. In Arizona, a traditionally Republican state that is competitive this year, Democrats plans to deploy a record 200 lawyers to make sure that everybody who is in line when polls close at 7 p.m. will get a chance to cast a ballot, said Spencer Scharff, the state party's voter protection director.But at the end of the day, poll monitors do not have the power to fix problems - they can only point them out to election officials."States have the most important role. They're the ones who write these laws and they have to enforce these laws," said Danielle Davis, a staff attorney at the Advancement Project, a national civil-rights group. (Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Leslie Adler)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Stephanie Nebehay and Lesley Wroughton
| GENEVA/WASHINGTON
GENEVA/WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry played down expectations of a new Syrian ceasefire deal with Russia after talks in Geneva aimed at agreeing on how to separate al Qaeda-linked militants from opposition fighters in the besieged city of Aleppo.After two failed ceasefire agreements between the United States and Russia to end the fighting in Aleppo, a new round of talks includes Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which support Syrian opposition groups. Syria's ally Iran was not invited, a Western diplomat said."I'm not approaching this with a high sense of expectation and nothing is based on trust," Kerry told a news conference in Washington following meetings with South Korean ministers."I urge Russia to sit at this table in Geneva and be serious about finding a simple way, which we are offering, to make sure that those who are genuinely terrorists are in fact separated out, isolated," Kerry said.Kerry spoke as a senior NATO diplomat, citing Western intelligence, said that Russian warships off the coast of Norway were carrying fighter aircraft that are likely to reinforce a final assault on Aleppo in two weeks.The Geneva talks follow a meeting between the United States and Arab and European allies on Tuesday that sought to coordinate efforts toward a new ceasefire after Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's more powerful ally, unexpectedly announced it had halted air strikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo.
Michael Ratney, the U.S. special envoy for Syria, led Washington's delegation in the talks in Geneva, while Moscow sent military experts whose names were not released. It was not clear if the talks would continue on Thursday.Russia favours a U.N. proposal to evacuate jihadists belonging to the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham militant group, formerly known as al-Nusra, from the besieged zone of eastern Aleppo in return for a ceasefire."Important countries, like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, which have influence over the mainstream rebel groups, are in a position to suggest to those groups to tell the al-Nusra fighters that it is time to go to Idlib and therefore take away any alleged justification, or alibi, for the heavy bombing of urban areas of eastern Aleppo," the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.Idlib is a largely rebel-held area of northwestern Syria.
Russia has said a planned eight-hour ceasefire on Thursday will be extended if other rebels clearly distance themselves from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, but it will not prolong the pause unilaterally."The Russians have no interest in getting to a point where they have to participate in the destruction of a city in order to fight a small group of fighters listed as terrorists by the U.N. and be remembered in history for that," de Mistura said.The last ceasefire fell apart in September, since when Russian and Syrian forces have undertaken a massive bombing campaign against eastern Aleppo in which hospitals have been destroyed and hundreds of civilians killed.
Assad argues that his forces have a constitutional duty to protect the civilian population and rid the city of "terrorists".The task of separating "moderate" rebels from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, designated as a terrorist group by the U.N., is complicated because they have long fought side-by-side and there is little agreement on the number of their combatants in Aleppo.The United Nations says there are up to 900 Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters out of a total of 8,000 rebels in eastern Aleppo, but diplomatic sources have told Reuters there are far fewer, probably a maximum of 200."They are calling the shots in Aleppo," one aid official told Reuters. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Editing by Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Las Vegas - what a fitting location for a Trump debate - the gambling den of Americas mid west, for a final dice roll against a woman just 20 days away from rewriting Americas political history.
Despite all the odds stacked against him - Trump is trailing in polls in all battleground states and staring down at an epic rebuke - what will a Trump victory in Vegas look like?
If Trump can divert the attention to new revelations of how Clintons emails were rigged, allegedly with generous help from the FBI, drum up the WikiLeaks splash about her Wall Street-friendly speeches, paint her as a sly racist who clubbed potential vice presidential picks are flavours of Black, Hispanic, female and raise question marks about who really incited violence in some Trump rallies - were they Clintons hit men, Trump would have done well.
If Clinton locks Trump in a school teacherish argument, hes done for even if she does not impress.
Trumps best bet is an all out offensive on the last 90 minutes of ad free television hell get if he does not become President of the USA and that looks increasingly certain. Here's why - Without Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Trumps chances of winning the presidency dwindle to 5%, according to FiveThirtyEight, a data-journalism outfit. The only place where Trump had a decent lead and has never voted Democrat since the Sixties - Utah - is also drifting away after tapes exploded of Trump bragging about grabbing women and sexually assaulting them.
From the sarcastic Would it be okay to call you Secretary Clinton, Trump went on to call his opponent the Devil who has hate in her heart - and all this not at a roadside brawl but on national television. So, whats next ? Will he lump Huma Abedin and Bill Clinton and all the real and alleged sexual transgressions of the Clinton camp in one final gambit and watch it blow up?
Expecting fireworks, the debate organisers have arranged for the candidates' spouses to enter the hall closer to their seats, rather than crossing the room, and each other's paths. That would avoid Melania Trump and Bill Clinton being forced to shake hands and any potential confrontation, given Mr. Trump's penchant for dramatic stunts, reports The New York Times.
Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod says of the Clinton performance - She has control of this raceshe should stay within herself and resist the temptation to trade insults with Trump.
So, what would a Clinton win at Vegas look like? Although the Democratic nominees debate preppers are ready for mud pies, they want Clinton to land some aspirational lines that will shine on, like how Obama did with his speeches that resonate till today, long after his candidacy.
Beyond suggesting to the American voter that she desperately wants to live in the White House again and keep Trump out of there, what else is Clinton offering. Shes had two 90 minute slots to close the sale, she did not. She has another one now, will she close the deal?
But Clinton, by her own admission, is neither Obama nor Bill Clinton and the only gifts she will give will all go to Saturday Night Live. Watch out for that coming Alec Baldwin spoof. The last two hits are here.
Here's the Associated Press take on what to watch out for in the final debate:
RIGGED
Trump in recent days has tried to deflect attention from the allegations about sexual advances by complaining that the election process is rigged against him. Without providing any evidence, he wraps together the potential for voter fraud with assertions that his female accusers are part of a plot to smear him. With millions of viewers tuning in, will Trump dwell on conspiracy theories or give voters a more positive reason to vote for him?
HACKED
Largely overshadowed by the allegations against Trump has been WikiLeaks' day-after-day release of thousands of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. The emails include excerpts of Clinton's closed-door speeches to Wall Street interests and lots of campaign strategizing over how to contain the political damage related to her handling of classified emails and her use of a private email server. Trump has responded with a scattershot series of criticisms about "Clinton corruption," but he has yet to hone a disciplined line of attack. Wednesday night gives him a fresh opportunity to try to synthesize his message and find a way to make the email controversy stick.
BREATHE
The campaign took a dramatic detour last week when a series of women came forward with allegations that Trump made sexual advances toward them. Trump's combative response, calling the women "sick" and "liars" and alleging that there's a global conspiracy against him, overtook all other aspects of the campaign for a time. How much oxygen will it suck up in the final debate?
CIVIL WAR
With a number of Republican officials in open revolt against Trump and worried that he will be a drag on the rest of the ticket, watch to see whether Trump gins up more discord with his party and whether Clinton steps in to make the case for Democratic control of the House and Senate.
FINGERS CROSSED
Immigration was hardly mentioned in the first two debates. Social Security never came up. The national debt has gotten only passing notice. Policy wonks have their fingers crossed that neglected issues will finally get an airing in the final debate. Wallace's list of potential topics includes debt and entitlements, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court and foreign hot spots.
IT'S BAAACK
A subject that both candidates love to dwell on also is teed up for Round 3: "fitness to be president." Trump and Clinton already have made plain their disdain for each other's qualifications to occupy the Oval Office, but they can be counted on to look for new ways to inveigh against each other's fitness for office.
CLOSING ARGUMENTS
The first debate attracted a record 84 million viewers and the second 66.5 million. Whatever the viewership for Round 3, it is sure to be the candidates' last chance to speak to such a large audience before Election Day on Nov. 8. Watch what messages the candidates pick to drive home as their closing arguments.
MIND GAMES
Both candidates have used the debates to try to rattle their opponents: Clinton baited Trump by questioning his wealth and his business acumen. Trump tried to throw off Clinton by seating three women who have accused her husband of sexual impropriety in the front row of the audience at the second debate. Odds are both candidates have saved some fresh theatrics for the final debate.
MODERATION
Wallace has served notice he won't try to "truth squad" the debate. Given Trump's habit of skirting the truth, that may put the onus on Clinton for more real-time fact checking. So far, she's largely punted, pointing viewers toward her website.
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT
By the time the debate gets under way, more than 1.6 million Americans already will have voted. For those viewers, the debate could serve to validate their choices or give them buyer's remorse.
WANNA PLAY COMEDY WRITER?
Keep an eye open for the most mimic-worthy moments: They're likely to show up on "Saturday Night Live's" next parody of the Trump-Clinton contest, featuring Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon as the candidates. "SNL" got an unintended boost when Trump tweeted that Baldwin's Trump impersonation stinks.
Blog Hinangai
While there is much discussion in Guam about the economic benefits of increasing the islands military presence, the damages/dangers that they represent are rarely mentioned. This blog, a supplement to the Peace and Justice for Guam Petition, is meant to counter that by providing information about the US military in Guam, with the hopes of steering policy away from a dangerous unilateralist course to more sustainable notions of regional development and a strengthening international solidarity.
MakeMyTrip has announced that it has agreed to acquire ibibo Group in an equity deal. Upon closing the acquisition, MakeMyTrip will own 100 per cent of ibibo Group. The latest move will help MakeMyTrip compete against rivals Yatra and Cleartrip.
Naspers and Tencent will become the single largest shareholder in MakeMyTrip, owning a 40% stake and will contribute proportionate working capital upon closing, the homegrown travel portal said. Additionally, prior to closing , the US$180 million, 5-year convertible notes issued by MakeMyTrip Limited to Ctrip.com International, Ltd. in January 2016 will also be converted into common equity, resulting in Ctrip having an approximately 10% stake in the combined entity.
Following the closing of the proposed transaction, Founder Deep Kalra will remain Group CEO and Executive Chairman of MakeMyTrip and Co-founder Rajesh Magow will continue to remain CEO India of MakeMyTrip. Founder and CEO of ibibo Group, Ashish Kashyap, will join MakeMyTrips executive team as a Co-founder and President of the organization.
Deep Kalra, Chairman and Group CEO of MakeMyTrip, said in a statement,
Todays announcement is a significant step forward for the rapidly growing travel industry in India. We expect this deal to create an even more scalable business with the expertise to transform the booking experience for Indian travellers. I am delighted to be leading such a strong team in our next chapter of high-growth in this dynamic industry.
Ashish Kashyap, CEO ibibo Group, said in a statement,
Since I founded ibibo in 2007, we have innovated and grown to become one of the leading travel companies in India, providing solutions not just for travellers, but for suppliers too. Deep, Rajesh and I saw a great opportunity to join forces, and I am excited that this merger enables all of us to continue a great journey together as the leading travel group in India.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of December 2016 and is subject to approval by MakeMyTrip shareholders and regulatory approvals.
Source
A new division of Russian strategic bombers will soon begin conducting patrols over the Pacific Ocean.
A new division of Russian strategic bombers will soon begin conducting patrols over the Pacific Ocean.
The Russian Aerospace Forces are in the process of setting up a new long-range Heavy Bomber Division in Russias Far East to patrol the Pacific Ocean inside the Japan-Hawaii-Guam triangle, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced last week, according to local media report.
The formation of the division is almost complete now. It consists of several squadrons of long-distance bombers deployed in the Eastern and Central military districts, an unnamed senior Russian defense official told Izvestia. The new bomber division will be based at Belaya and Ukrainka, in eastern Siberia.
The division will be composed of several dozen Tu-95MS strategic missile bombers and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers.
The Tupolev Tu-22M3, also an upgraded variant of an older aircraft developed for the Soviet Air Force, is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber. Around a hundred Tu-22Ms of all variants are currently in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces. The Tupolev Tu-95MS, an improved variant of the older Tu-95, is a four-engine, long-range, turboprop, strategic bomber that can be armed with a wide range of weapons including stand-off cruise missiles. Russia intends to operate 20 Tu-95MS by the end of 2016.
According to media reports, the new division is based on the 6953rd Guards Red Banner, Pacific Air Group. During the Cold War, Soviet bombers of the Pacific Air Group patrolled in close vicinity to U.S. military bases in Japan, Guam, and also U.S. naval bases in Hawaii.
Russia stopped conducting regular patrols in the 1990s and early 2000s, but has stepped up its military activities in the Pacific Ocean in the last two years. Russian bombers have routinely been patrolling airspace off the coast of Japan since 2014.
The Japanese Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) scrambled jets in response to two Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers flying along the perimeter of Japans territorial airspace in January 2016. Russian bombers have also appeared near the Ryukyu Island chain in March 2015. As my colleague Ankit Panda reported in January:
In 2014, shortly following Russias annexation of Crimea and ensuing isolation from the West, including expulsion from the G8 within which Japan is a member, Russian Tu-95 bomber patrols picked up in intensity in the Asia-Pacific region . As General Herbert Hawk Carlisle, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Force, said at the time, the United States noticed that Russian bombers were coming out to airspace near California and, [], circumnavigated Guam.
However, as I reported in April, the JASDF reported a decline in the number of times it had to dispatch fighter jets to intercept Russian military aircraft in 2015. Last year, there were 873 overall sorties, with 288 targeting Russian aircraft. In 2014, Japan scrambled jets 943 times, 473 of which were in response to Russian incursions.
In October 2015, two Tupolev Tu-142 aircraft, another variant of the Tu-95, flew within one nautical mile of the USS Ronald Reagan, a U.S. aircraft carrier, prompting the dispatch of four F/A-18 Super Hornets from the Reagan to intercept the Russian warplanes.
Xiaomi recently announced that it sold more than 500,000 smartphones in less than three days, between 1 and 3 October during festive sales in India. Today the Chinese smartphone maker has announced that it has sold 1 million devices within 18 days (1 18 October).
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To celebrate this milestone, CEO Lei Jun has shared an open letter to its employees.
Yesterday we set an incredible record in India by selling more than 1 million smartphones within 18 days. On behalf of Xiaomis management, Id like to congratulate the entire Mi India team for this outstanding performance.
A big round of thanks to Manu and Hugo for their outstanding leadership, to everyone at Mi India for their dedication, and to the business teams in China for their support. I am extremely proud of each one of you! I would also like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all our partners in India, especially Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, for their support.
And very importantly, I wish to thank every Indian Mi fan for the love they have shown to Xiaomi, which is the driving force behind our success.
India is an extremely important market in Xiaomis globalization strategy. It has become our largest market outside of mainland China. In the past two years, we have witnessed several exciting milestones in India:
August 2015: We became the first smartphone brand to participate in Prime Minister Modis Make in India initiative.
July to August 2016: As per IDC, we became the #1 online smartphone brand in the country.
September 2016: As per IDC, we became the third-largest smartphone vendor within Indias Top 30 cities with 8.4% market share.
September 2016: Redmi Note 3 became the best-selling device in the online market with over 2.3 million devices sold in 6 months.
When we entered India, there was extremely fierce competition. We have achieved such extraordinary growth in India firstly because of our vision to bring innovation to everyone with our high-quality products at incredible prices. Secondly, we have an amazing team in India. We will continue investing in India to deliver the best products to our Mi fans expanding our supply, ensuring the high quality of our products, and further improving our after-sales service.
The core of the Xiaomi model is creating high-quality products, making friends with our users, and operating our business extremely efficiently. This model has been proven in China. I believe that the Xiaomi model will resonate across the world, starting with India.
I am confident that with the sustained efforts of our entire Xiaomi family, we will be able to capture the largest market share in India within 3-5 years! Mi India, lets make history together!
Thank you!
Lei Jun
On 19 Oct., 2016
Cargill Asia Pacific
More than simply a food ingredients supplier, Cargill deeply understands our customers' strategies, consumers, distribution channels and competition. We deliver solutions that help the food industry and beverage manufacturers drive growth through new product innovation and reformulation. Cargill helps reduce costs through supply chain and manufacturing process efficiency and managing commodity price risk. Cargill helps our food industry and beverage manufacturing customers create unique products that fill product pipelines and reduce time-to-market by connecting our diverse food ingredients supplier capabilities marketers, research scientist, application experts, risk managers and manufacturing process engineers and seamlessly delivering these resources to customers. As a service and solution-oriented food ingredients supplier, our broad portfolio helps our customers address their food product development needs across the spectrum of applications and categories. Cargill helps our customers safely manufacture products every day around the world by reliably originating and distributing grain, oilseeds and other food ingredient commodities and by processing a diverse food ingredients supplier portfolio that spans core and specialty ingredients, ingredient systems and finished food systems.
When I think about John Stumpf, the now-disgraced former chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo (WFC -0.78%), I'm reminded of those stories you see on TV about the guy-next-door who had been living a secret life for years.
"He seemed so normal," neighbors would say.
"He always showed up to work on time and did his job," co-workers would add.
But then, for one reason or another, everything would come crashing down. Something would cause someone to peek behind the thin veneer of respectability and discover the truth.
In Ken Lay's case, it was the recession following Sept. 11, 2001 that revealed the inner machinations at Enron.
In Bernie Madoff's case, it was the financial crisis that caused his multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme to collapse.
And in John Stumpf's case, it was a fake-account scandal in which low-level employees were, if a growing multitude of allegations are to be believed, all but forced to commit fraud in order to keep their jobs and boost Wells Fargo's performance and thereby Stumpf's voluptuous paycheck -- he earned $20 million a year.
You may think that comparing Stumpf to Lay and Madoff is hyperbolic, but I disagree.
Like them, he carefully cultivated an image of infallibility. He lambasted other banks for seeking growth for the sake of growth. And he loudly trumpeted Wells Fargo's Vison & Values which made, in hindsight, preposterous claims like:
The reason we wake up in the morning is to help our customers succeed financially and to satisfy their financial needs, and the result is that we make money. It's never the other way around.
Meanwhile, while analysts and commentators like me were distracted by Stumpf's diversionary tactics, thousands of the banks' employees were opening millions of fake accounts for customers. Stumpf claimed that the fraud went back to only 2011, but there's now clear evidence that it may have gone all the way back to 2005, if not to 1998.
All along the way, moreover, those employees who didn't feel comfortable committing fraud and who blew the whistle to Stumpf, the bank's "ethics" line, its human resources department, or to Wells Fargo's board of directors, were fired or intimidated into continuing the fraud.
"We were constantly told we would end up working for McDonald's," a former employee told the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story in Dec. 2013. Never mind the fact that McDonald's has never been caught intentionally defrauding millions of customers.
Another employee who refused her supervisors' demands to open fake accounts was told that she'd never be able to find another job at a bank ever again.
Wells Fargo sought to make this happen by filing a U5 with securities regulators, claiming that she "failed to perform job duties." According to bankers I've spoken to, a document like that should NEVER have been filed against a personal banker, who sells FDIC-insured banking products, not securities. (One banker I spoke to who has hiring and firing authority had never even heard of a U5 filing.)
Another 12-year veteran of the company who blew the whistle received a menacing letter from his superiors, threatening him that his employment was "at will" and under the "complete and arbitrary discretion" of his superiors. The letter concluded by saying "you will never be allowed back in the same office, sue us if you disagree."
He did, and he won the case.
And all along the way, Stumpf was getting letters and emails from these people. And he did nothing to stop it.
He did nothing to stop the abuse of customers.
And he did nothing to stop the abuse of his employees.
In this way, he was complicit in -- dare I say the leader of -- a conspiracy that not only defrauded millions of customers, many of whom were undoubtedly the most vulnerable members of our society such as octogenarians living on $1,100 a month, but also silenced those who tried to end the scam.
These people believed that alerting Stumpf would give them safe harbor from their immediate superiors who threatened and belittled them.
But Stumpf ignored them. He allowed his managerial goon squad to defame their reputations and attempt to destroy these peoples' abilities to earn a living for their families.
It's like a horror movie where the victim runs unwittingly into the arms of a seeming do-gooder, only to discover that they were now in the grasps of the perpetrator they were fleeing from.
But rest assured that Stumpf will not escape this with his reputation intact.
Speaking under oath, before Congress, Stumpf said that he didn't learn about the fraud until late 2013.
That's eight years after he purportedly began receiving emails and letters from whistleblowers. And it was nearly three years after Wells Fargo began cleaning house in its retail operations, firing 1,000 employees a year who, if the bank is to be believed (ha ha), were furthering the fraud, or who, seemingly just as likely, were fired because they refused to participate in it.
In short, it seems farfetched to think that Stumpf won't, at the very least, be indicted for lying to Congress. His claim that he didn't know about any of this until late 2013 is just patently absurd on its face.
What's happening
Shares of Banc of California, Inc. (BANC -0.83%) are trading higher by about 22% as of 2:30 p.m. EDT as the company took steps to mitigate concerns about the bank's alleged relationship with serial fraudster Jason Galanis. Shares dropped 29% yesterday on the publication of a short report that outlined potential links between Galanis and the bank.
So what
Last night, Banc of California put out a press release in response to the short report. The release noted that its "Disinterested Directors" initiated an immediate investigation into links between Galanis and the bank, and refuted one claim of a direct link between Galanis and the company.
This morning, Banc of California released earnings a day earlier than previously scheduled, announcing record net income and deposit growth. It also increased its full-year earnings guidance to "at least $1.85 per share," up from $1.60 per share.
In the same 8-K filing with the SEC, the bank announced that its board of directors approved a share buyback program that would authorize the company to buy back up to 10% of its currently outstanding shares over the next 12 months. In an exhibit, the bank included a letter to SeekingAlpha, calling for the removal of yesterday's blog post that alleged ties between the bank and Galanis.
The bank added additional detail about its investigation in its prepared remarks on its earnings conference call, noting that management had advised the board of directors in 2015 about Galanis' indictment, and that it retained outside counsel for an investigation that continued for more than a year. The bank confirmed that there was no ownership or influence link between Galanis and the bank during that previous investigation.
The company didn't take any further questions about Galanis, citing the fact it believed the short report was libel per se and that further discussion could impact its ability to seek legal recourse. Executives also stopped short of naming the "disinterested directors" involved in the internal investigation that began yesterday. Instead, interest was diverted to its earnings for the third quarter.
Now what
This is likely only the beginning of a very public, back-and-forth conversation between critics and company executives, as these matters typically evolve over the course of months, if not years. Potential ties to Galanis are just one of many issues brought up in the short-seller's blog post.
The only certain development in the last day is that Banc of California's explosive asset growth may slow. Bank officials pointed out that the bank may sell certain assets on its balance sheet, use capital to pay larger dividends or repurchase shares, or all of the above.
The number of illegals seeking asylum to gain easy access to the United States has jumped 900 percent in less than 10 years, greatly expanding the Immigration population receiving Social Security, school loans, green cards, welfare and other taxpayer funded services, according to figures from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
While about 8,000 mostly Latin Americans in 2009 sought asylum, the number is expected to reach 80,000 or more this year, according to a projection from the Center for Immigration Studies.
The report said 80 percent come from just three countries that have already flooded the border with youths and young families, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Most claim a fear of torture, abuse, or retaliation, fulfilling the U.S. requirement that they must voice some credible fear of returning home.
The surge was sparked by a freeing up by President Obama of the restrictions to those requesting asylum. Now they are let into the United States while they pursue their asylum request.
The author of the report, Jessica M. Vaughan, the Center's director of policy studies, said many of those arriving at the border to claim asylum are trafficked through Mexico by gangs charging fees to get their clients into the U.S.
What's more, typically many are granted a temporary OK, then find their way to U.S. cities. A House panel found that some 90 percent are granted asylum, though only 30 percent of the requests were "fraud free," said the CIS analysis.
This is just too ironic. I received pic's with this but I don't know how to post them.:unsure:
Subject: YEP IT HAPPENS
The insanity marches on.
We dont want to insult a hijab clad Muslim woman by a search,
but its OK to search a nun.
Yep, makes sense to me!
You cannot make this stuff up!
Airport security (Detroit Metro Concourse A).
A Catholic nun being frisked by a Muslim security agent!
Excuse me?
Did you say a MUSLIM security agent in the USA screening for suspected terrorists?
ONLY IN OBAMA'S,
AND HILLARYS, AMERICA!
Political correctness is out of control.
The next few weeks are traditionally a tense time at Samsung Electronics Co <005930.KS> as executives wait to see if their work over the year is rewarded with promotion at the South Korean firm's annual performance review.
This year, that tension has been ramped up several notches as the year-end ritual comes on the heels of the debacle over Samsung's flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.
The world's top smartphone maker this month pulled the plug on the near-$900 device after phones overheated and caught fire. With some replacement phones suffering the same problem, Samsung has forecast a $5.4 billion hit to its operating profits. Some analysts predict the smartphone business may post a first quarterly loss for July-September.
"Everyone's afraid to be heard even breathing," said one Samsung employee. "There will be punitive measures; someone will have to take responsibility for this."
None of the Samsung employees Reuters talked to for this article wanted to be named as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Samsung's annual personnel decisions - a common practice in South Korea around December - is a secret more closely guarded than even details of its new products. Executives are told about any changes only at the last minute.
Samsung insiders say there is more nervousness this year than normal, and talk internally of sweeping changes, with a cull both in the executive suite and on the ground level.
"There's a lot of talk there could be major turnover in the executive ranks on the hardware side," said an insider at the mobile division. "There's also a lot of concern among the working-level employees about a major restructuring."
Samsung told Reuters it was not considering any management changes or restructuring in response to the Note 7 crisis.
FRUSTRATION
The sense of frustration among Samsung staff has been heightened by the company's inability to find the cause of the fires in replacement Note 7s that began shipping last month with what Samsung said were safe batteries, insiders said.
"We are working around the clock to analyze the causes of the reported cases," Samsung said in a statement to Reuters, adding it is premature to speculate on what went wrong.
In an internal Oct. 11 email apologizing to staff, mobile chief Koh Dong-jin - who has been in the job for less than a year - wrote of the "big wound" the scrapping of the Note 7 would be for executives and employees. Samsung confirmed Koh wrote to staff, but did not comment on what he said.
Some Samsung workers said there were already rumors circulating internally about which executives might be ousted. Some investors and analysts have said top executives including Koh may be held responsible at the year-end review.
Others said they felt ashamed when people they know ditched the Note 7 for a rival product or when they heard news announcements about the phones being banned from aeroplanes.
Koh and other Samsung executives have been active on internal messaging boards, discussing with employees how to deal with the Note 7 crisis, insiders said.
About 70 percent of Samsung's more than 325,000 employees work outside South Korea. It is not clear how overseas jobs or those at subsidiaries might be affected by the Note 7 storm; Samsung said it has no plans to cut jobs this year in Vietnam, a major smartphone manufacturing base.
TAKING IT SLOW
Internally, the mobile business was criticized by some for changing product specifications without delaying launch schedules, putting staff and suppliers under pressure to deliver fast.
"Some people who work in other business divisions feel something like this was bound to happen," said a Samsung employee at the consumer electronics division, noting mounting pressure on the mobile business to overcome slowing growth amid strong competition from rivals including Apple Inc and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL].
A person familiar with the development of the next Galaxy S smartphone, expected to launch early next year, said the process has now slowed as Samsung is anxious to avoid any repeat of the Note 7 problems in its future premium handsets.
"Depending on the cause (of the Note 7 problem), certain configurations may need to be altered," the person said. "So the specifics for the (next) phone have not been finalised."
Samsung is not likely to bring forward the launch of the next Galaxy S smartphone to make up for lost Note 7 sales, the person added.
Samsung told Reuters it will take "any and all necessary steps" to ensure product safety, but did not comment on whether the Note 7 fallout was affecting the next Galaxy S phone's development.
($1 = 1,114.7500 won)
(Reporting by Se Young Lee, with additional reporting by Cynthia Kim and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
Just this past week JP Morgan Chase announced a new program committing $75 million over three years to help small businesses, particularly ones owned by minorities, women and veterans. Pretty nice, right?
The program includes a $1.9 million grant to the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) to support its programs to connect small business owners with alternative funding sources when they are unable to qualify for traditional loans. The bank also extended its collaboration with a nonprofit lender called LiftFund with another $4.6 million grant, which builds on the grants and financial support it has been giving in the past to organizations that support local entrepreneurs.
Nice, yes. But the timing raised a few eyebrows. Chases announcement did come suspiciously soon after the news that the CEO of one its biggest competitors, Wells Fargo, had to step down after revealing that the bank had been creating fake accounts and charging fees to unsuspecting customers for years. Are Chases charitable actions related? Are they attempting to take advantage of a rival when theyre down?
Stop being so cynical! No, this announcement likely had nothing to do with Wells Fargos problems. Big companies give grants all the time -- and Chase has actually been among the most active. Some examples of others:
- Miller Beers ongoing Tap the Future campaign has given away $200,000 each year to an entrepreneur that displays passion and becomes who you want to be in a competition judged by industry and celebrity experts.
-Marketing firm Deluxe Corporation received 10,000 nominations and 180,000 votes before choosing the winner of its Small Business Revolution contest last year that awarded $500,000 in marketing services and support. The company plans to continue the program this year too.
-Fedex recently awarded $25,000 to a grand prize winner, $15,000 to the runner up and a bunch of $7,500 grants to small businesses who participated in its Opportunity Knocks contest, all for showing a deep passion for their business.
-Comcast Business gave out $20,000 awards to each of six small business owners who demonstrated their great ideas to a panel of judges to win its Innovations 4 Entrepreneurs contest.
-In addition to the philanthropy mentioned above, every year Chase also gives out $100,000 each to twenty small businesses who win its Mission Main Street grant program because they demonstrate innovation, diversity, and strength.
-Sams Clubs Community Grant Program awards unspecified grants to nonprofits that support small business owners particularly minority and women owned businesses - that can demonstrate opportunity, sustainability and community with education and youth success also being other areas of focus.
-Besides Sams Club, Walmart also has a variety of charitable foundations that offer grants to organizations that align with the companys key areas of focus.
-Many other large companies have charitable arms that offer money to non-profits and for-profits that are doing good things in the world. Heres a list of 20 of the most generous, according to Fortune.com.
At the same time, in my view it would be naive to say that these companies are doing this all out of pure goodwill. One could make an argument that in addition to wanting to do good, they do these kinds of things to get good PR and embellish their own brands. The reality is that a few $100,000 grants to a company the size of JP Morgan Chase is petty cash when you look at their overall financial picture.
These programs not only create a lot of goodwill for Corporate America, but they also start a conversation that can be used in their marketing campaigns and promotions. And the small businesses that win these awards give interviews to the media, appear at events and participate in video testimonials so that they can gush about the generous corporate sponsor doing their part to help Americas entrepreneurs.
So yes, there are certainly a number of business reasons behind these altruistic grants. But this is not unlike the small business that sponsors a fund-raising event or donates money to a local charity and then gets its logo published in the town newspaper, right?
In the end, if its helping a good cause, or providing much needed money to a capital-starved entrepreneur to grow their business and employ more people, isnt that what matters most?
So thank you Chase and all the others for helping Main Street, and if that helps you, too good for you.
SYDNEY - An unprecedented shortage of air cargo space, after years of booming exports to Asia, is forcing Australian producers of top-end foods to potentially miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars in sales of everything from lobster to cherries.
Australia has been pushing to become the 'delicatessen of Asia', tapping its favorable climate to send crates of luxury produce such as figs and edible flowers to store shelves across the increasingly-affluent region.
But finding space on planes has become a headache as producers of delicacies crank up output, with suppliers saying the crunch has been exacerbated as freight carriers are prioritizing higher-margin shipments of beef and milk.
"Getting air space is our biggest challenge because we are in this market only six weeks per year (after picking)," said Lucy Gregg from Tasmania-based cherry grower Reid Fruits. "It's not much bargaining power."
David Minnis, a veteran fruit and vegetable exporter in Melbourne, said growers of such produce were losing out on up to A$100 million ($76 million) in potential sales to Asia per year - a figure that does not include similar missed opportunities in seafood and other fresh foods.
"Air freight is very important to us because some produce, like cherries, asparagus and peaches, can't go by sea," he said.
Australian fruit can take two days to get to supermarket shelves in China by plane, compared to around two weeks by water.
All up, exports of Australian rural goods - which include meat, fruits, vegetables and cotton sent by sea and air - were valued at A$42.7 billion in the 12 months to August, up 37 percent from five years ago, government statistics show. That accounts for about 13 percent of the nation's total exports.
SPACE SQUEEZE
The squeeze in space comes despite numbers from data provider MariTrade showing that Australian air freight export volumes nearly doubled in four years to 35,000 tonnes in June.
But high-end food producers say that increase is not keeping pace with growing appetite for their products from Asia's middle class. The shortage is particularly acute when demand peaks around Christmas and the Lunar New Year.
Qantas Airways , Virgin , Cathay Pacific <0293.H>, and Singapore Airlines all told Reuters they had gradually increased cargo activity out of, or within, Australia.
Some in the air transport industry said that boosting flight numbers further was not easy due to aviation quota restrictions, while starting new routes involves considerable risk for airlines.
"If you are repositioning a $100 million aircraft, it's a big decision," said Phil Gregory, general manager of Wellcamp Airport, a A$200 million privately built air freight facility in the agriculture-rich state of Queensland.
Cathay, which operates two dedicated freight vessels between Hong Kong and Australia every week, will start a weekly cargo service next month from Wellcamp.
Still, exports of higher-margin products such as beef can take precedence. While fruits and vegetables cost around 70 to 80 Australian cents per kilo to ship by air, frozen beef fetches nearly double.
Typically using an agent as an intermediary, small producers such as cherry growers can start negotiating with airlines for cargo space nearly a year ahead of the picking season.
Yet, there is no guarantee of room on planes as crop estimates can sometimes be well below production numbers, and airlines can also bump off small shipments of fruits or vegetables with only a day's notice to load higher margin products.
Greg Milner, a grape grower in the southern state of Victoria, said the industry was losing market share to foreign competitors due to the freight shortage.
"When there is a gap in the chain (with Asian supermarkets), others move in and it's a problem for us," he said.
(Reporting by Cecile Lefort; Editing by Joseph Radford)
Image source: Getty Images.
Seaspan Corporation (NYSE: SSW) and Navios Maritime Midstream Partners (NYSE: NAP) both pay eye-popping double-digit yields, with Seaspan's at 11.3% and Navios' at 16.7%. When payouts get that high, it is usually a sign of trouble. While that is not necessarily the case with these two, one company does have a greater ability to maintain its lucrative payout. That makes it the better buy for income investors with a very high risk tolerance.
Comparing the balance sheets
The shipping sector is a capital-intensive industry because ships are expensive. As a result, ship owners typically borrow heavily to grow their fleets. That is certainly the case when comparing the balance sheets of these two companies:
Company Total Value of Fleet Cash and Equivalents Total Long-Term Debt Leverage (Debt Cash/Fleet Value) Debt-to-EBITDA Ratio Navios Maritime Midstream Partners $389.6 million $38.2 million $198.8 million 41% 5.6 Seaspan Corporation $5.3 billion $349.0 million $3.7 billion 63% 5.2
Data sources: Seaspan Corporation and Navios Maritime Midstream Partners. (Data as of the end of the second quarter.)
As the chart indicates, Seaspan Corporation is by far the larger company. Not only does it have substantially more total debt but it uses more leverage on a percentage basis. However, it does have a lower leverage ratio on an earnings basis.
That said, these two are pretty even when it comes to their balance sheet.
Contrasting the business models
These two companies also operate similar business models. However, Seaspan Corporation is the world's largest containership lessor, controlling 3.8% of the global containership fleet and is twice the size of its nearest rival. The company currently leases its 89 operated vessels to shipping companies under long-term time charters. As of the end of the second quarter, its average contract had nearly six years remaining with its total contract backlog totaling $6 billion in future revenue. That long-term backlog provides the company with significant future revenue certainty. Because of that certainty, Seaspan pays a pretty generous dividend, though last quarter it only paid out 32% of its cash available via dividends, meaning it covered its payout three times over.
Navios Maritime Midstream Partners, on the other hand, owns and operates six crude oil tankers, which are under long-term employment contracts with international oil companies and large vessel operators. Currently, its contracts have an average of 4.8 years remaining with 100% of its revenue fixed in 2016 and 2017 and 99.4% fixed in 2018. Overall, it has more than $500 million of revenue in the backlog. Because of that revenue stability, the company pays out nearly all of its cash flow via distributions to unitholders. Last quarter, for example, it paid out 87% of its operating surplus, which equates to a 1.14 times coverage ratio.
Both companies have very similar business models and cash flow security. However, Seaspan Corporation's much larger fleet and stronger dividend coverage give it the edge.
Considering the upside
Seaspan Corporation's rise to the top of the containership leasing segment came primarily via organic growth. It plans to continue down that path and has eight more ships scheduled to be delivered next year at a total cost of $470 million in remaining capex. The company already has the bulk of that capital lined up, after raising more than $1 billion in capital via multiple financing transactions this year to fund its capex requirements and refinance upcoming maturities. Those new vessels will supply the company with additional cash flow to maintain, and potentially expand its dividend.
Navios, on the other hand, takes an entirely different approach to growth, utilizing drop-down transactions from its parent company Navios Maritime Acquisition (NYSE: NNA) to expand its fleet. Sinceits IPO, the company has acquired two vessels from Navios Maritime Acquisition, and it currently has the option to purchase five more. In addition to that, it has the right to buy any crude, product, LPG, or chemical tankers within the Navios Group that have time charters lasting more than five years. Finally, it is selectively exploring the market for third-party acquisitions. The only hindrance to growth is its access to capital, which given the company's already elevated leverage and relatively small size, could prove problematic.
While Navios has tremendous growth potential thanks to drop-down transactions from its parent company, Seaspan Corporation's upside is much more visible due to the vessels scheduled for delivery next year.
Investor takeaway
Seaspan Corporation has three distinct advantages over Navios. It has much larger scale, pays out a smaller portion of its cash flow in dividends, and has clearly visible near-term growth. Because of those factors, it has a better ability to maintain its payout. Therefore, it is the better buy between the two for investors that aren't afraid of the risks associated with owning a highly leveraged shipping company.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Matt DiLallo owns shares of Seaspan. The Motley Fool recommends Seaspan. 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.
It's not likely to be happy news when craft-beer brewer Boston Beer reports earnings on Thursday, as its flagship Samuel Adams beer will probably still be in a funk. Image source: Getty Images.
When Boston Beer (NYSE: SAM) reports earnings on Thursday, most investors will immediately scan to see how its flagship Samuel Adams beer performed. Did depletions finally start to rise, or will they head south for another quarter?
Because the label was the brewer's first beer and is its most important brand, it's natural to want to see how it's doing, but this quarter investors might be better served by looking at the performance of three other brands it sells.
Forecast is cloudy
Now it's important to understand that Boston Beer doesn't reveal exact sales data for its different brands, not even Samuel Adams, though you can figure them out based on the broad numbers it does report.
In the second quarter, for example, Boston Beer reported that depletions fell 5% for the period "primarily due to decreases in our Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard and Traveler brands." Conversely, it said growth in its hard teas, sodas, and seltzers wasn't enough to offset the decline. Depletions are an important industry metric, as they measure sales from distributors to retailers, and so are considered a reliable proxy for consumer demand.
Still, just as food companies list ingredients on their product label in volume order from largest to smallest, Boston Beer (like pretty much all companies) delineates an item's appearance in its results roughly based on the size of its contribution. So when the brewer tells us Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard, and Traveler all contributed to falling depletions, we know the flagship brand had the worst performance, followed by its cider, and then the craft beer created by its Alchemy & Science incubator.
Alternative beverage opportunities
But those aren't necessarily the beverages to watch when Boston Beer reports earnings later this week. Instead, investors will want to watch out for these three:
Coney Island hard soda
Truly Spiked & Sparkling hard seltzer
And, yes, Angry Orchard hard cider
Boston Beer attributes the decline in Samuel Adams to intense competitive pressure. As the Brewers Association notes, there are more breweries in America now than at any time in this country's past. The trade group says there are more than 4,200 craft breweries operating in the U.S., up 18% from the year before, and there are many more planning to open in the future. These numbers suggest the loss of market share Samuel Adams has been experiencing over the past year or more will continue into the future.
Image source: Getty Images.
Fad, niche, or trend?
This is why the brewer has been relying more upon niche beverages to make up the difference. Angry Orchard has become something of the flagship for these alternatives, and the hard cider was chiefly responsible for carrying Boston Beer when its main brew stumbled. In 2014, when the brewer notched a 22% increase in depletions, it credited Angry Orchard as being the foremost reason behind the gains.
But that began to change in 2015, as more ciders appeared on the market and the segment was saturated. In addition to Angry Orchard, drinkers could also choose from Anheuser-Busch InBev's Stella Artois Cidre, the Crispin brand from Molson Coors, Heineken's Strongbow, and more.
At the end of last year, depletion growth had slowed to just 4%, and Angry Orchard was well down the list of contributing factors. Now depletions have turned negative, and as noted above, cider was a leading cause. Investors will want to see whether the tide has run out on cider, or if Boston Beer can turn it around once more.
Losing its fizz
That seems to be what's happening with the hard soda and seltzer brands, but in a very compressed time frame.
According to the analysts at Cowen & Company, Coney Island sales have "consistently slowed," and were down 63% from last year for the four-week period to Sept. 10. Industry site just-drinks.com quoted Cowen analyst Vivien Azer as writing, "While it had looked like cider was losing share to hard soda, over the last few months we have seen the trends reverse, with combined cider and hard soda sales now in decline."
The buffer provided by soda and seltzer was short-lived. With distiller Diageointroducing two new hard-soda lines of its own this month, the outlook for the niche is not promising. Investors need to see whether Cowen's channel checks hold up.
With little probability Samuel Adams will reverse course, it's going to be these three beverages that could determine just how far Boston Beer sinks. The outlook isn't promising, and this brewer's stock may soon sink lower.
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.
Rich Duprey has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Anheuser-Busch InBev NV and Boston Beer. The Motley Fool recommends Diageo.
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.
Former chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf. Image source: Wells Fargo.
When I think about John Stumpf, the now-disgraced former chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), I'm reminded of those stories you see on TV about the guy-next-door who had been living a secret life for years.
"He seemed so normal," neighbors would say.
"He always showed up to work on time and did his job," co-workers would add.
But then, for one reason or another, everything would come crashing down. Something would cause someone to peek behind the thin veneer of respectability and discover the truth.
In Ken Lay's case, it was the recession following Sept. 11, 2001 that revealed the inner machinations at Enron.
In Bernie Madoff's case, it was the financial crisis that caused his multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme to collapse.
And in John Stumpf's case, it was a fake-account scandal in which low-level employees were, if a growing multitude of allegations are to be believed, all but forced to commit fraud in order to keep their jobs and boost Wells Fargo's performance and thereby Stumpf's voluptuous paycheck -- he earned $20 million a year.
You may think that comparing Stumpf to Lay and Madoff is hyperbolic, but I disagree.
Like them, he carefully cultivated an image of infallibility. He lambasted other banks for seeking growth for the sake of growth. And he loudly trumpeted Wells Fargo's Vison & Values which made, in hindsight, preposterous claims like:
Meanwhile, while analysts and commentators like me were distracted by Stumpf's diversionary tactics, thousands of the banks' employees were opening millions of fake accounts for customers. Stumpf claimed that the fraud went back to only 2011, but there's now clear evidence that it may have gone all the way back to 2005, if not to 1998.
All along the way, moreover, those employees who didn't feel comfortable committing fraud and who blew the whistle to Stumpf, the bank's "ethics" line, its human resources department, or to Wells Fargo's board of directors, were fired or intimidated into continuing the fraud.
"We were constantly told we would end up working for McDonald's," a former employee told the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story in Dec. 2013. Never mind the fact that McDonald's has never been caught intentionally defrauding millions of customers.
Another employee who refused her supervisors' demands to open fake accounts was told that she'd never be able to find another job at a bank ever again.
Wells Fargo sought to make this happen by filing a U5 with securities regulators, claiming that she "failed to perform job duties." According to bankers I've spoken to, a document likethat should NEVER have been filed against a personal banker, who sells FDIC-insured banking products, not securities. (One banker I spoke to who has hiring and firing authority had never even heard of a U5 filing.)
Another 12-year veteran of the company who blew the whistle received a menacing letter from his superiors, threatening him that his employment was "at will" and under the "complete and arbitrary discretion" of his superiors. The letter concluded by saying "you will never be allowed back in the same office, sue us if you disagree."
He did, and he won the case.
And all along the way, Stumpf was getting letters and emails from these people. And he did nothing to stop it.
He did nothing to stop the abuse of customers.
And he did nothing to stop the abuse of his employees.
In this way, he was complicit in -- dare I say the leader of -- a conspiracy that not only defrauded millions of customers, many of whom were undoubtedly the most vulnerable members of our society such as octogenarians living on $1,100 a month, but also silenced those who tried to end the scam.
These people believed that alerting Stumpf would give them safe harbor from their immediate superiors who threatened and belittled them.
But Stumpf ignored them. He allowed his managerial goon squad to defame their reputations and attempt to destroy these peoples' abilities to earn a living for their families.
It's like a horror movie where the victim runs unwittingly into the arms of a seeming do-gooder, only to discover that they were now in the grasps of the perpetrator they were fleeing from.
But rest assured that Stumpf will not escape this with his reputation intact.
Speaking under oath, before Congress, Stumpf said that he didn't learn about the fraud until late 2013.
That's eight years after he purportedly began receiving emails and letters from whistleblowers. And it was nearly three years after Wells Fargo began cleaning house in its retail operations, firing 1,000 employees a year who, if the bank is to be believed (ha ha), were furthering the fraud, or who, seemingly just as likely, were fired because they refused to participate in it.
In short, it seems farfetched to think that Stumpf won't, at the very least, be indicted for lying to Congress. His claim that he didn't know about any of this until late 2013 is just patently absurd on its face.
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.
John Maxfield owns shares of Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Wells Fargo. 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.
U.S. housing starts tumbled to a 1-1/2-year low in September amid a steep decline in the construction of multifamily homes, but a surge in the construction of single-family units pointed to sustained strength in the housing market.
Groundbreaking dropped 9.0 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.05 million units, the lowest level since March 2015, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. August's starts were revised up to a 1.15 million-unit pace from the previously reported 1.14 million-unit rate.
Single-family home building, which accounts for the largest share of the residential housing market, jumped 8.1 percent to a 783,000-unit pace in September, the highest level since February.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast housing starts rising to a 1.18 million-unit pace in September. Last month's drop left the overall housing starts in the third quarter well below their average for the second quarter.
That suggests residential construction remained a drag on gross domestic product in the third quarter after subtracting from output in the April-June period.
Housing starts for the volatile multi-family segment plunged 38.0 percent to a 264,000-unit pace in September. But with rents rising at their fastest pace in 10 years, last month's drop is likely to be temporary.
Overall home building activity is likely to rebound in the coming months, as permits for future construction surged 6.3 percent in September. Single-family permits edged up 0.4 percent last month. Building permits for multi-family units soared 16.8 percent in September.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
Sheldon Adelson is nearing his wits end with Donald Trump.
The billionaire casino magnate, who once promised Trumps campaign $100 million in contributions, recently sent an e-mail to Trump advising the GOP candidate to stop attacking Republicans he has feuded with during the increasingly contentious presidential run, and lay off what Adelson considers counter-productive attacks on the media, according to two people with direct knowledge of Adelsons note.
Instead, these people say, Adelson wrote in the e-mail that Trump should focus on major political issues that he believes could help him narrow what appears to be a growing polling gap with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, such as the slow-growing U.S. economy under the watch of her old boss, President Obama, and these embarrassing disclosures about the Clinton campaign and Hillary Clintons dealings with major banks found in a recent WikiLeaks document dump.
Its unclear if Trump, as hes preparing for tonights third, and final presidential debate hosted by Fox News in Las Vegas, has responded to Adelsons e-mail. Recent polls show Trump trailing badly against Clinton, particularly in so called battleground states. Adelson, usually a prolific GOP contributor, has also expressed his opinion of the Trump campaign, including his feuds with major GOP leaders like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, by refusing to open his checkbook.
Adelson has only contributed $10 million to the Trump campaign, and continues to focus his efforts on aiding GOP candidates in Senate and House of Representatives races.
Adelson is doing what everyone is doinghes running away from Donald Trump, said Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. If the polls are right, no one wants to be around a dead body or a losing candidate.
Its unclear if Adelson has plans to give any additional contributions to support the Trump campaign. About 40 supporters of Trump plan to meet with the candidate Wednesday afternoon in Las Vegas at the Trump hotel; Adelson is expected to attend the event.
A Trump spokeswoman didnt return an e-mail or call for comment. A spokesman for Las Vegas Sands Corp., the holding company for Adelsons far-flung casino operations, also didnt return a call or e-mail for comment.
Adelsons relationship with Trump has hit rough patches in the past. Even after suggesting he could raise $100 million for the Trump presidential effort, Adelson has told people he disagreed with Trumps erratic campaign style and frequent attacks on GOP establishment figures who have taken issue with Trumps anti-immigration position and critiques of free-trade agreements.
They also fretted that Trump missed opportunities to attack Clinton, President Obamas former secretary of state during the Benghazi terrorist attack.
For a time though, it seemed that the GOP donor establishment was lining up behind Trump as he began to poll evenly with Clinton in many polls and started campaigning in a more deliberate manner, often reading from a prepared script in his speeches, and refraining from making controversial statements that have caused him problems in the past, such as his criticism of a judge involved in a private lawsuit over his Mexican heritage.
But Trump soon reverted back to his initial free-wheeling form. After losing the first debate to Clinton, he went on an extended attack against a former Miss Universe who is a Clinton supporter, and then began to attack the media for being too cozy with the Clinton campaign, while deriding the election itself as being rife with voter fraud and rigged against him.
In recent weeks Trumps campaign has been blindsided by additional controversies, including the release of an audio recording of Trump making crass, sexually provocative statements about women, and the accounts of a series of women who alleged they were sexually assaulted by Trump, which he has denied.
In the wake of these disclosures, many GOP leaders and some fundraisers have turned their back on their nominee. To date, Trump has raised just $200 million, compared to more than $500 million raised by the Clinton campaign.
Adelsons growing angst over Trumps campaign, according to people the casino executive has spoken to, seems more focused on what he believes is Trumps inability to focus on sound advice from donors and political consultants that could minimize the controversies that keep sidetracking his campaign, and have contributed to his growing slide in the polls.
Trump doesnt listen to anyonenot even his family or Steve Bannon, Adelson told one associate who spoke to FOX Business in reference to Trumps new campaign manager.
I like Trump less and less, Adelson said, according to this person.
Jim Carrey has broken his silence following two weeks of heavily publicized attacks by his late ex-girlfriends family, saying Cathriona Whites mom and widower are just seeking to cash out on her tragic suicide.
Brigid Sweetman and Whites estranged husband, Mark Burton, have both filed wrongful death suits against the actor, which he trashed Tuesday in court documents as shakedown lawsuits based on categorical lies concocted by Sweetman in collaboration with Whites green card husband.
They are driven by greed, Carrey writes in a motion, asking the Los Angeles Superior Court to freeze the proceedings until Sweetman proves she can fork over $372,700 to cover his litigation costs should her suit fizzle.
Sweetman had no relationship with White, nor did she love her, Carrey says. She loves only money.
Leading the legal assault on Carrey have been Sweetmans continued insistence he release medical tests taken under an alias from 2013, to prove he didnt give White chlamydia as well as genital and oral herpes.
White would be horrified by the disclosure to the world of Whites medical history of sexually transmitted diseases, Carreys new filing reads. And by the false allegations that she contracted the diseases from Carrey in 2013.
Sweetman and her attorney released the embarrassing information about White solely in an attempt to gain leverage against Carrey, they continue. White would also be outraged that Sweetman and her attorney delivered Whites highly private and intimate text messages with Carrey to tabloids to be published to the world.
Carrey is devastated by Whites suicide, but he is not responsible for it, the motion adds. It is outrageous that Sweetman, long estranged and motivated by greed, now seeks blood money from Carrey.
The documents mingle attacks on Sweetman and Burton with details of White and Carreys romance they started dating in 2012, after meeting at a Guns N Roses concert and even include excerpts from her suicide note.
I dont really know about burial or that sort of thing, White allegedly wrote. You are my family so whatever you choose will be fine.
Sweetman, the papers say, battled addiction as White was growing up, and fled Ireland for England. White was left in the care of her father Pat White, and stepmother Brigid.
She hated Sweetman, Carrey says of White, adding that Brigid recently wrote [Carrey] that Cat would hate that Ms. Sweetman has sued [Carrey] and would turn in her grave at the thought of it, and that Cat would never want her mothers name near anything to do with her.'
Carrey and his attorneys also denied accusations that he gave White the pills she ODd on, saying she stole them from him home.
Click here for more on this story from the New York Post's Page Six.
Almost 50 unmanned systems from the UK, USA, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria participated in a month-long war game for robots, organized by the Royal Navy. Spanning air, surface and the undersea domain, Unmanned Warrior 2016 (UW16), has been in the making for almost two years, with dozens of players from different nations invited to take part in this unique operational demonstration, held as part of NATOs Joint Warrior exercise.
The technologies tested in the exercise included anti-submarine warfare, minesweeping and countermeasures, intelligence gathering, including geospatial monitoring, meteorological, bathymetric and hydrological surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting (ISTAR) providing overwatch and persistent surveillance for coastal and maritime elements, and extended range ocean surveillance. Command, control, and communications were also an important factor supported by unmanned systems, enabling networking and collaboration of multiple systems performing collaborative missions.
A system designed for long-endurance autonomous operation in the open sea is the Sensor Hosting Autonomous Remote Craft (SHARC) from Boeing and Liquid Robotic. Four such crafts participated in Unmanned Warrior 2016. They were used to deliver continuous maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions for up to a year without refueling or servicing. These crafts employ innovative wave- and solar-powered propulsion system, and carry a sensor suite provided by Boeing. Its ability to conduct continuous patrols using autonomous navigation gives SHARC unique access to undersea, air and space domains. Multiple SHARCs can be monitored and controlled by a single, shore-side operator. To date, more than 50 sensors have been tested and integrated on SHARC, including Automated Identification System (AIS), acoustic sensors, electromagnetic sensors, and imaging systems. SHARCs onboard open architecture, commercial standards and modular configuration that allows rapid integration of advanced technologies and innovative payloads.
Unmanned Surface Vessels were the relatively new class evaluated at Unmanned Warrior 2016. Several models participated in the exercise, including the Halcyon from Thales, which carries the T-SAS sonar, that delivers live, high-quality sonar images to shore-based operators over long distances. In fact, the Halcyon is being developed as part of the Thales-led consortium solution for the first phase of the Anglo-French Mine Countermeasures program to assess the future mine warfare capabilities of the UK and French navies. Thales is the system integrator for the Maritime Autonomous Platform Exploitation (MAPLE) program, which also evaluates the command and control aspects of the system, through the Autonomous Control Exploitation and Realization (ACER) deployed on the vessel Northern River, which provided a warship command surrogate platform. Unmanned aerial vehicles such as the BlueBear Blackstart flew airborne relays linked the ACER with remote unmanned vessels at sea.
ACER also provided commanders with control over missions through the use of collaborative autonomy of multiple unmanned, autonomous platforms and sensors cooperating on specific missions. In the third week of the exercise anti-submarine and counter-mine, missions scaled up to include ten different vehicles from three countries, operating in four squads operating across air, surface and underwater domains.
The system is based on BAE Systems Systems Combat Management System and includes enhancements to support planning and decision-making using off-board systems. Hosted within a transportable command and control center, ACER is capable of integrating several unmanned systems and platforms from multiple suppliers, minimizing the number of screens and controls operators need to conduct successful missions.
Another USV provider, Atlas Elektronik UK (AEUK) deployed its 11-meter long mine hunting USV ARCIMS to Unmanned Warrior 2016. ARCIMS carries the AQS-24B Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) made by Northrop Grumman Corporation. Although the system is currently undergoing final integration, the company has already received firm orders for two ARCIMS. In the weeks that preceded AW16, the ARCIMS received final tweaks at the Portland Harbor, undergoing integration testing of the AQS-24B, that included remote launch and recovery of the towed sonar at the. The AQS-24B is a towed mine hunting sensor used by the U.S. Navy, features the worlds only high-speed synthetic aperture sonar for mine detection, localization, and classification, and an optical laser line scan sensor for the identification mine.
A smaller unmanned naval platforms taking part in the exercise was BAE Systems Pacific Class 950 Unmanned Rigid Inflatable Boat (P950 RIB). This RIB is capable of traveling at up to 47kts for up to 12 hours at a time. Remotely controlled via ACER, the RIB can also operated autonomously, using technology developed by BAE Systems and ASV Ltd with support from suppliers including Deep Vision Inc and Chess Dynamics Ltd.
Those sonars often needed targets to detect and unmanned systems provided these services as well. Saab provided the AUV62-AT an acoustic target that replicates the active and passive signature of a submarine, delivering essential ASW simulation and training for the entire maritime force.
USV were also operating Mine Counter-Measures (MCM) missions, employing various sensors and countermeasures to defeat mines. Among these countermeasures was the Sea Wasp from Saab. This small, highly maneuverable waterborne counter-IED vehicle is remotely controlled to deliver a demolition charge close to a mine, enabling MCM operators to neutralize the target from safe distance. Yesterday Saab announced the acquisition of Nordic Defense Industries (NDI), a Danish manufacturer of mine disposal charges, thus expanding its MCM offering.
Other systems participating at the UW16 demonstration were aerial vehicles of different sizes and types. Among the platforms being used were the familiar Austrian S-100 Camcopter from Shiebel, and American Scan Eagle from Insitu and Boeing, equipped with Visual Detection and Ranging system. Boeing hopes it can offer as a replacement to the Royal Navys ScanEagle, expected to be phased out of service in 2017. Other systems tested were the NRQ-21 and Indago quad rotor, from Lockheed Martin. UW16 provided the stage for the first maritime appearance of new platforms the Thales Watchkeeper, operating the i-Master radar over the sea and the Leonardo SW-4 Solo optionally piloted helicopter on surveillance missions, carrying the Osprey flat-panel electronically scanned radar, EO/IR payload, and SAGE electronic support measures system.
The technologies and concepts being demonstrated in Unmanned Warrior have the potential to fundamentally change the future of Royal Navy operations just as the advent of steam propulsion or submarines did for example. Commander Peter Pipkin, the Fleet Robotics Officer, said. By working closely with a wide range of system providers from defense, industry, and academia, Unmanned Warrior has also become the catalyst for a level of discussion and participation that sets the gold standard for collaborative projects.
The reviews are in for Michael Moore's surprise film "Michael Moore in TrumpLand."
While most expected the film to be a takedown about Donald Trump, many felt the film wasn't about Trump at all. Instead, the documentary, which began filming only 12 days ago, was more about why voters should support Hillary Clinton.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Moore starts off the film painting a grim future of the United States should Trump become president. He compares disaffected Americans to the British who voted for Brexit saying they "used the ballot box as an anger management tool" and should Trump win it will be "the biggest 'f--k you' ever recorded in human history."
"What the country doesnt need is to be told Trump is a sociopath, Moore said at the film's screening at New York Citys IFC Center, according to the Daily Beast. "Hes produced that movie."
But Moore's true agenda of the film is revealed when he declares his support for Clinton.
"She can be our Pope Francis," he says in the film according to The Hollywood Reporter. He claims Clinton is the candidate to solve the American health care system. "ISIS is gonna s--t if she's president," he said in the film.
Moore premiered a the film discussing the presidential election just three weeks before Americans head to the polls. It was made up of footage from his recent one-man show in Ohio.
He held off announcing that the film was in the works until Monday night and then debuted it in New York on Tuesday night in front of an audience of his fans.
Weak on satire, #TrumpLand -- essentially a concert film -- is most effective when Moore gets sincere about his love-hate romance w/Hillary. erickohn (@erickohn) October 19, 2016
@MMFlint , thx for #TrumpLand & for helping me find a ray of sun in this dark election. Playing it for my bernie friends ASAP! #ImWithHer CLA (@camilalvrz) October 19, 2016
Moore says he hopes more theaters will be announced soon.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
After Travis Robinson was born in October 2015 with an enlarged heart, he was added to a nationwide list of about 2,000 other children waiting for a new organ. In the meanwhile, his doctors at Levine Childrens Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, put him on a Berlin Heart, a mechanical device that would help his body maintain blood flow and keep his organs working.
"I'll never forget when Dr. Wallis came to us and said, I just want to let you know that your sons heart is very sick, Travis mother, Allyson Robinson, of Charlotte, told FoxNews.com. It took us a little while to accept that a transplant was what he was going to need.
But Allyson was not alone in her tragedy. Two weeks later, 3-year-old Aydan Ellis was admitted to the same hospital for a serious heart defect. Aydan was put on a Berlin Heart two weeks after Travis.
Trying to understand what the Berlin Heart was was kind of difficult, but yet I understood that it was something that he needed in order to maintain him until he could get a heart, Aydans mother, Miriam Ellis, of Rock Hill, South Carolina, told FoxNews.com. The hardest part of this is waiting for the donor.
Robinson and Ellis meet by chance in a hallway in Levine Hospital and quickly formed a strong bond that few parents ever could.
We would see each other in the waiting room, in the hallway and we would always check on each other, Robinson said. Then it would come to sitting in the room with each other, and then it was, If Im not here would you check up on baby Travis and if youre not here Ill check on Aydan, so it kind of evolved into a sisterhood.
As time went on and weeks turned into months, both families worried over when they'd get "the call" for their child's new heart. While exact wait times are difficult to predict and usually depend on several factors like the urgency for transplantation, the size of the heart and blood type, some national averages estimate the wait time for a heart can be between two to six months. In the United States, someone is added to the national transplant list every 10 minutes and, every day, 22 people die waiting for a transplant.
Transplant is a good option for some patients. It is not a great option. Our goal is to make transplant a great option, Dr. Thomas Maxey, a pediatric cardiovascular surgeon at Levine Children's Hospital, told FoxNews.com. Currently the younger you are the better you do, but the survival [is] about 18 to 20 years. Our goal is to make that 40 years, 50 years, maybe even 80 years of normal life.
Maxey cared for both Ayden and Travis.
As they waited, the two mothers continued to lean on each other for extra support.
"I had my husband and I had my family, but as a mom it's a completely different set of challenges that you can't really relate to unless you are a mom," Robinson said.
After four months in the hospital, Travis' parents got the call they'd been waiting for a new heart was ready for their baby.
The news for us was just amazing, and were forever indebted to the family that made that selfless decision," Robinson said.
As fate would have it, Aydans mom got the same call just two weeks later.
"Being on the Berlin, it was a temporary fix, but now we're on a home stretch to true healing," Ellis said.
Travis had a successful transplant surgery in May 2016, as did Aydan in June 2016.
Those are both tough kids, and unfortunately were dealt a bad hand early on, and I think both of those children as well as their families have acquired a unique strength that most of us fortunately have not had to experience, Maxey said.
While the heart-wrenching waitlist journey of Travis and Aydan was over, their mother's friendship goes beyond the walls of the hospital.
"We, from beginning to end, have had a bond that you couldn't make it up if you tried, you couldn't time it more perfectly if you tried," Robinson said.
For more information on how to become a donor, visit organdonor.gov.
A 17-month-old baby born with a rare syndrome that causes parts of her body to grow faster and larger than normal can finally smile, after doctors performed two surgeries to remove parts of her enlarged tongue. Paisley Kienow, who was born with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, is also being monitored for mismatched limb growth.
Jesus Christ never thought Paisley was perfect without Beckwith-Wiedemann, Madison Kienow, Paisleys mother, told Fox 2. I ask why us, but now I know why. Because were strong, and because we have love.
Kienow did not know Paisley had the condition until she was born pre-term at 26 weeks. In ultrasound photos it appeared that Paisley was simply sticking out her tongue. Drs. David and Patrick Munson at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, also addressed an umbilical hernia, and are devising a plan for Paisleys legs.
Kienow said her daughter will also have to undergo ultrasounds to ensure she does not develop tumors as a teen, Fox 2 reported. Kienow, a pre-medical student, said she has found support groups on Facebook which has helped her cope, and that doctors have given Paisley a good long-term prognosis.
The syndrome affects about one in 13,700 newborns worldwide, with tumors developing in about 10 percent of patients.
Hillary Clinton is a manipulative, power-mad liar.
Donald Trump is a selfish, sexist, narcissistic bully.
These are our choices Nov. 8?
The leading candidates' avarice is bad enough. Their ideas are worse.
Clinton wants to micro-regulate America into poverty and stagnation. Trump would start a trade war, if not an actual war.
While America is going bankrupt, both candidates brag that they will spend more -- Trump on the military and his pointless wall, Clinton mostly on social programs.
Both promise a new child care entitlement: paid maternity leave. I'd think a Republican presidential candidate would resist promising more "free" stuff. But Trump, with daughter Ivanka standing behind him, offers ClintonCare "lite": paid leave for six weeks instead of 12.
Naturally, the Clinton media want more. Socialist cheerleaders at Fortune magazine complain that Trump's proposal is stingy compared to Clinton's and very stingy compared to real family leave, offered by civilized nations in Europe -- especially Greece.
Hello? Have you not noticed how Greece suffers largely because of "generous benefits" like that? You think it's a coincidence that Greece's unemployment rate is 25 percent? Why would employers hire workers if they must later give them 12 weeks of pay not to work?
I'd think Fortune writers and Democratic and Republican presidential candidates would understand that "free" benefits come with nasty costs. But they don't understand. Or if they do, they just ignore it.
Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson doesn't ignore these problems. He promises to avert America's bankruptcy by cutting spending 43 percent.
But the candidate of the third party (I should call Libertarians the first party, since they respect the Constitution) is in a tough spot. He must both convince voters that he has better ideas -- and that he's not strange. That's tough to do when you're a politician who stumbles over words and the RepubliDems won't allow you into the debates. Recent polls show that almost 40 percent of Americans don't even know that Johnson's running.
That's too bad. If there were ever a year for a third party to thrive, this was it. Most voters -- from both major parties -- are unhappy with their party's nominee.
Sadly, they are not unhappy enough to vote for Gary Johnson. I have to respect the betting; bettors give Johnson just a .1 percent chance.
The bettors also say Clinton is favored 84 percent to 15 percent over Trump. Get ready for President Clinton. Sigh.
Polls suggest about 6 percent of Americans will vote Libertarian.
Some will be Bernie Sanders supporters. How can that be? Sanders is a socialist! He's an economic illiterate who wants government to control more!
But on civil liberties, Sanders is better than Trump and Clinton.
Both Sanders and Johnson are sympathetic to immigrants. Johnson knows that most become workers, customers and entrepreneurs who boost economic opportunities for everyone.
Like Sanders, Johnson wants to avoid getting bogged down in foreign wars.
Like Sanders, Johnson has long been in favor of marriage equality, whereas Clinton only recently decided it was politically safe to endorse it.
Like Sanders, Johnson knows that some complaints from the Black Lives Matter movement are valid and that the drug war does more harm than good.
Obviously, those positions upset some conservatives, but Johnson still has plenty to offer Republicans. He's more sensible than Donald Trump.
Unlike Trump, Johnson knows that free trade decreases poverty and makes the world a better, happier place. He understands that the minimum wage makes most people poorer and that free speech is a good thing.
Like Trump, Johnson opposes gun control, ObamaCare and increasing regulation.
A vote for Johnson will give Americans more choices and freedom in the future. Johnson getting 6 percent of the vote this election means easier ballot access, more money and more advertising next time. More people would know that there are other -- better -- options.
That's why I'll vote for Gary Johnson. He did a good job as governor of New Mexico. He vetoed the excesses of power-hungry state legislators 750 times. He'd stand up for limited government in Washington, too.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton won't.
In todays world, there is little doubt the Web has become a weapon. Hackers and nation-states are using the Internet to spy on us, steal our innovation, and infect our critical infrastructure. But we also need to be concerned about the threat from withinfrom human failure here at home that makes our networks vulnerable.
Most astonishing, one of our own presidential candidates was an insider threat to the United States cybersecurity. Indeed, former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons extreme carelessness with classified information, as the FBI Director noted, put our countrys secrets in danger of theft by foreign adversaries.
This is no small matter. Our nation relies on the Secretary of State to conduct sensitive diplomacy on behalf of the American people. If he or she fails to protect official communications, foreign governments can uncover them and take advantage of us.
Hillary Clinton used more than a dozen different mobile devices during her time in office. State Department officials warned Clintonand she was awarethat it was a serious risk to use her mobile phones abroad, especially in adversary nations. She even made this point in private speeches. Yet Clinton took her devices out of the country with her anyway.
The fact that Secretary Clinton put her own self-interest ahead of our security should alarm Americans.
The material on her devices included classified Special Access Program informationour nations top intelligence secrets. We also know, of course, that she used her own, relatively unsecure, homebrew server to store this sensitive data. Countries like Russia and China have the ability to launch cyber attacks on such unsecured devices, and there is a high degree of confidence that these programs are now in our adversaries hands.
Worse still, Clinton used these devices to communicate with the commander-in-chief, President Obama, while she was overseasalso putting the presidents messages at risk to theft by foreign spies.
This problematic threat to our national security was brought in front of Congress. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee found evidence suggesting there were attempted intrusions into Clinton's server by foreign governments, even after she stepped down as Secretary of State in 2013.
There is no getting around it: this kind of recklessness damages our national security and endangers our men and women serving our country overseas.
The fact that Secretary Clinton put her own self-interest ahead of our security should alarm Americans.
Our next president must be someone who can stand up to countries that hack into our networksnot someone who has been one of their soft targets.
President Reagan one asked, Are you better off than you were four years ago? But today they question is: are you safer than you were eight years ago?
I think most Americans would say they are not. In fact, we live in a much more dangerous world today than we did in 2008, largely because of President Obamas actions and the architect of his failed foreign policy, Hillary Clinton.
Our allies no longer trust us, our adversaries no longer fear us, and our enemies are plotting against us.
Americas retreat from the world stage has created an array of power vacuums, which terrorists and rogue states have exploited to plot against us.
This did not happen by accident. It happened by design.
Americans have watched with deep concern, rightfully, as foreign adversaries like Russia have interfered in our democratic process through egregious hacks and leaks.
But the carelessness of officials like former Secretary Clinton only make it easier for Moscow to exploit our weaknesses.
We need to be treating network security as a matter of national securityand we need a president who has the common sense to do that.
Sadly, Hillary Clintons growing list of obfuscations and negligence related to her own cybersecurity practices gives us low confidence that shes prepared to rise to the challenge.
The release this week of FBI documents describing the attempted cover up of Hillary Clintons email scandal raises a host of questions about the State Departments integrity and the role of its senior officials in protecting the Democratic nominee for president.
Among the most disturbing revelations involve the activities of Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy. As first reported by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, in 2015 Kennedy repeatedly pressured the FBI to change its classification determinations on Hillary Clintons emails.
Indeed, Kennedy went to extreme lengths to prevent the public from learning that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information, including so far as to pursue a secret quid pro quo deal in which the State Department was to approve FBI requests for overseas posts in exchange for reclassifying some of Hillary Clintons sensitive emails. As Hayes reports:
[An] FBI official [in the international operations division] spoke with Kennedy and Kennedy raised the possibility of keeping at least one Clinton email from public disclosure by obtaining a "B9" exemption under the Freedom of Information Act, a rarely used exemption that refers to "geological and geophysical information and data." One email in particular concerned Kennedy and, according to the FBI summary, providing a B9 exemption "would allow him to archive the document in the basement of the department of state never to be seen again." The FBI official told Kennedy that he would look into the email if Kennedy would authorize a pending request for additional FBI personnel in Iraq.
In other words, the Undersecretary of State contacted someone who likely had nothing to do with the investigation into Hillary Clintons private server--a senior FBI official in the international operations division--and told him that if he wanted State to approve the FBIs request to send agents to Iraq, he should find a way to make Hillarys worst email problems go away.
Not only did Kennedy try to interfere in a criminal investigation; not only did he try to induce the FBI to improperly reclassify sensitive national security documents; he also tried to hold our intelligence and investigative capabilities overseas hostage to Hillary Clintons political interests.
That is a staggering attempted abuse of power.
Not only did Kennedy try to interfere in a criminal investigation; not only did he try to induce the FBI to improperly reclassify sensitive national security documents; he also tried to hold our intelligence and investigative capabilities overseas hostage to Hillary Clintons political interests.
It is a breathtaking revelation.
The FBI official to whom Kennedy proposed the deal to then approached the chief of the Bureaus records management division. As Hayes reports:
The FBI records official, whose job includes making determinations on classification, told investigators that he was approached by his colleague in international operations after the initial discussion with Kennedy. The FBI records official says that his colleague "pressured" him to declassify an email "in exchange for a quid pro quo," according to the interview summary. "In exchange for making the email unclassified State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden." The request was denied.
Even after the FBI rejected Kennedys proposed deal to cover up for Hillary Clinton, he continued his attempts to corrupt the Bureaus classification process:
In the days that followed, the FBI records official attended an "all-agency" meeting at the State Department to discuss the ongoing "classification review of pending Clinton FOIA materials." One of the participants at the meeting asked Kennedy whether any of the emails were classified. Kennedy purposely looked at the FBI records chief and then replied: "Well, we'll see."
After the all-agency meeting, the FBI records section chief met privately with Kennedy. According the FBI interview summary, he reported that "Kennedy spent the next 15 minutes debating the classification of the email and attempting to influence the FBI to change its markings."
This is absolutely scandalous.
Kennedy was one of Hillary Clintons closest advisers during her time as Secretary of State, a man who twice denied Ambassador Christopher Stevens personal requests for more security in Libya.
His outrageous attempt to cover up for her should absolutely disqualify him from holding public office ever again.
But its not just Kennedy who needs to be fired.
As the Washington Examiner notes, the new FBI documents reveal the State Department took the highly unusual step of including outsiders in its public information request review process. According to the documents, the FBI thought these outsiders employment histories appeared to create a conflict of interest.
We can only begin to guess who they were and whose interest they had in mind.
The Washington Examiner also points out that employees involved in the State Departments FOIA review process told the FBI they felt immense pressure not to find any classified information in documents relating to Benghazi.
Finally, the FBI documents reveal a conspiracy of senior officials to minimize political damage of the emails to Hillary Clinton. According to the Washington Examiner:
A group of high-ranking State Department officials, dubbed the "Shadow Government" by witnesses who spoke to the FBI, pushed to release all 30,000 of Clinton's emails at the same time, in Jan. 2016, rather than over the course of several months starting in summer 2015.
The powerful group met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss how to handle FOIA requests for Clinton's emails. Regular attendees included Secretary John Kerry's chief of staff and Kennedy.
"Shadow Government" members argued the release of Clinton's emails should happen all at once to facilitate "coordination."
If Secretary of State John Kerrys top aides attended weekly meetings to minimize the impact of Hillarys misconduct on her political ambitions, the corruption and politicization of the State Department goes to the very top.
President Obama should clean house. And he should start with Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy.
Over the last several days, the fight led by the Iraqi Army to liberate Mosul and drive the Islamic State from the city is cause for some optimism. The spine of the Iraqi military is finally stiffening and with the help of U.S. and coalition forces, the liberation of Mosul now appears to an achievable objective.
No matter the outcome, the reality is that the fight for Mosul is just the start of what will be a long and arduous campaign to defeat the Islamic State through military means. The radical ideology motivating the Islamic State will persist, as it will throughout other parts of the Middle East, and the Islamic State fighters not killed in the coming and days and weeks will regroup and their presence in Iraq will continue. Though hopefully, not in Mosul.
President Obama acknowledged this week the significance of victory in Mosul, stating this will be a key milestone in what I committed to doing when [ISIL] first emerged. Hes right on what victory in Mosul will mean to the people and government of Iraq, as well as to the coalition of forces in support, but his self-proclaimed commitment is still nothing more than a head fake to distract from the fact that a plan to defeat the Islamic State is still non-existent.
Its certainly not an indictment of the U.S. military under a more than ready and capable Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and leadership team. If unleashed and its power harnessed, Americas military force could show the world without condition that the Islamic Stateabsent an Air Force or surface Navy, for instanceis truly a Junior Varsity squad, as the President stated.
Instead, the Islamic State has been emboldened by Americas inaction and even with Mosul is in the crosshairs at the moment, neither the President nor the Pentagon can articulate what will need to happen next. And its not because its some closely guarded secret to protect operational planning.
By now, its obvious that there is no clear end state for Iraq at large. The president is satisfied with an American presence alone, even if mostly reduced to airpower over Iraqi skies. Unfortunately, as our military leaders understand, presence alone will never win a war or defeat an enemys will to fight.
The president can take the lessons learned from Anbar Province when U.S. Marines altered the state of the entire Iraq war in 2005. Similarly, it will take a better understanding of the Islamic States strengths and weaknesses, including its tactical vulnerabilities. To be effective is less about immediately attacking the Islamic State at its center of gravity, such as its financing or public relations arm, but rather whats allowing its fighters to communicate and move freely on the battlefield.
Disrupt this command and control capability and the center of gravity will become more imbalanced and vulnerable. Still, the Islamic State will need to be knocked off its operational planning cyclefar beyond any temporary success that Mosul might yield.
This too must coincide with a broader commitment to confront the enemy at the strategic level. So far, theres been no concerted planning to defeat the Islamic State at the strategic and operational levelsand it shows.
The effort to liberate Mosul mustnt be misunderstood as a potential death blow to the Islamic State in Iraq. Its not. What it symbolizes, beyond a much needed military victory, is an opportunity for President Obama and his administration to finally realize the importance and necessity of developing a long-term plan of attack that will actually allow for the isolation and defeat of the Islamic State.
With the right strategy, the fight against the Islamic State is definitely winnable.
While the U.S. presidential election has many in the Washington media focused on the latest Team Clinton emails released by Wikileaks, the Associated Press has reported from Eastern Europe that Russia has been quietly trying to influence another election - the Moldovan presidential election on October 30.
It wasnt a surprise to many of the 150 million people living in the region. Russias influence can be a daily dilemma, after all, for the countless people of the former Soviet states.
But in the U.S., reports that Russia is trying to influence the 2016 presidential elections is unfolding in many political newsrooms like its a new occurrence.
Even Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, is acting shocked that Russia is purportedly trying to hack into official computer systems.
Why would Russia be working to influence the U.S. elections? Experts say it is less likely that Putin and his allies prefer a certain candidate, but they want to ensure that whoever is elected leader of the free world understands that Russia is on the offense and unintimidated by Americas traditional role.
While the allegations are still unproven, the U.S. government nevertheless is saying they believe it to be true. But Russian or Russian-approved tactics like cyber warfare and campaigns of misinformation have been happening for decades.
The Moldovans are stepping forward to confirm their suspicions of election lobbying by foreign actors. With the Moldovan presidential election in roughly two weeks, authorities in the capital of Chisinau believe the U.S. isnt the only place where the Russians are working to affect the outcome of a national election.
The Washington Post recently reported, Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu said the government thinks the Russians are financing political parties and leaders and backing anti-government protests.
Candu told The Associated Press that Moldovas leaders also suspect Russia of manipulating media outlets and doing propaganda.
The Moldovan Speaker visited with U.S. officials in Washington just a few weeks ago to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Moldovan Independence.
While sitting down with his counterpart, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker and several Congressmen, Candu answered questions from U.S. officials on how Russia was trying to influence the Moldovan election.
Senator Corkers office refused to talk about the details of the meeting.
But Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bridget Brink met with the Moldovan officials and offered this assessment, we applaud the positive actions taken by the Moldovan government Moldova has passed necessary and often difficult reforms, including in the justice and banking sectors. And it has already begun to reap the benefits of those reforms.
State Department officials know that the reforms are to ensure an end to the Russian money laundering that has consumed Moldova.
People familiar with Candus visit said one target of the Russians in Moldova is the 10 month old government of Prime Minister Pavel Filip, a technocrat working towards EU integration, and his political party, the Democratic Party.
The anti-government forces suspected of being financed by the Russians and their allies have even convinced a U.S. congressman to be a part of their misinformation campaign of propaganda.
Congressman Randy Weber, a former owner of a heating and air-conditioning company in Texas with two terms in Congress, was convinced to author House Resolution 896 attacking the ruling party and Vice Chairman Vladimir Plahotniuc of Moldova.
Webers spokeswoman confirmed that Weber has never been to Moldova. She also said Weber didnt attend the Moldovan Independence celebration where U.S. State Department officials complimented the Moldovan governments implementation of anti-corruption laws and their move closer to the West.
Weber decided to author his pro-Russian House Resolution after meeting with Moldovan Mihail Gofman, a man on the run from the Moldovan government and who is refusing to answer questions about his involvement in money laundering schemes benefitting Russian allies. For his part, Weber emailed a statement saying: I, along with my colleague Representative Trent Franks of Arizona believe that this House Resolution is a step in the right direction to show our support behind Moldovas efforts to rid themselves of corruption and promote democracy.
Moldovan officials, however, believe Gofman is being paid by Russian allies looking to bring down the current Moldovan government.
These attacks on the Moldovan government and ruling party leaders are clearly designed to stop the pro-West reforms inside Moldova.
The lobbyists and political operatives hired by wealthy Moldovan rivals serve as a reminder that Russia and its allies continue to look for ways to stop the slide toward Europe that many of their former Soviet states are on.
But why would Russia be working to influence the U.S. elections? Experts say it is less likely that Putin and his allies prefer a certain candidate, but they want to ensure that whoever is elected leader of the free world understands that Russia is on the offense and unintimidated by Americas traditional role.
It will be a test for whoever wins in November.
Over the last eight years, Russia has become accustomed to being unchallenged in their aggression throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Changing the current global status quo is one of the most important jobs of the next president.
Midway through the first presidential debate, moderator Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News asked the presidential candidates about Americas direction. He proposed the candidates start by talking about race.
Holt noted that the share of Americans who believe that race relations are bad in this country is the highest it has been in decades. He then pointedly asked how each candidate would heal the divide.
In the wake of Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and now Charlotte, both Trump and Clinton understandably answered with their differing views about policing. But neither talked about education and jobs in relation to healing the race divide.
In the second presidential debate the candidates occasionally mentioned the topic of race, but again neither offered real ideas for increasing employment opportunities for African Americans.
The bureaucrats in the Department of Education are waging a war to destroy the very schools we need to equip our most vulnerable communities for a successful economic future.
So as we head into the final weeks of the election at a time when the unemployment rate for young black Americans is 32 percent, compared with only 13.6 percent for white youth, candidates at every level owe it to the country to address this glaring omission.
Nobody can possibly doubt that the unrest in so many of our cities is fueled in part by the frustration that comes with limited work opportunities for African-Americans. And nobody should doubt that healing the race divide must include plans that grow meaningful work opportunities for African-Americans and provide access to the education and training needed to seize these opportunities.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has widened the race divide in this country, most recently by deliberately forcing the bankruptcy of the ITT Technical Institute career schools. In addition to 8,000 employees losing their jobs, the Department of Educations action meant that ITTs 40,000 students suddenly had their career plans turned upside down with no school to attend.
Since approximately 30 percent of all career education students are African-Americans, ITTs forced closure delivered a devastating blow on the high-unemployment African-American population that is most in need of skills-based education that provides a path to a good job in todays modern economy--exactly what ITT and other career schools have offered.
The Departments closure of the 137 ITT-Tech campuses has only accelerated the endgame of what the Washington Post has called the Department of Educations ideological crusade to kill for-profit career schools.
A few days after ITTs forced closure, the Education Department doubled down on its cold, bureaucratic answer to how we heal the race divide by revoking recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), the main accreditor of for-profit career schools. This means that 600,000 students across the country, including approximately 200,000 African-Americans, are now at risk of dramatic disruption in their career plans if the Department of Education does not allow their schools sufficient time to get a new accreditor.
So the same month that Charlotte erupted in violence, the Department of Education was actively killing hope for those most in need of it in vulnerable communities all across America--especially in African-American communities.
Career schools most of them multi-generational local educational businesses offer hope to millions of African-American and other students by providing the accelerated, focused academic programming that often produces graduates ready for work in two years or less. According to the Department of Educations own statistics, these schools have a completion rate of 67 percent in their two-year career programs -- far greater than any other sector of higher education.
But the Department of Educations war against career colleges continues and has real collateral damage; in this case it is the African-American and other students enrolled in these schools. The casualty toll is high and mounting.
In 2010, our nations career colleges enrolled 1.7 million students in undergraduate programs ranging from certificates to 4-year degrees. Each year since, enrollment has declined by approximately 100,000 students, to 1.2 million in 2014. If 30 percent of those students who are no longer in school are African-American, we have put 500,000 young African-American men and women on the street over the last six years with no degree and no skill. And these numbers dont include the casualties that will have been suffered this year.
Like every sector of higher education, career schools have their challenges. But never before have we bulldozed over the lives of tens of thousands of African-American and other students to address the errors of an individual school.
Both Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton, and the parties they lead, have rightly urged that our higher education system must offer paths to good jobs that dont require a traditional four-year academic degree.
But the bureaucrats in the Department of Education are waging a war to destroy the very schools we need to equip our most vulnerable communities for a successful economic future.
So if the Republicans and Democrats really mean what they say, leaders in both parties should immediately call for and put a stop to the crusade being waged by the Department of Education that treats so many African-American and other students as acceptable collateral damage in service of its extreme ideological goals.
It turns out that Barack Obama does indeed have a line in the sand and its the WikiLeaks dumps that are battering Hillary Clintons campaign, and damaging to his legacy.
In a recent interview with "Meet the Press" anchor Chuck Todd, Joe Biden said that the U.S. would launch a secret cyber counter-attack against Russia in retaliation for their hacking into the DNC and other individual email accounts.
That threat may have translated into John Kerry asking Ecuador, which is hosting Julian Assange in their UK embassy, to sever the WikiLeaks heads Internet connection. Ecuador has announced that it did remove Assanges access to the web; the State Department has denied involvement.
Because WikiLeaks has numerous back-ups, the cut-off hasnt slowed the steady release of embarrassing revelations about Clinton and her campaign.
If that is the sum total of Obamas retaliatory repertoire, it is no wonder the Russians are acting with impunity around the globe.
If Biden is right, President Obama is moved to confront Russia not over hundreds of thousands being slaughtered in Syria not because of the barrel bombs or chlorine gas nor over Russias takeover of Crimea from Ukraine, with whom we have a security treaty.
He is not inspired by Russia selling a missile defense system to Iran over U.S. opposition, guaranteeing the security of Tehrans inevitable nuclear program.
He is unmoved by Russian threats to shoot down our airplanes and their attacks on U.S. allies in Syria.
None of those insults and aggressions has moved our president. Instead, he is teed off that the Russians may be the source of embarrassing email leaks leaks that confirm, for instance, that Obama lied when he said he didnt know anything about Hillary Clintons private email server. (He had been regularly communicating with her via the Clintonemail.com address, using an alias.) Or that his White House did not police Hillary Clinton trolling for dollars from foreign governments while she was Secretary of State.
Well, everyone has a tipping point.
There are skeptics who doubt that Russia has anything to do with the steady drip, drip of WikiLeaks revelations. The blame was thrown on Moscow almost immediately after the initial dump of emails that showed the DNC in cahoots with the Clinton camp, tipping the scales in favor of Bernie Sanders.
That news shocked Bernie Sanders supporters, who were only grudgingly signing onto Hillarys campaign and who are so essential to putting the former first lady over the top. So devastating were those incriminating messages that the head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced to resign just days before she was due to gavel in the Democratic Convention.
With brilliant sleight-of-hand, operatives in the Clinton camp hinted the leaks came from Russia, and deftly turned the spotlight to an absurd narrative involving Trumps tenuous ties to Vladimir Putin.
They suggested, then as now, that Trump and Putin were working hand-in-glove to subvert U.S. democracy.
They give Trump far too much credit. Not only does he appear to have no real connection to the Russian government, he has also been astonishingly unable to capitalize on the leaks, so caught up is he in distracting and unnecessary confrontations.
More recently, intelligence chief James Clapper formally accused the Russians of orchestrating the hacks into the emails of the DNC and other figures which have been published by WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0.
This is the same James Clapper who in 2014 baldly denied to Congress that the NSA was collecting metadata from Americans; that was before Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. government was indeed collecting such information. That lie earned Clapper threats of perjury charges and a call for his resignation from Senator Rand Paul.
It could well be the Russians who are behind the torrent of embarrassing emails. Hillary Clinton in 2011 angered Putin by accusing him of perpetrating fraud in Russias parliamentary elections. How satisfying it must be for Putin to reveal information that shows Mrs. Clinton trying to rig our elections.
The Clinton campaign, with incredible chutzpah, recently ripped into WikiLeaks and the media for covering the damaging emails. Given that any number of email chains describe the embarrassing lengths to which national media figures and major news organizations have been willing to go to help out the Clinton candidacy, this faux outrage is masterful.
Hillary Clintons message to voters: Yes, I may have said and done terrible things but because Putin is behind these leaks, you should vote for me anyway.
As a campaign theme, thats certainly tops Stronger Together.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trumps respective spouses wont have to cross paths and shake hands before Wednesday nights debate because the Clinton campaign reportedly has been granted a change in protocol.
During the first two 2016 presidential debates, Melania Trump and Bill Clinton shook hands at the start of the debate.
But the Clinton campaign has asked the Commission on Presidential Debates that the respective spouses and families be allowed to enter the debate Wednesday night in Las Vegas closer to their seats so they wont have to cross paths and shake hands, sources told The New York Times.
The reported change is sign of how acrimonious this years White House race has become. It was purportedly sought by Clinton's team because Trump attempted during the second of the three debates to sit near his family three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or rape.
Trump reportedly has invited Malik Obama, a supporter and half-brother to President Obama, to this final debate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, moderated by Fox News Chris Wallace.
Click for more from The New York Times.
Donald Trumps path to the presidency has narrowed considerably in recent weeks amid campaign trail controversies, with the latest Fox News electoral ratings showing reliably red states coming into play a trend that only ups the pressure on the Republican nominee to tilt the race at the third and final presidential debate Wednesday night.
The debate in Las Vegas, moderated by Fox News Chris Wallace, will mark the last face-off between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the home-stretch of the presidential campaign.
Both candidates are dealing with their share of controversies Trump, facing multiple allegations of groping dating back decades; and Clinton, grappling with embarrassing revelations from leaked emails and now the allegation in an FBI file that a top State Department official offered a quid pro quo with the bureau to alter a Clinton server emails classification.
Trump has seized on the latter revelation in the run-up to the debate. But so far, his poll numbers have taken a bigger hit than hers and the latest Fox News Electoral Scorecard reflects this.
In a significant shift, the scorecard shows the rating for Texas being changed from solid Republican to lean Republican.
Trump still appears to have the advantage but his lead over Clinton is now in the single digits in recent state polls in a state that hasnt voted Democrat in the White House race since 1976.
Last week, a poll released by the Texas Lyceum showed Trump leading Clinton 39-32 percent among likely voters in the Lone Star State.
"The combination of the slow march of demographic change and Trump's rhetoric appears to have made Texas' registered voter pool more Democratic than we have seen in previous presidential races," Joshua Blank, the Texas Lyceum's research director, told The Dallas Morning News.
In another poll released Tuesday from the University of Houston, Clinton has pulled within 3 percentage points of Trump in the traditionally Republican stronghold. Its a stark difference from the 2012 race where GOP nominee Mitt Romney took the state by 16 points. Arizona Sen. John McCain led Barack Obama there by 12 points in 2008.
Clintons campaign, sensing an opening, has even gone on air in Texas with a one-week ad buy in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The ad highlights an endorsement from The Dallas Morning News the first time the conservative-leaning newspaper has backed a Democrat for president since 1940.
Nearly every major newspaper has backed the Democrat, though, just one factor fueling Trumps claims that the media are helping rig the election against him. Trump also says the allegations by numerous women against him are false and the media are only feeding the allegedly erroneous claims.
In a potential hint at the candidates debate strategy, the Trump campaign came out with a new ad overnight suggesting Clinton helped special interests during her time in Washington.
Hillary Clinton wants you to believe that behind the fog of scandal that shrouds her political career you find results, where in reality all you find is a trail of destruction that has damaged our economy and put American lives at risk, spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement.
To watch the debate, tune in at 9 p.m. to Fox News Channel.
The debate also will be streamed on FoxNews.com and the Fox News app.
The electoral map, though, is looking dicier than ever for Trump.
According to the latest Fox News ratings, if Clinton won all the solid and lean Democrat states, shed have 307 electoral votes well over the 270 needed to win.
If Trump won all the solid and lean Republican states, hed have just 181 electoral votes. That means even if he won all the pure toss-up states Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah and their 50 electoral votes, hed still be short of 270. Hed have to flip some states currently leaning Democrat back into his column.
That Utah is now in the toss-up column represents another shift, and another headache for Trump. The Fox News Electoral Scorecard recently shifted Utah from solid Republican to toss-up. The New York billionaire no longer has the clear advantage in the state, and is statistically tied in some polls with Clinton and Evan McMullin, an independent candidate who is pitching himself as the conservative alternative to Trump.
A poll of likely voters, conducted over the weekend by Rasmussen Reports, shows that 2 points separate the three candidates. For both Clinton and McMullin, it is their best showing in the state in any major poll thus far, and could reflect lost support for Trump among the states sizable Mormon population.
Following the release of Trumps infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape, a number of top Republicans in the state swiftly pulled their endorsements, including Gov. Gary Herbert who called Trumps comments beyond offensive and despicable.
Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who is a Mormon, said if he voted for Trump he would not be able to look his young daughter in the eye.
Chris Karpowitz, director of Brigham Young Universitys Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, told The New York Times that the Republican establishment in the state of Utah is in all-out revolt again the Trump candidacy.
The pressure now is on Trump to not only win the toss-up states and turn blue-ish states red, but to prevent states like Utah and Texas from abandoning the Republican ticket for the first time in years.
Even Alaska, which is still rated solid Republican in the Fox News scorecard, has seen Clinton gaining on Trump in recent polling. The last time Alaska, one of the countrys deepest-red states, voted Democrat was in 1964.
Speaking Tuesday night on Fox News' Hannity, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cast doubt on the polls and predicted Trump would defy them.
I think the polls are as accurate here as they were in Great Britain, Gingrich quipped.
Fox News Bryan Murphy contributed to this report.
Donald Trump has a final chance in Wednesday nights debate to change up his campaign playbook by making a persuasive appeal to undecided and swing voters before an audience of millions.
Whether the Republican nominee goes that route likely will become clear in a matter of minutes.
In the lead-up to the debate, Trump has opted to fire up loyalists with attacks on Hillary Clinton and even fellow Republicans who have crossed him. While Trump certainly will take advantage of their last prime-time face-off to play to his own base, he also is dealing with the political imperative to expand what polls indicate is a shrinking electoral map.
Some analysts, including Fox News contributor Michael Goodwin, suggest that appealing to swing and undecided voters Wednesday night might be the move he needs.
At the least, Trump is expected to continue to draw sharp contrasts between him and Clinton.
Donald Trump is going to have to make the closing argument that if youre ready for change, Im your guy, Republican National Committee chief strategist Sean Spicer told Fox News before the debate.
Spicer, like others, made clear that Trump will contrast his profile as a businessman and first-time candidate against that of Clinton, among the Washingtonians who brag about how many offices they have held.
To watch the Las Vegas debate, hosted by Fox News' Chris Wallace, tune in at 9 p.m. to Fox News Channel.
With 20 days left before Election Day, the RealClearPolitics average of national polls in a four-way race shows Trump trailing Clinton by roughly 6 percentage points.
However, he trails significantly among such key voting blocs as Latino and female voters, a group Trump has found increasingly hard to reach since early October, when a 2005 audiotape surfaced revealing him bragging about making uninvited physical advances on women.
A Fox News poll released Tuesday showed Clinton holding a 17-percentage-point advantage over Trump among likely women voters, while Trump has a 7-point advantage among independent voters.
Meanwhile, other major polls show Trump trailing Clinton by double digits among Hispanic voters, with whom Republican candidates have struggled to connect for years, as they emerge as the countrys fastest-grown voting bloc.
Trump has apologized for his audiotape comments but has been forced in the aftermath to try to reassure and reconnect with his core supporters, which may have kept his slide in the polls from being any worse.
On social media and in battleground states across the country, Trump has railed against the liberal media for rigging the election by publishing or airing stories about the audiotape and about nine women who since the tapes release have alleged Trump made unwanted sexual advances, which he denies.
The press has created a rigged system and has poisoned the mind of so many of our voters, Trump said at a rally Tuesday in Colorado.
In the debate Wednesday, Trump will almost certainly hammer on the stream of hacked Clinton campaign emails and other material recently released by WikiLeaks. The emails revealed infighting among Clinton associates, a cozy relationship with some in the press and internal uncertainty over some of Clinton's own policy positions.
Newly released FBI files also show a top State Department official tried to bargain with the bureau over classified Clinton emails during the agencys investigation of her using a private server when secretary of state.
Democratic strategist Douglas Smith said Wednesday that Clintons debate strategy will be to talk to the audience, instead of reacting to Trump attacks.
She needs to differentiate who she is, who she can be as president, he said. What she cannot do is make an unforced error.
He also said Trump has no time left to slow the attacks and appeal to women, minorities and still-undecided voters. Roughly 13 percent of the electorate remains undecided or still supports third-party candidates.
That ship has sailed so far away that well never see it again, said Smith, also a partner at Kent Strategies. It will likely be hair on fire and fire up the base.
Smith acknowledged not knowing exactly what Trump will try, amid reports that hes invited Malik Obama, a supporter and President Obamas half-brother, to the third and final debate.
In the second debate, Trump had as guests three women who have accused Clintons husband, former President Bill Clinton, of sexual assault and rape.
Trump, 70, has frequently questioned whether the 68-year-old Clinton is strong and healthy enough to be president, especially after she had pneumonia last month and needed help from assistants when hastily leaving a 9/11 memorial event.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
The United States warned Wednesday that any attack on American allies or use of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be met with an "overwhelming" U.S. response as it sought to reassure close ally South Korea that the U.S. has its back.
The statement by Defense Secretary Ash Carter came as top U.S. and South Korean diplomats and military officials met, weeks after North Korea's most powerful nuclear test explosion to date, and days after its failed test launch of a ballistic missile one of more than 20 such tests this year alone.
The flurry of activity has deepened concern over the North's progress toward having a nuclear warhead it can mount on a long-range missile.
The two sides discussed steps to strengthen the so-called "extended deterrence" provided by U.S. nuclear forces in defending South Korea and agreed to begin a high-level dialogue about it. Seoul is looking to allay calls from conservatives at home who want South Korea to develop its own nuclear arsenal.
"The U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea is unwavering. This includes our commitment to provide extended deterrence, guaranteed by the full spectrum of U.S. defense capabilities," Carter said in opening remarks.
"Make no mistake, any attack on America or our allies will not only be defeated, but any use of nuclear weapons will be met with an overwhelming and effective response," he said.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said the threat posed by North Korea is "more grave than ever" and that the North is "nearing the final stage of nuclear weaponization."
"North Korea's threat is no longer confined to the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia. It's now a direct threat to the mainland U.S.," he said after the talks. "The next few years will be the tipping point."
He said defense officials on Thursday would discuss the possibility of deploying U.S. "strategic assets" to the South an apparent reference to permanently basing nuclear-capable planes or vessels there.
Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated the U.S. will deploy "as soon as possible" a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, a missile defense system intended to protect South Korea and the nearly 30,000 U.S. forces based there.
The plans for THAAD have angered China and Russia, which see it as a threat to their own defense.
Kerry called for every country to rigorously enforce U.N. sanctions on North Korea, which are intended but have failed to prevent its development of weapons of mass destruction. He said the international community needs to cooperate so the North "pays a price for its dangerous actions."
The U.S. and China, which is the North's traditional ally and main trading partner, are currently negotiating at the U.N. Security Council on tightening sanctions in response to the Sept. 9 nuclear test. The U.S., South Korea and Japan are considering additional sanctions of their own.
Kerry said the U.S. wants to close a loophole in the current U.N. sanctions allowing coal exports from North Korea to support the livelihood of its people. Kerry said that provision was being abused and the "greatest amount" of coal and revenue has just passed between China and North Korea.
The U.S. hopes that tighter sanctions can force impoverished North Korea to return to long-stalled negotiations on providing aid in exchange for denuclearization, but there appears to be little prospect of their resumption because of Pyongyang's determination to have nuclear weapons.
North Korea's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Wednesday said the North would strengthen its nuclear capabilities in quantity and quality in response to the threat from its enemies.
"We have warned that South Korea will be engulfed in a sea of fire and the U.S. military units in the Pacific region and the mainland will be in chaos if the U.S. wages nuclear strikes against us," the newspaper said. "Our warning is not an empty word."
Kerry said claims from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he needs nuclear weapons to defend against the U.S. defy common sense.
"The United States has had the power to wipe out North Korea for years, for years. And if indeed that was out goal, we wouldn't be sitting around waiting" while they get additional nuclear weapons, he said.
GOP offices in three states were vandalized or burglarized during the past two weeks, and police had only made one arrest as of Wednesday morning.
An Indiana Republican Party office was vandalized last week after someone tossed two bricks through the window, officials said Monday. That news comes just a day after a Republican headquarters in North Carolina was firebombed. The Sunday blaze injured none, however, a perpetrator also spray painted the message "Nazi Republicans get out of town or else" on a nearby building.
An office in San Antonio used by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign was burglarized on Wednesday, FOX29 reported. Police detained a suspect around 5:30 a.m. and authorities believe that person targeted other buildings in the area, too.
Signs for Trump and Rep. Todd Young were hanging in the window of the Delaware County office on Oct. 8 when landscaping bricks were tossed through the windows, shattering them, officials said in a Facebook post.
Officials said it would cost about $1,200 to replace the window and those interested in helping defray the cost could donate online.
Delaware County Sheriff Ray Dudley said there have been numerous reports of campaign signs being stolen from yards in Yorktown and Mount Pleasant Township, Fox 59 reported.
Dudley said the reports were being taken seriously and that removing signs from homeowners yards could merit prosecution under the Indiana criminal code.
Click for more from Fox 59.
PASADENA, Calif. Volcanic activity on Venus took place in the recent past, geologically speaking, and may still be happening on the planet today. New research takes a deeper look at one recent eruption on Venus' surface.
The Idunn Mons volcano in the southwestern hemisphere of Venus rises 1.6 miles above the surrounding plains. In 2010, observations by the European Space Agency's Venus Express probe revealed that Idunn Mons is a "hotspot," meaning it radiates high levels of infrared light compared to the surrounding area. That suggests that lava flowed at the spot recently, and that the area is still warm.
Now, a more nuanced look at Idunn Mons suggests that the hotspot observations are consistent with multiple (cooled) lava flows along the volcano's eastern flank, the new research shows. The researchers behind the new work said the finding suggests that Venus' volcanos were active in the relatively recent past, and may still be active today. [Photos of Venus, the Mysterious Planet Next Door]
"Venus is a planet which has always been considered Earth's twin sister," said Piero D'Incecco of the German Aerospace Center and one of the researchers behind the new analysis. "But its cloud cover still hides a lot of secrets."
D'Incecco spoke at a media briefing at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Pasadena, California.
Venus Express initially identified the hotspot on Idunn Mons in 2010 using the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) instrument. Most of Venus' surface appears cool when viewed with VIRTIS, and this is a sign that those regions haven't changed (geologically speaking) in millions of years. By contrast, the researchers who initially studied the hotspot estimated that the region could be less than 2.5 million years old. Unfortunately, the thick clouds that cover Venus prevented the Venus Express probe from getting a more detailed look at the volcano and the lava flows.
The new analysis of lava flows on Idunn Mons uses radar data collected in the early 1990s by NASA's Magellan probe. D'Incecco and colleagues built a new numerical model to simulate lava flows on the top of the mountain and the eastern flanks, and compared that model with the Magellan data.
"According to our modeling, the flank lava flows are the ones responsible for this [hot]spot," D'Incecco said. "This is particularly important because this is the first time we can map, with such a high resolution, lava flows from a volcanic structure which is believed to be recently or still active on a terrestrial body other than Earth."
Preliminary estimates from Port Canaveral CEO John Murray claim the port sustained as much as $7 million in damage from Hurricane Matthew.
According to FloridaToday.com, initial reports suggested Port Canaveral suffered between $2 million-to-$3 million in damages from the storm, but the number could reach between $5 million-to-$7 million in total.
The estimates for Port Canaveral following the hurricane included damage to roofs of buildings on the property, leaks at its cruise terminals, potential issues with the port roads and the possibility of dredging work in the port's channel areas.
Luckily, Hurricane Matthew was far enough away from Port Canaveral when it passed Florida to avoid much more serious damage, and the cruise industry at the port didnt suffer much as the facility reopened the day after the storm passed.
Murray said in a statement that Port Canaveral is seeking assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help pay for the repairs, and a more detailed layout of the exact amount of damage would be available later this week.
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While Port Canaveral was forced to cancel two scheduled sailingsthe Disney Dream and Royal Caribbeans Majesty of the Seasand the Disney Magic was forced to skip a port-of-call at Port Canaveral, three other ships were forced to make stops at the port due to the storm.
The business lost by the cancellations was offset by the unscheduled stops by other cruise lines.
In addition to the impact on the cruise industry, Port Canaveral set aside 80,000 square feet of space in the new Port Canaveral Logistics Center in Titusville to the American Red Cross to assist with the relief efforts for people in the area.
White House officials announced their efforts to help improve air travel on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama's administration announced plans to provide consumers with more flight information and would require refunds on baggage fees if luggage is "substantially delayed. The definition of a substantial delay has yet to be defined according to the Department of Transportation.
Congress passed an aviation bill over the summer that directed the department to refund baggage fees to passengers whose bags have been delayed 12 or more hours for domestic flights or 15 or more hours for overseas flights.
The initiative is reportedly in response to consumer complaints about airline travel.
"The actions we're announcing today will help consumers know how airlines are performing, will make sure that consumers don't have to pay for services they don't receive and will help consumers find the best flight options for them," the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman said.
Along with baggage fee refunds, officials announced that online travel agents would be required to use neutral search results.
"We are trying to assure that ... a ticket agent doesn't rank flights of an individual airline higher or lower in search results because of incentive payments or any other business reason," a Transportation Department official told Reuters.
The new rules would also require some airlines to report the frequency that they lose or damage wheelchairs, as well as requiring airlines to report all flight delays.
"Airline passengers deserve to have access to clear and complete information about the airlines they choose to fly and to expect fair and reasonable treatment when they fly," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from Reuters.
Police were searching Wednesday for four suspects after four teenage students were shot in the shared parking lot of two San Francisco high schools Tuesday, and one of the students was in critical condition, investigators said.
The shooting took place at around 3:20 p.m. Tuesday as students were being dismissed for the day from June Jordan School for Equity and City Arts and Technology High School, which share a campus, San Francisco Police Officer Carlos Manfredi said.
Three of the students who were shot ran inside the school, and police initially ordered students to stay in place until officers searched each room and determined it was not an active shooter situation. A fourth student hurt in the shooting went to a hospital, Manfredi said.
"One female victim has life-threatening injuries to her upper torso," he said.
San Francisco school officials said two boys suffered non-life threatening injuries and a third boy walked into a police station with a gunshot wound.
Police were searching for four males in connection to the shooting, Manfredi said. They were last seen running away from the area in dark hoodies and jeans.
Classes were resuming Wednesday at both high schools with grief counselors available, Fox 2 reported.
#SFPD investigating shots fired @ Brazil & La Grande. 1 Confirmed victim. Shelter in place. SFPD searching for suspect. pic.twitter.com/8gYb9Vi3q7 San Francisco Police (@SFPD) October 18, 2016
Click for more from Fox 2.
A Florida man with a deformed skull, who became known as the "half-headed man," was arrested Monday on arson and first-degree attempted murder charges, WSVN reported.
Miami police said in an arrest report Carlos Rodriguez, 31, set his mattress on fire at a duplex Monday afternoon, which had two people inside at the time.
According to the arrest report, the fire was deliberately set, "posing an immediate threat to the lives and safety of the occupants."
Rodriguez appeared in bond court, Tuesday, where a judge gave him $20,000 bond, WSVN reported.
Rodriguez become an internet sensation in 2012 when he appeared in a YouTube video explaining how he lost a large portion of his brain and skull in a car crash.
I was barred out on drugs. I was driving, and I hit a pole and flew out the front window and landed on my head," he said at the time.
Click for more from WSVN.com.
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A 29-year-old man has been arrested in a shooting that left an Alaska police officer seriously injured.
Fairbanks police say Anthony George Jenkins-Alexie was arrested Tuesday morning as he was walking on a local street.
Jenkins-Alexie, of Fairbanks, is facing charges of attempted murder, assault and other counts in connection with the shooting early Sunday of Sgt. Allen Brandt. Police say Brandt is recovering at an Anchorage hospital after he was struck four times in the legs. Police say bullet fragments also struck the officer's eye.
A dashboard video shows some of the encounter between Brandt and a man holding a gun that police say was stolen.
Police say the man drove off in Brandt's patrol car and abandoned it a few blocks away.
Nobody feels particularly threatened when they are served a well-targeted ad online. It makes sense that if you Google vacation destinations in Puerto Rico that somehow an algorithm on the Internet will allow Kayak to flood your screen with hotel promotions. That is not sinister; it is just odd.
But the things that are done with people's personal data (and the things we search for on Google should be personal, right?) are increasingly crossing the line into a darker area that no one really wants to talk about. Thankfully, public awareness on the issue is rising thanks to high profile phone hacks, legislation that has been passed and stories about how much money data is actually worth.
A problem of this magnitude is also an opportunity of equal magnitude for an entrepreneur with the right idea. Though, in this case, there is room for a crowd of entrepreneurs, several government initiatives and probably some lawsuits.
These are four ways data is (and must) get way more personal and how entrepreneurs can play a part:
1. The social revolution.
Facebook is still the premier social network, even if it is increasingly surrounded by younger networks with sleeker features. As such, it plays a leadership role in the business of setting precedent for user data harvesting. According to Julian Ranger, personal data expert and founder of digi.me, the value of the data Facebook collects is worth billions of dollars.
Related: The New EU General Data Protection Regulation: Big Data Protection Gets Personal
"It is said you cannot know the value of something until you measure it and Facebook has lead the industry in its acquisition, organization and exploitation of data," says Ranger. "But how is it Facebook's right to have a file on personal users? And shouldn't the user have the right to allow or not allow that data to be sold to other companies?"
There are those in the private sector who think so and they are starting to fight back. Tech company Spy Aware offers an app that will tell you what data your phone is sending via the apps that are installed on it. If you are not outraged about invasive data practices yet, you will be soon after installing Spy Aware.
2. The regulatory revolution.
Laws are and will be an important step returning the power of data back to the people. But to-date there have been few successes to point to. The European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which does signal a shift from the wild west of data collection to a world with a few laws and borders. But functionally the law does little to return full ownership of people's personal data and companies are already preparing with elaborate compliance mechanisms that will help them to carry on with business as usual.
Related: Data Protection for Small Business
"The GDPR is a step in the right direction, but it falls far short of turning the tables on who owns the data," notes Ranger. "And that makes sense, much of the economy is run on the free flow of information. The challenge is to reshape the system so that individuals can selectively sell their own information for a value proposition that works for them."
3. The technology revolution.
The Internet, for all of its benefits, is controlled by powerful companies. Accordingly, for users to be safe on the Internet, they need to level the playing field, which will require some powerful technological solutions.
Users need to have the ability to locally store their data and control who has access to it. Ranger's digi.me offers a platform that allows users to do that with all of their social media data and has plans to expand into other areas.
The opportunities and needs are almost endless in this area. Users need tools that alert them about data leaks, allow them to control their data, and provide the means for them to selectively share it. The technology world has its work cut out for it, to be sure. But demand is such that the project is already underway.
4. The public opinion revolution.
Public opinion oscillates based on the news of the day, so to suggest what the public thinks about anything is presumptuous. But in an effort to understand the underlying causes that motivate people's opinions on sharing their personal data, Colombia Business School conducted a study of 8,000 people across generational divides. What they found was that for the right value proposition (a promotion or a discount) 80 percent of people would share their information with a company that wanted it.
Related: Companies Need to Take Responsibility for Protecting Sensitive User Data
The doomsayers who think that data privacy will grind the global economy to a halt must consider the possibility that many people just want to have ownership over their data and the right to disseminate it in a way that benefits them in return. It will be exciting to see how entrepreneurs step into this space. In the same way that the Internet connected us in a way that few people could have imagined, returning data to its owners could change the Internet into a vastly different place yet again.
A 14-year-boy among the first child migrants to arrive in Britain from Calais has told Sky News about the struggles he faced living there.
After 10 years apart, this Aghan migrant child has been reunited with his brother in the UK https://t.co/xoRQ79hLis Sky News (@SkyNews) October 19, 2016
Aemal Khan arrived on Monday where he was reunited with his older brother Asif who he had not seen in a decade.
"It was a great moment, when I saw him after a long time, more than 10 years," said Asif, a 25-year-old chef who has been living in the UK for 11 years.
"When I met him I hugged him and kissed him, he was so small when I saw him before. He's changed a lot, but brothers, if you see him after 20 years you can recognise."
Eight months ago Aemal fled Afghanistan and followed his brother to the UK - it was a journey he made alone.
He has spent the past five months stranded in Calais' 'Jungle' migrant camp, despite having a right of residence with family in Britain.
During an emotional interview, he said: "Sometimes I missed mum, sometimes I cried as I was not with my family; no parents. I missed my mum."
It was a drawn-out process to get him to Britain, but fortunately his brother had documentation to support his story.
Click for more from Sky News
A civil rights group has filed discrimination lawsuits against four New Jersey school districts and a charter school, saying their enrollment practices make it harder for children of immigrants living in the country unlawfully to enroll.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey said Tuesday it has filed lawsuits against the Fair Lawn, Jamesburg, Spotswood and Port Republic school districts, as well as the Jersey City Global Charter School.
The group says the districts wrongly force parents to produce either a driver's license or state ID, which immigrants living in the country illegally wouldn't possess.
Port Republic says the suit seems to be referencing an outdated page on the district's website.
Jamesburg says a driver's license isn't required for enrollment.
Forget about your typical 1950s flight attendant getup -- an impeccable skirt suit accessorized with a neck scarf, hat and white gloves -- Delta today aimed to shake things up.
The company, which partnered with New York fashion designer Zac Posen back in the spring, unveiled its new collection of uniforms for its 60,000-plus employees, including customer service agents, flight attendants and technicians.
Posen -- who is known for dressing celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon and Kim Kardashian for the red carpet -- worked with a committee of 24 Delta staff members to design the new collection, taking into account feedback from 20,000 employees.
The collection features more than four dozen looks, incorporating colors such as plum, thistle and cardinal -- a big change from Deltas standard blue. Along with the change in color, employees also noted that they felt the old uniforms were frumpy.
More From Entrepreneur.com Delta Flights Resume After Computer Crash Strands Passengers
Using techniques that create universally attractive pieces suited for a variety of body types and incorporating smooth accents to the pieces, Posen set out to create an elegant and contemporary new look for Delta employees, the designer said, according to The New York Times.
Employees are allocated a set of points so they can mix and match their outfits by choosing from different pieces, including dresses, skirts and blazers, coats, shirts and pants, reports The Times. Posen also took into account technical features such as stain-resistant linings, antibacterial materials and special pockets to hold certain devices.
The final rollout of the collection is planned for 2018. Check out the new uniforms here.
Authorities have launched an all-out search for a missing Texas college student whose family said she was last seen before a date more than a week ago.
Police announced Wednesday that a $30,000 reward is being offered for the safe return of 22-year-old Zuzu Renee Verk, a student at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, about 100 miles from the Mexican border. The Texas Rangers and FBI are assisting in the search for Verk, which has expanded outside of the Alpine area, according to investigators.
The young woman was last heard from during the early morning hours of Oct. 12, according to the Alpine Police Department. Verk's father told local news outlets that she was absent from both school and work later that day.
Verk reportedly left her home for a date at the movies with her on-again, off-again boyfriend on the night of Tuesday, Oct. 11, though police have released few details. No suspect or person of interest has been identified, and police haven't released the boyfriend's name or whereabouts.
"Were all special but theres something exceptional about this young woman," Verk's father, Glenn, told CBS 11. "Shes vibrant and shes full of excitement and life."
The Alpine Police Department is looking for two vehicles possibly related to Verk's disappearance: a grey 2006 Jeep Liberty and a 2004 Mazda Miata convertible with a beige top. Both vehicles, police said, were seen in the area between 12 a.m. and 10:00 am on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
The Brewster County Sheriff's Office has also asked area ranchers to inspect their property for "any suspicious signs of disturbed earth, personal items on the ground, anything that might raise your suspicions that it may need to be investigated further," according to the Dallas Morning News.
Verk is described as 5 feet tall, weighing 110 pounds with blonde hair and hazel eyes.
Alpine is about 200 miles southeast of El Paso. Anyone with information on the case is urged to call the Alpine Police Department at 432-837-3486.
A heat expert testified that temperatures peaked around 125 degrees inside the SUV where 22-month-old Cooper Harris died after being left there all day in June 2014.
David Michael Brani of Applied Technical Service said Wednesday that he measured how hot it would have been inside the car given outdoor temperatures throughout that day.
Harris told police he watched cartoons with his son that morning, took him to breakfast at a Chick-fil-A restaurant and kissed him while strapping him into his car seat. But Harris said he forgot to drop his son off at day care, and then forgot he was still in the back seat after driving to work.
Prosecutor Chuck Boring has said Harris' account doesn't make sense.
Boring said the restaurant is just over half a mile from the Home Depot office where Harris worked as a computer technician, and Harris parked his SUV by backing up between two vehicles which would have required looking over his shoulder, toward the backseat where his son sat.
On the day Cooper died, his father sent more than 30 messages on his phone "mostly to women, mostly about sex," the prosecutor said.
One of these women was Caitlyn Hickey Floyd, who testified on Wednesday that Harris never mentioned he had a son in his texts that day.
Local news media reports said Brani testified that it was about 98 degrees inside when Justin Ross Harris said he opened the car and tossed in a bag of lightbulbs he bought on lunch break, and that interior temperatures had risen nearly 30 degrees more by the time Harris finished work.
The defense argued that the interior temperature would have been warmer still, given the additional heat from Cooper's body, which could support the idea that he died earlier in the day than prosecutors have suggested.
Brani said he didn't test for body heat or humidity, which can make the overall heat index soar. But he said Cooper's body temperature would not have significantly changed his measurements.
Harris said he drove a few miles to a shopping center after work before realizing his boy was still in the back seat. Police later reported the SUV reeked from "sweat, a dirty diaper, the smell of death."
Harris's lawyers called the death accidental. But prosecutors say Harris intentionally killed his son by leaving him in the car in suburban Atlanta, where he moved from Alabama in 2012.
Pretrial publicity prompted the trial's move to Brunswick, 275 miles away.
A former police officer who shot a motorist running away from a traffic stop in South Carolina wants his murder trial moved out of Charleston.
Attorneys for Michael Slager filed a motion Tuesday saying a survey found 85 percent of people in Charleston County had seen bystander video of the North Charleston officer shooting Walter Scott in April 2015.
Slager's lawyers say the video doesn't show the entire confrontation, and potential jurors who have seen it might not fairly consider their evidence.
They also say Dylann Roof's federal trial in the killing of nine churchgoers in Charleston, being held across the street, will create "a media spectacle to rival any ever seen in this or any town."
The motion doesn't say where the trial should be held.
Cooking can be intimidating, especially if youre busy and on a budget. But if you had a community and easy to follow advice your fingertips, instead of being a stressful place, the kitchen could become a place fill with fun, creativity and inspiration.
Thats the mission behind Food52, an online hub dedicated to helping even the greenest chefs create high-quality and delicious meals.
Merrill Stubbs is the co-founder and president of Food52. With her co-founder, CEO Amanda Hesser, the duo have created a beloved and award-winning site that boasts countless recipes, tips about home design, a store for your kitchen needs and even a hotline if you get stuck needing a substitution in a recipe.
Related: A One-Stop Cooking and E-Commerce Site Heats Up
Since its launch in 2009, Food52 has been named publication of the year by the James Beard Foundation, developed partnerships with Random House and Whole Foods, published the work of big-food industry names like Danny Meyer and Mario Batali. Since 2013, Stubbs told Entrepreneur that revenue has increased eight-fold, the company has tripled the size of its staff and the sites audience has grown seven-fold.
Stubbs and Hessers latest book, A New Way to Dinner: A Playbook of Recipes and Strategies for the Week Ahead was published this week.
We caught up with Stubbs and asked her 20 questions to find out what motivates her and makes her tick.
1. How do you start your day?
Usually I roll over in my bed, pick up my phone and look at the Quartz morning email. It's a great way to get up to speed on really big stuff that's happened.I like to know what's going on in the world as opposed to just my industry, and it's a good way to brush up on that, especially since they do things that happened while you were asleep.
I'll also check trending topics on Twitter on the way to the subway. Typically, once I get to the office, I'm really steeped in our world, so getting a bird's-eye view of things outside of my world is a good thing to do first thing.
2. How do you end your day?
I try and read a couple of pages of whatever book [is on my nightstand], which has nothing to do with work. I do this to take myself out of the work frame of mind, which I'm in pretty much in every waking moment, and escape a little bit. It's also to do something that's not digital; that's screen free. I find it relaxes me.
3. Whats a book that changed your mind?
The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz literally changed my life. It talks about time not being our most precious commodity, but rather energy. It resonated for me, and reframed the way I approach not just work but life. I like to be in the moment. A general practice that has come out of it for me is to set aside time to think about the big picture, instead of trying to find a spare moment to do it. I was really inspired by reading that book and now I set aside chunks of time and block them out in my calendar.
Related: 9 Rules for Successful Time Management
4. Whats a book you always recommend and why?
Roald Dahl's Danny the Champion of the World. I love children's books in general, and a lot of kid's books are really good reading for adults. This one in particular is not only a great story and narrative, but it's a great study of a relationship between father and his son. I always recommend it to parents to read aloud to kids because it's a great book to share.
The entrepreneurial, can-do attitude of Danny and his father has always been inspiring to me. And while they are meticulous planners, ultimately it's the partnership and camaraderie between them that is more important than their scheme working out exactly as planned. I try to keep this in mind when things don't go the way we've anticipated.
5. Whats a strategy you use to keep focused?
Take breaks. I really step away from something after I've been working on it, take a short walk, talk to someone who has nothing do with what I've been focusing on and stay hydrated. I usually just walk around our office in Manhattan. If I have enough time, and it's market day, I'll walk down to Union Square Green market.
Related: How to Stay Focused: Train Your Brain
6. When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
I really wanted to be a performer. I did a lot of acting and singing as a kid and teenager. I think I was pretty convinced for a while that was my destiny. But I don't think I had the backbone for the rejection that comes with that path. Ultimately when I was deciding between a conservatory as opposed to a liberal arts college, that's when I made that decision: to keep singing as something for fun rather than my career.
7. What did you learn from the worst boss you ever had?
Being indirect about what you want or what you expect is a really terrible tactic for managing people. It makes them feel like the ground is shifting beneath them, that's an impediment and distraction from people doing their best work.
8. Who has influenced you most when it comes to how you approach your work?
My co-founder Amanda. For a lot of the same reasons that the other boss was not a good example, I learn from her every day. One of things she is really good about is communicating directly with people about their performance and their strengths and weaknesses without it feeling like an onslaught of criticism. She's really good at balancing those conversations and people respond well to that.
Related: 10 Steps to Finding the Right Co-Founder
9. Whats a trip that changed you?
The trip that changed me the most was a trip to Southeast Asia 10 years ago. Until that trip, I hadn't been anywhere that was so completely different. It really opened my eyes to the extent of differences in cultures, in norms and mannerisms and the extent of diversity that exists in the world.
I think that trip just reinforced an ongoing goal of mine, which is to be open-minded about where others are coming from. This usually involves lots of listening and observing.
10. What inspires you?
My kids. Watching them develop into real people. They're four and one. They're both growing and changing literally daily and seeing that evolution happen, thinking about how they are different from one another even with the same parents, is really exciting.
11. What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
I actually started a jacks rental business in 5th grade, because everyone was playing jacks at recess. I thought it would be a good way to make a little cash, so I sold them for 5 cents a set during recess.
Related: 9 Business Ideas Under $1,000 You Can Run From Anywhere
12. What was an early job that taught you something important or useful?
I think being a server in a restaurant. I hated every minute, but it taught me to multitask and keep different pieces of information in my brain at the same time.
13. Whats the best advice you ever took?
When I was in the job with horrible boss, one of my best friends sat me down and said, You don't want to be doing this, you need to go to cooking school, that's what you want to do, you just need to do it. Once she said that, I made the decision to do it.
14. What's the worst piece of advice you ever got?
This has come from a couple different people in my life, it's not worth it to bring up [a question about how to do something better] because it's too late to change things now. Different variations on that. It breeds apathy, paralysis, all sorts of bad things. It's very un-empowering. Whenever someone says something like we cant change or fix that, we kind of cringe. Amanda and I will come in and say this isn't actually the best thing for us, it could be better, let's see what we can do. People are annoyed, but it has led to some good things.
We started building an iOS app that was essentially a mobile version of Food52.com. The developers were already pretty far along when we called a meeting with our team and expressed our feeling that we were going down the wrong path. What we were building wasn't going to expand our audience or bring anything new to the market. So we changed course and built an app that was true to our mission of furthering the conversation around food and cooking, but was narrower in focus. Our current app, called (Not)Recipes, is a place where people can share images and short descriptions of the casual, off-the-cuff cooking they're doing in their homes every day, and get inspiration from what others are making as well. It's fun and engaging, and it's introduced our brand to a new segment of home cooks.
Related: The Most Powerful Advice Entrepreneurs Ignore
15. Whats a productivity tip you swear by?
List making. I have lists everywhere. I use a notepad but I also use apps like Evernote.
16. Is there an app or tool you use in a surprising way to get things done or stay on track?
I use my email drafts folder to store my lists.
17. What does work-life balance mean to you?
I think it's all about having perspective. It doesn't mean erecting a wall between the two; that's unrealistic. I think it means trying to stay in the moment, and it means being engaged in whatever it is I'm doing, trying not to let other things creep in and decrease my productivity or my enjoyment of that moment.
Related: 5 Secrets to Achieving and Maintaining Work-Life Balance
18. How do you prevent burnout?
Working remotely for a change of scenery, either at home or traveling and working remotely for some of the trip. Right now, I'm on the Jersey Shore, and it's great; I get to look out on the water from my desk.
19. When youre faced with a creativity block, whats your strategy to get innovating?
Going for a walk or doing some sort of physical exercise. I also like going swimming. It's important to pay attention to my body and slow down my mind a little bit. If I can get moving it frees up my head and makes some space.
20. What are you learning now?
I think I'm learning how to evolve my role as a leader from what was previously a small company to now a small-medium company. Ive had to put different skills into practice and be open to change. One thing in particular is to find ways to make our entire team feel supported when we aren't able to have personal relationships with everyone. A lot of it involves messaging to the entire team.
We also have breakfast with employees. We've been doing it for a couple of years, we have a sign-up sheet for one-on-one breakfast with us, it's been really fun.
Hunting is pushing hundreds of mammal species ever closer to extinction, according to an international study led by Oregon State University ecologist William Ripple.
In the first global assessment of its kind, Ripple and his fellow researchers analyzed data on more than 1,100 terrestrial mammals already listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Their conclusion: Hunting is a primary threat for 301 species, including rhinos, gorillas, chimpanzees and tigers. While the list includes several types of deer, pig and antelope, it also includes a staggering 126 primate species and 27 kinds of bats.
The problem occurs almost exclusively in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where subsistence hunting tends to play an important economic role and environmental protections are often lax, and it is mainly associated with illegal and unregulated hunting.
Madagascar, home to a large variety of threatened lemurs and other primates, has the greatest number of mammal species endangered by hunting, followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, India and China.
While many of the animals are killed by subsistence hunters desperate to put food on the table for their families, others are sold on the open market for game, or bushmeat as it is widely known. In other cases animals are killed for body parts used in traditional medicine or ornamentation, and some are trapped alive to be sold as pets.
People have been hunting wild animals for a long time, Ripple noted. But he also pointed out that modern firearms and motorized transportation have made large-scale hunting easier than ever before. Coupled with widespread habitat loss, global warming and other pressures on wildlife throughout the world, unchecked hunting could be enough to push some of these species over the brink.
Were getting to the point now where were at a crisis an overhunting crisis, he said.
The paper, tiled Bushmeat Hunting and Extinction Risk to the Worlds Mammals, is being published today in Royal Society Open Science. Ripples 14 co-authors include academic researchers at OSU, Stanford, the University of California-Santa Barbara and universities in Gabon, the United Kingdom, Sweden, South Africa, Brazil and Australia.
While no comprehensive figures are available, the researchers found that 89,000 metric tons of bushmeat worth $200 million is harvested each year in the Brazilian Amazon alone, with an estimated five times as much taken yearly in the Congo basin. That means overhunting threatens not only animals but humans as well, Ripple argues.
We have over 800 million people in the world who are hungry or malnourished, and a lot of those are dependent on bushmeat, he said. But it doesnt do them any good to drive these species to extinction.
Another aspect to consider: Some of the overhunting of threatened species is driven by organized gangs and terrorist organizations that use the profits to fuel their criminal activities.
Many of the most imperiled mammals are large herbivores and carnivores, the kind of animals that can play crucial roles in maintaining ecosystem stability Ripples research specialty. Losing some of those species could have far-reaching environmental consequences, he said, devastating some of the worlds most iconic landscapes, from the plains of Africa to the Amazon rainforest.
People in rich countries are connected through those cascading effects so its not just a poor country problem, he said.
In their paper, the researchers call on developed and developing countries alike to come together in a five-part approach to the problem:
Increase penalties for poaching and illegal trafficking while expanding habitat protections for threatened animals.
Clarify individual and communal property rights for legal wildlife users in communities that benefit from the presence of wildlife.
Identify more sustainable food sources, such as high-protein plant crops.
Educate consumers worldwide about the threat of illegal and unregulated hunting.
Provide family planning assistance to reduce population pressure on wildlife in areas where women want to delay or avoid pregnancy.
Ripple admits that addressing the problem is a daunting challenge. But he also sees signs of hope.
He points to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a legally binding treaty that has been signed by 183 nations, as well as Oregons Measure 100, a statewide initiative on the November ballot that would ban commerce in 12 threatened species.
Ripple said hes especially encouraged by grass-roots actions such as the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos, a protest march held Sept. 24 in more than 100 cities around the world, including Portland.
Now hes hoping that his paper in Royal Society Open Science will help focus public attention on what he sees as an existential threat to hundreds of the worlds mammal species.
I dont have the answer, but one of our major goals in publishing this paper is to educate people on the significance of the problem, he said. Until people become aware of the magnitude of this problem, there wont be any kind of strong global solution.
A 29-year-old man was arrested Tuesday in connection with a shooting that left an Alaska police officer seriously injured.
Anthony George Jenkins-Alexie was arrested Tuesday morning as he was walking on a local street, Fairbanks police said. Jenkins-Alexie has a "lengthy criminal history and has previously made threats toward law enforcement," Acting Fairbanks Police Chief Brad Johnson said at a news conference.
Jenkins-Alexie is facing charges of attempted murder, assault, vehicle theft, tampering with evidence and theft of a firearm in connection with the shooting early Sunday of Sgt. Allen Brandt.
Johnson said there are no other suspects in the shooting besides Jenkins-Alexie.
"After interviewing him and based on his own admissions and significant corroborating evidence, I can assure the community that he acted alone and that there is no continuing threat to my fellow police officers or our citizens," Johnson said.
Brandt is recovering at an Anchorage hospital after he was struck four times in the legs, police said. Body armor protected Brandt from a shot to the chest, but bullet fragments struck the officer's eye, police said.
Brandt, an 11-year veteran, was shot as he responded to reports of shots fired in a residential neighborhood just east of downtown. He was among officers responding to the scene.
Brandt's dashboard camera records him slowing down as a man on a nearby sidewalk approaches with his hands at his side. As the patrol car stops, the man moves his right hand toward his coat pocket but continues out of the picture.
A few seconds later, the man, gripping a handgun with both hands, runs around the front of the car.
Brandt managed to fire back at the suspect, but police did not say at Tuesday's briefing if the suspect was hit. Police spokeswoman Yumi McCulloch did not have an immediate answer to the question.
Police have not released details of how Johnson exited the car or from where he returned fire.
The suspect drove off in the patrol car. Police found it roughly two blocks away. The dash cam shows the suspect again walking in front of the patrol car, illuminated by the vehicle's headlights.
Brandt moved off the street. He radioed his location and reported that he had been shot. Responding officers administered first aid.
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported that Brenda Riley, a woman who lives nearby, was the first person to reach the injured officer. Riley, the executive director of the Fairbanks Children's Museum, said Brandt was conscious and radioing dispatchers when she arrived.
"I just held his head and did that mom thing of `Look at me, look at me, stay with me,' `' Riley told the newspaper.
Authorities in Northern California said that a man died Tuesday after exploding a pipe bomb outside a health clinic.
The Alameda County Sheriffs Office confirmed a report of an explosion at the San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center in Oakland, according to CBS San Francisco. Deputies said that the blast was reported at around 6:30 p.m.
A source told KTVU that a man in a wheelchair rolled up to the clinic and exploded a pipe bomb. Authorities were searching for secondary devices. Police were investigating the death as a suicide.
The man wasn't immediately identified.
CBS San Francisco reported that the Alameda County Sheriffs Office was assisting the Oakland Police Department in the investigation.
Click for more form CBS San Francisco.
A man convicted of sexually assaulting a teenager pulled a razor blade and slashed his throat in an Orange County courtroom Wednesday moments after the verdict.
Jeffrey Scott Jones, 56, of Huntington Beach, was rushed to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Jones, who taught Advanced Placement English classes at the Libra Academy in Huntington Park, was accused of molesting and having sex with a teenage relative of his live-in girlfriend in 2012 and 2013. Prosecutors said DNA evidence pointed to Jones.
The defense argued that the DNA evidence wasn't conclusive and the girl lied to cover up her marijuana use.
A Santa Ana jury deliberated about two hours before convicting Jones of continuous sexual abuse and aggravated sexual assault of a child, which carry a potential sentence of 66 years to life in prison.
"Right after the judge asked if we wanted jurors polled, both attorneys said no, and then he took a razor out of his left pocket and slashed his throat," prosecutor Heather Brown told City News Service. "His head hit the table, and I thought he fainted. But then I saw the blood and the razor on the table."
"I didn't see it even though I was sitting next to him" and only became concerned when Jones hit the table, defense attorney Ed Welbourn said.
"It's very unfortunate, the whole thing," he said. "We respect the jury's decision, but we thought there was reasonable doubt as to what occurred ... It's just terrible. The good news is it looks like he will recover."
The county Sheriff's Department will investigate how Jones, who had been free on bail, managed to get the razor blade through court security, Lt. Mark Stichter said.
Five people were injured Wednesday when scaffolding fell from a high-rise in downtown Miami, while a sixth person died of a heart attack while fleeing the falling debris, authorities said.
The collapse occurred Wednesday afternoon at the Echo Brickell building, a 60-floor condominium tower.
UPDATE: It appears scaffolding fell from construction site. Traffic closed from 14-15 Street on Brickell Ave. @CityofMiamiFire on scene. pic.twitter.com/PCmO0nJ7bu Miami PD (@MiamiPD) October 19, 2016
Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado told reporters that injuries related to the collapse were minor.
"Some woman was driving a car that was smashed," Regalado said. "Some people were injured as they were walking in Brickell [Avenue] and trying to get away."
The building's developer released a statement saying that a section of formwork fell from the top of the structure and offering thoughts and prayers to the victims.
The debris forced police to close nearby streets to traffic.
"We were just working at our computers, and all of a sudden heard a very large crash," witness Rudy Tomarchio, who works across the street, told WSVN. "We looked up, and in front of our eyes, we just see all this debris just crashing down ... We saw a couple construction workers in the crosswalk. It looked like they were trying to get out of the falling debris."
Family members identified one of the injured construction workers as 34-year-old Quincy Williams, who suffered a gash on his head.
There was no immediate word on what caused the scaffolding to fall.
Revisiting a crime that shattered a bygone era's sense of safety, prosecutors on Wednesday launched their second bid for a conviction in one of the nation's most influential missing-child cases, the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz.
After a jury deadlock last year, suspect Pedro Hernandez is back on trial in a case that eluded investigators for decades, ratcheted up Americans' consciousness of missing children and now centers on whether a chilling confession was true.
"It's a cautionary tale, a defining moment, a loss of innocence," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said as opening statements began. "It is Etan who will forever symbolize the loss of that innocence."
With his father and Hernandez's wife and daughter looking on, the trial began as an echo of the haunting story that unfolded over four months last year so haunting that about eight of the prior jurors and alternates were in the audience Wednesday to watch.
Prosecutors say Hernandez, 55, hid a brutal secret for more than 30 years. His lawyers say he's mentally ill and falsely confessed to waylaying and killing Etan as he walked to his school bus stop on May 25, 1979. It was the first day his mother granted her 6-year-old's big-boy wish to make the two-block walk by himself.
"Pedro Hernandez is an innocent man . an odd, limited and vulnerable person" whose only connection to this case is having worked at a convenience store by the bus stop, defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein told jurors.
"This trial," Fishbein said, "will not answer the question of what happened to Etan."
Etan's case did much to slam a door on a time when American parents, even some in New York City, felt comfortable letting children roam their neighborhoods unaccompanied.
The upbeat, trusting boy's body was never found, but his face became one of the first missing-children's portraits that Americans saw on milk cartons. The anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children's Day, and his parents helped push for a law that modernized how law enforcement handles missing-child cases.
Hernandez, 55, of Maple Shade, New Jersey, wasn't a suspect until police got a 2012 tip from his brother-in-law. He was among several relatives and acquaintances who later testified that Hernandez said years ago he'd killed a child in New York.
Hernandez then told authorities, on video, that he'd choked Etan after offering him a soda to lure him into the basement of the convenience store.
"Something just took over me," Hernandez said. "I'm being honest. I feel bad what I did."
Prosecutors suggest the motive was sexual and depict Hernandez as a cunning criminal. "You will see a man with very good memory, controlling and very aware of what he was going to say and what he wasn't going to say" when he confessed, Illuzzi told jurors Wednesday.
But the defense says the confession is fiction, imagined by a man with a history of hallucinations and an IQ in the lowest 2 percent of the population, and fueled by more than six hours of police questioning off-camera.
Defense psychological experts said Hernandez had given them dreamlike accounts of the killing, at points saying as many as 15 mysterious people were on hand, some wearing hospital gowns and pearls. He wavered on whether it actually happened, the defense doctors said.
"Pedro sees, hears and believes things that are not real," Fishbein said, noting that Hernandez has been on antipsychotic medication since the early 2000s and, even in his recorded confessions to authorities, describes having seen his dead mother speak to him.
The defense also suggests the real killer may be a convicted Pennsylvania child molester who was a prime suspect for years. He has denied involvement in Etan's death.
He left them heartbroken and allegedly without much in their bank accounts either.
Man charged with using girlfriends IDs to open credit cards held on $7,500 bail https://t.co/VKGTe6MTc2 pic.twitter.com/6yOti7SUL9 WBZ Boston News (@cbsboston) October 19, 2016
A New Hampshire man is accused of romancing and then ripping off women to fund a luxury lifestyle, racking up more than $375,000 in purchases on vacations, clothing, meals and jewelry, according to prosecutors.
Michael J. Shields Jr., 25, formerly from Boston, faced charges including credit card fraud and witness intimidation. A Suffolk Superior Court judge in Massachusetts ordered him held on $7,500 bail, WBZ reported.
A 45-count indictment alleged that Shields swindled his accusers between May 2015 and January 2016, duping them into "brief romantic relationships." Prosecutors said the women handed Shields their personal identification information, believing that he was going to add their names to his credit card accounts and help them out financially.
One of the accusers in the case, a childhood friend and former American soldier, said he trusted Shields to make investments for him so he could build up credit in his transition to a civilian life, authorities told the Boston Herald.
Shields case comes as a man in Missouri was arrested last week for allegedly posing as a U.S. Marshal to con women to buy him luxury vehicles.
A high school student in Norman, Oklahoma, said she used her cell phone to record a teacher saying, "To be white is to be racist," during a lecture on "how to heal the racial divide."
The unidentified student used her cell phone to record the lesson, KFOR.com reported. The student said she was offended by the teachers remarks and felt like he was encouraging people to kind of pick on people for being white.
The news station reached out to the teacherwho was teaching an elective philosophy course-- but did not receive an immediate response.
The lecture reportedly started with a video on the Mistreatment of Native Americans. The teacher went on to say, Am I racist? And I say, yeah. And I dont want to be. Its not like choose to be racist.
The video shows a man using a bottle of white correction fluid to cover a country on a globe.
He was basically comparing what he had done to the globe to what we did to America, the student said.
Dr. Joe Siano, the superintendent of Norman Public Schools, issued a statement identifying racism as an important topic.
The superintendent continued, We regret that the discussion was poorly handled. When the district was notified of this concern it was immediately addressed. We are committed to ensuring inclusiveness in our schools.
A man attempting to trade a pound of pot for a snowmobile on Craigslist didn't realize the snowmobile seller was actually an Oregon State Police trooper, according to investigators.
Police said Jason Owen, 29, of Sandy, made the trade proposal online last week.
The seller, an Oregon State Police trooper working in Salem, notified his supervisor, who suggested a consultation with the agency's drug enforcement section.
On Saturday, the trooper agreed to meet Owen to discuss the marijuana-for-snowmobile swap at a gas station in Brooks, according to police.
An unmarked police vehicle observed Owen driving around the parking lot. Several marked patrol cars then initiated a traffic stop.
The trooper identified himself and notified Owen that he was committing a crime.
Police said Owen had 1 pounds of marijuana in his car.
Click for more from Fox 12.
A Pennsylvania man has admitted he sexually assaulted a 6-year-old boy after authorities say they intercepted an internet broadcast of him raping the child and later discovered 10 other recorded assaults of the boy.
PennLive.com reports 20-year-old William Byers Augusta pleaded guilty in Carlisle on Tuesday to charges including rape of a child.
Prosecutors say Canadian authorities intercepted a broadcast of Byers Augusta sexually assaulting the boy in July 2015.
Investigators found videos showing Byers Augusta assaulting the child, including one of him and 62-year-old Ira Task simultaneously sexually assaulting the child.
Authorities say Task didn't wear protection despite knowing he had been HIV positive since 1994.
Task was sentenced in June to 17 to 40 years in prison.
Byers Augusta's sentencing is scheduled for January.
The lower house of Russian parliament has unanimously approved President Vladimir Putin's move to suspend a deal with the United States on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium.
Putin has cited the "emerging threat to strategic stability as a result of U.S. unfriendly actions" as a reason behind his move.
Under the agreement, which once a symbol of U.S.-Russian rapprochement, Russia and the U.S. each were to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough material for about 17,000 nuclear warheads.
Putin said the agreement could be restored if the U.S. pulls back its forces deployed near Russia's borders and revokes anti-Russian sanctions.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told lawmakers Wednesday that Moscow could take other steps that would be "painful" for the U.S. if Washington ratchets up sanctions.
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A man accused of setting off bombs in New Jersey and New York, injuring more than 30 people, has been moved from a hospital to a state prison.
New Jersey Corrections Department spokesman Matt Schuman says Ahmad Khan Rahimi was transferred to a state facility on Tuesday instead of a county jail for his safety and security. Schuman would not identify the facility.
Rahimi had been hospitalized with gunshot wounds following a police shootout that led to his capture in Linden on Sept. 19.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges he tried to kill police officers before they captured him.
He is accused of detonating a pipe bomb before a charity race in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and a pressure cooker bomb in New York City on Sept. 17.
A Houston-area couple has pleaded guilty to charges related to forcing a Nigerian woman to care for their five children and home without pay for two years, having her work nearly 20 hours a day.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston says 57-year-old Chudy Nsobundu (CHOO'-dee en-soh-BUHN'-doo) and his 49-year-old wife, Sandra, both of Katy, Texas, pleaded during a court hearing Wednesday as part of an agreement with prosecutors.
Chudy Nsobundu pleaded guilty to visa fraud while his wife pleaded guilty to unlawful conduct with respect to documents in furtherance of forced labor.
Attorneys for the couple didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.
Sandra Nsobundu faces up to five years in prison, while her husband faces up to 10 years' imprisonment when they are sentenced on Jan. 4.
Investigators in Texas said Wednesday they took a 14-year-old boy into custody for questioning after they found his grandparents shot to death in the couple's home.
Authorities: couple's 14 y/o grandson may have in been in home w/ bodies for days, mimicked grandfather's voice during truancy check #khou11 pic.twitter.com/eZgmMFnsnY Drew Karedes (@DrewKaredesKHOU) October 19, 2016
A deputy found the bodies of the husband and wife, both in their 70s, Tuesday afternoon in Beach City after the boy failed to show up for school, Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said.
Educators reached the teen by phone at the home in a truancy check. Hawthorne said the boy told an administrator someone might be injured at the home.
The sheriff said both victims appeared to have been shot with a handgun. There were no signs of forced entry or robbery, according to Hawthorne.
The couple's bodies turned up in the home's back bedroom, Fox 26 reported. The sheriff would not release the couple's names.
Beach City is 30 miles east of Houston and near Trinity Bay, off the Gulf of Mexico.
Click for more from Fox 26.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Top U.S. and South Korea diplomats and defense officials are discussing their response to the growing threat from North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
The meeting Wednesday comes weeks after the North's most powerful nuclear test explosion to date, and days after its failed test launch of a ballistic missile.
On the agenda is how to strengthen the so-called "extended deterrence" provided by U.S. nuclear forces in defending South Korea. Seoul is looking to allay calls from conservatives at home who want South Korea to develop its own nuclear arsenal.
The talks are between Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ash Carter, and their South Korean counterparts Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se (yoon pyuhng say) and Defense Minister Han Min-koo (hahn mihn-koo).
A state panel Tuesday suspended the license of a Texas veterinarian who used a bow and arrow to kill a cat that had wandered onto the property where she lived and boasted of the kill online.
Texas vet Kristen Lindsey who posted about killing a cat on Facebook could have her license revoked today https://t.co/LvgcIl7rIb pic.twitter.com/NjVDL2gRPa KXAN News (@KXAN_News) October 18, 2016
The Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners in Austin determined that Kristen Lindsey can't practice for a year because she was cruel to an animal. Her suspension will be followed by four years' probation and other requirements.
Her lawyer, Brian Bishop, told the board she believed the cat was feral and that it isn't unusual for people near her rural home west of Houston to dispose of feral animals. She shouldn't have posted an image to Facebook in April 2015, Bishop said, but she didn't act with "criminal recklessness."
"This case would never have gone forward but for the fact that we live in a social media age," Bishop said.
The cat, named Tiger, was owned by Lindsey's neighbor. The vet shot the animal through the head.
The Facebook post showed the cat dangling from the arrow as a smiling Lindsey held it aloft. She added the comment, "My first bow kill. Lol. The only good feral tomcat is one with an arrow through it's (sic) head! Vet of the year award ... gladly accepted."
Lindsey was fired from the Brenham animal clinic where she worked and Bishop said she's received enough punishment. She has received death and rape threats, and her mother also received threatening messages, he said. A suspension will create a hardship for her as she'll be unable to work while facing $150,000 in student debts, he said.
Animal rights groups have followed the case and one of them, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, said Tuesday that it was disappointed by what it sees as a light punishment.
"This slap on the wrist pales in comparison to the egregious felony cruelty that Ms. Lindsey committed against a defenseless cat," the group said in a statement. "Allowing Ms. Lindsey to continue to practice veterinary medicine in the future puts animals in the community at great risk, and taints the good name of the trusted veterinary profession."
A Somali media rights activist says three Al-Jazeera journalists were arrested by security forces, a few hours before an editor of a daily newspaper in Mogadishu was released.
Hassan Gesey, director of the media advocacy group SIMHA, said Hamza Mohamed, a journalist with Al-Jazeera English television, and two cameramen were arrested by troops near Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, on Tuesday.
Gesey said Somali officials told journalists who visited Mohamed in a Mogadishu prison that the Al-Jazeera journalists were arrested upon their return from areas held by Islamic extremists where they interviewed al-Shabab officials.
The National Union of Somali Journalists condemned the latest arrests of journalists which came few hours before the government released Abdi Aden Guled, the editor of Xog-Ogaal, one of Mogadishu's oldest daily newspapers. Guled was arrested on Sunday.
As the highly anticipated assault on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul grinds along, members of the minority Yazidi community wait with grim anticipation to learn the fate of loved ones trapped or enslaved in Iraqs second-largest city.
Yazidi hostages, sex slaves and even young men brainwashed and conscripted into the black-clad jihadist army are inside the city. And the beleaguered Yazidi community knows those may be the lucky ones.
The most important thing now is the hostages, Baba Chawish, the highest spiritual authority in the Yazidi community, told FoxNews.com. There is nothing we can do about the dead. We need to take care of the ones still living.
Yazidis joined Peshmerga soldiers on the front lines early Monday morning as the civilian exodus began, awaiting the return of familiar faces. According to Haitham al-Malaki, head of military intelligence for the Iraqi Army Emergency Response Division (ERD), the survival of potentially thousands of Yazidi sex slaves is of paramount importance. Locations of many have been identified and plans to ensure safe passage are in place, he said.
Yazidis are guarded in their hope. The persecution they suffered for centuries culminated in the rise of ISIS, which made Mosul its Iraqi capital in June of 2014. Two months later, the world watched as the Yazidi villages atop Mount Sinjar were overrun. The community remains skeptical that its members will be given special help or protection by any government.
Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department gave the Yazidis the official designation as victims of genocide a designation they say has done nothing to help them.
It hasnt changed anything. I am on my own, trying to find answers, one Yazidi man, who asked only to be identified as Omar, told FoxNews.com.
He was not at Sinjar on Aug. 3, 2014, when ISIS marauded its way into the mountain, slaughtering and capturing Yazidis by the thousands and prompting many more to flee to the top where they died of starvation and exposure. Omar has neither seen nor heard from his 18 closest relatives since that day.
Supported from the air by the U.S.-led coalition, Kurdish Peshmerga forces liberated Sinjar and the surrounding villages from ISIS occupation last November, yet the region remains largely unlivable and reminiscent of a haunted war zone. The lone road into Sinjar traces the Syrian border, right up into the coiled road mountain, and is still littered with overturned vehicles, strewn clothing and singed belongings. Some 22 Yazidi mass graves have recently been unearthed in different locales across the mountainside, with many more likely to be discovered in the coming weeks.
According to Chawish, there are now over 1,000 Yazidi orphans and more than 400,000 of their people remain homeless. Very few are able to return to Sinjar, scores have fled the country as refugees, some are living in displacement camps across the Kurdish region and others are simply finding refuge in abandoned buildings.
While many are hopeful the anticipated liberation of Mosul will bring with it some tearful reunions with freed Yazidi survivors, the community is all too aware that their people will need help, both immediate and long term.
Driving though an array of ravaged villages in northern Iraq, it is common to see Yazidis seeking shelter wherever possible. In one case, a rundown building where ripped sheets serve as walls had become home to several elderly and disabled Yazidis.
One occupant, Murad, 70, painfully reconstructed that scorching summer morning ISIS came for them. He was pushing his wife Guly in her wheelchair to collect water when members of the fearsome terror army opened fire. Unable to run, they were captured along with thousands of others and held prisoner in Mosul.
We were tortured, people died from starvation. They were killing infant babies in front of their mothers, he told FoxNews.com. They raped our girls in front of us. I will never forget.
Guly, previously disabled from what she referred to as a "brain attack" a stroke said that ISIS fighters threw away her wheelchair when they kidnapped her. In that first brutal winter of captivity, they were left without blankets or protection from the elements. She forever lost feeling in one hand, and her husband the use of a leg.
As they spoke to FoxNews.com, their young daughter, recently rescued from sex slavery, gently wrapped her frail mom in blankets to cover her legs.
After six months, they separated the disabled people and put us in a truck. We were dumped at the Kurdish border, Murad said. We are grateful for our lives but we have nothing, no medicines and no money. Before this, we had a beautiful quiet life. But they broke us inside.
With barely enough means for survival, the notion of psychological help is a distant priority that will loom larger if the Mosul operation succeeds. At one displacement camp in Duhok, a 7-year-old boy just rescued after being held and indoctrinated in a jihadist camp, attempted to behead his baby sister with a kitchen knife. He was stopped by his mother. Countless rescued girls have attempted suicide.
One by one, members of the Yazidi community produced documentation to FoxNews.com of the war crimes inflicted upon them, from gruesome before and after photos of men beheaded by ISIS, to their grandchildren being burned alive on hotplates, to the young children who succumbed to the heat and starvation while fleeing their ancestral homelands.
Many of the Yazidis refer to their loved ones, who were captured more than two years ago and have not been heard from since, as still with ISIS. However, after Mosul is cleared, and answers still not found, many fear that even greater grief and suffering will ensue. Also of grave concern to the community leaders is that with the lack of assistance, many more Yazidis will continue to flee.
We need protection and help from the international community, Chawish said. People will only stay if they know this wont happen again Or else we, as Yazidi people, will vanish.
The Yazedi Human Rights Organization reports that over 800,000 Yazidi lived in their native Iraq, but that number has dropped to below 450,000 today.
Genocidal campaigns against the ethno-religious minority have been a persistent hallmark of their history, although nothing on the scale of the ISIS-led atrocities. The Yazidi religion predates Islam and Christianity, but integrates numerous aspects of Abrahamic faith. Their calendar starts almost a thousand years before the Hebrew one, making it one of the worlds oldest vestigial religions, and due to their worship of a Peacock Angel, hardline Islamic militants like ISIS have justified their killings by referring to them as devil worshippers.
In spite of the pending reckoning, last week hundreds of Yazidis many traveling from the increasing Diaspora scattered around the world traveled to their holiest site, the Temple of Lalish, on the outskirts of Mosul for their annual pilgrimage, held every October. The event served as something of a modest, but not melancholy, commemoration of their resilience in the face of evil.
The crooked, ancient cobblestone streets of Lalish were ablaze with bright colors as families slept out on the roof tops under the still warm fall skies, market stalls were set up selling traditional goods, hundreds wandered barefoot to kiss the primordial trees, which they date back to Eden, and several took turns to enter their sacred White Spring to be baptized. For many even adults this marked the first time they had ever even been able to make the roughly three-hour journey between Sinjar and Lalish, the first time they have been baptized in their holiest of waters.
Many people from Sinjar are very poor and they lived their lives very happy, but very poor, said one young Yazidi, Baxtiar Baadri, exuding a quiet pride as a middle aged man stepped inside the sacred spring. He became a big man not yet baptized but today for him that changes. And if there is hope for one Yazidi, there is hope for us all.
An Austrian appeals court has found a politician guilty of defaming right-wing presidential candidate Norbert Hofer by suggesting he is a Nazi and fined him thousands of euros.
Hofer took Social Democrat Ingo Mayr to court after Hofer won about a third of the vote in the first round of elections in April. Among other things, Mayr had said that a third of the electorate "chose a Nazi."
Wednesday's verdict overturns an earlier court ruling in favor of Mayr and carries fines totaling 5,550 euros ($6,100.)
Hofer narrowly lost to left-leaning candidate Alexander Van der Bellen in a May runoff that Austria's highest court annulled after Hofer's Freedom Party objected that the vote was marred by major irregularities. The two face off again Dec. 4.
The head of Belgium's small Wallonia region is rejecting a Friday deadline to sign up to a huge trade deal between the EU and Canada, demanding a full renegotiation that could bring the whole trans-Atlantic agreement down.
Wallonia President Paul Magnette said Wednesday that "we cannot sign by Friday," when a two-day summit of EU government leaders is to end. It was set as a target day to get the last of the 28 EU nations on board.
Belgium can only back the deal if its regions, including Wallonia, approve it. Without unanimity among EU nations, the deal will collapse.
Magnette told TV network RTBF that despite progress over the past few days "it is insufficient. And you cannot say now: 'you have 3 days to accept."
The state of Oregon has approved a new $15 million remodel and addition to the Mennonite Home on the Mennonite Village campus, 5353 Columbus St. S.E.
The project is aimed to increase the privacy of residents at the nursing home facility by creating suites and rooms with bathrooms and showers.
The expectation today by nearly everyone is to have a private room with a private bath, said Ron Litwiller, president and CEO of Mennonite Village.
He added that the upgrades would improve the quality of life for residents.
In the first phase of the project, the north wing at the Mennonite Home will be removed, and a three-story, 50,000-square-foot building will be constructed to replace it. That building will have 42 private living suites, as well as a community gathering room, a beauty salon, a chapel, a training center for nursing certification and a state-of-the-art therapy center.
The rest of the original structure will be remodeled, and 37 semi-private rooms will be converted into suites with private toilets and showers. Five already existing rooms with toilets will have a shower added to the bathrooms, and eight semi-private rooms will get showers and sinks.
The total bed count of 95 for Mennonite Home will not change due to the project, which Litwiller expected to finish by fall 2018.
Its going to take 15 to 18 months, and we plan to start in May next year, he said.
However, the city still needs to approve a conditional use for the project, and the matter is tentatively scheduled for the Nov. 21 Albany Planning Commission, though that date could change.
Senior care facilities are not an outright allowed use in the residential zone for Mennonite Home.
Another building addition to the Mennonite Home, proposed as a later phase, would add a memory care home for 16 residents, and that also is in the conditional use review application. That new building would be constructed where a laundry building currently sits.
More than 20 trees also would be removed for the projects, according to the conditional use application.
Mennonite Village has about 700 residents on its campus, including people who are completely independent and those who require 24-hour care.
The approval of the Oregon Health Authority, given last week, was required under state law because the project involves the replacement of an existing nursing facility.
The state order, however, is a proposed order, and any affected party who takes exception to the proposed order may request the OHA Public Health Division to hold an informal hearing. If no request for a hearing is received by Monday, the proposed order will automatically become final.
For more information about the project, contact Jana Fussell, certificate of need coordinator at the OHA Public Health Division, at 971-673-1108.
Nigeria's army says Boko Haram Islamic insurgents have overrun a remote border military camp in the northeast, leaving 13 soldiers wounded and an unknown number missing.
Monday's attack on Gashigar, on the border with Niger, is the third reported direct attack on the military after months of a lull during which the Islamic extremists hit soft civilian targets.
Army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman called the attack a "temporary setback" committed by "remnants of Boko Haram" that forced the soldiers to retreat. He says an operation is in progress to find the missing troopers and "clear the Boko Haram terrorists at the general area."
It is believed such attacks are the work of a faction of Boko Haram that calls itself the West Africa Province of the Islamic State.
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Hundreds of people including politicians, actors and family packed into a Polish church Wednesday to mourn the death of Poland's leading filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, an honorary Oscar winner.
A metal urn with Wajda's ashes, surrounded by white flowers, and his black-and-white portrait were placed by the altar at the 13th century Holy Trinity church of the Dominican friars in Krakow, southern Poland.
Poland's President Andrzej Duda, foreign diplomats, family members, actors and intellectuals filled the church to capacity for the funeral Mass.
"Isn't it true that artists create their works because they believe in good, which has the final word in the world?," Bishop Grzegorz Rys said the homily.
Letters were read out from Polish filmmakers Roman Polanski and Agnieszka Holland as well as former president and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, whose struggle against the communist regime inspired Wajda to make a movie about him.
Later Wednesday, Wajda was to be laid to rest at Krakow's historic Salwator Cemetery, where the movie director's mother is buried.
Wajda died in a Warsaw hospital Oct. 9 at the age of 90, just months after finishing "Afterimage," Poland's entry for a foreign language Academy Award. In 2000 he received an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar.
He is survived by his fourth wife, stage designer and actress Krystyna Zachwatowicz, his daughter Karolina, and former wife, actress Beata Tyszkiewicz.
Indonesia's parliament has ratified the Paris climate change agreement, obligating one of the world's biggest polluters to limit its carbon emissions.
All 10 political parties in Indonesia's parliament agreed Wednesday to endorse the agreement, paving the way for it to become part of the country's laws.
The deal aims to curb the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Indonesia signed the agreement on April 22 in New York. The deal comes into effect Nov. 4 after the threshold of ratification by 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions was passed early this month.
The Latest on Syria (all times local):
4:00 p.m.
Turkey's president says his Russian counterpart has asked for Turkey's assistance toward the removal of fighters from the extremist Fatah al-Sham Front, previously known as Nusra Front, from the embattled northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he discussed Aleppo with Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday evening, before Russia announced a temporary halt to airstrikes.
"We gave the necessary orders to our friends," Erdogan said, adding that the leaders discussed an agreement to work together on "removing Nusra from Aleppo and ensuring calm for Aleppo residents on this front."
Erdogan also warned about the possibility of an influx of at least one million people to Turkey in the event of a population movement from Aleppo.
"We cannot pay this cost. Those who incite this must sit down with Turkey and talk," he said.
___
11:15 a.m
Russia's military says a U.S.-led coalition airstrike on a Syrian village in the province of Aleppo has killed six civilians.
The military's Reconciliation Center in Syria says Tuesday's strike on the village of Hassajek also wounded four people and destroyed two houses.
The center says Russian military surveillance means spotted two Belgian F-16 fighter jets over the area at the time of the strike. It noted that Russian and Syrian warplanes weren't flying over the area Tuesday.
Russia's Tass news agency reported from Brussels that the Belgian defense minister denied Belgian aircraft had struck the area.
Russia announced that Russian and Syrian warplanes halted their airstrikes on the besieged city of Aleppo, in preparation for a temporary pause in the military push that Moscow has announced for Thursday.
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Ukraine's president says an agreement has been reached at a summit with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany on deploying an armed police mission in separatist eastern Ukraine.
Petro Poroshenko's comments were reported by Russian news agencies early Thursday after more than four hours of talks at the summit in Berlin.
The reports did not immediately specify how the proposed mission of police from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would be deployed. But the OSCE said in May that the group would consider sending such a mission to help conduct elections in the separatist regions of the east.
Poroshenko said that Germany, the current chair of the OSCE, would be asked to present the mission proposal to the organization
A mom who killed her eight-year-old son after he allegedly discovered she was having an affair with the boys grandfather has been jailed for 30 years.
Veronica Panarello's son Loris Stival pictures,mom murdered her eight-year-old son https://t.co/6cLhw96Sb8 pic.twitter.com/ndO8rCq9JI China News (@ChinaNews86) October 19, 2016
Accused Veronica Panarello strangled Loris Stival with electrical cables and dumped his body in a remote gully in Santa Croce, Sicily after she claims he caught the pair having sex, reports Italian media.
Devious Panarello tried to pretend her son had been abducted, telling police she had taken him to school and had disappeared by the time she came to collect him in the afternoon.
Police began to suspect the mother when CCTV footage at the school did not back up her lies, judge Andrea Reale was told.
When Panarello confessed that her son had been killed, she blamed her husbands father Andrea Stival.
She told an earlier hearing that he had helped to plot and then carried out the murder because Loris had caught them having sex.
Stival is being investigated as an accessory to murder, reports Italian media.
He has denied the claim and is threatening to sue his daughter-in-law for slander, it has emerged.
Prosecutors branded Panarello an egocentric, manipulative liar and she was found guilty of murder and concealing a body.
This story first appeared in The Sun.
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The Iraqi military on Wednesday called on Iraqis fighting for the Islamic State group in Mosul to surrender amid a wide-scale operation to retake the militant-held city, where up to 6,000 fighters are believed to be preparing for a climactic battle.
Here is a look at the key developments on the third day of the Mosul offensive:
FIGHTING OUTSIDE NEARBY TOWN
Iraqi troops are now around one kilometer (half a mile) away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul.
Over the past day, IS sent 12 car bombs, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, and Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. He did not provide a specific casualty toll.
To the north, airstrikes pounded Bashiqa as Kurdish forces fired mortar rounds from an area overlooking the IS-held town.
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IRAQIS FLEE TO SYRIA
Save the Children said 5,000 people have fled to a refugee camp in northeastern Syria from the Mosul area in the last 10 days, with another thousand waiting to enter at the border. The group said the squalid camp has just 16 latrines shared by more than 9,000 people, many of whom only have access to dirty, untreated water.
U.N. humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien said no large-scale displacement of civilians has been reported since the operation began. But he said the U.N. anticipates "a displacement wave of some 200,000 people over the coming weeks, with up to one million displaced in the course of the operation in a worst-case scenario."
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US DEPLOYS APACHES
The U.S.-led coalition is providing airstrikes in support of the operation, and more than 100 American soldiers are embedded with Iraqi forces, with hundreds more serving in a support role.
Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, the top commander of U.S. land forces in Iraq, said U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters are striking IS targets in support of the operation. The deployment of U.S. attack helicopter crews brings added risk for American troops.
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RUSSIA FEARS FLIGHT OF MILITANTS
The chief of the Russian military's General Staff said it has been monitoring the Mosul operation and is concerned that militants might escape to Syria, where Russia has been carrying out airstrikes for more than a year in support of President Bashar Assad's forces.
"We hope that our partners from the international coalition realize what could be the consequences of large groups of IS fighters roaming the Mideast region," Gen. Valery Gerasimov said. "They must be destroyed on the spot, not driven from one country to another."
Romania's president has called for "tolerance and acceptance" of minorities as Romania considers whether to legally recognize a same-sex marriage between a U.S. citizen and a Romanian man.
Klaus Iohannis, an ethnic German and a Lutheran, noted that he belonged to two minorities. "Tolerance and acceptance of others are vital. These are the values I believe in," he said.
The Constitutional Court will rule next week on a petition to recognize the couple's union, which is currently invalid in Romania, amid opposition from the Romanian Orthodox Church.
"Religious fanaticism does not help society," Iohannis told foreign news organizations Wednesday. "If being a Christian leans toward fanaticism.... it sends a wrong signal."
Religious groups want the constitution amended to state that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.
Czech police have arrested a Russian hacker suspected of cyberattacks in the United States, officials said on Wednesday.
Police said an international warrant for the man, who was not named, was issued by Interpol and that officers cooperated with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on the case.
Hours after the arrest was made public, the professional networking service LinkedIn suggested that the arrest was tied to a 2012 breach of member information. A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department declined to confirm that or comment on a possible connection.
"Following the 2012 breach of LinkedIn member information, we have remained actively involved with the FBI's case to pursue those responsible," the company said in a statement Wednesday. "We are thankful for the hard work and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this criminal activity."
In May, LinkedIn said that the 2012 breach resulted in more than 100 million of its users' passwords being compromised vastly more than previously thought. The business social network said that it believes to be true a purported hacker's claim that 117 million user emails and passwords were stolen in the breach.
Police spokesman Jozef Bocan said the suspect was arrested in a Prague hotel. After the arrest the suspect collapsed, received first aid treatment and was hospitalized, Bocan said.
Another police spokesman, David Schoen, told The Associated Press the arrest took place on Oct. 5 and that police delayed releasing information about it for "tactical" reasons.
Police video from the arrest, obtained by the AP, identified the man only as Yevgeniy N.
In a Wednesday statement, the FBI said the man was "suspected of conducting criminal activities targeting U.S. interests," but didn't give any more details. "As cybercrime can originate anywhere in the world, international cooperation is crucial to successfully defeat cyber adversaries," it said.
Prague's Municipal Court will now have to decide on his extradition to the United States, with Justice Minister Robert Pelikan having the final say. Russian officials, however, are demanding that the suspect be handed over to them.
Spokeswoman Marketa Puci said the court ruled on Oct. 12 that the man will remain in detention until the extradition hearing. No date has yet been set.
U.S. authorities have two months to deliver to their Czech counterparts all the documents necessary for the Czech authorities to decide on the extradition request.
Stepanka Zenklova, spokeswoman for Prague's state prosecution, said U.S. officials have not officially asked for the man's extradition.
Russia's TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies quoted Prague's Russian Embassy spokesman Alexey Kolmakov as saying that it was insisting that the suspect be handed over to Russia.
"The embassy has been taking all necessary efforts to protect the interests of this Russian citizen. We are in contact with his attorney," the embassy statement said.
"Russia repudiates Washington's policy of imposing its extraterritorial jurisdiction on all countries. We insist that the detainee is handed over to Russia."
Justice Ministry Tereza Schejbalova said her ministry has not received any official request from Russia in this case.
The U.S. has accused Russia of coordinating the theft and disclosure of emails from the Democratic National Committee and other institutions and individuals in the U.S. to influence the outcome of the election. Russia has vigorously denied that.
There was no indication this case was connected to that accusation.
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A Soyuz rocket carrying two Russians and an American has blasted off for the International Space Station.
The crew of Roscosmos Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough lifted off as scheduled from the Russian-operated Baikonur launch facility in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 2:05 p.m. local time (0805 GMT) Wednesday.
Their Soyuz MS-02 space capsule is set to dock at the space outpost two days later.
The launch was originally set for Sept. 23, but it was postponed because of a technical issue with the Soyuz spacecraft that was eventually fixed.
Kimbrough, Ryzhikov and Borisenko are to spend just over four months at the station before coming back to Earth in late February.
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Thousands have turned out for the funeral of a senior commander of pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, who was killed in a bomb blast.
Arsen Pavlov, 33, known under his nom de guerre Motorola, was killed Sunday when an unidentified device exploded in an elevator of his apartment building in Donetsk. Rebel officials blamed the explosion on Ukrainian saboteurs.
Thousands lined up in Donetsk Wednesday to pay tribute at the local opera house, where his body was displayed.
Russian-born Pavlov became one of the most recognizable faces of the separatist movement. His unit took part in some of the fiercest battles in the conflict that has killed over 9,600 since April 2014.
Ukrainian officials have accused Pavlov of war crimes, and he once admitted personally killing 15 prisoners of war.
U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters have entered the battle for Mosul in support of Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State terror group, the head of the famed 101st Airborne Division running the coalitions ground component told reporters Wednesday.
The helicopters have been flying at night supporting any nighttime operations that the Iraqi security forces are doing, Maj. Gen. Gary J. Volesky said from Baghdad.
Also Wednesday, Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters the Mosul operation was "on track."
The U.S. military assesses ISIS could morph into an insurgent group and carry out high profile attacks if it's driven from Mosul, according to Volesky.
[ISIS] will try to do these high profile spectacular attacks, he said. Weve seen them do that before.
Volesky said he was concerned any ISIS attacks away from Mosul inside Iraq could stall the operation to liberate the countrys second-largest city.
One of the things that I'm worried about as well is, you know, the enemy tries a spectacular attack, tries to figure out how to retain some ground in the Euphrates River Valley and causes the attention of the government of Iraq to come back south and that delays or stalls the momentum going forward, he said.
Echoing earlier statements from senior U.S. officials, Volesky said foreign fighters have remained in Mosul, part of the estimated 3,000-5,000 ISIS fighters in that city. We expect there will be a fight, he said.
Volesky said some ISIS leaders have left Mosul, but declined to offer specifics.He said Iraqi forces have liberated 13 villages.
The Iraqis are ahead of where I thought they would be when this operation started, he added.
ISIS is launching attacks using mortars and suicide car bombers, Voleskly said, adding that U.S. aircraft were hitting back and in some cases killing ISIS before their fighters could reach the Iraqis.
Volesky said ISIS was using suicide bombers in vehicles to cover the ISIS retreat, which the general said he had not seen ISIS do before, which really kind of reinforces the point that they are completely on the defensive and are just trying to hold on, he added.
Volesky said ISIS fighters have been seen retreating into Mosul from the outskirts of town. They're burning buildings, which we assess to be their headquarters, and a lot of them are moving back into Mosul proper, he said.
Volesky told reporters there has not been a mass exodus of civilians leaving Mosul. The U.S. military dropped 7 million leaflets from B-52 bombers instructing civilians to stay in their homes.
Iraqi civilians living in villgaes outside Mosul are helping Iraqi forces locate ISIS fighters.
Volesky said that U.S. military troops used to call in airstrikes remained behind the front lines.
In keeping with current policy, the general said the U.S. military would not be supporting any Iranian-backed Shia militia forces in any way. Volesky said the Iranian-backed forces would not be going into Mosul.
Volesky would not comment on reports the Russian military would join the fight to the west of Mosul, where ISIS fighters were in control all the way to Tal Afar, roughly 50 miles away.
The [U.S.-led] coalition only supports those elements that are under the direct command and control of the Iraqi security forces and the Shia [militas] are not. So we don't support them. And the Iraqis clearly understand that, Volesky said.
He also said the U.S. military would not take part in any ISIS detainee operations as fighters were captured, leaving that mission up to the Iraqis.
The U.S. military has planned to exploit any intelligence it gets from those fighters or from inside Mosul in the weeks to come, officials said.
Fox News' Kara Rowland and Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.
U.S. officials expect the Islamic State to use crude chemical weapons as it tries to defend Mosul from an assault from Iraqi and Kurdish forces, though the terror groups ability to develop such weapons is limited.
ISIS has used mustard agent on multiple occasions against Kurdish Peshmerga forces, officials say, adding that nobody has been seriously hurt or killed so far. The effect has been fairly negligible, U.S. officials tell Fox News.
Mustard agent gives victims symptoms similar to poison ivy, according to one official who said ISIS use of the chemical is more like a weapon of mass disruption.
The officials said the threat of mustard agent attack is much less concerning than an attack or threat of using mustard gas. They said ISIS has not used mustard gas to date.
One official told Reuters that U.S. forces have gathered ISIS shell fragments to test for chemical weapons. U.S. officials said in a previously undisclosed statement that it had confirmed the presence of a sulfur mustard agent on ISIS munitions on Oct. 5.
"Given ISIL's reprehensible behavior and flagrant disregard for international standards and norms, this event is not surprising," a second U.S. official told Reuters.
Officials dont believe the Islamic State has been successful in fully developing chemical weapons with lethal effects. Conventional weapons were still the most dangerous threat as Iraqi and Kurdish forces advance.
More than 100 U.S. troops are assisting Iraqi and Kurdish forces involved in the assault. Theyre tasked with advising commanders and helping ensure the coalitions air campaign hit the right targets, officials said.
Meanwhile, as the fight for Mosul ramps up, the U.S. said it believes Islamic State fighters are using civilians as human shields as coalition forces move to the groups stronghold in Mosul.
Around 700,000 civilians are believed to be living in Mosul. President Barack Obama said there are plans in place for dealing with a potential humanitarian crisis as the offensive wears on.
The U.S.-backed coalition said they have driven Islamic State out of at least 10 villages surrounding the city. Iraqi forces are still believed to be at least 12 miles outside of Mosul.
Click for more from Reuters.
AdroitSSD Launches Customer Charm Offensive With Doubling Of RAM In Hosting Packages
The firm, based in Delaware, USA, has recorded growth of 200% to 300% since its birth in 2011, and now expects to increase its remarkable rate of development with the announcement of this significant offer.
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AdroitSSD, the cutting edge cloud hosting provider, has confirmed it will double the RAM in its range of hosting packages, giving customers another reason to task the company with their hosting.
The firm, based in Delaware, USA, has recorded growth of 200% to 300% since its birth in 2011, and now expects to increase its remarkable rate of development with the announcement of this significant offer.
Customers taking the Incredible Promo hosting package will receive new RAM of 1GB, newly launched, while those on the Incredible One deal can look forward to 2GB RAM, up from 1GB. For customers with a contract for the Incredible Power package, the allocation will now increase to 4GB RAM from the previous 2GB.
The move is in line with AdroitSSD's company ethos to put the customer at the heart of their business operations, and this enhanced offering is aimed at targeting new customers, as well as rewarding existing clients for their loyalty. AdroitSSD anticipates that the range of deals will not only be of interest to businesses looking for reliable hosting at a favourable rate, but also to individuals that are either running one man enterprises, or require website hosting for a page they maintain as part of a hobby.
Dan Anton, Director of Sales for Adroit SSD, said: "We are very excited at the prospect of delivering double the RAM for customers across all our packages. It means that whatever their hosting requirements, each customer can receive a product that delivers exceptional value, as well as our key facets of dependability, speed and security layering. The industry leading uptime we pride ourselves on will be augmented by a customer support function which we aim to be the best in the business, so whether customers are upscaling their package, downsizing or remaining on their current allocation, they can rest assured they will have the necessary expertise to call upon."
It is all intended to add up to a superior customer experience for every customer, and AndroitSSD has confirmed the offerings will be backed up with a dedicated customer support service, designed to reassure package holders by addressing their questions and queries quickly and professionally.
Customers can expect to enjoy the benefits of the extra emphasis AndroitSSD places on research and development, capitalising on the latest tech trends for the advantage of its clients. To learn more, please visit https://www.adroitssd.com
For more information, please visit https://www.adroitssd.com
Contact Info:
Name: Dan Anton
Email: contact@adroitssd.com
Organization: AdroitSSD LLC
Address: 3422 Old Capitol Trl, Wilmington, DE
Source: http://marketersmedia.com/adroitssd-launches-customer-charm-offensive-with-doubling-of-ram-in-hosting-packages/139198
Release ID: 139198
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Sweater Shop Launches New Fall/Winter Range of Aran Sweaters
The Sweater Shop, a renowned Irish based company has just announced the launch of its new range of knitwear for this season. This family run business is one of the largest suppliers of aran sweaters and Irish knitwear to both the domestic and international markets.
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With the colder weather just upon us, it means that it's time to start wrapping up and the new Fall range of Irish knitwear offers lots of different ways which you can keep yourself warm and stylish. Industry professionals believe the major contributing factor behind the success of the company includes their innovative collections, reasonable prices, high quality products and excellent customer service and this seasons range only supports that further.
When contacted, a representative from The Sweater Shop stated, "The iconic aran sweater has the ability to transform every outfit with effortless ease. Whether you are running errands, chilling out with friends, family and loved ones or dressing for a more formal gathering, the Irish Aran sweater is one wardrobe staple you will not want to be without this Autumn Winter." She further added, "A timeless staple and Ireland's major contribution to international style, our new range of sweaters, cardigans, scarves and hats are the perfect addition to any outfit this season."
The team at The Sweater Shop always try to provide both style and versatility to their range. For casual days their sweaters and cardigans worn with jeans, provide a look which is effortlessly casual and comfortable chic at its best. For a more traditional look with a modern twist, teaming your Aran with modern textures and fashion trends can add an edgy fashion forward look to your outfit.
Fashion changes but style endures, with the new Fall/Winter range from the Sweater Shop. The Aran sweater first became a coveted fashion icon when it first featured in US Vogue in the 1950's. This led to the sweater being exported from Ireland to the US for the first time. It has remained a firm favourite both on and off the catwalk in the last 70 years. More recently, the fashion bible Vogue again gave a sartorial nod to the iconic sweater in its British August edition, with academy award winning actor Alicia Vikander wearing the famous cable Aran knit.
The Sweater Shop stocks coats, Aran sweaters, and a large selection of cardigans, snoods, capes and lots more. With the serious Aran trend hitting this Autumn Winter, it's the ideal place to spoil yourself. They only provide genuine Irish wool products which are very well made and can be styled a million different ways. They make the whole order process run completely smoothly and constant communication is maintained to ensure customers are very much satisfied. They also provide free international shipping to anywhere in the world.
With so many options to wear it, you won't want to be without this sweater staple this Autumn Winter. Check out The Sweater Shops latest Autumn Winter collection and prepare to be amazed.
About The Sweater Shop
Sweater Shop is a family run business which was established in 1986 by Dom Byrne who still runs the company to this day. The Sweater Shop is truly a family affair with Dom, his daughter Laura, daughter in law Kate, Sister Breege and niece Alva involved in the business!
The large selection of superb quality Irish Aran knitwear at reasonable prices became so popular with locals and visitors that the business quickly expanded and now there are outlets in Dublin, Kilkenny and Galway city, while their online store ships their knitwear range around the world.
For more information, please visit http://www.sweatershop.com
Contact Info:
Name: Laura Byrne
Email: sales@sweatershop.ie
Organization: Sweater Shop
Address: 30 Nassau St, Dublin 2, Ireland
Phone: +353 (1) 671 2292
Source: http://marketersmedia.com/sweater-shop-launches-new-fallwinter-range-of-aran-sweaters/139243
Release ID: 139243
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Baumgartner Law Firm Announces 2016's Scholarship Winner
The scholarship is offered each year to needy individuals to who are enrolled at an accredited Law School in the US, reports https://baumgartnerlawyers.com.
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Houston-based Baumgartner Law Firm has recently announced the winner of their 2016 Scholarships. Each year, the firm furnishes a monetary award to a needy individual who is enrolled at an accredited Law School in the US. The winner will receive a one-time award of $3,000.00 to be used for tuition, books and law school expenses. This year, they are also awarding $1000 to another individual enrolled or accepted at an accredited school (based on need and commitment to helping others). More information about the scholarship and application requirements are available at the Baumgartner Law Firm website.
Greg Baumgartner, the Houston Personal Injury Lawyer at the helm of Baumgartner Law Firm, stated: "We are so excited to announce this year's scholarship winners to the public. The students we have chosen for these scholarships not only excel academically, but have also made personal sacrifices in order make a significant impact on their community as well. Becoming a great attorney is about having a heart to serve people in need, and our 2016 scholarship winners definitely embody that virtue. We're pleased to announce MacKenzie Ridgle as winner of the Baumgartner Law scholarship and Odalis Almendarez as the winner the car accident scholarship."
The Baumgartner Law Firm Scholarships are awarded to students based on both their demonstrated need and their commitment to helping others. Applications for the scholarships usually close at the end of August, and the winners are announced via the firm's Facebook and Google Plus pages.
As Attorney Baumgartner goes on to say, "Our team knows that school is a huge investment of both time and money for students. They often take on a huge financial responsibility in exchange for the opportunity to serve others inside and outside of the courtroom for the rest of their lives. We see these scholarships as something that we can do to help them fulfill their highest potential and achieve the life goals they've set out for themselves."
Those who are interested in learning more about Baumgartner Law Firm or would like to apply for next year's scholarship should log on to https://baumgartnerlawyers.com for more information.
About Baumgartner Law Firm:
Baumgartner Law Firm has been protecting the financial future of personal injury victims in Houston & Texas for over 30 years by fighting for maximum compensation in every case. Injury Attorney Greg Baumgartner founded the Baumgartner Law Firm in 1985. The law firm's mission from the very beginning has been to provide the highest quality legal representation to victims of personal injury. The law firm handles car wrecks, truck accidents, day care injury and other serious injury or wrongful death cases.
For more information, please visit https://baumgartnerlawyers.com
Contact Info:
Name: Greg Baumgartner
Organization: Baumgartner Law Firm
Phone: (281) 587-1111
Source: http://marketersmedia.com/baumgartner-law-firm-announces-2016s-scholarship-winner/139230
Release ID: 139230
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WHAT IS MOVELESS CHESS (FREE) Moveless Chess is a game released by Beavl. Your objective is to checkmate the black king without moving your pieces. But how then? By transforming your pieces into new ones. Every transformation costs Action Points (APs) and every level has a limited amount of APs. So use them wisely! Note: APs are based on the chess piece relative value system (queen = 9, rook = 5, bishop = 3, knight = 3, pawn = 1). DOWNLOAD LINKS * Android (FREE) * iOS (FREE)
An introduction
Designing levels for Moveless Chess is not an easy task. There are some things that you have to understand to make a level that works:
As player cannot move any pieces, player has to deliver checkmate from occupied squares.
Player can deflect AI pieces by offering sacrifices (offering material) or attacking that particular piece.
Player can make any AI piece stay at its current square by pinning.
AI is unaware of players powers and it plays regular chess. So when deciding its next move, it takes into account the present state of the board.
Player can make a waiting move (transforming a non-relevant piece into a pawn, the cheapest transformation, just to test AIs next move).
There are some more things to consider, but these are a good set to start.
So how do we design a level?
1. First of all, we decide the theme of the level. The level could be a rework on some famous match, some interesting variation, some trap or tactic or just a checkmate theme weve read about and we like. In Level 35 well be working on a theme consisting of two knights making a battery (its not a real battery, batteries can be formed by rooks, queen or bishops) and a queen. Its a beautiful checkmate theme, isnt it?
2. Then, we go to Lichess Board Editor and we create the board state from scratch.
3. After setting up the checkmate configuration, we start by changing the checkmate pieces into new ones so as to have a starting point for our level.
4. Then, we start playing around adding pieces for both sides trying to find certain configuration we like. Its like scripting a play. Some black pieces are immediate threats (remember that if checked, you lose), others can block your checkmate plans, and some pieces are there just for the sake of hiding the checkmate theme.
5. When we are ready with the first draft, were off to our lvlGenerator script (c#). We add the very first version of the current level and start playtesting this initial idea against the AI.
6. After lots of iterations, a final level looks something like this:
public static List lvl35pos = new List { -2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, -1, -5, 0, 1, 0, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, -1, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, -6, 0, 0, 0, -4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, -1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 6, 0, 0 };
And something like this in the Unity Editor:
7. So, why all these changes? Short answer is because of narrative tension. Every level is like a semi-open script (some players were able to find different solutions to the ones we came up with, think that AI plays real chess, so it reacts to every transformation the player tries. Its not a traditional chess puzzle where all the moves are forced). And what do we mean by narrative tension? Obstacles, tests to the player to come up with a plan, yeah, like a hero. Look at level 35 for example. How is this level solved? White pawn on f3 is key. It will deliver the checkmate (remember the two knights-one queen theme we talked about). Black queen on b7 is threatening with taking it, and if taken, its check (and you lose). Also, black queen is threatened by players knight on a5 so its going to move (or take the knight with the bishop). First thing is to protect the f3 pawn transforming the h2 pawn into a knight. If so, black is going to take the knight on a5 with its bishop on b4. This is how this level looks after the first transformation (Note: a gif with the complete solution at the end of this post!):
8. Now notice that the knight on f8 is threatened by the rook on a8. Also the pawn on d7 cannot queen because of the rook (remember that in Moveless Chess player cannot queen by transforming a piece on the 8th rank into a pawn, but AI is unaware of that. If a white pawn is placed on the 7th rank, AI will try to take it or block it). So, what then? Player can change the bishop on f7 into a knight. This transformation has two outcomes. First, it protects the queening on d8. Second, it makes the knight battery we need to checkmate the black king. So, being threatened by the possibility of queening, AI is going to move its bishop on a5 to d8 just to block the pawn (by doing so, it blocks the rook attack on the knight).
9. Now white has some options. Transforming the pawn on f3 into a queen is not one of them (if so, black queen would take it). So, black queen should be forced to move. In order to do so, player could offer some material. The objective is to make the queen move to a square from which it cannot either block the check or take the checking piece. The pawn on b3! Notice that the black pawn on d3 is going to block the queen from taking the white piece on f3. So here player can convert the pawn on b3 into a knight or a bishop (considering that the player needs 9 APs to deliver the final blow to the black king on the next transformation) or just make a waiting move and change the pawn into a pawn (black queen is going to take the material offered in b3 nonetheless).
10. And now, the final transformation. Player transforms the pawn on f3 into a queen and Checkmate!
Gilmore Girls Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Fan Fest Held At Martys Cafe, Expects Thousand Fans To Descend
"Gilmore Girls" will be holding a Gilmore Girls Fan Fest that will be held at Marty's Cafe, a Cafe that inspired the series. The cafe will offer breakfast and lunch and would expect thousands of residents fans to come and enjoy the festival.
According to Blane Withers, owner of Marty's Cafe, the cafe isn't big enough for the spotlight for many residents. Blane said, it's a good time for the festival as leaf peeping season is coming to an end, within this month. According to Courant, the cafe will expect two or three weekends of fan traffic to watch stars from "Gilmore Girls".
Mark Lyon said, they will be preparing enough foods for the surge of customers and in fact they also prepared food trucks to help for the supplement. Fans of "Gilmore Girls" will see more roles and cast such as Keiko Agena, Jackson Douglas, Vanessa Marano and Yanic Truesdale.
Only 38 days until A Year in the Life. pic.twitter.com/tafnV0mhIa Gilmore Girls (@GilmoreGirls) October 18, 2016
Meanwhile, "Gilmore Girls" recent news from GamenGuide relayed that Netflix also held a free coffee give away for the fans at Luke's cafe. Both Beverly Hills and Studio City ran out of coffee cups by 11 am as they celebrate the 16th year Anniversary for the show.
"Gilmore Girls" Fan Festival is expected to be successful and even the demand for lodging house has increased. For one, Mayflower Inn, the town's signature Inn was already fully booked for the said occasion even though the Inn's rate is higher as $775 per night.
Total War: Warhammer DLC Release Date, Gameplay, News & Update: The King And The Warlord Brings 22 Regiments Of Renown Units, More!
As the "Total War: Warhammer" DLC release date for The King and the Warlord approaches, excited among gamers has surged. This is no surprise as Creative Assembly decide to whet gamers' appetites about the coming DLC by release additional footages showcasing the twenty two Regiment of Renown Units.
'Total War: Warhammer' DLC Brings In New Regiment Of Renown Units
It is high time to bolster the ranks of the Dwarfs in the coming "Total War: Warhammer" DLC. Aside from the Legendary Lord and lord types, the upcoming pack will likewise introduce new Regiment of Renown units to their ranks.
First is the air unit called Skyhammer Gyrobomber. A flying war machine, it has the skyhammer bomb ability, which allows it to drop multiple bombs at once, a useful feature when the "Total War: Warhammer" DLC releases.
The coming "Total War: Warhammer" DLC will also introduce the Gob-Lobber Grudge Thrower. A catapult that throws a goblin tied to chunks of rock. The Skolder Guard will be arriving with "The King and the Warlord" DLC. They fire steam to their enemies dealing massive splash damage which 20 percent more physical resistance than their regular counterparts and is more effective against armored units.
Ulthar's Raiders is a good infantry unit. When "Total War: Warhammer" DLC release date comes, players can utilize their ability known as Marked by Ulthar dealing their enemies minus 22 percent missile resistance and less 16 percent armor. Using this ability will surely deal more damage to their enemies. The upcoming "The King and the Warlord" DLC will also introduce the Peak Gate Guards. These Regiment of Renown units adds magical damage to their attacks as well as minus 32 percent armor to their enemies.
Norgrimlings Ironbreakers will be introduced in the coming "Total War: Warhammer" DLC. They have vanguard deployment and are immune to psychology and there are twenty more men in the unit.
The upcoming "The King and the Warlord" DLC also introduces the Dragonback Slayers who possess 20 percent physical resistance as well as flame resistance. Completing the Dwarfs Regiments of Renown lineup is the Grumbling Guard with the ability to increase in size by 30 percent, the Warriors of Dragonfire Pass with their flaming weapons that does flame damage and lights up the surrounding areas and lastly Ekrund Miners with their Frenzy ability that grants 12 percent more damage and 8 percent attack. Are you excited for the new "Total War: Warhammer" DLC?
Of course, the Greenskins will have their own Regiments of Renown units as well. They are detail in this "The King and the Warlord" Trailer about the coming "Total War: Warhammer" DLC.
'Total War: Warhammer' DLC Release Date
Fortunately the wait is almost over for the upcoming "The King and the Warlord." The "Total War: Warhammer" DLC release date is slated this coming October 20, 2016. Stay tuned to GamenGuide for updates.
Xiaomi Redmi 4 Release Date, News & Update: Amazing Specs & Features Impress Users; Xiaomi Mi Note 2 Better Than iPhone 7?
The Chinese tech manufacturer, Xiaomi, has been making a lot of noise in the smartphone industry because of its amazing releases at a very affordable price. According to reports, the upcoming Xiaomi Redmi 4 is going to be the next big thing from the company and it is expected to impress consumers. The highly anticipated device has already become a favorite subject of numerous reports and speculations online for the last few weeks.
Although Xiaomi has yet to provide concrete details with regard to the development and release of the new Xiaomi Redmi 4, fans and critics have already shared their own predictions on what people can expect once the device hits the market. According to the report, the device will carry a metal uni-body exterior design with an interesting metallic finish. It will run on a Snapdragon 625 processor from Qualcomm paired with 3 GB of RAM and a 32 GB internal storage capacity. The smartphone is also expected to carry the Adreno 506 graphics technology, which will surely make the device a multitasking machine, according to a report by GSMArena.
Other features of the rumored Xiaomi Redmi 4 include a microSD slot, which is expected to increase the storage capacity of the smartphone of up to 256 GB. Apart from its impressive specs under the hood, the handset will run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow OS. However, there are speculations suggesting that the device might get the new Android Nougat operating system update a few weeks after its release. Its amazing specs and features will be powered by a 4,100 mAh battery, which allows the users to use the device for many hours.
Meanwhile, according to Xiaomi Today, the release of Xiaomi Redmi 4 might be put on hold as the company is currently focusing on the upcoming release of the much awaited Xiaomi Mi Note 2. The report says that the high-end handset will arrive later this month and is expected to challenge the mighty iPhone 7 as the best smartphone in the in the market today. Stay tuned for more news and updates about Xiaomi Redmi 4 and Xiaomi Mi Note 2.
Samsung Galaxy S8 Release Date, News, & Update: No More Home Button? Dual-Lens, 4K Display, Other Impressive Specs & Features Revealed
With the rollercoaster ride that the Korean tech giant has had with its smartphone lineup this year, can the Samsung Galaxy S8 redeem the company from the Note 7 fiasco? Here are the latest leaks regarding the upcoming device.
No More Home Button?
The tech giant is rumored to be removing the iconic Home button in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8. This will then allow the device to have a smaller overall footprint and sleeker unibody look. The fingerprint reader is said to be integrated to the display itself.
Display Rumors
There is no doubt that Samsung has been leading the industry when it comes to smartphone display. With their Quad HD resolution being incorporated in the flagship for quite some time, the Samsung Galaxy S8 may see an upgrade to a 4K resolution. The same Super AMOLED technology is expected to be integrated here, along with the high brightness capacity. This display setup would be ideal for the VR platform. There are also reports that the upcoming Galaxy S8 comes with only the Edge variant in two screen sizes.
Dual Lens Cameras?
Camera quality has been one of Samsung's strongest suits in the mobile arena. To further improve on their standards, the company is said to be procuring dual lens cameras that would be incorporated in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8 devices.
Powerful Processors
Being the flagship lineup, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is expected to tout nothing but the best chipsets available in the market. The Snapdragon 830 will most likely power the device in the US models, as well as the upcoming Exynos 8895 for the international models. It has been previously reported that the Exynos 8895 has a clock speed of up to a whopping 3GHz.
Other Release Details
The Samsung Galaxy S8 is expected to be released at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next year. This conference usually takes place either on February or March annually. However, Samsung is still looking into the culprit behind the Galaxy Note 7 explosions. If the company could not release an official finding explaining the issue, then market reception would surely take a hit.
Rotary got started in Long Beach in 1917 when seven local businessmen met with a New York Rotarian who talked about his club there.
Eugene-based Trek Theatre will visit Oregon State University for a pair of events Thursday, Oct. 20.
The "Star Trek" celebration is sponsored by the Anarres Project, a program based out of the OSU School of History, Philosophy and Religion.
Christina Allaback, Trek Theatre's artistic director, will give a public lecture at 4 p.m. titled "Star Trek and Social Justice" in Milam Hall, Room 319, 2520 S.W. Campus Way.
Allaback will explain the origins of Trek Theatre, how she sees it embracing the lessons of the theater of the oppressed, and what we can learn about social justice from science fiction.
At 7 p.m., Trek Theatre will perform a classic "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode called "The Drumhead" in the Learning Innovation Center, Room 228, 165 S.W. Sackett Place. The episode is a story about the clash between state security and the protection of human rights. Attendees are invited to wear "Star Trek" themed costumes to a costume reception, which will begin at 6 p.m. Prizes will be awarded.
The events are part of the 2016-17 SPARK program, the university's year-long celebration of the arts and sciences. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the original 'Star Trek' television series.
The lecture and performance are free and open to the public. For more information, see https://www.facebook.com/events/1572009539773971.
For the next two weekends, the Philomath Open Studios Art Tour and Sale invites people to not only see artwork by more than 30 mid-valley artists, but also watch the process of how it's made.
Many of the participating studios will feature live demonstrations, says Corvallis artist Mike Bergen, who enters his fourth year at the event.
"It allows artists to sell and show their work and their process," Bergen said. "People love to watch artists work."
At the 14th annual tour, viewers can take free self-guided tours around the 14 Philomath studios where 36 artists will display their art. Yellow tour signs will lead them on the right path.
All sorts of media are represented at this year's event. Visitors can expect to see oil, watercolor and silk paintings, acrylic, pastel, mosaics, collage, wood-fired ceramics, clay, mixed media, photography, printmaking, fiber art, textiles, glass, metal and woodwork, and jewelry.
Every year, local artists open the doors to their private studios to showcase what they are working on, allowing viewers to buy the art where it is made and meet the artist behind it.
Most host artists invite two or three guest artists to show at their studios, including some for the first time.
"We have a lot of new artists this year," Bergen said. "Jan Roberts-Dominguez, she's going to be with Marianne Post in her studio. There are others like Heather Kier, Aaron Reizes and Beth Rietveld."
Rietveld, a local fiber artist, has helped Bergen organize publicity for this year's event. Bergen says all participating artists help perform different tasks for the tour.
Bergen himself is guest-host at the studio of his friend Cindy McNutt-Kaestner. He invited ceramic artist Ann Lahr to share display space with him this year.
"She does whimsical ceramics stuff, which complements what I do with my paintings," Bergen said.
The tour also includes two high school students participating for the second year in a row. Babette Grunwald, textile artist and West Albany High School art teacher, will have photographers Paris Barton and Jayden Italia display artwork at her studio.
Artists not showing at one of the tour studios get an opportunity to share their art at local wine tasting rooms.
"We have two wineries (The Wine Vault and Spindrift Cellars) with what we call pop-up studios, where they allow us to come in and usually have two or three artists put up their work," Bergen said.
Bergen and others suggest visitors look to the official tour brochure to plan their excursion, because the studios are spread around Philomath, in town and along the back roads. The brochure features pictures of each artist's work.
"We recommend people use the brochure and pick the artists' studios based on the work they are more interested in, if you don't want to see all of them," Bergen said.
In addition to providing viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, some artists will show pieces they have never displayed in public.
In recent years, the Philomath Open Studios Art Tour has drawn 200-300 visitors, Bergen estimates.
"A lot of people use this event to buy Christmas presents, but I think the main thing is they just like to visit and see what artists are doing," he said.
The Benton County Board of Commissioners took the first step Tuesday toward a major facilities improvement package aimed at addressing longstanding space problems affecting the Health, Community Development, Public Works, and Natural Areas and Parks departments.
At their regular meeting, the commissioners voted 3-0 to accept a $1 million federal grant for renovations of the main county health clinic and unanimously approved a motion to proceed with the design phase of a $9.75 million improvement project involving the Public Services Building at 530 N.W. 27th St., the Sunset Building at 4077 S.W. Research Way and the Avery Building at 360 S.W. Avery Ave.
Dennis Aloia, the countys chief operating officer, told the board that the project will relieve serious overcrowding issues.
Weve done a really good job of extending the life of our buildings, Aloia said. (But) were cramming people into closets.
Aloia also noted that this plan is significantly cheaper than an earlier proposal for a new health clinic, which would have cost an estimated $12 million-$14 million. He also said it would not require any additional tax revenue, meaning there will be no need to ask voters to approve a bond measure.
Financing for the project would still need to be approved at a future meeting, but county staff outlined a plan to cover the costs. The county already has $2 million set aside in reserves to cover part of the cost, plus the $1 million grant. The remaining $6.75 million would be financed with a bank loan, to be paid back with annual county revenues that are already in the budget.
Public Works Director Josh Wheeler said the plans are still at the conceptual stage, with some of the funding set aside for architectural and design work. If final cost estimates come in higher than expected, he told the commissioners, parts of the project could be scaled back.
The most ambitious part of the plan calls for a $6.75 million renovation of the Public Services Building, which houses the countys main health clinic on the ground floor with offices for public health and administrative personnel on the second floor. In addition to reorganizing and updating the interior space for additional clinic expansion, Wheeler said, the work would include an exterior remodel that would make this look much more like a medical office than the old building we have now.
The Avery Building, which houses parks, public works and community development staff, would get a 5,000-square-foot second-floor addition at an estimated cost of $2 million.
The remaining $150,000 in the budget would be used to renovate 8,000 square feet of vacant space on the second floor of the Sunset Building.
All told, the project will take about three years to complete and will play out like a game of musical chairs.
The first step will be to finish the vacant office space at the Sunset Building. When thats ready, some of the staff from the Avery Building will temporarily relocate to Sunset while their building is being remodeled.
Once the Avery addition is finished, the relocated employees will move into their new quarters, freeing up the Sunset Building space for a permanent relocation of public health and administrative staff from the Public Services Building. That will open the second floor of Public Services for further expansion of the health clinic.
While work on the Avery addition is underway, construction will also begin on the first floor of the Public Services Building, which means the health clinic will have to operate out of temporary quarters in modular buildings. County officials are still looking for a suitable location to put those modulars.
The work approved on Tuesday does not address the countys biggest facilities needs what to do about its undersized jail and seismically vulnerable courthouse but Aloia told the commissioners it was a step in the right direction.
This takes care of our building needs for 15 years or more and allows you to focus on how were going to take care of criminal justice, he said.
This log includes incidents in which there might have been a public disturbance or a risk to the public. Information comes from the Corvallis Police Department, Oregon State Police and Benton County Sheriff's Office. It does not include all calls for service. The status of incidents might change after further investigation. Locations are approximate. People arrested or suspected in crimes are considered innocent until proven otherwise.
Corvallis Police Department
MONDAY, OCT. 17
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY: 10:06 p.m., 900 block of Northwest Garfield Avenue. A woman called police to report suspicious activity. The woman reportedly told officers that her ex-husband left her a note that talked about how he wanted to get back together with her "or else he would have a doctor erase her from his memory." The woman said the man had suicidal thoughts and had "recently sent a photo of him holding a gun to his head."
TRIPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU: 3 p.m., 300 block of Southwest 10th Street. A man reported that, while going through the mail, he found an envelope with what he believed were 20 "acid tabs" wrapped in foil inside an unsigned birthday card. The officer responding submitted the envelope, card and foil containing paper that he believed to be LSD to evidence. The case was discontinued due to lack of suspect information and investigative leads.
Benton County Sheriff's Office
SUNDAY, OCT. 16
PIE FIGHT: 5:25 p.m., 4300 block of Northeast Highway 20. A deputy responded to a report of a family argument. A man reportedly told the officer that his brother was mad that their stepfather hadn't bought enough pizza. The deputy reported that he "told all parties to stop fighting over pizza." The case was discontinued.
Classes were relocated and faculty instructed to work from home after rain heavily damaged Oregon State Universitys Richardson Hall over the weekend.
The three-story, 100,000-square-foot building at 3180 S.W. Jefferson Way, which opened in 1999, primarily houses laboratory and office space for the College of Forestry.
Roof repairs were already underway when a major storm system blew into the area, dumping more than 5 inches of rain between Wednesday and Monday morning, but that wasnt the main factor in the damage, according to OSU Vice President Steve Clark, the universitys chief spokesman.
In the course of fixing the roof, Clark said, workers discovered problems with the large awnings that overhung the building. Those had been removed, allowing rainwater to seep into the walls and work its way through leaky window gaskets that had previously been sheltered from storms.
Water rolls downhill, Clark said. By the time it got down to the first floor, it started to collect.
That led to further damage.
When the problem was discovered on Saturday, there was already significant damage to the building, Clark said. On Sunday night, emails went out notifying faculty, staff and students that most of the research and other activities normally conducted at Richardson would have to be done elsewhere while the building is being repaired.
All told, 48 classes totaling 683 students had to be relocated.
Clark said 25 workers spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday tearing out water-damaged wallboard, carpet and floor tiles while exhaust fans labored to vent moisture from the building. On Tuesday, the number of workers assigned to the task had been expected to double.
Walsh Construction, the general contractor on the roofing project, was installing temporary measures to keep more water from entering the building until the awnings could be replaced.
Clark said the damage was estimated at $500,000 to $700,000, but the universitys insurance would cover all but $100,000 of the repair cost.
He added that the awnings were expected to be replaced in about three weeks, but he wasnt sure when the building might reopen.
One of those displaced by the damage was William Ripple, a distinguished professor of ecology in the department of forest ecosystems and society who was working from home this week.
Its a double whammy, he said. We already lost Peavy Hall.
Peavy Hall, which has housed classrooms and administrative offices for the OSU College of Forestry since 1971, was torn down last month to make way for a brand new building.
Students, faculty and staff who used Peavy have been dispersed to other locations on campus until the new building is finished in spring 2018. The reconstructed Peavy Hall will be part of the Oregon Forest Science Complex, a $65 million project that will also include a 15,000-square-foot laboratory for advanced wood products.
A joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is expected to land a probe on Mars today October 19th, 2016. If successful, it will be the first successful landing on Mars that was not by NASA. Many attempts have been made by various countries and there have been a number of successful orbiters and flybys. For a full list of Mars missions see this Wikipedia page.
The mission named ExoMars includes an orbiter, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and a lander named Schiaparelli. Read more about it here.
You can watch the event live here. See here for more details on the broadcast schedule.
We used the details in this video to identify the landing area in Google Earth. You can use this KML file to view it in Google Earth. This is hand drawn based on the video and is not an official outline.
Schiaparellis landing zone as seen in Google Earth.
The landing zone includes the current location of NASAs Opportunity rover.
[ Update: Also see this KML file with more detailed landing ellipses kindly provided by GEB reader Fernando Nogal. See this thread for more details. ]
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
17-year-old wounded : Arrest in stabbing of teen
Bonn Police arrested a 19-year-old in the knife attack on a 17-year-old youth in the Bonn inner city on Sunday.
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After a teenager was stabbed on Sunday, police were able to find the perpetrator and arrest him, but they have not yet been able to find the knife used in the crime. Apparently, a 19-year-old and the 17-year-old whom he vaguely knew, got into an argument. It was around 1:20 a.m. on the corner of Maximilian Strae and Poststrae.
In questioning by police, the 19-year-old admitted to having stabbed the 17-year-old. He said he then threw away or lost the knife. The 17-year-old was wounded with a stab to the chest but his injury was not life-threatening. He was taken to hospital for treatment.
A 21-year-old witness was also at the scene, accompanying the 17-year-old. Apparently, the 19-year-old also bashed in a store front window during the altercation.
Deutsche Post study : Feelings of happiness in the west
Berlin A recent study commissioned by Deutsche Post shows an increase of contentment amongst Germans. Ratings were higher in the west.
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Measuring the satisfaction level of Germans, a study commissioned by Deutsche Post revealed some positive news. It hasnt happened for several years, but this time around German citizens rated themselves more happy and content than they were previously. On a scale of one to ten, their ratings went up from 7.02 to 7.11 within the year.
This may not sound like a huge jump but for researchers, it is telling. For Germans, who otherwise are considered laden with angst and acutely aware of their security, it means the terrorism threats and societal developments such as migration have not put a damper on the level of contentment in their private lives. Ratings of happiness in the eastern part of Germany, however were lower than in the west.
Some factors that can influence the satisfaction ratings are income and health. But researchers point out that the unemployment rate decreased from 11.7 percent in 2005 to 6.4 percent in 2011, and that didnt shake the ratings scale. Bernd Raffelhuschen, financial scientist at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, and one of the authors of the Gluckatlas (Atlas of Contentment) explains, Germany has been experiencing a boom for the last eight years with more income and buying power. Maybe that moved the numbers up.
The study doesnt measure emotional happiness or things like a lottery win. Its about long term perception of ones own life, wishes, goals and expectations. Germany came in ninth place in Europe in terms of ratings, while Denmark was the most happy.
Raffelhuschen suspects that differing perceptions of the refugee situation may contribute to the lower contentment ratings in the east. Responding to questions about cultural diversity, only around half of those surveyed in the east saw migration as a gain, while in the west it was more than two thirds. Those who personally had contact with refugees were more willing to help them with integration (58 percent) while only a third (29 percent) who didnt have contact were inclined to help. An interesting connection made from the study: the more tolerant and willing to help people were, the happier they were.
Transcription
1 Colombia Tax Guide 2012
2 foreword A country s tax regime is always a key factor for any business considering moving into new markets. What is the corporate tax rate? Are there any incentives for overseas businesses? Are there double tax treaties in place? How will foreign source income be taxed? Since 1994, the PKF network of independent member firms, administered by PKF International Limited, has produced the PKF Worldwide Tax Guide (WWTG) to provide international businesses with the answers to these key tax questions. This handy reference guide provides clients and professional practitioners with comprehensive tax and business information for 100 countries throughout the world. As you will appreciate, the production of the WWTG is a huge team effort and I would like to thank all tax experts within PFK member firms who gave up their time to contribute the vital information on their country s taxes that forms the heart of this publication. I would also like thank Richard Jones, PKF (UK) LLP, Kevin Reilly, PKF Witt Mares, and Kaarji Vaughan, PKF Melbourne for co-ordinating and checking the entries from countries within their regions. The WWTG continues to expand each year reflecting both the growth of the PKF network and the strength of the tax capability offered by member firms throughout the world. I hope that the combination of the WWTG and assistance from your local PKF member firm will provide you with the advice you need to make the right decisions for your international business. Jon Hills PKF (UK) LLP Chairman, PKF International Tax Committee I
3 important disclaimer This publication should not be regarded as offering a complete explanation of the taxation matters that are contained within this publication. This publication has been sold or distributed on the express terms and understanding that the publishers and the authors are not responsible for the results of any actions which are undertaken on the basis of the information which is contained within this publication, nor for any error in, or omission from, this publication. The publishers and the authors expressly disclaim all and any liability and responsibility to any person, entity or corporation who acts or fails to act as a consequence of any reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this publication. Accordingly no person, entity or corporation should act or rely upon any matter or information as contained or implied within this publication without first obtaining advice from an appropriately qualified professional person or firm of advisors, and ensuring that such advice specifically relates to their particular circumstances. PKF International is a network of legally independent member firms administered by PKF International Limited (PKFI). Neither PKFI nor the member firms of the network generally accept any responsibility or liability for the actions or inactions on the part of any individual member firm or firms. II
4 preface The (WWTG) is an annual publication that provides an overview of the taxation and business regulation regimes of 100 of the world s most significant trading countries. In compiling this publication, member firms of the PKF network have based their summaries on information current as of 30 September 2011, while also noting imminent changes where necessary. On a country-by-country basis, each summary addresses the major taxes applicable to business; how taxable income is determined; sundry other related taxation and business issues; and the country s personal tax regime. The final section of each country summary sets out the Double Tax Treaty and Non-Treaty rates of tax withholding relating to the payment of dividends, interest, royalties and other related payments. While the WWTG should not to be regarded as offering a complete explanation of the taxation issues in each country, we hope readers will use the publication as their first point of reference and then use the services of their local PKF member firm to provide specific information and advice. In addition to the printed version of the WWTG, individual country taxation guides are available in PDF format which can be downloaded from the PKF website at PKF INTERNATIONAL LIMITED APRIL 2012 PKF INTERNATIONAL LIMITED ALL RIGHTS RESERVED USE APPROVED WITH ATTRIBUTION III
5 about pkf international limited PKF International Limited (PKFI) administers the PKF network of legally independent member firms. There are around 300 member firms and correspondents in 440 locations in around 125 countries providing accounting and business advisory services. PKFI member firms employ around 2,200 partners and more than 21,400 staff. PKFI is the 10th largest global accountancy network and its member firms have $2.6 billion aggregate fee income (year end June 2011). The network is a member of the Forum of Firms, an organisation dedicated to consistent and high quality standards of financial reporting and auditing practices worldwide. Services provided by member firms include: Assurance & Advisory Corporate Finance Financial Planning Forensic Accounting Hotel Consultancy Insolvency Corporate & Personal IT Consultancy Management Consultancy Taxation PKF member firms are organised into five geographical regions covering Africa; Latin America; Asia Pacific; Europe, the Middle East & India (EMEI); and North America & the Caribbean. Each region elects representatives to the board of PKF International Limited which administers the network. While the member firms remain separate and independent, international tax, corporate finance, professional standards, audit, hotel consultancy, insolvency and business development committees work together to improve quality standards, develop initiatives and share knowledge and best practice cross the network. Please visit for more information. IV
6 structure of country descriptions a. taxes payable FEDERAL TAXES AND LEVIES COMPANY TAX CAPITAL GAINS TAX BRANCH PROFITS TAX SALES TAX/VALUE ADDED TAX FRINGE BENEFITS TAX LOCAL TAXES OTHER TAXES b. determination of taxable income CAPITAL ALLOWANCES DEPRECIATION STOCK/INVENTORY CAPITAL GAINS AND LOSSES DIVIDENDS INTEREST DEDUCTIONS LOSSES FOREIGN SOURCED INCOME INCENTIVES c. foreign tax relief d. corporate Groups e. related party transactions f. withholding tax G. exchange control H. personal tax i. treaty and non-treaty withholding tax rates V
7 international time Zones AT 12 NOON, GREENwICH MEAN TIME, THE standard TIME ELsEwHERE Is: A Algeria pm Angola pm Argentina am Australia - Melbourne pm Sydney pm Adelaide pm Perth pm Austria pm B Bahamas am Bahrain pm Belgium pm Belize am Bermuda am Brazil am British Virgin Islands am C Canada - Toronto am Winnipeg am Calgary am Vancouver am Cayman Islands am Chile am China - Beijing pm Colombia am Croatia pm Cyprus pm Czech Republic pm D Denmark pm Dominican Republic am E Ecuador am Egypt pm El Salvador am Estonia pm F Fiji midnight Finland pm France pm Guernsey noon Guyana am H Hong Kong pm Hungary pm I India pm Indonesia pm Ireland noon Isle of Man noon Israel pm Italy pm J Jamaica am Japan pm Jersey noon Jordan pm K Kazakhstan pm Kenya pm Korea pm Kuwait pm L Latvia pm Lebanon pm Liberia noon Luxembourg pm M Malaysia pm Malta pm Mauritius pm Mexico am Morocco noon N Namibia pm Netherlands (The) pm New Zealand midnight Nigeria pm Norway pm O Oman pm G Gambia (The) noon Georgia pm Germany pm Ghana noon Greece pm Grenada am Guatemala am P Panama am Papua New Guinea pm Peru am Philippines pm Poland pm Portugal pm Puerto Rico am VI
8 Q Qatar am R Romania pm Russia - Moscow pm St Petersburg pm s Sierra Leone noon Singapore pm Slovak Republic pm Slovenia pm South Africa pm Spain pm Sweden pm Switzerland pm T Taiwan pm Thailand pm Tunisia noon Turkey pm Turks and Caicos Islands am U Uganda pm Ukraine pm United Arab Emirates pm United Kingdom (GMT) 12 noon United States of America - New York City am Washington, D.C am Chicago am Houston am Denver am Los Angeles am San Francisco am Uruguay am V Venezuela am Vietnam pm VII
9 Colombia colombia Currency: Peso Dial Code To: 57 Dial Code Out: 09 (P) Member Firm: City: Name: Contact Information: Bogota Cristobal Uribe a. taxes payable FEDERAL TAxEs AND LEVIEs INCOME TAx Companies resident in Colombia are subject to corporate income tax on their worldwide income. Resident corporations are those organised under Colombian law and that have their principal domicile in Colombia. The tax rate for which both domestic companies and branches of foreign companies are taxed is 33%. A reduced 15% rate applies in the free-trade zone areas. CAPITAL GAINs Capital gains are taxed as ordinary income except for a few types of capital gains that may be subject to special taxation (eg gains from lotteries and similar sources) or exempt from income taxation. EQUITy A net worth tax (impuesto al patrimonio) was generated in 2011 and is payable between 2011 and 2014 by corporate and individual residents. The tax is imposed if the taxpayer s wealth is equal to or exceeds COP 1 billion on 1 January The taxpayer s net wealth includes both wealth located in Colombia and net wealth located abroad. The tax rate start in 1% on the value of the wealth between (COP $ and $ ), excluding the net worth of shares or interests in participations in national entities VALUE ADDED TAx (VAT) VAT is levied on taxable supplies of goods and services by a taxable person within Colombia and on the importation of goods into Colombia by any person. Exports (and some specific items) are zero rated. The standard rate of VAT is 16%. PROPERTy TAx Real estate property is subject to municipal taxation (impuesto predial unificado). The tax is usually levied at rates within a band of 1 to 16 per thousand, with reference to the cadastral value of each property. Undeveloped plots of land may be subject to increased tax rates. b. determination of taxable income DEPRECIATION Tax deductions are available for reasonable depreciation rates which reflect the normal wear and tear or obsolescence of the property concerned. The straight-line and the declining-balance methods may be used, along with any other method of recognised technical value authorised by the Auditing Assistant Director of the General Direction of National Taxes. stock/inventory The average, LIFO, FIFO, retail and specific identification methods may be used in order to value inventories and all are accepted for tax purposes as long as the relevant method is recorded in the accounting books. LOssEs Losses incurred by a company in a tax year can be carried forward and deducted against liquid income in subsequent tax years. Tax losses incurred before 31 December 2006 may be carried forward for only eight years and only 25% of the losses are available to offset each year. There are no group relief provisions. DIVIDENDs Dividends paid to resident shareholders are exempt from income tax if the dividends are distributed out of profits that have been previously taxed at the corporate level. If the distributed profits were not previously taxed at corporate level, they are subject 1
10 Colombia to a withholding tax at the rate of 20% when paid to resident persons and 33% for non-residents. INTEREsT DEDUCTION Interest is generally deductible in full, although there are some restrictions where the recipient of the interest is not regulated by the banking authorities. FOREIGN source INCOME Colombia taxes resident companies on worldwide income from all domestic and foreign sources. This includes capital gains from the sale of stock of foreign corporations. INCENTIVEs Special tax incentives are provided to investors in certain specified industries such as agricultural plantations dedicated to the cultivation of fruits, anchovies, rubber and cacao, creation of hotels (new and remodeled), and publishing houses. There are also a number of free-trade zones and special import-export systems which provide for the duty-free entry of capital goods and materials to be used in the production of export goods. 1) The law 1429 of 2010 gave the following income tax benefits for new small businesses (natural or legal person) that constitute or formalise after this Act, and for inactive enterprises that will be reactivated as a result of this law a) They do not have to present presumptive Income tax in their first 10 years (depending on department to be installed) b) They calculate the income tax at reduced rates (progressive rates - starting at 0%) at the first 10 years (depending on the department to be installed). c. foreign tax relief In most cases, double taxation is relieved unilaterally by the granting of a foreign tax credit (FTC) against Colombian corporate income tax. Taxpayers may credit the amount of foreign tax paid on income from abroad, up to a maximum of the Colombian tax that would be due on the amount of income received from abroad. Colombian resident companies receiving dividends from foreign companies may credit against both foreign withholding taxes paid on the dividends and also the amount of the underlying foreign income tax paid by the foreign company on the profits from which the dividends were paid. d. corporate Groups There is no concept of group relief for Colombian tax purposes. e. related party transactions As a general rule, transactions between related parties must be carried out on arm s length principles, i.e. the prices should be the same as those that would be arrived at in comparable transactions with independent parties. The tax authorities may adjust the prices at which the taxpayer acquires or sells goods, as well as the consideration of other transactions, and modify the taxable base or the relevant loss of a taxpayer for income tax purposes. f. withholding tax The following domestic withholding tax rates apply in respect of payments to nonresidents. Dividends 33% Interest 33% Royalties 33% Service fees and commissions 33% Payments for technical services 10% None of the double taxation agreements between Colombia and other countries reduce the withholding tax rates below the domestic rates. 2
11 Colombia G. exchange controls Certain foreign currency transactions must be channelled through intermediaries authorised for the purposes including: import of property export of property external indebtedness foreign investment in Colombia Colombian investment in foreign countries financial investments and fixed assets based in foreign countries endorsements and guarantees derivative transactions. H. personal tax Resident individuals are liable to income tax in respect of their worldwide income. Non-resident individuals are liable to income tax only on their Colombian-sourced income. Newly resident individuals are taxed only on Colombian-sourced income during the first four years of their stay in Colombia. An individual is considered to be a resident of Colombia if he or she stays in Colombia for more than six months in a tax year regardless of whether or not the stay is continuous or for a period of more than six months ending in a tax year. A Colombian individual whose family lives in Colombia, or whose main place of business is in Colombia, is also considered a Colombian resident even if he or she does not remain in Colombia. The individual tax rate is progressive as follows: Taxable income (UVT) Tax rate Up to 1,090 0% 1,091 to 1,700 19% 1,701 to 4,100 28% over 4,100 33% Capital gains are normally subject to ordinary taxation except for a few items that may be subject to special taxation (eg gains from lotteries and similar sources) or exempt from income taxation, such as gains arising from inheritances, legacies and gifts up to a certain amount. No inheritance (estate) or gift taxes are levied at the federal or the local level. However, certain gifts may be treated as income and therefore be subject to income tax in the hands of individual donees. 3
12 $
World War Two dud : Hiker finds bomb in the forest
Wolken A hiker in the Eifel forest stumbled upon an unusual sight - an unexploded bomb from the year 1943.
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A British bomb left over from World War Two was found on Monday evening near the town of Wolken in the Eifel. According to police, a hiker found a rusty metal object at the approach to Langentalbach (Langental creek) in the forest.
A bomb disposal team identified the object as a British 250-kilo bomb from 1943. After twenty minutes, the experts were able to diffuse the bomb and give an all clear for the area.
Bonners remember victims of October 18 bombing : United in fate
Bonn Bonn residents gathered with Syrian refugees to remember victims from the destruction of the old town of Bonn in World War II. The images reminded refugees of their hometown Aleppo.
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Deafening loud sirens howled on October 18, 1944 in Bonn. They warned of impending disaster. Throughout the city, people were hurrying to their basement or bomb shelters in search of protection. Until then, the city of Bonn had been relatively unharmed, with just 500 of the more than 27,000 homes destroyed by bombs. For the allies, the city on the Rhine was far from being an important target.
But on the fateful Wednesday morning, everything was different. At 11:03 a.m., 129 British Lancaster bombers did a test run for a new target system - their path was over the old town of Bonn. Within six minutes, Bonn was in ruins. 72 years later, a memorial service was held to remember the victims. Among the guests were refugees from Syria, who were reminded of the destruction in their homeland.
The pictures of destroyed Bonn remind me a lot of photos from my hometown Aleppo, said Soubhi Kalghssi (34). The Syrian Christian fled a year ago out of persecution and fear, leaving everything behind. My family and many friends are still there, even my shop I had to close. Kalhssi ran a supermarket before fleeing. I myself have witnessed bombings and can therefore understand how people must have felt at that time.
John Kieserg was a witness to the bombings on October 18 and spoke about the fateful day, It was actually a very nice morning. I was 15-years-old and doing my Schanzeinsatz (duties which were required of Hitler Youth from age 14) when the bombers came. His grandmothers house got hit but she was pulled alive out of the cellar. A painting business burned for days, because of strong winds the city could hardly get the fire under control.
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1 IN THE CIRCUIT COURT, SIXTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN AND FOR PASCO AND PINELLAS COUNTIES, FLORIDA ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER NO PA/PI-CIR RE: COURT APPOINTED ATTORNEYS FOR DEPENDENT CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS Section , Florida Statutes, requires the Court to appoint a private attorney to represent a dependent child with special needs if the Statewide Guardian Ad Litem Office is unable to recommend an attorney to represent the child. The Judicial Administrative Commission contracts with the appointed attorneys in accordance with section (5), Florida Statutes. The current Sixth Judicial Circuit Registry does not include attorneys to be appointed as counsel for dependent children with special needs. The Court appoints those attorneys from a registry that the Guardian Ad Litem and the Judicial Administrative Commission develop and provide to the Court. Effective July 1, 2015, the Guardian Ad Litem and Judicial Administrative Commission registry will no longer be maintained or available to the Court. See Ch , Laws of Fla. It is therefore necessary for the Court to establish and maintain a list of attorneys to be appointed for dependent children with special needs in Pasco and Pinellas Counties. Therefore, in order to provide for the appointment of counsel for dependent children with special needs and pursuant to the authority of the Chief Judge in accordance with Article V, 2, Florida Constitution, Rule of Judicial Administration 2.215, and 43.26, Florida Statutes, it is ORDERED: 1. Attachment (A) to Administrative Order PA/PI-CIR, entitled Sixth Judicial Circuit Registry Attorney Standards and Qualifications, is hereby amended as attached to this Administrative Order as Attachment (A). 2. The Court hereby adopts the Judicial Administrative Commission s Registry for Children with Certain Special Needs for Pasco and Pinellas Counties, as attached to this Administrative Order as Attachment (B). Each of the listed attorneys is approved to serve as a court-appointed attorney for a dependent child with special needs pursuant to section , Florida Statutes, until further order of the Court. 3. Registry attorneys must comply with paragraphs I.A. I.G. of Administrative Order PA/PI-CIR. All terms of Administrative Order PA/PI-CIR not in conflict with this Administrative Order remain in full force and effect. DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers at St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, Florida, this day of June, ORIGINAL SIGNED ON JUNE 30, 2015 BY ANTHONY RONDOLINO, ACTING CHIEF JUDGE Attachments: (A) Sixth Judicial Circuit Registry Attorney Standards and Qualifications (B) Judicial Administrative Commission Registry for Children with Certain Special Needs
2 cc: All Judges The Honorable Bernie McCabe, State Attorney The Honorable Bob Dillinger, Public Defender The Honorable Paula O Neil, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Pasco County The Honorable Ken Burke, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Pinellas County Gay Inskeep, Trial Courts Administrator Ngozi Acholonu, Assistant Regional Counsel Myriam Irizarry, Chief Deputy Director, Pinellas County Clerk s Office Lillian Simon, Director of Administrative Services for Pasco County Court Appointed Attorneys Bar Associations, Pasco and Pinellas Law Libraries, Pasco and Pinellas 2
3 SIXTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT REGISTRY ATTORNEY STANDARDS AND QUALIFICATIONS ATTACHMENT (A) to All Sixth Judicial Circuit Registry attorneys must meet the following experience and other qualifications as specified below for each list on which the attorney serves. An attorney s failure to comply with these requirements may result in removal of the attorney from all court-appointed lists. NOTE: All continuing legal education (CLE) must have been approved by The Florida Bar. Crime Lists Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service ALL Criminal, Juvenile Delinquency & Jimmy Ryce Trial & Criminal Appellate Counsel. Non-capital felony and misdemeanor trials. 1 st degree felony trials 2 nd degree felony trials 3 rd degree felony trials Misdemeanor trials Criminal Contempt Involuntary Commitment of a defendant adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity Criminal postconviction Interstate Extradition Post Sentence DNA testing Withdrawal of Plea Parole Revocation Probation Revocation Any other proceeding not noted elsewhere that may result in the 1. Have completed within the last 12 months, 10 hours of criminal law CLE. 2. Be familiar with the practice and procedure of the criminal courts in the Sixth Circuit. 3. Meet the experience requirements as stated below applicable to the alleged offense/event. 4. No later than May 15, 2016, have completed the continuing legal education course described in Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure Non-capital Felony & Misdemeanor Trials: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous three years. 2. Experienced and active trial practitioner with no fewer than ten state or federal jury trials. 3. Served as lead counsel or co-counsel in ten felony cases, including five jury trials that were tried to completion. 3 Pasco, Pinellas
4 incarceration of defendant/respondent. Juvenile Delinquency trials Crime Lists Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service Juvenile Delinquency Trials: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous 12 months. 2. Familiar with practice and procedure of delinquency proceedings. 3. Experienced trial practitioner with no fewer than 3 delinquency dispositions or 3 state or federal jury or non-jury trials. 4. Have completed 3 hours of CLE in delinquency law within the last 12 months. This CLE may be part of the 10 hrs. of criminal law CLE required for all Crime list conflict trial counsel. Alternatively, the attorney may annually complete at least 3 hrs. of CLE concerning legal advocacy for children; if this alternative is chosen, the CLE may not be counted towards the 10 hrs. of CLE required for all Crime list attorneys. Pasco, Pinellas Criminal, Juvenile Delinquency, & Jimmy Ryce Appeals Non-capital felony, misdemeanor, juvenile delinquency & Jimmy Ryce civil confinement appeals. Criminal, Juvenile Delinquency, and Jimmy Ryce Appeals: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous three years. 2. Completed within the last 12 months of ten hours of CLE devoted to appellate law. 3. An experienced and active practitioner in the field of appellate criminal law or have experience in the appeal of at least five criminal cases. Capital death penalty trials In accordance with (5), Fla. Stat., a capital case is any offense for which the potential sentence is death and the state has not waived seeking the death penalty. Attorneys on this list who are also on the registry of attorneys maintained by the Justice Administrative Commission under section (1), Florida Statutes, may be appointed to represent defendants in capital postconviction Death Penalty Trials Lead Counsel and Death Penalty Trials Co-counsel: Meet the requirements of Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure Rule 3.112(f) for Lead Counsel, and 3.112(g) for Co-Counsel, plus: a. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous five years; b. In addition to the continuing legal education requirements of 3.112(f)(7) and 3.112(g)(2)(E), respectively, during any year that counsel does not attend a continuing legal education program of at least twelve hours' duration devoted specifically to the defense of capital cases, counsel is required to obtain the case law update materials from the Public Defender s Office or the Florida Public Defender Association, Inc.; and c. Must not have provided constitutionally deficient representation, as determined by courts in two capital proceedings (trial, appellate, or postconviction), with the latest determination being made in a final order entered within the previous five years. Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.112(f-g). 4 Lead Counsel and Co-Counsel
5 proceedings in the Sixth Circuit (f) Lead Counsel. Lead trial counsel assignments should be given to attorneys who: Capital death penalty trials (Continued) Crime Lists Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service (1) are members of the bar admitted to practice in the jurisdiction or admitted to practice pro hac vice; and (2) are experienced and active trial practitioners with at least five years of litigation experience in the field of criminal law; and Lead (3) have prior experience as lead counsel in no fewer than nine state or federal jury trials Counsel and Coof serious & complex cases which were tried to completion, as well as prior experience Counsel as lead defense counsel or co-counsel in at least two state or federal cases tried to completion in which the death penalty was sought. In addition, of the nine jury trials which were tried to completion, the attorney should have been lead counsel in at least three cases in which the charge was murder; or alternatively, of the nine jury trials, at least one was a murder trial & an additional five were felony jury trials; and (4)are familiar with the practice & procedure of the criminal courts of the jurisdiction; and (5) are familiar with and experienced in the utilization of expert witnesses and evidence, including but not limited to psychiatric and forensic evidence; and (6) have demonstrated the necessary proficiency and commitment which exemplify the quality of representation appropriate to capital cases, including but not limited to the investigation and presentation of evidence in mitigation of the death penalty; and (7) have attended within the last two years a continuing legal education program of at least twelve hours' duration devoted specifically to the defense of capital cases. Attorneys on the Lead Counsel list may also be appointed as independent, special counsel in accordance with Marquardt v State, 156 So. 3d 464 (Fla. 2015) to represent the public interest in bringing forth all available mitigation for the benefit of the jury, the trial court, and [the Supreme Court]. Note: In accordance with section , Fla. Stat., the Board of Executive Clemency appoints private attorneys from a list that it maintains to represent persons sentenced to death in and seeking relief by executive clemency. Death Penalty Trials Lead Counsel and Death Penalty Trials Co-counsel Cont d: 3.112(g) Co-counsel. Trial co-counsel assignments should be given to attorneys who: (1) are members of the bar admitted to practice in the jurisdiction or admitted to practice pro hac vice; & (2) qualify as lead counsel under paragraph (f) of these standards or meet the following requirements: (A) are experienced & active trial practitioners with at least three years of litigation experience in the field of criminal law; & (B) have prior experience as lead counsel or co-counsel in no fewer than three state or federal jury trials of serious & complex cases which were tried to completion, at least two of which were trials in which the charge was murder; or alternatively, of the three jury trials, at least one was a murder trial & one was a felony jury trial; & (C) are familiar with the practice & 5
6 procedure of the criminal courts of the jurisdiction; & (D) have demonstrated the necessary proficiency & commitment which exemplify the quality of representation appropriate to capital cases, & (E) have attended within the last two years a continuing legal education program of at least twelve hours' duration devoted specifically to the defense of capital cases. Crime Lists Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service Capital death penalty Appeals Death Penalty Appeals: Meet Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure Rule 3.112(h), plus: a. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous five years; b. In addition to the continuing legal education requirements of 3.112(h)(6), during any year that counsel does not attend a continuing legal education program of at least 12 hrs. duration devoted specifically to the defense of capital cases, counsel is required to obtain the case law update materials from the Public Defender s Office or the Florida Public Defender Association, Inc.; and c. Must not have provided constitutionally deficient representation, as determined by courts in two capital proceedings (trial, appellate, or postconviction), with the latest determination being made in a final order entered within the previous five years. Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.112(h). (h) Appellate Counsel. Appellate counsel assignments should be given to attorneys who: (1) are members of the bar admitted to practice in the jurisdiction or admitted to practice pro hac vice; & (2) are experienced and active trial or appellate practitioners with at least five years of experience in the field of criminal law; & (3) have prior experience in the appeal of at least one case where a sentence of death was imposed, as well as prior experience as lead counsel in the appeal of no fewer than three felony convictions in federal or state court, at least one of which was an appeal of a murder conviction; or alternatively, have prior experience as lead counsel in the appeal of no fewer than six felony convictions in federal or state court, at least two of which were appeals of a murder conviction; & (4 )are familiar with the practice and procedure of the appellate courts of the jurisdiction; & (5) have demonstrated the necessary proficiency and commitment which exemplify the quality of representation appropriate to capital cases; & (6) have attended within the last two years a continuing legal education program of at least twelve hours' duration devoted specifically to the defense of capital cases. 6
7 Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Confinement Trials Dependency Proceedings. Dependency Shelter Hearings Dependency adjudication Judicial Review Children in Need of Services /Families in Need of Services --Attorney for Parent Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) --Chapter 39 --Chapter 63 Jimmy Ryce Trials: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous 3 years. 2. Be familiar with the practice & procedure of the criminal & civil courts in the Sixth Judicial Circuit. 3. Experienced & active trial practitioner with no fewer than ten state or federal jury trials. 4. Served as lead counsel or co-counsel in ten felony cases, including five jury trials that were tried to completion. 7 Pasco, Pinellas Dependency Lists Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service Dependency Attorney for Parent: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous 3 years. 2. Familiar with practice and procedure of dependency proceedings, including the Pasco, Pinellas application of the Juvenile Rules of Procedure and the Family Law Rules of Procedure. 3. Observation of at least 30 hours of hearings, including six shelter hearings, three dependency hearings, and one termination of parental rights (TPR) hearing. 4. Have completed within the last 12 months three hours of CLE in dependency law. Children in Need of Services /Families in Need of Services --Attorney for Child Dependency w/mental health (residential treatment) Emancipation Attorney Ad Litem for child Parental Notice of Abortion Act Any other proceeding where a child is entitled to representation (except for attorneys appointed for dependent children with special needs in accordance with section , Fla. Stat.) Dependent Children with Special Needs, including appeals, in accordance with section , Fla. Stat. Attorney for Child: Meet requirements for Dependency List, plus complete three-hour training course offered by the Guardian Ad Litem program. Attorney for Dependent Child with Special Needs: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for previous three years. 2. Familiar with the practice and procedure of dependency proceedings, including the application of the Juvenile Rules of Procedure and the Family Law Rules of Procedure. 3. Familiar with the Florida Guidelines of Practice for Lawyers who Represent Children in Pasco, Pinellas
8 Abuse and Neglect Cases. 4. Within the last 2 years, attended at least 10 hours of CLE on the legal needs of children, including 5 hours addressing the representation of children with special needs or disabilities, and 1 hr. on ethics related to the representation of children; must meet CLE requirements within 3 months of appointment to the registry. At least 1 year experience representing children in dependency cases within the last 5 years; or be currently supervised by an attorney who has at least 1 year of experience representing children in dependency cases; or have observed at least 30 hrs. of dependency hearings including 1 shelter hearing, 1 dependency adjudicatory hearing, 1 judicial review hearing, 1 hearing pursuant to Rule or Fla. R. Juv. P., and one TPR trial. Dependency Lists Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service Appeals of dependency proceedings conducted by a Dependency Attorney for Parent or an Attorney for Child. Note: in accordance with section (4)(b), Fla. Stat., appeals of proceedings conducted by an attorney for dependent children with special needs are handled by that attorney. Standard Guardianship Proceedings including: Developmental Disabilities Guardianship proceedings under Ch. 744, Fla. Stat. Attorney Ad Litem for estate Dependency Appeals: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous three years. 2. Familiar with the practice & procedure of dependency proceedings in the Sixth Circuit. 3. Appellate practitioner with at least three years exp. in dependency or appellate law. 4. An experienced & active practitioner in the field of appellate law or have experience in the appeal of at least five cases not limited to dependency or TPR cases. 5. Have completed within the last 12 months three hours of CLE in dependency law. 8 Guardianship Lists Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service Standard Guardianship: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous 3 years. 2. Familiar with practice and procedure of guardianship proceedings in the Sixth Circuit. Pasco, Pinellas 3. Experienced trial practitioner who has represented clients in no fewer than fifteen (15) guardianship proceedings. 4. Have completed within the last 12 months three hours of guardianship CLE. 5. Have completed eight hours of continuing legal education in guardianship law or have served as an attorney of record for guardians for three or more years. Emergency Guardianship proceedings, including: Adult Protective Services Substance abuse assessment (Marchman Act) Mental Health (Baker Act) Tuberculosis Victims Emergency Guardianship: Meet the requirements for the Standard Guardianship List, plus: Certify familiarity with statutory and case law for the following proceedings and certify competency to provide representation in the following proceedings: Chapter 415 for Adult Protective Services; the Marchman Act; the Baker Act; Chapter 392 for victims of tuberculosis; Chapter 744 & 765 and Fla. R. Prob Health Care Advance Directives; and Chapter 384 for victims of sexually transmitted diseases. Pasco, Pinellas
9 Healthcare Adv. Directives Sexually Transmissible Disease Victims Guardianship Appeals Guardianship Appeals: 1. Member in good standing with The Florida Bar for the previous 3 years. 2. Familiar with practice and procedure of guardianship proceedings in the Sixth Circuit. 3. Experienced appellate practitioner who has represented clients in no fewer than 5 appeals. 4. Have completed within the last 12 months three hours of guardianship CLE. 5. Have completed eight hours of CLE in guardianship law or have served as an attorney of record for guardians for three or more years. Other Registry List Name and Qualifications Geographic Service No standards set. Chief Judge will analyze type of case involved and use exigent circumstance authority to appoint appropriately qualified member of The Florida Bar. Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (50 App. U.S.C.A. 521 (b)(2)). Require plaintiff to pay $ fee. If plaintiff indigent, JAC to pay. Updated Attachment A June 29,
10 JUSTICE ADMINISTRATIVE COMMISSION REGISTRY FOR CHILDREN WITH CERTAIN SPECIAL NEEDS Bar No. First Name Last Name Circuit Patricia Alten Erin K. Barnett 6 Pinellas Thomas J. Biniak Eric P. Boles Nancy L. Browder Cynthia Bryant 6 Pinellas Larry Cangro Melissa A. Cordon Lorieann M. Cox Ronald Frankel Keith J. Ganobsik William E. Gottfried Jonathan E. Hackworth Julia W. Knight Heather M. Madigan Bowdre M. McAlister Ann Martino Price Melanie Quattrone 6 Pasco Jessica L. Rae Amanda Adel Riyad Jaime Rodriguez Girgenti Donna Rose Stephen P. Russell John E. Tuthill Lana Zabriskie Sixth Circuit Administrative Order PA/PI-CIR - Attachment B 10
*This is a guest post by researcher, David Claerr. David has posted on here several times some very interesting posts! Be sure and check them out in the search bar on the right. His links are below*
In a remote region of the Lava Badlands of Idaho, an intrepid researcher and his assistant were was working their way deep into a lava-tube cave system The lava tube formed a narrow, twisting crawlspace, with obstacles of rock and debris that made progress painfully difficult. The passage barely afforded room for an average man to crawl through.
But at what appeared to be the end of the cave, and after squeezing through some stalactites that were crowded, the two researchers made a discovery of the skeletal remains of a large bird-like creature, about the size of an ostrich. Some of the desiccated remnants of cartilage and tendons remained attached to the bone and dehydrated. There appeared to be no feathers of any kind in the lava tube. They photographed the carcass from several angles*. Below is a picture of the carcass in its entirety. (Note that is no head or feet on this specimen.)
Photo by Don Monroe
Identification of the carcass from photographs has apparently proved difficult, even for ornithologists at the university level. (see end of post where their responses are listed for all to see).
Some tentatively identified the remains variously as ostrich, emu or even trumpeter swan! Many others dismissed responding all together.
But let's examine the following comparisons that I have made from side-by side photos of the skeletal remains of these birds:
OSTRICH "CHICKOSAURUS"
EMU "CHICKOSAURUS"
TRUMPETER SWAN "CHICKOSAURUS"
Several years later, the same researcher returned to the lava cave with two other researchers to document the find and retrieve tissue samples for analysis. In a strange paradoxical twist, it appeared that another similar carcass was found in a different location of the tube! The newer find was in a similar state of desiccation, with the skin and muscle mostly absent. But the new specimen had the feet attached- and the foot had only two toes.
Tissue samples, consisting of a sequence of neck vertebrae and the trachea (or windpipe , as a common term) were retrieved (from prior find at teh end of the cave) and are currently pending further analysis; possibly DNA typing.
So, now for some additional analysis and speculation. Obviously we have two different specimens, because the first carcass did not have feet attached. As a disclaimer of sorts, it is worth noting that there are ostrich farms in the same general region as the Lava Badlands, although it is difficult to fathom how a domesticated ostrich could have escaped and wandered into this remote and inhospitable badlands, the terrain of which resembles the surface of the moon in some places. It is possible that a large predator could have dragged an already stripped ostrich kill into the cave system as stored provisions, to nibble off the remaining tissues in the colder months. This idea then begs the question: what type of being, carnivorous or omnivorous is capable of doing so? Perhaps a bear, cougar or a Sasquatch would have the strength and/or inclination. This scenario may fit for the second carcass.
But the first carcass appears to have a different anatomical configuration. Often caves preserve organic remains for hundreds of thousands of years if the setting is dry and cold. The lava-tube caves, formed perhaps about 15,000 years ago, fit this dry/cold criteria. Paleontologists and archaeologists often find remains of animals (and humanoids) dating from the present to the far distant past, in various stages of preservation or fossilization, in the same type of caves. If the first carcass was considerably more ancient, what could it possibly be?
One of the reasons that this topic interested me is that during my travels in the American Southwest, I have heard stories from Native Americans about sightings of creatures that resembled (as the varying descriptions go) giant roadrunner birds, mini-tyranosauruses , or feathered raptor-dinosaurs. These stories usually include that these creatures are very swift runners, hunting in packs. Most sightings are in the early mornings. The older Native Americans tended to describe the creatures with the Giant Roadrunner analogy, perhaps since they had less exposure to the media presentations on dinosaur-related topics or because that description is a more accurate eye-witness account.
Granted, now we enter the gray areas of speculation. In the more recent geological past, going back as far as the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, among the many species of megafauna in North America were giant, flightless carnivorous birds. (Indeed there are many stories in folklore and legend from peoples all around the world of encounters with these giants, often involving an epic struggle with the hero of the tale.)
Skeletal remains of ancient creatures are actually very rare. But there are several specimens of a fairly well-known genus of large predatory birds. Some of the mostly complete remains date as recently as 1.8 million years ago. This would make those flightless raptors contemporary with early humans. And even today, there is a smaller species of bird (the 80 cm-tall seriema) that is the closest known relative of the ancient raptors. So let us perform some more comparative anatomical analysis with illustrations and photographs. (The illustrations are by the author.) The most complete reconstructions of the ancient flightless raptors are depicted below:
The two ancient raptors in the illustration above are considerably older than the original Chickosaurus specimen, which would presumably be, at the oldest about 15,000 years. But note the strikingly close anatomical configuration between the smaller Patagornis (ostrich-sized) and the Chickosaurus.
Could it be possible that a flightless, carnivorous raptor-bird roamed the America West as recently as the last Ice Age? Could they be descendants of the more ancient Patagornis? Could these birds still roam the remote regions of the American Southwest, as related in many Native Americans tales?
Perhaps any or all of these possibilities could be true. There are many living fossils extant today, such as the well-known horseshoe crab, the coelacanth (a primitive fish), crocodiles and many insects such as the fig wasp, which have remained in the same anatomical state for millions of years.
If there was such a raptor alive and well during the last Ice Age, what would it look like?
The author, David Claerr, provides this rendition
It is important to note that there are no remains yet recovered of the original Chickosaurus, which was apparently found in a more remote area of the cave, or at the very least another location altogether, than the second specimen. So, until we have some specimen samples of the original discovery's remains, the nature of the original carcass will continue to be a perplexing mystery. Was the Chickosaurus actually a Terror Bird?
*Related copy photos courtesy of Don Monroe. Used with permission. Copyrights apply.
LINK TO PRIOR CHICKOSAURUS POST
About researcher and author of this post, David Claerr: David's Books David's Art
ADDENDUM
From Blogger Sharon Day (below accounting of poor responses for identifying the carcass)
- HERE ARE REPLIES FROM UNIVERSITIES AND MUSEUMS THUS FAR -
FAIL! - Idaho Museum of Natural History/ISU -
Our paleontologists identifies it as a trumpeter swan.
(Note from take another look above at trumpeters swan's delicate wing bones, how about the leg bones compared to the substantial bones of chickosaurus, not to mention the rib cage differences - did their paleontologist actually look at this???)
IGNORED - Colorado University Museum - no response
FAIL! - Cornell Lab of Ornithology - So far Ive received a deafening silence from both the curator of the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates, and from another staff member who is usually all about bone-sleuthing. I checked in with the former this morning and he said nothing occurred to him at first glance, but that he would take another look. (No response after)
FAIL! - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Connecticut - Im sorry but I have no real knowledge of skeleton identification. Id suggest contacting someone at a museum with a major collection as they are likely to have the relevant expertize. (Look at the dept this came from)
IGNORED - Arizona State University - no response
SOME DIALOGUE/FAILED ANSWER - Burke Museum, Washington - That is a pretty interesting find! My guess is that it was brought into the cave by a non-human predator or scavenger. But Im copying my ornithology colleagues here who will know more than me, and maybe can also ID the bird... That is a very large bird. Not many options other than a swan.
IGNORED Cal Academy - no response
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.
Life and Art Along the L Train
Saturday, October 22, 10am - 5:30pm
Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.
This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49
For a complete prospectus, email: jaconet@aol.com
The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.
#
I'm hoping that by now urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum -- who's also the Queens borough historian -- needs no introduction to readers, and if he does, just click on the tag below. As I've noted, Jack's wide-ranging tours around NYC (I've toured all five boroughs except Staten Island with him), with their emphasis on the evolving forces of urban geography, have done more than I could tell to enable me to see how and why the city has developed and continues to develop.One of Jack's choice tour modes is to devote an entire day to a single subway line, usually involving a half-dozen off-the-subway mini-walking tours along the route, giving urban gadders a sense of how variously the urban fabric both absorbed and was shaped by the line. He's probably best-known for what he calls his "signature" tour, "The World of the #7 Train," showcasing the diversity of what may be the world's most "international" rail line. But with Jack I've also toured the J train (from Lower Manhattan across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn and then Queens) and the Brighton line in Brooklyn (revisiting Howie's and my old lifeline into "the City").Now, as I've noted here previously, Jack is taking on the L train, in advance of the year-and-a-half shutdown of its connection from Williamsburg to Manhattan, to make possible desperately needed reconstruction and repair of damage caused by the ravages of time and Superstorm Sandy.: "Obviously, it isn't going to be possible to do this tour again at least until the L line reopens, and even then, who knows? So if this sounds like something you might be interested in, now is the time to get on board. At last word from Jack, there's still space, but since we're talking about this coming Saturday, you need to contact Jack ASAP, either by e-mail or by phone (if you e-mail me at, I'll send you the number).
Labels: Brooklyn, Jack Eichenbaum, New York City, Urban Gadabout
Xiaomi Mi Max Prime Edition Launched at Rs. 19,999, Availability Starts October 17 News oi -Vigneshwar
As promised, the Chinese handset maker Xiaomi has launched the Mi Max Prime smartphone powering the Snapdragon 652 SoC ahead of the diwali festival. Moreover, this smartphone will go on sale for three days starting on October 17th on a flash sale basis with discounts.
The recently launched Mi Max Prime is another variant of Mi Max, which was launched a few days back in the Indian market. Moving on, the difference between two smartphones is a processor, which is Snapdragon 652 SoC, 4GB RAM and 128GB inbuilt memory under the hood. Besides, everything is same on the spec sheet.
SEE ALSO: Get Free Gifts on Smartphones This Dasara and Diwali Season!
Reiterating the specifications, the Mi Max Prime comes with 6.44-inch Full HD IPS 2.5D curved glass display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Moreover, it has 1000 : 1 contrast ratio, 72% NTSC color gamut and a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection from scratches!
Besides 128GB inbuilt storage, you can also expand the storage through MicroSD card slot. On the software front, this smartphone comes shipped with MIUI 8 on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.
Xiaomi Mi 5c with E-Ink Display Leaks Via Photos: Here's What We Can Expect
Talking about the imaging factor, this smartphone has 16MP rear camera with dual tone LED flash, PDAF and F/2.0 aperture. On the front, the Mi Max Prime flaunts a 5MP selfie camera with 85-degree wide angle lens and f/2.0 aperture as well.
In terms of connectivity, the Mi Max Prime supports 4G LTE with VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4 / 5GHz) MIMO, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS + GLONASS. Just like the Mi Max , this smartphone measures 7.5mm thickness and weighs around 203grams as well.
SEE ALSO: 5 Benefits of Buying Apple iPhone 7/ 7 Plus under Reliance Jio Contract
Moreover, it also has the fingerprint sensor and infrared sensor also to act as a universal remote control. The Xiaomi Mi Max Prime is powered by a 4850mAh battery, which claims to give up to 14 hours of juice on a single charge.
Besides, Xiaomi will also hold Rs. 1 flash sale every day starting from October 17th to 19th every day 2PM. In this sale, you can get your hands on Redmi 3S Prime, Mi Bluetooth speaker, Redmi Note 3 , 20,000mAh Mi Power Bank, Mi 4 and Mi Band 2.
Also, you will also get Rs. 100, Rs. 200 and Rs. 500 discount coupons for smartphones and other accessories from 10am to 10pm till October 16th. For more information, you can head on to Mi India stores.
Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals
Best Mobiles in India
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'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.
Ecuador Cuts Wikileaks Head's Web Access Over Election Meddling
RFE/RL October 18, 2016
Ecuador's government said it temporarily restricted internet access for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, because it opposed the group's meddling in the U.S. election.
Wikileaks's web sites have carried numerous leaks of the private e-mails of top U.S. Democratic party officials recently -- leakswhich have been traced by U.S. intelligence officials and private experts to Russian hackers and which U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has blamed on the Russian government.
Assange has lived in Ecuador's London embassy since mid-2012 to escape Western law enforcement action. WikiLeaks said that Assange lost connectivity over the weekend shortly after it published Clinton's private speeches to Goldman Sachs.
The Ecuadoran government took responsibility for the cut-off late on October 18, saying it wanted to distance itself from WikiLeaks' decision to publish documents impacting the U.S. election, which it said was entirely Wikileaks' responsibility.
"Ecuador, exercising its sovereign right, has temporarily restricted access to part of its communications systems in its U.K. Embassy," the Ecuadoran Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"The government of Ecuador respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states. It does not interfere in external electoral processes, nor does it favor any particular candidate," it said.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has publicly supported Clinton over her opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has reveled in the numerous damning Wikileaks of Democratic e-mails showing internal party struggles and highlighting Clinton vulnerabilities.
"For the good of the United States and the world...I would like Hillary to win," Correa told Russia Today last month, adding that Clinton is someone who "I know personally and appreciate very much."
Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador's leftist regime after a British court ordered him extradited to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case involving two female supporters.
WikiLeaks said it activated "contingency plans" after Assange got disconnected from the Web, and Ecuador said that its cut-off did not stop the group from continuing its "journalistic activities."
On October 18, Wikileaks' Twitter feed released another tranche of e-mails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, suggesting that the group's ability to publish had not been compromised.
Podesta has blamed the extensive leaks of his e-mails on Russia and said he was told by the FBI that the breach is part of its investigation into Russian hacking of the U.S. election. Wikileaks has not said where it got the e-mails.
Shortly after Ecuador cut Assange's web link, Wikileaks charged that the United States had pressured the South American country to rein in Assange -- a charge denied by the United States as well as Ecuador, which said pointedly that it "does not cede to pressures from other countries."
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby dismissed Wikileaks' charge. "While our concerns about Wikileaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary [John] Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down Wikileaks is false."
With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/ecuador- cuts-wikileaks-founder-assange-web-access-over-us- election-meddling-clinton-trump/28062176.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.
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Hanscom looks to leverage industry to improve air picture
By Patty Welsh, 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs / Published October 18, 2016
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. (AFNS) -- A program office at Hanscom Air Force Base is working to improve and upgrade a system that provides comprehensive air surveillance and defense with a recent request for information and industry days.
The Battle Control Systems Fixed, or BCS-F, provides a comprehensive air picture for North America and allows air battle managers to execute command and control missions. Officials are looking for options to modify the system, including processing of new data sets, such as the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, ADS-B.
"With the current BCS, we get multiple feeds to create the air picture, and when we integrate ADS-B, we'll get information from the (Federal Aviation Administration) that would improve accuracy and details about an aircraft," said 1st Lt. Dylan Byrd, a launch deputy project manager. "For instance, if we saw a stuck track, we'd have the ability to pull up the emitter category of the aircraft to see if it's a helicopter instead of tasking resources to get a visual confirmation."
ADS-B is part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, and program office personnel will continually be looking at NextGen capabilities. NextGen is a massive initiative between federal partners to modernize America's air transportation system, and according to documentation developed by the FAA, it involves a shift to satellite-based and digital technology.
Additional work includes updating capabilities such as tactical display framework, and functions such as alerts and track history.
"We want to ensure we keep the functions the system has today, but we want to see if we can improve and update them alongside the new abilities ADS-B can bring in, especially if we can get the information seven to 12 times faster," Byrd said.
Another system capability the program office is looking to enhance is updating what is called the Correlator Tracker's Earth Model to a more accurate model, known as Earth Centered Earth Fixed.
"Currently, BCS takes multiple sources of data in and assigns them different values, including calculating position and displaying on the screen for the operator," Byrd said. "However, BCS thinks the world is a rectangle with fixed boundaries and we are trying to eliminate those boundaries. With air defense, the further out you can go and the further out you can look, understand, see and pull data in, the faster you can react and the faster you can provide an updated air picture."
The program office held industry days at the beginning of August to determine industry interest and capability. Fifteen companies attended, demonstrating significant industry interest.
"We're looking to industry to see if there is something in existence that brings in the new sensor information that is also able to accommodate what BCS already does today," Byrd said. "We're also looking to see if anyone can bring an open architecture."
Once the program office has finished market research, they are planning to look toward release of a request for proposal toward the end of fiscal year 2017.
As the BCS-F is a North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, system, the program office at Hanscom AFB is working a project arrangement with Canada.
"We're working with them to share the cost of development and bringing in their resources, such as engineers, right from the start," said Capt. Jeremi Viloria, a launch project manager. "ADS-B is their number-one requirement as it will improve their reach, allowing them to get surveillance in areas they weren't able to before."
And while all this work is going on, the program office is continuing efforts to sustain and maintain the current BCS-F with a contractor logistics support contract. This effort will bring in new functionality such as Mode 5, providing better information for the operators.
"This enhancement reduces ID track swaps, extends effective coverage and reduces target dropouts, which benefit our operators and provide some of the highest quality data available for the assets that matter most in a command and control environment," Byrd said.
He added the program office is looking to open up the system bit by bit to enable greater competition.
"The program office is pursuing its first full and open competition of contractor logistics support for the BCS-F fielded system," Byrd said. "We believe this competition will leverage industry strengths and also gives an opportunity for new contractors to provide the government with alternative methods to sustain this high-demand, critically important system at its 99.98 percent operational availability rate."
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Admiral: Networked Threats Pose 'Significant Challenge' to Western Hemisphere
By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2016 Networked threats in Latin America pose a danger to U.S. national security and erode stability in the region, the commander of U.S. Southern Command said here today.
Addressing these threats goes beyond stopping drug trafficking, the smuggling of weapons and other illicit goods, and human trafficking, Navy Adm. Kurt W. Tidd told the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a discussion on maritime security.
"Instead, it's the amorphous, adaptable and networked threats enabling these illicit flows that keep me up at night," he said. "Transregional and transnational threat networks -- and not the commodities that they move -- are the real threat to our nation's security and the region's stability."
While Southcom's focus had largely been in the last decades on combating the flow of drugs, the command is instead lifting its sights off a singular threat to take a networked view of the security environment, Tidd explained.
Whether extremist, criminal or even state-sponsored, the networked threats are a "significant challenge facing every nation in the Western Hemisphere," he said.
Some networks, for example, smuggle small arms via maritime conveyances or traffic cocaine, while violent extremist networks spread influence, and move money, weapons and people, he said. Human trafficking networks smuggle desperate people from all over the world into the United States who are seeking employment or trying to escape conflict, he said.
"While other networks specialize at moving individuals with questionable backgrounds, worrisome intentions, and possible ties to terrorism into the United States via a long and circuitous route, sometimes starting in South America, up through Central America and Mexico, and into the United States," he said.
Some, he said, even possess the expertise to build semi- and fully-submersible watercraft that are can travel unassisted and undetected.
Combating the threat networks requires a new way of thinking, he said. He called for strengthened bonds among U.S. government agencies, as well as increased regional maritime cooperation, including in information sharing and multilateral exercises.
Regional Security, Global Commitments
In the question-and-answer session of the hour-long discussion, Tidd noted the contributions of Central and South American nations to regional and global security.
The United States and Colombia, for example, have had a special relationship for more than two decades, he pointed out. Colombia, he noted, is very close to achieving a peaceful conclusion to its more than five-decades-long civil war.
In addition, Brazil has and continues to make notable contributions to global peace and security, he said, including leading the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti, and commanding the maritime task force of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
"This is a country that has significant capabilities and is willing to shoulder the responsibilities of being a security leader," he said.
Chile and Peru have significant capabilities and are working closely in support of peace and security, he said. In addition, El Salvador has deployed a helicopter detachment to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, he said.
There are a number of countries in the region, he said, that have significant capabilities and are interested in being constructive partners on a global scale, he said.
'Can't Afford to Ignore' Russian Presence in Region
Russia is reinvesting a significant amount in historical relationships it has had in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Tidd said in response to a question about Russian operations in the region.
"I think we can't afford to ignore their presence," he said. "You look at Russia and you look at what are their vital national interests. It's difficult to imagine that they have any vital national interest here in the Western Hemisphere."
He said he finds it troubling Russia has engaged in an aggressive propaganda campaign to spread the narrative that the United States is not a reliable partner in Latin America. Russia is engaged in a "competition for influence," he said.
The United States is concerned about the region, he said, pointing to the U.S. response in Haiti to the recent devastation from Hurricane Matthew.
"I think it's very, very noteworthy that when you look at the response to Haiti, we had at one point in time 12 helicopters -- heavy lift and medium lift helicopters -- flying vital aid, meeting the needs of the Haitian people and I didn't see any Russian helicopters out there," Tidd told the forum.
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Americans Advancing on Mosul with Iraqis and Kurds
By Carla Babb October 18, 2016
More than 100 American troops are accompanying Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces in their push to take back the city of Mosul from Islamic State forces.
Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Tuesday the Americans are assisting about 10,000 Kurds, 18,000 Iraqi Security Forces and another couple thousand Iraqi police as they face an Islamic State force that has been hunkered down in the second-largest Iraqi city for more than two years.
Estimates of IS fighters in Mosul range from about 3,000 to 5,000 fighters, but U.S. officials say Mosul is home to greater skilled IS fighters who are more dedicated to the fight and more ideologically zealous.
Davis said the more than 100 U.S. forces are embedded with Iraqi Security Forces at the division headquarters level. They also are embedded with Kurdish and Iraqi counterterrorism commandos at levels considered below the division level.
U.S. officials have stressed that embedded American forces will remain with Iraqi and peshmerga counterparts who are involved in coordinating and decision making, rather than at the frontlines of combat. But U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said U.S. troops are still in harm's way.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces say they have retaken a dozen villages outside Mosul, and Davis said there are four major points from which the offensive is pushing into the city. Kurdish peshmerga units are advancing on Kurdish villages from two points east of Mosul, with Iraqi Security Forces following behind. ISF forces are advancing from the north from the Qayarrah West base, and another ISF team is pushing into Mosul from the southeast.
Much of the west is still controlled by Islamic State, prompting U.S. officials to suggest that the IS leadership may look to flee west to Raqqah should Mosul start to fall. These officials say they have so far seen some IS family members flee west, but they have not seen foreign fighters coming in or out of the city recently.
The long-awaited offensive, backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition and involving Sunni tribal forces and Shiite militias, remains on the outskirts of Mosul.
IS fighters have burned tires and oil to obscure their movements, but officials say the tactic hasn't degraded air support by the coalition, which carried out four strikes against IS forces in and around Mosul on Monday.
President Barack Obama, speaking Tuesday in Washington, said Mosul will be a "difficult fight," but he expressed confidence that IS will be defeated in the city. "Perhaps a million civilians are still living there, so in addition to rooting out ISIL, our focus jointly is on the safety and humanitarian aid for civilians who are escaping the fight. That's going to be a top priority for both our governments," he added, using an acronym for Islamic State.
East of Mosul, the Kurdish peshmerga forces advanced quickly, with U.S. officials saying Tuesday that the Kurds had seen less resistance than anticipated.
Iraqi armed forces to the city's south have been making slower progress because they have more ground to cover, having begun their operations 40 kilometers from the edge of Mosul.
On the first day of the offensive, Iraqi regulars along with Shiite militiamen overran three villages. Their target Tuesday is the village of Zawiya.
Kurdish President Masoud Barzani has declared that "Mosul will be liberated," adding that his fighters are doing their best to keep the city from becoming like war-battered Aleppo in Syria.
Iraqi officials say there will be no sustained airstrikes on the city center to avoid high casualties among the more than 1 million civilians still in the city.
This is the largest and most complex military operation in Iraq since U.S. combat forces left the country five years ago. It will involve Iraqi-led troops, Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi police, and Sunni and Shiite militias. However, it is raising concerns about the safety of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the area, and aid agencies are warning of a likely humanitarian crisis.
'Ahead of schedule'
A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition said Tuesday the operation is "on or ahead of schedule," and that the militants are not able to stop the Iraqi and Kurdish forces with small arms and improvised explosives.
While they can't stop the advances, they can slow them. Movement forward by all coalition forces is methodical, with commanders opting for caution as they come under mortar and sniper fire. On the southern front, Iraqi troops are moving painstakingly into the village of Abbas, which is larger than most of its neighbors. Pockets of IS militants have been mounting lightning attacks. Iraqi troops are also fearful of improvised bombs, which have been planted in the main thoroughfares.
In the east, there were conflicting reports about why some Kurdish peshmerga appeared to have paused their advance Tuesday. Some Kurdish commanders said they had done so to allow Iraqi forces, who are earmarked to enter the city, to move forward. Others said they were in the process of re-ordering their own units.
Spokesman Davis said that pauses would need to occur throughout the fight so that anti-IS forces could conduct clearing operations or wait for logistics.
"It would be absolutely crazy to suggest on day two that we're stalled already," Davis said.
Peshmerga commander Bakhtyar Sadeeq told VOA: "There is no halt in our operation. The peshmerga forces paused moving forward because we coordinate with the Iraqi military. We have achieved our goal in the first day. Now the Iraqi army will take it from there. In fact, Iraqi troops have made significant advances today."
There have been several reports of IS suicide bombers driving cars packed with explosives at their foes. Soon after the peshmerga offensive began early Monday with Kurdish troops moving over dirt mounds marking the frontline between them and IS fighters on the eastern or Khazir front, IS offered stiff resistance, trying to strike back with mortar fire and car bombs. Two cars driving at the Peshmerga were destroyed by airstrikes, but another managed to get close to the Kurds before being detonated, according to commanders.
Long fight expected
U.S. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the coalition's ground commander in Iraq, tamped down expectations of a quick victory at Mosul. "This may prove to be a long and tough battle, but the Iraqis have prepared for it and we will stand by them," he said.
The peshmerga Chief of General Staff, Jamal Iminiki, also cautioned reporters not to expect a rapid collapse of IS resistance.
IS militants have had plenty of time to prepare for the fight and have constructed elaborate defenses, including a network of tunnels, in the city.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Monday that U.S. troops are on the Mosul outskirts in a support role, but that "Iraqis are in the lead."
Monday and Tuesday, Iraqi planes continued to drop leaflets warning civilians in Mosul and outlying villages of the offensive, urging them to stay indoors and to avoid any IS positions, which may prove difficult, with IS fighters throughout the city.
The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs called on all participating forces to ensure the safety of civilians in Mosul, and Iraqi commanders say they are taking steps to help civilians escape.
Jamie Detmer and Sirwan Kajjo contributed to this report.
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Malnutrition Spikes in North Cameroon Amid Boko Haram Conflict
By Moki Edwin Kindzeka October 18, 2016
Aid agencies are sounding the alarm about severe food insecurity throughout northern Cameroon as a result of the Boko Haram conflict.
This month, 70 children suffering from malnutrition have needed medical attention at the Minawao refugee camp. However, says nurse Irene Mbarga, the hospital has limited resources to treat them.
The families are not able to provide enough food, she says, and malnutrition is making other health conditions worse.
Mbarga told VOA that about three quarters of the cases the hospital sees are related to malnutrition. When the hospital is running short on supplies, she says, the staff can only provide first aid.
The Minawao camp is home to more than 50,000 refugees, a majority of them women and children. More displaced people live in host communities.
Dr. Abdoul Mustapha of the Cameroon medical council in Mokollo, far northern Cameroon, says local residents also have been bringing their children to the refugee camp hospital. Local health clinics are not set up to deal with malnutrition.
The rate of simple malnutrition has increased from 7 percent last year to nearly 12 percent now, Mustapha says. Cases of severe acute malnutrition also are on the rise, signaling an emergency.
Cameroon's Ministry of Public Health and the United Nations say more than 100,000 children in northern Cameroon currently suffer from acute malnutrition.
This part of Cameroon was already grappling with high rates of chronic malnutrition, as much as 30 percent among children, before the Boko Haram conflict arrived in 2014. The mass displacement, including the influx of refugees from neighboring countries, has only made the situation worse. In addition, insecurity has made farming impossible in some areas, while herders have lost their animals to insurgents.
"The situation of malnutrition, or food insecurity, reflects not only the fact that we are not able to grow sufficient or enough food, but we do not have the access to that and we do not have sufficient means in order to maintain access to health services, in order to maintain and address young people when they have diarrhea, for example," said Barbara Sow, the Cameroon representative of the U.N. Fund for Population Assistance.
"So the challenge for the U.N. is making the link between a humanitarian response today, bringing it food so that young children and families can eat today, but making sure that they have the means by which tomorrow, they are not in the same position," she added.
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Tags: academic, philosophical
permalink
Many years back, when I had just moved to Montreal (a great city to meet some of the most fascinating minds in the world, a topic for another blog post), I met Dr. Costopoulos from the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. He mentioned some work he and his students have been doing simulating animal decision making using ice core data.
The premise is simple, particularly coming from a machine learning, optimization and genetic algorithms background: in an environment punctuated by slow, progressive changes followed by cataclistic changes in the opposite direction, individuals that track the enviromment better will overfit (and die). More inaccurate individuals will be the ones surviving long term.
I finally tracked the paper published behind this research: Xue JZ, Costopoulos A, Guichard F (2011) Choosing Fitness-Enhancing Innovations Can Be Detrimental under Fluctuating Environments. PLoS ONE 6(11): e26770. While it explicitly states their assumptions are too simplistic for human populations, the theoretical ground is sound: the best decision makers among human populations should have been wiped out during the rapid deglaciation periods (think woolly mammoth), some of them as recent as 20,000 years ago. This of course has many interesting implications, some I will discuss next.
Iraqi Troops Advance Toward Mosul as ISIL Tries to Hide Movements
By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2016 Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga security forces are working together as they advance along several axes to liberate Mosul, Iraq, from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant control, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, director of Pentagon press operations, told reporters today.
"The level of coordination and cooperation we have seen between the Kurds and the [Iraqi security forces] has been very good," Davis said. "They're working together very well, collaborating just the way we would want them to."
The U.S. military supports Iraq's counter-ISIL fight with a wide range of capabilities such as air support, artillery, intelligence, advisors and air controllers, he noted. "To be clear, the thousands of combat forces that are going to liberate Mosul are Iraqis," he added. "We have, to date, conducted tens of thousands of precision strikes to support Iraqi operations."
And while the U.S.-led coalition has trained and equipped more than 54,000 Iraqi forces, it will continue to focus on the enemy and work diligently to minimize any impact on innocent civilians, Davis emphasized.
"We can't predict how long it will take for the [Iraqi security forces] to defeat ISIL in Mosul, but we know we will succeed," he said, citing other towns and villages they have liberated from ISIL's grip since 2014.
ISIL Tries to Block Attacks
ISIL has lighted what Davis described as "obfuscation fires giant pits with tires and oil they light quickly to create big, thick black clouds of smoke to conceal their movements and positions [and] make it harder for coalition aircraft to see and target them."
The United States has seen reports of suicide bombers who try to attack the Iraqi forces as they move in, Davis said, as well as reports of civilians being forcibly dressed in Iraqi military uniforms and publicly executed for propaganda purposes by ISIL fighters.
While it's an ugly fight, Davis said, "we've seen very good progress in day one."
Long, Tough Battle Expected
And while a lot of movement must take place for the Iraqi forces to get into Mosul, Davis noted, "It is very much under way."
An estimated 10,000 Kurdish security forces and 18,000 Iraqi security forces arje involved in the effort, Davis said, and about 2,000 Iraqi federal police follow behind Iraqi fighters as towns and villages are cleared. Those numbers could increase as more Iraqis are trained, he noted.
On the high end, he said, the estimates of ISIL fighters in Mosul and around the surrounding Ninevah province could be as high as 5,000.
While the fight to liberate Mosul from ISIL's two-year stronghold is anticipated to be a long and tough battle, Davis said, the Iraqi security forces are ready for it adding, "We will stand by them," he added, "and we have given them the tools they need to succeed in this."
Tidd Cautions Nations to Watch ISIL
Navy Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, commander of U.S. Southern Command, told reporters at the Pentagon today that nations around the globe must be mindful that the ISIL caliphate ideology has proven to be "damaging, destructive and has created [an] enormous security problem in the Middle East."
"As it continues to morph and metastasize," he said, "I think all around the world we must all be mindful of where it might it pop up, and we must [work] with our security partners around the world [to] take steps to prevent that from happening."
The Southcom commander was in the nation's capital to attend a chiefs of defense conference with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford and his counterparts from more than 40 nations to discuss "the global possibility of what happens after Mosul -- what happens after the physical caliphate is reduced," he said.
The conference was to put in place a more watchful global network to share information on what potential threats might exist, Tidd said.
"Many of our partners around the region now recognize that in the aftermath of attacks by self-radicalized individuals from Brussels, Paris, Nice, Ankara, Orlando and San Bernardino, that phenomenon can pop up almost anywhere and with very, very little advance warning," Tidd said. "It is incumbent on literally all countries to recognize how that can happen, and to be able to share information as effectively as possible, so as we learn of potential sources of radicalization, we take steps that are consistent."
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UN aid agencies brace for possible displacement 'catastrophe' caused by military offensive in Mosul
18 October 2016 United Nations humanitarian agencies operating in Iraq are bracing for what could be a displacement catastrophe requiring the largest and most complex global response in 2016, in the wake of the military offensive under way to oust terrorists from Mosul, the country's second-largest city.
"Displacement is expected to start any minute now," Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva.
According to OCHA and other agencies, up to one million people may be forced from their homes due to the military operation against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh), of which 700,000 may be in need of shelter assistance and up to 200,000 may be displaced within the first two weeks of the operation.
UN relief officials described the situation as having the potential to be one of the worst-case scenarios requiring the largest and most complex humanitarian operation in the world in 2016, or a catastrophe resulting in one of the largest man-made displacement crises in recent years.
"Protection concerns for all those civilians are at the forefront of the preparations of the humanitarian community, and there are already protection monitoring teams on the ground," Mr. Laerke said.
He explained that preparations for the offensive have been going on for several months, and the UN has focused on preparing shelter in three priority areas south of Mosul, where the first displaced families are expected to be accommodated. More reception sites are under construction. Supplies including food, water and sanitation and household kits have been stockpiled in preparation. All this has been done with the collaboration of non-governmental organizations, he added.
"The UN has prepared as efficiently as possible with the available resources. The preparedness appeal is asking for $367 million, but it is not fully funded," he said.
William Spindler, the spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the agency is continuing to prepare shelter and other emergency assistance while appealing for more international funding.
"There are real fears that the offensive to retake Mosul could produce a humanitarian catastrophe resulting in one of the largest man-made displacement crises in recent years," he said. There are already 3.3 million displaced Iraqis approximately 10 per cent of the population.
Mr. Spindler said UNHCR has already opened five camps, ready to shelter 45,000 people. There are plans for a total of 11 camps to open in the coming weeks, with a capacity for 120,000 people. UNHCR and partners are ready to establish more camps quickly, but have been constrained by a lack of access to safe and suitable land from the Iraqi authorities and private landowners.
With the rainy season and winter approaching, the issue is becoming even more pressing. In addition, UNHCR will have 50,000 emergency shelter kits available for out of camp populations, covering a total of 300,000 people. There will also be 25,000 tents available for families living outside of camps, covering a further 150,000 people, he added.
If all planned activities are funded and ready, UNHCR will be able to provide shelter support for 570,000 people. So far, $75 million, or 39 per cent, out of UNHCR's response budget of $196.2 million, had been provided.
"The enormity of the potential displacement raises also considerable concerns about the protection of civilian populations," he said. "For example, some could be prevented from fleeing or could face restrictions of movement to safe areas and access to humanitarian assistance, he added.
Moreover, there are also risks of vulnerable populations facing exploitation and abuse, including possible heightened intercommunal and ethnic or religious tensions and conflicts, and family separations and detentions for security screening.
Civilians risk being caught in crossfire
Speaking by phone from Bagdad in Iraq, Thomas Lothar Weiss, the Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the country, said the Mosul campaign, which started yesterday, puts civilians at extreme risk from cross fire, snipers, and artillery barrage.
Tens of thousands of people could be trapped between the fighting lines or held as human shields, for which there have been precedents, in areas which have been recaptured from ISIL in the past weeks and months, he said.
"There is also a fear, based on some evidence, that ISIL might be using chemical weapons," he noted.
"The Mosul situation has the potential to be one of the worst case scenarios and is expected to be the largest and most complex humanitarian operation in the world in 2016," he said.
Based on plans by the Government, it is envisaged that a number of the internally displaced persons who make it out of Mosul will be resettled in emergency sites in secure locations in different corridors to the east and south-east of Mosul. Those are sites that can be established quicker than the regular camps and will include some basic services.
IOM has started the process which led to the identification of four emergency sites, which have a potential capacity of up to 150,000 persons, but still far from the 200,000 people who might be displaced during the first week of the military operation.
UNICEF warns of 'extreme risk' for children and families
Christophe Boulierac, spokesperson for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that more than half a million children and their families in Mosul would be at extreme risk in the coming weeks.
"Many children and their families could be forcibly displaced and trapped between fighting lines or caught in the cross-fire," he said, adding that UNICEF's major concerns relate to the protection of children during the military operation, the scale and pace of displacement and its impact on the agency's ability to deliver, and the protection of children and their access to services in the aftermath of the conflict.
UNICEF has already prepositioned enough water, showers, latrines and hygiene kits for over 150,000 people immediately, with plans to reach over 350,000 over the next few weeks. Mobile teams are on standby to care for the most critical cases of mental and physical trauma among children. Together with the Ministry of Health, UNICEF also has more than 50 teams on standby to start a vaccination campaign against polio and measles.
Mr. Boulierac stressed that UNICEF has called on all sides involved in the conflict to protect children and respect international humanitarian law so that children and their families can safely get through this intense period of violence. For Mosul specifically, UNICEF is asking for $43 million and has received $30 million so far.
Bettina Luescher, spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP), said that the agency has been scaling up its preparations. WFP has over 14,000 tons of family food rations in warehouses near Mosul, enough for a million people for one month, or around 200,000 families.
She said WFP also has immediate response rations for 240,000 people. Those can be used immediately by people who do not have cooking facilities. Once the families go into shelters with cooking facilities, they would get the monthly rations, she added.
Over the past months, WFP has already been helping over 90,000 people fleeing from places liberated from ISIL along the Mosul corridor. "There is no good information about what is happening inside Mosul and WFP is very concerned about it," she said. "Also, despite the preparations that have been underway for months, WFP is worried that the circumstances on the ground can make humanitarian access difficult."
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U.S. Appeals Court Boots Defense Lawyers In Magnitsky Money Fraud Case
Mike Eckel October 18, 2016
WASHINGTON -- A U.S. appeals court has disqualified lawyers for a company accused of laundering the proceeds of a massive Russian tax fraud, whose fallout led Washington to sanction numerous Russians and helped poison U.S.-Russian relations.
The ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on October 17 was an incremental but noteworthy development that effectively paralyzes the legal team defending the company, Prevezon, which U.S. prosecutors have linked to a Russian businessman.
The three-judge panel ruled that a lower court "abused its discretion" by refusing to disqualify the legal team, who previously worked with the investment fund Hermitage Capital. A whistleblowing lawyer working for Hermitage, Sergei Magnitsky, helped investigate the $230 million tax fraud before his death in a Russian jail in 2009.
Lawyers for Hermitage, owned by British-American investor William Browder, argued that the involvement of the lawyers from the U.S. firm Baker Hostetler on Prevezon's behalf posed a conflict of interest.
"This is a precedent-setting ruling which shows the legal profession that they cannot change sides from representing victims to representing perpetrators of the same crime without grave professional consequences," Browder, a vocal Kremlin foe, told RFE/RL in an email.
U.S. prosecutors have accused Prevezon of buying luxury real estate in Manhattan using some of the proceeds from the $230 million tax fraud that first came to light in 2008.
Based on Magnitsky's research, Hermitage went public with details of the fraud, saying Russian law enforcement and tax officials colluded to illegally use companies it had owned to steal the massive sum from Russian coffers.
Magnitsky later died while in pretrial detention on fraud charges that his supporters said were retribution for blowing the whistle on the scam. His friends and family say he was tortured while incarcerated, and a Council of Europe investigation concluded that the conditions leading up to his death amounted to torture.
Russian Retaliation
Russian authorities later convicted Magnitsky posthumously of fraud, while a Russian court also convicted Browder in absentia on similar charges.
With intense lobbying by Browder, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in 2012 bearing Magnitsky's name, penalizing those accused of complicity in the tax fraud and his death, as well as other alleged Russian rights abusers. After President Barack Obama signed the bill into law, the Kremlin retaliated by banning Americans from adopting Russian children and sanctioning several top U.S. officials.
In 2013, U.S. prosecutors moved to seize Prevezon's assets as part of a civil asset forfeiture, a legal tool that allows the seizure of property if it is shown to be connected to criminal activity.
U.S authorities said as recently as last year that Prevezon's owner was Denis Katsyv, whose father is the former top transportation official for the Moscow region.
Both the company and Katsyv himself have denied accusations of involvement with the stolen funds. He is not facing criminal charges in either the United States or Russia, as he pointed out in a February 2014 affidavit, nor has he been sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act.
Michael Mukasey, a former U.S. attorney general who is now a private lawyer helping Prevezon with the appeal, said the defense team was disappointed by the ruling, and that no decisions had been made yet about whether to appeal further.
"We are helping the client consider its options," Mukasey told RFE/RL in an e-mailed statement.
The Magnitsky Act, which has publicly hit 39 Russians with sanctions and an unspecified number secretly, became law just months after Vladimir Putin returned to the Russian presidency. The Kremlin has repeatedly cited it as a major irritant for U.S.-Russian relations.
Earlier this month, in announcing the suspension of a symbolic plutonium disposal agreement with the United States, Putin cited removal of the Magnitsky Act as a precondition for resuming the deal and other agreements.
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-u-s-boots-defense- lawyers-magnitsky-case/28061649.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.
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Four Malaysian mobile operators say they have agreed to use the governments state-owned 5G network, paving the way for an increased rollout in the country.
The Hanoi Stock Exchange has allowed the company's shares to be traded on a market for unlisted companies.
Hanoi Beer, Alcohol and Beverage JSC., better known as Habeco, has been given the green light from the Hanoi Stock Exchange to list 231.8 million shares on the UPCoM market for unlisted companies.
Habeco shares with the face value of VND10,000 (45 U.S. cents) will be traded on the market under the code BHN. The UPCoM market allows Vietnam to better regulate over-the-counter trading and gives newly listed companies enough time to get ready for the main stock exchanges.
The listing will value the brewery at VND2.3 trillion ($104 million) based on market capitalization.
Habeco is the market leader in the north and the third largest brewer in Vietnam, after Sabeco and Heineken-owned Vietnam Brewery Limited.
In terms of market share, Sabeco, as the dominant player, controls 40 percent of the local beer market while Habeco comes second with 20 percent. They are now 90 percent and 82 percent owned by the state respectively.
The government's plan to divest from Sabeco and Habeco has been on and off for several years. They are among the few state-owned companies that perform extremely well.
Foreign investors always have eyes on the two breweries as they are attracted by the strong growth of Vietnams beer market, one of the biggest in Asia. The Vietnam Beer Alcohol Beverage Association forecast the country will see its annual beer output increase by 25 percent by 2020.
The government requires state-owned enterprises to list for 90 days on the UPCoM market after becoming a public company. The next step is to list the shares on the main bourses.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry, which is holding a major stake of 81.79 percent at Habeco, said Sabeco will follow in Habecos footsteps in the first quarter next year.
Successful exits from Sabeco and Habeco will bring about $2 billion more into the nation's coffers.
Unlike most other countries, Vietnam treats IPOs and listings as two different processes that are sometimes separated by years. Habeco in fact had its initial public offering in 2008.
In its new privatization drive, the govermnment has promised strong actions to speed up the process of selling and listing shares.
Related news:
>Vietnam to rake in $7 billion from massive divestment push
>Beer, big bucks and babes: tapping into Vietnam's thirst
>Vietnam's fresh privatization push puts local firms on edge
Early childhood education is so vital to Ben and Betty Davenport that they donated $1 million to improve child care training programs at four community colleges in Southside and Southwest Virginia.
Its so important, Ben Davenport said. During the first three years of life, 85 percent of the brain is developed.
Without being encouraged to have a love for learning, reading and other skills during those years, a child enters kindergarten at a disadvantage that could affect their whole lives, Davenport said.
We would like to see our population get smarter, Davenport said, adding that the way to do that is to have well-trained staff that can teach that love of learning at every childcare center.
The money donated by the Pittsylvania County couple will establish the Davenport Early Childhood Development Institute not a brick-and-mortar building, but an initiative that combines the forces of the community colleges with the Virginia Early Childhood Foundations initiatives, such as Smart Beginnings and the Virginia Star Quality Initiative.
It is basically a workforce training initiative, Ben Davenport said, to improve early childhood education training at community colleges so child care centers can better prepare preschoolers for kindergarten.
Ann Stratton, executive director of Smart Beginnings of Danville and Pittsylvania County, called the Davenport Early Childhood Development Institute important, noting that it will make further education possible for child care workers at most centers, from small, home-based providers to those held in churches and privately-owned childcare centers. It will teach the people who work with children to understand child development and how to interact with children appropriately so they are engaged in learning from an early age.
It will yield new interest in child care and preschool leadership in the region, Stratton said.
Child care is so much more than babysitting, Martha Tucker, associate professor of early childhood and reading at Danville Community Colleges Families First Childrens Center, said. If you read to children daily, they will love to read books, and if you engage them, they will learn to love learning.
Tucker said about 60 percent of the child care centers in the Danville area are involved in the Virginia Star Quality Initiative, which rates centers on how effectively they are interacting with their students. It also earns the centers extra points in those evaluations if staff has been getting the training they need to be more effective teachers.
But other areas in Southside and Southwest Virginia do not have the same level of participation in the Virginia Star Quality Initiative.
Were an anomaly; the other three districts have nowhere near 60 percent participation, Davenport said.
Davenport said Smart Beginnings of Danville and Pittsylvania County has tracked how well kindergarten students are for school for the past five years. Five years ago, he said, 30 percent of the children entering local school systems were not ready for kindergarten.
Now that number is less than 14 percent, Davenport said. Wed like to see that spread all over the region.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced the Davenport Early Childhood Development Institute during at a 50th anniversary celebration of the Virginia Community College System in Richmond on Saturday.
The community colleges that will benefit from the Davenport Early Childhood Development Institute are Danville Community College, Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville, Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke and New River Community College in Dublin.
Soldiers look for a helicopter that crashed in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province on Tuesday. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tuan
More than 400 people joined the 24-hour long search mission in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.
A helicopter that crashed in southern Vietnam during a training session on Tuesday has been found, together with the bodies of all the three pilots.
Local military officers confirmed at around 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday that they had found the aircraft, badly damaged, in a valley by Bao Quan Mountain in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province.
The valley is more than 500 meters above sea level, and around 90 kilometers to the southeast of Ho Chi Minh City. It is right next to Dinh Mountain, which was originally believed to be the crash site.
The two pilot trainees, Sub-lieutenants Dang Dinh Duy and Nguyen Van Tung, and their teacher, Captain Duong Le Minh, did not survive the crash.
Their bodies were intact. The aircraft was badly broken, an officer said.
They were flying an EC130 of Vietnam Helicopter Corporation on a training session when the helicopter crashed at around 8:30 a.m., less than half an hour after takeoff.
Ba Ria-Vung Tau authorities and the Ministry of National Defense sent more than 400 people and three helicopters to look for them. The search and rescue mission was hindered by the local mountainous terrain and heavy rains on Tuesday night.
The Eurocopter EC130 is a single engine light helicopter originally launched and produced by the Eurocopter Group, now Airbus Helicopters.
The model has various safety features, including flight data recorders and crash-worthy seats.
The safety record of Vietnams civilian aviation sector is generally good, but over the past years there have been several incidents involving military aircraft.
In late August, a Czechoslovakia-era jet training aircraft crashed into a paddy field on the fringes of the central province of Phu Yen, killing one pilot and critically injuring one passer-by on the ground.
Last June, Vietnams Air Defense suffered a double loss in one week. On June 14, a Su-30MK2 Vietnamese fighter crashed off the central province of Nghe An. Only one of the two pilots made it out alive. Two days later, a CASA-212-40 with nine people on board went missing while searching for the Su-30MK2.
In January 2015, four people were killed when a Vietnamese military helicopter, a UH-1 and known as a Huey, crashed minutes after it set off from Ho Chi Minh City, an army official told AFP.
In July 2014, 19 people died and two others were injured when a Russian-made Mi-171 chopper crashed in Hanoi during a training exercise.
In 2008, five Vietnamese air force officers were killed when their twin-engine light transport aircraft crashed on the outskirts of Hanoi, according to AFP.
Related news:
> Helicopter crashes in southern Vietnam during training session
> Military aircraft crash kills 1 in central Vietnam
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Destination Downtown South Boston is one of five groups in Virginia receiving a total of $300,000 in Virginia Community Business Launch grants announced Tuesday by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
The towns of South Boston and Altavista, as well as the cities of Bristol, Franklin and Waynesboro are each receiving $60,000 in grant funding.
The program helps communities incentivize and foster local entrepreneurship.
Each community will receive $60,000 in funding to support their respective development strategies.
The SoBo Start Up Program is a six-week entrepreneur boot camp program, culminating in a business competition where participants vie for a total of $60,000 in grant funds to start or expand their businesses in downtown South Boston, said Destination Downtown Executive Director Tamyra Vest.
The SoBo Start Up Program is part of the Governors Virginia Community Business Launch initiative to help localities with their efforts to have a more robust entrepreneurial environment.
Small business development and entrepreneurism are key components to building and diversifying the new Virginia economy, said McAuliffe.
The localities selected for this funding have articulated a clear vision for how to develop and grow a small-business ecosystem in their communities. The Community Business Launch program will help these cities and towns turn those visions into reality by helping entrepreneurs get their start and begin creating the next generation of homegrown Virginia jobs.
The CBL program starts with a communitys unique vision for its future and then uses a local business competition to find and foster the entrepreneurs that connect with that vision.
CBL provides the tools to effectively prepare multiple entrepreneurs to operate successful businesses in a downtown or neighborhood commercial district and allows them to compete for funding to launch their new endeavor.
The CBL program has been a smart tool for building strong entrepreneurial ecosystems, said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Todd Haymore.
Not only are we providing much-needed funding to budding entrepreneurs, but we are educating the community on the opportunities and impacts of entrepreneurial and small business development. Todays grant awards bring us one step closer to solidifying Virginias position as the preeminent place to live, work and conduct business.
While only a limited number of entrepreneurs may win the business competitions, CBL has given rise to many entrepreneurs that have been prepared, through the CBL initiative, to be successful businesses.
In the last grant year, CBL helped to start or expand 46 businesses. In addition, it helps communities begin to develop a coordinated, comprehensive sustainable environment that identifies, launches and supports community-based entrepreneurs and small business at all levels of development.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / October 19, 2016 / Canyon Copper Corp. (TSXV: CNC) ("Canyon") is pleased to announce that the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") has closed the option agreement ("Option Agreement") with ProAm Explorations Corporation ("ProAm"), a company listed on the "Exchange", to earn a 71% interest in the Samuels Lake Property (the "Property") by paying $50,000 and issuing 200,000 common shares to ProAm. The future obligations under the Option Agreement are set forth in Canyon's news release dated September 27, 2016.
Samuels Lake (the "Property") is located in the Rainy River District of Ontario, about 56 kms west southwest of Atikokan, a former mining centre that is 200 kms west of the port of Thunder Bay. The claim block covers a land area of 595.63 ha, (1,472 acres) with 5 mineral claims (36 units). This coverage encompasses all of the area of the Samuels Lake Intrusion.
The Property is host to Nickel, Copper, Cobalt and Platinum Group Elements ("PGE"). Ben Ainsworth, President and CEO of Canyon stated - "The advantage of having accumulations of nickel-copper sulphides, and the potential for cobalt as a by-product means Samuels Lake is an attractive exploration target for Canyon. Cobalt is an important component of lithium ion batteries electrode materials."
Summary of Historical Work
The Property is an advanced exploration project, having had two significant work campaigns on it. Both campaigns lead to recommendations for further work, with geophysical targets for drilling. The first campaign was in 1998 - 2001, which started from a joint venture agreement between StarCore Resources Ltd and ProAm Explorations Corporation ("ProAm"). The program included property scale geophysical surveys, together with prospecting and trenching of the discovery area. This was followed up by a drill program of 12 NQ drill holes for 2,748 m. to test some of the electromagnetic and magnetic anomalies identified by the surface geophysical surveys.
Drill hole SM 99-3 one of the early drill holes attempted, intersected 45.74 meters of 0.82 % copper, 0.64% nickel, with 0.8g/t Pt+Pd+Au and up to 0.08% cobalt. This mineralization was associated with wehrlite alteration which has a high magnetic susceptibility and can also present magnetic anomalies. Six subsequent holes were used to carry out a downhole Crone Pulse EM Survey which identified 3 conductive targets for further testing.
The second work program was completed in 2007 and 2008, by Teck/Cominco who optioned the property from ProAm. Further ground geophysical surveys, UTEM and ground magnetics followed by a 7 diamond drill hole program, which intersected interesting nickel, copper and cobalt mineralization, including:
Hole SL 08-13 0.39% Ni, 0.85%Cu, 0.075% Co over 14.3m from 234.7m to 249.0m
Hole SL 08-14 0.21% Ni, 0.30% Cu, 0.03% Co over 33.5m from 167.0m to 200.5m
Hole SL 08-15 0.23% Ni, 0.52% Cu, 0.034% Co over 15.2m from 107.4m to 122.6m
Including: 0.57% Ni, 1.299% Cu, 0.066% Co over 3.1m from 107.4m to 110.5m
The principal host rocks for the intrusions that host the sulphide mineralization discovered at Samuels Lake are the meta-sedimenary rocks of the Quetico belt of rocks. Bodies of early mafic and ultramafic intrusions are the host rocks for this style of sulphide mineralization, which intrude the principal host rocks. As these intrusions cool they may go through a process of settling out crystals, solidifying in the magma chamber, and forming layered reefs or pods of sulphides that may contain concentrations of copper, nickel, cobalt and PGE.
Activity in the area, focuses on the mine of North American Palladium Ltd. (NAPL) at Lac Des Iles, 180 km to the northeast. Lac Des Iles is regarded by many as a similar type of deposit to Samuels Lake. NAPL and several junior exploration companies are currently and actively exploring for Cu, Ni, PGMs and Co in the area between Lac des Iles and Samuels Lake.
Proposed Exploration Program
The first priority is to rework all of the Teck Cominco and ProAm drill hole data to position the holes in a 3D plot of their relative positions. A review of drill core will also be undertaken to assure that all the most prospective sections have been assayed. These activities on the earlier data sets will allow Canyon with targeting extensions of the higher grade, copper-nickel mineralization with associated cobalt coproduct and PGE. From these targets Canyon will plan a three to five hole drill program in early 2017, subject to obtaining sufficient financing.
Qualified Person
Benjamin Ainsworth, P. Eng, BC, with Licence #8648 and CEO of Canyon, is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release.
On behalf of the Board of Directors,
"Benjamin Ainsworth"
CANYON COPPER CORP.
Benjamin Ainsworth, President
Contact:
Canyon Copper Corp.
Investor Relations
(604) 331-9326
(604) 684-9365 (FAX)
info@canyoncc.com
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information
This News Release may contain, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are identified by their use of terms and phases such as "believe," "expect," "plan," "anticipate" and similar expressions identifying forward-looking statements. Investors should not rely on forward-looking statements because they are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Canyon's expectations, and expressly does not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to the following, limited operating history, proposed exploration and/or drill programs and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Canyon to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
SOURCE: Canyon Copper Corp.
LONGUEUIL, Quebec, Oct. 19, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stornoway Diamond Corp. (TSX:SWY) (the Corporation or Stornoway) is pleased to announce that the Renard Diamond Mine was officially opened today at a ceremony held in the presence of M. Pierre Arcand, Quebecs Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and Minister responsible for the Plan Nord, as well as current and former staff members, project stakeholders and local community members.
Also in attendance were M. Jean Boucher, the Member of the Quebec National Assembly for Ungava, Chief Richard Shecapio, Chief of the Cree Nation of Mistissini, Mme Manon Cyr, Mayor of Chibougamau and M. Steve Gamache, Mayor of Chapais.
Matt Manson, President and CEO, commented Todays opening ceremony marks the culmination of approximately 20 years of work to bring the Renard Project from a green-field exploration concept to a fully operating new diamond mine. A long list of individuals can claim a share in the success of this enterprise. While we celebrate the official opening ceremony today, our production ramp-up continues and we remain on schedule to achieve commercial production by the year end.
Patrick Godin, COO, commented Our company has relied for many years on its mineral resources, its shareholders, its employees and its stakeholders; and the strength, commitment, determination and ability of these four mainstays are what make us the most proud today.
An archived video recording of the opening ceremony will be available on Stornoways website at www.stornowaydiamonds.com.
About the Renard Diamond Mine
The Renard Diamond Mine is located approximately 250 km north of the Cree community of Mistissini and 350 km north of Chibougamau in the James Bay region of north-central Quebec. On July 8, 2014, Stornoway announced the completion of a $946 million project financing transaction to fully fund the project to production, and construction commenced on July 10, 2014. Processing of ore commenced on July 15, 2016.
In March 2016, Stornoway released the results of an Updated Mine Plan and Mineral Reserve Estimate in March 2016. The study highlighted the potential of the project to become a significant producer of high value rough diamonds over an initial 14 year mine life. Probable Mineral Reserves, as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101), stand at 22.3 million carats. In accordance with the Corporations September 2015 Mineral Resource estimate, total Indicated Mineral Resources, inclusive of the Mineral Reserve, stand at 30.2 million carats, with a further 13.35 million carats classified as Inferred Mineral Resources, and 33.0 to 71.1 million carats classified as non-resource exploration upside. Average annual diamond production is forecast at 1.8 million carats per annum over the first 10 years of mining, at an average valuation of US$155/carat based on March 2016 terms.
Readers are cautioned that the potential quality and grade of any target for further exploration is conceptual in nature, 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. All kimberlites remain open at depth. Readers are referred to the technical report dated January 11, 2016, in respect of the September 2015 Mineral Resource estimate, and the technical report dated March 30, 2016, in respect of the March 2016 Updated Mine Plan and Mineral Reserve Estimate for further details and assumptions relating to the project.
Qualified Persons
Disclosure of a scientific or technical nature in this press release was prepared under the supervision of M. Patrick Godin, P.Eng. (Quebec), Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. David Farrow, P.Geol. Pr.Sci.Nat (South Africa) and P.Geo. (BC), Vice President Diamonds, both qualified persons under NI 43-101.
About Stornoway Diamond Corporation
Stornoway is a leading Canadian diamond exploration and development company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol SWY and headquartered in Montreal. Our flagship asset is the 100% owned Renard Diamond Mine, Quebecs first diamond mine. Stornoway is a growth oriented company with a world-class asset, in one of the worlds best mining jurisdictions, in one of the worlds great mining businesses.
On behalf of the Board
Stornoway Diamond Corp.
/s/ Matt Manson
Matt Manson
President and Chief Executive
For more information, please contact Matt Manson (President and CEO) at 416-304-1026 x2101
or Orin Baranowsky (Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development) at 416-304-1026 x2103
or toll free at 1-877-331-2232
Pour plus dinformation, veuillez contacter M. Ghislain Poirier, Vice-president Affaires publiques de Stornoway au 418-254-6550, gpoirier@stornowaydiamonds.com
** Website: www.stornowaydiamonds.com Email: info@stornowaydiamonds.com **
This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. This information and these statements, referred to herein as forward-looking statements, are made as of the date of this press release and the Corporation does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.
These forward-looking statements include, among others, statements with respect to Stornoways objectives for the ensuing year, Stornoways medium and long-term goals, and strategies to achieve those objectives and goals, as well as statements with respect to Stornoways beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, anticipations, estimates and intentions. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect.
Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect current expectations or beliefs regarding future events and include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the amount of Mineral Reserves, Mineral Resources and exploration targets; (ii) the amount of future production over any period; (iii) net present value and internal rates of return of the mining operation; (iv) assumptions relating to recovered grade, average ore recovery, internal dilution, mining dilution and other mining parameters set out in the Updated Renard Diamond Project Mine Plan and Mineral Reserve Estimate, Quebec, Canada, NI 43-101 Technical Report (the 2016 Technical Report) ; (v) assumptions relating to gross revenues, operating cash flow and other revenue metrics set out in the 2016 Technical Report; (vi) mine expansion potential and expected mine life; (vii) expected time frames for completion of permitting and regulatory approval related to construction activities at the Renard Diamond Project; (viii) the expected time frames for the completion of the open pit and underground mine at the Renard Diamond Project; (ix) the expected time frames for the completion of construction, start of mining and commercial production at the Renard Diamond Project and the financial obligations or costs incurred by Stornoway in connection with such mine development; (x) future exploration plans; (xi) future market prices for rough diamonds; (xii) the economic benefits of using liquefied natural gas rather than diesel for power generation; (xiii) sources of and anticipated financing requirements; (xiv) the effectiveness, funding or availability, as the case may require, of the Stream, the Senior Secured Loan, the COF and the Equipment Facility and the use of proceeds therefrom; (xv) the Corporations ability to meet its Subject Diamonds Interest delivery obligations under the Purchase and Sale Agreement; and (xvi) the impact of the Financing Transactions on the Corporations operations, infrastructure, opportunities, financial condition, access to capital and overall strategy.; (xvii) the foreign exchange rate between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar; and (xviii) the availability of excess funding for the construction and operation of the Renard Diamond Project . Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as expects, anticipates, plans, projects, estimates, assumes, intends, strategy, goals, objectives, schedule or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements are made based upon certain assumptions by Stornoway or its consultants and other important factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performances or achievements of Stornoway to be materially different from future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business prospects and strategies and the environment in which Stornoway will operate in the future, including the price of diamonds, anticipated costs and Stornoways ability to achieve its goals, anticipated financial performance, regulatory developments, development plans, exploration, development and mining activities and commitments, and the foreign exchange rate between the US and Canadian dollars. Although management considers its assumptions on such matters to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. Certain important assumptions by Stornoway or its consultants in making forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: (i) required capital investment and estimated workforce requirements; (ii) estimates of net present value and internal rates of return; (iii) receipt of regulatory approval on acceptable terms within commonly experienced time frames; (iv) anticipated timelines for completion of construction, commencement of mine production and development of an open pit and underground mine at the Renard Diamond Project, which heavily depends, among other things, on adequate availability and performance of skilled labour, engineering and construction personnel, performance of mining and construction equipment and timely delivery of components; (v) anticipated geological formations; (vi) market prices for rough diamonds and the potential impact on the Renard Diamond Project; (vii) the satisfaction or waiver of all conditions under each of the Senior Secured Loan, the COF and the Equipment Facility to allow the Corporation to draw on the funding available under those financing elements for the completion of the development and construction of the Renard Diamond Project; (viii) Stornoways interpretation of the geological drill data collected and its potential impact on stated Mineral Resources and mine life; (ix) future exploration plans and objectives; (x) the Corporations ability to meet its delivery obligations under the Steaming Agreement; and (xi) the continued strength of the US dollar against the Canadian dollar. Additional risks are described in Stornoway's most recently filed Annual Information Form, annual and interim MD&A, and other disclosure documents available under the Corporations profile at: www.sedar.com.
By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and risks exist that estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved or that assumptions do not reflect future experience. We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these forward- looking statements as a number of important risk factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, anticipations, estimates, assumptions and intentions expressed in such forward-looking statements. These risk factors may be generally stated as the risk that the assumptions and estimates expressed above do not occur, including the assumption in many forward-looking statements that other forward-looking statements will be correct, but specifically include, without limitation: (i) risks relating to variations in the grade, kimberlite lithologies and country rock content within the material identified as Mineral Resources from that predicted; (ii) variations in rates of recovery and breakage; (iii) the uncertainty as to whether further exploration of exploration targets will result in the targets being delineated as Mineral Resources; (iv) developments in world diamond markets; (v) slower increases in diamond valuations than assumed; (vi) risks relating to fluctuations in the Canadian dollar and other currencies relative to the US dollar; (vii) increases in the costs of proposed capital and operating expenditures; (viii) increases in financing costs or adverse changes to the terms of available financing, if any; (ix) tax rates or royalties being greater than assumed; (x) uncertainty of results of exploration in areas of potential expansion of resources; (xi) changes in development or mining plans due to changes in other factors or exploration results; (xii) changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; (xiii) risks relating to the receipt of regulatory approval or the implementation of the existing Impact and Benefits Agreement with aboriginal communities; (xiv) the effects of competition in the markets in which Stornoway operates; (xv) operational and infrastructure risks; (xvi) execution risk relating to the development of an operating mine at the Renard Diamond Project; (xvii) failure to satisfy the conditions to the effectiveness, funding or availability, as the case may require, of each of the Stream, the Senior Secured Loan, the COF and the Equipment Facility; (xviii) changes in the terms of the Stream, the Senior Secured Loan, the COF or the Equipment Facility; (xix) the funds of the Stream, the Senior Secured Loan, the COF or the Equipment Facility not being available to the Corporation; (xx) the Corporation being unable to meet its delivery obligations under the Stream; (xxi) future sales or issuance of Common Shares lowering the Common Share price and diluting the interest of existing shareholders; and (xxi) the additional risks described in Stornoway's most recently filed Annual Information Form, annual and interim MD&A and Stornoway's anticipation of and success in managing the foregoing risks. Stornoway cautions that the foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive, and unforeseeable, new risks may arise from time to time.
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By Ngan Ho of the San Angelo Standard-Times
Tom Green County commissioners on Tuesday adopted a resolution for the Sheriff's Office to use body-worn cameras.
Texas lawmakers in 2015 set aside $10 million to provide 75 percent of funding for police agencies toward cameras used to document their actions.
The Sheriff's Office applied and recently received a state grant of $19,610 from the Governor's Criminal Justice Division to help the TGCSO get body-worn cameras in place.
The local match is $6,500.
"We have received the grant and are in the process of getting all the equipment and implementing the program," Sheriff David Jones said in an email.
Commissioners also accepted a State Criminal Alien Assistance Program grant award of $6,363. The grant is intended to offset some of the cost for housing suspects in the county jail who are undocumented immigrants.
This is an annual award that the county has applied for for years.
Facilities Maintenance Director Don Killam also updated commissioners on several construction and remodeling projects underway.
Killam said remodeling work at the Edd B. Keyes Building, a government building, is "rolling right along."
The project began in spring 2014 and is expected to be complete in early 2017.
Killam also said 65 percent of construction-related documents for the creation of a new county detention center are ready for county officials to review.
Of a proposed $53.5 million bond to be be paid off in 20 to 22 years, $45 million would be allocated for a new jail behind the Roy K. Robb Correctional Facility at 3262 U.S. 277 N., northeast of San Angelo.
The remaining money will go to fund improvements to the Tom Green County Courthouse, add-ons to justice of the peace offices and other contingencies.
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Given even the lowest expectations, Donald Trump still has the capacity to surprise.
In recent days, Trump has sneered at the looks of a woman who accuses him of sexual assault, denigrated the appearance of Hillary Clinton, proposed to drug test his opponent, used his campaign to promote what appears to be a Russian covert operation, asserted that Clinton has held secret meetings with international bankers "to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty," attacked "Saturday Night Live," promised to jail his opponent and contended that "the whole election is being rigged."
Which means that Trump is sickeningly cruel, boorish, bonkers, subversive, conspiratorial, obsessive, authoritarian and reckless with the reputation of American democracy.
This is quite a closing argument for a presidential candidate. I imagine it did not emerge from focus groups. So what does all of this mean?
(1) It means that the Republican nominee for president is frighteningly unstable under pressure. He is easily baited, highly sensitive to slights, prone to using faulty information from off the internet, hyperbolic and vengeful. Now imagine those characteristics during a confrontation with China in the South China Sea.
(2) It is an indication of the quality of his closest, nonfamily advisers. Stephen Bannon and Rudy Giuliani are not attempting to keep Trump in check. They are feeding his manias. Trump is completely unmoored from restraining influences, and would be as president.
(3) Trump's closing case is a version not of movement conservatism or tea party conservatism, but of crackpot conservatism an alt-right rage against a vast, scheming establishment that includes the liberal media, global financiers and a growing list of women making accusations of sexual assault.
All this was previewed during Trump's political rise, which included birtherism, vaccine denialism and insinuations of foul play in the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. GOP leaders can hardly pretend to be surprised by this bent given that Trump accused Clinton in May of possible complicity in the death of Vince Foster.
(4) It is a further indication (as if we needed it) that Trump has no commitment to the American political system. He is perfectly willing to delegitimize democratic institutions as a campaign tactic, squandering a civic inheritance he does not value.
Even before his current troubles, he said that an electoral loss would be prima facie evidence of fraud and encouraged supporters to monitor majority-black polling stations in Pennsylvania. Now he is entering uncharted territory. By pre-emptively questioning the legitimacy of his forthcoming shellacking, Trump is stepping outside the four corners of the constitutional order, on the model of autocratic strongmen he has publicly admired.
(5) Trump's descent into ideological psychosis is tainting the reputation of all who were foolish enough to associate with him. Consider vice presidential candidate Mike Pence. Interviewed recently on "Face the Nation," he defended the Republican nominee's verbal assault Trump has called them "sick," "horrible" and "phony" on women who accuse Trump of sexual assault.
This reaction is justified, Pence said, because of Clinton's "deplorables" comment. Here is one of the chief promoters of Christian morality in politics employing the ethical reasoning of 9-year-olds in the schoolyard. Someday Pence (and others) will look back on their shattered standards and ask: For this cause? For this man?
(6) Trump's final appeal also is corrupting a portion of the public and crossing moral lines that won't be easily uncrossed. There are certain qualities of heart and mind that allow for self-government civility, tolerance and mutual respect. In his rage and ruthlessness, Trump is inviting Americans to drink from a poisoned well.
One problem is the risk of physical violence the possible influence of unhinged rhetoric on an unbalanced mind. The broader result is radical polarization in which citizens question the legitimacy of elections and view some fellow citizens as enemies.
(7) Practically, Trump's downward spiral means that House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will need to repudiate the nominee before the end after they have shed the last of their credibility.
The political argument against repudiation is admittedly strong. It could ignite a self-destructive civil war within the GOP just before an election. But history generally does not remember good political arguments. It remembers acts of conscience in the face of them. It is time, and past time, for Republican leaders to do the right thing.
Trump's crackup complicates American political life in a variety of ways but simplifies one point: This man is temperamentally, ideologically and morally unfit to be president of the United States.
Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him at michaelgerson@washpost.com.
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Andy Eubanks, retired sergeant, Texas Highway Patrol, Bryan
Re-elect Sheriff David Jones
As a longtime acquaintance of Sheriff David Jones, I would like to encourage Tom Green County residents to vote for this outstanding individual. For many years he and I worked together as DPS Highway Patrol officers in Midland and I know him to be honest and hardworking.
His dedication and work ethic are exemplary and whatever he puts his heart to do, he will do with thought and caring. He is devoted to his family and community and is just an all-around good man. I know he will put the best interest of Tom Green County foremost in his decisions as sheriff.
A still from the video clip that shows two male passengers attack a female employee at Noi Bai International Airport on Tuesday.
A female employee at Noi Bai was attacked by two passengers who missed their flight.
A female employee at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi has been attacked in an incident involving two passengers who reportedly missed their flight.
At 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Tran Duong Tung, 32, Dao Vinh Thuan, 37, made a scene after they missed their Vietnam Airlines flight to Ho Chi Minh City.
Nguyen Le Quynh Anh, an employee of Vietnam Airlines who manages a service team, reportedly tried to explain the airline's policy to the men.
Tung and Thuan became agitated and started insulting the staff, according to media reports.
As Anh filmed the incident with her mobile phone, Thuan grabbed her shirt and Tung hit her in the head.
Airport security officers have handed over the two passengers to the police.
In a statement released late Wednesday, Vietnam Airlines said the two passengers have insulted and attacked its staff, asking the authorities to investigate the incident and punish violent acts.
The carrier said Anh has been sent home after health checks at a local hospital.
Passengers assault employee at Hanoi airport after missing flight Passengers assault employee at Hanoi airport after missing flight
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Trinh Xuan Thanh seen on the list of international wanted criminals. Photo by VnExpress
Trinh Xuan Thanh's been accused of causing $150 mln losses at a state firm.
Vietnamese police have been asking their counterparts in the U.S., Canada and some European countries to help them hunt down a fugitive linked to massive losses of $150 million at a unit of state oil and gas PetroVietnam.
Trinh Xuan Thanh, former chairman of PetroVietnam Construction JSC (PVC), will be caught, Lieutenant General Phan Van Vinh, the general director of the central Police Directorate, said on the sidelines of a workshop on international fugitives on Wednesday.
We have received strong support from many countries," Vinh said. "They promised to join hands with Vietnam to hunt down Trinh Xuan Thanh.
He said Vietnamese police will find a way to bring the suspect to justice, even if the country does not have an extradition treaty with Germany, where the 50-year-old man is believed to be hiding.
The Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security last month issued an international arrest warrant for Thanh.
Thanh is accused of mismanagement and causing losses of around VND3.2 trillion ($147 million) at PVC, a unit of the state-owned oil giant PetroVietnam, under his watch between 2011 and 2013. Four other executives from the company have been arrested.
Thanh sought overseas sick leave in mid-August and has never returned since, the police said. He was expelled from the Communist Party on September 8, a move that would pave the way for him to face criminal charges.
The now-infamous official first caught media attention in June for driving a $230,000 Lexus with a government license plate in a country where the annual average income was around $2,100.
The scandal caused uproar over the use of public money, prompting the Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong to order a probe into his political career and how he had been promoted.
Government inspectors found that Thanh and his team, starting in 2009, had launched many offshoot units and partnered with a number of companies, but few of the ventures proved effective. Most of their business projects during the period ended up being delayed or even canceled.
After his stint at PVC, Thanh continued to be kicked upstairs with an apparently successful political track record, holding various government positions before taking his latest post as vice chairman of the Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang.
He was not nominated for re-election for the 2016-2020 tenure in June. Then in July, he was also stripped of his legislator-elect status.
At the workshop on Wednesday, Vietnamese police said the number of suspects fleeing the country surged to more than 1,100 as of September. The police have issued international warrants for 300 fugitives.
Most of the runaway suspects have fled to Cambodia, Laos, China and the U.S. on fake identities.
Related news:
> Vietnams wanted bigwig ran away to Europe: official
> How the internationally wanted Trinh Xuan Thanh rose to power
> Vietnamese official quits election amid luxury car scandal
> Vietnam aroused by Party leader's probe into official's luxury car
Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and Democrat Roy Cooper sparred over taxes, House Bill 2, coal ash and even hurricane relief Tuesday night in the final debate of their gubernatorial campaign.The presence of Libertarian candidate Lon Cecil did little to soften the testy exchanges between the two main candidates.The debate at Raleighs WRAL came three weeks before the election and just two days before the start of early voting. It also took place amid rising political tension punctuated by the weekend firebombing of a Republican headquarters in Hillsborough. McCrory called the incident an attack on democracy.In what may be the nations highest-profile gubernatorial race, the two are locked in a close battle for the states highest office. Cooper leads by 3 percentage points in Real Clear Politics polling average.
Drug manufacturers give states discounts on prescription drugs sometimes, but it's not always as big as the one they give veterans.Californians wanted the same deal as the military, but it isn't looking like they are going to get it.Voters weighed in on a measure that would have made California the first to require health agencies to pay the same for prescription drugs as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which gets a 24 percent discount off manufacturers' average prices.With 92 percent of precincts reporting, 54 percent opposed it and 46 percent supported it.Proposition 61 would have applied to more than 1 million state and public university employees as well as 3 million Medicaid patients. (It would have excluded, however, the 10 million Californians on managed-care Medicaid plans.)Drug prices plague states' and patients' pockets throughout the country.Last year, California alone spent $3.8 billion on prescription drugs. In just one year, nationwide Medicaid spending on prescription drugs increased 24 percent from 2013 to 2014. That rise can be attributed to many things: the soaring price of new lifesaving drugs, the unregulated pharmaceutical industry, and in some states, an influx of Medicaid patients.Californians have to act because it has become painfully obvious we cant expect relief from Sacramento or Washington, wrote Margie Keenan, board member of the California Nurses Association, which supported Prop. 61, in theStates have tried to control these costs but largely had little success. California's latest effort was a novel one.Supporters said the initiative would have saved $5.7 billion over 10 years. But Amber Didier, an analyst with the state's Legislative Analysts Office, said it's impossible to predict the fiscal impact because it depends on how pharmaceutical companies would have reacted if Prop. 61 passed.Pharmaceutical companies, which spent millions of dollars to defeat the measure, warned that in order to make up for any lost revenue, they may have made everyone's prescriptions more expensive or stop offering certain drugs to government agencies altogether.But Michael Yee, a financial analyst with RBC Dominion Securities, argued that Prop. 61 shouldn't have significantly hurt companies' revenue. It would only start to hurt big pharma, he said, "if this initiative were passed in all 50 states."So the threats about limited access and higher prices, said Yee, are likely in part to dissuade other states from taking up a similar measure.The initiative proved to be one of the most expensive in California history. The opposition campaign, backed by several powerful pharmaceutical companies, had an arsenal of more than $100 million. The supporters, whose loudest surrogates include the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, raised just $17 million.Despite the opposition's huge fundraising advantage, pollsters predicted a close race. A poll released in September showed 50 percent would vote yes, 16 percent would vote no and 34 percent were undecided. It appears that the undecided ended up filing into the 'no' camp.The opposition camp included more than just pharmaceutical companies.Not a single newspaper in California had come out in support of Prop. 61. Theandall opposed the measure, calling it the wrong solution. In addition, several health associations believe the measure was flawedbecause of its limited scope and financial uncertainties.We have a higher percentage of older, sicker people, and we do think it could potentially reduce the access of certain drugs, said Gail Nickerson, executive director of the California Association of Rural Health Clinics, which opposes the measure along with the California Medical Association and the California Chronic Care Coalition.This isn't the first time California has tried to do something about the price of prescription drugs. Last year, the state became the first in the nation to cap the monthly cost of a lifesaving drug at $250. This year, however, a bill that would have required more notice of price hikes failed in the Senate.
A new report by a think tank at Georgetown University calls for greater oversight in the use of emerging facial recognition software that makes the images of more than 117 million Americans a disproportionate number of them black searchable by law enforcement agencies.While the agencies, including the F.B.I., have historically created fingerprint and DNA databases primarily from criminal investigations, many of the photographs scattered among agencies at all levels of government are of law-abiding Americans, according to the report released Tuesday.The report found that 16 states allowed law enforcement officials to compare the faces of suspects to photographs on drivers licenses and other forms of identification without a warrant, creating a virtual lineup.This is unprecedented and highly problematic, said the report, by the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetowns law school.Facial recognition technology, long used overseas by the American military and intelligence agencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, is seen by local law enforcement as a tool for identifying criminals, but it has also raised concerns among privacy advocates.Because African-Americans disproportionately come into contact with, and are arrested by, law enforcement officials, the report said, their police photos will most likely be overrepresented in facial recognition databases.The authors of the report said the aim was not to stop the use of the software, which they acknowledged had been effective in investigations. Nor did they fault law enforcement officers, who they said are simply using every tool available to protect the people that they are sworn to serve.Rather, they called for Congress and state legislatures to pass laws creating stricter regulations on the technology. Researchers found, for instance, that just one agency the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation specifically prohibited using the software to track people engaging in political or religious speech. No state has a law regulating use of the software.There is a real risk that police face recognition will be used to stifle free speech, the report said.
On Tuesday, in the morning, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC received the Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk MP, Premier of Queensland, for a regular meeting.
Following, at All Saints Church, Brisbane, the Governor and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended the Mothers Union (MU) Thanksgiving Eucharist, followed by a High Tea at the Mercure Hotel, Brisbane, where Mrs de Jersey addressed guests, to celebrate 110 years of service for MU Australia, Brisbane Diocese.
In the evening, the Governor and Mrs de Jersey hosted a reception for the presentation of the 2016 Roly Sussex Short Story Awards and to support the launch of the English Speaking Union Short Story publication, where His Excellency addressed guests.
Description
GIS - 19 October 2016 : The necessity for both State and non-State actors to join efforts to slow down the inexorable progress of Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) was underscored by the Minister of Health and Quality of Life, Mr Anil Gayan, this morning at the opening ceremony of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Dialogue Meeting at Intercontinental Hotel in Balaclava.
The Global Dialogue meeting on the Role of Non-State Actors in supporting Member States in their national efforts to tackle NCDs as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is organised by the WHO Global Coordination Mechanism on NCD, and co-chaired by the Governments of Mauritius and France from 19 to 21 October 2016. Representatives from Member States, United Nations organisations, other intergovernmental bodies and non-State actors such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), philanthropic foundations, business associations, and academic institutions are participating in this event to discuss ways and means to accelerate NCD prevention and control.
In his address, the Minister stated that NCDs are fast becoming a disease of mass destruction, with a WHO global projection of 52 million deaths in the very near future. This is why we need to work together as countries with the WHO, bodies like the NCD Alliance and civil society to find ways and means to come to grips with the NCD burden, said Mr Gayan. According to him that success in tackling the NCD burden will be achieved provided that all stakeholders, State and non-State actors, industry, civil society and academia are committed and dedicated.
Differentiating between the role of the State and the NGOs in the health sector, the Minister recalled that Government drives the public health system while other stakeholders must adapt to the strategic direction of Government. He urged NGOs working in the health sector to abide to the principles of accountability, transparency and the absolute necessity of producing verifiable and measurable results. NGOs engaged in tackling NCDs can undertake effectively the work of creating awareness and sensitisation for all those who are at risk and accompany all those who already suffer from NCDs, added the Minister.
Speaking on the way forward to tackle NCDs, Minister Gayan underlined the urgency to integrate prevention, control and reduction of risks in all health policies. He also focussed on the importance of early detection and timely treatment, and an effective primary health care system to enhance quality of life and cut down on costs. The Minister moreover called for the acceleration of sensitisation programmes on healthy lifestyles and on proper nutrition, as well as legislative measures, if necessary, to get food manufacturers to reduce sugar, salt and saturated fats in their products. We cannot fail in this endeavour as we cannot afford to fail, cautioned Mr Gayan.
In a video message to the gathering, the Director-General of WHO, Dr Margaret Chan spoke of the critical role that non-State actors can play in supporting the implementation of government-led efforts to address NCDs. Dr Chan, however, clearly distinguished the specific roles and responsibilities of each of these actors which vary, depending on the country, the topic, and the circumstances. She appealed for a collaborative approach where NGOs act as watchdog and service providers under the leadership of Government. She also called attention on the way to balance the need for companies to make reasonable profit, against distortions that come along with greed.
(TNS) BEMIDJI It was another night of questions for prospective Beltrami County commissioners Tuesday, as incumbents and challengers once again gathered for a public forum to discuss their platforms.Held at Bemidji City Hall and organized by the League of Women Voters, the forum hosted incumbents Jim Lucachick, District 5, Joe Vene, District 2 and Tim Sumner, District 4, along with their respective opponents, Ralph Morris, Reed Olson and Vince Gross.Throughout the evening, the group of candidates answered numerous questions from a public audience, such as their views on expanding transparency in county government.In response, Morris and Olson said they would support efforts to bring cameras into the Beltrami County meeting rooms and record the sessions so they could then be accessible to the public both by TV and online.Additionally, Olson said the current meeting times are too early in the day to be attended by the public, adding that if he was elected he would work to shift the sessions to a later time.Vene, who also said he could support more exposure to the public through broadcasts, said a more important aspect in transparency is a commissioner making themselves accessible on a consistent basis and talking to constituents regularly.Trust between the commissioners and constituents was Gross' most important aspect in delivering transparency to county government, noting that residents of the county rely on the government to make decisions. Additionally, Gross said the idea of broadcasting to the public was 'something to think about,' but wasn't sure about the feasibility.Sumner, who said improvements in technology should allow for televised county meetings, also described how he would host meetings with township chairs to get an insight into their concerns and then report on those meetings at county sessions.Lucachick said he worked to explore televising the county board meetings, yet Beltrami opted for a newsletter to be sent out to residents instead. Lucachick said the newsletter contains important information from the county and that he also sends out a personal newsletter twice a year for extra transparency with constituents.Another question raised at Tuesday's forum was on improving the relationship between the Beltrami County government and the city of Bemidji.According to Sumner, there's already been collaboration between the city and county and more steps can be done. Sumner said this can be done by both supporting the relationship with Bemidji while also holding meetings with other communities in the county such as Blackduck.For Lucachick, the city and county already work together regularly through sharing computer systems. In the future, Lucachick said the county can branch out and offer the computer system sharing with other communities while having more face-to-face meetings with city leaders."I think we have a fairly good relationship overall," said Olson, who agreed that there needs to be more meetings between county and city government. Olson, who currently serves on the Bemidji City Council, said in his time with the governing body there have only been two joint meetings in four years when there should be two per year.Morris had a similar response, calling for an increase in more joint meetings between the county and cities, especially with Bemidji."They can work together quite well as far as I know," said Gross, who added that he is opposed to using any county funds toward the Sanford Center.Citing his experience on Bemidji's planning commission, Vene said the county already works in some aspects with the city and that there are more partnerships that can be developed.Also on the schedule for Tuesday's event was a forum for Bemidji Area School Board candidates. However, two of the candidates, Ann Long Voelkner and Jeff Haack were unable to attend. The third candidate running for a board seat, John Gonzalez, did appear during the forum, though, to give details on his background.The forum was one of two organized by the League of Women Voters, with the other scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at Bemidji City Hall. The next forum will focus on Bemidji City Council and mayoral races.
Vietnams greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 were around 266 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, not including effects of land use and forestry. Photo courtesy of Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment
More can be done with international support, officials have said.
Vietnam, one of the countries worst affected by climate change, has reaffirmed its commitment to an 8-percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, saying it can even do better with international support.
A reduction of up to 25 percent could be possible if global organizations offer their helping hands, Tran Hong Ha, the environmental minister, said at a conference on Tuesday.
Official data showed that Vietnams greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 were around 266 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, not including effects of land use and forestry. Energy-related industries accounted for 53 percent.
The figure was a sharp increase from an estimated 150 million tons in 2000.
Ha, the minister, said that from now to 2030, Vietnam will keep applying various methods to reach the goal of greenhouse gas reduction and encourage the development of green industries. The country will conduct research to form a national carbon trading market.
John Roome, Senior Director for Climate Change of the World Bank, said that the global carbon market is expected to cut down 30 percent of cost for climate change relief by 2030. By the mid of this century, the market will help reduce 50 percent of global expenses.
A report of the World Bank showed that about 101 countries are currently working on carbon emissions trading.
Vietnam first announced its emission goal last year when it submitted its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, ahead of the COP21 conference in Paris.
According to the INDC report, Vietnams average temperature picked up by around 0.5 percent and sea level rose by around 20 centimeters over the last 50 years.
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> Choking smog makes Hanoi's pollution 'very unhealthy'
> Air pollution in Vietnam cities hit unhealthy levels: government study
(TNS) -- Efforts by Microsoft to build a stronger relationship between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C ., are valuable and worth government support.More collaboration between the regions universities, smoother border crossings and improved transportation between the cities will benefit both Washington and British Columbia.This leads to other policy questions around immigration and infrastructure priorities that are less clear and will need further consideration during the next presidential term.Government and business leaders from Seattle and Vancouver periodically announce efforts to strengthen ties between kindred cities that are hubs of technology, tourism and commerce and are cosmopolitan gateways to Asia.Microsoft is doing more than revive that conversation. Its also providing a physical reminder of our connections, in the form of glamorous offices it opened last summer in the heart of Vancouver.The Redmond companys Canadian expansion may contribute to the U.S. debate about fixing our immigration system. Vancouver has long served as a way station for overseas talent that Microsoft needs but cannot directly hire in Redmond because the U.S. visa system has less flexibility than Canadas.Jobs lost overseas are a concern, but this situation is more about meeting the tech industrys insatiable appetite for talent.That appetite pushed Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook to expand in Seattle over the last decade. Now its pushing Microsoft, Amazon and others to open satellite offices in Vancouver . At the same time, Seattle tech companies are still trying to hire thousands more than they will employ in Vancouver at home in Seattle.These tech giants straddle the West Coast, all of which can be considered an extension of the emerging Cascadia innovation corridor. Perhaps they should start infilling along the Interstate 5 corridor and expand in smaller cities such as Everett and Tacoma.During ceremonies in Vancouver last month, Microsoft also suggested a high-speed rail line between Seattle and Vancouver. Its good to dream big and pursue bold ideas, but this concept must be weighed on its merits and balanced with state and federal priorities that need funding.It might not be a coincidence that the alluring rail proposal surfaced as tech and pharmaceutical giants lobby for an enormous tax break on trillions of dollars theyre holding overseas. Some have floated the idea of bringing that cash back to the U.S. on condition their taxes are slashed and remaining tax proceeds boost infrastructure spending.How to reform immigration and tax policies and allocate any federal windfalls are conversations to look forward to in 2017 and beyond.In the meantime, the need for improved connections between Seattle and Vancouver is as clear as our coastal air after a rainstorm.
Delaware is the latest in a long line of states to announce an open data portal that promises new access to a host of the jurisdictions most sought after information.Gov. Jack Markell officially unveiled the new portal data.delaware.gov on Wednesday, Oct. 19. The new resource marks the culmination of more than 10 months of work to provide a one-stop access point to the states most requested data.In January, the second-term governor signed Executive Order 57 mandating a state open data clearinghouse to contain data sets from 10 state agencies. Socrata facilitated the creation of the public-facing website and its backend infrastructure."We are so excited that Gov. Markell issued Executive Order 57 for open data because what it did, in my mind as CIO, it really brought key agencies to the table to talk about a couple things," CIO James Collins told. "One, sharing data among state government you hear a lot about analytics and business intelligence, so I feel like we're laying the groundwork there."The new, streamlined information source boasts more than 30 nonpersonal data sets ranging from mortality rates and child poverty statistics to restaurant inspections and traffic counts.In some cases, the information can be mapped to provide a clearer picture of the target data.While open data websites have become fairly commonplace in recent years, open data proponents maintain that simply putting data online does not mark a successful transparency effort; data must be continually added to and updated as well.It is unclear at this point how often Delaware will add new data to its system.
(TNS) -- When Kevin Hsiung moved into his brand-new apartment on San Franciscos Potrero Hill, he wanted what every tenant wants: the best deal on Internet service. He did his research, found the company he liked and set about getting the service. Then he ran into an unexpected problem.The property manager for the 453-unit building told Hsiung he could sign up only with AT&T or Comcast.They wouldnt tell me why, said Hsiung, who eventually went with Comcast, even though he preferred Webpass, which provides superfast Internet access.On Tuesday, Supervisor Mark Farrell introduced legislation that would require property owners to give building access to all state-licensed providers. He said Hsiungs experience is increasingly common, although there have been no independent studies done on the issue in San Francisco.The reality in San Francisco is that tens of thousands of residents have been denied access to different Internet service providers, Farrell said. I fundamentally believe competition is a good thing that will ultimately drive prices down and improve Internet access across all of San Francisco.Groups that represent property owners say Farrell vastly overstates the problem and that the legislation is ill-conceived.We dont need laws telling us we have to allow any company into our buildings. We have concerns about safety, about the physical space, said Ken Cleaveland, vice president of public policy for the Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco. We think everything should be dictated by leases you write what kind of services you provide into the lease.Federal law says property owners cant prohibit tenants from signing up with their preferred service provider. However, the law allows owners to have revenue-share agreements with companies that provide television, phone and Internet services meaning the owners make money when tenants sign up with those companies. The practice is common in large, new rental apartment buildings.So while property owners cant stop tenants from signing up with competitors, they can refuse to allow those competitors access to the building to install fiber and antennas, effectively preventing them from providing service.Tenants in small apartment buildings sometimes run into the same problem, but for different reasons. The owners dont want to deal with the hassle of accommodating new equipment or giving rent-controlled tenants more incentive to stay, according to frustrated customers and companies.Farrells legislation says property owners could seek just and reasonable compensation from service providers for using their property, but they would not be able to refuse access outright. If disagreements arose about the just and reasonable compensation, the parties could go to court to resolve them. Property owners who refused access could be fined up to $500 a day.Charles Barr, founder of Webpass, which was recently acquired by Google Fiber, said there are roughly 400 large apartment buildings in San Francisco that deny his company access to their property.Some dont want fiber in the building or dont want a radio in the building or dont want anybody other than AT&T to come in, he said.But the biggest barrier, Barr said, is that some big apartment buildings will allow Webpass access only if it pays the owner a small monthly fee per subscriber which Webpass refuses to do. Farrells legislation would prevent owners from demanding a subscriber fee.Barr said Equity Residential, which owns 1010 16th St., where Hsiung lives, is one of those companies. A spokesman for Equity denied that the company seeks subscriber fees, but acknowledged it had refused to allow Webpass to access Hsiungs building. The spokesman said the company was working on bringing Webpass services to tenants in the near future.While the issue of Internet choice arises most frequently in large apartment buildings, tenants in smaller ones also report being stymied.Trent Robbins, who lives in a 12-unit building in the Sunset, wanted to purchase gigabit-speed Internet through Sonic. Sonic planned to drill into the side of the apartment building to run fiber into Robbins apartment. The landlord balked.Sonic said it could find a less invasive way to install service, but the landlord refused to let the company try, Robbins said. He is hoping other tenants pressure the landlord to change his mind. Farrells legislation indemnifies property owners for damage done to their property.Literally everywhere in the West except the United States has some form of gigabit available, Robbins said. Its a reasonable modification to an apartment, and I think Im within my rights.But Charley Goss, government and community affairs manager with the San Francisco Apartment Association, said his group would consider suing if Farrells legislation becomes law.There is federal law that already governs all of this. We would prefer the city enforce that law rather than write new laws, Goss said.And, he added, landlords dont need more rules telling them what they can and cant do.We are the highest-regulated industry in San Francisco and one of the highest in California, Goss said. And it kind of gets to a point where enough is enough.
(TNS) -- Wisconsin energy regulators are considering a move to expand funding for broadband Internet services via fees collected on monthly electric and natural gas bills.The move is being contemplated, the state Public Service Commission says, with an eye toward expanding the reach of the states Focus on Energy program in rural parts of the state.The PSC said that based on a preliminary review, utility customers in rural Wisconsin don't participate in the Focus on Energy program as much as those in urban areas. Rural areas also are served by fewer broadband providers, the agency said.The agency also said it's concerned about the ability of Focus on Energy program to market its programs in areas with "insufficient access to high-speed internet that could help support effective online advertising and social media campaigns."But some critics of the move are skeptical of the linkage between expanding broadband service and improved efforts to help utility customers save on their energy bills. Instead, they see the move as a way to find a source of funding, this time from energy utility customers, for broadband expansion."I want to challenge the idea that broadband will necessarily increase participation in Focus on Energy programs," said Kathy Kuntz, a former administrator of the Focus program. "I support the premise that everyone should have access to broadband, but broadband services do not prompt energy efficiency."Critics fear that the PSC would shift dollars from Focus on Energys core missions to help cut utility customers' energy use and boost deployment of small renewable energy systems in order to deploy those dollars for other purposes.The PSC solicited input on how it should proceed and received comments from about two dozen organizations, from utilities to energy-efficiency advocates and environmental groups.Some utilities responded that they would like to see Focus dollars spent the way they have been, with Madison Gas and Electric Co. saying "the test" for using Focus dollars "should be maximizing energy savings statewide. MGE believes the funds should not be used in any way that would diminish the opportunities customers have for participating in Focus energy efficiency and renewable programming."However, Alliant Energy Corp. weighed in, favoring the initiative. "We support the commissions intent to examine how greater access to broadband services could improve rural electric customers participation in the statewide energy efficiency and renewable resource programs," the Madison-based utility said.Supporters of continuing to fund energy-saving and renewable energy programs said studies have shown it to be cost-effective. The Focus on Energy program,, which funds discounts on energy-saving light bulbs as well and other moves to make homes and businesses more efficient, currently spends about $92 million a year and studies have shown has consistently delivered a payback of at least three times that, or at least $3 returned for every $1 invested."We do not support using Focus on Energy funding for purposes other than energy efficiency and renewable energy," the clean energy group RePower Madison said.According to the PSC, about $3.2 million is collected from rural parts of the state for Focus, and several organizations urged the commission to cap any funding for rural customers at that amount. Expanding the number of cooperatives that participate in Focus would be another way to boost participation, the PSC and others agreed.Renewable energy organizations and companies expressed concern that the PSC would fund a broadband initiative but not fund renewable energy projects the way it has in recent years. Noting high demand for grants that Focus issued in recent years, Renew Wisconsin urged the commission to support allocating $5 million in 2017 and $5 million in 2018 for renewable energy grants. Renew also said it would support increased investment by Focus in dairy-farm manure digesters that convert cow manure into energy.Efforts to cut energy use help the state delay the need for new power plants, supporters of energy efficiency say. According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a key challenge in Wisconsin is reduced funding for Focus on Energy, after a bill that cut funding by $7.2 million.Compared with four nearby states, Wisconsin is investing less than half as much in energy efficiency, said Seth Nowak of ACEEE. "In this context, it is crucial that money already collected by utilities on customer bills and by electric co-ops intended for Focus be used for their intended purposes, primarily energy efficiency programs," he said.The Focus on Energy and other fees collected on utility customers' bills have been used to fund non-energy activities in the past moves that prompted the Legislature to pass a bill banning budgetary transfers from Focus on Energy fees.Past transfers include funding that went into the states general fund, funded the state W-2 welfare-to-work program, and helped pay salaries for district attorneys around the state:From 2002 to 2007, during the administrations of Republican Gov. Scott McCallum and Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, funds collected for energy efficiency programs were used for municipal aid payments, the general fund and the Wisconsin Works, or W-2 program. Total amount transferred: $110.9 million.After the Legislature stopped that practices, from 2007 to 2011 the state transferred funds from a weatherization and energy efficiency program for low-income residents to the W-2 program. Total amount transferred: $36.7 million.When the Legislature stopped that transfer, it then enacted a special charge on utility bills that collected revenue to pay for the salaries and benefits of prosecutors in district attorney's offices across Wisconsin. Total amount transferred: $18.3 million.
Its been more than three years since Louis Carr Jr., took on the CIO role for Nevadas Clark County, but now he is moving on to head up IT operations for Los Angeles premier utility provider."My last day with Clark County will be Friday November 11th," Carr wrote in an email to friends and colleagues on Oct. 14. "Since IT plays a significant role in supporting the Elections Department, this is a watershed election and Nevada is a 'purple' state, I wanted to stay through the November 8th election."In an internal bulletin, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power General (LADWP) Manager David Wright announced that Carr would be joining the municipal utility agency as the chief information technology officer effective Nov. 14.In addition to serving as the CIO for Nevadas most populated county, Carr also served as CIO for the Texas Department of Transportation and of Arlington, Texas, prior to that. During his tenure at Clark County, Carr managed $45 million in operations, 160 employees and IT across 38 departments.According to the bulletin, Carr will report to Wright on the status of critical information technology systems and infrastructure, cybersecurity and system integration.
Flights to and from Hai Phong have been grounded due to safety concerns.
National flag carrier Vietnam Airlines has decided to cancel 14 flights to and from the northern port city of Hai Phong scheduled on Wednesday when Typhoon Sarika is forecast to hit the region.
Affected passengers will be given options to and from Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi instead.
Passengers are also advised to check weather conditions and announcements from the carrier to prepare their travel plans from Hanoi and the central province of Thanh Hoa.
Sarika is expected to make landfall in Quang Ninh and Lang Son provinces on Wednesday, the National Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting Center said late Tuesday.
Northern provinces, especially Hai Phong, Quang Ninh and Lang Son, are expected to experience heavy downpours from late Tuesday, the center said.
Related news:
> Typhoon Sarika barrels toward Vietnam as another storm brews
> Massive typhoon on course to smash into Vietnam
Kevin Magnussen has dismissed reports linking him with a potential move to Indycar for 2017.
With Renault having already confirmed Nico Hulkenberg for next year, whilst admitting that Esteban Ocon and Valtteri Bottas are also targets, it is also relevant that an extended 'option' on Magnussen's 2017 services ran out last week.
Then, reports emerged early this week that the young Dane could be in the running to switch from F1 to Indycar with Michael Andretti's team.
But Magnussen said on Twitter: "I'm a big fan of IndyCar but those are really just rumours. Nothing to it.
"I feel confident my future is in F1 and there should be no doubt I intend to stay with Renault for many years if I can," he insisted.
"Unfortunately there is nothing yet to announce regarding my future, but hopefully there will be soon. I too am getting impatient!"
A leading Danish motor racing official says he thinks Magnussen's lengthy Twitter retort is very much a strategic move.
"I can imagine it was to tell the world that he has more options, and that he is pushing to have a Renault's decision," Bo Baltzer Nielsen, a Danish automobile union official, told the Danish newspaper BT.
And F1 commentator Jens Hansen commented: "The timing is surprising because it simultaneously shows optimism but also impatience."
He said he thinks Magnussen is at least an outside chance of switching from Renault to Force India, Williams or Haas.
"The future is to some extent unclear at all four teams," said Hansen. "And Kevin has a good name with the team bosses at all of them."
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North Carolina is among several states dealing with a voter ID requirement, which starts here in 2016. The Tar Heel state also made other voti
A massive recall of sleep apnea machines is expected to drag into next year. That's caused frustration for U.S. patients and led federal officials to consider rare legal steps to speed the replacement effort. Dutch manufacturer Philips has recalled more than 5 million machines worldwide due to foam that can deteriorate, releasing potentially harmful byproducts. While customers were supposed to receive new machines within a year, the company says shipments will continue into 2023. That's left many U.S. patients to choose between using a recalled device or trying other risky remedies. U.S. regulators have warned they may take the unprecedented step of ordering Philips to step up its effort.
On Tuesday, I told you about some malls that were saying goodbye to opening on Turkey Day.
But for you die-hard shoppers, there will still be Thanksgiving shopping options.
Jeffrey Johnson, general manager of Tanger Outlets in Mebane, said Tuesday that the center will repeat its hours from last year. Tanger Outlets will be open from 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving through 10 p.m. on Black Friday.
In other Thanksgiving shopping news, Macy's has said it is opening one hour earlier this year on the holiday.
North Carolina students performed the worst theyve done in more than 20 years on national tests of reading and math performance showing how much achievement has declined since the pandemic. Reading and math scores in the state dropped from three years ago for fourth- and eighth-grades on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The results released on Monday by the U.S. ...
North Carolina voters will choose a new attorney general for the first time in 16 years. Josh Stein is an excellent choice.
A Democrat, Stein is a Harvard-educated lawyer who worked from 2001 to 2008 as a senior deputy attorney general for consumer protection. In that job, he targeted predatory lenders. From 2009 until earlier this year, he represented Wake County in the state Senate, winning praise from such groups as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the AARP of North Carolina, the North Carolina Association of Educators and the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. Now an attorney in private practice, hes active in community projects and co-chaired a $5 million capital campaign in Raleigh to build a domestic violence shelter for women and children.
Stein earned respect as an effective legislator who worked to improve education, public transportation and the environment. He also helped strengthen drunken-driving laws, expand the states DNA database and increase protections for domestic violence victims.
He is thoughtful, reasonable and well-prepared to meet the demands of running the states Department of Justice. Those include consumer protection, taking legal action against polluters and providing resources for law enforcement, as well as defending the states interests in court.
Republican candidate Eldon Buck Newton earned his law degree at Campbell University and practices in Wilson. Hes been a member of the state Senate since 2011, where he has led efforts to support law enforcement and the court system. Hes also active in his community.
Those are some of the good things. On the negative side, he supported Sen. Trudy Wades bill to impose a new City Council structure and election plan on Greensboro; was and remains a champion of House Bill 2, a discriminatory measure that resulted in severe economic harm to Greensboro; and led efforts to ban the use of the FaithAction International House ID card, which the city of Greensboro used to identify residents who lack other ID. Newton introduced another bill this year that would have barred even the Greensboro Police Department from recognizing this card, which it says helps improve relations with immigrant communities. That bill did not pass.
At a forum in Asheboro last month, Newton didnt only criticize a federal appeals court for overturning voter restrictions enacted by North Carolina, which the judges said targeted black voters with almost surgical precision. He implied that those judges were trying to influence North Carolinas elections. An attorney general should show more respect for the rule of law.
Newton faults current Attorney General Roy Cooper for refusing to defend some North Carolina laws challenged in court. He pledges to be more faithful. He raises a fair point. But Stein asserts that Newton backed 13 laws that have been overturned in court. Stein says that, as attorney general, he would advise the governor and legislature to avoid legal battles they are likely to lose. That would be a better approach for our state.
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GREENWICH Addressing the parents of the selfie generation, educational psychologist Michele Borba spoke about emphasizing empathy over grades in order to raise successful children.
In an event at Brunswick School Tuesday morning, Borba described nine strategies for raising modern children and teens and promoted her book, Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World.
We all want the same thing and that is happy, successful children but we also want them to be empathetic and make a difference in the world, said Borba, who regularly appears on NBC to discuss child development.
In the 21st century, there has been a 40 percent decrease in empathy and 58 percent increase in narcissism among college-age students, she said.
It isnt a parent problem or an educator problem, its a culture problem, said Borba. Weve become so hyper competitive. If you talk to Wall Street, theyll say the same thing.
Borba advised parents to encourage their children to step away from phones and computer screens, look people in the eyes, read fiction and examples of good news in the media and develop strategies to deal with their stress.
By the time she closed her lecture with a song about parenting, many mothers in the audience were teary.
One mother, weeping, stood up at the end and said, I just want to say that was sensational.
Eunice Burnett, a Greenwich resident whose son goes to Brunswick, admitted to shedding a few tears as well and said she had never been to a more timely talk.
The decline of empathy and rise of narcissism is evident every time you turn on the TV today and open a newspaper, so its critically important that we do something actively to rectify the situation, said Burnett, whos read Borbas book. I care deeply about this kind of stuff so I feel like its been an ongoing effort in our household.
Denise Prata of Purchase, N.Y., whose daughter attends Sacred Heart Greenwich, said Borba did a good job breaking big ideas about empathy down into simple strategies.
She was very real about how she is approaching parents, she said. I thought she was very powerful. She gave us a lot of information so I think its just figuring out what works for you.
emunson@hearstmediact.com; @emiliemunson
Pakistans parliament recently voted unanimously to toughen the laws against so-called honor killings. The United States commends the efforts of Pakistan to end this barbaric practice.
The newly passed legislation restricts the ability of family members to forgive those convicted of committing a so-called honor killing a practice that had previously allowed many convicted killers to avoid prison. Forgiveness is now only allowed if someone convicted of a so-called honor killing is sentenced to death, in which case the sentence can be commuted to life in prison.
Honor killings have long been a serious problem in Pakistan and in recent years public outrage against this practice has grown. According to a study, more than 1,000 women were killed last year in honor killings, often by male relatives who believed the victims had tarnished the family name by marrying a man of their own choosing, or even sitting or meeting with a man.
There have been several particularly outrageous killings in recent months. Qandeel Baluch, a social media celebrity and feminist, was choked to death by her brother; a mother, with the help of her son, strangled and set fire to her daughter because she married a man of her own choosing; a teenage girl was tied up in a car and set on fire on orders of Tribal leaders, allegedly for helping a friend elope.
The legislation, strengthening punishments for so-called honor killing is an important step toward protecting women and girls in Pakistan, said U.S. State Department Spokesperson John Kirby, and promoting their full participation in society. Raising social awareness and holding perpetrators accountable are critical next steps, and we will continue to support Pakistans efforts.
No woman anywhere should have to die for choosing whom she will marry or how to conduct her life.
GREENWICH Police made two big drug busts this week that resulted in the seizure of nearly 400 bags of packaged heroin, along with a stash of cocaine.
Both of these are significant seizures for Greenwich, said police spokesman Sgt. John Slusarz. Heroin is clearly a very dangerous drug, and were doing everything we can do to interdict it before it gets into our population.
One of the alleged dealers was from Greenwich, the other from the Bronx, N.Y. Authorities werent saying Wednesday whether there was any connection between the two arrests.
On Monday, police executed a search warrant at the residence of Kendrick Pozo, 21, of Armstrong Court. According to the arrest report, the bust was the result of a lengthy investigation.
Police said Pozo was in personal possession of four bags of heroin, and a subsequent search of his residence turned up 210 bags of the drug packaged for sale. Police said they recovered 11 small bags of what appeared to be cocaine, $472 in cash, a digital scale and packaging material.
Pozo was charged with operating a drug factory, possession of narcotics with intent to sell and possession of narcotics. Since there were children in the residence, ages 4 and 9, and drugs were easily accessible to the children, he was further charged with two counts risk of injury to a minor, a felony, according to the arrest report.
Since there is a day care facility within Armstrong Court about 300 feet away, Pozo was additionally charged with illegal possession of narcotics near a school. He was cited for a small amount of marijuana allegedly found at the scene.
Bail was initially set at $150,000, but was later dropped to $35,000 bond. Unable to post it, Pozo was being held in custody as of Wednesday, according to court records. His next court date is Nov. 7.
Another person who was in the apartment at the time police executed the search warrant is facing charges, as well. Reynaldo Martis, 37, of Walton Avenue, the Bronx, who was described as a family member by police, was charged with illegal possession of narcotics, risk of injury to a minor and illegal possession near a school. He was held in lieu of $20,000 bond, and is due in court Nov. 7.
Police said they snared a Bronx dealer carrying 180 bags of heroin Tuesday at 12:20 p.m. on Ritch Avenue in Byram. The arrest report said Angel Abreu was apprehended after the narcotic squad developed information he would be making a delivery.
Authorities said Angel Abreu came to Greenwich with the bags of heroin hidden inside the stereo speaker of a 1999 Toyota. After setting up surveillance, cops made their move with a State Police dog, Iowa, carrying out a search of the vehicle. The dog gave a signal that drugs were behind the speaker, according to the arrest report, and nearly 60 grams of heroin were confiscated. Cops tested the heroin and determined the drug had been laced with fentanyl, according to police. The synthetic opioid is considered even more potent and dangerous than heroin.
Abreu was charged with illegal possession of narcotics, illegal distribution of narcotics and criminal attempt.
Speaking at a Nigerian-American Chamber Of Commerce Conference on Small and MediumSized Enterprises -- or SME -- Financing and Franchising in Abuja, Nigeria, on October 5th, U.S. Charge dAffaires David Young said United States has provided more than half a billion dollars in annual assistance to Nigeria in the areas of health and security, but is also increasingly focused on the issues of economic stability and growth for the country.
We recognize that our shared health and security goals depend on a prosperous economy, he stated.
Mr. Young recalled that at the U.S. Africa Business Forum in New York, President Barack Obama said: Wherever Ive gone, from Senegal to South Africa, Africans insist they dont just want aid, they want trade. They want partners, not patrons. They want to do business, and grow business . . . and the United States is determined to be that partner, for the long term.
Mr. Young highlighted the United States support for Africas economic prosperity under President Obama, including renewal of the 10-year extension by Congress of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, in 2015 for a decade.
Other important steps taken by the United States: launching Trade Africa and Power Africa, creating the Doing Business in Africa campaign, and increasing commitments from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
The 2016 Nigerian-American SME Financial and Franchising Conference is a bilateral trade and investment advancement initiative organized in collaboration with the Economic Section of the United States Embassy in Nigeria.
The United States is proud to work with its partner Nigeria to promote a vibrant economy for the benefit of all Nigerians, the region, and the world.
Time to party.
Halloween is right around the corner. Youve already figured out your candy agenda and if not, what are you waiting for? but that still leaves some unanswered questions. Like, if youre hosting, what kind of (non-sugary) foods to serve and booze to get for your party that arent just the usual bubbly wine and cheese and crackers. After all, you want your guests to come to your next party, too. Thankfully, Grub can help out with that. Here, 16 things you need to throw a better party, from a Hungarian-style cheese spread to a fancy citron vodka.
Fuller Foods Cheese Puffs
Price: $15 for a three-pack of three-ounce bags
Is it a real party without cheese puffs? No. But you can do better with Portland, Oregons Fuller Foods, who make theirs with high-quality corn grits from Bobs Red Mill. You could get just one, or you could something for everyone with a trio of Asiago black pepper, blue-cheese jalapeno, and sriracha cheddar.
Zingermans Liptauer Cheese
Price: $10 for six-ounce container
Along with artichoke dip and chips of any kind, the cheese spread is one of the pillars of American party snacks. Ann Arbors Zingermans goes global with the traditional Hungarian version, made with farmers cheese doctored up with paprika, capers, toasted caraway, and a pinch of anchovies.
Martins Handmade Pretzels
Price: $5 for four pretzels
Fact: No one will complain about pretzels. Martins makes some of the finest these days, keeping things straightforward and simple some things need no improvement but so good youll want to order a couple of extra boxes for yourself.
Lehigh Biltongs Secret Spice Biltong
Price: $13 for a two-and-a-half-ounce bag
You could get the same old jerky. Or you could switch things up with South African biltong, prepared by seasoning and then air-drying the meat. Along with the traditional version made with salt, pepper, coriander, and vinegar, they offer this version spiked with a secret spice blend.
Kerfluffle SMores Fluffernutter
Price: $13 for a 13-ounce jar
If you were raised properly in New England, you inevitably ate fluffernutters, a somehow acceptable sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow spread. Kerfluffle does the work for you, mixing the two ingredients together and amping it up, smores style, with chunks of dark chocolate. Hey, at least itll be nighttime.
Ends Meats NDuja
Price: $13 to $64 for half a pound to two and a half pounds
Like pates and terrines, nduja was made for parties. Its a spreadable, spicy Italian sausage that makes for ideal drinking food. Brooklyns always-tinkering Ends Meat swaps out traditional Calabrian chili for a very American mix of New Mexico red, ancho, serrano, and chipotle chiles.
Butter & Scotchs Green Chili Margarita Caramel Corn
Price: $9.50 for a three-ounce bag
The Brooklyn bakery and cocktail bar spices up sweet caramel corn, in a style similar to Mexican snacks, with lime zest, green chilies, and tequila.
Smoking Gooses Stagberry Salame
Price: $16.50 for one seven-to-nine-ounce salami
New-school charcuterie operation Smoking Goose consistently puts out some of the countrys most original and deliciously interesting meats. The creation that captures that best is the stagberry salame. Made with cured elk meat seasoned with dried blueberries and dry mead, its really unlike anything else out there.
1732 Meats Lamb Prosciutto
Price: $500 for a whole leg
Or you could just go crazy and order a whole, bone-in lamb prosciutto from 1732 Meats, the ultimate American-made statement meat.
Hot Bread Kitchens Pan de Muerto
Price: $35 for four
Its Halloween, so you better have at least one thematic food thats not just a bowl of black-and-orange gummy worms. To celebrate the Day of the Dead, New Yorks Hot Bread Kitchen sells pan de muerto, the buttery traditional Mexican sweet bread thats integral to the holiday. Plus, its decorated with a skull and bones.
Farnum Hill Extra Dry Cider
Price: $15 for a 750-milliliter bottle
Its apple season, right, so pair your caramel apples with one of the Northeasts very best ciders. New Hampshires Farnum Hill takes a winemakers approach to cider, focusing on specific varietals, with great results: The extra dry, made from a blend of apples, is sugarless but still fruity and spicy.
Cornelius Applejack
Price: $46 for a 750-milliliter bottle
Tired of making batch bourbon drinks? Switch to applejack, the American heritage spirit thats achieved cult status in recent years. To make its version, New York distiller Harvest Spirits distills its hard cider twice before aging it for two years in bourbon bottles.
St. George Terroir Gin
Price: $40 for a 750-milliliter bottle
One of three gins made by the California company, which also produces quality absinthe verte and vodka, Terroirs botanical blend emphasizes warm and woodsy ingredients like Douglas fir, California bay laurel, and coastal sage.
Hermann J. Wiemers Gewurztraminer 2013
Price: $27 for a 750-milliliter bottle
Big parties arent really the place to explain to your friends and friends friends all of the virtues of your favorite funky natural wine. Better to choose something thats easy and compelling to drink, like this dry Gewurztraminer from the Finger Lakes.
Lini 910 Labrusca Emilia Lambrusco Bianco
Price: $18 for a 750-milliliter bottle
If youre in need of bubbles and tired of Prosecco or whatever, get a bottle of Lini 910s Labrusca. Bucking Emilia-Romagnas tradition of sparkling red lambrusco, its a (more familiar) bubbly white wine thats surprisingly dynamic while still being light.
Tamar Distillerys Citron Vodka
Price: $48 for a 750-milliliter bottle
Maybe, after years of secretly drinking Cosmos behind closed doors, you finally feel like the world is ready to accept your favorite drink again. But this being 2016, you want to make it with a craft spirit and with a twist to make your friends think its cool. If so, get a bottle of Tamar Distillerys double-distilled citron vodka, made with aromatic Buddhas hands and without any added sugar.
All the Maalox in the world wont help you. Photo: Michael A. Cheatham/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Somewhere, a mother is shaking her head hard-core: Doctors say a 47-year-old in San Francisco, with apparently no edifying hobbies, ate a ghost pepper during an eating contest, and it tore a one-inch hole in his esophagus.
The ghost pepper, or bhut jolokia, is one of the Earths hottest things. It has a rating of about one million Scoville units (ordinary Tabasco sauce measures around 2,500 to 5,000), was briefly the worlds hottest chili pepper, and makes for some really uncomfortable YouTube viewing. This man, though, agreed to eat a burger slathered in its puree. To calm the ensuing inferno, doctors say he fruitlessly tried guzzling six glasses of water, before abandoning all hope and calling for emergency help. Forceful vomiting and retching followed, and once he got to the hospital, doctors in the operating room discovered a 2.5-cm tear in the distal esophagus.
Surgeons were able to repair the mans organ which, again, was ruptured by a hamburger but only after keeping him intubated for 14 days. He began tolerating liquids on the 17th day, and finally got discharged with a gastric tube in place on day 23. Totally worth it!
Today LeEco has officially announced the first two smartphones it's going to be selling in the US. The Chinese company is ambitiously moving to cover that market, even before much older rivals such as Xiaomi.
LeEco will offer both the already unveiled Le Pro 3 in the US, as well as the newly outed Le S3. The Pro 3 comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 16 MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus, and dual-tone LED flash, an 8 MP selfie snapper, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset at the helm, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a fingerprint scanner on the back, a USB Type-C port (and no 3.5mm headset jack), and a 4,070 mAh battery. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
LeEco Le Pro 3
The high-end smartphone will go for just $399 unlocked, with an additional $100 instant rebate available if you sign up for the company's LeRewards scheme.
To complement the Le Pro 3 in its lineup, LeEco has created the Le S3. This model has a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen too and the same cameras, but swaps the Snapdragon 821 for a SD652 and only has 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a 3,000 mAh battery. This handset will retail for $249 unlocked, and once again you can shave $100 off that through an instant rebate with LeRewards.
LeEco Le S3
LeEco will use flash sales to get its devices into the hands of eager consumers, and it's going to be interesting to see how well this model will do in the US, since it's essentially the first time anyone's tried it. The first flash sale for the Le Pro 3 and Le S3 will take place on November 2 starting at 10 AM PT.
Source 1 Source 2
Oppo R9s and R9s Plus become official with 16 MP cameras both on the front and on the back
Today at an event in Shanghai, China, Oppo has finally taken the wraps off the much-leaked R9s and R9s Plus. The two handsets are successors for the R9 and R9 Plus which were unveiled this March.
While the original R9 had a 13 MP camera on the back and a 16 MP unit on the front and the R9 Plus went with a pair of 16 MP sensors, this time around every single camera on the R9s and R9s Plus is 16 MP. That makes things easy to remember.
Oppo R9s
The rear unit for both phones has f/1.7 aperture, electronic image stabilization in the R9s and optical image stabilization in the R9s Plus, 4K video capture support, and a LED flash. The selfie snapper on the other hand has to make do with an f/2.0 aperture.
The Oppo R9s has a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen with 2.5D curved Gorilla Glass 5, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset (with Adreno 506 GPU), 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage (via a hybrid dual-SIM slot), a fingerprint scanner on the front, and a 3,010 mAh battery with VOOC fast charge. It runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Color OS 3.0 on top.
Its dimensions are 153 x 74.3 x 6.58 mm, and it weighs 145g. Oppo says the R9s has 1.66m side bezels and a 77.5% screen-to-body ratio.
Oppo R9s Plus
On the other hand, the R9s Plus is bigger, coming with a 6-inch 1080p touchscreen with 1.78mm side bezels and a 79% screen-to-body ratio. This model is powered by Qualcomm's recently announced Snapdragon 653 SoC, aided by 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, once again expandable through a hybrid dual-SIM / microSD slot. The R9s Plus has a 4,000 mAh battery, its dimensions are 163.63 x 80.8 x 7.35 mm, and it weighs 185g. The rest of its specs are identical to the R9s'.
Both phones can receive a charge that's good for two hours of talk time in just five minutes plugged in. For both, the rear camera features Sony's IMX398 sensor with dual-focus that's 40% faster than phase detection autofocus. The devices have redesigned antenna lines on the back - instead of one thick line we now get three separate 0.3mm wide ones, making for an overall sleeker look. This also lets Oppo increase the proportion of metal in the R9s to a whopping 98.8%.
New antenna band design
The R9s will become available in China on October 28 for CNY 2,799 ($415 or 378 at the current exchange rates). It will be offered in black, gold, and rose gold. The R9s Plus will set you back CNY 3,499 when it goes on sale in December (that's $519 or 473). The R9 was sold outside of China as the Oppo F1 Plus, but it's still unclear if the R9s will transform into an F1s Plus for international markets.
Source 1 Source 2 Source 3
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun posted a letter to announce the latest milestone in India and to thank the team that made it possible. Xiaomi sold 1 million smartphones in just 18 days, not long after the Redmi Note 3 became an online best-seller. Actually, going by IDC numbers, Xiaomi has been the #1 online smartphone brand in India since July of this year.
This is an astronomic growth for a company that entered the Indian market in 2014, when it launched the Mi 3. This Flipkart exclusivity ended In April last year, when Xiaomi products went up on Amazon and Snapdeal.
Lei Jun thanked Xiaomi retail partners along with Manu (Kumar Jain) and Hugo (Barra) for their leadership and the business teams in China who lent their support.
And very importantly, I wish to thank every Indian Mi fan for the love they have shown to Xiaomi, which is the driving force behind our success.
- Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi
The head of the fast-growing smartphone maker is confident that with the sustained efforts of our entire Xiaomi family, we will be able to capture the largest market share in India within 3-5 years.
Source | Via
Earlier this year, Google put a ride hailing tab in Google Maps so that you can quickly compare if public transport, driving or getting an Uber is faster. Now, the search giant is moving this functionality to a more prominent position - its available straight into search results.
You just need to search for something like taxi to Bangalore airport or directions to Bangalore airport and the usual Maps card will be augmented by ride hailing buttons.
Currently, this feature is being tested in India and the Netherlands. In India you get a choice of Ola and Uber (anything from Uber Pool to XL). Considering the original feature worked with many local hailing services, chances are that the new search results feature will add more services as its availability expands.
By the way, you need the specific app installed (be it Uber, Ola or other). Otherwise, Google Search will offer a link to install the app.
Source | Via
Are you looking to jumpstart your creative juices? You might want to try playing around in a different tuning, such as open D. This particular tuning has been hailed as []
There has been significant progress in the fight against ISIL on the ground. And the next big offensive is now underway the battle to liberate Mosul from ISIL oppression.
The operation to regain control of Iraqs second-largest city will take time. Iraq is supported by a wide range of coalition capabilities including air support, artillery, intelligence, advisors and forward air controllers. The coalition has built a force of over 30,000 fighters for this operation, including Kurdish Peshmerga, Iraqi Security Forces, and some 14,000 local Nineveh fighters.
This liberation battle comes after more than two years of ISIL oppression in Mosul, during which they committed horrible atrocities. Over a million people in Mosul are living under the boot of ISIL, including most of the Yezidi slaves who were taken by ISIL two years ago.
ISIL is also on the run in Syria. Opposition forces there liberated the Syrian town of Dabiq from ISIL control, aided by support from Turkey and the international coalition. Dabiq held symbolic importance to ISIL. The group carried out unspeakable atrocities in Dabiq, named its English-language magazine after the town and claimed it would be the site of a final victory for the so-called caliphate, said U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in a written statement.
In the military operation to drive ISIL out of Manbij, Syria, coalition fighters uncovered a trove of ISILs foreign fighters and information about where theyre planning and plotting their strategy. Coalition forces uncovered over 15 terabytes of material. This intelligence is being mined and shared shared with global coalition members.
Aside from territory, ISIL is losing its leaders. Since August 30, the United States has taken out more than 18 ISIL leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis deputy Mohammed Adnani, who was the leader of all their external operations. After the fall of Manbij, many of ISILs leaders left wherever they were and gathered elsewhere.
It is clear that ISIL is on the run, and its safe haven is shrinking rapidly. The United States and its coalition partners will not rest until the job is done and ISIL is utterly and completely defeated.
ELKO Rehab Services of Nevada will host Business After Hours Thursday.
This monthly event is organized by the Elko Area Chamber of Commerce. It is from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at 2207 N. Fifth St. Suite B.
The event is free and open to the public.
Come enjoy good company, food and drinks while making new connections and learning more about Rehab Services of Nevada, said Melissa McJunkin, marketing and administration for the Chamber.
For more information contact the Chamber at 738-7135.
Two days after it said it would, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) finally announced on Oct. 14 Haitis new electoral timetable . The presidential and legislative elections that had been scheduled for Oct. 9, with run-offs on Jan. 8, will now be held on Nov. 20 and Jan. 29 respectively. The final results will be announced on Feb. 20, 2017. Haiti had been hoping to inaugurate a newly elected president on Feb. 7, 2017, a year after one should have been inaugurated constitutionally in 2016. The new 2017 inauguration date, which will be set by President Jocelerme Priverts interim government, has not yet been announced. The Oct. 9 presidential election, which was to be a redo of a fraudulent polling in 2015, had to be rescheduled due to the extensive damage caused by Hurricane Matthew, which passed directly over the cities of Les Cayes and Jeremie on Haitis southern peninsula on Oct. 4. According to an internal Organization of American States report dated Oct. 11, of 157 voting centers in Haitis southern department, 112 (71%) were damaged and 29 (18%) were inaccessible. In the Grande-Anse department, investigators were able to visit or verify only 26 of its 106 voting centers. Of those visited, 23 were damaged, and 31 of the total were inaccessible. In the Nippes department, investigators visited or verified 41 of the 85 voting centers and found 22 of them damaged, while 46 of the total were inaccessible. Furthermore, many Haitians in the south lost their homes and their voter identification cards in the storm. The three hard-hit departments are home to about 1.17 million of Haitis 6.19 million registered voters. There was also storm damage to voting centers and homes in five of Haitis other seven departments, the report said. The OAS report warned that repair and reconstruction of voting centers will be very difficult in the medium and long term because flooding washed away or damaged many roads and bridges. Meanwhile, food, clothes, relief supplies, and construction materials and machinery and have been streaming into Haiti from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, whose president, Danilo Medina, visited Haiti on Oct. 10. A convoy of over 500 vehicles from the DR crossed the border at Jimani/Malpasse on Oct. 12, but they were accompanied by 1,000 Dominican soldiers. Haitians are already outraged by the Oct. 13 renewal for six months of a Security Council mandate for 5,000 United Nations troops and police officers (known as MINUSTAH) to remain in Haiti until Apr. 15, 2017. The force, originally proposed for six months in 2004, has now militarily occupied Haiti for over 12 years. Therefore, the added deployment of Dominican troops on Haitian soil provoked a sharp nationalist backlash among Haitians, particularly after a 2013 Dominican law was used to strip citizenship from and expel thousands of Dominicans of Haitian ancestry over the past three years. But Haitians also jeered a food and water delivery by UN troops. As [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moons convoy traveled in Aux Cayes for his public relations tour on Oct. 16, angry Haitians shouted at the UN trucks, Get out of here! And take your food and water with you!, reported Haitian journalist Dady Chery for News Junkie Post. Things being as they are with the mainstream press, the AFP/France 24 translator reported instead that the irate Haitians, who were in return attacked with tear gas by UN troops, had demanded food. As expected, there has also been an upsurge in cholera in Haitis storm-ravaged south, as detailed in a poignant front-page article in the Oct. 16 New York Times. The deadly disease was brought to Haiti by UN Nepalese troops in October 2010, but the UN did not begin to admit its responsibility for the epidemic until this past August. Unfortunately, the principal response of the UN and Washington to the post-storm cholera explosion is to push a supposed cholera vaccine called Sanchol. The current promotion of oral cholera vaccines is a deceitful campaign motivated by pure greed, explains Dady Chery, who is also a U.S. university biology professor. Vaccination against cholera in Haiti right now is worse than useless. First, even inefficacious vaccines are risky, because the vaccines used on people in the Third World usually contain 6 to 30-fold higher concentrations than the WHO upper limit of thiomersal, a mercury-based preservative that might be linked to autism. Secondly, no one knows which cholera bacteria are in Haiti! The cholera strain identified six years ago has now changed to the point where vaccines manufactured against it will not work at all. These vaccines will certainly be absolutely useless against the strains of cholera from Bangladesh. Finally, even under the best circumstances, when Shanchol is designed and used against a cholera with recently sequenced DNA, protection is poor to nonexistent. A field trial in Bangladesh in 2011 found that the vaccine conferred only 45% protection in all age groups after one year, including only about 17% protection in children under five, who are those most likely to die from cholera. The results published in 2015 for a field trial in Haiti, passing as a vaccination and poorly monitored, claimed 57% protection after one year, but only people older than 12 were inoculated. Given that mass vaccine campaigns offer a huge money-making opportunity for pharmaceutical companies, Haitian authorities should be further advised that some of the supposed vaccinations might actually be drug trials for new vaccines, Dady Chery writes. This would be nothing short of experimentation on Haitians as a large field laboratory. Although the electoral campaign season is only scheduled for 12 days from Nov. 7-18, many candidates have used the disaster as an opportunity to promote themselves or their parties. [P]residential candidates have fanned out over the country, delivering aid supplies throughout the impacted regions, wrote Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watchs Jake Johnston on Oct. 13. Many candidates have branded relief supplies with their political logos. Absolutely, it is to contrast with the [Haitian] government that is seen as absent from many rural areas, [Roudy] Chute [of former President Michel Martellys Haitian Bald-Headed Party or PHTK] said. Political ploy or not, a barge with supplies from private sector actors supporting PHTK arrived in Jeremie earlier this week and was expected to continue along the coast, delivering goods to remote coastal towns that have yet to be reached by aid efforts. [The PHTK did similar disaster campaigning in 2014.] Many of the dump trucks removing debris in Jeremie bore the PHTK logo next to that of V&F, one of the largest Haitian construction companies. But PHTK is far from the only party to take such steps. Jude Celestin, another of the top candidates and a former head of the national construction company, has said he is willing to rebuild a crucial bridge that connects the south to the rest of the country, and that was destroyed. His LAPEH party logo was also seen on construction vehicles in Jeremie. Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the presidential candidate of the Fanmi Lavalas party, has led food distributions as well. In response to this de facto campaigning, the CEP put out a warning on Oct. 12 that humanitarian aid to victims of Hurricane Matthew should be an act of non-partisan solidarity. This gesture cannot be used... as part of an election process. Meanwhile, the Haitian governments official death toll from the storm has risen to 546 dead, with 128 missing and 439 wounded. The Civil Protection Directorate (DPC) says the government is housing 175,509 storm victims in temporary shelters.
Haiti - DR : More than 80,000 food rations delivered in Les Cayes
Nicolas Calderon, the administrator of the Dominican Economic Restaurants (Comedores Economicos) confirmed having delivered in Les Cayes, on board a boat of the Coast Guard (Orion 109) of the Dominican Navy, more than 80,000 rations of food raw and cooked.
The mayor of Les Cayes, Maria Claudette Regis, received 75,000 rations raw and cooked and 5,000 volunteers from the Haitian Red Cross also received rations to be distributed.
The mayor of Les Cayes and representatives of relief organizations appreciated and thanked the gesture of solidarity of the Dominican government that responds to a promise to the people of Haiti of Dominican President Danilo Medina.
SL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - FLASH : The Court of Cassation request the replacement of Jocelerme Privert
The judges of the Court of Cassation, gathered at the extraordinary, decided the following...
"Considering that the Constitution of 29 March 1987 Article 59 states that national sovereignty is exercised by three (3) branches: Legislative, Executive, Judicial. That,
moreover all these three branches constitute the essential foundation of the organization of the State, which is civil;
Considering that in the lapsed agreement of 6 February 2016. The Court of Cassation was excluded by the other two branches of the State. That, for evidence, the Head of State in a recent public statement, emphatically asserted that the decision to make enter the Dominican troops on national soil was taken together with the Presidents of the two branches of Parliament regardless of the Judicial Power;
Considering that the Parliament first and foremost vigorously denounced this fact that has shocked the national conscience;
Considering that some organizations, political parties, political groups and personalities had patriotically hailed the magistrates of the judiciary in a note and asked them to intervene to save the Nation that is at risk;
Considering that, in the when the force of the law can not impose the country is then delivered to the law of force which is unacceptable;
Considering it is imperative for the Court of Cassation, the Guardian of the law, to ensure scrupulous respect for the constitutional order and the proper application of the law;
Considering that, given the urgency, it is necessary to apply Article 149 of the 1987 constitution.
Accordingly, require State authorities to provide for the replacement of Mr. Jocelerme Privert Provisional President in accordance with Article 149 of the Constitution of 29 March 1987, in order to safeguard national sovereignty."
Signatures :
Jules Cantave, President
Joseph Mecene Jean-Louis, Judge
Windelle Coq Thelot, Judge
Kesner Michel Thermesi, Judge
Franzi Philemon, Judge
Louis Pressoir Jean-Pierre, Judge
See also :
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18977-haiti-justice-the-3rd-power-believes-that-the-governance-is-illegal-and-illegitimate.html
HL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - FLASH : A Dutch aid ship turned back for fear of a riot
Sunday the "HNLMS Pelikaan", a Dutch warship from Curacao (Netherlands Antilles), carrying on board 35 tons of humanitarian goods (food, hygiene kits and shelter among others...) to Jeremie could not unload its cargo on the Haitian port.
The Dutch military and humanitarian organizations on site, explained that there were too many people (many thousands), not enough security measures to ensure the distribution of aid. Faced with the risk of a riot to unforeseen circumstances, the ship's captain chose to to leave at sea.
However, the Dutch boat could try to dock again in the coming days if the Haitian government guarantee it more security.
For his part, the mayor of Jeremie, Claude Harry Milord considers that this situation was due to a problem of coordination and planning between the Dutch and the Haitian Red Cross which would not have allowed to take all the necessary security measures with the institutions concerned.
TB/ HaitiLibre
ELKO Great Basin College invites the community to attend local author Vince Juaristis book signing of his latest work titled, Basque Firsts, People Who Changed the World, on Oct. 26.
A moderated discussion with Juaristi will be held in the GBC Theatre beginning at 7 p.m. A performance by the Great Basin Basque Dancers will also be featured on stage, followed by the book signing in the bookstore foyer. Coffee and dessert will be provided. This event is free and open to the public.
Juaristi, a native of Elko, earned his masters degree in public policy from Harvard University. He is the CEO of a management consulting company in Alexandria, VA. He is also the author of Back to Bizkaia: A Basque- American Memoir.
Basque Firsts covers the many contributions Basque men and women have made throughout history in fields such as navigation, education, science, politics and more. Too often these achievements have been overlooked.
Naturally, I study and write about the Basque because my dad was Basque, and his daddy before him, and so of course, Im Basque too, said Juaristi. But I write about the Basque also because their tradition of oral history, in this day and age, risk losing so much of who they are their stories, their language, their culture.
When asked what step proved to be the most difficult while writing Basque Firsts, Juaristi noted the difficulty of his research.
I wanted to rely as much as possible on primary sources letters, diaries, personal testimony, interviews and quite often such rich, wonderful information is not readily available, said Juaristi.You have to search for it, dig for it, often in dusty boxes or wrestle it from the hands of librarians or governments that might not want to relinquish it. For the research on Basque Firsts, I pulled letters and diaries from archives in Spain and the Philippines, from historical libraries in California and London, and from countless hours of sit-down interviews. It was hard work, but in the end, well worth it.
Juaristis newest book along with his previous book, Back to Bizkaia is now for sale in the GBC bookstore and will be available for purchase during the event.
All proceeds from the book sale go towards the Juaristi Scholarship program for Nevada students. Juaristi said its important to give back to the community he grew up in.
Elko is my home; for me, the heart and hub of Basque culture in America, he said. Whatever money comes from the book as I did with my first book Im so very happy to give to kids in Nevada. So far Ive given out 75 scholarships, and plan to give out many more.
For more information about the book signing, contact Angie de Braga, Director of Continuing Education and Community Outreach at 775-753-2231.
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Published on 2016/10/19 | Source
Added episode 17 captures for the Korean drama "Moonlight Drawn by Clouds" (2016)
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Directed by Baek Sang-hoon, Kim Seong-yoon
Written by Kim Min-jeong-II, Lim Ye-jin
Network : KBS
With Park Bo-gum, Kim Yoo-jung, Chae Soo-bin, Jin Young, Kwak Dong-yeon, Kim Seung-soo,...
18 episodes - Mon, Tue 22:00
Synopsis
'Moonlight Drawn by Clouds' is a palace romance inspired by the genius Crown Prince Hyomyeong in the later era of Joseon, who loved etiquette and music. The drama will tell the coming-of-age story of youthful romance in Joseon era which was unwritten in the history.
Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2016/08/22
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Published on 2016/10/18 | Source
Added episodes 15 and 16 captures for the Korean drama "The Gentlemen of Wolgyesu Tailor Shop" (2016)
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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
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ELKO William A. Douglass also known as Mr. Basque will be at the Northeastern Nevada Museum from 4-6 p.m. Friday to sign copies and read from his recently published book Death After Life: Tales of Nevada.
The trim volume is a collection of 13 fictional short stories on the Silver State. In 2016, it won the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award for Best Book in the Historical Fiction category from National Association of Book Entrepreneurs.
The special event is free to the public. Refreshments will consist of wine and tapas from the local Basque community.
For 33 years, Douglass directed the Basque Studies program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Today, it bears his name: William A. Douglass Center for Basque Studies.
His many publications on the Basques earned him the sobriquet Mr. Basque (the title of a biography about his life and work). He worked with Robert P. Laxalt to establish a Basque book series at the University of Nevada Press.
The year 2015 marked the 40th anniversary of his seminal work that he co-authored with Jon Bilbao, Amerikanuak: Basques in the New World.
Douglass was named to the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2012.
Dust explosion at Korean chemical plant kills one, injures four
A dust explosion in a silo at the Star Chemical company plant in the city of Gumi in south eastern South Korea left one worker dead and four others injured on October 19, the Yonhap agency reported. A silo containing terephthalic acid powder caught fire while workers were removing the silo's pipes. The chemical is a raw material used in producing polyester, widely used for clothes.
Stock image
The fire was extinguished about 40 minutes after it broke out thanks to 20 fire trucks and 140 personnel that were dispatched to the scene. None of the injured were said to be in a life-threatening condition. Police are questioning the survivors to determine what caused the accident.
Yonhap said the company was taking procedures to go into liquidation due to financial difficulties.
On Wednesday, Oct. 26 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. everyone is welcome to F.A.R.M. (Feed All Regardless of Means) Cafe at 617 West King Street for the first of what is hoped to be a monthly event where a local business Buys Boone Lunch. The first company to participate in this opportunity is 4 Forty Four construction of Blowing Rock.
Every day at F.A.R.M. Cafe guests can donate what they are able, donate more to help others, or exchange an hour of work for a great lunch. However, with 4 Forty Four covering the cost of the meal and cafe operation on October 26 with a generous donation, each and every additional donation will be utilized by the cafe in its mission to fight food insecurity in the High Country.
Kevin Troyer of 4 Forty Four learned of this opportunity at a recent business breakfast at the cafe. He and his employees will not only be buying lunch on October 26 but will also be serving as volunteer servers, cooks, and dishwashers working with the Cafe staff.
Were really looking forward to this opportunity to support F.A.R.M. Cafe, said Troyer, were also excited to introduce this community cafe to our clients, vendors, and friends. It is a great way to support and give back to this community that means so much to us.
We are very grateful that Kevin and the crew at 4 Forty Four are stepping out to be the first of what we hope will be a monthly opportunity for business partners to participate in the mission here at F.A.R.M. Cafe, said Tommy Brown who serves as volunteer and development coordinator at the Cafe. We think this will be a real win/win situation for businesses and business leaders like Kevin who understand the benefit of giving back to the community through support of local non-profit organizations such as F.A.R.M. Cafe.
As stated on the web-site (4fortyfour.com), 4 Forty Four is a community-oriented team of people that are very grateful to live and work in Western North Carolina. We take our job, as stewards of this community that you will live in, seriously. Our intent is to reach beyond traditional business models to actively and responsibly engage our community, not merely service it. We value relational capital and treating people right. This starts in our office where all team members are treated like family and extends to you, our clients, who we strive to involve at every level of our systematic process.
F.A.R.M. Cafe is a non-profit, pay-what-you-can community kitchen that builds a healthy and inclusive community. It provides high quality and delicious meals produced from local sources when available, served in a restaurant where everybody eats, regardless of means. The Cafe is open for lunch Monday-Friday 11 AM to 2 PM. For more information on F.A.R.M. Cafe and its mission to fight food insecurity in the High Country please visit the website at Farmcafe.org.
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(Bloomberg) Credit Suisse Group AG is starting two hedge funds focused on quantitative strategies as part of a broader effort to build the banks asset management unit, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The two funds, Qube and QT, are comprised of existing London and New York-based teams from Credit Suisses Systematic Market-Making Group that had been housed within the investment bank, said the person, who asked not to be named because the matter is private.
To read this article:
The senseless bombings of civilians and children continue and no one is able to do a thing. One has to ask how something like this is even possible in 2016, he stated in his speech at an event organised by the Finnish Club on Tuesday.
The European Union, he estimated, has soft but no hard measures at its disposal, as is evident in its reaction to the situation in Syria.
The EU's tools to contribute to resolving the hard core of the war in Syria are limited. Russia's actions in Europe and its peripheries are also examples of hard force, but the EU has been unable to respond to them because it refuses to play and should not play by the harsh rules adopted by Russia, he analysed.
The European Union is, as a result, relatively slow to react to such crises and should seek to utilise the measures at its disposal more effectively, according to Sipila.
He pointed out that the common defence and security policy has previously revolved around crisis management but its focus is currently shifting towards strengthening a sense of security among Europeans. The European Council, he added, will convene in December to draw up a defence and security-related action plan and mull over means to better utilise the options afforded under treaties.
On the table are several concrete proposals that deal with, for example, developing funding for crisis management operations, developing the defence sector, improving the military security of supply, responding to hybrid threats, engaging in permanent structural co-operation, and establishing a permanent common operational headquarters and defence fund, revealed Sipila.
Aleksi Teivainen HT
Photo: Mikko Stig Lehtikuva
Source: Uusi Suomi
The Social Affairs and Health Committee of the Finnish Parliament announced yesterday its unanimous support for designing a new health-based tax on foods and beverages, demanding that the preparatory legislative work be started without delay.
Finland is moving ahead with its plan to levy a tax on sugary foods and beverages despite fierce opposition from the Finnish Food and Drinks Industries' Federation (ETL).
Studies indicate that the excess consumption of sugary beverages, in particular, increases body weight and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. It has been estimated that the adverse effects of sugary drinks are a consequence of how easy it is to consume them excessively, it states in a report drawn up for the Parliament's Finance Committee.
The tax is under consideration as a means to offset the financial effects of a ruling delivered by the European Commission that obliges the country to scrap its current tax on sweets and ice cream on grounds that the tax unfairly favours domestic producers.
Petteri Orpo (NCP), the Minister of Finance, has expressed his support for the sugar tax but also acknowledged the challenges associated with its implementation.
If there's a way to do it, I'm all for it. It'd have a fiscal effect and it'd be a good tax. It's a Pigouvian tax with clear health effects provided that we can get it to work [] I've asked the ministry to explore the options further, he said in an interview with Demokraatti on Tuesday.
ETL contrastively believes the challenges associated with the implementation are insurmountable.
Not a single EU country has a sugar tax and for a good reason: [the tax] is judicially, technically and economically infeasible, says Heli Tammivuori, a director at ETL.
She describes the sugar tax as a cork that re-surfaces regularly.
The possibility of introducing a sugar tax was previously explored in 20122013, as a diverse group of officials evaluated a variety of possible sugar tax schemes. All of the schemes evaluated were technically difficult to implement and dubious, to say the least, from a legal viewpoint, she argues in a press release.
Nor could any of the schemes guarantee a decrease in sugar consumption, according to Tammivuori.
Supporters of the tax have estimated that the implementation is possible following the adoption of new new food labelling regulations by the European Union. ETL, meanwhile, insists that distinguishing between products with natural and products with added sugar will remain difficult regardless of the new regulations.
If the tax was levied on the sugar contents of products irrespective of the product in question, food with natural sugar, such as fruit and berries, [] would also fall under the scope of the tax. Drawing a line between foods with natural sugar and foods with added sugar is very complicated, if not impossible, it states.
Tammivuori stresses that the industry appreciates the concerns about sugar consumption but has to reduce the amount of sugar in foods and beverages gradually in order not to hurt sales.
Aleksi Teivainen HT
Photo: Milla Takala Lehtikuva
Source: Uusi Suomi
I ask for your vote to represent you in Congress so that I can put #PeopleFirst, #GetStuffDone and help rebuild the middle class.
Im a businessman, family man and former radio talk-show host. I married my college sweetheart, Laynette, and we have three grown children.
In business, I have developed and managed complex budgets, paying close attention to forecasting income, managing expenses and minimizing waste. I have started companies, created jobs and assembled diverse teams to get stuff done. I have successfully negotiated contracts with people from other cultures with goals and values different than mine.
On my radio shows, I regularly discussed controversial issues with people across the political spectrum and found areas of agreement to build on. I actively seek out the views of others.
In my work with community groups, I have learned to listen to each persons story to understand their challenges. I embrace and work to achieve Americas constitutional commitments to the general welfare, equality and justice for all.
I actively reach out to people and organizations that represent women, people of color, seniors, veterans, LGBTQ, faith communities and working families Their appreciation is reflected in my endorsements.
My first goal as your Congressman is to vote. When our representative doesnt vote, we have no voice.
To bring more good-paying jobs that sustain families to northern Nevada, I will champion efforts to build Nevadas green energy sector. I will put our government on course to repair and modernize our roads, bridges, waterways, airports, transportation systems and other essential infrastructure elements.
I will work to establish private/public partnerships that accelerate development of a high-speed data highway in Nevada. It will create jobs, make our existing businesses more competitive, attract new businesses and expand the educational resources available to our children and adults seeking career training.
Also high on my To Do list are strengthening social security, getting big money and dark money out of our politics and aggressively addressing climate change. I will work for comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship.
Congress needs fixing. The repair begins with putting people first, above the special interests, big money, global corporations and partisan hackery. It continues with voters holding elected representatives accountable for their votes and showing up to work.
I will lead and collaborate to move America forward. We must reject obstructionism and discord. Its time for a change.
City Council, residents optimistic about downtown hotel prospects
Residents and city officials look at a model of downtown Hendersonville during a public meeting about a downtown hotel project.
Related Stories
If the size of the crowd signified the degree of interest, Hendersonville is very interested in the prospect of a hotel on the site of the historic Grey Hosiery Mill.
Eighty people filled most of the seats at the City Operations Center Tuesday night to hear public-private development experts issue an opinion that a downtown hotel is economically feasible as long as the city participates to some degree in the project. The citys main contribution would likely be to finance the sale of the mill property at a low rate and to invest money in streetscape improvements that makes for an appealing pedestrian link to Main Street.
The consulting group, Development Finance Initiative, was formed at the School of Government at UNC at Chapel Hill to respond to development finance challenges (and) bridge that gap between public and private investors for these type of transformational projects, said Rory Dowling, the project manager for DFI.
After the City Council approved the agreement a year ago, DFI set out to research Hendersonvilles demographics, analyze the demand for lodging and study the potential for growth, said Sarah Odio, a graduate student who was part of the DFI team. The analysis found that while there is no demand for more of the citys existing inventory of rooms bed-and-breakfast inns and highway motels there is a demand for a downtown hotel.
There is limited high-quality full service products with event space and a restaurant, Odio said. Just looking at the model, this is an awesome place and people want to come here.
The hope of the City Council is that those visitors want to stay downtown and that associations, betrothed couples or anniversary celebrants would book a convention, wedding or party in the 100-year-old mill on Grove Street at Fourth Avenue East. Plans now envision saving the historic 1915 mill for use as a restaurant and meeting space while clearing the rest for new construction.
The consultants looked at four comparable resort towns Beaufort, S.C., Staunton, Va., Blowing Rock and New Bern. All have a downtown hotel in the style youre looking at as well an event or conference space, Odio said. Downtown hotels can demand higher occupancy rates and higher room rates."
In response to a concern that lodging is a zero-sum game a room night downtown cancels a room night on I-26 Odio said thats not the case.
All the products including highway hotels and bed & breakfasts benefit, she said, because the downtown hotel brings more visitors overall. Interviews with hoteliers in the four towns DFI studied showed that across the board they felt the downtown hotel benefited them as a whole.
The public-private partnership model, in which the city sells the mill property at an attractive rate, would generate more tax revenue and tourism, the consultants said.
We found that with the public-private partnership theres actually a net positive return to the city, Dowling said.
Council members reacted enthusiastically to the presentation. The next step would be to authorize the consultants to draft a request for proposals in an effort to attract responses from boutique hotel developers. The proposal on the table now called for a five-story hotel with 130 rooms, a restaurant and convention space for 200.
I think its the best shot to do something great for downtown and also save an old building, City Councilman Jeff Miller said.
Mayor pro tem Steve Caraker said he favors authorizing the next step in an effort to recruit a developer.
Theyve done projects similar to this all over the state so they already have a list of prospects, he said of the Chapel Hill consultants. Dealing with an old building is not your normal from-the-ground-up construction. It presents its own list of challenges and surprises.
Carson Calton, the owner of City Tire and chair of the Historic Seventh Avenue advisory committee, liked what he saw.
From the perspective of the Seventh Avenue group, weve been talking about something like this forever," he said. "This makes perfect sense not only for all of downtown but for our whole district. To have an anchor like this is great. Its bound to have a spillover effect. Downtown is vibrant and full and theyre going to go to the next commercial area and thats us.
Dublin's ruthless gangland feud has made life tougher for low-level criminals.
The Hutch-Kinahan violence has led to extra gardai patrolling the city's northside.
With more officers on the streets, drug and gun seizures have increased and there have been fewer robberies.
Supt Paul Scott of Raheny Garda Station told a Dublin City Council meeting that increased patrols had had a "knock-on" effect in lowering crime in general.
Speaking at the North Central Joint Policing Committee meeting, Supt Scott said the number of robberies in the Raheny district had fallen by 36pc compared with last year's figures.
Drug seizures in the same district fell by 22pc.
Supt Scott attributed the reductions to a "significant input of resources" in response to "what has become known as the Hutch-Kinahan feud".
"It does have the knock-on effect that, say, the 'ordinary criminal' isn't prepared to stick his head above the parapet," he said.
Robberies
Supt Scott added that many criminals who may have considered armed robberies or ambushes of cash-in-transit vans had been discouraged.
However, he noted that robberies at businesses in the Howth area had increased in the past nine months, but gardai had a "number of operations" under way to combat this.
Meanwhile, Supt Gerard Donnelly of Coolock Garda Station said the number of people caught in possess- ion of a firearm had increased by 40pc compared with the first nine months of 2015.
Coolock also saw a 68pc fall in the number of thefts from a person.
Supt Donnelly credited an 11pc reduction in public order incidents to add- itional weekend patrols.
"A lot of it will be driven by the additional resources that we had out there," he said, adding that 1,000 searches had been conducted in the first nine months of this year compared with 685 in the same period in last year.
Asked by councillor Ciaran O'Moore about the budget needed to keep up the increased patrols, gardai stressed they would do what they could to lower crime figures.
John Herbert who has traveled from the UK , who has travelled to Ireland in the hope of finding his father Peter.
John Herbert with the Sunday Pictorial story on his father Peter who disappeared in 1957
An Englishman who has nurtured a lifelong hope of finding his missing father has travelled to Ireland to continue his search.
John Herbert (69) is appealing to people in Dublin for any information they may have on Peter Herbert, an accountant and racehorse owner whose last known location was in the city in 1957.
The tale of Peter is colourful to say the least.
"He left England with a woman named Stella to travel to Ireland in July 1957," said John.
"He stayed at the Belvedere Hotel in Dublin. We don't know what happened to him after he left the hotel in Denmark Street."
Embezzled
A British Sunday newspaper published a front page story in December 1957 with a photograph of Peter Herbert holding a cocktail shaker with the headline 'Good Riddance To A Rogue'.
The Sunday Pictorial published stories reporting Peter had embezzled money from a furniture manufacturing firm where he worked in order to finance a playboy lifestyle, including the purchase of a number of racehorses.
The newspaper published comments from Peter admitting he had been "fiddling the books" at the business. His employer also confirmed to the newspaper he had stolen money from him.
"Why did my father disappear? In his mind, he had to run away, a coward," said John, also an accountant who lives in Devon. "There were lots of things in his life we don't know. He has been called a rogue and many other things, all of which are probably true."
John said that by the age of 37 his father had children with three different women.
He said Peter had remained married to his mother, Olive, with whom he had five children.
Olive's five children were still very young when he disappeared.
"Despite being a very clever man, my father double-crossed others to get ahead," he said.
"I'm the first to accept my father was not a nice or a good man, however, it means so much to discover more about his life after 1957.
"Despite his wrongdoings, I feel a son or daughter has a right to know about their father, especially his last resting place."
He said his father may have used other names in Ireland, such as Peter Field, Peter Williams, or Peter Scott.
Extensive efforts by John to find out what happened to his father have included commissioning psychological profiling, employing private investigators in Ireland and Britain, commissioning a number of searches through the Salvation Army, and visiting the Garda Missing Persons office and the National Archives in Dublin, he said.
His father was born in England on October 31, 1920.
John has also contacted other missing persons agencies in Ireland and the UK, examined ship passenger lists, examined his father's bankruptcy documents, and checked death registers and probate records in the UK and abroad.
He also paid for Dublin solicitors to search Land Registry records in Ireland.
Although there was "a strong possibility" his father remained in Ireland, John has followed up rumours that he could have gone to Canada, the United States, Australia, or Trinidad by contacting investigators abroad.
Information
He told the Herald he would be willing a pay a reward for any useful information about what happened to his father and he can be contacted by e-mail at j_dudley@btinternet.com
John, who has one son and two granddaughters, said he had felt isolated and alone as a child without his father.
He was the eldest of the couple's five children and would dearly love to know what happened to him or even just his date of death. He promised his mother before she died that he would try to find out what happened him.
"I do not want to pass from this world without finding out what happened to my father," John said.
Children's Minister Katherine Zappone was caught up in a cash-in-transit raid only metres from her constituency office in Tallaght.
Ms Zappone was talking to local councillor Charlie O'Connor when raiders targeted a G4S security van making a cash drop at the Bank of Ireland on Main Street just before noon on Monday.
One of the gang pepper-sprayed a security guard before grabbing a cash box containing an estimated 50,000 and fleeing to a waiting car.
Commotion
A member of the public who witnessed the robbery drove his van across the path of the getaway car in an effort to stop it.
However, the raiders drove on to the footpath and severely damaged the side of their car as they made their escape.
"We were just standing and talking on the street when we noticed a bit of a commotion," Mr O'Connor told the Herald.
"We could hear horns and alarms going off and our attention was drawn to it, but we weren't sure what was happening. I went up to the bank to see what had happened and found out about the robbery, so I went back to Katherine and told her.
"We were both amazed by it, really. It's shocking to think of it now."
Mr O'Connor praised the driver who put his own property and safety at risk to try to stop the raiders from escaping.
The garda investigation into the robbery, and another unconnected one at the same time at the Charlestown Shopping Centre in Finglas, is continuing.
Ms Zappone (62) declined to comment on the cash-in-transit raid.
Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar has been accused of pitching the public against gardai after saying people "won't ever" look at the force in the same way again if they strike.
The minister has called on officers to reflect on the position they hold in society "before making a decision that can't be stepped back from".
He said that by "potentially leaving communities unprotected for one Friday or multiple Fridays over the coming weeks, the public won't see them in the same way as they did in the past".
Anger
However, Mr Varadkar's comments have only served to raise the anger of gardai who are scheduled to withdraw their services on four Fridays next month.
Members of AGSI are due to begin their industrial action on Friday by refusing to log on to Pulse, the garda data system.
Mr Varakdar made his initial comments on the way into yesterday morning's Cabinet meeting.
It prompted AGSI president Antoinette Cunningham to say that if he wanted to protect public relationships he "should be putting his energies into finding solutions and not pitching the public and the guards against each other".
However, later as he attended a press conference to announce the end of JobsBridge, Mr Varadkar reiterated his view, outlining why gardai are seen as different from other public servants.
"They are uniformed officers. They swear to uphold the law. That really sets them apart from other public servants," he said.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has confirmed it is "exploring options" for dealing with immigration control at airports ahead of planned days of industrial action by gardai.
It is understood that concerns have been raised by airlines that flights and services at airports could be affected on the days.
A spokesperson for Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said: "The Department is exploring with An Garda Siochana and Dublin Airport Authority options for dealing with immigration control in the event of the planned strike action going ahead."
Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London for four years. Markus Schreiber (AP)
More information Ecuador admite que corto Internet a Assange por interferir en las elecciones
Ecuador said on Tuesday that it has temporarily restricted the internet access of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living in the countrys London embassy for the last four years.
In a brief statement, Ecuadors Foreign Ministry said it had cut access at its embassy in London in light of concerns that the WikiLeaks founder, who has lived there since he was granted political asylum in 2012, was interfering in the US presidential election.
WikiLeaks has published thousands of emails detailing Hillary Clintons presidential campaign
The government of Ecuador respects the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other countries and does not interfere with electoral processes or support any particular candidate, said the countrys Foreign Ministry in a brief statement.
WikiLeaks has published thousands of emails detailing the internal goings on of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. The whistle-blowing website has continued operations despite the interruption.
WikiLeaks reported that Assanges internet connection had been cut on Saturday evening, accusing Quito of submitting to US pressure. The US State Department issued a statement denying having pressured the government of President Rafael Correa.
While our concerns about WikiLeaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down WikiLeaks are false, John Kirby, State Department spokesman, said on Tuesday.
Assange has become a growing problem for Ecuador since requesting asylum to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he faces questioning over sexual assault allegations that he denies. At the time, he expressed concern that the Swedish authorities would extradite him to the United States to face trial for the leak of hundreds of thousands of classified US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.
Ecuador has signaled that it would continue to grant Assange asylum
Ecuador has signaled that it would continue to grant Assange asylum, but the Foreign Ministry statement suggests he would be treated differently from now on. Ecuador is mediating with the Swedish authorities over the rape allegations.
WikiLeaks gained international attention in 2006 when it published cables that detailed the inner workings of US foreign policy. In recent months it has published emails stolen from top Democratic Party officials.
In July, days before the Democratic National Convention, it published more than 19,000 emails believed to have been taken from the Democratic Party, prompting the resignation of senior party officials.
Earlier this month, WikiLeaks again published several thousand emails, revealing messages apparently sent and received by top Clinton aide John Podesta. The organization is expected to continue releasing thousands of additional Podesta emails in the days leading up to the US election.
The Clinton campaign has accused Russia of stealing the emails and then having WikiLeaks post them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing the case. The Clinton campaign refuses to confirm whether or not the emails are authentic.
English version by Nick Lyne.
Kazakh entrepreneurs Tair and Olessya Assimov moved to Barcelona in 2013. JUAN BARBOSA
Kazakh Tair Assimov decided to sell his house in Finland and move to Barcelona, without ever having set foot there. He wanted to escape all those Scandinavian winters, and everything he read about the Spanish city online suggested it would fit the bill perfectly.
The climate, the culture, the way of life, says Assimov, listing his reasons for choosing the Catalan capital. He convinced his wife Olessya, enrolled his daughter in an international school and made the leap in 2013.
Many international executives come to Spain on assignment and then dont want to go home Manuel Clavel, Talengo
We have never regretted our decision only that we didnt make it earlier, says the 34-year-old IT engineer and founder of two startups, who was born in Almaty and educated in Helsinki. As an entrepreneur he was free to choose where he lived, and he chose Barcelona.
The case of the Assimov family might appear unusual but it isnt. Some 56% of foreigners living in Spain decided to move to the country in search of a better quality of life and 74% believe they have achieved this, according to the latest HSBC Expat Explorer Survey.
HSBC spoke to nearly 27,000 expats in 190 countries and found that Spain has the second-best rating for quality of life, behind only Switzerland.
Quality of life has become a driver of economic development, according to Mateu Hernandez, director of the independent, not-for-profit association Barcelona Global (BG). Hernandez believes cities around the world are now engaged in a fight to attract the best global talent and factors such as weather and cultural life are key.
The aim of BG is to attract the attention of executives, investors, entrepreneurs and artists. We want them to be thinking about Barcelona when it comes to choosing where to live, Hernandez says.
Cities around the world are fighting to attract the best talent and factors like weather and cultural life are key Mateu Hernandez, Barcelona Global
This was the certainly the case for Switzerlands Regula Stammbach, a qualified organizational psychologist. After 10 years in Frankfurt, she and her husband asked themselves: Do we want to spend the rest of our lives here? The answer was a resounding no. The couple put together a list that included Nice, Rome, Genoa and the Catalan capital. They individually put together a list of pros and cons for each city and Barcelona came out top.
Its the perfect city: the culture, the climate, the sea, the food, and the lifestyle, which is both modern and classic, says Stammbach.
Like the Assimov family, Stammbach and her husband had plenty of freedom in terms of where they chose to live. Back in 2014, the Swiss woman was running a leadership consultancy for businesses while her husband headed up a marketing firm. That year they moved to Castelldefels, near Barcelonas El Prat airport and they have lived there ever since.
I travel every week to see my clients in Switzerland and around the rest of Europe, Stammbach explains.
Appealing to investors
Spains reputation for its high quality of life also affects investment decisions. Talent attracts capital much more than capital attracts talent, says Hernandez. The CEO of BG argues that whereas investment used to follow natural resources and energy supplies it now goes where good professionals are to be found. For him, Nestles Digital Services Unit, a global digital hub in Barcelona, is an example of that.
Barcelona was chosen because its considered a highly attractive city in terms of attracting digital talent, says Jelena Trajkovic Karamata, director of the Nestle center. The Swiss company wasnt just thinking of people already based in the city, but also Barcelonas ability to attract people from all over the world. Half of the 55 people who work at the digital hub come from overseas and 17 different countries are represented.
In a similar way, when Amazon decided to set up its technical hub for Europe in Madrid, it wasnt just thinking about local staff. Madrid has two clear advantages: high-quality staff and conditions that attract international talent, says the companys PR director for Spain, Adam Sedo. The executive explains that the firm held recruitment events outside of Spain to put together its Madrid team. Those events were held in locations with good technical universities, with the last two taking place in Singapore and Buenos Aires.
Seventy percent of Amazons technical team in Madrid is made up of Spanish engineers while the remainder come from overseas, according to Sedo.
Earning less, living better
But foreign professionals arent just thinking about sun and sand when they choose where to live, says Manuel Clavel from international headhunter Talengo, which specializes in finding top executives for the Spanish job market. Other key factors in the decision include a citys economic development, the professional opportunities on offer, the quality of education and the existence of business schools, and international links.
Spain is highly rated among foreign executives, Clavel says. There are lots of international executives who have come to Spain on assignment and then dont want to go back to their countries, says the headhunter.
One of these people is Emmanuel Duriez, a 48-year-old Frenchman who specializes in helping companies in crisis. Duriez came to Spain in 2009 as the director of the Spanish office of French industry supply firm Metalco. He was tasked with restructuring the company and six years later he had made the business profitable again. When head office offered him a job back at home, he turned it down. I already feel more Spanish than French. I like the way people in Spain look at life, he says.
Duriez wants to stay in Barcelona and says that he would look for a position at a Spanish firm if Metalco ordered him to go back to France, although he knows he would earn less. I have a lot of French friends who had done this, he says.
For the Frenchman, one of the chief attractions of Barcelona is the way of life, but he admits that his love affair with the city lies in the small details. Sometimes we dont give it enough credit but having blue skies nearly every day helps you be happy.
English skills and tax system remain hurdles Spain is an attractive destination for foreigners but there are still obstacles for the country when it comes to attracting international talent. English language skills and the tax system are the chief concerns according to the latest poll by Barcelona Global (BG), which saw the participation of 678 foreign residents in Barcelona. Both of these issues are prevalent across the country according to BG CEO Mateu Hernandez, who says English skills are poorer here than in other countries and describes the tax system for individuals as "not very clear." This puts Spanish cities at a disadvantage when lined up against global destinations such as London, Berlin or New York.
English version by George Mills.
Grand jury findings in a 1988 cold murder case released Tuesday implicate a Wise County man in his brother-in-laws shooting death, and the likely involvement of his brother, then a Sheriffs Office investigator, in hampering the investigation.
These are the responsibility of the editor and convey the newspaper's view on current affairs-both domestic and international
The PSOE interim management team in Congress. ULY MARTIN
Anyone who reads the papers, listens to the radio or checks out the mood on social media these days could be forgiven for concluding that the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) is a party with no pulse and no willpower, a finished entity that could no more run the country than be an effective opposition group.
Socialists themselves whether party leaders, grassroots members or voters are not immune to this state of mind. Instead of embracing the partys (objectively dismal) results at the polls, trying to understand what went wrong and working to correct it, they have gone from a state of denial to an attitude of doom-and-gloom that leaves no way out.
The PSOE must use its role as opposition to the PP as an incentive to rebuild itself
And we should not underestimate the priceless contribution of the Popular Party (PP), whose cynical pose of affliction barely conceals its gleeful desire to prolong its rivals misery.
Nor should we play down the role of the media, with their live coverage full of titillating details about the final days of a once-proud lion in its death throes, which is how they are selling the story to their audiences.
Finally, let us not forget the chorus of lazy analysts and their endless, repetitive utterances about the crisis of social democracy, and their unavoidable conclusion that no matter what they do, within or without Spain, the Socialists are history.
This combination of factors inevitably leads to the same conclusions regardless of the fact that they come from very diverse sources: the PSOE is dead, or else about to die, or else about to commit suicide.
As is usually the case with all analyses imbued with a sense of anthropological or ideological pessimism, the starting point is logically the same as the finishing line: pessimism.
The problems afflicting Spains Socialists are many and grievous, and it would be senseless to avoid or minimize them. But they are not the only ones or even the most serious ones affecting Spain. Nor is the PSOE the only party in deep trouble (a brief glance at the PP and at other parties going through an identity crisis, from Podemos to Ciudadanos and to the former Convergencia in Catalonia, confirms this fact).
The PSOE is said to be dead, or else about to die, or else about to commit suicide
And while it is true that social democracy is facing major problems at the global level, it is also true that conservative parties are under pressure of their own (because of their xenophobic, nationalist right wings) that pales compared with the problems of social democracy.
There is a future for social democracy. What is it? One in which social democrats are able to use their activism to forge a renewed self-confidence and the ability to understand the way that social needs have changed. From Trudeau in Canada to Renzi in Italy and Obama in the United States, its clear that reformists still have a lot to say and do.
The situation is no different in Spain, and therefore it does not have to be any worse here: the PSOEs refusal to accept its election defeats and the serious strategic mistakes it has made since the general election of December 20 have widened pre-existing rifts within the party, and undermined efforts to restore self-confidence to the party.
But once it is back on the right track and accepts its double defeat at the polls, the PSOE must use its role as opposition to the PP as an incentive to rebuild itself into the reform-oriented alternative that this country needs.
English version by Susana Urra.
Comings and goings: Boot Barn in the works; Clorox plant opens
New store could be the third to move into Valley Plaza this year.
Former Argentinean president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Telam
When President Mauricio Macri came to power a year ago, in large part it was due to the efforts of opponents of his predecessor, Cristina Kirchner. Not content with removing her from office, many also want to see her face trial for corruption.
Few Argentineans believe their judicial system is independent, and are long used to seeing judges acting on behalf of the government of the day. The last year has seen one accusation of corruption against Kirchner follow another, and most people believe that Macri is, one way or another, behind them. Nobody believes him when he insists that he can do nothing to force the courts to take action against Kirchner.
The last year has seen one accusation of corruption against Cristina Kirchner follow another
Whats more, a growing number of voices are suggesting that Macri is doing all he can to keep Kirchner out of jail, preferring her to lead the opposition at the head of the divided Peronist Party, half of whose members want to dump her.
Kirchner has been called to testify in a kickbacks-for-contracts case in her home province of Santa Cruz, in the south of the country. Lazaro Baez, a property developer with close ties to Kirchner and her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, has been in jail awaiting trial since April in the same case.
In 2013, a well-known investigative journalist accused Baez of helping her and her late husband launder some 55 million abroad.
The wealth of the president and her late husband has been the subject of ongoing speculation since the political power couple emerged almost a decade ago as national leaders of the faction within the Peronist party that identified themselves as Kirchnerites.
In December 2010, WikiLeaks released a US State Department cable written in 2007 by then-US Ambassador Vilma Martinez, who complained to Washington that the Kirchner government was not cooperating with US authorities in cracking down on money-launderers.
Some embassy contacts argue that the current [Argentinean] leadership, including the president, stands to lose from the honest and vigorous pursuit of money laundering, wrote Martinez, adding that most money laundering in Argentina is the product of tax evasion and political corruption rather than financing of terrorism.
Kirchner could stand in mid-term elections in 2017
Veteran leftist politician Margarita Stolbizer, who has filed charges against Kirchner, as well as outlining her accusations in a best-selling book, believes that Macri is doing all he can to prevent Cristina Kirchner from standing trial.
I am concerned by this hold-up in the justice system. I suspect that this is part of a strategy by the government to allow Kirchner to stand for office next year and thus polarize politics. Every time she says something outrageous, Macri is the beneficiary, said Stolbizer in a radio interview.
Kirchner could stand as the Peronist Partys candidate for the province of Buenos Aires in mid-term elections in 2017, effectively taking attention away from other opposition parties.
In reality, Kirchner is a greater threat to her own party than she is to Macri. She retains a loyal and vocal following. Between 20% and 25% of voters in Buenos Aires will vote for her or whomever she names in the event of being sent to jail. Demand dictates supply, not the other way round, said Macris close aide Marco Pena.
English version by Nick Lyne.
Agentes de la policia cientifica inspeccionan la casa en la que fueron hallados los cuerpos de una familia brasilena en Pioz (Guadalajara). efe
The chief suspect in the investigation into the horrific murder of a family of four in Spains Guadalajara province arrived in Madrid on Wednesday after handing himself in to Brazilian police.
The suspect had told police investigators he fled to Brazil because he feared he would be next
Sources close to the investigation told Spanish news agency EFE that Patrick Nogueira Gouveira the nephew of the slain parents voluntarily gave himself up to police in his home country after conversations between his lawyer and Spanish investigators.
The 19-year-old was due to be taken into custody by Spains Civil Guard when he arrived at the Spanish capitals Adolfo Suarez-Madrid Barajas airport.
A video tweeted by the Spanish Civil Guard of the suspects arrival today at Madrid Barajas Airport.
Nogueira Gouveira, who has a criminal record after brutally assaulting a teacher when he was 16, is wanted in connection with the horrific murder of his aunt and uncle and their two small children. The dismembered bodies of the family of four were found in plastic garbage sacks on September 18 in their rented home in Pioz, Guadalajara after neighbors alerted police to a terrible stench coming from within the property.
Investigators originally suspected the four were victims of a drug deal gone wrong but evidence including DNA and fingerprints at the house pointed to Nogueira Gouveira.
In other key evidence, cellphone records obtained by police place Nogueira Gouveira at the scene of the crime on August 17, the day the murders are thought to have taken place. This was the last time his uncle Marcos Campos Nogueira was seen alive at his place of work.
CCTV footage also shows the young man entering the private housing estate where his relatives lived at 3am on that date, while data on his bus pass reveals he traveled to Guadalajara on August 17 and returned the following day.
Nogueira Gouveira brutally attacked a teacher when he was 16 years old
Nogueira Gouveira fled to Brazil two days after the hacked-up bodies of his relatives were found by Civil Guard officers. He initially told Brazilian police he had returned to the South American country over fears he would be next. Declaring that he was innocent, he said he had never been to house in Pioz, which he had helped his relatives locate on the internet.
However, as evidence against him mounted, the nephew changed his story. Via his lawyer, he stated the physical evidence found was a result of his having lived with his aunt and uncle, although he did not specify where he had done so.
English version by George Mills.
A crowd of around 200 violent protesters, many of them wearing hoods and face masks, prevented former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and chairman of the PRISA group (owner of EL PAIS) Juan Luis Cebrian from speaking at a panel discussion in Madrids Autonomous University on Wednesday.
The event was canceled after the protesters broke into the auditorium of the Law School to cries of: Out of this university, you fascists. Many bore placards with the message: You are not welcome here.
The level of violence acquired traits that went beyond the protest. It was best to cancel the event
Antonio Rovira, law professor
The protest was organized by a group that calls itself Libertarian Student Federation, which distributed leaflets insulting both speakers and accusing them of using their power and political influence to increase inequality.
In recent weeks, both Gonzalez and Cebrian have been blamed by leaders of the anti-austerity Podemos party, and particularly by its secretary general Pablo Iglesias, for allegedly pressuring the Socialist Party (PSOE) into delivering the executive to the Popular Party (PP) through an abstention at an upcoming investiture vote in Congress.
Some protesters held up a sign sympathizing with ETA convicts.
Spain has been in deadlock since December 20 of last year, when an inconclusive election yielded a fragmented parliament in which no force was able to secure a large enough majority to form a government. A repeat election on June 26 produced a similar result, with the PP winning the most votes both times.
Since then, the PSOE has been debating whether to keep voting down acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys attempts at reinstatement, or whether to let him form a minority government to take Spain out of its prolonged limbo. Felipe Gonzalez, Spains longest-serving prime minister and a respected figure of Spanish Socialism, has come out in support of the latter option.
Alarmed by the violence
Several masked individuals stationed themselves at the auditorium doors to prevent people from attending the panel discussion, which was part of a series about civil society and global change organized by PRISA.
A leaflet attacking Gonzalez and Cebrian was distributed ahead of the scheduled talk.
The dean of the law school, Yolanda Valdeolivas, faced the angry group and told them that their attitude was shameful.
Antonio Rovira, a professor of constitutional law at the university, said he was struck by the violence of the protest.
This [protest] had been announced, but we thought it would be peaceful, he said. But the level of violence acquired traits that went beyond the protest. It was best to cancel the event. There was another option, which was to resort to force and clear the way, but this has to be a very exceptional option at a university.
They are not letting us speak inside the auditorium. We dont know what to do in this type of situation, added Rovira. We are a little lost in the face of these signs of violence. The crowd came from outside this school. Today was a day for talking about things that people are allowed to disagree with. But we are persistent and stubborn, and we will try again.
English version by Susana Urra.
In an attempt to persuade the majority of investors to accept a debt-swap deal, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) , Venezuelas state-owned oil company, decided to extend the deadline for offers to October 21. A statement published on the companys website carries the tone of an urgent plea and ultimatum: failure to garner at least 50% participation in the swap deal will hurt its ability to make payments on its existing debt.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers a speech at the 23rd World Energy Congress in Istanbul. SEDAT SUNA
More information La petrolera estatal venezolana Pdvsa se acerca a la quiebra
Such a warning, especially after PDVSA pushed back the deadline three times since it made the initial debt exchange offer in September, indicates the serious challenge the Maduro administration faces when it comes to accessing the necessary liquidity to meet the commitments of an elephantine government that provides almost everything for its citizens, not to mention the lack of confidence the largest company in the South American country which contributes 96% of the total national budget inspires in its investors.
The macroeconomic policies of the chavista regime and falling oil prices have not helped bolster confidence in the swap deal either, though President Maduro has insisted that his administration will meet all debt obligations as it has until now.
PDVSA bonds were the most profitable asset on all global markets in the last two years, economist Ramiro Molina claimed
As of the deadline 5pm New York time on October 17 a substantially lower percentage than 50% of the total capital amount of the existing bonds had been offered, the company admitted in a statement. Improving swap offers would improve the companys liquidity in the short term, it added, before warning that should the exchange fail to go through, PDVSA will evaluate all alternative options. The above-mentioned improvement means exchanging $5.3 billion in bonds that mature in 2017 for new bonds that will mature in 2020.
Before the announcement, PDVSA said it would honor its commitments regardless of the results of the swap. But then its bond prices slipped each time it extended the deadline for offers due to fears that the company might have to suspend the transaction and default on its heavy debt obligations in the next 15 months, Reuters reported.
On Monday, several analysts appeared on Venezuelan TV discussing their view on the opportunities that the companys bonds represented for investors. PDVSA bonds were the most profitable asset on all global markets in the last two years, economist Ramiro Molina claimed in a discussion on Globovision. Ecoanalitica, a financial consulting firm, was also enthusiastic about the companys returns. With conservative estimates from Citgo, the Houston-based Venezuelan oil company, PDVSA 20s price should be between 82% and 84.2%, it said.
PDVAs statement warns that the company might extend the deadline again at its discretion. The Nicolas Maduro administration seems ready to push it to the latest date possible to avoid paying investors. If the exchange deal goes through with 75% participation, Ecoanalitica says PDVSA will free up $4 billion in liquid assets between 2016 and 2017. Venezuela will hold crucial elections during both years that will determine whether the chavista regime remains in power.
PDVAs statement warns that the company might extend the deadline again at its discretion
PDVSA is one of the largest exporters of crude oil and owner of the largest reserves in the world. But Venezuela is also the country with the highest volume of oil still underground. According to some estimates, the Latin American country could continue to extract this natural resource at the current rate for the next 300 years without exhaustion. This year, however, Venezuela had to buy American light crude oil for the first time. Its own very heavy crude is difficult to refine and must be mixed with lighter types before it can be exported to other nations.
In 2015, total production at PDVSA fell to 2.7 million barrels a day according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), more than a million barrels fewer than it produced a decade ago.
English version by Dyane Jean Francois.
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Taking a whack at Arnab Goswami is on the wishlist of his legion of detractors. Indeed, the television anchor seems to revel in public revulsion as night after night he hectors and bullies his hapless guests, especially if they happened to be Pakistanis. Now that there is a threat to him from a Pakistan-based terror organisation, and he has been given Y class security, much reaction online has been far from sympathetic.
He has been trolled viciously, the mildest criticism being some kvetching and grumbling that the anchor is being protected at a cost to the taxpayer. But then so are many politicians, some of whom probably do not face as much of a threat as Goswami.
Read: Anchor Arnab Goswami gets Y category security
Now you could say Goswami asked for it with his hyper patriotism and his consistent belabouring of Pakistani-sponsored terror. He often does not seem to differentiate between the Pakistani state, its people, its army, its intelligence agencies and terrorists. They are all bad, bad, bad, according to him. Whenever he has a Pakistani guest, he either does not let them speak, or smacks them down sharply when they try to get a word in edgeways.
Read: Uri aftermath: Delhi Police reviews security of VIPs
But, if there is a threat perception and this has clearly been verified by the intelligence agencies before giving him security, it is inappropriate to subject him to attack on this. There is much he can be attacked on but being given security is not one of them. There is hardly a neta today who does not get security and gets it often on flimsy grounds. We tolerate this even though that security often hampers us in public places. A terror threat is a serious matter and should be treated as such. Article 21 of the Constitution says: No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to the procedure established by law. In tandem with several court judgments on the issue of security to those under threat, the government is obliged to provide Goswami security. Anyone who feels so strongly can challenge it in court. This is not the first time a journalist has been given security cover, there have been several instances. So let us not single out Goswami for these online attacks. He is entitled to security whether we like it or not, and this is not an issue on which to pillory him.
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In a pre-recorded video film-maker Karan Johar has vowed not to engage with talent from across the border, has reiterated his patriotism and has appealed that the release of his movie not be disrupted.
Johar tries his best to reflect a sombre mood by wearing black and stands in front of a black background. He even speaks about how the country comes first for him. Maybe because Johar is from Bollywood, it does not have the desired effect. The point is: In any other situation it is a video that is worth laughing at. But not now.
People in the know of how Bollywood works attribute various reasons for the current tension: Some say this could be a war between the various camps in the film industry, others say there are political undertones to the controversy, and some say its nothing more than a response to some groups who specialise in intimidating and making a quick buck.
Read | Wish Karan Johar had expressed solidarity with Indian Army right after Uri: BJP
Whatever the reasons, this video is a reflection of the pitiable state to which our society has been reduced to. Videos where citizens profess their patriotism are stuff that emerge from nations that have a totalitarian regime, where citizens have to constantly remind the leader that they love the country and him.
India is a vibrant democracy that was built and continues to flourish by accommodating differing viewpoints and informed debate. India should not be defined by the limited spectrum of understanding professed by groups that rely on strong-arm tactics. Its a pity when a citizen is forced to profess his/her love for the nation.
Read | MNS threatens multiplex owners before Ae Dil Hai Mushkil release
Leading the charge is Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a party whose nuisance quotient is disproportionally higher than its political representation anywhere in the state. Given this, the Devendra Fadnavis governments refusal to take action against the MNS threats gives the impression that the government is either incapable or agrees with what is being done. Otherwise how can a statement by Ameya Khopkar, president, MNS Cine Workers Association, that we will ransack multiplexes if they go ahead with the releaseand that multiplexes that screen the movie better remember that they are decorated with expensive glass sheets not catch the attention of the police? The protection offered by the Mumbai Police to multiplexes comes late in the day after passions have been fanned.
Read | Will attack multiplexes if they screen Fawad Khan film: MNS
Theres an important line in Johars message which the MNS and other nationalistic attack groups have missed. He says that while he was making the movie there were efforts by our government for peaceful relations with the neighbour. So can it be argued that by accommodating Pakistani talent Johar was following what the government at that time was doing?
I feel sorry for Karan Johar not because I think he makes films that are stellar works of cinematic genius he prefers the tear-jerker variety stuffed with songs and dance (which, by the way, is purely Indian and thusnationalistic). I feel sorry because an individual has been pushed to a corner and threatened by a mob using nationalistic sentiments as an excuse to browbeat him into professing his patriotism as though Pakistan-bashing is the meter to measure an Indians patriotism.
Read | Im very patriotic, but why hang only artistes. Not fair: Priyanka Chopra
That a film-maker had to explain and make a xenophobic declaration in a desperate attempt to ensure the smooth release of his film is a slap on the face of the Fadnavis government. It is a pity that the State reduces its role to a mute spectator when fringe groups and political outfits fan nationalistic passions on false arguments and threaten to disrupt law and order.
Read | Varun Dhawan, Paresh Rawal support Karan Johars Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
The ruling BJP is doubly at fault because not only has it failed in checking threats from fringe groups, but it has also failed to rein in its youth wing which has joined those groups threatening to block the screening of movies with Pakistani artistes.
@vijucherian
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Compassion, it seems, has no place in the corridors of power dominated solely by electoral considerations. Nothing else perhaps can explain the plight of the 14-year-old rape survivor of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh who gave birth to a baby last week after losing a legal battle to abort her unwanted child.
Her tale is poignant and powerful enough that ought to have melted hearts: A young unwed mother saddled with the onerous task of bringing up a child in a poor family that struggles to feed its members.
Livelihood, however, is just one of the many daunting challenges that the girl faces. Though her alleged rapist is in jail, she is forced to confront stigmas associated with rape and out-of-wedlock motherhood in her village, Bairamnagar, about 40km from Bareilly town. Steeped in traditions and customs, neighbours look down upon the family, though they are simply victims and not perpetrators of a suspected heinous crime.
But logic is in short supply in Uttar Pradesh preparing for crucial assembly elections next year. The focus is firmly on votes and the cries of a single mother, pleading for justice and a bit of help, find no takers. The judiciary took too long to decide and even insensitive officials kept her waiting. Time was of the essence to abort the foetus that grew in her womb, but the establishment took no notice.
Police presence in Bisada village at Dadri in Greater Noida, after accused Ravin dies in Delhi hospital. (Sunil Sharma/HT file photo)
ead | How the system badly failed a minor rape survivor in Bareilly
Politicians focused instead on a murder suspect who died in a jail.
By no stretch of imagination, Ravin Sisodia could have evoked any sympathy from anyone under normal circumstances. Accused of being part of a mob that lynched Mohammad Ikhlaq, an elderly Muslim man of Bisada village last year on the suspicion of possessing beef, he was found dead in detention in Luksar jail.
Beef is an emotive issue with great electoral significance and Sisodia was made into a martyr in his death. His body was wrapped in the Tricolour and elected representatives rushed to his village to placate villagers divided on religious lines. In no time, his family had secured monetary pledges of Rs 25 lakh: the state government gave Rs 10 lakh, an NGO promised another Rs 10 lakh, and two BJP politicians Union minister Mahesh Sharma and state legislator Sangeet Som assured another Rs 5 lakh.
The unwed mother, on the contrary, was given just Rs 25,000 on Tuesday after months of ordeal maybe because empathy for her wouldnt fetch votes. For that matter, no politician has bothered to visit her till date despite newspapers consistently highlighting her plight. And the only time an official called on her was when she went to the local health centre to deliver the child and was refused help by a nurse for being a rape victim. The sub-divisional magistrate came to find out what exactly happened, but has not returned since.
Districts in Uttar Pradesh also have probationary officers to look after unwed mothers and rape survivors. But none so far has bothered to take care of the Bareilly girl. Uttar Pradesh boasts of a chief minister who is young, articulate and decent. But the establishment he runs has failed the girl at every step. Besides being shameful, the systemic failure is nothing but criminal.
Read | Why no outrage over this rape victim denied permission by court to abort?
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In Uttar Pradesh, the recent retaliatory commando raids across the LoC have taken on a new meaning. On Dussehra, PM Narendra Modi appeared at a Ram Lila in Lucknow, holding a faux sudarshan chakra. Across the state, posters featuring Modi, defence minister Manohar Parrikar, home minister Rajnath Singh and assorted BJP leaders have been plastered, along with silhouettes of soldiers, hailing the triumph of the avengers of Uri.
In the recent narrative, India seems to have had three military victories: The unambiguous triumph that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the somewhat ambiguous Kargil victory of 1999, and now, the surgical strikes of September 29, 2016, which have been declared to be a great victory, even though it has not quite achieved its goal getting Pakistan to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure.
The war of 1971 lasted two weeks, with the loss of more than 3,800 officers and jawans. The Kargil operation lasted roughly two months with the loss of some 470. In the surgical strike, which lasted several hours, fortuitously no one was killed.
The reason why the government is furiously making all kinds of claims, including that the Indian Army is now as good as the one of Israel in counter-terrorism, has to do with electoral politics. The use of military achievements to win elections is not new. But conflating a limited border operation to a military triumph certainly is, especially as it is aided by sections of an over-the-top media that seems to have lost its balance. The army itself has been low-key and the DGMOs statement announcing the attacks was factual and made none of the claims subsequently adduced on their behalf.
Read: Surgical strikes like Israeli ops: PM
Elections have played a role in all three victories. In March 1971, Indira Gandhi called for general elections and crushed the Opposition, in the main the dissident Congress and Jana Sangh. Strengthened enormously, she began the military-diplomatic moves that led to the surrender of the Pakistani army and the break-up of the country. Months after the war, in March 1972, she called for elections to 16 assemblies and the Congress swept them all.
In 1999, having been voted out of power in the midst of the Kargil crisis, Atal Bihari Vajpayee went to the polls with the Kargil victory as a slogan, accompanied by the same kind of media hype we see today. It didnt wash, the BJP managed to win 182 seats, the exact number it had in the outgoing Lok Sabha. But it formed the government because the Congress did particularly badly.
The assembly elections in UP are due in a few months. At this juncture, we can only guess on the outcome, but one thing that is clear is that the BJP is going all out to make the maximum political use of what it says is a famous victory.
The surgical strikes are witnessing some of the repeat of the Kargil scenario, when the ruling party raised the din of the victory so high that the failure to detect intruding Pakistanis for several months was papered over. TV studios have constructed their own war room sets complete with anchors in war correspondents gear.
What would Indira Gandhi have said of Parrikars claim that Like Hanuman, Army didnt know its power, I made our armed forces realise their power? Just how a supposedly cultural organisation like the RSS inspires a tactical military strike is another unfathomable mystery.
Read: Parrikar credits RSS teachings for surgical strikes
Parrikar insists that the strikes have been the most outstanding achievements of the army in the past 30 years. In claiming this, he does grave disservice to the brave personnel who have conducted such operations since 1993, sometimes going deeper into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir than the soldiers did this time.
In democracies, using military achievements for elections are not unusual. But its worth looking at the outcomes of our listed victories. Indira Gandhi squandered her mandate, and in three years declared the Emergency. Vajpayee wisely consolidated the NDA and ordered the Kargil inquiry, which led to the first systematic reform in Indias defence system since the mid-1960s.
It is one thing to declare that our army is the best in the world, its quite another thing to be taken in by ones own rhetoric. There are lots of gaps in the armys organisation, equipment, doctrine and professional education. As defence minister, Parrikars first job is to address these issues, not win elections.
Read: Engagement with Pak at time of our choosing
Modi has now signalled a zero tolerance for jihadi activity so he is now committed to respond each time an incident occurs. But we are still a long way from cracking the tough Pakistani nut and getting it to abandon support to terrorism. The strikes have been a great tactical success, but the real triumph will be in achieving a strategic shift in Islamabad. The strikes are only one element in what could be a sophisticated strategy of compellence; however, that strategy is already in danger of getting derailed by the premature celebrations of victory.
Manoj Joshi is Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation
The views expressed are personal
Delhis oldest secular festival, Phool Waloon Ki Sair, has managed to survive the test of time. The festival which was initiated by the Mughals in 19th century, has come a long way. It came to a halt though when the country was under the British rule. It was revived by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1961.
This annual week-long celebration in the Capital organised by Anjuman Sair-E-Gul Faroshan, brings together communities to promote communal harmony. What happens over the border cant stop us from holding this festival, says Usha Kumar, general secretary, Anjuman Sair-E-Gul Faroshan. She adds that the younger generation is oblivious to this more than a century-old tradition. But she adds, The response has been increasing every year.
Since its inception, the festival has been known for promoting peace and oneness among Hindus and Muslims. Keeping the grudges aside, people from both the communities will visit the Dargah of Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaaki near Qutub Minar on October 20 to offer floral chadar and panka. The next day, they will head to the Yogmaya Temple in Mehrauli to offer a floral chatra and panka (fan), says Kumar.
The Yogmaya mandir where the members will offer floral chhatra and Panka on October 21. The festival is celebrated every year at Mehrauli in the Capital. (Mohd Zakir/HT Photo)
The festivals itinerary aims to showcase composite culture of the city. The festival which kick started on October 14 with multiple activities, will culminate with the offering-ceremonies on the last two days.
About India-Pakistan relations and its effects on the festivities and Kumar adds, People from all over the city come together to celebrate this festival and at such a time when theres friction in the hearts people in both the countries, the relevance of this festival increases manifolds.
CATCH IT LIVE
What: Phool Waloon Ki Sair
Where: Dargah of Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaaki near Qutub Minar
When: October 20 and 21
Timings: 4 pm
Nearest Metro Station: Qutub Minar on Yellow Line
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The Gwalior police arrested a 36-year-old man accused of committing multiple thefts in a number of cities across the country.
The accused, Sachin Valmiki, a first year college dropout, who led a swanky lifestyle, was wanted in Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Nasik, Agra, Nagpur and Jaipur, said Morar town inspector Ravindra Singh Gurjar.
He was driving a stolen luxury sedan, wearing a Rolex watch and branded clothes when he was arrested on Sunday night at Morar neighbourhood of the city. He stole the car from a city showroom after being released from jail three months back, he said.
He was earlier arrested and released more than 20 times before being nabbed by the city police. He was driving around in the stolen car along with one of his accomplice when he was stopped near a check post following a tip-off from an informer.
When police asked him for documents of the car, he said that he had left them in his house and can fetch them in five minutes.
Gujar further said that police had information about him and knew that the car was stolen. During interrogation the accused confessed that he had stolen the car and put a fake registration number on it with a VIP number to evade arrest.
The accused told police that he has three wives and four girlfriends.
Valmiki also confessed about committing a theft at a city jewellery showroom, near one of his girlfriends house.
Police have recovered more than 1.5 kg of silver and gold jewllery from him, which he had stolen from a city showroom. During interrogation he revealed that his first wife a resident of Gwaliorwho was aware about his profession used to bail him out every time he was arrested.
Valmiki is fluent in English with excellent communication skills and used to travel by AC first class in train or by flights to commute one city to another to commit thefts, the police said.
Interrogations are on and we are trying to find out whether his wives and girlfriends were also involved in the theft along with him. He will be produced in a city court soon, Gujar said.
After film-maker Karan Johar gave in to the pressure of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and said he will not work with Pakistani talent in future, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday said that it would have been better had the director expressed solidarity with Indias armed forces post Uri and Pathankot attacks.
BJP spokesperson Shaina NC told ANI that the Centre has decided to give protection to every theatre that is going to showcase Johars film.
Clearly, there is a sentiment in public at large, which is anti-Pakistan at the given juncture as we all know post Uri and Pathankot. I wish the directors like Karan Johar would have come out with a statement in solidarity with our armed forces after the attacks rather than let a controversy break loose, said NC.
However, we do believe that the rule of law must prevail and because it cannot implement retrospective, our government has decided to give protection to every theatre that is going to showcase that film, she added.
NC further said that the question is who has actually boycotted this particular film, as the government has no role to play.
Earlier on Tuesday, Johar broke his silence on the row over his upcoming film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, in an emotional video statement expressing a deep sense of hurt and pain by the charge of being anti-national. I condemn terror in the strongest terms, I respect our Army, for me, the country comes first, the 44-year-old said.
Johar, who made his directorial debut with the blockbuster romance Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, further said, The best way to express your patriotism is to spread love and thats all I have ever tried to do through my work and cinema.
Yesterday, prominent industry veterans including filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt met Mumbai Police Commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar and Joint Police Commissioner (Law and Order) Deven Bharti, who assured them that they would provide protection to theatres screening Dharma Productions next release.
The meeting took place in the wake of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) veiled threat of vandalizing multiplexes if they screen Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.
CEO of Fox Star Studios Vijay Singh, CEO of Dharma Productions Apoorva Mehta and Siddharth Roy Kapur, the CEO of Disney India and the UTV Motion Pictures were among those present in the meeting.
Shunning long-time speculations about whether the movie will release on its defined date or not, Bhatt confirmed that they would stick to the initial date of release, adding the movie will hit cinemas worldwide on October 28.
Reaching out to the MNS workers, Bhatt urged them to show sensitivity about the fact that the movie has already been made and allow Diwali to be a festive affair for everyone.
I have a request as a fellow Indian to my brothers in the MNS, I am humbly requesting you to let us entertain people on the occasion of Diwali, he said.
Meanwhile, Mumbai Police spokesperson Ashok Dudhe said that all multiplexes and single screen theatres would get protection to release the movie so that no disruption is caused in middle of the shows or in the city as a whole.
The movie starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been under fire because it also features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in a cameo.
The MNS after imposing the ban on artistes from the neighbouring country, in response to the terror attack in Uri led by Pakistan, had on Monday openly threatened the theatre owners if they screen the movie.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
A decision on the goods and services tax (GST) rate will be taken next month, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday after the Centre and states failed to arrive at a consensus despite discussions over two days.
Jaitley, however, sounded confident about rolling out by April the single nationwide tax to replace a string of local levies, hailed as one of the biggest tax reforms in the country.
The discussions were initially planned for three days.
We will finalise the tax structure at the next meeting, Jaitley said, adding the GST council, that includes representatives of all states, will meet again on November 3-4.
Officials said the discussions on Wednesday centred around a cess on ultra-luxury and sin goods that would be used to compensate states for any loss of revenue they may suffer in the first five years of introducing GST.
The states could not come to a conclusion on whether a cess should be levied over and above GST. We have to come to a consensus on how the central government will garner the money to compensate the states, revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia told HT.
Before this is decided, GST rates or its structure cannot be fixed, he added.
This extra levy will come to around Rs 50,000 crore, ministry sources said.
Officials said the states sought more time to study the impact of the compensation formula and its impact on their exchequer.
The landmark tax reforms secured Parliaments approval earlier this year after months of hard bargain between the BJP-led government and Opposition parties over the tax rate. The Congress had demanded a cap on the GST rate at 18%.
On Tuesday, the finance ministry had proposed a four-slab structure with two standard rates of 12% and 18%. Food items and other necessities would be taxed at 6% while luxury products would be taxed at 26%.
The Centre has set a November 22 deadline for finalising the GST structure.
We know its a daunting task to finish this in the next meeting (to fix GST rates with full consensus of states), but we will accomplish it, Adhia said.
Goas plush Kingfisher Villa, where Vijay Mallya has hosted several glitzy parties in the past, failed to attract a single bidder at an e-auction on Wednesday --marking yet another failed attempt by lenders to recover dues from the embattled businessman.
While repeated attempts have been made without any success for sale of several other assets kept as collaterals by erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines of the Mallya-led UB Group, the famed villa was put under hammer for the first time.
However, the auction turned out to be a damp squib, supposedly due to its high reserve price at Rs 85.3 crore, sources said.
The 12,350 sq mt villa was once used by Mallya to host lavish parties in his good times.
None of the bidders came forward, so the auction of Kingfisher Villa failed. Higher reserve price could be the reason, a source said.
The sea-facing palatial villa, situated in Candolim, Goa had earlier attracted interest from at least half a dozen players in the hospitality industry and a media group, when it was opened for inspection to interested bidders during the end of September and early October.
The 17-lender consortium led by State Bank of India took physical possession of the property in May after a long legal battle with United Spirits over tenancy rights.
The villa was owned by United Breweries Holdings and mortgaged by Kingfisher Airlines to the consortium of banks to obtain loans in 2010. It is among many movable and immovable properties under lenders possession, which they are trying to auction as part to recover Rs 9,000 crore from Mallya.
In August this year, lenders to the now-defunct airlines and tax authorities had put under hammer various movable and immovable assets of the KFA for a second time, but failed to get any buyers.
The assets which were put on sale included the airlines erstwhile headquarters, Kingfisher House near Mumbai airport, cars, Mallyas plush personal jet and numerous brands and trademarks, including the famed Fly with Good Times.
Most of these assets were put on auction for a second time, and with a lower reserve price.
Lenders had reduced the reserve price of Kingfisher House, which has a built-up area of over 17,000 sq ft and is located in the prime suburb of Vile Parle, to Rs 135 crore from Rs 150 crore.
Similarly, the reserve price of the airlines trademarks, including Kingfisher logo and the tagline Fly the Good Times, for the last months auction was reduced to Rs 330.33 crore from Rs 366.70 crore.
All auctions had failed as bidders found the reserve prices too high.
Mallya owes over Rs 9,000 crore to lenders like SBI, PNB, IDBI Bank, BoB, Allahabad Bank, Federal Bank and Axis Bank, among others.
He had left the country in March and is currently said to be in Britain, having defied several court orders to return to India.
Amazon is encouraging the whole of India to sign-up on Prime, its premium membership service, which is essentially the US-based e-commerce giants biggest loyalty program. And the hook is faster deliveries.
In the first phase of the Great Indian Festival sale Prime memberships, at Rs 499, was the most sold product in Amazons history in India more than smartphones or televisions as customers wanted their orders to reach faster, Amit Agarwal, country manager of Amazon India told HT.
For the Prime buyer, the membership was offered on a 60-days free trial (stopped right before the sale started), has its own value. If a non-Prime member orders a product it can take up to 10-12 days to reach you, but for a member its guaranteed delivery within two days.
Once Primes free trial period got over, it automatically added the membership to the next order on Amazon (often resulting in its purchase). The membership letter is nicely delivered in a blue envelop -- the first mark of being premium.
The popular belief was that customers shop for cellphones, clothes or electronics a couple of times a year, mostly on discounts, and that they would never pay for convenience. The fact that premium delivery went up by five times and Prime was a top seller shows that customer are willing to buy convenience when they trust a site, said Agarwal.
What was more surprising is that 35% of all Prime memberships were sold in smaller towns, which reflects that convenience isnt limited to metros, but even in smaller towns people are shifting to online shopping and want quicker and reliable delivery.
To make Prime more attractive, Amazon opens up the sale 30-minutes early, only to its members. It also has something called the Prime Day, a sale period exclusive to the members.
Once a Prime member, Amazon assures that it has your loyalty. It becomes a e-commerce platform of choice once you have purchased a membership, said Sanchit Vir Gogia, founder and chief analyst at Greyhound Research.
As Prime grows it will also have exclusive video content, another catch for members. It has already partnered with Dharma Productions to premier its upcoming movie. There are more partnerships in the pipeline. Amazon is tight-lipped about it, but intends to change the way video content is consumed, rivaling Netflix, Hotstar, YouTube and other video streaming apps and websites.
As far as e-commerce is concerned, Agarwal believes that the customer would come to us even after the festive season is over. The customer will shop more and more as they use the Prime membership I think this is a big inflection point in e-commerce, and takes India in the direction in which e-commerce should be, he said.
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Bengaluru
For the first time, India is suffering a severe shortage of skilled manpower, especially in the information technology (IT) sector, with 48% of all employers finding it tough to fill job positions, said a report by HR specialist Manpower Group.
The 2016/2017 Talent Shortage Survey released on Tuesday is reportedly based on a global survey covering 42,000 employers across the world.
Apart from IT and accounting & finance, the most challenging job roles to fill are of project manager, sales manager, customer support, technician, quality controller and procurement staff.
AG Rao, group managing director of Manpower Group India, said: The demand index for IT and accounting professionals has been on a continuous rise. Focus on technology upgrade and better financial access will drive growth in these sectors in the coming months.
Further, with government and the RBI aiming to provide financial services in rural areas, the demand is set to grow across core and support functions.
Rao also said that increased automation will lead to a rise in demand for high-skilled jobs. The areas, which will see high demand and lucrative pay packages include big data, analytics, mobility, design, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence.
The report also said employers couldnt fill vacancies due to lack of soft skills (36%) among prospective employees, and aspirants looking for higher pay (34%).
Around 36% of the employers surveyed in India train their staff, and 33% offer higher pay to new recruits to tackle shortage of skilled workforce.
According to the report, as skills change rapidly, employers are looking inside for solutions, with 36% of Indian employers choosing to develop and train their own people.
Globally, 40% of employers surveyed are facing difficulty in filling job vacancies. Region-wise, 46% of Asian employers reported hiring difficulties, with Japan (86%), Taiwan (73%) and Hong Kong (69%) reporting most of the challenges, while just 10% of Chinese employers faced such an issue, the lowest of all countries surveyed.
Nearly 50 years ago British MP Enoch Powell gave one of the most racist and controversial speeches in British political history. Rivers of Blood, as it came to be known, was a tirade against Indians and Africans coming to work and settle in Britain. To him it was literally mad that the country was allowing them in. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre, he shrieked in anger and hatred. He said they should be sent back before things changed too much.
There were over 300,000 immigrants of Indian origin in Britain by 1971. They were exceeded in number only by the Irish. People like my parents family came over to take up jobs in factories, in the National Health Service, as shopkeepers and much more. Powell and his supporters didnt care that Indians were very hard-working and went on to prosper beyond their imagination. They believed British whites would suffer by mixing with Asians and blacks. He was afraid they wanted to buy houses next to white families or even follow their own religions.
Read | UK, India confirm Theresa Mays visit in November
Powell became too controversial to be government minister but his speech made him a martyr, even to this day. And now it looks like the ghost of Powell is making a comeback. Last week Simon Heffer, a well-known British newspaper commentator, wrote in the Daily Telegraph: Theresa May is following Enoch Powell by actually listening to what British people want.
Britain may not be back in the 1960s yet but there are ominous signs it is heading back into the direction Enoch Powell wanted.
A worryingly large number of Britons now think their communal hatred has become acceptable in wider society because of the referendum result. According to figures released last week, immediately after the Brexit vote, crime committed against people because of their race or religion jumped by 41%.
Read | No reversal of Brexit once UK triggers EU divorce process: UK attorney general
There have been a growing number of attacks on Britons of Asian and Eastern European origin. Go back to where you came from has become a fashionable insult, again.
We knew this would happen. Most of the key political figures who campaigned to leave the European Union (EU) either made up or exaggerated scare stories about immigration. It became the driving force behind their crusade. So its not surprising that many Britons now think that having won the vote its time for immigrants to leave the country. They feel their racist views finally have justification and validation.
Read | Explain funds or lose UK property
In the past, even as British politicians talked tough about immigration, the country had a relatively open policy. That is now changing. When she was home secretary, Theresa May had the bright idea of getting vans with a big sign saying GO HOME to drive around in areas of London dominated by families of Indian origin. Her department claimed they were only referring to illegal immigrants but the point she wanted to make was as clear as a bat-signal on a dark night.
Even before she gave her first speech as prime minister at the Conservative Party conference a few weeks ago, her team was sending out the signals. British companies must list the number of foreign workers they employed, the Times newspaper reported. May wanted to name and shame companies who employed too many foreigners, the Financial Times wrote.
Read | Most foreign students return: UK study
Her speech went along the same lines: Someone who finds themselves out of work or on lower wages because of low-skilled immigration, life simply doesnt seem fair, she said.
It doesnt matter there is little evidence to show British workers overall are being undercut by workers from other countries. Facts are the first casualty when a politician is pandering to voters prejudices.
Mays Britain is saying to Indias brightest and best: Youre not welcome any more. And shes right. They are not welcome any more. Not even the students who pay thousands of pounds a year just to study here. They are better off going to the United States or other countries where they will be appreciated.
Read | Pak made significant sacrifices in battling terrorism, says UK
The strict clampdown on immigration, which is in the works, will hit not just Indians looking to work in the UK, but also those looking to study, visit or join family here. It will also hit Indian companies looking to invest in Britain--who are now vital to British industry.
Make no mistake about it. Britains new PM Theresa May is set to deeply shake the economic and cultural ties between India and the UK. It is an act of aatmahatya that senior ministers are anticipating in the way suicide-bombers look forward to heaven.
Read | 24 years on, UK extradites first in list of Indias most wanted
May wont ever make racist speeches like Powell did, but the atmosphere and impact created by her policies take Britain back to a darker past. The irony is that a nation that built its wealth by colonising other countries is saying it is better off shutting itself from the outside world.
Sunny Hundal is a writer and lecturer on digital journalism based in London
The views expressed are personal
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Once again, the French legislature bans denial of Armenian Genocide
By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com Both Houses of the French Legislature have once again adopted a law that penalizes the denial of genocides recognized by French or international courts, or the denial, minimization or extreme trivialization of other genocides or Crimes Against Humanity, if accompanied by incitement to violence or hatred. The French Senate approved the new law by a vote of 156 to 146 on October 14, following the Parliaments approval by a vote of 305-157 on July 6. The law will go into effect after Pres. Francois Hollande signs it, which he is committed to do. The question now is whether the Constitutional Council of France will approve the proposed law or find it unconstitutional, as it did back in 2012, arguing that it violated freedom of speech. Here is the background of this tortuous saga: The French Parliament first recognized the Armenian Genocide on May 29, 1998, followed by the Senate on Nov. 7, 2000. However, due to intervening elections between the two votes, the Parliament had to approve it a second time, which it did on January 18, 2001, declaring that France publicly recognizes the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and Pres. Jacques Chirac signed the legislatures recognition into law on January 29, 2001. In response, the Turkish government withdrew its Ambassador from Paris. Given the fact that several members of the French media and some Turks in France and their cohorts continued to deny the Armenian Genocide, the French-Armenian community sought to penalize the denialists, as was the case with the Jewish Holocaust. French-Armenians demanded equal protection under the law, rightfully contending that there should be no discrimination among genocide victims! After 10 years of lobbying, French Armenians and their supporters finally succeeded in having the Parliament adopt a proposed law on Dec. 22, 2011 which set a penalty of a year in prison and $50,000 fine for anyone denying the Armenian Genocide. The Senate followed suit on January 23, 2012, prompting Turkey once again to withdraw its Ambassador from Paris! The French Constitutional Council decided on Feb. 28, 2012, that the proposed law was unconstitutional as it violated freedom of speech. The Councils decision was highly scandalous. Several of its 11 members had serious conflicts of interest because their families had business ties to Turkey or had opposed this bill during their years in the legislature! Most amazingly, one of Council members was on the Board of the Bosphorus Institute, a Turkish Think Tank that was lobbying against this law! After a French newspaper exposed these unethical affiliations, two members of the Council recused themselves from the case. The current Constitutional Council is now composed of 10 members -- three are leftovers from the 2012 Council that rejected a similar law. Fortunately, several of the new members are more favorably disposed toward the proposed legislation. More importantly, the newly adopted law, called Equality and Citizenship, is considerably different from the 2012 version. President Hollande along with the legislature and the French-Armenian community went to great lengths to ensure that the new language complies with the right to free speech. Although the freedom of expression is a cherished right in all democracies, there are several important factors that must be kept in mind: 1) Freedom of speech is more of an absolute right in the United States than in Europe where there are many laws that restrict it. Even in the U.S., there are some limitations on ones ability to say or write whatever one pleases, such as libel and defamation laws. 2) In countries where denial of the Jewish Holocaust is banned, so should denial of all other genocides, including the Armenian Genocide. No double standard among Genocide victims! 3) Since France has a law that recognizes the Armenian Genocide, there should be a penalty for violating it, as is the case with all laws! 4) Anti-denial laws would prevent Turkey from exporting its denialist policies to other countries. 5) In democratic France, it is now against the law to lie about the Armenian Genocide, while in despotic Turkey it is against the law to tell the truth!
NEW DELHI: India will engage with Pakistan diplomatically but the date and time of such an engagement will be of Indias choosing, foreign secretary S Jaishankar has told a parliamentary panel.
The countrys top diplomat was on Tuesday briefing members of the foreign affairs panel on Indian armys September 29 attacks on militant bases in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
We had been engaging with Pakistan and will do so in future. But right now, we dont have any fixed calendar even for talks at the secretary level, sources quoted Jaishankar as saying. He was responding to a query whether India, which was at an advantage after the surgical strikes, wanted to resume dialogue with the neighbouring country.
The strikes had given Islamabad a taste of what India was capable of, Jaishankar said.
The army had conducted targeted operations across the line of control earlier as well but those were not publicised, he said.
If you are asking whether our troops crossed the LoC and conducted calibrated operations before, the answer is yes. If you are asking if they achieved their targets and returned to India, the answer is also yes, Jaishankar was quoted as saying by two panel members who didnt wish to be identified.
The only difference this time we announced it a day later, he said, adding there were diplomatic reasons for going public but didnt elaborate on what those reasons were.
A week ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, talked about shifting from yuddha (war) to Buddha.
Sometimes war becomes inevitable because of the existing situations. But, we are those who can move ahead from yuddha (war) to Buddha. We strike a balance between the two, Modi said in a speech at Varanasi.
The lightning strikes ratcheted up tensions with Pakistan. They were seen as Indias first military response to an attack on an army base by suspected Pakistani militants in Kashmirs Uri on September 18 that left 19 soldiers dead.
India has since stepped up diplomatic offensive to isolate Pakistan, which dismissed the strikes as cross-border firing, for promoting terror.
The raid triggered a political storm at home. Opposition parties, which earlier asked for a proof of the army action, now accuse the government of trying to gain electoral mileage out of the operation.
But army vice-chief lieutenant general Bipin Rawat, who also briefed the panel, were non-committal on submitting proof.
Our boys went for a swift, time-bound operation. They were given specific targets but not told to collect evidence, he said. However, we are trying to collate some proof.
The government has said the army submitted proof of the operation but there was no need to make it public.
Panel chairman and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, party colleague Satyavrat Chaturvedi and CPMs Mohammad Salim questioned the foreign secretary on militants continuously targeting the army and paramilitary establishments in the Valley even after the cross-LoC raid. Some terror launch pads were still active, Jaishankar said.
There was no plan to stop people to people contact, Jaishnakar told the panel, as Pakistani artistes and films face a ban in the country.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi also sat through the briefing.
BJPs Sharad Tripathi, too, had a question. He wanted to know from special secretary (internal security) Mahesh Singlaif the government would review the security of parliamentarians.
This is the second time in week that a parliamentary panel was briefed on the surgical strikes. The defence panel met last week but no questions were allowed.
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NEW DELHI: One of the worst terror attacks in Myanmars recent history was blamed on a group led by a man trained in Pakistan but tackling terrorism cannot be only about isolating organisations or nations, the countrys de-facto ruler Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday.
The world community needs to isolate terror itself and focus on the reasons why people resort to terrorism, Suu Kyi, who is Myanmars State Counsellor and foreign minister, told HT.
Her remarks came against the backdrop of Indias campaign to isolate Pakistan over using cross-border terrorism as a policy, an issue which figured prominently at the BRICS Summit and meeting of Bimstec leaders in Goa that was attended by Suu Kyi.
Terrorism is rife all over the world, so I think its terrorism we need to isolate and to eliminate. I do not like to think in terms of individuals or organisations or countries, although these come into the equation as well, she said in response to a question about New Delhis drive to isolate Islamabad for sponsoring terror.
Suu Kyi acknowledged that two men handed over by Bangladesh in connection with the October 9 terror attack on three police facilities in the restive Rakhine state had said the strikes were organised by a man who had received six months training in Pakistan.
But she sounded a note of caution about apportioning blame.
A statement issued by the Myanmar Presidents Office on October 13 said the attacks were carried out by Aqa Mul Mujahidin, which is linked to the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation. The leader of the group was identified as Havistoohar, an extremist who attended a six-month Taliban training course in Pakistan . Nine Myanmarese policemen were killed and 64 weapons looted during the attacks.
Suu Kyi defended her governments handling of the issue of Rohingyas, saying it was working on both national reconciliation and reconciliation between different communities in Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh.
She also rejected the perception she had tilted towards China because of Indias prolonged engagement with the military junta, saying: We must keep very healthy balance because after all, both of you are our neighbours.
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Delhi health and PWD minister Satyendar Jain on Wednesday directed the Delhi Fire Services to inspect all Delhi government-run hospitals for fire-safety measures within seven days.
This decision was taken at an emergency meeting called by the minister on the day HT highlighted that 80% government hospitals in Delhi that treat more than 50,000 people in their out-patient department daily do not have basic fire safety measures.
I was informed that most government hospitals comply with fire-safety measure, but I have directed the fire department to conduct a fresh inspection of all hospitals, Jain said.
I have asked them to especially check staircases and corridors, they should not be blocked with old furniture, waste and other stuff, the minister said.
At least 20 people were killed and scores injured in a fire that broke out in a private hospital in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha on Monday night.
Read: 80% govt hospitals in Delhi dont have basic fire safety measures in place
Union health minister JP Nadda visited the survivors and held a review meeting on fire safety in hospitals.
A fresh advisory will be issued soon to all states to avoid such incidents in future, said Nadda.
The Delhi fire department has been asked to make a list of all deficiencies and send a copy to the minister as well as the PWD department.
The PWD secretary has been made the nodal officer, who will look after all works to ensure fire-safety in all the Delhi-government hospitals, said Jain.
The Delhi minister has also asked the fire department to visit all the centre-run and the private hospitals as soon as possible. All hospitals in Delhi must be informed about any deficiencies in fire-safety measure so that they are able to fix them, he said.
Overcrowding, lack of trained manpower and poor maintenance of fire safety equipment put hospitals at risk.
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A woman, who was the leader of a trafficking racket run by her brother-in-law and who allegedly placed over 10,000 minors into the labour market in the National Capital Region, has been convicted for 10 years by a Chhattisgarh court. He was arrested two years ago.
Gayatri Devis conviction has brought hope for those fighting against illegal placement agencies in Delhi. NGOs working for child rights have welcomed hailed the decision and hope the employers hiring minors for work will learn a lesson with this judgment.
Gayatri used to run a placement agency in west Delhis Shakurpur. She told the police that they used to buy minors for R12,000 and then charge R24,000 for placing them at a household to work as domestic help.
Her agents in villages of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, used to lure minors and bring them to Delhi. She then used to place them in Delhi households.
Read more: Six-year-old girl missing from Noida found in Delhi after 20 days
Her conviction is a strong message for the placement agencies and the police should now look for minors placed by them, said Rishikant of Shakti Vahini NGO.
A Delhi-based businessman, who had employed a girl trafficked by Devi, informed the police when the minor girl, placed at his home, ran away. He was the prime witness in the case.
She, her brother-in-law, Panna Lal Mahto, and his wife were running the racket in Delhi. But the minors placed by them have not been rescued yet. Even the girl of Chhattisgarh case is still missing. This case should be used to make the public aware in Delhi that how an employer can face problem if they employ a minor, said Aradhana Singh, anti-trafficking in charge at Khunti district in Jharkhand, who had busted the trafficking racket in Delhi.
Gayatris arrest helped the police unearth the racket as they got a list of over 150 illegal placement agencies operating from Shakurpur.
Mahtos relatives own several placement agencies in the area. The list submitted by the Jharkhand police contains names of wanted traffickers and illegal placement agencies and minors who were trafficked by them. But sadly due to lack of integration, nothing could happen, Singh added.
The trafficking racket in Delhi is a steadily growing menace with victims mostly minors and women brought in from states like Jharkhand and West Bengal. Once in the city, they are pushed into child labour, illegal domestic work or prostitution by unscrupulous placement agencies.
Mahto had earlier been arrested by Jharkhand Police in 2006 for human trafficking and had been in jail for around five months. He has many properties in Delhi, Ranchi and Khunti (Jharkhand), all acquired through his illegal human trafficking business.
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The government on Wednesday put poultry farms, wholesale markets and avian hot spots under watch after the death of 10 migratory birds at the capitals zoo sparked fears of what could be the first bird flu outbreak in Delhi.
The Delhi zoo has been closed for three days as a precautionary measure, Delhi development minister Gopal Rai said.
There was a possibility of the virus infecting humans if they consume or handle contaminated chicken, he said.
Though there are no known cases of human deaths from avian influenza in India, lakhs of poultry and other birds have been culled across several states over the years to contain the highly-contagious disease.
Worldwide, 60% of the humans infected by the H5N1 virus die, according to available data.
The World Health Organisation says the virus can cause fever, cough, sore throat, pneumonia, respiratory disease and, in severe cases, death in humans.
Experts said Delhis large pigeon population could potentially turn to carriers and spread the virus across the capital, a packed city-state with an estimated 1.86 crore people.
We have decided to check entire Delhi. We have asked the department to check possible places where birds are likely to come. We have sent a team to the Okhla sanctuary and Nizamuddin, where birds are sold, Yamuna Diversity Park in Wazirpur, Najafgarh drain and Ghazipur apart from deploying a 10-member team at the zoo, said Rai.
UNDERSTANDING H5N1 SPREAD H5N1, or avian (bird) fluvirus, infects and kills wildbirds and domestic poultry This is the first time it hasbeen detected in migratorybirds in Delhi
The last outbreak was in2015 in Kerala H5N1, or avian (bird) fluvirus, infects and kills wildbirds and domestic poultry
AMONG BIRDS
H5N1 does not usually infect people. Most human infection is from close contact with sick or dead infected poultry
There have been around 650 reported human infections globally since 2013, and 60% of them ended in fatalities
SYMPTOMS IN HUMANS
Fever, cough, breathing difficulty, abdominal pain, diarrhoea
Can lead to pneumonia, respiratory failure, shock, seizures, multiple organ failure and death.
The Ghazipur wholesale market is the source of poultry meant for consumption in Delhi. Officials said samples from the market have been sent to a lab in Jalandhar and a decision on shutting down poultry farms or the wholesale market will be taken after the report is received.
The animal husbandry department procured 200 personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, which will be used by personnel who enter the zoo and other infected places.
Zoo officials said the bird deaths were reported October 14 and 15 after which samples were sent to the Jalandhar lab, which detected symptoms of some virus. Re-tests at the High Security Animal Diseases Laboratory in Bhopal confirmed H5N1 virus in at least two birds.
On Monday, another one died while another carcass was found on Wednesday. These two have also been sent for tests.
We are taking steps to prevent the spread of the virus. On Thursday, we will hold a meeting with officials of health, revenue and other departments concerned, said Rai, who visited the zoo on Wednesday.
If the virus spreads and its symptoms are spotted, we will put in place some restrictions, he added.
On Friday, Delhi government officials will meet a team of officials from Maharashtra which had contained the virus after a severe outbreak this year.
The bird flu threat comes amid a record-breaking chikungunya outbreak and an equally widespread dengue flare-up that have stretched Delhis healthcare system.
A four-year-old girl died after falling into a septic tank on Tuesday afternoon in north-west Delhis Swaroop Nagar.
The deceased has been identified as Nandni who lived with her parents in Kushak Gaon of Swaroop Nagar. Her father works as an auto driver.
The incident took place when she was returning home with her mother and accidentally fell into a septic tank near Sujan Singh International School. The mother also jumped into the tank but was unable to save the child and was pulled out by the locals.
The girls family has alleged that the police and rescue teams from fire department arrived late causing a delay in fishing out their daughter from the tank. The child was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors pronounced her dead.
Locals claim the septic tank belongs to the school. Parents along with residents protested near the spot against local administration. The police are probing the matter.
Police officials said a case under section 306 and 304 (A) has been registered against unknown person on the basis of the call received by the Police Control Room. The police will establish the accountability of the school administration as the septic tank belongs to the school. The school authorities will be questioned as to why the tank was left open, a senior police official said.
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The National Green Tribunal on Wednesday criticised the Delhi government for its repeated failure to submit a status report on dengue and chikungunya in the city.
A bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said it was pained to note that all authorities concerned have not acted sincerely and with utmost sense of urgency while dealing with the matter related to public health issue in Delhi.
The bench said that in case authorities failed to comply with the order, then each government department will pay R50,000 and that amount will be taken from the erring official of that department.
The order came when the court was hearing a petition filed by advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal on behalf of a former Central Pollution Control Board scientist, Mahendra Pandey.
Pandey said action should be taken to ensure residents of Delhi are not exposed to serious diseases such as dengue and chikungunya.
On Monday too, the government did not file the status report.
Read: Sigh of relief for Delhi as chikungunya, dengue cases at half of last week
The lawyer representing the Delhi government, however, said after the green courts directions, a high-level committee has already been constituted. We will file the status report within two days, the lawyer had said.
This year, over 7,400 people were affected with chikungunya while over 3,000 caught the dengue virus this season, according to data available till October 15.
Earlier on September 21, the green court constituted a principal committee headed by the chief secretary of Delhi government to formulate an action plan to control the outbreak.
The committee -- including commissioners of all corporations, vice-chairman of DDA, head of the Delhi Cantonment Board, New Delhi Municipal Council, principal secretary of health and director general of health services of Delhi government as members -- was asked to submit a comprehensive report to the court within a fortnight.
National kabaddi player Rohit Kumar and his family have been missing since the suicide of the sportsmans wife Lalita Dabas on Monday night, prompting the police to track down the accused against whom a case of dowry death has been registered.
The 26-year-old player was in Mumbai when Lalita, two years elder to him, hung herself from a ceiling fan in her west Delhi home around 7:30 pm on Monday. She had left a suicide note and two-and-a-half-hour voice message that alleged her in-laws of harassing her. Lalita was living in a Nangaloi apartment, having left her husband recently after their marriage in March.
Read | Pro-kabbadi players wife kills self, leaves 2-hour long voice message on mobile
Kumar and his family, who live in outer Delhi, have since been evading the law, and have failed to appear before the investigators.
Police said on Tuesday that the Nangaloi station officials formed two teams to locate the accused and book them. All mobile numbers of Kumars family were switched off, and their Kanjhawala residence was found locked.
One of the teams is enquiring with Kumars neighbours to trace the accused. Investigators said they are in touch with some of Kumars relatives and friends, but they too were clueless about the familys whereabouts.
Vijay Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (west), said Kumar has gone missing from his Mumbai address as well and has switched off his mobile phone. We need to find them to investigate the case. As of now, they are absconding, he added.
A case of dowry death and subjecting a woman to cruelty by her husband and in-laws with common intention was registered on Tuesday against Kumar and his family.
The FIR was registered after the police recovered a suicide note Dabas left in her track pant pocket and two voice messages one was two hours long; the other 22 minutes which were in her mobile phones. Both the note and the audio clips allegedly accused Kumar and his family members of torturing her for dowry and a share in her fathers property.
The US has always been a magnet for Indian students and now the figures suggest that there is an increase in the number of those joining universities there. The Open Doors, an annual report on international students in the US compiled by the Institute of International Education, says that in 2015 there was a 30% increase in students from other countries going to the US over the previous year. Of this, India is the second leading place of origin for students and 13.6% of the international student population is Indian.
Read: Students will have to pay more for proposed 20 world-class institutions
The US system has a number of attractions. The courses are very varied and flexible. Here a student getting into a graduate course has to stick with the subjects chosen, in the US the student has the option to change midstream if he or she wants to. Students who need financial resources are able to access these from a variety of sources and universities help them in this process. In India, private scholarships are difficult to obtain and the conditions for getting a government grant are tough and restricted largely to students in the reservation quota. Students abroad are able to get internships, which helps them later in the job market. Perhaps the one major attraction is the synergy between academics and industry. Many courses are tailored to help students get jobs, again quite a departure from the largely academically-oriented curriculum in India. Research opportunities are also limited in India as many higher educational institutions do not have enough infrastructure or faculty for this.
Read: Education, job satisfaction can help reduce intolerance: Ratan Tata
The US sinks about $300 billion in higher education. India should consider investing much more in higher education as this will not only benefit our students but could be a potentially huge revenue generator. Already students from neighbouring and African countries see India as an attractive education destination since it is cheaper and the medium is English. We should cast the net wider. One thing that ought to be done without delay is to ensure that foreign students feel welcome here. This has not always been the case, especially with African students, who face racial slurs and even violence. We must have a proactive policy of going out and seeking students once we have a more flexible and student-friendly system in place. The returns on this could be enormous and we should not miss the bus. There are many lessons we can learn from the US, and how to structure higher education and attract a wider variety of students are certainly some of them.
Actor-comedian Jim Carrey has waged his own war in the courts against the mother of his late ex-girlfriend.
The 54-year-old Dumb & Dumber star has filed documents in which he claims Cathriona Whites mother, Brigid Sweetman, begged him to buy her a house and threatened suicide.
Carrey has alleged that Sweetman emailed him in November last year, two months after her daughter took her life in California, to inform the actor that people had started making death threats against her and vandalising her home, reported The Wrap.
She believed she was getting blamed for Cathrionas death because of a horrific and degrading Facebook post shed left for her daughter on the third anniversary of her fathers death.
Carrey claimed Brigid told him, I am on the point of killing myself, before asking him to buy her a new home.
Carrey insisted she became angry and bitter when he declined.
Cathrionas mother filed a wrongful death suit against the movie star earlier this month. His legal team fired back immediately, insisting the lawsuit was a money grab.
Carrey has also denied claims from Sweetman and Cathrionas estranged husband Mark Burton he gave the makeup artist sexually transmitted diseases, illnesses that allegedly contributed to Whites decision to commit suicide.
Love cannot be lost. pic.twitter.com/XxPYOhkdzc Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) October 10, 2015
Last week, Sweetman promised to drop her wrongful death lawsuit if Carrey publicly released the results of an alleged sexual health test.
Jim Carrey and his attorney have told the world that Carrey has never had STDs and he has never tested positive for STDs. They have called me and Mark shams for claiming otherwise, a statement read.
I am demanding they immediately release the full 2013 lab results so people can judge for themselves who is telling the truth and who is lying.
If they publicly release and publish the full Quest Diagnostics lab report for the blood sample Carrey gave on January 28, 2013 at 11:40am under the name Jose Lopez and if it shows Carrey did not test positive for STDs, I will immediately dismiss the case and apologize.
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A new, lengthy trailer for the Michael Fassbender movie Assassins Creed, was released online on Monday ahead of its December debut.
Conspiracy, virtual reality, and martial arts proficiency mix in the second trailer for the lavish video game adaptation Assassins Creed.
Michael Fassbender stars as Callum Lynch, a convicted criminal whose bloodline has been traced back to a clandestine organisation of Assassins.
Thats brought him to the attention of Abstergo Industries, a high-tech corporation pioneering full-body, immersive experiences via the Animus Project, but harvesting its subjects genetic memories in the process.
What happens in the Animus doesnt stay in the Animus; Lynchs experiences as a deadly, rooftop-running secret agent in 15th century Spain translate well into the modern day, where an ongoing struggle is taking place between the Assassins and their timeworn enemies, the Templars.
Assassins Creed draws heavily on its video game inspiration, Ubisofts ten-year-strong franchise of the same name that has taken players to recreations of 12th century Israel and Syria, through Renaissance-period Florence, Venice, Rome, and Constantinople, to revolutionary-era France and America, the 18th century Caribbean and New Orleans, and Victorian era London.
Ubisoft set up its motion picture division following the success of Jake Gyllenhaal-led action film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, whose 2010 effort was based on a predecessor to the Assassins Creed games.
And while Assassins Creed is to mark Ubisoft Motion Pictures feature film debut, its the first of half a dozen projects currently set for feature-length adaptation.
Alongside two-time Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender, whos become a fixture of the X-Men franchise and played tech guru Steve Jobs in a 2015 biopic, there are Oscar-winners Marion Cotillard (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises,) and Jeremy Irons (Batman v Superman, The Lion King) triple Golden Globe nominee Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, Edge of Tomorrow,) and Michael K Williams (12 Years a Slave, Boardwalk Empire.)
Behind the camera, theres Australian helmer Justin Kurzel of another historical epic, Macbeth, which also had Fassbender and Cotillard as its leads.
Assassins Creed is due in theatres from December 21, when it starts a worldwide theatrical rollout in the USA, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, with Australia and Germany among territories following soon after. The UK and Ireland, the Netherlands, and various European and South American countries are earmarked for a January release.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi met state counsellor and foreign minister of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi here on Wednesday, the concluding day of her three-day visit to India.
An old friend from the East, a partner in our common progress. PM receives Myanmar State counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at Hyderabad House, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted along with a picture of the two leaders.
Following delegation-level talks headed by Modi and Suu Kyi, the two sides signed some agreements.
#IndiaMyanmar: Partners in Progress - The two leaders witness exchange of agreements in sectors of power, banking and insurance, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.
PM @narendramodi & State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi witness the exchange of agreements at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. pic.twitter.com/36bksSMf8u PIB India (@PIB_India) October 19, 2016
One memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on cooperation in the power sector.
A second MoU was signed on banking supervision between the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Bank of Myanmar while a third MoU was inked for designing an academic and professional building programme for the insurance industry of Myanmar.
On Tuesday, Suu Kyi met President Pranab Mukherjee and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.
Though Suu Kyi is not the President as Myanmars constitution bars her from the post, the Nobel peace laureate is effectively the de facto leader of the country.
This is the first official visit of Suu Kyi to New Delhi since her National League for Democracy (NLD) assumed power in Myanmar in March this year.
Prior to reaching New Delhi on Monday for the state visit, she attended the BRICS-Bimstec Outreach Summit in Goa on Sunday.
Her visit comes after Myanmar President U Htin Kyaws visit to India in August this year.
Deliberating on its two-decade-old judgement which declared Hinduism as a way of life, the Supreme Court, on Wednesday, asked if spiritual leaders who arent contesting polls seek votes for a particular party could be held accountable for corrupt practices under the electoral law.
How can a person, who himself has neither contested nor returned as a winning candidate, be tried for allegedly resorting to corrupt practices under the Representation of the People (RP) Act? a seven-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur asked lawyers representing the contesting parties in the case.
The seven-judge bench is examining the legal question of what constitutes electoral malpractices.
Senior advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for Abhiram Singh whose election as a legislator in 1990 on BJP ticket from Santacruz, Mumbai, was invalidated by the high court said law related to corrupt practice comes in play only if it is established that a candidate or his agent asked for votes in the name of religion.
If any other person, like late Bal Thackeray and late Pramod Mahajan in the present case, sought votes on these grounds, referred to in the RP Act, then there has to be the consent of the candidate, Datar told the bench.
He stressed that consent of the candidate was necessary if he was liable to be held for corrupt practices, warranting his or her disqualification. In his clients case, he said, there was no consent. The leaders, it was alleged, had sought votes in the name of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra.
The HRD ministry may decide as early as next week to scrap the schooling policy that automatically promotes children to a higher class every year till the eighth grade with a panel announcing on Wednesday that it forwarded the suggestion to the Union government after taking inputs from states.
The no-detention policy put in place by the Right to Education Act has been blamed for falling standards among schoolchildren so much so that surveys in Delhi found half of sixth graders in government-run schools being unable to read at all.
Read | No-fail policy in govt schools under scanner
In its report to the HRD ministry, the committee said the policy should be reviewed and recommended commencing fifth and eighth standard exams independently as was the case earlier, said the chairman of the central advisory board of education (CABE) sub-committee Punjab education minister Daljit Singh Cheema.
The sub-committee had been tasked with taking final inputs on the no-detention policy after the CABE the primary education advisory board comprising education ministers of all states last year expressed concerns on the no-fail policy. If a decision to scrap it is made after the review, a process will begin to amend the RTE act.
Cheema said the 189-page report also recommended spending more on elementary/primary education besides having a head for every school compulsorily.
Read | No-fail policy: Central panel favoured exams after Class 5, but no action yet
Significant aspects of the recommendations made in the report were also considered in the meeting with the HRD minister, Cheema added.
The recommendations of the report would be debated in the annual meeting of CABE on October 25 in which school education and higher education ministers of all the states will take part.
The committee recommended that a recruitment calendar is needed to be prepared in advance in order to ensure that no post remains vacant in the wake of superannuation.
The committee has also recommended the constitution of a committee of academic experts to review the course syllabus, duration of course and practical training in vogue at present to become a teacher, he pointed out.
Police detained two schoolboys accused of repeatedly beating a lower-caste classmate who scored good grades, an officer said on Wednesday, after a video of the attack went viral on social media.
The 16-year-old Dalit boy released a letter to a television network pleading for the violence to stop, after the video of him being punched and kicked in a classroom made headlines.
The beatings, which the boy says took place every day for two years, are the latest incidents of violence against Dalits.
Police said they took action after studying the video, taken by another boy and uploaded, which shows the teen being punched, kicked and slapped at a government-run school in Bihar.
Read | Two KV students booked for thrashing classmate in Bihar, probe ordered
He was being tortured for quite some time, Babban Baitha, the investigating police officer from Muzaffarpur district said.
We went through the video which was recorded at the behest of the attackers themselves, and sent them to remand, Baitha said, pending the conclusion of his investigation.
You see, I am a Dalit and so doing well in the examinations or academics, which brings me praise at home, earns me humiliation and abuse in my classroom, the boy said in his letter to NDTV network.
You tell me, how should I cope and prepare? he said of his final school exams due next year.
The video comes after Dalit protests erupted in July over the public flogging of a group of Dalits wrongly accused of killing a cow in Gujarats Una.
A video of that incident also went viral and prompted enraged Dalits to call for an end to the discrimination and violence.
Also read | The great Dalit cauldron and why it matters
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the agency responsible for air safety standards in India, banned Samsungs Galaxy Note 7 phones on airplanes on Wednesday over increasing number of incidents of the phone catching fire.
The decision comes following a similar ban imposed by US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week.
Many Indian airlines such as Vistara and Jet Airways have already banned Note 7 on their flights. Japan also banned the phone on airplanes.
Samsung on September 2 announced a global recall of 2.5 million Note 7s in 10 markets, including the United States due to faulty batteries causing some of the phones to catch fire.
The South Korean company discontinued the product earlier this week, less than two months after its August release.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission says there have been nearly 100 reports of batteries in Note 7 phones overheating in the US. One fire erupted on a Southwest Airlines flight earlier this month. In another case, a family in St. Petersburg, Florida, reported a Galaxy Note 7 phone left charging in their Jeep caught fire, destroying the vehicle.
The Federal Aviation Administration had previously warned passengers not to pack the phones in their checked bags and to power them off and not charge them while on board planes.
Read | Samsungs smartphone brand takes beating from Galaxy Note 7 fiasco
A combative Congress accused the BJP-led government of exaggeration and hypocrisy, saying the Centres attempt to deny credit to previous administrations for striking militant bases across the Line of Control showed India in a bad light.
The strong comments came a day after foreign secretary S Jaishankar told a parliamentary panel that the army had conducted surgical strikes earlier as well but the operations were kept a secret.
This statement, the Congress alleged, contradicted previous claims by defence minister Manohar Parrikar that the BJP government was the first to conduct surgical strikes on militant bases in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Does it look good for the defence minister of this country to be directly contradicted by the foreign secretary of India? senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi asked reporters in Delhi.
The strikes were carried out on September 28 but have acquired a political flavor with opposition parties blaming the BJP of attempting to gain electoral mileage out of the army offensive.
Under the UPA, strategy required silence. We aren't blaming Modi Govt for not having silence, but acknowledge past actions: @DrAMSinghvi INC India (@INCIndia) October 19, 2016
Singhvi said the government shouldnt have denied that such surgical strikes had taken place before.
While we support the operations, they should be magnanimous to say this is not the first time that this country has conducted these strikes, he said.
Singhvi also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had called for no politicization of the army operation last week. While the PM joins us in saying this issue shouldnt be politicised, its happening under his nose by his colleagues.
This kind of prevaricating only to score brownie points is unfortunate because it paints the nation in a bad light: @DrAMSinghvi INC India (@INCIndia) October 19, 2016
Read| Modi praises Indian Army for surgical strikes, compares it to Israel
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The founder of Bhubaneswars SUM Hospital and Institute of Medical Sciences, where a massive fire killed 21 people, is known as a reclusive man with strong political connections.
While four officials of the private hospital have been arrested and four other employees suspended, the clamour to arrest Manoj Nayak, who is on the run, is growing by the day.
Before he made it big in early 2000, the 56-year-old engineer was known mostly among his fraternity as a teacher in a government engineering college. Born to a school teacher father in the undivided Cuttack district, Nayak excelled in academics in school and college.
He earned a B Tech degree in electrical sciences from the National Institute of Technology (formerly REC) in Rourkela in 1982 and also holds a PhD from IIT Kharagpur in computer science.
He joined Bhubaneswars College of Engineering Technology (CET), as a lecturer in computer science. While still teaching at CET, he established the Siksha O Anusandhan Trust and also founded Odishas first private engineering college, Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER).
At least 10 institutions including a medical college, an engineering college, dental college, biotechnology college, and nursing college among others function under the Siksha O Anusandhan University.
Nayak, however, has smartly dissociated himself from the board of management of the university preferring to work behind the scene. The official website of the Siksha O Anusandhan University does not even mention Nayaks name.
Read| Odisha govt files FIRs against Bhubaneswar hospital
Described as a very ambitious man, Nayak had his first brush with controversy in 2000 when the authorities of the state governments Joint Entrance Examination that conducts entrance test to engineering colleges, lodged a case of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy against him and several others.
It was alleged that Nayak and his brother were luring students, who had secured lower ranks in the Joint Entrance Examination, to take admission in his fledgeling engineering college.
The police chargesheet mentioned that ITER made payment on behalf of these students so that the college could claim the seats were filled up. It would then persuade the same candidates to leave the college after paying them and get other undeserving candidates to take admission in the same seat in lieu of a huge amount of money.
Nayak evaded arrest even though he was named in the chargesheet. He also managed to get a reprieve after the Odisha high court quashed the case a few years later.
Friends describe Nayak as overtly reclusive but he has never shied away from using his political clout. With familial ties to former BJD minister Nalinikanta Mohanty, they say Nayak used his political contacts to expand his business.
He is allegedly close to several influential ministers in the Naveen Patnaik ministry. Local TV channels reported that the wife of Odisha health minister even worked as a faculty in one of the educational institutions owned by Nayak.
Nayak started the SUM Hospital in 2006 on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar and a few years later founded a medical and dental college. Until recently, the hospital provided consultation and beds to patients free of cost.
He even sent vehicles to nearby villages to ferry patients to the hospital. It is now one of the prominent hospitals in the city with a huge footfall.
Like other Odia entrepreneurs who started media houses for saving their backs in times of distress, Nayak too owns television channel News 7 and Odia newspaper Prameya that made quite a splash and put him in the powerful league of media barons in the state.
Last year, his TV channel shot to popularity by airing a sting video of godman Sarathi baba, who was later jailed for exploiting women and cheating people.
On Tuesday, the TV channels coverage of Odishas biggest hospital tragedy was anything, but intense.
Read| Bhubaneswar hospital fire: Safety measures not yet in place
The gloves were off in the ongoing infighting in the Haryana Congress on Tuesday with supporters of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda seeking removal of state party chief Ashok Tanwar and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Kiran Choudhry from their posts.
The Hooda loyalists, who include 12 of 17 party MLAs in the state, made this demand in a meeting with Congress veteran leader Sushil Kumar Shinde in New Delhi. They met Shinde one by one and then also jointly to reinforce their demand.
Shinde, who also met several office-bearers of the state Congress, ex-MLAs and others during the day, is probing the clash between supporters of the two factions of the Haryana Congress at an important party event in the national capital on October 6 during which Tanwar sustained injuries and had to be admitted to a hospital. Calling it a well-planned conspiracy, Tanwar, one of whose supporters filed a police complaint, alleged that he was attacked by Hoodas supporters.
CONDEMN CLASH, MAKE COUNTER-CHARGES
The MLAs supporting Hooda, who drew their strategy at a luncheon meeting at the former CMs residence in Delhi on Monday, hit back at the HPCC chief in their meeting with Shinde, blaming Tanwar and Kiran for the atmosphere of mistrust in the party.
We told Shinde how they have gone to the constituencies of MLAs without informing them, inducted our adversaries, praised (chief minister Manohar Lal) Khattar and not run any major agitation or campaign against the state government, a senior legislator told Hindustan Times.
While condemning the clash at the party show, they also handed over a signed letter to Shinde to reiterate their allegations against the two leaders as planned. The MLAs were vocal after the meeting also.
Palwal MLA Karan Singh Dalal said that like the surgical strikes, there was clinical surgery going on in the state Congress.
Their actions have been detrimental to the party. I am hopeful they will be taken care of. And the party will get a new look. They have been giving issues to the BJP instead of focussing on its governments failures. We have mentioned everything that has been happening in writing to the party leadership, he said.
Geeta Bhukkal, MLA from Jhajjar, said the scuffle was unfortunate, but what happened subsequently was more unfortunate. The HPCC chief should not have created a scene, she said without mincing words. Another Hooda supporter, Kalanaur MLA Shakuntla Khatak said the clash was a spur of the moment incident and not a conspiracy as was being alleged. Tanwar should not have given such a statement, she told reporters after the meeting.
While Tanwar and Kiran had met Shinde on Monday and laid the blame for the internal bickering on Hooda and his supporters, former minister Capt Ajay Singh Yadav and several party office-bearers are also learnt to have backed them. Two other MLAs, Kuldeep Bishnoi and Renuka Bishnoi, met Shinde separately, but refused to discuss details of their meeting. They are counted among Hooda detractors, though.
Shinde, a former Union minister, was asked by Congress president Sonia Gandhi to probe the clash between supporters of Tanwar and Hooda outside the Bhairon temple near Pragati Maidan in Delhi on October 6 where party workers had gathered to receive AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi on the final leg of his 26-day kisan yatra that culminated at Parliament Street. While the party leadership had hoped to have a good gathering at the event, the clash proved to be a huge embarrassment.
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Hyderabad Police arrested former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira and three others in a multi-crore illegal marketing scheme, media reports said on Wednesday.
The arrest comes two weeks after Ferreira surrendered before a Mumbai court but the Padma Bhushan awardee reportedly didnt cooperate with investigators. The Supreme Court has also refused any relief to Ferreira and the other accused. His police custody with the economic offences wing of the Mumbai Police ended last Thursday.
Read | QNET scam: Michael Ferreira sent to judicial custody, Hyderabad police to take his custody
The sportsperson and three others were directors of Vihaan Direct Selling India (Pvt) Ltd, which is accused of running and operating an illegal money circulation scheme under the name of QNET previously known as Questnet in India.
Investigators say nearly 500,000 investors across India were duped by the promoters of QNET, which allegedly used a banned business model for their marketing schemes to lure investors.
The prosecution says QNET attracted investment from people by promising them huge commissions to enroll new investors into the firm, or offered them fraudulent investment schemes. In 2016, eight alleged victims complained to the police.
Other than Ferreira, the other accused are Malcolm Desai, owner of Vihaan, Srinivas Rao Vanka and Magaral Veervalli Balaji, directors of Vihaan, and Suresh Thimiri, director of Transview Enterprises India Pvt Ltd.
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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders
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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
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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".
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This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan
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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
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India and China on Wednesday carried out a joint army exercise in eastern Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, a move that comes amid hectic diplomatic manoeuvring between the two countries over a host of issues like nuclear suppliers group and designation of Masood Azhar as a terrorist by the UN.
During the day long exercise on humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR), a fictitious situation of earthquake striking an Indian Border village was painted. Thereafter joint teams carried out rescue operations, evacuation and rendering of medical assistance.
Read | China defends all-weather ally Pak after Modi calls it mothership of terror
This was done as a sequel to the first joint exercise held on February 6 in the area of border personnel meeting hut at Chushul Garrison of Eastern Ladakh, along with Chinese troops of Moldo Garrison.
Sources said that in February, the exercise was held in the Chinese side and this time in the Indian side along the line of Actual Control.
The Indian team for the exercise was led by Brigadier R S Raman and that of the Chinese was led by Sr Col Fan Jun.
Read | India can only bark about trade deficit: Chinese media
The exercise was a great success and has not only refined the drills to provide succour to the border population in case of natural calamity but has also increased the level of trust and cooperation between the two border guarding forces along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh, the Army said in a statement here.
The joint exercise, compliments the Hand in Hand series of the India-China joint exercises and the effort of both the nations to enhance cooperation and maintain peace and tranquillity along the border areas of India and China, it said.
This years edition of Hand in Hand will be held at Aundh, near Pune in Maharashtra, from November 15 to 27.
Also read | India and China must show mutual restraint to avoid a major crisis
An Israeli trekker died after falling into a gorge on way to the source of the Ganga in Uttarakhand, police said on Wednesday, the second such incident in a fortnight involving foreign nationals in the Himalayan state.
The incident occurred on Tuesday and the body of the trekker, identified as Ariel Frajman, 56, was brought to the district headquarter town Uttarkashi on Wednesday, said Dadan Pal, the superintendent of police.
Last week, a Polish mountaineer died during an operation to rescue him from a Himalayan mountain stretch, three days after he went missing with another climber while attempting to scale a 6543-metre peak. One of his team-members is still missing and is feared dead.
The snow-bound hills and valleys in Uttarakhand are a major attraction for trekkers and mountaineers from around the world. Till August, the state accounted for 30% of the 44 foreign expeditions to India this year, according to the Indian Mountaineering Foundation.
Over the past decade, at least 13 people have died in Uttarakhand during trekking and attempts to scale any of the 52 identified peaks in the state.
The police official said the Israeli embassy has been informed about the incident.
According to police, a group of five trekkers began their expedition from Gangotri, around 300 kms northeast from Dehradun, on Monday. They were headed towards Gomukh, the glacial origin of Ganga, an 18 km uphill trek from Gangotri, the last road head before the snow-clad mountain ranges begin. After a night halt on the way, the group resumed their trek on Tuesday.
The accident occurred when he (Frajman) slipped and fell into a gorge near Chirbasa, while on their way to Gomukh. His body was recovered and was brought to Gangotri, Pal told HT on phone.
The group had plans to trek up to Tapovan at an altitude of 4463 metres, a barren area located above the Gangotri glacier which acts as a base camp for mountaineering expeditions to Mt Shivling and other peaks, he added.
The incident involving the two Polish mountaineers too had taken place during an attempt to scale Mt Shivling, recognised as one of the most difficult mountaineering expeditions in the state.
Expeditions to Himalayan peaks in India and Nepal have led to several disasters over the years with climbers falling into snow-covered crevices or due to altitude sickness in stretches known as the death zones where the air is very thin.
In 2001, two Israeli climbers had lost their legs during an expedition to Mt Shivling.
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Security forces carried out a massive search operation at Jammu airport after getting information that two persons had entered the premises after scaling the airport wall, police said on Wednesday.
One person has been detained for questioning in this regard, sources said.
Some children in Azadnagar locality close to the airport in Jammu had informed the people that two suspected persons have breached the wall and entered airport area. The information was passed on to police.
The IAF pressed into service helicopters armed with search lights during the night-time operation, he said.
Personnel from the police, IAF, army, CRPF and Airport Authority of India (AAI) rushed to the area, which was cordoned off last evening and massive searches were undertaken.
Jammu Airport houses IAF station (technical area) and airport complex and is jointly guarded by IAF, CRPF, AAI security setup round-the-clock.
The search operation and information on suspected movement had triggered panic in localities around the airport including Gadigarh and Azadnagar areas.
Senior AIADMK leader C Ponnaiyan said on Wednesday Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa was making good progress and there is absolutely no cause for any concern.
Amma has begun talking to people. She spoke to Dr Richard Beale from England and thanked him for taking good care of her, Ponnaiyan told Hindustan Times.
Jayalalithaa may need to spend 10 more days in the hospital and later a fortnight of bed rest, the AIADMK leader said adding that he was in regular touch with Dr Beale.
She has had a lung infection and because of that she had breathing trouble as well. That is why she was being given respiratory support, which is a normal medical procedure. She has responded very well to the treatment, he added.
The AIADMK chief was admitted to Chennais Apollo Hospital with high fever and dehydration on September 22 but news of her treatment has been tightly controlled with cryptic health bulletins adding to the many rumours flying around.
The last bulletin on Jayalalithaas health condition was issued on October 10 by the hospital and was endorsed by the state government that distributed it through its official news dissemination machinery, the DIPR.
In its earlier bulletins, all that the hospital said was Jayalalithaa was responding well to treatment and in the last bulletin it informed that the CM was being constantly monitored and was under observation. Even after 9 days, the Apollo Hospital and state government have maintained silence about the CMs health.
The former finance minister said that nothing much should be read into the absence of health updates from Apollo Hospital.
Read | Panneerselvam chairs TN cabinet meet as Jayalalithaa remains hospitalised
The hospital is very annoyed with criticism that its health bulletins were contradictory and short on facts. These allegations were made by opposition DMK, Ponnaian said.
The DMK, however, rejected the ruling partys contention and asserted that it had neither criticised the Apollo Hospital nor the content of its health bulletins.
We only wanted an interim arrangement in place to handle the state and also that the state administration was smooth and governance continued unhindered, DMK spokesperson Manu Sundaram said.
The DMK has also not questioned the silence of the Apollo Hospital on Jayalalithaas health condition or its inability to come out with her health bulletin, said Sundaram.
Read | The lack of transparency about Jayalalithaas health is worrying
It is the prerogative of the hospital authorities to divulge what they can and want to, he added.
The DMK spokesperson said his party is certainly very concerned about the manner in which people were being arrested for alleged rumour mongering.
Ponnaian justified the governments decision to arrest people. We cannot have anyone spreading false information about Ammas health, at any cost.
Human rights activist, however, beg to differ.
Sudha Ramalingam said it was atrocious that people were being arrested for even speaking about the condition of the chief minister, referring to the arrest of two bank employees in Coimbatore, who were picked up for spreading rumours about her health in front of an AIADMK local leader.
The health condition of the chief minister is a matter of public concern and the government ought to come out with specific information so that there is no scope for rumours, Ramalingam, who is also a lawyer, said.
Read | Politicians, VIPs make a beeline to Apollo to see Jayalalithaa
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Tamil Nadu finance minister O Panneerselvam on Wednesday presided over a cabinet meeting, the first such of the state government since the hospitalisation of the chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
Although the government did not release details of the agenda of the meeting, the Cabinet is understood to have deliberated on the ongoing Cauvery water sharing dispute with Karnataka, besides other subjects.
The meeting also comes ahead of the scheduled onset of north-east monsoon later this month. The rains in December last year had wreaked havoc, flooding Chennai and nearby districts.
Last week, Tamil Nadu Governor C Vidyasagar Rao had allotted the portfolios including home held by Jayalalithaa to Panneerselvam, till the time she returned to resume official duties.
The government released photographs of todays cabinet meeting, where Panneerselvam was seen seated with a picture of Jayalalithaa placed on his desk.
The nearly hour-long meeting was held in the backdrop of the ongoing Cauvery water sharing row with Karnataka and demands by Opposition parties for an all-party meeting on the issue.
Farmers bodies and political parties had staged a two-day state-wide rail blockade ending Tuesday, urging the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board.
The Raj Bhavan had last week in a release, said Paneerselvam, who holds the Administrative Reforms portfolio, in addition to Finance, will also preside over cabinet meetings.
The last Cabinet meeting held by Jayalalithaa was in July this year to discuss the state budget.
Jayalalithaa, 68, was admitted to the Apollo hospital on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration.
A specialist from London besides three-member team of doctors from AIIMS, Delhi, had also examined Jayalalithaa, who is being treated for infection with respiratory support.
Read | No water in Karnatakas reservoirs: Siddaramaiah after SC order on Cauvery
The Rajasthan government has approached the Supreme Court against the acquittal of actor Salman Khan in two 18-year-old cases of deer poaching, a blow for the controversial actor who has had several run-ins with the law.
Rajasthans additional advocate general Shivmangal Sharma told IANS that hearing on the special leave petition is likely sometime after the Diwali vacations.
The government move comes after a popular uproar over Khans acquittal in July after the Rajasthan high court said the prosecution failed to prove charges and the evidence was too thin for convicting the superstar for killing Chinkaras or Indian gazelles.
The high court overturned two trial court verdicts that handed the actor one and five years imprisonment. Salman has spent 13 days behind bars.
The government move comes almost a year after the actor was cleared of all charges in a controversial 2002 hit-and-run case by the Bombay high court, triggering outrage and questions about whether the actor had used his star power to subvert the judicial system.
Chinkaras are a protected species and hunting them is banned. The actor was accused of hunting two chinkaras on September 26, 1998 in Bhawad village area of Jodhpur and another one two days later at Ghora Farm. Seven other accused in the Bhawad case were let off.
The actor was shooting for the film Hum Saath Saath Hain at that time. Two cases against Salman black-buck hunting and possessing illegal arms are still being tried at trial courts in the state.
The high court had observed that the prosecution failed to prove that a deer had even died as no carcasses were found. Moreover, the police couldnt zero in on either the weapon used for the alleged hunt or the place where it took place.
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A local court on Monday ordered to release all five arrested accused due to lack of evidence in the alleged gangrape of a Dalit girl from Bhiwani. The 21-year-old girl had accused five men of raping her twice first in 2013 in Bhiwani and again on July 13 this year in Rohtak. The case had made international headlines garnering major embarrassment to the BJP government in the state.
Based on her complaint, the police had arrested three Amit, Jagmohan and Sandeep out of the five accused on July 19, while the remaining two Mausam and Akash have continued to be on the run.
The case took a curious turn when few days later, the police arrested two more men Sandeep Hooda and Parmod Kumar from Rohtak, claiming that the two were seen in CCTV footage with the girl at a local hotel at the time of the alleged incident. The kin of the girl debunked polices claim and maintained she was gang-raped by the five men from Bhiwani.
However, the police on Monday moved an application in the court for their release, citing that they have found no proof against the three arrested on girls complaint, and no statement from the girl against the two arrested based on the CCTV footage.
Taking things in account, the court of judicial magistrate first class (JMFC) Deepti ordered to release the five accused from jail. The trial in the case would however continue, with next hearing scheduled for October 29.
The police said they found no evidence against the three. Since she was major and gave no statement of rape against the two held later, they, too, were released by the court, defence lawyer Harinder Balothia said.
My clients (Amit, Jagmohan and Sandeep) had submitted CCTV footage as alibi to prove they were not even in Rohtak when the incident was alleged, Balothia added. The DNA report in the case, too, came inconclusive since the forensic experts found no trace of semen on the girls body or her clothes.
The girl had recently threatened to commit suicide if the case was not handed over to the CBI from the special investigating team (SIT) of the Rohtak Police. While maintaining that the SIT was siding with the accused, the family has also moved an application in Punjab and Haryana high court to seek transfer of the case to CBI.
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The Muslim wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will deliberate next month-end on ways the minority community should evolve in the countrys current socio-political scenario.
A meeting by the Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM) in Uttar Pradeshs Agra on November 27 is slated to discuss triple talaq that permits verbal divorce and a uniform civil code (UCC) that can alter the political dynamics in the country. Also on the agenda are the threat of radicalism and the Muslim communitys overall development vis-a-vis education and employment opportunities.
This is not the first such conference by the 2002-formed RSS-affiliate, but the timing has now lent it particular significance.
In a few months from now, Uttar Pradesh, with a sizeable Muslim population, will go to polls. The BJP does not traditionally bank on the Muslims for a vote, but the party does not want to alienate the community even as it makes guarded moves to introduce UCC.
The MRM, with 10,000 volunteers and limited clout in the community, has thrown its weight behind the fight to end the practice of triple talaq. The Manch refers to Triple Talaq as a social problem does not keep in with the tenets of Islam.
Not all sects of Muslims believe in triple talaq; but somehow it is prevalent and misused, said Mohd Afzal of the MRM. So many women are forced to live in penury after being divorced. So, this is not a religious issue, but a social cause. We need to discuss this as a community.
While Afzal asserted the day-long event is to discuss issues concerning the communitys welfare and for erasing the notion that the BJP and the RSS are anti-Muslim, there are other reasons for the MRMs overtures.
For one, Ram temple construction in Ayodhya has resurfaced on public memory and the issue can further wedge communities in the poll-bound state. Politically too, it has the potential of rallying the Muslims against the BJP.
The MRM has thus stepped in to broker peace, given that the RSS cadre wont be pressed into reaching out to Muslims.
The Muslims are not opposed to a temple; it is a politically-motivated campaign, claimed Afzal. Muslims in Ayodhya revere Ram as much as the Hindus as he is part of the Indian culture.
In recent months the MRM has held several meetings with Ulemas and representatives of the community, focusing on reaching out to professionals and students to build inter-community bridges. It is particularly focusing attention on youngsters being lured by radical groups.
In strife-torn Kashmir Valley, too, the Manch is making attempts to woo Muslims by offering skill training opportunities and running schools.
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Does Lord Venkateshwara of Tirumala have a regional bias? This is what the head priest of the famous Chilkur Balaji temple in Telangana, Dr MV Soundar Rajan, feels.
Sounder Rajan filed a petition in the Hyderabad high court on Tuesday demanding Telangana be given more than Rs 1,000 crore in revenues by the Lord Venkateshwara temple at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh, the richest shrine in the country. He alleged that the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, which manages the Tirumala temple, had neglected hundreds of temples of Telangana.
The high court, which admitted the petition, served notices to the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments, besides the TTD. The hearing of the case was posted for three weeks later.
According to Sounder Rajan, the TTD has to contribute to the Endowments Administration Fund (EAF) and the Common Good Fund of the endowments department to the extent of 7% and 5% respectively to enable the department to take up renovation of dilapidated temples, welfare programmes for priests and other charitable purposes.
However, the TTD has not been releasing its dues since 2003 and the outstanding amount is nearly Rs 2,300 crore till 2014, when the united Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated to form Telangana state. Going by the revenue sharing formula of 52:48 between AP and Telangana as per the AP Reorganisation Act, Telangana will have to get its share of Rs 1,000 crore from the TTD, Sounder Rajan argued.
Let Andhra Pradesh take the revenue from the TTD after 2014. We want the Telangana share in the TTD revenues prior to the bifurcation. The temples of Telangana were subject to utter neglect during the united Andhra regime as there were no funds from the TTD. Let it clear all its dues to Telangana and we shall manage our Telangana temples, said the head priest of Chilkur Balaji temple. This shrine is also popularly known as the Visa Balaji temple owing to a belief that devotees aspiring to go abroad get their visa without any hassles if they pray to the deity at Chilkur, located on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
Read | Worlds richest Hindu temple Tirupati wants gold, not cash under scheme
Sounder Rajan, who has been championing the Temples Protection Movement (TPM), said he had to take the legal recourse, as several letters written to the AP government as well as the TTD authorities were ignored.
Interestingly, even the Telangana government has been actively pursuing the case of recovering dues from the TTD. Telangana minister T Harish Rao told the assembly recently the TTD was to clear its dues of Rs 241 crore to be paid under Common Good Fund. However, Sounder Rajan says the dues would be more than Rs 1,000 crore, taking into consideration the Endowment Administration Fund also.
The Tirumala temple is estimated to get revenue of Rs 2,530 crore this year, with hundi collections in the form of offerings accounting for Rs 905 crore. Interest on investments is the second major source of income with the estimates being pegged at Rs. 744.91 crore, followed by the sale of special entrance tickets that are expected to fetch Rs. 215 crore. In addition, the TTD expects to net an income of Rs 200 crore from the sale of human hair, Rs 145 crore by way of sale of laddu and other prasadams followed by Rs. 98.50 crore from guest houses and Rs 50 crore through sale of arjitha seva tickets, among others.
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After a Pakistani blue-eyed tea-seller became an internet sensation, it is the turn of a security officer at Singapores Changi Airport to wow social media with his good looks.
A photo of Lee Minwei, 22, a corporal in Certis Cisco, was posted by the agency on Twitter on October 14.
Meet the famous CPL (APF) Lee Minwei at Changi Airport. Say hello to our good looking officer when you see him! https://t.co/bj5yFOEwUa pic.twitter.com/CMvmKqt7Wo Certis CISCO (@Certis_CISCO) October 14, 2016
The photo was shared hundreds of times, so the agency decided to give the internet more to drool over. So Changi Airport decided to share another picture of Minwei on their Facebook page with more information about the 22-year-old.
As of filing this story, the Facebook post had received about 11,000 shares and 36,000 likes.
There are times when tourists ask me to take photos with them, but I never expected something like this to happen. It was really quite a shock, Minwei says in the post about his internet fame. My friends and family tease me a lot, but I have a feeling my younger brother is slightly jealous.
Internets latest heartthrob is single but, unfortunately, he isnt looking to mingle.
I am single, but not actively looking for a relationship right now because I want to focus on my career. I believe things will happen naturally if its meant to be, and if the right girl comes along, he says.
But that isnt stopping people from planning a trip to Singapore, just to meet Minwei.
The only question left is where to find the young man. Dont worry, commenters on Facebook have graciously provided that info as well.
A group of United Nations experts on Wednesday called on the India to immediately release prominent Kashmiri human rights activist Khurram Parvez, who was arrested last month.
In a statement released from Geneva on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the group of experts said: Mr. Parvez is a well-known and outspoken human rights defender who has had a longstanding and positive engagement with the UN human rights mechanisms. His continued detention following his arrest just a few days before his participation in the UN Human Rights Council, suggests a deliberate attempt to obstruct his legitimate human rights activism.
Read | Rights activist Khurram Parvezs arrest opens up can of worms
The group of experts comprise the UN Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst; the Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Setondji Adjovi; the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye.
Parvez, who is the coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCSS), was prevented in Delhi from travelling to Geneva to attend the 33rd session of the UN Human Rights Council in September and then arrested by police in Srinagar. He was later slapped with the controversial Public Safety Act (PSA) and is now lodged in the Kot Bhalwal prison in Jammu.
Read | Rights activist Khurram Parvez shifted to Jammu prison
The statement further added: We are concerned at the use of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act against Mr. Parvez, which permits administrative detention without judicial intervention for up to two years.
We have received allegations of this law often being arbitrarily applied to target human rights defenders, they added, noting with alarm the lack of clarity as to why the Indian authorities have deemed it necessary to address this case outside the countrys ordinary laws.
In a democratic society, the open criticism of Government is a legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression of every person, the experts stressed. We are seriously concerned that the arrest of Mr. Parvez may represent a direct retaliation for his legitimate activities as a human rights defender and the exercise of his fundamental freedoms, including freedoms of expression and association.
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Indias big fat wedding season is no stranger to lavish, elaborate weddings invitations. But this fancy wedding invite from former Karnataka minister and mining baron, Gali Janardhan Reddy, for his daughters wedding seems to have just raised the bar.
The wedding invitation is actually a box, which opens to display a small LCD screen playing a pre-wedding video of Reddys daughter Bramhani with son-in-law Rajeev.
The video starts with the family lip-syncing a welcome song announcing the upcoming nuptial, followed by visuals of the bride-to-be swirling in flowy dresses across extravagant flower decorations and the groom pacing in a traditional attire against the backdrop of white, heavenly horses.
The one-minute video plays out with shots of the to-be bride and groom giving each other coy looks while the family blesses the couple by throwing flowers at them. The entire production features a luxurious mansion, idols, flower canopies and waterfalls.
What stands out in the video is how the entire family is involved in the song-and-dance saga, which makes it look like the opening montage of a soap opera.
The video also includes the details of the venue and timing. The wedding, slated for November, is expected to be a grand event studded with celebrity guests.
The host, Gali Janardhan Reddy is a former Karnataka minister, who was jailed in September 2011 for involvement in illegal mining activities undertaken by his firm, the Bellary Brothers. He was released on bail in January 2015.
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As the news of a fire at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar claiming 22 lives broke out, the AMRI fire victims families in Kolkata relived the horror of the blaze in Dhakuria.
The AMRI fire on December 9, 2011, claimed 93 lives.
Dhanonjoy Pal, a government employee from Bankura, had admitted his 15-year-old daughter Prakrita, who had a small head injury.
She was to be released on December 9 but the AMRI fire killed her.
I was at the dormitory meant for patient families downstairs. As smoke started coming out, I ran and tried to go upstarts but the guards did not allow me. They said that I need to clear my dues first and only then can I take her away. And finally, when I managed to reach her, she was dead, Pal said.
If the inhuman behavior of the hospital staff was not enough, the long legal fight has broken his moral.
Read:22 dead in Bhubaneswar hospital fire, PM orders transfer of injured to AIIMS
By seeing the Bhubaneswar hospital fire, I remember what happened on that December night. It will be five years this December. So many patients, including my daughter died. But the case is going on at a very slow pace. We are still fighting for a dedicated bench hearing the case so that the trial could be done on day-to-day basis. The grief and the delayed justice have demoralised me. I am still hopeful and attending almost every hearing in every court by travelling 120 km to Kolkata, said Pal, who is also a member of the AMRI Fire Victims Association.
In fact, these days not more than 10 families take active interested in the legal tussle.
It took over four years for the trial to start. Everyone is out on bail and is pushing the dates further. Though the case had been filed by the state government against AMRI, we on behalf of the victims families are fighting with state government as well as the accused in the court.
This is because the state government is not giving us any support and is doing whatever it has to only under pressure, said SN Pandey, who is fighting the case on behalf of the victims families.
Read:Bhubaneswar hospital fire: 3 employees suspended, death toll reaches 20
The hospital, on the other hand, has reopened and is functioning from its parent building and an annex building that was not affected by the fire. Only the building engulfed by the fire remains inoperative. Those who were arrested are now out on bail.
On March 19, a local city court ruled that 16 officials of the hospital will be charged under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) for the fire. Police had submitted the charge sheet in March 2012. If found guilty, those guilty could be jailed for up to 10 years and also fined. The next hearing is scheduled in the first week of November. There are 432 witnesses in the case, all of whom will have to depose in the court before charges are framed.
For the families of the Bhubaneswar victims, the ordeal has just started. They have a long battle ahead. I wish they have the courage to go on with the trial, said Pal.
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Union minister Babul Supriyo said he was attacked by ruling Trinamool Congress supporters with brickbats on Wednesday during a visit to Asansol, his constituency in West Bengal.
The alleged incident occurred around 4:15pm when the singer-turned-politician was on his way to a police station to lodge a complaint against ruling party activists, who had allegedly assaulted BJP supporters staging a peaceful demonstration in front of the residence of state labour minister Malay Ghatak.
WATCH: Stone hurled at Union minister Babul Supriyo in Asansol, West Bengal pic.twitter.com/ecOG9os16t ANI (@ANI_news) October 19, 2016
Read | Governor, minister team up for film endorsing Bhagavad Gita for school curriculum
I was hit by a brick when I emerged from the car to speak to the ruling party supporters. I was lucky to escape with a minor injury. The glass panes of my car were shattered, the minister told the media.
Trinamool supporters vandalised more than 10 motorbikes of our supporters. They also smashed and badly damaged five cars. Strangely, the police arrested 60 workers and leaders of the BJP who were at the receiving end of the Trinamool ire, said Anjan Mukherjee, a BJP leader of the district.
Police officers and Malay Ghatak declined to comment for this story.
WATCH: Ruckus during Union Minister Babul Supriyos visit in Asansol, West Bengal pic.twitter.com/yCR8xHvftb ANI (@ANI_news) October 19, 2016
After the incident, Supriyo went to Kolkata.
The genesis of the trouble can be traced to an incident on Tuesday afternoon, when Supriyo was proceeding towards the Asansol Rifle Club but was held up by about 40-50 cows blocking the road. The minister inquired and found out that the cows were brought from a rural cattle market at Lalganj and being taken to a nearby abattoir. The minister confronted the four people who were shepherding the cows and asked for documents.
Supriyo then asked the police to arrest the four. The police detained the cows but later released them after the men furnished documents related to the purchase.
Read | TMC workers attack Babul Supriyo rally in Asansol
Babul Supriyo locked in an argument with a police officer on Wednesday in Asansol. (Md Asif)
To protest what they described as police inaction, a group of BJP supporters started protesting outside the residence of Malay Ghatak around 2 pm on Wednesday.
Bones of cows are being burnt in the town, which is spreading pollution here, said Supriyo on Wednesday after the clash.
The ruling party supporters descended on the BJP workers questioning their gall to carry their protest in front of the ministers house.
BJP secretary Siddharth Nath Singh condemned the incident. The Union Minister is under special police protection and goons of TMC can openly attack a protected VIP shows how callous is Bengal police, he said. Since 2016 assembly elections, TMC rattled by BJPs double-digit vote share has adopted violence on BJP workers. More than 200 workers have BJP has been targeted in last few months. We condemn this anarchist action of TMC.
A large contingent of police was deployed to bring the situation under control in Asansol.
Until a couple of days ago, Arshad Khan was just another tea-seller in Islamabads local Sunday bazar.Until a photographers random shot changed his life, forever.
An image of Khan looking up into the camera, while making tea, was first posted by photographer Javeria Ali on her Instagram account. Within minutes, the image went viral, with girls commenting on his good looks and blue eyes.
Overnight, Khan became an internet sensation, gaining almost instant international popularity. As #ChaiWala trended across social media sites, modelling offers started pouring in for the tea-seller.
This is the POWER of social media. The famous #chaiwala is now a model. He has been hired by fitin.pk pic.twitter.com/yOSFF4RKhL Madhav Sharma (@HashTagCricket) 18 October 2016
An Islamabad-based retail site, Fitin.pk, signed him on and before you know it - Khans first shoot is already out!
Chaiwala is no more chai wala, now he is fashion wala! , said a Facebook post by the online store.
The 18-year-old, who was earlier unaware of how much he had charmed the internet , is glad to know that he is famous and his pictures are being shared.
And the Internet couldnt be happier. In fact, many people were hoping that the #ChaiWala could profit from his accidental fame.
hope chaiwala gets offered a gig from a designer, a cafe, or a net-savvy brand so this hype around him can at least benefit him in some way. Imaan Sheikh (@sheikhimaan) 18 October 2016
And now that the wish has come true, this is one social media rags-to-riches story that we would love to see again.
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Home-schooling became the topic of discussion after 17-year-old Malvika Joshi from Mumbai earned a place in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with formal education only till Class 7.
The idea is catching on with many parents, who think schools have nothing extra to offer gifted children. But the alternative method of learning may not suit everyone, especially in a country where the education system is exam-oriented and students without formal school certificates find it hard to get admissions into colleges, said panellists and academics, at the Hindustan Times Top Schools Conclave, 2016, on Wednesday.
Held at The Lalit, Andheri, the event marked the culmination of the eighth edition of the HT Top Schools Survey, 2016 an annual initiative that recognises the best schools in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai.
Manoj Nair, associate editor, Hindustan Times opened the discussion with the question: does home-schooling work only for budding geniuses or can it be adopted by anyone seeking to study at their own pace?
Panelists were divided about the learning style benefitting all students.
Reeta Sonawat, professor and head of the department human resource development, SNDT Women's University, feels it can work for anyone. It offers child-centered learning and preserving the uniqueness of the child, often lost in a crowded school classroom.
But Dr Sagar Mundada, psychiatrist and president of Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD), had a different view.
Schooling is an individual decision to be taken depending on the specific child. It needs motivated parents who can devote large amounts of time to their children. Most parents today barely spend 20 to 50 minutes with them, he said.
He added that often, high-achieving parents may pressure children to pursue home-schooling. Such parents set high goals for their children and home-school them to meet their own expectations, Mundada said.
Malvikas mother, Supriya Joshi, part of the Indian Homeschoolers Network, countered this view with her her familys experience with homeschooling.
We believed in freedom and passion for learning. We never looked at success as degrees or academic achievements, Joshi said.
Learning is a natural thing that happens everywhere. We just need to support the children in their pursuits.
The degree-obsessed system of education in India, Joshi said, is important for students to appear for board exams in Class 10. But several boards such as Maharashtra State Board and National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) allow students to appear for the exams privately, she said.
Nair highlighted the concerns of principals that homeschooling deprives children of social skills as it takes place in isolation, when compared to schools.
Sonawat argued socialisation is limited even in schools. Interactions between students are restricted to the recess. Teachers dont allow them to speak among themselves in class. Even the seating arrangement rows of students facing the teacher doesnt promote socialisation, Sonawat said.
Later in the discussion, principals joined in.
A school isnt restricted to negative experiences. It ensures holistic growth of the children by teaching compassion, sharing and leadership, said Indu Mathur, principal, Apeejay School, Kharghar.
Madhura Phadke, Pawar Public School, Chandivli, asked if there is a system to show homeschoolers if they are on the right track. Sonawat replied such parents often dont need validation from others, and Mundada pointed out there are online communities and discussion forums for homeschoolers.
Urging Mumbai schools to aid homeschoolers by sharing resources, Joshi said, Chennais Mathematical Institute allowed Malvika to use their library and attend some classes. Similarly, St Xaviers College permits my other daughter to audit geology classes and go on field trips even though she is not their student.
Things are changing, Mundada said, pointing out to many schools going for smaller classrooms of 20-25 kids so they get attention.
The schooling culture works for the majority. Rather than homeschooling, if we reduce the number of students in class, counsellors can identify strengths and weaknesses of every child and they can be taught accordingly, said Mundada.
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While the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Bombay Gymkhana are locked in a tussle over the footpath opposite Fashion Street which is being used as parking area by Gymkhana members, the state government has now jumped into the fray saying that the land belongs to it and permission from concerned authorities should be taken before taking any decision regarding it.
The Gymkhana wants the BMC to extend special parking permission while the civic body wants to relocate hawkers from around the CST on the same land.
Meanwhile, collector of Mumbai city, Ashwini Joshi has written to civic chief, Ajoy Mehta stating that the parking area does not fall under the BMCs jurisdiction and permissions from the concerned authorities should be taken before taking any decision on the footpaths use.
A senior official said, This letter from city collector is a setback to us as it reveals that the land belongs to state and was given to the public works department for maintenance and thus the civic body cannot be the sole decision maker on the future use of the footpath.
Darius Udwadia, president of Bombay Gymkhana, said he did not wish to comment on the matter.
This is also likely to delay civic bodys plans of shifting hawkers from CST as a part of its beautification plans. With this letter we will now need permissions from other authorities and it will not be an easy task, said another senior official.
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Samir Patel, an accused in a case related to the 2002 Gujarat riots, has been detained in London and is due to be extradited to India shortly, officials here said on Tuesday.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), one of the key departments in the British government dealing with extradition requests, told Hindustan Times that Patel had consented to his extradition to India.
Patel is wanted in connection with a case of rioting in Ode village of Anand district on March 1, 2002. He was detained after a red corner notice was issued by Interpol when he was traced to London.
A CPS official said: We can confirm that Mr Patel has consented to his extradition to India. However, we are unable to comment on any surrender arrangements as this is an operational matter for the police.
Read | 24 years on, UK extradites first in list of Indias most wanted
Commenting on the development, police force Scotland Yard told Hindustan Times: On August 9, officers from the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) Extradition unit attended an address in Beavers Lane, Hounslow and arrested Samir Vinubhai Patel, aged 40, on a warrant issued under section 71 Extradition Act 2003. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on August 10, 2016.
A team from Gujarat Police is expected to arrive in London shortly and take Patel to India.
The Ode riot, in which 23 people were killed, was reportedly one of nine cases probed by a special investigation team appointed by the Supreme Court.
A special court had convicted 23 people for the riot on April 9, 2012.
Patels trial in the special court could not be completed when he absconded. It is expected to be resumed after he is taken to India.
India has been seeking the extradition of several individuals from Britain over the years, including Tiger Hanif, who is wanted for the 1993 Gujarat blasts and has made a final appeal against his extradition to the home secretary.
India and Britain signed an extradition treaty in 1992 and it came into force on November 15, 1993. India is included in Type B of the Category 2 list of countries in Britains Extradition Act of 2003.
Also read | 2002 Gujarat riots: Survivors scarred but look to the future
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Two minors, who were injected with petrol in their anus by a Ghaziabad politicians brother over suspicions that they stole a mobile phone, will need surgery doctors said on Wednesday.
Rizwan Qureshi, the brother of Samajwadi Party politician Haji Ehsan Qureshi, tortured the minors, who are 16 and 17 years old, and a 24-year-old man at Loni on October 12.
Rizwan and his aides allegedly injected petrol in their anal region with syringes used to inject medicines to cattle when they did not admit to the theft.
Both minors, admitted to Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital in Delhi, were taken for the surgery on Tuesday. However, the operation had to be deferred as both of them have an infection.
Surgery is a must for both patients. It is only during the surgery that the doctors can decide whether the collapsed anal opening can be repaired, if the damage is not extensive, or an alternate opening is required to be created. The infection has to subside before surgery, Dr Bharat B Sagar, chief CMO of the hospital, said.
Akram, the elder brother of one of the victims and an auto driver, said his entire family have been under stress after the assault on his brother - the youngest among four.
We all earn our living by engaging in daily labour. Since the incident, we have been running to get them treated and not able to go out for work, Akram, the elder brother of one of the victims and an auto driver, said.
Ghaziabad Police arrested Rizwan and Akil on October 17.
The third accused, Nadeem, surrendered in court on October 18. All the three accused, including Rizwan, are behind bars. We are also in touch with hospital authorities and getting regular updates on the health condition of the minors, Loni circle officer Anil Kumar Yadav said.
Police have registered cases under stringent sections of illegal confinement, causing grievous hurt by dangerous means and unnatural offences against the accused persons. They have also been booked under provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
Rizwans brother, Ehsan Qureshi, admitted that his brother beat up the three but rejected the allegations and described it as a political conspiracy by his rivals.
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Following the closure of Schiller Institute Senior Secondary School in Raj Nagar on Monday in the aftermath of a minor accident between its school bus and a politicians car, both parties finally reached a compromise on Tuesday evening.
On October 14, one of the schools buses had scraped the Mitsubishi Montero SUV belonging to Samajwadi Party candidate from Muradnagar in the upcoming UP assembly polls Dishant Tyagi, for which he demanded damages of Rs. 2.2 lakh.
School principal AK Gupta said on Tuesday morning that he had to keep the school closed on Monday after heated exchanges with Tyagi over the issue as the latter had demanded almost Rs. 2.2 lakh for repairs from the school.
Following the incident, we had offered to pay up to Rs 20,000 for repairs, but the estimate of Rs 2.2 lakh was too much. Following repeated calls and demands, Tyagi also threatened to come to the school with 500 people and even said he could get the school shut . Fearing escalation, we sent messages to all parents about the school remaining shut and also sent messages to police officials and the Election Commission of India , said Gupta.
We sent messages to parents describing the situation, the threats and our communication with the Ghaziabad police. We also filed a written complaint at Kavi Nagar police station on October 15. After an assurance by the police on Monday evening, we opened the school on Tuesday, he said.
On Tuesday morning, Gupta also shared the call recordings, stamped police complaint and his e-mails sent to the district magistrate, senior superintendent of police and the election commission and said the police did not register his FIR.
On Tuesday afternoon, superintendent of police (SP), city, Salmantaj Patil directed the Kavi Nagar station house officer to immediately look into the issue, after he was informed about the matter. Following media intervention, Tyagi too gave his version of events to media persons and said he had not threatened Gupta.
Later, the SP said that when the police approached Gupta on October 18, He said he does not wish to lodge an FIR and will sort out the matter amicably.
Finally, on Tuesday evening, Gupta and Tyagi said they had reached a compromise.
The school principal has apologised over the incident. In fact, there was no threat from me, said Samajwadi Party leader Dishant Tyagi. I just demanded the amount for repair of my car, the parts of which are expensive. It needed immediate repair as I use it daily. A staff member from the school was also sent to the workshop to get an estimate of the repair cost prepared. Despite repeated assurances, when the school principal refused to bear the expenses on account of repair, I got annoyed, Tyagi said. What can I do if demanding the amount for the damage is termed a threat? I have to contest elections and cant press too much for money if they do not pay. The principal did not behave like a sophisticated person.
On his part, the school principal said that police officials had brought Tyagi for a compromise.
A compromise was reached between the two of us. Now, the matter stands resolved. We paid Rs 20,000 for the damage caused to his vehicle, he said.
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Electoral Code passes first reading (video)
In its Wednesday sitting, Armenian legislature voted 104 to 4 to pass the new amendments to the Electoral Code. Before the vote, Head of the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) faction, Naira Zohrabyan, said she sees a tendency that the parliamentary majority wanted to thwart the agreement reached in the result of 4+4+4 format talks. It means they are not going to publish the signed electoral lists. The discussions with the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) did not produce any result. The parliament speaker promised that the discussions would continue but if we fail to achieve results, we shall vote against the amendments in the second reading. Today we are going to vote for the bill, she said. Vahram Baghdasaryan, Head of the HHK faction, said the five forces that had signed the agreement, today held a discussion. There were some professional differences. I call on you to vote for the amendments and continue discussions, he said. Heghine Bisharyan, Head of the Rule of Law Party (OEK), said there was some confusion over the bill. We are all speaking about the same problems. There was an initial agreement to vote for the amendments because certain changes were foreseen to be made in this article. That is why we are going to vote for the bill, she said. Lawmaker Khchatur Kokobelyan said he was going to vote against the bill.
Slamming the Badal government for failing to ensure the upkeep of war memorials in the state, Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh on Wednesday cleaned the neglected statue of Subedar Nand Singh, recipient of Victoria Cross and Mahavir Chakra, at Fauji Chowk here.
Also from the 1st Sikh regiment to which Subedar Nand Singh belonged, Captain described the condition of his statue as yet another glaring instance of how little the Badals care for our soldiers and their memories.
Trying to strike an emotional chord with armymen and ex-servicemen, Amarinder said there was no point of setting up memorials and installing statues if the government could not ensure their proper maintenance. Asking the government to hand over these memorials to the army, he said: Our martyrs deserve no less.
Captain, in whose book Lest We Forget Nand Singhs story finds detailed mention, recalled how at the age of 33 this loyal solider of the Indian Army (by then a jemadar, who was not even required to go into the battle) chose to lead his platoon in a desperate but successful attack to rescue his battalion from an ambush in Uri in Kashmir in December 1947. He was killed in action but his body was never recovered.
It was later discovered that the Pakistanis recognised Nand Singh because of his decorated VC ribbon and took his body to Muzaffarabad, where, in the most abominable manner, it was tied on a truck and paraded through the city with a loudspeaker proclaiming that this would be the fate of every Indian Victoria Cross recipient, said Captain Amarinder.
Unfortunately, the Badal government has never shown much respect to our army or its personnel, said Captain, referring to the prolonged protest of war widows in Punjab and reiterating his partys and his personal commitment to address their concerns.
Even as 22 patients were killed and over 20 others injured in a fire that broke out at a Bhubaneswar hospital on Monday evening, city-based Guru Nanak Dev Hospital seems least concerned about preparedness for a similar emergency.
HT has reported twice on May 2 and May 25 that how the government facility lacks fire-safety equipment. On a visit to the hospital on Tuesday, HT found that nothing much has changed in the past few months.
A rusted fire hydrant at Guru Nanak Dev Hospital, Amritsar on Tuesday. (Sameer Sehgal/HT Photo)
There are a number of fire extinguishers installed on the premises, but there is no way to find if these have been refilled, as slips are missing. Even the fire-fighting equipment at the entrance is in complete neglect. Fire hydrants to which hoses are attached have rusted and there are no sand buckets to douse the flames the traditional way.
Hospital superintendent Dr Ram Sarup Sharma, who had earlier told HT that everything will be taken care of , said: I have told the officials concerned to write to the fire department. We will request their team to visit and inspect the premises. The fire extinguishers will be refilled and the old ones will be replaced.
CIVIL HOSPITAL SHOWS SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT
The 250-bedded Jallianwala Bagh Martyrs Memorial Civil Hospital situated near Ram Bagh, however, has shown signs of improvement. Fire extinguishers have been filled and buckets have been filled with sand, unlike the situation reported on May 2. Fire hydrants, however, have still not been take care of.
Punjab Police on Tuesday told the Punjab and Haryana high court that it had arrested 14 people in connection with the attack on Sikh preacher Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale and role of Damdami Takasal head Harnam Singh Dhumma was under investigation.
In an affidavit filed in the high court, assistant commissioner of police, Ludhiana West, Rupinder Kaur Sra said told the bench of justice Jaishree Thakur that it had established role of 14 persons in the attack and all of them had been arrested with challan filed against them in a Ludhiana trial court. However, with regard to allegations against Dhumma and his associates, the investigations are still on, the affidavit read. As and when some material or evidence would come requisite legal action would be taken and supplementary challan will be filed, Sra said in the affidavit. The matter would now be taken up on October 24.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has already said that it would be better if Punjab agencies probed the May 17 attack on Sikh preacher Dhadrianwale.
Based on a petition from Dhadrianwale, his driver, and two followers in June, the high court had ordered Punjab Police to report where the investigation had reached. Preachers aide Bhupinder Singh was killed in the shooting and Dhadrianwale was injured. Dhadrianwale had accused Dhumma for orchestrating the attack.
Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh talked on a wide range of issues concerning agriculture on the second day of the Eegional Editors Conference on Tuesday. He also listed farmer-friendly schemes launched during the Narendra Modi government, but was evasive on the pre-poll promises made by the BJP for revival of the agriculture sector. He praised Punjab farmers for their unmatched contribution to national food-grain pool, but failed to suggest a clear solution to help the distressed community. Excerpts of an interview:
Before coming to power, the BJP promised to implement the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report, but nothing has been done. Your take?
Radha Mohan Singh: Of the 200 recommendations in the MS Swaminathan Commission report, most were accepted, except ensuring 50% profit over the input cost to the farmers. I think, thats not feasible. Before the 2014 polls (Narendra) Modi promised to double the farmers income and we are helping them on that count through reducing the input cost, better market facilities, crop diversification and increasing production.
Punjabs groundwater level is falling drastically and government continues to give free power to run tubewells? Do you recommend free power?
The fact is that 55% agriculture in India is being done without irrigation facilities. It is commendable that Punjab has arrangements for irrigation and its farmers reap good harvest even during a drought. It is difficult for me to comment on giving free power, but I am all for better water management.
Has Centre any debt-waiver plan for the Punjab farmers?
Not to my knowledge. I suggest the state government to do its bit by offering loans at zero interest to farmers. Banks offer loan at 9% to the farmers, of which the Centre contributes 5% and the state government can take care of the rest (4%).
Opting for basmati over paddy is not proving beneficial to farmers. What is government doing on this count?
We cant offer MSP on basmati. Its remuneration depends on the market dynamics and fluctuates from season to season. Moreover, support price doesnt help farmers much, there are other options to increase their income.
The benefits of government schemes dont reach the farmers as envisaged. Why?
I agree full benefits dont reach farmers. (Then he shifts to other question).
Nearly 30,000 hectares of farmland in Punjab is across the zero line on the international border. During the Vajpayee government, compensation was being given the landowners. Any plan to resume that?
We are working on it and will announce a policy soon.
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A total of 100 female teachers observing fast on the occasion of Karva Chauth have been deputed to display themes/ items relevant to traditional Punjabi culture for the rich heritage exhibition to be held at multipurpose hall of Guru Nanak Stadium on Wednesday.
The teachers have been directed to reach the hall at 9am, with no exemption to anyone.
Two nodal officers of principal cadre each from the seven tehsils of the district have been asked to reach the multi-purpose hall to check the arrangements. Five each students from 62 government schools will accompany their teachers to the venue for displaying the heritage items.
However, the female teachers observing fast are not happy with the assigned duty. A teacher requesting anonymity said, I have been working in a government school for the last 10 years but the authorities have never delegated us any duty on Karva Chauth. If I reach the venue at 9am, I need at least five to six hours to display the items and that means I can reach home after 4pm only. It will be very difficult to stay hungry till 4 pm. I have to attend the karva chauth puja at 3pm, but now I will do it after reaching home.
Another teacher, who wished not to be named said, Mostly girl students are accompanying their teachers for the event and that is why female staff is deputed by the education department. The higher authorities were aware about this occasion beforehand, despite that we were asked to work today.
When asked, the director public instructions (secondary) Balbir Singh Dhol said, This festival was scheduled to be held on October 3 but was later postponed to October 19 and 20. So for the teachers, we will make special arrangements for food and water. As soon as the teachers finish their work they can go home.
Pottery, gramophone, old musical instruments, dresses and ornaments, kitchen with old utensils, furniture, charkha and traditional home set up will be displayed in the exhibition.
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The oldest councillor Rana Kashmiri Devi (73), has not been seen in Ward 14 after she was elected. Considered as one of the most neglected wards comprising Sector 45 and Burail village a look at the area speaks volumes on the lack of attention from the elected representative.
Such was the level of apathy that residents had to move the Punjab and Haryana high court to get a green belt in the area.
In Burail village, tiles have been laid in select market areas. (Keshav Singh/HT Photo)
The 2013 senior deputy mayor held the position, but failed to make a mark even while holding the post and proved a major disappointment.
Her tendency not to attend office meant that a lot of the residents who turned up at the MC office had to return, feeling a sense of dejection.
ONLY BURAIL DEVELOPED, SAY RESIDENTS
She stays in Burail village and is accused of diverting the entire ward fund to the village only. Residents allege that she was seen only during elections.
Kashmiri Devi, a turncoat, contested on a Congress ticket in 2011, but joined the BJP in 2014.
Her son Vijay Rana was elected councillor from the same ward in 2001 and 2006 and had switched over to the Congress in his second term.
As the ward got reserved for women, she became the choice by default.
The ward is in utter state of neglect, evident from heaps of garbage and debri on roadsides.
Ill-maintained green belts stand out
The ill-maintained green belts and broken paver blocks trouble the residents of the ward. Residents term her tenure as a complete failure as she failed to undertake any development work.
But if you ask the 73-year-old councillor, the upgrade of the local dispensary into a 50-bedded Civil Hospital in Sector 45, Chandigarh, is her major achievement. The street-lights do not work in the area and the sewage lines are blocked in the ward.
Kashmiri Devi resides in Burail village, so her main focus has been on the village itself.
Did not raise issues in House
Kashmiri Devi has also failed to make her presence felt in MC House meetings.
It is true that councillor of our ward is not easily approachable. Often, members of the public and unions of shopkeepers managed to meet her and requested for construction of public toilets. Some of us even offered funds but the issue wasnt taken up, said a resident Shishu Paul.
He went on to add that even though a perception existed that that the councillor had diverted funds that should ideally have gone to Sector 45 to Burail, nothing had been done in the village too.
Tomorrow: Ward 15 Harjinder Kaur
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Daring Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh to list out five achievements of his 2002-2007 term as the chief minister, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Wednesday dismissed as lies the Congress promise to waive farm debt.
I challenge Amarinder to list out five achievements of his tenure. The Punjab government is highlighting its nine-year achievements Congress has nothing to say about its tenure. Is he ashamed of his five-year rule? Sukhbir questioned in a news conference, slamming the state Congress chiefs kisan yatra as jhoot yatra.
The deputy CM said Amarinder was just travelling from one destination to another without meeting farmers during his yatra. He chooses to reach his heaven before 6pm to enjoy his luxurious lifestyle. Is this kisan yatra? Sukhbir asked.
Replying a query regarding Amarinders promise of waiving farm loans after assuming power, Sukhbir said it was an open secret that after coming to power in 2002, Amarinder imposed the decision to charge power bills on farmers.
Now, the Congress is spreading lies that it will waive farmer loans. The Congress should begin the drive from Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka where it is in power, he said.
Responding to a question about the state government closing Amritsar Improvement Trust-related corruption case against Amarinder, Sukhbir said: I have not gone through the case because Vigilance Bureau is not with me. But I will look into what has happened.
In a yet another veiled attack on Amarinder, who has said that upcoming assembly election will be his last contest, Sukhbir said: This shows his hunger to gain power. Actually, a leader who wants to win by claiming that it is his last election should not be elected at all.
Regarding state government agreeing to pay Rs 31,000 crore in 20 years to settle the foodgrain account dispute, he said the state government would soon come out with complete data of the issue.
There is no foodgrain scam the Union government has gone through accounts this exercise has been going on for the past many years, even during Congress governments. The picture will be clear once the dispute and accounts are settled, he said.
Sukhbir also inducted Kabir Das, former Congress general secretary and former deputy mayor of Patiala municipal corporation, into the Akali fold.
Visiting dignitaries are always a cause of inconvenience and impede the movement of a common man.
The students of Government Model Senior Secondary School, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), were at the receiving end today in the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the university.
Students faced a lot of inconvenience as parents were told by the cops deputed at gate number 4 to drop their wards at the gate which is at a distance of approximately 1.5km from school.
While a holiday has been declared on Tuesay in all the colleges of PAU on account of Modis visit, however, Government Model Senior Secondary School, PAU remained open.
But out of a total strength of 2,500 students, only 1,600 students were present in the school while 900 chose to remain absent.
A parent, Raj Kumar said, In the morning when I reached gate number 4 to drop my two kids, I was told by the police to leave them at the gate only. So my son who is 7-year-old and 9-year-old daughter had to walk all the way to school carrying heavy school bags. I feel the school should have declared holiday as walking the distance of 1.5km is difficult for students.
A student of Class 12, Gayatri said, I was going to school on my bicycle and when I reached gate number 4, the cops asked me to walk for some distance as there was chaotic traffic outside the gate. I met one of my classmates on the way and offered her a ride along.
When contacted, school principal, Sanjeev Thapar said, Due to security reasons the police had not allowed the parents to enter the gate, but we had deputed teachers so that they may guide the students. If the students had to walk some distance, then it is not harmful for them.
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Two hoardings featuring deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on the newly installed unipoles on Club Road were allegedly burnt by unidentified persons. The incident has raised many speculations.
The local SAD leaders claimed that these hoardings of deputy CM, Sukhbir Singh Badal were recently installed with authorisation to showcase the achievements of the SAD-BJP government in Punjab.
Councillor from ward 59 and spokesperson of Youth Akali Dal, Tanvir Singh Dhaliwal alleged that the hoardings were intentionally torched. It is responsibility of the municipal corporation (MC) to keep check on hoardings as the government is paying for the display, he said.
I suspect that it is the work of opposition parties and the police should lodge an FIR against the accused persons, said Dhaliwal.
A homeless person who stays on the footpath near Durga Mata Mandi said, When I came here on Monday morning, the two hoardings were found burnt. It seems these hoardings were torched last night. I had also seen an empty bottle dumped near one of the unipoles.
Sources said that the burnt hoardings were recently replaced. Many unauthorised hoardings displaying the pictures of SAD leaders are also being installed at various places in the city.
Short circuit could be the reason behind burning of hoardings, said Harvinder Singh, MC superintendent (headquarters).
A sub divisional officer of MC is looking into the matter, he said. When contacted, station house officer (SHO) at police station division Number 8, Jagdeep Singh said he has no information regarding the same. He said the police will look into the matter.
According to MC, the state government will pay `1.25 crore for advertisements on 80 unipoles for five months. Besides, MC has also allowed the government advertisements on gantries and foot over bridges.
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Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Captain Amarinder Singh lashed out at chief minister (CM) Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday for forcing industries to flee Punjab, leaving the state grappling with near bankruptcy and a host of other critical problems.
Starting the second day of his kisan yatra with a visit to a closed sugar mill in Faridkot, he said once in power, he will take immediate steps to revive the defunct sugar mill and incentivise the industries in the state in line with the concessions being provided to attract industrial development in other states like Gujarat.
It was unfortunate, he said, that nobody was prepared for Make in Punjab even while the rest of the country was talking about the Modi governments Make in India campaign.
Accusing the Badal government of reversing Punjabs industrial growth and causing several industrial units to close down for lack of government support, Captain said he will ensure that the trend is reversed as soon as he takes over the reins of power in the state.
Farmers at Faridkot grain market complained that paddy was not being lifted from the mandis and what had been lifted was at lower than minimum support price (MSP).
Assuring the farmers to bring an end to their woes once Congress is voted to power, PPCC president asked them to support Congress in forthcoming elections.
Meanwhile, utilising the roadshow to display the collective strength of the local Congress leaders, Kushaldeep Singh Dhillon, known for his proximity with Captain, united all the ticket aspirants.
SAD LEADER TAKES A DIG AT CAPTAINS CLIP
Captain Amarinder Singh visited Kotkapura grain market on Monday evening where he interacted with the farmers and his team uploaded a video on his facebook account.
However, SAD leader Parambans Singh Romana shared the same video clip on his facebook account highlighting the fact that farmer in the clip indeed said that his paddy was procured within a day, contradicting the Congress claims.
The announcement of refund in cases involving two large developers in Gurgaon and Ghaziabad have left homebuyers relieved but merely getting the amount back is not enough for them to buy another house in the same locality where they originally chose these apartments, they say.
Homebuyers who had invested in Unitechs Vista project in Gurgaon years ago are relieved with the Supreme Court ordering refund of Rs 16.5 crore to 39 buyers but are doubtful if they will be able to afford a similar apartment with the refund. They are also worried that they will be again waiting for possession (as they did so far) if they invest in under-construction properties .
The Supreme Court today ordered Unitech to refund Rs 16 crore to 39 apartment buyers. The apex court refused to rely on Unitechs assurance of possession by 2017. The builder has already deposited Rs 15 crore in the Supreme Court registry (which will be given later to the homebuyers) and the court has ordered that it deposit Rs 2 crore in four weeks.
Voice of anguish is echoed in the courtroom (by the buyers) as their dreams are shattered. A property developer has to have a contractual commitment and has to live up to the terms of the contract and gain trust so that people who dream of having a house can repost faith in him, a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said while asking the top courts registry to let the investors withdraw money after their verification.
One of the buyers, who was part of the group seeking refunds, said that while he was happy that the money was being returned, he would not get a house worth the same amount in any project close to the Unitech project. We were sure that the builder would not be able to deliver the flat for the next three years and not get the occupation certificate either. We thought we would never be in position to occupy the flat.
The biggest challenge so far has been that while most of the buyers got together and pooled in money to fight the case, at least eight from the group of 39 represented the case themselves.
Sunil Bharadwaj of the Vistas Residents Association says that since the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 has already been notified, the Supreme Court should ideally decide the interest component in line with RERA and give the buyers 18% interest. Out of a total of 1,288 buyers, only 39 have gone in for a refund application. As of now we will also not be in a position to buy anything that is ready-to-move-in even with the amount that will eventually be refunded to us. We may be forced to invest in a new launch and there is every possibility that we may get into the same rut even after going through this mess for almost seven years, he says.
The Supreme Court order came a day after the same Bench asked Parsvnath Developers to refund Rs 22 crore to 70 apartment buyers in its Exotica project in Ghaziabad. A Bench comprising justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar allowed buyers to receive the refund of the principal amount paid by them in 2010. The interest component and compensation for delay in handing flats would be dealt with at a later stage, the court said. The refund would come partly from the Rs 12 crore deposit made by the developer with the apex courts registry. The court asked Parsvnath to deposit an additional Rs10 crore by December 10. The companys Exotica project in Ghaziabad hit a roadblock after the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) quashed a revised plan of construction.
A buyer who had invested in the Parsvnath project says that even if the buyers were to get 12% interest as penalty, the amount will be subject to 30% tax under Income Tax laws which means we will effectively received only 8.5% interest. All this while we have also been paying EMIs and rent, that is not something for which we will be compensated, he says.
But he is sure that he will now only go for a ready-to-move-in home and not go for something where possession in due in the next three months. I dont want to take that risk. What is the guarantee that the builder will deliver the project even after three months, he asks.
Almost one in three adults around the world believe people of the same sex should be allowed to get married to each other, a survey of about 1 lakh people in 65 countries showed on Tuesday.
About 32% said same-sex marriage should be legal, while 45% said it should not be, and the remaining 23% replied they did not know, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) survey said.
The rights group said a breakdown of the results highlighted deep regional divisions.
Only 19% of respondents in Africa and 26% in Asia said they approved of same-sex marriage, against 35% in the Americas, 41% in Europe and 56% in Oceania the online survey found.
These divisions reflect that rights advocates in Africa and Asia have focused on more pressing issues, such as fighting discrimination against gays rather than promoting acceptance of same-sex marriage, said study co-author Aengus Carroll.
Gay couples are legally recognised in more than 20 world countries, mostly in Europe and the Americas. (Shutterstock)
This is so far off the agenda for Africa and Asia, Carroll told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
An ILGA survey published earlier this year found two-thirds of adults would be upset if their child told them they were in love with someone of the same sex.
Gay couples are legally recognised in more than 20 world countries, mostly in Europe and the Americas.
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After exploring the OJ Simpson trial and its intense media coverage and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the third season of Ryan Murphys anthology series will focus on Gianni Versaces murder in 1997, US TV network FX has announced.
Although its second season is yet to be filmed, American Crime Story has already been renewed for a third season. Whats even more unusual in the world of TV, is that the theme of the true crime anthologys third 10-episode stint has already been unveiled: the murder of Gianni Versace.
The founder of the Italian fashion house, Versace, was found dead July 15, 1997, in front of his Miami villa, with two bullet wounds to the head. (AP)
Gianni Versace was the last of the five victims murdered by serial killer Andrew Cunanan. The police were never able to establish his true motives, however, as the killer took his own life eight days after the event.
The Versace/Cunanan affair will be filmed in Los Angeles and Miami in spring 2017, at the same time as the anthologys second season, focusing on the damage caused by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August 2005. The second season is due to air in 2017, one year ahead of season three, due to land on FX in 2018.
Ryan Murphy is currently in the process of casting this third season. The series creator, whos also set to direct the first episode, is searching for actors to play Gianni Versace and his sister Donatella, who has a major role in the upcoming dramatization. British novelist Tom Rob Smith (Child 44) will pen the script, with the help of Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orths book Vulgar Favors.
American Crime Story launched on FX in February this year, and proved a TV hit with its first season tackling the trial of OJ Simpson and the surrounding media frenzy. Cuba Gooding Jr, John Travolta, David Schwimmer and Courtney B. Vance starred in the 10-episode debut season, which scooped nine Emmy Awards in September, including Outstanding Limited Series.
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Actor Divyanka Tripathi Dahiya will be celebrating her first Karva Chauth after marriage with husband Vivek Dahiya today. While many husbands practice the day-long fast with their wives on this occasion, she doesnt want Vivek to do this.
He wants to fast, but I havent asked him to do it. I dont want him to. He works very hard in the gym and needs to eat well. Vivek is a fitness freak and going to the gym is an important activity in the day. Fasting requires a lot of energy and takes a lot of patience, says Divyanka, who tied the knot with Vivek in July in Bhopal.
Divyanka, who met Vivek on the sets of their daily show, is excited about the festival and will be in Mumbai on the big day.I dont know much about the exact rituals of the festival. Whatever I know is through films and television. But I dont want to make any kind of mistake because it is my very first Karva Chauth. I will seek guidance from my mother-in -law and have already asked her send me sargi (an assortment of gifts, eatables and jewellery). I will also ask my mother about the ritual and its importance, says the actor.
Asked if the couple will celebrate the festival together, Divyanka says, Yes. Vivek and I will be together in the evening and celebrate the special day.
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The festivals of Karva Chauth is here and like the rest of the married couples around the world, television stars will also celebrate them with zeal.
Arjun Bijlani and Neha Swami
Neha will get her shopping and mehendi done, and is fasting like every year. I am shooting for my show, so I will try to take a half-day or come early as she has to break the fast. Actually there is no ritual of men fasting on Karva Chauth but if there was, I would definitely fast! says Arjun.
Hunar Hale and Mayank Gandhi
Hunar who will be celebrating her first Karva Chauth says, I will be celebrating in Mumbai. Its special because I will learn a lot of things which I have only seen in films. Mayank will take a break from work and come early. Then we will go for dinner.
Actors Hunar Hale and Mayank Gandhi.
Jay Soni and Pooja
I like Karva Chauth. Life is all about loving your family. Its a special ritual. I am in Ahmedabad shooting for a film. So it will be a long-distance celebration for us. I will be on call with her while she does the puja. In an industry where marriages break easily, she has been my pillar of strength and compliments my personality completely, shares Jay.
Jay Soni with his wife Pooja Shah.
Annirudh Dave and Shubhi Ahuja
Says Anniurudh, My wife Shubhi is going to celebrate her first Karva Chauth. She will fast, and will wait for me to break her fast. I am lucky to have her. She is the perfect wife. This is our first Karva Chauth, so its special. I have been very unwell after ligament tear while rehearsing for a dance act and am still recovering and juggling between home and shoot. My wife will talk to my mom for the exact ritual details.
Deepika Singh and Rohit Raj Goyal
I will be in Delhi with my family for the festival. Rohit will come for two days. I am looking forward to celebrating with him. I am glad that I am not shooting this time around, which means I can spend more time with him, shares Deepika.
Deepika singh with fiance Director Rohit Goyal
Himanshoo Malhotra and Amruta Khanvilkar
My Karva Chauth plans are first to buy a gift for my wife so I am still thinking what to get her. She has warned me if I dont get her a gift, I better be prepared to sleep in the living room. I am thinking of buying a beautiful sari for her since she loves saris, says Himanshoo.
Actors Himmanshoo Malhotra and Amruta Khanvilkar.
Karan Patel and Ankita
Karan says, Its special and it has always been for us. I hope to get off from work early and come back home to my wife. All the ladies of my house are fasting and the puja will be followed by a good dinner.
Actors Karan Patel and Ankita.
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US Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is going into the third and final presidential debate of the 2016 race for the White House with a widening lead as her Republican rival Donald Trump ratcheted up talk of a rigged, stolen election.
Clinton was leading her rival by 7.5 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, up from two points on the eve of the first debate, and was ahead in some of the most crucial battleground states.
Clinton is opening up solidly Republican states such as Arizona, which voted Republican in 15 of the last 16 presidential elections. She led Trump by five points in a new poll released on Wednesday, just hours ahead of the debate. She was close behind in Texas, the reddest of states, by two to three points.
Her chances of winning at this stage stood at 87.2%, according to the FiveThirtyEight election forecast, with Trump at 12.7%.
The third debate takes place in Las Vegas (at 6.30 am IST on Thursday).
Read | Trump takes on Hillary in the final presidential debate: All you need to know
Trump has taken to complaining in recent days about a stolen election, fraud and rigging, citing stray incidents that have had the reverse effect of making him look like he is preparing the ground for a defeat.
There have been only 31 incidents of election fraud (including multiple ballots) between 2000 and 2014, according to a widely cited study by law school professor Justin Levitt. The study included all polls, municipal, state and federal and even primaries. More than 1 billion votes were cast in the primaries and general elections in that time.
The unfounded alarm and Trumps calls to supporters to monitor polling stations on election day have raised fears about voter intimidation especially among minorities.
President Barack Obama ticked off Trump sharply on Tuesday, telling him to stop whining. He added, I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place.
Possibly stung by the rebuke, Trump invited the presidents Kenya-born half-brother Malik Obama as his guest at the final debate, saying he gets it far better than his brother. The brothers dont get along and Malik Obama, who is older, has resented not getting enough help from the president for a foundation he runs in Kenya.
Trump has in the past used his guest list for the debates to make a point. He brought three women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault to the second debate.
Play the US Presidential Debate Tambola
But on Wednesday night, Trump will have plenty of other issues to take on Clinton, whose campaign has been hit by new allegations over her use of a private email server as secretary of state between 2009 and 2012. The state department is alleged to have tried to negotiate a deal with FBI investigators to mitigate violations.
Also, hacked emails of her campaign chair John Podesta are being released in small bunches every day by WikiLeaks. Trump might bring them up.
Clinton is likely to continue to repeat her campaigns key argument against Trump one that is dutifully reprised by surrogates that he is unfit to be president. She is likely to use reasons such as the way he treats women, talks about them and behaves with them.
The 2005 recording in which Trump boasted about groping women and forcing himself on them remains current, with his wife Melania Trump bringing it up earlier this week to describe it as boy-talk. That was a missed opportunity as Trump has tried to dismiss it as locker-room talk without any success.
Indonesia will be the country of focus at the Tokyo International Film Festival, which begins on October 25. Part of Crosscut Asia, an important segment of the festival, Indonesian movies will highlight some leading directors from the country.
Three films by Teddy Soeriaatmadja will be a study in intimacy -- daring and provocative. Along with these will be the works of emerging female talents like Nia Dinata (a pioneer in LGBT movies) and Kamila Andini with her evocative work, Following Diana.
Soeriaatmadja started his career with an independent movie titled Culik. His latest films to be screened at Tokyo are a trilogy: Lovely Man, Something in the Way and About a Woman. His attention to detail, stunning cinematography and compelling style of storytelling have made Teddy one of the most acclaimed directors in Indonesia.
While Lovely Man traces the relationship between a Muslim father and his daughter after she discovers him to be a transvestite working on the streets of Djakarta, Something in the Way talks about a man addicted to paid sex and how his life takes an about turn after he falls in love with a pretty neighbourhood prostitute. The third in the trilogy, About a Woman, grapples with the life of an elderly Muslim lady as she is forced out of her comfort zone.
About a Woman grapples with the life of an elderly Muslim lady as she is forced out of her comfort zone.
Dinatas hilarious musical, Three Sassy Sisters, focuses on the dilemma of an old woman who just cannot seem to find suitable grooms for her three granddaughters -- running a beachside boutique in the eastern part of Indonesia.
Three Sassy Sisters focuses on the dilemma of an old woman who just cannot seem to find suitable grooms for her three granddaughters.
Andinis Following Diana describes how a 30-year-old woman living with her little son and husband finds life shattering beyond belief when he wants to share his family with another woman.
Following Diana describes how a 30-year-old woman living with her son and husband finds life shattering beyond belief when he wants to share his family with another woman.
(Gautaman Bhaskaran will be covering the Tokyo International Film Festival.)
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Four teenage students were shot in the shared parking lot of two San Francisco high schools on Tuesday, and one of the students is in critical condition, authorities said.
The shooting occurred as students were being let out of school for the day from the June Jordan School for Equity and City Arts and Technology High School, which share a campus, San Francisco Police officer Carlos Manfredi said.
Three of the victims ran inside the school, and police initially ordered students to stay in place until police searched each room and determined it was not an active shooter situation. A fourth victim hurt in the shooting went to a hospital, Manfredi said.
One female victim has life-threatening injuries to her upper torso, he said.
Four male suspects wearing dark hoodies and jeans were seen running away from the area, Manfredi said.
The shooters seemed to have targeted the female student, said Karwin Sui, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Unified School District.
A year ago, Justin Trudeau led his Liberal Party to a surprising majority in Canadas federal elections. If the Prime Minister were to call a snap election now, he could well capture a supermajority in the House of Commons.
Over the past 12 months, not only has the honeymoon period persisted, Trudeaus romance with the voting public has grown stronger.
On October 19 last year, the Liberals captured 184 of the 338 seats in the lower house, equivalent of the Lok Sabha, while tallying approximately 40% of the vote share. According to a new poll from Toronto-based Forum Research, if elections were held today, that percentage would rise to 49, translating into a whopping 240 seats.
Trudeau, the face of the party, is spurring this gain in popularity. Thats a big factor. His personal approval rating is even higher. At 56%, hes actually ahead of his party, Lorne Bozinoff, Forum Researchs president and founder, told Hindustan Times. The latest poll had a sample size of 1,437 and was conducted during October 11-12.
And this is a countrywide trend, not limited to Liberal bastions, as Bozinoff pointed out, Its high in just about every demographic group in the country, its high in just about every region of the country.
There are exceptions in Conservative strongholds, but even there, the numbers are impressive for a Liberal. In places such as the province of Ontario, where the regional unit of the party is floundering, the Federal Liberals are above 50% in support. These numbers have been fairly consistent over the past six months or so.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrates after tapping the keg at the opening ceremony for Oktoberfest in Kitchener, Ontario. (AP Photo)
But the numbers from a recent poll conducted by Vancouver-based Angus Reid Institute were even better for Trudeau. Its executive director Shachi Kurl said, Today some two-thirds of Canadians approve of Justin Trudeaus job performance. That's an enviable approval rate for most politicians. The honeymoon has indeed lasted a year, which is an age in political time spans. He's achieved it by significantly shifting the tone coming from the PMO, his cabinet and his caucus - both when it comes to communication and symbolism.
Also helping is the fact that the principal opposition Conservative Party has yet to elect a full-time leader to replace former prime minister Stephen Harper.
Its been a good first year in office for Trudeau, and he has plenty of nationwide support to take his agenda forward as he enters the second.
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Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has a six-point lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a latest Fox News poll with just three weeks to go for the US presidential election.
A week ago, Clinton was leading by seven points. In the latest weekly poll, Fox News said Clinton has a six-point lead over Trump (45-39 per cent).
Libertarian Gary Johnson stands at 5 per cent and Green Partys Jill Stein at three per cent.
In the head-to-head matchup, Clinton (49 percent) is leading by seven points over Trump (42 percent).
Clintons lead is beyond the polls margin of error, the news channel said.
The poll, conducted from Saturday to Monday, reflects the large gender gap. While Trump leads likely among men by seven points, he trails Clinton by 17 points among women.
According to RealClearPolitics, which keeps track of all major polls, Clinton leads Trump by 6.9 per cent points.
Two elephants meet in tableware store and fight each other: Arman Navasardyan about war between Armenia and Azerbaijan (video)
Azerbaijan has always been preparing for a full-scale war. There is no need to worry about it, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Arman Navasardyan said on October 19. Strategic weapons may not matter in the given situation. Neither Baku, nor Yerevan can use them. It is excluded. Sometimes, I compare it with the scene when two elephants meet in a tableware store and fight each other. We may appear in the same situation. We can destroy Baku, leveling it to the ground, but Azerbaijan can also give us a similar blow from Nakhichevan. Such a thing cannot happen because that is what will become the beginning of World War III, Mr. Navasardyan said today. Speaking about the Yerevan-hosted CSTO summit, he said it had more negative than positive aspects. One of the negative things was that [President of Kazakhstan] Nursultan Nazarbayev did not come to Armenia to participate in the meeting. Besides, the meeting participants did not elect CSTO Secretary-General from Armenia. Reverence was shown to countries which were against it. As you know those are Turkic-speaking countries, and the organization has not reached the appropriate level that fits it, he added. Anyway, Mr. Navarsadyan says our problems will not be resolved, even if an Armenian is elected. The positive thing was that the organization outlined its roadmap and Russia made use of the venue [Yerevan] to show that it is ready to soften its relations with the United States.
Mogadishu
A suicide car bomb and gun attack in the Somali town of Afgoye on Tuesday killed 11 people, including government employees, an official said, raising the initial death toll from four.
Militants from the al Shabaab group, which has been carrying out a series of deadly attacks in the country, drove a bomb-laden car into a police station, while others engaged security forces in a gun fight.
Eleven people died, including police and civil servants, Abdinasir Moalim, the district commissioner for Afgoye, told Reuters on Wednesday. Six attackers were also killed, he said.
Afgoye is about 30 km (20 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu.
The police station, which was built with funding from the United Arab Emirates, was destroyed in the attack, the district commissioner said, adding calm had returned and the government was in full control of the town.
Ecuadors government acknowledged on Tuesday that it cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges internet access at its embassy in London after the whistleblowing site published a trove of damaging emails from Hillary Clintons presidential campaign.
The foreign ministry said that while it stands by its 2012 decision to grant Assange asylum based on legitimate concerns he faces political persecution, it respects other nations sovereignty and doesnt interfere or support any candidate in foreign elections.
The decision to make this information public is the exclusive responsibility of the WikiLeaks organization, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The recognition of the action comes less than 24 hours after WikiLeaks tweeted that Ecuador had cut off Assanges access to the internet on Saturday after the publication of Clintons speeches to Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs.
In follow-up messages posted Tuesday, the group claimed US secretary of state John Kerry had personally intervened to ask Ecuador to stop Assange from publishing documents about Clinton. Citing multiple US sources, WikiLeaks said the request was made on the sidelines of a visit by Kerry and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa last month to Colombia to show their support for a peace deal with leftist rebels.
The State Department denied the allegation and Correas leftist government said it was acting on its own and not ceding to foreign pressures. The foreign ministry didnt specify the extent of the temporary restrictions on Assange, saying only that they wouldnt affect WikiLeaks ability to carry out its journalistic activities.
While our concerns about Wikileaks are longstanding, any suggestion that secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down Wikileaks is false, US State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in an email. Speaking to reporters later, deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said Kerry never even raised the issue or met with Correa during his visit to Colombia.
There just was no meeting, he said. They didnt discuss any of this stuff.
Assange has been holed up at the modest embassy suite at No. 3 Hans Crescent for more than four years after skipping bail to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex crimes allegations, a position which until now hasnt prevented him from continuing to play a pivotal role in exposing state secrets and backroom trade deals.
The Ecuadorian national flag flies outside their London Embassy. (AP Photo)
WikiLeaks said unspecified contingency plans were in place and the site and its Twitter feed appeared to be working as usual. On Tuesday, it released another tranche of emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, suggesting that the groups ability to publish has yet to be compromised.
The disclosure was the 11th installation in a series of leaks that have captured the workings of Clintons inner circle. Those leaks themselves are part of a wider cascade that have embarrassed the Democratic Party and which the American intelligence community has recently described as an attempt by the Russian government to interfere in the US election.
Staff at WikiLeaks and the embassy either declined comment or didnt return messages.
Assange fled to the Ecuadorean Embassy on June 19, 2012, after a drawn-out and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to being sent to Sweden, where he remains wanted over an allegation of rape. Ecuador granted him asylum, but British authorities have made clear they would arrest him if he tried to leave. Londons Metropolitan Police used to maintain a visible presence outside the building, although officers were nowhere in sight when an AP journalist visited on Tuesday.
Assange has carved out a life at Hans Crescent, dining on delivered food, welcoming famous well-wishers and even occasionally addressing the media from the embassys balcony. On Saturday, former television star Pamela Anderson paid a visit.
But evidence of mutual suspicion with his hosts surfaced after BuzzFeed News drew on leaked documents to detail tensions between Assange and Ecuadorean embassy staff.
In targeting Clinton, Assange may have run afoul of Correas own preference for the Democratic candidate and a renewed effort to repair strained relations with Washington. The President recently said that while a Trump victory would energize Latin Americans to reject overhanded US policies in the world much in the way George W. Bushs invasion of Iraq did he personally would like to see Clinton prevail.
For the good of the United States and the world, and for my personal appreciation of her, Id like to see Hillary win, he told the Moscow-backed RT broadcaster last month.
Assange isnt likely to submit to the internet ban quietly. Over the weekend, WikiLeaks released three lines of code it described as pre-commitments, labeling them John Kerry, Ecuador, and FCO an apparent reference to Britains Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Pre-commitments are cryptographic functions that can be used to verify the integrity of material released subsequently.
Thomas White, a UK-based security researcher and transparency activist, saw the posts as a warning to the named parties that WikiLeaks had ammunition in reserve if Ecuadorean authorities do not continue to offer him political asylum.
Syrias President Bashar al-Assad told a Swiss TV station that government forces had to rid the city of Aleppo of rebel terrorists under its constitutional mandate to protect the civilian population.
Thats our mission, according to the constitution, according to the law, that we have to protect people, that we have to get rid of those terrorists from Aleppo. This is where we can protect the civilians, he said in an interview with Swiss broadcaster SRF conducted on Tuesday and posted on SRFs website on Wednesday.
How can you protect them while they are under the control of terrorists? Theyve been killed by them, and theyve been controlled fully by the terrorists. Is it our role to sit aside and watch if thats how we can protect the Syrian people? We need to attack the terrorists, thats self-evident.
Read| Russian, Syrian planes halt Aleppo airstrikes ahead of truce
Francois Hollande, Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel will meet in Berlin for talks on Syria on Wednesday ahead of a brief truce in Aleppo backed by Moscow in the face of mounting criticism for its part in a brutal regime offensive.
The meeting comes a day after the Kremlin announced that Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo prior to an eight-hour humanitarian pause in the battered city on Thursday, a move Moscow said showed goodwill.
It was an announcement welcomed by the United Nations and the European Union which nevertheless said the ceasefire needed to be longer to allow the delivery of aid.
The US State Department voiced scepticism regarding Moscows latest initiative while welcoming a halt in the bombing.
French and Russian presidents Francois Hollande and Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold a working meeting on the Syrian crisis on Wednesday in Berlin, the French leaders office said.
The meeting will be aimed at giving the same message to Vladimir Putin on Syria: a durable ceasefire in Aleppo and humanitarian access so that the devastation of this city can end, an aide to Hollande said.
EU foreign ministers said earlier this week they would press ahead with extending sanctions against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime, but stopped short of threatening measures against Russia.
But Merkel said that in light of the disastrous situation in Syria, no option, including sanctions, can be taken off the table.
The West has expressed increasing alarm at the situation in Aleppo, saying the ferocious Russian-backed onslaught on the rebel-held east could amount to a war crime.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced in a televised briefing Tuesday that strikes in the Aleppo region were stopping.
This guarantees the security of civilians exit through six corridors and prepares the evacuation of the sick and injured from eastern Aleppo, he said, adding that it would also guarantee safe passage for rebels to leave the area.
He added that the halt in bombing could contribute to the success of talks in Geneva on Wednesday on efforts to distance Syrian opposition fighters from jihadist group Fateh al-Sham Front, which changed its name from Al-Nusra Front after renouncing its ties to Al-Qaeda.
Hong Kongs legislature again descended into chaos on Wednesday as pro-Beijing politicians blocked the swearing in of two new lawmakers who want a split from China, in an increasingly divided parliament.
It comes as fears grow in the semi-autonomous city that Beijing is tightening its grip, fuelling an independence movement in Hong Kong.
Wednesday saw rival lawmakers clash in a heated shouting match after the pro-Beijing camp walked out of the swearing-in session.
The walkout led to the meeting being cancelled, preventing pro-independence lawmakers Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung from taking the oath that would allow them to take up their seats.
In the ensuing confrontations one veteran pro-democracy legislator threw slices of luncheon meat at his opponents while another was surrounded by security after turning China and Hong Kong flags displayed on pro-Beijing lawmakers desks upside-down.
Meanwhile, pro-Beijing lawmakers chanted Apologise!, demanding Yau and Leung say sorry for their failure to take the oath properly at last weeks swearing-in ceremony.
The pair had their oaths rejected last Wednesday after they draped themselves in Hong Kong is not China flags.
The oath states Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China.
Both refused to pronounce China properly, and Yau was heard to replace the words the Peoples Republic of China with the Peoples refucking of Zeena.
They were given permission to retake their oaths Wednesday, but the session was abandoned after the pro-Beijing walkout left an insufficient number of legislators in the chamber.
If they want people to respect their oaths, they have to express regret over their behaviour last week and to apologise to all Chinese around the world, pro-Beijing lawmaker Priscilla Leung told reporters.
Hundreds of pro-Beijing supporters waved Chinese flags and stamped on pictures of the two outspoken lawmakers outside the legislative council building.
Pro-Beijing supporters hold a Chinese flag and placard depicting legislator-elect Sixtus Leung outside the Legislative Council in Hong Kong on Wednesday. (AP)
The pair said they wanted to complete their oaths, but would not apologise for last weeks behaviour.
We are empowered by the people to enter the Legco, Baggio Leung said.
The former British colony was handed back to China in 1997 under an agreement protecting its freedoms for 50 years, but there are concerns those liberties are being eroded.
Leung and Yau are part of a new wave of lawmakers advocating independence and self-determination who won seats in the Legislative Council (Legco) -- Hong Kongs lawmaking body -- in citywide polls last month.
Five legislators, including the pair, had their oaths rejected at last weeks swearing in.
Of those five, one pro-Beijing lawmaker and one pro-democracy lawmaker, whose oaths were declared invalid the first time round, were allowed to retake them Wednesday morning.
The Beijing camp then walked out, forcing the session to be abandoned before Yau, Leung and pro-democracy teacher Lau Siu-lai, who read her oath at a snails pace last week, took the stand.
The chaotic scenes came after a late-night court bid Tuesday by city leader Leung Chun-ying and justice secretary Rimsky Yuen to block Yau and Baggio Leung from taking up their seats.
That went directly against a decision by the pro-Beijing president of Legco, who had already given the green light for them to have a second chance at the oath.
The court refused to grant an injunction against Wednesdays oath-taking, but gave permission for a judicial review into whether the pair should be disqualified, putting their future as lawmakers into question.
In a separate case Wednesday, former pro-democracy lawmaker Raymond Wong was convicted of throwing a glass at city leader Leung Chun-ying inside the Legco in 2014.
Wong, 64, was convicted of common assault and will be sentenced on Tuesday, local media reported.
A ship involved with the deep-sea sonar search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is being fitted with a drone that will examine several sonar contacts of interest on the remote seabed west of Australia, officials said on Wednesday.
None of the sonar contacts exhibit the characteristics of a typical aircraft debris field, said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the hunt for the Boeing 777 in a desolate stretch of the Indian Ocean. But some of the contacts do exhibit man-made properties and therefore must be investigated before they can be eliminated as having come from the plane, the agency said in a statement.
Officials have previously said that more than 20 sonar contacts that crews have picked up in recent months require closer examination by a sonar-equipped underwater drone. They are between 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) and 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the Australian port of Fremantle where the search ships are based.
Poor weather during the southern hemisphere winter has, until now, prevented the ships from deploying the drone. With the weather improving, the Chinese vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101 is being fitted with a video camera-equipped remotely operated vehicle that will scrutinize the sonar contacts.
Crews have picked up hundreds of sonar contacts of interest throughout the two-year hunt. The contacts are grouped into three classification levels based on their likelihood of being linked to the plane. Contacts dubbed classification 1 are considered the most likely to have come from the aircraft. None of the recent sonar contacts that the drone will investigate are classification 1. There have only been two contacts that fit into that category thus far; one turned out to be an old shipwreck, and the other was a rock field.
Search crews have so far come up empty in their attempt to find the main underwater wreckage of the plane, which vanished on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The ships have less than 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 square miles) left to scour of the 120,000-square kilometer (46,000-square mile) search zone.
Officials previously said the search would be finished by December. On Wednesday, the transport bureau said it is now likely to take until January or February to complete, due to the long stretch of poor winter weather that has hampered search efforts.
Read| Wing part found in Mauritius confirmed to be part of MH370
President Barack Obama on Tuesday held one of the largest state dinners of his tenure to celebrate the enduring alliance between the US and Italy.
The soiree for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was the 13th and final state dinner for Obama, who leaves office in January. Bittersweet was the word several guests chose to describe the evening.
Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., said its a little sad that its Obamas last state dinner. But to make the occasion even more memorable, he said, For tonight only, I pronounce my name Canoli, not Connolly.
Johnny Wright, who styles Michelle Obamas hair, also described the moment as bittersweet, but he, too, was excited to have been invited.
Others sought to inject some levity into the evening.
Were Jews, but we identify as Italian, joked comedian Jerry Seinfeld. By way of explaining why the Obamas may have invited him and his wife, Jessica, Seinfeld said they spend a lot of time traveling in Italy and we almost exclusively go out for Italian food, but thats as far as I can figure.
US President Barack Obama speaks during the State Dinner. (AFP)
Other guests of Italian heritage included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the highest-ranking Italian-American in U.S. politics; former race car driver Mario Andretti, who sported socks designed like a checkered racing flag; fashion designer Giorgio Armani; actor John Turturro; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; and actor-director Roberto Benigni.
Mrs. Obama wore a rose gold chainmail gown from Italian label Atelier Versace, the White House said. Other women also went Italian in their choice of attire, clothing themselves in designs by Valentino, Roberto Cavalli and others.
In his pre-dinner toast, Obama said American democracy had been graced by a touch of Italy. He noted that the Lincoln Memorial and the interior of the U.S. Capitol dome were done by Italians, and raised a glass to the two nations enduring alliance.
Obama has held 13 state dinners during nearly eight years in office two more than President George W. Bush, but fewer than other recent predecessors, according to the White House Historical Association. President Bill Clinton far exceeded both of his successors with 28 dinners during his two terms in office.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said it was time to say goodbye to the US during a visit to China on Wednesday, as the combative leader reconfigures his countrys diplomatic alliances.
Duterte is in China for a four-day trip that is expected to confirm his tilt away from Washington and towards Beijings sphere of influence.
During a speech addressing the Filipino community in Beijing, the firebrand president said the Philippines had gained little from its long alliance with the US, its former colonial ruler.
Your stay in my country was for your own benefit. So time to say goodbye, my friend, he said, as if addressing the US.
I will not go to America anymore. I will just be insulted there, he added, before once again referring to US President Barack Obama as a son of a whore.
Duterte, who took office in late June, said he was fed up with the Philippines foreign policy being dictated by a Western agenda.
What kept us from China was not our own making. I will charter a new course, he said.
Foreign policy under Duterte has dramatically shifted from that pursued under predecessor Benigno Aquino, who took Beijing to an international tribunal over its extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea and won a resounding victory.
The move infuriated Beijing. But Duterte, who took office in June shortly before the tribunal ruling, has made a point of not flaunting the outcome.
He has also suspended joint US-Philippine patrols in the South China Sea, and has threatened an end to joint military exercises.
A Shiite paramilitary force said late on Tuesday it will support the Iraqi armys offensive on Mosul, Islamic States last major stronghold in Iraq, raising the risk of sectarian strife in the mainly Sunni region.
The Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), a coalition of mostly Iranian-trained militias, said it will back government forces advancing toward Tal Afar, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Mosul.
Tal Afars population was a mix of Sunni and Shiite ethnic Turkmens until Shiites fled the town after Islamic States ultra-hardline Sunni militants took over the region in 2014, declaring a caliphate over parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
The PMF also said it will be supporting the armed forces advancing into the city of Mosul from the west.
The PMF will be backing the security forces on the western front (..) along two axis, the first is Tal Afar and the second is to support the forces going into the centre of Mosul, a statement on the paramilitary forces website said.
Read: Baghdad must ensure Mosul is not given over to vengeful Shia death-squads
The announcement came despite warnings from human rights groups that PMF involvement could ignite sectarian violence.
Shiites make up a majority in Iraq but Sunnis are predominant in the north and the west.
The PMF officially reports to the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who announced on Monday the start of the offensive on Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city.
Abadi had sought to allay fears of sectarian bloodshed, saying that the army and the police will be the only forces allowed to enter the city.
The PMF was formed in 2014 to help push back Islamic States sweeping advance through the northern and western provinces.
Read: US expects Islamic State to wield chemical weapons in Mosul fight
Amnesty International on Tuesday published a report saying Shiite militias had committed ``serious human rights violations, including war crimes against civilians fleeing Islamic State-held territory.
The UN in July said it had a list of more than 640 Sunni Muslim men and boys reportedly abducted by a Shiite militia in Falluja, a former militant stronghold west of Baghdad, and about 50 others who were summarily executed or tortured to death.
The government and the PMF say a limited number of violations had occurred and were investigated, but they deny abuses were widespread and systematic.
The Taliban on Wednesday rejected reports of secret meetings with the Afghan government in a bid to resume long-stalled peace negotiations, insisting that their hardline policy remains unchanged.
Afghan officials on Tuesday said they held two meetings since September in Doha, where the Taliban maintain a political office, after the news was first reported by Britains The Guardian newspaper.
But Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement rejected any reports of talks or meetings.
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, Afghanistans intelligence chief, and national security advisor Mohammad Hanif Atmar had attended one of the Qatar meetings, local Tolo television said citing a presidential palace source.
The representatives of the Islamic Emirate have not met with Stanekzai or any other officials. Our stance about the negotiations has not changed. Our policy is very clear on that, Mujahid said, referring to the Talibans official title.
The Taliban have long insisted on the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan as a precondition for peace talks with the government.
The Guardian said the talks were attended by Mullah Abdull Manan Akhund, brother of Taliban founder and long-time leader Mullah Omar who died in 2013.
A senior American diplomat was also present in the Qatar meetings, the newspaper said citing a Taliban official.
Pakistan -- the Talibans historic backers -- have hosted several rounds of international talks over the last year to jumpstart peace negotiations, which yielded little progress.
The dialogue process ground to a halt when the US killed former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in May.
The insurgency has shown stubborn resilience under new Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, attacking northern Kunduz city for a second time and threatening the capital of the southern opium-rich province of Helmand.
Why did Lavrov take photo of Ararat? Political analyst explains the reason
Political analyst Sergey Shakaryants says people need not take the statement made by the Russian FM on the Karabakh peace process literally. During the four-day skirmishes in Karabakh in April and after them Sergey Lavrov made 2 or 3 statements in which he blamed Turkey for inciting a war [in Karabakh]. But after the normalization of Russian-Turkish relations, he began making other statements. We all remember that he took photos of Ararat at Zvartnots airport before his departure from Yerevan. A person wishing to harm us, would not do such a thing, Mr. Shakaryants said. The political analyst says Turkish-Russian rapprochement is connected with Iran's statement on the April war. Iran had warned Turkey that it would review its relations with the country if Turkey did not stop provoking a war [in Karabakh]. In diplomacy, it means I am declaring a pre-war on you. After the statement Erdogan had to dismiss Davutoglu as the countrys prime minister and improve its relations with Russia. Speaking about Ilham Aliyevs statement that Artsakh is likely to be granted the status of an autonomous state, the political analyst said one need not take Azerbaijani presidents words seriously.
Thai police are investigating 12 new complaints of royal defamation found on social media lodged since the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej last week, a sharp rise amid intensifying scrutiny of anything deemed offensive to the monarchy.
The death of the revered king last Thursday, who was 88, after seven decades on the throne has plunged the Southeast Asian country into mourning and heightened sensitivity about the monarchy.
King Bhumibol was seen as a stabilising figure in a country often racked by political turmoil.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has moved quickly to quash any uncertainty around the royal succession, saying Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn would ascend the throne after a period of mourning that he had requested.
Insulting the monarch, the regent or the heir, known by the French-language term lese-majeste, is a crime in Thailand that carries a jail sentence of up to 15 years for each case.
Police spokesman Kitsana Pattanacharoen said there had been 12 lese-majeste cases since last Thursday, with arrest warrants issued for eight suspects and four already in police custody.
Their crime was posting messages or pictures which insulted the monarchy on social media, he told Reuters.
There were 70 cases in the two-and-a-half years from a May 2014 coup up to last Thursday, said Weerawat Somnuek, a researcher at Thai legal monitoring group iLaw.
Twelve cases in a week is a lot, Weerawat told Reuters.
Grief, Anger
The stepped-up prosecutions come at a time of deep grief among Thais, who have for decades seen the late king as a unifying father figure.
Read|Thais get inked in tribute to their late king
People are dressing in black around the country, and have been streaming to Bangkoks gilded Grand Palace to pay their respects to the late king, who is lying there.
No date has been set for a royal cremation but it is expected to take place in about a year.
The Thai stock market, which fell sharply last week as investors worried about stability after King Bhumibol, has been stable this week.
But some grief-stricken people have been quick to anger.
In some cases, violence has erupted against individuals deemed disrespectful, while similar anger has erupted online against people whose posts have been seen as inappropriate.
Thailands main mobile telecoms operators have, at the governments request, asked customers to report websites and social media posts deemed inappropriate or insulting.
The government also asked internet service providers to monitor content and inform platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to block offensive content. Failure to do so would be considered a crime, the government said.
The junta has sought to reassure the public that a roadmap to the restoration of democracy, which promises a general election in 2017, remains on course and there is no uncertainty around royal succession.
Prime Minister Prayuth told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the roadmap was unchanged and the succession would happen after a period of mourning.
There are a lot of preparations needed to be made before succession, junta spokesman Colonel Winthai Suvaree told Reuters.
Winthai said an estimate the prime minister gave on Tuesday of seven to 15 days was meant only to convey a passage of time and was not to be taken literally.
The length of time he mentioned were just a turn of phrase and not exact figures, Winthai said.
The formal procedure for the prince becoming king involves the cabinet informing the president of the legislature. The assembly then invites the prince to ascend the throne.
Pornpet Vichitcholcha, president of the National Legislative Assembly, told reporters that the legislature was ready to handle the matter at any time.
While Donald Trump often rails against a rigged election on Twitter and at rallies nationwide, he goes a few steps further in Pennsylvania, a state crucial to the Republicans fading chances to win the White House.
Here, he has made direct appeals since August to recruit voters as poll monitors on Election Day and has pointed specifically at Philadelphia as a city beset by voter fraud.
Despite offering little evidence for any of his claims, his rigged election message is resonating with his followers in this traditional battleground state where Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has opened up a wide lead. But his calls for poll watchers on Nov. 8 is drawing a mix of confusion, concern and tepid support.
In some cases, Trumps talk of fraud appears to have made some of his own followers more resigned to an election loss, even though independent studies show U.S. voting chicanery is exceptionally rare and certainly never on a national scale.
Since Aug. 8, when Trump first urged supporters in the state to watch other polling places and make sure that its 100-percent fine, civil rights groups have expressed fears that some supporters will take the idea too far by forming roaming, vigilante-style crowds intimidating voters.
Trump supporter Mark Bowman, 53, says he isnt the type to attend a political rally or put campaign stickers on his car. And he isnt confident the election results will be correct.
I hate to say it, but I dont have a lot of faith, Bowman said. Voter fraud is rampant especially in the cities.
But, in a comment echoed by nearly two dozen Trump supporters in the states reliably Republican central regions, he said he thinks nothing can be done to stop it and that becoming an amateur poll watcher is a step too far.
What authority do I have to confront someone? said the resident of Shermans Dale, a rural community of about 5,000 people. Your average citizen, youre going to end up in a confrontation with someone. Youre going to end up in a bad situation.
There are official channels to monitor elections. Pennsylvania has a system that allows campaigns and political parties to designate official poll monitors, who are allowed into the polling places and can register official complaints if they think someone isnt a valid voter.
A form on the Trump campaigns website asks voters to help Trump stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election by becoming a volunteer Trump election observer.
But in an example of the Trump campaigns near non-existent effort to organize field operations in key swing states, there is little evidence that the recruitment drive is translating into legions of officially sanctioned volunteers. Repeated inquiries from Reuters about efforts to staff polling places went unanswered by his campaign.
The rules allow each candidate and the state parties to name monitors. With federal and local candidates both on the November ballot, there could be dozens of watchers in a single precinct. But those familiar with past elections say rarely does that happen. Instead, campaigns tend to focus on only the most fought over swing districts.
Steve Reigh, 57, a realtor from Elliottsburg, Pennsylvania, agrees with Trump that the election is likely to be rigged, but says he also resigned to the outcome of the election, win or lose.
What are you going to do? he said.
Really close vetting
Some Trump supporters are branching out on their own.
Jack Posobiec, a navy veteran and special projects director at Citizens for Trump, a grassroots support group, says he hopes to mobilize 3,000 volunteers in several key swing states in the final days of the campaign, including busing supporters from Texas to Ohio.
On Oct. 1, Trump told a largely white rally of supporters in Manheim in central Pennsylvania that they should go to neighborhoods other than their own on election day and watch.
Youve got to get everybody you know and you got to watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas, Trump said. So go and vote and then go and check out areas because a lot of bad things happen and we dont want to lose for that reason.
Dale Ho, a voting rights lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Twitter that Trumps calls for poll watchers were a recipe for intimidation and discrimination.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Married Trump supporters Gina, 75, and Larry Snyder, 77, of Newport agree the election could be rigged but doubt anything can be done about it, including poll-watching.
Candace Lowe, 40, of Elliottsburg, Pennsylvania, said she is resigned to a Trump loss because the government can fudge stuff. Turning out en-masse to watch polling centers on election night wont change that, she said.
In Mechanicsburg, an overwhelmingly Republican borough of nearly 9,000 people, realtor Steve Johansen helped to set up a Trump field office in a skating rink, but he has no plans to monitor any polling places.
I have faith in the system, he said.
Two Russian cosmonauts and a Nasa astronaut soared into orbit in a Soyuz spacecraft on Wednesday at the start of a two-day journey to the International Space Station.
Nasas Shane Kimbrough and Andrei Borisenko and Sergei Ryzhikov of Roscosmos blasted off at 0805 GMT from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after their launch had been delayed by nearly one month because of technical issues.
The trios mission is expected to last just over four months with docking at the orbital laboratory taking place on Friday.
They will join Roscosmos Anatoly Ivanishin, Nasas Kate Rubins, and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), whose return to Earth is set for October 30.
The Russian Orthodox Church said it had provided the countrys space authorities with the relics of Seraphim of Sarov, a 18th-century saint, to be taken onboard the flight.
The local church official who handed over the relics last month, Metropolitan Georgy, had called for the astronauts to receive Gods help in this blessed and good work, the church said in a statement.
A few minutes after the launch, Roscosmos confirmed that it had been successful and that the three astronauts are scheduled to arrive at the space centre at 9:59 GMT on Friday.
The 49-year-old Kimbrough, who logged less than 16 days in space during a single mission aboard the US space shuttle Endeavour, will command the expedition aboard the orbital laboratory.
All systems go!! 24 hours and counting until Soyuz MC-02 Expedition 49/50 launch! Kimbrough, a father-of-three who served as a helicopter pilot in the 1990-1991 Gulf War, wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
Roscosmos flight engineer Borisenko spent 164 days in space for his first mission aboard the ISS in 2011, while Ryzhikov is entering the cosmos for the first time.
Launch delayed
Wednesdays launch is the second Soyuz space flight to be delayed this year after issues with software saw the launch of the newly upgraded Soyuz MS-01 postponed by two weeks over the summer.
Technical mishaps have complicated plans to extend the periods during which the ISS is fully staffed with six astronauts.
But the successful launch Monday of an Antares rocket carrying an unmanned cargo capsule to the ISS -- the first time since a massive explosion after liftoff two years ago -- came as a relief after a series of failures that have hindered travel to the ISS.
In addition to the 2014 Antares explosion, a Russian cargo spacecraft burned up before reaching the ISS in May last year.
The Antares rocket that blasted off from Virginia earlier this week is on course to bring 2,300 kilogrammes of food and equipment to the orbital laboratory and is scheduled to arrive by Sunday.
Space is one of the few areas of cooperation that has survived the crisis in relations between Moscow and Washington, which has see their bilateral ties plunge to their post-Cold War nadir over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.
Afghan civilians are paying the price for increased fighting in populated areas around the country, the United Nations reported on Wednesday, with government troops responsible for a growing share of civilian casualties.
According to UN officials, at least 2,562 civilians died and another 5,835 were wounded in the conflict in Afghanistan in the first nine months of this year.
A similar number of civilian casualties occurred in the same period in 2015, indicating rates may be leveling off at near-record levels after steadily increasing since the U.N. began monitoring them in 2009.
Ground fighting between pro-government forces and Islamic militants caused nearly 40 percent of all the casualties.
Children have been particularly hard hit by the fighting, with 639 young people killed and 1,822 wounded, for an increase of 15 percent over last year.
The Taliban and a handful of smaller groups have been fighting to topple the Western-backed government, 15 years after the Taliban lost power in a U.S.-led military operation.
Increased fighting in densely populated areas makes it imperative for parties to take immediate steps to ensure all feasible precautions are being taken to spare civilians from harm, Tadamichi Yamamoto, the U.N.s Special Representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement.
Casualties caused by pro-government forces rose 42 percent compared to last year, with 623 deaths and 1,274 injured, U.N. investigators reported.
That includes a spike of 72 percent in casualties from air strikes by the Afghan air force and its international allies.
At least 133 people were killed and 159 were injured in air strikes, with two-thirds of those casualties attributed to the Afghan air force, the U.N. said.
The Taliban and other militant groups still accounted for more than 60 percent of the overall casualties, with 1,569 civilian deaths and 3,574 injured, the report showed.
The U.N. condemned anti-government attacks that have directly targeted civilians, including a bombing in the capital, Kabul, in July that killed at least 85 people and injured 413. That attack was claimed by Islamic State.
Defeated Islamic State fighters from the Iraqi city of Mosul are likely to enter Europe to carry out terrorist attacks, the European Unions (EU) security chief has warned.
Thousands of Europeans who left to fight for IS in Iraq and Syria over the past few years may have already begun returning to the continent after the terrorist group suffered a string of territorial defeats in the Middle East, warned Julian King, the EUs Commissioner for Security.
Read | US expects Islamic State to wield chemical weapons in Mosul fight
The retaking of Islamic States northern Iraq stronghold, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent IS fighters, King told the German newspaper Die Welt.
According to King, a British diplomat who recently took charge as security commissioner, even a handful of such terrorists returning would pose a serious threat.
French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has warned the fight to liberate Mosul in its entirety could take a long time.
Its not a blitzkrieg. Its a city with 1.5 million residents, so its a long-term project - several weeks, maybe months, he said.
Read | Baghdad must ensure Mosul is not given over to vengeful Shia death-squads
Some 34,000 Iraqi security personnel, Kurdish fighters, Sunni Muslim Arab tribesmen and Shia Muslim paramilitaries have been deployed against IS, with backing from the US, France and others.
Their advance on Mosul comes over two years after the city was seized by IS in a major coup that enabled the extremist group to announce a self-proclaimed caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria.
Iraqi forces say they have captured 10 villages near Mosul since beginning their long-awaited offensive on Monday.
As many as 5,000 IS fighters are believed to remain in the city.
If the city is reclaimed by the Iraqi government, IS will be left with the Syrian city of Raqqa as its last major stronghold.
Read | Victory is near: Iraq PM tells Mosul residents ahead of retaking IS stronghold
Just three months after seeing off a failed coup, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has put right back at the top of the agenda a plan to increase his powers through constitutional change.
The plan to create a presidential system means Turkey is likely to be heading to a referendum in the first half of next year, analysts say.
This may create more instability for Turkeys fragile economy and exacerbate already simmering tensions in society, after Erdogan defeated the biggest challenge to his 13-year rule.
But it will also allow the leader to settle for once and for all the question of his powers.
Only a month after becoming prime minister in March 2003 Erdogan told an interviewer that his desire was for a presidential system in Turkey, similar to the one in the United States.
After being elected president in August 2014 and defeating the coup bid in July, Erdogan is more determined than ever to fulfil his desire and push forward with his plans.
Government officials argue a fully presidential system is needed to legalise what has become a de-facto situation, with Erdogan Turkeys undisputed number one after transforming the office of head of state.
To change the constitution the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) co-founded by Erdogan needs a super-majority of 367 votes.
The AKP only has 316 seats (excluding the speaker Ismail Kahraman) in the 550-seat national assembly.
But to put forward the changes to the public in a referendum, the party needs only 330 votes, which could happen if the 40-seat Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) of Devlet Bahceli gives its support. The two other opposition parties are likely to be against.
Bahceli has not indicated whether his partys MPs will give the government their support but on Tuesday gave his firmest indication yet it could be prepared to allow the referendum to go ahead.
Increase polarisation
Fadi Hakura, Turkey expert at Chatham House think tank in London, said that so far the Bahcelis statements indicate willingness to collaborate with the AKP to bring about a referendum.
He added there was a real possibility the system would be approved in a referendum but warned that the current polarisation in Turkey would worsen.
The presidential system will further intensify the ideological polarisation and entrenched conservatism.
(It) will further intensify the existing political, ideological and sectarian divisions bedevilling Turkish politics and society, he said.
The uncertainty since the issue rose back to the top of the agenda has also hurt the Turkish lira, which has lost over four percent in value against the US dollar over the last month.
Some experts suggest the president could even be tempted to call early legislative elections in 2017 although the government has denied having any such idea.
Michael Harris, global head of research at investment bank Renaissance Capital, warned in a note that the Turkish economy was on hold until Erdogan achieved his objectives.
According to Harris, if Erdogan tries to win a super-majority through an early election, it would be the crux of why we continue to recommend investors take money out of the country.
But if Erdogan is able to achieve the executive presidency in an accelerated and smoother process, Turkey could find political equilibrium in 2017, he said.
People support Erdogan
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Tuesday said it would be brought to parliament very soon because the changes were needed to eliminate confusion from the system.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag suggested last week a referendum on a presidential system could come as early as spring 2017.
The authorities are confident of winning a symbolic and convincing victory, which would be Turkeys fourth major national poll in as many years.
Polls after the coup showed that its defeat had substantially bolstered Erdogans ratings while a poll published on Tuesday in the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper said 63 percent supported the presidential system.
In Turkey people see a close relationship between Erdogan and the presidential system, said Mehmet Ali Kulat, the head of the MAK research company which conducted face-to-face interviews with 5,400 people between October 10 and 15.
What they support more is Erdogan rather than a presidential system, he told AFP.
KABUL: The Taliban and senior Afghan government officials have held two secret meetings since September in Qatar in a bid to restart long-stalled peace negotiations, sources said Tuesday.
An official in the National Unity Government in Kabul told AFP that the two rounds of discussions took place in Doha, where the Taliban maintain a political office.
Britains The Guardian newspaper said the talks were attended by Mullah Abdull Manan Akhund, brother of Taliban founder and long-time leader Mullah Omar who died in 2013.
A senior American diplomat was also present in the Qatar meetings, the newspaper said citing a Taliban official. The Taliban and the US government have so far not commented officially on the development.
The outcome of the September meeting was not clear but a Taliban source told the newspaper that it went positively and was held in a trouble-free atmosphere. A second dialogue was held this month despite intensified nationwide fighting between insurgents and US-backed Afghan troops.
BEIJING: My grandfather is Chinese, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte told the official Xinhua news agency during an interview last week, possibly in an attempt to warm up his past with China.
But as he began a four-day state visit to China on Tuesday, Dutertes focus was surely be on the future of Manilas relations with Beijing.
Strongman Dutertes high-profile visit comes amid his anti-drug war, criticised by many as brutal and ruthless as it has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people. Western countries have questioned his methods of dealing with the menace and talked about the violation of human rights and political vendetta. China, however, has issued several statements supporting Dutertes anti-narcotics campaign and vowed to stand by him.
As the old alliance between the US and the Philippines frays, the visit will be keenly watched for signs of Manila moving away from Washington and into the willing diplomatic arms of Beijing.
For more than a century, the Philippines and the US have had a shared history of colonialism, wars, rebellion, aid and deep economic ties. That could change as Dutertes three-month-old administration re-examines the relationship, said a Reuters report from Manila. But barely three months ago, Manila and Beijing were engaged in a war of words over the South China Sea arbitration case brought by Dutertes predecessor Benigno Aquino III against China.
WASHINGTON: Ford Foundation and Greenpeace, whose financing and contributions were under scrutiny by Indian government, had enlisted Clinton campaign chair John Podestas help, a new set of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks showed.
Podesta did try to help, the emails revealed. One of them said he was the primary reason for the positive turn in the fortunes of Ford Foundation, which survived the scrutiny and was back in business in March. Greenpeace was less fortunate, and was thrown out in November 2015, a development Podesta foresaw.
Ford Foundation has been a major donor to Podestas think tank, Center for American Progress (CAP), and one of its trustees reminded Podesta of this in an email about the India issue - I am always happy to see Ford grants to CAP.
Ford has become a mainstay for CAP too, Podesta conceded in his reply, confirming his think tank had received funding from the charity he tried to save from the Indian government.
Want to talk to the head of Greenpeace? Podesta wrote in an email to his brother Tony Podesta, who heads a lobbying firm that had India among its major clients then.
Kumi Naidoo (the Greenpeace head) is a very well known South African with a big international following, but I think GOI (government of India) is likely to stick it to them. He added, Separately, I am trying to help Ford Foundation which also got on the wrong side of GOI, but whose case I think can be more easily resolved.
Ford Foundation was cleared to resume business as usual just a month before Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the US.
A lobbyist who once worked with Greenpeace wrote to Podesta, saying, I have had a request from some colleagues at Greenpeace as they are facing a very serious situation in India. In a nutshell: an Indian Intelligence Bureau report was leaked alleging Greenpeace India was responsible for a loss of 2-3% of the countrys GDP.
Kumi Naidoo was hoping to speak with you or to get advice on who might be able to help behind the scenes explaining to people close to the Prime Minister that their campaigns are about the issues of clean air and clean water, wrote the lobbyist.
Podesta then put Greenpeace in touch with his brother.
QAYYARAH: Iraqi forces were making gains as tens of thousands of fighters advanced on Mosul on Tuesday in an unprecedented offensive to retake the city from the Islamic State group.
With the crucial battle in its second day, Iraqi commanders said progress was being made as fighters pushed on two main fronts against the jihadists last stronghold in Iraq.
The US military, which is leading a coalition providing air and ground support, said Iraqi forces even looked ahead of schedule but senior Western officials warned the battle would be long and difficult.
Advancing in armoured convoys across the dusty plains surrounding Mosul, forces moved into villages defended by pockets of IS fighters after intensive aerial bombardment.
At the main staging base for government troops in Qayyarah south of Mosul, federal police were rotating in and out of the front line. As Apache attack helicopters flew overhead, ambulances brought the wounded back from the battle.
Two armoured vehicles bearing US flags drove by, apparently carrying American military personnel. One manning a gun turret flashed the victory sign.
Speaking to AFP from inside Mosul, resident Abu Saif said heavy smoke was hanging over the city as the jihadists burned tyres to shield themselves from air strikes.
While the sounds of explosions could be heard coming from outside the city, its streets were eerily quiet, the 47-year-old former company manager said. - Empty streets The streets are empty, the people have been staying at home since the strikes started yesterday, Abu Saif said.
There is this happiness inside us... because we feel that we are about to be rescued, he said.
But we are scared that Daesh (IS) can still carry out acts of revenge against the population.
The long-awaited Mosul offensive was launched on Monday, with some 30,000 federal forces leading Iraqs largest military operation since the 2011 pull-out of US troops.
Retaking Mosul would deprive IS of the last major Iraqi city under its control, dealing a fatal blow to the caliphate the jihadists declared two years ago after seizing large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
Iraqi commanders said IS fighters were hitting back with suicide car bomb attacks but that the offensive was going as planned. Many villages have already been liberated, said Sabah al-Numan, the spokesman of the elite counter-terrorism service. Iraqi forces have achieved their goals and even more, but were careful to stick to the plan and not rush this.
KARACHI: A Mirage fighter jet of the Pakistan Air Force crashed on Monday while on a routine training flight during which the pilot was killed. The jet took off from Masroor Base in Karachi and crashed during flight at Musharraf colony. The pilot was killed while trying to steer away from residential localities.
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PARIS : Midway through releasing a series of damaging disclosures about US presidential contender Hillary Clinton, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his hosts at the Ecuadorean embassy in London abruptly cut him off from the internet. We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assanges internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clintons Goldman Sachs (speeches), the group said in a message posted to Twitter late Monday. With both WikiLeaks and Ecuadorean officials refusing to say much more about the incident, outsiders were left to guess at what was happening behind closed doors at the embassy suite at No. 3 Hans Crescent, which Assange has called home for more than four years.
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KARACHI: At least one child was killed and dozens of people were wounded in a drive-by bomb attack at a Shia mosque in Karachi, police said. Police said two men on a motorcycle lobbed the bomb as women and children sat outside the mosque in the port citys densely populated Liaquatabad district.
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MOSCOW: Moscow announced on Tuesday that Russian and Syrian air forces have stopped bombing Aleppo ahead of a brief truce, a move the Kremlin said showed goodwill as it faces mounting criticism for backing a brutal regime offensive.
Russia had said Monday there would be an eight-hour humanitarian pause in the battered city on Thursday, a move welcomed by the United Nations and the European Union which nevertheless said the ceasefire needed to be longer to allow the delivery of aid. The UN said Tuesday it was waiting for safety assurances from all sides before going in with critical humanitarian assistance for Aleppos desperate population.
The West has voiced increasing alarm at the situation in Aleppo, saying the ferocious Russian-backed onslaught on the rebel-held east could amount to a war crime.
Strikes in the Aleppo region by the Russian and Syrian air forces are stopping today starting at 10:00 am, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a televised briefing, adding that the measure was necessary to pave the way for the truce.
This guarantees the security of civilians exit through six corridors and prepares the evacuation of the sick and injured from eastern Aleppo, he said, adding that it would also guarantee safe passage for armed rebels to leave eastern Aleppo.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hailed the move as a manifestation of goodwill and denied it was meant to assuage Western critics who have accused Moscow of perpetrating potential war crimes in Syrias second city.
This is an obvious continuation of Russian efforts, on the one hand, to fight terrorists in Syria, and on the other, to unblock the situation in Aleppo, Peskov told reporters.
It is exclusively a manifestation of goodwill by the Russian military.
Raids in the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo have stopped since the Russian announcement, but air strikes are still being conducted in the broader Aleppo region, the Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday.
TORONTO: One year ago, Justin Trudeau led his Liberal Party to a surprising majority in the Canadian Federal elections. If the Canadian Prime Minister were to call a snap election now, he could well capture a supermajority in the House of Commons. Over the last 12 months, not only has the honeymoon period persisted, his romance with the voting public has grown stronger.
On October 19 last year, the Liberals captured 184 of the 338 seats in the lower House, equivalent of the Lok Sabha, while tallying approximately 40% of the vote share. According to a new poll from the Toronto-based Forum Research, if elections were held today, that percentage would rise to 49, translating into a whopping 240 seats.
Trudeau, the face of the party, is spurring this gain in popularity. Thats a big factor. His personal approval rating is even higher. At 56 %, hes actually ahead of his party, Forum Researchs president and founder Lorne Bozinoff told HT. This latest poll had a sample size of 1437 and was conducted over October 11 and 12.
And this is a countrywide trend, not limited to Liberal bastions, as Bozinoff pointed out, Its high in just about every demographic group in the country, its high in just about every region of the country.
There are exceptions in Conservative strongholds, but even there the numbers are impressive for a Liberal. In fact, in places like the province of Ontario, where the regional unit of the party is floundering, the Federal Liberals are above 50 % in support.
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LONDON : The county of Northumberland has signed a pact to share expertise as part of the Indo-UK Health Programme linked to the Narendra Modi governments Smart City project. The Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Northumberland County Council signed the MoU with Indo UK Healthcare Pvt Ltd, official sources said on Tuesday.
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MOSCOW: Arseny Pavlov, also known as Motorola, was killed on Sunday in Donetsk when a bomb exploded in an elevator in an apartment building where he was staying. Separatist officials have blamed previous bombings on Ukrainian saboteurs operating in the rebel-controlled areas.
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SANAA: The warring parties in Yemen have agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire that will take effect shortly before midnight Wednesday, the UN special envoy to Yemen said.
Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said he hopes the temporary truce can lead to permanent and lasting end to the conflict.
Ahmed said in a statement on Monday that he received assurances from all parties to the conflict o cease hostilities at 11:59 p.m. local time on Wednesday for an initial period of 72 hours that is subject to renewal.
The warring factions agreed to follow the conditions of a temporary April cease-fire agreement, he said. The agreement requires them to to allow free and unhindered access for humanitarian supplies and personnel to all parts of Yemen, he said.
The war in Yemen began in 2014 when Shiite rebels known as Houthis, based in the north, seized the capital, Sanaa.
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies launched a campaign of airstrikes against the rebels.
Jackie Cochran and the Origin of the WASPs
It took three years for pilot Jacqueline Jackie Cochran to convince the U.S. military that qualified women pilots could free men for combat duty by performing non-combat missions. Supported by Eleanor Roosevelt and Army aviation chief General Henry H. Hap Arnold, Cochrans goal was achieved in 1943 with the formation of the Womens Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs). Before deactivation on December 20, 1944, 1,074 WASPs logged 60 million miles flying for the U.S. Army Air Forces.
This 1957 photo shows Jacqueline Cochran standing next to her plane, with Chuck Yeager and Bill Longhurst, at Edwards Air Force Base, California.
Image: Air Force Flight Test Center History Office
T he outcome of World War II was determined in no small part by men and women who never fired a shot. Many were industrial workers who forged Americas Arsenal of Democracy. Their achievements are readily apparent, even if not always trumpeted.
Mostly fascination, rather than fact, still surrounds World War II espionage agents and code-breakers, not least because contemporary descendants of organizations they once worked for still cling to secrets with long-expired shelf dates.
With a lot of archival information under lock and key, World War II spycraft history leans on sources where the lines between truth, speculation, and fabrication are readily breached. However, British journalist and author Max Hastings has written The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas. It is a well-crafted, reasonably comprehensive, impeccably researched, and humor-leavened account of both Allied and Axis World War II backstage intrigue.
The Secret War fills a big narrative tenta sort of three-ring circus in which different types of attractions compete for attention. Human intelligence (HUMINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) occupy two rings. Partisan warfare, the third ring, is more of a sideshow, perhaps because, as Hastings argues, its moral impact far exceeded its military achievements. Altogether, the book is well worth the price of admission.
While Hastings downplays or rethinks many oft-told HUMINT stories, he delivers new gems, most notably Ronald Seth, aptly code-named Blunderhead, a fascist-leaning British agent who successfully deceived both sides. In the SIGINT realm, Hastings gives ample credit to the cracking of Enigma; but he also considers the breaking of Germanys Lorenz teleprinter, a device that conveyed the most important messages, as comparably essential.
Intelligence agencies spared no expense even though secret information rarely affected battlefield outcomes. That said, when SIGINT or HUMINT succeeded, the result was so incalculably valuable that the overall cost was justified. The United States expenditures on SIGINT averaged $500 million annually between 1942 and 1945. Yet, says Hastings, this has been justly described as its most cost-effective investment of the conflict.
The Secret War is replete with lessons that resonate today. One is that hard powerthe ability to mobilize superior ground, air, and sea forcesis essential. Without it, intelligence, no matter how timely and vital, simply cannot be exploited. Another is that democracies seem better equipped to exploit intelligence than authoritarian societies. They tend to appreciate the merit of truth and are more willing to employ their most diverse and cleverest minds. Stalin mobilized the most effective spying apparatus of the war, yet his all-consuming paranoia undid much that it produced.
Historian and former U.S. Navy officer David Sears is the author of November/December 2016 issues Death and Salvation on the Aluminum Trail.
This story was originally published in the November/December 2016 issue of World War II magazine. Subscribe here.
For some, the Battle of Shiloh seems like something out of the distant past. For those who study the American Civil War, it is almost a household name. At the same time the battle was in one of the most remote destinations in Southwestern Tennessee. It is one of many battlefields, that while marked by monuments, even monuments that were placed as recently as 2012, the park is one of the most remarkably diverse places one might see.
It is down a small state highway in Tennessee that one travels in order to get to the battlefield. As one enters the gates it is like taking a step back to an earlier time. A time that begs not to be forgotten.
In a visit to the historic battlefield we find the beauty of the place all over once again. It is in the passing of currents of the Tennessee River, a river that flows to the North rather than to the South. It was the one place that Sherman was able to put troops on dry ground.
Sherman had been encouraged to go upriver and try to fight through and break the Memphis and Charleston Railroad somewhere in the vicinity of Corinth, Mississippi. It was during this process that Sherman had happened across this location to put troops on land.
It was early in the spring of 1862 where one day it would be warm and sunny and the next it could have been cold and rainy. Many of the men were sleeping in large Sibley tents that held between 6 and 10 men. Sherman had sent word back to General C.F. Smith who, at the time, was in charge of the mission until Grant could arrive at Savannah. Smith agreed with the idea to put the men on shore, especially after the army had gone upriver on boats with the cavalry to attempt to break the rail lines and had failed to do so because of the amount of water on the ground. When Sherman returned he found General Stephen A. Hurlbut unloading his men and supplies; Sherman would then unload his.
By the next day General U. S. Grant had arrived at Savannah and taken control of the army from Smith. Back under the control of Grant, Sherman was ordered to take over the placement of the troops as they landed at Pittsburg Landing. In the process of doing this he had taken his troops, the Fifth Division, and moved them to the area around the Shiloh Meeting House, the building that would lend its name to the battle.
At the same time he moved the men of Benjamin Prentiss Division to roughly the same location and told them to start setting up camp. It would be these two divisions, with the most raw (or green) troops in the Union Army, that would be placed there to keep watch for anything that might be coming their way, but Sherman and Grant did not expect the Confederates to advance. They expected the Confederates would remain huddled around the rail junction located at Corinth.
The early battle started between 5:30 and 6 in the morning. There are some references that say the skirmishing started earlier, but for the most part, David W. Reed, the original park historian said in his 1903 history of Shiloh that he believed it to be closer to the half hour of between 5:30 and 6:00.
It took some time to push back the Union Army as the men had to fight across fairly open ground in Rhea Field. This was where the first of the fighting took place.
However as the Confederates continued to push the Yankees back and across the field, they were driven back to a spot on the battlefield that is commonly known as the Hornets Nest. It was this location that has gone on to spark great controversy for a couple of reasons. In a discussion with historian and professor, Dr. Timothy B. Smith, he mentions that the original park historian would have had a different view of the battle depending on where he would have been standing. If he would have come from the Peach Orchard the history would have leaned in that direction. If he would have been fighting at the crossroads then that would have been highlighted, but since the historian had fought at the Hornets Nest it was the spot that received the most attention.[1]
At the time of the battle that the Hornets Nest was taking place, the other two locations were also being hit hard. Both the Crossroads and the Peach Orchard were being hit on the two sides with the Peach Orchard to the Confederate right. It was one of the bloodiest scenes of battle as it took the blow of almost two whole Corps of the Confederate Army.
Off to the Confederate left was the crossroads. While this sat somewhat behind the Hornets Nest it was the second hardest hit. The reason the Hornets Nest at Shiloh was not hit as hard was because it was not a part of the Confederate agenda. There are two schools of thought on this. Both schools of thought were put together by veterans whose names have been lost to time. One of them said that the enemy was supposed to be pushed back and away from the Tennessee River, while the other said that Albert Sidney Johnston wanted to push the Federals back and into the Tennessee River. These two conflicting ideas still leave the middle of the Union lines in question. If Johnston was trying to push the Union back and away from the river it explains why he was trying to flank them on the right.
If he was trying to push them into the river it explains why he was trying to push past the Union left. Both of these actions were taking place at the same time.[2] There is much that is left misunderstood by the leaders of the two armies and no one seems to know much. The only thing that both sides seem to agree on is the fact that the middle of the Union line was not a primary goal. Johnston and Beauregard both believed that by getting hold of one of the flanks and pushing it, they would be successful.
In the end this caused Union General Benjamin Prentiss to surrender his troops due to his stubbornness and unwillingness to fall back with the rest of the Union Army.[3]
All of this took place on the first day of battle at Shiloh. It was because of the records from David W. Reed we have any evidence that this took place.
[1] Smith, Timothy B., Interview with Adam J Kugler, (2016).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Grant, Ulysses S., Memoirs, (New York, 1882)
Dear Editor: Why is the work on Highway 92 being done in the daytime rather than at night? T
North Korea's latest test of a powerful missile was denounced by the UN Security Council. This after North Korea test-fired a medium-range Musudan missile which is capable of hitting US bases as far away as Guam.
Although the exercise was a failure, it still represented a breach of UN resolutions. In a unanimous statement backed by China, the main ally of North Korea, the council condemned the test and agreed to monitor the situation and take further significant measures.
The Musudan has a range between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometers which could reach South Korea and Japan, and on the upper range, Guam. The missile launched in June flew 400 kilometers into the Sea of Japan and this was celebrated by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un.
The missile tests failed many times but it is improving. It could enter operational service sometime next year. The latest Musudan test came with the United States and China imposing new punishments to stop Kim Jong Un.
The ongoing negotiations on the new sanctions focus on closing loopholes and zeroing in on North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile technology industry.
The missile capability of North Korea grows very fast and it can become a real danger for all the countries in the area. This country has always been targeting Japan and South Korea.
North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device, but the it has survived and keeps testing more missiles.
The council adopted the toughest sanctions after North Korea did its 4th test and they try to punish that country in the trade of minerals and all that is related with bank accounts and financial activities.
Nuclear and ballistic missile technology industry will be limited by the new punishments or at least, they will try to be reduced to the lowest level.
Since the resolution was adopted in March, North Korea has carried out more than 20 missile launches.
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The latest find of the ScanPyramids Project shows that there are more cavities and corridors than previously thought. The new discovery is a cavity of about 105 meters from the ground on the northeastern corner of the pyramid which is followed by another cavity discovered on the north face.
In the project, the scientists applied a blend of infrared thermography, muon radiography imaging and 3D technology, which are proven to be non-invasive and non-destructive methods for archaeological research. The project is coming to the final weeks of its mission which began last October.
Archaeologist Dr Nicholas Reeves suggested in 2015 that the tomb of Queen Nefertiti could be behind the burial chamber of King Tutankhamun but others think different and believe the cavities are simply just part of the pyramid's structure. Former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs and Director of the Giza Pyramids Excavation said: "The core of the pyramid was built using long stones and small stones. If you know that, you'll find anomalies everywhere."
Thus, he doesnt believe in the theories of some archaeologist and he think that is just speculation.
Previously, the monument was known to have three chambers, and like other pyramids in Egypt was projected as a pharaoh's crypt. But the newly found chamber and passage are saying something else about the structure. As the scientists are taking the study further to discover more facts and hidden secrets about the pyramid, the exact figure, dimension and place of the chamber and passage has not yet been declared.
Muons technology extremely advanced. They are like the X-rays which can infiltrate the body and permit bone imaging, thus, scientists use this technology to explore several meters of stone before being retained. The cavities discovered a short time ago are under study and many experts are completely sure there will be many surprises.
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If you thought that global warming and nuclear attacks could wipe off the Earth, then think again. A huge meteor the size of a mountain could one day accomplish that dreaded task of totally demolishing our planet, say astronomers.
It could happen anytime in the coming decades. A report released by Nature World News explains that about 1,000 asteroids are hurtling towards the Earth at 60,000 miles per hour and that some of them could hit our planet. A number of the near-Earth asteroids have been identified.
However, the news is that there are plenty more waiting to be discovered in the next two years!
Last week, an asteroid known as 2016 SR2 was getting close. Immediately, a Biblical passage sprung to the mind of a number of conspiracy theorists: "A huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turns into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed," according to the Book of Revelation.
With powerful telescopes, experts are trying to gauge how close 2000 ET70 is going to get to the Earth. This two-mile wide space rock stirred astronomers from a number of American universities, who called it a "potentially hazardous asteroid". However, not much is known about this fist-shaped asteroid, says NASA. Such a huge asteroid can decimate the Earth, leading to massive earthquakes, tidal waves and widespread "apocalyptic scenes."
It is possible that the asteroid has already brushed past the Earth in 2012, when it came within 18 lunar distances. That was pretty close! However, it might revisit the planet soon, and come so near us that it could hit us.
Still, we need not fear doomsday, assures NASA. A spokesman said: "NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth anytime in the next several hundred years."
With enough investigation, we should be safer. Added the spokesman: "NASA has also made asteroid detection a top priority, and are developing strategies for identifying asteroids that could pose a risk to our planet."
NASA launched OSIRIS-Rex, the first mission to probe and conduct comprehensive surface mapping of asteroid Bennu. It collects samples with the spacecraft's robotic arm and will be studied closely by scientists.
"Astronauts will return to Earth with far more samples than have ever been available for study, which could open new scientific discoveries about the formation of our solar system and beginning of life on Earth," said a NASA official.
Another initiative is to launch a Robot Mission that will deflect the asteroids from their paths.
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South Korean tech giant Samsung is going to launch its latest two products i.e., Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 and Gear S3. Galaxy Tab S3 was expected to launch at 2016 IFA. But due to Gear S3 launch it is rumoured that both Galaxy Tab S3 and Gear S3 will release together in 2017.
At the present tech world which is mostly dominated by Apple Watch, the best fitness trackers, and Android Wear watch, and the Samsung Gear S3 which is expected to have competitive features so that it can beat the market.
There are two Gear S3 models, from which you can choose: the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier and the Samsung Gear S3 Classic. These both are pretty much identical apart from slight design tweaks and connectivity.
On talking the price, the Gear S3 duo would do well to stay at its current entry price of $299, reports TechRadar. While the Mobile Fun in the UK has put up its pre-order prices for both the Classic and Frontier at 350 (around $430).
The Gear S3 will support LTE in S3 Frontier. The high end gadget will have a dual core 1.0GHz processor with 4GB internal memory, 380mAh battery and a strong 768MB RAM.
The smart watch will run the Tizen operating system and compatible with Android devices running Android 4.4 or above. The Samsung Gear S3 will feature swappable 22mm straps and interchangeable digital watch faces.
The Galaxy Tablet S3 will be coming in two editions i.e. SM-T820 which will be Wi-Fi only and the 2nd one SM-T825 will be supporting both Wi-Fi + LTE, reports BitBag.
The latest Tablet S3 will have tremendous display of 9.7-inch and will support a full HD resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels. The device will feature AMOLED display and the screens are rumoured to support 16:10 aspect ratio.
Galaxy Tab S3 is also rumoured to be the company's first tablet to come with pre-installed Android 7.0 Nougat OS.
The high end tablet will be running on octa-core processor with four Cortex-A72 CPU cores and four Cortex-A53 CPU cores. The graphic part of the Tablet S3 will be enhanced by the Adreno 510 GPU.
Both the devices are having amazing and the competitive features. The Samsung fans are waiting for Galaxy Tab S3 for long and due to the launch of Gear S3, the release date of Tab S3 is also pushed to 2017. Fresh update says that both the devices will be launched in the March 2017.
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NASA is making the most out of its one inexpensive but effective scientific device. Just lately, new information about solar flares has been acquired by the Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) CubeSat which was launched in December last year on top of the Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft.
The investigation focuses on the spectrum of light from the sun that hits the Earth. Although what most people see and observe are the visible beams and glow, ultraviolet rays are also emitted.
In June, the loaf-sized unit has started engaging in science programs. Part of its responsibility is to gather data about mild X-rays from low-intensity solar flares snatched by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
In a statement, the MinXSS cites an accelerated brightness and energy levels. The SDO imagery presents a ring of solar matter emerging from the sun's active region that shone radiantly.
From the data, it is known that each kind of solar radiation provides distinct information about the underlying flares. Results unveil the density, temperature and abundance of solar blazes during an eruption. These findings are as well significant since they will determine how these bursts evolve and impact the sun's atmosphere.
Eruptions have a huge effect on the Earth's ionosphere since the sun rays unsettle the near-Earth space where interference in communications signals usually happen.
According to NASA, it has been observed how dynamic the solar atmosphere can act. The MinXSS points out the greater sensitivity even among weak flashes. Judging from the acquired information, the space agency has called the six-month probe fruitful.
The NASA-funded MinXSS is being managed by the University of Colorado in Boulder. The prime objective of the mission is to understand the dynamics behind solar flares. The CubeSat is comprised of two elements. One, it has a detector containing an X-ray spectrometer. Second, it utilizes a radio antenna which is fitted with an extendable measuring tape.
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Shailene Woodley made a headline after protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline and was arrested. She broke silence and took to social media her first statement following release from jail.
In her post on Tuesday, the "Divergent" actress said that she would continue to fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline construction, as reported by E Online.
"One day, baby, we'll sing our poetry. The words dripping from our tongues wet with ripened patience," she wrote on her Instagram. "And the lyrics, the sweet fruits born from the seeds our aging hands are now sowing. #alwaysinallways #heartforward #uptous #NoDAPL #protectcleanwater #iamonyourside."
Woodley was arrested and headlined last week's news after her silent protest to oppose the development of Dakota Access Pipeline. It landed her in jail, noted CNN. She was arrested for trespassing as she walked into her RV parked nearby on Tuesday last week.
Woodley alos recorded her arrest in her social media via Facebook Live. Her video has received almost 5 million views as of Wednesday, Oct. 19. Here is the video depicting her arrest:
She was taken into custody at the Morton County Jail in North Dakota. She was charged with a criminal trespass and engaging in a riot during a protest which could give her a maximum punishment of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine. After posting a $500 bond, Woodley was released from jail.
Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,172 miles oil pipeline that will connect the oil-rich Bakken Formation to Canada. The pipeline will stretch through Montana, North Dakota and southeast to South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.
Protesters insisted the pipeline will damage the environment and tribal lands of Native Americans since it will pass the reservation of Standing Rock Sioux tribe. But the advocacy group denies the protesters claim and calling it misleading. They said the pipeline does not cross into the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation.
Shailene Woodley was among the 300 people that came to the construction site to protest the pipeline. Some of the protesters even chained themselves to the contruction equipment.
According to Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney, there are some people with specific agenda and ideology came to the site and intentionally violating the law. He said that what was said to be a peaceful protest was not peaceful at all but a very tense and dangerous situation.
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Union of Informed Citizens: Russia invites Turkey to Karabakh negotiation process
The statements on Karabakh conflict settlement made by the heads of CSTO member states during the conference on October 14 in Yerevan, give rise to certain speculations. In particular, as the recent developments show, Russia has failed its plan on conflict settlement and wants to implicate new leverages of influence on the conflicting sides. The Deadlock As known, in early October the US Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement saying that the Karabakh conflict settlement at this stage is not realistic and progress in the negotiation process is impossible, as long as the leaders of the conflicting sides are not ready for it. However, Moscow, after such a statement by the US, did not rush and attempt to take over the peace initiative. Furthermore, statements by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that Baku had been imposed the recognition of Karabakh's status during the negotiations, showed that Armenia, at least temporarily, has been able to avoid the Russian plan of conflict settlement and, maneuvering the issue of return of territories to Azerbaijan, has succeeded in promoting Karabakhs status recognition. Under such conditions, the Russian President Vladimir Putin's advisor Yuri Ushakov makes a statement that there are no grounds for optimism in the future of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement. In fact, both the statements by John Kerry and Yuri Ushakov allow the conclusion that at the current stage of the negotiation process mediators do not have enough leverage on the parties to advance conflict settlement. Turkey Turkey becomes active amid such a situation, once again trying to break into the Karabakh peace process. In particular, the country's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking at the PACE, reiterated Ankara's desire to join the negotiation process. Turkish Foreign Minister's words could be viewed as yet another manifestation of Turkey's pro-Azerbiaijan regional politics, if not the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's statement on the October 14, that Turkey can play a positive role in conflict resolution if it opens Armenian-Turkish border and lifts the blockade on Armenia and Karabakh. Russia's such loyal position on Turkey's involvement in peace process proves that Moscow is ready to invite Ankara, with its huge influence on Azerbaijan, to the negotiations table and even put forward a special condition for Turkey - the opening of borders with Armenia. Russia, thus making Turkeys involvement in peace process very real, on the one hand could get new leverages to enforce decisions upon Armenia, and on the other hand, a negotiation partner with profound influence on Azerbaijan, which, if necessary, will enforce decisions upon Baku. Vahe Ghukasyan Union of Informed Citizens
Tim Peake recently spoke to a room full of primary and secondary level students, inspiring them to get into science, at W5 scientific interaction center in Titanic Quarter of Belfast. A European Space Agency astronaut, Peake, just recently returned from outer space, after spending six long months at the International Space Station in zero gravity.
He was asked about a lot of things and one of them was obviously the question about aliens' existence in the universe. To which Peake emphatically replied "Absolutely yes," according to recent reports.
He explained to Luke McKay, who asked about the presence of extra-terrestrial beings, that "building blocks of life" such as water and organic compounds are hovering around the solar system. This makes the possibility of life anywhere in the universe exceptionally high.
Meanwhile, he also believed that it is only a matter of time when men will eventually land on the red planet. He also added that it would most likely be someone from the generation of younger people than his own peers. Peake also shared that for men to reach Mars, it will take a concerted effort between NASA, European Space Agency and other international players.
The students at the event were obviously curious about his life in micro-gravity, versus life on earth in regular gravity. Peake shared that the feeling of being weightless was fun and it was wonderful to just float around all day. However, the students had more burning questions about how he went to toilet on space. To which he responded, "yesterday's pee is this morning's coffee basically," reported BBC.
The astronaut answered flurry of excited questions and was especially intrigued by the students' interest in prospect of how far will humans explore the universe and its indefinite vastness. Peake enlightened the students that in today's time, it is not only possible to build a moon base that can last for over three decades, but there is also a possibility of one being developed, alongside mission to Mars, that can be permanently manned by someone.
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Now the opposition should help the government - Republican MP (video)
Head of the Armenian National Congress (HAK), Levon Zurabyan, does not expect anything good from the corrupt government. One can present the best program and then do the same misdeeds, Zurabyan said after he asked to comment on the government program submitted on Wednesday. The HAK lawmaker does not hurry to assess the program which he has not read yet, though he says a program written in six months can only be pre-election. This very fact weakens the credibility of the program, Zurabyan said. The Republicans do not approve of HAKs attitude towards the government program. Honestly speaking, the Armenian National Congress does not have any expectations even from its faction, says Gagik Melikyan, Secretary of the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). He urges people not to give importance to HAKs political attitude and reminds Serzh Sargsyans words who said they have great expectations from this program which, he thinks, will increase confidence in the government. The questions and expressions used by opposition forces are inappropriate; we heard non-constructive criticism which formed an atmosphere of distrust, he said. Now the opposition should help the government to implement the program, says the HHK lawmaker. At the same time, Mr. Melikyan reminds that they do not have a magic wand, and the economy is not the sector where the steps show their immediate effect. We shall see slow, but positive results in six months. The Republican lawmaker says there are perquisites that we shall have a national unity government. I do not think that the opposition will try to facilitate economic growth with its constructive criticism, he said. Anyway, he believes that the opposition also wants to see our economy recovered in six months.
Why has the seemingly simple accommodations-sharing concept grown so quickly? The answer has a lot to do with Airbnb's platform approach.
The sharing economy is placing a new kind of pressure on the hotel industry. Despite being once ridiculed by the hotel industry, Airbnb has rapidly scaled to become a global provider of accommodation, with more rooms booked every night than the largest global hotel chains. The narrative is by now a familiar one: a service that boasts more than 60,000,000 guests and a $25.5 billion valuation by investors. But a more important question for hotels is why? Why has this seemingly simple accommodations-sharing concept grown so quickly? The answer has a lot to do with Airbnb's platform approach.
While some hotels look at technology as just another asset (investing as they would with beds, radios or Wi-Fi), Airbnb has embedded technology deeply inside the company DNA. "This is an end-to-end platform. From reservation, to room allocation, to customer service, to customer rating, the provider rating," says Prakash Shukla, 2016 HFTP International Hospitality Technology Hall of Fame Inductee and ex-CIO of Taj Hotels. "Most of the platforms in hospitality do not take care of this." In many ways, Airbnb is neither a tech company nor a hotel company, "by leveraging technology for hospitality they have created a new business model altogether."
This sharing economy behemoth succeeds not just by offering up unused apartments to travelers, but by redefining the interaction pattern between guest and host. The technical solution for guests is aspirational to many hotels. Through the same app that a guest uses to find and book a room, they receive a deeply personalized communication channel with their host. Rather than an anonymous front desk agent, the Airbnb host and the guest both have a personal profile, and engage in familiar communication pre-, during-, and post-stay. In addition, Airbnb is increasingly focused on providing local city experts and local experiences, creating a guest experience that begins to resemble a stay at a personalized boutique hotel.
About ALICE
ALICE is the leading all-in-one hospitality operations platform that enables hotel staff to do their most impactful work. Task management, real-time communication, and operational analytics reduce the complexity and chaos of hotel operations providing the transparency and flexibility needed to run efficiently. Founded in 2013, ALICE works with more than 2,500 hotels and tens of thousands of hotel staff across many of the world's leading brands, including Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Graduate Hotels, and Grupo Posadas. ALICE won 7 HotelTechAwards in 2022: winner of Best Concierge Software & Best Housekeeping Software; finalist for its Guest Messaging, Maintenance, and Staff Collaboration Tools; Top 10 People's Choice; and Top 10 Best Places to Work in Hotel Technology for the fifth straight year. https://www.aliceplatform.com/.
Lola Feiger
ALICE
HONG KONG -- Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, one of the world's largest and most dynamic hotel groups, today announced at HICAP (Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific), the signing for Radisson RED Kuala Lumpur City Center in Malaysia with Masteron Sdn Bhd. The 166-room new build hotel is strategically located 800 meters from the iconic Petronas Twin Towers.
With this signing, Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group will introduce Radisson RED, an ageless Millennial mindset brand, to the Malaysian market. The new property will be situated within Kuala Lumpur's Golden Triangle, in one of the last remaining areas of the city to be re-developed, and will respond to a local need for increased supply in the select service segment.
"We are delighted to welcome our new partner in Malaysia, where we will develop a property at the heart of the regional powerhouse of Kuala Lumpur. This deal will grow our presence at the center of the country's exciting economic growth story, and in one of its top tourist destinations. Malaysia is increasingly becoming a key market for us in Asia Pacific," said Thorsten Kirschke, president, Asia Pacific, Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group.
Radisson RED is Carlson Rezidor's upscale Lifestyle Select brand, which appeals to the millennial-minded traveler. It offers guests a non-traditional stay experience that combines work and play, and is inspired by design, art, music and fashion. At the same time, the brand offers developers and property owners a lower per-key cost than a traditional upscale hotel, through a multi-functional approach and more efficient space planning, which significantly reduce construction and operating costs, while driving higher margins.
Dato' Choy Wai Hin, executive director, Masteron Sdn Bhd said, "Carlson Rezidor has the right brands, an excellent reputation and deep expertise. We are confident that our partnership will deliver strong returns on our investment."
Radisson RED Kuala Lumpur City Center
is a 166-room new build hotel located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, close to a number of shopping complexes as well as several office towers including the Petronas Towers. Spanning 27 floors, the property will feature Radisson RED elements including beverage outlets such as Ouibar, and will also offer Meet-Event rooms with a view over the Petronas Twin Towers. The hotel will include a roof-top swimming pool and gym with undisrupted views over north Kuala Lumpur and Genting Highlands.
"The Asia Pacific region remains the most promising and energetic growth region for Carlson Rezidor, and we see a strong trajectory over the coming years. The efforts we have put in to the business here have allowed us to realize results both qualitatively and quantitatively, and we are in a good position to double our portfolio size in the mid-term, through anchor markets as well as portfolio deals. We only see our commitment to the region growing," continued Kirschke.
China represents a particular regional highlight, with Carlson Rezidor's unique legacy in the market developed over 20 years a legacy based on international proficiency, service ethics and sophisticated management systems. The group's China footprint includes Beijing, Chongqing, Libo, Liuzhou, Shanghai and Wuxi, where Carlson Rezidor has 13 hotels spread across the city. Momentum is strong in China and investor support remains robust for the core Radisson brand, with several openings planned for 2017.
Across Asia Pacific, Carlson Rezidor has 107 hotels in operation and 88 more under development. For more information and development opportunities, please visit www.carlsonrezidor.com.
About Radisson Hotel Group
Radisson Hotel Group is one of the world's largest hotel groups with nine distinctive hotel brands, and more than 1,600 hotels in operation and under development in 120 countries. The Group's overarching brand promise is Every Moment Matters with a signature Yes I Can! service ethos.
The Radisson Hotel Group portfolio includes Radisson Collection, Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson RED, Radisson Individuals, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson, Country Inn & Suites by Radisson, and prizeotel brought together under one commercial umbrella brand Radisson Hotels.
Radisson Rewards is our international rewards program that delivers unique and personalized ways to create memorable moments that matter to our guests. Radisson Rewards offers an exceptional experience for our guests, meeting planners, and travel agents at over 550 hotels in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Radisson Meetings provides tailored solutions for any event or meeting, including hybrid solutions placing guests and their needs at the heart of its offer. Radisson Meetings is built around three strong service commitments: Personal, Professional and Memorable, while delivering on the brilliant basics and being uniquely 100% Carbon Neutral.
The health and safety of guests and team members remain a top priority for Radisson Hotel Group. All properties across the Group's portfolio are subject to stringent health and safety requirements, as outlined in the Radisson Hotels Safety Protocol.
More than 100,000 team members work at Radisson Hotel Group and at the hotels licensed to operate in its systems. For more information, visit our corporate website. Or connect with Radisson Hotels on:
LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Camilla Chiam
Vice President, PR, Communications and Brands, Asia Pacific
+65 6511 9297
Radisson Hotel Group
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This article challenges an industry paradigm that has since long held the Indian hotel industry back from exploring new avenues for revenue growthleisure lacks the ability to make money. Fact is, a healthy market for leisure hotels exists in India.
Twenty years is a long time to understand a hotel market, which is about the same time when the first HVS Asian office was set up in New Delhi. Yes, what is happening in the leisure space for hotel accommodation in India today is indeed a revelation that needs to be recognized.
One of the key benefits of HVS data and knowledge base for the Indian hotel market is that we are able to slice and dice information and extract trends that deserve timely attention by the industry's stakeholders. This year we challenge an industry paradigm that has since long held us back in exploring new avenues for revenue growth leisure lacks the ability to make money!
Fact is that a healthy market for leisure hotels exists in India, and here is why we took a look at the top 25 ADR leaders in the country, and remarkably, 23 of these operate in leisure markets. With an average inventory of 68 keys, this sub-set secured a RevPAR of about INR12,600 last year, which is 3.6 times the national average and 2.2 times that achieved by five-star deluxe hotels. Playing the devil's advocate, some of you may suggest that leisure hotels' ADRs are mostly inclusive of breakfast and a few other charges bundled with the room rate. Even so, we are confident that the gap between this sub-set's performance and the rest would remain wide enough to call attention.
FIGURE 1: ROOMS PERFORMANCE COMPARISON (2015/16 )
Source: HVS Research
Now, although ADR is the primary driver of RevPAR in these 25 hotels, the occupancy of 53% in 2015/16 offers strong evidence of a steady demand for such hotels in India. Previously, domestic leisure locations were associated with only high-weekend demand, but this appears to be altering with meetings and conferences, weddings and social functions, corporate off-sites and group travel contributing to room bookings all throughthe week. The traditional adage that summer and monsoon months are poor is also being challenged with the reduction of gap between peak and non-peak season occupancies across several leisure markets. Another aspect working in favor of leisure demand is that these hotels do not rely on RFPs per se. Business hotels in India are too dependent on the RFP process to sell their room inventory. This, coupled with inexperienced sales professionals negotiating with the procurement managers of large corporations has systematically brought down ADRs across our hotel markets over the past few years, making it challenging to push the rate back up. Conversely, leisure hotels focus on FIT business that is more discerning in seeking an experience and not just a room at a discount. Increasing purchasing power of the Indian middle class, fuelling their propensity to take more vacations further bodes well for hotels operating in this segment.
Besides, it is not news to many that India in comparison to other Asian countries is a less expensive destination for foreign travelers, particularly for those arriving from the US and Europe. Even as the Indian media paints a picture of exorbitant hotel pricing, our research reveals that a very small percentage of the occupied rooms in India command an ADR that is commensurate to similar hotel markets globally, making the country extremely competitive for inbound leisure travel. However, the abnormally high taxes on room tariffs somewhat changes this for the end user. Thus, we hope that the state and central governments will take steps to rationalize tax policies, encouraging more visitors to the country.
Yet another takeaway is that over three-fourths of the top 25 ADR leaders discussed above are represented by the pre-eminent domestic Indian brands that have traditionally had a stronghold in this segment. We commend their foresight and commitment in defining Indian hospitality. The Taj Group was instrumental in establishing Goa as the leisure destination of choice almost three decades ago, by opening two seminal properties in Sinquerim. In recent years, their partnerships with hotel developers who have developed Taj properties in Coorg, Bekal and Damdama, displays their continued efforts for the creation and growth of leisure locations. The Oberoi group has repeatedly been recognised for establishing global and unparalleled hospitality standards with their Vilas properties. Also worthy of applause are hotels such as JW Marriott Walnut Grove and Alila Diwa Goa, both of which prove the inherent business sense in building hotels and operating in leisure markets. Their success also challenges the deep-rooted assumption held by many that budget and mid market hotels are the only safe investment bet in India. Instead, numbers prove that experience-led leisure hotels can also qualify as a prudent investment strategy.
In conclusion, it is clear that high ADRs do not mean low occupancies. We are more than convinced that the leisure segment in India holds tremendous potential with diverse destinations waiting to be explored. A paradigm shift is necessary, and the time has come.
Note: This article is part of HVS South Asias latest annual publication titled 2016 Hotels in India Trends & Opportunities' report.
About Manav Thadani
Manav Thadani, Chairman - HVS Asia Pacific, joined the company in 1995 in its New York Office. He went on to start the India operations in 1997 and was HVS first employee in Asia. Over the last 19 years, HVS India has expanded into multiple verticals including Strategic Consulting, Executive Search, Marketing, Communications, Energy & Sustainability and Professional Skills Development. In his current role, Manav oversees all eight offices across Asia Pacific, ensuring that they operate cohesively and effectively. Additionally, he runs four conferences in the region Hotel Investment Conference - South Asia (HICSA); Hotel Operations Summit India (HOSI); Tourism, Hotel Investment & Networking Conference (THINC) Indonesia, and Tourism, Hotel Investment & Networking Conference (THINC) Sri Lanka. A pioneering entrepreneur and an effective leader, Manav has been a trusted advisor to various industry stakeholders, with his candid views being highly sought after and respected in the field of hospitality. Under his guidance, HVS has garnered the reputation of being the Go To hospitality consulting firm in this part of the world. On a personal level, Manav co-founded SAMHI in 2011, a leading Indian hotel investment and development firm with focus on ownership of branded hotels in the mid scale and economy segments across key cities. Manav is also the immediate past Chairman of the World Travel & Tourism Council - India Initiative (WTTCII). Contact Manav at mthadani@hvs.com
Radisson Blu Hotel, Cologne
The group signs a 10-year lease extension with Invesco in Cologne and reopens Lyon after a 3-year long full refurbishment
The Rezidor Hotel Group announces the successful negotiation of a ten-year extension of the lease with Invesco Real Estate Fund. The deal will allow the iconic Radisson Blu hotel brand to remain a tenant for the next twenty years at Messe-Kreisel 3, Invescos landmark property in Cologne. As per the lease, the 393-room hotel will benefit from a 7million renovation program, bringing the best of the Radisson Blu interior design scheme to town.
Rezidors Senior Vice President of Asset Management, Philippe Dejonghe explained: The contract is a win for our business, for the landlord and for the city of Cologne. Invesco has a long term commitment with Rezidor, and we have strengthened that relationship further by showing our commitment to Cologne as a city, and as a showcase of our global upper-upscale brand, Radisson Blu. Radisson Blu Hotel, Cologne is a landmark on its own, and has won several awards and accolades since its opening in 2003. Our renewed agreement with Invesco allows us to renovate and to reposition the property to continue offering the best of Radisson Blus hospitality in Cologne.
The Radisson Blu, Cologne is located close to the city center, walking distance to the trade fair (Koelnmesse), congress facilities (Kolnkongress) and Lanxess arena and 15 minutes drive to the airport. The hotel has 393 rooms, two restaurants, one bar, 11 meeting rooms (950m2), gym/sauna and 164 underground parking spaces.
The news of the Cologne contract restructuring comes at an opportune time, as Radisson Blu recently re-opened its newly renovated landmark hotel in the heart of Lyon, earlier this month. This 40-storey tower, locally known as Le Crayon is the tallest building in Lyon (and second largest urban area in France).
The hotel reopens after a 3-year long complete refurbishment, which is the result of a co-investment of 40million between the hotel owner Hibernia France and The Rezidor Hotel Group, to create a world class hospitality experience in the culinary capital of France.
Philippe Dejonghe commented on the companys approach to investment: These renegotiations and related renovations form part of Rezidors wider asset management strategy. Although leases may be viewed as a liability on account, our management remains committed to investing in our core markets and trophy assets across Europe. When leased hotel properties are due for renewal, we take a view on what is best for the business, using our experience and expertise to fairly assess risk levels against opportunity and potential for profitability.
Last week, Azealia Banks announced via Facebook, now her primary social media channel, that she would be signing a deal with RZA. He and I have an excellent work chemistry, she wrote. Filming coco with him was loads of fun!! Now I get to make music with him!!!Business and Pleasure is imminent.
According to TMZ, the deal is now off. Banks ended negotiations because RZA failed to come to her defense after he watched Russell Crowe throw her out of his dinner party over the weekend. The events surrounding Banks removal from Crowes hotel suite are disputed; Crowe and multiple eyewitnesses claim that Banks was being unnecessarily belligerent and threatened to to break her glass and stab Crowe in the throat. Banks claims that Crowe issued racial epithets, choked her, and spat on her. She has filed a formal battery report with the police.
RZAs camp has sided with Crowe.
Azealia Banks
No one loves Chance The Rapper like Chicago, so its not a surprise that Barack Obama, who spent some important years of his life in the city, is a fan of the Coloring Book rapper. Chance was among the many artists invited to discuss the My Brothers Keeper Initiative at the White House earlier this year, and his Acid Rap deep cut Acid Rain landed on the POTUS summer playlist. While that would be honor enough for most musicians, it seems Chance will be joining Obama once again at tonights state dinner.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will be the guest of honor, and as FADER points out, CBSs Steve Dorsey has revealed that Chance The Rapper will be in attendance alongside actor Roberto Benigni and celebrity chef Mario Batali. Chance later Instagrammed a picture of himself and his dad dressed in some slick suits, Me and my Dad bout to pull up on Barack looking like some straight BOSSES, he wrote.
It was also recently announced that Chance will perform at the White Houses annual tree lighting ceremony. Heres hoping that we get a pic of Obama rocking a Chance 3 hat sometime in the near future.
Chance The Rapper
Space Jam will be returning to theaters for a quick limited run in honor of the films 20th anniversary. Thats right, its been TWENTY years since Michael Jordan saved the Tune Squad from the Monstars.
The classic 1996 film which starred MJ and Bill Murray will be showing in 450 theaters across the country on November 13th and November 16th.
According to Fathom Events, Space Jam will be showing at 2pm and 6pm on the 13th and at 7pm on the 16th, you can find out which theaters in your area will be turning back the clocks to 96 right here.
Space Jam has been a family favorite for the last 20 years and is sure to remain so for the next 20 and beyond, Fathom Events VP Tom Lucas said in a statement. This event is the perfect chance for audiences of all ages to view the film as it was meant to be seenon the big screen.
Additionally, as many of you already know, Jordan Brand will also be celebrating Space Jams 20th anniversary this year by releasing a new Space Jam Air Jordan 11 in December. Click here for more information about the Space Jam retro.
Space Jam
Having previously worked together on RTE series Pure Mule, director Declan Recks and writer Eugene OBrien have again teamed up to make The Flag. A charming comedy themed around the 1916 commemorations, it stars the redoubtable Pat Shortt as Harry Hambridge, a down on his luck Irish builder who leads a motley crew in a raid on a British army barracks, after discovering that the building contains the Irish flag hoisted over the GPO by Harrys late grandfather.
In January of last year, our producer Rob Walpole emailed us this letter hed found from his grandfather, explains Recks of The Flags origin. Hed got it from the army records bureau. His grandfather claimed that hed raised the tricolour over the GPO, so we thought: could we base the film around this character who goes to try and find the flag? It just worked and Eugene went for the idea straight away. The idea was that Harry was a man who had lost his voice and needed to find some courage again. With the help of his trusty friend Mouse, played by Moe Dunford, he sets about doing it.
Although Recks had previously worked on dramatic material with comedic elements, this was his first time to direct a feature-length comedy. Whilst acknowledging the difficulties, it helped to have such an experienced comedic actor as Shortt in the lead role.
They are one of the most exciting metal bands weve heard in a long time. And you can get a brilliant free CD of their work with the latest edition of Hot Press.
Armored Dawn is planning an assault on Europe! The Brazilian hard rock outfits are shaping up like real contenders, with their latest album being overseen in some style by Halloween producer Tommy Hansen, and Fernando Giovannetti. It is a powerful record indeed and you can get a brilliant four-track sampler with the new issue of Hot Press, with the Kings of Leon on the front.
That was a dream come true, says Armored Dawns front man Eduardo Parras of working with Hansen. He is spectacular we called him The Wizard. Hes so intelligent and so knowledgeable about this sort of music.
Hansens input wasnt just in terms of studio craft either.
He changed so much, Eduardo says. He added a lot both in terms of ideas for composition, as well as the arrangements themselves. He even played a keyboard solo on Far Away.
The free CD opens with the powerful King and it is a feast of big riffs and loud music exactly the sort of thing that your mother asks you to turn down! The full track listing is: 1. King; 2. Viking Soul; 3. William Fly (The Pirate); 4. Far Away.
Tracks 1, 2 and 4 were produced by the Hansen/Giovannetti team, with US producer Johnny Andrews handling desk duties on the epic, and at times Lizzy-esque 'William Fly (The Pirate).
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The Brazilian six-piece make a great noise. And they are keen on establishing a foothold in Europe.
We go to Europe to support Fates Warning in January, Eduardo relates.
For the uninitiated, Fates Warnings breakthrough album was the 1986 opus Awaken the Guardian. Their latest album is Theorise of Flight, released earlier this year.
Armored Dawn's 4-track EP, Power of Warrior, is free with this issue of Hot Press.
Ten environmental activists were arrested last week after claiming credit for temporarily shutting down five major pipelines carrying oil from Canadian tar sands to the United States, including two operated by Houston companies.
The group, Climate Direct Action, said it turned off emergency safety valves for pipelines in Washington, Minnesota, Montana and North Dakota, including the northern leg of TransCanada's Keystone pipeline. Others targeted were the TransMountain pipeline owned by Houston-based Kinder Morgan, Houston-based Spectra Energy's Express Pipeline, and Canada-based Enbridge's Line 4 and 67 pipelines. The activists claimed they stopped tar sands from coming to the U.S. via pipeline for the first time.
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When Khalilah McAfee opened her Quail Valley Family Dental practice in Missouri City last year, she faced an unusual challenge securing patients.
The practice had previously been run by a white dentist for 20 years and an Indian dentist for three years afterward. She had to deal with older white residents of the Quail Valley neighborhood questioning her longevity, as well as wondering if they were comfortable with a black dentist.
McAfee reached out to the community, and while she ended 2015 with a profit margin of negative 3.1 percent, she's set to close this year with a positive 33.7 percent, and possibly an award.
Quail Valley Family Dental is a finalist for the 2016 Upstart Award, one of the recognitions given at the Greater Houston Black Chamber's Pinnacle Awards. Saturday's event marks the 22nd run of the awards ceremony, with Mayor Sylvester Turner to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Courtney Johnson Rose, chairwoman of the Chamber, described the ceremony as a showcase of Houston's best and brightest African-American entrepreneurs who have not only demonstrated financial success, but have also dedicated time and effort to give back to the community.
The Upstart Award in particular is a unique opportunity for young businesses as it offers the winner a cash prize as well as dedicated mentorship from the Chamber. McAfee's nomination makes her feel validated in her work as she continues to overcome hurdles.
More Information WHAT: Greater Houston Black Chamber's 22nd annual Pinnacle Awards WHERE: 12401 South Post Oak Road , Houston, TX 77045 WHEN: Oct. 22 at 6 p.m. For tickets visit https://ghbcpinnacleawards.splashthat.com/ See More Collapse
"It helps you feel that you're doing the right thing," McAfee said.
For Zawadi Bryant, winning the Upstart Award a few years ago was a godsend. Bryant, co-founder and COO of NightLight Pediatric Urgent Care, noted that the cash prize, an HP computer and free advertising in the black business journal D-Mars, helped her and her co-founder better network within the business community and improve productivity.
Opened in 2007, NightLight Pediatric Urgent Care offers after-hours urgent care for children at five clinic locations.
"Most children don't get sick from 8 to 5," Bryant said.
The company networks with most insurers and even has X-rays on-site.
Today, all five clinics are profitable and Bryant and her co-founder are set to open two new clinics next year. Last year, they won the Pinnacle Award.
"Every time you win a prestigious award, it raises the level of your cachet," Bryant said.
Raising cachet for the service they provide would be the goal for The Education Valet, one of the nominees for the Pinnacle Award this year.
Founded in 1999 by current CEO Michelle Bonton, The Education Valet is an education consulting firm that partners with local community day-care centers offering staff training as well as runs the Rhodes School performing arts charter.
Bonton has spent years in education from teaching high school students to being a certified school counselor, a former public school administrator and even once hosting a talk show on 93.7 called "the Principal's Office. "She has also contributed her time to education policy work.
In 2007, her firm opened the Rhodes School, which serves more than 1,000 young students at four campuses. The firm as a whole employs 135 and generates an estimated $11 million for Houston.
For Bonton, the opportunity to affect children's lives in a meaningful way is what drives her and her business. The chance to be formally recognized as a Pinnacle winner would further boost the significance of an industry often cast aside.
"Education a lot of times is treated as that field that you need, but isn't held at high esteem," Bonton said. "We are the foundation for Houston's future workforce."
Being a role model for future generations is also a driving factor in McAfee's line of work.
Last year she attended a local Juneteenth celebration where she was giving out toothbrushes and toothpaste. There she met an African-American grandmother whose young granddaughter, like many young children, had a fear of dentists.
Yet after interacting with McAfee, the girl's attitude changed.
"Granny, I want her to be my dentist," she said.
A few days later the little girl came in to get a cavity filled in. No tears were shed.
Should McAfee win the Upstart Award, she would use the cash prize to improve the old chairs in the office as well as add digital radiography to the clinic, upgrades she had to postpone when starting out.
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CONROE - If a customer can find a better price for a leather sofa that Chris Pfeiffer is selling at Homestead House Distinctive Home Furnishings, he's happy to match it.
What's more difficult, though, is meeting a customer's demand to eat the 8.25 percent sales tax he must levy under state law. Armed with smartphones, some people have no problem spending hours talking to furniture and design experts in Pfeiffer's beautiful store in downtown Conroe and then ordering the same item online to avoid paying the taxes that keep our cities and schools operating.
Too many people, he says, feel comfortable treating his 15,000-square-foot store filled with high-end furniture from the best American brands as a showroom for internet retailers.
"The customer comes up, we do house calls, we do floor plans," Pfeiffer told me. "But then they say, 'I'm not paying the tax.' They want me to throw in another 8.25 percent. Now, that burns my skittle."
Most Texans don't understand that internet sales are not really exempt from sales tax, and that under state law, they are required to send a check to the Texas comptroller for the tax if a retailer doesn't collect it.
The trouble comes from a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of mail-order catalog companies. States wanted all retailers to collect sales taxes, but the court said a state can't order companies with no physical presence within its jurisdiction to collect taxes for it.
The court's decision made practical sense at a time when keeping up with different tax rates across the country was a burden for businesses, but today almost any point-of-sale system can calculate the sales tax for anywhere in the nation.
Amazon.com collects sales tax in 28 states, including Texas, or only where it has fulfillment centers. Retailers without a physical presence in a state do not collect sales taxes for that state.
Many states could also use the money. Texas relies on sales tax for about half of state revenues, so it missed out on $1.7 billion in e-commerce sales taxes, according to a 2014 study by the National Conference of State Legislators. That number has certainly grown now that 8 percent of retail sales takes place online.
Online retailers are hiring, while local retailers are declaring bankruptcy. State officials, meanwhile, show no inclination to collect sales taxes from individuals.
"The chances of the state of Texas going after them is so remote," Pfeiffer said. "You have to go on reality, and the reality is that that's never going to happen."
Evading taxes that no one tries to collect may be forgivable, but cheating your neighbor who owns a local business is entirely different. Tax cheating creates a huge disadvantage for local retailers like Pfeiffer, a downtown merchant selling top-quality American goods in an era that's been tough on both.
"Everybody should participate fairly. That's what I'm looking for, the fairness," he said.
There is a federal solution to this problem, but it's been stuck in Congress since 2010. The Main Street Fairness Act would allow states to require all retailers, no matter where they are based, to collect and remit the appropriate sales tax. In return, the state agrees to participate in the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, which is standardizing sales tax laws and registrations to lower the administrative impact on businesses.
An alternative introduced last year by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would force retailers sending goods out of state to collect whatever the sales tax is for their primary location. State governments would then fairly distribute the revenue with each other.
If either piece of federal legislation passes, Texas could tax all internet purchases equally, whether it's from a national department store like Macy's or a tiny boutique in Miami Beach. This would not be a new tax, as some critics will claim, but a fairer application of existing taxes for local retailers like Pfeiffer.
"I pay the property tax, I maintain the building I pay employee taxes - both state and federal - we've got inventory tax, and I've got the franchise tax," Pfeiffer said. "If internet retailers have to pay a tax, then a lot of their business is going to be hampered, and it would strengthen sales here, and strengthen the tax revenue stream."
Most of us value a thriving commercial district in our communities and don't want to see abandoned storefronts. We all want our friends and neighbors to find work in our community, and retail is a major source of employment. But until our government decides to treat local retailers fairly and stop punishing them for doing the right thing, the obligation falls on us to act justly in deciding where to spend our money.
"The operations owned and run by Texans, they are the best in the world," Pfeiffer said. "It would be nice if Texans were to honor that and support their local businesses."
Shopping online has its benefits, and if cheating on taxes is your thing, go ahead and buy those goods from out of state. But don't disrespect and cheat your neighbors who operate local stores this holiday season by taking advantage of them.
Local retailers make our communities richer. Treat them with the respect they deserve.
AUSTIN - Ever wonder why oil company television commercials feature a cast of diverse, attractive employees talking about how they are providing energy to make the world a better place?
"My job at Exxon Mobil," a montage of employees asks in a recent ad. "Turning algae into biofuels ... reducing poverty in the developing world ... making cars go farther with less ... and fueling the global economy ... and you think we just made the gas."
The ad doesn't mention deep-water drilling, massive refineries or even generating higher earnings for shareholders. We've come a long way from "Charlie," the friendly gas station attendant, offering to "put a tiger in your tank."
The new ads reveal the changing ways that companies market their products, and more fundamentally, how they think of themselves. Every enterprise these days must apparently do more than make money. They must be "purpose-driven."
Creating a purpose-driven company is not unlike embracing the purpose-driven life espoused by Christian author Rick Warren in his 2002 book. A company's purpose should be to identify a societal need and fulfill it using capitalism.
Making money while doing good without misleading the public was one of the hot topics at SXSW Eco, a conference on sustainability and social justice that brings corporations and activists to Austin every October.
Companies espousing a mission to improve the world usually make more money by earning customer loyalty, according to Gallup, the polling and data analysis firm. Deutsche Bank reviewed 56 academic studies and found that 89 percent of companies that prioritize doing good outperform the market in medium and long-term share prices and earnings.
Employees who believe their company is fulfilling a noble purpose are also between 13 percent and 30 percent more productive, according to the Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies and the Ifo Institute. That's particularly important to the millennial generation, whose members say they would take a 15 percent pay cut to do good in the world.
Social benefits can come from something as simple as employers making donations to charities, but the more effective method is demonstrating how the company's products improve society or the environment. The challenge for customers and job-seekers is knowing whether a company really is doing good or simply spending on marketing.
A coalition called the Net Positive Project is trying to create a rigorous method for measuring whether a company really does put more back into society than it takes.
"We have an increasing number of companies, and others, thinking about how do we get beyond sustainability and to a restorative or regenerative approach to business, and can this be done in a way that makes sense for the private sector?" said Eric Olson, a senior vice president at consulting firm BSR and a project leader. "You can imagine that if we are not careful with this kind of idea, it will be very quickly watered down, or at a minimum confusing."
The coalition includes nonprofits and major corporations, such as Dow Chemical Co., AT&T, Dell and Kimberly Clark, and is trying to develop tools that measure not only the environmental impact of a product, but whether the social benefits outweigh the impact.
For example, a tobacco company could never demonstrate that cigarettes do more good than harm, but chemical companies could make the case that cheaper and better health care products and improved public sanitation outweigh a carefully managed environmental impact. The problem is coming up with legitimate metrics, a process the Net Positive Project is just beginning.
"Part of the measurement of our success is the financial success of companies who take it on," Olson said. "There is a belief, and I think we can prove it out, that there are contributions to innovation, brand and reputation, stakeholder relations and, ultimately, to sales."
No fossil fuel company is listed as part of the coalition, but oil companies have always fulfilled a critical societal need by providing affordable energy that spurs economic development. Exxon Mobil's mission statement, for example, is to use "technology and innovation to help meet the world's growing energy needs."
Those benefits, though, have been overshadowed by catastrophic accidents and a warming planet. Most Americans know they need fossil fuels for their daily lives, at least for now, but many are resentful. Hence the television commercials by Exxon Mobil and others.
Whether a company does good or not goes back to the fundamental social contract of commerce: I provide you a quality good or service, and in return, you pay me a price that encourages me to keep providing it. The transaction must also improve the community. This is a calculation that more energy companies need to take more seriously.
The Net Positive Project is a fascinating idea that encourages companies and customers to look at both sides of the cost-benefit equation. The results, no doubt, will be fascinating, and likely controversial.
In a remote part of western Minnesota, Emily Johnston and Annette Klapstein calmly approached a small enclosure, readied their bolt cutters, and sliced through the fencing and chains protecting the emergency shutoff valves on two oil pipelines. Just as calmly, they turned the valves, helping to stop the flow of heavy Canadian crude, and waited to be arrested by local police.
The women were among 10 people arrested last week during coordinated actions to shut down five pipelines in four states, including two operated by Houston companies. The activists succeeded as the companies temporarily halted flows temporarily for safety reasons, underscoring the shifting battleground in the fight to slow climate change.
After years of focusing on the now fading coal industry, environmentalists are targeting pipelines as the new public enemy number one - a strategy that has implications for Houston, home to several major pipeline companies employing some 10,000 people. With the "keep it the ground" movement gaining support, the focus of efforts to slow the extraction of oil and gas has increasingly become pipelines that move the fuels to processing plants and consumers.
Protests, demonstrations and civil disobedience aimed at pipelines have spread from New England to Texas to California. In the Midwest, protesters from across the country have joined the Standing Rock Sioux to block the Dakota Access pipeline that would carry crude from North Dakota shale fields to Illinois. From there, the oil can be piped to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.
Richard Kinder, the cofounder and chairman of the Houston pipeline company Kinder Morgan, acknowledged the growing protests, but said that pipelines and the natural gas they carry will play a major role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions blamed for accelerating climate change. Natural gas has quickly replaced coal as the fuel of choice for generating electricity, he said, and that switch, according to the U.S. Energy Department, has cut greenhouse emissions in U.S. power sector in recent years.
"While the protestors get the headlines," Kinder said in call with analysts Wednesday, "it is still possible to build new infrastructure."
Kinder Morgan, however, scrapped a pipeline earlier this year that would have carried natural gas from Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale to the Boston area as the project faced strong local and environmental opposition. Last year, after a half-decade of protests, the Obama administration blocked the expansion of the Keystone pipeline, which would have transported crude more easily from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada to U.S. refineries.
Johnston, Klapstein and their compatriots targeted pipelines in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Washington state to slow the flow of fossil fuels, on which the overwhelming scientific consensus blames global warming. Johnston, in an interview after she was released on bail last week, said pipelines have become a particular target of climate change activists because they are ubiquitous, stretching in all directions and touching communities everywhere.
"We want to make sure it's not cheap or easy or even possible for them to come through," said Johnston, 50, of Seattle. "We have to do something to shake up the system and inspire people to action. We all have to understand how dire the situation really is."
Reality check
Pipeline opponents have proven effective in slowing some projects and, in perhaps their biggest victory, stopping TransCanada's Keystone XL. But the equivalent of 12 Keystone XL projects were built during the five-year debate over pipeline, according to the Association of Oil Pipe Lines industry group.
Environmentalists contend the continued growth of pipelines will make it impossible for the U.S. - and the world - to meet the goals of the Paris climate accords reached last year to prevent the world's average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Burning fossil fuels produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, which traps heat in the earth's atmosphere.
This year is projected to surpass 2015 as the hottest on record. Fourteen of the hottest 15 years have occurred since 2001.
Former vice president Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to slow climate change, sees no room for compromise on pipelines because of the long-term ramifications
"If we construct a major extension of pipelines, they'll be in use for 50 years," Gore said in a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle. "If they are, there would be no possible way for the U.S. to achieve its goals of CO2 reduction - no possible way."
The activists, however, aren't facing reality because the global economy will depend on fossil fuels far into the future, said Charles McConnell, a former assistant secretary of energy under President Barack Obama and now executive director of Rice University's Energy and Environment Initiative.
Pipelines are cheaper, faster and safer than shipping crude via railroad or trucks, which are more at risk of accidents and spills, he said. Policies and practice should focus on using fossil fuels as cleanly and efficiently as possible while developing new technologies that could eventually replace them.
"I embrace environmentalism," McConnell said, "but I also live in the real world."
The business view
Brandon Blossman, an analyst at Houston energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., said pipelines are the next phase for environmentalists after decades of fighting power plants that burn coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Ironically, Blossman said, it is cleaner-burning natural gas carried by pipelines that has played the biggest role in the decline of coal and greenhouse gases in recent years.
"Coal did just fine until competing gas got cheap and plentiful," Blossman said.
The latest wave of protests are particularly worrisome, raising concerns that tampering with valves and other controls - or something worse - could lead to an environmental disaster, said Andy Black, president and chief executive of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, an industry group.
If the Dakota Access pipeline, which received regulatory approval, is halted, it could create a dangerous precedent that would discourage investment in pipelines needed to provide the energy that heats homes, powers businesses, and fuels automobiles, he said. The owner of Dakota Access, Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, has already invested billions in the project.
"When a business is trying to expand, they need to know they'll be able to finish building the pipeline to serve the customers," Black said.
A federal court ruled this week that construction can move forward, but the federal government is still holding up on granting a final easement for construction of the last small chunk of the pipeline near North Dakota's Lake Oahe, where the Standing Rock Sioux contend sacred and environmental sites are threatened.
Energy Transfer said in a statement that it expects the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to soon issue the easement. "We reiterate our commitment to protect cultural resources, the environment and public safety," the company said.
Texas take
Some Texas activists hope opponents of the Dakota Access succeed in blocking the pipeline mid-construction so they can use that momentum and precedent to halt Energy Transfer projects in West Texas that have overcome community opposition at every turn.
Energy Transfer is building two gas pipelines from outside of Fort Stockton to Mexico at access points by El Paso - the Comanche Trail Pipeline - and farther south by Presidio - the Trans-Pecos Pipeline. They're slated for completion next year after Energy Transfer invested $1.3 billion for both.
The latter project runs right by Lori Glover's community in Alpine, Texas. She's a volunteer working with the Sierra Club, a national environmental advocacy group, and she salutes the efforts of Johnston and her cohorts.
Glover said she and her neighbors opposed the projects throughout the regulatory process to no avail. "Civil disobedience is all we have left," she said. "We're just small communities and the corporations are putting us at risk. They're just doing what they want without even trying to work with the American people."
Pipeline Safety Trust, a watchdog organization in Washington state, has fought for safer pipelines for more than a decade, rather than opposing pipelines entirely.
The fight used to be about preventing leaks and explosions and protecting local property rights, said Executive Director Carl Weimer. Now, nuts-and-bolts safety issues are being overshadowed by the "keep it in the ground" movement and debate over climate change.
What the country really needs is for the federal government to create a clear energy plan that indicates where pipelines are or are not needed, Weimer said. Instead, corporations lead the way and build competing projects, Weimer said, regardless of the public's energy demand and conservation preferences.
"We're letting industry decide how many pipelines and where," Weimer bemoaned, "and then we'll fight after the fact."
CHI St. Luke's Health hopes to significantly expand its footprint in the north Houston region with the acquisition of a physician group, a small hospital system, an ambulatory surgery system and two freestanding emergency room centers, officials announced Tuesday.
More than 100 physicians from the Greater Houston Physicians Medical Association, one of the largest multispecialty physician groups in north Houston, will be folded into the CHI St. Luke's Health network starting Nov. 1. The agreement also includes 25 affiliated clinics and medical group locations, the hospital said.
Among the specialties will be cardiology, orthopedics, oncology, general surgery and emergency medicine, according to a CHI St. Luke's statement.
In addition to the physician group, the health care system has acquired Apollo Hospital System, a five-bed facility with 16 outpatient centers. It will be renamed CHI St. Luke's-Pinecroft Hospital.
The acquisition also includes Woodlands Ambulatory Surgery Center, which will be rebranded CHI St. Luke's Health Surgery Center, and Conroe Emergency Center and Woodland Emergency Center, which have not yet been renamed.
"This is a game-changing opportunity for us to expand our network of care in north and northwest Houston, which is rapidly growing," Michael Covert, CEO of CHI St. Luke's Health, said in a statement. He added that such a large acquisition of multiple facilities will not only give the area's burgeoning population more access to care but also "achieve effective population health."
No price for the purchases was disclosed.
Dr. James McDeavitt, chief clinical integration officer for CHI St. Luke's and dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine, said Tuesday that this latest acquisition is part of what he calls a broadening game plan for the network as health care continues to evolve in Houston and in the nation.
"Ten, 15 years ago, it was about having a bright shiny new building," he told the Chronicle. But today's health care is more responsive to where people live and allowing treatments to be performed in an outpatient setting whenever possible.
Earlier this year, the health system expanded into the Lake Jackson area when it acquired Brazosport Regional Health System. It also added five emergency room centers across north and northeast Houston in recent months.
David Zalubowski/STF
Sending your child to a top-performing public school can sometimes be as costly as opting for private school. That's because houses and apartments zoned to highly rated public schools are almost always more expensive than in areas where children attend lower rated schools.
On average, rents are 25 percent higher in urban areas near sought-after schools, according to a report from RentCafe, a rental search site.
Malcolm S. Morris and Stewart Morris Jr. will resign from the board at Stewart Information Services Corp. as part of settlement agreements with activist investors who said the board composition created conflicts of interest that contributed to the company's underperformance.
The resigning board members are cousins who have served on the board for 16 years of the Houston-based title and real estate services company. They will be replaced with Stewart CEO Matthew Morris and Clifford Press.
Two additional board members will replace Laurie Moore-Moore and Frank Keating, who have agreed to step down. A director search firm has been hired to help find their replacements.
When the new board is in place, eight of its nine directors will be independent, the company said.
"The enhancements announced today will help us improve Stewart's corporate governance structure for the benefit of all shareholders, allowing us to create a truly independent board in line with best practices," Thomas Apel, board chairman, said in a statement. "We believe the newly constituted Stewart board, which will include substantial industry expertise, diverse perspectives and a wide variety of backgrounds, will help guide the company forward."
The agreements were made with Starboard Value and Foundation Asset Management. Collectively they and their affiliates own 3.6 million shares, or about 15.5 percent, of Stewart's outstanding stock.
Foundation has agreed to abandon its consent solicitation seeking to call a special meeting of Stewart's shareholders.
Press, 63, has served on numerous boards and is currently a director of Newcastle Investment Corp. and Quantum Corp.
Malcolm S. Morris and Stewart Morris Jr., formerly vice chairmen of Stewart's board, previously served as co-CEOs from 2000 to November 2011. They are first cousins, and Malcolm S. Morris is the father of current CEO Matthew Morris.
While the cousins were co-CEOs, stockholders experienced negative returns, and the Morris family collected $45 million "in the form of direct compensation, fees to affiliated companies and family-owned horse expenses," according to documents previously filed by Foundation.
"We are concerned that due to their familial relationships, Malcolm S. Morris and Stewart Morris Jr. are at risk of placing the interests of CEO Matthew W. Morris and other members of the Morris family above those of the company's public stockholders," the filing reads.
Stewart has been the target of a number of activist investors in recent years, leading to it making other changes, including a restructuring of the company's stock.
Stewart's stock closed Tuesday at $46.34, down 29 cents.
HAVANA - Like so much else in Cuba, shopping for clothes isn't easy.
Buying a simple pair of socks or a T-shirt means choosing between the wildly overpriced, shoddy offerings of state-run stores and the bales of low-priced clothing illegally imported by "mules" traveling from the United States, Ecuador or Panama.
This year, a third option is bursting onto the scene after years of growing quietly in backroom workshops and bedroom studios. A small homegrown fashion industry is winning renown and an increasing share of Cubans' limited clothing budget with simple but fun-and-stylish clothing produced on the island with natural fabrics and sold at competitive prices.
Hundreds of private designers are turning out gauzy wedding dresses, brilliantly decorated bathing suits, linen pants and even uniforms for state businesses. Last week, dozens of designers displayed their wares at the five-day Havana Fashion Week at Cuba's most elegant theaters, where hundreds turned out for runway shows, private fittings and cocktail parties.
"The changes that have taken place in this country, the openings, make things easier," said Jesus Frias, a designer who put on a swimwear runway show on Friday. "There's a fashion renaissance in Cuba but it can't be a priority for the state, so it's we private designers who are bringing it back."
The growth of the artisanal fashion industry comes thanks to free-market reforms put in place by President Raul Castro after he took power in 2008. Unlike some new private businesses, the fashion industry is receiving a relatively warm welcome from the communist bureaucracy, perhaps because it doesn't directly compete with the state. After successful runs in the first decades of Cuba's socialist revolution, state-run clothing businesses were hurt by the collapse of the Soviet Union and had largely disappeared by the mid-1990s.
Celebrities and fashionistas have made Havana a hot destination over the last two years amid a boom in tourism set off by detente with the United States. In May, French label Chanel took over Havana's Prado boulevard for a runway show that garnered global attention, and anger among many Cubans for its privatization of one of the main thoroughfares in the capital of a country that has declared socialist equality as its guiding principle.
Privately designed clothes remain out of reach for Cubans on state salaries of about $30 a month, but those with private-sector jobs or help from family overseas can afford them. Mario Freixas, a well-known designer who dresses many of the stars of state-run television, sells shirts for $20 and men's and women's pants for $30.
Alongside the domestic market, Cuba's own designers are hoping that their lightweight blouses and fringed swimsuits will become popular items for visitors to take home.
"We all have high hopes for the tourism boom," Frias said. "I don't think anyone comes to Cuba to buy imported clothing."
Havana Fashion Week began in 2015 with 30 designers, organizer Catherine Dorticos said. This year's edition had twice as many.
"It's a way to motivate people, for people to see other options and for artisans to produce more and feel inspired to do new things," she said.
If pythons and crocodiles weren't enough, a new troublesome creature has taken up residence in South Florida the screwworm.
Gory photos of screwworms eating wild deer alive have made the rounds on the Internet, turning stomachs and stoking fears that the insect might spread beyond Florida and harm agriculture in Texas and other states.
While screwworms were once a scourge to cattle in Texas, the odds of them turning up again the Lone Star State seem pretty remote at the moment. Many decades ago, the worms were responsible for killing thousands of cattle in this state,
For starters, the current infestation has been confined to a small population of endangered deer that live on one of Florida's remote southern keys, which has enabled wildlife officials to establish an effective blockade.
Also, Florida officials are using an eradication method that has had a proven track record. It involves releasing sterile male screwworm flies, which mate with females that then lay infertile eggs.
Still, it's understandable while federal and state agriculture officials are on alert for the pest, which was last seen in the United States in 1982.
Screwworms caused devastating livestock losses up until the early 1950's when scientists discovered that releasing sterile male flies would stop the spread of screwworms. For example, in 1935, Texas counties reported more than 180,000 livestock deaths due to screwworms.
A Texas A&M veterinary specialist recently told livestock producers that the cost to control screwworms in cattle alone could exceed $500 million annually should the pest spread beyond Florida to Texas and other areas.
What makes screwworms so unique and deadly is that they feast on live animal flesh unlike other blow flies that consume carrion, or rotting meat. Female screwworm flies are attracted to open wounds, lay hundreds of eggs inside the wound, and then the larvae hatch and begin eating their host alive.
"It's definitely not something you want to Google," said Sonja Swiger, a Texas A&M entomologist based in Stephenville, of the pictures of animals with screwworm infestations.
Swiger said that while screwworms were officially eradicated from Texas in 1966 there have been occasional reports of them, usually showing up in dogs that had traveled to countries where the pest was still present.
The Texas Animal Health Commission closely monitors livestock coming into the state and has been notified by federal counterparts of the Florida infestation. As a result of the discovery, Florida officials have declared an agricultural emergency.
Big questions still remain about the current outbreak, namely how did screwworms end up back in the United States?
Swiger said while there's no reason to worry about screwworms in Texas, ranchers should familiarize themselves with the pest, which is pretty hard to miss given its modus operandi.
"Think about it, if screwworms returned, it could be the end of part-time ranching," Swiger said. "Except for the dead of winter, stockmen would have to constantly watch their stock for 'wormies.' And white-tailed deer, which give birth in warm weather, and bucks in velvet with blood-engorged antlers, I expect would be easy targets as well."
In May, a 26-year-old Houston woman returned from a trip to Honduras and started to feel ill. Her skin broke out in a rash. Then came a fever and headache. A blood test soon confirmed her fears: Shed been infected with Zika virus.
The woman was among the first of more than 60 confirmed cases of Zika in Harris County so far this year, all among people whod traveled to countries where the virus is spreading through mosquito bites.
She had questions that her doctors couldnt answer. How long would the virus remain active in her? Could she pass it to a loved one?
So for the next three months, she allowed researchers at Baylor College of Medicine to study her. In an effort to better understand an emerging disease that some experts think might already be spreading in Texas, the researchers collected weekly samples of her blood, urine, saliva and vaginal swabs.
They published their findings Monday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, shedding new light on how the virus spreads and offering potential insights into the best ways to detect and prevent an epidemic in Houston.
Being able to study her over the course of several weeks was a big benefit to us, because right now theres so much we dont understand about the virus, Dr. Kristy Murray, the lead author of the report, said of the unidentified woman. There are so many questions still on how it's being transmitted and how long it persists in the body.
The months-long study of a single patient highlights the desperate efforts of researchers here and across the U.S. to better understand Zika, which causes microcephaly, a birth defect in which children have malformed heads and severely stunted brain development. Because the woman in the study sought medical care within a few days of returning, the researchers were able to collect their first samples hours before fever set in, giving them a rare opportunity to trace the virus from the onset of symptoms.
One important finding: Zika was detected in vaginal secretions for 14 days after onset, indicating the disease can be passed from a female sexual partner for up to two weeks. That's also important information for women who become infected late in pregnancy, said Murray, an associate professor of pediatrics at Baylors National School of Tropical Medicine.
It indicates a mother can pass Zika to her baby during the birthing process, Murray said. Thats how HIV and some viruses are spread.
Another revelation: Although the virus could only be detected in blood serum for about a week which is the current standard for Zika testing it persisted for more than 80 days in whole blood samples.
That finding could have significant effect on the way doctors screen for Zika, Murray said, potentially widening the diagnosis window by several weeks.
That could help public health officials get a better handle on the magnitude of an outbreak, and offer more options for screening pregnant women for the virus. Right now, there's only about a five- to seven-day window to diagnose Zika, and since most patients experience mild or no symptoms, the vast majority of cases are likely going undetected.
So far in the U.S., local transmissions of Zika from mosquito bites have only been confirmed in South Florida, but given the number of people who travel back and forth between Latin America and Houston, Murray and others worry the virus also has been spreading here.
Based on lab results, the woman could have passed the virus to any aedes aegypti mosquitos that bit her during the first eight days of symptoms, thus putting others at risk. Doctors gave her strict directions to apply bug spray and avoid being outside, but what about those who don't realize they've been infected?
As soon as we have local transmission here and for me it's more of a question of when than if we all of a sudden have 67,000 women at risk, Murray said. Thats how many women give birth here each year.
There's still much to be learned. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Murray and others on her team are now testing their findings on a larger pool of patients who've since returned to Houston with Zika.
The better we understand the virus, the better we can prepare," she said.
Karl Stolleis/Staff
Johnson & Johnson Innovation announced Tuesday that it has created the Center for Device Innovation at Texas Medical Center to speed up development of "breakthrough" medical devices.
CDI will consist of a new medical device engineering studio with a staff of researchers and developers, and will have access to preclinical facilities at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Methodist Research Institute and Texas Heart Institute, according to a statement from Johnson & Johnson.
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A 14-year-old boy was charged Wednesday with two counts of capital murder in the deaths of his grandparents who were found fatally shot in their Chambers County home.
Prosecutors will decide whether to charge the teenager as an adult.
A deputy was dispatched to a waterfront home Tuesday in the 11000 block of Cedar Gulley Road in Beach City and found the two adults dead from apparent gunshot wounds, the Chambers County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday.
On Wednesday the couple, both 72 years old, was identified as Chester and Sandra Bienek, according to KTRK. Public records show the couple moved to Beach City in 1999 and opened a business, Sandra's Gift Shop, in 2009.
"They were both shot with a handgun, we believe. ... There were no signs of forced entry or robbery or anything like that," Sheriff Brian Hawthorne told the TV station.
When the teen was questioned, Hawthorne said, he showed no emotion but seemed "lethargic" and "could not really give us a good account of anything."
The Barbers Hill ISD said in statement, "The grandparents of a Middle School South student were killed in a double homicide at their home."
"Our hearts go out to the family experiencing loss, and we have additional counseling at Middle School South for those in need of such services. ... [T]he best thing that anyone can do at this time is hug your children and grandchildren and tell them you love them," superintendent Greg Poole added.
Check back for new details as this case unfolds.
Did you know the couple? Email andrew.kragie@chron.com
At a time when the public and law enforcement officials contemplate how to best blend policing and community, Fort Bend County has lost a man many describe as a role model for the perfect mix of serving and protecting.
Longtime Fort Bend County Precinct 2 Constable Ruben Davis died on Tuesday morning. He was 61.
"He loved his community and, more importantly, he loved his family," Precinct 2 Chief Deputy Rodney Pentecost said. "We are grieving right now. It's obvious that he'll be missed."
Davis served as a Fort Bend constable since May 1996 and led a precinct that covers the county's east side including Missouri City. His name, as an unopposed candidate, will remain on the November ballot.
He was known for his big personality, huge heart and love for the residents of Fort Bend County.
Sharon Davis said her husband was a provider and protector for their Missouri City household and beyond.
"I think the people will probably miss his generosity. Anything that he could do for you, he was going to do it," she said. "He's always been a sweet and caring person."
Ruben George Davis Jr. was born on Aug. 18, 1955, and raised in the Sunnyside neighborhood on Houston's south side.
Davis and his future wife met in 1974 as cadets in the Houston Police Department academy. They married in 1976.
Sharon Davis said her husband retired from HPD two decades ago after 21 years of service to run for an open constable's seat in Fort Bend because "he wanted to be his own boss and he wanted to help people."
The neophyte politician was elected on his first try, in May 1996, and retained the seat ever since.
Several officials said that Davis will be missed by the people he represented and in Democratic political circles.
"He was a pleaser. He always tried to help his constituents, whether it had something to do with law enforcement or not," Fort Bend County Precinct 2 Commissioner Grady Prestage said.
Devoted to community
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, called her friend "the community's constable." She met Davis when she was serving on the Houston City Council and he was an HPD officer.
"He lived his law enforcement life with cheer and generosity," she said. "Everything in Fort Bend County - every elected official, every constituent - was touched by Constable Ruben Davis' seriousness about law enforcement and keeping the community safe."
During his 40-year career, Davis earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from the University of Houston-Downtown and a master's degree in counseling from Prairie View A&M University.
"Ruben Davis was a tremendous light to the community of Fort Bend County," Remus E. Wright, senior pastor of The Fountain of Praise, said in a statement. "He was a great political leader who was committed to legislation that inspired change for the youngest and eldest of those he served. He was a committed role model to husbands and fathers and a committed man of God. His impact will be greatly missed in both our church and community."
The constable's current term expires on Dec. 31. According to the Texas Elections Code, a vacancy occurs on the date of an official's death. Davis appears unopposed on the Nov. 8 ballot. If he is re-elected as a deceased candidate to a four-year term, another vacancy will occur on Nov. 22 - the date that Fort Bend County election results will be canvassed by commissioners.
It is unclear whether Fort Bend commissioners will make an appointment for the last six weeks of the year.
Diagnosed with cancer
According to Fort Bend County Judge Robert Hebert's office and county elections administrator John Oldham, commissioners have the responsibility to appoint someone to serve until the next election in November 2018. The winning candidate in that race will have an abbreviated two-year term. The seat then returns to the usual four-year rotation for the 2020 election.
Sharon Davis said she would be willing to accept an appointment to her husband's post.
His wife said Ruben Davis was diagnosed with bone cancer a decade ago, but didn't disclose his health challenge to many people.
The constable's decline in recent months was accelerated, Sharon Davis believes, by the death of their 36-year-old daughter, Traneka, from blood cancer in December 2014. She was their oldest child and a television writer in Los Angeles.
The couple's other daughter, Robin, said she's thankful that her father always found time for family and recalled road trips during her childhood.
"He was always there," the 33-year-old said. "He took us everywhere."
Davis returned home Friday from a rehabilitation hospital and enjoyed fellowship with family over a spaghetti dinner. He ate more than anyone else, his wife said, then chased that big meal with his favorite dessert: Blue Bell butter pecan ice cream.
Feeling ill on Sunday morning, the constable returned to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center where doctors caught an infection. He was expected to recover but made a sudden turn around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.
In addition to his wife and younger daughter, Davis is survived by his father, Ruben Davis Sr.; three siblings and a beloved Shih Tzu, Bella.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Thank God for WikiLeaks.
I confess, I was starting to wonder about what the real Hillary Clinton - the one you never get to see behind closed doors - really stood for. But now that, thanks to WikiLeaks, I've had a chance to peruse her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks, I am more convinced than ever she can be the president America needs today.
Seriously, those speeches are great! They show someone with a vision, a pragmatic approach to getting things done and a healthy instinct for balancing the need to strengthen our social safety nets with unleashing America's business class to create the growth required to sustain social programs.
So thank you, Vladimir Putin, for revealing how Hillary really hopes to govern. I just wish more of that Hillary were campaigning right now and building a mandate for what she really believes.
WikiHillary? I'm with her.
Why? Let's start with what WikiLeaks says she said at Brazil's Banco Itau event in May 2013: "I think we have to have a concerted plan to increase trade ... and we have to resist protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade."
She also said, "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere."
That's music to my ears. A hemisphere where nations are trading with one another, and where more people can collaborate and interact for work, study, tourism and commerce, is a region that is likely to be growing more prosperous with fewer conflicts, especially if more of that growth is based on clean energy.
Compare our hemisphere, or the European Union, or the Asian trading nations with, say, the Middle East - where the flow of trade, tourism, knowledge and labor among nations has long been restricted - and the case for Hillary's vision becomes obvious.
The way Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have made trade and globalization dirty words is ridiculous. Globalization and trade have helped to bring more people out of poverty in the past 50 years than at any other time in history.
Do we need to make adjustments so the minority of the U.S. population that is hurt by freer trade and movements of labor is compensated and better protected? You bet we do. That's called fixing a problem - not throwing out a whole system that we know from a long historical record contributes on balance to economic growth, competitiveness and more open societies.
In a speech to a Morgan Stanley group on April 18, 2013, WikiHillary praised the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which included reforming the tax code to increase investment and entrepreneurship and raising certain taxes and trimming some spending and entitlements to make them more sustainable.
The ultimate shape of that grand bargain could take many forms, she said, but Hillary stressed behind closed doors: "Simpson-Bowles put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues and we have to incentivize growth. It's a three-part formula."
She is right. We'll never get out of this economic rut, and protect future generations, unless the business and social sectors, Democrats and Republicans, all give and get something - and that's exactly where WikiHillary was coming from.
In an October 2013 speech for Goldman Sachs, Clinton seemed to suggest the need to review the regulations imposed on banks by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Her idea was not to get rid of all of the rules but rather to make sure they were not imposing needless burdens that limited lending to small businesses and startups.
As Clinton put it, "More thought has to be given to the process and transactions and regulations so that we don't kill or maim what works, but we concentrate on the most effective way of moving forward with the brainpower and the financial power that exists here." Again, exactly right.
When I read WikiHillary, I hear a smart, center-left politician who will be inclined to work with both the business community and Republicans to keep America tilted toward trade expansion, entrepreneurship and global integration, while redoubling efforts to cushion workers from the downsides of these policies.
I'm just sorry that campaign Hillary felt she could not speak like WikiHillary to build a proper mandate for President Hillary. She would have gained respect for daring to speak the truth to her own constituency.
Nonetheless, thanks to WikiLeaks, I am reassured that she has the right balance of instincts on the issues I care about most. So, again, thank you, Putin, for exposing that Hillary. She could make a pretty good president for these times.
Disbelief. Outrage. Befuddlement.
These may be your reactions to the story of Crenshanda Williams, the former Houston 911 operator who has gained nationwide attention after being criminally charged for allegedly hanging up on hundreds of callers.
The reason? Officials say she told them she just didn't feel like talking to anyone at the time.
"Ain't nobody got time for this," she reportedly said in one call.
It's a stunning lack of regard for human life and one's job description, which left a HoustonChronicle.com commenter to quip: "Meet the founder of the 'No Lives Matter' movement."
But while we're tarring and feathering this woman online, and mocking her at the water cooler, maybe we should look in the mirror.
I wonder if there's a little bit of Crenshanda in all of us. And I wonder if it's that lack of empathy and responsibility that allows us to avoid eye contact with the panhandler carrying a "hungry" sign past the driver-side window. To keep electing lawmakers who starve our schools and turn their backs on millions of uninsured Texans. To not even bother showing up at the polls.
Most of us see ourselves as decent people. We wouldn't think of hanging up on another human being pleading with us for help - especially if that's our job.
But how many ways in our daily lives do we avert our eyes and close our minds, to suffering and injustice, perhaps quietly muttering under our breaths "ain't nobody got time for this?"
Americans are generous people. But busy people. Isolated people. People who can withdraw cash at the bank, pick up a prescription and get dinner all in the comfort of our air-conditioned cars, without engaging in a single bit of conversation with a fellow human being.
We read less literature than we used to. Many of us no longer take a newspaper to learn about our local community or introduce us to different perspectives. Cable news is mostly an ideological pep rally.
Some studies have suggested a decline in empathy among Americans, especially young people. And income inequality only exacerbates the problem: research has shown that attaining higher socioeconomic status diminishes empathy, apparently because the rich have less need to cooperate with and rely on others.
Empathy, which generally means the ability to respond or understand other people's emotions, is a buzzword in education circles these days, as schools focus more on character and effective methods to combat bullying.
Even "Sesame Street" is introducing kids to the concept: actor Mark Ruffalo recently explained empathy on one episode.
But the educational nonprofit Sesame Workshop found something interesting when it surveyed some 2,000 parents and 500 teachers about empathy. A large share of teachers (86 percent) and parents (70 percent) admitted to often worrying that the world is an unkind place for children, NPR reported this week. And both groups overwhelming felt that being kind was more important than high academic achievement.
But parents seemed to associate the word "kind" more with being polite than with being helpful or thoughtful. And 58 percent chose manners as more important while only 41 percent found empathy more important.
I'm not saying we're raising a generation of kids who would do what the 911 operator is accused of doing.
But we model behavior. I was reminded of this recently when I rolled down my window for an especially desperate and haggard-looking panhandler to give him a few dollars. One of my daughters gasped in disapproval. She'd seen me pass by folks like him too many times, and I'd taught her to ignore this man as well.
It led to some soul-searching.
Of course, our hearts can't bleed for everyone. The people who try to are sure to end up with a bad case of compassion fatigue - the kind that counselors and pastors and certain newspaper columnists know well.
But we should fight the temptation to cordon off our tired souls from all that's foreign, and difficult, and confusing. We should make more small talk at the grocery store, and, even if we really don't have spare change, at least make eye contact with the guy asking for it.
And, when we read stories like Crenshanda Williams', we should keep an eye out for stories like that of Nick Latiolais, so beautifully told by the Chronicle's Lauren Caruba in her series "55 Minutes," which recounts the mass shooting in the Memorial area in May.
Latiolais, a Boy Scout and lifeguard, was driving by when he saw a man lying at the end of a driveway, screaming for help. He stopped to render aid when no one else would. The man, a waiter named Artur, had been shot in the leg. The 17-year-old stranger applied pressure until the ambulance arrived.
He acted with empathy. When a neighbor needed help, he had the time, and the courage, and the heart.
He's an example for us all.
Breaking into intermittent sobs in a Houston federal courtroom, a Katy couple admitted Wednesday they kept a Nigerian woman enslaved in their home for two years while she worked as their maid and nanny.
Chudy and Sandra Nsobundu pleaded guilty to one count each, just days before jury selection was set to begin.
"What has got to be emphasized is we're here not only to punish people but to rescue the victims," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ruben R. Perez, who heads the human trafficking unit for the Southern District of Texas.
"This couple enslaved this nanny for over two years and for two years this nanny did not get paid a single cent for her work," he said. "She thought that 20,000 Nigerian nairas - the equivalent of $100 - was going to be deposited in her account per month, but she didn't even get that."
The couple admitted they kept the nanny's passport and threatened harm if she did not cook, clean and tend to their five children. The victim told investigators she was forced to sleep on the floor, bathe in cold water, eat leftovers and work nearly 20-hour shifts seven days a week from September 2013 to October 2015.
After hearing more than an hour of barely audible and tearful testimony from the couple, Senior U.S. District Judge Nancy F. Atlas said she believed the defendants knowingly intended to commit the acts and that they understood they were forgoing their rights to a jury trial and appeals.
Perez, who prosecuted the case along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie N. Searle, said the victim - who falls under protected status in the United States under an act of Congress - came from abject poverty, did not speak English and had minimal education. She remains in the country but was not present in court.
Can keep their home
The husband and wife, naturalized U.S. citizens who remain free on bail, each pleaded guilty to the steepest individual federal charge against them, though prosecutors said dismissed counts would not have impacted the length of their sentences.
Chudy Nsobundu, 57, pleaded guilty to visa fraud, admitting he fraudulently submitted an online application for a tourist visa by pretending to be the nanny. He stated falsely on the application that the woman was married, was his sister, was 20 years older than she really was, and that she would be traveling to the United States for her niece's graduation.
Sandra Nsobundu, 49, pleaded guilty to unlawfully withholding the woman's passport.
In exchange for their pleas, the couple will not have to forfeit their home in Cinco Ranch. The government, however, has asked that they pay their former employee $129,000, to comply with federal labor laws.
The judge set sentencing for Jan. 4.
According to the plea agreements, Sandra Nsobundu accompanied the woman, known only as A.E. in court documents, to the U.S. Consulate in Lagos in September 2013 to obtain her visa and presented a letter falsely stating A.E. was her husband's sister and was married to the couple's driver in Nigeria.
'The idiot'
The Nsobundus covered her travel expenses to Houston, but as soon as she stepped into their vehicle on Sept. 29, 2013, Sandra obtained control of the nanny's Nigerian passport and other personal belongings and would not relinquish them.
The rules would be strict, the nanny learned, preventing her from making friends and getting assistance, according to the plea agreements.
She would work seven days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. She could not take breaks, sit down or watch TV. She could not use the telephone, see a doctor for a poorly healed arm, attend church regularly or walk beyond the immediate neighborhood with the young children.
She was forced to sleep on the floor in the children's bedroom, in the space between their beds. If she wanted milk for her tea, it had to be drained from the children's cereal bowls.
The defendants also subjected her to physical and emotional abuse. They called her "the idiot" and hit and slapped her in the neck, arms and back on a weekly basis until the situation came to the attention of federal investigators, with the help of a concerned neighbor who was fluent in Igbo.
The tip to National Human Trafficking Resource Center on Oct. 10, 2015, set the government's case in motion.
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The business card for Michael Shawn Kelly, a landscape architect who wants to represent the deep-red suburbs of far north Harris County in the Texas House, touts his conservative values and quotes the late Republican politician Jack Kemp.
The card, however, makes no mention of party affiliation. That is because Kelly is the Democratic nominee for the District 150 seat, one the GOP has held for decades.
With that scarlet D next to his name on the ballot, Kelly faces long odds in trying to defeat Valoree Swanson, who toppled state Rep. Debbie Riddle in the Republican primary by attacking the conservative lawmaker as insufficiently principled.
For Kelly to score the upset Nov. 8, the first-time candidate must find a way to cultivate voters that moves beyond party labels.
"It's tough for people to jump the fence," he said. "A lot of our advertising is about giving Republicans permission to vote for a Democrat."
The district, which sprawls over Tomball, Spring and the Harris County portion of The Woodlands, is politically predictable. In winning seven general elections, Riddle dispatched every Democratic challenger by at least 30 percentage points.
More Information Meet the candidates Michael Shawn Kelly Age: 60 Party: Democrat Occupation: landscape architect Campaign website: campaigntexas.com Valoree Swanson Age: 59 Party: Republican Occupation: Conservative activist Campaign website: valoreeswanson.com See More Collapse
Yet, Kelly, 60, believes he can defeat Swanson, 59, a conservative activist, by persuading a primarily Republican electorate that he can represent it with an independent voice. His strategy is to avoid hot-button social issues while hammering on education spending. He criticizes Republican lawmakers for not giving public schools the tools they need.
"The goal shouldn't be how to spend less money," Kelly said. "We should be asking, 'How educated do we want these kids to be?' Let's put a price tag on it and then ask people if it's worth it."
One convert is Diane Schumacher, a retired manufacturing executive and lawyer who said she votes "99.9 percent of the time" for Republicans.
"It was an easy decision because he is focused on the right things," she said. In the district, "people are really looking at him as an individual because his opponent is so far to the right."
Riddle said she also is inclined to vote for Kelly even though she never has voted for a Democrat. One reason is his willingness to fight for House members' ability to keep subsidized housing projects at bay in their districts. State senators gave up a similar power in 2013.
'Genuine conservative'
The other is Swanson's criticism of state House Speaker Joe Straus, an establishment-style Republican - a stance Riddle said will prevent Swanson from getting the leader's help on critical issues for the district.
"I want someone who will fight fiercely for our district, not just be a partisan," Riddle said.
Swanson said Riddle was wrong in her criticism, saying she would work to maintain authority over subsidized housing and indicated she would support Straus if he was not opposed for Speaker.
Swanson said she will work to expand school choice and to prohibit state courts from basing decisions on foreign legal codes. She refers to Kelly as a liberal Democrat and reminds voters at every turn that she is a "genuine, authentic conservative."
"This is a conservative district, and I'm the only conservative in the race," Swanson said. The House seat is likely to remain in Republican hands, considering two of every three voters in the district cast straight-ticket ballots, said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University.
The race "highlights the importance of the party label in Texas," Jones said. "It may be that Kelly is closer than Swanson to the median voter in District 150. But it's likely to hurt him to have 'Democrat' next to his name because of the association with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Wendy Davis."
Donald Trump's inability to unify the GOP means "this might be the year" that voters spurn straight-ticket ballots, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. "But this might not be the district."
'People need a lift'
Kelly dismissed the idea that he is a liberal posing as a moderate for votes. As a student at Texas A&M University, he read the National Review. He voted for Ronald Reagan and in GOP primaries. And he volunteered at a nonprofit crisis pregnancy center that offered parenting classes, free diapers and other support to make it easier for pregnant women to carry to term.
"I didn't change," Kelly said. Before deciding to run for office, "I looked at the issues, and I saw that the party I identified with wasn't the same party. Jack Kemp wouldn't be allowed in the Republican Party now."
A congressman and housing secretary, Kemp preached the gospel of economic opportunity and upward mobility that Kelly said has disappeared from the GOP in recent years. "There needs to be an acknowledgment that some people need a lift," he said.
For Harris County Democratic leaders, any misgivings they may have had about Kelly faded in a burst of pragmatism.
After talking to Kelly for the first time, "I came away with the sense that he is a disillusioned Republican who genuinely wants the government to work for the taxpayer," said Lane Lewis, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party. "He is a good candidate and alternative in that district. Debbie Riddle is pretty far right, and the woman who beat her is far, far right."
Despite the Democrats' support, Kelly has not asked for their help. He said the party's mailer listing its nominees and positions, such as favoring abortion rights and a $15 minimum wage, is an anvil pulling him down.
"There is no playbook for how to do this," but the Democrats "can't just get out the vote" to win in this district, he said. "You have to get the crossover."
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story said Swanson said she would vote for Rep. Joe Straus as speaker of the House, but did not include her caveat that she did not expect him to face a challenge.
INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana's chief elections official said Tuesday that thousands of voter registrations were altered, raising concerns about possible fraud and prompting her office to warn voters to check whether their information is correct online and vote early to avoid problems on Election Day.
Secretary of State Connie Lawson said that Indiana's online voter registration database had not been hacked but records were changed on paper forms, online and at Bureau of Motor Vehicles offices.
"At this time, my office is not sure why these records were changed, but we have evaluated the Statewide Voter Registration System and have found no indication it has been compromised," said Lawson, a Republican.
The Indiana incident comes amid scrutiny of voting systems ahead of the general election on Nov. 8. The Department of Homeland Security has warned states of attempts to hack election systems and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly said at rallies that the election could be rigged, without providing any evidence.
The Indiana voter registration problem surfaced when voters contacted the Secretary of State's office after discovering through the online system voters can use to check their registration status that their dates of birth or first names were incorrect, the office said. That prompted the office to run a report in the statewide system and it found that thousands of registrations had been altered. The office declined to provide a more precise number.
All of those who contacted the office after discovering changes had voted in Indiana's May primary, Lawson's office said.
The information collected on the altered registrations has been turned over to Indiana State Police, which already was conducting a separate investigation of possible voter registration fraud in 56 counties.
That investigation focuses on Washington, D.C.-based voter mobilization group, Patriot Majority USA, which denies any wrongdoing.
State Police are investigating whether some voter registrations applications submitted by the group were forged, or other possible fraud. State Police spokesman Capt. Dave Bursten has said investigators found "a number of applications" with signatures apparently written in the same person's handwriting.
AUSTIN - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump - hurt by weeks of self-inflicted wounds, public feuds with party brass, lagging support nationally - is statistically tied with Democrat Hillary Clinton in bright-red Texas just days before early voting begins, according to three polls released in the last week.
In a survey released Tuesday by the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs, Trump holds a 3-percentage-point lead over Clinton, 41 percent to 38 percent, among registered voters in the Lone Star State.
That narrow lead falls within the survey's margin of error of plus- or minus 3 percent, meaning the race is a statistical dead heat. Trump's lead rose to 4 percent among voters who said they were certain to vote on or before Election Day.
"The national gains Hillary Clinton has made in the last two weeks are evident in Texas, where she has closed within three points of Donald Trump," said Richard Murray, political science professor and director of the Hobby School's Survey Research Institute. "With such a close margin, the key question will be which candidate can actually get their supporters to the polls over the next three weeks."
Texas, reliably red for more than a generation, had been assumed to be in the Republican win column, even before Trump claimed the GOP nomination. Despite Clinton's history of support in the state - she outpolled Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary - her campaign never has outwardly suggested Texas could be in play in November. As the race appears to have tightened, however, her camp opened additional offices around Texas and announced a last-minute ad buy in the state's largest metropolitan areas.
Several polls conducted since the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 put Trump's lead in the high single-digits, but a few more recent surveys show his advantage shrinking. In particular, an Oct. 13 poll from WFAA-TV, a Dallas station, gave Trump a 4-point edge on Clinton, 47 percent to 43 percent, which, like the UH poll, put the GOP nominee within the margin of error.
'Trump's bad week'
Also released Tuesday, a Washington Post/SurveyMonkey poll - which was conducted online and had thousands of respondents - showed Clinton trailing Trump by 2 points in Texas, 44 percent to 42 percent.
Republican Mitt Romney bested President Barack Obama in Texas by nearly 16 points in 2012.
The seemingly close race in Texas likely is attributable to weeks of critical news coverage about Trump's businesses and a bevy of sexual assault allegations against him, said UH political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus.
"I think it makes sense. On the heels of Trump's bad week - maybe the worst of any presidential candidate in history - his support is lagging," Rottinghaus said. "Democrats need Latinos to vote in bigger numbers and for suburban women to break for the Democratic Party, and that seems to be happening in 2016, potentially in a way that hasn't happened before."
Ed Espinoza, the executive director of liberal media firm Progress Texas, said he sees some merit in the polls after several of them in recent weeks consistently showed the Lone Star State contest tightening.
"Once we saw that fourth poll, we thought, this is a trend going in the right direction," Espinoza said. "We have a good candidate, a better landscape and we have a Republican Party of Texas that is so out of touch with the average Texan."
Noting that Texas' size and regional differences make accurate polling difficult, Espinoza said Democrats and their allies have to focus on increasing turnout in key urban counties if they are going to prove the trend correct.
"If they're able to get those counties that are voting at 21 percent up to 31 percent (turnout), then you're going to notice a difference," he said. "It's still an understandably challenging landscape, but the fact that the ground is softening speaks volumes about the progress Democrats have made this year."
Last-minute efforts
While the margin between Trump and Clinton is narrowing, polls of registered voters conducted with fewer than 20 days until Election Day are unreliable, said GOP consultant Matt Mackowiak.
"Trump is hemorrhaging Republicans and college-educated white women. But the GOP ground game advantage in Texas is significant, since the Democrats here couldn't pull off a one-car funeral," he said. "But I'm sure they are encouraged right now."
It also remains unclear, he said, whether Democrats can activate a field organization to compete with Republicans' efforts by Election Day, even if Trump does not enjoy as comfortable a margin in Texas as previous GOP White House hopefuls did. Mackowiak cited the Clinton campaign's one-week TV ad buy and the recent opening of a Democratic field office in Houston as examples of a last-minute dash by national Democrats.
"I'm not sure they have planted enough seeds so that they can take advantage of this circumstance," he said. "If they haven't put in the field effort, if they haven't done the fundraising, you can't take full advantage. They're throwing it all together."
The UH poll included telephone interviews with 1,000 registered voters conducted between Oct. 7-15.
Among independent voters in Texas, Clinton dominates Trump, 30 percent to 14 percent.
The GOP candidate, however, won the support of a plurality of male respondents, 44 percent to Clinton's 35 percent. Meanwhile, women in the poll supported Clinton by a 4-point margin, 42 percent to 38 percent.
Over the past year, the nation has watched a tragedy unfold in Flint, Mich., where the drinking water was severely contaminated by lead. As kids returned to school last month, it's important to know that lead in drinking water is also a major problem in schools across the country, including right here in the state of Texas.
Lead exposure, especially for children, can cause very serious health problems, including decreased bone and muscle growth, damage to the nervous system and kidneys, and developmental delays. In adults, lead exposure can cause kidney failure and high blood pressure.
Lead exposure from drinking water is not a new issue. Historically, lead was used in water mains, service lines and plumbing fixtures, including in schools built before 1986. Over time, the lead leaches out of the pipes and fixtures and into the water coming out of the taps. Thirty years ago Congress banned the installation of lead pipes after research showed how exposure to lead can be dangerous, especially for children and pregnant women.
The EPA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree that there is no known safe level of lead in a child's blood, but water utilities are only required to take action when lead in drinking water is 15 parts per billion in 10 percent of test results.
Lead poisoning is irreversible. But is also preventable. If there is any place we should be preventing lead exposure, it should be in the place where our kids spend most of their time. Yet many school districts across the country have now confirmed lead contamination in schools' drinking water.
In Texas, there are more than 1,200 school districts with a student population over 5.1 million students, many of whom may be affected by lead in the water. As recently as July, 28 out of 116 schools tested were found to have some unsafe lead levels.
Some school districts are taking action to get lead out of drinking water. Fort Worth ISD began testing drinking water at its 140 schools in June and posted the results online. They are now working to replace hundreds of drinking fountains that are over 30 years old, eliminating some risk of lead contamination. In Houston and Dallas, all schools will be tested for lead by the end of the year.
All Texas schools should regularly and properly test their water for lead. Schools should post test results online in a timely manner, so parents know immediately if their kids are at risk. Schools should be up front with parents, letting them know that there is actually no safe level of lead in water - even if test results are below levels where mandatory action is triggered. Ripping out lead pipes and replacing fixtures is the ultimate solution, but in the meantime, schools need to ensure that kids have safe drinking water right away by installing filters on drinking fountains and/or providing bottled water.
Testing and replacing lead pipes and fixtures will cost money and the federal government should provide assistance to our schools. Fortunately, Congress is working to do just that. The Senate version of the Water Resources Development Act would distribute $4.8 billion in funding for national water infrastructure management, including a $220 million aid package to address the Flint, Mich. crisis, a grant program offering $300 million over five years for the replacement of lead pipes and a new $20 million federal grant program for schools choosing to test for lead. Congress should quickly approve this funding and the Texas Legislature should match it with state funds next spring.
Children spend a significant portion of their young lives at school. We owe it to them to keep them safe from toxic chemicals that may impede their learning and harm their health.
Johnson represents Dallas's 30th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Metzger is director of Environment Texas.
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United States Representative, District 2: Ted Poe
Consider this not just an endorsement for Ted Poe, but also heartfelt support as the six-term congressman recovers from treatment for leukemia. A former criminal district judge known for his creative sentences and shaming tactics, Poe has cut a niche for himself as a dedicated public servant who is leading the fight against sex trafficking and who listens to the constituents of his sprawling district, which spirals around from Atascocita through west Harris County, northwest Houston, Montrose and Southampton.
During his phone interview with the Houston Chronicle editorial board, we were particularly impressed by Poe's blunt critique of plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
He instead called for more manned patrols of the Rio Grande and the use of observation blimps.
Poe's Democratic challenger, Pat Bryan, is a retired engineer with no prior political experience.
United States Representative, District 7: James Cargas
John Culberson didn't receive our endorsement in the contested Republican primary, and we don't plan on changing our minds for the general election. But this showdown will be Democrat James Cargas' third attempt to replace the eight-term Republican congressman, and, frankly, it is starting to get a bit repetitive.
Meeting with the editorial board, Cargas, an energy attorney who works at City Hall, critiqued Culberson for failing to adequately advocate on behalf of the wealthy west Houston district, which stretches from West University through the Galleria to the Energy Corridor then north to Jersey Village. Throughout this election cycle, Culberson has faced criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike for being more of a busybody who panders to the tea party than a true representative. However, after two failed runs, Cargas' passion has grown listless, especially when placed next to Culberson's machine-gun staccato during their editorial board meeting.
If this is how a political challenger feels after trying to run in a gerrymandered system, we can only imagine its effects on voters.
United States Representative, District 9: Al Green
If you're worried about flooding in Houston, then Al Green is your man in Washington. Over the past year, he's been working with his fellow Democrats, and across the aisle with Republicans, to push a bill that would prioritize federal spending on Houston's bayous. Now in his six-term, Green has inserted similar language into the must-pass Water Resources Development Act of 2016. Don't expect any of this to make major headlines, but if it ends up in the final bill, it will save homes and lives in our swampy city. Green's goal-oriented, dedicated attitude deserves praise - and re-election - from voters.
The former justice of the peace represents a district that follows Beltway 8 from south Houston through Missouri City, Stafford and Mission Bend. His Republican challenger, Jeff Martin, did not meet with the editorial board.
More for you U.S. Congress, part 2
United States Representative,District 10: Michael T. McCaul
Over his six terms in Congress, Michael T. McCaul has distinguished himself as a steely and smart leader on foreign policy. As chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, the former federal prosecutor is on path to become the Republican face of international relations and national security. His sprawling district, which extends between Houston and Austin suburbs, grants him a certain luxury of being able to focus on these national and international issues.
Back on American shores, however, McCaul has aligned himself with a presidential candidate who continues to flatter Russia's aspiring despot and relishes in Wikileaks' 21st century Watergate break-in. In fact, McCaul was the only contested representative in Houston who attended the Republican National Convention, according to the Texas Tribune. No doubt that the second wealthiest man in Congress has his eye on higher ambitions. His name has been floated as a challenger to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. He would also be a natural fit for Director of National Intelligence - we'd just prefer it be in a Clinton administration.
McCaul's Democratic challenger, Tawana W. Cadien, is a registered nurse who ran for this position in 2012.
*Editors note: This is one in a series of profiles submitted by candidates for local offices.
I am a Texas County native, born and raised in Cabool, where I attended school and graduated in 1971.
I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1972 and graduated from the Naval School of Health Sciences in San Diego, Calif., as a hospital corpsman. I served as a staff corpsman in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at the Naval Regional Medical Center at San Diego. I attended and graduated from Field Corpsman School at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and was assigned to the First Marine Division until my discharge from active duty in May 1976. I received an honorable discharge in February 1978 having served two years in the ready reserve program. I obtained my California Emergency Medical Technician license while stationed at Camp Pendleton.
I returned to Cabool in May 1976 and started as an EMT at Texas County Memorial Hospital in June 1976. I attended the first hospital based paramedic training class in the Missouri and became a paramedic in 1981 and held that position for 20 years. I also worked as a surgical technician at Texas County Memorial Hospital until January 2005.
In 1992, I attended and graduated from the Missouri State Highway Patrol Law Enforcement Training Academy in Jefferson City. I worked as a reserve deputy for Texas County until 2008. I worked as the attendance officer for the Southern Texas County Safe Schools/Healthy Students program at Cabool Schools in 2005 and remained there during the duration of the grant.
I was a member of the Cabool Volunteer Fire Department for more than 20 years and served as fire marshal and assistant chief. I am Firefighter I and Firefighter II certified.
I am currently a member of the City of Cabool Board of Adjustments and have been on the board since its inception.
I have 20 years experience as a Medico-Legal Death Investigator. I am a 20-year member of the Missouri Coroners and Medical Examiners Association. I am a past president of the association and a current board member as the Troop G Coroners Director.
I have been married to Dala Brill Whittaker for 42 years. We have two children, Scott and Sarah, and two grandchildren, Grayson Jones and Josie Whittaker.
I am a lifelong member of the Cabool First United Methodist Church.
Not all of the 55 trees planted in Emmett Kelly Park survived following a joint operation between the City of Houston and Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) in 2012.
But the MDC has now purchased replacements for the five that died for various reasons, and three of them will be in the ground this week, weather permitting (a Shumard oak, a bald cypress and a London planetree), while two more will be planted in November (both redbuds).
The project four years ago was made possible by MDCs help in Houstons acquisition of about $7,000 through a TRIM grant (Tree Resource Improvement and Maintenance). It was designed to upgrade the parks landscaping by removing about 26 trees that that were either dying of old age or had sustained wind or lightning damage, while placing many more in areas void of shade.
MDC resource forester Travis Mills was instrumental in the project, and is not surprisingly a big proponent of trees. He and his Houston-based crew manage tens of thousands of acres of forested land in Texas County.
Mills said he would like to see citizens in incorporated Texas County communities get involved in an Arbor Day Foundation program called Tree City USA, which is billed as a nationwide movement that provides the framework necessary for communities to manage and expand their public trees. The program is designed to guide towns and citizens toward improving tree management in terms of growth, care and maintenance.
Im not sure a lot of people are aware of all the good things trees provide, said City of Houston public grounds supervisor Joe Kirkman. And its a renewable resource.
Getting a Tree City USA program started requires the formation of a tree board comprised of at least two individuals, and the adoption of a city ordinance.
That lines out a plan, Mills said, or provides protocol and standard operating procedures.
Another requirement of Tree City USA status is staging some sort of annual Arbor Day event.
And that wouldnt necessarily have to be on its own, Mills said. It could be correlated with something else.
Lastly, at least $2 per capita must be spent on urban forestry.
But the city can do that by what they do already, Mills said. Labor can be counted, and lots of other things. Basically, meeting the requirements is what every community should already be doing with trees anyway.
Mills said he would be glad to help anyone interested in beginning a Tree City USA effort in Texas County.
Id love to see some people get excited about this, Mills said. I cant do it single-handedly, but urban forestry as well as rural is part of our mission, and we will advise people to the best of our ability.
Mills said that since Houston is the countys business hub and county seat, he would like to see the town take a lead role with regard to Tree City USA.
But Id like to see the other towns in the county get involved, too, Mills said, and well help anyone whos interested get started. It sounds daunting and overwhelming, but its really not. It can be done, and its a good idea to have parameters.
The positive effects trees have on a community is well documented and wide-ranging they improve an areas ground water-retention, increase shade, add beauty and more. Industry is even attracted to communities with good urban forestry practices, Mills said, and a given tracts property value is significantly higher if trees are present.
Kirkman said education is needed with regard to trees, and the foundations program would help promote that.
Like Joe, I dont think a lot of people are aware of how much trees bring to their lives, Mills said. Because this program has to do with trees, it affects a lot of people, and I really believe this would be something really good for Houston and other towns in this county.
And think about it: We live in place with rivers are named after trees and where a community is nicknamed Timber Town. Trees are important everywhere, but theyre also a big part of this areas history and heritage.
Mills can be reached by phone at 417-967-3385.
I dont think a lot of people are aware of how much trees bring to their lives.
MDC RESOURCE FORESTER TRAVIS MILLS
According to 2015 Arbor Day Foundation statistics, 88 Missouri communities had earned Tree City USA status, including the states biggest city, Kansas City, and tiny towns like Augusta (population 225). Ohio was listed as having the most Tree City USA communities, with 247, and at 37 years and counting, Mexico was Missouris longest running Tree City USA community as of last year. Nationwide, there were close to 3,500 Tree City USA communities, including New York City and Chicago. For more information, log onto www.arborday.org/programs/treeCityUSA/index.cfm.
Tree City USA Missouri
Tree City USA national
Tree City USA summary
Four years after a strange campaign kept one Missouri Senate seat in Democratic hands, the party is hoping to capitalize on anti-incumbent sentiment and claim the other.
If 35-year-old Secretary of State Jason Kander upsets Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, it would be a coup for Democrats in a state where Republicans dominate the Legislature and havent lost a presidential race for two decades. Recent polls show Blunt, 66, a longtime member of Congress, with a slim lead, but its well within the polling margin of error, making the contest a virtual toss-up.
With Senate control potentially hanging in the balance, a Missouri campaign is a major national focus for the second time in four years.
In 2012, Sen. Claire McCaskill once considered one of the chambers most vulnerable Democratic incumbents easily won re-election after Republican challenger Todd Akin commented on a St. Louis TV talk show that womens bodies have ways of avoiding pregnancy from what he called legitimate rape.
The Blunt-Kander race wasnt always expected to be so close, but University of Missouri-St. Louis political science professor David Kimball said Kander has benefited from voters anti-Washington sentiment.
I think perhaps theres some anger in the general population with politics as usual and with people perceived as being veteran, career politicians, and for them, someone like Kander may look more appealing than Sen. Blunt, Kimball said.
Even now, both sides are playing it reasonably safe on the campaign trail, sticking to the same talking points theyve been hammering home for months.
Blunt, who served seven terms in the House before election to the Senate in 2010, focuses on the need to bring more and better-paying jobs to Missouri, making the nation safer, and reducing regulations.
Kander highlights his background as an Army intelligence officer in Iraq, and the need for a new generation of leadership in Washington.
Both sides are spending millions of dollars on TV ads, bolstered by millions more from their national senatorial committees as well as political action committees and other outside groups. Attack ads often try to tie the candidates to the tops of their tickets Blunt to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, and Kander to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Its a connection both men tend to shy away from. Both skipped their parties national convention this summer.
Clinton is rarely mentioned in Kander campaign appearances. Normally congenial with reporters, Blunt bristled Thursday following a campaign appearance in suburban St. Louis when asked once again if he continues to back Trump.
Asked and answered like 10 times in the last week and the answers still the same, Blunt said. As long as the choice is Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton will not change the Obamacare disaster, the out of control regulators, or our terrible foreign policy. I think with a Republican Congress that he (Trump) may be able to do that.
The two candidates have debated just once, along with three lesser-known candidates at a forum on Sept. 30 in Branson. Kander spokeswoman Anne Feldman said Kander has agreed to three additional debates hosted by broadcast outlets in St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield, but Blunt has refused.
Blunt spokesman Tate OConnor said the campaign continues to look for the best opportunities to talk with Missourians about the real issues that matter.
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The general election campaign for Missouri governor has featured attack ads and face-to-face accusations at a debate in Branson. It turns out in most of the claims, theres some truth and some hyperbole.
Republican Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL officer, and two-term Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster are engaged in a campaign to replace Democrat Jay Nixon, who is prohibited by term limits from seeking a third term.
Here is a fact-check on some of the claims in the campaign:
Greitens: Koster, as a state senator, voted against a bill to provide funding for medical exams for sexual-assault victims.
The facts: True, but with a major caveat.
Koster was one of four senators who voted against Senate Bill 583 on May 17, 2007. It passed anyway.
One section provides for state funding to pay for rape kits, meaning sexual-assault victims no longer had to pay for their own examinations.
But the bill contains nearly two dozen provisions on a variety of issues. One section offers the possibility of early parole for inmates incarcerated for killing a spouse or domestic partner and sentenced to at least 50 years without parole.
Among the criteria for parole after serving 15 years: evidence the convicted person suffered domestic violence that was not presented at trial.
Koster said at the debate he voted against the bill because that section could have freed convicted killers on manufactured evidence.
Koster: Greitens has profited substantially from his charitable organization, The Mission Continues. A Koster ad says Greitens used the charity to pay himself over $700,000 in salary and bonuses.
The facts: True, but the salary was not considered out of line by at least two charity watchdog groups.
Federal tax records show Greitens initially took no salary in 2007 and 2008 from the charity that helps veterans transition to life at home through volunteer work.
After receiving a grant, Greitens was paid a total of $150,000 from mid-2009 through 2010. As contributions increased, his salary was raised to $175,000 in 2011, and he received a $25,000 bonus that year. His salary remained at that level the next two years. He resigned as CEO in 2014 as his gubernatorial campaign began.
Charity Navigator said Greitens salary was higher than the $131,000 median compensation for chief executives of 237 medium-sized charities in the Midwest but not egregiously so.
Daniel Borochoff of CharityWatch said given Greitens credentials, including his doctorate degree in politics from Oxford University, his salary seemed within a reasonable range.
Greitens: The New York Times cited Koster as one of Americas most corrupt attorneys general.
The facts: An October 2014 Times article did not call Koster corrupt; however, the story about undue influence of lobbyists on state attorneys general focused heavily on Koster, raising the question of whether his office backed off investigations of companies after accepting gifts and campaign donations. The article specifically cited investigations of 5-Hour Energy, Pfizer and AT&T.
Koster has denied impropriety. Campaign spokesman David Turner said 45 other states also did not move forward with legal action against 5-Hour Energy, and one that did, Oregon, lost its case recently.
Turner said Koster has sued Pfizer several times and won a $22 million settlement in 2009 as part of a nationwide Medicaid fraud case. Missouri also was part of a 50-state settlement with AT&T in 2014.
A month after the Times article, Kosters gubernatorial campaign adopted a policy of not accepting gifts from lobbyists or contributions from anyone involved in litigation with the attorney generals office.
Turner said the campaign has refunded or returned more than $115,000 since the policy was implemented.
Nanci Gonder, a spokeswoman for the attorney generals office, said there is an intentional separation between the office and any candidate committee, so that decisions are not inappropriately influenced.
Greitens: At a debate Sept. 30 in Branson and in ads, Greitens has accused Koster of spending $3.2 million to redecorate his office.
The facts: The allegation is misleading.
In 2013, lawmakers approved Kosters request to use money recovered from consumer-fraud cases to pay most of a $3.2 million renovation of an office that houses staff for the attorney general. Koster works in a different building.
The work included replacing a ceiling, replacing carpet, improving the heating and cooling system, and addressing potential health concerns.
We tore asbestos out of a building that was seeping water through the mold and had no windows, Koster said at the debate.
Some critics at the time questioned whether it was a wise use of money when the state was considering cuts to higher education.
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The students gather around in anticipation of what they are going to see, and eventually feel. After a brief countdown, the instructor pulls the trigger. There is a distinct pop and, in less time than it takes to blink, the buzzing sound of electricity fills the void.
Being tased is a requirement for every student as part of the Department of Defense Inter-service Nonlethal Individual Weapons Instructor Course. According to Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeff Mueller, course chief, its the part students anticipate and dread the most.
They know its coming, so their anxiety level is through the roof, he said. The students are sprayed with pepper spray (oleoresin capsicum) on day three and are tased on day four of the 10-day course, Mueller said. If they can get through to the first Friday, they are good, he said.
This was not the first time being tased for Staff Sgt. Maria Gonzalez, a National Guard internment/resettlement specialist with 606th Military Police Company, El Paso, Texas.
Last time I was tased was four years ago, so it humbles you, she said. Its always good to have that refresher, so you dont lose that instructor aspect of it.
The course covers a lot in the short time they are on Fort Leonard Wood, Mueller said, including five academic and seven practical application evaluations on topics ranging from interpersonal communication skills to mechanical advantage control holds to non-lethal weapons.
Non-lethal weapons is a monster, Mueller said. It can be the baton you have, to the OC spray, your heavy devices which is the taser, all the way up to, last but not least, your munitions.
The course is open to all services, including civilian agencies and international students, and is not limited to just military police.
A lot of military police get the quotas, but it is open to anyone, because anybody can be tasked with doing a crowd control formation, Mueller said.
Mueller added the course is good for National Guard Soldiers who often respond to civil disturbances, such as the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland.
Marine Cpl. Mark McNulty, traffic investigator assigned to the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, said this was a course he has wanted to attend for a while.
I thought it would be good to go into other countries and be able to train them, but now that I am in the course, I see the benefits of where I can take this into a PMO (provost marshal office) setting and apply that non-lethal training to train my Marines, he said. Hopefully, I can give them information that can save their lives or somebody elses.
Thats one of the best things, Mueller said, to know that we are the instructor trainers. It is great to say I am one of seven people in the entire Department of Defense to make these people into instructors. Making non-lethal weapons instructors is only part of what Mueller said this course is about.
The end state of this course is to go back, and first and foremost, to be an adviser to their command on all things non-lethal, he said. Commanders will have to make the on-the-ground decisions, and they need to be able to look to someone who can speak intelligently and comfortably to it.
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ety per cent of employees decide whether to stay with a company within the first six months of starting a new job, according to research from Bersin by Deloitte Whats the key to getting a new employee up and running, productive and settled into a role?It often comes down to successful onboarding, according to Riges Younan, Avatures vice president APAC.We believe onboarding is a strategic process due to the impact it has on a companys performance by increasing employee engagement and reducing time to productivity, he said.It can have a tremendously positive impact on your employment brand.However, lots of organisations are still struggling with an ad-hoc approach to onboarding, marred by outmoded systems and a lack of consistency and cohesion between departments.With no structured onboarding process, its impossible to manage or even improve the experience, said Younan.Organisations may well be losing a lot of people for subtleties they may not even know about.These subtleties may seem small, but they make a significant impression on someone new to a company.They might include things like a missing laptop on their first day, a cancelled welcome meeting by their hiring manager, or missing out on an invitation to an after-work activity.If employers are not tracking the process, the interactions, or dont have a system that allows them to take the pulse of new hire engagement and happiness, they will never know what happened, at what point, with whom, and so on, said Younan.Its relatively simple really make onboarding easier to manage by structuring the process and importantly make it more human, more employee focused. Its not a big idea, its more common sense, he said.Younan added that its hard to implement common sense when you have 100,000 employees, especially when everything has to be done electronically for compliance and ease.Its very easy to fall into company-focused processes rather than human-orientated approaches, he said.Many organisations have ramped up their efforts in other steps of the recruitment cycle.For example, they are more sophisticated about the way they execute their talent acquisition strategy. If they are doing this right it means the new hire has experienced positive touch points throughout the whole process, from shoulder tap to hire.However, once the first day of work rolls around, it falls apart. Younan calls it a massive let-down or anti-climax when the employer drowns them in a pile of forms to be completed.I think little consideration is given about the way the service is delivered at this very crucial time, he said.In fact, bad service delivery at this stage of the process gives the candidate many opportunities to consider am I making the right decision?Losing candidates at this stage in the process is not only costly financially but has a negative effect on brand, employee perception, and future hiring ability for example, when people turn to Glassdoor to share their experiences, Younan said.
Warning labels briefly appeared on packages of select Halloween costumes in a Regina store on Sunday, warning shoppers of offensive products that promote the sexualization of Indigenous women and peoples.
Please avoid contact with these dangerous materials, they read.
Two groups, the Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism and Colonialism No More, visited the Spirit Halloween store with 60 paper labels. They taped them onto the front of costumes including ones named Reservation Royalty, Native American Princess, and Pocahottie.
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There were more costumes in the store than labels in their hands.
Robyn Pitawanakwat of Colonialism No More explained in a statement that they want all children to enjoy Halloween and not be bombarded by these harmful images, She added theres nothing fun about costumes and accessories based off riffs of cultural stereotypes.
As an Indigenous woman, early childhood educator and mother of three Indigenous children, I know that it is well documented that these types of images are harmful to children and society at large, Pitawanakwat said.
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Label action a public service
In a letter the groups shared with store management, they called the costumes disrespectful after the launch of a long-anticipated national inquiry into Canadas murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.
Each label included a mention of the inquiry, and provided a link where shoppers could find out more information.
As part of a public service, we have marked all the items in your store that rely on racist and stereotyped understandings of Indigenous peoples, the letter reads. It takes everyone in Canada to fight against sexualized violence. That starts with outfits of this nature.
Activists asked the company to immediately stop selling the items.
All the warning labels were removed by the next day.
The groups were motivated to do something after Saskatoon-based activist Zoey Roy called for a boycott of Spirit Halloween stores earlier this month, over its stock of Native American costumes.
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Went into @SpiritHalloween on 51st Street and got escorted out. She compared us to pugs (because pug owners can be offended of pug masks). pic.twitter.com/mEeNRr13aE Zoey Pricelys Roy (@Pricelys1) October 9, 2016
Spirit Halloween has store locations in the U.S. and Canada.
Removed costumes back in store
CBC News reported a Saskatoon store removed the costumes following Roys complaint.
But according to Chris Kortright with Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism, the costumes were soon back on shelves.
One day after they had told the media they had taken down the costumes in Saskatoon, they put the costumes back up, Kortright told The Huffington Post Canada.
The labels follow a recent petition launched by an Ontario woman asking Spirit Halloween to pull its derogatory products depicting Indigenous women and girls. An #IAmNotACostume campaign has also been launched asking Halloween shoppers to be more cognizant of their costume ideas.
We are proud of our costume selection for men, women and children. Lisa Barr, Spirit Halloween spokesperson to CBC News
Spirit Halloween did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment. But the company told CBC News in a statement that while they understand certain sensitivities, they have no intention to pull the costumes.
We always strive to present our costumes in a responsible and respectful manner. While we respect the opinion of those who are opposed to the sale of any cultural or historical costumes, we are proud of our costume selection for men, women and children, spokesperson Lisa Barr told the outlet.
To Kortright, the companys statement is ridiculous.
When the joke is at the expense of already marginalized and dispossessed people, it just furthers a culture that alienates people, he said in an interview.
It hurts people, he said. It actually perpetuates hurt.
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The past two years have been tough for energy companies and resource-dependent economies.
The price of oil has plummeted from about $100 per barrel to around $30, and only recovered to $50 in recent weeks amid news that OPEC would cap production.
An oil price recovery was welcome news for the oil industry, as analysts still expect Canadian production to grow by 28 per cent up to 2030.
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But demand for oil could peak in that time, says a new report from the World Energy Council (WEC). So where does that leave energy-dependent economies like Alberta?
The WEC report, titled "The Grand Transition," outlines three scenarios for the future of energy around the world.
In one scenario, titled "Modern Jazz," energy leaders will find themselves in a market-driven world where resource affordability will be achieved through economic growth.
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Another scenario, "Unfinished Symphony," sees a government-driven approach to sustainability using "strong policy, long-term planning and unified climate action."
A final scenario, "Hard Rock," is characterized by a "fragmented approach driven by desire for energy security in a world with low global cooperation."
Global oil demand is currently estimated at around 97 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Such demand would peak at 103 million barrels per day in the "Modern Jazz" scenario, and at 94 million barrels per day in "Unfinished Symphony." This would largely happen due to new technologies for transport fuel, as well as competition from alternative forms of energy.
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Oil demand would peak later under the "Hard Rock" scenario, reaching about 104 million barrels per day sometime between 2040 and 2050. In this scenario, transport systems would largely operate as they do right now.
You might say the world is set to reach "Peak Oil," though it means something different from what it used to.
This isn't the first report to suggest that demand for oil will level off in the coming decades.
Earlier this year, Bernstein Research released a report that also identified 2030 as the peak year for oil demand, after which the desire for the resource will start dropping.
It said fuel efficiency and alternative energy would sap out demand for the resource.
Bold #oil prediction from Bernstein Research showing demand peaking around 2030-2035. pic.twitter.com/205gBjLDEE Alex McGuire (@AlexMcGuire92) April 25, 2016
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But what would happen to an economy like Alberta's if demand for oil dried up?
The province's economy isn't solely dependent on energy, University of Alberta economist Trevor Tombe noted earlier this year.
In a January op-ed for CBC News, he said that seven per cent of Alberta's workforce is employed in oil, gas and mining. That's less than the eight per cent of Ontario workers employed in finance, insurance and real estate.
Construction, he noted, also employs a significant portion of Alberta's workers.
Agriculture has also shown strength amid the downturn, particularly in the cattle industry, which is thriving despite low beef prices, according to BMO.
Tombe stopped short of saying exactly what should be done. But clearly an economy like Alberta's can't just sit and hope for oil prices to go back to what they were.
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Barack Obama is no stranger to poking fun of his daughters. On Tuesday, the U.S. President joked about Malia and Sashas texting habits while addressing students at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington D.C.
After arriving late, Obama joked around, saying, I know you may have been waiting here a while. Good thing you all had your phones with you.
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He then continued to give a spot-on impression of his teen girls texting.
And then he said Girl, I couldnt believe it, Obama said in a high-pitched voice before showing off his selfie skills.
Watch the full clip below.
The 55-year-old dad then went on to tell students how he didnt have texting back in the day to ask out crushes.
We used to actually have to go up to somebody if we liked them and talk to them, he teased. So that may happen to you someday.
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Obama and his wife Michelle are parents to 18-year-old Malia and 15-year-old Sasha.
Malia recently graduated from high school and is now taking a gap year before attending Harvard University in fall 2017. Her younger sister Sasha is still continuing her studies at Washington, D.C.s Sidwell Friends School.
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A black barista in Australia recently had to deal with a terrible customer.
Josie Ajak, a South-Sudanese woman, is a shift supervisor at Gloria Jean's Coffees in Cairns, Queensland, Buzzfeed reports.
About two weeks ago, when Ajak was working, a white woman came into the coffee shop and told her she "refused to be served by a black person," Ajak told the site.
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[The woman said] 'Get me a white lady,'" Ajak told BuzzFeed. "[I told her] 'thats fine,' with a smile, and she moved aside, waiting for a white person. I told my staff that she is racist and that we wont be serving her, while I continued serving other customers with a smile."
Later that day, Ajak's friend and co-worker Jade Arevalo posted the incident on Facebook.
"To the woman who recently visited Gloria Jeans in Central for coffee and refused to be served by Josie because of the colour of her skin; you're lucky she didn't shit in your pie like that woman did in 'The Help,'" she wrote on Facebook.
"Josie is one of the most kind and friendly people you could meet but irrespective of her character, she did not deserve to be excluded like this."
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The post, which went viral, lead to the hashtag movement #buyacoffeefromjosie encouraging customers to buy a beverage from Ajak to show support.
The coffee shop even put up a #buyacoffeefromjosie banner in the store and made a statement after Ajak's encounter with the customer, saying how grateful they were for Josie's supporters.
"A heroine in this situation was a customer by the name of Stacey who openly supported and stood up for our employee," they wrote on their Facebook page.
"The employees on shift were very young and shocked however refused to serve this customer, showing their maturity and zero tolerance for racism. The customer who displayed this conduct will not be served/tolerated in our store."
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On her own Facebook page, Ajak responded with words of wisdom.
Regardless of which colour, gender, age, size, and shape you are, we are all deserving of love and should be treated accordingly, Ajak wrote.
"To everybody who has ever been refused service because of their skin colour, this is for you. There is absolutely no room for racism anywhere in the world!"
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Canadians often complain that their Netflix library is weaker than the one Americans enjoy.
That may be true when it comes to the sheer volume of titles.
But a new report out of U.S. blog Streaming Observer suggests you can access better content up north.
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Last month, the blog mined the U.S. Netflix catalogue to see how many titles were available from the Internet Movie Database's (IMDb) Top 250 list.
It turned out that only 12 per cent of them were available to American subscribers.
This month, Streaming Observer writer Eric Anthony looked at nine other countries' libraries and found that the U.S. catalogue ranks near the bottom of the list when it comes to movies that appear on the IMDb Top 250.
Netflix Canada has 49 titles from that list, while the U.S. catalogue only has 33. Both of them beat the U.K., which boasts only 28 titles from that list.
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The IMDb Top 250 is a ranking of movie titles by the website's users.
The rankings are subjective, but the list does include classic titles such as "The Godfather," "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Dark Knight."
Netflix Canada boasts all of those titles, and five in the top 10. The U.S. catalogue has only a single title in the IMDb top 10: "Pulp Fiction," which you can also access in Canada.
The Great White North is nowhere near the top of the list for quality content, according to Streaming Observer. That would be Brazil, which has 85 titles on the IMDb top 250. Mexico is second, with 73.
Canada FTW
This is only the latest piece of news that gives Netflix Canada a leg up on its southern cousin.
Earlier this year it added "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" to its catalogue. The U.S. can't have that title due to an agreement with pay channel Starz.
So TAKE THAT, America!
NDP MP Charlie Angus marked the Liberal government's first year in power by blasting its track record on indigenous issues so far.
During Wednesday's question period, the MP for Timmins-James Bay took aim at Justin Trudeau and some of his cabinet members, including Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who Angus criticized for reversing her stance on B.C.'s contentious Site C dam project.
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Wilson-Raybould joined protesters against the dam in 2012, when she was B.C. regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, according to CBC News.
In an interview from four years ago, Wilson-Raybould said the country's reputation was "at stake" depending on the approval of projects such as Site C, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
'Happy anniversary'
"The first promise this prime minister made was to indigenous Canadians and those are the first promises he broke," Angus said.
After Wilson-Raybould became justice minister, she did not speak up against the Liberal government when it approved a crucial permit for the massive project.
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Angus continued to make his point: "Doesn't the prime minister realize that breaking promises to First Nations children is the oldest con in Confederation?
"Happy anniversary."
Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett rose in the House to defend the government's track record, saying it remains committed to renewing its relationship with indigenous Canadians.
She touted the government's launch of a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, as well as the $8.4 billion earmarked in the first Liberal budget for Aborignal issues.
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Foreign buyers have become real players in Toronto and Montreal's housing markets.
But not all of them are snapping up luxury properties, as many have in Vancouver.
Foreign investment in real estate has already likely shifted from Vancouver to Toronto, in light of B.C. introducing a 15 per cent property transfer tax on foreign buyers, TD Economics said in a report from last week.
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Economist Diana Petramala noted that Toronto's sales-to-population ratio has grown significantly in recent months to hit 1.9, up from its average of about 1.6.
This suggests that "foreign investment and speculation are playing a part, albeit likely smaller than in Vancouver," Petramala told BuzzBuzzHome.
That buying has supported continuing strength in the Greater Toronto Area's (GTA) real estate market, which saw home prices climb by 18 per cent year-over-year in September.
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Ontario housing markets remain Canada's tightest, with only one to two months of inventory meaning that if no further homes became available, there would only be one to two months' supply left.
The average housing market across Canada has 4.7 months of inventory.
Montreal is also seeing an influx of foreign buyers, but they're not concentrated in affluent housing, as has been seen in Vancouver.
Chinese buyers are snapping up cheaper Montreal condos as they look to take up residence in the city or find places for their children to live, Royal LePage Quebec senior director Dominic St.-Pierre told CBC News.
But it's nothing like in Vancouver, he added. Only about one per cent of luxury properties, which sell for over $1.5 million, were bought by Chinese last year.
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Most foreign buyers in Montreal come from France or the United States; Chinese only make up about eight per cent and Saudi Arabians represent approximately five per cent.
B.C. implemented a tax on foreign buyers earlier this year after it released data showing that just over three per cent of sales between June 10 and 29 went to purchasers from elsewhere, and most of them were from China.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong said at the time that foreign nationals were also buying homes at "higher values than the average Canadian citizen."
Subsequent research showed that foreign buyers had purchased $1.024 billion worth of B.C. real estate from June 10 to July 14 of this year, representing 7.9 per cent of total money spent in that period.
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Almost three-quarters of the buyers purchased homes in Metro Vancouver.
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Now we know: don't ever eat ghost peppers.
A puree made from one of these peppers one of the hottest in the world led to a near fatal condition in a man from California, according to a recent report in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.
Ghost peppers, also known as Bhut Jolokia peppers and Naga-Bih Jolokia peppers, have a Scoville rating of more than one million (for comparison, common pepper spray measures at two million Scoville units and a jalapeno measures between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville units) and eating a single seed from a ghost pepper can cause severe burning in the mouth that lasts up to 30 minutes, according to the report.
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The ghost pepper, a.k.a. Bhut Jolokia, is one of the world's hottest peppers weighing in at 1,041,427 Scoville Heat Units, making it 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. Legend has it that it's named ghost pepper because if you eat one you either start seeing ghosts or flat out give up the ghost.
The pepper is so dangerous to eat that a man nearly died because of it. The 47-year old, from California, ate a hamburger topped with a ghost pepper puree as part of an eating contest.
Nearly immediately after eating it, the man started vomiting. In fact, he threw up so much that he caused a tear in his esophagus a rare condition known as Boerhaave syndrome. According to stuff.co.nz, this condition has a high mortality rate, and is named after the 18th century physician whose patient died after vomiting up a huge lunch.
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Fortunately for the man, doctors were able to save his life with emergency surgery, where they found the 2.5 cm tear in his esophagus as well as a collapsed lung. He was then placed on a feeding tube and spent 23 days in hospital to recover.
Study author Dr. Ann Arens said spontaneous esophageal rupture is caused by violent vomiting and retching, so, in other words, the man's reaction to the pepper, not the pepper itself, caused the tear.
This condition is fatal in 20 to 40 per cent of all cases, according to the study, even when patients receive treatment. "If [the condition is] left untreated, mortality approaches 100 percent," the study reported.
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Guillermo Del Toro really loves Hamilton, Ont.
The director, who is currently shooting the film "The Shape of Water" in the city, recently tweeted about his love for the local food, shopping and art scene.
"Hamilton is full of promise and surprises: great bookstores, Antique shops, coffee shops, restaurants and art stores. Crimson Peak land," the 52-year-old "Pan's Labyrinth" director tweeted.
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Hamilton is full of promise and surprises: great bookstores, Antique shops, coffee shops, restaurants and art stores. Crimson Peak land. Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 17, 2016
Guillermo Del Toro book signing for 'Guillermo Del Toro: At Home With Monsters' held at LACMA on July 29, 2016 in Los Angeles.
He even ate an amazing Canadian brunch at Cannon Coffee Co.
"Had the best breakfast at Cannon in Ottawa st, Hamilton. The Canadian brunch plate. Best, fluffiest, chewiest fresh-made waffles ever!"
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Had the best breakfast at Cannon in Ottawa st, Hamilton. The Canadian brunch plate. Best, fluffiest, chewiest fresh-made waffles ever! Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 17, 2016
The Canadian brunch is made with waffles, cheddar cheese and, of course, bacon.
A photo posted by Hamilton Foodies (@thishamiltonianeats) on Jul 16, 2016 at 9:00am PDT
The "Pacific Rim" director continued:
I know there's a Seedy side in Hamilton- but you can feel a transformation from the last 5-6 years (we scouted for Pac Rim) to now. Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 17, 2016
Broke for dinner. Had Luscious soup and salad at The Burnt Tongue, here at Hamilton, On. The hammer! Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 18, 2016
Awake and getting ready- filming starts later this afternoon so, meanwhile, I am choosing another interesting culinary spot in Hamilton... Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 18, 2016
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On Tuesday, del Toro ended up at both Southern Smoke Barbecue House on Ottawa Street and Papa Leo's Restaurant for brunch.
Southern Smoke BBQ in Ottawa st- great pork popcorn! And solid brunch at Papa Leo's!! Hamilton, Ontario. Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 18, 2016
@RealGDT Thank you for coming into @ssbbqhouse & we're glad you enjoyed our butchers popcorn. SouthernSmokeBBQ (@ssbbqhouse) October 18, 2016
He finished his day by heading to a bookstore and gallery.
Bought some arcane volumes in James st Bookseller and Gallery in Hamilton! Now I am arriving to set, besieged by 70 kmh winds!! Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) October 18, 2016
And of course, in true Canadian spirit, the director was welcomed to the city with open arms and a ton of responses on Twitter offering restaurant suggestions. Even the mayor, Fred Eisenberger, extended the welcome.
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@RealGDT@thismustbeseema Thank you for your generous and positive comments. Makes a Mayor Proud! You are welcome back anytime! #HamOnt Fred Eisenberger (@FredEisenberger) October 18, 2016
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Panel to propose raising immigration inflows by 50 per cent
McCallum balks at scale of proposed immigration increase
Canada a top-four country for skilled migrants
A panel of economic advisers will urge the federal Liberals to increase the number of immigrants to Canada by some 50 per cent, according to sources who talked to the Globe and Mail.
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Canada has been taking in roughly 250,000 to 300,000 immigrants annually in recent years, but the panel advising Finance Minister Bill Morneau will urge him to increase that number to 450,000 annually, the newspaper reported.
The 14-member panel, chaired by Dominic Barton of the firm McKinsey and Co., is to deliver a set of recommendations to Morneau on Thursday.
The federal Liberals have recently suggested increasing immigration levels and opening the doors further to foreign students and investment. But, when asked about it, Immigration Minister John McCallum seemed to balk at the large number that the panel will propose, saying it may be too ambitious.
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He says to meet the target suggested by the Advisory Council on Economic Growth would be a costly endeavour and might not find support across the country.
McCallum says discussions are continuing and the government will announce immigration targets for 2017 next month.
The advisory group is trying to come up with ways for the government to boost growth beyond the forecasted two-per cent annual level.
The business community is meeting the proposal somewhat more positively. Desjardins analyst Michael Markidis says the proposal is good news for the real estate industry, particularly the condo and apartment sector.
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Immigration is widely viewed as a positive driver of demand for multi-family residential accommodation, he wrote in a client note.
Canada among top four countries for skilled immigrants
A new study from Harvard Business School says the worlds highly skilled immigrants are increasingly concentrating in just four countries.
A pattern is emerging in which these high-skilled migrants are departing from a broader range of countries and heading to a narrower range of countries in particular, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, authors Sari Pekkala Kerr, William Kerr, Caglar Ozden and Christopher Parsons wrote.
The study dispels some myths about immigration, including the notion that immigration is becoming more common. It found that 3 per cent of the worlds population lives in a country that is not that of their birth the same rate as in 1960.
But one thing that has increased is temporary migration for work purposes. For example, global companies often insist that their rising executives live and work in other countries for a meaningful portion of their careers, the authors wrote.
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The report also predicts migration in the future will be more "circular," with a larger share of migrants returning to their home countries.
With files from The Canadian Press
Also on HuffPost
After a Canadian company launched a social media campaign aimed at telling America it's wonderful and lovely, U.S. late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel decided to return the favour and send his own message.
The "Tell America It's Great" campaign was launched last week by a Toronto marketing company. It beckoned Canadians to bombard their southern neighbours with kind messages as they wade through a controversial, crazy and at times downright ugly election campaign.
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We love you guys, and we're really sorry you're going through a tough time. Thank you for being our cool big bro #TellAmericaItsGreat Kel H. (@Venomous_Bear) October 15, 2016
On his show Tuesday night, Kimmel said the "Tell America" campaign's clips were the "most insulting thing I've ever seen in my life."
"I didn't realize we were in such bad shape we needed Canada to send us a cheer up video."
In return, Canadians got a message from Americans, which starts off innocently enough.
The people in Kimmel's clip predictably thank Canada for its polite people, its delicious maple syrup and bacon, poutine, and so on.
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But then the accolades evaporate. Canada is accused of trying to kill American pilot Chesley Sullenberger and the phrase "you suck moose balls" gets ingrained in your head.
Thanks, America.
Watch the message in the video above.
When Josette Durans son, Dylan, originally asked her to pack him two lunches for school, she thought he wasnt getting enough to eat. But when she asked her son, she found out the heartbreaking truth.
He said, No mom, its for this little boy at school and he sits by himself and all he eats is a fruit cup, Duran explained to KOAT.
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Proud of her sons kind heart, the New Mexico mom posted their conversation on Facebook:
It wasnt until later that Duran found out that the mom of the boy without a lunch had recently lost her job and couldnt afford to pay for her son's school lunches. As a result, Duran has been packing two lunches for her son Dylan and the unnamed boy every day since the beginning of the year.
Watch the video above to hear how the mother of the anonymous boy reacted after she found out Duran was feeding her son.
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On Tuesday, Durans story made it to the front news page of Reddit. In the comments, many were touched by Durans sweet gesture and even shared similar stories of their own.
I did this every day, one wrote. I actually asked my mom to pack 3 snacks (since lunch was provided by the school), for a couple of my friends who I saw were not eating anything at snack time.
Another admitted: I did this in high school, where a girl who sat at my lunch table never brought lunch (lived with single mother who didnt make much money), so I'd make two sandwiches for lunch and give her one.
Interestingly, a few Redditors also noted that many schools have a strict no sharing food policy and admitted they were surprised that Durans sons school allowed her to make another boy's lunch.
Another added: I was doing the same thing for one of the kids in my sons school till they found out. I was sending him in with two Lunchs (sic) and snacks and was sent a letter home from the school telling me to stop. That my son could get in trouble.
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Luckily, Duran was not penalized for her kind gesture.
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OTTAWA An NDP MPs bid to force political parties to nominate more women to Parliament may be headed for defeat Wednesday after the Liberal government decided not to actively support it.
NDP MP Kennedy Stewarts private members bill, C-237, the Candidate Gender Equity Act, would financially penalize parties that run a larger proportion of men than women in a general election.
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NDP MP Kennedy Stewart speaks in the House of Commons on Dec. 14, 2011. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)
His bill would reduce the amount of money political parties receive from taxpayers to refund election expenses if there is more than a 10 per cent difference between the number of male and female candidates.
Reimbursements would be reduced by 0.25 per cent for every percentage point difference above the 10 per cent threshold.
In the Commons Tuesday, Stewart said the Liberals needed to do more than just call themselves feminists; they need to take action here.
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Eighty-seven years after the definition of person was expanded to include women, he said, gender equity remains elusive in the House of Commons.
"There is only 26 per cent women in this House. That places Canada 64th in the world, behind countries like Iraq and Afghanistan." NDP Kennedy Stewart
There is only 26 per cent women in this House. That places Canada 64th in the world, behind countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, he told Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef. If the Liberals are serious about getting more women into politics, will they support my bill on candidate gender equity, yes or no?
Monsef responded that she could not support Stewarts bill. She said it was important to wait until the special committee on electoral reform has suggested a new system and then we can address this conversation through a different means.
In a leaked briefing note, in May, the government explained its rationale for opposing Stewarts bill to Liberal backbench MPs by saying it raised Charter of Rights and Freedoms concerns.
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Stewart has fought back against that claim, getting an opinion from the Houses legislative counsel that suggests his bill doesnt breach the Charter.
Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef speaks in the House of Commons on Oct. 18, 2016. (Photo: Fred Chartrand/CP)
But the Liberals also said his bill should not be supported because it would incentivize parties to refuse the nomination of qualified candidates on the basis of the gender. The bill would limit the independence of parties to run, for example, a slate of all-women candidates, the governments briefing note said. It also discriminates against transgendered people by excluding them from the gendered definitions of male and female, the note added.
Calling it a mathematically impossible target, the government also suggested small parties, which field only a handful of candidates, would be disproportionately penalized if they had no or very few women candidates.
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Monday, however, Monsef told The Huffington Post Canada the Liberals will hold a free vote on the bill. Grit MPs will be free to vote as they choose but cabinet ministers are expected to be whipped.
Environment minister weighs in
Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna told HuffPost she is personally, a little bit done with having conversations about whether there are there enough woman in politics and how many is enough. I think the fact that the prime minister said our cabinet is 50 per cent women, hopefully, ended a discussion.
McKenna said she sometimes thinks boards are not a bad place to have gender quotas, but politics is more complicated. You dont want to be in a situation where you get 50 per cent candidates and you do put them in seats where they are less likely to win.
Had she lost in her riding of Ottawa Centre against popular NDP incumbent Paul Dewar, McKenna said she suspects many people would have thought the Liberals had put a woman to fill a gender target in a seat that was seen as impossible to win.
Nancy Pickford of Equal Voice, a non-partisan group that champions more female representation in legislatures across the country, said she hopes Stewarts bill gets to committee where it can be further studied. For now, however, shes not totally sold on the idea of penalizing political parties for failing to nominate a certain percentage of women. Incentives might be better.
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Tory MP unsure how she'll vote
"Equal Voice would like to see the implementation of a mechanism that is regarded as fair and reasonable for all (parties), she told HuffPost.
"What we know is that mechanisms like this have proven to be somewhat effective on the international stage in boosting the numbers of women elected [and] using public funds as the lever is more constructive than a quota because it enables every party to determine their own approach to getting more women on the ballot."
Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, the chair of the Commons status of women committee, said she is still unsure how she will vote.
Philosophically, Im not a fan of quotas. I worked at Dow Chemical when they had affirmative action. And they didnt always put a competent woman in place and that wasnt a good thing, so Im not really a fan of that.
But that said, his bill is bringing an incentive a financial incentive for parties to encourage women to go into the field. And if they dont get enough competent woman, then they just have a financial loss. And I think that might not be a bad idea.
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First feminist legislation?
Despite the Liberals being in power for nearly a year, Stewart say his bill would be the first piece of feminist legislation in the House. Weve had studies, weve had the gender-balanced cabinet but we really havent had anything put forward in the House that would advance the cause of women in this country.
With only 36 months left in the life of this Parliament, Stewart said, Liberals have a limited window to move the feminist cause forward in Canada.
The NDP MP said hes open to suggestions on how his bill could be amended to garner broad political support. But for now, he just hopes MPs vote to keep it alive and send it off for further study.
Taxpayers currently reimburse political parties up to 50 per cent of allowable election expenses. Candidates also receive reimbursements from taxpayers worth 60 per cent of allowable election expenses.
Under Stewarts bill, the NDP, which fielded 43 per cent women candidates in the 2015 election, would not have been financially penalized. But the Greens who had 39 per cent female candidates, Liberals who had 31 per cent, the Bloc Quebecois with 28 per cent and the Conservatives with 20 per cent, would all have taken a financial hit.
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UPDATE - Oct. 20, 2016: The Candidate Gender Equity Act was defeated 209 to 68 when most Liberal and Conservative MPs opposed it. NDP MPs booed Status of Woman Minister Patty Hadju as she voted against.
Also on HuffPost
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has declined to speak directly about Donald Trump, his mother shared some of her observations about the U.S. presidential candidate.
Margaret Trudeau, who has struggled with bipolar disorder, alluded to Trump's mental health in an interview on Wednesday.
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"There are two things that define mental illness and [people] who aren't getting the help that they need and who are unstuck in their unquiet mind. They deny that there is anything wrong and then they blame everybody else for any mistakes theyve made. Its not their fault," Trudeau, who is a mental health advocate, told The Huffington Post Canada.
"Well, I see this in one of the candidates, that he's so involved in his own self that he forgets he's presidential and should be looking at issues. And that's all Im going to say and I'm not going to say one more word because I don't want to be in an enemy camp anywhere."
Trudeau made the comments backstage at the We Day youth rally in Toronto, where she was talking about mental health.
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In June, psychologist Dan P. McAdams analyzed Trump for the Atlantic magazine. "Trumps personality is certainly extreme by any standard, and particularly rare for a presidential candidate," he wrote in the story that explored the Republican candidate's "grandiose narcissism" among other personality traits.
Conversely, several therapists and teachers in the U.S. are warning that Trump's comments are chipping away at the mental health of ethnic minorities and sexual assault survivors.
"I will say that overall there has been a significant increase in symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder among many of my patients due to Donald Trump and this election," therapist Meredith Shirey told FRANCE 24.
A psychotherapist also told the outlet that Trump's lewd remarks about women have triggered people who have experienced sexual trauma.
Also on HuffPost
Frame of Mind: Youth Mental Health Issues And Suicide In Canada See Gallery
Whos afraid of a $15 minimum wage?
Some businesses, perhaps, but not Canadians as a whole. A Forum Research poll released last week found nearly two-thirds of respondents 63 per cent approve of making $15 per hour the least you can earn, while 31 per cent oppose the idea.
Wealthy Canadians are among the likeliest to oppose the idea, with 36 per cent against.
It is curious that the very wealthiest, who have no need of it, are the most likely to object to what has been described as an adequate living wage for a young family, while it is championed, obviously, by the least wealthy, said Lorne Bozinoff, president and founder of Forum Research, in a statement.
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The move comes in the wake of the Alberta governments announcement that it will move to a $15 minimum wage by 2018, and amid campaigns across Canada pushing for other provinces to do the same.
Support was strongest in Atlantic Canada (73 per cent) and British Columbia (67 per cent), but in Alberta, where the wage will actually be reality, its supported by just 49 per cent of voters. Alberta also has the highest opposition to the idea, at 45 per cent.
The elderly (67 per cent) and low earners (76 per cent of those earning under $20,000 a year) were the likeliest to support a $15 minimum wage, while youth (35 per cent opposed) were more likely than others to be against it.
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Youth are more likely to object, presumably, because they think their job prospects are those most threatened by a higher minimum wage," Bozinoff said.
Thats the view of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) and other groups that are campaigning against a $15 minimum wage.
A high minimum wage will reduce employment through hiring freezes, slower employment growth, or direct job cuts during an economic downturn, the CFIB said in a recent statement.
Like many others, the group argues a higher minimum wage will do little to reduce poverty, because most minimum wage earners are young, live with family members, and are not from low-income households.
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Thats a view that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) disagrees with. A study it carried out last year looking at British Columbia found 82 per cent of those earning the minimum wage were 20 years or older, 39 per cent are 35 years or older, and 60 per cent of minimum wage workers are women.
The study concluded that raising the minimum wage makes good economic sense, as it would put more cash in the hands of lower-income families.
However, the CCPA found that an increase in the minimum wage to $15 would reduce employment by about one per cent, with much of those losses concentrated among teens living at home.
Also on HuffPost
Wage Gains In Canada, By Industry (2015) See Gallery
Let's face it, we don't always see eye-to-eye with our kids' teachers. As much as we want to have a harmonious relationship with the person shaping the brains of our little ones, we sometimes have disagreements over the best approach for handling certain situations.
NDP MP Peter Julian has resigned as his partys House leader to explore a leadership run.
Julian announced the news Wednesday on the one-year anniversary of the election that saw Liberals form a majority and New Democrats fall back to third place in the House of Commons.
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NDP MP Peter Julian speaks during question period in the House of Commons on May 28, 2015. (Photo: CP)
The veteran British Columbia MP told reporters in Ottawa that "a lot of Canadians are disappointed" with how things have gone.
"There was a commitment to real change and we haven't seen that real change," Julian said. "So, what I'll be doing over the next little while is talking with Canadians and getting my inspiration from them and New Democrats about the next steps to take."
B.C. MP Murray Rankin will take over for Julian in the role.
The 54-year-old Julian is fluently bilingual and has represented the riding of New Westminster-Burnaby since 2004.
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He told reporters in June that the door was open to him making a bid to replace Thomas Mulcair as NDP leader, but suggested he was in no rush.
Big NDP names taking pass
Julian also attempted to dissuade the notion that the popularity of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was scaring off potential leadership candidates. Big names like Nathan Cullen, Quebecs Alexandre Boulerice, and former MPs Megan Leslie and Paul Dewar have all said they wont run for the job.
Its not scary to take on Mr. Trudeau, he said at the time. I think what we've seen over the last few months since the election is that it's very much business as usual in Ottawa. Not a lot has changed."
The veteran MP also said he wasnt concerned about polls suggesting traditional NDP support was bleeding to the Liberal government.
The Trudeau government is still in its honeymoon period, he said.
Decision comes at a price
Julians decision comes at a price. Unlike other members of the NDP shadow cabinet who may abandon critic roles to pursue the leadership, the partys House leader earns $16,800 more, annually, on top of the base MP salary of $170,400.
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Julian also served as the NDPs House leader between 2013 and 2015, when the party formed the official Opposition.
If he is making a bid, Julian would be the first MP to jump in the race. Ontario MPP Cheri DiNovo announced a bid in the summer but pulled out because of health concerns.
Another Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh is increasingly being mentioned as a possible contender, as are current MPs: Manitobas Niki Ashton, Ontarios Charlie Angus, and Quebecs Ruth Ellen Brosseau and Guy Caron.
New Democrats chose their next leader next October.
Also on HuffPost
Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs wasnt pleased by Finance Minister Bill Morneau's suggestion she doesnt talk to her constituents, so she called him out for his tone.
Thanks for the mansplain, Stubbs said in question period in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
A mansplanation is a portmanteau of man and explanation. Its loosely defined as a condescending or patronizing remark a man says to the woman under the presumption she is ignorant about a topic.
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The rookie Alberta MP repeated her urge to the Liberal government to consider the effect a federal carbon tax would have on the provinces dire economic situation.
Medicine Hat's food bank use is up by over 300 per cent this year over last. Another program for new mothers ballooned from 10 to 256 users during the same time, she said.
Morneau responded by asking Stubbs to actually talk to Albertans.
Because she would find that they have actually had a reduction in taxes this year, which has gone to help their families, he said before getting cut off by jeers from opposition benches.
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Morneau deepened his defence by beginning to list national changes including the Canada child benefit that have had an enormous effect on Canadians. He was cut off by the Speaker of the House just as he began to talk about EI changes.
Stubbs wasnt satisfied by Morneaus answer thats when she accused him of mansplaining.
The testy exchange happened to have occurred on Persons Day an occasion marking 87 years since womens personhood was officially recognized in the Canadian Constitution.
A mansplain from down under
Stubbs utterance of the word mansplain appears to be the first time its been recorded on the official question period record.
Thought it may be the first time its been said on official Canadian Parliamentary record, an Australian politician did the same thing last year during her government's own question period.
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Tanya Plibersek, deputy leader of Australias Labour Party, asked Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull if he will restore foreign aid program funding after significant cuts.
The prime minister responded by suggesting Plibersek was wasting question time, saying if she wanted a serious answer, she would have to ask a serious question.
Mr Speaker, I'd rather have an answer than the mansplaining by the prime minister, she said at the time.
Also on HuffPost
OTTAWA Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is backtracking on his promise to change the electoral system, his opponents charged Wednesday.
After campaigning last year on assurances that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system, Trudeau appears to backpedal in an interview with Quebec newspaper Le Devoir.
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If we are going to change the electoral system, people must be open to it, Trudeau is quoted telling the newspaper in an interview to mark the one-year anniversary of his Liberal partys election victory.
The prime minister said he plans to look at how consultations have unfolded, then gauge the public's reactions.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said Canadians would need be open to electoral reform before any changes would be made. (Photo: Getty)
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We are not going to prejudge what would be necessary [to change the electoral system]. But when we say, [we want] substantial support, that means something, he said.
Trudeau goes on to suggest that now that the Conservatives are no longer in power, there is less need for electoral change.
Under Mr. [Stephen] Harper, there were so many people who were upset with the government and his approach that people were saying it takes electoral reform to no longer have a government we dislike, Trudeau is quoted saying. But under the current system, they now have a government with which they are more satisfied. And the motivation to want to change the system is less compelling.
We are not going to prejudge what would be necessary." Prime Minister Trudeau
In Parliament, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair accused the prime minister of breaking his electoral pledge.
It's quite obvious that Mr. Trudeau no longer believes that the 2015 election should be the last election under the unfair first-past-the-post system, Mulcair said.
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Canadians do want changeMr. Trudeau even got a little bit less percentage of vote than Mr. Harper did, so the unfair system is still there.
The only thing that's changed is that Mr. Trudeau believes that he's such a good choice that the system doesn't have to be changed anymore, Mulcair said.
Under the current first-past-the-post electoral system, the Liberals last year won 184 seats 54 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons with only 39.5 per cent of the votes.
Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose said Trudeaus comments represent a real shift in his viewpoint.
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You know, much before any election was held, the prime minister was so clear that there needed to be electoral reform. But now, Ambrose, whose party doesnt support a change, said: I think what Mr. Trudeau is doing is listening to Canadians.
Ninety per cent of the people the Tories consulted across the country said they want a referendum before any reforms, she said. Mr. Trudeau is on the wrong side of this issue, so maybe hes backing down.
The only thing that's changed is that Mr. Trudeau believes that he's such a good choice that the system doesn't have to be changed anymore." NDP Leader Tom Mulcair
Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, a man who has been championing electoral reform for more than five decades, expressed his extreme disappointment with the prime minister.
Its a complete betrayal of what many Canadians believed was a genuine promise, to get rid of what he and his minister have described as an antiquated electoral system, Broadbent told The Huffington Post Canada.
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I deeply regret it, because he is the first leader in my lifetime of another party that has promised electoral reform.This is just very cynical betrayal that a lot of people thought would happen, Broadbent added.
Its perhaps the most significant backing down of any promise he has made since he got elected ironically on his own anniversary of his election.
Liberals need 'broad support': Monsef
Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef has said the Liberals are seeking the broad support of Canadians to change the electoral system but she hasnt defined what that means.
The Liberal government hasnt ruled out holding a referendum something the Tories have repeatedly demanded but Trudeau told students at the University of Ottawa in April that referendums are a good way of ensuring that nothing changes.
Many of the people who propose that absolutely we need a referendum, well, they know that the fact is that referendums are a pretty good way of not getting any electoral reform, he said.
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In recent weeks, the NDP has emerged from their consultations saying that Canadians want some form of proportional representation, that a partys seat count in the Commons should reflect the percentage of votes obtained.
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand has also said the broadest possible consensus is needed before any changes are made to the way MPs are elected.
Not a single government, whatever the majority is, should be able to unilaterally change the rules of election," he told reporters last month.
Trudeau is quoted telling Le Devoir that there are different levels of changes.
Smaller changes may require a lower level of support, and larger changes may need broader approval, the prime minister suggested.
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Whats a big change? Whats a small change? All those reflections, that is why we need to have rigorous and intelligent conversations with Canadians.
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)
This spring, the government convened an all-party parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, including online voting. The committee, which recently returned from cross-country consultations, has until Dec. 1 to issue a report. Monsef, who has also concluded her own consultations, is expected to table legislation next spring.
Trudeau told Le Devoir he wont commit to abiding by the committees recommendations, saying only that it will be a useful tool to frame the governments decision-making.
Unfortunately, whether you want to or not, the great preoccupation for political parties is their immediate survival and their capacity to finance themselves, Trudeau told the newspaper. So, yes, Im going to listen attentively to their concerns. Im going to keep them in mind, absolutely. It is important work [that the committee] is trying to do. But it is not the only work that is being done in this larger reflection.
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'Clear desire' for change: Trudeau in April
Last April, when speaking to the university students, Trudeau took a much firmer stance. He said there was a fairly clear desire out there to improve our electoral system.
While the current first-past-the-post electoral system worked pretty good for me this time, and it would be tempting to claim it is too complicated to change it now, the prime minister said it still remains a priority to me.
Quite frankly, political parties shouldnt be able to appeal to narrow constituencies and suddenly wield enough power to run the entire country, he added.
Also on HuffPost
ASSOCIATED PRESS Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Monday, Oct. 17, 2016, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
"Sexual assault has no excuses" image by Jason Taellious, on Flickr, through Creative Commons
Since that tape of Donald Trump bragging about hitting on women was leaked, the allegations have been coming fast and furious.
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According to a CBS report, several women have now come forward, saying Trump touched them sexually.
Some of the claims go back as far as 30 years.
Us Weekly features nine instances, one of which involved his first wife, Ivanna.
Vanity Fair reported that "Donald Trump's Apprentice set was a breeding ground for sexism. And there's probably a lot more.
Let's face it. The guy's a pig.
A pig who thinks that when you're a "star," it's okay to grope women and kiss them without their consent, that it's not sexual assault.
Wrong.
On Wikipedia, The National Center for Victims of Crime states:
"Sexual assault takes many forms including attacks such as rape or attempted rape, as well as any unwanted sexual contact or threats. Usually a sexual assault occurs when someone touches any part of another person's body in a sexual way, even through clothes, without that person's consent."
Now that we're clear on what, exactly, constitutes sexual assault here are some truly staggering statistics:
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According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, in the U.S. another person experiences sexual assault every 109 seconds. That's just about every minute and a half. Every minute and a half!
We've got nothing to brag about in Canada, either. In 2014 it was reported right here in Huff Post Canada that there are 460,000 sexual assaults in Canada every year.
Pretty damn disturbing.
But if anything positive can be said about Trump boasting about "moving on women" and "not even waiting to kiss them," he has created tremendous awareness around the issue of "consent."
And Rachel Verner couldn't be happier about it ...
Rachel is a recent grad from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. While there, she was working as their Sexual Assault Response Team Intern. Her goal was to find ways to diversify the conversation around consent and sexual violence prevention. It quickly became apparent that people weren't showing up at the workshops they hosted because either they didn't identify as "survivors" or they were uninformed about "consent."
So Rachel and two of her very close friends decided to do something about it.
As luck, or serendipity, would have it, they happened upon a spoof website designed to look like Victoria's Secret had launched a line of consent underwear. They were inspired by the idea and were surprised to discover that despite all the buzz generated by the website, no one had produced and sold the underwear.
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"To me, consent underwear seemed like a great way to get a wider group of people at Wesleyan talking about consent," Rachel told me when we spoke last week, and went on to say, "So I decided to design and sell a line to the student body."
And "Let's Be Clear," Rachel's company was born. Let's Be Clear is an apparel and education company, with a clear mandate: To normalize sexual consent, to remove barriers and encourage conversations, to increase dialogue and awareness. Their initial clothing line includes tees, sweatshirts and tank-tops emblazoned with gutsy statements, like "I'm the Boss of These Parts."
It's an empowering message. Men and women alike need to understand that "no" means "no" and it's okay to say "no." The merchandise can be ordered through the website and Rachel told me that they are happy to ship to Canadians who want to speak up for consent.
This is a big deal and under normal circumstances a female candidate running for President could make hay with it. But unfortunately these aren't "normal circumstances" and the minute Hillary Clinton brings it up her husband's past infidelities will come back to haunt her.
Otherwise I would have suggested that Rachel send her a T-shirt. I'd have loved to see her wearing one at the next debate.
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A small part of Belgium -- itself a small country -- voted late last week to say that it cannot support the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union.
I couldn't be happier, or more impressed by this beleaguered region standing up to the economic and political forces behind CETA.
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Last Friday, the Parliament of Wallonia, a French-speaking area in the bilingual country, voted to prevent Belgium from signing onto the deal. This is significant, because under the Belgian constitution, every regional parliament in the country must agree to any such deal.
Some have described this particular feature of Belgium's constitution as "byzantine" for its ability to block such national or international deals. Keep in mind that Wallonia is one of those regions of Europe that has been regularly overrun by foreign powers over the centuries. The constitutional veto is no doubt a reflection of outside threats, whether military or economic.
Here's why it matters: without Wallonia's support, Belgium cannot ratify the deal. Without Belgium's support, CETA cannot go ahead.
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In an attempt to counteract the feat of a tiny but mighty region, other CETA countries are sending trade envoys to Wallonia to boost support the deal. Canada is sending Pierre Pettigrew, our trade minister back when the World Trade Organization talks collapsed in Seattle.
On the face of it, Canada couldn't be more different from Belgium -- or Wallonia, for that matter. We are very big geographically, they are small. We are a relatively young country, the Belgian nation dates back centuries.
But we also have much in common -- and not just because so many Canadians fought and died in Walloon fields and towns during two world wars. Both Canada and Wallonia are home to industrial towns that have seen factories go silent, devastating their communities.
On CETA in particular, the concerns in Wallonia would be familiar to anyone in Canada who is also worried about the deal. As Socialist MP Olgo Zrihen said, "We say yes to trade with Canada. No to the text as it is currently written."
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Here in Canada, Unifor has been saying much the same thing about both CETA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Like other progressive groups in this country, we recognize that Canada is a trading nation, and we support international trade, but only when trade is fair.
What we cannot support is any trade deal that does not serve the needs of working people or one that restricts our right to pass laws in the interest of the people.
Like the people of Wallonia, Canadians are increasingly concerned about the powers given to corporations under Investor State Disputes Settlement (ISDS) systems. Helene Ryckmans, an MP for Wallonia's environmental Ecolo Party, said the ISDS system could force the region to pay compensation to corporations if local regulations hurt their profits - even if those regulations are in the public interest.
Here in Canada, we have similar concerns. Canada is already the most sued nation in the world under ISDS systems, thanks to similar provisions in NAFTA. It makes no sense for Canada to sign any deal, such as CETA or the TPP, that would see us sued even more.
The vote in Wallonia isn't about people or local politicians not understanding the deal. It's about out-of-touch politicians bending to a corporate agenda and the drive of capitalism rather than putting the needs of people first. This is the time for governments to stand boldly and with courage and conviction to push a new model of fair trade - one in which the needs and the future of communities are put first.
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We should take inspiration from them, and redouble our efforts to push back against CETA.
There is an opportunity here to do the right thing. The question is whether politicians have the will to stand up to restore and define the kind of communities that we want, ones where we are not made subservient to the profit needs of corporations.
Asked by reporters if such a small region should really have final say over such a big deal, the people of Wallonia just shrugged. What we are seeing in Wallonia are ordinary people from a forgotten industrial and farming region saying enough is enough.
This isn't the ugly face of Brexit. This is the people saying they know a better life is possible, and I applaud their efforts for taking action to stand up for the principle of fairness. They saw a better world when factories in their communities hummed with activity and provided good jobs. They believe in trade, knowing that the factories in Wallonia once sent products across Europe and around the world, but they don't believe in handing over all their rights to corporations just to get it.
It takes great bravery, in the face of stark economic troubles, to stand up to whatever faint hope a trade deal might offer, but that's what the people of Wallonia are doing. We should take inspiration from them, and redouble our efforts to push back against CETA.
To the people of Wallonia, Unifor stands with you.
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The five things you need to know on Wednesday, October 19
1) HIDDEN IN PLANE SIGHT
Its all but certain now that Heathrow expansion will get the go-ahead next week. Theresa May switched on the fasten your seat belt signs with her announcement yesterday that Cabinet ministers who disagreed with the final decision would be allowed some leeway to speak out.
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Whats not certain is just why May felt the need to amend (not suspend) collective Cabinet responsibility on what she herself describes as an issue of national interest. Was she so worried about protecting the feelings of Boris Johnson and Justine Greening and their local interests that she needed to give them special protection? It seems strange indeed given that few expected Boris to quit over the issue, especially as he now has the Foreign Secretary job he always wanted as a stepping stone to No.10.
In the Times, Grant Shapps has accused May of failing to show guts and authority with a quick decision. I am sorry this is going to be fudged for another year. He added that it was a strange world in which ministers were free to oppose government-backed projects.
As for those claims of delay, Heathrow and No.10 insist there isnt one and they may have a point. Mays letter to colleagues yesterday referred to a final airports National Policy Statement being ready for a Parliamentary vote by winter 2017/18. Industry insiders have long predicted that the consultation needed is so extensive that late 2017 was the earliest it could be completed.
The problem is the politics, not the planning process. Some in Whitehall and Westminster have in recent months fuelled the impression that MPs will get a vote this autumn, soon after the Cabinet sub-committee decision next week. It was only ever going to be a non-binding vote, but will it happen at all now? Or will Boris and others feelings be spared further? No.10 is being pretty opaque on that today. Sadly, one spectacle is now not going to happen. Boris wont be allowed to lie down in front of any bulldozers, as he previously threatened. Mays explicit guidance in her letter says no minister will be allowed to campaign actively against the decision.
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Another Parliamentary firework may still go off though. As HuffPost revealed last week, Zac Goldsmith is threatening to quit as a Tory MP and run as an independent in a by-election in Richmond Park. The Standard had the scoop that Twickenham MP Tania Mathias joined lots of local Tory association members and Zac on Monday night to agree his independence plan. CCHQ shows no sign of reprimanding them yet.
But will Zac actually quit when the Cabinet sub-committee comes out for Heathrow next week? Or will he wait for the final 2017/18 Parliamentary vote? Either way, should the PM really be that bothered by what one MP does in one seat in London?
2) ARTICLE OF FAITH
One reason Goldsmith may face a strong challenge in Richmond Park is that, despite his local popularity, the Lib Dems could run a campaign that centres on fears of a hard Brexit (the constituency voted to Remain, like many middle class London seats that depend on City jobs) as much as Tory betrayal on Heathrow.
And on the key issue of whether Parliament will have a say over the actual shape of Brexit, there was some fascinating movement yesterday. James Eadie QC, the Governments lawyer in the High Court challenge on Article 50, surprised some in court with a new statement that the final Brexit deal hammered out with Brussels would after all be subject to a Parliamentary vote. The view within government is that it is very likely that this treaty will be subject to ratification process in the usual way. Most of them are, he said.
That very likely phrase was endorsed by No.10. But Government critics believe this is just a ruse to mislead MPs into thinking they will get the final say, when in fact leaving the vote until the end of the process would be too late. Keir Starmer is smart enough to work this out, which is precisely why hes pushing hard still for a vote on Article 50 itself, rather than the final deal.
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The pound rallied yesterday, with its biggest gains since mid-August. Was this because of the very likely quote? Some think it was more to do with the Lord Chief Justices hints in court that he wasnt impressed with the Governments defence. If the court does uphold this challenge, the biggest issue of all is whether a Parliamentary rejection of Article 50 would mean keeping the status quo, ie UK membership of the EU.
The Guardian reports meanwhile that ministers been given detailed warnings that the UK pulling out of the EU customs union could lead to a 4.5% fall in GDP by 2030 and the clogging up of trade through Britains ports.
And on the Brexit Select Committee race, Hilary Benn is facing a strong challenge from Kate Hoey. I reported last night that there were some very interesting nominations backing Hoey, not Benn: Corbyn Shadow Cabinet allies Clive Lewis, David Hamilton and Ian Lavery.
The Telegraph reveals that Philip Hammond has told Theresa May that he will not be quitting the Cabinet. The very fact that he felt the need to say that may look odd, but the Chancellor has mounted a notable PR fightback this week.
3) DAVIES GOES DENTAL
Tory backbencher David Davies (known affectionately as Top Cat to colleagues because of his middle TC initials) is no stranger to controversy. The part-time police constable once said most parents would prefer their children not to be gay and attacked the National Black Police Association for not having white members. The gag among Tory backbenchers is that TC makes DD (his differently spelled namesake) look leftwing.
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Today, hes all over the news because he wants dental checks to prove if migrants from The Jungle camp really are children. Davies told Louise Menschs HeatStreet website: I will be tabling questions in Parliament asking how many migrant children have undergone dental checks and whether those who wish to come here in future will be subject to dental checks.
Davies went further on the Today programme, saying we should be hard-headed about those who looked older than children - and less like Lily Allen with tears in her eyes and all the rest of it (he said that not once, but twice).
Todays Sun splashes his remarks with the header Tell us the Tooth, and photos of migrants who look 40 and have crows feet. The British British Dental Association said it is vigorously opposed to unethical dental checks on migrants. It also disputed claims that dental radiographs can accurately determine whether someone is under the age of 18 or not.
BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR
Boris loves singing in German, showing off his French and even dabbling in Russian. Watch him try Italian in the Commmons yesterday.
4) HUNT THE HEALTH CASH
It didnt get much attention because of Heathrow, but Cabinet yesterday also discussed contingency plans for flooding, roads and the NHS for the coming winter. And the big question remains whether Jeremy Hunt will get more money to help stem the looming cash crisis in the health service.
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The Health Select Committee has pointed out that the 10bn a year Hunt promised the NHS by 2020 is looking like a much lower figure. Hunt told the Committee yesterday: Whether you call if 4.5bn or call it 10bn, it is what the NHS said it needed. Labour thinks theres been some creative accounting, including a six-year rather than five-year spending window.
But the most significant warning came from Simon Stevens, sitting just two seats along from Hunt, who said that health spending is set to fall per head (possibly for the first time in the history of the NHS). If you just look at the population growth - even before you take account of ageing - 2018/19 will be the most pressurised year for us - where we actually will have negative per person NHS funding growth.For the next three years we didnt get the funding that was requested .. so as a result weve got a bigger hill to climb. Sounds like perfect ammo for Corbyn at PMQs.
5) FLAGSHIP DOWN
Another bit of the George Osbornes legacy is being chipped away with the news that the Treasury has dumped plans to let pensioners raise money by selling their annuities to insurance firms. For all the ex-Chancellors bravado in hailing his pensions revolution, ministers have now admitted that this bit of the plan might have exposed pensioners to firms which lured them into making the wrong decision.
The other bit of the Osborne reforms, to allow pensioners to spend their pension pot however they liked (aka Steve Webbs Lamborghini plan) remains intact. Webb (now at Royal London pension giant) says the annuities plan founded because pensions firms were worried theyd be accused of ripping of little old ladies. The Mail is the only paper upset by the annuity plan axe, claiming rip off annuities will continue.
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A Milo Robinson / Alamy
Theresa May's speech at the Tory Party Conference espousing "the good that government can do" has been interpreted as a political land-grab repositioning the Conservatives squarely in the centre-ground. While this may be true, there's an even more interesting shift in the Prime Minister's thinking - a much stronger belief in the positive role of the state.
This is not a party political point. It's far more important than that. Whether you are from the left of politics or the right, whether you believe in free markets or socialism, it is the quality of government that matters.
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As the Prime Minister herself made clear. "No vision ever built a business by itself. No vision ever clothed a family or fed a hungry child. No vision ever changed a country on its own."
And the Prime Minister was unequivocal in the need to focus on delivery, telling her party faithful: "That's what government's about: action. It's about doing something, not being someone."
But while May's speech was itself long on vision and the need to deliver, it was short on the details of how government should be equipped for the task she's set.
That's not surprising, you might think - the technocrats can work that out later. But the hard truth is that unless the Prime Minster is prepared to focus on what is required to actually deliver results, she is likely to be disappointed.
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We've been here before. Tony Blair spent much of his first term urging reform across the public sector in speech after speech. The results were lacklustre and it was only during his second term, when he focused his energies on what he called "delivery", that the needle started to move. As a member of his Delivery Unit that acted as an extension of No 10 tasked with chasing progress across Whitehall, I saw the real difference this made to policy implementation.
Blair dedicated a significant amount of his time to the endeavour - and the results were impressive, although they were fuelled in part by significant additional public spending. Nevertheless, just as it was being celebrated and replicated the world over, this new model of delivery didn't survive the change in government from Blair to Brown to Cameron.
Theresa May has now refocused the debate on good government arguing that we need less ideology and a more sustained focus on achieving the outcomes that actually matter for ordinary "working-class people". "It's time to remember the good that government can do," the Prime Minister explained. "While government does not have all the answers, government can and should be a force for good; that the state exists to provide what individual people, communities and markets cannot; and that we should employ the power of government for the good of the people."
Whether May reinvents a Delivery Unit or not, she'll need a mechanism for holding her Cabinet, and the wider Whitehall machine, to account. And if she chooses to wield them, the tools of delivery are now far more powerful than they were in Blair's era. The vast oceans of data that exist within government are more easily tapped for insights than ever before. New techniques such as behavioural insights allow policymakers to "nudge" rather than shove. Digital technology can put people in control of services in ways hitherto considered impossible.
Now more than ever the Prime Minister should be looking for inspiration from our neighbours. For example, President Obama created the Performance Improvement Council (PIC) to advance and expand the practice of performance management and improvement in federal agencies. PIC combines rich insights from data with the latest collaboration techniques to radically improve results. In Canada, Justin Treaudeau created a new secretariat for Results and Delivery with much the same aim.
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In short, the machinery of government has the potential to deliver May's vision of "government stepping up, righting wrongs, challenging vested interests, and taking big decisions" but it won't do so without determined leadership from the top.
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We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has meant people who have written dissertations on obscure subjects, or who spend most of their day in libraries. But every human is, in an important sense, a carrier of an implicit philosophy - evident in their choices, pronouncements and commitments. Katie Price is no exception. She too is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher.
Partially Katie Price's philosophy is one of extraordinary confidence. She is remarkable not for her looks or antics but because of her tremendous self-assurance and her unwillingness to be intimidated by criticism or failure. She's always beginning a new endeavour, whether it's publishing a novel or auditioning for the Eurovision song contest. Her daring has ultimately paid off again and again. She has built a 45 million pound business empire and worldwide brand.
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After her first autobiography was repeatedly rejected by publishers (she demanded a million pounds in advance), she persevered and ultimately sold over a million copies. Now she's just released her fifth autobiography, and has published a vast range of other books including a line of especially popular children's books about ponies. And then there's her lines of clothing, cosmetics, household products, even equestrian gear. Some of her endeavours go awry from time to time, but she doesn't get discouraged. It would be easy to dismiss her confidence as a superficial posture, but she has put it into practice with each new enterprise.
Katie has maintained this unshakable optimism through scandals, disappointments, divorces, suffocating media attention and unkind words about everything from her supermodel appearance to her beloved children.
Her confidence has not only made her successful - it has become a commodity itself. Katie has realised what many CEOs often overlook: that people spend money on a brand not to obtain a material good but to possess - if only for a short while - the psychological benefit it represents. When people purchase a Katie Price product, they are not in need of a new outfit; rather, they want to possess the traits that make up her public persona: self-possession, playfulness and a disregard for the opinions of others.
It is for this reason that we have invited Katie to come and speak at our school - to better understand her perspective and to glean what we can from her experience in life. Most of us would benefit from even a touch of her confidence, resilience, and entrepreneurial forte.
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Some may think this sort of event can't be serious. But we believe that is because they have misunderstood the nature of seriousness. It does not always reside in a university, parliament or boardroom. It may not come from a peer-reviewed journal or a group of middle-aged men wearing ties. At The School of Life, we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - and take note wherever insight on this subject can be found.
Over the past few years, The School of Life has been host to some of the most legendary names in philosophy and thought, including Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond and Roger Scruton. But we felt it was time for an experiment. We live in an age of mass media and thought it was time to invite a different sort of thinker to The School of Life to discuss some of the great existential issues. We very much look forward to welcoming Katie Price to our stage.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In recent weeks you could be forgiven for thinking we were back in the early eighties at the height of the Reagan/Thatcher era's talking up of the threat from Moscow.
The renewed Russian and Syrian assault on rebel-held east Aleppo and the images of destruction getting out and into western media has stimulated what can only be described as Russophobia to reach new heights, stoked as it is by Washington and London with many journalists and commentators in tow.
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The charge list against the Kremlin is long and growing all the time.
President Putin is accused of a litany of wrongdoing from war crimes in Syria and Ukraine to attempting to subvert the US presidential election and funding Europe's anti-EU populist parties.
Historians can point to a long pedigree for Russophobia, and in Britain it long predated the 1917 Revolution, the rise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
Even though Moscow and London ended up on the same side in the two world wars and during the 1990s, following the collapse of the USSR, Russia was discounted as a weak, declining country of little consequence, the "Russian bear" has generally been portrayed as a rival and a threat in Britain since the imperial rivalry of the nineteenth century - by both politicians and journalists.
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Of course, the current Foreign Secretary, Boris Jonson, is a journalist who went into politics and perhaps that explains his suggestion last week that people should protest about Syria outside the Russian embassy in London- a suggestion that indicates he still has to learn he's no longer a practitioner of what one former diplomat joked to me is the journalist's vice - the exercise of power without responsibility.
In the case of the assault on Aleppo, there is truth in the accusation that the bombing is being carried out without much concern for civilian casualties.
But while it may allow the politicians, like Johnson, and media commentators to indulge in righteous indignation and - one suspects - to revel a bit in a feeling of moral superiority, it doesn't make for good policy or a long-term solution to the war in Syria and the growing impasse in relations between the West and Russia.
The former International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, allowed his sense outrage to get the better of his judgement when he went on the BBC to call for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Syria - an act which would almost certainly mean going to war with Russia, something no serious western politician has any intention of doing.
Indignation can be constructive.
It can galvanise people to take action to prevent humanitarian abuses or to end armed conflicts where unwitting civilians are caught in the middle.
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But selective indignation is counter-productive.
Undermined - as it inevitably is - by hypocrisy and double standards that undermine its moral force.
Be it the British government's condemnation of Russian action in Syria while remaining relatively quiet about Saudi action in Yemen, or that of supporters of the Stop the War coalition who tend to be muted in criticism of Russia while focusing their ire on the British and Americans over Iraq, Afghanistan and - indeed - Syria.
Or Russia's condemnation of American and British recognition of Kosovo's break away from Serbia while subsequently recognising Abkhazia and South Ossetia's declarations of independence from Georgia.
And that's before you consider how both sides are capable of sowing disinformation and outright lies to gain advantage.
Remember Russia's insistence its forces have not been involved in Ukraine or the American refusal to own up for launching a cyber attack on Iran's nuclear programme.
Moral suasion requires consistency to carry authority.
The old saying "people who live in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones" isn't a call to stay silent; but it should be taken as an invocation to avoid hypocrisy if you want your words and actions to carry weight.
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Double standards have practical consequences.
If you think Wendi Deng Murdoch has tucked herself away since her high-profile split from media mogul Rupert, you'd be wrong.
It turns out the woman with the most accurate right hook since Rocky Marciano has been more than busy, her latest project being a film she hopes will "build a bridge between China and the rest of the world".
If that sounds overly ambitious, it matches the bold aspirations of the subject of her film 'Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang' - an artist who uses gunpowder as the backbone of his work.
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When he created his actual pyrotechnic Sky Ladder, a 1,650-feet stairway to the heavens, it was to celebrate his grandmother's 100th birthday. It became a phenomenon, viewed more than 30million times on YouTube.
Now, with his work finding a whole new audience with this film, Cai Guo-Qiang and Wendi sat down with HuffPostUK to talk about working together on a film that boasts Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald at its helm and is now available on Netflix.
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WENDI MURDOCH:
I wanted to make this film because I wanted to tell the story of a truly amazing artist, also a dear friend, and show the world the extraordinary art he's creating, also his life story, this amazing story that everyone can relate to.
His art is quite explosive, but his personality is kind, quiet, and I love that tension.
This film is also a lot about China's culture, it's a great window, a good bridge between China and the rest of the world.
CAI GUO-QIANG:
There is always a lot going on in my life, so a film crew following me round didn't really bother me. Indeed, it was a pleasant experience working with the crew, including film director Kevin Macdonald.
I was indeed curious as to how they were going to make it work. But they managed to capture my perseverance in art and my journey, and the difficulties. It also captures my complicated affection for my family, my home town and my country. The film managed to capture something you wouldn't get in a museum exhibition.
WENDI MURDOCH:
Kevin Maconald did something very special. He took thousands of hours of footage, and was able to find a narrative that reflected the art and the artist's life, but also helped him touch the story.
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The artist's childhood traumas were included in this film - why?
CAI GUO-QIANG:
Those were actually the decisions of the producer and director. My job was to be there for them to film. It was important to include my upbringing, including the tumultuous time of my childhood, so that the audience can better understand the relationship with my art and why I'm doing what I'm doing today.
What do you want audiences to take away?
WENDI: This movie is meant for the whole world, not just Chinese people. I want them to get to know art work, Chinese culture and also personal stories - family, emotion, love for each other - and also to enjoy the moment.
CAI GUO-QIANG:
On the one hand, Sky Ladder was about my childhood dream to communicate with the universe, to touch the clouds, pick up the stars, but those sentiments of the little boy remain consistent with my older art life.
I want to follow this to Red Square in Moscow, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It's a continuation of my childhood dream. Sky Ladder is not just the actual project, it represents a continuing dream and aspiration.
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Image: Pixabay
Have you caught the travel bug and have your sight set on exploring the world in the coming year? How do people travel these days? What sort of experiences are they looking for? In a BookYogaRetreats.com survey of over 300 travelers, we've uncovered some travel trends that will definitely continue into 2017 and perhaps beyond. Here's a look at what to expect next year in terms of travel!
1. You will take at least one holiday this year
The idea of time away from work to travel is no longer just for a select few. Taking a break has now become more and more of a norm for individuals regardless of age. Our survey showed that only less than 15% of people aged 26 and under have stated they rarely go on holidays. As a whole, at least 40% of respondents go on one to two holidays in a year. News site Gallup also found similar trends in its study where over 55% of Americans say that they have vacation plans for the summer , and we expect this number to increase in the summer of 2017!
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Perhaps the reason for this trend is that more people are becoming aware of the value of rest and relaxation. Breaks have shown to have a positive impact on employees. Taking a break is also directly linked to performance at the office as a study by Project: Time Off found that people who took more days off were more likely to get a pay raise than those who don't!
Image: Pixabay
2. You will want an enriching travel experience
Gone were the days that a holiday automatically meant to travel with the purpose of visiting family and friends. Only 10% of our respondents state this as a reason for their travel. More interestingly, less people are traveling in search of the nightlife. Only 4% of respondents noted that they traveled to party. More people travel as a way to enrich themselves, be it to explore a new destination (29%) or to learn a new skill (32.9%). While on vacation, more than half of our respondents are more interested in immersing themselves in the local culture, opting to blend in and experience the local way of life!
At 12%, quite a fair number of respondents from the UK seek to cultivate new healthy habits on their travels. Under this category, the UK comes as the second highest number, falling behind Spain (16.7%). Respondents from these countries are more interested in going on fitness or wellness holidays such as yoga retreats or martial arts retreats.
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Image: Pixabay
3. You will become your own travel agent
With the advancement of technology, we are becoming independent travelers. Our survey showed that only 6.25% respondents say that they will go to travel agencies to book their flights.
Social media is set to be your new travel agent, with travel being named as the biggest social vertical on Facebook! According to the Adweek infographic, 52% of Facebook users said that their friend's photos inspired their travel plans.
The newly launched Google Trips travel app will also potentially rival the likes of Facebook as it combines travel planning with custom itineraries and guides will potentially be your personalised travel agent. Now that's an efficient travel agent!
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Image: Pixabay
4. You will prefer to travel solo
Think traveling solo is a good idea? You're not the only one! Half of our respondents thought so too! 51% of our survey respondents stated that they would be traveling solo on their next vacation. Solo traveling has been on the rise in the past year, with holiday companies offering incentives for solo travelers such as Cox & Kings and Caribtours in the UK.
While previously uncommon, many are now advocating for solo travel. According to our survey, 80% of solo travelers come from Germany, followed by the UK at 69% and then Canada at 67%. If you're still on the fence about going solo, Fodor.com stresses that it will make you a better traveler and make your experiences more meaningful, while Wanderlust says that it will boost your self esteem!
5. If you are a woman, chances are, you'll be even more likely to travel alone
More and more women are also now trekking the globe on their own, and in 2017, they will be seeking a solo adventure. A study has shown that there has been a 230% increase in the number of women-only travel companies in the past six years, no doubt catering to this rise in female travelers. Women are found to be more empowered to travel alone due to the rise of social media and a growing sense of safety.
Supporting this trend, more women are also increasingly interested in women-only themed vacations. Traffic to women-only retreats on www.BookYogaRetreats.com between January and August this year registered at almost 38,000 views, significantly more than visits to men-only retreats, couple retreats and family retreats.
6. You will be ready to disconnect from work
Perhaps the convenience of technology these days have contributed to this trend, but it is apparent that the boundaries between work and personal life is slowly disappearing. According to a Randstad study, 42% of employees in 2014 reported feeling obligated to check their emails during vacation.
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The blurring of work and personal lines had come to such great heights that main influential business media outlets have published dozens of articles to help employees to stop checking their emails while on vacation!
We are beginning to see a shift from this perspective. People begin to understand that being connected all the time polluted their personal wellness. Our survey found that over 75% of our respondents are willing to completely unplug from their work life while traveling. However, of this number, only 38% achieves this goal, so it seems we have a fair bit more to go!
Image: Pixabay
7. You will use social media to document your holidays
We are well and truly living in the age of social media! If before, we would document our holidays through carefully curate photos inserted in photo albums or gathered in digital albums, we now share our stories on the go using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat and Periscope. Our survey found almost 80% of our respondents use social media while on holiday, with 25% of respondents checking in daily. Only 10% have said that they would completely unplug from social media while on holiday, while only a mere 7% don't use it at all.
Christopher Furlong via Getty Images
While I've been personally lucky in life with my own health, whenever my family or I have needed the NHS it's been there for us. My children were born in Mansfield's Kings Mill Hospital and Leicester's General Hospital. The quality of care and dedication from staff, every one of them from doctors and midwifes to porters, receptionists and canteen staff was consistently exceptional, compassionate, reassuring and kind. They truly were among the very best of the NHS - and indeed of Britain.
Growing up in Manchester, Park Hospital - perhaps better known these days as Trafford General - was the local hospital for much of my family; indeed it was where my grandfather spent his final precious hours of life. As a child I often visited various relatives over the years in Park Hospital. I remember vividly the reception area where hung a large black and white 1940s photograph of a man in a double breasted suit with striking hair smiling enthusiastically at nurses and patients. Only later did I realise the man in that photo was Nye Bevan and Trafford General was the nation's first NHS hospital.
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The National Health Service is Labour's greatest achievement and in accepting the invitation from Jeremy Corbyn to take on the role of Shadow Health Secretary I'm acutely aware of the awesome responsibility on my shoulders.
Almost 70 years old, the NHS remains the fairest, the most popular and the most efficient system of healthcare the world has ever seen. With treatment free at the point of delivery and everyone treated equally and solely on their clinical need not on their ability to pay. These are principles the Labour Party will never compromise on, in government or in opposition.
What's more the Labour Party will never allow the privatisation of the NHS. And we will campaign to expose any attempt by the Tories to do so. At the last General Election Andy Burnham committed Labour to repealing the Health and Social Care Act that is intended to privatise the NHS. We will make the same commitment at the next general election
Of course the NHS couldn't achieve the extraordinary things it does day after day if it wasn't for the extraordinary efforts of the staff. Not just the 150,000 doctors, 300,000 nurses and health visitors, 25,000 midwives and 18,000 paramedics but also the vast army of porters, cleaners, administrative staff, receptionists, practice managers and of course senior managers. Labour values them all. That's why a Labour government would not pick fights with staff but instead work with them to improve the NHS to achieve the finest and most equitable care possible to patients and their families. We would invest in the next generation of staff, not discourage people from entering the profession by scrapping student nurse bursaries.
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But we have a job to do in opposition too.
My first priority as shadow health secretary will always be patient care. No one who cares about our NHS will be content with a million more patients on hospital waiting lists than when Labour left office - or the 900 a day patients who are stuck in hospital for longer than is medically necessary because of savage cuts to social care. I promise to give a voice to the millions of people who need a strong Labour Party campaigning for a strong NHS.
My second priority will be to look to the future and what the next Labour government can achieve for the NHS. At the heart of this approach must be an honest conversation about future funding.
The Chief Executive of the NHS has admitted again this week that the Government did not give it the money it asked for, and the body representing hospitals in England has warned the health service "is increasingly failing to do the job it wants to do and the public needs it to do" because of the growing cash crisis.
The only people who don't believe the NHS needs more money are the people who are meant to be in charge of it: Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May.
We cannot continue to allow decisions about future funding of health and care to be put in the 'too difficult to deal with' pile. It is incumbent on our generation of Labour politicians to have an honest debate and come up with the solutions that will protect the NHS for our children and for our children's children. And it's a debate I want to lead.
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Over the coming weeks and months it's the intention of Labour's shadow health team to listen. To listen to staff, to experts, trade unions, families, carers and of course patients and service users about what needs to be done to rebuild our NHS and make it fit for this century.
If we fail in that mission, then I truly fear that my party's greatest achievement will only be remembered by the pictures on old hospital walls and the memories from the past.
In 1655, the medical author Thomas Moffett explained that all 'kind and natural' women would breastfeed. 'Yea', he noted, 'all Women which truly loved their Children' did so. The alternative to breastfeeding for new mothers in the 1600s in England was to hire a wet nurse -- a woman that had recently given birth and was still lactating.
For medical and religious authorities alike, employing another woman to feed one's infant was seen as shirking a godly duty and a symptom of lukewarm maternal affection. As Jane Sharp, author of a 1671 midwifery text sneered, women that hired a wet nurse had as much 'love for their own, as Dumb creatures.'
Breast milk was thought to carry the physical and emotional characteristics of its source. Moffett, for instance, explained to new mothers that babies could 'draw ill Qualities from their Nurses both of Body and Mind', a concern echoing ancient guidance about choosing a midwife and reflecting social concerns about entrusting the care of an infant to a woman of more humble origins than her employers. Across the social spectrum in early modern England medical and moral authors considered a mother's milk the most beneficial for infant health.
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Just as seventeenth-century authors were adamant about the advantages of mothers breastfeeding, so modern debates stress the medical, moral and emotional imperatives for breastfeeding. Current medical recommendations propose that mothers should breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of a baby's life. A recent study in the Lancet suggested that breastfeeding exclusively could prevent 800,000 child deaths per year, and stop an additional 22,000 deaths annually from breast cancer. One Brazilian study concluded that babies that had been breastfed had higher IQs, spent longer in school and earned more than those who had not.
But there are numerous reasons why women might be unable to breastfeed, something the current dialogue often neglects to consider. Currently the alternative, if access to a milk banking service is unavailable, is formula. In early modern England when new mothers were unable to breastfeed, they sometimes avoided the dangers of hiring an unknown nurse that lived far from the household by soliciting former servants and friends to carry out the task; a more informal arrangement that did not necessarily involve money.
A case in point is recorded in the diary of the Yorkshire gentlewoman Alice Thornton. In 1655 she became ill and her milk disappeared. Dafeny Lightfoot, a family friend and former servant, fed the newborn in Alice's stead for three months. Similarly, when the clergyman Ralph Josselin and his wife had to leave their children in Earls Colne, Essex, he asked his 'former servant' Lydia to breastfeed his youngest child. The lawyer, Robert Woodford, also asked Mrs Rushworth, a former servant to feed two-month old John when his wife was troubled with sore and inflamed breasts. Even medical authors allowed for this practice as a more desirable alternative to sending a child away to nurse: Jane Sharp noted that some women were so blessed as to have enough breast milk to 'suckle a child of their own, and another for a friend.'
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Such examples show that social and cultural factors condition parenting expectations and norms -- wet nursing and breastfeeding have ebbed and flowed in popularity. More recently, private milk sharing has become a visible alternative for parents wishing to avoid formula. Such arrangements are facilitated by the internet and social media, but are not without their critics. On 26 October five experts -- two historians, a geographer, a sociologist and a milk banking consultant -- will join together to debate whether or not women should be feeding each other's babies as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.
Vietnam has a vibrancy that will bewitch you, from its beauty to its and diversity, a country that has everything everyone could want a mix of natural wonders, colonial Indochine charm and a cuisine that stands head and shoulders above its neighbours.
Its long coastline has some of best beaches in the world dotted with many chic beachside hotels. Vietnam can be traversed either north to south or vice versa. But beginning in the north allows you to relax at one of the southern islands as a finale. Below are just a couple of reasons why you will love Vietnam, but don't take our word for it, just hop on a plane and go see yourself.
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Hoi An
Listed as an UNESCO World Heritage listed site, the old trading port town of Hoi An is a place you will never want to leave, you will fall in love with this town. It is easy to get lost in its small cobbled streets lined with boutique art galleries, small craft shops, incredible restaurants, the nearby historical ruins of My Son open up a forgotten world. Hoi An is only minutes away from one of the longest sandy beaches in the country that stretches all the way to Da Nang. If you want to visit one of the many villages surrounding Hoi An, you can hire a bicycle and ride off and see a small slice of Vietnamese village life. The local farmers are very friendly although they won't be able to speak a word of English, but sign language and a smile always help.
Victoria Hotel Hoi An
Food
A major highlight of any trip to Vietnam is its food, without a doubt the best in Asia and head and shoulders above its neighbours. It has slowly developed over the centuries taking subtle bites from not only its near neighbours but from its former colonisers as well. The Chinese and French both left their mark in very subtle ways, however it took the Vietnamese to combine flavours, techniques and ingredients to create a truly unique cuisine. Only the Vietnamese could take the ordinary baguette and remake it with rice flour to create a light and fluffy version far superior to the French original and fill it with Vietnamese pates and spicy pickles to create a great sandwich, the Banh Mi. They also took the idea of stock making to new levels in creating what most people class as Vietnam's national dish. Pho, a simple noodle soup made with a stock that any French chef would be proud of. The food in Vietnam is delicious and one of the many things you will always remember form your trip.
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Ginger Junk Heritage Line
Halong Bay
Halong Bay is probably Vietnam's most famous and treasured natural wonder, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is the countries jewel in the crown that every traveller to Vietnam has to experience. You have to experience Halong Bay on board one of the many traditional Junks that sail around this incredible bay. They come in a variety of sizes from small boutique boats, perfect for honeymooners wanting the ultimate intimate experience to larger boats for families and friends. Time on the bay is not solely limited to sailing or relaxing on board admiring the landscape. Stopping off here and there, jumping off for a bit of swimming, kayaking or even relaxing on deserted beaches or visiting one of the many fishing villages that are scattered around the bay.
Victoria Hotel Sapa
Sapa
Hidden away in the remote northern mountain region, Sapa is a world away from the scenic coastline that Vietnam is so famous for. Accessed from Hanoi via luxury overnight train you arrive into the hilly rice terraced landscaped dotted with small minority villages. The small town of Sapa is nothing special, in fact it is quite unappealing, but the countryside and the weekly local markets around are what you are here for. The Hmong and Dao tribes are in the majority here and you can trek through their villages in the valleys below. You will make instant friends with the local groups who will want nothing more than to sell you locally made curios, it's all done with a smile and you are easily persuaded to part with a few dollars here and there. Sapa is best with a car as some of the best markets are up towards the Chinese border.
Did you know that Denmark, and its capital city Copenhagen, is one of the best places in the world to launch a startup? It's a tiny city in a small European country and one that doesn't always go around shouting about its achievements. However it has fostered a number of well known unicorn startups (startups that are valued at over one billion US dollars) such as Skype, JustEat and Unity Technologies.
But what is it about Denmark that makes this possible?
1. Top of most global quality of life surveys
"Denmark seems to have cemented its position at or near the top of every global quality-of-life survey. Now it also looks like a fertile ground for scaleups: it shows 1.7 scaleups for every hundred thousand people, which is 2.5 times the ratio in the UK and almost 6 times the average ratio in continental Europe. Not surprisingly, Denmark ranks third in the European Innovation Scoreboard," said Alberto Onetti, Chairman of Mind the Bridge, a Silicon Valley/European organisation dedicated to technology scouting for large corporations, which launched a report on the Danish scaleup ecosystem in September 2016.
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Photo credit: Ty Stange
2. Easy access to the rest of Europe
Almost 75% of the Danish scaleups in the report above are located in Copenhagen which offers easy access to customers and business partners in the rest of Europe. "With an airport only 25 minutes away and flying times of just over one hour to London I can get into central London quicker than some of my old colleagues can from their homes in the home counties," said Omar Shaikh, co-founder of COCOA Invest based in Copenhagen.
3. Denmark is open to new technologies plus almost everyone speaks perfect English
"Danes are open to new technology - in fact, I have all confidence that this will be the first cashless society," Shaikh said. "And I cannot emphasise enough how valuable it is to operate in a country where English is so second nature. Frankly, the level of English ability is so good I often forget I am not living in a country where this is the first language."
Photo credit: Copenhagen Capacity
4. Vast opportunities for funding
These are from public funding schemes, business angels, local and international venture capital investors as well as accelerators such as Accelerace, a Denmark based, internationally focused business development organisation. Since 2010, Accelerace has helped more than 250 startups raise over 269.5 million US dollars in funding and investment. There are opportunities for public funding for entrepreneurs from schemes such as Innovation Incubator Scheme. This provides counselling, pre-seed and seed capital for entrepreneurs and new innovative enterprises, and operates at the earliest stage of the investment chain. In 2015, the programme attracted private investments of almost 200 million US dollars to startups in Denmark.
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Photo credit: Ty Stange
5. One of the world's most liveable cities
Being able to source highly skilled talent is one of the main reasons why many Danish scaleups maintain core business functions such as R&D in Greater Copenhagen after moving their headquarters abroad. Like in most other cities with fast-growing industries, the local talent pool sometimes needs fuelling from other countries, and the international professionals who go to Copenhagen tend to get stay there.
"Copenhagen is very employer friendly. It is easy to attract talented staff because people just really fall in love with the way you live life in Copenhagen. Denmark also has a very flexible labour market, which is more or less second to none," says Anders Johansen, HR Director, Unity Technologies.
6. Young scaleup ecosystem is great for international investors in a booming scene
"The Danish scaleup ecosystem is still quite young, so international investors have a great opportunity to reap the fruits of Copenhagen's booming startup scene," said Claus Lnborg, CEO of inward investment agency Copenhagen Capacity, who assists international companies, investors and talents in identifying and implementing business opportunities in Greater Copenhagen.
7. Free movement within the EU
The fantastic opportunities for startups in Denmark are not just for the Danes with free movement within the EU, they are open to all EU citizens living there. There are still opportunities if you are coming from outside of the EU, you need to apply to Startup Denmark, which has some requirements you need to meet before you can launch a startup. But as soon as you have a company registration number in Denmark, you have the same opportunities as Danish startups.
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So what are you waiting for?
'Baby soft skin.' At least, that's what they're meant to have. Ours didn't though and at three months old she was diagnosed with eczema.
'Not to worry,' we thought, unperturbed by such a common ailment and, accordingly, the condition was soon beating a hasty retreat after a brief course of steroid cream.
That's that little problem over and done with then. Only, weeks later, those angry red patches were back. Surely that had been treated? A trip to the doctors' led to the same diagnosis as before.
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It went. And then it came back. Infected this time. Our hearts sank as we saw our baby's skin inflamed and raw. This time, as we were given a course of antibiotics and cream, we were more pessimistic than before.
We were right to be. After just a few short weeks, time we spent watching our baby's skin anxiously, the eczema did, as expected make an unwelcome return. And this time it brought an unpleasant side effect.
An itch.
'Don't scratch darling,' we'd say, covering her little hands with scratch mitts to stop her burrowing at her skin with her fingernails. 'Don't scratch.'
She ignored us. Even if she could understand us, I doubt she would have done our bidding. But fortunately we had the scratch mitts to stop her doing herself any harm.
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And then, one night, she worked out how to pull those mitts off.
We got to her before she could do any real damage but her cheeks were still marked with bloody little scratches. If she was in pain though you wouldn't have known it; in fact, she tried to have another little burrow at her face. We had to hold onto her determined little hands to stop her, much to her fury.
As we drove to the doctors', back from our brief holiday, we started to realise this was a real problem. And even with another course of antibiotics and cream it was a problem which didn't go away.
'Don't scratch, don't scratch, don't scratch,' we'd beg, to no avail.
It would break our hearts to see the relief in her eyes if she ever managed to get a sneaky (constantly trimmed) fingernail to a place where the eczema prevailed. It was relentless. Our whole time together seemed to be spent stopping her from scratching. I remember one night coming home from work and looking at my husband, who was staying home with our daughter at the time, and in his eyes I just saw naked desperation. 'She doesn't stop scratching.'
At last, we got to see a specialist who took one look at our daughter and slathered her in cream. 'It's like a thousand bites on her skin a minute,' she explained about the eczema. I felt myself fall then. My poor, poor baby girl; I hated that she had to endure such discomfort and would have given anything and everything to swap places with her.
I also hated the way our darling baby would scream when we applied the latest combination of creams. And I hated the way it took two of us to dress her - one to hold her ever-itch-seeking hands and one to get her into her clothes. I also hated seeing her in the special sleeves she wore at night which, thankfully, stopped her hands escaping for a scratch - but which also stopped her getting access to the thumb she used to soothe her. And I hated the way I always felt the need to explain what the medically prescribed 'silks' she wore were to strangers.
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And then I realised. This was real life. This was the reality of parenting.
Up until my daughter had been diagnosed with eczema, our parenting path had been as expected, with sleepless nights and nappy explosions and projectile vomiting and earth-shattering screaming. All standard baby behaviour. But the eczema had caught us off guard.
And we weren't alone. The more parents I spoke to, the more I realised that all of our children had different challenges to face - be it reflux or colic or horrendous sleeping patterns or, like us, eczema. And in some cases, for some poor parents, even worse. The path through babyhood is never smooth - and not as rosy as I might have imagined. At some point, the reality of parenthood kicks in.
Thankfully, the eczema has calmed down and our girl only suffers really bad flare-ups when she's teething. And some days she hardly tries to scratch at all.
In an odd way, the eczema has made us stronger. We worked together to tackle it and we remained committed to getting the right treatment for our little girl.
And as for our daughter?
LOUISA GOULIAMAKI via Getty Images
Such is the self-absorption of Britain with things that affect Britain, you could almost be forgiven for thinking the world's refugee crisis is largely about who comes to this country. It's all about Calais, isn't it? The squalor of the shanty town-like "Jungle". Or people crammed into the backs of lorries or even clinging perilously to the underside of moving vehicles on the M25. Or the much-publicised scheme to bring Syrians to this country.
Er, not really. These are all real. They're enormously important for the often desperate people involved - and in particular the much-discussed plight of children in the camps in northern France is a major disgrace (which may finally be inching toward a resolution). But overall the UK is just a big player in the global drama - the tragedy - which has seen tens of millions of people forced out of their homes because of war and repression.
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Take for example Iraq. Not commonly mentioned in this context, it's nevertheless true that the twin menace of Islamic State atrocities and Shia militia violence have uprooted a staggering four million people. Here's what a new report from Amnesty says about their plight:
"Many have fled with little more than the clothes on their backs, setting off at night to avoid detection and walking for hours along treacherous paths. Not all those escaping have made it to safety. Fleeing civilians have been shot at by ISIS fighters, while others have stepped on mines or other unexploded remnants of war."
Something of the desperate sadness of present-day Iraq is surely summed up in this chillingly matter-of-fact passage. And with the much-heralded "battle for Mosul" now underway, there's every reason to fear that Sunnis in the city could face a dreadful wave of reprisal attacks from vengeful Shia militias who already have a bloody record of acting as anti-Sunni death squads.
But depressingly enough, there are similarly massive population displacements (some even bigger) in other places. Unsurprisingly, the scale of uprooting in Syria is huge (nearly five million who've fled the country, six million who've been forced to leave their homes but are still in Syria). But there are other cataclysmic events we hardly even hear about. More than two million people forced out of their villages and towns in Nigeria. Even more - about 2.5m - in the same position in Yemen (where, of course, UK-supplied weapons are part of the armoury of a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition which has repeatedly bombed homes, mosques, funeral halls and hospitals).
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Meanwhile, there are vast numbers of refugees in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. When did you last hear about how these - not especially rich or completely stable - countries were coping with their new populations? Or what about Mexico, what about all the refugees who've fled there?
Yes, fled to Mexico. As AA Gill has pointed out, despite the US political rhetoric about vast numbers of Mexicans supposedly decamping to Texas or Arizona, Mexico is a net recipient of migrants, including people fleeing murderous organised gangs in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. (Gill's very vivid account of the precarious lives of those who've crossed into Mexico is here []).
To listen to politicians like Donald Trump you'd think the refugee crisis in the wider Americas was all about the US-Mexico border. This, you'll recall is what Trump said about building a wall on the border:
"We will build a great wall along the southern border ... On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall."
Other news disappeared beneath this maelstrom, including a story which lays bare some other, more poignant results of a political system beleaguered by adult indolence and self-seeking. Nelson Mandela once commented 'The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children'. Another event in June 2016, which did not make the headlines, makes it clear how the contemporary UK is reflected in this particular mirror.
On 3rd June 2016, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) released their advance, unedited version of the concluding observations on their fifth periodic report on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The UK signed the convention on 19 April 1990 and ratified it on 16 December 1991. It was formally adopted as a set of policies for the UK to work towards on 15 January 1992. Every five years since then, the UNCRC has reported on the UK's progress in this endeavour.
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This new report makes grim reading. It raises concerns about children in the UK suffering from economic hardship that is increasingly exacerbated by government policy, exclusive practices in state education, a lack of infrastructure to deal with mental illness amongst the child population and the harsh manner in which children are treated by the criminal justice system. It also raises concerns about reducing opportunities for play and leisure, and rising obesity rates amongst the child population.
The main concerns the UNCRC raises in the area of education relate to inequalities, particularly the use of various forms of subtle exclusion for children with special needs, who, they comment 'are often subject to the practice of "informal" exclusion or "taught offsite". The announcement that Mrs May's administration wishes to bring back selection at eleven will further enshrine a system of mass exclusion to underpin the entire system of secondary education.
Other issues raised by the report relate to the use of acoustic youth dispersal devices in public spaces, the use of tasers against children, the use of restraint and isolation when dealing with children who have psycho-social disabilities, and a lack of policy development in response to adolescent bullying behaviours, particularly through online interaction. The UNCRC also recorded its concern about the increase in numbers of children coming into local authority care who might have remained with their families, had timely support been provided.
The mishandling of juvenile mental health difficulties underpins a range of UNCRC concerns, including youth suicide linked to social and economic deprivation and the lack of infrastructure for dealing with children's mental health difficulties, meaning that too often, children who require in-patient treatment for mental health disorders are hospitalised many miles away from their homes. Out-patient therapeutic services were judged as similarly lacking, and concern raised about the overuse of psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin, controversially used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a condition that is exacerbated by lack of free, active play.
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So, to summarise, in the light of the UNCRC's investigations, the UK is a nation which shows insufficient concern about children living in poverty or having a dearth of time and space to play, preferring to medicate those deemed 'hyperactive'. Its state education system contains significant inequalities, which the new administration plans to further exacerbate. Within the past twenty years, England and Wales legislated to effectively reduce the age of criminal responsibility, despite increasing evidence from neuronal development experts to suggest that the human brain remains immature for far longer than was previously proposed, and it offers grossly inadequate mental health services to children and young people.
Photo: Toa Heftiba
Online marketplaces have changed the world we live in.
It's hard to believe the first generation of online marketplaces began over 2 decades ago. Amazon was founded in 1994 and Ebay the following year, spearheading a movement that has led to the normalisation of online shopping and is ultimately leading to a different kind of high street experience.
Airbnb is nearly 10 years old and this summer was valued at $30bn. Where its popularity has exploded, the cumulative impact - the 'Airbnb effect' - is starting to be perceived as negative. There is little data to back this - although Airbnb is by no means the root of housing problems it is certainly shaping cities. It's ironic that fears of gentrification and homogenised neighbourhoods in cities like Amsterdam have resulted from an enterprise started by two guys who couldn't afford to pay New York rent.
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Not only are online marketplaces shaping physical places, but impacting society itself. In recent months and even days, online marketplaces such as Uber, Deliveroo and Asos have been under fire for treating their employees unethically and penalising workers who do not meet difficult targets. Relatively low and insecure wages are having an impact on wider society, while investors benefit from high valuations and customers from a convenient and low cost service.
That's why I've titled this post 'aggressively human'. Aggressive organisations that are meant to improve people's lives often do - but can end up having negative side-effects.
Is there a better way to do the sharing economy?
Yes #1 - by improving regulation. Uber recently criticised Sadiq Khan for showing favouritism towards London's black cab drivers. New York banned Airbnb in 2014, and coalitions have sprung up in cities such as Amsterdam and Toronto to help regulate Airbnb from the citizen perspective. As the power and influence of sharing economy organisations grows we need to create a system that works for workers and wider citizens, that reflect the changes caused by so called sharing economy businesses. The RSA for example is using a 'collaborative and consultative approach' to develop thinking in this area.
Yes #2 - by using different business models that remove the negative single-mindedness of us-or-die. Take FutureGov, a public-sector consultancy, which sector creates platforms for communities based on user-centred design and research. Not only do their digital platforms actively help solve problems in society, but beyond their own public sector projects they want to empower people to use their vision and change something in their local community.
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Yes #3 - accessing the right kind of capital can help sharing economy organisations maintain their integrity. Getting investors who buy into the social impact can allow an organisation to stay true to its mission and focus on sustainability, rather than quickly scramble for profit. It's less aggressive (but not less tactical), more commons-based and human-centred.
And taking the long view, startups taking a user centred, social impact approach can, with the right business model, build sustainable and effective organisations.
Let's look at startups who have gone through the 8 year old Bethnal Green Ventures programme, a tech-for-good early stage accelerator supporting social-tech ventures to develop a solution to a social or environmental problem. Nearly 70 percent of those ventures that have gone through their programme are still going strong.
So let's make the sharing economy inclusive and democratic. Let's line up the incentives with the results. And let's make sure that while not every organisation will be targeted towards everyone's needs, no human loses out.
Hemera Technologies via Getty Images
The key challenge to all climate change agreements, argues Yale economist William Nordhaus, is free riding:
"The benefits from investments to reduce emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a global public good. They require costly investments by individual countries. However, the benefits from the lower emissions are spread widely around the world, and the country undertaking the investments will receive only a tiny fraction of the benefits."
"Paris was a resounding success", argued Chatham House after the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference was completed. This is in part because it directly addressed the free rider problem through Intended Nationally Determined Contributions to carbon reduction. The UK made its pledges as part of the EU's (pdf) target of a 40 per cent reduction in emissions against 1990 levels by 2030. The Centre for European Policy Studies have laid out how Brexit negotiations in this area might play out here.
The UK's existing legislation prevents us from backtracking. Under the Climate Change Act 2008, "it is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for the year 2050 is at least 80% lower than the 1990 baseline." We have generally been doing better than our EU neighbours - delivering a 38 per cent reduction against the 1990 baseline by 2015 despite a growing economy. But Brexit and haphazard government policy threaten this progress.
The issue is how we actually fund the transition that makes the targets possible. "Europe lost its renewable energy mojo just as costs were plummeting to the point where green power is fully competitive without subsidies in more and more parts of the world", argues Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. From a peak of $131.7bn in 2011, European investment halved to $58.5bn last year, just 18 percent of the global figure.
The Committee on Climate Change, which helped develop the latest, 2016 Carbon Budget, believes that "it will be necessary to decarbonise all new investment by 2020 for power". In the UK, public investment will not do the whole job. We have 7.7bn of renewable energy projects in the National Infrastructure Pipeline for 2017-18. This falls to 283mn by 2020-21. In the most recent edition of EY's Renewable energy country attractiveness index, the UK had sunk to 13th place thanks to "the UK Government's noncommittal, if not antagonistic, approach to energy policy [which] continues to go against the grain of almost universal global support for renewables."
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There's stiff competition for private capital - the largest fund is no bigger (pdf) than $2bn. But Europe's generally stable regulatory environment for energy has meant half of the deals in the private market are concluded here. Post-crisis fears over the Euro that scared off investors elsewhere made UK deals more attractive, but that advantage has well and truly evaporated with the value of the pound.
Germany has as ambitious national targets as we do - by 2050, it also aims to cut 80 percent of fossil fuel energy generation. Their energy revolution or energiewende has already seen half of nuclear power generation replaced by renewables after public concern around the Fukushima meltdown. Significantly, nearly half of investment has come from individual citizens and energy cooperatives. On average, initial investment by each cooperative is around 686,000 - that's 738 per investor. However, because nuclear has been the first to fall out of the energy mix, the share retained by coal means has strictly curtailed the resulting fall in emissions.
So we might be doing better on coordination, but much worse on incentives. Feed in Tariffs - where energy suppliers directly pay for generation and export of low carbon electricity - will be open until 2019 following a review, but after that Government intends to introduce a new, capped system. The Renewables Obligation required UK electricity suppliers to source an increasing proportion of electricity from renewable sources. However, these close to all new generating capacity on 31 March 2017, and closed to wind a year early: in April this year. In their place Contracts for Difference were established as long-term, legally-binding agreements that stabilise prices for low-carbon generation. They're intended to insulate power generators from wholesale electricity price fluctuations and give more certainty about future revenues.
However, argues Respublica, the sheer complexity of this system deters equity investment in renewables, especially by communities. On Hinckley Point, for example, the Adam Smith Institute argues that the contract for difference actually increases the amount of subsidy paid to generators. It has a 'strike price' of 92.50 per megawatt hour, intended to be index linked for 35 years. "So, for example, if the wholesale price of electricity is 47.50 per MWh, the Hinkley Point plant will receive 45 per MWh subsidy. This means that if wholesale prices fall, the subsidies received by the Hinkley Point project will increase."
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As Barnaby Wharton, senior energy and climate change policy adviser for the CBI, recently argued:
"We still need to attract huge sums of private investment to keep the lights on and diversify our power mix, and we must maintain momentum on progress made so far. This is not about government hand outs, rather timely policy decisions."
The 80s revival has been gathering momentum in recent years. The way things are going, it is possible that Glastonbury 2017 revellers will be able to see Howard Jones, Shakin' Stevens, Simply Red and Bros.
Phil Collins has also announced a comeback, and will be feeding his particular brand of musical gruel to estate agents and bank managers in the near future.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of much of what emerged in the 1980s, though would rather see The Levellers, Throwing Muses, The Waterboys, James and The Stone Roses on the Pyramid Stage than the musical Mogadon of Phil Collins or Simply Red.
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There are darker aspects to the 80s revival, however, than Rubik cubes and Howard Jones. We are seeing these in all their horror in the UK and US, and the rest of the world is looking on in alarm - or doing their own hideous timewarp.
In Britain we have Theresa May, who I regard as a pound store Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in a post-Referendum puff of smoke, as her colleagues lay all around with knives in their backs.
From her home secretary days commissioning vans emblazoned with demands that illegal immigrants 'Go Home', May has been 'leading' the country at a time of greater and greater anti-immigrant sentiment. Hate crime has been increasing, and the recent Conservative Party conference did less than nothing to tackle rising xenophobia.
Suddenly, in the UK and the US, racists who had been selective about who they would vomit up bile in front of are doing it all over the place. Social media is splattered with the sort of racist bile that was unacceptable when I was at infant school.
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Another echo of Thatcher's Britain that May seems quite happy with is massive and increasing social inequality, with the young bearing the brunt of uncertainty and poverty. May claims to want build a fairer society - than that which her party has been actively creating. I'm not convinced. The hard Brexit she is pushing for will harm the poorest and the young more than anybody.
The Cold War and nuclear threat was one of the darkest shadows hanging over the 1980s. But those who missed that have the chance to experience a more volatile version of it. Spectres of that past rose in Ukraine in 2014, but in Syria the new Cold War has rapidly become a hotter conflict. Propaganda machines on all sides of the most complicated tug of war ever played have been whirring clunkily into action, like 1980s printers.
It is unfortunate that the huge problems we face in Britain can seem less significant when we look to the US. Donald Trump can be seen as the must hideous bit of the 80s revival we are enduring. He is the bloated narcissistic embodiment of the grasping materialist era satirised in Wall Street and, with each new allegation of sexual assault, seems increasingly reminiscent of some of our 'light entertainers' of yesteryear.
The 1980s also was a decade when environmental concerns came to the fore, and there was growing recognition that we needed to move to renewable sources of energy. There has been progress on this, but government and global corporations running roughshod over local opposition to fracking, and rapidly melting polar ice caps, suggest we haven't moved as far since the 80s as a supposedly clever species should have.
In the 1980s there were also explosions of public - and especially youthful - energy. Some of these were generally peaceful, like rave, and some not so much. There were, however, profound long-term positive impacts.
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The 1981 Brixton riots were a response to a number of factors, including racial disadvantage, inner city decline and institutionalised racism within the Metropolitan Police, which often treated black people as third class citizens. In the lead up the riots, police (mis)used the 1824 Vagrancy Act to stop and search a vast number of young black people.
Other riots in the 1980s were also fuelled by the treatment of minorities, but the one that ultimately paved the way to Thatcher's downfall occurred at a poll tax protest in 1990. The largest of several such protests happened on March 31 in London, with up to 250,000 in attendance, from many walks of life. Rioting appears to have started after mounted police suddenly charged protesters in Trafalgar Square.
In the aftermath, questions were raised about policing methods, and widespread public opposition to the highly regressive tax led to Thatcher being pushed from office. She was replaced by John Major, who announced in his first parliamentary speech that the poll tax would be abolished.
Although we have seen footage of UK police behaving in atrocious ways at protests in recent years, they are arguably better at dealing with demonstrations now. And the institutional racism seen in the 1980s has, hopefully, reduced somewhat. However, fundamental political problems haven't gone away.
October 20th 2016 marks the official induction of the 1st Annual Trans Nation Festival, co-hosted by Amazon Prime. This 4 day celebration runs October 20th -23rd 2016, and will pay tribute to the trans community through beauty, art, and film.
The event will be initiated with a film festival guest curated by producer and trans performance artist Zackary Drucker.
An eclectic selection of the best new shorts along with rare and underseen gems that reflect the trans experience through film are expected to be showcased in the city of West Hollywood.
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Filmmakers and actors will present these pieces, which will also include the Los Angeles premiere of "Diane from the Moon", starring Mya Taylor.
Candis Cayne and Curly Velasquez will emcee The Queen USA Transgender Beauty Pageant, which is also constituted in the 4 day festival.
This 15 year long pageant was created to celebrate the heights of transgender beauty culture while engaging contestants and the audience in a broader awareness of transgender issues.
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Contestants will compete in the categories of swimsuit, cocktail, and evening wear in addition to participating in a q&a portion which will enable contestants to explore key issues facing the transgender community.
Proceeds from the 4 day festival will go to the Imperial Court of Los Angeles, which is a private non profit 501(3) California Public Benefit corporation whose primary goal is to further relationships with organizations and businesses within the LGBT community in Los Angeles.
Donations will also benefit St. John's Well Child and Family Center, an independent non profit 501(3) community health center that provides primary health care along with socioeconomic and social justice services for over 1200 transgender patients in South LA.
St. John's has been a groundbreaking addition for the transgender community of Los Angeles in terms of health care. "Our clinic has grown from 6 patients to over a thousand in less than 3 years with virtually no outreach or promotional work. Our program has grown exponentially through word of mouth."
says Diana Feliz Olivia, Program Director of St. John's Transgender Health Care Program.
Diana Feliz Olivia, a latina transgender woman who was also appointed to the Transgender Advisory Council for the City of Los Angeles earlier this year, stated:
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"The reason for the Trans Nation festival is to bring trans men and women together to build community and support. We really needed a multi-day festival in Los Angeles to celebrate the intelligence, grace, poise, and talent of the trans community while raising funds to expand our services and create new opportunities for our community."
Diana Olivia has been the program director of the St. John's Transgender Health Care Program for over a year, and emphasizes how the health care program is unique in the way it serves the trans community.
"The majority of our staff is transgender, which immediately puts our new and present patients at ease. They walk into our office and they see someone who looks like them, talks like them, and dresses like them and they feel comfortable. This is part of what has made our program so successful and unique."
The Trans Nation Festival is the first of its kind in Los Angeles and many in the trans community are hoping this event will not only bring the community closer together, but also help other communities familiarize themselves with what being trans means.
The Trans Nation festival is particularly different from the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, because there is an entire day specifically set aside to celebrate the beauty of being transgender though the Queen USA Transgender Beauty Pageant. This is particularly important, because many trans men and women struggle with the idea of feeling or being beautiful, since society teaches us we are not.
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It is vital to continue to maintain and cultivate transgender health care services because there are very few places where transgender health care is offered in an affordable and personalized setting.
The Affordable Care Act included trans health care in many places and that was a remarkable step in the right direction for trans people, but in some ways it still remained difficult to receive personalized and comprehensive transgender healthcare.
Now that health care is available it is wonderful to see community leaders, celebrities, and city officials coming together for one cause: to maintain the health and happiness of the transgender community in Los Angeles.
The UN General Assembly's confirmation of Antonio Guterres as the next Secretary-General of the United Nations is encouraging news for global education, not least because he has been a vocal supporter for education, particularly in humanitarian emergencies. The Global Partnership for Education extends a very warm welcome to the UN's next Secretary-General, and we look forward to working with him when he begins his new post in January 2017.
From my own experience, Mr. Guterres' convictions about elevating support for education in humanitarian and development situations run deep. GPE Board Chair Julia Gillard and I had a number of productive and encouraging conversations with him when he was UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Those discussions culminated in an April 2016 agreement between GPE and UNHCR to collaborate more closely in support of education during emergencies through joint advocacy and through country-level cooperation.
Mr. Guterres' firsthand exposure to countless internally displaced and refugee children surely helped shape his views about the importance of ensuring access to education - especially in the earliest moments of a crisis.
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In 2015 he told the World Education Forum that "we have a collective responsibility to ensure education plans take into account the needs of some the most vulnerable children and youth in the world - refugees, internally displaced children, stateless children and children whose right to education has been compromised by war and insecurity. These children are the keys to a secure and sustainable future, and their education matters for us all."
Similarly, on the margins of the annual opening of the UN General Assembly in New York a few weeks ago, Mr. Guterres participated in a panel discussion about education in humanitarian emergencies.
"If one looks at the investment in education in emergency situations compared with the global expenditure in those situations," he told the leadership gathering, "we are still talking [about] a very small percentage [for education]." He added that "this shows, really, how neglected education has been in fund raising and fund mobilization in humanitarian aid."
There is a growing need today for new development models that break down the historical siloes within and between various development sectors in favor of coordinated, partnership-based collaboration - an approach GPE believes is highly effective. Along those same lines, Mr. Guterres said in the UN panel discussion last month that education must be deeply embedded in any humanitarian response from the very start of planning and execution, especially because crises can last for years and a country's recovery can take even longer.
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"Education that some might neglect in a narrow-minded approach to life-saving in emergencies," he said, "... is the central pillar of any development project."
That message echoes GPE's own work to bridge the divide between immediate humanitarian action and long-term development programs for children in crisis contexts. And it is why GPE is deeply engaged with the Education Cannot Wait fund that launched earlier this year. Education Cannot Wait will raise much needed additional resources for education in countries affected by fragility and conflict. But it will also ensure that humanitarian assistance efforts prioritize education alongside other essential human services.
Mr. Guterres' confirmation to be the next UN Secretary-General comes at a moment of mounting promise and momentum in the global education sector. World leaders are increasingly supporting the urgency of global education - starting with the adoption of the ambitious new global education goal last year, to the bold recommendations issued last month by the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (which, among other recommendations, called for increasing total spending on education from $1.2 trillion per year today to $3 trillion by 2030).
We feel and reflect that urgency at the Global Partnership for Education, where our new strategic plan, GPE 2020, aligns our work with the global goal for education, and where developing country partners and donors are collaborating with us to intensify their own contributions to address the challenge of ensuring a quality education to all children in 65 developing countries.
Having spent decades in public office (he served as Prime Minister of Portugal and President of the European Council, among many other roles), Mr. Guterres has an impressive track record as a leader who moves quickly to get beyond formalities and apply the muscle necessary to resolve tough problems. That makes him a great asset for the education sector, let alone for the many complex, high-stakes matters he will face as Secretary-General.
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This piece is running in newspapers in my conservative congressional district (VA-06).
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This ugly presidential campaign will soon be over, but ugliness threatens to continue beyond Election Day.
Donald Trump, who threatened that if he wins he will seek to jail his opponent, has been inciting his followers with accusations that, if he loses, it's because of a conspiracy.
Win or lose, Mr. Trump threatens the foundations of American democracy.
Polls indicate that Trump probably will lose. So that's the scenario we have to worry about, as Mr. Trump wantonly sews the seeds not only of rage but also of insurrection.
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Defeated presidential candidates in America have traditionally conceded graciously and left the stage, leaving the victor to lead the nation.
Trump seems to be preparing to do neither.
Trump, whose identity is defined by being a "winner," seems unwilling to acknowledge losing fair and square. If he loses, it has to be because he was cheated.
Trump has shown a genius for seizing the attention he craves.
Normally, it is the president who is the center of national attention -- which is probably why Trump sought the office. But a defeated presidential candidate ceases to bask in the spotlight. Will Trump accept the loss of the nation's attention when another option is available?
That other option? Setting the nation on fire.
Being the focus of an insurrection he has stoked is sure to keep Trump the center of attention.
Forcing himself on others is Trump's MO. He forced himself on the Republican Party, he forced himself on women, and now Trump seems to be planning to force himself on the nation even after defeat.
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This violates a vital American political norm, one that has helped us maintain domestic peace for most of our history. But having shown no compunction about violating so many other norms, why would Trump be restrained by this one?
So how is the precious American system of government to be protected from Trump's reckless attack?
One question: What proportion of the 50 million likely Trump voters will believe the picture Trump is selling of a "rigged" election?
Shouldn't Trump's failure to present even a scintilla of evidence to support his wild accusations make them incredible even to those who believe in him. But there is reason to fear that some Trump supporters are so caught up in their devotion that his pronouncements outweigh all evidence.
It does not take a big percentage of 50 million people to pose a threat to public order.
The first challenge is to prevent the delegitimizing of a legitimate election in the eyes of the American people, including Trump's supporters. The second challenge is to mobilize to protect the American system of government from whatever subversion that Trump manages to incite.
Every effort should be made -- by those who have credibility with Trump's followers -- to discredit Trump's unfounded accusations. Trump supporters who see through Trump's reckless talk about a global conspiracy can talk sense to their compatriots. And many Republican officials are already stepping up to this task.
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The media have a job to do. This threat is more pertinent to our responsibility as citizens than all the lurid stories of Trump's sexual predation.
Leading up to the election, the media should continually push Trump to present evidence to support his dangerous assertions. But since there is no evidence, because Trump is just making it up, the media should help the American people see this violation of basic democratic norms for the dangerously self-serving thing that it is.
The news media should also, now, decide how they would deal with post-election refusal of the losing side to follow American norms and accept the results of a legitimate election. With the system our founders gave us jeopardized, it's no time for pseudo-evenhandedness in treating the story.
Truth, not phony balance, is the main business of responsible journalism.
All those who have moral authority in America - and that includes the current President, all living former presidents and former presidential candidates -- should be ready to speak out forcefully against Trump's reckless attack on the norms and institutions of American democracy.
All else failing, those charged with protecting the peace and enforcing the law should be ready to nip any insurrectionary activities in the bud.
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By Hong Soon-do, Beijing correspondent, AsiaToday - South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Group has opened its fourth manufacturing plant in China in the city of Cangzhou in Hubei Province to boost its presence in China. On current plans, the company is expected to achieve cumulative sales of ten million units by 2018.
Hyundai Motor expressed its will to boost its presence in China at a opening ceremony of the Cangzhou manufacturing plant with an annual capacity of 300,000 units on October 18, which coincides with the company's 14th year of operation in China. The ceremony was attended by 800 officials, including Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo, Beijing Hyundai President Shi Hui, Hubei Province Secretary Zhao Kezhi, Beijing Deputy Mayor Sui Zhenjiang, Korean Ambassador to China Kim Jang-soo, as well as executives of Hyundai Motor Group and partner companies.
[Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo attends a ceremony to mark the construction of a new production facility in China's Cangzhou, on October 18./ Source: Hong Soon-do]
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"As a symbol of economic cooperation between Korea and China, Beijing Hyundai achieved the 8 million mark in production in August. I believe that achieving 10 million cumulative sales is just a matter of time," said Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo expressing his strong confidence in achieving the target. He added, "The Cangzhou plant is the most advanced, environmentally friendly and smart facility that will produce cars of the highest quality for Chinese consumers, including the new Hyundai Verna. With the launch of the Cangzhou plant, Beijing Hyundai will take a new leap forward."
[The Cangzhou plant, the fourth Chinese plant of Hyundai Motor Group. It has an annual capacity of 300,000 units./ Source: Hong Soon-do]
"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment."
I was looking for the origin of the statement, "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it" when I came upon this quote, also from George Santayana, the 20th century philosopher.
I've always felt that happiness is the point of life, so it's great to be validated. We Americans are fortunate to have the right to the "pursuit of happiness" enshrined in our Constitution, and nowhere is that right more accessible to us than in our National Park System where we experience it mentally, physically and emotionally.
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The great philosopher Joseph Campbell established that when we are out in nature, there is no accounting for the aggregate of ways it affects us beneficially, and today doctors across the country are writing prescriptions for healthy doses of nature to address a myriad conditions.
What is our national happiness index today, I wonder?
As our public discourse becomes more rancorous and debased, I am grateful that Nature, the "product" we have been pushing for the past 20-plus years is increasingly being recognized as a key to a happier, more fulfilled life. In our national parks and wealth of public lands we have the opportunity to calm our minds, to distill essential truths about the development of our country and our shared destiny, and to see clearly our way forward.
" 'Facing a great vista - or a starry sky or a cathedral - we realize we're a small part of something much larger. Our thinking shifts from 'me' to 'we,' " I quoted from the October 7 issue of Parade Magazine's Feeling Awe May Be the Secret to Health and Happiness to the large group of conservation supporters gathered at the Openlands Luncheon in Chicago last week.
"Nowhere are we more privileged to have these experiences than in our National Park System and on our publicly owned lands," I reminded the group, approximately 900-strong, including representatives from Chicago-based Outdoor Afro, Blacks In Green and Eden Place Nature Center.
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Showing an image of the Milky Way Galaxy taken in Badlands National Park, I emphasized that we occupy a tiny dot in a far corner; that, having no idea how we got here and how or when we'll get off, humanity has segmented ourselves into artificial categories and assigned "values" that have little relationship to truth.
As an example I showed a wide cross section of non-white Americans engaged in mountaineering, sailing, hiking, scuba diving and conservation advocacy from Congress to the White House. Long standing fallacies hold that Americans of color are incapable of appreciating or managing our public lands. (Green 2.0 Report)
I pointed out how those views do our country a disservice and must be discarded in favor of embracing our entire population to confront the challenges presented by - among other urgencies - climate change. I said that it's going to take all of us working together to protect our environment so that it continues to sustain human life.
Heartened by their enthusiastic response, Frank and I flew to Shutesbury in Western Massachusetts to visit friends who're also collaborators in our work. Over the weekend I heard many different people thanking Frank for shifting their perspective.
"I thought we were at the most dire stage in our country, and you remind me that we've been through worse," said both a father and his 21 year old son. "It makes me feel calmer when you remind us that it's our turn to do our part, not just whine about how depressing everything is and how stressed we feel."
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Exactly! As park ranger Betty Reid Soskin pointed out at the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference last month, "this is a participatory democracy. . . it doesn't come nicely wrapped up in a little bow. Each generation must do its part."
Frank often laughs about being around for almost one-third the time America has been an independent country. He's lived through segregation and the horrors of Bull Connor and George Wallace. He can place our current experiences in context of the aggressive strain of racial malignance that has not gone away. (Driving through the South in the 60s with his wife and sons on their way from Florida to her parents' house in Tuskegee, Alabama, he carried a pistol on the dashboard as a signal to racists that he would defend himself and his family.) Working for civil and human rights and now for the protection of our environment, he maintains the calm demeanor of someone who knows his country, warts and all, and is prepared to love and strive as those who've gone before us to achieve the goals of democracy.
It's the same message I get from our public lands, and it's not complicated: Every racial and ethnic group that has ever graced the North American continent invested their lives into building the country that we enjoy today, and only with willful ignorance can anyone demand to "take our country back."
The National Park System contains our American story, warts and all, and shows us always striving to a more inclusive country that is "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all."From the Natives 11,000 years ago at Bandelier National Monument to George Washington's destitute multi-racial army at Valley Forge National Historical Park 1777-78; from Gettysburg where Abraham Lincoln called our country to Unity; from the Civil Rights Marchers on the Selma to Montgomery road and the LGBT uprising at Stonewall Inn, the National Park System commemorates our experiences at the places where they happened.
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By that example, the only question I need to answer for any choice is,
Does it bring us together? Or does it strive to tear us apart?
This might have been a tough week for Monsanto Co. The Environmental Protection Agency was slated to hold four days of public meetings focused on essentially one question: Is glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide and the lynchpin to Monsanto's fortunes, as safe as Monsanto has spent 40 years telling us it is?
But oddly, the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) meetings, called to look at potential glyphosate ties to cancer, were "postponed" just four days before they were to begin Oct. 18, after intense lobbying by the agrichemical industry. The industry first fought to keep the meetings from being held at all, and argued that if they were held, several leading international experts should be excluded from participating, including "any person who has publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate."
As the meetings drew near, CropLife America, which represents the interests of Monsanto and other agribusinesses, specifically took issue with at least two scientists chosen for the panel, alleging the experts might be unfavorably biased against industry interests. On Oct. 12, the group sent a letter to the EPA calling for Dr. Kenneth Portier of the American Cancer Society to be more deeply scrutinized for any "pre-formed conclusions" about glyphosate.
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More notably, CropLife called for leading epidemiologist Dr. Peter Infante to be completely disqualified from panel participation: "EPA should replace Dr. Infante with an epidemiologist without such patent bias," CropLife told EPA. The chemical industry group said Infante was unlikely to give industry-sponsored research studies the credibility the industry believes they deserve. CropLife said Infante has testified in the past for plaintiffs in chemical exposure cases against Monsanto. Croplife also argued that because Infante was the "only epidemiologist on the glyphosate SAP" he would have enhanced influence in the evaluation of epidemiological data about glyphosate and cancer.
The CropLife letter was dated last Wednesday, and by Friday the EPA announced it was looking for additional epidemiology expertise to ensure "robust representation from that discipline." EPA also said one panelist had voluntarily departed, though the agency refused to say who that panelist was.
Challenging Infante's role is a gutsy move. After all, Infante spent 24 years working for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration helping determine cancer risks to workers during the development of standards toxic substances, including asbestos, arsenic, and formaldehyde. His resume includes a stint at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health where he conducted epidemiological studies related to carcinogens, and he has served as an expert consultant in epidemiology for several world bodies, including the EPA and the World Trade Organization.
According to sources close to the situation, Infante remains a panelist as of this week, but there is no certainty when the meetings might be rescheduled, and what the panel membership might look like when they are rescheduled. The EPA has refused to discuss who remains on the panel and who does not at this point, and some onlookers said the EPA was clearly bowing to agrichemical industry interests.
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"This is outrageous. The industry wants to say that our own government scientists, the top ones in their fields, aren't good enough for these panels," said Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at the Consumers Union. "If the EPA wants to add extra epidemiologists that is great but why didn't they do it before? They are doing this because of pressure from industry."
The industry clearly has much at stake, as does the public. Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Monsanto's branded Roundup herbicides as well as herbicides marketed by numerous agrichemical companies around the world. It is also the key to what has been 20 years of sales of genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant crops developed by Monsanto. The future sales of both the chemical and the crops are being jeopardized by the mounting concerns that glyphosate can cause cancer and other illnesses or disease. Scientists around the world have been raising red flags for years over worrisome research findings, and last year the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), said glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen. More than three dozen lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto by people claiming Roundup gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and both European and U.S. regulators are evaluating the chemical for continued use.
Since the IARC classification, Monsanto has asked the EPA to back industry assurances that glyphosate is safe, and so far, the EPA has done exactly that, issuing a series of reports and memos that dovetail with Monsanto's position. Monsanto also has sought to bolster arguments for glyphosate's safety by pointing to supportive research papers published in late September in Critical Reviews in Toxicology. Monsanto hired the group that arranged for the panel, and most of the 16 scientists involved are former Monsanto employees or Monsanto consultants. At least one, Gary Williams, has also consulted for Monsanto on litigation matters involving glyphosate. Despite all those affiliations, the research is touted as "independent."
It seems more than a little hypocritical that those scientists are presented as credible by the industry, but scientists like Infante and Portier are said to be unfit to advise EPA because of suspected bias. Like Infante, Portier has a long track record as an independent scientist. He is vice president of the Statistics & Evaluation Center at the American Cancer Society. He has participated in over 60 other SAP meetings and has served on expert and advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Toxicology Program, and the World Health Organization Food and Agriculture Organization.
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Portier also would not comment about the industry concerns about him, the postponement or changes to the makeup of the SAP, other than to say that as of today, he remains on the panel.
"Remember the 99%!" That could be Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's banner in the final stretch of this wretched "presidential" campaign. Insults and scandal loom larger in campaign coverage than any discussion of issues critical to the 99% -- the vast majority of Americans who are not super-rich or super-resourced.
Recently, Clinton made two speeches on economic reform that should warm Bernie Sanders supporters -- and, if they can hear it, supporters of Donald Trump. These two populations, wildly unlike in their solutions, share this in common: Both feel the economy works best for the 1% and not for middle- and working-class Americans.
Her message in brief: While channeling Bernie Sanders in his diagnosis of capitalism's ills, Clinton vows to radically reform the way a Donald Trump can do business. "Our economy should work for everyone," Clinton declared, "not just those at the top."
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It's a powerful message not getting enough attention. Clinton delivered the speeches in Ohio, battleground state and site of economic upheaval -- one in Columbus at Ohio State University and the other in Toledo at a rally. At OSU she touched more on student-related issues, like loan debt, while in the Toledo speech she got into "kitchen table issues" -- "You know, the ones that keep you up at night."
Clinton opened with "the basic bargain": If you're willing to work, you should be able to get ahead and stay ahead. This entails, along with good schools, creating more good jobs with rising incomes. The problem is that, while most corporations are run by honorable people, "there are still too many powerful interests fighting to protect their own profits and privileges at the expense of everyone else."
And they are aided and abetted by the rules and incentives in our economy [that] actually encourage people at the top to take advantage of consumers, workers, small business, and taxpayers. That makes it tougher for the well-meaning CEOs to take the high road and it gets even harder when we don't aggressively enforce the rules.
The worst, most injurious of these "incentives" is the U.S. tax code, which "rewards corporations for outsourcing jobs, and their profits overseas, instead of investing here in the United States." It's a tax code "riddled with loopholes that let the rich get even richer and make income inequality even worse," tilting the playing field further against small businesses that can't afford lawyers and lobbyists.
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What needs to happen, says Clinton, is changing those incentives and leveling the playing field -- heresy if you're a pure free-market capitalist but which, given the rage over income inequality and the widespread belief we are on the "wrong track," must happen. This means corporate behavior -- doing business -- must change.
Corporations "that benefit from everything America has to offer," says Clinton, should feel a "sense of responsibility, not just to their biggest shareholders, but to their workers, to their customers, to their communities, and, yes, to our country." If elected, Clinton would use every tool to "make the case that patriotism is profitable":
I want to send a clear message to every board room, every executive suite across America, if you scam your customers, exploit your many employees, pollute our environment, or rip off taxpayers, we will find ways to hold you accountable. But on the other side....if you do the right thing, and you invest in your workers, and your communities and our country's future, we will stand with you.
As bad corporate behavior, she cites Wells Fargo Bank, "bullying thousands of employees into committing fraud against unsuspecting customers." Says Clinton, "It is outrageous that eight years after a cowboy culture on Wall Street wrecked our economy, we are still seeing powerful bankers playing fast and loose with the law."
"And then in a category by himself, there's Donald Trump": Clinton cites The New York Times' revelation that in 1995 Trump lost a billion dollars in failing casinos and may not have paid taxes for two decades -- which avoidance he says is "smart":
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While millions of American families....were working hard and paying our fair share, it seems he was contributing nothing to our nation. Imagine that. Not fair. Nothing for Pell grants to help kids go to college. Nothing for veterans. Nothing for our military.
Compounding the irresponsibility of paying no taxes, Trump "didn't lift a finger to help and protect his employees, or the small businesses and contractors he'd hired. They all got hammered." Meanwhile he used "his political connections to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies and extra tax breaks" for his company and to keep "living like a billionaire." In other words, "Trump was taking from America with both hands, and leaving the rest of us with the bill" [my italics].
It's this predatory ethos of business, this allegiance not to country but company, that Clinton aims to reform, for while Trump is unique, he represents broader trends. "He's taken corporate excess and made a business model out of it." Declares Clinton: "It's time to rewrite the rules and make this economy fair for everyone."
How? By closing those tax loopholes: "We're going to make Wall Street corporations and the super-rich start paying their fair share of taxes." By imposing the Buffett Rule (after financier Warren Buffet), disallowing multimillionaires from paying at lower rates than their secretaries. By imposing a new "exit tax" on companies that leave the U.S. to avoid paying their fair share: They're going to "give back every tax break they ever received." And all that new revenue? "We're going to put that money to work creating opportunities here in America."
These are no mere technical proposals; real fire is behind them. Clinton calls it "insulting" when corporations engage in "games like moving their headquarters to a foreign country, on paper, not in reality, just to take advantage of lower tax rates." She calls it "infuriating" when corporations "take tax breaks with one hand and give out pink slips...with the other hand." Crikey, she sounds like Bernie Sanders.
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Clinton also stressed consumer protection: by "defending and empowering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau" created after the '08 financial crisis by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. By "building on the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.... because Wall Street can never, ever be permitted to threaten Main Street again." By slapping penalties on pharmaceutical companies for unjustified price hikes. And by eliminating the "fine-print gotchas" in contracts prohibiting lawsuits against corporations, forcing consumers into arbitration without court protections.
On trade -- which this presidential campaign has revealed to be a major sore point with voters across the spectrum -- Clinton expanded. In Toledo she explained her eventual opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): "It sets up a dispute resolution system that favors large corporations over everyone else." In Columbus she cited her three tests for any trade deal: "Does it create American jobs? Does it raise American incomes? Is it good for our national security?" As president she'd appoint a new chief trade prosecutor and triple the number of enforcement officers.
Other Main Street-oriented measures include: encouraging, via new tax credits, profit-sharing with employees, "on top of, not instead of, higher wages." Appointing "tough, independent authorities to strengthen anti-trust enforcement and really scrutinize mergers and acquisitions, so the big don't keep getting bigger and bigger." Creating a $10 billion "Make It in America" partnership to support American manufacturing. Raising the federal minimum wage. And of course, launching Clinton's $275 billion infrastructure repair program.
What Hillary Clinton proposes is a radical reform -- even revolution? -- of America's business ethos. "We're going to do everything we can," she vows, "to make sure workers are treated like assets, not costs" -- the antithesis of Donald Trump's way. With Main Street suffering stagnant wages and futures, on Nov. 8 we the 99% can take America's great Capitalism-and-Democracy project and put a human face on it.
For my post, "The Speech Hillary Clinton Should Give to the One Percent on Capitalism and Income Inequality," see here.
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I think that really the first step for anyone is just being honest and being genuine to who you are. For me that is I write and sing country music so I think it is my responsibility to be genuine in the music I put out there and how I portray myself. I think it's really important that you see me with someone that I would be with and that is a man. If it's a song about heartbreak or breakup or anything that we country people like to write about the visual is genuine to the artist. I think that is the first step for anyone.
Well I think over the past few years we've made great strides thanks to people better than I and I am so thankful and grateful for that and benefit from those things. I think we still have a long way to go and I would love to figure out my part to help in that. One of the things that I think about is the fact that we still have states including my home state where people just like me can be fired from their jobs just for loving the people they love and I think that is grossly unfair and un-American and not right and something I would love to see changed. I came out as a 22 year old man and at the time was working at a job where I didn't know how my boss felt about me being gay. They didn't know and I really relied on my paycheck like most people do. I don't think that anyone should have to go through fear of coming out to their boss for fear that they are going to lose their jobs. It is a horrible feeling and experience and something I personally had to go through and something I just want to shield others from ever having to experience. So I would love to see that pushed forward and make this something that people in the LGBT community don't have to worry about anymore.
TOPSHOT - Women take part in the 'Ni una menos' (Not One Less) march against femicides in Buenos Aires, on June 3, 2016. / AFP / EITAN ABRAMOVICH (Photo credit should read EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP/Getty Images)
They walked out on the street, dressed in black. Silence engulfed the crowd in a collective mourning ceremony. This is how Polish women resisted the government's abortion ban proposal.
This is also how the people of the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina, will march on the streets on Wednesday, October 19. Women will go on strike for an hour, to condemn the brutal rape of 16 year-old Lucia Perez earlier this month. Lucia was raped and drugged. She died after a horrible episode of torture. Lucia suffered terribly. She was the victim of femicide: a new word for an old crime.
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The death of Lucia is shocking for various reasons. The first is how the perpetrators treated her body. The crime was heinous: she died after being tortured even beyond rape. The second reason is how the assailants acted after they committed the crime. They washed her body and claimed that she had overdosed on drugs.
The cruelty and audacity of the assailants is a sign of impunity. They are men, which seems to give them the green light to plunder women's bodies. They faced the police as if they were socializing with their neighbors. They acted if they had sympathy for the victim.
The third reason why Lucia's death is so outrageous is that it shines a spotlight on how abandoned women are in Argentina. It is a boundless abandonment. They are abandoned by the state, so all they have is the street. That's why they will march, in silence, dressed in black.
If Poland's protests were condemning the abortion ban, Argentina's protests are denouncing femicide. In reality, there is a long list of reasons why women are angry, including the failure of legal abortion services, zika virus, and femicide. These are all pressing issues in this time of political and economic crisis, and they severely impact the survival of women. So why is protesting the only option?
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To march is all that's left for us: We don't believe in parliaments, we are ignored by the political powers, and we're tasked with domestic jobs and childrearing -- as if that was our destiny.
We are experiencing deep political turmoil in the region -- just take a look at our neighboring Colombia, where peace is being negotiated by people with conservative agendas with regards to women's issues. But in such brutal times, women's rights must become a priority.
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the PM4SD (Project Management For Sustainable Development) Conference in Akureyri, Iceland. Akureyri only has a little less than 18,000 residents but is the fourth largest town outside of Reykjavik, and the largest town not near the capital. Locals call it the capital of the North.
Akureyri was selected in part because it was the recipient of the #1 Europe Destination in 2015 by Lonely Planet who said:
"Akureyri, in contrast, sits on the north coast under snowcapped peaks at the head of Iceland's longest fjord. It's Iceland's second biggest urban area, and while you shouldn't expect a big-city vibe (the population is only 18,000), this easy-going place has more buzz than anywhere outside of Reykjavik. It's also a great base for exploring the north's green pastures, fishing villages, mudpots, waterfalls, ski fields and whale-filled bays. Signs of the earth's power - glaciers, volcanoes, lava fields and stacks of basalt - are everywhere, while strange underwater features lure divers and offshore islands are home to colonies of seabirds."
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Iceland has become a global leader in renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction. Geothermal and hydro meet 81% of Iceland's primary energy needs for electricity, heat, and transportation.
Reykjavik, where 40% of Iceland's residents live, has set a goal of being entirely free of fossil fuels by 2050. Geothermal energy powers all buildings in the city. This heats the homes, lights the streets, and powers the greenhouses that produce most of the vegetables. It also heats the popular outdoor pools popular for swimming and bathing year round by locals and tourists alike. Only around 0.1% of Iceland's electricity is generated using fossil fuels.
It was from this backdrop, that the PM4SD conference offered some valuable lessons for sustainable development in general and sustainable tourism more specifically.
PM4SD brought together a wide diversity of panelists from government, academia and the private sector. The conference opened with an enthusiastic presentation from the Ms. Olof Yrr Atladottir, Director General Icelandic Tourism Board, who spoke proudly of the nations 99% electricity coming from renewables and there current exploration with companies like Tesla to make their transportation more renewable as well.
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Silvia Barbone, the executive director of PM4SD and chief organizer of the conference framed the conference beautifully as an opportunity to build on existing sustainable development management knowledge and sustainable tourism best practices to create the future that we wan.
One panel featured representatives from the UNTWO, UNEP, and the World Bank and was moderated by local TV News personality Hilda Jana Gisladottir. Some key points included:
- Chris Imbsen from the UNWTO reminded us of the power of the tourism industry with it accounting for 10% of the worlds GDP, one out eleven jobs, and being the third largest export, behind fuels and chemicals but ahead of food. Chris also shared an inspirational video on the opportunity for all to participate in the UN Year for Sustainable Tourism for Development.
- Deirdre Shurland, senior consultant at UNEP discussed the opportunities for tourism to respond to the challenges of low carbon development, monitoring and measuring, resilience, quality tourism services, and resource efficiency.
- Shaun Mann - World Bank - Senior Tourism Specialist, spoke of the biggest challenges being political economy around the tourism sector, governance: national / local, social and economic inclusion, and in-country capacity / infrastructure. He suggested the need to use a "whole government approach" that would bring together national, regional, and local champions along with public private dialogues to create quick wins to gain necessary momentum.
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In another panel Rob Holmes spoke of the power of story telling in connecting people with nature and promoting sustainable destinations.
My own presentation presented our Blue Community model that suggests we move beyond the traditional sustainable tourism model of balancing social, economic, and environmental concerns to a new model that would take into account the four pillars of the GSTC (Global Sustainable Tourism Council) and operate with just and sustainable economic development, create a safe and just space for humanity, within the limitations of the science of planetary boundaries.
Some of the key lessons were found in the PM4SD excursions. On these trips we learned the importance of sustainable fishing, the ability of local people to protect and preserve their cultural and historical heritage, the value of mass transportation, the opportunities of featuring natural resources, and the treasure to be found in connecting people with nature in a sustainable manner. Some examples included:
1. Preserving Cultural Heritage. Siglufjordur, Iceland is the most northern town in Iceland. It is less than 30 miles from the Arctic Cirlce, and is a historic fishing village. The small town has a number of museums and galleries, the most famous of which is the award-winning Herring Era Museum.
The small town of only about 1200 people was quite impressive on how the local people were creative and resilient to turn around a decline town following the collapse of the herring fishing industry. The town has developed a tourism industry through development of a small conference center with a building for meetings, a restaurant, and coffee shop. Volunteers have built a fantastic fishing museum telling the story of the herring industry. Opportunities for tourism also now includes fishing and hiking, and the wonderful hospitality of the local people.
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The town in the 1950's had about 3000 people when herring was king of the fishing industry. Although warnings were given, about overfishing the warnings were not heeded until to late and the result was that the industry collapsed.
The town has learned the valuable lessons of sustainable fishing practices and the role that tourism can play to diversify an economy.
Part of the lesson is the importance that preserving a community's unique cultural heritage can have in both bringing a community together, and providing a new resource for attracting tourists. Although Siglufjordur is a small town, The Herring Era Museum is the largest maritime museum in Iceland and has won the European Museum Award.
2. Packaging Natural Resources. - A trip to Godafoss "Waterfall of the Gods", the Myvatn Nature Baths, and the Dettifos waterfall was a lesson in how different natural resources can be packaged into an exciting tourism program while at the same time providing incentive to protect the natural world.
Our first stop was Godafoss "Waterfall of the Gods", one of the most spectacular waterfalls of Iceland. It received its name from orgeir Ljosvetningagoi, a local ruler around 1000 A.D. who made Christianity the official religion of Iceland. He then threw his Norse God Statues into the water fall thus giving it the name Godafoss meaning "Waterfall of the Gods".
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Following our trip to Godafoss we relaxed and played in the in the Myvatn Nature Baths. The baths are a human made creation utilizing the National Power Company's bore hole for the supply of water. The bath has a scenic overview of the landscape where guests can swim or bathe in 97 to 104 degree water and relax in the pool with the scenic views.
The lesson is that we can utilize existing resources to partner with the natural environment to create new and sustainable attractions for locals and visitors alike.
We then traveled to the Dettifos Waterfall in Vatnajokull National Park. After a short and pleasant hike we arrived at an overlook where we realized that Godafoss was just a warm-up when it comes to viewing spectacular waterfalls.
Detifoss is the most powerful waterfall in Europe with a height of 45 meters (150 ft) and about 100 metres (330 ft) wide. The water volume is about 500 cubic meters of water per second, the most powerful in all Europe
The lesson was the importance of preserving and protecting our natural environment. The Vatnajokull National Park is a relatively new national park, established in June 2008. It has since expanded and now the second largest national park in Europe, and covers 14% of Iceland. Iceland has three National Parks and a strong foundation for continuing to increase its tourist base through this national protection.
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3. Making Tourism Attractions Carbon Neutral - Our last stop on the day's tour was in Husavik, where we were treated to a carbon neutral whale watching trip provided by North Sailing. North Sailing is working to become more sustainable in every action it takes. Some of the ways they are doing this include:
Setting a goal to become totally carbon neutral by 2020 using electric propulsion on day tours and hybrid regenerative systems and second hand bio diesel on expeditions where possible
Restoring old boats and buildings for modern use. All of the North Sailing ships are restored vessels. Given a new purpose, saving materials and preserving cultural heritage. Restaurant Gamli Baukur, there restaurant at the dock, is a replica of historical buildings constructed from driftwood collected in Northern Iceland
Electric company cars. North Sailing is already using two electric cars that utilize Iceland's green energy source. The goal is to make the car fleet as environmentally friendly as the ships
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Local food. The Gamil Baukur's menu focuses on the daily catch of the local fishermen and the meat is from the local farmers.
Nature friendly operations. Respect for nature and focus on sustainability is the goal and basis for every decision. North Sailing adheres to a strict code of conduct for responsible whale watching.
For example sound travels more than four times faster in water than air and the noise from large vessels can carry long distances and impact and disrupt whales in important feeding grounds. North Sailings use of wooden sailing boats with slow propellers that operate at slow speeds makes this whale watching virtually noise free.
North Sailing advertises itself as "Pioneers in Sustainable Tourism". From what I saw and experienced, I would have to agree. Hopefully they will be a model that others will follow.
In summary, Iceland is a good case study for others who are beginning the process of transforming from old unsustainable models to new ones.
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For sustainable tourism they provide good examples of best practices for preserving cultural heritage for tourism, protecting natural resources and packaging them for the visitor, and transforming a whale watching tour business to become carbon neutral and more sustainable.
I look forward to returning to Iceland again to explore and learn more.
Co authored with Helen Berger, Resident Scholar Brandeis University Women's Studies Research Center
Often during presidential elections one side or the other claims that if their candidate does not win there will be dire consequences for the country, possibly the world. Certainly, to some degree this is always so. We have learned that elections have consequences. Wars or recessions occur under one president that might not have occurred under another. But this time it is different -really it is different. I know that we have called wolf so often that it sounds like the typical rhetoric of partisans, but it's not.
Why do we say that? Trump said that he would use his powers as president to jail his opponent. This is what dictators do; not democratically elected presidents. Yes, it is probably just hyperbole but words matter and who knows what is and is not bluster with Trump. He regularly praises Putin, a strong man himself. And now he is using the material dumped by Wikileaks that US intelligence has determined was hacked by the Russians. We know they doctored some of it. Here is a foreign power interfering in an US election and Trump is participating. In one instance he read from one of the alleged emails before it was in the public arena. We need to ask how did he get a preview?
More worrisome, as he sinks further and further in the polls, is his claim that the election is rigged. He has already suggested that second amendment people kill his opponent. He is now sending them to "those neighborhoods" to determine who can and cannot vote. What will happen when he loses, which at this point appears likely? Will those well armed men take to the streets to defend their "liberty" believing that the election was stolen?
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When Al Gore was declared the loser by the Supreme Court, after winning the popular vote, and undoubtedly winning the state of Florida, he accepted the decision. Why? Because to not accept it, is to bring into question all that maintains our democracy. Trump is no Al Gore, and at the moment, he is threatening our nation.
There is a lot to write about Trump using Wikileaks and now women coming forward to say his locker talk actually led to similar actions outside the locker room. He again threatens to sue those who make public accusations against him. He forgets democracy comes with rights and responsibilities! He doesn't pay taxes. He trashes just about every group except his own. Seems like it is not "Crooked Hillary." It is "Twisted Trump." - Bad business deals, threats, lies!
Let us focus instead on a woman with true grit - Hillary Clinton. She has stood above the fray. She went high when he went low. She acted presidential, strong, indefatigable. She withstood eleven hours of grilling by the Senate, who found nothing worthy of prosecution. She has been sliced and diced and no one seems to be able pin anything on her, though so many have tried. There has been lots of name calling but no bones broken; Hillary has stood tall. She has spoken for women all around the world. She has said Women's rights are Human Rights. She supports families; she realizes the crucial role families play in stabilizing our society and will prioritize their needs. She not only talks about family values, but she promotes policies which will strengthen the families.
We all want a president who will stand up for America, who will negotiate and have patience for the long arduous process of democracy and diplomacy. Hillary is the "man" for the job. She is a proven policy wonk who knows how to put ideas into practice, she has not made democracy a soap opera or the country a laughing stock of the world. Nor does she threaten to bring down the country in her wake if the voters reject her.
Congress has finally approved a stop gap spending bill that provides funding -- $1.1 billion - to fight the Zika virus. The money comes at the same time that new Zika transmission zones have been found in Florida and the first group of babies of mothers in Puerto Rico known to have been exposed to the virus in their first trimester are being born.
Beyond the funding, the Zika epidemic has exposed a major national weakness that must be converted to a strength. That can happen, if we now use lessons from Zika to advance our preparedness for this and other infectious diseases that are sure to come.
Simply put, our political system could not respond rapidly enough to combat the virus in a timely fashion. President Obama proposed $1.9 billion in emergency funding in February, and only this week, seven months later, did funding emerge from Congress. Only through creative accounting - borrowing from one disease to pay for another - could the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) combat Zika as best they could.
It may seem as though we got away with it in the short term, but we have yet to see the toll the rapid spread of Zika will take in Puerto Rico, and globally our delay is unconscionable. And even if we do escape the brunt of the Zika epidemic, as an expert in infectious disease I know well that waiting for politicians to respond to epidemic threats is a very dangerous game that the greatest nation in the world cannot afford to keep playing.
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Infectious diseases tend to emerge suddenly, as do biosecurity threats. We cannot wait for the give-and-take of an intentionally deliberative legislative body to work an emerging threat into its protracted agenda. I've seen the need for expediency first-hand, as Chair of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity and as President of Stony Brook University, a major research institution and healthcare provider.
We must provide our public health and healthcare professionals with the resources that they need to keep Americans safe. We must also correct the weakness that we have now publicly exposed: our inability to provide vital funding within even half a year. It's time to design and implement an expanded national infrastructure for infectious disease defense. That infrastructure should include the following:
First, a fund should be created that would give the CDC and NIH sufficient financial resources to respond to emergencies. This would protect both the American people and Congress. As an institution, Congress does not benefit from its inability to respond quickly to threats of this nature.
Second, as a nation we must invest more aggressively in the science of vaccine development. We have the strongest scientific community in the world, yet it's left without sufficient funding to keep our nation ready for threats that arise. We were dramatically unprepared for the Ebola virus. We were not properly prepared for Zika, which was not even on our radar a year ago. What will we be unprepared for next?
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One cannot predict the precise nature of each likely threat, but we can advance our understanding of the science of vaccine development and work to bring more innovation to this vital medical need.
In the case of Zika, there is reason to hope that a vaccine could be available in 18 months. The fundamentals for a successful vaccine are strong (effective vaccines against other similar viruses have been developed, protective immunity appears to develop naturally after infections, and protection from Zika infection after vaccination with experimental inactivated virus and viral DNA-derived vaccines has already been achieved in mice and non-human primate models of disease). But the lack of resources is limiting the basic science and clinical studies needed to test these vaccines both in laboratories and in the field where they can truly be assessed.
Third, we need to streamline the regulatory process for innovative treatments, vaccines, and other responses to global infectious disease threats. This does not mean weakening the regulations, just expediting their application. This applies to two main areas: development of Genetically Modified Organisms such as a Zika-fighting genetically modified mosquito; and the deliberations of Institutional Review Boards, which review and approve research involving human subjects. Those could allow for a rapid expansion of sites, for instance, or more rapid enrollment of patients.
Finally, we need to refine our public health delivery systems, through which we inform and protect the public during a crisis. These include, in the case of Zika for example, our capacity to remove standing water and to perform efficient spraying of mosquitoes. As The New York Times has reported, the most effective aerial spraying in Miami, "seems to have come from combining sprays that kill adult mosquitoes with sprays that kill larvae" - an outcome that "goes against conventional wisdom."
At a time when global air travel makes us more susceptible than ever to newly threatening diseases, the need for further research to transform the field of vaccination technology and to develop new therapies for infectious diseases has never been greater. New infectious disease threats will continue to present in unexpected ways and at unpredictable times. It's the reality of a world drawn ever closer together and changing weather patterns that are altering the range and thus the dangerous collision between microbes, their insect vectors, and animals, including, of course, humans.
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What we know for certain is two things: threats will arrive, and we are more capable of combating them than any nation in the world. It's time to give our scientific community the infrastructure that's needed and not expose Americans unnecessarily to threats that can be significantly reduced if not prevented.
If you've noticed that your fellow New Yorkers smell a whole lot nicer these days, it's due to a new fragrance shop that recently opened on Crosby Street in Soho, Fueguia 1833.
To understand the full impact of this new store, let me preface it by saying that Patagonian brand Fueguia 1833 is to perfumes what Beluga caviar is to food and Valentino is to couture: Timeless, beautiful to behold and oh, so delicious.
I personally fell in love with the brand at this year's Pitti Fragranze in Florence. Inside that wondrous world that is the Stazione Leopolda, there are endless possibilities. And for a woman who grew up collecting perfume samples from the local beauty shop, where she accompanied her mom on shopping trips, the yearly fragrance fair is the equivalent of a toy shop -- with an all-you-can-eat ice cream parlor thrown in.
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Fueguia 1833 is the love child of Argentinian businessman and musician Julian Bedel who founded the brand with Amalia Amoedo in 2010. For the first three years or so, fragrance aficionados had to travel to Buenos Aires to get their hands (and noses) onto the deliciously perfumes. With a penchant for uncluttered scents that are inspired by nature and the cleanest, clearest molecules which make up usual fragrance favorites along with never before used ingredients, Fueguia 1833 has easily conquered a market that is typically difficult to seize. This month, with NYC, they will have opened ten stand-alone boutiques, while also selling their creations through luxury fragrance shops around the world.
Perhaps it's all due to the inspiration of the brand, the figure of Fuegia Basket to which the company owes its name -- a 19th century Patagonian girl who also happened to inspire Charles Darwin. Lets just say that the name fits Fueguia 1833 perfectly, as they blend Argentinian grassroots scents with timeless elegance and new world class, both in their image and in their perfumes.
I caught up with Bedel, a dashing, tall, smooth voiced gentleman, in Florence and asked for a few insider's tips that he could share, to make the wonderful world of perfume more accessible. And while I dream of visiting the new location in NYC, I continue to refer back to my bag of samples for inspiration, whenever I find myself with a case of writer's block. Because scent really is the best medicine!
What is your own background and how did Fueguia 1833 come to be?
Julian Bedel: My father is an artist, a painter, my grandfather was a collector. I grew up in Buenos Aires, I'm super-Argentinian. My family is French and Italian. I turned to painting and music, and building guitars. In my family, we all have a profound love of nature so we have different farms all over Argentina. We took care of the sawing and pruning of our trees. So as a kid, I was always exposed to woods, all the essential oils, burning things, cutting grasses. And Argentina is so bio-diverse that nature changes silently. Moving around in those different properties and working in them, it really exposed me to a side of nature that's incredible. It was easy, as a musician or a painter -- for perfumes you just change the palette. In music you need three notes to build a chord, in painting you can create even with two colors and it's all about combinations.
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I wanted to create a whole brand that would reflect our biodiversity as Argentinians, particularities what we have as a culture and a country, despite the cliches, but especially to be a platform for botanical research, which is what we've been doing, and is our main focus.
Fragrance is so personal, and so incredibly alive in the moment; is it more difficult to think in perfume terms?
Bedel: For me it's easier, it's like a trick. As a musician, I love guitar playing, you can really tell from whom I'm stealing things. In painting the same. As an artist, you are influenced and it's there, even in contemporary art. It's very difficult to find really talented people who are creating something new.
One of my fascination with scents and perfume was the potential of this palette in my hands. Without knowing anything, yet continuing this story. Because most of the ingredients that we use do not exist in this industry. These are molecules that either you produce or they don't exist.
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When someone in, lets say Japan gets exposed to our scents, and they don't have a tradition of personal scent, it's not about the brand or anything. It's only about the ingredients, the level of transparency.
How can you continue to create new scents, source the prime ingredients necessary?
Bedel: In 2002 I created a foundation in NY called Help Argentina, and it allowed me to coordinate communities to actually produce the ingredients I was looking for. It was one thing to go to my farm and cut a wick and say, wow, it's amazing. And it's another thing to be able to produce it in a sustainable way. With consistency. We have ten boutiques, between Buenos Aires, Milan, Tokyo and NYC, among others. That creates another problem. We only make four hundred bottles per batch. It's like an individual scent because that batch cannot be repeated. The distillation that I do at a precise moment of a certain ingredient is particular.
So, today I buy this scent and it's this distillation; but if I buy it again in a year, it will be slightly different...
Bedel: Exactly.
Then your perfume is like a couture creation. Can you elaborate?
Bedel: An essential oil of jasmine is made up of three hundred molecules, while cedar is fifty molecules. The smell of coffee is eight hundred molecules. What we are working on a lot, also in our botany center in Uruguay, our fluid extraction facility there, is in cleaning these ingredients. The facets, the different facets among these three hundred molecules in a jasmine, you have ones that can contaminate the other layers. What does it mean? If I don't clean the jasmine, suppose I want two hundred molecules of that jasmine, and I need to get rid of the others, because they add a lot of noise. You need technology to separate, to rectify. This happens with vetiver a lot, because the heart of vetiver is so amazing but depending on the origin and the distillation, which is usually very rudimentary, it can be very smoky and earthy. If you put vetiver in something, it can monopolize everything and cover everything.
So in order to use these ingredients and have my artistic vision I needed to refine the ingredients. That's why I also say it's not the perfume but the ingredients, that requires a lot of work, of cleaning.
Some famous last words for fragrance lovers?
Bedel: If you don't watch cinema, you don't see art, and you don't write, it becomes very difficult to find the right description of a scent you are enjoying.
Twice during our nine-day visit to eastern Germany - once in Leipzig and once in Dresden, both of which are in the state of Saxony - Jackie and I (and our friend) ate Sachsische quarkkaulchen for dessert. These are Saxon pancakes made with mashed potatoes and the fresh cheese known as quark, lightly sweetened if at all, and served with applesauce or, sometimes, another fruit compote, and whipped cream. I'm forever making to-cook lists on our travels, and (between us) not many of its entries actually get eaten once we've returned home. This trip, however, yielded three to-cook entries; I've already made them all, and you'll read about them in the next few weeks, if you care to.
Pancakes made of quark or something like it are common enough in places such as Russia and Poland (Dresden is half an hour's drive from the Polish border), and I had my say on them a few years ago. The addition of potatoes - lots of them - makes these very different in flavor and texture. They're also a cinch to make, and very forgiving when it comes to proportions: some cooks use more quark than potato; some equal weights; some more potato than quark.
I'm of the latter cohort because I like flavor of potatoes and the appealing slightly glutinous consistency they lend the pancakes. And there's still plenty of quark to add the gentle, fresh dairy tartness. For a dozen plump pancakes about 2 inches (5 cm) across, I used an eight-ounce (225 g) tub of quark made in Vermont. If you don't find any, you can puree a 7-ounce (200-g) package of farmer's cheese in a food processor with a couple of tablespoons of sour cream, and I'll bet a dense strained Greek-style yogurt would be an excellent substitute too.
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A while in advance, I boiled three quarters of a pound (350 g) of peeled potatoes in lightly salted water, then put them through a ricer (a food mill works too, and so does a sieve if you have an assistant to do the work). When they'd cooled a while, I added the quark, two egg yolks, the zest of the lemon whose juice I'd used in my applesauce, a quarter teaspoon of fine salt and a tablespoon of sugar. I stirred it all together with a rubber spatula then vigorously stirred in half a cup (75 g) of flour to yield something between a thick batter and a soft dough: just dense enough that you can form half-inch-thick disks by hand if you're careful. Note that you may very well need to add more flour depending on how liquid your cheese mixture is.
Some cooks add raisins. Because of the apple or other fruit accompaniment, I don't see the advantage of that. And some add vanilla and/or a little cinnamon, which isn't a terrible idea at all.
After a rest (minimum 10 minutes on the counter or up to a couple of hours in the fridge) form the pancakes and fry them over low heat for five minutes per side, so that they brown slowly enough to make sure the inside is cooked through. You can use whole or clarified butter, or neutral oil. I used brown butter (strained) from last week's bread-dipping adventure. Sprinkle with granulated sugar before serving, two per portion, with unsweetened whipped cream and applesauce (or, as I did, with briefly-cooked plums - with the option of applesauce for the purists).
It doesn't seem to me that these would re-heat very well; they would still taste good, but the texture would probably suffer. Leftover batter, on the other hand, will hold for a couple of days in the fridge, though you may need to adjust its consistency before cooking: you could stir in a little more flour or you could just spoon it into the frying pan as is and forget about forming perfect disks by hand.
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That's one entry checked off on the to-cook list!
From Greg Mitchell's The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill , published this week by Crown.
When Daniel Schorr, on August 7, 1962, got a call at dawn in his Berlin hotel room, on the morning of the great escape under the Wall that he planned to cover, he was perplexed. The crafty CBS correspondent was being summoned to the U.S. Mission. On arrival, greeted by a Marine guard, he was even more startled to learn that he would be speaking on a secure line (indicating some sort of top secret issue), arranged by the American military.
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It wasn't so surprising that the man on the other end was his boss, CBS news manager Blair Clark. But what was Clark doing in Secretary of State Dean Rusk's office--around midnight--in Washington? Rusk was still there, with some top aides, along with three CIA officials, acting with the approval of his boss, President John F. Kennedy. Rusk had just met with JFK's close aide and press secretary, Pierre Salinger.
"What's this I hear about you planning to film a Berlin tunnel escape?" Clark asked. Schorr had been tipped of to it just the week before, and paid thousands of dollars for the rights, which meant he could scoop arch-rival NBC, which had been filming inside another absurdly dangerous tunnel under the Wall since June. Up to one hundred East Germans were expected to flee through the CBS tunnel.
"I told our foreign editor all about it," Schorr replied.
"Well, I am sitting here with the Secretary of State in his office," Clark said.
"Yes?"
"And he has convinced me that you shouldn't go ahead and do that."
"Why not?"
"Because it would be considered a provocation [by the Soviets]," Clark asserted, "it could lead to a great deal of trouble, and the State Department doesn't want any unnecessary trouble at the Wall."
"That's the trouble with the State Department," Schorr countered. "That's why there is a wall."
"Dan, I know you don't like to be ordered around," Clark said, putting it mildly, "but that's it--I want you to scrap all your plans to do that film."
Schorr was stunned. "Okay," he said, after a moment, "but would it make any difference for you to know that once this gets around and we don't do it, they [the tunnelers] will go to NBC or, god forbid, ABC?"
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"It's an order."
The call lasted just six minutes. Rusk penned a cable (recently declassified) to diplomats in West Germany announcing CBS's surrender. Schorr returned to his hotel humiliated and fuming. The whole concept was wrong--this administration, any administration, dictating news coverage. He knew Blair Clark was a Kennedy man--a friend since their Harvard days--and he figured that JFK had talked to him personally, even pressured him, which made Dan even angrier. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
Rusk would meet with Clark again that morning, just to make sure CBS had no second thoughts.
In the days ahead, under orders from Rusk, U.S. diplomats in West Germany would meet with Schorr, the declassified cables reveal, and make it clear that he was not to consider any such foolishness in the future. Schorr would remain angry about the shutdown of his tunnel film for the rest of his life.
Little more than a month later, the "NBC tunnel"--then now known to American officials--successfully brought 29 East Germans to freedom in the minute, fully filmed by the network's cameras. A ninety-minute primetime special was planned. A few weeks later, in October, the White House and State Department would attempt to repeat its shutdown of a TV news special. This time the network would resist such bullying, but only to a point.
Last month, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made international headlines citing Hitler and the Holocaust, saying he would happily "slaughter" three million drug addicts. But even before Duterte was elected on a dramatic anti-drug platform, the Philippines' drug war tactics were fueling one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the world.
Despite more than 20 years of relatively low prevalence of HIV infection, the Philippines now has the third highest incidence of HIV, exceeding a 25 percent growth in new infections annually. Cebu City has the highest HIV prevalence rate in the country, at 7.7 percent, where sharing of drug injection equipment is the primary driver.
As in many parts of the United States, sterile syringe programs had been operating in Cebu largely underground since 1993. But in 2009, while many other countries and U.S. states were reforming the paraphernalia laws passed in the 1980s as a result of scarce injecting supplies leading to the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, the Philippines made syringes without a prescription illegal for the first time. As a result, Cebu's local public health organizations had to discontinue their needle-exchange programs, and people who inject drugs were unable to buy them at pharmacies. The following year, HIV cases among injecting drug users in Cebu jumped from less than 1 percent to a startling 53 percent.
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The primary drugs used in the Philippines are methamphetamine (known locally as shabu), marijuana, and to a lesser extent, opiates in the form of the pain killer Nubain, usually injected with shabu. Drug use rates are high for Asia, but lower than in Australia, and on par with the U.S. The perception that the Philippines has an enormous drug problem, however, is shared by many Filipinos, and Rodrigo Duterte swept into power on a tough-on-drugs platform. During his campaign in April he threatened, "All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you." A month later, when he was President-elect, Duterte offered medals and cash rewards for citizens who shot dealers dead.
"If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful," he said to a crowd on July 1, the day after his inauguration. "Do your duty, and if in the process you kill 1,000 persons because you were doing your duty, I will protect you," he told police officers the same day.
As a result, more than 3,600 people have been killed in the Philippines between Duterte's June 30 inauguration through October 10. Of these, 1,375 have been killed by police, who claim they were in self-defense during shoot-outs. In media reports, witnesses say these are extrajudicial killings. An additional 2,233 murders been attributed to vigilantes, some of whom are reportedly state-hired contract killers. And according to an October 4 report by the Guardian, highly orchestrated and trained state-sanctioned police death squads have been created to execute a list of targets: suspected drug users, dealers and criminals.
Meanwhile, over 700,000 Filipinos have 'volunteered' to turn themselves in as drug addicts. In early September, news broke that the Chinese government has agreed to build huge drug rehabilitation centers in Philippine military camps. Chinese drug rehabilitation centers are widely critiqued for being no more than forced labor camps, and rarely offer evidence-based drug treatment. Furthermore, these "relentless and draconian countermeasures" have not lessened China's drug problem, according to a report released last year by the Brookings Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank. It appears that the Philippines are preparing a mandatory detention system for confessed drug users, a brand of treatment the United Nations warns can lead to some of the most egregious forms of human rights abuses.
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At the International AIDS Conference in 2010, activists noted that, "The criminalization of illicit drug users is fueling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequence," and passed the Vienna Declaration calling on governments to end drug war tactics as an essential step to ending AIDS. It delineated some of the harmful consequences of drug law enforcement, including forced labor, execution of drug offenders and, "The undermining of public health systems when law enforcement drives drug users away from prevention and care services and into environments where the risk of infectious disease transmission (e.g., HIV, hepatitis C & B, and tuberculosis) and other harms is increased. "
It is too early in this extremely deadly version of the "war on drugs" to know what effect it will have on HIV prevalence, but the indicators are grim: Duterte has bankrolled the crackdown by giving huge funding boosts to the police and military while slashing the country's health budget by 25 percent. The latest Philippines Department of Health figures showed 841 newly diagnosed HIV cases in June - the biggest monthly total since records began in 1984. As Duterte wages a bloody war on his own citizens and defunds public health programs, advocates are deeply concerned about both immediate human rights violations and the long-term implications for people affected by the HIV epidemic.
People in the U.S. can join protests in New York on October 11 and Washington DC on October 13. Please sign the petition asking President Obama and Secretary Kerry to strongly condemn the killing of Filipino drug suspects, and immediately withdraw the U.S. pledge of $32 million in new funding for law enforcement in the Philippines, until President Duterte acts to: Immediately end the incitements to kill people suspected of using or dealing drugs,Fulfill international human rights obligations, such as the rights to life, health, due process and a fair trial, as set out in the human rights treaties ratified by the Philippines, andPromotes evidence-based, voluntary treatment and harm reduction services for people who use drugs instead of compulsory rehabilitation in military camps.
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Co-authored by Doug Ragan, Chief of UN-Habitat Youth and Livelihoods Unit
From October 13-15, a preparatory conference centered around youth and dedicated to knowledge sharing and co-creation relating to sustainable urbanization, YoutHAB, will take place at the Polytechnic University of Ecuador. Led by the Latin American and Caribbean Climate Change Youth Movement (CLIQ!) and supported by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), this event will have the participation of 200 youth from Ecuador and many other countries committed to the implementation of the New Urban Agenda.
After four months of in-depth negotiations, the final version of the New Urban Agenda, dated 10 September, has been agreed upon and is ready for adoption when ministers and heads of states gather in Quito next week for Habitat III, the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. The New Urban Agenda will shape thinking and governmental decision-making for the next two decades and beyond.
The New Urban Agenda marks a tremendous victory for the 1.8 billion young people around the world, as well as the many more that will be added to the planet these upcoming 20 years. The UN-Habitat Youth Advisory Board, a UN-Habitat mandated body composed of 16 youth around the world involved in urbanization, actively fought for the incorporation of age- and gender-response language in this new draft, which is now mentioned in nine different occasions. Meanwhile, the transformative potential of youth was noted 12 times throughout the text, and, in Paragraph 148 under "Means of Implementation", governments agreed to "promote the strengthening of the capacity of national, subnational, and local governments...and youth...enabling them to effectively participate in urban and territorial development decision-making."
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While the international community will continue to celebrate the New Urban Agenda up to Quito and beyond, we must now focus on effective implementation. Youth in Latin America and the Caribbean are becoming increasingly important players in sustainable urban development. One in five people living in Latin America and the Caribbean are youth: a staggering 156 million young people, representing the two region's highest level in history.
The outcome of YoutHAB will be a declaration that synthesizes the position of youth regarding the New Urban Agenda. This will be a collaborative project led by youth but in partnership with civil society, the UN, the research community, and the private sector.
This organization of YoutHAB not only reflects the increasing complexity and knowledge of young people to organize, but also their leadership in the public sector. It reflects the needs and demands of young people for a re-imagination of the decision-making processes and the role that young people can play in sustainable urbanization, from urban design to budgeting and the creation of safe and accessible public space free from violence.
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A television cameraman tests his equipment prior to showtime at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, where the final debate between US presidential nominees Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump will be held October 19, 2016. / AFP / PAUL J. RICHARDS (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
The eyes of the nation and of the world will turn to Las Vegas and the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, this evening for the final presidential debate of the 2016 election.
The fact that this debate is being hosted in Las Vegas highlights some important roles that Las Vegas, the state of Nevada, and the American southwest play in electoral politics. Most people who follow politics regularly already know that Nevada is an important swing state. However as my UNLV colleagues have explained eloquently in various forums, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/2016-why-nevada-primary-matters-clinton-sanders-213641 few also realize that Nevada is also an important bellwether. Specifically, Nevada has voted for the presidential candidate that has been elected in every election but one since 1912. More importantly, the population of Nevada represents demographic trends in many American states. Indeed, Nevada's growing population includes a rapidly growing percentage of Latino, Asian-American/Pacific Islander, and African-American residents. In the future, America's national elections are increasingly likely to be decided by the candidate capable of winning swing states in the American southwest.
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One of the most incredible facets of having the final presidential debate take place at UNLV was the opportunity to host an International Debate Study Mission (IDSM). https://www.ndi.org/debates The IDSM is a group of international delegates from 29 different nations. These delegates are the progenitors of political election debates in their own home countries and are visiting UNLV so that they can better understand the process of hosting political-election debates. From Argentina to Zambia and all points between, these delegates are dedicated to the principles of fostering civil democratic discussions. Hearing the delegates stories and discussing the hurdles that they have faced was nothing short of awe-inspiring. Their sacrifice, hard work, and unrelenting commitment to debate should make every American feel humble and grateful for our nation's democratic traditions. Because of the dedicated work of those in the IDSM, there are now political-election debates in 80 countries around the world.
What can we expect tonight? Scholars of presidential debates will uniformly report that the Clinton-Trump debates have no historical analog. However, the first two debates can provide us with some insight into what we can expect for the final debate. Trump's poor performance in the first debate set a new low bar for the genre. In the second debate, Trump improved, but both candidates were still mired in discussions of character and fitness for the office. This takeaway suggests that neither candidate adequately focused on critical discussions of policies and issues that could make a meaningful difference in the lives of all Americans. The overall perceived negative tone of the two in preceding debates was laid bare by the collective glee surrounding the second debate's final question asking the candidates to "name one positive thing you respect in one another." This reaction illustrates the desire of many Americans to move beyond the negativity of this campaign season and to embrace policies that will move our nation forward in a productive manner.
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Given the adversarial tenor of the first two debates and the likelihood that the third debate may be even more negative, some have suggested that the third debate should be cancelled. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/14/enough-enough-scrap-third-debate/32oyCuhCjolz9ptFt3Ty0H/story.html While these critics have made some reasonable arguments, we must realize that cancelling the third debate will not eliminate character attacks nor will it silence anti-democratic statements. In fact, cancelling the debate might actually amplify both. In the end, there is no solution to anti-democratic rhetoric except for more vociferous pro-democratic rhetoric. The delegates of the International Debate Study Mission know this all too well. Many delegates fought to craft debates in democracies emerging from decades or centuries of monarchical or dictatorial rule. A delegate from Guatemala described his country's first large political debate occurring with tanks surrounding the building where the debate was being held. The delegate's story paints a poignant picture of the value in having one's voice heard.
At the end of the day, it is fair to assume that individuals from all nations want the opportunity to have their voices heard. Following in the footsteps of those who fought for our right to voice, this final presidential debate affords UNLV a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pave roads of our own. As we set the stage for the final presidential debate tonight, we firmly place our footsteps as a campus community in the bigger picture of voice in the American southwest and democracy as a whole.
-You can't tell who is craziest: the refugees, the police or those women, said a local shopkeeper. He made a cross over his chest, to express his sincere Serbian bewilderment.
He had just witnessed ten shabby Afghan and Syrian refugees walking past, escorted by ten Women in Black from Serbia, Italy and Spain, themselves escorted by ten policemen and a police car.
By the railway station in downtown Belgrade, the temporary citizens-from-nowhere are living their nomad existences in the the rubble of the so-called Belgrade Waterfront construction project. The refugees loiter all day, hoping for something to happen, between the city bus yards and huge trash-cans full of boxed food that the aid workers supply on a regular basis.
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Around five pm there is a kind of tea ceremony where about 800 people gather, most of them arriving from the organized camps where they sleep. They arrive to be heard, to be seen. We Women in Black went to join them to show this Belgrade political scene to our international colleagues.
It' s been now two years since the Syrian refugee crisis seized headlines, but the refugees are not entirely Syrians, but a global peoples' market of Afghans and Nigerians as well. In the beginning there were many more refugees, and far less aid from the locals and the Serbian state. The migrants were simply collapsing on flat surfaces anywhere in Belgrade, urban nooks, parks and lots where they ate, drank and slept.
Now the bus-station square, a favorite place to cluster for obvious reasons, has been fenced and organized. The police are everywhere and a routine has been invented for the nomads. Its scope is international: border walls are being erected around Serbia, blocking the paths into Schengen Europe, where of course the refugees long to go. They come from the perilous South, the imagine safety in the West, and Balkan Serbia is only a transit zone.
I spoke to some : they are 90 percent young men. They aspire to reach France, Germany, Italy and Spain. They have addresses and phone numbers of relatives and allies in those countries, but they have no transit papers and no money.
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A Nigerian young man confided me: money is the only real problem. If I had the money for travel, trust me: no walls or police could stop me. I believed him, because, although money cannot buy you a happy life, it can swiftly bail you out of misery, in war and in peace.
I remember how I myself smuggled chocolate into wartime Serbia from Hungary by handing cash to the customs officers. Chocolate was pure joy for Serbian children living under sanctions. The same applied to toilet paper, diesel fuel, gasoline, cigarettes, liquor...
In the nineties in Serbia, my country was being punished, but nobody thought to build walls around our national borders. On the contrary, in those heady days they built shopping malls, instant ramshackle markets that welcomed the smugglers, mostly everyday people who crossed the borders and illegally brought back suitcases stuffed with subsistence goods for a population in dire straits.
The entire economy had been de-legitimated, so we were all smugglers. The locals from countries around us made plenty of money, for their governments officially supported the sanctions while the population broke them.
Today, by historical contrast, it's Serbia is playing the warm-hearted good cop role. The former villains in the story are generously taking in the refugees, while the international community, morally pinched by the ever-growing breakdown of world-order, pays a lot of the bills. The refugees are not a novelty any more, they are escorted here and there to wherever some shred of bureaucracy or activism will take them.
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The official camps were packed long ago, overcrowded with women and children, so many of the more venturesome young men end up as street vagrants, lurking under the bridges, lighting trash-fires in barrels and building makeshift showers and latrines.
I joined a Syrian group at their five o'clock tea-time. Very polite and neat brothers made us tea and poured it into genuine glasses, not plastic containers, as a sign of respect. Syrian refugees in Europe are particularly well educated, as my friend Faisa from Morocco told me: they are the elite. Here in Serbia the Syrians are the most envied by other refugees, because they are genuine war refugees and the official recognition of their dire situation is a kind of privilege.
It follows that the Syrians sometimes get roughed up in the squats for other refugees and the Belgrade police have to intervene. I asked my tea-drinking hosts, and the other young men who gathered around me: where are your women?
They could not understand my English or Italian, but they had learned some scraps of Serbian. They all knew the word "mamma!" Everybody' s mamma was either back in the home country, or off in a camp. A few children were visible, but not many.
Belgrade Women in Black never come empty-handed, so they brought the useful, lightweight treats that true refugees appreciate: cigarettes and bananas. We left the covert obscurity under the bridge and began a march with some sick to the local first aid.
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The women activists walked in the center, the refugees gathered around them and the police escort formed an outer circle. A police car was a kind of cavalry escort. The Serbian police were the same age as the refugees, but with somewhat lighter skin color and in uniforms.
I talked to the cops: where are the refugee women, I asked. The chief answered me with a sly secretive smile: you noticed that fact, madame, he said, you are bright , he complimented me. Because these are men fit for army service. They came here to conquer Europe, they are on a secret Muslim jihad, they left their women safe behind!
When I asked the refugees the same question, they echoed the policeman's compliment : you are very bright madame. Our women are at home hungry, we are here to earn money to help them. But they won't let us make a living; they keep us behind the barbed wire.
The refugees and policemen had one great point of agreement in their paranoid stories. They knew that the same people who had destroyed their nations were the ones attacking them for being transnational. They were punished for the crime of becoming victims.
I guess they blamed the big powers, those with the power to bomb them rather than their own militias and factions, but I didn't want to inquire into the details. As a woman, as an activist, I've seen enough warfare to know its situations. It doesn't take genius to see that a war-shattered society can't integrate its men and women; the genders get scattered and there aren't a lot of women around.
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Wars and refugee crises are business as usual for someone, just like the situations in stark situations in barracks, prisons, and hospitals. When there is money involved, it's human trafficking; when even the money fails, then it's sheer disaster.
I have no recipe to solve a world with 60 million refugees in it, but I see more coming. The whole planet is becoming a nomad zone, for various reasons of war, oil, climate, ethnicity, religion, and everyone, especially including the most privileged, is scared that they might be next. The one percenters who own the hot investment money are perhaps the most nomadic among us, so they cannot play the geostrategic game properly any more. Their money cannot by them any security, while the refugees were ardent patriots until their burned their neighbors homes or had them blown up from above. Utopia and dystopia have the same postal code.
WEST PALM BEACH, FL - OCTOBER 13: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the South Florida Fair Expo Center on October 13, 2016 in West Palm Beach, Florida. In his remarks Trump vehemently denied recent allegations of past sexual assault and railed against mainstream media corruption and the 'Clinton machine'. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
This opinion piece originally appeared in The Hill prior to the second Presidential debate. However, since no questions were asked about the critical issue of nuclear weapons at that debate, I'm reposting it now in the hopes that tomorrow night's debate moderator, Chris Wallace, will ask a question about this existential issue.
The United States controls the most lethal nuclear arsenal on the planet. We have nearly 7,200 nuclear warheads, and when combined with Russia's total, our two countries possess more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. We could literally destroy the world many times over.
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Yet with election day just over four weeks away, the American people still know very little about Donald Trump's views of nuclear weapons.
Americans deserve to know what their next Commander in Chief thinks about these weapons of war. This Sunday, ABC News' Martha Raddatz, CNN's Anderson Cooper and the attendees at the second presidential debate in St. Louis have a unique opportunity to rectify this failure.
At the debate, Trump must be asked two crucial questions about nuclear weapons: first, when would he use them? And second, how would he prevent their global proliferation?
Why does this matter? Unlike any other issue, the president has total control of the nuclear codes. No other American -- not a general, not a cabinet member, not a Supreme Court Justice -- can stop him or her from using them. There are no real checks and balances when it comes to using the nuclear arsenal.
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Yet the statements Trump has made about nuclear weapons during this campaign are simply terrifying. When questioned about their use, Trump has meandered between protestations about how he would never use them to refusing to answer the question.
However, he has dropped certain confusing hints about his views. He's suggested that he may encourage countries like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to develop their own nuclear weapons. And MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has even reported that Trump asked during one national security briefing: "If we have them [nuclear weapons], why can't we use them?" -- sending a collective shiver up the spines of everyone who fears nuclear annihilation.
In a world with multiple nuclear weapons states, Trump's erratic rhetoric fuels the type of uncertainty that leads to major miscalculation -- and potential disaster. Take for example the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that time, President Kennedy didn't know Soviet Premier Khrushchev's intentions, and it led to near catastrophe. Only when the two leaders had direct communications about their intentions -- and their desire to not have a nuclear war -- did cooler heads prevail and was war averted.
Leaders must be clear and credible, not intemperate and unpredictable, to avoid a calamitous miscalculation.
If Trump's plan is to leave our nuclear state adversaries guessing, then it's more likely that he'll scare them into taking preemptive nuclear action against us. And if Trump believes that he would use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear state actors -- such as the Islamic State, which he has hinted about -- then he would be using them against millions of innocent civilians without either justification or proportionality, turning the United States into a nuclear aggressor.
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Hillary Clinton has taken a starkly different approach. As Secretary of State, she played an important role in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. As a presidential candidate, Clinton has called for a new Nuclear Posture Review to ensure that our nuclear arsenal is prepared to meet present and future threats. She is thinking deeply about ways to better manage our nuclear arsenal while keeping the American people secure.
This is exactly the type of leadership we need and that Clinton provides. What we don't need are leaders, such as Trump, who view nuclear proliferation as either inevitable or beneficial to our national security. It is not.
For the past half century, ever since President Kennedy's administration, the goal of American nuclear weapons policy has been to prevent their spread while avoiding ever having to use them. And we've had successes in the past half dozen years on President Obama's watch. We've concluded a diplomatic agreement to prevent a new nuclear state in Iran. We've concluded an agreement with Russia to slash both our countries' nuclear stockpiles. And we've pressed the international community to adopt a nuclear test ban treaty. Hillary Clinton played a central role in all of these successes.
The moderators at the next presidential debate must therefore put these issues front and center. We need a Commander in Chief who not only has the temperament to handle the challenges of the nuclear arsenal, but also one who understands what it's all about.
Let's get this right on Sunday. Because once you drop the bomb, you can't take it back.
Rubin is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Department of State. He was responsible for building support in the House of Representatives for the nuclear agreement with Iran. Rubin has also worked with the Ploughshares Fund, an organization dedicated to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus (L) and Speaker of the House and Chairman of the convention Paul Ryan confer on what to do after the Alaska delegation demanded that their votes for candidates other than Donald Trump be counted and recorded at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 19, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
The GOP still clings to the idea that it's the party of "traditional values" and "strict construction" of the U.S. Constitution even while breaking with past precedent in radical and reckless ways. It's clear by their actions over the past 22 years that the Republicans are willing to chuck precedent and tradition out the window if they believe it will serve their narrow partisan interests.
Let's review:
In 1994, when the Republicans won the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years the first thing they did was shut down the government in an unprecedented attempt to extort the Democratic president to bow down to their demands to voucherize Medicare.
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The full-throated denunciation of the U.S. government as a new form of "tyranny" coming from Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and radio shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh, helped create the politically toxic environment that led a handful of right-wing extremists to truck bomb the main federal office building in Oklahoma City.
When the government shutdown tactic faced public opprobrium the House Republicans moved on to transforming their oversight function into a partisan attack machine. Abusing their subpoena power, as well as the post-Watergate rules requiring "Special Prosecutors" to be appointed when evidence of administration wrongdoing surfaced, they took the unprecedented step of impeaching a Democratic president for trying to hide a private sexual relationship.
The Republican Justices on the Supreme Court had ruled that the partisan investigations of President Bill Clinton would not impair his ability to carry out his constitutional obligations. Boy were they wrong. After the federal government was tied in knots for the better part of two years over the Monica Lewinsky revelations, the Clinton sex scandal became the functional equivalent of a government shutdown by other means.
The Republicans not only forced the country to endure months of graphic descriptions of the president's trysts with his young intern, but also revealed their own shameless hypocrisy when Speakers Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston were both exposed as serial adulterers even while denouncing Clinton's "character."
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The Republicans then settled on the boring and outwardly asexual Dennis Hastert as Speaker. Hastert, the creator of the hyper-partisan "Hastert Rule" that the Republicans in the House still dutifully enforce (where no bills are allowed to come up for a vote unless a "majority of the majority" approves them) is today in prison for illegally spending millions of dollars to try to cover up his earlier life as a sexual predator. It turns out that the longest serving Republican House Speaker in American history was a pedophile.
All of these extreme actions of the 1990s showed that the GOP had no qualms about breaking with precedent and tradition (or "family values") if it furthered its partisan objectives.
And these acts of unprecedented partisanship and recklessness continued into the 21st Century.
In 2000, the Republican attacks on anyone advocating recounting the vote tally in the state of Florida to find out who really won the presidential election dovetailed perfectly with the five Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices stepping in to rule George W. Bush the winner. These actions were unprecedented and no election has come close to the irregularities in the 2000 race, except for maybe the thoroughly messed up Hayes-Tilden debacle in 1876.
But the Republicans' break with precedent and tradition was just getting started.
After eight years of Republican misrule, and four full years (2003-2007) where they ran the whole government, they left the country in the worst shape since the Great Depression.
And the moment Barack Obama was sworn in as president in January 2009 the Republicans began to obstruct everything the new president wanted to do to try to deal with the economic crisis. Their wrath was unprecedented in its vindictiveness and bile.
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House members yelled "You Lie!" at the president in the middle of a State of the Union address, a kind of outburst that hadn't happened since the lead up to the Civil War; they questioned whether the president was born in the United States; they claimed he was a Kenyan Mau-Mau, and so on.
The reception Republicans gave the first African-American president, a chief executive who constantly shunned his own base to reach across the aisle to work with them, was shameful in its thinly veiled racism.
And in 2010, when the Republicans won the House they wasted no time in once again shutting down the government, this time inventing the novel tactic of holding the "debt ceiling" hostage to extort draconian budget cuts from the Democratic president.
Never before had the viability of the world's reserve currency been held hostage in this manner, which was a move that even some of the Republicans' most important corporate boosters thought was too extreme.
Once again, the Republicans showed their willingness to put the perceived political interests of their party ahead of what was best for the country they claim to love so dearly.
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And then, following the 2010 census Republicans at the state level moved to cement their political advantage through the most aggressive gerrymandering the nation had seen since the early 19th century.
Later, we saw the Republican House invite a foreign head of state to lambaste the sitting president over an international nuclear arms agreement, an unprecedented step that the Republicans no doubt would have denounced as "treason" had a Democratic House done the same thing to a Republican president.
And following that slight to the office of the presidency's ability to manage U.S. foreign policy, the Republicans in the Senate under Mitch McConnell took the unprecedented action of refusing to allow a vote for the president's nominee of a Supreme Court Justice.
So the Republicans in the House and the Senate moved from attacking the Democratic President to attacking the office of the presidency itself -- all for what they believe to be in the service of narrow partisan gain.
Which brings us to the disgraceful way the Republicans have handled the presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump.
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They gave the country in the form of their 2016 presidential nominee a person who is not only unfit for the presidency, but who is a charlatan, misogynist, con artist and sexual predator.
Then they rallied around this unstable person as the Republican standard bearer even after all of his stinging insults aimed at Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled, women, immigrants, Jews, and any other group that doesn't fit into his white supremacist worldview - all the while the Republicans still claimed to be the party of "patriotism" and "family values."
Bernie Sanders pointed out during the primaries that the GOP has become a "fringe party"; but the process that brought the Republicans to this sordid juncture has been long in coming.
The only way any social progress can happen in this country is if this fringe extremist party is pushed aside. We cannot "reach across the aisle" and meet these bigots "half way."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't go to the Republicans begging them to sign on to his Social Security and other New Deal programs; Lyndon Baines Johnson didn't go hat in hand to the Republicans asking them to meet him in "the middle" on Medicare and the Great Society. These gains were only done at a time when the Republican Party was totally sidelined and was in no position to obstruct progress.
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Let the Republicans whine about "rigged" elections and scream about "big gov'mint" -- it's time for the adults to take charge.
For all the important international events that took place in 2016, there were a select group of Latinos who played an important role.
During the inaugural list, we met some of those leaders and honored many more who have paved the way for this current generation.
And still, there are countless other role models in international affairs such as Hon. Ann Alonzo, Gov. Bill Richardson, Hon. Carmen Cantor, Amb. Cresencio Arcos, Hon. Dina Siegel Vann, Hon. Francisco Sanchez, Sen. Marco Rubio, Amb. Mari Carmen Aponte, Hon. Ricardo Zuniga, Hon. Peter Villegas, Hon. Rita DiMartino, Sen. Robert Menendez, who without them such great advances would not be possible.
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With that said, more must still be done to increase diversity in international affairs. The '15 class is leading the way as role models for millennials, but we need more leaders. Where are some of the previous awardees? Heather Wild class of '15 keeps rising through the ranks and is now serving Under Secretary Heather Higgenbottom at the State Department. Meanwhile, Gabriel Kohan class of '15 won the Harvard Ames Moot Court Competition and is clerking on the Southern District of New York and for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Keep an eye on the rest of their talented class.
Without further delay here are 40 Latinos to watch for in the realm of foreign policy and international affairs who are on their way towards opening doors for the next generation. Selection of this year's list was done by a committee of peers and this new generation of internationally driven talent is listed here in alphabetical order by first name.
1. Adam Sotomayor (State Department):
Strategy=Execution. #Visionary Leaders with capacity to influence & #inspire exercise #RealPower before they get the job title @doscareers Adam Sotomayor (@Sotomayor_Adam) February 3, 2016
As a proud member of the Office of the Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of HR, Adam works to promote Diversity and Inclusion in the National Security Workforce. He has served in the Office of Global Partnerships at State Department.
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2. Alan Bucaria (Fovrth):
#WisdomWednesday #VR needs subjects that warrant head mvmt. This demands experimenting sharing & growing w/ community 2gether @storycodeorg Fovrth Studios (@GoFovrth) July 21, 2016
Bucaria is leading the international news industry in virtual reality video production. As a respected cinematographer and ground-breaking virtual reality filmmaker, Bucaria has applied his expertise to war zones and natural phenomenon around the world to bring Americans from their living rooms face to face with the realities behind the headlines.
3. Ana Ayala (State Department):
She is strong. She is resilient. #SheInspiresMe. On #IWD2016 I stand with women survivors of war around the world. https://t.co/nwIdQ7f4mp Ana Ayala (@anayathzin) March 8, 2016
Ayala serves as the Regional Policy Officer, South and Central Asian Affairs Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Ana coordinates public diplomacy programs and policy for the Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) for South Asia and Central Asia. She previously managed the Charles B. Rangel and Thomas R. Pickering Fellowship programs the State Department's premier diversity recruitment program for the diplomatic corps.
4. Andres Blanco (Sotera Defense Systems):
Welcome to Berkeley, New Bears! #CalWelcome UC Berkeley (@UCBerkeley) August 20, 2016
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Blanco will serve as a Risk/Vulnerability Analyst focusing on cybersecurity and critical infrastructure for the Department of Homeland Security for Sotera Defense Systems. He has served at NATO as a Civilian International Staff and also with the US Mission to NATO. Previously he worked in the CSIS the Americas Program, focusing primarily on Latin American defense and economic issues. He's also served in the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He holds an M.A. from the London School of Economics and a BA from the University of California Berkeley.
5. Andres "Andy" Diaz (CEB):
Andres A. Diaz is a Director with CEB. Prior to CEB, Andy served as a Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration and has also served as an International Energy Policy Advisor at the United States Department of Energy.
6. Anjoly Ibrahim (State Department):
Ibrahim currently serves in the Office of the Legal Advisor at the Department of State, working on law enforcement and intelligence issues in Central America and the Caribbean. Prior to this position, Anjoly served in the Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Office.
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7. Crista L. Cornavaca (State Department):
Crista previously held the position of Country Officer for Abductions in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. Currently she serves as a staff member detailed to the Secretary's Executive Secretariat Staff, which supports the logistic and protocol needs of Secretary of State, John Kerry, on his domestic and overseas travel. She has an M.A. in Diplomacy & International Relations from Seton Hall University. 8. Daniel Bremer-Wirtig (Global Ties):
Daniel serves as the Director for External Affairs at Global Ties. He is also the co-founder of MXDC, a DC Mexican Professionals Network.
9. Dennis Vega (State Department):
Vega is the Managing Director for Planning, Performance, and Systems in the Department of State's Office of Foreign Assistance Resources and a member of USAID's senior management team. He has also served as the Chief of Staff to the Director of USAID's Budget office.
10. Eliza Ramirez (Rep. Michael Capuano):
Ramirez is a Legislative Assistant at the U.S. House of Representatives for Congressman Michael Capuano where she serves as advisor on foreign policy and trade issues. She also worked for Senators Barbara Boxer and Robert Menendez.
11. Eric M Ambrose (USAID):
To celebrate this years International Day of Peace, we share with you a behind-the-scenes look at peacebuilders https://t.co/NlEAKe3Wur pic.twitter.com/ZcAR0sItdm USAID (@USAID) September 21, 2016
Ambrose is the Development Cooperation and Donor Engagement Specialist at USAID. Previously he served as an Analyst for the Development Partner Relations Department and as a Communications Consultant at the World Bank Group. He has also served in the Organization of American States.
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12. Ernesto Londono (New York Times):
Extraordinaria columna, @YolandaRuizRCN. Colombia necesita politicas que promuevan la igualdad, no discriminacionhttps://t.co/U62zJg4d4t Ernesto Londono (@londonoe) September 15, 2016
Londono is a New York Times Editorial Board member that covers international affairs. Previously he served as a Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post.
13. Ezequiel Vasquez-Ger (Innovatics Group LLC):
Que @joffrecampana no se solidarice con lo q vive @fevillavicencio, alla el. Pero aprovechar la situacion para atacarlo es una bajeza total Ezequiel Vazquez-Ger (@ezequielvazquez) August 13, 2016
Ezequiel is the founder and Managing Director at Innovatics Group LLC. He is also the founder of the Center for Investigative Journalism in the Americas (CIJA). Previously, he was an Associate Director at Otto Reich Associates LLC.
14. Isabella Martinez (NetWings):
Calling all High School & College students to apply to @NETWINGS1 #germany#education#travel https://t.co/poFElnv86N pic.twitter.com/OHhXsbUDI9 isabella martinez (@_IJMartinez) September 14, 2016
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Martinez is the Founder and President of NewWings, a cross cultural exchange organization that provides early global exposure platforms for youths to interact with the world. Concurrently she works for Full Measure Education Inc and previously served as an Assurance Senior Associate for Ernst and Young.
15. Jayson Browder (Veterans in Global Leadership):
Check out the announcement on our name change, and bookmark the blog page for more great articles from VGL!https://t.co/jSccUve0Qg Vets in GL (@VetsinGL) September 12, 2016
Browder is the Founder of Veterans in Global Leadership. He has served in the U.S. House of Representatives and at The White House as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Office of Management and Budget. Currently he serves at USAID's Global Development LAB in the office of Development Innovation Ventures. He is a U.S. Air Force and Iraq War veteran and a Fulbright scholar to Turkey.
16. Jennifer Miel (US Chamber of Commerce):
With 1,600 U.S. Companies & their 60,000+ employees in #Turkey, it's more important than ever to reinvigorate ties https://t.co/H3bYJxWxed Jennifer Miel (@_JenniferMiel) August 26, 2016
Miel is the Executive Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's U.S.-Turkey Business Council. She also serves as the U.S.-Bahrain Business Council Executive Director and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Turkey and Middle East Affairs Director with responsibilities to support programming and policy formulation across Egypt and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Previously she worked as a financial analyst at JonesLang LaSalle for nearly three years. There, she advised the U.S. Army on a $12.7 billion portfolio of real estate assets.
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17. Jerry Rengel (NASA):
I can't wait to see the @NASA_SLS liftoff carrying our astronauts in the @NASA_Orion as they #JourneyToMars. Jerry Rengel (@SpaceRengel) September 28, 2016
Rengel currently serves as the Media Relations Specialist at NASA. Previously he served at USAID as a Digital Communication Specialist as well as a Community Engagement Specialist. He's also served as a Press Intern for Congressman Charles B. Rangel.
18. Jessie Hernandez (Homeland Security):
If you see something, say something. Report suspicious activity to local law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/nMK7ydmiy0 Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 19, 2016
Hernandez serves in the Homeland Security Secretary's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. There he's handled issues such as immigration, Ebola, Zika, refugee resettlement and the "If You See Something, Say Something" public awareness campaign.
19. Juan Pio Hernandez (World Economic Forum Global Shapers):
Momento d decidir entre institucionalidad democratica o la continuacion d complicidad interna q asfixia a la region https://t.co/4dqGAOGwjJ Juan Pio Hernandez (@Juapio) May 31, 2016
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Hernandez serves as the Washington D.C. World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community Hub Co-Curator as well as the Managing Director at Innovatics Group LLC. Previously he served as an Associate for Allen F. Johnson and Associates.
20. Karina Plascencia (USAID):
Latin America, Not Southeast Asia, Will Be the World's Economic Powerhouse https://t.co/Ma9jaPSiQW # via LatinoVoices karina (@kakki_09) February 4, 2016
Plascencia serves as a Special Assistant at USAID's Latin America and Caribbean Bureau. Previously she served as a Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton.
21. Laura Jaramillo Bernal (Efecto Naim):
"I am not a CIA agent." A very Latin American way to open a very powerful letter from OAS head to Vzla pres Maduro. https://t.co/qQvs9htpTb Laura Jaramillo (@laurajaramillob) May 18, 2016
Jaramillo Bernal is the executive producer of Efecto Naim. Prior to joining Efecto Naim, Laura was a Michael Rockefeller Fellow in China; and was one of the first journalists at La Silla Vacia, an award-winning political journalism startup in Colombia where she covered the 2010 presidential election and wrote analytical and investigative pieces about topics including government corruption and human rights abuses.
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22. Lily Lopez-McGee (Charles B. Rangel Graduate Fellowship):
The "#inclusion" part of #Diversity efforts. The organizational culture has to shift to make "belonging" possible. https://t.co/T9ymyXVRQX Lily LM, PhD (@lilylop32) August 18, 2016
Lopez-McGee serves as a Program Manager for the Rangel Fellowship. Previously, she served as Manager at Diversity Abroad where she managed the Diversity Abroad Network, Lily serves as a Co-Chair of the Global Access Pipeline and has helped coordinate the Conference on Diversity in International Affairs sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.
23. Manuel Avendano (USAID):
To celebrate this year's International Day of Peace, we share with you a behind-the-scenes look at peacebuilders https://t.co/NlEAKe3Wur pic.twitter.com/ZcAR0sItdm USAID (@USAID) September 21, 2016
Manuel currently serves as a Management and Policy Analyst at the U.S. Agency for International Development's Bureau for Management. Concurrently he serves as President of the USAID Hispanic Employee Council for Foreign Affairs Agencies (HECFAA). Avendano is also a U.S. Air Force Veteran.
24. Dr. Marga Gual Soler (American Association for the Advancement of Science):
Hello new followers! Read my story: "How I Became a Science Diplomat" https://t.co/VGLetuhviw #ScienceDiplomacy Dr. Marga Gual Soler (@margagual) January 9, 2016
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Dr. Soler serves as the Project Director for the Center for Science Diplomacy. Previously she served as a Science Policy Consultant for UNESCO.
25. Mariela Martinez (The Brookings Institution):
Martinez serves as a Senior Project Manager for the Brookings Institution where she manages peer-exchange program as part of the Global Cities Initiative (GCI). She has also developed and managed new metro-to-metro trade partnership between Chicago and Mexico City. Previously she served in the Inter-American Development Bank.
26. Mario Hoang Nguyen (Fulbright Ambassador):
Are you a college or high school student looking to launch a career in #peace? Guidance from a #Fulbright Scholar: https://t.co/jYDirRslbd The Fulbright Program (@FulbrightPrgrm) September 24, 2016
Hoang Nguyen works for Locke Lorde LLP in the Office of White Collar Crime and Government Investigations. When he was a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico, he served as a Social Investment Program and Communications Coordinator for Ashoka Social Entrepreneurs.
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27. Marvin Alfaro (State Department):
Energy, climate, gender issues, and cyberspace are increasing priorities for U.S. diplomats- William (Bill) Burns http://t.co/3BiqMbFhGa Marvin Alfaro (@Marvin_E_Alfaro) October 24, 2014
Alfaro is in an elite class of his own having received the Gilman Scholarship, Fulbright Scholarship and the Thomas R. Pickering Fellowship. Today he serves as a Foreign Service Officer for the State Department. In addition, Marvin has also served as an Ambassador for both the Gilman and Fulbright Scholarships.
28. Matt Padilla (U.S. Senate):
This could have a lot of potential. Using #Space assets to make the world a better place. Could help reduce conflict too. https://t.co/AaoR0SQvLy Matt Padilla (@MatthewPadilla) September 24, 2016
Padilla serves as Senator Tom Udall's Military and Foreign Relations Legislative Assistant. Previously he served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima (LHD-7), and the USS Laboon (DDG-58) from 2003-2007, and completed his active duty service as a Lieutenant. He is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Woodrow Wilson Congressional Foreign Policy Fellow.
29. Mayra Robinson (State Department):
Robinson serves as the Human Resources Liaison for the White House Liaison's Office at the U. S. Department of State. Prior to this appointment, she served for five years in a variety of roles including work as a Management Analyst with the Bureau of International Security and Non-Proliferation, Executive Office.
30. Monica Bautista (USAID):
This Global Health Outfit Got $2 Million Out of the Blue. What Will It Do With Its Windfall - Inside Philanthropy https://t.co/NwSASXnrQY Monica (@Avenew) September 1, 2016
Bautista is a Certified Health Education Specialist and works as an Analyst on the Africa Ebola Unit at the United States Agency for International Development and also serves as an Adviser on gender issues related to Ebola and works to integrate gender-sensitive approaches into Ebola programming. In addition, she is the Vice President of USAID's Hispanic Employees Council where she works to recruit, retain, and promote Latinos at USAID.
31. Natalia Capel (State Department):
2 things a leader should know. What you'll insist on and what you won't tolerate. #FSIleadershipclass Natalia Molano (@intloptimist) November 5, 2015
Natalia is a Foreign Service Officer serving as Deputy Cultural Affairs Officer in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. She has served as a Mexico desk officer in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and then as Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. She is an alumna of the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Graduate Fellowship and a board member of the Hispanic Employee Council of Foreign Affairs Agencies (HECFAA).
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32. Nury Gambarrotti (Senate Foreign Relations Committee):
Gambarrotti serves as Legislative and Research Assistant on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Ranking Member Cardin. As a Legislative Assistant, she handles a broad range of issues including economic development, counter-narcotics, and human rights as they relate to Latin America and the Caribbean. She holds a B.A. from Rutgers University.
33. Paloma Gonzalez (State Department):
Gonzalez serves as a Political Economic Chief Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Recife Brazil. Previously she served as a Staff Assistant for the Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs as well as a Political Officer in the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.
34. Pam Campos (U.S. Air Force Reserve):
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Campos is a Geopolitical/Operations Intelligence Analyst in the United States Air Force where she is specialized in high-level strategic analysis, anti-violent extremism, and international affairs. Previously she has served as an international consultant for the Solidary Project as well as an International Consultant in the United Nations Population Fund.
35. Patricia Aguilo (State Department):
Aguilo has served as a Foreign Service Officer for a decade. Today, she is a Political and Economic Officer at the U.S. Embassy of Khartoum.
36. Tony Perez (USAID):
Perez serves as a Special Assistant to the Global Water Coordinator at USAID. Previously he served at the U.S. Department of Education SIT Graduate Institute where he provided on-ground support for the CRIS (Climate Resiliency Infrastructure Services). He was elected Vice President of Community Engagement, 2015-2017, representing USAID HECFAA (Hispanic Employees Council of Foreign Affairs Agencies and most recently won USAID's 2015 Superior Honor Award.
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37. Selena Gomez (UNICEF):
When women support each other, we accomplish amazing things. Celebrate the women who #LeanIntogether with you: https://t.co/LBKG46rHNM Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) June 23, 2016
Selena Gomez is a recording artist, actress, and designer and was appointed a UNICEF Ambassador in September 2009. As a UNICEF Ambassador, Selena has played an active role in advocating for the world's most vulnerable children by participating in numerous campaigns, events, and initiatives on behalf of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.
38. Silvana Rodriguez (State Department):
Rodriguez serves as a Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. Previously she served as a Political Officer in the Office of Russian Affairs at the State Department and as a Political Officer at the Embassy of Antananarivo covering Madagascar and the Union of the Comoros.
39. Travis Benaiges (State Department):
Benaiges serves as a Program Specialist in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor supporting The Global Equality Fund. Travis interned at the Office of the U.S Trade Representative (USTR) supporting the early stages of The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations.
40. Violeta Rosales (The American University in Cairo):
Two concepts you must know how to apply: Adaptive #Leadership & Emotional Intelligence. #mindpower #gamechanger Violeta Rosales (@_VioletaRosales) September 15, 2014
Rosales is currently completing her thesis work on Obama's response to the 2011 ouster of Mubarak, using Critical Discourse Analysis, and is expected to graduate in 2017 with honours. Previously she served as a Copy Editor for Ahram Online and as a Global Diaspora Assistant for the Ashoka Arab World. She was also a Fulbright Scholar to Egypt.
Women around the world face a unique struggle: they are continually advised to "close the wage gap" by pursuing careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields over liberal arts, and yet many women are prohibited from making such a choice. In some regions of the world, women are socially prevented from pursuing careers in STEM, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Many women feel incredible societal pressured to leave their STEM positions to raise a family, and others must re-locate to find jobs overseas. These issues impact women globally, making it important that women of STEM come together to break down these barriers.
It's a common misconception that women are underrepresented in STEM because of economic or educational reasons. This issue has little to do with women's rights- in most developed countries, women have the right to attend university and work in any field they choose. It's not that women aren't going into STEM fields; it's that they're not staying there- this is often seen in the MENA region, and in the US, we often refer to this phenomenon as the leaky pipeline.
Fortunately, more women are pursuing an education in STEM fields than ever before- in India, for instance, women surpass men at medical programs and key engineering schools in India. The issue is thus not so much with college matriculation; it is with what many women do with their degrees post-graduation. According to a study featured by The Economist, only 21% of the workforce in the MENA region consists of women- while more than half of all university graduates in the region are women. About half of all STEM majors in the Middle East and North Africa are women (according to a 2012 study by OECD), but they are pursuing careers in other fields after earning their degree.
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The women in the MENA region are known for their strong desire to work. As times change, more young women wish to pursue careers outside of the home. Women in the region are encouraged to attend university by their parents, but they face resistance when they wish to get jobs in their field. In many cases, their families object to their desire to work- their husbands believe the wives should stay home and take care of the children, while they bring home a paycheck.
These issues exist in other parts of the world as well, but are more prominent in the Middle East and North Africa than other regions. For example, women in the United States and Canada feel much less pressure to stay home and care for their families. In fact, stay-at-home moms and housewives are becoming less and less common in the United States, as women pursue their own professional careers. According to a 2012 Gallup poll, only 14% of women in the United States are considered "stay-at-home moms," and 56% of all women are employed. This is vastly different from countries like Saudi Arabia, where only 13% of the workforce is made up of women.
What does all of this mean for the future of women in STEM? Simply put, it means women need to come together and support their presence in STEM fields. To take off the cloak of isolation. women must be taught that they can and should pursue their interests in STEM post University, particularly women in undeveloped countries. Without proper encouragement, how can one expect the proportion of women in STEM fields to rise? If young college graduates in the Middle East and North Africa are being told they should not or cannot pursue a career in their field, how can we expect to see stronger representation of women in STEM?
Mentors may be the answer to the global disparage between men and women in STEM fields. Around the world, mentors are helping improve workforces, and STEM fields are no exception. Mentors provide employees and students with guidance they so desperately need to succeed in their field- particularly women in STEM. Women in the MENA region are in need of good mentors and role models, and then they can pay it forward by lifting up the next generations. They need someone they can trust to help them achieve their goals and dreams. Without proper guidance, many women in this region will be persuaded out of their careers by their society, and mentors may be the solution. If women in STEM can mentor new graduates, they may be able to help them fight societal pressures and find their place in a STEM-based career.
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Contrary to popular belief, the biggest obstacle most women face when pursuing their career is judgment from other women. Their husbands may ask them to stay at home and take care of the family, but what are they to do when the other women in their lives disagree? They might feel like an outcast in their own family for their desires to share the burden of breadwinning. If women cannot go to their mother, their sister, their sister-in-law, or their best friend and find support for their career choice, it's understandable that they may not have the confidence to follow through. For this reason, it's of growing importance that women support each other and come together around STEM on a global scale. We unite, we mentor, we engage, we champion.
At the upcoming Global Women in STEM Conference (#WISTEM2016) we can bring more bright young minds together, driving success and inspiration. We are bringing women together around STEM, giving young, aspiring professionals role models they can look up to. Our goal is to inspire more young women around the world to follow their dreams, despite what their culture may tell them. Dubai is an incredible place of innovation and change bringing some of the brightest minds from all over the globe with a sustainability mindset. It is a perfect setting for a global agenda to advance women. Our world has advanced significantly over the past 100 years, and it's time to do away with the draconian belief that women belong only in their homes. By empowering young women and encouraging them to pursue careers in STEM, we can all make greater strides towards gender equality in the professional world.
The above topic and more will form the agenda of the Global Women in STEM Conference and Awards 2016 to be held on October 25th and 26th in Dubai, an initiative of the Meera Kaul Foundation. This year's event will comprise four industry led-tracks, startup pitch, career fair, awards night and the chance to network with global brands like Cisco, Discovery, MT Energy, Abu Dhabi Tourism, SK Telecom, Mercer, IBM and many others. Special thanks to A. Crosser for her work and great assistance with this article.
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Here I am again. It seems this will never end. I'm not referring to my blog which used to be called the Letter from Melbourne and renamed Occasional Notes from CA. I'm referring to the American endurance contest otherwise known as the Presidential Election Campaign of 2016. To my Aussie readers, it's worse than you think. You have 8000 miles and Australian media filtering the bad news.
With about three weeks left before election day, Donald Trump's reaction to the ever increasing bad news facing his campaign sounds more and more ominous. While I cannot be absolutely sure he will lose (I never thought he had a chance to get the Republican nomination - at least from my then-perch in Melbourne) the polls and general feelings predict he's going to get clobbered. Democrats may not only win the presidency but win majorities in both houses of Congress.
But from his Republic of Salo, Trump is already speaking of a "rigged election." I suppose no one should be surprised that his rhetoric of hate now invokes a Clinton conspiracy with "international bankers" to stop his rise to the top. He didn't have to use the word, Jewish, with regards to the commercial world - most of his followers probably haven't heard of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" but when things get rough, latent anti-Semitism always seems to rear its ugly head.
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But my real fear is that our current American polarization, that began with the ridiculous slate of Republican candidates for the nomination and included the long and powerful campaign of Bernie Sanders, will not end on election day. White America's middle class decades long frustration with standard operating procedure in the U.S. is likely to lead to their agreement with Trump's notion that a rigged system led to his election loss -- and will result in post-election day eruptions of violence. That's my sad prediction for the USofA immediately following November 8th.
And maybe violence and bombs are what it will take to change things here now. The first Gilded Age ended only when Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican) and Congress reacted with fundamental reform to union miners dying and physical threats to the system from the Wobblies, anarchists and Communists.
But it's a sad time to be in America. Today's New York Times reported on a Connecticut judge who dismissed a suit against the gun manufacturers for partial culpability in the Sandy Hook elementary school mass murder brought by the relatives of some of the children. Most legal observers were surprised the case had gone as far as it had.
The judge dismissed the suit based upon the protection given gun manufacturers by the American Congress in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed in 2005. Please forgive my pessimistic cynicism when it comes to fundamental change in my country (I'm thinking here also about my personal campaign on the overuse of psychiatric drugs, especially Adderall, in children). If we, as Americans, cannot make changes to our gun laws after 21 children were killed by a madman, then we are truly a very stuck country.
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Meanwhile, over in Oz, the biggest international news is about the safe return of the "Budgie Nine" back to Down Under from Malaysia. Turnbull and Shorten continue to argue over everything but overall the country continues to chug along economically as far as I can tell, from perusing the online Age two or three times a week.
Today's Times carried another interesting article on the power of the too big to fail Big Four banks of Australia. I read the article with interest. While Denise and I lived in Melbourne we actually banked with CitiBank (if you want to consider an international too big to fail bank). Despite the concerns raised by the article, I felt once again, when it comes to regulating the market place, the Australians are dealing with problems on a much lesser level than in the free-wheeling corporate oriented U.S. business/political world. As I've said many times, Aussies (including businesspeople) are just much more accepting of government regulation that tempers the worst amoral efficiencies of capitalist market economies - compared to the United States.
You know how you start watching a movie or TV series--or reading a book--and you automatically give the story's protagonist the benefit of the doubt? Even if you see him sliding, making questionable choices that lead to worse ones that lead to disaster, you're kinda on his side.
Yeah, I'm not going to do that with Trump.
I'm a Republican, and I get the argument that, like any thoughtfully written character, no candidate is perfect. I get that Hamlet had issues, but, big picture: the Dane was right. But The Donald is no Hamlet--although he does seem to think he's fighting for his birthright. Trump, whose mission is all over the map, is tragically flawed, and the tragically flawed aren't supposed to finish with happy endings. So here's why I'm not going to do what Every Single Person I Know is urging me to do--vote for the lesser of two evils:
I don't wanna. Deep in my gut, I can't hold my nose and tick off that name, even if it does have an R next to it. I don't want to tell my daughters I did this dirty thing. I don't want to tell my future grandchildren. Saying yes to Donald Trump is not going to be a part of the book of me. I'm no angel, but I don't want to soil myself.
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So what if there's a soiled dress to prove Bill Clinton did worse? At a level any kindergartener could intuit, this argument doesn't pass muster. The But-Bill-Did-Worsers sound freakishly like they're chanting I'm rubber; you're glue. Plus, I didn't ask for Bill to be naughty. I didn't sign up for Trump's "locker room talk," either. Bill did that; Trump said this--The Donald's failings are the ones now on ballots coming soon to a precinct near you. (Incidentally, Bill's not running, his wife is.) It's not Trump's fault that We the People ate up the R-rated audio, with the vocals being more damning than any amount of alleged he-said, she-said. But it is what it is, with an unprecedented ick factor.
Trump's talk is just talk, or is it? Here's what he was boasting about: sexually assaulting women just 'cuz he could. To grope or not to grope, that is the question--we're not going to sort out in the next few weeks whether Trump indeed had octopus arms. But this much is on record: Trump has a value set that says unwanted advances are badass. His comments weren't only creepy, they were aggressive.
For some lads, washing their mouth out with soap worked. I'm not going to disrespect the adult male population by classifying them all as no-holds-bar, sex-obsessed adolescents. I appreciate that men are, er, driven, but we're living in a society here, in which appetites are certainly curbed, with time and place taken into account. So I don't think I'm being naive when I say there's a group of guys (hi, honey!) who conduct themselves, for the most part, like gentlemen. Gentlemen of a feather hang together, and, in these locker rooms, this particular brand of braggadocio is a no-no. These are the fellows, heroes really, who stay faithful to their wives--who don't betray their trust either in deeds or words. And yet even these good men are maligned when pundits place all dudes in the same so-called locker room as Trump's gold-gilded one.
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A thousand wrongs don't make a right. Hollywood churns out some filth, they say, and have you listened to the lyrics of that song pumping on the radio? So isn't it hypocritical to hold a public figure like Trump to a stiffer standard? But neither is Eminem seeking the highest office in the land--at least during this election cycle. And what about the dangerous precedent of taking semi-seriously a reality TV personality, a deviant, a boor, a guy with skin so thin even Nobel-winning biologists can't explain it? Is it my imagination, or are most of us scratching our heads, wondering how we got here? Is the system totally broken? How did something in Denmark get so rotten?
If pigs fly on Nov. 9 and the Trump ticket somehow wins the day, would that be the best thing for conservative ideals in the long run? Picture two years from now--after Trump has worn us down with gaffe after gaffe and alienated this group here, that nation there. Won't the Democrats sweep Congress? After four years of Trump, it would seem SpongeBob SquarePants, if he had a D after his name, could crush Trump's reelection efforts so epically, even Jimmy Carter's head would spin.
Imagine what your life would be like if all of the things that most of us take for granted were not there. Things like food, a functional bathroom, clean clothes, privacy, adequate heat in the cold of winter, a sense of physical and emotional security, and other ingredients that most of us consider the basics of living. And imagine if instead, your life was filled with all of the opposites of those things: filth, neglect, hunger, exhaustion, anxiety, shame, and squalor. Then imagine that you were a child, a very young child living in that environment with no hope of any possible redemption from your suffering and no end in sight of your misery.
Liz Murray was born into and spent her childhood living in such circumstances. Her parents were drug addicts and both eventually succumbed to AIDS. Liz and her older sister lived with them in a squalid apartment in the Bronx which during most of their childhood was the base for ongoing drug-dealing and drug use, with strangers coming and going throughout the day and night, strangers who like Liz's parents had only one thought in their mind: getting their next fix.
Yet as overwhelming as the physical deprivation was that Liz experienced, it was not the most difficult part of her life. "It was", she told us, "the feelings of loneliness, shame, and isolation that I lived with daily that made my life so painful. As much as I knew that my parents loved me, their enslavement to drugs made it impossible for them to provide for my most basic needs or even their own for that matter."
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Liz learned, from a very young age, that she was not only going to have to fend for herself but that she would have to take care of her parents as well, since their obsession with drugs prevented them from attending to even the most fundamental requirements of living. The only income that the family ever saw came from a small monthly SSI check that her mother received because she was legally blind. This was occasionally supplemented by small amounts of income that came in from sales of discarded items that her father found in trash cans and from petty cash that her mother hustled through prostitution and panhandling. The SSI check came on the first of the month and by the end of that week, all of the money would be gone. With three weeks left until the next check and no money, Liz's mother was so desperate and strung out that she frequently stole the hard-earned money that Liz made and saved doing odd jobs in the neighborhood from a very early age. But the money never went for food, even when Liz and her sister Lisa had nothing to eat. It was always spent on drugs for her parents..
Liz's father was incarcerated during the first three years of her life and she first laid eyes on him when he was released from prison shortly after her third birthday. When Liz was six, she was sexually molested by a "family friend" who was brought into the home by her mother. Shortly afterwards, her mother became schizophrenic and was hospitalized in the first of a series of hospitalizations that would continue until her death from AIDS in 1996. After the death of her mother when she was 15, Liz became homeless and spent the next several years living on the street, occasionally spending the night with friends, or riding and sleeping on the New York subways all night in order to stay warm.
Living in the chaotic environment that characterized her life had made it impossible for Liz to attend school on anything but a very infrequent basis, or concentrate on academic subject matters at all. When she was in school her classmates continually taunted and harassed her for her ragged clothing, her filthy hair and unwashed body, and Liz experienced herself as a pariah throughout most of her childhood. She had few friends and she internalized the judgments about her that others held: that she was worthless, ugly, defective, and stupid, perhaps even retarded.
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Yet Liz was not only possessed an intellect far beyond what she or others realized, she also had character strengths that enabled her to transcend the horror of her life circumstances and achieve inconceivable accomplishments. And yet even this isn't the most impressive thing about Liz or her life.
What is most amazing about this remarkable young woman (Liz is just 32 years of age) is that throughout the hardship, deprivation to the point of near-starvation and uncountable instances of neglect and abuse, she managed to keep her heart open without succumbing to the temptation to become bitter, hateful, or vindictive, as so many in similar situations have. Liz doesn't seem to have an ounce of self-pity in her body, although no one could possibly blame her if she did. If anyone ever had a right to feel that she got a raw deal in life, it's Liz. And she did. But self-pity and bitterness are not her thing. What her thing is, is love. It's Liz's enormous capacity for love and compassion and her commitment to service that makes her the extraordinary person that she is. Her willingness to live with an open heart has attracted many people into her life and some have taken advantage of her openness seeing her vulnerability as something that they could exploit for their own interests. But others have responded to her vulnerability with compassion, love, and great generosity.
Despite getting rejected by a great many alternative high schools as an adolescent, Liz continued to pursue her desire for an education and was finally accepted into the Humanities Preparatory Academy in Manhattan where she was befriended by two inspired and inspiring teachers, Vince and Perry, who recognized in her great inner beauty, strength and intelligence. Thriving in their encouragement and validation, Liz committed herself to her studies and completed four years of high school in two years receiving straight A's throughout. She remained homeless during this time, although no one knew it. She worked summers to cover her living expenses and ate meals at a shelter that provided food for homeless young people.
One day on a field trip to Boston with her high school class, Liz visited Harvard and was deeply impressed with it even though she had barely heard of the university prior to the trip. A few months later when it was time for Liz to apply to college, Perry suggested that she consider Harvard. He told her, "Sure it would be a reach, but it's not impossible". What happened next is the stuff of fairy tales but this was not fiction, it was reality. Liz was accepted by Harvard, but then there was of course, the little matter of paying the tuition and covering the living expenses at one of America's most prestigious and expensive universities. Undaunted, Liz, along with several thousand other high school students, entered an essay contest sponsored by the New York Times. The guidelines for the contest required applicants to describe any obstacles that they might have had in their lives that they had to overcome in order to thrive academically. Liz won the contest and was granted a full scholarship to Harvard.
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Liz interrupted her education at Harvard in 2001 to care for her father who was sick with AIDS, attending Columbia University and caring for him until 2006 when he died. Liz later returned to Harvard and graduated in 2009.
A poster child for transformation, Liz has an indomitable spirit and will to survive and has prevailed against all odds. She currently travels nationally and internationally and is a highly sought after motivational speaker. She is the founder and director of Manifest Living, based in New York City, a company that sponsors workshops that empower and inspire adults to create extraordinary things in their lives, as Liz has.
Her inspirational life story was captured on Lifetime Television's original film, Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, which was nominated for three Emmys. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Breaking Night, a memoir, which was released in September 2010. She has since then gotten married and had two children. In 2013 Liz was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Public Service from Merrimack College in Massachusetts.
Liz is undoubtedly one of the most resilient, compassionate, and committed individuals we have ever met and obviously wise beyond her years. She is an inspiration to everyone who is fortunate enough to cross paths with her. The next time you doubt your ability to accomplish something that is very important to you, think again. Think of Liz.
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Linda and Charlie Bloom are excited to announce the release of their third book, Happily Ever After . . . and 39 Other Myths about Love: Breaking Through to the Relationship of Your Dreams.
Praise for Happily Ever After:
"Love experts Linda and Charlie shine a bright light, busting the most common myths about relationships. Using real-life examples, they skillfully, provide effective strategies and tools to create and grow a deeply loving and fulfilling long-term connection." - Arielle Ford, author of "Turn You Mate into Your Soulmate".
A few years back I was teaching yoga classes and developing a small following of students. One of the ways that is done is by practicing some advanced, beautiful poses. But, for an obvious reason I couldn't quite grasp I always had little injury or two so I was always searching for better techniques. In my search I came across an intriguing article about an elderly woman by the name of Vanda Scaravelli who had developed an intuitive approach to yoga.
Vanda was an Italian aristocrat who knew many of the luminaries of the mid 20th Century. Close friends with BKS Iyengar, one of the instrumental figures in the transmission of yoga to the west, and philosopher, Jiddhu Krishnamurti who had been identified at a young age as a spiritual leader. Groomed to be the leader of a world religion called the Order of the Star, Krishnamurti took the unusual step of gathering his followers together in Mexico City in 1927 where he rejected his position with a now famous speech title "The Truth is a Pathless Land. He spent the rest of his life criticizing systematized thinking and encouraged people to rely upon their own intuitive abilities rather than the authority of others. Vanda blended insights from Iyengar and Krishamurti to create a unique style of yoga based, she said, on "undoing," a descriptor I found both cryptic and intriguing.
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I had recently attended an Iyengar workshop which I considered rigidly militant in its approach, quite opposite from what I gathered that Vanda might have taught. Fortunately, the article included a link to Vanda's principle student, Diane Long from whom I hoped to get some answers. I emailed Diane and she told me that she had a young student, Brooke Welsh, who was interested in traveling and teaching. I contacted Brooke and invited her to the studio where I taught.
We held a workshop with Brooke and many of my students attended. I never saw any of them again, which turned out to be a good thing because I had no business teaching yoga. Working with Brooke provided a total deconstruction of my yoga practice. I began the weekend an expert and teacher but I ended it a beginner without the slightest idea how to practice yoga.
The workshop also ended my search for new forms of yoga. Since that time I have only taken a class or two a year with either Brooke or Christine Borg, who lived too briefly in Dallas and now resides in Edinburgh) and one class with Diane herself. Between classes, I've worked on my own which has been challenging and funny. I have a memory of Christine gazing searchingly into my eyes and telling me that the practice is "really, really simple."
And it is very simple. My ambition to become a great yogi had been interfering with any awareness of what my body needed. The Scaravelli inspired yoga gave me, not a system, but an invitation for to slow down and allow my body to teach me how it wanted to practice yoga.
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Ironically, I'd been practicing meditation for about 15 years by this time, obviously quite selectively.
It might be regrettable, but it is actually somewhat funny that someone like me would begin a supposedly spiritual practice like yoga without bringing any awareness to the enterprise. But that's life, a stumble from one incredible self deception to the next, usually with no awareness at all. There is no reason to expect that spiritual practices would be free from self deception. The satisfying thought that you are a following a wholesome, beneficial path might make this considerably more rather than less likely. The straight and narrow path is about following a path that can be ground into a well worn trench, which was Krishnamurti's exact and only point.
We hope that the spiritual path will deliver us from suffering and the hope to escape suffering is the agenda that blocks awareness. Actual spirituality require the faith that we can to drop the effort to escape and survive the pain of life without self protection and without going mad. It is this that allows awareness of the subtle suffering that created the agenda in the first place, the pathless land of which Krisnamurti spoke. He described meditation as "the understanding of what is without trying to change it or make it go away."
The Buddha described what is succinctly- suffering, impermanence, and the selfless impersonal nature of it all. The wonder of awareness is that when we acknowledge suffering without trying to change it or make it go away, we just begin watching. In watching we notice impermanence. Suffering comes and goes and there is nothing at all to it. It is completely impersonal.
This isn't so easy for us. WH Auden summed it up nicely with these lines:
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.
Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, as in this asian pangolin, is another reason to preserve carbon storing forests. Pangolins everywhere are endangered. These prehistoric creatures are being vigorously hunted due to false rumors of their scales' healing powers. Source www.edgeofexistence.org
OO Warning To Forest Destroyers: This Scientist Will Catch You With his satellites that spot deforestation as it happens.
Forests: the cheapest way to store carbon
A Rarity That Could Soon Disappear Forever - the Saola of the mountain forests of Vietnam and Laos is extremely rare and unique, and was discovered from a skull found in a hunter's home. Source wildlifeleaders.org
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OO Hunting, Not Deforestation, Biggest Threat To Southeast Asian Biodiversity shows a new study. Forest animals are vital to the health of forests. Takeaways:
animal populations have declined sharply at multiple sites across Southeast Asia since 1980, with many species now completely wiped out in substantial portions of their former ranges.
Besides improved enforcement of hunting restrictions on protected areas and species,
efforts to engage hunters in sustainable hunting practices are urgently needed.
the region will likely lose most of its iconic species, and many others besides, within the next few years.
Hunting is pushing many species close to extinction.
When we harm forests, we harm ourselves.
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HOT NEWS
OO Planet At Its Hottest In 115,000 Years Thanks To Climate Change experts say, a time during an interglacial era, when sea level was 6-9 meters (20-30 ft) higher than today.
MELTDOWN
@@ The Melting of the Arctic - surface ice cover is decreasing, but what's happening beneath it is far more dramatic - the TOTAL volume of the Arctic is shrinking dramatically and fast, as this flick shows.
Arctic surface ice acts as a thermal shield by reflecting sunlight back to space, but the ice beneath it helps keep it cool, and helps winter reformation of ice. When that submerged ice goes...
OO Disappearing Yosemite Glacier Becomes Symbol Of Climate Change - the dying Lyell Glacier has become a vivid example of the effects of climate change, a touchstone of increasing concern for National Park Service officials.
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WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND...
Indonesia Will Not Be Able To Control Its Fires if it doesn't start controlling them now; global warming will create conditions that will likely set massive Indonesia peat fires beyond human control. Photo Source yournewswire.com
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OO How Earth Will Pay Back Our Carbon Emissions With ...
More Carbon Emissions,
Beyond Our Control
if we don't control it now. Takeaways:
Many natural feedback cycles amplify carbon emissions,
and will likely become self-generating, without human help.
Examples include:
Indonesian peat wildfires can release massive climate changing emissions, fueling more fire; Melting Arctic ice increases heat absorption there, further speeding global warming (albedo effect); Warming drying ecosystems (like California) burn more, emitting more climate changing emissions.
In all these cases, the carbon that can fuel massive further climate change is locked into the soil, peat and forests of ecosystems that span the tropics to the poles.
Like lighting a fuse, if we allow enough emissions to heat our planet enough, these natural cycles will start generating themselves - and we will be facing uncontrollable global warming and climate change.
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GOOD IDEAS
Credit DearTomorrow at facebook
What Would YOU Write To Your Children Or Grandchildren In 2050? Maybe it will inspire you.
OO Climate Letters To The Future That Should Inspire You Now Part social movement, DearTomorrow uses how much we care about future generations to get people engaged in dealing with climate change now.
OO Public Art Or Renewable Energy? New Designs Aim To Produce Both and enlighten the public on environmental issues.
It Might Not Look Like Much, But Can It Store Energy! And cheaply, too - enough to make wind power cheaper than natural gas, Siemans is betting. Source www.greentechmedia.com
OO Breakthrough Thermal Storage System For Wind Power Could Beat Natural Gas - Takeaways:
surplus energy fuels a big heater blowing 1000+ F air across an insulated, packed bed of basalt rocks;
when needed, the energy is used to drive a steam turbine to deliver power.
system could store up to two days' worth of energy for a week for111/megawatt-hour,
beating the price of natural gas.
Energy giant Siemens is testing it with a pilot project.
"This technology operates on a set of simple principles with off-the-shelf, tried-and-tested technologies that can...achieve high system efficiencies at relatively low cost," said an energy expert.
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OO Hawaiian Electric Is Testing Flywheels As An Energy Storage Option
Wind Power Kites are an example of the innovative renewable clean technology that Oregon's BEST Program funds, pairing universities with companies. Source www.yaleclimateconnections.org
OO Oregon's 'Do-It-Yourself' Approach To A Clean Economy The state's BEST program pairs universities with companies to develop affordable solutions in clean energy and energy efficiency, providing unusually consistent and adequate funding to such startups.
OO How Midwest States Are Pursuing Efficiency Amid Trend Against Mandates
They're doing so by:
Using, not wasting, the heat created from generating electricity;
Creating energy efficiency requirements for buildings, transport and appliances.
MEH: While mandates might not last, they probably provided impetus for states to increase their energy efficiencies.
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OO Europe: Big Utilities Fund Renewable Energy For Profit - without involving banks, as a way to balance cuts in subsidies for fossil fuels.
Growing MaryJane Is Energy Intensive - so doing so efficiently, with LEDs, is important.
OO LEDs Light Up Indoor Farming And Marijuana Cultivation
Source www.rodalesorganiclife.com
OO A Desert Full Of Tomatoes, Thanks To Solar Power And Seawater - is growing in Australia, where Sundrop Farms is using solar power to desalinate water and grow lots of greenhouse tomatoes.
The catch? You have to sell a LOT of tomatoes to pay the $150 million price tag of the desalinization plant - and then there's maintenance...
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HEALTH DISASTER LOOMS
In An Every Hotter World, More Children Will Die - whether from heat exhaustion, the spread of disease, hunger, extreme weather disasters like storms and flooding, or the conflict over resulting scarcity of resources.
OO The Coming Public Health Disaster - High temperatures are disrupting global ecosystems and food production, causing more extreme weather events and wildfires, threatening coastal communities with accelerated sea level rise and creating the perfect conditions for deadly diseases to spread.
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The young and old are most vulnerable.
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CONNECTING THE DOTS
Want to Stop More Storms Like This? Vote for leaders who understand and will support solutions to climate change. Credit Luis Rodriguez at weather.com
OO Hurricane Matthew Looks A Lot Like Climate Change which should be a focus of public safety.
And if we want to stop storms like this - or worse - we need to do everything we can to rid the economy of fossil fuels.
Related Headline:
Credit Stephen B. Morton at AP photo
OO Hurricane Matthew's Strength Is Yet Another Climate Change Indicator - a record-shattering storm that is unusual for October, it is a reminder of climate change's potential to turn seasonal weather into extreme, year-round threats.
The storm has surpassed several milestones as one of the strongest, longest-lasting hurricanes of its kind on record.
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GOOD CLEAN NEWS
Source DOE Revolution Now 2016
OO The Us Clean Energy Revolution Is Here says the US Department of Energy in a new report, with several charts to prove it. Takeaways:
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Costs have dramatically declined for renewable clean energy;
Installation of wind and solar power structures has exploded.
Electric vehicle sales are also exploding
As are highly energy efficient LEDs.
OO Global Energy Efficiency Has Tripled, But Not Enough To Curb Climate Change
"We need to improve [energy efficiency] by 50 % ... immediately."
Reykjavik: The geothermal city that aims to be the firsty city to go carbon neutral.
OO Iceland: Geothermal Capital City Aims To Be Carbon Neutral by 2040, and become the first city to do so.
OO $$$: 'Significant Economic Opportunities' For Low-Carbon Cities says a new analysis.
OO The Future Belongs To Clean Energy Wind power is projected to more than double in developing countries and increase by one-third in developed nations by 2030.
OO From Amazon To Wal-Mart, Wind Power Deals Are Blooming in Texas and beyond.
OO UK: Solar Panels Outstrip Coal-Fired Electricity in previously 'unthinkable' feat.
Source Kite Power Solutions Ltd 2015
OO One Of World's First Kite-Driven Power Stations To Open In Scotland - Its company says the system is so cheap it will not need any kind of subsidy - unlike fossil fuels or most renewables.
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OO 191 Countries Strike Deal To Cut Aircraft Emissions - every bit counts.
Credit Nate Beeler at the Columbus Dispatch, modified
OO The Paris Climate Agreement Is Officially Happening. Unless Donald Trump Wrecks It. - don't forget to vote!
Related Headline:
OO Paris Climate Accord To Go Into Force In November - to face the test of enforcement.
How Much Will They Pay To Make It Go Away? Is a question that Canada is letting its provinces answer on the price of carbon emissions. Source econews.com.au
OO Canada's Trudeau Steps Up On Climate Change With Carbon Pricing and leaves provinces with choices on how to carry it out.
OO Oil Clout Ebbs In Alaska As Billions In Tax Credits Are Cut - finally, people are realizing that oil doesn't pay.
NATURAL REPERCUSSIONS
OO US: No Matter How Much It Rains, Megadroughts Are 'Virtually Certain'
Due To Climate Change with the Southwest to suffer scorching, decades-long "megadroughts" if the world continues producing greenhouse gas emissions at its current pace, a new study warns.
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OO Global Warming Could Kill Off 'Good Bacteria',
Weakening Ecosystems - shows new research focused on an insect, but its implications ripple all the way up the chain to us: bacteria form a mutually beneficial relationship with virtually all animals, not noted in the piece itself.
Two interesting facts:
Bacteria help us digest our food;
Bacteria outnumber human cells on any human body.
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SPEAKING OUT
OO Paul Krugman: What About The Planet? Our two major political parties are at odds on many issues, but nowhere is the gap bigger or more consequential than on climate.
OO Recognizing Smokescreens:
Putting Carbon Back In The Land vs. Real Climate Action
Mainstream Media Is "Missing in Action" - and so are, consequently, much of the public, on the important evolving story of climate change - not only its dangerous acceleration and consequences, but even the good stories of how nations are starting to seriously address it.
OO Is The Media To Blame For Climate Inaction? Media needs to report far more frequently and openly on important actions being taken to solve climte change, such as these recent developments:
Ratification of a climate treaty to tackle emissions worldwide;
Commitment of nations to phase out climate changing HFCs;
Commitment of nations to a climate changing emissions limit in aviation.
MEH: Coverage of climate change in most media is lacking, and inconsistent - so, yes, media is significantly part of the blame for climate inaction.
OO UK Conservationists Deal Last-Minute Blow To 'Unlawful' Fracking Bid
Military Acts on Climate Change by increasingly cutting its climate changing emissions via adoption of clean energy in the field, and at its bases. Source US armed forces, via pewenvironment.org
OO US Military View On Climate Change:
It's Eroding Our National Security And We Should Prepare For It Something not even being discussed in the current election.
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SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS
Source Reuters
OO Global Economy Could 'Self-Destruct'
If World Carries On Burning Fossil Fuels a leading economist warns. Lord Nicholas Stern - author of the influential Stern Review on climate change in 2006 - says 'strong investment' in green technologies could finally revive growth in the world economy.
Bye Bye California Salmon? Populations and entire species of fish, many of which we eat, are facing extinction, as Californians take away their water - and Californians, present and future, are the ultimate losers. Source chowhound.com
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OO San Francisco Bay Ecosystem Collapsing As Rivers Diverted scientists report. Evidence of what scientists are calling the planet's Sixth Mass Extinction is appearing in San Francisco Bay and its estuary, the largest on the Pacific Coast of North and South America, says a major new study.
OO Invasive Insects Cause Tens Of Billions In Damage: Study - at least $77 billion in damage every year, says a new study, and that this figure is "grossly underestimated" because it covers only a fraction of the globe. It will worsen under continuing climate change.
And this is just due to crop damage - it doesn't apply to malaria, zika or other diseases spread by mosquitoes invading new areas.
All insects, including those in their native habitat, take a heavy toll on agriculture, consuming 30 to 40 % of global harvests -- enough to feed a billion people.
Source International Business Times
Mosquito-borne diseases, especially malaria, claim hundreds of thousands of lives every year.
Climate change is on track to boost the damages by nearly 20% before 2050.
"The distribution of many invasive species is today limited by temperature barriers, and climate change could allow them to invade regions that were inhospitable up to now", said the lead study researcher.
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OO When Spark Meets Sprawl: Building In Wildlands Increases Fire Risk Wildfires, now threaten many other parts of the country as extreme weather becomes more commonplace and more people live in areas at risk for wildfire.
OO As Cities Heat, Their Trees Partly Lose Ability To Remove
Climate Changing Carbon From The Air shows new research.
OO Climate Change Is Causing Earlier Springs In National Parks which could hurt their ability to manage invasive species.
Source climateandcapitalism.com
OO Europe Must Prepare For Extreme Weather - Cities and towns are warned to adapt to the battering they face from intense storms as extreme weather events become more frequent.
OO Will Climate Change Sink The Mekong Delta? It is vital to the lives of millions of southeast Asians. No delta region in the world is more threatened by climate change.
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FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE
@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.
The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What's not to like? Check it out!
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FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES
Source fort-russ.com
OO Economic Growth Ups Pollution, And Mortality modestly, and because it is largely linked to increased pollution from fossil fuels, says a new study. Another reason to go clean...
But economic growth also spurs death via upping alcoholic intake, stress. overwork, and driving more.
And high economic levels (as opposed to growth) correlate with longer lives.
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That is, "If the pollution doesn't kill you in the short run, then in the long run the increased income will help you live longer," a study author says.
Source www.worldbank.org
Dirty Driven Growth Costs - mortality also costs society, when you account for the money spent on humans whose productivity is cut by premature death.
Wait a minute. Step back.
What this study does not tackle is the overall long term effect of unsustainable economic growth on our health, safety, and future quality of life - and all indications are that the effect is dramatically negative.
Another Reason to Give Up Oil Source WalesOnline
OO North Sea Oil Spills Reach Record High
OO Fossil Fuel Industry's Methane Emissions Far Higher Than Thought - up to 60% greater than previously estimated, meaning current climate prediction models should be revised, new research shows.
What Climate Change at 400 PPM Will Look Like - Only Worse and more.
OO Milestone For Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere:
A Climate Changing 400 Ppm has been reached.
OO World Bank Secretly Funds Asian Coal Boom
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CLIMATE OR CLUELESS LEADERSHIP: YOU DECIDE
Your Vote Is ALWAYS Meaningful - because it's not just about winning or losing, but by how much, which gives incoming leaders a sense of how much of the populace supports their policies - and that influences their actions. So, don't forget to vote!
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OO Sign The Environmental Voter Pledge For Your Family And Future
OO Climate Change Must Be A Bigger Part Of Election Discussion
OO What's At Stake For The Climate In The 2016 Election? Everything.
If Only It Worked That Way Credit Hilary B. Price on Earth Day 2016
OO Next 'Renewable Energy': Burning US Forests, If Senators Get Their Way - the president's Clean Power Plan is being fought by 28 states, and a bipartisan group of senators who want burning wood for electricity to be considered carbon neutral.
Just goes to show that greed is nonpartisan.
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ELECTION YEAR:
If You Don't Vote For Climate Action, You Can Forget The Rest - in a climate-changing world of famine, drought, rising seas, giant storms and heat waves, there will be no security in jobs, health, wealth, or national safety. There will be chaos ensuing from increasing crises and disasters. Vote.
OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years - of global warming, a new study shows -- and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.
This time, it could be worldwide. Let's keep "The Hunger Games" in the realm of fiction.
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If we do not grow sustainably,
Our children will die inhumanely.
@@ The Cost of Unintended Pregnancy: Too Young
Teen childbearing cost US taxpayers $9+ Billion in 2010
And the costs of raising a child usually ensures decades, if not a life, of poverty for its mother.
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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WHAT YOU CAN DO
Help prevent unintended pregnancies in your community:
publicize where women can access affordable contraception.
They can go here to find locations:
And there are many more actions you can do, right here.
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SOLAR KEEPS SAILING
OO Bringing Light To The Darkness: Illiterate Women Trained As Solar Technicians By an Indian organization, which hopes to help 1.2 billion people in the world living without electricity.
OO In Rural Bangladesh, Solar Power Dents Poverty Via microfinance and small rooftop panels, which can transform lives in a country where the electric grid reaches just 25 %of the population.
Check it out here, right now!
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WHY WE SHOULD ACT NOW: RISING RISKS
Daily Climate Change: Global Map of Unusual Temperatures, Oct 18, 2016
How unusual has the weather been? No one event is "caused" by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.
Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US and the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures: the eastern Pacific warm spot continues and so does the drought in California, despite recent rains.
Much of the areas surrounding the North Pole are experiencing much warmer than normal temperatures - not good news for our Arctic thermal shield of ice. Hotter than usual temperatures continue to dominate human habitats.
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There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I've compiled, "Climate Change News Resources," at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.
To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!
Muslim refugee holding his baby looking through a fence
On Monday, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and Human Rights First (HRF) released a report outlining what a private refugee sponsorship system could look like in the United States. The report provides answers to many questions about the specific design of a sponsorship system, with the ultimate goal of improving the U.S. refugee resettlement program and increasing resettlement capacity.
Private refugee sponsorship is defined as a platform that, "offers communities, organizations, companies, and philanthropies the opportunity to support the resettlement of additional refugees to the United States." Sponsorship serves as a mechanism to translate private sector support into direct assistance to increased refugee resettlement.
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IRAP and HRF's report examines the key principles of private refugee sponsorship. Such a program, they write, must ensure privately sponsored refugees receive the same stringent security checks that refugees currently undergo, and must facilitate resettlement in addition to the government cap. Moreover, the models for pairing sponsors and refugees should accommodate the motivations of the sponsors to produce the best outcomes.
The report provides answers to many questions that refugee advocates have been asking about a private sponsorship system. From strategies to set the private quota and the process to select both sponsors and refugees to what sponsorship would entail for pre and post-arrival services, this policy blueprint delves deep into the details. It also includes a section sketching out what the structure of a initial pilot program could look like.
The paper comes on the heels of Refugee Council USA-the umbrella organization representing the refugee groups nationwide-releasing their statement on private sector engagement in the refugee resettlement program. They call for the United States to consider private sponsorship as a way to tap into private sector support and interest for resettlement, noting an increase in demand from citizens and communities to get more involved to aid refugees.
Not only would private sponsorship increase total refugee admissions, it will create a robust, pro-refugee constituency that can push Congress to increase funding and implement reforms benefiting refugees. Furthermore, it will help forge close relationships between Americans and refugees that ease their integration into American society.
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The Niskanen Center published the afterword of the report after leading the advocacy effort for private sponsorship in the last year. As I wrote in the paper:
The magnitude of the current refugee crisis--unprecedented in recorded history--has led many in the U.S. to push for ways to harness the tremendous goodwill of everyday Americans looking to do their part to help. The idea of private refugee sponsorship answers the question refugee advocates receive from Americans on a daily basis: 'How can I help?'
Private sponsorship is now on the agenda of policymakers at the height of the U.S. refugee program thanks to a dedicated effort from a broad range of refugee advocates since last year. This new IRAP and HRF report provides the necessary specifics to take the general support for the idea and push forward in sketching out what a sponsorship program could really look like. It's an invaluable contribution to the U.S. effort to launch private sponsorship and leverage American charity to help more refugees.
Refugees around the world are looking at the United States to demonstrate leadership in the face of this global human rights crisis. As the U.S. moves closer to private sponsorship, the American people will have the chance to play a larger role in providing a safe haven to the persecuted across the globe.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S. October 18, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
In tonight's third and final presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in Las Vegas, moderated by Fox News's Chris Wallace, the Supreme Court is one issue we're told will be focused on.
Donald Trump, however, made his intentions quite clear at the last debate, and many times before: He will appoint justices to the high court "very much in the mold of Justice Scalia."
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You can't hold up a better example of anti-LGBT extremism on the Supreme Court than Antonin Scalia, the most homophobic force ever on the court, who made hateful comments, on and office the court, about gay people for several decades.
The late Scalia had compared homosexuality to bestiality, incest and child pornography and believed that banning homosexuality was similar to banning murder. Scalia not only wrote a blistering, unhinged dissenting opinion in the historic marriage equality case in 2015, Orbergefell v. Hodges; he was virulently opposed to striking down sodomy laws, writing the dissenting opinion in the Lawrence v. Texas case in 2003, attacking the "law-profession culture" which he claimed had "signed on to the homosexual agenda."
It's pathetic, as I've pointed out again and again, that much of the mainstream media has portrayed Trump as "more accepting on gay issues" than other Republicans -- again grading him on a curve because he's not railing against gays like others have -- while he has forcefully advocated for Scalia-like justices on the court, producing a list of 20. Not only do many of the judges Trump has listed meet that standard, but he has specifically said he would put them on the court to possibly overturn marriage equality.
Back in January, Trump told none other than tonight's debate moderator, Wallace, that he was unhappy with the Obergefell ruling, which brought marriage equality to the entire nation. He'd rather it had been left "to the states," which of course allows for rampant discrimination.
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It's interesting that Wallace, from his perch at Fox News and certainly not a champion of progressive values, has been the only journalist interested in getting answers from Trump on this issue, while reporters at publications like The New York Times and Washington Post have given him a pass again and again, even portraying him as better on LGBT rights. When pressed by Wallace about appointing justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn the Obergefell ruling Trump replied, "I would strongly consider that, yes."
It's difficult to imagine that ruling being overturned -- and the chaos that would ensue -- but simply by pandering to those who desire this action Trump is revealing the mortal danger he is to LGBT rights. If not on a marriage equality, there are a whole host of issues about which Trump can hold back or reverse LGBT rights, and many of the judges he's suggested he'd appoint would be primed to do so.
Hillary Clinton, at the last debate, countered Trump's promise of Scalia-like justices very clearly: "I want a Supreme Court that will stick with Roe v. Wade and the woman's right to choose, and I want a Supreme Court that will stick with marriage equality." She has called for a full and comprehensive LGBT anti-discrimination law. The Equality Act, which would protect LGBT people in housing, employment, public accommodations and other areas, would add LGBT people to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was introduced in Congress last year. Clinton obviously believes such a law can and would be held constitutional. That is, unless a Supreme Court with justices "in the mold of Justice Scalia" are appointed to the court and are able to preempt such a law by ruling against LGBT people in a variety cases making their way to the high court.
Trump, back in February, two weeks after the Wallace interview, promised evangelicals, during an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, to "trust me" to overturn the "shocking" and "massive" Obergefell ruling. And that is something with which his anti-LGBT running mate Mike Pence surely agrees. What we need from Trump are fuller details about how he's going to get that done, or how he expects the judges he'd appoint to the court will thwart LGBT rights in other ways. Trump and Pence have both promised to defend "religious liberty" -- code for allowing Christian business owners, such as bakers and florists, to use their religious beliefs to discriminate against LGBT people in their businesses. So how does he expect that will happen?
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In 2006, in the sixth year of the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, I began writing a speculation about what the world be like if Al Gore had become president. The Huffington Post published it on May 11, 2008.
You will remember that the presidential vote in 2000 was contested and close. Gore won the popular vote, and the Republican-majority Supreme Court gave the election to Bush. President Bush ignored warnings about Osama bin Laden's intention to attack the US. After Bin Laden struck on 9/11, Bush falsely contended that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein was responsible and had weapons of mass destruction. He pushed to invade Iraq.
Bush's invasion in March 2003 led to the breakup of a coherent Iraqi national entity into three warring factions, Shia, Sunni, and Kurd, which had been kept in check by Hussein. Because of Bush's invasion and occupation, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. One of the thousands of American soldiers killed in the Iraq war was Casey Sheehan. His mother, Cindy, became an eloquent antiwar activist. Toward the end of "The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009" the Sheehans appear.
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I am republishing "The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009" below without any changes from its publication on May 11, 2008.
In May 2008, "The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009" was about how important it is to think carefully before you vote. In 2000, the Green Party candidate had siphoned off enough progressive votes to assure Bush's victory and the disasters that followed. In 2016, a vote for the Libertarian or Green presidential ticket is a vote for Trump. It is existentially essential to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Here is "The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009" exactly as published in The Huffington Post on May 11, 2008, except that I have added that publication date to the opening note.
The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009
[May 11, 2008: Note: Continually thinking about how disastrous the last seven years have been, I did some imagining and research on what the world would be like if Al Gore had become president in 2001. Such a process is really about how important it is to elect the right president. I asked friends and acquaintances for their ideas, I read books by and about Gore, and I watched again his September 2000 interview with Oprah Winfrey, where I learned about his favorite book and movie and his art teacher. Here are some of my findings.]
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The Presidency of Al Gore, 2001-2009
On January 20, 2001, Al Gore, the candidate who won the most votes, becomes the 43rd president of the United States.
President Gore follows up on the many urgent warnings from the intelligence agencies that Osama Bin Laden is determined to strike in the United States. The 9/11 planners are caught, and their plots are aborted.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban warns that it will destroy the two giant 1,500-year-old statues of the Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley. Much of the world sees these serene figures as symbols of wisdom beyond time, but they offend conservative Muslims. Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke talks with the Pakistani foreign minister, who reminds him that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and suggests that if aid to the poor there is increased, the Buddhas will be spared. Gore calls the American Buddhist actor Richard Gere, who immediately raises $50 million for the Afghani poor, and the Gore administration promises $5 billion in direct aid over the next five years. The Taliban agrees to preserve the statues.
Gore's favorite film, Local Hero, the Scots eco-comedy, becomes a best-selling DVD. The film is about how ancient values of subsistence, closeness to nature, and community defeat the rapacious forces of the oil industry. People like quoting the old Scot who puts the kibosh on the oilmen: "The business left, but the beach is still here."
Republicans are squawking that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a threat to the safety of the country, that he has weapons of mass destruction. Gore asks the United Nations to send its weapons inspectors back into Iraq, and after six months of searching, they find none. Saddam is in what Eliot Weinberger calls "the 'autumn of the patriarch' mode: holed up in his palaces writing his trashy novels, and oblivious to the details of government." Gore brokers a deal in which Saddam's novels are translated into English and published and he agrees to slowly loosen up some of the restrictions on the Kurds and Shias and bring them into the government.
In 1998, as vice president, Gore proposed a NASA satellite, Triana, to provide, from a distance of 930,000 miles, a continuous view of the sunlit side of the earth. Triana would measure global warming by measuring how much sunlight is reflected and emitted from the earth and would monitor weather systems. Triana is built and launched in February 2003. In late 2004, it sends back images of the beginnings of a great tsunami that might have killed hundreds of thousands if it had gone undetected in its early stages. But Triana's continual data feed allows people to be warned to flee to higher ground, and only a few dozen perish.
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The president's favorite book, Stendahl's The Red and the Black, becomes a best seller. People like quoting the book's young hero, Julien Sorel: "So there, this is what these rich people are like. First they humiliate you, then they think they can make it up to you by monkey business!"
Recognizing that nothing good can come from the continuing Israeli-Palestinian standoff, Gore sends Holbrooke and Vice President Joe Lieberman to broker a peace. In May the two sides sign a peace accord, in which Israel agrees to go back to the 1967 boundaries, the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist, and both sides renounce violence. The Republic of Palestine is founded in 2002.
President Gore has a nightmare: He becomes president on January 20, 2001, but the next day he is incapacitated, and Lieberman becomes president. In the spirit of the close election, Lieberman appoints George W. Bush as vice president on January 22. The next day Lieberman is incapacitated, and Bush becomes president and appoints Dick Cheney his vice president. The Bush-Cheney presidency starts January 23, not January 20. Immediately Bush begins abrogating treaties of long standing that kept the world at peace. Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center on September 14, 2001. Bush enacts draconian laws that make America a police state. People constantly refer to "9/14" as the day that changed everything. President Gore wakes up in his bed in the White House in a cold sweat, the dream disappearing from his conscious mind but the numbers 9 and 14 puzzling and haunting him at odd moments for the rest of his days.
As vice president, Gore signed the Kyoto Accord on Climate Change in 1998, but there were not enough votes to ratify it in the Congress, and there still are not. President Gore, however, is able to implement most elements of the treaty by executive order. He begins a process of education about global warming and publishes a book on the subject. He sponsors twenty-four hours of concerts with rock and pop stars, Live Earth, on every continent, and broadcast on television, radio, and the Web to raise awareness about climate change and global warming. A third of the planet's population watches and hears the concerts and has a pretty good time in the process. Soon every nation has ratified Kyoto, and the climate crisis begins to ebb. The temperatures of the oceans stop rising, and thus the severity of hurricanes stops increasing.
Early in 2001, acting on urgent warnings from the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, the president directs that the New Orleans levees be reinforced and where necessary rebuilt, and the nearby wetlands protected and expanded. When hurricane Katrina strikes in August 2005, the wetlands absorb much of the flooding, the reinforced levees hold, and New Orleans suffers only minor damage.
People start reading Gore's favorite philosophers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, and Reinhold Niebuhr. They quote passages like this from Merleau: "We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." And this from Niebuhr: "The sin of man arises from his effort to establish his own security; and the sin of the false prophet lies in the effort to include this false security within the ultimate security of faith. The false security to which all men are tempted is the security of power. The primary insecurity of human life arises from its weakness and finiteness."
The United States and the nations of the former Soviet Union agree to destroy the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons built up during the Cold War. The president halts and junks the Star Wars strategic defense initiative boondoggle. Every nation signs a treaty to begin eliminating their weapons of mass destruction. The military-industrial complex must now make a transition. Converting the country, and the world, to alternative energy sources other than fossil fuel and nuclear becomes a new growth industry.
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The special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom continues, as does the close relationship between the progressive governments of Tony Blair and Al Gore, begun under Bill Clinton. As planned, Blair carries through the New Labour vision of the New Jerusalem, with higher quality of life and better public services, similar to those in France. In 2008, he is re-elected for an unprecedented fourth term.
President Clinton had twice shaken hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and now President Gore sends Holbrooke to Caracas to draft a treaty of cooperation with Chavez. Gore arrives in the Venezuelan capital, where he and Chavez sign the treaty. Later, they talk about their mutual love of Victor Hugo's great novel of the dispossessed, Les Miserables. Chavez tells Gore that he was named for its author. They quote from memory lines from the great book.
Gore remembers this, about Jean Valjean: "Then he asked himself if it was not a serious thing that he, a workman, could not have found work and that he, an industrious man, should have been without bread." Chavez responds with what Jean Valjean's savior, the Bishop of Digne, says: "Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you." Gore replies with this about the inspector who hunts Valjean: "Javert was always in character, without a wrinkle in his duty or his uniform, methodical with villains, rigid with his coat buttons." Chavez says this about Fantine: "What is this story of Fantine about? It is about society buying a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, from cold, fron loneliness, from desertion, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a piece of bread."
Gore and Howard Dean, his Health and Human Services Secretary, begin having regular discussions with Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, about that country's single-payer health care system. Gore plans to introduce universal health care in the United States step by step. His health care bill, narrowly passed in 2001, covers all those age eighteen and under by 2004, and everyone else by 2007.
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The president invites to the White House the person who had the most influence on him, his high school art teacher. The Smithsonian exhibits some of Gore's paintings.
By a few votes in each house, Congress passes Gore's tax cuts for middle- and lower-income people. But also by a few votes in each house, the Congress passes tax cuts for the rich and super-rich, which Gore vetoes. The rich and super-rich continue paying their same rate. Soon, the gap between rich and poor, which has been increasing since the Reagan administration began in 1981, begins decreasing.
The undamming of rivers, begun seriously under Clinton/Gore, continues, and the ancient vibrant river life of salmon, shad, freshwater dolphin, and manatee returns.
U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan becomes a Chaplain's Assistant. In 2005, his tour of duty up, he returns to California to visit his mother, Cindy.
A bird alights on a Bamiyan Buddha.
America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. - Alexis de Tocqueville
I want to believe we are the good guys. I want to know, deep in my heart, that we reject the vile, the stupid, the disgusting. I want us to behave as a nation should behave - caring for those least amongst us like the poor, the disenfranchised, the vulnerable, with the same unceasing generosity we displayed at the end of World War 2 and the implementation of the Marshall Plan . We knew that the rest of the world would scoff at our naivete and think us foolish to expect appreciation, but we did it anyway. Because we thought it was the right thing to do.
We are facing a true crisis in America. An existential crisis about our way of life, our national character, and the very existence of democracy. This entire election cycle, from its inception, has been completely toxic. Candidates have shown little respect for each other. They threaten each other, insult spouses, children, and take horrific swipes at each other. They have shown little respect for the citizens of this country and for our institutions, our civility, and our place in the world.
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The U.S. has always seemed brash. I remember when I was working with the York Archaeological Trust one summer. I went to the bank with our weekly stipend to change some dollars into pounds. We were essentially paid volunteers and not paid a lot. A friend from the trust, ironically from York, Pennsylvania, was also in this bank, and as we were standing in line, we heard the harsh, strident tones of an American accent, arguing that the previous day's exchange rate had been better and demanding the bank honor it. Since there was a bit of a line, we kept hearing the angry American and her equally loud and obnoxious husband arguing with this poor bank teller about the rates. The more they spoke, the more British we became, so that by the time we were at the window with our familiar weekly teller waiting to exchange our dollars to pounds, we were speaking in upper crust drawls. With a glance at the bleating, loud, ugly Americans behind us, the teller winked and didn't betray us, and we slinked out of the bank without having to acknowledge we were American.
Recalling that incident makes me realize that there has always been a harsh, uncouth, unattractive section of our society. I don't mean physical appearance but unattractive souls that have now become elevated into the mainstream of our lives. The "isms" that used to be sidelined in the shadows - racism, misogyny, ignorance, and staggering anti-intellectualism - are now blatantly in the light for all to see. They are a result of an education system that is failing, a vocal minority that has failed to learn critical thinking skills, tolerance, acceptance, or even the golden rule. These people have felt voiceless and powerless. These are frightened, angry people making bad choices and more importantly forgetting that they are, in fact, Americans - you know, the good guys.
We are becoming uncivilized. Although Michelle Obama exhorted us to go high when others go low, that concept seems to elude everyone. We denigrate, we hound, we humiliate - all in the name of free speech. Our rampant isolationism from the rest of the world between the World Wars has now devolved into an even more insidious internal isolationism that promulgates hate, mistrust, and ignorance. Some still fighting - and losing - the Civil War will glom onto anyone who wants to return to the antebellum South, which they consider the good old days, for the good old boys.
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Religions, as a rule, are myopic, declaring that they are the only way to believe. However, in this country, where the founding fathers were mostly deists, religion was never to hold sway over government. Nonetheless, over the years, doing a litmus test of faith, as opposed to an understanding of how government works, and the rights and privileges that we the people hold therein through our constitution, has become the deciding factor. How else can you explain the fear of the "other" propagated these past 15 years?
The slow decline of conservatism started when Robert Taft and his brand of conservative politics had a hissy when Eisenhower was nominated and the country 'liked Ike and his policies, It refocused the intellectually driven, conservative party that espoused smaller government, fiscal management and individualism, and deadheaded it right into what is now called the alt-right. Calmer voices were silenced, and the stage was set for people to preach from their bully pulpits a deeper, fundamentally flawed brand that forgot what American ideals really were.
The greatest generation saved the world. The founding fathers declared a revolution that promised 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, created a system of laws, of moral and ethical behaviors founded from the 17th century Enlightenment. Where has all the reason gone?
Alexis de Tocqueville warned us that "When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness." Have we so forgotten our glorious past that we've allowed ourselves to accept that incivility, misogyny, racism, bigotry, and all the other hates being spewed are the norm?
I want a return to the 'good old days' when politicians built consensus, and sought to improve the lives of our nation and the world. When we didn't denigrate, disparage and denounce, but built up, buoyed and believed in our country and our citizens.
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Are we the good guys? I'd like to think so. I was raised on the notion that the U.S. eventually comes to the right decision and we make the right choices.
Let's find ourselves and become our best selves once again.
As the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging prepares to release the latest version of its widely followed "Best Cities for Successful Aging" rankings index, our Advisory Board is once again calling on U.S. mayors to sign the Center for the Future of Aging Mayor's Pledge. The upcoming "Best Cities" report will publicly recognize mayors who join their colleagues across the country to promote purpose and well-being in their communities.
The stakes are clear. With a federal government hamstrung by partisanship and politics, the time is now for mayors to demonstrate their commitment to better lives by signing the Pledge. Their leadership is critical as the aging population grows at an unprecedented rate across the United States and the world.
By 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 and over. Worldwide, this age group will outnumber children under 14 by midcentury, due in large measure to declining birthrates and increasing longevity thanks to advances in science and public health.
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Cities are on the front lines, with more than 80 percent of Americans age 65-plus living in metropolitan areas. Nearly 90 percent of older adults in the U.S. want to age in their homes and communities, according to AARP research. Enabling these residents to age with dignity, opportunity and access to services and supports is a central issue for the future of urban environments. The Pledge unites forward-thinking leaders around a commitment to enhance life for the largest-ever population of older adults, and for generations to come.
From the first signatory in late 2014, 140 mayors of cities large and small have signed the Pledge. And they are taking action. At the 2015 White House Conference on Aging, then-Iowa City Mayor Matt Hayek told policy and business leaders about the programs and services that make his heartland city such a vibrant place for mature residents. With his colleagues on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of L.A. and the first to sign the Pledge, announced Purposeful Aging Los Angeles, a multisector initiative to improve lives in this massive and diverse region. We look forward to many more mayors signing the Pledge and to the reports of their plans and progress.
As the Pledge recognizes, mayors can ensure that their evolving cities include welcoming neighborhoods that are physically, economically and socially attuned to the well-being of mature residents. These centers of population, culture and commerce must optimize health and security as well as engagement and productivity, offer housing and transit options, social services and opportunities for education, work and social interaction. They can provide innovative technology and communications solutions that allow people to age independently in their homes. Mayors who take the lead in developing these attributes will profoundly influence older residents' ability to age well and enjoy healthy and fulfilling lives.
But mayors can do more. Cities are economic engines and enablers of purpose. Mayors can ensure that older residents contribute to the economy and strengthen society, applying their abilities and knowledge to keep their cities vibrant. Rather than focusing on the stereotypes of decline and disengagement, mayors can recognize the potential of older adults as assets rather than burdens.
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The Pledge acknowledges that elders have much to offer people of all ages. Their wisdom and experience enriches their families as well as business, educational and social institutions. They offer mentoring and training in workplaces and perspectives that enhance intergenerational connection. As entrepreneurs, they boost economic growth. In encore careers, teaching and volunteer activities, they contribute to society's well-being. The Pledge calls on mayors to promote the involvement of older residents in volunteer and paid roles that serve others, to help them train for and transition to those roles and to recognize this growing age group for the value and potential it represents.
The goals of the Pledge promise vast opportunity for our cities, and an increasing number of mayors are demonstrating vision as they build coalitions and plan for a new demographic future. Their ground-level experience opens the door to solutions that can be replicated at the state, national and global levels.
This is a unique opportunity for mayors themselves, as well as their cities. We call on them to join together in civic leadership by signing the Pledge, and we look forward to celebrating their efforts to create a better future of aging for all.
Paul Irving is chairman of the Center for the Future of Aging at the Milken Institute and distinguished scholar in residence at the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
Today, with sadness, I am participating in funeral ceremonies of Andrzej Wajda, a world acclaimed film director, and a great friend of Gdansk. He died on October 9th at 90 years of age. Agencies all over the world have been giving accounts of his life and many remembered his great life and films, including the Oscar he received for lifetime achievement in 2000.
Andrzej Wajda, the Honorary Citizen of Gdansk. The King Arthur's Court in Gdansk. March 2016. Photo: J. Pinkas
I feel a special affinity with Mr Wajda and a special obligation to him. Just several months ago, in January, I visited him in his home in Warsaw with the invitation to become an Honorary Citizen of Gdansk. He gladly agreed and happily recounted numerous times he had been in Gdansk, and how important our city is to him and his work.
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Gdansk has a great relation with Andrzej Wajda, because the most important movies in his career were filmed in Gdansk and about Gdansk.
They clearly showed how important events in the history of Poland were inseparable from the myth and a genius loci of the place: its golden age in XV-XVII centuries, its proud status of Free City, and the place of the beginning of World War II. The breakthrough events of workers' strikes of December '70 and August '80 resulting in a birth of "Solidarity" took place here. There's no denying that the films that Wajda made in Gdansk are formative to generations of viewers. His "Man of Marble" and Man of Iron" are films institutions. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the world cinema without Andrzej Wajda's input.
How happy were we when he agreed to come to Gdansk on his 90th birthday in March and received the Honorary Citizen Award in King Arthur's Court, the most representative building, so dear to Andrzej Wajda's heart. He knew many anecdotes from the period immediately following the war, when the fortunes of Gdansk's cultural heritage was decided. That's when I got to know him as a lively storyteller. We laughed at his colourful rendition of 1945 negotiations of Polish art historians with a Soviet commandant over a huge table in today's New City Hall. The matter was about saving as many as possible pieces of art from pre-war Gdansk from being taken away to the Soviet Union.
From the left: Andrzej Wajda, Lech Walesa and me. Photo: J. Pinkas
When he arrived in March for the award ceremony, we told him what a great honour for Gdansk residents it was to have him among us. In my speech I emphasised that the new Honorary Citizen of Gdansk for decades had taught Poles patriotism. Not the "textbook" one, however, but the difficult, sometimes tragic one.
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The protagonists of his films are put in extreme situations, faced with crucial and most difficult choices. Importantly, Andrzej Wajda never proposes easy solutions. He teaches that patriotism is also a thoughtful reading of national literature and a constant reinterpreting it. It forces us to create independent thoughts and makes us who we are.
On the filmset of "Walesa. Man of Hope". In the front of the train station in Gdansk. Robert Wieckiewicz starring as Lech Walesa. Photo: J. PinkasHow strange: he seemed eternal. At 90 he still made plans for new movies, joked and laughed. He left us with a gift: an Oscar nominee for the best foreign movie: Powidoki. We will be watching, of course. With sadness, with a feeling of great loss, with deep gratitude.
The following piece is by Robert L. Dilenschneider. It offers valuable insights about the American political system:
With less than 20 days before one of the most important elections in American history, we have prepared this note on executive privilege, executive orders and executive actions that may be of interest.
Many wonder if either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be able to make much difference in office if, for example, the Democrat is faced with a Republican-led Congress or the Republican president must deal with a Democrat-controlled Congress.
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Be sure that either Clinton or Trump will invoke "executive privilege," "executive orders" and "executive actions" to advance their agenda. Each of these is quite different, but all three are used by presidents to get their way when the path is firmly blocked on Capitol Hill or they are fighting legal action.
Executive privilege is power claimed by the president to thwart interventions to the executive branch by Congress and the judiciary seeking to access sensitive information and personnel issues relating to the executive branch.
Ironically, the concept of executive privilege is not mentioned in the Constitution. However, the Supreme Court has upheld the concept as part of the doctrine of separation of powers, especially in areas of national security.
Please note that while executive privilege is often used to avoid abiding by subpoenas, the whole concept is far from settled law.
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Famously, President Truman issued a secrecy order to keep Congress from getting FBI and White House data on security problems. Truman had security files moved to the White House and ordered his team not to testify in Congress on anything involving security. During the McCarthy hearings into alleged Communist infiltration of government, President Eisenhower claimed executive privilege to keep internal conversations and meetings and notes (well before email) private. Likewise, Defense employees were not permitted to testify before McCarthy or provide any documents he sought.
The most famous case is United States v. Nixon. In 1974 Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox ordered President Nixon to produce White House Oval Office audiotapes. Nixon invoked executive power to refuse. The Supreme Court noted that there is a valid need for protection of communications among government officials but said that certain procedures must be invoked to protect public interest with the courts put in the difficult position of deciding which branch of government prevails. The court said this is a difficult situation that is to be avoided as much as possible. "Once executive privilege is asserted, coequal branches of the Government are set on a collision course."
Bill Clinton in 1998 became the first president since Nixon to assert executive privilege and lose in court, when a federal judge ruled that Clinton aides could testify in the Monica Lewinsky case.
Executive orders are directives issued to federal agencies, department heads and other federal employees by the president using his constitutional powers. They are similar to written orders or instructions issued by CEOs to department heads or directors. They have the force of law, although, of course, they can be challenged in the courts. They are published in the Federal Register and take effect 30 days later. They bypass Congress but may not be used to circumvent laws or direct agencies to do anything illegal.
Two of the most famous executive orders came after the United States was attacked. After Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Roosevelt issued executive order 9066 (they are numbered historically) ordering the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, although many were U.S. citizens. After 9/11, President Bush issued an executive order to combine more than 40 federal agencies into the Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.
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Although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously decreed Republicans would do everything in their power to ensure President Obama would be a one-term president, Obama prevailed more than many expected he would by issuing executive orders. For example, in a 2012 order known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Obama decreed that people under 30 who came to the United States before the age of 16 could get a two-year deferral from deportation, under certain conditions.
Executive orders are not immutable. The president may change or abolish an executive order at any time or supersede an existing order. Incoming presidents may keep or replace or revoke previous orders. Rarely, Congress may pass a law that alters an executive order. The Supreme Court may declare an executive order unconstitutional.
Executive actions are even more common. Early in office Obama called a press conference and announced he was issuing 23 "executive actions" addressing gun violence. He called for universal background checks on anyone trying to buy a gun and restoring a ban on military-style assault weapons. But they carried no legal weight.
There have been a number of myths about Obama's use of executive orders. He did not issue an order keeping his records (e.g., birth certificate) secret. In fact, he issued an order reversing a Bush order so that records of former presidents are no longer as secret as they were. Obama did not sign an order giving him a third term, contrary to Internet gossip. And he did not sign an order getting rid of super political action committees, which give huge amounts of money to the political process, although he dislikes them. He is urging Congress to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing them.
Although President Obama has issued 252 orders so far in his presidency and undoubtedly will issue more, he is lagging behind his predecessors. George W. Bush had 291 executive orders in eight years, and Bill Clinton built up a total of 364 executive orders during his eight years. Obama actually has issued the fewest per year--33--since Chester Arthur. Franklin D. Roosevelt issued 3,721.
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Why did Apple remove the headphone jack from the iPhone 7? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
In short, because it was more trouble than it's worth.
A waterproof iPhone is a big win for users. Apple collects all sorts of data through AppleCare and the Genius Bar about what kinds of problems people have with their Apple devices, and they use this data to improve future products. Perhaps the best known example is the MagSafe adapter: Apple saw many broken laptops that had been pulled to the ground when someone tripped over the charging cable, so they designed a charging cable with a magnetic connector that would harmlessly detach when you sharply tugged on it. But they've also used this data in other ways, like selecting more resilient materials for iPhones; their moves from plastic to glass to various grades and colors of aluminum was driven by seeing what condition iPhones were in when they returned to the Genius Bar after months or years in the wild.
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The most common kind of accidental damage for iPhones is probably dropping a phone and shattering the screen. Apple has changed the screen glass a couple times, and made an abortive attempt at moving to sapphire, but it hasn't quite fixed that problem yet. But the second most common type is most likely liquid damage. I'm sure you know somebody who's drowned an iPhone (and probably tried to revive it with a bowl of dry rice)--everybody does.
That's what the limited waterproofing in the iPhone 7 is really about. It's not about taking your iPhone for a swim, or in the shower, or even out in the rain. It's about accidentally dropping it in the toilet or pool, or forgetting it's in your pants pocket when you do the laundry, or getting splashed when a car drives through a puddle, or any of a hundred other accidents that used to result in an expensive repair that made you less happy with your phone.
So waterproofing (yes, I know, it's actually water resistance) is something every iPhone user needs, even if they don't know it. It's an important feature.
Unfortunately, it's also a difficult feature. Every part of the phone that interacts with the outside of the phone needs to be redesigned, usually in ways that make them larger. And that's a problem.
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The inside of an iPhone is valuable real estate. There's a story from the iPod days: examining a prototype one day, Steve Jobs said it was too big, but the engineers told him that making it smaller was impossible. So Jobs dropped the prototype in an aquarium and watched closely as it sank to the bottom, trailing bubbles. "Those are air bubbles," Jobs said. "That means there's space in there. Make it smaller."
Apple's engineers have long since learned that lesson. Today, iPhones are crammed full of components, with as little wasted as possible. Most of the space inside an iPhone is behind the display assembly. In this area, the thickness of components is limited; you can put chips and batteries here, but not much else. Access to the outside world is also obstructed--the screen is in front and solid aluminum behind.
That means that any component that is nearly as thick as the phone, sends or receives radio signals through the antenna lines, or reaches the front of the case has to be in the bezel areas above or below the screen. That includes antennas, cameras, ports, speakers, sensors, microphones, and the Home button and Touch ID hardware. I've labeled an image (from the old marketing website) of the 6S internals to give you an idea of how much stuff is jockeying for space in these couple square inches:
Just eyeballing it, the headphone jack in the 6S probably takes up about 10% of the bezel space in the entire phone. (I'm talking about the entire jack assembly--the big whiteish piece in the bottom left--not just the shaft itself.) The only larger bezel components are the speaker, the rear camera, and possibly the earpiece.
Think of real-world places with very valuable real estate. In Manhattan, a not-so-profitable gas station occupying a parcel of very expensive land will often be bulldozed to make way for a tall building full of lucrative offices or condos. The inside of an iPhone is valuable real estate, and these bezel areas are especially scarce. Parts that aren't providing enough value are likely to get bulldozed.
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Waterproofing takes a lot of space--especially when it demands a new Taptic Engine. Here's a similar image of the bottom bezel area of the iPhone 7. You might notice that most of the components are completely different:
The Taptic Engine is much larger and is partially behind the new, non-mechanical Home button. The Home button change is probably both for waterproofing (it's hard to seal all of those seams) and for reliability (broken Home buttons are another common repair--or at least people think they are); an impulse from the Taptic Engine is now used to make the non-mechanical button "click" the way the old one did.
But the new Taptic Engine protrudes into the space previously taken up by the headphone jack; I estimate it covers about a quarter of the jack's depth, depending on the purpose of the three prongs just below the Taptic Engine's main body. And it has to be there, in the bottom left of the phone; it must be near the Home button, and the speaker's on the right side.
Looking at the rest of the bezel, the speaker is also much larger and fully enclosed. Presumably, this makes it louder and improves its waterproofing. There are also water-tight seals all around the rim of the phone. And there are a number of other new components here; in the exact location of the old headphone jack, you'll find a barometric vent, which allows the barometer to work so the iPhone can sense altitude changes (like climbing a flight of stairs) without permitting water into the phone.
I don't know of a similar image of the top bezel, but with a larger rear camera, a second speaker, and the need for similar waterproofing work in that area, I can only assume it's gotten pretty crowded up there, too. Perhaps the unidentifiable parts in the 7's bottom include a replacement for the antenna unit at the top of the 6S.
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So if the headphone jack couldn't stay in the lower left, then where else could they have put it? It's a huge component, it's only getting bigger if it's being waterproofed, and it absolutely must be in one of the cramped bezels.
Keep in mind as well that, even with the headphone jack gone, there's tons of other stuff that still won't fit in the bezels. The 9.7 iPad Pro has a really cool "True Tone" display that changes its color temperature to match the lighting conditions. It's gotten rave reviews, and I thought it was a shoo-in for the iPhone 7. But it didn't make the cut--it requires two extra light sensors in the bezels, and there just wasn't room for them.
Ports are especially difficult to waterproof. Besides literally being holes in the phone, ports are also places where electricity is directly exposed to the outside world. It's well known that electricity and water don't mix--or rather, that they mix all too well. That means ports need special attention when you're waterproofing.
The iPhone 6S has two ports: the Lightning port and the headphone jack. Lightning was introduced only a few years ago; given how serious an issue water damage has been and how long Apple's product cycles are, I suspect they were thinking about waterproofing from the beginning, so this would have been pretty easy to handle.
But the headphone jack is a different story. The headphone jack was designed a century ago and Apple can't change its design to make it easier to waterproof. Other waterproof phones have struggled with the headphone jack; they've either provided a plug you're supposed to put in when it's not in use, or they've not proven to be as waterproof as advertised.
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That's not to say it's impossible to waterproof a headphone jack, or that other manufacturers haven't done it. But the most dependably waterproof port is the one you removed.
It doesn't actually do very much. So the headphone jack takes up lots of precious bezel space, is especially difficult to waterproof, and is in the way of the necessary expansion of the Taptic Engine. It's causing a lot of problems. How much is it bringing to the table? Is it pulling its weight?
Well, the headphone jack has three purposes:
Get stereo audio out of the phone.
Get mono audio into the phone.
Get volume and play/pause signals into the phone.
All of these are not only redundant, but doubly redundant: the Lightning port and Bluetooth radio can both do all of these things.
The headphone jack can't really do anything else. You can't connect other accessories to it. (Well, you can do some simple, passive things like a Square card reader, but this is hacky, insecure, provides a poor user experience, and can be done better through Lightning or Bluetooth.) You can't provide power through it, so active noise cancellation headphones need separate batteries. You can't perform media commands beyond the basics provided by the Apple inline remote, or figure out what the phone is playing, or even learn the current volume level.
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In fact, before the iPhone, it wasn't even particularly common for phones to have standard headphone jacks. Most phones before that had proprietary headset connectors. The main reason the iPhone used a standard headphone jack was that the iPod did first. For a dedicated music device, headphone compatibility is pretty much a necessity, but a phone has a lot more on its plate.
The headphone jack is a gas station in Manhattan. There are more valuable things that could be done with the space.
It does half of what it does in incompatible ways. There are actually two standards for stereo-plus-headphones:
The iPhone uses CTIA (except in China, where OMTP is legally required), but some manufacturers use OMTP, and others used to use OMTP but have switched to CTIA. If you plug in incompatible devices, the plug will mechanically fit, but the headset won't work properly.
Even leaving this issue aside, the play/pause and volume buttons are the Wild West. The only standard in this area, Android's Wired Audio Headset Specification, appears to have been introduced in 2015, years after every phone manufacturer was already shipping headphones with controls on the cable. By that time, Apple had already shipped hundreds of millions of remotes that could never be made compatible with it.
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This whole area is an intractable mess.
Headphone cables suck. Have you ever noticed that the feel of the plastic in an Apple headphone cable has changed over time? That's Apple trying to reduce the cable's tendency to knot in your pocket. Unfortunately, the cable is long enough that it's mathematically impossible to keep it from tangling, but they can try to make it a little bit better.
Headphone cables also snag (Apple responded to this by making iPods and iPhones pause when the headphone cable is yanked out of them). They end up on the wrong side of clothes and straps. They turn out to be too short or too long. They fray and break. In general, they're just an overall nuisance.
Lightning cables are the same way, but wireless Bluetooth headphones avoid all of these problems entirely.
W1 has a neat trick up its sleeve. AirPods and other devices with the W1 chip can automatically switch between your different devices, so if you're listening to music on your computer and then answer a call on your phone, they can seamlessly switch over without you having to unplug and re-plug a cable. That's really convenient (and it encourages people to buy all-Apple, too).
Perfect backwards compatibility is possible. A headphone-to-Lightning adapter is cheap enough to ship with every iPhone and compatible with all devices supported by the old built-in port. Adapters aren't ideal, but they're a good solution for getting us over the hump.
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In the long run--once the price drops--Apple believes that Bluetooth is the future for casual headphone use, while Lightning will serve advanced use cases like professional audio equipment. The only real cost, they believe, is the pain of the transition. If we ever want to leave the headphone port behind, that pain will have to be borne eventually. And they believe that now is as good a time as any to get it over with.
This question originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
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When you think of Ancient Greek sites, for sure you will have heard of the Acropolis in Athens, you may have heard of the Oracle of Delphi - Sanctuary to the God Apollo. You might have even heard of Meteora; a UNESCO World Heritage site with gigantic rock pinnacles, atop which site magnificentally designed and precariously balanced monasteries. But have you heard of the World Heritage island of Delos, a sacred island sitting, ironically, just a 40 min boat ride from the hedonistic island of Mykonos?
Delos - Birthplace of Artemis and Apollo
Fans of Greek Mythology will be aware that the Gods were a frivolous lot. And no exception for the head of the Gods - Zeus. Married to Hera, he had an affair with Leto and when Hera found out, in a jealous rage banished Hera from earth. Where could this poor pregnant soul go? Poseidon, God of the Seas, took pity on her and provided the island of Delos as a sanctuary and safe haven for her to give birth to her twins: Apollo (God of the Sun) and Artemis (the Huntress).
The approach to Delos by boat Rebecca Hall
As you approach Delos, only 2 miles away from the partying of Mykonos, it's like entering a different universe. The impressive ruins of the temples and sanctuaries dedicated to various Gods still stand. Interspersed within these you'll see slightly more modern houses. But don't get too excited; it's not possible to stay the night on Delos unless you're one of the state employed Guards (who guard against exactly that; people illegally trying to set up camp or steal artefacts) or an archeologist.
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Avenue of the Lions Rebecca Hall
The Avenue of the Lions is one of the most famous places of the island. Nine lions made of marble from Naxos island guarded the Sacred Lake - drained in 1926 but where the swans and geese of Delos used to live. Now you can see a lone palm tree in the centre, planted there to honour Leto as she is said to have clutched one similar as she gave birth to her twins.
The Lions on display now are replicas, some of the originals still in tact in the Archeological Museum on the island.
Delos Archeological Museum
The Museum was built in 1904 and expanded in 1931 and 1972. It now has nine rooms, of which:
Six house the statues found on the island (such as the Lions)
Two house the various pottery found on digs and
The last room contains the everyday objects found in the ancient houses once standing.
Artefacts inside the Archeological Museum Rebecca Hall
A small cafe is also on site, but it's recommended to bring your own water and a packed lunch when you visit Delos as the prices are extortionate! (Supplies have to be shipped in, that's why).
Entry to the museum, at the time of writing, is 5.
Delos facts
Round boat trip costs (at time of writing) 20
Then you have to pay entry into the Archeological island - 12
An extra 5 if you wish to visit the Archeological Museum on the island
It's recommended you visit Delos in the spring or autumn (Fall). Winter there are significantly less boats travelling, and the seas are rougher. Summer is too hot to walk around the site, there is no shade.
Every time I huddle with my guides, exploring ways to improve Rick Steves Europe Tours, our goal is the same: "How do we maximize the experience?" There are many clever ways to pack each day with lifelong memories and cultural lessons. While standard-issue tour guides often don't go beyond the basic sightseeing schedule, a Rick Steves guide is constantly finding creative ways to carbonate the experience with fun little extras.
So many towns in Europe have classic carousels on their main squares. Why not buy tickets for the gang and enjoy a chance to be kids again...and another rich travel memory.
A good guide steers tour members away from the tired sandwich for lunch, and into a characteristic local bar where you'll enjoy a plate like this: At my favorite bar in Venice (Osteria al Mascaron), just ask for the mixed seafood antipasto plate. It's 16 and -- unless you're squiddish about fish -- a delightful lunch.
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You can't travel through France without a good wine-tasting. Here in Burgundy, we enjoy sharpening our wine-tasting skills in a classic cellar under our favorite hotel with a local wine expert.
Anyone who dreams of going to St. Peter's Basilica will consider a chance to go through the Holy Door (open only in Jubilee Years) a once-in-a-lifetime experience. As 2016 happens to be a Jubilee Year, our group got to do that with our Vatican visit. As I see it, it is the responsibility of a professional guide to know when these opportunities present themselves, and not to miss it.
Over a 30-year period, the average investor has made 3.79% on an average annual basis, while the stock market has annualized 11.06%. As human beings, we have the ability to do research, diversify our portfolios, and think things through, so why is it that people are underperforming the stock market by so much? The answer is emotional investment behavior. Individual investors are simply too emotional to outperform the stock market.
One of the most popular quotes about markets and emotions is by Sir John Templeton.
"Bull markets are born on pessimism, grown on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria."
He explains that our emotions in relation to the stock market are always wrong. Bull markets emerge when we are most fearful, grow when we are scared and crash when we feel they never will.
The biggest problem with investing emotionally is that the way investors feel about the market is highly correlated with market performance at that time. This means that if the market is at a low, investors feel despondent, and when the market is at a high, investors feel euphoric. Poor investment behavior is either caused by a fear of loss, or overconfidence.
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Have you ever been in a moment, and felt that you will never be able to move past that moment? That is the way investors feel when their investments plummet. Nothing and no one can convince them otherwise, even though stock market lows are generally the best time to invest. When investors trade based on their emotions during these times, they will inevitably be wrong. If you are feeling despondent, it is likely that you will sell, in fear that the market will never come back around again, but the reality is that our biggest rallies have occurred when investors are sad and fearful. The same goes for market highs. When the market is rallying, it is hard to see a world where the market goes down, so investors tend to invest the most at these highs, even though markets at all-time highs will ultimately have a correction. Adding to this problem is the media. The media feeds investors an incredible amount of information very quickly, encouraging investors to make emotional decisions based on current news. The internet has gotten us used to getting what we want, in the exact moment that we want it.
As an investor, it is important to arm yourself with the knowledge to get out of the emotional investing trap. Investors need to accept the fact that they cannot time the market, and that anyone that tries to convince them otherwise is wrong. The stock market is often inefficient, and is not always priced consistently with economic performance. While it is possible to understand overall trends and market movements, capturing that performance at precisely the right time is very difficult. You may turn to the experts for advice on market timing, but sadly, they don't know the answer either. For example, John Paulson made a killing in 2008 when he shorted the housing market, but his fund is down over 50% since 2010. His theories may have been right, and still may ultimately pan out, but his timing was wrong.
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Bull markets have often emerged when investors least expect it, and there is no single formula for the start or continuation of a bull market. They have begun during recessions, expansions, and at all levels of rates. Up markets last longer than down markets, averaging 43 months, while down markets average 14 month periods. The average cumulative return for a bull market is 117.3% and average annual loss in a bear market is 24.6%.
Markets always recover; even after a disaster. One month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the biggest bankruptcy in history, the market recovered by 18.3%. By one year later, the market had recovered by 48.8%. After the September 11th terrorist attacks, the market made a full recovery after 1 month. After the Pearl Harbor attacks, the market recovered by 15% within one year. Most recently, the UK announced their exit from the European Union, causing the S&P to sink by almost 3% in one day. The market has recovered by 6% since the bottom of the Brexit crisis.
Another way to stay on track with your overall financial goals is to hire a financial advisor, and give them discretion to make wise and long term choices for your portfolio. Make sure it is someone that you trust and agree with their overall investment philosophy. Agree on a detailed long term plan, but allow them to implement it on your behalf. Commit to staying invested for a long period of time. Remember that you have no control over market timing, and neither does your advisor, but you do have control over the amount of time spent in the market. Generally, the longer you are invested, the more money you will make.
The best time to invest is when it doesn't feel so good. No big accomplishment feels very good when we are training for it. In order to lose weight, you need to cut out delicious food and work out harder than your body is comfortable with, but if you follow the uncomfortable path, you will ultimately yield your goal result. The same is said for investing. It will never feel good to invest. If the market is up, it will feel too expensive, and if the market is down, you will feel like it may never turn. If you can take the emotions out of the picture and stay invested for a long period of time, you will likely come out on top.
When I first moved to Berlin my knowledge of electronic and dance music was, in a word, thin. But one of the first tracks that caught my attention very early was a remix by Ben Pearce of "Cool". When I discovered Le Youth and the smooth and emotive original mix (which samples Cassie's "Me & U"), it immediately became my song of the summer and I couldn't wait to hear what would come next. What came next was almost four years of touring and remixes for artists including Disclosure, Sia, and Lana Del Rey. This week L.A. based Le Youth also announced the start of his own label, HOMEWERK, and released a new 90s inspired track "Me Without You".
What is a track that inspired your early connection to electronic music?
It actually wasn't a track at all. I got into electronic music because I couldn't play my drums in my apartment. That's literally the only reason. I grew up playing drums and singing in bands. I didn't know anything about electronic music when I was younger. I also loved the idea of not being restricted to playing only when the rest of my band members could meet. I guess I don't really work well with others either. The explosion of accessible software and hardware really helped me get into creating my own setup and figuring out what worked for me.
When did you start producing?
The term producing has always confused me. I've been making music for as long as I can remember. When I started writing songs that had a dance beat behind them, people started saying I was "producing." They also stared calling me a DJ. It's so funny to me. I've been making dance music for a few years now.
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What is it about dance music that is so special?
It still feels new to me. There are so many different avenues to explore and so many different sub genres that crop up. It's a constantly evolving landscape that I'm so happy to be a part of.
Tell me about your "Homewerk" Tour. How are you playing out?
It's a new visual concept for the tour and has been the precursor to a bigger project. It's been really great to tour North America, and I've got some upcoming dates in Mexico that I'm excited to play. I've got a load of new material that I'm road testing all the time, as crowd reaction really is the perfect litmus test for a new track.
How is the tour going?
The tour name is based off a record label I'm launching called HOMEWERK, with the first release being my new song "Me Without You".
So far the Los Angeles show was particularly special. Sometimes it just feels like I'm playing my favorite songs for all of my friends. I guess that's what I'm going for at all the shows.
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What was the process like working on your upcoming track, "Me Without You".
It was a very quick process. At the time I was very motivated by the line "there ain't no me without you". I was going through a rough breakup and, I don't know. Sometimes songs just come together quickly, I wish I knew why.
Why did you decide to start your label and what are your future plans with it?
Having worked with major and independent labels in the past, I always felt like I had to make compromises with myself and my music. Ultimately the HOMEWERK label is a way for me to take back control.
I think dance music and it's record labels have become so cookie cutter lately. I want to do things differently. I have a strong relationship with fashion, imagery, video and music; this label is the culmination of those things. It'll be a home for timeless music, not defined by a trend or flavor of the moment. Basically, I'm just going to do what I want.
In the immediate future, the releases will be from myself, remixes and some collaborations with other artists, a mix series, and hopefully soon some label parties.
Tell me about the Christina Aguilera remix. How did it come about? What was your process working on it?
The Aguilera remix came out of nowhere. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to like the original, but it's actually very good; but that can make remixing difficult. I'm really happy with how it turned out, it was a real honor to be asked to remix one of the greats.
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Is there a song you find consistently works on the dance floor?
There are tons. On this tour, my remix for Goldroom's "Embrace" has been crushing the dance floor. Also, Treasure Fingers - Cross The Dance Floor and anything from Todd Terry.
Any producers/DJs that should be on our radar?
I think everyone should know about Russ Chimes. He's an incredible musician and a bit underrated I think. Everything he makes is gold. Some others to put on your radar, Pat Lok, Futurewife, and Ghosts Of Venice.
NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 04: Carole Simpson speaks onstage at the The Jackie Robinson Foundation Annual Awards' Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on March 4, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for The Jackie Robinson Foundation)
The Center for Public Integrity has issued a report claiming to detail how "journalists" have donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign far more than to Donald Trump's. Needless to say, the right-wing media jumped right on it because it reaffirms the longstanding "liberal media" narrative conservative have been pushing for decades. For example, the headline at the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog screamed "TILT: Study of Journalist Donations for President Find More Than 96 Percent Went to Hillary Clinton."
But if you read the report closely -- which the right-wing media has no interest in doing -- it's obvious that CPI is using an overly broad definition of "journalist."
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The star finding, usually cited in right-wing stories on the report, is that former ABC anchor Carole Simpson has donated $2,800 to Clinton. What CPI doesn't make clear: Simpson left ABC in 2006 and currently works as a college professor. Insisting that Simpson continue to be held to the standards of a job she has not held for a decade -- CPI offers no evidence that Simpson made any political donations while employed as a journalist -- is simply dishonest.
CPI also touts the donations to Clinton by talk show host Larry King, which are also usually highlighted in reports on the study. But has anybody ever considered King to be a "journalist"? No.
In fact, the first example of an actual working journalist the CPI provides is the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum. But she's a TV critic and rarely covers news or politics. Indeed, most of the working journalists in hard news that CPI cites as making political donations are employed by small local papers, not large media organizations, which generally prohibit reporters from making political donations.
As the Washington Post's Callum Borchers noted, "The Center for Public Integrity's findings would be far more concerning if they included the journalists who shape coverage of the race for the White House," pointing out that no campaign trail reporters are on the CPI's list.
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For someone who only frequents Braamfontein in downtown Johannesburg during the day, De Beer Street at night would be almost unrecognisable. The city's main party suburb is always an entanglement of cars and bodies. Always a lane of hovering vehicles, their hazard lights flashing, limbs and bass-lines pouring from the open doors. Always a current of club-goers claiming the night-street for pedestrians, willing to encounter strangers in ways they would not normally do during the day.
From the one corner, where the club cum bar Kitchener's is, all the way up to the next corner next to the Bannister Hotel, people queue for the dancefloor and find solidarity in waiting. Someone argues with the bouncers, a child begs those in line, a dealer offers marijuana, a young woman yells to a friend across the street.
Yet not too far away from the De Beer Street turbulence are inner city roads that only a few hours earlier were a knot of activity. Congestion dissipates with the daylight and these streets are left empty, creating a cavern in which pedestrian footsteps echo, and drivers move seamlessly from one near-redundant traffic light to the next.
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The night has a different rhythm, feel, and aesthetic to the day. This "second city", academic William Sharpe once said, "comes with its own geography and its own set of citizens". We occupy space differently at night. Yet so little attention has been given (both within academia and without) to the multifaceted articulations of place, power, atmosphere and identity that constitute Johannesburg after dark.
Fear of the dark
Scholars of urban studies are increasingly acknowledging that the discipline, and indeed the wider imagining of cities, is characterised by nyctaphobia: A fear of the dark, and relatedly, the night. As is so often the case, it is artists that are giving us a creative language to describe and engage with that which was once impenetrable.
Elsa Bleda's recent "Nightscapes" exhibition is one such example. The young photographer's arresting images capture the serenity, mystery and other worldliness of Johannesburg by night. A primary impetus for her work lies in the century-old Rupert Brooke quote that "cities, like cats, will reveal themselves after dark". Nevertheless, urban residents are all-too-often strangers to the night.
Darkness often comes with a web of seedy associations --- of terror, shadow, deviance, abandonment and impenetrability. There are anxieties about criminals using the night as camouflage, about the vulnerabilities of women, and about the dangers of poorly lit roads.
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And indeed the dark is often charged with ambivalent possibilities. On Friday, October 14 slices of Braamfontein's night-streets, including The Orbit Jazz club, were torched amid turbulent protest: sites of play incidentally colliding with those of fierce, volatile struggle.
Darkness can also awaken the imagination, offering atmosphere for transgression, abandon and fantasy. Social anthropologist Julia Hornberger said of Johannesburg dusk:
Going forward into the night is like going backwards in time. Chipped corners on balconies heal, cracks in the plastering disappear ...
The night is a time for dreaming, for graffiti artists, for activists, lovers and dancers.
Charles Leonard
Paradoxically, darkness is often the necessary backdrop for glistening electric illumination, with all the associations of developmental modernity and consumptive excess. Indeed, despite the ways in which electricity blackouts have brought Johannesburg residents into new encounters with the dark, much of our urban night lives take place amid a superfluity of light technologies --- traffic lights, nightclub LEDs, police sirens or fluorescent towers in the distance. Light has been a mechanism to claim nocturnal time and territory --- to make the dark habitable, exploitable, police-able, profitable and beautiful.
After-dark nightscape
Curated lighting is so much a part of the nighttime infrastructure --- designating areas of safety, enchantment and surveillance, and then disappearing as day breaks. Braamfontein's after-dark nightscape is marked by the multi-coloured spectacle of the Nelson Mandela Bridge overhead, abrasive car lights, flash billboards and flickering neon. Again in New York Nocturne: The City After Dark in Literature, Painting, and Photography, 1850-1950, Sharpe tells us:
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"Like a city, night has a history. And the two come together explosively with the spread of artificial light.
A recent event, "Alight", saw artists and designers launch audiences into a series of encounters with electric light in the night. There was a maze of illuminated blocks that responded to touch. Also, a net of sparkle strung to the ceiling. Lasers sketched silhouettes across a cement wall. There were glowing balloons and networks of interactive video technology.
Beth Vale
On the darker side of the Juta Street intersection, it connected audiences to Johannesburg's nocturnal city and promoted a sense of place through play, light and music. But what "Alight" also achieved, in my mind, was to make explicit the infrastructure of our nightlives, which rather than being assembled from bricks and mortar, is more tangibly a composite of sound, darkness, illumination, and moving bodies.
A nightclub without the music and lights
Ever been to a nightclub during the day, without the darkness, the music, the ambient lighting or the intimacy of the crowd? It feels like a non-place. So much of our attachment to nightclub spaces is made from bodies in motion, set to carefully curated sound and light-scapes, all of which disappear at dawn. In urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone's words, we might begin to see "people as infrastructure".
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Human practices, the absence or presence of others, in the city gives places particular contours, creates obstruction or permissiveness, and alters the look and feel of a place.
Moving through Johannesburg's night city, particularly as a young woman, has meant adopting particular protective sensibilities. But it has also opened up alternate ways of knowing and encountering the city and its practices.
In the realm of the urban night, artists are exposing the dearth of academic language and imagery, prompting us to research and collaborate outside our conventional bounds. They are showing us how much of human life goes unnoticed, while most of the world sleeps.
Stronger measures to protect lions in Africa from commercial trade failed to pass at the recent meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Johannesburg.
CITES is a treaty between 183 national governments, known as the Parties, to control international trade in live wildlife and their parts. In a vote to up-list the lion from Appendix II to Appendix I - the highest category covering species threatened with extinction, in which trade is permitted only in exceptional circumstances - the Parties to CITES (CoP17) rejected a proposal from nine African nations to upgrade the status of lions.
At first glance, the decision is alarming and disappointing. The lion has undergone widespread decline in Africa, mainly from habitat loss, illegal trade in bush meat and retaliatory killing by people protecting their livestock. Although the species is not in immediate danger of extinction and trade is not the primary driver of declines, upgrading some lion populations to Appendix I was warranted.
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Sadly, all indications are that lions will continue to decline in a significant proportion of their range, and increasing demand for their parts will likely fuel those declines. But had the parties voted "yes", would it have helped?
Trophy hunting and the bone trade
Strengthening the ban would not have eliminated one of the main targets of up-listing proponents, the trade in lion trophies from sport hunting. Legal trade in hunting trophies is readily accommodated by CITES, regardless of the Appendix on which a species is listed. For example, the cheetah and leopard are both included on Appendix I, yet exports of trophies are permitted by a number of countries.
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Nor would an Appendix I listing preclude trade in captive-born lions or their parts. So an upgrade would not necessarily have affected South Africa's ongoing trade of lion bones scavenged from canned hunts of captive-bred lions. Full skeletons - minus the skull, which the hunter usually keeps - are legally sold to Lao People's Democratic Republic, China and other Asian nations that value big cat parts for "medicinal" uses. This takes place despite the complete absence of evidence demonstrating any therapeutic value.
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One step forwards, two backwards?
This is not to say that CITES was unable to address some serious issues that affect lion conservation. CoP17 adopted a new resolution to ban all trade in wild lion parts; specifically bones, bone pieces, bone products, claws, skeletons, skulls and teeth removed from the wild and traded for commercial purposes. This is welcome news.
Unfortunately though, the loophole that perpetuates South Africa's lion farming industry has been left open. As seen from failed experiments allowing legal ivory sales, legalised trade may fuel demand and creates pathways to sell the products from illegally killed wildlife.
The legal trade in bones from captive-bred lions perpetuates the demand for big cat parts - not only of lions but also of leopards, jaguars and highly endangered tigers. These bones are largely indistinguishable except to experts. Deciding what is lion or tiger, and legal versus illegal, presents a formidable challenge for local authorities in Africa and Asia.
The Parties to CITES should be congratulated for recognising that trade in wild lions needs to be addressed. But I fear that, in failing to take on the captive bone trade, their efforts will be undermined. As long as South Africa continues to trade in body parts from farmed lions, an escalation in wild African cats being killed for the same markets in Asia is inevitable.
Luke Hunter, President and Chief Conservation Officer of Panthera, Research Associate, University of KwaZulu-Natal
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Mexico is in the midst of a public debate on gay marriage that has focused on 'traditional family values'. Carlos Jasso/Reuters
In September, some 100 cities in all 32 Mexican states hosted a so-called "March for the Family" - protests against a proposal to legalise gay marriage. Estimates vary, but according to the National Front for Family, the coalition of civil society organisations and religious groups that organised the march, more than a million people participated; other sources place the number in the hundreds of thousands.
LGBT activists quickly responded to the march with counter protests and human rights-based arguments.
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The large anti-gay marriage protests came as something of a surprise. Gay marriage is already legal in Mexico City and several states. And, in 2015, Mexico hosted 70 Pride events, making this Catholic, Latin American country only third in the world for the number of such events (after the US and Brazil).
Still, when President Enrique Pena Nieto announced a proposed constitutional reform to recognise same-sex marriage on World Day Against Homophobia (May 17), negative reaction swiftly followed.
Catholics, judge not
Though it was largely Catholic churches that called for believers to march against the proposed legislation, church authority has actually been evolving on this issue. This is in keeping with the leadership of Pope Francis I, who in 2013 famously declared, "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?"
Even prior to that, when the pope was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he demonstrated support for gay rights, saying:
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I am in favour of homosexual rights and, in any case, I also support civil unions for homosexuals, but I think that Argentina is not ready for a gay marriage law.
Catholicism is declining in Mexico. But unlike in other Latin American countries, such as Brazil and Guatemala, where evangelical Protestantism has increased markedly in recent decades, the shift in Mexico is modest.
Mexico's National Institute of Statistics has found that from 1950 to 2010, the percentage of the population that identified as Catholic dropped from 98.2% to 89.3%. Only 4.9% of Mexicans report no religious faith.
As such, in the fight for sexual diversity, and for the rights of single-parent families and same-sex parents, leadership must come from the church. Many catholics believe in church dogma, obey their priests and seek to avoid "living in sin". They want to do as the church mandates.
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But in opposing gay marriage, Mexican Catholics are following Mexican church dogma while ignoring Rome's softening on the issue. This is a contradiction that Mexico's Catholic church must eventually face.
Nor can Mexico let conservative evangelical sectors lead this debate. Recently, President Pena Nieto met with 27 evangelical pastors who oppose the proposed gay marriage legislation. The Mormon church has also publicly rejected the initiative.
Children are people, too
An under-analysed element in Mexico's gay marriage debate, which includes adoption rights, is respect for the rights of children. Children are not just "little people", as they were conceptualised until the 19th century. They are individuals with specific rights, recognised in the 1924 Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child. These were later confirmed with the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.
The debate on gay marriage in Mexico includes gay adoption. Article 21 of the convention stipulates that, in questions of adoption, "the superior interest of the child must be the primordial consideration".
Thus, any debate on family structure must centre on a child's particular individual rights - to life, a name, education, health, safety; to play; to have parents who take responsibility for him or her.
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When Mexicans march for "the family", under international law, we are obligated to ask in response, what kind of family situation is best for the child?
Getting a woman pregnant does not make you a father, and giving birth does not make you a mother. These are titles that a child gives to a person who raises them, is there for them - ideally in an accepting, warm, and respectful environment.
Gay couples are just like other couples. Like heterosexual relationships, they may suffer violence and be irresponsible. They can get separated, be unfaithful, act jealously, hurt each other. They can be bad parents. So, too, do they love, honour, cherish, and respect both each other and their children, just like straight couples.
It is thus erroneous for the "March for the Family" to assume that all heterosexual couples are, by virtue of being differently gendered, poised to be good parents. Let us not fall into the facile trap of thinking that any kind of marriage - gay or straight - necessarily means "happily ever after".
Raising healthy, happy children requires sacrifice and represents a challenge for couples - gay, straight or otherwise. Indeed, a review of scholarly literature has showed that children of gay couples have similar health and well-being outcomes as children of heterosexual couples.
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Considering the right of the child as an individual versus valuing only the family unit - for indeed, families are comprised of individuals (and the individual, not the family, is the core of society) - is thus an important input in the marriage equality debate.
Changing perception of marriage equality
The notion of a traditional family unit with a mother, father, and children is still prominent in Mexico. Exact figures on public perception of gay marriage vary but one study from 2010 showed that only 22% of people fully supported marriage equality, while a 2015 Pew Research Poll indicated that nearly half the country was in favour.
But a generational shift is underway. In a 2011 study in Mexico, researchers administered surveys to two groups - young people and young adults (between 18 and 25 years old) - and found that attitudes differed between the two. They showed that both these age groups displayed more positive feelings toward gay adoption.
Mexican perception of gay marriage is clearly changing, just as it has in other parts of the world in recent decades.
Society must follow
Still, the sheer number of people who marched against marriage equality demonstrated that Mexico is profoundly divided on LGBT rights. Even if the proposed marriage equality bill passes, the possibility of a social backlash, including in the form of discrimination against children adopted by gay parents, is very real.
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Violence and discrimination against LGBT people in Latin America is widespread, despite gay marriage legalisation in several countries, including Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Brazil has actually seen an increase in anti-gay hate crime since a 2013 court ruling opened the door to same-sex marriage, and there, says the New York Times, "a gay or transgender person is killed almost daily".
In Central America, threats from criminal organisations are forcing hundreds of LGBT citizens to flee their countries. Because of the social stigma against LGBT people "in the name of culture, religion, and tradition", according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Mexico must confront, not ignore, these widely held beliefs.
For advocates of marriage equality, then, there is work to be done. It was civil society that came out to march against it, and it must be civil society that enriches this debate with alternative perspectives. As a nation, Mexico must engage in dialogue and its people must educate one another so that we can advance together towards a more equal future.
This is a bizarre time in U.S. presidential politics. American voters are faced with an unsavory choice between two presidential candidates, neither of whom would be viable if the other party offered a credible alternative. It is the deep repugnance many Republican and independent voters feel for the lie-fabricating Hillary Clinton (Queen Jezebel?) that keep them backing the egomaniacal, bomb-throwing Donald Trump (Dr. Strangelove?), even though they see Trump's talk and actions as anything but presidential. Likewise, it is the discomfort that many Bernie Sanders supporters feel for Trump's policy extremism, chauvinism, and boorishness that leave them uncomfortably allied with the Clinton camp. This alliance exists in spite of the fact that a vote for Hillary Clinton by those who see good things in the Bernie Sanders movement will likely delay a needed revolution in Democratic Party politics.
After witnessing the inadvertent assistance that Ralph Nader voters in Florida and New Hampshire gave to George W. Bush in the year 2000 presidential race, people in swing states are reluctant to vote for a third party candidate. A protest vote seems too expensive in this contest. Not that anyone believes a single vote will decide the presidency. Still, voting is not irrational when voters believe that if others in comparable positions use a similar logic, the nation will be better for it. While this is small consolation during a Hobson's Choice election that forces the selection of a lesser evil, it is better than staying home or casting an empty protest vote that will do little to build a third party's momentum for the next election.
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Granted, voting for a lesser evil is not motivational. Yet, if voters perceive that the dangers in a presidential election are high enough, voting for a slightly lesser evil is part of risk management. It is in this vein that "never Trump" voters come to mind, especially persons connected with or leaning toward the Republican Party. Some of these people are committed to the Republican platform while others hope to vote for a principled candidate with high scruples. Many of these people are deeply troubled by recent revelations about Donald Trump's attitudes and actions. As much as they decry Hillary Clinton's demagogy and Machiavellianism, they can no longer support Trump. What are these voters to do?
Recently, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte rescinded her support for Donald Trump, saying she will provide a write-in vote for Mike Pence instead. John McCain offered a related statement, suggesting that he will vote for someone other than Trump or Clinton. Trump supporters have criticized these defections as undermining the Republican hope of selecting the next U.S. Supreme Court justices as well as populating federal government appointments broadly. Trump loyalists, even those frustrated with Trump, see defection as capitulation to open border policies, bad trade deals, nefarious Wall Street schemes, and a bonfire of hypocrisies.
A Computer Scientist's Voting Calculus
What is a thinking person to do? Surprisingly, there is a reasonable way for voters who can tolerate the evolving Republican populism more easily than they can trust Hillary Clinton not to sell out America to her globalist sponsors. One must gird up one's mind for this strategy, for it is not appealing except under profoundly dysfunctional circumstances. That said, the strategy is ruggedly pragmatic and recommended by a Yale University computer scientist in an exceptionally insightful Wall Street Journal article.
The strategy is this: Vote for Mike Pence for president by voting for Donald Trump, but with the understanding that if Donald Trump acts dishonorably he will be impeached under the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution says this: "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors." Political scientists have often debated why the subjective term "misdemeanors" was put into the Constitution. The answer is that it was inserted for times like these. Indeed, America's founders would likely approve the use of impeachment in cases of late discovery that a president hid criminal conduct engaged in before election.
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A sitting U.S. president has no remedy if a simple majority of the U.S. House votes to impeach, and the U.S. Senate votes to ratify the impeachment by a two-thirds majority. The president cannot block the action: he or she is terminated without political recourse. The interpretation of what constitutes a presidential misdemeanor lies fully within the purview of the U.S. Congress, not the U.S. Supreme Court. It is doubtful that the U.S. Supreme Court would review such a matter. What America would be left with is the presidency of Senator Mike Pence. This is a reasonable pathway to the presidency for a public official with a record of integrity and competency that his mud-slinging opponents cannot undo. Indeed, Pence's presidential prospect in this scenario calls to mind the 1993 Hollywood movie, "Dave." By contrast, ten million write-in votes naming Mike Pence for president will go nowhere. No write-in candidate can conceivably win the presidency in our times.
An important question must be answered: If this is a good rationale in voting for Trump, why isn't it a good rationale in voting for Hillary Clinton in order to gain Tim Kaine, her running mate, if Hillary Clinton gets impeached? The answer is that a sufficient number of U.S. Senate Democrats would fail to join a Republican effort to ratify a Hillary impeachment. In the 1998-1999 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, Democratic Senators refused to join Republicans in voting for Bill Clinton's guilt on the obstruction of justice charge. But if Trump were president, many Democrats as well Republicans in the Senate would eagerly support impeachment. He is, as some have noted, impeachment bait.
Some people will object, claiming it is unethical to vote for a presidential candidate with the expectation that he will be impeached and replaced by a better man. But this objection ignores the current perilous dilemma. As millions of voters are now convinced, Donald Trump tried to mislead the American public during the first two presidential debates. Furthermore, the end of the race is revealing a scurrilous behavior that is inexcusable even in the context of Hillary Clinton's feckless lies.
Voting with a Clear Conscience
Political objectivity argues that neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton merit elevation to the Oval Office. Equally problematic, neither mainstream party has a platform that will adequately address the nation's problems. With violence unthinkable only two tolerable outcomes remain for those who cannot accept Clinton. Donald Trump could withdraw in favor of Mike Pence, although this seems unlikely. Alternatively, Trump could be voted into the presidency with the understanding that he will be impeached upon any provocation that can be construed congressionally as a misdemeanor. If raised to office, Trump's future would be his own burden. He would remain in office only by serving his country honorably and competently. The political gallows would remain in sight.
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Using the impeachment calculus of the Yale computer scientist, the vote choice is recast between a credible politician, Senator Mike Pence, or a Machiavellian politician named Hillary Clinton who, if elected, will be the country's "Dissembler-in-Chief." One need not support most of Mike Pence's policy positions or believe in their efficacy (this writer does not) to find Pence presidentially respectable and demonstrably superior to Trump and Clinton.
One of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's chief defenses against charges that he inappropriately touched women over the years has been deceptively straightforward: If this really happened, why didn't they speak up at the time?
As an attorney who regularly works with women fighting sexual harassment on the job, these women's reticence to come forward rings true to me, however.
Many women who have faced this kind of behavior worry that speaking up will cost them their job and reputation. They fear that no one will believe them and their career will be damaged. They second-guess themselves, thinking that they may have brought it on themselves somehow.
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But, like Trump's accusers, they also come to regret not speaking up earlier.
Natasha Stoynoff, a journalist with People magazine who wrote about the allegedly sexually predatory behavior by Donald Trump, said that after seeing the Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging about "grabbing" women she felt she should have done something sooner.
"I felt deep regret for not speaking out at the time," she wrote. "What if he had done worse to other female reporters at the magazine since then because I hadn't warned them?"
So what can you learn from this? Here are three major lessons for women who've experienced unwanted attention in the workplace.
1. Don't think that your choice is between doing nothing or becoming a public pinata.
Many women fear taking action because they see women in high-profile sexual harassment cases having their personal lives being dragged through the mud.
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But the choice is not that dire. There is a third option: report the conduct to human resources (or the entity designated in your company's handbook). Then negotiate a severance so you can leave the company to find another place where management respects women.
If your company has 15 or more employees, reporting any incidents to human resources will make it illegal for your company to take action against you for reporting the harassment, which is called retaliation. It gives you two potential claims instead of one. Some states, such as the District of Columbia, have laws that cover even smaller companies.
Why ask for a severance? There are two reasons: First, the company now has some legal exposure in the form of a potential sexual harassment claim. It would like that claim to go away, and the way to do that is to offer you a severance in exchange for releasing those claims. This gives you a nest egg to use as you move on to find another job. Second, you can also require that your company give you a positive reference if contacted by any prospective future employers.
2. Understand that this is not justice, it's business.
There are some things to keep in mind if you report the incident(s) to human resources. First, understand that HR is not likely to help you. Your human resources officer's job at the end of the day is to protect the company. Chances are that if you report harassment, your future at the company is over. That means that when you report to HR -- best to do it in writing -- you are doing it not because you really expect help. You're doing it to maximize your leverage against the company.
Another reason to report the harassment is that in some instances the law requires that you report a claim if you later have to go to court. If you fail to report, even if your company's policy is bogus, you might lose your right to sue later on. Of course, if it turns out that your company really will do the right thing, then all the better.
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3. Remember, it's not just your word against his.
Many women don't come forward because they fear it will be their word against their assailant's. But testimony from a witness is more compelling than you might believe.
I represented a woman who confronted her boss about his harassment. His response: "What are you going to do about it? It will just be your word against mine," implying that she didn't have enough to make a case against him. But she did. Remember that testimony from a witness -- in this case the woman subject to harassment -- is enough evidence to win a case. When I was a prosecutor I obtained criminal convictions based on nothing more than witness testimony. I didn't have video tapes, emails or a CSI-type bag of tricks.
Also remember that voice recordings can be evidence. Many states are what is called one-party consent state, like Virginia and the District of Columbia. Want to find out about the law in your state? Do a Google search "Is [insert your state here] a one-party consent state?" If it is, it means it is perfectly legal to record a conversation as long as one person participating knows about the recording. But even in cases where you may believe it is your word against his, that doesn't necessarily mean that you will have only your testimony. As with what is happening to Donald Trump, one allegation can open the floodgates to similar stories that can be used as evidence to support yours.
"When someone shows you who they are the first time, believe them." - Maya Angelou
The contentious, vitriolic and unpredictable race for the American presidency mercifully entered its final month this week and the consensus is that November 8, 2016 cannot come sooner!
In the race for the Republican Party's nominee, Donald James Trump proved all pundits and prognosticators wrong by emerging victorious, in the process besting more seasoned and better-connected politicians. Unfortunately for the party, the real estate mogul's campaign style, persona and (past) private life have also proved to be as mercurial and more damaging than Wikileaks' expose of the inner workings/deliberations of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Audio tapes recently released provided incontrovertible evidence that Donald J. Trump is a crass, misogynistic sexual predator who actually leers at his own daughter Ivanka!
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Eeewwww!
Similarly, though not as revolting has been WikiLeaks' continued drip-drip-drip of hacked email evidence that Hillary Clinton is, as alleged by Bernie Sanders, too cozy with and beholden to Wall Street bankers, multi-national corporations and globalists. The former First Lady has also been revealed to be a master of doublespeak; simultaneously holding at least two policy positions - one in private and a different one in public.
Politicians!
Undeterred, supporters of Donald Trump claim that they are not "electing a Sunday School teacher or pope"! They argue that they are electing someone to "go change Washington (DC)". Supporters of the Republican nominee don't seem to mind that their man has a string of utterances and behavior that have psychologists, psychiatrists and students of social and human sciences scratching their collective heads in utter disbelief.
Jeff Sessions, Senator from Alabama and Trump surrogate twisted himself into a pretzel trying to explain the Donald Trump heard on the "Access Hollywood" tape. The senator from the "bible belt" state offered that he was "not sure" whether grabbing a woman by the genitals is sexual assault nor "how 'that' would occur"!
For the record, the US Justice Department's definition of "sexual assault" includes "any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient."
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Across the aisle, supporters of Hillary Clinton cite her extensive resume -- former First Lady's/Senator's/Secretary of State -- as, pardon the pun, trumping her many foibles including coziness with Wall Street, the near non-existent firewall between the Department of State (during her tenure as SecState) and the Clinton Foundation, her use of a private email server and her alleged tacit support of Bill's philandering ways.
Juxtaposing the now-ending American campaign with the one just beginning across the Atlantic Ocean in Kenya, there are striking similarities as Kenyans across the Jubilee/CORD divide become contortionists and apologists explaining their support for those who have publicly staked seemingly untenable positions including "eating meat even as others look on salivating"!
At least they are "telling it like it is" and not engaging in "vitandawilis"!
Like most Americans, Kenyans are being asked to choose between "the devil they know and the one they don't know" i.e. between the status quo (Mr. Kenyatta) and the "outsider-cum-agitator" (Mr. Odinga). A point of interest is the near-identical rhetoric and policy positions espoused by "outsider" Donald Trump and "insider" Uhuru Kenyatta. As previously written, the two men (and their supporters) have pushed increasingly nationalistic, faux patriotic and in the case of Trump, xenophobic agendas including "otherization" of opponents and detractors alike. The GOP/Jubilee axis includes a "law & order" platform that seemingly disregards police misconduct. Finally, I would add that the two sides have benefited from the "tyranny of the majority", the former underscored by the late Lee Atwater's "Southern Strategy" campaign. As a result, they have governed thus until now, especially for the Republicans -- thanks to the "browning of America".
The Kenyan half of the conundrum was aptly illustrated in a recent exchange I had with a friend on Facebook.
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Shortly after Mr. Kenyatta's Freudian slip i.e. "eating meat even as others jealously salivated", I engaged a self-proclaimed "good governance" and "anti-corruption" activist in an exchange on Facebook. I was seeking to understand Sam's (not his real name) support of arguably the most corrupt presidency in Kenya's history.
Sam's obfuscation, prevarication and confluence of facts and timelines was classic and not surprising.
In a move reminiscent of the darkness portended by the "Taking Our Country Back" call to arms heard back in 2009 after Barack Obama took office, Sam first fudged the "lost years" that marked the dark period from which his version of Kenya's "gilded" era emerged. In Sam's mind, Kenya's 2nd president Daniel Moi was solely responsible for all that (had) ailed Kenya since independence. He asserted that it was from the Moi "Error" that Sam and his "patriotic" band of "real" Kenyans rescued the country!
Not Jomo Kenyatta's documented and demonstrable authoritarian ethnocentric post-independence fiefdom or Mwai Kibaki's bunker mentality that set the stage for the violence of 2007/8.
Stateside, the recent opening of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC could not have been more timely. The curated displays provide evidence of a past most fair-minded Americans do NOT want their country to go back to.
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When I challenged the intellectual honesty of hoisting all that has ailed Kenya onto its second president, who incidentally was "following the footsteps" of its first president, Sam flipped the script with the dismissive "I have a much bigger scope and not just four years and not just on corruption but many other things". He then followed the dismissal with the non sequitur "I don't have do (sic) vote for Joho, Kidero, Raila, Uhuru, Waiguru or Ruto. My argument is purely academic"!
So after spending the better part of an hour debating and contextualizing the strengths and weaknesses of Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta and Mr. Raila Odinga, in true Trumpian fashion and obstinacy, it did not matter -- at least according to Sam!
Hearing the National Public Radio (NPR) segment "How Politics Killed Universal Child Care in the 1970s," and following the avid dissemination of this tragic story by my colleagues in the civil society sector, made me wonder who might, decades from now, be blamed for killing Head Start? Kill Head Start, the life advantage that some of the most disadvantaged children and families get, and over 30 million have gotten already? Who would do that?
In addition to elements and groups who have historically opposed the idea of providing opportunity to the families with most economic, racial, and developmental barriers to success, we are surprised to find that some of our colleagues in the Washington policy/advocacy civil society world are imagining that the nation's most vulnerable children and families could be better served by individual states' efforts at universal early learning. Have they forgotten the history of why institutions in local communities (churches, schools, community action agencies, reservations, and migrant programs) were given direct grants to provide the window of opportunity to children who would have been excluded from it on the basis of their race or ethnic identity in some states? Do they not know that Mayors and County Commissioners (of both parties) rely on their Head Start programs to provide the Head Start advantage through their comprehensive whole-child, whole-family two-generation approaches?
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Getting ready for a new Administration has ramped up the quest for big new ideas among many of us in Washington. And while the Head Start community nationwide explores and compares local innovations to increase attendance, improve conditions for the Head Start workforce and looks to use the flexibility in the new Performance Standards to serve their families and communities even better, many of the Washington bunch see the old idea of giving states the Head Start money in a block grant, as a shiny new idea. Everyone in the Head Start community, and leaders of their communities, know that block granting Head Start to states would kill this proven national commitment to providing the opportunity for the American Dream to our most at-risk children. Do we, for the sake of an idea - states building their own early learning systems with all different federal money streams at their disposal - dare deny to actual children in demographically and geographically unfavored areas the opportunity to be the next President of the Ford Foundation, or the CEO of the NAACP or Girl Scouts of the USA, or the US Secretary of Health and Human Services?!
An old friend who is an accomplished family therapist told me that she could not understand the desire to dismantle something that is in place, gets results, and continually improves. This brings us to the question of "evidence", the bunker that holds both the long-lasting opponents of Head Start and the enthusiasts for the new idea of block granting Head Start to states. The much mischaracterized Impact Study and the 3rd grade "fadeout" myths and realities are used to deny the incontrovertible long term positive results for success in school and life of the recipients of the Head Start advantage (see this, this, this, this, or this).
For many Americans, the 2016 presidential election has left a bad taste in their mouths. More common than talk about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's email transgressions, repugnancy over Republican nominee Donald Trump's inflammatory and often downright problematic rhetoric, or vapid conversations surrounding third party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, is a shared sense by many that America deserves better.
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Trump himself, and his pedestrian campaign, fully represent the ways in which America is rigged against the poor in this country.
And to be clear, talk centering on the ways in which American institutions are rigged is nothing new. Democratic superstars Elizabeth Warren and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have moved millions with fiery speeches about the ways in which the American system is rigged against the "little guy." The difference between these stalwart rebukes and Trump's whining, however, is in the subject. Warren and Sanders have raised awareness to the ways in which American financial systems are rigged against the average American, while Trump's rigging claims focus solely on himself. Narcissism aside, though, Trump is spot-on. Ironically enough, Trump himself and his pedestrian campaign, fully represent the ways in which America is rigged against the poor in this country.
Trump serves as the current poster child for just how power and wealth provide unparalleled access to success in this country - and apparently the ability to run for president, absent any qualitfications. Trump's family wealth provided him the opportunity to attend prep schools (e.g. the Kew-Forest School of Forest Hills, NY) and some of the nation's premier collegiate institutions. That same wealth allowed Trump's father to gift him a "small loan" of $1 million to jumpstart his now global business, which thereby allowed Trump to provide his children similar access to the world stage. Wealth does indeed beget wealth. And to be clear, no one should fault Trump for being wealthy; however, his success does beg the question: what allows for the current and long-lasting racial disparities in generational wealth.
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Without question, the racial disparities that exist today stem directly from 400+ years of free labor white families stole from enslaved Africans. The persistence of these racial disparities is arguably exasperated by the rigging of American systems that has led to the disproportionate incarceration of American minorities (recently highlighted in "13th" by Ava DuVernay) and segregation of American minorities in communities of poverty with limited access to quality schools.
It is widely known that while poverty does not correlate to children's intelligence or ability to learn and achieve at high levels, it does directly correlate to children's preparedness when entering kindergarten and later school success. (The good news is that the gap in kindergarten readiness between affluent and poor children is seemingly shrinking). It is also widely known that one's educational success directly correlates with their ability to attend college, lifetime earning potential (thereby the economy), social and civic engagement (thereby voter turnout), lifelong health (thereby healthcare), and ability to move freely in the circles in which Trump and Clinton, among many others, find themselves.
Why then hasn't there been much more conversation about education in this presidential election? Or any for that matter? Perhaps it is because it is not as sensational or tantalizing as Clinton's emails or the myriad of sex scandals in which Trump finds himself. Perhaps the reason is much more nefarious, in that those with power and wealth remain most concerned with maintaining their societal position and ensuring that their children have access to America's most elite schools. Not to mention, our capitalistic society requires a constant "under class." Meanwhile, American politicians only seem interested in symbolic and/or incremental change versus system overhauls - the likes Warren and Sanders call for or that would be needed to ensure all children in this country are afforded an excellent education. As a result, the most disadvantaged students - those segregated in failing schools with ineffective teachers and leaders - often students of color - remain invisible in the current political circus.
"I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me." - Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)
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Two Hutchinson teams headed to playoffs
Central Christian and the Hutchinson Salthawks in Class 5A will represent Reno County in the second round of the Kansas state high school playoffs.
Women In The Music Industry: A Networking Guide
Concerns regarding the persistence of majority-male event lineups and the low number of female producers have been raising some concerned questions about the state of the modern music industry. This networking guide looks at several organizations working to bring about effective change.
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Guest Post from Point Blank London on the TuneCore Blog
[Editors Note: This article originally appeared on Point Blank Londons blog.]
Recently, topics such as the comparatively low number of female producers and the persistence of all-male (or majority-male) event line-ups have raised pressing questions about the state of the music industry in the 21st century. In a piece for The Fader, Ruth Saxelby asked why more women arent becoming music producers, before turning the platform over to high profile female artists to set out their proposals of how best to redress the balance. In 2016, the prevailing sense is that, while the industry remains male-dominated (women represent less than 5% of music producers and engineers), theres a real desire to call for effective change.
At the sharp end of this development are a number of networks and platforms geared towards helping women in the music industry, from Discwoman in NYC to the Berlin-based platform female:pressure. In this guest post, Point Blank Music School spotlight a range of networking resources and collectives in a bid to help the next generation of women artists to make their mark.
At Point Blank theyre committed to equipping artists of all genders with the industry skills to succeed at the highest level. Want to get out there and alter that 5% statistic? Start by discovering their range of courses.
female:pressure
Since its launch in 1998, female:pressure has built an international network of over 1,600 female artists across 66 countries working across the spectrum of electronic music. Not only is it an invaluable grassroots resource (their research into the amount of women artists on festival bills made for enlightening reading) but they also represent one of the key platforms for new artists, both through their events including the Berlin-based Perspectives Festival and their own label. Their recent release Rojava Revolution was the product of an open call for musicians, and made Facts Bandcamp Release of the Month. Get involved here.
Shesaid.so
Founded in 2014, Shesaid.so is a carefully selected global community of women who work in the music industry. Where female: pressure tends to focus more on artists and creators, Shesaid.so connects women across all industry sectors, from PR to management to record labels. As well as acting as a forum where members can seek advice, share jobs and events and announce new projects, their regularly updated programme of events and panels encourage conversations on vital topics. The next panel, which takes place at LISTEN! 2016 is entitled Girls, Geeks & Music: Where are the female producers?, and aims to explore a male and female perspective on the intersection between women, tech and electronic music. Join in here.
Discwoman
New York-based Discwoman started out as a two-day festival back in 2014 and has grown into a platform, collective and booking agency with events taking place in over 15 cities, working with over 150 producers and DJs. Founded by Frankie Hutchinson, Emma Burgess-Olson and Christine Tran, Discwomans remit is, essentially, to represent and showcase artists who identify as female and their parties are incredible, as evidenced by their recent Boiler Room session featuring the likes of Julia Huxtable, Bearcat and Uniiqu3. They also have a regular mix series, spotlighting new artists. Discover Discwoman here.
Women In Music
Of all the groups mentioned, the US-based Women In Music is surely the most established. Now well into its third decade, WIM brings together a broad group of music industry professionals to offer support and cultivate a network of women working across all areas of the music industry. From official panel discussions at SXSW to free legal clinics, the organisers work hard to produce a diverse programme of events throughout the year. Their recent free Women In Music Tech event was hugely popular with panels and presentations delving deep into the topic from a variety of key angles. You have to become a member to take part in these events, so head over to the WIM website for more details and sign up.
Point Blank Music School are super proud to be helping the next generation of female producers, artists and industry figures prepare for a successful career in the music industry. If youre feeling inspired and want to join the ranks of PB alumni like Monki, Madam X and Nicole Moudaber you need to sign up to one of their courses based either inLondon, Los Angeles or online. Point Blanks Online Music Production Master Diploma is not only the most comprehensive course available online, but it offers 1-2-1 tutorials between you and your instructor every two weeks, alongside live masterclasses and the opportunity to receive customized feedback for your work as you progress. Check out the full range of online Professional Programmes.
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The auditorium was packed with students for the Tuesday afternoon forum.
DA, Doctor Advocate Against Legal Marijuana at United Way Forum
District Attorney David Capeless opposes the question of legalization. PITTSFIELD, Mass. Dr. Jennifer Michaels says every patient she sees struggling with serious addiction began by smoking marijuana at a young age.
Michaels, the medical director at the Brien Center, joined District Attorney David Capeless on Tuesday in a forum at Berkshire Community College urging a no vote on the referendum to legalize marijuana, which will be on the ballot in November.
Michaels outlined her belief that the legalization will lead to more issues with addictions while Capeless said public safety would be put at risk with little authorities could do to mitigate impacts.
"The devil's in the details about this. It isn't just about marijuana legalization," Capeless said.
Capeless compared the Massachusetts question to that in Colorado or Washington, both of which legalized the drug for recreational use, saying Massachusetts is limiting the tax on it to 11.75 percent, which is lower than Colorado's maximum of 40 percent or Washington's 37 percent, so the influx of money into the economy won't be there. He said the money gained would only go toward the administration of the new law and elsewhere in the budget such as education.
Further, he says the drug will be held to lesser standards than alcohol. For a store selling to a minor for alcohol, there is a $300 fine and possible 90-day loss of license whereas with marijuana it would only be a $100 fine. For people selling to a minor, alcohol is punishable for up to a year in jail whereas with marijuana, as long as the person appears to be 21, there is no arrest or charge.
"I am well aware there is a burgeoning black market among college students like yourselves for fake IDs. This is just giving dispensaries a carte blanche to sell to all of the college students in Massachusetts," Capeless told a full auditorium at BCC.
He said there is no medical use of alcohol with minors but there could be with marijuana. In Colorado, he says while the number of fatal crashes has decreased since legalization, the number of fatals with drivers testing positive for marijuana has nearly tripled. In Washington, that number doubled.
He said when marijuana is coupled with alcohol, the likelihood of an accident is 24 times higher.
"Overall fatality rates were down. But fatalities with drivers testing positive for marijuana increased by over 100 percent," Capeless said.
But, the opinions among youth aren't in line with those figures, he said. Surveys show a quarter of teens say they've driven while high and three-quarters say they don't believe it is an issue. Capeless says car accidents are twice as likely if the driver has been smoking marijuana.
While recognizing marijuana impacts the ability to operate a motor vehicle is one thing, Capeless said local authorities are woefully underprepared to be able to enforce laws restricting driving while high.
"We have scientific devices that we can use to stop people from speeding. We have testing we can use for people who are under the influence of alcohol. We do not have that available to test people for use of marijuana," Capeless said.
Capeless said there was only one certified expert in the county who could identify operating under the influence of drugs, but that person has since moved on. Recent court rulings say that even the smell of burnt marijuana isn't enough to stop and search a vehicle, making it even more difficult for authorities, he said.
It isn't just about driving for Capeless but those other crimes that he feels comes with marijuana.
"Overall crime [in Colorado] is up by almost a third, crimes against a person by a quarter, simple assault almost two-thirds, and domestic assault almost 100 percent increase," Capeless said.
FBI data does support Capeless' claim that crime has risen in Denver, showing an increase of 3.5 percent. However, city officials there have been tracking crimes relating to marijuana, which shows less than 1 percent growth there so the likelihood is that the two are unrelated.
In 2015, the Berkshire County Law Enforcement Task Force made just 127 marijuana-related arrests, said Capeless, despite it being a popular drug in the county. And he said in 95 percent of the searches the force does, mostly looking for cocaine, heroin, and illegal prescription drugs, marijuana is also found. Of the 18 people charged with marijuana crimes in 2015, courts fined just one individual. Twelve cases were continued without a finding and five cases were dismissed, he said.
Pulling up headlines from local media, he showed that selling marijuana locally has led to armed robberies, shootings, kidnapping, and home invasions.
Capeless also suggested that marijuana use among teens has "considerably gone up" but other recent surveys have shown that usage among teens has mostly remained level since legalization and that Colorado has a lower rate of teen usage than the nationwide average.
From the audience, one man said teen usage in Colorado has actually decreased, with the reasoning being that teens could get it without having to show ID and now they do. A student added that marijuana sales are often coupled with gangs and that by legalizing marijuana, it would deflate that market while at the same time allow authorities to focus more energy on opioids and gang violence.
Capeless said there is no reason to believe a black market would be eliminated with the legalization because of the restrictions and requirements surrounding the potency.
"It will not get rid of it at all. It may well thrive. In Colorado, it has thrived and crime has gone up," Capeless said.
The use among teens is really the key point of opposition from Michaels, who says the drug has significant impacts on the developing brain.
"The more you use regularly, the more your IQ went down," Michaels said.
Michaels cited a study out of New Zealand that tested children from age 13 on and found the more one uses marijuana, the more the IQ has dropped. Again, her statistics are countered by other studies that show there is no link between IQ and marijuana usage.
Michaels focused her presentation more on the science behind marijuana usage specifically focusing on the drug's compensation, addictiveness, medical impacts, public danger, and its ability to be a gateway drug.
"Virtually everyone who gets to those more serious drugs started with marijuana and alcohol," Michaels said.
She began by saying that while marijuana is natural, that doesn't mean it is good.
"Of course it is natural. It is a plant, it grows in the earth. It comes from two different plants cannabis sativa or indica so it is natural like other plants," Michaels said. "But over time we have altered how natural it is because we have cultivated it to maximize the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content. That's the thing that gets you high, the psychoactive component. It is less natural than it used to be."
She said cocaine and alcohol both derive from natural sources but that doesn't mean the drugs are safe.
"Natural is not good or bad, it just is. The opium poppy plant is natural. The coca plant we get cocaine from is natural. The alcohol we drink is probably the most natural thing we are consuming," Michaels said.
Marijuana's THC acts like the body's natural anandamide chemical transmitter and attaches to parts of the brain that impacts movement, coordination, judgment, and memory. In hijacking those transmitters, it causes the brain to release high levels of dopamine.
"All drugs of abuse including marijuana does something unhealthy, unnatural with dopamine in your brain," Michaels said. "Our brains aren't wired for that type of dopamine."
The good news, she said, is that the drug does not attach to the brain stem, which regulates breathing and arousal so overdoses are unlikely.
"In some ways, it is much safer than other drugs like opioid which does bind there or alcohol which does bind there. With high doses of those two substances, you stop breathing and overdose and die. So in some ways marijuana is safer than those other substances," Michaels said. "However, if you look at the binding the effects, the judgment, and coordination, that is not safe behavior if you are intoxicated."
She said while overdoses may not be a threat, it is the fatal car accidents and possible hallucinations. She told the story of 19-year-old Levy Thamba, who earlier this year jumped to his death from a hotel window after ingesting marijuana in Colorado.
"He began to hallucinate. He became delusional. He was talking to the lampshade. He was really out of it, not himself. He never had a psychotic experience before. He was with friends who tried to talk him down. He ended up jumping out of the window and killing himself," Michaels said. "This is an example of how someone died, not because of decreased respiration but because people can become psychotic and lose judgment. Is that common, no. But we are starting to see it and we are starting to see it in youth people."
She, too, cited statistics showing that marijuana use will double the risk of a motor vehicle accident. But even more frightening for Michaels, is when marijuana is mixed with alcohol.
"The problem is when people drink or smoke, they often aren't thinking at their best and do both. Then you multiply the risk for all accidents. We know when people smoke, performance is impaired," Michaels said.
Jennifer Michaels said marijuana leads to other drug addictions. Further, she believes drug abuse will increase with marijuana. She said the drug creates a euphoric feeling because of the dramatic increase in dopamine, but once it wears off, the levels drop to lower than before thus leading to anxiety and a desire for more marijuana
"We know that for some people, they get addicted to marijuana," Michaels said.
She said there are symptoms of marijuana withdrawals from irritability to nervousness, to difficulty sleeping, and depression. Those withdrawals create the compulsion for users to smoke more.
Michaels said people who smoke marijuana are more likely to have mental health issues such as depression or mood disorders. But again, Michael's concern is addiction and she said children who smoke at a younger age are more likely to have addiction struggles.
"It is really about the kids, the decisions we make will impact them the most. If you have a fully grown brain and you had engaged in healthy activities, you've wired your brain with joy and happiness, you are not going to be as vulnerable to marijuana addiction. The chance of getting addicted is pretty low. However, if you are a young person and your brain is still forming, you haven't formed all of the connections, if you smoke if you are 12 or 13, your chances are really high, 17 percent," Michaels said.
She said 74.6 percent of teens entering substance abuse programs are entering for marijuana, she said.
"As we perceive marijuana to be a less risky substance, young people use marijuana more. As we make these decisions as adults, we must consider the impact on our young people," Michaels said.
As for marijuana's use in medicine, Michaels says there hasn't been enough evidence to suggest that medical marijuana is effective. She said most studies only test certain of the 480 chemicals in marijuana and not the drug as a whole.
"Most of the studies do not actually have patients smoking marijuana," Michaels said. "We are not ready for prime time because most of the studies have studied only specific chemicals but not marijuana."
She conceded that there is evidence that marijuana does help with muscle spasms and HIV and pain related to chemotherapy. But she rejects the common notion that glaucoma should be treated with marijuana.
She said marijuana relieves pressure in eyes of glaucoma patients but not in a sustainable way. At the same time, marijuana restricts the blood flow to the eyes, causing more damage over time.
The forum was sponsored by the Berkshire United Ways' Pittsfield Prevention Partnership, which focuses its work on reducing substance abuse among the city's youth.
A high-definition print of Leonard Stomski's oil painting of the departure of the Mammoth Cheshire Cheese that is being donated to the town.
Local Painter Presents Cheshire Mammoth Cheese Painting To Town
Local artist Leonard Stomski and his wife, Doris, are introduced by members of the Historical Commission. CHESHIRE, Mass. Local artist Leonard Stomski has gifted an oil painting of the Cheshire Mammoth Cheese to the town.
Stomski and his wife, Doris, presented the Selectmen on Tuesday with a high-definition print of the painting that depicts the famous cheese wheel being sent off President Thomas Jefferson in 1802. The actual painting is 4-foot by 8-foot.
"My wife and I are celebrating 40 years here in Cheshire and we did that by creating this painting," Stomski said. "We would like to gift it to the town and have it in Town Hall.
The board thanked Stomski for his work.
"We will have to put it upstairs. It is beautiful," Selectwoman Carol Francesconi said. "Thank you very much."
The 1,200-pound wheel, reportedly made from the milk of 900 cows in an oversized cider press, can be seen in the painting on a decorated wagon pulled by six horses while residents of Cheshire see it off in a celebratory manner. Milk cans and another cheese being pressed are painted in the lower right-hand corner. The cheese was created at the urging of the Rev. John Leland, the local Baptist minister and a friend of the president's. It arrived at the White House in January 1802 and Jefferson described it as being over 4 feet in diameter and 15 inches thick. It lasted at least two years.
Stomski also gave the town all rights to "Cheshire Cheese Goes to Washington DC" so officials can use it however they want and can utilize all possible proceeds the painting generates.
"Usually the copyrights belong to the artists but I want to turn them over to you people so you are free to do whatever you want with the painting," he said.
"Any proceeds go entirely to the town of Cheshire."
He asked that Historical Commission and the Selectmen take a look at the painting before the final hanging to make sure everything looks historically accurate.
Selectman Robert Ciskowksi suggested modernizing the painting by painting in the current select board.
"Could we get the Board of Selectmen in there somewhere?" he joked. "We could modernize it. It's not the Constitution, it could be interpreted."
The Selectmen plan to hang the painting Monday.
Updated Wednesday to clarify the board received a print of the painting on Tuesday and adding the painting's size.
Raya Kirby told the commission how the lack of paid parental leave stressed the finances of her family. Commissioners Penny Blaisdell of Marblehead, left, Becca Glenn of Waltham, Sara G. Schnorr of Holliston and Vice Chairwoman Margot Parrot of Athol take testimony. The session was held at City Hall on Tuesday. State Rep. Gailanne Cariddi speaks to the commission on the issue of health care access for women. Berkshire County Commission Chairwoman Gillette Conner speaks with Cariddi after the meeting. PreviousNext
Massachusetts Commission Hears Testimony on Women's Issues
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Affordable health care and family leave are the "forefront" issues for Raya Kirby.
Balancing her 4-month-old daughter on her hip, told the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women on Tuesday how she accumulated sick and personal time by not taking any time off for 10 months and her family stocked away every penny, to ensure they could pay bills during her maternity leave.
Still, half of her 12 weeks out was unpaid, stressing the finances of the family of four. And it wasn't enough time to spend with her newborn.
"You don't sell puppies and kittens until their 8 weeks old because you don't want to separate them from their parents yet you require mothers to return back to work sometimes immediately after having a child because there's no income," she said.
Stories like Kirby's are what the commission wants to hear so they can turn needs into legislation. Created in 1998, the commission is comprised of 19 volunteer members appointed by various executive and legislative agencies. It works with local commissions, holds listening sessions around the state and hosts an advocacy day in Boston to bring issues of importance of women to the State House.
A listening session brought four of the commissioners Vice Chairwoman Margot Parrot of Athol, Penny Blaisdell of Marblehead, Becca Glenn of Waltham and Sara G. Schnorr of Holliston to the Berkshires. Along with Director Jill Ashton and Outreach Coordinator Kelly Lynch, they heard testimony from a half-dozen or so area women at City Hall and were greeted by Mayor Richard Alcombright.
The top issues: Health care, child care and maternity, poverty and transportation. All topics that are to a large extent inextricably intertwined.
Donna Morelli, an attorney with Community Legal Aid's family law unit, citing a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, said parents pay more for child care per year in Massachusetts than for a year at a four-year college.
Bay State parents of more than one child pay out an average of $30,000 on child care for categories of infant and 4-year-olds. The third category is school age, which isn't much less.
"The lack of affordable child care affects all parents. It has a significant economic impact on clients I represent," Morelli said, most of whom are trying to escape some form of domestic violence and are financially stressed. They are overwhelmingly mothers, with an average of 1.2 children, and most of them work. Nearly half receive no government benefits.
Their average income is $271 per week, or $1,166 per month, and even with an average $150 a month in child support, can barely cover child-care costs.
"Even with child support, these single mothers still cannot afford child care without using a huge part of their weekly income," she said. Child care centers average $17,083 a year. "That is $320 per week, which is $50 higher than the income of the mothers I represent. ...
"The clients I represent still cannot afford these costs without depriving themselves and their children of necessities."
Michelle Rubin, licensed child care provider, traveled from Greenfield to echo those statements.
"If parents can find child care, they usually can't afford it," she said. "There are more than 25,000 children on the waitlist right now waiting for vouchers. ...
"If parents are unable to work the entire family suffers ... mothers should not have to choose between taking care of a newborn and their jobs."
She told of her own situation of how she had to return to work two weeks after her last child was born. Vouchers were no longer really covering the cost for child care, she said, and lack of transportation for parents was a serious issue.
Nuclea has filed for bankruptcy.
PEDA Claiming $10K Loss in Nuclea Bankruptcy Filing
PITTSFIELD, Mass. PEDA is looking to recoup some $10,000 in losses from Nuclea Biotechnologies Inc., which filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy six week ago.
Nuclea had rented office space from the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority on Kellogg Street for a number of years. That lease agreement was until the end of October this year but, the company has vacated the space by the end of April.
PEDA Executive Director Corydon Thurston said on Wednesday that the company left without paying back rent or its share or utilities and contracted services such as janitorial work.
"The total indebtedness is a tad over $10,000," Thurston said. "We're going to file for everything they would have paid until the end of the lease."
When first notified, Thurston said U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware indicated the company had no assets with which to pay back debts. However, a followup notice from the court on Oct. 5 told PEDA to file a claim, meaning there may be some assets for PEDA to get paid back.
That notice read, "there are assets from which a dividend might possibly be paid to creditors" and asked for proof of claim should anything be paid out.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy allows for a liquidation of assets, instead of a reorganizational bankruptcy. Thurston doesn't know what to expect with the court ruling, if anything, but he is hoping to get back all of the debt owed.
"We have registered our proof of claim," Thurston said.
Nuclea was once a highly touted aspect of the city's future but has fallen dramatically since. It hit its high point just two years ago when former Gov. Deval Patrick used the company's Elm Street facility to t out a $510,000 tax incentive that was eyed to help the company grow a tax incentive that required jobs just until the end of 2015. In January 2016, it began cutting back.
City officials rallied to bring the company to the proposed Berkshire Innovation Center which Nuclea later backed out of and to the William Stanley Business Park. Nuclea also partnered with local colleges for job training. In 2012, it moved into the Kellogg Street office and i nvested some $200,000 into the 1,700 square-foot space
At the time, former Mayor Daniel Bianchi said, "The next chapter is being written right now ... The William Stanley Business Park will soon be a magnet for many life science industries."
Nuclea then boasted of employment numbers of 70, with 43 workers located in the Berkshires with plans to add 35 to 40 more. It purchased Wilex Inc., taking control of a 20,000 square-foot facility in Cambridge and 11 employees.
By the end of 2015, former CEO Patrick Muraca stepped down and claimed, "It is hard to leave a company but this is a victory lap. This was a true success ... I'm leaving Nuclea in a very strong situation."
Muraca moved on to start a spin-off, NanoDX, in the Albany, N.Y., area . Don Pogorzelski was put in charge of Nuclea, who said then that "I think they've got a plethora of opportunity for them," while Muraca, who is still a majority shareholder, promised Nuclea wasn't leaving the city of Pittsfield.
Thirty-nine days later, Nuclea left Pittsfield.
SVMC Presents 'Taking the Scare Out of an Abnormal Mammogram'
BENNINGTON, Vt. If you're a woman over the age of 40, you may have been there: You get a call that your mammogram is abnormal, and you get scared. It's completely natural. The fear sometimes stops women from getting a mammogram in the first place or from coming back for the recommended diagnostic breast imaging.
What you need to know is that there is a long way between an abnormal mammogram and a breast cancer diagnosis. Information about the process of breast cancer screening, including what is happening behind the scenes, can help you cope with this unsettling news and move forward with confidence.
That's why clinicians from Southwestern Vermont Medical Center's (SVMC) Imaging Department and the Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center partnered to offer this special presentation, titled "Taking the Scare Out of an Abnormal Mammogram," from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, October 25 at the Manchester Community Library in Manchester, Vt.
While most people are aware of breast cancer, many forget to take the steps necessary to detect the disease in its early stages when it is most successfully treated. In "Taking the Scare Out of an Abnormal Mammogram," Dr. Terrell Coffield of Radiology Associates of Bennington, and Rebecca Hewson-Steller, a registered nurse and breast health navigator at SVMC Women's Imaging Department and the Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center, will give attendees a behind-the-scenes look at the screening mammography process and the different ways radiologists use breast imaging to help women find breast cancer early.
Dr. Matthew Vernon, a radiation oncologist with the Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center, will be on hand to describe the treatment options available to mammogram patients who are diagnosed with breast cancer. Mammogram and ultrasound technologists will also be on hand to answer questions.
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
2016 Good Food Org Guide
Food Tank and the James Beard Foundation have just released the third annual Good Food Org Guide, which features 1,000 nonprofit organizations creating a better food system across the United States.
Washington, DC - Download the guide and check out the website HERE!
With the help of an advisory board of food system experts, Food Tank and the James Beard Foundation created this definitive guide to feature nonprofit organizations that are creating a better food system. The organizations in this years Guide are effecting change in kitchens, schools, churches, labs, businesses, community centers, governments, urban farms, fields, food banks, and more.
Since the inaugural Good Food Org Guide was released in 2014, it has highlighted groups who combat childhood obesity, malnourishment, and physical inactivity; prevent food waste; educate consumers on healthy, nutritious food choices; create networks of social entrepreneurs; protect food and restaurant workers; highlight solutions for restoring the health of people and the planet; work with indigenous communities to preserve traditions, culture, and biodiversity; inspire and educate individuals to cook more of their own food; and protect public health, human health, and the environment.
This years Guide, building on the success of the 2015 Guide, includes an online search tool. The website enables users to search for organizations by the region and category of the organizations work. Each organization highlighted in the Guide has its own profile page, which includes their contact information, description, logo, social media links, location, photos, and related organizations.
Working in collaboration with the James Beard Foundation, we are proud to bring the total number of listed organizations to the 1000 mark. It is a testament to the tremendous amount of growth and support we have seen in the good food sector, says Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank.
At least 10 organizations from each state are represented in the 2016 Good Food Org Guide. Below are just a few of the organizations that are included.
FTC Charges Operators of Scheme That Used Fake Government Affiliation to Sell Commercial Trucking Registration Services
Washington, DC - A federal judge has granted the Federal Trade Commissions request for a preliminary injunction against two people and their companies for allegedly tricking small commercial trucking businesses into paying them for federal and state motor carrier registrations by impersonating government transportation agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT).
Consumers who own and operate certain types of commercial vehicles must register annually with the Unified Carrier Registration (UCR) system or their state government and pay a fee based on their fleet size. Some of these small businesses also must file a Motor Carrier Identification Report every two years, which can be done at no charge on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration website.
According to the FTCs complaint, the defendants have taken in more than $19 million from thousands of small businesses by sending misleading robocalls, emails, and text messages that create and reinforce the false impression that they are, or are affiliated with, the USDOT, the UCR system, or another government agency. As noted in the FTCs complaint, the defendants used official-sounding names, official-looking websites, warnings of $1,000 in civil penalties or fines for non-compliance, and threats of imminent law enforcement to trick consumers into using their registration services instead of using official government website services.
According to the complaint, the defendants deceptively disclosed the total amount charged, without telling consumers the cost included the defendants service fees that ranged from $25 to $550 or more. The FTC also alleges that many consumers who paid the defendants UCR fees were automatically enrolled, without their knowledge or consent, in SafeRenew, the defendants annual renewal program for UCR fees.
Defendants James P. Lamb, Uliana Bogash, DOTAuthority.com Inc., DOTFilings.com Inc., Excelsior Enterprises International Inc. and JPL Enterprises International Inc. are charged with violating the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act.
The Commission vote authorizing the staff to file the complaint was 3-0. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The court entered a preliminary injunction against the defendants on September 29, 2016.
The Commission files a complaint when it has reason to believe that the law has been or is being violated and it appears to the Commission that a proceeding is in the public interest. The case will be decided by the court.
This Isnt Our Last Love Letter
Dear Don Don,
Way back in 92
I walked into the room and knew
Never felt this way before
I shook your hand while gazing into your eyes
And the feeling grew
As I took a seat I knew
A love that would have my heart
Forever
I knew
Way back in 92
They say love at first sight doesnt always last or isnt true
We were the exception to that rule
Our love had no where to hide
A spark set fire
As if this is how the universe started
I never doubted our love or what we could do
Together we grew
Forming a bond everlasting
That became our glue
My euphoria was YOU
Im eternally grateful for the love and life we shared
For how fortunate we were :
to have and to hold
through sickness and in health
Til death do us part
Until we are together again
This isnt our last love letter
I love you with all my heart and soul
Yours forever,
Deirdre (Mrs. Hank Snow)
Im fortunate to have fallen in love with, marry and make a life with the sharpest, coolest, funniest, most rare, bad ass, tender loving, loyal man on the planet, my husband Don Imus.
A True American Hero
I dont know why it has been so hard for me to write about my dear friend Don Imus.
I certainly know what he meant to me, my family, my charity, my hospital and the millions of fans that listened and loved him for so many years.
I keep reading all the beautiful condolences that people are writing about how much a part of their lives were effected by listening to him over the years.
But what most people dont talk enough about is what he did for all of us.
In every sense of the word, he was an American Hero. His work with children with so many different illnesses and his dedication to their future was unmatched by anyone I have ever known or heard about.
Besides raising over $100,000,000 for so many causes, he took care of young people for over 20 years in a state where he could not breathe. Along with his incredible wife Deirdre, he created a world where children were not defined by their disease. That was a miracle! He was a miracle.
I will miss him ever day for the rest of my life.
I was blessed to be a part of his and Deirdes life.
No one will ever do what he did.
I love you Don Imus - A TRUE AMERICAN HERO
David Jurist
IMUS IN THE MORNING
FIRST DAY BACK!
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The National History Museum has revealed its Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners, encompassing dramatic photographs of leopards, parakeets and pangolins.
American Tim Laman was the overall winner, thanks to his orangutan photo which didnt require fancy equipment and lenses (it was taken on a GoPro) but did require three days of climbing.
Its a difficult-to-achieve shot, commented chair of judges, Lewis Blackwell. This is very often what wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year: a picture that has a high degree of technical difficulty, but one that also has something to say; and Tims image certainly has that as well.
The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 The alley cat, Nayan Khanolkar, INDIA Winner, Urban At night, in the Aarey Milk Colony in a suburb of Mumbai bordering Sanjay Gandhi National Park, leopards slip ghost-like through the maze of alleys, looking for food (especially stray dogs). The Warli people living in the area respect the big cats. Positioning his flashes to mimic the alleys usual lighting and his camera so that a passing cat would not dominate the frame, he finally after four months got the shot he wanted. With a fleeting look of enquiry in the direction of the camera click, a leopard went about its business alongside peoples homes. Nayan hopes that those living in Mumbais new high-rise developments now impinging on the park will learn from the Warli how to coexist with the original inhabitants of the land. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Star player, Luis Javier Sandoval, MEXICO Winner, Impressions As soon as Luis slipped into the water, the curious young California sea lions came over for a better look. He had arrived the night before at the island of Espiritu Santo in the Gulf of California, sleeping aboard his boat so that he would be ready to dive at sunrise. He had in mind a picture that needed warm light, a slow shutter speed and friendly subjects. One of the pups dived down, swimming gracefully with its strong fore-flippers (sea lions are also remarkably agile on land, since they can control each of their hind flippers independently). It grabbed a starfish from the bottom and started throwing it to Luis. Angling his camera up towards the dawn light just as the pup offered him the starfish and another youngster slipped by close to the rocks he created his artistic impression of the sea lions playful nature. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 The sand canvas, Rudi Sebastian, GERMANY Winner, Details The pristine white sand of Brazils Lencois Maranhenses National Park offers a blank canvas to the rain. In the dry season, sand from the coast is blown by powerful Atlantic winds as far as 50 kilometres (30 miles) inland, sculpting a vast expanse of crescent-shaped dunes up to 40 metres (130 feet) high. With the onset of the rains, the magic begins. An impermeable layer beneath the sand allows water to collect in the dune valleys, forming thousands of transient lagoons, some more than 90 metres (295 feet) long. Bacteria and algae tint the clear water in countless shades of green and blue, while streams carrying sediment from the distant rainforest make their mark with browns and blacks. Patterns appear as the water evaporates, leaving behind organic remains. Shooting almost vertically down from a small aircraft with the door removed, avoiding perspective or scale, he created his striking image. A few weeks later, the scene had evaporated. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Snapper party, Tony Wu, USA Winner, Underwater For several days each month (in tandem with the full moon), thousands of twospot red snappers gather to spawn around Palau in the western Pacific Ocean. On this occasion, with perfect anticipation, he managed to capture a dynamic arc of spawning fish amid clouds of eggs in the oblique morning light. Still obsessed by the dynamics and magnitude of this natural wonder, he will be returning to Palau next April to witness once again the spectacular snapper party. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Eviction attempt, Ganesh H Shankar, INDIA Winner, Birds These Indian rose-ringed parakeets were not happy. They had returned to their roosting and nesting hole high up in a tree in Indias Keoladeo National Park (also known as Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary) to find that a Bengal monitor lizard had taken up residence. They would then harass it when it tried to come out to bask. This went on for two days. But the action only lasted a couple of seconds at a time and was fast-moving. These Indian birds are highly adaptable, and escaped captive parakeets have founded populations in many countries. In Europe, where they are known as ring-necked parakeets, they are accused of competing for nest holes with some native species, such as nuthatches, and even bats, but in turn, other birds such as starlings are quite capable of evicting the parakeets from their nest holes. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 The moon and the crow, Gideon Knight, UK Winner, Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 A crow in a tree in a park: a common enough scene. It was one that Gideon had seen many times near his home in Londons Valentines Park, which he visits regularly to take photographs. Positioning himself on a slope opposite, he tried to capture the perfect composition. But the crow kept moving along the branch and turning its head away, and so getting a silhouette of it with the moon in the frame meant Gideon had to keep moving, too. Then, just as the light was about to fade beyond the point that photography was possible, his wish came true, and an ordinary London scene turned into something magical. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Requiem for an owl, Mats Andersson, SWEDEN Winner, Black and White Every day in early spring, Mats walked in the forest near his home in Bashult, southern Sweden, enjoying the company of a pair of Eurasian pygmy owls until the night he found one of them lying dead on the forest floor. Pygmy owls, with their distinctive rounded heads and lack of ear tufts, are the smallest owls in Europe, barely 19 centimetres (7 inches) long, though with large feet that enable them to carry prey almost as big as themselves. He found this owl dead, too, and suspects that it and its mate may have been killed by one of the larger owls in the forest, not for food but because, in the breeding season, it didnt tolerate other birds of prey in its territory. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 The pangolin pit, Paul Hilton, UK/AUSTRALIA Winner, The Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Single image Nothing prepared Paul for what he saw: some 4,000 defrosting pangolins (5 tons) from one of the largest seizures of the animals on record. These Asian victims, mostly Sunda pangolins, were part of a huge seizure a joint operation between Indonesias police and the World Conservation Society found hidden in a shipping container behind a facade of frozen fish, ready for export from the major port of Belawan in Sumatra. The dead pangolins were driven to a specially dug pit and then incinerated. The live ones were taken north and released in the rainforest. Wildlife crime is big business, says Paul. It will stop only when the demand stops. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Wind composition, Valter Binotto, ITALY Winner, Plants and Fungi With every gust of wind, showers of pollen were released, lit up by the winter sunshine. The hazel tree was near Valters home in northern Italy, and to create the dark background, he positioned himself to backlight the flowers. Hazel has both male and female flowers on the same tree, though the pollen must be transferred between trees for fertilization. And now recent research suggests that bees may also play a role. The catkins are an important source of pollen for early bees and have a beefriendly structure, while the red colour of the female flowers may entice insects to land on them. The hardest part was capturing the female flowers motionless while the catkins were moving, explains Valter. I searched for flowers on a short branch that was more stable. Using a long exposure to capture the pollens flight and a reflector to highlight the catkins, he took many pictures before the wind finally delivered the composition he had in mind. The 10 winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Entwined lives, Tim Laman, USA Winner, Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 A young male orangutan makes the 30-metre (100-foot) climb up the thickest root of the strangler fig that has entwined itself around a tree emerging high above the canopy. The backdrop is the rich rainforest of the Gunung Palung National Park, in West Kalimantan, one of the few protected orangutan strongholds in Indonesian Borneo. He had to do three days of climbing up and down himself, by rope, to place in position several GoPro cameras that he could trigger remotely to give him a chance of not only a wide angle view of the forest below but also a view of the orangutans face from above. This shot was the one he had long visualized, looking down on the orangutan within its forest home.
There was an emphasis on pictures that showed the threat to wildlife around the world, including Paul Hilton's shocking The Pangolin Pit, which won the Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Single image category and depicted a seizure of 4,000 frozen pangolins destined for illegal shipping in Sumatra.
2016s junior award went to 16-year-old Gideon Knight from Kent.
Its not an unfamiliar subject, but its got a freshness to it and a very pleasant aesthetic, Mr Blackwell told BBC News of his photo of a crow in Londons Valentines Park.
I dont know whether Gideon has been studying his art history but hes got a feel for composition and artistic reference, which is terrific in someone so young.
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A new Christopher Guest film is always a reason to rejoice, and the mockumentary master is back with Mascots, currently available on Netflix. Probably best known as co-creator of the seminal This is Spinal Tap (he played Nigel this amp goes up to 11 Tufnell), Guest's first faux documentary as director was 1997's Waiting for Guffman.
Ricky Gervais has made no secret of the fact that The Office wouldnt exist without Guests work and Guffman, released just four years before the defining British sitcom of a generation first aired, was undoubtedly an influence.
Guest stars as Corky St Clair, a flamboyant theatre director tasked with overseeing a community theatre production showcasing 150 years of life in the fictional town of Blaine, Missouri. The usual repertory of gifted improvisers round out the cast; Fred Willard, Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, Catherine OHara and Bob Balaban.
The film tackles the delusional nature of amateur actors with much the same panache that Spinal Tap skewered heavy metal. These are people with the unwavering certainty that they have what it takes to make great art despite all evidence to the contrary. The irony, of course, is that the actors portraying these characters are skilled performers improvising the dialogue throughout in a manner Larry David would adopt for Curb Your Enthusiasm a couple of years later.
Mort Guffman, a Broadway producer, has promised to attend the show but will he show up or pull a Godot? The final act, in which we actually get to see the musical, is a triumph of poor acting and worse music. The observations are loving rather than cruel, not least the actors' insistence on facing the audience at all times. It is surely no coincidence that, despite gently mocking the characters for the duration of the running time, Guest ensures the majority of them end up in a happier place than they were when the film began.
Meryl Streep once named this her favourite movie and it just goes to show that even the greats can see something of themselves in the delusions of grandeur shared by amateurs and professionals alike. All that, and we are treated to the sight of The Remains of the Day lunch boxes. What more could you want?
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Trolls
Dir: Mike Mitchell, Walt Dohrn, 92 mins, voiced by: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, James Corden
Trolls - Trailer 3
Made in iridescent colour, Trolls is a wondrously zany and inane animated feature. Watching it in 3D is like being submerged in candy floss. The main characters are fluffy little gonks who live in a rainbow world of singing, dancing and hugging. They are preyed on by the Bergens, a race of slobbering, bogeyman-like reptile misanthropes with bad teeth who think the only way they can achieve happiness, even if only briefly, is by eating Trolls. On Trollstice, they come hunting for their prey.
For all its hyper-cheerful humour, the film has some surprisingly macabre elements. The Bergens pursue the little Trolls with a genocidal fury. The Trolls are so distressed that some of them become incontinent (and start defecating cupcakes).
Pink-featured Princess Poppy (voiced by Anna Kendrick) is the most optimistic of the Trolls. Whenever shes around, cheesy disco songs play on the soundtrack and fireworks go off. Branch (voiced by Justin Timberlake, who also oversaw the music) tries to warn her that theres trouble ahead. He is the greyest, gloomiest character in Troll-land, never singing, never dancing, hiding out in his underground bunker and always expecting the worst.
Alongside the disco, Trolls is aimed at a very young audience but contains plenty of in-jokes and nostalgic references to keep the parents happy. Timberlakes choice of music includes some very cheesy Simon and Garfunkel and Lionel Richie songs as well as a blast of Total Eclipse Of The Heart.
Trolls combines eye-opening visuals with plenty of frenetic chase sequences involving tunnels and roller skates. Alongside the story about Princess Poppy venturing to the kingdom of the Bergens to rescue her friends, the film includes a touching Cinderella-like romance about a buck-toothed scullery maid called Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) besotted with Gristle, prince of the Bergens. There are also some surprisingly grown-up meditations on life, love and the meaning of happiness which may leave the kids scratching their heads.
Keeping Up With The Joneses
Dir: Greg Mottola, 105 mins, starring: Isla Fisher, Zach Galifianakis, Gal Gadot, Jon Hamm
Keeping Up With The Joneses - Trailer
Keeping Up With The Joneses is a misconceived comedy-thriller that cant work out whether its spoofing spy movies or making fun of suburbia. Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher play Jeff and Karen Gaffney, a jaded middle-class couple whose kids are away from home. They live in a suburban cul-de-sac alongside other equally conventional, equally jaded middle-class families.
Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot are their improbably glamorous and very worldly new neighbours, Tim and Natalie Jones. Tim claims to be a travel writer. Natalie says she works in social media. In fact, theyre both spies. Theyre strangely obsessed with goings-on at MBI, the secretive company at which Jeff works as a human resources manager.
Director Greg Mottola keeps the pace brisk, combining suburban barbecues and scenes of shopping expeditions with shoot-outs, explosions and high-speed chases. Michael LeSieurs screenplay yields a few funny one-liners. There are some good jokes about British dentistry and Galifianakis cant stop making feeble puns which work by sheer force of attrition. The hitch is that the film is pulling in opposing directions.
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On the one hand, it is trying to be a character-based comedy about two very different couples who have far more in common than they could have anticipated. On the other, Mottola wants to make an Austen Powers-like farce. The improbabilities mount and the action scenes become ever more random. Assassins on motorbikes turn up from nowhere, houses explode.
The performances are fine. Galifianakis has some funny moments as the empathetic HR guy who loves to listen to other peoples stories. Fisher shows comic flair as the bored married woman who turns out to have a natural instinct for espionage. Hamm and Gadot are playing one-dimensional characters, both of whom seem to have stumbled out of a Bond movie, but at least they do so with a certain charm. Its the premise here which simply doesnt hold together.
Ouija: Origin Of Evil
Dir: Mike Flanagan, 99 mins, starring: Elizabeth Reaser, Lin Shaye, Annalise Basso
Ouija: Origin Of Evil - Trailer
The title of Mike Flanagans horror film, released in good time for Halloween, is misleading. The Ouija board features prominently enough but this is a good, old-fashioned tale of a haunted house and of demonic possession at heart. Set in the late 1960s, it is stylishly shot but not quite as scary as might have been anticipated. Its trump card is the precocious child actress Lulu Wilson, who manages to look wide-eyed and innocent even as she channels all the forces of darkness that the special effects department can muster.
Wilson plays Doris Zander, the youngest daughter of Alice Zander, a single mum who makes a precarious living by staging seances in her sitting room. Doris and her teenage sister Paulina hide in the wings, making noises and blowing out candles to convince Alices gullible, grief-stricken clients that their loved ones really are getting in touch from the other side of the grave.
When Alice buys a ouija board as a new prop for work, matters begin to become properly creepy. In no time at all, Doris starts rolling her eyeballs and writing long letters in Polish, dictated to her from the other side. Alice, meanwhile, is desperate to communicate with her late husband, who died in mysterious circumstances.
The overloaded screenplay by Flanagan and Jeff Howard throws in elements of everything from The Exorcist to The Amityville Horror. There are references to a Mengele-like devils doctor from the Nazi era who made his way to America and whose pet trick was to sew victims mouths shut. Skeletons are in the woodwork. Kids speak in adult voices. Kindly priests talk about getting the Vatican involved.
There are hangings, stabbings and nightmarish visions. The basement is one part of the house you most certainly dont want to visit. With so much going on, it is little wonder that the film seems so sprawling and unfocused. A simpler approach might have chilled our blood more effectively but there are a few moments here that should jolt you out of your seats.
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Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump square off for the final television debate at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in Las Vegas tonight, with the exchange kicking off at 9pm ET / 6PM PT / 2AM BST (UK).
In a WWE-esque move, Trump has invited Obamas half-brother to the debate, Malik Obama having declared himself a surprise fan of the Republican nominees.
With Trump on the ropes and swinging, its sure to be a heated encounter, so how to watch it live?
The following outlets are all live-streaming it in its entirety on YouTube and TV:
NBC News (embedded above)
CBS News
Fox News
PBS
Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Show all 13 1 /13 Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? ABC/Facebook Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Twitter Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? ABC/Facebook Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Twitter Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Twitter Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Twitter Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Twitter Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate? Why was Trump creeping behind Clinton at the debate?
C-SPAN
Washington Post
New York Times
Univision
Telemundo
A handful of news stations are also running it on their mobile apps:
CBS News on Android, iOS, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku.
ABC News on Android, iOS, Windows, Apple TV, and Roku.
NBC News on Android, iOS, Windows, Apple TV, and Roku.
Reuters on Android and iOS.
Alternatively/in addition, you might want to head to debates.twitter.com where a debate about the debate is sure to be raging.
The Commission on Presidential Debates has said the third debate structure will be identical to the first, which was as follows:
"The debate will be divided into six time segments of approximately 15 minutes each on major topics to be selected by the moderator and announced at least one week before the debate.
"The moderator will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. Candidates will then have an opportunity to respond to each other. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a deeper discussion of the topic."
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The head of financial development for Luxembourg said a string of overseas banks and fund managers had explored moving London staff to the tiny country since the Brexit vote.
Nicolas Mackel said there had been strong interest from US and other non-EU firms assessing their options since Junes referendum.
Mr Mackel was speaking a little over a week after investment giant M&G announced it would be opening funds in Luxembourg, whose government styles it as the only country left that still loves bankers.
He said: They need to come up with contingency plans now; perhaps they should have done it before but were possibly numbed, like so many of us were, into thinking Brexit would never happen.
They are not looking to move their entire European teams from London; they just want to open a small unit in Luxembourg as well.
Mackel predicted a maximum of about 30,000 staff would leave the UK capital, split largely between Luxembourg, Frankfurt and Dublin.
But London is the major global financial centre and will remain the major global financial centre. You built London over decades, you have the infrastructure, the depth of expertise that is unmatched, he said.
However, he predicted a longer second phase of the Brexit effect on financial services, which would see new financial companies setting up in Europe less likely to choose the UK as their base.
Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty
For access to the EU, London will no longer be the natural choice, he said.
He predicted British institutions would follow Switzerlands UBS, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and Pictet in opening Luxembourg offices with between 300 and 400 staff to gain access to the EU.
Defecto La Defense, the body responsible for the business district in western Paris, this week made a play to lure City workers from London to France.
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Broadcast regulator Ofcom has dismissed every accused levelled at TV channels for their coverage of Jeremy Corbyns reign as Labour leader.
Mr Corbyn and his supporters have frequently claimed broadcasters like the BBC and Channel 4 are biased against his leadership of the party when they are supposed to remain neutral under the terms of the broadcast code.
But figures obtained by PoliticsHome through a Freedom of Information request that Ofcom has dismissed 72 complaints about bias fromt the channels it regulates - not including the BBC which is self-regulating.
It also dismissed a further 67 complaints over the past year which were deemed out of remit because they were against the BBC.
The BBC declined to disclose how many complaints it had received about the bias of its coverage.
The highest single number of complaints came in September 2015 when Mr Corbyn was first elected leader.
Following this 16 complaints were made about the BBCs coverage of the revenge reshuffle and seven in particular were made about the corporations Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg.
Ms Kuenssberg suffered a stream of online abuse and threats by Mr Corbyns supporters and was booed and hissed when asking the leader a question at an event months later.
The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Show all 11 1 /11 The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He called Hezbollah and Hamas friends True. In a speech made to the Stop the War Coalition in 2009, Mr Corbyn called representatives from both groups friends after inviting them to Parliament. He later told Channel 4 he wanted both groups, who have factions designated as international terror organisations, to be part of the debate for the Middle East peace process. I use (the word friends) in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk, he added. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. Reuters The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy Partly false. David Cameron used this as a line of attack at the Conservative Party conference but appears to have left out all context from Mr Corbyns original remarks. In an 2011 interview on Iranian television, the then-backbencher said the fact the al-Qaeda leader was not put on trial was the tragedy, continuing: The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is haunted by the legacy of his evil great-great-grandfather False. A Daily Express expose revealed that the Labour leaders ancestor, James Sargent, was the despotic master of a Victorian workhouse. Addressing the report at the Labour conference, Mr Corbyn said he had never heard of him before, adding: I want to take this opportunity to apologise for not doing the decent thing and going back in time and having a chat with him about his appalling behaviour. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about pigeon bombs in Parliament This one is true. On 21 May 2004, Mr Corbyn raised an early day motion entitled pigeon bombs, proposing that the House register being appalled but barely surprised that MI5 reportedly proposed to load pigeons with explosives as a weapon. The motion continued: The House believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again. It was not carried. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He rides a Communist bicycle False. A report in The Times referred to Mr Corbyn, known for his cycling, riding a Chairman Mao-style bicycle earlier this year. Less thorough journalists might have referred to it as just a bicycle, but no, so we have to conclude that whenever we see somebody on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao, he later joked. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn 'Jeremy Corbyn will appoint a special minister for Jews' False so far. The Sun report in December was allegedly based on a rumour passed to the paper by a Daily Express columnist who has written pieces critical of the Labour leader in the past. The minister did not materialise in his shadow cabinet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn wishes Britain would abolish its Army False. Another gem from The Sun took comments made at a Hiroshima remembrance parade in August 2012 where Mr Corbyn supported Costa Ricas move to abolish it armed forces. Wouldnt it be wonderful if every politician around the worldabolished the army and took pride in the fact that they dont have an army, he added. The caveat that every politician must take the step suggests Mr Corbyn does not support UK disarmament just yet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn stole sandwiches meant for veterans False. The Guido Fawkes blog claimed that the Labour leader took sandwiches meant for veterans at at Battle of Britain memorial service in September but a photo later emerged showing him being handed one by Costa volunteers, who later confirmed they were given to all guests. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He missed the induction into the Queens privy council True. After much speculation about Mr Corbyns republican views and willingness to bow to the monarch, his office confirmed that he did not attend the official induction to the privy council because of a prior engagement, but did not rule out joining the body. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn refuses to sing the national anthem. Partly true. The Labour leader was filmed standing in silence as God Save the Queen was sung at a Battle of Britain remembrance service but will reportedly sing it in future. Mr Corbyn was elusive on the issue in an interview, saying he would show memorials respect in the proper way, but sources said he would sing the anthem at future occasions. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cheese True. The group lists its purpose as the following: To increase awareness of issues surrounding the dairy industry and focus on economic issues affecting the dairy industry and producers.
She had provoked their fury after she arranged for the former shadow foreign minister Stephen Doughty to resign live on air during the BBCs Daily Politics programme in January.
This is a standard technique employed by journalists but 35,000 people signed a petition to have her sacked for bias.
Campaigning website 38 Degrees eventually removed the petition due to the number of misogynist comments it attracted.
Labours Deputy Leader Tom Watson rushed to her defence following the booing incident in June after Mr Corbyn was appeared to smirk at the noise before intervening.
He said it was rude and inappropriate and he felt embarrassed on behalf of his party.
Hissing is not the answer and it undermined Jeremys message he tweeted, I understand people hold many views on how she does her job but... hissing at her because of those views is wrong.
Mr Corbyn claimed the BBC was biased against him during a Vice news documentary shown earlier this year saying they were obsessed with discrediting him.
He said: There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me.
It is obsessive beyond belief. They are obsessed with trying to damage the leadership of the Labour party.
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While Samantha was a character adored by thousands of women for her unapologetic sexuality, independence and fiery one-liners, Kim Cattrall has said the Sex and the City role came at a personal cost.
The actress attributes the role she undertook for six years as the reason her marriage to her ex-husband Mark Levinson ended in a divorce.
It [Sex and the City] cost me my marriage because I was never home, the 60-year-old told news.com.au. I was never there and my husband got lonely and upset and competitive and it was really difficult, it was really hard.
Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage Show all 22 1 /22 Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318648.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318645.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318647.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318643.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318581.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318634.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318633.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318632.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318571.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318631.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318630.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318570.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318629.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318564.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318626.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318618.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318621.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318616.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318610.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318608.bin Getty Images Kim Cattrall on sex and the stage 318604.bin Getty Images
You end up spending more time with my Sex and the City family than I did with my real family.
Cattrall and Levinson, the actresses third husband, married in 1998, one year after she was cast in the hit show, the couple divorced in 2004.
Cattrall was married twice before and has never had children. Last year, she told BBC Radio 4 she finds the term childless offensive as it implies youre less because you havent had a child.
She said she considers herself a mother in many other ways, such as to the young actors and actresses she mentors and the nieces and nephews she is close to.
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A popular porn star has claimed a law that would force adult performers to wear condoms on all California sets would threaten her rights as a woman over her own body.
Tasha Reign is one of a number of adult actors campaigning against Proposition 60, a controversial measure due to be voted on in November.
Proposition 60 is being led by Michael Weinstein, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation president. It is effectively the tightening of a pre-existing law asking all performers to wear condoms during filming which is only acted upon if the agency charged with enforcing it, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, is notified.
Under Weinsteins proposals, adult film sets which do not comply with the law can be sued up to a year after the film is released, instead of the current six months statute of limitations. It also allows any Californian living in the state to sue filmmakers if condoms are not used. To put that in perspective, there are more than 38 million people living in California.
These portraits show porn stars in a different light Show all 12 1 /12 These portraits show porn stars in a different light These portraits show porn stars in a different light Riley Reid Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Sara Vibes Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Evan Stone Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Nina Hartley Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Chanel Preston Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Anri Okita Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Little Red Bunny Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Bonnie Rotten Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Valentina Nappi Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Carter Cruise Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Dakota Skye Roger Kisby These portraits show porn stars in a different light Samantha Mack Roger Kisby
Performers argue this aspect of the legislation is particularly damaging to them because it affects their financial interests in the films they perform in. They say having their details made public compounds their vulnerability.
Reign, 27, claims the measure is impractical and compromises her autonomy over her own body.
Recommended Read more The adult film stars transcending porn to become mainstream models
She told The Guardian: I do acts where I literally could not use condoms, whether that be anal, whether that be double penetration, whether that be multiple guys. I cannot even imagine having a group sex scene like that.
The bigger issue for me is that it opens up the gateway to mandate my body. I hate the idea that some man is going to tell me what I can and cant do.
[I dont believe a person] should come in and tell me, on my own adult film set that Im producing in my own home that I need to use a condom.
The contentious law has been the subject of a number of protests which have been ramped up in recent weeks. On Monday, hundreds of adult performers staged a demonstration outside of Weinsteins office in Los Angeles. Major porn sites also blocked access to their IP addresses in California on the same day.
Jessica Drake, a veteran adult film actress with a number of roles in mainstream productions under her belt, is a major opposing voice in the Proposition 60 debate and has organised fundraisers to fund the Vote No campaign.
Proposition 60 also requires producers to pay for vaccinations and STD testing. It is opposed by both the Republican and Democratic parties in California.
The Independent has contacted Weinstein for comment.
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Among the earliest forms of tools used by the ancestors of modern humans, a stone split to form a razor-sharp cutting edge has been used by palaeontologists investigating our evolution for decades.
But monkeys, it appears, have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works, according to academics at Oxford University and elsewhere.
For they have been observed in the wild in Brazil pounding rocks together and, apparently accidentally, creating almost identical stone blades.
The researchers who made the discovery said this disproved the idea that such activity was limited to humans and their ancestors, raising interesting questions about scientists understanding of our past.
The earliest known stone tools were found at the Lomekwi site in West Turkana, Kenya, and have been dated to 3.3 million years ago.
However one of the lead researchers behind that discovery told The Independent they were confident the tools they found were not the work of monkeys, partly because of the presence of cut marks on bones found at the site.
In the new study, described in a paper in the journal Nature, the scientists said they had observed wild-bearded capuchin monkeys in Serra da Capivara National Park in Brazil smashing quartzite cobble stones onto other embedded in a cliff face.
It is thought they do this to extract minerals such as silicon or remove lichen from them and have no interest in the sharp flakes of rock produced as a byproduct.
They reported that no monkey attempted to use the flakes to cut or scrap something.
Lead author Dr Tomos Proffitt, an Oxford University archaeologist, said: This does not mean that the earliest archaeological material in East Africa was not made by hominins.
It does, however, raise interesting questions about the possible ways this stone tool technology developed before the earliest examples in the archaeological record appeared.
It also tells us what this stone tool technology might look like. There are important questions too about the uniqueness of early hominin behaviour.
His co-author, Dr Michael Haslam, leader of the Primate Archaeology at Oxford, said understanding technology used by early forms of humans helps shape our view of human evolution.
The emergence of sharp-edged stone tools that were fashioned and hammered to create a cutting tool was a big part of that story, he said.
The fact that we have discovered monkeys can produce the same result does throw a bit of a spanner in the works in our thinking on evolutionary behaviour and how we attribute such artefacts.
But he added that even though making the flakes might not be unique to humans the manner in which they used them is still very different to what the monkeys seem capable of.
Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary
Professor Sonia Harmand, lead author of a paper in Nature last year about the discovery of 3.3 million-year-old tools, said she was very excited by the fantastic study.
But she stressed it did not affect their findings.
The first important thing to say is that these monkeys are not interested at all by the flakes that are accidentally produced this is a very, very important thing to say, said Professor Harmand, of Stony Brook University in the US.
We have bones associated with the tools, we have cut marks on some bones and we have micro-wear analysis showing they were used. So there is nothing to worry about.
However she said it was certainly something for scientists to bear in mind if they chance upon a sharp stone.
If you see things that look like broken stones and tools, Professor Harmand said, you have to ask yourself if there were monkeys around.
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The British Army is facing accusations of racism after a photo was posted from its official Twitter account showing a soldier wearing camouflage that critics compared to blackface.
Being a #soldier in the jungle requires a robust sense of humour, the tweet read, showing a troop pulling a face while wearing dark face paint and pointing a gun.
The message was deleted minutes after it was posted on Wednesday morning amid a storm of criticism.
One critic called the tweet an offensive mess, while several compared the image to blackface and many suggested it was racist.
But many were defending the post, saying the outrage was misplaced.
If you think camouflage is racist, please wear a hi-vis jacket next time youre being shot at, one message read.
The British Army frequently publishes images of soldiers in camouflage, including during a recent exercise by the Irish Guards in Belize, where the photograph was taken.
A spokesperson said: The content of the tweet shows a picture of a soldier wearing camouflage and concealment measures, standard for jungle training in Belize.
"We can see how the tweet may have been misinterpreted, have immediately removed it and apologise for any offence it may have caused.
Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Show all 20 1 /20 Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Professional Op Herrick Portfolio category An air insertion operation mounted by British soldiers and Afghan police, re-establishing government control in an area of Helmand province, Afghanistan Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Best Overall Professional Army PR Image Former Garrison Sergeant Major, The Household Division and London District, WO1 William Mott OBE MVO inspecting Nijmegen Company Grenadier Guards. The photo is titled 'How can you forget to shave?' Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Professional Portrait category Sergeant John S Kabia from the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF) at a camp in Kono, Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak Paul Shaw ABIPP Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Amateur Portrait category Cpl Dave Johns holding a photograph of his eldest son who in turn is holding a picture of his younger brother. The photo is titled 'Me and my boys' Pte Rebecca Brown Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Best Overall Professional Op Herrick Image Private John Mitchell resting after patrolling through the night in the Upper Sangin Valley, Afghanistan. The photo is titled 'Black Watch' Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Professional Op Herrick Portfolio category Cpl Carl Hines of the Royal Artillery providing covering fire while members of 4 Brigade Reconnaissance Force cross open ground in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Professional Op Herrick Portfolio category Soldiers serving with 16 Air Assault Brigade seated on a Royal Air Force C17 for the final leg of their journey to Afghanistan Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Professional Op Herrick Portfolio category Members of 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment resting in a secure compound while on patrol around Char Coucha village near Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Professional Op Herrick Portfolio category The US Army's 502nd Regiment supplying fire support for 5 Armoured Engineer Squadron, Royal Engineers during Operation HAMKARI in Afghanistan Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner Britain's soldiers at work. The photo is titled 'Mortar at Night' Cpl James McAllister Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner of the Professional Sport category The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery has left the noise and confines of London for equestrian and military training in the rural West Country. Enjoying the best of the Indian Summer in Cornwall, twelve horses and riders from Centre Section left their temporary stables in RAF St Mawgan just after dawn this morning to take to the surf on Watergate Bay Beach. The photo is titled 'Surf's Up' Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner Soldiers at work. The photo is titled 'Sitrep' LCpl Paul-Rui Penu Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner in the Professional Portfolio category, 2nd Place One of the ceremonial horses involved in the parade and a Grenadier Guard in the stables before the Colonels Review. Photo is titled 'Ceremonial Selfie' Cpl Jamie Peters Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner Sergeant Richard McKinnon a Royal Logistic Corp Bomb disposal expert checks the fuse on the World War II era SC 250kg German Bomb. The photo is titled 'Bombs Away' Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner This is taken on a Civilian Aircraft, taking Troops from Aldergrove Airfield in Northern Ireland on their first leg of the long trip to southern Afghanistan at the beginning of op Herrick 10. The photo is titled 'Here I go again' Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Runner Up in Best Professional Op Herrick Portfolio category Ranger Pete Mawhinney returns fire, with his General Purpose Machine Gun, after Taliban attempt to ambush his patrol Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner in the Professional Op Herrick Portfolio, 2nd Place Corporal Calum Cooper Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland talks to local children while he carries out searches on compounds. Photo is titled 'Kids' Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner in the Professional Soldiering category British Army Short Term Training Team (STTT) deliver training to the Ukrainian military Corporal Tom Evans Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Best Overall Professional Op Herrick Image, Highly Commended Boy soldier, Fusilier John Bryant. an 18 year old soldier from A Company, The Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland. In the muddy compound where he lives the 18 year old soldiers patrol on the front line in Helmand Province Afghanistan. The photo is titled 'Boy Soldier' Sgt Rupert Frere Army Photographic Competition 2015 winners Winner in the Professional Op Herrick Portfolio category, 2nd Place The photo is titled 'Re Supply' Sgt Rupert Frere
The furore came as the British armed forces continue attempts to attract more black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) recruits.
Soldiers from those groups make up just 7 per cent of the UKs regular forces, under the proportion in the wider population and short of a 10 per cent target to be reached by 2020.
In the Army, the BAME figure stands at 10 per cent but falls dramatically for the Royal Navy and RAF, at 3.5 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively.
The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Nicholas Carter, insisted the militarys values shared common ground with minority communities last year, saying increasing representation was his highest priority.
Our recruitment from the black, Asian and minority ethnic communities has been improving over the years, but it is nowhere near where it needs to be, he added. We have to do more.
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A Muslim charity is calling on members of the public to donate their coats in a bid to provide warmth for homeless and needy people in Manchester warm during the winter months.
Human Appeal, a British international development and relief charity in southern Manchester, has launched a campaign called Wrap Up Manchester, which will collect unwanted coats from the public and give them directly to those in need around the city.
The charity is working in partnership with Hands On London, an organisation that has run a similar campaign in the capital over the past six years.
The project has organised nine locations across Greater Manchester, donated by Safestore Self Storages, where people can drop off their coats.
Donated coats will then be distributed to homeless shelters, refugee centres, elderly organisation, women's refuges, children centres and other charities.
Samra Said, Human Appeals UK Programmes Coordinator, said there is a significant need for warm clothing in Manchester at a time when homelessness is rapidly growing.
Ms Said told The Independent: Its the first time weve done something of this nature. Weve done a call out to all the organisations in Manchester whoever is in dire need. So far weve got 500 people down as needing a coat, and we hope to provide for them all.
"Homelessness has worsened and the figures are scary. 100,000 people are homeless across the UK and 13.2 million are living in borderline poverty."
According to the councils annual rough sleeper count, nearly twice as many people are sleeping on the streets of Manchester as last year. Seventy people were recorded in one night in December, compared with 43 on the same evening in 2014. Meanwhile there were just 10 in 2011.
Jon Meech, chief executive of Hands On London, said: We are really excited that our friends at Human Appeal and will be running Wrap Up Manchester for 2016.
Did Banksy's latest work bring misery to a homeless man? Show all 3 1 /3 Did Banksy's latest work bring misery to a homeless man? Did Banksy's latest work bring misery to a homeless man? 581166.bin Rex Features Did Banksy's latest work bring misery to a homeless man? 581164.bin Did Banksy's latest work bring misery to a homeless man? 581163.bin Reuters
"Wrap Up London is now in its sixth year. With the support of Human Appeal, the most vulnerable in our two great cities will be able to keep a little warmer this winter. Human Appeal and the people of Manchester.
Earlier this week Theresa May unveiled a 40 million package designed to prevent homelessness by intervening to help individuals and families before they end up on the streets.
Wrap Up Manchester will run between 7-18 November. Donations can be made on here.
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A Tory MP has claimed child refugees arriving in the UK from Calais should undergo dental X-rays to ensure they are under the age of 18, and while they are used in Sweden and other countries, concerns remain about their effectiveness.
Children with links to the UK began arriving in Britain from the Calais Jungle this week after French authorities approved a list drawn up by charity Citizens UK.
But after photographs were published of 14 male refugees arriving on UK soil on Monday (17 October), remarks began to circulate that they looked older than 18.
Amid the speculation, Conservative MP David Davies claimed medical tests, such as dental X-rays, should be carried out on children arriving in the UK from Calais to assess how old they are, claiming such tests would "verify their age very, very accurately".
What do other countries do?
Sweden recently introduced a measure to do medical age assessments of unaccompanied asylum seekers by examining their teeth and knee joints, amid growing doubts over the accurate age of those who seek asylum in the country.
Meanwhile in France the High Council for Public Health (HCSP) adopted a recommendation in January 2014, stating that the medical examination must take place only at last resort and after a social evaluation and an examination of civil status documents," referring to the fact that no method taken alone can scientifically determine precisely and reliably the age of a person.
What are are people saying?
Mr Davies' comments sparked a wave of anger online and provoked a strong response from several charities working with migrants and refugees.
Rowan Farrell, co-founder of Refugee Info Bus, a charity operating in the Jungle camp, said the children looked more "weathered" due to the trauma they have endured. Mr Farrell told The Independent: A lot of the 16 and 17 year-olds in the camp look very weathered. Theyve been living in tents in Calais and before that theyve been through things we cant possibly imagine.
Ive physically seen it myself. Refugees and migrants who look a lot older, more wrinkled. But then you speak to them and see that they speak and act like a child, because they are in fact a child.
Citizens UK, the charity working with the government to bring unaccompanied minors to the UK, urged that the age assessments carried out on the children was a "rigorous process" and that lawyers "spend 10 hours on each case".
Jonathan Clark, a Citizens UK Leader, said: Extensive checks are carried out on the children. Safe Passage UK works with while they are still in Calais to verify that they are under 18; this is an extremely rigorous process and our lawyers spend ten hours just on verification for each case. In addition, the Home Office carries out their own checks before children are brought to the UK."
So does checking teeth actually work?
While Mr Davies said the tests would be "very accurate", experts have said dental evidence is said not totally reliable, pointing out it is possible to wrongly estimate someone's age by up to three years when making an estimate based on this criteria.
Professor of medical statistics at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, Tim Cole, told the BBC these tests were very inaccurate, saying: If you test children around the age of 18, or three years either side, in this way, the results get one third of the ages wrong.
Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Show all 9 1 /9 Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A coach carrying the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain arrives at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A Catholic priest chats to Muslim Imans as they wait for the arrival of the coach carrying the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain arrives at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Fourteen migrant children from the 'Jungle Camp' in Calais are due to arrive in the UK today to be reunited with relatives Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Young men are escorted after stepping off a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A boy is escorted after stepping off a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House after arriving from the Calais 'Jungle Camp' Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK UK Border Force staff escort the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain as they arrive at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A young boy arrives on a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House after leaving the Calais 'Jungle Camp.' Fourteen migrant children from the 'Jungle Camp' in Calais are due to arrive in the UK today to be reunited with relatives Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK British former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, center, flanked by Bethany Gardiner-Smith, left, from the Citizens UK charity and Bishop of Croydon Jonathan Clark speaks to the media about the 14 migrant children who will be resettled in the UK, outside Croydon Minster church in Croydon, south London AP Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Asif Khan whose brother Aimal Khan was one of fourteen migrant children who arrived in the UK, speaks to the media outside Lunar House in Croydon, south London. The 25-year-old chef has been living in the UK for 11 years, having fled Afghanistan himself. His brother Aimal Khan, 14, also from Afghanistan, had been stranded in the Jungle for six months PA
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) meanwhile said the tests are "imprecise" and "inappropriate", adding that there are health risks involved.
A spokesperson for RCPCH told The Independent: There is no single reliable method for making precise age estimates and the most appropriate approach is to use a holistic evaluation, incorporating narrative accounts, physical assessment of teeth, puberty and growth, and cognitive behavioural and emotional assessment.
"The use of radiological assessment is extremely imprecise and can only give an estimate of within two years in either direction and the use of ionising radiation for this purpose is inappropriate. If not done for medical purposes it can be potentially dangerous for a child to undergo these X-rays."
Frances Trevena, Acting Head of Policy and Programmes for Coram Childrens Legal Centre, a national charity committed to promoting children's rights, confirmed there is no medical procedure that can accurately assess a person's age, and raised "serious concerns" over "lazy assumptions" being made "on the basis of appearance.
Ms Trevena told The Independent: It is important to note that there is no way to accurately assess age, with the margin of error sometimes as much as five years either side, especially around the time of puberty. There is no medical assessment, whether through dental x-rays or measurement of bone density, which can accurately assess a childs age.
"The Childrens Commissioner, British Dental Association and Royal College of Radiologists have raised serious concerns around medical procedures being used to assess age, particularly given the significant lack of accuracy.
"In our experience, children as young as 14 are often incorrectly assessed as adults, and this can lead to serious repercussions, including children being placed in facilities with adults, in detention and in some cases going missing.
Where no reliable documentation exists, assessing age is notoriously difficult. Cultural differences, physical changes through puberty and the effect of trauma can have a significant impact on physical experience.
"UK government guidance confirms that assessments should only be carried out where there is significant reason to doubt the age of the child. It is extremely difficult to assess age from physical appearance alone, it is better that trained professionals conduct these investigations than journalists and political commentators.
"Vulnerable children fleeing persecution, often suffering high levels of trauma, will suffer from lazy assumptions made on the basis of their appearance.
What does the Government say?
Since Mr Davies made his comments it has been reported that, according to Home Office documents, nearly two-thirds of child refugees who officials questioned about their real age in the year 2015 were found to be adults.
However when asked how the age assessments were done in relation with the statistics,the government said there was no way of accurately confirming a refugees' age through medical tests, and explained that where documentary is not available, the assessment is made based on the "physical appearance" and "demeanour" of the individual.
A Home Office spokesperson said: All individuals are referred to the UK authorities by the France terre d'asile (FTDA) and are then interviewed by French and UK officials.
"Where credible and clear documentary evidence of age is not available, criteria including physical appearance and demeanour are used as part of the interview process to assess age.
Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' Show all 8 1 /8 Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' Heavy rainfall has turned the camp into a 'swamp' The Hummingbird Project Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' Heavy rainfall has turned the camp into a 'swamp' The Hummingbird Project Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' Heavy rainfall has turned the camp into a 'swamp' The Hummingbird Project Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' People gather outside the Eritrean church at the camp The Hummingbird Project Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' Heavy rainfall has turned the camp into a 'swamp' The Hummingbird Project Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' Heavy rainfall has turned the camp into a 'swamp' The Hummingbird Project Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' A fire at the camp destroyed shelters for 180 people The Hummingbird Project Calais refugee camp is at 'crisis point' A fire at the camp destroyed shelters for 180 people The Hummingbird Project
We do not use dental x-rays to confirm the ages of those seeking asylum in the UK. The British Dental Association has described them as inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical.
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More than two-thirds of refugees arriving in the UK who had their age assessed were in fact over 18, Home Office figures reveal.
Data from the year ending in June reveals that of 933 refugees whose ages were disputed, 68 per cent were deemed to be adults.
It comes as the Home Office rules out dental checks to verify the ages of young refugees from Calais, after a call from Conservative MP David Davies to implement such tests.
The Home Office statistics revealed that between January 2006 and June 2016, 45 per cent of 11,847 applicants whose ages were checked were not children.
The Home Office says when refugees do not have documentation to prove their age, the test comes down to "physical appearance and demeanour".
The disclosure also comes ahead of an expected arrival of a second group of refugee children in London.
A Home Office spokesman could not yet confirm how it carries out age checks on refugees Getty (Getty)
It also follows widespread criticism of Tory MP David Davies suggestion to check the teeth to verify migrants ages.
The Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee chairman said mandatory checks would reassure the public the system was not being exploited.
But a British Dental Association (BDA) spokesman said: It is both inappropriate and unethical to take radiographs of people when there is no health benefit for them.
Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Show all 9 1 /9 Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A coach carrying the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain arrives at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A Catholic priest chats to Muslim Imans as they wait for the arrival of the coach carrying the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain arrives at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Fourteen migrant children from the 'Jungle Camp' in Calais are due to arrive in the UK today to be reunited with relatives Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Young men are escorted after stepping off a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A boy is escorted after stepping off a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House after arriving from the Calais 'Jungle Camp' Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK UK Border Force staff escort the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain as they arrive at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A young boy arrives on a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House after leaving the Calais 'Jungle Camp.' Fourteen migrant children from the 'Jungle Camp' in Calais are due to arrive in the UK today to be reunited with relatives Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK British former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, center, flanked by Bethany Gardiner-Smith, left, from the Citizens UK charity and Bishop of Croydon Jonathan Clark speaks to the media about the 14 migrant children who will be resettled in the UK, outside Croydon Minster church in Croydon, south London AP Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Asif Khan whose brother Aimal Khan was one of fourteen migrant children who arrived in the UK, speaks to the media outside Lunar House in Croydon, south London. The 25-year-old chef has been living in the UK for 11 years, having fled Afghanistan himself. His brother Aimal Khan, 14, also from Afghanistan, had been stranded in the Jungle for six months PA
Doctors of the World executive director Leigh Daynes said: "It's as unethical as it is inappropriate to expect healthcare workers to conduct tests on patients for immigration enforcement purposes.
"Such is the seriousness of Mr Davies's unethical and divisive remarks that we are asking his party chairman to consider disciplinary action."
Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Show all 7 1 /7 Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis The Solidarity With Refugees group said Saturdays protest aimed to show our Government and the world that Britain is ready to welcome more refugees. Rex Features Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis People march through central London as they take part in a protest rally organised by Solidarity with Refugees in a bid to urge the Government to take more action on the migrant crisis Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis The protest comes days before world leaders meet to discuss crisis at UN General Assembly Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Demonstrators made their way from Park Lane to Parliament Square in London on Saturday afternoon Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Marchers chanted refugees are welcome here and waved banners reading no-one is illegal and lets help people Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis The march was supported by charities and groups including the Red Cross, Asylum Aid, Save the Children, Hope Not Hate, Oxfam and the UN Refugee Agency Rex Features Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis In the wake of Alans death, David Cameron pledged to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK over the coming five years but there have been additional calls to re-home those who have already reached Europe, as well as asylum seekers coming from other conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan Rex Features
A series of mainstream UK publications, along with the Monmouth MP, have raised eyebrows over the ages of 14 teenagers who arrived from Calais on Monday to be repatriated with family.
A Home Office spokesman also said its comment that the child refugees look older "because war has toughened them up", was an unofficial quote given to a Mail Online journalist.
The spokesman, who could not confirm how many child refugees were expected on Wednesday, said: We work closely with the French authorities and their partner agencies to ensure all those who come to the UK from the camps in Calais are eligible under the Dublin regulations.
All individuals are referred to the UK authorities by the France terre d'asile (FTDA) and are then interviewed by French and UK officials. Where credible and clear documentary evidence of age is not available, criteria including physical appearance and demeanour are used as part of the interview process to assess age.
We do not use dental x-rays to confirm the ages of those seeking asylum in the UK. The British Dental Association has described them as inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical.
Frances Trevena, acting head of policy and programmes for Coram Childrens Legal Centre, said today that checking age is "notoriously difficult" and that there is "no way to accurately assess".
"Cultural differences, physical changes through puberty and the effect of trauma can have a significant impact on physical experience," she said.
"Vulnerable children fleeing persecution, often suffering high levels of trauma, will suffer from lazy assumptions made on the basis of their appearance."
French authorities are expected to empty the Calais jungle in the coming weeks and dismantle it by the start of winter.
A Lille court rejected a request from aid groups to delay the operation, claiming the country was not ready for the relocation of up to 10,000 migrants.
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Dentists have condemned calls for the teeth of child refugees to be tested to verify their ages, after a Tory MP suggested those arriving in the UK from Calais "don't look like children".
Images of some of those arriving in Britain on Monday were splashed across some UK papers, with headlines suggesting they may not be under 18.
David Davies, the MP for Monmouth and not to be confused with "Brexit" secretary David Davis, said: "I hope British hospitality is not being abused."
The UK has committed to take more child refugees from Calais's "Jungle" refugee camp as the French authorities seek to close it down.
Refugees are supposed to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach after fleeing conflict or persecution. But under the Dublin regulation, they can seek asylum elsewhere if they are minors and have family ties there.
Recommended Read more The first unaccompanied children from Calais Jungle arrive in Croydon
The British Dental Association (BDA) said Mr Davies' demands for testing were "inappropriate and unethical".
It asked that the privacy of these "vulnerable young people" be respected by the media, and said it was not even possible to accurately say if someone was under the age of 18 using dental tests.
A spokesman said: "We are vigorously opposed to the use of dental X-rays to determine whether asylum seekers have reached 18.
"It's not only an inaccurate method for assessing age, but it is both inappropriate and unethical to take radiographs of people when there is no health benefit for them.
"X-rays taken for a clinically-justified reason must not be used for another purpose without the patient's informed consent, without coercion and in full knowledge of how the radiograph will be used and by whom."
The Jungle refugee camp could be closed imminently after a French court rejected an appeal from aid groups to delay the clearance.
French authorities are expected to empty the migrant camp in Calais in the coming weeks and dismantle it by the start of winter.
A Lille court has rejected a request from aid groups to postpone the closure, arguing that authorities are not ready to relocate its residents.
Charity groups warned that many of the migrants do not want to stay in France and may set up camp elsewhere to continue trying to cross the English Channel to Britain.
The French interior and housing ministers welcomed the court's ruling and said the camp should be dismantled before winter sets in.
Additional reporting by agencies
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Russias flagship aircraft carrier is leading a fleet of naval ships heading towards the English Channel as they journey towards Syria.
The nuclear-powered Admiral Kuznetzov is one of seven vessels photographed off the Norwegian coastline on Monday en-route to the eastern Mediterranean, with the most likely passage taking them through the North Sea, Dover Strait and English Channel before heading south.
The Admiral Kuznetzov is loaded with fighter jets, reconnaissance and combat helicopters and cruise missiles to be used to bolster Russias bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
A photo taken from a Norwegian surveillance aircraft shows a group of Russian navy ships in international waters off the coast of Northern Norway on October 17, 2016. (Reuters)
Norways National Joint Headquarters said the fleet was shadowed by a Norwegian naval frigate as it passed through international waters.
Major Elisabeth Eikeland, a spokesperson for the Norwegian army, told the AFP news agency the tone was good with the Russian ships.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is escorted by the Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) battlecruiser, the Vice Admiral Kulakov destroyer, Severomorsk destroyers and several supply ships - all part of the Northern Fleet - the Russian defence ministry said.
Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta newsapaper claimed the Russian naval force is the most powerful to sail in northern Europe in two years.
It is the latest show of military power from Russia, after a series of incidents seeing fighter jets approach Nato members airspace in what has been compared to Cold War-style brinkmanship.
In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Show all 19 1 /19 In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrian boys cry following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov speaks to the media in Moscow, Russia. Konashenkov strongly warned the United States against striking Syrian government forces and issued a thinly-veiled threat to use Russian air defense assets to protect them AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrians wait to receive treatment at a hospital following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Alepp Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov speaks at a briefing in the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia. Antonov said the Russian air strikes in Syria have killed about 35,000 militants, including about 2,700 residents of Russia AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Jameel Mustafa Habboush, receives oxygen from civil defence volunteers, known as the white helmets, as they rescue him from under the rubble of a building following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civil defence members rest amidst rubble in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A girl carrying a baby inspects damage in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members look for survivors at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members carry an injured woman on a stretcher at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Volunteers from Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, help civilians after Russia carried out its first airstrikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria The aftermath of Russian airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Smoke billows from buildings in Talbiseh, in Homs province, western Syria, after airstrikes by Russian warplanes AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Air Forces carry out an air strike in the ISIS controlled Al-Raqqah Governorate. Russia's KAB-500s bombs completely destroy the Liwa al-Haqq command unit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia claimed it hit eight Isis targets, including a "terrorist HQ and co-ordination centre" that was completely destroyed In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A video grab taken from the footage made available on the Russian Defence Ministry's official website, purporting to show an airstrike in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A release from the Russian defence ministry purportedly showing targets in Syria being hit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia launched air strikes in war-torn Syria, its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. Russian warplanes carried out strikes in three Syrian provinces along with regime aircraft as Putin seeks to steal US President Barack Obama's thunder by pushing a rival plan to defeat Isis militants in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria, a thousand kilometres away. The targets include ammunition factories, ammunition and fuel depots, command centres, and training camps A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis
The deployment came amid continuing international tensions over Vladimir Putins intervention in Syria, with Russia announcing a temporary pause in the bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday as a show of goodwill.
Monitors say the campaign in support of President Assad has killed thousands of civilians in indiscriminate air strikes violating international law, while Russian authorities maintain they are targeting Isis and other terrorists.
The defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced the Admiral Kuznetsovs deployment last month, saying it would bolster Russias capability in the region, where it already has around 10 ships.
A spokesperson for the Royal Navy said British forces and Nato routinely monitor foreign warships nearing territorial waters.
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Chancellor Philip Hammond has set himself up for a Brexit battle with Theresa May after challenging one of her longest-held stances on immigration.
Mr Hammond indicated that he thought foreign student numbers should be removed from net migration statistics, something Ms May vehemently opposes.
He then attacked cabinet colleagues who leaked his comments from a private meeting and challenged Brexiteers, such as Boris Johnson, over big promises they made about extra public spending during the EU referendum.
Recommended Read more Amber Rudd launches immigration crackdown targeting students
Mr Hammonds words follow reports of a cabinet rift over Brexit, with the Chancellor on one side and Brexiteers intent on leaving the single market and strong immigration controls on the other.
Speaking at a hearing of the Treasury Select Committee, Mr Hammond said it is essential that immigration controls are introduced in a way that protects our economy.
When asked if students should still be counted among immigrant numbers, he said: My view is this is a question of public perception and the publics view. Clearly immigration and the level of net migration is an issue of concern.
The question we should be asking is what does the public understand should be included within that definition?. Its not whether politicians think one thing or another, its whether the public believe it.
When committee chair Andrew Tyrie cited research showing only a fifth of people think students count as immigrants and that 59 per cent are opposed to efforts to reduce their number, Mr Hammond said: I think thats very interesting information.
Theresa May on immigration in conference speech
As Home Secretary, Ms May doggedly fought off an attempt by George Osborne to remove students from net migration numbers at a time when the ex-Chancellor was at the height of his power.
At Conservative conference earlier this month, the Government announced plans for a tough new crackdown on student visas.
Mr Hammond revealed his approach to the issue after he was attacked in the press by unnamed Brexiteers, who revealed that in a cabinet committee meeting he raised concerns about the economic impact of a new work-visa system.
Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty
Addressing the cabinet leak head-on, he said: It would be far more helpful to this debate if we were able to conduct these internal discussions privately without leaks to newspapers.
We need space to explore different options, to discuss among ourselves.
Its no secret that there are different views about how we should approach the [Brexit] negotiation.
During the EU referendum Leave campaigners, including now Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson, travelled round the country on a red bus emblazoned with a pledge that the NHS could have an extra 350 million if the UK left.
Asked if he thought Leave voters would be disappointed about the absence of promised extra public funding, a so-called fiscal dividend, Mr Hammond said: That is for others to answer.
I didnt propose to anyone that there would be a substantial fiscal dividend.
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The UK could suffer a fall in GDP of 4.5% by 2030 if it leaves the EU customs union.
Cabinet ministers were given stark warnings from multiple sources of the effect of adopting a Norway-style model, in a paper that was circulated at a meeting of Theresa Mays Brexit cabinet committee, according to the Guardian.
Studies by the Treasury, think tank NIESR and London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance, made pre-Brexit predictions of the impact of the UK remaining in the single market but leaving the customs union.
The paper warned that the UK would need to grow trade with its 10 largest partners outside the EU by 37% by 2030 in order to mitigate any negative impact on trade.
Professor Thomas Sampson at London School of Economics corroborated the warnings, arguing that leaving the customs union would be bad for the economy.
Leaving the EU customs union would hurt the British economy and a fall in GDP per capita of 4.5% by 2030 is a sensible estimate of the potential impact. We cannot know for certain how large the costs will be, he told The Independent.
Theresa May hints that Brexit negotiations will go past 2019
At the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE we estimate the effect of leaving the customs union and trading with the EU under World Trade Organisation rules would be equivalent to a fall in living standards of between 2.6% and 9.5% due to reduced trade with the EU.
Professor Sampson advocated a soft Brexit, warning the consequences of leaving the customs union would result in a fall in wages and would force the government to make cuts.
This would mean a fall in average real wages and would lead to lower tax receipts forcing the government to cut public spending, he said.
Pursuing a soft Brexit and staying in the Customs Union and the Single Market would be a better option for the British economy.
Ministers were also warned that some ports, including Dover and Holyhead, could find themselves completely log-jammed if custom checks on trade vehicles were implemented.
Jonathan Roberts, head of communications at the UK Chamber of Shipping, said the dissolution of custom checks in 1992 spurred a huge spike in trade between the UK and the EU.
When custom checks were abolished in 1992, it basically meant you could trade as easily with Munich as you could with Manchester, we saw a big spike in trade between the UK and the EU, he told The Independent.
Whenever you make trade more easy, the volume of trade will inevitably go up.
Shipping containers and vehicles wait to be loaded for export at Liverpool Docks (Getty Images)
However, he warned UK port and motorway infrastructure had not been designed to accommodate custom controls, which could cause significant backlogs.
If there was any kind of reintroduction of customs reporting you would have a backlog, a major traffic problem in and around the ports because there is nowhere for lorries to go while the paperwork is being sorted, so theoretically traffic jams could become commonplace, like the ones we saw earlier in the year that stretched miles long, he said.
Making trade more difficult, you could assume there would be a drop in the volume of trade. That would bad for the UK, but crucially for the EU as well. This is the kind of mechanical detail that is never going to be discussed in a referendum debate but that ultimately we need to think of.
Drivers wait next to their parked lorries on the M20 motorway as part of Operation Stack, which aims to manage traffic during disruption to Eurotunnel or ferry services (REUTERS/Neil Hall) (Reuters)
Mr Roberts argued that there was no incentive for Europe to implement strict custom controls due to the amount it imports to the UK.
The UK has a trade deficit with the EU so it is not in the EUs interest to see trade become more difficult with the introduction of checks, I think its quite unlikely there will be a significant reintroduction because it is in no one's interest for that to happen, he said.
I assume the UK will come to an agreement with some very light touch custom reporting. The EU sells us far more than we send to them so its not in their interest to make trade more difficult, so you can make a reasonable stab that neither side wants to harm their trade relationships.
What experts have said about Brexit Show all 11 1 /11 What experts have said about Brexit What experts have said about Brexit Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond The Chancellor claims London can still be a world financial hub despite Brexit One of Britains great strengths is the ability to offer and aggregate all of the services the global financial services industry needs This has not changed as a result of the EU referendum and I will do everything I can to ensure the City of London retains its position as the worlds leading international financial centre. Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Yanis Varoufakis Greece's former finance minister compared the UK relations with the EU bloc with a well-known song by the Eagles: You can check out any time you like, as the Hotel California song says, but you can't really leave. The proof is Theresa May has not even dared to trigger Article 50. It's like Harrison Ford going into Indiana Jones' castle and the path behind him fragmenting. You can get in, but getting out is not at all clear Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Michael OLeary Ryanair boss says UK will be screwed by EU in Brexit trade deals: I have no faith in the politicians in London going on about how the world will want to trade with us. The world will want to screw you that's what happens in trade talks, he said. They have no interest in giving the UK a deal on trade Getty What experts have said about Brexit Tim Martin JD Wetherspoon's chairman has said claims that the UK would see serious economic consequences from a Brexit vote were "lurid" and wrong: We were told it would be Armageddon from the OECD, from the IMF, David Cameron, the chancellor and President Obama who were predicting locusts in the fields and tidal waves in the North Sea" PA What experts have said about Brexit Mark Carney Governor of Bank of England is 'serene' about Bank of England's Brexit stance: I am absolutely serene about the judgments made both by the MPC and the FPC Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Christine Lagarde IMF chief urges quick Brexit to reduce economic uncertainty: We want to see clarity sooner rather than later because we think that a lack of clarity feeds uncertainty, which itself undermines investment appetites and decision making Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Inga Beale Lloyds chief executive says Brexit is a major issue: "Clearly the UK's referendum on its EU membership is a major issue for us to deal with and we are now focusing our attention on having in place the plans that will ensure Lloyd's continues trading across Europe EPA What experts have said about Brexit Colm Kelleher President of US bank Morgan Stanley says City of London will suffer as result of the EU referendum: I do believe, and I said prior to the referendum, that the City of London will suffer as result of Brexit. The issue is how much What experts have said about Brexit Richard Branson Virgin founder believes we've lost a THIRD of our value because of Brexit and cancelled a deal worth 3,000 jobs: We're not any worse than anybody else, but I suspect we've lost a third of our value which is dreadful for people in the workplace.' He continued: "We were about to do a very big deal, we cancelled that deal, that would have involved 3,000 jobs, and thats happening all over the country" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Barack Obama US President believes Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU: "It is absolutely true that I believed pre-Brexit vote and continue to believe post-Brexit vote that the world benefited enormously from the United Kingdom's participation in the EU. We are fully supportive of a process that is as little disruptive as possible so that people around the world can continue to benefit from economic growth" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Kristin Forbes American economist and an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England argues that the economy had been less stormy than many expected following the shock referendum result: For nowthe economy is experiencing some chop, but no tsunami. The adverse winds could quickly pick up and merit a stronger policy response. But recently they have shifted to a more favourable direction Getty
However, Brexit secretary David Davis and international trade secretary Liam Fox allegedly claimed the paper was pessimistic.
Mr Fox allegedly told colleagues that non-EU countries had assured him the UK would be able to continue trading on the same conditions until new agreements had been drawn up, according to The Guardian.
Downing street declined to comment on the paper and confirmed their stance that thay would not comment on ongoing Brexit negotiations.
A UK Government lawyer said on Tuesday it is very likely MPs will be able to vote on the final Brexit agreement between the UK and the EU.
James Eadie QC spoke in the High Court as part of the final day of a hearing to decide whether the Prime Minister can trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval.
Downing Street has since confirmed that he was representing the Government's position.
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The Government must use the full weight of its influence in order to stamp out corruption, money laundering and tax evasion which is having a disproportionate impact on the world's poorest countries, MPs have concluded.
In a report, by the International Development committee (IDC), it is also claimed that there is much more Britain could do to get its own house in order as some individuals and businesses based in the UK have long played a role in facilitating global corruption.
The group of MPs, led by Labour MP Stephen Twigg, highlighted official figures estimating that between 23 and 57 billion was being laundered through the UK each year while it pointed to the role of British overseas territories in facilitating global tax avoidance and evasion.
Around half the companies featured in the leaked "Panama Papers" of law firm Mossack Fonseca - some 113,000 in all - were registered in the British Virgin Islands, while the UK was second only to Hong Kong for the number of facilitators of tax evasion and avoidance it hosted.
In particular, the report urged the Government to use the "full weight of its influence" to persuade the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies to publish registers of "beneficial ownership" so they could no longer be used by companies to shield their profits from the tax authorities.
"It is clear from the evidence we received that companies and individuals in the UK, Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories play a major role in facilitating global corruption," the committee said. "Lack of transparency in the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies will significantly hinder efforts to curb global corruption and continue to damage the UK's reputation as a leader on anti-corruption.
"It is disappointing that the Government has missed an opportunity to build on the momentum of the anti-corruption summit."
The committee chair Mr Twigg added: The IDC has previously called on the UK Government to get its own house in order. This remains the caseGovernment must continue to lobby for the same level of transparency and accountability to be applied in the UKs Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, for example by the creation of public registers of beneficial ownership.
The Governments commitment to the creation of a crossgovernment Anti-Corruption Strategy and the establishment of the Joint Anti-Corruption Unit, based in the Cabinet office earlier this year is to be welcomed. To have real impact overseas, this progress must be complemented through its work in developing countries. Dfid must publish its anti-corruption country strategies, long overdue internal reviews and country plans as a matter of urgency.
Huge amounts of money are lost every year through illegal tax evasion, money laundering and bribery. The people most at risk from this scourge are the worlds poorest, who lose out on education, healthcare and infrastructure; not to mention the impact of petty corruption on their daily lives. It is vital that the UKs established commitment to anti-corruption measures places their needs first and foremost.
A spokesperson for Dfid added: The UK is a global leader in the fight against corruption, and this report rightly recognises the Governments summit in May as a significant moment in international efforts to tackle corruption.
Helping the worlds poorest stand on their own two feet by tackling poverty overseas while stopping organised crime, money laundering and tax evasion is firmly in the UKs interests. The UK is fully committed to delivering on the promises made at the Anti-Corruption Summit.
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The Liberal Democrats remain confident hopes of pushing the Conservatives close in the by-election for David Camerons former constituency of Witney, despite the incumbent partys seemingly unassailable position.
Liz Leffman, a councillor in West Oxfordshire, is the Lib Dem candidate. She won her council seat with 65 per cent of the vote in 2016, when the Tories came in second place with 22 points.
She contested the parliamentary seat of Witney in 2005, coming second to David Cameron with the highest ever share of the vote for both the Lib Dems and any opposition party.
The Oxfordshire constituency has been a safe Conservative seat since its creation in 1983. It was fleetingly a Labour seat, when former MP Shaun Woodward defected from the Tories to the Labour Party in 1999, until it was retaken in 2001 by David Cameron.
Now, the Conservatives have fielded councillor and barrister Robert Courts to replace the former prime minister, but with lesser name recognition and lower turnout he is unlikely to do as well as Mr Cameron.
In normal circumstances, the Conservatives would be expected to easily hold the seat, given their 25,000-vote majority at the last election. However, the Tory governments determination to take Britain out of the European Union is a direction emphatically opposed by many residents of relatively affluent and well-educated West Oxfordshire.
A total of 57 per cent of voters - likely higher in the town of Witney - voted to remain part of the bloc, making Oxfordshire the most pro-EU county in England.
It is considered unlikely Theresa Mays commitment to a hard Brexit will resonate among many here, with industry based in the area, including motorsports, dependent on close European cooperation.
The Liberal Democrats under Europhile leader Tim Farron have positioned themselves in the pro-EU centre-ground since the Brexit result.
While their recovery in national polls has been patchy, a spate of council by-election wins since May has given the party hopes of a more substantial recovery.
Given the divisions within the party, Labour candidate Duncan Enright is not expected to improve on the 17 per cent of the vote he achieved in 2015.
Hoping for a good showing for his party, Mr Farron himself promised to spend much of month running up to the election in Witney.
He believes the Lib Dem ground operation is efficient and well-staffed - and is confident of picking up votes from disaffected Europhiles, social liberals and former Conservatives wary of the new direction of the Government.
Witney resident Matilda Pillonel, a law student and former Conservative voter, explained why she would be supporting the Lib Dems.
I feel let down by the Conservative Governments poor management of Brexit and their regressive grammar school policy, she told The Independent.
I admired the liberal wing of the party, but Im disillusioned with this sudden lurch to the right under Theresa May.
The betting markets have responded positively, with the Liberal Democrats odds-on to retake at least second place - from fourth in the General Election.
Lord Ashdown, a former Lib Dem leader, has called for the by-election to be treated as a referendum on the Governments Brexit course.
Parliament PMQs (PA)
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Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are clashing in the House of Commons ahead of an EU summit to decide the future of the continent.
Tory MP condemned for demanding teeth checks
MPs can block Brexit deal, No. 10 admits
Brexit could mean fewer holidays, research suggests
Theresa May gives clear signal towards hard Brexit
The clash comes after Government lawyers said in court yesterday that Parliament would likely be given a vote on any final Brexit deal a reversal in tone from previous pronouncements from the Prime Minister.
Labour has been pushing for a parliamentary vote on the opening terms of any Brexit negotiations, but Ms May has resisted such plans, saying there would categorically not be a vote.
The summit will be the first since Theresa May was appointed and since she pledged her support for a Hard Brexit restricting freedom of movement.
Britain and other EU nations are also set to confirm the CETA trade agreement with Canada at the summit.
It was revealed yesterday the Department for International Trade would not grant MPs a vote on the controverisal deal described by activists as TTIP's 'little brother' until it had already been signed.
Others issues likely to be raised at PMQs includ the Child Sexual Abuse inquiry and the resignation of its top judge.
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It would take an orator of the most gifted craft to shift between subtle innuendo over how Mrs Bone marks the occasion of Mr Bones birthday, and the historic death of 144 people in a colliery collapse. Our new Prime Minister is not an orator of the most gifted craft.
Not that it was her fault. Last week Michael Fabricant graciously eased her in with a lengthy soliloquy on the matter of his own prostate gland. No such niceties this time.
Its possible birthday boy Peter Bone should have foreseen, when he was granted the first question, that it would likely fall to him to ask it directly after a tribute from the Prime Minister to the 144 victims of the Aberfan colliery disaster, fifty years ago this week. He should have forseen that it would therefore fall to him to add his own sympathies to hers, and that therefore his question on whether she would kindly reopen his local prison would require a different hook than to begin by shouting: Anyway! Its my birthday today!
Its possible also, that Ms May should have foreseen, when she told him she hoped Mrs Bone will treat the occasion in the appropriate manner, that the house would descend into uproarious laughter for what felt like a full minute. Bone, no longer erect by this point but still a glowing red, glanced to the heavens.
From the midst of such hilarity came Corbyn. It was one of those weeks where six questions really doesnt seem like enough. Is the Chancellor going to quit the cabinet? Will there ever, ever be a third runway? Is the decision over whether parliament can have a vote on leaving the EU seriously going to end up in the hands of the European Court of Justice (beyond satire this one, but a subject for another day)? When did the Prime Minister know that the (most recent) outgoing chair of the child abuse inquiry may or may not allegedly be prone to the odd edgy remark on the subject of race? And all this while Iraqi troops close in on Mosul and one of her backbenchers is touring the TV studios agitating for refugee children to receive the same kind of dental checks that are ordinarily only practised on horses by the travelling Roma community.
With so many gift horses to choose from, it was nothing if not brave of Corbyn to look all of them in the mouth one by one and reject the lot. Instead we had six questions on the NHS. It lasted 12 minutes and 31 seconds. It can be summarised thus: Jeremy Corbyn thinks the Conservatives are cutting the NHS. The Conservatives think theyre spending more on it. This is a debate that has not advanced or altered a nanometre in six decades but it does serve a wider strategic purpose. The moment two politicians start arguing about the NHS on live TV, there is an instant surge in UK calls to Dignitas, even from the young and perfectly healthy. Independent studies have put the savings in billions.
At a Select Committee hearing this week, NHS England chief Simon Stevens warned that if current funding levels are maintained, by 2018 the only anaesthetic offered to patients undergoing the most invasive surgeries will be videos of politicians arguing about the NHS. This new and inexpensive procedure has apparently had some success in trial, but months later several patients are yet to come round.
Labours Lisa Nandy, by the way, did manage a question on what the Prime Minister knew by when with regard to New Zealand Judge and former child abuse chair Lowell Goddards alleged comments about Asian men and paedophlia. Ms May was shaken, briefly. She didnt have an answer, at least not until 3pm, when the latest polls came out putting the Conservatives at 47 per cent and Labour at 29. We imagine Mr and Mrs May will be treating the occasion in the appropriate manner.
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Theresa May has failed to assure MPs that civilians have not been killed by British manufactured bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia on Yemen.
The Prime Minister was asked twice by Angus Robertson, the SNPs leader in the Commons, to provide an assurance that the Paveway IV bombs, manufactured in Britain, and under licence from the Government to the oil-rich kingdom, have not killed civilians in Yemen.
Thousands of innocent civilians have now been killed by Saudi airstrikes, Mr Robertson added.
But Ms May appeared to avoid the question, claiming: We have one of the toughest regimes in the world in relations to arms exports. When these allegations arise then we have been pressing the Saudi Arabian government have properly investigated these issues.
Recommended Read more Britain to review arms sales to Saudi Arabia after funeral strike
Mr Robertson the pressed again on the same question. Its beyond doubt that Saudi air forces bombing Yemen, flying planes that are made in Britain, by pilots that are trained in Britain and they are dropping missiles that are made in Britain. I asked her a direct question and she couldnt answer it, he said.
He added if Ms May doesnt know the answer to the question how can she possibly in good conscience continue selling them to Saudi Arabia?
She responded: The point I made is a very simple one that we press for proper investigations into what has happened on those incidents before we reach a decision or a conclusion on what has happened in relation to those incidents. We do have a very strong relationship with Saudi Arabia that is important for this country it is important in terms of dealing with counter terrorism and a number of other issues.
Last week arms campaigners demanded, in the wake of one of the deadliest massacres of Yemens ongoing civil war, that arms exports from Britain must end now. It followed an attack, two weeks ago, which is strongly believed to have been carried out by the Saudi-led coalition air force, killing at least 140 people and injured as many as 600 more at a funeral. Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Yemeni rebel governments spokesman in Sanaa said the airstrike was an act of genocide by the Saudi-led alliance, which is fighting the rebels.
Andrew Smith of Campaign against the Arms Trade (CAAT) added: The humanitarian situation in Yemen is dire and getting even worse. Innocent people are dying every day. The UK Governments response has been to continue supporting the Saudi forces that are dropping the bombs, and to sell them even more weapons.
Theresa May has previously defended selling arms to Saudi Arabia despite the country facing accusations of war crimes, insisting close ties keep people on the streets of Britain safe. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, however, has called on the Prime Minister to halt the sales because of the humanitarian devastation caused by the coalition waging war against rebels in Yemen.
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Theresa May has failed to rule out that looming NHS efficiencies in every part of England will end in the closure of some casualty departments.
In the Commons, the Prime Minister was challenged about the impact of new sustainability and transformation plans (STPs), ordered by NHS chief Simon Stevens.
The 44 plans which must be finished within weeks have already provoked fierce local campaigns against the threat of mergers, or closures, of hospital departments.
It was reported that protesters went to Downing Street last week with petitions from parts of Devon, West Yorkshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Cornwall.
During Prime Ministers Questions, Jeremy Corbyn demanded a guarantee as part of a wide-ranging attack on the state of the NHS, claiming it faces the worst crisis in its history.
The Labour leader said: Next month, sustainability and transformation plans are going to be published.
Many all over the country are quite alarmed by this, because of the threat to accident and emergency departments.
Can the Prime Minister deal with this issue now, by quite simply saying there will be no downgrades and no closures of A&E departments?
In reply, Ms May ducked the question arguing decisions must be taken by local health chiefs, not imposed by Whitehall.
She told MPs: We believe, on this side of the House, that, at local level, people should be able to make decisions about the National Health Service.
That decisions about the National Health Service should be made by clinicians that it shouldnt be a top down approach.
The Prime Minister said her Government was spending over half a trillion pounds on the NHS over five years, adding: That is a record level of investment.
Some health commentators have praised the idea of the STPS, as an attempt to ensure parts of the NHS are working together properly, after the fragmentation sparked by the 2012 Health Act.
But, at the same time, Mr Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, has ordered the NHS to make 22bn of efficiency savings by 2020 arousing public suspicion about cuts.
In heated clashes, Mr Corbyn also accused the Government of allowing funding crisis in both mental health and adult social care
The results were police holding mental health patients in cells because of a lack of hospital beds and delayed operations because of bed blocking by elderly patients on hospital wards.
But the Prime Minister said Mr Stevens had asked for an extra 8bn for the NHS in this Parliament, yet the Government was delivering 10bn.
And she told MPs that 10bn would not be improving care if Labour had won last years general election, having made no similar commitment.
Mr Corbyns decision to target the NHS in the weekly Commons bout reflects growing fears that there are growing problems with its funding over the next few years.
Yesterday, Mr Stevens told a committee of MPs would funding-per-head would fall in England in 2018-19, despite the promised cash injection.
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The Conservatives have opened up an eighteen-point lead over Labour in the latest opinion poll.
Theresa Mays party would win 47 per cent of the vote if a general election were held today, according to the latest Ipsos MORI poll.
Labour would trail on 29 per cent, with Ukip dropping to fourth on 6 per cent, the Lib Dems on 7 per cent, and the Green Party on 4 per cent.
7 per cent of people would vote for other parties, including the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru.
Labour were down five points on the previous comparable poll by the firm, while the Conservatives were up seven points.
According to the Electoral Calculus method, on a uniform swing under the new boundaries proposed by the Government such a vote share would give the Conservatives 371 seats and Labour 159 a majority of over 200.
The poll is the Conservatives biggest lead for years with the firm but the Prime Minister has ruled out calling an early election.
She says one will not be held before 2020, even though she only has a slim majority in the House of Commons.
Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Show all 12 1 /12 Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn's reshuffle Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn and the Syria bombing vote Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn asks questions from the public at PMQs, meanwhile backbenchers plot to oust him Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn is unavailable to attend the Privy Council Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Conference rejects Corbyns call to debate Trident Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn At Labour conference Corbyn and McDonnell press for a Robin Hood tax Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyns hopes for a new politics look optimistic in the face of a media barrage Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn enters Labour leadership race
Ms Mays approval rating fell by around 6 per cent to a positive 16 points; Jeremy Corbyns rose by about 4 per cent to minus 24.
Despite the poor polling for Labour Mr Corbyn was re-elected as leader by his partys members and supporters by a landslide last month.
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British workers could face cuts to holiday days and reduced holiday pay after Britain leaves the European Union, new research suggests.
The House of Commons Library has identified a number cases in which the European Court of Justice (ECJ) overruled courts in favour of giving workers better pay and conditions.
Vote Leave Watch, a campaign group, said these cases and others like them would likely fall on the side of employers once Britain had left the EU and warned employers could now challenge existing decisions.
In a speech to Tory conference in Birmingham earlier this month Theresa May said that workers rights would be protected and enhanced by a Conservative government.
She and her ministers have so far however failed to back a proposed bill by Labour MP Melanie Onn to incorporate all EU workers rights into British law.
Decisions by the ECJ highlighted by the House of Commons Library include the awarding of annual holidays during long-term sick leave, the banning of so-called rolled up holiday pay, and favourable holiday pay calculations.
The judgments include Stringer v HM Revenue and Customs, which secured the right for annual pay to accrue during sick leave. Previously, some employers had denied those who were ill any additional time off when they returned to work.
Leave voter who wants to 'control our own laws' can't name single EU law
Others include Robinson-Steele v RD Retail Services Ltd, which ended the practice of "rolling up" holiday pay into wages, meaning a worker is paid nothing when they physically took the holiday. This decision effectively ended a loophole that employers used to get around giving paid holiday.
Another case, Williams v British Airways plc, ending the practice of excluding allowances and bonuses from holiday pay.
Vote Leavers like Boris, Andrea Leadsom and David Davis promised repeatedly that our rights at work, such as holiday pay, would be unaffected by a vote for Brexit, Chuka Umunna, chair of Vote Leave Watch said.
But if businesses start challenging these rights in British courts, their promises may prove hollow. The Government must legislate to keep these rights in British law.
Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty
Emma Reynolds MP, a patron of Vote Leave Watch, said: The Prime Minister has talked the talk on protecting workers rights; now its time for her to walk the walk.
Her fine words at Tory party conference will mean nothing unless she takes steps to stop unscrupulous employers from challenging hard-won rights in British courts once we leave the EU.
One Act of Parliament is all it would take to enshrine these rights in statute law. And she would have my total support in doing so.
The bad news for would-be holidaymakers comes as the Pound collapses to a new low, dramatically increasing the cost of holidays abroad for people from the UK.
71.5 percent of participating European firms described their current operation as excellent and good, only 5.5 percent rated not good and a very few said very bad.
The majority of responded European enterprises acknowledged that the countrys macroeconomic stability is likely to continue, with nearly 60 percent of respondents forecasting stabilisation and improvement.
Approximately 41 percent of polled firms said to maintain their current investment level in Vietnam, while 39 percent planned to pour more money into the market.
EuroCham Chairman Michael Behrens said the index reflected EuroCham enterprises positive outlook for Vietnam, which is a good sign for the implementation of the European Union-Vietnam free trade agreement (EUVFTA)./.
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Thousands of people have applied for less than 100 jobs to drive a new fleet of trains being launched by Virgin.
More than 15,000 people applied for 78 jobs to work on the new Azuma trains, built in the UK by Hitachi, which are being launched in 2018.
The company said there were almost 200 applications for every vacancy following the biggest recruitment campaign on the East Coast route since the 1980s.
The successful candidates, who will work from depots between London and Edinburgh, will begin a year-long training programme in January.
During the year, the trainees will take part in a mix of classroom-based and on the job learning. Virgin said the new recruits will also go through rigorous immersive practical learning driving a simulator to familiarise themselves with the new trains.
Industry sources told the Guardian, the new drivers can expect to earn around 57,000 once qualified and that steps had been taken to encourage a diverse range of candidates.
Virgin said the fleet of 65 Azuma trains will be among the most advanced in the world when they launch in two years time.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters 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
The fleet is promised to reach speeds of up to 125mph, provide an extra 12,200 seats, a new and expanded timetable and increase capacity into Kings Cross by 28 per cent during peak times.
A spokesperson for Virgin Trains said: We have received a huge amount of interest in this fantastic opportunity at Virgin Trains on its east coast route
The Talent team are working hard to process and update all of the applications we received. Those who have been successful in getting through the first stages of the process will be invited to attend a selection day which will include a variety of assessments and exercises that will bring the best talent into our business.
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Boris Johnson has been accused of prolonging the suffering of a British citizen who was kidnapped, illegally rendered and sentenced to death by the Ethiopian authorities.
The Foreign Secretary brushed off the concerns of fellow MPs and actually appeared to be unaware of the latest developments in the case of father-of-three Andy Tsege during a session in the Commons this week.
Now, The Independent can reveal, even Ethiopian rights groups are aghast at the lack of action from the British government to support its own citizen, and in a joint letter with international organisations have called on Mr Johnson to do more.
The groups said the ministers failure to call for the release of Mr Tsege, and his appalling refusal to answer questions on the case from MPs, was condemning the Londoner to remain on death row.
Mr Tseges case is particularly urgent now as the Ethiopian authorities have declared a state of emergency, dispensing of the rights of expression and assembly for political opponents and restricting the movement of foreign diplomats.
A vocal critic of the regime, Mr Tsege fled Ethiopia in 1979 and was granted asylum and British citizenship. He had been living in the UK with his wife and three children ever since.
He continued to advocate for democratic reforms in his home country, however, and was seized by the Ethiopian authorities while travelling through an airport in Yemen in 2014.
Mr Tsege was illegally sentenced to death in absentia in 2009, and has now spent two years in a jail known as Ethiopias gulag without being granted the right to a fair trial.
Yet he has been all but abandoned by the British government, which sees Ethiopia as a vital strategic ally in fighting Islamist extremist groups in the Horn of Africa.
In their open letter, groups including Reprieve, Free Trials International and the Ethiopia Human Rights Project urged Mr Johnson to go further than his current insistence that the UK is trying to secure Mr Tsege access to a lawyer.
Not only have previous promises to that effect failed to materialise, but the Ethiopia has repeatedly said Mr Tsege has no appeal process available to him in other words, access to a lawyer will do him little good.
Mr Johnson has repeatedly said Britain does not interfere with the legal systems of other countries. Yet the rights groups pointed to two recent cases involving British citizens Lee Po in China and Karl Andree in Saudi Arabia where the Government successfully did just that.
By focusing solely on the request that Mr Tsege be granted a lawyer, the FCO is neglecting to address Mr Tseges illegal kidnap, illegal transfer to Ethiopia, and illegal in absentia death sentence, the letter read, describing each as a grave abuse in its own right.
Worse still, the approach risks lending credibility to a sham legal process that will only prolong Mr Tseges ordeal, the groups added.
Conservative ministers repeatedly brushed off questions about Mr Tsege on Tuesday, when Birmingham MP Steve McCabe asked what impact the continued detention of British citizen Andy Tsege is having on our relations with the Ethiopian regime.
Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood refused to comment on the consular case in question, but added: I would pass congratulations to the country of Ethiopia [as well as] Kenya, Uganda and other countries, that are providing important contributing forces to the support and stability of Somalia.
The Labour MP Stephen Timms later raised the case again, saying that even the British governments minor boasts of securing Mr Tsege access to a lawyer had not materialised, and Mr Johnson was asked if he would now formally request [his] release.
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. 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The Foreign Secretary replied: I have set out our position on Mr Tsege in an open letter on gov.uk.
Im afraid comment further because our handling of this case is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings.
Mr Johnson appears to be referring to a case brought against the Government over its inaction by Mr Tseges nine-year-old daughter. The High Court has ruled in the Governments favour in that case, and no appeal is planned. Ethiopia is clear that it sees the case as closed, meaning there are in fact no ongoing legal proceedings at all.
Maya Foa, a director at Reprieve, said the state kidnap of a British citizen and the Governments subsequent lack of response was nothing short of an outrage.
His family in London are desperately worried about him, and MPs are rightly asking why Boris Johnson wont request his return, she said. Its appalling that the Foreign Secretary is unwilling to explain himself to Parliament.
As weve written to Mr Johnson, the Ethiopian government has shown zero interest in delivering on its weak promises on Andys case and the current crackdown is yet more evidence that Ethiopias ruling party has little mercy for its critics.
Boris Johnson must start listening to our concerns, and urgently request Andys return to Britain.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office told The Independent the Government "has provided significant support to Mr Tsege and his family, and to suggest otherwise is simply incorrect".
"We lobbied for many months to secure a move from solitary confinement to a federal prison, and this was achieved in July 2015," he said.
"From the moment we heard about his detention we pressed for consular access and have now been able to visit Mr Tsege 11 times.
"The Foreign Secretary has now made it clear to Foreign Minister Tedros that Mr Tsege must be given access to legal representation, as agreed by Prime Minister Hailemariam in June. And we will press the Ethiopians on this matter until they follow through on this commitment.
There has been an extremely high level of engagement with Mr Tseges family in the UK throughout this case, and we will continue to support them.
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A 58-year-old woman knocked a supposed gangster out cold with a crowbar and a glass beer stein when he allegedly tried to sexually assault her.
Prosecutors claim Dorval Grice wrestled with victim Angela Ferguson and demanded sex after climbing through her unlatched living-room window.
But Ms Ferguson allegedly urinated on him and knocked him unconscious with the crowbar she keeps tucked beside her bed for protection.
The dogged American woman from Chicago has described, in colourful detail, how she fought back.
Dorval Grice is accused of home invasion and aggravated criminal sexual assault Police handout (Police handout)
Speaking to FOX 32, Angela Ferguson said: He kept saying, dont look at me bitch, Im the Grim Reaper.
So he kept hitting me in the face, and doing blows to the head, so I did this, and I said please, please, why is you doing this?
You're not gonna put Angie out. And so he should have knew, that where he messed up. I bet he won't break into nobody else's house.
Long-time neighbour Grice started punching Ms Ferguson when she refused him sex on Monday, according to assistant state attorney Bryan Grissman.
After knocking him out, and after police arrived, she was taken to hospital covered in blood and with bruises across her body.
Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil ordered Grice be held on a $250,000 (203,000) bail on charges of home invasion and aggravated criminal sexual assault.
Grice is a reputed gang member, according to the prosecution report.
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British-based US voters could swing key states in next month's race for the White House, an Oxford University study has found.
With polls showing the election still close in some of the battleground states despite a series of scandals engulfing Republican candidate Donald Trump's campaign, the report says the estimated 2.6 million US voters living overseas could have a major effect on the result in some states.
Canada is host to the biggest number of expat Americans with 661,000, Britain is home to the next largest cohort, 306,000, then comes France with 157,000, followed by Israel, Japan, and Australia, which all have more than 100,000 voter-age American residents each.
While Mr Trump still appears to be in contention in some of the Northern rust-belt swing states, Hillary Clinton is now pouring resources into traditionally Republican-leaning areas such as Arizona.
The study finds that Arizona, along with North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa could go Democrat with the backing of enough foreign-based voters on November 8.
Report co-author Dr Patrick Andelic, research associate at the Rothermere American Institute (RAI) at Oxford University, said: Canada, Britain, France and Israel all play a substantial role in US elections now.
While current polling places Clinton in a commanding lead, the volatile nature of the race so far means that anything can still happen - and if Britain's recent general election and Brexit result have shown us anything, it's that one shouldn't call a winner until the votes have all been counted.
Overseas voters proved crucial to George W Bush's victory in 2000 and they may make a critical difference in 2016. Political parties ignore this hidden constituency at their peril.
RAI director Dr Halbert Jones, co author of the report, said: Our analysis shows that, based on recent polls, Trump might need a majority of just 5,600 among Ohio's overseas voters to win the state, and a majority of just 7,100 among overseas voters to win Nevada.
But if the national vote swings further behind Clinton, the overseas vote could mean she takes the presidency with a rout rather than a slim victory - helping the Democrats to snatch prizes like Georgia, Iowa and Arizona.
The significance of Mexico is disputed with a US Government study suggesting there are just 65,000 US voters living there, while the 2010 Mexican census puts the figure closer to 200,000.
However, the report suggests with such a huge number of US-born children living in Mexico - more than 800,000 - the country is set to play an increasingly important role in American elections in the future.
The report notes: By far the most dramatic instance of overseas voters influencing a presidential election came in 2000, when delayed overseas ballots gave George W Bush a narrow 537-vote lead after the Florida recount was stopped by the Supreme Court.
Had that election been decided on ballots that had arrived by the original November 26 deadline, Al Gore would have won the state, and the presidency, by 202 votes.
Similarly, overseas voters may have played a decisive role in some very close Senate races in recent years.
Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Show all 15 1 /15 Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Who are famous people voting for in the US election? George Clooney HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Leonardo DiCaprio HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Mike Tyson DONALD TRUMP Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Beyonce HILLARY CLINTON Rex Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Chloe Grace Moretz HILLARY CLINTON Vivien Killilea/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Sarah Jessica Parker HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Jon Voight DONALD TRUMP Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Katy Perry HILLARY CLINTON Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Jennifer Lopez HILLARY CLINTON Angela Weiss/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Denis Rodman DONALD TRUMP TIMOTHY CLARY/AFP/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Salma Hayek HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Le Bron James HILLARY CLINTON Justin Carissimo Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Hulk Hogan DONALD TRUMP Reuters Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Kid Rock DONALD TRUMP Theo Wargo/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Stacey Dash DONALD TRUMP Kevin Winter/Getty Images
With only 5% of eligible overseas voters casting a ballot in the 2012 White House race, the report states the impact this year could be far greater, especially after a major Stop Trump registration drive was launched.
Press Association
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Hillary Clinton holds a decisive advantage over Donald Trump in the competition for votes in the electoral college, leading in enough states to put her comfortably over the 270 majority needed to win the presidential election in November, according to a new SurveyMonkey poll of 15 battleground states conducted with The Washington Post.
Based on the results from the 15 state surveys, along with assumptions of the likely outcomes in other states that have consistently voted for one party or the other, Clinton, the Democratic nominee, holds leads of four percentage points or more among likely voters in states that add up to 304 electoral votes.
Trump, the GOP nominee, has the advantage in states with an estimated electoral vote total of 138. Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Texas, which account for 96 electoral votes, remain as toss-ups. All results in the 15 state surveys are based on ballot tests that include Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein.
Trump effectively rejects US election result before votes have even been counted
The results underscore the importance for Trump of Wednesdays final presidential debate, in Las Vegas. National polls have moved in Clintons direction since the exchanges began in late September. Her current average margin is seven points in polling averages from the Huffington Post Pollster and RealClearPolitics. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll put her national lead over Trump at four points.
The effect of the shift toward Clinton in national polls is evident in the new 15-state study. In late August, The Post, using SurveyMonkeys online methodology, conducted individual polls in all 50 states among registered voters. At that time, Clinton led in states that added up to 244 electoral votes, while Trump led in states accounting for 126. Toss-up states equaled 168 electoral votes.
SurveyMonkey election tracking poll (The Washington Post)
The SurveyMonkey surveys also included polls of Senate and gubernatorial races, where applicable, in the same 15 states. The results show two things. First, many Republican Senate candidates are outperforming Trump in their states. Second, that still may not be enough to maintain the GOPs majority in the chamber.
Democrats need a net gain of five seats to take outright control of the Senate, four to exercise control if Clinton becomes president. The results showed Democrats with leads of four or more points in three states with GOP incumbents: New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Republican incumbents lead in Florida and Ohio, in the latter by a wide margin. Meanwhile, races in Nevada, for a seat currently held by Democrats, and Pennsylvania, for a seat now in Republican hands, continue to be close. Pennsylvania is emblematic of the problem for GOP Senate incumbents trying to survive in states where Trump is struggling. Clinton leads Trump by six points in Pennsylvania, but the Senate race is even at 47 percent apiece for Republican incumbent Patrick J. Toomey and Democrat Katie McGinty.
Illinois was not included in the survey, but based on other polls, its contested Senate seat appears to be one of the likeliest to shift from Republican to Democrat in November. Republicans also are defending seats in Indiana and Missouri, both of which now have highly competitive races but neither of which was included in the 15-state survey.
The 2016 campaign has produced apparent shifts in several states battlegrounds and non-battlegrounds that could foreshadow more permanent changes in future elections. Demographic trends have moved several swing states more strongly in the direction of the Democrats Colorado and Virginia are prime examples.
(The Washington Post (The Washington Post)
States such as Arizona, Georgia and possibly Texas show predicted signs of shifting from traditional GOP strongholds to potential future battlegrounds. The demographic changes would put Republicans at an even greater disadvantage in the future if they cannot find a way to appeal to a changing electorate.
At the same time, the electoral map looks somewhat different from past campaigns, owing to the uniqueness of Trumps candidacy the coalition he has attracted and the voters who are repelled by his message and temperament. His relative strength in states with high percentages of non-college graduates and of white voters, such as Iowa and Ohio, is an example of the former. Utah, which has been scrambled this year by Trumps candidacy, is an example of the latter.
Utah was not included in the SurveyMonkey analysis. But recent public polls suggest that this traditionally rock-solid Republican state is now a competitive battleground. Trump can hardly afford to lose the states six electoral votes, given his current disadvantage.
Overall, the results of the 15-state survey underscore Clintons wider margin for error in the state-by-state competition over the final three weeks of the campaign, as well as the increasingly tortuous path for Trump to cobble together an electoral-college majority.
Clinton has many paths to 270; Trump has few. This has been the case for some time, based on all available evidence from state and national polls. Trump now needs a clear shift nationally and then a strategy for converting that into state-by-state victories.
Among the states that have moved in Clintons direction since the previous 50-state survey are Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Of those, the results in Georgia differ from the current average of all recent polls in that state. The Huffpost Pollster average in Georgia gives a Trump a four-point lead, while the SurveyMonkey poll puts Clinton ahead by four points.
Texas is another state that, by historical results, should end up in Trumps column. The SurveyMonkey results show the state splitting 44 percent for Trump to 42 percent for Clinton. The average of other public polls shows Trump with a larger, although single-digit, lead there. But with virtually the entire Bush family on the sidelines and with an endorsement of Clinton by the Dallas Morning News, Texas has proved to be a more competitive battleground than anyone expected.
The SurveyMonkey results also put Clinton in a stronger position in New Hampshire and North Carolina than other public surveys. Public polls in North Carolina show her with a low single-digit advantage. In New Hampshire, public polls show her ahead but not by the 11-point margin in these findings.
None of that negates the obstacles for Trump. If he were to win all the toss-up states, plus hold on to Georgia, which has consistently voted for Republican presidential candidates since 1996, he would still be 20 electoral votes short of the 270 needed to win. Were he to eke out an additional victory in North Carolina, which has 15 electoral votes, that still would not be enough.
Trumps campaign has claimed for a long time that, because of his support among white, blue-collar voters, he would be able to make inroads in traditional Democratic territory such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The new findings underscore the degree to which he is falling short in those Midwestern battlegrounds. He trails Clinton in Michigan 45 percent to 37 percent, in Pennsylvania 46 percent to 40 percent and in Wisconsin 43 percent to 38 percent.
Two states remain among Trumps best among the battlegrounds. He leads Clinton by five points in Iowa and by four points in Nevada, a state where other polls have shown Clinton with a slight edge. In Ohio, the results are Trump at 44 percent and Clinton at 41 percent. But traditionally Republican Arizona is equally close, with Trump at 44 percent and Clinton with 41 percent.
In state after state, Trump appears to have a relatively low ceiling to his support. Of the 15 measured, he garners 45 percent in two states and at or below 40 percent in eight. Clintons lowest is 40 percent in Iowa and Nevada, but she is at 45 percent or more in six states, topping out at 49 percent in Virginia.
The demographic contours of support for Clinton and Trump show some variance from state to state, but there are consistent patterns, beginning with gender differences.
Among women, Clinton leads Trump by four points or more in 14 of the 15 states surveyed. Averaging across all 15 states, her lead over Trump among women is 49 percent to 35 percent. Among men, Trump leads by four points or more in 12 of the 15 states and by 10 points (47 percent to 37 percent) on average across all 15 states.
Trump has comfortable leads among white men in all states except New Hampshire, where he and Clinton are tied. Clinton leads by four points or more among white women in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump leads among white women in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. The two are running nearly even among white women in Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.
Racial divisions are stark. In Georgia, Trump leads among whites by more than 30 points. Among nonwhites, Clinton leads by just over 70 points. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, whites split almost evenly while nonwhites back Clinton overwhelmingly. In Virginia, Clintons lead of more than 50 points among nonwhites easily overcomes Trumps five-point advantage among white voters.
Educational achievement remains a clear dividing line and one of the potential mold-breakers of this campaign. Republicans have generally won the votes of whites with college degrees and those without. This fall, among white voters without college degrees, Trump leads by four points or more in 14 of the 15 states surveyed, most by sizable margins.
Clinton, however, leads among whites with college degrees in 12 of the 15 states. Trump leads narrowly among white college graduates in Georgia, and the two are running about even in Florida and Texas. In Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton leads Trump by double digits among white voters with college degrees, helping offset losses among those without degrees.
In these battlegrounds, Clinton holds a higher percentage of Democrats than Trump holds among Republicans. Averaging across the 15 states, she wins 92 percent of self-identified Democrats while Trump has support from 85 percent of Republicans. Trump leads among independents by six points (38 percent to 32 percent), while Johnson, the libertarian, averages 20 percent among independents.
The SurveyMonkey poll was conducted online Oct. 8 to 16 among 17,379 likely voters across 15 states, with between 569 and 1,702 respondents in each state. No margin of sampling error is calculated, as this statistic is applicable only to randomly sampled surveys.
The Washington Post
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The third presidential debate before the 2016 election is tonight.
Following a slew of allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump, from more than 12 women and including former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos, it has been more difficult for the Republican nominee to reassure voters that he has never touched a woman without her consent.
The topic of Mr Trumps treatment of women is likely to be a recurring theme at the third debate, as well as the latest batch of Clinton campaign emails which showed her staff boosted friends requests up the chain of command when it came to the lucrative gold rush for government contracts in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Recommended Read more How to watch the third and final presidential debate
Mr Trump insisted he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Ms Clinton as she should be in jail.
The debate tonight in Las Vegas will be the candidates final chance to address each other directly and make a plea in front of millions of viewers. Audience figures for the first debate on 26 September hit 100 million.
In the front row viewers may spot Malik Obama, the half-brother of president Barack Obama, who is an outspoken Trump supporter.
In the second debate, Mr Trump had invited three women - Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey - who accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting them to sit in the front row.
Over the 90-minute debate, starting at 9pm ET at the University of Nevada, both camps are likely to throw pointed barbs, interrupt each other and swing insults, moderated by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.
Here are five things to look out for tonight:
Whining about a rigged election
President Barack Obama said that Mr Trump should stop whining that the election is rigged in Ms Clintons favour and make his case to voters.
Electrion fraud is not a new theme - Mr Trump has long evoked Bernie Sanders, who made similar claims before he quit the race in July and endorsed Ms Clinton. But Mr Trumps insisting the system is set up against him has gathered fuel as he has lost support in the polls.
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said at a rally in Denver that she agreed the election was rigged - in favour of the Donald Trumps and the billionaires of the world.
Trump Slams 'Rigged' Delegate System
Meeting and greeting
Ms Clinton and Mr Trumps behaviour towards each other is always under close scrutiny.
At the second debate, the candidates did not shake hands before the session, but shook hands afterwards. Her daughter, Chelsea, chose not to shake hands with her mothers opponents family. Bill Clinton, however, may have taken the Trump family by surprise when he smiled at and shook hands with the children and Melania Trump.
Donald Trump holds pre-debate press conference with Bill Clinton sexual abuse accusers
Mr Trumps treatment of women
The subject seems unavoidable at this point, as the raft of allegations against him continue to gain weight in terms of both the number of accusations and the impact it is having among voters. Mr Trump has denied all of the allegations and is likely to continue to do so.
He said at a recent rally that the women were sick and he did not know most of his accusers. His wife, Melania Trump, told CNN that the media and Clinton supporters were conspiring to invent negative stories about her husband.
Look out also for where Mr Trump stands and sits during the debate - will he continue to loom over Ms Clinton while she talks?
Trump stalks Clinton in SNL sketch
Ms Clintons emails
The investigation over Ms Clintons misuse of her personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state is now closed and Ms Clinton has been cleared of any criminal charges.
But the controversy still resonates among many voters, prompting them to think of the Democrat as untrustworthy.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace is also likely to mention the scandal in some way, highlighting favours for friends, foreign donors to the Clinton foundation and the exposed attempt to smear Bernie Sanders when he was still in the race.
Second Presidential Debate in 90 Seconds
More compliments?
The final question at the second debate - did the candidates have anything nice to say about each other? - took everyone by surprise and caused Ms Clinton to laugh heartily. She praised her rivals children while Mr Trump said that Ms Clinton was a fighter and didnt quit.
Who knows if they will sweep aside the insults at the final debate and perhaps even wish each other all the best.
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Three weeks before Britons went to the polls to decide whether or not to leave the European Union, Donald Trump had what might now be called an Aleppo moment, in honor of Gary Johnson. Trump was being interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter on June 1 when he was asked his position on Brexit, as the referendum is commonly known.
Huh? Trump replied.
Brexit, the interviewer prompted.
Hmm, Trump answered.
Eventually, Trump said that he was in support of Britain leaving the union, and on June 23, that's how the country voted. Shortly afterward, Trump bragged about how he'd called the vote.
Nowadays, though, Trump talks about Brexit for another reason. There's a commonly understood argument that polling before the Brexit vote showed the Remain side by a wide margin, only to see a huge populist surge turn out on Election Day to vote Leave, which carried the day. To Trump, who's currently trailing Hillary Clinton by one of the widest margins he's seen in the RealClearPolitics polling average, that's an appealing idea. Maybe the same thing will happen here: A nationalist base will rush to vote Trump and, once again, those idiot polls will be proven wrong. Trump has at times asked that he be called Mr. Brexit, the human embodiment of that thing that didn't immediately click when he was asked about it on June 1.
There's just one little problem, as FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten points out: That's not what the polls showed.
Over the last three months of the campaign, polling showed Leave gaining ground against Remain until the two sides were about tied in mid-June. The Financial Times compiled polling, from which we can make a handy little chart.
(The Washington Post (The Washington Post)
The Financial Times's running average by June 23 had Remain at 48 percent and Leave at 46 percent, with 6 percent undecided. On June 22, six polls came out, with Remain leading in four. There are fewer polls in the FT's tally than in Enten's, but the effect is the same: 16 Leave wins to 14 Remain wins. In April, Remain lead in twice as many polls as Leave. The final vote was Remain, 48 percent, Leave, 52 - a bit wider than polling would have suggested, but hardly the sort of poll nightmare that has been presented by Trump and his supporters.
Perhaps Trump should think about calling himself Mr. Michigan instead. In the Democratic primary in the state this year, polls consistently showed Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by over 20 points. Sanders won by 2 points. The giant miss was in part a function of bad turnout estimates thanks to the weird way in which the 2008 primary in the state was run. But it was a huge miss of the sort that renewed all sorts of polls are bad talk, particularly among Sanders supporters. But that poll was the exception, not the norm.
Brexit's polls were more like the norm. It was a close race coming into the final vote, and it seems like a turnout surge did contribute to the difference. Betting markets saw it differently, giving Remain a wide margin a week right before the actual vote. But betting markets aren't polls.
If this is another Brexit, as Trump said on Tuesday, that suggests that we should assume that the results will wind up in the margin of error and that, therefore, Donald Trump is poised to lose. A weird pitch for him to make in front of his own supporters, but kudos to him for his honesty.
The Washington Post
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An unshackled Donald Trump is barreling down the final stretch of the campaign, making bold and unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and rigged elections the centerpiece of his closing arguments to American voters.
While Trump is light on the specifics of how this alleged election-rigging works, it seems to involve some combination of media bias and official complicity running all the way from precinct ballot boxes to the director of the FBI.
The truth of the matter is that lawmakers already have numerous legal options at their disposal for tipping the scales of democracy in one direction or another. Changing the composition of the electorate - by enacting restrictions on who can vote, or at what times, or on the ID required to fill out a ballot - are one way to do this.
But lawmakers can also change the way that votes translate into political representation by changing the geography of political districts to beef up their parties' representation in state and federal legislatures. The official term for this is gerrymandering - drawing political boundaries to give your party a numeric advantage over the opposition. Here's how it works, in simplified, abstract terms:
(The Washington Post (The Washington Post)
Say you have the 50 people represented by the red and blue squares above. Depending on how you draw the lines, you can set up legislative boundaries that either closely represent the red/blue party split (first example), hand all the seats over to the blue party (second example), or hand a majority of seats to the red party, even though they make up only 40 percent of voters (third example). You can learn more about it here.
In practical terms, gerrymandering can have very real effects on the composition of legislatures. The most famous recent example of this is the 2012 election.
That year, Democratic candidates for US House seats earned about 1.2 million votes more than Republican candidates did across the nation. You might reasonably infer that those results would produce a majority-Democratic US House.
But they didn't. In fact, Republicans won 33 more seats in the House than the Democrats did. To put it another way, Republicans won 49 percent of the popular House vote, but 54 percent of the seats.
Many people blamed this on the redrawing of the House legislative districts following the 2010 census. In 2011 and 2012, when this redistricting happened, a majority of state legislatures were under Republican control.
You can see the net effect of this in the chart below. For each state, it plots the difference between the actual and expected number of US House seats held by Democrats in each state, based on the share of the state's popular House vote that went to Democrats.
Negative values indicate states where Democrats ended up with a smaller percentage of seats than their statewide vote share would suggest. Positive values indicate a Democratic advantage relative to vote share. The colors of the bars represent whether Democrats (blue) or Republicans (red) controlled state government in 2012.
Data source: Federal Election Commission, New York Times (The Washington Post)
So in Pennsylvania, all the way on the left side of the chart, you can see that Democrats received 4 fewer seats in the House than their popular vote totals would suggest. In Pennsylvania, Democratic House candidates received a total of 51 percent of the popular House vote. But because of the way Pennsylvania's district's are drawn, Democrats only won five out of the state's 18 seats in the House.
You see similar Democratic disadvantages in places like Ohio, North Carolina, Texas and Michigan. Those states have one thing in common: They were all under the control of Republicans in 2012.
Gerrymandering isn't a one-way street, either. You can see on the right side of the chart, where boundaries drawn by Democratically controlled states yielded much larger seat totals than expected based on the popular vote numbers.
But overall, Republicans had the upper hand in redistricting efforts following the 2010 census. And the composition of the House in 2012 reflected that.
A cynic might call such an outcome rigged.
The 2014 House election was a different story. Democratic voters are less likely to turn out in midterm elections, giving Republicans a natural advantage. In 2014, Democratic House candidates received 45 percent of the overall vote and won about 43 percent of the seats. The overall composition of the House didn't change much.
One step toward fixing the issue would be to appoint independent commissions to redraw congressional districts, rather than letting the parties do it. Some western states do this already.
But independent commissions still leave the door open to human bias creeping in. An even better solution would be to hand the task of redistricting over to algorithms that can redraw equal-population districts according to simple and straightforward criteria, such as geographical compactness.
(The Washington Post (The Washington Post)
People have already worked out what this would look like. Compactness isn't a perfect metric, of course. Boundaries will always have to be drawn somewhere, and that somewhere could arbitrarily fall across a neighborhood, geographic area, or community of similarly minded individuals.
But our current redistricting system produces serpentine boundaries that are far more arbitrary and capricious. Even worse, they're often drawn with the express intent of favoring one political party over another.
Computer redistricting could, by definition, eliminate the all-too-human bias that often creeps into the process. That could go a long way toward restoring peoples' confidence that the system is working for them and that they are picking their legislators, rather than the other way around.
So yes, there is a very true sense in which certain election outcomes could be rigged this year. But not at all in the way Trump is suggesting.
The Washington Post
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A man has been sentenced for pulling off a Muslim womans hijab and shouting this is America on a flight.
Gill Parker Payne, from Chicago, was fined 815 and ordered to a years probation including two months of home detention.
The 37-year-old admitted saying something to the effect of take it off! This is America while flying between Chicago to Albuquerque in New Mexico.
According to the Albuquerque Journal, US attorney Damon P. Martinez said: The case sends a clear message to anyone who contemplates the use of threats or intimidation to interfere with the right of individuals, including members of our Muslim community, to express their faith without fear.
Payne was sitting a few rows behind victim Khawla Abdel-Haq on the Southwest Airlines flight in December 2015.
Payne admitted in a statement: I stopped next to her seat, looked down at K.A., and told her to take off her hijab, stating something to the effect of take if off! This is America.
The court heard Ms Abdel-Haq was scared to leave her home for weeks after the in-flight tirade.
She said at the sentencing on Tuesday: You hurt me, you disrespected me, you violated me.
An apologetic Payne said he was drunk on the flight, and has since visited a mosque, adding: Im embarrassed. Im 100 per cent embarrassed.
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A man who was injected with the HIV virus as an infant child by his father has defied the expectations of doctors to live to the age of 25, and says he is healthy as a horse.
Brryan Jackson from Missouri was 11 months old when his father Brian Stewart, who worked as a blood tester at a local laboratory, injected him with the virus, after becoming convinced he was not Brryans real father.
Stewart began denying Mr Jackson was his child after serving in the naval reserves in Saudi Arabia, demanding DNA tests as proof of paternity, and allegedly became verbally and physically abusive towards Jackson's mother in 1992.
The father allegedly told Mr Jacksons mother your childs not going to live beyond the age of five and refused to pay child support, before injecting HIV into his sons bloodstream during a visit to hospital in attempt to kill him.
Mr Jacksons health deteriorated rapidly and he began to suffer from a range of HIV-associated infections, although he was not officially diagnosed with the virus until the age of five. Doctors described his condition as "full-blown Aids" and sent him home with medicine.
He says his entire childhood was lived "one day at a time", and he was given five months to live after his initial diagnosis. Meanwhile, suspicions over Mr Stewart's involvement were raised and he was taken in for questioning.
By the age of seven, Mr Jackson was forced to take 23 oral medicines, had swollen liver and developed a very severe fever - at which point doctors believed he would only survive for a matter of hours.
Mr Jackson said having the disease led to him being severely bullied and alienated at school. I felt like there was no place in the world for me," he said but added that suspicious parents were more to blame for his isolation than their children.
"He didn't just try to kill me, he changed my life forever, he told BBC News.
He was responsible for the bullying, he was responsible for all the years in hospital. He's the reason I have to be so conscious about my health and what I do."
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
His father was given a life prison sentence in 1998, and in July this year Mr Jackson read out a statement at his parole hearing, saying he felt he had no connection to the man who had almost killed him. Mr Stewart was denied parole for a further five years.
After almost two decades of treatment, Mr Jackson now has a high T-cell count, meaning his HIV status is now registered as undetectable. He hopes to one day become a father himself through the process of sperm washing, which prevents the virus being transmitted.
Mr Jackson now travels the world as a motivational speaker, and said he has used his story to inspire others.
"I'm as healthy as a horse! Healthier than a horse! I am beyond that! I might be slightly chunky, but I'd still consider myself a good athlete," he added.
"I still have AIDS, though. Once an HIV diagnosis, always an HIV diagnosis."
Accordingly, local people must carry out environmental hygiene activities after heavy rain and flood; use powdered lime or chemicals when burying dead animals to avoid infectious epidemics; and coordinate with the health sector to spray chemicals to exterminate disease-transmitting insects in danger areas.
Earlier, the Ministry of Health requested local provincial health departments in the central region and its units to implement remedial actions to deal with the floods, while ensuring sanitation and food safety in places which have gone through flooding and enhancing post-flood disease prevention.
Medical units were urged to closely coordinate with functional forces to support victims affected by the flood and provide necessities, medicines and sanitation chemicals for locals, while guiding residents in flood-stricken areas in maintaining sanitation, disinfecting water and preventing infectious diseases.
On the same day the ministry sent an official request to its medical businesses to provide Quang Binh, Ha Tinh, Nghe An and Thanh Hoa provinces each 125 life jackets, 200 lifebuoys, two life float rafts, antivirals, and 100,000 Chloramine B disinfection capsules./.
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Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeeds CEO, questioned Ivanka Trumps reaction to her fathers lewd comments by tweeting a story involving mulatto cocks on Wednesday afternoon.
Surprised Ivanka would be shocked by lewd language. I met her once & she casually said: I've never seen a mulatto cock, but I'd like to!
Ivanka, Donald Trumps eldest daughter, recently said that she was shocked by her fathers comments in the leaked audio from 2005 where he bragged about grabbing womens genitals without permission.
Thats not language consistent with any conversation Ive ever had with him, certainly, or any conversation Ive overheard, she explained at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit. So it was a bit jarring for me to hear.
Mr Peretti claims the conversation took place at a Manhattan dive bar nearly 10 years ago with at least five others present.
She was saying how she first said she had never seen an uncircumcised cock, he told BuzzFeed News, and then she said, Ive never seen a mulatto cock. Theres lots of cocks Ive never seen, or something like that.
Of course, it was memorable just because of the use of the lewd language and racist language," he explained. "It was also memorable being in the environment of being in New York, sometimes liberal and progressive people make comments meant as jokes and not necessarily earnest. I didnt know how to take it.
Andrea Harner, Mr Peretti's wife, supported her husband's claims.
She told the news outlet, I was there and did hear it but have no comment beyond that.
Ms Trump has since denied the accuracy of the story, "I am not sure if this was meant to be a joke, but in case there is any ambiguity, this is a complete and total lie."
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Four students, three males and one female, were injured in a shootout near the City Arts and Technology High School and the June Jordan School for Equity, authorities with the San Francisco Police Department announced on Tuesday.
The 15-year-old female victim was shot in her upper extremities and is listed in critical condition. Shes currently fighting for her life at the San Francisco General Hospital. Both male students are recovering from non-life threatening injuries after they were shot in the lower extremities.
Witnesses reported the gunfire just at 3:20pm just as the schools were being dismissed. Police are currently searching for four male suspects in connection with the shooting.
Fernando Rodriguez, a 16-year-old junior at June Jordan, told The San Francisco Gate that the entire incident was terrifying."
The famous for and against US gun control Show all 31 1 /31 The famous for and against US gun control The famous for and against US gun control Against: Robert De Niro Despite the actor being a gun-wielding fast-talker, he told Daily Mail: "There should be more control. It has just gotten out of hand, how easily you can get guns." The famous for and against US gun control For: Brad Pitt "America is founded on guns. It;s in out DNA. Its very strange but I feel better having a gun." Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control For: Angelina Jolie "Brad and I are not against having a gun in the house, and we do have one. If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, Ive no problem shooting them." AFP/Getty The famous for and against US gun control For: Johnny Depp "When I was a kid it was a controlled atmosphere, we weren't shooting at humans - we were shooting at cans and bottles mostly. I will most certainly take my kids out for target practice." Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control For: Bruce Willis "Everyone has a right to bear arms. If you take guns away from legal gun owners, then the only people who have guns are the bad guys." Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control For: Clint Eastwood "I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it." Reuters The famous for and against US gun control For: Whoopi Goldberg "Im an NRA member, as you know or probably dont know... I want to know that theres at least some way to prevent folks who are just getting out from mental institutions [from getting guns]." The famous for and against US gun control For: Vince Vaughn "Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won't rid the world of criminality... I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home." Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control For: Donald Trump "Democrats want to confiscate all guns, which is a dumb idea because only the law-abiding citizens would turn in their guns and the bad guys would be the only ones left armed. The Republicans walk the NRA line and refuse even limited restrictions" Getty The famous for and against US gun control Against: Matt Damon I actually hate guns. They freak me out. Rex The famous for and against US gun control Against: Mark Wahlberg "Well, I would love it if they could take all the guns away. Unfortunately, you cant do that so you hope that good people in the world have them to protect the people who cant protect themselves." AP The famous for and against US gun control Against: Sean Connery "It is said that a total ban on handguns, including .22s, would take away innocent pleasure from thousands of people. Is that more or less pleasure than watching your child grow up?" Rex Features The famous for and against US gun control Against: Arnold Schwarzenegger "Im for gun control. Im a peace-loving guy." Lionsgate The famous for and against US gun control Against: Sylvester Stallone "Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what youre gonna have. Its pathetic. It really is pathetic. Its sad. Were living in the Dark Ages over there." Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Rashida Jones "Gun control is our only road to freedom. Freedom from the fear of senselessly losing children." Getty The famous for and against US gun control Against: Susan Sarandon "How much more suffering & loss will it take before we better regulate the sale of arms in our country?" Getty The famous for and against US gun control Against: Beyonce Queen B was part of the Demand a Plan campaign against guns after Newton shooting, by appearing in a video alongside a bunch of celebrities. AP The famous for and against US gun control Against: Jamie Foxx A Hollywood gang joined Beyonce in the campaign... GETTY IMAGES The famous for and against US gun control Against: Cameron Diaz Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Jessica Alba Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Jennifer Garner Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Jennifer Aniston Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. Jason Merritt | Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Jon Hamm The Mad Men actor also appeared in the video... The famous for and against US gun control Against: Reese Witherspoon Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Ellen DeGeneres Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. Reuters The famous for and against US gun control Against: Julianne Moore Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. The famous for and against US gun control Against: Selena Gomez Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. GETTY IMAGES The famous for and against US gun control Against: Peter Dinklage The Game of Thrones also appeared in the video... Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Zooey Deschanel alongside the New Girl star. Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Steve Carell Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign. Getty Images The famous for and against US gun control Against: Gwyneth Paltrow Took part in the Demand a Plan campaign, too.
June Jordan was placed on lockdown for over an hour as police secured the area and searched for evidence. Authorities told the news outlet that they believe at least one of the victims was being targeted by the assailants.
SFPD also announced that the school will open as planned on Wednesday and students will be offered counseling sessions.
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Hillary Clinton has won the White House and the sighs of relief are echoing around the world. But on to business, how will the newly annointed President Clinton approach the subject of global trade? This will be one of the most closely watched storylines of the early part of her term of office.
The minutiae of international trade agreements is hardly a sexy subject but the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) have become the subjects of fierce debate in the US all the same.
They will remain so even if the defeat of Donald Trump has brought an end to his threats to torch existing deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Trade deals are at the centre of a fault line in American politics that cuts across both main parties.
In her heart of hearts, President Clinton is a supporter of free trade, and of the multi-national agreements between countries that make it happen, like the aforementioned.
She said as much in her memoir Hard Choices and she played a key role the administration of her husband that ratified the much criticised NAFTA.
She was a supporter of the TPP prior to the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders, who pushed her close during the primaries, partly on the back of the opposition to it and similar deals in Americas rust belt.
Clinton is also a supporter of exporting American power alongside American goods and supporters of the TPP say it, and other deals of its type, do that.
The 12 country agreement, if ratified, will be the biggest regional free trade deal yet to be finalised. Its advocates argue that it will stimulate economic growth, create more jobs than it displaces, and also cement an American approach to trade and business in one of the worlds most economically dynamic regions. As opposed to, say, the Chinese way of doing things. China, despite what Donald Trump insinuated during the campaign, is not part of the deal although it might at some stage join.
President Obama, another strong advocate, will nonetheless struggle to get ratification of the TPP through the lame duck session Congress prior to the transfer of power in the face opposition from both sides of the aisle. Speaker Paul Ryan had refused to countenance what he considered to be a pointless vote during the election campaign.
The arithmetic of the new Congress is more favourable to Clinton. Will she be able get it through? Will she even try after going cold on the deal during the campaign?
The success of Sanders is partly responsible for that. He remains a fierce opponent of the TPP and of the TTIP, and he isnt going anywhere. He will not be sidelined by taking a relatively low profile job in the Clinton cabinet and is free to make trouble now the threat of Trump has been dealt with.
Whether she can face him down depends on whether President Clinton feels strong enough to pivot again.
She will face pressure to do so. Many of her influential supporters, and more to the point, many of her influential donors, are enthusiastic backers of the TPP.
Clintons campaign benefitted from a flood of Wall Street money, and Wall Street wants the agreement ratified. Much of corporate American shares that view.
E-mails published by Wikileaks have demonstrated the struggles the Clinton campaign had with the issue.
Jimmy Dore, speaking on The Young Turks, the liberal online news network, has said that he thinks the e-mails show how she will ratify the TPP and perhaps the TTIP after it.
Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Show all 15 1 /15 Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Mary Schwalm/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP
If it meets three tests: That it will help the middle class, create more jobs than it displaces, and strengthen Americas national security she could make the case for signing.
If the TPP meets these three tests shell endorse it, Dore predicted. Theyre telling you right now how Hilary Clinton will come around to pass it and this is the criteria shell use.
Given Clintons history, and her natural inclinations, hes probably right. Clinton is going to do her damnedest to find a way to sign up.
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Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went head-to-head on Wednesday night in the third and final debate before the election.
The stakes were certainly high for Mr Trump who defended himself against the nine women accusing him of sexual assault.
Please wait a moment for the live blog to load.
When is the debate?
The debate runs from 9:00pm to 10:30pm Eastern time on Wednesday at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
How can I watch it?
Major television networks including C-SPAN, Sky, BBC, NBC, PBS and Fox News will air the debate.
Who is moderating?
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace will be hosting the debate. Mr Wallace has a reputation for taking a combative approach to both Republicans and Democrats. He has interviewed President Obama multiple times and is well known for his aggressive 2006 interview with Bill Clinton, where he repeatedly questioned him about whether he had done enough to capture Osama Bin Laden.
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President Barack Obamas half-brother Malik will attend the third and final presidential debate on Wednesday night as a guest of the Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Malik told The New York Post on Tuesday night that hes excited to be joining Mr Trump and that he still supports his bid to the White House.
I look very much forward to meeting and being with Malik, Mr Trump told the outlet. He gets it far better than his brother.
The 58-year-old, who lives in Washington DC when he isnt visiting Kenya, says that he doesnt believe the many women accusing Mr Trump of sexual assault. He even questioned, Why didnt they come forward before?
Malik is also a critic of the mainstream media and Hillary Clintons performance at the State Department. He says that the former Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy is a good friend of his, Check out the situation in Libya now.
The third debate before the general election will take place at 9:00pm Eastern on Wednesday from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
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A US politician has revealed she was raped in college to condemn Donald Trumps "predatory" comments about women.
South Dakota's Democrat House of Representatives nominee Paula Hawks told how she was raped by a person in a position of authority in 1995, in an essay published on the website Medium.
Ms Hawks said she didn't report the assault to police as she didn't want to have to repeatedly relive the experience, and at the time didn't want her friends and family to know.
I was raped in college. Sexually assaulted by a person in a position of authority, when I listened to the audio from Trump bragging about what he could do to women because of wealth and fame, it hit me extremely hard, Ms Hawks wrote.
Never in a million years did I think I would feel comfortable talking about this publicly. But then, I didnt think wed ever have a presidential candidate bragging about sexual assault. Nor did I expect to witness the number of people ready and willing to excuse his behavior.
She continued saying she believed there were certain lines in society that should not be crossed, including supporting a sexual predator.
A man who brags about sexual assault is a man incapable of leadership. Those enabling him have already proven they cannot hold him responsible for the most reprehensible of acts. If we condone this behavior in our most important elected office, we enable it in our workplaces and at our colleges, she wrote.
What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? Show all 8 1 /8 What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On the leaked tape from 2005 where he talks about sexually assaulting women I'm very embarrassed by it, I hate it, but it's locker room talk. It's one of those things. I will knock the hell out of Isis Getty What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On Hillary Clinton I hate to say it but if I win I'm going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, so much deception. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Rex What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On Bill Clinton What he's done to women, there's never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women. AP What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On whether his alleged opposition to Iraq War had been disproven "Its not debunked. Its not debunked." Getty What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On exploiting tax loopholes "I absolutely used it, and so did Warren Buffett, and so did George Soros and so did many people who Hillary is getting money from." Getty What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On claims he's sexist I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Reuters What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On what he respects about Hillary Clinton I will say this about Hillary - she doesn't quit, she doesn't give up. I tell it like it is. She's a fighter. Reuters What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On his controversial immigration policies "Its called extreme vetting. Were going to areas like Syria, where they are coming in by the tens of thousands because of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wanting to allow a 550 per cent increase [of refugees] over Obama. People are coming into this country. We have no idea who they are, where they are from and what their feelings are about this country." Getty
Sexual assault is real. Rape is real. We need to pay attention to these stories. When we talk about the dysfunction in our country, I think we need to start by setting some basic standards for ourselves, for our political parties, for the people we support. We are role models and we should strive to be good ones. The example we set does matter. It should matter.
Ms Hawks' Republican House rival, Kristi Noem has publicly declared her support for Mr Trump, despite his comments in a 2005 tape that heard him discussing kissing and grabbing women by their "p*ssy".
On Tuesday, Ms Noem said she was heartbroken by what happened to Ms Hawks but maintained her backing of the Republican's campaign for president, claiming the actions of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton disqualified her for the presidency.
Recommended Read more Donald Trump is directly contributing to rape culture
In October, The Washington Post published audio of a 2005 conversation in which the real estate mogul said he could do anything he wanted to women because he was famous.
Mr Trump, who was wearing a hot mic, insisted the claims were just locker room talk however, more than 10 women have since shared their experiences of being kissed, groped or assaulted by the Republican.
Mr Trump has strongly denied all of the claims, saying he did not know most of the women in question and accused them of wanting publicity.
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Get set for a bonfire of the trade deals as President Donald Trump keeps his promises over one of the few policy areas about which he has shown any consistency.
His shock victory sounds the death knell for the Transpacific Trade Partnership, which was to have been the biggest regional free trade agreement in history, and the biggest trade deal struck since the 1994 completion of the Uruguay Round of the GATT world trade talks that created the World Trade Organisation.
Intended to stitch 12 countries into a free trade area, and secure an American style approach to their future dealings, its ratification before the transfer of power has been one of the key goals of the outgoing Obama administration, which has expended a huge amount of energy to that end.
That won't now happen, not even in the lame duck succession of Congress before President Trump enters the Oval Office. Speaker Paul Ryan had ruled out a vote before his election. While he said he favoured a deal, albeit with some tweaks, he also said that we just dont have the votes to pass the measure. There is no chance of a change of heart now. He needs to mend fences with Trump, who angrily attacked Ryan for his lack of loyalty during the campaign.
The Trump administration will thus be free to consign the TPP to the dustbin of history, unless it can secure a multiple concessions from the other signatories, which include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malyasia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vitenam, and the incoming Presidents favourite whipping boy Mexico.
The same is almost certainly true of the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Parntership - or TTIP - with the European Union, on which talks started in 2013.
With tensions already high as a result of European tax demands levied against American multinationals such as Apple, and the mega-fines levied on European banks imposed by American regulators on the other side, the talks were already in trouble before the election of a President whose campaign was characterised by the bellicose cry of America First
Trumps election will likely see it indefinitely stalled if not actually scrapped. One potential beneficiary is the UK. Post Brexit, it has been promised a free trade deal before any European agreement is signed, which may be of some comfort to the Conservative Brexiteers who will lead negotiations.
Not that they should be under any illusions. They cant expect too many favours from the Trump team when they sit down to negotiate that deal.
Also on the agenda is a withdrawal from NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Area, promised by Trump to protect American manufacturing jobs from moving south of the border to Mexico. Other deals, too, are under threat if Americas co-signatories refuse to renegotiate them in Americas favour.
It is possible that the incoming Trump administration may soften its tone in relation to other policy areas, where they have been mapped out. Trump has proved more than willing to flip flop when it suits him. His supporters have proved more than willing to forgive him for doing so.
What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? Show all 8 1 /8 What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On the leaked tape from 2005 where he talks about sexually assaulting women I'm very embarrassed by it, I hate it, but it's locker room talk. It's one of those things. I will knock the hell out of Isis Getty What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On Hillary Clinton I hate to say it but if I win I'm going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, so much deception. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Rex What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On Bill Clinton What he's done to women, there's never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women. AP What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On whether his alleged opposition to Iraq War had been disproven "Its not debunked. Its not debunked." Getty What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On exploiting tax loopholes "I absolutely used it, and so did Warren Buffett, and so did George Soros and so did many people who Hillary is getting money from." Getty What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On claims he's sexist I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Reuters What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On what he respects about Hillary Clinton I will say this about Hillary - she doesn't quit, she doesn't give up. I tell it like it is. She's a fighter. Reuters What did Donald Trump say during the second presidential debate? On his controversial immigration policies "Its called extreme vetting. Were going to areas like Syria, where they are coming in by the tens of thousands because of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wanting to allow a 550 per cent increase [of refugees] over Obama. People are coming into this country. We have no idea who they are, where they are from and what their feelings are about this country." Getty
This is unlikely when it comes to trade deals. They were Trump bugbears before he started his quixotic run for the White House. The promise to act upon them was a central plank of his campaign.
Moreover, taking a hard line will help Trump to stomp on the legacy of the hated Obama administration and solidify his coalition, which drew in some former Democratic supporters of Bernie Sanders. The only common ground between the latter and Trump is their mutual opposition to trade deals.
Historians may now come to see the Obama administration as the high watermark of the free trade era. Not the former host of the American Apprentice has been elected its fired.
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Vogue magazine has endorsed Hillary Clinton for US president, the first time in its 124-year history that it has openly supported a politician.
In an op-ed, the fashion magazine said never before has it spoken in favour of one candidate, although editors have made their opinions known from time to time.
Given the profound stakes of this one, and the history that stands to be made, we feel that should change, it read.
Recommended Read more Arizona newspaper gets death threats for endorsing Hillary Clinton
Ms Clinton has been profiled six times in the magazine, and Vogue has enthusiastically covered her rise from a Yale law student to governors wife, to first lady of the US to senator and then secretary of state.
Vogue said it had also featured Donald Trump, his wives and daughter Ivanka several times.
We understand that Clinton has not always been a perfect candidate, yet her fierce intelligence and considerable experience are reflected in policies and positions that are clear, sound, and hopeful, the op-ed read.
The article reasoned that Ms Clinton had fought for immigration reform, racial justice and policy reform.
Her years as Secretary of State have shown that she understands how to strengthen alliances abroad, respond to global crises, and continue American leadership in the world.
She is forceful in her support for LGBTQ rights, including an end to discrimination against transgender people. She knows the challenges working women face.
Her tax proposals and commitment to infrastructure investment will be a boon to the middle class. She will continue the important work on health-care reform begun by President Obama. She is a sane voice on guns.
Vogue also said the words "Madam President" gave "hope", as it has been almost a century since women got the right to vote.
The magazine was founded in 1892 and current editor, Anna Wintour, took the reigns in July 1988.
It has made waves over the years by placing black models on the cover before other magazines did and featuring an entire British issue in October with no models.
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Chemical castration could reduce sex crimes and "wipe out" paedophilia in Indonesia, the country's president has said.
Earlier this month, Jakarta introduced harsh new laws including minimum sentences, chemical castratoin and possible execution for paedophiles.
The legislaiton was proposed by the president after the brutal gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl.
"Our constitution respects human rights, but when it comes to sexual crimes there is no compromise," President Joko Widodo told the BBC.
"We are strong and we have to be very firm. We will hand out the maximum penalty for sexual crimes. This will not be compromised."
Indonesia to execute 14 drug convicts despite protests
When asked what evidence there is chemical castration works with sex offenders by presenter Yalda Hakim, Mr Widodo said: "In my opinion... chemical castration, if we enforce it consistently, will reduce sex crimes and wipe them out over time."
The law has been criticised by the Indonesian Doctors Association, which said its members would refuse to administer chemical castration as it is a violation of its medical ethics.
"That's fine if doctors don't want to do it," Mr Widodo said.
"We can use other doctors. We could use military doctors."
He added: "There are lots of people who want to do it. That's not a problem."
Bali Nine pair executed Show all 22 1 /22 Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed People attend a vigil for the prisoners to be executed in Indonesia at Martin Place on April 28 Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Crosses for condemned drug convicts (from L-R) Australians Andrew Chan (L) and Myuran Sukumaran (C), and Nigerian Okwudili Oyatanze AFP/Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Brintha Sukumaran, a sister of Australian death row prisoner Myuran Sukumaran's screams as she arrives to see him for a final time Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Brintha Sukumaran, the sister of Myuran Sukumaran, cries during her final visit to see him in prison on 28 April AP Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Michael Chan, brother of Australian drug convict and death row prisoner Andrew Chan, arrives at Nusakambangan island on 28 April AFP/Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed The back of a painting by Australian death-row prisoner Myuran Sukumaran is shown, signed by the eight other condemned people EPA Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed A lawyer carries a painting by Myuran Sukumaran at Wijayapura port in Cilacap on 28 April Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed A woman places a tribute on a flower wall that reads '#keephopealive' as part of an Amnesty international vigil for the pair Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed People at a vigil in Sydney on 27 April against the execution of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran Amnesty International/Sitthixay Ditthavong. Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Activists hold a banner during a protest in front of the Indonesian embassy in Manila on April 27, 2015 AFP/Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed The lawyer for Australian death row inmates Myuran Sukumaran carries a painting after visiting Indonesia's Nusakambangan island on April 26 AFP/Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed A lawyer carries a self-portrait drawn by Myuran Sukumaran after visiting the prison island of Nusakambangan on 27 April AP Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Workers load coffins into a lorry ahead of the execution of nine prisoners in Indonesia Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Indonesian soldiers stand as guard at Wijayapura port near the prison island of Nusa Kambangan on Monday Reuters Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Chintu Sukumaran (L), brother of Myuran Sukumaran, stands next to Michael Chan, brother of Andrew Chan in Indonesia on 26 April, 2015 Reuters Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Raji Sukumaran (R) and Brintha Sukumaran (L) family members of death-row prisoner Myuran Sukumaran cries as they talks to media after visiting Myuran at Kerobokan Prison in Bali, Indonesia EPA/MADE NAGI Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Indonesian police stand guard as the Bali Nine duo Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran arrive at Wijaya Pura Port where they will be transferred to Nusa Kambangan prison ahead of their execution in Cilacap, Central Java, Indonesia Getty Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Halen Chan, the mother of death-row prisoner Andrew Chan, wipes away tears during a press conference in Jakarta, Indonesia EPA/MAST IRHAM Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Andrew Chan, right, and Myuran Sukumaran, centre, talking to their lawyer EPA Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the two members of the Bali nine who could be executed within days, appear at court in 2006 Jason Childs/Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Two Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan (L) and Myuran Sukumaran (R) were sentenced as the ringleaders of the "Bali Nine" drug ring in 2006 JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images Bali Nine pair executed Bali Nine pair due to be executed Myuran Sukumaran is due to be executed EPA
He said if the court hands out the punishment of chemical castration, then "we will carry it out," saying military doctors or government doctors could carry out the procedure.
Chemical castration of paedophiles is already practiced in several countries, including Poland, Turkey, South Korea, Russia and some parts of the US.
In the UK, convicted paedophiles can undergo the procedure voluntarily.
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Indonesia's capital has launched a city-wide rat hunt offering 1.20 for each one caught.
Authorities in Jakarta are hoping their 'Rat Eradication Movement' will help rid the city of rats living on rubbish dumps in slum areas.
Jakarta Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat has claimed he came up with the campaign after a recent encounter with a large rat.
He has asked those interested not to use guns as people could be hurt by stray bullets, AFP reports.
Deputy Governor Hidayat said: "There are many rats here, and big ones. For each rat, we will pay 20,000 rupiah (1.20)."
"If possible, please do not use guns. If you miss your shot, the bullets could hit other people."
Residents are to hand over the rats to local officials who will pay out the reward and pass on the rats to the city's sanitation department for burial.
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. 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A similar project failed in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi during French colonial rule where money was handed over for rat tails.
Hanoi's rat population continued to increase as rat catchers simply cut off the rat tails before setting them free - allowing them to carry on breeding.
New Zealand has announced it plans to eradicate all rats on its islands as the government estimates pests cost the economy 1.76 billion a year.
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Sometimes the men just wanted to talk with the North Korean women. Face cam, its called. But most of the time, they wanted the other option: body cam.
Watching through a smartphone app, the men would ask the women, some of the unknown thousands of North Koreans sold to Chinese husbands and living secretly in northern China, to show their breasts or their backsides, to touch themselves or perform sex acts on one another.
Most of the time, the women did as requested. They needed the money - even if it amounted to only a few dollars a day.
In the beginning, I didnt think it was going to be a big deal. I thought it would be okay because I wasnt actually sleeping with anyone, said Suh, who, until dreams of escape brought her to this dingy room in Laos, had been one of the legions of North Korean women performing online sex work in back rooms in China. But then I found out how many perverts there are out there.
Suh, a 30-year-old who escaped from North Korea in 2008, resorted to doing video chatting after her second child was born and her husbands meager construction earnings wouldnt stretch any further.
There are some people who just want to look at your face, but the majority of them are there for their sexual desires, Suh said, putting her head down so her long hair covered her cherubic face. I felt so disgusting.
Together with two women from her village in northeastern China who were also doing chatting work, Suh fled over the summer. She made the heart-wrenching decision to leave her 5-year-old daughter with her Chinese husband.
The women traveled by bus and car down through China to the border with Laos, which they crossed illegally in the black of night, Suh carrying her 18-month-old daughter, Ji-yeon, on her back.
The women made it to Vientiane, the Laotian capital, where a Washington Post reporter spent two days with them as they paused on their journey to what they hoped would be a better life. The women talked for hours about their lives in North Korea and in China but, unlike some defectors who exaggerate their stories to make them more sensational, they appeared to play down their experiences, apparently out of shame.
Most of their stories could be verified with the pastor and broker who were helping them escape, and it was clear that the women, faced with no other options, had resorted to performing on camera for men.
The women had a friend film them at work before they left, so they could prove what they had been doing. The videos showed the women - sometimes in brightly colored underwear, sometimes naked - sitting against a low bed covered with a purple Hello Kitty quilt in front of two computers on a low table. Men, sometimes visible, sometimes not, gave them instructions. Most of the men they chatted with online were in South Korea, but a few were in America and even Africa.
Safely out of China, the other two women, both called Kim, wanted to get to South Korea, but Suh had her heart set on a more ambitious destination: the United States, the strongest country on Earth.
I think my daughter is one lucky baby, Suh said, sitting on the bed in a grimy room in Vientiane and looking at Ji-yeon as she slept, snoring lightly. Their few possessions were in plastic shopping bags, save for the clothes drying on coat hangers dangling from the light fittings. The baby had not even one toy. All the suffering is worth it. Our destiny has changed, Suh said.
Lives at risk
Defections such as that of Thae Yong Ho, North Koreas deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom who fled to South Korea over the summer, make headlines because they are so rare. But less sensationally, a steady if diminishing stream of North Koreans is making their way out, down through China, across to Laos, then into Thailand and eventually to South Korea.
Most are women from the northern provinces, considered down-and-out even by North Korean standards, and face an extremely precarious life in northeastern China. Many had been sold - some knowingly, thinking life couldnt get any worse. But other women had been tricked into thinking they were heading to jobs in China, only to find that the man who offered to help them escape, paying bribes to border soldiers and arranging passage, turned out to be a trafficker, selling the women and pocketing the profits.
The buyers are men in the countryside who are too poor or unappealing to get a wife any other way, and the women are stuck in remote villages where they cannot communicate with the locals - if they are permitted to leave the house, that is.
Since Kim Jong Un took control of North Korea at the end of 2011, security has been tightened, and it has become increasingly difficult to escape. That has driven up prices. Women ages 15 to 25 are the most prized, fetching between $10,000 and $12,000, brokers and humanitarian workers say, while women in their 30s can be acquired for half that.
Increased prices mean that some Chinese families are spending their entire life savings to buy a North Korean woman, and as a result the women are sometimes shackled inside the house.
But even if the women are allowed out and even after they learn some Chinese, venturing into the open is a risky business. If theyre caught by the Chinese police, they face repatriation to North Korea and, at a minimum, time in a labor camp.
These North Korean women in China faced a dire dilemma, either having to remain hidden and submit to this kind of sexual exploitation, or risk working outside of their residence with the very real possibility that Chinese authorities could arrest them at any time and force them back to North Korea, said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch.
The State Departments 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report noted that North Korean women and girls are subjected to sexual slavery by Chinese or Korean-Chinese men, forced prostitution in brothels or through Internet sex sites, or compelled service as hostesses in nightclubs or karaoke bars.
The State Department reported that the Chinese government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.
Although some women take the risk of working outside the home, shuttling between cleaning and babysitting jobs or working behind the scenes in restaurants, an increasing number feel they have no choice but to try to make money behind closed doors.
That is where video chatting comes in.
Online sex work vs. escape
About one-fifth of the North Korean women living in hiding in China are involved in this kind of online sex work, said Park, a broker who works to get women out.
The Post agreed to withhold Parks full name to avoid jeopardizing this highly sensitive work. The newspaper also agreed to use the womens family names only, partly to protect relatives in North Korea.
If youre working in a restaurant or outside, you run the risk of being asked for your papers by the police. So doing this work is safer and the money is better, Park said. In the village where they lived, every North Korean woman does this. Its so normal to be doing this.
Some North Korean women in China are forced into this work, essentially held prisoner by pimps. The women The Post met were not forced, as such. But they had few other opportunities.
Suh was sold eight years ago to a man in northern China who, she said, treated her well - he beat her only a few times. But the arrival of their second child made a tough financial situation untenable. She heard about video chatting through a friend of a friend and began chatting with South Korean men at night when everyone in her house was asleep.
On her first day she earned $3. In her best week, she netted $120.
A few months ago, Suh decided she couldnt take it. I wondered why I had to do this. Im a human being, the same as everyone else, Suh said, breaking down into heaving sobs. I wanted to be a good mother, a strong mother for my daughters.
She decided to try to leave, along with the two others. They found out about Park and Kim Sung-eun, a pastor from the Caleb Mission, a church in South Korea that helps bring defectors to safety, and asked to be helped out. For the second time in their lives, they escaped, this time to a safe house in northern China, and from there they made the journey to the border, then walked to Laos.
Laos was safer but still somewhat of a gray area; they may be sent back. Once they got to Thailand, the fear of repatriation to North Korea would be gone.
While waiting to cross the Mekong River, the women talked about the difficult decisions they had had to make. Suhs 5-year-old is listed on her Chinese fathers family register, which gives her legal status in China and enables her to go to school. But by the time Ji-yeon was born, the back channel for registration - involving bribes to willing officials - had closed. The baby doesnt legally exist.
So when Suh decided to flee and realized she could only manage to take one child with her, she knew it had to be Ji-yeon. She thinks Ive abandoned her, Suh said, breaking down into another torrent of tears as she recalled telling her older daughter she would be back soon.
The day they were to cross into Thailand, the women were full of nervous excitement. But things soon went wrong. Heavy rain had swollen the Mekong, and their boat missed the drop point.
They were discovered by local police and taken to a prison. They were terrified and sent an endless stream of messages to Park, asking if they would be sent back to North Korea. One photo they sent showed Ji-yeon standing in a cell, looking out through the bars.
Instead, they were taken to Bangkok, where they are now being held at a detention center, the pastor said.
Suh has applied for asylum in the United States, even though she speaks no English and knows she will receive little support, unlike in South Korea. Officials from the American Embassy in Bangkok have met with Suh and her daughter, the pastor said. He estimated that it would take about four months for their asylum claims to be processed.
An embassy spokeswoman in Bangkok declined to comment. The United States has accepted 74 refugees from North Korea since Kim took power, according to State Department data.
During the pause in Vientiane, the relief of being out of China had washed over the women, and the challenges ahead loomed. The women had begun to dwell on the handicaps that North Koreans face. I have no passport, no papers, nothing, Suh said. Why are our lives so different, just because of where we are born?
The Washington Post
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A police officer is fighting for his life in Germany after being shot by a right-wing extremist during a weapons raid.
The officer was one of four injured in a gun battle with a suspect named as Wolfgang P at a house in Georgensgmund on Wednesday morning.
Officials said police were executing a warrant to confiscate legally-owned firearms after the 49-year-old refused mandatory inspections by local authorities.
A team of specialist officers launched the operation at 6am local time (5am BST) and were immediately met by gunfire.
Johann Rast, the chief of Central Franconia Police, told a press conference police found the suspect in a bedroom.
He was hiding behind the door and shot through the closed door, he said. It is not yet clear how many shots were fired.
Three hit an officer who remains in a critical condition, striking his helmet, elbow and edge of his protective vest. Another officer was shot in the arm, while two others were injured by flying glass.
Wolfgang P is believed to have been alerted to the polices approach by blue lights and sirens, having a gun and bulletproof vest next to his bed.
The suspect was injured and taken into custody, with an arsenal of 30 weapons seized in subsequent searches of his home.
Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Show all 13 1 /13 Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism outside Cologne Cathedral on 5 January after the assaults Oliver Berg/EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism in Cologne following the rash of sex attacks on New Year's Eve Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police initially failed to mention the assaults in report the following morning EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police officers patrol in front of the main station of Cologne, Germany AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks German far-right supporters demonstrate at Cologne`s train station (Reuters) Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police used pepper spray to control supporters of Pegida, Hogesa (Hooligans against Salafists) and other right-wing populist groups as they protested against the New Year's Eve sex attacks on 9 January, 2016 in Cologne, Germany Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use a water cannon during a protest march by supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016 Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use pepper spray against supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida, in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Artist Mira Moire protests naked in Cologne against the mass sex attacks on New Year's Eve AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks A demonstrator holds a sign in German that reads 'No violence against women' during a demonstration in the wake of the sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, outside the cathedeal in Cologne, Germany, 09 January 2016. EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Counter demonstrators hold up a sign reading "Against sexism, against racism" as they protest against a demonstration of the islamophobic movement PEGIDA at the train station in Cologne, Germany, on January 9, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Demonstration by a womens group on Saturday (AP) AP
Officials said he calls himself a Reichsburger, part of a far-right movement that claims the current German state is illegitimate and is alleged to have neo-Nazi links.
Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, described his shock at the shooting and said it was clear that Wolfgang P fired before police officers.
To be part of the Reichsburger movement is to be a right-wing extremist, he added.
We must take a closer look at the movement. The Reichsburgers are not being dismissed as a group of nutters.
It is obvious that these people, who are so consumed by their ideological beliefs, are willing to use violence against police.
Mr Herrmann said the movement has been under intensive observation by state intelligence services because of elements' far-right aims, and that surveillance would increase.
Police uncovered a neo-Nazi plot to attack a refugee centre in Bavaria last year (EPA)
Reichsburgers adhere to their own self-declared government, known as the KRR, which issue their own version of official documents such as driving licences, while followers frequently spurn federal taxes or fines.
They are mainly known for aggravating German authorities by pursuing obscure legal claims rather than violence, but a member was wounded during a gun battle as he was evicted from his home in August.
Wolfgang P, who is unemployed and previously operated a martial arts school, had reportedly written scurrilous letters on the movement after joining in the summer. He remains in police custody.
A recent report by Berlin's state intelligence service describes the Reichsburgers as an extremely diverse range of small groups and individuals who believe in an ideological mixture of conspiracy theories, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic views, and who have been behaving increasingly aggressively for some time".
Germany remains on a state of high alert following a series of terror attacks by Isis supporters, including a suicide bombing in Ansbach and axe attack on a train.
But there is also growing concern over far-right movements, which have been gathering increasing support during tensions over the refugee crisis and sexual assaults in Cologne.
Centres for asylum seekers have been the target of arson attacks and racist graffiti, while police uncovered a neo-Nazi plot to attack refugee accomodation with explosives last year.
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A suspected terror cell has been arrested in Belgium as authorities continue hunting down Isis supporters.
A new wave of police raids were launched on Tuesday morning, seeing officers search 15 homes in Ghent, Deinze and Antwerp as part of an operation coordinated by Europols European Counter Terrorism Centre.
The federal prosecutors office said 15 people were taken for questioning, including four who have subsequently charged with terror offences.
Those persons have been indicted because of participation in the activities of a terrorist group, amongst others its funding, a spokesperson said.
Some of them are suspected of recruiting people with a view to departing to Syria and joining Islamic State [Isis] there.
No guns nor explosives were found and officials said no link had yet been established to the attacks on Brussels Airport and Maalbeek Metro station on 22 March.
In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images
The massacres, which killed 32 people, were carried out by the same super cell of jihadis who carried out the Paris attacks in November.
Recommended Read more How Isis is turning young criminals into new brand of terrorist
Mohamed Abrini, an accomplice of the Paris attackers, was among the Brussels bombers after evading detection by security forces for more than four months.
He was a childhood friend of fellow suspect Salah Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up on the Boulevard Voltaire during the Paris attacks.
The pair grew up in Molenbeek, now notorious as a breeding ground for extremism, while several other suspects were Belgian and used the country to prepare the atrocities in both Paris and Brussels.
The revelations turned international scrutiny on Belgiums security services, with interior minister Jan Jambon admitting inexcusable blunders with the handling of intelligence.
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Czech police carried out a joint operation with the FBI to arrest a Russian citizen in Prague suspected of staging cyber attacks on the United States.
Last week, Washington formally accused the Russian government of attempting to interfere with the 2016 election by hacking US political institutions charges the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed.
However, there was no indication from Czech police the arrest in Prague was linked to the US claims.
Czech police have successfully collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), police spokesman David Schon said in a statement posted on the forces website on Wednesday.
The aim of the operation was a Russian citizen suspected of hacking attacks on targets in the United States.
Trump 'accused of treason' after urging Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's email
The arrest took place in a hotel in Prague city centre, the police statement said. The suspect was not identified by name and no date was given for his arrest.
The suspect collapsed in police custody, it added, before he was given first aid and then hospitalised.
Czech judicial authorities will now rule on his extradition to the United States, the statement said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed US threats of retaliation over alleged Russian hacks, saying such statements only confirmed Washington used cyber attacks for political ends.
US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump shakes hands with Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the conclusion of their first presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York Reuters US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures President Barack Obama embraces Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on stage at the party's convention in Philadelphia US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Donald Trump's wife Melania delivered a speech at the GOP convention in Cleveland that was later found to have been cribbed in part from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention address AP US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Hillary Clinton talks to reporters aboard her new campaign plane on Labour Day, 5 September, her first 'press conference' since 2015 (Getty Images) US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Donald Trump held a joint press conference with Mexican leader Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City in August, hours before reiterating his harsh immigration plans at a campaign rally in Arizona Reuters US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Bernie Sanders officially endorsed Hillary Clinton, saying his progressive vision for a transformed America would be best served by the defeat of Donald Trump Reuters US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Khizr and Gazala Khan appeared at the DNC to slam Trump for his stance on Muslim immigration, citing the case of their son Humayun Khan, who was killed in combat while serving as a Captain in the US Army in Iraq US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is doing better in polls than any third party candidate since Ross Perot, 20 years ago Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Green Party candidate Jill Stein (centre) marches with supporters in Colorado AP US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Hillary Clinton and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine at a rally in Kaine's home state in July, days before Ms Clinton tapped him to be her running mate Getty US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Trump on the campaign trail with his vice presidential pick, Indiana governor Mike Pence AP US election 2016: the race for the White House in pictures Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage appears at a Trump rally in Mississippi in August, where he told the crowd that he 'wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me'.
On Friday, US Vice President Joe Biden told NBC News we are sending a message to Mr Putin, and retaliation for Russias hacking attacks will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact.
The CIA was preparing a retaliatory cyber attack designed to harass and embarrass the Kremlin leadership, NBC reported.
The US government officially accused Russia for the first time of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organisations ahead of the 8 November presidential election.
The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organisations, a statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
The Kremlin was propelled to the heart of American politics in July, after Hillary Clintons campaign blamed Russia for an embarrassing leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Russia has been accused of favouring Republican candidate Donald Trump who has praised Mr Putin and called for better ties with Moscow over Ms Clinton, who is seen as more hawkish.
Russias relations with the US have fallen to their post-Cold War nadir over the conflict in Ukraine and stalled efforts to end the five-year Syrian war.
Additional reporting by AFP
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A school student has been convicted of animal cruelty after carrying out the ritual slaughter of three sheep in Austria.
The 18-year-old, who has not been named, says he sacrificed the animals to give thanks for his father recovering from an illness.
The Austrian-Turkish teenager from the southern city of Gratz had contacted local farmers and asked about purchasing sheep that were advertised online.
After agreeing a deal with one, the teen took delivery of the livestock and then sacrificed them according to traditional practice.
I laid them on the ground and my mother held the legs behind, then I said a quotation from the Koran and closed the sheep's eyes," he said in court.
He cut the throats of the animals on the farm and let them bleed to death before loading them into his car, according to The Local.
Austrian law states that animals can only be slaughtered in licensed slaughterhouses and must be given anaesthesia immediately.
The teenager claimed he was unaware of the law and only discovered his actions were illegal when he was arrested.
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. 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He accepted a one-month suspended sentenced, while his mother, who also claimed ignorance, was given 150 hours of community work.
She initially refused to accept the sentence, hoping her husband might be able to pay a fine on her behalf instead. When informed the only alternative was jail, the woman in question agreed to the community service.
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They are afraid of a lot of things now. They are afraid of the bombing, they are afraid of the attack thats coming and they are also really afraid of the foreign spies who are among them. This was Rachids description of what was going on inside Isis. And the Western intelligence agency that has infiltrated Isis the most, claimed the Belgian jihadi, was the British.
Rachid is one of the thousands of foreign fighters who had gone to join Syrias jihad, graduating in extremism among rebel groups to two years serving with Isis. But disillusioned, he says, with the Islamists and fearing what lay ahead, he has fled across the border to Turkey.
Rachid, a mechanic before he took up the gun in the name of Islam, was part of a small but steady flow of fighters leaving Isis as it faces an assault on Mosul, its last stronghold in Iraq and waited for the coming offensive against Raqqa, the capital of its caliphate in Syria.
The contact with Rachid came through an intermediary in Turkey after I wrote an article in The Independent last month about thousands of jihadis from who, with Isis facing defeat, will be seeking to return. The picture painted by him was of an Islamic State where the sense of omnipotence that came during the astonishingly quick advance through Syria and Iraq has been replaced by foreboding, divisions and desertions. And with it has come rising paranoia and violent retribution being exacted on those deemed to be traitors.
Rachid, who had trimmed his beard and burned the clothes and documents he had in Syria, was anxious to leave Urfa, the city where we met, as soon as possible. It has, despite being in Turkey, become a haven for Islamist extremists, including those from Isis.
Moderate activists have been murdered in Urfa, among them Ibrahim Abdul Qader and Fares Hamadi, who were members of the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which charts the brutality of Isis. A video posted by Isis of the killings claimed the victims had conspired with crusaders. There is no evidence that any of these activists had links with British or other intelligence agencies.
In pictures: Mosul offensive Show all 40 1 /40 In pictures: Mosul offensive In pictures: Mosul offensive A doctor carries an Iraqi newborn baby at a hospital in Mosul, Iraq July 18, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi girls play at a yard of a school in Mosul, Iraq July 18, 2017alal Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A woman on crutches who is a relative of men accused of being Islamic State militants is seen at a camp in Bartella, east of Mosul, Iraq July 15, 2017. Picture taken July 15, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A displaced girl, who fled from home carries a doll at Hamam al-Alil camp south of Mosul, Iraq July 13, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi federal police members and civilians celebrate in the Old City of Mosul on 9 July 2017 after the government's announcement of the "liberation" of the embattled city. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office said he was in "liberated" Mosul to congratulate "the heroic fighters and the Iraqi people on the achievement of the major victory" AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A picture taken on 9 July 2017, shows a general view of the destruction in Mosul's Old City. Iraq will announce imminently a final victory in the nearly nine-month offensive to retake Mosul from jihadists, a US general said Saturday, as celebrations broke out among police forces in the city. AFP In pictures: Mosul offensive Members of the Iraqi federal police raise the victory gesture as they ride on a humvee while advancing through the Old City of Mosul on 28 June 2017, as the offensive continues to retake the last district held by Islamic State (IS) group fighters. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Smoke billows as Iraqi forces advance through the Old City of Mosul on 26 June 2017, during the ongoing offensive to retake the last district held by the Islamic State (IS) group. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi man wearing the green scarf of the Shi'ite faith kisses an Iraqi Army soldier on safely reaching the Iraqi forces position as Iraqi civilians flee the Old City of west Mosul where heavy fighting continues on 23 June 2017. Iraqi forces continue to encounter stiff resistance with improvised explosive devices, car bombs, heavy mortar fire and snipers hampering their advance. Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A picture taken from the inside of an Iraqi forces armoured vehicle shows residents walking through a damaged street as troops advance towards Mosul's Old City on 18 June 2017, during the ongoing offensive to retake the last district still held by the Islamic State (IS) group. Military commanders told AFP the assault had begun at dawn after overnight air strikes by the US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces. They said the jihadists were putting up fierce resistance. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi Army soldiers advance in a destroyed street after an Iraqi forces airstrike targeted an Islamic State sniper position 17 June 2017 in al-Shifa, the last district of west Mosul under Islamic State control. IS snipers, as well as car and suicide bomb attacks continue to hinder the Iraqi forces efforts to retake the final district. A series of airstrikes by Iraqi helicopter gunships attempted to hit multiple Islamic State sniper positions in al-Shifa. Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier frisks a displaced Iraqi man at a temporary camp in the compound of the closed Nineveh International Hotel in Mosul on 16 June 2017 which was recovered by Iraqi troops from Islamic State group fighters earlier in the year. A screening centre set up in the compound's fairgrounds sees a constant stream of Iraqis fleeing the battle for Mosul, awaiting their turn to be checked by the Iraqi forces who are searching for suspected Islamic State (IS) group members. The small fairground lies at the end of a pontoon bridge across the Tigris recently opened to civilians that is the only physical link between the two banks of the river. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqis staying at the al-Khazir camp swim in a river near the camp for internally displaced people, located between Arbil and Mosul on 11 June 2017. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi government forces drive on a road leading to Tal Afar on 9 June 2017, during ongoing battles to retake the city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi policeman carries a poster bearing an image of Mosul's iconic leaning minaret, known as the "Hadba" (Hunchback), on 22 June 2017. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqis stand in line to receive food aid in western Mosul's Zanjili neighbourhood on 7 June 2017, during ongoing battles as Iraqi forces try to retake the city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters. Living conditions in Mosul have again deteriorated since the start of the Iraqi government's offensive on the city in October in which they retook a large part of the west of the city. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Displaced Iraqis carry lightbulbs and sacks as they evacuate from western Mosul's Zanjili neighbourhood as government forces advance in the area during their ongoing battle against Islamic State (IS) group fighters on 13 May 2017 AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) flashes the victory gesture as he patrols in western Mosul's al-Islah al-Zaraye neighbourhood on 13 May 2017 AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi army soldiers from the 9th armoured division on a truck flash the sign of victory as they drive back from Mosul to the town of Qaraqosh (also known as Hamdaniya) Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Members of Iraqi forces flash the sign of victory on their vehicle as they advance towards Hammam al-Alil area south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi security forces gestures in Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi children, one flashing the sign of victory, greet Iraqi army's soldiers from the 9th armoured division in the area of Ali Rash, adjacent to the eastern Al-Intissar neighbourhood of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Peshmerga forces look at a tunnel used by Islamic State militants near the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier takes a photograph with his phone as his comrade stands next to a detained man, whom the Iraqi army soldiers accused of being an Islamic State fighter, who was fleeing with his family in the Intisar disrict of eastern Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iranian Kurdish female members of the Freedom Party of Kurdistan (PAK) hold a position in an area near the town of Bashiqa, some 25 kilometres north east of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi families, who fled their homes in Hamam al-Alil, gather on the outskirts of their town Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Displaced people walk past a checkpoint near Qayara, south of Mosul, Iraq AP In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi families who were displaced by the ongoing operation by Iraqi forces against jihadists of the Islamic State group to retake the city of Mosul, are seen gathering in an area near Qayyarah In pictures: Mosul offensive A boy who just fled Abu Jarbuah village is seen with his family at a Kurdish Peshmerga position between two front lines near Bashiqa, east of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi child eats a pomegranate upon the arrival of Iraqi forces in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive People who just fled Abu Jarbuah village sit as they eat at a Kurdish Peshmerga position between two front lines near Bashiqa, east of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A couple who just fled Abu Jarbuah village are escorted by Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Women carry a boy over a wall as civilians flee their houses in the village of Tob Zawa, Iraq AP In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier and a civilian ride a motorbike as smoke rises behind them, on the road between Qayyarah and Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi forces, wearing a skull mask, waits at a checkpoint for people fleeing the main hub city of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier sits at a checkpoint in an area near Qayyarah Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi men prepare food portions for Iraqi forces deployed in areas south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi forces celebrate upon the arrival of vehicles bringing food to them Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi childen smoke cigarettes upon the arrival of Iraqi forces in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi forces distributes drinks to children in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty
Many of those killed across the border, however, have been accused of being foreign spies. One of the most high-profile figures was Abu Ubaida Almaghribi, head of Isiss security for Aleppo, who was in charge of James Foley, the American photojournalist, and other Western hostages before they were murdered. Almaghribi, a Dutch national of Moroccan descent, and three others were said to have been beheaded after being accused of being MI6 agents and passing on secrets to the UK.
Isis held an internal investigation after British national Mohammed Emwazi, who murdered James Foley and other captives, including Britons David Haines and Alan Henning, was killed in another drone strike last November. A purge and executions followed claims that his location had been betrayed, enabling the successful air strike to be carried out.
Rachid and other European jihadis face the prospect of long prison sentences if they returned home. The only European state that does not charge returnees from Syrias rebel groups with terrorism related offences is Denmark, which runs a rehabilitation programme .
Mosul battle: Civilians flee ahead of fighting
The foreign fighters were convinced, said Rachid and other fighters, that the Western security agencies are tracking them after placing agents inside Isis and other Islamist group. They are also convinced that Britain has taken a leading role in this. The British are not the biggest group of volunteers from a country [in Europe]. But maybe because some of those who came from there became so well known that their intelligence service is so involved. But many brothers will tell you that spies are active, Daesh [Isis] have killed men, women even, after saying they were foreign spies, some of them British spies, said Rachid.
Daesh asked for a lot of people, not just fighters, but teachers, engineers, doctors to build the Islamic State, if you remember. They now think that a few of these spies got in at that time, he added.
Uluk Ultas, a Turkish academic and political analyst who is writing a book on Syrian rebels was also aware of the British connection. He said: There is a pretty widespread feeling that the UK has managed to infiltrate a number of groups, including Isis, and that the Isis leadership was aware of this and worried. I was surprised when I was first told this, because I thought it would be the Americans who would be taking the lead in this among the Western countries, but it seems the British have been working on this for a while, dont forget Almaghribi was arrested by Daesh two years ago.
Recommended Read more Mosul braces itself for next bloody chapter after 13 years of war
Mr Ultas is the director of Seta, a think tank which was founded by Ibrahim Kalin, an adviser to President Recep Tayyep Erdogan. His book will contain a rare interview with Abu Firas al-Suri, a senior leader of Jabhat al-Nusra who was subsequently killed in a US drone strike.
He continued: What is interesting is that as Daesh [Isis] got bigger the checks it made on those wishing to join became less strict. It seems the feeling in the leadership was that since they were no longer just a fighting group, but the Islamic State, they were somehow above it and that their security would find enemy agents.
But it seems they were not so successful and Western intelligence and others like the Turkish and the Jordanian were able to get in there. Almaghribi was the most high profile of those Daesh called a British spy and said they killed. But I have spoken to fighters who say that Almaghribi isnt dead after all and has been seen around. Maybe hes being held as a bargaining counter for when Raqqa falls who knows?
Isis releases video claiming everything is fine in Mosul
Some of the information about Almaghribi came from Jejoen Bontick, who was, like Rachid, a Belgian jihadi. He had stated that James Foley and his fellow hostages were being held by Belgian jihadis who belonged to a group called Sharia4Belgium in Aleppo. They were later moved to Raqqa and into the hands of Emwazi and three other Britons, who became known to their captives as The Beatles (Emwazi was known as Jihadi John).
Philip Balboni, the chief executive of GlobalPost, the American news organisation for which Foley worked, had said of Bontick: A young Belgian who had travelled to fight in Syria befriended Foley and, once that jihadist went back to Belgium, offered excellent information on roughly where Jim was held and by whom. It was the first time we knew that Jim was alive.
Bontinck was a member of Sharia-4-Belgium. Its leader Fouad Belkacem, a convicted burglar, visited England in 2010 and met Anjem Choudary, the London-based radical Muslim preacher for advice before starting the group in Brussels. Choudary was jailed for five and half years in London last month after being convicted of supporting Isis.
Some Sharia-4-Belgium members subsequently visited Choudary and worked with him in London: some of the preachers followers went in turn to Belgium. Choudary, who represented fundamentalist British Muslim groups Islam4UK and al-Muhajiroun, gave his support to Sharia4Belgium through a website called Paltalk. It was also used by Omar Bakri Mohammed, another radical preacher who was expelled from the UK. After the murder of Lee Rigby, Bakri Mohammed told The Independent that one of the killers, Michael Adebolajo, used to be part of his congregation.
Sharia4Belgium founder Belkacem has been jailed for 12 years in Belgium, Boninck received a suspended sentence after testifying against others, many of them members of the organisation, accused of terrorist offences,
Around 27,000 foreign fighters are believed to have joined Isis since the start of Syrias civil war five years ago, with between 5,000 and 7,000 of them arriving from Europe to join Isis and other hardline Salafist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra an al-Qaeda affiliate that now calls itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. Just under 800 have travelled from the UK, but the numbers coming back have been fewer than a dozen for the past nine months.
The British brothers are not going back because they are afraid of getting arrested like the others from Europe said Rachid. But staying in Syria now means there is a big risk of being killed, either from the bombing, or when the attack on Raqaa starts or by Daesh, if they decide you are a traitor, a spy.
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Iraqi troops are poised to seize a Christian town on the outskirts of Mosul as Isis attempts to slow the offensive on its last remaining major stronghold in Iraq with suicide bombs, tunnels and booby-traps.
An officer from the 9th Division of the Iraqi army said his troops were under half a mile from Bakhdida on Wednesday, afternoon as government forces and militias continued their advance.
The town, also known as al-Hamdaniya or Qaraqosh, was deserted by its predominantly Christian residents during the Isis advance two years ago and is now a bastion for jihadi fighters attempting to block routes towards central Mosul.
Militants sent lorries and cars loaded with explosives toward the front lines, many of which were destroyed before reaching their target, and fired mortars to slow Iraqi troops attempting to clear the region of Shora.
Isis claimed it had launched 12 martyrdom operations during battles and published footage claiming to show its fighters attacking enemy troops.
Families were beginning to return to one of the villages captured from the extremists overnight, finding their homes in Sheikh Amir rigged with explosives and dug in with elaborate underground defences.
Iraqi forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga and militias are encircling the city from the north, south and east, advancing with the backing of American and British special forces and air strikes by the US-led coalition.
The assault has been hailed as decisive by commanders in Iraq and the US but analysts have warned the battle is likely to take months, with jihadis likely to flee into Isis territory in neighbouring Syria to regroup.
Renad Mansour, an academy associate of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, told The Independent the loss of Mosul was certain but would definitely not signal the end of Isis.
Displaced Iraqis from a village outside Mosul, who fled fighting in the area (Getty)
It will continue to exist like it has done since 2003, he added. Isis will change the narrative to make it look like Mosul is only a small battle in a much larger war, its the only way to legitimise themselves.
Mr Mansour said the loss of the groups de facto capital in Iraq would deal a major ideological blow to Isis, damaging recruitment and fighters morale.
He predicted Isis would revert to guerrilla-style warfare in Iraq while leaders form a new strategy to continue attempts to build the groups caliphate.
They will come together and wait they know theres no political solution, as well as fear of Kurdish Peshmerga and militias, he added.
They know at some point the ground will be ripe again for them to move back in. Everyone is still looking short term, at a military solution for Mosul rather than the future of Isis.
The Iraqi military and Kurdish forces say they launched operations to the south and east of militant-held Mosul (AP)
A senior Iraqi commander, Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, called on Iraqis fighting for Isis to surrender as their approach continued for a third day, estimating that up to 6,000 militants remained in Mosul.
They are embedded among more than a million civilians, prompting warnings from the United Nations and international human rights organisations over the impossible choice faced by families choosing to risk their lives to flee Isis or stay and face the oncoming onslaught.
The terrorist groups Amaq propaganda agency published a video showing fighters fanning out through the citys streets in the darkness, lining deserted roads while a leader threatened humiliation for the US.
The stunt may have been intended for the viewing of Mosuls residents as well as Isis enemies, with the group routinely using civilians as human shields during military offensives.
While families living inside the city have been prevented from leaving, 5,000 people who managed to flee surrounding villages have arrived in a filthy and overcrowded refugee camp in Syria in the past 10 days.
Save the Children warned that the al-Hol camp was already bursting at the seams, with dire sanitary conditions and inadequate supplies of food, drinking water and medicine, with the UN estimating that 100,000 people may cross the border.
In pictures: Mosul offensive Show all 40 1 /40 In pictures: Mosul offensive In pictures: Mosul offensive A doctor carries an Iraqi newborn baby at a hospital in Mosul, Iraq July 18, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi girls play at a yard of a school in Mosul, Iraq July 18, 2017alal Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A woman on crutches who is a relative of men accused of being Islamic State militants is seen at a camp in Bartella, east of Mosul, Iraq July 15, 2017. Picture taken July 15, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A displaced girl, who fled from home carries a doll at Hamam al-Alil camp south of Mosul, Iraq July 13, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi federal police members and civilians celebrate in the Old City of Mosul on 9 July 2017 after the government's announcement of the "liberation" of the embattled city. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office said he was in "liberated" Mosul to congratulate "the heroic fighters and the Iraqi people on the achievement of the major victory" AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A picture taken on 9 July 2017, shows a general view of the destruction in Mosul's Old City. Iraq will announce imminently a final victory in the nearly nine-month offensive to retake Mosul from jihadists, a US general said Saturday, as celebrations broke out among police forces in the city. AFP In pictures: Mosul offensive Members of the Iraqi federal police raise the victory gesture as they ride on a humvee while advancing through the Old City of Mosul on 28 June 2017, as the offensive continues to retake the last district held by Islamic State (IS) group fighters. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Smoke billows as Iraqi forces advance through the Old City of Mosul on 26 June 2017, during the ongoing offensive to retake the last district held by the Islamic State (IS) group. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi man wearing the green scarf of the Shi'ite faith kisses an Iraqi Army soldier on safely reaching the Iraqi forces position as Iraqi civilians flee the Old City of west Mosul where heavy fighting continues on 23 June 2017. Iraqi forces continue to encounter stiff resistance with improvised explosive devices, car bombs, heavy mortar fire and snipers hampering their advance. Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A picture taken from the inside of an Iraqi forces armoured vehicle shows residents walking through a damaged street as troops advance towards Mosul's Old City on 18 June 2017, during the ongoing offensive to retake the last district still held by the Islamic State (IS) group. Military commanders told AFP the assault had begun at dawn after overnight air strikes by the US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces. They said the jihadists were putting up fierce resistance. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi Army soldiers advance in a destroyed street after an Iraqi forces airstrike targeted an Islamic State sniper position 17 June 2017 in al-Shifa, the last district of west Mosul under Islamic State control. IS snipers, as well as car and suicide bomb attacks continue to hinder the Iraqi forces efforts to retake the final district. A series of airstrikes by Iraqi helicopter gunships attempted to hit multiple Islamic State sniper positions in al-Shifa. Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier frisks a displaced Iraqi man at a temporary camp in the compound of the closed Nineveh International Hotel in Mosul on 16 June 2017 which was recovered by Iraqi troops from Islamic State group fighters earlier in the year. A screening centre set up in the compound's fairgrounds sees a constant stream of Iraqis fleeing the battle for Mosul, awaiting their turn to be checked by the Iraqi forces who are searching for suspected Islamic State (IS) group members. The small fairground lies at the end of a pontoon bridge across the Tigris recently opened to civilians that is the only physical link between the two banks of the river. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqis staying at the al-Khazir camp swim in a river near the camp for internally displaced people, located between Arbil and Mosul on 11 June 2017. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi government forces drive on a road leading to Tal Afar on 9 June 2017, during ongoing battles to retake the city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi policeman carries a poster bearing an image of Mosul's iconic leaning minaret, known as the "Hadba" (Hunchback), on 22 June 2017. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqis stand in line to receive food aid in western Mosul's Zanjili neighbourhood on 7 June 2017, during ongoing battles as Iraqi forces try to retake the city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters. Living conditions in Mosul have again deteriorated since the start of the Iraqi government's offensive on the city in October in which they retook a large part of the west of the city. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Displaced Iraqis carry lightbulbs and sacks as they evacuate from western Mosul's Zanjili neighbourhood as government forces advance in the area during their ongoing battle against Islamic State (IS) group fighters on 13 May 2017 AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) flashes the victory gesture as he patrols in western Mosul's al-Islah al-Zaraye neighbourhood on 13 May 2017 AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi army soldiers from the 9th armoured division on a truck flash the sign of victory as they drive back from Mosul to the town of Qaraqosh (also known as Hamdaniya) Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Members of Iraqi forces flash the sign of victory on their vehicle as they advance towards Hammam al-Alil area south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi security forces gestures in Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi children, one flashing the sign of victory, greet Iraqi army's soldiers from the 9th armoured division in the area of Ali Rash, adjacent to the eastern Al-Intissar neighbourhood of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Peshmerga forces look at a tunnel used by Islamic State militants near the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier takes a photograph with his phone as his comrade stands next to a detained man, whom the Iraqi army soldiers accused of being an Islamic State fighter, who was fleeing with his family in the Intisar disrict of eastern Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iranian Kurdish female members of the Freedom Party of Kurdistan (PAK) hold a position in an area near the town of Bashiqa, some 25 kilometres north east of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi families, who fled their homes in Hamam al-Alil, gather on the outskirts of their town Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Displaced people walk past a checkpoint near Qayara, south of Mosul, Iraq AP In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi families who were displaced by the ongoing operation by Iraqi forces against jihadists of the Islamic State group to retake the city of Mosul, are seen gathering in an area near Qayyarah In pictures: Mosul offensive A boy who just fled Abu Jarbuah village is seen with his family at a Kurdish Peshmerga position between two front lines near Bashiqa, east of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi child eats a pomegranate upon the arrival of Iraqi forces in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive People who just fled Abu Jarbuah village sit as they eat at a Kurdish Peshmerga position between two front lines near Bashiqa, east of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A couple who just fled Abu Jarbuah village are escorted by Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Women carry a boy over a wall as civilians flee their houses in the village of Tob Zawa, Iraq AP In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier and a civilian ride a motorbike as smoke rises behind them, on the road between Qayyarah and Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi forces, wearing a skull mask, waits at a checkpoint for people fleeing the main hub city of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier sits at a checkpoint in an area near Qayyarah Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi men prepare food portions for Iraqi forces deployed in areas south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi forces celebrate upon the arrival of vehicles bringing food to them Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi childen smoke cigarettes upon the arrival of Iraqi forces in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi forces distributes drinks to children in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty
The camp is littered with waste and faeces, with a looming risk of outbreaks of disease as a result, the charity said. There are just 16 latrines shared by more than 9,000 people.
There are also concerns over the treatment of civilians by Iraqi troops and militias, following allegations of abuse as Isis was driven out of Fallujah, where Amnesty International said hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians were detained, tortured and killed while trying to flee.
The International Rescue Committee said all men and boys over the age of 14 were to undergo security screening monitored by it and other charities.
Shia militia leaders have attempted to calm fears of sectarian tensions by announcing they would focus on Tal Afar, a town to the west of Mosul, rather than on the predominantly Sunni Muslim city itself.
The Mosul offensive is the largest launched by the Iraqi army since the 2003 invasion, involving 25,000 troops, Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish Peshmerga forces and state-sanctioned Shia militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) converging on the city.
Additional reporting by agencies
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Saudi Arabia has executed a member of the royal family for an alleged murder.
Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was sentenced to death after apparently shooting dead his fellow countryman Adel al-Mahemid during a brawl.
The method of execution remains unknown but the majority of those who are put to death in Saudi Arabia are beheaded with a sword.
The prince pleaded guilty to shooting his compatriot after an argument erupted at a desert camp on the edge of Riyadh three years ago.
When al-Kabir realised the victim was a colleague and friend he informed the police, according to Arab News.
The victims family were offered financial compensation in return for not demanding the death sentence but they refused, Al-Arabiya reported.
Saudi Arabia arrests teenage YouTube star over 'enticing' videos with female American blogger
The government... is keen to keep order, stabilise security and bring about justice through implementing the rules prescribed by Allah, the Saudi interior ministry said in a statement.
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In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
The House of Saud rarely sees executions of its own thousands of members.
One of the most prominent cases was Faisal bin Musaid al Saud, who was sentenced to death for assassinating his uncle, King Faisal, in 1975.
Saudi Arabias strict legal code means murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and apostasy can all receive the death sentence.
The kingdom executed at least 158 people last year, with only Iran and Pakistan carrying out more death sentences, according to Amnesty International.
China is not included in Amnesty figures, but is apparently the world leader executing thousands of people last year, according to CNN.
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Syria has accused the European Union of fuelling the country's civil war by supporting terrorism and said it has no right to criticise the government or its ally Russia.
EU foreign ministers vowed on Monday to impose more sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad's government, saying the bombardment of Aleppo by Russia and the regime "may account to war crimes".
The ministers also said the Syrian government should be referred to the International Criminal Court.
In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Show all 19 1 /19 In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrian boys cry following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov speaks to the media in Moscow, Russia. Konashenkov strongly warned the United States against striking Syrian government forces and issued a thinly-veiled threat to use Russian air defense assets to protect them AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrians wait to receive treatment at a hospital following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Alepp Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov speaks at a briefing in the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia. Antonov said the Russian air strikes in Syria have killed about 35,000 militants, including about 2,700 residents of Russia AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Jameel Mustafa Habboush, receives oxygen from civil defence volunteers, known as the white helmets, as they rescue him from under the rubble of a building following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civil defence members rest amidst rubble in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A girl carrying a baby inspects damage in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members look for survivors at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members carry an injured woman on a stretcher at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Volunteers from Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, help civilians after Russia carried out its first airstrikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria The aftermath of Russian airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Smoke billows from buildings in Talbiseh, in Homs province, western Syria, after airstrikes by Russian warplanes AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Air Forces carry out an air strike in the ISIS controlled Al-Raqqah Governorate. Russia's KAB-500s bombs completely destroy the Liwa al-Haqq command unit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia claimed it hit eight Isis targets, including a "terrorist HQ and co-ordination centre" that was completely destroyed In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A video grab taken from the footage made available on the Russian Defence Ministry's official website, purporting to show an airstrike in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A release from the Russian defence ministry purportedly showing targets in Syria being hit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia launched air strikes in war-torn Syria, its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. Russian warplanes carried out strikes in three Syrian provinces along with regime aircraft as Putin seeks to steal US President Barack Obama's thunder by pushing a rival plan to defeat Isis militants in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria, a thousand kilometres away. The targets include ammunition factories, ammunition and fuel depots, command centres, and training camps A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis
"The European Union lacks the lowest degree of credibility when it talks about the humanitarian situation in Syria because it is, through its support of terrorism, an accomplice in the suffering of Syrians," an official source at the foreign ministry was quoted as saying by Syrian state media.
The Syrian regime regards all rebel groups seeking to overthrow Mr Assad as terrorists, some of which are backed by European countries, the United States, Turkey and Gulf Arab states.
On Wednesday, a senior German official told Reuters European Council President Donald Tusk indicated EU leaders would not take any decisions on sanctions against Syria this week.
"That means it won't take any options off the table. Sanctions are one of the options on the table. We expect they will remain on the table after the summit," the official said.
UK Ambassador gives damning speech to UN after Russia's security council veto over Syria
Syria's five-and-a-half-year civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced half the country's pre-war population, dragged in regional and global powers and created space for global jihadist movements to plan attacks abroad.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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Protesters are mobilising womens strikes across Argentina after the brutal killing, rape and impalement of a teenage girl that has shocked the country.
Lucia Perez was allegedly abducted outside her school by a gang before being drugged, repeatedly raped and penetrated with an additional object.
Some 50 activist groups are calling on women across the South American country to take to the streets dressed in black at 1pm on Wednesday to protest against the sexist culture that exists.
Argentinians protested the bail of Lucia Perez's suspected killers on Saturday Agencia Efe/YouTube (Agencia Efe/YouTube)
There were 235 "femicides" - the term written into Argentina's legal constitution to describe gender-based killings - in 2015 and at least three women have been killed in the country since Miss Perez's death.
The protest intends to be a call to reflection for the entire population, said journalist and author Florencia Abbate, who works closely with protest organisers Ni Una Menos.
So that each person evaluates his own practices and understands the need for a cultural change.
Miss Perez is believed to have been abducted outside her school in Mar del Plata, a city 260 miles south of capital Buenos Aires, on 8 October.
Her body was brought to hospital by two men claiming she overdosed on drugs, but doctors soon noticed signs of violent sexual penetration.
Lead prosecutor Maria Isabel Sanchez said: I know its not very professional to say it, but Im a mother and a woman, and Ive seen a thousand things in my career, but nothing equal to this litany of abhorrent acts.
Two men have been arrested over the incident.
Police on Tuesday arrested a third suspect over covering up the femicide, according to EL PAIS.
Miss Perezs parents led a 1,000-strong protest on Saturday demanding the judge deny them bail.
Thousands took part in similar protests over violence against women in Argentina last year.
It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the
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A recent surveys findings that a quarter of LGBT travellers hide their sexuality while on holiday summed up the quandary for many globe-trotters in the community. On the one hand, youd like to explore the world however you want, rather than simply honing in on LGBT scenes abroad. But on the other, you can feel obliged to pass as non-LGBT when holidaying outside of, say, known LGBT nightlife areas or beaches.
And it seems these instincts are not without foundation the same survey, conducted by Virgin Holidays earlier this month, also found more than one in three LGBT travellers had experienced discrimination while on holiday.
So, if youre LGBT, dont particularly want to spend your holiday just in LGBT hotspots, but dont want to hide who you are either where are the best places to go?
For that answer, we turned to Darren Burn, founder of online travel agency OutOfOffice.com, which launched last year with a specialist focus on LGBT travellers. Burn was inspired to set up the company after a bad experience when on holiday in Egypt with his then boyfriend. I realised there should be no reason I shouldnt travel anywhere in the world as long as I was doing it with the right knowledge, he told The Independent.
Weve had some people tell us we shouldnt be sending people to countries where its illegal to be gay, he added. We like to think were a little more progressive than that. The LGBT community has long been used to dealing with discrimination and is mindful of the potential pitfalls. We should not be boycotting countries where its illegal to be gay.
Jamie Tabberer, travel editor at Gay Star News, agreed it was a tricky topic. Our readers are polarised on travel to LGBTI-unfriendly countries, he told The Independent.
I respect those who boycott countries where its illegal to be gay, or where LGBTI rights records are unfavourable, whether its for safety or ethical reasons.
But I wouldnt judge anyone for visiting those countries. Instead I encourage them to stay safe, dont endanger LGBTI locals, and research the destination before departure.
Tabberer added that travel to such countries could even lead to progress and change, but qualified: Remember, while we can drop in and out, the people who live there cant. So if youre going to enjoy a holiday there, support the rights of LGBTI people in that country in whatever way you think appropriate. That may include lobbying their government or ours, donating to good causes, posting on social media or making new friends there.
Burn also said that while, ultimately, the goal should be to change the law in those countries, We need to be mindful that our customers want to travel to these places, and so to enable them to do so safely is far more important than telling them they shouldnt or cant travel to a destination. I for one want to see as much of the world as possible and our clients do too.
The key, Burns argued, was to be honest and upfront with each customer, which he said he worried some other travel agencies arent: Other companies and we know because weve mystery shopped them can provide you with inaccurate advice which is in some cases, quite frankly, dangerous. His recommendations come with a caveat: while on the whole these destinations are safe, you would be safer being discrete in some situations, such as at the airport.
The scenic green rice fields of Bali (Getty)
The options for transgender travellers can be even slimmer, but this also seems to be improving, Burn claimed, revealing that a cruise for transgender passengers will be launching next year. As with gay rights, each country has different attitudes towards trans travellers and those are evolving over time, he said. We will work to ensure that we choose the most appropriate guides, hotels and suppliers for our customers.
With all this in mind, here are the top holiday destinations, as chosen by OutOfOffice, for LGBT travellers right now.
Seminyak, Bali
Indonesia isnt exactly known for being LGBT-friendly see this weeks case of a gay couple facing prosecution for obscenity and pornography after posting a picture of themselves kissing on Facebook but homosexuality isnt actually illegal in the country. And according to OutOfOffice, The majority of hotels in Seminyak are extremely LGBT-friendly. This beach resort in south Bali might be one of the less traditional-feeling places on the island all busy boutiques and bars but it makes a good base and there are plenty of paradise beaches to choose from. Plus youre never too far from views of gorgeous green rice fields and top dive spots.
One of the world's most dramatic-looking cities, Cape Town (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Cape Town, South Africa
As OutOfOffice admits, When people hear the word Africa, LGBT-friendly definitely doesnt spring to mind. But South Africa was in fact the fifth country in the world and the first (and only) country in Africa to legalise gay marriage. Same-sex couples can adopt children, and have full access to IVF treatments. Probably the city LGBT travellers can feel most comfortable in here is Cape Town known as the gay capital of Africa though the company adds that at a game reserve same-sex couples should be welcomed like any other guests. Handily, South Africa has absolutely loads to offer safari, city, sun-and-sea and wine breaks so this is a particularly great choice for travellers.
Maldives
Many LGBT couples may feel they have to rule out a romantic break in the Maldives, given that its hundreds of islands adhere to strict Islamic laws criminalising homosexuality. In fact, its even starker than that homosexuality here is punishable by death. But as OutOfOffice says, Holding hands in the Maldives for a gay couple on arrival at the airport isnt a sensible idea. But if you were to do so in the comfort and privacy of your resort, you are unlikely to encounter any major issues.
The company works with specific luxury resorts that it knows to be LGBT-friendly resorts they know and trust. Plenty of gay couples travel to the Maldives each and every year and as with all destinations, its about empowering yourself with the knowledge to make informed decisions before you go, OutOfOffice blogger Luke Jackson said. "Clearly no one can license for other guests or an isolated incident... But if youre a gay couple on holiday in the Maldives then you can be confident of a warm welcome."
The famous Geysir exploding on a tour of Iceland's Golden Circle (Discover the World)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Argentina became the first country in Latin America to legalise gay marriage and in 2010 a law was passed allowing same-sex couples to adopt a child. The capital, Buenos Aires, hosts a huge Pride event every year in November, which attracts thousands of visitors. Renowned for its nightlife, theres masses of history, culture and boutique shopping to explore too. Read The Independent's recent guide to 48 hours in the city for more.
Iceland
Iceland was the first country to have an openly gay prime minister and in June 2010, it legalised gay marriage. Since then, same-sex couples have had the same access to IVF treatment and adoption as heterosexual couples. It also just so happens to be one of Europes best travel destinations, offering natural wonders like geysers, glaciers, volcanoes and the Northern Lights alongside its modern, vibrant capital of Reykjavik. Find out how to spend the perfect weekend there with The Independent's 48 hours guide.
We also asked OutOfOffice for destinations that were particularly welcoming of trans travellers. They chose the following.
Mykonos is said to be a good destination for trans travellers (Shutterstock)
Sitges, Spain
According to OutOfOffice: Sitges is very LGBT-friendly. It has a very inclusive feel, which is very comforting and relaxing exactly how you want to feel when you are on holiday. The coastal, Catalonian town is known for its LGBT scene.
Mykonos, Greece
Mykonos is the most cosmopolitan of the Greek Islands, said Burn. Long an LGBT haven, youll happily find families alongside gay, lesbian and transgender travellers. Hotels on the island have, over time, improved their staff training and the handful of LGBT bars are welcoming of all. Youll also find a predominantly gay beach at Super Paradise which is a good and welcoming spot for transgender travellers too."
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Theresa May is sounding fierce: over her dead body will you can stop Article 50 from being triggered in 2017. Britain is leaving the European Union; that much we know.
Meanwhile the EU is facing its own crisis. Despite its vast infrastructure, the left is also turning its back on the union. It accuses the bloc of fiscal and social dumping, speculation, tax fraud, high unemployment, an environmentally destructive economic model and wealth inequality.
But unpicking this this tightly knit EU fabric would take several decades. The EU needs reforming and it will change, but it wont disappear. Its a collective organisation that has helped weak countries and they all are weak, in one way or other focus on their potential to improve. Spain benefited from a unified Europe after nearly 40 years under obscurantist Franco; Portugal did well in the EU group and so do Ireland and Italy.
No institution can survive and thrive without restructuring. The EU will undergo that too, but its here to stay.
Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty
In the aftermath of the 23 June vote, commentators in Britain speculated on what countries would quit the EU after Britain. Italy was mentioned and the catchword Quitaly readily coined. The reality is that none will have the bottle to follow the UK out. Eurozone countries cant afford to; eastern European countries are still cautiously preparing for the common currency.
The EU will muddle through, learn from the mistakes made that led to the loss of the UK as a partner member, change political orientation its leaders are mostly right-wingers at the moment, but they wont stay that way forever and no doubt go through a few more other man-made crises too. Just like any European country or member state.
But the UK is the only nation truly floundering on the question of Europe. Its already tried out almost every relationship with its group of neighbours: it remained outside the European Community until 1973, then it joined but wanted special dispensation from Schengen; later, a full member of the EU, it firmly refused the euro. Britain always tried to shape a special path for herself. Now she wants to leave at the very point that nation unions are being set up everywhere else, from South America to Africa and Asia.
Those groups are being established because, on balance, they work. Thats what UK has forgotten and thats what will drive it back into the arms of the EU again. Its not a question of it, only when.
Having experimented with nearly all possibilities to the contrary and perhaps more, during the Article 50 negotiations the British will want to try one last option and have a proper go at it EU membership. In my view, Britain will rejoin the EU either by not actually quitting in the first place, having figured out how to put the referendum outcome in the loft, or, more likely, much later in the future, after three decades of having stubbornly kept out until it couldn't cope anymore.
Brexit could mean end of fresh British fruit and vegetables
It may yet even end up leading the EU in future. Britain is historically used to be in charge, not being told what to do the source of so many of the concerns of the Leave voters. Many things can change in 30 years. The EU could even have a different name.
Socially divided, with unparalleled inequalities weakened workers' rights in spite of tax haven status, England will be no Switzerland in 30 years time. It will need the support of the group to thrive again, just as the EU helped rescue its fortunes in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The whole of Britain outside the EU ad infinitum? Sorry Brexiteers, thats just not likely.
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On the eve of the final presidential debate, the Trump infinity helix of dystopian horror takes another downward twist. But before we come to that, the good news. Assuming US opinion pollsters are better than ours (not a high hurdle), Donald Trump will not acquire the capacity to wage thermonuclear war.
Technically, it isnt over. Perhaps WikiLeaks has a more lethal weapon in its arsenal of Clinton-related emails than those yet released (embarrassing though some are). Or maybe Hillary will use tomorrows debate to confess to the murders of Vince Foster, JFK and Bambis mother.
But, barring something epic, the outcome is obvious enough to have penetrated the peasouper fog of delusion and derangement that passes for Trumps mind. Effectively throwing in the towel, he has taken to thinking out loud about his post-election plans, which may go beyond immediately inciting the fan base to violence.
It will be a big surprise if no one is shot on or before 8 November by someone in a Lock Her Up T-shirt. After election day, with Trump and such revolting surrogates as Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani force-feeding the rubes their strychnine candyfloss about electoral fraud, it will be a miracle.
Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Show all 28 1 /28 Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Dave Brown Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Brian Adcock Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Christian Adams for Daily Telegraph Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Martin Rowson for The Guardian Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Christian Adams for Daily Telegraph Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Morten Morland for The Times Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Bob Moran for Daily Telegraph Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Christian Adams for Daily Telegraph Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Morten Morland for The Times Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' KAL for The Economist Trumped! The best cartoons on 'The Donald' Martin Rowson for The Guardian
When Mitt Romney was soundly beaten in 2012, Trump machine-gun tweeted about what he claimed to regard as a stolen election. He lost the popular vote by a lot, he wrote of Obama (who won the popular vote by almost four per cent). Another tweet went: Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.
If that was his response to the defeat of a Republican candidate for whom he had contempt, imagine his reaction when the person he loves most in the world loses to a woman. And not any woman; a woman who lacks stamina, belongs on a chain gang and failed to impress him with her rear view when he did his Jaws act during the second debate.
All the uncertainty concerns not whether Trump will make a gracious concession speech, but whether he will concede at all. If not if in the early hours of 9 November he informs his tens of millions of voters that theyve been cheated out of their rightful President, implicitly by black electoral fraudsters, as he is already warning one must assume that people will die.
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What proportion of Trump supporters is crazy enough to interpret sour grapes of the kind as a call to arms specifically, as an invitation to visit the nearest inner city (in TrumpWorld, inner city is the new n-word) and shoot someone they suspect has voted multiply is unknowable. But it will be many, many times higher than the proportion of voters who actually commit ballot fraud, which is so minuscule as to be virtually non-existent.
While Trumps candidacy will fail to make him Commander-in-Chief, it has succeeded in making him Supreme Commander of an enormous ragtag army of parallel universe-dwellers.
We can gauge its size from the poll finding that 71 per cent of Republicans believe this election will be stolen. That equates to some 40 million Americans. If one in 10,000 of these fantasists is provoked by more of his talk of revolution, that means 4,000 maniacs with firearms looking for revenge. In a far less febrile atmosphere, it took one maniac to shoot the Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords in the head (as it took one to kill Jo Cox here).
Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton's email scandal 'worse than Watergate'
And so, lest this prospect of low level civil war isnt hideous enough, to that fresh dystopian development: as rumoured, Donald Trump is thinking of starting a TV network. To this end, a son-in-law has talked with an investment bank specialising in funding media start-ups.
One appreciates the logic of Trump TV. Many Trump fans have concluded, especially since the departure of his enchanting adviser and fellow alleged groper Roger Ailes, that Fox News is no longer fair and balanced but another outpost of the lying mainstream media which would be rigging the election if it wasnt about to stolen by African Americans and the deceased.
The resulting gap in the market may offer a chance to cash in on the tragically bemused who believe Obama is a Muslim, Sharia law is imminent from coast to shining coast, Hillary Clinton is a dying demonic lesbian serial killer, black is a synonym for criminal, America is about to fall under the dominion of a fascist/communist New World Order, and much more besides taken verbatim from the Cuckoos Nest Compendium of Conspiracy Theory. Trump TV might appeal as the conduit for a kind of shadow presidency, allowing him to directly address the faithful about the Clinton regimes wickedness from a mocked-up Oval Office.
None of this, of course, may come to pass. Trump might decide that the start-up costs are too big and the projected revenues too small, and abandon the idea. He may even think better of declaring war on 9 November, conceding the election with whatever grace (ha ha ha) he can muster and retreating to Trump Tower to live out his life in isolation like Charles Foster Kane at Xanadu.
You wouldnt bet on it, though.
In his guise as a cut price Dr Evil, leading a huge army of dangerous irregulars, he seems determined to weaken the foundation stone of democracy that is faith in the electoral system. He has pushed America to the ledge above what Dante might have settled on as his tenth circle of hell had he been a 21st century political analyst. Well discover in a few weeks if he means to give it one last, decisive shove.
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Mosul has been a dangerous place since the US-led invasion of 2003. It is the greatest Sunni Arab city of Iraq during an era in which the Sunni had lost their old predominance and have struggled against Shia-dominated governments in Baghdad and Kurdish rulers next door in Iraqi Kurdistan.
It is a battle that is still going on as the Iraqi army and Shia paramilitaries advance on Mosul from the south while Kurdish Peshmrga come from the east. The way is cleared for both by air strikes, predominantly by the US air force, attacking Isis fighters dug into ruined villages and hiding in deep tunnels.
If the anti-Isis forces ultimately succeed in recapturing Mosul it will be the fifth time the city has changed hands in the course of 13 years of war. The first time was in April 2003 when the Iraqi army was breaking up and surrendering and the Kurdish Peshmerga burst into the city. There was looting on a mass scale which the Arabs blamed on the Kurds and vice versa, but in fact both took part. I saw crowds ransack the governors mansion, the Central Bank and the university.
The Arabs, three-quarters of the citys population of two million, were appalled by the Kurdish incursion. I visited the biggest hospital in Mosul where the director Dr Ayad Ramadani told me that the Kurdish militias are looting the city. Today the main protection is from civilians organised by the mosques. By the entrance to the hospital, a family was loading the body of a deceased relative into the back of a truck when there was a burst of machine gun fire. This frightened the truck driver who sped away leaving the body behind and the family angrily waving their fists after him.
Relations between Arabs and Kurds did not get much better over the following years. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) claimed parts of Nineveh province around Mosul which it said had a Kurdish majority or had historically belonged to the Kurds. Mosul sits at the heart of a fascinating but confusing ethnic and sectarian mosaic made up of Arabs, Kurds, Shabak, Yazidis and Christians of different dominations. Few of these communities had any liking for the others.
The Kurdish takeover was followed by the Americans and for the rest of 2003 General David Patraeus commanded the 101st Airborne Division in the city. He could see how the de-Baathification campaign mandated by the US authorities in Baghdad was alienating former Iraqi army officers and officials who were now out of a job. A high proportion of the army officer corps had always come from Mosul and, in keeping with this military tradition, the defence minister under Saddam Hussein was from the city. Petraeus issued de-Baathification certificates on his own authority so these unemployed officers were at least eligible for a job.
Inside Isis secret tunnels Show all 7 1 /7 Inside Isis secret tunnels Inside Isis secret tunnels Network of underground tunnels was discovered by Kurdish forces after they regained the town of Sinjar in Iraq Inside Isis secret tunnels A member of the Peshmerga forces inspects a tunnel used by Isis militants in the town of Sinjar, Iraq Reuters Inside Isis secret tunnels An entrance to the tunnel used by Islamic State militants is seen in the town of Sinjar, Iraq Inside Isis secret tunnels The secret tunnels allowed militants to freely move underground Inside Isis secret tunnels The tunnels appear to be wired with electricity Inside Isis secret tunnels Some of the tunnels are 30 feet deep Inside Isis secret tunnels Concerns remain that parts of the tunnels are rigged with explosives
It was not enough. The Americans over-confidently thinned out their troops and then withdrew the remainder to take part in the recapture of Fallujah. In November 2004, Iraqi armed opposition fighters raced into the city, the newly reformed Iraqi army fled and the rebels captured aresnals of weapons. They withdrew after a few days and Baghdad, backed by the US, regained a shaky control.
But Baghdads rule was always contested between 2004 and 2014. There were repeated guerrilla attacks. I would travel from Irbil in KRG to visit the Kurdish deputy governor whose well-fortified office was on the far side of the Tigris river. But we either had to drive very fast or go more slowly in convoys defended by troops and armoured vehicles.
Isis releases video claiming everything is fine in Mosul
Al-Qaeda in Iraq never entirely lost its grip on Mosul even when it was at its lowest ebb before 2011. Local businesses had to pay it protection money, close down or risk assassination. A Turkish businessman with several big construction contracts there recalled later that he had to pay $500,000 (400,000) a month and, when this was increased and he refused to pay up, one of his employees was killed. He stopped work, withdrew his staff to Turkey and complained to the government in Baghdad. But their only proposal was that he pay the protection money and add the sum to his contract price.
The government was much disliked in Mosul, but even so the Isis capture of the city in June 2014 was an astonishing victory of a few thousand fighters against a garrison that was meant to total 60,000 and may have had as many as 20,000 soldiers and police. The difference between the two figures was made up of ghost soldiers who did not exist or never came to the barracks but whose salaries were taken by officers. Many other soldiers had simply gone on leave to Baghdad and never come back as the security situation deteriorated. When Isis attacked the army and police dissolved.
Isis was never popular in Mosul but they ferociously suppressed all dissent. They drove out the Christians and murdered and enslaved the Yazidis. They blew up iconic monuments like Jonahs Tomb. People may have disliked them, but there was not much they could do about it.
Isis also benefited from fear among Sunni in the city about what would happen if the Iraqi army and Shia paramiltary militias came back. They know that the whole five or six million Sunni Arab population of Iraq, a fifth of the 33 million population, are under threat and as many as a third have been displaced. In the sectarian war in Baghdad in 2006-7 the Sunni in Iraq had been driven into several enclaves, mostly in the west side of the city, which US diplomats described as islands of fear. This is now happening in the rest of Iraq. Other Iraqis may see them as complicit in Isiss crimes and seek vengeance. Whatever conciliatory statements come from Iraqi leaders, sectarian and ethnic hatreds are running deep and people in Mosul face a frightening and uncertain future.
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This week, the UKs largest property event, the MIPIM conference, has opened in London. #MIPIMUK is waiting for you, tweeted @MIPIMWorld, the Twitter handle of the international organisation. Underneath was an image of exploding paintballs, overlaid with the words: THE POST BREXIT BOOM Are you ready?
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The conference this week will be a fairly sedate affair: property magnates with lanyards in expensive suits, stalls dedicated to the Midlands Engine and the Northern Powerhouse, tired corporate phrases like driving innovation and diversification in the market (tweeted out from that same MIPIM handle this morning), and so on. The real fun is had at their annual event in Cannes, scheduled for mid-March, where estate agency professionals and wealthy investors cavort around five-star hotels and champagne receptions in the sunshine, while ruminating about the housing crisis many of them benefit from directly.
Within hours of arriving, I was on a yacht with some investors, being asked to join the Freemasons, one MIPIM attendee told me about his experience last year. Another described it as a nonstop party where she woke up one morning and couldnt remember the name of the hotel she was staying in until I looked at the monogram on my bespoke dressing gown.
You meet some people who are involved in things that feel dodgy, another property professional admitted. I work in property and I didnt know about the layers of middlemen and secret deals that go on, particularly where London is concerned. Investors buy up flats before theyre built, then sell them on to other investors, but they dont want the public to know theyre selling them again because that would drive down the price of the other units they own. So they pay off middlemen to do private deals with people they know, just to keep knowledge of the deals out of the public domain.
Housing activists are right to be angry but its not MIPIM they should attack
Keeping prices high is the business most of these property magnates are in: the housing crisis which makes the London market impossible for young first-time buyers on average incomes is, of course, the lifeblood of many who run and attend MIPIM. Attracting more foreign investors into the London market particularly to buy smaller properties which can be rented back to young Londoners unable to get on the housing ladder is central to their continued influence across global property markets. And as the value of the pound plummets, their jobs only become easier.
Estate agents were happy to tell me that theyre seeing more foreign investors than ever offer to buy London flats traditionally expected to be taken by UK-based first time buyers because their money goes twice as far now, which is great for business. This is the Brexit bubble people feared would make the housing crisis worse after leaving the EU, and its fast becoming a reality. One presumes its why one of MIPIMs main events this week is titled: Extraordinary times, extraordinary returns?.
Cast your eye over the speakers at MIPIM this week and theres little to feel optimistic about. Theres Navid Chamdia, the UCL-educated head of real estate at the Qatar Investment Authority. He focuses on direct acquisitions, joint ventures and co-investments in Europe after spending 12 years at Ernst & Young advising on the financing and delivery of over $10bn of global real estate and infrastructure projects. Theres Simon Mower, associate director at KPMG Debt Advisory who has particularly strong experience in the real estate market navigating the sectors lender universe structuring investment and development financing transactions for his clients. Theres even one entertainingly named Mark Bourgeois.
The world's 10 most expensive cities Show all 9 1 /9 The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Singapore AFP/Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Paris Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Oslo AFP/Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Sydney AFP/Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Melbourne AFP/Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Geneva Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Copenhagen AFP/Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Hong Kong AFP/Getty The world's 10 most expensive cities The world's 10 most expensive cities Seoul AFP/Getty
Then, of course, theres our astonishingly out-of-touch housing minister Gavin Barwell, who famously suggested that the solution to generational inequality was everybodys rich grandparents skipping a generation with inheritance and giving the millions theyve squirrelled away to their grandkids.
Barwell also made a speech two weeks ago in which he suggested the housing crisis could be tackled by making young people live in smaller rooms. We want people to innovate there are things the private sector is doing, he told a fringe event at the Conservative conference. I dont know if anyones seen any of the schemes that Pocket [Living] have done where theyve basically done a deal with the GLA [Greater London Authority] to get some flexibility on space standards. As a result they can offer a product well below market price. A tarted-up way, of course, of saying Pocket Living has managed to twist the standards on what usually would be considered habitable. For a government minister to openly celebrate this isnt just irresponsible; its downright bizarre.
Britain has the smallest homes in Europe at an average of 500sqft for a one-bedroom flat and Pocket Living sells 400sqft flats about the size of the average American sitting room, or the average UK hotel room starting at 250,000. This week, Gavin Barwell will speak at MIPIM alongside Marc Vlessing, chief executive of Pocket Living, whose background is in City corporate finance. If that doesnt speak volumes about the housing crisis, the Government and the property professionals who pull the strings across the UK, I dont know what does.
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Poor old Dr Abdullah al-Hamid. He founded the Committee to Defend Legitimate Rights in Saudi Arabia in 1992 and has been in and out of prison ever since.
He wanted a constitutional monarchy, and four years ago he faced 13 charges in the Riyadh Criminal Court including the grave offence of promoting peaceful protests and establishing an unlicensed civil society organisation. Had he not been a Saudi, this might have been a case of off with his head.
But in March 2013, the court showed its leniency: five years in the slammer (plus six years from a previous sentence) for breaking a promise not to pursue further political activities and a subsequent 10-year travel ban. But now al-Hamid is under investigation in prison for sending, earlier this year, a letter to His Majesty King Salman of Saudi Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and head of the House of Saud, a letter entitled: The Flaws of Despotism.
Despotism? DESPOTISM? What could this man be talking about?
Saudi Arabia is so close to the bosom of British democracy, you may recall, that when 80-year-old Salmans half brother, King Abdullah, died last year, David Cameron, a former British prime minister, lowered the flag of the United Kingdom to half-mast as a sign of our condolence. What we were mourning was never quite clear. An oil potentate? A moderate if we forget his countrymen: bin Laden, 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 and his Shiite opponents (including Nimr al-Nimr) who had their heads chopped off by Salman whose citizens seemed to send a lot of cash to Isis? Or a despot?
10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty
Either way, al-Hamid and his fellow members of ACPRA, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association which has peacefully sought a constitutional monarchy, an elected parliament, and an independent judiciary are not getting much of a hearing in the Kingdom. In fact, no hearing at all.
So lets take a look at the mournful list of some of its members and what has happened to them.
Mohamed Saleh al-Bajadi, who once founded a Forum for Cultural Debate in Saudi Arabia, was arrested several times for his demands to end torture and arbitrary arrest, and for inciting protests. Charges against the 38-year old included harming the countrys reputation, questioning the independence of the judiciary and harming the image of the state. He was put on secret trial in August 2011 and his lawyers were denied access to him. He got four years from the Specialised Criminal Court and a travel ban, was released three years ago, almost immediately re-arrested, and then a court of appeal overturned the sentence upon which al-Bajadi received another four-year sentence and is currently on probation.
Then we have Saleh al-Ashwan, 30 years old, who defended women in detention in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in 2012 and held without trial until 2016 during time which he was reported to have been tortured and then finally sentenced this year to five years in prison (and a five-year travel ban) by the same Specialised Criminal Court which chucked al-Bajadi into jail.
Sheikh Sulieman al-Rashudi, who, despite being a lawyer and former judge and 79 years old is currently serving the last 10 years of a 15-year sentence, which is to be followed by a 15-year travel ban. His crimes since 1993: demanding constitutional reforms, breaking allegiance with the King, establishing a secret [sic] organisation and financing terrorism. The preposterous nature of all this is illustrated by the fact that by the time al-Rashudis travel ban expires, he will be 106 years old. Well, long life to him.
Dr Mohammad al-Qahtani is only 51, but hes serving the last seven years of a 10-year sentence for inciting dissent and breaking allegiance with the ruler, questioning the integrity of the officials and the supreme scholars, antagonising international organisations against the Saudi Government by disseminating false information and using the Internet to disseminate opinionsagainst the government. Al-Qahtani is a founder member of ACPRA, holds a PhD in economics from Indiana University and used to teach political economy in the Kingdom. His current address: Hayer High Security Prison, 25 miles south of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
So, back to Dr Abdullah al-Hamid, a 65-year-old writer. He was charged in June 2012 in the Riyadh Criminal Court with promoting peaceful protests, causing public disorder and unrest, establishing an unlicensed civil society organisation and making false testimonies to foreign organisations. Three and a half years ago, he received a five-year prison sentence in addition to another six from a previous sentence for breaking a promise not to pursue civil rights demands. And hes the guy whos now under investigation for having sent to King Salman this year the letter headed The Flaws of Despotism.
Footage shows extent of child malnutrition in Yemen as Britain continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia
I havent yet received a copy of this treatise I am looking forward to it but the title alone raises many questions. After all, if the King really wants his country to be a pioneering global model of excellence on all fronts, as he claimed in his Vision 2030 speech, then what on earth is he doing when he throws Saudis who want basic freedoms and rights into the clink?
A truly visionary monarch less influenced, perhaps, by his warlike defence minister Prince Mohamed (Salmans son by his third wife and the chap who launched the Yemen military fiasco) might have embraced these men as patriotic Saudis who want to help him bring his country into the real vision of 2030. But, no; they must be enemies of the state if they speak so freely even if they still want a monarchy, albeit constitutional.
Their case has been taken up by Alkarama, the Swiss-founded human rights group largely funded by multi-millionaire Qatari businessman Khalifa Mohamed Al-Rabban which has dubbed Saudi Arabia the kingdom of arbitrary detention. When I asked its Gulf human rights officer, Michelle Wazzan, why such humble dissidents should trouble the Kingdom, she talked about fear.
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Their ideas resonate with the people, she said. Its coming to people in the streets. They make people feel they should ask for their rights not just a constitutional monarchy, but entrenching their rights in a document. I think this is scary to the Saudi government There is a fear of the people and anything that goes against the doctrine of the state. Hanging onto traditions and very strict values make it easier to do what you want to do.
Maybe so. But can this last forever?
Imprisoning people on nonsensical charges was once described by Churchill as tomfoolery. And thats what this is. It is tomfoolery to lock up these decent men. It is also a sign of decrepit thinking. Surely freeing them from jail and giving them a voice must be easier than bombing Yemen back into the Stone Age?
When you look at these ridiculous sentences, it is surely the rulers of this nation, not its prisoners, who are harming the countrys reputation.
Sterling's plunge since the UK's June Brexit vote has finally forced Ryanair to cut its full-year profit guidance, after months of warning that such a move could be on the cards.
The recent accelerated decline in the value of sterling prompted Ryanair to concede that its profit in the 12-month period that ends next March will now rise by 7pc compared to the 12pc increase it had previously pencilled in.
It now expects to book a profit of between 1.3bn and 1.35bn. That compares to a previously estimated range of between 1.37bn to 1.42bn.
And chief executive Michael O'Leary cautioned that even the revised figure could come under pressure again if sterling continues its declining trajectory and the price of fares fall further.
The beleaguered currency - which has tumbled 18pc since the June referendum - will account for 26pc of Ryanair's full-year revenues.
Ryanair said the average price of its first-half fares fell 10pc compared to a guided decline of 9pc and in the second-half, it expects average fares to fall by between 13pc and 15pc. That compares to a previously guided fall of between 10pc and 12pc.
Mr O'Leary said its second-half yields had been weakened by more than originally anticipated.
"While high load factors, stronger traffic growth and better cost control will help to ameliorate these weaker revenues, it is prudent now to adjust full-year guidance," he said.
"We would caution that this revised guidance remains heavily dependent upon no further weakness in H2 fares, or sterling from its current levels," he added.
Ryanair's model is to be load factor active, and price passive, meaning it will price its tickets at whatever level is needed to fill its aircraft.
Shares in the carrier fell on the opening bell but quickly recovered, rising 2.5pc by mid-afternoon.
"While this earnings cut is disappointing, we see it as all driven by sterling," said Davy Stockbrokers analyst Stephen Furlong. "Its business model and free cash flow generation still leaves Ryanair as the stand-out winner in the European airline industry."
Mr O'Leary has already indicated that Ryanair will favour growth in other countries over the UK due to Brexit, which he and the airline had campaigned against. It isn't allocating any of the 50 new aircraft it is taking delivery of this year to the UK.
The airline chief said recently that he expects the fallout from Brexit to impact Ryanair's profits for as long as four years.
Ryanair expects its full-year ex-fuel unit costs to fall by 3pc compared to a previously guided 1pc fall. It expects to carry 119 million passengers this financial year.
U+I is developing the Vertium Building on Burlington Road in Dublin
Property group U+I is eyeing further opportunities in the Dublin commercial property market, chief executive Matthew Weiner has said.
Mr Weiner was speaking in the publication of the company's interim results where he said the business was gaining momentum since its merger two years ago.
"We remain committed to Dublin as one of our three core regions as we see significant opportunities in the market and will continue to build on our work to date with our local partners.
"We continue to explore the opportunity to create a specialist platform to meet the growing need for affordable rental housing across our portfolio of sites in key regions and are advancing other partnerships to leverage the expertise we have in specific sectors of the market," he said.
The commitment to developing affordable rental accommodation will come as welcome news to tenants in the capital where rents have continued to soar.
The firm posted an 11.5m (12.8m) gain in developments and trading during the first half of the year, pushing it ahead of the original 8m guidance set at the start of the year.
U+I, which was formed through the combination of Cathedral Group and Development Securities, has also secured a further 11m in development and trading gains since August, rising to 22.5m for the year.
Brexit has caused the company's investment portfolio to wane during the first half of the year with a relative capital decline of 5.2pc.
Despite the challenging backdrop U+I is tipping its development and trading gains for the year to reach between 35m and 40m.
In the first six months of the year the firm moved forward with a number of developments in Dublin.
Planning permission was secured for a complete refurbishment at Donnybrook House in D4 and for 'The Avenue' in Sandyford.
All apartment units are sale agreed at Percy Place with commercial space sold to Irish Life.
Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley says he does not understand the reasons behind the pre-season testing row, adding a Bahrain test would be a 400,000 minimum extra cost.
Pirelli wants to test in Bahrain in order to have warm, stable conditions throughout pre-season in which to evaluate its tyre compounds, with the tyres vastly different from previous years due to new regulations. While Mercedes has been vocal in support of the idea, many teams have offered resistance and Fernley says there has yet to be a compelling argument to go to the Middle East over Barcelona.
Certainly for us its a 400,000 minimum extra cost, Fernley told F1i. Plus all the extra inconvenience. When you go to somewhere like Barcelona youve got the ability to bring in additional parts through that testing program. Once youre in Bahrain theres a big difference in cost and time to do all of that. The whole purpose of that test is chassis and engine-related tests, its nothing to do with tyres, so I cant see why tyres have all of a sudden appeared in it.
Testing from our point of view is very clear. The test before the first race is for chassis and engine evaluation for new cars. At no point in my understanding have we ever been worrying about tyres in those, so I dont know why the tyres are coming into it. There cannot possibly be a safety issue three weeks before the first race, so why are we doing it? Why are we confusing ourselves?
At the end of the day it is chassis and engine testing. In order to do that we voted that Barcelona would be the best place to do it. Whats changed to make that any different? Its only the Pirelli bit thats changed it. In essence youre putting the tyres under far more pressure in Barcelona than you ever will be in Bahrain, so I cant see the point of it.
And Fernley still doesnt believe teams would automatically accept the venue change even if Pirelli offers to foot the extra cost itself.
I suppose if Pirelli put the money up everybody would think about it, for sure, but the question is why do we need to do it? Nobody has answered the question of why are we going to Bahrain for tyres?
When it was put to Fernley that Pirelli wants to ensure it has selected the right compounds for the opening four races as a result of not getting the required aerodynamic loads from the mule cars being used this year, he replied: The bottom line is theyre not going to change that anyway.
They say its nine weeks before you can implement any new compounds. The first four races will be over.
If theyre not finding the loads [using the mule cars], why are we going to Bahrain when the loads are going to go through Barcelona? Theres nothing making sense in any of this.
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A parcel of 42ac of 'top class' Kilkenny land is coming to auction before the end of the month. The tillage grounds, which include a registered quarry, are brought to market with a guide price of 10,000 to 12,000/ac.
Located at Goresbridge, the lands are 6km from Gowran and 20km from Kilkenny City. Auctioneer Ed Donohoe describes the ground as "the best land you'll ever walk".
The farm is on a vein of limestone land and, in testament to its quality, the property includes a limestone quarry reputed to have 2m tons of a limestone deposit. According to Ed Donohoe, the quarry is still registered and could be reactivated.
With access to a cul-de-sac and a lane, the lands are laid out in four fields of tillage and are in the best of heart.
Mr Donohoe is expecting huge interest in the parcel when it comes to auction at the Clubhouse Hotel, Kilkenny at 3pm on Friday, October 28.
Mr Donohoe is also handling the sale of a 14.5ac parcel of ground at Garryhill, located off the Garryhill to Bagenalstown road. The parcel of grazing ground is in four fields with plenty of road frontage and is described by Mr Donohoe as "real good ground".
Coming with a guide price of 8,000 to 10,000/ac, the place will be sold at public auction at The Clubhouse Hotel, Kilkenny at 3pm on Thursday, November 3.
Kildare and Laois
Further north, a parcel of a 42ac at Corrig near Portarlington in Co Laois is to be sold by auction at the end of October. The non-residential lands are guided at 10,000/ac.
Situated 1km from Portarlington on the R419 Portlaoise to Portarlington Road, and 5km from Ballybrittas, the lands are in four fields and are all in tillage.
The ground is described by Ronan O'Connor, of selling agents CME auctioneers, as the best of ground with 500m of road frontage and ideal for the construction of a residence, subject to planning permission.
"This is as good a piece of ground as you are likely to get," Mr O'Connor said. The property is in two divisions, a 4.5ac parcel and a 37.5ac piece. It will be sold at auction at the Hotel Keadeen, Newbridge at 3pm on Wednesday, October 26.
Tomorrow, the same auctioneers will handle the sale of a property much closer to Dublin and with great potential. Located at Oldmill, Kill in Co Kildare, the residential 16ac holding is coming to auction in lots with a guide price of 500,000.
Situated 2km from the N7, 10 minutes from Citywest Business Park and 15 minutes from Newlands Cross, the property consists of a structurally sound bungalow, a farmyard with a series of old sheds and 16ac of land with road frontage on to two roads.
According to Ronan O'Connor the place will be offered for auction in lots, with the bungalow on 0.5ac guided at 225,000, the farmyard on 2.57ac guided at 95,000, while the remaining 12.7ac is guided at 180,000.
A guide in excess of 500,000 is on the entire.
The auction takes place tomorrow, October 19, at 3pm at Lawlor's Hotel, Naas.
The IFA National Animal Health Committee, which was controversially disbanded more than a decade and a half ago, is to be fully re-instated within the organisation structure with immediate effect.
Northeast Regional Chairman, Bert Stewart, has confirmed that notification is being issued to the branch and county structure countrywide within the next week, inviting nominations for positions on the reinstated committee.
While each branch is entitled to nominate a candidate, it is up to each county executive to decide on their representative, with one seat on the committee for each of the 29 executives to form the new committee, which is being scheduled to be operational from the beginning of January 2017.
Mr Stewart, who is currently IFA Animal Welfare Project Leader, will automatically become chairman of the Animal Health Committee next January.
He has confirmed that he will serve the first year in the position, with an open election among the membership in January 2018 to appoint his successor.
There was strong opposition voiced within the rank and file membership at the "cost saving" decision of the IFA to dissolve the committee in the early years of the last decade because it was felt the "concerns of farmers over disease controls" and administration of the disease control and eradication schemes would not be monitored to protect the interests of livestock farmers.
However, during the same period, TB infection levels declined significantly to 1.82pc in 2015, down from 3.6pc in 2001.
The number of reactor animals removed from herds last year declined to 15,317 across a total of 115,000 herds tested. Mr Stewart said vaccination of badgers is showing "encouraging" results, which could replace the necessity for culling to control disease spread.
"Where vaccination only of badgers has been carried out, TB infection has not increased any more than in the areas outside the target vaccination area, which indicates that it is being effective and the cost to the Department of the vaccination and micro chipping is cost neutral," he said.
However, TB in deer in Wicklow remains an issue, with a recent trial showing that 16pc of 103 deer tested were infected with the disease.
The land is described as undulating midlands ground laid out in a series of big fields with plenty of road frontage and a water supply.
In another big farm sale, a holding extending to 153ac at Ballymaurice Granard in Co Longford sold under the hammer on Friday last, making 1.152m or over 7,500/ac.
A farmer from across the county boundary in Cavan won the day while the underbidder was a Longford farmer.
Located more than 2km from Granard, the farm was renowned in years gone by as a beef-fattening unit. The 153ac grassland holding is serviced by an extensive farmyard that was once the hub of a major beef operation, but of late, the farm was let for grazing. The holding comes with a basic farm payment in the region of 14,500.
The yard includes a six-column shed with a lean-to, a pair of seven-column double-slatted sheds with a central feeding passage, four covered silage pits along with grain storage and cattle handling facilities.
The land is described as undulating midlands ground laid out in a series of big fields with plenty of road frontage and a water supply. The farm is divided into two natural lots by a local road, with 87.8ac on one side and 64.9ac on the other.
On the day, auctioneer Paul Murtagh opened proceedings looking for bids on the lots, but there was no interest in the smaller portions - the buyers were there for the big stuff.
While Dillon Murtagh reckoned there were five serious contenders in the room when the bidding opened at 700,000, three customers declared their hands. This was soon down to two as the price rose in increments of 50,000 and 20,000.
After the 1m mark was broken the size of the increments eased back to 10,000s and 5,000s and at 1.111m, the place was put on the market. Bidding continued in tranches of 2,000 and 1,000 until the price reached 1.152m and there was no more money in the room. The hammer fell in favour of a Cavan farmer living about 30 km away.
Irish agri-tech business BHSL has appointed former Kerry Group chief executive Denis Brosnan as its new chairman.
Mr Brosnan joins the company alongside four new additions.
Former ESB chief executive Padraig McManus, retired Supreme Court Judge Fidelma Macken, veteran corporate financier David Hickey, and Limerick businessman Tom Lynch have also joined BHSL's board as non-executive directors.
The firm, which has developed a system that turns poultry manure into fuel for energy generation, is also looking to raise at least 7m in new equity through a capital raise. Corporate finance firm Focus Consulting is to lead the round.
The Limerick-based business uses a patented-protected system to drive profitability through reduced energy bills.
The newly raised funds will be used to increase BHSL's sales presence globally as well as extending its research and development operation.
BHSL managing director Declan O'Connor said welcomed the company's new additions to the board.
"He brings decades of experience in the agri-business sector and will provide huge support as we enter a new growth phase for the business, and target new export markets.
"Padraig's deep expertise in the energy sector will be a valuable asset, as will David's corporate finance knowledge, and Fidelma's appreciation of the evolving legal and regulatory environment."
The firm's new chairman said he has been "hugely impressed" by the company's technology.
"We are very confident of attracting interest from investors who will see the global scale of this market opportunity.
"It is exciting to be involved in an innovative Irish agri-tech business, and I believe 2017 will be a transformational year for the business, given the sales pipeline we are seeing."
BHSL currently delivers its systems to farmers in both the UK and the US and is continuing to expand in Europe.
Kellogg has been based in Ireland since 2005 and employs 250 people here including its head of its European cereal business unit and a number of senior cereal functional leaders for Europe. Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The main Irish arm of breakfast cereal giant Kellogg last year paid zero corporation tax for the second year running as revenues topped 1.28bn.
New accounts filed by Kellogg European Trading (KET) Ltd with the Companies Office show that it recorded a 27pc jump in operating profits, from 38.7m to 49.36m, in the 12 months to the end of January 2 last.
However, interest charges payable of 137.45m on loans from other group firms pushed the firm into the red to record losses of 75.5m.
The firm reduced its losses in 2015 to 65.6m with a deferred tax asset of 9.8m.
Kellogg has been based in Ireland since 2005 and employs 250 people here including its head of its European cereal business unit and a number of senior cereal functional leaders for Europe.
Along with Kellogg European Trading, Kellogg also operates a number of other subsidiaries here.
Revenues at KET last year reduced by 2pc from 1.3bn to 1.28bn. The business recorded a gross profit of 356m after its cost of sales totalled 927.7m.
The company's brands include Corn Flakes, Coco Pops, Nutri-Grain and Rice Crispies.
A breakdown of the KET's revenues show that 526.72m were generated in the UK with 747m in 'Rest of Europe' and the remaining 9.8m in 'Rest of World'.
Numbers employed at the firm last year increased by four to 215 with staff costs totalling 39.8m, including 1m in equity share based payments.
The firm's directors are well rewarded - four served on the board last year, sharing pay of 2.22m. Included in that amount is 258,000 paid to the firm's ultimate parent for the provision of director's services.
According to the directors' report, "the outlook for 2016 remains challenging with an expectation of little year on year growth in turnover or operating profit".
The report adds: "Marketing support/pressure for our brands will be in line with the previous year in real terms. The overall cost base is expected to be lower than the previous year thanks to notable efficiencies in this area offset by commodity price increases."
The principal activity of the firm is the production and marketing of ready to eat cereals and related foodstuffs in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
It states that affiliated enterprises act as consignment manufacturers and as local market distributors.
The directors stated that they consider turnover satisfactory for the year.
The company has moved about 9.78bn of foreign sales through KET in the last seven years but paid a very small amount of tax due to the interest on the group loans.
The loss last year resulted in the firm having a shareholders' deficit of 676.86m at the end of January 2 last.
Interest charges payable of 137.45m on loans from other group firms pushed the firm into the red
Nama has been accused of "playing the man and not the ball" by launching a stinging attack on the spending watchdog, in its defence of the controversial Project Eagle deal.
Chairman of the Dail's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Sean Fleming, said if he was a referee, Nama officials appearing before TDs would have gotten a "red card".
Expand Close Pimco's letter was read into the public record by committee chairman Sean Fleming TD this morning. Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook
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Whatsapp Pimco's letter was read into the public record by committee chairman Sean Fleming TD this morning. Photo: Tom Burke
The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) report into the sale of the Northern loan book found it incurred a probable loss of 190m (223m) in the 2014 deal.
Nama has rejected this finding. Three of Nama's board members, Willie Soffe, Brian McEnery and Oliver Ellingham faced severe criticism from TDs as they answered questions on the matter.
A statement read by Mr Soffe accused the C&AG of being "simply wrong" in its finding that a probable loss was made on the Project Eagle deal because it came from a "mistaken assumption" about the discount rate used.
Mr Soffe said the 5.5pc rate cited by the C&AG was not the "market discount rate" of 10pc used by Nama in the deal, and it was like "comparing apples and oranges".
Independent TD Catherine Connolly said Mr Soffe's statement was "pejorative".
He defended it, saying it was a response to a report that suggests "that we made a foolish commercial decision". He insisted Nama got the best possible price.
Fianna Fail TD Mr Fleming counted 10 attacks on the C&AG in Mr Soffe's statement and said he was "shocked".
But Mr Soffe said: "I think it is right that we should defend our position and that's what we are doing. Why should we meekly accept what is very strong criticism?"
Mr Fleming replied: "I'd prefer if a State body would play the ball and not the man."
The issue of the alleged 'success fee' to be paid to former Nama adviser in the North Frank Cushnahan was also raised. The businessman was alleged to be in line for a one-third share of up to 16m if the Project Eagle sale had gone ahead to Pimco, the initial bidder. Mr Cushnahan has denied any wrongdoing.
Asked why Pimco would offer Mr Cushnahan such a fee, Mr Soffe said he had "no idea".
Mr Ellingham said: "It would appear that the persons paying him that thought he was worth some input or value." But Mr McEnery said: "I don't want to speculate about what this is about."
Labour's Alan Kelly asked about the decision to sell the portfolio in a single block. He asked if Nama weighed up political pressure in the North and business risks with Section 10 of the Nama Act - which says it must ensure the best financial return for the State expeditiously.
He asked if Nama "couldn't look a gift horse in the mouth" when an offer was made to buy the whole portfolio.
Mr McEnery insisted: "The paramount focus of the board was Section 10."
Bookmakers have already begun paying out on Ms Clinton winning the US election: JOHN GURZINSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Irish bookmakers Paddy Power are paying out to customers who backed Hillary Clinton to win the US election, three weeks before Americans go to the polls.
The bookmakers are paying out $1m (910,000), gambling on Donald Trumps election campaign being all but finished.
Other bookmakers all make Mrs Clinton the strong favourite.
Ladbrokes currently gives her odds of 2/11, and Mr Trump 4/1.
Betfair makes him even more of an outsider, with odds of 5/1.
In October a 46-year-old woman made a 450,000 (502,000) bet with William Hill on Mrs Clinton winning, which would give her a 180,000 return.
Joe Crilly, press officer at William Hill, said over the summer that the turnover for bets on this US election in total is more than 300pc times bigger than for the ballot in 2012, partly because both candidates are so high-profile.
Trump becoming president would not quite be in the Leicester City league of upsets but in political betting it would certainly trump the comparatively short upsets of the EU Referendum outcome and the Tories winning the General Election, he said, in a blog post.
Mr Trump initially was given odds of 100/1, between November 2012 and June 2015, of occupying the White House. By May this year however he had decreased his odds to 13/8.
But recent revelations have halted his momentum, and the bookies now give his chance of winning at 9/2 - an 18.2pc chance of winning.
Trump gave it a hell of a shot going from a rank outsider to the Republican candidate but the recent flood of revelations have halted his momentum, said a Paddy Power spokesman.
Recent betting trends have shown one way traffic for Hillary and punters seemed to have called it 100pc correct.
Despite Trumps Make America Great Again message appealing to many disillusioned voters, it looks as though America are going to put a woman in the White House.
Mrs Clintons odds of claiming the presidency have fallen to 2/11 giving her an 85.7pc chance of winning. Over the past week, Paddy Power says they have seen a flood of money on Mrs Clinton.
Two days before President Barack Obama won the 2012 election, the bookie paid out $700,000.
Should Mr Trump upset the odds and become 45th president it will trigger the biggest political payout in bookmaking history.
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
UK retailer Asda - owned by US giant Wal-Mart - funnelled 228.2m (253.4m) of online grocery sales through its Irish unit last year.
The Irish subsidiary is used to process revenue from the sale of its groceries through all its online channels, including the Asda.com website, as well as phone and tablet applications.
The 'Sunday Independent' revealed in 2014 that Asda had established the Irish unit to process payments.
The retailer - which posted sales last year of 22bn - said at the time that the Irish unit was being set up in order to help cut costs.
That year, Asda had posted online sales of about 1bn and said it planned to increase that figure to 3bn by 2019.
Leeds-based Asda did not say precisely how the Irish arm would help it to reduce costs.
However, it was keen at the time to point out that the unit was not being established as a tax-related move.
The subsidiary is liable for UK corporation tax. A spokeswoman had described the decision to set up the Irish firm as a "housekeeping" exercise and that it was "about reducing the cost of processing credit card charges for online grocery shopping".
Newly-filed accounts for the division - Asda Home Shopping Cards - show that revenue hit 228.2m last year, and that it made an operating profit of 307,000.
The accounts also note that the principal activity of the company is to process and manage credit card transactions, and to provide card payments and payment solutions on behalf of other fellow subsidiary undertakings of Asda.
The revenue figure excludes VAT.
"Revenue is derived from the principal activities in the United Kingdom and is recognised net of coupons and the free element of multi-save transactions," note the accounts. "All revenue is generated from the sale of groceries through online channels, including the Asda.com website, phone and tablet applications." Asda has been struggling in a fiercely competitive UK grocery market, shedding market share to rivals such as Lidl and Aldi.
In July, Wal-Mart took a step towards trying to shore up the business, when it appointed the then head of its Chinese unit, Sean Clarke, to take over at Asda.
Accounts for Asda show that its like-for-like sales, excluding VAT and fuel, fell 4.7pc last year to just over 20bn.
Its underlying operating profit declined 1.5pc to 1.04bn.
Here are the main business stories from this morning's papers:
Irish Independent
* Sterling's plunge since the UK's June Brexit vote has finally forced Ryanair to cut its full-year profit guidance, after months of warning that such a move could be on the cards.
The recent accelerated decline in the value of sterling prompted Ryanair to concede that its profit in the 12-month period that ends next March will now rise by 7pc compared to the 12pc increase it had previously pencilled in.
* UK retailer Asda - owned bay US giant Wal-Mart - funnelled 228.2m (253.4m) of online grocery sales through its Irish unit last year.
The Irish subsidiary is used to process revenue from the sale of its groceries through all its online channels, including the Asda.com website, as well as phone and tablet applications.
* It was home to hit movies and film series including 'The Tudors' and 'Braveheart' - but now Ardmore Studios has been put up for sale.
Located on 18 acres in Bray, Co Wicklow, Ardmore has played host to a string of big-budget productions.
The Irish Times
* San Diego-based Brandes Investment Partners has doubled its stake in Bulmers-maker C&C to 6pc, making it the fourth largest investor in the company.
The investment firm is owned by US billionaire Charles Brande who increased his stake in C&C from 5.1pc.
* Britain's decision to leave the European Union has prompted Irish PR firm Hume Brophy to open an office in Germany and is now eyeing up a move for an acquisition in Berlin.
The financial services-focused firm said the referendum result quickened a shift in business towards Germany.
* Wicklow-based Ardmore Studios has been put on the market as a going concern after three successful financial years for the company.
The firm said it had a healthy number of potential productions on the horizon, insisting the sale of the major Irish studio would have no effect on its day to day running.
Irish Examiner
* Irish agri-tech business BHSL has appointed former Kerry Group chief executive Denis Brosnan as its new chairman.
The firm, which has developed a system that turns poultry manure into fuel for energy generation, is also looking to raise at least 7m in new equity through a capital raise. Corporate finance firm Focus Consulting is to lead the round.
* The main Irish arm of breakfast cereal giant Kellogg last year paid zero corporation tax for the second year running as revenues topped 1.28bn.
New accounts filed by Kellogg European Trading (KET) Ltd with the Companies Office show that it recorded a 27pc jump in operating profits, from 38.7m to 49.36m, in the 12 months to the end of January 2 last.
* Shares in Ryanair rose by 2.5pc yesterday even though the airline cut its guidance off the back of the weak sterling.
The Michael O'Leary-led aviation giant said its net income for the year was due to come in at between 1.3bn and 1.35bn rather than 1.375bn and 1.425bn.
William Hill and Canadian online gambling company Amaya have abandoned merger talks, leaving the British bookmaker struggling to find a partner in a fast-consolidating industry.
Amaya operates the Full Tilt poker business that employs hundreds at a site in Cherrywood in Dublin as well as the PokerStars website.
William Hill, one of the best known British gambling brands, said earlier this month that it and Amazya were in talks about a merger of equals but the deal was thrown into doubt days later when a leading investor in William Hill said it would oppose the plan.
The Canadian company said it had decided it could best deliver shareholder value by remaining an independent company, while William Hill said it had decided to walk away after canvassing its biggest investors.
William Hill investor Parvus Asset Management, which came out against the Amaya deal last week, welcomed the news.
"We're pleased that the board has decided to cancel the talks with Amaya, and, from our perspective, we're looking forward to working constructively with the board with regard to creating shareholder value for William Hill owners," Parvus co-founder Mads Gensmann said.
William Hill is looking increasingly isolated after European rivals Paddy Power and Betfair joined forces, while Ladbrokes agreed to unite with unlisted Gala Coral.
William Hill had 51 betting shops in the Republic before the financial crash but shut many and in 2011 sold the remaining 15 to BoyleSports.
Betting companies are facing tighter regulation and higher taxes in countries such as Britain and need to adapt to an environment in which younger and more tech-savvy gamblers are increasingly betting online or via smartphone. William Hill rejected a joint takeover approach from smaller online rival 888 and casinos and bingo halls operator Rank Group in August.
That turned the tables on William Hill which had made a 720m bid for 888 last year.
In its statement yesterday, William Hill said it was focusing on the priorities set out by interim chief executive Philip Bowcock - online, technology, efficiencies and international.
It said the company would "continue to consider strategic alternatives where they have the potential to create shareholder value."
(Reuters)
Netflix's shares jumped as much as 20pc on Tuesday, after the company added 50pc more subscribers than expected in the third quarter.
At least 10 brokerages, including Goldman Sachs and RBC Capital Markets, raised their price targets on the stock, praising the company's focus on developing original content.
Netflix's shares were up 18.6pc at $118.23 in early trading, adding about $8bn to the company's market value.
The video streaming company also said it was getting ready to spend $6bn on content next year, up $1bn from 2016.
"The benefits of NFLX-produced original content including attractive economics and greater control are clear and we believe returns on original spend are high," J.P. Morgan Securities analyst Doug Anmuth said in a research note.
Strong subscriber additions, after disappointing growth in the previous quarter, helped Netflix post a 31.7pc jump in third-quarter revenue.
Anmuth said he believed Netflix was on track toward 60 million plus subscribers in the United States and about 100 million internationally by 2020.
The company has often been criticized for spending too much on content as it tries to aggressively gain subscribers outside the United States, its main market.
The company added about 3.20 million subscribers internationally in the third quarter, compared with the 2.01 million average analyst estimate.
In the United States, Netflix added 370,000 subscriptions, compared with analysts' estimate of 309,000, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.
Though the company's stock has fallen nearly 13pc this year, it trades at 356 times forward earnings, versus the peer median of 5.88.
The second season of "Narcos", a Netflix original show on Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar, has proved highly popular, following up on the success of "Orange is the New Black" and "House of Cards".
The company plans to launch "Crown", a show about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.
Netflix plans to release more than 1,000 hours of original programming in 2017, up from 600 hours this year.
"This is unprecedented growth that should drive a substantial improvement in the breadth and depth of content on the service, which should provide a tailwind to subscriber growth in 2017," said Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves.
The company said it now expects a higher free cash flow burn at $1.5bn in 2016 as producing original content consumes more cash up front.
The company, which faces competition from the likes of Hulu and Amazon.com Inc , said it would likely tap the capital markets to fund spending on original content.
The company behind Frozen wants to keep its family image
THE Walt Disney Company decided not to pursue a bid for Twitter partly out of concern that bullying and other uncivil forms of communication on the social media site might soil the company's wholesome family image, according to people familiar with management's thinking.
The producer of family fare like 'Frozen' and 'Finding Dory' had gone so far as to hire two investment banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Guggenheim Partners, to help evaluate a Twitter bid.
Disney management also listened to a presentation about the business from Twitter executives, according to the sources.
There were other reasons for Disney not to pursue Twitter. The social media pioneer is losing money and yet has a market value of almost $12bn. That would be a big deal even for Disney, which has a market value 12 times that. (Bloomberg)
Northern Irelands First Minister Arlene Foster, Philip McBride of Thales Belfast, astronaut Tim Peake and Economy Minister Simon Hamilton at the new space industry facility in Belfast. Photo: Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye /PA Wire
Astronaut Tim Peake praised Northern Ireland's "cutting-edge" technology, as he opened a new 6m (6.7m) space propulsion centre in Belfast.
The centre is a major step forward for the space sector north of the Border and a boost for the city.
Expand Close Tim Peake with Callum Milligan (5) during a visit to the Glasgow Science Centre on Sunday. Photo: John Linton/PA Wire / Facebook
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Whatsapp Tim Peake with Callum Milligan (5) during a visit to the Glasgow Science Centre on Sunday. Photo: John Linton/PA Wire
After the renowned space explorer opened air defence group Thales's new centre, Tim also met 200 children from local schools on the visit.
The new Thales centre will be manufacturing propulsion systems for sending high-tech satellites into space - for everything from telecommunications to weather-forecasting.
Tim famously spent six months in the International Space Station, where he helped to inspire the next generation of scientists.
He described the range of his work for the European Space Agency.
"I can go from melting metal alloys in the European lab, to the US laboratory, working with proteins for the pharmaceutical industry.
"It gives me as much, if not more pleasure, to come back and visit industry that is driving investment in cutting-edge technology."
Speaking at the event, First Minister Arlene Foster said: "I welcome this 6m investment in this magnificent facility. The establishment of this industrial aerospace production facility is an important investment in the development of Northern Ireland's space cluster and demonstrates the group's confidence in the world-class engineering capabilities of its workforce in Northern Ireland."
Goldman Sachs Group reported a 58pc jump in third-quarter profit yesterday as bond trading rebounded and the Wall Street bank managed to keep a lid on expenses.
Goldman reported nearly $2bn (1.8bn) in revenue from trading fixed income, currency and commodities, making it the biggest contributor to overall revenue.
Strong bond issuance and better conditions in credit and mortgage markets helped the bottom line, chief financial officer Harvey Schwartz said on a conference call with analysts. But he noted that the business only seems to be doing so well because it performed so poorly in the year-ago period. "It wasn't so much about tailwinds as it was about not having so many headwinds in the quarter," said Schwartz. "It translated nicely for us." He noted that while credit and mortgage trading results were better, currencies were flat and rates declined slightly.
Goldman, the fifth largest US bank by assets, has historically been more reliant on bond trading than its peers.
That helped the bank earn big profits leading into the 2007-2009 financial crisis, but financial reform rules imposed since then have hindered the business.
In an effort to buoy profits, Goldman launched an efficiency programme earlier this year, with the goal of reducing annual expenses by $700m.
Goldman shares, which had fallen 6.2pc this year through Monday's close, were up 1.3pc in morning trading yesterday, to $171.19. Goldman generated $2.1bn in net income for common shareholders, up 58pc from the year-earlier period. It was the bank's second straight rise in quarterly profit after four quarters of decline. Chief executive Lloyd Blankfein described it as "solid performance." (Reuters)
Juli Neeson (pink hat) as Sakura from Cardcaptors, Rachel Ralph (light blue hair) Kirenshi Cosplay as Hatsune Miku and Saturn (purple hair)13 Cosplay as Rei Ayanami from Evangelion. Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
It was a case of 'anime instinct' for cosplay enthusiast Juli Neeson when she attended Ireland's largest anime convention Eirtakon seven years ago.
The graphic designer from Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, met her husband Conan while wondering around the stalls and stands.
"He was working and I was a guest, now we go together as a cosplay couple," she said.
Cosplay coupling is when real-life couples dress up as fictional couples from the anime world and attend conventions.
Expand Close Irelands largest Anime Event Eirtakon. Photography: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland / Facebook
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Juli refrained from dressing up in Cosplay on her wedding day "although I did have Legend of Zelda place settings," she said.
Next month, other cosplay enthusiasts can try and find Mr and/or Mrs Right when they attend the three-day event.
Cosplay blind dating is one of the events on offer at the convention - which takes place in Croke Park.
Attendees can also take part in console tournaments and gaming workshops. Care assistant Rachel Ralph (20) from Dunboyne has been a cosplay enthusiast for several years.
Expand Close Pictured in Dublins Croke Park Stadium are Andrew Mahon as Marvels Captain America, Juli Neeson (pink hat) as Sakura from Cardcaptors, Julia Vasiljeva (black hair) as Studio Ghiblis Princess Mononoke, Rachel Ralph (light blue hair) Kirenshi Cosplay as Hatsune Miku, Saturn(purple hair)13 Cosplay as Rei Ayanami from Evangelion, Stephen Lynch as Red Power Ranger, Michael Abrahamson-Mr Balloonatic with a balloon Pokemon. Photo: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland / Facebook
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Whatsapp Pictured in Dublins Croke Park Stadium are Andrew Mahon as Marvels Captain America, Juli Neeson (pink hat) as Sakura from Cardcaptors, Julia Vasiljeva (black hair) as Studio Ghiblis Princess Mononoke, Rachel Ralph (light blue hair) Kirenshi Cosplay as Hatsune Miku, Saturn(purple hair)13 Cosplay as Rei Ayanami from Evangelion, Stephen Lynch as Red Power Ranger, Michael Abrahamson-Mr Balloonatic with a balloon Pokemon. Photo: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
"My character Hatsune Miku was originally a singing synthesizer application but then she was given a design," she told the Herald.
"We're a big community. It's a great way to meet people. It took my family a bit of time to get used to me dressing up the whole time but now they're really supportive. They see all the friends I've made so they think it's great."
Cosplayers can spend up to 500 decking themselves out in Japanese cartoon-inspired costumes.
"I make all my costumes myself," Rachel said.
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"My mum taught me to sew so she helps me sometimes."
The guests of honour at Croke Park are voice-over artists Luci Christian and John Swasey.
The organisers will also host a League of Legends Tournament.
Children's entertainer 'Mr Balloonatic' will attend the convention.
Eirtakon is also hosting the International Worbla Awards - a costume and fashion show for costume designers and cosplayers.
The event runs from November 4-6 and is now in its 12th and final year.
According to organisers the convention simply outgrew itself.
The event is supporting Jigsaw - the national Centre for Youth mental health.
Tickets cost 25 for the day.
Adele and Simon Konecki have been together since Summer 2011
Adele on stage in Nashville with her confetti love notes. Pic: FreddyAmazin/Twitter
Adele's boyfriend surprised her by making a sweet change to her concert confetti.
Adele and her boyfriend Simon Konecki recently celebrated their fifth anniversary while the musician was performing in Nashville, Tennessee over the weekend.
As a romantic gesture, Simon decided to hijak Adele's confetti spectacle end-of-show finale.
Normally as Adele sings her final song of the night, white confetti with her handwritten lyrics fall down from the ceiling onto her fans. But on Sunday, Simon swapped the song lyrics for pink, handwritten love notes to surprise his wife.
"we got pink confetti tonight.. this confetti is normally white" i'm crying pic.twitter.com/XQpGobgd8H bree van de kamp (@dayrdreamer) October 17, 2016
Among the confetti were sweet phrases like, You are an angel <3, I love you, and Love you long time.
The pair are parents to son Angelo (three) and Adele has credited Simon with helping her success.
Speaking to 60 Minutes Australia in 2015, she said: "Being in such an amazing relationship with someone that's so there for me and so loyal and is really part of my core now. That's what made me write about everything I've ever done, because I've got his love."
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Me...& My Affair tells the stories of people who have experienced infidelity
To outsiders, Petes life was a model of success. Having risen through the ranks of the police force to become a detective, he owned a business with his wife of 23 years, with whom he had two children.
But for two decades he had kept a secret. He was a serial cheater, and had slept with at least 23 women in as many years.
Fully aware of the shocking scale of his infidelity, Pete stresses that he was compelled to cheat because of his addiction to sex, and his longing for unconditional love when his wife's attentions were drawn to their young children.
The 53-year-old is among the one in five adults in the UK who admits to having an affair. Pete has chosen to speak publicly about his story in a new Channel 5 documentary Me and My Affair, alongside five others who have also been unfaithful.
Pete, from Warwickshire, met his wife in 1984, in their last year of university. He was roguish, bold, brash and loud, while she was very smart, and very shy.
I was bowled over by her looks, he says recalling the moment he saw first saw her in a lecture. She was engaging and different to any other girl Id dated. There was an air of sophistication about her that was really alluring.
After dating for three years, they married in 1987. Egged on by his laddish friends to sew his wild oats, Pete had cheated on his previous girlfriends. But he experienced a new level of commitment with his wife, and he rejected his old lifestyle. Combined with is new, full-time career in the police force, Pete felt as if he had finally grown up.
But his faithfulness unravelled when he was assigned to a 14-week training programme with the police, meaning he was only at home on the weekends.
The time in the evenings was our own. He says. Pete and his colleagues would often unwind in pubs and clubs, and indulge in a culture of womanising.
It was at a club in Birmingham that Pete chatted with a woman, drew her in for a slow dance, and kissed her. That night, he cheated on his wife, who was pregnant with their first child, for the first time.
There was a decided difference in the level of guilty, Pete remembers. Before there wasnt much at stake, but now there was.
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Asked if he enjoyed it, he goes on: Oh absolutely. It was fun. He never saw the woman again.
Over the next two decades, Pete slept with at least 23 women although he suspects there were more seizing any chance he had. While some were one-night stands, he saw one woman in particular for two-and-a-half years.
To feed his addiction, he would concoct excuses to leave town for the weekend for quick, risky sex but would feel uncomfortable, guilty and ashamed if a woman became attached.
I really dont think it was especially different to any other marriages, he says.
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Sometimes wed sleep together and go away and have social functions with the kids. Other times were at each others throats and sleeping in separate bedrooms. And then wed move on.
It was when Petes wife found his workbook from a personal development business course that she discovered he had been cheating. Asked to write down a past regret, he had scrawled the words: being unfaithful.
She was devastated," he said.
Unable to reveal the extent of his infidelities, Pete told her it was a one-night stand with a woman he used to work with ten years ago. That night, he moved out of the house. Months later, Peter presented his wife with a list of all of the women he remembered.
She saw someone who needed help, he says. His wife suggested they attend counselling to mend their marriage.
We could have carried on quite normally and appear to function, but there was a dearth of unconditional love between us, says Pete. He says now realises that he was in emotional pain, and his affairs were a short-term fix.
That was six years ago. Pete and his wife now plan to spend their 30th anniversary together in New York.
Those feelings that I had have completely gone, says Pete, adding that the feeling of being loved and loving in return doesnt compare with what he experienced before. I know within my heart of hearts that Ill never do it again.
Me and My Affair, will premiere on Channel 5, Thursday 20 October, at 10pm
George Hook has warned that debates might get heated on tonight's episode of Cutting Edge.
The outspoken broadcaster will appear on the RTE show alongside businesswoman Norah Casey and the writer of Can't Cope Won't Cope, Stephanie Preissner.
And true to form he promises to treat viewers to his "very strong views" on the circus that is the US presidential election. Hook believes his opinions might clash with those of his fellow panelists and lead to potential fireworks.
Speaking to the Irish Sun, he said: "If we discuss the American presidential election there is definitely going to be a row because I think Hillary Clinton is getting the softest ride in the history of American politics."
Brendan O'Connor's Cutting Edge airs tonight on RTE One at 9.35pm.
The family of the late Cathriona White say they are not involved in any legal action against her former boyfriend, the Hollywood actor Jim Carrey.
Ms White's mother Brigid Sweetman is suing Carrey for her daughter's wrongful death.
However, a statement issued by the White family say they have no involvement in this or any other legal action.
"The White family would like to clarify the public record in relation to recent media reporting concerning their beloved, Cathriona White.
"Contrary to recent media reports, no member of the White family is involved in any legal action with any party in relation to the untimely passing of Cathriona.
"The White family remember their beautiful Cathriona as a wonderful, caring and compassionate person. The continuous media intrusion and speculation only continues to cause hurt and upset to the family.
Expand Close Jim Carrey carries the coffin of ex-girlfriend Cathriona White in Cappawhite, Co Tipperary / Facebook
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"The family request that Cathriona is allowed to rest in peace with the dignity that she deserves," the statement added.
Make-up artist Cathriona, originally from Cappawhite in Co Tipperary, took her own life in September of last year.
She had been involved in a relationship with actor Jim Carrey and they split in the months before her death.
The actor flew to Ireland and carried her coffin at her funeral in her native Cappawhite, and was embraced by the White family.
A year later, Cathriona's estranged husband Mark Burton filed a lawsuit against Carrey claiming he was responsible for his wife's death.
Carrey is being sued by his late girlfriend's mother Brigid Sweetman and her estranged husband Mark Burton, alleging he provided White with prescription drugs involved in her suicide. Documents lodged with the court in Los Angeles also contains a number of allegations against the actor.
Carrey has strenuously denied the allegations against him and has promised to fight the claims in court.
A bishop from Cork has said that he would have no issue with priests being allowed to marry, but that it has to be the Popes decision.
Its not our decision; its a decision for the Holy Father, but it is a regulation and regulations can change, Bishop John Buckley of Cork and Ross said on Corks Red FM today.
On the subject of women priests, he was more certain that the rules cannot change: The pope has said that the church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood; that follows the tradition of Christ himself. But women do marvellous work in the church.
And on the subject of gay priests, Bishop Buckley said that his own support for the community was not unique in the church.
The church in Cork has been very supportive of the gay community. Back in the 1980s my predecessor appointed a chaplain to the gay community and that was before the state had decriminalised homosexuality.
Bishop Buckley was speaking to Neil Prenderville today after manning a stand at the Careers Option Expo in the Rochestown Park yesterday in an effort to encourage young men to think about the priesthood.
I read about it in the paper and thought Why not? The priesthood is a career; its a vocation. Its a great privilege to serve the people, especially in difficult times of sickness and bereavement, and thats the life of a priest. The vast majority of priests are very happy.
He said that quite a few people approached his stand and that young men were interested in knowing more about the priesthood.
I met a lot of young people, and they were very interested. Theyd come along and ask a few questions. They were very well disposed.
There are more people studying for the priesthood than at any time in history. The decline is confined to the western world, Bishop Buckley said.
A nine-year-old schoolboy, who broke his left collar bone when his head got trapped in a moving electric gate, has been awarded 19,000 damages in the Circuit Civil Court.
Barrister Fran Rooney said that in May 2010, Joel Gannon was in the courtyard at his home in Homestead Court, Quarry Road, Cabra, Dublin, when his head got caught in the gate as it was closing. He was two-and-a-half at the time.
Mr Rooney told Circuit Court President Mr Justice Raymond Groarke that Joels head and shoulders were dragged along the ground as the gate closed before his father had rushed to help him and managed to free him.
The court heard that Joel was taken to the Emergency Department of Childrens University Hospital, Temple Street, Dublin. He had suffered bruising and abrasions to the left side of his face and to his shoulders.
X-rays revealed Joel had fractured his clavicle in the incident. Through his mother, Lyndsay Gannon, Joel sued Tuath Housing Association Ltd, with a registered address at Merrion Square North, Dublin, and Dublin City Council.
Mr Rooney, who appeared with B&P Byrne Solicitors, said an engineers report prepared for the court proceedings stated that the gate should have been covered with a metallic net.
Counsel said liability had not been conceded and was an issue between the defendants. He said a 19,000 settlement offer had been made and he was recommending its acceptance to the court.
Judge Groarke, approving the offer told him he was lucky his father was near him at the time. The court heard Joel, who celebrates his ninth birthday on Wednesday had made a full recovery following the incident.
A former lay worker with the Church of Ireland will be sentenced next month for the rape and molestation of 14 young boys over the course of 30 years.
Patrick OBrien (76) pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 48 sample counts of indecent assault, including various instances of anal penetration, and three counts of sexual assault of the boys between 1977 and 2010 at numerous locations throughout the state including Kildare, Westmeath, on a boat in Loughrea in Co Galway and at St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin where he worked as a volunteer.
He has one previous convictions for a sex assault of another boy in 1989 for which he got a one year suspended sentence.
OBrien, with an address at Knocklyon Road, Templeogue, Dublin, was sent forward for trial from Dublin District Court. Judge Cormac Dunne previously ruled that the media could identify the accused following an application by RTE at the District Court.
All of the victims wish to preserve their anonymity. Four victims were present in court for the sentence hearing. A number of victim impact reports were prepared but not all the men wanted their statement to be read out.
It took over 30 minutes to read out the charges in a sentence hearing that took place over two days to allow for all 14 statements of complaint to be read into the record.
One man described in his victim impact report how his biggest fear over the years was that he might end up abusing his own daughter. He said he had read numerous cases about abused children becoming abusers themselves and it played on his mind. It frightened the crap out of me, he said.
One man outlined in his victim impact report that he had never married and said that this was down to the abuse he suffered. He said he felt now at 50 years old that the chance to have a wife and family had passed me by.
Another victim said he never wanted to have children because he didn't want to be responsible for them after the abuse he suffered as a young boy.
One of O'Brien's youngest victims, who was raped as a nine-year-old boy, described himself in his victim impact report as a lion without a roar. He said he developed a shield and like a tortoise, a shell, to bury this violent secret inside.
He said O'Brien made him feel like the abuse was almost a rite of passage but that he now understood he was grooming him.
Detective Garda Anthony Maloney told Anne Rowland BL, prosecuting that various victims told gardai that they had made efforts to avoid O'Brien as children.
One victim cycled to his local garda station to report O'Brien a day after the man tried to rape him.
When he arrived at the station he got cold feet and felt intimidated. He was worried about the consequences for him if he reported it and decided to put the abuse to the back of his mind. O'Brien continued to abuse the boy in the months afterwards until the boy threatened to report or kill him if he touched him again.
The victims were told by their abuser that it was their little secret with some of the boys feeling they were being threatened. Others described him as being like an uncle to them and many said he was very much a trusted family friend.
The men also told gardai that O'Brien gave them sweets, toys, cash and watches. One boy was given a bike.
Det Gda Maloney said all the men were badly affected by the abuse. Two men who were raped by O'Brien told gardai they were very worried when they learned about AIDS on the news as children and were terrified they were going to die.
Many victims reported that their school work began to suffer and they had trouble with relationships. Many began drinking from an early age.
The court heard that O'Brien was first arrested in March 2014. A search was carried out of his home during which photographs of some of the victims, in normal social situations, were discovered.
In April 2014 O'Brien made a voluntary statement in which he agreed with the statements of his victims.
He said he had been abused himself and told gardai I would like to say how sorry I am for causing these lads such distress and apologise to them all absolutely.
Sean Guerin SC, defending told Judge Melanie Greally that his client had written a letter in which he said he wanted to apologise unreservedly for the breach of trust and the suffering the victims and their families endured. He acknowledged his deep heartfelt regret and shame.
Counsel said O'Brien has completed 312 hours of group psychotherapy treatment since April 2014 which he said was a practical indication of remorse and efforts at rehabilitation even at this stage of his life.
Mr Guerin asked the judge to take into account the negative publicity surrounding O'Brien, which he said was intense at times and led to stigma and isolation. He said for a man who worked all his life he had no one in court to support him.
Counsel submitted that his client's plea of guilty and admissions were of substantial value in the case, having regard to the victims, many of whom he said indicated a fear of being disbelieved.
Judge Melanie Greally said she needed time to consider the case. She remanded O'Brien in continuing custody to November 10, next for sentence.
EVIDENCE
Det Gda Maloney outlined the various incidents of sexual abuse which included open mouth kissing, rape, attempted rape, oral rape and mutual masturbation. There are at least two set of brothers amongst O'Brien's victims.
The court heard that O'Brien would bring the boys to his yacht, take them for driving lessons or bring them to the office where he worked. He abused one boy once a week in a car wash after they were hidden from view when the vehicle was covered in foam.
He would organise games of hide and seek to be alone with his victim, and on one occasion abused a boy in a kitchen, while the child's parents and grandmother were in the sitting room.
Another boy was abused in the electrical room of St Patrick's Cathedral while people were outside in the body of the church.
OBrien would often drop the boys home and have dinner or drinks with their parents, having abused their child hours earlier.
O'Brien regularly came up to the victims bedroom to kiss them goodnight and tuck them in but would then sexually abuse them, usually touching their penis and then performing oral sex on them.
One man, who was raped a number of times by O'Brien, was first raped by him on the childs parents bed. He blocked the bedroom door with a chair before stripping the child and himself.
This same victim was also raped in O'Brien mother's home. The first time he visited the man's mother, he was introduced to the woman before O'Brien took him into the garage and sexually abused him.
This man also told gardai that O'Brien would put him and his younger brother to bed when their parents were downstairs. He would read his brother a story while that child was lying in a top bunk and at the same time would force the victim, who was lying on the bottom bunk, to perform oral sex on him.
When he had finished reading the story, OBrien would sit on the boys bed and French kiss him.
Another victim, who was first raped by O'Brien when he was nine years old, told gardai that he was in pain for days afterwards and could still recall that pain when he made his statement of complaint a few years ago.
He said O'Brien continually reassured him while raping him, calling him a good and brave boy.
He said when being raped by O'Brien on his boat, he just closed his eyes waiting for the morning to come and tried to think about the fun he would have sailing the next day.
AN Algerian man with alleged links to terrorism has brought a High Court challenge against the State's attempt to deport him.
The man opposes the Minister for Justice's decision that he should be deported on the grounds he is at risk of being tortured and suffering inhuman and degrading treatment if returned to Algeria due to his political views.
The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has been convicted of terrorism and terrorism related offences in other jurisdictions.
Gardai have informed the Minister that man's activities and associates, in Ireland and outside the country, are considered to be "of serious concern" and contrary to the State's security.
The man strongly denies claims he is involved in terrorism, inside or outside of the state.
He has been living in Ireland for several years and is aged in his early 50's.
Before he left Algeria, the man says he was convicted of criminal offences, which he denies, and was sentenced to death.
Algeria currently has a moratorium on capital punishment and the North African nation has not carried out an execution since 1993.
However, he says, if he is returned he is at serious risk of being tortured. He said he and his brothers have been tortured in the past because of their political opinions.
Arising out of the Minister's decision to exclude him from the state he has brought a High Court challenge against the deportation order.
In his proceedings the man claims the Minister's decision ignores a finding by the Refugee Appeal's Tribunal(RAT) when considering his application for subsidiary protection that in the man's case there is "a personal, present, foreseeable and substantial risk of serious harm by the Algerian authorities."
Despite finding there was a risk of serious harm to the man if returned to Algeria, the RAT excluded him from subsidiary protection due to his having been convicted in France of an offence of membership of a criminal organisation preparing an act of terrorism based on acts committed in France and other countries.
The man argues the Minister should not have made an order to depart him where there is a finding there is a real risk he will suffer serious harm.
To do so, he claims, is a breach of European law.
The Minister opposes the man's challenge.
The matter came before the court Wednesday (Oct 19) when Mr Justice Richard Humphreys, after hearing submissions from lawyers for the man and the State adjourned the matter to next week.
The court heard the man first arrived in Ireland in the late 1990s under a false identity. In 2000 he was recognised as a refugee.
Shortly afterwards he went to France to visit relatives. He was subsequently arrested, convicted and jailed for seven years by a French court for terrorist related offences.
On his release he applied for asylum in France, which was refused. He returned to Ireland in 2009. His refugee status was revoked in Ireland because his application here was based on false documentation.
The man says he regrets using false documents and misleading the Irish authorities but did so to avoid the death penalty.
An aspiring model who was a passenger in a stolen car may avoid a prison sentence if she is deemed suitable for community service.
Chloe McAllister (19) was a rear seat passenger in the car, which was taken from a house in Skerries during the early hours of the morning, Swords District Court heard.
Gda John Lennon said he came across the car at 3.25am at Barnageeragh Cove before it took off at speed.
He said the driver and front seat passenger ran from the vehicle while McAllister and another female, who were in the rear, remained at the scene and were arrested.
McAllister, of Mourne Close, Skerries, pleaded guilty to unauthorised carriage in the car last May 28.
The court heard McAllister has one previous conviction, for being in unlawful possession of 12 bags of cannabis with a street value of 300 last March 14.
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Defence barrister David Costello told the court that McAllister is currently unemployed but does modelling work.
Sorry
"She was a passenger in the car and should've known better," said Mr Costello, adding that the teenager was very sorry for her actions.
Judge Dermot Dempsey ordered a probation report to see if McAllister would be suitable for 150 hours of community service in lieu of one month in prison.
He adjourned the case until December for the report.
Independent TD Clare Daly has appeared in court after gardai executed a bench warrant against her.
The Independents 4 Change TD appeared before Swords District Court in relation to a speeding charge in Co Kildare.
Ms Daly met gardai by arrangement in the vicinity of Swords District Court on Tuesday and was then taken before the judge to execute the warrant.
On Thursday, October 20, a bench warrant was issued for the TD's arrest after she failed to remain in court for a speeding charge.
She turned up to court on the morning, but left again when she saw a large number of people waiting for their cases to be heard before hers.
She appeared at Swords District Court on Tuesday for the sole purposes of the execution of the warrant.
The case has now been referred back to Naas District Court. Ms Daly signed a bail bond in court on Tuesday, committing to her appearance in Naas District court next Wednesday.
Ms Daly, originally from Newbridge in Co Kildare but with an address in Swords, is charged with travelling at 59kph in a 50kph zone at Ballymany, Newbridge, on New Year's Day. She is represented by solicitor Cairbre Finan.
He said Ms Daly had instructed him to plead guilty in her absence.
When her case was called in the afternoon, Mr Finan said his client had been at the court earlier in the morning and chose to leave.
Judge Desmond Zaidan said the defendant had to be present in court or he would issue a bench warrant for her arrest.
The judge asked what Ms Daly did. "She tells me she is a TD," Mr Finan said.
Judge Zaidan said she should know better, because they make the law. He said it was "total disrespect for this court" and "an insult" for her to leave. Mr Finan said no disrespect was intended.
Judge Zaidan said that Ms Daly should have asked the court to leave. "If she has no respect for me as a human being have a little respect for the office I hold," he added.
Mr Finan asked that the case be adjourned for one week and that a bench warrant not be issued.
Judge Zaidan said he did not adjourn cases in the absence of the defendant when they are legally represented, to protect everyone, including the lawyers and gardai.
He then issued the bench warrant with discretion and adjourned the matter until November 30.
Speaking after an Agricultural committee meeting, Ms Daly said she had received the summons for motoring offences "out of the blue" last week.
She said she left the court because she was anxious to attend the committee meeting, which was discussing the Horse Racing Ireland affair.
However, she stressed that a solicitor had remained to represent her on her behalf.
"I'll have to go again. We'll sort that out," she said.
A violent criminal has been cleared of assaulting a prison officer when he was searched for weapons.
Leon Wright (28) of Donore Avenue in Dublin 8 remained handcuffed and flanked by five prison staff wearing riot gear for his district court trial on Wednesday.
Wright, who claimed he was beaten by prison officers, was supported in court by Independent TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly who took notes of the proceedings from the public gallery.
After the defence raised questions over the credibility of prosecution witnesses and evidence, Judge Alan Mitchell said that having viewed the CCTV evidence in particular he was dismissing the case.
He also said that he was going to direct that the Court Service would prepare a copy of the digital audio recording of the hearing and that it would be offered to Inspector of Prisons Judge Michael Reilly in the event he would like to take further action.
I certainly have concerns in relation to this matter, the judge added.
In 2014, Wright, who has 84 previous convictions, including 30 assaults, four garda assaults, robberies and firearms offences, received a six year sentence with the final two suspended for stabbing two people in random attacks.
However, in his Dublin District Court trial on Wednesday he pleaded not guilty to a charge of assaulting prison officer Michael Kerr at Wheatfield Prison in Dublin on Oct. 7, 2013. Officer Kerr alleged Wright produced an object from his back passage and stabbed him in the face cutting his lip.
He and two other prison officers said Wright became aggressive when told he was about to be searched. They denied that the defendant was beaten by several officers.
He was moved from the first cell because property was broken there and prison officers feared he had weapons, the trial was told. Witnesses alleged that Wright became more aggressive when told he was going to be searched after being initially compliant.
A nurse gave evidence that he saw lacerations inside and on the prison officer's lip and he said that from his experience it would have been caused by being cut with a sharp object.
Prosecution witnesses also said Wright lashed out. Prison officer Brian Hayes said he saw officer Kerr being struck with an object but he did not mention it in his statement to the investigating garda.
Defence counsel Emmet Nolan put it to prosecution witnesses that Wright was stripped and given a hiding which was denied. He asked the judge to note that CCTV footage showed four prison officers in riot gear outside the cell while four others dealt with Wright inside. He argued that it was not believable that they would remain outside the cell while their colleagues were being attacked.
The court also heard that Wright was exonerated of having a weapon or attempting to stab the prison officer during an internal investigation by the Governor.
He also asked the court to note evidence about Wright having his clothing removed for the purpose of a weapon search. He told the judge that none of the witnesses mentioned that he was bare chested when he was brought to the cell as could be seen on CCTV.
The court heard that another senior officer who had been forbidden by the prison authorities to be in the same area as Wright was present.
After Wright was cleared of the charge he gave two thumbs up to the two TDs, who had spoken to him before the trial. He was then taken out of the courtroom by prison officers.
After the hearing concluded TDs Wallace and Daly gave a brief statement to the media.
They said they believed Leon Wright's human rights had been breached and they said the case will be taken further and they also called for a full investigation in relation to his treatment.
The TDs also said it was a turning point for Leon Wright and maybe for how things are done in prison.
Leon Wright is regarded by both staff and management at Irish jails as Ireland's most dangerous inmate.
Although he is just 28 years of age Wright has already amassed over 84 previous convictions including robberies, 34 assaults and firearms offences.
He is serving time for a knife rampage on Dublins Grafton Street in 2013 while on bail for assaulting two gardai.
But some of his most serious crimes have happened behind bars.
Wright has been disciplined over 212 times in prison. He has attacked over two dozen guards while in jail and left many with very serious injuries.
Such is the fear surrounding the inmate that only trained control and restraint officers can deal with him and they must don riot gear for any interractions.
If he is being moved at least six prison officers, dressed in protective clothing and helmets, will accompany him.
A senior source said: "Wright is one of the worst, if not the worst that the prison system has ever come across.
"Anywhere he goes he need the C&R (Control and Restraint) guys accompanying him.
"In terms of his physical aggression towards staff, it is unprecedented."
Another source said it was an insult that two TDs would offer support to Wright in court.
"Wright is a by-word in the prison system for thuggery. The threats he has made to prison officers and their families are virtually unheard of in prisons."
Wright is regularly moved around Ireland's maximum security prisons and staff have repeatedly tried to curb his violent behaviour.
He was given an aquarium on his landing in Portlaoise, a Playstation with various console games and even a washing machine.
A TRAINEE accountant has seen an award of compensation by the Employment Appeals Tribunal for unfair dismissal more than quadrupled in the Circuit Civil Court.
Peter Nowak had appealed the decision of the Tribunal which last year found he had been unfairly dismissed by international accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Services, awarding him 7,500 compensation. Judge Francis Comerford today awarded him 34,000.
Judge Comerford said Mr Nowak, who became a trainee with the firm in 2006, was dismissed in 2009 after he failed to pass an examination with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ireland.
Nowak had signed an open ended employment contract with the firm in 2006 to work as a trainee accountant in the business advisory services department. He had later been asked to sign a training contract for a three-and-a-half year period.
Judge Comerford said PricewaterhouseCoopers claimed that it was a term of Nowaks employment that he pass three examinations required to become a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ireland.
The employer claimed the contract stated that it could terminate the employment if Nowak failed any years examination. Novak, who represented himself in court, denied this and claimed he was entitled to continue his employment with the firm.
PricewaterhouseCoopers claimed that after Nowak failed the examination in Summer 2008 and again the following Autumn, they had written telling him they were willing to support him for one final attempt. His employment had been terminated when he had failed again in 2009.
Nowak claimed the Institute allowed students six attempts to pass the exams. PricewaterhouseCoopers had argued that it had decided in 2006 to allow trainees two opportunities to sit the exams.
The judge said he was satisfied that Mr Nowaks contract of employment did not expressly state that it could be terminated if he failed to pass an examination.
The employer has failed to establish the existence of the contractual provision upon which it relied to dismiss him. The dismissal being based on the assertion of an entitlement that did not exist was unfair, the judge said.
Judge Comerford said clearly worded contracts could have ensured that what was intended by the employer was understood and accepted by Mr Nowak. He was of the view the documentation was inadequate and unclear.
The judge said Mr Nowak, who has been unemployed since his dismissal seven years ago, should have taken steps to ensure some employment and found that reinstating him in his previous position was not appropriate.
The clear evidence of Mr Nowak was that he was more concerned with establishing that he had actually passed the examination and intends proceeding to the European Court of Justice with his claim to obtain copies of the examination scripts, Judge Comerford said.
Nowak claimed he passed the examination and had asked to see his exam scripts and felt he was entitled to access his exam papers under the Data Protection Acts.
The Institute refused, stating it was not obliged to do so as the exam papers did not constitute personal data. Nowak later sought the assistance of the Data Protection Commissioner, who had agreed with the Institute.
Nowak challenged that decision through the Circuit Court, the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court which, in May, referred the case to European Court of Justice claiming it needed guidance as to whether an exam script constitutes personal data.
Currently, various aircraft are used to perform missions relating to drug smuggling, detecting crime and mitigating threats to homeland security. Stock picture
Gardai are hoping to put a high-tech plane in the sky to help target organised criminal gangs such as the Kinahan cartel as well as any potential threats to the security of the State.
The plane would be used in sophisticated operations targeting drug smuggling, terrorist threats and hunting down criminals in the immediate aftermath of an offence. The aircraft could also be used for covert
surveillance operations.
An Garda Siochana issued a tender for a censor-equipped aeroplane which they hope to add to their fleet of planes and helicopters in the Garda Air Support Unit.
The plane will be used for intelligence gathering as well as airborne tracking in the fight against organised crime gangs including the cartel.
In the tender notice, the force said: To improve mission effectiveness and resource flexibility, AGS wishes to explore the feasibility and practicality of using a sensor-equipped fixed wing aircraft that can effectively perform these types of missions.
Currently, various aircraft are used to perform the airborne tracker, ground surveillance and air/ground interdiction missions relating to drug smuggling, detecting crime and mitigating threats to homeland security.
THERMAL
The Garda Air Support Unit fleet, which is operated by members of the Air Corps, is stationed at Baldonnel Aerodrome.
It includes a Pilatus Britten-Norman BN 2T-4S Defender 4000 plane as well as two Eurocopter EC 135 T2s.
The aircraft are fitted with daylight and thermal image cameras mounted on gyro stabilised platforms, search lights, extensive communication suites and microwave downlink/
uplink technology.
The deadline for the supplies contract, issued by the Garda Finance and Procurement section, is November 11.
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Inverness road, Fairview where shots were fired at a window last night. Picture: Damien Eagers
Gardai have arrested two men after shots were fired at a house in North Dublin overnight.
In a statement gardai said that that at approximately 11.30pm they received a report of a firearm being discharged at a house on Inverness Road in Fairview.
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On arrival it was discovered that a shot had been fired at an upstairs bedroom window from outside causing it to smash.
A mother, her two adult children and another man were in the house at the time. There was no one in the damaged room and no one was injured.
In a follow up operation shortly afterwards two males, one in his 20s and one in his 30s, were arrested in Donabate.
The occupants of the house did not want to comment when approached today.
"Everyone is okay, just let the gardai deal with it," said a woman who answered the door.
The shotgun blast to the window in the upper floor was clearly evident, with two panes of glass broken and the frame rail between them peppered with shotgun pellets.
There were also two marks in the front door that looked like they were caused by being hit with a blunt instrument rather than gunfire.
Neighbours reported hearing a gun blast at 11.30pm but did not see anyone leave the scene.
"It's a very quiet road normally, so it is quite shocking," said one woman.
The two men are currently detained under the provisions of Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act 1939 at Swords and Clontarf Garda Stations.
The scene has been preserved for a technical examination and investigations are ongoing.
Witnesses or anyone who can assist with the investigation are asked to contact Clontarf Garda Station on 01 6664800, The Garda Confidential Telephone Line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Detectives investigating the murder of 31-year-old Laura Marshall in Lurgan last April arrested a 28-year-old man in the Craigavon area on Tuesday morning.
Ms Marshall's body was discovered at her flat in Victoria Street, Lurgan, on Sunday 3 April 2016.
In April a PSNI detective said officers had found a "violent scene" in the bathroom, which was destroyed, with a pool of blood on the floor.
Detective Chief Inspector Eamonn Corrigan, from Serious Crime Branch, said: "The suspect was interviewed today and subsequently released pending a report being submitted to the Public Prosecution Service."
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A 36-year-old man has been charged with Ms Marshall's murder and appeared at Craigavon Magistrates Court on Friday 8 April.
Arts education can often be seen as a luxury, but a recent landmark study found that pupils who engage with arts and culture feel happier and cope much better in school.
The report, by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) on behalf of the Arts Council, followed children aged three, five, nine and 13 over a period and measured the impact of activities like reading, drama, singing, dance and painting on their cognitive development and emotional well-being.
It found that, by age 13, children who participate in artistic and cultural activities have an improved "academic self-image", along with reduced anxiety, better academic skills and fewer socio-emotional difficulties.
Arts Council director Orlaith McBride says that from their perspective, "this report very clearly confirms that the arts are not just the icing on the cake - there are genuine benefits to teachers introducing the arts in their classrooms".
She believes that key to the successful provision of arts in education is integration across the curriculum, rather than isolated periods of music or drama. The term "arts in education" is crucial, as it refers to a cross-curricular approach dedicated to freeing the arts from "the silos of the subject".
"It's at post-primary that we have a lot of work to do. It's seen as a subject area and, if you don't do that subject, you don't do the arts at all. We need to find new ways to bring the arts into school, so it's released from being purely about the subject," she says.
Ms McBride is also a member of the implementation group for the Arts in Education Charter, an initiative of the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
One of the charter's objectives was to set up an online resource to share best practice and, in 2015, the Arts in Education Portal was established. The portal contains reports from teachers and artists on projects in schools, a directory where users can see cultural assets in their community, and a selection of written and audio-visual materials on various art forms.
It is edited by the Kids' Own Publishing Partnership, a Sligo-based arts organisation that runs book-making workshops for children and projects connecting students with artists across the country. Creative director Orla Kenny explains that the portal aims "to build an informed community of practitioners", including artists, arts organisations, pupils and teachers.
"The arts are seen as something that's an added extra rather than something that's core or integral to how we think and learn," she says.
"We were interested to see how an online space could support practice on the ground, and the audience has really grown. We can see from the statistics that we are engaging artists and teachers.
"During our consultations, we were speaking to teachers and artists around the country, and a lot of them said they wanted to be inspired and they wanted to learn from others."
Creative Engagement is a National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), programme that pairs local artists with second-level schools to produce projects on everything from dance to sculpture. At last week's annual exhibition, held in IMMA, there were 43 projects on display, with 85 projects nationwide.
Creative Engagement administrator Dermot Carney says: "The big push now is to put the arts into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Multinationals know that they need creativity to get ahead, and you see companies like Cisco and Microsoft in the US advocating for more arts in education."
Even as stand-alone school subjects, he says the arts have "a way to go".
He points to art and music teachers on part-time contracts, and argues there are "serious problems" with an out-of-date Leaving Cert art syllabus, as well as art ranking lowest for the number of A grades handed to higher level students.
"The idea of modular, project-based arts in education programmes is the way to go. A lot of good kids are packing in art after Junior Cert because of the CAO grind - they take a look at the stats and they know they're probably not going to get an A1 in art," he says.
The Arts Council/ESRI report identified significant differences in levels of participation across socio-economic backgrounds and Ms McBride notes that, for some children, school may be the only place where they have access to the arts.
"If you come from an advantaged community, your parents can afford to send you to violin classes. If there are no arts in schools, then maybe children from lower socio-economic backgrounds aren't having any arts experience, because they can't afford it," she says.
One of the programmes dedicated to broadening access is Music Generation, co-founded by U2 and which operates under the auspices of the Department of Education. It now works with local music education partnerships in 12 areas around the country to offer tuition in singing, songwriting and a wide range of instruments, providing access for 38,000 children.
"Our mantra is all about access. We want to open the door to give children these vibrant, rich, meaningful experiences and the opportunity to engage with professional musicians," says national director Rosaleen Molloy.
"We're trying to reach children who would not otherwise have the means to pay for tuition, so it is highly subsidised.
"It could be free, it could be something as modest as 2, or if there is a child who wants to progress further, they might be part of a small group that could be 5 to 10 per lesson. It varies so much, depending on the programme, the child's circumstances and what's on offer locally as well."
Ms Molloy notes that the barriers to access go far beyond the socio-economic.
"There is a very strong focus on providing access for children and young people who wouldn't otherwise have the choice or chance. But there are also geographic barriers. If you live in a very rural part of the north-west of Mayo, the nearest tuition centre might be in Castlebar, and you're a two-hour round trip from that," she says.
"There are other barriers as well, such as if your interest is in rock and pop but the only option available is piano. If the child's parents value classical music education, but don't see the value in rock and pop, you're trying to counteract that kind of barrier as well."
'I wanted to make it easier for teachers and kids to make music in the classroom'
Teachers may wish to bring music into the classroom, but many lack the confidence or training to do so.
To tackle the problem, TCD music graduate Shane McKenna launched DabbledoMusic, a music education service that teaches primary school teachers and pupils a form of music notation that aims to be much simpler than the traditional staffs, crotchets and quavers.
"I wanted to make it easier for teachers and kids to make music in the classroom. My experience from working in classrooms was that traditional notation wasn't designed for teaching children, and it wasn't practical enough for teachers to use every day," he says.
"The notation that I developed is a colour-coded, animated system of music technology. It's all delivered through our website and can be used on interactive whiteboards."
DabbledoMusic's website offers free learning resources and, as well as classroom visits, Mr McKenna and his partner Killian Redmond deliver professional development workshops for teachers.
Last week, they received a Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Elevator Award.
Next September, DabbledoMusic will launch a subscription model, where teachers will receive weekly lesson plans via email.
Mr McKenna says there will be a variety of subscription options to cater to a range of schools, including DEIS schools and individual teachers.
Last week this column looked at some of the impact on students of the new Leaving Certificate grading system and CAO points scale. This includes the 37 points to be awarded for a mark of 30pc-39pc on a higher level paper as well as, potentially, less difference between the points a student may receive in their 'mocks' and their final exams, as a result of wider grade bands.
What concerns my students most is the increased difficulty in trying to predict where the points cut-off will lie. While students should refrain from keeping points at the forefront of their minds, it is impossible for students and parents to avoid completely looking up where the cut-off fell last year and wondering whether it is likely to go up or down.
It was never possible to predict the minimum cut-off for a particular course with any certainty. Cut-off points are a result of supply and demand.
Points will continue be calculated in the same way as before: students add up their best six subjects for points, having added 25 points to the maths score for a minimum 40pc mark at higher-level.
Additionally, cut-off points for courses will also be determined in the same way as before, i.e. all students who apply for a particular course and meet the entry requirements are placed on a list in order of the number of points they achieve. Starting from the top of the list, places are offered until all places are filled. The cut-off is the number of points achieved by the last applicant offered a place on a given course.
What is different this year is the new grading system and the points students will be awarded for each grade. As a result, cut-off points for courses will change regardless of any change in demand.
Courses that were oversubscribed and therefore had high minimum cut-off points are likely to be oversubscribed again and require relatively high points. Similarly, less popular courses, which had lower points last year, are likely to be comparatively low again in autumn 2017.
Applicants will be able to gain a better understanding of the competition for different disciplines in the spring when the CAO releases application figures. An increase in applications in any area suggests courses may see a rise in points.
Another effect of this new system is the greater range of points students may achieve. Previously, points were awarded in multiples of five for different grades, for example 55, 60, 65 points.
Under the new system, the difference in the points awarded for each grade will vary with, for example, 100 for a H1, 88 (H2), 77 (H3), 66 (H4), 56 (H5) etc. So it is no longer a standard difference of five points, but 12, 11, 10, nine or eight and such differences between what is awarded for each grade means that the variety of total points score students can achieve will vary much more.
Hopefully, this will result in fewer students missing out on places as a result of random selection. Random selection means that while places were offered to applicants who achieved cut-off points, not all applicants with these points were offered a place.
The placing of an asterisk alongside the cut-off points indicates that random selection has occurred. It is very difficult to miss out on a college place knowing that other applicants who achieved the same results received an offer. This change is likely to be welcomed by both students and parents. It is certainly welcomed by guidance counsellors and may result in less disappointment and feelings of injustice come offers season.
Aoife Walsh is a guidance counsellor at Malahide Community School, Co Dublin
Important dates
Today
College & Careers Fair - Banagher College
Tomorrow
Open Day - IT Sligo
Open Days (2 days) - Limerick IT
Open Days (2 days) - Mary Immaculate College
Open Day - National Maritime College of Ireland
Information evening, Tralee - NUI Galway
Open Day - Sligo CFE
Open Day - St Angela's, Sligo
Open Days (2 days) - UL
OCTOBER 21
Open Day - Shannon College of Hotel Management
OCTOBER 22
Graduate Entry Medical School Open Day - UL
OCTOBER 25
Options West Exhibition - Galway Bay Hotel
UCD Science Postgraduate Open Evening - UCD
Try Nursing at WIT (4 days) - Waterford IT
Q. I am hoping to apply for the DARE (Disability Access Route to Education) scheme. I have heard they are very particular with regards to deadlines and there is no leniency for late applications. When do I have to apply by?
A. You are correct, However, students apply for DARE through the CAO and it is not possible to begin this application until November 4. Applicants must tick the relevant box by February 1 to indicate they plan to apply for DARE, fill out the online form before March 1 and forward all relevant paperwork to the CAO by April 1. Paperwork includes evidence of disability papers, psychological and educational assessments, consultants' letters, which can take time to gather, as well as school educational impact statements. It is helpful to give the school plenty of notice that you will be requiring an educational impact statement. Last year my colleagues and I completed over 20 of these forms and due to changes in the requirements for DARE in 2017 I expect to complete a lot more this year. Notifying the relevant person in your school in January or asking when they would like you to submit this form could be very helpful in ensuring that there are no delays or panics in March. Information is available on accesscollege.ie to help you begin planning your application.
A nationwide campaign gets underway tomorrow to recruit parents and others to take over supervision and substitution work in hundreds of second-level schools from November 7.
It is a desperate bid to try to avert the closure of schools for in indefinite period arising from industrial action by the Association of Secondary Teachers' Ireland (ASTI).
Payment will be a minimum of 38.36 per day based on two hours' supervision, and any further supervision above those two hours will be paid at a rate of 19.18 per hour.
Up to two-thirds of second-level schools - around 500 in total - could be forced to close because of ASTI members' withdrawal from supervision and substitution duties as part of their ongoing pay campaign.
The Department of Education will place advertisements in the national media tomorrow identifying schools where external supervisors will be needed to replace thousands of teachers.
Read more: 'Anyone recruited in public service has had to take lower pay' - Richard Bruton
Schools are also expected to use local contacts to find suitable personnel. The contingency plan will involve schools recruiting external personnel to supervise pupils on the school premises, in the school yard as well as in classrooms, where a teacher is absent.
Despite efforts to put contingency arrangements in place, the Department of Education and school management bodies, who met yesterday to finalise a plan, say that widespread school closures are inevitable from November 7.
This is because of the tight deadline set by the ASTI when it announced the action last Friday, and the union's refusal to allow principals play what would be a crucial role in helping to put alternative cover in place. As well as advertising for, and recruiting external supervisors, individuals who are selected for the work have to undergo Garda vetting, and it could take up to the end of November to complete the process.
It means that hundreds of schools are at real risk of not re-opening after the mid-term break, causing serious disruption to the education of up to 250,000 students and massive headaches for parents.
The ASTI has also announced a series of one-day strikes, specifically on the issue of pay equality for newly qualified teachers.
Read more: Chaos of seven strike days could mean heavy financial losses for teachers
The first of those stoppages is set for Thursday, October 27, which means about 500 schools will close that day, re-open on October 28 and close later that day for the mid-term break.
The other strikes are scheduled for a dates up to December 7, but the withdrawal from supervision and substitution duties is likely to mean that most schools will be closed on those days anyway.
ASTI leaders have accepted an invitation to meet Department of Education officials on the pay row today.
Thousands of students marched through Dublin today to urge the Government not to impose a student loans scheme.
The huge number of students surpassed the expectations of student leaders who had estimated only 5,000 marchers would be present.
Gardai said the numbers were considerably higher.
It took more than half an hour for students walking 10 abreast to pass The Spire in O'Connell Street on their way from Parnell Square to the Department of the Taoiseach.
Union of Students in Ireland (USI) President Annie Hoey with a megaphone at the ready, told Independent.ie that third level education has as much right to be funded by the State as other public services such as public libraries.
"Debt is debt. Young people don't want to be straddled with extra debt when they start making a living," she said.
"Graduates will end up paying taxes like everyone else....We don't believe college fees will be kept down if loans are introduced. Students in Britain were promised fees would be kept down but when loans were introduced they ended up rising from 1,000 a year to 9,000 a year," she said.
USI deputy president Jack Leahy said State investment in students' education is returned nine times in terms of the higher taxes they pay in the future and in terms of attracting multi-national companies who confirmed well-educated graduates are crucial to the reasons for setting up here.
DCU student Jade Byrne (19) from Ballymun, Dublin, who is studying law, said she would have to drop out of education and emigrate if the grants system was replaced with a loans system.
"I don't think the Government will take heed of us but we need to protest about this," she said.
A student loan scheme, contingent on income levels earned after graduation, was one of the options in the Cassells Report on funding for the third level college sector.
The chants of the thousands of students filled the city centre as they marched.
Among the placard slogans were: "Buy College? Bye College," "I'm a student, not a customer,"
"Ah here, Enda," "Study Now, Depression Later," "God hates fees," and "Dumbledore didn't die for this."
A well-known south Dublin girls school is to close.
The fee-paying Notre Dame Des Missions on Churchtown will close its primary school in next June while its secondary school will remain open until June 2019, to allow existing senior and junior cycle students to complete their programme.
The school trust has told parents that insufficient income to repay loans/mortgage, increasing operating costs and the need for significant investment in the infrastructure are the reasons for the decision
Notre Dame, which was founded in 1953 by a French order of nuns, came close to closure about a decade ago, but a strong campaign by the school community led to a change of heart by the nuns.
It led to the establishment of The Notre Dame School Trust Ltd. in 2005, amid hopes of a more certain future, but, last year, second level enrolments had slipped to about 150. Fees at the school were about 4,300.
Dublin Rathdown-based Senator for Fine Gael, Neale Richmond has expressed disappointment at the news.
"I am truly saddened and disappointed to hear that this very famous school is to close its doors, after over 60 years serving the people of South County Dublin from its prime Churchtown location.
"Notre Dames primary and secondary schools are very well known locally and the school itself was an integral part of the community. Accordingly the decision taken by the charitable trust that operates the school to close will be a shock and a disappointment to many in the area.
"The primary school is to close in June 2017 but I am heartened to learn from the Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, that the secondary school will remain open until June 2019 to allow for Leaving Certificate and Junior Certificate students to complete to finish off their examination cycle.
"The majority of parents, teachers, staff and pupils have only learned of the imminent closure this afternoon and I am sure this news will be a very bitter pill to swallow.
"First opened by the Notre Dame des Missions sisters in 1953, the school was an iconic institution for many more than the 230 girls currently enrolled. Indeed when the sisters decided to withdraw from education in 2003, a great campaign was launched by the school community to keep it open. Notre Dame had a very positive impact on the local area and will be remembered fondly."
It is understood that Department of Education has acquired the campus and will use it for school purposes in the future.
The World Bank Board of Governors has endorsed guarantees worth $500 million under which Naftogaz Ukrainy may be provided with credit facilities or loans from international commercial banks to buy natural gas from individual suppliers, Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk has said.
"I welcome the World Bank Board's decision to grant $500 million in loan guarantees to Naftogaz to buy gas. This would enable us to safely pass the heating season," Danyliuk wrote on his Facebook page.
The Finance Ministry clarified the funds will be provided at the conditions attractive for Naftogaz: the availability of the World Bank guarantee reduces risks for borrowers and allows lenders to provide funds at a lower interest rate.
"Naftogaz is expected to sign a loan agreement after all the necessary procedures are completed," the ministry said.
As reported, President of the European Investment Bank Werner Hoyer and President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim on October 9, 2015 signed an agreement under the guarantees of the European Union to attract credits of up to $520 million for gas purchases by Naftogaz Ukrainy both from Europe and Russia. However, the consideration of the project has been delayed for a long time.
The family and friends of two Cork men who died tragically in Canada last week have raised thousands of euro in their efforts to bring home the remains of the two friends.
A fundraising campaign was started on Sunday night and, within 48 hours, almost 200 people had donated more than 9,500.
Cathal Murphy (33) from Bandon, and Raymond McCann (42) from Kanturk, were killed in a car accident on October 8 in Manitoba, Canada.
The car they were travelling in was found overturned at the side of a road west of Melita on Thanksgiving weekend.
It is expected family members will return home with Cathal and Raymond later this week, with the funerals to take place at the beginning of next week.
A close cousin of Cathals, Ray OCallaghan, has set up a Go Fund Me account to help pay for the process of repatriating the bodies.
Expand Close Cathal Murphy (33) from Bandon, Co Cork / Facebook
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The monies raised will go to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust.
This Trust was set up in 2013 after Kevin Bell was killed in a hit-and-run in New York City.
Kevin's father, Colin, has been helping to raise money to bring home the remains of other Irish people who have died abroad ever since.
Only for Colin, none of this would be possible. He took full control of all the paperwork and funeral homes logistics; otherwise we would be here for much longer. The paperwork is just frightening, Cathals brother James told the Evening Echo in Cork.
Colin is just a true gentleman and so understanding as he knows what were going through at this hard time. We just want to bring our brother home to our parents and Raymond home to his family, he added.
To donate to The Kevin Bell Repatriation Fund in honour of Cathal and Raymond, click here.
Mark Toland, Deputy Chief Inspector, at a Press Conference held by the Garda Inspectorate to mark the publication of the Inspectorate's tenth report.Picture:Arthur Carron
The Garda Inspectorate has said that frontline policing is not prioritised in An Garda Siochana and there is a lack of visible garda presence in communities.
The agency is this morning briefing TDs and Senators on its priorities for the near future and gave an outline of its recent reports and how their implementation by the Gardai.
Deputy Chief Inspector Mark Toland said the majority of its recommendations have been accepted by the Gardai, but they're not always implemented.
He detailed the Inspectorate's Changing Policing in Ireland 2015 report.
He said that his organisation found an ineffective structure, struggling to cope with the modern demands on Garda services.
Mr Toland added: We found that people are not always on duty at the right times, in the right places and doing the right things.
He also said there is a two-tier community policing system exists, with high numbers of gardai in Dublin, but significantly less in other areas, particularly rural Ireland.
Mr Toland also raised concern that not all crimes reported to Gardai end up being recorded on the Pulse computer system.
He said this makes auditing of the number of crimes "impossible" adding; "it's really difficult to decide how many guards you need if you don't know how busy you are ."
In an overview he said: We believe that front-line services are not prioritised and protected.
All other police services we engaged with have restructured, reduced the number of administrative areas and now operate from far leaner structures, with fewer managers in order to protect the front line.
In total, 83pc of garda resources are deployed to front-line services, compared to 93pc in some other police services.
Our evidence including analysis of data, and feedback from the communities we visited, highlights the lack of a visible Garda presence, he said.
According to Mr Toland the force performs some functions like prosecuting District Court cases and transporting remand prisoners that may be more appropriate to other agencies.
At least 1,500 Gardai are in non-operational roles that could be released for patrol, investigation and community policing duties, Mr Toland added.
He said that An Garda Siochana has broadly accepted the vast majority of the Inspectorate recommendations.
The Inspectorate does not have the statutory authority to oversee the implementation of its recommendations and unfortunately, full implementation of many of the recommendations has yet to be achieved, he said.
He called Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan's The Commissioners Modernisation and Renewal Programme an ambitious reform plan.
The Commissioner now has her top team in place, new gardai have joined and the Government has provided significant funding for crucial technology, new vehicles, new stations and refurbishments, Mr Toland added.
The Inspectorate looks forward to working with the Garda Siochana to help them to achieve the significant changes planned.
Gardai are appealing for witnesses to a robbery of a pharmacy in Galway earlier this month.
The robbery took place on Tuesday, October 11 at 10:45pm at Oranmore Pharmacy in Co. Galway.
Two masked men forced their way onto the premises through the front of the property and left with a sum of money.
Anyone with information in relation to this incident is asked to contact Oranmore Garda Station on 091-388030.
Gardai have launched an investigation into a reported assault of a woman by two men on a roadside in Co. Laois.
The incident happened on Tuesday morning at approximately 12:30am on the Mountmellick Road, Portlaoise.
It is reported that the woman was repeatedly punched in the face after two men entered her stopped vehicle.
Gardai have confirmed that they have launched a full investigation into the incident.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Portlaoise Gardai on 057 8674 100.
A three-year-old girl was found among a group of refugees in the back of a lorry that was shipped in to Ireland.
The girl was found in the lorry at haulage firm O'Leary International in Marshmeadows, New Ross, with three men and one woman. All of the occupants of the container are from the Middle East, and told immigration officers they were Kurdish.
Wexford Chief Superintendent John Roche said the people with the child, who are all aged in their 20s, were discovered at 6pm on Sunday. Noises from the back of the lorry alerted one of the company's staff who contacted gardai.
The people had travelled on the Oscar Wilde ferry into Rosslare Europort from Cherbourg the previous day.
They are thought to have entered an unaccompanied refrigerated container which was left in Cherbourg.
The container was taken from a compound in the port city by a tug on Saturday and deposited on the ferry for the 18-hour journey to Ireland.
It was sealed by custom officials as it contained perishable goods.
Supt Roche said the refugees were taken to New Ross garda station where they were medically assessed prior to being taken to Wexford garda station's immigration unit.
They were processed and interviewed before being taken to a refugee reception centre in Waterford where they spent the night, then onward to Dublin where they will apply for asylum seeker status.
He said: "They were all in good health and we made sure they had food and plenty of liquids."
The matter is still under investigation. It is not known whether the group are related as the last names given are not similar.
Supt Roche said there was a significantly increased garda presence at Rosslare Europort this year. Around 10 people in total, including some children, have so far been found hiding in the back of lorries and trailers.
"Both immigration and security checks have increased at Rosslare Europort in recent months. We have six ferries arriving here every day from Cherbourg, Fishguard and Pembroke," he added.
"We search the majority of trucks coming into Rosslare Europort and we have found a lot of clandestines who are sent back to France.
"This container was sealed so we could not search it."
Supt Roche said Wexford immigration officers were in regular contact with their counterparts in Cherbourg.
He said several people who had false documents has been sent back to their outgoing port from Rosslare Europort.
The increased garda presence is also due to the heightened Isil threat across the continent.
In June, a cargo of 18,500 of apples owned by a Wexford company had to be destroyed after a refugee left a bottle of urine in the back of a trailer.
In February, nine male refugees were discovered inside the back of a truck in New Ross that also arrived at Rosslare Port.
The Irish Blood Transfusion Service said it needed an additional 1,500 donations over the next three weeks to stabilise national supplies. Stock Image
Hospitals will be left without a guaranteed supply of blood in the coming weeks unless there is a large increase in donations.
The Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) said it needed an additional 1,500 donations over the next three weeks to stabilise national supplies.
With just three days' supply left, it will be very difficult to guarantee supply to hospitals in the coming weeks.
IBTS director of operations Paul McKinney said: "While the summer is always difficult, we still managed to maintain the supply to the hospitals.
"However, attendances at clinics over the past number of weeks have been consistently down by 6pc, while the demand has remained constant.
"The IBTS is calling for blood donors to make a special effort to give blood over the coming weeks to restore blood supplies to seven days across the main blood groups."
He said that in addition to regular clinics, the service is taking a number of measures to address the shortage in supply including extra clinics next Sunday in Wexford town, Celbridge, Co Kildare, and Mountbellew, Co Galway. All clinic details are available on www.giveblood.ie
A Galway woman has called for her Brazilian husbands deportation order to be reversed, following the HSE's decision that their desire to marry was genuine.
Kleber Medeiros was deported in July pending the completion of a HSE investigation into his application for a marriage license. A member of the public had objected to his application last year on the basis that the application was a 'sham' for convenience.
The objection was made completely out of malice; the stuff in the objection was completely ridiculous, Harriett Bruce, Medeiros wife, told Independent.ie.
It was made anonymously and we werent told about it until weeks after.
Mr Medeiros came to Ballinasloe from Sao Paolo in 2012 and began seeing Harriett Bruce a year later.
They got engaged last August and set a wedding date for December.
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Just three weeks before their wedding, they received a notice that a member of the public had objected to the marriage and that the HSE would need to investigate before granting them a license.
Harriett and Kleber had people flying in for their wedding and decided to go ahead with the religious ceremony and get the license when the case cleared.
Despite the fact that they immediately provided the HSE with documents including utility bills to prove that they had been living together, the HSE took almost a year to decide that their desire to marry was not a sham.
In the meantime, Mr Medeiros was deported and the couple have been completely in limbo ever since.
Despite the fact that the HSE have now ruled in favour of the couple and allowed their marriage to continue, the deportation order still stands.
In order to get a marriage license, they will have to come together to the registry office in Ireland, but they cannot do that until the order is reversed by the Irish National Immigration Services.
The lack of communication between the departments is disgraceful, Harriett told Independent.ie.
If the objection had been dealt with properly in the first place none of this would have happened. Now that the HSE have finally dealt with it, INIS wont reverse the order.
Harriett flew to Brazil to join her husband on September 6, but is flying home on November 6. Her mother is in remission from cancer.
Hes been onto me every day to check my email and see if hell be able to come home soon. Its heartbreaking. Im being pulled between my mam at home and my husband here.
We had planned to go to America after the honeymoon, and then to Brazil. After we got back, we were going to start a family, Harriett told Independent.ie.
Im a hairdresser and beautician and my intention was to extend my business and employ people, and thats all been put on hold.
Were after building our life together; we had a good lifestyle and all the comfort that we wanted and he was sent back to Brazil with the clothes on his back.
Kleber and Harriett received an 11-page document from the Irish National Immigration Services highlighting their reasons for recommending deportation, which cited the economic wellbeing of Ireland as a reason for his deportation, noting that he was unskilled and therefore that his employment prospects were limited.
Kleber has been working as a meat-boner in Leafy Meats since early 2013. Hes very skilled at that job, he works more than 45 hours a week and pays taxes which supports the economy. The idea that his living here was harming the economy is just ridiculous, Bruce told independent.ie.
Kleber and Harriett have appealed the INIS decision, but they have no idea when the case will be processed.
We got a notification that our case is one of many and they dont know when it will be decided on.
Harriett has had support from local TDs and senators and is hoping that the Minister will take note of her case when she returns home in November so that they do not have to rely on the slow appeals process.
Since the new legislation passed in 2015 to combat sham marriages between Irish people and foreign nationals seeking residency, 103 objections have been made to proposed marriages on that basis. Of those, only 25 of the marriages have been approved.
I wouldnt be surprised if there are other people in our situation, Harriett said.
The HSE have been contacted by Independent.ie for comment.
Embattled charity Goal has appointed Celine Fitzgerald as its general manager following the resignation of CEO Barry Andrews.
Ms Fitzgerald, who comes into the interim position having served at CEO and board level across several multinational, state and charity bodies, will begin her new role on November 1.
She takes over after Mr Andrews stood down last week following a US-led investigation into the charity's multimillion-euro Syria operation.
The new general manager has been described as an expert in "change management".
The charity said she will oversee a period of transition within the organisation over the next 12 months.
Ms Fitzgerald has previously worked in management roles in the private sector including working for Eircell, Vodafone and outsourcing business, Rigney Dolphin, where she acted as chief executive officer from 2007 to 2012.
She is currently on the boards of both the VHI and Irish Water's parent company Ervia.
She was also a former director of Organisational Development at Trocaire, and a former Board member of Nurture Africa - a charity providing health services in Uganda.
As a result of the aid investigation carried out by the US Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the Department of Foreign Affairs withheld 10.1m funding from Goal pending the results of the inquiry.
Goal is also implementing an action plan, which is based on a consultant's report, which was commissioned in response to the ongoing investigation by the Office of the Inspector General of USAID (OIG) into alleged supply chain irregularities relating to US-sponsored humanitarian aid programmes in Syria.
Ms Fitzgerald said: "It is critical that we sort out the issues facing Goal during my one year tenure, and ensure that the people on the front line, whether in head office or in the field, can get back to doing what they do best."
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved measures for the effective use of public funds.
According to cabinet resolution No. 710 of October 11, the government approved measures for the effective use of public funds provided for the maintenance of public authorities, enterprises, institutions and organizations, formed by state authorities, which use national budget funds.
The Cabinet by this decision also cancelled resolution No. 65 dated March 1, 2014 on the saving of public funds and prevention of budget losses."
The government instructed the State Treasury Service to make payments on a priority basis and in full on the expenses of the general fund of the national budget to the employees of budgetary institutions, for wages, the purchase of medicines and bandaging materials, the supply of food, clothing, footwear, equipment for students from the number of orphans and children deprived of parental care, as well as make payments for housing and utilities services, energy, costs associated with the implementation of projects of targeted environmental (green) investments and the fulfilment of obligations of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the provision of specialized ambulances for emergency medical assistance.
Gardai arrested three people and searched 14 airplanes as part of a major international crime-busting operation carried out over 11,000 locations worldwide.
The global Operation Ciconia uncovered 2.38 tonnes of cocaine and identified 529 human trafficking victims.
A total of 386 people were arrested following the week-long operation.
Gardai confirmed to Independent.ie that officers took part in Global Airport Action days on October 11-13.
A spokesman said the aim of the Action Days was to counter fraudulent flight bookings using compromised payment card data.
"Three persons were arrested, with two of those charged and a further three persons questioned during this operation."
A series of targeted interventions and examinations of selected flights at Dublin Airport were conducted on the same dates.
Gardai say that an analysis of passengers on those flights was carried out with a view to identifying indicators and victims of human trafficking.
A spokesman said: "Over the course of the three days, 14 flights with approximately 150/160 passengers per flight were targeted each day.
"Information Leaflets on Human Trafficking (Blueblindfold leaflets) and contact details of human trafficking officers were given to any vulnerable persons identified."
No victims of human trafficking were identified during this exercise.
Requests were received by 9 member countries in relation to exchanging intelligence on human trafficking.
In an earlier statement Europol said 51 countries and four international organisations teamed up to deliver what has been described as a "major blow to organised crime groups operating across the European Union and beyond".
The operation was focused on disrupting the most dangerous criminal networks currently active in Europe but sources said this did not include major Irish crime gangs.
Investigators put an emphasis on cases related to facilitated illegal immigration, trafficking in human beings, drug trafficking (cocaine, heroin and synthetic drugs) and cybercrime.
Gardai and other law enforcement officers in the field were supported from an operational coordination centre located at Europols headquarters in The Hague.
Europol officers, liaison officers and national experts from the participating countries, working with specialists from other international partners, offered information exchange using Europols secure channels, and constantly analysed intelligence gathered.
The statement said: "Simultaneously, 16 Europol specialists were deployed on the spot in several countries across the world. From there, they worked hand-in-hand with investigators to provide forensic support, analytical reports and live crosschecks against Europols databases."
Among the areas searched were red-light districts, brothels, massage parlours, private apartments, airports and immigration reception centres. The nationality of the identified victims of human trafficking, and the suspects arrested during the operations, confirmed that trafficking networks originating in Nigeria, Asia and Eastern Europe are the most active in the EU.
In one case, Austrian authorities discovered a cannabis plantation while performing checks at a brothel to identify potential victims of sexual exploitation.
The officers ordered the closure of the premises, which was being run as an illegal brothel, and a new investigation was initiated.
In another case, Europol was able to establish links between a payment card fraud case and a case on facilitating illegal immigration.
This information was forwarded to colleagues from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) based at an airport in Athens, Greece. Following the lead provided by Europol, the officers intercepted four irregular migrants who were intending to travel to Italy. Four forged passports and four fraudulently-purchased flight tickets to Italy were found on them, and the individuals were arrested.
Also, a fake travel agency was discovered in Greece that was facilitating the trafficking of human beings and illegal immigration. The successful result was based on analysis of Europol information, notifications from airlines and the proactive approach of Greek police.
In addition, intelligence collected during the operations triggered the initiation of 449 new investigations.
John Herbert with the Sunday Pictorial story on his father Peter who disappeared in 1957
An Englishman who has nurtured a lifelong hope of finding his missing father has travelled to Ireland to continue his search.
John Herbert (69) is appealing to people in Dublin for any information they may have on Peter Herbert, an accountant and racehorse owner whose last known location was in the city in 1957.
The tale of Peter is colourful to say the least.
"He left England with a woman named Stella to travel to Ireland in July 1957," said John.
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"He stayed at the Belvedere Hotel in Dublin. We don't know what happened to him after he left the hotel in Denmark Street."
Embezzled
A British Sunday newspaper published a front page story in December 1957 with a photograph of Peter Herbert holding a cocktail shaker with the headline 'Good Riddance To A Rogue'.
The Sunday Pictorial published stories reporting Peter had embezzled money from a furniture manufacturing firm where he worked in order to finance a playboy lifestyle, including the purchase of a number of racehorses.
The newspaper published comments from Peter admitting he had been "fiddling the books" at the business. His employer also confirmed to the newspaper he had stolen money from him.
"Why did my father disappear? In his mind, he had to run away, a coward," said John, also an accountant who lives in Devon. "There were lots of things in his life we don't know. He has been called a rogue and many other things, all of which are probably true."
John said that by the age of 37 his father had children with three different women.
He said Peter had remained married to his mother, Olive, with whom he had five children.
Olive's five children were still very young when he disappeared.
"Despite being a very clever man, my father double-crossed others to get ahead," he said.
"I'm the first to accept my father was not a nice or a good man, however, it means so much to discover more about his life after 1957.
"Despite his wrongdoings, I feel a son or daughter has a right to know about their father, especially his last resting place."
He said his father may have used other names in Ireland, such as Peter Field, Peter Williams, or Peter Scott.
Extensive efforts by John to find out what happened to his father have included commissioning psychological profiling, employing private investigators in Ireland and Britain, commissioning a number of searches through the Salvation Army, and visiting the Garda Missing Persons office and the National Archives in Dublin, he said.
His father was born in England on October 31, 1920.
John has also contacted other missing persons agencies in Ireland and the UK, examined ship passenger lists, examined his father's bankruptcy documents, and checked death registers and probate records in the UK and abroad.
He also paid for Dublin solicitors to search Land Registry records in Ireland.
Although there was "a strong possibility" his father remained in Ireland, John has followed up rumours that he could have gone to Canada, the United States, Australia, or Trinidad by contacting investigators abroad.
Information
He told the Herald he would be willing a pay a reward for any useful information about what happened to his father and he can be contacted by e-mail at j_dudley@btinternet.com
John, who has one son and two granddaughters, said he had felt isolated and alone as a child without his father.
He was the eldest of the couple's five children and would dearly love to know what happened to him or even just his date of death. He promised his mother before she died that he would try to find out what happened him.
"I do not want to pass from this world without finding out what happened to my father," John said
It took police over an hour to respond to the theft of a valuable artwork from the Bullitt Hotel in Belfast, even though a station is located across the street, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal.
It is also understood that when officers did arrive, they were from a different station several miles away.
Two pension-age women are being sought in connection with the removal of a specially commissioned 6ft x 4ft portrait of Hollywood star Steve McQueen from the newly opened business, named after one of the late actor's most famous movies.
The audacious heist ultimately failed because the striking black and white piece of art, worth approximately 15,000, was too big to fit in the ageing suspects' getaway car, which was parked nearby.
The unique portrait, by Slovakian artist Kamil Vojnar - a friend of hotel owner Bill Wolsey - has now been mounted to a wall in the Ann Street premises, which is diagonally opposite Musgrave PSNI station.
Mr Wolsey, whose portfolio of local businesses includes the five-star Merchant Hotel, said he was awaiting news of the culprits' fate.
"I would like to sit down and ask them, could they not have planned their getaway a bit better?" he added.
"Secondly, I think they need to sit down and ask themselves how proud their granddaughter or a daughter will feel about what they did."
Mr Wolsey, who was at home at the time, explained he had watched CCTV footage of the incident, which happened just after 8pm on Sunday, only two days after the four-star establishment was opened to the public.
Standing in front of the artwork of McQueen - which was later recovered, having incurred some damage, beside Tedfords restaurant on nearby Donegall Quay - Mr Wolsey revealed that it has been securely attached to deter other potential offenders. "We hung it up on Friday night," he said. "I didn't want to nail it to the wall like the other pictures because it is a specially commissioned piece of artwork. But as you can see, that has changed and it's a shame."
CCTV cameras captured the two females - who police said were in their late 60s, with shoulder-length blonde hair, and wearing glasses - initially checking out the hotel foyer before approaching their target. One gave her walking stick and handbag to her accomplice, who opened the cloak she was wearing to prevent hotel staff from noticing her partner in crime removing the massive portrait.
They can then be seen leaving the hotel through a fire exit and slowly dragging the expensive artwork up Victoria Street, past Musgrave Police Station on Ann Street towards Donegall Quay, where they abandoned it.
A spokesman for the PSNI said last night the investigation into the botched theft was ongoing.
"On Sunday evening, police in Belfast were dealing with a large number of incidents and calls were prioritised according to risk to life and vulnerability," he added. "Unfortunately, on this occasion, police were unable to attend the call in as timely a fashion as they would have liked.
"Details provided in the initial report enabled police enquiries to start and these are ongoing. An investigation was commenced immediately upon the arrival of police and the portrait was recovered in 40 minutes."
The PSNI has asked anyone who can help to contact Lisburn Road police, quoting reference number 1256 of October 16, 2016.
Five months after the Programme for Government pledged to re-open six garda stations on a trial basis nothing has happened, the Dail has been told.
Roscommon TD, Eugene Murphy, told the Dail that the scheme to re-open six was an effort to assess the importance of garda stations generally in fighting crime. He said none of the six had been identified.
There was talk about Stepaside but even that has not happened, the Fianna Fail TD said. He said the station in Tarmonbarry, Co Roscommon, on the N5 national route, urgently needed to be re-opened.
He said the Taoiseach knew this because he drives through Tarmonbarry virtually every day.
The Government has no intention of stepping aside from that commitment, Mr Kenny punned.
But he said it was up to the Garda Commissioner to assess the situation and recommend which stations should be re-opened as part of the pilot scheme.
Fine Gael ministers have rounded on Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe over his handling of the decision to scrap the pay hikes they were due under the Lansdowne Road Agreement.
In a rare occurrence, both Cabinet and junior ministerial sources have voiced anger over the fact they were not consulted over the move before it was announced by Mr Donohoe.
The Dublin Central TD announced that all ministers will forego their pay rises.
This will mean that members of Cabinet lose out on pay hikes next year of just under 4,000.
And ministers of state, who were told of the decision by Mr Donohoe personally after the meeting ended, will lose out on 2,800.
But TDs will be allowed to make up their own minds in relation to whether they forego their pay increase, which is set to be just over 2,700 next year.
However, the handling of the move has angered several Fine Gael ministers, a number of whom said they first learned of the decision through the media.
Others said they should have been given the chance to discuss the matter first with their families.
The blame has also been pointed at Mr Donohoe's department, with ministers claiming there should have been a full consultation before a decision was made.
On Monday evening, several junior ministers told the Irish Independent that they intended to accept the pay hikes due in April - before being told yesterday that they too must forego the money.
One Cabinet source described the handling of the matter as a "fiasco", while a second minister said it led to him receiving a backlash from his constituents last week.
There is also disquiet in Fine Gael over remarks made by super junior minister Finian McGrath over the issue.
In an interview with the Irish Independent, Mr McGrath said all TDs should stop "whingeing" and forego the increase.
Finally, at yesterday's Cabinet meeting it was agreed that all ministers, both senior and junior, will not get the pay hikes.
It was hoped the move would draw a line under the controversy that has raged since it emerged ministers were entitled to pay restoration worth 11,735 between next April and April 2019.
Mr Donohoe told reporters that no office holder will receive any increase.
"All office holders at both minister and minister of state level will forfeit the wage restoration that is due to happen under the Lansdowne Road Agreement. That decision was reaffirmed by Cabinet and it has now been reaffirmed by the ministers of state," Mr Donohoe said at a press briefing at Government Buildings.
He said an "administrative device" was agreed which will ensure ministers' take home pay does not change.
"The way we are going to work that...we have had to come up with an administrative device to deal with that. So from next April, the TDs' portion of their salary will increase and what we will do is we will decrease their ministerial salary by a larger amount to make sure their take-home pay does not change," Mr Donohoe added.
Backbench TDs will continue to be asked whether they will forego their pay hikes after a number of deputies said it is their intention.
These include Dublin North West TD Noel Rock and Roscommon/Galway deputy Michael Fitzmaurice.
"In relation to TDs, I continue to believe that the best framework for dealing with the pay of TDs is that it is anchored with payments to principal officers," Mr Donohoe said.
"The reason why I believe that is if we don't use that anchor, we will end back with politicians determining what other politicians are paid.
"That is not the right way to deal with something as sensitive as politicians' pay," he added.
Meanwhile, Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin called for an "annual discussion" on TDs' pay.
"TDs, after years and years of discussions about what was the appropriate rate, are linked to the grade of principal officer in the public service. I think we should not politicise the pay of TDs by disconnecting that now and then having an annual discussion about it."
Peter McDonnell with his wife Helen, who is raising money to help treat his illness
The prospect of Donald Trump being elected president is particularly troubling for Helen McDonnell after she promised to change her name by deed poll to whoever wins the US election.
The 57-year-old secretary will be officially known as either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump if she succeeds in raising 34,000 through a unique crowd-funding scheme she hopes will give her the financial means to help save her husband's life.
Helen, from Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, made the bizarre pledge in a bid to raise vital funds for husband Peter McDonnell (58), who is battling an incurable lung disease.
The couple, who moved to Mayo from their native London 20 years ago, came up with the scheme after Peter's 27-year-old nephew Oliver suggested injecting a bit of humour into an otherwise serious situation.
Although Helen doesn't relish the thought of being known locally as "The Donald" or even Hillary for that matter, she has vowed to go through with the legal name change if it means there is a chance to save the life of her beloved husband who suffers from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
There is no cure for the terminal illness and Peter was given only three to five years to live when he got the grim diagnosis in 2013.
His only chance of survival is if he receives a double lung transplant. As Peter, a former plumber, hopes to get on the waiting list for a double lung transplant, the couple's finances are dwindling because neither can work.
With Peter's condition deteriorating, Helen now provides 24-hour care.
Although Helen is hoping Trump won't be elected next month, she is prepared to adopt his moniker. "It's a bit daunting and I'm not sure what the complications are going to be. Maybe Peter could call me Dolly or something," she laughed.
For more details, see www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/namechanger
Naftogaz, its subsidiaries will demand $2.6 bln from Russia for stolen assets in Crimea
NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy and its six subsidiaries on October 17, 2016 initiated arbitration proceedings against the Russian Federation with the requirement to reimburse for losses caused by the illegal seizure of the group's assets in Crimea, the press service of the state holding has told Interfax-Ukraine.
"Naftogaz has initiated proceedings in accordance with the agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the government of the Russian Federation on promotion and mutual protection of investments, better known as the Russian-Ukrainian bilateral investment agreement. Naftogaz preliminarily estimated the damage to the group at $2.6 billion," the report reads.
According to the state holding, the matter concerns the property of Naftogaz, Chornomornaftogaz, Ukrtransgaz, Ukrgazvydobuvannia, Ukrtransnafta, Gaz Ukrainy and Likvo.
"After the illegal invasion of Crimea and the occupation of the peninsula in 2014, the Russian Federation applied an ambitious and well-coordinated scheme of depriving Ukrainian companies of their property without paying compensation. In Crimea Naftogaz had several valuable energy assets, the seizure of which by the Russian side violates the bilateral investment agreement, which requires the Russian Federation to respect and protect Ukrainian assets, including those located in Crimea," the holding said.
Naftogaz earlier declared its plans to seek to regain control over its assets lost because of Russia's occupying Crimea and have all losses compensated for through international judicial institutions.
Naftogaz in February 2016 initiated a negotiating process regarding the loss of its assets in Crimea by formally notifying Russia of an investment dispute under the bilateral investment protection agreement.
According to Naftogaz's annual consolidated statement, the six-month negotiating period ended in August 2016. Thus, the negotiating process produced no results, which entitles Ukraine to start arbitration proceedings against Russia regarding the investment agreement.
Naftogaz contracted Covington & Burling LLP (New York, the United States) to protect its interests in the litigation concerning the lost Crimean assets.
Naftogaz Ukrainy is wholly owned by the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers and consolidates the country's largest oil and gas producing facilities. It holds a monopoly on the transportation and storage of natural gas in underground storage facilities and on the transportation of oil through pipelines across the country.
A British mother has spoken about the life-altering moment doctors told her she was HIV Positive, which had remained undiagnosed for more than 30 years.
Vanessa Roberts (52) was diagnosed with the virus in 2014, after battling the infections symptoms for three decades during which she was married twice and gave birth to two children.
The mum-of-two from Oxford in England discovered she was HIV Positive after a chance blood test, carried out in a Sexual Health Clinic where she had visited to treat oral thrush.
Over 25 years these symptoms continued until I found out what the cause was, Vanessa told The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTE Radio 1.
Infections, chest infections, ear infections, lots of niggly things, persistent coughs, veruccas on my feet, strange oral thrush in my mouth.
I went many times to see my doctor and various doctors over the years and asked if there was something underlying wrong with me and I asked why I kept getting this and I was told Oh no, some people just get it.
It was as if they treated each individual thing but they didnt look at the whole picture really.
I was worried there might be something seriously wrong with me
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A couple of years ago, I had thrush and I wanted a doctors appointment and I couldnt get one for a couple of weeks so I took myself to the local sexual health clinic at the hospital, even though thrush isnt an STI, and I knew that I could go there and get the treatment. They offered me a routine blood screening test and not wanting to be difficult I agreed but I didnt expect it to show up anything.
The three days later I got a text at work asking me to call the hospital. I phoned up and they told me I had to return to the hospital immediately. When I pressed them on why they actually told me I was HIV Positive, she said.
The bereavement councillor revealed that the diagnosis left her deeply upset and in fear of her life.
I felt terrible for a week. I even considered jumping in front of a bus. I thought I was going to die. I was planning my bucket list and thought about putting my affairs in order.
My reaction was awful. I just thought I was going to die imminently. Deep down though somewhere in a calm place there was a kind of Oh so thats it, that explains everything, she said.
Vanessas husband, her ex-husband and her children had to be tested for the virus following her diagnosis, but fortunately they were all found to be HIV Negative.
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Taking into consideration the levels of the virus in Vanessas blood as well as her sexual and medical history, medics guessed that she had been living with the virus for more than 30 years and was even hospitalised for its symptoms in 1983.
From the levels in my blood and the state of my immune system they had known that Id had it for a very long time. Tracing back my medical history and my sexual history, it became apparent that I must have contracted the virus before my first marriage.
Looking back even further I was actually hospitalised in 1983 with what was then called a mystery virus. They tested me for everything but of course they werent testing me for HIV in those days. I left the hospital. My consultants looked at the records and they believe that was shortly after I had contracted HIV.
I was actually having a relationship with a man from Malawi shortly before that and they suspect that that is where I got it, said Vanessa.
Despite her upset at the diagnosis, Vanessa revealed that her knowledge of HIV was ill-informed and the realities of living with the condition are much more positive than she imagined.
All my symptoms disappeared within four weeks of me starting on my medication. I felt much healthier, Ive got energy now. Really, I feel 100pc better than I felt over the last 20 years.
I was very, very wrong. My knowledge of HIV went back to the eighties. A television campaign with tombstones falling over, and I was lead to believe that it was a death sentence and extremely contagious.
Within a week I had an appointment with a consultant and I was told that actually things are very different these days and having HIV wont affect my life very much at all.
All the specialists that Ive seen now, they said with that list of symptoms that I had they would have known straight away that I had HIV. Unfortunately Im a white, middle aged female. Ive never injected drugs, Im not an African person, Im not a gay man and I didnt fit the profile, but in actual fact anyone can get HIV so its important for everyone to get tested if they are having unprotected sex, she said.
The mother is getting set to wed for the third time in a fortnight, and said living with HIV has impacted her life in a way she never predicted.
I actually feel like its enriched my life. I feel like a better person, less judgemental, more tolerant. I just feel its kind of made my life better in some ways, which sounds crazy. For me personally I feel absolutely fine, she said.
A British man who suffered a severe panic attack minutes before boarding a flight to Las Vegas for his honeymoon survived take-off after being hypnotised by an Irish psychologist in Gatwick Airport.
Jim Roberts, who has an intense fear of flying, was so panicked ahead of his flight to the US on October 3, that Virgin Atlantic staff began to make moves to remove his checked baggage from the aircraft.
Noticing the commotion at the boarding gate, Dublin-based psychologist Jim OCallaghan approached Jim and asked his permission to perform hypnosis, which calmed him down enough to take his seat on the plane.
The airlines staff then upgraded the pair to business class along with Jims new wife Sarah, where they sat alongside one another for the duration of the flight.
Jim, from Kent in the UK, took to Facebook to thank OCallaghan for saving his dream holiday to America.
As most of you know I have a massive fear of flying, so an 11 hour flight to America was always going to be hard.
So I'm at the airport worrying about what is ahead; boarding the plane. We get to the gate and then bang - an extreme panic attack. The worst I have ever had. I'm in bits, everyone else has boarded and we are the last ones left at the gate. Just when all hope is all lost a stranger comes out of the blue. He is running really late for the flight and it just so happens that he is a psychiatrist and hypnotist.
He sees me and offers to help, sitting me down, he starts to hypnotise me. The next thing I remember is walking on board with him and then sitting in our upgraded business class seats having a glass of champagne.
Jim you are a hero. You saved my honeymoon. I will never forget what you done for me, wrote Jim.
OCallaghan, who runs a clinic in Dublin 4, has risen to media attention in recent years with many commending him for using hypnosis to aid weight-loss, ease anxiety and quit smoking among other things.
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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.
The current Garda pay dispute is shaping up into a scenario that may well produce no winner and lots of losers. It sees the Garda Representative Association (GRA) serving notice of a "unilateral withdrawal of services" on November 4, 11, 18 and 25 - and might well be described as the product of prudence, impatience, trickery, and 'too little, too late'.
Much media focus in this dispute has been on whether gardai have the right to take industrial action. This is irrelevant and does little to help resolve the dispute.
For clarity on the matter, under the Garda Siochana Act 2005, officials of the Garda associations are liable to prosecution for inducing their members to withhold services, while Garda Regulations 2007 enable sanctions in respect of gardai disobeying orders.
However, the fundamental problem with such provisions is that it is difficult - and would be counterproductive - to enforce them. For example, if all efforts fail and thousands of gardai withdraw their labour in November, who exactly is going to arrest them and where would they be detained?
Indeed, even the deployment of more measured sanctions, such as dismissal, would likely harden Garda resolve, as former Taoiseach Charles Haughey discovered in 1961, when, as Justice Minister, he was obliged to reinstate 11 gardai dismissed for their involvement in the 'Macushla' pay dispute.
While the Government is understandably trying to 'hold the line' on public-sector pay, it is not entirely blameless. For example, as part of the 2013 Haddington Road pay deal, it agreed to an independent review for gardai, to be completed by mid-2014. Alas, the appointed reviewer resigned last May "for personal reasons", prompting speculation the scale of the GRA's demands and the government's flexibility weren't overlapping. This matter has now been passed to former Labour Court chairman John Horgan. However, initial Garda optimism of repeat performances of the Conroy Commission and Ryan Report (in 1970 and 1979, respectively, giving gardai 9pc and 18pc pay rises) has long evaporated.
Indeed, the resurrection of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors' (AGSI) militancy - after they appeared to be safely tucked into the Lansdowne Road deal last August - is attributed to a similar sleight of hand, as alleged assurances on the promised Public Service Pay Commission also evaporated.
Many argue that trust in the Garda will be irreparably damaged by this dispute - despite successive national MRBI polls ranking gardai as the most trusted role model/institution in the State - ahead of doctors, judiciary, charities, unions, the President, the Church, religious and business leaders, the media and the Government.
There can be no doubt that, in recent years, gardai have endured a torrid time. This can be attributed to reduced remuneration, resources and promotions prospects, increased work demands and the daily risk of injury or death. The swarm of inquiries has also served to hammer Garda morale.
Of course, it should also be recognised that both parties to this dispute have shown a will to work toward solutions. For example, at the end of last month, the leadership of the GRA reached a (relatively) good deal with their official counterparts - one that most other public sector workers (who have already accepted the Lansdowne Road deal) would have jumped at.
In this self-same deal, civil service negotiators displayed considerable creativity, with a package promising a pension perk (estimated to be worth 8,000), the neutralising of the controversial 30 hours' free overtime, rent allowance restoration, increased promotions, etc. Make no mistake about it - this is a risky package for Government to peddle. Most other groups would take your hand off to secure equivalent provisions.
With mounting pressure to accelerate pay restoration, the Government finds itself in an unenviable 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' position. The dreaded 'knock-on' effect of concessions - to 300,000 other public servants - is at the heart of the Government's reluctance to put more money on the table. Indeed, many are conscious this effect played its part in the eventual discrediting of the 20-year social partnership arrangement.
And while the resolution of the Luas and Dublin Bus disputes was a welcome boon for Government, the provisions enabling breakthroughs are probably well in excess of what would be required to keep gardai on duty. Furthermore, pay demands are unlikely to be assuaged by reports of good Exchequer returns and economic growth.
Nor should it be overlooked that while the aforementioned disputes were settled by pay increases, gardai argue they're looking only for pay restoration.
Beyond the difficulty facing the GRA in winning the 'we're unique' argument, a more disconcerting feature of their campaign is the lack of support for it among mainstream political parties.
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald will have noted the mileage garnered by British Prime Minister Theresa May when successfully campaigning for party leadership, as she boasted about bringing the GRA's British counterparts - the Police Federation - to heel.
It is in the interests of all parties to resolve this dispute with immediate effect. Failure to do so will prove costly for affected parties - including the vulnerable public.
Now is the time for creativity, conciliation and compromise to replace threats, counter-threats and hardline positions.
Dr Gerard McMahon is a lecturer/ consultant at the College of Business, DIT, and co-author of the book 'Industrial Relations in Ireland', 4th Edition
Experience has taught us not to confuse pronouncements by politicians with the prophecies of Nostradamus, they are merely expected to have a tangential relationship with truth.
For some time now, Finance Minister Michael Noonan has issued various solemn statements about the responsibilities of the banks and building societies towards reducing variable mortgage rates. As they fell on deaf ears, he upped the decibel level; advice became admonition -eventually he was forced to resort to threats.
A fat lot of good it has done either him or the more than 300,000 unfortunate homeowners who find themselves on the rack of variable rates, and paying 1.5pc more than their fellow citizens in the eurozone.
Mr Noonan is undoubtedly serious in his determination to get the financial institutions into line, but how seriously he has been taken is very much open to question.
Did he not bring the lenders into his own office to roast them for failing to act? Now he himself is to be quizzed by the Oireachtas Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform Committee.
Mr Noonan's patience with lenders appears to be inexhaustible, but that of hard-pressed homeowners is not. It is hardly as if Mr Noonan needs any more incentive.
Fianna Fail has been pressing for a private members' bill to give the Central Bank powers to directly control variable rates. Mr Noonan feels the bill is unconstitutional, and that there is no need for it. The committee members will tease these matters out.
Back in 2015, Mr Noonan threatened lenders with a punitive banking levy and to keep rates under review. In the interim, it is the borrowers who have been punished and the lenders who have been profiting. Why this is so is hard to tell. Mr Noonan's answers will be eagerly awaited by homeowners.
Donohoe makes right mess of a simple task
A fine mess he got himself into. The waiving of ministerial pay rises was a simple enough task. The previous Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition government had agreed ministers would not be availing of the public sector pay rises kicking in next year. For unknown reasons, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe waited until after the Budget to carry this policy through to the new administration.
It implies a level of naivety that the minister didnt realise that politicians pay rises would be juxtaposed with the benefits befalling ordinary citizens from the proceeds of Budget 2016.
Fine Gael ministers are now annoyed with Mr Donohoe over his handling of the decision to scrap the pay hikes they were due under the Lansdowne Road Agreement.
In a rare occurrence, both Cabinet and junior ministerial sources have voiced anger over the fact they were not consulted over the move before it was announced.
Its a fair point. He should have consulted with colleagues a long time back and cleared this matter up months ago.
If he cant even handle a simple task like waiving his own colleagues pay rises, why should there be confidence in him to negotiate pay deals with public sector unions?
Ministers will forego their pay hikes next year. They shouldnt hold their breaths for any applause from the public.
But the Minister for Public Expenditure needs to show he is more in tune with the public mood.
Louth county council has one of the highest rates of absenteeism due to sickness among its staff, according to figures released by Housing Minister Simon Coveney to Fianna Fail TD Barry Cowen recently.
The local authority lost an average of 11.84 sick days per employee, just behind Leitrim County Council with 12 days.
The number of paid working days lost are broken down between medically certified and self-certified sickness. The sick leave rate in Louth was 5.36 per cent, of which 4.73 per cent was medically certified and 0.62 per cent was self-certified. This compares to a rate of absenteeism in the private sector of 2.35 per cent, which is lower than the figure for any local authority.
The overall cost of sick leave in the public service was estimated at 317.9 million for 2015 which represents a saving of 104.4 million on 2013.
The Government introduced measures in 2013 to halve sick leave entitlements for the public sector. The changes allow workers three months' full pay followed by three months' half pay, followed by 'temporary rehabilitation pay' for a maximum period of two years for certified sick leave.
Absenteeism rates attributed to illness in city and county councils have been on the rise for almost a decade. They have fallen significantly since 2013 but had risen until that point.
The main causes of short-term-illness absence are flus, colds and respiratory tract infections. Long-term sickness factors are musculoskeletal disorders, post-surgery convalescence and acute medical conditions such as cancers
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has sent bank doing business with Russian payment systems a telegram telling them to stop, chief of NBU's payment systems oversight bureau Olena Makhayeva has said.
"The NBU sent a telegram to each bank belonging to these payment systems about stopping transactions via Russian payment systems and settling all accounts with them," she said during a press conference on Wednesday.
The NBU said the telegram did not set a date for settling accounts in order to allow the banks to comply in an orderly manner. The central bank also obliged banks to return to the regulator NBU authorizations to work with the payment systems issued prior to 2014. The NBU has not authorized banking transactions with Russian payments systems since 2015.
As earlier reported, Ukraine has extended sanctions against the Russian Federation. They include measures to curtail the activities of a number of Russian payment systems listed in recent presidential decree No. 467/2016.
According to the decree, transactions involving Russian payment system "Gold Crown" (Zolotaya Korona), belonging to the payment organization "Payment center" are to be curtailed, along with Unistream, the international payment system Kolibri (earlier known as Blitz), Leader, Anelik and Blizko (managed by Svyaz Bank).
A trip to the dentist may not be everyones idea of a holiday, but a visit to Kreativ Dental Clinic in Budapest, Hungary can change that. Voted the Best Dental Clinic in Europe, Kreativ Dental can help you to achieve a healthy and happy smile with ease. Here, Elaine Townley from Co Meath tells us about her five-star treatment at the clinic
Id always considered my teeth to be perfect they looked perfect but they were really weak, explains Elaine. My teeth would reject root canals and could never hold a filling so each time I went to an Irish dentist, I would hand out money for a filling that wouldnt even last.
Fed up, Elaine got in contact with Mary Flanagan, the Irish representative of Kreativ Dental Clinic in Budapest. Mary attended the clinic herself for the first time 11 years ago when she was told the cost to get work done in Ireland would be 60,000. She spent 12,000 on treatment at Kreativ Dental, which included implants and a full-mouth re-construction with porcelain crowns.
Mary was so understanding and when she told me about her own situation, it gave me reassurance. Id never been to Budapest before, I didnt know much about Hungary and I would never really have considered travelling to a different country for dental treatment, but Mary made me feel more at ease.
Dental tourism
Kreativ Dental have over a decade of experience in dental tourism, with more than 700 European/USA patients visiting the clinic every month, many of whom are Irish. The clinic has an in-house training centre that provides continuous professional development for their staff and each dentist specialises in their own area. Treatments offered throughout the clinic include dental implants, teeth whitening and root canal. You can also have your smile designed by the clinic with their highly-advanced Smile Design System.
I couldnt get over the number of staff there and how experienced they were, says Elaine. Surgeons, dental technicians, dental assistants, dentists and those working in laboratories shaping and moulding crowns and implants there was a specialist for all dental needs. I stayed overnight for a free next-day consultation.
The dentist is obliged to tell you about all work that needs to be done but its up to you to make the final decision, they put no pressure on you whatsoever. Originally I went over thinking it was just one tooth which needed to be sorted but I didnt realise that my other teeth were also very weak. He did up two plans for me and guided me through the required work. There were no hidden costs or anything, he really was just all about trying to fix my teeth for me.
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I needed quite a bit of work done to my teeth so when I went home, I made the decision to go ahead with it. I rang Mary and again she took it from there. She booked the appointment and hotel while I organised flights. I had five days of work to be done this time, but its completely different to getting it done in Ireland. If you have an appointment at 10 oclock, youre taken at 10 not ten or 45 minutes later. This is great for those who are nervous about dentists because having to wait past your appointment time doesnt help!
Retreat
Elaine says that not only did the staff put her at ease during her stay and treatment, but the entire atmosphere of the state-of-the-art clinic was calm and relaxing despite being so busy!
When I first entered the clinic I thought to myself oh, wow! It reminded me of the film Finding Nemo, she laughs. There were fish tanks on all floor levels, filled with extraordinary fish. It was similar to a health spa you knew you werent going to one, but it certainly felt like you were in one!
Elaine says people shouldnt let the fact that theres a plane journey involved get in the way of receiving dental treatment its an excuse to explore all that Budapest has to offer.
The clinic is outside the city, but when you walk outside the hotel doors the metro is close-by. Budapest is an amazing city to explore theres plenty of sightseeing, beautiful architecture, shopping and the river tour along the Danube and the hot baths are must-dos! Its not a country I would have ever considered going on holidays to but Im glad I got the chance to visit.
If I was speaking to somebody who was having problems or felt paranoid about their teeth, I would tell them to research Kreativ Dental on the internet. Theres so much information online about the clinic and treatments. Ring Mary no matter what time I rang, text or sent an email to her at, she got back to me within a day and was extremely helpful. The savings alone were brilliant. I would have had to take out a small mortgage to do the work here. When you think about it, a flight costs the price, or less, of a filling here in Ireland and you come back knowing that you have been looked after by the best possible team.
Kreativ Dental Clinic also provides aftercare dentists in Ireland and there is a written guarantee on all work, which includes both flights and accommodation
I know youre taking a chance by going to another country theres the worry that if anything goes wrong with the work you get done, that your dentist back home wont be too helpful. But, Kreativ Dental Clinic will completely put your mind at ease. They will talk you through all of this before you get the treatment done and if there is any issue, they will look after you. Im not paranoid anymore about my filling falling out and my treatment has given me more confidence when Im smiling.
For more information, visit kreativdentalclinic.eu/en/the-clinic or contact Mary on (01) 805 5526 or (086) 0299 998
Mother-of-two TV reality star Kim Kardashian was robbed in flat during Paris fashion Week
Kim Kardashian is suing a celebrity website for claiming that she faked the dramatic Paris robbery.
The reality star, 35, was locked up in a bathroom in a private residence in Paris and tied up by armed robbers.
The robbers, dressed as police officers, are thought to have stolen 10 million dollars worth of jewellery during the terrifying incident, which took place as Kardashian was in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.
In a lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, New York, Kardashian's lawyers have said that she was wrongly portrayed as a liar and thief after she was attacked.
It seeks unspecified damages from MediaTakeOut.com, saying that Kardashian was victimised a second time when the website reported that she faked the robbery and lied about the assault.
The report came after Twitter trolls mocked the mother-of-two's ordeal.
James Corden rallied to Kardashian's defence, telling people to stop making jokes about the robbery and remember "she's a mother, a daughter, a wife, a friend. Be nice or shut up".
The lawsuit came after Khloe Kardashian said that her older sister was "not doing that well" following the jewellery heist.
Khloe, speaking on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, said the incident was "incredibly traumatic" for her sister.
She said that the incident was "a wake-up call to make a lot of life adjustments".
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Rapper Kanye West, Kardashian's husband, 39, has returned to his tour after cancelling dates following the robbery.
The rapper resumed the Saint Pablo Tour in his home town of Chicago after abruptly cutting short a New York concert citing a "family emergency".
No arrests have been made.
The comedian is expecting his first child with fiancee Laura Gallacher
Russell Brand has said he is "lit up by the idea" of becoming a father.
The comedian, who is expecting his first child with fiancee Laura Gallacher, recently swapped his London home for the countryside which he described as calmer than living in the capital.
"I'm so much happier over the course of the day to see one or two people and a few chickens, that's a good way of living," he told ES Magazine.
On becoming a father, Brand said: "I'm very excited about becoming a dad and I'm preparing myself.
"I am just getting ready to be with a new little person and see what it is they want."
"I feel lit up by the idea."
Brand has recently enrolled at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies which he described as an attempt to explore religion and spirituality.
"I'd like to understand what the deep truths are of Islam, Baha'ism, Christianity; I want to know more", he said, adding: "I am very interested in the role that religion and spirituality will play in the further formulation of world events and how secular societies are held together.
"The old idea (about politics) is dead and people don't know what's replacing it yet, so I'm spending some time discovering what it is."
Brand, who has battled addictions in the past, said he was "lucky" to have a substance misuse problem rather than a "food, sex or spending issue".
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"Those things are insidious because they're culturally endorsed, they're habitual,'' he said.
He said addiction should "be regarded like autism".
"Everybody is somewhere on the spectrum. If you look at your own life, what is it you do that isn't good for you and you can't stop doing, even if it is seemingly innocuous, like the way you watch TV," he added.
Rosanna Davison and Wesley at the 3Live experience at Electric Picnic. Photo: Leon Farrell/ Photocall Ireland
Rosanna Davison pictured at the launch of the 3XE Digital Conference at Croke Park in Dublin. Picture: Laura Hutton/Collins Photo Agency
Rosanna Davison has hit out at Donald Trump for his insulting comments towards a former Miss Universe, describing the attack as "crazy".
The Wicklow woman burst onto the scene when she was the first and only Irish contestant to be crowned Miss World in the 2003 contest.
The US presidential candidate slammed former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado for gaining weight and labelled her "Miss Piggy".
However, Rosanna has insisted people were much nicer to her at the Miss World pageant in comparison.
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"It's just a shame. I think Trump says things for effect, it's a shame that it was said. It's unfortunate to hear about cases where a woman is made to feel insecure about her body. It's crazy, but does it surprise anybody?" she told the Diary.
"There was nothing inappropriate or anything that made me feel uncomfortable at Miss World in any way; we were all treated like princesses." The competitions have a long-standing rivalry with each other, but the Eat Yourself Beautiful author believes the difference comes down to what each pageant stands for.
"Miss World is older and involves more countries. It's more focused on the charity side. I spent most of my year working with charities.
"They're looking for someone who can go out in front of the media or go to hospitals and orphanages and things like that," she said.
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The 32-year-old has been focused on building her brand as a health and fitness expert in recent years and has authored two books, her most recent being Eat Yourself Fit.
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"I've been flying around the place promoting it and will be up until Christmas. I have various cookery demos coming up," she said.
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"I really enjoy it, it's a great buzz. I actually enjoy public speaking which is unusual, most people don't enjoy it."
The blonde has also experienced some of the negative aspects of fame and has had fans taking pictures of her when she's out and about.
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"They do take my picture, it tends to happen in restaurants or bars. I don't mind, but I would be just as happy if they came up to me," she said.
I'm happy to take pictures with people. I think people think they don't want to disturb you but I don't mind that much.
"It's always nice to interact with people who follow you online and meet them in real life."
Rosanna believes the key to her success has been interacting with her fans.
"Your content is important and the creativity that you use for the material you put up online. You have to build a sense of community with your followers.
"Launching competitions is a great way to attract new followers," she said.
Meet the Irish photographer taking over the international fashion world.
Christopher "Boo" George (35) landed another major coup in his career, shooting Victoria Beckham for the cover of Vogue Australia - the latest in a long line of high profile gigs with the fashion designer.
He shared a series of pictures on Instagram, captioning one: "Thanks vb @victoriabeckham @estherlangham @romyglow @natalielewis13w @vogueaustralia what a gal, shot in Nyc in the baking heat."
George, from Bray, Co Wicklow, first began working with Beckham in 2013 when he shot her for the style bible and worked with her again in November 2015 for German Vogue.
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He's no stranger to high profile gigs having worked with everyone from Alessandra Ambrosio, Emma Watson and Jessica Alba and shot for every major publication including iD, W and shot campaigns for Zara, Louis Vuitton and Calvin Klein.
Basically, he's a big deal.
Thanks vb @victoriabeckham @estherlangham @romyglow @natalielewis13w @vogueaustralia what a gal, shot in Nyc in the baking heat A photo posted by Boo George (@boo_george_studio) on Oct 11, 2016 at 7:35am PDT
Despite his rising star, he hasn't forgotten his roots as he famously shot Emporio Armani's Autumn/Winter campaign on Dollymount Strand in 2014.
He moved from Wicklow to England in 1999 to study photography and landed coveted apprenticeships with top photographers like Julian Broad before moving on from assisting in 2008.
"I moved to northern England in 1999," he told Artsy of his rise to fame. "I got a scholarship to go to a college in northern England. I did three years studying photography before I moved to London.
"I started doing documentary photography...and then for my end-of-year project, I went on a fishing boat North Sea off for nine months to shoot fisherman.
My @vogueaustralia November cover issue is out today where I discuss my charity journey as a @unaidsglobal ambassador! X VB #aidsfreegeneration A photo posted by Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) on Oct 17, 2016 at 11:50am PDT
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"And I made a book out of that. Still to this day, one of my favorite pictures is of a fisherman. I moved to London straight after that, and started assisting."
Actress Shailene Woodley has pleaded not guilty in a North Dakota court to criminal trespass and riot charges after her arrest in a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline.
Court records show the Divergent star entered her pleas on Tuesday through her attorney Alexander Reichert.
Woodley and 26 other activists were arrested on October 10. She livestreamed her protest on Facebook.
The Standing Rock Sioux wants construction of the 3.8 billion US dollar (3.1 billion) pipeline halted, saying it could taint the water supply and encroach on tribal burial sites. Protests supporting the tribe have been going on for months.
Woodley could face 60 days in jail and 3,000 US dollars (2,444) in fines if she is convicted of criminal trespass and engaging in a riot.
AP
Virgin said they had received almost 200 applications for every vacancy for train drivers on the new Azuma trains
More than 15,000 people have applied for 78 jobs driving new trains being launched by Virgin.
The company said there were almost 200 applications for every vacancy following the biggest recruitment campaign on the East Coast route since the 1980s.
The new drivers will work on new Azuma trains, built in the UK by Hitachi, which are being launched in 2018.
The successful candidates, who will work from depots from London to Edinburgh, are due to start a year-long training programme in January.
A spokesman for Virgin Trains said: "The Talent team are working hard to process and update all of the applications we received.
"Those who have been successful in getting through the first stages of the process will be invited to attend a selection day which will include a variety of assessments and exercises that will bring the best talent into our business."
Ukraine has expressed its position on the status of the debt on sovereign eurobonds worth $3 billion, held by Russia, in a judicial process being conducted in the UK, according to the website of the Finance Ministry.
"Ukraine has clearly stated its position on the alleged "Russian debt" in the trial. At the same time, Ukraine sticks to its integrity commitment to the International Monetary Fund in this regard," the report says.
The Ministry of Finance said Russia under different circumstances makes different statements about this.
"Yesterday, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reiterated the clear position of Russia that the latter regards the alleged "Russian eurobonds" as a sovereign bilateral debt. This contradicts statements made by Russia's trustee at its request and in its interests in litigation in the UK," the ministry said.
Paula Hawks said she was raped at college
Kathy Kohler and other Trump fans make no bones about where their loyalty lies as they whip up support outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas (Las Vegas Sun/AP)
A South Dakota Democrat running for the US House of Representatives has revealed she was raped at college, in an essay that condemned Donald Trump's predatory comments about women.
In the essay on the website Medium, Paula Hawks said condoning such behaviour enabled sexual assault at colleges and in the workplace.
Ms Hawks, 41, said in the essay that she was raped by "a person in a position of authority" while at college.
In a telephone interview, she said it happened in 1995 while she was at South Dakota State University. She did not report it to police, but told KELO Radio News that the man got into trouble mutliple times and so "justice has been served on that person".
Ms Hawks says she was "outraged" by the Trump tape and just had to speak out.
She is challenging Republican House member Kristi Noem, who has said she will vote for Mr Trump because he will sign conservative legislation.
Ms Noem said she was "heartbroken" by what happened to Ms Hawks but stood by her support of Mr Trump.
AP
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's all smiles at a campaign rally in Colorado, but several polls show he is trailing Hillary Clinton (AP)
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will lock horns in Las Vegas in the final US presidential debate before next month's election.
The two candidates will go head to head at the University of Nevada, 10 days after a tense second debate which saw Mr Trump threaten to jail Mrs Clinton if he was elected.
Fox News host Chris Wallace is moderating the third election clash, which will cover six topics - debt and entitlements, immigration, economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hotspots and fitness to be president.
Mr Trump is facing a battle to win over undecided voters, with multiple polls showing Mrs Clinton is leading the race to the White House.
Ahead of the third debate, the Republican nominee has faced claims of sexual misconduct from a number of women, including a former contestant on the US version of The Apprentice.
Mr Trump has insisted the allegations are "100% made up", while his wife Melania said they were co-ordinated by his political rivals, telling Fox News: "They want to damage the presidency of my husband."
The claims surfaced after the publication of Mr Trump's lewd comments in a 2005 video recording, in which he talks about grabbing women "by the p***y".
With less than three weeks remaining before Americans go to the polls, Mr Trump has claimed the November 8 election will be rigged in favour of Mrs Clinton, tweeting that "there is large-scale voter fraud happening on and before election day".
His remarks prompted President Barack Obama to urge Mr Trump to "stop whining", while a number of prominent Republicans have rejected claims of election rigging.
Mr Trump has also called for Mrs Clinton to take a drugs test before their final showdown after claiming she lost her energy by the end of their second election clash.
Since the last debate, Mrs Clinton has faced her own controversy following more revelations about her use of a private email server, which Mr Trump has branded a scandal "worse than Watergate".
It emerged the US state department had asked FBI officials to lower the classification of a sensitive email related to an attack on the US compound in Benghazi, Libya.
The FBI notes revealed the discussion of a "quid pro quo" in trying to get the email reclassified. Both the state department and FBI officials have denied any bargaining took place.
The Trump campaign has said Pat Smith, whose son Sean was killed in the attack in Benghazi, will be attending the debate in Las Vegas as the Republican's guest.
Mrs Smith was a featured speaker at the Republican National Convention in July, where she delivered an emotional speech blaming Mrs Clinton for her son's death and accusing her of lying to families about what sparked it.
Mr Obama's half brother Malik will also be in the audience of the third debate as a Trump supporter, telling the New York Post the Republican "can make America great again".
The 90-minute debate starts on Thursday at 2am BST.
This man is wanted by police over the theft of a venetian blind CREDIT: NORTHAMPTONSHIRE POLICE
Police are looking to speak to this man about the theft of a venetian blind from a furniture store.
The alleged thief was captured on camera with what appears to be the stolen 7ft blind hidden under the hood of his jacket.
Man sought following theft of venetian blind from Dunelm Mill, Northampton https://t.co/p4o92znWyV pic.twitter.com/emAU2R0ucE Northants Police (@NorthantsPolice) October 18, 2016
Police claim that sometime between 2pm and 2.25pm on Sunday a man entered the store and allegedly concealed a venetian blind down one trouser leg and up the back of his jacket.
In a statement from Northants Police said the man "then left the store making no attempt to pay for the item.
"He was followed by staff up a nearby canal path, where he dropped the blind before making off."
The blind was damaged as a result of the incident.
The blind was taken from a Dunelm Mill store in Nene Valley Retail Park, St James Mill Road Sometime between 2pm and 2.25pm on Sunday, 16 October.
Scene outside a house in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the bodies of 49-year-old Elizabeth Edwards and 13-year-old Katie were found, as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth and Katie, who were smothered and stabbed through the throat. Chris Radburn/PA Wire
Tributes left outside a house in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the bodies of 49-year-old Elizabeth Edwards and 13-year-old Katie were found, as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth and Katie, who were smothered and stabbed through the throat. Chris Radburn/PA Wire
Undated handout photo issued by Lincolnshire Police of the murder weapon as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth Edwards and her 13 year old daughter Katie. Lincolnshire Police/PA Wire
Tributes left outside a house in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the bodies of 49-year-old Elizabeth Edwards and 13-year-old Katie were found. Photo: PA
Two teenagers, dubbed the 'Twilight killers', have become the youngest couple to be convicted of a double murder in Britain.
The pair, who were both aged just 14 at the time, killed dinner lady Elizabeth Edwards (49) and her teenage daughter, Katie (13), in a "cold, calculated and pre-planned attack" at their home in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
The boy admitted the two murders, and the girl was convicted following a trial at Nottingham Crown Court.
The killers, who moments after the slaughter took a bath and then watched the film 'Twilight', cannot be identified because of their age.
Expand Close Undated handout photo issued by Lincolnshire Police of the murder weapon as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth Edwards and her 13 year old daughter Katie. Lincolnshire Police/PA Wire / Facebook
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Whatsapp Undated handout photo issued by Lincolnshire Police of the murder weapon as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth Edwards and her 13 year old daughter Katie. Lincolnshire Police/PA Wire
The pair were compared in court to the infamous American crime duo, Bonnie and Clyde, with one psychiatrist saying the killings would not have happened if they had not been in a relationship.
The girl, said by a defence psychiatrist to have been suffering from a mental disorder, had denied murdering the victims on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
The Crown submitted she was not mentally ill at the time of the killings and was guilty of the "cold, calculated and callous" murder, even though it was the boy who inflicted the fatal stab wounds.
A trial heard that Mrs Edwards and her daughter were found dead by police on Friday, April 15, this year.
Expand Close Tributes left outside a house in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the bodies of 49-year-old Elizabeth Edwards and 13-year-old Katie were found, as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth and Katie, who were smothered and stabbed through the throat. Chris Radburn/PA Wire / Facebook
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Whatsapp Tributes left outside a house in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the bodies of 49-year-old Elizabeth Edwards and 13-year-old Katie were found, as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth and Katie, who were smothered and stabbed through the throat. Chris Radburn/PA Wire
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The 15-year-old girl was alleged by the prosecution to have shown "sheer brutality and utter contempt" for the victims, helping the boy to carry out the killings "to the letter" after days of planning.
Expand Close Scene outside a house in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the bodies of 49-year-old Elizabeth Edwards and 13-year-old Katie were found, as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth and Katie, who were smothered and stabbed through the throat. Chris Radburn/PA Wire / Facebook
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Whatsapp Scene outside a house in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where the bodies of 49-year-old Elizabeth Edwards and 13-year-old Katie were found, as a 15-year-old girl has been found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of murdering Elizabeth and Katie, who were smothered and stabbed through the throat. Chris Radburn/PA Wire
The girl sobbed softly and wiped her face with a tissue in the glass-panelled dock at Nottingham Crown Court as she heard the verdict wearing a black cardigan and black leggings flanked by a security guard.
The court heard the couple shared a "Bonnie and Clyde" view of the world and the girl was the "driver" behind the brutal slayings.
In the months leading up to the killings, the girl wrote in her diary: "There is madness in me" and "death is the only way".
She was described as a "ticking time bomb" fuelled by "sheer contempt and brutality" for her victims.
The sickening plot started as a "joke" but "quickly escalated" when the teens realised they were both serious.
The boy pinned Ms Edwards down on the bed "by kneeling astride her" and "almost completely cut through her windpipe" with a knife.
Her jugular vein was severed and she suffered five knife wounds to one hand as she desperately fought for her life. Katie was stabbed in the neck twice and was then smothered.
The court heard that the couple planned to kill themselves with an overdose but instead ate ice cream, watched vampire romance film 'Twilight' and had sex. ( Daily Telegraph London)
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Lina Alvarez leaves Lucas Augusti Hospital with her new born baby, in Madrid, Spain.Photo: AP
A 62-year-old Spanish woman has given birth to a healthy girl and encouraged women in their later years to imitate her if they want to.
Lina Alvarez left Lucus Augusti Hospital in the north-western city of Lugo with her third child in her arms, saying she felt wonderful.
Baby Lina, born by Caesarean section on October 10 weighing 2.4kg (5.3lbs), is in perfect health, she said.
Ms Alvarez's first child, now 27, was born with cerebral palsy and her second child is now 10.
Expand Close A 62-year-old Spanish woman has given birth to a healthy girl and encourages women in their later years to imitate her if they want to. Photo: AP / Facebook
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Her second and third pregnancies were through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.
Ms Alvarez, a doctor, said that women who are well enough to have a baby in their later years should not be afraid to do so, adding that they should let nature, not gynaecologists, decide.
Ex-Minister of Transport of Poland Slawomir Nowak has been appointed new acting head of the State Automobile Roads Agency of Ukraine (Ukravtodor).
"We believe that [managing] Ukravtodor requires significant expertise, including international. Our position is that high-quality roads, highways that will connect us with Europe should be built in Ukraine, so the professional level of Ukravtodor needs to be raised," Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said before presenting Nowak at a government meeting in Kyiv on Wednesday.
According to Nowak himself, he was in charge of transport plans and investments during Poland's preparation for Euro 2012, before that he was member of the Polish Sejm. He named a profound reform of the Polish railways and the IPO of the PKP Cargo company, whose former chief executive Wojciech Balchun currently heads Ukrzaliznytsia, among his achievements.
"Regarding my vision of reform, they should include formation of the State Road Fund and the improvement of cooperation of the EBRD and the World Bank with private capital. We need to conduct technical audit of roads and improve technical standards very quickly. We need to urgently draft a plan for the construction and reconstruction of roads depending on the traffic," he said.
Nowak added that he wants to invite international companies to Ukraine, which together with Ukrainian business will take part in road tenders.
He also stressed the importance of internal reform of Ukravtodor.
Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said Ukravtodor has been a source for corruption for decades.
He also spoke about a scandal in Poland involving Nowak.
"Regarding the corruption scandal, the cause of the scandal around Slawomir Nowak in Poland was a watch worth $3,500. And he later defended his good name in court. Former executives of Ukravtodor, regional automobile road administrations, have mansions, luxury cars, etc. None of them is in jail, none of them lost his post because of a scandal. The scandal in Poland ended with Nowak's resignation from his positions. This story would be unthinkable in present day Ukraine. This topic has been closed," Omelyan said.
As reported, first deputy head of Ukravtodor Yevhen Barakh was appointed as acting head of the agency in June 2016.
Nowak worked as secretary of state in the Prime Minister's Chancellery and chairman of the political cabinet of Prime Minister Donald Tusk in 2007 to 2009. From 2009 until 2010, he was vice president of the Civic Platform parliamentary faction. From 2010 to 2014, he serves as governor of the Pomeranian region. From 2010 to 2011, he was secretary of state in the Office of the President for the contact with government and parliament. From 2011 to 2013, Nowak was minister of transport, construction and maritime economy. He also was member of Polish parliament of several convocations.
Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, has defended introducing chemical castration for paedophiles.
In an interview, which was published on Wednesday, he said that there would be "no compromise" when it comes to dealing with this sort of criminal activity.
In May, the President introduced a series of tough punishments for paedophilia, including including chemical castration and the death penalty. This followed an outcry over the fatal gang-rape of a schoolgirl.
Last week, Parliament voted to put the new regulations permanently on the statute book.
In an interview with the BBC, Widodo defended introducing chemical castration, a decision that has sparked anger from human rights activists.
"Our constitution respects human rights, but when it comes to sexual crimes there is no compromise," he said, adding that the government "will hand out the maximum penalty" for such crimes.
"In my opinion... chemical castration, if we enforce it consistently, will reduce sex crimes and wipe them out over time," he said.
Indonesia is among a small group of places worldwide which use the measure, including Poland and some states in the USA. In 2011 South Korea became the first Asian country to legalise the treatment.
Chemical castration involves using drugs to reduce libido and sex drive.
Widodo was spurred into action after the murder and gang-rape in April of a 14-year-old girl. She was set upon by a gang of drunken men and boys as she walked home from school on the western island of Sumatra.
The leader of the gang was sentenced to death last month after being found guilty of premeditated murder, a crime already punishable by death before the new laws were introduced.
Other members of the gang have been jailed.
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
A senior Iraqi general has called on Iraqis fighting for Islamic State in Mosul to surrender as a wide-scale operation to retake the militant-held city entered its third day.
Lt Gen Talib Shaghati told reporters at a military base that up to 6,000 IS fighters are inside the city. He did not say how many of them are foreigners.
IS captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, in a lightning advance in the summer of 2014.
The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats over the past year and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq.
So far, the militants have put up fierce resistance in villages surrounding the city, where most of the fighting has been concentrated.
IS has sent trucks loaded with explosives towards the front lines and fired mortars to slow the Iraqi forces' advance.
An Iraqi officer from the 9th Division said his troops were now around one kilometre (half a mile) away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul.
Over the past day, IS sent 12 car bombs, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, he said, adding that Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds.
To the north, air strikes pounded Bashiqa as Kurdish forces fired mortar rounds from an area overlooking the IS-held town.
Save the Children said 5,000 people have fled to a refugee camp in north-eastern Syria from the Mosul area in the last 10 days, with another thousand waiting to enter at the border.
The group said the overwhelmed camp is "littered with waste and faeces, with a looming risk of outbreaks of disease".
It said there are just 16 toilets shared by more than 9,000 people, many of whom only have access to dirty, untreated water.
"Conditions there are among the worst we've seen, and we expect thousands more people to be on their way soon," said Tarik Kadir, head of the group's Mosul response.
The top commander of US land forces in Iraq says US army Apache attack helicopters are striking IS targets in support of the push to retake Mosul.
Adding US attack helicopter crews to the unfolding combat is an extra element of risk for American troops.
Major General Gary Volesky said the Apaches were being used at night to strike targets from a distance.
He said the mere presence of the Apaches was a confidence booster for Iraqi soldiers.
Maj Gen Volesky, commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, said he believes IS fighters in Mosul will put up a stiff defence in the city but eventually lose and morph into an insurgency.
The operation to retake Mosul is the largest launched by the Iraqi army since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Some 25,000 troops, including Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and state-sanctioned Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Units are approaching the city from different directions.
The participation of the Shiite militias in the operation to retake the mainly Sunni Mosul has raised concerns that the campaign could inflame sectarian tensions.
Rights groups have accused the Shiite militias of abuses in past campaigns against IS-held areas.
In a bid to alleviate those concerns, Shiite militia leaders announced that they will only focus on capturing the mostly Shiite town of Tal Afar to the west of Mosul, and not enter the city itself.
"The only troops who will enter Mosul are the army and police, not the Popular Mobilisation Units or the peshmerga," said Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Brigade, one of the largest Shiite militias.
"This has been agreed upon," he said at a press conference in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Amnesty International said in a report released on Tuesday that Iraqi government and paramilitary forces detained, tortured or killed hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians fleeing IS-held areas during the operation to retake the Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, earlier this year.
The Iraqi government has denied any systematic violations by security forces or the militias, and says individuals have been held accountable for occasional abuses.
AP
Michael Moore In TrumpLand features a one-man stage show of Moore discussing the presidential race (Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
Michael Moore has premiered a surprise film discussing the US presidential election just three weeks before Americans head to the polls.
Moore debuted Michael Moore In TrumpLand in New York on Tuesday night in front of an audience of his fans.
The film features Moore speaking about both Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on stage earlier this month in Wilmington, Ohio, a hotbed of Trump support, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The liberal documentary maker urged the crowd at Tuesday's premiere to vote for Mrs Clinton next month.
The film will screen for one week at the IFC Centre in Manhattan beginning on Wednesday and will also be shown at a cinema in Encino, California, The Hollywood Reporter said.
Moore said he hopes more cinemas will be announced soon.
AP
Rescue workers trying to remove a boy stuck in the debris of a building in the neighborhood of Qaterji in rebel-held east Aleppo following an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria
Russian and Syrian war planes halted their airstrikes on Syria's besieged city of Aleppo yesterday in preparation for a temporary pause in the military push that Moscow has announced for later in the week.
According to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, the halt in the strikes should help pave the way for militants to leave the eastern rebel-held parts of the contested city.
On Monday, Moscow announced a "humanitarian pause" between 8am and 4pm tomorrow to allow civilians and militants safe passage out of the city. At that time, Russian and Syrian militaries will halt any offensive actions. Syrian rebels, including al-Qa'ida militants, as well as the wounded and the sick will be allowed to leave to the neighbouring rebel-held province of Idlib.
Mr Shoigu said: "It will...guarantee a safe exit of civilians through six corridors and prepare for the evacuation of the ill and the wounded from the eastern part of Aleppo."
The United Nations said Russia has communicated plans for two eight-hour cease-fires in rebel-held parts of Aleppo over "consecutive days" this week.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, would not say if the strikes would resume after the pause, saying that depended on whether the rebels can be persuaded to cut ties with militants.
A member of Peshmerga forces sits in the back of the military vehicle in the east of Mosul during operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
Peshmerga forces walk in the east of Mosul during operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
Smoke rises from clashes in the east of Mosul during clashes with Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
The Commander of the Joint Military Operation Commander, Army Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati, walks in the town of Khazer, Iraq, Monday (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
Smoke rises from clashes in the east of Mosul during clashes with Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
Tanks move past soldiers in military fatigues as the sun begins to set east of Mosul, where the Iraqi government launched a U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State from the northern city, in this still image taken from video released October 17, 2016. RUDAW via REUTERS VIDEO
Kurdish security forces take up a position as they fight overlooking the Islamic State-controlled in villages surrounding Mosul, in Khazer (AP Photo)
Kurdish security forces take up a position as they fight overlooking the Islamic State-controlled in villages surrounding Mosul, in Khazer (AP Photo)
Smoke rises from Islamic state positions after an airstrike by coalition forces in villages surrounding Mosul, in Khazer, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Mosul, Iraq, Monday, Oct. 17, 2016. Iraqi government and Ku (AP Photo)
Peshmerga forces are seen in the east of Mosul to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer
Still image taken from video posted online by Amaq News Agency of the Islamic State militant group shows a street scene in Mosul, Iraq. Photo: AP
A US army soldier (L) speaks with an Iraqi soldier at a military base in the Makhmour area near Mosul during an operation to attack Islamic State militants. Photo: Reuters
US army soldiers arrive at a military base in the Makhmour area near Mosul during an operation to attack Islamic State militants. Photo: Reuters
Iraqi security forces gather on the east of Mosul during preparations to attack the city. Photo: Reuters
A US army soldier stands with his weapon at a military base in the Makhmour area near Mosul during an operation to attack Islamic State militants
A peshmerga fighter looks out of the entrance of an underground tunnel built by Islamic State fighters in the town of Badana. Photo: AP
A peshmerga fighter walks through a tunnel made by Islamic State fighters. The Kurdish forces found the tunnel in the town of Badana that was liberated from the Islamic State group on Monday. Photo: AP
Peshmerga forces sit in the back of a vehicle in the east of Mosul during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in the city. Photo: Reuters
Europe must prepare for a fresh influx of 'Islamic State' jihadists fleeing Mosul as the army moves in, the EU's security commissioner has warned.
"The retaking of Isis' northern Iraq stronghold, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent fighters," Julian King said. "This is a very serious threat and we must be prepared to face it."
He added that even a handful of jihadists returning would pose a "serious threat that we must prepare ourselves for" and the risk should not be underestimated.
The warning comes as the much-anticipated battle for Mosul entered its second day.
Iraqi forces are advancing in an offensive aimed at retaking Mosul and dealing a death blow to Isis' "caliphate" in the city where it was declared two years ago. A small number of jihadists are putting up a fight against the advancing Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the villages leading up to the city, but there are reports fighters in the city are defecting in growing numbers.
The US coalition yesterday targeted Isil pick-up trucks seen heading out towards the Syrian border. Residents inside Mosul said that scores of jihadists had defected in recent weeks and more than 50 have fled since the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, announced the start of the offensive on Monday morning. "They wait until the night and leave by car. They are going to al-Ba'aj in the west of Mosul, then on to the Iraq-Syria border, where they continue to Syria and Turkey," one resident said.
Expand Close A peshmerga fighter walks through the kitchen of an underground tunnel made by Islamic State fighters. The Kurdish forces found the tunnel in the town of Badana that was liberated from the Islamic State group on Monday. Photo: AP / Facebook
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Whatsapp A peshmerga fighter walks through the kitchen of an underground tunnel made by Islamic State fighters. The Kurdish forces found the tunnel in the town of Badana that was liberated from the Islamic State group on Monday. Photo: AP
The resident said the families of Isil fighters have also moved to the western side of the city to protect them from attacks by the Iraqi forces.
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Steven Nabil, who has family inside Mosul, said that phone lines had been re-established inside the city for the first time in months on Monday by the Iraqi government, and residents are sending the coalition "hundreds of messages" with Isil fighters' locations.
There had been reports last week that the US, which is supporting the Iraqi army on the ground and in the air, could decide not to completely encircle the city and allow fighters out through the western side in an attempt to avoid greater civilian casualties.
Expand Close This image made from video by Rudaw News Agency shows a family fleeing Mosul, Iraq on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016. Photo: Rudaw News Agency via AP / Facebook
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Should that happen, the jihadists - with no major territory left in Iraq - would move across the border to Syria, where they will either join the fight against president Bashar al-Assad forces or travel on to Turkey or Europe.
There has been a growing backlash amongst the 1.5 million residents in the city against Isil. A small number of resistance fighters known as the Kataib al-Mosul group led a brief uprising in various parts of the city.
At least 20 members were killed and their cars burned yesterday.
Residents of Mosul said Isil was using civilians as human shields as Iraqi and Kurdish forces captured outlying villages in their advance on the jihadists' stronghold.
The leader of Isil and one of its main explosives experts were reported to be among thousands of the hardline militants still in Mosul, suggesting the group would go to great lengths to fend off any ground attack within the city limits.
With the attacking forces still between 20km and 50km away, residents reached by telephone said more than 100 families had started moving from southern and eastern suburbs most exposed to the offensive to more central parts of the city.
Isil militants were preventing people fleeing, they said, and one said they directed some towards buildings they had recently used themselves.
"It's quite clear Daesh (Isil) has started to use civilians as human shields by allowing families to stay in buildings likely to be targeted by air strikes," said Abu Mahir, who lives near the city's university and offered food to the displaced. ( Daily Telegraph London)
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
IThe LE Samuel Becket has recovered five dead bodies while conducting a search and rescue operation off the coast of Tripoli.
Earlier today, following a request from the Italian Maritime Rescue Co-Ordination Centre, the Irish Navy located and rescued a total of 118 migrants from a rubber vessel.
They also recovered the dead bodies of five migrants. The bodies are now onboard the LE Samuel Beckett.
The rescue operation began at 7.00am and all migrants were taken on board LE Samuel Beckett by 8.30am. The 118 migrants are now receiving food, water and medical treatment where required.
LE Samuel Beckett remains in the area.
The New York Times' website is currently non-responsive.
It is not yet clear what is causing the outage with NYTimes.com. briefly
The New York Times wrote on Twitter "The @nytimes website is experiencing technical problems. We're working to get them fixed. Out app is working though."
It comes just days after Donald Trump made a libel threat to the media organisation.
The New York Times attorney, David McCraw, responded to the threat in a letter, writing: Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself.
The website was restored to service at approximately 10:30am.
Julia Roberts speaks during the The Hillary Victory Fund Stronger Together Concert at the St. James Theatre in New York. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
IF star power alone could propel a candidate to the White House then Donald Trump may as well pack it in now, judging by the constellation that turned out for Hillary Clinton at a New York benefit.
Julia Roberts, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Hugh Jackman, Emily Blunt, Neil Patrick Harris and Helen Mirren put on a splashy fundraiser for Mrs Clinton.
The Democratic candidate could only address the group via a video message.
But daughter Chelsea and husband Bill were present at the sold-out event at the 1,300 seat St James Theatre.
Expand Close Sarah Jessica Parker and Andrea McArdle perform during the Hillary Victory Fund - Stronger Together concert at St. James Theatre in New York. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Facebook
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Billy Crystal was the host and Barbra Streisand lent her recorded voice to the show.
"What is at stake in this election is the future that we want our children to grow up in and whether or not we are going to have a country that we all can be proud of because all of us can be ourselves," Chelsea Clinton said.
Mr Clinton called his wife "the single-best changemaker I've ever known".
He added: "It is not true that our best days are behind us. It is not true - unless we give it up. Don't give it up. Grab it."
The event alternated performances with readings or short speeches. Angela Bassett recited a Sojourner Truth speech, Mirren read one by Eleanor Roosevelt and Roberts read a column by Molly Ivins.
Joel Grey and Sienna Miller sang 'Wilkommen' from 'Cabaret', Parker and Andrea McArdle belted out 'Tomorrow' from 'Annie', Anne Hathaway and Kelli O'Hara sang a tuneful medley of 'Get Happy' and 'Happy Days Are Here Again', and Sara Bareilles sang her hit 'Brave'.
Jon Hamm and Mr Gyllenhaal teamed up to perform a bit of Sinclair Lewis's play 'It Can't Happen Here', Alan Cumming spoke about LGBT rights, Lena Dunham recited part of Clinton's concession speech in 2008 and new Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo closed the show with a gospel-tinged 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'.
Crystal kicked off saying it was the greatest collection of Broadway and Hollywood stars since liberal-leaning producer "Harvey Weinstein's daughter's bat mitzvah".
Crystal then launched into a version of 'Comedy Tonight' from the musical 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum' - renamed 'Hillary Tonight' - with the lyrics: 'No racist baiting/No Muslim hating/Pantsuits for everyone/It's Hillary tonight!'
Mr Trump was a constant target for Crystal, who at one point compared the Republican candidate to hurricane season: "Think about it: It starts with a lot of hot air spinning out of control. It hits America, causes a lot of damage and panic. But it's completely over by November."
Many of the songs were picked to tweak Trump, including one from 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying' and 'Children Will Listen' from Stephen Sondheim's 'Into the Woods', sang by Bernadette Peters with a choir of children.
Other performances included Josh Groban singing 'Over the Rainbow', Stephen Schwartz and Kelli O'Hara duetting on 'For Good' from 'Wicked'. Harris reprised his Tony-winning title turn in 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' with a powerful rendition of 'Origin of Love'.
Tickets ranged from $45 in the rear balcony to $2,700 premium orchestra seats, with bundles of top tickets - plus access to a post-event party - going for $5,000. It was streamed live on Clinton's Facebook page.
A few protesters - one holding a "Clinton 4 Jail" sign - stood across the street under the marquee for 'The Phantom of the Opera'.
Inside the Clinton event theatre, which usually houses the musical 'Something Rotten!', many performers wore pro-Hillary T-shirts and at least one attendee wore a glittery 'I'm With Her' top.
Toward the end of the two-hour show, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Renee Elise Goldsberry, the Tony-winning stars of the Broadway phenomenon 'Hamilton', took to the stage for a riotous rap based on the song 'The World Was Wide Enough' - "I have only one overwhelming feeling," they asked. "Anybody here want to shatter a glass ceiling?"
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at an event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. AFP/Getty Images
Melania Trump sits down with CNN television host Anderson Cooper during an exclusive interview in New York. Photo: Reuters
Melania Trump has given a steadfast defence of her husband in the wake of multiple sexual assault allegations and dismissed the lewd video revelation as "boy talk".
Mrs Trump has been virtually silent on the campaign trail since she was widely mocked for her convention speech in July, which was plagiarised from Michelle Obama's 2008 address.
However, she was thrust back into the limelight, doing two interviews with CNN and Fox News in which she repeated that Donald Trump's comments had been "inappropriate" but that they are "moving on".
Mrs Trump said that Billy Bush had "egged on" her husband during the 2005 footage into "dirty and bad stuff".
"I said to my husband that you know the language was unappropriate [sic]," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "It's not acceptable and I was surprised, because that is not the man that I know.
"And as you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on. It was only a mic. And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on. Because they were kind of - ah - boy talk.
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"And he was led on. Like egg on from the host to say dirty and bad stuff." She also said: "Don't feel sorry for me, I can handle everything."
In the interview, Mrs Trump blamed the Clinton campaign for the way sexual assault allegations against both Mr Trump and Bill Clinton have dominated the election run-in - rather than policies and leadership.
"They're asking for it. They started...they started from the beginning of the campaign, putting [out] my picture from modelling days.
"That was my modelling days and I'm proud what I did. I worked very hard."
She added that she did not believe the women accusing her husband of sexual assault.
"All the allegations should be handled in a court of law," she said.
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Meanwhile, NBC News last night announced that it had fired Billy Bush from his job as a presenter on the 'Today Show'.
Bush (pictured inset) was suspended from the morning show two days after contents of the 2005 tape were reported on October 7.
NBC and Bush's representatives had been negotiating terms of his exit before Monday's announcement.
Bush, the nephew of former president George HW Bush, said he was "embarrassed and ashamed" by the video.
Meanwhile, bolstered by several opinion polls that have her leading in key swing states, Hillary Clinton's campaign spoke bullishly yesterday about making Democrat gains in traditional Republican states.
Aides said Mrs Clinton would be "dramatically expanding" her campaigning in Arizona.
Michelle Obama, who has been a key weapon for the Clinton camp at both the convention and subsequent events, will speak in Phoenix tomorrow.
"Donald Trump is becoming more unhinged by the day, and that is increasing prospects for Democrats further down the ballot," campaign manager Robby Mook said.
Indiana and Missouri - which have voted Republican for decades - are also being targeted as states where Democrats could make gains.
Yesterday Mrs Clinton faced revelations about her use of a private server as secretary of state after the release of emails from a top campaign official's personal account.
The FBI documents showed Patrick Kennedy, an under- secretary of state, had asked the FBI to declassify or lower the classification of one Clinton email that had been rated "secret".
The Trump campaign accused Mrs Clinton of colluding with US authorities to "cover up criminal activity".
Mr Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin last night that the new FBI records were worse than Watergate.
"This is one of the great miscarriages of justice in the history of our country," he said.
Mrs Clinton was reportedly said to be "p****d" at the constant flow of hacked emails from WikiLeaks.
Bill Clinton was also "having a hard time" at the re-emergence of his sex scandals, according to aides who spoke to Politico.
As the campaign gets murkier by the day, Mr Trump turned his sights on Joe Biden, highlighting what was claimed as being the vice president's "long history of groping".
The Republican retweeted a video posted by journalist Mark Simone titled: 'Watch Joe Biden's Long History Of Grabbing, Kissing and Groping Women Who Are Cringing.'
Mr Biden has in the past been labelled as "handsy" for being too tactile with women at various events.
With regards to the contest itself, a majority of polls have Mrs Clinton leading comfortably nationwide and in most key swing states. However, a political science professor at Stony Brook University and leading election forecaster has warned that all may not be as it seems.
In an article for 'The Hill' titled 'You can't trust polls: Clinton leads, but our polling methods are bunk', Prof Helmut Norpoth wrote: "Having an opinion and acting on it are two different things. Barely six in 10 voting-age American citizens turn out for presidential elections.
"Ascertaining the opinions of 100 citizens is just a start. Now you have to determine which 60 of them actually take the time to mark a ballot.
"They are the "likely voters". They are the only ones that count. But to find them is no easy chore."
It is important to remember pollsters incorrectly forecast last year's British general election and the Brexit referendum, as well as recent elections in Turkey, Canada, and Israel.
Mr Trump yesterday railed against what he claimed was large-scale voter fraud and suggested it will affect the outcome of the presidential race.
His comments raised further fears that the Republican may refuse to recognise the election result and he also appeared, once again, to be at odds with his running mate, Mike Pence.
"Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day," Mr Trump said. Mr Pence had said recently: "We will absolutely accept the results of the election."
Chris Ashby, Republican campaign lawyer, said Mr Trump's charges could foment unrest and were "unfounded" and "dangerous".
"When you say an election is rigged, you're telling voters, your supporters, their votes do not matter," Mr Ashby said in an interview. "I think some of Donald Trump's comments could cause unrest at the polls."
Last night Mr Trump vowed to "end government corruption" if he is elected to the White House.
Speaking in Wisconsin he said he wants to ban executive branch officials from lobbying the government for five years after they leave the White House and wants Congress to do the same for members and their staffs.
It was reported yesterday what a massive pay cut Mr Trump would be taking next month should he win the race and be hired for a job which pays a not-too-shabby $400,000 (364,000) a year. According to one estimate, Trump earns more than $470m a year from his various activities.
So even allowing for some complicated trust arrangement which sees the business run by his family, the Republican nominee's wallet would take a bit of a battering if he wins the election. ( Daily Telegraph London)
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Ukraine's Health Ministry is working on preventing the problems appeared in 2016 during medicine procurement via international organizations, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said.
"I want to say that today we ensured the supply of 90% of medicines we bought, including vaccines. You know what the catastrophic situation with supplies of medicines and vaccines was. Today the situation is changing and our task not to have problems in 2017 that we saw in 2016. The Health Ministry's team is seriously working on the issue," he said at a government meeting on Wednesday.
"I want to pay your attention to what we have done in medicine turnover in Ukraine. First, we have opened the market for high-quality imported medicines. Earlier this market was closed or it was very small. It was almost impossible to enter it. If someone entered it they spent much time and there were large corruption challenges. It is important that with opening the market for high-quality drugs our task is to ensure fair pricing," Groysman said.
The three men share the same father but have different mothers (AP)
US president Barack Obama's half-brother has said he does not agree with the decision by another half-brother to attend the final presidential debate as a guest of the Donald Trump campaign.
Mark Obama Ndesandjo said: "I love my brothers, but no one member represents the Obamas."
The Trump campaign said Mr Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother Malik would be in the audience for the showdown on Wednesday between Mr Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The three men share the same father but have different mothers.
Mr Ndesandjo is an American businessman who has lived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen for about 15 years.
He said: "Others in my family and I do not support my brother Malik's position on Mr Trump."
Malik Obama supports Mr Trump's candidacy.
AP
Saudi Arabia is among the world's most prolific executioners
Saudi Arabia says it has executed a prince who fatally shot another man in a fight, a rare death sentence carried out against a member of the kingdom's extensive royal family.
The Interior Ministry said it had executed Prince Turki bin Saud bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabeer in Riyadh. It did not describe how the sentence was carried out, although the Sunni-ruled kingdom often beheads the condemned in public.
A ministry statement to the state-run Saudi Press Agency warned "whoever dares to commit such a crime that the Shariah penalty is awaiting".
Saudi Arabia is among the world's most prolific executioners.
Royal executions are rare, but have happened before. In 1975, the kingdom beheaded Faisal bin Musaid bin Abdulaziz Al Saud for assassinating King Faisal.
A screengrab as Lina Alvarez leaves hospital in Spain with her newborn (Atlas TV via AP)
A 62-year-old Spanish woman has given birth to a healthy girl and encouraged women in their later years to imitate her if they want to.
Lina Alvarez left Lucus Augusti Hospital in the north-western city of Lugo with her third child in her arms, saying she felt wonderful.
Baby Lina, born by Caesarean section on October 10 weighing 2.4kg (5.3lbs), is in perfect health, she said.
Ms Alvarez's first child, now 27, was born with cerebral palsy and he r second child is now 10.
Her second and third pregnancies were through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.
Ms Alvarez, a doctor, said that women who are well enough to have a baby in their later years should not be afraid to do so, adding that they should let nature, not gynaecologists, decide.
AP
Arsen Pavlov, also known as Motorola, was killed in Donetsk (AP)
Thousands of people have turned out for the funeral of a senior commander of pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, who was killed in a bomb blast.
Arsen Pavlov, 33, known under his nom de guerre Motorola, was killed on Sunday when an unidentified device exploded in a lift at his apartment building in Donetsk.
Rebel officials blamed the explosion on Ukrainian saboteurs.
Thousands lined up in Donetsk to pay tribute at the local opera house, where his body was displayed.
Russian-born Pavlov became one of the most recognisable faces of the separatist movement.
His unit took part in some of the fiercest battles in the conflict, in which more than 9,600 people have died since April 2014.
Ukrainian officials have accused Pavlov of war crimes and he once admitted personally killing 15 prisoners of war.
AP
Donald Trump's campaign manager has acknowledged that the Republican presidential nominee needs a "comeback" in the final weeks of the campaign.
Kellyann Conway said Mr Trump has pulled off comebacks several times before, but i t was a rare acknowledgement by the billionaire's campaign that he could ultimately fall short.
She was speaking to Fox News ahead of the third and final presidential debate and as a string of battleground state polls showed Hillary Clinton ahead.
Ms Conway said she does not understand why Mrs Clinton has not been able to "put him away" given her experience and her campaign's "endless amounts of money".
She said: "What is her problem, already?"
Meanwhile, Tim Kaine said he wants Mrs Clinton to "win big" so that no-one will believe Mr Trump's claims of a rigged election.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate was urging supporters in Ohio to run up the score against Mr Trump, who has made unsubstantiated claims that the election has been fixed in Mrs Clinton's favour.
Mr Kaine said that the bigger Mrs Clinton's margin of victory is, "the harder it is for him to whine and have anybody believe him".
He said Mr Trump's claims of election rigging are an insult to American democracy, adding: "It's shameful."
Mr Kaine said he hoped the moderator of Wednesday's presidential debate, Fox News host Chris Wallace, would challenge Mr Trump and not let him simply throw insults at Mrs Clinton.
No matter how persuasive the candidates are at Wednesday night's debate, it is already too late for either to win over millions of voters.
Advance voting by post or in person is now under way in more than 30 states and at least 2.1 million voters have already cast ballots.
More than 45 million people are expected to vote before Election Day on November 8.
In Nevada, site of the debate, absentee ballots were being posted on Wednesday.
Early balloting has so far shown promise for Mrs Clinton in battlegrounds North Carolina and Florida, while Mr Trump has generally held ground in Iowa and Ohio.
Early voting is traditionally favoured by Democrats and is a key part of the Clinton campaign's strategy.
Mr Trump is counting on a stronger performance on Election Day itself.
AP
A Lockheed P-3 Orion flies over survey ship HMS Echo in the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the flight recorder from missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 (MoD/PA)
A ship involved with the deep-sea sonar search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is being fitted with a drone to examine several sonar contacts of interest on the remote seabed west of Australia.
None of the sonar contacts exhibit the characteristics of a typical aircraft debris field, said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading the hunt for the Boeing 777 in a stretch of the Indian Ocean.
But some of the contacts exhibit man-made properties and must be investigated before they can be eliminated as not being from the plane, the agency said in a statement.
Officials have previously said more than 20 sonar contacts crews have picked up in recent months require closer examination by a sonar-equipped underwater drone. They are 1,200 to 1,700 miles from the Australian port of Fremantle where the search ships are based.
Poor weather during the southern hemisphere winter has until now prevented the ships from deploying the drone.
With the weather improving, the Chinese vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101 is being fitted with a video camera-equipped remotely operated vehicle that will scrutinise the sonar contacts.
Crews have picked up hundreds of sonar contacts of interest throughout the two-year hunt. They are grouped into three classification levels based on their likelihood of being linked to the plane.
None of the recent sonar contacts are classification 1, seen as most likely to have come from the aircraft. There have only been two contacts that fit into that category; one turned out to be an old shipwreck, and the other was a rock field.
Search crews have so far come up empty in their attempt to find the main underwater wreckage of the plane, which vanished on March 8 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
The ships have less than 3,900 square miles left to scour of the 46,000 square mile search zone.
Officials previously said the search would be finished by December. On Wednesday, the transport bureau said it is now likely to take until January or February, due to the long stretch of poor winter weather that has hampered search efforts.
Malaysia, China and Australia agreed in July that the hunt would be suspended after crews finish scouring the current search zone, unless credible new evidence emerges.
AP
The Russian military says that Russian and Syrian warplanes are staying away from Aleppo a day before a temporary pause in the military push declared by Moscow (AP)
Syrian government forces and their Russian counterparts are preparing to open corridors out of the besieged districts of Aleppo, in the hope that fighters and civilians will evacuate the contested city's rebel-held quarters after weeks of bombardment has left the area in ruins.
The city's eastern quarters experienced relative peace for the second consecutive day in the run-up to the hoped-for evacuation on Thursday. Russia's military said two corridors would be opened for militants to flee to the neighbouring, rebel-held province of Idlib.
The government's overture to rebels and civilians trapped in Aleppo's east follows a pattern of evacuations around the country that the UN has likened to "forced displacement." On Wednesday, some 2,000 residents of the once autonomous Moadamiyeh suburb of Damascus were carried by government buses to Idlib as part of an arrangement to restore government control after years of siege at the hands of the military.
Hassan Ghandour, a former Moadamiyeh resident who liaised between the suburb and besieging forces, said on Wednesday the evacuees included 700 gunmen. He said the government is to release all detainees from the suburb in exchange for the evacuation.
Several activists also left with the convoy. Wassim al-Ahmad said it would be "impossible" to live again under government authority, saying he did not trust official promises for amnesty.
Some of those remaining in Moadamiyeh struck a defiant tone.
"I'm not going to settle anything with the government," said local resident Mahmoud, who declined to give his family name out of safety concerns. "I'm going to stay in my home."
"I've spent five years of my life besieged here. I've been through war, siege, starvation... bombardment, and poison gas - I've survived with all this so I can stay here."
Government forces gassed the suburb along with two others with Sarin on the night of August 21 2013. About 1,300 people, mostly civilians, suffocated to death around the capital.
Some 28,000 people remain in the Moadamiyeh, down from a pre-war population of 105,000, according to the government.
In Aleppo, government buses queued at checkpoints leading to the besieged east prepared to take evacuees to Idlib on Thursday, according to the media arm of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the government in Syria.
The government's foreign ministry said soldiers were withdrawing from the designated corridors to reassure evacuees.
Civilians will also be allowed to evacuate to the city's government-controlled western districts.
It is unclear how many people will take up the government's offer after weeks of siege and bombardment pulverised the east and shattered its medical network.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 640 people, including 128 children, have been killed in rebel-held parts of Aleppo and the surrounding rural areas since a truce brokered by the US and Russia collapsed on September 19. It said 88 people, including 14 children, were killed in retaliatory shelling on government-held Aleppo.
Bassam Heji, a member of the Nour el-Din al-Zinki rebel faction, said the Russian offer is a "trap" that only reflects its intention to "exterminate" the residents of the eastern, rebel-held Aleppo neighbourhoods.
The arrangement follows a proposal by the UN Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, to allow al Qaida-linked militants to leave Aleppo in exchange for a truce and local autonomy for the city's eastern districts. Rebels, along with many residents, rejected the offer.
But Russia and Syria moved ahead unilaterally with the evacuation arrangements without making any promises for an extended ceasefire or self-administration.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the break in fighting should allow the moderate opposition in the east to sever ties with militants.
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would work with Russia's government to evacuate the al Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, formerly known as Nusra Front from the east.
Mr Erdogan warned about the possibility of an influx of at least one million people to Turkey in the event of a population movement from Aleppo.
"We cannot pay this cost. Those who incite this must sit down with Turkey and talk," he said.
Kurdish-led forces meanwhile pressed their campaign to drive Islamic State militants from areas in northern Aleppo province, expanding the front line with rival Turkish-backed opposition fighters also operating in the area, according to local rebels and activists.
The Russian military accused a US-led coalition air strike of killing six civilians in Hassajek, hours before the announcement that the village had been taken from IS.
Despite the brief lull in the fighting for Aleppo, most of the surrounding province has become Syria's hottest theater of combat, showcasing the complexity of the terrain where rival forces are vying for control.
In the area of Hassajek, three rival groups are battling IS: the Kurdish-led forces, Turkey-backed Syrian rebels and troops loyal to the government of President Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish-led forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, gained control of Hassajek, killing at least 10 IS militants in fighting there.
One of the fighting units in SDF, the Rebel Army, said in a statement that the clashes with IS militants continued for the third straight day further to the south. It said its troops also seized weapons and ammunition from IS.
The advance by the Kurdish-led forces has widened the front line between them and rival Syrian rebels, who in recent weeks have pushed into northern Aleppo backed by Turkish tanks and aircraft, driving out the Islamic State group from villages and towns it controlled. The Turkey-backed offensive also aims to undercut Kurdish aspirations for a contiguous and independent east-to-west stretch of territory in Syria.
The Russian military's Reconciliation Centre in Syria said the strike Hassajek also wounded four people and destroyed two houses.
Russian military surveillance spotted two Belgian F-16 fighter jets over the area at the time of the strike, the centre said, adding that Russian and Syrian warplanes were not flying over the area. Russia's Tass news agency reported from Brussels that the Belgian defence minister denied Belgian aircraft had struck the area.
AP
CONCORD- Dunkin Donuts will celebrate the opening of its 50th store in the Charlotte area with 50 cent small hot coffee and donuts at all Charlotte locations on Friday, Oct. 21.
The 50th store, located at 30 Raiford Drive in Concord, will also host a grand opening event called Kickin Cancer with Coffee, benefitting the Bring it 4 Braylon Foundation that same day. If the community purchases 500 cups of coffee throughout the day, Dunkin Donuts will donate $5 per cup to the charity.
Schedule of Events for the new store in Concord:
6:30-7 a.m. One Guest Wins Year of Free Coffee
Mayor Scott Padgett will be behind the counter to serve one guest, and surprise him or her with a year of free coffee.
7-7:30 a.m. Kickin Cancer with Coffee Dance-Off:
Braylon Beam, local child cancer survivor, will lead Concord firefighters and policemen in a DJ-fueled dance-off against one another. Mayor Padgett will crown the champion.
7-9 a.m. Free Coffee:
All guests at the Concord store may enjoy a free medium-sized coffee.
George Ross is the Dunkin Donuts franchisee for the new location and currently operates 36 Dunkin Donuts restaurants in North Carolina. Ross currently has seven additional stores under construction, which are slated to open in 2017. The first Dunkin Donuts in Charlotte opened in 2004.
As my team and I celebrate this milestone, we want to give back to the community that has been so kind to us by offering specials on some of Dunkin Donuts guest-favorites, supporting a local charity and recognizing some local heroes, comments Ross. With the Kickin Cancer with Coffee event, Dunkin Donuts and the local community can together support the Bring it 4 Braylon Foundation, and help to alleviate the burden that sick children and their families face every day.
Now open from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week, the new restaurant employs approximately 28 crew members.
To learn more about Dunkin Donuts visit www.DunkinDonuts.com or follow us on Facebook www.facebook.com/DunkinDonuts and Twitter www.twitter.com/DunkinCarolinas.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has met with King Harald V of Norway and thanked him for supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity and considerable practical assistance, the Ukrainian presidential press service reported on Tuesday evening.
During the audience, the king mentioned the historic importance of the first official visit of a Ukrainian president to the Kingdom of Norway.
"The president indicated the significance that His Majesty personally attaches to the situation in Ukraine, which, in particular, can be seen from the recent throne speech during the opening of the current session of the Norwegian Storting, in which he said that 'Russia's actions in Ukraine are an unambiguous violation of the international law'," it said.
Poroshenko also mentioned the importance of Norway's support for the reforms in the Ukrainian defense sector and the modernization of its armed forces.
The Ukrainian military positions in Donbas have been shelled 57 times in the past 24 hours, the military operation press center said on Facebook.
Forty-four shell attacks have been recorded in the Mariupol area, it said. Ukrainian military fortifications near Talakivka, Pavlopil, Hranitne, Krasnohorivka and Maryinka were shelled from large-caliber machineguns, grenade launchers and small arms, according to the statement. Vodiane, Lebedynske and Shyrokyne were attacked with barrel artillery of the 122- and 152-millimeter caliber and mortars of the 82- and 120-millimeter caliber.
In the Luhansk area, ten instances of ceasefire violation have been recorded. The Ukrainian positions near Popasna and Orikhove were attacked with grenade launchers, machineguns and small arms; in Novozvanivka and Krymske, the Ukrainian forces shelled 120-millimeter mortars.
Three shell attacks were recorded in the Donetsk area. In particular, Avdiyivka came under grenade fire, while Verkhniotoretsk was attacked with grenades, machineguns, small arms and 82-millimeter mortars.
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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko during a telephone conversation with Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven have discussed the acceleration of providing visa-free regime for the Ukrainians and the completion of the ratification process of the Association Agreement.
As reported on the official website of the Ukrainian president, the sides also coordinated their positions on priority issues of cooperation between Ukraine and the EU on the eve of the European Council meeting which is to be held in Brussels on October 20-21.
The head of state informed the Swedish premiere on the security situation in Donbas and urged Sweden to follow Norway and officially recognize the fact of Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
Poroshenko and Lofven also confirmed the importance of the EU unity in the issue of sanctions preservation against Russia until the full restoration of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Tribal leaders are calling on the federal government to do more to prevent their sacred property from being sold to the highest bidder.
Tribes have become increasingly alarmed as auction houses around the world have put hundreds of items up for sale. Due to legal, financial, political and cultural barriers, they say it's incredibly difficult to them to recover what's rightfully theirs.
"Money is attached to everything," Governor Eddie Paul Torres of Isleta Pueblo said at a Congressional field hearing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Tuesday. "Even if it was stolen from a house, it was sold and somebody paid for it."
"When sacred objects are found," Torres continued, "you've got to figure out a way to get them without putting up that red flag. Because if you don't, it's going to disappear and you'll never see it again."
Sen. Tom Udall (D-New Mexico), at podium, and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) discussed efforts to protect tribal property at a press conference prior to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs field hearing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on October 18, 2016. Photo by Tara Gatewood
But even when law and politics are on their side, tribes face incredible hurdles. Acoma Pueblo , another New Mexico tribe, has been pleading with authorities in France to return a sacred shield that was stolen from the reservation in the 1970s.
"The Acoma shield belongs to the people of Acoma," Governor Kurt Riley said of an item that remains in legal and diplomatic limbo thousands of miles away. "Inherently, it belongs to us."
The Navajo Nation has taken the drastic step of sending leaders to France to reacquire sacred items. But those efforts come with significant drawbacks because collectors and dealers start demanding more money, President Russell Begaye said.
"These sacred objects are not to be studied, hung on walls to be admired or cataloged and placed in storage bins in annexes across the world," Begaye told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs . "They were and are constructed to maintain our sacredness and the wholeness of our people."
Indianz.Com on YouTube: Legislative Efforts to Protect Tribal Cultural Patrimony (Video by Tara Gatewood)
Sen. Tom Udall (D-New Mexico), a member of the committee, chaired the field hearing as lawmakers from both parties take greater notice of the problem. He's sponsoring S.Con.Res.49 , otherwise known as the PROTECT Patrimony Resolution, which calls on the federal government to work more closely with tribes to stop the theft, sale and export of tribal items and to return them to their rightful owners.
"Some people are exploiting the loopholes in our current laws -- laws that are meant to stop the theft of important cultural items," Udall said at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in downtown Albuquerque. "And they have exported deeply important sacred objects to other countries to be sold as art."
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) also attended the hearing. He's sponsoring another bill -- S.3127 , the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act (STOP Act) -- that would increase penalties for people who traffic in tribal property.
"While we must improve federal law to create a stronger legal deterrence, we also need to change the hearts and minds of art collectors and dealers who are engaging in it," Heinrich said.
Dealing or exporting items that tribes have identified as essential and sacred pieces of their cultural heritage must be... Posted by Senator Martin Heinrich on Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Senator Martin Heinrich on Facebook: Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act (#StopAct)
The hearing, though, took a bizarre turn when a non-Indian professor presented boxes containing what he said were sacred items to the tribes. In his testimony, he urged lawmakers not to take a "punitive" approach when it comes to collectors and dealers.
But tribal leaders were clearly disturbed by the gesture due to the unknown origin of the items. They appeared to be stored in cardboard boxes -- one was a shoe box.
On September 21 , the House passed H.Con.Res.122 , another version of the PROTECT Patrimony Resolution. The bill was introduced by Rep. Steve Pearce (R-New Mexico).
The Senate passed the bill on September 29 . But lawmakers replaced the text of H.Con.Res.122 with that of S.Con.Res.49.
Since the two versions are slightly different, the House would need to take action before the measure can be sent to President Barack Obama for a potential signature.
The committee approved S.Con.Res.49 on September 7 and, on September 29, it cleared the Senate , although in a modified form as H.Con.Res.122
Since the measure was changed after passage in the House on September 12 , Congress would need to take additional action before it can be sent to President Barack Obama for his signature.
Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Notice: Oversight FIELD Hearing on "The Theft, Illegal Possession, Sale, Transfer and Export of Tribal Cultural Items." (October 18, 2016)
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The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a field hearing on the theft and sale of tribal property at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on October 18, 2016. Photo by Tara Gatewood
Leaders of Acoma Pueblo Isleta Pueblo and the Navajo Nation were clearly disturbed by the presentation. They were worried about the origin of the items, whether the items actually belonged to their people and whether they were truly sacred or cultural patrimony.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is now investigating the matter, the Associated Press reports. An agent collected the three cardboard boxes -- one bore the packaging of a shoe company -- as possible "evidence," the AP said.
The presentation came during a field hearing on the theft and sale of tribal property. A non-Indian witness brought out the boxes and at one point held one above his head as tribal leaders sat next to him in shock.
The U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, Damon Martinez , was among those who witnessed the presentation. His office has secured a federal warrant to seek the return of a sacred shield stolen from Acoma Pueblo, an issue that was discussed during the hearing.
The hearing took place at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in downtown Albuquerque. The facility is Indian Country -- it's part of a collection of properties held in trust for the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico
The BIA leases a portion of the property for its Southwest Regional Office
Read More on the Story: Officials: Loopholes allow for trafficking of Native American items to foreign markets (AP 10/19) Tribal leaders speak for bill protecting artifacts (The Albuquerque Journal 10/18) Senator: Loopholes allow for trafficking of tribal items (KOB 10/18)
Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Notice: Oversight FIELD Hearing on "The Theft, Illegal Possession, Sale, Transfer and Export of Tribal Cultural Items" (October 18, 2016)
Join the Conversation
Related Stories
The remains of the Spirit Cave Man and other tribal ancestors were found in an area near the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. Photo by Charles Cornell
A long-running dispute over a tribal ancestor in Nevada appears to be coming to a close thanks to a shift in course by the Obama administration.
After two decades of debate, the Bureau of Land Management plans to repatriate the remains of a 10,000-year-old individual -- often referred to as the Spirit Cave Man -- to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe . A notice published in the Federal Register on Tuesday confirms the ancestor is indeed Native American.
"DNA analysis illustrates that the human remains in the Spirit Cave Assemblage are effectively more closely related to Native Americans than they are to any other population," Melanie O'Brien, the manager of the National Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Program , wrote in the notice. "The associated funerary objects contained within the Spirit Cave Assemblage manifest characteristics of Native American ancestry, including a rabbit skin blanket, moccasins, and woven mats."
The decision caps off a controversy that dogged both the Clinton and Bush administrations. A federal judge at one point said federal officials "passed the issue up the chain of command" without ever providing a direct answer to the Paiute-Shoshone people.
"All we want is our ancestor to come home," Rochanne L. Downs, a former tribal council member who worked on the matter for years, told Indianz.Com back in 2003
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Review Committee met in Missoula, Montana, from July 13-16, 2016. Photo by Angela Steiner Neller
The issue was so contentious that it went before the NAGPRA Review Committee , a panel of experts that Congress created through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to weigh in on such disputes. But even when they said the remains should be returned to the tribe, the BLM did nothing, prompting the tribe to file the lawsuit.
In September 2006 , a federal judge ruled that the BLM's failure to consider all of the tribe's evidence was "arbitrary and capricious." The Bush administration promptly appealed but the case was dropped a few months later with the tribe's agreement.
Still, the ancestor sat in limbo until the Interior Department in 2010 finalized long-awaited regulations regarding so-called "culturally unidentifiable" Native remains. The BLM's notice on Tuesday cited the new rule as the basis for initiating repatriation to the tribe.
The decision marks the second time this year that the Obama administration has sided with tribes in a dispute over ancient remains. Citing DNA and other evidence, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in April confirmed the 8,500-year-old individual known as the Kennewick Man was Native American.
The determination opened the door for the Pacific Northwest tribes to reclaim their ancestor, whom they refer to as the Ancient One, under the provisions of NAGPRA. But Congress also stepped in and is close to finalizing a national water bill that would return the remains to his descendants.
"The Colville Tribes, along with the other claimant tribes, has always known that the Ancient One was our ancestor, and it is only right that he should be laid to rest in his homeland in the traditional way," Chairman Michael Marchand of the Colville Tribes said last month. DNA from the Ancient One showed a direct relationship to modern-day Colville citizens.
Leaders of the Fallon-Paiute Shoshone Tribe were sworn into office on October 18, 2016. From left: Secretary Laura Ijames, Chairman Len George and council member Natalie Pacheco. Photo by FPST Election Committee
Despite the successes, some within the academic and scientific community continue to oppose the return of ancient remains to tribes. One anthropologist who has been repeatedly proven wrong about the Kennewick Man's Native origins even holds a top position within the Smithsonian Institution
DNA studies , though, have been among the most conclusive evidence about the identities of some of the very first Americans. Remains dating back as far back as 12,600 years have been directly linked to modern-day Native populations.
Spirit Cave Man and other tribal remains were discovered in 1940 at Spirit Cave , an area near the Fallon-Paiute Reservation. The remains have been dated to be between 5,400 to 10,600 years old, according to the BLM.
Federal Register Notices: Notice of Inventory Completion: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Nevada State Office, Reno, NV (October 18, 2016) Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Regulations-Disposition of Culturally Unidentifiable Human Remains (March 15, 2010)
From the Indianz.Com Archive Judge faults BLM for decision on ancient remains (September 25, 2006) Nev. tribe wants ancient remains 'to come home' (February 14, 2003) Norton treads uncharted waters over remains (April 22, 2002)
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Karan Johar broke his silence on the bans and the controversies surrounding his upcoming Diwali release ADHM in form of a video statement that was winning the internet. While KJo clearly mentioned that he won't work with Pakistani artists in the future, he also mentioned that apart from Fawad Khan, there were more than 300 artists who worked hard for the film and it surely is unfair to them.
Right after KJo's video, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena said that it will continue to oppose the release of his movie Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. There were many reports that claimed how Raj Thackeray-led MNS has threatened multiplex owners with vandalism if they released ADHM.
Questioning KJo's 'sudden change of behaviour', Shalini Thackeray, general secretary of Chitrapat Karmachari Sena told Express, This is the same Karan Johar who once said Pakistani actors should not be banned. Why this sudden change in heart? Its come a little too late in the day for him.
Amey Khopkar, President of Maharashtra Navnirman Chitrapat Karmachari Sena, the film wing of the MNS, told The Indian Express, "We are firm on our stand and we will not allow him to release the film."
MNS even tweeted about the same. One of their tweets read:
"We will not let the film air even in Multiplexes as it features Pakistani actors. Multiplex owners need to stay away from airing films featuring Pakistani actors...Or else, remember how expensive your glass walls are."
The film business is money-driven and why not? A film needs to make money so that more films can be made. While most often brands collaborate with a particular film to increase their brand recall and visibility, it's not always that filmmakers to do something as sweet as what Force 2 makers did.
While the trailer of Force 2 was released two weeks ago, there was a slide that read:
Viacom18
Dedicated to the heroes who sacrificed their lives for the country and yet remained unnamed and unrecognised. This gesture won hearts of the families of the martyred soldiers who couldn't help but thank the makers. Appreciating the gesture, the families wrote to the makers.
Talking about it, Vipul Amrutlal Shah, the film's producer told the media,
Instagram
"We weren't expecting this kind of response. I'm happy that we are the first in saluting our unsung martyrs. My team and I were really touched by the letters. The families of soldiers and undercover agents have also thanked us for appreciating the loved ones they've lost. That means a lot to us."
Vipul's team now wants to pay a tribute to the heroes at the Amar Jawan Jyoti in Delhi. They are also planning to file a PIL for the benefit of their families. Talking about this, he added,
"There's little that the kin of these heroes get. Our government is working towards the betterment of the intelligence officers and soldiers. Maybe we can bring the plight of the families of the deceased officers to their notice and help them. After seeing the response to the trailer, we've expedited the process."
Watch the trailer of the film here:
The government told a parliamentary panel that while the Army had crossed the LoC to hit targets earlier too, September 29 was the first time they had entered Pakistan's territory to destroy terror launch pads .
BCCL
Responding to a question by Congress's Satyavrat Chaturvedi, foreign secretary S Jaishankar told members of Parliament's standing committee on external affairs that the "surgical strikes" carried out by the Army in the wake of the Uri terror attack differed in nature from the operations the Army had undertaken earlier on the other side of LoC.
The earlier strikes were also different because of the fact that, unlike in the latest instance, they were not publicised.
Chaturvedi, a senior Congress member of the Rajya Sabha, had sought to know from the foreign secretary and other functionaries from the government whether surgical strikes had been carried out earlier too, the objective of the post-Uri operation and whether clearance had been taken from the government.
BCCL
"If the question is that did the Army cross the LoC in the past too, the answer is yes. But if the question is that did the Army carry out an operation to destroy launch pads of terrorists across the LoC, the answer is no," a source in the committee quoted the foreign secretary as saying.
Late on Tuesday, news agency PTI issued a clarification regarding a report wherein it had quoted Jaishankar having told the committee that the "surgical strikes" were not unique and differed from the previous ones only in that it was publicised.
BCCL
The agency said the foreign secretary's purported statement was based on what it had gathered from opposition MPs who are members of the standing committee. It quoted a government source as saying, "What the FS said is that the key issue is that we went public after conducting the surgical strikes which conveyed a politico-military message. Whether any previous crossing had been done only the Army would know. But it is irrelevant anyway because there was no message."
The foreign secretary, who was accompanied by defence secretary Mohan Kumar, Army vice-chief Lt General Vipin Rawat and other officials, also emphasised that the Army had acted on the basis of precise intelligence to carry out what he called a "counter-terror operation".
BCCL
Jaishankar, who refrained from using the term "surgical strike", said the September 29 operation was meant to send a strong message across to Pakistan and to the world at large that India would not silently suffer terror strikes any more. Hence the decision to go public about them, said the top diplomat, adding that in a democratic set-up like India, the Army was mandated to seek clearance from the government for such operations.
The testimony of the foreign secretary that the previous strikes across LoC were different --PTI quoted him describing them as "professionally done, target-specific, limited calibre counter-terrorist operations"-- comes in the wake of skirmish between BJP and the government on the one hand, and Congress on the other over whether the "surgical strikes" of September 29 were unprecedented. Congress has claimed that the Army had crossed over the LoC at least on three occasions under the UPA.
BCCL
However, the claim has been disputed by defence minister Manohar Parikar who has said that LoC crossings by the Army before Uri were limited in nature, which were taken at the level of the local army commander and required no political go-ahead. His assertion, which was endorsed by former Army chief General J J Singh as well as Lt General Vinod Bhatia who served as Director General of Military Operations under UPA.
With various film bodies imposing a ban on Pakistani actors after the Uri attack, the government was also asked about the ban on Pakistani films and artistes and Jaishankar is learned to have said that people-to-people contact with Pakistan would continue and there was no plan to stop it.
For a 45-year-old blind elephant, stuck in a dam, with a broken foreleg, life is pretty grim at the moment. His pain, however, goes unnoticed by the residents of the village nearest the dam as they have to stay up all night because of his calls and the appearance of other elephants responding to him.
Fondly called Sidda by forest officials, the elephant is a tusker, believed to have fallen into a ditch near the Dodderi village. He then drifted with the water into the Manchanabele dam, 30 kms from Bengaluru nearly 40 days ago.
BCCL
Forest authorities have stepped up efforts to rescue Sidda from the dam and take him to safety of the Bannerghatta National Park. Officials have said that Sidda probably broke his right foreleg when he fell into the ditch. He is in great pain but forest officials have been keeping him company, although all efforts of trying to sedate him seem to fail!
While Sidda has been relishing all the sugarcane, maize, bananas and ragi or millet balls, which the forest officials have been feeding him, any efforts of mixing antibiotics or painkillers with his food is immediately rejected.
The condition of the injured elephant has not deteriorated. Four veterinary experts from Chennai, Guwahati and Kerala will visit the dam next week, Dr D Manjunath, Deputy Conservator of Forest, Ramanagara district, told The Indian Express.
AFP/Representational image
The locals residing in the village near the dam, however, are worried about the other elephants getting attracted by Sidda's cries.
The elephant keeps drifting towards our village at night and pushed down a jackfruit tree on Friday night. It also stomped through our ragi crops. Forest officials must shift it and provide better treatment, K Rajanna, a resident of Avverahalli village, told the daily.
Pakistan-based terror group Laskar-e-Taiba has issued a warning to the Baramulla SHO, for facilitating an operation on Monday, in which at least 44 have been arrested for terror-related activities.
BCCL
It was a multi-agency crackdown in the old town of Baramulla in north Kashmir on Monday. After 700-odd houses were searched, security agencies seized petrol bombs, Chinese and Pakistani flags, LeT and Jaish letter pads, illegal mobile phones and other seditious material, defence spokesperson Manish Kumar said.
The crackdown was part of a joint operation by the Army, the BSF, the CRPF and police in 10 localities, including Qazi Hamam, Ganai Hamam, Taweed Gunj and Jamia, considered safe havens for terrorists.
BCCL
A large number of suspected hideouts were also busted during the search operation, Col Manish added.
However, according to locals, around 1am on Monday, the security forces jointly laid siege to the entire old town. "An announcement was made about the crackdown and people were asked to stay indoors. The personnel conducted house-to-house searches," a local said.
Before entering the old town, the forces had sealed the bridges connecting it with the Civil Lines area to restrict public movement, they said. "The forces checked the youngsters for pellet injuries and similar wounds to identify those who had participated in protests and resorted to stone-pelting," another local claimed. Sources said the crackdown was the first major one in Baramulla in more than a decade.
BCCL
Police, however, claimed that the search operation was launched to nab militants. "We had information about the presence of militants in the area. It was an anti-militancy operation aimed at nabbing some Jaish-e-Mohammed militants who had taken refuge in the area," Baramulla SSP Imtiyaz Hussain Mir said.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will meet in Brussels on Thursday, October 20, and also make statements to the media.
"On October 20 in Brussels, President Petro Poroshenko will meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Poroshenko and Stoltenberg are scheduled to brief media after the talks," the press service of the head of state said on Tuesday.
In addition, the president during his visit to Brussels intends to hold a number of meetings with the EU leaders on the same day. Poroshenko will meet with European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz.
"The leaders of Ukraine and the EU institutions will discuss the situation in Donbas and Crimea, the state of implementation of the Minsk agreements and prospects for the sanctions regime against Russia in response to its aggression against Ukraine. Participants will also discuss progress in implementing reforms and ways to strengthen EU support, and will coordinate the next steps for the ratification of the Association Agreement and visa-free regime for the citizens of Ukraine," the press-service said.
Bilateral meetings between President of Ukraine with leaders of a number of EU member states are also on the agenda on the eve of the EU summit which is to be held in Brussels on October 20-21.
Maharashtra government's proposal to set up a leopard safari in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park has been shot down by the Central Zoo Authority. The authority states that the park does not have the kind of funds or infrastructure to support this attraction.
On the other hand, the number of leopards roaming around in the city has been on the rise in the past three years. In fact, Mumbai is one the only cities where people have learnt to live in harmony with leopards and crocodiles among many other species.
BCCL
Following a site inspection on September 6, the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) rejected the proposal for the safari. Visitors to the park can still enjoy the lion and the tiger safari. The CZA has specified that unlike the other two big cats, leopards are far lighter and quicker on their feet and would pose a threat to the locals and the tourists, if they escaped their enclosures.
Speaking to Mumbai Mirror, Chief Conservator of Forests Sanjay Thakre said, To build a safari, the park is required to have double fencing and there should also be no trees nearby. This would mean that trees would have to be cut down for at least 30 hectares at a stretch a space which is not available in the national park at the moment. At the most, the state can maintain a leopard enclosure at the park.
BCCL
The Sanjay Gandhi National Park currently has more than 20 leopards captured from various parts of the city and other cities in Maharashtra. They have all been kept in one giant enclosure.
Militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen has asked the displaced Kashmiri Pandits, who flee the Valley in early 1990s after the eruption of militancy, to return to their homes.
BCCL
The outfit has also assured the Pandits protection while saying that it is also planning to raise a group of Sikh youths.
"We request Kashmiri Pandits to return to their homes. We take responsibility of their safety," Zakir Rashid Bhat, alias 'Musa', the self-styled commander of the militant outfit, said in a brief video message released.
Hundreds of families of Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee the valley after they were targeted by militant groups during the outbreak of militancy and have been living in Jammu and other parts of the country.
BCCL
"They should look at those Pandits who never left Kashmir. Who has harassed or killed them?" asked the commander who's seen as the successor of Burhan Wani, the Hizbul commander who was killed in an encounter by Indian Army on July 8.
Musa also claimed that Indian government is planning to take action in the Valley in an operation similar to 'Operation Blue Star' in Punjab. He also said that the outfit is mulling to raise a separate Sikh group.
BCCL
"Our Sikh brothers are requesting us to join Hizbul Mujahideen...We are with them on every front and God willing, we will try and make an exclusive group for Sikhs in the outfit," he said.
Even without filing a First Information Report (FIR), the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has sought help of relevant central agencies including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to trace Najeeb Ahmad, a first year M.Sc. biotechnology students who went missing from Mahi Mandavi Hostel on Saturday (October 14) following a scuffle with fellow residents associated with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) a night before.
Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes
Adding that the university is seeking help from all relevant central agencies to help trace Najeeb, the university said in a statement on Tuesday evening (October 18) that the Delhi Police have been approached to investigate the matter and the administration is regularly in communication with the police. The police have informed that they have already registered a case under Section 365 of the IPC and doing the investigations. All PCR vans in Delhi and all SSPs throughout India have been alerted and efforts are being made to trace the student. Further, the police has intimated all the six neighbouring states and put the information on Zip-net in Northern Zone. Moreover, all relevant central agencies, including NCRB and missing section of CBI, have been requested for help.
Najeeb was allegedly assaulted in his hostel on Friday (October 14) at around 11 pm when Vikrant Kumar, a bachelors student residing in room number 213 of the same hostel, who was contesting hostel elections for the post of mess secretary, went to his room for campaigning.
Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes
The assaulters violent not only thrashed him but also allegedly hurl abuses and criminally intimidated Najeeb in presence of senior warden Dr Sushil Kumar, two other wardens Dr Somyajit Ray and Dr Arun Srivastava and G4S security persons of the varsity.
Traumatised and shocked Najeeb left his room at around 11 am on Saturday in absence of his roommate Qasim leaving behind his cell phone, laptop and even chappals apart from other belongings and have not returned so far. His grieving family is in the campus running from pillar to post to know about his whereabouts.
The JNU further said in the statement that it is making all its efforts to resolve the incident that took place in Mahi-Mandvi Hostel in the night of October 14, 2016. The Inter Hall Administration (IHA) is constantly at work and the Wardens have been instructed to extend all necessary help to trace Mr. Najeeb Ahmed who has gone missing.
Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes
It is pertaining to mention here that despite huge protests, the university has not so far filed a missing complaint with the police, forget about an FIR. Several students groups of the university are protesting against this lackadaisical attitude but the varsity is not ready to budge. After the university did not pay heed to their demand, the students marched to Vasant Kunj North police station on Monday night in large number and filed a separate complaint regarding the incident that took place on October 14 night that perhaps led to the mysterious disappearance.
Meanwhile, a case (number 523/16) under section 365 (kidnapping with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has already been registered on October 15 evening in the police station on the basis of a complaint by his mother Fatima Nafees.
Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes
We are cooperating the police in their investigation. We are proving all the details the investigators need. The eye-witness of the incident have deposed before the university authorities and their statements have also been forwarded to the police, hostel warden Dr Sushil Kumar told Indiatimes.
Asked why the university did not file any complaint or an FIR after one of his students that too a resident of its hostel went missing in mysterious circumstances from the campus, he replied, An FIR has already been registered and the police are investigating the matter.
While the police still do not have any clue on his whereabouts, a majority of the residents of his hostel, including his roommate, believe that Najeeb has been abducted following the brawl. Even four days, the young man is still untraceable.
Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes
JNUSU had recommended to punish Najeeb and expel him from hostel
While the police and JNU authorities still seem clueless about Najeebs whereabouts, the role of JNU Students Union (JNUSU) in the entire matter is being criticised. The student body, although protesting the missing of Najeeb, had endorsed his expulsion from Mahi Mandvi Hostel, following the brawl.
I had signed the decision without going it in entirety, accepted JNUSU president Mohit Kumar Pandey.
The ABVP members had alleged that Najeeb slapped Vikrant, who was contesting for mess secretary post went to Najeebs room for campaigning. Two other hostellers - Ankit Kumar (of room number 214) and Sunil Pratap (of room number 122) both were present at that time.
Najeeb was brutally assaulted by a group of at least 15 students.
Since Najeeb went missing, the JNUSU changed its stance and began protesting against ABVP alleged role in his disappearance.
Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes
"The decision has already been deferred till further notice. Najeeb was brutally assaulted by the ABVP activists, and therefore, in the Warden Committee meeting held on October 16 we have recommended the chief proctor to take appropriate disciplinary actions against those involved at the earliest, said the JNUSU president.
Mohit K Pandey said that since Najeeb did not say anything in his defence, it was assumed by the university panel, investigating that matter, that he was guilty and hence his expulsion was recommended, on which majority of the members agreed.
Najeebs roommate Qasim, who was also a signatory to the earlier Warden Committee decision also backtracked saying that he was misguided.
Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes
I can never endorse anything that projects a victim as a culprit which the university administration in case of Najeeb is trying to do. Najeeb was my room-mate but when Vikrant and others had gone to my room for campaigning, I was not there as I was on the another floor in support of another candidate. But when I heard the commotion, I came downstairs and saw Najeeb being assaulted at the staircase. He was even beaten up in front of the warden, he said.
No independent witness except the two ABVP members Ankit Kumar and Sunil Pratap saw Najeeb slapping Vikrant but everyone saw Najeeb being assaulted by 10-15 goons who include outsiders as well, Qasim added.
Actor Salman Khan should be ordered to surrender immediately so that he can be sent back to jail in the black-buck poaching case, the Rajasthan government on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court.
BCCL
This after the state government decide to challenge his acquittal in the case by the High Court.
According to the government, the court while acquitting the actor did not consider the statement of his then driver who claimed that Khan had shot the gazelle.
BCCL/ Representative Image
The incident took place in 1998 during the shoot of film 'Hum Saath Saath Hain', when Salman Khan along with Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, and Sonali Bendre, allegedly hunted down two Blackbucks in the Kankani village of Rajasthan.
Ahead of the Diwali, terror outfits, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which have recently suffered significant casualties, may use the festival season to hit back, the Ministry of Home Affairs has warned.
According to intelligence agencies the terrorists may resort to Nice-style lone wolf attacks as they have failed to get adequate logistical support from sleeper cells".
BCCL/representational image
IB officials said that the strike could be carried out by an infiltrator or a sympathizer of the groups who could be activated to strike during the festival season.
Recently the security at Red Fort was stepped up following specific threats of possible attack. Across key cities, including Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata too the alert has been stepped up.
Also read: 'Lone Wolf' Attacks Are ISIS's Deadliest And Most Effective Weapons Yet
BCCL/representational image
The threat of attacks also comes amid an increase in ceasefire violations across LoC from the Pakistani side, which for years the terrorists have used as a cover to infiltrate into the Indian side.
Even the recently busted ISIS module in Kerala had plans to carry out Nice-style terror attacks.
Union Minister Babul Supriyo has reportedly suffered minor injuries after his vehicle was allegedly attacked by a group of TMC workers.
The incident happened in his constituency of Asansol.
ANI
The video footage from the spot, showed stones were pelted at the BJP leader.
His car was heavily damaged by the attackers.
According to reports the attacker were from Bengal's ruling party, Trinamool Congress.
In most of the Indo-Pakistan wars, conflicts didn't start all of a sudden. In fact, history has witnessed that small skirmishes and battles between two armies have led to full fledged war.
Thehindu
The war of 1965 is one of the biggest wars fought by the Indian army, where a large share of its resources got employed. The war began on September 1, 1965, when Pakistan Army entered Chambh sector in Jammu & Kashmir. Two major operations that Pakistan launched to test the Indian, Army the paved way for the full fledged war between two countries.
Operation Gibraltar, launched by Pakistan establishment in August 1965 with nearly 30,000 infiltrators including Pakistan Army regulars.
Wikimedia
Pakistan launched this operation believing that once they infiltrate in Kashmir, the Kashmiris will rise in large numbers against India, meanwhile, they can target Indian Army to take control of the Valley.
Operation Gibraltar had failed miserably, forcing Pakistan to open front in Jammu, so that the intruders can retreat safely.
But before the launch of Operation Gibraltar, Pakistan had launched another Operation in the Rann of Kutch in Sindh in January 1965, which continued to June 1965, and paved way for first the Operation Gibraltar and than the full scale war.
Operation Desert Hawk
Though ever since the partition, Pakistan and India remained in contention over several issues, Kashmir largely remained the core issue between the two neighbours. But other issues too rose occasionally. One such dispute was in Rann of Kutch, the barren land in Indian state of Gujarat. It began in 1956 which ended with India regaining control over the disputed area.
merinews
But in January 1965, Pakistan started patrolling areas under Indian claim line. Pakistani patrolling south of Kanjarkot might have been going on for quite some time without the Indians knowing it. By the time, Indians came to know about regular patrols of Pakistan army in the claimed area, Pakistan had established post in the Kanjarkot area which further irked India. India accused Pakistan of aggression in the Rann of Kutch.
After India lodged a formal protest, it increased its own patrolling activity in the area, but the area full of wet lands was hard to patrol and monitor. Thus, by mid-February 1965, Pakistani forces had dug themselves in around Kanjarkot, the areas which were previously unoccupied.
India objected to it but Pakistan President Ayub claimed that Pakistan had long been occupying the area. In response India moved heavy forces in March-April and established forward military posts.
travelsntrips
Indian response of occupying other posts near the frontier and, reportedly, building an airstrip nearby brought the latent crisis to a head with Pakistan increasing its strength of troops in area. By second week of April 1965, the skirmishes between two armies turned into small scale battles.
Pakistan while enjoying the militarily superior position, moved forcefully against Indian outposts near the border fort of Kanjarkot and garnered a little success in penetrating the Indian defenses.
Adityaaryaarchive.com
Casualties were reported by both sides as the incidences of shooting continued between patrols. On 19 April Pakistan's troops in the Rann of Kutch captured of Biar Bet and came closer to cut right through to the Indian forces to destroy two Indian brigades. But increasing international pressure forced Pakistan to cease fire by April 30.
Partial success prompted Pakistan to move further
thehindu
Partial success it enjoyed in Rann of Kutch, fed the belief of Pakistan that "Hindu army can't stand two strong and timely blows". Thus they planned to further pinch India and this time in Valley through Operation Gibraltar which further snowballed into full fledged war which they badly lost.
The tribunal and what both countries got from Rann of Kutch
In June 1965, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson successfully persuaded both countries to end hostilities and set up a tribunal to resolve the dispute.
madrasregiment
On February 19, 1968, the tribunal bolstered India's claim over 90 per cent of the Rann while conceding remaining 10 per cent area to Pakistan. Both sides accepted the award of the Indo-Pakistan Western Boundary Case Tribunal designated by the UN secretary general. Of its original claim of some 9,100 square kilometers, Pakistan was awarded only about 910 square kilometers.
An immigrant union of Mexicans and Latinos plans to erect a 'wall' - of taco trucks - outside of Trump International Las Vegas hotel, ahead of tomorrow's final presidential debate at a university in the city, BuzzFeed News reported.
AFP
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has during his campaign called Mexicans "rapists" and ranted against immigrants saying he "will build a great, great wall on our southern border" and will have Mexico pay for it.
"As he has demonized Hispanics, women, veterans, and the disabled, we will send him and those who supported him like my opponent Congressman Cresent Hardy a message that we're here and we vote," said Democrat Ruben Kihuen.
The Culinary Union and several other groups aim to have at least five taco trucks outside Trump's hotel, in addition to a banner in the style of a wall that participants will be able to sign.
TASTY SCOOP: A Union Is Building A Wall Of Taco Trucks Outside Trump's Las Vegas Hotel https://t.co/IV03XqwyXb via @buzzfeednews Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) 17 October 2016
"Taco trucks, featuring perennially sky-high approval ratings, were dragged into the 2016 race by a Hispanic Trump surrogate who argued on MSNBC that Latino culture is very dominant, warning that eventually there would be taco trucks on every corner," BuzzFeed News explained.
ALSO READ: Michelle Obama Puts Donald Trump In His Place After He Bragged About Sexually Assaulting Women
AFP
The Trump campaign's response to the 'wall' of taco trucks? --"I never, EVER turn down a chance to eat some good tacos so I say 'thanks' for setting up shop right outside!" said senior adviser and Hispanic outreach director AJ Delgado, to BuzzFeed News.
The Culinary Union has held nearly 10 rallies outside Trump's Las Vegas hotel, since workers voted to unionize and won last December. They argue that Trump is illegally refusing to bargain with them.
ALSO READ: Melania Trump Comes To Her Husband's Rescue, Calls His Comments On Groping Women A 'Boy Talk'
AFP
"Everyone coming together is really about sending a message that we reject Trump and the politics of hate," said Rocio Saenz of iAmerica, another group supporting the Union. Saenz told BuzzFeed News she believes the Latino and the Asian-American communities will come out strongly to repudiate Trump in November.
As the political director of the Culinary Union said, "We're reminding Mr Trump that immigrant workers here and across the country will be watching the debate and voting in November."
ALSO READ: Mexicans, Muslims And Women, How Donald Trump Runs Down Americans Who Are Not White And Male
wikimedia commons
Indias submarine fleet has been given a shot in the arm with the quiet commissioning of the INS Arihant SSBN. The home made submarine is designed to carry missiles with nuclear warheads to impart a deadly blow to the enemy.
But that's not all, here's another exciting bit of news. India and Russia have reportedly signed a deal for leasing another Akula-II class attack submarine. Alexei Nikolski, a columnist with Russian daily Vedomosti said, "According to a source in the Russian defence industry, the long discussed lease to transfer a multipurpose Project 971 nuclear submarine to India from the Russian Navy was signed in Goa." Read more here
Here are 5 more stories that may interest you:
1. Wheelchair-Bound Man Thrashed In A Theatre For Not Standing During National Anthem
twitter
Writer and disability activist, Chorao-based Salil Chaturvedi, was in a multiplex in Panaji when he came across the shock of his life. He was viciously assaulted during the national anthem.
His fault? The spinal injury, due to which, he could not rise to his feet while the national anthem was being played.
According to a report in The Times of India, a 'patriotic' husband-and-wife duo standing and ostentatiously singing in the aisle above took offence on his action.
The man hit, and the woman shouted, why cant he get up?!
Though extremely shaken and physically hurt - by the unprovoked attack, he simply turned around after the anthem, and asked, why dont you just relax? Why do you have to get into peoples faces? You dont know the story here. You will never know. Read more here
2. Passengers' Tweets Save The Day When Sudden Change In Train Schedule Leaves Them Stranded!
Twitter
Several hundred passengers were left stranded on Tuesday after they missed their train due to misinformation on part of the railway authorities.
Due to an operational issue, Kaviguru Express with train number 19709, arrived at platform number 3 instead of 1. It's scheduled time of arrival was 1.55 pm but since it arrived on the wrong platform, 150 passengers missed boarding it because of lack of communication from the authorities. Read more here
3. A Group Of IIT-Gandhinagar Students Came Together To Set Up Library For Village Kids
BCCL
Twelve-year-old Vipul has been beaming with excitement for the past few days
This student of a primary school in Palaj village loves reading, but his supply of books had always been limited due to his meagre family income.
Now, due to the efforts of students of Indian Institute of Technology-Gandhinagar (IITGn), Vipul and many others like him have access to an entire library.
The library of over 100 books in English, Hindi and Gujarati comprising categories like fiction and non-fiction was inaugurated on Monday.
Students from second year of B Tech course of IIT-Gn, including Prateek Verma, Akshat Pachauri, Rajat Ranjan, Yash Patel, Rajat Goel and Rohit Singh have this year decided to set up a mini-library in Palaj Primary School for 250 students in the age group between 7 and 14.
Prateek Verma, who is a part of Team Amalthea, which has launched the initiative, said, "We will increase the number of books in the library in course of time. Course books including books published by NCERT will also be added to the library." Read more here
4. Blind, Lost And Injured - This Stranded Elephant Gets Little Sympathy From Local Villagers
For a 45-year-old blind elephant, stuck in a dam, with a broken foreleg, life is pretty grim at the moment. His pain, however, goes unnoticed by the residents of the village nearest the dam as they have to stay up all night because of his calls and the appearance of other elephants responding to him.
Fondly called Sidda by forest officials, the elephant is a tusker, believed to have fallen into a ditch near the Dodderi village. He then drifted with the water into the Manchanabele dam, 30 kms from Bengaluru nearly 40 days ago.
BCCL
Forest authorities have stepped up efforts to rescue Sidda from the dam and take him to safety of the Bannerghatta National Park. Officials have said that Sidda probably broke his right foreleg when he fell into the ditch. He is in great pain but forest officials have been keeping him company, although all efforts of trying to sedate him seem to fail! Read more here
5. When Indo-Pak Armies Met At Rann of Kutch, Leading To Operation Gibraltar And 1965 War
Thehindu
In most of the Indo-Pakistan wars, conflicts didn't start all of a sudden. In fact, history has witnessed that small skirmishes and battles between two armies have led to full fledged war.
The war of 1965 is one of the biggest wars fought by the Indian army, where a large share of its resources got employed. The war began on September 1, 1965, when Pakistan Army entered Chambh sector in Jammu & Kashmir. Two major operations that Pakistan launched to test the Indian, Army the paved way for the full fledged war between two countries.
Operation Gibraltar, launched by Pakistan establishment in August 1965 with nearly 30,000 infiltrators including Pakistan Army regulars. Read more here.
The Islamic State, facing concerted attacks from Iraq by the Army, Kurdish Peshmerga forces, Shia militias and Sunni tribesmen may use chemical weapons against the civilians, the US has warned.
AFP
Even though Washington says the group's technical ability to develop such weapons is highly limited, they still are not leaving out the possibility.
This comes as the joint troops are making steady progress in gaining ground against ISIS in the outskirts of Mosul.
A combined force of 30,000 coalition troops supported by 5,000 US soldiers and hundreds of British squaddies have cleared 20 villages as come within 30 miles of Mosul.
AFP
According to local media, the operation have forced ISIS to defend their stronghold in Mosul and prevented it carrying out its usual raids on houses in the neighbourhood.
Another report suggested that a lot of the ISIS fighters are fleeing the city with their families to Raqqa in Syria the de-facto capital of the Caliphate.
AFP/ File
However as the war intensifies the hardest hit are the residents of Mosul who according to a UN estimate could be as high as 1.5 million.
Even though the UN and other humanitarian group are preparing for a huge flow of displaced, it will be a dangerous task for them to leave the city besieged by ISIS. This is because for the jihadists they serve as a human shield, making the job of the joint forces difficult. In order to prevent the civilians from fleeing ISIS is believed to have mined the key road and planted IEDs and booby traps.
AFP
Meanwhile, some local media quoting intelligence reports, claim that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the chief of the Islamic State who declared his caliphate from Mosul in 2014 is still living in the city.
He is said to have been surrounded by 8,000 fanatical fighters who are willing to fight till death in the apocalyptic battle which is in the core of the terror group's propaganda.
The Russian Federation continues its aggression against Ukraine and does not comply with agreements, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said at a meeting on Tuesday with representatives of the U.S. Congressmen William Flores and Andrew Harris.
As reported on the official website of Defense Ministry, Poltorak told the congressmen about facts of recorded attacks per day and for the year as a whole.
"We comply with the agreements. Ukraines experience, as well as the experience in Georgia [2008] and Syria [2015-2016] shows any agreement with Russia is worth nothing. In this situation we need to count on reformed and strong army, political and economic support from our partners and the continuation of the sanctions against the aggressor, "the minister said.
During the conversation the parties discussed the situation in Donbas, state of forces withdrawal, as well as the issue of granting a lethal weapon to Ukraine. Poltorak said that Ukraine appealed to NATO member states and the EU with requests of providing a lethal weapon.
In turn Flores assured the U.S. would continue supporting Ukraine both on the political arena and in providing practical assistance.
"The Americans are amazed by Ukrainians resistance and their desire for independence and European future. The U.S. Congress supports Ukraine on the legislative level, including in the maintenance issues and continuation of sanctions against Russia," he said.
During the meeting the sides also discussed issues concerning the urgent needs of the Ukrainian army to ensure current assistance that is provided and will be provided in the future by partners.
Where are all these hot men coming from?
Just days after the hot chaiwallah in Islamabad grabbed eyeballs, now this hot security dude from Singapore is making hearts flip!
changiairport
Meet Lee Minwei - a corporal in Certis Cisco, the organisation that runs security at Changi Airport in Singapore.
Meet the famous CPL (APF) Lee Minwei at Changi Airport. Say hello to our good looking officer when you see him! https://t.co/bj5yFOEwUa pic.twitter.com/CMvmKqt7Wo Certis CISCO (@Certis_CISCO) October 14, 2016
As expected, people started taking note. And before they could make sense of everything, Changi Airport decided to share another really attractive photo of Lee on their Facebook page.
This post went on to be shared over 10,000 times, so much so that when someone asked for the exact terminal he worked at, Changi Airport happily obliged:
Facebook
Even though Lee only wants to focus on his work, people just can't seem to stop ogling at him:
Facebook
Singapore, better lock your doors, the girls are comin'!
The Verkhovna Rada has appealed to the government and parliament of the Netherlands for the completion of the ratification of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU.
Some 235 people's deputies voted for the corresponding decision at the plenary session on Wednesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.
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n October 2016, the city of Rio de Janeiro will host one of the biggest events in the mining sector - the World Mining Congress - WMC 2016. The 24th edition of this event will be promoted by the Brazilian Mining Association - IBRAM, and shall continue to focus its efforts on promoting and providing techno-scientific support for cooperation in support of progress in mining and the development of natural mineral resources.
The World Mining Congress is a world event on mining that takes place every 3 years. Led by a secretariat with organisational status, it is associated with the United Nations and is located in the Central Mining Institute, in the city of Katowice, Poland.
Its goal is to promote and support cooperation, both technically and scientifically, for national and international progress in mining and natural mineral resources.Since its first edition in 1958, WMC has been establishing a world exchange network in various areas of knowledge: science, technology, economics, health and safety in mining activities, and environmental protection. It is a great opportunity to learn about and follow projects that are developed by professionals who, in the most part, work in one of its 42 member countries.
A Justice of the Supreme Court, Inyang Okoro, who is among the seven judges arrested by the operatives of the Department of State Services between October 7 and 8, has accused the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, as the one who instigated his ordeal.
He said in his four-page letter dated October 17, 2016 and addressed to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, that he strongly believed that Amaechi had a hand in his travails because the Supreme Court ruled against the All Progressives Congress governorship candidates in Abia, Akwa Ibom and Rivers states.
He also said during the raid on his house in Abuja which started around 9pm on October 7 and ended at about 1am on October 8 by the DSS operatives, the sums of $38,800 and N3.5m were recovered in his residence.
He said the sums of money recovered during the search of his home by so many heavily armed men were the balance of his unspent estacode for the past three years.
On the involvement of Amaechi in his ordeals, the Justice of the apex court said both the minister and the APCs governorship candidate in Akwa Ibom State in the 2015 poll, Mr. Umana Umana, made attempts to use him to influence the decision of the Supreme Court on the election cases.
He said both men at different times paid him visits in their bid to influence the apex courts decisions.
Okoro said during Amaechis visit, the former Rivers State governor said President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC wanted him (Okoro) to help in influencing the Supreme Court to deliver judgments in favour of the party.
He said Amaechi claimed to have sponsored Umanas election and as such could not afford not to win the case that was to later come before the apex court.
Reacting, Amaechi described the allegation by the judge as a figment of his imagination,
He denied the allegation that he approached the judge for a favourable judgment.
The former governor of Rivers State, who stated this in a statement by his media office, asked the judge to respond to the corruption allegation levelled against him.
The statement said, This accusation from Justice Okoro against Amaechi is a figment of his imagination, concocted to obfuscate and politicise the real issues for his arrest and the DSS investigation of allegations of corruption against him.
The claims by Justice Okoro against Amaechi are blatant lies, bereft of any iota of truth or even logic. Amaechi did not, and has never approached Justice Okoro in respect of the cases Okoro mentioned or any other case.
This is a cheap attempt, albeit political move to drag the name of Amaechi into something he knows nothing about.
Justice Okoro should face his issues and leave Amaechi out of it. He will be hearing from our lawyers.
Justice Okoro also alleged that Umana promised to be paying him millions of naira if he (Okoro) cooperated.
He said, My Lord, I strongly believe that this my travail is not unconnected with the verbal report I made to you on 1st of February, 2016 about the visit to my official residence by H/E Rotimi Amaechi, former Governor of Rivers State and now Minister of Transportation.
In that report, I told you My Lord, that Mr. Amaechi said that the President of Nigeria and the All Progressives Congress mandated him to inform me that they must win their election apppeals in respect of Rivers State, Akwa Ibom State and Abia State at all costs. For Akwa Ibom State, he alleged that he sponsored Mr. Umana Umana, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress for that election and that if he lost the Akwa Ibom appeal, he would have lost a fortune.
Mr. Amaechi also said that he had already visited you and that you had agreed to make me a member of the panel that would hear the appeals. He further told me that Mr. Umana would be paying me millions of naira monthly if I cooperated with them.
Source: Punch
Thousands of Argentine women will take to the streets of Buenos Aires to protest the fatal rape of a 16-year old girl, Lucia Perez.
Perez died in early October after she was dropped off at the hospital by two men who claimed she had overdosed on drugs. Doctors later found evidence that she was raped.
Three men have been arrested in connection with the indident as authorities say shee was drugged with cocaine before shebwas raped by the men. Lucias mother, Marta, said: We cant understand such barbarity. Its impossible to understand.
Activists have called on women to wear black and walk out of their offfices at midday to protest the incident.
President Muhammadu Buhari will on Wednesday meet the 21 Chibok girls who were released by Boko Haram on October 13, and their families at the State House, Abuja.
The president is yet to meet the girls as he was in Germany for talks with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel a few hours after the girls were released. They were received instead by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on his behalf.
The girls are part of the over 200 schoolgirls who were in April, 2014 abducted from a government secondary school in Chibok, Borno state, by Boko Haram insurgents.
Their release was brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss government. They have been reunited with their family.
It has been reported that the Islamic State-allied Boko Haram faction is willing to free 83 more girls if the Nigerian government is ready to negotiate.
There are also claims that about 100 of the girls are with the Abubakar Shekau faction.
SEE ALSO: Buharis daughter, group float Chibok girls fund, BBOG kicks
Rubbish dumps are gradually taking over Alagbole, Olori, Abule Ekun and Oke Aro communities, in the Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State, as every available space and drainage channels have been turned into illegal dumps.
It was gathered that the development was the consequence of lack of government rubbish dumps in the communities.
An environmental expert said the indiscriminate waste disposal in the area was an invitation to an epidemic.
Our correspondent, who visited some of the illegal rubbish dumps, observed that the dumps were located at the heart of the communities.
All the dumps visited were manned by attendants, who collected money before anyone disposed refuse.
The men declined comment on their mode of operation and the management of the dumps.
PUNCH Metro also observed that the dump in Alagbole was close to a river.
The attendant at the site, who refused to disclose his identity, said, Baale is the person who asked us to fill this place (the river). We dont collect more than N100 from whoever comes to dispose of refuse. Once they bring their waste, we receive them. We normally burn everything during the dry season.
At the dump in Oke-Aro, the attendant did not allow our correspondent access to the site, insisting that only his boss could give the permission.
A resident, who identified himself as Saga, however, said, We pay N300 per trip to dump our refuse.
A landlord at the Obanla area of Enilolobo, Oke Aro, where a rubbish dump is situated, Mr. Alabi Ogunbukola, lamented the foul smell in the area caused by the dump.
Ogunbukola said, The smoke and foul smell from the dump have been discouraging people, especially tenants, from staying here. There is no fresh air to breathe around here. Some residents of this densely-populated community suffered respiratory diseases, and it is not unconnected with the presence of the dump.
A community development association leader in Olori, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said attempts to stop indiscriminate disposal of refuse in the area had failed.
In 2012, we attempted to stop the use of that place as a refuse dump. I visited the baale to say it was not safe for residents, but my efforts failed. They probably want to fill that place up so as to sell it, he said.
Also, a top government source told our correspondent that the Oke Aro rubbish dump was approved by the Ifo LGA.
However, the Commissioner for Environment, Ogun State, Mr. Bolaji Oyeleye, said there was no government approved rubbish dump in the Akute and Alagbole areas.
There is no official dump in the Alagbole and Akute areas, but there are pockets of places where residents have been dumping their refuse, Oyeleye said.
An environmental expert, Mrs. Nike Olokode, lamented the indiscriminate waste disposal in the area, adding that it exposed residents to environmental health hazard.
Besides perennial flooding, she noted that an epidemic was inevitable if the improper waste disposal was not decisively addressed in the area.
She said, People are just eager to see their domestic waste leave their premises. They are ignorant that it comes back to them some other ways.
Men who use carts to collect domestic waste for a fee and managers of sites, where such are dumped, lack required competence. Therefore, disposed wastes are fed back into the system through air and water. Consequently, ill health, environmental insanitary and similar hazard may result.
Source: Punch
The international community has had its eyebrows raised following the emergence of a photograph showing an Indonesian woman caned on Monday in front of a jeering crowd after being accused of standing too close to her boyfriend.
The unidentified woman was among 13 people flogged in Aceh province on the western island of Sumatra for allegedly breaking strict Islamic laws, which ban intimate behaviour such as touching, hugging, and kissing between unmarried people.
Photographs which show the young woman crying out in pain have been shared by local and international media, amid growing concerns over the rising number of people subjected to corporal punishment in the region.
Indonesia is the worlds most populous Muslim-majority country, but Aceh is the only province which imposes sharia law.
People in the region can be flogged for a number of offences, including gambling, drinking alcohol, and gay sex, in addition to any consensual sex outside of marriage.
Operatives of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Rivers State Police Command have smashed a kidnap gang responsible for numerous abduction cases in Eleme area of the state.
Acting on a tip-off, the operatives were able to arrest stanley Mgbiri, Mkpowu Blessing, and Micheal Hope, who are serial kidnappers terrorizing the axis. The trio are responsible for the kidnap of a nine (9) year old girl, Miracle John, at Igbo Etche.
The suspects were arrested when they threatened to kidnap one Mr. Osato Nwakaji from Onne. They asked him to pay the sum of N3 million into a certain bank account.
They threatened to kidnap him as they did to a certain staff of NNPC whom they collected a ransom of N12 million from and yet killed the man.
As a bait, Mr Nwakaji paid the sum of N100,000.00 into their account, this lead to their arrests as they were caught wile attempting to withdraw it.
They are presently helping the Police as further investigation is ongoing, and the suspects will be charged to court as soon as investigations are over.
According to the Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Omoni Nnamdi, the Commissioner of Police, CP. Francis M. Odesanya, is assuring the people of Rivers State of the resolute of the Command to fight crime and get rid of all the criminal elements in the state.
He enjoins all members of the public to cooperate with the State Command in its determination to ensure safety for all. He appreciates public cooperation in providing useful information to fight kidnappers and other criminal elements in the state.
Barack and Michelle Obama hosted their final state dinner at the White House on Tuesday night.
First Lady Michelle Obama dazzled the crowd in a floor-length rose gold Atelier Versace gown as she joined her husband to welcome visiting Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his wife, Agnese Landini.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzis wife Agnese Landini also sparkled in a floor-length, silver, and gray gown as the First Families stepped inside the White House for the final state dinner.
The Nasarawa State Government says it has removed five principals from different schools for charging fees from students.
Ramatu Ajuji-Abubakar, Nasarawa State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, made this known during an interview with newsmen in Lafia on Tuesday.
From our investigation so far, we discovered and have removed five principals of different schools for charging students fees, she said.
She further threatened to sanction any principal in public schools caught collecting fees from students.
According to her, the free education policy of the state government is still in force from primary to secondary levels.
Students are not supposed to pay any money and any principal caught extorting money from the unsuspecting students in the name of school fees would be sanctioned.
Students in all the public boarding schools across the state are not to pay money or give any food item as the government has taken full charge of their feeding, the commissioner said.
She explained that the state government, through the ministry, had set machinery in motion to check illegal practices by principals.
Ms. Ajuji-Abubakar added that the government has provided massive infrastructure at both primary and secondary schools in the state in order to provide environment conducive for teachers and students.
She said in spite of the huge investments of government in providing infrastructure and feeding for boarding students, government was still battling with the high influx of students from private schools.
She cautioned the leadership of the Parent-Teacher Association in the state not to charge the students any money without permission from the ministry as doing so would not be tolerated.
Ukraine considers the upcoming meeting in Berlin as a platform to demonstrate Russias unwillingness to fulfill Minsk agreements, which will result in the extension of sanctions at the summit of the European Council on October 20, Deputy Head of Presidential Administration of Ukraine Kostiantyn Yeliseyev has said.
"This meeting is considered in the context of the Summit of the European Council, which is to be held in Brussels on October 20, where the development strategy of the EU's relations with the Russian Federation will be considered on the basis of new conditions. Therefore, "Normandy format" summit is another opportunity to demonstrate its inability or unwillingness to fulfill Minsk agreements to Russia, and the result of this unwillingness will be the EU's decision to extend the sanctions or tighten them, if necessary," he said on air of 5 TV channel on Tuesday night.
Yeliseyev also said that for Ukraine the key issues of the meeting are: access to the Special Mission of the OSCE border, the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the territory of Donbas, the release of hostages, ensuring of holding local elections in Donbas region in the future by ensuring the work of the armed OSCE mission, as well as the removal of all "fake" structures of the executive and legislative branches of the so-called "LPR" and "DPR".
The AP deputy head emphasized the importance of taking the development initiatives of the 'road map' of implementation of the Minsk agreements by all partners.
A new social networking app named Rich Kids has been launched presumably for affluent consumers.
The app is available on Apples App Store, and offers free membership via Facebook login. Non-paying users who choose to sign up will be able to view and follow the young and wealthy. Only Rich Kids members are allowed to post content on this ultra-exclusive social network.
The app crowns itself as the worlds most exclusive social network, and separates itself from the regular, free-to-use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by charging its users a $1,000 monthly fee for premium membership.
Its site says, Being rich is boring when nobody sees you.
According to Rich Kids developer, the app was created for more privileged people who want to stand apart from the rest of the users. It promises to offer its wealthy members the ability to gain new followers they might not be able to find among the millions of users on Instagram.
The Rich Kids team states Anyone can use #rkoi or #richkids hashtag on Instagram or pose next to a luxury car on a parking lot. But not on Rich Kids.
We created something different. A new social network where our members can really stand out and be visible in an elegant and meaningful way. Share their life with other users and build a true fan base.
Only members of Rich Kids can share photos. To become a member, users have to subscribe to Rich Kids Membership. To ensure the quality and exclusivity of our members the membership is set to be $1,000 per month, they added.
The developers claim that the high payment charges are for maintaining the quality and exclusivity of the wealthy members.
Rich Kids CEO, Juraj Ivan, said that a third of the membership fee will go to the education of poor kids.
With proper education, they have a chance for a better life, its website added.
The app is already gaining members. Robert Cavalli, son of a renowned fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, has been reported to be one of the first members of the app.
Turkish real estate empire heir, Emir Bahadir and Ukrainian socialite Julia Stakhiva have also been reported to have joined.
The 21st century experienced its first global melt down in the middle of 2007 when the world stock markets fell, large financial institutions collapsed and governments in even the wealthiest nations came up with rescue packages to bail out their financial systems.
Within a short while, the world had serious financial crisis on its hand. The military was one of the few institutions that withstood the onslaught and continued its operations in most countries of theworld. Defence and economy are deeply intertwined and the tendency to apply an economically driven approach towards defence will always occur in most climes.
Defence is not only a question of means, it is also a question of planning, training and organising, it is a question of strategy. That strategy has been replicated in the Nigerian army which has fortified the defence of the country and now emerging as a force that will withstand another economy or global meltdown that is already in the offing.
With a period of one year, the man at the helms of affairs of the Nigerian Army has brought about the professionalism that was fading away. Frugality, simplicity and conservation is what is required by any administrator in this era when the national reserves are dwindling.
The Chief of Army Staff(COAS), Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, has hit the ground running right from the onset and made the management more pronounced by carrying out forensic audit of its units, formations and all operations across the country in July this year, to ensure judicious use of funds for North East operations.
The COASs management strategy which is part of efforts to ensure prudent utilisation of resources allocated to the army and ensure that they justify what was being used to prosecute their operations goes a long way in solving the hydra-headed issues that is in Nigeria.
The prudence and forensic audit goes a long way in solving the Nigerian battle with the onerous task of trying to bridge the wide infrastructural chasm that exists in every sector of the nation. The North-Eastern part ofthe country which has been the hotbed of the terrorist is being liberated on daily basis, thereby giving way for the economic activities there to pick up since the past one year, due to the professionalism of the manager of the army-Burutai.
Since he assumed office, over 20,000 people who were kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorists in Nigerias northeast have been rescued from captivity. This goes along way in raising the morale of the civil populace and the residents of the most affected areas of terrorists attack. The morale in question is also directed to the personnel of the Nigerian army, who are ready to work well under the right leadership- morale to work well , inspite of the dwindling reserves.
The Chief of Army Staff brought out the best with the little resources at his disposal to ensure the benefit of soldiers in the country and also to justify what was being used to prosecute their operations. By ensuring the inclusion of barracks renovation in the 2016 federal budget, which has resulted in the massive renovation of residential and office accommodation, the building of new barracks for soldiers across the country.
The Maxwell Khobe Cantonment Jos, Nigerian Army School of Artillery in Kachia Kaduna State, Office of the Military Secretary,the ongoing army barracks building in Otukpo, Benue state and others, Burutai has demonstrated the management trait required from a leader.
A well-ordered modern state is one that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and that allows domestic markets tooperate. Internationally, where order is more tenuous, residual concerns about the coercive use of force, even if a low probability, can have important effects including a stabilising effect. Burutai has created this stabilising effect within a period of one year in office by constantly appealing to the public to always avail the military or any nearby security agency of any useful information that would lead to the continued success inthe counter-insurgency war.
The meetings with security heads including the police, Department of State Services and representatives of companies also give the stabilising effect to the people required from a COAS. His recent proposal to the militants in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria to speak with one voice, if they expect to be taken seriously is a right step in unifying the civil populace for optimum result.
The proliferation of groups, who claim to be Niger Delta militants, do not come across as a genuine move for peace, as Burutai affirmed this month, is step in the right direction and the Exercise Crocodile Smile not to be mistaken for an invasion in the Niger Delta region sheds more insight about the armys operations. Burutais mandate to military personnel to respect the rights of law abiding citizens in their areas of operation whom he said were critical to the success of the exercise also shows a leader that respects human rights of individuals.
This sensitisation of the public from him goes a long way in allowing the public to know what the army is doing in the Niger Delta. The army extends its cordiality in the region by offering free medical services to the people. The team of Operation Crocodile Smile has demonstrated it in communities in Delta ,Rivers and Bayelsa states and other places. To strengthen this friendship, soldiers have gone out of the normal line of duty to tame kidnappings and abductions by engaging in rescue operations.
They have rescued several innocent persons from kidnappers and petty criminals and the victims have been reunited with their families. Burutais declaration as an incentive to soldiers currently in the war front with Boko Haram insurgents in the North-East zone of Nigeria or elsewhere in the country would have personal houses upon retirement would definitely have a multiplier effect on every facet of the army.
By directing the army Post-Housing Development Directorate to work out modalities for this housing scheme and the Nigerian Army headquarters unrelenting efforts to stand by soldiers wishing to secure mortgage loans for personal housing projects, the COAS has turned things around for the benefits of all.
Indeed, military power provides a degree of security that is to order as oxygen is to breathing, with the right leadership at the helm of affairs. In the twenty-first century, where military power does not have the same utility for states that it had in the twentieth century, but remains the pivot for stability, it will remain a crucial component of power in world politics.
The recurring financial meltdown that has also hit Nigeria will be managed well if the right COAS is in place.
Source: Vanguard
Nigerian Newspaper Headlines October 19:
Punch
The Federal Inland Revenue Service on Tuesday sealed the premises of two oil servicing companies for evading tax worth over N500m in Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta State.
Guardian
The Nigeria Army has confirmed an attack on troops in the border town of Gashigar by Boko Haram insurgents injuring 13 soldiers, while some are missing.
Vanguard
More than 300,000 Nigerians affected by the insurgency in the North-East are to benefit from an 11 million Euros Oxfam intervention fund to aid food production in impacted communities.
Leadership
The House of Representatives has expressed concern over the likely relocation of agriculture value chain companies as well as non-agriculture-related ones from the country owing to the scarcity of foreign exchange in the country.
Premium Times
Another Nigerian judge caught in the State Security Service crackdown on senior judicial officers has written to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mahmud Mohammed, stating how the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, allegedly tried to manipulate him.
The Lagos State Command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps has arrested a driver, Adebiyi Yusuf, for allegedly engaging in illegal oil bunkering and adulteration of diesel.
Thirty-two-year old Yusuf was apprehended along with one Paul Ifeakandu on Saturday on the premises of a complex on Jimoh Odutola Street, Surulere, Lagos, where they were reportedly selling the product.
PUNCH Metro gathered that eight drums and 14 jerrycans of adulterated diesel; six drums of chemicals; six pumping machines and two number plates, among other items, were recovered from the premises.
Tanks said to be 11,000 litres each were also reportedly mounted on the premises.
Our correspondent learnt that the anti-vandal team of the corps, acting on a tip-off, swooped on the suspects around 4pm on Satuday. They were paraded on Tuesday at the NSCDC state commands headquarters in Ikeja.
Forty-five-year-old Ifeakandu, who hails from Anambra State, said he only assisted the owner of the factory, identified as Okechukwu, to offload the product from tankers.
He said, The product belongs to Mr. Okechukwu. He is also from Anambra State. I help him to offload the diesel. According to him, he buys the product from a depot in Apapa. I have been working with Mr. Okechukwu for two years now. He gives me N3,000 for every offloading I do.
However, Yusuf, who claimed to be a Forte Oil tanker driver, denied his involvement in the act, saying he was ill and decided to sleep inside a vehicle parked on the premises when the operatives nabbed him.
Yususf, who also claimed to be a Lagos State indigene, said in Yoruba that he started working for the oil company in January, 2015.
He said, I was arrested while sleeping in a vehicle on the premises. I told the officers that I am an assistant driver with Forte Oil and not an oil thief, but they ignored my explanation.
There are mechanics and some people selling gas on the premises. I dont know why they spared them and arrested me. I dont know anything about the seized product.
The Lagos State Commandant of the NSCDC, Tajudeen Balogun, however, said the suspects were culpable of dealing in adulterated and illegal oil bunkering.
He said, They (the suspects) dont have licence from the appropriate agency. It looks like they are working for somebody.
The commandant added that the suspects would be charged to court soon.
Forte Oil Plc, however, denied that Yusuf was its worker.
An official of the firm, who did not want his name in print, said, We dont have tanker drivers. He may be working for a transporter. Transporters are independent of our company. We have checked his name in our database; the suspect is not known to us. The company is not affiliated to this case.
Source: Punch
A former Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, has told the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that he gave the sum of N2.3bn to the Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, in the run-up to the Ekiti State governorship election in 2014.
Obanikoro was said to have also told operatives that N60m was converted to dollars at N168 per to a dollar and given to Fayose.
The PUNCH learnt on Tuesday that the minister told operatives of the anti-graft commission, who continued his interrogation in Abuja on Tuesday, that he personally handed over N5,357,357 to the governor on an occasion.
A top operative of the commission, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity, said Obanikoro told his interrogators that the money was transferred to Fayose on the instruction of the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, (retd.).
The source alleged that following the instructions from the former NSA, the sum of N1.3bn was brought for transfer to Fayose by Diamond Bank in a bullion van.
Obanikoro was also said to have told the EFCC operatives that Agbele received the money in the presence of the ex-ministers Aide De Camp, one Lt. Adewale, and officials of Diamond Bank at the Lagos airport.
The source added, The former minister, Obanikoro has made some revelations. You know that he responded to a petition from the office of the NSA dated 28/11/2015 under the category Payment without award of contracts.
He admitted that N2.23bn was transferred to Macnamara for onward transfer to Governor Ayodele Fayose. He claimed that it was done on the instructions of the NSA.
He also said he handed over N5,357,357 to Fayose.
Obanikoro told the commission that the N1.3bn was received by Mr. Biodun Agbele, one of Fayoses associates, in the presence of his (Obanikoro) ADC, one Lt. Adewale, and bank officials.
The former minister was said to have told his interrogators that while he had no interaction with the officials of the bank, he called Fayose to have his consent to hand over the money to Agbele.
The source stated that Obanikoro also told his interrogators that Agbele used his (Obanikoro) mobile to speak to Fayose to confirm receipt of the money.
Obanikoro also said the money was moved from the Lagos airport to Akure airport in two flights.
He said he instructed that the money be handed over to the governor before leaving with the first flight, the source said.
The source said the ex-defence minister, however, denied ownership of Sylvan Mcnamara, the company that received N4.685bn from the ONSA between April 4, 2014 and November 13, 2014.
The anti-graft agency had alleged that Obanikoros sons, Babajide and Gbolahan, were directors in Sylvan Mcnamara as of the time the money was paid into the companys account.
The former minister was quoted to have admitted that he introduced the owner of the firm, whose name was given as Mr. Kareem Taiwo, to the former NSA in the days of heightened fear of possible Boko Haram attacks on Lagos and the South-West.
The source stated, He denied being the owner of the company but admitted introducing the owner of the company, one Mr. Kareem Taiwo, to the NSA during the days of the threat of Boko Haram in Lagos and the South-West.
He said the company was introduced to the ONSA at a time government was taking a decision to incorporate local input into intelligence gathering to prevent terrorists attacks in Lagos and the South-West.
The PUNCH learnt that the former minister was being questioned by the commission for receipt of funds from the ONSA without contract awards.
The firm, which received the money from the ONSA, Mcnamara, was said to be listed as number 78 among companies that received funds from the ONSA.
Our correspondent learnt that Obanikoro was still being detained by the EFCC as of the time of fling this report on Tuesday night to continue with the agencys investigations on Wednesday.
Source: Punch
The Kano State Police Command said it arrested eleven suspected kidnappers in the notorious Falgore forest in Doguwa local government area of the state.
The state Commissioner of Police, Rabiu Yusuf, made the disclosure on Tuesday in Kano while briefing journalists.
He said the police anti-kidnap squad successfully rescued 10 victims from the suspected kidnappers in the forest.
He added that the kidnappers were arrested on Tuesday, October 11, following intelligence report.
The anti-kidnapping squad on receipt of intelligence report, launched a major offensive into the notorious criminal camp inside Falgore forest, he said.
Yusuf said that during the operation which lasted for one hour, the police and the kidnappers exchanged fierce gun duel which resulted in the arrest of the suspects and rescue of the 10 kidnapped victims.
According to the police commissioner, some of the suspected kidnappers escaped into the thick forest with bullet wounds.
The police boss said that during mop-up operations, two victims, Bello Saleh and Mohammmed Sani of Rafin Kura Village, who were abducted on the same day, were rescued from the forest.
Mr. Yusuf listed items recovered from the forest to include one AK- 47 rifle, two fully loaded magazines, 250 rounds of live 7.62 mm ammunition, eight Bajaj Boxer motorcycles, masks and other personal belongings.
He said that all the rescued victims had undergone post trauma counselling and medical examination and would be formally handed over to their respective families.
The police chief promised that the squad would to carry out similar operations in the area until all criminals in the forest were completely fished out and brought to book.
The River State Police Command said it has apprehended three suspected fraudsters for circulating fake naira notes.
The suspects, including a woman named Helen Okeke, were said to have been arrested, Tuesday, by operatives from the Rumuepirikom Division of the State Police Command. The other suspects are one Andrew Ogah and Ozoemena Okeke.
The suspects photocopied N500 and N1000 denominations of the Nigerian currencies and were arrested when one of them, Mr. Ogah, attempted to deposit the money in a bank, the police spokesman in the state, DSP, Omoni Nnamdi, said.
Mr. Nnamdi, said the suspects would be charged to court when the police conclude their investigation.
As part of measures to reduce crime across Nigeria, the Nigeria Police has launched the Eminent Persons and Stakeholders Forum in Osun State.
The police said security of lives and property must be taken as the business of every individual and not of security personnel alone.
The Assistant Inspector of Police in charge of Zone 11, Dan Bature, conducted the inauguration on Tuesday at the Police Headquarters in Osogbo, the Osun State capital in southwest Nigeria.
He stressed the need for a cordial relationship between the police and members of the society, saying it is imperative for the enhancement of security.
Highlighting the purpose of the forum, Mr Bature noted that new trends of crime were experienced across the country.
On his part, the Commissioner of Police in the state, Simian Adeoye, explained that the inauguration was in line with the directive of the Inspector General of Police, Mr Ibrahim Idris.
He advocated the support and cooperation of every stakeholder towards ensuring proactive and effective policing in the state.
Stakeholders at the event, Samson Adewole and DIG Adeoye Adedayo (rtd), urged the residents to see the security of lives and property as a collective responsibility.
The police have launched similar forum in different states, as a strategy to maintain peace and secure lives and property of residents of different communities.
A Saudi prince, Turki bin Saud al-Kabir has been executed for murder.
Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was put to death for the murder of a man, Adel bin Suleiman al-Muhaimeed, during a brawl in Riyadh three years ago.
He was convicted by a General court but the manner of his execution was not disclosed.
The family of Adel bin Suleiman al-Muhaimeed reportedly refused financial incentive from the Prince in order for them not to demand the death sentence. It is the first time in decades that a member of the Royal Family will be put to death.
For the first time in 124 years, Vogue Magazine has endorsed a candidate for the American Presidential election. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Presidential candidate is Vogues choice for the Presidency head of her Republican rival, Donald Trump.
Editors in chief have made their opinions known from time to time, but the magazine has never spoken in an election with a single voice,
Given the profound stakes of this [election], and the history that stands to be made, we feel that should change, the piece said.
We understand that Clinton has not always been a perfect candidate, yet her fierce intelligence and considerable experience are reflected in policies and positions that are clear, sound, and hopeful, the endorsement continued.
Vogues endorsement will come as a huge boost to Clinton ahead of the final Presidential debate on Wednesday night.
As of Wednesday morning, Ukraine has not removed its forces and equipment from Stanytsia Luhanska in view of the enemy not having observed the ceasefire for seven days, Donbas operation headquarters spokesman Viktor Shubets told Interfax.
"Under the agreements, the ceasefire should last seven days. But we are not losing hope that the opposite side will honor its obligations, and then the separation of forces and equipment will take place," he said.
He said of the current situation in the Stanytsia Luhanska area: "Yesterday there was no shelling there" and "it was also quiet there between midnight and ten in the morning."
Representatives of the Luhansk People's Republic said earlier they were ready for another attempt to withdraw forces and equipment in the Stanytsia Luhanska area on October 19.
With its pulling of the plug on Small Business Server (SBS) in 2011, Microsoft encouraged small business (those with as many as 500 users and 500 devices) to go with the new Essentials version of Windows Server. Windows Server 2016, now available for download, has gotten a lot of attention -- the 2016 version of Windows Server Essentials, not so much.
Microsoft's server portfolio had so many great tools that small IT shops requested, but they didnt want -- or couldn't afford -- to set up the required infrastructure. To accomplish that ease, Microsoft put everything in the SBS box: Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, and so on. But today, small IT shops can use Office 365 instead.
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Why bother with Windows Server Essentials now? Because although you can rely entirely on Office 365 in the cloud, chances are you want more local control and hands-on capabilities on local servers. That's the main reason to use Windows Server Essentials, as a supplement to Office 365. (Yes, you can also use Windows Server Essentials in an on-premises-only deployment for basic services.)
By integrating your Windows Essentials Server with Office 365, you can perform much of the administration through the Dashboard on your server. For example, you can create accounts easily; you can manage license assignments; password changes made on-premises are synced to Office 365; and you can manage mobile devices and other services from the server. Granted, you could do this from the Office 365 admin center too, but it's so much easier to have everything in one place.
The Essentials Experience server role, shown in Figure 1, is how you connect Windows Server Essentials to Office 365. It contains wizards to handle complex integrations, such as synchronizing directories and setting up single sign-on. Remember: The Office 365 integration works only with a single domain controller, and the wizard must run on that domain controller.
Figure 1: The Essentials Experience server role helps you extend the functionality of your server to the cloud-based Office 365.
To illustrate how Windows Server Essentials works, I set up a single Windows Server 2016 server and configured Active Directory so that it would be the sole domain controller for my domain. I then enabled the Essentials role and let it install the role and features needed for a Windows Server Essentials server. Once the role was installed, I selected the Essentials shortcut on my desktop to open the Essentials Dashboard (shown in Figure 2).
Figure 2: The Windows Server Essentials dashboard.
Then I selected the Services option to get a list of integration options for cloud services and on-premises Exchange (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Using the Essentials dashboard to configure your Office 365 connection.
Note that Azure Active Directory and Intune are included in the list of services. New to the 2016 version, Windows Server Essentials can integrate with Azure Site Recovery Services, which allows for real-time replication of your server/site for recovery purposes. It can also integrate with Azure Virtual networking to allow for point-to-point (P2P) or site-to-site (S2S) virtual private networks so that when you have split resources (some in the cloud and some on-premises) they appear to fall under one local network.
To kick off the wizard, you click the integration link and follow the prompts. You can either create a subscription for Office 365 or use an existing one through the wizard. Once the wizard has completed, you can use the dashboard from the server to add and manage user accounts in Office 365.
Hat tip to Andrew Higginbotham, an Exchange MCM and Microsoft MVP, for suggesting I cover Windows Server Essentials 2016 in this column.
You'd be forgiven if you were a little suspicious of Google's resolve in the smartphone game. This is, after all, the company that's used a revolving door to partner with every major player/competitor except Apple for each generation of Nexus device. This is the company that bought Motorola, strip-mined it for patents, and sold the husk to Lenovo.
That being said, it's impossible not to pay attention when Google presents its new smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL, which are billed as "the first phones made by Google."
[ Android is now ready for real usage in the enterprise. Read InfoWorld's in-depth guide on how to make Android a serious part of your business. | Get the best office apps for your Android device. ]
The Pixels are indeed the first phones to carry only Google's name, with no credit to a development partner. The Google Nexuses were co-branded with their manufacturer. But if you've tried out a lot of smartphones (and done a bit of online research) you'll realize that the Pixels are very much the work of HTC -- which is a good thing.
The smaller Pixel has a 5-inch display; it measures 5.7 x 2.75 inches, about 0.1 in. longer than the Samsung Galaxy S7, and 0.3 inches longer and 0.1 inches wider than an iPhone 7. The XL, which has a 5.5-inch display, measures 6.1 x 3 inches, about 0.1 inches bigger in both dimensions than a Galaxy S7 Edge, and about 0.1 inches shorter and the same width as an iPhone 7 Plus. Both Pixel phones come in Quite Black, Very Silver, and (in a limited edition) Really Blue. (I just write these, I don't make 'em up.)
Mentioned in this article Pixel XL $769.00 MSRP $769.00 See it on Google
The Pixel XL that Google made available for review is more than a little reminiscent of the HTC 10, a phone I reviewed in April and liked very much. The Pixels use the same solid aluminum case, with chamfers along the rounded edges that make it comfortable to hold. The back is flat, without any bulge for the fingerprint sensor or camera. The top third of the back, though, has a glossy plastic insert. The fit and finish are perfect, but it's unclear why Google didn't use metal for the whole back. One probable reason may be to enhance radio power, but it's a bit of an odd look.
There's a knurled power button and volume rocker on the right edge, a SIM drawer on the left, a single speaker with two ports and a USB-C socket on the bottom, and a headphone jack on the top. The Google branding is subtle to the point of invisibility: a small phone-color logo on the bottom of the back.
The displays are AMOLED and covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 4. The Pixel's screen is full HD (1920 x 1080 at 441ppi) and the XL's is quad HD (2560 x 1440 at 534ppi). The display is okay; I've seen better, and there's no evident way to adjust the color accuracy.
Mentioned in this article Pixel $649.00 MSRP $649.00 See it on Google
There's very little bezel along the left and right edges. The Back, Home, and Recent buttons are done in software on the screen, not as hard buttons on the phone's chin. The chin, interestingly, is featureless: no mic, no buttons, no obvious sensors (although it's a sure bet that there are proximity sensors underneath).
The internals are about what you'd expect from a high-end phone: a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 quad-core processor, 4GM of RAM, either 32GB or 128GB of local storage (although no provision for an SD card). The Pixel's battery is 2770mAh, and the XL's is 3450mAh.
I ran the AnTuTu Benchmark suite on the XL review unit, which yielded a score of 140747, compared to 134599 for the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and 133781 for the iPhone 6S. (Scores for the iPhone 7 phones weren't available for comparison.) The higher benchmark is not surprising: Qualcomm says the Pixel's Snapdragon 821 runs about 10 percent faster than the S7 Edge's 820. Sure enough, the Pixel benchmarks are about 6 percent higher.
There's more to a benchmark than raw processor power, of course. And, in fact, the 821 chip also promises better battery life. The Pixel XL lasted about 4.5 hours in the AnTuTu battery drain test; in comparison, the Galaxy S7 Edge got about 4 hours out of a 5 percent bigger battery.
Using Qualcomm's increasingly common Quick Charge 3.0, the Pixel XL charged from zero to 100 percent in about two hours. The drawback: Quick Charge 3.0 requires a fairly chunky wall plug. The other drawback: Charging through a standard USB 3.0 port is very slow, on the order of seven hours to go from 50 percent to 100 percent.
Subjectively, the Pixel XL ran quickly with no evident delay and no freezes or crashes during testing.
Because of recent events with Samsung's Note 7, I've started to play closer attention to battery temperature. The Pixel XL's battery never reached higher than 110F, even during stressful rapid charge or high demands of benchmarks. In normal use, the battery never even felt warm.
Pixel phones do not support wireless charging. There is an NFC chip that supports Android Pay.
Unlike some current top-of-the-line phones, you won't want to bring the Pixel swimming. Google advises that the phones have a penetration rating of IP53. That means it won't get hurt by dust, and it will survive getting sprayed and splashed a little. Don't use it as a waterski for your pet squirrel, though.
Network flexibility
Where you can buy the Pixel gives an important clue into how the phone fits into Google's plans. You can get it from Verizon (or one of its resellers, including Best Buy) or from Google itself as part of its Project Fi smartphone service. Verizon's core phone network uses the CDMA standard, which only Sprint also uses. Its data network, however, runs on 4G LTE, which uses the global GSM standard. The review unit came with a Verizon 4G LTE SIM card. A close look at the phone's settings reveals that Pixels are designed to use the LTE network for calls and data whenever possible.
Moreover, the phone does not appear to be locked. I put a Project Fi SIM into the Pixel (which, again, was sent with a Verizon SIM and would reasonably be expected to be locked into Verizon), and it worked fine using Fi's mix of GSM and Wi-Fi.
Verizon, of course, offers a zillion Android smartphones to choose from. Google, however, has just two others: The Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, both of which are a little long in the tooth. For Verizon, the Pixel is just another phone. For Google, the Pixel is the flagship it's going to have to live with for a while.
Nougat-y goodness
The Pixel is the first U.S.-available phone that runs Android Nougat (7.1). LG's V20 was the world's first Nougat phone, but despite widespread teases and previews to journalists, it is not yet sold in the United States. However, Nougat has begun to be sent to existing phones.
Most of the changes in Nougat are under the hood, but there are a couple of interface changes that I found especially interesting: Split-screen and Settings.
Phones running Nougat can now show two apps running side by side (as long as those two apps are enabled for the feature). With, for example, Chrome open, hold down the Recent button and you'll be shown a list of your recently opened apps. Tap one of them, and your screen will split and you'll see -- and be able to work with -- both apps. It's really handy, and works in both portrait and landscape modes.
The changes to Settings seem designed to simplify what had threatened to become an endless set of possibilities and options. A first swipe from the top of the screen displays five customizable frequently used controls: By default, Wi-Fi, cell signal/data usage, battery use, Do Not Disturb, and flashlight. Where a second swipe used to open the full Settings menu, it now shows a few more customizable settings. To see the full Settings menu, tap the Gear icon.
And when you do get to the Settings menu, you'll find it much simplified, with many fewer top-level categories. To find a feature that's been moved, there's an effective Search window. And rather than forcing you to work your way up and down a menu tree to get things done, there's now a menu icon on all submenu screens that lets you move to another setting quickly. It's a big improvement.
Phone as cloud device
It will not come as a surprise that the cloud is a key part of the Pixel experience. Why no SD card slot? Because of the Cloud. Your photos and videos are automatically uploaded to your Google Photos account, as is other data when your phone gets too full. And Google has a point -- no SD card is necessary when you have infinite storage at the other end of your data pipe.
But because this is a Google phone, you're going to have pushed at you what Google wants to push at you. Hangouts is here, but so is the new Allo chat app, Google Assistant voice control, and Duo video calling. (And because it's from Verizon, the phone came with My Verizon, Message+, and Go90 apps, which at least is a lighter payload than usual.)
Pixel's pixels
Google brags that the Pixel's 12MP back camera (the front camera offers 8MP) earned the best-ever score of 89 from the DXOmark photo benchmarking team. It's true as far as that goes, but it's also true that the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and the HTC 10 got an 88 -- and that the Samsung's screen is better.
What struck me is that the Pixel's camera's functions were very limited in comparison to what some other high-end phones are offering. It has the expected photo and video functions, and also slow motion, panorama, photo sphere and lens blur function -- this last for close-ups where you want to blur out everything but the subject. But there's no hyperlapse or manual mode. There's a way to control white balance, but nothing that lets you play with things like exposure compensation or metering modes, and there's no way to capture RAW-format images. In selfie mode, there's no voice or gesture control, or image recognition.
For a phone called the Pixel, you might have expected more devotion to photography. There's more to a good camera than a great benchmark.
Bottom line
The Pixel phones are an important jump up in class for Google, especially for users of Project Fi. But if you're not a Fi user, it's hard to recommend the Pixel. Samsung's reputation has been badly dinged by the Note 7 recall, but that doesn't change the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are great phones -- water-resistant with fine cameras, excellent displays, and wireless charging. Similarly, the HTC 10 is near the top of its class.
The Pixel sells for $649 with 32GB of storage and $749 with 128GB; the Pixel XL sells for $769 for 32GB and $869 for 128GB of storage. In comparison, Verizon sells the 32GB version of the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge for $792, and the HTC 10 with 32GB for $648.
The prices are more or less equivalent, and in my opinion, the Pixels don't quite measure up -- unless you feel that Nougat and the improved Google Assistant are deal-breakers.
So from here, it doesn't look like the Pixels quite make it to the top of the heap.
At a Glance Google Pixel and Pixel XL Price: Pixel: $649 (starting vendor price); Pixel XL: $769 (starting vendor price) Pros: Uses new Android Nougat, Google's latest OS; usable both on Verizon and Googles Project Fi; solid construction Cons: Price is as high as the competition's; camera functionality could be better
Related video
This story, "Review: Google's new Pixel XL is a fine phone -- but not that special" was originally published by Computerworld .
Cotton Settles Red on Monday Barchart - 1 hour ago A wide ranged session from +133 points to -168 points ultimately settled with Dec cotton 11 points in the red at 72 c/lb flat. The other front months traded similarly, but closed weaker with losses of... CTZ22 : 72.00s (-0.15%) CTH23 : 71.64s (-0.60%) CTK23 : 71.85s (-0.62%)
Cattle Close Weaker on Monday Barchart - 1 hour ago October fat cattle futures dropped $3.60 on Monday to expire at $146.77. The other front months closed firmer with losses limited to 52 cents. Feeder cattle closed Monday down by 25 cents to $1 in the... LEV22 : 146.775s (-2.39%) LEZ22 : 152.475s (-0.34%) LEG23 : 155.825s (-0.32%) GFX22 : 177.625s (-0.14%) GFF23 : 179.450s (-0.51%)
Mixed Monday for Hog Market Barchart - 1 hour ago Lean hog futures ended the Monday round of trading with a 40 cent loss in Feb and a $1.17 loss for December. The other front months closed with $0.85 to $1.02 gains. That widened Aprils premium to Dec... HEZ22 : 84.925s (-1.36%) HEJ23 : 93.600s (+0.97%) KMZ22 : 95.475s (-0.68%)
Double Digit Gains for Corn Barchart - 1 hour ago Corn futures worked lower off their initial strength out of the weekend to close the gaps. July futures met their objective but the nearby contracts left just a little room on their daily charts. The afternoon... ZCZ22 : 691-4s (+1.58%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.8247 (+1.57%) ZCH23 : 696-6s (+1.46%) ZCK23 : 695-6s (+1.38%)
Soy Futures Gain on Monday Barchart - 1 hour ago Beans closed the first trade day of the week with double digit gains of at least 1% in the front months. November got above its $14/bu mark for the closing bell on a 1.39% gain. Meal futures faded back... ZSX22 : 1407-0s (+1.39%) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.7181 (+1.75%) ZSF23 : 1419-4s (+1.37%) ZSH23 : 1427-4s (+1.31%)
Livestock Report Walsh Trading - Mon Oct 31, 4:15PM CDT Hogs retreat
An appeal by Phoenix-based U-Haul International Inc. and its subsidiary U-Haul Co. of California in response to a decade-old lawsuit was denied this week by the appellate court in San Francisco. As a result, U-Haul was ordered to pay the legal fees of Leigh Robinson, owner of Downtown Self Storage in Fairfield, Calif., who was sued by the company over a contractual no-compete clause in 2006.
The court ruled that U-Haul used a no-compete clause in its rental-dealership contracts even though the company knew it was illegal to do so in California. The court said U-Hauls action indicated it would likely use the clause in the future. It also ruled the clause had hurt the truck-rental market by restricting fair competition, according to the source.
Robinson acquired his self-storage facility in 2001, inheriting a contract to operate as a U-Haul truck-rental dealer. He terminated the contract in 2006 to work with Budget, a competing truck-rental company. At the time, U-Haul had already renewed its Yellow Pages advertising for Robinsons dealership and warned him via letter that the non-competition clause in the contract meant he couldnt compete locally against U-Haul while the advertising was in place. U-Haul sued Robinson a few months later for contract violation, the source reported.
Dual lawsuits languished for years before Robinson prevailed in a 2013 civil-jury trial. The jury concluded U-Hauls lawsuit had been malicious and awarded the self-storage owner more than $195,000. Robinson also won his counter claim that the no-compete clause violated California law. Two years later, Judge Harry S. Kinnicutt ruled U-Haul had to pay Robinsons attorney fees, which had amassed to more than $834,000 over nine years. U-Haul appealed the Kinnicutt ruling, which led to this weeks appellate-court decision.
According to the Better Business Bureau website, Robinson is also owner of Sunset Self Storage in Merced, Calif. Both the Downtown and Sunset facilities are part of a family-owned group of four storage properties in Northern California that operate under different names.
Established in 1945, U-Haul has more than 49 million square feet of self-storage space at more than 1,300 owned and managed facilities throughout North America.
Ukraine has imposed sanctions against a number of Russian and Crimean companies involved in coal transportation, handling and sales.
The corresponding decision is stipulated in the resolution of National Security and Defense Council dated September 16, 2016 and presidential decree No. 467/2016.
"The basis for applying sanctions is the actions of the legal entity, creating real or potential threats to the national interests of Ukraine," the document says.
Some companies mentioned in the decree were earlier accused by the SBU of formalizing coal illegally exported from Donbas to Russia.
The list of the companies that were applied the sanctions is as follows: South-Eastern Fuel Company (Kazan, Russia), OJSC Rostovtopprom (Rostov-on-Don, Russia) and the sales offices of the company, Coal Alliance LLC, Businesstranslogistic, Uglerod ore mining and processing mill, Donalliance (all based in Rostov region, the Russian Federation), Binom D LLC, Monolit Impex and Servis Postavok (all based in Taganrog, Russia), Chermetresurs LLC (Moscow region), and Port Mechel Temryuk (Krasnodar region, Russia).
The list also includes the Crimean enterprises Donsevugol and GEN Invest (Kamysh-Burunsky port).
Ansvar Insurance has unveiled a new business resilience toolkit designed to help brokers work with their SME clients in a crisis.The toolkit will help brokers assist their SME clients in the event of a crisis and was presented at the latest series of Ansvar forums.The toolkit consists of three components; a crisis management plan, a business continuity plan and recovery plans, all of which will help brokers work alongside their SME clients in the event of a crisis. The release of the toolkit follows changes made by the insurer to their business insurance products earlier this year.Ansvar Insurance also announced that their latest round of broker forums were the best attended to date with more than 300 delegates in attendance across the country.The forums, on the topic of technology and innovation, saw the insurer discuss its use of drones, thermography and security and fire detection systems and discuss the latest development of technology for risk assessment and mitigation.Ansvars next series of forums are currently in-development for 2017.
Drivers in New South Wales could need to buy income protection insurance to maintain their current level of cover if green slip reforms progress.The Sydney Morning Herald reports that drivers may need to pick up the extra cover as the Baird government looks to overhaul the CTP industry.The Australian Lawyers Alliance has said that some consumers could have to pay up to $4600 a year in private income protection insurance premiums to maintain current levels of income cover."The government is not content with creating a scheme that will line the pockets of insurers by reducing the value of claims made by NSW drivers and pedestrians, but now they are going to force people to take out additional costly insurance from those very same insurers," Andrew Stone from the Alliance said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald."This move is going to hit hard-working families on a budget - the self-employed, tradies and manual workers need an income safety net to keep paying the bills for them and their families if injured."The Insurance Council of Australia said that it does not believe the reforms will lead to an uptick in customers purchasing income protection cover as many are already covered via superannuation fund or agreements with employers."Under the proposed reforms, injured road users will receive money for treatment and loss of income for up to five years," said ICA spokesman, Campbell Fuller , according to The Sydney Morning Herald."The final report of the CTP Reference Panel report indicates the number of minor-to-moderately-injured road users who still need treatment after five years is extremely small, and the report outlines options to provide them extra assistance.Victor Dominello, NSW minister for innovation and better regulation, hit back at the claims, labelling them alarmist and misleading."Under the current green slip scheme, injured people have to wait three to five years on average to receive income payments, from which significant legal fees are then deducted," Dominello said."Where the current system can leave people in financial stress and further traumatised by extended dispute resolution processes, the reforms will provide people with access for the first time to weekly income support if they need time off work to recover."
New Jersey Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino and the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor announced that a Woodbridge, N.J., man was sentenced to three years in prison for reporting that his motorcycle had been stripped of its parts by thieves on two occasions. In reality, he directed a repair shop to remove the parts so that he could make claims with his insurers.
In pleading guilty, Lew Alicock stated that in May 2013, he filed a fraudulent claim with Pacific Specialty Insurance Company that parts of his Yamaha motorcycle had been stolen while parked outside his mothers house in Irvington. Alicock had actually paid a repair shop mechanic to remove the parts, including fairings and the slip over the exhaust. Alicock took the parts with him. Four days after filing his claim, he returned to the shop and had the mechanic put the parts back on the motorcycle, Alicock admitted. Pacific issued Alicock a $5,512.96 check for the claim, which he cashed.
Alicock must pay the $5,512.96 back to Pacific Specialty Insurance Company under the sentence handed down by the Superior Court Judge Michael Toto in Middlesex County, N.J.
Alicock also admitted he tried the scam again in November 2013, this time attempting to defraud Rider Insurance Company. Alicock said he filed a claim that his motorcycle had been stripped of several parts totaling more than $1,000 while being housed in Newark. In reality, Alicock had again paid to have the parts removed from his motorcycle, he admitted. Rider Insurance did not approve that claim.
Deputy Attorney General Colin Keiffer represented the state sentencing. Randy Davenport, Esq. of the Law Office of Randy P. Davenport, Esq, represented Alicock at sentencing.
Source: The New Jersey Office of the Attorney General
Topics Auto Fraud New Jersey
The Philippines raised the storm alert for two northern provinces to its highest level as authorities moved people to safer ground, canceled work and suspended flights before Super Typhoon Haima is due to make landfall as soon as Wednesday night.
Haima is a Category 5 storm that is packing maximum winds of 140 knots (259.3 kilometers per hour) and gusts of up to 170 knots, according to the latest bulletin from the U.S. Navy and Air Forces Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The storm is expected to reach land either in Cagayan or Isabela province late Wednesday or early Thursday, the Philippine weather bureau said in its 2 p.m. report. Moderate to heavy rain is expected within its 800-kilometer diameter.
Authorities are forcing people to evacuate in Cagayan and Ilocos Norte provinces, GMA Network reported, citing officials. Eight local flights had been canceled as of 2 p.m. Manila time, airport authorities said. School classes were suspended in nine provinces, while more than 500 passengers are stranded in various ports. Lower level alerts have been raised in more than 20 other provinces.
Haima, the second storm to hit the Philippines main Luzon island in a week, may have a high humanitarian impact and could affect as many as 11.6 million people, according to the United Nations Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System. Named after a seahorse in China, the storm threatens to bring storm-surge flooding, damaging winds and possible landslides in the Philippines main Luzon island, The Weather Channel reported.
The Philippines, battered annually by an average of 20 cyclones that form over the Pacific Ocean, is among countries most vulnerable to climate change, according to risk analysis company Verisk Maplecroft. Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms in the world to hit land, killed more than 6,000 people in November 2013 and left more than a thousand missing.
Haima will remain a violent tropical system as it approaches China and may impact Hong Kong, Accuweather said. The storm is expected to enter the northern part of the South China Sea on Thursday, edging close to the coast of Guangdong on Oct. 21, the Hong Kong Observatory said.
Related:
Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Windstorm China
JLT Re, the London-based reinsurance broker and consultant, has appointed Jong Kuk (JK) Moon as CEO of JLT Re Korea.
Moon will be based in JLT Res Seoul office and will report to Kenny Moyes, CEO, JLT Re Asia.
JK Moon will oversee JLT Re Koreas ongoing strategy and business development across treaty, facultative, analytics and strategic advisory on behalf of our core clients in Korea, said Moyes.
With 23 years at Korean Re, JK Moons wide knowledge and experience of the property, marine, aviation, liability and various mutual re/insurances, notably in the government sector, makes him the ideal person for JLT Res continued growth in the Korean market, Moyes added.
As a veteran underwriter across a number of business classes and geographies, Moons expertise and experience will be invaluable in helping to drive JLT Re Koreas business, as it delivers complex solutions that meet clients needs, the company said in a statement.
Source: JLT Re
France plans to increase a levy on property insurance policies to 5.90 euros [$6.30] from 4.30 euros [$4.59] per contract to bolster a fund that provides compensation to victims of attacks or other criminal acts.
Following the Islamist attacks in France over the past two years paying out compensation has become a drain on the countrys Guarantee Fund for Victims of Terrorist and Other Criminal Acts (FGTI). More than 230 people have been killed in the attacks and hundreds more injured.
The fund, created by the French government in 1986, is financed by a tax on 80 million individual car, house and business insurance policies in France.
We have decided along with (finance minister) Michel Sapin to increase the solidarity contribution to 5.9 euros, Juliette Meadel, Minister of State for Victim Assistance, told reporters on Wednesday.
The increase would bring in an extra 140 million euros [$149.4 million] for the fund every year, Meadel said.
Since January 2015 the fund has received about 4,000 claims, the same number it received between 1986 and end-2014, its chief executive Julien Rencki told Reuters.
The decision gives us means to meet our commitments, Rencki said. He also said the fund had 1.4 billion euros [$1.5 billion] in reserves to cover claims.
(Reporting by Myriam Rivet and Maya Nikolaeva; editing by Brian Love and Jane Merriman)
Topics Pricing Trends Talent France
Veolia Environnement SA, the French utility that provided drinking water to 100 million people last year, has beefed up cyber security to protect installations from hackers.
Cyber crime is the main threat for the company, Jean-Louis Fiamenghi, the head of security at the Paris-based water, waste and energy company, told journalists Tuesday. Theres been some attempts, but they arent always villainous. Some hackers are lured by the challenge. We havent been asked for ransoms.
Veolia has also added new sensors that can detect a much wider range of poisons than previous monitoring systems in some of its networks, the security chief said. At this stage, it hasnt detected criminal or terrorist attacks, and illegal intrusion attempts at its facilities have mostly been made by juveniles, he said.
Veolia is one of 250 companies deemed critical by the government that have heightened security measures. More than 200 people have been killed in a string of terrorist attacks across France since January 2015.
Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Topics Cyber France
Massachusetts federal judge Mark Mastroianni has rejected a bold attempt to pin liability on Bill Cosby over what his spokespersons told the press in reaction to women who accused the entertainer of sexual assault.
Cosby is facing a defamation lawsuit from seven women over statements from his reps that the assault claims were fabricated, ridiculous and absurd. In October 2015, Mastroianni allowed the lawsuit to proceed by declining Cosbys motion to dismiss.
Last month, Joseph Cammarata, the attorney for the women, filed a motion for partial judgment on the pleadings.
Cammarata pointed to Cosbys generalized responses in the answer to the complaint. There, Cosbys lawyers addressed various allegations by asserting they were either conclusions or characterizations of law and therefore no response is required.
The lack of specific denials, argued Cammarata, was a violation of civil procedure. The judge was asked to rule that Cosby admitted being liable for the publication of the statements, that the public knew that Cosbys spokespersons were speaking for Cosby, that the statements were widely and foreseeably republished, that the statements are of and concerning the plaintiffs, and that Cosby and his spokespersons acted with intent to cause the women emotional distress.
On Friday, Mastroianni denied the motion.
The judges order states he rejects Plaintiffs claim that a judgment on the pleadings is the relief available for these assertions of deficiencies in Defendants answer.
Mastroianni also notes that Cammaratas arguments would have more properly brought as a motion to strike and knocked Cammarata for making an untimely challenge.
Criminal Case
The civil case is taking a back seat to the criminal one that Cosby is facing in Pennsylvania for allegedly sexually assaulting ex-Temple University employee Andrea Constand. But discovery and other activity in the defamation case proceeds.
In the Constand case, a Pennsylvania appeals court this week turned down an attempt by Cosbys lawyers to review how the prosecution could only be proven through hearsay evidence. Nevertheless, Cosbys team has come forward with a protest to an alleged violation of the entertainers due process rights.
There are more big fireworks to follow in the Constand case, which is currently scheduled to go to trial in the middle of next year.
For example, a status report filed on Oct. 11 in the defamation lawsuit reports that Cosby has until Nov. 8 to file a motion to change venue in the criminal matter. Cosby could potentially see some advantage to moving the Costand case away from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where his non-prosecution for more than a decade became a politically charged issue in the election of the District Attorney who is now pursuing the entertainer.
Related:
Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Topics Claims Pennsylvania
There seems to be more questions than answers as to what happens next in the wake of the Oklahoma Supreme Courts finding that the opt out portion of the states 2013 comprehensive workers compensation legislative overhaul is unconstitutional.
Thats because the Court has yet to publish its mandate on the Sept. 13 ruling the document that will outline the steps companies that developed their own employee injury benefit plans must take to become compliant with Oklahomas workers compensation statutes.
The mandate will provide more specific direction as to how to carry out the decision of the Court. Right now were waiting on the document to get more details, said James Mills, director of Workers Compensation at the Oklahoma Insurance Department.
When the mandate is published, opt out companies will have 90 days to secure workers compensation coverage under the Administrative Workers Compensation Act, according to the Oklahoma Workers Compensation Commission (OWCC).
The Opt Out Act was passed by the legislature in 2013 as part of a workers compensation reform package that also established the OWCC to replace the former Oklahoma Workers Compensation Court.
The act allowed qualified employers to opt out of the Oklahoma workers compensation system by creating an Employee Benefit Plan (Plan) under the provisions of federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
There were 54 companies providing their own opt out plans on the day the Supreme Court issued its ruling, according to Mills.
In a press statement, the OWCC said the Court on Sept. 13 ruled that a section of the Oklahoma Workers Compensation Statute, the Opt Out provision, is unconstitutional as it violates Article 2, section 59, the prohibition of special laws. Oklahomas workers compensation statute provided a unique Opt Out section, which allowed companies to create their own workers compensation plans or provide coverage under the state system.
The 7-2 ruling came in Vasquez v. Dillards, which was appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court after the OWCC came to the same conclusion about the law in its ruling on the case in February.
The Court remanded the case back to the OWCC to consider whether the plaintiff in the case, Jonnie Yvonne Vasquez, was properly served by Dillards injury benefit plan. At issue is whether or not the injury that prompted Vasquezs claim was a work injury or a pre-existing condition.
Vasquez alleged she injured her shoulder and neck while lifting shoe boxes at her workplace. She received benefits while her claim was being investigated, but Dillards ultimately denied her claim on the grounds that Vasquez injury was pre-existing and not an injury defined by Dillards benefit plan.
Our task now is to consider this case, and several other cases which have been stayed awaiting this ruling, under the provisions of the Administrative Workers Compensation Act (AWCA), Commissioner Mark Liotta said in the commissions release.
Mills said that the reform package passed by the legislature in 2013 has on the whole been very successful for our state.
The insurance department reported in September 2015 that the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) filed an overall loss cost decrease of 10.2 percent, which is expected to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2017. With this drop, the total impact of NCCI filings since 2013 is a 44 percent decrease, the department said. NCCI has credited Oklahomas loss cost decrease to declines in market experience and market trend, as well as the recent reforms.
Asked whether he anticipated that lawmakers would take another look at opt out in the coming legislative session, Mills said he didnt know if the legislature will take it up in the same way given that its only one component of the overall reforms. And all of the other pieces are continuing to work.
I would expect them to continue to revisit the topic of workers compensation in Oklahoma to ensure that our system is providing the best way to address workplace injuries for Oklahomans that we can create. But I dont know if that will mean small or large changes, including removing or rebuilding the Oklahoma option, he said.
A Transition Plan
Bill Minick, president of Dallas-based PartnerSource, which designs, implements and provides support for workers comp nonsubscription plans, said his team had previously developed a transition plan for companies involved in opt out in case the Court decision in Vasquez went the way it ultimately did.
That 10-step plan advises companies on the 90-day time period for returning to the workers comp system, and stresses the importance of identifying claims with potential exposure under worker compensation and developing a plan of action to deal with those claims. Other steps include engaging a broker to secure workers compensation coverage and providing proper notices to the Oklahoma Insurance Department, the OWCC and employees of the companys plan to return to the workers comp system.
We are continuing to advise employers and their insurance companies and their administrators who handle the vast majority of claims to continue to focus on timely report of injury, getting the best medical care possible and return to work, Minick said.
While the possibility of introducing new legislation is under consideration, right now we are focused on the orderly transition [of] claims and getting great outcomes for the injured workers. If employers and legislators in Oklahoma and other states find performance records in Oklahoma and Texas compelling, then the pursuit of new option laws will continue, he said.
Related:
Topics Workers' Compensation Oklahoma
The Texas Division of Workers Compensation is taking a promising pilot program statewide to help simplify and speed resolution of some disputes.
A pilot started last year splits up related claim issues so that a hearing officer can decide the most far-reaching issue first. This can clear the way for secondary issues to be resolved sooner. So far, about half of the disputes accepted for the program have had a hearing, and a third of those have resulted in full agreement to resolve the dispute.
Workers Compensation Commissioner Ryan Brannan said he is encouraged by the outcomes.
The division has a number of tools in its toolkit to manage claims disputes, Brannan said. The two-step approach to deciding some of the most complex issues in a dispute can be a good option for system participants in certain cases.
When an injured employee has a dispute about a claim, it often involves three issues: extent of the injury, the date that the employee reached maximum medical improvement, and the impairment rating for the injury. Deputy Commissioner for Hearings Kerry Sullivan said even though extent of injury is a threshold issue that can affect the other issues, it was addressed at the same time as the other issues in the dispute process.
It can be very challenging to come into a hearing and know there are so many alternatives for the hearing officer to address, he said.
Parties in a dispute may base their recommendations for impairment ratings and dates of maximum medical improvement on what they think the extent of injury should be. If the hearing officer decides a different extent of injury, parties often request more time to adjust those recommendations.
The program is voluntary. The option to participate is presented by the presiding officer at the initial benefit review conference for cases that may benefit from the approach. The two-step approach is used only if both parties agree to it.
The presiding officer usually knows going into the dispute whether a decision on extent of injury will move things along, Sullivan said. Deciding the extent of injury issue first can lead to a better outcome, a more efficient hearing, and more agreements.
Dallas-Fort Worth area attorney Daniel Morris, of the Morris Law Firm, said several of his clients who are injured employees have opted to have their disputes handled under the two-step approach. He said there is a benefit to examining issues separately.
When youve got four or five different combinations of possibilities for the extent of a workers injuries, it allows everybody to weigh their options before getting to the other issues, Morris said.
Jeremy Lunn, who represents insurance carriers for the Silvera Law Firm in Dallas, said he agreed that some proceedings are slowed as attorneys try to guess what a hearing officer will decide on the extent of injury issue.
This is a good thing that the division is trying to deal with delays in certain cases, Lunn said. DWC management really has been reaching out to attorneys and asking us to help it work.
The two-step program started at the divisions Weslaco office in May 2015 and soon was expanded to Dallas. Its now available at all 20 offices statewide.
Source: Texas Department of Insurance
Topics Texas Workers' Compensation
The office of Ukrainian human rights commissioner Valeria Lutkovska has said that 23 convicts have been transferred to the Ukrainian side by representatives of illegal armed groups in eastern Ukraine. The transferred convicts will serve out their prison terms in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.
"The next transfer of inmates to the controlled territory has been successful. There are 23 people, including one woman," Lutkovska wrote on her Facebook page on Wednesday, illustrating the message with convicts photos at a meeting attended by representatives of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic.
The commissioners press service told Interfax-Ukraine the transfer process took place on Wednesday afternoon. It said persons expressing their desire to serve out their sentence on the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government were transferred to the Ukrainian side.
David Outlaw was a survivor, so much so that his brother cant believe how he died, drowning in a puddle, pinned underneath his wheelchair after being left alone at the height of Hurricane Matthew to smoke outside his South Carolina nursing home.
Even Gov. (Nikki) Haley said everyone needed to be inside, Richard Outlaw told The Associated Press. My brother survived Vietnam, car crashes and two strokes, just to die in a puddle of water?
Richland County deputies and state nursing home regulators are investigating Outlaws death Oct. 8 at the National Health Care facility in Columbia.
A nurse told deputies that Outlaw, 66, refused to come inside, so she left him in a courtyard to smoke. A nurse then came to give Outlaw his medication several minutes later and found him face-down in the puddle around 7:45 a.m., according to a police report. The report did not specify how much water was standing in the courtyard.
How negligent is it to just leave him outside in a hurricane by himself? Outlaws wife Karyl said.
Richard Outlaw said someone should have at least kept a close eye on his brother if he wouldnt come inside.
David Outlaw had a stroke seven years ago that left his left side paralyzed. His wife took care of him until last year, when she decided to send him to the nursing home. Outlaws health improved his high-blood pressure was better controlled and his blood sugar readings were improving, his wife said.
He still had a lot of life ahead of him, Karyl Outlaw said.
The nursing home has not returned several calls seeking comment. The state Department of Health and Environmental Control, which licensed nursing homes, is also investigating the death.
David Outlaw served in the Army in Vietnam, rode motorcycles before his stroke and loved to laugh and fish, his wife said.
The nursing home and deputies have told the family almost nothing about David Outlaws death, she said. Shes waiting on the investigations to make sure someone is held accountable.
I was just so stunned when I was out there getting his stuff I havent told them off yet, Karyl Outlaw said through tears.
Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Topics South Carolina
A judge has allowed a class-action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination by Seattle, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. to proceed.
U.S. District Judge James Robart of Seattle in an order Friday denied the companys request to dismiss key claims by women in the suit.
The Seattle Times reported the judge said three women suing Microsoft were specific enough in their claims. He also said they presented a plausible case that Microsofts pay and promotion practices had the effect of treating female and male engineers differently.
Microsoft says the performance review system was not arbitrary, and has denied the womens allegations of discrimination.
The ruling sets into motion what could be months of wrangling over what documents Microsoft and the plaintiffs must turn over and the roster of outside experts both can ask to weigh in.
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Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Topics Legislation
Fears of flooding are dissipating after rainfall helped quell a wind-whipped wildfire in Northern Nevada that destroyed 22 homes and 17 other structures in the Washoe Valley north of Carson City.
Sierra Front Fire Management spokesman Mark Struble said that containment was increased to 55 percent, and some localized flooding was reported after three days of rain in the 5.3-square mile burn area.
Struble says flood damage has been minor.
More than 665 firefighters battled the so-called Little Valley fire after it was discovered early Friday. Four were treated for smoke inhalation.
Struble says the cause of the fire is being investigated.
Hundreds area residents are being contacted directly by the Washoe County sheriffs office about re-entering the area.
Crews say they kept the fire away from about 480 homes.
Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Flood Wildfire
If risk is like a smouldering coal that can spark a fire at any moment, then insurance is our fire extinguisher. The institution is as old as human existence with the first insurance policy being written in ancient times on a Babylonian obelisk monument with the code of King Hammurabi carved into it. It was practiced by early Mediterranean sailing merchants and Chinese traders who sought methods to minimise risks.
The concept of insurance has expanded and become more refined over the ages, its successes and travails have become more symmetrical to a countrys economic growth (or lapse). Because of the peculiarity of insurance and its relevance to an economy, the Nigerian government has put a lot of effort into making the insurance industry what it is today. These efforts are showcased by the implementation of numerous Acts over the years such as the National Insurance Commission Act 1997 and the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers Act 2003 (which is to ensure the proper administration and functioning of the insurance sector), as well as the passing of several reforms.
However, amendments made in the Companies Income Tax (Amendment) Act 2007 (CITA) have created changes within the sector that have led to an unwelcome higher tax burden for insurance companies, which has in turn led to a fall in the number of businesses operating in the industry.
Disappearing companies
Nigerias insurance sector has undergone two rounds of recapitalisation over the past 14 years to restructure a company's debt and equity mixture, most often with the aim of making a company's capital structure more stable.
The first round of recapitalisation happened in 2003 when the Insurance Act was passed, which required insurance companies to increase their capital bases from:
NGN20 million ($65,000) to NGN150 million for life businesses, which are companies that protect against the loss of income that would result if an insured individual died. In this circumstance, the named beneficiary would receive the proceeds and would thereby be safeguarded from the financial impact of the death of the insured;
NGN70 million to NGN300 million for non-life businesses, which are companies that are typically involved in any insurance that is not determined to be a life insurance policy but that provides payments depending on the loss from a particular financial event; and
NGN150 million to NGN350 million for reinsurance businesses, which is a company that accepts a portion of the potential obligation in an insurance contract in exchange for a share of the insurance premium, in order to reduce the likelihood of an insurance company paying a large obligation resulting from an insurance claim.
The 2003 changes led to the liquidation of 14 Nigerian insurance companies out of 117 registered in the jurisdiction.
In September 2005, another capitalisation requirement was announced to increase the capital base to NGN2 billion for life businesses, NGN3 billion for non-life businesses and NGN10 billion for reinsurance. This again resulted in numerous consolidations that led to the number of liquidating insurance companies falling from 103 to 49. In the first quarter of 2014, the total assets and liabilities of insurance companies was NGN517.2 billion.
A diminishing asset base
The asset base has continued to dwindle every year for the industry because of sections in CITA that penalise it. These sections have compelled insurance companies to pay out their capital in the form of a minimum tax because they are almost always in a never-ending refund cycle with the tax authorities. Originally, the CITA was meant to amend and simplify controversial aspects in its policy, instead it has made it more obscure particularly for the insurance sector.
As with any other business, the tax liability of an insurance company is based on figures contained in its annual published accounts and it is subject to similar assessment and collection procedures by the tax authorities. However, certain special features arising from the nature of the industry mean that profits are taxed slightly different than other sectors.
Simply put, in section 16(2)(a) of the CITA, the profits of a life business insurance company are calculated by taking management expenses, including commission, subject to subsection (8)(b) of the Act from gross income (investment income and revaluation surplus).
For non-life businesses, section 16(1)(b) states that profits will be calculated for tax purposes by deducting the reinsurance cost and a reserve for unexpired risk (the premium corresponding to the time period remaining on an insurance policy), subject to subsection (8)(a) of the Act from a gross premium, interest and other income receivable in Nigeria.
The relevant subsections of CITA are listed below:
(8) An insurance company, other than a life insurance company, shall be allowed as deductions from its premium the following reserves for tax purposes:
(a) for unexpired risks, 45 percent of the total premium in case of general insurance business other than marine insurance business and 25 percent of the total premium in case of marine cargo insurance;
(b) for other reserves, claims and outgoings of the company an amount equal to 25 percent of the total premium, so that, after allowance under the Second Schedule to this Act as may be restricted, has been allowed for in any year of assessment, not less than amount equal to 15 percent of the total profit of the company for tax purposes.
(9) An insurance company, in respect of its life insurance business shall be allowed the following deductions from its investment incomes and other incomes:
(a) an amount which makes a general reserve and fund equal to the net liabilities on policies in force at the time of an actuarial valuation;
(b) an amount which is equal to 1 percent of the gross premium or 10 percent of profits (whichever is greater) to a special reserve fund and accommodation until it becomes the amount of the statutory minimum paid-up capital;
(c) all normal allowable business outgoing, except that after allowing for all the outgoing and allowance under the Second Schedule to this Act as may be restricted under the provisions of this Act for any year of assessment, not less than an amount equal to 20 percent of the gross incomes shall be available as total profit of the company for tax purposes.
For both life and non-life insurance businesses, the basis for computing minimum tax seems punitive at 20% of gross income and 15% of total profit, correspondingly. To compound the tax burden little solace was given to the industry when they suffer losses.
A thorough review of subsection (8) in the CITA Act exposes the inadequacy of parts (a) and (b). The former imposes a limit on unexpired risk while the latter restricts the deductibility of expenses. Section 16 (9) (c), in the case of life insurance business, introduces a new basis for minimum tax. In practice, the newly introduced minimum tax usually exceeds the minimum tax provisions of section 33 in the CITA. This puts the insurance industry in an unfair situation of paying a higher minimum tax than their peers in other industries in cases when the loss or a total loss of profits result in no tax being payable, or a tax charge that amounts to less than the minimum tax.
The insurance industry has long campaigned to correct this anomaly but it is yet to yield the desired result.
Reforming the CITA
Between 2009 and 2010, the Nigerian Insurance Association (NIA) and KPMG worked with the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Federal Ministry of Finance and National Assembly to discuss the dire effects of the CITA 2007. It established regulatory amendments that intended resolve the problems. Unfortunately, the necessary amendments are yet to be passed into law while a tax reform bill, which would enact the amendments, continues to be debated in the National Assembly.
Taxation of losses
Section 16(7) of the CITA restricts insurance companies to carrying forward tax losses for a maximum of four years. Losses that are not fully relieved after four years by an insurance company cannot be carried forward. Companies are made to pay taxes irrespective of the losses accumulated from preceding years.
Similarly, the restriction of deductibility for operating expenses that are 25% of the total premium of a company, regardless of the expense passing the wholly, reasonably, exclusively and necessarily (WREN) test, is counter intuitive. It also violates the principle of fairness and equity in taxation because the WREN test would have sufficed to deduct all operating expenses for companies in other industries.
Furthermore, the tax authorities expose part of the insurance companies unearned premiums to tax. This stems from limitations placed on provision for unexpired risks to 45% of total premium for general insurance and 25% for marine insurance businesses. Consequently, if the total amount of claims from the unexpired risks during the fiscal year exceeds provisions made for tax purposes, the insurance company bears the burden as it receives neither a refund nor a credit.
Another issue which is hindering relief is that the profits referred to in subsection 9(b) are not defined. Because of this, profits could be interpreted as the total taxable profit, assessable profit or profit before tax. Clearly, the resulting figures from using any of these bases will differ.
International comparisons
At the risk of stating the obvious, to justify the reasons why the government needs to address the sections of the tax laws which burden the insurance industry, a comparison of global markets is apt.
The US
In the US, the Internal Revenue (IR) Code successfully created a more friendly terrain for its insurance industry that permits growth and expansion.
Firstly, there is no minimum tax that applies to insurance companies. However, there is an alternative minimum tax (AMT) that applies across all industries. The AMT can result in an AMT credit, which can be used to reduce regular tax where it exceeds the AMT in a future accounting year. Moreover, the tax credit does not expire because the credit relates to taxes already paid and the entire credit represents a component of the deferred tax asset. The AMT regime in the US means that insurance companies are not unduly disadvantaged, upholding the principle of equality in taxation.
Secondly, the IR Code treats the period of recovery from loss differently. A company that loses money in a particular year experiences what is known as a net operating loss (NOL). No corporate tax is due when a company has a NOL because they do not have profits. In addition, a NOL can be carried back and deducted from up to two years taxable income. The company is then eligible for a refund equal to the difference between previously paid taxes and taxes owed after deducting the present years loss. If the loss is too large to be carried back, it may be carried forward for up to 20 years and used to reduce future tax liabilities. Under this rule, insurance companies can only carry back losses for three years and carry forward losses for 15 years. Nonetheless, several proposals such as the camp proposal, call for life insurance companies to benefit from the same loss tax treatment as other companies.
As a result, allowing for the carry back of losses reduces the distorting effects of taxation on investment and, in turn, increases economic efficiency. The government, by allowing NOL carry backs, effectively enters into a partnership with taxpayers to share both the return to investment (tax revenue) and the risk of investment (revenue loss). When companies have losses, past and future tax liabilities are reduced through loss carry backs, reducing risk. The further back in time that losses can be carried, the less distorting taxation becomes on investment. It is simply fair. Additionally, the ability to carry back losses encourages equity by helping to prevent two firms that earn the same amount over a given time period, but differ in the timing of when the income is earned, from paying different amounts in taxes.
Thirdly, the US provides a special deduction for qualifying small life and non-life insurance companies equal to 60% of their income computed without regard to the deduction. This and many more measures capture how a developed economy sets a healthy environment, based on tax laws, for the domestic insurance industry to thrive.
South Africa and Brazil
A cursory look at the tax laws of selected emerging economies reveals that for both South Africa and Brazil, there are no restrictions placed on provisions for unexpired risks, provisions for other reserves, claims and outgoings, and periods for the recovery of losses. Both economies also do not have a minimum taxable profit for their insurance companies.
India
Meanwhile, India has no restrictions on provisions for unexpired risks, but does apply a minimum tax on the profits of insurance companies on provisions for other reserves, claims and outgoings. The country also places a restriction on the period of recovery of loss but it still provides eight years, compared to the four years offered in Nigeria.
Nigeria needs to act now to save the sector
Taking a cue from these countries, the Nigerian government needs to act fast to save the insurance industry.
Nigeria does not follow best practices and the insurance industry gets severely short-changed as a result of the tax treatment. It is further at risk with countries such as the US, Brazil, South Africa and India that are actively competing with Nigeria for the worlds foreign direct investments.
When a potential foreign investor compares the Nigerian insurance industry index with that of a fast developing economy, the hostile tax laws governing the industry could work against Nigeria.
Imposing taxes is not the problem, especially considering it is pivotal to the functioning of the machinery of government. However, what should not be celebrated but quickly redressed is an unfair tax system. Its negative ripples are immeasurable. If the US could resist the huge tax subsidy received by the East India Tea Company from British government (against small American companies) then taxpayers and stakeholders in the insurance industry should persist until the government sees the positives in this line of thought for the industry and economy at large.
Reform should be pushed to fairly place insurance companies with other Nigerian companies and to align with what applies in developed economies setting the pace among peers and other developing economies positioning our economy to be more competitive.
If restrictions are successfully removed and losses are carried forward in perpetuity, it will relieve the insurance companies of all undue tax burdens, improve their profit takings and grow their capital. A healthy insurance industry will strengthen the Nigerian economy as it pushes for a place among the worlds top 20 economies.
Se il Coronavirus ha messo in ginocchio Paesi come Cina, Stati Uniti e Italia, quali effetti potra avere su quei Paesi dove il sistema sanitario e sempre in difficolta e dove lindigenza, la poverta, lo sfruttamento sono i protagonisti?
Il rischio dei bambini in Nigeria
In Nigeria la pandemia di Covid-19 rischia di trasformarsi in una grave crisi dei diritti dei bambini, dal momento che centinaia di migliaia di minori vulnerabili potrebbero essere esposti a una pericolosa combinazione di estrema poverta, malnutrizione e fame a causa del virus. Save the Children, lorganizzazione che da oltre cento anni lotta per salvare i bambini e garantire loro un futuro, teme che limpatto socioeconomico della pandemia spingera molte famiglie povere a fare di tutto per sopravvivere, distruggendo le speranze di una generazione di bambini, che potrebbero essere maggiormente a rischio di lavoro minorile, sfruttamento sessuale o matrimoni precoci per aiutare a sfamare le proprie famiglie. Save the Children esorta le autorita nigeriane ad aumentare le misure di protezione sociale come la fornitura di denaro e lassistenza alimentare per i bambini e le famiglie piu vulnerabili, per mitigare urgentemente limpatto della pandemia di Covid-19 nel Paese.
Le parole del direttore di Save The Children
Mentre il numero di casi positivi sale in Nigeria a 782 e il virus si sta diffondendo in diversi Stati, stiamo lavorando duramente per ridurre gli effetti negativi che tutto questo avra sui bambini piu vulnerabili, specialmente nelle comunita piu fragili. I minori sono gravemente colpiti e senza la protezione che necessitano qualora i genitori e gli operatori sanitari risultino infettati dal virus e portati via per le cure. Stiamo lavorando a stretto contatto con il governo per sostenere gli sforzi per contenere il virus e mantenere i bambini al sicuro e protetti durante la pandemia, ha dichiarato Mercy Gichuhi, direttore di Save the Children International Nigeria.
Il commento del presidente del Parlamento dei bambini dello Stato di Katsina.
Il coronavirus sta minacciando il nostro diritto alla partecipazione, alla protezione, alleducazione e alla vita sana. Temo un possibile aumento degli abusi sui minori poiche i bambini delle famiglie povere potrebbero rivolgersi ai ricchi della comunita col rischio di essere sfruttati emotivamente, fisicamente o sessualmente, in cambio di cibo e supporto finanziario. Ce chi si approfitta delle famiglie povere e della pandemia. Questo puo avere un impatto molto negativo e a lungo termine sui minori, ha detto Ibrahim Maharazu, presidente del Parlamento dei bambini dello Stato di Katsina.
Lappello di Save the Children
Save the Children lavorera con tutte le parti interessate per garantire servizi di protezione sociale piu accessibili per le persone vulnerabili, anche attraverso il potenziamento e la riforma dei programmi di protezione e di sussistenza esistenti. LOrganizzazione esorta il governo a fornire cure e protezione adeguate a tutti i bambini, soprattutto a coloro che sono rimasti orfani o soli perche chi si occupa di loro e in ospedale a causa del virus. Attraverso i programmi per assicurare una rete di sicurezza sociale, il governo dovrebbe anche fornire un reddito immediato e mezzi di sussistenza alle famiglie vulnerabili, per ridurre il rischio che la disperazione li induca a mettere a rischio i minori, in particolare le ragazze. Dobbiamo agire subito e aumentare rapidamente il sostegno ai bambini, che vivono in comunita fragili e il cui reddito familiare e insicuro. E necessaria una maggiore protezione per i minori, in particolare per le ragazze, i bambini sfollati e gli altri gruppi vulnerabili. I nostri sforzi collettivi e le azioni sostenibili nel rispondere alla pandemia dovrebbero garantire che nessun bambino venga lasciato indietro, vulnerabile o non protetto, ha aggiunto Mercy Gichuhi.
Le protezioni individuali, listruzione. Difendere il futuro dei bambini
Save the Children sta acquistando materiali come dispositivi di protezione individuale (DPI) e prevenzione e controllo delle infezioni (IPC) che verranno donati alle agenzie governative competenti che coordinano la risposta COVID nel Paese. Inoltre, e in corso ladattamento dei programmi esistenti di Save the Children, al fine di rispondere allepidemia di coronavirus attraverso la sensibilizzazione delle comunita e lofferta dei dispositivi di protezione e di prevenzione per il controllo delle infezioni. E importante che i bambini e gli altri gruppi marginalizzati non siano esclusi dalle attivita di risposta al Covid-19. Dovrebbero essere tenuti al sicuro ma anche consultati in merito alle adeguate misure relative allistruzione e alla protezione da mettere in atto, ha affermato Maryam Ahmed, ambasciatrice della gioventu di Save the Children International Nigeria. Save the Children, che lavora in Nigeria dal 2001 ed e attualmente presente in 12 Stati, apprezza gli sforzi del governo per realizzare diversi programmi di sensibilizzazione per educare la comunita riguardo al coronavirus e alle misure preventive, ma fa appello a tutte le parti del governo, sia a livello nazionale che locale, affinche garantiscano che le voci dei bambini siano ascoltate e che siano al centro dei piani di preparazione, risposta, prevenzione e controllo del coronavirus.
La situazione illustrata da un ragazzo di 14 anni
Il Covid-19 e un disastro. Ha influenzato il nostro modo di vivere e interrotto la nostra routine, inclusa la frequenza scolastica e la regolarita delle entrate. Conosco bambini i cui genitori sono piccoli commercianti che in questi giorni hanno difficolta a procurarsi il cibo. Potrebbero non essere in grado di permettersi nemmeno un pasto al giorno. Queste famiglie vivono alla giornata, non hanno scorte di cibo o risparmi su cui contare. Pertanto, il governo deve fornire assistenza finanziaria o prodotti alimentari sufficienti, che possano raggiungere le persone nellimmediato. Questo potrebbe ridurre il rischio di sfruttamento, violenza domestica e abusi sui bambini, in particolare sulle ragazze , ha detto Purezza Oriaifo, 14 anni.
SAN DIEGO, CA - October 19, 2016 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Gopher Protocol Inc. (OTCQB:GOPH) ("Gopher" and the "Company"), a development-stage company which specializes in the development of real-time, heuristic-based mobile technologies, and its partner, Guardian Patch LLC ("Guardian"), announced today that they are in the process of creating their initial 50 Guardian Sphere devices, which, if completed, will be tested in the U.S. as complete systems. As previously announced on September 21st, the Company and Guardian are currently ramping-up their efforts for the release of their Guardian Sphere tracking device, of which there is no guarantee, which is primarily designed for pets, but may also be used for tracking children, adults, including the disabled, inventory, artwork or virtually any object located within an area covered by the device.
The Guardian Sphere (the "Sphere") system is a derivative technology of the Company's Guardian Patch technology. The Sphere is designed to provide its users with local tracking capability using a re-chargeable/replaceable battery source. The objective of the Company's current efforts, which the Company hopes to achieve, is to deliver for testing in a pre-designated area 50 Guardian pet devices along with a base station, test results and eventual manufacturing capability for both the mobile and the base unit.
The Sphere is an innovative tracking device that can easily be attached to a pet's collar and then transmit real-time location information to the smartphone(s) or website account of the registered owner of the device. The Sphere has a replaceable battery and operates on the exclusive Guardian private network, which provides owners with the unique ability to obtain real-time tracking information without the need for GPS, Wi-Fi or cellular service. The Sphere includes state of the art radio technology, a GPS system and micro controller systems, with a potential "back-up" Bluetooth unit. The Sphere sends signals in specific intervals to report on its location. The Sphere's system analyzes the information using its proprietary, advanced mathematical modeling software that precisely calculates the Sphere's location. The Sphere's mobile application then presents the exact location of the Sphere on the map. An additional unique system feature is the Sphere's Emergency Alert system. Users of the Sphere have the ability to transmit emergency alerts directly from their mobile apps, which transmit their Sphere locations. All registered users located in such a Sphere's proximity will be notified about the Emergency and may notify the user about the Sphere's recovery (which we fondly refer to as a "private emergency alert").
The Sphere utilizes a bi-directional system which enables data transmission/receiving acknowledgment. It also includes error correction protocol to ensure data accuracy. The Sphere has its own battery source and may be plugged into external power using a standard Android type charger socket. The Sphere also comes with its own ID. This ID is registered on the mobile app to track the Sphere's location. Multiple Spheres can be registered on the same app for multiple tracking.
"The actual creation of our initial 50 Spheres along with their suggested final design is extremely exciting. These 50 Spheres will be tested as a complete system in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. We believe tests will be initiated by mid-November. Our goal in developing the Sphere is to provide pet owners with peace of mind through the use an invaluable recovery tool which could enable them to track their pets in real-time should they ever become separated," stated Company CTO, Dr. Danny Rittman.
At the time of this press release, the Company has not specified a sale release date for the Sphere. The Company is committed to providing more definitive release date information in the coming weeks and is targeting a release date of approximately Q1 2017, of which there is no guarantee.
About Guardian Patch
The Guardian Patch (the "Patch"), potentially arriving in consumer markets in 2017, is a unique location technology that works with or without GPS. The Patch is a "stick-on" device that provides its users with the capability to protect and track objects, a loved-one or even a pet, through a mobile application. Download the Patch app, register your patch, and track anything that you own on your mobile device or on our designated website. Register the Patches of your family members and friends to receive alerts in the event of an emergency. Peel the Patch off and the Patch acts as a beacon, sending out a signal and notifying anyone who has registered the user's Patch.
About Gopher Protocol Inc.
Gopher Protocol Inc. (OTCQB: GOPH) ("Gopher" and the "Company") (http://gopherprotocol.com) is a development-stage company developing a real-time, heuristic-based mobile technology. Upon development, the technology will consist of a smart microchip, mobile application software and supporting software that will run on a server. The system contemplates the creation of a global network. Gopher believes this will be the first system that is developed using a human, heuristic-based analysis engine. Since the core of the system will be its advanced microchip technology that will be capable of being installed in any mobile device worldwide, Gopher expects that this will result in an internal, private network between all mobile devices utilizing the microchip by providing mobile technology for computing power enhancement, advanced mobile database management/sharing and other additional mobile features.
Corporate Site: http://gopherprotocol.com
Press page/ press kit - http://gopherprotocol.com/?page_id=228
Consumer and product website for Guardian Patch: http://www.guardianpatch.com/
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors as disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission located at their website (http://www.sec.gov ). In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.
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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.
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The Verkhovna Rada urges the parties of the armed conflict in Syria to cease active hostilities throughout its territory, and comply with international law, human rights and international humanitarian law.
Some 241 MPs voted for the decision No.5214 on the Verkhovna Radas appeal to international organizations, parliaments of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) participating states and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the latest developments in Syria.
The Verkhovna Rada called on "all involved parties to facilitate the creation of the necessary preconditions for the restoration of the political process for the settlement aimed at the establishment of an inclusive transitional government in Syria with further adoption of the Constitution and holding of elections in accordance with the Geneva Communique dated 2012 and UN Security Council Resolution 2254 (2015)."
Vodafone has recently announced that it will launch NB-IoT, a low power network aimed at devices like smart meters, in four European markets. The markets are Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain, and the networks are expected to go live in the first quarter of 2017. Moreover, Vodafone in the announcement also committed to rolling out the network standard across all of its countries by 2020.
By committing to this date, Vodafone has sent a strong message to its competitors, but also makes a strong commitment to other players in the value chain, from chipset designers to application developers, said analyst Tom Rebbeck's, Research Director at Analysys Mason. This announcement will encourage others to invest in NB-IoT, which will help all parts of the ecosystem.
Rebbeck said he thinks that the company is being very aggressive about its time table, but that it could be achievable. Most of the rollouts will only require an over-the-air software upgrade, Vodaphone said, so no site visit should be required.
Vodafone will want its partners, and not just its own networks, to launch NB-IoT, said Rebbeck. Part of Vodafones success in winning major IoT contracts using traditional cellular has been due to it offering seamless regional coverage. It will want to do the same with NB-IoT but this will depend on partner networks also investing in NB-IoT.
In addition, LoRa could become a big factor in future rollouts, because this plan will put pressure on competitive technologies like LoRa, SIGFOX and Ingenu to execute as heavily and quickly, the analyst said. As evidence, he pointed to recent news from Softbank in Japan and Comcast in the US that they have plans for LoRa networks.
The race has been on for some time, but this could very well be the beginning of the tide turning, as big carrier players choose their paths for IoT connectivity and begin pushing out the little guys.
Edited by Alicia Young
Two men have been arrested in Dublin following a gunshot let off on the Northside of Dublin last night.
The shot was fired at 11.30pm at a house on Inverness Road in Fairview.
The 18-acre facility in Bray, Co Wicklow, has been owned by former U2 manager Paul McGuinness and well-known accountant Ossie Kilkenny, for nearly 30 years, with Enterprise Ireland controlling a one-third stake.
The three shareholders said in a statement that they believe the time is right for a sale.
IBI Corporate Finance is handling the sale and although an asking price has not been disclosed, a sale price of at least 10m has been estimated by sources.
Ardmore currently hosting filming of the new Mel Gibson and Sean Penn movie, The Professor and the Madman, and TV series Into the Badlands is being sold as a going concern and the sale will have no impact on its day-to-day operations.
The current owners cite the favourable Section 481 tax incentive scheme as being a key attractor for international productions and said that demand for fully-serviced studio space in Ireland remains buoyant.
They added that there is a healthy number of potential productions in the pipeline for the coming months and year ahead at the nearly 60-year-old studio complex.
Ardmore has generated respective pre-tax profits of 1.6m and 1.5m in the last two years and has seen more than 2m of fresh investment pumped into it in the past three years, which has resulted in a significant upgrading of on-site facilities.
An additional 47,000 sq ft of studio space, to cater for market demand, was built on Brays Southern Cross Rd earlier this year.
Ardmore Studios has operated at an average annual capacity of 85%-90% since 2013.
Over the years it has housed a number of high-profile productions including My Left Foot, Excalibur, and Braveheart, while more recently the likes of Penny Dreadful, Moone Boy, and The Tudors.
In all, productions made at the Bray studios have received 14 Oscars and a number of Bafta, Golden Globe, and Emmy awards.
In terms of its owners, yesterdays statement said both Mr McGuinness and Mr Kilkenny will continue to explore a number of other individual business interests.
Mr McGuinness is currently producing a TV series for Sky television, whilst Mr Kilkenny has a variety of film related enterprises, the announcement said.
Ardmore Studios has benefited from a significant investment programme in recent years to enhance its facilities and has recorded year-on-year growth in profitability.
It is understood that the redundancies will only affect the existing operations of data storage company EMC, in Ovens, and will cover a range of job areas.
The development is due to the overlap of job functions brought about by Dells recent takeover of EMC.
Dell completed its $67bn (61bn) purchase of EMC last month; at which time the cutting of 2,000-3,000 jobs mostly in the US was mooted.
The jobs being cut in Cork comprise less than 1% of the enlarged entitys Irish workforce.
In all, the combined businesses employ 5,500 people here.
EMC employs 3,000 people in Ovens and Dell around 2,500 people across facilities in Limerick, Cork, and Dublin.
EMC has, for some time, been one of the biggest private sector employers in the Munster area and this news will come as a blow for the region.
Nevertheless, the result is seemingly not as bad as had been feared, with reports suggesting anything up to 200 roles had been viewed as being under pressure.
Dell-EMC now forms part of the wider Dell Technologies group, which houses the likes of cybersecurity firm RSA; software consultancy Pivotal, hardware manufacturer Dell and cloud computing company VMWare, all of which have existing facilities in Ireland.
A spokesperson for Dell Technologies yesterday said the job losses were unavoidable, but were being minimised.
While job reductions are never our first alternative and we strive to minimise them, in a merger of this size they are necessary given some overlap in functions, said the spokesperson.
We will do everything possible to minimise any impact on jobs.
Following the recent merger of Dell and EMC to form Dell Technologies, we expect revenue gains will far outweigh any cost savings, and revenue growth drives employment growth.
The company also offered its full commitment to Ireland, a territory highly regarded by the groups management. The spokesperson said: Ireland is, and remains, an important base for Dell Technologies.
We are proud of the team we have built in Ireland and look forward to it continuing its work to drive our global business forward.
Dell founder Michael Dell and EMC chief executive David Goulden reportedly visited the combined entitys workers in Cork in May to discuss the merger.
The Dell-EMC deal was the largest technology transaction on record and was done to give Dell a broader product offering with which to challenge the likes of IBM, Cisco Systems, and Hewlett-Packard in areas such as cloud computing, mobility and cyber security.
Speaking on the conclusion of the deal, which took nearly a year to complete, Mr Dell called it an historic moment, saying that our investments in R&D and innovation, along with our 140,000 team members around the world will give us unmatched scale, strength and flexibility deepening our relationships with customers of all sizes.
Last year, Dell was named seventh largest exporter in Ireland, selling 8.65bn worth of goods to international markets, according to the Irish Exporters Association and Investec Ireland. That placed it higher than Apple with 6bn worth of exports.
Kendrick Investments, an Isle of Man registered company which holds 99% of issued share capital in Topaz Energy Group Ltd (TEGL), says Circle K Holding Ireland Ltd, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin, made a 1.8m payment as part of the overall 7m share purchase agreement but failed to pay 4.7m.
Kendrick is seeking judgment against Circle K for 4.7m and the case has been admitted to the High Courts fast-track commercial division.
In an affidavit, Kendrick director Dermot Hayes says that, under the December 2015 agreement, Kendrick agreed to sell its shares in TEGL to a company called 9121-2738 Quebec Inc.
Under an assignment of rights (deed of novation) mechanism between Kendrick, businessmen Denis OBrien, Emmet ONeill, and Sean Corkery, and also with Circle K Holding Ireland, another company called Circle K IOM Ltd, as well as with 9121-2738 Quebec Inc, it was agreed Circle K Ireland would assume the rights, benefits, obligations, and liabilities of the Quebec company under the share purchase agreement.
Mr Hayes says it was a term of the agreement that the defendant would pay Kendrick 7m by way of what was called the Dublin Port Additional Consideration.
This related to a February 2016 lease for premises at Dublin Port and a retail lease which was not to be terminated before August 2017.
Mr Hayes says the port consideration was satisfied and the 7m became payable, less an agreed 480,000 related to working capital.
However, while Circle K Holding Ireland paid some 1.8m in September 2013, 4.7m was owing. Kendrick demanded payment on September 23 but Circle K failed to pay. Mr Hayes says the defendant has raised an unmeritorious breach of warranty claim.
In correspondence, he says, it was suggested Kendrick had failed to disclosed details of the financial situation relating to the Exol Group. He says the breach of warranty claim is spurious and the issue Circle K complains of was appropriately disclosed prior to the completion of the transaction.
Accounts filed by Kellogg European Trading show it recorded a 27% jump in operating profits, to 49.36m, in the 12 months to January 2.
However, interest of 137.45m on loans from other group firms pushed the firm into the red to record losses of 75.5m.
The firm reduced its losses in 2015 to 65.6m with a deferred tax asset of 9.8m.
Kelloggs has been based in Ireland since 2005 and employs 250 people here, including the head of its European cereal business unit and a number of senior cereal functional leaders for Europe.
As well as Kellogg European Trading, Kelloggs operates a number of other subsidiaries here.
A breakdown of revenues of Kellogg European Tradings show that 526.72m was generated in the UK with 747m in the rest of Europe and the remaining 9.8m in the rest of the world.
Numbers employed at the firm last year rose by four to 215 with staff costs of 39.8m. That included 1m in equity share-based payments.
Four directors served on the board last year and they shared pay of 2.22m.
Included in that amount is 258,000 paid to the firms ultimate parent for the provision of directors services.
The outlook for 2016 remains challenging with an expectation of little year-on-year growth in turnover or operating profit, management said in the accounts.
Marketing support/pressure for our brands will be in line with the previous year in real terms.
The overall cost base is expected to be lower than the previous year thanks to notable efficiencies in this area offset by commodity price increases, it said.
The principal activity of the firm is the production and marketing of cereals.
Bishop of Cork and Ross, Most Rev Dr John Buckley, commented as he promoted religious life and the priesthood at a students careers fair in Cork yesterday.
However, he said he was not sure if changing Church rules on celibacy would boost vocations.
Celibacy is a regulation of the Church, he said.
Certainly, in the years ahead, people might look at that, and I wouldnt see any difficulty if they see that its absolutely necessary. But whether it would help vocations, Im not sure. Other denominations which allow ministers to marry are also seeing a shortage of vocations.
Third-level institutions from all over Ireland and Britain, and industry bodies attended the Institute of Guidance Counsellors- organised Career Options Expo for second-level students, but it is the first time in several years that Vocations Ireland attended, and the first time the bishop manned the stand.
With just 11 ordinations of diocesan priests in Ireland in 2014, and 15 last year, Bishop Buckley said his diocese, like others, is operating under constraints but he told students that religious life is a great calling.
He also confirmed that Pope Francis has yet to answer his letter of resignation, written two years ago.
I have served in the diocese of Cork for 33 years the longest-serving bishop in Cork, he said. It has given me joy and happiness. My greatest joy is the enrichment which contact with people gives to my life. You are bringing good news to people, and people appreciate that.
Glanmire-based Fr Anthony Buckley, ordained five years ago, said celibacy is a great gift he treasures.
It allows me great freedom to give myself completely to God and his people, he said. My days can be very busy and if I had a wife and children, I think theyd see very little of me.
Up to 5,500 students will have attended the careers fair by close of business today.
An Bord Pleanala has been deliberating on the application for renewed planning permission at its existing Edenderry Plant in the Co Offaly town, in a case which has already been the subject of judicial review proceedings.
Siptu has claimed that if the application is unsuccessful, it could lead to up to 300 job losses.
The trade union has also signalled its concerns over the possibility that licences due for renewal in 2019 at two other peat-burning stations in west Offaly and in Lanesboro in Co Longford might also be in jeopardy, with up to 1,000 jobs at risk.
The Edenderry plant is run by Edenderry Power, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bord Na Mona. Amid looming greenhouse- gas emission targets, the plant has already switched to 35% biomass use, and is set to rise to 50% by 2020.
A stay on any decision is in place until next February and a spokesman for An Bord Pleanala said yesterday that no decision on the application was imminent.
Siptu sector organiser, John Regan, said employees were concerned and that any meeting with environment minister Denis Naughten would need to look at a plan B of alternative employment in the Midlands.
In a worst-case scenario where the application fails the agenda we will meet him on is alternative employment for the Midlands, said Mr Regan.
Regarding the wait for a final decision on the application, he said: It has all livelihoods held in suspension.
Meanwhile, Mr Naughten has secured cabinet approval that will start the process for the ratification of the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The Government yesterday agreed to seek the approval of the Dail under Article 29 of the Constitution regarding any ratification of an international treaty.
If it is ratified, Irelands obligation will form part of the European Unions overall commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
The minister said that he was seeking full Dail backing for ratification, claiming the wave of global momentum behind the plan was unprecedented and adding: It is our childrens future and of vital national interest.
The National Bus and Rail Union (NRBU) will today appear before the Oireachtas transport committee as part of a discussion on the future of public transport and the level of state subvention. It is understood the NBRU will challenge the Department of Transports policy, as implemented by the National Transport Authority (NTA), particularly in the area of licensing.
It has accused the NTA of mismanagement because it awarded licences to private operators on Expressway routes, which it argues has undermined the Bus Eireann service.
Tensions escalated this week after the union dismissed the NTA as the HSE on wheels in a letter to Transport Minister Shane Ross.
What is particularly fascinating for those of us who observe the political manoeuvrings and shenanigans across Leinster House is the notion that those who were happy to be portrayed as being the paragons of the anti-quango brigade, now find themselves cast in the role of insiders facilitating agencies like the NTA to indulge in empire building to the detriment of frontline transport services, wrote NBRU general secretary, Dermot OLeary.
This particular quango, the HSE on Wheels, appears to have all the Authority with no Responsibility. Being a civil servant in the Department or in the NTA does not automatically conjure up magical powers of exclusive expertise on all matters transport, wrote Mr OLeary.
The NBRU has already stated its strong opposition to any proposals to change the service and is balloting its members on potential industrial action in response to proposed changes to Expressway. The result of the ballot is expected within the next two weeks.
Last month the NBRU accused Bus Eireann of dropping an industrial relations bombshell after it emerged the company is reviewing Expressway with a view to restructuring the service.
The damage that has been inflicted on Bus Eireann by this policy cannot nor should not be underestimated in particular the effect on the Expressway business by the issuing and amending of Licences by the Department and the NTA, wrote Mr OLeary.
Woe betide the politicians who would be held responsible for the dismantling of these vital transport links into hundreds of communities across Ireland.
Patrick OBrien, aged 76, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 48 sample counts of indecent assault, and three counts of sexual assault of the boys between 1977 and 2010 at locations including Kildare, Westmeath, Loughrea in Co Galway, and at St Patricks Cathedral in Dublin, where he worked as a volunteer.
OBrien, with an address at Knocklyon Rd, Templeogue, Dublin, was previously sent forward for trial from Dublin District Court. Judge Cormac Dunne previously ruled that the media could identify the accused following an application by RTE at the district court.
All of the victims wish to preserve their anonymity. Four were present in court for the sentence hearing. Each man prepared a victim impact report but some indicated they did not want their statements read out.
It took over 30 minutes to read the charges in a sentence hearing taking place over two days to allow for all 14 statements of complaint to be read into the record.
Detective Garda Anthony Maloney outlined the abuse, which included open-mouth kissing, rape, attempted rape, oral rape, and mutual masturbation. There are at least two set of brothers among OBriens victims.
The court heard OBrien would bring the boys to his yacht, take them for driving lessons, or bring them to the office where he worked. He abused one boy once a week in a car wash after they were hidden from view while the vehicle was covered in foam.
OBrien would often drop the boys home and regularly have dinner or drinks with their parents, having abused their child hours earlier.
OBrien regularly came to the victims bedroom to kiss them goodnight and tuck them in but would then abuse them, usually touching their penis and then performing oral sex on them.
One man was first raped by OBrien on the childs parents bed. OBrien blocked the bedroom door with a chair before stripping the child and himself.
This same victim was also raped in OBriens mothers home. The victim was introduced to OBriens mother before OBrien took him into the garage and abused him.
Another victim, who was first raped by OBrien when he was nine, told gardai that he was in pain for days afterwards. He said OBrien reassured him while raping him, calling him a good and brave boy. He said when being raped by OBrien on his boat, he closed his eyes waiting for the morning to come and tried to think about the fun he would have sailing the next day.
Det Gda Maloney said all the men were badly affected by the abuse. Two men who were raped by OBrien told gardai they were worried when they learned about Aids on the news as children and were terrified they were going to die.
One man, now 50, outlined in his victim impact report that he had never married and said that this was down to the abuse he suffered. He said he felt the chance to have a wife and family had passed him by.
Another victim said that he never wanted to have children because he did not want to be responsible for them after the abuse he suffered as a young boy.
The hearing continues.
Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar confirmed the situation yesterday, saying that there should be an employer contribution to gain access to the programme and that future interns must be guaranteed at least the net minimum wage from state and private sector funds.
Under long-flagged measures formally announced in a new report into the JobBridge scheme, the Government is scrapping the deeply divisive internship system from this Friday and replacing it will a new group from next summer.
While existing nine-month placements will continue until their conclusion, just 2,500 placements will be allowed under the new system and will be focused specifically on the private sector, with public groups only allowed to participate if they can prove there is a genuine chance of employment for interns after their placements end.
Mr Varadkar said the JobBridge replacement will see a working week cap of 30 hours instead of the existing 40-hour JobBridge ceiling, reduce placements from nine months to six months, limit the number of interns to 10% of a companys workforce, and guarantee that interns receive at least the net minimum wage.
This means participants will be in line to receive about 258 per week, compared to the existing system which works out at 152.50 per week for a person under the age of 25 and 240.50 per week for older participants.
The recommendations have been made in an independent review of the Job-Bridge system by consultancy firm Indecon, which was itself reviewed by the Labour Market Council which concluded, among other recommendations, that the taxpayer contribution to the new scheme should be limited to the first three months of a six-month placement.
In addition to the changes, Mr Varadkar said he expects employers taking part in the new scheme to pay a contribution to interns wages, which the Indecon and Labour Market Council reports separately said could be a blunt contribution or a programme registration fee.
However, despite the minister and his spokesperson last night saying the exact figure will be the subject of a consultation process with businesses and other interest groups in the coming weeks, no suggested rate for the employer contribution has been put forward.
And while the internship funding increase has been widely welcomed, the crucial part of the plan is risking a showdown with small and medium-sized businesses which claim to be already critical of Brexit, the 10c minimum wage budget rise and other rising costs.
There should be an employer contribution to gain access to the entry to the programme, and I think that will reduce the risk of exploitation, Mr Varadkar confirmed at the launch of the reports at the Royal Irish Academy yesterday.
An Ibec spokesperson last night declined to comment on what type of contribution, if any, businesses would be willing to pay for six-month net minimum wage placements which taxpayers may only fund for three months until after the consultation process begins.
Small Firms Association director Patricia Callan said while most firms are willing to pay an amount it would certainly not be towards the minimum wage, and similarly declined to provide a figure until after the consultation process begins.
JobBridge was introduced at the depth of the recession in 2011 in a bid to help the long-term unemployed back to work.
It was quickly criticised for taking advantage of unemployed people and young college graduates.
Seven ceasefire violations were recorded in the conflict area in Donbas on Wednesday, the anti-terrorist operation headquarters' press center said.
"In the Mariupol sector, Ukrainian units were shelled five times. The adversary fired small arms in Maryinka and heavy machineguns and grenade launchers of various systems in Slavne and Shyrokyne, while the 122mm conventional artillery was used in the shelling of Vodyane," the headquarters' press center said on its Facebook page.
The Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk sector, particularly in Avdiyivka, were shelled twice as Kyiv's adversary opened fire from grenade launchers, large-caliber machineguns and small arms there, it said.
In the Luhansk sector, no violations of the regime of calm were recorded on Wednesday, the headquarters said.
Darren OHalloran, aged 31, of Aurea Cottage, Dublin Rd, Limerick, has pleaded not guilty at Limerick Circuit Court to charges of threatening to kill detective garda Pat Whelan and threatening to burn down his house.
John OSullivan, prosecuting, opening the case to a jury of eight men and four women said it was alleged that Det Gda Whelan was among a party of gardai who went to the address of the accused on March 29, 2015, and left some time after 2.35am. As he left, it is alleged that the accused made a remark to Det Gda Whelan about being on a white horse clip-clopping at Christmas time through a village near to where he lived.
The warning came from an experienced environmental engineer and county councillor, who was backed up by colleagues, when she maintained the design of the new Cork-Ringaskiddy motorway (M28) was fundamentally flawed.
Independent councillor Marcia DAlton said people living around the Bloomfield interchange near Rochestown already suffered from excessive diesel fumes and noise pollution above internationally-recognised limits.
She quoted what are supposed to be acceptable EU and national levels on pollution, which were already contravened at the moment in roads around the area and added that additional traffic generated by HGVs (high goods vehicles) from the proposed motorway between Cork and Ringaskiddy would raise them even higher.
Cork County Council engineers are working with Transport Infrastructure Ireland to design the route which is planned to run from the Jack Lynch Tunnel to Ringaskiddy.
The motorway is primarily designed to provide access for HGV traffic which will be generated by the Port of Corks plan to turn Ringaskiddy into a major deepwater terminal to handle larger container ships into the future.
Ms DAlton said that, cognisant of the damaging noise and air pollution associated with heavily trafficked motorways, the National Roads Design Office/Transport Infrastructure Ireland should consider an entirely new route for the M28 which would avoid its running adjacent to residential estates, such as in Maryborough, Rochestown, Mount Oval, and the general Douglas area.
Ms DAlton said extra traffic generated by increased port activity at Ringaskiddy would have a major impact on raising noise levels and air pollution.
Residents living in the area already have significant issues with noise, she said. Only a certain amount of mitigation can be done with noise barriers and theres very little we can do about emissions from diesel engines.
The councillor added that recent research carried out in Denmark showed diesel emissions were very dangerous to human health.
Residents have asked that we look at alternative routes for what will essentially be a freight-carrying motorway, she said.
Fine Gael councillor Deirdre Forde, who lives in the area, said local residents had mobilised significant public opinion against the proposed route.
Theres already a lot of traffic in the area. The Douglas LUTS [Land Use & Transportation] study confirmed noise pollution is way beyond norms and this isnt acceptable, said Ms Forde.
Ms DAlton acknowledged that as part of the planning application for the motorway an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) would have to be put together by engineers.
She added: It was easy to couch things in the EIS to make it [pollution levels] look OK. But its not OK.
Ms DAlton said noise and traffic pollution were serious issues which couldnt be engineered out of the project.
Meanwhile, a public consultation meeting will be held in the Rochestown Park Hotel on Saturday, October 22, from 2pm-6pm to explain plans to upgrade the current N28 to motorway status.
They are particularly concerned at the consequences for road safety, public disorder, assaults and robberies and fear it will provide a golden opportunity to the Kinahan cartel in carrying out assassinations.
Im not saying it will be Armageddon, but its going to be a very, very dangerous situation for both the public and the State, said a senior source.
The association supporting families of homicide victims expressed concern at the impact on Garda support and communication to their families and any effect on court cases.
Meanwhile, Policing Authority chair Josephine Feehily said she welcomed discussions that had started between the parties.
My hope is that these will conclude successfully and that the threatened industrial action will not occur, she told the Irish Examiner.
The Garda commissioners contingency plans began with certainty yesterday after Mondays decision by the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors.
Its 2,000 members have joined the Garda Representative Association, with 10,500 members, in withdrawing labour on the same dates November 4, 11, 18, and 25.
Noirin OSullivan
Noirin OSullivan and her team will also watch the outcome of Thursdays meeting between AGSI and Department of Justice officials.
Senior sources also said they were caught off guard by AGSIs decision to begin industrial action this Friday by refusing to use the Garda Pulse system and, the following Friday, buy refusing to do administrative duties.
If sergeants and inspectors decided not to go on strike on the same days as the GRA, we might have got through it, said one senior source. Now, its going to be impossible.
Garda figures provided to the Irish Examiner show there are just 218 senior officers left 165 superintendents, 45 chief superintendents, and eight assistant commissioners.
There are 529 probationary gardai in stations providing a total strength of 747.
It is likely 450 students in Templemore College will be called up and that up to 789 Garda reservists could be asked to work, if they are available. However, sources pointed out that probationers, students, and reservists must have sworn gardai accompanying them.
Do you ask a probationer or student to be the first responder to a robbery, or to intervene in public disorder? said a source. There is a duty of care on the employer and the last thing we want is a GSOC inquiry.
He said key problems on Friday evenings and nights were road accidents, public disorder, and assaults.
On Monday, GRA leaders asked members working in the Emergency Response Unit and Regional Support Units to turn up for duty and for members of the Technical Bureau to remain on call.
But sources said this will be no replacement for the constant armed patrolling and checkpoints aimed at keeping a lid on further Kinahan-Hutch violence.
This could be a golden opportunity to the Kinahan cartel, said one source.
Advocates for the Victims of Homicide said their concerns were for the families they supported and any impact on Garda communication or any disruption to court dates.
The girl was found in the lorry at OLeary International in Marshmeadows with three men and one woman on Sunday. All of the occupants of the container are from the Middle East. They told immigration officers they are Kurdish.
Wexford chief superintendent John Roche said the people with the child, all aged in their mid to late 20s, were found on Sunday at 6pm having travelled from Cherbourg on the Oscar Wilde ferry the previous day into Rosslare Europort.
They are thought to have entered an unaccompanied refrigerated container which was left in Cherbourg. The container was taken from a compound in the port city by a tug on Saturday and deposited on the ferry for the 18-hour journey to Ireland. The container was sealed by customs officials as it contained perishable goods.
Once at Rosslare Europort the container was transported by tug to a compound where it was picked up by a truck and taken to OLeary International. Noises from the back of the lorry alerted one of the companys staff who contacted gardai.
Supt Roche said the refugees were taken to New Ross Garda station where they were medically assessed prior to being taken to Wexford garda stations immigration unit.
They were processed and interviewed prior to being taken by gardai to a refugee reception centre in Waterford where they spent the night prior to travelling to Dublin where they will apply for asylum-seeker status.
He said the matter is still under investigation and it is not known if they are related as the last names given are not similar. Supt Roche said there is an increased garda presence at Rosslare Europort this year, and that about 10 people including children, have been found hiding in the back of lorries and trailers and under trailers at Rosslare Europort.
We search the majority of trucks coming into Rosslare Europort and we have found a lot of clandestines who are sent back to France. This container was sealed so we could not search it, he said.
Mr Justice Peter Kelly made the remark when he yesterday rejected an appeal by Omar Hassan Khalafalla Mohamed, 30, against his striking off the medical register for professional misconduct and poor professional performance.
The judge said he could not understand how Dr Hassan got on the medical register in the first place, apart from the fact that he obtained appointments in three different hospitals.
The judge acknowledged the Irish Medical Council (IMC), which had recommended the erasure of Dr Hassans name from the register, had also expressed similar concern.
The IMC made the recommendation after a fitness to practice committee found him guilty on multiple grounds related to his conduct and performance earlier this year.
After the judge confirmed his striking off, Dr Hassan, who qualified in Sudan, said for me it is meaningless.
When the judge ordered he pay the costs of the legal action, Dr Hassan said he did not believe in the integrity of the procedure.
He also said he did not believe it was a fair decision.
In his appeal, Dr Hassan argued that, among other things, he should not be struck off because the evidence against him did not meet the required standard.
He also said the complaints against him should not have been referred to the fitness to practice committee because they were not of a serious and grave nature.
Mr Justice Kelly said the committee made its findings after hearing from 30 witnesses over 11 days. It had met the criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in making its findings, he said.
It would be difficult to consider the complaints against Dr Hassan were anything other than grave , he said.
Among those incidents, which happened in the Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise, Mayo General, and Galway University Hospital between 2012 to 2014, was that, while performing a gall bladder-related procedure, Dr Hassan stood on the pedal of an electrosurgical machine, which was not in use, and caused a burn injury to a patient.
On another, he attempted to insert a needle into a patients arm on a number of occasions, causing her pain, even though the procedure was not necessary.
Around February 17, 2014, during a trauma meeting/teaching session in Galway, he misidentified an x-ray image of an ankle as being one of an elbow.
He was also found by colleagues to act in a bizarre way and to be aggressive and confrontational both to colleagues and patients.
The court previously heard Dr Hassan had complained about his treatment at the public inquiry and threatened in correspondence it will be fully paid for at an extremely bloody price for the people involved worldwide.
He also wrote that there would be a grave response from me... to these events outside court and not necessarily in Ireland.
Mr Justice Kelly, on that occasion, said he was glad to know the IMC had informed gardai of the threats.
Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar confirmed the move at a launch of two separate reports into the controversial scheme, despite opposition parties lashing out at the new measures and describing them as JobBridge 2.0.
The Government has confirmed that it is ending the JobBridge programme and replacing it with a new system in the coming months.
Existing nine-month placements will continue until their conclusion despite new placements being stopped from Friday.
There will be scope for just 2,500 placements under the new system and be focused specifically on the private sector, with public groups only allowed to participate if they can prove there is a genuine chance of employment for interns after placements end.
The JobBridge replacement, Mr Varadkar said, will also see:
A working internship week cap of 30 hours instead of the existing 40-hour Job Bridge ceiling;
A reduction of placements lengths from nine months to six months;
A limitation on the number of interns to 10% of a companys workforce;
A guarantee that interns will receive at least the net minimum wage, with the taxpayer potentially only paying for three months of this over a six- month period
The latter point means participants will be in line to receive approximately 258 per week, compared to the existing system which works out at 152.50 per week for a person under the age of 25 and 240.50 per week for older participants.
In addition, there will also be a higher, yet to be agreed, financial contribution to the scheme from employers wishing to participate, with suggestions either a wage contribution or a registration fee for firms taking part may be sought.
Speaking at the launch of the separate Indecon economists and Labour Market Council reviews of the Job Bridge scheme, on which the changes are based, Mr Varadkar said he believes the scheme has served its purpose and is no longer needed in a growing economy.
Rejecting claims the Governments scrapping of Job-Bridge is proof it now agrees the system is unworkable, he said 38,000 people have been helped into full-time employment and that the new system is an entirely separate model now unemployment levels are down to 8%.
However, despite the claims, opposition TDs rounded on Government last night. Paul Murphy, AAA-PBP TD and a vocal critic of JobBridge, said: These are not meant to be schemes that are a boost to small business. People should be paid for their work, adding that the replacement scheme risks being Job Bridge 2.0.
Paul Murphy, AAA-PBP TD
The Indecon report launched yesterday said Job Bridge helped 79% of people find long-term work and 70% of those who took part spoke of the scheme positively.
However, a previous National Youth Council of Ireland study found 31% failed to be employed when their placement finished.
The woman concerned said that her family was on the edge of poverty when she applied for money to be paid out of court funds to buy school books and other items applicable to their education for her three children.
Some years ago, the three children had been awarded 11,000 each for personal injuries they suffered in a rear-ending accident and the awards, totalling 33,000 had been lodged in court funds until they reached the age of 18.
The mother had applied for, and received, payment out of 1,600 in July 2014, and again in 2015 she received payments out amounting to 1,385.
The court heard that, this year, the mother had applied to the county registrar, Rita Considine for payments out of 1,700, 1,400, and 370 in respect of her children. The county registrar had directed payments out of 1,200, 750, and 235.
Ms Considines decision was appealed by the childrens mother to the Circuit Civil Court before Judge Jacqueline Linnane, who dealt with the matter yesterday.
The mother outlined the grounds of her appeal to Judge Linnane and said that she was unable to meet the cost of her childrens education. She had nevertheless purchased the items that her children needed for school before applying to the court for the money.
Judge Linnane told the woman that she had taken a risk buying the educational items before applying for payments out. She said it was the moral duty for each parent to provide for their children and there would soon be nothing left for the children.
I want to give them the best start possible in life and this is money they need now rather than a lump sum when they are 18, the mother, who represented herself, told the court.
Its better they get the value of the money now rather than spending it on something like a motorbike when they are 18.
Judge Linnane said that there may be no funds left available to provide for third-level education for the children.
Substantial payments out had been made and the court was being asked to pay out further sums.
We are in a situation of near poverty, the woman told the court. We cant afford to do it.
When Judge Linnane said that in difficult situations parental expectations had to some extent to be curtailed the woman told the court: Our expectations have been enormously curtailed.
Judge Linnane said that, for the provision of school books, she would allow further payments out of 256.69, 138.05, and 66 in the three cases.
A number of circuit judges have made it clear in the past that damages awards for children are for the benefit of the children when they reach adulthood and are not a substitute for the parental cost of rearing a child.
Vera Twomeys daughter, Ava, suffers from Dravet syndrome which is a rare but severe form of epilepsy that hampers peoples cognitive development and requires those with the affliction in need of round-the-clock care due to the frequency of the seizures they suffer.
While Ms Twomey has managed Avas symptoms over the past month with the use of Charlottes Web, an oil that is legally available in Ireland, she says legislation is needed for her daughter to receive the medicines she needs long term.
Charlottes Web has had a fantastic impact. She went 11 days with no seizures, then had two on October 13, and now has gone five days without one, said Ms Twomey.
That mightnt sound like much, given shes had two seizures, but she would have 102 in a month before now.
People have no idea. To be able to put on her uniform and send her to school, shes not wrecked looking anymore, shes talking more, shes brighter every day.
I would say it has been life-changing. We have spent nearly seven years now trying to tackle her seizures. It has been like a curtain opening before our eyes, she said.
However Ms Twomey fears the effects of Charlottes Web will wear off in time and that stronger medicinal products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, which is not available in Ireland, will be needed.
She said: If Charlottes Web doesnt work in the coming months we will need something with tetrahydrocannabinol and we will be stuck. We cant get that without breaking the law.
In July, People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny introduced the Cannabis for Medicinal Use Regulation Bill 2016 to the Dail proposed legislation that Ms Twomey hopes will be passed.
She said: It would allow certain circumstances where people like us can get what we need when we have tried every other conceivable alternative.
Senators are to be moved out of Leinster House to allow essential refurbishment on the Seanad chamber and ante-rooms which could take up to two years.
During that time senators will move to the nearby National Museum of Ireland,taking up an upstairs a wing of the museum that has been used for lectures, educational displays, and other functions.
Nama credit committee chief Willie Soffe and board members Brian McEnery and Oliver Ellingham issued the denial during a six-hour meeting with the Dails public accounts committee meeting which also heard claims other credible bidders were ignored.
Speaking during the meeting, Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said she has seen documentation where US firm Pimco asked Nama to acquiesce and allow it to stay in the bidding process after alleged fixers fee payments to former Nama Northern Ireland advisor Frank Cushnahan emerged.
Under parliamentary privilege, Ms McDonald said the companys own legal team became the whistle-blower by raising the issue initially with Nama.
However, she said on discovery of these unethical fees the firm also attempted to get Nama to acquiesce and allow it to remain in the bidding process.
She said the situation shows Pimco sought to side-step the issue and that former Nama official Ronnie Hanna later wrote to the company asking if the deal could be shaped differently to allow it continue bidding.
However, the Nama board members said they have no knowledge of any detailed discussions on the matter.
The allegation came as the PAC continued to investigate the Project Eagle deal due to comptroller and auditor general concerns over fixers fees, political pressure and claims the state lost out on 220m over the deal.
During the meeting, concerns were also raised over why Namas board did not examine in greater detail whether eventual Project Eagle winner Cerberus was a proxy to Pimco as it was using the same legal firms and why Nama board minutes appear to show Cerberus was confirmed as the contract winner a full month before it was agreed.
However, responding to the specific claims, Mr Ellingham said the board was satisfied Cerberus was unconnected to Pimco and that the apparent meeting minute issue may have been a typo.
The Nama board members said that if they held onto the Project Eagle property until today it would be worth less than 1bn instead of its 1.3bn 2014 price.
"The Strategy of the EU development "Europe 2020" is based on the principles of sustainable development 1. The questions of energy efficiency, effective use of resources, pollution prevention are among the priorities. Over the past 20 years the EU Council and the European Commission adopted more than 200 directives, decrees and regulations relating to environmental issues. In the process of implementation of the strategy "Europe 2020" the EU institutions continue to develop and improve European law, combining environmental standards with voluntary instruments inherent in the model of circular economy 2, as a basis for the development of sustainable consumption and production. Thus, in recent years acts of law in the field of public procurement (the introduction of a model of sustainable (green) procurement), environmental monitoring, environmental certification and labeling of products and services, the assessment of impact on the environment, support the introduction of energy saving technologies and clean technologies, promotion of products with improved environmental characteristics have been updated. According to the latest Eurobarometer study, 3.26% of European manufacturers offer eco-products and services, that is, those that have passed organic or environmental certification. And 77% of consumers are willing to pay more for eco-products, provided that they are sure that they are really environmentally safe, that is have the proper certification and labeling. The global market for 'low carbon' and 'environmental' goods and services (which is a subset of the total market of green products) is estimated at EUR4.2 trillion with an EU share of 21%. This market has been growing at an annual rate averaging 4%, even during the economic recession, this contributing to make of the green economy one of the sectors with the strongest job growth potential. There is an increasing competition between companies to gain market share in this market. However, in relative terms green products still represent a marginal part of the EU consumer good market. Public procurement accounts for a large proportion of European consumption (nearly 20% of EU GDP). It can therefore play a key role in the circular economy, and the Commission will encourage this role through its actions on Green Public Procurement (GPP), where criteria are developed at EU level and then used by public authorities on a voluntary basis. Christine Dorosko EC General Directorate for Environmental Protection (Brussels, Belgium) "Practical tools inherent in a sustainable development model are the programs aimed at informing consumers about the benefits of sustainable consumption, sustainable (green) public procurement, sustainable construction, sustainable tourism, sustainable lifestyles and education, etc. In Germany, in February 2016, in order to implement these tools a national program on sustainable consumption was launched. According to the program, sustainable consumption should grow from a niche market to a leading position. The principle of sustainable consumption is based on the consumption of products with improved environmental performance at all stages of their life cycle. This method involves the life cycle assessment of the possible impacts on the environment and human health, taking into account the raw materials and the safety performance of materials and products in conjunction with indicators of environmental pollution on the stages of production, transportation and disposal of waste. This approach provides a comprehensive assessment. One of the most important practical tools for sustainable consumption is eco-labeling. The German eco-labeling program is the oldest certification system in the world (38 years), which allows to evaluate the benefits of different goods and services according to their impact on the environment and human health. Currently Germany has 120 environmental standards for product and service groups, which are used as criteria for the implementation of eco-certification and public procurement (technical specifications for criteria). These standards are voluntary, because they are developed on the basis of the best available technologies. The purpose of the voluntary environmental certification is to evaluate the benefits of products and provide the right use of the eco-label. In Germany the eco-labeling sign is called the "Blue Angel." This label is known for more than 90% of German consumers. Today more than 13,000 kinds of products produced by 1,050 member companies that mark their products with the "Blue Angel" sign are environmentally certified. The driving force behind the development of environmental certification and labeling in Germany is growing demand on eco-products and sustainable (green) public procurement 4 in the private sector. Dr. Ulf Jaeckel Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety Sustainable Consumption, Environmental Product Policy Division (Berlin, Germany) "Among the constraints that slow green modernization of the industrial sector, besides economic, there is insufficient understanding by the business community the benefits of green transformation, lack of professional information, lack of opportunities and lack of real incentive instruments for such changes, as well as inadequate legislative controls. Realizing the need to drive the Ukrainian enterprises to green methods of economic activity, one of the strategic directions of the Strategy of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UCCI) 2020 is the development of services aimed at promoting "green" resource-efficient, low-carbon modernization of our economy and industry. To perform the tasks assigned to the UCCI, the office for promoting green economy and modernization and the Entrepreneurs Committee on natural resources and environmental protection was created at the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a think tank, a source of information and consulting support for business environment that actively helps green modernization processes at all levels. The UCCI also cooperates with international organizations and programs. In particular, active cooperation is developing with the GEF/UNIDO "Implementation of energy management at Ukrainian enterprise," GIZ program (by the German government) "Promoting green modernization of the Ukrainian economy" and other programs." Gennady Chyzhykov The Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry There comes the time in the process of European integration of each country when the issue of foreign policy is transformed into a number of specific and complicated problems of internal policy. For Ukraine, this moment has come and has since then the fore technical challenges have come, such as the implementation of hundreds of European regulations to comply with the rules by which the public sector, politics and economy in Ukraine operate. The absolute priority is the modernization of the Ukrainian economy, overcoming the technological backwardness, the attraction of foreign investments and new technologies, creating new jobs, improving the competitiveness of domestic producers, access to global markets, especially the EU market. The European choice of Ukraine opens up new prospects for cooperation with the developed countries of the continent, offers opportunities for economic development, strengthening Ukraine's position in the global system of international relations. This is the best way to realize national interests. Today there is a trend in the world, where successful business chooses a model of sustainable development, because this concept answers the manufacturers' question: how to do more and better with fewer expenses. This can be achieved by increasing net benefits from economic activity by saving energy and resources, reducing the degradation and pollution of the environment throughout their life cycle while improving quality of life. On the other hand, tangible incentive is the growing desire of consumers to choose more high-quality and environmentally friendly products and services. The Ukrainian consumers have learned to read carefully the packaging, and prefer products safer for health and the environment in many cases. These are the conclusions of an independent consumer survey, conducted in 2015 with the support of the UN Development Program in Ukraine. The national conformity mark is known to 15% of respondents, the European sign "Organic" - 12%, and the Ukrainian sign eco-label "Green Crane" - 10%. In general, the survey results indicate low awareness of Ukrainian consumers about the importance of labels pointing at the safety and environmental benefits of products (from 10% to 15%) compared to, for example, with the German consumers (over 90%). At the same time the Ukrainian poll results show a significant potential for our customers to choose exactly eco-products 5. Some 82% of respondents are willing to consciously choose products with improved environmental performance and are willing to pay more for them. Some 25% of the respondents are ready to buy such products regardless their price, 29% are ready to pay 10% more than the average price, 21% are ready to pay 20% more, and 7% - 30%. Only 18% of respondents are not willing to pay more for environmentally certified products. This statistic indicates the need for a system to inform consumers about the values of labels in conjunction with the information on the safety and environmental benefits of the product, confirmed by the corresponding certificates. Currently 68 domestic manufacturers have successfully certified their products and services according to ISO 14024, which voluntary use the eco-label "Green Crane." The leaders are the companies of food industry, construction industry, manufacturers of detergents and cosmetics. Unfortunately, in Ukraine there is still a practice of unfair competition with use of DAM producers on the environmental benefits of products, sometimes disguised under the brand name. The application of ecological and organic labeling is regulated in Ukraine by Technical Regulation on eco-labeling (Resolution No. 529 of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine from dated May 18, 2011) and the Law of Ukraine "On the production and turnover of organic agricultural products and raw materials." These acts of law prohibit the use of its groundless application, that is, without the appropriate certification - ecological or organic. The violators of these acts should be punished for misleading consumers and unfair competition to favor the producers who have invested in new technology to modernize production, purchased a safe and high-quality raw materials in order to achieve the requirements of voluntary standards, which will define the priority of such products. This year, non-governmental organizations took the initiative to conduct public monitoring of the legality of the business entities of ecological and organic labels in the Ukrainian market. The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC) was informed about these violations. Now under consideration by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine are more than 40 references. Work in this area continues. The AMC has the authority to address the issue of unfair competition in advertising brands for companies that use false claims and mislead the consumer, as well as "pseudo" certification bodies, which do not have the appropriate accreditation and mislead the entrepreneurs over the competence of their services for the recognition of certificates. Unfair competition involves penalties of up to 30% of revenue for the last fiscal year preceding the year in which a fine was imposed in case of such a violation. " Svetlana Berzina Co-organizer GREEN MIND Ukrainian NGO "Living Planet" Eco-labeling plays an important role in the replacement of outdated models of consumption by more rational - sustainable. The result of the efforts of the Global Eco-Labeling Network (GEN) 6 is a consistent increase in market participants who change old habits and take responsibility, giving examples to others. Our network brings together 27 multi-criteria environmental certification and labeling systems, which operate in accordance with ISO 14024. International standard principles and methods of evaluating these systems allow identifying the environmental characteristics and the overall benefits of production on its life cycle. This type of certification is aimed at stimulating consumer demand for eco-products through its verification and identification (eco-labeling). This is very important because the need for reliable information on the environmental characteristics of products is growing worldwide. Consumers are increasingly focused on eco-labeling as a result of the certification, and have less trust in the authorities, advertising and DAM vendors. The demand for eco-products encourages producers to switch to environmental standards, which in turn helps to reduce environmental pollution, prevent climate change and improve safety performance and product quality. It should also be noted that the development of environmental certification and labeling affect sustainable (green) public procurement and the need to confirm the environmental performance of suppliers of raw materials, for example, in green building - for building materials suppliers. The network members interact with each other, which involves: - The development of support programs; - Joint participation in the development / revision of baseline environmental standards for various categories of service or groups (for example, hotel, restaurant, trade services, etc.); - Mutual international recognition of evaluation results between environmental certification and labeling bodies. Despite the active development of the market eco-products and services in different countries, regions and globally, the Ukrainian business has good opportunities for entry into foreign markets, positioning itself as products with improved characteristics regarding the impact on the environment and human health at all stages of life cycle, which is confirmed by ISO 14024. This can be done through a system of mutual recognition of evaluation results of eco-production between national and regional certification systems, combined with the global network, which Ukraine entered in 2004 with the eco-label "Green Crane." This means, for example, that the environmental certification and labeling system of the Nordic countries "Nordic Swan," which I represent, eco-label in Germany "Blue Angel," European "Eco-label EU," eco-label in America "Green Sea" and Canada, China, Australia, as well as the Ukrainian "Green Crane" and other GEN members mutually recognize the results of the evaluation." Bjorn-Erik Lonn Chair Nordic Swan (Eco-labeling program of the Nordic countries) (Oslo, Norway) -------------------------------------------- 1. Sustainable development is the proclaimed by the United Nations strategic direction, which by 2015 was chosen by 192 countries in the world, including Ukraine. For our country, the sustainable development model provides the economic and social changes aimed at economic growth and ensuring high standards of quality of life. To achieve these changes is possible due to the innovative development, modernization of production and investment, output of Ukrainian producers to new markets, combined with institutional changes. 2. Circular economy is the economic model aimed at energy conservation, resource efficiency and cleaner production in conjunction with sustainable consumption. 3. Eurobarometer is an international project of regular opinion polls, conducted under the auspices of the European Commission. 4. Sustainable (green) procurement is the purchases that take into account environmental criteria, technical specifications and evaluation value of the product life cycle. Defined by the European Commission as more effective, efficient, aimed at protecting the environment and the achievement of high social standards. 5. Eco-certified products in accordance with ISO 14024 international standard, eco-label is awarded in accordance with the requirements of technical regulations on environmental labeling (Resolution No. 529 of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated May 18, 2011). 6. GEN, Global Eco-Labeling Network is an international association, which currently brings together 27 systems (regional and national) for environmental certification of products in accordance with the requirements of the international standard ISO 14024. The scope of the GEN membership extends to 60 countries.Galina Buzan info@greenmind.com.ua Tel: +38 (067) 354-72-88
The embattled agency, which has had some USAid and Irish Aid funding withheld pending the outcome of the probe, yesterday announced the appointment of an external management consultant as its general manager for the next year.
Celine Fitzgerald, whose background is in outsourcing and the telecommunications industry, will take up the position on November 1. She stands in for chief executive Barry Andrews, who announced he was standing down to give the organisation a fresh start.
Ms Fitzgerald, who will launch an open recruitment campaign for a new chief executive, will also oversee the implementation of an action plan to address weaknesses identified in an independent consultants report commissioned by Goal after the US investigation began.
The plan includes creating a new position of senior complaints response director; the establishment of a counter-fraud unit within the organisation; and the strengthening of the finance team.
New procedures to support whistleblowers will also be introduced, and the procedures for monitoring spend and procurement in emergency response operations will be tightened up.
Goal said yesterday it still did not know when the US investigation, which centres on allegations of bid-rigging for supplies bought for Syria, would be complete but the action plan would be rolled out immediately.
Goal chairwoman, Anne OLeary, said: The next 12 months will be critical for Goal as we seek to regain and consolidate the trust of our donors and the general public while continuing with the implementation of our aid programmes.
Barry Andrews
I am delighted that someone of Celines experience is joining the organisation at this important juncture. Given the changes and additions we are making at management level within the organisation in the coming weeks, it is important that we appoint someone with experience and competence in the field of change management to oversee this period.
Ms Fitzgerald has worked in the private sector for the past 30 years, holding management positions at Eircell, Vodafone, and outsourcing business Rigney Dolphin, where she was chief executive for five years prior to her departure in 2012.
She has since set up her own consulting business, Integro Consulting. She also sits on the boards of health insurer VHI, gas and water semi-state Ervia, and the non-profit educational organisation An Cosan. In the past, she was a board member of development agency Nurture Africa, and a director of organisational development at Trocaire.
I have admired the work of Goal from afar for many years and I am acutely aware of the great work that the organisation does with millions of vulnerable people across the world, she said.
It is critical that we sort out the issues facing Goal during my one-year tenure and ensure that the people on the front line, whether in head office or in the field can get back to doing what they do best.
However, the Government says the money needed to fund Irish Water in the coming months will be taken from savings.
Some 110m is available as a result of not having to pay out the water conservation grant.
The remaining 13m will come from the Local Government Fund.
Minister for Local Government Simon Coveney yesterday brought the memo on funding to cabinet which was signed off on by ministers.
The long-term funding of the utility is now being considered by a special commission on water charges chaired by former senator Joe OToole.
The commission is due to report back with recommendations to an Oireachtas committee by the end of November.
The committee will then have three months to decide on the best course of action and will put its own recommendations to the Oireachtas in February. A vote on the matter is not expected until the end of March.
Until then, the Government has said it will not make any decision on a long-term funding model for Irish Water.
However, Mr Coveney recently said: Lets be honest about this, if the Oireachtas decides to do away with water charges, then we still need to progress and deliver on the significant capital expenditure programme that Irish Water needs to deliver on.
"That will have to come through other revenue raising and presumably general taxation, which then limits in our ability to spend in other areas and also undermines the water conservation incentive that comes with having some link between what people pay and how much they use, never mind all the issues around water directives.
Announcing the new Public Service Pay Commission (PSPC) yesterday, officials also confirmed the commission would only produce its first report towards the middle of next year.
Trade union leaders have welcomed the setting up of the new commission, which will be chaired by former Labour Court chairman Kevin Duffy.
Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe confirmed that Mr Duffy will receive 11,000 for his role while the other six members of the commission will be paid 9,000 each.
Part of the role of the new commission will be to examine how to unwind emergency legislation which introduced pay cuts for workers during the crash.
Its work will begin immediately but its first report will not go to Government until the second quarter of next year, it was confirmed.
Benefits and allowances for different workers in the public sector will be considered, as will the security of jobs under existing agreements. Pay comparisons with other jurisdictions will also be looked at by the commission.
Public service reform, retention and recruitment within sectors will also be examined.
The terms for the new commission also say that the impact of public wages on national competitiveness and sustainable national finances will be considered.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet has agreed that all office holders in government will waive a pay rise which was scheduled to take effect from next April. This means that senior ministers, whose salary was due to increase from 157,540 to 161,451, will in fact not change. Similarly, junior ministers yesterday agreed their salary would also remain at 121,639.
Taoiseach Enda Kennys pay will also remain at just over 185,000.
There was controversy after the existence of the pay hikes emerged during the budget talks and it was revealed that ministers were entitled to pay rises worth 11,735 between April 2017 and April 2019.
The pay rise was agreed with public service workers under the Lansdowne Road Agreement.
Minister Donohoe confirmed the Cabinet had agreed not to accept the increases, which apply to public servants on salaries over 65,000.
But he signalled that salaries of other officials such as secretaries general would not be frozen as this would be rearranging the mechanics of the current pay deal.
However, the minister said it would up to individual TDs on whether they accepted a similar pay rise next year, which will see their salaries rise from 89,965 to 92,672.
Parties have given a mixed response on whether TDs should voluntarily give up their 2,700 pay rise.
News 6&7
Editorial: 12
Trevor ODonoghue, aged 34, of Kilbeg, Bandon, Co Cork, had pleaded guilty to robbing 750 from the man at the Cork City Bus Station on June 29, 2014. He was subsequently sentenced to five years imprisonment with the final 18 months suspended at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.
The Court of Appeal reduced ODonoghues prison sentence yesterday after finding that the circuit court was incorrectly told he had a previous conviction he did not in fact have.
Giving judgment, Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan said the injured party, a 61-year-old man who walked with the aid of a stick, was on his way home when ODonoghue and an associate approached him, spoke to him, and grabbed him.
ODonoghue held the injured party while his associate grabbed 750 from his hands. They then ran away.
The injured party did not make a victim impact statement and asked that ODonoghue not be sent to jail. His associate on the night in question died from heroin use prior to the case reaching court.
In the course of sentencing, Mr Justice Sheehan said the circuit court was incorrectly told that ODonoghue had a previous conviction which he did not in fact have.
When asked about this matter, the circuit court judges response was that he could not say whether this was in his mind at the time of sentence and he was going to let the Court of Appeal deal with this matter, Mr Justice Sheehan said.
Once the judge decided not to open the matter, it was proper for us to do so because ODonoghue could well have a sense of grievance believing the conviction wrongly attributed to him could have left him with a higher sentence.
He had 44 previous convictions including one for robbery in 2003. He left school when he was aged 11 and began using drugs three years later. From 2007 to the time of sentence, he was addicted to heroin.
It appeared that, since going into prison, ODonoghue has made a serious effort to deal with his addiction, the judge said.
Mr Justice Sheehan, who sat with Mr Justice George Birmingham and Mr Justice Alan Mahon, resentenced ODonoghue to four years imprisonment with the final 18 months suspended.
Speaking to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation about the impact of Brexit, Ms Buckley said that in all we do, we want to be more competitive and that includes personal taxation
Across the board in infrastructure, education etc, we have to compete, its critically important, she said.
Other IDA and Enterprise Ireland representatives had commented earlier that tax, including capital gains tax and corporation tax rates, were important in the decision to locate here but not the only factor.
They cited quality work space, talent and access to international markets as equally as important.
Kevin Sherry, Enterprise Ireland executive director, said while it is impossible yet to predict how Brexit will map out, Enterprise Ireland are helping up to 1,500 companies to examine options like diversifying into other export markets or developing value-added products if possible.
He said big exporters are attempting to counter the more immediate problem of exchange rates by focusing on competitiveness, hedging strategies or in some cases, by increasing sales prices in the UK.
Meanwhile earlier yesterday, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern dismissed the idea of interrogating EU passengers travelling here, amid suggestions Irish border checks may be beefed up when Brexit is triggered. He said he could not imagine EU passengers being subject to greater scrutiny arriving in Irish ports and airports.
His comments come after Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire signalled that governments in London and Dublin would work to strengthen external borders here after Brexit.
Mr Brokenshires remarks were also accepted by Tanaiste and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald who appeared to support the idea, reiterating the governments opposition to any border between the South and North.
Ahead of talks today between Education Minister Richard Brutons officials and the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI), the department finalised arrangements with schools bodies to get staff in place after the mid-term break to supervise students during lunch breaks and other periods.
The unions 18,000 members will stop doing these duties when schools are due to reopen on Monday, November 7, after a week-long mid-term.
The action is in response to pay increases being withheld because ASTI members refuse to continue doing an extra 33 hours work a year which was done under a previous pay agreement to the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA) which the union is not signed up to.
Before the mid-term break, they are scheduled to take the first of seven days of strikes tomorrow week, October 27.
However, most of the 525 schools where ASTI members work would be forced to close until early December anyway because it will take that long for management to hire, train, and have replacement supervisors Garda-vetted.
In details advertised today in the Irish Examiner and elsewhere, the Department of Education promises 38.36 to temporary staff who do two hours of supervision in a school day, with 19.18 to be paid for each additional hour.
The numbers of staff needed in schools will depend on local circumstances, including the availability of non-ASTI teachers or non-teaching staff such as special needs assistants (SNAs) who might make themselves available for the work.
But a major difficulty will be organising training and operation of supervision rosters, as principals who are ASTI members will be banned from co-operation with the arrangements.
Hiring will result in panels being formed, which might see those employed being required to be available to different schools in an area, depending on local needs or short-notice requirements. The training required would also have to be overseen by others, and is expected to be run by school management bodies representing the three second-level sectors.
The biggest disruption will be at the 375 voluntary secondary schools, those run by or for religious orders where teachers are almost exclusively ASTI members. But the effect will also be felt at 95 dual-union community and comprehensive schools, and possibly dozens of community colleges which are operated by education and training boards (ETBs).
After talks yesterday between his officials and representatives of schools likely to be affected by strikes and potential school closures, Mr Bruton left for China on an education trade mission. But he will return early on Friday four days ahead of schedule in light of the industrial relations situation.
The Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) executive will discuss the dispute on Friday, as its members could have to forego a days pay if they refuse to pass ASTI pickets at the 100-plus schools where members of both unions work.
The Department of Education has communicated the urgency of Garda vetting for supervisor staff to the relevant authorities.
The Irish Blood Transfusion Service needs an extra 1,500 donations over the next three weeks to stabilise the blood supply.
IBTS director of operations, Paul McKinney, said attendances at clinics had been consistently down 6% in recent weeks, while the demand for blood from hospitals had remained constant.
He said the blood bank managed to maintain supply to hospitals over the summer, even with donors travelling and their routines disrupted during the school break.
However, the recent fall in attendances reduced stocks to only three days supply. Those who have O-positive and O-negative blood are particularly needed.
The IBTS is calling for blood donors to make a special effort to give blood over the coming weeks to restore blood supplies to seven days across the main blood groups, said Mr McKinney.
Only 3% of the eligible population are active donors but blood lasts just 35 days, and platelets, a component of blood, only last five to seven days.
IBTS chief executive Andy Kelly said the blood bank recently took part in a global initiative with blood donor organisations across 21 countries to highlight an almost 30% international drop in donors, compared to a decade ago.
In Ireland, there is a particular need for new donors as 21% fewer people came forward to donate for the first time last year, compared to 2010.
There is also concern that the donor population in Ireland has got older. The average age of donors was 40.8 years last year, an increase of 2.5 years from 38.4 years in 2005.
Mr Kelly said the IBTS was running a campaign on social media in a bid to try and reach the age group of 18 to 32.
Asked about the lifting of the ban on gay men donating blood next year, Mr Kelly said he did not expect that it would have a marked effect on supply.
From next January gay men in Ireland will be able to give blood, provided they have not had sex with a man in the previous 12 months.
The current ban has been in place in Ireland since the mid-1980s to reduce the risk of HIV transmission.
In 2011 the ban was lifted in England, Scotland, and Wales, where there is also a one-year deferral period for gay men wanting to donate.
Mr Kelly said other countries that had lifted the lifetime ban on gay men had not seen a big increase in members of this community giving blood.
Mr Kelly said they knew young people were willing to donate but the challenge for the IBTS was to attract them into the clinics and get them to come back.
We are working with an agency to build our campaign, but it wont kick in for a few months and, in the meantime, we are struggling to maintain supply.
Mr Kelly said the current supply had not yet reached a critical level, but hospitals need to know that they will not run short. A big worry for us now is that we are heading towards the October bank holiday weekend when donations fall, and people are also less inclined to donate during November.
Even if someone commits to donating once a year, that would help. We all know people who needed blood, but someone has to donate it for them to get it, he said.
www.giveblood.ie
In the first operation, the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) and the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau conducted 20 searches targeting a west Dublin crime gang involved in money laundering and drug trafficking.
As well as 46 top-end cars, including BMWs and Audis, Cab seized up to 60,000 in cash and valuable jewellery.
In a second operation, Revenue uncovered a massive drug importation centre, containing 60kg of cannabis herb, 33kg of cocaine, 2.2kg of MDMA (ecstasy), and 72,000 ecstasy tablets with an estimated value of 4m.
In an operation that went on for much of yesterday, Cab officers, backed up by armed detectives from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, targeted 20 commercial premises connected with the motor trade and private dwellings.
A prominent car showroom in Dublins north inner city and garages and lock-ups across west Dublin were searched. In some cases, the luxury cars were being stored in sheds. Sources said that the gang, headed by a 30-year-old convicted drug dealer from Clondalkin, was connected to the Kinahan crime cartel.
Solicitor and accountancy offices were also searched yesterday. A large amount of documentation and financial records were removed.
Customs officers attached to Cab are examining suspected VRT and Vat fraud and the transportation method used by the gang.
The leader of the gang has served a sentence for drugs supply after being caught with a significant amount of crack cocaine.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, routine profiling by the Revenues National Profiling Centre, targeting drug importation, examined a vehicle-importing plant machinery.
When a further investigation was conducted by Customs officers in the Border-Midlands-West region they uncovered a massive drug importation and distribution centre.
Revenue estimated that the street value is more than 4m.
It is one of the biggest hauls of cocaine in recent years and compares to 109kg of cocaine for all of 2015.
WHEN Ken Loach won his second Palme dOr at Cannes for I, Daniel Blake, he seemed genuinely surprised. This tale of the demise of the welfare state in Britain was an altogether smaller affair than his 2006 winner, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, set in West Cork.
Its extraordinary really because its the same little gang from 2006 who have done it, he says of writer Paul Laverty, producer Rebecca OBrien, and his other regular crew members. Its nice to be in that team and we really werent expecting this.
As with some of his other best films, including Raining Stones and Cathy Come Home, the 80-year-olds latest film focuses on a microcosm, and, in working-class Newcastle, Loach and his regular screenwriter Laverty found just the right niche.
Newcastle is a great city, says Loach. Its got a long tradition of working class struggle in the shipyards and the mines and its got a terrific identity. Theres a great sense of humour and its one of those cities like Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester where you can identify it, absolutely. The richness of that culture provides a great background to work from; it gives you so much energy.
Initially, the Glaswegian Laverty, who is 20 years younger, did all the legwork, travelling the country to talk to people at food banks and in Newcastle he notes there were 2,000 people on the day he visited.
After listening to peoples stories and working with welfare organisations and disabled groups, what was remarkable was how the most vulnerable people bore the brunt of the welfare cuts, Laverty notes. People who work with the disabled say they suffer six times more, and a remarkable phrase we heard from one of the civil servants was that the low lying fruit are the easy targets. But in this story Daniel is a competent man who has a lifetime of work, whos got friends and is smart. We chose two competent, smart people as the main characters, but it could have been much more heartbreaking.
Nevertheless, the repercussions of Daniel being denied sickness benefits, when he can no longer work, is gut-wrenching. A generous soul, he takes to helping Katie (Hayley Squires), a young single mother and they form a close bond. As with so many Loach films the performances are so affecting that we believe the characters are real.
Geordie stand-up comic Dave Johns, who actually hails from the neighbourhood where the film is set, plays his first movie role as Daniel, while London-born actress Hayley Squires plays Katie.
Its really very easy working with actors who are full of imagination and vulnerability, Loach says. We started at the beginning and shot in order, so the story unfolded as the actors got the script, bit by bit. It feels like it happens in the moment and takes people by surprise. We cast real people working in food banks in the old Italian neorealist tradition so they knew the job. People in the office signing people on worked in that office.
Johns and Squires performances are what makes the film such a heartbreaker. Even if the story was clearly tough to portray, they had the sense that Loach was with them every step of the way.There was a calmness on set, a family element and we felt completely safe, Squires recalls. Before shooting we spent time researching and talking and having lunch together. Youre with Ken and his team and theyre the most supportive group of people. You know it will never collapse.
In fact Loach and co were spurred into action by what they discovered, especially at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). People working there said recalled how unhappy they were in the way they were forced to treat the public, says Laverty. They are actually trained for potential suicides.
Having supposedly retired after Jimmys Hall, set in Leitrim, Loach returned for I, Daniel Blake because he felt it had to be made.
OBrien, who has worked with Loach since Hidden Agenda in 1990, notes that its a simple human story.
You recognise our own life in the story were telling. So many films are about other peoples lives; theyre distant. Here we tell a story people can identify with.
Setting the right tone was hugely important, Loach says.
The story is so strong that we had to be very simple and clear and very economical and didnt need any embellishment.
The films cinematographer Robbie Ryan is Irish, and had previously worked on Jimmys Hall.
He talked about finding a clear and unadorned style without any extraneous movement or anything to distract you from capturing the essence of the people in front of the camera, says Loach.
During the Brexit debate, Loach advocated staying in the European Union and working to affect change within its strictures not least because his film, and many of his previous films, would never have been made without European financing.
Ironically, the very people Loach presents in the film were the kinds of disenchanted voters who brought about the exit that could hugely affect the financing of any future Loach films. Will there be a future Loach film? I dont know if therell be another one, Ill have to wait and see, the director responds. Its nice having made it and its nice talking about it, but the actual making of it does take it out of you. I know Woody Allen finds it easy, but for some of us its still a struggle. Of course everyone would like to go on forever. You just cross your fingers when you get very old. Youre just pleased to see the sunrise the next day. So well take each day as it comes.
I, Daniel Blake opens on Friday.
Persuading someone to discuss their past, present, and future on camera is a delicate process. You urge deliberation; you advise them of the repercussions; and you warn that a television audience will ultimately judge, condemn and maybe applaud.
For the average, well-adjusted person it is a difficult decision but for an addict, already vulnerable and an outcast of society, it signifies a huge step.
In the new two-part documentary, Rural Addiction, which airs on RTE2 on October 25 and 26, at 9.30pm, we explored sensitivities such as family and local community with potential contributors.
We emphasised that our presence might provide the motivation to push on with their treatment.
Also, many of those willing to contribute wanted to tell their story in order to rid themselves of the tag junkie, to proclaim to local communities how they had got clean.
In a metropolitan area, it is easy to distance yourself from those afflicted by addiction, from those in turmoil, whose lives have been shredded by drugs. In cities, people with addiction disappear more easily into the urban fabric; they waste away, anonymously.
Our focus was rural Ireland. In small towns community is stronger. People know people.
Many people offered to appear on camera without revealing their identities.
We explained, however, that we could not blur faces; that the story of addiction needed people to engage fully with a TV audience, to explain openly the process they were going through and what they had overcome.
Potential contributors we spoke to had already engaged with support services such as the Ana Liffey Drug Project or the HSE, at one of their four treatment centres in the midlands: Portlaoise, Tullamore, Mullingar or Athlone.
We began filming at the end of May; slowly the number of contributors grew.
We were in Nenagh one day to record a piece with a woman called Ali, who had a court appearance that morning. It was 10am. We had already spoken on the phone three times, but still there was no sign of her.
The director, Martin, and I were anxious because we had arranged to meet a willing contributor named Yvonne*, at 12.30pm, in Longford.
I had spoken to Yvonne the day before. Yvonne had told me she was 32 and she had begun taking heroin in her late teens. Ive been on methadone for two or three years, she added.
We needed more female participants, so we agreed to meet to talk it through. I told her she would recognise us because we would be the two men wandering aimlessly around the hotel. She laughed.
It didnt sound like the laugh of a young woman who had spent nearly half her life on heroin.
Back in Nenagh, Ali finally arrived. We recorded the piece with her at 10.45am and left 20 minutes later.
We arrived in Longford 10 minutes late but there was nobody in the hotel lobby. Nobody in the bar and nobody in the restaurant. We waited.
People began arriving for lunch; we scanned the various shapes that poured out of each car but none fitted Yvonnes description.
The sun appeared, the air was heavy, and the hedgerows and trees that fringed the car park seemed to lean upon the wall, panting. We chose a table close to the hotel entrance. One woman looked promising but she was overweight, which tends not to be a good fit for an addict.
We ordered lunch and ate slowly. It was half past two when we finished so, although reluctant to leave, we made our way back to the car. Had we travelled from Nenagh for nothing? Martin pulled a fag from his cigarette pack, and I checked my phone again.
A small car glazed in grime appeared. The single occupant behind the wheel drove erratically. Martin and I exchanged a hopeful glance, but the Nissan disappeared around the side of the hotel. A minute later, though, it reappeared.
This time it made a dash for another corner, a more isolated parking space. We waited for someone to get out. Nobody did.
Ill go see. And do what? Martin asked.
I shrugged and then approached the car, stopping 20 metres from the drivers door. Yes, it was a woman, and yes, she was the right age.
Her jet-black hair was pulled into a loose pony tail. Her head was down, perhaps checking her phone. She became aware of my presence and turned. In her mouth was a silver tube about the length of my forefinger. It was a toot. She was about to smoke heroin.
I put a conciliatory hand up and took two steps back. As I watched, she smoked. Seconds later, she started the motor. I tried to protest to calm her, to stop her. Yvonne? She didnt wait. She spun away, aiming for freedom, for the safety of the front gate. Within seconds she was gone and with that any chance of securing her participation.
All I could think of was that I had messed up; if I hadnt sought her out, she would have come to meet us. As I reproached myself, another thought crossed my mind: perhaps it wasnt even Yvonne.
But thankfully other participants did come on board. The resulting two-part documentary features a collection of brave and honest contributions.
It is a powerful, penetrating look at drug addiction and the support services available in rural Ireland today.
Yvonnes name and details have been changed in order to protect her identity.
Rural Addiction will be broadcast on October 25 and 26, on RTE2 at 9.30pm.
Textile-Contact Company, one of the leaders of the national market for the sale of fabrics and light industry production, during the talks that took place on October 12-13 within the framework of the XII International Cotton and Textile Fair in Tashkent signed a contract for the supply of Uzbek textile products of new crop high quality cotton to Ukraine. The contract is worth $12 million.
Oleksandr Dmytrenko, Textile-Contact Director, said "the contract we have signed under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, Investment and Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan, will allow us not only to provide the Ukrainian market with high-quality cotton fabrics, but also to keep the prices at an adequate level for Ukrainian consumers. It is at the expense of large-scale purchases of textile products, direct supply from the manufacturer and long-term cooperation with Uzbek partners that we will be able to manage the supply chain, save on the amount of production and offer Ukrainian consumers the best product, while considering the needs of wholesale and retail customers of Textile-Contact Company.
Oleksandr Sokolovskyi, the founder of Textile-Contact Company, feels absolutely sure about the quality of Uzbek cotton.
"Uzbek cotton is one of the highest quality in the world. The annual output of the world cotton industry is estimated at approximately $500 billion. Uzbekistan's strategy of cotton raising lies in maintaining stable output and increasing production. At the same time, our Uzbek partners are actively expanding the product range, investing in innovations while adhering to the principles of sustainability in production. Being the leading company, we hold this position, that is why Textile-Contact maintains effective cooperation with Uzbekistan for already many years," he said.
The XII International Cotton and Textile Fair in Tashkent was attended by delegations from 43 countries. Light industry experts and world level cotton buyers had an opportunity to get acquainted with all stages of production, processing, storage and export of textile products. What made the XII International Cotton and Textile Fair special is that it provided an exceptional opportunity to sign contracts for the bulk of the Uzbek new crop cotton fiber at exclusive prices.
The Nightmare Realm terrorising Cork and Dublin this October, promises its Facebook page. True to their word, three actors from the Cork-based Halloween scare house, dressed as terrifying clowns and armed with pretend chainsaws, took a wrong turn into the grounds of a Dublin school.
Cue panic.
Followed by embarrassed apologies; the scary clowns were lost. They meant no harm. Ooops. Naturally, it made the papers. Who doesnt love the tingly fear-buzz of a horrid clown?
Coulrophobia is undergoing a vigorous reboot, as we all hide under the bed during this latest bout of bad clowning.
It last happened in 1981 in Massachusetts, where men in clown masks were said to be luring children from schools (although no arrests were ever made), but this did not develop into a major bout of cultural hysteria because social media didnt yet exist then, and we were unable to spread the ersatz terror digitally.
Unlike now.
The bad clown virus is spreading from town to town, place to place, waiting to leap out at you from behind a darkened corner, frightening kids and adults alike.
Nobody has been killed, or seriously injured, but fear levels are peaking. Halloween is still weeks away.
What started in South Carolina last August when some dastardly individuals, dressed in clown wigs and make up, leapt out at members of the public, scaring them rigid - has become a full-blown phenomenon that spread from the US to Ireland and the UK via Australia, New Zealand and Brazil faster than a fire in a nylon wig factory.
Such has been the fear caused by these fancy-dressed scarers that people have been dressing up as Batman to patrol their neighbourhoods. In real towns, not just Gotham City.
There have been numerous reports and sightings although as yet no Irish arrests, despite several Northern Irish schools recently put in temporary lockdown of scary clowns providing therapists with a whole new generation of terrified children they have attempted to lure into the woods.
While such antics may sound like nothing more sinister than extreme Halloweening, there have been instances in the US and UK of armed robberies, clowns wielding actual knives and machetes, and people being accosted.
Which, even if youre wearing a red nose and giant shoes, is not remotely funny.
Yet the situation lapses back towards absurdity when you hear how police have been visiting fancy dress shops and issuing stern warnings about hiring out clown costumes.
Ronald McDonald, the unpleasant red and yellow junk food mascot, has been keeping a very low profile. He has been temporarily retired, according to his employers.
Even the White House has been involved, although President Obamas press secretary Josh Earnest appeared to have difficulty keeping a straight face while fielding a press query about the FBI being notified about scary clowns, and what they were going to do about the phenomenon.
The press secretary suggested it was a local law enforcement thing.
While creepy clowns provide far more opportunities for the media to have fun than, say, Isis or the Russian military, the fact that these fancy-dress meanies are scaring children (as well as adults) rather negates the joke.
Giving kids nightmares and making them afraid to go outside seems closer to straightforward bullying than anything as innocuous as pranking. So what started it? Is it Donald Trumps fault?
Such has been the implied influence of the forthcoming film of Stephen Kings novel It, starring a very nasty clown called Pennywise, that the author tweeted, Hey guys, time to cool the clown hysteria most of em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh.
Professional clowns those performers who make their living custard pieing each other are up in arms. Metaphorically, at least.
While many of us have always found clowns incredibly creepy, they are still a recognised profession who are now suffering an image meltdown as evilly costumed impersonators wreck their trade.
Real clown Bibbledy Bob real name Rob Bowker from the British Midlands - in a statement on his website calls the fake clowns idiots who are putting on some cheap freak show caricature of a clown mask (although how one caricatures a clown mask is unclear).
If I put a doctors coat on does that make me a doctor? Clearly not. Bowker, remaining true to clown form, concludes his statement, If youre like an orange, Ill see you around.
Bibbledy Bobs fellow professional, New Jersey based Fudgie the Clown, has been clowning for 34 years, but told the BBC that since the scary clown craze took off, her bookings have dried up.
Silly Tilly, a UK based Christian clown, believes that scary clowns are anathema that the true spirit of clowning is vulnerability while Croydon based clown Rico says he hasnt worn full clown make-up in years, because it scares people.
Reacting to the unfortunate creepy craze in the US, professional clowns shot themselves in the joke-sized foot when they organised a peace march in mid October, hashtagged Clown Lives Matter.
Which, as you can imagine, was perceived as disrespectful and trivialising of the Black Lives Matter movement. Apologies were hastily issued. The last thing the professional clowns wanted was to offend even more people.
Benjamin Radford, author of a cultural history titled Bad Clowns, says that we have always feared clowns, that coulrophobia is as old as clowns themselves.
And clowns are very old indeed, existing four thousand years ago in ancient Egypt, and throughout the Dark and Middle Ages, particularly flourishing during the Renaissance in the Italian commedia dellarte, where the best known zanni, or domestic clown, was Harlequin. (This is where we get zany).
The Fool, another version of the clown or jester, appears everywhere from Shakespeare to the Tarot.
The modern clown originated in the 1800s when a tragic British character called Joseph Grimaldi whose memoirs were edited by a chap called Charles Dickens first applied white make up with an oversized red mouth.
Behind the make up, you were unable to see whether the clown was laughing, crying or screaming.
And there lies its terror.
Happy Halloween.
FIVE OF THE SCARIEST CLOWNS
John Wayne Gacy the Killer Clown, who raped and murdered 33 boys in 1970s Illinois, before his execution in 1994. Gacys alter ego was Pogo the Clown, which he dressed up as for childrens parties. Gacy, an amateur artist, liked to paint portraits of clowns.
Mr Punch the psychotic clown doll from English seaside puppet shows who batters his wife Judy while screaming Thats the way to do it!
The Joker Batmans greatest adversary, his pan stick blotched and red clown smile a knifes slash. Played brilliantly by Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson. Famous for his maniacal laughter.
Krusty the Simpsons resident chain smoking alcoholic clown, who hates everyone, especially children.
Donald Trump a terrifying orange clown with delusions of world domination.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Donald Trump, two politicians who have shocked the world this past year, have mostly gotten away with their outrages. But not anymore.
When Kaczynskis Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power last year, it immediately seized control over key Polish institutions, including the Constitutional Tribunal, the state prosecutors office, public media and enterprises, even state-owned horse stables.
Because the PiS government inherited a sound economy and strong fiscal position, Kaczynski hasnt seen the need for a finance minister, so the post was recently liquidated.
Trump, too, has been engaging in behaviour that under normal circumstances would be politically disqualifying.
This state of affairs might have continued. But both Kaczynski and Trump have recently been confronted by a political force that neither reckoned with: women.
Before last years parliamentary election in Poland, the far-right organisation Ordo Iuris had proposed a blanket ban on abortion, one that would go beyond Polands current legislation, already among the most restrictive in Europe, by forcing women to give birth even in cases of rape, incest, health risks, and serious foetal defects.
But, at the same time, another legislative proposal was put forward to liberalise abortion laws, introduce sex education into schools, and guarantee insurance coverage of contraceptives.
Although PiS solemnly promised that the Sejm (parliament) would not reject the latter bill in the first reading, the legislation criminalizing abortion was advanced to a parliamentary vote, and the pro-choice proposition was rejected. Women spontaneously took to the streets en masse.
For nearly two decades, Poles believed that the countrys abortion laws could not be changed, owing to the power of the Catholic Church and the subordination of the political class to religious authorities.
But the actress Krystyna Janda, who starred in Andrzej Wajdas film Man of Iron, called on Polish women to launch a general strike. On October 3, instead of going to work, women across the country turned out to protest, following a model established by Icelands women in 1975, when 90% did not go to work and effectively paralysed the country.
The demonstrations occurred even in small towns, and despite dismal weather. Women also congregated outside PiS headquarters, the true seat of power in Polish politics. In solidarity with Polish women, women from Kenya to Berlin took to the streets dressed in black.
For the first time since PiSs return to power last year, Kaczynski was frightened. The next day, he had his party vote to reject the anti-abortion proposal. Never before had he acted in a similar manner.
In the United States, Trumps presidential campaign began to crumble only when it was revealed that he boasted about sexually assaulting women. Soon, women who had endured his attacks began to come forward and describe what had happened to them.
Trumps spell was broken. Independent voters and many Republicans bolted. Michelle Obama delivered an emotional address about how Trumps behaviour had shaken her, speaking in a way that Trumps opponent, Hillary Clinton, cannot because of the complicated history of her own marriage.
Support for Trump, particularly among suburban women, crashed. According to recent polls, his backing from women plummeted from 39% to 29% over the course of a couple of days.
And yet neither Trump nor Kaczynski seems willing or perhaps able to reverse course. After withdrawing his support for the Ordo Iuris proposal, Kaczynski couldnt leave the issue alone.
We will strive to ensure that even pregnancies that are very difficult, when the child is doomed to die or is seriously deformed, are brought to term so that the child can be baptised, buried, and given a name, he announced on October 13.
Women have called for another general strike on October 24.
[imgcap=]http://snappa.static.pressassociation.io/assets/2016/10/13160806/1476371284-f1fbf41a2051eeb068968a2e6a98009d-600x366.jpg[/imgcap]
Kaczynski (who holds no official government position) first united the political mainstream (whom he dubbed the worst sort of Poles) against him by attacking liberal democracy.
Now, by pressing his war on women, who form a majority in Poland, he has united the mainstream with the left and politicised and galvanized the countrys youth. Immediately after Kaczynskis latest comments, women began to gather in front of his house, warning him: You want to peer into our beds? Well peer into your home.
Trump, too, has doubled down on sexism, blaming the media for his travails and calling one of his accusers that horrible woman, adding, Believe me, she would not be my first choice.
And, appealing directly to his many white-supremacist supporters among the so-called alt-right, he has also begun indulging a classic anti-Semitic trope, accusing Clinton of meeting in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.
But Americans arent buying it; nor are Poles. And it is only fitting that Trump, and possibly Kaczynski, will be defeated by those whose dignity and equality each refuses to recognize, with women in the lead.
Slawomir Sierakowski is director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2016.
While any attempts at sorting out their differences will be welcome, both sides will have to be seen to concede something if there is to be any breakthrough.
The ASTI insists that the idea of being unable to negotiate any deal outside the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA) has been the mantra of Education Minister Richard Brutons officials in recent meetings.
If this is the case, it needs to change. The Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) rejected the LRA a year ago and yet the department was able to negotiate a deal with it in May to begin addressing some issues not covered by the agreement.
On the other hand, the ASTI has to acknowledge the bigger picture in which the ministers representatives are entering further discussions.
With gardai also fighting for increased pay, the Government is not going to do anything that could threaten the industrial peace enjoyed across the majority of the public sector.
The granting to the ASTI of full pay parity for pre-2012 teachers would lead to justified demands from every other public-sector union, whose newer members also started on different pay rates after 2011.
That is not to say there is not merit in the unions claim for equal pay for equal work, but a defined timescale in which the differential might be bridged could be something to encourage the ASTI to moderate or postpone its planned series of industrial actions.
It will take, however, more than Mr Brutons approval of any such statement of commitment to be given.
His cabinet colleague Paschal Donohoe, at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, will expect to have these kinds of issues played out at the Public Pay Commission, whose work has not even begun.
Whether the minority government can pre-determine some of the outcomes such as prioritising closure of gaps between salaries of newer and longer-serving public servants, including teachers is unclear.
Even more uncertain is whether such a measure would be enough to quell teacher anger on the issue, evident in the ASTIs 80% mandate for strikes for equal pay.
It is likely that nothing but a clear Government statement of how it intends dealing with the issue will force a deferral of the earlier industrial actions.
A strike day next Thursday is almost inevitable, even with talks beginning today.
The eventual measure of those discussions success will be whether over 250,000 students are forced to stay at home after the mid-term break in the second week of November.
Culture Board of Trustees Formed to Spearhead Secretariat Renovations
East Wing of the Secretariat, Rangoon, in 2015. / Tin Htet Paing / The Irrawaddy
RANGOON The Rangoon Division government has formed a board of trustees to manage renovations on one of Burmas most famous colonial-era buildings, the Secretariat, said Rangoon Division Minister for Electricity, Transport and Communication Daw Nilar Kyaw.
The head of the trust told The Irrawaddy that the seven-member board, peopled primarily with architects and engineers, will manage the 126-year-old complexs conservation processbeing carried out by the Anawmar Groupas well as certain aspects of the groups operational procedures, including the selection of Anawmars partners.
Anawmar, which is owned by family members of former junta general Tun Kyi, won rights from Burmas Investment Commission in 2012 to restore the buildings architecture and preserve it in the long term as a historical museum and arts and cultural center.
Daw Nilar Kyaw said that, given the Secretariats towering historical significance, handing over renovations to a private organization had to be handled differently. She added that the trust intends to use Somerset House in London as a model to develop the red brick complexwhich sprawls across 16 acres of land in downtown Rangooninto an arts center.
Thats why weve created the trust to assist Anawmarthe main operatorwith the conservation and operational processes. Well work hand in hand with the Yangon Heritage Trust and Anawmar to make sure everything is right, she said.
Built in 1890, few colonial structures in present-day Burma are as historically important as the magisterial Victorian-era complex located at No. 300 Thein Phyu Road. It served as the headquarters for the British-Burma administration during colonial times. In 1947, Burmas independence hero Aung San, father of State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and his colleagues were assassinated in an upstairs room in the west wing of the complex.
Standing in the center of the Secretariat courtyard is a flagstaff where the flag of a newly independent Burma was first raised on Jan. 4, 1948. After the 1962 military coup, the complex became the Ministers Office. It was used in this capacity until 2005, when it was abandoned as the military regime suddenly made Naypyidaw its administrative capital.
Anawmar eventually stepped in to save the Secretariat from years of neglect.
U Soe Thiwn Tun, managing director of the group, said that he welcomed the formation of a board of trustees because it is an authoritative body with decision-making power.
The Secretariat is a part of [Burmas] national heritage. And so we have to take a great care when it comes to renovation. The trust will be very helpful [in this regard], as [its members] will be able to make decisions regarding dos and donts, U Soe Thiwn Tun said.
Still, Anawmar was criticized this past year for its privatization of the colonial structure. Because its significance is so tightly stitched into Burmas national memory, critics argued, the Secretariat should belong to the public.
In response to the public tussle, U Soe Thiwn Tun assured skeptics that the groups intention is to open the complex to the public, not to develop a hotel or a shopping mall.
He also explained that even though Anawmar secured tender four years ago, the group had until recently done little in the way of renovations because it was awaiting approval from the Rangoon Division government, only receiving the go-ahead in 2015.
During that time we could only clear the site, U Soe Thiwn Tun said.
But with the completion of the Conservation Management Plan, which was commissioned by the Yangon Heritage Trust, last September, evidence of renovations is impossible to missscaffolding surrounds most parts of the complex.
Facade cleaning is now in progress. However, weve been told to suspend additional work until we get further instructions from the trust, U Soe Thiwn Tun said.
He also outlined his blueprint for the refurbished Secretariat: the upstairs rooms in the south and west wings, as well as the old parliament building, will be transformed into public cultural and historical museums and an art gallery; the east wing will be rented out as office space; and small buildings in the complexs north will be turned into restaurants.
One-third of the complex will be used for commercial purposes since it wont be easy to cover the cost of renovating and maintaining the building. For office spaces and restaurants, Ive invited an international partner, he said. He declined to reveal the name of the partner, saying he was awaiting approval from the Rangoon Division government. He insisted that such partnerships were within the terms of the contract.
One of the trust members, Daw Moe Moe Lwin of the Yangon Heritage Trust, which has been providing renovation training to Anawmar, said the formation of the trust made sense.
The governments involvement in a state-level project like this will have advantages for management as well as for ensuring progress with implementation, she said.
Anawmars contract stipulates a 50-year lease to the group for renovations, along with the possibility of two, 10-year extensions. The total investment is US$50 million.
Dateline Dateline Irrawaddy: Our Economy Will Not Pick Up Unless and Until Economic Sanctions are Lifted
As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi visits the US, U Khine Win and Daw Yamin Myat Aye join Irrawaddy Burmese editor Ye Ni to discuss sanctions on Burma.
Ye Ni: Welcome to Dateline Irrawaddy. This week, well discuss State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis trip to the United States. U Khine Win, director of the Sandhi Governance Institute and freelance business journalist Daw Yamin Myat Aye will join me for the discussion. Im editor of The Irrawaddys Burmese edition Ye Ni.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is traveling to the US via London. This visit to the US is different from her previous visit, when she was welcomed as a champion of democracy. This time, she goes as the state counselor and foreign minister. She is going to the US amid the peace process and a transformation in Burma. Ko Khine Win, what do you think will happen to US economic sanctions against Burma?
Khine Win: Like many people, I expect that the US government will lift some sanctions such as the SDN [specially designated persons] list during the visit. I think this because national reconciliation is one of the economic policy priorities of the National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government. Our economy has been failing to the extent that it will not pick up unless and until economic sanctions are lifted and international investments come in. I think that she will try for this.
YN: Some argue that she used sanctions as a bargaining chip throughout the struggle for democracy and might do it again in building democracy and rebuilding the nation. Ma Yamin, what do you think?
Yamin Myat Aye: I would like to note two things regarding sanctions. One concerns the economy. Burma cannot do bank-to-bank transactions, which impedes trade and foreign investment. This will only be possible when there are no sanctions. Financial sector reformsincluding banking reformscannot be carried out while there are sanctions. It is necessary to reduce sanctions over time.
Officials from the Central Bank of Burma are accompanying Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on her trip to the US and, as Ko Khine Win mentioned, because the national economic policy seeks national reconciliation, I think she will push for the removal of many of the sanctions. Only then can the country receive foreign investment. Currently, US companies invest in the country, but they do so indirectly through Singapore.
Regarding the Burmese military and cronies, an arms embargo is imposed against the military. To what extent sanctions will be reduced in that regard will depend on the level of trust between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the military chief. She has visited the Royal Defense Academy in the United Kingdom, and it is likely that there will be training for military officers and visits between the two armed forces.
As for cronies, I am sure that those who are involved in arms and drug dealings will not be removed from the SDN list. Sanctions may be relaxed to an extent that allows for foreign investment but excludes cronies. But, some cronies may possibly be removed from the list. I have interviewed businessmen following this speculation.
While there are opportunists who accumulated wealth by working hand in glove with the authoritarian regime, there are also businessmen who got rich because of their industrious hard work. Opportunists have crossed the finish line early because they had an early start in the race. Those who did not work hand in glove with the regimes got a late start and therefore struggled.
If all cronies are removed from the list, people will think they can do whatever they like as long as they have money and power. Nobody will want to conduct business fairly and moral values will be undermined. If I were in the shoes of the US government, I would take this into account when deciding to what extent sanctions should be lifted. And I believe the US government will do so.
YN: You have made an interesting point. The Kachin community living in Washington, DC recently released a statement calling on the US to continue its embargo on arms deals and avoid military-to-military engagement until peace is established in Burma. But Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has become closer with military leaders and it is because the military has cooperated that we are seeing changes today. Ko Khine Win, do you think Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will speak for military leaders and ask the US to remove sanctions?
KW: The US government has to take internal politics and geopolitics into account. An Indian commentator wrote that China would perceive it as a threat if Burmas armed forces and the US get too close. The military-to-military relationship could include things other than military exercisessuch as human rights trainings, which the US provides to Burmas military now. They should provide training about the role of the military under a civilian administration.
Regarding the relationship between the US and China, everyone knows that America is counteracting China. Commentators argue that the US is trying to contain China by cooperating with its adversaries and that it only wants to allow Chinas rise within an international liberal order. Our leaders need to find a balance and engage with China since it plays a role in the countrys peace process and national reconciliation. On the other hand, it is also important for them to engage with the international community, including the US, to have economic sanctions and embargoes removed over time. The government has to strike a balance, which is not an easy task.
YN: Ma Yamin, it seems certain now that the US will grant the GSP [generalized system of preferences] to Burmese exports, and that US companies will invest and smooth financial transactions will be facilitated. How can Burmese businessmen make the best use of the GSP?
YMA: If the GSP is granted, duties do not need to be paid when importing things from Burma to the US. So, Burmese products would be more competitive. We can expect lively trade if financial transactions are realized between the US and Burma, but it will also depend on other factors such as the quality of the products and accessibility to the market.
Vietnam has gained considerable market share in the export to the US of agricultural and marine products. Burma could export similar items to the US. But it is necessary to connect the producers to the market and it is important that the products are of good quality. The government must think about how it can subsidize producers.
I would like to highlight the e-government system here. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi recently visited China and I heard that the company Huawei proposed helping Burma introduce an e-government system. The US voiced opposition to the plan. During her trip, she could ask the US to help Burmas transition to an e-government systemwith the help of companies like Google, for instance. Then, online payments could be realized in Burma. This would also create more job opportunities for young people. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi could use her power to get sanctions eased and find a market for agricultural produce.
YN: Ko Khine Win, Ma Yamin, thank you for your contributions!
News China Says Visit by Philippine President Restores Trust
President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte arrives at a hotel in Beijing, China. / Thomas Peter / Reuters
BEIJING This weeks visit to China by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte points toward a restoration of trust between the sides following recent tensions over their South China Sea territorial dispute, Chinas official news agency said Tuesday.
The visit by the recently elected Duterte, who was due to arrive in Beijing later in the day, will be a step toward ending years of estrangement between the countries, Xinhua News Agency said.
Should he demonstrate his good faith, the trip will present a long overdue opportunity for the two nations, which enjoy longstanding friendship, to heal the wounds of the past few years and steer their relationship back to the right course, Xinhua said in a commentary.
Dutertes visit will help define how far he wants to shift allegiance from the United States to an Asian superpower locked in a territorial standoff with his small, impoverished country, and the Philippines 65-year alliance with the United Statesa key pillar of President Barack Obamas rebalance to Asiacould hang in the balance.
The Xinhua editorial signals how China hopes to use the visit to regain lost ground in a Southeast Asian nation that won a major arbitration lawsuit against Beijings massive territorial claims in the South China Sea just three months ago.
China refused to take part in the litigation or accept the ruling, which said Chinas historical claim to virtually the entire strategic waterbody wasnt supported by international law.
The verdict issued by a law-abusing tribunal has no place in the negotiations at all, Xinhua said.
Duterte is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials on Thursday. The Philippine draft of a proposed joint statement touches on the restoration of permits for Filipino agricultural exports, Chinas support for Dutertes campaign against illegal drugs, boosting tourism and enhancing Coast Guard cooperation to avoid misunderstandings at sea.
Details are still being worked out, officials say, and it remains unclear whether the thorny issue of the South China Sea territorial disputes will be reflected in the statement.
China was to offer assistance in personnel training and donation of equipment to aid in the fight against illegal drugs, according to the Philippine draft seen by The Associated Press.
Dutertes deadly battle against drug dealers and abusers has been a defining issue of his political career, prompting him to lash out at Obama and other foreign critics and further propelling him toward rapprochement with an uncritical Beijing.
News Chinese Nationals Arrested in Northern Shan State for Illegal Mining
A truck illegally transporting silica in Namkham Township. (Photo: / ) / Nang A Nge / Facebook
Four Chinese nationals were arrested for illegal silica mining in Namkham Township in northern Shan State on Monday afternoon.
Local residents joined authorities to apprehend the four men along with two trucks transporting silicaa mineral extracted from sandin Wen Kam village of Namma village tract in the township, Namkham resident U Sai Yi told The Irrawaddy.
He said locals had long opposed mining in their area. There were previous cases of Chinese men taking away mineral stones with trucks, he said.
U Kyaw Kyaw Tun, the lead administrator of Muse District, which includes Namkham Township, told The Irrawaddy that authorities had already suspended silica mining, including by licensed companies, in Namkham Townshipafter sustained local activism and petitioning.
We arrested four Chinese men and seized two trucks carrying stones. We are investigating where they dug those stones from, and to which company they belong. They are now being detained at Namkham Township police station, U Kyaw Kyaw Tun told The Irrawaddy.
The Department of Immigration and Population is investigating how the Chinese nationals entered Burma. Authorities are also checking whether or not the two trucks are licensed.
Due to grievances that silica mining was harming the local environment and damaging farmland, on Sept. 5, 2014, more than 3,000 people demonstrated in Namkham demanding an immediate stop to mining in the area.
On Sept. 8 of that year, 10 Shan community-based organizations released a join statement saying that mining should be halted until mining practices are reformed and peace is secured in the area, which has seen recurrent clashes between the Burma Army and ethnic armed groups in recent years.
The [silica] mining has led to floods, damaging more than 100 acres of nearby land and crops there, activist Nang Muay Noom Hom told The Irrawaddy at the time. Roads were also damaged by the floods and there have been fatal road accidents.
Six mining companies started to operate silica mines in Namhkam in 2012, exporting the mineral across the nearby border with Chinas Yunnan Province, said Nang Muay Noom Hom.
Silica, or silicon dioxide, is a chemical compound that exists naturally as quartz and as a major component in sand. It is used commercially around the world in soaps and cosmetic products.
Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
News Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Responds to Arakan State Attacks
Burmas State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the joint press conference in Naypyidaw on Wednesday. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy
NAYPYIDAW Burmas State Counselor and Foreign Affairs Minister Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday that she would not accuse any individual or organization before obtaining evidence regarding the culprits of the recent violent attack in Arakan State.
While responding to questions posed by journalists during a joint press conference of the State Counselor and her counterpart Bert Koenders, the Foreign Affairs Minister of the Netherlands who is currently in Naypyidaw on an official visit, she pledged to handle the case fairly and manage the situation according to rule of law.
We are not going to accuse anybody until we know clearly [who is behind the attack] and have solid evidence.
According to information from the government, the Sunday attack on border guard headquarters and outposts in Maungdaw and Rathedaung Townships in Arakan State resulted in the death of nine police officers and eight alleged attackers.
A manhunt by security forces in Maungdaw Township reportedly involved the death of four soldiers and seven suspects.
At Wednesdays press conference, the State Counselor did not identify an organization responsible for the attacks.
One Dutch journalist asked Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to respond to criticism that she is not moving fast enough and not outspoken enough regarding human rights violations in Burma.
We take it very seriouslyaccusations regarding human rights violationsand our country will investigate very carefully, she responded.
She said Burma was coping with a system that has been in place for more than half a century and that it could not be changed overnight.
The State Counselor also stressed the importance of public involvement in protecting human rights but that the greater part of the responsibility falls on the government.
The protection of human rights is not something that the government alone can handle. The public also has to be involved, she said.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticized by local and international human rights advocates for her perceived silence regarding human rights violations by the Burma Army in ethnic areas where there are ongoing armed conflicts.
Koenders is in Burma on an official visit from Oct. 11 to 13 to discuss bilateral cooperation between the two countries and will open the new Dutch embassy in Rangoon on Wednesday evening.
He will also travel to Arakan State to meet with those affected by communal conflicts in 2012. The Netherlands opened a trade office in Burma in 2013.
News Election Tribunal Dismisses Ex-Ministers Fraud Allegations
U Ohn Myint / The Irrawaddy
RANGOON A Union Election Commission (UEC) dispute tribunal has dismissed the objection filed by former minister of Livestock, Fisheries and Rural Development U Ohn Myint against the electoral victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker Daw Aye Mya Mya Myo.
Former military general U Ohn Myint ran as a Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) candidate in the November 2015 general election for a Lower House seat in Rangoons Kyauktan Township. He was defeated by Daw Aye Mya Mya Myo by more than 10,500 votes.
In December, he filed a complaint with the UEC against Daw Aye Mya Mya Myo, alleging electoral fraud and accusing her of blocking him from campaigning. He asked the tribunal to declare him the rightful lawmaker of Kyauktan, claiming that he had obtained the majority of votes.
In an announcement published on Wednesday, the election commission said that the tribunalwhich is made up of senior UEC membershad decided to dismiss the objection, and ordered the petitioner U Ohn Myint to pay 200,000 kyats (US$157) compensation to his opponent, Daw Aye Mya Mya Myo.
U Ohn Myint will be allowed to appeal the tribunals decision if he chooses.
Daw Aye Mya Mya Myo told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that the commission had cleared the objection as there was no reliable evidence for the accusation.
He accused me of blocking his way during the campaign. But I was acting in accordance with the commissions approval, for which we seek permission in advance. So the commission decided that his accusation is not valid, she said.
The Irrawaddy previously reported that more than 40 tribunal cases have been filed with the UEC against winning candidates in Novembers election: 26 by USDP, and eight by the NLD. At the Union level, the cases involved 14 Lower House seats and seven Upper House seats; 25 regional parliamentary seats have also been disputed. Objections range from allegations of intimidation to misconduct at polling stations to defamation and misuse of religion.
Daw Aye Mya Mya Myo told The Irrawaddy that Myo Chit, U Ohn Myints election agent, also sued both her and polling booth officials for electoral fraud. She was charged under Article 341 of Burmas Penal Code, which states that the wrongful restraining of any person shall be punished with one month in prison or with a fine. The case is still ongoing at the Kyauktan Township Court.
U Ohn Myint has previously made headlines after he was caught on video threatening to slap a group of villagers for insubordination. The incident occurred during a visit to Thityarkaut village in Magwe Division in 2014, while he was serving as a Union minister. He described himself as the one who slapped peoples faces around the country and added that he was brave enough to slap anyone in the face.
On Wednesday, the UEC also released the designated schedule for by-elections which will be held on April 1 to fill vacant parliamentary seats. It said that the names of candidates will need to be submitted from Nov. 28 until Dec. 7 and that the candidate lists will be announced on Jan. 2. The election campaign period is scheduled from Jan. 30 until March 30.
News Local Muslim Community Condemns Maungdaw Attacks
People walk along the fence separating Burma and Bangladesh in Maungdaw Township, northern Arakan State. / Reuters
Local Muslim organizations have slammed recent attacks on police outposts on the Bangladeshi border in Arakan States Maungdaw Township, calling them destructive to the peace and stability of the country.
The border line is the security of the country. A terrorist attack on such a place is totally unacceptable since a commission has been formed to [] hold a discussion in line with the law, U Kyaw Nyein, chairman of Myanmar Muslim Lawyers Association, told The Irrawaddy, referring to the Arakan State Advisory Commission formed by State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in August. The commissions role is to explore root causes of tension between Buddhists and Muslims in Arakan State; it is headed by former UN general secretary Kofi Annan.
On Sunday, around 250 assailantsmost of whom are currently on the runlaunched separate attacks on Kyikanpyin border guard police headquarters and the Kotankauk and Ngakhuya outposts between 1:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m.
Nine police officers were killed in the ambush; on pursuing the attackers, police killed eight men and apprehended two, who were taken to the state capital of Sittwe for questioning.
The government so far has not named an organization responsible for the attack.
Meanwhile, eight local Muslim civil society organizations (CSOs) released a joint statement on Wednesday denouncing the attack and expressing their concern that further violence could follow the event.
Ma Darli Myint, leader of a CSO called Social Alliance, said: We are not talking about religion, but we condemn any act destructive to the peace and stability of the country. I would like to urge the leaders to settle the problem peacefully in line with the law.
On Monday morning, local Muslims were killed in Maungdaw Township after shots were fired by members of the Burma Army in Myothugyi village. State media reported four casualties, and civil society groups reported seven.
State media and government sources reported that four soldiers were killed in clashes Maungdaw Township on Tuesday by forces suspected to have been involved in Sundays ambush. Fighting continued until Wednesday afternoon.
Al-Haj U Aye Lwin, a Muslim member of Arakan State Advisory Commission, said that the commission still cannot make public remarks about the attacks, but he personally cant accept acts deemed as destructive to the sovereignty of the country.
I dont accept violence. A harsh punishment must be given [to the attackers]. In so doing, there needs to be extra caution taken to make sure those who are not involved in the violence are not affected, said U Aye Lwin.
He said the commission is monitoring the events and is set to meet soon, at which time, they will release a statement.
Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
News Over 100 Teachers Evacuated From Border Town in Northern Arakan State
Burma Army airlifts teachers and locals from an area close to the Bangladesh border in Maungdaw Township of northern Arakan State on Thursday. / Office of the Defense Services Commander-in-Chief
More than 100 teachers in government schools have been evacuated via Burma Army helicopter from the small settlement of Taungpyoletwea by the Bangladesh border, in Maungdaw Township of northern Arakan State, with just over 20 remaining to be airlifted.
These evacuations, with the teachers flown in to neighboring Buthidaung Township, are taking place after fatal attacks on border guard police posts on Sunday, followed by a manhunt focused on Maungdaw Township, has led to several dozen deaths among police, Burma Army soldiers and suspected militants.
Most of the estimated 250 assailants who attacked the police posts remain at large, according to state media. At least six suspects have been arrested.
[The attackers] have done nothing to teachers. No [teacher] has suffered injury so far, said Maungdaw Township education officer U Khin Aung, who added that the Burma Army was preparing to evacuate the remaining 20 teachers in Taungpyoletwea.
Alongside the 114 teachers that have been airlifted since Thursday, the Burma Army has evacuated 50 government officers, one monk, and 16 local residents, according to the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services.
An unverified number of residents of rural villages in Maungdaw Township have reportedly fled to Maungdaw town, with monasteries providing shelter.
U Tun Hla Sein, a state lawmaker representing Maungdaw Township, said, Locals have fled for the town for fear of food shortages. Most vendors [in their villagers] are Muslim, and have closed their shops.
Schools have been closed in Maungdaw and neighboring Buthidaung townships since the beginning of the week due to security concerns. Education officer U Khin Aung said whether schools would re-open after the Thadingyut festival, which lasts for the duration of next week, would hinge on an improvement in the security situation.
Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
News Rangoon MP Raises Questions About Previous Govts Land Leases
Rangoon Division NLD lawmaker U Nay Phone Latt answers reporters questions after Wednesdays parliamentary session. / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy
RANGOON Near the end of his tenure as Rangoons chief minister, U Myint Swenow serving as Union Vice President (1)issued 232 land lease contracts to private companies at special rates; local lawmaker has raised questions about why information about these initiatives appears to have been blacked out.
National League for Democracy (NLD) regional legislator U Nay Phone Lattalso known as U Nay Myo Kyawasked during Wednesdays parliament session about the rental rates decided upon for these projects during 2015-2016 fiscal year, and called for the agreement between the previous government and the companies involved to be unveiled.
He claimed that such land leasing practices had occurred not only in Rangoon but also in Mandalay Division. When a Mandalay NLD lawmaker proposed that the parliament scrutinize these non-transparent projects, the move was approved and an investigative committee was formed.
Like Mandalay, he said, Rangoon also needs to examine whether public lands were involved in the dealings.
Will the Rangoon government review these projects? asked U Nay Phone Latt. If the government has a plan to check, when would it inform the parliament of the findings? If there is no plan to inform us, let me know why.
Rangoon Mayor U Maung Maung Soe said, We dont have plan to cancel 232 land [contracts], and described the projects as impossible to shelve.
He added that the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC) would carry out an inspection, but that challenges remain, as the land was given out in individual deals under the previous government.
U Nay Phone Latt again stated: We want to know the land types involved in the 232 [projects] and who they were given to.
Arguably brushing off the MPs inquiry, the mayor said the question had been answered.
After the parliamentary session, U Nay Phone Latt told reporters that he felt the mayor had ignored his question as to how much profit the government gets from land leases.
We know nothing of such information, he said.
MP U Nay Phone Latt said he believed that YCDC might have the list of lands leased in this manner, although the mayor declined to comment on these details in parliament. Both citizens and lawmakers have the right to know the activities of the government, he added, and said that he would continue to try to learn more about the case.
News Sagaing Chief Minister Pledges to Enforce Ferry Safety Laws
A rescue team tries to salvage a ferry that capsized and killed at least 48 on the Chindwin River in Sagaing Divisions Kani Township. / Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy
RANGOON Sagaing Divisions chief minister has pledged to take effective legal action against ferry operators who violate restrictions set by regional government, in the wake of the tragedy of the overcrowded ferry that capsized on the Chindwin River on Saturday.
Regional chief minister U Myint Naing visited the location of the rescue operations in Kani Townships Michaung Dwin village on Wednesday and told reporters that the regional government would plan a proper policy to tackle such violations, given that similar accidents have happened in the past.
He also confessed that regional legislation on the issue is flawed and assured that it would be amended.
U Myint Naing added that the regional government would hold a press conference concerning the incident on Friday, detailing updates on the situation based on reports and investigations.
Once the sunken ferry is salvaged and we get precise reports, we will proceed with legal procedures as soon as possible, he said.
The privately owned Aung Soe Moe Kyaw-2 ferry was reportedly carrying 300 passengers. As of Wednesday, the rescue team had recovered 48 bodies, but the death toll is expected to climb as several people remain missing.
According to the Sagaing Divisions Department of Marine Administration, the ferry was registered as having a seating capacity of only 36 passengers.
The vessel left Homalin for Monywa on Friday evening. However, the Marine Administration Department restricts ferries from navigating after dark. Police have since brought charges against the helmsman of the ferry.
Lower House lawmaker U Tun Tun Naing of Kani Township told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that he would raise questions to the government about its plan to undertake and enforce regulations on privately owned ferries.
There were also two recent fatal boating accidents in Arakan State, killing four schoolgirls in Rathedaung Township and six women in Taungup Township. According to police investigations, the deaths were a result of an insufficient or total lack of life jackets provided for passengers on board.
On March 13, 2015, the government-owned Aung Ta Kon (3) ship, running between Sittwe and Kyaukphyu in Arakan State, sank in Myebon Township, reportedly killing at least 160 people, but with only 72 bodies recovered. The boat was reportedly overloaded with various goods. The Arakan State government has since suspended the route after facing criticism for being unable to enforce regulations.
News Senior Party Figure U Win Htein to Appear Before NLD Tribunal
Expelled and demoted NLD members U Tin Maung Toe and Daw Khin Moe Moe meet with reporters in Naypyidaw. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy
Burmas ruling party the National League for Democracy (NLD) on Wednesday launched an internal investigation from Naypyidaw into the controversial purge of senior leaders in the Shan State chapter of the NLD.
U Win Htein, an NLD central executive committee (CEC) member and leading party figure, expelled the NLD Taunggyi District chairperson U Tin Maung Toe in a verbal order and demoted Shan State NLD chairperson Daw Khin Moe Moe and two others during his visit to Shan State in September.
The expelled and demoted members subsequently filed an appeal, prompting the CEC to launch an internal investigation.
NLD auxiliary CEC member U Kyaw Ho, a practicing lawyer, heads the three-member party tribunal charged with the investigation, serving alongside Mandalay Division NLD chairperson U Tin Htut Oo and CEC member Daw Lei Lei.
Today, the tribunal started hearings. But U Win Htein couldnt come because he is on a trip. We will examine the evidence at the next session, U Kyaw Ho told the media.
U Win Htein has been on a tour of local NLD offices in Chin State.
Daw Khin Moe Moe told reporters that she suggested that the tribunal question U Win Htein when she originally filed the appeal. The tribunal assented and plans to question U Win Htein, alongside witnesses, on Oct. 24-25.
I explained to [tribunal] head U Kyaw Ho that it wouldnt be fair if we were questioned before U Win Htein. U Win Htein has to present an official justification [for having expelled the members] in front of the tribunal, and then we can defend it, said Daw Khin Moe Moe.
U Win Htein has claimed he has evidence that Daw Khin Moe Moe told locals to vote for the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy [with whom the NLD refused an electoral alliance] in the 2015 general election and failed to campaign for the NLD in Shan State.
U Tin Maung Toe, the Taunggyi District NLD chairperson, told the media: I have been in this party since 1988 [when it was founded]. We understand all the rules and regulations of the party. I have never heard of a verbal dismissal. The party is currently the ruling party and also formed the government. So, I would like for it to go by the rules. I want it to become a model party for the country.
The two other Shan State NLD members to have faced demotion, Daw Mee Mee and Daw Yumi Zaw, were also accused of failing to campaign for the NLD in the lead-up to the 2015 election. Their demotions will be investigated as a single case. U Tin Maung Toes expulsion and Daw Khin Moe Moes demotion will each be considered as separate cases.
When [U Win Htein] came to Shan State, I wrote a Facebook post that he considered insulting towards him, U Tin Maung Toe told the media, to explain his demotion, saying he would defend his case with evidence.
Though Daw Khin Moe Moe was made to forfeit her position as NLD Shan State chairperson, she remains a central committee member.
We called for the formation of an investigation commission to punish whoever is guilty, Daw Khin Moe Moe told the media.
Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
Guest Column Burmas Disappointing New Investment Law
Then-opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi visits the Letpadaung copper mine near Monywa in Sagaing Division, a highly controversial Chinese investment, on March 14, 2013. / The Irrawaddy
A new investment law has been rushed through Burmas Parliament, with the Upper House giving its approval on Oct. 6. According to the Myanmar Investment Commission, the law is expected to take effect soon.
EarthRights International and other civil society groups are concerned that the consultation period for the law was too short, and the law itself is incomplete and too weak to secure responsible investment in many of the countrys most destructive industries. Despite the ruling National League for Democracys rhetoric of responsible investment in the lead-up to the 2015 general election, the Investment Law is a significant disappointment.
The NLD governments new sense of urgency in passing the Investment Law came in the wake of State Counselor and Foreign Minister Daw Aung San Suu Kyis visit to the United States, during which President Obama announced that the US would end its economic sanctions program and Responsible Investment Reporting Requirements for US investment into Burma. In response, lawmakers in Burmas Upper and Lower houses felt pressured to enact the new Investment Law as soon as possible, leaving no time to properly debate the laws terms and understand its implications.
Typically, a draft law will be debated in the Lower and Upper houses over a period of two to three months. In the case of the Investment Law, the draft was passed by both houses in under two weeks.
The Law represents a missed opportunity to introduce an investment framework that decentralizes decision-making power over large-scale investment projects, and ensures that the voices of local communities affected by massive development projects are heard. Despite paying lip service to investors environmental and social responsibilities, the new law fails to recognize affected communities right to an effective remedy against investors for breaches of the law.
Burmas new investment law also gives the Investment Commission broad decision-making powers with little guidance and no effective oversight. This means that many projects in industries with enormous environmental and social footprints, such as mining, oil and gas, coal and hydropower may be approved without any meaningful constraints on the investment permit process, which is not clearly defined. When an investment is likely to have a significant impact on the environment and local populations, the commission is merely directed to give the proposal necessary scrutiny to determine whether it is strategic for the Union. This represents wide-ranging discretion, which should be bounded by strict rules that further define the terms of acceptable, responsible investment.
What is more, under the new law, only one among the new nine-member Investment Commission must be a democratically elected officialcreating the risk that the majority will be drawn from private industry.
Crucially, the new investment law also fails to ensure transparency. The law does not oblige the Investment Commission or investors to make any information on investments publicly available. This is a critical oversight, particularly in light of Burmas history of cronyism and corruption linked to investment in Burmas wealth of natural resources.
As the government rushes to revise laws and procedures that impinge on investmentincluding those related to land tenure and the environmentlittle is being done by lawmakers to ensure consistency. For example, it is unclear in the new investment law how procedures for acquiring investment permits interact with the duties of investors to submit Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). So far, a lack of understanding over this relationship has meant that EIAs are not properly reviewedyet permits from the Investment Commission signal a green light to investors for their projects.
Environmental and human rights groups in Burma, such as EarthRights International, had petitioned lawmakers to delay the enactment of the Investment Law until these issues were clarified and the terms of the law could be strengthened. However, it appears the NLD was more concerned with pushing the law through to encourage US investment.
The NLD has missed an important opportunity to strengthen participation in the legislative process and to enact a law that promotes responsible investment. Most disappointing of all, the Investment Law leaves the citizens of Burma vulnerable to multiple forms of harm at the hands of improperly regulated investment.
Kate Taylor is a Rangoon-based legal fellow at EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights organization headquartered in Washington DC.
Opinion Wa Tin Mining Boom May Have Peaked
A UWSA soldier on duty in Mongmau, Wa State. / J Paing / The Irrawaddy
The massive tin mining boom underway in territory controlled by Burmas largest ethnic armed group, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), may be set for a decline, concludes a recent update from the International Tin Research Institute (ITRI), a not-for-profit organization closely connected to the international mining industry.
The autonomous section of northern Shan State located along the Chinese border officially known as Shan State Special Region 2, but more commonly referred to as Wa State, is estimated by ITRI to currently account for 95 percent of Burmas tin production, peaking at some 50,000 tpy [tons per year]. Almost all of it is exported to China.
A paper published last December in the journal Resources Policy concluded that Wa tin production had in just a few short years boosted Burma from being a small player in the global tin trade to the status of the worlds third largest tin producing country.
According to figures provided by ITRI between 2009 and 2014, Burmas overall tin production shot up 4900.00 percent thanks almost entirely to output from the Wa territory, a dramatic shift that appears to have caught the global tin mining industry completely by surprise.
ITRI reports that the mining operations at Man Mawsome 90 kilometers from Panghsang, the UWSAs de facto capitalhave changed considerably over the past few years.
Citing information from an ITRI staff person in China who recently visited the UWSA territory, ITRI says that mining in Man Maw, which as recently as 2014 was dominated by open pit mines, has shifted as these sites have depleted. According to ITRI, today most mining is underground, with higher operating costs and lower ore grades.
Another change cited by ITRI is that many of the smaller mining outfits operating in the area have disappeared and have been replaced by larger firms that are better organized and well financedoperations that are more mechanized and use expanded ore processing facilities.
According to ITRI, in 2014, tin mining operations at Man Maw commonly dealt with grades of 10 percent tin. These have been largely depleted: most ore mined now grades between 2-3 percent tin.
Although the ITRI update concludes that, in the short-term, tin output from Wa territory seems stable, ITRI notes that the longer-term outlook for production in Wa territory mainly depends on whether there are new resource discoveries in the next few years. Otherwise, production may peak in 2015-2017 and then decline.
ITRI has estimated tin production in Wa territory by analyzing Chinas official import figures for tin ore and concentrate. According to the update, ITRI believes that the big increase in imports reported by China in the first half of 2016up 88 percent year-on-year in gross weight termsis based on a depletion of above-ground stocks of ore and concentrate accumulated over the last few years. This masks an underlying decline in mining activity and depletion of readily accessible higher grade ore resources.
If the forecasted peak in the Wa mining boom takes place, global tin prices will likely rise. Currently tin is trading at U$18,770 a metric tonan 18-month high, but still considerably lower than the height reached during the most recent commodities boom. Much of the worlds tin production ends up in solder, used in electronic circuits.
The leadership of the UWSA and its similarly named political wing the United Wa State Partymost of whom were mid-ranking members of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) when the group imploded in 1989are known to be reclusive and rarely grant access to their territory to foreign journalists or other outside visitors.
Much of this appears to stem from a series of indictments filed by US authorities against the UWSA leadership, including Chairman Bao Youxiang, for their alleged involvement in the global drug trade. The UWSA has long denied these claims, which it maintains are part of a smear campaign.
We, the UWSA, are wholeheartedly engaged in the fight against drug-dealing, the groups spokesperson, Aung Myint, told The Irrawaddy in a 2013 interview. For seven years since 2005, there have been no poppy fields and no poppy plants in our region. This has finished. Thats why the world should recognize us.
The UWSA has longstanding ties with China, carried over from the days when Beijing was the main backer of the CPB and its armed insurrection against Ne Win, who in the parlance of the Cultural Revolution was a counter-revolutionary, fascist, and reactionary.
More than a quarter century after the almost exclusively Burman CPB politburo was toppled by their ethnic comrades, the UWSA remains on good terms with their Chinese neighborsa relationship no doubt shaped by the vast amounts of tin being shipped across the border to feed Chinas giant manufacturing sector.
Though this may not be the kind of recognition that Aung Myint and his colleagues had in mind, the Wa territorys significant role in the global tin tradeaccounting for nearly 10 percent of global tin output by recent estimateshas certainly put the group on the global mining map.
Several international tin mining firms have cited Man Maws mammoth tin production and its effect on global tin prices as an issue of concern in the market outlook section of their annual reports. In a similar vein, metals analyst Andy Home described in a recent write-up for Reuters how plans to restart a long dormant tin mine in southwestern England depend on how much tin is left in the UWSAs mines.
Man Maw is the hard reality that looms large over Cornwalls dreams of reviving its historic tin sector, he wrote.
Despite their size and importance to the global tin trade, the UWSAs tin mines did not make an appearance in Burmas first ever Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) report published last year. The report disclosed royalty payments paid by firms operating in Burmas resource sector as well as royalty payments received by the government.
Burma joined the global pact, which aims to bring about greater transparency in the oil, gas and mineral resources sector in developing countries, under President Thein Seina move heralded by some, including the World Bank, as a transparency breakthrough. If the figures from ITRI are to be believed, 95 percent of Burmas tin production remains unaccounted for in the EITI report.
Given their current trajectory, it appears unlikely that the UWSAwho, since signing a ceasefire with the then ruling military regime in 1989, have run their special region on the Chinese border with almost complete autonomy from the central governmentwould cooperate with efforts like the EITI in future.
The UWSA are much less inclined than many of their fellow ethnic armed groups in Burma to cooperate with the central government, if such cooperation doesnt directly suit their interests: the preservation of a degree of sovereignty unparalleled among their ethnic militia peers, none of whose forces are anything near as large or well-equipped.
The groups representatives stormed out of the 21st Century Panglong peace conference in Naypyidaw last week, over a perceived slight related to their being given observer nametags at the outsetcasting doubt on their seriousness as participants in Burmas peace process.
What kind of royalties the UWSA leadership is charging mining firms operating in their territory is unclear, but it certainly appears that the massive windfall from tin mining is helping the UWSA maintain its powerful militiaby some estimates numbering between 20,000 and 25,000 soldiers, larger than the standing armies of several European nations.
Given the central role tin production appears to be playing in the Wa economy, it is very likely that tin mining analysts are not the only ones interested in just how much tin is left in Man Maws mines.
With each footfall, breath, and tick of my watch, I feel curiosity stirring inside of me. This feeling only intensifies, so I search the crevices of my mind for the source of intrigue. All the while, I try to keep focus on navigating by the two-by-six-inch white blazes that mark the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States. The creation of this trail that runs the length of the state began when the Green Mountain Club declared a mission to make the mountains of Vermont play a larger part in the life of the people. Speaking for myself alone, I can say they have succeeded.
I have digressed, let me backtrack. For countless years, I have wanted to summit Camels Hump and then follow the Long Trail north for 30 miles to the summit of the highest peak in Vermont, Mount Mansfield. Two distinctive mountains, similar in size, both rock capped, but at the same time the two mountains vastly differ in their development and personalities. The Hump sits amongst a forest preserve, while Mansfield is one of the most highly developed mountains in the state. I have summited both mountains countless times, but never in the same day nor during the same run. Increasingly, I have been reminded that life is short, life is unpredictable, and dreams will only be dreams until I transform them into reality. So with my hydration pack filled with essentials for the day I park my car in Huntington at the base of Camels Hump and head up the trail.
Within an hour I summit Camels Hump. Being the only soul on the summit feels spectacular. Rather than tagging the summit and taking off, I decide to sit and take in the sights and sounds. From this stony pedestal I have a panoramic view. To the west is Lake Champlain and the New York Adirondacks, to the east are the White Mountains, and then dominating the immediate landscape to the north is my destination, Mount Mansfield. I feel alone, isolated with my thoughts and surrounded by the sound of a gentle wind. Through my adventures I have come to learn that feeling alone can be unsettling, but in this moment it feels extremely empowering. After getting lost in my thoughts I get back on my feet with the realization that Ive got a lot of distance to cover.
After descending Bamforth Ridge via the Long Trail, I follow the Winooski River and then cross the newly installed foot suspension bridge. North- and south-bound traffic surges past on Interstate 89 and Route 2. Ah civilization, I havent really missed you, but this intersection provides me with the opportunity to refill my hydration pack. Earlier this morning, my stepfather Jeff left me water at the Bolton trailhead. As I run up to the parking lot, I find the 20-year-old Igloo family cooler locked to the trail kiosk with my name written on it. Certainly worth a laugh as it seems like high security for a gallon of water, but damn it is good and cold.
After filling my hydration bladder and offering the remaining water to other hikers, I am off. Not even three hours into my endeavor and I have over 12 miles under my belt. Yes that does sound slow, but on these trails nothing happens fast, besides falling. I feel good, am making progress with ease, and develop what I will understand in retrospect as a false sense of confidence as I am now at the lowest elevation of the Long Trail so there is nowhere to go but up! I climb up the road section and then plunge back into the woods, running the rollers and flats. After a few miles, the dryness and sun catches up with me. The Long Trail is notorious for its mud and boggy sections, slick rocks, and streams, but with no rain this summer, everything is bone dry. With each moment it becomes increasingly clear that I will have to ration my water over the next six-plus hours.
Over the next miles, I sip water only when taking in calories, then finally I come across a section that has some moisture in the form of a few stagnant puddles cupped in the rock. I pull my Lifestraw out of my pack and examine the puddle from my knees. I can see organisms milling about, but with fingers crossed I begin gulping through the straw. I drink almost the entire puddle, before moving up rock to the next minute pool. Five hours into my endeavor I am now in the thick of the wilderness, committed to forward progress. False summit after false summit I make my way to the top of Bolton Mountain. It honestly feels like it takes forever because I am starting to obsess over the time of day. Just below the high point of Bolton Mountain, from the Puffer Shelter, I send my mother a text. She is tracking my day and at the culmination she is my ride home. I cant tell if the text goes through or not before shoving my phone back in my pack, but feel like I dont have time to fuss about it.
I descend into Nebraska Notch and my hope is to make up some time on this section, but the rocky ledges laden with roots and the wooden ladders installed to aid in maneuvering over the technical terrain dont help. I catch my toe and fly forward, luckily getting my feet back underneath my body before I hit the ground below. My heart races and now being alone feels different. Fear of getting hurt in the solitude of these mountains resonates in my mind. I check my phone and see a text from my mom that she is out on the trail headed toward me with water and snacks to help me refuel before the final push to the summit on Mansfield. I think about her text, which is fairly vague, as she could be within yelling distance or still miles away. After dropping about 2,000 feet and passing Taylor Lodge I see a skittish wild-looking dog standing in the trail and holler Shotgun. Its my mothers dog who has wandered ahead of her to find me. Further up the trail I see my mom sitting on a rock, waiting for my arrival. We sit on the trail as I chug a bottle of cold water she has carried in. Then from her pack she pulls out a bag of salt-and-pepper potato chips and we work on eating those. I cant consume them at a fast-enough rate to appease my appetite.
As we sit and talk, reality sets in. I still have about 10 more miles in front of me. Ten miles doesnt sound like a lot, but there have been sections where traveling even two miles an hour is labor intensive. My mom and I start hiking north together until we reach an intersection where I can continue on the Long Trail or head to the caralso known as bailing! I keep right, staying on the Long Trail reiterating aloud to my mother, but more to myself, that the point is to summit both mountains. My mom heads back down the trail to the car and will meet me down the next valley after I make my final summit of the day. Within minutes of leaving her, I start to second guess my decision to continue. My energy is waning, my teeth feel like they have layer upon layers of plaque, and everything I touch feels sticky. In the scheme of things I am fine, just transitioning into the realm of uncomfortable. I scurry up the ladders and cling to the rocks on the ledges, all the while trying to keep an honest pace and focus.
As the sun starts to noticeably lower I am almost to the forehead of Mansfield and from here I traverse across the bare summit ridge that extends for more than a mile to the chin before taking the most direct route down. With broad views, I make my way across ledges and stone. I am taunted by the looming darkness so I dont look at the views too much. I try to make quick work over to the chin, but the trail becomes more congested as it is occupied by people mostly dressed in street wear carrying little to nothing beyond their SLR cameras. This is the reality of a developed mountain, where you can drive to the top or ride the gondola up to just below the summit. I try to be polite, letting them know I am approaching while also saying hello.
A man walking south asks, Where are you going in such a hurry? I semi-begrudgingly slow to a stop and see him wince as he glances at my lower legs, which are crusted over with several layers of mud. Then again maybe it is my outdoorsy odor that makes him grimace. As I stumble for words to explain the journey I am on, I peer down at my GU- and chocolate-bar-stained shirt and feel that my appearance is being judged. Immediately a feeling of self-consciousness comes over me and I tip my trucker cap and swipe my forehead with the buff that is wrapped around my wrist. The breeze flutters my running shorts as wisps of my dark brown hair dance around my face. There is really no use in trying to tidy myself up to appease this gentlemen as I attempt to hurriedly verbalize where I have been and where I have yet to go. He has no idea what I have accomplished, but that is okay with me. It is my bucket-list adventure, my dream, and Im not going to allow a well-dressed man wearing loafers on the top of a mountain make me feel inadequate.
Finally, I reach the high point of the ridge and turn off the Long Trail to head down toward Underhill State Park, but as I turn there is hesitation. The curiosity is there, asking question after question. How much further I could go following those two-by-six-inch blazes? What are my limits? Why does this trail that I seem to love and hate bring me such intrigue? I have fulfilled my dream of summiting both mountains in the same effort, yet in the process I have also created many more pipeline dreams for myself and this 273-mile trail from Massachusetts to Canada.
Call for Comments (from Meghan)
Oil painting portrays the Red Army during the Long March
October 22nd, 2016, marks the 80th anniversary of victory of Long March, which is a significant event in modern Chinese history.
The Long March, together with the use of gunpowder and Genghis Khan conquering Europe, are enlisted among 100 Events that Changed the World in the fall 1997 issue of Life Magazine The Millennium.
From October 1934 to October 1936, the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army soldiers left their bases in southeast Chinas Jiangxi Province and marched through raging rivers, snowy mountains, and arid grassland to break the siege of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China) forces and continue the fight against Japanese aggressors. Some of them marched as far as 12,500 kilometers, the same distance from Beijing to London.
During the Long March, the soldiers had to deal with airstrikes and fight against hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers who were after them every day. The Red Army soldiers, who were wearing shoes made from grass, fought once every 72 hours while marching 50 kilometers a day on average. The surviving military force was less than 7,000, down from 86,000 at the start of the Long March. Compared to the Long March, Hannibals crossing of the Alps was like a summers day stroll, noted American journalist Edgar Snow in his book Red Star Over China.
The spirit of the Red Army soldiers during the Long March is stunning. Chen Shuxiang, a division commander of the Red Army, was caught after exhausting all the divisions food and bullets in the four days battle along the Xiang River with his soldiers. Chen avoided capture by tearing open his wounds and cutting his bowel. Jiang Xiuying, a Tibetan female soldier, severed her toes with an axe after they had mortified when the Red Army climbed the snowy mountains.
What empowered the Red Army soldiers to be so fearless, even of death? It is the ideals and causes they believed in that empowered them. They wanted to change China, they were determined to end the century of humiliation, they wanted to show the Chinese people that a fair and just society can be won, and that the peoples destiny is in their own hands. British missionary Rudolf Alfred Bosshardt who had followed the Red Army's Long March described in The Restraining Hand: "These people, known as bandits by the Kuomintang, are in fact people who believe in Marxism and practice its principles."
Their determination has astounded many people and propelled some of them to re-walk the Long March. In October 2002, two British men, Andy McEwen and Ed Jocelyn, set off to retrace the Red Army's footsteps and recorded the experiences of the last-remaining witnesses and participants of the Long March. Their book The Long March became an instant best seller.
The Long March has become an important symbol in modern China. Many streets and roads in Chinese cities are named after the Long March, as are many rockets and nuclear submarines designed and made in China. President Xi Jinping has called for carrying forth the spirit of the Chinese Red Army on the Long March, and striving fearlessly to realize Chinas dream of national rejuvenation.
China is undergoing comprehensive reform, which means the country is not only trying to liberate thinking and transform mindsets, but also stand against vested interests. The Chinese people commemorate the 80th anniversary of victory of the Long March to remember our forefathers spirit of working hard, fearing no sacrifice, and believing in the ultimate victory of China's revolution.
Today, on October 17, 2016, China launched the Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft with a Long March-2F carrier rocket. The successful launch marks another giant step forward for Chinas space exploration program. The sixth plenary session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee will be held from October 24 to 27, 2016, to discuss the issue of party building. Eighty years after the victory of the Long March, China is on a new Long March journey toward a brighter future.
Wednesday, October 19th, 2016 (7:49 am) - Score 1,614
Internet retail giant Amazon is allegedly investigating the possibility of launching its own fixed line home broadband and phone service in Europe (the United Kingdom is said to be first on their list), which would probably involve selling a triple-play bundle with their Prime Instant Video (TV) content.
Apparently insider sources close to the company have informed The Information (paywall) that this is precisely what the company is planning, although wed take that with a pinch of salt until some solid information emerges. But according to the article, the UK would be one of Amazons first European targets due to the ease at which an ISP can be established.
Certainly its fairly straightforward to setup an ISP in the UK, assuming the intention is one that doesnt involve building your own network (i.e. reselling another ISPs products or buying a managed wholesale solution). A number of retailers, such as John Lewis, have managed to enter the market quite quickly by taking a similar approach and Amazon could be mooting the same.
Entering an aggressively competitive market is one thing, but making a success of it is quite another. However Amazon does have a formidable presence and, much like the Post Office, it would be in a prime position to attract a significant proportion of consumers away from traditional ISPs. Indeed that might even be enough to make the wider market a little nervous (unless of course youre the ISP they choose to partner with).
At this stage Amazon are only understood to have discussed the idea at a high level, which might not translate into an actual product. However broadband would be a good fit for the company and it could be used to help grow their Internet based TV / video streaming solutions.
Plus in Amazons mind the longer you spend with their name in your head, the more likely you are to buy something off their website. The dream of a full circle style consumer experience, from Internet access delivery to online content distribution and shopping, is something Amazon could deliver.
BEIJING, Oct. 19 -- The Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft successfully completed its automated docking with the orbiting Tiangong-2 space lab at 3:31 a.m. Wednesday Beijing Time, according to Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).
Shenzhou-11, which was launched Monday morning from northwest China's Gobi Desert, began to approach Tiangong-2 automatically at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday and made contact with the space lab at 3:24 a.m..
The rendezvous took place in the orbit about 393 kilometers above Earth.
The two astronauts aboard Shenzhou-11, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, monitored and reported on the docking operation, relaying their findings to the control center.
According to the mission schedule, once they enter the space module, the astronauts will stay there for 30 days.
Shenzhou-11, China's sixth manned spacecraft, will undertake the longest-ever space mission in the country. The two astronauts will spend a total of 33 days in space.
Sun Jun, deputy chief engineer of BACC, told Xinhua that the precision needed for the orbit prediction and automated docking calculation was much higher than previous docking missions.
China is the third country, after the United States and Russia, to complete successfully space rendezvous and docking procedures.
Tiangong-2 was sent into space on Sept. 15. It is hailed as China's first space lab "in the strict sense" and a key step in building a permanent space station, which the country aims to accomplish by 2020.
Terre Haute, IN (47809)
Today
A shower is possible early. Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Low 46F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..
Tonight
A shower is possible early. Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Low 46F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
10 Critical Responsibilities of the Cybersecurity Manager
The Internet of Things (IoT) is big, amorphous, somewhat mysterious and quickly evolving. It is stuck in the gray area between concept and reality.
That makes discussing IoT security difficult. The good news, however, is that people are discussing and debating IoT security from both the conceptual and product perspectives.
The challenges of IoT security were featured this week when The New York Times focused on The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is offering prizes in the millions of dollars range in the Cyber Grand Challenge. The idea is to develop technology to allow the IoT to more or less police itself:
To win, contestants would have to create automated digital defense systems that could identify and fix software vulnerabilities on their own essentially smart software robots as sentinels for digital security.
The serious nature of IoT security is illustrated in the piece by the news of two recent IoT-related hacking incidents. Level 3 Communications came under attack from malware launched from IoT devices. Akamai Technologies had been attacked by hackers testing whether they could use stolen names and passwords to gain access to websites.
All in all, its not a pretty picture. An exhaustive survey conducted on behalf of ForeScout by Quocirca found that organizations are concerned about the IoT, even as they seek to take advantage of what it has to offer.
The key, according to the conclusion of the research report, is that systems must be implemented that allow the discovery and classification of IoT devices. This means that previously unknown devices and those running unusual operating systems can be tracked and therefore securely accommodated. It also means that permanently connected devices must also continually be monitored, managed and secured.
In short, the job of IT security teams is more complex and demanding than it was just a few years ago. Computerworlds Evan Schuman wrote that enterprises face three dangers: Being attacked from outside, having compromised devices belonging to the company attack others or having these devices attack internally. A big part of the challenge is that IoT functionality is increasingly embedded in elements, such as LED light fixtures, that are not signed off on by the IT department. The fixes to this, Schuman writes, are to train staff on where the IoT resides and to require IT or the CISO to sign off on purchases.
The IoT has great potential benefits. As time goes on, however, the potential for damage seems to equal or outweigh that upside. It seems that vendors are recognizing another type of potential: that of making money developing the technology that will keep those worst fears from being realized.
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.
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Finally, after the release of the original movie 10 years ago, "The Boondock Saints 3" will be coming to your favorite theaters again. The original film was one of the most surprising cult movies in the 90s. It was a rather small-budgeted film but was accepted by the fans and the critics very well at that time.
The New Movie Will Have Major Hollywood Stars
There are reports coming out that "The Boondock Saints 3" will star two major Hollywood celebrities. Possible casting may include Chris Pratt or Brad Pitt. If the two sign up with the film, this could be a potential blockbuster.
What The Original Story Is About
The original story is about two (twin) brothers who embarked on a mission to fight crime and get rid of evil men in their Irish hometown. To do this, the twin brothers have to use their own brand of justice. The first film was action packed and captured the hearts of millions of fans. It even got a sequel and was regarded as one of the successful cult movies of all time.
The "Saints" Stayed On For 15 years
Because of its first two movies, "The Boondock Saints" lived on for the following 15 years after the first film released in 1999. This was due to the re-releases of home videos of its title and marketing of online merchandise related to the film. A big help to its success is the effort of its original stars to interact socially with the community and the dedication provided by the creators of the movie.
A Big Stepping Stone For "The Walking Dead' Star
"The Boondock Saints" was also instrumental in the success of Norman Reedus, the current star of "The Walking Dead." Reedus played the role of one of the twins and led him to take up the role as one of "The Walking Dead" main characters. Meanwhile, Troy Duffy, the writer, creator and would-be director of "The Boondock Saints 3" has released in January and April some images of the movie script.
After months of recovery, actor Dylan O'Brien is now ready to get back to work, although still recovering to date. Thus, there have been reports that although he started filming for his other projects already, he still hasn't returned to filming "Maze Runner 3" wherein he met his accident.
Dylan O'Brien Went Through Facial Reconstruction After Accident During Filming
As a result to his accident while filming for "Maze Runner 3," the actor Dylan O'Brien suffered blunt force trauma to his face and was in need of facial reconstruction. This explains his long absence from the outside world since the damage was done mostly to his face. The extent of his surgeries was apparently more serious than everyone may have assumed and the actor is in fact still at risk of complications up to now. Nevertheless, the actor still decided to come back for his committed projects.
The accident happened in March and for the first time in months, Dylan was seen in public just last September. He also recently returned to social media recently, after posting on his Twitter account. As it looks, the actor seems well on his feet already and ready to return to his job, as he has reportedly been filming for "Teen Wolf" season six already.
Will Dylan Pursue Legal Actions Against Production Of "Maze Runner 3" After Horrific Accident?
However, there have been reports claiming that the actor may not yet be ready to come back on set for "Maze Runner 3," and still doing negotiations on portraying less action scenes than originally planned. After the accident, Dylan has to be more careful now especially that his roles mostly require him action-packed scenes. There have also been reports that Dylan would have a case against them, since the production failed to ensure the safety of the actors while on set.
There have been speculations saying that Dylan might take up on this, and decide on some legal actions towards the production team of "Maze Runner 3."However, there hasn't been any confirmation that the actor is going to sue them at all, or simply arrange things peacefully before he continues filming for the movie. Rest assured, Dylan O'Brien is already back on his game.
Just recently, more than 200 employees working under two Jim Beam distilleries in Kentucky have resulted to a strike after claiming that they have overworked in response to production demand; and the company has deprived them of a quality way of life. According to one of the employees, the compensation or money is not their main issue. They were assured to have a great salary raise amidst the massive work they needed to do at that time.
Employees Under Jim Beam Distilleries In Kentucky Go On Strike After Having Claimed To Be Overworked
However, the employees have complained that they are now working 80 hours a week, making them have lesser time to spend with their families. They asked the company to hire more workers instead, rather than using the existing workers as if robots that don't need any rest at all. According to MSN, the company offered a very competitive proposal to the employees but a greater percentage has rejected it, resulting to a strike.
Just recently, there has been a nationwide revival demand on the Kentucky bourbon and this caused the immediate massive workload being piled on the employees. However, the employees feel that the proposals made by the company with regards to their compensation did not lure the employees to allow themselves to work almost thrice as much as any regular employee. Even though the company already added temporary workers, there hasn't been any confirmation yet to their regularity under the company's employment regulations.
Contingency Plans Made By The Company May Solve Issues Regarding Losing Manpower
The employees are hoping that this will be settled shortly, or else the company will be losing profit at the loss of their employees. They insist that more people be brought in as regular employees, rather than hiring temporary ones and leaving the regular ones to carry on with the job at a great expense. However, there have been reports made by FOX News that given their current inventory list and a number of contingency plans, the company may not suffer as much as anticipated at the loss of these employees in two distilleries in Kentucky.
The transparency radical organization WikiLeaks accused the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry of pressuring Ecuador to sabotage its leader Julian Assanges internet, in order to stop him from publishing further leaked files from Hillary Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta. Apparently, the private meeting between the Perry and Ecuador officials was conducted on 26 September in Colombia.
BREAKING: Multiple US sources tell us John Kerry asked Ecuador to stop Assange from publishing Clinton docs during FARC peace negotiations. WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) 18 de octubre de 2016
The John Kerry private meeting with Ecuador was made on the sidelines of the negotiations which took place pricipally on Sep 26 in Colombia. WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) 18 de octubre de 2016
State Department Denies John Kerrys Involvement
This situation could represent one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history, since it would show the governments diplomatic actions benefitting a presidential candidate, to the point where it even asked the sabotage of a political asylees privacy. However, the state department denied any involvement, as reported by the Daily Mail.
'While our concerns about Wikileaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down Wikileaks is false. Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period," U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said in an email.
The Mystery Behind Ecuador's Cooperation
Although the U.S. interest in this action might be very clear, it is a mystery whats behind Ecuador's intentions to cooperate with the U.S., considering the fact that these two nations have been political rivals since President Rafael Correa came to power. In fact, Correa has always supported Julian Assange, giving him asylum while many nations, including the U.S., asked for his extradition.
The most enigmatic detail about this situation is that Correa has expressed his support for Hillary Clinton, but also explained that it would be extremely beneficial for leftist countries as Ecuador that Donald Trump could be the new U.S. president. Although he is one of the main allies of Vladimir Putin, who also wants Trump as president, he actually made a great contribution for Hillary Clintons interest with Assanges internet sabotage.
Julian Assange And WikiLeaks Trapped In Geopolitical Change
The only scenario that could make sense of this picture is that Ecuador wants to reestablish its relations with the U.S., considering that many of South America's leftist countries are changing their political stances, and the Ecuadorean government would like to keep its status in the new world order. If this is whats taking place right now, Julian Assange will be inside a place where those who protected him are now cooperating with is enemies.
Could he complete his mission of publishing all the Clintons files before November 8? Could this be the beginning of his freedoms end? Will he start to publish Ecuadors delicate documents to threat the embassy?
There are only two facts in this history: Julian Assange is now trapped in a geopolitical change, and the U.S. presidential elections have become a lot more compelling.
Over the years, people have accustomed themselves to the .com's, .net's and other country level top level domains (TLD's) like .uk and .nz. This has always been the case in the realm of the internet until the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) decided to expand the number of generic TLDs in 2008.
With this change, Google decided to step up and apply for new TLDs that are geared to strengthen their trademark, improve user experience and express creative possibilities. After all, what's the internet going to be like without some good old dose of creativity?
In relation to this, Google has finally released a Java-based registry platform that is responsible for Google's own top level domains. This is called Nomulus, a 2012 project that Google has been working on. According to TechCrunch, Nomulus is the platform that Google uses to manage all the registration data for domains that fall under its TLDs.
This also handles all the requests to buy, renew and transfer domains. Nomulus is tightly integrated with Google's Cloud Platform, utilizing the Google Cloud Datastore as its backend database and running on App Engine. The best thing about this is that everyone can use it for free.
An example of Google's venture in testing this source of innovation is their new corporate blog at www.blog.google. The site is referred to as "The Keyword" and is a new central source for news and stories about the search giant.
So far, this is Google's first take on a broadcasted, non-domain industry website under its .brand TLD. With this step taken by Google, users will know that the company is aiming for longevity and has a lot of things in store for their users in the future.
After all, Google wants to open up more choices for internet domain names to promote diversity among individual websites. With Nomulus, the internet will surely be a much more engaging, much more colorful place.
Halloween won't be complete without counting down the scariest places on earth. We will try to narrow down the list and this will not be in order.
Are you fond of experiencing paranormal activities? Are you afraid of the dark? Do you have what it takes to stay in a haunted place alone? Today, I will list some of the scariest place on earth that people don't dare to visit specially during night time.
Chapel Bones In Portugal
As the name implies, this Chapel is not your ordinary place when you want to pray and worship God. The Chapel Bones in Portugal is literally covered up with bones from 5000 monks and they have two hanging bodies in a rope, one is a child.
Suicide Forest In Japan
Japan is one of the most beautiful country in the world due to its culture and diversity. But there is one place that terrifies almost all Japanese, the Aokigahara Forest. Tagged as the Suicide Forest in Japan, this forest already have 500 people who committed suicide for unknown reasons. Japanese officials were alarmed even put a signage on the entrance of the forest that states "Your life is a precious gift from your parents," and "Please consult with the police before you decide to die."
St. George's Church in the Czech Republic
This church in Czech Republic was abandoned after part of the roof collapsed during a funeral service in 1968. There are a lot of ghostly encounters and stories about this medieval church. The ghost sculptures added by artist Jakub Hadrava may keep the church running by bringing in tourist dollars, but also make it just a bit more terrifying.
The Catacombs in Paris
I really don't understand what's with the medieval period about using bones as their decoration. In Paris, there is a place where you can visit a 200 mile long underground pathways that is entirely made out of bones. Historians said that this bones are from over 6 million bodies who died in a war.
Plague Island in Italy
When you think of Italy, you think of good food and romantic sceneries. But the most iconic tourist spot in Italy is none other than the Plague Island. Poveglia is a small island near Venice that was used as a quarantine for almost 160,000 people infected with plague from 1793 to 1814. Napoleon Bonaparte also used it to store weapons during the war. From 1922 to 1968 it was converted as a mental hospital and on that same time, a certain doctor was allegedly the brain of the mass murder of all its patients.
Snake Island in Brazil
Ophidiophobia the abnormal fear of snakes. Fear of snakes is sometimes called by a more general term, herpetophobia, fear of reptiles and/or amphibians. So if you have this fear or basically you don't want to be frightened, don't go to this island. The ever popular island called Snake Island in Brazil is not for the wicked heart. While most of the places on the list are scary because of paranormal activity and things we don't see, Snake Island will scare you because over a million venomous snakes is actually living there.
Born and raised in brotherly love, Philadelphia, there is no doubt that Kevin Hart is one of the hottest and funniest comedians we have right now in the business.
Kevin Hart, who is now 37 years old, made a living out of making fun and doing its comedic sketches. Kev is so popular that he has more followers than Seinfeld and Chris Rock on Twitter. He embodies what it looks like to be a normal guy while living in the spotlight.
He started his career as a stand up comedian when he quitted his job as a shoe salesman. By then, Kevin Hart started developing his mic skills and eventually mastering the art of stand up comedy. It wasn't that easy for Kevin to rise to the top immediately specially in stand up comedy.
Day-in and day-out he has to compete with the best of them. That includes Chris Rock, Chris Tucker, Eddie Griffin; and arguably the greatest stand up comedian alive today, Dave Chappelle. Instead of giving up, Kevin Hart used this as his motivation to reach the top and eventually he did.
He already conquered the stage with its hilarious punch lines and now he is one of the best comedians to play in a movie. Kevin Hart already made more than count on one hand movies. Movies such as Ride Along, Ride Along 2, Wedding Ringer, Central Intelligence, Get Hard and his latest, What Now? Is just a few of his successful movies.
So what makes Kevin Hart successful? Here's why he is on top of the food chain right now.
His Fame Doesn't Go To His Head
Kevin Hart stays the same whether he was the lonely shoe salesman before or the superstar that he is right now. He mentioned on an interview that, it was a strong family trait that keeps his feet on the ground. He doesn't mind if he eats in a subway or go to the mall alone. He is as real as it gets.
He Takes Advice And Listens To People Who Already Made It
In the stand up comedy business, there is a fierce competition. If you are weak, then the business is not for you. Remember when we mentioned on top that he was competing against the best? Apparently, he wasn't only competing with them, he listened to them and takes their advice to his heart. Kevin Hart mentioned that Chris Rock kept him from chasing his dreams and Dave Chappelle made him realize how to live his dreams.
He Uses His Life Experience On His Skits
While most comedians use other celebrities to bomb and make fun of them. Kevin Hart is comfortable making fun of himself and his family. As he mentioned before, he's good at it since it's plainly telling his life story in a comedic way. Kevin is also not afraid of being laughed at by his contemporaries as he finds this a success in making them laugh.
Lastly, Kevin Hart uses social media very well. He uses it to plug his films and latest projects. He also uses this as a tool for him to share his everyday life activities, and most of them, they are downright funny.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrives in Beijing on October 18, 2016, beginning his state visit to China. [Photo: Chinanews.com]
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has arrived in Beijing, beginning his 4-day state visit to China.
Duterte and several Chinese officials have expressed confidence that the visit will bring bilateral ties between the two countries back to the right track of healthy and steady development.
Duterte's visit to China is his first visit to a non-ASEAN country since taking office in June.
Duterte is scheduled to meet several Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.
Ahead of his visit, Duterte elaborated on his hopes of improving and strengthening bilateral relations with China and bringing prosperity to his country.
"Well, in one word, I would say it is a defining moment of my presidency to open frontiers of friendship and cooperation, enhancement of all relationship between our two countries, and some dark spots in the relationships, or better still, you may call it gray areas. So we want these totally erased, and I want to establish a more cohesive and a stronger bond between China and the Philippines."
His visit comes amid a backdrop of deteriorating China-Philippines ties, due to the unilateral filing of the South China Sea arbitration case initiated by former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III.
Duterte noted that insistence on territorial claims does not help with economic development, and that a better China-Philippines relationship can benefit his country's sluggish domestic economy.
"(I'm going) there in friendship and to extend my hand in warm brotherhood, and also to ask for help. I must be frank, I must be honest enough to say that we need your help."
A number of Chinese officials have expressed confidence in Duterte's visit, noting that better ties between the two sides benefit both peoples, and regional peace and development.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Duterte's visit will be a historic one and will become a new starting point in the Sino-Philippine relationship.
"China pays high attention to the visit. We have made good preparations and we want to open our arms of friendship and extend our hands of cooperation to the Philippine people. We believe that President Duterte's visit will be a success and will not only bring the relations between China and the Philippines back to the right track but also open new prospects for the win-win cooperation in various fields between the two countries."
He notes that no foreign force can stand in the way of improvements to China-Philippines relations.
Shen Danyang, spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce, also confirmed that both countries are actively preparing for further economic and trade cooperation.
"China and Philippines will further boost connections in terms of economic and trade development strategies. The two countries will embark on in-depth discussions about ways to expand bilateral trade, promote and guide Chinese enterprises to expand investment in the Philippines and strengthen cooperation in fields such as infrastructure, and training on human resources."
The Philippines is currently the largest supplier of bananas to China, accounting for 82 percent of the country's banana imports.
It also provides 70 percent of China's pineapples imports.
Disney, Salesforce and Google's Alphabet Inc. have already backed out from buying Twitter. Now, sources from Disney revealed the primary reason why they withdrew. Apparently, it's not about the money. The squeaky clean company might have taken an issue of the widespread user abuse and hate in Twitter.
Twitter Is Not Fit For Disney's Wholesome Image
Sources who have knowledge about the matter have recently disclosed some details to Bloomberg. Walt Disney Co. was concerned about not being put in a negative light with the Twitter acquisition. The said social networking site is a haven for online verbal abuse and hate.
Particularly, trolls enjoy in making other people's lives miserable. Supporters of different known personalities, politicians, artists and celebrities have continuously used Twitter to express their thoughts. Fan wars and cyberbullying also take place. The block and report features don't seem effective in resolving the said issue.
It's not a surprise that Disney would want to distance itself from Twitter.
Other Reasons For Disney
Profit and user growth are not favorable for Twitter. It is still struggling in finding a good strategy to combat such financial decline. Disney would want to carefully review if a buy-out is beneficial to them.
In fact, Bloomberg further reports that Disney even hired investment banks JPMorgan Chase Co. and Guggenheim Partners LLC in their bid evaluation. It also considered the presentation made by Twitter executives
The sources made it known that some of the company's largest investors were against the Twitter purchase. The reasons given were the same ones already mentioned. This is aside from the fact that Twitter might not be profitable for Disney.
The Effect On Twitter's Stock
According to the International Business Times, Twitter's stock had increased during the announcement of the possible purchase by other companies. However, it had plunged when the news hit that Disney, Salesforce and Google's Alphabet Inc. had backed out.
The search for alien life has been a long endeavor by thousands of scientists around the world. Many as they are, conclusive evidence regarding the matter remains elusive.
But outer space is vast and it is possible that among those distant stars and planet thrives a civilization that may be far advanced than ours. As such, the search continues and astronomers are peering across the sky to find clues that would lead to a concrete answer.
Star Clusters Exhibiting Strange Activities That May Be Cause By Alien Life
Among these researchers are Ermanno Borra and Eric Trottier from Laval University, Canada. They claim that a cluster of stars is exhibiting strange pulses that they said may be an indication of extraterrestrial life.
To investigate this cluster, the duo used the eight-food wide telescope called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to observe some 2.5 million distant stars. Their investigation led them to believe that 234 of those stars are showing anomalies and that the pulses are akin to lasers being flashed from deep space, said New Scientist.
"We consider several possibilities, such as rotational transitions in molecules, rapid pulsations...and signals generated by Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI)," stated the two. They added that the fact that these pulses are found in a very small fraction of stars in a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun indicates that ETI could possibly be causing the peculiar cosmic activity.
Researchers From Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence To Investigate Star Cluster
However, Borra and Trottier's conclusion to their observation have been met with a wave of criticism in the scientific community and called the study ambiguous at best, reported Business Insider. Despite this, the Breakthrough Listen Project, funded by Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, will be investigating the star cluster as every avenue that shows signs of alien life is worth looking in to.
"It's an incredibly profound subject - and of course that's why many of us devote our lives to the field and put so much energy into trying to answer these questions," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research. "But you can't make such definitive statements about detections unless you've exhausted every possible means of follow-up."
The researchers of the project said that while the possibility of ETI is still on the table it's the last thing that they expect to find. Borra, on the other hand, is still excited that others are joining in on the investigation to find out what is really going on in that cluster of stars.
For the longest time, researchers thought that the depictions of a strange-looking bison in a cave painting have just simply been a bad attempt at capturing the animal's image. A recent study revealed, however, that the bison drawn in these dwelling did exist at some point and is, in fact, the ancient ancestor of the cattle breed today.
The team conducting the study consisted of experts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Polish bison conservation researchers, and paleontologists across Europe and Russia. To trace the genetic history of the species, the researchers studied ancient DNA pulled from radiocarbon-dated teeth and bones found in caves in Europe, Urals, and the Caucasus, reported the Daily Mail.
Mystery Bison Resulted in a Hybridization Event
The findings concluded that the peculiar-looking bison was the result of a cross-breeding between the steppe-bison and aurochs, the ancestor of modern cattle. Prior to this research, the resulting animal from this cross-breeding has seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the fossil record as it apparently became a separate species over time.
"Finding that a hybridization event led to a completely new species was a real surprise - as this isn't really meant to happen in mammals," said Professor Alan Cooper, one of the researchers. He went on to add that when the team first detected the peculiar DNA, they "weren't quite sure a species really existed" as they found the genetic signals from the bison bones to be quite odd.
They even jokingly called the mysterious beast as "Higgs's Bison," referring to the five-decade hunt for the so-called God particle in physics. Through continuous study, the team eventually found a distinctive genetic signal from many of the bone samples they have which couldn't be observed to any known species, said the Independent.
Ancient Bison Is The Largest European Species To Survive Mega-Faunal Extinction
The researchers explain that the genetic bottle-neck that modern European bison went through in 1920 resulted in the species having different genetics from its ancestor. This new species apparently dominated during frigid tundra-like periods and was the "largest European species to survive the mega-faunal extinction."
The mystery bison was first detected by Professor Beth Shapiro in 2001. "Fifteen years later it's great to finally get to the full story out. It's certainly been a long road, with a surprising number of twists," said Shapiro.
Apple's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are attracting a very strong consumer response in their first month of sales, as reported by online tech sites. This doesn't come much of a surprise, considering that many have been believing that the iPhones will be expected to benefit in terms of sales after rival Samsung Electronics have decided to fully ditch the faulty Galaxy Note 7 for good. "Such a heated response has been fully expected," a telecom industry stated. "Added to those who have been loyal to the iPhone series, the iPhone 7 has also drawn a lot of consumers from who were dissatisfied with the Note 7."
Apple has seen a rise in sales
Reports have been saying that the Apple has sold more than 20,000 iPhone 7s and iPhone 7 Pluses even in the first minute after its release. "We received twice as many presale applications for the iPhone 7 series, compared to those for the iPhone 6s series," SK Telecom claimed.
Apple Benefits from Samsung's collapse
Along with a number of added features, Apple also introduced waterproof and dustproof features, while also removing the hardware home button for the new iPhone for the very first time. Along with that, they also removed the earphone jack and instead released their own version of wireless earphones, drawing mixed responses from consumers. Overall every feature that the iPhone 7 received ultimately revolutionized the device and made it unique among its predecessors.
iPhone variants Prices
An iPhone 7 of a 32GB variant is priced at $649, while the 128GB and 256GB variants are sold at $749 and $849, respectively. The larger iPhone 7 Plus was priced at $769 for 32GB and $969 for the 256GB variant, Although the prices of the iPhones may seem a bit high compared to other smartphone prices, people are preferring it more than ever since Samsung's untimely demise with their Note 7 Line, which have seen a rapid decrease in sales, ultimately favoring Apple, and all other smartphone brands.
Apple has been receiving plenty of backlashes, as the company has not confirmed whether or not the public will see the 2016 MacBook Pro before it turns into the 2017 MacBook Pro. Fortunately, all signs indicate that the Cupertino-based company will indeed unveil the new device before the end of the month. Furthermore, it looks as if it will blow everyone away.
Forbes, thanks to Japanese site Macotakara, has reiterated that the 2016 MacBook Pro and 2016 MacBook Air will arrive within the month. This not only proves other reports but is solidly backed up by Rhoda Alexander, the Director Tablet and Notebook PCs at IHS Markit Technology, whom the publication spoke with.
"Production started in the second calendar quarter on refreshes of the 13.3-inch and 15.4-inch MacBook Pro [and] the 13.3-inch MacBook Air," she said. Estimating the production time, Alexander then confirmed that the public could expect a release within the month of October. For now, it looks like it will happen on October 27.
The publication goes on to claim that the upcoming 2016 MacBook Pro will sport a USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 ports, which effectively eliminate the need for a USB Type-A connector. As such, it is also likely that the MagSafe connector may go. The latter is quite surprising as this feature has been standard in Apple's Mac products.
First introduced in 2006, the MagSafe feature is a series of magnetically attached power connector. The feature is a safety one, as the connector is held firmly by magnetic strips. While the hold is still strong, removing the same - if someone were to trip over the wires, for example - is also easy and poses no threat.
As Mashable notes, there is still time for Apple to announce a 2016 MacBook. Apple, after all, seems to have a preference for October events, as proven in previous years. The clock, however, is ticking and the Cupertino-based company might lose its opening.
Alec Baldwin has been getting much attention for his mockery of Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live." As it turns out, the comedian would be the voice behind Dreamwork's new animated movie "The Boss Baby." The film centers on rivalries between siblings and between babies and pets.
Who Is "The Boss Baby"?
Based on the 2010 picture book "The Boss Baby" by Marla Frazee, the story is about how a baby takes over a family's world. But the story comes with a big twist -- the baby, just like Perry the Platypus in "Phineas and Ferb," turns out to be a man on a secret mission. The newest member of the family can talk, has a hidden stash of cash in his diapers, and is deployed to save the world from evil.
Baldwin, the voice behind the endearing character of Dreamwork's animated film, has been getting much attention for his mockery of Donald Trump on the show "Saturday Night Live." He takes a break from his impressions of the Republican candidate on this film to lend his voice to the adorable "Boss Baby."
"The Boss Baby" Inspiration And Plot
"Madagascar" director Tom McGrath explains the premise of "The Boss Baby" as a movie with a lovable baby who has "Alec Baldwin's voice coming out of him." Tim, the older brother, was jealous of the new baby in the family but they need to team up to destroy Puppy Co. CEO Francis E. Francis who plans to suck up the love supply in the world by introducing the cutest puppies.
While sibling rivalry may be the main theme of the movie, it is also about the babies and puppies competing over who is more endearing. McGrath revealed that the baby may be a sophisticated businessman but when things don't go his way, "he throws a fit" just like what any tyke would do. Overall, this is a family-oriented flick that is perfect for the whole family.
Given the number of R-rated films in cinemas such as "Sausage Party," a wholesome animated film for the entire family like "The Boss Baby" would definitely be a refreshing change. The film is scheduled for release in cinemas on March 31, 2017.
The Nintendo NX big reveal might just be a few days away, according to a reliable analyst. The mysterious 2-in-1 console has been elusive so far, thus fans and industry observers are looking forward to Nintendo's official unveiling.
Takashi Mochizuki of Wall Street Journal, dubbed the leading analyst when it comes to anything Nintendo NX, has expressed that the Japanese company will finally unveil their next-generation console within the week. A Saturday reveal is unlikely, so that leaves Thursday and Friday.
"I guess all we can do is just wait. No announcement from company yet," he tweeted on Sunday.
Nintendo NX Might Be Revealed On Oct. 21
Incidentally, Oct. 21 marks the five-year anniversary of the first Direct presentation the company has ever had. There are strong suggestions that the gaming company will reveal the Nintendo NX at this time, but there are a lot of speculated dates at this point that it is getting harder to pinpoint which might be accurate.
The Nintendo NX might also be revealed next week on Oct. 26, when the company is set to hold an investors meeting. There is no evidence that supports this though, as an announcement as major as this is unlikely to happen in such a meeting. However, it is not entirely impossible.
Nintendo NX Expected Specs
Per Forbes, it is important to note that these are just rumors and speculations, but the internet already has a vague idea of what Nintendo NX will be. It is expected that the upcoming console will have 2-in-1 functions. It is widely believed that it will be both a home and a handheld console, which means that players will be able to connect it to TV or take the second screen with detachable controllers outside.
There are high expectations for the Nintendo NX following Wii U's major flop. The 2-in-1 feature is certainly intriguing, but it is unknown if it will be able to get Nintendo back in the race, in which it is lagging far behind the Microsoft and Sony.
"The Simpsons" has a new feat of reaching the 600th episode in its season 28. With its overwhelming success, "The Simpsons" showrunner disclosed that the animated comedy is definitely not ending soon.
"The Simpsons" season 28, episode 5 titled "Treehouse of Horror XXVII" is the show's 600th episode, and it does not seem to be ending anytime soon. In an interview of The Washington Post with David Silverman, the producer maintained that "The Simpsons" is never ending. He said: "We don't want it to end."
"The Simpsons" To Continue For Over 1000 More Episodes
In fact, Silverman emphasized that his team is willing to go until the 2,000th episode. He made mention of the Warner Bros. achievement with Looney Tunes which first aired in 1930 and ended in 1969. From the looks of it, Silverman is taking a lesson as well from what happened to the closure of the said animated series. He would want to work out the "delivery system" for "The Simpsons" which was lacking in Looney Tunes causing it to be killed.
"The Simpsons" Season 28, Episode 5: "Treehouse Of Horror XXVII "Recap
The Halloween episode of "The Simpsons" season 28 has been watched by millions of viewers. However, the episode "Treehouse of Horror XXVII" is not the best in this season which many would have expected.
The 600th episode opened with "The Simpsons" villains: Leprochaun, Frank Grimes, Bob and Kang. As soon as Homer remembered Frank, he greeted him. It can be noted that Frank hates Homer so much. Maggie Simpson meanwhile jumps right out of bed. The episode ended with a James Bond parody at Moe's bar which happened to be the headquarters of an international spy agency. Bart Simpson ventured on a revenge as a spy. Meanwhile, "The Simpsons" predictions have Shirley Bassey out of the gag to celebrate the 600th episode.
Watch "The Simpsons" previous seasons online for free.
CIA-backed surveillance software Geofeedia, which enabled several U.S. law enforcement agencies to collect information on social media users, was also marketed to American public schools, in order to monitor its students through their social media posts. Apparently, the data mining firm sold its services to the Lincolnshire-Praire School District in Chicago, which paid $10,000 to monitor some of its students.
Geofeedia Surveillance Tool For Students' Safety
As reported in previous news, Geofeedia has recently been involved in many scandals, since three major social media as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram suspended its access after it was known that the surveillance tool was used to catch and arrest civilian protesters. However, this case apparently was to improve the students' safety.
"We did have for one year a contract with Geofeedia, which earlier in the year received an investment from the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. We were mostly interested in the possibility of trying to prevent any kind of harm, either that students would do to themselves or to other students.It was really just about student safety; if we could try to head off any potential dangerous situations, we thought it might be worth it," said spokesperson of Lincolnshire-Praire School District Jim Conrey, according to The Daily Dot.
According to the International Business Times, it is not known how many public schools bought Geofeedias surveillance software. Also, it was revealed that the tool was operated by a police liason stationed within the school campus.
Monitoring Public Schools Students Might Be A Bypass Of Basic Rights
Although the data mining firm justified its services and nature for safety issues, there are many who found this situation as a threatening precedent for peoples privacy, arguing that spying on innocent people its a bypass of the most basic rights.
"Discovering that Geofeedia was not only being used by social media sites to help police spy on activists of color was disturbing enough,". "But then to find out this third-party vendor is also helping to police public school students is beyond disturbing, it's a terrifying bypass of the most basic rights of some of the most vulnerable, and most dissident, voices in the country: activists of colour and students," executive director of the Center for Media Justice Malkia Cyril said.
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief Michael Hayden admitted on Tuesday that the U.S. has hacked foreign political parties in past operations, just as Russia is doing right now. As it turns out, Moscow's conduct with regards to cyberattacks did not really go too far.
U.S. Reasons To Hack Foreign Political Parties Were Different From Russias
According to CNN, far from wanting to support the Republican Nominee Donald Trump, the retired general explained that Russian intentions are to break the American voter confidence in the political process. This opinion comes after the U.S. intelligence formally accused Russia of being the mastermind behind the Democratic National Convention hack, wanting to disrupt the presidential election.
Also, Hayden explained that even when the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) have previously done these type of hacks themselves, it was just done to influence a political election, such as what Russia is doing. Apparently, Putin might be giving green light to these operations by the paranoia that the U.S. spy agencies are doing the same to him all the time.
U.S. Spy agencies Have Been Involved In Many Scandals
"To take the internal emails and then begin to use them to influence the American election, that's quite a different matter. That has now moved from an espionage activity to a covert - or not very covert - influence operation. I think they are doing it to mess with our heads, to erode confidence in our political processes.I think they are doing it because [Russian president Vladimir Putin] is convinced we do this to him all the time. We do not. We don't," said Hayden in an interview at The Heritage Foundation.
These statements come in a time where it has been revealed the American spy agencies' involvement in many espionage activities, whether in the U.S. or in foreign countries. As reported by the International Business Times, the Edward Snowden documents showed the details of these activities, revealing controversial cases as the where the NSA tapped phone conversations of German chancellor Angela Merkel and her closest advisers for years.
The repeated ghost worship by Japanese politicians has been planting dangerous seeds that can potentially lead the whole country in the wrong direction, read an editorial published by the Peoples Daily on Tuesday after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine a day earlier.
The Japanese leaders tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Class-A convicted World War II criminals were honored, reflects their preposterous historical viewpoint, read the editorial.
The following is the translation of the article:
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering on Monday to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo during the war-linked shrine's autumn festival, once again repeating its annual farce of "ghost worship.
The Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among the 2.5 million Japanese that died in WWII, is regarded as a symbol of past Japanese militarism.
After Abe angered the world with his personal visit to the shrine in December 2013, it has almost become tradition for Japanese leaders to send ritual offerings to the shrine during annual spring and autumn festivals, or even on Japans WWII day of surrender.
Despite opposition from the international community, Japanese right wing politicians are acting recklessly in its worship at the Yasukuni Shrine. But ghost worship, either by visiting the shrine or sending offerings, is a reflection of their preposterous historical viewpoint.
Japanese leaders are not only exposing their arrogance, but also planting dangerous seeds for regional and international disorder by leading the whole country in the wrong direction.
History is by no means only related to the past. Todays world has found that the incorrect views held by the Japanese government are exerting great influences on its diplomacy.
For instance, after US President Barack Obamas trip to Hiroshima, some US strategists advised Abe to pay a visit to Pearl Harbor. The idea was rejected by the Japanese government. Such a flat-out rejection reveals Japans attitude toward history, which means that it is impossible for Abe to apologize for Japans attack on Pearl Harbor.
According to Japanese media, Tokyo has held back its mandatory payment to UNESCO this year because of the UN body's push to reform the Memory of the World program, which registered Chinas documentation of the Nanjing Massacre last year.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the Japanese government considered whether to suspend the contribution after the program registered the documents without consideration of Japans opinion during the process.
As one of the gravest crimes committed by Japan during World War II, the Nanjing Massacre is widely recognized by the international community. The registered Documents of the Nanjing Massacre show the responsibility of the international community to preserve history, treasure peace and safeguard human dignity.
However, the Japanese government, turning a blind eye to justice, threatened to suspend its annual payment after failing to block registration of the documents. Such a farce shows that for Japanese right wing politicians, covering up a countrys crimes always come before international obligations.
This was not the first attempt by the Japanese government to rewrite history. Over the years, Japan has continued to tamper with historical fact in order to undermine the post-war peace.
For example, it manufactured threats from surrounding countries ina bid to exempt itself from a new security law.
A strategy of hypocrisy was also adopted. Before the regular election of members of the House of Councillors held this summer, it cooled down the aggressive campaign on the law in order to avoid public protests.
In a bid to profit from escalating regional conflicts, Japan has also been wooing G7 members to cement alliances with the US.
Japans recent behavior recalls the danger it was during World War II.
But Japans right wing politicians have no chance for success when faced with the mirror of history.
The international community should realize that peace is never achieved at one stroke. It not only calls for justice, but also far-sighted strategies and actions.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A person who had access to the nation's deepest secrets, Robert Gates, the former CIA chief and U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, is lot more open in retirement.
Gates had the crowd at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo laughing over his observations about IT and applauding at some of the things he believes in.
On stage here, for instance, Gartner analyst Richard Hunter fired off questions, asking at one point whether Edward Snowden, the former security contract employee who in 2010 took thousands of classified documents, was a "traitor or hero?"
"Traitor," said Gates, prompting applause from the audience of IT managers, who routinely deal with their own insider and outsider threats. As the applause faded, Gates added: "And he hasn't been given sanctuary in Russia for nothing."
Gates, whose military career extends back into late 1960s, regaled the audience with some ancient technological stories.
For instance, before the era of digital photography, the U.S. sent satellites with cameras and Kodak film to take pictures. Once the film was used up, the satellite would eject a film-bearing capsule, which deployed a parachute on its way to the Pacific Ocean.
It was the job of the pilot of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules to use a hook to capture the capsule before it hit the water. "Woe to the pilot who missed the canister," said Gates, to audience laughter.
When digital photographic capability arrived in the 1970s, the intelligence agencies faced new problems, namely managing and analyzing the volumes of data. Problems of this sort helped propel IT spending by defense, sometimes to dead ends.
"I have wasted more taxpayer money on IT than anybody in history," said a smiling Gates to an applauding audience.
On a more serious note, Gates argued that the U.S. has the technological capability to help protect private-sector networks, but policy disagreements and politics are preventing it.
Gates divided cyber threats into four areas. There is the collection of data for national security purposes, something the U.S. has been doing since the Civil War when it tapped into telegraph lines.
The second threat is acquiring information for economic advantage. There are two dozens countries that do this, said Gates. "Until the Chinese really got busy at it, the best in the world probably were the French."
But Gates said the U.S. and U.K. do not engage in this type of economic spying. "We do not collect information to advantage our domestic companies," he said.
The third area is simple cyber crime, and fourth is cyber as a defensive weapon: Disabling networks, denial of service and other attacks.
Gates says the Department of Defense does a "pretty good job" defending its networks in the .mil world. The areas most at risk are .com and .gov networks.
In 2010, working with the Department of Homeland Security, Gates said they developed a plan to allow DHS to appoint a deputy director at the National Security Agency, The deputy director would have ability to task the NSA to protect a private network when under attack from a foreign source. President Barack Obama approved the plan.
But once other agencies and lawmakers learned of the NSA plan, opposition arose and it was never implemented. Business cooperation was needed as well.
This approach was needed, argued Gates.
"Those who are waiting for a domestic agency to be created to protect our domestic networks have a long wait. It's not going to happen. There is not enough money. There is not enough human capital. There's not enough time to build a domestic NSA," said Gates.
Gates said, "As with, it seems, everything else, because of the politics of the issue we're kind of nowhere" in utilizing government resources to protect private networks.
This story, "Politics keeps the U.S. from securing private-sector networks, says former CIA chief Robert Gates " was originally published by Computerworld .
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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has reiterated his opposition to foreign interference in the South China Sea, warning that such unwelcome overtures would pose a great threat to regional stability.
Even though countries like the U.S. say all nations are by the Philippines side, I say we are close to a third world war, said Duterte during an interview with CCTV on Oct. 13. Duterte believes that stubborn insistence on territorial claims does not help with economic development.
Though the South China Sea issue has dampened the two countries relations, Duterte said he still has faith that China and the Philippines can totally erase these dark spots, adding that he wants to establish a more cohesive and stronger bond with China.
"In one word, I would say it is a defining moment of my presidency to open the frontiers of friendship and cooperation, and enhance [the] relationship between our two countries," Duterte said.
Discussing the balance of the Philippines' diplomatic ties with the U.S. and China, the president noted that his country should not be too constrained [by] the dictates of any other country. He also stressed that China and the Philippines are neighbors, while the U.S. is thousands of miles away.
I am not breaking away from the U.S. - I just want to be friendly with everybody. So you do not restrain me from doing [the same thing to] China. Why should we be afraid? Why should we stick to a certain country? Duterte said,
As for his expectations for his state visit to China, the president said he hopes that better Sino-Philippines relations can benefit his country's sluggish domestic economy, adding that China is the only hope for the Philippines economy.
China is the first non-ASEAN country that Duterte has visited as a president. The visit, which kicked off on Oct. 18, will continue until Oct. 21.
The Chinese consulate in Malaysia said on Oct. 18 that it has been working to end the transnational human trafficking recently reported on by Malaysian media. According to local media reports, the criminals first cripple and disfigure the trafficked children, and then force them to beg at popular Malaysian tourism sites after years of captivity.
This is precisely what happened to 33-year-old Xiu Yuan, who said he was abducted and then crippled as a child. According to Xiu, only beggars who earn the trust of the criminal gang leader are permitted to go out and beg in foreign countries, and there are many people controlled by the gang back in China. The leader takes 60 percent of everyone's daily income.
On Oct. 18, the Chinese consulate in Malaysia confirmed the reports by local media and said it has been investigating the case. A consulate employee told Beijing Youth Daily that Chinese child beggars have long been an issue in Malaysia, though the consulate has taken measures against the phenomenon. While some criminal gangs have been dismantled, new ones are constantly emerging.
The case will be dealt with primarily by local police, and the Chinese consulate will spare no efforts to help trafficked children, the employee added.
Chinese archaeologist refutes BBC report on Terracotta Warriors Terracotta Warriors at the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum in Xi'an, Shaanxi province [Photo by Zhu Xingxin/Asianewsphoto]
BEIJING - A Chinese archaeologist recently refuted a BBC report about northwest China's Terracotta Warriors, saying that the article has quoted her out of context and overstated her remarks about Western influence on the 8,000 life-sized figures.
The BBC report, released October 12, said archaeologists have found that inspiration for the Terracotta Warriors, found at the Tomb of the First Emperor near today's Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, may have come from Ancient Greece.
The article quoted Li Xiuzhen, senior archaeologist from the Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum Site Museum, as saying, "We now think the Terracotta Army, the acrobats and the bronze sculptures found on site were inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art."
Li, however, said that the BBC quoted her out of context, as the article ignored much of what she told BBC reporters.
"I think the terracotta warriors may be inspired by Western culture, but were uniquely made by the Chinese. BBC overstated my remarks about Western inspiration and ignored main points I made during the interview," Li told Xinhua.
Li said the local nature and cultural environment, such as soil, craftsmen and traditional funeral culture, all contributed to the creation of the Terracotta Warriors.
She also pointed out that the article put her quotes right before those of Professor Lukas Nickel from the University of Vienna, whose opinion is contrary to her own, but makes it seem as if they share the same idea.
According to the article, Prof. Nickel said, "I imagine that a Greek sculptor may have been at the site to train the locals."
"I am an archaeologist, and I value evidence. I've found no Greek names on the backs of Terracotta Warriors, which supports my idea that there was no Greek artisan training the local sculptors," Li said.
The Higgs Bison, an ancient animal, was recorded on a cave wall that dates back more than 15,000 years ago in a cave in Ardache, France.
The animal was wittingly named after Higgs Boson, a subatomic particle, because it's elusive like its namesake. It is said to be a hybrid of a bison and cattle that lived 12,000 years ago.
With the help of radiocarbon dating, researchers found out that this specie lived with Steppe Bison. Steppe Bison were the only known bison specie to live during the Late Ice Age in Europe.
Alan Cooper of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA explained that the hybrid is the ancestor of modern bison which can be found in Poland and Belarus. He explained that the hybridization was a complete surprise to the him and his colleagues.
He explained that this is not supposed to happen to mammals. He added that the genetic signal of the ancient bison was odd, Science Daily reported.
Cooper explained that the hybrid managed to dominate colder tundra periods. He also explained that they tend to be the largest European specie to survive the Megafaunal extinction.
Researchers were misled by two bison species that don't match for a long time. They now come to realize that there finding is the answer on how cow genes can be found in modern bison.
However, without any skulls the researcher can't reconstruct the animal. Cooper and his colleagues asked help from other cave experts.
They explained that cave men wouldn't have created two bison models if they haven't seen two. Cave men illustrated bisons having long horns and forequarters, as well as, having small horns and bumps, NPR reported
Higgs Bison was first detected by Beth Shapiro of University of California Santa Cruz in 2001. She's happy to report that after fifteen years they managed to get the full story behind it.
The two drawing showed Higgs Bison and Steppe Bison. Researchers agreed that the drawings were remarkable and helpful on their study.
"I deeply regret my actions. As a Party chief trained and educated by the Communist Party of China for so many years, how could I become such (a corrupt official)? I caused huge damage to the Party."
Blockbuster TV series with tearful confessions and juicy details seen as useful cautionary account
After reading about numerous officials accused of bribery and other forms of corruption, the public is finally hearing from some of the disgraced officials themselves.
An eight-part documentary being aired on national television provides a first full look inside their stories, including tearful expressions of regret and even surprise at their own actions, which brought them a posh life at the public's expense.
At the same time, anti-corruption officials see it as a chance to showcase their work over the past four years, and as a cautionary tale for public servants. It also comes right before a high-level meeting expected to develop stricter rules for CPC members.
"I never expected I would have such an ending," Zhou Benshun, 63, former top Party official of Hebei province, tells the camera. "I was brought up in a poor family. ... I hated corrupt officials since I was young, but I became one in the end." He was placed under investigation in October.
Juicy details also are coming to light, such as bribes in the form of "gifts", like a jade bracelet worth 15 million yuan ($2.2 million) given to Bai Enpei, 70, a former top official in Yunnan province, in exchange for a piece of land.
The series is being aired shortly before the Sixth Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China's 18th Central Committee.
The meeting, to be held Monday through Oct 27, is expected to propose tougher rules for Party members in the form of two draft disciplinary documentsfor professional and personal conductto be submitted for discussion and approval.
The series, produced by the CPC Central Committee for Discipline Inspection and the national television system CCTV, entitled Corruption Fight Is Always Underway, began airing nightly on Monday at 8 pm on CCTV-1.
It features the cases of about 10 former provincial or ministerial-level officials and one former State leader, Su Rong, former vice-chairman of China's top political advisory body. The interviews were done while the former officials were detained but before any convictions.
The cases of disgraced officials who held higher positions, from former State security chief Zhou Yongkang to former Central Military Commission officers Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, are discussed, though they are not interviewed.
Airing the series before a key national political meeting is "a good opportunity to tell good anti-graft stories and promote building a clean and honest government," said Hong Daode, a law professor at China University of Political Science and Law.
Yang Weidong, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, a school for training senior officials, said, "After watching the corrupt officials' stories, officials and CPC members will exchange their views on the lessons they will have to learn, and to regulate their own behavior according to the new rules."
The series' production team visited 22 provinces and regions to gather information on more than 10 former top officials linked to more than 40 corruption changes.
They also interviewed 70 experts from home and abroad as well as anti-graft officers to explain the cases and how they were handled.
In the first episode, aired on Monday night, viewers heard from Bai, Zhou, and Li Chuncheng, former deputy Party chief of Sichuan province.
In the second episode, screened on Tuesday, Wan Qingliang, former Party chief of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, and Gu Chunli, former vice-governor of Jilin province, told their stories.
Bai, Li and Wan have been convicted, while Zhou and Gu await trial.
The series has had a big impact.
"After watching the TV series, we know how serious and complex the graft issues are, and (that) it's necessary for the government to carry out a continuous and persistent campaign to target corruption," said Li Wei, an anti-graft officer in Liaoning province.
Zhang Li, a teacher at Beijing No 11 Middle School, said, "It's being shown to reflect the central leadership's resolute determination and the measures taken to fight corruption, which will leave no place for the corrupt suspects to hide and escape."
Since November 2012, when the new leadership took office, anti-corruption has become a top priority, and President Xi Jinping has launched a sweeping campaign to target both high- and low-ranking officials. Over 140 senior corrupt officials have been investigated over graft issues, according to the CCDI.
Zhou Benshun, 63, former top official of Hebei province
Zhou was placed under investigation of corruption charges in October. No detailed information is available about the value of bribes he obtained.
The documentary showed that Zhou redecorated a two-story government building in a military compound in Hebei province and used it as his home. He hired a caretaker for his pets, and after his pet tortoise died at home, Zhou had Buddhist Sutras transcribed, burying the transcriptions with the tortoise. Zhou confessed in the first episode of the TV series to failing to discipline his children and using his power to help his son's business. Zhou's wife, Duan Yanqiu, and his son, Zhou Jing, were also placed under investigation.
Li Chuncheng, 60, former deputy Party chief in Sichuan province
Li was given a 13-year jail term last year for illegally obtaining nearly 40 million yuan from 1999 to 2012.
In the first episode of the documentary, he confessed to ignoring the Party's code of conduct and deviating from the correct path.
Russian president Vladimir Putin will visit Berlin on Wednesday, October 19, 2016, and will meet German Chancellor Andela Merkel for talks on the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts.
This is his first trip to this German City since the Ukranian conflict flared up.
Chancellor Merkel said the talks will include Ukraine and France in a 4-way summit to make a crystal-clear assessment of the progress in the implementation of the Minsk peace accords for Ukraine.
She told reporters in Berlin that "things are stalled in many areas such as the ceasefire, political issues and humanitarian issues."
President Putin is expected to meet a lot of pressure from the participants in the scheduled talks. Chancellor Merkel is not optimistic about the results of the talks but making the effort might be the right direction.
On the Syrian conflict, President Putin will be asked for lasting ceasefire in Aleppo so humanitarian can the alleviate hardships of the people and to put an end to the utter devastation of the city.
Allepo, the second largest city in Syria has been seized by rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian military backed by Russia have assaulted the city employing land and air strikes causing wide destruction to the city, mostly residential buildings and civilian structures.
The European Union has warned that the continuous bombardment of the city may constitute a war crime for the severe damage done to civilians.
The Berlin meeting will be held almost simultaneously with the European Union summit in Brussels set to discuss its relationships with Russia including renewal of sanctions over the Ukraine conflict.
France is more interested in finding the right processes that can end the Ukraine crisis. Russia denies that it has sent weapons and troops to the pro-Moscow separatist rebels that resulted in 10,000 casualties.
Ukranian president Petro Poroshenko has little trust in the outcome of the Berlin meeting but he is optimistic about the future of his country.
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(Xinhua) 14:52, October 19, 2016
BRUSSELS, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- China and the European Union (EU) on Tuesday hailed the outcomes of a high-level trade dialogue in Brussels.
The sixth China-EU High-level Economic and Trade Dialogue was co-chaired by Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai and European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen.
Ma said the dialogue, since inception nine years ago, has played an important role in promoting bilateral economic and trade cooperation.
The sixth dialogue held on Tuesday deepens mutual trust, promotes pragmatic cooperation, and actively implements the agreements reached during the 18th China-EU summit and the G20 Hangzhou Summit, Ma said.
Under the theme "strengthening policy coordination, promoting sustainable growth," the sixth dialogue highlighted topics on macro-policy coordination, the Belt and Road Initiative and the China-EU connectivity on development strategy.
At the Dialogue, China and the EU reached consensus on cooperation on digital economy, third-party market and intellectual property rights.
China and the EU should further coordinate on macro-policies and join hands in developing their economies, Ma said, adding that they should also enhance cooperative work on trade and investment.
The Chinese official also proposed the two sides accelerate the connectivity of development strategies, so as to push for economic and trade cooperation in various fields.
China and the EU should embrace the New Industrial Revolution for innovation and sustainable growth, Ma noted.
Ma pointed out that as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the EU should fully fulfill its obligations under Article 15 of the Protocol on China's accession to the WTO.
Article 15 requires WTO members to stop using an alternative calculation method in anti-dumping investigations against China after Dec. 11 this year.
Stressing that the EU pays high attention to the trade dialogue with China, Katainen said the bloc is willing to strengthen coordination on macro-policies with Beijing and will make efforts to fulfill the obligations aforementioned.
Ma also met with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuesday.
On Oct. 16, four foreign tourists became lost on an abandoned part of the Great Wall in Beijing's Huairou district. After six hours, Huairou firefighters came to their rescue, escorting them to safety.
Eleven firefighters responded to the emergency. They were led by a friend of the lost tourists, eventually coming across the unlucky group early the next morning. By then, one Canadian woman was already exhibiting symptoms of low blood sugar. The rescuers distributed mineral water to the tourists before escorting them down the hill.
The four tourists, originally part of a group of seven, became separated from the rest of their party when it got dark outside.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |
AFP is reporting that a news agency linked to Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), A`maq, is carrying a video of a Daesh fighter who swears that he and his colleagues will inflict a decisive defeat on the US in Iraq, as the guerrillas spread through the streets of the city. He addresses the camera saying, As for you, America, we promise you that which our honored elders promised you, God bless them, such as Abu Mus`ab (al-Zarqawi) and Abu `Umar and Abu Hamza [etc.].
The threats dont make any sense. The US does not have infantry combat troops at the front lines, and is mainly intervening with fighter jets and bombers. If you are a small guerrilla group, you really cannot match that firepower. There is no obvious way in which Daesh could inflict harm on the US in Mosul.
Alarabiya reports that the Iraqi army on Tuesday entered the al-Hamdaniya district of Mosul, heading for the citys downtown. The most difficult issue facing the advancing army is ensuring the safety of the some one million civilians trapped in the northern Iraqi metropolis.
In contrast, the Kurdistan Peshmerga or national guard for the Iraqi Kurdish superprovince took seven villages near Mosul. After that it got bogged down in the advance on Mosul from the northeast by Daesh booby-traps.
Alarabiya reports that the media-savvy Daesh has activated a cyber-army of keyboard supporters and social media fundamentalists to support the organization as the attack on Daesh proceeds.
This is so despite the Daesh cut-off of the internet and social media in Mosul itself. Daesh sympathizers are asking the organizations acolytes on the internet to lend their support from the outside. Many anonymous accounts are representing themselves as inside Mosul, but these are for the most part lies. (The videotape discussed at the beginning of this piece likely is part of this propaganda message.)
Russia and Syria are afraid that the Iraqis will allow the militants to escape from Mosul to Raqqa, their Syrian capital, and so would reinforce the capabilities of Daesh in Syria. The Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria still dreams of reconquering all Syria, including Raqqa, and this development will make that pipe dream even more of a stretch.
Related video:
On the road to Mosul with Iraqi forces BBC News
Nie Zhengyuan gets rid of weeds in the cemetery.
The Red Army Ground graveyard in Tongjiang County, Sichuan province, is home to the remains of more than 3,000 Red Army soldiers. The cemetery has been protected and watched over by four generations of the same family over the course of eight decades.
Most of the soldiers buried in the graveyard lost their lives after getting injured in the civil war. Nie Youkui began to watch over the cemetery in 1934, spending the next 48 years of his life on this voluntary mission. On his deathbed, he told his son, Nie Zhengyuan, that it was the Red Army that allocated farmland to their family and cured Nie Youkui's typhoid. The family could repay their kindness by guarding their graveyard, Nie Zhengyuan's father told him.
Nie stands at the site of a Red Army hospital.
Nie Zhengyuan kept the promise he made to his father and replaced the older man as the defender of the graveyard. Nie Zhengyuans son, Nie Changzhou, also chose to continue the mission, opting to work close to home so he could watch over the cemetery.
Every year during Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day, both Nie Zhengyuan and Nie Changzhou, along with Nie Changzhou's 19-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter, bring libations and joss sticks to the cemetery to honor the martyrs.
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Simon Mabon | (The Conversation) |
After weeks of speculation about an attempt to retake the city of Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (IS), Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi proclaimed the start of the offensive. God willing, the decisive battle will be soon, he said at a press conference.
This could well be a major turning point in the battle against IS. Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, has been under ISs control since June 2014, when it became the groups biggest prize yet. It brought global attention that IS have enjoyed ever since. In the ensuing two or so years, it has ruled over the citys hundreds of thousands of residents in accordance with a strictly enforced fundamentalist version of Sharia law.
The groups last major stronghold in Iraq, Mosul is one of the jewels in ISs crown, and losing it would be a huge blow especially after the group was routed from Dabiq, the Syrian town whose name graces the IS magazine. Fearing the worst, IS set oil refineries on fire to obstruct and delay the oncoming forces, while the Washington Post reports that the group has strategically decided to flee Mosul and regroup in Syria, moving from defensive to insurgency tactics. Such a move is facilitated by the strategy coming out of Baghdad, which has encircled Mosul but left a corridor to the West of the city where IS fighters (and supporters) can flee to Syria. This strategy seeks to move the IS problem out of Iraq and into Syria.
The forces assembled to mount the offensive include somewhere in the region of 45,000 troops; they include Iraqi Shias, Sunnis, Christians and Kurds, but also Shia paramilitary groups known as the Popular Mobilisation Units. Supporting and advising this assault are British, American and Turkish special forces, while the US-led coalition has targeted IS mortar positions close to Mosul.
Final authority rests with the Iraqi army but as is true of the Iraqi state generally, the armys authority is seriously undercut by the tensions between the countrys different tribal factions. Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of the USs Operation Inherent Resolve against IS in Iraq, stressed that despite these differences, the thousands of ground combat forces who will liberate Mosul are all Iraqis.
Nonetheless, one of the most immediate and serious challenges for the Mosul offensive is to keep this rather motley crew together. Many of them have competing loyalties and goals; they have a long and complex history with each other, and ensuring their unity is paramount.
Theres also the imperative of keeping Mosuls civilians safe during what promises to be a period of uncertainty, chaos and violence. Stephen OBrien, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs at the UN, called for all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians and ensure they have access to the assistance they are entitled to and deserve.
The hard work begins
For all the fanfare, the liberation of Mosul will not mean the end of IS. The group has never been defined by the territory it holds. As Stephen Royle and I argue in our book The Origins of IS, IS is the product of deep political and sectarian disenfranchisement and of the dire socio-political conditions on the ground in Iraq.
Mosul in particular is a largely Sunni city, and a number of its residents welcomed IS in 2014 simply because it broke the authority of the corrupt and sectarian Shia government in Baghdad. That said, opposition to ISs reign has been steadily growing documented among others by Mosul Eye, which has recorded instances of everyday resistance in the city.
The situation on the ground is shifting rapidly, and Kurdish Peshmerga forces have already reportedly seized control of a number of villages to the east of Mosul. The state of play is extremely fluid, and by the time forces reach the suburbs of the city it will surely look very different.
Despite al-Abadis proclamation that the people of Iraq would celebrate the fall of the city as one, the schisms among his people run deep. In the short term, hes right to stress that these forces that are liberating you today, they have one goal in Mosul, which is to get rid of Daesh [IS] and to secure your dignity. They are there for your sake. But in the longer term, the social and political situation in Iraq is not nearly so clear cut.
And while most Iraqis certainly would celebrate the defeat of IS, questions about what comes next for Iraq, for Syria, and for the Middle East simply throw up a whole other set of problems. Mosul will be far from the last battle.
Simon Mabon, Lecturer in International Relations, Lancaster University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Related video added by Juan Cole:
AFP: Battle for Mosul sparks fears of humanitarian crisis
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By Sandy Tolan | (Tomdispatch.com) |
Washington has finally thrown in the towel on its long, tortured efforts to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians. You wont find any acknowledgement of this in the official record. Formally, the U.S. still supports a two-state solution to the conflict. But the Obama administrations recent 10-year, $38-billion pledge to renew Israels arsenal of weaponry, while still ostensibly pursuing peace, makes clear just how bankrupt that policy is.
For two decades, Israeli leaders and their neoconservative backers in this country, hell-bent on building and expanding settlements on Palestinian land, have worked to undermine Americas stated efforts and paid no price. Now, with that record weapons package, the U.S. has made it all too clear that they wont have to. Ever.
The military alliance between the United States and Israel has long been at odds with the stated intentions of successive administrations in Washington to foster peace in the Holy Land. One White House after another has preferred the solution of having it both ways: supporting a two-state solution while richly rewarding, with lethal weaponry, an incorrigible client state that was working as fast as it could to undermine just such a solution.
This ongoing duality seemed at its most surreal in the last few weeks. First, President Obama announced the new military deal, with its promised delivery of fighter jets and other hardware, citing the unshakable American military alliance with Israel. The following week, at the United Nations, he declared, Israel must recognize that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land. Next, he flew to Israel for the funeral of Shimon Peres, and in a tribute to the Nobel Prize-winning former Israeli president, spoke of a man who grasped that the Jewish people werent born to rule another people and brought up the unfinished business of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. (Peres is remembered quite differently by Palestinians as an early pioneer of settlement building and the author of the brutal Operation Grapes of Wrath assaults on Lebanon in 1996.) Not long after the funeral, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brazenly approved a new settlement deep in the West Bank, prompting the State Department to strongly condemn the action as deeply troubling.
Such scolding words, however, shrivel into nothingness in the face of a single number: 38 billion. With its latest promise of military aid, the United States has essentially sanctioned Israels impunity, its endless colonization of Palestinian land, its military occupation of the West Bank, and its periodic attacks by F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters using Hellfire missiles on the civilians of Gaza.
Yes, Hamass crude and occasionally deadly rockets sometimes help provoke Israeli fire, and human rights investigations have found that both sides have committed war crimes. But Israels explosive power in the 2014 Gaza war, fueled in large part by American military aid and political support, exceeded that of Hamas by an estimated 1,500-to-1. By one estimate, all of Hamass rockets, measured in explosive power, were equal to 12 of the one-ton bombs Israel dropped on Gaza. And it loosed hundreds of those, and fired tens of thousands of shells, rockets and mortars. In the process, nearly 250 times more Palestinian civilians died than civilians in Israel.
Now, with Gaza severed from the West Bank, and Palestinians facing new waves of settlers amid a half-century-long military occupation, the U.S. has chosen not to apply pressure to its out-of-control ally, but instead to resupply its armed forces in a massive way. This means that weve finally arrived at something of a historic (if hardly noticed) moment. After all these decades, the two-state solution, critically flawed as it was, should now officially be declared dead and consider the United States an accomplice in its murder. In other words, the Obama administration has handed Israels leaders and the neoconservatives who have long championed this path the victory theyve sought for more than two decades.
The Chaos Kids
Twenty years ago, the pro-Israel hard right in America designed the core strategy that helped lead to this American capitulation. In 1996, a task force led by neocons Richard Perle (future chairman of the Defense Policy Board), David Wurmser (future senior Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney), Douglas Feith (future undersecretary of defense), and others issued a policy paper aimed at incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm advocated that Israel walk away from its embrace of the Oslo peace process and Oslos focus on territorial concessions. The papers essential ingredients included weakening Israels neighbors via regime change in Saddam Husseins Iraq and roll back in Syria and Iran. The authors recommendations turned out to be anything but a wish list, given that a number of them would soon hold influential positions in the administration of George W. Bush.
As journalist Jim Lobe wrote in 2007:
[T]he task force, which was chaired by Perle, argued that regime change in Iraq of which Feith was among the most ardent advocates within the Pentagon would enable Israel and the U.S. to decisively shift the balance of power in the region so that Israel could make a clean break from the Oslo process (or any framework that would require it to give up land for peace) and, in so doing, secure the realm against Palestinian territorial claims.
In other words, as early as 1996, these neocons were already imagining what would become the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003. You could argue, of course, that neither the neocons nor Netanyahu could have foreseen the chaos that would follow, with Iraq nearly cracking open and Syria essentially collapsing into horrific civil war and violence, civilians stranded under relentless bombing, and the biggest refugee crisis since World War II gripping Europe and the world. But you would, at least in some sense, be wrong, for certain of the neocon advocates of regime change imagined chaos as an essential part of the process from early on.
One can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please, wrote Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute in the National Review during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. (In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security Council and to Oliver North, Ledeen had helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel.) The war wont end in Baghdad, Ledeen later wrote, in the Wall Street Journal. We must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus.
The neocons got so much more than they bargained for in Iraq, and so much less than they wanted in Syria and Iran. Their recent attempts with Netanyahu as their chief spokesman to block the Obama administrations Iran nuclear deal, for example, went down in flames. Still, its stunning to think just how much their strategy of regime change and chaos helped transform our world and the Greater Middle East for the worse, and to be reminded that its ultimate goal, at least in those early days, was in large part to keep Israel from having to pursue a peace deal with the Palestinians. Of course, there were other benefits the neocons imagined back then as part of their historic attempt to redraw the map of the Middle East. Controlling some of the vast oil reserves of that region was one of them, but of course that didnt exactly turn out to be a mission accomplished moment either. Only the Israeli part of the plan seemed to succeed as once imagined.
So here we are 20 years later. All around the Holy Land, states are collapsing or at least their foundations are crumbling, and Israels actions make clear that it isnt about to help improve the situation in any way. It visibly intends to pursue a policy of colonization, permanent human rights violations, and absolute rule over the Palestinians. These are facts on the ground that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu, the Israeli right wing, and those American neocon visionaries fought so hard to establish. A succession of leaders in Washington at least those who werent designing this policy themselves have been played for fools.
In the two-plus decades since the 1993 Oslo Agreement, which some believed would put Israel and the Palestinians on the path to peace, and that Clean Break document which was written to undermine it, the West Bank settler population has grown from 109,000 to nearly 400,000 (an estimated 15% of whom are American). The would-be capital of a Palestinian state, East Jerusalem, is now surrounded by 17 Jewish settlements. Palestinians nominally control a mere 18% of the West Bank (also known as Area A), or 4% of the entire land base of Israel/Palestine.
The Palestinians would-be homeland is now checkered with military bases, settlements, settler-only roads, and hundreds of checkpoints and barriers all in a West Bank the size of Delaware, our second-smallest state. An estimated 40% of adult male Palestinians, and thousands of children, have seen the insides of Israeli jails and prisons; many of them languish there without charges.
Israel has, in essence, created a Jim Crow-like separate and unequal reality there: a one-state solution that it alone controls. The United States has done almost nothing about this (other than carefully couched, periodic State Department words of complaint), while its ally marched forward unchecked. Not since James Baker was secretary of state under the first President Bush before notably enough the signing of the Oslo accords has any U.S. leader threatened to withhold funds unless Israel stops building settlements on Palestinian land. The phrase friends dont let friends drive drunk no longer applies in U.S.-Israeli relations. Rather, what we hear are regular pledges of absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israels security. Those were, in fact, the words of Vice President Joe Biden during a 2010 visit to Israel a pledge offered, as it turned out, only a few hours before the Netanyahu government announced the construction of 1,600 new apartments in East Jerusalem.
Unvarnished commitment in 2016 means that $38 billion for what Obama called the worlds most advanced weapons technology. That includes 33 of Lockheeds F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, at $200 million per jet, part of a troubled $1.5 trillion weapons system subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Other deadly hardware headed for Israel: cargo planes, F-15 fighter jets, battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, a new class of warships whose guided missiles would undoubtedly be aimed directly at Gaza, and more of Lockheeds Hellfire missiles. If recent history is any indication, you would need to add fresh supplies of bombs, grenades, torpedoes, rocket launchers, mortars, howitzers, machine guns, shotguns, pistols, and bayonets. As part of the agreement, U.S. arms manufacturers will soon supply 100% of that weaponry, while Israeli weapons manufacturers will be phased out of U.S. military aid. Its a win-win for Israeli security and the U.S. economy, a White House aide cheerily told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The Clinton (Trump) White House and Israel
Current policy, if thats the right word, could perhaps be summed up as weapons, weapons, and more weapons, while Washington otherwise washed its hands of what was always known as the peace process (despite that fig leaf still in place). Today, functionally, theres no such process left. And thats unlikely to change under either a President Clinton or a President Trump. If anything, it may get worse.
During the Democratic primary campaign, for instance, Hillary Clinton promised to invite Netanyahu to the White House during my first month in office in order to reaffirm Washingtons unbreakable bond with Israel. In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which labels itself Americas pro-Israel lobby, she was virtually silent on the Israeli settlement issue, except to promise to protect Israel against its own violations of international law. She attacked Trump from the right, denouncing his once-expressed wish to remain neutral on the issue of Israel and Palestine.
In the 1990s, as first lady, Clinton had stirred controversy by uttering the word Palestine and kissing Yasser Arafats widow, Suha, on the cheek. Now she fully embraces those who believe Israel can do no wrong, including Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, who has donated at least $6.4 million to her campaign, and millions more to the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee. Saban, an Israeli-American whose billions came largely from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise, describes himself as a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.
Last year, he convened a secret Las Vegas meeting with fellow billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the bankroller of a panoply of Republican candidates and a huge supporter of Israels settlement project. Their aim: to shut down, if not criminalize, the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS. That boycott movement targets cultural institutions and businesses including those that profit from the occupation of the West Bank. Its approach is akin to the movement to impose sanctions on South Africa during the apartheid era.
With Sabans millions destined for her campaign war chest, Clinton wrote to her benefactor to express her alarm over BDS, seeking your thoughts and recommendations to work together to counter BDS. Yet its a nonviolent movement that aims to confront Israels human rights abuses through direct economic and political pressure, not guns or terror attacks. Would Clinton prefer suicide bombers and rockets? Never mind that the relatively modest movement has been endorsed by an assortment of international trade unions, scholarly associations, church groups, the Jewish Voice for Peace, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. At the root of BDS, Clinton has hinted darkly, is anti-Semitism. At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, she wrote Saban, we need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.
As for Trump, some Palestinians were encouraged by his statement to MSNBCs Joe Scarborough that he might be sort of a neutral guy on the issue. He told the AP: I have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it. A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal whether or not Israels willing to sacrifice certain things. Yet Trump subsequently fell in line with Republican orthodoxy, pledging among other things to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, a litmus test for supporters of the hard right in Israel, and a virtual guarantee that East Jerusalem, at the center of the Palestinian dream of statehood, will remain in Israels hands.
In the short term, then, the prospect for an American-brokered just peace may be as bleak as its ever been even though U.S. officials know full well that a just solution to the conflict would remove a primary recruiting tool for jihadists. For the next four to eight years, American leadership will, by all indications, shore up the status quo, which means combining all that weaponry and de facto acquiescence in Israels land grabs with, perhaps, the occasional hand-wringing State Department statement.
With Patience, Change Will Come
However, like Jim Crow, like South African apartheid, the status quo of this moment simply cant last forever. Eventually, the future of the region will not be left to the self-proclaimed honest brokers of Washington who lecture Palestinians on the proper forms of nonviolence, while offering no genuine alternatives to surrender. Given the long history of Palestinian resistance, it is foolhardy to expect such a surrender now and particularly unwise to slander a movement of nonviolent resistance especially given what we know about the kinds of resistance that are possible.
Whether by peaceful resistance or other means, the status quo will change, in part simply because it must: a structure this twisted cannot stand on its own forever. Already AIPACs monumental attempts to scuttle the Iran deal have led to humiliating defeat and thats just a taste of what, sooner or later, the future could hold. After all, young Americans, including young Jews, are increasingly opposed to Israels domination of Palestinian lands, and increasingly supportive of the boycott movement. In addition, the balance of power in the region is shifting. We cant know how Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran will operate there in the years to come, but amid the ongoing chaos, U.S. influence will undoubtedly diminish over time. As a member of a prominent Gaza family said to me many years ago: Does Israel think America will always protect them, always give them arms, and that they will always be the biggest power in the Middle East? Do they really expect they can maintain this hold on us forever?
A popular Arab folk ballad, El Helwa Di, promises a penniless child who has placed her life in Gods hands: With patience, change will come. All will be better.
Perhaps it will prove useful, in the end, to abandon the illusions of the now-terminal two-state solution, at least as envisioned in the Oslo process. In the language of those accords, after all, the words freedom and independence never appear, while security is mentioned 12 times.
In a regime of growing confinement, the Israelis have steadily undermined Palestinian sovereignty, aided and abetted by an American acquiescence in Israels ongoing settlement project. Now, at least, there is an opportunity to lay the foundations for some newer kind of solution grounded in human rights, freedom of movement, complete cessation of settlement building, and equal access to land, water, and places of worship. It will have to be based on a new reality, which Israel and the United States have had such a hand in creating. Think of it as the one-state solution.
Sandy Tolan, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of the international bestseller, The Lemon Tree, and of the acclaimed Children of the Stone about one Palestinians dream to establish music schools under Israels military occupation. He has reported from more than 35 countries and is professor at the Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication at USC. His website is sandytolan.com, his Twitter handle, @sandy_tolan.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Sandy Tolan
Via Tomdispatch.com
Related video added by Juan Cole:
Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center: Against Israels Colonial Tide: Palestinian Initiatives to Shape Their Future
[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights [advocacy websites] and 50 other interest groups, sent a letter [text] on Tuesday urging the US Department of Justice [official website] to investigate the increasing use of facial recognition technology. This letter is a part of the advocacy groups greater concern that certain police use of technology may violate civilian rights, and that those violations are disproportionately felt by minority communities. According to ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani, half of American adults are within a government facial recognition database, and those databases are used with near impunity by law enforcement.
The privacy of individuals [JURIST op-ed], and the use of technology by law enforcement, are important and evolving topics in the 21st century. Swiss voters in September voted to approve [JURIST report] a new surveillance law allowing their national intelligence service broad powers to spy on terrorist suspects and cyber criminals, as well as the ability to cooperate with foreign intelligence agencies. In August a UN rights groups criticized [JURIST report] the US Investigatory Powers Bill, stating it could threaten freedom of expression and association. In December China passed a new anti-terrorism law [JURIST report] that requires technology companies to provide information to the government obtained from their products and make information systems secure and controllable. And last October the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied [JURIST report] a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union to halt the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA. The court ruled that Congress intended for the agency to continue its data collection over the transition period, and the new legislation was to take effect November 29.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia [advocacy website] on Monday filed a lawsuit [complaint] against two officials in Georgia seeking an extension of the voting registration deadline [ACLU report]. The lawsuit comes after Hurricane Matthew affected many coastal states days before registration deadlines, creating mandatory evacuations, power outages, and other situations that hindered citizens ability to register. The ACLU of Georgia is suing Governor Nathan Deal [official website] and Secretary of State Brian Kemp [official profile], who have refused requests of extension in six affected counties. The plaintiffs claim that refusal hurts the democratic process and voter participation, and that it has a disproportionate impact on minorities and young voters. Although one county was granted an extension through a previous judicial ruling [CNN report], the lawsuit seeks to enjoin enforcement of the previous October 11 deadline and provide an additional six days of registration for all six counties.
Voting issues have become contentious as the presidential election approaches. Last week a federal judge in Florida extended the voter registration deadline [JURIST report] by six days due to the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. Earlier this month a federal court issued [JURIST report] a preliminary injunction in favor of the Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute Native American tribes challenging Nevadas voting procedure of failing to provide polling places on Native American reservations. Late last month California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation [JURIST report] clarifying felons voting rights.
Iraqi government and paramilitary forces are committing serious human rights abuses [press release] and war crimes, according to an Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] report [text, PDF] Tuesday. AI claims that both the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are perpetrating acts of arbitrary detainment against internally displaced persons (IDP), particularly Sunni Arabs. In Iraqi-controlled territories, IDPs reportedly face further acts of abduction, torture and extrajudicial execution. According to the report, many of the abuses are carried out by the Iraqi government-backed Shia militias when IDPs turn themselves over to their authority. Citizens are fleeing conflict between the government forces and the Islamic State (IS). Once displaced by the conflict, the report claims Sunni Arabs are subjected to revenge punishment by the government forces for the crimes of IS.
Historic tension between Sunni and Shia groups (also known as Shiite, and Shiite) has drawn renewed international scrutiny in recent months. Earlier this week the Bahrain Court of Cassation overturned the sentence [JURIST report] of a Shia opposition leader who had been convicted for insulting the Interior Ministry, inciting others to break the law, and inciting hatred against naturalized Sunnis. In May Pakistani human rights activist Khurram Zaki was killed by unidentified gunmen [JURIST report] in Karachi. Zaki was an activist that campaigned against religious extremism and cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz of a radical Sunni mosque who incites hatred against Shia Muslims. In January Human Rights Watch accused Iraqi Shia militias of carrying out revenge attacks [JURIST report] against Sunnis in wake of an IS suicide bombing attack at a local cafe.
[JURIST] A Croatian prosecutor [official website] on Tuesday charged eight ex-Yugoslav military officers, including commander Borislav Djukic, with war crimes perpetrated during the Croatian War of Independence [BBC backgrounder]. Croatia split from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, and the nations fought until peace was found in 1995. During this time, the prosecutor alleges, the suspects ordered attacks on civilian areas and failed to prevent the rape, torture and murder of over 100 civilians perpetrated by soldiers in their charge.
Prosecution of individuals suspected of committing war crimes during the Croatian conflicts is ongoing. Last month former Serbian paramilitary commander Dragan Vasiljkovic went on trial [JURIST report] for war crimes in Croatias Split Court. Dragan was accused of torturing and murdering civilians and prisoners during the Croation War for independence. Vasilijkovic was indicted [JURIST report] in January of this year. In July International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia war crimes defendant Goran Hadzic, the former president of the Republic of Serbian Krajina during the Croatian War of Independence, died from brain cancer. Hadzic was accused of coordinating, supporting and instigating efforts to achieve the permanent removal of a majority of the Croat and other non-Serb population from a large part of the territory of the Republic of Croatia during his term as president. Hadzic was the last fugitive of the original 161 sought by the ICTY to be arrested [JURIST report].
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected [order, PDF] the Obama administrations request to narrow an injunction banning the enforcement of an Education Department policy [press release] requiring public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the students gender. Judge Reed OConnor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas [official website] refused [Politico report] to allow the Department of Education [official website] to enforce their policy for public schools across the nation in an order on Tuesday but did make some changes to his initial ruling granting an injunction [JURIST report] from August. This occurred after 13 states brought suit against the policy [Bloomberg report]. The Department of Justice [official website] had asked that OConnor maintain the injunction only in the 13 states that filed suit, but OConnor cited the need for a uniform application of national standards in education and workplace policy as his reasoning for maintaining a nationwide injunction. OConnor is allowing the government to continue to defend their policy in other cases where they are being sued and to continue to pursue policy enforcement in litigation not substantially developed before his August ruling. OConnor also clarified that this ruling only applied to intimate facilities such as locker rooms and bathrooms. The Obama administration is expected to appeal the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Transgender access to public restrooms has been a controversial topic and has created a wave of legislative and judicial action. In August the US Supreme Court blocked [JURIST report] a lower court ruling allowing a transgender student who identifies as male to use the boys restroom at school. In July US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced a new policy that allows transgender individuals to serve openly in the military [JURIST report], effective immediately. In May Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced legislation that would ban transgender discrimination [JURIST report], including it within Canadas hate crime laws.
A former vice president of the Democratic Republic of Congo [BBC profile] was found guilty [judgment, PDF] of bribing witnesses in his International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] trial for war crimes. On Wednesday The Hague-based court found Jean-Pierre Bemba [BBC profile] guilty of bribery during the trial [ICC trial profile] in March when he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Bemba was convicted of influencing witnesses and falsifying evidence at trial, after the court was made aware that Bemba masterminded the bribery scheme from within his prison cell. During the second Congo civil war, Bembas troops committed rapes, murders and pillaged in 2002 and 2003.
The Bemba [JURIST news archive] case has been ongoing before the ICC since 2008. In March the ICC found unanimously [JURIST report] that Bemba was guilty of two counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of war crimes for his role in the armed conflict in the Central African Repubilc in 2002 and 2003. In September of last year Bemba pleaded not guilty to charges of interfering with the administration of justice after he and four members of his legal team were ordered to stand trial [JURIST reports] on those charges. In October 2014 ICC Trial Chamber III delayed the closing statements [JURIST report] in the case against Bemba so that it could hear additional witness testimony after the defense requested to testify about alleged collusion between prosecution witnesses. In November 2013 four persons were arrested on charges of falsifying evidence [JURIST report] in connection with the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba Bembas defense lawyers opened their case before the ICC in August 2012.
An administrative court [official website, in French] in Lille, France, on Tuesday rejected requests from almost a dozen aid groups and permitted the closure process [Reuters report] of the Jungle migrant camp near Calais to continue. President Francois Hollande [profile] has promised closure of the camp as pressure for such a result grows while the April election approaches, and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve [official profile, in French] stated that the demolition project is only days away. The groups were seeking postponement of the closure in order to better organize relocation of the migrants, but the court determined that the closure seeks to prevent inhuman treatment that migrants are currently subjected to at the camp [Independent report]. While another concern was the transport of unaccompanied minors, the transfers are to be done pursuant to the Dublin Regulations [materials], which in part governs family reunification.
The rights of migrant populations has emerged as one of the most significant humanitarian issues around the world, as millions seek asylum from conflict nations. Hungarian citizens gathered at the beginning of October to vote on a European Union (EU) referendum regarding the relocation of refugees and migrants among member states [JURIST report], but low voter turnout invalidated the vote [JURIST report]. Ahead of the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants last month, UN experts urged [JURIST report] states to protect women and girls in the movement of refugees and migrants by adhering to international human rights conventions and standards. Last month Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said that the draft of the final outcome document for the UN summit on refugees fell short of dealing with the issue effectively [JURIST report]. According to the rights groups, the UN is missing an opportunity by not proposing anything of substance. Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said [JURIST report] earlier last month that Austria will take Hungary to the International Court of Justice if Hungary does not begin accepting returning migrants that crossed into Austria from Hungary. In August the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al Hussein expressed concern [JURIST report] over Bulgarias criminalization of migrants leaving and entering the country.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) [website] released a report [materials] Tuesday finding that the July attack on a peaceful demonstration in the nations capital directly targeted civilians. The report focuses on the planning and preparedness of security forces facing the attack. It also touches on response by such forces directly following the event. The report calls the attack, a serious violation of international humanitarian law. It was the deadliest attack on civilians since UNAMA began its documentation, and, according to UNAMA, it may amount to a war crime.
In July UN Special Representative to Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto stated that the suicide bombings in Kabul amounted to a war crime [JURIST report] . Earlier that week two suicide bombers targeted [CNN report] Shiite Hazaras who were holding a peaceful demonstration to push for more access to electricity in the region. Over 260 civilians were reportedly wounded from the attack. While the Taliban has been the cause of recent bombings and kidnappings in Kabul, ISIS immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. As ISIS increases its presence in the region, the Taliban continues to be Kabuls primary security concern.
The left sticker presents "never forget the determination," and the right one presents "be delighted."
Stickers of a young Red Army soldier have been growing in popularity on Wechat, and have begun to dominate other forms of social media in the lead-up to the 80th anniversary of the Long March victory.
The stickers are either accompanied by online buzzwords or else depict scenes from the Long March. For example, to express fortitude and determination, one sticker references how the Red Army overcame severe natural obstacles to cross the grassland.
"Fortitude and determination"
Designer Gu Chen explained that the prototype of the soldier originates from a primary school textbook. For those born during the 1980s and '90s in China, most of their knowledge of the Long March comes from one specific text about a young and stubborn Red Army soldier. The soldier refused to accept food and eventually died of starvation once food became scarce.
Gu explained that such stubbornness is still relevant in contemporary society. No matter what the difficulty, it's important for young people to persist when they encounter obstacles.
Indeed, the stickers of the young Red Army soldier define and extend the power of the Long March, making it accessible to younger generations.
"Study hard and make progress."
[JURIST] The Venezuela Supreme Tribunal of Justice [official website, in Spanish] ruled [materials, in Spanish] on Monday that a referendum to unseat President Nicolas Maduro will require his opponents to collect signatures from 20 percent of voters in each of Venezuelas 24 states. The court interpreted Articles 15 and 29 of the Rules Regulating the Procedure for the Referendums [text, PDF in Spanish], denying the opponents argument that the rules only required signatures from 20 percent of voters nationally. In June the National Electoral College [official website, in Spanish] declared [JURIST report] that the more than 600,000 signatures found on an earlier petition for the referendum were invalid.
There has been considerable legislative tension between the pro-government controlled Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the opposition-majority National Assembly of Venezuela following the December election. In April Venezuelas opposition-led parliament approved [JURIST report] new referendum rules. In March the Supreme Tribunal of Justice ruled that the Venezuelan national assembly may not review the appointment of 13 justices [JURIST report] to the high court by the Socialist Party. The 13 justices were sworn in on December 23, immediately prior to the exit of prior Socialist Party majority. In February the court upheld President Maduros economic emergency decree [JURIST report] as legal and valid despite a rejection by the national assembly. The decree allows the president to control the budget, companies and the currency. In January the Supreme Tribunal of Justice ruled that all decisions from the opposition-led assembly would be void [JURIST report] until three opposition lawmakers were removed from their seats.
A surprising photo has recently gone viral online. In the photo, a teacher is giving a lecture in a classroom while holding an umbrella. Taken at Shuozhou No. 1 Middle School in nothren China's Shanxi province, the photo reveals the poor condition of the school's classrooms.
According to students and teachers at the school, the classroom ceiling was leaking on Oct. 6 after a rainstorm the previous day. The students moved their desks to avoid the dripping. However, the teacher, Zheng Zhaoliang, had to make do with an umbrella.
The students said that the leaking was serious - that water was flowing rather than dripping from the ceiling, thereby disturbing their studies. Wang Sen, the leader of the school, told Youth.cn that many classrooms and offices in the school leak when it rains.
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Recent media reports stated that several "legs" of a newly built bridge in Cili County, Hunan province had become so eroded that the concrete was peeling off and the steel support bars were visible. Despite such obvious deterioration, the government's official WeChat carried a statement that the bridge was still safe to use.
The old bridge, built in 2005, is still in good shape. By contrast, the newly built bridge, which cost 88 million RMB, is already in disrepair after just six years of use. After sending for experts to investigate the site, officials determined the bridge not to be a hazard. On the other hand, Zhao Jiaxing, a bridge expert, said that the visible cracks in the bridge, as well as its overall shakiness, means the bridge could be potentially unsafe. Zhao believes the original design materials should be examined.
Other than the WeChat statement, the local government has not yet offered a public response.
The replica firearms Liu bought online.
Fujian Higher Peoples Court made a decision on Oct. 18 to retry the case of Liu Dawei, a weapons enthusiast who was sentenced to life in prison for smuggling firearms.
In July 2014, Liu placed an order on a Taiwanese website for 24 replica firearms at a cost of 30,540 yuan (around $4,600). However, his parcel never reached his home in Quanzhou, Fujian province. Instead, two months later, on Sept. 29, 2014, Liu was arrested for arms trafficking. Police identified 20 of the 24 replicas" as real guns. On April 30, 2015, Liu was sentenced to life in prison.
Liu Dawei
In response to his conviction, Liu Dawei yelled in the courtroom, Please shoot me with the guns I bought! Ill admit to being guilty if I am killed!
According to the judge, the crime of smuggling more than 20 firearms calls for a death sentence. However, considering Lius young age at the time when the crime was committed, the court handed down a lifelong prison sentence instead.
On Nov. 26, 2015, Xu Xin, Liu's lawyer, submitted material for the appeal to Fujian Higher Peoples Court, suggesting that the court retry the case.
(Xinhua) 19:27, October 19, 2016
NANNING, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- China is working with Vietnam to crack down on drug traffickers in border areas.
Chinese police announced Wednesday that they have detained five suspected drug dealers, including four Vietnamese, as well as 18.2 kg of heroin in their third joint crackdown with Vietnam to fight drugs.
The drug trade remains rampant in China's border areas despite enhanced supervision. The problem is especially pervasive in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, which borders Vietnam and has become one of the biggest channels for drug trafficking to and from China -- second only to neighboring Yunnan Province.
"A lot of drugs from the Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent areas flow to China via the border areas, while some new synthetic drugs are trafficked from China to Vietnam," said Qiu Yucheng, deputy head of the anti-drug division under Guangxi's regional department of public security.
HIDDEN IN EELS
It is increasingly difficult to spot and nab drug dealers.
Earlier this year, police in Guangxi's Pingxiang City were tipped off about some Vietnamese who were trying to transport drugs to China via seafood. A secret investigation was launched immediately.
"After a long-term investigation, we found that a seafood transfer station in Pingxiang often took live seafood from Vietnam," said Luo Shenghui, head of the anti-drug division under Pingxiang's public security bureau. "The station's seafood was frequently transported to neighboring Guangdong Province, which is one of the major areas for heroin sales."
On Aug. 29, local police learned that several Vietnamese nationals had carried two buckets of eels -- possibly containing drugs -- into China.
One policeman disguised himself as a driver and helped transport the eels from the transfer station to a seafood market in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong. There, police detained two Vietnamese women and a Guangxi woman who were waiting for the eels. In the buckets, they later found 38 chunks of heroin weighing 13.3 kg.
WORKING TOGETHER
As the drugs and the main suspects in the case were from Vietnam, Guangxi police contacted Vietnamese police via a "border contact mechanism" established in 2012 to investigate the case together.
"We managed to contact Vietnamese police very quickly via the mechanism," Luo Shenghui said.
On Sept. 1, five Vietnamese police came to Guangxi for the investigation. They later found that the drugs were from several drug dealers in Vietnam, and the suspects were in China to help transfer the drugs. Based on their confessions, the Vietnamese police managed to seize the dealers in Vietnam while confiscating 14 chunks of heroin.
Police in Guangxi and Vietnam are currently expanding their anti-drug cooperation.
China has stepped up efforts in recent years to control illegal drug trafficking in Yunnan Province, which is on the forefront of the country's fight against illegal drugs. Guangxi, which has many loosely supervised shortcuts linking China and Vietnam, has naturally become a magnet for smugglers.
Official statistics reveal that in 2010, 2011 and 2012, Guangxi police nabbed illegal substances weighing 181 kg, 212 kg and 421 kg respectively in the border area. They mainly came from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
"We have not only found drug trafficking, but also gun and human trafficking," Qiu said.
Border cities or counties including Dongxing, Pingxiang, Ningming and Daxin face particularly serious drug problems, with substances transported to China via Vietnam. According to Guangxi's border police, the locations usually act as a "transfer stop" for drugs sourced from Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle" to be sold in China.
However, Chinese and Vietnamese police have been able to exchange information and launch joint investigations since the "border contact mechanism" was established.
In July this year, the anti-drug department under China's Ministry of Public Security inked a cooperation memorandum with its Vietnamese counterpart to launch its third joint border clamp-down against drugs from September to December.
By Oct. 10, the crackdown had resulted in 1,036 suspects caught in 842 cases across 18 provinces, cities and regions in China. Of the suspects, 11 are Vietnamese nationals and two are foreign nationals from other countries.
Though the cooperation mechanism has had good results, challenges remain.
Qiu Yucheng said that drug traders have taken to hiding drugs in fruit, seafood and other commodities, making investigation difficult.
"We will enhance our cooperation to crack down on such crimes," Qiu said.
The Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces launch military operations in Khazar village, 35 kilometers south of Mosul, Iraq, on Oct. 18, 2016. Iraqi security forces on Tuesday recaptured more villages from the Islamic State (IS) militants, as part of a major offensive aimed at liberating the city of Mosul, the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, a security source said. (Xinhua/Jaser Jawad)
MOSUL, Iraq, Oct. 18 -- Iraqi security forces on Tuesday recaptured more villages from the Islamic State (IS) militants, as part of a major offensive aimed at liberating the city of Mosul, the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, a security source said.
On the west side of the Tigris River, the Iraqi forces and allied paramilitary Sunni and Shiite Hashd Shaabi units, backed by Iraqi and U.S-led coalition aircraft, recaptured the villages of Lihoud, Abbasiyah, Khuder al-Yas, Bajwaniyah and Tal al-Samen, while moving north to the IS-held town of Shoura, some 30km south of Mosul, a security source from the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
On the east side of the river, the army forces also cleared several villages while moving to the IS-held town of Hamdaniyah, some 40 km southeast of Mosul, the source said.
On Tuesday afternoon, the troops arrived at the southwestern edge of Hamdaniyah and shelled IS positions inside the town in preparation for a battle to recapture it.
Meanwhile, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces east of Mosul suspended fighting and advance, as they are reorganizing their ranks to prepare for more battles, the source said.
Early on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is also the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi forces, announced the start of a major offensive to retake the country's second largest city from the extremist IS group.
"Today I declare the launch of the operation of liberating Nineveh province. The time of victory has come, and the moment of the great victory is approaching," Abadi said in a brief address aired on Al Iraqiya.
Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend:
Azerbaijan and Indonesia have great potential for the development of trade relations, said Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono, Sultan of Indonesias Yogyakarta Sultanate.
He made the remarks during the meeting with Azerbaijani businessmen, the Indonesian embassy in Baku told Trend Oct. 19.
During the meeting, Sultan told the guests that the Yogyakarta city is a center of industry and education, said the embassy.
The delegation also held a meeting with the Deputy Head of the citys Chamber of Commerce Wawan Hermawan, local entrepreneurs, as well as visited a textile factory. The sides discussed the opportunities to develop business.
A group of representatives of the Silk Road Public Union for Promotion of Development of Entrepreneurship, Indonesian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Husnan Bey Fananie and a number of the embassy employees are on a visit to Indonesia.
The delegation visited Jakarta to attend the Trade Expo Indonesia 2016.
Azerbaijani entrepreneurs are also holding meetings in various cities of Indonesia in order to develop business cooperation between the two sides.
Trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $101.73 million in January-August 2016, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
The OSCE is expected to monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops Oct. 20, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Oct. 19.
The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative along the line of contact near Ashagi Abdurrakhmanli village of Azerbaijans Fizuli district, said the ministry.
On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be held by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Hristo Hristov, Simon Tiller and representative of the OSCE High Level Planning Group, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Nepokrytykh.
On the Azerbaijani territories occupied and controlled by Armenian armed forces, the monitoring will be carried out by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Jiri Aberle, Peter Svedberg and representative of the OSCE High Level Planning Group, Mayor Christian Hirsch.
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.
MALAKAL, South Sudan (AP) The eyes of the American parents living at a United Nations camp alongside thousands of South Sudanese refugees fill with tears as they describe their options: Remain and risk another rebel assault or fly to safety, leaving behind the 10 orphans who call the couple mom and dad.
For nearly two years, Brad and Kim Campbell have been feeding, clothing, educating and parenting 10 South Sudanese children whose parents were killed by conflict or sickness. Their missionary lifestyle was upended after violence broke out in South Sudans capital, Juba, Dec. 15. Now the Campbells, their two American daughters and the 10 orphaned children live in an ad-hoc U.N. refugee camp that is low on food, water and sanitation.
The former Omaha, Neb. residents are grappling with ensuring that daughters Katie and Kassidy Talbott are safe, and also protecting their South Sudanese children, who range in age from 5 to 16. Mother Kim Campbell, 54, said it is a tough balance to strike.
I have two of my own children here, she said in an interview at the refugee camp Monday. We know the situation is bad. There is no food or water in Malakal.
The American daughters are adamant that they wont leave unless everyone can. Father Brad Campbell said the family is working with the U.N. and the United States Embassy to try to get everyone to safety.
Weve got these amazing kids we want to take care of, and were trying to do that the best we can, said Brad Campbell, who works with the group Keeping Hope Alive. This isnt the time for us to check out and leave them.
When violence broke out in Juba, the capital, Dec. 15, life remained calm but tense in Malakal the capital of Upper Nile, one of South Sudans two main oil-producing states. But then fighting radiated outward from Juba, as army commanders defected and pledged allegiance to the countrys ousted vice president. In most cases the violence has pitted the ethnic group of President Salva Kiir a Dinka against ethnic Nuers.
Tension began building in Malakal three or four days before Christmas, said Robbie Keel, a 53-year-old electrician and chaplain from Charlotte, N.C., who arrived in Malakal a month ago to volunteer at the orphanage.
The sounds of approaching war crescendoed on Christmas Eve, when everyone in the orphanage took cover. Christmas Day, as orphanage volunteer Brent Trusdle put it, sounded more like the 4th of July.
On Christmas morning it sounded like the whole world exploded, said Keel, who called the roar of battle traumatizing. I didnt know there was that many bullets in the country.
The orphanage is only a half mile from the airport, a key infrastructure the two sides were fighting for. With artillery booming outside, a bullet flew through the house.
The group 10 orphans, seven Americans and two South Sudanese employees took off for the U.N. camp some two miles (three kilometers) away. Most of the thousands of residents who streamed to the U.N. were not immediately allowed inside. The Campell clan was.
Rather than put us in the field where the bullets were flying, they put us in a safe place, Kim Campbell said of the U.N. And they specified it was not because were Americans but because we had the kids.
The thousands of South Sudanese left outside the U.N. fence remained exposed. Stray bullets hit some, Keel said. Then the U.N. let everyone inside, even though they clearly didnt have the food or water to support so many people. Some 75,000 are sheltering at U.N. bases across the country.
Some refugees in Malakal are now getting out. The three Americans volunteers at the orphanage Trusdle, Keel and J.D. Baggett of Nashville, Tennessee flew from Malakal to Juba on an evacuation flight Monday.
The Campbell family is desperate to do the same, but their South Sudanese children do not all have the needed paperwork. The U.S. Embassy, Kim Campbell said, is doing what it can but has little influence. American officials, Campbell said, have told the family that the decision as to who boards an evacuation flight rests with the U.N.
I understand were dealing with international law and the kids dont have proper ID, but this isnt theoretical. This is people we know and love and we cant do anything, Brad Campbell said.
The Omaha, Nebraska family has been doing mission work since 2008 but really committed to the lifestyle when they sold all their U.S. possessions in 2012. The orphans mingled behind the Campbells as they spoke to a reporter. One, 12-year-old Ron Peter, has high hopes for his future.
We want to go to the United States because there is many war in South Sudan, he said, employing a young students English.
Another orphan, 16-year-old Panom Peter, said: This is my dad and mother. If they go never will I have a mother and dad again.
Though Kim Campbell appears to be conflicted about whether the family should leave and possibly do more to secure the childrens future from afar Brad Campbell and his two daughters appear committed to staying, no matter what may come.
One of the things weve tried to do is commit to these kids: We wont leave them, Brad Campbell said, tears welling up.
Were not going to go, said Katie Talbott, 23, Kim Campbells daughter. Were not going to leave anybody behind. I cant consciously leave knowing that theyd be left on their own to face what will happen.
Kim Campbell said the family may have to make a decision in the next 24 to 48 hours. She is praying they make the right one.
OMAHA -- Anthony Garcias split-level home was spartan.
So sparse, so spare, that photos of the home scream of a man in transition, perhaps a permanent one.
Drawers were left open and empty. Closets, clean and clear. Pantry shelves were bare. A wet-dry vacuum sat alone in the dining room. In the master bedroom: a blue air mattress on the floor, no sheets, no blankets.
As Omaha Police Detectives Ryan Davis and Nick Herfordt combed the home after Garcias arrest in July 2013, they saw signs of a man who had put his affairs in order.
On a living-room table were eight stacks of paper. The important documents of Garcias life.
The deed for the house that Garcia was about to lose to foreclosure. The title to the Mercedes SUV that Garcia had driven on Interstate 57 to southern Illinois, where he was arrested.
Garcias birth certificate. His house insurance policy. His medical license from Illinois the only lasting one he ever obtained after his firing from Creighton University Medical Center in 2001.
All piled in perfect formation on the marble-tile tabletop.
And then the detectives sniffed something amiss. Something pungent, in the kitchen.
It was nauseating, Davis said.
A black garbage bag had been plopped into water in the kitchen sink. Some kind of chemical had been poured inside the bag.
After photographing it, detectives opened up the bag.
Inside, they found what authorities would later classify as the reasons for Garcias revenge. The poor reviews he got from Dr. Chhanda Bewtra, his former supervisor at Creighton. His June 26, 2001, termination letter with the signatures of Dr. William Hunter and Dr. Roger Brumback the two Creighton pathologists prosecutors say he targeted.
And this: a yellow piece of legal paper with Garcias characteristic chicken scratch.
On it, a plan. Go to the home of another Anthony Garcia in suburban Indianapolis. Arrive about 10:30 a.m. (when no one is around), the note said. Steal pertinent mail from mailbox. Where they shop. Super market, mall, movies ... And shop with their stolen info/credit cards/ATM cards only at those places ... Take out loans, credit cards, ect (sic) with their info ... Follow him to work, ect (sic).
Whats clear from the red-streaked, chemical-smeared plan is this: Garcia hoped any trace of his former life would disappear. One way or the other.
Day 11 of Garcias trial ventured from the naturally faded receipts Garcia kept from March 2008 when Thomas Hunter, 11, and Shirlee Sherman, 57 were killed to the chemically altered documents left behind in his Terre Haute home.
Tuesdays testimony prosecutors have one more witness today before the defense begins presenting its case proved the adage: Big cases are built with little things.
Little things like:
receipts and bank records that showed an empty day on Garcias March 13, 2008, calendar the same day that Thomas and Sherman were killed at the Hunters Dundee home
neighbors descriptions of a suspicious olive-skinned man and his silver CRV that day near the Hunters home
parts of a gun a spring, three inches long, and retaining loop, smaller than a dime found at the home of Dr. Roger and Mary Brumback in May 2013
the frame of a broken gun found near an Illinois highway 580 miles from the Brumbacks residence and 16 miles from Garcias home in August 2013
an empty gun box found in Garcias home, with the same serial number as the frame found near the highway
Internet searches on Garcias phone for the address of Dr. Brumback on the same May 2013 day that prosecutors believe the Brumbacks were killed
trace evidence of skin cells on the door handle of Bewtras home, which prosecutors allege Garcia tried to break into
a wayward comment Garcia made to a stripper, suggesting that he was a bad boy because he had killed an old woman and a young boy
Even as evidence mounted, Garcia was at his most active Tuesday.
In the morning, he laughed and nodded as his attorney, Robert Motta Jr., poked away at prosecutors contention that his otherwise busy calendar was empty on a critical day: March 13, 2008.
Omaha police found a treasure trove of potential evidence when a team went to search the Walnut, California, home of Frederick and Estella Garcia.
In the garage was a duffle bag and stacks of financial records, store receipts and ATM slips that Anthony Garcia had diligently kept.
Omaha Police Detective Doug Herout sifted through the bundles of receipts and bank records and found that Garcia had multiple expenditures on most days in March.
On March 12, 2008, he withdrew $300 from his Shreveport, Louisiana, bank. And he made a $6.99 purchase at a Pep Boys auto parts store near Shreveport.
The purchase: A smoke shade to cover a license plate.
The purpose: It makes it difficult to read the plate, Herout said.
Prosecutor Brenda Beadle suggested that Garcia did so to conceal his license plate in Omaha. He also wanted to conceal his movements, Beadle said.
So, she said, he withdrew bundles of cash.
She also pointed to what she described as another curious purchase: Garcias March 17, 2008, trip to a Honda dealer in Shreveport to purchase a new set of floor mats.
Beadle: Say they get some thing on their floor mat oh I dont know, blood might they need new floor mats?
Herout: Yes.
Motta left little unchallenged. He said Garcias purchases of floor mats, a fuel cap and a tire show nothing more than car maintenance.
He pointed to Garcias 2008 date book, which had a doctors appointment listed on March 13, 2008. (Prosecutors say that doctor lives in California and theres no evidence of an appointment.)
Motta noted that Garcias receipts showed no activity on five other days in March, in addition to March 13.
Motta made a rare acknowledgment that credit-card receipts put Garcia in Omaha on May 12, 2013, the day prosecutors say the Brumbacks died.
But nothing puts him in Omaha on March 13, 2008, Motta said.
Motta also noted that Garcia had withdrawn cash, sometimes $300, on several other days in March: the 1st, 4th, 14th, 24th, 27th.
Motta offered a reason: Garcia was a casino connoisseur. His bank records show several trips to casinos in the Shreveport area.
What do you need to gamble? Motta asked Herout. Chips. And you get chips with cash, right?
At that, Garcia lowered his chin to his chest and chuckled the first time he has shown any emotion in the trial.
Motta offered another reason for all the cash.
My client likes to go to strip clubs, Motta said.
Garcia didnt laugh at that one. But that didnt stop the defenses demonstrativeness.
My wife is here and unfortunately, I have to admit, I have been to strip clubs, Motta Jr. said. Its no secret that (strip-club) ATMs charge a premium to withdraw cash.
Hence Garcias withdrawals from his bank before he went, Motta said.
From her front-row perch, Alison Motta smiled and shook her head. Alison Motta, who made her first appearance in the courtroom Monday, spent most of Tuesday frantically leaning over a courtroom railing, passing notes, legal rulings and advice to her husband.
At one point, Alison Motta muttered an objection that Jeremy Jorgenson, another of Garcias attorneys, repeated verbatim.
At another point, Judge Gary Randall shushed her. Randall barred Alison Motta from sitting at the defense table or having a speaking role in the case after out-of-court comments she made, pretrial.
Counsel, youre going to need to wait for a break, Randall called out to her and her husband. This is distracting.
Earlier, Jorgenson had tried to counter prosecutors contention that Garcia was fueled by his festering job frustration.
In addition to the searches of the Brumbacks and Bewtras addresses, Jorgenson noted that Garcias phone and digital tablet showed that he had job leads.
He pointed out that in the days immediately before May 12, 2013, Garcia had applied online for jobs at the American Society of Microbiology and at Chicagos Rosalind Franklin School of Medicine and Science.
Its true that there was not only Dr. Garcias interest in employment, but employers showing interest back? Jorgenson asked Herfordt.
Yes, the detective said.
Jorgenson also suggested that the online searches for the names of Brumback and his colleague related to getting references for his job applications.
You have to have names and references, you have to reach out and get reference letters, etc., etc., etc., Jorgenson said.
Tuesdays etceteras werent good for Garcia.
Prosecutors closed the day with the walk-through of Garcias Terre Haute home.
Detectives found one other note, under the living-room table that held all of his life documents.
Scratched out in what appears to be Garcias elementary-school scrawl is an ode of sorts, similar to lines from a 2012 Liam Neeson movie, The Grey.
Into the fight we go, the note said.
We live.
We die.
We live.
We die.
As Davis detailed that and the other writings Garcia left behind in his home, some jurors scribbled furiously. Others not at all.
Then there was Garcia.
The 43-year-old defendant tilted his head back and to the right and closed his eyes for Davis testimony.
But this time unlike the other times that the defendant has nodded off only to snap awake Garcias head didnt bob.
Instead, he swiveled in his chair, back and forth, back and forth, his eyes still closed.
He wasnt asleep.
He just wasnt looking.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Seba Aghayeva Trend:
The Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has adopted resolutions on the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan and the destruction of monuments, related to the history and culture of Islam, by Armenia in the occupied Azerbaijani territories.
The resolutions have been adopted at the 43rd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend Oct. 19.
The resolution highlights the importance to respect Azerbaijans sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions.
The resolution titled The aggression of the Republic of Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan, which has been adopted during the session, condemns the ongoing Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan, as well as the atrocities of the Armenian armed forces against the civilian population of Azerbaijan. The document regards it as a crime against humanity and requires the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by Armenia. Azerbaijans right to demand compensation from Armenia for the damage on Azerbaijan during the conflict was also recognized in the document. It was also noted that the responsibility for the payment of compensation is on Armenia.
In order to prevent aggression and ongoing occupation of the Azerbaijani territories, the resolution calls on the OIC member countries not to sell armaments to Armenia and not to allow their territory to be used as a transit point for arm sales to Armenia.
The document titled Destruction of monuments belonging to Islamic history and culture as a result of Armenias aggression against Azerbaijan says that the historic, cultural, archeological, anthropological and ethnographic monuments, as well as examples of material culture in Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia are integral part of the Islamic heritage and strictly condemns their destruction.
The document highlights that the flagrant violation of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its protocols by Armenia, requiring unconditional implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions 822 (1993), 853 (1993), 874 (1993) and 884 (1993).
Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov represented the country during the 43rd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers that was held Oct. 18-19 in Tashkent.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was established in September of 1969 to ensure Islamic solidarity in social, economic and political spheres. The organization has 57 member states.
The Council of Foreign Ministers, which meets once a year, it is one of the governing bodies of the OIC.
FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015, file photo, a person passes a T-Mobile store in New York. T-Mobile, the countryAos No. 3 wireless carrier, has been fined $48 million for not clearly telling customers how AuunlimitedAu data plans werenAot really, well, unlimited. The Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016, that T-Mobile had a policy to slow down the speeds of customers who were the heaviest data users. But the company didnAot let customers know what amount of data used would trigger the lower speed. The FCC says T-Mobile started doing a better job with disclosures in June 2015. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
In this May 8, 2008, file photo blank checks are seen on an idle press at the Philadelphia Regional Financial Center, which disburses payments on behalf of federal agencies, in Philadelphia. The Internal Revenue Service touches everyone, not just taxpayers but anyone who receives a government check, drives on roads made possible by tax revenue or sends a child to a school helped by Washington. It's a touch that can come with a heavy hand, in the eyes of critics who believe the agency's far-reaching powers are abused and the agency needs to be cut down to size. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
Details added (first version posted on 16:08)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Seba Aghayeva Trend:
The Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has adopted resolutions on the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan and the destruction of monuments, related to the history and culture of Islam, by Armenia in the occupied Azerbaijani territories.
The resolutions have been adopted at the 43rd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend Oct. 19.
The resolution highlights the importance to respect Azerbaijans sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions.
The resolution titled The aggression of the Republic of Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan, which has been adopted during the session, condemns the ongoing Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan, as well as the atrocities of the Armenian armed forces against the civilian population of Azerbaijan. The document regards it as a crime against humanity and requires the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by Armenia. Azerbaijans right to demand compensation from Armenia for the damage on Azerbaijan during the conflict was also recognized in the document. It was also noted that the responsibility for the payment of compensation is on Armenia.
In order to prevent aggression and ongoing occupation of the Azerbaijani territories, the resolution calls on the OIC member countries not to sell armaments to Armenia and not to allow their territory to be used as a transit point for arm sales to Armenia.
The document titled Destruction of monuments belonging to Islamic history and culture as a result of Armenias aggression against Azerbaijan says that the historic, cultural, archeological, anthropological and ethnographic monuments, as well as examples of material culture in Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia are integral part of the Islamic heritage and strictly condemns their destruction.
The document highlights that the flagrant violation of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its protocols by Armenia, requiring unconditional implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions 822 (1993), 853 (1993), 874 (1993) and 884 (1993).
Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov represented the country during the 43rd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers that was held Oct. 18-19 in Tashkent.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was established in September of 1969 to ensure Islamic solidarity in social, economic and political spheres. The organization has 57 member states.
The Council of Foreign Ministers, which meets once a year, it is one of the governing bodies of the OIC.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Seba Aghayeva Trend:
The Nagorno-Karabakh region has always been, is and will remain Azerbaijans integral part, said Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in his article published by the official press.
Armenias occupation policy will never be successful, said Mammadyarov.
The only way to achieve a sustainable settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and establish civilized relations between the two neighboring countries is the liberation of the occupied Azerbaijani territories, restoration of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and ensuring the right of refugees and IDPs to return to their motherlands, noted the minister.
He said this is required by international law and the UN Security Council resolutions.
The minister expressed regret that the UN Security Council resolutions on the conflicts settlement arent implemented by Armenia and the mediators efforts have not led to a result for more than 20 years.
Instead of showing good will in the negotiation process, Armenia openly impedes any effort aimed at the conflicts peaceful settlement, said Mammadyarov.
Armenia refuses to withdraw its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, hinders the refugees and IDPs from returning to their homes by ignoring the UN Security Council requirements and blatantly violating the international law, he added.
The minister said Armenia draws attention to the technical aspects of the ceasefire regime and periodically commits military sabotages by trying to divert attention from the core and substantive issues of the peace process.
Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that it is ready for substantive negotiations on the conflicts settlement, said Mammadyarov, adding that substantive negotiations should bring a change in the status quo and lead to liberation of occupied Azerbaijani territories.
The sooner Armenia realizes this and withdraws its troops from the occupied territories, the sooner the conflict will be resolved and Armenia will be able to take advantage of economic benefits of the regional cooperation, added the Azerbaijani minister.
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, Oct. 19
Trend:
High ranking political leaders from different countries have offered their support to the activity of the OSCE Minsk Group, established to mediate between the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office said in an interview with Azernews newspaper.
With regards to criticism in the address of the OSCE MG, Kasprzyk said co-chairs are informed in detail about the developments around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The Chairmanship of the OSCE is paying constant attention and is informed in detail about developments. The Chairperson-in-Office, Dr Steinmeier, visited the region and the resolution of the conflict was high on the agenda of his trip. The CiO and other high ranking political leaders from different countries have offered their support to the activity of the MG, he said in an e-mail, further mentioning that the conflict is a frequent subject of public debate in other international organizations besides the OSCE.
Kasprzyk emphasized that the co-chairs are involved in this mediation activity on a daily basis.
Kasprzyk, commenting on the armistice between the sides on the frontline, said that his office follows the situation on a daily basis.
Citing the information obtained from OSCE observations, Kasprzyk said that from the end of May 2016 the situation along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops has been relatively stable, though there were still reports about ceasefire violations and recently about casualties. "Every casualty is a tragedy and causes grief and sorrow for the family and friends of the deceased. I share these sorrows, he said , adding that the ceasefire will only hold based on the political will of the parties.
Finally, I would like to stress that the monitoring exercises are not investigations, nor are they a peacekeeping measure. They provide a snapshot, an effective and consistent way of accessing information regarding the situation on the ground. With the support of the sides, we will continue our activity, he continued.
As for the expansion of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Kasprzyk said that his mandate and the modalities of work of his Office would be unaffected.
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.
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My dad is a locally famed and sincere career politician. All my life I have seen him value public service over personal wealth. As a young lawyer, he worked in Washington DC for the Department of Justice during the civil rights movement, and he often shares stories of his tour of duty in 1960s Alabama. After that service, he came back to West Virginia where he has been elected to numerous West Virginia constitutional offices. He taught me, and has been quoted as saying, Without protection for the least of us, there is no protection for the most of us.
I have been a wife and a doctor for 20 years. I have been a mother for 17 years. My daughter is 17. When I heard Donald Trumps 2005 (he was a then 59-year-old man) comments regarding the uninvited grabbing of a woman, I felt not only bothered and disgusted by it, but also minority like and potentially oppressed. It was an example of what I have seen in this country which has been coined, the Trump effect.
It is a phenomenon which I have noticed all along myself and have un-eloquently called his, bringing out the worst in people. He brings out the lowest.
The Trump effect survey was the SPLCs (Southern Poverty and Law Center) April 2016 survey of 2000 teachers which showed an increase in bullying in schools. It was self-describedly unscientific.
However, as the SPLC website notes, it is the richest data source we have on this phenomenon and at least approaches the power of large numbers with 2000 survey respondents. The SPLCs survey report noted students seem emboldened to use slurs and inflammatory language towards others.
Unscientific as it may be, I have seen the phenomenon in adults. Professionals. Fellow physicians. Colleagues. Unscientific? Perhaps, but by definition (of I know it when I see it) I didnt need scientific evidence to tell me it was there. I know it when I see it.
One colleague, a physician, has taken to disparaging remarks about other physicians ethnicity. Another told me a blatant racial joke. I have a physician colleague who religiously brings me extreme right wing presidential campaign propaganda which is often constructed in the form of a joke. I repeatedly tell him, I dont think its funny. Worse than that, I think its part of the problem.
Again, these colleagues are fellow physicians. They have attained arguably the highest educational status our country has to offer.
How can this happen? According to Douglas Fields, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and author of, Why We Snap, Donalds banter triggers deep-seated human instincts instincts of fear, anger, and aggression which are located in the limbic system.
These human instincts are:
Being part of the tribe: Us versus them. This can be illustrated by the self-proclaimed traditionally Republican newspaper the Cincinnati Enquirers endorsement of Hillary Clinton. They said of Donald, Trump, despite all of his bluster about wanting to make America great again, has exploited and expanded our internal divisions But going two weeks without saying something misogynistic, racist, or xenophobic is hardly a qualification for the most important job in the world. They even as of then, condemned his offensive remarks to women.
Threat to environment. Ironically, the Cincinnati Enquirer said, Trump is a clear and present danger to our country.
Invoking talk or thoughts of life or death situations. Sadly, this instinct was illustrated by Dr. Fields himself by the use of the word kill 53 times during the December 2015 GOP debate, versus zero times during the previous GOP debates.
Ive lately wondered, will my daughter grow up in this milieu? Will this easiness with haphazard degrading remarks, and will similar ease toward racism, sexism and xenophobia stick to our collective unconscious? Will the clock be set back to the 1960s? The language and the connotation of the 2005 remarks made me wonder about my daughter as a young woman coming of age, will she be taken seriously in her endeavors?
This lowering effect, this bringing down of individuals in our society, this incitement of these tribal instincts, the rise of bullying, the so-called, Trump effect, while it may not be rock-solid science, as a mother of a daughter and a wife and a doctor, again, there doesnt need to be that for me to know it is there. I know it when I see it.
So, back to my dad and what he taught me; without each of us being protected, none of us are. Our rights are sacred. Our protection as individuals is at stake with this vile-talking man. Donald Trump is a magnet for the worst in us. What I hope for us is a leader who will bring out our best.
The author is an anonymous physician.
Image credit: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
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For all the medias (and candidates) attention to candidate health over the course of this presidential campaign, we seem to be spending precious little time in the presidential debates discussing the candidates actual health plans.
Those on the left have diagnosed Mr. Trump as unhinged and mentally unstable, calling attention to a narcissistic personality consistent with a DSM diagnosis, though in violation of the Goldwater Rule. They have further raised the unusual way in which Mr. Trumps medical records were released, with language better characterized as flamboyant rather than scientific or precise, and a discussion of his health history on the television show of the widely debunked Dr. Oz.
Mr. Trump and those on the right have mocked Secretary Clintons health, replaying a collapse amid an episode of pneumonia. Pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli further went on Twitter to postulate that Secretary Clinton had what he viewed to be Parkinsons disease, despite any medical records to support the diagnosis.
All told, the health of the candidates and public insistence on revelation of medical records was dominating much coverage prior to the more recent discussion of the importance of revelation of candidates tax returns and the now infamous revelation of the 2005 tape in which Mr. Trump boasted about being able to grope women without consent on account of his celebrity status. The purported justification with respect to the focus on candidate health is that the American electorate deserves to know whether a person is physically fit for the demanding job of president, though presidential candidates publication of medical records has been a rather inconsistent practice over time, and past presidents deaths in office were not always attributable to medical conditions (e.g., assassination). More often than not, the emphasis appears to be for the purpose of media, gossip, and distraction.
That an American presidential campaign would be dominated at least in part by media sensationalism is hardly a surprise. What is more distressing is that we have thus far spent more time discussing candidate health which does not appear to have a bearing on the ability to effectively hold the office of president of the United States (think FDR) than we have spent in the presidential and vice presidential debates on the candidates health care plans. (Side note: Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson does not even list health care on his websites Issues section).
The first presidential debate between Mr. Trump and President Clinton did not include a single discussion of either candidates health care plans, whether with respect to access to care or reducing the cost of too-often-exorbitant prescription drug prices. With a record-breaking viewership of 84 million viewers, this was a missed opportunity for both candidates to discuss the merits of their plans on this key issue.
In the days that followed, Mr. Trump spoke at a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania in which he not only encouraged his supporters to intimidate voters an action that would have garnered the top headline any other election but also mocked Secretary Clintons stumble, to the cheers of his supporters. Mayor Giuliani was interviewed and continued his long history of unfounded assertions of an illness that Secretary Clinton might be keeping secret.
During the vice-presidential debate, the Affordable Care Act got mentioned by Governor Pence in his discussion of the concerns he had regarding the national debt, noting President Clintons recent criticism of Obamacare, noting Secretary Clintons desire to expand it, and Mr. Trumps desire to repeal it. Governor Pence did not, in his discussion of Obamacare, discuss with any substance the alternative that he and Mr. Trump propose. Senator Kaine did not use Governor Pences comments as an opportunity to pivot the conversation toward the progress that the Affordable Care Act has created namely, 20 million more people with health insurance and a historic low uninsured rate of 8.6 percent, and the delivery of much-needed primary care and behavioral health care through Medicaid expansion in 31 states and the District of Columbia (which Governor Pence should know given that his state of Indiana accepted those government funds). 84 million watched the 90-minute presidential debate. 37 million watched the 95-minute vice presidential debate. In none of those 185 minutes did we learn apart from the Trump/Pence tickets pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act anything about the candidates positions on this issue affecting every American, rich or poor, young or old, Democrat or Republican. This is particularly striking giving that health care accounts for 17.5 percent of the United States GDP.
It was not until the second presidential debate admittedly one in which the chatter was much more focused on the Trump tape and the challenges it presents for his campaign and party that a single question was asked on the subject of health care and how the candidates would address the challenges that some are facing of higher costs and, in some cases, less coverage. This provided the first opportunity for the candidates to provide their talking points on health care over the course of approximately seven minutes, with Secretary Clinton discussing her desire to keep what works within the Affordable Care Act but curb costs and make it easier for small businesses to afford to provide health insurance, and Mr. Trump articulating a desire to repeal the ACA and allow for the selling of health insurance across state lines (though some argue that that would not actually curb costs). Within these settings, we unfortunately still have had no discussion of prescription drugs, the pricing of which have been in the news with EpiPens most notably.
Two days after the debate, Mr. Trump returned the conversation to Secretary Clintons health in a new ad.
That the personal health of the presidential candidates is making top headlines is silly, though not altogether inconsistent with the antics that have characterized this highly unusual election cycle. That their personal health is garnering greater attention during these forums than their own health care plans is a disgrace.
Miranda Yaver is a political scientist. She can be reached on Twitter @mirandayaver.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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It turns out that South Carolina is having a busy hurricane season. Recently, Charleston County was under a mandatory evacuation in anticipation of Hurricane Matthew. All I-26 lanes were converted into westbound traffic, gas stations were running low on fuel, and the local Wal-Mart was out of bottled water. It was T-minus 3 days to the landfall of Hurricane Matthew, with very variable predictions on the trajectory, speed, and strength. In the meantime, hurried preparations were being put in place for patients and care team members alike at the Medical University of South Carolina Hospital.
It is times like this that I am reminded of the selfless and stoic nature of health care team members. Countless numbers of our team stayed in town and prepared to defend in place for an unknown period of time. Many of us were separated from friends and family, unable to look after our kids, homes or pets. But without question, those on the A (essential personnel) team reported for duty without a complaint, accepting that this was par for the course for working in an acute care facility. It is times like this that we should reminded of why we are afforded such respect in our society.
T-minus 2, and the storm loomed towards Florida, with several different models predicting vastly different outcomes for Charleston, ranging from a tropical storm to a Category 3 hurricane. Team A remained in high spirits, as we all tried to figure out how we were going to eat and sleep for the next several days. Some inpatient units from the older buildings moved to completely new areas of other buildings, concerned about the integrity of large windows and leaking ceilings. All units double-checked their water supplies, battery stocks, and flashlights; facilities and engineering staff ensured emergency plugs were functional and generators were backing up if needed.
Any potential patient discharges were fast-tracked; outside hospitals continued to call for transfers into Charleston, as many other hospitals were evacuating up and down the coast. Some patients did not have a family or safe housing to be discharged to, so they were stuck for the duration of the storm. Home health agencies, nursing homes and assisted living facilities all evacuated, bringing some to the ED who were not fit for travel or who otherwise would not make it through the storm. As such, our census remained high around 600 patients to care for, regardless of what happens. There was a slightly anxious air about the place, while we all kept ourselves busy to distract us from thinking too much about the possibilities to come.
T-minus 1, and the storm continued on a volatile path, making plans more and more difficult to create and implement. The tidal surge is predicted to be much higher than expected upwards of 10-11 feet. Noting that most of the Charleston peninsula is at (or even below) sea level, we feared this could pose a major problem for most of the facilities. The campus ambulatory clinic is ~9 feet at its entrance, so all first-floor equipment and medications were moved to higher ground, including a large fixed pharmacy robot (which is hoisted onto a palate, the best we can do). The first floor of the inpatient psychiatric hospital houses the senior care unit, the most complex and least ambulatory patients in the building. Half were relocated to other units, and the other half stayed and waited to see what the water level will do. The emergency departments, dialysis units, and bronchoscopy labs all moved their equipment and supplies from the first to the second floor in case of a water surge into the building. The moving was calm, steady, and quiet. Many care team members tried to sleep in conference rooms and auditoriums on cots. All we could do was wait for the rain, wind, and tide to rise.
T-minus 0, and the wind was sustained at 60 mph, with 100 mph maximum gusts and heavy rain for several hours. This was far better than expected and resulted in only minimal tree and building damage. The tidal surge recedes, and the rainfall waned, long before the 1 p.m. high tide. All first level floors remained dry! Roof and window leaks, however, abounded, with endless work for the facilities and environmental services crews. A few windows were blown out, and a few elevator shafts took on water. But all in all, our buildings, patients and care team members fared extremely well. But there was no rest for the weary. Team A remained, as the evacuation had not lifted, with most major bridges closed for inspection and many major roads filled with flooding and debris. It would be another 24 hours before relief arrived, equipment and patients could be moved back to their original places and roofs, and leaks could be patched and repaired.
Living in a coastal town, this is not the first or last incident command center our hospital team will experience. Theyre filled with phone lines, sugary snacks, old coffee, competing TV screens, mixed emotions, projecting best and worst scenarios, avoiding under- and over-staffing, hoping we dont run out of water or linens and ultimately trying to keep a positive attitude and project confidence, while fighting off uncertainty and fatigue.
But there is no better team building exercise than a hurricane incident command center. There are no silos, competing interests or hidden motives. Only clear communication, respectful tones, and companionship. Saint Matthews name is interpreted as a gift hastily given; I view this event as a strange and unwelcome but important gift for our team, long overdue and never to be taken for granted.
Danielle Scheurer is a hospitalist. This article originally appeared in the Hospital Leader.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Details added (first version posted on 18:21)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Seba Aghayeva Trend:
The Nagorno-Karabakh region has always been, is and will remain Azerbaijans integral part, said Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in his article published by the official press.
Armenias occupation policy will never be successful, said Mammadyarov.
The only way to achieve a sustainable settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and establish civilized relations between the two neighboring countries is the liberation of the occupied Azerbaijani territories, restoration of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and ensuring the right of refugees and IDPs to return to their motherlands, noted the minister.
He said this is required by international law and the UN Security Council resolutions.
The minister expressed regret that the UN Security Council resolutions on the conflicts settlement arent implemented by Armenia and the mediators efforts have not led to a result for more than 20 years.
Instead of showing good will in the negotiation process, Armenia openly impedes any effort aimed at the conflicts peaceful settlement, said Mammadyarov.
Armenia refuses to withdraw its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, hinders the refugees and IDPs from returning to their homes by ignoring the UN Security Council requirements and blatantly violating the international law, he added.
The minister said Armenia draws attention to the technical aspects of the ceasefire regime and periodically commits military sabotages by trying to divert attention from the core and substantive issues of the peace process.
Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that it is ready for substantive negotiations on the conflicts settlement, said Mammadyarov, adding that substantive negotiations should bring a change in the status quo and lead to liberation of occupied Azerbaijani territories.
The sooner Armenia realizes this and withdraws its troops from the occupied territories, the sooner the conflict will be resolved and Armenia will be able to take advantage of economic benefits of the regional cooperation, added the Azerbaijani minister.
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.
A man found guilty of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl is sentenced to 30 years in prison.
On Wednesday morning at the 111th District Court, the jury reconvened to determine the sentencing for Fernando Cano-Garcia, 32.
This comes after Wednesday's trial, where they found him guilty of sexually assaulting his niece.
Cano-Garcia was arrested last year after his niece talked to her school counselor about the sexual abuse.
"Like many cases, I would say as high as 90 percent of the cases involving abuse of children and sexual abuse of children is committed by someone the child knows and somebody the child trusts," says District Attorney Isidro Alaniz. "This case is no exception. This man was the uncle of the victim."
"But the difficulty in this case is that we had the mother of the victim, and Catelyn herself came before the jury, and asked the jury for leniency. So, that's very rare in this type of case, but they did it for him," says Garcia's attorney Nathan Henry.
Cano-Garcia faced the possibility of life in prison, but after the victim took the stand during the trial and sentencing, it was pushed back to 30 years.
County officials say over 50 Webb County employees' paychecks will be affected this Friday.
Some will either be paid half of their paycheck, while others will not be paid at all.
Commissioner John Galo says the county auditor did not approve transfers, even after approval during the county budget.
We spoke to County Auditor Leo Flores about the allegations, and what will happen to the employees' pay.
"I'm just finding out that the treasurer is saying that some employees are not going to get paid," Flores said. "That's a decision she makes - not the auditor. The auditor doesn't make decisions [of] who gets paid and who doesn't get paid. Now there is a budget that was approved by the court called the "adopted budget," and in that budget, in the general order, has the employee's name and the amount of salary he should get. That is approved by the court. All she has to do is follow that."
In our later newscasts, we talk to the county treasuer on the employee check cuts decision, and the auditor's allegations.
The county has kept quiet in light of the lawsuit made by C.Y. Benavides on a county official and commissioner who are allegedly trying to stop the development of the proposed landfill.
The developers filed a lawsuit claiming Webb County Planning Director Rhonda Tiffin and a county commissioner were stopping the development.
Benavides says Precinct Three Commissioner John Galo is trying to stop the operation.
Our cameras found both Tiffin and Galo on a statement regarding these allegations, and this is what they had to say.
"You know, we are not allowed to talk about it," says Assistant County Attorney Jorge Trevino. "We are not allowed to talk about it. We appreciate it. You understand we can't discuss it in anyway. Thank you."
Reporter: "Mr. Galo, can you talk about the lawsuit?"
Galo: "I can't. I haven't been served."
There is no word yet on where the hearing for the case will take place.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev attended the opening of Birinci Sxl Farm LLC in Qazakh district October 19.
The president was informed that the farm occupies an area of 151 hectares.
The administrative building of LLC is located there. The farm includes a 2,000-ton capacity warehouse, 250 square meter park for agricultural machinery and a 600 square meter production area.
There is also an arable land which occupies an area of 15 hectares, and an artificial rain-making technology is used there. The farm will create 170 jobs.
The president was informed that at the initial stage products manufactured by the farm will be supplied to the local market.
President Aliyev met with staff of Birinci Sxl Farm LLC and local residents, and then posed for photographs with them.
A wonderful Kilkenny woman with a joyful personality who died recently has left a wealth of memories from her time in her native city, Waterford and her final resting place, Dingle, Co Kerry.
Liz Daly (nee Martin) of Ballinvounig, Dingle and formerly of Newpark, Kilkenny died after a long and courageous battle with cancer last month, aged 59 years at Dingle Community Hospital following a short Illness.
She was born on the 6th of July 1957 in Kilkenny city. She later moved to Co. Waterford with her husband Sean and started a family.
While in Waterford she resided in Ballyduff, Kilmeaden and later Butlerstown Co Waterford.
For the past 18 years she lived in Dingle and was co-founder of Dingle Crystal. She is survived by her husband Sean; children, Stephen, Shane, Rebecca, Bella and Adam, her six grandchildren; brothers, John, Paul, David and Sister Donna.
Liz embraced life and took part in walking/hiking groups, Zumba dance classes and yoga classes every week. She was extremely talented in the kitchen and loved to host dinner parties, her home-baking was exceptional and her cafe The Cutting Wheel Cafe on Green Street, Dingle was always a popular stop off for a coffee and something sweet. She was known for her smile, her kindness, her zest for life, her flamboyancy and her fashion. She was truly ahead of her time.
Lizs life was characterised by her relentless love and care for those around her. She cared for Seans father Thomas Daly during his final weeks as he battled cancer in 2003.
Liz herself was diagnosed in 2009 with cancer, but she acquired a positive attitude and with conventional treatment and adopting a healthy organic eating lifestyle, she beat the cancer. Unfortunately, four years later she was struck again but as always she maintained her positive attitude and overcame that obstacle too. She inspired all those around her, so much so that those who were diagnosed after her always turned to her for advice.
Unfortunately, her health started to decline in late 2015 due to delayed side effects of previous cancer treatment. She died peacefully in her sleep on the 26th of September 2016 surrounded by her family.
Liz touched the lives of so many people near and far and that was made obvious by the support shown to her family during the past 9 months and during the week that she was waked at her home in Dingle.
Condolences poured in from all over the world and proved a great support to her family. She was removed from her home in Ballinvounig, Dingle on Friday the 30th of September and brought to St Marys Church in Dingle, which is situated across the street from her business Dingle Crystal. Following mass, she was buried in St Brendans cemetery in Milltown, Dingle.
There are truly no words that will do Liz the justice that she deserves. We may try, but we will always fail. As her daughter, Bella said during her eulogy on the morning of her funeral: She lived, she laughed, she loved and she left
Ar dheis De go raibh a hanam dilis
Months mind mass is in St Marys Church, Green St, Dingle at 8pm on Saturday the 29th of October.
Lovers of whiskey and beer as well as entrereneurs will be whetting their lips ater hearing about Carlow IT's latest course.
They have launched the countrys first Bachelor of Science (Honours) Degree programme in Brewing & Distilling.
The programme is the first of its kind on the island of Ireland and the result of two years of research and development by Institute of Technology Carlow that has included consultation with industry, representative organisations, national bodies and government.
Alongside the degree course, the Institute will offer several continuous professional development (CDP) programmes for employees. They include: Yeast Biology; Malting & Brewing Raw Materials; The Brewing Process; Distillation and Distilled Spirits Production and Post Distillation Downstream Processing.
The programme builds on a long tradition of degree programmes in biosciences at Institute of Technology Carlow. It will position Carlow as a centre in Ireland for teaching, learning, research and innovation in brewing and distilling and provide necessary support to the brewing and distilling industry which is undergoing a major renaissance yet experiencing a national skills deficit.
As a university-level Institute, our purpose is to identify and provide opportunities for our 7,000 learners to gain the skills, knowledge and attributes required to fulfil their professional and personal goals, while simultaneously supporting and driving the development of a vibrant economy, commented Dr Patricia Mulcahy President of Institute of Technology Carlow. The new four-year BSc (Hons) in Brewing and Distilling is the latest manifestation of this. One of the most welcome aspects of this initiative has been the expert support that we have received from the sector across the region, nationally and internationally. My thanks particularly to Carlow Brewing Company, Walsh Whiskey, Waterford Distillery, Alltech, Heriot-Watt University, An Bord Bia, Teagasc, the Irish Whiskey Association and the Irish Brewers Association.
The brewing and distilling sector is now one of Irelands fastest growing industries, exporting over 95% of its production. According to the Food Wise 2025 national plan, Irelands brewing and distilling industry will contribute towards the creation of an additional 23,000 food and drink based sectoral jobs by 2025.
an 85% increase in food and drink exports to 19 billion.
and a 65% increase in primary production value to 10billion. Whiskey exports are up 60% since 2009 with 60 million litres exported per annum. 28 distilleries are now operating or being developed on the island of Ireland and the number of microbreweries are expected to grow to 100 by 2025. Direct employment in distilling will grow 30% by 2025. A surge of interest in craft beer and micro distilleries, emerging markets in Asia and the explosion of the craft alcohol market in the United States are fuelling the sector.
Sam Synnott and Judith Ashton have been awarded a Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Elevator award at a ceremony on Tuesday, 11th October. The organisation, Buddy Bench Ireland focusses on giving children the coping skills they need for success and happiness in life.
They promote positive mental health and friendship amongst children through their classroom programme and the use of the physical bench as a visual tool on playgrounds. The award consists of 30,000 in funding and support to expand and grow the organisation.
Speaking about the award, Sam Synnott said: We intend to reach every child in Ireland. By winning the SEI Award, we can concentrate more on operations, networking and business development. Being part of this new group, I know that we will help each other professionally and personally to make an impact on society.
Over the last twelve years, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland has invested over 6.7 million in social entrepreneurs and 1,230 employment opportunities have been created in the process. This programme is sponsored by Irish company DCC plc, who have been the flagship sponsor of the Awards for the last six years and earlier this year pledged its commitment to Social Entrepreneurs Ireland until 2019, continuing its financial support with a further 700,000 in funding over this time.
CEO of DCC Tommy Breen said: DCC is proud to be a long term sponsor of the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Elevator and Impact Award programmes. It is a great privilege to play a role in getting behind Irelands brightest and most ambitious entrepreneurs working to have a positive impact on our society.
Members of the local community in Castlecomer may have information that is key to bringing a murder suspect before the courts.
Last year a murder investigation was launched into the death of Gerry Nolan who was killed in Castlecomer a decade ago.
Significant developments have been made but gardai are keen to speak to people living locally who may have vital pieces of information.
Mr Nolan, who is originally from Castlecomer, died as a result of a fire at his mobile home at the rear of a house in Deerpark in July 2006.
At the time gardai carried out a full investigation and the 44-year-old was found to have died as a direct result of the fire.
The investigation has remained open and a number of recent lines of enquiry have resulted in additional new evidence which led to the upgrading of the case to murder.
Gardai are issuing a fresh appeal to members of the public, particularly to those living in the Castlecomer area, for any information that they might have that might assist into the circumstances that surrounded Gerry Nolans death.
We know that there are people out there who have information in their possession which they were not willing to share previously, a senior investigating garda said.
We hope that with the passage of time peoples perspective and attitude and network of association might change and they might now find themselves in a position to contact us, he added.
The senior investigating officer described Mr Nolan as a generous, inoffensive and very well-liked person and appealed to people with information to come forward and contact gardai in confidence.
Were appealing to those people who have that information to share it with us, to help us resolve this for Gerrys memory and for his family and for the wider community in Castlecomer.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Kilkenny gardai on (056) 7775000.
Traffic problems are continuing to plague the residents of Wolfe Tone Street in Kilkenny City, with the closure of part of the road and restrictions in place due to ongoing works on the Central Access Scheme.
Construction work is ongoing between the hours of 7am and 10pm. Access is being restricted to local residents on the lower part of Wolfe Tone Street, Michael Street and Greens Bridge Street until October 24, and no through traffic is being permitted.
However, residents have repeatedly expressed their concern over the security of the site, the hours at which the work is being carried out, and accessibility issues. A video was posted online last week showing fire services impeded on the street.
The Order of Malta, which is currently based at the former auxiliary hospital, has also confirmed that one of its vehicles was damaged whilst attempting to navigate through the area.
The issue was raised by local councillors at meetings on Monday afternoon.
What is going on in terms of emergency vehicles, Cllr Joe Malone asked director of services Tim Butler.
I was over there and to be honest, the site wasn't safe. You could walk out on to the Castlecomer Road. Could we maybe have an update? There's a lot of people talking about it.
Cllr Malcolm Noonan said there had recently been an incident where an ambulance was required on Michael Street, and people there were concerned.
Mr Butler said that, unfortunately, the work on Wolfe Tone street is quite disruptive for residents. He said that the contractor had been on to fire and ambulance services, and they were happy that they were able to access the area.
I know there were breaches of some of the fences that have been erected, he said.
Extra efforts have been made to secure the site, while ensuring access is still possible.
Cllr Breda Gardner asked Mr Butler who the site's health and safety officer is.
Is there anything more we can do to alleviate the fears of residents?
Cllr David Kennedy said he had worked on sites for many years, and the current situation was far from satisfactory.
It should be secured or someone will get hurt, he said.
Cllr Andrew McGuinness said he had concerns in relation to noise and hours of operation on the site.
The problem is that issues have mounted up and it seems to have escalated, he said.
The problem is the construction works and the level of concern. Operating heavy machinery in or around midnight is totally unacceptable.
Cllr David Fitzgerald agreed with his colleagues.
The fencing on Wolfe Tone Street is poor. The signage it should be clearly highlighted and there is a genuine health and safety risk to residents and those going into the area.
Mr Butler said the safety of the site was the responsibility of the contractor, and that he was not aware who its health and safety officer is.
I know they don't have security on the site, but they do check it regularly, he said.
SEAT has announced details of its special 171 offers which will be available across its 22 strong dealer network from now until December 31.
The 171 offers feature 0% finance available on selected Ibiza and Leon models, 1.9% finance available on the SEAT Ibiza Sport and SEAT Leon SE Select and a staggering 2.9% finance available on the all new SEAT Ateca, SEATs first ever SUV model.
Scrappage
In addition to the attractive finance offers available, SEAT will introduce a scrappage offer of up to 4,000 on the Leon range and up to 2,500 on the Ibiza range.
Niall Phillips, Brand Director of SEAT Ireland said they were very excited to announce details of the 171 offers as they look ahead to what will be a busy 2017 for the brand.
As is always the case at SEAT, we have put the effort in to ensure we are offering the most attractive finance rates to our customers across our high quality range, he added.
The SEAT range is growing rapidly and we are delighted to be in a position to offer an extremely attractive finance rate of 2.9% on the all new SEAT Ateca, our first ever SUV model which we are sure Irish motorists will fall in love with.
Exciting time
The launch of the SEAT 171 finance offers comes at a particularly exciting time for the brand has welcomed new, high profile dealers to the network, all featuring the marques new look showrooms and forecourt signage.
In addition, SEAT has just launched the all new SEAT Ateca in the Irish market which is already performing well and generating strong interest.
Next year also promises to be a busy and exciting year for SEAT as it is set to introduce a host of new product to its rapidly growing range.
* Q3 economic growth seen steadying at 6.7 pct y/y, same as Q2
* Government spending, housing rally spurring construction boom
* Growing debt levels, property bubble among key risks
* Property market correction would weigh on growth, banks
* Q3 GDP data, Sept activity data due 0200 GMT, Wednesday
By Kevin Yao
BEIJING, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Fueled by government spending and a housing frenzy, China's economic growth likely steadied at 6.7 percent in the third quarter, but slumping private investment, surging debt and the risk of a property correction are keeping the government and global investors on edge.
Wednesday's data is expected to paint a picture of an economy that is slowly stabilising but increasingly dependent on government spending and a housing boom for growth, as exports remain stubbornly weak.
Chinese leaders are trying to spur growth to create jobs, but are also facing pressure to push painful structural reforms such as cutting industrial overcapacity, raising the spectre of more layoffs and debt defaults.
Government pledges to reduce debt are also fraught with risk, as less leverage almost always means slower economic activity in the short run, a prospect Beijing will be loath to accept as it spends ever more to hit official growth targets.
Economists believe that the greatest near-term risk is a possible correction in the high-flying property market, which accounts for about 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). A wave of restrictions imposed on buyers in major cities in recent weeks has resulted in a sharp drop in sales. "Downward pressure on growth could mount after recently announced property tightening measures. Short-term growth would also likely come under pressure as a reduction in credit growth spurs a fall in spending," analysts at Singapore's DBS Group said in a note.
"Of course, such a deleveraging push could put China's economy on a more sustainable long-term path by reducing the risk of a bad-debt crisis."
Premier Li Keqiang said last week that the economy performed better than expected in the third quarter due to a rebound in factory output, company profits and investment, while adding that debt risks are under control. However, the forecast for the third-quarter by 58 economists polled by Reuters would still be near the weakest since the global crisis, despite an expected mild improvement in factory output and investment in September.
Analysts at DBS have penciled in growth of 6.5 percent - the poorest showing since the first quarter of 2009, when it slowed to 6.2 percent amid the global crisis.
The government is aiming for growth of between 6.5 percent and 7 percent this year. In 2015, the economy expanded 6.9 percent, its slowest rate in 25 years.
Despite a rocky start, the economy grew 6.7 percent in the first half as the government cranked up infrastructure spending and state banks extended a record amount of credit.
A surprisingly strong third-quarter reading would be a welcome boost for the gloomy global economy as well as financial and commodities markets.
But unexpectedly robust data could fan scepticism about the reliability of Chinese official data. Some market watchers believe current growth is much weaker than government readings suggest.
A weak outcome would raise the risk of more capital outflows and put more pressure on the yuan currency , which has slid to six-year lows. It could also reduce Beijing's appetite for tough reforms.
But analysts believe the central bank may not rush to ease policy, given the government is now leaning more on fiscal spending to generate growth.
<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ GRAPHIC - China's GDP trends ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Reporting by Kevin Yao; Editing by Kim Coghill)
HANOI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0044 GMT.
Oct 19 Oct 18 USD/VND mid-point 22,011 22,020
USD/VND interbank 22,306/22,308 22,309/22,310 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 35.43/35.67 35.44/35.68
NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank quotes are indicative bid/ask prices.
One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are 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)
By Sudip Roy
LONDON, Oct 19 (IFR) - How big will Saudi go? That's the multi-billion question.
The lead managers on the triple-tranche offering of five, 10 and 30-year notes have been careful not to give any details about demand since books opened at the New York open on Tuesday.
Yet market chatter suggests it will be huge. The biggest-book size for an emerging markets deal was the US$69bn generated by Argentina for its US$16.5bn comeback trade earlier this year.
Argentina appealed to a deep pool of investors in the US in particular. Saudi's appeal is, arguably, more global with Middle East and Asian accounts likely to show strong interest alongside US and European investors.
"A broad range of people will look at this. It will appeal to Asian investors, developed market investors, and anyone looking for a duration trade in hard currency," said Colm McDonagh, head of EM fixed-income at Insight Investment.
Emerging markets investors, too, are likely to put in bids although the bonds are not eligible for JP Morgan's indices as Saudi Arabia's GNI per capita is too high to qualify.
If demand is US$50bn-plus, Saudi has to weigh its options between going for size or reining in pricing.
The general consensus is that Saudi will be more size sensitive than price - with most people expecting a US$10bn-US$15bn deal - but strategies can quickly change.
One EM investor in London said a 20-30bp premium over Qatar on the five-year would be appropriate but he would want a bigger concession on the 10s and 30s. Initital price thoughts of Treasuries plus 160bp area, plus 185bp area and plus 235bp area suggest a 50bp premium to Qatar.
"Saudi is a weaker credit than Qatar but from a debt stock perspective it's better as it's starting from zero. Therefore, the short-dated bonds should trade close to Qatar and Abu Dhabi. If it was a one-year maturity you could argue it should come through Qatar.
"But over a period of time, unless there is reform or the oil price rises, this credit will deteriorate more quickly so the curve needs to be steeper."
Another issue he said was lack of transparency - the investor said Saudi hasn't even revealed what oil price it is basing its budget on, while a premium will also be needed as a debut issuer.
We shall soon see.
(Reporting by Sudip Roy; editing by Alex Chambers)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev attended the opening of 110/35/6 KV Das Salahl sub-station in Qazakh district.
The president was informed that the sub-station was built to improve electricity supply for the large part of Qazakh.
Das Salahl is the fourth 110KV facility built in the western region of Azerbaijan and the 44th in the country. The previous sub-station supplied electricity to 3,637 consumers in 8 villages, while Das Salahl will supply power to 19,364 consumers in 22 villages.
The sub-station will also supply electricity to farms, plants, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure facilities in Qazakh and Aghstafa districts.
The ceremony featured demonstration of a photo and video slide show highlighting the work conducted by Azerishig.
President Aliyev launched the sub-station.
PRAGUE, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Wednesday.
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: ==========================NEWS==================================
CARS: The Czech car industry increased production by 7.3 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2016, the Automotive Industry Association (SAP) said on Wednesday.
Story: Related stories: CHINA: Czech ministers and senior parliamentarians held a private meeting with exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, risking upsetting China just as Prague is trying to boost ties with Beijing.
By contrast, the country's four highest-ranking officials kept their distance from the meeting and issued a rare joint statement stressing that the Czech Republic accepted Tibet as part of China and wanted to maintain good bilateral relations.
Story: Related stories: CENBANK: The exact timing of exit from the Czech central bank's policy of weak exchange rate remains unknown, Vice-Governor Mojmir Hampl told an exporters' conference on Tuesday.
He reiterated the bank's stance that the end of the policy would definitely not come before the second quarter of 2017, and that the bank saw the exit coming in mid-2017.
Story: Related stories: CEE MARKETS: Romanian stocks and government bond prices eased on Tuesday after the Bucharest parliament passed a bill on the conversion of Swiss franc mortgages into leu at historically low rates, intensifying fears that bank costs will rise sharply.
Story: Related stories: ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change
close on day in 2016 vs Euro 27.018 27.002 -0.06 -0.07 vs Dollar 24.578 24.577 0 1.14 Czech Equities 915.33 915.33 0.92 -4.29 U.S. Equities 18,161.94 18,086.4 0.42 4.23 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1500 GMT ======================PRESS DIGEST=============================
CETIN: Telecoms infrastructure group CETIN, owned by the richest Czech Petr Kellner's PPF group, is planning to issue bonds worth up to 2 billion euros.
Pravo, page 21
MORTGAGE RATES: The average mortgage rate fell to a new low of 1.82 percent in September from 1.84 percent in August.
Pravo, page 21
CARS: Skoda Auto, Volkswagen's Czech carmaker, has begun production of its new SUV Kodiaq. Deliveries begin in February.
Pravo, page 4
BANKS: Czech Post picked KBC's CSOB bank to continue to provide banking services at its branches.
Pravo, page 21
(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)
BRASILIA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Brazilian police on Wednesday arrested on corruption charges Eduardo Cunha, the former leader of the lower house of Congress who led the drive to impeach ex-President Dilma Rousseff, a spokesman for the federal police said.
Cunha, who was detained in the capital Brasilia, has been caught up in the sprawling kickback probe of state-run oil company Petrobras . He is accused of taking a $5 million bribe related to contracts for two drillships built for the company.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
By Jonathan Spicer and Dion Rabouin
NEW YORK, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve has rolled out a series of announcements, online forums and meetings with Americans this year in response to outspoken civic groups and many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, calling for a more transparent and inclusive U.S. central bank.
The latest critique came this week when Fed Up, a labor-affiliated coalition pushing for reforms, said it was "disappointing" that Nicole Taylor, a black woman and dean of community engagement and diversity at Stanford University whose term as director at the San Francisco Fed soon expires, would be succeeded on the board by Sanford Michelman, a white man who is co-founder of law firm Michelman & Robinson LLP.
"It's definitely a step back in terms of what I'd like to see on our board. We're working actively to build representation of women and minorities," John Williams, president of the San Francisco Fed, said on Wednesday in response to reporters' questions, noting the decision was made by private banks in his district.
After years of resisting more overt political efforts to curb its independence, the Fed this year has appeared willing to shine a light on its historically opaque process of choosing district Fed presidents, and also to show it is more sensitive to racial and gender diversity. After the Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks last year all chose as presidents men with past ties to Goldman Sachs, the Atlanta Fed hosted a public webcast this month and said it seeks a "diverse set of candidates" for its new chief, raising hopes it would name the first black or Latino Fed president in the central bank's 103-year history. "It's not just because we want to go and say we're diverse," Loretta Mester, Cleveland Fed president, said at a meeting with workers a day after her bank launched online applications for the public to recommend directors and advisers. "It's about getting different view points that are very helpful to us in ... thinking about the economy and understanding the trends."
The regional Fed presidents have rotating votes on policy, except for the head of the New York Fed who has a permanent voting role. Unlike Fed governors who are selected by the White House and approved by the Senate, the presidents are chosen by their district directors, half of whom are themselves picked by private local banks that technically own the Fed banks.
Critics say the dizzying structure leaves the Fed beholden to bankers who do not represent the public, and they point out that 11 of 12 district presidents are white while 10 are men.
Clinton, the Democrats' presidential nominee, has come out in favor of dropping bankers from district boards. That followed a May letter from 127 lawmakers to Fed Chair Janet Yellen urging more diversity. (Additional reporting by Ann Saphir in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler)
B2Gold Corp. (TSX: BTO; NYSE MKT: BTG; NAMIBIAN: B2G) reports that issues raised by the Philippines government for the Masbate gold project are broadly consistent with an action plan that has already been developed. The government has been reviewing all mining operations in the country and has shut down some as new President Rodrigo Duterte vowed to get tough with mining companies over environmental issues. B2Gold says management has developed an action plan after a preliminary notice from the government. We have received and analyzed the comprehensive audit report findings and determined that they are broadly consistent with the preliminary notice and the action plan developed to date, B2Gold says. The points raised are principally related to administrative and regulatory compliance issues, which B2Gold is confident will be resolved by continuing to work closely with the appropriate government agencies. The company is well positioned to respond to the matters raised in the audit report and expects to do so by Friday, which is within the seven-day timeframe provided by environmental authorities. Meanwhile, operations continue uninterrupted, B2Gold reports. The company describes its Masbate gold project as the largest single investment in the province of Masbate and the largest producing gold mine in the Philippines.
By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
Gran Colombia Reports Rise In 3Q Production
Gran Colombia Gold Corp. (TSX: GCM) produced 39,111 ounces of gold in the third quarter, which was up 14% from the same period a year ago, the company says. This brings output for the first nine months of 2016 to 108,829 ounces, up 25% year-on-year. The company says it remains on track to meet 2016 production guidance of 135,000 to 145,000 ounces. At the Segovia operations, third-quarter production totaled 33,552 ounces, up 20% year-on-year despite a temporary disruption in the late September due to a civil strike that kept many workers from safely reporting to their jobs, Gran Colombia says.
By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
Kerr Mines Begins Dewatering At Arizona Mine
Kerr Mines Inc. (TSX: KER) has begun dewatering and rehabilitation activities at its flagship Copperstone mine located in Arizona, the company says. We are firmly focused on restarting operations at Copperstone," says Chris Hopkins, interim chief executive officer. Completing the de-watering activities will represent a major catalyst in our efforts to unlock Copperstone's potential value. The company has also begun developing an exploration and underground development program." The Copperstone mine has produced nearly 500,000 ounces of gold through open-pit mining.
By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
Thompson Creek Shareholders Approve Purchase By Centerra
Thompson Creek Metals Co. (TSX: TCM) reports that its shareholders approved the previously announced merger with Centerra Gold Inc. (TSX: CG). The arrangement was favored by some 97% of votes cast by Thompson Creek shareholders at a special meeting Tuesday, the company says. The merger is expected to be completed on Thursday, Thompson Creek adds. The company would then become a subsidiary of Centerra.
By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
ABU DHABI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Guinea opened a new container terminal on Wednesday, part of a bauxite complex being developed in the West African country by Abu Dhabi investment fund Mubadala . Mubadala signed a $5 billion agreement with Guinea in 2013 to develop a bauxite mine, alumina refinery and a port in Guinea to secure raw material for the United Arab Emirate's aluminium plants.
The terminal in the new port of Kamsar will be used by the complex as well as by third parties as an alternative to container facilities in Conakry.
"This project remains an important milestone for my development programme for Guinea," President Alpha Conde said in a statement.
Guinea has around seven billion tonnes of bauxite resources, over a quarter of the global total, the statement said.
Guinea Alumina Corporation's (GAC) mine is in the Boke region of north-west Guinea, which holds over 1 billion tonnes of bauxite. Commercial production at the mine is expected to begin in 2018.
GAC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Emirates Global Aluminium.
(Reporting By Stanley Carvalho, editing by Susan Thomas)
(Kitco News) - Gold will rise to $1,347 an ounce during the next year, according to a poll of attendees after the London Bullion Market Associations annual conference in Singapore this week.
If so, that will mean a rise of 6% from the spot price of $1,270.35 around 8 a.m. EDT Wednesday.
Comex December gold
The LBMA asks audience members where they think each of the precious metals will go as of the 2017 LBMA conference, which is scheduled for Oct. 15-17 in Barcelona.
Participants were most bullish about silver over the next year, the LBMA pointed out. The average of forecasts was $20.90 an ounce, which would be an increase of 18% from the early-morning price of $17.73.
LBMA attendees collectively see platinum rising to $1,053.30 and palladium climbing to $752.50. Around 8 a.m. EDT, these metals were at $944.50 and $640.75, respectively, meaning LBMA forecasters see rises of 12% and 17%.
More than 700 delegates, representing 34 countries, attended the 2016 conference, the LBMA reported.
By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
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DUBAI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Fresh headline quarterly earnings results from major companies in the Gulf are set to swing investor sentiment on Wednesday, but the broadly in-line results from Saudi Basic Industries may steady the Riyadh index after three sessions of declines.
Headline third-quarter earnings of Saudi companies have come in mostly weak with some below expectations and that has dragged the main index down 4.1 percent so far this week.
But SABIC's results came in at the upper end of analysts' average expectations. The largest petrochemical producer posted a net income of 5.22 billion riyals ($1.39 billion), a 6.8 percent drop from the same period a year ago.
SABIC attributed the profit fall to lower average sales prices and a reduction in the quantity of products sold, which outweighed the benefits gained from a decrease in costs.
Saudi Cement , one of the kingdom's largest cement firms by market value, reported a 3.9 percent drop in its third-quarter net profit on Tuesday as sales dropped, selling and distribution expenses rose, and other income decreased. Tabuk Cement , a mid-sized producer, also recorded a drop in profit for the three months to Sept. 30. Net income came in at 7.9 million riyals, a 14.1 percent year-on-year decline.
In Qatar, the index may likely be weighed by some disappointing results. Commercial Bank of Qatar , reported a third-quarter net loss versus a year-ago profit. It made a net attributable loss of 1.38 million Qatari riyals ($379,016.75), Reuters calculated based on financial statements in lieu of a quarterly breakdown. That compared with a profit of 275.93 million riyals in the same period a year earlier.
Qatar Insurance , the Gulf country's largest insurer by market value, reported a 6 percent fall in its third-quarter net profit at 108.8 million riyals ($29 million). EFG Hermes had forecast the insurer to post a profit of 312 million riyals. ($1 = 3.7490 riyals)
(Reporting by Celine Aswad; Editing by Andrew Torchia and Andrew Heavens)
(Adds segment performance, details)
SYDNEY, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Australia's top casino company Crown Resorts said on Thursday it plans to spin off some of its Australian hotels and retail property in an initial public offering.
The move would split Crown's domestic assets from its resorts in the Asian gambling hub of Macau, where turnover has been subdued and the company is facing a crisis, with 18 of its staff detained for suspected breaches of Chinese gambling laws.
"The Crown Resorts board has now endorsed the implementation of a potential IPO of a 49 percent interest in some of its Australian hotels and associated retail property," the company said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange. The spun-off unit will include hotels in Melbourne and Perth, the company said.
The company first announced it was considering such a move in June, and it has not put a price tag on the hotel assets. The detention of Crown staff since last week, including the head of international VIP gambling Jason O'Connor, sent shares of the business tumbling 14 percent on Monday, amid fears of a broader crackdown on the industry in China. Crown's Macau operations were already facing a downturn, with gaming revenue there down 22.5 percent for the year to June 30, the company said in August. Billionaire James Packer, who is the company's largest shareholder but quit the board in 2015, said in June that he supported the proposal to split the business. (Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Jane Wardell, Sandra Maler and Bernard Orr)
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By Andrew Binion of the Kitsap Sun
BREMERTON A 23-year-old passenger on the Bremerton-to-Seattle ferry Monday night accused of attacking her boyfriend, then the ferry workers who tried to break up the fight, was charged Tuesday with two counts of felony assault.
As ferry workers attempted to restrain the woman, who lives in Seattle, she removed all her clothes, according to court documents.
The woman "did pull her pants back up but continued walking through the ferry topless until she was finally restrained and ferry workers were able to drape her zip-up sweatshirt over her top half," a Washington State Patrol trooper wrote.
The fight delayed the 7:55 p.m. sailing of the Hyak because it returned to the Bremerton terminal shortly after setting sail.
"All of the deck crew is trained in crowd control, but this one was out of control," Washington State Ferries spokesman Ian Sterling said.
The trooper boarded the boat to take the woman into custody.
In the lead up to the ferry workers' attempts to restrain the woman, workers told investigators they saw the suspect use a fist to strike a 51-year-old Bremerton man several times in the head and neck area, according to documents. The man told police he was in a "dating relationship" with the woman.
While being booked into the Kitsap County Jail, the woman kicked the trooper's car door into corrections officers and spat at them, according to documents.
She was charged in Kitsap District Court with two counts of third-degree assault, one for spitting on a ferry worker who tried to restrain her and the other charge for slapping another ferry worker.
Sterling said fights aboard the Bremerton-Seattle ferry are not uncommon, especially following sporting events, but he could not immediately provide numbers to back up that assertion.
"The crossing is longer, so you have longer for something to go wrong," Sterling said.
"Certainly removing clothing is a little strange," Sterling said. "I think what's rare here is that the captain had to make the decision to go back to port."
Separating hostile people usually isn't difficult, as the boats are large.
"These folks were not able to do that," Sterling said.
He added that the ferry system has requested the woman be legally barred from riding ferries.
The Rich Passage 1 was pressed into service last month on the Bremerton-Port Orchard route.
Larry Steagall / Kitsap Sun
By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun
BREMERTON Kitsap Transit, after voters twice rejected its fast ferry proposals, is trying again.
Why might the result be different?
The agency and those going to bat for the plan say a new boat that's proven to ply Rich Passage is the difference maker.
"The major difference between this plan and the others is the issue of being able to run at high speed through Rich Passage has been answered," Kitsap Transit Executive Director John Clauson said.
But opponents are doubtful that Rich Passage 1 is enough to persuade an electorate that voted down passenger-only ferry measures in 2003 and 2007. Despite a service plan that the agency expanded to reach a broader range of riders, there are concerns that all residents will pay a regressive sales tax increase for the benefit of commuters.
"I think it benefits very, very few people," transit board member and Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson said. "It is mostly funded by sales taxes, which hit our poorest populations very hard. It truly is reverse Robin Hood, giving to the rich at the expense of the poor."
The lack of a vessel that could carry riders swiftly through Rich Passage without damaging beaches was the state's downfall. At the turn of the century, Washington State Ferries operated a popular fast ferry service between Bremerton and downtown Seattle. WSF was preparing to add routes at Kingston and Southworth in a plan similar to one that Kitsap Transit has on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Rich Passage property owners sued, alleging the fast ferries' wakes were damaging their beaches. They were right. The boats were slowed, nullifying their advantage over car ferries, which serve the same route. The ferry system's subsequent loss of license tab funding put the program out of its misery.
Kitsap Transit inherited from the state what became a nine-year, $13 million, federally funded research project that culminated in the building of the low-wake, foil-assisted catamaran Rich Passage 1. Scientists tested it in the passage and determined it caused no harm. Thirty-minute crossings were back.
Questions remain, however. Can the RP1 make all of the trips expected of it? Can it meet rider demand? Can it be reliable?
During four months of testing with passengers, the boat made 40 to 60 trips a week. Scientists recommended that when it goes into service, it begins with no more than 60. The shoreline should be monitored as more are added.
Sixty trips is the number the agency had planned to run in a commuter-oriented schedule it first proposed. The public insisted that everybody should benefit, not just workers, so nighttime and Saturday trips were added. Total sailings remained at 60 during the winter but were increased to 150 from May through September. The effect on Rich Passage of more than doubling the sailings is unknown.
"What we received from (the scientists) anecdotally is they do not anticipate there to be any problems (with more sailings)," Clauson said. "What we've agreed to do is ramp up while they continue to monitor to just verify. No one seems to be at all concerned, but we're still going to make sure."
Erickson worries about the RP1 racing through Rich Passage at 37 knots, which it must to limit its wake. If it slows down for safety's sake, it'll send bigger waves toward the shoreline.
"We just don't know how this boat is going to perform," she said.
The Kingston and Southworth routes would operate in open water where boat wakes aren't a problem.
If and when service begins July 1, it would be with the 60-trip schedule.
"We have to walk before we can run," project manager Carla Sawyer said.
Depending on the shoreline, some trips might be added later in 2017, she said, with full service beginning in summer 2018.
When the state's 350-passenger Chinook and Snohomish were providing half-hour crossings, riders arrived at the Bremerton dock a half-hour early to get in line. Ridership peaked at 876,000 in 2000. Rich Passage 1, after being reduced to 118 seats to meet wake requirements, is barely one-third the size of the state's ferries.
The Kitsap Transit plan estimates Bremerton ridership at 334,000 per year at full build-out. It projects that Kingston would carry 239,000 and Southworth 205,000.
"With a $12 fare and vessel capacity of 118, the Bremerton route is not expected to face capacity issues," the plan states. "The Kingston-Seattle service is forecast to experience some capacity issues for PM trips with a proposed vessel capacity of 150."
Private operators Aqua Express and the Port of Kingston's SoundRunner service both failed to attract enough riders to survive in Kingston, but scientific modeling showed riders would change travel modes if more sailings were available and they could be confident they wouldn't go away, Sawyer said.
Kitsap Transit will be beginning service at Bremerton (2017), Kingston (2018) and Southworth (2020) without backup boats, opening it up to the risk of missed sailings. The state's car ferries could somewhat fill the role.
The prototype Rich Passage 1 hasn't been without problems. The foil fell off in April 2010 in Bellingham Bay during sea trials. Exhaust systems on the four engines were removed and rebuilt with heavier material after stress cracks appeared. Impellers in the jet drives were removed and re-engineered after being damaged in a grounding.
During the four-month test period, however, Rich Passage 1 completed 786 out of 812 trips, or 96.8 percent. The 26 trips it missed were to reinforce exhaust system welds.
Kitsap Transit is asking for a sales tax increase of 3 cents on a $10 purchase, the same as in 2007 when the measure was defeated 55 percent to 45 percent. That was an improvement over 2003, when it was shot down 61 percent to 39 percent after seeking the sales tax plus a license tab hike of $30 on a $10,000 vehicle.
The earlier attempts didn't include a bonus for buses. The sales-tax increase could fund both the cross-sound and existing Port Orchard-Bremerton ferries, freeing $1.5 million a year in the bus budget. Transit spokesman Sanjay Bhatt said there is a firm commitment to move the transit dollars back into more bus service. It equates to 23,000 more bus hours, enough to restore Sunday service, though its use would be determined after an independent route analysis.
"If the ferry issue is approved, it does not guarantee Sunday service because we're not sure what the community wants most, Sundays or more frequent and later service," Clauson said.
The business plan, taking two years to compile and costing more than $300,000 in research grant funds, is much more comprehensive than its predecessors. Experts analyzed vessels, terminals, ridership, operations, implementation, maintenance, fare collection, service planning, economic benefits and conducted public outreach.
Besides adding night and Saturday sailings during the summer at the public's behest, planners added a bigger boat at Southworth that could dock in the car ferry slip, cutting three years off the wait.
"Our feeling is this is the culmination of a lot of work with the community to make sure we've developed a plan they feel like they support," Clauson said.
Ticket prices would be kept about $2 higher per trip than competing car ferries, ranging from $5.25 for a trip using a reduced-fare monthly pass to $12 for full fare.
POPCORN & ISSUES: FAST FERRIES AND OUR FUTURE
What: The Kitsap Sun hosts a discussion on the role of fast ferries in Kitsap County's mass transit strategy.
Who: Experts in transportation policy, fast ferry operation, demographics, economics and regional planning discuss the peninsula's growth and mass transit.
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25
Where: SEEfilm Bremerton Cinema, 655 Fourth St.
RSVP: pugetsoundblogs.com/brews-and-issues/#fastferries
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
Embassy of the US in Azerbaijan has congratulated the people of the country on the 25th anniversary of independence celebrated Oct. 18.
The US was among the first countries to recognize Azerbaijans independence and values the warm friendship we have built together since that time, the US Embassy said in a statement.
Azerbaijan has made great progress in its first quarter century of independence, and we look forward to continuing to work together in support of measures to promote freedom of expression, political participation, and rule of law, increase economic prosperity, fight terrorism, and to ensure a peaceful and stable future for Azerbaijans citizens, the statement reads.
The US remains committed as well to facilitating a negotiated settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, according to the statement.
On this special occasion marking a quarter century of independence, Americans extend their best wishes to all Azerbaijanis, the US Embassy said.
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By Andrew Binion of the Kitsap Sun
PORT ORCHARD A 29-year-old Tacoma man accused of pistol-whipping his girlfriend and punching a 17-year-old girl last week in Bremerton was charged Tuesday with three felonies.
On Oct. 12 Bremerton police were called to an apartment on 100 block of Sheridan Road after receiving reports of threats with a gun, according to documents.
The teen told officers that the suspect and his girlfriend had been arguing and the suspect ended up outside. He attempted to force the door open and pointed a revolver at his girlfriend's head, cocked the hammer and threatened to shoot her if she didn't let him back inside, according to charging documents.
Once back inside, he struck the woman with the pistol, dropped the gun on a futon and began punching the woman. When the teen tried to intervene, she said the suspect punched her.
A man inside the apartment told officers that he saw the suspect beating the woman and told him to leave. The suspect picked up his pistol and left.
The suspect was booked Monday into the Kitsap County Jail. He was charged in Kitsap District Court with first-degree burglary, second-degree assault and third-degree assault.
By Andrew Binion of the Kitsap Sun
BREMERTON A 23-year-old passenger on the Bremerton-to-Seattle ferry Monday night accused of first attacking her boyfriend, then the ferry workers who tried to break up the fight, was charged Tuesday with two counts of felony assault.
As ferry workers attempted to restrain the woman, who lives in Seattle, she removed all her clothes, according to court documents.
The woman "did pull her pants back up but continued walking through the ferry topless until she was finally restrained and ferry workers were able to drape her zip-up sweatshirt over her top half," a Washington State Patrol trooper wrote.
The fight delayed the 7:55 p.m. sailing of the Hyak because it returned to the Bremerton terminal shortly after setting sail.
"All of the deck crew is trained in crowd control, but this one was out of control," Washington State Ferries spokesman Ian Sterling said.
The trooper boarded the boat to take the woman into custody.
In the lead up to the ferry workers' attempts to restrain the woman, workers told investigators they saw the suspect use a fist to strike a 51-year-old Bremerton man several times in the head and neck area, according to documents. The man told police he was in a "dating relationship" with the woman.
While being booked into the Kitsap County Jail, the woman kicked the trooper's car door into corrections officers and spat at them, according to documents.
She was charged in Kitsap District Court with two counts of third-degree assault, one for spitting on a ferry worker who tried to restrain her and the other charge for slapping another ferry worker.
Sterling said fights aboard the Bremerton-to-Seattle ferry are not uncommon, especially following sporting events, but he could not immediately provide numbers to back up that assertion.
"The crossing is longer, so you have longer for something to go wrong," Sterling said.
"Certainly removing clothing is a little strange," Sterling said. "I think what's rare here is that the captain had to make the decision to go back to port."
Separating hostile people usually isn't difficult, as the boats are large.
"These folks were not able to do that," Sterling said.
He added that the ferry system has requested the woman be legally barred from riding ferries.
Stuff reports:
A proposal for a Waikato medical school has ruffled the feathers of existing medical schools, with one dubbing it an ill-considered and expensive folly. The University of Waikato and Waikato District Health Board presented their proposal for a third, Hamilton-based, medical school to the Government on Monday.
Things may have changed but for many years the reputation of the Waikato Law School was so poor that a significant number of major law firms would not hire people from them.
Setting up a medical school from scratch in a university without a strong tradition in health sciences runs the risk of ending up with the same result.
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Got to tour the Ile De Re at Ports of Auckland on Tuesday, courtesy of Spark. The ship is in port for a couple of days before heading back to the Tasman Sea to lay the second half of the new Tasman Global Access cable.
The cable is a joint venture between three companies who normally are fierce competitors (well two of them anyway). It will be 2,300 kms long and go from Ngarunui Beach in Raglan, to Narrabeen Beach in Australia.
The cable capacity is 20 terabits a second. To put this in comparison the Southern Cross Cable started off with capacity of 120 Gb/s and even with upgrades is now at only 3.6 Tb/s.
The tour of the ship was fascinating. They have three containers that can store 500 kms of fibre each. This is one of the tanks.
The fibre is put manually into the tanks. A series of people walk it in backwards, so they walk backwards for 500 kms! Also to make it even more challenging the fibre gets taken to a pacific island on a freighter from France, offloaded there and then wound onto the ship once it arrives, so thats a lot of walking!
You think of submarine cables as huge wide cables, but fibre ones are much thinner. It is only 20 mm wide.
The Ile De Re maintains dozens of cables in the South Pacific over 50,000 kms of them. In this chamber they have all the different spare segments so they can go out and repair a cable immediately if needed, rather than go into port to get it.
The cable is fed up from the chamber and along here to the back of the ship.
This wee bugger weighs around 25 tonnes and is used to bury the cable in the shallower waters. If the depth is under 1500 metres, this is thrown off the side and used to bury it around 1 metre down.
When out in the open ocean, there are a lot of engineering calculations to work out where the ship should go and at what speed, to get the cable down where they want it. The cable may only hit the bottom 30 to 50 kms behind the ship.
I nicknamed this Thunderbird 4. It is a robotic aquatic vehicle and is used to lay and repair cables in shallower waters. The advantage over the larger unit is that it has little weight in water due to the flotation devices so you dont have 25 tonnes moving over the seabed.
In shallower waters they tend to lay one km per hour while in deeper water they can do 11 kms a day or so.
This is the bridge. This front part is where they navigate, but at he rear they have all the computers for plotting the cable location etc.
The ship has up to 60 crew on it at peak capacity. Most of the officers are French and the crew are Filipino.
It is an expensive exercise laying a submarine cable. Of the total $100 million cost of the project, the vast majority would be the actual laying.
Around 50% of our international bandwidth is now with Australia and it is projected to grow by 11,000% over the next decade. So this cable will be an important addition to our capacity, and will also provide greater redundancy in case of failure with Southern Cross (itself unlikely as it has two cables).
There is an existing cable called Tasman 2. It has such small capacity it can only handle 1% of trans-Tasman traffic. It will be decomissioned once TGA goes live in hopefully very early 2017.
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Stuff reports:
The last remnant of the anti-nuclear standoff has been swept aside, with approval granted for a visit by a United States warship to a New Zealand port.
Prime Minister John Key announced the destroyer USS Sampson will take part in the navys 75th anniversary.celebrations in November.
It will be the first US warship to dock here since the ANZUS bust up over New Zealands anti-nuclear legislation in the mid-1980s.
I am 100 per cent confident it meets New Zealands law and that means its neither nuclear powered nor carries nuclear weapons, Key said.
And this time around peace protesters from the mid-1980s are far more relaxed about the visit.
Kevin Hackwell, who with a friend was arrested in Wellington harbour after swimming out to tag the USS Texas in 1983, said it was a victory for New Zealands anti-nuclear policy.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
As part of his visit to Aghstafa, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has viewed conditions created at the newly renovated Heydar Aliyev Center.
The construction of the Heydar Aliyev Center started in February 2008, and the building was inaugurated in September of the same year with participation of President Ilham Aliyev.
The repair and reconstruction work was carried out in the building in January-February, 2016. A 320-seat open air concert scene was built in the center.
A bas-relief of national leader Heydar Aliyev was installed in the foyer of the four-story building. There are exhibition halls featuring photos that reflect the national leaders life and activity.
Exhibition halls of Saloglu furniture and Akkord sewing factories were opened in the center.
A 400-seat auditorium here is supplied with modern sound equipment.
The center also has a small cinema and two conference halls.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend:
The 23rd OSCE Ministerial Council will take place on Dec. 8-9, 2016 in Hamburg, Germany, the OSCE said in a message posted on its website.
The event will be held at the invitation of the 2016 OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The Ministerial Council is the central decision-making and governing body of the OSCE. The meeting, held annually, provides the foreign ministers of the 57 OSCE participating states an opportunity to review and assess the Organization's activities and strengthen the dialogue on security issues in the OSCE area.
The OSCE chairmanship will pass to Austria in January 2017.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend:
NATO looks forward to continue cooperation with Azerbaijan, James Appathurai, NATO secretary general's special representative for South Caucasus and Central Asia, tweeted Oct. 19.
Appathurai also congratulated Azerbaijan on the 25th anniversary of the restoration of its independence.
Azerbaijan-NATO cooperation is realized as part of the Partnership for Peace program.
Earlier, NATO adopted a document on the fourth stage of the Individual Partnership Action Plan for 2015-2016.
Meanwhile, NATOs main office, which is the Hungarian embassy in Baku, will carry out the functions of the NATO coordinator in Azerbaijan since Jan. 1, 2017.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
By Choi Sung-jin
Government and business officials here rely much on advice from foreign consultants when they decide which industries and companies to keep afloat and which to let go under.
But some recent examples raise doubts about the wisdom of giving too much credence to these consulting firms.
For instance, McKinsey & Co., which recently advised Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) to withdraw from its offshore plant business, reportedly previously told the company to increase its proportion of floating oil-drilling structure production, industry sources said Tuesday.
In 2013, Daewoo Shipbuilding asked McKinsey to provide consulting services on its management. The multinational consulting firm estimated DSME's annual sales would grow to 28 trillion won ($25 billion) by 2023, with some 15 trillion won of it coming from offshore plants. It then predicted the offshore plants market would grow 7 percent a year on average.
McKinsey told Daewoo to enhance capacity for offshore plant construction to widen the gap with its Korean and Chinese competitors. To sum up, its conclusion was to concentrate on offshore plants while selecting a few strategic parts and focusing on them in building commercial vessels.
Daewoo accepted the advice and signed a contract in that year to enter into an industrial park on the outskirts of Seoul to train manpower designing offshore plants.
A year after the McKinsey report came, however, international oil prices began to fall, freezing demand for offshore plants and throwing Daewoo into trouble. Daewoo's orders for offshore plants totaled $10.5 billion in 2012, accounting for 74 percent of its order receipts, but fell to $8.1 billion in 2013 and $2.7 billion in 2014. Daewoo has received no new offshore plant orders since last year.
Design changes and schedule delays have added to Daewoo's losses -- the biggest reasons for the company's present trouble.
In another consulting report McKinsey made at the request of the Korea Offshore & Shipbuilding Association this year, the U.S.-based company reportedly told Daewoo Shipbuilding to withdraw from the offshore business after completing the existing contracts, concluding that DSME is least likely to survive among the nation's three large shipbuilders.
Industry watchers are expressing doubts about the credibility of McKinsey's consulting that represented a sharp about-face in three years, though. "It would be risky to push ahead with industrial restructuring based on the advice from the foreign consultant that failed to forecast the market situation in the near future," a local analyst said.
A similar controversy has hit the steel industry.
Boston Consulting Group recently advised Korean steelmakers to curtail production facilities for thick plate, predicting a supply glut because of declining orders from the shipbuilding industry. Domestic steelmakers cast this aside as an "assertion ignorant of industrial reality."
"Korea imported as much as 2.5 million tons of thick plates from China and other countries last year," an industry executive said. "If we cut down on their production under the pretext of restructuring, it will not help to strengthen the competitiveness of the domestic industry but will benefit only Chinese makers. Another reason we can hardly trust their advice is that it is the U.S. company's first consulting service for the steel sector."
By Kim Tae-gyu
Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics
The recent Galaxy Note 7 crisis will prompt Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong to end his quiet and low-key stance and come to the fore in running the group, analysts said Wednesday.
Adding to such expectations is that the 48-year-old Samsung Group heir would win a board seat as a registered executive of the tech giant at a shareholders' meeting slated for Oct. 27.
As his father, Chairman Lee Kun-hee, has remained incapacitated since a heart attack midway through 2014, Vice Chairman Lee has led the country's foremost company but has not come forth formally.
"Vice Chairman Lee would not stay in the background anymore. He is likely to take the driver's seat to deal with the aftermath of the Note 7 blunder," said Cho Yun-nam, a chief researcher at Daishin Securities.
"The shareholders' meeting would provide momentum because thereafter he will have to take legal responsibility for the management of Samsung Electronics."
Earlier this month, Samsung opted to pull the plug on its jumbo smartphone Galaxy Note 7 due to continued reports of the flagship device catching fire while charging.
The unprecedented decision, made less than two months after the introduction of the gadget, is feared to cost Samsung billions of dollars.
IBK Securities research head Lee Jong-woo likened Vice Chairman Lee's current situation to 1993 when Chairman Lee emerged at the fore to deal with Samsung product quality problems.
After his inauguration in late 1987, Chairman Lee waited almost five years to spearhead the famous new management campaign in 1993 incorporating the quality-first mindset into the group.
Back then, he famously urged employees to "Change everything except your wife and kids."
"The senior Lee waited five years to come to the fore but the junior Lee does not have the luxury to wait so long because changes are happening so fast now compared to the early 1990s," Lee said.
To complicate things further, Elliott Management this month urged Samsung Electronics to split in two to improve its "unnecessarily complex" ownership structure, which the hedge fund claimed undermines the firm's values.
The U.S. fund, which has a 0.62 percent stake in Samsung Electronics, is predicted to bring up the issue when shareholders convene later this month.
"The Galaxy Note 7 recall and other issues put Vice Chairman Lee to the test. I think it is a good option for Lee to speak to the public himself about them," said Prof. Lee Phil-sang of Seoul National University.
The third-generation Samsung executive had an official press conference only once last year to apologize for the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
Samsung Group's affiliate, Samsung Medical Center, was accused of being responsible for the disease's fast spread to many patients at the large-sized hospital.
By Kim Tae-gyu
Starfield Hanam, a mega-sized shopping mall of Shinsegae Group, is expected to make a profit beginning in November, just three months after its launch in early September.
A senior Shinsegae executive said that Starfield Hanam might get into the black this year if profits for the next two months are substantial it is supposed to draw up the income statement for 2016 based on performance during the final four months.
"We check the financial status of Starfield Hanam every month. We suffered a loss last month and things would be similar this month," said the executive who asked not to be named.
"But the entity is highly likely to make money starting next month. If the amount is big enough for the remainder of this year, we may chalk up a profit for the full year 2016."
He refused to disclose the figures in detail but said that its profits would be stable and sustainable.
"Most of our income came from rent without regard to fluctuations of sales. As a result, our revenue streams are not volatile," he said.
Another Shinsegae insider said that the group aimed to be profitable in the first year between September 2015 and August 2016 but didn't expect that it would near the goal this early.
Shinsegae Property Vice President Yim Young-rok recently told the press that the mall's operator would earn more than 820 billion won ($745 million) in sales during the first 12 months of operation.
He added that the new cash cow of Shinsegae strives to turn a profit in one or two years.
Situated 20 kilometers southeast of Seoul, the shopping complex is the biggest in the country in terms of floor space. It has a department store, retail outlets and electronics shops as well as a luxury zone harboring approximately 30 global premium brands.
Premium supermarkets and toy shops are also popular together with showrooms of diverse vehicles.
The facility built on a 119,000 square meter site with a parking lot big enough for 6,200 cars attracted more than 1.5 million shoppers in the first 10 days after opening.
Shinsegae, the country's top retail conglomerate, joined hands with Taubman, a U.S.-based shopping mall developer, to build Starfield Hanam. The former has a 51-percent stake while the latter holds the remaining 49 percent.
According to sources, its Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin spearheaded the project. He is a grandson of Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chul and cousin of Samsung Group heir Lee Jae-yong.
By Park Jae-hyuk
Korean cosmetics firms are seeking to expand their presence in China, building cosmetics plants or selling their products in Chinese online malls, in order to advance K-beauty fever there.
Their moves come as China has tightened sanitary inspections amid chilly relations since Korea's decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system.
TonyMoly said Monday it would build a new cosmetics plant in Zhejiang, China, by next June, investing 23 billion won ($20 million) into its Chinese affiliate Megacos.
The road-shop brand plans to work on product development, container making and packaging procedures all at once, through the factory's one-stop system.
"We will introduce our high-quality technologies to China, promoting color cosmetics and running OEM and ODM businesses," a TonyMoly official said.
Hanbul Cosmetics also said it will build its new plant in Zhejiang by next May, and other promising cosmetics firms such as Cosmax and Kolmar aim to expand in the Chinese market, building additional facilities there.
The two leaders, AmorePacific and LG Household & Health Care, have already built plants in China.
The nation's top cosmetics firm, AmorePacific, built Beauty Campus in Shanghai in 2014, investing 130 billion won. The 41,000-square-meter facility produced 15 million items last year and seeks to produce over 20 million this year.
Small and medium-sized businesses, which struggle to establish large facilities overseas, are finding their markets through China's online malls.
Those firms had the chance to sell their products at Tmall, during the event hosted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), between Monday and Wednesday.
The largest online mall in China introduced over 50 Korean brands, enabling Chinese consumers to purchase cosmetics directly delivered from Korea, during the event.
"The government will help cosmetics firms to advance in China, collaborating with online and offline retailers, as well as Tmall," said a trade ministry official.
Korean cosmetics firms have depended on Chinese tourists at duty free shops and exports.
However, Chinese customs authorities banned import of 61 items from Korea including cosmetics and foods in August, according to KOTRA. China plans to tighten its regulations on heavy metal content in cosmetics in December as well.
Due to the strong regulations, Prestige Creme d'Escargot of It's Skin is yet to be approved for sales, although the company applied for approval in August last year.
If Korean cosmetics firms build plants in China or sell their products at Chinese online malls, they can sell their products without needing approval.
Korea Exchange CEO Jeong Chan-woo, right, poses with Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) CEO Tran Van Dung after signing an agreement about IT infrastructure at HOSE in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Wednesday.
/ Courtesy of Korea Exchange
By Nam Hyun-woo
The Korea Exchange (KRX), Korea's bourse operator, said Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with its Vietnamese counterparts over establishing advanced IT infrastructure for the latter's stock market.
According to the KRX, the deal is aimed at building the entire IT system within the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE), Hanoi Stock Exchange and Vietnam Securities Depository. The project is funded by the Vietnamese government and will be the largest project in KRX's history.
The KRX said it will take two years for the establishment to take place and it will cover the fields of market information, market surveillance, clearing and settlement, and depository and registration.
The Vietnamese system will be based on EXTURE+, which is a next generation trading platform in production by the KRX, and will be customized to meet the requirements of the Vietnamese market. A number of leading IT firms in and outside of Korea will join the project, the KRX said.
"The close alliance and cooperation will not only make this project a success, but lay a firm foundation for further collaboration in the future," said KRX CEO Jeong Chan-woo.
A KRX official said the project will not only raise the bourse operator's status in the global stock trading IT solution market but also serve a key role in the progress of the Vietnamese capital market.
Since 2007, the KRX has been exporting its IT system to eight countries Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Vietnam. In 2007, the KRX assisted Bursa Malaysia to develop an electronic bond trading platform and joined Cambodia to set up a bourse.
Most recently, the KRX exported technologies for trading and a market surveillance system for the Azerbaijan stock market last year. The KRX official said it seeks to sign agreements in other regions, such as the Middle East and South America.
KRX CEO Jeong, HOSE CEO Tran Van Dung and other ranking officials from Hanoi Stock Exchange and Vietnam Securities Depository attended a signing ceremony held at HOSE.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerrys recent statement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is absolutely unacceptable, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in an interview with head of the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya Dmitry Kiselyov for Sputnik.
The president was responding to Kiselyovs question regarding Kerrys recent statement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution.
This is a diplomatic mishap, and our Foreign Ministry and I have already responded to this inappropriate statement, he said.
Ilham Aliyev reminded that recently, on October 7, he has quite clearly expressed his opinion on the statement during a Cabinet of Ministers meeting.
I said it is at least unfair to put blame on Azerbaijan for the conflict not being resolved, said the president. The statement is absolutely contrary to the position of the U.S. President Obama, together with other presidents of France and of Russia has said that the status-quo is unacceptable. But now the U.S. secretary of state declares that he sees no settlement, and moreover he says that solving this conflict is even harder than solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
What kind of signal is he sending, and to whom? Is he sending a signal to Armenia that they should protract this conflict as many years as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has lasted? This is absolutely unacceptable statement, said the president.
He added that this statement once again shows why the conflict is still not solved.
Because there are decisions, resolutions of international organizations, but they are not executed. There is no pressure on the aggressor country, on the contrary, often there is a policy of encouraging the aggressor, something well-known in the history of the 20th century not of the same scale, but roughly of the same essence, said Ilham Aliyev.
This is the problem we are facing. We are being told: the peaceful way, only the peaceful way, nothing but the peaceful way. We say very well, lets settle this, because eventually it is unfair, aside from violating all the international laws, to occupy another states territory and drive out the population, and keep the occupied territories under control, President Aliyev added.
He said it is no secret today that Azerbaijans army has a serious potential to solve many issues.
We are told the peaceful way, we say very well then, we are waiting. And instead of the pressure on the aggressor we hear such statements, added the president.
Herman Cornejo, left, and Alessandra Ferri perform in a scene from the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan / Courtesy of Universal Ballet Company
Ballerina Alessandra Ferri speaks during a press conference for the Universal Ballet Company's
"Romeo and Juliet" at the Universal Arts Center in eastern Seoul, Tuesday. / Yonhap
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Physicality is an important aspect of ballet and it is common for ballet dancers to retire as they age. However, age doesn't matter for Alessandra Ferri, 53, the oldest active ballerina in the world. She will dance the role of Juliet in Kenneth MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet" with the Universal Ballet Company (UBC) in Seoul on Oct. 23 and 26.
Ferri, who retired in 2007, returned to the stage due to her endless yearning for dance.
"When I decided to stop, I was 44 years old," Ferri said at a press conference at the Universal Arts Center in eastern Seoul, Tuesday. "The element of fear at that time was competing with myself -- not being able to feel how I used to be. I was starting to feel insecure about myself, so I decided to stop. It was a mental fear."
However, she was not completely happy with her six years of leaving dance. "I was not alive. I realized that I love dancing and it's not a job I just can quit," the prima ballerina explained.
Julia H. Moon, president and director of the UBC, asked Ferri to dance Juliet in Seoul after her successful stint in New York earlier this year. Ferri has visited Korea a few times, but this is her first time as a lead dancer.
"It is quite special to be here. I thank Julia for giving the opportunity to perform with this amazing company here," Ferri said. "It happened very quickly, but we made it possible and I'm very happy about it."
MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet" is one of the masterpieces of drama ballet, which requires theatrical strength as much as dancing techniques.
When she came out of retirement in June as Juliet at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the New York Times wrote "The plasticity, liquidity and effortless eloquence of her movement seem unchanged. Her stage persona remains vivid, ardent, rapturous, impulsive and compelling."
"I was born with a physique good for dancing and am lucky to be given by nature. Maybe I always wanted to be a human being, a woman on stage, not a dancer. It is how I approach every role and it is what is strong about my interpretation," Ferri said.
Ferri said "Romeo and Juliet" is not romantic. "It is not a love story at all. It's about violence, hate and death. It's not just a pretty dance. I think 'pretty' did not exist in MacMillan's vocabulary," she said. "MacMillan said a dancer should never be afraid of being an artist on stage. What he meant was when you love, cry and die on stage, just be who you are."
American Ballet Theatre's principal dancer Herman Cornejo will dance as Romeo opposite Ferri. The 35-year-old said it was easy for him to decide when Ferri proposed the role to him.
"I grew up watching Alessandra dancing and (her longtime partner) Julio Bocca is like my mentor. I was nervous to step into his shoes, but it is a pleasure to work in the role. It's very special to dance Romeo and Juliet with Alessandra. This is the highlight of my career," Cornejo said.
The UBC's "Romeo and Juliet" runs Oct. 22 to 29 at the Opera Theater of Seoul Arts Center in southern Seoul. Tickets cost 10,000 to 120,000 won. For more information, visit universalballet.com or call 070-7124-1737.
Korean customers queue at French brand Vetements' one-day garage sale in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, Monday.
/ Courtesy of Vetements
By Kim Jae-heun
One of the hottest fashion brands currently, France's Vetements held a surprise garage sale in Korea, introducing its limited editions only to Korean customers at Namyangju in Gyeonggi Province, Monday.
The global brand's sudden decision to open its capsule collection not in New York, not in London, not in Paris and not in Milan, but at a far-off warehouse located on the outskirts of Korea's capital city Seoul, was welcoming but dubious news for the brand's local customers. Korea is Vetements' biggest online buyer in Asia and third-largest global customer.
But then, it all came clear, when the notorious brand revealed its concept and location of the event just a day before the opening. It wanted to prove that it can sell anything, anywhere in Korea and people will still flock to sweep the items disguised as limited edition.
Vetements' garage sale, in collaboration with British online luxury brand retailer Matchesfashion.com, announced its collection concept as "Official Fake."
This captured Instagram image from British online luxury brand retailer Matchesfashion.com shows its notification of Vetements' capsule collection in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, Monday.
The brand reportedly explained that "Korea is one of the countries that have many fake' products especially that of the designer brands,' and Vetements found many products here, which have reinterpreted its original products freshly and applied its inspiration on their new collection."
However, fashion insiders criticized the brand's original intention to mock Koreans.
"I felt like I was at Costco with a bunch of clothes hung in a long line at a huge warehouse," said Lee Sun-woo, CEO of Seoul Showroom, a managing company for fashion designers. "My impression was that the event looked like a collaboration between Vetements and a fake product company. Vetements say they got the inspiration from reinterpreted products here, but it was only a scene of mockery to me.
"It was as if they were saying you are still going to buy our products even if you have copy designs in your country selling at much lower prices. We will reinterpret them and sell them again at higher prices. See, so many people came,'" said Lee.
Some 800 to 1,000 people came to the garage sale and all items there were sold out except black T-shirts and white hoodies.
Matchesfashion.com held a two-day pop-up event following the garage sale, Monday, introducing 26 brands, including Vetements. The company's CEO Tom Chapman participated in the event at the SongEun ArtSpace in Cheongdam, Seoul. An online retail giant official explained that their visit aimed to meet Korean customers, who enjoy their fastest international delivery system, offline. Korean customers reportedly take up some 50 percent of Vetements sales.
Fashion industry insiders agree that people no longer shop at department stores or offline shops these days and these events have replaced this.
However, Lee also questioned their intention to hold the garage sale right before the country's biggest fashion festival, Seoul Fashion Week.
"I am just curious why they had to open a garage sale just a day before the runway shows and trade shows were scheduled at Seoul Fashion Week. It could have been seen as a unique event for Vetements to display a collection of kitsch concepts, if it was held on another day. But that particular day makes fashion insiders question the French brand's original intention of the garage sale," said Lee.
The fashion management CEO's criticism continued on Vetements' exclusive event for the lack of item variety and the extravagant prices for their quality.
The brand introduced seven newly designed items, which Lee argued were neither new nor high quality.
A red cap displayed on the hanger had only the word "CAP" written on it and it was sold for 235,000 won ($208.96). The most expensive item there was Vetements' signature product Light Hell Sock Boot, which sold for 1.49 million won ($1,320), followed by jeans that cost 1.37 million won ($1,213).
"If you look at the collaboration between H&M and Isabel Marant, the collection shows the unique design of Isabel Marant but at a much cheaper price. But Vetements' capsule collection presented at the garage sale was not the level they originally offered," said Lee.
"The kitsch concept of its clothes may have scarcity for its collaboration with Matchesfashion.com, but I would rather buy Vetements' original label with the same price."
Security guards watch over the site where a man, 36, died after being caught in the gap between a train and a platform safety screen door at Gimpo International Airport Station on Wednesday morning. / Yonhap
By Ko Dong-hwan
A man was killed after being caught between subway safety doors and a train at Gimpo International Airport Station in western Seoul, Wednesday.
The passenger, surnamed Kim, 36, was on a train heading for Banghwa Station of line No. 5. As the train arrived at Gimpo station, he was getting off but got caught in the 30-centimeter gap between the train and the platform safety screen door.
As the subway engineer closed the train doors and screen doors to depart, a passenger reported through the intercom on the train that a man was caught between the two sets of doors, according to Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit Corp.
The engineer re-opened the doors and closed them again 27 seconds later and started moving the train, apparently failing to check whether the man got out of the gap.
The victim, circled, collapses after coming through an emergency door on the platform. He died in hospital. / Yonhap
A security camera showed that Kim was flung through an emergency exit door next to the safety screen door when the train began moving again.
Kim was taken to Myongji Hospital in the nearby city of Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, but was pronounced dead on arrival.
It was the year's third death related to screen doors at train stations. In February, an elderly woman was killed after being trapped between the screen door and the train at Seoul Station. In May, a mechanic was hit and killed by an arriving train at Guui Station in eastern Seoul while fixing a malfunctioning platform screen door.
Incheon firefighters save a woman trapped in a toy machine after she crawled in to steal a doll. / Yonhap
By Ko Dong-hwan
Firefighters have rescued a drunken woman who was trapped in a toy machine.
The woman, 20, got inside the machine in Incheon through the 30-centimeter square opening where toys drop out. She attempted the escapade at 4 a.m. Monday after failing to earn a toy.
The machine, controlled by a joystick and buttons, challenges players to maneuver a gripper to pick up the toys.
Incheon Seobu Fire Station said Tuesday firefighters arrived at the scene after the woman's friend called for help. They ripped open a metal panel on the machine to free the woman, who was unharmed.
"The woman had an accomplice looking out for anyone coming while she sneaked into the machine," a lawyer told YTN TV news. "That's a good case for special theft. She must compensate for the destroyed dispenser, too. She won't be possibly dealt any heavy punishment but she certainly earned herself a criminal record."
Toy dispensers filled with dolls are common in Korea. / Yonhap
In 2015, a boy, 9, got into a toy dispenser to steal a doll. Another boy, 7, tried to steal a cap inside a machine in 2013, while a similar theft was attempted by a boy, 10, in 2011. A man, 32, stole 600,000 won ($530) worth of toys using the same method in 2013.
"These thefts only leave the machines' owners embittered," the lawyer said. "I mean, what did they ever do wrong? I'm sure the woman must have been too embarrassed to call for help inside the machine."
Police arrested 800 foreigners from July to October who were involved in 348 crimes. / Korea Times file
By Lee Jin-a
Police booked more than 800 foreigners for allegedly committing crimes during a special 100-day crackdown from July 4.
The National Police Agency said Tuesday 803 foreigners involved in 348 cases were booked and 136 were arrested in the period.
By crime type, violent crime (67 percent) led the way, followed by narcotics (24 percent), sexual violence (5 percent) and gambling (4 percent).
For violent crime, 189 cases (80 percent) occurred among foreigners and 83 percent among compatriots. Police said most criminals who assaulted people were drunk.
Most of the drugs were smuggled into Korea via airplane luggage or international shipping packages from China and Thailand. By type, 62 percent of the reported drugs were methamphetamine and 30 percent yaba. They were mainly sold via social network services in the country.
For gambling cases, most offenders were caught in private homes. Police said the stakes were usually not high and about 1.8 million won ($1,600) on average was confiscated in each case. Police said they will continue clamping down on these crimes because they can often lead to offences such as loan-sharking.
Meanwhile, police helped 15 illegal immigrants who were victims of assault or molestation to report their injuries without being deported.
According to a policy introduced in March 2013, police have exempted illegal immigrants that are victims of crime from being reported to immigration authorities when they report their cases to police.
By Hong Dam-young
Two Korean military officers are being investigated for allegedly raping a female college student last year before they were commissioned.
The suspects, both second lieutenants, were students at the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) in Gwangju when they allegedly raped the drunken student at a motel in the city, according to the Korean military on Tuesday.
The three were drinking near the college at the time. When the victim got drunk, the suspects took her to the motel, where three other men allegedly joined the officers in the assault, the military said.
The alleged crime was revealed by accident when one of the suspects was accused last July of assaulting a woman while on leave.
During the investigation, military police found a video of the previous year's alleged rape on the suspect's laptop.
Police said they will investigate the other officer over allegedly plotting the rape.
Three other men who were allegedly involved have been taken to a local police station.
By Jun Ji-hye
Debate is heating up over whether the nation should introduce alternative military service after an appellate court on Tuesday acquitted three men accused of refusing to be drafted for religious reasons.
The three men were indicted for violating the military service law after having refused mandatory service out of their religious conviction that rejects war and murder. One man was found not guilty in a lower court, which led to an appeal by the prosecution, which was turned down by the appellate court. For the two other men, the appellate court overturned a guilty verdict given to them at a lower court.
It was the first time that an appellate court ruled in favor of conscientious objectors, while lower courts have given mixed rulings in multiple cases.
"Personal conscience and religion is constitutionally guaranteed rights and cannot be punished," the court said in its ruling.
The court also said the international community tends to recognize the rights to the conscientious objection of military service, noting that "A social consensus has been formed in Korea as well for the need to introduce alternative military service."
All able-bodied Korean men are mandated by law to serve in the military for about two years.
Alternative service allows conscientious objectors to do community service or participate in disaster-relief missions instead of serving in the military. Some European countries including Norway, which maintain a conscription system, allow such alternative service.
Supporters of the alternative service say that the country should recognize the minority and respect their faith.
"Without having alternatives, it is improper to force everyone to serve in the military and do things related to war," lawyer Sohn Soo-ho said during a radio appearance, Wednesday. "I agree with the latest ruling of the appellate court. It is about time we take a step forward in the discussion."
But those who are opposed to the idea say that it is too vague to decide what is conscientious and what is not.
"Criteria for deciding conscientious objectors are vague," said lawyer Roh Young-hee. "We need to think about what would happen when everyone wants alternative service amid the challenging security situation of this nation."
The Ministry of National Defense also took a cautious attitude about the issue, saying that the alternative service could decrease the morale of soldiers in active service.
"There is also a possibility that the system could be abused by draft evaders," said Col. Na Seng-yong, the ministry's deputy spokesman.
The ministry also said in a parliamentary inspection session held earlier this month that it is "premature" to introduce alternative service when the national security situation is considered.
The number of those who have refused the compulsory service for religious reasons since 2006 is about 5,700, according to the ministry. Most of them have been sentenced to about a year and six months in prison.
The Constitutional Court ruled in 2004 and 2011 that it is constitutional to punish those who refuse mandatory military service.
Three men who faced a jail term last year for refusing to be drafted for religious reasons filed a constitutional complaint, and the court is currently reviewing the case.
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, left, and Defense Minister Han Min-koo greet veterans during their visit to the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Wednesday. / Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
Imposing harsher sanctions on North Korea might be discussed with U.S. officials, said Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, who is visiting Washington along with Defense Minister Han Min-koo, Wednesday.
The ministers are scheduled to hold "two plus two" talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry, Thursday.
"There are sanctions imposed by the UNSC, those imposed by the United States and its allies and those imposed by other international communities," Yun told reporters during a joint visit with Han to the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. "South Korea and the United States will discuss ways to maximize effects of sanctions on the North in these three pillars."
Yun also told the National Assembly, Oct. 13, that there is great possibility that even harsher content would be included in Seoul and Washington's unilateral sanctions compared to those imposed after the North carried out its fourth nuclear test in January.
In the wake of the fourth test, the UNSC also adopted Resolution 2270, which included the harshest sanctions yet on the North, but the Kim Jong-un regime conducted its fifth test on Sept. 9.
Wednesday's talks are also expected to focus on ways to strengthen the U.S. "extended deterrence" protection of South Korea.
Extended deterrence refers to Washington's stated commitment to defend its ally by mobilizing all military capabilities nuclear and conventional to cope with the North's aggression and provocations.
"We will discuss comprehensive strategies to deal with North Korean threats," Yun said. "In particular, we're going to have in-depth discussions on ways to specify and institutionalize extended deterrence, which is a key element in the U.S. security commitment to South Korea."
On Thursday, the two countries are scheduled to hold the annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) led by defense chiefs of the two nations, during which Han and Carter are also expected to discuss detailed extended deterrence measures, possibly including permanently deploying U.S. strategic assets in the South, such as nuclear-capable B-52 and B-1B bombers.
"In the SCM talks, we will jointly assess North Korea's threats and the situation in the North and discuss ways to guarantee the implementation of extended deterrence, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella, so as to cope with North Korea's nuclear and missile threats," Han told reporters during the visit to the war memorial.
In 2016 alone, the reclusive state has conducted two nuclear tests and launched more than 20 ballistic missiles despite warnings from the international community.
On Saturday, Pyongyang launched what was presumed to be a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), though it exploded soon after liftoff, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The IRBMs, believed to have a range of 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers, are in theory capable of striking U.S. naval and air bases in Guam.
Four-month corruption probe ends with a whimper
By Jung Min-ho
Shin Dong-bin, chairman of Lotte Group, comes to work at the group's head office in Seoul, Wednesday.
/ Yonhap
Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin was indicted on charges of embezzlement and breach of trust, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office announced Wednesday, concluding its four-month corruption probe into the group.
Prosecutors have also indicted Shin Kyuk-ho, the chairman's father and Lotte founder, and Shin Dong-joo, the chairman's elder brother, on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement. With Shin Young-ja, the chairman's sister, and Seo Mi-kyung, the founder's common-law wife, indicted on similar charges, a total of five members of the Lotte founding family will face trial.
Yet for the prosecution, the results are disappointing, given that more than 20 prosecutors have participated in the lengthy investigation into the allegations of massive slush funds and corruption tied to heavyweight politicians. Evidence shows that their corruption charges are much less than suspected.
The chairman is suspected of allowing his family members to pocket 50 billion won in total from Lotte affiliates. The prosecution also believes that he caused financial damage of 175 billion won to Lotte by supporting his family business within the group.
The chairman has denied all the charges, saying he did not play any active role in the illegal activities.
Initially, the prosecution planned to arrest him. But investigators had to change their plan after the Seoul Central District Court disapproved their request for the arrest warrant on Sept. 28.
Shin Kyuk-ho is suspected of dodging 85.8 billion won in taxes in the process of yielding his shares of Lotte Holdings to his family, including Seo. He is also facing charges of embezzlement and breach of trust.
Shin Dong-joo is facing charges of receiving 39.1 billion won from Lotte's affiliates for no reason from 2005 to 2015.
Shin Young-ja is facing charges of evading 56 billion won in gift taxes for receiving shares of Lotte Holdings from her father.
Prosecutors believe Seo and her daughter pocketed 50.8 billion won from Lotte affiliates. The two have been staying in Japan to avoid investigation.
Along with the owner family, the prosecution also indicted 14 former and current Lotte executives.
During the investigation, Lotte Group Vice Chairman Lee In-won was found dead hours before he was to face questioning by the prosecution. Some analysts predicted at the time prosecutors would wind down the investigation.
Lotte, which is Korea's fifth largest conglomerate, vowed to carry out a major overhaul to regain consumer confidence, faced with criticism over shady business practices.
"We will try to fix various problems revealed during the investigation and will faithfully cooperate with the legal proceedings," Lotte Group said in a statement.
Lotte's turmoil began last year, when a family feud erupted between Shin Dong-bin and Shin Dong-joo over the group leadership. Since then, Lotte has faced a torrent of regulatory scrutiny and investigations.
By Kang Seung-woo
President Park Geun-hye faces growing calls to speak on the alleged irregularities linked to her confidant Choi Soon-sil.
The main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) has set up a special committee to look into the allegations, while the second-largest opposition People's Party is seeking a special prosecutor.
In addition, some ruling party members also demanded that Cheong Wa Dae step up to put the irregularities to rest, while calling for an investigation by the prosecution.
Choi, the daughter of President Park's late mentor, is regarded as a secretive heavyweight that holds great influence over Park as well as her administration.
Choi has been caught up in allegations that she was behind suspicious fundraising activities involving the K-Sports and Mir foundations.
Her daughter, Chung Yoo-ra, is also embroiled in speculation that she received special treatment in her admission to Ewha Womans University and academic credit she did not earn. Amid the mounting controversy over Choi's daughter, Ewha Womans University President Choi Kyung-hee has stepped down.
The MPK said Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling Saenuri Party should end their cover-up of the scandals.
"Amid the growing allegations, Cheong Wa Dae has avoided them. The prosecution needs to begin looking into suspicions raised by the media before evidence is destroyed," said MPK Chairwoman Choo Mi-ae during a party meeting.
"Preisident Park has not provided any apology for or explanation of Choi's scandal for over two months. Speculation will rise further if Park remains silent. She must provide answers to the questions of the people."
Park Kyung-mee, an MPK spokeswoman, also said, "We urge Cheong Wa Dae not to defend Choi Soon-sil anymore. In order to get state affairs back on track, the presidential office should work its way out of the scandals by cutting its ties with Choi."
The People's Party floated the idea of a special prosecutor to investigate the case.
"While the nation is facing security and economic difficulties, President Park is just burying herself in covering up the suspicions," said Rep. Kim Dong-cheol.
Some Saenuri Party lawmakers also suggested that the governing party provide the public with clear explanations surrounding Choi's scandal, so they can put the issue to rest.
"During the latest regular audit, the K-Sports Foundation case emerged as the biggest issue, but the ruling party gave the impression it is not tackling the issue head-on," said Rep. Choung Byoung-gug of Saenuri Party.
"We need to move forward to help the president finish the remaining term in office," Choung added. Park's term in office ends in February 2018.
The Hankyoreh, a local daily, reported Wednesday that two paper companies established by Choi to support Chung's equestrian training are called The Blue K, with branches in Frankfurt, Germany and Seoul. The staffs of both companies were found to be employees of K-Sports Foundation, raising suspicions that Choi is using the organization to support her daughter's equestrian career.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
Territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is not and can not be a subject of discussion, said Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev in his interview with the head of the Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, Dmitry Kiselyov.
We will never agree with granting independence to Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian side is well aware of this, Ilham Aliyev said.
However, a reasonable compromise is possible by ensuring the security of population of Nagorno-Karabakh, implementation of various investment projects by Azerbaijan and a peaceful cooperation between the two peoples under the condition of liberation of territories beyond the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, said the president commenting on Kiselyovs question on how Azerbaijan sees the conflicts settlement.
This corresponds to the proposals on which we are working and which have been put forward by the mediators, he added.
Touching upon the main reason behind the conflicts remaining unsettled, President Aliyev said that over the past 24 years, since the OSCE Minsk Group was created, Armenia has in every way blocked any slightest progress in the negotiation process.
Our position is that people should live there, where they lived. Because they lived there for a long time: the Armenian population lived there for 200 years, while the Azerbaijani people much more, but that is not the point. he noted. For example, 95 percent of the population in Shusha was Azerbaijanis. They were driven out, their houses were either captured or destroyed, and currently, other people live in their houses.
This must end, said the president.
The Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh can live there as they lived before, we are not against that, he added.
What benefit did Armenia have from this conflict? Millions of Azerbaijanis suffered, but did Armenians become happier from this, did it become more secure, more prosperous, of course not, said Ilham Aliyev. Without normalization of relations with Azerbaijan, there cant be development in the region. They will always live under certain pressure, thinking what if something happens.
We want peace in the region and our position is quite constructive, but we want our territories back, he added. Armenia wants peace but it doesnt want to give back somebody elses territories. That is the difference.
Undoubtedly, we cant provide anything more than this compromise, said the president. As I have already said, there can be no compromise on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, but there can be a compromise on the issues of local self-government, self-government of the Nagorno-Karabakh, and in the future, if we agree, it can be an autonomous republic.
The Armenian leadership is well aware of this, but they manipulate public opinion, create an image of the enemy, distort the essence of the negotiation process and present it in such a way that as if Azerbaijan wants to almost annihilate the Armenian population or to expel them. That is not true, Ilham Aliyev said.
By Kang Seung-woo
Former Minjoo Party of Korea Chairman Moon Jae-in / Yonhap
Former Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) Chairman Moon Jae-in is maintaining an ambiguous stance about an escalating controversy over South Korea's decision to abstain from a United Nations vote in 2007 on North Korea's human rights.
Song Min-soon, who served as foreign minister at the time, said in his recently published memoir that the liberal government sought the North's opinion before abstaining from the vote and Moon backed the idea. Moon was the presidential chief of staff at the time.
Initially, Moon said he did not remember how the decision was made. Later he told his aides that he was not involved in the decision-making process.
On Wednesday, Lee Byung-ho, the head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), told lawmakers that the memoir is based on fact.
However, the spy agency chief said he can "neither confirm nor deny" that there is evidence that backs up the claims made in the book.
"It is not the right time to speak on the matter, considering the case's impact on national security," Lee was quoted as saying by lawmakers during an Assembly audit session that took place at its headquarters.
"Although North Korea is a rogue state, this matter is also linked with the agency's credibility," Lee added.
As the memoir is damaging Moon's reputation as a possible candidate for next year's presidential election, his attitude is also inviting criticism from the ruling Saenuri Party as well as from his own party members, who are urging him to speak up about the controversy.
He has refused to take any questions regarding the memoir from reporters.
"It is not a good sign for a potential presidential candidate to face allegations unfavorable to him regardless of their veracity. So, Moon had better put an end to the issue this time, making clear his position on it," said Cho Jin-man, a professor of political science at Duksung Women's University.
"Otherwise, this issue will provide fodder for a political offensive from the conservative side in the lead-up to the presidential election. Even, the issue may haunt him in the party primary."
An MPK lawmaker said although Moon cannot recall his position on the issue, he should try to find the truth with his former co-workers.
"It does not make sense that he wants to become the head of state, but he cannot remember such an important incident," the lawmaker said. "His attitude is cowardly."
Kim Chong-in, a former MPK interim leader, pointed out that Moon is handling the controversy poorly.
Political watchers believe that Moon's passive response is based on his past experience during the 2012 presidential race.
During the campaign, Saenuri lawmakers grilled Moon, claiming that the late President Roh tried to nullify the inter-Korean sea border in the West Sea, the Northern Limit Line, during his meeting with the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2007.
Moon stepped up and explained his version of the truth, rather; he was thrown into the center of the political dispute, helping conservative voters flock to then ruling party presidential candidate Park Geun-hye.
"If Moon fails to speak out about the issue, he may face similar allegations in the run-up to the election, which will deal a hard blow to his leadership and ethicality," said Cho.
People's Party floor leader Rep. Park Jie-won questioned Moon's leadership and ability to manage a crisis as a political leader.
"He has changed his words every day. I hope he will tell the truth to the people to end the crisis," he told a party meeting.
Policemen examine the shooting scene in Beon-dong, northeastern Seoul, Wednesday evening, after a criminal suspect shot a police officer. Investigators said the suspect, Seong, 46, fired at the officer after quarreling with his neighbor. The officer was pronounced dead after being taken to a nearby hospital. / Yonhap
By Kim Se-jeong
One policeman was shot dead Wednesday evening in a gunfight with a sex offender in northeastern Seoul, police said.
According to the police, the suspect, surnamed Seong, 46, was arrested after the shooting near Mt. Opae Tunnel in Beon-dong, Gangbuk-gu.
The police said the suspect became a fugitive when he removed his electronic ankle monitor and went on the run.
The police found six handmade firearms in his possession. It's unknown how he obtained the firearms and what his motive was.
The suspect shot the policeman surnamed Kim, 54, in the back with a wooden firearm in front of a convenience store near the tunnel at around 6:30 p.m., the police said.
Before the gunfight with the police, the suspect got into a fight with his neighbor, striking the man with a hammer, an investigator said. The neighbor was identified as Lee, 67, a real estate developer.
Responding to a call, police soon arrived at the scene, and the suspect fired at officer Kim and then ran into the tunnel carrying six homemade firearms, an investigator said.
The officer was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment but died during surgery one hour later.
Lee was also taken to a hospital for a minor injury to his head. Another civilian was also taken to a hospital after he was shot in the belly during the gunfire.
"I heard the first shot and though it was a tire blowout," a bystander who saw the suspect said during an interview with a local TV station. "About five minutes later came another shot, and I ran away, because it was clear that it was a gunshot.
The witness also said "I heard people saying that he was drinking with a man and they started quarreling. Then they were brawling and soon he was holding a hammer."
Police said the suspect fled the scene and the police followed him to the tunnel where they exchanged fire. But the witness said it was civilian men who followed him to the tunnel to capture him.
Police found the broken ankle monitor near the store. The firearms have been taken in for police analysis. Making and selling firearms is illegal in Korea.
By Lee Ju-won
"But they're both my children!" she explained to a South Korean official.
"We're very sorry, but according to regulations the latter one is not considered North Korean," the official replied.
"But they're my children and I'm North Korean!"
This conversation explains the paradoxical situation a North Korean defector entering South Korea can face if she brings her children, the first one born inside North Korea and the other one outside North Korea.
This is not uncommon considering the many years North Korean defectors spend in the underground railway waiting to make passage to a third-party country.
Here is the tragedy: She and her first child are considered North Korean refugees and therefore fall under the protection of South Korean law, but the other child is not. This second child is considered "non-protected."
North Korean defectors in South Korea receive various kinds of legal protection and support from the government according to the North Korean Refugees Protection and Settlement Support Act.
However, their children born outside the North are ineligible for such support because the law is applied only to "residents escaping from North Korea." This simply excludes children who, for example, are born to North Korean women and Chinese men while in China. These excluded children have never actually escaped from the North, even if their mothers have.
Such children in the South are often called "non-protected youths," not necessarily meaning that they are stripped of any support but they are not provided full support. They are in limbo, for their identities and circumstances are so complex that they cannot be easily categorized.
This is why for years they have not had a uniform term and have been called by many names: non-protected youths, unprotected youths, or children of North Korean defectors born in third countries.
As the status of these kids is in a blind spot, action is in urgent need for their inclusion and adequate protection under the law. That is, they need to be regarded legally and treated as equally as their siblings born in the North are.
With the lack of proper support from the law, these non-protected youths undergo severe difficulties settling into South Korean society. Other defectors born in the North are entitled to governmental support in many areas, including special admission to college, support with housing and living expenses and exemption from military duty. Non-protected students, however, are not entitled to most of this support.
Fortunately, the dire situation these non-protected youths face has recently recognized by the government. Strengthening support for the non-protected youths was included in the 2016 operational plan of the Ministry of Unification, and the government decided in January to make them eligible for special admission to college.
However, this is not the first time the non-protected youths have received a small bit of recognition, and if past experience is anything to go by, it can be assumed that this minor attention by the ministry will result in the same outcome as past efforts: nothing.
This mention of non-protected youths by the ministry was a mere one sentence with no elaboration, made almost without consideration. "Without consideration" is how they have been and are treated. Until this changes, with the government and in the minds of the South Korean people, and without nationwide public recognition, there will be no exit from this bureaucratic limbo and this injustice will be allowed and perpetuated.
Every minute passed by the public in denial of dealing with the issue properly only adds up to more pain for these kids.
Failure to embrace the non-protected youths is a serious loophole in the nation's efforts for North Korean refugee resettlement. It is about time such loopholes are closed and the non-protected are protected.
The writer is a student at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies where he has a double major in international studies and English linguistics. He may be reached at juwonlee523@gmail.com.
By Yi Whan-woo
North Korea is earning hard currency by selling fish abroad, exploiting loopholes of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) sanctions.
Citing Chinese customs data, the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) said Wednesday that North Korea's export of fish products reached $110 million from January to August. The amount was up 70 percent from the same period last year.
KITA said the amount of fish sold to Russia in the January-March period alone was worth $2.8 million, increasing from $1.6 million over the whole of 2015.
The sale of squid, octopus and other mollusks to China hit $80 million in the January-August period.
During the same period, Beijing also imported shellfish, including shrimp and crab, worth $26 million, and dried fish worth $3 million.
Such exports come amid a series of revelations that the Kim Jong-un regime has been selling the fishing rights in its territorial waters in both the East and West seas to China.
It is estimated that North Korea earns 82 billion won ($74.3 million) annually by selling fishing rights in the two seas.
The analysts said such measures are partly attributed to the fact that fish is excluded from the list of products that the UNSC banned Pyongyang from trading.
"Fishing has been part of daily life around the world. The UNSC apparently left it in the blind spot when imposing sanctions against North Korea," said An Chan-il, the head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies.
In its latest resolution imposed in March, the UNSC banned North Korea from selling coal and iron ore but allowed the trading of other resources if they are "determined to be exclusively for purposes of livelihood."
"Pyongyang is exploiting the loopholes of the UNSC sanctions and is likely to expand the export of fish to continue pursuing development of nuclear weapons," An said.
He cited that the earnings from selling fishing rights have been diverted to the young despot.
It is also not coincidental that a North Korean fishing boat crossed into Russia's exclusive economic zone near the East Sea last week in a deadly skirmish with the Russian coast guard, according to analysts.
A North Korean crew was killed and eight other fishermen were injured after a Russian patrol ship opened fire during the inspection of the North Korean trawler for alleged illegal fishing.
"It is seen as North Korean fishermen under pressure to raise money to prop-up its regime," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.
"The UNSC may need to come up with an efficient way to stop the Kim regime from exploiting daily living activities for its nuclear ambitions while ensuring that it will not deal a blow to North Koreans in general."
By Na Jeong-ju
Politics editor
As North Korea's nuclear development becomes an acute threat to the United States, China is finding it increasingly difficult to play a double game over its bellicose neighbor.
While dragging its feet in joining international sanctions against Pyongyang, Beijing has increased supplies of oil, food and energy to the Kim Jong-un regime. North Korea's heavy economic dependence on China and the latter's lax enforcement of United Nations sanctions are some of the root causes of the present situation.
In July, the U.S. finally took a military option to break this vicious cycle. It decided to deploy a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea to protect its ally and its forces in Northeast Asia from North Korean missiles. China has strongly protested, claiming the THAAD radar can detect its own missiles and spy on its forces on the mainland.
South Korea is taking its own steps, too.
As the deployment is backed by most South Koreans, politicians are capitalizing on this public sentiment to call for armament with some dangerous, powerful weapons.
The ruling Saenuri Party, controlled by loyalists of President Park Geun-hye, has asked the government to consider developing a nuclear-powered submarine. A presidential advisory panel recently proposed that South Korea ask the U.S. to redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons as an option to counter the North's nuclear threats.
Some staunch Park loyalists have even claimed that the country should develop its own nuclear weapons instead of being under a U.S. nuclear umbrella.
These moves are certainly making China uncomfortable but do not pose any real threats yet, unlike the decision to accept the U.S. anti-missile system. For now, the U.S. may let South Korea behave that way.
In effect, the threat of an increased U.S. military profile in the region and South Korea's hawkish moves are causing alarm in China. And this may force China to make North Korea change course as China has started to realize that the North's nuclear threats can threaten its security interests, too.
At the moment, the U.S. and South Korea along with Japan seem highly likely to take more military options to push China harder and ultimately make it use its leverage on North Korea.
The best scenario for the allies will be the establishment of a new North Korean regime that is more responsive to international concerns and can give up or freeze the nuclear program to rehabilitate the economy.
Only China can do this.
For the U.S. part, there are strong reasons why it should start talks with China.
North Korea's nuclear development has become the strongest case to make for the next leader.
North Korea has emerged as the biggest security risk that the new president will have to confront, with the rogue state believed to be completing development of intercontinental missiles tipped with nuclear warheads it will have ready soon.
In this context, the two superpowers may seek a grand bargain over North Korea for their mutual interests, and this could be the most crucial task for the next U.S. president.
Washington can ask Beijing to use its leverage over Pyongyang to end its nuclear program in exchange for some concessions like the scrapping of the THAAD decision.
If this happens, other conflicting issues could be on the negotiating table, including disputes in the South China Sea.
Hillary Clinton, the likely next U.S. leader, may have this game plan, expecting China to play a balancing role for regional peace. That is because the U.S. must share the same strategic interests with China at certain times, and this may be when such strategic cooperation is needed.
The permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have chosen Antonio Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, to succeed Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general. The appointment to the initial five-year term still needs approval by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly but that should be a formality.
There is little question that Guterres, 67, is up to the job. Portugal, a country of nearly 11 million, has a complex economy and foreign policy that spreads across the world, as a result of Portugal having been an important world power. Also, more to the point of the realities of the day, he served as the U.N.'s high commissioner for refugees from 2005 through 2015. The flow of refugees, both from the wars of the Mideast and South Asia but also from the economic desolation of parts of Africa, is far and away one of the pre-eminent problems facing the world today, with the U.N. inevitably playing a critical role in dealing with it.
The U.N. secretary-general is unavoidably and even though sometimes ignored in world power politics one of this world's key figures, ranking with the American, Chinese and Russian presidents, the German chancellor and the pope. Apart from the political problems that sometimes require U.N. intervention to reach a conclusion, there are the global problems. These are issues that must be attacked on a universal basis if they are to have any chance of being dealt with successfully.
Epidemics of disease are one example; climate change is another. Peacekeeping in places where no nation wishes to involve itself is another. Who wants to put troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be frustrated, killed and drained of money? The United Nations picks up the problems that all wish to see addressed but are the porcupines of world diplomacy that no one wants to pick up.
There was pre-choice discussion of the need to pick a woman as secretary-general for the first time. There were initially a dozen or so candidates for the job. But agreement among the permanent members China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States on whom it should be was not reached, and Guterres was finally chosen after weeks of discussion.
That does not mean that he was a compromise, fallback choice. Guterres gives every appearance of being well prepared to serve the world in this almost impossible mission. He deserves and requires the support of the United States and all other countries represented at the U.N. in performing his duties.
This editorial appeared on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Joseph Yun
By Yi Whan-woo
Joseph Yun, a Korean-American who served as the U.S. ambassador to Malaysia, has been named to Washington's top negotiator for denuclearization talks on North Korea, according to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.
The embassy posted on Twitter this week that Yun is "back in (Washington) D.C." for his new job after working as the top U.S. envoy in Kuala Lumpur since 2013.
Yun is concurrently serving as the U.S. Department of State's special representative for North Korea Policy and deputy assistant secretary for Korea and Japan. He succeeded Sung Kim, also a Korean-American who has been appointed as the ambassador to the Philippines.
Yun is scheduled to hold the first meetings this week with Kim Hong-kyun, his South Korean counterpart for the six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Yun, 62, a career diplomat, is considered to be one of the U.S. Department of State's top Asia experts.
He joined the department's Foreign Service in 1985. Since then, he served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and also at the U.S. embassies in South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and France.
Before working for the U.S. government, Yun was a senior economist for Data Resources, Inc., in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Yun was born in Seoul and moved to the U.S. in 1963. He graduated from the University of Wales and London School of Economics.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
A meeting of academic staff and students of Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) with Peoples Artist of Azerbaijan Fuad Poladov was held at BHOS in the framework of the entitled Meeting with Masters of Arts and implemented by the Knowledge Foundation under the President of the Azerbaijan Republic.
Greeting the attendants, BHOS Vice-Rector for Training, Science and International Relations Ramiz Humbatov informed them about the most important milestones in Poladovs biography and acting career. He said that he liked Poladovs works from the very day when he saw the actor in the Investigation Continues movie.
Humbatov also reminded that Poladov received the title of the Peoples Artist of Azerbaijan in 1986, when he was 38 year old, and said that the actors name is legendary for national theatre and cinema. He expressed his hope that this meeting would encourage the students to learn more about the artist and they would watch more movies with his participation.
In his speech, Poladov greeted BHOS teachers and students and emphasized that such an event is both a great responsibility and a great honor for him.
I often meet with young people, and one of the important objectives of such meetings is to raise youths interest in the theatre art. As Ataturk was saying, theatre is a mirror of cultural level of a country, Poladov added.
The famous actor told about his youth, studentship, and his evolvement as an artist as well as about main milestones of theatre and cinema arts development in Azerbaijan.
He also recalled stories happening during making films including some interesting and funny ones. He said that prefers work in the theatre to the work in the movies.
While on the scene, an actor always feels the audiences energy, Poladov said. And if the spectator sees a false play, he will never go to the theatre again.
He recited a poem by famous Azerbaijani poet Vagif Samedoglu, whose works he likes very much. He also pointed out that arts in general and theatre in particular play a vital role the intellectual development of youth.
In appreciation of the artists love of poetry, BHOS student Nazperi Isfandiyarzada specializing in Chemical Engineering recited a poem by Ramiz Rovshan, Poladovs another favorite poet. Then the actor answered numerous questions from the BHOS teachers and students. At the end of the meeting, on behalf of the attendants Humbatov expressed his gratitude to Poladov for the interesting meeting and presented him a memorable gift.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
Today, when the 25th anniversary of State Independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan is celebrated, Azerbaijan Gymnastics Federation (AGF) has commenced its work with good news, said the AGF website.
According to the decision made at the 81st electoral Congress of the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) taking place in Japanese Tokyo, the organization of the next FIG Congress was entrusted to AGF for the first time.
The representatives of the FIG affiliated federations and FIG Council members will gather in Baku for the Congress - the FIGs supreme authority - on December 2-3, 2018.
It should be reminded that our capital will also host the FIG Council meeting in 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Azad Hasanli Trend:
In Jan.-Sept. 2016, Azerbaijan increased export of agricultural products by 31.9 percent compared to the nine months of 2015, the countrys Deputy Minister of Agriculture Seyfaddin Talibov said.
He made the remarks Oct. 19 in Baku at the conference Non-oil exports: today's challenges and opportunities.
He said that about 90 percent of agricultural products of Azerbaijan is exported to Russia.
We hold 11th place among exporters of agricultural products to Russia, Talibov said. 2.7 percent of Russian imports of fruit and 3.5 percent of imports of vegetables account for the Azerbaijani products.
Despite the fact that the price of our agricultural products sold in Russia is above the average index for the market, they are of high quality, Talibov said.
The deputy minister noted that over the past 15 years, the export of primary agricultural products of Azerbaijan in value terms increased by 5 times, by 56.2 percent over the last ten years and by 28.7 percent over the last five years.
If in 2000, fruits and vegetables accounted for only 31 percent and export of cotton accounted for only 66 percent in the export of agricultural products, currently the supply of fruit and vegetables abroad accounts for 80-90 percent, Talibov said.
Details added (first version posted at 12:10)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
As many as 62 projects by Azerbaijans entrepreneurs have received an investment promotion document worth 787 million manats since April 2016, the countrys Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev said.
He made the remarks Oct. 19 in Baku at the conference Non-oil exports: today's challenges and opportunities.
The minister said that currently nine projects worth 55 million manats are also being considered.
The implementation of these projects will make it possible to open over 5,000 new jobs, Mustafayev said.
The minister also spoke about the measures being implemented in Azerbaijan to support business.
He said that the National Entrepreneurship Support Fund (NESF) of Azerbaijan granted preferential loans worth nearly 2 billion manats, which made it possible to implement nearly 32,000 projects in various sectors of economy.
At the same time, Mustafayev said that costs required to obtain a certificate of origin were reduced by 30 percent in Azerbaijan, and the time to receive it was reduced from three days to one day.
Practice shows that in reality, not even a single day, but just two hours are currently needed to obtain the certificate, he added.
The minister also spoke about the measures being undertaken within promotion of the brand Made in Azerbaijan in the global markets.
He said that the first export mission to China (Hong Kong and Guangzhou) is expected in November 2016.
In addition, Azerbaijans Economy Ministry will help the countrys entrepreneurs to promote their products in various retailer chains such as Carrefour, as well as in duty-free shops at the airports of the world.
Headline changed, details added (first version posted at 12:53)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Azad Hasanli Trend:
In Jan.-Sept. 2016, Azerbaijan increased export of agricultural products by 31.9 percent compared to the nine months of 2015, the countrys Deputy Minister of Agriculture Seyfaddin Talibov said.
He made the remarks Oct. 19 in Baku at the conference Non-oil exports: today's challenges and opportunities.
He said that about 90 percent of agricultural products of Azerbaijan is exported to Russia.
We hold 11th place among exporters of agricultural products to Russia, Talibov said. 2.7 percent of Russian imports of fruit and 3.5 percent of imports of vegetables account for the Azerbaijani products.
Despite the fact that the price of our agricultural products sold in Russia is above the average index for the market, they are of high quality, Talibov said.
The deputy minister noted that over the past 15 years, the export of primary agricultural products of Azerbaijan in value terms increased by 5 times, by 56.2 percent over the last ten years and by 28.7 percent over the last five years.
If in 2000, fruits and vegetables accounted for only 31 percent and export of cotton accounted for only 66 percent in the export of agricultural products, currently the supply of fruit and vegetables abroad accounts for 80-90 percent, Talibov said.
Indonesia could wipe out paedophilia with its new policy of chemical castration, President Joko Widodo has told the BBC.
He said Indonesia respected human rights but there would be no compromise when it came to punishing such sexual crimes.
Indonesia passed controversial laws earlier this month authorising chemical castration for paedophiles.
The laws were however subject to fierce debate in parliament.
The Indonesian Doctors Association says its members should not be involved as the procedure would violate medical ethics.
Chemical castration is the use of drugs to reduce sex drive and libido, without sterilisation or removing organs.
President Widodo said our constitution respects human rights, but when it comes to sexual crimes there is no compromise.
We are strong and we will be very firm. We will hand out the maximum penalty for sexual crimes.
He added: In my opinion chemical castration, if we enforce it consistently, will reduce sex crimes and wipe them out over time.
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Nigerias National Universities Commission (NUC) has abolished all diploma sub-degree level programmes at the countrys universities.
The NUC says it wants universities to concentrate on providing quality education to train people to run the countrys public service.
Its head Abubakar Adamu Rasheed told university vice-chancellors that it was the job of polytechnics to run diploma courses.
Critics say that over the years, Nigerian universities introduced the diplomas to gain income rather than improve peoples knowledge.
And this has taken its toll on the standard of education. But it is very unlikely this ban will be adhered to.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Anvar Mammadov Trend:
Azerbaijan may become a member of the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) by late 2017, said the Chairman of EDBs Management Board Dmitry Pankin in an interview with Izvestia newspaper.
Pankin named 12 candidate countries which may become members of the organization by the end of 2017.
These countries are Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Egypt, Israel, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and Japan, he said.
He added that bringing new shareholders will allow increasing the banks capital.
With the banks current capital of $1.6 billion, investment portfolio of $2.1 billion and balance portfolio of $1.6 billion, reaching balance figures of $3 to $4 billion is completely normal and real, said Pankin.
Eurasian Development Bank is an international financial institution founded by Russia and Kazakhstan in January 2006 with the mission of facilitating the development of market economies, sustainable economic growth and the expansion of mutual trade and other economic ties in its member states.
EDBs authorized capital amounts to $7 billion. The member states of the bank are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Armenia.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Azad Hasanli Trend:
Entrepreneurs will be able to take part in at least 5 international exhibitions in 2017 through the line of Azerbaijans Economy Ministry, the countrys Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev said.
He made the remarks Oct. 19 in Baku at the conference Non-oil exports: today's challenges and opportunities.
Mustafayev said that in 2017, Azerbaijani businessmen will be able to showcase their products at exhibitions in Dubai (UAE), Moscow (Russia), Habsburg (Switzerland) and Dusseldorf (Germany).
Also, China will host an international exhibition of wine producers in November this year in the city of Guangzhou and Azerbaijani entrepreneurs will be able to take part in this exhibition within the first export mission, the minister said.
Mustafayev stressed that all expenses for the installation of booths and transportation of products, which will be presented at exhibitions, will be paid by Azerbaijans Economy Ministry.
Jack Viertel knows his way around the theater. He is senior vice president of Jujamcym Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters. His body of work includes being a theater critic, an arts editor for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, a dramaturg for the Mark Taper Forum, and a decade of teaching musical theater at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
With so many years of theatrical experience, he was destined to write a book. The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built, was published this year, and the 312-pager could also be called an encyclopedia. Viertel will talk about his tome 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30 at the Jewish Community Center, 4126 Executive Drive in La Jolla, as a guest of the 22nd annual Jewish Book Fair.
I first had the idea to teach it at NYU about 12 years ago, Viertel said. I set up two classes for writer and director grad students. I went through this material many times. I was asked to give talks by more fans than professionals, so I wrote a book. It took about two years to write and another for editing and design.
Viertel has a connection to San Diego. He reviewed plays of an early season of the La Jolla Playhouse that included The Visions of Simone Machard, A Mad World, My Masters, and Romeo and Juliet.
From curtain up to curtain down, in his book Viertel details productions giving advice, opinions and comments. He addresses acting, producing, directing, set design and the music. He compares how shows worked in earlier years compared to now. I attend almost everything on Broadway, as thats my job, Viertel said. At any given time, there are probably about 40 there and about 60 regional.
Along with tons of information about musicals, Viertel includes interesting or humorous details. One example is a reference where he compares deck chairs missing a part from Home Depot to subplots in the show. Thats the way I talk more or less, he said. This book was not constructed like a T.S. Eliot poem. I think all the years of being a critic and on deadline, you get proficient at meeting deadlines and start to write that way. I didnt take a lot of notes. I have a weirdly selective encyclopedic memory and remember most of it. I did most of the research as I was writing. I had taught the shows to students over and over again, so that does get stuck in your head after a while.
His insights on musical theater are remarkable as this excerpt reveals: I had begun to understand what it meant to tell a story on stage. I eventually came to understand that theater is not the written word, its the word made flesh. Somethings can make you cry. Sometimes an actor turning toward or away from another actor can tell you more of the story than all the words a playwright could think up.
When asked what percentage of Tony Awards he usually agrees with, he replied, A lot this year. Im a big Hamilton fan. I sometimes see shows that win awards that I cant imagine being nominated for anything. The Tonys affect the audiences tastes more than the critics. Rarely are there shocking surprises. The Tonys are a way of promoting what Broadway people want to come see.
Since his career has spanned many years and generations, one wonders if he thinks a person should see a play more than once. Things have shifted over the years to a different kind of collaboration. The way rock n roll bands put stuff together is different from what Rodgers and Hammerstein did on roadshows. I dont know that one method is better than another, but there is a feeling that its become a slightly less rigid and formal process than it once was.
Viertel sees many shows every year, but his favorite, which he said he could watch over and over, is Follies.
IF YOU GO: The San Diego Jewish Book Fair runs Oct. 29-Nov. 6 mostly at the Jewish Community Center, 4126 Executive Drive in La Jolla. For a schedule of events and speakers and to buy tickets, call (858) 362-1348 or visit sdcjc.org/sdjbf
On the election campaign trail, Congressmember Scott Peters stopped by the Bird Rock Community Council (BRCC) meeting at La Jolla Masonic Lodge Oct. 4. Peters, a Democrat, is up for re-election Nov. 8 in the 52nd Congressional District, where he will face Republican Denise Gitsham. The meeting was held, by Peters memory, in the very room that once hosted meetings to hash out the Bird Rock Roundabouts, which started as a grassroots project, and were completed in 2008.
Joking that most people just ask him about presidential candidate Donald Trump, the former environmental attorney and San Diego City Councilmember answered questions about sea lions at The Cove, expected changes in Washington D.C. in the new few years, student loan issues and more. Peters also touted his accomplishments with improving services for veterans and environmental research.
Ive tried to take a bipartisan approach and get things done, even in this difficult environment in Congress, he said, adding that he calls himself an independent Democrat, which Republicans love but Democrats dont like so much, and that he has crossed his party when the solution was in the middle.
Im with the Democrats on choice, marriage equality and background checks for guns; but on tax policy, health care and financial regulations, we all need to work together to make it work, he explained.
When asked if he could bend some ears on curtailing the increasing pinniped population at La Jolla Cove, Peters said, This is a community that is very tied to the ocean and some people at City Hall kick us around a little bit and dont understand that (access to the ocean via places like The Cove) is part of our culture. I think the notion that we should not be active with respect to (removing) the sea lions is wrong. He encouraged a La Jolla-wide solution everyone could agree upon to prompt change.
Peters was also asked whether communication and a sense of collaboration that has not been present during the Obama Administration is expected to get better after the November election.
It has to, he responded. If you were betting, youd bet on Secretary Hillary Clinton to be president. The House of Representatives will stay Republican, so Clinton would be the first Democrat since Grover Cleveland to take office without a majority in Congress. So, if she wants to do anything, she is going to need to talk to and work with Republicans. I know Paul Ryan has things he wants to get done (so he is going to have to work with her as well). Communication and working together is going to have to get better if anything is going to get done.
One of Peters ideas addresses student loans. The price of a public university education has gone up 300 percent since I was in school, he said. The average student is coming out of their undergrad education with $33,000 in debt. That has a huge drag on the economy, (these) people arent buying houses or starting families.
(I propose) that if you work for a company and you have student loan payments, we would let your employer match your student loan payments up to $6,000 a year so the company has an incentive that makes them more competitive. He said he would also work to decrease the cost of tuition at California universities and colleges.
Peters concluded by applauding neighborhood advocacy. Community leadership, like what you find here and what got the roundabouts installed, is really needed everywhere, he said. We rely on you to let us know if you have an idea or if we are missing something on the Federal level. We need to hear from you about what were missing because most great ideas dont come from Washington, they come from groups and communities like this.
In other BRCC news:
New benches? BRCC treasurer Barbara Dunbar said the board is considering adding, repairing or replacing public benches as needed. We need a few more, so if you have an idea for a location, let us know. We need to know what the community wants, she said. The board can be reached at info@birdrockcc.org
Dog droppings: Dunbar also reported several complaints of unleashed dogs and dog waste on sidewalks and private property. She cited the San Diego Municipal Code and reminded attendees that it reads: No person shall allow a dog in his/her custody to defecate or to urinate on public property or any improved private property other than that of the owner or person having control of the dog. It shall be the duty of all persons having control of a dog to curb such dog in order to carry out the intent of this section. The failure to do so and to immediately remove any feces to a proper receptacle constitutes a violation of this section. Unsighted persons while relying on a guide dog shall be exempt from this section.
Private security: La Jolla Safety, a subcommittee of BRCC, continues to explore a private security option, but is no longer considering National Private Security (NPS). Representatives from NPS presented several times in Bird Rock, but La Jolla Safety ultimately decided not to contract with them because, La Jolla Safety founder and BRCC trustee Ron Fineman said, They were not a good fit.
Fineman added that much of what Bird Rock experiences is considered low priority crime and out of reach to the understaffed San Diego Police Department. Were in the process of vetting private security companies that suit our needs, he said. Were doing our best to keep costs down, and the more people who sign up, the lower the cost will be. Those interested can visit lajollasafety.org
MAD meeting in November: The annual Maintenance Assessment District (MAD) meeting will follow the next BRCC meeting: 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1 at Masonic Lodge, 5655 La Jolla Blvd. The MAD meeting will address projects and provide a status report on environmental, safety, maintenance, irrigation water conservation, aesthetics and landscape matters. birdrockcc.org
Continuing to serve as a forum for public safety and local government, the La Jolla Town Council hosted the two candidates running for the office of City Attorney for a brief debate during its Oct. 13 meeting at La Jolla Rec Center. Over the course of half an hour, Republican Robert Hickey and Democrat Mara Elliott covered topics such as how to hire contractors for public projects (to avoid fiascos like the Childrens Pool lifeguard tower), short-term vacation rentals, the legalization of marijuana and more.
The role of City Attorney (salary $193,648 plus benefits) is to advise the Mayor and City Council on the law, and prosecute misdemeanors. In terms of how they would carry out that role, candidate Elliott spoke to her experience in the City Attorneys office, and Hickey touted his fresh eyes perspective.
Town Council president Ann Kerr Bache opened the forum by asking each to introduce themselves.
Elliott began: I am a chief deputy city attorney at the San Diego City Attorneys office and I am the attorney that advises on the independent audit committee and environment committee. I bring to the table almost 20 years of experience advising public entities. My emphasis (if elected) is going to be providing services to the city-at-large and ensuring the elderly and children are protected, our domestic violence response is strong, and protecting our environment and consumers. If elected, I can hit the ground running on Day One with the experience I have.
Hickey followed: I am the son of a Miramar fighter pilot and that is why both public service and San Diego run through my veins. Ive been a lawyer for almost 22 years and married that same amount of time I passed the bar and got married in the same month 20 of those years have been in the District Attorneys office.
I also work in private practice at a major international law firm, where we worked on very important matters, including with the Padres and PETCO Park. (The Park) sat rusting because of lawsuits against the City in the early 2000s, and I was hired to find a creative litigation strategy to get that ball rolling again. So I got a real glimpse in the City when they work with private entities when they do a public-private venture. My approach is not just about being tough on crime, but being smart.
Attendee Jeff Chasan asked about public projects that are done and then redone, or delayed due to poor work standards, seeking to learn how the winning candidate would make sure it doesnt happen in the future.
Noting that the City Attorney is often tasked with holding shoddy contractors accountable after projects are complete, Elliott said its a common question. The way the city is addressing those types of projects (by opting for the lowest bid) and then remedying them when things go wrong doesnt make a lot of sense. Under my leadership, weve been able to debar, which means we prevent contractors from working with the City when they leave us with the bag when it comes to fixing things at taxpayers expense. Weve been very aggressive with this, so if they should not be doing work with the City of San Diego, they wont be. But this is just the beginning.
Hickey added, Everyone I talk to expresses frustration with the City, and working with the City. In the City Attorneys office, we need to be more transparent and more service-oriented. We need to have smarter systems and better systems of accountability and ways to track our results.
On the topic of short-term vacation rentals, on which Kerr Bache reminded attendees the Town Council held a standing-room-only forum, the candidates were asked what they would do differently from the hands-off approach of the current City Attorney.
Elliott opened, The Municipal Code is very clear and does not allow short-term vacation rentals (in residential neighborhoods). The City and its politicians have been very reluctant to touch the issue because there are very strong lobbyists pushing them in one direction, but it is not fair to those whose neighborhoods have been affected and those whose lives have been completely changed because this industry is not regulated. Under my leadership, we will enforce the Municipal Code. This does not mean short-term rentals wouldnt be allowed later with fair and reasonable regulations, but this is an issue that has been brewing far too long with no action.
Hickey said his first course of action would be to Put the City Council on notice and say whatever regulations youre going to have, you better give them to us, because my job is to enforce the law and enforce the ordinances. So give us some clarity here about what you want in terms of ordinances. The current situation is not acceptable. There is (an often cited) memo from 2007 that is the source of much controversy, and only by the 2007 memo has this been deemed legal, so I would also look into that.
Considering Proposition 64, which will appear on the November ballot, Town Council trustee Al Ramirez asked the candidates and thoughts and experiences on legalizing marijuana.
Elliott said she is not a Prop 64 supporter. I have some concerns. From both the perspective of a mother of two children and from a City perspective, we dont want marijuana to end up in the hands of children, but there are also environmental impacts that I dont think have been fully addressed. Everything Ive read suggests that it will pass, and if it does, we are prepared to look at the regulations needed to go with that.
Hickey agreed in the assumption that Prop 64 would passed, but said the importance lies in having a City Attorney who knows how to deal with it, he said. The real challenges are going to be (looking at the regulations associated with) being under the influence of marijuana. Weve had years to study what it means to be under the influence of alcohol, but there havent been as many studies on being under the influence of marijuana. In Colorado, there has been an influx of homeless teenagers and there might be a short-term change to our homeless population.
Citing the Childrens Pool Walk project which was designed by local landscape architect Jim Neri Phyllis Minick asked about the recent Fair Political Practices Commission opinion that determined it constitutes a conflict-of-interest violation to have a contractor create plans and then bid on the same project. She posed why anyone would design a project knowing they would be ineligible to carry it out.
Elliott explained the opinion, and said, The State has interpreted that if someone does a design up front, they cannot bid on it later. But that makes things very difficult in a design-build situation, and almost every situation were seeing in the City Attorneys Office now because of this very narrow reading of that law has affected business greatly and has been very frustrating for the contractors that do business with the City. Its coming from the State, but we do have a legislative team that needs to address that and get it fixed. We cant be the only public entity impacted by that.
Hickey added that he has heard the complaint more than once. Id be happy to bring a fresh set of eyes to the situation. Because it is an issue that goes beyond San Diego. It reminds me that San Diego is the hardest city to get a housing project were a challenging place to get business done. We need to do something about that. Lets make things faster, more definitive and more transparent, and not get waylaid by distractions when people are trying to get things done.
Ready? Set? Vote!
The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 8 presidential general election is Monday, Oct. 24. Residents can fill out a registration form at sdvote.com, and if their signature is confirmed through Department of Motor Vehicles records, it will automatically be sent to the Registrar.
If youve moved recently, or changed your name, youll need to fill out a new registration form, said Registrar of Voters Michael Vu. If you go online, the process is quick and convenient. If youre not sure whether youre registered, check online at sdvote.com
The deadline to apply for a mail ballot is Tuesday, Nov. 1. Voters can find the application online at sdvote.com or on the back of their sample ballot and information pamphlet sent to each registered voter.
You can also request a mail ballot by sending a letter to the Registrar of Voters with your name, registered address, the name and date of the election, the address where the ballot is to be mailed and your signature. Send forms to Registrar of Voters, 5600 Overland Ave., San Diego, 92123 or fax them to (858) 694-2955.
As a third option, registered voters can request a mail ballot by phone at (858) 565-5800. All applications must be in house at the Registrars office by 5 p.m. on Nov. 1. Voters who are already signed up to vote permanently by mail do not need to reapply.
Approximately 1 million mail ballots were sent out through the post office Oct. 11 and for the first time, registered voters will receive a two-card ballot. Contests will be listed on the front and back of each page. The two-card ballot also weighs a bit more, so it will take 67 cents in postage. Considering the length of the ballot, voters who requested their ballot by mail are urged to act early.
If you know how you want to vote, grab that mail ballot when you get it, vote it and send it back in right away, said Vu. The sooner we get the ballot back, the sooner we can start processing it so it will be counted right when the polls close at 8 p.m. on Nov. 8.
To find your polling place, visit sos.ca.gov/elections/polling-place
La Jolla View reservoir committee demands EIR
Following an update on the planned La Jolla View Reservoir Project at the La Jolla Parks & Beaches (LJP&B) September meeting, affected residents and LJP&B members still with questions and concerns gathered for the inaugural meeting of a working group tasked with reviewing the project and spurring change on how it will be carried out.
Chiefly, the group asserts an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) should be required. They met Oct. 7 at La Jolla Rec Center, 615 Prospect St.
The planned resevoir project will replace two existing reservoirs with one new 3.1 million gallon underground reservoir, by demolishing the existing above-ground 720,000 gallon La Jolla View Reservoir and decommissioned Exchange Place reservoir/pump station, found within La Jolla Heights Natural Park (aka La Jolla Natural Park). New pipelines will be put in place and a temporary access road would be constructed to allow trucks entry and egress to the project site. The total cost is just under $9.7 million. Construction will begin in winter 2018, and be finished by summer 2020.
At the most recent presentation, City representatives said they predicted the project would merit a Mitigated Negative Declaration (rather than an EIR), which would indicate there would be no environmental consequences as a result of the work. At the working group meeting, resident Jack McGrory called this assumption a joke.
Agreeing, the committee decided to advocate for the creation of an EIR, that would, in theory, address several concerns raised. These include 1) whether the Reservoir Project is necessary, 2) whether the project is in conformance with the City Open Space Preservation and Maintenance Policy, 3) the creation of a Biological Survey for the environmentally sensitive land on which the reservoir sits, 4) how emergency response would be accommodated, 5) an overall traffic plan for the project, 6) a traffic safety plan, 7) how access to public parks would be accommodated, 8) noise impacts and more.
The committee also decided to draft a list of project concerns and deliver a letter to local government representatives, and to continue meeting on a regular basis. More information and updates will be provided at the next LJP&B meeting, 4:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 24 at La Jolla Rec Center, 615 Prospect St. lajollaparksandbeaches.org
Dentist starts practice with open house, Oct. 21
Sarah Winter, DDS, will launch Sarah Winter Dental, a general and cosmetic boutique dental practice, with a grand opening celebration, 4-6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 21 at 7818 Ivanhoe Ave. It was formerly the dental practice of Chris Wood, DDS, who recently retired.
The open house will feature a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the La Jolla Village Merchants Association, gourmet hamburgers and salads from Burger Lounge and a toast with celebratory beverages. The daughter of a dentist, Dr. Winter has practiced dentistry for seven years. She earned her undergraduate degree in education from USC, and later went on to graduate Magna Cum Laude from the UNLV School of Dental Medicine. She is a member of the American Dental Association, California Dental Association, Academy of General Dentistry, Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, Crown Council and the Steven E Smith Honor Society.
Internet cables coming through Bird Rock
Details are forthcoming on a project to install Internet cables in Bird Rock to improve Internet services to area schools. Briefly discussed at recent Bird Rock Community Council meetings, the project involves trenching and digging along La Jolla Hermosa. An announcement is planned for Nov. 2.
At the Oct. 4 Bird Rock meeting, treasurer Barbara Dunbar reported: Cox Communications is installing underground cable along the east side of La Jolla Hermosa to provide high-speed Internet to area schools. Weve had a couple of complaints and problems with drilling, and weve been made aware that at one point they severed a water line at Colima. But we are in communication with them.
City Council candidate launches online survey
Barbara Bry, District 1 candidate for the San Diego City Council, wants voters to let her know of their ideas for improving the area. The high-tech entrepreneur has launched a virtual listening tour for this purpose.
With the answers to 13 questions ranging from personal information to what the responders priorities are, she plans to analyze the data and address the concerns of District 1 citizens. As the first high-tech entrepreneur on the City Council, I will bring a fresh perspective to City Hall to tackle the difficult challenges ahead. I want to use technology to better communicate with constituents and to improve City services, Bry stated on a press release.
The survey is available at bbryd1.typeform.com/to/Bp5P6N
San Diego History Center adopts donations-only admissions
The San Diego History Center changed its admissions policy last week. Rather than paying a set admissions fee, visitors to the History Center are now asked to make a contribution based on their experience at its museums in Balboa and Presidio Parks.
This Give Forward support will, in turn, provide the ability for another visitor to see the History Centers exhibitions. The San Diego History Center was founded in 1928 and is one of the oldest and largest historical organizations in California. It is one of only a handful of institutions nationwide that is dedicated to celebrating the heritage of a major American city. For more details, visit sandiegohistory.org
LJHS teacher honored for innovation
La Jolla High School math teacher Trang Vu is one of the recipients of the Mental Floss 2016 Platypus Award for innovation. She was recognized for her creative approach to geometry, chiefly for the hands-on project that encourages students to explore how fashion designers use math to create new pieces. Under her leadership, students are tasked with making a skirt out of concentric circles to understand the real-world applications for math. Vu is one of 10 nation-wide honorees of the Platypus Award.
San Diego Police have been making the rounds to discuss changes in the department, as well as to update residents on criminal activity. In La Jolla, officers stopped by the La Jolla Shores Association (LJSA) during its Oct. 12 meeting, and gave a full presentation to the La Jolla Town Council (LJTC) during its Oct. 13 meeting.
When scheduling the meeting, Town Council president Ann Kerr Bache said the intention was to thank Northern Division Mark Hanten for his service to the community, but unbeknown to the committee, Hanten was transferred to another department. In his stead, Community Relations Officer Larry Hesselgesser and Lt. Robert Daun spoke about recent crime activity, the Halloween season, and Northern Divisions new leadership.
I would have liked to have introduced Captain Hanten tonight, but at the police department, one of the constants is change. We just had a round of transfers and Captain Hanten will be moving to Northwestern Division effective Oct. 22 and Captain Stephanie Rose from Northwestern Division will be our new captain at Northern Division, Daun said. Captain Rose has been a captain for many years ... she has lots of experience.
At the LJSA meeting, Hesselgesser said, as soon as we get her acclimated, will bring her to one of the meetings and introduce her. I think its happening in the next couple of weeks. Rose reportedly had a prior commitment the night of the Town Council meeting and was not able to attend.
Recent armed robberies
Officer Hesselgesser updated attendees on two recent armed robberies in La Jolla. As reported on nextdoor.com (by Hesselgesser), on Oct. 11, a 60-year-old man had just returned home and pulled his vehicle into his garage around 9 p.m. on the 1300 block Virginia Way. Three men wearing ski masks and dark clothing two of them armed with handguns approached the man in his garage and demanded property. The victim surrendered his watch, cell phone and briefcase. The suspects fled on foot. One of the males holding a weapon was described as approximately 6 feet tall.
Police are investigating whether either of these incidences are related to robberies that took place that same day in Ocean Beach and Sunset Cliffs.
In a separate incident, at 8 a.m. Oct. 12 on the short La Jolla Shores street of Avenida Alamar, a La Jolla couple was robbed at gunpoint by two men who broke into their house through an open window. When the male victim was confronted by the two suspects, he observed one of them holding a gun. Undisclosed items were taken during the robbery, and the suspects are believed to be driving a blue or purple 1990s Honda.
Hesselgesser noted in the nextdoor.com report, It is unknown if any or all of these robberies were committed by the same suspects. This is an ongoing investigation being (handled) by SDPD Robbery Division. If you have any information or surveillance photos or video that you think is relevant call (619) 531-2000 or the Robbery Division during business hours (619) 531-2299.
At the LJTC meeting, he elaborated, These people are targeting you by watching you and taking advantage of opportunities. (Regarding the La Jolla robberies) we are very close to getting someone in custody. But to keep you safe: Be aware of your surroundings and if you have a feeling that someone is watching you, dont put yourself in a position where you could become a victim.
Thefts during the holidays
Hesselgesser said this is especially important advice during the holidays when thieves look for unattended deliveries left on porches or shopping bags left in cars. As safety precautions, police have advised residents to observe vehicles following delivery trucks, keep shopping bags out of sight and require signatures for deliveries.
Given the recent rash of home invasions, one meeting attendee asked about safety tips on Halloween, citing concern over opening front doors to people you dont know, many wearing masks or costumes.
Daun advised: It comes down to personal choice. If you feel safe turning off your lights and not opening the door for trick-or-treaters, do that. If you feel safe knowing most of the people that come to your door are kids looking to have a good time, go from there. If something makes you feel uneasy, dont open the door.
A thank you to police
At the end of the police presentation to the Town Council, Kerr Bache presented the officers with an award to thank them for their service. She was joined by representatives from the La Jolla Town Council Community Watch Committee, which formed to exchange information among Neighborhood Watch captains and report on area trends. Their findings are posted at lajollatowncouncil.com
La Jolla Town Council next meets 5 p.m. Thursday Nov. 10 at the Rec Center, 615 Prospect St. The guest speaker will be State Assemblymember Toni Atkins. lajollatowncouncil.com
San Diego City Council President Sherri Lightner attended the Oct. 12 meeting of La Jolla Shores Association (LJSA), telling trustees, This is the last LJSA meeting that I will attend as your Councilmember.
Lightner, a Shores resident, is finishing her second (and last) term as District 1 representative and said shes working hard to close some loose ends and get some things done in the area before I leave. I have enjoyed working with you and I hope that you continue on in your efforts. It has been a great privilege to serve you and represent you.
She informed trustees of a meeting 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1 at Golden Hall, 292 C St. where the City Council will discuss short-term vacation rental issues. I know this issue has had a significant amount of comment from the beach communities, she said.
Lightner also reminded everyone of the lengthy Nov. 8 election ballot and encouraged them to vote down the ballot.
Shores improvement projects
In the past few months, LJSA trustees have been trying to come up with a list of things that theyd like to see improved in their community. Finally, the list was formulated at the October meeting, and at the top sits a project to create a signature boardwalk for La Jolla Shores.
Trustee Angie Preisendorfer explained, The boardwalk is just ugly. We should have a signature boardwalk, a signature look.
Trustee Richard Monte Montemarano insisted there are liability issues with the state of the seawall-adjacent sidewall. Theres a 2-foot section all the way down thats cracked. Its almost like where the seawall is hitting cracks on the sidewalk, which is just a mess.
Lightner representative Justin Garver pointed out the La Jolla Shores boardwalk uniqueness as an American with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant structure. Its one of the few accessible ones because theres direct access from the street to the beach, he said.
Garver highlighted the possibility of obtaining money from the Regional Park Improvement Funds or even consulting the Park & Rec Department for future grant openings. This type of project is going to have a significant cost, it certainly could use some community advocacy to the Regional Park Improvement Fund Oversight Committee, and prioritize trying to find some funding.
Other LJSA improvement projects include repainting the La Jolla Shores parking lot, including a pass-though lane to avoid traffic congestion when a car is stopped on the right lane; re-paving Viking Way; repainting pedestrian crosswalks; and creating a drop-off lane closer to the surf zone.
Summer season lifeguard report
Lt. Rich Stropky of San Diego Lifeguard Services told trustees the summer of 2016 was the busiest for the lifeguards in over a decade. I dont know if its the weather, the water or the way the sand moves the rip currents around, but the last record of water rescues was set in 1993 with an annual total of 4,443; by Sept. 15 last month, we already beat that.
In July alone, he continued, the lifeguards performed a total of 4,102 rescues, well over the 1,807 average for the month. In August 1,279 water rescues were performed, and in June, 1,707. We are happy that everything went well, Stropky said. And again, thanks for the support from those who give us the ability to do our jobs, especially Council President Sherri Lightner, who has done a lot for us.
He also answered questions about the overcost and delays with the Childrens Pool Lifeguard Tower. I know for a fact that its going to be the best tower that we have, he said. There are some hiccups, some plumbing issues, but theres a plan to work it out. We would like to be in there already, but everybody is working toward that.
Utility and street work update
San Diego field engineer Steve Lindsay provided an update on the construction taking place on the Shores right-of-ways. As you can tell, were on Camino del Oro, probably for another two weeks, he said. They got slowed down because they found some really bad soil that couldnt support the streets, so they had to take that out, he told trustees. Of course, if we start getting deeper, we need to have the Native American (history) monitors that make sure everything is done properly.
Next week smaller projects will start on Avenida de la Playa, such as pothole repair. Bigger construction work on the street will resume when the pipeline that needs to be replaced arrives. I want to start excavating as soon as the pipe arrives. I dont want the hole open and waiting on the pipe, so its a timing thing, Lindsay said.
LJSA next meets 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Martin Johnston House, 8840 Biological Grade. ljsa.org
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Chamber retreat helps discover strengths in communication The Lake Norman Chamber of Commerce has proved that networking can come in many ways. It doesnt have to come at a luncheon or happy hour or Christmas party, but...
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
Negotiations were held between the Civil Aviation Administrations of Azerbaijan and Iraq in Baku.
The meeting was held in a constructive and friendly atmosphere. During the meeting, the sides discussed issues of bilateral cooperation in the area of air transportation and prospects of implementing regular passenger and cargo flights between Azerbaijan and Iraq. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the two countries air carriers.
The delegation of Iraq Civil Aviation Authority was acquainted with the activity of the Heydar Aliyev International Airport.
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary
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PRESS RELEASE
China: We Will Solve Philippines Fishing Rights as a Right to Life
Oct. 18, 2016 (EIRNS)All Chinese newspapers today run articles and commentary welcoming Philippine President Duterte to China, as he arrives in the south today and will meet with the leaders in Beijing on Thursday.
The most interesting commentary, in the Global Times, reports that one expected outcome of the meetings will be an agreement on restoring Philippine fishing rights around the Scarborough Shoal. Their reasoning is important:
"In recent years, despite the rapid growth of the Philippine economy, the poverty rate has risen, and about 40 percent of the Philippines population is still facing food shortages. The fishing industry has created about 1.61 million jobs for the Philippines and the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data shows that 38.7% of Philippines animal protein intake is from fish. In this context, many [Filipinos equate] the right to fish to the right to live."
In 2012, the previous Manila government sent Coast Guard boats to chase away Chinese fishing boats in the region, but China responded by sending their own Coast Guard boats and have kept Philippines boats away since then. With the conflict over sovereignty put aside as secondary, cooperation is again possible.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Emil Ilgar Trend:
Iran is negotiating with 16 international oil companies to develop 50 oil and gas fields, based on newly designed contact model, called Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), the Deputy Managing Director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Gholamreza Manouchehri told reporters in Tehran Oct.19.
During a press conference, he said that the Azadegan oil field, joint with Iraq, may be the first project that may get a deal between Iran and foreign companies, based on IPC.
Without mentioning the foreign companies name, he said that some $10 billion worth of investment is needed for this field to increase the output by 600,000 barrels per day.
Iran would issue the first tender, based on newly designed oil and gas agreement in November, Ali Kardor, managing director of National Iranian Oil Company said Oct.17.
He said the first tender would be issued on Azadegan oil field.
The field needs high technology to be developed. Without that, only 6 percent of reserves are recoverable. Currently Total, as well as another companies from Japan, Russia and Europe are willing to get involved, he said.
The heavy oil container field has been divided to North and South Azadegan.
Currently 73,000 b/d of oil and 1.1 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) of associated gas is produced from North Azadegan field. After commencing the second phase of this project, the output would reach 150,000 b/d.
Iran also produces 50,000 b/d of South Azadegan and another 30,000 b/d would be added to this volume in September.
The level would reach 110,000 b/d and then 320,000 b/d, after another 132 wells are drilled. The second phase of South Azadegan would add another 280,000 b/d to the output of South Azadegan.
Iran plans to develop 49 oil and gas projects based on IPC.
Iran plans to invest $134 billion in upstream sector by 2021.
PRESS RELEASE
Is Mosul Operation Intended To Send ISIS Fighters to Raqqa To Fight Assad?
Oct. 18, 2016 (EIRNS)According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the U.S.-backed operation to liberate Mosul, Iraq, from two years of occupation by ISIS, has left a corridor out of the city open.
"As far as I know, the city has not been encircled completely," he said this morning during a joint press conference with the foreign minister of Paraguay.
"I dont know the reason for this, but I hope they were just unable to do so rather than unwilling. At least, the remaining corridor creates the risks that ISIS will leave Mosul and Iraq for Syria. If this happens and additional ISIS contingents turn up in Syria, where our forces have been operating at the request of the legitimate government, we will assess the situation and adopt political and military decisions. I hope that the U.S.-led coalition, which is actively involved in the operation to seize Mosul, will focus on this, too."
Lavrov is not alone in his suspicion that the United States may have plans for the ISIS militants in Mosul other than simply killing them there. The Independents Robert Fisk reports that the Syrian army suspects that the US intention is to drive ISIS out of Mosul in order to swamp Syria with the hordes of ISIS fighters who will flee their Iraqi capital in favor of their "mini-capital" of Raqqa inside Syria itself. Fisk reports that Syrian intelligence has already heard of demands by ISIS in Syrias eastern Hasaka province for new electricity and water supplies in towns that it controls there, in preparation for an influx of ISIS fighters in Mosul. The same thing had happened earlier this year when when Fallujah fell to U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and many of the ISIS fighters there fled to Syria.
"In other words," writes Fisk,
PRESS RELEASE
Normandy Four Summit To Take Place in Berlin
Oct. 18, 2016 (EIRNS)The leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia will meet in Berlin tomorrow to discuss the settlement of the Ukraine crisis. The Ukrainian presidential office issued a statement confirming the meeting, following a three-way phone call between French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters this morning, "Tomorrow the President will go to Berlin where he will hold talks with Merkel, Hollande, and Poroshenko." Peskov clarified that Putin is not going to Berlin in response to the escalating fighting in the Donbass.
Putin is going, in fact, even though the expectations for the meeting are low, as Peskov indicated.
"Take a look at the Ukrainian presidential website and you will read there that Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande have agreed to hold a Normandy format meeting on Oct. 19 for the purpose of forcing Russia into compliance with the Minsk Accords,"
Peskov said.
"That this wording has been used on the Ukrainian presidential website merely indicates how complicated the situation is and to what degree Kiev is not ready to honor with its own obligations under the Minsk Accords."
Putin, he stressed, is, nonetheless, ready to do everything possible to push implementation of the Minsk agreements.
Poroshenkos statement stressed the security part of the Minsk agreement, but Poroshenko also blames Russia for the political failure in the Donbass as well.
"I am quite optimistic about Ukraines future, but not very optimistic about tomorrows meeting," he said yesterday, during a joint press conference with the Norwegian prime minister. He claimed that "there are no internal problems" (!) in Ukraine. "The only thing we need is free local elections in Donbass, which will conform to OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] standards," he said. He claimed that it is impossible to hold these elections "as long as there are foreign troops there," likely referring to the phantom Russian army of 30,000 troops in the Donbass that the regime in Kiev has repeatedly claimed, even though nobody, including the OSCE monitoring mission, has ever seen them.
PRESS RELEASE
Swedish Foreign and Defense Ministers Oppose Joining NATO
Oct. 18, 2016 (EIRNS)Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom and Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist have come under scathing attack for refusing to join NATO. Both are Social Democrats who believe in non-alignment, Russias RT reports today.
In a recent parliamentary debate, Wallstrom was accused of "lying flat for Russia," by opposition Conservatives, Christian Democrats, Liberals, and Center Party members. The Social Democrats and the Greens are in the governing coalition, with the other parties in opposition.
Wallstrom warned that NATO membership would lead to an arms race in the region.
"In the end, its about choosing between deterrence and detente. I advocate detente." Fear of Russia is driving the demands to join NATO, she said, and that should not determine Swedens defense policy.
"We have had a defense doctrine for over 200 years that has helped us steer clear of wars. If we were to join NATO, it would be seen as a sign that we are afraid of Russia,"
Wallstrom said. NATO membership would end Swedens control over its own defense budget; as a NATO member, Sweden would not be able to pursue an independent nuclear policy. She added, "We have close cooperation with NATO, but we still have the opportunity to make decisions." Wallstrom says she would like to resume contacts with Russia at a top political level, and especially would like to do it before Sweden assumes its responsibilities in the UN Security Council in which Russia is a permanent member.
Its come to this, America: Disney-branded fruits and vegetables.
Dole Food Co. said Friday it is partnering with Walt Disney Co. to market fresh produce to children nationwide. Characters from Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar films will now help hawk blueberries, bananas and broccoli.
For the record: An earlier version of this article said Disney is based in Anaheim. It is based in Burbank.
Disney and Dole have a shared mission of providing high quality produce to help families lead healthier lives, Josh Silverman, executive vice president of global licensing at Disney, said in a statement.
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The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal, nor did they say whether Disney-branded produce will be priced higher than nonbranded fruits and vegetables when they hit grocery shelves next month.
Last year, Burbank-based Disney partnered with Sage Fruit Co. for a similar campaign to promote the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Darth Vader helped market bags of apples; Yoda hawked green grapes.
Using well-known characters to sell nutrition is nothing new. Popeye famously persuaded children to eat spinach, and generations have grown up chewing Flintstones vitamins. In the 1990s, hundreds of dairy-mustached celebrities helped revive milks popularity with the Got Milk? advertising campaign.
Its not difficult to slap a character on a food and get kids to love it, said Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding expert. But these days, anybody who tries to sell anything to kids also has to appeal to the parents. This is a way for Disney to prove to Mom and Dad: See? We care about the health of your kids.
Thats different from the way items were marketed in the 1970s and 80s, Frankel said. Back then, advertisers were focused squarely on appealing to children. General Mills, for example, marketed its popular line of sugar-laden cereals with characters such as Franken Berry and Count Chocula, while Pillsbury used cartoon figures Goofy Grape, Lefty Lemonade and Freckle-Faced Strawberry to promote its line of Funny Face powdered drinks.
It was all about the nag factor, Frankel said. If companies sold the kids on it, eventually theyd whine and beg enough that Mom and Dad would buy it.
But that began to change in the 1990s, he said, as baby boomers took a more hands-on approach to parenting. All these helicopter parents needed to be told, Mom and Dad, heres the best thing for your kid, Frankel said.
As a result, companies shifted their marketing tactics to appeal to parents. They began adding phrases such as all natural and no sugar to their labels, and emphasized health-related benefits. Disneys partnership with Dole based in Westlake Village is a step even further in that direction, Frankel said.
Now they can get you from both sides, Frankel said. The kid is happy because its got a Disney princess on it, and Mom feels good because shes buying a vegetable.
Bhattarai writes for the Washington Post.
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Toy maker Mattel Inc. showed signs of a turnaround in its third quarter, with several of its key brands on the upswing.
For the three months that ended Sept. 30, the El Segundo firm posted net income of $236 million, up 6% from $224 million a year earlier. On a per-share basis, the toy company reported 68 cents, compared with 66 cents a year earlier.
We continue to make some very good progress, Chief Executive Christopher Sinclair said during a Wednesday call with analysts. We continue to see real strength in our core brands.
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Worldwide sales came in at $1.8 billion, essentially flat compared with a year earlier.
Sinclair said that the third-quarter showed that Mattels turnaround efforts were energizing sales after years of lackluster performance.
In January, for instance, Mattel announced three new body types for Barbie petite, curvy and tall and seven new skin tones to better reflect the diversity of women. Last month, the toy maker said that it was opening nearly 100 American Girl mini-shops inside Toys R Us locations in an attempt to reach a wider customer base.
So far, those changes appear to be working.
In the third quarter, worldwide sales rose 14% for American Girl and 16% for Barbie. Sales of its infant and toddler brand Fisher-Price as well as Hot Wheels and Matchbox jumped 6%.
Sinclair said that the latest results have boosted Mattels confidence as the crucial holiday season approaches. Sinclar took over as CEO after the company fired its former chairman and chief executive, Bryan Stockton, in January.
Mattel also brought back Richard Dickson, who was credited with Barbies last surge in popularity around 2010, as chief operating officer. Analysts have credited Dickson with injecting innovation back into the company that had become known for its bureaucracy.
Follow Shan on Twitter @ByShanLi
The California Department of Justice is investigating Wells Fargo & Co. on allegations of criminal identity theft over its creation of millions of unauthorized accounts, according to a search warrant sent to the banks San Francisco headquarters this month.
The warrant and related documents, served Oct. 5 and obtained by The Times through a public records request, confirm that California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, in the final weeks of a run for U.S. Senate, has joined the growing list of public officials and agencies investigating the bank in connection with the accounts scandal.
Harris office demanded the bank turn over a trove of information, including the identities of California customers who had unauthorized accounts opened in their names, information about fees related to those accounts, the names of the Wells Fargo employees who opened the accounts, the names of those employees managers and emails or other communication related to those accounts.
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Her office is also requesting the same information about accounts opened by Wells Fargo workers in California for customers in other states.
Kristin Ford, a spokeswoman for Harris office, said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation. Wells Fargo spokesman Mark Folk said the bank is cooperating in providing the requested information but would not comment further.
Documents filed along with the search warrant say there is probable cause to believe Wells Fargo violated two sections of the state penal code one outlawing certain types of impersonation, the other outlawing the unauthorized use of personal information. Both violations can be charged as felonies, punishable by imprisonment for more than a year.
Its not clear whether Harris office is considering charges against individual bank workers, high-level bank executives or the bank itself. The investigation could lead to charges beyond the identity-theft allegations used to secure the search warrant.
In the weeks since Sept. 8, when the Los Angeles city attorneys office and federal bank regulators announced a $185-million settlement with Wells Fargo over the creation of the accounts, lawmakers and other regulators have questioned whether the bank may have violated fraud, labor and securities laws.
At a fiery Capitol Hill hearing last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), told Wells Fargo Chief Executive John Stumpf that he should be criminally investigated. Stumpf abruptly retired last week and was replaced by longtime Wells Fargo executive Timothy Sloan.
There also have been questions about when and how much former bank executive Carrie Tolstedt, who led the bank division at the root of the accounts scandal, knew of the practices. She retired this summer in the lead up to the settlement, which was prompted by a 2013 Los Angeles Times article that uncovered the banks practices.
But identity theft has not been a central issue in the matter, and its noteworthy that it seems to be at the heart of Harris investigation, said Paul Stephens, policy director at the San Diego nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
One wouldnt typically think of a financial institution opening an account in the name of a customer as being an act of identity theft, Stephens said. Its a creative way of looking at these activities and finding them unlawful under a statute that arguably could be prosecuted in state court.
In an affidavit used to secure the search warrant, state investigator James Hirt said there is probable cause to believe bank workers illegally accessed Wells Fargos computer system to find customer information, then used that information to open unauthorized accounts.
In regulatory orders issued along with last months settlement, bank regulators reported that Wells Fargo employees forged customers signatures, created personal identification numbers without customers knowledge, made up email addresses and even moved money from customers legitimate accounts into unauthorized ones to make them look real.
U.S. attorneys in San Francisco, New York and Charlotte, N.C., have opened their own investigations, though the scope of those inquiries is not clear.
Irving Einhorn, a retired white-collar criminal defense attorney and former head of the Securities and Exchange Commissions regional office in Los Angeles, said there are few charges that a state attorney general could bring that federal prosecutors could not.
Still, he said its not surprising that Harris office is investigating the bank on its own. With a big national bank like this, there are overlapping jurisdictions, he said.
Not to mention political ramifications. Elected officials of all political stripes have jumped on Wells Fargo in the weeks since the settlement was announced, holding hearings, enacting sanctions and calling for legislation aimed at reining in big banks or even breaking them up.
In California, State Treasurer John Chiang last month said his office would cut off several business relationships with the bank, a move thats since been followed by officials in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and the states of Illinois and Ohio.
At this point, Einhorn said, no one wants to be left out.
You have to remember how it looks to constituents in a particular state when their officials get tough with the big, bad banks, he said.
The attorney generals move to investigate the bank comes amid her campaign to succeed Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is retiring from her Senate seat. Harris is running against Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a fellow Democrat who represents central Orange County.
Harris has made her crackdown on wrongdoing in the financial services industry one of the themes of her campaign. She has especially pointed to her role in negotiating $20 billion in relief from banks for California homeowners who lost homes or suffered losses in the housing bust. But that deal still resulted in many Californians losing their homes and did not lead to criminal charges against bank executives, opening her up to some criticism.
By investigating Wells Fargo, Harris could be trying to burnish her bank-busting credentials, said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Quick breakdown of the Wells Fargo scandal.
Shes looking for every advantage she can get, he said. Going after a big, unpopular bank can only help her with the electorate. Wells Fargo has gone into Voldemort territory when it comes to popularity.
Along with investigations by Harris office and federal prosecutors, Wells Fargo is also under investigation by the federal Labor Department, an outside law firm hired by the banks board and two congressional committees.
With so many agencies looking at the bank, its likely that there will be more revelations about the scope and the details of the problems that pushed more than 5,000 workers to open as many as 2 million unauthorized checking, savings and other accounts for customers over the last five years.
In a report last week after the announcement of Stumpfs retirement, Jaret Seiberg, an analyst for brokerage and investment bank Cowen & Co., said the former CEOs exit would not come close to ending problems for the bank.
There are simply too many entities investigating for more troubles not to surface, Seiberg wrote.
The raft of investigations into the banks practices was one factor cited by ratings agency Standard & Poors on Tuesday when it announced it had downgraded its outlook on Wells Fargos credit rating from stable to negative.
That means that, although S&P did not cut the banks credit rating, it believes a downgrade may be warranted. In a memo noting the change in outlook, the ratings agency said it is concerned, among other things, about the potential consequences of ongoing legal and regulatory investigations.
S&P also said it is concerned about the long-term effects of damage to the banks reputation. Some of those effects showed up in the banks quarterly earnings report last week.
The bank reported that third-quarter profits in its community banking division fell 9% from a year earlier. And the number of new checking accounts opened in September, the only month in the quarter affected by the settlement announcement, fell 25% compared with a year earlier.
The companys stock closed Wednesday at $45.26, about 9% lower than the day before last months $185-million settlement.
james.koren@latimes.com
Follow me: @jrkoren
MORE ON WELLS FARGO
Wells Fargo stock falls 2% as it tries to regain customers trust
As Wells Fargos earnings fall, new CEO wishes scandal was handled earlier
Why did Wells Fargos Stumpf lose his job, while JPMorgans Dimon kept his?
UPDATES:
3:05 p.m.: This article was updated with information about the companys credit rating, quarterly earnings and stock price.
2:20 p.m.: This article was updated with details from the affidavit supporting the search warrant.
This article was originally published at 1:15 p.m.
This Depression-era home, designed by celebrated Southern California architect Paul R. Williams, boasts authentic charm and original architectural details including a secret Prohibition-era room complete with bar.
Originally commissioned by Gabriel and Mary Duques, a prominent Los Angeles couple, the Hancock Park residence was designed for entertaining. A traditional entry with a sweeping staircase opens to a step-down living room with vaulted ceilings. A large dining room and a mahogany-paneled library retain the air of a bygone era.
Address: 340 N. Las Palmas Ave., Los Angeles 90004
Price: $4.599 million
Built: 1933
Architect: Paul R. Williams
Lot size: 13,006 square feet
House size: 5,888 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
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Features: Original details; formal entry; molding and wainscoting; hardwood flooring; three fireplaces with original mantles; decorative mahogany wood paneling; formal library; secret Prohibition-era room with bar; dining room; kitchen with butlers pantry; master suite with dual bathrooms, dormer windows; original built-ins; large back yard; includes original 1932 blueprints
About the area: The median sale price for single-family homes in the 90004 ZIP code in August was $1.275 million based on 17 sales, according to CoreLogic. That was a 26.1% decrease in median price compared with the same time last year.
Agents: Steven Aaron, Keller Williams Beverly Hills, (310) 432-6588
To submit a candidate for Home of the Day, send high-resolution color photos via Dropbox.com, permission from the photographer to publish the images and a description of the house to neal.leitereg@latimes.com.
Follow Bonnie McCarthy on Twitter @ThsAmericanHome
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After snapping up Irvine television maker Vizio in July for $2 billion in cash, Chinese tech firm LeEco made its official U.S. debut Wednesday, hosting a San Francisco news conference to spell out its ambitions to sell gadgets as varied as phones and cars.
During the two-hour presentation, the company ran through nearly a dozen products it plans to launch, including a range of 4K smart TVs, the Le Pro3 and Le S3 smartphones, a virtual reality headset, a smart bicycle that can travel up to 30 mph, a video streaming service and two smart cars: the semi-autonomous LeSee and the fully autonomous LeSee Pro concept car.
But the LeSee was noticeably absent from the news conference. LeEco founder Jia Yueting told the audience it got into a serious accident while in transit from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley.
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We werent able to repair it, he said.
The LeSee Pro, present at the event, sat stationary on display.
The company was also scant on details about how its video streaming service, which boasts partners such as Lionsgate, Showtime, Vice and Machinima, will work and whether its exclusive to LeEco devices.
LeEcos effort to expand to the U.S. has drawn skepticism from technology analysts, who point to Chinese companies struggles relative to their Japanese and Korean rivals in selling high-tech gadgets to U.S. consumers.
Among analysts doubts is whether a company as young as LeEco has enough cash to effectively make and market its ambitious slate of products. Many of its flashier products, such as the self-driving car, remain concepts with no planned launch date or price tag.
LeEco got its start in 2004 doing video streaming before expanding into hardware. In addition to the Vizio acquisition, the company signaled its U.S. ambitions in June when it acquired 49 acres of property in Santa Clara from Yahoo.
LeEco plans to develop this site into our global headquarters, and what weve dubbed as EcoCity, Dan Poritzky, LeEcos head of real estate, said on the companys blog.
Times staff writer Paresh Dave contributed to this report.
Czech authorities have arrested a man U.S. officials and LinkedIn believe stole personal information about millions of users of the social network for professionals.
Yevgeniy Nikulin, identified by law enforcement officials Wednesday as a Russian citizen, was arrested at a Prague hotel Oct. 5 on charges stemming from the 2012 data breach.
The theft didnt come to light until this spring, when a hacker claimed to have more than 100 million LinkedIn login names and passwords, or about a quarter of the Mountain View, Calif., companys user base. LinkedIn confirmed the breach in May and reset passwords of affected users.
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The company cooperated with the FBI to track down the suspect, saying Wednesday that it was thankful for the FBIs efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this criminal activity.
In a statement, the FBI confirmed the arrest of a Russian citizen suspected of conducting criminal activities targeting U.S. interests, though the bureau declined to comment further.
The case has nothing to do with recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee or other political organizations that the Obama administration alleges were orchestrated by the Russian government, one U.S. law enforcement official said.
The official described the hack of LinkedIn as fairly typical of the types of cybercrimes the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement agencies have investigated in recent years.
Cybersecurity experts are unsure about the value of such investigations and the filing of charges against foreign nationals. Definitively identifying a culprit can be difficult because hackers often route their attacks through computers around the world, complicating efforts to trace the digital trail. In addition, extraditing suspects is often difficult when dealing with Russian and Chinese authorities. A Russian official reportedly said Wednesday that the Czech Republic should return the detained suspect to Russia.
del.wilber@latimes.com
paresh.dave@latimes.com
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Chris Wallace was the first anchor from Fox News to moderate a presidential debate when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump clashed for the final time Wednesday at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. He may be new to viewers who dont watch his program Fox News Sunday, but the son of the legendary 60 Minutes correspondent has been a TV news fixture for five decades.
His first TV job was at the station that hosted the 1960 presidential debate. Wallace started his reporting career at WBBM in 1973, the CBS-owned television station in Chicago where John Kennedy and Richard Nixon participated in the very first televised face-off of White House contenders in. The building on McClurg Court that housed WBBMs studios, where Nixon sweated and Wallace first toiled, was demolished in 2009.
He was once a coanchor on NBCs Today. When Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley were teamed on NBCs morning program in 1982, Wallace was featured as its Washington anchor. The arrangement lasted for nine months, as Wallace was moved off to cover the White House and eventually became moderator of Meet the Press.
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His first girlfriend was Walter Cronkites daughter. Wallace was a 16-year-old gofer working at CBS News during the networks political convention coverage, which was fraught as the network panicked over Cronkite losing in the ratings to NBCs team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. During the Republican convention in San Francisco, I had met and courted Nancy Cronkite, Walters daughter, who was my first girlfriend, he told TV Guide in 2013. When he got pulled from the convention, everybody else was worried about Walter. I was worried about whether this was going to mess up my relationship with Nancy.
His father once poached a celebrity interview from him. Wallace recounted how in 1996, he booked comedian Chris Rock for a coveted sit-down on ABCs 20/20. Rock backed out and later turned up on 60 Minutes, where he talked to Mike Wallace. My old man had stolen the interview and he knew he stole it from me, he told the audience at his fathers memorial service in 2012.
Hes a registered Democrat. In 2014, Wallace explained his party registration to the Hollywood Reporter: Where I live, in Washington, D.C., the only elections that count are the Democratic primaries. But Ive voted for Democrats and Republicans for president.
See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour
stephen.battaglio@latimes.com
Twitter: @SteveBattaglio
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Elena Kosolapova Trend:
The pipeline system of Kazakh KazTransOil company got 18,900 tons of Kashagan oil as of October 18, the company reported.
Kashagan started supplies of oil to KazTransOils pipelines on October 11.
KazTransOil will pump Kashagan oil to export through Atyrau-Samara pipeline. In early November this oil will be shipped through Russian port of Ust-Luga in the Gulf of Finland.
Moreover, this week Caspian Pipeline Consortiums (CPC) said that its pipeline system receives up to 10,000 tons per day of Kashagan oil. CPC is expected to pump up to 1 tons of Kazakh Kashagan oil till the end of 2016 and up to 12 million tons of Kashagan oil in 2017.
Kashagan is a large oil and gas field in Kazakhstan, located in the north of the Caspian Sea. Its total oil reserves amount to 38 billion barrels. Some 10 billion out of them are recoverable reserves. Kashagans natural gas reserve exceeds one trillion cubic meters. Oil production at Kashagan was launched in Oct. 2016.
KazTransOil is Kazakhstans national operator of the main oil pipelines. The company operates a network of 5,400 kilometers long main oil pipelines and 2,000 kilometers long water pipelines.
Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Michael Moore in TrumpLand is not only the title of the new film by the cinematic provocateur but it is also an accurate description of what it provides.
Not an investigative documentary on the order of the writer-directors previous films like Fahrenheit 9/ll, Bowling for Columbine or Sicko, TrumpLand is rather a rambling, mildly entertaining performance film recording a stand-up appearance Moore recently made in the heart of Trump country.
That would be the city of Wilmington, Ohio, the key metropolis in that states Clinton County, a place where four times as many primary voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump as they did for Hillary Clinton and a city so conservative that Glenn Beck is the benefactor of the Murphy Theatre where the event took place.
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And, that title notwithstanding, TrumpLand is not really about the Republican presidential nominee. Such a last-minute project that it was shown to critics only the day it opened in theaters, its main thrust is as a defense of Hillary Clinton against those who hate her and a heartfelt plea for people to vote for her no matter what.
You can keep hating her, says Moore, who confesses he himself has never voted for a Clinton in his life. Do it for the country.
Before Moore gets to the pro-Hillary message, however, he offers himself up as a kind of therapist in chief, offering soothing words to any and all constituencies, refusing, for instance, to chastise millennials because they change the ink cartridges in computer printers.
Next, he tries to make the Trump voters in the audience feel comfortable, first with humor, then with empathy.
The humor part is his visual stunt of isolating all Mexican Americans in the crowd in one walled-in balcony while isolating all the Muslim Americans in another balcony and observing them with an in-theater drone.
He also talks about the key Trump demographic, the angry white guy over 35, telling them, our days are over. He jokes weakly about internment camps for men if Clinton wins, and says that the loud male roar often heard at Trump rallies is the sound of the dying dinosaur.
More serious is Moores discussion of why so many good people he knows in his home state of Michigan are voting for Trump even though they dont like him.
He is saying things to people who are hurting, Moore says in the films most serious moments. All they have left is the right to vote, and they see Trump as a human Molotov cocktail, a hand grenade thrown into a system that destroyed their lives.
It will be the biggest f... you in recorded history. I get it.
But after imagining what a Trump presidency would bring, including deporting Rosie ODonnell to American Samoa, Moore turns to the difficulties everyone, himself included, have had with Clinton in the past.
After noting that she is too cozy with Wall Street and that she voted for the Iraq war, he encourages audience members to say nice things about the candidate, saying three things he likes about George Bush to get the ball rolling and telling an elaborate, pointless anecdote about the time he got invited to a White House state dinner.
Warming to the task, Moore talks about the horrible way Clinton has been treated, noting that crackpots online claim she has personally killed 46 people and lamenting the way she was attacked and humiliated after her failed attempt to pass universal healthcare, one of Moores passions.
Referring to the current pope, who Moore says remained silent during the military dictatorship in Argentina only to blossom into a reformer once he was elected, the filmmaker wonders what if Hillary became our Pope Francis, surprising everyone with the good things that she does.
It will only happen, Moore says, if people both vote for her and insist that she keep her promises. If she doesnt, he announces with a concluding flourish, he will run for president himself in 2020.
Sounds like another film project coming on.
kenneth.turan@latimes.com
Michael Moore in TrumpLand
No rating
Running time: 1 hour, 13 minutes
Playing: Laemmles Town Center 5, Encino
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Lou Adler didnt need his memory jogged to recall a disastrous test screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Santa Barbara in 1975.
Ill tell you exactly what happened, said the 82-year-old rock and roll impresario, whose long resume includes, among other things, producing that film, organizing the Monterey Pop Festival and overseeing the creation of Carole Kings album Tapestry.
People started leaving a third of the way through. Were sitting on the curb outside, me and one of the executives from Fox, wondering, Is this the end? But then 25 people come out after its over: We really like this. When can we see it again?
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That small but passionate response launched Rocky Horror born as a live production first staged in the U.S. at Adlers West Hollywood club, the Roxy toward decades of repeat business as the quintessential midnight movie.
And its what laid the groundwork for a TV reboot of the musical set to premiere Thursday night on Fox with a young, pop-savvy cast including Laverne Cox, Adam Lambert and Christina Milian.
Reboot is a word for computers, said Adlers son Cisco, a veteran of the Los Angeles rock scene who handled music for the new production. Added Lou, who serves as executive producer: I think of it as a reimagining.
Either way, the splashy update reflects a belief that people still want to see Rocky Horror again.
Yet reviving this indelible period piece about fresh-faced couple Brad and Janet, who happen into the lair of one Dr. Frank-N-Furter (memorably depicted in the original by Tim Curry) required some delicate retrofitting.
For one thing, Frank-N-Furter is introduced in the show as a sweet transvestite, a well-meaning but very antiquated term, as Cox, who plays the role in the new version, described it.
The transgender actress best known for her Emmy-nominated performance in Orange Is the New Black, Cox said the phrase (which survives in this edition) now plays as a self-conscious throwback, one of many in the movie.
I mean, the whole premise of the film is that Brad and Janet, their car is broken down and they need to use a phone, she said with a laugh. In 2016, theyd have a cellphone and theyd just call AAA.
There was also the matter of Richard OBriens music for the show, which decades ago tapped into the prevailing glam-rock sound of the mid 70s and spawned a stand-alone hit in the deathless Time Warp.
You cant go to a bar mitzvah now without hearing it, Lou Adler said as he and Cisco, 38, sat in a glass-walled living room at his home in Malibu. Posters commemorating some of Adlers many projects hung on the walls, while a TV tuned to cable news flashed images of Donald Trump. (Hes a hustler, Adler said with visible disgust. A hustler and an elitist.)
Today, though, rock hardly dominates the mainstream the way it once did. So Cisco known for his group Whitestarr and his work with the rapper Shwayze saw himself as a kind of a translator: someone who could reinterpret Time Warp, Dammit Janet and Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me for younger viewers raised on hip-hop.
These songs are rock standards, he said. I didnt wanna flip the music on its back and make it EDM. But I did wanna flip it on its side steroid it up, give it fatter drums.
To record the tunes, Cisco recruited live players (including drummer Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars and guitarist Duane Betts, who plays in L.A.s Dawes) but also employed plenty of modern post-production techniques.
For Touch-a Touch-a, I was thinking of Hey Ya!, he said, referring to the bouncy 2003 hit by the rap duo OutKast.
Kenny Ortega, the remakes director, said he views Cisco alongside artists like Bruno Mars guys whove been clearly influenced by all thats preceded them and are able to make these interesting connections to timeless music.
And the selection of Ortega to helm Rocky Horror speaks further of Lou Adlers desire to nudge Rocky Horror toward current pop. An experienced choreographer who directed Michael Jacksons This Is It as well as the hit High School Musical films, he understands how to navigate the tricky space between musical theater and the Top 40, and does it here with dancing that feels closely aligned with top-tier arena shows.
Still, for all the effort the Adlers put into reaching a new audience all those Brads and Janets who dont go to midnight screenings, as Lou put it the elder producer insisted he kept the original Rocky Horror faithful in mind, making sure that the update honors the spirit that once excited that tiny group in Santa Barbara.
The fans have fought me on every change, going back to when we first put the movie on VHS, Lou said. But its because theyre so invested in it. And God bless em theyve kept this thing going for 42 years.
Twitter: @mikaelwood
Roger Ailes is returning to television, though not in a way most may have anticipated.
Gabriel Sherman, national affairs editor of New York magazine and a biographer of Ailes, announced Wednesday at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit that he is working on a limited series for television based on Ailes fall from grace at Fox News. The series is to be overseen by Oscar-winning Spotlight director Tom McCarthy.
The founding CEO of Fox News resigned in July after 21st Century Fox launched an investigation of sexual harassment claims against him.
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Spurred by a lawsuit filed by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, more than 25 women who worked at Fox News, including Megyn Kelly, came forward with allegations of harassment.
Ailes has denied the allegations.
Even after the publication of his 2014 Ailes biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room, Sherman continued his coverage of Ailes, including a story about how the women of Fox News brought down Ailes by sharing their stories.
Sources close to the project report that Sherman and his wife and collaborator, Jennifer Stahl, have partnered with Blumhouse Television the TV arm of horror mogul Jason Blums production company to produce a limited series using Loudest Voice and Shermans 2016 reporting as source material.
Previous Blumhouse Television projects include two Emmy-winning HBO projects: The Jinx, centered on the life of murder suspect Robert Durst, and The Normal Heart, based on the eponymous 1985 play about the rise of the HIV-AIDS crisis in early 80s New York City.
McCarthy will executive produce and shepherd the series; Sherman and Stahl will co-executive produce and serve as writers.
See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour
libby.hill@latimes.com
Twitter: @midwestspitfire
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Its a thing now: Young men are into makeup, and the industry is going where the boys are. Driven by hyper-connected Generation Zs disinterest in gender identification, beauty brands are looking to market with a gender-neutral approach.
A report this year by J. Walter Thompsons The Innovation Group found that 56 percent of Generation Z knows someone who goes by the gender-neutral pronouns of they, them, or ze. They are also rejecting the gender binary while shopping for clothes 44 percent said they only bought clothes restricted for their own gender, and 70 percent support a move toward gender-neutral bathrooms.
[Gender] matters less than it used to, said Lucie Greene, worldwide director of the J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group. If youre a youth brand, its something you need to embrace and understand. Its this very self-confident, hyper-individual generation who are constructing their identity in fashion and makeup outside of their traditional gender buckets. She listed Jaden Smith, who wears nail polish and skirts, as an example, noting that his penchant for accouterments designed for women doesnt necessarily indicate anything about his sexuality its simply a matter of self-expression, which she said Gen Z is interested in doing any way they can. These are not the drag queens of old.
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Last week, Cover Girl announced its appointment of 17-year-old makeup artist James Charles as its first male faces. The brand certainly isnt the first in beauty to address gender neutrality this year Milk Makeup launched in January with a genderless approach; Anastasia Beverly Hills debuted its Moonchild Glow Kit campaign featuring male models decked out in prismatic highlighter; Sephora teamed with vlogger Patrick Starrr on a collaboration for its Formula X nail polish line, and Giorgio Armani released a range of tinted lip balms for him/for her as part of its fall makeup collection. And its just as much a part of the online world, too. Just this week, The New York Times covered beauty boys male vloggers and YouTube stars who showcase their theatrical makeup skills for millions of followers.
Men wearing makeup is not new Jean Paul Gaultier tried his hand at a makeup line for men in the Eighties but an acceptance of it in consumer culture is emerging into the mainstream. This idea of choice, being whoever you want to be its something that is acceptable more and more, said art director Fabien Baron. Its like the gay evolution in the Sixties and the Eighties. Its the normal continuation of what should have been happening decades ago.
Its something thats existed for a long time in a clandestine way, said Debbie Harry of Blondie. I sort of like things that are undercover and cool, but its better that we acknowledge what our possibilities are. We should share that.
And like many a beauty phenomenon, it has roots in fashion, with designers like Hood by Air, Vaquera and Gypsy Sport sending gender-neutral clothing down the runway, and powerhouse brands like Burberry and Gucci casting female models in its mens wear shows. Gender issues have dominated the recent political and cultural climate as well, from Facebook introducing 56 new gender options in 2014, to Caitlyn Jenners highly publicized transformation from male to female last year, and Targets implementation of a gender-neutral bathroom policy.
Edward Bess, himself a Millennial and founder of a self-named beauty brand sold at Bergdorf Goodman, echoed the sentiment that gender neutrality in beauty is a label issue, not to be confused with a sexuality issue, and noted that the younger generations, so used to being connected to whats going on in the world via social media, are throwing off traditional societal constraints. Were more and more disinterested in the boring confinement of labels, said Bess, who just launched Genre, a fragrance designed to be androgynous. And its not just the traditional man and woman labels that the younger generation is opposed to. The term metrosexual has fallen out of fashion, Bess said. A guy can wear bronzer now and not be labeled.
Added Greene, Were in a state of flux with gender identity and sexuality and how they interplay.
Mazdack Rassi, founder of Milk Makeup, formulated his makeup and skin-care line with an ethos inspired by the young downtown New York crowd hanging out and working at Milk Studios. Rassis products are designed to be up for interpretation as to who can wear them and how they can be used. We look at our products as paint, as fun, Rassi said. We want to take the seriousness out of it.
The idea is to make it a moot point, he said of gender. For Milks initial campaigns, Rassi purposefully obscured the gender of some of his models. We have boys who used to be girls or you may look at a girl and think shes a boy, Rassi said. Its taking the labels off. This new generation doesnt think it should be a topic, so its not worth bringing up. We want to concentrate on the people and the beauty there and what the product helps them do in life.
It was always important to include males in our beauty campaigns, and Ill do it in the future, said Claudia Soare, president of Anastasia Beverly Hills. Soare grew up in the beauty industry and said she has always known men who wear makeup, particularly her mothers makeup artist friends and many Anastasia customers in fact, are men. For Soare, the Moonchild campaign, as well as an eyeliner campaign in which the brand featured male models, were simply ways to access her customer base. It was important to speak to them directly.
For beauty brands that have historically addressed only women, the pressure to market to men is on, but it requires a tactful approach brands can run the risk of being seen as just riding the wave of whatever is being discussed in the zeitgeist.
Brands are being called out [now] because they dont reference things in a respectful way, said Greene, noting the backlash to the dreadlocks used at Marc Jacobss spring show as an example. The important thing to bear in mind is it cant seem inauthentic and fetishistic or some kind of appropriation because this [generation] is highly politicized and see through that if its not executed very well.
In some ways its a validation for everyone included and the other is a very bold flat-faced marketing initiative to show Cover Girl as edgy and relevant, said Wendy Liebmann, chief executive officer of WSL Strategic Retail, of Cover Girls James Charles announcement. She noted that Cover Girls positioning of James Charles as its first male Cover Girl is in line with its diverse brand ambassador appointments in the past, like Ellen DeGeneres and Queen Latifah.
Its certainly more culturally relevant than ever, said Laura Brinker, vice president of influencer marketing at Coty. Its a culture of self-expression regardless of gender that has been fueled by social media. As a mass brand, you can be very broadly appealing, so its important that were at the forefront of those shifts so we can send a message to the beauty industry that this is the way we believe our business and brands are evolving.
Liebmann stressed caution in executing gender neutral marketing strategies. Its that balance between inclusiveness and legitimacy, that it doesnt feel like its too commercial, thats grounded in authenticity, Liebmann said.
Avoid tokenism, warned one industry source.
Soare advised against doing something for the shock value or to seem inclusive. You risk some backlash from your customer and you risk insulting people by using their lifestyle as an ad campaign, Soare said. Be aware of whats authentic to your customer if your brand caters to men so much so that you feel the need to acknowledge them in ad campaigns, you should.
Sam Cheow, chief product accelerator at LOreal, pointed out that the company already to markets to men in a subtle way, noting its beauty for all motto, and is preparing for a societal shift toward gender progressiveness with new product developments and communications some of which have already manifested, such as the Armani lip-care range.
He noted two trends percolating in product development. One is uniformization, which means having a genderless positioning, and making products like lip balms that appeals to everyone or fragrance that is unisex in its scent and packaging. He also pointed to hyper-specialization of products, or offering special types of coverage for different skin types. The skin of a man is different [than a womans] and we need to start considering how we can ensure the coverage they need, Cheow said. He noted that issues such as hair removal for males transitioning to females, differences in skin texture and coverage needed will pave the way for new niche categories in makeup. In the next three to five years, there could be some really interesting products coming out.
Following a Deadline report that a new 10-episode American Crime Story will be dedicated to Gianni Versaces murder in Miami in 1997, the Milan-based company on Wednesday pointed out that the installment is fictional.
Asked to comment on the news, the fashion house said it had neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming series about Versace.
The series should only be seen as a work of fiction. Versace/Cunanan: American Crime Story, from Fox 21, will be based on the book Vulgar Favors by Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth, according to Deadline. It will focus on the assassination of the designer by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who shot himself eight days later on a Miami houseboat.
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The series comes on the heels of the Emmy-winning People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Filming is expected to start in Los Angeles and Miami next spring. The series is to be directed by Ryan Murphy, who also directed the opening episode of People vs. O.J. Simpson, but the actors who will play the title roles, including that of Versaces sister Donatella, have not been selected yet, according to the report.
This is not the first time the Versace siblings have been an unwilling source of inspiration. In 2013, Lifetime broadcast its original movie House of Versace. On that occasion, the company said that it neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV movie about Mrs. Versace.
The firm also took issue with the book that triggered that film, Deborah Balls 2010 House of Versace: The Untold Story of Genius, Murder and Survival. Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is based, the movie should only be seen as a work of fiction, the fashion house said at the time. The book centers on the struggles and the challenges faced by the designer after the murder of her brother.
Gina Gershon played Donatella Versace in the movie.More recently, as reported in July, Antonio Banderas has been tapped to play Gianni Versace in an upcoming movie directed by Bille August on the late designer. Filming is expected to start in December in Milan and then move to Reggio Calabria, the southern town where Versace was born, and Miami.
Details about the script were not available, but the Italian fashion group said at the time that, in this case, too, it had neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming movie about Versace. The movie should only be seen as a work of fiction.
As reported, in May, Banderas, who has also been studying fashion design at Central Saint Martins in London, presented his first collection in collaboration with Selected, a Scandinavian high-street label. He admitted at the time that he had been inspired by Versace for gold metal embellishments into his biker jacket.
After sitting down with CNNs Anderson Cooper, where she blamed Billy Bush for her husband Donald Trumps infamous locker room talk, Melania Trump took to late night TV specifically, to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to continue her defense.
According to the Fake Melania, again played by Laura Benanti, former Access Hollywood host Bush can not only be blamed for coaxing presidential nominee Trump into making lewd comments, but is even in on the alleged rigging of the election. Colberts reply: Now I know why theyre on a bus its easier to throw Billy underneath it.
She also suggests that all men, including your husband, your brother, the pope [and] Luke Skywalker, are guilty of such crude speech and are unfit to lead. Her solution? Only a woman could be president.
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As Lucy tells the story that was passed down to her, she almost didnt make it. Her mothers breast milk had become poisoned, and Lucy was so desperately ill as an infant in Egypt, a call was put out to the Armenian familys pastor.
My grandmother took me in her hands and said, Dear God...if this child is going to die, take her now or else...let her live and serve you.
And thats how Lucy Garabedian Abdelradiy, who moved to the United States many years ago with her grandmother and the rest of the family, became known to relatives as the miracle baby.
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When she was just 7 or 8, she helped look after her younger cousins in Pasadena. When she completed high school and went on to Pasadena City College, her plan was to be an accountant, but a psychology class put her back in touch with a nurturing instinct inherited, perhaps, from her grandmother. Should she be a marriage or family counselor?
While trying to figure out the next step, Lucy got a job at a gas station mini-mart. One day the manager asked if she could do him a big favor and drive his sister to a job interview.
On the drive, the woman told Lucy she was going after a childcare position at Hillsides, a nonprofit that houses and counsels children removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect. Lucy had never heard of the place. When they got there, the receptionist asked Lucy if shed like to fill out an application too.
She hadnt intended to, Lucy said, but why not?
Her friend did not get hired.
Lucy did.
And she stuck around.
Today in Pasadena, Abdelradiy will be honored by Hillsides for 35 years of service to children.
This isnt a retirement party. Abdelradiy loves the job too much and hasnt begun to think about walking away. Its just a day of recognition for a woman who has been a comforting presence for hundreds of children whose lives have been traumatic in countless ways.
On Monday morning, I visited the cottage where Lucy spends her days supervising and tending to the needs of 10 teenage girls. Two 14-year-olds were getting ready for school, with one working on her hair in front of a full-length mirror.
One girl said she lost her home in Hurricane Katrina, and her aunt lost her life in the storm. Both girls said they had been away from their biological parents for years. They said they feel as though they can always talk to Abdelradiy, no matter what their problems are.
Like how my mom left me and my sisters, and we got put in the system, said one girl.
Shes just there for us, said the other. She listens.
Many years ago, a 7-year-old took a particular liking to Abdelradiy, following her everywhere. The child asked if it was OK to call her Mama Lucy, a name that stuck.
Whatever youre comfortable with, said Abdelradiy, who took a while herself to get comfortable at Hillsides.
Kids need to know that they exist. Sometimes they dont even need to fix something. They just need to know that you are hearing them. Lucy Garabedian Abdelradiy
To be honest with you, I couldnt believe that kids would cuss you out as a grown-up. I never heard cuss words in my life, and it was like, Wow, where is this coming from? Abdelradiy said.
I went home to my grandmother and I said, Grandma, I cant do this...Theyre driving me crazy. Theyre calling me all the names in the book.
Her grandmother told Abdelradiy that in time, she would be a blessing to the kids. Just stick with the job.
I was naive, said Abdelradiy, who sometimes went home with bruises after breaking up fights. She had never before heard a certain word that starts with B and rhymes with itch, and had to ask a coworker for the definition.
Now I know all the cuss words, Abdelradiy said. But she also knows where they come from.
The kids she works with are wounded, in great pain and filled with anger. Some have gotten into trouble, but Abdelradiy was less inclined to judge them after learning their stories. They have been physically abused, sexually molested, abandoned, betrayed. They have been court-ordered out of their homes, shipped off to foster families, separated from siblings, bounced here and there.
Hillsides therapists work with them; Mama Lucy is there for them when they return to their dorm cottage. She takes them to school and to the doctor, serves unlimited helpings of tough love, delivers the dreadful news that they have to clean their rooms or pay the consequences, and sits with them if, at the end of the day, they still feel lost or alone.
Kids need to know that they exist, Abdelradiy said. Sometimes they dont even need to fix something. They just need to know that you are hearing them.
She learned when to back off and when to lend an ear. And she learned to say goodbye, in some cases to kids who were with her for as long as 10 years.
One went on to become a nurse. One became a lawyer.
NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>
I can name so many of them who are successful, Abdelradiy said.
Many of them including Stephanie Castillo, 39, who is in management at a nursing home are in regular contact with Mama Lucy.
When I was there, I always thought of myself as her child, said Castillo, who lived with Abdelradiy from the ages of 10 to 13, and later sneaked back in to visit with her.
It didnt begin well between them.
Castillo had been through a lot, and she was shy, frightened and defiant. When Abdelradiy told her to clean her room, Castillo sat on the floor, crossed her arms and stubbornly refused. It took six months for Castillo to understand that Abdelradiy was on her side, and then they were inseparable.
It was like a mother hen and baby chick. I was always underneath her, said Castillo, who runs a toy drive and donates the gifts to Hillsides.
She nurtured and loved me...She helped mold me into who I am today. She basically instilled in me self-confidence when I didnt have it as a child.
To Abdelradiy, who is deeply religious, this was all scripted.
From her survival at birth to the unplanned job interview at Hillsides to a life in the service of children.
I guess its my grandmothers miracle, she said.
Get more of Steve Lopezs work and follow him on Twitter @LATstevelopez
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The judge was not sure whether Mahanad Badawi had been actively recruiting for Islamic State.
The 24-year-old Anaheim man had already been convicted by a federal jury in June of conspiring to help the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria. Badawi had used his debit card to purchase a one-way ticket so that a friend, Nader Elhuzayel, could board a plane to the Middle East to join Islamic State.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter asked to listen to audiotapes of Badawi in which he seemed to be trying to entice other men from a local mosque. After listening to the recordings and a five-minute recess, Carter said he was convinced.
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I believe youre radicalized. I believe youre a recruiter and I believe youre dangerous. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter
I believe youre radicalized. I believe youre a recruiter and I believe youre dangerous, the judge told Badawi, who did not appear to betray emotion.
The judge sentenced Badawi to 30 years in prison the same sentence Elhuzayel got after being found guilty of the same charge.
After the sentencing, Badawis mother, Samia Suliman, was embraced by family members and friends as she sobbed.
Badawi had purchased a ticket for Elhuzayel to fly from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv. While Carter initially admitted feeling torn about the sentence he would give Badawi, he said he believed Elhuzayel was beyond redemption.
Kate Corrigan, Badawis attorney, argued that her client was not an Islamic State recruiter. If that were the case, she stated, federal officials would have had secured multiple indictments of the people he had allegedly recruited.
But for Carter, the audiotapes clinched the sentence he would hand down.
Badawi and Elhuzayel were convicted after a two-week trial that detailed their efforts to join the terrorist group, including their recorded pledges to fight for the cause of Allah and to die in the battlefield, according to court documents
The pair were arrested on May 21, 2015. Agents from a counterterrorism task force intercepted and detained Elhuzayel at Los Angeles International Airport before he boarded a plane bound for Israel. Badawi was arrested at an Anaheim gas station.
Agents began monitoring the men after seeing their inflammatory remarks on social media. Scrutiny of the men intensified in April and May of 2015 as agents eavesdropped on their phone calls and surveillance teams tracked their movements.
Elhuzayel was found guilty of attempting to provide material support to Islamic State, and Badawi was convicted of aiding and abetting the attempt to provide material support. In September, Elhuzayel was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Corrigan argued that a sentence of more than 15 years for Badawi would be excessive. She said the sentencing guidelines had resulted in an outrageous punishment and that the terrorists had already won because peoples rights to fair sentencing were being trampled on.
She said such sentences were normally reserved for criminals who have been in prison several times for felony convictions.
My client has no evidence of even a parking ticket. Hes not a career offender, she said.
Badawis family was stunned. They had expected a more lenient sentence, his older brother said.
Mohamed Badawi didnt want to elaborate any more on Wednesday, but did say in an earlier interview that his brother was naive and had a misguided friendship.
cindy.carcamo@latimes.com
Follow Cindy Carcamo on Twitter @thecindycarcamo
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
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Proposition HHH on the Nov. 8 ballot asks Los Angeles city voters to approve a general obligation bond that would raise money to build housing for chronically homeless people.
The proposal involves complicated financing and service arrangements between the city, county and state. Following are answers to some of the questions about the measure:
What would Proposition HHH do?
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If the measure obtains the two-thirds vote needed to pass, the city would borrow up to $1.2 billion over 10 years for construction projects to provide safe, clean, affordable housing for the homeless and for those in danger of becoming homeless.
The City Council resolution that placed Proposition HHH on the ballot requires that 80% of the money be directed to permanent supportive housing. Up to 20% could be spent on conventional affordable housing without services, and an unspecified amount could be spent on shelters and other measures such as portable showers and storage facilities.
How much would it cost property owners?
As bonds are issued, the annual cost to taxpayers would increase gradually from the first year and peak in 2027, when it would be $18.54 for every $100,000 of assessed valuation. Thats the value the Los Angeles County assessor places on the property, a figure that is generally lower than its market value.
Los Angeles City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana estimates that the average annual cost over the 29 years the bonds are being repaid would be $9.64 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. That would be $32.87 on a home valued at the median of $341,000.
What is permanent supportive housing?
Permanent supportive housing is for people who have been living on the street for a year or more because of mental illness, physical disability or addiction. It primarily consists of apartments with a high percentage of single units in buildings that include space for on-site case managers and clinicians. It is paired with services that can include mental health treatment, addiction therapy and vocational training.
Rent subsidies assure a permanent home as long as the person needs the services.
Who would pay for the services?
Services are provided either by Los Angeles County or private mental health organizations using county funds.
Who would pay for the subsidies?
The Los Angeles Housing Authority has committed up to 1,000 federal housing subsidies per year for the new units as they are constructed. Those vouchers would come from the supply of about 2,100 the Housing Authority distributes each year to eligible applicants who have been waiting since 2003 to get subsidies effectively allowing them to jump to the head of the line.
What does the housing cost?
Permanent supportive housing costs more to build than comparable market-rate housing. Space set aside for case managers and clinical staff is one factor. The requirements of public funding sources include prevailing wage, high-energy efficiency and extra-large bathrooms for handicapped accessibility also raise the costs.
City planning laws result in many projects being proposed at 49 units, even when the underlying zoning would allow more. Thats the maximum that can be built without an environmental review that can add months and raise costs. Smaller buildings with space set aside for services incur larger per-unit costs.
Developers of permanent supportive housing also commit extra resources to gain community acceptance of their projects. For instance, they usually spend extra on architecture to make their buildings visually appealing. They also spend extra on outreach to head off potential backlash over negative perception of their clients.
The Corporation for Supportive Housing, a nonprofit that provides technical and financial assistance to agencies that build permanent supportive housing, estimates the cost in Los Angeles at $350,000 per unit.
A Times analysis of projects funded by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, which includes most permanent supportive housing projects, shows that recent projects have usually cost more, averaging about $420,000 per unit in 2016.
How much permanent supportive housing is needed?
In an analysis based on the 2015 homeless count, the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority estimated that 25,000 units of permanent supportive housing are needed countywide to serve the portion of the homeless population requiring intense services to live independently. About 9,000 units already exist, leaving a gap of about 14,000. The gap in Los Angeles city is estimated at 9,849.
How is permanent supportive housing financed?
Most projects receive about 65% of their cost from federal tax credits. Under a state-administered program, developers are allocated tax credits that they sell to investors in exchange for equity in the project. The credits currently sell for more than face value because the investors can declare depreciation in addition to the tax credit.
The remainder of the money comes from a combination of local, state or federal subsidies that usually include soft loans from the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department that are repaid from excess revenue. Before they can apply for tax credits, developers have to own the land, have an approved development plan and obtain commitments for all the remainder of the financing.
How would Proposition HHH help?
The city plans to contribute up to $150,000 per unit to permanent supportive housing projects, enough in most cases to pay about a third of the cost. That would allow the developer to complete their financing through a less-desirable tax credit program that pays about 35% of a projects cost. The lower-yield credits are not competitive, meaning that developers could obtain financing quickly for as many projects as they can get ready.
Why is the city focusing on permanent supportive housing?
Based on a growing body of research, homeless advocates generally regard permanent supportive housing as the most effective solution for the chronically homeless who remain on the streets because of mental illness, addiction or disability.
(The research covers topics including Medicaid costs, as well as the impact of housing on the cost of treating homeless people with severe alcohol problems and those who use hospitals. Theres also a map of studies of such costs.)
Why will it take 10 years to build the units?
Currently, a permanent supportive housing development takes about three to five years to complete.
Along with financing, the primary obstacles are land acquisition and the approval process. Both must be completed before a developer can apply for tax credits. Developers of permanent supportive housing compete with market-rate developers for scarce sites suitable for multifamily development in the city. Community opposition to projects geared to the homeless can extend the approval process.
The city is working to shorten the development time by providing excess city land to developers and streamlining the development process.
The City Administrative Office and Housing and Community Investment Department have identified about two dozen city-owned parcels that could be used for housing. Both agencies have received proposals from developers. The City Administrative Office is expected to make recommendations on the proposals
The citys Department of City Planning is developing a Permanent Supportive Housing Ordinance, which the council is expected to vote on by summer. It would remove regulatory barriers and streamline the entitlement process, shortening the development timeline by up to two years.
Are there any alternatives?
Homeless advocates widely believe that expanding the supply of permanent supportive housing is the only way to reduce the chronically homeless population.
There are skeptics, though, who contend that only a small percentage of the chronically homeless population requires the intense services.
Most of the mentally ill, they say, would be able to function independently in regular apartment buildings with drop-in services provided by mobile providers the scattered housing approach. More expensive permanent supportive housing is necessary only for a small portion of the homeless population, they say.
Proponents of permanent supportive housing say that rental subsidies for scattered housing are less costly than building new units only in the short term. Permanent housing units are subject to rent limits in effect for decades. Over that period, rent subsidies for market housing cost more. Subsidies for scattered housing also require thousands of homeless people to find housing In a tight rental market.
Who will be watching to make sure the money is spent wisely?
An administrative committee of city officials and a citizen committee would be created to provide oversight.
Will Proposition HHH end homelessness in Los Angeles?
Proposition HHH is part of a plan to reduce homelessness to what an analysis for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority calls a less than perfect equilibrium. That means that chronically homeless people have obtained permanent housing and resources exist so that people who become homeless can be rehoused. Proposition HHH addresses only housing for the chronically homeless. To reach the goal, additional funds need to be spent on rapid rehousing and homelessness prevention programs.
According to the analysis, at least 14,000 people will always be homeless in Los Angeles County until more money is spent to increase the supply of affordable housing.
doug.smith@latimes.com
Twitter: @LATDoug
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Many California school districts offer their staff little or no guidance on when police should be called to control student behavior, according to a new study that comes as districts face increased pressure to redefine law enforcements role in public schools.
The report, released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, analyzed law enforcement policies of 119 California school districts, including 50 of its most populous. It found that more than half of the districts large and small gave their staff broad discretion to summon police officers for small infractions, bullying and disrupting lessons.
After the police are called in (most districts dont permanently station officers in their schools), many districts do little to shield their students from potential consequences, the study found. Of those analyzed, about 98% dont require parental notification before a student is interviewed by police and about 99% dont mandate that officers advise students who havent yet been arrested of their constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent.
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The result, according to the studys authors, is that school administrators often outsource what used to be routine, in-school discipline to police officers. And when they do, the effects are disproportionately harsh for poor, minority and disabled students, who are more likely to be arrested than their peers.
Too often, school staff call the police to have them handle a situation that makes a student end up having to go to court or get a fine. Victor Leung, ACLU staff attorney
During the 2013-14 school year, 9,540 school-related arrests were made in California, according to the study. Black students were three times as likely as white students to be charged with an offense.
Too often, school staff call the police to have them handle a situation that makes a student end up having to go to court or get a fine, said ACLU staff attorney Victor Leung. Really, they should have no discretion the rule should be that they handle this minor rule-breaking with their own staff.
In California, 19 school districts have their own police forces, ranging in size from four officers in Apple Valley Unified to 410 sworn officers and 101 school safety officers in Los Angeles. Most districts have memorandums of understanding with local law enforcement, but many of these documents contain deficient, vague, or even non-existent policies, according to the report.
The worst offenders, Leung said, are the 33% of school districts that require staff to report low-level offenses such as vandalism or graffiti to the police. Although these may sound like well-defined criminal acts, in practice, their meaning has been interpreted to include doodling on a desk or drawing ones name on a locker.
In 2011, the East Side Union High School District in San Jose called police on an autistic seventh-grader who had carved his initials on the sidewalk outside of his school. He was cited for vandalism, a charge that appeared on his criminal record. In response, Supt. Chris Funk told an NBC affiliate that East Side Union was hiring more social workers and counselors.
I think what happened was because of zero-tolerance policies, there was a period of time where people just went to the police and had students cited for everything, Funk said.
Model school districts include San Francisco, Oakland and Pasadena, the latter of which has an agreement with local law enforcement that forbids police officers from responding to calls of discipline problems and says school administrators are responsible for handling misbehavior.
Los Angeles Unified School District receives some kudos for its policy requiring police officers to have a warrant or court order before removing a student for questioning. But the report notes, disapprovingly, that the district continues to require school staff to screen middle and high school students randomly and daily, using a metal detector wand.
While the policy expressly states that police should not conduct the searches, the ACLUs review of the districts search logs revealed that police frequently perform the searches, the report says. This policy has led to the unnecessary criminalization of students who possess minor contraband or do not wish to comply with the searches.
A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles school police chief said he was unavailable to comment.
The report recommends that school districts refer matters to the police only when there is an immediate physical threat to anyone on campus. Even drug and alcohol use should be handled by school staff, it says.
It also urges districts equipped with police forces not to permanently place officers in schools.
anna.phillips@latimes.com
Twitter: @annamphillips
To read the article in Spanish, click here
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Maksim Tsurkov Trend:
Alternative and renewable energy sources wont be able to completely replace the traditional ones, Azerbaijans Energy Minister Natig Aliyev said, according to the message of the countrys Ministry of Energy released Oct. 19.
Aliyev made the remarks at a meeting with Kazakh Deputy Energy Minister Magzum Mirzagaliev, who arrived in Baku to participate in the 7th International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development.
At the meeting it was noted that the use of alternative and renewable energy sources is one of the main priorities of Azerbaijan.
Despite the work done in this sphere, the share of renewable energy on Azerbaijans energy balance is not so high for now, and its necessary to attract the private sector, create conditions, carry out promotional measures and improve the legislative framework to achieve progress in this area, Aliyev said.
At the same time, I believe that alternative energy sources wont be able to completely replace traditional sources, Aliyev noted.
Mirzagaliev, in turn, spoke about the preparations for International Specialized Exhibition Expo-2017 Energy of the Future, which will be held in Kazakhstan.
I also invite Azerbaijans energy minister to take part in the 8th International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development, which will be held June 11-14 in Astana within the framework of the exhibition, said Mirzagaliev.
The sides also discussed prospects of cooperation in the energy sector, the export of oil from the Kashagan oil field, the importance of establishing an extensive export system in Kazakhstan and other issues.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
After a five-year drought, chocolate and strawberry milk are making their way back into public school lunchrooms in Los Angeles.
With a vote of 6 to 1, the Los Angeles Unified School District Tuesday loosened a district-wide ban on sugary, flavored milk that took effect in 2011. The board approved a pilot program to study the effects of reintroducing flavored milk in a small group of schools, all of which must volunteer to take part in the experiment.
It is not that board members believe children arent consuming enough sugar. Rather, the decision to re-examine milk offerings stemmed from concern that the district is throwing out an obscene amount of food 600 tons of organic waste each day, according to a 2015 district study.
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Much of whats being taken to the landfill is the plain milk that schools are encouraged by federal law to offer, but that students arent enthusiastically drinking.
Right now we are ... taking garbage bags filled with milk to landfills, and that just doesnt make any sense to me, said board member Monica Ratliff, who introduced the idea of the flavored milk experiment. We cant continue to ignore this issue.
What Ratliff proposed, and the board endorsed, is a four-part study in 21 schools that would treat school cafeterias as behavioral science laboratories. Will L.A. Unified school children drink more plain milk if they are also offered the sugary variety, as one study suggests? How might they respond if plain milk is offered to them in an appealing display case, or if they are shown an information campaign about how milk is good for them?
Her proposal references a 2014 Cornell University study, which found that when Oregon elementary schools banned flavored milk, students caloric and sugar intake dropped, but they also rejected plain milk in increasing numbers. The health benefits of that milk went down the drain, as students threw their half-empty cartons into the trash.
Parents and health advocates had lobbied successfully for the flavored milk ban, arguing that the drinks had unnecessary added sugar and contributed to childhood obesity. When the board approved a five-year, $100-million dairy contract, there wasnt a drop of chocolate milk allowed.
I cant think of anywhere else we would do this. We wouldnt serve caramel apples to increase apple consumption. Brent Walmsley, founder of SugarWatch
Brent Walmsley, founder of the advocacy group SugarWatch, said the board made the right call in 2011 and shouldnt retreat from its position in the name of reducing food waste.
I cant think of anywhere else we would do this. We wouldnt serve caramel apples to increase apple consumption. We wouldnt glaze carrots with sugar to get increased carrot consumption, Walmsley said. Milk is getting this odd pass here.
But among school board members, tastes, and minds, have changed.
At every school I go to, the request is for flavored milk. Theres not one school that Ive gone to where they say they dont want flavored milk, said board member Scott Schmerelson.
The lone no vote came from board member Monica Garcia, who said she would rather leave it to L.A. Unified staff to propose food waste solutions.
Board members were unanimous on one point their desire to change the U.S. Department of Agricultures school meal regulations, which require schools to offer milk with meals in order to receive reimbursement. But their decision Tuesday may have a more immediate effect on flavored milk than on the federal government. The school districts milk supplier has said its willing to lower the amount of added sugar in order to find an equilibrium palatable to both students and parents.
Student board member Karen Calderon said that when she met with a focus group of 14 L.A. Unified students, 13 of them endorsed the idea of dismantling the districts flavored milk ban.
This is something Ive been passionate about for years now, so thank you, Calderon said.
anna.phillips@latimes.com
Twitter: @annamphillips
To read the article in Spanish, click here
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The ongoing tug of war between pro-charter school and anti-charter forces was focused Tuesday on the Los Angeles Board of Education, which faced controversial decisions on the future of six campuses.
By the end of a sometimes contentious meeting, the school board allowed one high-profile charter to survive in exchange for the departure of its leader. The board also voted to reject petitions for five schools run by two other organizations.
The outcome was bittersweet for many at El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills.
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The district agreed to stay a revocation process that would have returned El Camino to the control of the L.A. Unified School District. But founding executive director, David Fehte, consented to leave within the next week. Several governing board members also are expected to depart over the next several months.
The L.A. school boards vote was 6 to 0 against a five-year renewal for three schools operated by locally based Magnolia Educational and Research Foundation. Board member George McKenna abstained.
Magnolia came under widespread scrutiny after the Turkish government accused it and other U.S.-based charters with Turkish governing boards of helping foment a failed July coup in Turkey. The schools leaders denied any involvement.
A more direct concern for L.A. Unified was Magnolias importing of Turkish nationals and their families for teaching and other staff positions. That past practice is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the districts inspector general.
Magnolia operates 10 campuses, including eight in L.A. Unified; the ones up for renewal were Magnolia Science Academy 1 in Reseda, Magnolia Science Academy 2 in Van Nuys and Magnolia Science Academy 3 in Carson.
The school board denied the other two charter renewals, for Celerity Dyad in South Los Angeles and Celerity Troika in Eagle Rock, in a 6-0 vote. Ref Rodriguez, who represents the area where the schools are located, abstained.
The actions on these schools directly affected more than 13,000 students but also took on greater significance as the L.A. Unified School District struggles both to oversee and compete with charters.
L.A. Unified has more of these independently operated schools than any other district, and, as they compete for students, charter growth is one major factor affecting the districts financial stability.
Charter advocates on Tuesday asserted that L.A. Unified is growing increasingly hostile to new and existing charters, and that district evaluators are seeking to close charters over relatively minor matters that have no bearing on academic performance.
They insisted that L.A. Unified is acting unfairly and possibly in violation of state regulations. An attorney for Magnolia went further, calling the focus on the Turkish workers, discrimination based on nationality and religious beliefs.
These people have never done anything but provide a world-class education to inner-city kids in Los Angeles, attorney Jerry Simmons said.
District officials maintained that all six of the schools had problems that justified taking action despite their academic performance, which ranged from acceptable to much better.
The approval process for charters has taken on a ritual-like quality in the nations second-largest school system.
Whenever a charter has an item affecting its future before the board, its supporters, officials and attorneys turn out en masse.
Tuesday was no different, as Magnolia and Celerity brought out hundreds of supporters.
Like Magnolia, Celerity Educational Group has been dealing with an inspector-generals investigation, which examined possible conflicts of interest.
The unfinished investigations are confidential, so the official presentations against Celerity and Magnolia involved other matters, including alleged shortcomings in the wording of renewal petitions and allegations that the organizations failed to provide investigators with all requested documents in a timely fashion.
L.A. board members were ultimately swayed by the argument that Celerity was operating too secretively and that an independent fiscal team had issues with Magnolias responsiveness to problems. Celerity and Magnolia could appeal to the county and the state to remain open.
El Caminos charter had been renewed last year, but it faced possible revocation over such issues as Fehtes use of school credit cards for wine, costly dining tabs, upgraded air travel and expensive hotel rooms.
He called the charges inadvertent and reimbursed the school for more than $6,000 when they were called to his attention.
El Camino took a variety of measures to placate L.A. Unified, including canceling staff credit cards. Then, last week, chief business officer Marshall Mayotte agreed to leave.
But that apparently wasnt enough for the school district, and Fehte, whom supporters considered instrumental to the schools success, became the next domino to fall.
I will do what it takes to preserve this charter which we all worked so hard to establish, Fehte said in a statement.
howard.blume@latimes.com
Twitter: @howardblume
Most teenagers can't vote in this election. But they know what theyd like to say to the next president.
L.A. Times High School Insider asked current and recent high school students what issues are important to them, and what they want the next president to know.
More than 140 students chimed in, most from Southern California. Many asked for immigration reform so they wont have to be afraid that theyll return home from school to find their parents deported. They want college to be affordable so theyre not weighed down by student debt before they get a chance to contribute to their country. They want to know that the president will put aside partisan politics and lead. They also want to protect the marginalized: those who fear being shot by police, those who need safe bathrooms.
Here are some of their messages, addressed to their future president.
I see African Americans getting shot and killed on a weekly basis on the news and I dont want to be another hashtag.
I am scared to grow up. I am scared to not be in the protection of my mother and father. I am scared that when its time to go to college, thousands of miles away from my parents, Im going to be harassed by a police officer.
I see African Americans getting shot and killed on a weekly basis on the news and I dont want to be another hashtag. I dont want to be that other black girl who was gunned down at a traffic stop.
I want my future president to help put a stop to this abuse. I need my future president to help me make sure I have a future and that my brother and sisters have a future as well.
ShaVon Luckey, 15
CHAMPS Charter High School, Los Angeles
[Immigrants] come to the U.S. for a new life, but oftentimes they dont get that.
Im a Latino, born and raised in Los Angeles, and I have noticed that undocumented immigrants dont have rights to be part of the United States. Just because they are immigrants doesnt mean that they shouldnt be treated equally. Both my parents are naturalized citizens. They always tell me about the struggle they faced when they first arrived in the United States.
Even though they have their papers, they are treated as if they are nothing. Im tired of witnessing immigrants being rejected [for] a job because theyre undocumented. They have families they have to raise and, by not being able to get a job, they cant put food on the table and live the American dream. People come to the U.S. for a new life, but oftentimes they dont get that.
My question to you is how will you help the people who have all these issues? Will you be courageous enough to legalize people who are undocumented? How will you make that difference, or a better question, will you be the one to make that difference?
Juan Sandoval, 17
Los Angeles River School, Los Angeles
Please dont let me continue to live in a world where rapists walk free and victims are silenced.
Rebecca Castillo, 18
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
Graduate of Charter Oak High School, Covina
I dont want my list of colleges to be limited by what my family can and cannot afford.
College is expensive. Its lack of affordability binds me. I dont want my list of colleges to be limited by what my family can and cannot afford. I dont want to get accepted to my dream college only to be forced to turn it down. I dont want to worry about whether I will be able to attend college outside of San Diego, simply because of the cost of room and board.
Upon entering the adult world, I ask that I not be crushed by the weight of my debt. I want to continue to the next chapter of my life without being cornered by stress and worry and having my every step affected by my decision to pursue a higher education.
I dont want to force my own financial burdens on my mom, who will have to take out loans to pay for my schooling while still having two other daughters to support and to later put through college. It frustrates all of us. I will still be in school when the next one of us reaches this point in her life. Although she hasnt yet realized how soon this will affect her, I dont want to think about how my debt will shrink her window of opportunity further.
Kate Sequeira, 17
San Dieguito Academy, Carlsbad
You must make it faster and easier for people like my parents to walk the path of citizenship, because no child should have a backup plan for their parents.
Luis Valente, 16
South East High School, South Gate
I need it to weigh heavily on your mind that the largest-scale mass murder of LGBTQ+ people happened this year.
I want to live in a country where I dont have to fight tooth and nail just so that people in my community can feel safe. I need it to weigh heavily on your mind that the largest-scale mass murder of LGBTQ+ people happened this year: not centuries ago, not decades ago, but this year, the year you are stepping in to take office.
I need you to be aware of how LGBT people of every age, race, sexuality, gender, income level and location in America are highly susceptible to hate crimes, abuse, sexual assault, homelessness, bullying, discrimination and murder. I need to know that it terrifies you as much as it terrifies me, as much as it informs my every decision, as much as it impacts my ability to trust others or express myself. I need to know this on behalf of myself, a lesbian teenager, and on the behalf of every single queer person Ive ever met, befriended or loved.
We need you to make a change. You want to make this country a better place? Well believe it when we see less of our friends, less of our heroes, less of our innocents suffering, fighting and dying.
Sarah Orgiyvsky, 16
CHAMPS Charter High School, Los Angeles
Im a hyphenated American. ... Chinese comes before American, as though all the things that make me different come before my love for my nation.
Simone Chu, 17
Arcadia High School, Arcadia
Be a role model to my peers and me, both in policy and in character.
Im tired of American exceptionalism of glorifying our leaders as something more than human. I want a president who is honest simple as that. I want a president who doesnt present themselves as superhuman, but manages to embody the qualities a leader (or any person) should: empathy, candor, justice, compassion.
A politician who attempts perfection will be an incredible disappointment when their flaws surface. Be representative, but not patronizing. Live our struggles next to us, but use your authority and influence to prevent them in the future. Admit our nations mistakes, and vow not to repeat them. Stop leaving blanks in our history textbooks where the names of the slaves and Native Americans should be; we built this nation on their backs. Let it be okay to be queer, transgender, an ethnic minority, a female, gender non-binary, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. Fight back with grace and resilience, and dont back down.
You must promote acceptance, not just tolerance. Be a role model to my peers and me, both in policy and in character.
Charlotte Weinman, 16
Harvard-Westlake High School, Studio City
Reach Sonali Kohli at Sonali.Kohli@latimes.com or on Twitter @Sonali_Kohli.
High School Insider project lead: Kyle Finck
Digital production: Sean Greene
Building a cougar crossing over one of Southern Californias busiest freeways will cost tens of millions of dollars funding that is unlikely to come any time soon from the states transportation kitty.
So advocates have launched a campaign to raise private donations for a span over the 10-lane 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills that would provide safe passage to mountain lions and other wildlife moving between the Santa Monica Mountains and inland habitat.
The effort got a jump-start from the Annenberg Foundation on Wednesday when the philanthropy announced a challenge grant that will match every dollar, up to $1 million total, donated by other foundations.
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Although best known for its education and arts funding, the foundation has supported animal-protection causes around the world and views the wildlife crossing as a way to improve the overall ecosystem, said foundation Executive Director Cinny Kennard.
The roughly 15 mountain lions that live in the Santa Monica range desperately need new blood. Isolated by freeways and urban development, adults are breeding with close relatives and losing the genetic diversity necessary for population survival.
Its easy to think of Los Angeles as a concrete jungle. The truth is, were home to one of the most richly diverse ecosystems in the entire world. Wallis Annenberg, Annenberg Foundation president
A recent study by UCLA and National Park Service scientists concluded that the inbreeding leaves the local cougar population at risk of extinction within the next 50 years.
Its easy to think of Los Angeles as a concrete jungle. The truth is, were home to one of the most richly diverse ecosystems in the entire world, Annenberg President Wallis Annenberg said in a statement. We need to do more to protect our mountain lion population, to help them breed and thrive.
A 2015 Caltrans report presented two alternatives for the 101 crossing, which would rise immediately west of Liberty Canyon Road.
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A bridge thats 165 feet wide and 200 feet long would cost $30 million to $35 million. A longer span over the freeway and Agoura Road the choice of wildlife advocates would cost $50 million to $60 million.
This is a capital campaign, just like a hospital, said Molly Judge, the West Coast philanthropy director for the National Wildlife Federation, which is helping spearhead the drive for public and private funding.
This is a capital campaign, just like a hospital. Molly Judge, West Coast philanthropy director for the National Wildlife Federation
Given Californias highway construction backlog, Judge said proponents are seeking state conservation money, rather than transportation funds. Last year, they obtained a $1-million grant from the California State Coastal Conservancy.
Backers want to raise $10 million from public and private sources by the end of next year to advance the project, which they hope to build by 2021.
The crossing would not help Southern Californias most celebrated mountain lion, P-22, who took up residency in Los Angeles Griffith Park after managing to cross not only the 101 Freeway but the 405 Freeway as well.
What hes accomplished is pretty powerful, Judge said. Hes become a figurehead for the movement to coexist with wildlife and to protect habitat.
To call attention to the bridge initiative, which is part of the federations #SaveLACougars campaign, a team of advocates, scientists and government officials on Wednesday are beginning a four-day, 40-mile walk that will retrace P-22s likely journey from the Santa Monicas to Griffith Park. The starting point is the site of the proposed cougar crossing.
bettina.boxall@latimes.com
Twitter: @boxall
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A man in a wheelchair killed himself Tuesday after detonating a pipe bomb inside a health clinic in Oakland, police said.
The deadly incident was reported about 6:26 p.m. at the San Antonio Health Center in the 1000 block of International Boulevard, according to the Oakland Police Department.
Witnesses told police the adult man entered the lobby of the clinic and appeared to be armed with what looked like a pipe bomb.
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He then detonated the explosive and took his own life, police said.
Pipe bomb set off at San Antonio Health Ctr. #oakland by man in wheelchair. PD: suicide-no others hurt @nbcbayarea pic.twitter.com/bcfxV4hODC TerryMcSweeney (@TerryMcSweeney) October 19, 2016
No other injuries were reported.
The investigation reveals this is an isolated incident where an individual took his own life, the department said in a statement.
The Alameda County Sheriffs Office said its bomb squad assisted police to ensure the area was safe and secure.
veronica.rocha@latimes.com
For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
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Francisca Molina had been an American citizen just a few minutes when she was inundated with sales pitches:
Come take a photo with Donald Trump!
All Hillary information here!
Dont forget to vote!
She and thousands of freshly sworn-in citizens exited their naturalization ceremonies at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Tuesday to find a scene that went beyond the usual peddling of T-shirts, flowers and teddy bears.
Outside the centers doors, backers of both presidential campaigns crowded around them, vying to get more registered voters for their party.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton worked the crowd too. (Well, their life-size cutouts did). Trump flashed two thumbs-up, and Clinton smiled, clad in her trademark pantsuit.
Molina, 68, born in Mexico, made her way through the crowd with help from her daughter and grandchildren. Like many, she was too overwhelmed with emotion to talk about politics or even make sense of the commotion around her.
I have the power to vote, said Molina, who waited 18 years to become a citizen. Thats what matters most.
Her plan was to go home, eat tamales and think things through, with input from her daughter, a Clinton supporter, and a granddaughter, a Trump backer.
Less than a week before Californias registration deadline, some new citizens found themselves torn between the advice of loved ones. Others, like Editha Eckert of East Hollywood, had already made up their minds.
Makia and Emmanuel Nunes pose for a photo with a cutout of Hillary Clinton after several thousands of people were sworn-in as new American citizens at the L.A. Convention Center on Tuesday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times )
Im with Hillary because shes a woman fighter, said Eckert, who was born in the Philippines.
Her husband, Larry, and her son, Earl Rich, rooted for her at the ceremony, but they disagreed with her choice.
I just cant stand the sound of Hillarys voice, her husband told her.
I know you cant, she said, laughing. Its too bad because shes going to win.
Volunteers from both parties typically set up booths at the center each month to register new citizens.
But with the election three weeks away, the entrance to the center was packed with more than half a dozen booths operated by immigrant-rights groups, nonprofits organizations, political party organizers and the Los Angeles Public Library. More than a dozen voter registration workers were working independently to sign up citizens.
Some volunteers set up as early as 6 a.m. to get a prime spot near the centers exit, where they can best access people.
This is the busiest weve ever seen things here, said Renee Nahum, political chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. Everybodys been pretty good about keeping a cool head.
Crystal Siri and her mother, Maria Siri of Laos, pose with a Donald Trump cutout after being sworn-in. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times )
Of course, there were a few minor skirmishes:
Democrats taunted Republicans for flashing a Latinos for Trump sign during a group photo, when, according to them, they didnt have any Latino volunteers.
And one Republican, Debra Oresko of La Habra, approached a registration worker and questioned her tax-paying record.
I think shes only been in the country like seven days, she said.
Each side policed the other to keep them from violating the convention center rules, such as soliciting citizens inside or blocking their pathway as they exited their ceremony.
At the Republican booth, Trump supporter Stephen Saletros said the goal wasnt to push the candidate onto people, though his cutout was a popular stop to snap selfies.
Were here to say congratulations, he said. We want to show them were diverse and were inclusive.
Standing by the front doors with a handful of balloons in his hand, Rolando Sifuentes, born in Guatemala, looked at the scene and shook his head. His brother, Marco, had just become a citizen and would soon register to vote.
Hes going to do whatever he wants, Sifuentes said. But if you ask me, I think this whole thing is ridiculous. We should forget this election and just start all over.
esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com
Twitter: @LATBermudez
Two men arrested on suspicion of murder following a bloody gun battle at an underground Jamaican restaurant over the weekend have been released without charges, according to officials.
Mowayne McKay, 33, and Diego Reid, 25, were released from jail Tuesday evening after prosecutors said they needed additional evidence to consider formal charges against the men, according to Det. Meghan Aguilar, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Investigation into the violence that killed four is continuing, according to Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney.
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McKay and Reid, who are Jamaican nationals, are not thought to be the men who initially confronted and killed the first victim at at the non-permitted restaurant in the West Adams neighborhood, Los Angeles Police Capt. Peter Whittingham told The Times. Those gunmen remain at large, he said.
At the time, the captain said it was not yet known how many -- if any -- people were killed by shots fired by McKay or Reid. But he said after consulting with prosecutors, police decided the evidence against the men was strong enough to arrest them.
Generally speaking, if a person has been arrested on suspicion of committing a crime, but is not formally charged by prosecutors within three days, they must be released from custody.
McKay and Reid were arrested on suspicion of murder early Sunday after they were found at area hospitals seeking treatment for gunshot wounds. At the time, Whittingham said eyewitness accounts and other evidence, including videos, led police to the men.
Gunfire erupted at Dillys Kitchen, in the 2900 block of Rimpau Boulevard, after two men confronted another man and fatally shot him, according to police. The dispute, which occurred during a birthday celebration, likely arose from a drug deal gone bad, Whittingham said.
As some 50 birthday celebrants ran for cover, a gun battle broke out between associates of the man who was killed and the two men who had confronted him, the captain said.
A total of nine men and six women were struck by gunfire. The four people who died were all men, police said. Their identities have not yet been released.
Anyone with details about the shooting is urged to call gang homicide Dets. David Dilkes or Isidro Soto at (323) 786-5110. Anyone wishing to remain anonymous should call the L.A. Regional Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477 or go directly to lacrimestoppers.
veronica.rocha@latimes.com
For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
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Classes resumed at a San Francisco high school Wednesday, just one day after four students were wounded by gunfire outside the school, officials said.
Security was increased at June Jordan School for Equity and counselors were meeting with students and faculty, according to the San Francisco Unified School District.
Though only four students were physically injured, this terrible incident has shaken everyone in the community, particularly the staff and students at June Jordan, Myong Leigh, the district interim superintendent, said in a statement Wednesday. Fortunately the school has a strong tradition of coming together daily to discuss challenging topics and to support one another.
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Gunfire erupted about 3:17 p.m. Tuesday outside of the campus when students were being dismissed, school officials and police said.
The shooter was accompanied by three other males, police said. Students ran from the parking lot as the shots rang out
Three 15-year-old male students and a 15-year-old female student were struck by gunfire, police said. They were taken to area hospitals. School officials said they were recovering from their injuries.
Responding officers thought initially that they had arrived at an active shooting scene, because they spotted the injured students inside the school, Officer Carlos Manfredi told reporters Tuesday.
Officers immediately began searching for the shooter, thinking that suspect might still be in the school shooting, he said.
The suspects had fled before police arrived, however.
School officials said the suspects were not students. They were targeting a student who attends June Jordan School for Equity for reasons that are presently unclear, according to the interim superintendent.
I need to state emphatically that this isolated event, although awful, should not be viewed as a negative reflection on the school, Leigh said.
The campus and its classes, he said, are intentionally kept small to motivate students to be independent thinkers and go to college.
We deeply appreciate the educators and students at June Jordan School for Equity and will proudly stand by them through this disturbing, but temporary, challenge, he said.
veronica.rocha@latimes.com
For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
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San Francisco police said four students were injured and one of them is in critical condition after shots were fired in the parking lot of a school around the time students were being dismissed.
The gunfire erupted outside the City Arts and Technology High School and the June Jordan School for Equity, which share a campus, Officer Carlos Manfredi said.
Three of the victims ran inside the school, he said, and a fourth victim hurt in the shooting went to a hospital.
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Manfredi said the shooting happened in the schools parking lot.
The students were initially ordered to stay in place until police searched each room and determined it was not an active shooter situation, he said.
The shooting happened during the schools dismissal time, Manfredi said.
Four male suspects wearing dark hoodies and jeans were seen leaving the area.
Investigators say they believe at least one of the injured persons was targeted.
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UPDATES:
7:15 p.m.: This article was updated with news of a fourth person injured officials originally said three people were hurt and about one victims condition.
This article was originally published at 6:05 p.m.
Jeremy Haley worked security at Denver International Airport, studied to be an air traffic controller in Great Falls, Mont., and sold natural gas leases in Williston, N.D.
But he was anxious and adrift. Night after night the lanky, heavily tattooed young man took refuge in vanilla-flavored vodka and Coke.
I was looking for something to fill the void, he said.
After a drunk-driving arrest, he heard of an obscure tropical plant called kratom.
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The leafy botanical, related to coffee, has been used throughout Southeast Asia for centuries to treat ailments including anxiety, chronic pain and drug addiction. It has become increasingly popular in the U.S. in the wake of an opioid drug crisis that is killing close to 20,000 people a year.
Haley, 30, ordered a batch from a company called Kratom King in Indonesia. When the powdered leaf arrived, he dissolved it in water and drank it.
It took about 10 minutes to kick in, he said. I felt a sense of reverence for being alive. It was calm, relaxing energy.
The leaves, he said, eliminated his desire for booze and soothed his anxiety.
Inspired with a new purpose, Haley began peddling kratom on the streets of Denver before starting Rocky Mountain Kratom and selling it online.
A photo illustration of kratom products that until recently could be legally purchased in the U.S. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images )
But his plans to open the Artisans Apothecary, perhaps the first shop in the country specializing in kratom, hit a major snag.
On Aug. 31, the federal government said it would list kratom as a Schedule 1 drug on par with heroin, LSD and methamphetamine by the end of September.
The Drug Enforcement Agency called it an imminent health threat, saying kratom was addictive and had been implicated in 15 deaths, though 14 of those involved other drugs as well. The agency also noted that kratom resulted in 660 calls to poison control centers between 2010 and 2015. It is already banned in Vermont, Alabama, Indiana, Arkansas and Wisconsin.
Denvers Department of Environmental Safety put a hold on Haleys kratom supply, scuttling his September grand opening.
Yet few were prepared for the national outcry that followed.
I have been with the DEA for 20 years and have never seen this level of public response, said Melvin Patterson, a spokesman for the agency.
They were flooded with calls. Protesters descended on both the U.S. and Colorado capitols to rally against the plan. Fifty-one members of Congress from both parties sent letters to the DEA, the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department demanding they reconsider.
Given that we are in the midst of a drug crisis and there is promising evidence of kratoms potential medical benefits, including the possibility of new, safer medications for the treatment of pain, we believe that placing kratom in Schedule 1 without adequate time for experts to weigh in via public comment may have unintended consequences, said one letter signed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
Other legislators, including conservatives such as Rep. Steve King (R-Utah), wrote a letter saying it would be premature to ban the drug while research was being done on kratoms role in reducing opioid withdrawal symptoms.
I have been with the DEA for 20 years and have never seen this level of public response. Melvin Patterson, agency spokesman
In a rare retreat, the DEA backed down. It delayed the ban and opened the matter for six weeks of public comment.
We have heard from a lot of people who self-medicate with this for pain and opioid addiction, Patterson said. We just want to make sure its safe.
The American Kratom Assn. declared victory.
It is an unprecedented move by the DEA, said the associations director, Susan Ash. I dont think we have ever seen a turnaround like this in the history of the Controlled Substances Act.
She said there are roughly 3 million to 5 million kratom users nationwide, and thousands had called the DEA and members of Congress to protest the planned ban.
Ash, 46, said she used kratom to break a debilitating morphine habit that grew out of her struggle with fibromyalgia.
In two weeks I went from a completely unproductive member of society to a changed person, she said. It eliminated my opioid cravings altogether.
Researchers are trying to ferret out the addiction-reducing properties of mitragynine, the active ingredient in kratom, which is either drunk like tea or taken in capsules.
Andrew Kruegel, a medicinal chemist at Columbia University, studies kratoms effect on brain receptors. He said the plants active ingredients seem to reduce the impact of opioid withdrawal, making it easier to get off the drugs.
From what I have seen, its quite safe and has been used for hundreds of years in Southeast Asia, he said.
But Dr. Lawrence Fox, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, has a different perspective. In 2013, his son Alex, 20, had just broken free of opioids. The family was about to sit down to dinner one night when Alex announced he was too tired to join them. His father found him dead the next day in his room. Kratom packets were in his desk.
The medical examiner found O-Desmethyltramadol in his body, which has been marketed as an opioid substitute sometimes added to kratom and sold as Krypton, Fox said. It has been linked to several overdose deaths.
He supports banning kratom until more is known.
Right now people are buying this stuff over the Internet and have no idea what they are getting, said Fox, who stressed that he wasnt speaking for the NIH. I dont want anyone else to die the way Alex did.
Haley said anyone buying kratom should ask sellers to produce lab reports detailing the ingredients and not to purchase anything with additives.
Meanwhile, hes getting his store ready for another attempted grand opening this month. It sits in an eclectic Denver neighborhood and is still a bit spartan. Medicinal plants, cactuses and succulents dot the airy interior. A pair of young kratom trees sit beneath plastic boxes where a mister bathes them in dewy fog.
Reclining in his back office, Haley, wearing a fossilized mollusk around his neck, said he plans to sue the city for lost business. And he wonders if hell be shut down again in six weeks.
I dont want to sound too dramatic, he said, but the DEA will have blood on its hands if they make people go back to opioids.
Kelly is a special correspondent.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Anakhanum Hidayatova, Orkhan Guluzade Trend:
Construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline in the European territory depends on political choice of the EU, Yusuf Cinar, president of the Turkish international research center Strategic Outlook, told Trend Oct. 19.
Cinar said that Europe needs continuous supply of energy and doesnt want any delays in deliveries.
After the crisis in Ukraine it turned out that a political decision can affect the EU's energy policy, he said. Europe wanted the supply of Russian gas through Ukraine to continue, and as a result bureaucratic barriers to the South Stream project emerged.
The expert believes that the EU is not really willing to implement the Turkish Stream project, but the Union doesnt have many alternatives.
If the foreign policy and energy strategy of the EU dont interfere with each other, if the political situation in Ukraine changes, the EU energy companies will be able to participate in the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, but if the EU is against the project, then the Turkish Stream has the risk to face bureaucratic obstacles, just like the South Stream project did, Cinar said.
Russia suspended the implementation of the South Stream project, which was designed to supply Russian gas to Europe bypassing Ukraine in December, 2014. The reason was the non-constructive position of the EU. It was decided to build the Turkish Stream instead.
Russia and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement October 10 on the implementation of the Turkish Stream project.
The agreement involves construction of two branches of the main gas pipeline under the Black Sea, the power of each branch being 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas.
One branch is provided to supply gas directly to the Turkish market, the other for the supply of gas by transit through Turkey to Europe. The intergovernmental agreement also stipulates that these two offshore branches should be built by December 2019.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum , @o_quluzade
Questions of conflicts aside, Hillary Clinton says shes proud of Clinton Foundation
Challenged about ethical questions at the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton cited work in Haiti and around the world.
Hillary Clinton defended the work of the Clinton Foundation during Wednesdays debate, brushing aside questions about conflicts and criticisms from Donald Trump.
The sprawling foundation, which works on challenges in the developing world and in the U.S., has drawn criticism for accepting gifts from foreign countries and businesses with international interests while Clinton served as secretary of State.
Everything I did as secretary of State was in furtherance of our countrys interests and values, Clinton said, saying there is no evidence of special handling for donors, but a lot of evidence of the good work done by the organization.
Trump took the opening to slam the foundation for accepting money from Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia.
These are people who push gays off buildings; these are people who kill women and treat women horribly, Trump said, calling on Clinton to give money back. He also criticized the foundation for its mixed record in Haiti, saying he got an earful about that during a tour of Miamis Little Haiti neighborhood.
Let me tell you, they hate the Clintons because of what happened in Haiti, he said.
Clinton said she would be happy to match her foundation with Trumps, which she noted used some of its funds to buy a portrait of Trump, and is under investigation for improperly raising money.
The Clinton Foundation was created in 1997, while Bill Clinton was still in office, to build the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.
Since then, it has grown into a worldwide health and development organization, with a range of interests and projects as diverse as planting trees and promoting healthy school lunches.
Among its goals, the foundation seeks to promote worldwide economic growth, increase opportunities for women and girls, fight childhood obesity and ameliorate the effects of climate change.
The foundation has raised about $2 billion from wealthy individuals, corporations and foreign governments. Its efforts, including disaster relief and providing low-cost medicines, have helped save millions of lives.
Despite assertions to the contrary, the foundation is not a money-making enterprise for the Clinton family. The former president, his wife and their daughter, Chelsea, receive no salary from the foundation, which spends 80% to 90% of its expenditures on charitable programs.
Much of the controversy surrounds the foundations fundraising and allegations that donors including foreign governments that gave millions traded contributions for access to Clinton when she was secretary of State during President Obamas first term.
To address those concerns, the foundation had signed a memorandum of understanding in December 2008 with Obamas transition team promising to publicly report its donors, though not specifying how much they have given.
Hillary Clinton also signed a separate ethics agreement with the State Department.
The Clintons, however, rejected suggestions at the time they ban all foreign donations to, at the least, avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. And emails showed they did did not always keep operations as separate from State Department affairs as they had promised.
Hillary Clinton met with some of the foundations donors and others in the Clintons orbit reached out to the secretary of State seeking opportunities for some givers.
There has been no evidence, however, of any explicit quid pro quo.
Bill Clinton has said he will cut ties to the foundation if his wife wins in November. The foundation also announced that if Hillary Clinton wins it will stop taking new contributions from foreign and corporate donors.
Pro-Clinton group will air ads linking vulnerable GOP senators to Trump
(Jim Cole / Associated Press)
A super PAC backing Hillary Clinton plans to air ads tying vulnerable Republican senators to GOP nominee Donald Trump in two battleground states.
Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania are facing tough reelection battles, and their opponents have tried to link them with the controversial statements of their partys standard-bearer.
The ads are an indication of the confidence the group feels about Clintons chances of winning the White House. This is just the beginning of expanding the map & supporting Dems. More to come soon, tweeted Guy Cecil, co-chair and chief strategist for Priorities USA, on Tuesday.
The senators have struggled to deal with their partys nominee. Ayotte once said she would vote for Trump, apologized after calling him a role model for children, and then announced she would not vote for him after recordings emerged of Trump making lewd comments about women.
Toomey is refusing to say who he supports for president.
Priorities USA is focused on electing Clinton to the White House, and has raised more than $133 million through the end of August. The group has not disclosed the ads it plans to air or how much it is spending.
Cecil indicated on Twitter that the group planned to advertise on television and African American radio in Georgia, another sign of their confidence in Clintons campaign. The state last voted to send a Democrat to the White House nearly a quarter-century ago.
Im Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I dont want you to miss today.
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Smear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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Vicious allegations. Vehement denials. Eye-popping guest lists. The buildup to the final presidential debate tonight between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas is as dramatic (and/or mentally fatiguing) as ever. What must each side do to make a mark at the last big event before the election? Cathleen Decker breaks it down.
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-- A cinematic October surprise: Michael Moore is releasing a film on Trump and Clinton, filmed over the past 11 days.
-- Join us at the Debate Watch Spectacular in downtown L.A. for an evening of music, laughs and political analysis.
In This Drought, Whos Thinking About Floods?
Answer: the Army Corps of Engineers. A new study says more than 3,000 homes and businesses along the L.A. River could be submerged by an average of 5 to 10 feet of water when a so-called 100-year flood hits. The number of properties that could be affected is much larger than previous estimates and includes areas such as Atwater Village, Elysian Valley, Griffith Park, Glendale and Burbank. Whats a homeowner to do?
Why L.A.s Teacher Housing Has No Teachers
Nearly a decade ago, the LAUSD was looking to retain new teachers who were leaving because of skyrocketing housing costs. The solution: Build affordable apartments on unused district land. The hitch: The teachers earn too much to qualify for the units under federal rules. So who lives there instead? Read on.
In Nigeria: An Infants Cry and a Fathers Risky Mission
Boko Haram wants to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria, and part of its strategy involves killing anyone who dares to harvest or hunt food. The result in northeastern Nigeria, once a breadbasket, is a famine in which 1 out of 5 children suffering from malnutrition is expected to die without help. If youre a father, what do you do to feed your 1-year-old son and family of six?
The Los Angeles Times and San Bernardino
It was a tragic and heartbreaking event that left 14 people dead the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. But the story of San Bernardino didnt start and doesnt end there. Thats why were trying to help a new generation engage with the city. On Thursday, an L.A. Times delegation will be in San Bernardino to host a community event and donate to student journalists the entire prize money from The Times Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the attack. The ceremony starts at noon at the Cal State San Bernardino student union and is open to the public.
YOUR ELECTION GUIDE
-- What to make of Californias 17 propositions on the ballot.
-- Reminder to Californians: You have until Monday to register to vote.
-- Endorsements by The Times editorial board.
CALIFORNIA
-- Thousands mourned two Palm Springs police officers killed in what has been called a planned attack.
-- Steve Lopez writes about a miracle baby who grew up to devote her life to helping abused and neglected children.
-- WikiLeaks emails show that L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti was a possible VP pick.
-- After a five-year drought, chocolate and strawberry milk are making their way back into public school lunchrooms in Los Angeles.
HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS
-- Heres how Rock Hall nominee Tupac Shakur popularized a sound and became a myth.
-- Seth Rogen, Jordan Peele and other celebrities will perform short plays written by fifth-graders in downtown L.A.
-- A big band in a small-ish room: When Green Day rolled out its new album Revolution Radio to the Palladium.
-- What Nobel Prize? Bob Dylan has been silent on his historic honor.
NATION-WORLD
-- Two Iranian Americans, a father and son, reportedly have been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran on charges of spying for the United States.
-- A federal judge who ruled on some of Mexicos highest-profile criminal cases was gunned down in broad daylight.
-- Yazidi women and girls are held as slaves by Islamic State in Mosul. Will they survive the battle to free the city?
-- An after-school Satan Club could be coming to your kids grade school.
-- Theres an easy way to prevent cavities in kids teeth. So why are most children in the U.S. not using it?
BUSINESS
-- A federal task force has made 44 recommendations to prevent another Aliso Canyon-style gas leak.
-- Pasadenas Dog Haus will become a national chain with nearly 500 locations.
-- Want a Tesla 3? Be prepared to wait a couple of years.
SPORTS
-- The Dodgers are two victories away from their first World Series berth since 1988 after a 6-0 win over the Cubs.
-- The Dodgers Adrian Gonzalez chose not to stay in a Trump hotel in May, but he didnt want it to be news.
OPINION
-- The new rules of obstruction: No new Supreme Court justices until the next Republican president?
-- Patt Morrison: Under the threat of police violence, some African Americans are writing their own obituaries in protest.
WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING
-- Who is Bill Mitchell, a.k.a. @mitchellvii on Twitter, who has become a prime social media surrogate for Trump? (BuzzFeed)
-- A Silicon Valley man is trying to make cellphones less addictive. (The Atlantic)
-- Would you like a chamber orchestra sent directly to your living room? (Wired)
ONLY IN L.A.
Vin Scully is off the air, but with the Dodgers in the postseason, the one and only voice of the team is still in the air. To wit: the Vin Scully Snapchat filter at Dodger Stadium. Get a look at it here.
Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died this year, President Obama went about nominating a successor, as required by the Constitution. But Senate Republicans including John McCain of Arizona resisted, insisting that the vacancy should be filled by the president chosen by voters in November. They invoked (or fabricated) a rule that a presidents right to have his Supreme Court nominees considered by the Senate lapses in an election year.
Now that Hillary Clinton seems likely to win the election, however, some Republicans are changing their tune. This week, McCain promised that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up. Huh?
It was a reminder of just how unprincipled Republicans have been in refusing to bring the court up to strength. This fight has been all about partisan advantage, and if that means the court must leave some important issues unresolved because of a 4-4 deadlock, so be it.
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McCains outrageous threat also highlighted a longer-term problem: the bipartisan repudiation of the idea that the Senate should defer to a presidents choice of a Supreme Court justice so long as the nominee is well qualified, untarnished by accusations of personal wrongdoing and within the mainstream of legal thought.
In 2005, 22 Democratic senators voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., regarded as a moderate conservative and rated well qualified by the American Bar Assn. Among those voting no was Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois. (Ironically, Roberts would go on to cast crucial votes to reject challenges to Obamas signature domestic proposal, the Affordable Care Act.) Almost five years later, 36 Republican senators, including McCain, voted against Obamas nomination of Elena Kagan, a moderately liberal jurist also rated well qualified by the ABA.
And now McCain threatens to oppose any Hillary Clinton nominee though his spokeswoman later said that he would thoroughly examine the record of any Supreme Court nominee put before the Senate and vote for or against that individual based on their qualifications.
The Constitution does provide for a role for the Senate in the appointment of judges, including Supreme Court justices. But senators abuse that authority when they reflexively reject or block a nominee from a president of the opposite party. Merrick Garland, an experienced federal appeals court judge who was nominated by Obama in March to replace Scalia, still hasnt been afforded even a hearing.
If Clinton wins and the voters also install a Democratic majority in the Senate, Republicans who decide to stonewall her Supreme Court nominations may find that their ultimate check on the president the filibuster will be taken away from them. Democrats went part of the way there in 2013, barring filibusters on other presidential nominations after Republicans blocked Obamas appointments to an important federal appeals court.
The Republicans obstructionism is wrong; it also could backfire by giving the next president an even freer hand in shaping the Supreme Court. Some might call that poetic justice.
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Medical marijuana may be a billion-dollar industry in California, but its a cash business.
Because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, most pot shops cant get bank accounts or accept credit card transactions because the financial services companies fear they would be penalized or shut down by federal regulators for handling money gained from unlawful drug sales. That means marijuana products are typically sold for cash, and dispensary owners pay their employees, their landlords and others in cash as well. Its not unusual for pot shop owners to haul bags of money tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the state tax collectors office.
But as unwieldy as the cash-only system is now, California regulators and cannabis businesses could be swimming in even more cash if voters pass Proposition 64 in November and the state legalizes adult recreational use of marijuana. California dispensaries sold an estimated $2.7-billion worth of marijuana last year, and industry observers predict the recreational and medicinal market could increase to $6 billion by 2020.
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Marijuana is already easily accessible and widely used in California; it would be better for public health and for public safety if it was regulated.
Proponents of Proposition 64 have drafted a logical, pragmatic plan for legalization, which includes a comprehensive licensing and regulatory system, and which the gives state legislators the flexibility to change the law to address unintended consequences. Thats one reason why The Times has endorsed Proposition 64. Marijuana is already easily accessible and widely used in California; it would be better for public health and for public safety if it was regulated and highly controlled for adult use.
But even proponents must acknowledge that as long as the marijuana industry is a cash business, it will be harder for California to regulate and control. And there is little state officials can do to fix the banking problem as long as the federal government considers marijuana an illegal drug and classifies marijuana revenues as illegal proceeds.
The problems are already apparent. Board of Equalization Chairwoman Fiona Ma estimates that the state collects only about a third of the taxes owed by existing medical marijuana businesses. And because cash transactions dont generate a reliable paper trail, tax collectors have resorted to sitting outside pot shops and counting customers to estimate sales revenue and taxes. Proposition 64 proponents say a new seed-to-sale regulatory system created for medical marijuana, and which would apply to recreational cannabis as well, should make it easier for the state to track tax revenues.
Then there are the safety and logistical challenges of having so much cash on hand. Pot shops have been targeted for robberies and are often staffed with armed security guards.
In theory, banks have some cover for working with marijuana customers. The Justice and Treasury departments issued guidance on how banks could serve state-sanctioned marijuana businesses, as part of President Obamas policy of allowing states to experiment with legalizing marijuana. But that doesnt apply to independent bank regulators like the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. In practice, pot shops that are able to open accounts often find them shut down after a few months when the large cash deposits raise alarms, according to the National Cannabis Industry Assn.
There have been various attempts by states to facilitate banking services for cannabis businesses. In 2014, Colorado officials approved a charter for the first-ever credit union created specifically to serve marijuana businesses, but the Federal Reserve refused to grant a master account to conduct transactions from the illegal sale of marijuana.
California officials have also tried to devise workarounds. Ma, the Board of Equalization chairwoman, proposed creating a state bank to take cash deposits and allow businesses to make electronic transfers to pay their tax bills. But that wouldnt address the larger goal of letting customers and shops conduct transactions without cash.
Ultimately, the solution will have to come from the federal government. Congress or the next administration could reclassify marijuana from Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (a designation meaning its as addictive as heroin and has no medicinal value) to a less-restrictive category that would allow banking transactions. Or Congress could bar federal regulators from penalizing banks that provide services to state-legal marijuana businesses.
Lawmakers from Colorado and Oregon have introduced bipartisan bills that would allow banks to start providing services to marijuana businesses that are licensed and regulated by the state, but theyve failed to get traction in the House and Senate. If voters in California and four other states choose to legalize marijuana in November, how much longer can federal leaders ignore a multibillion dollar industry?
For a complete list of The Times endorsements for the Nov. 8 ballot, go to latimes.com/endorsements.
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Los Angeles would be the worst affected county in America, losing 176,000 jobs by 2019, if Donald Trump is elected president and fulfills his campaign pledge to unleash trade wars with China and Mexico. Another 60,000 jobs would be lost in Orange County. California as a whole could see 640,000 jobs disappear, more than 4% of private sector employment. And this is just a small taste of what might happen nationallyaccording to a Peterson Institute model for a scenario in which the U.S. imposes a 45% tariff on China and a 35% tariff on Mexico, and they respond in kind.
Trade issues have seldom reached the top of the U.S. political agenda. For decades, a consensus in favor of an open U.S.-led trade system held. But the 2016 election has marked a departure from this pattern. Both major candidates oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the single major trade initiative under consideration. This opposition is regrettable: TPP would deliver significant gains to the U.S. economy, and its failure would be a blow to both the U.S. economy and U.S. standing in Asia.
But Trump goes much further than Hillary Clinton, promising punitive tariffs on China and Mexico, at times advocating firm-specific tariffs (which are historically unprecedented and probably unconstitutional), talking about abrogating disastrous free trade agreements, and even considering withdrawing from the World Trade Organization. That last move, if implemented, could undo 70 years of economic diplomacy.
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The last time the U.S. enacted protectionist trade policies, cutting itself off from the rest of the world, that action worsened the Great Depression.
The sobering reality is that legal experts believe that under a variety of statutes, the president has considerable executive authority to do these things. Even if Trump were ultimately stymied by Congress or the courts, that process would be time-consuming, giving him ample opportunity to wreak havoc.
Capital goods industries would be hardest hit. The trade shock would then propagate throughout the economy, also destroying jobs in sectors such as retail, restaurants, and temporary employment agencies. Millions of jobs that appear unconnected to international trademany of them filled by lower-skilled and lower-wage workerswould be at risk.
The Peterson Institute forecastwhich used conventional economic models based on national income, employment and other macroeconomic variables, as well as models capturing the linkages among more than 300 sectors down to the county levelindicates that the worst year would be 2019. At that point, the economy would slowly begin recovering from the shock. Hiring would subsequently pick up, but there is no guarantee that displaced workers would be re-employed at their previous pay levels.
Washington state would be hardest hit, experiencing a loss of private sector employment of more than 5%. However, a broad array of states, including a number of so-called battleground states, would suffer employment declines of more than 4%. In California, the job losses would not be limited to Southern California: Silicon Valley would take a major hit, with Santa Clara County losing 64,000 jobs, or more than 7% of private employment, for example.
China and Mexico might decide to retaliate in ways other than imposing tariffs, but even in scenarios in which retaliation is limited, Southern California could be hurt. For instance, if China were to instruct its state-owned enterprises to stop buying U.S. business services, the state could lose nearly 14,000 jobs, with nearly 6,000 of those losses occurring in Los Angeles and Orange counties alone. The state and region would experience additional losses if China decided to stop buying U.S. aircraft.
Theres a reason liberalizing international trade has been the policy of the United States for the last 70 years. The last time the U.S. enacted protectionist trade policies, cutting itself off from the rest of the world, that action worsened the Great Depression. While Clintons opposition to the TPP will cost America potential income gains and will undermine U.S. leadership in Asia, Trumps proposals could actually sink the U.S. economy. Clintons policies amount to a fender bender. Trumps would be a head-on collision.
When asked about trade wars, Trump once insouciantly replied, Who the hell cares? In these trade wars, the American causalities will be numerous and disproportionately drawn from the ranks of lower-income citizens.
Marcus Noland is executive vice president and director of studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and senior fellow at the East-West Center.
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Los Angeles is in the grip of a widely acknowledged housing crisis. Two years ago, scholars at UCLA and Harvard proclaimed L.A. the most unaffordable rental market in the United States. This required some explaining: Other cities clearly have higher housing costs; Los Angeles won its dubious honor because so many of its residents make so little money.
Los Angeles is also home to the most overcrowded neighborhoods in the country, as shown by a statistical analysis by The Times. Again, this seems counterintuitive, given the citys famous sprawl, but it is exactly the lack of density that makes housing here scarce, unaffordable and packed to the rafters.
You might think we were on our way to solving the crisis if youve been anywhere close to downtown in the last few months. The historic core and nearby neighborhoods are dotted with massive cranes that signal new apartments and condominiums going up. In addition, L.A. Countys increasing minimum wage has already started boosting the incomes of many poor people. Unfortunately, as consequential as both these trends are, they arent solving the housing crisis.
On average, the rent for a new one-bedroom unit is a jaw-dropping $2,000 a month.
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In just four years from now, wages in L.A. will be at least $15 an hour, and yet households with two minimum-wage earners will still not be able to afford whats being built: On average, the rent for a new one-bedroom unit is a jaw-dropping $2,000 a month. Worse, as all this pricey housing goes in, nearby rents increase too, creating a gentrification double whammy: Longtime residents cant afford the new units, and they cant afford to stay put either.
The city has no policy requiring developers to include affordable housing in new buildings or to replace any such units destroyed by new construction. Now there are signs that too much luxury housing is being built. Vacancy rates across the city are frighteningly low, just under 3%, but downtown the rate is climbing. To lure prospective tenants, landlords are offering incentives, but they are not lowering rents.
Housing rights groups and labor unions developed Measure JJJ, on the Nov. 8 ballot, to combat the inequities renters face in Los Angeles. It represents the priorities of low-income Los Angeles residents in the most rapidly gentrifying areas of the city Boyle Heights, Koreatown, the South Figueroa corridor, and along the Los Angeles River. JJJ provides the city with a number of ways to increase housing for middle-class and low-income Angelenos, and at the same time creates jobs that can sustain working families.
The measure doesnt apply to all residential projects, just to those bigger than 10 units for which the developers obtain special permission to build in places, or at densities, other than what city land-use rules would allow. Such waivers, which can dramatically increase the value of residential projects, are commonly granted and yet L.A. asks for nothing in return.
If JJJ passes, apartment builders that meet the criteria would have to include up to 25% affordable housing. Some of those units must be priced within reach of households making less than 30% of the areas median income, and if there were affordable or rent-controlled units previously on the site, they would have to be replaced. In general, the lower the price per unit, the fewer such units must be included in a project. In all cases, developers could choose instead to pay into the citys Affordable Housing Trust Fund or to supply affordable housing elsewhere.
For the jobs component of the measure, the criteria are these: Workers on JJJ projects must have graduated from a construction-trades apprenticeship program; 30% have to be permanent city residents; and 10% have to represent groups that experience barriers to employment including those with criminal backgrounds, the homeless, veterans, single parents and former foster youth. These labor rules are important. It doesnt make sense to build more affordable housing if people still cant find the work or wages that would allow them to sign a lease.
Measure JJJ wont halt new housing developments, as some charge, or speed them up, as others claim. It merely makes sure that what gets built meets the needs not just of well-to-do newcomers in gentrifying neighborhoods, but also of the everyday working people who live there now. These folks need better jobs and places to live.
Measure JJJ wont solve all of L.A.s housing problems, but it can help stop the citys evolution into a shiny preserve for the wealthy, devoid of diversity, rife with luxury properties, punctuated with enclaves for the poor and homeless. Measure JJJ can put more affordable housing into the Los Angeles market and create more jobs as well. It can ensure that newcomers will continue to be welcome here and that natives can stay where generations of their families have worked and lived.
Cynthia Strathmann is executive director of Saje, a Los Angeles organization that advocates for tenant rights and equitable development.
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Newspapers write a number of obituaries in advance, to keep on file, because when heads of state or movie stars or Nobel laureates die, theres no way to assemble what amounts to a substantive instant biography on a tight deadline. Jahan Jones knows all of that. Hes a recent graduate of Arizona State Universitys journalism school, and in the year or so hes just spent working in New York as a page at NBC, at the Today show, hes given some thought to obituaries not those of the rich and renowned, but of black people whose names would likely make news only if they were killed in encounters with police. So he began the Black Obituary Project, a Web platform for African Americans to post their own obituaries as theyd imagine they might read, if they did indeed die in an encounter with police. And Jones began the project by writing his own.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW ON THE PATT MORRISON ASKS PODCAST
What is the Black Obituary Project?
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The Black Obituary Project is a collaborative project undertaken by a gamut of black people and its intended to convey the reality of state-sanctioned violence and also its residual impacts.
What we did was collect prewritten obituaries from black people with the intent being to show that police violence is indiscriminate; it affects all of us, young, old, all in between. Secondly it allows black people an opportunity to tell their own stories.
So often, when African Americans are killed by the police, their photos are posted about, but their stories are not shared in a way that is humanizing. and so this gives black people a chance to share their stories, share their shortcomings in many cases, and tell their tales on their own terms.
You studied journalism at Arizona State University, so writing obituaries isnt something thats unfamiliar to you.
About a year ago, I was toying with the idea of writing my own obituary and submitting it as a freelance piece to, honestly, anyone who would take it. That piece never came into fruition.
This year, in the wake of the Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings, I was driven to do it again, but I saw so many of my peers had similar sentiments. And I thought it would be even more powerful to loop them in on a project like this. So I fairly instantly began contacting people and seeing how open they would be to the idea of writing their own obituaries for the purposes of this project. I was really surprised, and you know weve enlisted thus far about 140, 150 people and were looking to grow.
When you thought about writing your own, you were not, I hope, writing it in anticipation of anything but sending a big message to say, This is who I am and this is what my life would be summed up as if this happened to me.
One of the things I also wanted to stress is that for black people to conceive of our own deaths actually isnt too formidable of a task. Because there is the so-called talk that black parents have with their children about ways for their children to avoid fatal conflicts with the police.
They tell their children to stand up straight and keep their hands on the steering wheel and make sure their pants are pulled up and to treat the officer respectfully.
So theres a checklist that black children are very familiar with. And theyre only familiar with that checklist because they know the repercussions of not adhering to it strictly could be their death. And so I was able to conceive of my own death fairly easily.
Thats not to say it wasnt emotionally taxing, but the actual task of putting pen to paper was easy. And I think thats a sentiment shared by a number of other people in this project.
You grew up in Arizona. Did your parents give you that talk, too? And have you had any encounters with police that reinforced it for you?
Absolutely. My parents did give me that talk. I have family members who have been harassed by police. Personally, I can only speak of one specific incident that was kind of off-putting, and that was that I was just running through the park once, and a police officer drove his car onto the sidewalk of the park, so hes driving onto the grass.
Mind you, Im the only one running throughout this park and he asked me who I am and what Im doing there, and he let me go on my way. But I would be lying if it didnt admit to the fact that as I was speaking to that man, all the things my parents told me about my potential interaction with police, and what I should do those things were going through my mind.
Theres this sort of terror that black people experience in many cases when speaking with police, because they know that their lives could be ended at any moment for any reason.
Of the people who have submitted their obituaries to you, what have they told you about why theyre doing it?
I think theres been this sense of kinship among us. We realize that these are trying times and these are important times, so Id say the prevailing rationale that Ive heard from people who have contributed is they just want to contribute their voice to a movement at this time.
Id say one of the things I was truly surprised about was how forthright people were in writing their own obituaries, and that was my request, of course. What I was surprised about in reading these obituaries was that so many people were incredibly honest about their stories, and the things that they had yet to accomplish and their failures and their personal shortcomings.
So quite possibly the most enlightening aspect of this project was reading peoples realities with blemishes included.
What kind of blemishes did they talk about?
A number of people spoke about their timidity, about how they lived lives that were safe to such an extent that they may have shorted themselves tremendous opportunities and shorted themselves incredible experiences.
And a number of people considered themselves cowards, and thats a direct quote. I advise people to read these obituaries in full because you really get the gamut of emotions. You see a number of people who are speaking triumphantly about all theyve accomplished, and then you have other people who are speaking regretfully about all they werent able to accomplish.
Has any of them said to you that writing his or her obituary changed their lives at least changed their thinking about themselves and their lives?
A number of people, when they sent their obituary back to me, were thankful for the opportunity. Those people who contributed, this is their first time of doing so on a formal platform. I sent them a template. They had to adhere to that template, of course, but they also infused their own emotion, their own passion and things of that sort in their own stories.
Part of your template is the lede, which everybody uses. So we read: Jahan Elliot Jones, 24, was unarmed when shot and killed in a conflict with local police officers Alisha Patrice Miles, 24, was unarmed when shot and killed in conflict with local police officers. And at the end we see, Alisha Miles was once a woman upon this earth and yet she is no longer. Dominic Joseph was once a man upon this earth and yet he is no longer. You went to journalism school, and you know thats not the way necessarily a news obituary is going to be written. But this is about something else than just delivering the news.
I consider this a convergence of my journalism interest and my artistic interest. I dont believe the two are necessary mutually exclusive. Ive always believed that the finest journalists among us take our realities, yes, and speak to them, but they also contextualize them.
But with regard to the uniform intro and outro, I felt as though the lede was as devoid of opinion as possible. When they sent their obituaries back, a number of them had created different narratives. They said so-and-so was unarmed when shot and killed at an anti-violence rally. They were building these stories and I completely understand that, because we have this urge to create this sort of perfect victim.
And I was trying to urge all the contributors not to do that. Because there are no perfect victims, and just because youre not a perfect human being doesnt mean that your life is should be valued less.
We have, I think, about 150 submissions. That number is almost reflective of the number of black people killed in this country thus far this year. If all of these people were to pass in a day, it would be considered at national tragedy. But the fact that that number, whatever it may be 197, and it may have grown since then has been spread out over the course of a year, we dont really treat it as such. So the vastness of it will allow it to be more impactful.
Looking at some of the photos on the webpage, there are young people with cap and gown from graduation, young people with kids, young people with parents and grandparents. Tell me a little about the range of these 150 people who have submitted their obituaries.
They come from so many different backgrounds, they come from a number of different political affiliations. They range in ages. You discussed the photos, and that was something I kind of wrestled with.
Initially I was just going to have everyone send in just a gray selfie sort of photo. The best way to describe that is just the typical photo you find when black people are killed by police. Its usually this photo that seems to have been taken with a phone from 2008 and its not typically high-resolution.
This comes from my journalistic experience: sometimes when were writing stories about people who were slain we dont have access to their personal Facebook accounts. So we can only use the photos that are made available to use, and those typically arent the photos that present people in their best light. I told them to send me the photo they would like to serve as their lasting image.
Did the people who wrote their own obituaries show them to their families?
Its very possible some of them shared with their families what theyd written. I didnt share with my family that I was even working on this project until the day I debuted the project. My parents were excited about the project; they thought it was beautiful, but of course theyre forced to reconcile their appreciation for this project with the prospect that their son may be taken at any moment.
The grievances Ive heard from people who have been opposed to the project is that black people are supposedly speaking their own deaths into existence. I dont believe black people dying at the hands of the police have died because of an inability to speak positivity into their lives.
Were interested in creating our own narratives. We are unflinching in our criticisms of the nation as it is today. And we also realize that there are greater machinations at work that pose impediments to black lives. So this project is just one of many thats serving as an indictment of sorts.
Who are those critics?
It hasnt been exclusively white people, which may be some peoples initial assumption. I concede that this project is discomforting but its necessarily discomforting, as far as Im concerned. Were trying to be jarring. Were trying to show people that its very easy to see these stories on television, to see that someone has died, and to continue with your life if you dont know the person who has died.
And abstaining from conversation about race and racism and disproportionate policing is contributing to the very society that so often leads to the deaths of African Americans.
Everyone finds a different way to express her voice or his voice, and some people turn out at rallies for Black Lives Matter. This seems to be the journalist in you saying, This is my contribution.
Absolutely. And this is just the beginning. Its been humbling to be able to encircle so many of my peers and co-workers in a project like this. This is going to exist forever. Im never going to stop accepting these obituaries.
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On Thursday Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will appear at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a white-tie fundraiser for Catholic charities at which they will flank Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. Lucky for them that the affair isnt being held in Philadelphia.
The archbishop of that city, Charles Chaput, has expressed such contempt for both candidates that he might find it hard to break bread with them.
Last week Chaput approvingly quoted a friend who described this years presidential election as a choice between a vulgar, boorish lout and disrespecter of women with a serious impulse control problem and a scheming, robotic liar with a lifelong appetite for power and an entourage riddled with anti-Catholic bigots.
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That exercise in false equivalence came in a column in the conservative magazine First Things in which Chaput took aim at private comments by Clinton campaign aides that he and others have called anti-Catholic. (You can read Chaputs column here, and a less overwrought reaction to the comments from Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne here.)
But even before WikiLeaks released emails containing those comments by Clinton aides, Chaput had written in a column that both candidates are whats the right word? so problematic that neither is clearly better than the other.
Really, Your Grace?
To understand Chaputs scorn for Clinton you need to know that he is an intellectual leader of the right wing of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, a faction for which Clintons support for legal abortion is anathema.
As Chaput himself wrote in the aforementioned column: The right to life undergirds all other rights and all genuine social progress. It cannot be set aside or contextualized in the name of other rights or priorities without prostituting the whole idea of human dignity.
Chaput also is famous for his rejection of John F. Kennedys vision of an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.
Kennedy enunciated that vision during his 1960 presidential campaign in a speech to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston. In 2010, Chaput, also addressing a Protestant audience in that Texas city, said that Kennedys speech was sincere, compelling, articulate -- and wrong.
Chaput, then the archbishop of Denver, chided contemporary Catholics for living their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy -- the kind that theyll never allow to become a public nuisance.
Traditionally archbishops of Philadelphia are appointed to the College of Cardinals charged with electing a new pope. But when Pope Francis announced a batch of new cardinals earlier this month, Chaput wasnt one of the three American prelates named to the college.
Vaticanologists explained that Francis is moving away from the practice of automatically bestowing cardinals red hats on the heads of major archdioceses, which could also explain why Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez was passed over. But it also seems likely that Chaputs fondness for hurling anathemas hurt his chances.
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To the editor: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps unsubstantiated allegation that the election is rigged against him sows seeds of distrust in our democracy and its institutions. (Trumps talk of a rigged election is dangerous demagoguery, editorial, Oct. 18)
His candidacy should serve as a lesson to the American voters: Do your homework and be careful whom you elect. Trump has been an embarrassment to members of his own party, many of whom have disavowed him.
I can truly say that in my 102 years of life, I have never seen a presidential race stoop so low.
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Morie Markoff, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Trumps assertion that the presidential election is rigged is an obvious attempt by him to save face in the event that he loses the election. The irony is that by making his false claims, it is Trump who is, in fact, rigging (or manipulating) the perceptions of the American people.
Fortunately, the vast majority of us are not that gullible.
Indeed, while Trump wants the American people to dismiss his vulgar remarks about women as locker-room talk, it seems far more likely that the American people will dismiss his claims of a rigged election as padded-room talk.
Steve Danning, Las Vegas
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To the editor: If this election is rigged, it happened way before Trump began his campaign to discredit our voting system by blaming his impending defeat on the media and voter fraud. It happened when the Republicans themselves started to legally rig elections.
Its called gerrymandering.
Republican governors and state legislators have drawn electoral districts to virtually ensure that their state and federal seats will be incontestable. Many Republican-dominated states have gone even further, putting in place restrictive and often unconstitutional voting laws that will make casting ballots difficult for groups of citizens.
That is a rigged election. And guess what: Those adversely affected tend to not be Republican voters.
Julia Springer, Santa Barbara
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To the editor: Trump has already built a wall.
Saying the election is rigged has deeply divided my family and surely others like mine across the nation. Decent people turn a blind eye, while others scream at members of their own family, desperately trying to get through to their loved ones.
It has such a terrible price. We are the collateral damage no one speaks of. Saying the election is rigged has put up a wall up that words cannot reach over.
Maybe that is the wall Trump was talking about.
Dennis Grossman, Woodland Hills
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To the editor: It is nice that the presidential nominees can sleep in their own beds most nights, even while campaigning. (Why Trump and Clinton sleep in their own beds most nights even though theyre on the campaign trail, Oct. 13)
Now if I could only find a way to sleep at all after watching one of their debates.
Allen F. Dziuk, Carlsbad
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:
The prosecutor's office of Kazakhstans West Kazakhstan region fined Ural Oil and Gas company for 2.07 billion tenge ($6.23 million), the prosecutor's office reported.
The company was fined for unauthorized disposal of drilling waste.
Ural Oil and Gas obtains no facilities for the disposal of industrial wastes and had contracts on export of hazardous wastes outside the drilling area with transporting companies. This fact resulted in uncontrolled waste disposal in unauthorized places: near settlements, state reserves and on agricultural lands.
According to Kazakh law, a company or individual producing wastes is responsible for their safe management.
Ural Oil and Gas is engaged in exploration of hydrocarbons at Fedorovsky block in Western Kazakhstan.
Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
To the editor: Soda taxes are not meant to shame consumers; they are a pricing tool that makes unhealthy choices less attractive. However, the proposal doesnt go far enough to promote healthy alternative choices. (World health officials want super-size tax on soda and sugary drinks, but are countries ready to swallow that? Oct. 12)
Revenue from the tax doesnt trickle down directly to the consumer. This makes the proposal unappealing, especially to the poor, who carry both the tax burden and the potential health benefits.
In fact, the World Health Organization recommends a more comprehensive set of policies to reduce sugar consumption. In addition to a 20% to 50% tax on soda, there should also be a 10% to 30% subsidy on healthy alternatives such as fruits and vegetables. In Britain, the tax is pro-rated according to the amount of sugar in the product.
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If the provision of healthy alternative subsidies were included in the proposition, this policy would be more consumer-friendly and weaken the grocery tax argument that is resonating with many voters in San Francisco Bay Area cities this November.
Gianna Le, San Francisco
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To the editor: It seems there is nothing that people in power wont do to take away your freedom to make your own mistakes.
If consumption of sugar is such a bad thing, then simply ban it, as one would do with lead in paint. But that would take away from the lucrative extraction of money from the people. It is as if these bureaucrats have said, We have the research to back up our claims that sugar is bad, so if they still want to ignore us, then we will use force to get our way and make money as well.
I think Ill take a big gulp of soda before thats banned.
William Baker, Yorba Linda
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There are compelling reasons not to vote for Donald Trump. He has the emotional temperament of a spoiled 14-year-old girl everything is someone elses fault and any rare apology is insincere and grudging. His attitude toward sex and women mirrors those of an obnoxious frat boy girls are sex toys to be rated and groped. And he exhibits the ignorance of a drunk on a tirade at the end of a bar red rage aimed at imagined enemies and wedded to simplistic solutions based on cliches, stereotypes and conspiracy theories.
Nevertheless, despite the many things that disqualify him, there has been the faint hope that, should a Trump presidency come about, it would not turn out as badly as it could because he would surround himself with capable people who would run the country while he kept busy tweeting, nursing grudges and having his hair refurbished.
Some of this wishful thinking was based on the false image of Trump as a wildly successful businessman. Now that there is plenty of evidence that Trump is a better con man than businessman, it seems less likely that he would be able to draft a team of masters of the universe from the corporate world to staff his administration.
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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)
Still, he could assemble the usual crew of Republican stalwarts, couldnt he? Well, perhaps not not after breaking so dramatically with the GOP establishment. So, who would Trump find to guide Americas destiny? If the path of his campaign is any indication, the answer to that question is clear: the kooks and conspiracy theorists of the extreme right.
Trump has long peppered his public pronouncements with the phrase some people say. When those people actually exist, rather than being figments of Trumps imagination, they are invariably right-wing talk radio entertainers and paranoid doomsayers with bizarre takes on reality. In 2011, Trump famously latched on to one of their more inflammatory fantasies that President Obama was not born in the United States and ran with it. Now, as his campaign for president is sinking into the scum of a sex harassment scandal, he is acting like a guy who is relying on the crazies for guidance.
Trumps current rants about a rigged election, voter fraud, media conspiracies and a cartel of international bankers taking over the government are ripped from the dark musings of fevered minds on the right. If he were president, it seems highly likely that he would continue to look to the same sources for inspiration. After all, his campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, comes from the alt-right crowd.
Imagine a presidency steered by the fierce fantasies of someone like Alex Jones, a Trump fan and radio host who Rolling Stone magazine dubbed a giant in Americas conspiracy subculture. Jones has come up with some interesting ideas. He has said the horrific slaying of schoolchildren and teachers at Sandy Hook was staged by actors to drum up support for gun control. He has said terror attacks in Orlando, San Bernardino and on 9/11 were engineered by sinister forces inside the U.S. government. He has said military maneuvers in the Southwest were a ruse to cover up a federal takeover of Texas. He has said the government has a weather weapon that can create and steer groups of tornadoes. He has said that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered by the Obama administration and that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been responsible for numerous homicides throughout their political careers.
Jones is a loon, but his crackpot theories are believed by a significant number of Trump supporters and, apparently, by Trump himself. When Trump came to California in May and said the states multiyear drought was not real, he was repeating a Jones-inspired theme. Trump sat for an extended interview on Jones show that was filled with statements of mutual admiration. Your reputation is amazing, Trump told Jones.
If all the other reasons not to vote for Trump are not enough, this one should be the clincher: The right-wing lunatics who have been kept away from the levers of power even in conservative Republican administrations would find an open door at the Trump White House.
David.Horsey@latimes.com
Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter
Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa endorses marijuana legalization initiative By Patrick McGreevy Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday endorsed a marijuana legalization initiative. ((Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) ) Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday became the latest high-profile politician to endorse an initiative on next weeks ballot that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in California. Villaraigosa is considering whether to run for governor in 2018 amid a field that already includes Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a leading proponent of Proposition 64. I took my time on this measure because I wanted to make sure it included protections for children and public safety, Villaraigosa said in a statement. In evaluating the measure in its entirety, I am convinced there are enough safeguards to make it a workable proposition. The Proposition 64 campaign welcomed Villaraigosas endorsement at a time when one recent poll indicated slightly fewer than half of Latino voters support the measure. Were glad to have it, said Jason Kinney, a spokesman for the campaign. Facebook
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Conservative group spends $3.5 million on Central Valley race once considered safe By Sarah D. Wire The Congressional Leadership Fund is pouring another $1.5 million into the race between Rep. Jeff Denham and Democrat farmer Michael Eggman. The group, which is endorsed by House Republican leaders, and works with the American Action Network, has now spent $3.5 million in the race. The race was initially viewed as an easy win for Denham (R-Turlock), but has become increasingly uncertain in recent weeks. The district is being closely watched as an indicator of how Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump might affect down-ballot candidates. Democrats have spent more than $6 million in the district. The Congressional Leadership Fund and American Action Network have spent $45 million in 32 districts nationwide so far and have aired ads in other California House races, including in the nearby 21st District race between Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) and attorney Emilio Huerta and the 7th District race between Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) and Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones. The groups newest ad in the 10th District race begins running on television Tuesday. It calls Eggman, an almond and bee farmer, an extreme liberal and a rubber stamp for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) because he supports the Affordable Care Act. It previously ran an ad against Eggman that used news footage from the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack. ------------ FOR THE RECORD 2:14 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the Congressional Leadership Fund as the Conservative Leadership Fund. ------------ Facebook
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The Rev. Al Sharpton and civil rights leaders hold rally in support of Proposition 61 By Christine Mai-Duc The Rev. Al Sharpton kicks off a rally and march in support of Proposition 61, the California ballot measure that seeks to lower the price state agencies pay for prescription drugs. The Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders gathered at a rally Monday morning to support Proposition 61, the ballot measure that seeks to lower the price state agencies pay for prescription drugs. Sharpton appeared alongside black community leaders, including Marc Morial, former New Orleans mayor and head of the National Urban League, and Kevin Sauls, pastor of a South L.A. church. This issue is very simple, Sharpton said to a crowd of about 40 supporters. Its about the right of people to afford what they need, and they need to have accessibility that is affordable with prescription drugs. He likened the issue of prescription drug affordability to a civil right, and recycled the well-known Yes We Can slogan from President Obamas 2008 election to urge voters to pass Proposition 61. Sharptons appearance came a day after he and Morial stumped for the measure at seven different churches in South Los Angeles and the Bay Area. The significance of bringing in people of color is that we are the ones who disproportionately are impacted by the prices and impacted by the need for healthcare, Sharpton said in an interview afterward. I think its a civil right for people to be able to afford healthcare in the wealthiest nation in the world. Appearance of Sharpton, New Orleans mayor Marc Morial and LA pastor follows Sharpton's visits to two South LA churches Sunday for Yes on 61 pic.twitter.com/redBvU8WWZ Christine Mai-Duc (@cmaiduc) October 31, 2016 In a statement, No on Proposition 61 spokeswoman Kathy Fairbanks pointed to support for the opposition campaign from groups like the California NAACP, and the California League of Latin American Citizens. Higher drug prices resulting from Prop. 61 will decrease access to care, Fairbanks said. Thats a policy step in the wrong direction. The Rev. Al Sharpton at a Yes on Proposition 61 rally in downtown Los Angeles. (Christine Mai-Duc / Los Angeles Times) Facebook
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Voters are being asked whether they want to cast more votes in future elections on big public works projects By John Myers (Russel A. Daniels / Associated Press) Voters casting a ballot for Proposition 53 on election day are, in effect, choosing more voting on more propositions in future elections. The ballot measure, bankrolled by a wealthy Stockton agribusiness owner, seeks to force voter approval of a particular type of borrowing for large public works projects. Its most likely impact, in the near future, would be ballot measures on a landmark water project and on Californias high-speed rail effort. The propositions backer, Dean Cortopassi, argues its all about more transparency when it comes to government debt. His critics suggest theres more to it than that. Read More Facebook
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This congressional race could be one of the Republicans worst nightmares By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Jeff Denham represents the Modesto area in Congress and is up against Democratic beekeeper Michael Eggman, the same man he beat just two years ago by 12 points. Denham first won his seat in 2012 even as a majority of his constituents voted for President Obama. When Denham (R-Turlock) started this latest campaign, most observers thought he would probably win. But some now wonder if Denhams 10th District race will be an example of what Republicans fear across the country. Will conservatives expected to win actually lose because voters arent excited about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump? Read More Facebook
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Rep. Loretta Sanchezs day on the campaign trail: Two ribbons cut, one candle lit, and jabs made at her Senate rival By Phil Willon U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez shows Clifford Young, president of the West Valley Water District, where to cut the ribbon for the grand opening on a new water treatment plant Saturday. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) With less than two weeks to go before election day, U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez bounced from the Inland Empire to Monterey Park on Saturday as she tries to drum up support for her uphill Senate bid. Sanchez, the U.S. representative from Orange, started her day with a gaggle of other Inland Empire politicians at the grand opening of a $23-million water treatment system in Rialto, using the occasion to lay out her record on water issues during her 20 years in Congress. Sanchez told the crowd of about 60 that shortly after she was elected to Congress, two members of a local water board approached her about a way to deal with Californias serious drought. They said, we need to convince people that were going to take toilet water and were going to clean it up enough for people to drink it, Sanchez said. They said, we cant get anyone to champion this for us. Well, no wonder. Sanchez said they won her over, and she helped deliver federal funding for Orange Countys Groundwater Replenishment System to do just that. The system uses treated waste water to recharge the local groundwater basin and provides enough water for nearly 850,000 residents. After the event, Sanchez accused her rival in the Senate race, state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, of having little grasp of the complexities of Californias drought and water crisis. One of the biggest differences between my opponent and myself is that I actually talk about issues, I actually meet with people, I actually try to figure out whats going on, Sanchez said. Ive not seen anything about her. Ive not seen any policy. All I see is commercials on TV. U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Orange) officially opens the childrens Diwali celebration at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple in Chino Hills on Saturday. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) A few hours later, Sanchez raced over to Chino Hills to open the Kids Diwali Celebration at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple, a family-friendly event filled with carnival rides, booths and food. She thanked festivalgoers, saying they were setting a good example for the rest of the country at a time when the presidential election is filled with such meanness. This is a time where through tradition and through culture you can show Americans the better part of people, Sanchez said. You give the rest of us hope. After listening to Sanchez speak, Kay Mistry, a volunteer at the festival, said he still wasnt sure who he will vote for in the Senate race. He said he was aware that Harris, whose mother emigrated from India, went to a Hindu temple as a child. Im not sure that matters to me, said Mistry, 48, of Chino Hills. Im pretty conservative. Sanchez attends her second ribbon cutting of the day, this time for Halloween in the Park in Monterey Park. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) The Orange County congresswomans final stop of the day was in Monterey Park, where she helped cut the ribbon to open citys Halloween in the Park festival. After the ceremony, Sanchez mingled with the crowd, handing out campaign fliers. Arnold Jeung, 62, stuck the flier in his back pocket. He said he didnt know much about Sanchez or Harris. Im not sure what Im going to do, said Jeung, a Republican. I might not even vote. Facebook
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California Politics Podcast: The lowdown on the states big down-ticket races By John Myers Perhaps more than any other recent election season, races for seats in the California Legislature and U.S. Congress are being reshaped by the broad, national discussion. In short, its the Trump effect. On this weeks episode of the California Politics Podcast, we take an overview of some of states most closely watched down-ticket races. Theres new polling data in the U.S. Senate race that suggests a sizable number of voters will skip casting a ballot. Meanwhile, President Obama had endorsed candidates all the way down to the state Assembly level. Im joined by Marisa Lagos of KQED News and Anthony York, author of the Grizzly Bear Project website. Facebook
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California, your official presidential write-in options include Bernie Sanders and Evan McMullin By Christine Mai-Duc Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is one of five officially certified write-in candidates for president in California. (Christopher Dolan / Associated Press) California Secretary of State Alex Padilla released the names of the five officially qualified write-in candidates for the presidential race in California, along with their vice presidential running mates. Contrary to popular belief, votes for write-in candidates only count when the candidate is officially certified. (That means votes for Mickey Mouse, Giant Meteor, or Chuck Norris will not be counted.) The officially qualified write-in candidates are: Laurence Kotlikoff for president and Edward Leamer for vice president
Mike Maturen for president and Juan Munoz for vice president
Evan McMullin for president and Nathan Johnson for vice president
Bernard Bernie Sanders for president and Tulsi Gabbard for vice president
Jerry White for president and Niles Niemuth for vice president Now, that doesnt mean that Sanders and the other candidates wanted to be recognized as official write-ins. California law only requires that 55 electors sign on to declare a person a write-in candidate, not that the person consent, according to a statement from the Secretary of States Office.
A full list of each candidates electors can be seen here. Write-in votes for these candidates will not be reported until the counties send their final vote certifications after the post-election canvass period, meaning a write-in vote will take longer to count. You might be wondering: Does spelling count? The Secretary of State says election officials will accept a reasonable facsimile of the spelling of a candidates name. For example, Joe Smith and Joseph Smith would both be accepted. Facebook
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Dueling ads aim to persuade Latinos on proposition to legalize marijuana in California By Patrick McGreevy With a poll indicating Latino voters lag in their support for a ballot proposition that would legalize recreation marijuana in California, the campaigns for and against the measure are launching dueling ads aimed at that large demographic. A poll Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Proposition 64 is favored by a majority of likely voters in California, including a majority of all ethnic groups, except Latinos. Latinos support is just under half at 47%. The campaign against the ballot measure will launch its second ad on Spanish language television, titled Asusta or Scary on Halloween. The ad warns if approved, Proposition 64 could eventually lead to radio and television ads for marijuana candy. Federal law prohibits such ads on broadcast stations, and the initiative prohibits television advertising aimed at minors if federal law ever changes. The campaign in favor of the ballot measure said Friday it has launched new counter TV ads targeted to the Los Angeles area, where there is a large Latino audience. One ad, for Spanish language television, labels as falso, or false, the claims that there will be television commercials for marijuana candy. A second ad, in English, features a mother of teenagers saying she appreciates that Proposition 64 has important safeguards for families, like strict product labeling and child-proof packaging of all marijuana products and banning edibles that would appeal to a child. The two sides each claimed Friday that the polls are favorable to their cause. The polls highlight the lack of support by the Latino community because they know their neighborhoods will have to face the problems that recreational marijuana creates, said Andrew Acosta, a spokesman for the opposition campaign. Not true, said Jason Kinney, a spokesman for the Proposition 64 campaign. Polls show that Latino support for Proposition 64 and marijuana decriminalization has been increasing as they learn how communities of color are being disproportionately targeted for marijuana arrest and prosecution, he said. Facebook
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi endorses ballot measure to repeal the death penalty in California By Jazmine Ulloa (Win McNamee / Getty Images) House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) on Friday announced her support for a proposition that would repeal the death penalty in California, calling the practice cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment to the Constitution. Even the most heinous of crimes can be punished without killing, she said. As Pope Francis said in his address to Congress, where he reaffirmed his advocacy for the global abolition of the death penalty: every human person is endowed with an unalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes. Pelosi is among a string of top political leaders, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and celebrities to come out in support of Proposition 62, which would replace the punishment with life in prison without parole and apply life sentences retroactively to death row inmates. The initiative is one of two competing death penalty measures on the Nov. 8 ballot. She also is among fewer political leaders to denounce the death penalty itself on moral grounds. I oppose the death penalty because too many defendants have not had access to appropriate legal counsel; because poor people especially in communities of color have been disproportionately charged with capital crimes and sentenced to death, compared with more affluent defendants; and, so many people have been exonerated with DNA evidence. It is time for us to take a moral stand. Read More Facebook
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Obama endorses Emilio Huerta in his Central Valley race against Rep. David Valadao By Sarah D. Wire (Sarah D. Wire / Los Angeles Times) President Obama on Friday endorsed 21st District congressional candidate Emilio Huerta, the Democrats campaign announced. I am proud to endorse Emilio Huerta for the United States House of Representatives, Obama said in a statement released by the campaign. In Congress, Emilio will be a fighter for Central Valley working families. Emilio isnt afraid to take on tough challenges, and hell fight for more and better access to clean water, good jobs with fair wages, and an education system that works for every child. Emilio is the kind of smart leader who will build on what weve accomplished and move our country forward, and thats why I know Californians can count on Emilio Huerta. Huerta, an attorney and son of labor rights icon Dolores Huerta, is challenging Rep. David Valadao in the Central Valley district. Obama had already endorsed six California Democrats. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was in the district Thursday to campaign for Valadao. Hes in the middle of a swing through California to support vulnerable House Republicans. David Valadao is exactly the type of representative Central Valley families and those involved in the agriculture industry need. He understands the issues impacting the area, because thats been his life. David was born in the Central Valley, he grew up there, he went to school there -- and he even met his wife there. In Congress, he has led the fight on water, veterans issues, and education, Ryan said in a statement. Facebook
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Comedian Kathy Griffin pokes fun at tobacco company ads By Liam Dillon The tobacco industry-funded television advertisements against the Proposition 56 tobacco tax increase are ubiquitous. They all generally have the same message: The money from the tax hike would go to Medi-Cal, the states low-income healthcare program, and therefore benefit the doctors and insurance groups that are helping finance the measure. Comedian Kathy Griffin decided to spoof the advertisements follow-the-money message in a video she released on Twitter Tuesday. Hey @YesOn56...I had to get involved! #YesOn56 https://t.co/ZXURPBZYZP Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 27, 2016 Griffin highlighted that tobacco companies had funded the advertisement, which is clear when you read the fine print at the end. So in general just be careful of these opposite ads, Griffin said, dressed in a similar gardening outfit as the actress in the No on 56 ad. Or in general white ladies gardening. You can watch Griffins full spoof here: Facebook
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Los Angeles County Bar says expediting the death penalty system will compromise justice By Jazmine Ulloa The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. has joined opponents of a Nov. 8 ballot measure that intends to expedite executions in California, saying it would likely compromise access to justice at all levels of the court system. In a letter released late Wednesday, the organization, which comprises more than 20,000 members, said Proposition 66 would require appellate courts to hear initial death penalty appeals, without providing the roughly $100 million needed to fund additional judges, staff and resources. LACBA opposes Proposition 66 based entirely on its damaging effect on the operation of an already over-taxed judicial system, and most importantly, the resulting lack of access to justice for California citizens, states the letter signed by Margaret Stevens, the associations president. The association said it took no position on the death penalty itself, its effectiveness, morality or social merits. But its opposition to the ballot measure comes as top Los Angeles County officials, including Sheriff Jim McDonnell and Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, have announced their support. Proposition 66 has drawn wide support and funding from law enforcement officials and organizations that argue Californias death penalty must be preserved and reformed. Facebook
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Gov. Jerry Brown launches TV ad against Prop. 53s change to state revenue bonds By John Myers Its a nuanced pitch from Gov. Jerry Brown, asking California voters to oppose an effort that would give them a vote on future big infrastructure projects. But Brown has more than $15 million in campaign cash to make his case against Proposition 53, in a TV ad that began on Thursday. Proposition 53 asks voters to add revenue bonds of $2 billion or more to the list of government borrowing that requires statewide voter approval. Unlike general obligation bonds, which are paid back by taxpayer dollars through the states general fund, revenue bonds are paid back with fees charged to users of projects like bridges, dams and buildings. Brown takes aim in the ad at the fact that 53 is paid for by one millionaire, Central Valley agribusiness owner Dean Cortopassi. In an interview this week, Cortopassi called revenue bonds a blank check to sell debt forward into the future. Proposition 53 could force statewide votes on two high-profile infrastructure projects: Californias plan for a high-speed train system and the construction of twin underground tunnels to divert water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California. Facebook
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New citizens can still register to vote Nov. 8 even though the California deadline has passed By Sophia Bollag Thomas Macariola, center, fills out a voter registration form after a naturalization ceremony on Oct. 26 in Sacramento, where a cardboard cut-out of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was among the witnesses. (Sophia Bollag / Los Angeles Times) Alex De Leon, a 30-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, was among more than 400 people who became U.S. citizens at a ceremony in Sacramento on Wednesday. After the program concluded, he walked outside and filled out his voter registration papers. The registration deadline to vote in the Nov. 8 election for most Californians was Monday. But a 2012 state law allows people like De Leon, who became citizens after the deadline, to register late. To vote, they must bring proof of citizenship and California residency to show to an official at a county election office. As a precaution against voter fraud, theyre not allowed to vote at a neighborhood polling place or with an absentee ballot. Read More Facebook
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A new poll shows Californians remain ready to legalize the recreational use of pot By Patrick McGreevy (David Zalubowski / Associated Press) A majority of Californias likely voters continue to favor legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, but the level of support has dipped from a reported 60% a month ago to 55% this month, according to a statewide poll released Wednesday night. The latest poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found 38% of those surveyed oppose Proposition 64 and 6% are undecided. But the basic finding is that the initiative would still pass with a majority vote if the election were held today, according to Mark Baldassare, the institutes pollster and president. The numbers have been favorable, consistent, and exactly where we expected and wanted to be at this point, said Jason Kinney, a spokesman for the Proposition 64 campaign. The poll was conducted Oct. 14-23 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4% at a 95% confidence level. Proposition 64 is supported by 66% of Democratic likely voters and 56% of independents, but 60% of Republicans are opposed. Just under half of Latino likely voters (47%) would vote yes, while majorities of other racial/ethnic groups (65%) and whites (55%) would do so, the poll report said. Support is highest, at 78%, among those age 18 to 34. The opposition campaign said the campaign for Proposition 64 has turned voters away from the measure. It is clear that voters are realizing that Prop 64 is a 62-page mess that helps the marijuana industry tap into the California market, said Andrew Acosta, a spokesman for the campaign against the initiative. Those polled were also asked whether they have ever tried marijuana and, if so, if they used it in the last year: 18% said they have tried marijuana and used it in the last year, while 25% said they have tried it, but not in the last year. Updated at 9:30 am to include comments by the campaigns. Facebook
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New poll shows Kamala Harris leading Californias U.S. Senate race by a 2-to-1 margin By Phil Willon U.S. Senate candidates Kamala Harris, left, points a finger toward rival Loretta Sanchez during their debate at Cal State L.A. on Wednesday, Oct. 5. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) With ballots already being cast, State Atty. General Kamala Harris leads by a more than a two-to-one margin over her rival in Californias U.S. Senate race, according to a new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California. The survey showed that 42% of likely voters supported Harris, compared to 20% who favored her opponent, Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez. Among the remainder, 20% of voters were undecided and 18% said they will not vote for either candidate by election day on Nov. 8. The results are dramatically different that those in a PPIC released on Sept. 21, when Harris had just a 7-point lead over Sanchez. But the new poll numbers are closely aligned with results in the June 7 primary, when Harris received 40% of the vote and Sanchez came in second with 19% in a race with 34 candidates on the ballot. In a PPIC poll in July, Harris also had 38% support among likely voters and Sanchez 20%. From the start this has been a race in which Harris, who did very well in the primary, has had a large advantage, said PPIC President Mark Baldassare. Loretta Sanchez hasnt been able to, in any of our polls, get above 25% Unlike the PPICs surveys in July and September, the new poll included the ballot designations for the two Senate candidates, listing Harris as Attorney General of California and Sanchez as a United States Congresswoman. Both Harris and Sanchez are Democrats. There also have been a few major developments in the Senate campaign since Sept. 21, including the Oct. 5 Senate debate at Cal State Los Angeles where Sanchez caused a stir by dabbing as her finale. The following day, U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein endorsed Harris. Both Harris and Sanchez are trying to succeed Boxer, who is retiring after serving four terms in the Senate. According to the new PPIC poll, Harris is favored over Sanchez across all general income and education levels of voters, as well as among both men and women. Harris also leads in these major regions of the state: Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, Orange and San Diego counties, and the Inland Empire. Latinos are the only major cross-section of likely voters who favor Sanchez over Harris, by a margin of 41% to 33%, the poll shows. Harris also gained support from Republicans and independents over the past month, mostly likely from voters who previously said they would not vote. Still, more than a third of likely Republican voters said they would not vote for Sanchez or Harris, and 16% of independent voters also plan to take a pass. The two Democrats are facing off in the highest-profile contest between two members of the same party since California adopted a top-two primary election system. Facebook
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Will the Defense Department fix the National Guard bonus repayment problem? California congressional reps are skeptical By Sarah D. Wire (Paul Sakuma / Associated Press) Some members of Californias congressional delegation arent satisfied with a Defense Department plan to verify whether thousands of California National Guard members fairly received bonuses for enlisting during the height of the Iraq war or must repay the money. They said Wednesday that they want a detailed plan by the time Congress returns in mid-November. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) organized a call so that Californias 53 House members could question the Defense Department about how it plans to fix the problem, which was first reported Sunday by The Times. Members werent sure exactly how many of their colleagues were on the call. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday ordered the Pentagon to pause efforts to claw back the enlistment bonuses. He said the suspension would continue until he was satisfied that our process is working effectively. Congressional members told The Times that Defense officials said they plan to increase the number of employees reviewing the cases and expect all of them will be examined by July. After the call, Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village) said she was still outraged and wants a more detailed plan from the Defense Department. There was definitely a level of skepticism that they would move forward on this in a very fair and evenhanded way, Brownley said. Department officials told the delegation there are 13,800 questionable bonus cases in California. Of those, 4,000 have been cleared as properly eligible and 1,200 cases identified as possible fraud, meaning the guard member was not eligible or did not complete the contract. The department still must review the remaining 8,600 cases. (The case numbers relayed to members of Congress on Wednesday differ slightly from those provided to The Times by the department.) Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said the Defense Department told members its plan is to clear up to 100 cases a day. They will give everybody a chance to go through the panels and make their case, she said, even the 1,200 identified as possible fraud. Brownleys staff said some Guard members were told to pay back more than $60,000. Many of the bonuses were at least $15,000. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said that in many cases, Guard members werent spending money they knew they werent supposed to receive, and that the Pentagon should have the burden of proving the soldier knowingly took a bonus they werent supposed to get. In the vast majority of cases, soldiers accepted these bonuses in good faith, Schiff said. You dont call them up years later and say, We shouldnt have offered that and try to collect. The department will give the California members another briefing when Congress returns Nov. 14. Brownley said several members told the department they would go ahead with legislation to forgive the bonus debt for at least some Guard members if a detailed plan was not ready by then. Facebook
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Latinos in California are motivated to vote against Donald Trump, and that could affect a lot of other races By Sophia Bollag Voters make their way in and out of a polling place at the House of Mercy in Los Angeles in November 2012. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Latinos make up the largest ethnic group in California, but are often underrepresented at the polls. This year, however, experts say they expect good Latino turnout in November, thanks largely to the heated presidential election that is motivating many Latinos to vote against presidential candidate Donald Trump and his anti-immigration rhetoric. They stand to have considerable impact on many down-ballot races in California, as well as on the outcome of many statewide propositions. Read More Facebook
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Tom Steyer is now the biggest donor in the effort to raise the tobacco tax By Liam Dillon Billionaire Tom Steyer is now the largest donor in the effort to raise the states cigarette tax by $2 a pack. With a $3.5-million donation to the Yes on Proposition 56 campaign Tuesday, Steyers total spending on the race has reached $11.3 million. Thats more than a third of the $31 million the primary Yes on 56 committee has raised and more than all the money raised during a similar, but failed, effort to increase the tobacco tax four years ago. Steyer, who is a major donor to state and national liberal causes, is the focus in two Yes on 56 television advertisements. Hes said hes motivated to spend to limit youth smoking and the memory of his mother, a smoker who died of lung cancer. Steyer also is frequently mentioned as a potential Democratic candidate for governor in 2018. The No on 56 campaign, which is almost entirely funded by tobacco companies, has raised $71 million. Facebook
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California congressional reps say they didnt know so many Guard members were being forced to repay enlistment bonuses By Sarah D. Wire Some of Californias members of Congress say Californias National Guard did not explain in 2014 how many guard members were being forced to repay enlistment bonuses. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter ordered the Pentagon to suspend all efforts to collect reimbursement from the nearly 10,000 California National Guard members who were improperly given bonuses as an incentive to reenlist at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier in the week, a senior California National Guard official said it told the states members of Congress two years ago the Pentagon was trying to claw back reenlistment bonuses from thousands of soldiers, and even offered a proposal to mitigate the problem, but Congress took no action. After The Times first reported the problem Sunday, most of Californias 55 members of Congress signed onto letters to Carter, or House and Senate leaders, asking for an immediate fix. On Wednesday, they praised the Defense Department for halting the clawbacks and said Congress needs to stop the process entirely and refund the Guard members who already have repaid money. Still, some members took issue with the California Guards characterization of what it told the California delegation two years ago. Staff in members offices said the Guard broadly mentioned the clawbacks in a 2014 letter detailing its policy goals for the year, but officials didnt meet with members of Congress in person or by phone, and didnt otherwise tell them about the scale of the issue. Such letters are fairly common from groups working with Congress. If they would have come and said, Youre going to have thousands of combat veterans having their wages garnished and tax liens being put on them, we would have been all over this, said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine). That was never communicated to us. Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles) said neither the Pentagon nor California Guard officials told him about the large number of soldiers ordered to repay bonuses, though his office had received complaints from individual soldiers. I have no record of receiving any formal notice of this widespread issue from any department federal or state. The only record I have is of individual cases of service members who approached my office to get help, and we are working with these individuals who have served our country to make sure they are treated fairly, he said. Several high-ranking members of the delegation said this week they first heard of the scope of the problem from The Times reporting. The California Guard also sent members of Congress a suggested provision that would have allowed debt waivers for the affected soldiers in the 2015 defense authorization bill. Reps. Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley) and Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) initially pushed for the provision but later abandoned the effort, and it didnt appear in the final bill. Cook and Denham said they dropped the effort after being told the Pentagon already had the power to waive the debts. Guard officials said they were told the provision was discarded because waiving the debt would have cost the Pentagon money, requiring the estimated costs to be offset with cuts elsewhere in the defense budget. For the record: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Denham declined to discuss why he dropped the provision to waive the debt. He dropped the effort after being told the Pentagon already had the power to waive the debt. Facebook
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Ted Cruzs old gang called into action to help California GOP By Phil Willon Ron Nehring, a former aide in Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential bid, chats with visitors at the California State Fair in Sacramento during his 2014 campaign for lieutenant governor. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential bid may be history, but his supporters in California are banding together to help GOP candidates locked in tight down-ballot races. Ron Nehring, the former state GOP chairman who was a top Cruz booster, said the focus will be turning out Republican voters and recruiting volunteers to work on a list of hotly contested congressional and legislative races selected by the California Republican Party. Among those pinpointed are Vista Rep. Darrell Issa, who faces his toughest challenge since being elected to Congress in 2000, and Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Ami Bera of Elk Grove. It is 100% exclusively boots on the ground, Nehring said. Michael Schroeder, who was co-chairman of Cruzs campaign in California and also served as the state GOP chairman, said Republican turnout in the Golden State is expected to be down because of the controversies surrounding GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Having Trump at the top of the November ballot also will motivate more Democrats to vote, and that could endanger GOP candidates in close races throughout the state, he said. Trumps campaign is a lost cause in California at this point, Schroeder said. Trump said he was going to drive Hispanic turnout, and I think hes right -- but not in the way hes hoping for. Californias Cruz alumni have a website and on Monday night held a conference call with 75 former Cruz organizers asking them to activate their local political networks to help with the effort, Nehring said. Other Republicans theyll work to protect or elect: Reps. Jeff Denham of Turlock, David Valadao of Hanford and Steve Knight of Palmdale.
Assembly members Catharine Baker of San Ramon, David Hadley of Manhattan Beach, Tom Lackey of Palmdale and Young Kim of Fullerton.
State Senate candidates Mike Antonovich of Glendale, Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita and Ling Ling Chang of Diamond Bar. Facebook
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Central Valley congressional race shifts to a toss-up By Sarah D. Wire (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) The 10th Congressional District race between Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) and Democrat Michael Eggman is now a toss-up, the nonpartisan analysts at the Cook Political Report announced Tuesday. The contest in the heavily Latino Central Valley district had been rated lean Republican, meaning the analysts thought Eggman had a chance, but they expected the third-term Republican to be reelected.The Cook Political Report now lists several California House districts held by Republicans as toss-ups, including Rep. Darrell Issas seat in the 49th District and Rep. Steve Knight in the 25th District. This is the second matchup for Denham and Eggman. Denham won their 2014 encounter with 56% of the vote, but this year, there is the added unknown of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps effect on other races and whether his unpopularity will drag down other candidates. For the record: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Rep. David Valadaos race in the 21st District is listed as a toss-up. It is listed as leaning Republican. Facebook
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U.S. Rep. Ami Bera: Soldiers who served our country should not be penalized for the mistakes of others By Sophia Bollag Urging @DeptofDefense today to immediately stop ordering @theCAGuard members to pay back their enlistment benefits. pic.twitter.com/Ti6bzWJias Ami Bera, M.D. (@RepBera) October 24, 2016 U.S. Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) wrote to top Department of Defense officials Monday urging them to stop asking veterans to repay enlistment bonuses. The Pentagon has ordered nearly 10,000 California Guard soldiers to repay bonuses that were improperly awarded to them, The Times reported Saturday. With his letter, Bera joined the chorus of lawmakers who have condemned the action, calling on the Pentagon to waive the soldiers debts. Soldiers who served our country should not be penalized for the mistakes of others, wrote Bera, who faces a tough reelection battle in his Northern California district. I urge the Department to halt the collection of these bonuses at this time to prevent placing more service members in financial hardship. Facebook
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Crime victims oppose the death penalty in Yes on Prop. 62 ads By Jazmine Ulloa In new online ads released Tuesday by proponents of Proposition 62, which seeks to repeal the death penalty in California, crime victims urge voters to end the system and bring peace to grieving families. Proposition 62 would replace the ultimate punishment for murder with a sentence of life in prison without parole, ending a lengthy appeals process that some victims say has interfered with their healing. It is one of two competing death penalty measures on the Nov. 8 ballot. In one of two videos, which campaign officials say are geared toward swing voters, Beth Webb tells viewers she has had to face the death row inmate who killed her sister and seven others in a hair salon almost 50 times in court. Him sitting there, soaking up all of the attention, loving it, its disgusting, she says. The commercials come as proponents of the opposing measure on the ballot, Proposition 66, have released their own ads over the last few days, urging voters to reform the system, not end it. In one of those videos, a murder victims mother says no punishment other than the death penalty is appropriate for the twice-convicted sex offender who abducted her child. Read More Facebook
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Common, Russell Simmons, Shailene Woodley among celebrities pushing to legalize weed in California By Patrick McGreevy Common at the 2015 Academy Awards (Kevin Winter / Getty Images) Top celebrities including Common, Tim Robbins and the author of the Orange is the New Black memoir are joining forces in what they are calling Artists for 64" the effort to legalize recreational use of marijuana in California. A show of force announced Tuesday includes rapper and actor Common; music producer Russell Simmons; Ty Dolla $ign; actors Danny Glover, Olivia Wilde, Tim Robbins, Sarah Silverman, Shailene Woodley of The Divergent series, Jesse Williams of Greys Anatomy and Michael K. Williams of the HBO series The Wire; and Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Womens Prison. Jay Z, who last week put out a video calling the war on drugs an epic fail, also signed on to the effort. In California, the question on whether to legalize marijuana for adult use is a policy change that will have a lasting impact on historically marginalized communities, Glover, the star of films including the Lethal Weapon series, said in a statement posted on Artists for 64. Marijuana laws have been used as a tool by law enforcement to racially profile, harass, intimidate and criminalize mostly young African American and Latino men for decades. I am shocked and saddened by the harm that marijuana criminalization brings, especially for communities of color, Wilde said in a statement. The campaign against Proposition 64 said Hollywood celebrities are not the most credible endorsers, charging they are out of touch with the reality of drug abuse in many communities in the state. Today the No on Prop 64 campaign did a press event in Fresno with faith and community leaders who know that the problems that recreational marijuana creates will impact these communities and neighborhoods across California not Hollywood, said Andrew Acosta, a spokesman for the opposition campaign. In a video produced by Dream Hampton and included on the website, former Golden State Warrior Al Harrington talks about how marijuana helped him overcome pain and inflammation during a staph infection and helped his grandmother with her glaucoma. Im a California voter and Im voting `yes for Prop. 64, he says. Williams spoke from personal experience. Im in recovery and dont use marijuana, and my Christian faith is my rock when it comes to staying sober, he said in a statement. But I dont believe people should be arrested for marijuana anymore. California can lead the country by voting yes on Prop 64. Drug Policy Action, an advocacy group backing Proposition 64 to legalize the drug for recreational use, paid for the site. Facebook
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Californias Congress members knew the Pentagon was trying to get back bonuses from soldiers, official says By David S. Cloud The California National Guard told the states members of Congress two years ago that the Pentagon was trying to claw back reenlistment bonuses from thousands of soldiers, and even offered a proposal to mitigate the problem, but Congress took no action, according to a senior National Guard official. What form that communication took and whether the members of Congress understood the scope of the problem at the time is unclear. On Monday, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying that Congress should pass legislation to halt the Pentagon debt recovery as soon as we gavel back into session after the Nov. 8 election. Other California congressional members, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, also sent letters to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter about the matter. Read More Facebook
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Proposition 56 and the great vape tax debate By Liam Dillon (Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP/Getty Images) Turn on any TV in California and you know that all the talk surrounding the Proposition 56 tobacco tax has been about cigarettes. But if the initiative passes next month, e-cigarettes will also be taxed like traditional cigarettes for the first time a huge tax increase that could boost the price of a typical 30-milliliter bottle of e-liquid by $10. Read More Facebook
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State ethics watchdog asks court to force assemblymans campaign to turn over documents for investigation By Christine Mai-Duc Assemblyman David Hadley (R-Manhattan Beach) greets people after participating in a candidates forum in Torrance. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) The campaign of Assemblyman David Hadley (R-Manhattan Beach) has delayed turning over documents related to an official investigation into his campaign practices, according to court documents filed by the state Fair Political Practices Commission. The investigation grew out of a complaint from Hadleys opponent, Democrat Al Muratsuchi, that claims Hadleys campaign was illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure committee that also supported Hadley. In a letter to the FPPC, Muratsuchi claimed Hadleys campaign and Spirit of Democracy, a group funded mostly by Republican donor Charles Munger, Jr., shared consultant Steven Presson during at least part of the primary campaign for Assembly District 66. In court documents filed Oct. 13, FPPC special investigator Garrett Micheels said he initially emailed Hadley Aug. 4, asking him to voluntarily provide certain records to the commissions enforcement division. The records requested included emails, letters and text messages between Jan. 1 and June 7 between Presson and the Hadley campaign, or any other individuals or groups concerning the Hadley race. The next day, Presson responded that the campaign would require a subpoena to avoid possible public exposure to sensitive emails within the Hadley campaign regarding our strategy. After a subpoena was issued on Aug. 12, Micheels said in court documents, Hadley retained attorney Steve Churchwell, who asked for extensions to produce the documents at least three times, but never provided the records. On Sept. 27, Hadley produced some of the documents, court filings say, but wrote to explain that he was withholding his communications with Presson because there are hundreds or thousands of such correspondences that contained sensitive/confidential campaign communications that he said he had not had the time to review. As of Friday, the FPPC says, they have not received the rest of the documents requested. There is only one reason Hadley would conceal documents, and that is because he is guilty and is trying to hide the evidence, said Mike Shimpock, a consultant for the Muratsuchi campaign. A Hadley campaign spokesman declined to comment and Churchwell did not return a request for comment. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday in the Sacramento County Superior Court. Facebook
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New ads urge California voters not to repeal the last defense against killers By Jazmine Ulloa In two new television ads, police officers and prosecutors urge California voters not to repeal the death penalty on Nov. 8, calling it the last defense against killers. The commercials, released late Monday by the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., are part of the No on Prop. 62, Yes on Prop. 66 campaign. The effort aims to defeat Proposition 62, which would replace the ultimate punishment for murder with life in prison without parole, and to support Proposition 66, which would change and limit how and how often death row inmates can appeal. The pro-death penalty campaign has drawn broad support and funding from law enforcement organizations across the state. The Correctional Peace Officers Assn. alone has donated nearly $600,000 since last September. Ive seen what the worst among us can do, killings so brutal families never recover, Sgt. Dan Cabral of the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs Assn. tells viewers in one ad. Its why we have a death penalty. The second ad features the case of serial killer Charles Ng, who has spent 17 years on death row for the rape, torture and slayings of at least 11 victims. This is cruel punishment for the families, Sharon Sellitto, one victims sister, says in the video. Read More Facebook
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GOP Rep. Darrell Issa returns fire after President Obama rips his campaign mailer By Phil Willon Vista Republican Rep. Darrell Issa said Monday he was disappointed but not surprised by President Obamas criticism of him for using the presidents photo in a campaign mailer. At a fundraiser in La Jolla on Sunday night, Obama said Issas primary contribution to Congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollars on trumped-up investigations that have led nowhere. The president called Issa shameless for using his image in his reelection campaign. Im disappointed but not surprised that the president, in a political speech, continues to deny accountability for the serious scandals that happened under his watch where Americans died overseas and veterans have died here at home, Issa said in a statement released by his congressional campaign Monday. Youd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks Ive done too much to hold Washington accountable. Ive worked with the administration on good legislation where it was possible, called out wrongdoing wherever I saw it and will continue to do so. Issa is running his toughest congressional campaign to date, an increasingly nasty race that has been declared a toss-up by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Issas Democratic challenger in the 49th Congressional District, retired Marine Col. Doug Applegate, has criticized the congressman as a Washington insider and supporter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In the political mailer sent out by the Issa campaign, the congressman said he was pleased with the president for signing legislation he co-sponsored that provides victims of sexual assault legal protections in the federal criminal justice system. At the Sunday night fundraiser, Obama ripped Issa as a guy who, because poll numbers are bad, has sent out brochures with my picture on them touting his cooperation on issues with me. Now that is the definition of chutzpah, Obama said. Issa once called Obama one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times. While chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he led investigations into the Benghazi attack, the Internal Revenue Service scandal, the botched Fast and Furious gun sting and other actions by the Obama administration. Facebook
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California Democrats remember Tom Hayden for pursuits close to home By Michael Finnegan (Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times) Top California Democrats remembered Tom Hayden on Monday as an influential activist whose pursuit of liberal causes extended far beyond his best-known work leading protests against the Vietnam War. Tom took up causes that others avoided, Gov. Jerry Brown said. He had a real sense of the underdog and was willing to do battle no matter what the odds. Hayden died Sunday in Santa Monica after a long illness. He was 76. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recalled Haydens work negotiating a gang truce in Venice, along with his contributions to an anti-sweatshop ordinance to prevent worker exploitation. Tom Hayden was a giant who never stopped pushing for peace and justice, and inspired a generation of change agents to bring new voices and overlooked perspectives to the decision-making process, Garcetti said. Hayden, classified by the FBI as a rabble rouser in the 1960s, was prosecuted by President Nixons Justice Department in the raucous Chicago 7 trial after violent clashes with police at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. His conviction was dismissed on appeal. He went on to serve in the state Assembly and Senate for a total of 18 years. John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party, recalled two measures that Hayden got passed. One allocated $250,000 to buy tattoo removal machines for imprisoned youth so they could cut their gang ties. The other set up a program for parents to use tax-free accounts for savings dedicated to their childrens college education. These bills didnt get a lot of attention at the time, but they have had a far-reaching impact on young peoples futures, said Burton, who led the state Senate when Hayden was a member. The Senates current leader, Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles, said Hayden was well ahead of the curve on issues involving the environment, social justice, gang intervention and urban peace, access to higher education, domestic violence and much more. Hayden, he said, distinguished himself as a paragon of political integrity and a great intellect. Facebook
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Secretary of States office holds voter registration drive at the Capitol on the last day to register in California By Sophia Bollag .@CASOSvote staff are outside the Capitol today to register new voters. Today is the deadline to register in CA. pic.twitter.com/vNovU1jNla Sophia Bollag (@SophiaBollag) October 24, 2016 The Secretary of States office is holding a voter registration drive outside the Capitol today, the last day to register in California before the November election. The offices staff registered about 20 people in the first couple of hours, said Milena Paez, who works in the offices elections division. Many people had also stopped by the booth to ask where their polling place is or check their voter registration status, she said. LaRhonda Sayles-Willis, who recently moved to the Sacramento area, said she saw the booth as she walked down the street and stopped by to see where she was registered. She ended up re-registering to vote to be on the safe side and said shes particularly motivated to vote for Hillary Clinton. I really oppose her opponent. I just dont like the guy, the 56-year-old said. I just dont think hes a good representation of the United States. Ada Avelar, 21, said she decided to register because she recently moved to the United States from Mexico City to attend Sacramento State University. Avelar is an American citizen. She said she saw the booth on her way back from having lunch with a friend and decided to register right there. I was like, its a sign, she said. I have to do it. Facebook
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Assemblywoman Patty Lopez vows not to give up on reelection despite lack of party support By Christine Mai-Duc Patty Lopez watches as ballots are counted in her 2014 race against then-incumbent Raul Bocanegra, who she bested by fewer than 500 votes. ( (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)) On a recent weekend, with just three weeks to go until the November election, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon made a whirlwind tour of five of the most hotly contested races in the state, stumping for Democratic candidates. Assemblywoman Patty Lopez (D-San Fernando), who faces a stiff challenge from former Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, was not one of them. Instead, she spent part of her Saturday walking through a community street festival, handing out fliers with a handful of volunteers. Ive been blocked from my party, but my district knows who is Patty Lopez, she said. Sometimes I feel disappointed, but thats not stopping me from doing what I need to do. In 2014, Lopez shocked many when she eked out a win against Bocanegra by a margin of less than 500 votes. With six Democrats on the ballot in this years primary, Lopez received just 27.2% of the vote, a distant second to Bocanegras 44.4%. Despite this, and the fact that the California Democratic Party has endorsed her challenger, Lopez says she is a woman of faith who believes 100 percent that shell be reelected. Read More Facebook
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Obama says Darrell Issa is shameless for praising him in campaign mailer that is the definition of chutzpah By Sarah D. Wire At a California fundraiser Sunday night, President Obama called Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) shameless for using the presidents photo on a recent mailer and praising him after years of criticizing the Obama administration. Issa is facing an unexpectedly tough race this year as the eight-term Republican squares off against political novice former Marine Col. Doug Applegate. Issas primary contribution to the United States Congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollars on trumped-up investigations that have led nowhere. And this is now a guy who, because poll numbers are bad, has sent out brochures with my picture on them touting his cooperation on issues with me, Obama told the crowd, according to a transcript, at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in the La Jolla home of donor Christine Forester. Now that is the definition of chutzpah. The Vista Republican has been a frequent critic of Obama and has called him one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times. The campaign mailer said Issa was pleased with the president for signing legislation he co-sponsored into law. Issa was one of 40 House members who co-sponsored the legislation, which provides some sexual assault victims legal protections in the federal criminal justice system. The president is in Los Angeles today and Tuesday for a taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live and two fundraisers, including a $100,000-per-ticket fundraiser at DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenbergs home tonight that is completely closed to the press. Facebook
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The district where water is more important than all other campaign issues By Sarah D. Wire (Sarah D. Wire/ Los Angeles Times) In Californias Central Valley, the nations most productive agricultural region, the drought drives everything. And the ongoing fight over how much water flows could be the reason Democrats havent been able to win in the 21st Congressional District with a national race even though 47% of registered voters there are Democrats. Heres a look at the role of water in the race between Rep. David Valadao, and attorney Emilio Huerta. Read More Facebook
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What happens if both death penalty measures are approved by voters on Nov. 8? By Jazmine Ulloa (Pat Sullivan / Associated Press) California voters are weighing dueling death penalty propositions on the Nov. 8 ballot, one that seeks to repeal the system and another that aims to speed it up. If both pass with a majority, the initiative with the most yes votes would supersede the other. If both fail to garner the votes, then the status quo remains, a frustrating prospect for many as advocates on both sides of the issue say the system is broken. California has more than 740 inmates awaiting execution, the largest death row population in the country. Their appeals go directly to the state Supreme Court and take 25 years to process. Both capital punishment measures would require current prisoners to work and pay restitution to victims. But Proposition 62 would repeal the death penalty in California for first-degree murder and replace the sentence with life in prison without the possibility of parole. It also would apply retroactively to offenders already sentenced to death. Proposition 66 would designate lower trial courts to take on initial challenges to convictions and limit successive appeals to within five years of a death sentence. It also would require court-appointed lawyers who dont take capital appeals to represent death row inmates. Facebook
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California Politics Podcast: Propositions, polling and parole By John Myers The fact that there are 17 propositions on the statewide ballot has not only made things hard on voters, its been almost impossible for pollsters to sample opinion on so many issues. But one new poll looks at some of the least talked about measures, and its our first topic on this weeks California Politics Podcast. The poll suggests a lot of voters remain undecided about several of these low-profile proposals. We also take a detailed look at one of the most contentious ballot fights, the effort by Gov. Jerry Brown to revamp state prison parole rules through Proposition 57. Im joined on this weeks episode by Marisa Lagos of KQED News. Facebook
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In No on 62, Yes on 66 campaign ad, murder victims mother urges California voters to keep the death penalty By Jazmine Ulloa In three online ads released Friday, Sandra Friend tells California voters they should fix the states death penalty system, not end it. The 43-year-old mother has been a crime victims advocate since Robert Boyd Rhoades sexually abused and killed her 8-year-old son, Michael Lyons, two decades ago. She is now serving as one of the main voices behind a campaign that is working to defeat Proposition 62, which would repeal the death penalty, and in favor of Proposition 66, which seeks to speed up executions. Voters will weigh the dueling capital punishment initiatives on the Nov. 8 ballot. Both would require current death row inmates to work and pay restitution to victims, but would take opposing approaches to what the measures both call a broken system. Rhoades, who abducted Lyons on his way home from school in Yuba City, is one of 740 death row inmates in California. Executions have been on hold since 2006, when the states lethal injection protocol was challenged in court. Friend tells viewers it has been difficult coming to terms with the fact that her son was murdered by a twice-convicted sex offender. I am living a parents worst nightmare, she says. Facebook
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Former state Sen. Ronald Calderon sentenced to 42 months in prison on corruption charge By Joel Rubin Former state Sen. Ronald S. Calderon was sentenced in Los Angeles on Friday to 42 months in prison after he pleaded guilty in a federal corruption case. The Montebello Democrat, who served in the state Senate for eight years ending in 2014, admitted in a plea deal in June that he accepted tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from undercover FBI agents and a hospital executive in return for official favors. Federal prosecutors had asked for a five-year sentence for a charge where the maximum possible penalty was 20 years. U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder, who handed down the sentence to Calderon, said five years was too severe but that a significant prison sentence was needed to punish Calderon and send a message to other elected officials that corruption will not be tolerated. The crime is significant, she said during the court hearing. This is a true public corruption case. Striking a defiant tone throughout, Calderon refused to admit any wrong-doing or to apologize during the court hearing. My goal was always to do the right thing for California, he said. At no point did I intend to break the law. He said he ultimately decided to plead guilty in order to spare his family the ordeal of a trial, but persisted in his innocence, saying he never agreed to any quid pro quo to benefit himself or his family. Unemployed and tens of thousands of dollars in debt, Calderon said professional relationships had been ruined as had his relationship with his brother. My reputation is destroyed, Calderon said. Snyder was unmoved. I did not really hear Senator Calderon accept responsibility or apologize, she said. It was really about himself. Calderon, 59, had pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud as part of a plea in which he admitted to accepting trips to Las Vegas, jobs for a son and daughter, and cash for him and his brother, former Assemblyman Tom Calderon. Tom Calderon was sentenced last month to one year in federal custody for laundering bribes taken by his brother. The Calderon family was politically powerful for decades in California. A third brother, former Assemblyman Charles Calderon, was not implicated in the corruption scandal. Ronald Calderons nephew, Ian Calderon, is a state assemblyman, the last family member in state elected office. He was not alleged to have any part in the corruption scheme. Assistant U.S. Atty. Mack E. Jenkins wrote a blistering brief opposing Calderons request to serve time with home detention or be released for the brief time he already spent in jail. Here, defendants trafficking in his legislative votes (for, by contrast, over $150,000 in benefits) caused a reverberation of negative effects throughout California and put a stain not just on his career, but on the reputation of the state legislature, Jenkins wrote. Read More Facebook
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Accusations fly in the congressional race for this Northern California swing district By Sophia Bollag Democratic U.S. Rep. Ami Bera, left, shakes hands with his Republican challenger, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, after their debate Tuesday in the race for the 7th Congressional District seat. (Jose Luis Villegas / Associated Press) Questions about character have been dominating the congressional race between Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) and Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones. Both candidates have been plagued by allegations of wrongdoing. Beras father was recently sentenced to jail for illegally funneling money to two of his sons past campaigns. Jones faces allegations he sexually harassed a subordinate at the Sheriffs Department more than a decade ago, which he denies. Theyre competing in a divided district that leans Democratic, but not by much. In 2014, Bera beat his Republican challenger by less than a percentage point. This race is always one of the closest races in the country, he said. Read More Facebook
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Loretta Sanchez says she got death threats after she voted against the Iraq war By Phil Willon Rep. Loretta Sanchez, after her speech Thursday. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez on Thursday urged ROTC cadets at UCLA to have the courage to challenge politicians who call for ill conceived uses of military force such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We need military leaders that understand the limits of our military power, said Sanchez, who has served in Congress for two decades and sits on the House Armed Services Committee. Why is it that every generation and every president has to learn that all over again? The Orange County congresswoman made the comments during an address to ROTC cadets at UCLAs Pauley Pavilion. Sanchez said her experience on the House Armed Services Committee made her question the long-term implications of the Iraq invasion, and whether the U.S. might find itself bogged down in a war in the Middle East. In 2002, Sanchez was among the 133 House members who voted against the authorization of military force against Iraq. It was a lonely time, Sanchez told the cadets. [When] I came back to Orange County, I was spit on. I received death threats. The congresswoman told the cadets the military is just one part of a national security strategy that includes intelligence gathering, diplomacy and the use of the countrys economic strength. Because so much is at stake, the use of our military should always be a last resort, Sanchez said. Sanchez is running against fellow Democrat and state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris for Californias U.S. Senate seat. She says her expertise on national defense and terrorism are among the reasons shes the most qualified candidate. Facebook
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Tobacco companies claim proponents of cigarette tax will use the new revenue to enrich their top executives By Liam Dillon Tobacco companies have unveiled a new claim in their campaign against the $2-per-pack increase in cigarette taxes on the November ballot. In a television advertisement that debuted over the weekend, the No on Proposition 56 campaign contends that the doctors and health insurance groups financing the initiative wrote it to avoid external oversight over the money going to low-income patient care. They even exempted themselves from the new audit requirements, the ad states. They can use the new revenue to enrich their top executives, and theres no requirement to treat even one more patient. The claim rests on a part of the Proposition 56 initiative that creates new auditing rules to govern where the new tax money would go. But it ignores the litany of state and federal auditing requirements to which Medi-Cal, the states low-income health program, already is subject. First, heres a little background about how the money from Proposition 56 would get spent. Assuming fewer people use tobacco because of the tax increase, the tax would raise about $1.27 billion next year, according to an estimate from the Legislative Analysts Office. Of that amount, $710 million about 56% would go to Medi-Cal, primarily to increase the payment doctors and other healthcare providers receive when they treat patients. The remaining dollars go to back-filling current state and local sales taxes and other programs because fewer people will buy cigarettes, doctor and dentist training and anti-tobacco efforts. The initiative kicks in $400,000 a year to audit the agencies receiving the money. Beth Miller, spokeswoman for the No on 56 campaign, said that opponents like that state and local agencies will be audited if the measure passes. The criticism is that the provisions dont go far enough. It would have been nice to have those audit requirements also apply to those end users, so to speak: the hospitals, the insurance companies and the doctors, Miller said. Medi-Cal providers, however, get audited all the time. The states Department of Health Care Services does internal audits and investigations through an entire department of about 700 employees and a $50-million budget dedicated to reviewing the programs under its jurisdiction, including looking at the financial records of Medi-Cal providers. Beyond that, the California State Auditor has issued at least two wide-ranging audits involving Medi-Cal providers in the last five years on the states oversight of managed-care plans. And the federal Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General also audits programs and providers that receive federal dollars for low-income patients. One recent federal audit of California that examined pediatric dental providers happened last May. Miller contended that the audits required under Proposition 56 are more transparent than the existing state and federal programs. Mike Roth, spokesman for the Yes on 56 campaign, said the initiative has plenty of safeguards to ensure the tax money is spent wisely, including the auditing provisions. This is another desperate and deceitful red herring from tobacco companies, and it takes the cake as far as their flagrant lies about Proposition 56, Roth said. Heres the full ad: UPDATES: 3:03 p.m.: This post was updated to include the full video of the advertisement. This article was originally published at 2:00 p.m. Facebook
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Central Valley congressional race that once leaned Republican is now a toss-up, report says By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) The nonpartisan analysts at the Cook Political Report now say its a toss-up whether Republican Rep. Jeff Denham or Democrat beekeeper Michael Eggman will win the 10th Congressional District race. The race had been rated leans Republican since last fall, indicating that the analysts expected Denham to keep the seat, but felt Democrats had a chance. This is the second matchup for Denham and Eggman. Denham won in 2014 with 56.4% of the vote. Democrats have worked for months to tie vulnerable House Republicans to the rhetoric of their presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and this race is one where Trumps effect down the ballot could be most visible. Denham has said he disagrees with Trumps rhetoric, but hasnt backed off supporting him, a move that could prove unpopular in the Central Valley district where at least 40% of the population is Latino. Three Republican-held seats in California are now considered toss-ups. The other two are representing the 25th Congressional District, held by Rep. Steve Knight (R-Palmdale), and the 49th Congressional District, held by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista). Facebook
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California Senate leader endorses gun control initiative despite differences with its author, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom By Patrick McGreevy California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, left, and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, right, applaud at Gov. Jerry Browns State of the State speech in January. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Despite political differences with its author, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) on Thursday endorsed Proposition 63, which would expand Californias already tough gun control laws. Proposition 63 was proposed by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and would outlaw large-capacity ammunition magazines, require background checks for those buying bullets, require lost or stolen guns to be reported quickly, make stealing a firearm a felony and provide a process for newly convicted felons to relinquish their guns. De Leon and Newsom have both been working on gun control issues for years and both have aspirations for higher office. Newsom is running for governor in 2018. Some in the De Leon camp thought when the initiative was proposed last year that it was being used to try to take over an issue on which the senator has been a leader. The two disagreed earlier this year on the best way to achieve gun control aims, with De Leon publicly calling on Newsom to drop his initiative and allow the Legislature to act, and Newsom refusing, charging that the Legislatures proposals were not extensive enough. In the end, the Legislature approved several bills, including one by De Leon that requires background checks for ammunition purchasers, even though a similar proposal is included in the Newsom initiative. The Legislature also mandated that its background-check plan would supersede the one in Proposition 63. On Thursday, De Leon made no mention of the differences. Earlier this year, our Legislature passed the most sweeping and important package of gun safety laws in the nation, increasing nationwide momentum and grass-roots outcries for common-sense safeguards against gun violence, De Leon said in a statement. I endorse Proposition 63 because we must send a powerful and united message to the national Gun Lobby that California will not capitulate to political bullying or compromise the public safety, he added. The differences between the two politicians were highlighted noted by Richard Grenell, co-chairman of the Coalition for Civil Liberties, which is campaigning against the initiative. This is a prime example of why people should trust law enforcement on this question before self-interested politicians, Grenell said. Just a few months ago, de Leon asked Newsom to repeal Prop 63. De Leons statement was released a day after Newsom ruffled some feathers in the De Leon camp when he told the Sacramento Press Club that his initiative accomplishes things that state officials could not. Newsom noted that 11 other states have enacted the requirement that stolen guns be reported. There have been legislative attempts and they have failed multiple times here in the Capitol, Newsom said. The Legislature did approve such a bill this year, but it was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in July. The political dispute between the two leading Democrats surfaced last year when De Leon acted to slash a third of Newsoms staff, notifying him that two Senate employees who had been on loan to the lieutenant governors office were being reassigned. UPDATED at 1:10 pm to include comment from opponent of initiative. Facebook
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No fight from the business community over the proposed tobacco and income tax hikes By Liam Dillon (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) Business groups often make up a triumvirate with Republicans and taxpayer advocates against tax increases. But on the two tax hikes on the 2016 California ballot, major business leaders are mostly staying away from the fight. They tend to dislike the income tax extensions promised by Proposition 55, but arent campaigning against them. And some are even backing Proposition 56s cigarette tax increases. Read More Facebook
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Almost half a million Californians have already voted by mail, with a surge in some hotly contested races By John Myers (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Early data compiled from local elections officials shows a surge of ballots being returned in the mail, especially in some of the most closely watched races this election season. A report compiled by Political Data Inc. shows almost 408,000 ballots cast in just the first eight days of voting, with more than half of those ballots arriving in local election offices Wednesday. As weve reported before, election day in California is now more like an election month. A majority of the states voters cast their ballots away from traditional polling places, and political professionals can closely monitor which voters in any given race have turned those ballots back in. The report also shows strong early voting in some of Californias most talked about congressional races. In the hotly contested reelection race of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), more than four times as many ballots have been returned so far compared to the 2014 general election. And even though Republicans have an eight-point registration advantage in Issas district, the ballots cast so far have skewed more Democratic. In early voting, the two major parties are almost even in the number of votes cast. Issa, facing a tough race against Democrat Douglas Applegate, recently sent out a campaign mailer trying to appeal to local voters who support President Obama. Compared to the first few days of the 2014 general election, substantially more ballots have also been cast in the Central Valley races featuring Reps. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) and David Valadao (R-Hanford). In both districts, Democratic voters are outpacing GOP voters in early ballot returns. While none of the data offers information on how those ballots were cast -- these are only totals received by county officials -- the early numbers may offer a glimpse at how energized some parts of the electorate are in this contentious campaign season. Facebook
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What will Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom focus on in his run for governor? Aging infrastructure among issues By Patrick McGreevy California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at an event in Los Angeles in April. (Nick Ut / Associated Press) Signaling that his gubernatorial campaign will shift into higher gear after next months election, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that he is working on a plan to double spending on roads and other infrastructure since the Legislature failed to act this year. This is going to be something you will be hearing a lot more from me on over the course of the next number of months, a very aggressive infrastructure proposal, Newsom said in a speech to the Sacramento Press Club. The former San Francisco mayor is running for governor in 2018. He noted that the governor and Legislature did not reach an agreement on a transportation funding program in the face of a $130-billion backlog in state and local road repairs. Legislative Democrats proposed a $7.4-billion plan earlier this year that would raise the gas tax by 17 cents a gallon. Thats about twice the size of an earlier plan by Gov. Jerry Brown. Weve got to more than double our investment in infrastructure in this state, Newsom said, adding the problem has reached code red in California. Plans by the governor to use proceeds from sale of cap-and-trade credits have merits, he said. Separately, Newsom said he continues to support the vision of a high speed rail system for California but said I remain concerned about the finances. He said the private sector must step up to provide more of the money as the project cost has close to doubled from its original $33 billion price tag. Newsom acknowledged that he has work to do to introduce himself to voters outside his home base. I think a lot of the state really doesnt know me yet, he said, adding he sees it as a great opportunity to tell his story. He declined to comment on the gubernatorial candidacy of state Treasurer John Chiang and possible runs by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer. Im not focused on those others, he said. Im focused on what we have before us. Facebook
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L.A. activist is building his AIDS organization into a political powerhouse with two November ballot measures By Christine Mai-Duc (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) When Michael Weinstein launched his AIDS Healthcare Foundation in the late 1980s, he had a coffee can for donations and a $50,000 budget to provide end-of-life care to those dying of the disease. Today, hes grown the nonprofit into a $1.2-billion operation that manages hundreds of clinics and pharmacies globally, and has quickly become a major political player in California, and, he hopes, nationally. AHF, as it is known, is sponsoring two initiatives on Californias November ballot: Proposition 60, which would require adult film actors to use condoms during sex scenes, and Proposition 61, which would bar state agencies from entering contracts to purchase drugs where the price is higher than that paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Thats quite a feat in a state as expensive as California, and in a political year as crowded as 2016. Were doing things on a scale that we havent before, Weinstein said in a recent interview from his office in a Hollywood high-rise. Read More Facebook
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These janitors are giving up sleep to knock on doors for Hillary Clinton By Sarah D. Wire Yamilex Rustrian, left, of North Hollywood, and Leticia Soto of Los Angeles check Las Vegas addresses to visit to encourage voters to support Hillary Clinton. (Sarah D. Wire / Los Angeles Times) Early Saturday morning, Yamilex Rustrian sat with her mother and other janitors assembled at long tables in the old mortuary that is home to the SEIU United Service Workers West. They ate ham, cheese and bean sandwiches as they waited for the final workers to get off the late shift. At least one came still dressed in her blue smock. The group of janitors and their children made a quick trip to Las Vegas over the weekend to knock on doors for Hillary Clinton, and got home Sunday just in time for the late shift. Each had their reasons to join the more than 150 union members who made the trip. Read More Facebook
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Federal prosector seeks 5 years for former California Sen. Ron Calderon in corruption case By Patrick McGreevy A federal prosecutor has recommended that former state Sen. Ron Calderon be sentenced to five years in prison as part of a federal corruption case that rocked the California state Capitol. Assistant U.S. Atty. Mack E. Jenkins wrote a blistering brief urging the federal judge to not show leniency to Calderon, who in June entered a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud. Here, defendants trafficking in his legislative votes (for, by contrast, over $150,000 in benefits) caused a reverberation of negative effects throughout California and put a stain not just on his career, but on the reputation of the state legislature, Jenkins wrote ahead of Fridays sentencing date. The prosecutor noted that only one fellow politician wrote a letter of support for Calderon, a Montebello Democrat. In defendants plea agreement, he admitted to participating in two substantial and complex bribery schemes that entailed multiple forms of bribes, concealment and sophisticated money laundering, the prosecutor wrote. Here, defendant sold his vote not just to help pay for the expenses of living beyond his means, but for the more banal and predictable aims of corruption fancy luxuries, fancy parties and fancy people. An attorney for Calderon has asked the judge to sentence the former lawmaker to time already served in jail during his booking or home detention. Jenkins proposed that Calderon be sentenced to five years in custody, one year of supervised release, a $7,500 fine and 250 hours of community service. Facebook
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A new Jay Z video says pot should be legal in California and calls the war on drugs an epic fail By Patrick McGreevy Rapper Jay Z has weighed in to support Proposition 64, which would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in California, calling the war on drugs an epic fail, in a YouTube video, which also describes how the effort filled prisons with young African American and Latino men. Young men like me who hustle became the sole villain, Jay Z says as the video depicts the deterioration of a neighborhood drawn by artist Molly Crabapple. The one-minute video was produced by the group Drug Policy Action from a longer animated video that addressed the general issue of drug prohibition, said Jason Kinney, a spokesman for the campaign. The shortened video, titled The War on Drugs from Prohibition to Gold Rush, ends with a new, written message urging people to vote for Proposition 64, adding, We can stop the harm on Nov. 8. Jay Z agreed to have the video tailored to the Proposition 64 campaign, Kinney said. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who helped qualify the initiative, praised the rapper on Twitter, writing Thank you, Jay Z, for your strong voice for social justice & co-creating this new @Yeson64 video! Facebook
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Bay Area congressman Eric Swalwell got married over the weekend By Sarah D. Wire View Instagram post Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) and Brittany Watts, a sales director at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, got married on Friday. They were married at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland. Before being elected to Congress, Swalwell worked in the courthouse as a prosecutor with the Alameda County district attorneys office. Here is the couples wedding announcement. The congressman also posted an image of the couple cutting their wedding cake on Instagram. Facebook
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Los Angeles top elections officer talks about voter fraud and polling place intimidation in Reddit chat By John Myers The questions posed by Reddit users on Monday to the top elections officer in Los Angeles ranged from small problems over where to cast an early ballot to broader concerns about election security. Dean Logan, Los Angeles Countys registrar of voters, attempted to answer almost all of them during the hourlong online conversation. Asked about intimidation of voters at the polls, possibly inspired by criticisms over comments by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, Logan said the question has been popping up a lot in his office. We, of course, encourage people to observe all elements of the process, but any disruption of voters or intimidation of voters is unacceptable, he wrote. Another Reddit user asked whether all ballots mailed or dropped off at a polling place are counted. Any valid and timely received vote by mail ballot will be counted and included in the certified election results, Logan wrote. I am always surprised by this question. Logan said that officials mailed some 1.8 million ballots last week to Los Angeles Countys permanent absentee voters, with one-time requests for ballots by mail being sent out this week. Asked by one Reddit user about a potential way to commit voter fraud with absentee ballots, Logan said it is important to note that the voter doing so would be signing an oath under penalty of perjury. He also agreed with one questioners concern that voter turnout was too low, and suggested that a new state laws significant expansion of voting by mail may help. I think the model of voting we use is somewhat outdated and unfamiliar to new voters, Logan said. Facebook
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Kamala Harris and her husband made $1.17 million in 2015, according to report on their tax returns By Phil Willon Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris files to run for the U.S. Senate in February at the Los Angeles County Registrar with her husband, Douglas Emhoff. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) The 2015 tax returns filed by U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris and her husband, Los Angeles attorney Douglas Emhoff, show that the couple earned $1.17 million that year, according to reports. Harris tax returns, which were viewed and first reported by the Sacramento Bee, also showed that the California attorney general and her husband paid $450,000 in state and federal income taxes. Harris campaign spokesman Nathan Click said journalists are being allowed to view the tax returns by appointment only. Harris rival in the Senate race, Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez, provided her 2015 tax return to the Orange County Register and will not make those tax records available to other journalists until after that news organization publishes its story, said Sanchez campaign spokesman Luis Vizcaino. Harris and Sanchez have net worths that likely run in the millions, according to federal and state financial disclosures. Facebook
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Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum reopens and his daughter and grandson get a tour By Christine Mai-Duc Christopher Cox, grandson of Richard Nixon, talks to reporters during a tour of the newly renovated Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum reopened Saturday, after a 10-month renovation that sought to reframe the narrative of the 37th presidents life and legacy. The $15-million remake brings to a close a more than decade-long effort to bring greater legitimacy to a library that historian and Nixon scholar Stanley Kutler once called just another Southern California theme park whose reality level was slightly better than Disneyland. We wrote about the librarys new exhibits a couple of months ago, and the challenge of building an unflinching portrait of a complicated man. In attendance were Henry Kissinger, Nixons former secretary of State, former California Gov. Pete Wilson and Nixons daughter and grandson, Tricia Nixon Cox and Christopher Nixon Cox. Times photographer Mark Boster attende
Usually, the special guests whom presidential nominees invite to their debates are meant to underscore some central theme of the candidates agenda or uplifting moment in their biography.
This year, the guests in the spotlight underscore how much the candidates dislike one another. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be bringing people whose purpose for coming appears to be antagonizing their opponent.
Heres who will be in the guest seats in Las Vegas on Wednesday night:
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Donald Trumps guests
Malik Obama. President Obamas estranged half-brother opposes gay marriage, is angry about the overthrow of Libyas former dictator and likes Trumps campaign slogan.
Kenyan-born Malik Obama, who has homes in Africa and Washington, voiced his grudges with the president in a July interview with the New York Post. He said Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi was a friend.
The presidents half-brother, a polygamist with multiple wives, also begrudges Barack Obama and Clinton for supporting same-sex marriage, though Trump also calls himself a champion of gay rights. And Trumps vow to protect Israel also appears to put him at odds with Malik Obama, who has aligned himself with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart, Malik Obama told the Post. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him.
On Wednesday, he will likely get his chance.
Patricia Smith. Patricia Smiths son, Sean, was killed in the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. She lays blame for his death on Clinton, and she accuses the former secretary of State of lying to her about what happened in the Libyan city in the aftermath of the attacks.
Clinton has vehemently denied ever giving Smith false information, and her campaign notes that the accusations Smith makes about Clintons handling of Benghazi conflict with the findings of several government investigations.
Sarah Palin. Palin, the former Alaska governor and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, endorsed Trump during the GOP primaries.
James OKeefe. Conservative activist James OKeefe will attend, according to Bloomberg News. OKeefe makes undercover videos in which he seeks to entrap government officials, advocacy organizations and others into making compromising comments that reveal what he alleges is corruption and abuse.
The productions of his group, Project Veritas, are often selectively edited. But they have attracted considerable media attention, particularly on Fox News. OKeefes highest-impact video involved staff at the advocacy organization ACORN appearing to offer actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend advice on how to avoid getting caught engaging in such illegal activity as human trafficking and child prostitution. But investigators at the California attorney generals office ultimately found OKeefes work to have been severely edited and misleading. A probe by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found ACORN had not misused any federal funds.
Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon also said to CNN on Wednesday that the campaign had invited other guests who will expose Bill and Hillarys sordid past.
Hillary Clintons guests
Meg Whitman. Hewlett-Packard CEO Whitman is a former GOP gubernatorial nominee in California and one of the most prominent defectors from the Republican side of the presidential race this year. Her presence campaigning and raising money for Clinton reflects the deep uneasiness so many moderate and Republican women have about Trump.
In a private meeting with some of the biggest donors in the GOP, Whitman compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini as she asked House Speaker Paul Ryan how he could in good conscience support such a nominee, according to the Washington Post.
Mark Cuban. The presence of billionaire Mark Cuban at the first presidential debate touched off the war of the guests this year. Trump threatened that if Cuban came to the event as Clintons guest, he would bring the women who accused Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual advances.
By the second debate, Trump made good on his promise, though his campaigns plan to have the women confront Bill Clinton just before the event started was thwarted by the debate commission. Now, Cuban is back. After the first debate, Clinton had taunted Trump by mentioning Cuban was her guest and that he is a real billionaire, by the way a reference to reports that Trump has inflated his wealth.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The basketball great has excoriated Trump in several columns published in the Washington Post, warning readers that the GOP nominee is xenophobic and paranoid.
Clinton also invited several other guests. They include:
Leon Panetta. Former U.S. Defense secretary and White House chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton.
Karla Ortiz. A Nevada resident whose parents are undocumented and at risk of deportation.
Astrid Silva. A Dreamer and activist from Nevada.
Ryan Moore. A man with spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia dwarfism who has known Hillary Clinton since 1994 and is featured by the campaign often praising her compassion.
Ofelia Diaz Cardenas. A Mexican immigrant who was fired from her housekeeping job with Trump International after wearing pro-union buttons, but was later reinstated after federal labor officials intervened.
Family and friends of Pvt. Damian Lopez-Rodriguez. Lopez-Rodriguez was an undocumented immigrant when he was killed serving the U.S. Army in Iraq.
Pastor Robert E. Fowler Sr. Senior pastor, Victory Missionary Baptist Church in Las Vegas.
Kevin Hooks. President, Las Vegas Urban League.
Dolores Huerta. Labor leader and civil rights activist; co-founder of the National Farmworkers Assn.
Gene Karpinski. President, League of Conservation Voters.
Jonathan Nez. Vice president, Navajo Nation.
Arturo Rodriguez. President, United Farm Workers.
Stephanie Schriock. President, Emilys List.
D. Taylor. President, UNITE HERE.
Were scoring the third presidential debate. See whos winning each round
Even lots of Donald Trumps supporters are starting to think hell lose the election
evan.halper@latimes.com
Follow me: @evanhalper
One big reason the WikiLeaks emails arent as damaging for Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump
Five things you may not know about debate moderator Chris Wallace
To win the debate, Donald Trump needs to turn the attention to Hillary Clinton
UPDATES:
6:30 p.m.: This story was updated with additional guests.
5:15 p.m.: This story was updated with additional guests.
This story was originally published at 1:10 p.m.
Throughout the long and tawdry presidential campaign, both Donald Trump, by dint of his personality, and Democrats, by dint of the damage they see him doing to his cause, have kept the attention focused on him.
On Wednesday, from a stage at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Trump will face an imperative that sounds simple but has eluded him for months: to turn a fierce spotlight onto his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
This election has been about Donald Trump from Day One; thats the only context he has, said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart. You look at this as his last, best chance. If he continues to do the same things hes always done, the results are going to be the same.
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If Trump can manage to shift attention to his opponent, he has material to work with. Clinton enters the third and final presidential debate with a persistent lead of at least middling single digits in almost all national polls and a strong hold on states Trump needs to win, but she faces challenges of her own.
She has been buffeted in recent days by the release of hacked emails, which have renewed questions about her tenure as secretary of State. That offers Trump an opening, if one less sizable than the difficulties that have enveloped him since the last debate 10 days ago. But benefiting will require a deftness and discipline that Trump has been unable or unwilling to maintain in the two previous debates.
This final debate occurs under extraordinary conditions.
Trump, accused by more than a dozen women of varieties of sexual assault, asserts that Clinton is part of a global conspiracy to undermine U.S. independence. Clinton returns the sentiment by contending that Trump lacks the temperament to be trusted with the nations nuclear weapons and is being aided by hackers directed by the Kremlin.
The way theyve pushed those arguments has not helped Trump gain ground.
Clinton has deflected some of the sharpest assaults on Trump to her surrogates, in what appears to be an effort to alienate as few voters as possible. First Lady Michelle Obama laid into the Republican nominee last week as representing a destructive anti-woman worldview. President Obama on Tuesday belittled Trump as whining about his loss rather than being a stand-up leader.
But Trump is the dominant personality in his campaign by far, and so he has taken on the largest role in reminding voters of Clintons failings. He has done so in biting and mocking ways that have served to reinforce Clintons criticisms of him.
Its like a boxer with a glass jaw leading with their chin, said Republican pollster Ed Goeas. When he is the one leading the fight he not only stirs up her negatives, but his own negatives.
Still, for all the drama that has marked the presidential contest, the race for the White House has been remarkably stable. And that stability, in defiance of all the tumult, makes it harder for Trump to overcome Clintons lead.
Clinton and Trump started the campaign with high unfavorable ratings; now, less than three weeks before election day, those numbers have barely budged.
Asked last October if they were optimistic or pessimistic about Trumps candidacy, 67% of Americans told the NBC News/Wall Street Journal pollsters they were pessimistic. This month, that number sat at 65%. Asked about Clintons candidacy, 56% said they were pessimistic a year ago; this month that figure was 55%.
That stasis, after all the campaigns furor, speaks to an electorate that is resistant to moving sharply toward one or the others campaign.
People sized them up pretty early and havent changed their opinions very much, said Hart, whose firm co-directs the NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.
Overall, an average of polls conducted by Real Clear Politics finds Clinton ahead of Trump by almost 7 percentage points nationally.
More sobering for Trump was his performance in the states whose electoral votes will tip one of the candidates into the White House. In those states, Trump had a substantial lead only in Iowa, where he was ahead by an average of less than 4 points. Clinton was ahead by at least that amount in Florida, New Hampshire and Nevada, and by almost that much in North Carolina.
Trump was far behind in states he once wanted to contest, like Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado. The race was a dead heat in Ohio, the state every winning Republican nominee has claimed.
Perhaps most fearfully for Trump, he led by a mere 1 point in Arizona, typically a Republican state. Other polls showed weakness in two other loyal GOP states, Georgia and Texas.
The reason for Trumps difficulties is the teeter-totter he has ridden since the beginning of his campaign.
His opposition to trade deals, anger at immigration policies and expressions of cultural affinity with blue-collar whites secured his hold on that slice of the electorate. But those arguments have repelled suburban, college-educated voters, an increasingly large part of the voting population and one that typically has sided with Republicans.
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Trump has done almost nothing in recent weeks to try to solve that problem. He has publicly criticized the nations highest-ranking Republican, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, and other GOP figures. After slicing Clinton for being critical of women who allege sexual misconduct by her husband, Bill, he flayed women who made the same accusations against him.
He suggested that Clinton had been on drugs during their second debate one which voters said she had won. In West Palm Beach, Fla., on Friday, he used conspiratorial language to question her patriotism, asserting that she was meeting in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty.
Perhaps most notable has been Trumps assault on a main tenet of American democracy that fair elections usher in a peaceful exchange of power. His insistence that the electoral system is rigged and that voters in nonwhite areas cast illegitimate ballots has prompted bipartisan rebukes.
In Colorado on Tuesday, he insisted that he was correct in saying that heavily nonwhite inner cities were rife with instances of voting fraud, even though there is no evidence to back up his claim.
If you talk about them, they say bad things about you, he said. They call you a racist.
Clinton, content to give Trump the attention, had no public events Tuesday; for days she has focused on debate preparation. A senior campaign aide, Jennifer Palmieri, said Clinton was ready for whatever Trump might say in an effort to pull ahead.
If he chooses to continue to embrace his strategy of a scorched-earth campaign and bringing that to the debate stage, shell be prepared to handle that, Palmieri told reporters, as she has the last two times.
cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Twitter: @cathleendecker
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Donald Trump slashed fiercely at Hillary Clinton on Wednesday night in their third and final presidential debate, calling her a nasty woman, a liar and a failure, and saying he might not accept the results of the election if she wins.
Clinton parried the assault with a scathing attack on the GOP nominee as a greedy misogynist and bully, who used his public prominence to personally enrich himself, take advantage of women and exploit employees of his lucrative business empire.
She said she found horrifying the intimation he would not accept the will of the people on Nov. 8.
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After a fairly placid start, in which they differed over guns, Supreme Court appointments and taxes in a relatively civil tone, the debate turned into an angry flood of innuendo and insult, starting when Trump defended himself against allegations he had repeatedly forced himself on women.
Trump categorically denied the charges, which have dominated the campaign in the last week, and asserted without proof that the Clinton campaign had orchestrated the statements from more than half a dozen women who came forward to accuse Trump.
These stories are all totally false, he said firmly. I didnt know any of these women I didnt see these women. I think they want either fame or her campaign did it, and I think its her campaign.
Clinton, speaking slowly and deliberately into the television camera, noted that Trump had earlier denied the allegations, in part, by suggesting the women were not attractive enough to draw his interest.
Donald Trump thinks belittling women makes him bigger, Clinton said. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I dont think there is a woman anywhere who doesnt know what that feels like.
I think its really up to all of us to demonstrate who we are, she went on, and who our country is, and to stand up and be very clear about what we expect from our next president.
Trump simply repeated his contention that the various accounts were false.
Nobody has more respect for women than I do, he said.
The 90 minutes onstage at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, represented Trumps last, best chance to stop a drastic political slide and keep the White House in reach. He used the opportunity to repeatedly disparage Clintons character and personal integrity.
Such a nasty woman, he uttered at one point.
This is just another lie, he said at another.
He suggested the Democrat would continue what he described as the failed domestic and foreign policies of President Obama. And he said putting Clinton in the White House would do nothing to bring about the change he said the country desperately needs, insisting her more than 30 years in public life had accomplished nothing.
The one thing you have over me is experience, he said, but its bad experience. The problem is you talk but you dont get anything done, Hillary. If you become president this country is going to be in some mess, believe me.
Clinton countered that she had spent her entire career working to help the poor, children and minorities while Trump was accumulating personal wealth. While she was in the White House Situation Room, as secretary of State monitoring the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, he was hosting the Celebrity Apprentice, she scoffed.
So I am happy to compare my 30 years of experience, she said.
Under the intended format, Wednesday nights debate was sectioned off in 15-minute intervals devoted to topics chosen by the moderator, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. For roughly half an hour, that managed to corral the candidates.
They differed over Supreme Court appointments, Clinton saying she would appoint justices who uphold legalized abortion, same-sex marriage and rein in unlimited political contributions.
Trump said he would appoint justices that would overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion and would strictly uphold expansive gun rights.
But Trump has shown a penchant on the debate stage and, especially, at his boisterous rallies for straying far afield from policy and typical campaign discourse, and he did so again Wednesday night.
In a striking breach of the countrys long-standing tradition, he twice declined when pressed to say whether he would accept the outcome of the election. I will look at it at the time, Trump said. Ill keep you in suspense.
There was a gasp from the audience inside the debate hall.
That is not the way our democracy works, Clinton said. He is denigrating, he is talking down our democracy. And I for one am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of a position.
In a discussion of immigration, Trump accused Clinton of favoring amnesty for millions of people in the country without proper documentation, calling that unfair to those who entered the country properly. We either have a country or we dont, said Trump, whose signature issue is construction of an impenetrable wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
At one point, the GOP nominee, who is highly unpopular among Latinos, tossed in a word of Spanish as he vowed to rid the U.S. of drug lords and other bad, bad people who entered the country illegally. We have some bad hombres here, and were going to get them out, he said.
Clinton said she favored tough border security but not going school to school, home to home, business to business rounding up people who are undocumented, as she said Trumps policy would require.
The first two debates have proved to be pivot points in the contest, turning a race that favored Clinton into a potential blowout. Her lead in polls has grown, both nationally and in states Trump needs to win. Even some traditionally Republican states, such as Arizona, Georgia and Utah, have grown competitive in the final weeks of the contest.
Trumps response has been to assert, without proof, that a collection of conspirators Clinton, the media, international financiers and fellow Republicans, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan are trying to steal the election.
But his earlier performances on the debate stage contributed greatly to his problems.
An ill-prepared Trump was tetchy and erratic in last months first session, then compounded his troubles by spending days on a body-shaming campaign against a former Miss Universe whom Clinton had defended.
Subsequent revelations that Trump may have avoided federal income taxes for close to two decades and bragged in a 2005 videotaped conversation that his celebrity allowed him to force himself on women dominated the second debate.
Trumps insistence in the last debate that he never acted inappropriately was the cause for several women to step forward and accuse him of unwanted sexual advances.
Trumps difficulties have overshadowed developments that could have been harmful to Clinton, including a series of hacked private emails of her campaign chairman that portray the candidate in less-than-flattering ways and new details concerning her private email server.
A question from Wallace about the hacking which U.S. intelligence officials have blamed on Russia led to a harsh exchange over Trumps professed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Clinton accused Trump of accepting the help of Russian operatives believed to have hacked the documents and giving them to WikiLeaks to try to influence the American election. Clinton demanded that Trump make it clear he will not have the help of Putin in this election, that he rejects Russian espionage against Americans.
Trump accused Clinton of trying to deflect the discussion away from another of the WikiLeaks disclosures. She had been asked about a document that showed her telling a group of bankers during a paid speech that she supported a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.
That was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders, Trump said. I dont know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well that would be good. He has no respect for her, he has no respect for our president, and Ill tell you what, we are in very serious trouble.
Clinton shot back: Thats because hed rather have a puppet as president of the United States, referring to Putins praise of Trump.
Youre the puppet, Trump responded.
A discussion of the economy centered on the candidates respective tax plans. Clinton charged that Trump would give the biggest tax breaks ever to the wealthy and to corporations and cited analyses that it would reduce employment overall.
Trump accused Clinton of proposing a massive, massive tax increase before turning to what has proved to be more comfortable terrain: trade. He vowed to work to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, and potentially rescind it if a better deal wasnt possible.
Clinton defended her tax plan, reiterating a pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making $250,000 or less but seeking higher taxes from wealthier Americans that would allow her to make investments in new jobs and innovation. She also reiterated her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed 12-nation agreement championed by Obama, and said she would aggressively enforce existing trade agreements.
Before the debate, both campaigns engaged in a bit of psychological gamesmanship.
Trump announced his guests would include the mother of an American killed in the 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, as well as Obamas Kenyan half-brother, Malik. Clintons guests included billionaire Mark Cuban, a longtime Trump detractor, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Chief Executive Meg Whitman, the 2010 GOP nominee for California governor, who endorsed Clinton.
Trump and Clinton may share a stage one more time before election day on Nov. 8. The antagonists were both scheduled to attend the 71st annual Alfred E. Smith memorial dinner Thursday night in Manhattan, a traditionally lighthearted affair that raises funds for Catholic charities.
Barabak reported from San Francisco, Halper from Las Vegas and Memoli from Washington.
Twitter: @markzbarabak, @evanhalper, @mikememoli
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UPDATES:
9:45 p.m.: This story has been updated with additional comments from the debate and for clarity.
8:25 p.m.: This story was updated with comments from the debate.
6:10 p.m.: This story was updated with the start of the debate.
This story was originally published at 3:55 p.m.
When Donald Trump apologized for saying in 2005 that he could grope women because of his celebrity, he immediately pointed to Bill Clinton as having done worse. Trump appeared before a debate alongside Clintons accusers and again mentioned the former presidents past while onstage with Hillary Clinton. But Trumps argument was undercut when more women publicly came forward with allegations that he had groped or kissed them without consent.
Heres a look at the pasts of both Trump and Bill Clinton and accusations against them.
Donald Trump
In a screen grab of a 2005 Access Hollywood video, Donald Trump prepares for his cameo on Days of Our Lives with actress Arianne Zucker and Billy Bush, right, then Access co-host. (Getty) (Getty)
1977, 31-year-old Trump
Trump marries his first wife, Ivana Trump
Donald Trump Jr. is born
Early-1980s, 30-something Donald Trump
Allegation: While Trump was seated next to her on a plane, businesswoman Jessica Leeds said, he lifted her armrest and touched her inappropriately.
He was like an octopus, Leeds, now 74, told the New York Times. His hands were everywhere.
Response: Trump called it a ridiculous tale. At a rally in North Carolina, he said, She would not be my first choice.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/786560925113266176
1981, 35-year-old Trump
Ivanka Trump is born.
1984, 38-year-old Trump
Eric Trump is born.
1989, 43-year-old Trump
Allegation: Ivana Trump used the word rape in a 1992 deposition during their divorce to describe an encounter with Trump when they were married in 1989. In 2015, after the allegation resurfaced, she said it was without merit and that she had made it at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald.
Response: After the allegation resurfaced last summer, Michael Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, incorrectly said that a man cannot legally rape his wife. Many states have laws outlawing marital rape. Trump distanced himself from that statement.
Early 1990s, 40-something Trump
Allegation: Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post that when she was at a Manhattan nightclub, someone sitting next to her "touched her vagina through her underwear. Anderson said she fled the couch and only then realized it was Trump.
Response: "Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous," Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said to the Post.
1991, 44-year-old Trump
Ivana Trump files for divorce.
1992, 45-year-old Trump
Accusation: Donald Trump reportedly talked about dating young girls once they reached maturity. A 1992 wire service report said he joked to 14-year-old girls that hed be dating them in a few years. In CBS footage from around the same time, he says of a 10-year-old girl that hed be dating her in 10 years.
Response: Trump has not commented specifically on those allegations.
Accusation: Jill Harth filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Trump, alleging that while working on a beauty competition with him, he harassed her to the point of what she called attempted rape.
He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again, she told the Guardian. And I had to physically say: What are you doing? Stop it.
Response: In an interview with CNN on Friday, Trump said he was the victim of a political smear campaign.
1993, 46-year-old Trump
Tiffany Trump is born.
Trump marries Marla Maples.
1997, 50-year-old Trump
Trump and Marla Maples separate.
Accusation: Temple Taggart told the New York Times that when she was Miss Utah, Trump kissed her on the lips without consent.
Response: Trump has denied the allegations.
1998, 51-year-old Trump
Accusation: During a press conference with Gloria Allred on Thursday, Karena Virginia said Trump approached her after the 1998 U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing, N.Y. He then grabbed her arm and touched her breast.
Dont you know who I am? Virginia said Trump asked her when she flinched.
Response: "Gloria Allred, in another coordinated, publicity seeking attack with the Clinton campaign, will stop at nothing to smear Mr. Trump, Trump spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said. Give me a break. Voters are tired of these circus-like antics and reject these fictional stories and the clear efforts to benefit Hillary Clinton.
1999, 52-year-old Trump
Trump and Marla Maples divorce
2003, 56-year-old Trump
Accusation: Mindy McGillivray says Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida while she was working with a photographer at the site. She was 23.
Response: Trump has denied the allegations.
2005, 58-year-old Trump
Trump marries Melania Trump
Allegation: Trump makes lewd comments about groping women.
Response: Apologized, calling it locker room talk, while dismissing it as a distraction.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/785842546878578688
Accusation: Natasha Stoynoff of People magazine says Trump groped her while she was waiting for Melania Trump to return for an interview.
Within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat,
Response: Trump called the story a total lie.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/786554517680693248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Accusation: Rachel Crooks says Trump kissed her without permission outside an elevator bank at Trump Tower in Manhattan when she was 22.
Response: Trump denied the allegations. When questioned by a New York Times reporter, he told the journalist, You are a disgusting human being.
2006, 59-year-old Trump
Barron Trump is born.
Allegation: During a Saturday press conference with Gloria Allred, adult film star Jessica Drake said she met Trump in 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe where she said he made sexual advances toward her and two friends.
"When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission," Drake said, releasing a posed photo she took with Trump at the event.
Drake said that later, Trump or a male speaking on his behalf offered her $10,000 and use of his private jet for sex. She said she declined.
Response: "This story is totally false and ridiculous. The picture is one of thousands taken out of respect for people asking to have their picture taken with Mr. Trump," Trumps campaign said in a statement. "Mr. Trump does not know this person, does not remember this person and would have no interest in ever knowing her."
2007, 60-year-old Trump
Accusation: Former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos says Trump invited her into his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and proceeded to kiss her against her will, groped her and shoved his genitals towards her.
Response: "To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. That is not who I am as a person, and it is not how Ive conducted my life, Trump said in a statement.
Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. (Getty Images)
1975, 29-year-old Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton marries Hillary Rodham.
Mid-1970s to 1992, 30- to 40-something Clinton
Allegation: Dolly Kyle Browning, a high school friend of Clintons, said she had an occasional sexual relationship with him over about 15 years.
Response: Clinton has not publicly responded.
1978, 32-year-old Clinton
Allegation: Juanita Broaddrick said in 1999 that when Clinton was Arkansas governor, he invited her to a hotel room where she said he kissed, then raped her.
Response: Clinton denied the allegations.
1980, 34-year-old Clinton
Chelsea Clinton is born.
1982, 36-year-old Clinton
Allegation: In 1998, Elizabeth Ward Gracen said she had had a consensual one-night stand with Clinton when he was Arkansas governor in 1982. It was the same year she won the title of Miss America.
Response: Clinton denied the allegations.
1983, 37-year-old Clinton
Allegation: In 1994, 1958s Miss Arkansas, Sally Perdue, said she had an affair with Clinton the previous year. She claimed that a Democratic staffer told her not to reveal any information, and was warned "they knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn't guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs."
Response: He has not publicly responded to the allegation.
1991, 44-year-old Clinton
Allegation: Paula Jones said a state trooper asked her to meet then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in his hotel room. Jones said that Clinton dropped his pants and underwear and told her to kiss it. She refused.
Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment in 1998, prompting the investigation that culminated in the revelation of Clintons affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Response: Clinton settled a sexual harassment suit with Jones with no apology or admission of guilt.
1980-1992, 45-year-old Clinton
Allegation: During Clintons presidential campaign in 1992, Gennifer Flowers said she had had a 12-year sexual relationship with him.
Response: Clinton admitted to a sexual affair with Flowers while under oath in 1998.
1993, 46-year-old Bill Clinton
Allegation: In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without permission in the Oval Office.
Response: Clinton denied the encounter while under oath in 1998.
1995-1996, 49-year-old Bill Clinton
Allegation: Monica Lewinskys affair with Bill Clinton surfaced in 1998, when Lewinskys friend Linda Tripp learned that she had signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying her relationship with Clinton. Tripp handed secret recordings of Lewinskys account of the affair to investigator Kenneth Starr.
Response: Clinton initially denied the allegations.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman, he said famously.
Clinton later admitted to the affair, and the House of Representatives voted to impeach him.
Updated at 11:10 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2016: This story was updated with Jessica Drakes statements.
Updated at 1:20 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2016: This story was updated with Karena Virginias statements.
This article was originally published at 3:35 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2016.
colleen.shalby@latimes.com
Twitter: @cshalby
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In a state as expensive as California, and during a political year as crowded as 2016, most organizations would struggle to sponsor just one ballot measure. Fighting on two fronts is often reserved for the most formidable interest groups.
But thats just what the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation is doing this year.
The foundation, led by longtime HIV activist Michael Weinstein, has become one of the biggest and most controversial nonprofits dedicated to fighting the disease and is quickly becoming a political powerhouse. It has a $1.2-billion budget and two high-profile measures on Californias ballot: Proposition 60, which would require condom use in adult film production, and Proposition 61, which seeks to lower prices state agencies pay for prescription drugs. AIDS Healthcare Foundation has contributed more than $19 million to the initiatives.
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It is also funding a similar drug-pricing initiative in Ohio, its first out-of-state campaign, and a measure set for the Los Angeles city ballot in March that seeks to stymie mega-developments in Hollywood.
Were doing things on a scale that we havent before, Weinstein said in a recent interview from his office in a Hollywood high-rise.
Weinstein has come a long way since the late 1980s, when he started with a $50,000 budget and a narrowly tailored mission to provide end-of-life care to those dying of AIDS. Today, the foundation manages 450 clinics and pharmacies that serve 629,000 patients worldwide. Its Out of the Closet thrift stores and campy billboards a recent one advertised its free sexually transmitted disease screening services with the slogan Feel the Burn? are Los Angeles mainstays.
A fast-talking Brooklyn native who has little patience for his critics, Weinstein has been labeled a bully, Satan and, as one longtime Los Angeles County supervisor put it, a thug. His brand of advocacy is aggressive and brash, born out of the early days of AIDS activism when Weinstein helped defeat a state ballot measure that would have allowed people with the disease to be quarantined.
Weinstein often dismisses those who publicly oppose him, including other HIV and LGBT advocacy groups, as shills who are in the pocket of powerful industries. He has earned a reputation as a fiercely litigious leader.
If the worst thing anyone can say about me is that Im zealous in supporting the issues that I think are right I can live with that, Weinstein said.
Proposition 60 would require adult film actors to use condoms during sex scenes and is inspired by a similar L.A. County ballot measure Weinstein helped pass in 2012. Weinstein calls it a matter of workplace safety and of public health.
The Yes campaign has reported $4.5 million in contributions, all of it coming from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Opponents, who have raised just $433,000, say the measure would allow any Californian to sue adult film producers or others with a financial interest in a production if the state doesnt act on complaints of violations, and could lead to frivolous lawsuits.
But the foundation is focusing the bulk of its advocacy budget on Proposition 61, hoping to tap into public anger over prescription drug prices, a bread-and-butter issue for the sprawling healthcare organization.
By taking on drug manufacturers in California and Ohio, a crucial swing state, Weinstein had hoped to launch drug pricing onto the presidential debate stage. His plans faltered when, after months of legal wrangling, Ohio officialsplaced his measure on the November 2017 ballot instead.
Now, Weinstein is pinning all his hopes of sparking that national movement on California and is considering a similar effort in Florida.
Proposition 61 would mandate that state agencies pay no more for a drug than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which traditionally pays some of the lowest prices for medicines. The Yes campaign has sent double-decker buses full of nurses up and down the state, parking them outside the house of a former drug company executive and at rallies. Full-page newspaper ads have challenged the CEOs of top drugmakers to a debate, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has appeared in the campaigns TV ads.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to the crowd at a rally in Hollywood in support of Proposition 61. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
It is a very profound moral issue, Sanders said at a rally in Hollywood last week, with Weinstein at his side. It is time for the pharmaceutical industry to stop ripping off the people of this country. The entire nation is looking at California.
Critics have raised the specter of unintended consequences, saying drug companies could simply raise drug prices for veterans or refuse to provide their drugs at lower costs to California.
The pharmaceutical industry has touted those arguments in its campaign against the measure, raising a $94.4-million war chest and blanketing the airwaves with ads featuring doctors and veterans. It has also targeted Weinstein and his foundation, which has contributed nearly all of the Yes campaigns $14.5 million.
Theyve pointed out that the measure exempts Californias largest state-run health program: Medi-Cal managed care, a program that brings in $12 million a year for the foundation and its pharmacies. The No campaign has also pointed to lawsuits the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has pending with L.A. County and the state over how much they should be reimbursed for healthcare services for patients who are assisted by government programs.
If they really wanted to do something for the cost of state healthcare programs in California, why exempt the largest program of all? said Kathy Fairbanks, a spokeswoman for the No on 61 campaign. It calls into question the efficacy of Prop. 61 and also the motives behind it.
Weinstein dismisses the idea that the foundation rushed to the ballot box.
Weve been supporting other peoples legislation on this subject for more than a dozen years, he said. It was hardly a rash decision.
After two bills to bolster drug pricing transparency failed this session, Weinstein said he was convinced that a ballot measure was the only way to bring change.
Advocates for lower drug prices board the Yes on Prop 61 double decker tour bus outside the home of former Gilead CEO John Martin in Hillsborough, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016. (Alison Yin / AP Images for AIDS Healthcare Foundation)
Weinsteins efforts on condom use in adult films have similarly been thwarted. Complaining that L.A. County officials have failed to adequately enforce Measure B, the ballot measure voters passed in 2012, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation took its fight to the state Legislature and found an ally in Assemblyman Isadore Hall III (D-Compton).
Hall, now a state senator, introduced two AIDS Healthcare Foundation-sponsored bills on the subject in 2013. In the fight that ensued, dozens of adult film actors descended on the Capitol to testify against the measure, while former performers described the horror of contracting HIV on set.
At one point, Weinstein accused Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Glendale) of stalling one of Halls bills in committee and blanketed the lawmakers district with mailers and robocalls that labeled Gatto the pornographers best friend. Gatto criticized Weinstein for what he called scorched-earth tactics.
Neither bill made it out of committee for a floor vote.
They certainly push the bounds of impropriety, Gatto said in an interview recently. Ultimately, I would question whether those kinds of tactics really deliver that much for the organization.
Weinstein likes to point out that, despite such criticism about the large sums of money the group dedicates toward political advocacy, the amount he estimates the AIDS Healthcare Foundation will spend on advocacy this year is still less than 2% of its overall budget.
The primary business of this organization is providing medical care, and that still occupies more of my time than anything else, he said.
So how did this once-struggling AIDS foundation develop such deep pockets for a growing political agenda?
It turns out that providing cutting edge medicine and advocacy regardless of ability to pay, as the organizations mission statement reads, can be quite lucrative. The foundation brought in more than $800 million roughly 80% of its total budget through its pharmacies last year.
Weinsteins stances on some of those issues have drawn strong criticism from many LGBT activists. In particular, hes been condemned for his dismissal of Truvada, a once-a-day preventive HIV pill, as a party drug that would lead to decreased condom use.
Scott Wiener, a San Francisco County supervisor and state Senate candidate, said Weinstein and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation are preoccupied with a condoms-only attitude toward HIV prevention, to the detriment of other more holistic approaches such as the one thats helped San Francisco dramatically reduce its rate of new infections.
They have a lot of money to spend, and theyre willing to spend that money to promote anti-science points of view and to get involved in issues that have nothing to do with HIV advocacy, said Wiener, who has come out against both propositions and recently disclosed hes taking Truvada.
But where others see costly battles that distract from the groups core mission, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation sees crucial steps in caring for its patients.
Lowering prescription drug prices helps the AIDS Healthcare Foundation serve more patients, Weinstein reasons, and fighting runaway development in the Hollywood area prevents clients and employees alike from being displaced by rising housing costs.
Rand Martin, the foundations lobbyist, said hes not surprised that the foundation has expanded its ambitions in recent years.
Their aspirations have always been broad, and they have always wanted to do big things in Sacramento, Martin said. If theyre going to be a big player in Los Angeles, if theyre going to be a big player in California, theyre not going to limit their involvement in policies to just the things people think they should be working on.
christine.maiduc@latimes.com; javier.panzar@latimes.com
For more on California politics, follow @cmaiduc and @jpanzar.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Oct. 19
By Demir Azizov Trend:
Uzbekistan and Kuwait will hold a session of the joint intergovernmental commission on cooperation in the first quarter of 2017 to expand the trade-economic and investment partnership, Uzbekistan national news agency (UzA) reported.
According to the report, the agreement on that issue was reached during the meeting between Uzbek acting President, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Kuwaits First Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah.
During the recent meeting, the sides exchanged views on bringing the Uzbekistan-Kuwait relations to a higher level, the report said.
According to the report, Mirziyoyev and Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah stressed the importance of mutual exchange of visits at various levels for the development of relations between the countries.
Uzbekistan and Kuwait signed bilateral intergovernmental agreements in the field of economy during Uzbek first President Islam Karimovs official visit to Kuwait in January 2004.
In particular, a memorandum on cooperation between the government of Uzbekistan and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) was signed. The memorandum envisages financial assistance totaling $215 million for the implementation of nine projects in the fields of health protection, energy supply, land reclamation and water supply in Uzbekistan.
Another intergovernmental agreement was signed as part of Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabahs official visit to Uzbekistan in July 2008. The agreement envisages KFAEDs financial assistance to implement 10 projects totaling $375.2 million.
In total, KFAED allocated $135 million for the implementation of investment projects in Uzbekistan. KFAED also allocated $60.6 million for three projects implemented in the field of water supply, transport infrastructure and medicine. Four more projects co-financed by KFAED in the amount of $72.5 million are being implemented in the field of cardiac surgery, irrigation and road repair.
Twenty-one-year-old Yamilex Rustrian cannot vote, but she would like to one day. So the Dreamer is doing all she can to make sure Hillary Clinton becomes president.
Last weekend, doing all she can meant climbing into a van with her mother, a janitor who is undocumented, and a dozen other Service Employees International Union members and their children at 3 a.m. for a quick trip to knock on doors in Las Vegas.
Rustrian was 7 when she and her younger sister came to live in the U.S. with their mother, who was already living here illegally. Her mother paid a smuggler to collect her daughters after their father was shot and killed by gang members in Guatemala shortly before Fathers Day. She thought theyd be safer here.
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Rustrian, now a Los Angeles Valley College student, received a work permit through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals because she was brought to the country as a child by her parents. The work permit gives her legal status, not the citizenship she would need to be able to vote, and her mother could still be deported.
Early Saturday morning, Rustrian sat with the group of janitors assembled at long tables in the old mortuary that is home to the SEIU United Service Workers West. They ate ham, cheese and bean sandwiches as they waited for the final workers to get off the late shift. At least one came still dressed in her blue smock.
Rustrian and her mother loaded into the last of the seven vans and buses that brought more than 150 people SEIU members and their families from Southern California to knock on 25,000 doors in Las Vegas suburbs for the weekend. The janitors and their children hunkered down for the 4 1/2-hour ride. Several had done this for the union in 2008, 2012 and during the 2016 primaries.
The union, which promised to deploy hundreds of thousands of volunteers when it endorsed Clinton a year ago, is at the forefront of the push to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, preserve the Affordable Care Act and overhaul the nations immigration system.
Union members from safely Democratic states like California and New York poured into battleground states like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia in search of undecided voters or committed Democrats to nudge toward the polls. Many brought their wives, husbands and children.
The presidential contest in Nevada is competitive, with Southern California workers planning to make the trip to Nevada again this weekend, and perhaps once more before the election, in hopes they can sway the U.S. Senate race for Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and shore up the state for Clinton.
SEIU organizer Jasmin Castillo puts gas in a van full of sleeping janitors near the Nevada state line. The van left Los Angeles after 3 a.m. Saturday, right after their shifts ended. (Sarah D. Wire / Los Angeles Times )
Most in the van were asleep as dawn broke, Joshua trees dotting the hills barely visible through the early light. A worker tossed in her sleep and the smell of cleaning solution wafted through the van. When they reached the Las Vegas Strip there was no time for sleep or a shower just a quick bite to eat before heading to the local SEIU office. There, they picked up clipboards with lists of addresses, a script that instructed them what to say when someone answered a door, and the all-important polling place information.
As she headed out with her instructions, Los Angeles resident and janitor Dora Diaz said she felt especially motivated to go wherever she was needed to help turn out the vote after hearing a 2005 tape of Trump talking about grabbing women without their permission.
Diaz and several other SEIU women who have been raped or assaulted at work fasted outside the Capitol in Sacramento last month to urge Gov. Jerry Brown to sign a bill that requires janitors and their supervisors to complete sexual harassment training, and created a tip line so women can report abuse without fear of being fired or deported. Brown signed the bill into law.
As a survivor, I know the importance. I hear Donald Trumps comments towards women, and just thinking about the women who have gone through this abuse and seeing that he is running for president I havent been able to sleep, the 49-year-old Diaz said through a translator.
SEIU Executive Vice President Rocio Saenz and janitor Dora Diaz of Los Angeles speak with Claire Voss, 47, of Las Vegas at her home. (Sarah D. Wire / Los Angeles Times )
Claire Voss was cleaning her house when Diaz and SEIU Executive Vice President Rocio Saenz knocked on her door. She said she was waiting to cast her ballot on election day alongside her daughter, a first-time voter. The 47-year-old casino worker invited Diaz and Saenz in to talk about Clinton and the election night watch party she has planned, but there were dozens more doors they needed to knock on.
Halfway through the day, the all-female group of janitors returned to the SEIU office. Some of them were shaken; others were frustrated.
They said a man in a house with Trump campaign signs in the yard saw them knocking on a neighbors door, and came out to confront Rustrian and the daughters of several janitors. He questioned whether they were allowed to be in the gated community and followed them as they tried to move on. He began filming them and threatened to call police, they said. As a crowd gathered, he confronted them, asked if they spoke English and if theyre in the country legally. They had only knocked on a few doors, but their driver, a local steelworker, insisted they return to the SEIU office.
When Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists last year, it stung, Rustrian said. Hes spoken about using deportation forces to remove immigrants and building a border wall, and shes worried what will happen to immigrants like her mother in the country illegally if he wins. She believes Clinton will work with Republicans and keep her promise to overhaul the countrys immigration system, succeeding in an area Latino families were frustrated to see President Obama fail.
Im documented currently, but that doesnt mean I can stay here; that doesnt mean that my mom gets to stay here. I want my family to stay here, Rustrian said.
SEIU and Clinton campaign organizers encouraged them to keep at it.
The janitors stopped at another neighborhood, sticking together this time. Rustrian walked up and down the rows of buildings looking for an address in an apartment complex, stopping residents to ask for directions, looking at names on mailboxes. When she finally found the door, no one was home, so she slid a Clinton flier with precinct information into the doors seal.
The next address on their list didnt seem to exist. Rustrian led the women back and forth across a busy street. The group split up, weaving through courtyards, looking for a way past locked gates, until they found it. They ended up just leaving a flier there, too.
The janitors hurried to find the last dozen addresses on their Saturday list, all in a mobile home park. As they spoke to a Clinton supporter, her neighbor drank a beer and watched them warily. He angrily told them they werent allowed in the mobile home park, followed them and pulled out his cellphone to record. The janitors waved to him and continued on.
From left, janitors Leticia Soto and Dora Diaz look on as Jasmin Castillo knocks on the door of a mobile home in Las Vegas. (Sarah D. Wire / Los Angeles Times )
At one home, a man who wasnt even on their list crossed his heart, said hed vote for Clinton and used profanity to describe Trump.
After a second day of door-knocking, the janitors clambered back into their van at the SEIU office for the ride home Sunday. They huddled together, sharing piles of blankets and nodding off against window panes and on each others shoulders. The teens who stayed awake played Pokemon Go and made suggestions for music to add to the road-trip playlist.
When they pulled back into the SEIU United Service Workers West building after 11 p.m., the janitors stretched, grumbling at the pops and cracks they heard, and hugged goodbye. Diaz wiped the sleep from her eyes.
Then she headed back to work for the late shift.
sarah.wire@latimes.com
Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter
To read the article in Spanish, click here
Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics
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The European palate may not always have been so sophisticated.
This week, researchers report the first evidence of ancient Europeans snacking on rodents at least 5,000 years ago.
The discovery suggests that rodents like mice and voles have not always been mere pests hellbent on annoying humanity throughout its history: They may have been a food source as well.
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Rodents are frequently excavated from older archaeological sites in Europe, but people havent examined why they are there, said Jeremy Herman, a biologist at the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh. Maybe because they are not currently a food source in Europe, no one ever thought to ask if they had been in the past.
The new finding, reported Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, was made after researchers sifted through nearly 60,000 small mammal bones collected at the Skara Brae settlement on the largest island of the Orknay archipelago in Scotland.
Skara Brae consists of the remnants of eight stone houses and was occupied in the latter half of the Stone Age from roughly 3180 .BC. to 2500 B.C., according to radiocarbon dating.
Archaeologists pulled more than 2.5 pounds of micro mammal bones out of four different trenches dug at and near the site in the 1970s. The bones were bagged based on which trench they came from and also what strata or time period they represented. Herman, the senior author on the study, said all told there were enough bones to fill a cereal box.
Previous studies have shown that there were just two types of rodents living among the people of Skara Brae the wood mouse and the Orkney vole, a form of the common European vole. However, until now, nobody had studied how these rodent populations interacted with humans.
After reexamining the bones, the authors found the number of mouse bones was equal across all four trenches. However, the trench in one building had a greater accumulation of vole bones than the other three trenches. This suggests that the voles, who generally live in the fields and stay away from human homes, had been brought there deliberately by people, the authors said.
In addition, the research team found burn marks on several of the bones, suggesting the animals had been roasted.
The way they are burnt its pretty clear that they were pretty much whole when they were stuck on the embers of a fire, Herman said. I havent tried it myself, but I imagine they got pretty crisp on the outside.
Herman said the number of vole bones the team discovered suggests that the rodents were not a primary source of food for the inhabitants of Skara Brae. Still, it seems pretty clear that people were eating them, at least occasionally.
It could be that people ate them as a snack, or it was something they fell back on or harder times, he said. Or maybe kids were catching them and then roasting them. Its hard to tell.
The people of Skara Brae were farmers who raised cattle and sheep. Herman said most of their food probably came from these sources as well as from crops and shellfish.
He adds that there is no evidence of the people eating mice.
Voles are a little bigger then mice, but I dont know why they focused on them, he said. Maybe they taste better.
The authors hope that future studies will examine the relationship between humans and rodents at other Neolithic sites in Europe.
This is the first example of ancient people eating rodents in Europe, Herman said. But that may be because we havent looked hard enough previously.
deborah.netburn@latimes.com
Do you love science? I do! Follow me @DeborahNetburn and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.
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A Bates College professor is coming to Burbank to talk with residents about how LGBT rights have advanced, and in some cases, regressed over the decades.
Professor Stephen Engel, chair of politics at the Maine-based college, is looking to chat with residents at the Buena Vista Branch Library on Thursday about his recent book, Fragmented Citizens, and discuss how there is still more to be done to make LGBT people full citizens in the United States.
Engel explained that the status of a citizen, such as one that is a part of the LGBT community, is dependent on where a person lives in the United States, the era in time and the issue at hand, such as marriage, healthcare or childrens rights.
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Depending on all of those contextual distinctions, your status as a citizen and your rights and responsibilities that follow from it varies over time, he said. Thats the notion of a fragmented citizen, that your citizenship is broken or fractured depending on those elements. My hope is to talk people through some different ways of thinking about what that means.
While those in the LGBT community can now marry and the Dont Ask, Dont Tell policy in the military has been lifted, Engel said that people can still be fired for identifying as being gay or transgender.
What you see in the U.S. is the dilemma of, I got married on Sunday and can get fired on Monday, he said. Thats not just an issue of federalism, thats an issue of how policy changes over time and the way[s] in which policy changes are always kind of partial.
Engel used gays in the military as an example, explaining that although Dont Ask, Dont Tell is gone, the federal government has yet to figure out how to establish spousal protection for gay couples.
The main dynamic of the book is to show that as you move toward an area of equality on a given issue, that might expose previously unseen qualities of inequality on another issue, he said.
The LGBT community isnt the only group of American citizens affected by, what Engel calls, this two steps forward, one step back in policy change toward equality.
He pointed to U.S. amendments regarding slavery and the rights of African Americans that passed decades ago.
Yeah, we passed the 13th, 14th and 15th [amendments,] but then we had Jim Crow [laws] for 100 years, Engel said. Or we passed those amendments and then you get the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1880s. Theres a lot of two steps forward, one step back in terms of inclusion, and I think thats also true with LGBT individuals.
Engel will speak at 7 p.m. on Thursday at the Buena Vista Library, 300 N. Buena Vista St., Burbank.
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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
Passengers traveling through Hollywood Burbank Airport can now buy their furry companions a treat or new gear during their trip.
Burbank pet supply store Up Pup N Away celebrated the formal grand opening of its kiosk in Terminal A on Monday.
Pet owners can choose from a variety of pet toys, collars, treats and calming sprays for their cat or dog. There is also a plethora of gifts for people, such as novelty socks, T-shirts, stickers and even politically themed poop bags.
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Marwick Kane, chief executive of Up Pup N Away, got the idea to open a pet store in an airport while volunteering for Los Angeles International Airports Pets Unstressing Passengers program, where various dogs and their handlers walk around the terminals to greet passengers and alleviate their stress.
I quickly realized that passengers have nowhere to shop for dogs or cats, he said.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than two million pets travel via airplane.
He had aspirations to start the business at LAX. However, Kane said that the cost of opening a shop at that airport was out of his price range.
Instead, Kane and Tracy Tabb, chief marketing and operations officer for Up Pup N Away, opened a brick-and-mortar location at 3117 W. Magnolia Blvd. in Burbank in 2015, and Kane said it has since been a go-to spot for pet owners.
Kane said that their popularity among pet owners is due to their inventory, of which most of the products they sell are made in the United States. If he can, Kane selects products that are made and assembled in California, and if possible, within Los Angeles County.
Were trying to aim for more of that, he said. Eventually, wed like to be 100% made in the United States.
Like the brick-and-mortar store, the kiosk at Hollywood Burbank Airport has taken off with passengers. Many items in the inventory are quickly selling out and need to be restocked almost on a weekly basis, Kane said.
The pet products arent just a hit with travelers. Many of the kiosks repeat customers are airport employees.
We have regular airport employees shopping with us and getting toys and treats every month, Tabb said.
Kane said he was anticipating most of the sales to come from passengers who are flying out to their destinations. However, he and Tabb learned that a good chunk of their sales come from those who arrive at Hollywood Burbank, returning home.
You dont ever shop for your dog or cat while youre away on vacation because you never have time to go to a pet store, Tabb said. But then you see our kiosk and say, Oh my God, I can bring treats or toys home, and theyre going to think Im amazing.
While Hollywood Burbank is the first in the Southern California region to open an Up Pup N Away kiosk, Kane said he still has his sights on opening a store in LAX and possibly at LA/Ontario International Airport.
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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
For the first time in nearly 50 years, support for the death penalty has dropped below 50% among Americans.
According to a Pew Research Center poll, just 49% of Americans say they support capital punishment a seven-point decline in about a year and a half, the New York Times reports.
Although support for the death penalty has declined for both Democrats and Republicans, opinions differ drastically along party lines. Among Republicans, 72% support the death penalty down from 87% two decades ago. Just 34% of Democrats support capital punishment.
This question is simple: What is your opinion of the death penalty? What does your faith or belief system say about capital punishment?
The LDS church is neutral on whether governments should impose capital punishment, viewing it as a matter to be decided solely by the prescribed processes of civil law.
This position allows church members considerable leeway in their personal views on the question of whether some crimes are so terrible that society is justified in killing the perpetrator.
The churchs neutrality essentially says that while Gods law does not prohibit the death penalty, neither does God require it as an element of divine justice. We are not spiritually obligated to take the life of a killer.
I am unaware of reliable metrics that would reveal how the churchs membership views capital punishment, but my impression is that support for the death penalty has moderated over time, as it has with the rest of the U.S. population.
As to my personal view, I have struggled with this issue in part because guidance from religious sources, including the scriptures themselves, is ambiguous. Even the seemingly straightforward, Thou shalt not kill is clouded by conflicting translations of the original Hebrew. Should we read it as kill in the broadest English-language sense of the word, or murder, as some scholars contend? The difference is profound.
I accept the latter interpretation. But I also have reservations about the death penalty. Although there are cases in which execution can be justified, I dont believe it is necessary. Advances in criminal science, including the use of DNA evidence that has exonerated a number people convicted of serious crimes, highlight some of the flaws in the jury system and in reliance on witness testimony. Because of this, and because life is a sacred gift, I prefer to err on the side of caution. But that is my view only. It should not be interpreted as the position of the church or as being representative of how most church members see the issue.
Michael White
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
La Crescenta
..
I abhor capital punishment because it is an immoral abomination.
Not that I dont understand the vengeance impulse. I have no doubt that I would be capable of carrying out the death penalty with my bare hands were a loved one of mine a victim of a capital crime. But a civilized society demands that vengeance be restrained, and the state cannot kill people in cold blood yet expect citizens to respect either the law or human life.
It is unfairly applied, with minorities and the poor overwhelmingly populating death row. Any state-sanctioned death is unacceptable, but executions of the factually innocent as we know has happened are particularly heinous.
It defies rationality as well, since it does not deter homicides. There is credible evidence that the use of capital punishment may increase murders. It is a huge taxpayer expense, and Im not talking about the mythical big-screen TVs in cells and multiple tax-funded appeals the public pays for only one. Life imprisonment would be more of a deterrent at a much lower cost.
Obviously the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment as I believe that the U.S. Supreme Court should rule, bringing us in line with the rest of the developed world. We trail 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia which have already abolished the death penalty, with a moratorium on executions in four more states.
This November we have a chance to do both the right and the smart thing by passing Proposition 62 and ending capital punishment in California.
Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose
..
Im for it. I take my cue from the pages of Scripture, where God commands, Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind. (Genesis 9:6). To unpack this, you need to understand that every human being bears the image of God, and the value of this is such that for any person to brazenly destroy what God has set both his image and affection upon, that person must forfeit their own earthly membership. That person is one who must immediately be sent to the divine court, and we do that by invoking Genesis and declaring capital punishment. It is just, and it is right, and it is Gods perfect opinion on the matter. What hubris to think any creaturely opinion should be preferred.
The reason this path has met with increasing opposition is, in my opinion, because Christianity is waning. Stupid is as stupid does, Forrests mama always said, and people no longer look to divine authority for instruction. Instead, they are more and more relying on their own feelings about everything, and so they foolishly abandon the right course and subsequently embrace the wrong. People generally find the death penalty yucky. Its barbaric, some will decry, and this comes from an increasing population who will abort an innocent, gestating human child in a millisecond, would waver on whether to save first their neighbor or their neighbors dog, in a fire, and yet will firmly denounce executing some murderous cannibal or serial killer, as just uncivilized!
It makes no sense to catch a violent danger to humanity and then graciously provide them free food, housing and television for the rest of their life, when we should be done with them and properly reward them for their contribution. Some argue that capital punishment is no deterrent to crime, and that is, on its face, errant. If anything, the one euthanized shall never again rape and murder children and bury them in the backyard; they wont drive by a wedding and accidentally murder the bridal couple while trying to shoot one rival gang member in attendance, etc. The circumstances are legion, as are the devils who deserve the Green Mile. And its not revenge, nor murder, nor barbaric, it is our human responsibility and we must not waver. If we hesitate, we show our lack of respect for the divine image as well as the divine commander, and we deserve all the subsequent repercussions.
Rev. Bryan A. Griem
Tujunga
More than 100 UC Irvine Health workers used their work break or their day off Tuesday to picket at UCI Medical Center in Orange in response to 175 employee layoffs that began this month.
UC Irvine Healths chief executive, Howard Federoff, informed staff of the layoffs through an email Oct. 3. Previous expense reductions and increased revenue through growth of the organizations clinical services have not been enough to avoid reductions in staff, Federoff said in the email.
The layoffs are part of a plan to ensure the efficiency of the medical centers clinical and education operations, officials said.
But picketers Tuesday questioned how eliminating employees in frontline positions such as nurses, admitting clerks and medical assistants would serve the centers patients and improve its efficiency.
When you go into the ER and youre admitted, you need someone to coordinate that, and that doesnt happen without these folks, said Kathryn Lybarger, president of Local 3299 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union that represents technicians, assistants and other service workers. Theyre the people who wheel you in your wheelchair, the people who draw blood or even the person who gives you a bowl if youre about to throw up.
Protesters also questioned why layoffs are needed when, they say, the medical center just had nearly $70 million in profit.
In the past fiscal year, the center had about $933 million in operating revenue and spent $864 million on salaries, pension benefits, medical supplies and other expenses, leaving it with about $68.7 million in net income from operations, according to a financial statement provided by UC Irvine Health spokesman John Murray.
According to Murray, academic medical centers like UCIs have to provide expensive services such as research and residency training.
The $68.7 million refers to an operating margin of whats left after hospital expense, Murray said. However, there are additional expenses that we are obligated to fund, including $60.9 million for academic and research support.
The protesters Tuesday hit several spots on the medical centers campus, including the street facing the 5 Freeway, the UC Irvine Health Douglas Hospital and the neuropsychiatric center, where eight hospital assistants will be laid off, picketers said.
We will fight, Lybarger shouted as protesters huddled on the front lawn of the Douglas Hospital. We will fight until every laid-off worker gets a job.
Employees being let go have received notice of their layoffs, which take effect in early November.
The layoffs affect 68 workers represented by Local 3299 and also impact people such as secretaries, managers and interpreters.
UCI Medical Center had about 4,930 staff members before the layoffs began.
alexandra.chan@latimes.com
Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
Ten people are vying for three available seats on Huntington Beachs seven-member City Council in the Nov. 8 election.
High-density development, public safety and government transparency have been among the hot-button issues for the group of candidates, which includes one incumbent, a former mayor, three planning commissioners and five newcomers.
The candidates are, in the order they appear on the ballot:
Lyn Semeta
Age: 56
Professional occupation: Business and real property transactional attorney
Education: Huntington Beach High School; UCLA, bachelor of arts; University of San Diego School of Law, juris doctorate
Time lived in Huntington Beach: Went to Huntington Beach High School and moved back to Huntington Beach in 1996.
Lyn Semeta (Scott Smeltzer / HB Independent)
Previous public service: Vice chairwoman, Huntington Beach Planning Commission; member, Huntington Beach Design Review Board; member, Huntington Beach Investment Advisory Board; appointed by Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel to Cal Optima Board selection panel; board member, workshops co-chair, Huntington Beach Art League; volunteer, Huntington Harbour Philharmonic Committee Islanders Group, Cruise of Lights commentator; mentor, Orange County Regional Center Parent Connection (for special-needs families); parent liaison, West Orange County Consortium for Special Education; co-founder, Gods Special Children program for children with autism at St. Bonaventure Church; chairwoman, San Diego County Bar Assn. Community Services Committee and homeless subcommittee chairwoman; mediator, Bar Assn. attorney/client fee dispute Panel; pro bono attorney for Vietnam Veterans Standdown for Homeless Vets; co-founding pro bono attorney, Superior Court temporary restraining order clinic for battered women; founding co-chair, Womens Resource Fair for Homeless and Battered Women; panelist, Far West Regional Women in Law Conference; president and treasurer, Gaslamp Quarter Foundation
Immediate family: Husband Rich, daughters Kristen, 24, and Lauren, 21
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Assure that future development in Huntington Beach preserves our suburban beach culture, is compatible with surrounding neighbors, does not cause undue traffic congestion or spillover parking problems and allows for discretionary review and opportunity for citizen input. Ill represent the citizen majority that opposes more high-density apartments.
2. Streamline permitting processes and reduce fees and regulations on businesses to stimulate investment in our economy that expands our tax base to meet ongoing expenses.
3. Increase transparency and opportunity for citizen engagement and involvement in city government.
Ron Sterud
Age: 44
Professional occupation: Financial advisor
Education: Some college, UC Riverside; Certificate in Financial Planning, American College
Time lived in Huntington Beach: 36 years
Previous public service: Current Investment Advisory Board member
Immediate family: Wife Krista
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Stop high-density development.
2. Work to lower unfunded liabilities.
3. Prevent Poseidon [desalination plant].
Mark Rolfes
Age: 53
Professional occupation: Vice president of sales, Pelican Products Inc., Torrance
Education: Bachelor of science and business administration with a minor in marketing, Towson State University, Towson, Md.
Time lived in Huntington Beach: 19 years
Previous public service: Currently on board of directors of the Los Angeles City Fire Foundation; previously active in Ocean View Little League, Best Coast Girls Lacrosse Club and Cub Scouts
Immediate family: Spouse Dominique, son Matthew, 19, and daughter Anna, 15
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Work more successfully at funding the unfunded liabilities. This can be done by increasing revenue to the city by growing business.
2. Improve the environment in the city and relationship to City Hall for business owners in Huntington Beach.
3. Develop a plan to address the housing issues and alternatives to high-density development.
Jill Hardy
Age: 45
Professional occupation: Teacher and councilwoman
Education: Bachelor of arts, economics/mathematics (UC Santa Barbara); masters, economics (Cal State Long Beach)
Time lived in Huntington Beach: Fourth-generation resident family moved to H.B. in 1926
Previous public service: Three terms on the City Council, including serving twice as mayor; Planning Commission; began volunteering on city boards during high school as a member of the Huntington Beach Youth Board
Immediate family: Husband Greg Moore, children Kalissa, 9, and Alec, 5
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Continue to protect open space, including preserving Rodgers Park for community services.
2. Continue to fight against high-density developments.
3. Continue to work with the City Council and city staff to address the citys unfunded liabilities.
Amory Hanson
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Education: High school diploma
Time lived in Huntington Beach: 19 years
Previous public service: None
Immediate family: Dr. Amy Hanson, mother; Dr. Stefan Hanson, father
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Build an event center.
2. Keep the Michael Rodgers Seniors Center as public land.
3. Hire more police officers and firefighters.
Mariann Mare Ettorre
Age: 60
Professional occupation: Certified public accountant
Education: Two years of masters coursework in taxation; bachelor of science in accounting
Time lived in Huntington Beach: 27 years
Previous public service: Former board member and treasurer for Mothers Against Drunk Driving; 11-year board member, secretary (executive committee) and finance committee member of a nonprofit; member of advisory panel AICPA Journal and Tax Journal; member of Huntington Beach Fourth of July Parade board for two years
Immediate family: Daughter who is a senior and cheerleader in high school
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Address and move some action forward on homelessness, safety and crime in Huntington Beach.
2. Address pension costs and unfunded liabilities.
3. Poseidon [desalination plant] and possibly the Shopoff land purchase.
Edward Pinchiff
Age: 54
Professional occupation: Business owner; Huntington Beach planning commissioner; attorney
Education: Bachelor of science in accounting from Pepperdine University (1985); juris doctorate from University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law (1988)
Time lived in Huntington Beach: Nearly two decades
Previous public service: Current chairman of the Huntington Beach Planning Commission; previous liaison to various city boards and committees, including the Historic Resources Board, Sunset Beach Area Committee, Downtown Economic Development Committee and Southeast Area Committee; member of the city General Plan Advisory Committee and previous member of the Subdivision Committee; volunteer with numerous community events; member of board of directors of various charitable and nonprofit organizations; current vice president of Huntington Beach Council on Aging; volunteer with Project SHIP (Senior Home Inspection Program); member of Huntington Beach Elks
Immediate family: Two children
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Oppose high density and preserve the small-town character of Huntington Beach. We are Surf City USA, not Los Angeles.
2. Respect the community, making sure its voice is heard and working with the community to achieve its vision for Huntington Beach.
3. City Hall must be transparent, and I will have an open-door policy to meet with residents any time on any issue.
Joe Carchio
Age: 79
Professional occupation: Retired business owner
Education: Attended Seton Hall University
Time lived in Huntington Beach: 35 years
Previous public service: Huntington Beach mayor and councilman
Immediate family: Six children (two step)
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FOR THE RECORD
An earlier version of this article stated that Carchio and Judith Rossner were engaged. They are not engaged.
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What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Create jobs; help start-up businesses expand. A positive climate for existing business. This will increase needed revenue in our city.
2. A commitment to the basics of government to fix and maintain parks, trees, sidewalks and streets. These are amenities we hold so precious.
3. City planners have rules on what can be built. If builders play by the rules, Im here to help. No high density.
Karen Leighton
Age: Not stated
Professional occupation: Registered nurse
Education: Bachelor of science, nursing
Time lived in Huntington Beach: 34 years
Previous public service: Volunteer for the California State Board of Registered Nursing; hospital committees for medication safety and multidisciplinary quality improvement
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Promote slow, sustainable growth. Huntington Beach is evolving with the changing times and the rest of California.
2. Foster small business in Huntington Beach. Small business contributes to the diverse economy significantly.
3. Maintain our open spaces for our families and visitors to enjoy. I would encourage the Michael E. Rodgers Seniors Center land be used as a park with the possibility of a community center.
Patrick Brenden
Age: 57
Professional occupation: Retired small-business owner
Education: Bachelor of science, business/finance (USC)
Time lived in Huntington Beach: 22 years and five months
Previous public service: Huntington Beach Planning Commission (current); H.B. Public Works Commission (past); H.B. General Plan Advisory Committee (past); H.B. Charter Review Commission (past); H.B. Blue Ribbon Pavement Panel (past); Orange County Water District Ocean Desalination Citizens Advisory Committee (past); Bolsa Chica Conservancy Advisory Council (current); Boy Scouts of America Orange County Council board of directors (current); Host Lions Club of Huntington Beach (current); Kiwanis Club of Huntington Beach (current); H.B. Chamber of Commerce board of directors (immediate past chairman); Boy Scout Troop 1 Scoutmaster emeritus; St. Bonaventure Catholic Church Parish Council (past); Golden West College Patrons (current)
Immediate family: Wife Antoinette, son Trevor, 23, daughter Nicolette, 21
What are three things you hope to achieve if elected?
1. Keep our community safe, maintain excellent public safety and reduce crime.
2. Preserve the character of our community through sensible development. Keep high-density development out of our neighborhoods.
3. Improve our quality of life with innovative solutions to reduce traffic, decrease homelessness and control sober-living homes.
brittany.woolsey@latimes.com
Twitter: @BrittanyWoolsey
As a former elementary teacher of 20 years, Ive seen my share of bullying.
We knew the statistics. We knew that the majority of children are victims of bullying at some point in their 12 years of school. We knew that it could take the form of physical, psychological or social trauma.
This was before cyberbullying reared its ugly head. We knew it could cause depression, anxiety and anger, which often followed the abused well into their adult years.
I taught in a Maryland school located in a fairly affluent neighborhood. Children from the outlying areas were permitted to attend, making it a very diverse school, ethnically, economically and socially.
We, as teachers, knew that this could be a hot button for bullying and taunting, so we took every opportunity to discourage it. We continually emphasized that diversity and uniqueness makes for a more interesting and successful society.
The final question of the second presidential debate asked each candidate to find one positive thing to say about one another. Miraculously, they did. It reminded me of a self-esteem activity that I did with my students every year.
About a month into the school year, I had each child write his or her name at the top of a sheet of paper. As the papers were passed around the room, each child was asked to write one thing they admired about each other student.
By the end of the activity, each pupil had a list of 30 positive comments written by his classmates. I watched, as each child read the list to himself. Their smiles told the whole story, as they beamed with pride. I suggested that they keep this paper handy for the rest of the school year, and to look at it periodically. (I often felt that an activity like this might be beneficial to do as a family.)
It breaks my heart to see such negativity coming out of this dysfunctional presidential race. They are emphasizing intolerance of one another, suspicion and name-calling.
If we want to Make America great again, we need to invest in our children by being good role models. We need to emphasize acceptance, patience and love for ones fellow man. Above all, we need to find reasons to live together peacefully in a very diverse world.
TERRI GOLDSTEIN lives in Newport Coast.
Guests considering joining the Cabrini Literary Guild learned about its many facets during the Membership Tea in early September at the Incarnation Church Community Center.
The patio framed by lush foliage was an inviting setting to take in one of the first fall-like days.
President Miryam Finkelberg opened the program by emphasizing that the organization, founded in 1943, continues its objective these 73 years later to assist financially and in other ways Catholic and charitable organizations. Members also participate in activities that stimulate interest in Catholic literature.
Guild member, Sister Regina Palamara, who serves with the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart order, gave her blessing followed by the organizations new moderator Father Norman Supancheck, who presented the invocation.
Ann Herrmann, curator of the Bridge Club, led the group in organizing the tea and chose a patriotic theme in honor of Patriots Day. Marie Urrutia, general curator, catered the delightful menu of mini sandwiches, fresh fruit in a swan-carved watermelon and lemonade or iced tea, of course.
The new board of directors was announced with Finkelberg taking on the presidency for another year. She will be assisted by Jessica Botticella, first vice president; Karen Swan and Patty Szot, co-second vice presidents; Anne Phelps, recording secretary; Herrmann, corresponding secretary; Maureen Walsh, treasurer; Urrutia, general curator; Laurie Leask, director of membership; and Monica Sierra, director of the Writing Awards Program for students of the Archdiocesan high schools.
Botticella gave an overview of the programs for the year including a bingo night on Oct. 15, the main fundraiser on March 11 and the Writing Awards Program on April 13.
Joan Sandon, as philanthropy chair, explained that she gathers her committee to decide which local charities will receive donations at the June luncheon a well as the amount of funds they will receive.
The guild also offers members four special interest departments.
There is a Book Reading Club in which members discuss a book they have read on the second Wednesday evening of the month. Members take turns choosing the book title. In the Bridge Department members play Duplicate Bridge from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of the month.
Members in the Busy Fingers Department participate in several needlework projects and receive instruction as needed from more proficient crafters. They meet from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on the third Thursday of the month.
The Philosophy Department gives members a chance to hear guest speakers address subjects relating to religion. A discussion follows. Meetings are at 10 a.m. the third Tuesday of the month.
The guild is named for St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who is known as Mother Cabrini all over the world. She promoted education and literature and charitable work along with her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart with headquarters in New York, Chicago and Burbank.
To join, email information@cabriniliteraryguild.org.
Fundraiser helps homeless families
Family Promise of the Verdugos, a local nonprofit organization that assists first time homeless families with children find housing and sustainable employment, is having its sixth annual Empty Bowl Lunch and Arts & Crafts Fair on Sunday.
Independent potters, arts associations and community groups create and donate handcrafted ceramic bowls to the event. Guests purchase a ticket for a simple meal of soup, bread and dessert donated by area restaurants. Those purchasing an adult ticket or sponsorship get to take home a handmade empty bowl made by a local artisan as a reminder of the hunger and uncertainty homeless families face every day.
Proceeds go to the program that offers temporary shelter and food for families while parents receive training to find a job.
Abraham, who asked that only his first name be published, recently graduated from the program and is now living in an apartment with his daughter. He had been working two jobs to make ends meet, but became homeless when he lost the second job, he said.
He called around, but only Family Promise was able to help him. A case manager and volunteers at the organizations resource center help clients with resume preparation. Clients are able to use the computers with Internet access, printers and phone to research job leads, he said.
Abraham was able to secure a second job, and he and his daughter stayed in the program until he had enough money saved to get an apartment plus a little extra for emergencies.
For those thinking about applying for the program, he suggested following the plan they provide and staying focused.
This year the arts fair begins at 11:30 a.m. and drop-in lunch runs from noon to 2:30 p.m. in St. Albert Hall at St. Finbar Catholic Church, 2010 W. Olive Ave., Burbank.
Adult tickets are $30. Childrens tickets are $15 (ages 11 and under) but do not include a ceramic bowl. Sponsorships are available for $2,500, $1,250, $600, $400 and $150.
This past year, Family Promise has made great strides, including a 96% success rate of homeless-to-home transition, with each family typically spending between six to eight weeks with the organization, said Board President Renee Johnson. In addition, Family Promise was named the nonprofit of the year for the 25th Senate District by Sen. Carol Liu.
The agency works with a network of 26 local congregations, 13 of which host families for one week on a rotating basis.
To qualify for this 90-day back-to-work program, families must include at least one adult and one minor and have no active alcohol or substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness or felony convictions. Throughout the entire process, the family is able to remain safely together, with the children going to school so they dont fall back academically.
Family Promise officials believe that by intervening early, the organization helps to stop situationally homeless families from spiraling down into chronic homelessness, thereby strengthening the community.
To learn more, visit www.FamilyPromiseVerdugos.org.
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JOYCE RUDOLPH can be reached at rudolphjoyce10@gmail.com.
If youre going to Thailand anytime soon, expect to find a subdued nation deep in mourning over the loss of the countrys beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who ruled for seven decades. He died Oct. 13 at age 88.
Travelers should be sensitive to the 30 days of public mourning and 100 days of royal funeral observances, during which the kings body will be on display at the Grand Palace in Bangkok. The mourning period for government workers stretches to a full year.
MORE: Many in Thailand want the princess to ascend to the throne, but her scandal-plagued brother is next in line
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If you want to go partying in the red light district, dont go now, says Andrea Ross, founder and chief executive of Journeys Within Tour Co., which specializes in travel to Southeast Asia. But if you want to experience this moment in Thailands history, Ross says, Its an amazing time to go. Its unprecedented.
How should you act if you visit?
In guidelines posted online Tuesday, the Tourism Authority of Thailand asks travelers to refrain from boisterous partying and inappropriate or disrespectful behavior. It also warns travelers that parts of Bangkok may become clogged with traffic as mourners dressed in black and white pour into the city from the countryside to pay their respects.
Bangkoks tourist attractions as well as shops, public transit and banks are open, except for Wat Phra Kaeo or Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and the Grand Palace, where the kings remains will be on display starting 1 p.m. Oct. 28.
During the 30 days of mourning, full moon beach parties popular with tourists have been canceled, the Soi Cowboy red-light district has closed indefinitely, and alcohol is being sold only at select hours. Tourist activities such as snorkeling, scuba and kayaking at the countrys southern beaches continue.
Bangkoks famed Loy Krathong Festival on Nov. 14 falls just after the 30 days of mourning. Festivalgoers will celebrate the tradition of lighting lanterns and floating them on rivers, but the accompanying fireworks and parade have been canceled, Ross says.
She advises travelers to wear dark colors and keep knees and shoulders covered when traveling in Bangkok and across the country. Trekkers should wear long pants instead of shorts out of respect for a grieving nation.
Also, Ross encourages visitors to engage with guides and locals to tell them youre sorry for the loss of their king. They feel like theyve lost a family member, she says.
Be careful about personal safety too because Buddhist temples particularly the more popular ones such as Wat Arun and Wat Pho in Bangkok may draw huge crowds.
Ross recommends going early in the morning or in the evening when things may be calmer and quieter. And make sure to rely on your guide for information and follow whatever rules may be in place.
The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok and the U.S. Consulate General in Chiang Mai are observing regular opening hours.
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Tehran, Iran, October 18
By Mehdi Sepahvand, Dalga Khatinoglu - Trend:
Iran has 5-10 gigawatts (GW) worth of renewable power firm projects for foreign companies in the next ten years, the deputy of Energy Minister Houshang Falahatian told Trend Oct.18.
He said that Iran proposed a guarantee for foreign companies to purchase their power firms electricity in a 20-year period with good tariffs. "We call on foreign companies to invest in Irans renewables projects," he said.
Falahatian said that Iran has planned to purchase 1 GW of renewable power, generated in foreign companies projects in Iran annually, in short-term and within a 10-year plan.
Currently, Irans nominal power generation capacity stands at about 76 GW, of which only 240 MW (or 0.32 percent) accounts for renewables.
He said that Irans priority is construction of wind and solar power plants.
Below is Irans proposed tariffs for foreign companies: (Currently $1 equals 36,000 rials in open markets)
The boys frail cry pierced his fathers heart.
Saleh Umar feared his youngest son, Hassan, would die. The 1-year-olds ribs protruded sharply, his shrunken arms were like twigs, his eyes dark hollows.
Since being driven from their village by the Nigerian extremist group and Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram, Umar and his family have often gone hungry. The six of them made their way to the dusty, sprawling city of Maiduguri, and Umars wife wandered the city for days in vain seeking help for Hassan.
Umar then made a desperate decision. On Oct. 6 he took the meager food the family had scraped together, a small bag of sorghum, and walked nine miles to his village to plant the seeds food he knows he may not survive to harvest.
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The famine killing thousands of children in northeastern Nigeria is forcing parents to take drastic measures, and aid workers fear the death toll will continue to spiral upward.
The famine is the product of Boko Harams scorched-earth attacks, which stopped farmers from planting, fishermen from casting their nets and traders from plying their goods. But aid from the Nigerian government and the international community only recently began to increase for a population that, already struggling with chronic malnutrition, has been tipped into starvation by the crisis.
Also, there have been allegations that food meant for desperate families has been stolen in recent months, one reason food parcels do not always arrive at aid stations and camps.
At least 65,000 people are in famine in Nigeria, according to aid experts, and 2.5 million children are malnourished.
It doesnt get worse. I call it the F-word, Arjan de Wagt, UNICEF head of nutrition in Nigeria, says of the famine. Thats the word you dont want to speak of. These are the pictures of children that you dont like to see.
The images are sadly familiar in Africa children with distended bellies and skin that appears to be pulled tight against bony frames.
Hadiza Adamu wandered Maiduguri, Nigeria, for days seeking help for her 1-year-old son, Hassan, who was growing weaker every day. (Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times )
The situation is bad as it can be, De Wagt said. You are talking about the worst-case scenario. In northeastern Nigeria, the U.N. estimates 1 in 5 of the 400,000 children suffering severe acute malnutrition will die without help.
But with 80% of the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno still threatened by Boko Haram and inaccessible to humanitarian groups, the famine may be worse than feared: About 2.2 million people are trapped in inaccessible villages because of Boko Haram.
Boko Haram wants to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria and has engaged in bloody revenge attacks on any village that has tried to post community guards to protect against its fighters. Some estimates put the number it has killed at 20,000, but there is no real way to know.
Part of Boko Harams strategy to destabilize society is to kill farmers, and the day Umar walked back to his village, he worked in fear, making holes on his little plot and carefully dropping a seed into each.
But that afternoon, he saw Boko Haram gunmen racing toward him on foot and other farmers fleeing. He ran, heart pounding like a hunted animal, into the bush. Night fell as he lay hidden.
Earlier that day, his wife, Hadiza Adamu, had set out early to try to save Hassan. She left Hassans twin sister, Husseina, who is healthier, in the care of her oldest daughter, 10-year-old Aisha.
Another son, Umar, 4, dressed in a ragged gray cotton shirt, trailed behind her, his head covered in sores where flies congregated thickly. He looked numbly ahead, too exhausted to brush the flies away. He didnt moan or cry.
Saleh Abubakar, 9 months old, clings to life in the intensive care unit of a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Maiduguri, Nigeria. His mother died, leaving behind nine children. (Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times )
Adamu joined a press of women at a UNICEF malnutrition-management center in Maiduguri and waved a small cloth above Hassans head every few seconds, flicking off flies. He listlessly waved his arms as a community worker placed a bracelet designed to measure malnutrition around his upper arm. The circumference, the size of his fathers thumb, showed severe acute malnutrition.
Adamu has lost two daughters before. Halima died five years ago after a fever because they family couldnt get her to hospital because of Boko Haram attacks in the area.
The second, Binta, was lost when Boko Haram gunmen on motorcycles roared into the village, screaming God is great! Umar had gone out to fetch water when the attack started. She dropped her buckets and sprinted to her house for her children, but Binta, 7, had wandered off.
She grabbed the other children and fled into the bush.
Umar tried to run into the bush too, but with so many gunmen chasing down fleeing men, he hid inside his house and somehow escaped detection.
They burned five old men in their houses, some of them blind. And they killed 18 others, Adamu said. She searched for Binta in vain. That was two years ago.
It was only the last two months I gave up hope of finding her, said Adamu.
Maiduguris population has swelled from 1 million to 2.5 million with families like Adamus. For nearly two years, she, Umar and the children lived under a flimsy plastic sheet rigged to a branch until the sheet broke just over a week ago. In the recent rainy season, water poured in.
We had no food, no clothing, no shelter, Umar said. When it rained, everything was soaked with water. The children were soaked, all of them.
A woman and her baby arrive at the In-Patient Therapeutic Feeding Center in the Gwangwe district of Maiduguri, Nigeria. (Stefan Heunis / AFP/Getty Images )
Among the poorest and most desperate men in Maiduguri are the water sellers, pushing heavy carts, their faces furrowed in worry. They fill dozens of cans with well water and hurry to be the first to sell. Doing that job, Umar sometimes scraped up enough for a single bowl of millet, sometimes two. But about four days each week, they had nothing.
Maiduguri also hosts a Doctors Without Borders clinic, a facility whose intensive care unit is nearly silent, filled with motionless children waging their small battles for survival. Their mothers murmur stories of Boko Haram attacks and the years of desperate poverty and hunger on the streets of Maiduguri that followed.
On a recent day, there was Hadija Modu, about 30, who fled with her husband and six children from the village of Yawal, about 20 miles away, after Boko Haram looted their food and cattle, burned the village and killed many people.
They live in Maiduguri under a tree that supports their shelter a leather hide. Her husband, Mohammed, has been bedridden for months and her two sons, 13 and 7, cart water or sell ice cream to bring in a little food.
Modu cradled her slight, 5-year-old son, Lawan Tahiru, who could not raise his head or keep down the rehydration liquid she gently tried to spoon into his mouth. He bared his teeth, showing his discomfort. At her feet was daughter Bunu, 2.
When theres no money for food, then we sit and watch, sighed Modu. Five of her 11 children have died of sickness over the years.
In the next bed, Yagana Gonis 3-month-old baby, Mohammed, was so weak that when he opened his tiny mouth to cry, no sound came out. His limbs quivered feebly with the effort. At a camp for displaced people where Goni and her family stay, she said food aid has been sporadic.
The last four months have been hell, said Goni. We missed food so many times. Sometimes we go two days without eating.
The U.N. World Food Program only received government permission to start work in the region in August. Just a quarter of a $484-million global humanitarian campaign to address the crisis is funded, according to the United Nations. The ongoing violence means many farmers will be unable to plant for the third year in a row.
The response has been far from adequate, said De Wagt, the UNICEF nutrition chief, outlining plans to triple his organizations response in coming months. Things are happening, but there are still 2.2 million people out there [in inaccessible areas], and I am worried that they have missed another harvest.
We need to go from house to house, from hut to hut and shelter to shelter, to screen children for malnutrition.
At the UNICEF center, Adamu was given a therapeutic food ration to feed Hassan. Since the familys shelter collapsed, they stay in a spare room offered by a friend.
I feel empty, knowing that Im helpless, Umar said. I look at my son and I feel pity, thinking Will he survive? Or will he die? And here I am, poor, without work, without money to take care of him.
Umar, who believes he is about 40, feels he is a failure. Recently, after spending the night in the bush to escape Boko Haram, he sickened and missed a day that could have been spent scrambling for work.
On Tuesday, Boko Haram gunmen killed five people in a village near Umars farm. Yet, determined to get a crop in to feed his family next year and still haunted by Hassans feeble crying he plans to return to his fields to plant whenever he can find seeds.
Yagana Gonis 3-month-old baby, Mohammed, is so weak that when he opens his tiny mouth to cry, no sound escapes. (Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times )
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
Twitter: @RobynDixon_LAT
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This town in South Sudan has no name. It was never supposed to exist. Now 21,000 people live there
The tough-talking new president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has heaped effusive praise on China in the opening days of a state visit to Beijing, a marked contrast to his often profane rhetoric about the United States, his countrys historical ally.
That startling contrast, which may foreshadow a major shake-up in the East Asian security order, played out Wednesday against a backdrop of violence in Manila, where anti-U.S. protesters gathered outside the American Embassy. Police repeatedly plowed through the crowd with a van, injuring dozens of people.
Duterte, 71, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night, kicking off a four-day state visit; on Thursday, he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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The only hope of the Philippines economically, Ill be frank with you, is China, Duterte told state broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday. He called the trip the defining moment of my presidency.
The visit would have been unthinkable even three months ago, when tension simmered between the two countries over Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea. Yet Duterte, in a stark break from his predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, has adopted a conciliatory tone toward China while stoking anti-U.S. sentiment, pleasing Beijing while exacerbating divisions at home.
China is the only country to come out freely and a firm statement that they are supporting the fight against drugs in my country. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
Duterte, a notoriously foulmouthed former mayor, has called President Obama a son of a whore and delivered profanity-laced tirades against the European Union and United Nations. He has called for an end to long-standing U.S.-Philippines military exercises.
Wednesdays violence in Manila occurred as hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy to demand that the United States, the Philippines onetime colonial ruler, remove its forces from bases in the country.
Video of the incident, which was posted widely on Filipino news websites, showed demonstrators attacking a police van with sticks and their fists, as rows of blue-shielded riot police stood by in tight rows. The van then plows through the crowd, knocking protesters over and crushing some beneath its wheels. (Warning: The video displays graphic content.)
Although dozens were injured, early reports indicated there were no fatalities.
Dutertes foreign policy leanings are inextricably tied to his anti-drug campaign, a hallmark of his early tenure. He campaigned for president on the promise of eradicating illegal drugs within six months, without regard for human rights. Since his June 30 inauguration, thousands of suspected drug dealers have been killed by police and vigilantes. The U.S., U.N., and EU have repeatedly called for the killings to stop.
China is the only country to come out freely and a firm statement that they are supporting the fight against drugs in my country, Duterte told the official New China News Agency on Tuesday. The other countries, United States, EU, instead of helping us, they know that we are short of money.... All they had to do was to criticize. China never criticized.
Experts have cast Dutertes cold shoulder to the U.S. as a high-profile gambit. According to a September poll by Social Weather Stations, a Manila-based research institution, 76% of Filipinos place much trust in the U.S., while only 22% feel the same about China.
The story so far: What makes Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who compared himself to Hitler, so popular
Only a few months ago, Manila was the greatest roadblock to Chinas achieving its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. Under the last president, Aquino, the Philippines filed a petition to the Permanent Court of Arbitration seeking to clarify the seas maritime boundaries. In July, the court issued a stinging rebuke to Beijing, ruling that its actions in the sea violated international law. Beijing immediately declared the ruling null and void.
Duterte has said he will not bring up the issue during his state visit. He probably will seek Chinese infrastructure investment, including help building railways on Luzon and Mindanao islands.
When I started looking at [South China Sea issues] 20 years ago, it was something only the elite cared about, said Ian Storey, a Southeast Asia security expert at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. Most Filipinos were concerned about where they get their next meal from. But thats changed over the past 10 years. This has become an issue for Filipino nationalists this idea that China is stealing what rightfully belongs to the Philippines, particularly its resources, oil and gas and everything.
If [Duterte] offends a key constituency in the country such as the business community, the armed forces or political rivals, we might see a situation in which he is impeached or threatened with impeachment, like [former President Joseph] Estrada, he said. Estrada was ousted in 2001 during a popular uprising in Manila.
In Cagayan de Oro, a farming and industrial city on the north coast of Mindanao, several people said in interviews that they welcomed U.S. military aid a major force in the regions struggle against separatist movements and Islamist terrorism and felt uncertainty over whether China would be as effective.
Locals remember when terrorists bombed a row of restaurants in 2013, killing six people and injuring 48; security in the city remained tight, with strict security checkpoints on roads and at the citys top university.
Its good that we use American aid in the Philippines, said Kirk Nagac, an unemployed 27-year-old, as he filled out job applications in a public park. American aid means more advanced equipment. It can provide things that the Philippines doesnt have. Theres a conflict between China and the Philippines the only country that helps the Philippines is the USA.
China has welcomed Dutertes rapprochement. Early this month, Chinese officials lifted a ban on the import of Philippine bananas and pineapples, which have faced restrictions for four years amid diplomatic tension. China also may lift restrictions on other fruit imports mangoes, coconut, dragon fruit in coming days.
Last week, a Chinese billionaire, Huang Rulun, pledged to build a drug rehabilitation center in the Philippines that can treat 10,000 patients. Duterte has called the offer a symbol of Beijings goodwill.
The ice is melting, said Xu Liping, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. China in principle supports [Dutertes domestic policies] because hes trying to fight against drugs. And how he does it, thats the Philippines internal affair.
Times staff writer Kaiman reported from Beijing and special correspondent Jennings from Cagayan de Oro, the Philippines. Nicole Liu and Yingzhi Yang in The Times Beijing bureau also contributed to this report.
jonathan.kaiman@latimes.com
For more news from Asia, follow @JRKaiman on Twitter
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In the days after Britain voted to leave the 28-nation European Union, the leader of the far-right U.K. Independence Party triumphantly resigned, declaring that his political ambitions had been achieved.
But as the country grapples with Brexit-related political and economic turmoil after the June referendum, the party that Nigel Farage worked to build also is facing a crisis.
The party recently has been referred to as ungovernable and at risk of falling into a death spiral by the partys former immigration spokesman, who was widely considered the front-runner to succeed Farage.
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Steven Woolfe chose to resign this week, announcing that the party had been consumed by infighting and had lost its way.
I believe that a strong UKIP would hold this governments feet to the fire and make sure it delivers a clean Brexit, Woolfe, a member of the European Parliament, said in a resignation statement. However, I have come to the conclusion that UKIP is ungovernable without Nigel Farage leading it and the referendum cause to unite it.
UKIP was founded in 1993 with the central policy of seeing Britain leave the EU. It branded itself as the countrys first genuinely populist party and spoke to the working-class voters who felt disenfranchised by mainstream parties.
It tapped into peoples feelings of frustration with bureaucracy, rising immigration, declining living standards and what they saw as an undemocratic, wasteful EU.
During the 2015 election, UKIP amassed nearly 4 million votes, an all-time high.
Former Prime Minister David Camerons decision to hold a referendum on EU membership was largely born out of a desire to halt UKIPs rise and stop euroskeptic wings of his Conservative Party from migrating over.
But after 52% of referendum voters favored the core issue UKIP championed, some observers say, the party lost not only its charismatic leader but its common enemy. And, some observers say, it appears to have turned on itself.
Party leadership candidate Raheem Kassam has said UKIP is in the midst of an existential crisis. He said the party currently doesnt know what it stands for, it doesnt know where its going.
Woolfe said the party has let down itself and the British public.
I think unless someone very quickly can wrestle with the issues that theyve got, then we will see the loss of something that I think shouldnt be lost the loss of the party, their influence, the goodwill that the British public have with them, he said in a BBC interview. This wont be good for British politics.
Prime Minister Theresa May of the Conservative Party has said she will trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the process by which Britain will formally start to negotiate a two-year exit from the EU, by the end of March.
Impassioned debates are taking place about what the exit will look like, namely whether Britain will lose access to the single market in return for total control over its borders a stance that is being referred to as hard Brexit, compared with a softer, or more compromised position.
Contrary to giving UKIP plenty to continue fighting for, observers argue that the referendum has actually taken away some of the movements thunder.
Once the referendum was done and Britain had to some extent decided to withdraw from the EU, the essence, the raison d'etre of the party was fulfilled, said politics professor Matthew Flinders of the University of Sheffield.
The issue around EU membership has become a mainstream issue now in a way it wasnt before. The issue about hard or soft Brexit are now issues that are dominant across the political spectrum, he said. The UKIP agenda used to be periphery, now its everywhere.
Matthew Goodwin, politics professor at the University of Kent and a senior visiting fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, said the partys future has never looked more uncertain.
The party is grappling with several major problems; a lack of money, members, infighting, a leadership vacuum and a new Conservative prime minister who appears determined to park her tanks on UKIPs lawn, Goodwin said.
Farage has temporarily stepped into the leadership void while a replacement is named, but finding a successor has not been easy. The party has been made up of a small group of strong-willed politicians who had rejected the mainstream but also often expressed disdain for each other.
Woolfe was hospitalized this month for three days following an altercation with a fellow UKIP member of the European Parliament, Mike Hookem, during a party meeting in Strasbourg. Hookem has categorically denied throwing a punch at his colleague.
UKIPs Diane James was briefly named leader in September but announced she was stepping aside after just 18 days in the job. She cited personal and professional reasons, including that she did not have the backing of her party members.
A new leader is expected to be announced Nov. 28.
UKIPs chairman, Paul Oakden, has sought to reassure supporters, but when pressed in a recent TV interview about how unified the party was, he answered in the future tense: Were going to be very united.
Boyle is a special correspondent.
On a single day earlier this month, Turkish authorities arrested more than 120 police officers in raids across the country and charged them with being members of a terrorist group all because they were allegedly using an encrypted messaging app. The app, called ByLock, has been linked to the Hizmet movement, a religious group that the Turkish government blames for the July 15 attempted coup.
The arrests are part of an increasingly wide-ranging attempt to rid Turkish society of anyone who may have been involved in the failed coup, during which renegade soldiers used tanks, jets and small arms to kill 260 people.
Under a state of emergency imposed after the coup attempt was put down, the Turkish government can detain individuals without charge for up to 60 days and restrict what media outlets report. At least 32,000 people have been arrested so far.
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On Oct. 4, officials announced that the state of emergency was to be extended for another three months. That same day, nearly 13,000 police officers were suspended, accused of being part of Hizmet, a global network of thousands of private schools and businesses headed by self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen.
The government refers to Hizmet as the Fetullah Terrorist Organization. More than 100,000 people have been suspended from their jobs for alleged ties to Hizmet since July 15, including primary school teachers, university professors, and civil servants in a slew of ministries.
Its a kind of civil death, said Kerem Altiparmak, a human rights lawyer and political science professor at Ankara University. You cannot leave the country, you cannot find other jobs, either because of legal or de facto obstacles, because even in the private sector people do not want to employ you because you are a member of a terrorist organization.
The evidence connecting those accused is often tenuous and ambiguous, as in the case of the police who were jailed because they were allegedly using the ByLock application.
This month, authorities have issued arrest orders for 404 people including prosecutors, judges, and police officers accused of using ByLock, an ostensibly secure instant messaging app that appeared on the Internet in 2014.
Turkish officials have said ByLock was developed by a Hizmet member who was a senior scientist at the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), a top civilian research institution, after a schism between Gulen and Erdogan sparked a government crackdown on thousands of alleged followers of the cleric in the public sector.
The application was briefly hosted on well-known app stores like Google Play and reached hundreds of thousands of users, before the creator of the app pulled it. The identity of the apps developer is still unknown, said Minhac Celik, a cybersecurity expert who worked in TUBITAK between 2013 and 2014.
Several months before the coup attempt, the national intelligence agency, known as the MIT, obtained a list of global ByLock users, said Celik. Officials have been unusually tight-lipped about the details, said Celik, but cyber experts believe the MIT hacked a server in Lithuania that had a list of global ByLock users, which numbered up to 215,000. While messages themselves are encrypted by ByLock, the names of users and their IP addresses, which can be used to locate them, were being stored in plain text, Celik said.
Most members are Turks, Turkish nationals, and nearly all conversations are in Turkish, Celik said. They [the MIT] have a list of users and they are going through and looking at the users. This is the only information we have [about the users connection to Hizmet].
The problem of legality starts now, he added. How can you blame someone for just downloading an application?
Around 56,000 users were identified by the MIT, including police officers and 600 members of the military, all of whom are now presumably being tracked and detained.
On Oct. 2, a court in the southern province of Hatay refused to hear a case against a man who prosecutors said was a member of Hizmet because he had ByLock on his phone.
The judge made a very reasonable decision, said Altiparmak, the human rights lawyer, asking for more evidence than the presence of the application on a mobile phone.
But shortly after the ruling, the judge was publicly called a Hizmet member, said Altiparmak, and may face a legal investigation himself.
The independence and impartiality of the judicial system is a core problem in Turkey, and it became even worse after the coup attempt, said Altiparmak.
Thousands of foreign students also find themselves in legal limbo after authorities shut down schools like Fatih University, one of the countrys top English-language universities, for alleged ties to Hizmet.
I knew [since the day of its closure] that graduates from Fatih will be marked as Gulen sympathizers, said Ahmed, a third-year international relations student from Southeast Asia who asked his real name not be used.
His connection to Gulen, however indirect, makes it nearly impossible to transfer to a new university in Turkey. Even if you didnt have anything to do with the coup, many institutions in Turkey educational, financial, etc. will see that you are blacklisted, he said.
Farooq is a special correspondent.
As he watched the television images of terrified Yazidi women and children fleeing Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, a familiar unease gripped Father Patrick Desbois.
There were no men among the fleeing villagers. This, he told himself, was genocide unfolding before his eyes.
Though Desbois had never heard of the Yazidi, the 2014 images stirred a spiritual calling to investigate the mass killings and other atrocities inflicted on this non-Muslim religious minority and raise awareness of a little-known ethnic group that has suffered so profoundly.
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Islamic State, also known as Daesh, its Arabic acronym, killed an estimated 5,000 Yazidi men when it took control of Iraqs northwest two years ago, according to the United Nations and human rights groups. Thousands of Yazidi women and children were taken captive. The women were often raped and sold as sex slaves or servants; the boys were forced to convert to Islam and become soldiers of Islamic State.
While the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar has since been liberated, about 3,500 women, girls and some men remain captives of Islamic State, according to a recent United Nations report. The majority are Yazidis. The abuses, the report suggests, may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Catholic priest and anti-genocide advocate Father Patrick Desbois has created a new initiative to document Islamic States persecution of the Yazidi people. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times )
The priest pursues his calling
Desbois had already built a reputation as a self-made mass murder sleuth. Through Yahad-In Unum, the organization he founded in 2004 to uncover and denounce genocide, he had identified largely unrecognized sites where the Nazis slaughtered and buried Jews and Roma, also called Gypsies, in the former Soviet Union.
But the murderous treatment of the Yazidis presented a real-time cause.
I couldnt just stay on the mass killings of the past, said Desbois, 61, a former mathematics teacher and government worker. But I had no door to enter into Iraq.
That opening arrived unexpectedly. On business in Brussels in the winter of 2015 and searching for a barber, Desbois stepped into the only open shop he could find one run by Arabs. When the priest told the barber that he was interested in learning more about the tragic Yazidi situation, the man whispered in his ear that he was a Yazidi.
The barber and his family helped initiate the primary contacts that Desbois needed to begin his mission, and two months later the priest was en route to northern Iraq.
In this 2014 file photo, displaced Iraqi families from the Yazidi community rest after crossing the border with Syria in northern Iraq. (Ahmad al-Rubaye / AFP/Getty Images )
Documenting genocide
Today, through a project called Action Yazidis, Desbois collects testimony from survivors who escaped slavery and imprisonment by Islamic State. The accounts are pieced together through interviews that are cross-referenced with separate statements, photographs and other sources and written material.
Every nugget of information comes from the victims: What day, date and time did the Islamic State fighters arrive? Where exactly were you in the house, in the yard, at school? Were you alone? Who was with you?
The survivors are asked to draw details of what they remember: An illustration of the camp where they were held, where they entered, whether they could sit down, the number of seats. The interviews last hours.
The goal is not only to document the horrors but also to rebuild the topography from the first day of being captured to the day of escape, Desbois said.
Each story paints a grim picture of Islamic States methodology. The militants typically arrive toting three bags: one to collect money from their captives, one for jewelry and the third for cellphones. Desbois was familiar with the tactic; the Nazis also stole from their victims.
Families are separated. Newborns are taken from mothers and given to Muslim families. Boys, many as young as 9, are taken to prison, forced to convert to Islam and sent to terrorist training camps to learn to shoot Kalashnikov rifles, fire rockets and if necessary blow themselves up.
Girls are examined to determine whether they have entered womanhood, Desbois said. Virgins are sold to the highest bidder. Young mothers are forced to become servants. Older women are saved for use as human shields against attacks.
In Daesh everyone has a purpose, Desbois said.
The effects of the terror and abuse
One 42-year-old woman who spent almost two years in Islamic State captivity with her four children recalled one fighter breaking her 6-year-old sons teeth and laughing at him, and then hitting her 10-year-old daughter so hard she urinated.
He would beat my children up and lock them up in a room, the woman told Amnesty International. They would cry inside and I would sit outside the door crying. I begged him to kill us, but he said he didnt want to go to hell because of us.
Her account, as those of 17 other women and girls who survived Islamic State captivity, was published in a recent Amnesty International report that concludes victims are in desperate need of financial assistance and psychological counseling.
Last year, dozens of Yazidis committed or attempted suicide in northern Iraqs Kabarto refugee camp, according to Alex Bartoloni, Baghdad-based community health manager for the International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles humanitarian medical group.
We had never seen this level of suicide in another refugee population, said Bartoloni, whose group provides mental health and psycho-social support for about 30,000 displaced Yazidis in the camp. It was quite shocking to us.
Although the suicides have decreased in recent months, Bartoloni said the level of anxiety, depression and extreme distress had taken a large toll on family dynamics.
Justice delayed by international inaction
Among the Yazidis, there is a sense the world has turned its back on them. Or, worse, is not even aware of what is happening.
Mirza Ismail, chairman of the Canada-based Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, called on people in the West to press their governments to stand for accountability and justice.
A participant at a remembrance march for Yazidis killed by Islamic State holds up a poster in Berlin on Aug. 3 2016. (Wolfram Kastl / Associated Press )
Ismails group wants the world to acknowledge that Yazidis, a predominantly ethnic Kurdish religious minority that is widely believed to have suffered 74 genocides throughout its history, are being targeted solely because they are non-Muslims.
What has the West done to save the non-Muslim minorities, if anything at all? Ismail asked.
Gulie Khalaf, treasurer of Yezidis International, a nonprofit based in Lincoln, Neb., which is thought to have the largest Yazidi population in the U.S., stressed the importance of survivors keeping their stories alive by sharing testimony.
They are documents to help study and understand what happened and how and why we failed to protect hundreds of thousands of people, said Khalaf, whose group works to educate the public about the Yazidis. It holds the authorities accountable for their actions and future action. It helps lawmakers make better decisions for prevention of genocides.
Desbois said the first step toward justice is capturing and punishing Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi, who has exploited the worlds seeming indifference toward the plight of the Yazidis.
If we begin not to care about the genocide of people we dont know about, we open the door for much worse, Desbois said.
ann.simmons@latimes.com
For more on global development news, follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter
In Tehran, the ritual is becoming as familiar as the Death to America chants at Friday prayers.
Its the yearly rush to enter a lottery for the chance to immigrate to the United States.
I want to experience a new life in the U.S. Why not? said Milad Nazari, a spiky-haired 29-year-old working at a sleepy florist in downtown Tehran.
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Death to America? I dont care. The U.S. is the most powerful country so why shouldnt I take my chance in the lottery?
This month the State Department opened a five-week window for visa applications from citizens of countries that historically have had low rates of immigration to the United States.
The annual Diversity Visa lottery selects 50,000 winners who, along with their spouses and children under 21, can obtain green cards and become permanent U.S. residents. Last year 9.4 million people and 5 million family members from more than 200 countries sought visas under the program.
Death to America? I dont care. Milad Nazari, U.S. visa applicant
Those numbers included nearly 500,000 Iranians and 432,000 spouses and children, among the most of any country, though a slight decrease from 2014. About 5,000 Iranians were selected for visas; only Cameroon and Liberia had more winners.
Entries from Iran have risen sharply from 150,000 in 2007, reflecting both Iranians enduring fascination with the United States despite official propaganda labeling the U.S. the Great Satan and worsening prospects for the middle class in a country ravaged by economic sanctions.
I have worked hard but not been able to save enough, said Naser Zaeim, manager of a printing house in Tehran.
Standing under a printing machine and wiping his greasy hands, Zaeim, 45, said he had missed previous lotteries but planned to apply before this years Nov. 7 deadline. (Winners are granted visas starting in 2018.)
As a young man Zaeim spent two years as an unskilled laborer in Japan, where he saved enough to buy a small apartment. When he was deported to Iran, his fortunes faltered.
I see no future here for my three children, he said.
Read more: Why Iranians say the nuclear deal is a disappointment
Saeed Mohammadi, an air-conditioning repairman, entered the lottery unsuccessfully the past two years. While he said he was satisfied in Iran economically, he found the prospect of life in the United States thrilling for his wife and 10-year-old son.
I earn enough here, but I dont have enough leisure time, said Mohammadi, 33. I want to work and relax too. Here the only option is to drive north for a holiday and rent a vacation home on the Caspian Sea for a few days. There is no fun in Tehran.
Such comments do not please Irans hard-liners, who oppose any warming of relations with the West. They have tried to undermine the 2014 nuclear deal that President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, struck with the United States and other world powers, arguing it has not brought economic relief.
The archconservatives have characterized Iranians with dual citizenship in the West as security threats, and cheered this week when two Iranian Americans were sentenced to 10-year prison terms on vague charges of spying for the U.S. On Wednesday, the Qalam news outlet reported that 35 dual nationals had been dismissed from managerial positions in state-run companies.
American critics of the Diversity Visa program, begun in 1990, say it is an arbitrary way of choosing new immigrants. While applicants must have at least a high school education or its equivalent, or two years of experience in a semi-skilled profession, opponents of the lottery say it does not ensure that new arrivals are prepared to contribute to the U.S.
They say Irans hostility to the U.S. also raises questions about whether it should be included in the program.
Certainly, everything ought to be on the table when it comes to saying to the Iranians, Were not going to tolerate this behavior, said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates reducing immigration across the board.
In general we ought to look at people based on individual merit and give the proper amount of scrutiny to make sure they dont pose a danger and dont adhere to ideologies that threaten the safety of this country. You need to put everyone through a rigorous vetting process, which clearly we do not do.
The State Department says the lottery helps broaden the U.S. immigrant pool.
Guidelines discourage entrants from hiring consultants to help fill out the application, which is free to submit. But in Tehran, Internet cafes in many shopping malls tout their services at preparing applications and submitting them through the State Departments online system.
Several of our clients have been winners of the green card, read a sign outside one downtown cafe. Ali, a clerk, said that about 10 people visited every day, paying the equivalent of about $10 for help submitting their lottery entry.
We help them because they dont have good command of English or a high-speed Internet connection, said Ali, who did not give his last name for fear of running afoul of authorities.
Affixed to the wall of the cafe was a newspaper clipping from September 2003, with a story quoting Irans central bank governor as saying the government would not allow the U.S. dollar to reach an exchange rate of 9,000 Iranian rials. The rials value has since plummeted to one-quarter that amount.
The youth realize that in 10 years, what will be our economic situation? said Alis father, owner of the cafe, which also helps customers apply for European Union visas.
Thirteen years ago this mirage was sold to us. So why should our young people believe President Rouhanis promises of improvement and economic growth?
Many young Iranians appear to heed that message.
Alireza Bromandi, a tall, broad-shouldered 20-year-old working at his fathers trading company, said he would enter the lottery once he obtains an exemption from mandatory military service, for which he is eligible as the sole son of his parents.
Im trying to persuade my rich dad to cash out our capital and transfer it to America, Bromandi said. Then Ill be a businessman in the United States, the land of capitalism. Why should we waste our time here?
Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia
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A Philippine police van rammed into protesters, leaving several bloodied, as an anti-U.S. rally turned violent Wednesday at the American Embassy in Manila.
At least three student activists had to be taken to a hospital after they were ran over by the van driven by a police officer, protest leader Renato Reyes said.
Associated Press TV footage showed the van repeatedly ramming the protesters as it drove wildly back and forth after activists surrounded and started hitting the vehicle with wooden batons they seized from police.
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In front of horrified crowds, including videojournalists and photographers, the van suddenly charged backward then sprinted forward twice over a space of about 60 feet, barreling through the scattered protesters and hurtling some to the side like bowling pins. A few got ran over but somehow managed to stand.
Some screamed in surprise, others hurled stones at the van and yelled invectives. A speaker called the police puppies of imperialists on a loudspeaker.
There was absolutely no justification for it, Reyes said of the violent police dispersal of about 1,000 protesters. Even as the president vowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the U.S.
Police lobbed tear gas and arrested at least 23 protesters who broke through a line of riot police and hurled red paint at the officers and a U.S. government seal at the start of the rally at the seaside embassy compound.
A firetruck doused the rowdy protesters with water to push them back, but they took hold of the water hose and confronted the outnumbered police with rocks and red paint. After breaking through the police corridor, they scribbled U.S. troops out now and other slogans at the embassys tall fence with red paint.
The protesters, consisting of students, workers and tribespeople, were demanding an end to the presence of visiting U.S. troops in the Philippines and to support a call by President Rodrigo Duterte for a foreign policy not dependent on the U.S., the countrys longtime treaty ally.
The activists came from the largest left-wing umbrella group called Bayan (Nation), which has organized regular anti-U.S. protests in front of the embassy for decades, most of which are peaceful.
Duterte was on a state visit to China, where he is seeking to repair relations strained under his predecessor over territorial conflicts in the South China Sea. He is also seeking to expand two-way trade and investments and financing for badly needed infrastructure projects.
Amid an uneasy relationship with the U.S., Duterte has tried to reach out to China and Russia, bringing uncertainty to his countrys long alliance with America.
But the protesters also opposed the presidents effort to lean toward China. The Philippines will not be dictated on, whether by the U.S. or China, they said in a statement.
The Philippine National Police did not comment immediately Wednesday.
The violence happened as the police and Duterte are under increased international scrutiny for their alleged role in the killings of thousands of drug suspects and pushers as part of the presidents war on illegal drugs.
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UPDATES:
Oct. 19, 2 a.m.: This article was updated with information about the event at the scene and reaction from officials.
This article was originally posted at 10:25 p.m. Oct. 18.
They call her Phra Thep Princess Angel. The most popular of the late Thai kings children, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn has built a reputation as a hardworking and down-to-earth royal.
And although Thailands military rulers keep a tight lid on palace politics, many in the country had quietly hoped that she might one day succeed their beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Those hopes appeared to have been dashed Tuesday when Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, the prime minister and junta leader, said Sirindhorns scandal-plagued older brother could ascend to the throne in as little as two weeks.
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Prayuth surprised the nation last week when he announced that Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, 64, had asked for time to mourn before he became king. Just how long that might be was not spelled out, prompting speculation among some longtime observers about a behind-the-scenes power struggle.
An official installs a new portrait of Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn at the Thai police headuarters in Bangkok on Oct. 14, 2016. (Borja Sanchez Trillo / Getty Images )
Citizens in Thailand and abroad should not be worried or concerned, Prayuth told reporters after a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
After at least 15 days of mourning, it will be the appropriate time to enact Section 23 of the constitution, he said, referring to clauses on the succession.
Like her father in his younger years, the 61-year-old Sirindhorn is often spotted, notebook in hand and a camera around her neck, inspecting rural development projects.
Vajiralongkorn, however, has shown little interest in the public duties expected of a monarch. A jet-setter once described by his mother as a little bit of a Don Juan, he has divorced three times and spends much of the year in the German countryside.
Few dare to complain openly about the prince because of a strictly enforced law that makes it illegal to insult the royal family; offenders can face up to 15 years in jail. But the distaste and bemusement felt by many are evident in coded comments that frequently appear on social media.
Thais were scandalized in 2007 when a leaked video showed Vajiralongkorns third wife, Princess Srirasmi Suwadee, appearing topless at a poolside birthday party. Also in attendance was the princes pet poodle, Foo Foo, who, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks, was promoted to the rank of air chief marshal before his death last year.
Although it was never clear who leaked the video, some speculated that it was spread by opponents of the prince in the hopes that his sister might ascend to the throne in his place. Such hopes were spelled out in another leaked cable that described a conversation between then-U.S. Ambassador Eric G. John and the late Air Chief Marshal Siddhi Savetsila in 2010.
Siddhi stated that succession would be a difficult transition time for Thailand, the cable says. According to Palace Law, the Crown Prince would succeed his father, but added after a pause, almost hopefully: if the Crown Prince were to die, anything could happen, and maybe Prathep (Sirindhorn) could succeed.
In recent months, the countrys military leaders have appeared keen to burnish the reputation of Vajiralongkorn. Prayuth joined the crown prince at a nationally televised mass cycle ride in honor of his mothers birthday over the summer.
We know the crown prince has enemies among the Thai establishment, but thats the nature of politics everywhere, said Patrick Jory, who teaches Thai history at the University of Queensland in Australia.
There are powerful forces in the military and the bureaucracy who have an interest in a smooth succession, Jory said. The evidence that we do have strongly suggests that the crown prince is in a strong position.
In a sign of Sirindhorns importance, the princess will oversee Bhumibols funeral ceremony in a years time.
She attended a meeting Monday at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization office in Bangkok, her first public appearance since her fathers death. She was named a special ambassador for zero hunger.
Mourners pray and light candles in memory of Thailands late king outside the Grand Palace in Bangkok on Oct. 16, 2016. (Paula Bronstein / Getty Images )
Although a change in the Thai Constitution has made it possible for a woman to succeed to the throne, any attempt to get in the way of Vajiralongkorn could be seen as contradicting Bhumibols wishes a risky move for a junta that has promised to return power to civilians and hold elections in 2017.
Bhumibol, who reigned for seven decades and was venerated as a near-deity, named Vajiralongkorn as heir apparent in 1972.
Since the kings death Thursday at age 88, Thais have lined up by the hundreds of thousands to pay their respects at Bangkoks Grand Palace.
I want to come here to give something for the father, said Nattapsorn Juijuyen, a volunteer who helped distribute food and water to the swelling crowd Monday.
Thousands of Thais lined up outside banks overnight to pick up commemorative currency notes in honor of Bhumibol.
Across Bangkok, shops are running out of black clothing as well as photographs and paintings of the late monarch. Books about him also are in short supply.
We have nothing left, said a staff member at the Kinokuniya bookstore in one of the citys many glossy malls. We only have books about the other kings from the past.
At a time of great uncertainty in the country, which is still reeling from a series of coups and political unrest, authorities and members of the public are on the watch for any dissent including against the future monarch.
Videos of mobs surrounding people accused of anti-royal sentiments have been circling on social media since the weekend. In one clip, an elderly woman is attacked on a bus in Bangkok.
How could you insult the royal father? a voice is heard saying. You shouldnt have been born.
In another, a bloodied man is forced to apologize before an image of the late king, receiving a kick to the head for his troubles.
In statements to the media Tuesday, Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya appeared to endorse such public retribution. There is no better way to punish these people than to socially sanction them, he said.
The government will also be seeking the extradition of any Thai critics who live abroad, the minister said.
Times staff writer Zavis reported from Los Angeles and special correspondent Roughneen from Bangkok.
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Twitter: @alexzavis
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A federal judge who ruled on some of Mexicos highest profile criminal cases was gunned down in broad daylight
The jogger trots down a narrow sidewalk, apparently oblivious to the slim man in black trailing a few yards behind. Early morning traffic passes as usual. Nothing seems amiss.
As the jogger crosses a street, his pursuer accelerates and raises his right hand to the joggers head.
The jogger collapses, coils into a fetal position, then rolls onto his back with arms and legs extended. Blood seeping from his head flows into the street.
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A gun comes into view as the assailant turns and sprints away, startling a pedestrian and a cyclist.
The video, captured by a security camera Monday in the upscale Mexico City exurb of Metepec and leaked to the media, has caused a sensation here.
The victim was Vicente Antonio Bermudez Zacarias, a 37-year-old federal judge based in the state of Mexico, just outside Mexico City. Transported to the hospital, he was pronounced dead of a single gunshot to the head.
Even in a country that has become synonymous with violence, the shooting of a federal judge in daylight is a stunning occurrence. The assault drew broad condemnation and official vows to find whoever was responsible.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said he had ordered the attorney general to investigate the very lamentable act.
Authorities have offered no motive. The video would seem to suggest a professional hit by someone familiar with the judges routines. It was not clear whether Bermudez had received threats before his slaying.
His extensive caseload included some of Mexicos highest profile criminal cases.
He was involved in legal rulings regarding the 43 college students who disappeared in the state of Guerrero two years ago and are presumed to have been killed. They were last seen in the custody of local police.
This month, the judge blocked a request from Gildardo Lopez, suspected of being a hit man for a Guerrero-based drug gang to be transferred from the high-security Altiplano prison outside Mexico City.
Among the suspects Bermudez has jailed are an operative of the ultra-violent Zetas gang and a boss in the so-called Jalisco New Generation cartel, a leading drug trafficking organization.
His judicial district issued an order last year stalling the extradition of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, Mexicos most notorious trafficker, to the United States, where he faces charges of murder and other crimes. Mexican officials say they expect the extradition to occur by February.
One of Guzmans lawyers, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, denounced as yellow journalism any effort to link his client to the judges assassination. I have heard that he was very honest, impeccable, and that he was widely respected, he told the Televisa network. There is no basis to see Joaquin Guzman behind this act.
Whoever the killer, the assassination has quickly become a testament to what many Mexicans view as culture of impunity.
The judiciary lives under a constant siege of criminal interests that look to twist institutional rulings through the classic method of filling the judge with money or lead, columnist Julio Hernandez Lopez wrote in the newspaper La Jornada. To a large extent, the mechanisms of judicial decision-making have been compromised by this mafioso threat that in no way has been confronted and exterminated.
There has been some progress, but youth drug smuggling persists at the U.S.-Mexico border
The day before the judge was killed, the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico warned publicly that the country was in flames because of unchecked violence, with proliferating numbers of kidnappings, extortion threats and assaults on streets and in buses and trains.
In certain zones of the country, violence is escalating and appears uncontainable, the church declared in its weekly newsletter From the Faith.
At times the country feels at war with itself. Five Mexican soldiers were killed last month in an ambush on a military convoy in northern Mexico, suspected of being orchestrated by sons of Guzman.
The church itself has suffered, with more than a dozen priests killed across the country in the last four years, including two last month in the state of Veracruz. In that case, police announced the arrest of a suspect this week.
Veracruz has been an epicenter of violence, including the killings of journalists and others who were critical of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Disgust over the killings contributed to the partys defeat in June in the election for governor there.
On Tuesday, the Mexican media reported that an arrest warrant for organized crime and illegal enrichment had been issued against Javier Duarte, who stepped down from the governorship last week with six weeks remaining in his term amid widespread allegations that he was corrupt and implicated in violence.
Human rights groups say that during Duartes six years in office hundreds of people disappeared and were killed in Veracruz, where rival cartels battle it out for access to lucrative drug- and people-smuggling routes to the United States. Many victims remain missing.
In a recent case, four university students went missing Sept. 29 and their mutilated corpses were found several days later. As is often the case, it remains unclear why they were targeted.
Cecilia Sanchez in The Times Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
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Iraqi forces face Islamic State snipers, rockets and suicide bombers during Mosul offensive
Iraqi army Col. Omar Adl Ali and his men, after fierce fighting against Islamic State extremists, listened as their two-way radios buzzed with reports on the government offensive to retake Mosul.
Ali and about 280 soldiers from the 9th Division had fought in the Hamdaniya area southeast of the city, facing off against Islamic State snipers, rocket attacks and suicide bombers as they recaptured villages. They rested at a makeshift command post in an abandoned cinder-block house.
We encircled the city and now there are some clashes, Ali said Tuesday at the command post in Gwer. Islamic State fighters are resisting.
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Its not clear how much that resistance will slow the offensive to retake the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul. Islamic State fighters conquered the city two years ago like an army, staging organized attacks and commandeering military vehicles.
But advancing Iraqi troops face an enemy that has morphed into more of a terrorist network, hiding in tunnels and among civilians, broadcasting misinformation to wage a tricky urban war.
The Iraqi battle for Mosul is being waged from the east and south by troops including 18,000 Iraqi security forces and 10,000 Kurdish fighters, according to U.S. officials.
The Iraqis are pushing north along Highway 1 from Qayyarah, an Iraqi air base about 40 miles south of Mosul. In the east, the Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, captured a string of villages around Hamdaniya, which is also known as Bakhdida and Qaraqosh, and held them as Iraqi forces moved up.
More than 100 U.S. special operations personnel are advising Iraqi and Kurdish commanders near the front lines and helping to direct airstrikes.
Its an ugly fight but we have seen very good progress, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters in Washington.
U.S. officials fear that Islamic State could employ crudely designed chemical weapons, namely munitions packed with sulfur mustard agent, against Iraqi forces.
Davis said Kurdish and Iraqi forces, which long have squabbled over territory and oil profits, are cooperating in the assault, which began Monday. The Kurdish fighters have captured Kurdish-dominated towns, but have agreed to allow Iraqi security forces to ultimately take the lead into Mosul, a largely Sunni Muslim city.
The Iraqi battle plan aims to overwhelm the estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Islamic State fighters in Mosul, making them defend a 12-square-mile city at various points from much larger advancing ground forces supported by U.S. air power and artillery. The city is believed to have about 1 million people.
The Iraqis have left the territory west of Mosul open, where civilians and deserters are expected to flee. Few people have left the city so far, however, officials said.
Iraqi and coalition aircraft have dropped leaflets telling civilians to stay in their homes in Mosul both for safety and in hopes of preventing a massive outflow of refugees. The outnumbered militants are not expected to defend every neighborhood as the Iraqis advance.
Coalition warplanes carried out four airstrikes Monday near Mosul against Islamic State buildings, vehicles and bomb-making facilities. Two other airstrikes hit targets near Qayyarah, the Iraqi air base that U.S. forces are using as a logistics hub to push weapons and supplies to the front lines.
Clashes continued late Tuesday near Gwer in the village of Kani Harami, where Alis troops have been fighting.
The Kurdish television station Rudaw reported that the village had been recaptured by Islamic State on Tuesday. Iraqi officials disputed that account.
We took the village, then Islamic State attacked us and they took it back. So we attacked them again and we held the city. Its under our control, Army Capt. Zuhar Habib said late Tuesday.
Islamic State released statements on social media reporting that its fighters attacked Iraqi forces southeast of Mosul with car bombs, recapturing the villages of Kabibah, Adleh and Ibrahim Khalil.
But Ali Dalagi, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, said late Tuesday that he had returned from the area an hour earlier and everything is fine there.
Rest assured, all the areas near Gwer remain liberated, he said.
Ahead of their advance, the Iraqi army dropped leaflets instructing civilians to put tape over their windows in the shape of an X to keep them from shattering, disconnect gas pipes, hide valuables, stay on low floors and tell children that any loud booms are thunder, Habib said. The leaflets also encouraged young men, once the army arrived, to join the fight against Islamic State.
He said civilians have heeded the armys advice, distributed on leaflets, social media and television, to stay inside as troops advanced. As they rolled into town, troops saw another encouraging sign: scores of makeshift white flags, which civilians had been instructed to post.
But Iraqi troops also faced repeated attacks from Islamic State. Ali pointed to a Humvee with a shattered window. Two of his soldiers were killed in a rocket attack by Islamic State, and about eight were wounded.
Habib, an intelligence officer, said they were receiving reports from Mosul residents that when Islamic State fighters spot warplanes, they are going house to house, hiding among civilians to avoid airstrikes.
He said Islamic State used mosques and cars to broadcast its intention to abandon the city but it was a trap.
They were trying to see who was supporting the [Iraqi] army, Habib said as he stood outside Alis command post. They know there are people working with the army.
He said commanders were not fooled by the misinformation campaign: We know when Islamic State withdraws from a place, they do it secretly.
Sitting on a fortified hilltop amid several dozen peshmerga, Gwer Cmdr. Jamal Murtka pointed amid the sandbags to windows shattered by Islamic State bullets two years ago when the area was besieged. Extremists also shot up peshmerga trucks, he said.
Now, equipped with better armored vehicles and coalition backing, We have pushed Islamic State back from the whole Kurdistan border, Murtka said.
Ali also credited coalition airstrikes with aiding the armys advances. He listened for the buzz of U.S. drones, pointing up at the clouds. When two loud booms sounded, he pointed about nine miles away across the wide plain where sheep grazed to twin brown clouds looming on the horizon near metal towers and a cluster of houses.
Airstrikes, he said, smiling. Thats a very good feeling.
But then the radio at his hip crackled with bad news: Iraqi troops some miles away on the front lines had entered a house booby-trapped by Islamic State.
Had they been killed?
The radio crackled again, this time with what passes for good news: It was not a booby-trapped house, but rather another Islamic State suicide bomber detonating explosives. Iraqi troops were unscathed.
The colonel looked at the captain, relieved. Moments later they would receive orders to advance another three miles toward Mosul.
We are moving forward step by step, Habib said.
Ali responded: Until we get to our target.
Special correspondents Nabih Bulos and Wael Rasoul in Irbil, Iraq, and Times staff writer W.J. Hennigan in Washington contributed to this report.
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
@mollyhf
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Farhad Daneshvar Trend:
Iran and Azerbaijan are planning to cooperate in exporting jointly produced commodities to third countries, Governor general of Ardabil Province Majid Khodabaksh told reporters in Baku, Oct.19.
During a press conference, he said that for example Ardabil can export potato to Azerbaijan and a joint venture can convert it into chips for exporting to a third country, like Russia.
Ardabil and Azerbaijan have common borders with two checkpoints and customs.
Pointing upon the common cooperation areas between Ardabil Province and Azerbaijan Republic and also friendly ties between the two countries, he said that the sides want to increase the investments between the two countries.
Khodabakhsh also mentioned the existing capabilities in Ardabil and proposed exporting power from Ardabil to Azerbaijan.
There are many firms in Ardabil who can import materials from Azerbaijan including wood products, he said.
Congratulating Azerbaijan on the dependence Day, he added that Iran has always expressed support for territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
Chinese capital will contribute $15bn to the fund, while up to $5bn will come from Brazil
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Apologies for the silence here during the past week. Ive just returned from an amazing nine days visiting the beautiful country of Cuba, where I had no phone or internet. Im back now and hope to get this blogs engines restarted right away. And if you sent me an email recently, I hope eventually to get to it, as I dig out from a backlog of several thousand new messages.
As for Cuba, I hope to write more about my visit, maybe here, maybe elsewhere. Id originally hoped to meet with lawyers there, but that never happened. But I can tell you right off that the Cuban people are the warmest and most gracious people Ive ever encountered. If you are contemplating visiting there, do it sooner rather than later, because warming relations between Cuba and the U.S. will inevitably change the character of this charming country.
Tehran, Iran, October 19
By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
The 10th tourism train to Iran is expected to arrive in the country in two days.
Having on board tourists from America, Europe, and East Asia, the train will arrive on October 21 and leave nine days later, Mehr news agency reported October 19.
The train will stop at cities in the northern cities by the Caspian Sea as well as in Mashhad, Kerman, Yazd, Isfahan, and Shiraz.
More such trains are expected to make trips to Iran in the comings months following agreements between Iranian and foreign organizations.
Tehran, Iran, Oct. 19
By Mehdi Sepahvand Trend:
The Iranian Embassy in Ankara has advised Iranian nationals to cancel their unnecessary trips to Turkey.
The warning comes in the wake of an announcement by the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey expressing suspicion that terrorist acts have been plotted in the country, ISNA news agency reported Oct. 19.
The embassy has also advised Iranians in Turkey to avoid crowded places.
This is the second time this month that Tehran has made such an announcement. On Oct. 3 the Iranian Embassy in Turkey in an announcement said, Iranians who plan to visit Turkey are required to keep from going to busy, insecure places.
With regard to incidents that have happened to our fellow nationals, Iranians in Turkey are required to heed the warnings of Islamic Republic of Irans Consulate in Turkey and those of other organizations in the host country, the message read.
A suicide bomb attack in a busy tourist area in central Istanbul on March 19 claimed three lives and wounded 39.
Most of the casualties of the Istanbul attack were foreigners. Two of the three slain were Israeli citizens and one Iranian national. Three Iranians and 10 Israeli citizens were also wounded.
In a similar incident about a week earlier on March 13, a car bomb exploded in the Turkish capital Ankara, killing 32 people and wounding more than 100.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Fatih Karimov Trend:
Iran has successfully tested 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs on the last day of the air force military drills.
Iranian F-7 fighters targeted preset mock targets with optimized bombs in this stage of the drill, Brigadier General Masoud Rouzkhosh, the spokesman for the drills said, IRINN TV reported Oct. 19.
Rouzkhosh said the F-4 fighters used home-made air-to-surface Nasr missiles and Qased bombs to destroy the preset targets during the drills.
Iranian armys air force launched three-day war games on Oct. 17 aimed at demonstrating the capabilities of the air force in safeguarding the Islamic Republics airspace.
The large-scale drills took place in the central province of Esfahan. In addition to the interceptor aircraft and fighter bombers of the Iranian air force, transport planes, reconnaissance aircraft, refueling planes and different types of drones took part in the massive drills.
In recent years, Iran has made major breakthroughs in its defense sector and attained self-sufficiency in the production of important military equipment and systems.
The country has also conducted major military drills to enhance the defense capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and state-of-the-art equipment.
The Islamic Republic maintains that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense doctrine is merely based on deterrence.
A New Jersey man is accused of assaulting a 2-year-old while babysitting the boy last month in Bethlehem.
On Sept. 22, the boy was brought to Lehigh Valley Hospital for treatment of severe bruising to his right eye, Bethlehem police said. The toddler was admitted to the children's hospital for two days for broken blood vessels in the eye, police said.
Tyler Mckie, 44, of Newark, was watching the boy at the time, and gave officers several different versions of what caused the injury, according to police.
Mckie reportedly claimed other family members injured the boy, and that "people are breaking into homes (and) assaulting children on the South Side of Bethlehem."
Officers interviewed Mckie again on Tuesday and he told them that on Sept. 21 a dog was licking the victim's face, and Mckie struck the dog and "probably" struck the child, police said.
Mckie reported that 15 minutes after the hit, he saw the injury to the 2-year-old's eye. Mckie was the only person watching the child at the time, police said.
Mckie gave police a written statement apologizing about not coming forward and telling the truth, and that "it all happened so fast," police said.
Mckie was charged with simple assault of a child under the age of 12, child endangerment and reckless endangerment. He was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail.
Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Forks Township man who administered a fatal dose of methamphetamine was sent to state prison Tuesday.
Jason Laduca, 27, was sentenced to four and a half to nine years by Northampton County Judge Paula Roscioli.
Laduca injected meth into 27-year-old Rachel Dannucci, of Bethlehem Township, at The View Inn & Suites hotel in the township. She died two days later on Nov. 7.
Laduca pleaded guilty to possession of drugs with intent to deliver and no contest to involuntary manslaughter. By pleading no contest, Laduca did not admit that he killed Dannucci but admitted prosecutors have enough evidence to prove that he did. The plea is treated the same as a guilty plea for sentencing purposes.
Another woman doing drugs with the pair that day, Lauren Miller, testified in March that Dannucci had never tried meth and was curious. Dannucci was already high on heroin when she took the meth, according to Miller.
"She started to get bad very quickly," Miller testified in March. "Her legs were giving out. She kept saying, 'Something's wrong,' over and over."
A police sergeant unsuccessfully attempted to revive Dannucci.
Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Not a single one of the Bethlehem Police Department's squad cars have working dashboard cameras.
In today's digital world, where police incidents routinely show up on the news, Bethlehem needs to get with the times, Chief Mark DiLuzio said.
DiLuzio wants to outfit the department's fleet of squad cars with dashboard cameras and equip his officers with body cameras.
Evesham Chief of Police Christopher Chew demonstrates a Body Worn Camera System to be worn by every patrol officer in the department, Friday, July 18, 2014.
He's included the request in the city's 2017-2021 capital improvement plan, which city council reviewed for the first time Tuesday night.
"I think it's time for them to protect citizens and to protect cops," DiLuzio said.
Cameras can show exactly what transpired when there's a complaint against police or when someone is charged criminally, he said.
Nationally, there's been a movement for police departments to add or require body cameras in the wake of fatal officer-involved shootings and questionable police actions recorded by bystanders.
When there is a video of an unlawful use-of-force complaint, U.S. Department of Justice statistics show the cameras help prove that the majority of complaints are unfounded, DiLuzio said. Not having the cameras opens the city up to liability issues, he said.
Bethlehem has had only three police officer-involved shootings in recent years, the chief noted.
All police officers are being judged by the actions of a few -- and cameras can help clear that up, DiLuzio said.
"There is so much false information in the media about what police do," he said.
The Allentown Police Department outfitted its officers with body cameras last year through a Department of Justice grant. Lehigh University, Bethlehem Township and South Whitehall Township police all have body cams.
The city's non-utility capital plan calls for spending $220,000 over five years to install dash cameras into 34 police vehicles and spending $150,000 over five years on body cameras. The city is proposing seeking whatever grants it can and relying on borrowing for the rest.
Councilman Shawn Martell commended DiLuzio for bringing the proposal forward, but agreed it is unfortunate this is today's reality.
"It is difficult to put a price tag on something that may be able to exonerate an unjustly criticized officer or a citizen in an unfortunate situation," Martell said.
DiLuzio acknowledged that both projects are costly undertakings. The squad car dash cameras would be his first priority, so the department is on par with others in Pennsylvania.
Back in 2007, about three-quarters of city police vehicles had working dashboard cameras. Two years ago, six to nine of them worked and none do today after a server stopped working, DiLuzio said.
Diluzio wants to equip 125 of his 155 officers with body cameras eventually. He plans to start out with a pilot program of at least six months, so the department can test out several different cameras.
The city's police union has not been asked whether it supports body cameras, DiLuzio said. The chief noted the National Fraternal Order of Police has backed them.
Council supports the idea of body and video cameras, but seemed wary of the associated costs.
Councilman Michael Colon asked about the life expectancy of the cameras. Councilman Eric Evans expressed concern about borrowing money to buy technology that could be outdated before the bonds were paid off.
Body cameras, dash cameras and civilian videos appear on television regularly following police shootings, DiLuzio noted. But city police rarely use deadly force.
City police shot a man in 2010 after he stabbed his domestic partner, who he was holding hostage along with their kids.
In 2007, Christopher Eric Johnson, 21, was killed by police on Catasauqua Road after he shot Bethlehem police Officer Stephen Marks twice in the legs. Johnson robbed two teens in the woods along Route 378 and shot one of them before he encountered police.
In 1997, city police shot 21-year-old John Hirko Jr. 11 times in a raid, killing him. Following an almost six-month civil trial, the city agreed to pay Hirko's family, fiancee and landlord almost $8 million. It led to police department reforms and accreditation.
Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Bethlehem Area School District enrollment is up for the first time in a decade, and the district seems to have stemmed the flow of students to charter schools.
Michael E. Faccinetto, president of the Bethlehem Area School Board. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)
Superintendent Joseph Roy noted it is only 102 students, not a huge number for a district enrolling almost 14,000, but it is a good trend.
Bethlehem is entering its second year of full-day kindergarten and the district saw kindergarten enrollment rise over 900 for the first time since 2012.
Overall, 51 more students are enrolled in charter schools this year. But Bethlehem's effort to start its own cyber academy seems to have paid off because 45 fewer students are enrolled in cyber charter schools and many signed up with the district, Roy said.
"We'll see how those trends play out," Roy said.
Almost 2,000 district students are enrolled in state cyber and charter schools this year.
The majority, about 1,011, are attending Lehigh Valley Regional Academy Charter School in Hanover Township. The school's charter is currently up for renewal.
Monday night the school board looked at how many students are leaving each district school and where they are going.
Board President Michael Faccinetto said he knows it's unpopular to say this but the chart shows "the people that are afraid of poverty and running" to schools that end their name with academy.
Three of the district's poorest schools -- Donegan, Fountain Hill and Lincoln elementaries -- have the biggest exodus of students to charters. Ironically, those schools have dynamite principals, active parent groups and innovative programs, Faccinetto said.
But some families are unwilling to give them a chance, Faccinetto said.
Director Tom Thomasik suggested the district survey Lehigh Valley Academy parents to see why they're choosing the school over Bethlehem schools.
Roy noted that some parents fear poverty but parents select charters for myriad reasons. Some like the longer school day or the bus transportation, which for some families helps them avoid paying for child care.
From speaking to the district's Latino community he's learned uniforms attract some families because all Puerto Rican schools require uniforms. Families that relocate from New York City expect to compete in charter school lotteries, so some are blown away that they can just enroll in a charter academy, Roy said.
"We continue to do what we do best and grow those things," Roy said.
The district has struggled with losing students to charter and cyber schools in recent years. It has meant millions of dollars flowing out of the district and into the independently operated public school coffers. Bethlehem projects spending $26 million on charters this school year.
The district tends to lose students before they even step foot in a district building, Roy said, noting most enroll elsewhere for kindergarten. The lure for charters used to be full-day K when the district didn't offer it.
"We're not losing many kids at all once they're in our system," Roy said.
Director Shannon L. Patrick suggested that the district have building principals reach out to families enrolled in charter schools midway through the school year to see how things are going. Some schools sell a bill of goods to families and use fear-mongering to their advantage, she said.
Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Ninety-four percent of Marvine Elementary School students in Bethlehem are poor and 79 percent of its third-graders don't read on grade level.
Marvine Elementary School celebrated its new community school status Wednesday. (Sara K. Satullo | For lehighvalleylive.com)
Reading on grade level by third grade is one of the greatest indicators of a student's future academic success, including whether they'll graduate high school or go on to college.
So, Marvine Elementary School is the perfect choice to become the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley's newest community school. The community school model strives to turn schools into neighborhood hubs that connect parents and students with resources. The United Way acts as the intermediary, pairing schools with a lead and corporate partner.
"We will have resources and opportunities you have never had in this community before," Marvine Principal Karen Gomez told parents and students Wednesday afternoon. "... Our mission is truly 100 percent of our students experiencing ongoing academic progress."
United Way plans to double the number of community schools in the region in the next few years as part of its goal of increasing the number of third-graders reading on grade level by 50 percent.
"What we want is for you to be able to read your favorite book by yourself," said Marci Ronald, executive vice president of the United Way Greater Lehigh Valley.
Marvine is the Bethlehem Area School District's sixth community school and the region's 15th.
"We cannot do this alone here at Marvine," Gomez said.
Just Born Quality Confections is expanding its reach from Broughal Middle School, where its been the corporate partner for six years, to Marvine as well, which is located blocks from its Stefko Boulevard facility. Just Born will support the school through funding, in-kind donations, employee volunteers and leadership.
"Your community cares about you," Ronald said. "We care about your kids."
St. Luke's University Health Network has stepped up as the coordinating partner and will connect students and families with physical and behavioral health services.
"They are investing people, money and time into Marvine to provide programs and opportunities for students," district Superintendent Joseph Roy said of both entities.
His district's students, who come from a wide-range of experiences, don't always have equal access to opportunities, Roy said. But still the district strives to give each child what they need to success.
"We want to be able to tear down the obstacles that they have," Roy said.
St. Luke's and Just Born both want to help the community where they live.
A stronger educated community benefits St. Luke's because these students are tomorrow's doctors, nurses and paramedics, said Carol Kuplen, president of the health network's Fountain Hill campus.
Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Berks County man wanted for a parole violation was arrested Wednesday in Easton, city police announced.
Claudie Robinson, 37, of Wernersville, Pennsylvania, also faces a new charge of drug possession after being found with a single dose of the opioid painkiller oxycodone, police said in a news release.
Easton detectives set up surveillance in the city's West Ward in an attempt to locate Robinson and arrest him on a warrant for the parole violation, the release states.
He was observed walking about 11:30 a.m. in the 100 block of South 11th Street, where patrol officers detained him and confirmed the warrant with Pennsylvania State Police. A subsequent search turned up the painkiller, police said.
He was arraigned before District Judge Richard Yetter III on a misdemeanor count of drug possession and sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $2,500, in addition to the parole-violation warrant.
Robinson was sentenced to up to eight years in prison in May 2010 after pleading guilty to four counts, from four separate cases in Luzerne County, of drug possession with intent to deliver, according to court records. He was sentenced in July 2013 to another year to two years after pleading guilty to escape, also in Luzerne County, records say.
The nature of the parole violation was not immediately available Wednesday afternoon.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
An Allentown man is accused of attacking his ex-girlfriend in a vehicle after she left work in Palmer Township.
Emmanuel Gonzalez-Santiago, 28, of the 800 block of North Howard Street, at 10:07 p.m. Tuesday arrived at the workplace of his ex-girlfriend at XPO Logistics, 1520 Van Buren Road, police said.
A security employee notified the victim Gonzalez-Santiago was at the workplace because the couple's son had a cut on his face and was going to the hospital, court records indicate. It's unclear if the child was actually injured.
Police said Gonzalez-Santiago then got into the victim's vehicle. A short while later, he accused the victim of cheating and began punching her while she was behind the wheel, police said.
Gonzalez-Santiago ordered the victim to drive home while he continuously punched her in the face until her nose and inside of her mouth began bleeding, police said. Gonzalez-Santiago also is accused of choking the victim as she drove, as well as breaking a cellphone, valued at $120.
The victim was taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries.
Gonzalez-Santiago is charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, harassment and unlawful restraint. He was arraigned before District Judge Robert Hawke, who set bail at $20,000.
In lieu of bail, Gonzalez-Santiago was taken to Northampton County Prison.
Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
Trend:
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter will visit Turkeys Ankara October 21, Anadolu Agency reported Oct. 19.
Carter will meet with Turkish leadership to discuss the Syrian crisis and the situation in Iraq.
After his visit to Ankara, Carter will visit the UAE, France and Belgium.
On October 25, the US secretary of defense will take part in the Paris talks between the defense ministers of member countries of the coalition against the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group.
Carter will arrive in Brussels October 26, where he will take part in the NATO defense ministers council meeting.
UPDATE: Passenger identified in double-fatal motorcycle crash
Two people on a motorcycle were killed in a crash Wednesday afternoon in Monroe County, the coroner there said.
It occurred at 12:16 p.m. in the 600 block of Toll Road in Chestnuthill Township, in the Effort area, said Pennsylvania State Police at Fern Ridge.
Identified by police as 22-year-old Daniel G. Weir, of Effort, the rider crested a hill and came upon traffic stopped for a school bus discharging students, county Coroner Bob Allen said.
Weir hit the brakes on the 2015 Harley-Davidson he was riding but lost control and struck the driver's side rear of a 1997 Chevrolet Blazer stopped behind the school bus.
Neither Weir nor his female passenger was wearing a helmet, Allen said. The coroner pronounced Weir dead at the scene, and the female was taken to Pocono Medical Center in East Stroudsburg, where she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, authorities said.
Authorities were not immediately identifying the female victim, her age or her hometown, pending notification of next of kin.
Both died of injuries suffered in the crash, police said. Autopsies are scheduled Thursday at Lehigh Valley Hospital, Salisbury Township, according to Allen.
The crash occurred on northbound Toll Road, and the bus was stopped headed south. The driver of the Blazer, 17-year-old Michael Buccieri, also of Effort, was obeying the law by stopping for the bus, police said; he was uninjured.
Police said the crash was caused by speeding.
Toll Road reopened shortly before 3:20 p.m., and no one else was reported injured.
West End Ambulance and the West End Fire Department assisted at the scene, police said.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
pedals.jpg
Pedals, a bear who became something of a celebrity for his habit of walking upright, is believed to have been killed in the most recent bear hunt in New Jersey.
(nj.com file photo)
By Jeff Tittel
The killing of a bear named Pedals has brought New Jersey's bear hunt into the spotlight. This was a tame and injured bear who was never a threat to anyone and even had members of the community monitoring his condition. Despite people looking out for the bear for three years, someone wanted him for a prize so he was shot and killed. This murder clearly shows why this hunt is a trophy hunt and has nothing to do with management.
Jeff Tittel.
The New Jersey Sierra Club believes the hunt is a poor excuse for an actual bear management plan because it does not deal with protection of habitats, garbage or educating people in bear country. The fall bear hunt ended Saturday with 562 bears killed. We are concerned the number of bears killed is greater when you add the numbers from poaching, cars and euthanizing. This is the second highest harvest since 2010 and may even double after the winter hunt. Since 2010, 2,943 bears have been killed, but when the hunt began there were about 3,500 bears. We are very concerned that there may not be any more bears left after this hunt.
This hunt has expanded it to two hunts and included bow hunting for the first time this year. The last time we permitted bow and arrow hunting was in the 1960s and 70s, but then we had only 50 bears. It is shameful that they have used tactics that will actually allow more bears to be hunted. This hunt even took many cubs and sows and played games with the tagging system. It is clear this hunt is doubling down on a management plan that hasn't worked and must be stopped.
Aggressive bear encounters have been increasing, despite six years of hunts. Most bears avoid people, but bears that have been feed or exposed to food from humans then see people as a source of food and become aggressive. We are urging the Legislature to support Pedal's Law, S2702, which would prohibit hunting and establishes non-lethal control program for black bear for five years. It would also prohibit feeding bears and require use of bear-resistant containers, dumpsters, and food boxes in bear habitat. Unless we actually deal with things like the protection of habitats, garbage, and educating people in bear country, we won't see any reduction in human-bear incidents.
New Jersey used to spend more than $2 million a year on bear management education. That money has been reduced by 90 percent. Ten years ago New Jersey had bear wardens whose jobs were to manage bears and educate the public. The officers used nonlethal tactics like bear aversion therapy to make bears afraid of people by using pepper spray and air horns. That program has been eliminated. Now only conservation officers do that work and there are 40 percent fewer of them compared to 10 years ago. The Christie administration decided it was cheaper and easier to have a hunt rather than an effective management plan.
We need to implement an effective bear management plan that focuses on education. More than half a million New Jersey residents live in bear country, but many do not have the education to understand bears and avoid confrontations with them. The biggest problem we have with nuisance bears is when they see people and homes as a source of food. Without a concerted effort to codify and enforce requirements on garbage, other bear policies will fail.
The state needs to mandate bear-proof containers and locking dumpsters in bear country and ban the practice of leaving garbage out overnight. Protecting our habitat is another important step towards managing our bear population. Each year, New Jersey loses 8,000 to 10,000 acres of land in bear country.
Instead of fixing the failed plan, the Christie administration has vastly expanded the hunt to new areas of the state, and we are having two hunts instead of one. Christie promised the hunting lobby that if they endorsed him, he would increase the bear hunt. This hunt is all part of the same political strategy to get rid of bears, forests, clean air, and clean water, to protect his supporters. Unfortunately, the only sure fire way to stop a bear hunt is to change administrations.
We need to stop the December hunt. Without a real education plan, this hunt just expands a policy that hasn't worked. We're still seeing nuisance bear problems while innocent bears are indiscreetly targeted, including sows and cubs. This hunt was supposed to be sustainable, keeping the same number of bears. Instead the number of bears is dropping. This is not a sustainable hunt; it is a trophy hunt. We need a real bear management plan instead because this hunt is unbearable.
Jeff Tittel is the director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
Route 57 and Railroad Avenue in Washington, NJ
Looking eastbound, Railroad Avenue branches off to the right of Route 57 in Washington. Norfolk Southern Corp., which has a track that crosses Railroad Avenue, is proposing the road's closure to through-traffic. (Google Maps)
A plan to close a railroad crossing on a half-mile road in Warren County is on the wrong track, say local leaders concerned about public safety.
To stop through-traffic on Railroad Avenue in Washington -- as proposed by Norfolk Southern Corp. -- would hinder emergency responders and reroute school buses, according to police, fire and school officials in the borough and surrounding township.
The company, however, says its goal is to improve safety.
Railroad Avenue runs between Route 57 and Washburn Avenue, crossed by tracks running to and from a nearby rail yard. Less than 500 vehicles used the crossing in each of three 12-hour periods studied in May, according to a letter to residents from the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
Norfolk Southern has asked that the state close the crossing, effectively making the road a dead end to vehicular traffic. The request is still under DOT review.
The DOT in August sent surveys to some residents regarding the potential road closure. In its letter, the department notes that the road's closure means train horns would no longer sound there, and that routes around the closed crossing would not increase by more than a half mile.
Norfolk Southern spokesman Dave Pidgeon said railroads are under pressure from regulators to close crossings where possible to reduce the risk of accidents. Though he could not immediately speak to the specifics of the Railroad Avenue proposal, Pidgeon said similar plans are in motion elsewhere.
"Safety is our top concern," he said, later adding: "The safest crossing is a closed crossing."
However, police and fire officials say the road provides a critical connection during emergencies.
In correspondence with the borough's acting manager, both Washington Township police Chief Thomas Cicerelle and fire Chief Joe Fox said they oppose closing Railroad Avenue's crossing. Manager Jasmine Lim included the opinions in the agenda for Borough Council's meeting Tuesday.
"This road is our shortest and fastest emergency route to the southeastern section of Washington Township and the village of Changewater," Cicerelle said in a letter to Lim. "The proposed detours would delay our response as well as force emergency response vehicles to drive through more populated residential areas."
The fire chief said that any emergency at the rail yard would require the use of all hydrants in the area -- one of which is south of the crossing -- to keep material stored at the yard cool. Closing the crossing would cut off access, he said.
"This closing would also hinder the evacuation of residents in the area in the event of an emergency in the rail yard or at the BASF facility," Fox said.
Warren Hills School District Transportation Coordinator Peggy Edmiston, in an email to the borough manager, said two bus stops would be affected by the Railroad Avenue closure and would lengthen some bus routes. To adjust, one bus would have to arrive at school before 7 a.m., meaning students may be unattended until staff arrives, she wrote.
According to the agenda, council was to discuss the road closing at Tuesday's meeting. Lim, the acting manager, in a letter to council dated Oct. 11 said they have two options: conduct an independent survey of residents, or take a stand.
"I recommend that the borough strongly oppose the proposed closing of the railroad (crossing) on Railroad Avenue," she wrote, "on the basis of public safety and inconvenience to the borough residents and other travelers."
Pidgeon, with Norfolk Southern, said the company wants to hear about the concerns from public safety leaders and residents. Anyone with questions about the proposal can contact him at 717-541-2247 or david.pidgeon@nscorp.com.
Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Orkhan Quluzade Trend:
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) recognized the movement of Fethullah Gulen as a terrorist organization, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Oct. 19, Anadolu Agency reported.
Previously, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) recognized the movement of Fethullah Gulen as a terrorist organization.
Turkey listed the Gulen movement as a terrorist group in 2015.
Earlier, the Turkish Ministry of Justice officially requested the US to arrest Fethullah Gulen. In addition, the Turkish authorities sent two requests to the US for Gulens extradition. Prior to that, the Istanbul Court released an order to arrest Gulen.
On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country. Meanwhile, a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed.
Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246 people, excluding the coup plotters, and over 2,000 people were wounded.
He also declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20. The state of emergency was prolonged for 90 more days on Oct. 3.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
Bog standard stops was the name suggested by Cllr Sean Power (FF) for two new proposed bus shelters for rural Kildare.
Speaking at this mornings Kildare Newbridge Municipal District meeting, he made the joke after councillors questioned officials about the design of the shelters and if they would have a cover and seating.
Officials said the recommendation for the stops had come from a council policy sub committee and the shelters would be funded from the Local Property Tax (LPT) pot. The council wrote to Local Link, who suggested a stop be located at Hacketts old shop in Rathangan and the other in Kilmeague.
Cllr Murty Aspell (FF) said he knew of businesses in Newbridge who would be interested in covering the cost of bus shelters and perhaps enterprises in other areas would also be willing to do so.
Officials said the aim was to provide shelters for rural areas as the National Transport Authority (NTA) only provides part funding for shelters in urban areas.
Cllr Mark Lynch (SF) said that while the locations mentioned were worthwhile, he would be of the opinion that the location should be based on the number of people using them and not on whether they were in a rural or urban area.
Cllr Joanne Pender (Ind) asked if the council was in charge of the design and would the shelter be enclosed and have a seat.
Officials said they were looking at a project in County Laois where they installed basic bus shelters at a reasonable cost.
Cllr Suzanne Doyle (FF) asked how much they cost and should the NTA not part fund them. By spending money from the LPT, are we not letting the NTA off the hook, she asked.
She said Kilmeague and Rathangan were not rural areas but were in fact towns. Cllr Doyle said she believed the shelters should be located in rural areas outside towns where people have no other recourse to transport such as the Curragh.
There is not an ounce of shelter in the Curragh, they are standing in the puddles and the muck and not a shop in sight, she said.
Rathangan resident, Cllr Mark Stafford (FG) said he supported the two suggested locations. He said small towns were considered rural areas.
Officials said the bus stops could be built for around 6,000 or 7,000. They said they would find out more about the design from their Laos counterparts and get back to the councillors.
Have you names for them already, joked Cllr Power, bog standard stops.
On the surface of it, you couldnt be blamed for feeling pretty grim about the results of the recent local elections which took place on 2 October in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In both semi-autonomous regions, the biggest winners were the large, ethno-nationalist parties who managed to maintain and entrench their positions as the major political force in their region. Perhaps most symbolically of all, the city of Srebrenica, where the infamous genocide of over 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks by the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska took place in 1995, has elected its first Serb mayor since the end of that conflict, triggering alarm amongst the Bosniak population and a resurgence in public expressions of Serbian nationalism.
Bosnians were voting for mayors and municipal councils in Bosnias two semi-autonomous regions the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. These regions have their own governments, presidents and parliaments, although they remained linked by shared federal institutions. The regions were empowered to largely run themselves after the end of the Bosnian War to maintain relative peace between the two largest ethnic groups in Bosnia.
In Republika Srpska, the Serbian nationalist party, the Independent Social Democrats Party (SNSD), successfully shored up their support through a nationalistic and since declared illegal referendum campaign for keeping the date of January 9th as the national day of the Republika, which took place just days before the election. The SNSDs pro-Serb rhetoric has only strengthened, with incumbent President Milorad Dodik campaigning on a promise of Republika Srpskas secession from Bosnia. The results show that such nationalistic rhetoric still holds a lot of power, with the SNSD winning 11 more mayoral posts and 30% more municipalities since the 2012 local elections.
Meanwhile, in the Bosniak-Croat Federation region, nationalist parties overwhelmingly defeated their non-nationalist rivals. The Party of Democratic Action (SDA), maintained their hold on power, despite reducing their overall number of mayoral posts by 12 positions since 2012, and have the backing of smaller, but still nationalistic parties in that region.
At first and even second glance it seems that the space for a third and truly multi-ethnic force to emerge in Bosnia is as narrow as ever.
However, if you dig a little deeper, these elections tell another, parallel story. While nationalism Serb and otherwise has not lost its potency in Bosnia, there seems to be a steady growth in support for an alternative.
Pro-European, multi-ethnic and socially liberal party Nasa Stranka, have almost doubled their percentage of the vote and their representation in Bosnia, and they have gained mandates in municipalities where they have never been represented before. Nasa Stranka fought on a platform of strong local service delivery, anti-corruption and powerful pro-Western internationalism, positioning themselves as a party for all of Bosnia, not one ethnic group or another.
The Liberal Democrats, through the International Office and with the support of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), has been working closely with Nasa Stranka for the past two years, specifically supporting them to increase their female representation. Nasa Stranka described by some as the womens party has led on the issue of gender equality in Bosnia and, with the support from the Liberal Democrats for female candidates for council this year, over 40% of their elected councillors and mayors are now women. In Bosnia, where women remain under-represented in all aspects of public life, this puts Nasa Stranka ahead of most other political parties in terms of equal gender representation.
As ethnic tensions continue to boil over in Bosnia, it will be a tall order for Nasa Stranka to capitalise on their local growth to increase their power at the regional and national level. However, the surge of liberal support on 2 October certainly indicates that there are thousands of Bosnians for whom ethnic identity and harking back to Bosnias troubled past is no longer enough. A gap exists in Bosnian politics where a moderate, multi-ethnic and ideological party should be. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, Nasa Stranka could fill that gap and take Bosnia forward to a genuinely post-war era.
* Harriet Shone is Head of the Liberal Democrats International Office.
Many of us have expressed the opinion that 2016 can just do one. The deaths early in the year of national treasures, the heroes wed grown up with, like David Bowie and Alan Rickman shocked us. In Scotland, that sense of loss has intensified and come closer to home as we learned of the passing on Monday of one of our most popular and stalwart members, Helen Watt.
Helen was convener of the Scottish Partys Conference Committee between 2003 and 2007. She also chaired and held most of the offices of Scottish Women Liberal Democrats. She stood for Parliament, both Holyrood and Westminster, many times. A member in East Dunbartonshire, she was a critical part of Jo Swinsons campaign team from the very beginning and helped to elect the areas councillors.
I served as an office bearer with her and always admired and learned from her practicality and common sense as I have neither.
Helens capacity for work was incredible. As well as full-on Liberal Democrat commitments, her retirement was taken up with other voluntary organisations such as Meals on Wheels. Everything she did was accomplished with energy, warmth and humour. The thought of not hearing that infectious laugh again makes me very sad. The last thing she would want, though, is sadness. Her instructions for her memorial events included positivity and red wine. I have shared many a bottle with her over the years, often well into the early hours. I have fond memories of one first thing Sunday Conference debate that she was chairing and I was aiding where we were a little ashen-faced and sleep-deprived but we got through it unscathed.
She knew an army marched on its stomach. When you came back, freezing and bedraggled, from delivering leaflets for Jo, shed be there with tea and a massive spread. Youd be replete and shed have waved you off with a smile with another massive bundle of leaflets before you knew it. Its no surprise that my fondest memories of her are associated with food and wine.
I was campaign manager for the Livingston by-election in 2005, which ended up being renowned for its catering because of Helen. She brought all sorts of fancy rolls, fillings, chutneys and salads for people to eat. She was so good at providing a delicious spread in virtually no time.
She also ran the buffet for my 40th birthday party with great aplomb, making sure everything looked pretty and appetising and organised the clearing up afterwards.
She was so generous, too. My child benefitted from a clear out of her childrens books and toys, many of which are still cherished to this day.
One Lib Dem Christmas Party became particularly exciting as her first grandson was born much earlier than expected. She was so proud of her children Jeff and Susanne and adored her grandchildren and was always telling us what they were up to.
Women Liberal Democrats (as Lib Dem Women used to be known) simply wouldnt have existed in Scotland without Helen. She drove it forward and got it well recognised and respected as an important contributor to policy debates.
Helen was the life and soul of any party and the Party. She was a dear and loyal friend to many. I know that many of you reading this will have your own memories of her. Please share them in the comments.
Helens family has set up a donation page to raise money for the Marie Curie nurses who cared for her so well during her final illness. They would appreciate your donations in her memory.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
A YOUNG man who gave conflicting evidence during a district court appeal has avoided a prison sentenced for driving without insurance while disqualified.
Thomas Whelan, aged 24, who is originally from Upper Gerald Griffin Street initially told Limerick Circuit Court he was 100% sure he was not driving at OConnell Street on October 13, 2014 before later admitting that he had been stopped by gardai.
The defendant, who has a large number of previous convictions, was sentenced to six months imprisonment and disqualified for 20 years at Limerick District Court on March 22, last.
During the appeal, which was heard before Judge Gerald Keyes, Detective Garda Anthony ODriscoll said he stopped a vehicle being driven by the defendant at around 1.15pm.
He said he knows Mr Whelan and that he had stopped him driving the same car the previous day.
Detective Garda ODriscoll confirmed the defendant was not the registered owner of the vehicle which was seized on the date of the offence.
In his evidence, the defendant insisted he was not driving the car on the day and that he did not know who was driving the car.
I wouldnt be here contesting it if I did it. I wasnt driving that car.
However, a short time later, the defendant admitted he was behind the wheel after he warned by Judge Keyes that it would be in his interests to be up front and honest.
After taking to the witness box for the second time, Mr Whelan said: I put my hands up, I was driving that day and the day before. Im sorry about that.
Affirming the district court conviction, Judge Keyes said he wanted to impose a sentence that is a deterrent to him getting into any vehicle again.
He imposed a nine month prison sentence which he suspended for two years on condition Mr Whelan stays out of trouble.
I guarantee you this if you are found in a vehicle over the next two years you will serve nine months in prison, he said as he directly addressed the defendant.
The judge reduced the 20 year ban which was imposed in the district court to 12 years.
He did not change any of the fines.
THE boss of ACI Worldwide, which has just announced at least 50 new jobs in Limerick, said it is staff in the city which persuaded the firm to expand.
Philip Heasley, who heads the electronic payment and banking solutions firm, praised the 82 workers currently at the company, which unveiled its new data centre in Plassey.
Im glad we made the decision to build a data centre here. We could have built it in many places in Europe. But we stuck very tenaciously to building it here. There were lots of reasons it may not have worked. But I dont know if we could have built it as quickly anywhere else, or with the same level of enthusiasm that everyone has displayed and the amount of hard work done, he said.
ACI, which can count Irelands two largest banks, among its clientele, has invested $20m at the new centre in the former Flextronics factory.
And while the IDA has officially announced there will be 50 new jobs, the company in presentations, actually indicated there will be closer to 70, as it ramps up its headcount to 150 workers.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan said: Its a great company. Its another great announcement for Limerick city in particular.. Going from 82 jobs to 150 jobs is quite significant. You can see from the physical layout of Plassey, and the parkland atmosphere that this is the new Ireland. These are the kind of jobs we want to see here, and these are the kinds of companies we want to bring in.
ACI exists to provide electronics payments, banking and fraud protection solutions and services to more than 4,600 financial institutions, retailers from billers around the world.
Founded in Naples, Florida, it employs 4,500 people globally. It opened in Limerick in 2006.
The latest jobs boost means that more than 750 IDA-backed roles have been announced in the last month. ACI joins Fazzi Healthcare (300 jobs), Casa (50 jobs), WP Engine (100 jobs), Trusource Labs (134 jobs) and Ortec in Newcastle West, which brought with it 110 new roles.
THE COST of care in Limericks two public nursing homes is 83% more expensive than the city and countys 23 private centres, new HSE figures show.
According to the figures, the cost of care at St Camillus Hospital, Shelbourne Road, is at 1,498 per week, while the average cost of private and voluntary homes is 803 per week.
There are currently 92 patients at St Camillus Hospital. There are 70 long-stay patients. This brings the potential annual cost of care for patients to around 105,000 per annum, at the Shelbourne Road facility.
Weekly cost of care at St Itas Hospital, Newcastle West, is 1,458, according to the HSE figures.
While private nursing homes regularly publish their cost of care, Nursing Homes Ireland has lobbied for five years for the HSE to publish its own figures, a spokesperson said.
NHI stated that it is no surprise it has taken the State so long to publish as it has been operating a system that discriminates against the private and voluntary sector. The publication of the costings has laid bare the true cost of nursing home care and the implications of the failure to address this glaring inequity must be addressed by Government. Failure to do so threatens the sustainability of the private and voluntary nursing home sector and the vital services provided, the organisation warned.
NHI chief executive, Tadhg Daly claims that the State is discriminating in a scandalous way against private and voluntary care facilities.
Private and voluntary nursing homes are under intense, unjustifiable pressure because of the State pinning them against the wall when it comes to the negotiation of fees. No independent appeals mechanism is available if a private and voluntary nursing home deems a fee unacceptable. The State continues to abuse its dominant position within the sector, adopting a take it or leave it approach during the fee negotiation process under the Fair Deal.
He further described the differences in the cost of care as a rotten inequality. Private and voluntary nursing homes are the majority providers of nursing home care but are expected to do it at half the fees provided to State nursing homes. The sustainability of private and voluntary nursing homes is threatened by fees that are not recognising true costs incurred.
Equality in fees payable must become an immediate priority within the Fair Deal. The buck has been passed in this regard by successive Ministers over a number of years and it now must be prioritised. The long-awaited publication of the figures must hasten the review of the Fair Deal pricing mechanism and bring into effect a fair pricing model that provides fees to private and voluntary providers that are reflective of the true costs of providing the high dependency care that nursing homes are delivering in our communities.
The lowest cost of care within a private sector is 685 per week, with the highest at 910.
SEARCHES for new homes in Limerick have surged in the week following the announcement by the Government of the first-time buyers help-to-buy scheme.
The property website, Daft.ie, which has 2.21 million unique users each month, recorded an increase of 77% in searches for new homes in Limerick when compared with the average daily searches for new homes in Limerick in 2016.
The spike in searches is quite large and certainly points to an increased interest in new homes on the back of the announcement by the Government. The areas to attract the most interest in Limerick were Castletroy, Limerick city centre and Fedamore, said Martin Clancy from Daft.ie.
In Limerick city, prices between July and September 2016 were 14% higher than a year previously, compared to a rise of 17% seen a year ago. The average house price is now 164,000, 38% above its lowest point.
The help-to-buy scheme will offer first-time buyers a rebate of as much as 20,000 on income tax paid over the previous four years. They will be able to claim the rebate of as much as five per cent of the purchase price from January 2017, for all purchases dating from July 19, 2016. However, the scheme, which is due to run until December 31, 2019, only applies to new properties.
On average over 1,000 property searches occur on Daft.ie every minute. There are currently over 1,500 properties for sale in Limerick, based on listings with Daft.ie.
To date this year 1,237 properties are listed as selling in Limerick, according to the Property Price Register. Of those, just over 900 are priced under 200,000; a further 250 properties are priced between 200,000 and 300,000; 90 properties are priced between 300,000 and 400,000; a further 24 properties are priced between 400,000 and 500,000; and 27 properties are priced above 500,000.
Only two properties in Limerick are priced in excess of 1m. They are Ballyneale House in Ballingarry, a seven bedroom period property on 17 acres, with up to 37 acres available, for 2m. It was previously listed for 3m in April 2015, but 1m has been shaved off its guide.
Glin Castle remains listed for sale online for 6.5m, after first coming to the market this May, even though the family has expressed hopes of turning it into a boutique hotel.
LIMERICK businessman JP McManus is continuing to fight in court in US in a bid to recover $5.2 million (4.7 million) withheld in taxes in gambling earnings he won from a US billionaire during a backgammon match.
McManus is taking the case against against the US government in a bid to recover the six-figure sum withheld in taxes from $17.4 million he won from US businessman Alec Gores during a three-day backgammon match in California in 2012.
At a court hearing in Washington this week, Terry Giles, attorney for Mr McManus, questioned the motives of Irish Revenue officials in assisting their American counterparts, the Internal Revenue Service.
The IRS earlier claimed that Mr McManus does not qualify for a tax exemption on $17.4 million made from betting on a serious backgammon match as he was not a resident of a contracting state under the double taxation treaty between Ireland and the US.
McManus may not be the most liked person within the Revenue Commissioners because he is wealthy, well known and paid no tax for 15 years, his lawyer claimed in court.
Mr Gores withheld the $5.2 million on the money paid to Mr McManus on the basis that the winnings might be subject to US federal income tax.
The IRS said in a filing submitted to the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington that McManus, a tax resident of Switzerland, was able to avoid Irish income tax by spending significant time outside Ireland in 2012, and thus he was not deemed a resident of Ireland for tax purposes.
McManus has argued that his winnings should be exempt from US income tax under the treaty because he was an Irish citizen who paid the domicile levy of 200,000 to Ireland in 2012.
The Irish Times has reported that Mr Giles claimed that the Revenue way-overstepped its bounds in the case by disputing that the 200,000 domicile levy paid by Mr McManus and other wealthy Irish tax exiles meant he benefitted from a 1997 double taxation treaty between the countries that made his gambling winnings tax-exempt in the US.
Mr Giles told Judge Nancy Firestone that the Irish authorities were assisting in the case because it did not want the Limerickman, a resident of Switzerland, to have the $5.2 million he claims he is due.
He said McManus has paid no tax in Ireland between 1995 and 2010.
Attorney Jason Bergmann, for the US government, argued that the Irish authorities had no financial interest in the case.
He told the court that 200,000 levy could not be considered a tax covered under the treaty because it was a limited type of wealth tax capped at a fraction of Mr McManuss likely substantial worldwide income.
The levy was not a comprehensive tax on worldwide income because it was not linked to the amount of income earned globally, he said, but a capped amount imposed on Irish-domiciled citizens who had worldwide income in excess of 1 million and Irish assets worth more than 5 million.
For Mr McManus, 200,000 is a drop in the bucket, said Mr Bergmann, noting that if he won $17.4 million in one weekend presumably his worldwide income was much larger than that.
Mr Giles represented Mr McManus in court, alongside attorney Mark Curry and his Limerick solicitor John Power.
The case gets very strange, said Mr Giles, when the US government hid the name of the Irish tax official by redacting his identity from a letter sent to the IRS stating that the levy was not covered.
This meant Mr McManus could not question the official in a deposition, he said. He claimed the official may have breached Irish law by disclosing what was not a covered tax under the treaty.
Mr Bergmann said that the name was withheld by the IRS, not the Irish tax authorities. No one should infer that Ireland was trying to hide something, he said.
Judge Firestone asked both sides to agree to a sealed protective order keeping the identify of the official private to the parties. She expressed concern that an individual may be exposed to a potential criminal liability for a violation of Irish law.
Mr Giles also argued that under the non-discriminatory article 25 of the treaty Mr McManus should not have his gambling winnings taxed in the US became they are not taxed in Ireland, describing it as the good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander clause.
The judge asked for further written submissions from both sides on this issue at the end of the hearing.
The case continues.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Orkhan Quluzade Trend:
Turkey can hold a referendum in April 2017 to amend the countrys constitution, deputy chair of Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party, Hayati Yazici, said in an interview with NTV TV channel Oct. 19.
According to Yazici, proposals for changes to the constitution are to be submitted to Turkeys Grand National Assembly (parliament) in January 2017.
Within the framework of the referendum, it is planned to change the form of governance in Turkey from parliamentary to presidential system.
Earlier a source in the Turkish presidential administration told Trend that it is vital for Turkey to adopt a new constitution since the current constitution does not meet the interests of the country and its citizens.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
OSCAR winning producer Lord David Puttnam has praised the efforts of an enterprising group in Limerick, which has invested more than 20,000 hours in restoring a historic wooden sailing vessel.
To mark a significant milestone in the boat rebuilding project of the AK Ilen in bringing Irelands sole surviving wooden sailing ship back to life, a ceremony was held at the weekend in Cork, where Lord Puttnam resides.
The AK Ilen was famously sailed to the Falklands Islands by Conor OBrien, an Oxford-educated Limerickman and the first Irishman to circumnavigate the globe, in 1927. Seven decades later another son of Limerick, Gary MacMahon, a sailor himself, flew to the Falklands and purchased this piece of living history, with a capacity of 43 tonnes.
Since then some 20,000 hours have been invested in restoring the ship to its former glory by over 20 volunteers and a group of skilled tradesmen and boat builders from around the world, through Ilen School & Network for Wooden Boat Building in Roxboro, which opened in 2008.
Brother Anthony Keane, of Glenstal Abbey, a key promoter of the Ilen Project, officiated at the ceremony and said that what has been achieved so far showed that there was not alone a great work ethic in the Ilen Project but also a spiritual commitment to the work being done.
This is an amazing act of faith and commitment come to fruition. It is heading for the sea, like a salmon, and it will not be stopped, even if some of the financial people have still to solve their problems of calculus and apply their mathematics, said Br Keane.
Guest speaker Lord Puttnam said that the project underlined what could be done by a determined community, a community that could make their decisions for themselves, not to be dependent upon others beyond their community, but to be self-sufficient, and the project of the Ilen showed that.
Dr Edward Walsh, the founding president of the University of Limerick, told of how he had at the outset of the project urged those involved go ahead and buy the boat and pretend that the money was there. Following Saturdays decking-out ceremony, Gary MacMahon, of the school, said while the ship has been restored to its 1927 state, there is much work left to be done.
THE LAST surviving brother of the McCourt clan has been presented with the Eugene ONeill Lifetime Achievement Award in New York.
The award was presented this Monday night to Malachy McCourt, 85, the actor and author, at the Manhattan Club by the Irish American Writers and Artists Inc.
The Eugene ONeill Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2009 to honour the accomplishments of a writer, actor, musician or artist whose body of work best exemplifies the level of integrity established by ONeill.
Previous honorees include Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy, and actor and noted ONeill interpreter Brian Dennehy. Born in Brooklyn, and raised in Limerick, Malachy, brother of the Pulitzer Prize winning Frank, returned to the US aged 20.
He has appeared on and off-Broadway in numerous plays, some of which he co-authored and starred in with his brother Frank.
As a writer, he has published a New York Times best-selling memoir, A Monk Swimming.
Malachy has been a powerful force in the arts of Irish New York for decades, said IAW&A President Larry Kirwan.
With his acting and writing talent, his generosity of spirit, and his love of life and creativity, he is known as our organisations spiritual godfather. Malachy came up with the idea of the IAW&A Salon and he reads and sings there every month, delighting audiences and encouraging emerging artists.
A screening of award-winning Irish documentary, Atlantic, will take place this Wednesday in the Belltable followed by a Q&A session with its Limerick-based produced Marie-Therese Garvey.
Atlantic follows the fortunes of three small fishing communities as they struggle to maintain their way of life in the face of mounting economic and ecological challenges. As the oil majors drive deeper into their fragile seas, and the worlds largest fishing companies push fish stocks to the brink, coastal people and the species they rely on may be reaching a point of no return.
It was directed to Risteard ODomhnaill, who previously directed The Pipe, examining the Corrib gas pipeline controversy.
My last documentary, The Pipe, told the story of a small coastal community as they faced down one of the worlds most powerful oil companies, which was forcing a high-pressure raw gas pipeline through their farms and fishing grounds, he explained.
The story raised more questions for me than it answered, leading me to look at the politics of our oil and gas prospects off the Irish coast. What has since unfolded is an incredible story of resource mismanagement, and the capture of our offshore riches oil, gas and fishing whilst our gaze is elsewhere.
Atlantic is one of the most successful Irish crowd-funded film projects and to date has garnered numerous awards including Best Irish Documentary at the Dublin International Film Festival this year.
Emmy Award-winning actor Brendan Gleeson narrates the film which was shot across Ireland, Norway and Newfoundland (Canada).
The screening, part of the See for Cinema series in the Belltable, takes place at 8pm.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Orkhan Quluzade Trend:
In case if the fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo intensifies, nearly one million refugees may flee to Turkey, the countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Oct. 19, TRT Haber TV channel reported.
Turkey doesnt intend to undertake the responsibility for these refugees, Erdogan said.
He added that after the conflict in Syria ends, Turkey is ready to help restore Aleppo, as it doesnt consider this city as foreign.
According to the Turkish Office for Prevention and Elimination of Consequences of Emergency (AFAD), there are three million Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has spent more than $10 billion on Syrian refugees.
Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives.
Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.
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Allen Kane celebrated at first-day ceremony for Florentine Madonna and Child stamp
Oct 19, 2016, 6 AM
Allen Kane (left), director of the National Postal Museum, and Linda Malone, area vice president of the Capital Metro Area for the United States Postal Service, unveiled the Florentine Madonna and Child stamp at the first-day ceremony held Oct. 18 at the
By Bill McAllister, Washington Correspondent
The United States Postal Service dedicated its 2016 Florentine Madonna and Child Christmas stamp with tributes to Italy and a former postal official who has hosted many of Washingtons first-day ceremonies.
The Oct. 18 release of the forever holiday stamp drew a small audience of about 150 people to the National Postal Museum on Capitol Hill.
Jeffrey C. Williamson, chief human resources officer at the USPS, used the event to laud Allen Kane, the museums director for the past 14 years.
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Assisting Kane with the unveiling of the stamp was Linda Malone, who serves as area vice president of the Capital Metro Area for the Postal Service.
Kane, a former Postal Service executive, has hosted dozens of first-day events at the museum during his tenure, and the Florentine Madonna and Child is likely his last.
Citing a recent heart attack, Kane has announced that he will retire from the museum in January.
We want to say thank you and goodbye to a special colleague, Williamson told the audience.
During his tenure, the museum has seen a remarkable growth, the postal executive said, citing an increase in exhibitions and the stamps in its collection.
It would be impossible to overstate the significant contributions Allen has made to both the agency and this museum, Williamson said, referring to Kanes 30 years with the Postal Service.
Everyone who supports the Postal Service owes Allen Kane a debt of gratitude, he said to applause.
Kane expressed appreciation for the tribute but added: I sure dont want to be on a stamp yet.
Thats because the USPS requires anyone honored on a U.S. stamp to be deceased, he said.
The ceremony, held in what was once the great hall of Washingtons premier post office, also was filled with praise for the unknown Italian artist who created the Florentine Madonna on the stamp.
National Gallery of Art curator Gretchen Hirschauer told how the painting was believed to have been influenced by two 15th-century Florentine painters.
As for the artist, we hope one day to discover his name, she said.
Miles Fisher of the Sons of Italy reminded the audience how strongly Italians have influenced America.
A highlight of the event was the singing of the Eye Street Boys Choir from Washingtons Gonzaga College High School.
They never disappoint, said Williamson, who noted that his son is a member of the group.
Oct 18, 2016, 11 PM
A leader in the establishment of the Oregon Territory, John McLoughlin is shown at left on this 3 commemorative from 1948.
By Michael Baadke
John McLoughlin, a medical doctor, fur trader, and community leader in the Pacific Northwest, has been referred to as the Father of Oregon. He was born Oct, 19, 1784, in La Riviere du Loup, Quebec, Canada.
He joined the North West Company as a physician at Fort William on the northern shore of Lake Superior, and became a partner in the company, which would merge with Hudson's Bay Company in 1821.
Three years later, McLoughlin represented the company in the Columbia District and built Fort Vancouver, where he supervised a vast trade in furs, timber, and more. In 1842, he established the town of Oregon City, where he later lived and became mayor.
McLoughlin maintained peaceful relations with the Indians, who called him Great White Eagle for his imposing stature and mane of white hair. He aided settlers arriving in the Northwest, including Methodist missionary Jason Lee, who was also instrumental in developing the region.
McLoughlin is honored along with Lee on the 3 stamp issued Aug. 14, 1948, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Oregon Territory (Scott 964).
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 19
By Orkhan Quluzade Trend:
Three mortar shells landed in the territory of Turkish province of Osmaniye, Haber 7 newspaper reported Oct. 19.
Two people were wounded in the ensuing explosions.
Reportedly, Osmaniye was shelled from the territory of Syria.
On Aug. 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force with the support of the coalition aircraft launched an operation to liberate the city of Jarabulus from the Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) militants in northern Syria.
The operation was dubbed the Shield of the Euphrates.
Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives. Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The IS, the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.
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Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said that Russia circulated in the UN Security Council a draft statement on the necessity to separate moderate opposition from terrorists in Syria, Sputnik reported.
Russia circulated in the UN Security Council a draft statement on the necessity to separate moderate opposition from terrorists in Syria, in the light of the halting the airstrikes by the Russian and Syrian forces in Aleppo area, Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said.
"We believe, that under these circumstances it is extremely important for the member states that influence the opposition groups in the eastern Aleppo and beyond, to intensify efforts, to separate expeditiously all moderate opposition forces from terrorist entities designated by the Security Council We have prepared a draft press statement and hope it will be approved by the members of the [UN Security] Council, " Churkin told journalists.
Churkin added, that it was also highly important to prevent providing individuals and groups that were associated with the terrorist groups, designated by the UN Security Council, with material and financial support.
On Monday, Russia announced the humanitarian pause in Aleppo from 08:00 to 16:00 local time on October 20, halting its airstrikes so that civilians could escape the besieged rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo and aid convoys could safely get through to those who remain there.
On Tuesday, Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said that a longer ceasefire in the city of Aleppo was possible, but it has to be agreed on multilaterally.
A gunman in an Afghan army uniform on Wednesday shot dead at least two American advisers and wounded three more near a base in the Afghan capital before being killed himself, The Daily Mail reported citing Reuters.
The American deaths included one soldier and one civilian, while one soldier and two civilians were injured and in stable condition, the U.S. military command in Kabul said in a statement.
"The two individuals were killed during an attack near a coalition base by an unknown assailant, who was later killed," the statement said. "They were conducting duties as part of the larger NATO mission to train, advise, and assist the Afghan security services."
About 13,000 international troops and thousands of additional civilian contractors remain in Afghanistan to train and assist government forces battling Taliban insurgents hoping to reimpose a fundamentalist Islamic regime 15 years after they lost power in a U.S.-led military operation.
The shooting took place at about 11 a.m., while the international troops were visiting a base in Kabul, said Dawlat Waziri, a Defence Ministry spokesman.
He said reports indicated the suspected attacker, who was killed when the international troops returned fire, was wearing an Afghan army uniform.
American officials said they were investigating the incident.
More companies are launching drones for commercial use as regulators try to keep up with the growing UAV industry. (Photo : Getty Images)
The market for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has seen impressive growth over the last couple years, with companies that include the likes of GoPro and Amazon joining the race.
As drones move closer to commercial adoption, issues regarding security and privacy arise inevitably. To combat these, some makers introduce products designed to stop and take down a drone.
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These so-called "anti-drone" weapons perform tasks such as blocking GPS signals and shutting down a camera mounted on a UAV. One company called HiGH + MiGHTY boasts Skynet, a rifle that bars a drone from detecting GPS signals and disables its camera.
According to online site Popular Science, the rifle powers up in 90 minutes and can hold a charge in standby position for 15 hours. Working time is two hours.
Skynet is said to operate within 1.25 miles without interference. In a video, the drone targeted by Skynet can be seen landing, although it is uncertain if this was directly triggered by the rifle itself or the pilot's command. Popular Science said it tried to reach the Taiwan-based company but received no response.
HiGH + MiGHTY is not the first company to cater to this anti-drone niche. In an earlier report, Popular Science wrote about a cyber-rifle designed for the military that can take down a drone.
In the Netherlands, meanwhile, eagles are trained to "snatch a quadcopter out of the sky," offering a counter to these flying machines, which other people may find intrusive.
The fast-paced growth of the UAV industry has not escaped the gaze of regulators, but rules surrounding the technology remain uncertain in some levels.
"Air-safety authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have acknowledged that traditional rule making is too slow and rigid to cope with the rapidly expanding applications of the flying machines, from bridge inspections to land surveys to news photography. And the pressure to spell out exactly what's allowed and what isn't is growing as the industry booms," wrote the Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for its part is welcoming new rules that will complement the current pace of the UAV industry. At a conference, FAA chief Michael Huerta said that regulations have to be altered "in a way that does not stifle the kind of innovation we are seeing."
China is determined to stop illegal organ trade. (Photo : Getty Images)
In a conference held recently in Beijing, Chinese doctors made a commitment to stop organ trafficking and said that they will stop performing transplants if the organ came from an executed prisoner.
World Health Organization and the Montreal-based Transplantation Society representatives who attended the conference praised Chinese officials for reforms in the country's transplant system. The reforms include a ban put in place last year on using organs from executed inmates.
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Chinese surgeons have been performing transplants using organs that came from prisoners who were in the death row. The country has received widespread criticism for violations on human rights.
A report was published by former Canadian lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann gathered from figures from hospitals across China. The report showed that there is a massive discrepancy between official figures for the number of transplants carried out.
"The (Communist Party) says the total number of legal transplants is about 10,000 per year. But we can easily surpass the official Chinese figure just by looking at the two or three biggest hospitals," Matas said.
The government denied the allegations.
"As for the testimony and the published report, I want to say that such stories about forced organ harvesting in China are imaginary and baseless--they don't have any factual foundation," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
Dr. Jose Nunez, an adviser from the World Health Organization, said that China was building the "next great" system during the Beijing conference.
"You are taking this country to a leading position within the transplantation world," he said.
According to Dr. Francis Delmonico, a surgeon and a professor at Harvard Medical School, "It's not a matter for us to prove to you that it's zero "It's a matter for the government to fulfill what is the law, just as it is in the other countries of the world that we go to."
North Korea has upgraded and restarted its atomic bomb fuel production plants (Photo : YouTube/ODN)
It seems more likely that as tensions between Russia and the United States continue to escalate, it is the former that will launch a preemptive attack, possibly sparking a full-scale nuclear showdown. But North Korea begs to disagree, boasting that it has the capabilities to hit the mainland America.
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In new report, NBC News said that North Korea is readying up for more nuclear tests following the fifth detonation attributed to the country this 2016. Pyongyang's defiance also translates to it readiness to wage nuclear confrontation against the United States, the report added.
The Asian country sees the U.S. as a threat to its existence that the option of preemptive strikes aimed on American targets is on the table. "A preemptive nuclear strike is not something the U.S. has a monopoly on ... If we see that the U.S. would do it to us, we would do it first. ... We have the technology," NBC reported a senior North Korean as saying.
The official was identified as Foreign Ministry's Institute for American Studies director Lee Yong Pil.
A nuclear strike on U.S. targets even in the absence of clear provocations is justified, Lee said, insisting that North Korea is a constant target for nuclear annihilation by Washington.
"The U.S. has nuclear weapons off our coast, targeting our country, our capital and our Dear Leader, Kim Jong Un ... We will not step back as long as there's a nuclear threat to us from the United States," Lee told NBC.
And the threat voiced out by Lee appears credible enough. As mentioned, this 2016 alone North Korea was observed to have already executed its fifth nuclear detonation and there's no stopping the country from going ahead with further tests. As Lee has indicated, his nation has existing nuclear policy chiefly for self-preservation.
"We have to have nuclear weapons to protect our country, and it's our policy to go nuclear," the official declared.
While U.S. officials and scientists have long maintained that the North Korean military remains incapable of attacking the continental United States, Pyongyang insisted that its weapons delivery system is further enhanced by its advanced missile program. Rockets fired from North Korea will not only reach the U.S. mainland but also the moon or even other planets, Pyongyang officials said in highlighting Nokor's increasing capability of striking at the heart of America.
More importantly, the officials stressed that any preemptive strikes from North Korea will surely not benefit from any kind of help coming from its known allies - the Russians and the Iranians.
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Currently 25 states and the District of Columbia have medical cannabis programs. On Nov. 8, Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota will vote on medical cannabis ballot initiatives, while Montana will vote on repealing limitations in its existing law.
We have no political position on cannabis legalization. We study the cannabis plant, also known as marijuana, and its related chemical compounds. Despite claims that cannabis or its extracts relieve all sorts of maladies, the research has been sparse and the results mixed. At the moment, we just don't know enough about cannabis or its elements to judge how effective it is as a medicine.
What does the available research suggest about medical cannabis, and why do we know so little about it?
What are researchers studying?
While some researchers are investigating smoked or vaporized cannabis most are looking at specific cannabis compounds, called cannabinoids.
From a research standpoint, cannabis is considered a dirty drug because it contains hundreds of compounds with poorly understood effects. That's why researchers tend to focus on just one cannabinoid at a time. Only two plant-based cannabinoids, THC and cannabidiol, have been studied extensively, but there could be others with medical benefits that we don't know about yet.
THC is the main active component of cannabis. It activates cannabinoid receptors in the brain, causing the high associated with cannabis, as well as in the liver, and other parts of the body. The only FDA-approved cannabinoids that doctors can legally prescribe are both lab produced drugs similar to THC. They are prescribed to increase appetite and prevent wasting caused by cancer or AIDS.
Cannabidiol (also called CBD), on the other hand, doesn't interact with cannabinoid receptors. It doesn't cause a high. Seventeen states have passed laws allowing access to CBD for people with certain medical conditions.
Our bodies also produce cannabinoids, called endocannabinoids. Researchers are creating new drugs that alter their function, to better understand how cannabinoid receptors work. The goal of these studies is to discover treatments that can use the body's own cannabinoids to treat conditions such as chronic pain and epilepsy, instead of using cannabis itself.
Cannabis is promoted as a treatment for many medical conditions. We'll take a look at two, chronic pain and epilepsy, to illustrate what we actually know about its medical benefits.
Is it a chronic pain treatment?
Research suggests that some people with chronic pain self-medicate with cannabis. However, there is limited human research on whether cannabis or cannabinoids effectively reduce chronic pain.
Research in people suggest that certain conditions, such as chronic pain caused by nerve injury, may respond to smoked or vaporized cannabis, as well as an FDA-approved THC drug. But, most of these studies rely on subjective self-reported pain ratings, a significant limitation. Only a few controlled clinical trials have been run, so we can't yet conclude whether cannabis is an effective pain treatment.
An alternative research approach focuses on drug combination therapies, where an experimental cannabinoid drug is combined with an existing drug. For instance, a recent study in mice combined a low dose of a THC-like drug with an aspirin-like drug. The combination blocked nerve-related pain better than either drug alone.
In theory, the advantage to combination drug therapies is that less of each drug is needed, and side effects are reduced. In addition, some people may respond better to one drug ingredient than the other, so the drug combination may work for more people. Similar studies have not yet been run in people.
Well-designed epilepsy studies are badly needed
Despite some sensational news stories and widespread speculation on the internet, the use of cannabis to reduce epileptic seizures is supported more by research in rodents than in people.
In people the evidence is much less clear. There are many anecdotes and surveys about the positive effects of cannabis flowers or extracts for treating epilepsy. But these aren't the same thing as well-controlled clinical trials, which can tell us which types of seizure, if any, respond positively to cannabinoids and give us stronger predictions about how most people respond.
While CBD has gained interest as a potential treatment for seizures in people, the physiological link between the two is unknown. As with chronic pain, the few clinical studies have been done included very few patients. Studies of larger groups of people can tell us whether only some patients respond positively to CBD.
We also need to know more about the cannabinoid receptors in the brain and body, what systems they regulate, and how they could be influenced by CBD. For instance, CBD may interact with anti-epileptic drugs in ways we are still learning about. It may also have different effects in a developing brain than in an adult brain. Caution is particularly urged when seeking to medicate children with CBD or cannabis products.
Cannabis research is hard
Well-designed studies are the most effective way for us to understand what medical benefits cannabis may have. But research on cannabis or cannabinoids is particularly difficult.
Cannabis and its related compounds, THC and CBD, are on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which is for drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse and includes Ecstasy and heroin.
In order to study cannabis, a researcher must first request permission at the state and federal level. This is followed by a lengthy federal review process involving inspections to ensure high security and detailed record-keeping.
In our labs, even the very small amounts of cannabinoids we need to conduct research in mice are highly scrutinized. This regulatory burden discourages many researchers.
Designing studies can also be a challenge. Many are based on users' memories of their symptoms and how much cannabis they use. Bias is a limitation of any study that includes self-reports. Furthermore, laboratory-based studies usually include only moderate to heavy users, who are likely to have formed some tolerance to marijuana's effects and may not reflect the general population. These studies are also limited by using whole cannabis, which contains many cannabinoids, most of which are poorly understood.
Placebo trials can be a challenge because the euphoria associated with cannabis makes it easy to identify, especially at high THC doses. People know when they are high.
Another type of bias, called expectancy bias, is a particular issue with cannabis research. This is the idea that we tend to experience what we expect, based on our previous knowledge. For example, people report feeling more alert after drinking what they are told is regular coffee, even if it is actually decaffeinated. Similarly, research participants may report pain relief after ingesting cannabis, because they believe that cannabis relieves pain.
The best way to overcome expectancy effects is with a balanced placebo design, in which participants are told that they are taking a placebo or varying cannabis dose, regardless of what they actually receive.
Studies should also include objective, biological measures, such as blood levels of THC or CBD, or physiological and sensory measures routinely used in other areas of biomedical research. At the moment, few do this, prioritizing self-reported measures instead.
Cannabis isn't without risks
Abuse potential is a concern with any drug that affects the brain, and cannabinoids are no exception. Cannabis is somewhat similar to tobacco, in that some people have great difficulty quitting. And like tobacco, cannabis is a natural product that has been selectively bred to have strong effects on the brain and is not without risk.
Although many cannabis users are able to stop using the drug without problem, 2-6 percent of users have difficulty quitting. Repeated use, despite the desire to decrease or stop using, is known as cannabis use disorder.
As more states more states pass medical cannabis or recreational cannabis laws, the number of people with some degree of cannabis use disorder is also likely to increase.
It is too soon to say for certain that the potential benefits of cannabis outweigh the risks. But with restrictions to cannabis (and cannabidiol) loosening at the state level, research is badly needed to get the facts in order.
Steven Kinsey, Assistant Professor of Psychology, West Virginia University and Divya Ramesh, Research Associate, University of Connecticut
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Two Egyptian military personnel and six militants were killed in the restive North Sinai region, the army said, in the fourth day of a fresh operation by Egypt's air and ground forces to strike insurgents based there.
The attacks on Tuesday come as part of a new campaign launched by the army to fight militants in the area after a Friday attack on an army checkpoint in the Bir Al-Abd area west of El-Arish, the capital of North Sinai, killed 12 soldiers and wounded at least six others.
Egyptian air forces and artillery brigade pounded seven militant hideouts on Tuesday, and damaged 16 havens and arms caches used by the insurgents, the military said in a statement late in the day.
The raids left six militants and two soldiers dead, it added.
Since Fridays attack, the army said it has killed over 50 militants in retaliation.
Egyptian forces have in recent years been battling an Islamist insurgency based in parts of the northern Sinai region, which has mainly targeted police and troops.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said in an interview with three public newspapers published on Saturday that his country's war against Islamic militants in the Sinai Peninsula would be long, but that conditions in the mountainous, thinly populated region were improving.
"The terrorists are evolving and we are improving our operations," he said.
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Egypt's Court of Cassation, the country's highest appeals court, overturned on Wednesday death sentences for 15 defendants in the case of the storming Kerdasa police station and the murder of a police officer on 3 July 2013.
In April 2015, a Giza criminal court had sentenced the defendants to death after it convicted them of murder and attempted murder in the storming of the station in rural Giza hours after the ousting of Islamist president Mohamed morsi.
Last September, in a case also involving unrest in Kerdasa after the ouster of Morsi, a Giza criminal court confirmed death sentences for seven defendants for the murder of high-ranking police officer Nabil Farag, who was killed in September 2013 during a shootout with the ousted president's supporters in the town. This sentence can still be appealed.
Kerdasa is known to be a stronghold for supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group.
The Brotherhood was officially designated a terrorist organisation by the government in December 2013 following several deadly attacks on security personnel blamed on members of the group.
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Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases, Seasonal & Current Events
By Long Island News & PR Published: October 19 2016
On Tuesday, October 25th, Councilman Mark Cuthbertson will be hosting a one-day event designed to educate and better protect senior citizens from identify theft.
Huntington, NY - October 18, 2016 - On Tuesday, October 25th, Councilman Mark Cuthbertson will be hosting a one-day event designed to educate and better protect senior citizens from identify theft.
In todays technologically advanced world, identity thieves have more tools in their toolboxes to locate and steal our very valuable and sensitive personal information, stated Councilman Mark Cuthbertson. Statistics have shown that seniors are even more susceptible to the creative criminals that prey on their personal information and steal their identities. Identity theft can cause a significant amount of financial and emotional hardship, which is why it is so important help protect seniors from falling prey, added Cuthbertson.
Paper Shredding: To better protect our seniors from becoming a statistic, Councilman Cuthbertson will be holding a four-hour paper shredding event at the Town of Huntington Senior Center, located at 423 Park Avenue in Huntington on Tuesday, October 25th, beginning at 11:00am, courtesy of Safety Shred. This will provide our seniors with a safe and environmentally friendly way of discarding old or unwanted personal documents and have them shredded (please note that there is a three banker-box size limit per person).
Avoid I.D. Theft Workshop: In addition, Councilman Cuthbertson will also be joining forces with the Suffolk County Police Departments Identity Theft Unit to provide seniors with a thirty minute seminar on ways to help keep themselves and their loved ones safe. The seminar will take place concurrently on October 25th in the Senior Center Dining Room from 1:30pm to 2:00pm.
Medicine Disposal: We will also provide residents with the ability to safely dispose of medicines, thanks to the Suffolk County Police Departments Second Precinct. Residents will be able to drop off unwanted and unneeded medications, which will be taken by the Suffolk County Police Department for environmentally safe disposal. The Town will also distribute information about the adverse environmental effects on groundwater and Long Islands drinking water supply when proper protocols are not followed in disposing of pharmaceutical drugs.
Its about educating our seniors on ways to become more vigilant with their personal information, said Cuthbertson. Whether shopping day to day with charge cards, getting mail from the mailbox or identifying what not to throw away in the trash, there are many valuable lessons to be learned.
For more information, please call Councilman Mark Cuthbertsons Office at 351-3171 or email
Local News, Business & Finance, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: October 19 2016
The County may not have received the quality and cost effective comprehensive inmate medical care expected for the $11.8 million annual contract expenditures.
The audit revealed that the Correctional Center had not inquired as to whether the quality of care being provided met the minimum contractually mandated standards, until June of 2016 when it asked Armor to provide the contract required performance metrics.
Mineola, NY - October 17, 2016 - An audit of Armor Correctional Medical Services of New York, Inc. (Armor), the provider of medical services at the Nassau County Jail, indicates that the contract for inmate medical care was plagued by mismanagement, noncompliance with basic professional standards and unaccountability for contractual obligations. The County may not have received the quality and cost effective comprehensive inmate medical care expected for the $11.8 million annual contract expenditures. Although the County realized savings of approximately $8.5 million annually over the previous medical provider, the County could potentially face greater liabilities due to allegations of inadequate care. The audit began in January 2015 and covered the period from June 2011 to the present.
The County spent considerable taxpayer funds to provide quality medical health services to inmates under its care, said Comptroller George Maragos. Clearly, the County did not get what it paid for. It is disturbing that the level of care provided was not monitored, and the Correctional Center appeared to be defending the vendor rather than holding them accountable.
The audit revealed that the Correctional Center had not inquired as to whether the quality of care being provided met the minimum contractually mandated standards, until June of 2016 when it asked Armor to provide the contract required performance metrics. Armors employee turnover rates were abnormally high, especially for nurses (over 60%) and doctors (50%) which should have been a serious concern.
Until very recently, there was no appropriate medical supervision at the Jail - there was no Health Contract Administrator nor a Physician appointed to supervise the inmate medical care on behalf of the County as required by the New York State Correction Law and the County Contract with Armor. Neither the Correctional Center nor Armor obtained the contractually required National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) accreditation for the facility, nor attempted to obtain it.
For a copy of the report, please connect with Nassau County Comptroller Maragos online.
Local News, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: October 19 2016
Attorney General Schneiderman called on the NYS Board of Elections to issue clear guidance to poll workers about the affidavit ballot process.
New York, NY - October 17, 2016 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman called on the New York State Board of Elections today to issue clear guidance to poll workers about the affidavit ballot process in advance of the November 8 election. After receiving over 1,000 complaints from voters during the Presidential Primary on April 19, the Attorney Generals Civil Rights Bureau opened an inquiry into the practices of Board of Elections across the state, which remains ongoing. As part of that inquiry, the Attorney Generals office has found that many poll workers do not receive guidance about their legal obligations with respect to affidavit ballots.
I urge the Board of Elections to address issues with the affidavit ballot process that my office has uncovered as part of its inquiry. It is critical that we ensure all eligible New Yorkers are able to cast an effective ballot on Election Day. Poll workers must offer affidavit ballots to voters who believe they are registered, even if they do not appear in poll books, said Attorney General Schneiderman.
In the letter, the Attorney General asks the State Board of Elections to issue clear guidance to local BOEs regarding the (a) procedures for determining the eligibility requirements for affidavit ballots; (b) process for casting such ballots; (c) importance of reviewing affidavit envelopes for completeness; and (d) necessity of providing persons who choose not to cast affidavit ballots with voter registration applications. BOEs also should be advised to provide the written guidance and training to their poll workers, and to ensure that poll sites have sufficient affidavit ballots and voter registration applications to meet demand.
Read the letter sent to the State Board of Elections.
Local News, Crime, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: October 19 2016
Six individuals arrested from the Bronx, New York, Queens and Suffolk Counties - each separately allegedly exploited the financial vulnerability of elderly nursing home residents.
Schneiderman: Nursing home residents are among our most vulnerable, they must be treated with the utmost respect and dignity.
New York, NY - October 18, 2016 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced the arrests of six individuals from the Bronx, New York, Queens and Suffolk Counties for each separately allegedly exploiting the financial vulnerability of elderly nursing home residents. The five defendants from New York City allegedly stole or secured the personal identifying information from patients and used that information to secure cash or credit to which they were not entitled. The remaining defendant from Suffolk County allegedly stole a necklace from a 95-year old female resident.
Todays arrests illustrate some of the methods by which nursing home residents, a uniquely vulnerable segment of our elderly population, are financially exploited. As todays cases illustrate, the perpetrators of identity theft are often those most trusted by their victims. Five of the six defendants were caretakers, legally responsible for the care and well-being of their victims.
Nursing home residents are amongst our states most vulnerable citizens, and they deserve to be treated with the utmost respect and dignity by those in charge of their care. It is reprehensible for caregivers to steal from defenseless residents in order to line their own pockets, said Attorney General Schneiderman. My office will not tolerate this type of financial exploitation, and we will remain vigilant in ensuring that nursing home residents personal and financial information is protected.
Currently, over 100,000 individuals reside in long term care facilities, such as nursing homes, in New York State. Each receives medical care and a variety of services depending upon their individual needs to assist them in their tasks of daily living. Annually, the State spends over $3.7 billion dollars for such care. Residents of long term long care facilities, because of their delicate physical, emotional and mental condition, are nonetheless vulnerable to being exploited, be it physically, mentally or through financial abuse.
Indeed, the elderly, including nursing home residents, are often victimized by fraud schemes and various studies estimate that nationwide the elderly lose billions of dollars in personal wealth every year from financial fraud. One study estimates that 13% of all elderly Americans have been the victims of financial fraud, including identify theft.
Diana English
Prosecutors allege that, on June 4, 2015, defendant Diana English, 60 of Far Rockaway, the Director of Social Services at Far Rockaway Nursing Home in Queens, removed an elderly, vulnerable and ill resident from Far Rockaway without obtaining the necessary medical clearance to do so, took that resident to his bank, observed him change his personal identification number and withdraw $500, which English then kept. Thereafter, on that date and on several subsequent ones, including once after the resident had passed away in July of 2015, defendant English allegedly accessed the residents bank account using the residents PIN number and stole $1,200 from his account. At the time of the bank visit, the resident suffered from an anxiety disorder, various physical issues resultant form hip replacement surgery, short and long term memory deficits, and cognitive deficits and was unable to care for himself.
English was charged with Endangering the Welfare of an Incompetent or Physically Disabled Person in the First Degree, Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree, and Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree. English was arraigned in New York City Criminal Court - Queens County.
Sandra Rivera-Tapia
While the Director of Social Work at Holliswood Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare located in Queens County, prosecutors allege, defendant Sandra Rivera-Tapia, 54 of Brooklyn, acquired a residents ATM card and PIN number and using both, stole $7,418.00 from the residents bank account. She did so, prosecutors allege, by making cash withdrawals from various ATM machines in her neighborhood and elsewhere in New York City and by making store purchases using the residents ATM card. At the time, the resident suffered from, among other things, schizoaffective disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, subluxation of the right hip, chronic kidney disease, diabetes and hypertension and was unable to care for himself.
Rivera-Tapia was charged with two counts of Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, Endangering the Welfare of an Incompetent or Physically Disabled Person in the First Degree, and Unlawful Possession of Personal Identification Information in the Third Degree. She was arraigned in New York City Criminal Court - Queens County.
Josephine Cruz
For over a year, between January 1, 2015 and January 28, 2016, prosecutors allege defendant Josephine Cruz, 53 of the Bronx, a finance clerk at Kings Harbor Multi-Care Center (KHMC) in the Bronx was responsible for distributing spending money to residents. These funds came from Medicaid. In distributing spending money, defendant Cruz was required to track how much money each resident requested on a worksheet. Instead, prosecutors allege, defendant Cruz repeatedly altered the worksheet to reflect that residents had requested more money than they had actually sought and pocketed the difference. Over the course of a year, prosecutors allege, defendant Cruz, in the aggregate, stole $2,160 from 22 residents at KHMC.
Cruz was charged with Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree and Petit Larceny. Cruz was arraigned in New York City Criminal Court - Bronx County.
Channel Francis
Prosecutors allege defendant Channel Francis, 40 of Rosedale, acquired the personal identifying information of three elderly and vulnerable residents from an employee of Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation in Queens, and opened credit and charge accounts in their names and used those fraudulent accounts to pay her own bills and to purchase thousands of dollars of luxury items, such as handbags and electronics.
Channel Francis was charged with two counts of Identity Theft in the First Degree and Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree. Francis was arraigned in New York City Criminal Court - Queens County.
Nathalie Germain
Defendant Nathalie Germain, 39 of Brooklyn, allegedly used her position as a certified nurse aide at Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home (MMW), a residential healthcare facility in Manhattan, to acquire the personal identifying information of many of those in her charge. Armed with that information, prosecutors allege, defendant Germain, online, over the phone and in person, paid a host of personal expenses and made purchases using the financial information of four residents at MMW. Over the course of summer of 2014, it is alleged, defendant Germain stole over $6,500 from these four residents and attempted to steal another $4,500 from them as well. She used her victims limited funds and good credit to pay her own credit card bills, to make a car loan payment, to attempt to pay her Con Edison bill, and to purchase personal items.
Germain was charged with two counts of Identity Theft in the First Degree, Identity Theft in the Second Degree, Attempted Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, three counts of Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree, and four counts of Endangering the Welfare of an Incompetent or Physically Disabled Person in the First Degree. Germain was arraigned in New York City Criminal Court New York County.
Jason Battaglia
Jason Battaglia, 32 of North Massapequa, allegedly stole a necklace off the neck of a 95-year old female resident suffering from Alzheimers disease of Gurwin Jewish Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Commack. Prosecutors allege that on June 13, 2016, Battaglia removed two necklaces from the residents neck, one gold and the other silver. He subsequently placed only the silver necklace back onto the resident and left the room with the gold necklace. Prosecutors further allege that Battaglia later returned the gold necklace to a registered nurse and claimed he found it on the dining room floor, but subsequently admitted to police that he stole the necklace and only pretended to find and return it.
Upon the Suffolk County Police Departments initial apprehension of Battaglia on the date of the alleged theft, he was charged with Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance after allegedly being found in possession of nine hypodermic needles and a spoon containing heroin residue. The defendant pled not guilty to those charges, which are currently pending in Suffolk County District Court.
Battaglia was further charged with Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree, Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Fifth Degree, and Wilful Violation of Health Laws. He was arraigned in Suffolk County District Court.
Identify Theft in the First Degree and Grand Larceny in the Third Degree are each class D felonies subjecting a defendant to seven years of incarceration in state prison. Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree, Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree and Endangering the Welfare of an Incompetent or Physically Disabled Person in the First Degree are all class E felonies subjecting a defendant to four years of state prison. The rest of the charges are misdemeanors punishable by up to one year in jail.
The charges in the criminal complaints are accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent.
The Attorney General would like to thank the Suffolk County Police Department for their assistance in conducting the Battaglia investigation, and the New York State Department of Health for referring these matters.
The investigations were conducted by MFCU Investigators Robert Hatt, Kimara Bradley and Jose Ruiz, Supervising Investigator Ronald Lynch, Special Auditor Investigator Lisandra Defex and Principal Audit Investigators Jerome Hosinking and Yehuda Scheff with the assistance of Deputy Regional Chief Auditor Jonathan Romano, Regional Chief Auditor Thomasina Smith, Supervising Investigator Greg Muroff and Deputy Chief Investigator Kenneth Morgan.
The criminal cases are being prosecuted by Special Assistant Attorneys General Felicia Berenson-Reinhardt, Mark Cannon, Megan Friedland, Jonathan Reiner, Prabhjot Sekhon and Jeffrey Winkler with the assistance of Deputy Regional Director Twan Bounds, NYC Regional Director Christopher M. Shaw and Hauppauge Regional Director Jane Zwirn-Turkin. Thomas OHanlon is MFCUs Downstate Chief of Criminal Investigations. MFCU is led by Director Amy Held and Assistant Deputy Attorney General Paul J. Mahoney.
Westbury Woman Arrested After Altering $1 Bills to Read $1000 and Using Them at Various Post Offices
Crime, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: October 18 2016
The incidents took place at at post offices located in Roosevelt, Atlantic Beach and Westbury.
Westbury, NY - October 18, 2016 - Major Case Bureau detectives of the Crimes Against Property Squad, in a joint investigation with the U.S. Postal Inspection Services, report the arrest of a Westbury woman for incidents that occurred in Nassau County.
According to detectives, Nedelyne Coq, 21, of Westbury, between July 21, 2016 and August 10, 2016, cashed and attempted to cash altered money orders that read $1000.00, instead of their purchased $1.00 value, at post offices located in Roosevelt, Atlantic Beach and Westbury. During each of the transactions Coq presented her N.Y. State Drivers License as identification. The defendant, as a result of cashing three altered money orders, caused the U.S. Post Office to sustain a loss of $3000.00.
On Tuesday, October 18, 2016, Coq was located at Nassau County Family Court and was placed under arrest. She is charged with Grand Larceny 4th degree and five (5) counts of Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument 2nd degree. Coq will be arraigned in First District Court, Hempstead on 10/19/2016.
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Columnists Press Releases
Joint military drills between Egypt's armed forces and their Russian counterparts near the coastal city of Alexandria will continue until 26 October, state news agency MENA reported.
The joint military training, which began on 15 October, includes drills between Egyptian and Russian paratrooper units in the northwestern region of El-Alamein.
The drills, which aim at "boosting mutual militarily expertise" between the two countries, also include field skills, special forces tactical training, urban combat and the freeing of hostages, MENA added.
In 2015, Russia and Egypt held a joint naval exercise off the coast of Alexandria, which included supply and communication exercises, search operations, and defence and firing exercises.
In September, Egypt's Defence Minister Sedki Sobhi visited Russia to discuss various aspects of military cooperation between the two countries.
The September visit was the latest in a series of meetings focused on boosting military cooperation between Egypt and Russia, which has increased since President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi was elected to office in 2014.
Last Saturday, Egypt backed a Russian resolution in the UN Security Council on Syria that made no mention of an end to air strikes on Aleppo. Earlier that day, Egypt also voted for a rival French resolution which included language on ending Russian airstrikes on the city.. Both resolutions failed to pass.
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Egypt's Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry met on Wednesday in Cairo with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grand where they discussed efforts to assist refugees in the region.
According to the Egyptian foreign ministry, Grand said he appreciates the role Egypt is currently playing regionally and internationally regarding refugees because of Cairo's efforts to support stability and security in the Middle East.
Grand also discussed with Shoukry ways to raise the level of cooperation between Egypt and the UNHCR.
Shoukry explained to Grand Cairo's evaluation of the situation in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
Egypt is host to 5 million refugees, according to official accounts.
The UNHCR released numbers in August showing that only 187,838 refugees in Egypt - mostly from war-torn Syria - are officially registered with the organisation.
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US Forces-Afghanistan confirmed that one American soldier and a civilian were killed and three more Americans were wounded in an attack today in the Afghan capital of Kabul. From the USFOR-A press release:
One U.S. service member and one U.S. civilian died as a result of wounds sustained in Kabul, Afghanistan today. One U.S. service member and two U.S. civilians also sustained wounds and are currently stable. The two individuals were killed during an attack near a coalition base by an unknown assailant, who was later killed. They were conducting duties as part of the larger NATO mission to Train, Advise, and Assist the Afghan security services. An investigation is being conducted to determine the exact circumstances of the event. U.S. Department of Defense Policy is to withhold the identity of those involved pending next-of-kin notification. We will release additional information as appropriate.
According to Reuters, The shooting took place at about 11 a.m., while the international troops were visiting a base in Kabul. The gunman is reported to have been wearing an Afghan Army uniform.
Neither the Taliban nor the Islamic State has claimed the attack at this time. In the past, the Taliban has infiltrated Afghan security forces to carry out such attacks or convinced soldiers or policemen to turn their weapons on Coalition personnel. The Islamic State claimed credit for killing a US soldier in an IED attack in its stronghold of Nangarhar two weeks ago.
If the shooting is confirmed to be a green-on-blue or insider attack, where Afghan police or soldiers target Coalition personnel, then it would be the first recorded incident of its kind since May of this year. [For in-depth information, see LWJ special report, Green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan: the data.]
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.
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Russia has accused Belgium, a member of a US-led coalition fighting militants in Syria, of killing six civilians in air strikes in the Aleppo region but the claim was swiftly denied by Brussels.
"Six people were killed and four people injured to various degrees as a result of bombing that destroyed two homes" in the village of Hassajik in the Aleppo region early on Tuesday, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.
"Two of Belgium's F-16s were identified at that time in the region," it said late Tuesday. "There were no Russian and Syrian air force planes in this region."
Belgian defence ministry spokeswoman Laurence Mortier denied the country's air force was active in the area at the time.
Moscow had announced on Tuesday that the Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo to pave the way for an eight-hour truce on Thursday.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova took a jab at the United States on Wednesday, calling on the State Department to release statements "strongly condemning strikes against civilian targets and the murder of civilians".
"I think that photographs of the dead will not be difficult to find to launch an appropriate campaign on CNN," she wrote on Facebook.
The brutal government offensive against rebel-held eastern Aleppo -- which has destroyed hospitals and other civilian infrastructure -- has plunged Syria into some of the worst violence of the five-year war that has claimed over 300,000 lives.
The West has accused Russia of potential war crimes over its bombing campaign in Aleppo in support of the regime offensive.
The US State Department voiced scepticism regarding Moscow's planned truce while welcoming a halt in the bombardments.
President Vladimir Putin is set to face Western pressure over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine at international talks in Berlin on Wednesday as Russia comes under increasing criticism over its support for Damascus.
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Style / Fashion
We meet up with DEBONEIRE founder Matthew Gideon to find out more about the brand and what it has in store for guests at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS.
Oct 19, 2016 | By Vimi Haridasan
In the past few weeks leading up to the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS, we have presented you with an exciting lineup of yachts, classic cars and luxury lifestyle options that are sure to be a treat for all. One such partner who is bringing the party to Raffles Marina is DEBONEIRE but in the area of sartorial elegance for men. Yes, we really do have something for everyone.
Owned and managed by Matthew Gideon (above, wearing his own work), the ready-to-wear and bespoke fashion line is gearing up for its very own fashion show on Saturday at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS. Started up in 2015, the label provides unique suits for the man who values his individuality and is not afraid to express it through his sense of style. We meet with Matthew to find out more about the brand and what he has up his sleeves (no pun intended) for guests at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS.
Could you tell us about DEBONEIRE and how you came up with the concept of providing bespoke tailoring services?
DEBONEIRE was originally a ready-to-wear menswear label, the bespoke element came as part of a natural progression. Classic mens couture will never go out of style. The classic style that has defined menswear for decades is still as dashing as ever, so we kept what is good and made it better. For both our ready-to-wear collections and bespoke services, you will find things like pick stitching, functional sleeve buttons (also called surgeons cuffs), and even Milanese buttonholes which is rarity these days- that showcase highly skilled craftsmanship. These are some key elements that true sartorial sophisticates pay attention to that are coupled with uniquely woven fabrics and bold colors, all while staying within the universe of elegance.
We decided to make bespoke a house-call service as part of providing convenience to the customer, an element of modern luxury. People want things fast these days, so much so that the fashion industry is almost forced to adopt the see-now-buy-now business model. As part of our effort to meet demand, weve managed to achieve a two-week timeframe to construct and deliver fully canvassed and handmade bespoke suits. Most other brands and tailors take an average of two months.
Why did you choose a name such as DEBONEIRE?
I wanted the name to be instantly recognizable, that when people hear of it they will know exactly what we are about. The name DEBONEIRE is constructed from De Bon Eire, a nod to the French meaning, of good heir. DEBONEIREs logo, the Paradise Riflebird, is a rare bird-of-paradise with enviable plumage, and (the epitome) of a man who is indeed debonair.
Is there a particular fabric that the brand is known for using in the suits?
I am a huge fan of velvet and jacquard fabrics (seen above on Matthew), and these are what our customers return to us for. We develop our own fabrics, thats very important for our customer. They dont want to come to us and spend this much and see that exact same fabric elsewhere.
Why is DEBONEIRE an online store and not a physical one?
Were known for being exclusive, and we decide where we are sold. We were stocked at Takashimaya for the past year and a half, whose support I am thankful for, especially for an all-new brand like us. However, we recently made the decision to move out, in preparation for bigger plans. Having an online store also allows us to connect with, and serve customers beyond our shores. We offer complimentary shipping to over 20 countries worldwide.
Are there any difficulties you face with running an online store since several fittings are required to get the perfect fit?
Thankfully, our customers are familiar with the process of shopping online. The savvy ones already know their size, and we havent had any trouble so far. We have a free-returns policy which hasnt been utilized because everything fits our customers perfectly something most customers are pleasantly surprised to discover. Alterations, if necessary, are minimal. We also have a comprehensive size chart, for good measure. (Pun intended)
Does your background as a software engineer influence your work ethic and approach to your business?
Ive never really thought about this, but yes I do think so. Software engineering has instilled in me the discipline of coming up with multiple methods to go about a task. Computers dont have the human ability to rationalize on their own, and the programmer needs to define how an app responds in accordance to the many different ways an end-user navigates. Graphic design was also one of the modules I took, and I cant begin to describe how much the business depends on it, since fashion is very visual.
How has your business evolved over the years since you started out customizing hoodies for yourself?
I started out wanting to design a streetwear label, back when #OOTD was a thing, and sites like LookBook.nu were huge. But as I understood the business better, and after much consideration during my time in National Service, I decided I wanted to build something I would be proud to stand for in the long run. I definitely didnt see myself wearing hoodies when Im 30.
DEBONIERE is set to showcase its designs at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS with a fashion show. What do you think of the event and what do you hope that guests can enjoy from it?
Im excited! Ive been following China Rendezvous and making plans to visit, so I was thrilled to learn that its now in Singapore. I knew I had to be part of it. Singapore has been known as Asias most prosperous state, for being tiny yet rich and dynamic. SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS is the epitome of that. Our customers indulge in various luxury pursuits, from collecting luxury watches, to cars, and even ownership of thoroughbreds. I hope this event will help guests to experience and enjoy the lifestyle of the DEBONEIRE Man.
For more information, visit SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS or DEBONEIRE.
Cars / Yachts
The Lagoon 42 is one of the many yachts that will be docked at the Raffles Marina for SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS and Thibaut de Montvalon of Beneteau tells us what is in store.
Oct 20, 2016 | By Staff Writer
The Lagoon 42 is about to make waves at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS, the luxury lifestyle event happening this week, October 20-23. Brought to Raffles Marina by Beneteau Group and Simpson Marine, the prestigious yacht will be on display during the 3-day event, as announced in Simpson Marines press release read the full version here.
Making her debut at this lifestyle event is the Lagoon 42, an award winning model which was launched earlier this year in January 2016. Since her launch she has sold over 100 units and also won two awards. Her accolades include Best Multihull Sailing Yacht award at Asia Boating Awards and recently winner of the Multihull category at Sailing Today Awards in Southampton Boat Show last month.
Before we immerse ourselves in the fun-filled weekend that will see the Lagoon 42 as one of the luxury yachts on display, we engage Thibaut de Montvalon, Director of Beneteau Group Asia Pacific in a brief conversation. He tells us about the brands growing presence in Asia and what is in store for visitors at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS.
Give us some background on the Beneteau Group ? How does it perform today on a worldwide basis ?
The Beneteau Group is the worlds number one sailing yacht builder both mono and multi-hull and a global market leader for motorboats. The Groups strategic roadmap is based on four pillars: building on its position as the world leader for sailing yachts, continuing to develop its business on the motorboat market, expanding its range to include larger units and lastly, further strengthening its presence in the North American market.
These four strategic areas, which have been guiding the Groups development for several years, are especially relevant as the global recreational boat market is growing again for the first time since 2008-09. This growth is being driven primarily by the upturn in the European market and continued growth in the American market. This buoyant environment has enabled the Group to improve its profitability.
As far as Asia is concerned, the Beneteau Group has a long term commitment to the region as it set up its first Asia branch back in 2005 in Shanghai, to focus on the Asian market and develop its market share in the region. Asia is still a rather small market for us as a Group but we believe in its future and we are committed to participate to its development.
Where are you based in Asia? In a few words, how is your dealership network organized ?
We relocated our Asia Regional Office from Shanghai to Hong Kong last year and took over the management of the Pacific area in addition to Asia. From our Asia Pacific office, we are now managing a network of 32 dealers 18 in Asia and 14 in the Pacific ranging from Vladivostok, through Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia and French Polynesia! We are very proud to have the largest network of distributors in Asia and the Pacific and, just as importantly, incredible teams of professionals distributing and servicing our brands.
This is key in our strategy: we look for the best professionals in one market and we are building relationships for the long run. Another one of our objectives is to step-in early in a new market. Were always scouting for emerging boating markets and we aim to take part in the development of the boating culture in these new destinations.
There has been a strong focus on the launch of the MONTE CARLO Yachts 80, how important is this range of motor yachts in Asia ?
Monte Carlo Yachts is strategic for us in Asia. There is a strong demand for luxury motor yachts in the region and a request for new, outstanding designs.
Asian yachtsmen and yachtswomen have high expectations and always look for the latest styles and values. This suits Monte Carlo Yachts beautifully as our yachts are made to be unique, namely thanks to the talent of Nuvolari & Lenard, our designers, and thanks to the innovative building process we are implementing in our Italian shipyard.
Additionally Monte Carlo Yachts offer unrivaled flexibility when it comes to customization. Once again we aim to build unique yachts perfectly aligned with each owners tastes and aspirations.
Our latest MCY 80, which was launched in July and presented at the Cannes boat show in September, is a pure example of this Monte Carlo Yachts promise: unforgettable lines and an outstanding level of finish in every detail. We are very pleased with her success and already have a yacht on the way to Asia for one of our customers.
The Lagoon range continues to enjoy strong success in Asia. It has almost become synonymous with catamarans. How do you explain the success of the Lagoon range ?
Lagoon is indeed a great success in Asia, and all around the world. We refer to Lagoon as the boating success story as the brand was launched in the 1980s, based on a vision according to which catamarans would become popular in the future. It was a gamble which Lagoon is winning. Catamarans are becoming increasingly popular especially in Asia as clients appreciate the volumes and stability you can find on such boats.
The reason why Lagoon is performing better than any other brand lies in three factors: the ingenuity of the design from VPLP, simply the best multihull designers in the world, which offers incredible space, is light and has good functionality while preserving performances at sea. The quality of the yacht is also essential as it is not an easy matter to build a catamaran. The physics and loads involved are complex; the ability to consistently build good boats is also challenging. The strength of the Lagoon brand through our thousands of loyal owners who are circumnavigating the globe as our best ambassadors and of course our distributors who, once again, perform an exceptional job at promoting and servicing our yachts.
Your group will be displaying a Lagoon 42 at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS, what are the specificities of this Catamaran ?
The Lagoon 42 is a new model launched in January at the Dusseldorf boat show. She has met her market as we have already sold more than 100 units of this particular model worldwide!
You can spot her strong personality at first sight, combining modern, dynamic lines and flowing curves. On board, the focus is on the living space, with incredible volumes, comfort and amenities. When it comes to sailing, the Lagoon 42 has already made a name for itself, to be performing outstandingly. This is namely thanks to the latest generation of rigging and the sail plan Lagoon has developed, which increases performances under sail while simplifying maneuvres.
The Lagoon 42 is presented for the first time in Asia at the SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS.
What are the actions taken by the BENETEAU group to lead more Asians to discover and enjoy the yachting lifestyle ?
If I was to list all the actions we implement across Asia in terms of yachting lifestyle, the list would be too long! As you can imagine, through the years since we have been active in the region and thanks to our extensive distribution network, we keep a busy agenda! On the sailing front for example we are involved with a number of regattas all across Asia. In each of these regattas we aim to have one or two boats which we manage and we invite on-board guests and owners, to experience yacht racing together with our team of passionate sailors.
On a less competitive front we are partnering with sailing schools and charter companies to promote sailing culture and encourage people to go boating across Asia, during their holidays. On the power boat front we organize a sport fishing competition, called Barracuda Tour. We run Open Days, where we welcome guests and owners to experience our new models. We also organize Owners Rendez-Vous, where clients go to discover new destinations together as a group, under our supervision. And of course, we host numerous parties and dinners on board our yachts, at sea or in the marinas and yacht clubs.
Chartering a yacht or looking at buying one, how do you tackle this sensitive question ?
In my opinion, this question is irrelevant. Owning a yacht and chartering one are as complementary as owning a property and visiting hotels, or spending holidays in resorts. I can think of many yacht owners who charter yachts on a regular basis.
I see charter as a stepping stone to becoming a yacht owner: you get to experience life on board, see how it feels, share the experience with your friends and family, try different types of boats. This is one aspect of yacht chartering. The other aspect is the ability to extend your horizon, discovering new boating grounds. Yacht charter is a means to combine the love of yachting with travels and holidays abroad. To that extent, I believe that Asia has some of the best boating destinations.
Your best experience on the sea in Asia ?
I recall two experiences. The first one is discovering Phang Nga Bay, in Phuket and Koh Lipe near Langkawi, as skipper of a sailing yacht (a charter yacht actually!) with my family on board. We invited our parents from Europe and cruised between Thailand and Malaysia. To me, cruising is simply the best and purest way to discover a new destination.
The second experience was yacht racing in the China Cup as crew for Michel Desjoyeaux. He is a famous skipper, a French sailing legend. I was, all at the same time, proud to get him participating in one of the Asian regattas with our Beneteau team and humbled to witness his talent, and experience as a member of his crew.
For more info and tickets, visit SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS website and SINGAPORE RENDEZVOUS Facebook Page
Spend Thanksgiving in Nevis at Paradise Beach Resort
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Simultaneous attacks on the Islamic State-held cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa, the de facto capital of the militant group's self-proclaimed caliphate across the border in Syria, would make military sense: such assaults would make it harder for the extremists to move reinforcements and deny them a safe haven.
When preparing for the Mosul operations this summer, U.S. officials said a push against IS group in Raqqa could be almost simultaneous, putting additional pressure on the group by stretching its ability to defend two strongholds at once.
While the long-awaited Mosul offensive began earlier this week, there's no sign of an imminent campaign against Raqqa.
Perhaps that's because Syria is proving to be a more daunting terrain than Iraq. Going after IS group-held Raqqa would mean moving deeper into an explosive mix of regional and international rivalries, including a proxy war that has pitted the United States against Russia and its allies.
The fight against IS in northeastern Syria also underlines a U.S. reliance on its one effective partner there Syria's Kurds. Such an alliance for a Raqqa campaign threatens to ignite a new conflict, with another U.S. partner, NATO member Turkey, and its allied Syrian rebels.
In Iraq, the U.S. offers logistical and other support for the military in its fight against IS group.
In Syria, Washington views President Bashar Assad's government as illegitimate and cannot partner with him.
Even if IS group militants were to be driven out of Raqqa, finding someone to administer the city would be problematic, said Noah Bonsey, a Syria expert with the International Crisis Group think tank.
Mosul is the largest city under IS group control, with an estimated population of up to one million and no more than 10,000 fighters. Oil-rich Raqqa is home to nearly 200,000 people, most Sunni Arabs, and an estimated 5,000 militants.
Bonsey said retaking Raqqa is key to defeating IS militarily, a U.S. priority, but that among the warring factions in Syria "everybody else has other geostrategic interests that take higher priority."
In recent weeks, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeted half a dozen bridges in Syria's largely IS group-controlled Deir el-Zour province between Raqqa and the Iraqi border.
The strikes were aimed at cutting the road between Iraq and Syria for fleeing militants.
Activist Hussam Eesa reported increased IS group activity in Raqqa, including more night-time checkpoints, and said some wounded and IS families arrived from Mosul before the start of the offensive.
He said there was no sign of panic in Raqqa. Most fortifications in Raqqa, such as trenches, were built long ago, said Eesa, who is not in the city and whose group, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, relies on leaked reports from residents.
Raqqa could serve as a refuge for IS fighters fleeing Mosul, even if roads are harder to access, said Jennifer Cafarella of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
Retreating fighters could also hide among fleeing civilians, or travel in small groups to evade coalition aircraft, she said. Others could withdraw to desert areas between Syria and Iraq for staging future attacks.
Since the summer's discussions in Washington about a possible double-strike against IS group, Turkey has entered the fray. Starting in August, Ankara has backed Syrian opposition fighters with tanks and aircraft.
This has complicated planning for a possible Raqqa campaign and threatened America's main ally on the ground, the Kurds.
The rivalries are dangerous because IS group is deft at exploiting divisions among its enemies, said Cafarella.
Kurdish fighters, mostly the well-trained and highly organized People's Protection Units, or YPG, have been the U.S. partner in the anti-IS group fight in Syria since 2015 when they freed the town of Kobani.
In return for leading the battle for Raqqa, the Kurds demand to be armed by the U.S. and to win political recognition of their right to self-rule.
That would enrage Ankara, which considers the Syrian Kurdish forces as an offshoot of its domestic rebels it deems a terrorist group.
Cafarella said directly arming the Kurdish forces would simplify logistics during planning for a major offensive.
But the potential for direct confrontation between the Kurds and Turkish and Ankara-backed Syrian forces "would cause a huge ripple in the strategy" and would be difficult for the U.S. to mitigate while conducting a major operation on the Iraqi side, she said.
Ilham Ahmed, a senior Syrian Kurdish official who was in Washington last month, claimed that preparations by Kurdish-led forces for such an offensive are in their final phase, suggesting U.S. recognition and arming are a matter of time.
Fighting elsewhere in Syria has further complicated the situation, including a Turkish push in the northern Aleppo province and a bid for al-Bab, an IS group-run town in the area.
The Kurds are also vying for control of al-Bab, in hopes of connecting separate cantons they hold along the Syrian border with Turkey.
Meanwhile, Turkish troops and Syrian rebels argue that by advancing on al-Bab, they can break the Syrian government's hold on the rebel-held besieged city of Aleppo city, 30 kilometers (18 miles) to the west, while also denying the Kurds their continuous territory.
"Both actors want to grab more territory to prevent the other from grabbing more territory and both want to improve the depth and breadth of coordination with the U.S. against the interest of the other," Bonsey said.
Since August, Turkey-backed efforts have driven IS group militants and Kurdish rebels from a large swath along the border.
The aim, Ankara said, is to set up an even larger "terror-free zone" of as much as 5,000 square kilometers (just under 2,000 square miles) inside Syria, trampling on the Kurdish aspirations.
Adding to the complexity, Turkey, which backs anti-Assad forces, is seeking warmer ties with Russia, a major Assad supporter and an opponent of the U.S. in the proxy war in Syria.
On Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyin Erdogan said his forces would take part in any Raqqa operation. Ankara is also taking part in the Mosul offensive, despite Baghdad's protests.
An adviser to the Kurdish-led forces, Nasser Haj Mansour, said no Arab or Kurdish group would accept a Turkish role in Raqqa because this would effectively mean a long-term Turkish presence in Syria.
He said the complex maneuvering may delay a possible Raqqa battle, which he said would require about 10,000 fighters, including Arabs, from the force he advises.
Residents in Raqqa fear the advances of Kurdish fighters, previously accused of evicting and mistreating Arab populations.
"The political conditions are not right and the military force that we have to retake these cities is complicated at best," said Cafarella.
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David Bunnell (1947-2016), founder of Macworld, PCWorld, and PC Magazine, passed away on Tuesday at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 69 years old. Without him, our website and sister sites wouldnt be what they are today. Below, we remember one of Bunnells greatest storiesabout how he convinced Steve Jobs to pose for the cover of Macworlds very first issue back in 1985.
A few weeks after Steve Jobs posed for the cover of the first issue of Macworld, he changed his mind. He didnt want to be on the cover anymore.
So David Bunnell, the founder of Macworld, used one of the oldest tricks in publishing: He lied about the magazine going to the presses.
This is one of the highlights of my career, said Bunnell, who told the story to a crowd attending the Mac 30th Celebration at the Flint Center (the site of the original Macintosh introduction) in Cupertino in 2014. I said, Steve, its too late, the magazine is off to the printer, its on the presses as we talk. Theres nothing we can do about it. In truth, the entire issue hadnt yet shipped to the printer.
Macworlds first issue cover wouldnt have happened without David Bunnell.
The first issue of Macworld was released the same day the Mac came to market. On the day that Steve introduced the Macintosh, we were [at the Flint Center] passing it out, said Bunnell. It was really a phenomenal event.
Jobs initially didnt want to be on the cover of the first issue of the magazine. Getting this photo done was a major undertaking, said Bunnell. It took some convincing by Bunnell and other Macworld staffers before Jobs finally relented. How could we have this incredible magazine come out the very day the Macintosh comes out and not have Steve Jobs on the cover? Its unthinkable.
Jobs stressed that he didnt have time for a photo shoot, so preparations were made beforehand to help the shoot happen as quickly as possible. According to Bunnell, a stand-in was used to properly adjust the lighting, props, and camera settings. That way, when Jobs arrived, he could simply stand in place, take some photos, and leave.
The first cover was reprinted on a special subscriber-only cover of the January 2009 issue of Macworld to commemorate the Macs 25th anniversary.
Of course, when Jobs arrived for the shoot, he immediately disliked what he saw. The first thing he did was look at these screens, said Bunnell, and he didnt like what was on the screens. This set off a scramble to change the screens as quickly as possible.
Then when it can time to shoot, Jobs shouted to photographer Will Mosgrove, Look, take a picture of this! and Jobs held out his middle finger. Jobs continued by saying to Mosgrove, Are you one of those photographers that takes a whole bunch of pictures and hopes that one of them turns out okay?
Eventually, Bunnell got his photo. It was the one and only time Jobs ever posed for a cover of Macworld. Other Macworld covers featuring Jobs used licensed photos.
A version of this story originally ran in January 2014, to commemorate Macworlds 30th birthday.
Counsel at Red Lobster, Atlassian and two other companies say its hard to register descriptive terms, but that it can be worth the slog in some cases
The webinar, produced in association with RWS Inovia, is just over an hour long and you can view and listen to it in full on our webinar page.
As part of the discussion, we invited the audience to answer some questions about their attitudes to the Unitary Patent with and without the UK involved. Here are the results (though of course they are not scientific).
The first question was: Do you plan to use or recommend the Unitary Patent if it does come in? and the responses were:
Selectively only: 70%
Not initially: 21%
For all my European applications: 6%
No: 3%
The second question was: Would you use or recommend the Unitary Patent if the UK was not involved? and the answers were slightly different:
Selectively only: 64%
Not initially: 14%
No: 18%
For all my European applications: 4%
This confirms that the Unitary Patent is somewhat less appealing without the UK - with a rather larger percentage of people replying "No, I will not use it" - but not as much as you might think.
In fact, more than two-thirds of our audience said they would still use it either for all European applications or selectively even without the UK involved.
UP without UK?
So is a Unitary Patent and UPC without the UK a realistic possibility? The answer is probably yes - but not yet.
On the European level, enthusiasm for the new patent system appears to remain strong. The Italian Senate has just approved ratification, meaning Italy could become the 12th of the 13 required states to sign. Meanwhile, reports from Germany suggest that companies such as Siemens and Bayer back the system even without the UK.
On the other hand, in the UK, things are much less certain. Remember that Article 89 says the UK is one of three countries that must ratify the UPC Agreement, and that London is due to host part of the central division. So what happens following the vote to leave the EU will determine whether or not the UPC and Unitary Patent can go ahead in its current form.
Recognising the inevitably delay caused by the referendum vote, the UPC Preparatory Committee this week confirmed that it is putting the appointment of judges on hold.
Interpreting UK policy
Given the gradual and continuing development of government policy since the Brexit referendum in June, it would be rash to predict what the UK will do on something as specific as the UPC. However, some things have become clearer over the past few weeks.
First, Prime Minister Theresa May has said that she will trigger Article 50, which begins the process of leaving the EU, by the end of March next year. This would mean the UK is likely to leave the Union by spring 2019.
Second, the broad direction of government policy seems to be in favour of a so-called hard rather than soft Brexit. This makes it less likely that the UK would seek to remain in the single market, for example by joining the EEA, or that it would accept rulings by the European courts.
Third, there is growing pressure for Parliament to be able to scrutinise and vote on the details of the negotiation and even the decision to invoke Article 50 itself (this is the subject of litigation which has been taking place over the past week). If this happens, everything could be delayed.
Based on the information in the public domain now (including the latest legal and procedural developments, and speeches by EPO officials) as well as conversations with various practitioners, we've identified six possible outcomes, and how likely they are to happen.
Six possible outcomes
Name Description Likelihood Starting gun UK ratifies UPCA before it leaves the EU in spring 2019. This would get the system up and running soon while delaying the difficult decisions about what to do post-Brexit. Increasingly unlikely in current political environment. Stalemate UK does not ratify UPCA but does not explicitly say it will not do so either. Given the UK veto in Article 89, the other member states cannot go ahead until the UK leaves the EU (expected in spring 2019). Effectively where we are now and for the foreseeable future. Stop-and-go UK states it will definitely not ratify UPCA. This would enable the other participating member states to revise UPCA and go ahead with the system without the UK. There would be further discussions about fees and court locations. This outcome apparently appeals to some in industry. Unlikely now, but could become increasingly likely as negotiations develop during 2017. Staying in As part of Brexit negotiations, UK states intention to remain part of UPCA after leaving the EU. This would mean the UK accepting some EU jurisprudence, and could also open up the Agreement to other non-EU member states such as Switzerland. Parts of Agreement would require re-drafting. Legally possible according to some, but unlikely in current political climate. Start again Member states decide that keeping the UK involved cannot be achieved within UPCA, so decide instead to launch new initiative for EU and non-EU states, possibly building on the work done for the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA). Many IP practitioners support this, but it would take many years to agree and would face political opposition. Unlikely at the moment, but may become more likely as time goes on. Status quo No agreement: it becomes clear the UK will not ratify and there is insufficient political will to resolve the outstanding issues. The UPCA fails to come into force and no realistic alternatives are proposed. The existing system of national European patent validations and enforcement continues. The most likely outcome?
Readers may be able to think of other possibilities, or variations on these, and we would welcome any comments. As negotiations develop and (we hope) the mist clears, we will reconsider the likelihood of each of these outcomes in future posts.
Thiruvanthapuram: The Kerala Vigilance Director Jacob Thomas on last day requested the LDF government to remove him from the post, two days after allegations of financial irregularities cropped up against him.
Citing personal reason for his decision, Jacob Thomas handed over a letter to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and additional chief Secretary. His stern action against the corruption including the IPS officers caused strong objections from the top officials.
Recently, allegation of financial irregularities were raised against him in connection with a solar power project during his previous tenure as Port director. Dismissing the allegations, Jacob Thomas asked that how there would be a financial irregularities of 52 lakhs, when he was only allowed to spend five lakhs for the setting up of the solar panels.
In the wake of global recall of Samsung Galaxy Note 7, the United Nations has banned the device on all aircraft, even if they are turned off. The phone also cannot be shipped as Air Cargo. Earlier, the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA) issued a warning to the passengers to not turn on the phone during midair.
Though it might cause some inconvenience to some passengers, the transportation Secretary Anthonny Foxx said that their priority is the safety of the passengers.
Following world wide reports of battery failures and fires with the Galaxy Note 7, the Samsung and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a complete official recall of Galaxy Note 7 and in a second recall, the authorities forbid passengers from bringing it on board airplanes.
Turkish police shot dead a suspected Islamic State militant overnight who was believed to be planning a suicide bomb attack in the capital Ankara, the city's governor said on Wednesday.
It was the latest in a series of counter-terror police operations coinciding with a Turkey-backed rebel operation in Syria to drive the jihadists away from its southern border.
Police tracked the suspect to the ninth floor of a building on Ankara's outskirts, where he was killed in a gunfight around 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) after opening fire in response to a call to surrender, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
"The terrorist is judged to have been planning to carry out a suicide bomb attack and carried out reconnaissance around the old parliament building and Anitkabir," Governor Ercan Topaca wrote on Twitter, referring to the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The suspect may have been targeting ceremonies to be held there on the Oct. 29 anniversary of the Turkish Republic's foundation or on Nov. 10 to commemorate Ataturk's death, Anadolu cited Topaca as saying.
Police found explosive materials including sticks of dynamite and ammonium nitrate at the scene, the governor said.
The suspect was registered as resident of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir and was born in 1992, Anadolu said.
Having received intelligence that militants were planning attacks in the capital, Topaca's office on Monday banned public meetings and marches until the end of November.
The ban was enforced in line with emergency rule imposed after an attempted coup in July.
Islamic State group and Kurdish militants have carried out attacks in the capital.
This month two suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) members, believed to be planning a car bomb attack, blew themselves up in a standoff with police in Ankara.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters in Ankara that operations targeting militants would continue in the days ahead.
In Diyarbakir, 20 people were detained overnight in simultaneous raids across the city in an operation designed to avert Islamic State bomb attacks, security sources said.
In the Mediterranean coastal province of Mersin, the governor has banned street celebrations such as weddings for reasons of public security, his office said in a statement on its website.
It called for tighter security at transport hubs.
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Trumpophobia and the American Election - Impacts on Global Peace and Development and Islamic World
Hillary Clinton has a long association with the corridors of Power and she is well-versed in the art of Statecraft as the brain of Obama Administration, besides her background as a lawyer for her advantage in this election. Above all, she has a wonderful capacity to mobilize billions as election fund even using the influence of Barrack Obama. Obama has a vested interest in placing Hillary in his position, as he aims at putting his wife as the Secretary of State besides mobilizing billions for his foundation. That is why; the Obamas have so aggressive to attack Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton could effectively make use of the Media and Channels to create and spread the phenomenon of 'Trumpophobia' within and outside America besides projecting Donald Trump a comic hero. On the other hand, the strategic mistake of Donald Trump is that he underestimates Hillary Clinton. He could not understand the Machiavellian strategies and Goebbellian techniques effectively employed by Hillary Clinton, for he is basically a businessman though outspoken. As a man, he has a lot of limitation to attack his rival woman candidate, Hillary Clinton for the fear of backfiring.Trumpophobia is a double-edged sword or dragon of Hillary Clinton aimed at sidelining her rival Donald Trump and also mobilizing financial and political support from many especially the Muslim organizations, countries and big business groups, in terms of Billions, more correctly Trillions. For her sake, Islamic Terrorists remain clam without any terror attack till the election is over.Hillary could effectively make use of the Big Money that she mobilized to bribe or corrupt almost all Medias, journalists, celebrities, including Hollywood and even Trumps own people. She could parade a number of low profile artists, including very old women, as the victims of the misadventures of Donald Trump with well scripted stories.In Politics and Electioneering, the real stars are Machiavelli, the author of The Prince, and Dr. Joseph Goebbels , the Nazi Propaganda Minister of Adolf Hitler. Create Fear and Tell half-truths one after another are the most effective strategy in winning the Power or maintaining Power besides using the corrupt money to buy anybody.Hillary Clinton has effectively been applied their tricks and strategies to capture Power or winning the Election. Trump is an easy prey of her Machiavellian and Goebbellian tricks. She could effectively fool millions of people all over the world, within and outside America.If Hillary Clinton wins, it will lead to Aggressive Cold War that may grow to the extent of Hot War or World War III and total disintegration of the Middle East and Muslim Countries as Russia and China are going to play strategic role in the Middle East.ISIS will become more aggressive with wider support; thousands of Muslim boys, girls and youth will be radicalized and become fighters leaving Schools, Universities, Professions and Jobs. Muslim youths can easily be made emotionally overcharged and they can be made fierce fighters for the cause dictated by others.This will ultimately result in making over 70% of the world Muslims refugees or war victims. Almost all Muslim countries are volatile with the growing role of Fundamentalists. Within the country they fight each other; between countries they fight each other; as a class they fight against others. War and Terror are inbuilt within their belief and practice systems.If Hillary Clinton becomes the President, the greatest casualties are the Global Peace and Development besides prolonging the Global Economic Crisis and the American Debt both internal and external, will rise in terms of Trillions, though Mrs. Obama will be placed in higher office so that Obama can make back seat driving. On the other hand, Donald Trump as a fresh blood in Politics with his temperament as a businessman can never aggravate the Cold War, the disintegration of the Muslim countries, the prolonging of the Global Economic Crisis besides and the Mounting American Debts, both internally and externally. It may take more time for the common people and those who are not well-versed in the Science of Statecraft to realize the dangers of a Ruler or Princes mad with Power and one who follows Machiavelli and Joseph Goebbels. In the coming days, we can realize the effectiveness of these strategies as well as their boomeranging effects as they can be backfired and boomeranged at any moment. Within one day, everything will be changed or upset just like an unexpected storm.
My recent writings on these topics appeared in the Market Oracle (UK) can be found with the help of the following link: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/UserInfo-Dr_R_M_Mathew.html
Prof. (Dr.) Raju M. Mathew
2016 Copyright Dr. Raju M. Mathew - 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.
Senior U.S. and Russian officials held talks on Wednesday aimed at agreeing on how to separate al Qaeda-linked militants from rebel fighters in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo so as to pave the way for a ceasefire.
U.S. special envoy for Syria Michael Ratney led Washington's delegation, while Moscow sent military experts whose names were not released.
They were joined by officials from regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but not Syria's ally Iran which was not invited, a Western diplomat said. The Syrian warring sides themselves were not at the table.
"The idea is to engage the Russians in a discussion on the issue," the Western diplomat said before the meeting held at the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva.
The talks follow a meeting between the United States and its allies on Tuesday that aimed to coordinate efforts toward a new ceasefire, after Russia unexpectedly announced it had halted air strikes on Aleppo.
Russia favours a U.N. proposal to evacuate Islamist militants fighters belonging to the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group from the besieged zone of eastern Aleppo in return for a ceasefire.
Russia has said a planned eight-hour ceasefire on Thursday will be extended if other rebels clearly distance themselves from the group, but it will not prolong the pause unilaterally.
The last ceasefire fell apart in September, since when Russia and Syria have undertaken a massive bombing campaign on eastern Aleppo, in which hospitals have been destroyed and hundreds of civilians killed.
Britain has triggered a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council to be held on Friday. A draft resolution seen by Reuters calls for an independent special inquiry which would name those responsible for breaking international law, including possible crimes against humanity.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad argues that his forces have a constitutional duty to protect the civilian population and rid the city of "terrorists".
The task of separating "moderate" rebels from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which was formerly known as the Nusra Front and is designated as a terrorist organisation by the U.N., is complicated because they have long fought side-by-side and there is little agreement on the number of Fateh al-Sham fighters in the city.
The U.N. says there are up to 900 Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters out of 8,000 rebels in eastern Aleppo in total, but diplomatic sources have told Reuters there are far fewer, probably a maximum of 200.
"They are calling the shots in Aleppo," one aid official told Reuters.
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STUART A Martinsville man was sentenced to 40 years in prison for selling heroin and oxymorphone, but will serve just three years and six months of that.
On Tuesday in Patrick County Circuit Court, Judge Martin F. Clark Jr. sentenced Derek Lee Moore to 10 years in prison on each of four counts of selling a schedule 1 or 2 controlled substance. Moore pleaded guilty to each of the charges against him. Three of the charges involved selling heroin and one count involved selling oxymorphone, a pain killer.
Judge Clark suspended 36 years and six months of the sentences (leaving three years and six months to serve) on condition of five years of supervised probation, five years of good behavior, suspension of Moores drivers license for a total of two years, and payment of a total of $2,000 in fines and $660 in restitution to the Patrick County Sheriffs Office.
Moore, 31, of Martinsville, pleaded guilty to selling drugs to a confidential informant involved in an undercover drug operation on four occasions: about 0.7 gram of heroin for $160 on Sept. 10, 2014; nearly 0.6 gram of heroin for $140 on Sept. 11, 2014; eight oxymorphone pills for $220 on Sept. 12, 2014; and about 0.8 gram of heroin for $140 on Oct. 8, 2014.
According to evidence presented and statements made in court Tuesday and online court records, Moore also was charged with drug offenses that happened in Henry County and Martinsville between September 2014 and January 2015.
According to Patrick County Commonwealths Attorney Stephanie Vipperman, Moore was convicted in Henry County of two counts of distribute schedule 1 or 2 controlled substance and sentenced to 17 years in prison, with one year and three months of that to serve. He was convicted in Martinsville of two counts of distribute schedule 1 or 2 controlled substance and sentenced to 10 years in prison, with one year of that to serve.
Vipperman said Moore also was convicted in Rockingham County, North Carolina, of felony simple possession of heroin in connection with an incident in June 2015 and was sentenced to three months to 13 months.
Judge Clark said the active sentence that he gave Moore (three years and six months) and the active sentences Moore received in Henry County and Martinsville total five years and nine months, and the offenses in all three localities happened within a span of a few months.
The maximum sentence for each charge was 40 years in prison. So Judge Clark could have sentenced Moore to a maximum of 160 years in prison.
Moore waived a presentence report and asked to be sentenced Tuesday.
The sentencing guidelines, which were not binding on the judge, called for a range of two years and 11 months to four years and nine months, with a midpoint of three years and 11 months.
Moore testified that he worked as a welder several years before being diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2012. The cancer spread to his lung and lymph nodes, he said.
He underwent chemotherapy and two surgeries, he said. That affected his ability to hold a job and eventually he was unable to work, he said.
After his treatment ended and a doctor said Moore no longer needed a prescription pain-killer, Moore continued to get a pain-killer (he said he knew people who used it) and also got heroin, which was cheaper, he said.
He said he got addicted to drugs.
Moore indicated that the payment he received for selling drugs was to keep a portion of the drugs he sold.
Moore said he was not blaming his crimes on the cancer treatment.
Its my fault, he said. He added he took responsibility for his actions, he apologized for his crimes, and he wanted to be sentenced and then get on his life.
Moore indicated that being arrested probably saved his life.
Moores lawyer, Robert Deatherage, asked him how he felt about putting poison in the community, referring to the drugs Moore sold,
Im sorry I did. I apologize, Moore said.
Judge Clark said one of the factors he considered in reaching his judgment was that Moore may have had a sense of resignation or despair, at least in the beginning, because of his cancer diagnosis. Some other pros for Moore were that he had a pretty minor criminal record before his drug charges, he had a good work record before getting sick, he took responsibility and was remorseful, Clark indicated.
On the negative side, Judge Clark said, selling heroin is more serious than marijuana, and other people have health problems and dont become drug dealers.
Judge Clark said he was ordering that Moore complete a therapeutic community at Indian Creek in the Department of Corrections, and he hopes authorities will comply. However, Clark urged Moore to be vigilant about requesting to go there for drug rehabilitation.
Moore said his cancer now is in remission.
Paul Collins reports for the Martinsville Bulletin and can be reached at paul.collins@martinsvillebulletin.com.
Belgium summoned the Russian ambassador to Brussels on Wednesday in a spat over Moscow's claim that Belgian jets killed six civilians near Syria's Aleppo.
The diplomatic summons was issued after Russia said two Belgian F-16s from the US-led coalition had been identified in the region where the deadly air strike took place Tuesday.
"We are making contact with the Russian ambassador with the aim of summoning him today," Belgian foreign ministry spokesman Didier Vanderhasselt told AFP.
"We are also making contact at the level of the ministry of defence to pass on the message that Belgium has no responsibility for these air strikes... We are also unhappy that this information was not verified before being made public."
Russia's defence ministry said two of Belgium's F-16s fighting Islamic State militants in Syria had been identified in the area where the deadly strike took place.
"Six people were killed and four people injured to various degrees as a result of bombing that destroyed two homes" in the village of Hassajik in the Aleppo region, it said in a statement.
Belgian defence ministry spokeswoman Laurence Mortier earlier denied the country's air force was active in the area at the time.
But responding to the Belgian summons, Russian defence minister spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Moscow was confident of its information.
"Russia has effective air defence capabilities, allowing it to carry out 24-hour monitoring of air activity practically over the whole territory of Syria and beyond its limits," he said.
"We would like to remind you that for the countries of the international coalition that Belgium is part of, such errors in designating targets are not at all something impossible and unfortunately are happening regularly," he added.
Moscow had announced on Tuesday that the Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped bombing Aleppo to pave the way for an eight-hour truce on Thursday.
Russia said Wednesday it was extending the eight-hour truce in Aleppo to 11 hours to allow civilians and rebels to leave the city's rebel-held east.
The extra time will allow representatives of the United Nations and the Syrian Red Crescent to evacuate the sick and wounded, "and also to allow peaceful civilians out of the city", a defence ministry spokesman said.
Russia also said its planes and Syria regime jets were keeping 10 km away from Aleppo.
The government offensive against rebel-held eastern Aleppo -- which has destroyed hospitals and other civilian infrastructure -- has plunged Syria into some of the worst violence of the five-year war that has claimed over 300,000 lives.
The West has accused Russia of potential war crimes over its bombing campaign in Aleppo in support of the regime offensive.
The US State Department voiced scepticism regarding Moscow's planned truce while welcoming a halt in the bombardments.
President Vladimir Putin is set to face Western pressure over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine at international talks in Berlin on Wednesday as Russia comes under increasing criticism over its support for Damascus.
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Editors note: Every Wednesday, we feature a column from our local SCORE organization, offering business owners and would be employers some tips about what to plan for.
Thousands of small businesses, which account for 99.7 percent of all employers (according to 2011 U.S. Census data) in the United States, export products and services to other countries. According to the U.S. Trade Commission in 2012, small and mid-size businesses comprised nearly 98 percent of U.S. companies in the international trade arena. In fact, they accounted for 33 percent of goods exports.
As the Internet and social media continue to bolster our ability to collaborate with others across the globe, its not a stretch to predict more small businesses will embrace the opportunities to reach customers beyond the U.S.
Small businesses have opportunities to grow and thrive in a large, diverse global market. According to the Export.gov website*, 96 percent of consumers and two-thirds of the worlds purchasing power comes from outside of the United States. Doing business internationally offers advantages operationally and competitively via the potential to increase revenue and gain some protection from fluctuations in domestic markets.
That doesnt mean doing business globally is easy, though. Entering markets in other nations requires attention to details you may not have had to concern yourself with before.
In addition to its many opportunities, doing business overseas poses some risks and obstacles.
Issues in getting paid
Protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
Corporate income tax in certain countries (Some charge extra taxes upon receiving goods.)
Lofty shipping costs and unreliable postal services in other countries
Trust issues with the partners or agents youre working with
Cultural expectations when conducting business
Rules, restrictions, and license requirements of destination countries when shipping products
Language barriers (e.g., in marketing materials, avoiding words and terms that may be unfamiliar or inappropriate for other cultures)
According to SCORE mentor Jin Han who has over 20 years of global consulting experience, If youre interested in going global, be sure to understand the local culture, and be sure to account for extra costs, be it in the form of tax, tariff, delivery costs and other costs.
For additional insight about doing business globally, you can tap these resources that specialize in providing information and programs in support of international trade:
SBAs Office of International TradeThis office works with other federal agencies and public and private groups to encourage export opportunities for small businesses.
U.S. State Departments Direct Line to American Business programThis program gives small businesses direct access to U.S. Ambassadors, mission teams, and foreign government officials to explore market opportunities in their respective countries. The State Department also provides the Business Information Database System (BIDS), a portal to help U.S. businesses learn about international projects that may offer commercial opportunities.
U.S. Commercial Services Gold Key Matching ServiceThis service can help small businesses find potential overseas business partners, agents, distributors, and sales representatives.
Export.govs links to information about doing business in specific countriesThese links offer insight and data about various countries cultures, business climates, market research, service providers, trade events, and other information. The breadth of information available varies from country to country.
Doing business globally can be immensely rewarding, both financially and culturally, shares Han. However, there is also an added learning curve in order to reap the benefits, so be sure to perform due diligence, and seek advice where possible.
The Martinsville SCORE chapter is located at 115 Broad Street. If you have any questions, SCORE members can be reached at (276)-632-6401.
The bodies of five migrants were recovered in the central Mediterranean on Wednesday during rescue operations that saved 300 others, the Italian coastguard said.
The migrants were on board two inflatable dinghies and three small boats, the coastguard said in a statement.
The dinghies were helped by a charity boat and an Irish naval vessel, which rescued 118 people and found five dead bodies.
Some 145,000 migrants have been picked up and brought to Italy since the start of 2016. According to the UN, at least 3,626 people have died during the perilous crossings or are lost at sea.
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TODAYS WORD is noctambulist (knock-tam-ball-list). Example: He had become a noctambulist, waking up in different places throughout the house.
TUESDAYS WORD was shavetail (sheyv-teyl). It means a newly commissioned officer. Example: When the American naval ship left port, it had on board more shavetails than normal.
Board of Trustees
The Blue Ridge Regional Library Board of Trustees will meet today at the Bassett Branch Library, 3969 Fairystone Park Highway. The meeting starts at noon.
Plant Swap
The Bulletins fall plant swap is coming up this Saturday. Dig up perennials, bulbs, tubers and other plants and bring them to the newspaper office, 204 Broad Street, beginning at 10 a.m. This warm weather is supposed to go away for a bit over the weekend, so be sure to dress warmly. If it rains on Saturday, the swap will be held next week, on Oct. 29.
Benefit singing
There will be a benefit singing for Garland Boyd this Saturday. Itll be held at 5 p.m. at the Abiding Grace Family Worship Center, 600 Mayo Court in Stuart. Mr. Boyd and his family lost everything in a house fire and the community wants to help them out. The Hylton Family, the Hooker Family, Ann Boyd and others will sing at the event.
Ruritan Club
The Sanville Ruritan Club will be having its annual Brunswick Stew sale on Saturday. The sale will start at 10 a.m. and run until the stew is sold out. The stew will be made using club member Bill Maxwells famous recipe and the price is $6 per quart. To preorder, give Judy Mays a call at (276) 629-1103.
Country Buffet
The Horsepasture Fire Department will be holding a country buffet breakfast on Saturday, from 6 to 10 a.m. The menu includes brown, white and redeye gravy, grits, country ham, bacon, eggs and fried apples. The cost is $7 for adults, $4 for kids under 10. All carry out orders will be $7.
Telehealth lecture
What is Telehealth and how is it changing healthcare? Thats the question behind a discussion later today over at the New College Institute. The lecture will be held at noon at the NCI building, 191 Fayette St., Martinsville.
Luncheon coming
Dupont Family and Friends will be sponsoring a luncheon at the Sirloin House, 530 Commonwealth Blvd., Martinsville, on Nov. 10. Itll start at 11:30 a.m., with a registration deadline of Oct. 31. There is limited seating, so they ask that you call ahead to register at (276) 340-5777, (276) 632-7362 or (276) 650-8533.
TRIVIA QUESTION: Whoever is elected in November will be the 44th president of the United States. But did you know that technically, they would be the 45th? Go back more than 100 years and there was, at least for one day, a president who isnt counted? Who is this President for a Day? The answer will be in tomorrows Stroller.
TRIVIA ANSWER: On Sunday, we saw the latest edition of the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 here in Martinsville. But how did racing get its start? Before NASCAR, what was the first race to use two self-powered road vehicles? It was a private road race, held at 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 30, 1867. The eight mile race in England stretched from the town of Ashton-under-Lyne to the stadium of Old Trafford.
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David Black.jpg
Novelist David Black
SPRINGFIELD - Some book lovers associate Classical High School with one its most famous graduates, Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. But crime and mystery novel aficionados are more in tune with another of the school's alumni, David Black.
The award-winning author, screenwriter and playwright will return to the site of the former high school on Nov. 6 at 2 p.m. to discuss his experiences researching and writing for print, television and film.
"I know him from years ago - his father worked at the school. He was a young student at the time and graduated from Classical High School." said Teresa Regina, president of Historic Classical, Inc.
"I think what he'll do is tell us about his research methods. He's had some interesting experiences. He said he would be bringing some clips from his movies," she said.
Regina said that upon graduating from Classical High School in 1963, Black has gone on to become a prolific and critically-acclaimed author, including "Like Father" and "King of Fifth Avenue," both of which received accolades from the New York Times.
A prominent crime and mystery author with nine books and more than 150 published articles, Black most notably was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for "The Plague Years," a book resulting from a two-part piece written for Rolling Stone magazine that would go on to win a National Magazine Award for reporting.
Regina also said that Black would discuss the research methods behind his titles, which oftentimes found the author risking his life in locations ranging from New York's East Village, where he exposed a slave trade, to Haiti, where he was put under house arrest by secret police.
In addition to his work as a mystery and crime novelist, the Classical High School graduate went on to achieve success writing for some of television's most renowned police dramas.
"We're very happy to have him come, and I think he's happy to see his old school. He's very happy to come and he's excited," said Regina.
As a writer for television series "Law And Order," Black received a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association Certificate for a controversial episode, "Nullification," about Militia groups.
Black has also served as writer and producer on a number of television series, ranging from "Law & Order" to the short-lived "100 Centre Street" in 2001, wrote the screenplay for 1999's full-length film "The Confession" and theater production "An Impossible Life," starring Richard Dreyfuss.
WORCESTER - Progressive metal band Dream Theater brought their Astonishing Live Tour to the Hanover Theatre on Tuesday.
The tour follows the release of their 13th studio album "The Astonishing."
The album, released in January of this year, is the band's third concept album. The album is set in a a dystopian future United States and follows the Ravenskill Rebel Militia in their efforts to defy the Great Northern Empire of the Americas using the magical power of music.
Following the release of the album, the tour was announced, the premise being that the band would perform the full album in it's entirety for every show.
Original critical reception predicted that the album would have trouble keeping up with listeners attention spans, somewhat righteously so, as the final track count comes in at just under 35 songs making the full album length more than 2 hours long.
The live performance, however, proved otherwise. While the turn out could be considered "less than optimal", the band captured the soul of everyone in attendance, and it wasn't long before their unique story telling and visual effects had everyone entranced.
This stop in Worcester is a coming home of sorts for the band, which formed in 1985 at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Students at the time John Petrucci, John Myung and Mike Portnoy agreed to form a band, originally starting by covering Rush and Iron Maiden songs in the Berklee rehearsal rooms.
Since then, then band has gone on to become one of the world's top progressive metal bands. Guitarist John Petrucci is debated amongst peers to be one of, if not the best, guitarist in the world. Bassist John Myung was voted the greatest bass player of all time in a 2010 poll conducted by Music Radar. Original drummer Mike Portnoy is now a 26-time award winner from Modern Drummer Magazine, and the second youngest person to be inducted into the Rock Drummer Hall of Fame. Following his departure from the band in 2010, he founded the band Adrenaline Mob with Symphony X vocalist Russell Allen and guitarist Mike Orlando.
The tour continues on Wednesday night at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey and runs through early December where it comes to a close on Dec. 5 at the Durham Performing Arts Center in North Carolina.
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LONGMEADOW From French classes to jazz music, there are a number of events and activities planned at the Longmeadow Adult Center on 231 Maple Rd. this month. Check out what is coming up.
French classes
Each Wednesday from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., native French speaker Therese Eiff will teach classes on the French language. The class is offered at no charge.
Winter car care
With the winter season fast approaching, Mark Whitney will offer pointers on how to best maintain your car when temperatures drop and snow falls. During the class on Oct. 24 at 12:15 p.m., Whitney will provide a checklist so that attendees can gauge how much preparation they need to do.
Journey to jazz
Continuing a jazz listening series called "The Kings of Swing," a listening party with limited dancing will be held on Oct. 25 at 1 p.m. Bands on the playlist include Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Harry James and Artie Shaw.
Halloween lunch party
Before the kids are out trick or treating, the Longmeadow Adult Center will host a Halloween lunch party on Oct. 31 beginning at 11:30 a.m. The lunch will be followed by Halloween bingo, as well as other games with prizes. Those who want to attend must sign up before by calling 413-565-4150. A $3 lunch donation is waved for seniors who show up in costume.
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri intends to endorse Michel Aoun for the country's vacant presidency, political sources said, though a leading member of Hariri's party was quoted as saying the decision was not yet final.
The dramatic proposal would result in Aoun, a political ally of the Iranian-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah, becoming head of state and the Saudi-backed Hariri becoming prime minister for the second time, the senior political sources said.
Political conflict has left the Lebanese presidency empty for 2 1/2 years. The post is reserved for a Maronite Christian in Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing arrangements.
It was not immediately clear if Aoun's candidacy would enjoy enough support among other Lebanese politicians to secure the necessary two-thirds quorum for the vote in the 128-seat parliament.
The next scheduled parliamentary session to elect a president is set for Oct. 31. Aoun's political opponents include the powerful politician Nabih Berri, who is parliament speaker and head of the Shi'ite Amal Movement.
Two senior politicians told Reuters that Hariri had expressed his intention to nominate Aoun, who is in his 80s, for the presidency as part of the power-sharing deal.
A third source, a member of Hariri's Future Movement, confirmed Hariri had expressed this intention, but members of his own parliamentary bloc opposed it.
Fouad Siniora, a former prime minister and head of the Future Movement's parliamentary bloc, told the newspaper Daily Star that Hariri had told his MPs on Tuesday that he had decided to support Aoun's candidacy for the presidency, but added that there was "no final decision yet on this matter".
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WILBRAHAM The Wilbraham Hiking Club will tackle Peaked Mountain, a 1,227-foot mountain located in Monson near the Hampden border, on Sunday, Oct. 30.
Hikers will meet up in the Peaked Mountain parking lot at 138 Butler Road. The moderate excursion begins at 9 a.m. and will cover roughly 3 to 5 miles of terrain. The hike begins as an amble through the woods, but as hikers get higher, the trek gets tougher and the views get better.
From the summit, participants will be rewarded with panoramic views of New Hampshire's Mount Mondnock to the north and Worcester County to the east and northeast, including Mount Wachusett, the highest peak in that county.
They'll also glimpse parts of the Quabbin region to the extreme northwest and Connecticut's Shenipsit State Forest to the south. In between all these landmarks, however, is a sweeping view of pristine countryside, including forestland, fields, ponds, wetlands, valley farms, and small villages.
On the west side of the mountain is the popular Valley View overlook, where a large rocky outcropping offers great western views of nearby Boulder Hill and the City of Springfield.
Some sections of the hike traverse rocky areas, particularly near the peak. Participants are reminded to wear proper foot gear, dress in layers, and to bring water and snacks.
More information is available by emailing or phoning Gerri Morgan at grm740@gmail.com or 413-896-5528.
The Town of Wilbraham's website has a link to the Wilbraham Hiking Club's webpage, which includes a link to scheduled upcoming hikes.
Peaked Mountain is managed by the nonprofit Trustees of Reservations.
MAP showing approximate location of Peaked Mountain:
BOSTON - Men kicked off their shoes and socks, women shed their sandals and kids jumped into large puddles of water as king tides rolled onto the Boston waterfront, flooding the Long Wharf area on a sunny Wednesday.
According to Weather.com, "The king tide occurs when the earth, moon, and sun align. Gravity pulls the oceans to their highest tides."
In Boston, that means water that rises two feet higher than average.
Morrissey Boulevard, in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, became a small lake, just in time for Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the Edward Kennedy Institute nearby.
Researchers with MyCoast, a project of the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, are seeking pictures people have taken of the tides.
"Massachusetts needs your help to capture photographs of king tide events," MyCoast says on its website. "Your photographs will be used in the long-term analysis of coastal vulnerability and planning initiatives with municipalities."
Smith poster
(Courtesy Massachusetts State Police)
Massachusetts State Police on Tuesday announced the addition of a 16-year-old murder suspect and alleged gang member to the state's Most Wanted Fugitive list.
On July 11, Jayden W. Smith of Fall River, then 15, and another boy, Joel Lopez, 16, shot 29-year-old Jerrod Cohen multiple times on Plain Street in Fall River. Cohen later died of his injuries at the hospital.
Police apprehended Lopez and charged him with murder and firearms offenses, but Smith has so far evaded custody. The search for Smith continues, with police warning the public not to approach the teenager. He is described as an African-American with medium complexion who stands 5-feet, 8-inches tall.
The Bristol County District Attorney's Office and the Fall River Police Department have offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to Smith's arrest.
Smith is suspected of being a member of the Gangster Disciples street gang and considered armed and dangerous.
When apprehended, Smith will face charges of homicide, carrying a firearm without a license and carrying a loaded firearm in Bristol County Superior Court.
(Beijing) The number of organ donations in China jumped 50%, to 2,950, in the first three quarters of 2016 compared with a year earlier.
Li Bin, head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, told an international conference on organ donations on Monday that authorities recorded 8,866 donations by the end of 2015, which contributed to 25,000 organs being used in transplant operations across China.
China introduced a system to encourage donations in 2014 after the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners was banned amid persistent criticism from international rights groups. Since the government ban went into effect in January 2015, the number of voluntary donations has soared in what has become the only legitimate source of organs for transplants.
China ranks first in Asia in organ donations, said Chen Zhu, director of the Red Cross Society of China. About 260 out of 100 million people in China have made an organ donation in the first nine months of the year, up from 3 people out of 100 million several years ago.
There are no official statistics to indicate how severe the organ shortage in China is, but the state-run Xinhua News Service, quoting official statistics, said that surgeons performed 11,000 organ transplants in China last year.
Contact reporter Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com); editor Calum Gordon (calum@caixin.com)
China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth was steady at 6.7% for the third quarter as the country shifted from an investment-driven economy to one that is consumption-focused. But the pace of growth was the slowest it has been since the second quarter of 2009, and economists said the trend is unlikely to improve by the end of the year.
GDP growth might stabilize at 6.7% in the last quarter, but it will be hampered by a potentially softer property market, which has been restricted by a variety of cooling measures, Liu Liu and Yi Huan, economists at the macro research team of China International Capital Corp. (CICC), told Caixin.
China's housing market contributed 8% to economic growth in the first nine months of the year, National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Sheng Laiyun said Wednesday at a news conference when releasing the GDP figures. The sector became frenzied as home prices have increased in some cities by as much as 40% in August from a year earlier.
Reacting to surging prices, at least 20 cities have tightened home-purchases rules since the end of September with measures that include raising the minimum payment required for a down payment and not allowing residents to buy a second home.
There is no overall data yet to reflect the effectiveness of the new constraints. But Sheng said that home sales in first-tier cities and some smaller ones have started to fall in the first half of October.
Money that would have been spent on homes could go to other sectors, which might continue to support the economy, said Liu Wenqi, a CICC economist, in a written note.
As the property market cools, the related industrial sectors, such as steel and cement, may decline in the near future, said Zhang Lu, an assistant analyst at CEBM Group, a subsidiary of Caixin Insight Group. She predicted that GDP growth might worsen from October to December.
The future of the manufacturing industry is also clouded by a national strategy to trim excess production capacity and a slowdown in investments. In the first nine months, fixed asset investment grew by only 8.2%, with the manufacturing component growing at just 3.3%.
As China shifts toward a consumption-based economy, the government is likely to increase economic stimuli to boost the economy that might be dragged by the property market, Yi said.
The country's central bank has held its lending rate at a record-low 4.35 percent since October and cut its reserve requirement ratio for major banks, with the latest reduction to 17%.
Contact reporter Coco Feng (renkefeng@caixin.com); editor Ken Howe (kennethhowe@caixin.com)
2016-10-19 12:00:00
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Date: Wednesday, October 19 from 12:00-1:00 p.m., Mountain Time.
Overview: Join experts from the field to hear how the definitions of "digital inclusion" and "digital equity" have evolved over time. While access to affordable robust broadband is important, people also need digital skills, access to computers and other Internet devices, and knowledge of useful applications and content in order to fully benefit from Internet access. Our presenters Emy Tseng, Broadband Program Specialist, BroadbandUSA and Dr. Roberto Gallardo Estrella, Associate Extension Professor & Leader, Intelligent Community Institute, Mississippi State University Extension will highlight some of their own digital inclusion work and discuss examples of digital inclusion programs.
Roberto Gallardo is an associate Extension professor with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Roberto spearheads the efforts of the Mississippi State University Extension Intelligent Community Institute that helps rural communities transition to, plan for, and prosper in the digital age. He work in local and regional community economic development, including use of technology. He holds an engineering degree from the University of the Americas in Mexico, a masters degree in economic development from the University of Southern Mississippi, and a PhD in public policy and administration from Mississippi State University.
Emy Tseng is a Broadband Program Specialist with the BroadbandUSA program at NTIA. Emy provides technical assistance to communities to help further broadband access, adoption and digital inclusion throughout the U.S. Emy is also an Affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University where she focuses on Inclusive Innovation how marginalized communities adopt, adapt and shape technology. Previous to NTIA, Emy was the Director of Digital Inclusion for the City of San Francisco. Emy has a math/physics degree from Brown University and a masters degree in Technology and Policy from MIT.
Register now!
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/rt/2578680599272392707
Prospera Business Network is the lead non-profit organization advancing and supporting community-centered economic development in southwest Montana. Our focus is helping people start and grow their business in turn strengthening our regions economy and communities.
Oh, Canada. Youre making us blush.
Our ever-friendly neighbors to the north have watched from afar a U.S. election cycle that has broken all norms for civility. Its created tremendous stress and surfaced deep tensions within our society. For many, its been disheartening and demoralizing to watch. But Canadians are here to offer a sympathetic message to lift Americans spirits.
By Colby Itkowitz
Full Story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/10/17/leave-it-to-canada-to-remind-america-that-its-still-a-great-country/?tid=sm_fb
Marriott International, Inc. has announced that it has signed an agreement to open a St. Regis in the New Administrative Capital of Egypt, just outside of Cairo.
In the second quarter of this year, The St. Regis Almasa is expected to occupy an existing luxury hotel at the entrance of the up-and-coming city that is slated to become the administrative and financial hub of Egypt.
We are delighted to be working with the National Authority for Management & Investment on this exceptional conversion opportunity to bring St. Regis to Egypts New Administrative Capital, said Jerome Briet, Chief Development Officer, Middle East and Africa, Marriott International. This signing further enhances the St. Regis brand portfolio in Middle East and Africa and underscores the tremendous momentum that our luxury brands have in the region.
Speaking on the occasion, Colonel Waleed Samy Salama, CEO, National Authority for Management & Investment commented, The National Authority for Management and Investment is pleased to start a relationship with Marriott International. The St. Regis Almasa will be positioned as the luxury hospitality hub in the New Administrative Capital and with the largest state-of-the-art convention center in Egypt, the hotel will be the ideal host to the countrys largest events, conferences and summits. We are confident that this deal signing will play a vital role in the development of tourism in Egypt.
Also present during the signing ceremony were General Mohamed Amin Ibrahim Nasr, Advisor to the President of Egypt for Financial Affairs and Liam Brown, Group President Europe, Middle East and Africa, Marriott International.
With the population of greater Cairo expected to double in the next few decades, the government in Egypt announced plans to build the New Administrative Capital. Almasa Royal Palace, which the owner has operated for the past two years, is located adjacent to a 42,000-square-foot convention center that hosts official government conventions and events, as well as official foreign presidents visits.
The hotel consists of 270 rooms, 90 suites, 60 apartments and 14 villas. Other facilities include outdoor and indoor swimming pools, a gym, spa, club house and 20 food and beverage outlets.
When it opens, The St. Regis Almasa is expected to encompass the hallmarks of the brand such as its rich traditions and rituals, and signature St. Regis Butler Service. Through a phased approach, areas across the hotel will undergo a refresh to deliver an on-brand experience in New Cairo whilst remaining open to guests.
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(Beijing) Three securities firms have been criticized by regulators and ordered to improve the way they screen clients after they opened trading accounts for them on the "new third board" exchange without properly assessing their customers' ability to handle the high risk.
This is the first set of regulatory warnings issued after the country's top securities regulatory body stepped up efforts in March to control entry requirements for investors on the Beijing-based National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ), also known as the new third board.
The new third board contains shares in smaller technology companies that are considered to be of higher risk than those on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges. Regulators now require securities firms to assess their clients to make sure they are knowledgeable about the risks of investing and can afford a certain degree of losses.
In the first three months of 2016, a Shanghai branch of the Guizhou-based Hua Chuang Securities opened NEEQ trading accounts for 284 clients. In the self-inspection process ordered by the securities regulators in March and April, the securities firm did not disclose any violations. But Shanghai securities market regulators subsequently found that 96.8% of them were not eligible.
Meanwhile, the Shanghai branch of Beijing-based Dongxing Securities had opened NEEQ trading accounts for 418 ineligible investors from May 15, 2015, through March 2016, according to regulators.
The Shanghai Securities Regulatory Bureau has decided to suspend both security firms' right to open new NEEQ trading accounts for six months since Oct. 10.
In Anhui province, the provincial Securities Regulatory Bureau demanded that Huaan Securities, based in Anhui's capital of Hefei, improve before Nov. 15 its procedures for opening NEEQ trading accounts due to the inadequate risk control in place.
In March, the China Securities Regulatory Commission further clarified the entry barriers for investing on the new third board, requiring retail investors to not only own securities assets worth at least 5 million yuan ($742,000) on the previous trading day, but also have more than two years of investment experience in securities or a professional background related to accounting, investment and finance. A professional designation recognized by China such as certified public accountant (CPA) and chartered financial analyst (CFA) also count.
For institutional investors, a 5 million yuan capital contribution from shareholders is required, evidenced by audited financial statements or capital verification reports made by accounting firms.
Contact reporter Dong Tongjian (tongjiandong@caixin.com); editor Ken Howe (kennethhowe@caixin.com)
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by Larissa Faw , October 19, 2016
Princess Yachts International is launching its first global brand campaign that features real people rather than professional models.
Developed with agency BSUR Amsterdam, the campaign differs from traditional messaging where products mainly are displayed to instead focus on lifestyle.
Images portray real people in normal situations heightened by the fact that they happen to be on a yacht. The scenes, photographed by Roger Neve in black and white are understated and were shot in an intimate way to make the viewer feel part of the moment.
The campaign will appear in publications such as the Financial Times, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, Oracle, Mayfair Times, Wallpaper, Hole & Corner Magazine, Aston Martin Magazine and Royal Opera House. The images will also appear via out-of-home billboards around yacht shows, online and across social media.
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The media buy is targeting the U.S., North & South America, China, Russia Europe. Other targeted regions include Nord Africa, particularly Lebanon and Egypt and the Middle East with Qatar and Dubai. Asia countries include Singapore, Philippines and Taiwan.
This is the first project between the two companies since BSUR was named global lead creative brand and communications agency in 2015. Since 2008 the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) group has owned the yacht company.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, October 19, 2016
TBWA\Worldwide announced that Brent Anderson, Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles, will be moving to TBWA\Media Arts Lab as Chief Creative Officer, leading the creative vision for TBWAs dedicated agency for Apple.
Duncan Milner, who has served as Chief Creative Officer for TBWA\Media Arts Lab, will move into a new role as a Global Creative President, working on domestic and international accounts, as well as an ongoing role leading MAL\FOR GOOD, the collectives purpose-driven marketing arm, globally.
The move comes less than a year after Grey Worldwide Chief Creative Officer Tor Myhren joined Apple as VP Marketing Communications.
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TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles will replace Andersons role in the coming weeks.
The agency said that Andersons new role is a testament to his creative output and leadership during his tenure with the agency. In 2016, his work led to TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeless most successful Cannes performance in six years, with 10 Lions and 31 shortlists awarded in June across a wide array of categories including Mobile, Cyber, Innovation, PR, Outdoor and Film Craft. Among the winning work were initiatives for clients Airbnb, Gatorade, Nissan and The Grammys.
Anderson also created the Gatorade Replay campaign, the most awarded campaign in Cannes 2010, which took home two Grand Prix and six Gold Lions at the festival. His work has been recognized in every major industry award show, and has been nominated for three Emmy awards.
The brainchild of Media Arts Lab Chairman Lee Clow, MAL\FOR GOOD was launched in 2015 and is dedicated to cause-related work. The division focuses on clients and projects that help brands do good in the world including clients XQ from the Emerson Collective and Conservation International.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, October 19, 2016
It is undoubtedly the most bizarre presidential election in recent memory and a top contender for all time. One of the many pieces of collateral weirdness is the number of publications that have abandoned their longstanding political neutrality to issue an official endorsement.
The latest of these surprising partisan displays comes from Vogue, the iconic fashion publication, which has strayed from its usual haunt of haut couture to throw its bespoke hat in the ring for Hillary Clinton.
Like the other first-time endorsers, in their unsigned letter to readers, Vogues editors were quick to note that the magazine doesnt usually do this kind of thing, but that unusual circumstances demanded it.
Vogue has no history of political endorsements. Editors in chief have made their opinions known from time to time, but the magazine has never spoken in an election with a single voice. Given the profound stakes of this one, and the history that stands to be made, we feel that should change.
Ticking off Clintons policy positions, Vogue acknowledged her issues, but argued that these are not disqualifying: We understand that Clinton has not always been a perfect candidate, yet her fierce intelligence and considerable experience are reflected in policies and positions that are clear, sound, and hopeful.
With classy circumspection, the editors dont acknowledge the elephant in the room the only reason they would abandon the magazines traditional neutrality is how objectionable they find Donald Trump.
At the same time, its worth noting that editor-in-chief Anna Wintour has openly supported Clinton long before this election, most recently serving as a fashion consultant to her presidential campaign, according to Politico.
As noted, this is just the latest in a series of unusual endorsements from major publications. Previously, USA Today broke with tradition to argue in favor of, well, anyone but Trump, followed by The Atlantic Monthly, whose support for the Democratic candidate marks only the third endorsement in its history. (The previous ones were for Lincoln and LBJ.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, October 19, 2016
Google has offered a survey product since 2012, but the latest version, announced Wednesday, integrates with its Analytics 360 Suite and adds a function that enables marketers to target specific surveys to groups of users who previously were exposed to certain content about products or services, according to the company.
Think market research. Marketers could use the tool to help with product development or to judge the impact of branded content or a campaign. The data is tied in with performance and analytics data, Dylan Lorimer, product manager of Analytics Solutions and Measurement at Google, explains in a blog post.
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Available now in the U.S. and parts of Canada, the platform aims to help marketers with attribution and campaigns that extend across platforms. As mobile continues to change the consumer journey through the buying process, per Google, the shift affects the outcome of campaigns and projects.
The idea is to provide rapid access to data and findings, design the survey and decide who should take it. Respondents answer questions in exchange for incentives. Google Surveys 360, previously called Google Consumer Surveys, supports a panel of more than 5 million online respondents and one million surveys fielded weekly that offers marketers access to a new layer of data and insights into consumer behavior.
Marketers can use the platform to connect brand marketing to performance marketing and measure the integration of offline and online campaigns, such as the consumer response to TV ads. The platform can ask questions about TV ad recall during and after broadcasts, then follow up with questions on topics such as intent and favorability.
The targeting is really the smarts. Google is helping marketers reach customers that were exposed to the TV ad. Demographics are provided--inferred on the Web and declared on app--tapping into Googles advertising technology, DoubleClick.
Google says marketers can combine the TV recall data with modeling and analysis to gain a clear picture of marketing performance. During the 2016 Summer Olympics, Google executed this strategy to determine which ads were noticed by the audience, which ads drove interest, and which ads drove consumer responses.
The results are available directly in the Survey 360s user interface and can be imported into the Google Analytics 360.
A womans chances of pregnancy success with in vitro fertilization might be predicted through hormone levels in her hair. This is the finding of a new study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology. Share on Pinterest The likelihood of pregnancy though IVF could be predicted through levels of cortisol in a womans hair, say researchers. Conducted by researchers from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, the study reveals that women with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their hair were significantly less likely to conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF) than women with lower levels. IVF is a form of assisted reproductive technology, whereby mature eggs are retrieved from the ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a laboratory. The fertilized eggs are then implanted into the uterus. According to Resolve: The National Fertility Association, the majority of women who undergo IVF have a pregnancy success rate of 25-30 percent per cycle, though this can vary widely. The chances of IVF success are influenced by a number of factors, including age, body mass index (BMI), reproductive history, and the presence of medical conditions. It has also been suggested that stress plays a role in the likelihood of pregnancy success with IVF.
Cortisol and IVF success Stress is known to increase levels of the hormone cortisol; some studies have suggested that women with higher cortisol levels may have a lower chance of IVF success, though other studies have found no such link. Fast facts about infertility 1 in 8 couples in the United States have problems conceiving
Approximately 11.9 percent of women in the U.S. have ever received some form of fertility treatment
Most infertility cases can be treated with drug therapies or surgery; less than 3 percent of cases required assisted reproductive technology. Learn more about infertility Researchers have been interested in the role that cortisol may play in determining reproductive outcomes for some time now, not least because cortisol is typically elevated in relation to stress, says lead investigator Prof. Kavita Vedhara, of the School of Medicine at Nottingham. There has been ongoing debate within the scientific community about whether or not stress may influence fertility and pregnancy outcomes. The team points out that previous studies looking at the link between cortisol levels and IVF have solely relied on measures of the hormone in saliva, blood, and urine, which only provide short-term insight. For their study, Prof. Vedhara and colleagues added hair samples to the mix, which enabled them to measure womens cumulative cortisol levels over the past 3-6 months. The researchers enrolled 135 women of an average age of 35 who underwent IVF between December 2012 and April 2014. Of these women, 81 or 60 percent became pregnant. Over the course of 2 days, saliva samples were collected from the women. These were retrieved immediately after waking in the morning, 30 minutes after waking, and at 10 p.m. Additionally, 88 of the women provided hair samples. Both the saliva and hair samples were assessed for cortisol concentrations.
A pilot study by researchers at Mayo Clinic has found that patients suffering from pain related to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) may benefit from taking pregabalin, a neuro-pain inhibitor commonly used to treat fibromyalgia. The results of the study were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology in Las Vegas.
"There currently are limited treatment options available to fight the abdominal pain associated with IBS," says Yuri Saito Loftus, M.D., the study's author. "We theorized that pregabalin could potentially be helpful."
Dr. Saito-Loftus and her colleagues followed 85 patients with IBS who reported high levels of abdominal pain. These patients ranged in age from 18 to 70 years. The placebo-controlled study lasted 12 weeks. Patients who received pregabalin reported significant improvement in pain management, compared to those who received a placebo. Preliminary data also showed improvement in other IBS symptoms, including bloating and diarrhea.
Dr. Saito Loftus cautions that, because the study is small, the results are not definitive. "Our study does provide preliminary evidence that pregabalin may be an additional treatment option for patients with IBS who have failed other treatment options, but more research is needed," Dr. Saito Loftus says.
Previous academic research has found that having greater control over your job can help you manage work-related stress. But it's never suggested that it was a matter of life and death - until now.
New research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business finds that those in high-stress jobs with little control over their workflow die younger or are less healthy than those who have more flexibility and discretion in their jobs and are able to set their own goals as part of their employment.
Using a longitudinal sample of 2,363 Wisconsin residents in their 60s over a seven-year period, they found that for individuals in low-control jobs, high job demands are associated with a 15.4 percent increase in the likelihood of death, compared to low job demands. For those in high-control jobs, high job demands are associated with a 34 percent decrease in the likelihood of death compared to low job demands.
"We explored job demands, or the amount of work, time pressure and concentration demands of a job, and job control, or the amount of discretion one has over making decisions at work, as joint predictors of death," said Erik Gonzalez-Mule, assistant professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the Kelley School and the paper's lead author.
"These findings suggest that stressful jobs have clear negative consequences for employee health when paired with low freedom in decision-making, while stressful jobs can actually be beneficial to employee health if also paired with freedom in decision-making."
The paper, "Worked to Death: The Relationships of Job Demands and Job Control With Mortality," has been published in the journal Personnel Psychology. His co-author is Bethany Cockburn, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business.
Studies exploring the work factors associated with death are largely absent from the organizational psychology and management literatures. The authors believe theirs is the first study in the management and applied psychology fields to examine the relationship between job characteristics and mortality.
Gonzalez-Mule said the paper's results do not suggest that employers necessarily need to cut back on what is expected from employees. Rather, they demonstrate the value in restructuring some jobs to provide employees with more say about how the work gets done.
"You can avoid the negative health consequences if you allow them to set their own goals, set their own schedules, prioritize their decision-making and the like," he said, also recommending that firms allow "employees to have a voice in the goal-setting process, so when you're telling someone what they're going to do ... it's more of a two-way conversation."
Thus, micro-managing employees can have a public health impact. Among people in the study's sample, the researchers also found that the same set of causal relationships applied to their body mass index. People in high-demand jobs with low control were heavier than those in high-demand jobs with high control.
"When you don't have the necessary resources to deal with a demanding job, you do this other stuff," Gonzalez-Mule said. "You might eat more, you might smoke, you might engage in some of these things to cope with it."
Cancer research studies have found a correlation between eating poorly and developing the disease; at 55 percent, cancer was the leading cause of death of those in the paper's sample. Other leading causes of death were circulatory system ailments, 22 percent; and respiratory system ailments, 8 percent.
The paper provides more reasons for those in stressful, dead-end jobs to refresh their resumes and look for other employment. Twenty-six percent of deaths occurred in people in frontline service jobs, and 32 percent of deaths occurred in people with manufacturing jobs who also reported high job demands and low control.
"What we found is that those people that are in entry-level service jobs and construction jobs have pretty high death rates, more so than people in professional jobs and office positions," he said. "Interestingly, we found a really low rate of death among agricultural workers."
Gonzalez-Mule said the new study highlights the benefits of job crafting, a relatively new process that enables employees to mold and redesign their job to make it more meaningful. Other research suggests that workers who engage in job crafting are happier and are more productive than co-workers who don't.
"In some settings, it will be difficult to do this. For a construction worker, it's going to really hard to allow them autonomy; there's usually just one right way to do things. In jobs like that, it's more about just warning the employee of the risks that are here," he said. "But with some blue-collar jobs, you can. Some people have experimented with this in factory settings, using things like flex-time and paying people based on piece-rate ... showing employees what the outcome is of their work.
"There's a lot research that shows that people who have a social connection with the beneficiaries of their work are much more satisfied and have less stress in their jobs, with no change in the job itself."
Their study also found that people with a higher degree of control over their work tend to find stress to be useful.
"Stressful jobs cause you to find ways to problem-solve and work through ways to get the work done. Having higher control gives you the resources you need to do that," Gonzalez-Mule said. "A stressful job then, instead of being something debilitating, can be something that's energizing. You're able to set your own goals, you're able to prioritize work. You can go about deciding how you're going to get it done. That stress then becomes something you enjoy."
Data in the study was obtained from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which followed more than 10,000 people who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. They were interviewed at various time intervals over their lives, through 2011, to provide data on educational, occupational and emotional experiences. All participants in the study were employed but near the end of their careers.
Gonzalez-Mule and Cockburn only included those who were not retired in 2004 and who responded to questions about job demands and job control, and then followed up on their responses to questions in 2011. They employed rigorous controls for factors such as demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status and affect.
Gonzalez-Mule wonders if younger workers are better able to cope with demanding jobs, regardless of the level of control, than workers at the end of their careers. Future research could follow people at an earlier point in their careers to see if the Job Demands-Control Model accurately predicts strain over time.
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"Through the understanding of how the antiviral protein viperin prohibits TBE virus, we were able to identify two new weaknesses of the TBE virus that will hopefully be utilized in the future to develop efficient ways of breaking TBE infection," says Kirstin Vonderstein, doctoral student at the Department of Clinical Microbiology and author of the dissertation.Since viruses use the cell building blocks to multiply and spread to other cells, the cells have developed mechanisms to recognise and defend themselves against viruses. A key component in the cell's early defense mechanism against viral infections is the signal protein interferon, which is submitted as a warning to adjacent cells. These cells are then able to produce proteins that protect themselves against viral attacks. One of the cell protecting proteins is viperin.Kirstin Vonderstein, together with research colleagues at the Unit for Virology, has studied how viperin is active in its defense against TBEV. Research shows that viperin prohibits viral multiplication inside the cells as well as limits the amount of functional viruses that can leave the cells. In addition, the researchers found that viperin does not act on its own, but needs other cell proteins to perform its function."The discovery provides us with an increased understanding of how this antiviral protein hampers the TBEV and what happens in the cells when the virus is being fought. Further research is required to elucidate the antiviral mechanisms of viperin in detail, but our hope is that this discovery will lead to an efficient drug against TBE in the long run," says Kirstin Vonderstein.Source: Eurekalert
'Ali Hamidi, a Syrian journalist opposed to the regime, called on regime opponents to abandon the political solution and ignite an all-out war in Syrian order to force the world to step in and end it. Writing on a Syrian opposition website, he said that the brutal offensive waged in recent weeks by the Assad regime and by Russia against the rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo is nothing less than a holocaust and slaughter for its own sake. He leveled harsh criticism at the international community, headed by the U.S., for the situation in the city, saying that their failure to intervene does not stem from helplessness or a lack of influence but rather from a lack of willingness to stop Assad and Russia.
The following are excerpts from his article:[1]
Devastation in Aleppo (image: Aljazeera.com)
"It would be absurd to write anything or make any comment about the all-out war of extermination currently being waged by Russia and the Assad regime against the 'besieged neighborhoods' of eastern Aleppo. This is [nothing less than] a holocaust; it is the ongoing indiscriminate killing of civilians without any military justification... Its objective was and is nothing but killing for its own sake. Many of us have made efforts to find definitions and reasons for this [military] action. We have heard, for example, that its objective is ethnic and sectarian cleansing; that it is an attempt to pressure the civilians in eastern Aleppo to leave or to disassociate themselves from the militants; that it is a holy war against the Sunnis, and many other analyses that are belied by the scenes of bombing and indiscriminate killing. At this point analyses and theories fail, and the main [insight] that emerges is that [it is nothing but] the killing of anyone opposed to the Assad regime...
"Can we really say today that the world is helpless? I think that would be the greatest and falsest compliment we could bestow upon this world - for the international community was not, is not and will never be helpless. It has ability and influence, if it only wanted [to use them]. But the simple [truth is] that nobody wants to stop Assad and Russia - neither the U.S. nor Europe nor anyone else...
"In the UN Security Council session on Aleppo [on September 25, 2016], UN envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura expressed concern about the firing of '[gas] canisters' from [rebel-held] eastern Aleppo into the [regime-held] western [parts of the city]. But he did not mention the kinds of missiles and mortars fired on the people [of the city], nor did he mention the over 300 victims [that are killed] every day as he delivered this miserable speech. Even more disturbing were the statements made by the representatives of the permanent Security Council members, who parrot hollow words of commiseration that are nothing but humiliating pleas [directed at] Russia, beseeching it to do its best to restrain Assad and restore the fragile ceasefire...
"Are we not being naive when we wait for others to make their considerations, and hand them the keys to our cities [while we sit around,] waiting to be bombed? We wait for Barack Obama to [formulate] a policy [on Syria], when everyone is quite convinced that his departing administration will do nothing for those who are being killed in Aleppo and elsewhere, and that he and his team are not really doing anything to topple the Assad regime or to compete with Russia and Iran by supporting [the Syrian opposition]. If this is the position of the [world] leadership, there is no point in expecting anything from the countries it leads.
"Eastern Aleppo is in flames and its people are dying, and the entire world is party to this crime. Therefore, all the efforts that are currently being invested in renewing the dialogue with the Assad regime must be diverted to starting a war - an all-out war that will burn everyone. Then the world will hurry to stop it.
"The statements we hear, that only the political solution exists, are not realistic in the least. In fact, even the Assad regime does not accept them. Hence it would be folly to continue pinning our hopes on political [solutions] or on the 'friendly' countries. [Such suggestions] are tantamount to asking the people of Aleppo to surrender [just] in hope of being allowed to negotiating for the lives of those who still survive...
"To those who ask what alternative exists, [I say]: Why shouldn't everyone who is dedicated to the cause [of saving syria] divert his efforts from the political channel to looking for weapons, even on the black market, so as to deliver them to the fighters in order to start an [all-out] war[?]"
Endnote:
No matter how much we criticize our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one thing we must acknowledge is the fact that he is doing some incredible work. One such initiative was announced in his Himachal Pradesh visit, where he dedicated three hydro-electric projects (HEPs), with a generating capacity of 1,732 MW, to the nation.
All these three power projects are equipped with generating equipment supplied and commissioned by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL). These power projects are Koldam HEP (4x200 MW) of NTPC, Parbati HEP Stage-III (4x130 MW) of NHPC and Rampur HEP (6x68.67 MW) of SJVN.
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The event was graced by Acharya Devvrat, Governor of Himachal Pradesh, Virbhadra Singh, Chief Minister, J P Nadda Union Health Minister and Power Minister Piyush Goyal. When it comes to hydro-electric projects, BHEL is highly experienced and has contracted over 500 hydro generating sets with a cumulative capacity of nearly 29,000 MW of various ratings in India and abroad.
This move is definitely going to be beneficial for the environment since the increasing number of hydroprojects would result in reduction of greenhouse gas emission. Reportedly the government is considering including the large hydro projects in the fold of renewable energy to kick-start these projects.
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Its not for the first time that PM Modi has left us amazed with his initiatives. The recent surgical strikes are proof that he is not someone who will stay quiet when it comes to external threats. In fact, earlier when he was mocked by people for wearing a suit with his name monogrammed on it, lets not forget that he is also someone who got the BRICS leaders to wear Indian jackets, making it a proud moment for the whole nation. After all, its not every day that you see globally prominent leaders adorn desi clothes. Undoubtedly, this man is leaving no stone unturned in making India stand out in front of the world.
Source: The Times Of India
The resolution is not expected to have direct impact on Jerusalem itself, but it deepened tensions within UNESCO, which is also facing a diplomatic dispute between Japan and China that threatens funding.
The board adopted the measure by consensus in its morning session at Paris-based UNESCO. A draft form of the resolution had already been approved by a commission last week.
UNESCO's executive board on Tuesday approved a resolution that Israel says denies the deep historic Jewish connection to holy sites in Jerusalem -- and that has angered Israel's government and many Jews around the world.
The resolution, titled "Occupied Palestine," is the latest of several measures at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization over decades that Israelis see as evidence of ingrained anti-Israel bias within the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters. Israel's concern has mounted since UNESCO states admitted Palestine as a member in 2011.
Israel last week suspended its ties with UNESCO over the draft resolution, which uses only the Islamic name for a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The site includes the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical temple and the holiest site where Jews can pray.
Jews refer to the hilltop compound in Jerusalem's Old City as the Temple Mount. Muslims refer to it as al-Haram al-Sharif, Arabic for the Noble Sanctuary, and it includes the Al-Aqsa mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock. It is the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
Israel had already suspended its funding to UNESCO when Palestinian membership was approved, along with the United States, which used to provide 22 percent of the agency's budget.
The longstanding dispute is also linked to Israel's refusal to grant visas to UNESCO experts to go in the country and assess the level of preservation of the holy sites in Jerusalem.
And now Japan, UNESCO's second-biggest funder, is threatening to halt funding. Japan announced last week it has withheld its annual UNESCO dues, saying it wants to make sure the UN body properly functions to foster trust among member nations. The decision is believed linked to UNESCO's listing last year of Chinese Rape of Nanking documents as a memory of the world.
The advanced age of taxi drivers in Seoul has recently become a hot issue after a number of them breathed their last behind the wheel.
According to the Korea Transportation Safety Authority, 19.5 percent of all taxi drivers in the nation were 65 or older at the end of last year, and in Seoul 51 percent are over 60.
According to a 2013 study by the KTSA, a whopping 73.1 percent of cab drivers over 65 who had driven taxis for more than 25 years were involved in car accidents in the previous three years, compared to only 7.5 percent who had driven taxis for less than five years.
That means elderly drivers are 10 times more likely to get into accidents than younger ones.
This is a current list of the top 250 companies by market capitalization on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Learn more .
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is one of the largest, and most recognizable, stock exchanges in the world. The NYSE is in New York City, New York at 11 Wall Street. The NYSE has been in existence since the earliest days of the United States becoming a nation, in 1792 and is primarily made up of blue-chip companies with large market capitalizations. In fact, many of the stocks that make up the Dow Jones Composite Index (i.e. The Dow) are listed on the NYSE.
This article gives a brief history of the New York Stock Exchange. In addition, it covers topics such as what kind of stocks trade on the exchange, what are the listing requirements, how trading is performed, and what the daily price movement of the NYSE tells investors about investor sentiment.
What Were the Origins of the NYSE?
Today, the New York Stock Exchange is known as the center of the financial universe. However, the exchanges origin is far more humble. On May 17, 1792, 24 stockbrokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement creating a centralized exchange to help provide order to the securities market in what was still a young nation. The "Buttonwood Agreement comes from the tree of the same name under which the founders signed the agreement.
An initial benefit of the exchange was how it removed the need for auctioneers when trading commodities like wheat and tobacco and to set a commission rate. The exchange initially focused on government bonds.
However, the exchange had no formal home. Business was usually conducted informally in the local coffeehouses. In 1817, the exchange changed its name to the New York Stock & Exchange Board which later became the New York Stock Exchange. At this time, the exchange adopted a constitution that set the rules for trading. A group of stockbrokers met twice a day at 40 Wall Street to trade 30 stocks and bonds.
Over time, the exchange moved became the financial hub of the country and moved to its current location in 1865.
What Kind of Stocks Trade on the NYSE?
As of June 2022, the NYSE includes approximately 2,400 companies with a market capitalization of over $28.2 trillion. Although the NYSE trades stocks of all market capitalizations, its best known for trading the stocks of large cap companies. These have the benefit of being mature companies in mature industries. And many of these companies reward shareholders with dividends.
However, that also means that many of these companies are better suited for value investors as opposed to growth investors. In bear markets this stability can be a benefit for investors as these stocks tend to perform less bad than more volatile stocks. But in a bull market, these stocks are not likely to provide investors with the growth that they look for.
An interesting fact about how the NYSE and NASDAQ operate is that the companies with the five largest market caps on the NYSE are also listed on the NASDAQ exchange.
What Are the Listing Requirements For the NYSE?
The NYSE has strict guidelines that govern the types of companies that can list on the exchange. Here are the major requirements that all companies must meet:
The company must have at least 2,200 shareholders
The company must trade over 100,000 shares per month
The company must have a market valuation of over $100 million
The company must generate more than $75 million in annual revenue
However, there is at least one advantage of having such stringent requirements. That is the companies that meet the requirements generally find it easier to get more investors funds when they hold their initial public offering (IPO).
Once a company begins trading on the NYSE, it must continue to meet these requirements. If it doesnt it can be delisted. In addition to these requirements, the stock must continue to trade above $1. If the price of a stock drops below $1 for more than 29 consecutive trading days, the stock receives an Initial Price Violation Notice.
At that point, the company has 10 days to provide the exchange with a plan for bringing their shares above $1.
How are Trades Executed on the NYSE?
For over a century, the floor of the NYSE was the place for investors to be. This meant trades were conducted by traders who ran buy and sell orders across the trading floor looking to broker a deal for their clients. But with the birth of the NASDAQ exchange in 1971, the New York Stock Exchange began conducting electronic trading.
However, the NYSE continues to conduct trades in an auction style. Brokers purchase stocks on behalf of their clients or firms. Every order features a broker who will enter the order electronically and a specialist who serves as the market maker for that stock. The specialist posts bid and ask prices and manages the actual execution of the trades. And there are still a handful of stockbrokers who still traffic buy and sell orders physically on the floor of the exchange.
How Does the NYSE Signal Investor Sentiment?
Like its counterpart, the NASDAQ, the NYSE measures the risk appetite of investors. When the NYSE is moving higher over a length of time, it signals that a risk on environment. Conversely when the NYSE moves lower over a significant period, it signals that investors are moving to a risk off position.
Some Final Thoughts on the NYSE
Financial news networks plan their programming schedule around the opening and closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Its still considered a distinguished honor when individuals or groups are invited to ring the opening bell. In fact, Warren Buffett is attributed with saying that in the short term, the stock market acts like a voting machine. A fact that many U.S. presidents will attest to.
The NYSE is the oldest and most recognizable of all the stock exchanges. It also has the most stringent requirements for inclusion. And those requirements must be maintained even after a stock begins publicly trading on the exchange.
Although the NYSE still has a small in-person Trading Floor, much of the trading is done electronically to provide traders with the speed to execute trades.
The following companies are subsidiares of Procter & Gamble: "Petersburg Products International" LLC, "Procter & Gamble Services" LLC, "Procter & Gamble" LLC, 1837 LLC, Agile Pursuits Franchising Inc., Agile Pursuits Inc., Ambi Pur, Arbora & Ausonia, Arbora & Ausonia S.L.U., Avon - Giorgio Beverly Hills, Billie, Braun GmbH, Braun Shanghai Co. Ltd., Celtic Insurance Company Inc., Charlie Banana USA LLC, Corporativo Procter & Gamble S. de R.L. de C.V., DDFSkincare, Detergent Products B.V., Detergent Products SARL, Detergenti S.A., FPG Oleochemicals Sdn. Bhd., Fameccanica Data S.p.A., Fameccanica Industria e Comercio Do Brasil LTDA., Fameccanica Machinery Shanghai Co. Ltd., Fameccanica North America Inc., Farmacy Beauty, Fater Central Europe SRL, Fater Eastern Europe LLC, Fater Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Fater S.p.A., Fater Temizlik Urunleri Ltd STI, First Aid Beauty, First Aid Beauty Limited, Folgers Coffee, Fountain Square Music Publishing Co. Inc., Gillette Australia Pty. Ltd., Gillette China Limited, Gillette Commercial Operations North America, Gillette Diversified Operations Pvt. Ltd., Gillette Egypt S.A.E., Gillette Group UK Ltd, Gillette Holding Company LLC, Gillette Holding GmbH, Gillette India Limited, Gillette Industries Ltd., Gillette International B.V., Gillette Latin America Holding B.V., Gillette Management LLC, Gillette Pakistan Limited, Gillette Poland International Sp. z.o.o., Gillette Shanghai Ltd., Gillette U.K. Limited, Gillette del Uruguay S.A., Hyginett KFT, Industries Marocaines Modernes SA, Inversiones Plaza LLC, LLC "Procter & Gamble - Novomoskovsk", LLC "Procter & Gamble Distributorskaya Compania", LLC Procter & and Gamble Ukraine, Laboratoire Mediflor S.A.S., Laboratorios Vicks S.L.U., Lamberts Healthcare Ltd., Liberty Street Music Publishing Company Inc., Limited Liability Company 'Procter & Gamble Trading Ukraine', MDVIP, MERCK KGAA NPV, Marcvenca Inversiones C.A., Merck Consumer Healthcare, Modern Industries Company - Dammam, Modern Products Company - Jeddah, Native, Nature's Best Health Products Ltd., New Chapter Canada Inc., New Chapter Inc., Nioxin Research Laboratories, Noxell Corporation, OUAI, Olay LLC, Oral-B Laboratories, P&G Consumer Health Germany GmbH, P&G Distribution East Africa Limited, P&G Distribution Morocco SAS, P&G Hair Care Holding Inc., P&G Health Austria GmbH & Co. OG, P&G Health France S.A.S., P&G Health Germany GmbH, P&G Healthcare Zhejiang Limited, P&G Industrial Peru S.R.L., P&G Innovation Godo Kaisha, P&G Investment Management Ltd., P&G Israel M.D.O. Ltd., P&G Japan G.K., P&G K.K., P&G Northeast Asia Pte. Ltd., P&G Prestige Godo Kaisha, P&G South African Trading Pty. Ltd., P&G-Clairol, PG13 Launchpad Alpha Inc., PG13 Launchpad Beta Inc., PG13 Launchpad Gamma Inc., PGT Healthcare LLP, PT Procter & Gamble Home Products Indonesia, PT Procter & Gamble Operations Indonesia, Phase II Holdings Corporation, Pressbox, Procter & Gamble Algeria EURL, Procter & Gamble Amazon Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Amiens S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Argentina SRL, Procter & Gamble Asia Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Australia Proprietary Limited, Procter & Gamble Azerbaijan Services LLC, Procter & Gamble Bangladesh Private Ltd., Procter & Gamble Blois S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Brazil Holdings B.V., Procter & Gamble Bulgaria EOOD, Procter & Gamble Business Services Canada Company, Procter & Gamble Canada Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Chengdu Ltd., Procter & Gamble Chile Limitada, Procter & Gamble China Ltd., Procter & Gamble China Sales Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Commercial LLC, Procter & Gamble Czech Republic s.r.o., Procter & Gamble DS Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Danmark ApS, Procter & Gamble Detergent Beijing Ltd., Procter & Gamble Deutschland GmbH, Procter & Gamble Distributing New Zealand Limited, Procter & Gamble Distributing Philippines Inc., Procter & Gamble Distribution Company Europe BV, Procter & Gamble Distribution S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Eastern Europe LLC, Procter & Gamble Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Procter & Gamble Egypt, Procter & Gamble Egypt Distribution, Procter & Gamble Egypt Holding, Procter & Gamble Egypt Manufacturing Company, Procter & Gamble Egypt Supplies, Procter & Gamble Energy Company LLC, Procter & Gamble Espana S.A.U., Procter & Gamble Far East Inc., Procter & Gamble Finance Holding Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Management S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finance U.K. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Investments LLP, Procter & Gamble Financial Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Services S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finland OY, Procter & Gamble France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH, Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH & Co. Operations oHG, Procter & Gamble Ghana Trading Limited, Procter & Gamble GmbH, Procter & Gamble Grundstucks-und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Consumer Products Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Enterprise Management Service Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Ltd., Procter & Gamble Guangzhou Technology Innovation Co. LTD., Procter & Gamble Gulf FZE, Procter & Gamble Hair Care LLC, Procter & Gamble Health & Beauty Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Health Belgium BV, Procter & Gamble Health Limited, Procter & Gamble Health Ltd., Procter & Gamble Health Poland Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Hellas Single Member Ltd., Procter & Gamble Holding France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Holding GmbH, Procter & Gamble Holding S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Holding Thailand Limited, Procter & Gamble Holdings UK Ltd., Procter & Gamble Home Products Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Honduras S de RL, Procter & Gamble Hong Kong Limited, Procter & Gamble Hungary Wholesale Trading Partnership KKT, Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Inc., Procter & Gamble India Holdings Inc., Procter & Gamble Indochina Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Industrial - 2012 C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial S.C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Costa Rica Limitada, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Guatemala Limitada, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Panama S. de R.L., Procter & Gamble International Operations SA, Procter & Gamble International Operations SA-ROHQ, Procter & Gamble International Sarl, Procter & Gamble Investment Company UK Ltd., Procter & Gamble Investment Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Italia S.p.A., Procter & Gamble Jiangsu Ltd., Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan Distribution LLP, Procter & Gamble Korea Inc., Procter & Gamble Korea S&D Co., Procter & Gamble L&CP Limited, Procter & Gamble Leasing LLC, Procter & Gamble Levant S.A.L., Procter & Gamble Limited, Procter & Gamble Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Berlin GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Ireland Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing SA Pty Ltd, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Thailand Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Tianjin Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Marketing Romania SRL, Procter & Gamble Mataro S.L.U., Procter & Gamble Mexico Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Mexico Inc., Procter & Gamble Middle East FZE, Procter & Gamble Nederland B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Services B.V., Procter & Gamble Nigeria Limited, Procter & Gamble Norge AS, Procter & Gamble Operations Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Overseas India B.V., Procter & Gamble Overseas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Pakistan Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Peru S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Philippines Business Services Inc., Procter & Gamble Philippines Inc., Procter & Gamble Polska Sp. z o.o, Procter & Gamble Portugal - Produtos De Consumo Higiene e Saude S.A., Procter & Gamble Product Supply U.K. Limited, Procter & Gamble Productions Inc., Procter & Gamble RHD Inc., Procter & Gamble RSC Regional Service Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Retail Services Sarl, Procter & Gamble S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Procter & Gamble Services Company N.V., Procter & Gamble Services Switzerland SA, Procter & Gamble Singapore Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Spol. s.r.o. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Sverige AB, Procter & Gamble Switzerland SARL, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Limited, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Sales Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Limited, Procter & Gamble Technology Beijing Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Trading Thailand Limited, Procter & Gamble Tuketim Mallari Sanayii A.S., Procter & Gamble UK, Procter & Gamble UK Group Holdings Ltd, Procter & Gamble UK Parent Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Universal Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Vietnam Company Limited, Procter & Gamble d.o.o. za trgovinu, Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.C.A., Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.R.L., Procter & Gamble do Brasil Ltda., Procter & Gamble do Brazil LLC, Procter & Gamble do Nordeste S/A, Procter & Gamble doo Beograd, Procter & Gamble-Rakona s.r.o., Procter and Gamble Lanka Private Limited, Procter and Gamble SA Pty Ltd., Progam Realty & Development Corporation, Recovery Engineering, Redmond Products Inc., Richardson-Vicks, Richardson-Vicks Real Estate Inc., Riverfront Music Publishing Co. Inc., Rosemount LLC, SPD Development Company Limited, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH, Series Acquisition B.V., Seven Seas Limited, Shulton Inc., Snowberry, Snowberry New Zealand Limited, Sunflower Distributing LLC, TAOS - FL LLC, TAOS Retail LLC, THIS IS L, TULA, Tambrands, Tambrands Inc., Temple Trees Impex & Investment Private Limited, The Art of Shaving, The Art of Shaving - FL LLC, The Dover Wipes Company, The Gillette Company, The Gillette Company LLC, The Gillette co., The Iams Company Inc., The Procter & Gamble Distributing LLC, The Procter & Gamble Global Finance Company LLC, The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company, The Procter & Gamble Paper Products Company, The Procter & Gamble U.S. Business Services Company, This is L., This is L. Inc., Thomas Hedley Co, US CD LLC, Vidal Sassoon Shanghai Academy, VitaminHaus Pty Ltd, Walker & Co. Brands Inc., Walker & Company Brands, Wella AG, Zenlen Inc., Zirh, and iMFLUX Inc..
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The White House on Monday defended the decision to station a U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery in South Korea, citing North Korea's latest launch of medium-range ballistic missile and its threat to conduct another nuclear test.
The U.S. "has worked with our partners and allies in the region to isolate North Korea and to apply pressure to them to try to persuade them not to engage in this kind of destabilizing behavior," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. "And the United States is prepared and has mobilized the appropriate military resources to defend our allies and ourselves."
"And that is why [we have] been in discussions with our South Korean allies about deploying a THAAD battery, an anti-ballistic missile battery, to South Korea to protect South Korea from the ballistic missile threat emanating from North Korea," he added.
The decision to station the THAAD battery here has angered China as well as North Korea and exacerbated tensions in the region.
Earnest also commented on threats by North Korean Foreign Ministry official Ri Yong-pil of further nuclear tests and preparation for a preemptive strike on the U.S. in an interview with NBC the previous day.
"We've been deeply concerned about the willingness of the North Korean regime to ignore or even flout their basic international obligations," Earnest said. "Both China and Russia have expressed concerns about this kind of destabilizing behavior from the North Koreans. And it's an indication of just how isolated the North Koreans are right now."
The U.S. State Department also condemned the threat.
State Department spokeswoman Anna Richey-Allen in an interview with VOA urged Pyongyang to refrain from behavior and rhetoric that heighten tensions in the region.
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.
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.
Seoul batted away a proposal by the U.S. for fighter jets from Japan, the U.S. and South Korea to fly in formation over South Korea in response to North Korea's nuclear tests, the Asahi Shimbun reported Tuesday.
The U.S. sounded out the idea immediately after the North's latest nuclear test, but Seoul demurred, citing fierce resistance here to any renewed Japanese military presence, a source told the daily.
Instead, a couple of the U.S.' B-1B bombers buzzed South Korean skies last month as a show of force. The U.S. had hoped to make the event a show of unity among its allies in the region, who are roughly pitted against an alliance between China and North Korea.
Japan in turn refused South Korean F-15Ks fighters permission to pass through Japanese airspace en route to a multinational aerial exercise in Alaska earlier this month.
Tokyo said it reserves permission to overfly for the U.S., which has a status of forces agreement with Japan, the newspaper added.
South Korea's Defense Ministry denied the report.
OPKO Health, Inc., a healthcare company, engages in the diagnostics and pharmaceuticals businesses in the United States, Ireland, Chile, Spain, Israel, Mexico, and internationally. The company's Diagnostics segment operates BioReference Laboratories that offers laboratory testing services for the detection, diagnosis, evaluation, monitoring, and treatment of diseases, including esoteric testing, molecular diagnostics, anatomical pathology, genetics, women's health, and correctional healthcare to physician offices, clinics, hospitals, employers and governmental units; and a novel diagnostic instrument system to provide blood test results in the point-of-care setting, as well as 4Kscore prostate cancer testing services. Its Pharmaceutical segment offers Rayaldee to treat secondary hyperparathyroidism in adults with stage 3 or 4 chronic kidney disease, and vitamin D insufficiency; OPK88004, an orally administered selective androgen receptor modulator; OPK88003, a once-weekly administered peptide for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and associated obesity that is in Phase IIb trials; and hGH-CTP, a once-weekly human growth hormone injection that completed Phase III clinical trial in partnership with Pfizer, Inc. This segment develops and commercializes longer-acting proprietary versions of already approved therapeutic proteins. The company also offers specialty APIs; develops, manufactures, markets, and sells pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, veterinary, and ophthalmic products; commercializes food supplements and over the counter products; manufactures and sells products primarily in the generics market; and imports, markets, distributes, and sells pharmaceutical products in a range of indications, including cardiovascular products, vaccines, antibiotics, gastro-intestinal products, hormones, and others. In addition, it operates pharmaceutical platforms in Ireland, Chile, Spain, and Mexico. The company was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.
The Marine Corps is quietly rolling out a new initiative aimed at building Marines who are fit spiritually as well as physically.
In coming months, discussions about spiritual fitness and making moral choices will be part of the curriculum at the Corps' Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia, and at corporals' and sergeants' courses around the service, Rear Adm. Brent Scott, chaplain of the Marine Corps, told Military.com in an interview.
The service hasn't ruled out making spiritual fitness a part of boot camp as well, he said.
Scott said he began planning this initiative when he arrived at his post two years ago, after reflection on the qualities that make a Marine resilient on the battlefield.
"We're now at the tail end of what was a long war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We found that much of the resilience we saw was not necessarily attributed to something that somebody could do in the gym," he said. "A lot had to do with the heart and soul of the individual."
Spiritual does not necessarily mean religious, Scott clarified. He breaks spiritual fitness into three parts: personal faith, personal values, and moral living and decision-making.
"A moral compass doesn't just come from a faith foundation; it's not enough to make a decision based on what is legally right or wrong," Scott said. "Chaplains will help Marines discover that compass for themselves -- that center of gravity that comes from their own upbringing, personal experiences, and religious teaching."
As a first line of effort, Scott said, his office is creating discussion guides around a book on the commandant's professional reading list: "What It Is Like to Go to War," by Navy Cross recipient Karl Marlantes, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War.
In the 2011 book, Marlantes describes in moving detail his journey to find spiritual absolution and peace, and his struggle with moral injury sustained in war, decades after returning home from Vietnam. He describes various ceremonies and rituals ancient cultures observed as they welcomed warriors back into society, acknowledging the transition from war to peace that must take place.
"We should allow people to curse the dead for murdering their friends, and then, if the younger ones can't, the older ones, officers and NCOs, should be trained in conducting the rituals of forgiveness and healing," Marlantes writes. "Something like: 'Bless these dead our former enemies who have played out their part. Bless us who [live], whose parts are not yet done. Forgive us if we killed in anger or hatred. Forgive them if they did the same. Judgment is Yours, not ours. We are only human."
Scott said two sets of discussion prompts are being designed with this book in mind: one for conversations between chaplains and Marines, and one for Marine leaders working directly with subordinate troops.
Spiritual fitness elements of the OCS and NCO professional military education curricula are still being developed, Scott said, but they will emphasize "kneecap to kneecap" discussions, rather than classroom instruction.
Close to the Marine Corps birthday on Nov. 10, the service will release a video featuring Scott, Commandant Gen. Robert Neller and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Ronald Green talking about the importance of spiritual fitness.
This initiative will be proved successful, Scott said, if Marines begin talking about spiritual fitness and maintaining spiritual health as openly as they discuss physical fitness and physical training.
"If all you have to do is look within yourself, that runs kind of bankrupt over a period of time," Scott said. "Marines face mortality, life and death, and that's when those faith issues start to come up."
-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.
Korea's exports of IT parts are suffering as China moves to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers for key components.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Tuesday said Korea's exports of industrial parts and materials to China fell 13.2 percent on-year in the first nine months of this year to US$60.4 billion.
Industrial parts and materials account for 70 percent of Korea's total exports to China, and a failure by Korean manufacturers to find alternative markets or products could lead to disastrous results. Exports of electronics parts to China plunged 18.7 percent, the biggest decline.
China is investing heavily to boost production of semiconductors and other IT components within its borders. Exports of chemical products to China fell 10.1 percent due to excess supply there.
"We need to bolster research and development on industrial parts and materials to create products that are superior to those made in China," said Han Jae-jin at Hyundai Research Institute. "We also need to lower our dependence on exports of intermediate goods to China and boost sales of consumer goods there."
Meanwhile, Korea's imports of Japanese industrial parts and materials, which had been declining until last year, have risen again.
Japanese industrial parts and materials accounted for 16.5 percent of Korea's imports of such goods last year, a record low, but that has risen again to 17.6 percent this year.
"Due to the economic slump, overall imports slowed, but imports of core Japanese industrial parts and components increased steadily because they're hard to replace," said Moon Byung-ki at the Korea International Trade Association.
The U.S. Air Force's top officer said he expects the high pace of war-related operations to continue for decades to come.
"We've been deploying now for 15 years," Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said. "We've probably got 15, 20 years to go."
His comments came Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, during a spouse and family forum hosted by Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James.
While fewer airmen are deploying, the time they spend away is increasing -- driven in part by missions related to the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a resurgent Russia and China's increased military activity in the Pacific.
Rising Deployment Times
On average, enlisted airmen deployed for 132 days and officers for 128 days in 2015, up from 110 days and 93 days, respectively, in 2013, according to an analysis by Air Force Times.
Goldfein last month announced an initiative to deploy airmen in teams of three or more, rather than dispatching them individually.
"I'm concerned that over the past 15 years, we have migrated into sending too many single airmen into combat," Goldfein said at the time. "While we will never be the service that says, if you want an airman, you get an entire squadron -- because that's not what the nation needs, we need to be a little more flexible than that -- I think the pendulum has swung a little too much to individual airmen."
Continued deployment demands put pressure on the Air Force's goal of a 1:2 deploy-to-dwell time, or six months deployed and one year at home. In 2015, no career fields increased from the 1:2 mark, with all but six keeping rates of 1:3 or lower, according to Air Force Times.
Family Programs
Goldfein asked a panel of military family advocates how efforts such as the Exceptional Family Member Program are catering to families when loved ones are deployed.
"Is there anything in our system that actually reaches out to a deployed spouse, or is a deployed spouse really looking at the exact same process as a couple that's together?" he said.
Air Force Lt. Col. Andy Cruz, the 14th Medical Group deputy commander, responded, "I know from a base level that the key spouse program at the base I just came from works along with the airmen, family readiness center ... to develop different programs monthly. "
Panel member Dr. Ed Tyner, deputy director of the Defense Department's special needs program, said, "At our level at OSD, we've done several trainings on doing warm handoffs," using the term to describe when a primary care provider personally introduces a patient to a behavioral health specialist. "But again, it's probably only going to be if the family member comes in and asks for it, because they won't always know [the program exists]," he said.
-- Amy Bushatz contributed to this report.
-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
The U.S. Army announced Wednesday it will deploy a heavy brigade from the 1st Infantry Division as part of the regular rotation to the Republic of Korea.
Approximately 3,500 soldiers from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, from Fort Riley, Kansas, will deploy this fall and replace the 1st Cavalry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team to support the United States Forces-Korea's commitment to the Republic of Korea, according to an Oct. 19 Army press release.
"I am exceptionally proud of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat team," Brig. Gen. Patrick D. Frank, deputy commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division, said in the release.
"The Devil brigade has proven themselves while conducting rigorous training during Danger Focus at home station and at the National Training Center," the release states. "The leaders and soldiers of this great brigade are well-trained and fully prepared for this important mission to South Korea."
The Army also announced recently that the Fort Riley-based 1st ID will deploy 500 soldiers to Iraq this fall to assume the role of Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command-Iraq support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
The 1st Infantry Division Headquarters troops will replace soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), providing command and control of coalition troops training, advising and assisting Iraqi Security Forces.
-- 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.
U.S. Marine special operations forces recently chose the Glock 19 as their official sidearm, but this isn't the first time elite units have invested in the Austrian pistol maker.
The U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment decided to pure-fleet its battalions with the Glock 19 in September 2015, according to an Army source familiar with the decision who is not authorized to speak to the media.
Four months later, U.S. Army Special Operations Command followed the Ranger Regiment's example and chose Glock 19 for the rest of its forces, including all Special Forces Groups and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the source said.
Elite units had routinely authorized personnel to carry the Glock 9mm pistol instead of the standard-issue M9 9mm pistol.
But this latest decision by Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, to follow Army special operations forces in choosing to use only the Glock 19 speaks to Glock's standing in the world of military sidearms.
"It came down to feedback from the field," MARSOC spokesman Maj. Nick Mannweiler told Military.com on Tuesday. "We determined that the Glock 19 met the requirements that we needed for a concealable, reliable pistol that fired a 9mm round."
Army Special Operations Command has not agreed to Military.com's interview request, but the Army has paid more than $5 million to Glock Inc. since September 2015.
The compact Model 19 is one of Glock's most popular handguns. The striker-fired, 9mm pistol features a four-inch barrel and has a standard capacity of 15 rounds, although 17-round magazines are available. The polymer frame features an accessory rail for mounting lights.
MARSOC'S move follows a Marine Corps decision in February that authorized MARSOC operators to carry Glock pistols, since many of the elite outfit's members prefer the popular Glock 19 9mm handgun over the custom .45 pistols the service bought them in 2012.
The Corps completed an exhaustive search for a new MARSOC pistol in 2012. The service awarded a $22.5 million contract to Colt Defense LLC for up to 10,000 Close Quarter Battle Pistols.
But MARSOC officials decided it would be better to streamline its pistol inventory down to one sidearm, Mannweiler said, adding that the command has purchased 1,654 Glock 19s.
"That is the standard-issue sidearm now that you will see," he said. "You are not going to see 9mm M9 Berettas; you are not going to see the Colt 1911. You are going to see Glock 19s as the issued sidearm."
Army's Modular Handgun System
Glock is also competing against a handful of well-known pistol makers for the chance to make the Army's Modular Handgun System. The Army launched its long-awaited XM17 MHS competition in late August to replace the service's Cold War-era M9 9mm pistol.
Sig Sauer, Beretta and FN Herstal are also competing for the MHS contract. The Army recently notified Smith & Wesson that it would not be advancing to the next phase of the competition.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has considered bypassing the multi-year MHS effort and following Army Special Operations Command's decision to buy Glock 19s.
Earlier this spring, Milley publicly criticized the MHS program's 356-page requirement document and lengthy testing phase, slated to cost $17 million for technology that has existed for years.
The chief also asked the Army Special Operations Command's G-8 office, which oversees fielding of equipment, if there was room for the Army to join the pistol contract to buy Glock 19s, according to the Army source.
Milley has since backed off of his criticisms of MHS and in early October said the program was "on track."
If Glock wins the MHS contract, it stands to replace the 400,000 M9 pistols in the Defense Department's inventory since the Army is the Pentagon's executive agent for small arms.
For now, Glock is staying quiet. Company spokeswoman Brandi Collins declined to comment on its recent success in the special operations world.
The results are obvious by the delivery numbers. Since September 2015, the Army has taken seven delivery orders from Glock, totaling $5.6 million. Notably, the Army paid Glock $1.7 million on Feb. 16 and $3.5 million on March 23.
New Glock 19s retail for $500-$600 each, but the Glocks for U.S. Army Special Operations Command currently cost about $320, the source said.
-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
A U.S. service member was killed and another was injured in an insider attack on Wednesday in Kabul, according to NATO.
A U.S. civilian was also killed and two more American civilians were wounded in the incident in the capital of Afghanistan, according to a release Wednesday from NATO's Operation Resolute Support mission in the country.
The slain individuals weren't immediately identified, pending notification of their family members, the release states. The injured service member and civilians are listed in stable condition, it states.
An investigation into the attack is underway, according to NATO. The incident occurred while the Americans were training Afghan security forces near a coalition base, it reported.
The unidentified assailant was killed, the release states. The individual was wearing an Afghan army uniform when he opened fire on the coalition forces around 11 a.m. local time, the website al-Jazeera reported.
"Anytime we lose a member of our team, it is deeply painful," Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and Operation Resolute Support, said in a statement.
"Our sympathies go out to the families, loved ones and the units of those involved in this incident," he added. "To those who continue to target coalition forces, ANDSF, and Afghan civilians, RS and USFOR-A will continue to pursue our Train, Advise, and Assist mission to help our partners create a better Afghanistan."
The death marks the 10th fatality of a coalition member in Afghanistan in 2016 -- and the eighth of an American service member this year, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks the information based on public records.
Hundreds of coalition members have died or been wounded in so-called insider attacks in the country over the past several years, by some estimates.
At least 150 troops since 2008 have been killed in insider attacks -- and in 2012 the incidents accounted for as many as 15 percent of coalition deaths, according to an analysis by the online The Long War Journal.
-- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Brendan_McGarry.
The government and ruling Saenuri Party agreed on Tuesday to speed up the planned deployment of advanced weapons to respond to North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threats.
The previous target was the mid-2020s, but the plans are to be brought forward by three or four years. They cover the development of various homegrown arms. Next year's budget will include the purchase of two more early-warning radar systems.
They will be stationed in the southern part of the nation to detect North Korean submarine-launched ballistic missiles attacking from southern waters.
Spy satellites could be rented from other countries until South Korea's indigenously produced surveillance satellite is deployed in orbit between 2021 and 2022.
The government will also buy an additional 90 Taurus long-range air-to-ground missiles and add the acquisition of naval helicopters to next year's budget.
The government and Saenuri Party also agreed to speed up the development of a 230 mm multiple launch rocket system to deal with North Korea's new 300 mm artillery, and to bolster cyber security.
I seriously envy young couples in Surrey and Langley in this day and age, with great date night and dine out options available like the impressive new S+L Kitchen & Bar.
In my early twenties, most of the date night options in my hometown suburb would have been a pub (with pull tabs), or the same casual chain restaurant I used to go to with my grade 7 volleyball team (with orders of chicken fingers and fries all around). When I heard two separate couples talking about S+L at an event I attended this summer, I knew John and I had to make the trip to Langley see what all the hype was about.
S+L Kitchen & Bar is located just off Highway 1 on 200th St, as you exit towards Downtown Langley. Pruned, branded foliage greeted us out front as oversized doors were opened by a staff member to invite us into the radiantly warm and welcoming venue.
I ordered an Old Fashioned to start the evening, a delightfully delicious version of my favourite cocktail that would inspire a return visit on its own, to be enjoyed again at the restaurants extended bar area.
We decided on two small plates to begin our meal, the scallops (pan seared, served on a butternut squash puree with brown butter, hazelnuts, smoked bacon) and the gnudi (with brown butter and wild mushrooms). I suppose brown butter was the theme, realizing this now as I type out the ingredients, but the dishes were great for our seasonal early autumn supper.
Whenever John sees a hearty pork chop on a menu, he orders it. Hes from Iowa where pork reigns supreme so he knows good chops. That was his choice for an entree, served bone-in with sweet potato puree and pickled shiitake. The dish got a lip-smacking seal of approval from the Midwest boy, although he did comment that the pickle on the mushrooms could have been toned down.
I went with the feature entree that is showcased in several places on S+Ls menu card: Wagyu Beef. In partnership with Snake River Farms in Idaho, S+L offers a range of dishes featuring this unique cut. The intensely marbled steak I ordered was rich and silky, prepared sous vide and basted in butter again with the butter, I know!
We topped off our decadent trio of courses with a dessert that was described as a sphere. When it arrived, I had to pull up my camera and film as our server drizzled warm creme anglaise over a white chocolate orb, which melted away to reveal a brownie dessert within.
Our bellies were full and our minds were blown with this creamy coup de grace. Of course your experience at S+L doesnt need to be as indulgent as they offer a selection of lighter fare such as fresh oysters, a variety of crisp salads, sablefish, lobster pasta, eggplant parmesan, and more. They also have a full brunch menu, served Sundays from 10:00am to 2:00pm.
New at S+L Since Our Visit
Earlier this month, Joseph Richard Group announced that Chef Matthew Stowe joined the company as Director of Culinary Operations. Stowe, who won Top Chef Canada in 2013, is one of Canadas most talented chefs and comes to the company with 18 years of experience in some of the best known kitchens in North America.
Stowe will work across all of JRGs operations, his immediate focus will be on refining the menu and leading the team at all S+L Kitchen & Bar locations, including the Langley location, which includes MasterChef Canada winner David Jorge, and the soon to be open locations in Abbotsford and South Surrey.
Enter to Win
S+L Kitchen & Bar has generously offered up a dinner experience for one lucky Miss604 reader and three guests! Enjoy an exclusive five course wine and food pairing experience created by JRG Director of Culinary Operations, Chef Matthew Stowe and JRG Corporate Chef, David Jorge. The meal will be prepared and served by S+L Kitchen & Bars own Chef and General Manager.
Heres how you can enter to win:
Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
Like, share, or comment on this post on Facebook (1 entry)
Post the following on Twitter (1 entry)
I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Tuesday, October 25, 2016. Must be 19+. Please enjoy responsibly. Prize is valid for S+L Kitchen & Bar in Langley at 8399 200 St. Reservation arrangements will be made for the winner and their guests for a mutually agreed upon date.
Update The winner is Michelle Towstyka!
Many customers are slow to return their Galaxy Note 7 smartphones to Samsung despite a spate of the phones catching fire.
Korean telecoms started product exchanges or refunds last Thursday, but by Monday only 50,000 customers had turned them in, whereas an estimated 500,000 are in circulation.
Of those who did, 70 percent accepted a Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge instead, and the rest Samsung Note 5, Apple iPhone 6S, LG V20 or other devices and were given the difference in cash. The vast majority seem to be waiting for the iPhone 7 or 7 Plus to hit stores so they can get a better deal.
"Compared to the Note 7, the other smartphones available in the market now are outdated," one office worker said. "So I'm going to wait till the new iPhone comes out."
8th Annual Detroit Fall Beer Festival
When: Oct. 21-22, 2016
Where: Eastern Market, Detroit
Time/Tickets: 5-9 p.m. Friday; tickets $40 in advance, $45 at gate (if available); 1-6 p.m. Saturday; tickets sold out
Contact: mibeer.com
Complete beer list: mbgmash.org
CHARLEVOIX, MI - Is there really "sunken treasure" at the bottom of Lake Charlevoix?
Indeed, and it comes in the vessel of a stainless steel Firkin.
Amy Sherman and I made a side trip to the Lake Charlevoix Brewing Company while on our recent search for Michigan's Best Pizza to ask reps about a Firkin aged at the bottom of an undisclosed location in Lake Charlevoix.
This sunken treasure will be ready just in time for the Detroit Fall Beer Festival, which is Oct. 21-22, 2016 at Eastern Market.
"The magical waters of Lake Charlevoix are something we can't even explain," said the brewery's co-owner Aaron Hagen, who said the beer was submerged 20 feet.
"With the extra pressure and that magic water it will really strengthen the yeast and make for a really strong and potent product," said the brewery's marketing manager Andy Smith.
"Potent" is the key word.
The Firkin is a Belgian Quad -- "Shot the the Dome" -- that comes in at 11% ABV. It was named by head brewer Evan Keller.
The Firkin will be tapped Friday on the first day of the Detroit Fall Beer Festival, but it also will be kegged and available both days at the event. Some might even make it to the Tap Room in Charlevoix, if supplies last.
This weekend Lake Charlevoix Brewing Co. will also offer Up North Pale Ale; Pig Devil - Smoked Maple Bacon Porter; Double Cookie Stout; Pineapple Gose; and Acacia Amber.
Overall, the fall festival will feature more than 100 breweries and 800 beers. (Complete beer list at mbgmash.org.)
Lake Charlevoix Brewing Company is located at 111 Bridge Park Dr.
More info at lakecharlevoixbrewing.com.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Jim Foguth, president of True Value Builders of Wyoming, says he knows what it's like to be down and out.
That's why he's promised to donate 5 percent of his company's sales to Mel Trotter Ministries, a Grand Rapids-based mission that helps troubled men and women get back on their feet.
Foguth says he hopes to send Mel Trotter $200,000 by the end of 2017 from the windows, siding and roofing projects True Value Builders will install.
With 24 employees at the company, Foguth said he just hired two Mel Trotter residents this month. He said he also plans to start a profit sharing and pension program for his workers.
More significantly, Foguth said he also intends to hire and train Mel Trotter's residents and other disabled, homeless and mentally ill persons at a nonprofit window manufacturing plant he plans to start in 2017.
Foguth, who admires American founding father Benjamin Franklin, said he plans to call his new company "Franklin's Finest Windows."
"We're just extremely grateful for him and others in the community who see the value in people who are experiencing homelessness and are willing to go the extra mile and give them the opportunity to get back on their feet," said Dennis Van Kampen, CEO of Mel Trotter Ministries.
"I want to employ as many people as I possibly can," said Foguth, who added he's motivated by the kindness other employers showed him 27 years ago, when he lost his home, his car and all his possessions in a messy marital breakup.
After sleeping on a beach in Virginia for a month, Foguth said he was fortunate to be hired by Honeywell Corp. selling closed circuit video security systems on commission.
That success led to a job selling replacement windows in Florida and eventually led him back to his hometown in West Michigan, where he started True Value Construction, which specializes in installing windows, siding and roofing systems.
Besides donating to Mel Trotter, Foguth said he also is giving $25 gift certificates to his customers that can be redeemed at Mel Trotter's mission stores.
"Our donation to Mel Trotter Ministries and the creation of our new nonprofit are very personal to me, because there but for the grace of God go I," Foguth said.
Based in Grand Rapids' Heartside Neighborhood, Mel Trotter Ministries is a 116-year-old shelter for the homeless and hungry. The charity also operates thrift stores in Sparta and Jenison.
Jessica Webster | MLive.com
Ann Arbor is famous
Jessica Webster | MLive.com
October 19, 2016
Ann Arbor is only the sixth largest city in Michigan, but thanks to The University of Michigan and some of the city's more famous former residents, it has an outsized presence in popular culture.
Inspired by a recent Saturday Night Live skit that had us snickering about a fictional - but awfully close to home - Ann Arbor Short Film Festival, we thought now would be a good time to look back at some of the other times Ann Arbor has hit the mainstream in popular culture, from Hitchcock classics to terrible "American Pie" spin-offs.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
SNL skewers the "Ann Arbor Short Film Festival"
We'll start with the most recent mention. On the October 15 episode of NBC's "Saturday Night Live," host Emily Blunt and the SNL cast skewered the film festival culture - and perhaps Ann Arbor's annual film festival - with this humorous sketch. Was Alex Moffat's film festival host a take-off on Michigan Theater executive director Russ Collins?
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Jessica Webster | jessicawebster@mlive.com
"Ann Arbor sounds disgusting"
In the "Cones of Dunshire" episode of NBC's "Parks & Rec," Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope character is not happy to hear that her best friend is moving to Ann Arbor.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"Lost"
On the hit television show "Lost," Ann Arbor was the location of the origin of the shadowy research organization called The Dharma Initiative.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
The Big Chill
Michigan grad Lawrence Kasdan directed this movie about a group of University of Michigan grads who get together for a fellow grad's funeral. Michigan gear and references abound.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"The FIve-Year Engagement"
Shooting for the film "The Five-Year Engagement" took place over several months on the streets and in clubs and restaurants in Ann Arbor in 2011. Unlike several other movies filmed in Ann Arbor during that time, this one featured the city prominently in the movie's plot. Emily Blunt's character works at the University of Michigan in the movie, and Jason Segal's character works at a series of restaurants, including Zingerman's Deli.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"The Upside of Anger"
In this preview of the 2005 movie "The Upside of Anger," Kevin Costner can be seen wearing a shirt from Ann Arbor's Mr. Stadium Coin Laundry and Dry Cleaner (1964 S. Industrial Hwy.).
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
Drake on Saturday Night Live
Canadian pop star Drake plays Derek, a new Kinko's employee who grew up in Ann Arbor, went to Michigan and carries a Block M mug. The skit was cut from the broadcast but released online.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"Freaks & Geeks"
In the final scene of the brilliant series "Freaks & Geeks," the Lindsay Weir character, played by Linda Cardellini, takes a bus to Ann Arbor from her home in the fictional Detroit suburb of Chippewa, ostensibly to attend an academic summit at the University of Michigan.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"House"
On the Fox television show "House," the title character Gregory House and his love interest/boss Lisa Cuddy attended The University of Michigan. According to the show's backstory, Cuddy and House met in an Ann Arbor bookstore when they were both enrolled at the university.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"Answer This"
"Answer This" is a 2011 comedy about a Michigan grad student who enters a city-wide trivia contest. The movie was set and filmed in Ann Arbor, and bars across the campus area are featured prominently.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile"
In this spin-off from the popular "American Pie" movie series, a character heads to Ann Arbor to participate in the now-defunct end-of-semester Naked Mile run.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"The Men Who Stare At Goats"
Ewan MacGregor stars as hapless Ann Arbor Daily Telegram reporter Bob Wilton, who investigates an American military special forces unit that has been trained in psychic warfare during the Iraq War.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"Jumper"
Hayden Christensen plays an Ann Arbor high school student with special powers. Scenes from the movie were shot at Huron High School and Gallup Park.
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Jessica Webster | MLive.com
"North By Northwest"
Here's a classic for you. In the Alfred Hitchcock film "North By Northwest," we hear announcements for a train heading from Chicago's LaSalle Street Station to Detroit, with stops in Niles, Dowagiac, Lawton, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Marshall, Albion, Jackson, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.
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LANSING, MI - A group of area students traveled to Lansing on Tuesday, Oct. 18, to voice their support for proposed bills that would requires schools to consider alternatives to harsh disciplinary measures.
Fourteen students and six adults from Ypsilanti and Jackson participated in a "capitol commencement" initiative on Tuesday, where they handed out cupcakes and postcards to state senators prior to their session. During the session, they presented graduation caps with a "diploma" of startling facts about harsh school discipline.
The group is in favor of several house bills known as the "rethink discipline" bill packages. HB 5618 to 5621 would require schools to consider other factors and options before suspending or expelling a student, which could include restorative practices. HB 5693 to 5695 would incorporate changes made by HB 5618 to 5621 in other areas of the Revised School Code and define restorative practices as efforts that "emphasize repairing the harm to the victim and the school community caused by a student's misconduct."
Advocates for the "rethink discipline" bills say they're needed to counteract zero-tolerance policies many schools adopted in the '90s - especially after the Columbine High School shooting - that offer no flexibility for school staff to consider a student's age, developmental abilities or intent when determining an appropriate disciplinary measure, according to an analysis by the House Fiscal Agency.
"We want to get bills passed, for a better education," said DaQuann Harrison, a student in Ypsilanti, in a press release.
The bill packages received support in the House in June, and on Tuesday, they were referred to the committee of the whole in the Senate.
The students involved in the "capitol commencement" initiative are part of the Student Advocacy Center's Youth Action Michigan, a program that gives high school students skills and support to impact schools' policies that push out students. The Student Advocacy Center has been around since 1975 helping out-of-school and struggling youth find a learning path.
The SAC's "capitol commencement" event is part of the national Week of Action, organized by the national Dignity In Schools Campaign. During this year's DSC Week of Action, more than 100 organizations in more than 40 cities across the country will hold rallies, marches, forums and workshops to raise awareness to end school pushout. This year's theme is: Lift Us Up! Don't Push Us Out.
Nationally, groups are calling on their governments, districts and schools to:
Shift funding from school police to counselors, peace builders and positive discipline.
Fund and use transformative and restorative justice, mediation and positive interventions.
Stop arresting and pushing out student of color, LGBTQ youth, students that are homeless and students with disabilities at higher rates. (Black students are pushed out at the highest rates nationally.)
Make sure states and districts focus on school climate under the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
End paddling and physical punishment in all schools.
SAC Executive Director Peri Stone-Palmquist said it's exciting that Michigan has reached a critical stage with the "rethink discipline" bills at the very time organizations around the country are celebrating the Week of Action.
"This proposed legislation represents an enormous step forward," Stone-Palmquist said. "These bills encourage second chances and give our districts more flexibility to respond in more restorative ways that truly teach and hold students accountable to their community."
Sen. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, said she wants to keep more students in the classroom by preventing "overly punitive expulsions and suspensions."
"It is critical that we do everything possible to help at-risk youth become healthy, productive adults and contributors to their communities," Warren said. "Our current zero-tolerance policies give school districts too little flexibility to address non-weapon offenses on a case-by-case basis."
Aysa Villanueva, a high school student from Jackson, said she doesn't understand why suspensions are used for certain infractions.
"Suspensions for petty things like clothes shouldn't be necessary, because they're losing their education," she said.
Villanueva and other students say they hope the bills, if passed, will send a clear message that education matters and reduce the number of out-of-school removals.
YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - Police are investigating after a woman was robbed while trying to sell her wedding ring on a mobile app on Oct. 14.
Police were called about 8 p.m. Oct. 14 to the 8700 block of Spinnaker Way in Ypsilanti Township for a reported robbery, according to the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office.
A 35-year-old Canton woman told police she had posted her wedding ring for sale on the mobile app "Offer Up" and agreed to meet a potential buyer in a parking lot on Spinnaker Way to make the sale, said Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Keith Flores.
Police said the suspect asked to look at the ring and the receipt for the ring before exchanging money. When the woman pulled out the ring and receipt, he grabbed both and fled.
The ring is valued at $4,000, Flores said.
The suspect was described as a black man, about 6 feet tall and 150 pounds wearing a red hoodie. Further description of the individual was not immediately available.
Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office confidential tip line at 734-973-7711 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SPEAK UP.
BAY CITY, MI -- A 28-year-old Reese man who drunkenly rolled his Jeep into a Bay County ditch on St. Patrick's Day is entering treatment court to tackle his alcohol issues.
Spencer C. Palmreuter on Wednesday, Oct. 19, appeared before Bay County Chief District Judge Dawn A. Klida and pleaded guilty to one count of third-offense operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. The charge is a five-year felony.
In exchange for his plea, Bay County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Nancy E. Borushko agreed to dismiss counts of driving while license suspended, denied, or revoked failure to report an accident, and failure to stop at the scene of a property damage accident. She also consented to him receiving a delayed sentence so he could enter into Bay County's sobriety court program.
The sobriety court -- one of four treatment court programs in Bay County -- has four phases and takes participants 15 months to two years to complete. The first phase is the most intensive, with each subsequent phase decreasing in intensity.
All participants must plead guilty to their third driving while intoxicated offense.
If Palmreuter successfully completes the program, his conviction will be downgraded to second-offense driving while intoxicated, meaning he won't have a felony on his record.
Klida told Palmreuter the final sentence won't be imposed until his time in treatment court has ended. If he ends up being terminated from the program, a Circuit Court judge will sentence him, she said.
Klida did, however, order Palmreuter to pay $530 in court fines and costs and a $1,100 fee to participate in sobriety court.
Palmreuter's case stems from Bay County sheriff's deputies on the afternoon of March 17 responding to a one-vehicle crash on East Kinney Road near Cotter Road in Merritt Township. A 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee had been reported in a ditch containing 2 feet of water, court records show.
While deputies were on the way, Bay County Central Dispatch advised them the Jeep's lone occupant had escaped from the vehicle and was running eastbound from the scene, court records show. Before deputies arrived, a responding Hampton Township police officer nabbed the fleeing person, identified as Palmreuter, court records show.
Deputies observed Palmreuter's eyes to be watery, glassy and bloodshot, that he smelled of alcohol, and that his clothes were wet and muddy, court records show. When they asked him why he fled, Palmreuter reportedly responded, "I ran?"
Palmreuter went on to tell deputies he was at a friend's Bay City home and had consumed seven or eight beers. He said he was on his way home when he lost control of his Jeep and crashed it into the ditch, court records show.
When deputies asked if he would be willing to attempt some field sobriety tests or breathe into a Breathalyzer, Palmreuter replied, "No, it's my right as a United States citizen to refuse any test."
Palmreuter volunteered he was on probation in both Bay and Tuscola counties on drunken-driving charges. At 6:41 p.m., he ended up giving a breath sample to deputies' alcohol-testing Datamaster. The result indicated his blood alcohol level was 0.25 percent; two minutes later, a second test yielded a result of 0.24 percent, court records show.
In Michigan, a person is legally intoxicated when their blood alcohol level reaches 0.08 percent. A person is considered super drunk at 0.17 percent.
Before the Wednesday plea hearing ended, Judge Klida offered Palmreuter some words of encouragement.
"You're a young man and this will be challenging for you," she said. "You'll get out of this program what you're willing to put into it. We want you to be successful."
WINDSOR, ONTARIO -- One Canadian humane society is backpedaling on its attempts to capitalize on Donald Trump's controversial "grab her by the p****" statement.
The Windsor/Essex County Humane Society put out an ad in which it joked "you don't have to be a star to grab a pussy ... cat."
The advertisement was aimed at promoting the society's $50 cat adoption sale.
The Windsor Star reports the ad garnered negative reaction from the public, with Windsor lawmaker Lisa Gretzky tweeting that she was "profoundly deeply disappointed" by it.
I am profoundly deeply disappointed and disturbed by this advertisement. When it comes to sexual assault #itsneverok Lisa Gretzky (@LGretzky) October 19, 2016
We must ensure that demeaning behavior towards women is not perpetuated. Regardless of intent it is never acceptable #neverok #WomenMatter pic.twitter.com/tKC5FzXMG2 Lisa Gretzky (@LGretzky) October 19, 2016
The newspaper reports that Gretzky passed the advertisement around to other provincial parliament members, who were also irked enough by the advertisement to reach out to the society.
Backlash from the ad resulted in a quick take-down, as it was reportedly pulled from all channels within three hours of hitting the internet.
"Our intent was to poke fun at the U.S. election," the society's director, Melanie Coulter, told the Windsor Star.
"We were thinking, 'Okay, we need to do an adoption program ... What can we do that will get people talking and people will share?'
"We thought, 'Everybody's talking about the U.S. election.'"
Korean fishermen's squid catch in the East Sea is plummeting as voracious Chinese trawler fleets decimate stocks.
According to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries on Tuesday, the annual squid haul from the East Sea shrank from 88,581 tons in 2012 to 65,181 tons last year.
Squid typically migrate toward South Korean waters from North Korea from July to September, but Chinese fishing boats who buy their fishing rights from North Korea catch them before they can make their way south.
One source at a fisheries cooperative in Pohang said, "There are more than 1,000 Chinese trawlers estimated to be operation in North Korean waters. Squid hauls have been dropping for years now, which is a major concern."
China signed a fishing pact with North Korea in 2004 that led to a huge increase in the number of Chinese trawlers in North Korean waters.
According to Gangwon Province officials, Chinese fishermen have to pay US$60,000 to $80,000 for the fishing rights, and they fish in North Korean waters between June and August every year with each trawler hauling between 7 to 10 tons of fish.
Yangon City Development Committee is paving the way for vendors to open stalls in a night market along Strand Road, with a plan formulated under the previous government set to take shape as soon as November.
We had that plan since [the former government was in power] but we couldnt implement it, YCDCs Department of Administration deputy U Nyi Nyi told The Myanmar Times. We will soon have a night market like other countries do.
The market will be in the car park on Strand Road, stretching from Ahlone Township to the intersection with Pansodan Road.
Preparations include ensuring a water distribution system is in place and constructing an adequate number of public toilets.
We have already constructed public toilets in two or three place on Strand Road, he said.
YCDC will add facilities such as a garbage collection system, and supply electricity to the site.
Select vendors selling products in the downtown area will be invited to open up a stall in the night market.
We have already collected a list of vendors to open shops in the night market but right now we cant say how many stalls there will be, U Nyi Nyi said.
YCDC has not released specific details of the plan. They say following this announcement of the development, they will seek to create a night market of international standard in order to attract foreigners.
A draft list from the Department of Administration collected over the past few months indicates there are over 5000 street vendors in Lanma daw, Latha, Pabedan and Kyauktada Townships.
Is this Yangon's future? YHT outlines ambitious vision
Yangon Heritage Trust (YHT) has emphasised that street vendors are a crucial characteristic of Yangons urban landscape, and that YCDC must ensure the plan is to their benefit.
It is difficult to relocate a market because it is a place for both vendors and buyers, said YHT director Daw Moe Moe Lwin.
The governments plan for driving economic development is set to be unveiled in greater detail at a summit in Nay Pyi Taw at the end of the month, where officials will garner policy input from various industry leaders.
When it comes to the agricultural sector, farmers and industry insiders say they expect the policy to cover all aspects of the value chain.
Freedom of Farmers League president U Thein Aung said most in the agricultural sector are hoping the new policies will set a meaningful course for developing capital financing and infrastructure, and will seek greater access to foreign markets.
If the policies do not seek to open up markets it can make it harder for farmers to be involved in the countrys economic growth, he said. At the same time, the policy [could help] farmers make direct connections with investors and markets.
For farmers, hopes are high as are the stakes.
Under the previous government, the policy remained unchanged, he said. I [hope] this governments economic policies work out or it will be like previous years where farmers are always indebted, he said.
Many in the business community had expressed disappointment with the release of a mid-year economic policy outline, saying it lacked specific details.
The July release of a 12-point policy outline included plans to support competition and build a stronger private sector, improve public financial management, tackle smuggling, provide more credit for farmers, promote foreign direct investment and reform state-owned enterprises.
The NLDs economic committee confirmed last week that the event planned for October 22 would provide greater clarity on the 12-point plan, particularly in the area of foreign investment. But the finance and planning ministry said the event would not unveil in full detail the final economic policy.
U Maung Maung Lay, a vice president at the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, previously told The Myanmar Times that senior UMFCCI representatives would be among those attending.
Optimism over the US lifting of sanctions has been tempered by concerns that crucial economic issues must be addressed by a government policy in order for meaningful development to take place.
Well discuss the grievances and challenges [of the business sector], U Maung Maung Lay said.
Processes and strategies developed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries were submitted to the Ministry of Planning and Finance in September.
Deputy secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries U Myo Tint Htun said it was developed in consultation with sources in various departments and ministries.
They focused on financing, infrastructure, milling, and processing for ease of sales and export, U Myo Tint Htun said.
[We need] to have quality control after harvesting, and adaptive cultivation systems for climate change, and make things easier for getting certification and quarantine for export products, he said.
It will take time to prepare a legal framework for foreign and local investors, U Myo Tint Htun conceded. However, he hoped that the new policy would have the way toward a value-added agro-based economy.
The details are considered in context of the ministrys budget and the needs of stakeholders throughout the whole supply chain, he said.
Yankin's Socialist-era public housing is targeted for demolition, with damaged and poorly maintained buildings set to be cleared in order to make way for modern housing developments.
The Ministry of Construction announced the buildings put up by the Public Housing group under the Anti-Fascist Peoples Freedom League (AFPFL) and the Myanmar Socialist Program Party will be replaced by construction projects following a public tender.
Between 1953 and 1972, 206 buildings were constructed in Ward 1 and 6. This includes 3604 rooms. The Yankin Housing Project is populated by civil servants, retired civil servants, ex-servicemen and their families. They currently rent from the Urban and Housing Development Department for a monthly fee of K12.50 per square foot.
The places will be given to residents as well as [residents of] Lan Thit Avenue housing. Tenders will be invited, U Yu Khaing, director of urban housing and development under the Ministry of Construction, told The Myanmar Times yesterday. The master plan had already been written. The regional government and the Ministry of Construction will carry out this project.
It is not yet known when the demolitions will begin.
Over 16,000 rooms in nine state-owned housing complexes are managed by the construction ministrys Department of Urban and Housing Development. These include the Lan Thit housing project in Lanmadaw township, the Yankin township buildings, and the Hpa Sa Pa La (AFPLF) housing project in Mingalar Taung Nyunt township. These sites have been identified as the first priority.
The Department of Urban and Housing Development announced an open tender on the Lan Thit site for domestic construction firms in state owned newspapers. Tenders on the Yankin and Kandawlay Hpa Sa Pa La sites will come next.
Two state-owned buildings, 51st Street housing and Link Street, were demolished and replaced under the previous government. Original residents have been resettled into the new, upgraded housing.
The construction company which won the tender worked in cooperation with the Department of Urban and Housing Development under a public private partnership agreement.
During a the Yangon Region Hluttaw session on October 12 Yangon Region Minister for Electricity, Industry and Transportation Daw Nilar Kyaw said the apartments from Yankin Housing Project are deteriorating badly. She said the buildings are old, with roofs, windows, fences, ceilings, water and sewage pipes, as well as electricity cables, in desperate need of repair or replacement. Only a few apartments have been painted and repaired, and a lack of funding has hampered restoration efforts so far.
Responding to a question from MP Daw Thidar Maung (Yankin 1), Minister Daw Nilar Kyaw said they were now at the stage of putting forward proposed architectural designs.
Translation by San Layy and Win Thaw Tar
Only the bravest festival goers dare to ride the human-powered Ferris wheels at Yae Kyaws Thadingyut festival each year in October. Ferris wheel workers call out to the crowd, coaxing both thrill-seekers and the faint of heart alike to take a spin, as a troupe of boys, dressed in the same monochromatic uniforms, physically turn the Ferris wheel until it reaches its top speed.
Though the ride in itself is quite scary, whats more frightening is the startling lack of safety regulations as these boys protected only by their own wits scamper up and down rusting metal frames, perching themselves above the whirling seats all seemingly without any fear.
The morning of October 18, following the last night of the full moon festival, the Ferris wheel troupe and construction workers dismantle the remaining pieces of the ride and get ready to clear out for the next carnival in Yuzana in Dagon Seikken township later this year.
Fifteen year old Than Zaw said he has been operating Ferris wheels at carnivals and festivals across the country for the past four years.
At first, I was scared, he says briefly, loading up the truck. But now I am used to it.
Than Zaw is just one of the many boys working for the travelling troupes, plucked from their respective villages in all of Myanmars states and regions.
As construction workers pass by carrying long metal poles, a former Ferris wheel worker turned troupe organiser, 22-year-old Ye Lin Mon, explains the employment process for these festivals.
On our way down, the boys are trained before they work, Ye Lin Mon, who originally comes from Ayeyarwady Region, said. I am the organiser. I know which parts work and who has to do what job.
The Myanmar Times asked him about the youngest age of his workers as the boys appear to be quite young.
He claimed the youngest of his workers were 16 years old though Than Zaw, who spoke just before him, responded saying he is only 15 years old.
According to the International Labour Organization, child labour is as any kind of labour that deprives children (any person under 18) of their childhood through work that requires them to leave school or puts them in physical danger.
The operation of human-powered Ferris wheels by children under 18 can pose a risk to their safety and well-being, depending on the specific work they do, said Aaron Greenberg, chief of the child protection at UNICEF Myanmar.
It is important that the hazardous forms of labour are clearly defined in Myanmar and awareness raising is conducted with the general public including those operating small and large businesses, Greenberg added.
When asked if there are ever any accidents involved in this line of work, the organiser was curt. No one is injured in this.
His seriousness is telling. These men dont have time to talk; they are hesitant to answer questions; they have to pack up and go to the next festival.
This is how I make my living, how I earn my money. It is also kind of fun, Ye Lin Mon says with a half smile.
Child labour is pervasive throughout Myanmar the situation is unlikely to change without a serious crackdown and enforcement of child labour laws.
In an hours time, the Ferris wheel boys, the organiser, and their truck stacked with a disassembled wheel, much like the rest of the characters in Yae Kyaws festival, will be gone without a trace to the next destination.
Additional reporting by Emoon
A Thailand-based migrant rights group is suing senior figures from the Myanmar Overseas Employment Agencies Federation and the Ministry of Labour following accusations that the officials exploited the very workers they are meant to help.
The Myanmar Association in Thailand has launched proceedings against the Ministry of Labours permanent secretary U Myo Aung, MOEAFs chair U Min Hlaing, its vice chair U Win Htun and general secretary U Kyaw Htin Kyaw for violations of Myanmars insurance and telecommunications laws. At least one of the accused has denied the allegations.
U Kyaw Thaung, leader of the Thailand-based rights organisation, said the senior officials have illegally been selling Thai and Malaysian SIM cards and life insurance policies to workers travelling abroad.
Each month, according to MOEAF figures, more than 7000 Myanmar citizens venture to either Malaysia or Thailand for work. There, many migrants suffer exploitation, unsafe working conditions and unfair treatment at the hands of employers and employment brokers.
[These officials] are exploiting our migrant workers by cooperating with the brokers and abusing their authority. This is why I have to sue them, U Kyaw Thaung said, adding that he had sufficient evidence to support his claims.
The lawsuits follow an initial complaint against the four men sent to Myanmars president as well as State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
This lawsuit is not a personal attack ... I just want to reveal the improper behaviour of officials who are meant to help workers instead of exploiting them, U Kyaw Thaung said.
MOEAF chair U Min Hlaing has responded to the allegations, denying any wrongdoing.
We are not selling SIM cards. We give them to the workers free of charge, he said.
He added that this practice was intended to assist migrants who might face trouble abroad and need to call someone for help. He said the practice was followed since the previous government and is a protocol that was sanctioned by the Ministry of Labour.
U Min Hlaing also stated that providing life insurance to migrant workers was legal and that it was based on a memorandum of understanding between the Myanmar and Thai governments under which the formers Ministry of Labour agreed to cover the cost of compensation for migrant workers injured in workplace accidents.
The Myanmar Times was unsuccessful in its attempts to reach U Myo Aung, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Labour, for comment on the allegations.
Activists formerly imprisoned under the Telecommunications Law are demanding an overhaul of the legislation in order to guarantee internet users freedom of expression.
The Committee for Amending the Telecommunications Law was launched with 23 members at the end of September. The committee includes activists whose high-profile convictions under the law garnered national and international backlash as the legislation was wielded to suppress criticism and satire.
The victims of this Telecommunications Law have gathered to discuss an amendment campaign. We are calling for the input of experts and will collect reactions and personal experiences from those who have suffered under this law, said campaign member and poet Ko Maung Saung Kha. He was convicted last year and sentenced to six months in prison after posting a poem on Facebook that included a reference to having then-president U Thein Seins image tattooed on the narrators penis.
We will submit the material to the hluttaws and call for them to amend the law to include better definitions of the rules and regulations, he said.
Like many of the other members of the committee, the poet was charged under section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, which prohibits actions that extort, threaten, obstruct, defame, disturb, inappropriately influence or intimidate and carries a maximum three-year prison term. The campaign committee hopes to have the section removed, or redefined.
Under this section [66(d)] the defendant can be sentenced to up to three years in prison without bail, said lawyer U Robert San Aung. The main weakness of the law is the lack of by-laws providing the rules and regulations to guide its enforcement.
Other defendants who served time under the law and are joining Ko Maung Saung Kha in the campaign include Ma Chaw Sandi Tun, also known as Chit Thami, Ko Zaw Myo Nyunt and Ko Patrick Kum Ja Lee.
The Telecommunications Law was approved by the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw in 2013 in order to regulate a sector with increasing foreign investment, and to protect both service providers and users. But critics have said the law is too broad and too vague, points the campaign committee hopes to change.
According to a 2015 report from the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business, there is a clear risk that the Myanmar Government could use the 2013 Telecommunications Law to arbitrarily characterise legitimate expression as threats or an inappropriate influence, punishable as a criminal offense. The centre added that the law also allows for the government to selectively block or filter content if it is deemed in the interest of the public to do so.
Ko Maung Saung Kha said if the law is truly aimed at protecting the public, it needs to be amended.
[The law] is more about threatening online users rather than protecting them. And social media users are afraid, he said. They can be blackmailed like when police arrest someone whose name and face have been used for a fake account and then they cannot even get bail.
Tourism authorities are planning a big shake-up in southern Shan State, cracking down on hotels and transportation companies offering tourism services without a licence. The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism in the state says it will take legal action against offenders.
The ministry wants to develop tourism in Shan State, and has already announced that various fees for tourism-related licences will be halved. The state government is to launch an investigation on October 20 to identify erring companies. They delayed the operation until then so as not to clash with the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda Festival in Inle, the ministrys assistant director, U Win Aung said on October 17.
The state government had already agreed to investigate, starting October 20, in southern Shan State to see if companies offering tourism services hold one of the four types of licence required. Illegal hotels and tour transportation vehicles will be targeted. The point is to promote the long-term development of the tourist industry by ensuring that travel agencies run their businesses systematically.
The investigation will cover hotels and lodging-houses, travel and tour companies both domestic and foreign, transportation, and guide qualifications. Those found to be operating without a licence will face action under the law.
Tourist transportation vehicle number plates should come in red and blue, but some drivers do not possess the correct plates. Municipal guesthouses have been allowing foreign guests to stay, which is against the rules, said U Win Aung, adding that this was the first such wide-scale investigation to be launched.
In May, the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism warned that tour guides found without a licence could end up behind bars for up to three years. The government cited complaints from licenced guides, who said their untrained counterparts were undercutting the profession and driving down profits. And, after a landmine blast in April at Kyaukme, Shan State, injured two foreign trekkers and an unofficial local guide, experts said the lack of training and licensing could be dangerous.
The ministry said that as of August it had granted licences to 173 hotels, offering 4837 rooms, 581 regional guides and 96 international guides, and 1017 passenger motor boats, as well as issuing 15 blue number plates and 135 red plates in southern Shan State.
Sai Win, chair of Myanmar Tourist Guide Association in Nyaungshwe, Shan State, welcomed the move, saying, Travel operations will be more systematic. Transportation in particular should be better regulated.
The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism announced on September 21 that fees for the replacement or renewal of licences and registering a change of name or address would be reduced by half from October 1.
Translation by San Layy
Buses and trucks along the notorious Death Highway had better make sure they are hooked up to a Telematics system, which measures their speeds, according to police.
We have a plan to ban vehicles that refuse to install the Telematics system from using the highway, Police Colonel Soe Myint Oo from the Highway Police Force said in a press conference.
Buses driving along the Yangon-Nay Pyi Taw-Mandalay route have been required to have the Telematics system installed since last November, said Daw Myint Myint Shein, a spokesperson for B Smart, which won the National Road Safety Committee and Ministry of Constructions contract for their installation. Trucks needed to have the system in place by February, she said.
B Smart has installed the device in about 1000 trucks and another 1000 buses, said the companys Supervisor U Aung Soe Oo. Vehicles are required to pay K25,000 monthly for the service.
Trucks, defined as vehicles over 14 feet (4.25 metres) long, are allowed to use the highway if they have the system installed and are carrying items in need of quick transport: newspapers, fish, prawns, crabs, eggs, chicks, fruit and flowers, Highway Police Force officials said.
Trucks, depending on their weight, are limited to 60 to 80 kilometers (37-50 miles) per hour while passenger express buses are limited to 100km an hour.
After an educational period, which began in June, police began using the devices to take action against speeding drivers on September 1.
Through October 5, they have charged 1424 vehicles, said Col Soe Myint Oo. Penalties carry a K50,000 fine, a one-month jail sentence or both.
But the most common speeding offenders are private cars, records show.
Between 2013 and 2014, traffic accidents involving private cars accounted for 85 percent of total traffic accidents, 75pc of the accidents involving a fatality and 80pc involving injuries, Col Soe Myint Oo said.
Therefore, we have planned to extend the installation of Telematics to private cars travelling along the highway, he said.
In September, police began monitoring the speed of private vehicles, said Highway Police Force Major Yan Naung Win. When drivers were pulled over, they were confused, noting that they had only been following the instructions of the signs on the highway.
Those signs, said Yan Naung Win, were not meant to instruct drivers on the speed limit but were erected by the Ministry of Construction to measure the speed the drivers were traveling and inform the drivers of that speed.
Police say their speed crackdown, which started in June, has led to a decline in accidents. Fourteen of 80 were speed-related in July, 25 of 70 were speed-related in August, and 14 of 50 were speed-related in September, said Maj Yan Naung Win.
In monsoon season, cars always skid or collide with motorcycles and cattle, he said.
Traffic accidents have been a major issue countrywide, as vehicle usage skyrockets while enforcement, driver training and road infrastructure lags far behind.
Translation by Zar Zar Soe
Schools in Maungdaw district, closed since October 10 in the aftermath of deadly attacks on border guard posts, will reopen next week, according to the district administrative department.
U Ye Htut, head of the department, told The Myanmar Times that some schools in remote or conflict-sensitive areas may not resume right away but those that are able to would open their doors to students when schools elsewhere in the country do on October 25, following an extended holiday break for Thadingyut.
There is not any plan yet for how to take action regarding [reopening] schools in remote areas, he said.
The district encompasses the townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung in northern Rakhine State, where 183 and 219 schools have been shuttered, respectively.
U Khin Aung, head of the Maungdaw District Education Department, confirmed that classes would resume on October 25, with teachers already having been instructed to make sure they are back to school in time.
The plan to reopen schools two weeks after the coordinated border guard post attacks on October 9 comes despite a persisting sense of insecurity in the region. The government announced on October 14 that the district has been designated a combat zone, and the Tatmadaw is heavily restricting access and movement in the area as security forces undertake a manhunt for the suspected attackers.
A senior military official from the Kyikan Pyin Border Guard Police command post, where assailants killed six police officers in the first of three coordinated raids in the early hours of October 9, said civilians were being prevented from travelling beyond a gate there for security reasons. Police and Tatmadaw troops were still conducting clearance operations in the area and could not yet guarantee the villages safety, he said.
Colonel Htin Lin, Rakhine States minister for security and border affairs, said Tatmadaw forces were systematically combing the area to root out suspected militants but had not yet completed the operation as of yesterday.
According to an October 14 statement from the Presidents Office that identified perpetrators of the October 9 assault as belonging to a group called Aqa Mul Mujahidin, The attacks in Maungdaw township were systematically planned in advance over a long period of time, assisted by foreign funding and the support of members of foreign terrorist organisations.
Nearly 400 militants could owe allegiance to Aqa Mul Mujahidin, said the statement, describing the attacks as intended to promote extremist violent ideology among the majority Muslim population in the area, a reference to self-identifying Rohingya Muslims.
A manhunt for the perpetrators has since seen 30 attackers and five Tatmadaw personnel killed, according to an October 17 press conference featuring senior members of the cabinet.
Rights groups have urged restraint as the crackdown continues. Officials at the press conference in Nay Pyi Taw on October 17, recently returned from a trip to Rakhine State, insisted that security forces conduct in the restive region including interrogation of detainees suspected of ties to Aqa Mul Mujahidin was in accordance with the law and police procedures.
According to the Rakhine State government, more than 1000 people have fled the combat zone to safer locations, including many teachers.
We are working to normalise the situation around the state, cooperating with the military and trying to allow fleeing ethnic people to return to their original villages, said U Min Aung, head of Rakhine States information department.
Some residents expressed scepticism that a return to business as usual at schools in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships would be possible as soon as next week, citing lingering concerns about the security situation.
Daw Ni Ni, 67, from Phar Watt Chaung village, about 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) from Kyet Yoo Pyin village in Maungdaw township, told The Myanmar Times that nearly all the residents of her village had fled in the aftermath of the attacks, with just a few men staying behind to stand guard.
Both of those villages are located near Pyaungpit village, where an attack by 300 armed assailants on October 11 killed four Tatmadaw soldiers.
As a teacher, how to teach without students? So far, most of the villagers are still worried about returning to the village, she said.
Ma Thida Soe, 24, a teacher from Ywet Nyo Taung village who also fled to Maungdaw town, said on October 15 that the village she teaches in is surrounded by Muslim villages. She added that she worried the security presence in the area was insufficient.
If the government takes strong security [precautions] for us to go back to school, I will be back. If not, I am afraid to go back, she told The Myanmar Times. However, I am a [civil] servant. I have no choice when the government orders back the teachers.
U Ye Htut, the department head, allowed for the possibility that the target date for reopening schools in the district might have to be pushed back if conditions were not right.
If the security in place is not strong, we have to make contingency plans for school resuming and teaching, but no idea for that [has been proposed] yet, he said.
Senior officials from the World Food Programme in Myanmar have said they are very, very concerned about the governments continued refusal to let them deliver food rations to thousands of people in trouble-hit northern Rakhine State.
The organisation yesterday reinstated ration entitlements for over 6000 former IDPs across the state who were removed from the ration list in July. Representatives said the ration resumption aims to prevent an escalation in community tensions amid fears that recent violence in northern Rakhine State could spread across the state.
But Arsen Sahakyan, WFP partnerships officer, said that despite repeated requests to government officials, their staff were being denied access to villages across northern Rakhine State, where around 70,000 are considered entitled to rations.
We have asked from township level to Union level. The official explanation [for access being denied] is that security operations are ongoing, he said.
Rakhine is one of Myanmars poorest states and malnourishment is endemic across both ethnic Rakhine and Muslim minority communities. Problems accessing food is exacerbated for around 1 million Rohingya Muslims. The mainly stateless group are a minority across the state but account for the majority of people living in northern Rakhine and are denied freedom of movement by authorities, restricting many from earning a livelihood.
Mr Sahakyan said about 1200 people of ethnic Rakhine origin were known to have relocated from Maungdaw to Buthidaung township following the outbreak of violence on October 9. He added that local groups have said they were providing food to those people.
However, he said he did not have information about displaced Rohingya people because his staff were not allowed to access affected areas.
Mr Sahakyan said that while he understood government concerns about being unable to guarantee the safety of UN workers, WFP staff are used to working under difficult circumstances and being able to deliver services to those in need was a priority. He added that staff are on standby to move the moment permission is granted. However, it remained unclear when that would be.
Are they starving? WFP slashes rations for Rakhine IDPs
A statement issued by the Presidents Office following a press conference on October 17 indicated that authorities believe they have already brought the threat of unexpected attack in the region under control.
The statement said, Tatmadaw-police-force combined troops met head-on attacks with violent attackers occasionally during the area clearance operations, but any separate armed attacks did not occurred [sic] in main camps, towns and villages, thus it can be said that the area security is under the control.
The October delivery of food aid to northern Rakhine had just gotten under way when a series of deadly attacks were launched on police stations by people the government has described as Islamist terrorists, prompting a manhunt by the Tatmadaw that has left at least 30 alleged assailants dead.
Ration deliveries to Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships were halted as the violence unfolded and WFP staff on the ground are now trying to ascertain how many people received their entitlement. Mr Sahakyan said a lot of people had not got the vital supplies.
U Aung Kyaw Zan, state minister for electricity, industry and transportation, said he was not aware of the WFP entreaties.
WFP has not come and negotiated with us about providing food. The state government is providing food to people displaced in Buthidaung and who remain in Maungdaw, sending supplies from Sittwe to Buthidaung via waterway then onward to Maungdaw by car, he said.
On October 17, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said they also were unable to give assistance to those believed to have been displaced in the violence in northern Rakhine.
The total number of displaced people and their needs have not been assessed yet due to a lack of access. Humanitarian response interventions are being coordinated but are hampered by movement restrictions, the organisation noted in its weekly update.
Access to medical services has also been severely curtailed, according to sources on the ground.
The northern part of the state has been placed under military control and an information blackout has effectively been imposed, with international observers and foreign journalists denied permission to enter the region and even local journalists restricted from accessing areas where Muslim villages are alleged to have been razed during the militarys clearance operations.
Rights groups have also alleged that extra-judicial killings are being carried out against Muslim civilians following the lethal attacks on the border guard outposts. But the Tatmadaw, which admitted security personnel have killed 30 alleged attackers, has insisted the use of lethal force was necessary.
The reinstatement of the rations to former IDPs across the state is expected to last until next month, when the advent of harvest time should reduce the need for seasonal rations.
The controversial initiative to cut supplies to displaced people who had since been resettled or returned to their home villages was said by WFP at the time to be aimed at easing community tension between former IDPs who were still receiving rations and their neighbours who had never been displaced and had therefore never been entitled to rations. However, a number of major aid bodies condemned the move for placing people at risk of falling into food insecurity.
Additional reporting by Yee Ywal Myint
State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi returns to Yangon today after a three-day trip to India, where she attended meetings of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the economic grouping of five nations known as BRICS.
According to the State Counsellors Office website, the BRICS and BIMSTEC leaders Outreach Summit was the first-ever meeting of its kind. BRICS is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a grouping of five large and emerging national economies that was formed in 2009 as BRIC, with South Africa joining one year later.
BIMSTEC, meanwhile, was founded as BIST-EC, consisting of Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand, in June 1997, with Myanmar joining later that year and Bhutan and Nepal also gaining membership in 2004. The seven nations with a total population of 1.5 billion formed BIMSTEC to create an enabling environment for rapid economic development through identification and implementation of specific cooperation projects in the sectors of trade, investment and industry, technology, human recourse development, tourism, agriculture, energy, and infrastructure and transportation, according to its website.
In addition to the region forums, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi travelled to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, her first trip to the neighbouring nation since her government took power earlier this year.
Officially, she went to India to attend the BIMSTEC and BRICS meetings. But this is also her first trip to India as a state visit for [promoting] the bilateral friendship, said Daw Aye Aye Soe, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry.
The state counsellor, who also serves as foreign minister, was received by an honour guard yesterday in New Delhi at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential residence, where she met with Mr Modi and Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.
The state counsellor met with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena as well, in the Indian coastal state of Goa on October 16, when opportunities for bilateral cooperation were discussed, according to the State Counsellors Office website.
This week also offered Daw Aung San Suu Kyi another opportunity to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country was the first major power the state counsellor visited since she assumed power. According to state media, the two leaders discussed advancing agreements made on her August trip to China, as well as security along the two countries shared border and recent upheaval in northern Rakhine State, where an armed assault on border guard posts and an ongoing manhunt for the militants is proving a major early challenge to her government.
In answer to the clarification of the peace process and the latest events in the northern part of Rakhine State by the State Counsellor, President Xi replied that he was well convinced of the matters and would provide constructive help, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported of their October 17 meeting.
The report made no mention of the Chinese-backed Myitsone mega-dam, a project in Kachin State that remains suspended and the fate of which could set the tone for bilateral relations with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the helm.
Though Myanmar shares a border and cultural and historical links with both India and China, geopolitical analysts have long noted Beijings far more extensive economic ties to the Southeast Asian nation. Pledges by New Delhi in recent years to look east in a concerted push to deepen engagement with fast-growing Southeast Asia have at times been criticised as more talk than action.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as the countrys de facto leader chose first to travel to Beijing, but she dispatched President U Htin Kyaw to India that same month.
The state counsellors ties to India date back to her childhood, when her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, served as Myanmars ambassador in New Delhi.
Mandalay's regional government has appealed to the Ministry of Education to assist in filling vacant teaching positions in primary schools across the regions rural and remote areas.
U Khin Maung Myint, a deputy director of Mandalays education office, said 162 new teachers were needed to fill gaps in the regions primary schools.
We assigned many teachers to primary schools in Mandalay in July this year but we have not been able to fill all the positions. Some teachers [who were initially assigned to schools in the region] have given reasons why they cannot fulfill their assignments. For example, some of them have other jobs, U Khin Maung Myint said.
We have made a request for replacements to the Ministry of Education. We hope to fill the positions once the ministry responds to our request, he said.
More than 900,000 students are enrolled across Mandalay Region this academic year, a number which has increased on previous years due to the introduction of free education, according to the regions education office.
U Khin Maung Myint said that the vacancies were mostly in areas far from the relevant townships education office and that the replacement teachers would be sent to these areas. He added that there is a general need for more teachers across Mandalay, a problem exacerbated by high teacher turnover.
There are enough teachers in the schools in the cities but there are not enough teachers in the places which are very far from the cities, said one female primary school teacher. Many female teachers find it hard to work in places which are remote.
Translation by Win Thaw Tar
Cameras will be installed at Mandalays busiest intersections in a bid to reduce the citys chronic traffic problems, Mandalay City Development Committee has announced.
CCTV cameras have been installed since the first week of October. Traffic jams will now be managed with the help of CCTV, said Daw Hnin Thidar Ko, an engineer for MCDC.
She added that in addition to monitoring traffic conditions, the cameras will be used to prosecute drivers who disregard road rules.
The city already has installed 11 cameras on major roads.
Mandalays residents are reserving judgement on the project, however, waiting to see whether it will yield results.
I have never heard of problems of theft and traffic jams being solved through CCTV. If the technology does not solve these issues, it is not money well spent, said teacher U Soe Naing.
The cost of installing the cameras and the accompanying laser-operated real-time traffic lights is estimated to be K110 million, which will be drawn from MCDCs 2016-17 budget.
The project is being implemented by MCDC and Dream Light Technology Co Ltd and is expected to be complete by March 2017.
Translation by Khine Thazin Han
The government has launched a five-member team tasked with investigating the reason for the deadly sinking of the Aung Soe Moe Kyaw 2, a ferry that went under in Sagaing Region on October 15.
The investigative team is scheduled to conduct a field investigation tomorrow, the Ministry of Transportation and Communication said yesterday.
Survivors say the boat, which was headed to Monywa from Homalin township on the Chindwin River, had as many as 300 people on board, well over the legal limit, before it sunk in Kani township.
The death toll has not yet been announced, but there were 158 survivors as of October 17 and dozens of bodies, Sagaing Region Water Transport Department head U Phyo Min Khin told The Myanmar Times yesterday. Early reports indicate the ferry struck a rock.
We will attempt to determine who the responsible person is in this case, said U Thaung Kyine, deputy director general of the Yangon Department of Marine Administration and a member of the investigating team. Some members are going there now. We will send our findings to our director general.
The rescue process is being led by the regional department in Kani township, said U Phyo Min Khin. Members of the Red Cross, the fire brigade, NGOs, and organisations like the Department of Relief and Resettlement are also participating in the rescue effort.
We are undertaking the rescue processes and salvaging the dead bodies, he said.
The Sagaing Region Water Transport Department is starting an investigation of its own, U Thaung Kyaing said.
Though the 40-tonne ferry was called the Aung Soe Moe Kyaw 2, its licence refers to it as the Shwe Thiha, said Ministry of Transportation and Communication assistant secretary U Win Zaw.
As of October 17, a crackdown on ferry operators had led to four arrests.
Translation by Thiri Min Htun and Win Thaw Tar
Police have permission to shoot if they are under attack, according to Yangon Region Minister for Security and Border Affairs Colonel Tin Aung Tun, who called for officers to be more fully armed.
Speaking to the regional hluttaw yesterday he said police are combating increasingly violent crime, but have insufficient weaponry. He added that some officers have been killed or injured while on duty.
In September 2015, two police officers were killed when trying to arrest a fugitive in Thanlyin township.
The government gave all patrol officers taser guns for protection against criminals on September 24, 2015, said Col Tin Aung Tun.
The government is trying to support the police by getting all officers fully equipped, he added.
Officers assigned to zones controlled by ethnic armed groups are issued automatic firearms by the Tatmadaw, the Pyithu Hluttaw was told last year. The deputy home affairs minister said at the time that out of desperation some officers had taken to carrying swords to protect themselves.
MPs approved a proposal from U Yan Aung (NLD; Mingalar Taung Nyunt), urging the appropriate departments to provide equipment, increase staff, and improve housing for the police, judiciary, and government lawyers.
Additionally, the government wants to install closed circuit television cameras on every lamppost across the Yangon Region, he said.
The government is implementing a security plan across eight townships at the moment but, Col Tin Aung Tun acknowledged, it has not been 100 percent successful in reducing criminal cases.
MP U Kyaw Kyaw Tun (NLD; Hlaing) said that criminal cases are taking a long time to get through the courts, noting that each judge is handling 100 to 150 cases.
The courts, law offices, and police stations are old and faded, he said. The government should plan for them in the budget.
MP U Myint Lwin (NLD; North Okkalapa) advised the regional government to increase the number of police and build standard housing for the judges and law office staff.
Col Tin Aung Tun and Attorney General U Han Htoo responded that they are still scheduled to build housing and repair courts and police stations through next fiscal year.
Get ready for the blackouts. A regional minister has acknowledged that decayed powerlines and a surging demand for electricity will once again leave the commercial capital in the dark.
Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation had hoped a handful of patchwork measures would help boost the supply but the lofty targets and mercurial promises of no more cuts have again evaporated in the face of the daunting task.
Daw Nilar Kyaw, the regional minister for electricity, industry and transportation, said yesterday that while the regional government is trying to supply enough electricity, distribution is hampered by the governments budget.
After rainy season ends, Yangon will confront its annual problem of insufficient electricity. And to make matters worse, the government is unable to guarantee enough power to avoid the annual hot season shortage, the minister told parliament yesterday.
Daw Nilar Kyaw was responding in parliament to a question from lawmaker Daw Soe Pa Pa Hlaing (NLD; Pabedan) about the governments preparations for hot season.
Last year, the onset of a spell of frequent blackouts in Yangon and other urban centres coincided with the swearing-in of the National League for Democracy government in late March, presenting one of the first of several legacy challenges to the fledgling leadership. The recurrent blackouts tested the patience of a public that has endured power shortages for decades.
Last month, the Union minister for electricity and energy had pledged an end to the blackouts exacerbating Aprils blistering hear, and said that the total power generated in 2017 would exceed the demand before hot season kicks in. But regional minister Daw Nilar Kyaw backpedalled the boast, saying cuts would be forthcoming because of both transmission issues and a scrapped coal factory.
Currently, Yangon is supplied 300 megawatts of power per day through a consortium consisting of local companies National Infrastructure Holdings and MCM Pacific, and US companies APR Energy and Ace Resources Group. Ten companies are responsible for distributing electricity to 15 of the regions townships.
Although we have selected companies, we still need to improve infrastructure for electricity transmission and distribution. This infrastructure depends on our budget, Daw Nilar Kyaw said.
She added that a coal factory that was slated to produce electricity for Kyauktan township has been cancelled after public backlash.
The Yangon Region government wont build the coal factory after the people made their objection clear, she said.
Read more: The truth behind the blackouts
YESC officials announced in May that Yangon is responsible for half the countrys electricity use, with the region expected to consume between 1350 and 1400MW in the coming year.
Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thin told parliament yesterday that there are 61 engines and turbines operating under state and privately owned companies in Yangon which can produce more than 400MW.
The countrys total electricity consumption last summer exceeded 2730MW, while all power stations generated 2450MW combined, according to authorities.
[October 18, 2016] Mobile Base Stations Report 2016 Ed 3
NEW YORK, Oct. 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile telephone networks are in transition. Network architecture must manage high data-traffic growth rates, and support new 4G services and the increased demand for broadband and Internet access. In the developed countries a high level of coverage has been achieved but capacity is inadequate as data traffic escalates beyond all expectations. In the developing countries both coverage and capacity are wanting. Macro base stations with towers cover large cells and long distances but they fail to reach effectively inside buildings, where 70-80% of mobile broadband traffic is generated. A new network concept has been launched - the HetNet, which combines large and small cell sites and different radio technologies like cellular and Wi-Fi. The first commercial HetNets are being rolled out. HetNets are the networks of the future with macro-micro coordination to improve Quality of Service. This report quantifies the macro infrastructure of today, of base stations, ground based and rooftop towers and poles, forecasts growth and $ value to 2020 in every country, with analysis of ownership and market shares of tower vendors. The report outlines tomorrow's new infrastructure, the HetNet, the macro-micro network. It outlines the technologies of macro and of micro cells and base stations, estimates current penetration and projects demand. We are in the first stage of a new wave of technology for mobile telephones - the HetNet. Network technology is evolving rapidly to meet exponential new demands. The focus is shifting from coverage to capacity, driven by the rise in data traffic. The answer is the HetNet/Heterogeneous network. Past networks were based almost entirely on macro cellular base stations mounted on towers, rooftops and poles. They were designed for volumes of voice mail which were small by today's standards. Data traffic has grown exponentially and is set to escalate by leaps and bounds, driven by the Internet, videos, and a plethora of 3G and 4G mobile devices. The HetNet is providing the solution; a network which combines all types of base station, each designed for a different purpose; macros on towers and rooftops, micro, metro, pico, DAS and Wi-Fi both inside buildings and outside. These issues are discussed and analysed in this report. Macro base stations (BTS) will remain the core of the networks, but the networks must develop more granular delivery. We have constructed a dtabase of macro base stations for every country, starting from the launch of mobile services in the 1980s. In an electricity network replacement happens when equipment is past its design life and risks failure, and the replacement may also be an up-grade. In a mobile network this is not the case. From 1G to 2G, 3G and 4G and LTE the technology of the networks must be up-dated to new generations of technology at more frequent intervals. A regional analysis of GBTs (ground based towers) and RTTs (rooftop towers) is provided.
The total market is surveyed, macro and micro. Forecasts of base station capex, analysed by macro site additions, macro site upgrades and replacements, and new small cell sites with annual expenditure from 2015 to 2020. Total mobile traffic is analysed by cell site types: macro cell, in-building small cell, outdoor small cell, Wi-Fi hotspots, residential femtocell, DAS/RRH. The populations of GBTs and RTTs are analysed by region. The market for construction of new macro base stations (BTS), ground-based, rooftop and street poles, upgrades and replacement of aged assets is estimated and forecast in nominal $ from 2015 to 2020, for the world, for regions and is analysed by 213 countries. Market commentary is provide by regions and major countries. The steady growth of the macro cellular infrastructure does not fully reflect the real rate of expansion of the networks. With mobile data traffic expected to double annually, small cell base stations are set to play an important role in expanding the capacity of wireless networks. Small cells provide flexibility and increased QoS capabilities. Past development of small cells is analysed to help predict the future path. Shipments are analysed in units by cell type. The cost components of a small cell installation are analysed. Global expenditure on installing small cells with related costs and backhaul is estimated for 2015 and projected annually to 2020 for regions and 33 countries. Capex is analysed by residential/non-residential and by cell type. Tower sharing allows operators to cut down on capital expenditure. Infrastructure cost for operators is estimated to decline by 16% to 20%. Running and maintenance of tower infrastructure, form a significant portion of operator Opex. Divesting responsibility for infrastructure unlocks value. Site and/or tower sharing is the most common form of network sharing, but full network sharing is gaining traction. The various forms of infrastructure sharing are outlined and the towerco market is analysed by country. A breakdown of tower construction cost by component is given. Infrastructure and network sharing, either between operators or via independent tower owners, is growing rapidly but has a distinct regional pattern. MNOs share assets with jointly-owned infracos in Europe , Japan and many other regions. Independent towercos started in the United States and are also prevalent in India , in China since 2015, in Southeast Asia and are making headway rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The incidence of sharing is given by regions and major countries with total numbers of macro towers and the numbers owned by towercos. Detailed market profiles are given for regions and leading countries. Energy accounts for 30% of the network operating costs of an MNO. 90% of sites have diesel base generators where towers are off-grid or as standby to grid supply when grid-connected. For cost and environmental reasons there is a growing trend towards renewables systems, mainly solar PV or hybrid systems of solar PV and wind power.
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Ghana Society, a UK-based event company, is set to make history with the first ever Batakari Festival in UK.
The festival will celebrate the rich and beautiful culture of Africa during 2016 Black History Month, and is expected to gather thousands across the world to experience Ghana-made Batakari.
Batakari, also known as smock, is a national dress of Ghanaians. It originated from the Northern Region of Ghana and used to be worn by kings in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions of Ghana, but now very popular across the country as well as Burkina Faso and other African countries.
According to the CEO of Ghana Society, Maria Lovell, this years celebration of Batakari in the UK is to introduce the beautiful culture of Ghana to the world and also a means to create a platform for individuals and small companies from all over the world to come and showcase their unique products or services.
We look forward to hosting this event every year as it is an important educational awareness of black history, she added.
The Batakari Fair will take place from Monday, October 24 to Saturday, October 29, 11:00am to 5:00pm daily with cultural dance display and music.
The fair will be climaxed with the prestigious 'Batakari Fundraising Dinner Dance' in Luton Lewsey Farm Learning Centre.
The dinner dance is also supported by the Ghana High Commission UK, Ghana Union (London), Ghana Carnival Ambassador for Northern Region, Sherifa Gunu, D Cryme, amongst many distinguished guests and patrons.
By Francis Addo (Twitter: @fdee50 Email: [email protected] )
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Fast rising rapper Fancy Gadam is set to rock the Gadam Nation concert scheduled for November 6, Sunday at the National Theatre.
The young northern artiste burst onto the mainstream scene earlier this year after making headlines when he sold out his album launch at the Tamale stadium.
Building on that momentum Fancy Gadam has performed alongside some of Ghana's biggest acts like Stonebwoy, VVIP and more. Fancy recently gave a spectacular performance at the just ended Stonebwoy Peace Concert held in Ashaiman.
Since then, he has been steadily building on his success as he recently sealed a deal with Rush Energy Drink at an undisclosed amount as the brands Ambassador in the three Northern regions.
Artistes billed for the night includes Ataaka, Nandos, Iwan and Saani among others.
Gadam Nation concert is a show put together by 5PM and Gadam Nation, which is expected to be another night of thrilling music display.
The show happening at the National Theatre promises to be another exciting Fancy Gadam show.
Ticket for this event is selling for; GHC50 VIP and GHC30 Regular.
Follow Fancy Gadam on Twitter @fancygadam2 and Fancy Gadam on Facebook or call 0509897093 for more information.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is promising to build a large theatre for each region should they win power in the upcoming election.
Speaking at a media briefing Member of Parliament for Anyaa South, Shirley Ayokor Botchwey said very little attention has been given to that creative industry but the party will reverse that trend.
She announced new measures to be put in place for the industry when the party comes to power, one of which is a Creative Arts Council which will coordinate and harmonize the various interests and fragmented associations into a well functioning body to protect the interests of members.
Her announcement is a follow up on the party's manifesto promises and what the party will do for the creative industry if it wins power.
The manifesto said the NPP government will focus on transforming the country into a major Meeting, Incentive, Conference, & Exhibition (MICE) centre, as well as on expanding the tourism sector, through investment, innovation, the pursuit of service excellence and meaningful partnerships. This will enable tourism to become a major revenue- generating sector that provides safe, memorable and enjoyable experience for tourists.
The party also promised to establish a Creative Arts Fund to make available funds to modernize and develop the creative Arts industry in Ghana.
A division of the High Court will be tasked to focus on the Creative Arts and deal with all matters relating to intellectual property rights, and a dedicated enforcement unit.
Below are the highlights of what the party will do under tourism, culture and creative arts
We will:
a. aggressively develop our tourist sites to bring them to world-class standards, complete with the requisite amenities and facilities
b. pursue a deliberate marketing programme to promote our unique historical sites, flora and fauna, waterfalls and other cultural artefacts
c. take the staffing of these tourist sites and our hospitality industry as a whole seriously. To improve professionalism in the sector, we will partner with the private sector to set up a state-of-the-art hospitality teaching facility, with an operational hotel, classrooms, kitchens, library, and dormitories
d. encourage local communities to take ownership and be invested in the sustainability of tourist attractions in their localities, The NPP will champion a revenue- sharing programme to inject 5% of tourism revenues from fees of well-developed tourist attractions into local community projects
e. promote domestic tourism, by making it an aggressive plank of our tourism strategy with a marketing drive centred on entrenching a tourism culture among Ghanaians
f. review and actively implement the Culture Policy developed under the Kufuor-led NPP government to give our culture pride of place in our national development.
g. build a detailed inventory of all our cultural assets, so the nation has a database of these assets.
h. the Copyright Act 2005 (Act 690), among other provisions, provides for the protection of Adinkra symbols and the older Kente designs as expression of folklore. The NPP will ensure that the provisions regarding the protection of Kente and Adinkra designs are strictly enforced against illicit exploitation by foreign interests, to enable the country maximize revenue through the proper marketing of these heirlooms.
i. establish a Creative Arts Fund to make available funds to modernize and develop the sector
j. create a Division of the High Court, focusing on the Creative Arts to deal with all matters relating to intellectual property rights, complete with a dedicated enforcement unit
k. establish a Creative Arts Council to coordinate and harmonize the various interests and fragmented associations into a well-functioning body to protect the interests of members.
l. collaborate with private sector interests to acquire the technology and equipment needed to log creative works, in order to determine true and deserved royalties.
m. promote regional and district literature, music, dance and drama competitions, particularly in schools and colleges, and
n. pursue the construction of modern large seating theatres in every regional capital except Accra, beginning with Takoradi, Tamale and Kumasi, as well as setting up an additional Copyright Office in Tamale to cater for the northern sector in addition to the existing ones in Accra and Kumasi.
Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com
The Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ms Maite Nkoana-Mashabane
Honourable Deputy Ministers of International Relations and Cooperation, Ms Nomaindia Mfeketo and Mr Luwellyn Landers,
Your Excellencies Ambassadors and High Commissioners,
DIRCO top management,
Delegates,
Distinguished guests,
We welcome all our heads of mission back home for this important annual get together, where we share ideas and update you on issues and priorities to enable you to continue representing the country well.
It is indeed momentous for us to meet in OR Tambo Building in the October month, which has been declared OR Tambo Month.
I had a privilege to officially open this building in honour of OR in December 2011, recognising the outstanding contribution of this illustrious leader in the struggle for liberation and in shaping the South Africa we live in today.
Also importantly, OR shaped the foreign policy of the democratic South Africa and laid a firm foundation as the foremost diplomat and face of the ANC during the most difficult time in our history.
Former President Nelson Mandela reminded us that ORs ideals can never die when he said:-
".Oliver Tambo has not died because the ideals of freedom, human dignity and a colour-blind respect for every individual cannot perish.
We urge you as our representatives abroad, to internalise the ideas of OR and build a South Africa that prioritises unity, justice and respect for democracy, equality and the human rights of all.
Be inspired by OR as you make your contribution in building a prosperous South Africa, which makes meaningful progress in the fight against poverty, inequality and unemployment.
We are building a South Africa where more of our people have jobs, especially the youth, and where people also have income generating opportunities through running successful small businesses and a booming township economy. It must be a South Africa where those in rural areas have land to grow their own food, and where they can also have opportunities to earn an income through a thriving rural economy.
As our representative abroad you have a responsibility to build friendships and partnerships that will help us achieve these goals.
The economy remains an apex priority for our country. The National Development Plan outlines what we are seeking to achieve. We want to achieve inclusive growth, jobs and a decent life for our people.
South Africa remains an important investment destination in the continent, a destination of choice on many fronts, and the gateway for businesses into Africa. We have been able to draw more Foreign Direct Investment in the continent and want to continue doing so.
Our infrastructure and institutions still present a competitive place to conduct business.
We have a stable democracy, which was affirmed two months ago in our successful free and fair local government elections.
Our exemplary leadership role on the international front has earned us widespread admiration, demonstrated in many leadership roles that we continue to play on the global stage.
You are our foremost marketing and promotion officers. You need to continue to position our country positively and help us to grow the economy through global economic partnerships. Keep our country brand alive and visible everywhere.
As said the economy is the apex priority. We say so mindful of the global economic meltdown and also some domestic economic constraints which are making it difficult to achieve the growth we seek.
Despite the 3.3% growth in our GDP in the second quarter, our economy is still facing major challenges.
The recent announcement by the Stats SA of the loss of 67 000 jobs means that we are not out of the woods yet; we need to redouble our efforts at rejuvenating and growing the economy.
At about 23%, our unemployment rate remains at worrying levels, particularly among the youth.
But we have plans in place to achieve our goals, especially to reignite growth.
You need to familiarise yourselves more with these plans, in particular the Nine Point Plan that is our action plan to implement the NDP.
The plan is aimed at promoting growth in sectors such as agriculture, energy, tourism, science and technology, industrialisation, infrastructure development amongst others.
To contribute to success, it means economic diplomacy should be an apex priority. Our heads of mission need to promote various sectors of our economy to host countries.
We have established good working relations with the business community, Business Unity SA and the Black Business Council.
We also continue to work with Labour as part of a patriotic effort to boost inclusive growth. We had a report back meeting recently from CEOs who are part of the Presidential CEO Initiative led by the Minister of Finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan and the Chairman of Telkom Mr Jabu Mabuza.
Considerable progress is being made. Business is establishing an SME fund and also engaging stakeholders in an initiative to create job opportunities for a million young people. We promoted these initiatives at the highly successful 8thBRICS Summit in India over the weekend. We urge you to take this spirit of cooperation forward in the missions you head and promote South Africa in every possible way to local business.
Our efforts of revitalising the economy also include transforming our State Owned Companies, to advance inclusive economic growth.
A lot of discussion is taking place in government on who to make the SOEs function better and not to be a drain on the national fiscus, but to be catalysts for development.
I will be convening a Special Cabinet meeting on SOE reform, where Ministers will discuss nothing else on the agenda but SOEs, so that we can benefit from the collective wisdom.
To grow the economy, we are also employing a host of other strategies including local procurement and growing black entrepreneurs and industrialists.
In this regard, you have a responsibility to brief your host countries of our broad-based black economic empowerment programme. They need to understand our transformation imperatives well and know what to expect when they seek investment opportunities in the country.
The de-racialisation of the ownership, control and management of the economy must be accelerated and all have a role to play to ensure success for the sake of achieving true reconciliation in our country.
In my last meeting with the Presidential Broad-Based Black Economic Advisory Council, we agreed that more work must be done to ensure that transformation does not become just lip service. We believe the 500 billion rand buying power of the state must be utilised to achieve this noble and correct goal.
In this regard, government is to produce a new procurement law which will replace the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act or the PPPFA which is unpopular with black business. They say it hinders transformation.
We are developing regulations that will make the PPPFA helpful while awaiting the finalisation of the new law. One of the key new measures in the regulations, which we hope to finalise soon, is the enactment of 30 per cent set asides, requiring of big companies subcontract 30 per cent to SMMEs.
The National Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry will be able to brief you further on these changes so that you are able to explain to investors abroad and in the continent.
Supporting small business is critical because unless we grow our small business sector, we will not achieve our employment goals or successfully fight poverty.
Your Excellencies
As you aware, education remains a key priority of our government. We are making progress in promoting free education. For example, 80 percent of our schools are no-fee schools and the children of the poor and the working class do not pay fees.
With regards to higher education, the Freedom Charter states as follows:
Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit.
The expansion of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme is part of efforts of ensuring that more children of the poor and the working class attend universities, universities of technology and technical and vocational training colleges.
We have also gone beyond the call of the Freedom Charter to support students on the basis of merit, as well as the need.
It is in this vein as well that in response to the call of students, government is to again carry the costs of fee increases for children of parents who cannot afford the increases, as announced by the Minister of Higher Education and Training.
To look at long term funding and support for higher education, I established a judicial commission of inquiry chaired by Judge Heher.
We urge all who have an interest in finding a solution to make presentations to the commission.
The Higher Education Minister Nzimande will be here with you this week and I urge you to share with him helpful experiences from your host countries.
I also urge you to explore more partnerships and new areas of cooperation that can broaden educational opportunities for our youth.
This could be in the form of scholarships, exchange programmes and vocational skills training programmes, among others.
We have had successful cooperative partnerships with countries such as Cuba. Other countries have offered us a large number of scholarships which we appreciate.
I believe we can optimise the scientific and cultural exchanges that we often commit to in our bilateral relations.
It is however worrying that genuine concerns regarding high tertiary education fees are hijacked for wrong ends, and involve particularly violence, arson and various forms of destruction of property.
We have to ensure that universities complete the 2016 academic programme, while we are still finding medium to long-term solutions.
The Minister in the Presidency Mr Jeff Radebe is leading efforts to support the Minister of Higher Education and Training and universities to stabilise universities and support students who want to write exams and ensure that the academic year is not lost.
The police will also continue to ensure that those who use genuine grievances to promote criminal acts are arrested and face the full might of the law.
We are a caring government. We are sympathetic to the message from the students because we share the understanding of the need to ensure that children of the poor and the working class obtain higher education.
There is therefore no need for violence and the kind of protests we have seen, which give an impression that students think government is opposed to what they are asking for. We are not opposed to the call, we support it. It is a noble call. We also urge them to support the orderly processes of finding solutions to this important challenge.
They must not break doors that are already open.
Your Excellencies,
We trust that missions work well with Brand SA, Tourism SA, dti and other departments and agencies aimed at promoting the country.
Brand SA is conducting an Investor Perceptions Study in 16 countries, which will indicate what investors think about our country and will inform our strategies to attract investments.
The outcomes of this study will be shared with you through DIRCO and Brand SA will be at your disposal to unpack it further.
We are pleased with the progress cited in the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index which was released at the end of September. It demonstrates the great strides that South Africa has made in various areas.
The results show that South Africa improved by two places, following an improvement of seven places last year.
More impressive however is that South Africa improved in 10 of the 12 areas assessed by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
These include Goods and Market Efficiency, Labour Market Efficiency, Macro-economic environment, Infrastructure, Innovation, Higher Education, Health and Primary education, business sophistication, financial market development and technological readiness.
Most noteworthy are growth by ten positions on Goods and Market Efficiency and labour Market and by six positions in macro-economic environment and higher education and training, out of 138 countries.
All these will support our efforts to tell our good South African story, and we must tell it.
Ladies and gentlemen
Let me reiterate that as we work to reignite growth, our efforts are moderated by the challenging international economic climate. There is a sharp decline in commodity prices and shrinking revenues, Brexit ramifications in Europe, as well as security matters such as terrorism.
Climate change is also taking its toll, with erratic rainfalls and the drastic drop in our water reserve levels. This is affecting our livestock and crops, thus slowing our economic growth and threatening food security.
These challenges make the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change more urgent.
Some of your host countries have technologies that we require to mitigate the effects of drought, such as drought resistant seeds, and technologies that convert ocean water.
Let us explore all these possibilities and lastly, continue to work collectively with our partners for a peaceful and stable Africa, including silencing the guns by 2020 as envisaged in our 2063 vision.
Your Excellencies,
We welcome you back home indeed for this important interaction.
We urge you to continue your good work in advancing the mission of building a truly united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.
I thank you!
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations is moving hundreds of peacekeepers from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to Kinshasa to help deal with a possible outbreak of violence over the postponement of a presidential election, UN officials said Tuesday.
About 300 soldiers and police from the MONUSCO force will be stationed in Kinshasa, where violent protests killed 49 last month, the officials said.
"We are planning for all eventualities and have taken measures to strengthen our posture in Kinshasa," UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said.
However, the reinforcements would probably not be enough if the capital sees widespread violence, he cautioned.
"It's important to keep in mind that Kinshasa is a city of almost 11 million people and MONUSCO has neither the manpower nor the mandate to provide security," he said.
Political tension has been mounting over President Joseph Kabila's apparent bid to cling to power.
An agreement was reached on Monday to push the presidential election, set for this year, back to April 2018.
But opposition parties boycotted the deal, calling for a major protest on Wednesday.
The UN envoy for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Maman Sambo Sidikou, warned last week that the country had entered a period of "extreme risk to its stability," saying "large-scale violence is all but inevitable" if nothing is done to address the crisis.
The UN Security Council is considering a trip to the country next month to try to help find a way forward in the political crisis, diplomats said.
One of Africa's biggest and most resource-rich countries, the DR Congo has been ruled by Kabila since 2001, when his father Laurent was assassinated.
He was elected in 2006 to his first five-year term under a constitution that sets a two-term limit for presidents.
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Three embattled members of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Northern Region who had wanted to contest in the December polls as independent candidates after losing the partys parliamentary race have rejoined the party.
Joy News Northern Regional Correspondent, Hashmin Mohammed explained was made possible after the Employment Minister, Haruna Iddrisu intervened in what some political commentators labeled a dicey situation for the government.
The Minister is reported to have facilitated the movement of the aggrieved NDC members out of town a day to the Electoral Commission (EC)s deadline for filing of nominations.
The three namely Daniel Nsala Wakpal from the Kpandai Constituency, Tampi Acheampong Simon and Thomas Borempong Laten from the Sanguli Constituency confirmed to Joy News they reasoned with the party and decided against competing.
They are motivated to support the party to reclaim all the parliamentary seats lost in the Northern Region during the 2012 election.
Speaking to Joy News, one of the former independent parliamentary aspirants said the Employment Minister was candid to walk them through the ramifications that await the NDC had they filed their nominations.
The Employment and labor Relations Minister has made us to understand that our candidature could worsen the party agenda of reclaiming lost seats in the Region, considering our respect for him we decide to step down, he said.
However, there are some setbacks to the negotiation process. Key among them is the decision by one of the aggrieved NDC members to contest no matter what government say.
Alhassan Iddrisu Bunglung who is running as an independent candidate in the Savelugu constituency would face the Municipal Chief Executive who is contesting on the ticket of the NDC in the December 7 election.
Notwithstanding, a source close to Joy News has revealed negotiations are still ongoing and there is the likelihood Mr Bunglung would yield to the partys demand.
As head of the Political and Strategy Team of the NDC's 15-Member Northern Regional Campaign Taskforce, Mr Iddrisu has a lot of work to do especially in addressing grievances of party members.
The entire taskforce in the region is headed by Minister of Food and Agriculture, Alhaji Mohammed Muniru-Limuna.
Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
A Circuit Court in Accra has ordered the arrest of Kwame Gyebi, the man who allegedly stated that President John Mahama will ''fall down'' during this years Independence Day parade.
Gyebi, 33, who is being held on charges of threat of death and offensive conduct, failed to turn up in court, hence prosecuting Deputy Superintendent of Police George Amegah prayed for a bench warrant.
The Court, presided by Mr. Aboagye Tandoh, obliged the prosecutions request and adjourned the matter to October 28.
Gyebi has pleaded not guilty and he is currently on bail.
Gyebi is alleged to have made the comment at a drinking spot at Dzworwulu, in Accra, and this was witnessed by some people.
He was said to have boasted that he knew what he was referring to and dared anyone to mark his words.
The matter was reported, consequently, to the Airport Police and he was put before the Court on March 1.
President John Mahama has urged the Ghanaians to heed the warning of the former President Jerry John Rawlings urging them to be wary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its traditions following its criticism of governments borrowing to undertake development projects.
He said this as he rejected claims from the opposition NPP that his government is plunging the country into an economic crisis with excessive borrowing.
At the National Democratic Congress (NDC) campaign launch in August, former President Rawlings warned the NDC not to underestimate the NPP as they have been in existence almost the entirety of Ghanas democratic existence pursuing their agenda.
Speaking to residents of Nkwanta in the Volta Region, President Mahama asserted that he would not be discouraged by the criticism because the forbearers of the opposition NPP said similar things about the country's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
They are the same people who frustrated Dr. Nkrumah. They have been there for a very long time. They say we do not chew roads, we do not chew hospitals and we do not chew schools. During our campaign launch in Cape Coast, former President Rawlings warned us to beware of them. He said they had been there for a very long time. They tormented Dr. Kwame Nkrumah during his era.
They have appeared again repeating the thing they did under Kwame Nkrumah. They are again downplaying the positive impact of the loans Ghana has contracted under my era. I do not use the monies on lavish things but for projects that will last.
Developmental projects are providing jobs
The NPPs agenda, should it win power, will be geared towards job creation per its 2016 manifesto but President Mahama has maintained that the the developmental projects undertaken by the governing NDC has also brought income and employment.
When we were undertaking these projects, we employed Ghanaians as carpenters, masons, electricians and other artisans. All these people have had some form of employment I am sure their family members also benefited because they were catered for out of the income they got from being employed.
The schools and hospitals we are building will also employ thousands of teachers from the various colleges of educations and thousands of graduates also from the nursing training colleges.
While we are doing all these things, they are still saying we are wasting national resources. They are still saying we are wasting national resources, President Mahama stated.
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate for Dome-Kwabenya, Mr Nurudeen Mohammed has said that his party is poised to take over the seat from opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
According to him, the assertion that the constituency is the stronghold of the NPP hence he stands a very little chance of winning in the upcoming election is false.
He said, The Dome-Kwabenya Constituency is not the stronghold of any single political party, the seat is winnable and the NPP can therefore not continue to claim ownership of it in the area.
Mr Mohammed, who was launching his Campaign in the Constituency, said although the NPP had occupied the seat for so many years, the performance of President John Dramani Mahama in the country would catalyse many more people to opt for the NDC in the December polls.
The launch attracted hundreds of party supporters amidst drumming and chanting of the party songs and slogans.
It was also attended by party bigwigs including, Mr Ade Coker, the Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the Party, and other constituency executive members.
Mr Nurudeen Mohammed, who is a Journalist by profession, said with his knowledge of the Constituency, he would work hard to create a better environment for the betterment of the vulnerable and marginalised in society.
He said the incumbent Member of Parliament had nothing to offer the people, which had created the opportunity for the electorate to constantly call for a change to transform their living conditions in the coming days.
The people have realised that they had been deceived all these years and are, therefore, yearning for a change, which I will offer in humility after the December Polls.
He, however, cautioned his party supporters to remain calm and vigilant on the voting day to avoid election malpractices.
He promised that a win for him and President Mahama in the Constituency would further step up the provision of development projects in the area and appealed to the electorate to demonstrate their solidarity with the party by voting massively.
Mr Ade Coker, the Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the Party, urged the constituency executives to intensify their house-to house campaign programmes to retain the faith of their supporters.
In doing that, however, the Regional Chairman tasked them to resist any measures that could undermine the peace and unity the country was enjoying.
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Those without short memories can recollect that Dr. Bawumia was the least of choices for the position of the NPP's flagbearer running mate ahead of the 2008 elections. Most political analysts and pundits were expecting the NPP 2008 running mate to either be then MP for Salaga, Abubakar Boniface Siddiq or Hajia Halima Mahama. Others expected Messr MND Jawula taking the spot. But out of nowhere and to perhaps surprise a lot, Nana Addo picked a relatively unknown person in political cycles, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. His choice of Dr. Bawumia didn't settle down well with all the party members and sympathisers. Nana Addo stood firm on his choice and the rest as they will always say, is history.
In the 2008 elections, Dr. Bawumia wasn't attacked that much. Most of the NDC's propaganda was against Nana Addo. They accused him from being arrogant to him being a fake lawyer and many other unprintable lies and distortions. The worse of them was the one being led by Kofi Wayo saying Nana Addo indulges in drugs. All these allegations were levelled without any shred of evidence. They did it and it perhaps helped them to deceive a supposedly gullible public with "short memories" to win the 2008 elections.
Then came the 2012 elections and again most of the lies and propaganda was against the personality of Nana Addo. This time though, the NDC had the added advantage of Professor Mills death which they capitalised on and used it to clamour for sympathy votes. The results of the elections tells us that it worked for the NDC.
We are now in the 2016 elections and the dynamics this time are totally different. The NDC have realised that people are now so fed up with their incompetence, very corrupt, clueless, uncaring and indecisive administration. They have equally realised that Ghanaians have had enough of their lies, mischief, distortions and malicious propaganda against Nana Addo. Kofi Wayo can no longer be used to accuse Nana Addo, Hassan Ayariga true colours of being a NDC mole in PNC is known by all and Fiifi Kweetey and the other babies with sharp teeth are now known by their true lying and deceptive colours. The NDC needed to find a new and innocent target to defame. And they found, Dr. Bawumia.
Dr . Bawumia have grown to endear himself to many people in the NPP and out of the NPP through his numerous lectures he has been organising. These consistent and honest lectures not only expose the weaknesses and failings of the current NDC administration but also propose feasible and simple solutions to the problems and challenges we face as a nation. A good government would have listened more to Dr. Bawumia. But unfortunately, the president Mahama led NDC government wouldn't take anything from him.
Instead of the ruling NDC government consulting him the more in the spirit of all-inclusiveness, they rather decided to attack and rebuke him. They tried organising counter lectures and they all backfired. The Vice-President then realised it would be a shame on the NDC if they don't respond properly to Dr. Bawumia.
To tame and silence Dr. Bawumia, the Vice-President raised our interest high by telling us that he is going to let Dr. Bawumia know that the economics he Dr. Bawumia has been lecturing is primary school economics. Little did we know that the Vice-President's statement was another NDC propaganda. Till date, neither the Vice-President nor the finance minister has come out to answer or debunk the 170 questions Dr. Bawumia asked them about the economy.
Their attempt to use Fiifi Kweetey, Okudjeto Ablakwa, Felix Kwaakye and the other babies with sharp teeth to refute his lectures with propaganda, lies, mischief, distortions and defamations through the setting the records straight forum also backfired. Now losing focus and the debate on the best policy to rescue this collapsed economy, the NDC have decided to resort to the age-old tactics of slandering the truthful and honest person when you can't debate with him. This explains the insults and derogatory statements coming from the mouths of Koku Ayindoho and some of the NDC members. The NDC now don't know how to deal with Dr. Bawumia.
Besides, the words of Asiedu Nketia against Dr Bawumia goes deeper. He's saying the NPP is only using Dr. Bawumia to win the 2016 elections and after that dump him. He cited the case of late Aliu Mahama losing the NPP primaries even though he was the sitting vice president. What a weird analysis?
In fact some of these analysis or tribally-inspired politics beats my imaginations. The late Aliu Mahama was not abandoned by the NPP. If for nothing at all, he been Vice-President for 8 years was itself a good platform to serve his country. He campaigned against others during the NPP internal primaries and lost. The late Vice-President never complained to anyone he was maltreated or mishandled by the NPP.
So why should the NDC think for us? Why must Asiedu Nketia try to always insult our intelligence? In any case, what did the NDC do to us from the three Northern regions after voting for them for 8 years? Is it the SADA create, loot and share or is it the taking away of fertiliser and fuel subsidies? Doesn't the NDC know we are mostly farmers? Why should the loving NDC, our beloved Northern brother and party, use our names as northerners to con, dupe and exploit the state? Why must they enrich themselves and their families leaving the three Northern regions underdeveloped and poor? Is this the NDC definition of love? Then that's a distorted and very wicked love!!!
Let's in a way assume that Asiedu Nketia is right, does that mean that the NDC has an agenda against people of Northern descent especially the Muslims? Why didn't the NDC handover or chose Honourable Mahama Iddrisu to take over from former president Rawlings after he serving the P/NDC for more years than professor Mills? Wasn't he very loyal to the cause of the PNDC and NDC governments? Why didn't the same NDC vote for Mahama Iddrisu in the 2006 NDC presidential primaries? Is it because it falls in the NDC's agenda of using Muslims and dumping them like rubbish after elections? We can't forget that it's around this same period that Fiifi Kweetey told us that no Muslim can be a president in Ghana.
The NDC must respect themselves and concentrate more on the policies they have to transform Ghana from its current hopelessness. We know it's not easy to see defeat staring you in the face and you'll be normal. That doesn't also mean that you must disrespect yourself by descending too low to make desperate and reckless tribally-inspired statements. That doesn't also mean you must descend so low and end up insulting people who have built respect for themselves.
The NDC must think of our national unity and cohesion before and after the 2016 elections. The wind of change can't be stopped now by the NDC, In sha Allah. Nana Addo and Dr. Bawumia are clean and their positive and truthful vision for Ghana would, In sha Allah, come to fruition starting the 7th of January, 2017. No amount of lies, mischief, slander, malicious propaganda and distortions can prevent that....
I shall, In sha Allah, be back
Fuseini Abdul-Fatawu
Japan Motors Trading Company Limited (JMTC) has won the prestigious Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana (CIMG) Motor Firm Award for the second consecutive year.
JMTC, the leading distributor of Nissan vehicles and Yamaha motorbikes, outboard motors in the country, was again adjudged CIMG 'Motor Firm of the year 2015' for its strategic marketing in the areas of market insights, marketing strategy development and managing CSR programmes.
The company's continuous research, which has become synonymous with its brand, was also acknowledged.
Abdul-Somad Alhassan Musah, Assistant MD of Japan Motors, Imad Antoine Ghorayeb, General Manager, Sales & Marketing, Hilda Peasah, Marketing Manager and Wasim Deen Ahmed, Nissan Product Manager were present to receive the award on behalf of the company.
Imad Antoine Ghorayeb thanked CIMG for acknowledging the companys hard work in the industry and dedicated the award to its customers, whose patronage has made JMTC a household name in Ghana.
Joe Voyticky (9th left) welcoming members of the Advisory Council on stage during the celebration
Max International Ghana Limited, a global producer of wellness and weight loss supplements, has celebrated its second anniversary in the country.
Speaking at the ceremony held at the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC) on Saturday, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Max International Ghana Limited, Joe Voyticky, praised his outfit's performance in Ghana in the last two years.
According to him, Max International has contributed a total of $6 million to the Ghanaian economy over the period.
The company, he said, had also contributed significantly to job creation in the country and intends to further invest in the economy in the years ahead.
Max International aims to empower people across the world to experience better health, success and significance, according to Mr. Voyticky.
He seized the opportunity to announce the 2016/2017 Advisory Council of Max International Ghana Limited.
Max International is an industry leader in the production of wellness and weight loss supplements and products headquartered in Utah, USA.
Its branch in Ghana serves as the corporate office for Africa in the distribution of preventive health supplements.
The vision of the institution is to empower people to significantly change their lives and that of others.
By Melvin Tarlue
Samuel Sallas Mensah
19.10.2016 LISTEN
The Public Procurement Authority (PPA) has appealed to government to expedite action on the Cabinet memorandum for the approval of the public private partnership process that will assist it to own a permanent office.
According to Samuel Sallas Mensah, Chief Executive of PPA, since his assumption of office, efforts have been made to secure a permanent office for the authority but that has not been easy.
Our continuous operation in rented facilities is having a heavy financial toll on the authority's scarce resources and gradually becoming unsustainable.
Speaking at the 8th annual public forum of the Authority in Accra recently, Mr Mensah also called on his successor to ensure that integrity and efficiency in public procurement were entrenched to strengthen PPA's appeals and complaints mechanism, and further encourage the use of PPA's procurement planning system, as well as support the electronic procurement initiative and other measures aimed at mainstreaming public procurement into the wider Public Financial Management Framework.
My utmost concern about the numerous accusations that continue to dominate public discourse on the use of restricted and single-source methods of procurement, which are fully provided for in section 40 of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) is that many of these issues are debated from ill-informed positions and often given undue political slants just to dint the corporate image of the PPA and the ruling government.
The irony of the issue is that in spite of all the arguments that have been raised against the use of these methods, at no point during the amendment process did we have even one Member of Parliament make a proposal for the introduction of stiffer measures for the use of these methods of procurements or even have them expunged from the law.
A business desk report
Accra, Oct. 18, GNA - Access Bank Ghana Limited has pledged to support the development of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) as part of its corporate social responsibility effort to contribute to national growth.
A statement copied to the Ghana News Agency said the Regulus CFO Forum, sponsored by the Bank, was to highlight opportunities for partnerships, strategic insights and business networking among top finance executives.
Mr Anthony Mensah, the Head of Corporate Banking at Access Bank Ghana, said 'CFOs play key roles in our organisations hence the need to offer them the needed support to enhance their performance'.
He said the hard work of CFOs made them the backbone of their organisations which enabled the companies to pay taxes and other contributions to national development.
He said 'Access Bank is an African Bank committed to support projects that seek to promote national development. Our values play a vital role in our decision making processes. They are the bedrock of our culture and they form the keystone for all we do and accomplish. And Access Bank is proud to support such a cause'.
Madam Mona Quartey, the Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, expressed delight at the efforts of CFOs improving their work performance, which also impacted national development.
'Regulus CFO Forum is a business professional group and their immense value cannot be overstated', she said, and urged the participants and members to stay focused in their activities.
Mr Hitesh Makhija, the President and Founder of the group, (a Chief Financial Controller at Olam Ghana Limited), said 'the aim of the forum is to be the best CFO networking platform in Ghana with a membership of at least 20 percent of Ghana's GDP contributing companies across all sectors of the economy.
Regulus CFO Forum is a new series of CFO fora that seeks to endow CFOs with immense value through training on business strategies; creating mentorship opportunities for new members; creating a platform to share best practices; giving CFOs advance information on valuable economic trends and activities; and providing high-value events for its members.
The maiden session was on the theme: "The CFO's Role in Today's Digital Economy', with participants including CFOs and Financial Directors (FDs) from PZ Cussons Ghana, Allterrain Services, SBC Beverages (Pepsi Bottlers), Stallion Group and Beiersdorf Ghana Limited.
Other participating companies included Mohinani Group, Japan Motors, Vodafone, Access Bank, Interplast Limited, Expro International Group, Focos Orthopedic Hospital, Right Holdings Limited, Predictive Excellence and Invest Corporation.
GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
By Laudia Sawer
Old-Ningo (GAR), Oct 18, GNA - The National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) has organized a community durbar at Old-Ningo in the Ningo-Prampram District to educate the electorate on the December 7 general elections.
Mr Albert Odoi Anim, NCCE Greater Accra Regional Principal Civic Education Officer, addressing the durbar, called on stakeholders to play their roles properly to maintain peace before, during and after the elections.
Mr Anim said it was not enough to cry for peace without all stakeholders playing their respective roles effectively.
He added that institutions, political parties, the electorate, among others are duty bound to secure the country's democracy.
He indicated that the transition of Ghana's true democracy from the past six elections under the fourth republic must be reflected in the 2016 elections.
"It is incumbent on us to exercise our rights and freedoms in a responsible way through the ballot box", he stated.
Mr Anim also advised the electorate to exercise tolerance to its elastic end when engaging each other on national and elections issues.
He urged the citizens not to use the election period to demand for material things from politicians but should rather engage them on topical issues.
Electorates, he said, must also desist from defacing and removing posters, posting over opponents' posters and posting bills on people's properties without permission.
Mr Anim intimated that since there was no substitute for peace, the youth should not allow themselves to be incited into violence.
Mr Sylvester Tetteh, Ningo-Prampram Parliamentary Candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) pledged that he and his executive members would ensure that they organize their activities in a peaceful manner.
Mr Tetteh however stated that if the elections were not organized freely and fairly, the NCCE's peace cry would amount to anything.
According to him, "Our actions should depict peace more than our public talk of peace" adding that all must endeavour to play in accordance with the rules.
Mr Frederick Martey, Parliamentary Candidate of the Convention People's Party (CPP) called on politicians and the electorates to abide by the electoral laws.
Mr Martey reminded residents that elections were not war but rather an exercise to choose people to administer the resources of the country.
Nene Narwotey Aklotia, Stool Father, Ningo Traditional Area, chairing the durbar, appealed to the Ningo-Prampram District Assembly (NIPDA) and government to properly resource the NCCE in the District to enable them carry out their mandates effectively.
Miss Gifty Agyeiwaa Badu Ningo-Prampram, Ningo-Prampram District NCCE Director, said with the support of the European Union, her outfit organized the durbar to strengthen and deepen understanding of issues of governance among the electorates.
Miss Badu added that it was a civic responsibility for every qualified Ghanaian voter to vote at elections to decide who should governs the nation.
Participants at the durbar were drawn from political parties, women groups, disabled associations, the assembly among others.
GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Accra, Oct.18, GNA - The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has been commended for making progress in the implementation of a Financial Management Improvement Project, a donor initiative from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, (JICA).
The project is aimed at safeguarding and ensuring the efficient use of government resources and assets.
Since 2010, JICA has been supporting the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to enhance its fixed asset management system being the first Ministry to deploy the Ghana Integrated Financial Management and Information System (GIFMIS) on a pilot basis.
The progress of the Ministry in implementing the project was announced by a Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) set by JICA in Accra, a statement signed by Kojo Williams, the Public Relations Advisor of JICA, said.
Mr Norihito Yonebayashi, Senior Representative at JICA, who commended the Ministry for its commitment, asked other government agencies to emulate the practice.
"The Controller and Accountant General's Department should roll out the practice to be replicated by other government agencies.
"This would help improve the asset management cycle utilising GIFMIS and to ensure the accountability and transparency in the efficient use and the safeguarding of government assets", Mr Yonebayashi said.
Mr Joseph Boamah, the Chief Director of MoFA and the Project Director, commended JICA for the project saying it had helped to regularise some of the financial management practices at the Ministry and introduced a lot of efficiency".
"Through the Project, the Accounting Guidebook of MoFA was developed to standardise the procedures of accounting and asset management, in line with the Public Financial Management reforms of the Government of Ghana', the statement said.
GNA
The Minerals Commission has given the strongest indication yet for illegal miners still occupying the Obuasi concession, of AngloGold Ashanti, to evacuate the site or suffer ejection.
This comes on the back of the insistence of some of the informal miners not to relocate to the new site allocated by the Commission.
I am not in the security service but eventually they will be moved. But unlike in those days that nobody was unsure whether they will be moved or not, I am sure they themselves know that they will definitely be moved, the CEO of the Minerals Commission, Dr. Toni Aubynn stated.
The continuous stay of the informal miners has led to many altercations including the death of a Senior Manager, John Owusu and about 64 of the illegal miners.
A latest directive for the illegal miners to leave expired on Monday, October 10, 2016 .
Dr. Toni Aubynn also explained to Citi Business News the defaulting miners would be treading risky paths if they continue to defy the order.
We want them to comply with the directive since we do not want to cause any serious damage like what happened some months ago, he stressed.
AngloGold Ashanti has been compelled to take numerous actions both mild and stern ones to get rid of the illegal miners at the Obuasi concession.
The recent involves a legal suit filed by the company at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID) to compel government to get the issue settled.
Citi Business News understands the illegal miners amount to about 4000 while the new site being offered them can accommodate at least 9000 people.
Commenting on the subsequent plan on guarding the mining site, the Minerals Commission boss assured of government's support where necessary.
That site is for AngloGold Ashanti and we will take the necessary steps to protect the placein any case long before the illegal miners went there, government security personnel were there. It is a shared responsibility and I am sure the company will take charge of the security and government is also ready if they seek for government's support, Dr. Aubynn added.
By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Suddenly President John Dramani Mahama is not supposed to say certain things on the campaign trail. To the NPP people, it is outright abomination for President Mahama to utter certain words while campaigning. In fact, while the opposition NPP has the right to say anything including the political lies they daily spew on the campaign basket, President Mahama does not even have the luxury to tout his achievements.
Otherwise how come that the NPP on radio, television, door-to-door campaign and Nana Akufo-Addos cherry picking campaign stops, confidently tell Ghanaians that they are going to win the 2016 Elections hands down, but President Mahama is barred from making same assertion. Indeed, to the NPP what is good for them is an abomination for the NDC. Or to put it bluntly, what Akufo-Addo says President Mahama dares not say same.
Throughout the world, politicians running for office are allowed to make pronouncements to boost their campaigns, even if polls suggest that their campaigns are going nowhere. I can cite the disqualified Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, who before she was bounced by the Electoral Commission boldly stated that she was going to the win the Volta Region during the upcoming elections.
But the law allows politicians to make such assertions. Which is why Nana Akufo-Addo who to date has not mounted one single political rally anywhere apart from greeting chiefs and opinion leaders, goes everywhere saying he would be the next President come January 7, 2017.
Therefore, it is totally wacky and nonsense for this Shamolo Guy, who goes by the name Sammy Awuku, the so-called National Youth Organizer of the NPP, to state that if President Mahama boldly states that he would win the 2016 Presidential Elections, then he is out to steal votes. Another Donald Trump in Ghana? What a world do we find ourselves today?
Sammy Awuku, the famous bed-wetting guy, in his days at the University of Ghana, Legon and other NPP guys are attempting to gag President Mahama for telling Ghanaians that he would win the Elections based on his record.
Does Sammy Awuku and others want President Mahama to go out there waving a surrender handkerchief telling Ghanaians that he would lose the Elections? I mean, do they want Mahama to campaign for Akufo-Addo to win? Do they want to tell President Mahama what to say during campaign stops?
We have heard on multiple times Nana Akufo-Addo, the septuagenarian who cannot even account to the NPP the millions of monies that have been pumped into his presidential campaigns since 2008, calling President Mahama incompetent. Akufo-Addo uses the word incompetent everywhere.
Yet when President Mahama responded in equal measure by telling Ghanaians that Akufo-Addo is very divisive, dictatorial, a one-man knows it all, who does not entertain ideas and suggestions from his fellow NPP people, which has pushed the into tartars today, Nana Akufo-Addo and his cohorts cannot stand it.
They first started condemning President Mahama for criticising Akufo-Addo, and when the NDC Communicators responded that President Mahama was only returning Akufo-Addos political favour, the NPP would nothing of that.
The next thing Ghanaians saw was the NPP running to the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) to advice President Mahama to desist from attacking Akufo-Addo. And strangely enough, the CCG, which behaves as if all its members are NPP people, jumped on the wagon and came out with a statement condemning the description of Akufo-Addo by President Mahama.
Where was the CCG when Akufo-Addo was calling President Mahama incompetent? Where was the CCG when the NPP used various negative invectives to label President Mahama? Were they sleeping or simply playing politics? Is the CCG in bed with Akufo-Addo? Are the leaders of the CCG NPP supporters wearing the clerical garb?
I would like to know if statements issued by the CCG are the total reflection of the views by churches under the CCG. Is the CCG leadership aware that not every single member under their umbrella is an NPP?
Where are we heading to as a country? Some churches in Ghana and their notable pastors who have trooped behind Akufo-Addo and making false election predictions and have adopted preaching sound bites against the ruling NDC government must know that perhaps the silent majority of their members are NDC members or supporters.
One may ask if Akufo-Addo has the right to say President Mahama is incompetent, who says President Mahama has no right to say that Akufo-Addo is divisive? And the truth is that Akufo-Addo is divisive. He is Ghanas most noted politician who does not accept criticism or correction from anyone. What he says is the bond of every NPP member. Its either Akufo-Addos way or the highway! Akufo-Addo is simply, he who must be obeyed. And this is a known fact in NPP circles.
With this kind of mentality just imagine if Ghanaians send Akufo-Addo to the Flagstaff House. Imagine; just imagine if Americans vote to send Donald Trump, another bigot to the White House. Trump and Akufo-Addo have the same trade. They never apologize for anything. They think everybody is beneath them. Imagine if we have two of their kind as leaders of their countries. God forbid!
Imagine how Ghana would be if these nation wreckers called the NPP return to power. They are even trying to gag a sitting President. They dont want President Mahama to tell the truth about their stock in trade. They dont want President Mahama to campaign freely. They want President Mahama to campaign according to their political dictate. So just imagine how Ghana would be if they win power. No one, I mean no one, would be safe from the NPP.
This is what Im leaving with you for now!
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Fadi Dobboussis recent sordid journalistic faux pas committed against the President of the Republic of Ghana, Mr. John Dramani Mahama was condemned by many social pundits. However, concerns were raised about the modus operandi of the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) who invited Fadi to interrogate him. Fadi has revealed the death threat he is receiving from some individuals in Ghana.
For example, according to him the message sent to him read, ''Take this from me, look for me when you get to Achimota Kingsby Roundabout, grateful to let you know your status. A Lebanese dog like you will remain so and be tamed. St**** f**l.'' (Source: ghanaweb.com, October 18, 2016). Begotten from a notorious womb, a lamb called death threat in Ghana must be a concern of all and sundry. The aim of this article is to reflect on the possible ways of dealing with an electronic message death threat in Ghana.
Out of his frustrations about the French political and social systems in the 18th century, the philosophe Denis Diderot asserted that man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. Certainly Diderot was not happy about the French monarchy and the church concerning the social happenings of his era. We have leaders, pastors, public officers in Ghana and yet people continue to issue death threats with impunity. Serial murder is becoming a pattern in Ghana now. For example, in December, 2013, a staff of Stanbic Bank, Rosemond Nyampong was murdered in a cold blood. In March 2014, Fennec Okyere was murdered by unknown assailants.
On May 23, 2015, Mr. Adams Mahama, the Upper East regional chairman of NPP was murdered. On February 9, 2016, the member of parliament of Abuakwa North constituency, Mr J.B Danquah Adu was murdered. On June 28, 2007, Mr. Rokko Frimpong, the deputy managing director of the Ghana Commercial Bank was murdered by unknown assailants.
Death threat and serial killings are serious menace in our country. The urgent need to ferret out the causes of death threat and its attendant serial killings must not be shelved by all especially those in authority. Unemployment, corruption, excessive powers of the executive arm of government, lack of policing the police, individuals stress level and emotional misgivings are some of the motivations for issuing death threat. From my novice opinion, I think the following suggestions will help in the fight against death threat in Ghana.
We must broaden the legal definition of death threat with a strong legal backing.
An appropriate anger or stress management interventions.
A very strong legal collaboration between the police and telecommunication companies. For example, the police must quickly get the cell phone number of an individual being threatened and take it to the telecommunication service providing companies involved. The companies will then provide the location and the number of the individual who issued the threat whether hidden or not? The company, say, MTN, must provide some of the favorite contacts of the number, some of whom must be invited by the police. Then police must compel such individuals to call that number. If the number is registered then that should be easier for the law enforcement.
The office of Inspector General of Police (IGP), BNI boss must be made independent of executive to enable the police and the BNI be bold enough to prosecute government officials who engage or instigate others to issue death threat.
The court must be given powers to receive complains from the public concerning death threat. The court must also be empowered to carry out its special investigations with telecommunication service providers along with the police. The court then will invite the police officers dealing with the case to provide details of investigation. The court must be given quasi executive powers to police the police
Fellow countrymen, we must eradicate this nonsense called death threat from our country. If Ghana police service really want to arrest individuals who issue death threat, a simple collaboration with telecommunication companies will nip the menace of death threat in the bud. Serial killing and death threats are UNGHANAIAN. These political beasts issuing death threat must not be entertained in our country. God Bless Our Homeland Ghana. I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing. (Socrates).
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Nana Yaw Osei (Padigo) is a PhD Candidate in Psychology at Arizona, USA.
The Minister of Petroleum Emmanuel Kofi Buah has cut the sod for the construction of a building to facilitate the establishment of the School of Petroleum Studies in the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT) at Tarkwa in the Western Region to produce skilled graduates to work in the petroleum sector.
He said the establishment of the school falls in line with the national framework for the training of Ghanaians in the petroleum sector to promote the country's policy on local content and participation.
The government, about two years ago, announced its intention to establish a school of petroleum in one of the country's universities.
The UMaT met the selection criteria, and during one of his visits to the University in Tarkwa, President John Mahama announced that the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) had agreed to collaborate with UMaT to upgrade its Petroleum Engineering Department into a centre of excellence.
The GNPC subsequently presented a cheque for GH2 million to start the first phase of the construction of the building of the School of Petroleum Studies, which is estimated at GH5.5 million.
At a brief ceremony to present the cheque to start the construction of the project, the Petroleum Minister commended the university for effectively training mining, petroleum engineers and other professionals in spite of the infrastructural challenges.
He noted that the government has been focusing on the building of state-of-the-art laboratories and facilities in some tertiary institutions to building capacity in the oil and gas industry.
The GNPC is also focusing on producing the best petroleum engineers in the country, he added.
The Minister reiterated his commitment to establishing the new School of Petroleum Studies at UMaT.
Carmen Bruce-Annan, Manager, Corporate Affairs of GNPC, stressed that the petroleum corporation had been mandated by law to develop the capacity of Ghanaians in petroleum related disciplines.
Vice Chancellor of the UMaT, Professor Jerry Kumah, expressed gratitude to the stakeholders for the initiative and revealed that the university had been ranked the best in Mines and Technology in Africa.
UMaT is the only mining university in West Africa and has the mandate through the Act of Parliament to train manpower for the minerals and oil and gas industry.
He revealed that the Petroleum Engineering Department of the university had been offering undergraduate courses since 2009.
The department has so far successfully churned out over 100 petroleum engineering graduates throughout the period, he added.
He applauded the GNPC for fulfilling its promise of helping to transform the department into a centre of excellence.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Tarkwa
The Chairman for the National Hajj board Alhaji Rauf Tanko who doubles as the aspiring Member of Parliament on the ticket of the NDC for Yagaba-Kubori constituency in the Northern Region is optimistic that he would deliver the seat to the NDC come December 7.
According to him, after losing the seat in 2012 to the incumbent Member of Parliament, Mr Yussif Mustapha of the NPP, he is seeking re-election to continue the works he had started in the area before his untimely removal from office.
One of the duties of a Member of Parliament is to lobby for projects. During my administration, I was able to lobby for projects, I lobbied for Yagaba-Kubori to be given a Senior High School, I lobbied for us to be given a District. No one has been able to lobby to develop this area more than myself.
Addressing party supporters at his campaign launch at Yagaba Kubori, he said Mr. Yussif's victory was based on lies propagated against him adding that he was not happy when he lost the seat but a couple of weeks later, he accepted the decision that the good people of Yagaba-Kubori had made.
One of such claims was that, I was given GH5 billion every quarter of the year for roads and to pay the fees of students but I embezzled it, claiming that, I used the money to buy cars and to provide shelter for my family.
The Chairman for the National Hajj board stated that it was time Ghana as a nation moved from ethnic politics and look at the bigger picture of national interest where the victory of any political party will not be victory for some ethnic tribes but the nation at large.
No ethnic tribe can produce the 50+1 votes required by the Electoral Commission to declare victory for any individual. That stands to mean that, you will need the vote of other tribes to achieve victory.
Alhaji Tanko pleaded with the people of Yagaba-Kubori to vote for him to go back to parliament as their MP and also vote massively for President John Dramani Mahama to retain power and continue delivering on his Better Ghana Agenda.
FROM Eric Kombat, Yagaba Kubori
Pupils of Gomoa Kweikrom D/A School in the Central Region have criticized government for failing to supply them with chalks.
Owing to the development, we fetch firewood in the bush to sell in order to buy chalk for the school, the pupils told the media.
They indicated that the development was negatively affecting their academic performance in the school since they fetch the firewood during learning hours.
A teacher of the Gomoa Kweikrom D/A School collaborated the story of the pupils in an interview with the media.
But immediately government heard about the assertions by the pupils, it accordingly rushed to the school with a box of chalk.
Government's supply of some basic learning materials like textbooks, chalks and mathematical sets to some schools have not been regular across the country.
However, the pupils have asked government to complete the school's six-unit classroom block project.
According to the pupils, the construction of the classroom block, which started four years ago, had been abandoned by government.
2nd Lady drama
Last year, Matilda Amissah-Arthur, the wife of the Vice President, was caught on tape refusing to supply pupils in Kukurantumi in the Eastern region with chalk.
Headmistress of Kukurantumi Presby Primary School, Juliet Oppong, who was expressing gratitude to Mrs Amissah-Arthur for presenting five sets of computers to the school, appealed to her to urge government to provide some basic items like logbooks for teachers and chalks which she said were in short supply in the school.
The elderly say if you want to communicate something to God, you say it to the wind. We are therefore requesting of you to tell government to try and come to our aide with these things which are in short supply in the school, Mrs Oppong said.
However, the Second Lady became offended and scolded the headmistress for making the request.
The head teacher has shocked meshe said you lack chalk and log booksI am very shocked that you are today asking me about chalk, how much is a box of chalkI won't give you chalk today, I won't give you chalk tomorrow.
Mrs Amissah-Arthur is quoted as saying that Secondly, you talk about log books and school uniforms, I think we have spoilt you so parents don't want to even buy school uniformshead teacher find another means of helping yourself.
I will even feel shy to go to Accra and call on the government to come and provide chalkit would be very difficult for me to do so.
By Melvin Tarlue
President John Mahama has been touring the Volta Region and visited Kpando today. While addressing us in Kpando, I was listening with apt attention to hear the messages His excellency had for us. I must say, that you did very well with communicating and spinning around the issues that really mattered to us. What you did very well was to engage in an "exercise of mediocrity" (to borrow your words).
I was surprised when I heard you mention roads, school buildings, and water you turned on as an achievement while Campaigning for you and your Boss (Late Prof. Mills) in 2008 you made us tell the whole world that those were mediocre achievements. Well, I want to believe that it was politics as usual then and it is politics again this time round. But trust me, I will not vote for anybody who isn't bold enough to man up to his own words, because he cannot be trusted. Mr. President, you have lost my trust as an advent admirer.
But Sir, as a person brought up in an African home with the values, there was something missing in all you said to the gathering. I do not know why you refused to apologise to the People of Kpando, the Volta Region and Ghana at large for lying about the state of the Kpando township roads. Or have you forgotten what you said? Well I won't be surprised because you have stated in the past that "Ghanaians have short memory", and you are a Ghanaian.
A quick reminder, on page 34 of the 2016 State of the Nation's Address delivered to Parliament, you mentioned the Kpando township roads as having been constructed by your administration. So I am only asking that how come a road you claimed has been constructed is again being awarded for contract to First Sky Company? As a man popularly acclaimed as respectful by your party fanatics, I expected to hear you show that respect to my people by apologising for erring and deceiving the world about the state of the roads, but all you did was to praise yourself for doing everything and telling them what to think of you and your achievements. Do you really respect those of us in the Volta Region or you are just disrespectful, which is contrary to the accolades given you?
Mr. President, why in God's name would you lose for humbly apologizing to the good people of the Volta who gave you over 80% of their votes to make you president?
Gradually you are revealing your real self to us and we now know that John Mahama isn't the president we wanted. If you can lie to the world and not have the courage to apologize to us, then we are sorry, you are too big to serve us.
Residents and traders of Ashtown in Kumasi of the Ashanti Region are blessed to receive transforming SME Banking to enhance their business and economic livelihood from Universal Merchant Bank (UMB).
The viability and growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana has been given a boost with the launch of the first UMB Centre for Businesses in Kumasi.
Located on the Ashanti New Town road in Ashtown, this innovative Centre will set a new standard in the delivery of SME banking services and enhance the competitiveness of UMB Bank in the SME segment.
UMB is a full-service financial institution specializing in customized banking products and services.
It is a leading Ghanaian indigenous bank with considerable financial expertise. UMB is recognized for its entrepreneurial approach, innovative use of technology, and distinctive banking solutions.
Speaking at the inauguration in Kumasi, the Chief Executive Officer of UMB Bank, Mr. John Awuah, recounted UMB Banks long and proud history of developing business in Ghana.
He indicated that, "the bank is poised to restore its leadership position as the preeminent financial partner for businesses in Ghana".
He further said another Centre will be opened in Accra before the end of the year and that in the next five years, the bank will open similar Centres in other parts of Ghana and the UMB Centre of Businesses will become a permanent and differentiated beacon in SME banking in Ghana.
SMEs are unique and face peculiar challenges and that is why we have taken the bold step of setting up an operational infrastructure outside of our normal banking operations to cater exclusively to the needs of SMEs He stated.
According to Mr. Awuah, the UMB Centre for Businesses is not a UMB bank branch, but the cradle for developing all categories of businesses and entrepreneurs from the woman who sells used clothing to the young technology entrepreneur who has the next billion cedi idea.
The Head of Business Banking of UMB Bank, Mr. Ernest Tetteh also stated, At UMB, we take a more holistic approach to SME banking by providing both financial and non-financial solutions.
According to Mr. Tetteh, we cannot grow SMEs by simply advancing loans to them and that is why the UMB Centre of Businesses will also provide world class advisory services in areas such as corporate governance, business strategy, internal controls, business development initiatives, marketing, and succession planning among others.
Customers of the Centre will have access to dedicated and experienced relationship managers and credit analysts. They will also enjoy quick transactions and the utmost convenience and confidentiality.
To us at UMB Bank, small businesses are big businesses and our Big on Small Business mantra is amply demonstrated by the establishment of this Centre.
I encourage all business owners in Kumasi and beyond to take advantage of this Centre and they will be glad that they did he added.
Amsterdam Child & Youth Finance International (CYFI) is delighted to announce the finalists for the Global Inclusion Awards 2016!
Responses to this years call for nominees was outstanding, and more than 500 applications were received. With so many inspiring applications the jury had a difficult decision in choosing the impressive financial inclusion finalists narrowing down to just 54 contenders across the 6 awards categories .
The Awards categories include: Child and Youth Friendly Banking Award, Civil Society Achievement Award, CYFI Country Award, Global Money Week Award, Global Youth Entrepreneur Award, Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award.
Winners will be announced at the Global Inclusion Awards ceremony, which are taking place on 28th November 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Held in collaboration with Finansinspektionen Financial Services Authority of Sweden and other partners, the Awards recognize and honor those that achieve greatness and demonstrate innovation in financial, social and livelihoods education, financial inclusion, and entrepreneurial support for children and youth at the national, regional and international level.
From groups of active youth to financial institutions, government ministers to civil society organizations, CYFI and Finansinspektionen will be joined by representatives from all over the world to celebrate global efforts to economically empower young people.
Celebrating youth empowerment
As part of the event, interactive workshops will bring together a diverse range of experts, practitioners, researchers and educators. The workshops will provide the opportunity to share best practices, experiences and recommendations for economically empowering children and youth worldwide.
Following this, a ceremony will be held in the Golden Hall at Stockholm City Hall to present the wonderful winners with their Awards. Key speakers will lead the audience in celebrating the tremendous work of inspiring members of CYFIs global network.
Now in its 5th edition, the Global Inclusion Awards commend efforts to address poverty and support todays youth become the capable citizens and leaders of tomorrow.
About Child & Youth Finance International
Child & Youth Finance International (CYFI), an NGO based in Amsterdam, aims to develop a generation that will be able to prevent future financial crises by increasing the financial education, financial access, employability, and entrepreneurship skills of children and youth. Launched in April 2012 the Child and Youth Finance Movement has already expanded to 132 countries worldwide.
Accra, GHANA On Monday, October 18, U.S. Charge dAffaires Melinda Tabler-Stone and other officials and dignitaries participated in the national launch of Rotary Family Health Days. The program is initiated and managed by Rotary International in partnership with governmental and non-governmental organizations to provide health screening services to vulnerable children, women, and men throughout Ghana. The United States Agency for International development (USAID) has supported Rotary Family Health Days in Ghana for the past three years.
Rotary Family Health Days is taking place two days after the launch, from October 20-22. Fifty beneficiary communities in Greater Accra, Eastern, Western, Central, Ashanti, and Volta Regions will receive HIV counseling and testing; screenings for tuberculosis, diabetes and blood pressure; childhood vaccinations and vitamin A supplementation; deworming; family planning education; condom distribution; and eye health testing. The event has been taking place each year in Ghana since 2014, and last years event reached more than 37,000 people. This year, the event aims to reach 50,000 people.
We could not be happier to support Rotary Family Health Days for the third year in a row, said Ms. Tabler-Stone at the launch. The U.S. government has a proud history of partnering with Rotary International in Ghana. Our partnerships have touched thousands of lives.
Rotary International is a key partner of USAID. From 2009 to 2013, USAID and Rotary International cooperated to improve access to water and sanitation for more than 46,000 people. Last August, they signed a second partnership to scale up these results throughout the country.
Nana Kweku Eyimah I, Gyaasehene of Assin Apimanim traditional council has stated categorically that president John Dramani Mahama and the ruling NDC deserve a second term to enable the government to build on the solid foundation he had built for the nation.
Gyaasehene Kweku Eyimah I added that since 1992, Ghanaians have been voting for a change of government after a sitting president has ruled for eight years and therefore charged his subjects to ignore calls that the president should be changed in December.
Nana Kweku Eyimah I stated this at Assin Apamanim palace yesterday when the vice president, Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur visited him as part of his four day campaign visit to the central region.
Nana said, he has ruled for only four years so I am pleading with you to give him another term in office so that we can have our fair share of the developmental projects.
He continued; we the people of Apimanim are solidly behind Mahama. He should win and come and continue his development agenda for us because he who performs must be supported.
On the second day of his tour, the vice president, Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur commissioned a newly constructed market at Assin Ngrasi in the Assin South District.
He was supported by the central regional minister, Mr. George Kweku Ricketts Hagan and the District Chief Executive of the Assin South District Assembly, Mr. Kwabena Adyei-Anoma .
The new market has 40 lockable stores, 60 stalls and places of convenient for market men and women as well as the general public.
Remarkable euphoria greeted the commissioning of the market by the local people amidst chanting and showering of praises on the vice president and the Assin South District Assembly.
They joy stemmed from the fact that until the construction of the market, all forms of trading activities were done openly by the sides of the road.
Traders, customers, pedestrians and vehicles always have to compete for space especially during market days in the town.
It is now envisaged that a proper market day will be instituted in the town by the local authority to ensure that the new market becomes vibrant and serve as a third force in the area after Nyankomasi and Foso.
The Ghana Police Service has transferred 38 senior police officers two months ahead of the December polls.
IGP John Kudalor made 29 changes in November 2015, 61, 80 and 90 in January, May and August, 2016 respectively; making a total of 298 changes in one year.
With the latest changes, the Ministries Commander in Accra, ACP Tiwaa Addo Danquah has been moved to the Police Intelligence and Professional Standards Bureau (PIPS) as the second in command.
She was recently moved from the Police Staff College in Winneba to the Ministries Division some months ago.
In other related transfers, Chief Superintendent Akwasi Kankam-Boadu who was the Donkorkrom Divisional Police Commander has been transferred to the Half Assini Divisonal Command in the Western Region.
Chief Superintendent Cephas Kwofie of the Amasaman Division has been sent to Donkorkrom to Head the division.
Donkorkrom and some surrounding towns were hit with violence after some residents in the Afram Plains South district clashed with police officers destroying some police properties.
By: Franklin Badu Jnr/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Kinshasa (AFP) - The Congolese capital Kinshasa was gripped by a strike Wednesday in a protest over plans by the president to stay in power beyond the end of his term in December, AFP journalists said.
The opposition called for the action to protest a deal signed Tuesday which would keep President Joseph Kabila in power in the Democratic Republic of Congo until April 2018 by postponing this year's scheduled presidential vote.
Kabila first took office in 2001, and in 2006 a new constitutional provision limited the presidency to a two-term limit which expires on December 20.
The country's main opposition party, the UDPS, called the deal signed between authorities and fringe opposition groups a "flagrant violation" of the constitution and said the strike would show Kabila "the yellow card".
At 9:00 am local time (0800 GMT), roads in northern parts of Kinshasa -- a city of 10 million people -- were totally deserted and most shops closed. They would typically have been bustling ahead of the work and school day.
The upmarket Gombe district was also unusually quiet.
And in Kasa-Vubu, a district in the south of the city, the only people on Victories Square were some 50 police officers.
Officers were deployed in force at other locations including parliament and at several military bases.
The only visible commercial activity taking place was women selling bread and petrol stations that were open but unused.
Shared taxis had all but stopped and private traffic was nearly non-existent.
Those public buses that were running were practically empty.
Despite the widespread strike action in Kinshasa, the situation was normal in the second city Lubumbashi.
Calls for a strike were also ignored in Bukavu, according to an AFP correspondent there.
However in Goma, eastern Congo, the call to down tools was largely followed and most shops remained closed, according to two AFP journalists.
The agreement to allow Kabila to serve into 2018 emerged after the EU threatened sanctions if the country did not hold elections in 2017.
It was concluded at "national dialogue" talks aimed at reducing tensions triggered by disquiet that the president is seeking to remain indefinitely.
But the main opposition coalition -- "Rassemblement" (Gathering) -- boycotted the talks, branding them a ploy by Kabila to stay in power beyond the end of his term.
The Director of Communications at the Electricity of Ghana says the power outages experienced in some parts of Accra within the past 24 hours have nothing to do with load shedding.
According to William Boateng , the interruption in power supply is due to an accident which led to a cable cut, tripping the system at its Mallam Bulk Supply Point (BSP).
Several parts of Accra including Mallam, Weija, Dansoman, Kwashieman, Santa Maria were plunged into darkness on Tuesday evening.
After about three years of a power crisis, yesterday's incident re-ignited anxiety about the country's power supply situation.
When William Boateng was asked whether this indicates a possible re-lapse, he discounted it explaining that the power generating company, Volta River Authority(VRA) is currently producing enough power to meet the demand.
Mr. Boateng said engineers at the ECG worked assiduously to restore power to some areas soon after the outage occurred in the western part of Accra.
After apologising for any inconveniences caused, Mr Boateng said power supply will be restored to the affected parts by Wednesday evening.
Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com | AA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
From Ernest Best Anane, Kumasi
Koku Anyidoho, Deputy General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), has tasked student members of the party at the University of Education Winneba (Kumasi campus) to ignore media propaganda and send the message about the achievements of the government to the electorate.
He said the electorate should be educated on the party's manifesto to ensure that the NDC party wins the upcoming generation elections by a landslide.
Addressing the students union last Sunday, after the launch of the NDC regional campaign, Mr. Anyidoho entreated the students not to be discouraged about what the media publishes, and urged them to vigorously campaign to enable the party retain political power, come December 7.
According to him, had it been media reports, the late President Atta Mills of the blessed memory and the sitting President John Dramani Mahama would not have won elections in this country.
He stated that a greater part of the media would want the grounds to be fertile for the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), and would continue predicting elections in NPP's favour, when, in actual fact, it is not the case on the ground.
The Deputy General Secretary called for an effective campaign, based on their achievements and manifesto, as a party in power and government.
He said it is their (party members) collective responsibility to protect this years elections, as they have built a solid foundation, considering ongoing development projects, and entreated the students to venture into vigorous campaigns to help the NDC retain power.
According to him, voting for Nana Akufo-Addo would be the worst mistake Ghanaians could make.
Reacting to the accusations by the vice presidential candidate of the NPP, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, that the Mahama-led NDC administration had indulged in excessive borrowing, Mr. Anyidoho explained that Mahama is borrowing to create assets, and to use our own gas to power our thermal plants, which the NPP failed to do in their eight years in government.
He underscored that the Bui Dam project, which was championed by the NPP, has added nothing to the power sector, as former President Kufuor refused to follow Thermal plant generation needs to improve on the power sector, and that the NPP has no moral right to complain over the erratic power supply.
Mr. Brogya Genfi, NDC Regional Youth Organiser, who is also the parliamentary candidate for Suame constituency, tasked the students to campaign based on the partys manifesto and the achievements of the government in the region, and the country as a whole.
The Suame parliamentary aspirant reminded them of the governments scraping of all the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) registration fees, as one of the efforts to give all children of school-going age access to basic education, and urged them to embark on clean campaigns for the party to win the elections.
Felix Enam Wotodzor, President of TEIN branch at the Kumasi campus, also expressed the hope that looking at the euphoria on the campus and in Ashanti Region, the NDC would win this years elections, and charged the members embark on a vigorous campaign, in and outside campus, to ensure that the party wins the elections massively.
The son of renowned Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed more than 20 years ago, has died in London.
Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr, 47, passed away after suffering a stroke, his family say.
He was a journalist who became an adviser to three presidents.
The 1995 execution of his father by a military government for leading protests against environmental degradation caused by the oil industry sparked global outrage.
Saro-Wiwa Sr led the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop), which accused oil multinational Shell of destroying the environment in his home region of Ogoniland in south-eastern Nigeria.
His execution after a secret trial under Gen Sani Abacha led to Nigeria being suspended from the Commonwealth.
Saro-Wiwa Jr's father was hanged with eight others after a secret trial
Noo Saro-Wiwa, sister of the late journalist, told the BBC: "It is with great sadness that we announce that Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr passed away suddenly. His family are devastated and request privacy at this difficult time."
Funeral arrangements are yet to be worked out, the family says.
Ken Saro-Wiwa was first appointed in 2006 as a special adviser on peace and conflict resolution by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.
He later served Mr Obasanjo's successor, President Umaru Yar'Adua, as an adviser on international affairs and stayed on under President Goodluck Jonathan until he lost last year's election.
His willingness to work with the federal government marked him out as less militant than his father.
But like his father, he was committed to the cause of the Ogoni people.
In a 2015 opinion piece for the UK's Guardian newspaper , he wrote that the effects of the oil pollution on Ogoniland had still not been cleared up.
"If my father were alive today he would be dismayed that Ogoniland still looks like the devastated region that spurred him to action.
"There is little evidence to show that it sits on one of the world's richest deposits of oil and gas."
A 2011 UN report said Nigeria's Ogoniland region could take 30 years to recover fully from the damage caused by years of oil spills. The study said complete restoration could entail the world's "most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up".
It added that communities faced a severe health risk, with some families drinking water with high levels of carcinogens.
Shell has accepted liability for two spills and said all oil spills were bad for Nigeria and the company.
Prior to the Election Day, various political parties cling onto advertising schemes and strategies to carry across their party manifestoes and messages to the public.
Most political parties in a bid to ensure the adverts have an impact on the electorates, spend huge sums of money in advertising on radio, TV, newspapers and on billboards among others.
The Klottey Korley constituency Vice Chairman of the NPP, Alhaji Alui Kabey explains to Citi Business News that for every budget drawn by his political party; at least a quarter is attributed to media advertising.
Because most of the time with politicians you know even if it is fifteen to thirty minutes, the radio stations will take five thousand to six thousand Ghana cedis.
Citi Business News checks also reveal most political parties spend at least 60, 000 cedis monthly on advertising on media platforms alone.
For example to advertise in a newspaper, a political party is likely to spend between GH5,000 to GH8,000 for a full page.
But this amount may differ across newspapers depending on the size and number of pages used by the political party placing the order.
With radio however, an advertisement could cost between GH10, 000 GH40, 000 depending on the duration and number of days the advert runs.
While with television you will be slapped with GH50, 000 for an advertising slot running into a number of minutes.
But these are usually slashed by some media houses.
A Lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School and Political Marketing analyst, Dr Kobby Mensah also explained the massive influence these media advertisements by political parties, have on voters.
We have categories of voters; there are some who are very much entrenched with their choices and therefore may not be influenced by these political media advertisements. However, even those who are entrenched in their choices would probably want to know that they have actually made the right decision, he said.
In addition, there are others who are fairly new to the business of voting and therefore are seeking direction as to where to vote and therefore the advertising actually plays a role in their decision. It influences them and it influences their votes, Dr. Kobby Mensah added.
But then again as these political parties prolifically compete for the attention of their audience via these media ads, one wonders if they truly make an impact on Ghanaians?
An electorate, Adjei remarked,My mind is already decided I know who I'm going to vote for per what I want for my country and also from whoever is the president. So when it comes to election the mind is already decided from day one.
Another, Isaac also intimated, I've already made up my mind to vote for the one I'm going to vote for. So far the three major parties have already brought their manifestoes and we have heard everything so I've chosen the one I'm going to vote for.
Also, a driver at Adabraka, Kingsley,What is done on radio is just noise making. I've already made up my mind on who to vote for., he concluded.
By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
A Deputy Minister of state, Sampson Ahi has defended the Mahama-led government for pegging the producer price of cocoa at 11.76 percent describing calls for a further increment as irrational.
Cocoa prices are announced based on the world international price. It's just not that you wake up tomorrow and announce that I will pay cocoa farmers this amount; it is based on the prevailing cocoa price at the international level. It is just one factor but it is key because if a tonne of cocoa is $2950 then somebody says that pay the cocoa farmers GH600 it doesnt make sense. That is irrational, because it doesnt make sense that you call on government to pay GHc600, he added.
Mr. Ahi who is the Deputy Minister of Water and Resources made the comment after a press conference held by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) on the issue.
Some cocoa farmers following the increment announced on October 1, 2016 complained that the GHc475 was too small .
But speaking to Citi News, Mr. Ahi said the NDC government is only implementing a policy that was also used by the NPP in determining cocoa prices.
If you multiply 600 by 16 bags that is a tonne, you are getting about GHc9600 but the world market price even if it is $2950 and even if the exchange rate is even GhC4, you are even going to get GHc11,000. But that is not how cocoa is calculated in this country. What we have done is the same format NPP adopted when they were in office. Over the years, cocoa farmers have been paid based on net FOB price. A tonne of cocoa at the international market is $2950 that is not the benchmark successive governments have used to pay cocoa farmers. Because of uncertainty in terms of price at the international level, what they do is that when the benchmark it below the international market price. So this year for instance they used $2470 and what happen is that they deduct certain support programmes to cocoa farmers before the price is announced. That is what NPP used.
Farmers complaining are NPP people
Sampson Ahi further accused the NPP of rallying its supporters to mount pressure on government saying it is not a representation of the cocoa farming population in the country.
The farmers are aware that for cocoa roads, the amount is taken from the cocoa. President Kufuor started cocoa roads; he deducted certain amount from whatever he got at the international level before prices are announced. He also started mass spraying, they deducted it before the prices were announced, so we are not doing anything different. Afriyie-Akoto is just organizing some NPP people and they are talking because farmers are grateful that President Mahama has added GHc50.
Don't blame Akufo-Addo
The Minority Spokesperson on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs, Dr. Owusu Akoto-Afriyie who addressed the press accused the NDC of spreading wicked lies in cocoa growing areas that government paid low producer price of GHc475 because Nana Akufo-Addo failed to sign an agreement with international banks for government to get money to enable them offer a high producer price.
Dr. Akoto-Afriyie further entreated cocoa farmers to dismiss what he said was the vile propaganda against Akufo-Addo saying government wass using the propaganda to cover up its failures to cocoa farmers.
government could not go beyond the GHc475; it has nothing to do with Nana Akufo-Addo. The executive wing of government is in charge of cocoa policy exclusively and no opposition member has any influence or whatsoever on that, not even us here as minority in Parliament, we have no influence on how much the government decides to give to producers for their produce. The [Kwaku] Ananse story is meant to throw dust into the eyes of our poor cocoa farmers.
By: Godwin A.Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin
19.10.2016 LISTEN
From John Bediako, Tema
The raging cement war seems unending, with the local manufacturers on the verge of losing grip of their territories. The manufacturers Ghacem and Diamond Cement recently protested against the presence of African business magnet Dangote and Fujian of China, accusing the two of unfair trade practices.
As though the agitations had rather triggered the valve to open floodgates for the commodity to enter the country, information available to The Chronicle suggested that there are more shiploads of bagged cement at sea, navigating towards Ghana.
The business community views this as a means to neutralise the monopoly local manufacturers have enjoyed over the years.
The presence of Dangote and others has already forced down prices of local cement for the booming construction industry.
Anchored at the Tema Port since the 11th of this month is a Hellenic flag liner, Motor Vessel (MV) Navios Achilles, being operated by KLEIMAR, and in her belly is 28,500 metric tonnes of bagged cement for discharge at Tema.
The consignment, our checks indicate, is owned by Fouta General, but the paper could not establish whether the company has a license to import or not. Fujian, which is already into the same business, has duly obtained a license from the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Ghacem was the first to establish a cement manufacturing plant in the country, followed by Diamond Cement.
They were later followed by Dangote, which set up a plant at Tema, producing cement, and, at the same time, importing bagged ones from Nigeria.
The local manufacturers are, however, not happy with the importation of bagged cement, even though it has helped to beat down the price on the local market.
A bird has, however, whispered into the ears of The Chronicle that Fouta General is exploring an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) trade liberalisation protocol among member nations.
More Anon!
19.10.2016 LISTEN
From Michael Boateng, Sunyani
When the official liquidators of DKM Micro Finance announced to agitated customers the table for the repayment of their locked up deposits, they received the news with joy, which later turned into a rather sour taste, when they went to the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) in Sunyani to collect their monies yesterday.
The reason is simple the amount promised them was slashed down, much to the surprise of the customers, who accused the authorities of not being transparent in the payment of the deposits.
According to most of the affected customers, they were made to understand that the bank was going to pay 20% of the deposit of each customer. They were, again, told that any customer with a deposit above GH10,000, would be receiving GH3,500, while all customers with deposits below GH3,500 would receive full payment.
However, shortly after some of the affected customers had returned from the banking hall of the GCB, their moods were unsatisfactory, as they claimed the amounts given them were insulting and very annoying.
A customer, who had invested GH70,000, was given only GH3,500, while another customer, who had a deposit of GH40,000, was also given GH3,500.
Meanwhile, some of the customers, who had a deposit of GH1,000, were paid in full. This decision annoyed the customers, who are asking whether they would be having access to another payment or not.
The Spokesperson for Concerned Affected DKM Customers, Maxwell Mahama, told journalists that the entire process lacked transparency, because the customers did not know the amounts they were going to receive from the bank.
He said the customers should have been made aware of the amount each was going to receive, based on his or her deposit.
According to Maxwell Mahama, per the Official Liquidator, a total of about 73,000 customers were to be paid nationwide, however, currently, the number of names published is 4,000. He, therefore, wondered when the remaining customers would be receiving their monies.
The process for the payment was, however, smooth as the authorities made sure security was tight. Special Tellers were picked to cater for the DKM customers.
According to the Official Liquidator, eight GCB branches have been designated for the payments, and each of the branches is expected to attend up to 500 customers daily till all the payments were concluded.
The Liquidator urged customers not to panic, since all the challenges encountered would be addressed later. The affected customers of DKM have been wailing in dismay for over a year after the operations of DKM Microfinance were suspended for flouting regulations in the financial sector.
Most of the affected customers have died due to this, while others have had their marriages collapsed. Businesses of others have also collapsed, following the closure of the Micro Finance Company.
The Monday payments process, coupled with the amount being received, has been met with threats of court injunctions, boycotts, and a demonstration by the aggrieved customers.
19.10.2016 LISTEN
The Ashanti Regional Council of Ulamau and Imams has joined the campaign to keep the nation calm, as it talks the youth in the Zongo communities out of anything evil, reckless, and unlawful.
Sheikh Abdul Mummin Haroun, Regional Imam, said they should be responsible and resist overtures by self-seeking politicians to foment trouble during political campaigns and voting day.
In a speech read for him at a two-day workshop meant to deepen the participation of Muslims in the electoral process, he said it was important for all to uphold the peace.
The programme was organised by the Islamic Foundation for Peace and Development (IFPAD), a civil society organisation, with support from the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).
It was held under the theme: Strengthening the Islamic community's participation in the electoral process.
In attendance were political party youth activists, Muslim scholars, youth associations, women groups, and opinion leaders in the Asawasi constituency.
The programme is part of a nationwide project by the foundation to sensitise and assist people in the Zongo communities to show strong commitment towards peaceful polls.
The Regional Imam reminded political leaders to accept to play by the rules of fair play to remove needless tension and nasty clashes in this year's elections.
Mr. Garba Auwdu Talle, Executive-Secretary of IFPAD, took the participants through various topics, including 'Causes, effects and resolution of conflicts', 'Role of Muslim leaders in curbing violence', and 'Election 2016 and building democratic dispensation'.
He appealed to Imams to continue to educate, counsel, and aid the youth to channel their enormous energy into productive ventures.
Source: GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
By William Nlanjerbor Jalulah, Sumbrungu.
As the December 7 polls draw nearer, political bigwigs have intensified their campaign strategies with all manner of interesting descriptions of their opponents, which, they believe, will win them the crucial elections.
One of such gurus is the outspoken General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia.
He has admonished supporters of his party not to vote 'skirt and blouse', because that is the theory of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
'Skirt and blouse' is a Ghanaian electoral parlance, which means voting, either for a presidential or parliamentary candidate of a particular party, and voting against the other of same party.
In most instances, it is the parliamentary candidates who suffer this fate, because, during parliamentary primaries, those who lose are likely, sometimes, with pressure from their supporters, to vote against the victor in the main elections, and vote for the presidential nominee .
But, speaking to supporters of the NDC at Sumbrungu in the Upper East Region during the campaign launch of Isaac Adongo, NDC parliamentary candidate for Bolgatanga Central constituency on Sunday October 16, 2016, Mr. Nketia, otherwise known as General Mosquito, was emphatic that this voting pattern is alien to the NDC, and, therefore, they should vote for President John Mahama and all NDC's parliamentary candidates.
Skirt and blouse is NPP theory and not NDC theory. NDC knows how to support a single leader, and when we win, everybody comes on board, he said.
He observed that the people of Bolgatanga, in the previous elections, voted massively for the NDC both presidential and parliamentary and, therefore, any attempt to vote 'skirt and blouse' in the approaching December 7 polls will be injurious to the party.
According to him, it will be in the common interest of the constituents that President Mahama is retained, so he can do the development they so desire.
He said: Let me tell you, this election is not about President Mahama or Adongo or Asiedu Nketia or anybody else. It's about your own.
Economic Proposals in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) manifesto could leave Ghana with lost revenue and increased expenditure annually amounting to about GHc 27 billion, Vice President Kwesi Amissah Arthur has said.
Addressing students at the Cape Coast Polytechnic, the Vice President indicated that eight out of the NPP's proposals on Economy in the NPPs manifesto are on revenue reduction and would cost the nation billions.
In the manifesto that they have published, they have put in about 63 proposals. Eight of them are revenue proposal in which they will reduce revenue.
When I calculate the cost and the revenue loss that their manifesto proposes, I get something like GHc 6.2 billion if they were running the government this year [2016] from the reduction in taxes and son on.
The Veep also noted that in addition, they have also introduced GHc 21 billion of new expenditure.
With the loss of revenue and the increase in expenditure, we are talking about an additional GHc 27 billion, he added.
NPPs shift from taxation to production
The NPPs economic strategy is anchored on a shift from taxation to production according to its running mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
At the NPPs 2016 manifesto launch, Dr. Bawumia promised that an NPP government would lessen and abolish the tax burden on a number of sectors ranging from the ECOWAS common external tariff to levies on head porters, otherwise known as Kayayei.
Dr. Bawumia blamed the mismanagement of the economy under this John Mahama led National Democratic Congress government for the increase in taxes on virtually everything taxable.
Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia
Taxes were imposed on even on condoms and cutlasses, The NPP running mate noted.
Mentioning some of the taxes the party intends to reduce or scrap, he said corporate tax would be reduced from 25 percent to 20 percent. He also said an NPP government would remove import duties on raw materials and machinery from production within the contest of the ECOWAS common external tariff, along with a scrapping of the special import levy.
To accompany the various tax scraps and reductions, Dr. Bawumia assured that the NPP would introduce tax incentives for businesses that hire fresh graduates from schools and we are going to reduce the VAT for micro and small enterprises from the 17.5 percent to the 3 percent flat rate.
Follow the hashtag #GhElections on Social Media for election related stories
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
More than 100 million people, primarily children, have been treated for schistosomiasis since 2007
Merck provides WHO with around 10 million tablets for Ivory Coast for the first time
Merck ( MerckGroup.com ), a leading science and technology company, today announced that it has donated to the World Health Organization (WHO) the 500 millionth tablet to treat the insidious worm disease schistosomiasis. At a school located roughly 25 km north-west of Abidjan, representatives from Merck, WHO and the Ministry of Health of Ivory Coast jointly announced the launch of the medicines distribution in Ivory Coast.
Mercks engagement in fighting schistosomiasis dates back to 2007 and involves 35 countries in Africa. More than 100 million patients, primarily school children, have been treated to date. We are committed to further donating up to 250 million tablets annually until this devastating disease has been eliminated, explained Belen Garijo, member of the Merck Executive Board and CEO Healthcare. Donating the 500 millionth tablet of praziquantel today demonstrates our strong progress in achieving this objective, Garijo added.
At a celebration held at the primary school of the village of Attinguie, representatives of the Ministry of Health of Ivory Coast and the British Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) administered the praziquantel tablets for the treatment of schistosomiasis to the children. Depending on their height, the children receive between one and five tablets. Furthermore, the teachers explained to them the causes of the tropical worm disease. For this purpose, Merck has donated a total of 20,000 educational booklets to WHO for Ivory Coast.
According to WHO, almost 20% of the Ivory Coast population requires treatment. To date, the U.S. development agency USAID and the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) have supported the government of Ivory Coast in its fight against schistosomiasis. As a member of the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance, Merck has been cooperating with both organizations since 2014. Within the scope of this cooperation, the company has donated to WHO at short notice 3.6 million tablets for 2016. Consequently, Ivory Coast is benefiting for the first time from the partnership between Merck and WHO. For 2017, Merck will provide WHO with 6.5 million tablets for the West African country.
Schistosomiasis affects an estimated 260 million people worldwide. The infection rate is especially high among children, and the consequences are serious. The parasitic disease stunts growth, causes learning disabilities, and leads to anemia. Merck is donating praziquantel tablets to WHO as part of its responsibility for society and within Health, one of its corporate responsibility strategic activities. Praziquantel is well tolerated and the most effective treatment to date for schistosomiasis. In addition, Merck is supporting educational and awareness programs, researching schistosomiasis therapies for very young children and cooperating with partners in the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance.
Amnesty International has published on 29th September a report titled Scorched Earth, Poisoned Air: Credible Evidence of children killed and maimed by horrific Chemical Weapons attacks in Darfur. In the report the organization alleges that it has gathered harrowing evidence strongly suggesting the repeated use of chemical weapons against civilians, including very young children in Jebel Marra One of the most remote parts of Darfur.
Implausibility of the allegations:
It should be recalled that the Sudanese Army fought one of the longest and most difficult wars in South Sudan, before signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in January 2005. Yet it had never resorted to the use of chemical weapons in the South, nor was it ever accused of this. Thus, why should chemical weapons be used in Darfur, at a time security and tranquility prevail in the region and the situation is almost completely under the control of the Sudanese Army?
The report estimates the victims of the alleged chemical attacks as around 200 hundred people, while asserting that 171 villages in the area have been repeatedly attacked between January to September, 2016. Given that the said area is densely populated, and that Sudanese Armys soldiers do not use protective masks, is it logical that the number of victims would be around that figure, if there were repeated chemical attacks for a period of NINE MONTHS as the report alleges?
The United Nation/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has permanent presence in the area since 2007 and holds regular meetings with representatives of the local communities and displaced people as well as with leaders of armed groups. At no time had the mission raised any concerns that chemical weapons might have been used in the area.
Besides, the US Special Envoy to Sudan visited Jebel Marra in September 2016 for 5 days and had meetings with all concerned parties in the area. Nothing close to the accusation of use of chemical weapons by the Sudanese army has ever cropped up in his discussions with the Sudanese officials. The question is how Amnesty International, which does not have presence in the area or even gained legal access to it, obtained information and credible evidence that the 20,000strong UNAMID and the US Special Envoy failed to notice?
On 9th October 2016 Mr. Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, Joint AU-UN Special Representative to Darfur, Head of UNAMID and Joint Chief Mediator, issued an elaborate press statement on peace in Darfur. Concerning the allegations by Amnesty International on use of chemical weapons in Darfur, Mr. Uhomoibhi points out the following:
UNAMID has been requested to shed light on the claims in the Amnesty Internationals report and the facts are as follows:
In spite of the almost 20,000 UNAMID personnel on the ground in Darfur, none of them has seen any Darfuri with impact of the use of chemical weapons as described by Amnesty Internationals report.
Not one displaced person meeting such description has shown up at any UNAMID Team Site clinics where they would have naturally gone for help.
Amnesty International claimed to have made calls into Jebel Marra but did not for once call any of the almost 20,000 UN personnel all over Darfur, including in places like Sortony and Nertiti within a stone throw from the places where chemical weapons were reported to have been used.
Not one among the leadership of the Armed Movements in Darfur discussed use of chemical weapons with me or my Deputy during several meetings spanning January, April, May, July, August and September this year.
Position of the OPCW:
The Organization of Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is the only international implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which entered into force in 1997, and aimed at preventing chemistry from ever again being used for warfare.
Sudan is party to the CWC and member of the OPCW since 1998. Sudan is by no means in possession of any type of chemical weapons. Sudans Industrial facilities, military and civil, are all open to the verification of the OPWC at all times.
In its latest report, June 2016, the OPCW confirmed that Sudan does not have or use chemical weapons. The OPCWs official response to Amnesty Internationals report, on 29th September 2016 reads:
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has examined the relevant parts of the Amnesty International report regarding allegations of the use of chemical weapons in the Darfur regions of Sudan. The OPCW has also noted the response of the Government of Sudan to the allegations. Without further information
and evidence being made available, it is not possible at this stage to draw any conclusions based on the content of the report.
This is in contrast with claim of Amnesty International that its report contains credible evidence of use of chemical weapons by the Sudanese Army.
It is evident that Amnesty Internationals allegations are based on hearsay information. The ostensible testimonies cited by the report are by elements from the so-called Sudan Liberation Army/Abdul Wahid. This faction is the only Darfuri armed movement that has been persistently and adamantly rejecting all peace endeavors in Darfur and insisting on perpetuating strife and suffering in the region. Its Leader, Abdul Wahid Nour, based in Paris, has consistently failed on all his promises and commitments to join the peace process in Darfur since 2005. The latest attempt in this regards was by the Joint Special Representative of the UN AU to Darfur Head of UNAMID (JSR) when he met him in Paris on 11July 2016.
He committed himself to hold meeting of his faction Leadership to consider joining the Peace Process. He further asked for UNAMIDs assistance toward that end, a request that was approved by the JSR provided that there is a formal written letter to process the request. Abdul-Wahid promised to send the letter immediately. However, according to the JSR, he failed to do so till the date in spite of the JSRs two reminders on that. That is why the JSR concludes that there is a need that the UN and respective Special Envoys of influential countries to exert necessary pressure on the Sudan Liberation Army / Abdul-Wahid to Join the Peace Process
Apparently Abdul Wahid was aware of the contents of the report Amnesty had been working on, which would provide him with yet another excuse to continue his stubborn refusal of peace bids in Darfur. Amnesty Internationals said report is, therefore, little more than propaganda to serve Abdul Wahid war agenda.
Disqualified All People's Congress (APC) Presidential candidate Hassan Ayariga says the Electoral Commission chairperson Charlotte Osei has demonstrated that she cannot be trusted to manage the 2016 general elections.
According to him,the former Electoral Commissioner Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan conducted the affairs of the commission more credibily than his successor, Charlotte Osei.
If I have to tell you the truth, I dont trust the EC. She is not straight in doing their things the 45-year old businessman said on Joy FMs Super Morning Show, Wednesday.
Making his case for a reversal of his disqualification, Hassan Ayariga said the EC told the world a big lie when she claimed he could not properly fill his presidential nomination forms.
Hassan Ayariga was the first of 12 presidential aspirants disqualified for their inability to meet a statutory requirement of getting 432 voters to endorse their nomination forms.
Charlotte Osei at the press conference to announce the staggering list of disqualified politicians explained that two voters had endorse Hassan Ayariga and another candidate. It means he fell short of the statutory requirement to amass 432 endorsers.
A tantrum-throwing Ayariga was incensed by the announcement and verbally abused the first female Electoral Commissioner.
It was an action he later apologised for. He explained on Joy FMs Super Morning Show, the EC attacked my identity so I attacked her integrity.
He explained he was in no position to verify if his endorsers had also endorsed other candidates.
We dont have database to know whether you have subscribed to someone or not he said.
As far as he is concerned he submitted 432 voters and that should be enough statement of his commitment to meet the requirements spelt out in C.1 94.
If there are mistakes, made in ignorance, the EC should correct it. it is simple this is not a matter that you have to drag he dismissed.
He also pointed to the mistakes that the EC also makes when an 18-year-old voter had a card that put his age at 140 years.
The election petition hearing which challenged the EC declaration of John Mahama as the winner of the 2012 presidential elections also exposed the commission as prone to error, he said.
He argued that the Supreme Court did not ban the EC from organising elections but instead it directed that the EC should take steps to improve the credibility of elections.
If the Supreme Court could overlook the errors of the EC, why should Charlotte Osei have the mettle to disqualify a whole presidential candidate he argued.
The EC thinks that she is hard but she is setting a bad precedent,undermines he said.
He rejected criticisms that his laughable comments undermine the seriousness of his bid to be president.
According to him he did not open 10 regional offices, 143 constituency offices and procure 30 APC-branded pick-ups all in one year if he was not serious about being president.
At 20, I made my first million; at 22, I built my first house; at 44, I formed my own political party. If Ghanaians think Im not serious with all these, then by the time I get serious, I will buy the whole world he said.
-Myjoyonline
19.10.2016 LISTEN
By Philip Tengzu
Mr. Mark M. N. Dagbee, Upper West Regional Director of the Centre for National Culture, has said the passage of the Creative Arts Bills would not benefit the people of the region, because it has no theatre or building to host arts, dances, drama and music.
The challenge, he said, was undermining the centre's efforts towards developing the creative talents of the people.
Mr. Dagbee announced this at the Regional Cultural and Arts Festival held in Wa, as part of preparations towards the National Cultural and Arts Festival next month.
The event was under the theme: Promoting a culture of peace for national unity and socio-economic empowerment. It is aimed at ensuring unity among the people for sustainable socio-economic development.
He appealed to the government, traditional rulers, and other stakeholders to act swiftly and provide the centre with a theatre complex.
Mr. Dagbee observed that there was no better way of ensuring that the people lived in peace, than bringing them together to share their cultural values and beliefs.
Every culture is characterised by unique beliefs and values, and there is the need to bring the people together to celebrate their cultures, to ensure unity in diversity, he said.
May this festival reignite the flames of our dying cultures, because a group of people without a culture is one that is dying. Therefore, if we are not to die as a people, we must keep our culture alive.
Mr. Dagbee appealed the people not to engage in any acts of innuendo, insults or composition of provocative songs against their political opponents, because that could mar the hard won peace Ghana was enjoying now.
Dr. Mohammed Mushiebu Alfa, Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, appealed to the people to jealously safeguard the prevailing peace in the country, while reminding them that peace was the only ingredient that bound the people together.
He said culture was one of the major definers of peace, and that sustained peace could not prevail in Ghana if there was no unity among the various cultures.
If we all observe our cultural values and norms to the letter, Ghana will continue to enjoy the prevailing peace, which is a prerequisite for socio-economic development, Dr. Mushiebu noted.
The Deputy Regional Minister urged the people to resort to the rule of law and the use of dialogue, as well as the law courts to settle electoral disputes.
Dr. Mushiebu urged the public to patronise made in Ghana products, as well as tourist sites, such as the Wa Naa's Palace and Wichiau Hippo Sanctuary to promote local tourism for economic development.
Traditional rulers, heads of departments, municipal and district chief executives, and students, as well as cultural troupes from all the 11 districts of the region, among other people, attended the forum.
Source: GNA
The final decision of honourable members of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly on a compromise to settle on Nana Adu Mensah Asare, the Amakomhene as the Presiding Member of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly is an indicator of how traditional authorities could be moderators of fracas contained in our traditional district assemblies which stalls the intentions of the framers of the 1992 Constitution that district assemblies should not be partisan and non-political.
It has also triggered a questionable intent of the Constitution Review Commission on the proposition of electing District Chief Executive Officers and membership of the District Assemblies and effective working relationship of the central government and the district assembly in a region not being a strong hold of the ruling government.
Laws that do not appease public for public good but serves as a brook to anything anarchical and indecorous to peace, serenity and political stability leads to political polarization. Entrenched and polarised position of the people of Ghana brought about by some Constitutional Provisions under the 1992 Constitution continue to serve as an enervate to Ghanas democratic progression which we seriously need to revisit to rekindle our stoke of one people, one nation and one destiny.
Participatory democracy, a cornerstone of democratic altruism, shall thrive well and shall bring all hands on deck through arrogating of political offices to all sections of the Ghanaian societies against parading on the sharp-edges of oligarchy fused with political clientelism.
In pursuit of nonpartisan political platform to serve as the highest political authority in the district that shall have deliberative, legislative and executive powers as provisioned under Article 241.3 of the 1992 Constitution, membership to the house needed be all inclusiveness of all interest groups within the district and that selection of members to the house must be independent of external influence and interference.
In a nutshell, Safe Democracy Ghana proposes that 20% Membership to the house is allocated to the Traditional Council 10% to the Ghana Peace Council and representative of the Central Government Ministries representatives at the district, then the elected Honourable Members of the assemblies elected from government electoral areas keep the 70% among whom they shall elect the District Chief Executive officer. Traditional councils members shall elect from among them the Presiding member and the district executive council of the district assembly shall be made up of equal percentage shared among them the honourable members of the district assemblies.
Paramount Chiefs so described under Article 295 of the 1992 Constitution and Act 759 Section 13 (1 and 2) as the President of Traditional Council, who by virtue of Article 36.8 and 267 serves as the fiduciary of the land under which seats the district assembly, and Article 11(2and3) customary law and usage and Act 759 that made the traditional authorities the custodians of our culture and tradition cannot be denied the position to become the head of the highest political authority of the district even if that position should be Ceremonial one.
We must remember, in the case of the Kumasi Metropolis impasse, the intervention of the Kumasi Traditional Council worked the odds and not the bravado of the political parties. That is why in our humble opinion; we seek consolidating our culture and tradition in the main stream of political institutions by revisiting Article 242 (1992), local government Act 642 (1993) and the Chieftaincy Act 759 (2000)
Article 241(3) provides that (3) Subjects to this Constitution, a District Assembly shall be the highest political authority in the district, and shall have deliberative, legislative and executive powers.
Though recognisedby the constitution and considered for consultation on appointment of a fraction of membership into the District Assembly, Traditional Authorities before the Guggisberg 1925 Constitution have continued to be very influential in conducting communal affairs affecting their localities which has consequently affected the mindset and social reality of the Ghanaian positively and enticed the Ghanaian to cooperate in the administration and support of the chieftaincy institution.
Furthermore, to effectuate Chapter Six of the 1992 into a proper working document for livelihood, all of us must reconsider our political history from birth, culture and tradition and how we weld it with western culture called democracy for sustainable democratic progression.
Under Article 39.1 3 the 1992 Constitution states categorically that (1) Subject to clause (2) of this article, the State shall take steps to encourage the integration of appropriate customary values into the fabric of national life through formal and informal education and the conscious introduction of cultural dimensions to relevant aspects of national planning. (2) The State shall ensure that appropriate customary and cultural values are adapted and developed as an integral part of the growing needs of the society as a whole; and in particular that traditional practices which are injurious to the health and well-being of the person are abolished. (3) The State shall foster the development of Ghanaian languages and pride in Ghanaian culture.
These directives are meant for Article 34.1 that The Directive Principles of State Policy contained in this Chapter shall guide all citizens, Parliament, the President, the Judiciary, the Council of State, the Cabinet, political parties and other bodies and persons in applying or interpreting this Constitution or any other law and in taking and implementing any policy decisions, for the establishment of a just and free society.
Therefore the Constitution Review Commission must take note, that, the quest for electing district chief executive under their sleeves must consider the Kumasi impasse as a honker.
Thank you very sincerely.
Faithfully yours
Munir |Saani
Conveyor
Safe Democracy Ghana
19.10.2016 LISTEN
There is no question that illegal gold miners are a real threat to
national security in our homeland Ghana. Ditto illegal loggers and
illegal sand-winners.
That is why the wealthy criminal syndicates that sponsor the
activities of illegal gold miners - as well as illegal loggers and
illegal sand-winners - across the country, need to be monitored
closely, by the leaderships of all the security agencies.
For example, if it is not checked, the pollution of the drinking-water
sources of so many economically vulnerable communities, across vast
swathes of the Ghanaian countryside, by illegal gold miners, could
create humanitarian crises all over rural Ghana.
That is a potentially dangerous situation, which will doubtless not
bode well for the long-term stability of our nation - as it will
directly affect the quality of life of millions of our people.
Has the time not therefore come for all the political parties in
Ghana, and members of our political class (from across the spectrum),
to focus on the protection and preservation of what is left of our
nation's natural heritage - particularly at a time when global climate
change is negatively impacting Ghana and the rest of the nations in
the African continent?
The worst aspect of illegal gold mining, in Ghana, today, is that
most of it is sponsored by super-wealthy criminals, who have become
emboldened because they have errant members of the security agencies,
dishonest officials from the regulatory bodies (both at district and
national levels) and rogue politicians, all on their
off-ledger-payrolls.
Is that not dangerous for the long-term stability of our homeland
Ghana, I ask? Every Ghanaian who cares about the well-being of this
nation, and all its people - including present and future generations
- must stand up against the rich criminals behind illegal gold
mining, illegal logging and illegal sand-winning, across Ghana.
We all need to clearly understand that the wealthy criminals profiting
from unlawful and environmentally destructive activities such as
illegal gold mining, illegal logging and illegal sand-winning, could
eventually undermine Ghana's stability - if they are not dealt with
effectively today.
In light of that latent threat they pose to Ghana's long-term
stability, our ruling elites need to learn valuable lessons from the
civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, before the situation here gets
out of hand too.
They must always remember that it was the rape of natural resources,
such as diamonds and timber, by callous people driven by unfathomable
greed, which fueled the brutal civil wars in those two sister West
African nations of ours, for so many years.
Anyone who has had the misfortune of seeing up-close, illegal gold
miners destroying forestland that has evolved over millions of years,
which provide valuable ecosystem services for many communities across
the nation, will not hesitate to condemn the present regulatory
system that grants permits to small-scale gold miners.
How can so-called small-scale gold miners, be permitted to deploy
32-tonne excavators - which on the ground allow them to mine on an
industrial scale - and still be expected to follow the rules and stick
to mining just 25 acres, once they obtain permits from regulators?
Amazing.
Clearly, that is not realistic: Not when they simply bribe officials
sent to monitor their activities at mining sites, when concerned
opinion leaders in affected rural communities lodge official
complaints against illegal gold miners at district police commands,
and petition officials at district-level offices of the regulatory
bodies, as and when infractions of the Mining Act occur.
A case study that illustrates the point made above, perfectly,
reveals the myraid of egregious infractions of the Mining Act by
Hagnela Mining Company Limited, and its super-ruthless assigns, at
Akyem Juaso.
There, private freehold heavily-wooded forestland - which has not
been given out officialy as a gold concession by the Minerals
Commission and happens to be far away from the area officially
designated a concession for small-scale gold miners - is being
unlawfully destroyed with total impunity.
The criminals destroying that incredibly beautiful forestland, boast
openly, that no one in Ghana can stop them - because they are prepared
to bribe every official sent to stop them from mining gold in what is
part of my family's freehold 14 square mile forestland, which they
apparently claim to have paid my cousin, Kwame Thompson, and our
former overseer, John Awuku (aka "Red"), to mine gold on.
What escapes those greedy fools, and all those they claim to have paid
bribes to, is that the GPS coordinates of the area in question,
exposes them, and points to the fact that the documents they have been
bandying about and deceiving officialdom with, are all fake ones.
Furtheremore, the Anyiman District Police Command ought to know - if
it does not already know it - that no private landowner is allowed to
give out his or her land to third parties to mine gold on in this
country: as that power only lies with the Minerals Commission.
Consequently, the mere fact that the dishonest Kwame Thompson has a
stake as a beneficiary in what is actually still legally part of the
estate of the late P. E. Thompson, to which he does not have
individual title to, cannot, and should not be used as an excuse by
the Ghana Police Service not to arrest and prosecute him, Red, Rasta
of Hagnela Mining Company, and his arrogant assigns.
In the meantime, as officialdom drags its feet, the brutal gang-rape
of what is part of a designated Globally Significant Biodiversity Area
(GDBA), which has been owned by my family as a registered freehold
forestland in the name of P. E. Thompson, since 1921, from the British
colonial era, goes on with impunity. Incredible.
That abomination - made possible by the thoroughly dishonest Kwame
Thompson and John Awuku "Red," who I gather have apparently taken
money from the CEO of Hagnella Mining Company Limited, and that
company's assigns - is simply intolerable.
How can such lawlessness be allowed in a democratic nation in which
the rule of law is said to prevail? What green investor will invest in
a society in which rich criminals can get away with destroying
forestland they want to turn into ecotourism destinations to give
local people sustainable futures?
Incredibly, as we speak, I have actually petitioned the head of the
BNI, the Director General of the CID, the Minister for Lands and
Natural Resources, and the head of the Minerals Commisson - all of
whom have dutifully sent investigators to the area in question.
Readers can better appreciate the magnitude of the travesty going on
there, by looking at photographs of the area in question, if they
google and visit the "Akyem Juaso Nature-Resource Reserve Facebook
page".
Unfortunately, it has not yet dawned on any of those officials sent to
investigate the infractions of the Mining Act - despite my
protestations - that on the ground, in the real world, the said
illegalities are actually occuring outside the officially designated
area, allotted (and indicated on the Minerals Commission's cadestral
map) to small-scale gold miners as a concession. But I digress.
The fact of the matter, is that their utter ruthlessness, total
disregard for the laws of Ghana, and willingness to bribe public
officials sent to stop their activities, have combined to make the
wealthy criminal syndicates behind most of the illegal gold mining
that goes on in this country, a law unto themselves. Literally.
Yet, potentially, they could become allies of global terrorist
organisations - which, as we are all aware, are always on the lookout
for new sources of funds: to enable them extend their global
footprint.
If our nation's political class understood that illegal gold miners
could easily evolve into allies of global terrorist organisations,
perhaps they would take the security threat illegal gold miners pose
to our nation, far more seriously, than they currently do.
Above all, instead of throwing up their arms in despair, over their
continued inability to stop those behind illegal gold mining in our
country, the authorities should rather collaborate with local
environmental activists, to stop all those in their communities who
engage in illegal gold mining, illegal logging and illegal
sand-winning.
For the sake of future generations of our people, illegal gold mining
needs to be tackled effectively now - lest we end up with a situation
in which global terrorist groups co-opt the criminal syndicates behind
most of the illegal gold mining in Ghana: to enable them generate cash
to fund terrorism across West Africa.
If current trends continue, this blog confidently predicts that the
takeover of illegal gold mining in Ghana by terrorist organisations,
will come to pass in the not too distant future, as sure as day
follows night.
Those in charge of the regulatory bodies overseeing gold mining in
Ghana must sit up: today society may be contending with foreigners
driven merely by unfathomable greed. But tomorrow those foreigners
weill ve determined terrorists with an agenda of their own.
What ought to dawn on officialdom is that the wealthy criminals behind
most of the illegal gold mining in Ghana, today, who get away with
defying officials on the ground, in illegal gold mining sites across
the Ghanaian countryside, could actually evolve into local allies of
global terrorist groups.
Surely, all the relevant mining sector public officials who regulate
mining in Ghana, have a moral obligation not to allow that to ever
happen? Hmm, Ghana eyeasem o: asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.
llies Of Global Terrorist Organisations?
By Kofi Thompson
There is no question that illegal gold miners are a real threat to
national security in our homeland Ghana. Ditto illegal loggers and
illegal sand-winners.
That is why the wealthy criminal syndicates that sponsor the
activities of illegal gold miners - as well as illegal loggers and
illegal sand-winners - across the country, need to be monitored
closely, by the leaderships of all the security agencies.
For example, if it is not checked, the pollution of the drinking-water
sources of so many economically vulnerable communities, across vast
swathes of the Ghanaian countryside, could potentially create
humanitarian crises all over rural Ghana.
That is a potentially dangerous situation, which will doubtless not
bode well, for the long-term stability of our nation - as it will
directly affect the quality of life of millions of our people.
Has the time not therefore come for all the political parties in
Ghana, and members of our political class, from across the spectrum,
to focus on the protection and preservation, of what is left of our
nation's natural heritage - particularly at a time when global climate
change is negatively impacting Ghana and the rest of the nations in
the African continent?
The worst aspect of illegal gold mining in Ghana, today, is that most
of it is sponsored by super-wealthy criminals, who have become
emboldened, because they have errant members of the security agencies,
dishonest officials from the regulatory bodies (both at district and
national levels) and rogue politicians, all on their
off-ledger-payrolls.
Is that not dangerous for the long-term stability of our homeland
Ghana, I ask? Every Ghanaian who cares about the well-being of this
nation, and all its people - including this and future generations -
must stand up against the rich criminals behind illegal gold mining,
illegal logging and illegal sand-winning, across Ghana.
We all need to clearly understand that the wealthy criminals profiting
from unlawful and environmentally destructive activities such as
illegal gold mining, illegal logging and illegal sand-winning, could
eventually undermine Ghana's stability - if they are not dealt with
effectively today.
In light of that latent threat they pose to Ghana's long-term
stability, our ruling elites need to learn valuable lessons from the
civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, before the situation here gets
out of hand too.
They must always remember that it was the rape of natural resources
such as diamonds and timber, by callous people driven by unfathomable
greed, which fueled the brutal civil wars in those two sister West
African nations of ours for so many years.
Anyone who has had the misfortune of seeing up-close, illegal gold
miners destroying forestland that has evolved over millions of years,
which provides valuable ecosystem services for millions across the
nation, will not hesitate to condemn the present regulatory system
that grants permits to small-scale gold miners.
How can so-called small-scale gold miners, permitted to deploy even
32-tonne excavators - which on the ground allow them to mine on an
industrial scale - be expected to follow the rules and stick to mining
just 25 acres, once they obtain permits from regulators? Amazing.
Clearly, that is not realistic: Not when they simply bribe officials
sent to monitor their activities at mining sites, when concerned
opinion leaders in affected rural communities lodge official
complaints against illegal gold miners, at district police commands
and petition district-level offices of the regulatory bodies, as and
when infractions of the Mining Act occur.
A case study that illustrates that point made above perfectly, are
the myraid of egregious infractions of the Mining Act, by Hagnela
Mining Company Limited, and its super-ruthless assigns, at Akyem
Juaso.
There, private freehold heavily-wooded forestland - which has not
been given out officialy as a gold concession by the Minerals
Commission and happens to be far away from an area officially
designated a concession for small-scale gold miners - is being
unlawfully destroyed with total impunity.
The criminals destroying that incredibly beautiful forestland, boast
openly, that no one in Ghana can stop them - because they are prepared
to bribe every official sent to stop them from mining gold in what is
part of my family's freehold 14 square mile forestland, which they
apparently claim to have paid my cousin, Kwame Thompson, and our
former overseer, John Awuku (aka "Red"), to mine gold on.
What escapes those greedy fools, and all those they claim to have paid
bribes to, is that the GPS coordinates of the area in question,
exposes them, and points to the fact that the documents they have been
bandying about and deceiving officialdom with are all fake ones.
Furtheremore, the Anyiman District Police Command ought to know - if
it does not already know it - that no private landowner is allowed to
give out his or her land to third parties to mine gold on in this
country: as that power only lies with the Minerals Commission.
Therefore the fact that the dishonest Kwame Thompson has a stake as a
beneficiary in what is actually still legally part of the estate of
the late P. E. Thompson, to which he does not have individual title
to, cannot, and should not be used as an excuse by the Ghana Police
Service not to arrest and prosecute him, Red, Rasta of Hagnela Mining
Company, and his arrogant assigns.
In the meantime, as officialdom drags its feet, the brutal gang-rape
of what is part of a designated Globally Significant Biodiversity Area
(GDBA), which has been owned by my family as a registered freehold
forestland in the name of P. E. Thompson, since 1921, from the British
colonial era, goes on with impunity. Incredible.
That abomination - made possible by the thoroughly dishonest Kwame
Thompson and John Awuku "Red," who I gather have apparently taken
money from the CEO of Hagnella Mining Company Limited, and that
company's assigns - is simply intolerable.
How can such lawlessness be allowed in a democratic nation in which
the rule of law is said to prevail?
Yet, as we speak, I have actually petitioned the head of the BNI, the
Director General of the CID, the Minister for Lands and Natural
Resources, and the head of the Minerals Commisson - all of whom have
dutifully sent investigators to the area in question.
Readers can better appreciate the magnitude of the travesty going on
there, by looking at photographs of the area in question, if they
google and visit the "Akyem Juaso Nature-Resource Reserve Facebook
page".
Unfortunately, it has not yet dawned on any of those officials sent to
investigate the infractions of the Mining Act - despite my
protestations - that on the ground, in the real world, the said
illegalities are actually occuring outside the officially designated
area, allotted on the Minerals Commission's cadestral map, to
small-scale gold miners as a concession. But I digress.
The fact of the matter, is that their utter ruthlessness, total
disregard for the laws of Ghana, and willingness to bribe public
officials sent to stop their activities, have combined to make the
wealthy criminal syndicates behind most of the illegal gold mining
that goes on in this country, a law unto themselves. Literally.
Yet, potentially, they could become allies of global terrorist
organisations - which, as we are all aware, are always on the lookout
for new sources of funds: to enable them extend their global
footprint.
If our nation's political class understood that illegal gold miners
could easily evolve into allies of global terrorist organisations,
perhaps they would take the security threat illegal gold miners pose
to our nation, far more seriously, than they currently do.
Above all, instead of throwing up their arms in despair, over their
continued inability to stop those behind illegal gold mining in our
country, the authorities should rather collaborate with local
environmental activists, to stop all those in their communities who
engage in illegal gold mining, illegal logging and illegal
sand-winning.
For the sake of future generations of our people, illegal gold mining
needs to be tackled effectively now - lest we end up with a situation
in which global terrorist groups co-opt the criminal syndicates behind
most of the illegal gold mining in Ghana: to enable them generate cash
to fund terrorism across West Africa.
If current trends continue, this blog confidently predicts that the
takeover of illegal gold mining in Ghana by terrorist organisations,
will come to pass in the not too distant future, as sure as day
follows night.
Those in charge of the regulatory bodies overseeing gold mining in
Ghana must sit up: the wealthy criminals behind most of the illegal
gold mining in Ghana, who get away with defying officials on the
ground, in illegal gold mining sites across Ghana, could actually
evolve into local allies of global terrorist groups.
Surely, they have a moral obligation, not to allow that to ever
happen? Hmm, Ghana eyeasem o: asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.
The governing NDC says President John Mahama's achievements in the Northern region is unmatched contrary to claims by the NPP that he has failed the North.
Mounting a defence for the party, NDC Regional Secretary Abdul Rauf Khalid said the significant social infrastructure like schools, roads, health facilities were done under the NDC government dating back to President Jerry John Rawling's administration.
"If not because of NDC there wouldn't have been any electricity or even TV in this part of the country", he praised government.
Photo: One ardent supporter stole the show when she led a train of party supporters on a motorbike to welcome President John Mahama during his 'Accounting to the People' tour of the Northern Region.
The party was responding to claims by the NPP Vice-Presidential candidate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia that the NDC has failed the people of the region.
At a rally in Tamale, the NPP campaign team, led by Dr. Bawumia said despite the cumulative 16-years in government, the NDC has failed to transform the North.
The running mate of the New Patriotic Party argued that the NDC cannot claim to love northerners when it misappropriates funds meant to alleviate poverty in the north.
But the NDC has challenged him to provide evidence of the NPP's record of development in the Northern region.
"NPP should tell us for the eight years in governance what they did for the people of the north," he challenged.
Abdul Rauf said it took the NDC to construct the 147-kilometre Fufulso-Sawla road in the Northern Region after the NPP abandoned it.
"When Kufuor and Anane climbed on a bulldozer apparently in an attempt to construct the Fufulso-Sawla road, the chippings that was dumped there is still there," he said.
He catalogued roads such as the the Yendi-Saboba-Chereponi and Yendi-Wampuli-Chereponi roads which have been awarded for construction.
"The number of Secondary Schools that have been put up in this part of the country is highly monumental", he said and referred to a Community Day Senior High School that has also been cited in Wampuli.
It is one of five schools under construction in the region
He cited the establishment of some CHIPs Compounds in the region to improve health care delivery, the planned second phase of the expansion of the Tamale Teaching Hospital which is underway to back his claims.
For the General Secretary, the latest evidence of the NDC's love for the region is the airlifting of Muslim pilgrims directly from the Northern region to Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj.
In previous years, all Muslims had to travel to the Kotoka International Airport to make the journey.
"The NPP should tell us. What didn't Muslims go through at the Kotoka International Airport at the Hajj village even when the vice-president at that time was a Muslim" he continued.
"If there is any political party that has the Northern region at heart, then that should be NDC and never NPP" he maintained.
Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected]
19.10.2016 LISTEN
IT IS getting increasingly clear that the former President and founder of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Flt Lt. Jerry John Rawlings is on his own and no longer enjoys the loyalty and support that many members of the party had for him.
The perception that the former President is being alienated from a party he founded through his own toil and blood is becoming apparent, following refusal by the NDC leadership and some personalities who at a point in time were ready to sacrifice their lives for him, to come to his aid in times of trouble.
After the leader and flagbearer of the disqualified Great Consolidated Popular Party(GCPP) had mounted a witch-hunting campaign to get the former President indicted in the controversy surrounding a $2M 'gift' he was alleged to have received from the late Sani Abacha of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, one would have expected that the NDC would marshal all their arsenals to defend him and protect his integrity
1988, Accra, Ghana Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings Image by George Steinmetz/Corbis
Not even the cry by the former President that the decision by the GCPP leader to haul him before the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) has attracted sympathy from his hard core fans.
Some foot soldiers of the ruling party do not sound amused by the outburst from the former President and are challenging him to make public the so-called officers he claimed were responsible for the attacks on his personality.
Whilst some known ardent supporters of the former President have refused to go on record, claiming reasons of political expediency, others have poured cold water on the claims by Mr. Rawlings.
One of such firebrand foot soldiers, Yakubu Tony Aidoo, says he doubts if any NDC leader or minister would hide behind people to denigrate the former President.
According to him, former President Rawlings is highly regarded in the party and still commands respect as the founder of the NDC and, therefore, it will be very outrageous for him (Rawlings) to claim that someone has been paid to destroy him.
I am surprised to hear this from President Rawlings; we all cherish and regard him as our father, but to come out and say that some members in the NDC are responsible for attacks on his personality is way overboard, Yakubu told The Chronicle in a telephone interview.
He stated that he suspects political foul play, stressing that former President Rawlings could have dealt with this matter amicably by mentioning the names of the personalities involved in the hatched agenda.
I dont think President Mahama himself will sit down and allow people to work against Mr Rawlings; he is our party founder and we respect him as such,
Meanwhile William Nlanjerbor JALULAH also reports from Bolgatanga that some residents of Bolgatanga have expressed varied feelings about the $2million 'gift' former President Jerry John Rawlings was alleged to have received from the former Nigerian Military leader, General Sani Abacha.
The leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) has dragged ex-president Rawlings before the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice over the $2 million gif t.
In Bolgatanga, a cross section of residents whose views were sought by this reporter on Tuesday October 18, 2016, had varied views to share.
Cecelia Kolog, a mobile phone credit vendor said: They should allow the old man to rest. Hasnt he done enough for this country? I think they are just doing this because his wife broke away from the NDC and formed her own party. I really believe what he has said; his own party people are the ones fueling this matter.
Another resident who gave his name only as Paul, thought otherwise. He said: We are in a country governed by laws and if something like this happens and somebody is pursuing the matter, then we must allow the law to be applied.
If Rawlings suspects people in his party are behind the leader of the GCPP, then he should come out with their names. But first of all, he must submit himself before CHRAJ. After all, we are all equal before the law.
Ben Atia, a tricycle rider, had a different perspective. He wondered why the issue is being brought up now and blamed the media for being responsible for what he called confusion in Ghanaian politics.
Why should these journaliss do something like this? Why didnt they say it long ago? Ah! Me I know nothing will happen to him. They are just making noise, he angrily reacted.
Interestingly, most of the residents who were approached knew little or did not know anything about the gift allegation.
One of such residents was Nsoh Adombire, a second-hand cloth seller. Massa, me I hear this matter small but I no get time take hear am well well.
Meanwhile, Mr. DonatusAkamugri, Upper East Regional Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress, in a response, alleged that the decision to haul Mr. Rawlings before CHRAJ was fueled by the opposition.
When asked which opposition party could have done that, he said: I cant pin point any party but you know that every political party is formed to win power and so I cant name any party.
He, however, said if the claim by Mr. Rawlings was anything to go by, then it could have been a personal issue he had with an individual or individuals within the NDC and not the entirety of the party.
From Issah Alhassan, Kumasi.
By Comfort Sena Fetrie, GNA
Dalun Simli (N/R), Oct. 18, GNA - Ahaji Abdulai Baba, Vice Chairman of Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), has called on the politicians to avoid using intemperate language during their campaigns.
He said there is the need for the politicians to end insults and others forms of debasements to prevent conflicts and violence during and after the general election.
Ahaji Baba said this during 23rd Denmark seminar at Dalun Simli in the Kumbungu District of the Northern Region.
The seminar was on the theme: 'Ghana's electioneering and violence; Challenging the status quo'.
The event organised by the GDCA in collaboration with Ghana Friendship Groups in Denmark was to deliberate on issues concerning this year general elections.
Alhaji Baba called on traditional rulers to join hands to the fight against violence in the December elections.
Madam Lone Benedicte Schroder, a member of Ghana Friendship Groups in Denmark, said migration is a very important issue which the two countries needed to address.
She said development and education is very important to help reduce the migration situation.
GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
By Samuel Akapule, GNA
Fumbisi (U/E), Oct. 18, GNA - The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has commended the European Union for supporting the Commission to embark upon voter education in all the ten regions of the country.
Mr Samuel Akuamoah, the Deputy Chairman of Operations of the Commission, said this at Sandema in the Builsa South District of the Upper East Region at a voters' education programme.
He said through the EU's support, many Ghanaians were becoming conscious of the need to maintain and preserve peace in the country.
He said through the activities organized by the Commission, many stakeholders including political parties, traditional and religious leaders, civil society organizations among others had pledged to ensure peaceful election in December.
Mr Joseph Kwaku Yeboa, Deputy Regional Director of the Commission, who took the participants through Electoral Offenses, called on political parties to desist from destroying or defacing the materials of their opponents.
He also cautioned them not to engage in abusive language, intimidation or violence, provocation, and carrying of arms as these could lead to the disruption of the electoral process.
Mr Yeboa advised election officials not to take alcohol on Election Day and also called on drinking bar operators not to sell alcohol within 500 meters of any of the polling stations.
'Apart from the ballot don't put any foreign material into the ballot box and the display of party colors at polling centres are not also allowed.
Any person who destroy any literature relating to registration is liable to a fine of GHC 100 or imprisonment of two years or both', the Deputy Director said.
Mr Pontius Pilate Apaaby Baba, the Regional Director of the Commission, said the Commission has undertaken many activities in all the thirteen districts and educated various stakeholders including political parties, traditional and religious leaders.
He impressed upon all the Political parties to remain committed to the respective agreement they had signed towards ensuring peace in the upcoming election.
GNA
By Fatima Anafu-Astanga, GNA
Bolgatanga, Oct. 18, GNA - Reverend Eric Adjei, a member of the Upper Regional Media Advisory Council, has called on the media to show high professional standards in their reportage on political issues during this political season.
Rev Adjei made the call at a seminar organized by the Upper East Regional Media Advisory Council for the press where he made a presentation on the topic: 'The Media's role in sustaining peace before, during and after elections'.
He urged the media to avoid being used as conduit for intemperate language as this could lead to violence in the upcoming elections.
Rev Adjei, who is also a member of the National Peace Council, said the council was prepared to ensure sanity prevails in the elections and asked the media to comply by ethical standards and give unbiased reportage.
Mr Alfred Ndago, a retired educationist and member of the Advisory Council, said democracy in Ghana was progressing as expected and the media could either champion its cause or mar it.
He urged the media to promote issue based campaigns and expose parties and candidates that foment trouble and or seek to intimidate the electorate.
Mr Robert Ajene, Chairman of the Media Advisory Council, urged all journalists in the country to do their best to contribute to the success of the December General Elections.
He said peaceful elections went beyond casting of votes as wrong reportage could create many problems.
GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA
Accra, Oct. 18, GNA - An Accra Circuit Court has granted bail in the sum of GH 25,000.00 with two sureties to Ntim Gyakari, a social worker, charged with dishonestly receiving.
The accused person pleaded not guilty and he would reappear in court on November 1.
Superintendent of Police (DSP) Kwaku Bempah, told the Court that the complainant in the case was a driver.
He said on June 2, this year, the complainant, who was driving a taxi with registration number GR 6376-14, was hired from Akim Oda to Mile 7, a suburb of Accra, by a certain young man.
He said on reaching Dansoman, another young man joined, from where they set off to Mile 7, under the pretext of meeting someone for money.
The Prosecution said, however, on reaching a spot close to the Kumbaya Hotel at Mile 7, the two passengers and three other young men, including one in a police uniform, allegedly robbed the complainant of his taxi.
A report was made to the Police at Mile 7 and investigations commenced to arrest the culprits.
Supt Bempah said on August 23, the Akim Oda Police arrested one Richard Kwakye at Oda, with the said taxi, but a different registration number of GE 5029-15 and handed him over to the Mile 7 Police.
He said the accused led the Police to arrest one Emmanuel Okyere Darko from whom he allegedly bought the taxi in Kumasi.
He said the latter also pointed out that accused Ntim, who was being held in a similar case, as the one he allegedly bought the car from.
The accused person admitted the offence in his caution statement, the Prosecution said, and mentioned one Rasmus Adama Nketia, a supposed National Security operative, as the one who allegedly sold the car to him at Sakumono in June.
Efforts are underway to trace the suspects.
GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Accra Oct. 19, GNA - A Commercial motor bike rider (Okadaman) who offered a 14 year- old girl a ride and ended up having sex with her has appeared before an Accra Circuit Court.
Ben Alake charged with defilement pleaded guilty, pleaded with the court to forgive him.
The court convicted Alake on his plea but deferred sentence to October 28.
This is to enable him provide documents to ascertain his age on the next adjourned date.
Prosecuting, Detective Inspector Kofi Atimbire said the complainant, the father of the victim, was a farmer residing at Katapor, near Amasaman.
According to prosecution, the victim is a hairdresser apprentice living with the complainant. Accused person also resides at Katapor.
Detective Inspector Atimbire said on October 10, this year, at about 10:00pm, the victim closed from work and the accused person offered her lift.
When the victim reached her house, she told the accused person that she would alight but accused declined and sent her to his house and defiled her.
The following day, prosecution said the complainant had information that accused person was seen carrying the victim on his motor bike so he proceeded to his house and found the victim lying on a mattress while the accused person had left for work.
According to the prosecutor, the complainant took the victim to the Police Station and lodged complaint.
He was issued with a medical form to send the victim to the hospital for examination.
On October 11, this year, Alake was arrested, the prosecutor said.
GNA
Accra, Oct. 19, GNA - Vodafone Ghana's Healthline team has visited Veronica Kumako a middle-aged trader, who underwent a facial tumour surgery courtesy of Vodafone's Healthline programme.
Healthline, a programme, which seeks to educate, inform and demystify various myths on health related conditions, went to the rescue of Kumako.
Veronica expressed gratitude to the telecommunication giant, revealing that her life was more than beautiful now.
Following a decade of misery, the cheerful Veronica said she is now empowered to socialize, laugh and work to provide for herself and her son.
In a release in Accra, before the successful surgery, Veronica lived with a tumour that affected her eyes, disfigured her face and made breathing difficult.
Her condition made her a liability to her immediate family, neighbours and customers alike.
'I started feeling some swelling in my nostrils at age 24, three years later, I couldn't breathe well and later a small boil appeared closer to my eye.
'I didn't approach it with seriousness until it became so big that I had to go to Battor, where I was transferred to Korle Bu' said Veronica, on the award-winning television show, Vodafone Healthline.
'When my condition didn't get better after five years, my husband absconded and left me to my fate.'
According to the release Kumako said initially she couldn't do her business in the market because no one wanted to come close to her but now, everything had changed.
'Now my heart is at rest and I give Vodafone Ghana the credit,' she added.
Healthline, since 2011, has catered for the full cost of surgeries for many financially challenged Ghanaians suffering from various health conditions.
Season 6 of the 13-episode series airs on UTV at 9pm on Mondays, with a repeated version on TV3 on Saturdays at 6:30pm.
GNA
Wife of standard bearer of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP,) Mrs. Yvonne Nduom, has urged all parents to endeavour to educate their children.
According to Mrs. Nduom, education is the safest way that a parent can secure his or her pension and future.
She was speaking at the rally held by partys parliamentary candidate for Komenda Edina Eguafo Abbirem (KEEA) constituency in Agona in the Central region.
As I stand here, I am my mothers pension. I take care of her because she educated me to be able find a good job and open businesses with my husbandDont neglect your childs education for anything because when you are old, you will surely benefit from their success in life, she revealed.
Mrs. Nduom believes people may have neglected the need to put wards through school and monitor their growth because they [parents] did not have any form of education hence did not understand the benefits.
She added that some had the desire but are financially unstable to afford fees.
Against this background, she said that the PPP knows these challenges and that is why it wants to ensure the enforcement of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) provision in Ghanas constitution to enable Ghanaian children go to school from the creche to Senior High School (SHS).
Mrs. Nduom explained that her party will enforce school going through a taskforce known as Education Guards.
She said these Education Guards will ensure that no child of school going age stays at home or loiters about.
For his part, Member of Parliament (MP) aspirant for the area who is also the junior brother of Mrs. Nduom, John Sterlin, charged the people who had defied the heavy downpour to listen to him to ignore Messrs. Nana Ato Arthur and Samuel Mills of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) respectively and vote massively for him on December 7 to see the development they yearn for.
Mr. Sterlin asked the people to look around and if their lives and town has seen developments since they voted for the NDC and NPP.
Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom who accompanied his wife in a remark asked the people to observe a minute silence to honour the memory of the partys stalwart, Madam Eva Lokko.
He urged the people to look at what he did for them when he was MP and what he is doing now and vote for Mr. Sterlin to enjoy even more.
The business mogul highlighted some projects he has embarked upon in his private capacity for area and assured the people of jobs when elected.
Dr. Nduom earlier had toured parts of northern Volta, Upper East and West and the Northern region where he conferred with chiefs and their people as well as held rallies in these areas.
Kinshasa (AFP) - Congo's normally bustling capital Kinshasa was shut down Wednesday by a strike to protest plans to extend the president's stay in power beyond the end of his term in December, AFP journalists said.
But there were few signs of any stoppage in the Democratic Republic of Congo's second largest city, southern Lubumbashi.
But central Mbuji-Mayi, which is an opposition bastion, also came to a standstill.
The opposition had called for a nationwide protest against a deal signed Tuesday which would keep President Joseph Kabila in power until April 2018 by effectively postponing the presidential vote scheduled for this year.
The country's main opposition party, the UDPS, called the deal signed between the authorities and fringe opposition groups a "flagrant violation" of the constitution and said the strike would show Kabila "the yellow card".
He first took office in 2001, and in 2006 a new constitutional provision limited the presidency to a two-term limit which expires on December 20.
In Kinshasa -- a city of 10 million people -- roads remained totally deserted through the morning, with public transport running empty and no sign of the many privately-run shared taxis that normally ply the city's roads.
Roads would typically have been bustling ahead of the work and school day.
The only visible commercial activity taking place was women selling bread and petrol stations that were open but unused.
The upmarket Gombe district was unusually quiet, and in Kasa-Vubu, a district in the south of the city, the only people on Victories Square were some 50 police officers.
Heavy police presence
Officers were deployed in force at other locations including parliament and at several military bases.
Demonstrators gather in front of a burning car during an opposition rally in Kinshasa on September 19, 2016
Police reported several incidents of protesters stoning vehicles or burning to tyres. But the city remained mostly calm unlike the at last month's protests in which 49 civilians and four police were killed during violence, according to the UN.
Despite the widespread strike action in Kinshasa, the situation was normal in the second city Lubumbashi.
Authorities there had warned early this week that civil servants who failed to show up for work on Wednesday would face consequences.
Calls for a strike were also ignored in Bukavu, according to an AFP correspondent there, as well as in northeastern Kisangani and in the country's sole deep water port, Matadi.
However in Goma, eastern Congo, the call to down tools was followed to some extent, with most shops remaining closed though traffic appeared normal, according to two AFP journalists.
In central Kananga, another big town, activity slowed in the morning while in the western town of Mbandaka people headed for work wearing yellow as a sign of protest.
This week's controversial agreement to allow Kabila to serve into 2018 emerged after the EU threatened sanctions if the country did not hold elections in 2017.
It was concluded at "national dialogue" talks aimed at reducing tensions triggered by disquiet that the president is seeking to remain indefinitely.
But the main opposition coalition -- "Rassemblement" (Gathering) -- headed by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi boycotted the talks, branding them a ploy by Kabila to stay in power beyond the end of his term.
Irate illegal miners in Obuasi in the Ashanti region are on rampage and have demolished the Obuasi municipal chief executive's office, Ultimate FM's Isaac Bediako Justice has reported.
The miners have also vandalized the constituency office and billboards of the ruling National Democratic Congress.
According to Bediako Justice, the operators are angry at the government's insistence not to allow them mine in their various mining centers.
The Obuasi Police have reportedly called in more men to handle the rioting miners who are also burning tyres in the middle of the streets. No one has so far been reported hurt in the rampage.
-Starrfmonline
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Minister of Trade and Industry, says maintaining the right standard in all spheres of life is key to promoting quality, efficiency and progress.
Cutting corners in order to cut down on cost and maximise profit could be much more expensive, because of the unpleasant consequences that often go with such behaviour.
The Minister, said this at the 47th World Standards Day Celebration, which was held in Accra on Friday, October, 14.
This year's celebration was on the theme: Standards Build Trust, and seeks to throw light on the link between adherence to standard practice in all spheres of life, and the trust such practice inspires in publics, clients, and all other stakeholders who stand to gain or lose, depending on how well standards are maintained.
Dr Spio-Garbrah, who officially launched the day, noted that it was a good thing that Ghana for example, had quite a good reputation as a dependable supplier of pharmaceutical products.
Pharmaceutical products from Ghana are therefore in high demand all over the world, he noted.
The Minister said this kind of trust could only be earned when one diligently stuck to standard practice, and became known and respected for that.
He said besides serving the needs of prospective beneficiaries better, maintaining standard practice also ensured the growth and progress of individuals, businesses, organisations and nations.
A country that is known for poor standards in the provision of goods and services, would definitely perform poorly in a world that has now become a global village.
Dr Spio-Garbrah, urged the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) to continue in its bid to ensure adherence to the right standards as it had excellently done in the past.
The government would continue to support the Ghana Standards Authority in all ways possible, to ensure that the authority effectively execute its mandate, which would ultimately promote socio-economic growth, said Dr Spio-Garbrah.
The occasion was hosted by the GSA.
The World Standards Day is celebrated every year, to re-enforce the need to live up to the right standards in all fields of endeavour, in order to ensure trust and dependability.
Source: GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
By John Bediako.
The Guggisberg-built premises of the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs at Dodowa is likely to witness a bloodbath on Monday, 24th October, 2016, following the refusal of a group, calling itself COALITION OF GA-DANGME YOUTH, to distance itself from administrative matters of the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs.
The group, which has written to the police for a permit to demonstrate, swore fire and brimstone to storm the Regional House of Chiefs that day, and forcibly remove the Registrar, Harry Antony Attipoe, from his office, because he is not proceeding on transfer to the Volta Region.
The revered chiefs, on their part, have assured the youth of an unprecedented showdown, besides the historic battle of Dodowa, should they throw caution to the winds and attack the premises.
The traditional authorities, The Chronicle gathered, would marshal a force of warriors from Ada, in the east of the Greater Accra Region, through Ningo, Teshie, La, Osu, and Ga Mashie in the west.
The Tema Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Paul Manly Awini, when contacted, opined that they were prevailing on the protagonists to exercise restraint and allow law and order to permeate.
According to him, the Dodowa District Police Command was in a meeting with the leadership of the youth group, and that the next line of action would be determined after the engagement.
According to DCOP Awini, peace was a very essential commodity, without which, there would be no meaningful development, and, therefore, appealed to all sides to be law-abiding.
The Chieftaincy Minister, Dr. Henry Seidu Daana, recently urged the Coalition of Ga-Dangme Youth to stay off his Ministry's administrative issues, in order to bring about harmony in the traditional administration of the country.
According to him, groups and persons who have problems with personnel of the Ministry should separate their issues from administrative transfers and postings. The Minister did not like the posture of a youth group, which is wading into administrative matters.
The youth group is accusing the Registrar, Harry Attipoe, of allegedly taking possession of US$5 million from Sunon Asogli Power a claim the Chinese company has denied and selling lands at Kpone, which was equally rubbished by the Kpone Traditional Council as baseless.
It is also being alleged that his presence at the House of Chiefs is preventing some groups from installing certain persons who do not qualify as chiefs in the region.
A former Peoples National Convention (PNC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga, Mr David Apasera, is seething with rage over what he claims was an alleged role of the National Chairman of the party, Mr Bernard Mornah, towards his exclusion from the Electoral Commissions list of aspirants in the upcoming elections.
After being offered huge sums of money and other inducements, Mr Mornah, the aggrieved candidate charged, was acting zealously in the interest of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to see its parliamentary candidate emerge victorious.
Narrating his ordeal, Mr Apasera noted that the party made it clear to its parliamentary candidates that it was in the position to pay their filing fees, an announcement which urged him to fill and deposit his forms with the Electoral Commission (EC).
However, Mr Apasera indicated that even though the party paid the fees for 65 of the 275 candidates, he received the shock of his life when his name came up as one of those captured on the EC's list of disqualified candidates in the region, following an announcement.
The former MP stated that: The party chairman had quietly struck out his name without drawing his attention to it, explaining further that the move was cleverly crafted so that, after the deadline, he would not be able to contest the coming parliamentary elections, a subversion from within.
Having served as a Member of Parliament for eight years between 2000 and 2008 Mr Apasera was confident of winning this years election to shore up the strength of legislators the PNC would boast of.
He was convinced that this time round after the electorates have had a feel of a number of MPs, I would have been given the nod, asking rhetorically that, why should the so-called chairman of the party deny me and the party the opportunity?
To that question, he stated that, I had no answer than to say that, the so-called chairman was acting in the interest of another party, which has a candidate in my constituency, adding that, he must have been properly 'seen', to undertake such an (shameful) act.
Touching on the disqualification of the PNCs presidential candidate by the EC last week, the former Bolgatanga legislator revealed that there was a deliberate arrangement between the General Secretary and Mr Mornah to foil Dr Edward Mahamas candidacy.
In the case of Mr Bernard Mornah, the incensed former MP said information available to him revealed that: When at the party office, when it was all hands on deck to see the presidential candidates forms being properly filled, the so-called chairman was relaxed and sleeping in his office.
For him, the care-free attitude of the chairman could mean nothing less than an act that could only be in the interest of another political party.
Mr Apasera also expressed concern over vehicles and monies the party had raised to support its campaign, observing that since the beginning of this year's general elections, no one sees a car or van branded in PNC colours, yet cars have been given to the party by well-wishers.
I am aware that monies have flowed into the party but no one has seen any significant party activity. And one would have a cause to believe that it is for the grabbing of these goodies that the conspiracy has been hatched to leave PNC without a flag bearer so that the demise of the party would be pronounced sooner than later, he remarked.
Mr Apasera thus wants the supporters of the party to press for the removal of the National Chairman of the party from office.
Meanwhile, Mr Bernard Monarh has told Joy FM that he was not aware his accuser was contesting the elections.
According to him, Apasare tried to use the courts to invalidate results that won him the chairmanship but failed.
Mr Monarh challenged Apasare to provide evidence that vehicles had been given to the party which he (Monarh) has sat on them.
Citi Business News can confirm that the payment process for validated creditors of DKM Microfinance in Bolgatanga in the Upper East region has stalled, following a boycott by aggrieved creditors.
The customers are angry over what they say are the paltry amounts being paid them.
Some of the customers who spoke to Citi Business News complained that they are paid as little as 10 cedis after investing about 1000 or 1500 cedis.
Citi News'Upper East regional correspondent, Frederick Awuni said activities have come to a halt due to the refusal of creditors to accept the payment.
They try enquiring from the reps of the liquidator and they have since not had any better answer. Although some have cashed the GHc10.00 and GHc20.00, majority of them have refused those cheques and the process has been brought to a halt, Awuni reported
He however said that the liquidator representative who was present at the scene at the time refused to comment on the situation.
Meanwhile some of the affected customers have also threatened not to vote if their monies are not refunded to them in full.
We feed our family and children, plus children's school fees. So what are you trying to tell us? President should sit up and look at how best to solve this issue. Otherwise, we will vote him out. If he is comfortable in his office and state, we are really suffering. We won't take that GHc10.00. DKM also better refund our monies to us one aggrieved customer stated.
Another added that Because of this issue, people have lost their lives. And we come here only to be told that we are to receive only GHc10.00, what do we use GHc10.00 for? I will not vote for this government. How can I invest all my money and be given only GHc10.00? What do they mean?
DKM customers lose investment
Thousands of people lost their investment when DKM Microfinance Company misapplied deposits of the customers against the Bank of Ghana regulation.
Customers lost millions of cedis leading to a panic withdrawal in all branches of the company.
The BoG appointed the Registrar General's Department to oversee the liquidation process of DKM's assets to help refund customers.
By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
The incumbent Member of Parliament for Odododiodoo in Accra, Edwin Nii Lantey Vanderpuije has said that he is ready to sponsor the education of his main contender in the upcoming parliamentary election, Nii Lantey Bannerman.
He said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate had deceived constituents that he is a University graduate hence must be voted into power.
According to him, he [Vanderpuije] had records that showed Mr Bannerman's highest level of education was Senior High School because he dropped out of a University.
He told Citi News, Nii Lante Bannerman told all of us that he was a graduate and that he went to Cape Coast University and that he as a Banking and Finance but I have records that show that even the Senior High School, he didn't even do well to qualify him into a University and there is no course in UCC called Banking and Finance. Then he said he went to Regent University, we saw that he tried doing some courses at Regent University but his first semester was a failure.
He added that I am going to spend time, if he makes himself available, I will sponsor him to school, get education so that he will stop insulting the elderly people and he will stop what he is not.
Nii Lantey Vanderpuije said Nii Lante Bannerman stand no chance of winning in the Odododiodoo constituency since he lacked the capacity to unseat him.
For now, I am giving him [Nii Lante Bannerman] 5 out of the 116 polling stations but even the 5 I am being very considerate, if he doesn't change his attitude, I will take the five away from him.
Meanwhile, Nii Lante Bannerman has described as untruth Mr Vanderpuije's claims against him.
In a sharp rebuttal on Citi Prime News on Wednesday, Nii Lante Bannerman said he was an accomplished banker and did not need Nii Lante Vanderpuije to sponsor his tuition if he decides to pursue higher education.
By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Calm has returned to Obuasi in the Ashanti Region after illegal miners went on rampage Wednesday morning attacking the Municipal Assembly and political parties offices among others.
Rampaging miners who took to the streets smashed glasses and destroyed billboards of National Democratic Congress (NDC)and New Patriotic Party (npp) parliamentary candidates of Obuasi West and East before attacking the assembly offices with stones and clubs.
Some of the miners carried placards some of which read No Galamsey No Vote marched from the offices of the Artisanal Small Miners office at Tutuka, a suburb of Obuasi.
It took the military and police reinforcement from Kumasi to bring the situation under control after several warning shots were fired.
The miners have been protesting against their relocation from AngloGold Gold Ashanti concessions following recommendations of a 15-member committee inaugurated by the Minerals Commission in August 2016.
No one has been arrested in connection with what police describe as a spontaneous action of the illegal miners as police and military take over the streets.
Obuasi Municipal Commander, ACP Afful Boakye Yiadom who led the police charges say police will continue to monitor the situation.
Brong Ahafo Regional Youth Organizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Kwame Baffoe says officials at the accounts office of the Electoral Commission (EC) are inefficient and unable to discharge their duties very well.
Reacting to errors on the receipt issued by the EC to the leader of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), Papa Kwesi Nduom when filling his nomination forms, Kwame Baffoe wondered how these officials would be able to collate election results during the December polls.
The PPP said it is dragging the EC to the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), and the Auditor-General, to investigate the Electoral Commission for giving them a receipt riddled with mistakes.
According to the party, they believe the EC is on a course of a possible fraudulent act because of the receipt which was issued for the payment of nomination fees for their presidential and parliamentary candidates.
Do you know that the receipt EC gave us for the payment of the deposit had Gh1, 700.00 in figures but in words they wrote One Million Seven Hundred (r was placed after e instead of vice versa) Thousand Ghana cedis. Apart from this, on the same receipt, the EC wrote 'being payment of parliamentary candidate' (without s) as if payment was made for only one parliamentary candidate Director of Policy for the PPP, Kofi Asamoah Siaw, said at a press conference.
The PPP's presidential nominee was among 13 persons disqualified from the race due to errors on their nomination forms.
The Electoral Commission Chairperson, Charlotte Osei, who made the announcement at a news conference, said those disqualified failed to meet the necessary requirements for a presidential candidate.
There were different reasons for which each of the parties was disqualified.
However Mr Baffoe speaking on Adom FM's Morning Show Dwaso Nsem Wednesday could not fathom why the accounts office of the EC would make such an administrative errors while callenging the claim of infallibility the EC has cloaked itself with.
Kwame Baffoe
If we keep on talking about this disqualification without blaming the EC then we are not being fair to ourselves. The accountants at the EC office are inefficient. They call themselves accountants and then are making simple mistakes.
Even a simple hundred, they are unable to spell and write on a receipt even when the amount of money was already written on a bankers draft.
Even my 6 year old son, Julius, when I saw that mistake, I asked him to spell hundred and he was able to do it quickly and even write it for me. And so comparing my son to the accountant in that EC office, I think my son can perform far better than the EC staff.
Given their (accountants) performance, can't he (my son) qualify to be presiding officer? Of course he can but Im sure they would even reject him because they will say he is my son but these EC officials who keep making mistakes are the ones who will collate election results on election day he bemoaned.
adomonline
19.10.2016 LISTEN
From Edmond Gyebi, Tamale
THE MEMBER of Parliament (MP) for Asin North, Kennedy Agyapong has descended heavily on the current and past governments for failing to do the right investment in the Northern Sector of Ghana to end or reduce the overwhelming poverty situation in the area.
He equally chastised all the rich and influential Northerners who are making huge investments outside the North for failing to go back home and take advantage of the vast but wasting lands, suitable for any agricultural or industrial purposes.
Speaking on Adom TV's Badwam Show hosted by Omanhene Kwabena Asante on Tuesday, the outspoken MP could not hide his disappointment in all the governments for their gratuitous leadership blunder and lack of vision to discover the huge potentials that abound in the three Northern Regions.
Mr Agyapong, who claimed to have visited some parts of the North recently, expressed the need for Ghana to redirect attention to the North and possibly move the national capital to the North, where lands are in abundance for heavy industrialisation, real estate development, solar energy facilities and most especially agricultural development of the nation.
The three Northern Regions of Ghana (Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions) have great human capital but are regarded as the poorest regions in Ghana. Several thousands of the energetic youth (male and female) consistently migrate to the southern part of Ghana and the neighbouring countries for menial jobs.
They have no place to stay and the streets become their executive abode. They mingle with armed robbers and drug addicts.
Some get rapped or defiled and others get unwanted pregnancies or contract diseases. Apart from developing smoking and drinking habits, others also become commercial sex workers and armed robbers just to earn a living.
Successive governments have paid several lip services to repatriate these young people and establish them in gainful employments in their communities.
However, the Asin North MP, Kennedy Agyapong, believes the poverty in the north could be blamed on the irresponsibility of governments and other rich and influential natives of the area, who were making huge investments in the Southern part of Ghana and internationally, instead of going back home.
Mr Agyapong who claimed to have felt in love with the North assured of directing some substantial resources to invest heavily in the area.
I could not believe the north has so much beautiful lands and water. The area is good for sugarcane, rice, maize, tomato, pepper and cashew and mango plantations among others.
The MP, therefore, encouraged the Northerners to return home and give back to their people and reduce the rate of unemployment and poverty facing the people.
The presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo-Addo has told Ghanaians to reject President John Mahama in the December 7 general elections because he does not feel the pain they are experiencing.
The President claims all is moving on smoothly in Ghana, the reason why he is seeking a renewal of his mandate in office. President Mahama, clearly, does not feel your pain and suffering. He is impervious to the hardships Ghanaians are going through on a daily basis, in their efforts to make ends meet. I doubt he is living in Ghana with us, because if he was, he wouldn't be making such comments.
Nana Addo who made the remark on Wednesday at Kramoase in the Atwima Kwanwoma constituency, during his campaign tour of the Ashanti Region said he cannot fathom why the President would make such comment in the wake of a declining economy, high unemployment rate, high cost of living among others.
He further urged Ghanaians to give the NPP the chance on the election day to turn the fortunes of Ghana around.
We have an opportunity this year to rid our nation of the suffering and hardship the Ghanaian is going through under the leadership of President Mahama. When we vote in a competent government in December, I assure you that Ghana will be put on the path of progress and prosperity once again. That is the task before us in Ghana in this year's election, Nana Akufo-Addo said.
Only NPP can unseat Mahama
Akufo-Addo also insinuated that the NPP is the only party in Ghana that can unseat the governing NDC from office.
There is no other political party in Ghana that has the support and organization to remove the NDC from office, other than the NPPIf you are a Ghanaian who is fed up with the hardship under Mahama, please come and ride on the back of the elephant and let us go together to Jubilee House, so we can go and do a good job for Ghanaians.
The NPP flagbearer urged residents of Kramoase to vote massively for the NPP in this year's elections, and increase the 80.83% margin of victory chalked by the party in the 2012 presidential election.
He also admonished party faithful to vote for the NPP's parliamentary candidate for the constituency, Dr. Kwadwo Appiah Kubi.
By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin
Government has today signed two separate contracts with Vamed Engineering group for the construction of five district hospitals and a polyclinic in the country.
The District Hospitals will be situated at Buipe, Tolon, Sawla, Somanya and Vheta in the Volta Region and one Polyclinic will be placed in Bamboe.
The other contract involves five separate Polyclinics in the Greater Accra, which would be situated in Adentan, Ashiaman, Botienor, Sege and Oduma.
The Minister for Health, Alex Segbefia, said, this falls in line with President Mahamas vision to increase healthcare facilities an strengthen the existing ones in the country, based on the countrys infrastructure deficit.
Thus to situate a number of polyclinics minimum of five in each region, this he said has gone through the process of government approvals.
Mr Segbfia indicated that the sector has seen improvement in terms of infrastructural development across the country, as part of social interventions in health sector.
Some he said are the numerous community-based Health Planning and Services, Regional and Teaching Hospitals being built by this government.
He explained that Vamed Engineering Group had been one of the major stakeholders in the health Industry and were responsible for the construction of the Sogakope hospital in the Volta Region and other policlinics in the country.
On his part, the Regional Director, Middle East and Africa, for Vamed Engineering Group, Mr Oliver Storzer, mentioned that the company is ready and will deliver these hospitals in two to three year period.
Mr Storzer, assured the Ministry that the company would build on the 15 years trust it had earned with the country by delivery on the job and expressed the companys gratitude to government.
Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com
Young people from various countries across the world have made a fresh demand for concerted efforts from governments and ordinary members of the public to end global warming to ensure food security in developing countries.
They note the problem of climate change is making it more difficult for farmers to grow enough food to feed themselves and earn good money from the farms.
They have been speaking at a panel discussion organised by the New York State-based Cornell Universitys Alliance for Science Program in Ithaca USA.
The discussion which was under the theme global agriculture in the face of climate change gave the opportunity to residents in the Ithaca community to ask young people from Ghana, China, Mexico, Uganda and Nigeria about the impact that climate change is having on agricultural production in their home countries and continents.
Journalist with the Multimedia Group Limited Joseph Opoku Gakpo who was part of the five-member panel that participated in the discussion noted that climate change has resulted in poor rainfall patterns in Ghana, thus causing farmers huge yield losses and massive debts.
We produced a documentary last year titled Lost Harvest and it highlighted how long periods of drought resulted in crop failures across the country It caused the price of maize to rise by about 70 percent, he explained.
He advocated for the modernization of agricultural production procedures and the improvement of indigenous surviving techniques to help rural communities deal with the problem.
Nassib Mugwanya who works at the Ugandan Biosciences Information Center expressed similar sentiments, saying smallholder farmers in Uganda have noticed changes in rainfall patterns. This is affecting their planting season.
Modesta Abugu Nnedinso who works with the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Nigeria noted the need for farmers to have access to improved seeds that can resist harsh weather conditions.
She explained some work is already ongoing in her country to develop such seeds, but there was the need to scale up the efforts.
Climate change refers to rise in the temperature of the atmosphere resulting in extreme weather conditions like drought. Various human activities including the heavy use of fossil fuels have led to the warming of the globe, resulting in this.
It is estimated that the world loses more than US $1.2 trillion as a result of climate change. Yan Mi who is founder of Youth Lead, an environmental non-governmental organisation in China made a passionate appeal to all citizens of the world to play individual roles in dealing with the problem.
We need to spread awareness and change people's minds. We need to save water, save food, and make an effort to move towards more sustainability, he said.
Wildlife advocate and Conservation Practitioner from Mexico, Sol Guerrero Ortiz called for a return to the basic principles of environmental protection as a way to save the planet from further destruction.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, That is so basic. It can be introduced in schools, offices, public sector and private sector. Even that small action can have some degree of impact, she appealed.
Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com
The Member of Parliament for Obuasi East is blaming government for the rampaging attacks by some galamsey miners, Wednesday.
Edward Anim said the attacks were as a result of false hopes given to the miners by government representatives.
Over hundred galamsey miners invaded the Obuasi Municipal Assembly and destroyed properties over there.
Political parties were not spared either as the NDC and NPP constituency offices were attacked by the rampaging miners.
The spontaneous attacks were to protest a takeover of a mining concession owned by Anglogold Ashanti.
Military men were deployed to guard the concession and to prevent the illegal miners from mining on Wednesday.
Convinced that their only source of livelihood have been taken away from them, the angry miners took the law into their own hands and went on a destruction spree.
Speaking to Joy News' Parliamentary correspondent, Elton John Brobbey, the MP for Obuasi East said the attacks would not have happened if the galamsey miners had been told the truth.
He explained that the concession in question is owned by Anglogold Ashanti and under no circumstance should the illegal miners be allowed to mine on that same concession.
He said if a land has been acquired legally by a company, it is difficult to take it away from them and hand it over to illegal miners.
He said the activities by the illegal miners are embarrassing and pose a great threat to foreign investment, adding, the matter came up when the president recently addressed the UN.
"I will not blame the illegal miners," but will blame representatives of the president who have not been candid to the president and to the miners as well, the MP added.
Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah
Libreville (AFP) - Wilfried Bony's Ivory Coast will start their defence of the Africa Cup of Nations against Togo in January, according to the draw made Wednesday.
Ivory Coast are in Group C against Togo, Morocco and Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hosts Gabon will stage the opening match in Libreville on January 14 against Guinea Bissau who are making their first appearance in the 16-nation tournament.
The other group favourites, Algeria and Ghana start against Zimbabwe and Uganda respectively.
The final is in Libreville on February 5.
19.10.2016 LISTEN
Accra, Oct 19, GNA - The Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in collaboration with the Keshe Foundation, a non-profit space Organisation, has opened a three-day space summit in Accra to explore new ways of solving Africa's health, environmental and developmental challenges.
The summit is expected to provide a good overview of the applications of the Keshe technology and success stories that could ginger Ghanaians to work hard and also to pay much attention to challenges or cautions that comes with these facilities.
Professor Benjamin J. B. Nyarko, the Director-General of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission at the opening ceremony on Monday, said the Commission had over the past year been familiarising, testing and affirming the Keshe technology and its applications, of which the outcomes have been very encouraging and promises a good future for Ghana and Africa as a whole.
He said the Commission has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Keshe Foundation for further partnership and training on their ground-breaking technologies especially in the treatment of health conditions including cancer and HIV.
He said the Keshe technology application involves a wide range of fields involving medicine, human health, agriculture and food production, space science and space travel, automobile and energy, which if well harnessed, would place the country at an advantageous position on the global front.
Prof. Nyarko said the theme for the summit which is: 'The New Dawn: Africa's Meteoric Rise in Spaceship Technology', which was attended by Scientists, researchers, and Officers from the various security services including the military and police, was therefore well and truly captured, to reflect the situation of the Continent.
He said breaking new grounds in science in the contemporary era was the way to go in order to propel Ghana's position in the world of high technology.
He said science and technology has been the principal agents of social and economic change although they had their benefits and disadvantages, and they provide new scientific knowledge as well as new solutions to major global challenges such as famine, water shortage, lack of electric power supply, climate change as well as diseases.
'However, in the nutshell, with these technologies, we have come to accept that science has no limits and we can defend the position that the impact of technology on the society has far more positive sides than negative', he said.
Prof. Nyarko said GAEC would set up a laboratory to begin production of the ground-breaking products made from the Keshe Foundation's plasma technology to solve pressing challenges in areas including health, and intends to further strengthen the partnership between the two institutions for human resource development.
Mr Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, the Founder and Leader of Keshe Foundation, said over the next two days scientists gathered from around the world would showcase what they had done in their respective fields and would impact these knowledge to their Ghanaian counterparts for national development.
He said the Keshe Foundation which currently operates in about 180 countries around the world, provides free education and training on simple application of physics and chemistry, and its partnership with GAEC would propel Ghana to become a sense of knowledge not only for the continent, but for the world at large.
He urged that participants stayed open, to learn from the Keshe's new Plasma technology which uses mostly natural methods to arrive at natural outcomes. GNA
By Christabel Addo-GNA
19.10.2016 LISTEN
By Hafsa Obeng, GNA
Accra, Oct. 19, GNA - A trader, Rebecca Brome, was on Thursday granted bail by an Accra Circuit Court when she appeared before it for defrauding two persons of various sums of money.
Rebecca was granted a self-recognisance bail by the court presided over by Madam Mary N. A Aryee.
She is to deposit an amount of GHa 13,000.00, with the court registrar, deposit her passport to the police and alert them anytime she intends to travel.
She was said to have defrauded one Theophilus Anyan of GHa7,000.00 and Prosper Segbawu of GHa 6,250.00.
Prosecuting Superintendent of Police, Kweku Bempah told the court that the complainant Theophilus is a trader living at Asamankese and Prosper is a carpenter living at Anloga, while the accused person is a pensioner living in the United Kingdom.
He said in 2013, the accused person collected the above mentioned amounts from the complainants under the pretext of securing a United Kingdom visa for them at Odorkor.
He told the court that the accused person on receipt of the money failed to honour her promise and went back to the United Kingdom.
Superintendent Bempah said a report was made to the police.
On September 30, the complainants spotted the accused in town and arrested her to the police.
The prosecution told the court that in her caution statement, Rebecca stated that she used part of the money in processing the forms for the complainants.
GNA
Accra, Oct. 19, GNA - Madam Dzifa Gomashie, the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, has thrown a challenge to Ghanaian Book Publishers to improve on the quality of their works and to also forge ahead in unity.
She said a united front would improve the quality of output from the local industry and enable them to compete favourably with their counterparts in the international arena.
She said since a divided house can never achieve any meaningful progress or development, there is the urgent need for the renewal of minds and attitudes of local publishers, who pursue individualistic interests without thinking about its impact of the industry and the nation as a whole.
Ghana would realise the anticipated growth and development over the next decade, if the book publishing industry was given the needed push to play its role actively in producing quality products that reflect the culture and heritage of the country, she said.
She said it was only a paradigm shift that would change the present situation with respect to changing reading habits and improving upon local publications and enhancing the performance of the members of the industry.
Ms Gomashie said this at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Ghana Book Publishers Association (GBPA) in Accra.
She commended the leadership of the GBPA for ensuring that their members maintain their key roles in both human and national development over the years.
The theme of the meeting: 'The Future of Textbook Publishing in Ghana: Can We Guarantee an Industry for the Next Generation?' was to review the performance of the Association over the previous year and strategise on ways to improve upon the past in the ensuing year.
Ms Gomashie said in spite of the massive investments being made in educational sector, and the current high demands for quality textbooks and supplementary readers for schools, the local book publishing industry has not been able to cooperate to meet these demands.
She blamed this on the lack of unity among publishers, unhealthy competition, selfishness, and the lack of self-appreciation on the part of Ghanaians, which has resulted in situations where some publishers after securing procurement contracts prefer to print their books outside the country, leaving the local industry to its current poor shape.
She called for a paradigm shift and the renewal of the minds, saying no one individual could achieve national development unless these successes were linked to the contributions of others through strengthened partnerships.
The Deputy Minster advised publishers to learn to collaborate and support each other in their respective works, and also to work hard to produce quality textbooks and other readers to improve upon the reading habits of Ghanaians.
Mr Elliot Agyare, the President of the Ghana Book Publishers Association, said the industry was saddled with numerous challenges with the advent of technology and also the new procurement law.
He said until the coming into being of this and other laws, members of the Association had worked in partnership with the Ministry of Education in the area of supplying textbooks and other supplementary readers to schools, but that relationship was currently being marred by the lack of transparency, suspicions and lack of trust from both sides.
'We need to recapture the spirit of restoring confidence in local publishers on the textbook policy', he said.
Mr Ken Ashigbey, the Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited, said the country stands to benefit greatly if government gives much attention to the book publishing industry.
He said although the challenges of the book publishing industry was numerous, they were not insurmountable, because they could be reversed if the needed investment were strategically made to change the attitudes of the public towards reading.
He called for the total removal of taxes on all materials for textbook publication just like in other developed countries, which would not only affect the prices of books in a downward manner, also help in improving the reading habits of the public as well as enhance the performance of the local industry.
He also urged the Association to set up a fund for improving the reading and to finance reading clubs in schools, which would go a long way to generate a competitive reading interest and attitudes among students at all levels.
Mr Ashigbey said the contents of books usually portray the identity and cultural heritage of people and the local industry must be supported to maintain this responsibility.
GNA
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If you ever happened to scout for budget stays across India in the last 18 months rarely you would find quality and cheaper rooms on any other site, cheaper than GoStays, a brand owned by Naspers-funded Ibibo Group.
Earlier this year, one could find quality rooms on GoStays in most Central Business Districts of Indias major cities for as low as Rs 1500. Couple it with a 60 percent cashback discount that GoIbibo was offering, the booking amount came to as low as Rs 750, the cost of a lunch meal at a decent restaurant in any metro.
OyoRooms was offering rooms starting Rs 999. In city centres, it cost about Rs 1200 for a decent room.
MakeMyTrip launched its Value+ budget rooms segment, last year and it blocked smaller aggregators. However, it faced an onslaught of price war with GoStays, OyoRooms and the now defunct Zo Rooms.
Heavy discount wars between OTAs
For the same quality of rooms, priced higher on MakeMyTrip, a customer would often chose the Naspers funded Ibibo or the Softbank funded Oyo Rooms.
However, with the Ibibo Group and MakeMyTrip merger, it has been announced that there would be rationalisation in the discounts and cash-backs being offered by the group.
It is fair to imagine that there will be a rationalisation in marketing spend for both brands and in the kind of competitive scenario we have been seeing. It had led to competition by both brands, said Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip Group founder and chairman. It is something fair to imagine that within the realms of keeping fast growth we will rationalise it, he added.
However, GoIbibo founder and CEO Ashish Kashyap said that his consumers should be not be worried about the merger.
"I can assure you that GoIbibo for now will run as a separate brand and the discounts including cash-backs will continue," he assured consumers through Moneycontrol.
OyoRooms had further dropped prices further in last few months, to compete with GoStays. It is offering a 25 percent discount on current rooms pricing it at often equal or lower than GoStays for same properties. But how do the aggregators make money? The simple answer is - often they do not.
Here is it how it works Hotel or guest house owners end up giving capacity to multiple Online Travel Aggregators. Often you would find the same property available for a higher price on one OTA but lower on the other. Thus the hotel room price is often subsidised by venture capital coffers of the OTAs. For listed companies such as Yatra and MakeMyTrip, its difficult to justify the bleeding price war.
But as a consumer, it makes me happy when the service providers compete against each other, either for quality or on price. However, when consolidation takes place, cartels emerge which can move prices up or down, as per the whim of large businesses. This has started to happen in the online taxi aggregation space.
The acquisition of TaxiForSure by Ola and the infusion of large capital by two big firms - namely Uber and Ola, have led to other VCs backing off. Smaller taxi aggregation startups have virtually died in the sector.
Last weeks simultaneous increase of fares by both Ola and Uber are an example. While Deep Kalra said that the deal has got a clearance from Competition Commission of India. It is fair to say that governments across the developing world have not been able to control cartelisation in the online space. CCI had earlier exonerated Uber and Ola.
Competition ensures choice
Earlier the travel aggregation space in India was dominated by MakeMyTrip and Yatra. Then came GoIbibo, IxiGo, and other VC funded startups such as OyoRooms, FabHotels and Treebo. Other firms such as Stayzilla and Wudstay which earlier were doing aggregation business have now however shifted their focus towards alternate stay segment.
While OYO runs more of an aggregation business along with few flagship properties, Treebo and Fab are based on franchise model wherein they lease a property, get it renovated and then sell them on their platform. These start-ups mostly target budget travelers.
Interestingly, online travel agencies including MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Goibibo had delisted OYO last year. The companies went ahead and launched their own budget hotel business. This was good for the consumer who saw a variety of choices in the sector and prices which varied across spectrum.
While MakeMyTrip plans to keep GoIbibo and MakeMyTrip as separate brands, ultimately the prices across the spectrum which a consumer pays will not vary.
We have seen it in the airline or pharma space, where prices are regulated by the government. However in the sectors such as hospitality, when investors look for exits and consolidation takes place, its the consumer who loses.
harsimran.julka@network18online.com
This warm spell has spawned clouds of no-see-um, gnat-like pests that fill the air from the ground to way above the treetops. If I could roll all of them in our little plot into a ball, I could turn the tide because the ball would generate its own gravitational pull.
Thats the way of nature, to take advantage of unusual weather. Warmth where there should be chill creates a flurry of activity, the insect version of make hay while the sun shines. When the Lord commanded Go ye forth and multiply, the insects didnt have to be told twice.
Alas, there are good critters and pesky critters. At least we get to choose among the ones we allow closest to us well, some of the time. I know of no species that doesnt have obnoxious misfits among its population.
I do believe that in trillions of years, when black holes have sucked almost everything out of our universe, if theres anybody left to zoom among the dross, a stinkbug will land on the windshield.
Bear in mind this unseasonable warmth only compounds the misery of our Carolina coasts and flood-stricken inland areas. Help the people if you can.
Sex has been part of politics for many generations. Its one of the traditions gleefully imported from the Old World when the United States was made. Benjamin Franklin had the reputation for being an amorous ambassador for the breakaway colonies, and its been said George Washington was the father of our nation in more ways than one.
Much was made about the affairs of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. The 1884 presidential campaign between Grover Cleveland and James Blaine was a bitter contest that included the slogan, Ma, Ma, wheres my Pa? in reference to the story of Taft fathering a child out of wedlock.
When Taft won, the politics didnt end. Detractors added, Gone to the White House ha, ha, ha! Taft admitted the story was true, and the slogan is permanently attached to his legacy.
Presidential candidates accused of sexual dalliances include Warren Harding, John Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Strom Thurmond and Newt Gingrich. The stories and their candidacies didnt necessarily coincide.
Sometimes, those accused have paid a steep price with their political careers severely stunted and even ended (like Hart). For others, the results werent too bad. Gerry Studds, representing Massachusetts in the U.S. House, was censured by the House for an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male page. He was reelected six more times after the censure.
Dan Crane U.S. House member from Illinois also was censured at the same time for an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female page. He was defeated in the next election and never returned to national politics.
Daniel Webster, William O. Douglas, Robert Packwood, Henry Hyde, Pete Dominici, Gary Condit, Larry Craig and oh, yes Anthony Weiner are among a large group of political leaders who have tawdry reputations.
And Victoria Woodhull, who got an astonishing amount of support for president, was not accused of being a prostitute, but a plain ol harlot.
When a politician decides to grab the biggest headlines in the land, you can bet some tales will be bared.
One thing everyone should at least consider is that when political opponents criticize each other for the way they voted, look up the bills in question. Single-issue legislation in Congress is almost unheard of, so there might be something hidden in these bills (those nasty riders) that might have affected the voting.
And I think that whoever is elected president should present a carefully considered and thoroughly vetted nominee for the Supreme Court as soon as possible. Anyone who interferes with the process simply because the nominator is of the wrong party should be charged with treason.
Supreme Court nominees should not be rubber-stamped, but the process must be held as sacred as our lives, liberty and honor and rise above sour-grapes politics which for all the good it does our nation is in the same general category as anarchy.
Reach Larry Clark at wryturlc@yahoo.com.
In the current environment it is increasingly difficult to get both income and growth from any one asset. As a result, private investor Aidan Clubley has tried to build up a diverse portfolio; including property, car parking spaces, direct shareholdings as well as more conventional managed funds.
Its trying to get the balance right between income and growth. I want my investments to provide some yield, but also want to ensure that my capital grows over the longer term, he explained. Access to my money is also a factor. While I am prepared to tie up some of my savings for longer periods I dont want all of my money to be locked away. I want to be able to access some of my capital, should I need it.
Clubley says this approach also means he has a very mixed risk profile: Some of my investments are far riskier than others. But where I have higher risk holdings I try to balance with investments that deliver steadier returns.
Investments to Supplement Wage Income
Clubley, who lives in Buckinghamshire, began his career by working in banking but retired from this at the age of 50. He then went on to own a number of restaurants and wine bars, as well as his own credit management and consultancy business.
Although his business still provides an income, he is increasing looking to his investments to supplement this. In recent years property has been a mainstay of his portfolio. As well as owning his business premises he also owns a couple of local buy-to-let properties. More recently he has invested in Property Partner, a crowdfunding platform that allows investors to club together to buy UK residential property.
He says: This enabled me to get a foothold in the London property market. It would be too expensive to buy a property there outright. Ive invested in a couple of new-build flats in areas which are to be connected by cross-rail so hopefully they will appreciate in value.
Investors split rental income and the properties are typically sold after six years. However, Clubley says he likes the fact that there is second-hand market for investors to trade the stakes they own in these properties.
While he says he gets a reasonable yield from these properties, his best income asset at present is an airport parking space in Glasgow. Here your money is locked away for five years, but I get an 8% income for the first two years, 10% income for the next two, then 12% for the final year.
Typically, investors need to deposit a large lump sum to invest in such schemes. Investors should think very carefully before opting for these alternative investments as they are unregulated and should only ever make up a small part of a large diversified portfolio.
Funds for Equity Exposure
When it comes to equity investments, Clubley says he has made decent returns on a couple of Henderson funds. He invests in Henderson European Selected Opportunities, and Henderson Global Growth.
As well as offering exposure to different geographical areas, Clubley feels the two funds complement each other in terms of risk profile. The European fund, is invested in larger blue chip companies, while the global fund is considered more high risk as its invested in slightly smaller companies, often at an early stage in their development.
The European Selected Opportunities fund has a four-star performance rating from Morningstar, reflecting its strong returns in recent years. The manager John Bennett is described as an experienced and talented fund manager by Morningstar analysts, who have awarded him a coveted Silver Rating.
Morningstar analysts say: One of Bennetts strengths is his continual assessment of the [investment] process and there have been enhancements over time. He pays close attention to macroeconomic trends, as he believes an understanding of global market and industry dynamics gives him a valuable insight into the behaviours of European stocks.
Global Growth has a five-star performance rating from Morningstar showing it has outperformed the majority of peers in recent years. This global fund invests in a concentrated portfolio of innovation-focused stocks. In the last five years it has produced at least 10% a year the only exception being 2015, where it chalked up a 9.1% return. In four out of these five years its benchmark has produced returns of less than 1%.
Speculative Stock Picking
Aside from these funds he also has a number of direct shareholdings. But Clubley says: These are far more speculative. Hopefully I will make a good return on some of them, but I am not relying on these returns to fund day to day living costs. Its a bit more of a gamble, and more of a hobby really.
He says he invests in some smaller company shares such as Fevertree Drinks (FEVR), as well as larger FTSE 100 companies like Experian (EXPN).
Fevertree is a supplier of premium carbonated drinks and mixers, and in the past year has seen its share price rise by a staggering 122% according to Morningstar data. It mainly sells its drinks to hotels, restaurants, bars and off-licences.
Experians core business is as a credit rating agency, and it is a major player in both the US and UK markets. It has a two-star rating from Morningstar, meaning its current share price is greater than Morningstar analysts fair value estimate for the firm. Morningstar says this company has a wide economic moat reflecting the fact it is hard for other competitors to move into the markets it dominates.
Morningstar says: [Experian] has not been content to simply operate its existing businesses, instead expanding through acquisitions into new businesses and new countries. The company now generates about one fourth of its revenue outside North America and the U.K., which we think positions it well to increase revenue and shareholder value. For example, it is a leading player in the Brazilian market.
At its May 2016 index review, MSCI completed the addition of a number of US-listed Chinese companies into its MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes. As a result, Chinas weighting has increased in a number of key indexes, and its role in global portfolios has also been amplified. In addition, we believe the indexes now better represent the underlying growth drivers of the Chinese economy, which has various implications for portfolio managers and investors.
Chinas progressive financial market liberalisation has spurred numerous IPOs and the success of a number of Chinese companies, which has been reflected in their gigantic market capitalizations, such as Tencent.
This has had a significant impact on the evolution of Chinas weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. A decade ago, the index was dominated by Taiwan and South Korea, and China accounted for a meagre 3.69%. Fast forward to 30 June 2016, and, fuelled by the recent addition of a number of US-listed Chinese companies into the index, China has become the largest country weighting at 25.79%.
China Set to Grab Even More of the Market
The story does not end there. China will continue to gain global importance as it improves accessibility to its onshore A-share market, one that offers better liquidity and a more diversified opportunity set than the Hong Kong stock market, which is currently the most commonly used avenue to get Chinese exposure. Many asset managers believe it is only a matter of time before A-shares are included and have accordingly been beefing up their A-share research capabilities or even managing their portfolios against a custom benchmark that includes A-shares.
Referencing to MSCIs Consultation on China A-Shares Index Inclusion Roadmap, a potential full inclusion of A-shares can raise Chinas weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index to almost 40%. That said, this will require among other things, Chinas full liberalisation of its capital mobility restrictions, and it will likely take a long time to materialise. The inclusion of US-listed Chinese companies often referred to as American Depositary Receipts, or ADRs into the MSCI indexes has undoubtedly helped to better reflect the Chinese investment universe and provide more-relevant performance benchmarks for portfolio managers and investors alike.
How the Chinese Stock Market is Diversifying
Prior to the ADR inclusions, the Chinese exposure of various indexes predominantly came from the old economy, that is, the traditional state-ownership-heavy sectors such as banks, energy, and telecom services. To put this into context, we examine the MSCI China Index, a popular benchmark among Chinese equity managers, and one which had shown the most pronounced changes.
Taking its 30 November 2015 portfolio and assuming that there were no ADR inclusions, the yellow bar in the graph below shows how the indexs sector allocations would look as at 30 June 2016, adjusted for stock price movements. The financial sector, which comprises banks, insurers, and property developers, until 30 August 2016, when MSCI adopted a new real estate sector in its global industry classification standard structure, was by far the most prominent sector and accounted for 40% of the hypothetical index.
Other mature industries, such as the telecom services and the energy sectors, accounted for 11% and 9% of the index, respectively. MSCI added 14 ADRs to its indexes as a result of the index review. Many of these new constituents are privately owned new economy companies, particularly Internet-related companies. As a result, the MSCI China Indexs information technology exposure dramatically increased from 17% to 31% in Exhibit 2, where the orange bar depicts the MSCI China Indexs actual sector allocations as at 30 June 2016.
Notably, Alibaba and Baidu became index giants and accounted for 8.15% and 4.64% of the index, respectively. The indexs consumer discretionary exposure also doubled from 4% to 8%. On the flip side, the once-overriding financial sector now shares its top position with the IT sector at around 30%.
We think that these changes better align the index with the growth drivers of the Chinese economy, with an increased representation of the in-demand service industries, such as the IT and consumer sectors. These sectors are arguably more directly exposed to the Chinese domestic-consumption story, a popular long-term investment theme as China looks to transition away from an investment-led economy, than some of the traditional sectors such as oil and gas.
From a quality perspective, the substantial increase in the more privately owned new-economy sector has indirectly diluted the exposure of state-owned-enterprise-heavy old-economy sectors such as banks, energy, and materials. This shift in ownership dynamics presents a differentiated opportunity set for portfolio managers, one that focuses on return-on-equity potential and the alignment of interests between management and shareholders.
How Active Fund Managers May Benefit
Investors in benchmark-aware strategies, that is, funds with relatively tight tracking-error budgets and not much leeway to deviate from the index, can expect increased exposure to the added index constituents, whether their portfolio managers believe those names have strong investment merits or not. For example, a few benchmark-conscious portfolio managers invested in Baidu despite their belief that the company has over-monetized its search results. Nonetheless, they bought the name to manage benchmark-relative risks and expressed their disflike through an underweight position.
On the other hand, some have had the foresight to invest in select U.S-listed Chinese companies prior to the inclusion exercise and captured considerable upside before the huge buy-in from the market. The Chinese investment universe has continued to expand and evolve, and China is becoming an increasingly important part of global investors portfolios.
Improving accessibility, such as the recent implementation of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, provides another channel for offshore investors to invest in the domestic Chinese equity market. As one of the worlds largest economies with diversifying growth drivers, we believe China presents exciting investment opportunities to global investors.
Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.
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Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
Wells Fargo cant catch a break after revelations that it opened 2 million unauthorized customer accounts. States are falling over themselves to withdraw their business from the embattled bank. Its CEO, John Stumpf, was forced to step down. And now it has list its accreditation with the Better Business Bureau.The BBB stripped Wells Fargos accreditation following the banks settlement with regulators over the scandal, according to a Charlotte Observer report. The government penalties pushed the bank below the B rating the minimum required to retain accreditation. The bank currently has a C- rating, according to the Observer.Tom Bartholomy, president of the Better Business Bureau of the Southern Piedmont, told the Observer that Wells Fargos loss of accreditation was quite remarkable. He said that in his 34 years with the BBB, the bank is the largest company hes seen have its accreditation revoked.On its website, the BBB states that the banks accreditation was revoked due to government action(s) against the business, including the September settlement that included a $100 million fine from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Bartholomy told the Observer that the governments actions will remain on the banks BBB record for three years.Theres nothing they can do to cure this, so theyre going to be out for at least a three-year period of time, he said.Wells Fargo said in a statement that it would continue to work hard to restore our customers trust.
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ODESSA Seeing strength in numbers, a conglomerate of 40 companies in Mexicos Chihuahua State banded together to form the Chihuahua Energy Initiative.
Were a conglomerate of about 40 companies and we can do about anything, said Humberto Guglielmina with the initiative.
The goal of the cluster is to bring together (different) companies, share costs and share synergies, he said.
He explained that the member companies dont work in the oil and gas industry. Theres no oil in Chihuahua, he pointed out.
But member companies manufacture tanks, well controls and pumping units and are specialists in heat treatment, among other items and services. What one company isnt capable of doing, one of the other companies most likely can, he said.
All are based in Chihuahua State, primarily in the cities of Chihuahua City and Juarez.
Guglielmina said that the companies have expertise in manufacturing products that are used in the oil fields. Member companies hope to supply components for area manufacturers to incorporate into their equipment, he said.
Guglielmina, for example, is chief executive officer of Tanques Especializados de Chihuahua, which was founded in 1994 and designs and manufactures storage tanks for flammable liquids.
These companies joined in the hope it would help them grow and become more successful, said Alejandro Casas, also with the inititive and director of economic development for the State of Chihuahua.
This is the initiatives second time to exhibit at the Permian Basin Oil Show, and Casas said the group received interest from a Midland company that is looking at the initiative to build parts for the company.
This particular cluster was formed three years ago, according to Casas, but business has been slow in large part because of the downturn in the energy industry.
Both Casas and Guglielmina said members of the conglomerate are hopeful business will improve as oil and gas industry activity continues to increase amid rising commodity prices.
Last October the group applauded the signing by Odessa Mayor David Turner of a symbolic tri-sister city agreement between Odessa, Chihuahua City and Los Mochis Sinaloa and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sinaloa.
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Akufo-Addo should have apologised over hardship ...
Statistics show the 2016 fire season has been quieter than recent years.
According to the Associated Press, via information from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, just under five million acres have burned this year, nationally, compared to over 10 million acres last year. 2016 is also below the 10-year average which has been closer to seven million acres charred.
In California, the largest wildfire of 2016 has been the 132,100 acre Sobranes Fire in Monterey County. The largest fire in the Mother Lode this year has been the 1,080 acre Marshes Fire near Chinese Camp.
By comparison, last years Butte Fire in Calaveras and Amador counties charred over 70,800 acres and the 2013 Rim Fire in Tuolumne and Mariposa counties burned over 257,000 acres.
The lighter fire season across the entire West is being partially attributed to heavier precipitation last winter and early snow this Fall across portions of Northern California, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Wyoming.
Areas of southern California still have a notably high fire risk entering the end of October due to dry conditions and heavy winds.
A California man is calling three Bay area nurses heroes after they saved his life on board an airplane.
Three nurses save man onboard plane
The women were traveling back to Tampa from Los Angeles
The man, Gregory Gam, 56, says he plans on traveling to Tampa to thank them
Cassidy Orvik, Jessica Adey and Emily Goodyear were leaving Los Angeles Sunday when a male passenger had a medical emergency.
All three jumped out of their seats to help.
"There was no hesitation on any of our parts, Goodyear said.
We knew this was what we were put here for, Adey said.
Its what we are trained to do, Orvik added.
The nurses gave the man, 56-year-old Gregory Gam, oxygen, started an IV and monitored his vitals for the next few hours. But just before the plane landed in Atlanta, Gam collapsed and didnt have a pulse.
Orvik, Adey and Goodyear sprang into action again.
"[Cassidy] held his head to stabilize it, Adey said. Emily and I somehow lifted him over, call it adrenaline, call it whatever you want.
The two of them lifted a 250 pound man over the seat and into the aisle, Orvik said.
They did CPR and got Gam breathing again until they were back on the ground. Gam was rushed to an Atlanta hospital where he stayed for three days.
"They are angels and I was very lucky that they were on this flight, Gam said.
But the nurses said they were just doing their jobs.
"We are blessed just to be able to serve another person in those unconventional circumstances, but more importantly knowing he is going to wake up with his family another day, Adey said.
Doctors have cleared Gam to fly back to his home in California on Thursday. He said he plans on coming to Tampa to thank the three nurses in person.
While Donald Trump has been relentlessly attacking both Bill and Hillary Clinton as he campaigns for president including going after Bill Clinton's alleged infidelity he was filled with praise for both of them in an exclusive interview with NY1 in 2008.
Donald Trump praised Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton in 2008 interview
The interview aired on NY1 News after the 2008 presidential election
Trump on Hillary Clinton: "Hillary is a very smart woman, very tough woman"
"I think Bill Clinton was a great president," Trump said in the interview that was conducted shortly after the 2008 presidential election.
"You know, you look at the country then. The economy was doing great. Look at what happened during the Clinton years. I mean we had no war, the economy was doing great, everybody was happy. A lot of people hated him because they were jealous as hell," Trump said.
Asked about Hillary Clinton, Trump said: "Hillary is a very smart woman, very tough woman. That's fine. She's also a very nice person, and I know Hillary, and I know her husband very well. They're fine people."
NY1 looked deeper into its archives Wednesday morning after a CNN reporter begain inquiring about the interview.
Source: ny1.com
The last presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton turned out to be perhaps the hottest and harshest yet.
Third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas
Debate moderator was Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel
Third presidential debate: LIVE FACT-CHECKING
Time on topics, interruptions
Amid heated statements on foreign policy, Wikileaks, the treatment of women, the candidates' charities and taxes, the most shocking may be Trump saying that he would not commit to the result of the election.
"I will look at it at the time. I'm not looking at anything now," Trump said.
Post-debate, the Republican National Committee made it clear that it would respect the will of the American people.
Trump has been telling supporters for weeks that the media and the Clinton campaign are rigging the election in her favor.
Trump says the election is already rigged because Clinton is a criminal and shouldn't be allowed to run.
Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel was the moderator of the third debate in Las Vegas. He used a format similar to the first debate -- six 15-minute segments, each focusing on a different topic:
Debt and entitlements
Immigration
Economy
Supreme Court
Foreign hot spots
Fitness to be president
However Wallace had trouble stopping the candidates from interrupting each other and keeping time, a problem that continued from previous debates.
Latest Updates
(Associated Press contributed to this section)
11:15 p.m.
The Republican National Committee will accept the results of the general election even if Donald Trump doesn't.
That's according to RNC spokesman Sean Spicer. He says, "We're going to respect the will of the people."
The answer was in response to Trump's refusal during the debate to say whether he would concede if he loses the general election. He said, "I'll keep you in suspense."
He has been railing against the U.S. election system as "rigged" for weeks.
Spicer addressed Trump's explosive comment after the debate. He says it likely won't be an issue because Trump will win.
When pressed, Spicer said, "I cannot speak for what he thinks."
___
11:10 p.m.
Republican senators are saying Donald Trump should accept the results of the presidential election.
The statements came after Trump refused to promise he'd accept defeat on Nov. 8 if Americans choose Hillary Clinton as president.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says "Mr. Trump is doing the party and the country a great disservice" by suggesting the election is rigged.
Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona says Trump's statements are "beyond the pale."
Both senators have long been critical of Trump.
___
10:40 p.m.
Though it was not planned, moderator Chris Wallace gave each candidate a minute to give a closing argument. It gave each candidate a chance to reiterate their biggest talking points and make one last plea to the nation.
Clinton emphasized her experience, talking about seeing the presidency up close and her work to strengthen children and families. She appealed to all Americans, saying everyone from all walks of life was needed to "make our country what it should be."
"We need your talents, your skills, your commitment, your energy and your ambition," Clinton said.
Trump, meanwhile, emphasized his signature campaign slogan, "make America great again," saying we needed to fix our military, take better care of our vets and our law enforcement, and saying he was a better candidate to help the inner cities and minorities.
"We are going to make America strong again, and we are going to make America great. We can't take four more years of Barack Obama," Trump said.
___
10:38 p.m.
Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton is "such a nasty woman."
Trump made the remark while Clinton was talking in the last presidential debate Wednesday about preserving Social Security and Medicare. She says her plan to save both programs would raise Social Security taxes on the wealthy, including her and Trump, "assuming he can't figure out how to get out of it."
As she continued talking Trump interjected, "Such a nasty woman."
Clinton did not react to the comment and instead completed her statement on her plans for Social Security and Medicare.
___
10:37 p.m.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agree: There'll be no "grand bargain" on entitlements.
Both presidential candidates reject the idea of a bipartisan deal to raise taxes and cut benefits to avoid running out of money to fund Social Security and Medicaid in coming decades.
Trump says he will make the economy grow and repeal President Obama's health care law.
Clinton says she'll raise taxes on the wealthy to help fund Social Security. But she says she wants to expand benefits rather than cut them.
___
10:35 p.m.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are sparring over who has the better plan to shrink the national debt and spur the U.S. economy.
Trump is pushing back against a report from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that said his proposed economic policies would grow the national debt. Trump says he would hire experts, and not "political hacks," to negotiate more favorable trade deals.
Trump says under his administration Americans would have more jobs that pay better.
Clinton says Trump's economic plans are geared toward helping the rich while she is focused on helping the middle class, a difference she attributes to Trump's privileged upbringing. Clinton says she takes shrinking the national debt seriously, and none of her new proposals would add to it.
___
___
While the segments may not necessarily be in this order, it may give the candidates a chance to really distinguish themselves on some issues that have not come up as much, including social security and medicare, domestic spending, immigration and the Supreme Court.
"Fitness to be president" will likely be the place for the hot topics that have dominated the media in recent weeks -- from Clinton's Wikileaks and other email issues to Trump's numerous allegations of sexual misconduct.
Also likely to come up in this segment is Trump's recent tactic of saying Democrats are rigging the election for a Clinton win.
Wallace has already made it clear that he will not try to fact check the candidates during the debate. What is not clear is whether Wallace will make sure the candidates stick to answering the questions and keeping time, or whether he will let them go at each other.
Moderators have had a difficult time reining in both candidates, but particularly Trump.
The debate runs for 90 minutes without commercial interruption.
Early and mail-in voting has already begun in many states, including Florida. An estimated 2.2 million people will have already voted by tonight.
Previous Updates
10:30 p.m.
Hillary Clinton says imposing a no-fly zone over Syria can save lives on the ground while speeding the end of the fighting in that country.
She acknowledges in the third and final debate with Donald Trump that enforcing a no-fly zone "would take a lot of negotiation."
Clinton says she thinks "we could strike a deal" and make it clear to Russian and Syrian leaders that "this was the best for people on the ground."
Donald Trump is responding that Clinton would allow potential terrorists into the United States as refugees from Syria.
Clinton counters that she wouldn't allow refugees to immigrate without being properly vetted, but says she also wouldn't close U.S. borders to women and children fleeing war.
___
10:26 p.m.
Donald Trump is again asserting that U.S. involvement in the war-torn city of Aleppo, Syria, is not a worthwhile cause.
Aleppo is the center of the years-long Syrian civil war between President Bashar Assad and rebel forces. Russia is backing Assad.
Trump says Aleppo is a "humanitarian nightmare" but suggests that keeping Assad in power may be better than replacing him, because Assad and Russia both oppose the Islamic State group.
Trump says the United States would be in better shape if it had "done nothing" in Syria.
The United States has protested Russia's bombardment of Aleppo. It says civilians are being slaughtered to prop up Assad's regime.
___
10:25 p.m.
Donald Trump is once again denying that he supported the invasion of Iraq.
Trump said "Wrong" in Wednesday's final presidential debate when Hillary Clinton said he supported the invasion in 2002.
Trump actually offered lukewarm support for invading Iraq before the war began. He's repeatedly and erroneously claimed to have come out against the war before it started, telling Howard Stern in September 2002: "Yeah I guess so," when asked if he would back an invasion.
Clinton says in the debate that anyone questioning what Trump's position was could simply google it and find "dozens of sources" showing he was for it.
Clinton says," He has not told the truth on that position."
___
10:15 p.m.
Donald Trump said a win in the Mosul offensive will be a wonderful thing, but it will be particularly wonderful for Iran, which is taking over Iraq.
Trump says since America has announced its Mosul offensive, the ISIS operatives are gone, because there was no element of surprise.
Clinton says going after the leadership is important but it's also important to take Mosul because of its position near Syria.
"We need to go after the leadership, but we need to get rid of their fighters, their estimated thousands of fighters," Clinton said.
"We need to take back Mosul and then we can take back Raqqa in Syria."
___
10:10 p.m.
Donald Trump is refusing to say whether he will respect the results of the election if he does not win. Instead, he said he will see when he sees the results.
"I will look at it at the time. I'm not looking at anything now," Trump said.
Trump has been telling supporters for weeks that the media and the Clinton campaign are rigging the election in her favor.
Trump says the election is already rigged because Clinton is a criminal and shouldn't be allowed to run.
Clinton said she was appalled by Trump's remarks, calling it part of Trump's pattern of complaining something is rigged when he doesn't win.
"We've been around for 240 years, we've had free and fair elections. We've accepted the outcomes," Clinton said.
___
10:09 p.m.
Donald Trump says the Clinton Foundation is a "criminal enterprise" and is calling on Hillary Clinton to have the foundation return money it's received from countries with repressive human rights regimes. There is no evidence the Clinton Foundation has broken any laws.
Trump also says the Clinton Foundation's work in Haiti was a "disgrace."
Clinton says she is "thrilled" to discuss the foundation's work, and says it is a world-renowned charity that has helped millions of people. She also says there was no improper connection between the foundation's donors and those awarded contracts to help rebuild Haiti after it suffered a devastating earthquake.
___
10:09 p.m.
Donald Trump is suggesting that accusations of his inappropriate behavior with women over the years were started by Hillary Clinton and her "sleazy campaign."
Asked about the many women who have come forward to accuse Trump, the Republican presidential nominee called the accusations "fiction" and blamed Clinton. But he then quickly pivoted.
Trump accused Clinton of deleting her emails while serving as secretary of state to hide potentially disclosing classified information, saying "she's lied hundreds of times to the people, to Congress and to the FBI."
Clinton responded that when Trump "is pushed" on any major issue, he immediately unleashes denials that are bullying and beside the point. Trump responded, "Wrong."
___
10:08 p.m.
Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama paid people to incite violence ahead of his planned rally in Chicago earlier this year.
There's no clear evidence of that.
Trump was referencing secretly record, selectively edited video footage released this week by conservative activist James O'Keefe. Among the footage was a woman who says she was at the Chicago event in March, which Trump canceled because of safety concerns.
The woman, identified as Zulema Rodriguez, has attended several Trump events as a protester. Rodriguez said on the O'Keefe recordings that she was paid to be in Chicago. Federally filed finance reports show she was paid about $1,600 by the campaign at the end of February, before the Chicago rally.
___
10:08 p.m.
Hillary Clinton says Donald Trump "thinks belittling women makes him bigger." And she's accusing him of going after women's "dignity" and "self-worth."
Clinton is making the case against Trump's treatment of women, saying, "I don't think there's a woman anywhere who doesn't know what that feels like."
Clinton's comments come in response to allegations from several women that Trump groped or kissed them without consent. He's denying the charges. But Clinton is noting that he brushed off the remarks by belittling several of the women's appearances.
Trump is denying he suggested some of the women weren't attractive enough to win his attention. But he said of one recently, "believe me, she would not be my first choice."
___
10:07 p.m.
Donald Trump says claims by women who say he groped them have been largely debunked, even though they have not.
Trump is also claiming in Wednesday's debate that he thinks Hillary Clinton's campaign is behind the women coming forward, even though there is no evidence of that, either. Trump says, "I believe she got these people to step forward." He calls the women's stories "lies and fiction." He says, "I don't know those people."
Clinton says, "Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger." She says Trump attacks women's dignity and self-worth and says: "That's who Donald is. I think it's up to us to demonstrate who we are."
___
10:06 p.m.
Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton may have more experience than he does, "but it's bad experience."
He says, "The problem is, you talk, but you don't get anything done, Hillary."
Clinton is responding by comparing her record over the decades to Trump's.
She notes that on the day she was in the White House's situation room during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Trump was hosting the NBC show "Celebrity Apprentice." She says, "I'm happy to compare my 30 years of experience" to Trump's.
___
10:05 p.m.
Donald Trump is back to his usual bluster on the debate stage.
The GOP nominee had largely held his tongue during the first half-hour of Wednesday's final debate, speaking only when called on and not interrupting.
But Trump appears to be sliding back to his usual bluster as he and Hillary Clinton discuss Russia and nuclear weapons.
"Wrong!" he declared at one point, interrupting Clinton.
Later, Clinton said she would "translate" Trump's plan to reform the tax code.
Trump interjected, "You can't."
___
10:02 p.m.
Donald Trump is making a misleading charge that Hillary Clinton will double "your taxes."
Clinton's tax plan would only raise taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent. Even then it would only add 4 percent to the top rate, not double it. She would require people making more than $1 million annually to pay at least 30 percent in federal taxes. She'd also limit some tax deductions.
So the only people whose taxes could be doubled are those making a large amount of money and paying very little in taxes.
Trump has proposed a large across-the-board tax cut. Analysts say he'd actually raise taxes on some single parents because of the structure of the plan.
___
10:02 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is continuing to defend Democratic economic priorities as the way to help the most Americans.
She insists her tax-and-spending priorities would "not add a penny to the debt," because she would raise taxes on top-income earners while investing in programs she says will benefit middle-class Americans and grow the economy.
She says her philosophy is to "invest from the middle out and the ground up, not the top down." She says Republican Donald Trump proposes tax plans tilted toward the wealthiest Americans.
Clinton is also defending President Barack Obama's economic record.
___
10 p.m.
Donald Trump says his plan to boost the economy is to make the United States' rich allies pay more for military support and to renegotiate trade deals. Trump also says he would cut taxes "massively."
Trump is naming several allies he says could afford to pay the U.S. for its spending on defense.
He says, "Saudi Arabia, nothing but money. We protect Saudi Arabia, why aren't they paying?"
The Republican presidential nominee is also criticizing current trade deals, saying he would renegotiate them to get better terms for the U.S. or leave them.
Trump says NAFTA, signed by former President Bill Clinton, was one of the "worst deals ever" and was causing U.S. jobs to flee to Mexico and other countries.
___
9:55 p.m.
Clinton dinged Trump on his use of Chinese steel and overseas production houses for some of his products, in response to his attacks on trade deals.
Clinton accused Trump of "crocodile tears" over closed factories because he is part of the problem.
Trump responded that if Clinton has a problem, she should have stopped him.
"If you say I use steel or I use something else, make it impossible for me to do that, I wouldn't mind," Trump said. "The problem is you talk, but you don't get anything done, Hillary, you don't."
___
9:50 p.m.
The conversation has turned to the economy, with a question on why each candidate's economic growth plan is better than the opponent.
Clinton ticked off a number of aspects to her plan, including a massive investment to expand on infrastructure and advanced manufacturing jobs, investing in clean energy, offering small business help, raising the minimum wage, investing in technical education and apprenticeships, and making public college tuition debt-free.
She hopes to pay for it with a tax increase on the wealthy.
"We are going to have the wealthy pay their fair share," Clinton said. "We are going to have corporations make a contribution than they are now to our country."
Trump said his goal is to bring jobs back to the country.
Trump said the trade deals we have are sucking jobs out. He said he is going to renegotiate and get much better trade deals.
He is, however, avoiding questions about his tax plan, which many economists say would overwhelmingly helps the wealthy.
___
9:45 p.m.
Donald Trump says he "of course" condemns Russia or any other country interfering in the U.S. elections.
Still, he says he doesn't necessarily believe Russia hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign. U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia is behind the hacks.
Trump says Russian President Vladimir Putin is not "my best friend," but says the Russian leader has "outsmarted" Clinton repeatedly. Democrats have slammed Trump for calling Putin a stronger leader than President Barack Obama.
Trump is alleging Clinton has allowed Russia to expand its nuclear weapons.
Clinton, in response, says Trump is "cavalier" about nuclear weapons, pointing to his past statements suggesting more countries should have nuclear power.
The two have repeatedly sparred over Russia's role in the world, with Democrats alleging Trump would strengthen Moscow and Trump saying Clinton is too weak to take on Putin.
___
9:43 p.m.
Donald Trump is disagreeing with U.S. intelligence officials who have concluded that Russia has hacked political emails.
Hillary Clinton notes that some of Donald Trump's foreign policies line up with Russia's and that he's called for Russian hackers to find her emails. She contends that Russia hacked her campaign's emails to help Trump. The emails were recently released through the web site WikiLeaks.
Trump says Clinton has no idea if Russia or someone else was behind the hacks. Clinton counters that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia is the culprit.
___
9:42 p.m.
What is this that the presidential candidates have been talking about?
Oh, it's policy!
So far in this third debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are debating their very different approaches to some of the country's stickiest issues: gun rights, abortion and immigration.
That's a striking turnabout from how the previous two debates have unfolded in their earliest moments. Last time the two met, in St. Louis, the debate moderators began by asking about the increasingly negative tone of the campaign, focusing on a 2005 video of Trump making predatory comments about women.
This time, right off the top in Las Vegas, it was all policy.
There are signs the issues focus may not last: Clinton and Trump have begun sniping at each other about ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
___
9:40 p.m.
Hillary Clinton says Donald Trump "choked" during a meeting with the Mexican president when he failed to bring up his own plan to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it.
Clinton says she voted for border security and believes the U.S. is a country of laws, but also a nation of immigrants.
She said she's against ripping families apart, noting that there are an estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country who have 4 million American-citizen children.
She is portraying Trump's deportation plan as a logistical nightmare, saying it would force a "massive law enforcement presence" and require shipping people from the country in trains and buses.
She says she would push for an immigration reform plan within her first 100 days of office.
___
9:37 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is accusing Donald Trump of employing immigrants in the country illegally.
The Democratic presidential nominee charges that her Republican opponent "exploit(ed) undocumented workers."
Trump is not refuting the charge. He is repeating his promise to deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally if elected. He notes that President Barack Obama has also deported millions of immigrants.
Trump hired a contracting firm that employed immigrants in the country to help build Trump Tower in New York. He settled a related court case out of court.
___
9:32 p.m.
A much more disciplined and restrained Donald Trump is on stage at the third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas.
Trump spent much of the first two debates constantly interrupting rival Hillary Clinton and drawing attention to himself as she spoke with his pacing and animated facial expressions.
This time, Trump is largely waiting to speak until he's asked questions and declining to interrupt even when Clinton accused him of calling for women to be punished if abortions are outlawed.
While Trump did say that during a town hall event, he later issued a statement clarifying that was not his stance.
___
9:30 p.m.
Wallace says immigration is one area where the two candidates could not be more different. He asked each candidate why their plan was right, and their opponent's was bad?
Trump said Clinton's plans for amnesty were a disaster and unfair for the people who waited their chance. Trump pointed to the four mothers he had in the audience of children killed by criminals who were illegal immigrants.
"We have no country if we have no border, Hillary wants open borders," Trump said.
Clinton said she voted border security while in the U.S. Senate, but believes there is a better use for the money than the wall, which Trump reiterated that he wanted. She also condemned Trump's statements calling for mass deportation.
"That is not in keeping with who we are as a nation," Clinton said.
Clinton says it's not open borders that she wants, but she believes getting undocumented workers to come out in the open and put them on the path to citizenship.
___
9:25 p.m.
Donald Trump says he thinks Roe v. Wade will "automatically" be overturned if he is elected because he will appoint justices who oppose abortion rights.
Trump says he is against abortion rights but did not give a straight answer on whether he personally thinks the landmark abortion case should be overturned. He is saying he will appoint justices who would likely do so.
Trump says it would then be up to states to decide whether abortion should remain legal and what restrictions should be placed on it.
Hillary Clinton says she'll strongly defend Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood.
___
9:20 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is criticizing one of the Supreme Court's biggest recent decisions.
Clinton disagrees with the 2008 Heller decision that found the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms for self-defense.
Clinton says she supports the Second Amendment but thinks the court prevented a reasonable attempt to make guns safer. It struck down the District of Columbia's requirements for a trigger lock on all guns.
Republican Donald Trump says this is one of the reasons supporters of the Second Amendment don't trust Clinton.
___
9:15 p.m.
Donald Trump is opening the final presidential debate by promising to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will uphold Second Amendment gun rights, saying it is "under such trauma."
The first question in Wednesday's debate focused on what kind of justices Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton would appoint to the high court.
Trump says he would appoint judges who are "pro-life," have a "conservative bent" and will protect gun ownership rights.
Trump says, "The Supreme Court is what it's all about." He says it's "imperative that we have the right justices."
Trump has released the name of 20 potential nominees to the Supreme Court and has emphasized the high number of potential appointments the next president may make.
Trump also says the Constitution should be interpreted "the way the founders wanted it."
___
9:10 p.m.
Hillary Clinton says she supports a Supreme Court that stands "on the side of the American people" and not the "powerful corporations and the wealthy."
The Democrat's comments were part of her first response in Wednesday night's third and final debate.
The former secretary of state specifically said the nation's high court should not reverse its decisions on abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Clinton said it should, however, reverse its Citizens United decision that allows "dark" money into politics.
She added that the Senate has a responsibility to act on a president's Supreme Court pick.
___
9:05 p.m.
The debate has begun. Chris Wallace of Fox News is making the introductions.
One intro that is not happening is the introduction of the candidates' families. The Clinton campaign said it was put off by Trump's news conference with Bill Clinton's past accusers in the second debate.
There was also no cordial greeting between Clinton and Trump when they took their podiums.
___
8:17 p.m.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are preparing to face off on the debate stage for the final time.
But before the showdown, Trump has issued an invitation to his Facebook page to join his team live at 8:30 p.m. EDT. Before the last debate, Trump appeared on the same platform with three women who have accused rival Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, of sexual assault. The former president has denied the accusations. Trump then sat the women in the debate hall.
At Wednesday's final debate, Trump was expected to bring a woman who has accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, the mother of a man who was killed in the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi and President Barack Obama's half-brother.
Clinton guests include CEO Mark Cuban, basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
For now, at least, Clinton has a significant lead in most polls. Trump's team says he's planning to be aggressive on the debate stage.
___
8:02 p.m.
Billionaire businessman and leading Donald Trump critic Mark Cuban is making the rounds at the third presidential debate in Las Vegas, and Hillary Clinton's campaign insists their high-profile guest is not here to troll the Republican nominee.
Clinton's communications chief Jen Palmieri called Cuban "a very accomplished, serious business leader in our country." And she touted him as "one of our most effective advocates" who "makes a really strong case for why Hillary Clinton will be a great president."
Palmieri says Clinton has no regrets about inviting Cuban to the first debate, and says it has nothing to do with Trump's invitation list for the second debate. Trump invited three women who have accused former president Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and other misdeeds. His guests in Las Vegas include President Barack Obama's half-brother.
Palmieri says "however Donald Trump chooses to react is his choice," and she argues that the Trump campaign "telegraphed well in advance of the debates" their intention to take a "nasty turn" in the campaign.
___
7:58 p.m.
Donald Trump's spokesman says Hillary Clinton will have an opportunity during the debate to apologize to the mother of a man who was killed in the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller says the Republican nominee will press the issue whether the debate moderator asks about it or not. Miller made the comments Wednesday in an interview shortly before the debate.
Trump's campaign confirmed that its guests inside the debate hall would include Pat Smith, whose son was an IT consultant killed in the deadly Benghazi attacks. Smith has accused Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, of lying to her about what sparked the violence.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.
Time on topics, interruptions
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Here's the Central Florida weather forecast for Wednesday night and the weekend ahead:
Cold front moving into the area
Weekend temps down about 10 degrees
Little, if any rain, over next 7 days
SEE BELOW: See the 7-day forecast
Tonight will become mostly clear and dry, with temperatures getting down into the mid 60s for most areas of Central Florida. Thursday will be quite nice, but warm.
Highs will be above normal by a few degrees again, topping out in the mid 80s under a partly cloudy sky.
Then, get ready for our first real taste of fall.
A cold front will be pushing through the state from the north by Friday, sending our temperatures down by almost 10 degrees from where we have been lately. Until then, our temperatures will remain slightly above normal Thursday and Friday.
Lows will be mostly in the mid to upper 60s with highs in the mid to upper 80s. Late Friday afternoon, dry air will begin to infiltrate, scouring out the clouds as the humidity falls.
High temperatures this weekend are expected to be in the 70s, with lows dipping into the 50s. Little, if any, rain is in the forecast for the next seven days.
We are still tracking a tropical wave, dubbed Invest 99, east of the Bahamas that could have formation in a couple of days.
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Surfing conditions are still set to be poor for Thursday with wave heights a bit lower, from 4-5 feet. The rip current threat is still high and is expected to stay high through the week.
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LUBBOCK Good late-summer rains improved conditions for cotton in the Rolling and High Plains regions of Texas and likely mean an above-average crop for 2016, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service experts.
Dr. Seth Byrd, AgriLife Extension cotton agronomist, Lubbock, said cotton harvests in two top cotton producing regions began on a small scale a few weeks ago but should ramp up soon. So far, the cotton fields there look better than expected.
Producers had low expectations for dryland fields because of a hot, dry July, but they seem happy with where the crop is at this point, he said.
Byrd said leaf grades, which are determined by the amount of plant material left in lint, was a big issue last year. With about 4,000 bales ginned, Byrd said this years small sampling of cotton showed leaf grades in the 2-3 range.
Its pretty clean cotton so far, he said.
Dr. Gaylon Morgan, AgriLife Extension state cotton specialist, College Station, visited the Rolling Plains last week and said overall, fields represented one of the better crops theyve had in quite some time.
They caught some more timely rains than previous years and the dryland crop looks like it could be 25 percent better than average, especially in the Northern Rolling Plains.
Not enough cotton had been harvested to give a good indication about fiber quality, Morgan said.
He said there were issues with weather, pests and diseases. Hail storms led to substantial damage for isolated fields, and stink bugs surprised producers by the amount of damage they caused in some areas. Bacterial blight also impacted production in some of the northern tier counties of the Rolling Plains.
Byrd and Morgan said irrigated fields looked very good and the rainfall also reduced irrigation costs. Morgan estimated 10-15 percent of dryland fields were defoliated, while irrigated and lateplanted fields still had a significant number of green bolls.
Morgan said temperatures were at or above 90 degrees and were expected to remain in the region for a while before cooler temperatures return. Fields in the Rolling Plains were planted later than usual due to late May rains, and fields in the High Plains, which are typically harvested late, could be later than usual also.
There remains some concern of frost for some late maturing cotton, Byrd said.
Theyll be up against a freeze at some point but weather the past two weeks and the forecast for the near future is perfect for maturing cotton, he said.
AgriLife Extension district reporters compiled the following summaries:
SOUTH PLAINS: Conditions were warm and dry for most of the district. Some areas experienced cool damp conditions for a few days. Topsoil and subsoil moisture levels in Cochran County were still adequate. Peanut, corn and sorghum harvests continued. Cotton continued to mature. Producers were defoliating most area cotton fields. Cotton harvests were kicking off in some areas, and the moisture was enough to keep farmers out of the fields for a few days. The average yield for irrigated cotton was expected to be three to four bales per acre. Planting of winter wheat continued. Pastures and rangeland continued to improve with the recent moisture, and cattle were in good condition. Rain was received in some areas. Floyd County received anywhere from 0.3 to 0.8 inch of rain, and Lubbock County reported 0.4 inch to 1.7 inches. Corn and sorghum were still maturing. Wheat could use rain.
PANHANDLE: The district reported above-average temperatures. Weather was very cool and windy. Some moisture was received. Measurements were from 0.5-1 inch of rain. Soil moisture was mostly adequate. Deaf Smith County producers were close to wrapping up corn harvests. Yield reports were all over the board. Some producers reported very low to average yields while some were above average. Producers blamed low yields on the July heat wave. Sugarcane aphids were still causing problems in area sorghum fields with many producers applying second and third applications of insecticides. Winter wheat planting was ongoing with some of the earlier plantings emerging. Some wheat was irrigated, and cattle were placed on some for grazing. Insect and disease pressures were plaguing some area wheat plantings. Producers will replant some fields. Silage harvests were wrapping up. Hansford County corn harvests were under way. Corn was making around 250 bushels per acre and under. Some late-planted corn could be very late maturing. Soybean harvests started, and yields were better than expected. A few milo fields were harvested, but some fields need a freeze to mature. Randall County was unseasonably warm with daytime temperatures in the lower 80s. Cattle remained in good to fair shape. Rangeland and pastures were mostly fair to good but continued to decline.
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Although Halloween is still 12 days and Thanksgiving is more than a month away, the Plainview Chamber of Commerce is looking ahead to Christmas.
To be specific, the Chamber is looking at kicking off the holiday season on the first Thursday of December, which is Dec. 1. Thats the date for the annual Christmas Parade of Lights, sponsored by the Chamber.
At Tuesdays Chamber Board meeting, Chamber Executive Director Linda Morris reported that plans are moving forward for this years event, with a theme of A Texas Christmas.
Were changing up the route a little, particularly where it starts in Broadway Park, Morris told directors. We always have a bottleneck there, with parents wanting to drive as close as they can to drop off children to ride on the floats, while at the same time we are trying to line up parade entries. Last year we had more than 60 entries, and we expect to have at least that many or more this year.
In an attempt to ease traffic congestion, there will be designated areas for parents to drop off children to load onto floats before floats are brought into the parade staging area. Parking will be prohibited in staging area.
We plan to block off entrances into the park since weve had problems in the past with people dropping children at the floats, then having trouble finding their way out, Morris said. Well need extra help to get that accomplished, but it should make getting the parade lined up much easier.
Looking farther ahead, Vice President Tim Hardage, who presided Tuesday in the absence of President Bobby Hall, announced that the annual Chamber of Commerce Recognition Banquet is Feb. 23. During the banquet, Plainviews Man and Woman of the Year will be recognized. Nominations open Jan. 1. The program has not yet been announced.
Shane Harrell, who serves as both program and curriculum director of Leadership Plainview, introduced members of the 33rd Leadership Plainview Class. There are 14 members.
Morris reported that the Chamber ended its fiscal year on Sept. 30 with a net profit of $1,541 against a projected loss of $10,500. Actual expenses during 2015-16 for the non-profit was $131,384 against budgeted expenses of $135,643. Actual income was $132,925 against budgeted income of $125,144.
Looking ahead, Morris reported that Express Employment agreed to be corporate sponsor of Lemonade Day, including the $2,500 franchise fee. Morris added that the cost of the 2017 fireworks show is unchanged from $14,000 in 2016. In 2017, it will be held Tuesday, July 4.
Jordan Dunlap, a Leadership Plainview participant, is the newest member of the Chamber Ambassadors. That group is planning two upcoming ribbon cuttings, at the new Plainview Dodge in early January and at the new NAPA collision center, Texas Collision Worx, at 10th and I-27 in the former Willson & Son Lumber location.
The next Business After Hours is Tuesday, Dec. 6, at Centennial Bank.
Melinda Brown, Main Street manager, reported that her group will host the Texas Plains Trails quarterly meeting on Thursday at the Fair Theatre and is being considered to host the groups annual conference in August. The Texas Plains Trail promotes tourism in the upper 52 counties in the Texas Panhandle-South Plains.
Brown added that the annual Downtown Trick or Treat event will be held Friday, Oct. 28, with Halloween-themed movies shown at the Fair Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 29.
Main Street will help stage the Turkey Trot event on Nov. 11, and 12 Days of Christmas events are planned during December, beginning with the Christmas Parade on Dec. 1 and culminating with movie night on Dec. 23.
Mike Fox, executive director of the Plainview/Hale County Economic Development Corporation, reported meeting recently with representatives of BNSF concerning a new wind energy prospect needing rail capacity. Fox also has met with a prospect seeking a site for a logistics center along the Ports to Plains corridor. He also is following up on an ag-related prospect forwarded by the High Ground of Texas. It also wants to be situated on the Ports to Plains Corridor and has a requirement for 100 acres of land with irrigation. The prospect would initially employ 80 to 100, eventually going to about 250.
Fox said the Plainview Business Park Steering Committee has met with the consulting firm of Parkhill Smith and Cooper, and will soon tour other business parks before finalizing local development plans.
PHCEDC has awarded a $10,000 grant for the development of a culinary program through the Plainview High School CTE Department.
Fox added that the Hilton Hotel Project is on track to begin the process of converting the vacant structure into the Conrad Loft Apartments. MRE Capital, project developer, is now awaiting historic approvals before the work can begin.
Earlier in the meeting, Wayland Baptist University junior Maddie Murphree of Friona was introduced as the Chamber Student of the Month for October and Area Community Hospice, Inc., was introduced as Business of the Month.
Almost 50 years ago, from 1967 until at least 1971, two Plainview Herald staff members, David Bryant and Mike Wall, operated a photo studio Bryant-Wall Photography -- as a sideline business.
Their studio was located at 300 N. Broadway, offering portrait and wedding services as well as colorization, enlargements and photofinishing. For a time Wall lived on the premises, literally sleeping in a box.
Bryant was Herald news editor when he died April 15, 1973, as his Chevy Blazer suffered a direct hit from a killer tornado as the vortex churned across US Hwy 70 after knifing a wide path through the heart of Westridge. The savage storm continued its deadly course through the northwestern edge of Plainview, bouncing along both sides of Interstate 27. It claimed the life of another Plainview resident, a young boy, while injuring dozens more before lifting into the clouds.
Bryant was just 30 years old when he died.
Wall died 10 years later, in 1983, not long after suffering a major heart attack. Age 40 when he died, Wall was owner and publisher of the Hart Beat newspaper. His widow, Neoma Wall Williams, continues to edit and publish that newspaper, which now operates under the name of The Pulse.
Recently, Neoma Williams located a large collection of negatives and proofs from the Bryant-Wall Photography studio long forgotten in the attic of the rural Hart residence she shares with her husband, retired Castro County Sheriffs Deputy Don Williams. Shes given some of the negatives to Hart area residents who were the subjects of those long-ago photo sessions, or those related to people shown in the ghostly negatives. She took other images to Llano Estacado Museum for historic preservation. Some she passed along to Gordon Zeigler for distribution. Zeigler, a Herald retiree, worked with both Bryant and Wall and shares their passion for photography.
Last week, Neoma Williams -- Herald correspondent for Hart -- brought almost 50 packages of negatives to the Herald seeking the papers help in distributing the images and proofs to those pictured in the negatives or to their relatives. The negatives are available for pickup, free of charge, at The Herald. (None will be mailed.)
A list of names, listed addresses, and date, when available, includes:
--Bundy H. Campbell, Matador, 1969
--Andrea Day, 2309 Norma, 1969
--Buddy Harris, 2213 Independence, 1969
--Mrs. Claude Matney, Matador, 1967
--Mrs. A.J. Keenum, Hale Center, 1969
--Winnie Karrh
--Royce Durhum, Kress, 1969
--Bill Davis, Hale Center, 1969
--Buck Meinzer, 1970
--Kemp
--Mrs. A.H. Weiber, Kress, 1970
--Mrs. W.E. Thomas, Plainview, 1969
--Royce Durham, 1969
--Linda Dye, Plainview
--A.H. Wieber, Kress, 1968
--Sheriffs Office (tire tracks)
--Alexander
--Miss Plainview, 1970
--Dyone Patridge, 1970
--Gary Jennings, 1305 W. 32nd, 1969
--Katie (Cecil) Turner, 1969
--James, 2013 W. 21st, 1969
--Kathy Urbank, 1969
--Linda Watson (Mrs. Joe Barton), 1970
--Erma Jordan, Mays Hall, Wayland, 1969
--Shelley Hegi, 210 W. Crestway, 1969
--Shirley Hudgins, 112 SE Ninth
--Tommy Villanueva, 1003 Houston 1969
--R.E. McMinn, Hale Center, 1970
--Hortensia Martinez, 213 Austin, 1970
--Vickie Turner
--Lita Goree, Olton Route
--Bobbie Weekes c/o Melvin Weber, 1210 Zephyr, 1969
--Glenda Spoommau, 1969
--Roy Sherman, 2008 Independence, 1969
--Mary Ann Stephens
--Bill Matsler c/o Ernest Matsler, 1318 Navajo, 1969
--Rainbow Girls c/o Mrs. Gay Shea, 1300 Floyudada, 1970
--Heritage Home (portraits of elderly residents), 1969
--Mary Soucy, Southwest 10th, 1969
--Chris Schimmels
--Beth Jones, 124 SE Ninth, 1969
--Mrs. Betty Joe Crow (Judge Abernethy portrait), 1970
--Linda White, 2217 Joliet, 1970
--J.O. Vardy, 804 Joliet, 1969
--Sue Turvaville, 914 W. 26th, 1969
A man in a wheelchair detonated a pipe bomb inside an east Oakland health clinic Tuesday night, according to authorities, who believe his intent was to commit suicide.
Oakland police said the explosion occurred at 6:26 p.m. inside the San Antonio Neighborhood Health Clinic, 1030 International Blvd.
A divided Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to donate $100,000 to help Italy recover from the devastating earthquake there in August.
Proponents said giving the money was part of a long and proud tradition of the city helping other cities and countries in need. Opponents said the money should be spent on San Francisco residents.
The 7-4 vote largely split on political lines, with moderate Scott Wiener joining his progressive colleagues to support the donation.
Central Italy was hit by a 6.4-magnitude earthquake on Aug. 24. More than 290 people died.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced the measure to send money to Italy.
San Francisco has a proud tradition of being the beneficiary of largesse from other cities and countries during our times of need, Peskin said before the vote.
Yesterday is the 27th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake and countries from all over the world came to San Franciscos rescue, including Italy. Since then we have from time to time come to the aid of cities throughout the world that have been devastated by earthquakes.
But Supervisor Mark Farrell said the money should be spent at home.
The city of San Francisco should not be in the business of providing financial relief for natural disasters around the world, Farrell said after the vote.
What about the Syrian refugee crisis or the ISIS bombings in Europe over the summer? he asked. Its a slippery slope that has no end. Our focus should be on the residents and neighborhoods of San Francisco, plain and simple.
San Francisco has a history of donating to countries and cities that have experienced natural disasters.
Peskin said that in 1999 the city gave $250,000 to Taipei, Taiwan, following the earthquake there, and in 2001 donated $100,000 apiece to the Salvadorian Emergency Committee and the Indo-American Trade and Commerce Councils Gujarat Earthquake Relief Fund for earthquake relief efforts.
Supervisor Malia Cohen, who voted against the $100,000 gift to Italy, said the city should develop guidelines for when to donate money and how much.
Perhaps we develop a process for us to vet how much money and what type of natural disaster warrants a contribution from the city and county of San Francisco, Cohen said.
Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen
Michael Bodley
San Francisco police were searching Tuesday afternoon for a shooter in the city's Excelsior District near a high school campus after a person was injured by gunfire, officials said.
One victim was hurt in the shooting near the City Arts and Technology High School and the June Jordan School for Equity, which share a campus, police said.
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ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) Americans are apparently still hot for home-delivered pizza: Domino's Pizza posted a jump in sales in the last quarter, even as other fast-food companies have reported weaker sales growth.
Domino's also reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and revenue, and its shares jumped to an all-time high Tuesday.
Rivals McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King have blamed weaker-than-expected growth on cheaper groceries, political uncertainty and other factors, but Domino's didn't report any of those problems Tuesday. It said that sales at U.S. stores open at least a year considered an important measure of a retailer's health rose 13 percent in the last quarter from the year before. That's above the 8 percent rise analysts had expected, according to FactSet.
The company's year-old loyalty program "significantly" increased orders, Domino's Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Lawrence, said in a conference call with investors and Wall Street analysts. Customers earn a free pizza after they spend a certain amount on online orders.
Easy online ordering may also be helping. Paul Westra, an analyst at Stifel, said in a note to clients that Domino's is in the "forefront" of how Americans want to order and pay for food. Beginning last month, for example, customers could order a pizza through Facebook's Messenger app. Before that, users could text or tweet a pizza emoji to Domino's to send in their order. In April, it launched a no-click smartphone app that automatically orders when the app is opened.
For the quarter that ended Sept. 11, the company posted net profit of $47.2 million, or 96 cents per share, up from $37.8 million, or 67 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue rose 17 percent to $566.7 million in the period. Both earnings and revenue beat Wall Street expectations, according to Zacks.
Shares of Domino's Pizza Inc., based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, rose $10.99, or 7.2 percent, to $163 in afternoon trading Tuesday. Earlier, the stock touched an all-time high of $163.73.
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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on DPZ at http://www.zacks.com/ap/DPZ
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Keywords: Domino's Pizza, Earnings Report
Two big announcements from Pugel's, the home of some of the city's best hot dogs: They're adding breakfast soon and bringing on hot dog auteur Kris Martinez of RockerDogz.
We received the news from John Pugel, owner of his namesake restaurant on 3502 N. St Mary's St, and the Original San Antonio Hot Dog House, at 1218 W. Bitters Road.
GREENWICH As a filmmaker who captured some of the most searing images of the 9/11 attacks on lower Manhattan, Jules Naudet has witnessed the ways in which people endure terrible mental trauma himself included.
Some have moved on from that catastrophic date, mostly sound of mind, while others came away permanently scarred, he told a class of Greenwich High School students Tuesday morning.
Naudet, a Stamford resident, shared his unique perspective on the capacity of the mind to cope with terrifying ordeals with Advanced Placement psychology students.
His documentary, 9/11, which Naudet made with his brother Gedeon, riveted a national television audience when it aired in 2002. It was screened for the students in psychology teacher Neal Schopicks class prior to the filmmakers visit.
Naudet recounted the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as he followed firefighters from a lower Manhattan firehouse as they faced the worst disaster of their lives. He spoke in particular of the psychological impact that the disaster had on the men he observed that day, and in the period that followed it.
The worst was not necessarily that day, but in the weeks and months after, said Naudet, a native of France who became a U.S. citizen.
The time-honored tradition of the firehouse go to the basement with a bottle of whiskey and talk was eventually superseded by more sophisticated forms of therapy, in a sometimes haphazard process.
Most of the guys are OK, some are not, said Naudet, who has stayed close with many of the firefighters he befriended while making the documentary about the New York City Fire Department in 2001. The ones who shut down, theyre the ones who did the worst. ... The ones who are more open, who took something out of it and moved forward, are the ones doing OK.
Naudet spoke of the remorse many firefighters experienced after 9/11, the unsettling sensation that they had survived by often arbitrary and inexplicable twists of fate.
Guilt comes in many forms: survivor guilt, thinking you did not do enough, or not being up to the standard, the filmmaker said. You obsess about it and analyze and over-analyze. It doesnt lead to good places.
As to his own experience on 9/11, which he told in meticulous detail, Naudet recalled a whirlwind of emotions, from horror and disbelief, to sorrow, anger and relief. His work as a filmmaker kept him going.
I came there for a job, and it gave me a defense mechanism. I was looking at a little screen (on the camera). It was a way to detach myself from the horrors that were going on around me, he recalled. As he continued to work on the 9/11 documentary, he was grounded by his work and a conviction to see the project completed. The job helped him keep depression and anguish away.
A successful career as a documentary filmmaker has followed Naudets Sept. 11, which originated in a story about a rookie firefighters first months on the job before it turned into a much bigger subject. His films have included works on counter-terrorism, the lives of spiritual leaders and ongoing projects about firefighters who served on 9/11.
Naudet still has some bad moments, as when he was leading a group of French firefighters around the 9/11 museum. In one room, audiotapes of firefighter communications were being broadcast, and Naudet heard a voice he recognized from the past. It brought me back to that day. The trauma never really goes away, he said.
The filmmaker said the determination of the firefighters and others he witnessed that day also stayed with him, and gave him hope. One of the things that sticks with me the most even with evil incarnate, that makes you lose all faith in humanity I saw the best rise out of those shadows. I saw firefighters and civilians teaming up to help each other, I saw something amazing, the resiliency of the human spirit. When the worst comes, the best will rise up next to it, he said.
Asked by a student about what people should learn from his traumatic experience, Naudet said, You find something positive from it, and cling to that. Not to dwell on the past, but take lessons for the future. Bad things will happen in life, you learn from them and grow from them.
A junior whose father died in the Sept. 11, attacks, Joe Lenihan, approached Naudet after the class to thank him for the presentation.
Its great that you did this, he said. Its a first-hand account. And the best in humanity, thats something you can take away from something like this.
Lenihan, whose father Joseph A. Lenihan died at the age of 41, said he was appreciative that young people his age who have no memory of the 9/11 attacks could learn from Naudets words and films about the event in an immediate way.
Schopick, the psychology teacher, called the lecture a success. It makes it real, what post traumatic stress is, what happened that day, it brings it to life, he said. Its so much more meaningful to hear it from them, people who were there. It allows us to know it on a more personal level.
Robert.Marchant@scni.com
DANBURY - Former Latin Kings gang member Alex Garcia was sentenced to 30 years in prison Wednesday for shooting a motorist in a case of mistaken identity on Interstate 84 more than 15 years ago.
Mark Rebong was driving his Jeep Cherokee to work in January 2000 when he fell victim to a gang war that had erupted weeks earlier in the city between the Crips and the Latin Kings.
Garcia was also in a car on Interstate 84 that night, along with a high-ranking official with the Latin Kings who mistook Rebong as a member of the Crips. The official ordered Garcia to shoot his rifle at Rebongs car. Rebong was shot in the head and died from the wound.
The case had gone cold for more than a decade, but investigators with the State Police reopened the case about a year ago, interviewing former gang members in the hopes of turning up new evidence.
Garcia, a former Latin King who was already serving a 40-year sentence for another shooting, eventually confessed to the crime after several interviews with investigators.
(Rebong) was a completely innocent man who was tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time, court documents state. Marks parents spent the next 15 years heartbroken and without explanation as to why their son was murdered.
U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly noted during the sentencing hearing Wednesday that Rebong was not a member of either gang or involved in any criminal activity.
In a reckless act of brutal violence, this defendant murdered an innocent young man who was driving to work, Daly said. I commend the investigators from the Danbury police, State Police and DEA who never stopped searching for Marks killer until he was finally brought to justice. Hopefully the Rebong family, who showed patience and courage and dignity throughout this ordeal, have found a measure of solace in this result.
Garcia was given a 30 year prison sentence that will run concurrently to his existing sentence.
dperrefort@newstimes.com
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BRIDGEPORT Former Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch said his mother, along with his late father, taught him and his three siblings the meaning of hard work and sacrifice.
Just that whole Greatest Generation ethic, Finch said Wednesday.
Margaret Cole Finch, Marge, of Bridgeport, died Saturday at St. Vincent's Medical Center with her family by her side. She was 85.
The ex-mayors father, William Bill Finch, a World War II veteran, died in July 2014 at 89.
If it werent for those two, I never would have been mayor, Finch said. He served from 2007 until 2015, and now heads the New York State Thruway Authority and Canal Corp.
Finchs parents adopted him when he was 4 months old. He was their first child. The couple went on to have three more children Elizabeth Berry, Edward Finch and Rosemary Yost.
Finch said he was never treated any differently than his natural-born siblings.
I was just one of the four, he said. But he added there is a special affection between an adopted child and his parents.
They got you off the shelf and picked you out, Finch said, adding, She was very loyal to me.
According to her death notice, Margaret Finch was born in New Haven on Oct. 19, 1930. She was a daughter of the late Edward F. Cole and Gertrude Enscoe Cole, and was a longtime resident of Trumbull and Bridgeport. Before her retirement, Margaret Finch was a teller at Fleet Bank.
Finch recalled his mother being very frugal and carefully setting aside money in envelopes for certain expenses, like new shoes for her children. The family refrigerator was off limits without parental permission.
One of the things that got me through tough budgets was asking people to do more with less, Finch said. Thats where that came from.
He said the family was poor growing up, but the children never knew it because of how careful his mother was with money.
Her death notice also said, Marge was well known for many years as a school volunteer, band parent and elected member of several school Parent Teacher Associations over many years of her children's education. She was active in civic affairs and encouraged her children to be involved.
Besides Bill Finch and his sisters and brother, Margaret Finch left behind nine grandchildren, a great grandson, a sister, a brother and many nieces and nephews.
Relatives and friends may greet the family on Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Abriola Parkview Funeral Home, 419 White Plains Road, Trumbull. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Stephen Church, 6948 Main St., Trumbull. Interment will follow in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Trumbull.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Catholic Charities of Fairfield County.
Finch said he is grateful his mother and father lived long lives.
We had them for the better part of a century, Finch said. How lucky are we?
GREENWICH The Greenwich Harbor Management Commission is meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in the Mazza Room in Town Hall, where they will have copies of the revised Harbor Management Plan to distribute to those in attendance.
At the Sept. 21 meeting, the commission said they would bring copies of the plan complete with revisions done based on feedback from the state to this meeting, and those who wanted one would be able to get it.
SCHENECTADY A jury took less than three hours Wednesday to reject the insanity defense of former mixed martial arts fighter James Hilton and convict him of brutally attacking a Schenectady police officer last year.
The panel of nine women and three men convicted Hilton, 33, of Lake George of all counts, including felony assault-on-a-police-officer charges that carry up to 15 years in prison at his Dec. 2 sentencing by acting Supreme Court Justice Frank Milano.
An Iraq war veteran and father of three young children, Hilton did not deny he attacked Patrolman Mark Weekes, striking him 28 times and fracturing his skull on Aug. 1, 2015. Hilton and his lawyer, Lincy Jacob, argued Hilton was not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect better known as the insanity defense during an "out-of-body experience."
The defense needed to prove Hilton lacked substantial capacity to appreciate his actions and could not distinguish between right and wrong. The jury was unmoved, convicting Hilton of the assaulting a police officer charge, another felony assault charge, strangulation and disorderly conduct.
"I'm glad that he's finally being held responsible for his actions," Weekes, 31, himself an Iraq war veteran, told the Times Union after the verdict.
Weekes was in court for the trial, accompanied by his girlfriend.
On Monday, Hilton, who served in the Marines, testified that he was in Iraq for 10 months and witnessed a soldier accidentally blow himself up and die. His defense was based on the argument that he suffers from episodic psychosis, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
But Jacqueline Bashkoff, a forensic psychologist testifying for the prosecution earlier in the week, said: "He does not suffer from any type of psychiatric disorder which would mitigate or excuse his blameworthiness at the time of the commission of this crime. He understood his actions and the consequences and he understood that the behaviors he engaged in were wrong."
On the night of the attack, Hilton was out with friends and drunk and was singing in a traffic cone when patrolman stopped him. Hilton testified he complied with the officer's attempt to arrest him but went into the "out-of-body experience" when the officer grabbed his wrist and tried to wrench his arm behind his back.
Hilton attacked the officer, ran away and hid in a trash bin, where city police arrested him. Hilton later told a Schenectady detective: "Nobody puts their hands on me. I don't care who they are, even an officer of police."
The interview was played for the jury.
Assistant District Attorney Christina Tremante-Pelham discredited the testimony of defense expert witness Lawrence Avery, a local psychologist who examined Hilton and said he believes the defendant was "probably psychotic" at the time he assaulted the patrolman. Hilton has a past misdemeanor arson conviction.
Jacob declined to comment after the verdict. Tremante-Pelham said a juror told her, after the verdict, that the jury appreciated how Weekes tried to "de-escalate the situation" when he approached Hilton.
"Which I think was telling to Mark's character and I think that made a big impact with the jury," Tremante-Pelham said. "Mark gave (Hilton) a chance, tried to de-escalate ... the defendant was just not going to comply with his authority and literally took it to the next level and severely injured him."
Weekes, when asked, said it was tough hearing parts of the testimony. But he said the good support he has received from fellow officers and the community at large has outweighed the bad. He thanked Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney's office.
"The quick verdict shows that the jury didn't think much of the psychiatric evidence," Carney said. Borrowing a line that Tremante-Pelham used in her summation, the district attorney said, "Whether or not he has PTSD ... that's no license to commit assault."
On this date in ...
1916: The police of Albany and Rensselaer were looking for $200 worth of brass parts of the fire apparatus belonging to the Citizen Hose Company of Clinton Heights that were stolen by a person or people with a key to the building. The missing parts included valves, a nozzle (that was cut from a hose), a compressed air whistle that was on the building and all the brass parts of the machine.
1966: Guilderland would cut speed limits on some town roads if it got voter approval to transfer to suburban town status in November, Supervisor Carl Walters said, explaining that it could not do so under the present town law. He also said the town would set up a reserve fund for capital projects, if the status change was voted upon.
1991: A downstate retailer said it was moving into the long-vacant Toys for Joy building in the Shoporama Shopping Center on Altamont Avenue in Rotterdam. US Factory Outlets Inc. of New York City signed a 10-year lease for 33,000 square feet of space a deal worth $2 million for the New Jersey-based owners of the 30-year-old shopping plaza. Shoporama was hit hard 21 months earlier when one of its largest tenants, Toys for Joy, closed its doors. The 120,000-square-foot shopping plaza at 1300 Altamont Ave. was also hit by the closure of Carl's in early 1991.
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/
For the latest events and activities happening in Greenwich, turn to For the Record. To have your event included, submit a description, date, time, price and contact information. Photos are welcome. Drop us an email about your latest goings-on at gtcitydesk@scni.com.
Investment and Portfolio management workshop
A series of workshops to build financial literacy and investment savvy continues at Greenwich Library, 101 West Putnam Ave. The remaining workshops are slated for 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday and Oct. 27. Open to all at no charge. For more information, visit www.greenwichlibrary.org/business or contact Assistant Business Librarian Yang Wang at ywan@greenwichlibrary.org.
Special Evening of Hope
YWCA Greenwich will host a Special Evening of Hope 6:30 p.m. Thursday to honor survivors of domestic violence and light candles of hope for the future. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. 239 East Putnam Ave. For more information, visit www.ywcagreenwich.org/seminars-raising-awareness
Library hosts job-seeking help
Help is available for completing resumes and job applications at the Greenwich Library Technology Training Center. Drop in from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday at the library. For more information, contact Training Center staff at trainingcenter@greenwichlibrary.org, call 203-625-6508, or visit www.greenwichlibrary.org/training.
Open skating dates
The Old Greenwich Civic Center, 90 Hardig Road, Old Greenwich, is holding open roller skating from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Fridays. Admission is $10 and includes rental skates. Upcoming skating dates are: Oct. 21 and 28.
CTPlaymakers to perform
The CT Playmakers will present a musical revue, Callbacks, featuring Broadway, jazz and pop favorites on Oct. 21, 22, 28 and 29 at the Albertson Memorial Church, 293 Sound Beach Ave. Tickets are $25. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. To buy tickets, visit CTPlaymakers.org or call 203-561-5247.
Oktoberfest at St. Lawrence Society
Bratwurst, beer and other German delights will be featured at the St. Lawrence Societys Oktoberfest at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the club, 86 Valley Road. For tickets or to RSVP, call 203-918-9036.
Free Pizza
Steven Fox Jewelry will host a pop-up cafe with free pizza from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday in front of the store at 22 Lewis Street to raise awareness about Greenwich-based Kids in Crisis. Pizza will be provided by New Haven Pizza Truck. A raffle drawing for Pommelato earrings, valued at $6,000, will take place as part of the event.
Artist exhibit
The work of local artist Lindy Blanchard, Old World, New World, will be on display at the Greenwich Art Society gallery, 299 Greenwich Ave., second floor, through Saturday. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, noon to 4 p.m. weekends.
Hazel Jarviss work exhibited
Les Beaux Arts Gallery will display the paintings of Greenwich artist Hazel Jarvis from Sunday through Nov. 30 at the Round Hill Community Church, 395 Round Hill Road, Greenwich. Gallery hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday to Friday, closed Saturday, open 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sundays. For more information, visit roundhillcommunitychurch.org.
Chabad holds barbeque and concert
Chabad Lubavitch of Greenwich will host a Sukkot Concert and Barbeque, 11:30 a.m. Sunday at The Chabad Center for Jewish Life, 75 Mason St. The event will feature Bobby Doowah & Co. Band. Tickets are $20 a person, $72 per family and $360 for sponsors. For full details and tickets visit www.chabadgreenwich.org.
Seminar on handling application process
Greenwich Library will host Jennifer Burstiner, independent college counselor, and ACT/SAT tutor Valerie Erde for Navigating the College Process Without Driving Yourself Crazy from 3 to 5 p.m., Sunday at the library, 101 West Putnam Ave. For more information, contact Valerie Erde, at 203-918-4496.
European ceramics lecture slated
Thomas Michie, the Russell B. and Andree Beauchamp Stearns Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture in the Art of Europe Department at Bostons Museum of Fine Arts will speak on Old Friends, New Directions: European Ceramics at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston at 1:15 p.m. Monday at First Congregational Church of Greenwich, 108 Sound Beach Road, Old Greenwich. Refreshments immediately following lecture. Admission for non-members of the Connecticut Ceramics Study Circle is $25. Space is limited. Reservations required for members and guests by Oct. 17. For reservations and information: rsvp@ctceramicscircle.org.
YWCA screening domestic violence documentary
The YWCA Greenwich, in support of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, will screen The Children Next Door at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas, Greenwich Plaza. An award-winning documentary, the film recounts the fear and pain of domestic violence through the eyes of children. A panel discussion led by Leslie Coplin, YWCA Greenwich Prevention and Outreach Coordinator, will follow. Tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door. Tickets available at www.ywcagreenwichb.org/children-next-door.
Greenwich Library workshop on grantmaking
Tailoring foundation grant applications for the best results will be the topic of a workshop led by Judith Margolin, an independent consultant, scheduled for 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the Greenwich Library, 101 West Putnam Ave. To register, contact mmartin@greenwichlibrary.org or call 203-625-6533.
Greenwich Chamber networking event
The Greenwich Chamber of Commerce will host its October After Six networking event from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Granola Bar, 41 Greenwich Ave. Wine and appetizers in a meet-and-greet setting. Tickets $25 per member, $15 non-members. Register online at greenwichchamber.com or email greenwichchamber@greenwichchamber.com.
Round Hill Community House Harvest Supper
The Round Hill Community House will host a Harvest Supper including a turkey dinner with all the fixings 6:30 p.m. Wednesday . Reservations are required. Tickets are $15 per adult and $5 per student. Located at 395 Round Hill Road. For more information or reservations visit roundhillcommunitychurch.org or call 203-869-1091.
BRYAN Spiraling cattle prices in recent weeks are not leaving much wiggle room when it comes to marketing calves and replacement females to fit current trends, according to cattle experts.
The recent Brazos Valley Beef and Forage Expo held at the Brazos Valley Livestock Commission featured talks that included purchasing replacement heifers, evaluating feeder cattle and marketing the right type of cattle to achieve maximum profits. The program was sponsored by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service beef and forage committee.
One of the traits we are looking for when purchasing replacement heifers is docility and temperament, said Dr. Joe Paschal, AgriLife Extension beef cattle specialist, Corpus Christi. I want my heifers to be calm and to protect her calf. I dont want her to run away from me or try to run over me as I approach.
Paschal suggests talking to local sale barn operators to find out what buyers are wanting in calves marketed each week. That will give the beef producer key insight as to which breeds or crossbreeds of replacement heifers to consider when buying.
After all, why not produce what the market wants? Paschal said.
Ideally, Pascal said producers should be developing heifers to calve at 24 months. Most beef producers like to have crossbred heifers in their herd because of hybrid vigor. A popular option is a Brahman and Hereford cross or Brahman and Angus cross. Both these combinations have hybrid vigor, which Paschal said, is like having an insurance program giving you a greater chance of having them bred and calving at 24 months.
Structural soundness is also important, he said. We want heifers that have good frame size and the ability to calve with ease.
One thing to keep in mind is annual cow cost. Paschal said the average cow cost is $600 annually, which includes feed and taxes.
One thing that drives up the cost of replacement heifers is hay and purchased feed, Paschal said. In some parts of Texas, you can get away with not feeding any hay at all. In my area in South Texas, I dont feed any hay at all. I stockpile forage and utilize rotational grazing. That helps keep my annual cow cost in line. But for those in South Central Texas, it can be cold, muddy and nasty during the winter, so you have to feed hay. Just keep in mind how expensive hay is to produce or purchase. There are feeding strategies that can be developed to keep those costs in check.
Meanwhile, Pete Scarmardo, owner of Brazos Valley Livestock Commission, told attendees cattle prices have been very volatile.
The futures market has been used more as a trading tool than a speculative tool, he said. Thats made things very difficult for the cattle market. Somewhere, we will reach a bottom.
Through October, fed cattle prices continued to trend lower, he said.
Weve got to get some equity back into these cattle, he said. We have no bargaining power in the cash market. Until we reach a peak in the cattle supply, the U.S. dollar gets weaker, our industry has some big problems. There are a lot of people who have lost money over the last 18 months.
However, Scarmardo said the packing industry has continued to have strong processing margins of $150 to $200 a head. He said feedyards are being filled with specific types of cattle being bought.
What they buy is dictated by corporate specifications, he said. There are more branded beef programs than ever, then youve got all the commodity beef (U.S. Department of Agriculture grades) that is not branded beef. Its not people buying cattle and taking a gamble. They are purchasing the type of cattle that fits their specifications.
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STAMFORD Phillip Balestriere first ran for office in the 148th House District a year before the current incumbent, Dan Fox, came on the scene.
Balestriere, a Republican, first vied for a two-year seat on the state Legislature in 2010 against Democrat Carlo Leone.
In 2011, when Leone ran and won in a special election for state Senate in the 27th District, voters elected Fox to his House seat, which the Democrat has since defended in two elections.
Fox faced Balestriere in 2012 and won with about 66 percent of the vote in a majority Democratic district that covers Glenbrook and the Cove.
Balestriere did not run in 2014, but is back this year to challenge Fox again.
Both candidates said they have been canvassing the district to get their messages out to voters ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
And despite coming from opposite ends of the aisle, both men say balancing the state budget is their priority if elected.
I think the priority for everyone is the budget, said Fox, a 40-year-old attorney who stressed the importance of bipartisan decision making. We really need to pay attention to our fiscal responsibilities. There are some very difficult decisions that need to be made.
Balestriere has a similar view.
As a small business owner here in Stamford, my blood pressure rises every time I think of what theyre doing in Hartford, the 57-year-old property manager said. We have a lot of problems and its only a matter of time until we fall face-first. Were practically there.
More Information 148th House District Dan Fox Incumbent - Yes Political party - Democrat Age - 40 Highest educational level - Graduate or professional degree Occupation - Attorney Employer - Curtis, Brinckerhoff & Barrett, PC Marital status and family - Married, three children Campaign website - DanFox2016.com What makes you the right choice for this seat? - "I have proven to be a responsive and effective legislator. Constituent service and outreach are essential to effective representation and addressing the needs of our immediate community will remain a priority. I have a track record of working with all my colleagues regardless of their party affiliation to find solutions. In light of the challenges facing our state, I believe that my temperament and grasp of the issues makes me the right choice for this seat." Phillip Balestriere Incumbent - No Political party - Republican Age - 57 Highest educational level - High school graduate Occupation - Property manager Employer - Self-employed Marital status and family - Divorced, three children, four grandchildren Campaign website - UnclePhil2016.com What makes you the right choice for this seat? - "I'm not an attorney or a politician. I'm a small-business owner that feels the pain of what our elected officials (Democrats) have done in the past 45 years of a one-party ruling, a Constitution state that is broke while our deficit keeps climbing each year with no budget, not to mention our unfunded mandates are at record highs of $73 to $90 billion. We need leadership that understands what it takes to drive an economy and bring jobs back to Connecticut." See More Collapse
Balestriere who calls himself Uncle Phil and uses the slogan Make Connecticut Great Again would also support measures to help small businesses and stop corporations from leaving the state. He is also in favor of eliminating the Common Core education standards and leaving school curriculum to the states.
Uncle Phil is looking out for you because obviously Uncle Sam is not, he explained.
Changing his approach from previous races, Balestriere has been knocking on the doors of Democrats and sharing his platform.
Balestriere said it bothers him when hes asked whether he supports Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, which he does.
Im not like these other Republicans who have pulled away from Trump. Theyre not united, he said last week, resenting the focus on Trumps relationship with women.
But he added, Who I support should not really have an impact on what my accomplishments would be if Im elected.
While Fox hopes to be re-elected, he said nothing is guaranteed.
The mentality in elections is you run scared and hope it all comes together on Election Day, he said.
The tone at the national level is really out of hand and people are really sick and tired of it. They appreciate when you stand on the front porch and talk to them.
As part of his goals in office, Fox said he supports expanding hospice care and transit-oriented development.
Fox serves on the Legislatures Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, Judiciary Committee and Planning and Development Committee.
Fox was absent for much the 2015 legislative session after he contracted encephalitis lethargica, a rare disease that affected his speech, mobility and vision.
While Fox is back to work full-time and says hes able to serve in office, hes still working to overcome speech issues caused by the disease.
I have to thank the community for being so responsible and encouraging throughout this process, he said.
Foxs ordeal has also inspired him to want to work on health care reform, saying patients should not have to deal with so much red tape when youre the most vulnerable youve ever been in your life.
eskalka@scni.com
Local advocates against domestic violence are hosting a screening of the documentary followed by a panel discussion to promote awareness of domestic violence in the community.
The event is hosted by Family Services of Texas, the Southeast Texas Domestic Violence Task Force and the Lamar University Chapter of Alpha Chi Omega and is scheduled for Oct. 24 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
As Donald Trump continues to insult various groups of people, including women, veterans and members of his own party, many Republicans have dropped their support of him as the Republican nominee for president.
However, two local elected officials, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Midland, have decided to stay the course, but have serious concerns about Trumps comments.
Twenty20 chief coordinator Sabu M Jacob has said his party is against mixing politics with religion.
More than 40 years ago, an angry wife who allegedly killed her husband with a pot of hot grease was able to slip away from authorities.
The 76-year-old woman with an oxygen tank would go undetected for decades before being arrested last week in a small community in south Georgia, near Valdosta.
Mary Ann Rivera had been living with one of her children in Lake Park, five miles north of the Florida state line. She was wanted in connection with the 1970 slaying of Cruz Rivera, the oldest unsolved case of the 637 being revisited by the Harris County District Attorney's fugitive unit, investigator Chuck Lowery said.
Exactly how she was able to evade detection for 41 years came down to two major factors: A missing date of birth for Mary Ann Rivera, even though she was arrested in 1970 as a suspect in the death of Cruz Rivera, and a lack of resources to mount an intensive search for her in the years after she apparently bailed out of jail and disappeared, Lowery said.
After her arrest last week, she was driven back to Houston because her dependence on the oxygen tank made her unable to fly. She was booked into Harris County jail on Wednesday on murder charges. No bail had been set Thursday.
Lowery would not disclose details of the original incident that led to Cruz Rivera's death, but did say that his wife was angry with him on Oct. 14, 1970. She boiled a pot of grease, then threw it on him. Cruz Rivera died of his injuries three days later.
When Lowery began work on the case in 2009, he found little information about Mary Ann Rivera. Her date of birth, a key identifier in modern law enforcement databases, was missing. And files did not specify what happened after she was arrested as a suspect in Cruz Rivera's death, leaving Lowery to surmise that she bailed out and disappeared.
"Things were done a little bit different back then, I guess," Lowery said.
Lowery was able to determine the names and birth dates of the couple's children, then found an address for one of them in Georgia in late 2009.
After locating Mary Ann Rivera, he kept track of her while he worked to piece together evidence from the case, searching for witnesses and learning that many of them had died.
"It wasn't just locating her," Lowery said. "It was trying to make sure that it was still a case."
It was two years before he had enough for an arrest. He wouldn't comment on the evidence.
Meanwhile, authorities in Georgia had kept track of Mary Ann Rivera, and Lowery had asked them to contact her and question her about the case.
The arrest was one of two made in Georgia related to cold cases this month. On Wednesday, authorities in Gwinnett County, Ga., arrested Epifaneo Jaimes Arroyo, 55, suspected of beating and stabbing a man to death outside the La Chancla Club in north Houston on July 12, 1980. Lowery was the investigator on that case as well.
"We're starting to find them here and there now, so it's a sense of accomplishment," he said.
As for the Rivera case, Lowery said, "being the oldest, it was kind of unique, but they're all gratifying when I find them."
That isn't always easy, he said, noting that cases can go unsolved for years because of the sheer number of crimes committed.
With more than 10,000 outstanding felony arrest warrants out, and more than 30,000 arrest warrants overall, the detective said, it can be hard to stay focused on a case in which little progress has been made for years.
"It's just a numbers thing," Lowery said. And for Rivera, "I think that kind of combined to make it somewhat easy for her to remain under the radar."
zain.shauk@chron.com
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A central Texas woman is facing six separate charges after being accused of pimping a 16-year-old girl on Backpage.com.
The Hays County Sheriff's Office has charged 43-year-old Nancy Cisneros of Kyle with three felony charges of trafficking a child and three charges of compelling prostitution as far back as June 2015.
READ MORE: Police: Backpage ad leads to fatal stabbing at hotel
Court documents obtained by news station KXAN read Cisneros trafficked the victim by posting online escort advertisements on Backpage.com. She then brought the victim to hotels to engage in prostitution, according to the documents.
According to the news station, the teen met Cisneros through a friend who was a prostitute. Cisneros then sent the victim's name and phone number to a man known as Bernell Quillens. He and another man identified as Cameron White then picked up the victim at 1 a.m. June 29, 2015. The two men drove her to a hotel in San Marcos. They took pictures of her and posted them online.
READ MORE: Life in prison for man who coerced girl into prostitution
After the first encounter, the men would pick up the victim when her mother was at work or asleep, according to KXAN.
The court documents state Quillens and White picked up the victim on an unknown date and drove her to a 7-11 in Kyle. The news station reports Cisneros met them at the 7-11 and told the men, "B*** better make me some money because I own her." KXAN states Quillens and Cisneros exchanged money. The victim told police the money she made went directly to Quillens.
How and when the teen escaped was not reported by XKAN.
According to the Hays County Clerk's Office, Quillens is charged with three felony counts of trafficking a child and three felony counts of compelling prostitution.
READ MORE: 4 men accused of human trafficking, murder of Florida teen
Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer was arrested on Oct. 6 at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on "charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping," according to the California Department of Justice. Backpage hosts prostitution-related ads under its "adult services" section.
On Friday, Ferrer, 55, posted a $500,000 bail. The site's controlling shareholders Michael Lacey, 68, and James Larkin, 67, posted $250,000 bail each.
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SAN ANTONIO At least a dozen San Antonio Fire Department crews were battling a structure fire on the Northeast Side Wednesday morning.
Firefighters were dispatched just before 9:40 a.m. to the 5800 block of Castle Lake, a neighborhood situated between Eisenhauer and Rittiman Roads just east of Interstate 35.
SAFD Captain Mark Trevino said the house is not a total loss, but a lot of items inside the home were damaged.
RELATED: FBI says San Antonio soldier killed wife and left baby in her arms
Trevino said a woman was inside the home at the time of the fire and neighbors had to notify her of the fire.
He said no one was injured in the home, but a cat at the home did die in the blaze.
Trevino said the fire was likely caused by an electrical malfunction.
Firefighters blocked off the intersection of Castle Lake and Castle Cross, but traffic did not appear to be affected by the closure.
"We're going to return the house to as close as livable as possible," Trevino said.
MORE: SAPD: 65-year-old woman shot by son on Southwest Side
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SEGUIN Guadalupe County Commissioners on Tuesday voted to deny a music festival permit for a "Float Fest" planned next July along the San Marcos River near Martindale.
Citing past problems with littering, drunkeness, loud music and trespassing during events at the 220-acre Cool River Ranch, about a dozen public speakers opposed issuance of the permit sought by Marcus Federman of Current Events LLC for July 21, 22 and 23 there.
"It's unbelievable the amount of trash on the bottom of the river," Martindale resident Mike McClabb said. "To allow this to happen to the San Marcos River is sinful."
RELATED: Float Fest delivered weekend of tubing, music and dancing
Last year, an estimated 10,000 festivalgoers showed up for the three-day event slated as "The raddest, loudest, floatest fest in Texas," to see a star-studded music line-up including Bone Thugs N Harmony, Bleachers, Chromeo, Rick Ross, Metric and about a dozen other artists.
County Commissioner Jack Shanafelt noted that unlike a concert that's contained in one area, attendees at the Float Fest swarm the river and its banks, creating sanitary problems.
"You've got folks and tubers doing their business on private property and in the river itself," he said.
MORE: Float Fest 2015 surges through San Marcos this weekend with live concerts and fun
Still, Federman said the event "will carry on as planned."
"That hearing will not stop us from having the event. Any rumors you hear about the event being canceled or stopped from happening are not true," he said.
County Judge Kyle Kutscher cited discrepancies in the Federman's application as justification for denying the permit, noting it said the property owners had granted Federman the right to use the property for the concert on July 15 and 16.
He told Federman should do a better job controlling obscene language by performers, monitoring traffic problems and cleaning up afterward.
"I'm here because I want to make it better and do the best I can to make it safe," responded Federman, noting he'd tendered a permit amendment in September about the date switch that he thought addressed the discrepancy.
Dissenting on the motion to deny the permit was County Commissioner Greg Seidenberger, who noted that Federman could hold numerous events of less than 5,000 attendees without a permit or direct county oversight.
RELATED: Popular Float Fest left hundreds of pounds of trash
He said permitting the larger event would allow the county to regulate issues related to traffic, sanitation and security.
Staff writer Kelsey Bradshaw contributed to this report.
zeke@express-news.net
Another case of Zika has been confirmed in San Antonio bringing the total up to 17, according to a press release from the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District.
The health district, following CDC guidelines, does not report the gender or the pregnancy status of those infected.
You wont need an invisibility cloak, parental permission, or a ticket to Hogsmeade, err Florida, to get a frosty glass of butterbeer, a staple of the Harry Potter universe, this week. You just need to make the trip to Temple, Texas.
Peggys Coffee House, 3111 S. 31st St., is serving up the butterscotch-tasting drink that characters Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley sipped on during visits to Hogsmeade, a village Hogwarts students would visit on the weekend. In the fictional village, the trio would go to the two bars that sold the sweet drink: The Hogs Head and The Three Broomsticks.
The city of Schertz will not be collecting license plate information on cars driving through the community at least, not right now.
At its Oct. 11 meeting, City Council held a lengthy discussion on the topic that ranged from constitutional questions to the ethics of data mining to preserving the citys reputation.
The issue was a proposal submitted late last year by California-based Vigilant Solutions to outfit two city warrant officers cars with scanning equipment at no cost. The mounted cameras would automatically scan all vehicle license plates within range, store the information digitally with time stamps and GPS information, and check the plates against databases of outstanding warrants.
If they got an alert, officers would have the ability to immediately collect all outstanding fines using credit or debit cards and run them through a Vigilant collection service, which would assess a 25 percent surcharge on all fines as its fee.
While he noted Schertzs police department and warrant division favors such a system as a law enforcement and investigative tool, Dudley Wait, executive director of operations, said city staff recommended to pass on the Vigilant system and possibly purchase its own license plate readers.
One reason, he said, was recently issued federal guidelines on jailing violators unable to pay high fines. Federal officials noted some cities use high fines as tools of discrimination, as a means to lock up indigents, and as a way to raise revenue thats not used for public safety.
Under its proposal, Vigilant would store all data, the city official said, but, whether that information was held by Vigilant or by Schertz, it could be subject to open records laws, Wait explained.
So someone could come in and say Id like to know where my wifes car has been for the last 60 days within the city of Schertz, he told the council. Also what happens to that data that might be sold or given to somebody to use for marketing purposes that is beyond the public safety realm?
In addition, Wait said, a decision has to be made whether Schertz would share its warrant information with other Texas cities, possibly leading to local officers having to travel hundreds of miles to collect small fines, or enforce warrants from other communities, which could entail additional time and manpower.
Other nearby communities, including Guadalupe County constables, Seguin and Alamo Heights, are experimenting with license plate readers, but there is no consensus on their effectiveness yet, he said. Cibolo plans to purchase its own cameras and is working out legal details. Kyle signed up for the free Vigilant system, but canceled it, citing privacy concerns.
Schertz currently has about 18,000 outstanding warrants, most for failure to appear dating back to 2000, with total outstanding fines of around $5 million, said warrant officer Deputy Sgt. Steve Pulaski. However, he estimated some 95 percent of those are for people living outside the city limits, beyond the reach of any city scanning equipment.
Councilman Grumpy Azzoz pointed out Vigilants system was free to Schertz and could help capture child kidnappers and rapists.
Several council members seemed wary of the system.
I dont have an answer and Im just raising the question, said Councilman Robin Thompson, alluding to the collection of all nearby license plate data, but at what point do we want Schertz to be known as the city where big brother is constantly watching you?
Council voted unanimously to return the issue to city staff for more research. No specific deadline was set.
For nearly 30 years, the country has officially recognized the period of time from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month. This is a time for all Americans to celebrate Hispanic culture and achievement and there is a lot to celebrate.
From 1968 to 1988, the country only marked National Hispanic Heritage Week. But some elected officials successfully made the case that the celebration needed to be expanded in order to properly recognize the contributions of Hispanic citizens. We want the public to know that we share a legacy with the rest of the country, a legacy that includes artists, writers, Olympic champions, and leaders in business, government, cinema, and science, said U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres of California in 1987.
1925: The mayor said work would begin on the proposed Witte Museum as soon as the site had been cleared.
1940: Baylor University defeated Villanova, 7-0, in a game played at the new Alamo Stadium.
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SAN ANTONIO The Texas Department of Public Safety is asking for assistance in solving a cold case from 1983, when a manager was left for dead in a walk-in cooler at a restaurant in Balcones Heights.
Charles Alfred Bates, 51, was found stabbed to death on May 22, 1983 in the Po Folks restaurant at 4250 Fredericksburg Road where he worked as a general manager. DPS said an undisclosed amount of cash was also stolen from the restaurant, according to the news release.
RELATED: SAPD: Drunk driver who critically injured 3 pedestrians, including man in wheelchair, has past DWI
Around the time of his slaying, Bates had been in the restaurant business for several years and was engaged.
According to an initial report around the time of the homicide, The San Antonio Express-News reported Bates was stabbed with a butcher knife in the chest, back and head. He was found lying in a pool of blood in a walk-in freezer by an employee who showed up reportedly minutes after the homicide occurred.
Bates had only recently moved to the San Antonio area, a previous report said, citing that his identification information stated he was from Brick Town, New Jersey.
RELATED: San Antonio firefighter suspended following public intoxication arrest in La Vernia
Investigators believe Bates was killed by someone he knew, the news release said.
DPS features one case each month from the Texas Rangers Unsolved Crimes Investigation Team with a goal of generating news investigative leads and bring added attention to unresolved or cold cases across the state, the release said.
San Antonio Crime Stoppers is offering a reward for any information that helps solve this case.
RELATED: BCSO: SUV carrying 2 children runs red light, collides with car
Tips must be submitted by calling 210-224-STOP (7867) or visiting the San Antonio Crime Stoppers website here.
Those with information may also send tips through the Texas Rangers Cold Case website or by contacting the Missing Persons Clearinghouse at 1-800-346-3243.
News researcher Mike Knoop contributed to this report.
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Dusty Solis, 36, still has more questions than answers more than two months since her son was fatally shot in an alley on the West Side.
He was just getting started, Solis said of her son Silvester Gregorio Garcia, 19.
Garcia was fatally shot on Aug. 13 near West Commerce and Navidad streets, according to the San Antonio Police Department.
According to police, Garcia had been with a friend and an acquaintance. At one point, Garcia accompanied the acquaintance to buy drugs on West Travis Street after they dropped off his friend at a residence.
After the failed drug deal, a police officer was flagged down by the acquaintance who said that his friend, Garcia, had been shot, according to a police report.
The whole thing doesn't make sense because the person driving the car was not his friend, it was his friends friend, Solis said of the acquaintance.
According to a police report, the acquaintance said that when he arrived at the West Travis residence, one of the men listed as a suspect in the report told him they were no longer selling drugs out of that home.
Instead, the suspect and an apparent accomplice led the man and Garica to an alley near West Commerce and Navidad.
The man told investigators he pulled up behind the alleged suspects, who were driving a beige Buick from the 1990s.
During the drug deal, the suspects held both Garcia and the man at gunpoint, ordering them to the ground, police said.
At some point, one of the suspects hit the acquaintance on the side of his head before attempting to steal his vehicle, investigators said.
Thats when one of the suspects shot Garcia, according to the police report.
After the shooting the suspects fled the scene in their Buick, investigators said in the report.
Moments later, the man realized Garica had been shot and was attempting to transport him for medical treatment, but didnt know where to go until he spotted the passing officer.
When EMS arrived, Garica was taken to University Hospital. He was pronounced dead there at 2:33 a.m., according to the police report.
As officers were investigating the scene, a third passenger was discovered to have been inside the vehicle with Garcia and the man.
Investigators noted in their report that the man did not mention there was a third passenger.
Solis said detectives told her they have attempted to reach out to the man who flagged down the officer, but he has since been unavailable.
We don't know why they shot him (Garcia), Solis said. Why him and not the guy who actually went to buy the drugs?
Garica is remembered by family as an outgoing teenager who loved spending time with family and friends.
He had aspirations of joining the U.S. Marines and was hoping to start a family with his girlfriend, his mother Solis said.
We just want to get justice for my son, she said. I dont feel like my sons resting knowing that person who shot him is out there still living their life.
Authorities are urging people with information regarding the suspects identities or their whereabouts to call Crime Stoppers at 210-224-7867
Crime Stoppers will pay as much as $5,000 for information that leads to the arrest of the people responsible for this crime.
Rounds One and Two are in the history books. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will debate for a third and final time Wednesday night at University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Fox News' Chris Wallace will moderate.
With 20 days until Election Day, this will be the candidates' last chance to make their closing arguments before a national audience and possibly pull the race from the muck of the past three weeks. The format will be six timed segments of about 15 minutes each.
President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, have been high-profile surrogates for Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail this year. But not all the Obamas are on board.
The president's half-brother, Malik Obama, is expected to be Donald Trump's invited guest at Wednesday night's debate in Las Vegas.
Donald Wilmoth Smith knew the value of being prepared.
Raised during the Great Depression, and later surviving a direct hit to his aircraft during World War II, Smith believed that you have to live in the moment because you never know when life is going to get turned upside-down, his daughter Nona Jo May said.
Smith raised his children with the same philosophy.
Building their home on almost an acre in Castle Hills, Smith made sure his family could do all those things that might be necessary if the economy tanked again, including growing and preserving produce, May said. He never forgot what it was like not to have food.
Smith died Oct. 7 at 94.
Growing up with a schoolteacher aunt when his parents were unable support all of their children, Smith remained close to his family his whole life.
He was attending what is now Rice University when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, prompting the U.S. to enter World War II.
He was 17 and his mother signed his enlistment papers to join the Marine Corps, his daughter said.
Becoming a pilot, Smith flew missions in the Solomon Islands, and was shot down during a mission over Rabaul.
More Information Donald Wilmoth Smith Born: Aug. 14, 1922, San Antonio Died: Oct. 7, 2016, San Antonio Preceded by: Wife Sophie Hodges Smith; daughter Donna K. Smith; parents Van Calvin and Ivah Harvick Smith; a sister and a brother. Survived by: Daughter Nona Jo May, Lizanne Smith, and Suzette Smith; son Kern Stone Smith. Services: Burial at 2 p.m. Monday at Mission Park North Cemetery, 20900 I-10 West, followed by a memorial service at 3 p.m. at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 211 Roleto Drive. See More Collapse
He was running out of gas flying low over the water, May said. He knew they would land close to the coast where the Australians looked for American pilots.
Smith and his crew were in rafts for three days before they were rescued.
He lost no one on the landing, May said. He just coasted in, softly settled.
Becoming a pilot instructor in 1943, Smith served in several locations and was headed for the Mariana Islands when the Japanese surrendered, precipitating his return home to enroll at the University of Texas at Austin to study civil engineering.
Marrying in 1950, Smith was recalled to fight in the Korean War just a few months later.
A major in the Marine Reserve Squadron, Smith was flying over North Korea when his plane was hit by a Chinese shell which lodged itself in the bomb his plane was carrying, missing the triggering device.
Flying the aircraft to safety, Smith later displayed the shell on his desk.
Though he stayed in the Marine Reserves until 1971, Smith returned to civilian life, working for H.B. Zachry Construction all over the world.
He was the start-up man, May said. He would look at the job, put the plans together, figure the cost, start it and move on to another job.
mheidbrink@express-news.net
Congratulations, Mayor Ivy Taylor, you have been Trumped.
Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump recently griped about San Antonios mayor on the radio waves, telling talk show host Joe Pags Pagliarulo that Taylor should be ashamed that 23 police officers were reprimanded for donning Trump caps.
The officers had escorted Trump during a fundraising visit here. They were disciplined because it violates city policy to promote such personal political views while on duty. Officers on duty are expected to be impartial regardless of the candidate or party affiliation.
Taylor had said she was deeply disappointed by the officers conduct.
That strikes us as a reasonable response from the mayor to a relatively small issue. It is disappointing that on-duty officers couldnt use better judgment. They should have known better.
But since Trump graced Taylor with his fleeting attention span, we cant help but make an observation: She is imminently more qualified to be president than the Republican nominee.
Taylor trumps the Trump by every important measure. A Yale graduate with a masters degree from the University of North Carolina, she is better educated. As mayor of the seventh-largest city in the nation, and a former city councilwoman, she has significant elected experience. He has none. She understands and thinks about policy. He really gets Twitter. We have no doubt evangelical voters would prefer her, and she has a history of bipartisan support. Trumps a bit shaky on those fronts.
Were not saying you should print your Taylor 2020 bumper stickers. But what does it say about a presidential nominee who doesnt measure up to the local mayor? Sad!
BROOKFIELD - A woman who authorities said almost hit a police cruiser after traveling the wrong way on Federal Road was arrested recently.
According to a statement from police, Helene Piel faces several charges in connection to the incident including failure to drive in the proper lane and operating under the influence.
Twitter screenshot
The photographer whose image of a bowl of Skittles was used in controversial tweet by Donald Trump Jr. is reportedly suing the Trump presidential campaign for copyright infringement.
The tweeted photo included the caption "If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you, would you take a handful? That's our Syrian refugee problem." The text included the Trump/Pence logo and campaign slogan "Make America great again!" at the bottom.
San Antonio is widely known as one of the friendliest cities in the United States, a fact that is further emphasized by the San Antonio International Airport Ambassadors, a group of volunteers who greet the 8.5 million travelers passing through the airport every year.
Dressed in white cowboy hats, Western denim vests, white shirts and nametags, there are currently 186 ambassadors who each donate at least four hours every week. They provide directions to airline check-in counters, ground transportation, San Antonio restaurants and other points of interest, as well as assist airport public relations with special events.
As soon as you see them, you feel the hospitality, said Evelynn Bailey, senior public information officer for San Antonio International Airport. Whether directing passengers to a connecting flight, helping to reunite long-lost loves or families, or even taking snapshots for people, there is no task too challenging for our ambassadors.
Armed with big smiles and a wealth of knowledge about the airport and San Antonio, the ambassadors all share a love of meeting people and helping visitors with whatever they need. There are always lost cellphones left on planes or foreign visitors who greet ambassadors with Howdy and ask to have photos taken with them.
There also are unusual cases, such as the woman who arrived at the airport insisting that she had a speaking engagement at a local hotel which the ambassadors could not find listed in San Antonio.
We figured out that she was supposed to have gone to Houston, laughed volunteer Billie May, who has been an ambassador for 15 years.
May is one of 40 airport ambassadors who are Certified Tourism Ambassadors, a certification sponsored by the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau that provides an extra level of training about San Antonio and the region.
Barbara Garrow, an ambassador for nine years, said You can tell when someone is lost. They get this look on their face.
The ambassadors have welcomed home hundreds of returning service members with Welcome Home Hero signs and flags. And theyve applauded World War II veterans traveling to Washington, D.C. as part of Honor Flight San Antonio.
Pam Verschoyle, a volunteer since December, has fond memories of a man and his two daughters welcoming home their military mom. When needed, ambassadors also are ready with tissues for tear-jerker moments like those.
Being an ambassador is all about meeting people, emphasized Al Russomano, who is almost 89 and has been an ambassador since the airport began the program in 2000.
We look for volunteers with different personalities, said Alba Diaz, coordinator of the ambassador program. Everyone has something to give.
Furry four-legged critters owned by ambassadors have even been drafted for the Pups and Planes program to greet visitors and help relieve stress as they navigate through the airport.
The ambassador program recorded almost 3,000 hours of service in August while assisting 24,500 people. From January through August of this year, the group helped 197,000 people.
Ambassadors do more than greet passengers and give directions, Bailey emphasized. They are the first impression our visitors have of San Antonio. Being an ambassador is a great way to share your gifts, meet new people and help your community.
Applications are currently being accepted for anyone interested in becoming a San Antonio International Airport Ambassador. For more information, view the "Be an Airport Ambassador" video and call Alba Diaz at (210) 207-3546 or email alba.diaz@sanantonio.gov.
Editors Note: This content is made possible by San Antonio International Airport. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com.
1 Refugee shipwreck: After months of painstaking autopsies, Italian authorities in Sicily on Tuesday put the death toll in the April 2015 refugee shipwreck at between 750 and 800 people, confirming survivors initial estimates. With only 28 survivors, the April 18, 2015, shipwreck off the coast of Libya remains the deadliest known refugee tragedy. Two-thirds of the dead were between the ages of 20 and 30 and one-third were adolescents. There was one child, a 7-year-old boy. Most were from sub-Saharan African nations.
2 Mass arrests: The mayor of Sebeta just outside Ethiopias capital of Addis Ababa says 1,000 people have been arrested this month after violence that led to the burning of factories and vehicles. This East African country declared a state of emergency this month after sometimes deadly antigovernment protests demanding wider freedoms. Businesses have been a target over suspected government links, hurting Ethiopias reputation as one of Africas best-performing economies. The violence came shortly after more than 50 people were killed in a stampede when police tried to disperse protesters in the Oromia region.
PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa has skipped his first political rally since last months deadly military crackdown on protests so he could explain the unrest to fellow African leaders.
Exiled rival and information minister Professor Jonathan Moyo immediately suggested that, the heat is on! Something is happening, or has happened.
Mnangagwas administration has been under pressure amid reports of at least 12 people killed, hundreds wounded and some women raped.
Spokesman George Charamba in a statement said the president spent his Saturday briefing regional leaders. Mnangagwa earlier in the week blamed Western countries for backing the unrest.
However, according to Prof Moyo, there was more to the missed rally than Charamba was admitting in his statement.
Said Moyo on Twitter; When you see #GeorgeCharamba running around like this on a Saturday, bet your last bond note hes managing an EMERGENCY.
Something has happened or is happening. Mnangagwa might have been making EMERGENCY phone calls, but certainly not to heads of state or govt. Watch the space!
https://twitter.com/ProfJNMoyo/status/1091701029157171200
The military remains in the streets, and human rights groups, witnesses and opposition figures continue to report abuses in poor and working-class suburbs.
International condemnation continues over the crackdown on the protests over steep fuel price increases.
The top US diplomat for Africa says the United States is deeply concerned.
NewZimbabwe/Agencies
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By Maria Demertzis, a fellow at Bruegel and a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam. She has previously worked at the European Commission and the research department of the Dutch Central Bank. Originally published at Bruegel
The attempt to address the problem of non-performing loans in the EU should tackle both sides of credit creation at once. On the demand side, new credit is not picking up as long as the problem of the debt overhang, namely the disincentive of undertaking new investments and consumption while old debts are prohibitively high, remains. This, hinders the creation of new productive capacity, necessary to absorb factors formerly misallocated to sectors hit by the crisis. By implication, as long as private debts remain at high levels, economic activity will struggle to pick up. On the supply side of credit, progress has been slow in resolving impaired loans, which persist in banks balance sheets. This is problematic for both their overall health but also the creation of new credit.
Figure 1: Gross non-performing debt instruments, % of total gross debt instruments
Source: ECB, Note: peak year to 2016Q1
And while a number of countries (namely the Baltics) have managed to decisively resolve bad debts to the benefit of new credit creation, others have made less progress and some have even been unable to make any (Figure 1). The ECB recently issued draft guidelines in an attempt to pool resources and address the issue.
I argue here that an important guiding principle in resolving NPLs should be to ensure that viable debt remains serviced, while non-viable debt gets resolved. But this is not the same as resolving non-performing debt while holding on to performing debt. It helps therefore to categorise loans in two dimensions: viability and ability to service themselves.
Table 1 then provides four possible ways of classifying loans. Performing loans are those that are effectively being serviced and paid back. Viable loans are those for which the underlying assets generate sufficient value to cover funding costs.
Good loans are then, productive loans that are being serviced. This is the only category where debt has a productive role.
Bad loans by contrast are those that do not perform, but also those for which the activities they had financed do not generate enough value. Aiming to resolve these loans in a swift and timely way should be encouraged, as the only way of identifying losses and reducing uncertainty for creditors but also releasing debtors from unproductive activities (second chance).
Unproductive loans are then those which may actually perform in the sense of servicing payments, but do not themselves generate value. Collateralised loans can provide indicative examples here.
Consider a household in the following situation: the value of its house is smaller than the loan that financed it (negative equity); it is liable by law for that remaining difference, as is the case in European countries (full recourse), and has very little possibility of walking away from such obligation by declaring bankruptcy (say through strict insolvency rules). If the household chooses (or needs) to sell that house, additional resources would be needed to repay the loan in full. Also, since the possibility of walking away from such a liability is effectively not available, the household is left locked into servicing a loan which is economically unattractive, as it is larger than the value of the house.
Protecting creditor rights is of course an important reason why insisting on servicing such debt may be a good idea. But when housing markets have gone through sharp corrections, followed typically by a downturn in the business cycle, such arguably unproductive loans may not be isolated cases, but rather wider spread. From a macroeconomic perspective, one ought to therefore at least consider whether the benefits of creative destruction outweigh the costs of violating creditors rights. The European Commission alludes to this in its last country report for the Netherlands.
Finally, there is also a category of temporarily distressed loans or strategic defaults. This includes either debts that are temporarily in distress but could return to being performing or loans that are non-performing by choice. The latter are the result of moral hazard where debtors choose not to pay back debt even when economically feasible. Evidence shows that strategic defaults increase as negative equity on mortgages increases, and especially when there is no full recourse. However, households likelihood to default strategically is shown to be also associated with perceptions of fairness, but also decreasing with the perceived risk of negative consequences of doing so (stigma, negative credit ratings etc). In this respect, indiscriminate protection of debtors or the less than perfect ability to collect collateral may lead to more strategic defaults.
Resolute action to remove non-performing loans from banks balance sheets should address both the supply and demand side of credit. Removing bad loans from banks balance sheet is important for their health and financial stability more generally. But removing them also from the debtors balance sheet is equally necessary if new credit is to be demanded.
Given the four categories presented above, understanding debtors true ability to pay back debts and restructure appropriately is crucial in this process. But aligning incentives between the different parties involved, creditors, debtors and relevant institutions (supervisors, regulators but also tax authorities and courts) is equally important.
The aim is to have as much debt fall in the good category. If loans are only temporarily distressed, they need to be identified as such and assisted in becoming productive again. Banks should be incentivized to deal with this in a timely manner.
Unproductive loans could be reduced if, for example, the possibility of walking away from debts through bankruptcy was not protracted and/or unforgiving. But here, while banks do not have an immediate incentive to either identify or deal with such loans, macroeconomic policy makers do, in particular when their size is systemic to the economy. Data on debtors failing to make other payments, like taxes or health insurance contributions, could serve as important indicators of financial distress. Such loans should then be assisted in becoming bad, which in turn should be treated swiftly to help redirect resources to productive activities. Enforcement and the rule of law are important in identifying non-performance; aligned incentives and bank involvement are important in determining viability.
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Readers may recall that Bill Clinton planned to privatize Social Security in the second term of his Presidency. The Monica Lewinsky scandal derailed his plan.
As the Clintons knew, only a Democrat can dismantle Social Security. Hillary looks to be picking up where Bill left off. As David Sirota describes in a must-read story, Hillary is planning to introduce mandatory retirement accounts, a scheme that Hillary has mentioned in high concept form earlier. As details emerge, this enrich Wall Street at the expense of everyone else program is even more attractive to pet Democratic party constituencies than the 1.0 version of going after Social Security directly. No one in the Clinton or George W. Bush administration was so audacious as to cut in private equity and hedge funds in the way this variant would.
But Hillary, and her major advisor on the plan who is also on her short list of Treasury Secretary candidates, Blackstone CEO Tony James, are too adept to label these required savings accounts as a stealth replacement for Social Security.The plan, as described in Sirotas article parallels the way the contributions are made now to Social Security, with both employers and employees required to put aside a percentage of payrollbut not in the form of Social Security taxes, but in individual retirement accounts that in turn are put in pooled plans run by professional managers.
If you look at James speech, what he is proposing sounds innocuous, a supposed additional 3% of worker savings. But that is a nearly 25% increase over what workers are paying into Social Security now. Moreover, most experts agree that to the extent that Social Security needs fixing (30 forecasts are fraught), some not very onerous tweaks would do the trick. First and foremost would be to eliminate the payroll tax ceiling.
Its not hard to see the long-term game plan. Social Security will be cut due to purported need to keep the budget balanced while funding bombing runs in the Middle East. It will be turned from a universal social safety net more and more into a welfare program. That in turn makes it easier to make more cuts, since its core supporters will be further and further down the food chain.
Moreover, the canard is the assumption that James makes: if these savings are invested correctly and earn a good return for the retiree. Tell me how this happens in a world of ZIRP, NIRP, low growth, high private debt levels, and equity prices increasingly dependent on unsustainable stock buybacks?
There are fundamental problems with saving and investing for retirement as a mass solution, as opposed to for a relatively small group of high income individuals. One is that everyones financial asset is someone elses financial liability. Expecting a return over the long-term GDP growth level on average isnt attainable as the pool of financial claims keeps rising. Thats why, as Michael Hudson keeps pointing out, debt jubilees were a regular part of ancient civilization. The burden of outstanding claims became economically destructive and socially destabilizing. And as Keynes and others have pointed out in the more modern formulation, high savings rates produce the paradox of thrift: what seems virtuous on an individual level is destructive on a societal level.
In fact, rather than more savings, what the US needs is higher worker incomes, which in turn would support more spending, more job creation, and more investment. Ultimately, the cost of supporting non-working members of society is a function of the size of the economy in the future, as in the quality of infrastructure, how many people are employed productively, the utility of inventions in the intervening decades (as in advances that lower the cost of treating cancer have vastly greater positive societal spill-overs than apps that generate the same amount of GDP). That is why having the Federal government be obligated to provide a retirement social safety net aligns incentives much better: the authorities should be concerned about how to produce long-term growth for the economy, not just get through the next quarter, um election. But neoliberalism remains dominant despite its abject failure here and in Europe, so policy-makers are still relying on the economic equivalent of snake oil.
And despite the smooth talk, lets underscore the point: even if you buy into the false narrative that Social Security needs to come out of individual contributions, when it is in fact a pay as you go system, a 3% increase in employee contributions across the board now is well beyond what anyone is calling for in the way of fixes.
Put it another way: this is just another form of looting. Obamacare was written by the health insurance lobby and look how well that has turned out. Just imagine what sort of cooking ordinary Americans will get from the kitchen of Tony James and his fellow private equity robber barons. From Sirotas story:
The proposal would require workers and employers to put a percentage of payroll into individual retirement accounts to be invested well in pooled plans run by professional investment managers, as James put it. In other words, individual voluntary 401(k)s would be replaced by a single national system, and much of the mandated savings would flow to Wall Street, where companies like Blackstone could earn big fees off the assets. And because of a gap in federal anti-corruption rules, there would be little to prevent the biggest investment contracts from being awarded to the biggest presidential campaign donors.
In other words, this is the worst of all possible worlds. You have an individual account, but you are not permitted to invest in stocks and bonds; you may not be permitted even to choose your asset allocation. Worse, James language suggests that the vehicles will be run by professional asset managers, as in many or perhaps all will be actively managed, as opposed to indexes. As any student of John Bogle will tell you, paying for active managers is a waste of money, but Hillary wants to go that route on an industrial scale so as to further enrich grifters like Tony James (let us not forget that the Blackstone has paid fines in an SEC settlement for charging fees it was not authorized to take, which in most walks of life would be called embezzlement).
And of course, private equity is on the list of preferred investment. And even better: James holds up private equity as a solution, just as it supposedly is for public pension funds, even as Blackstone was one of the first private equity firms to warn that returns in the future would be paltry. Indeed, the valuations of the private equity firms that are public say that they expect none of them will be earning any carry fees over the next few years. Its perverse to see James praise public pension funds for their high allocations to alternative investments even when he and his private equity colleagues snigger privately about their lack of sophistications.
Again from Sirota:
In the blueprint of the plan, James lamented that 401(k) systems dont invest in longer-term, illiquid alternatives such as hedge funds, private equity and real estate, and said the new program could invest in high-yielding and risk-reducing alternative asset classes. In a CNBC interview, James said he wants the billions of dollars of new retiree savings to be invested like pension plans. He noted that in the average pension plan in America, about 25 percent is invested in stuff we do, in alternatives, in real estate and private equity and commodities and hedge funds. Unlike stock index funds and Treasury bills, those investments generate big fees for financial firms and critics say they do not generate returns that justify the costs.
So James is looking for a way for Blackstone to unload its failed investment in single family rental homes, where it is struggling to find an exit strategy, on government-mandated investors? How sporting of him.
And as for the other supposed virtues of this scheme, let us not forget that this story appeared a day after New Yorks pension overseer blasted the state comptroller for paying big fees for hedge fund underperformance, and for not knowing what private equity fees and costs were when the state has a clear duty to do so, and reason to be vigilant in light of SEC reports of widespread abuses.
And there is another layer of this that is not pretty: the more money that is in the hands of mega-funds, the less corporate accountability. CEOs can regularly pay themselves well out of line with performance and get away with other governance failings by virtue of the fact that most institutional investors either cant be bothered to try to discipline them or have incentives not to (they want the 401 (k) or pension or Treasury funds management business). Mega-funds that are selected via a largely if not entirely political process have even less reason to push for good governance.
I hope youll circulate this post and/or Sirotas story widely. This is what you can look forward to in a Clinton administration. Dont say you werent warned.
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Yves here. This post exemplifies why economists should not be in charge of anything important. Keynes was correct when he said, If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
Mind you, I am not disputing that there are many area of life where people can and do engage in transactions that raise serious moral issues. But what is troubling about this post is that it appears completely pre-occupied with more efficiency, as in How do we get more kidney trades done despite public squeamishness about them?
I have a well-off friend who had to have a kidney removed as a result of a bad infection. He is keenly aware of how the loss of that kidney increases his risk of mortality and takes steps to reduce his risk of impairing his remaining kidney, like giving up sushi and sashimi entirely due to hepatitis risk. Yet this article fails to acknowledge why selling ones kidney is morally dodgy: the donor is potentially lowering his lifespan and the existence of a market allows the wealthy to take advantage of the poor. Even though this article gives survey responders a scenario in which money is given on a priority basis (flattening one side of the rich are exploiting the poor scenario), it fails to address what is a fair price to the donor as in what data is there on the health and lifespan loss for people who give up a kidney at a young age.
By Julio J. Elias, Professor, Department of Economics and Business School, University of CEMA, Argentina; Nicola Lacetera, Associate Professor, Institute for Management and Innovation, University of Toronto; and Mario Macis, Associate Professor of Economics and Management at the Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University. Originally published at VoxEU
Imagine that you or a loved one were suffering from kidney failure. Receiving a kidney from a donor would be a far better option than dialysis it would improve your life expectancy and the quality of your life, and it would also save money to you and the health system. Imagine that you cannot find any matches among your relatives, friends or acquaintances, or the donor registry an all too common scenario in the US and elsewhere. There is, however, someone who is willing to give you a kidney in exchange for monetary compensation. You are willing to pay the requested amount and as such, you will be better off if the transaction occurred, and so will the donor. However, unless you happen to live in Iran (Ghods and Savaj 2006) you would not be allowed to do so. Alvin Roth defines this transaction as repugnant because of moral concerns, individuals and societies oppose that such a transaction occur, even if the parties directly involved benefit from that trade (Roth 2007).
There are many activities and trades toward which there is a feeling of moral repugnance, often translated into laws that prohibit or restrict these activities. Examples include prostitution, commercial surrogacy, selling human eggs or plasma, as well as the trade of certain types of meat, and pricing practices for certain products. Attitudes toward these as well as other repugnant transactions vary across countries and over time; for example, indentured servitude contracts were once permitted but they are now universally prohibited, and conversely life insurance contracts were considered immoral in the past.
Repugnance considerations can therefore have important consequences on the types of markets and transactions that we observe, and pose challenges for policy and market design.
The Kidney Market: Repugnance-Driven Regulations and Costs
The market for kidney transplantation is one such example of the restrictions that repugnance imposes on the exchanges that are allowed to take place, as well as of the costs associated with these limitations. For example, although the US system allows kidney exchanges whereby pairs of living would-be donors and recipients who prove incompatible look for another pair or pairs of donors and recipients who would be compatible for transplants, cutting their wait time monetary compensation is prohibited by Federal law. The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 prohibits transfers of human organs for valuable consideration for use in transplantation, and punishes violations with a fine of up to $50,000 or five years in prison, or both.
To the extent that monetary compensations can increase the supply of kidneys and organs in general, as some scholars estimate (Becker and Elias 2007), prohibiting these transactions is costly. Each year in the US, approximately 35,000 new patients require a kidney transplant, but only about 17,000 obtain one (Held et al. 2016). Recent estimates indicate that each additional transplant leads to about $200,000 in direct savings; the social benefits rise to $1.1 million per kidney recipient if we add the value of the increased life expectancy and quality. The total cost of the kidney shortage in the US is estimated to be about $20 billion annually.
If indeed the population shared this repugnance, and considered it a sacred value that is, a position that cannot be traded for other considerations then the prohibition and the ensuing costs would be justified. Cultural and moral beliefs are important factors in the cohesion of a society and, as such, can themselves enhance welfare; the respect of deeply held principles, in particular, may trump considerations about the potential efficiency gains from a payment system.
There is, however, no evidence on the precise nature of the moral opposition to payments for organs, and in particular, on whether and how other factors, such as consideration for efficiency (the surplus created by these trades), enter individual positions about how kidney transactions should be organised:
What drives the rejection toward payment to donors?
How intransigent is the position of those against payment?
Does information matter?
Are there finite increases in the supply of kidneys for transplants generated by payments that would lead individuals to express a preference for a paid-donor system versus an unpaid-donor alternative, even if payments were considered morally problematic?
Understanding Repugnance: An Experimental Approach
We recently carried out a survey-based choice experiment to address these questions and quantify the trade-off between the morality and the efficiency of alternative kidney procurement systems. We found that although systems that allow for payments to donors do raise stronger moral concerns than a system with no payments, a majority of individuals would be willing to accept a more repugnant system provided that it produced a sufficiently large additional number of transplants.
The Repugnance-Efficiency Trade-Off
We recruited 2,918 US residents through Amazon Mechanical Turk. After providing an overview of the state of organ procurement and allocation in the US, we asked the participants to consider three alternative procurement systems to increase living undirected kidney donations:
A system based on unpaid donors with allocation based on priority rules determined by the patients medical situation, age, time on the waiting list, etc. (corresponding to the current system). A system where donors would receive $20,000 from a public agency, with allocation based on the same priority algorithm. A system of individual, private transactions, where donors would receive $20,000 from the organ recipient (out of pocket or through privately purchased insurance, for example).
After receiving this information, respondents expressed their opinion about these systems related to their morality in terms of ethical concerns emphasised in philosophy and bioethics studies (e.g. Delmonico et al. 2002). We asked the subjects how coercive, exploitative, unfair to the patients, unfair to the donors, and against human dignity they thought each system was, and an overall assessment of how much a system was in contrast with the respondents values
Respondents were then asked to assume that each system would result in a given efficiency in terms of the kidneys for transplantation procured, and to choose their preferred system. The efficiency levels were randomly determined, and each participant was presented with three choice opportunities, in a sequential manner.
The unpaid-donor system received low repugnance ratings that is, individuals, for the most part, did not express moral concerns about this system. The two paid-donor systems received, in general, higher repugnance ratings than the unpaid-donor system. However, there was a large difference according to whether the system contemplated payments by a public agency or by the recipients in private transactions, with the latter resulting as the most repugnant system.
Looking at choices, the results show that the likelihood of respondents choosing a particular combination of repugnance and efficiency increased with the level of efficiency and decreased with repugnance. Respondents thus preferred options with higher efficiency and those considered less repugnant, but also acknowledged, through their choices, a general trade-off between these two characteristics.
We estimated the size of these trade-offs employing discrete choice models. The median respondent would favour payments to organ donors made by a public agency if it increased the annual supply of kidneys by about 6 percentage points; this corresponds to about 2,000 additional kidneys, which would reduce the shortage by around 11% and would result in $250 million saved annually by taxpayers.
However, to accept a system based on private transactions, the median respondent would require about a 30 percentage point increase in supply, corresponding to 10,000 extra kidneys procured (which would reduce the shortage by more than 50%), and $1.26 billion in savings for taxpayers. This difference in the estimated trade-offs appears to derive from the fact that the public agency paid-donor system was considered less repugnant than the private transactions system along all of the morality features that we included. In particular, participants rated the public agency system as being equally fair to the patients as the unpaid donor system (these two systems allocated organs to patients based on the same priority rules), whereas private transactions (in which the allocation is purely market-based) were considered highly unfair.
There was heterogeneity in the population, ranging from respondents with deontological preferences who were not willing to allow payments, irrespective of the expected number of lives saved, to consequentialist individuals who placed a large weight on efficiency over moral concerns. This heterogeneity did not generally relate to the respondents socio-demographic characteristics, but was correlated to broader attitudes as measured by a set of moral dilemmas typically used in psychology, thus providing further evidence that ethical views in these choices are central.
Conclusion
Alvin Roth stresses that we need to understand better and engage more with the phenomenon of repugnant transactions, which often serves as an important constraint on markets and market design.[1] The prohibition on payments to kidney donors is one important example of this phenomenon. Our research suggests that individual choices based on repugnance considerations respond in a predictable ways to efficiency information, but also that ethical views play a crucial role in these preferences.
Supplying evidence and promoting studies on such sensitive topics might therefore lead to greater awareness and improved policy design based on the actual preferences of a population. In the case of introducing regulated payments for organ donors and their families in particular, the evidence is particularly strong that informing society about the potential benefits of economic incentives does impact the acceptability of this transaction.
Because individual preferences appear to depend on expected efficiency in addition to ethical considerations, pilot trials testing the outcomes of different arrangements may enhance the ability of a population to determine the preferred organ procurement and allocation system.
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Eco-friendly fabrication of silicon nanowires (Nanowerk News) Scientists from the Faculty of Physics, the Lomonosov Moscow State University have worked out a new and more eco-friendly method of silicon nanowires obtaining, which allows to replace hydrofluoric acid (HF) by ammonium fluoride (NH 4 F) (Nanoscale Research Letters, "Optical Properties of Silicon Nanowires Fabricated by Environment-Friendly Chemistry").
These silicon nanowires were obtained with the help of new eco-friendly method developed by Russian scientists. Toxic hydrofluoric acid is replaced by harmless ammonium fluoride. (Image: Kirill Gonchar)
Silicon nanowires are streamlined, almost parallel to each other nanostructures, looking like wires. Nanowires diameter varies from 50 to 200 nm, and the distance between structures - from 100 to 500 nm. Nanowires length, depending on etching time, could be from 100 nm and up to 10s of microns.
Interest for silicon nanowires is caused by perspectives of their application in micro- and optoelectronics, photonics, PV, sensorics. They could be used even in biomedicine as silicon nanostructures are biodegradable materials, what means that they self-destruct in an organism after some period of time. Besides that, in limited concentrations nanostructures are not toxic for an organism. However, hydrofluoric acid (HF), used by conventional method in order to produce silicon nanowires, is extremely toxic.
Obtaining of silicon nanowires with the help of metal-assisted etching becomes possible due to chemical etching of a silicon wafer, where metal nanoparticles (for instance, silver nanoparticles) activate etching.
Kirill Gonchar, a Junior researcher in the Low Temperature Physics and Superconductivity Department, the Faculty of Physics, at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, describes the whole scheme of nanowires elaboration. He says: "We've used a two-step method of etching. At the first stage silver nanoparticles were deposited on the surface of a silicon wafer. But this deposition didn't produce a level layer but different island regions. At the second stage the silicon wafer was etched right in the places, covered with silver. Because of this, those silicone sheet places, which were uncovered with silver, turned into nanowires. Silver nanoparticles fell into the silicone sheet. And the more etching was lasting the longer nanowires were got at the output. At the end silver was removed with the help of nitric acid."
Researchers from the Lomonosov Moscow State University have replaced dangerous and toxic hydrofluoric acid by ammonium fluoride at all stages of chemical etching. Moreover, they have studied optical properties of silicon nanowires, produced with the help of this method, and compared them with nanowires, received on the basis of conventional method, rested on hydrofluoric acid usage.
Kirill Gonchar shares, how this idea to use ammonium fluoride in nanowires synthesis has emerged. He clarifies: "The idea of ammonium fluoride application wasn't new, it was borrowed from experiments of porous silicon obtaining, which took place 20 years ago. Ammonium fluoride was also used there instead of hydrofluoric acid. There were similar projects where nanowires were produced in ammonium fluoride, however, there was no replacement at all etching stages. We've studied optical properties of the nanowires we got and proved that they don't differ much from nanowires, obtained by conventional method."
Silicon nanowires, produced by metal-assisted etching, could be used for creation of new photonic devices and silicon based sensors. Kirill Gonchar clarifies, that nanowires are promising as sensory elements of optical sensors for different substances. This happens due to, first of all, increase of Raman effect signal intensity, which is a "finger print" of a substance. And, secondly, due to sensitivity to different gases presence, for instance, oxygen (the relevant patent has been already registered).
Ultra-short pulse lasers increase precision of diamond sculpting (Nanowerk News) Diamonds come top of Mohs scale of mineral hardness, which ranks materials according to their ability to scratch another one. Besides leading to brilliant gemstones, that property means they are ideal for cutting and drilling other materials.
But it also means that sculpting the diamonds themselves into industrial tools presents a tricky problem. How do you cut one of the hardest materials in the world?
The answer is lasers.
Any mechanical tool has to be harder than the workpiece, explained Maximilian Warhanek, a manufacturing expert and project coordinator for the EU-funded DIPLAT project.
Researchers are using lasers to manufacture more efficient industrial tools. (Image courtesy of DIPLAT)
Researchers on the DIPLAT project, led by Switzerlands ETH Zurich university, are developing a method to cut diamond with ultra-short pulsed lasers, and have already produced several prototypes for milling, grinding, and drilling tools.
The laser doesnt care at all about the hardness. It can cut through diamond at the same rate as any soft metal, said Warhanek.
Thats due to the way lasers work versus conventional cutting. When a drill or grinder pushes into the surface of a workpiece, the material deforms around it under the intense pressure. Friction heat is produced and induces cracks, which eventually break the material in the form of a cut.
For that to work, however, the drill needs to be harder than the object material to push its atoms out of the way.
But lasers are different. They use powerful beams of light that heat up molecules in the target object to such an extent that atomic bonds are pulled apart, and material is vaporised. Yet that heating can also create problems.
Diamonds arent forever
The main difficulty the team needed to overcome was how to create a setup where lasers could move quickly enough that they didnt overheat and damage the diamond.
At about 800 degrees Celsius, diamond decays to graphite, the material commonly used in pencils. Not very good for making drilling tools.
They overcame that partly by using ultra-short pulses of 50-Watt lasers lasting just 10 picoseconds, or 10 trillionths of a second.
We are able to remove material faster than heat can spread inside the material, which means if you do it right, the diamond stays cold, Warhanek said.
The other way to avoid heat damage is by moving the laser around quickly. To do this, the researchers created a work surface capable of moving a tool around five mechanical directions, including twisting the object, along with a laser scan head that could move the laser beam another three directions.
We are really doing pioneer work, Warhanek said. The scan head is mirrors that are actually moved very fast to move the laser up to three metres per second, with several thousand gs of acceleration, which is at least a factor of 100 faster than any mechanical axis could achieve.
Ceramic materials
The project is already selling its laser sculpting tools, and Warhanek has launched a startup, along with some other DIPLAT partners, to further use the technology to cut ceramic materials like zirconium dioxide, commonly used in medical implants.
The researchers are also eager to make use of their Swiss location for future opportunities.
Theres a huge trend in Switzerland for ceramic watches, Warhanek said. We are talking, for example, with one of the big Swiss watchmaking companies about a project next year to really find the limits of whats possible with these drill bits and milling tools.
Right now, the design is limited by the current process which is mainly grinding, but if they have new tools which have new capabilities, then they could maybe reinvent some of their parts.
Even after they are manufactured, overheating can create problems for tools. However, researchers on the EU-funded CONTEMP project have now come up with a way to help tools dissipate heat faster with an internal cooling system.
When you take a look at the cutting process, currently the industry is injecting hazardous cooling lubricant from external nozzles right into the processing zone. In the CONTEMP project, we thought well take the cooling process and put it right into the tool, said project researcher Paul Furstmann from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany.
While lubricants can be used to keep cutting tools cool, they are unable to avoid thermal shock - where different parts of the material expand by different amounts, causing stress - and can create industrial waste when they become contaminated.
Engineers on the project designed a way to use a mixture of water and ethanol that the tool could regulate on its own using a self-learning system. That means the tool can save energy by pumping only when it needs extra cooling.
Theatre graduate popularises musicals among VN audience
VietNamNet Bridge A fresh theatre graduate of the University of New Hampshire, Vietnamese director Nguyen Phi Phi Anh, returned to his home country in April to prepare for his latest Broadway musical-inspired project entitled Hope. Alongside two revues, Goc Pho Danh Vong (LAvenue) and Dem He Sau Cuoi (A Mid-summer Night Murder), which were stage phenomenon in Viet Nam in 2012 and 2013, the project will also stage his new production, Mong Uoc Khong Xa Voi (A Not So Far-fetched Dream). Phi Anh, who acts as producer, stage director and scriptwriter, talks with Thuy Hang about his "offspring".
What is the difference between this years shows and the previous ones?
In the summer of 2012, LAvenue made its debut in Ha Noi, followed by A Mid-summer Night Murder in the summer of 2013. Audiences warmly welcomed both productions. This time, I am simply rerunning these two productions without any adjustments because they are already complete and interesting.
Some people ask me if I have adjusted any details of those productions, and when I say No they seem to breathe a sigh of relief, because they were satisfied by the musicals and dont want them to be changed. Actually, those people also bought tickets for the show Hope. Anyone who knows me or has ever watched my shows believe in me and the quality of my shows, so they do not hesitate to purchase tickets for the new shows this year.
The shows in 2012 and 2013 were to measure the local audiences enjoyment of a Western art genre not commonly popular among Vietnamese people. This years show is to target a mass audience with 35 shows of three plays. Over the months, my team and I also had to deal with a tough task -- how to draw a large enough audience to cover all 200 seats of the Lespace auditorium and how to sell out the tickets for all 35 shows.
Can you reveal a bit about your newest musical, A Not So Far-fetched Dream?
The story basically follows a car driver for a day. He gets to hear different stories told by the various people who step into his car. The scenario has been completed, but so far, we have not practised it yet, as we have to focus on the reruns of the first two musicals. We will stage this newest musical in the beginning of January. Unlike the two revues, that have some songs from famous musicals as well as contemporary international hits, A Not So Far-fetched Dream will feature famous Hongkongese and Japanese songs. I also wrote Vietnamese lyrics for these songs.
Alongside highly-educated audiences, your Hope project also targets labourers by offering low-cost tickets (VND99,000). What will you do to reach your goal as the low price is not a strong factor to draw in that audience?
I dont do charity by offering low-cost tickets. My wish is to see my audience, including both rich and poor people, sit together in a same venue to enjoy my shows because art is for everyone. Thats why I encourage my audience to take their housekeepers or any poor or disadvantaged person that they know together with them to the theatre.
I believe that anyone who has watched my shows would say that musicals are not something too academic. By contrast, they are easy to understand, as the stories are inspired by normal life.
In your productions, what is the more important factor -- fresh or interesting?
For me, the interesting factor is more important.
I was extremely serious when I worked on my first production LAvenue. I didnt want the audience to grant me the privilege of watching my show simply because I was a student. I wanted to attract them by my interesting script and a fresh amateur cast.
I always tell myself that if I take two-and-a-half hours of my audiences time, I should never ever waste that time. It should be a really worthwhile two-and-a-half hours. That is why the biggest pressure on me is to make my shows as interesting as possible.
When LAvenue made its debut in 2012, we couldnt sell all the tickets until the first show was staged. In the end we had to extend the show an extra night, as the audience was still eager to see the revue.
The same thing also happened with my second production, A Mid-summer Night Murder, in 2013. After the first theatregoers enjoyed the show, they would talk about it to their friends, who then went on to talk to other friends. Like a circular water wave, the publics interest in musicals has expanded.
I always devote myself totally whenever working on any production. In preparing for Hope, I suffered hair and weight loss, and developed acne caused by stress.
You are always confident of the quality of your productions. Can you foresee the results of Hope?
Actually, I dont dare say anything about this. It is better to wait until the 35th show has finished. Once we have staged all 35 shows successfully, then we can continue to present them to more audiences. If we still have audiences, of course, we dont have any reason to stop running the show.
What is your next project?
I am not sure that I will stay in Viet Nam for a long time. I need to travel or move to another place to become fresh, both spiritually and physically. I like travelling, that is why I cant stay in the same place for too long.
So far, I dont yet know what I will do after Hope, but I know I will create movies that touch people.
My thesis work -- a 90-minute film -- has received a positive evaluation from my faculty. Entitled, Arbitrary Fairytales, it is a dark and philosophical movie. I am the director, scriptwriter and cameraman for the movie.
How do you describe yourself in five words?
Candid, pragmatic, bold, inspired, ambitious.
VNS
NASCAR championship contenders have plenty of ARCA Menards Series experience The Championship 4 have been set for the NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, and the contenders in each series all have plenty of experience and in most cases success within the ARCA Menards Series platform.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau decried an appeals court ruling last week that found its single-director structure unconstitutional, saying the opinion was "wrongly decided" and had "no basis in the text of the Constitution or in Supreme Court case law."
In a brief filed October 14 in an unrelated case, CFPB v. Intercept Corp., the agency said that a motion by the defendant to dismiss charges based on last week's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should be ignored because that ruling was erroneous and will be overturned on appeal. The ruling in PHH v. CFPB, the agency argued, relied on a novel and heretofore unconsidered reading of the Constitution that determined that independent commissions may not be headed by a single director.
"This principle has no basis in the text of the Constitution or in Supreme Court case law," the CFPB said in its Intercept brief. "The panel decision was wrongly decided and is not likely to withstand further review."
The agency said even if the PHH decision had more merit, it would not have bearing in the Intercept case since the CFPB has not yet had an opportunity to prepare an appeal to the D.C. Circuit en banc. Further, the case would not apply to the eighth circuit, where the Intercept case is being heard.
The CFPB has thus far not made any public statements about whether it intends to appeal the PHH decision. During a public appearance in Philadelphia on Tuesday, CFPB Deputy Director of Enforcement Jeffrey Ehrlich reportedly declined to say whether the agency would appeal, saying the agency would make no advance notice of its decision. Nonetheless, the agency is widely expected to challenge the opinion, and the brief in the Intercept case appears to signal that such a move is all but inevitable.
Stewart Information Services Corp. is reshaping its board by adding three independent directors and its chief executive officer to the panel as part of a settlement with its biggest shareholder, activist investor Starboard Value.
Stewart CEO Matthew Morris and Clifford Press a former Morgan Stanley banker who founded his own investment companies will join the property-title insurer's board immediately, the company said in a statement Tuesday. They replace Malcolm Morris and Stewart Morris, who agreed to resign. Stewart is searching for two additional independent directors to replace Laurie Moore-Moore and Frank Keating, who will step down once replacements are found. The changes mean eight of Stewart's nine directors will be independent.
Starboard disclosed a near 10% activist stake on Aug. 12 in Stewart, which had faced earlier pressure from other investors. Stewart also said Tuesday it reached a separate agreement with Foundation Asset Management to end efforts to call a special shareholder meeting. As part of Tuesday's pacts, Starboard and Foundation agreed to standstill and voting provisions.
Title insurers like Stewart, which competes with First American Financial Corp. and No. 1 Fidelity National Financial Inc., use records and public documents to verify a seller is a property's true owner and that it's free from liens. The companies collect a premium at the closing of a purchase or a refinancing, and pay costs that may arise if there are disputes over ownership. Title insurance is typically required to finalize mortgages and property transactions.
Stewart ended its dual-class share structure at its April annual meeting, opening up voting rights after being targeted by other activists. Phil Goldstein's Bulldog Investors went public with its grievances in 2015, urging a sale and seeking control of its board. In a settlement announced weeks later, Stewart agreed to add an independent director and Bulldog to a standstill.
Under Stewart's now-defunct dual-class share structure, four directors were elected by the B holders, including members of the company's founding Morris family.
Bulldog's campaign came a year after the third-largest U.S. title insurer settled a separate activist battle with hedge funds Foundation Asset Management and Engine Capital. To resolve that situation, Stewart agreed to add two directors, embark on a $70 million share buyback, deliver $25 million in annual cost cuts and begin holding earnings calls.
NATO and the United Arab Emirates reinforced their partnership and set out their priorities for future cooperation by signing an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme (IPCP) on Wednesday (19 October 2016).
During a signing ceremony with Dr. Anwar Mohammed Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, the Secretary General stressed the importance of NATOs cooperation with the UAE. He praised the UAE for its role as a valuable NATO partner in projecting international security and stability: from Kosovo, to Afghanistan to Libya.
The Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme takes NATO-UAE political and practical cooperation further, setting out in detail more areas for enhanced bilateral engagement, including through political dialogue and practical cooperation in NATO-led operations and missions, enhanced interoperability, crisis management, civil emergency planning, capacity building, counter-terrorism, education and training.
Three projects aiming to build Moldovas defence capacities were launched on 6 October 2016. Two projects concern cyber defence and the third seeks to promote the role of women. Developed within the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme, the projects support implementation of the Defence and Related Security Capacity Building Initiative for Moldova.
Cyber defence laboratory
The first project is related to the launch of the e-Research and Education Laboratory for Cyber Defence at the Moldova Technical University. The cyber environment provides us with great opportunities, but it is also connected with serious threats, emphasised Valentin Amariei, Vice Rector.
Serghei Popovici, General Director of the Center for Special Telecommunications, added that the lab will have a major impact on the defence sector of Moldova as it represents a common space where participants can obtain capabilities to respond to current threats. The launch of this high-end laboratory will benefit both system administrators from the public sector as well as students from the Technical University of Moldova.
The project is supported by NATO, the embassies of Estonia and the United States as well as national institutions involved in the project.
Computer Emergency Response Team
The second project relates to the creation of a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) at the Moldovan Ministry of Defence, which will be an instrument for efficient counteracting of various cyber threats and vulnerabilities.
The aim is to enhance the cyber defence capabilities and the protection of the military critical infrastructure, through the provision of equipment and software as well as by sharing best practices, capacity-building and policies.
Ian Davies, Principal Scientist at the NATO Communications and Information Agency, explained that hundreds of millions attacks are detected every day in NATOs cyberspace. However, they can be drastically reduced using sophisticated technologies. It is the experience we have gained in building and operating the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability that we are sharing with the Moldovan MoD and General Staff to support the development of their computer incident response capability, he explained.
Promoting the role of women in peace and security
The third project focuses on assisting the Moldovan government and civil society to develop a National Strategy for the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and related Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security.
Such projects create platforms between the government and civil society, emphasised Elena Marzac, Executive Director of the Information and Documentation Centre on NATO in Moldova, which will support project implementation along the Ministry of Defence and the US-based Inclusive Security Institute (ISI). In the long run, the project is expected to strengthen the role of women in Moldovan society.
Cooperation between Moldova and NATO
The Moldovan government hosted an event to mark the launch of the three new projects. It was attended by senior officials from the State Chancellery, foreign diplomats, NATO delegates, representatives of national institutions and the Technical University of Moldova, as well as press and media.
Roman Cazan, Deputy Secretary General of the Government of the Republic of Moldova, welcomed NATOs strengthened cooperation with Moldovan stakeholders.
Michael Gaul, Senior Advisor in NATOs Emerging Security Challenges Division, underlined that these projects will further enhance the cooperation between Moldova and NATO, will be significant in strengthening Moldovas defence and security sectors and will have a value beyond defence by positively impacting capabilities of the young generation and the Moldovan society at large.
Emil Druc, Head of Multilateral Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration stressed that the launch of those three projects represents a practical advantage of cooperation between NATO and Moldova and is of national importance.
(NaturalNews). The residents of Lower Slobovia have two choices when they are suffering from chronic pain:(Article by Charles Hugh Smith, republished from Charleshughsmith.blogspot.com 1. A natural, non-addictive medication that they can grow themselves that has never caused a single fatality due to overdose, adverse reactions or mixing with other drugs (polypharmacy), or2. synthetic opiates manufactured by pharmaceutical corporations that are highly addictive, trigger multiple adverse reactions, manifest dangerous polypharmaceutical attributes and have killed over 165,000 people in the past 15 years-- 28 times the nation's 5,790 combat deaths in recent military conflicts. [1]'You Want a Description of Hell?' Oxycontin's 12-Hour Problem (via John F.)The natural painkiller that never killed a single soul and can be grown at home is criminalized, while the drugs that have already killed 165,000 people (a number that grossly understates the total number of deaths at least partly attributable to synthetic opiates ) and addicted and/or harmed millions of other users is perfectly legal, declared "safe" by the pushers (oops, I mean pharmaceutical manufacturers) and the government, and distributed in the tens of millions of doses by the "healthcare" system.And the insane laws reversed so the killer corporate synthetic opiates are declared Schedule 1 and heavily criminalized, and the natural nobody-dies painkiller legalized and distributed, right?Yes, I realize cannabis and opiates are not apples to apples, but you get the point--the drugs that have killed more than 165,000 people and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of others should be on Lower Slobovia DEA's Schedule 1 of criminalized drugs instead of being passed out like candy by its "healthcare" system-- a distribtion that has reaped tens of billions of dollars in sales and profits for the pharmaceutical sector.Could Medical Cannabis Break the Painkiller Epidemic? (Scientific American, September 2016 issue) A body of research suggests yes, but scientists are having to fight red tape to study whether medical marijuana could substitute for opioid drugs. [3]the criminality of the pharmaceutical racketeers who hid the truth from doctors and patients, and the complicity of a "healthcare" industry that has been happy to pass out deadly drugs like candy--at a profit, of course.There is only the U.S.A., a nation "in the midst of an unprecedented opioid epidemic," a nation blind to the lethality of its Destruction Enforcement Agency (DEA), its corporate pushers and its government-funded and enforced "healthcare" system.Read more at Charleshughsmith.blogspot.com Sources:[1] Wikipedia.org [2] News.Doximity.com [3] ScientificAmerican.com
Cause of HAE remains unknown, though experts say it's genetic
(NaturalNews) Imagine going about your normal routine and suddenly feeling your body starting to inflate, in some cases to more than double its normal size. This is what sufferers of hereditary angioedema, or HAE, experience at random, with some incidences being so severe that the condition could be life-threatening without swift and proper treatment.Though rare, afflicting only about one in 50,000 people, HAE is extremely serious because those afflicted with it never really know when it's going to show up and cause problems. HAE seems to lie dormant for relatively long periods of time, sufferers say, only to turn up spontaneously when they least expect it.One of these folks is Linda Miller of Houston, Texas, who recounted towhat it's like to have an attack. The otherwise physically fit mother seems to have attacks mostly on her face, which cause her cheeks and lips to blow up like a balloon, almost like a patient who's recently undergone lip injections of Botox."The windpipe can swell shut and then you can't breathe," Miller says about what she typically experiences. Miller also gets HAE outbreaks on other parts of her body, and she describes it as some of the worst pain a person can possibly experience."It's about as big as it can get. I mean, as big as the skin can stretch, because the fluid just doesn't stop pouring in. When it occurs in the stomach, it is so excruciatingly painful, we have to be hospitalized. It's been described as having a child without medication."Many doctors don't know what to do with their HAE patients as there isn't currently a standardized treatment for the condition that works for everyone who suffers from it. Some patients respond positively to one type of antihistamine while others don't, which makes it a bit of a challenge to know what to do when an HAE sufferer shows up at an emergency room.Typically, allergy medications like Benadryl often don't work, experts say, which is why some drug companies are investigating new treatment options that they hope will offer improved efficacy. Research doctors and others are likewise looking into new ways to help people who suffer from HAE, as the condition can be quite scary.Dr. Paula Busse, an associate professor of medicine at Mount Sinai and allergist-immunologist who's been treating allergy and asthma patients for many years, is currently treating some 40 patients with HAE. She told the(NYDN) that, while progress is being made, nobody really knows what causes HAE.The swelling could be caused by exposure to reactive toxins , which for some people might respond positively to a natural detoxification protocol like chlorella . It could also be a factor of genetic mutation, which is mostly the direction towards which Dr. Busse leans."It's autosomal dominant, which means that if a parent has HAE, there's a 50% chance the child will have it," she told. "For about 25% of patients, it's a new mutation, in which case there's usually not a family history."Though HAE episodes seem to appear at random, some if its known triggers include anxiety and stress, trauma, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and pharmaceutical drugs like blood pressure medications."Other known triggers include surgical procedures or invasive dental work anything that involves manipulating the mucous membrane," says Dr. Busse, adding that many doctors who are unfamiliar with HAE misdiagnose it as a food allergy or bowel disorder, simply due to related symptoms like itching, swelling and the occasional bout of hives.
'Congress has not sent an environmental law to the president's desk in 18 years'
Chemical contamination of the environment growing at an exponential rate, say scientists
Minnesota Zumbro River laced with traces of prescription pills
(NaturalNews) While it's true that Americans have been afforded the luxury of living in a modern day world, our natural resources, the fundamentals upon which human life began, continue to be destroyed and depleted. One must ask which is more important: convenience or sustainability?The so-called innovations of today's society are threatening the planet in which we live, say scientists, revealing that increasing number of pharmaceuticals and other forms of pollution are being deposited into our lakes, rivers and soil. Even more disturbing is that the effects of this phenomenon are widely unknown.For once, a lack of regulation on the government's part is largely to blame. The "environmental spread of pharmaceuticals" is totally ignored by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), allowing these man-made pills to end up everywhere, including in our drinking water The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which hasn't been updated since its creation, excludes drugs and pesticides. Under the law, the EPA is required to maintain a registry of industrial compounds that may be potentially toxic, but advanced safety testing of those materials is not required, according to a report byOnly a fraction of the estimated 84,000 compounds registered have been tested for their safety on humans, prompting scientists and environmental groups to call for a serious revision of how risk assessments of suspect compounds are performed."Our chemical safety net is more hole than net," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. "Where does that leave us in terms of scientific understanding of what drugs to regulate?"Anne Womack Kolton, vice president for communications at the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers said, "Think about the world 40 years ago. It was a vastly different place. It's common sense to revise the law and make it consistent with what we know about chemicals today."The American Chemical Society maintains a database of chemical substance information containing more than 89 million organic and inorganic substances and 65 million sequences dating back to 1957. An estimated 15,000 new substances are added each day, many of which are poorly understood, scientists say.In an essay published in the journal, Dr. Jerald L. Schnoor, a University of Iowa professor of civil and environmental engineering, wrote about the way older compounds are altered in the environment Some substances become even more toxic after their breakdown by plants or animals.For example, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs (which are banned in the U.S. but keep showing up in the environment), are broken down into even more "toxic metabolites," according toAnother example is chlorpyrifos, a highly toxic organophosphate insecticide that when ingested by animals become 3,000 times more potent, according toWhile investigating the chemistry of the Minnesota Zumbro River, environmental health scientists were surprised at the "sheer range and variety" of prescription drugs they found.Relatively high levels of acetaminophen an over-the-counter painkiller that causes liver damage in humans the antibiotic anti-convulsive carbamazepine, caffeine and pesticides were among the contaminants found."We don't know what these background levels mean in terms of environmental or public health," said Deborah Swackhamer, the investigation's lead scientist.The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) tracks chemicals in waterways , sediments, landfills and municipal sewage sludge, which are often converted to fertilizer. Steroid hormones and triclosan (an antibacterial agent banned in Minnesota) were found in sewage.The antidepressant Prozac has shown up in fish, causing them to be anxious, anti-social and even homicidal, reported the"We're looking at an increasingly diverse array of organic and inorganic chemicals that may have ecosystem health effects," said Edward Furlong, a USGS chemist. "Many of them are understudied and unrecognized."
Arboreal: A Collection of New Woodland Writing Edited by: Adrian Cooper Little Toller: 2016. 9781908213419 | ISBN: 978-1-9082-1341-9 Edited by:
For too many years, I have been one of the rats running frequently along the motorway from Oxford through the Chiltern Hills into London. On the capital's outskirts, my bus sweeps past a scrap of land wedged between the road and a London Underground line, where an increasingly decrepit sign proclaims the future home of gleaming corporate headquarters. In reality, the site has, over time, turned from rubbish-strewn concrete to a dense young wood dominated by birch trees, some more than 8 metres tall. The last time I went by, on a bright, blustery autumn day, their tens of thousands of leaves caught the sunlight in a vision of glory. Oliver Rackham analysed interactions between people and woodlands. Credit: East Anglian Daily Times
This patch of self-willed wood might have raised a smile from botanist and historical ecologist Oliver Rackham. Over several decades until his death in 2015, Rackham probably did more than any other scientist to advance our understanding of the consequences of human interactions with woodlands and other landscapes in Britain. That contribution inspires and informs Arboreal, a beautiful, insightful anthology edited by nature writer Adrian Cooper. The more than 40 pieces by ecologists, educators, photographers, sculptors and writers, are highly diverse. Their common starting point is that the perceptions, memories and imagination of individuals matter, and that without wonder and reflection, research and action are blind and blundering.
Rackham's insights remain compelling. With more than a dozen books, notably Ancient Woodland (Edward Arnold, 1980) and The History of the Countryside (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1986), he attracted and educated a large public. He showed that ancient woodland any wood in continuous existence since at least 1600 was frequently as much a human artefact as 'natural.' He helped to set in train significant changes to planning and conservation, fighting the Forestry Commission over the planting of uniform stands of conifers, and showing that large unmanaged populations of deer pose serious threats to woods. In his last years, he stressed the dangers of unregulated global trade in trees, a factor in the spread of pests and diseases. His final book, The Ash Tree (Little Toller, 2014), explored the place of the much-loved genus Fraxinus in culture, and explained Chalara ash dieback, caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, which threatens to wipe out a large proportion of this hitherto abundant species. (In 2012, dieback was reported to have affected some 90% of ash trees in Denmark, but Rackham withheld judgement about the probable scale of UK devastation.) Above all, Rackham helped to create a vision of woodlands as complex, dynamic and potentially resilient places that for thousands of years have seldom been free from human intervention, and where the stories we tell and choices we make have significant consequences.
Cooper calls this long relationship one of both estrangement and affection. Britain is among the most deforested countries in Europe: almost half the ancient woodland in the British Isles was either felled or poisoned between 1933 and 1983. Yet the country famously treasures its large ancient trees. The majority of us do not own woodlands nor earn our living by them, Cooper writes in the introduction, yet it seems that the trees and the woods still inhabit us.
So George Peterken, a woodland ecologist of Rackham's generation, unfolds the surprises and paradoxes of what may be Britain's most 'natural' ancient wood, at Lady Park in the Wye Valley. Gabriel Hemery, forest scientist and author of The New Sylva (Bloomsbury, 2014; G. Hemery Nature 507, 166167; 2014),'looks back' from 2050 on the reforestation of Dartmoor in the face of climate change.
Poet Kathleen Jamie brings the form and sensibility of classical Chinese poetry to the woodlands around Inshriach Bothy in Scotland's Cairngorms National Park. Jay Griffiths (author of Wild; Hamish Hamilton, 2007) unfolds the beauty in woodland birdsong, in prose of great energy and power. Sculptor David Nash explains how he created the extraordinary Ash Dome at Cae'n-y-Coed in Snowdonia, Wales. And in images such as one of leaf-fall through an opening in the New Forest canopy, photographer Ellie Davies creates a sense of immanence redolent of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1975 film The Mirror.
Elsewhere, Tobias Jones co-founder of the Windsor Hill Wood project for young people with mental-health issues makes a powerful case for the therapeutic use of woodland. He explores the Japanese practice of shinrin yoku, or forest bathing, and its reputed beneficial effects on insomnia and anxiety. Deb Wilenski, a specialist in early-childhood education, shows how Spinney Wood in Cambridgeshire can fire the imaginations of the very young to produce maps and poems (B. Kiser et al. Nature 523, 286289; 2015). And music journalist Will Ashon recounts the social history of Epping Forest Britain's unofficial first national park and a Cockney Paradise.
Outside the hall containing the posters and exhibits at last month's Geological Society of America meeting in Denver, Colorado, was a surprise. A travelling photography exhibition displayed large, black-and-white portraits of women wearing beards. To challenge perceptions of who is and is not a scientist, the Bearded Lady Project ( www.thebeardedladyproject.com ) has photographed more than 75 female Earth scientists; a documentary will be released in early 2017. Filmmaker and project mastermind Lexi Jamieson Marsh and palaeobotanist Ellen Currano of the University of Wyoming in Laramie, who inspired the project, talk about 'invisible women', communities of inclusivity and rocking a moustache.
What prompted this project? Ellen Currano (left), Lexi Jamieson Marsh (centre) and photographer Kelsey Vance at a photoshoot. Credit: Draper White/The Bearded Lady Project
LJM: Ellen and I have been friends for about eight years. We met in the small college town of Oxford, Ohio, where she told me she was a palaeontologist. I was really excited: I had never met one in real life. We were having dinner and Ellen said, I know how you see me, but I don't necessarily see myself in that light. As a female I'm either very uncomfortable with all eyes being on me for fixing the diversity problems, or I'm ignored, talked over and not paid attention to. There are days I wish I could walk into a room with a beard on my face and just do my work.
EC: It was nothing I had spent a lot of time thinking about. Except that if I were male, my professional life would be easier, because people would listen to me. There's this celebration of the large grizzled or bearded man going out in the field and facing the elements and being tough and strong, having a large pickaxe and moving giant boulders. And I can't do that. We're not in the documentaries. We're not in National Geographic.
LJM: That night, I e-mailed Ellen at 2 in the morning and asked her, what if you did wear a beard? What if we filmed you, and brought in a photographer? And we could nod to the history, that there are no pioneering women palaeontologists in the classic textbooks. We could make up for a lost legacy and do a tongue-in-cheek response: where are the women if this is the only image we see?
How are you playing on the history of the bearded lady?
LJM: We're walking a fine line, playing with gender identity. I don't expect everyone to understand it. It can be kind of uncomfortable to see a woman with facial hair. But it does nod to the discomfort that comes with women in power positions in science that they still aren't supposed to be there. The bearded lady is in this ambiguous state of masculine and feminine, which ties nicely in with the many cases of how women in science feel that they're there, but not really there. With the film, I wanted to challenge what is shown in mass media. It shows women being independent, being physical and scientifically minded.
How did the women choose their facial hair?
LJM: I did most of the facial hair. I have a background in theatre. The scientists choose where they're filmed, what they're photographed wearing, what tools they would like in the picture. The only thing we alter is the beard. We're not dressing them up like men, it's very much who they are and what they do. But if all that changes with the beard, and your mind can't figure out who this person is, that's the goal. Carole Hickman at the University of California, Berkeley, said she would like to participate, but would bring her own moustache. In the 1970s, she worked in the Australian outback and, as a young woman working alone, she was constantly approached by men. She got a moustache, threw it on and got her work done. So that is her moustache.
How do you think you look in the photo?
EC: I think my parents said it best I look like I should be on a wanted poster. I look tired and run-down, like I've been out in the field for a long time and I'm dirty. And I was. The beard I could do without, but I think I really rock that moustache.
What do you hope people will get out of this project?
EC: The community of inclusion. Making ties between scientists. And the knowledge that you can look however you want and do good science, and people shouldn't be judging you. This project is just one part of getting there.
Deborah Jin invented ways to study a state of matter created in the mid-1990s: gases of strongly interacting atoms, cooled to near absolute zero. Her visionary and methodical approach made it possible to use these ultracold gases as model systems to tease out the quantum principles that lead to behaviours in real materials, such as superconductivity. Credit: GLENN ASAKAWA/UNIV. COLORADO
Jin, who died of cancer on 15 September, aged only 47, was born in 1968 in Stanford, California. She grew up in Indian Harbour Beach, Florida; her father was a professor of physics at Florida Institute of Technology. Her mother and brother also trained as physicists. A studious child, Jin won many mathematics competitions in school.
Jin completed an undergraduate degree in physics at Princeton University in New Jersey in 1990. She earned her PhD in 1995 from the at the University of Chicago in Illinois under Thomas Rosenbaum, studying unconventional superconductors that were cooled to millikelvin temperatures using liquid helium and similar traditional cryogenic techniques. Jin probed how the exotic superconductivity in these materials reacted to pressure, stress and magnetic fields. During this period, she met her husband, John Bohn, also a physics graduate student at Chicago. In the years that followed, they collaborated on several studies on the collisions of quantum particles.
Next, Jin made the bold decision to change research areas. She moved to Boulder, Colorado, to do postdoctoral research with Eric Cornell at JILA, a joint institute between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado, previously known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics. She worked on materials created with a new set of techniques quantum gases of atoms cooled with lasers to microkelvin temperatures and suspended in vacuum by magnetic fields.
Jin quickly made key contributions to this new field, including measurements of the heat capacity and the excitation spectra of a BoseEinstein condensate, a quantum phase of matter that Cornell had created for the first time with a colleague in 1995. BoseEinstein condensates comprise bosons, particles that have either zero or integer values of spin, that are all in the same spin state. Remarkably, the behaviour of collections of quantum particles, whether in superfluids or neutron stars, is determined by whether they are made up of bosons or fermions, particles with half-integer spin.
In 1997, Jin accepted a permanent position at JILA and took on one of the greatest challenges in atomic physics at the time creating a gas of ultracold fermions. Only bosonic gases had been thus cooled when Jin chose to work with the fermionic isotope potassium-40. She realized that trapping two nuclear states of this rare atom was key to producing the first quantum Fermi gas, which her team did in 1999 (B. DeMarco and D. S. Jin Science 285, 17031706; 1999). The usefulness of these gases lies in their ability to emulate other models, for example of high-temperature superconductors.
The natural interactions between potassium-40 atoms are too weak to induce strong quantum correlations directly. So Jin and Bohn harnessed collisional resonances to strengthen the interaction between atoms using a magnetic field. They produced the first molecular Fermi condensate in 2003, and the first resonantly interacting Fermi gas in 2004.
Jin's work marked a shift in how other branches of physics viewed and interacted with experimental atomic physics. The early work on dilute atomic BoseEinstein condensates could be understood using relatively simple and well-developed theoretical approaches. The achievement of strong interactions in the gas enabled experiments to connect with open and difficult physics questions, some of which still cannot be tackled using the most powerful supercomputers. This led to rich and varied exchanges between research areas, as exemplified by Jin's connections with nuclear and condensed-matter theorists.
In 2008, expanding her work from atoms, Jin partnered with Jun Ye at JILA to create the first quantum gas of diatomic molecules that experience long-range inter-particle interactions. These interactions lead to correlated behaviours in many-body quantum systems. The collaboration also helped to launch the study of chemical reactions in the ultracold quantum realm.
Despite a career cut tragically short, Jin's scientific legacy is broad and deep. Her research made textbook models a scientific reality, including ideal Fermi gases and the crossover between BoseEinstein condensation and the BardeenCooperSchrieffer theory of superconductivity. She developed the tools and techniques to tune these states and conduct precise measurements, unveiling new physics along the way.
Debbie inspired a generation of young scientists who founded careers on the research directions she started. She was a warm, dedicated mentor and role model, and a champion of female physicists. She cared deeply about her students, colleagues and friends. Her laser-like focus and intellectual integrity could at times seem blunt, but her ex-students still ask themselves how Debbie would approach a problem.
A few days ago, a resident gorilla in a London zoo named Kumbuka managed to escape his enclosure. United Press International said in a report that the 18-year-old endangered western lowland silverback gorilla was filmed smashing the glass window of his enclosure moments before he escaped.
Eyewitnesses Hannah O'Donoghue-Hobbs and Charlotte Neild told BBC that the gorilla appeared to be "really angry" and was "banging on the cage." His escape resulted in a brief panic among the visitors who were in the area. A lockdown was immediately called as the visitors were ushered in a safe place.
Meanwhile, zoo officials said Kumbuka did not break the glass wall, but rather escaped through an open door into a secure area accessible only by zookeepers and not by the public. Many concerned citizens feared that Kumbuka's fate might suffer the same fate of Harambe, a Cincinnati zoo endangered gorilla who was shot dead after a boy fell from its enclosure.
READ: #RIPHarambe: Who Was Harambe? Facts About the Critically Endangered Animal
Kumbuka is now back in his enclosure after the officials were able to tranquilize him. Terry Maple, an expert in animal's psychological responses to captivity and the former head of Zoo Atlanta told National Geographic that gorillas, who prefer to avoid people, are very powerful and they must be treated with respect.
Appearing on "Good Morning Britain," Sir David Attenborough, a naturalist and broadcaster, said he felt sympathy and sorrow for the escaped gorilla and urged the people to be sensitive towards the animal. He added that the gorilla might have felt "fed up" from people watching him for ten hours outside the glass enclosure.
"Sometimes visitors to zoos are not respectful and they start shrieking or waving their arms in order to get the poor gorilla to do something," Attenborough said. "You might think, oh they're just animals. They are not just animals. They are related to us. They value their privacy. Just imagine what it's like to be there. [...] That finally the alpha male, the big gorilla, got fed up with it, is hardly surprising."
Just recently, Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have detected strange 'strobe-like' bursts coming from 234 stars. Since then, astronomers have been investigating it. The latest to join the investigation is Stephen Hawking, through the Breakthrough Listen project, which is funded by himself and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and run by the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Centre at the University of California Berkeley.
The discovery of the mysterious lights was described in a paper entitled "Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars," which was published in a pre-print website, arXiv.org.
"We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an ETI signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis. The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis," the abstract read.
The paper was authored by astronomers Ermanno Borra and Eric Trottier from Laval University in Canada. While Borra and Trottier said the signals could be coming from extraterrestrial life, it is yet to be formally peer-reviewed. Thus, further study in needed.
Read: Aliens on Mars: NASA Captures Mysterious 'Ancient City' on the Red Planet
In a statement, SETI, said Borra's and Trottier's study is worth a follow-up, "The one in 10,000 objects with unusual spectra seen by Borra and Trottier are certainly worthy of additional study. However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The statement added that careful work is needed and that the use of two or more independent telescopes is a must to confirm the extraterrestrial claim. Andrew Siemion, the director of the SETI Research Centre said he thinks the spectral patterns were likely caused by errors in calibration or data analysis because of some steps of analysis they did not think through.
Nevertheless, Borra told New Scientist, that he is excited to see that others are taking the reins. "At this stage, the signal is so strange, that although our detailed analysis seems to indicate that it is a real signal, it has to be validated with more work," he said.
Elon Musk and his commercial space flight company SpaceX is consistent in working for his dream of sending the first humans to Mars in 2025. But Musk found himself a competitor with Boeing, another commercial space flight company, who's CEO recently announced that he plans to beat Musk to Mars. The question now is, whose human-carrying rocket will make it to Mars first?
"I'm convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket," Boeing CEO Deni Muilenburg said in a statement during a conference in Chicago.
Not only Musk's SpaceX is targeting Mars, being the next frontier. Other organizations such as ESA, ISRO and the China Space Agency are also planning to reach Mars as soon as possible. But the forerunner in sending humans to Mars are NASA and its Journey to Mars mission that intends to send humans to Mars in 2030 and Musk's SpaceX mission to Mars in 2025.
SpaceX made news when CEO Elon Musk announced that the first batch of humans to land on Mars would leave Earth on 2024 and reach the red planet by 2025. However, Boeing contested by saying that the first humans to reach the red planet will arrive there using a Boeing spacecraft.
In order to send humans to Mars, these space flight companies need to build the most powerful rockets capable of deep space explorations. NASA is currently building its Space Launch System (SLS) with the help of Boeing while SpaceX takes pride in its Mars Interplanetary Transport System (ITS).
NASA claims that the SLS will be the most powerful rocket ever built while the Mars ITS is threatening to take the title away from NASA's rocket. Boeing intends to become a vital player in colonizing Mars and with NASA's SLS, it might be possible.
Elon Musk accepted Boeing's challenge and seems to welcome the competition. "I really don't have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets, except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multi-planetary," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a statement. "I think it's actually much better for the world if there are multiple companies or organizations building these interplanetary spacecraft. You know, the more the better."
Sending humans to Mars is not an easy feat, and the way the majority of the public and the scientific community see it, whoever built the most powerful rocket and whoever reach the red planet first, will make a mark in history; not only will their achievement be a win for the company but also a milestone for the human race.
Six years ago, two Wells Fargo employees filed whistleblower complaints with the federal government.
They sent their cases to the Department of Labors Whistleblower Protection Program, which is administered by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
But an investigator who reviewed cases for the agency says no one actually investigated the complaints.
This revelation comes as the nation reels from an enormous Wells Fargo banking scandal. The San Francisco-based company was fined $185 million last month after employees opened two million phony bank accounts and credit cards to meet sales goals.
Now Darrell Whitman is breaking his silence to the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, claiming if his agency had done its job, the banks widespread practice of opening fraudulent customer accounts could have been exposed and fixed years ago.
I think its pretty obvious they dont follow protocols, Whitman said of OSHA. You dont do the job, thats pretty close to dropping the ball, isnt it?
Whitman worked in the agencys San Francisco office from 2010 to 2015. He says in May 2010, OSHA received two complaints from former Wells Fargo employees who claimed the company retaliated against them for raising red flags about the banks business practices.
Whitman says instead of investigating, the agency held the complaints for six months. He says in November 2010, after the two complainants decided to file federal lawsuits against Wells Fargo, his supervisors assigned him the cases simply to close them.
They assigned it to me only for the purpose of dismissing the complaint, he said.
According to OSHA policy, the agency is relieved of pursuing whistleblower cases when complainants head to court. But, Whitman says the agency should have started and completed the investigations before the whistleblowers filed their lawsuits.
Wells Fargo Employee Blows the Whistle in St. Helena
Whitmans insights have frustrated Yesenia Guitron, one of the complainants.
Now I know that nothing happened with my complaint. It just sat on someones desk, Guitron said. At the time, I didnt know. But I was certainly trusting that everyone was doing what they were supposed to do. And they didnt.
Guitron turned to the Whistleblower Protection Program after Wells Fargo fired her in January 2010.
She says she first noticed in 2008 that something wasnt right at the St. Helena branch where she worked as a personal banker. Guitron says customers would come in complaining of fees and collection calls for accounts they never opened.
She says she notified her manager and human resources department and called the companys ethics hotline to report what she describes as a clear pattern of intentional fraud by other employees. Guitron believes she was terminated for speaking up about unethical business practices.
Guitron says she expected OSHA to investigate her complaint.
I think everyone files with the expectation that they are going to be investigated, she said, and not just dismissed after six months of sitting on someones desk.
In the final investigation reports Whitman prepared for Guitrons case and the case of the second Wells Fargo whistleblower, he noted that the company declined to provide a defense to the allegations.
He says that should have resulted in an automatic merit finding or win for the complainants. And a win, Whitman says, would have required OSHA to provide details about the complaints to banking regulators, which could have prompted them to take corrective action years ago.
In September, six years after Guitron submitted her complaint to the government, Congress grilled former CEO John Stumpf about the companys sale practices. Lawmakers also raised questions about who knew what and when.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was formed in 2011 and says it learned of Wells Fargos sales practices in the summer of 2013. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which protects investors by regulating the securities industry, declined to comment on when it first found out about the fraudulent accounts.
Judge Dismisses Guitrons Federal Lawsuit
Guitrons retaliation lawsuit was dismissed in 2012. Her attorney says although the judge found some evidence of unlawful conduct at Wells Fargo, the judge decided there was justification for her termination. Guitron lost an appeal in 2015.
Wells Fargo says it doesnt tolerate retaliation against employees who report their concerns, the company said in a statement.
We regret and take full responsibility for the incidents in which customers received a product they did not request, as that is inconsistent with the values and culture we strive to live up to every day, the company wrote.
The bank also says it is making fundamental changes to help ensure team members are not being pressured to sell products. As of Oct.1, Wells Fargo ended all product sales goals.
OSHA Investigator Raised Red Flags Before
This isnt the first time Whitman raised red flags about the OSHA Whistleblower Protection Program. In 2015, he spoke to the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, claiming supervisors ordered him to close cases without properly investigating them.
Last year Whitman filed a retaliation complaint of his own after he was fired. The complaint is pending before the Office of Special Counsel, which reviews retaliation claims submitted by federal employees.
OSHA says it cannot comment on internal personnel matters or on specific whistleblower cases, but the agency says its now taking a second look at whistleblower complaints involving Wells Fargo.
In a Sep. 26 letter to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has emerged as a fervent critic of Wells Fargo, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez says OSHA is reviewing the entire docket of both closed and open Wells Fargo cases since 2010. Perez says the reviews include an examination of OSHAs coordination with other federal agencies.
One of those complaints may involve Claudia Ponce de Leon, a former Wells Fargo branch manager in Pomona, Calif. She filed a whistleblower case with OSHA in 2011 after she was fired. Whitman says the complaint crossed his desk briefly, before it was transferred to another investigator.
That complaint has been pending for five years. Ponce de Leons attorney, Yosef Peretz, says the agency finally contacted him last year to arrange an interview with his client.
I gave them a date and a time that they requested, Peretz said. Never heard back.
Guitron says Wells Fargo and many layers of government let down Wells Fargo whistleblowers. Now, she has a message for OSHA.
I would tell them, do their job, she said. Its not fair just to ignore peoples cases like my case.
If you have a tip for the Investigative Unit, email theunit@nbcbayarea.com or call 888-996-TIPS.
Classes at a San Francisco high school are set to resume Wednesday after four students were shot just outside the campus, prompting a lockdown and sending waves of panic through local parents and students.
Police continue to search for four suspects tied to the shooting reported Tuesday afternoon at the parking lot of June Jordan School for Equity, which is located in the city's Excelsior District.
Police said at least three students were shot outside as school was dismissed for the day at around 3:15 p.m. A fourth victim, a male student, walked into the Bayview Police Station in San Francisco hours later with a gunshot wound. All four were students at the school. All four students are 15 years old.[[397631621, C]]
Four male suspects, unaffiliated with the school, approached the campus on foot targeting a student for reasons that are currently unclear, police said. One of the suspects pulled out a gun and began shooting at two male students and a female student, who suffered a life-threatening injury. All three students ran back into the school after they were shot. They were transported to San Francisco General Hospital.
San Francisco police search for suspects after four students were shot outisde a school Tuesday.
The four suspects, who were all wearing black hoodies, were last seen running away on Brazil Avenue, police said.
San Francisco Unified School District officials said the school immediately went on lockdown after the gunshots were fired because of fears of an active shooter. The lockdown was lifted after the scene was declared safe by police shortly after 4 p.m.
Parents and grandparents came rushing to the school looking for their students after the scene was cleared.[[397547931, C]]
During the initial response, a swarm of police squad cars responded to reports of shots fired at Brazil and La Grande avenues.
Students were too shaken to speak on camera to NBC Bay Area, but said they heard what sounded like fireworks right when school was letting out. Dozens of students came running back into the school.
Police said classes at June Jordan High School will resume Wednesday and counselors will be available for students. Extra security will also be on campus Wednesday, school officials said.
The scene where the shooting took place, 325 La Grande Ave., is the address for the June Jordan High School as well as City Arts And Tech High School.
There is a new push in San Francisco to end all business ties with its hometown bank, Wells Fargo.
Two San Francisco supervisors are calling for the city to end its relationship with the bank due to a recent scandal involving unauthorized customer accounts. The push comes after the state treasurer severed its ties with Wells Fargo earlier this month.
The supervisors also announced plans to investigate all banks after the Wells Fargo scandal.
"The city of San Francisco can no longer afford to do business with the predatory culture of Wells Fargo," Supervisor John Avalos said.
Charlie Batte, who lives in San Francisco's Bayview District, said she almost lost her home in foreclosure and claims Wells Fargo made it difficult to refinance her home.
Batte said she wrote to the district attorney and supervisors to see if they can help.
Avalos claims Wells Fargo has a history of loan discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics.
"We're doing what we can, but it's going to take state and federal regulations to be held accountable," Avalos said.
In response to Avalos, Wells Fargo released a statement saying it is committed to restoring public trust.
"We have already provided full refunds to customers we identified as having accounts that could have been unauthorized," Wells Fargo said in a statement.
More than 300 people flocked to a so-called Trump teach-in at the University of California, Berkeley on Tuesday.
Berkeley is known as the birthplace of free speech, but some students are miffed. They have accused professors of violating the universitys policy about political activity on campus by participating in the event at Sproul Plaza.
What is to be done about the problem that is Donald J. Trump? one professor asked the crowd.
Professors talked about issues, including Islamophobia and immigration, while members of the student-run Berkeley College Republicans staged a counter-demonstration that featured signs criticizing Hillary Clinton.
Our club feels it is a gross misuse of university resources for a professor to use the prestige of their university title to stage this event, said Claire Chiara of Berkeley College Republicans.
On Oct. 10, university chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent an email to the campus community, reminding them that UC Berkeleys resources and that includes employees should not be used to campaign for or against presidential candidates during work hours.
NBC Bay Area reached out UC Berkeley officials for a response on students allegations that professors violated university policy. The response was that they did not, as long as they were on their time and not supposed to be teaching or holding office hours.
But teachers argue that Tuesdays sit-in was not a political rally. It was designed to shed light on some of the critical issues at stake in the Nov. 8 election.
I would classify this as a Trump teach-in about the issues surrounding democracy, said professor Leigh Raiford, who chairs the African-American Studies Department. "People who don't have a platform like undocumented [immigrants] or Muslims or blacks we need to hear [their] issues."
Student Kayleen Zamudio agreed.
"It was a teach in about Trump but you made your own decision," she said.
A Mexican judge who handled legal challenges from drug kingpins, including Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was gunned down in front of his home in Mexico City on Monday, Reuters reported.
Judge Vicente Bermudez was fatally shot in the head, authorities said, and President Enrique Pena Nieto quickly announced his attorney general is investigating the shooting.
Bermudez has handled overseen trials and legal challenges in the state of Mexico, outside the capital, since March. Miguel Trevino, ex-leader of the Zetas cartel, is jailed in Mexico's maximum security Altiplano prison, and Guzman was housed there before being transferred to a prison near the U.S. border.
While the presidential candidates debate in Las Vegas Wednesday, a fleet of taco trucks has lined up to create a "wall" outside the Trump International Las Vegas hotel, NBC News reported.
It's a response to Donald Trump's pledge to build a wall separating the U.S. and Mexico, and a cheeky reaction to a Trump supporter's warning in early September that the unchecked expansion of Latino culture in the U.S. would lead to "taco trucks on every corner." (Many viewers welcomed that notion.)
Over 35 taco trucks were already helping to register eligible voters on Tuesday, Nevada's voter registration deadline, according to American Bridge PAC.
"We did not come up with the idea for the wall, Donald Trump came up with building the wall," said Yvanna Cancela, political director of the Culinary Workers Union 226 in Las Vegas. "We are all coming together to make sure that Donald Trump never becomes president."
Former Late Show host David Letterman was in Chicago Tuesday to attend a fundraiser for Rep. Tammy Duckworths Senate campaign.
Duckworth, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and former Illinois state Sen. Bill Marovitz were all in attendance for the event, which was held at Chicagos Carnivale restaurant. Marovitz co-owns the West Loop hotspot. Tickets for the event ranged in price from $100 per person to $5,000 for the VIP reception, according to the Chicago Sun-Times Lynn Sweet.
Letterman has been especially critical of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump this campaign season. Trump was a frequent guest on Lettermans show before the host retired last year.
In an interview with the New York Times earlier this month, Letterman referred to Trump as a big blowhard billionaire.
If I had a show, I would have gone right after him, Letterman told the Times. I would have said something like, Hey, nice to see you. Now, let me ask you: what gives you the right to make fun of a human who is less fortunate, physically, than you are?
And maybe thats where it would have ended. Because i dont know anything about politics, Letterman added.
Duckworth faces Republican incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk in the November election. Kirk disavowed Trump in June, pulling his tacit endorsement of the divisive billionaire.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is in Chicago Wednesday to attend a pair of campaign events for Sen. Mark Kirk and Rep. Bob Dold.
Romney, who was easily defeated by President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, is headling a fundraiser for fellow Republican Kirk at the Chicago Club Wednesday. Kirk is locked in a tight Senate race with Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth.
Tickets for the event range in price from $250 per individual to $2,700 to be a top sponsor, according to the Chicago Sun-Times Lynn Sweet.
The former Republican presidential nominee will also attend a fundraiser for Rep. Bob Dold in Lake Forest Wednesday. Dold will face former Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider, who the congressman unseated in 2014.
Three people are facing misdemeanor charges after a woman was stabbed during a domestic fight with her sister Monday night in the South Side Gresham neighborhood.
Taijah McKinney, 21, was fighting with her sister, 25-year-old Jessica Foster, about 11:40 p.m. in the 7600 block of South May, when McKinney was stabbed in the left cheek, according to Chicago Police.
She was taken in good condition to Holy Cross Hospital, police said.
Foster, of the 6600 block of South Oakley, was charged with simple assault, and resisting or obstructing a peace officer, both misdemeanors, police said.
McKinney, of the 7600 block of South May, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of battery causing bodily harm, police said.
A third person, 46-year-old Marvin McKinney, was charged with one misdemeanor count of resisting or obstructing a peace officer.
All three are next scheduled to appear in court Nov. 7.
There's one moment the parents of twin boys who were once attached at the head can't wait for after their sons' historic separation surgery -- to see them in a bed side by side.
Christian McDonald, the father of the boys, told CNN he's "so excited and anxious to see that moment."
McDonald's 13-month-old sons, Jadon and Anias, were separated following 16 hours of surgery at New York's Montefiore Medical Center last week. The twins survived the critical 72 hours following the surgery and are now in stable condition.
According to the report, Anias suffered a seizures over the weekend, but those have since been brought under control. Meanwhile, Jadon still has not moved his left side, something doctors predicted could happen following the surgery but say isn't concerning yet.
Christian McDonald has yet to hold either of his sons post-surgery, saying they are too fragile, but reportedly said Jadon will "squeeze your fingers and not let go, on his right side."
Nicole McDonald, the mother of the Illinois twins, has reluctantly documented her family's experience as her sons faced their most difficult surgery yet. But if supporters of her family read anything she hopes, it's her message to them and the doctors who saved her children.
In a lengthy and emotional Facebook update on Saturday, the mother shared that as she and her husband "emerged from the depths of the hospital" last week, they were forced to face the fact that their family's private battle has quickly become a national story.
"For those of you who don't know us, it might be interesting to note that we do not have TV or Internet access at home," she wrote. "We don't get to watch the news on a regular basis and we have literally spent the last 36 hours at the boys' bedside or waiting for updates from the doctors in the Caregiver Support Center at Montefiore."
McDonald noted that at first, she didn't want to take her family's unique situation public, but agreed because they wanted to help show the medical miracle that would soon separate her sons.
"Our biggest desire was to show how brilliant the team at Montefiore has been and to give the hospital the credit it deserves," she wrote. "The real heroes of this story are the people who have put countless hours, days and months into the success of today."
McDonald had been sharing updates on the surgery as the boys returned to their room one by one.
Hours later, McDonald wrote that the brothers had been "finally reunited."
"How surreal. I now realize that I always saw you as separate because seeing you like this is really nothing different to me," McDonald wrote. "When I stand at your bedside, Jadon, it's almost as if Anias is still there. Anias, when I leaned over you I protected my hair from Jadon. But the view is still the same. This is how I always saw you. I love you so much. Now it's time to step forward into the new chapter of our life. I'm ready to fight and I know you are too."
McDonald and her husband first found out they were having twins during a routine ultrasound when she was 17 weeks pregnant. But hours after learning the big news, the couple was called back for a repeat ultrasound, a call she said is "every pregnant mother's nightmare."
"It was on that day, in that dark room, that our whole life changed," McDonald wrote in a GoFundMe page for the family. "I was informed that I was pregnant with craniopagus twins, which in normal language means twins who are joined at the head. I was given the option on many occasions to abort my precious babies. I kindly declined. I had heard their heart beats...they spent their life listening to mine. It was my job as their mother to give them life and I decided that I would give everything up, if need be, to do so. Miracles happen...and there is one (really, two :)) unfolding before our very eyes."
McDonald went into labor on Sept. 9, 2015 and an emergency c-section was performed at Rush University Medical Center.
While the babies started having some health problems shortly after birth, things quickly "went downhill" for the McDonald family.
"Anias started having trouble breathing," McDonald wrote. "Because of the way he was positioned in my belly, his chin was against his chest and his jaw couldn't grow. His airway was also constricted. As he required more oxygen for day to day life, his breathing got worse and worse, until eventually he was back on oxygen."
Months later, the couple met with a specialist in hopes of successfully separating the twins. Fast forward to October, the babies have undergone their final surgery, but their most difficult.
The family's GoFundMe page had raised $161,161 as of Friday, exceeding their goal of $100,000 to aid with the babies' medical care.
McDonald thanked those who helped her family during the trying time, saying "each and every one of you is a hero in your own way."
Most recently, McDonald said the boys are stable, but "there are some things happening that I can't really find the words to explain or allow myself to dwell on."
"Every thing changes from hour to hour and we just have to remember that the brain responds in crazy ways when it's been cut through," she wrote. "We still cannot hold the boys because they are intubated so we sit at their bedside and hold their hands, give them massages and kiss their faces. When I have a better understanding of their actual status, I will do my best to update. Thank you so much for your heartfelt support."
Nearly 8,000 students will return to classes Wednesday after teachers at Chicagos largest charter school reached a deal to avert a strike.
Negotiations lasted through the night Tuesday between teachers and support staff with UNO Charter School Network fighting for a new contract, finally reaching a tentative agreement after 3 a.m. Wednesday.
Although classes will be remain in session at the charter networks 15 schools, UNOs CEO Richard Rodriguez said both sides still have more work to do, including a $1.5 million shortfall to address before finalizing a contract.
"I appreciate the fact that they've come and they've worked with us to get through this and I look forward to working collectively with anyone who would like to help us ensure that educational funding is allocated appropriately," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said they will be looking into getting some of the TIF funds that Chicago Public Schools agreed to in the Chicago Teachers Union contract last week.
"After much discussion, we all agreed the most important thing is to keep schools open while we investigate ways to bridge that gap," Rodriguez said.
In the meantime, the two-year deal that was agreed upon gives 3 percent raises to support staff and caps class size at 32 students. It also creates a shorter work day and shortens the school year by five days.
Four people are in custody after a police pursuit of a stolen vehicle in New Haven Tuesday afternoon.
According to New Haven police, a stolen Honda CRV out of West Hartford crashed into 904 Quinnipiac Ave. following a police pursuit.
Three men were taken into custody, Officer David Hartman confirmed, but a fourth person fled from the scene.
The U.S. Coast Guard assisted in searching for the fourth suspect, who police believed to have jumped into the Quinnipiac River Marsh. The fourth suspect is now in custody.
None of the suspects have been identified at this time.
Police were looking into the possibility that the vehicle was involved in a fatal shooting in the city around the same time, but the cases do not appear to be connected.
Open enrollment for health-care is about to begin, and sorting through insurance benefits can be downright confusing with all those plans and options.
It has gotten more complicated," said ConnectiCare Retail Operations Director Laurie Blier.
Not everyone is comfortable getting answers over the phone or online, she added.
Its very personal. If someones sick in your family, its your spouse, its your child, its yourself. So, you want to make sure you understand and you can make the right decisions," said Blier.
Thats why the Connecticut-based insurance company ConnectiCare has opened up its first retail store, in Manchester.
They really want to be able to have a face-to-face relationship with us," said ConnectiCare Senior Vice President David Gordon.
However, its more than just a place to shop for health insurance. There's a multi-purpose room for meetings and group activities.
We can have yoga classes, Tai Chi classes, sessions on how to eat healthy, how to cook healthy," explained ConnectiCare Retail Operations VP Gary Wolters.
A sign saying "Be well," hangs on a wall near a health hallway, where starting next March a nurse will give voluntary personal health assessments to customers.
Shell also get information from our equipment that shows their body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol, and advise them if theres an issue and get them to make an appointment with their provide," Wolters explained.
The store has gotten positive feedback since it opened last Friday.
We had one customer that came in when we first opened that said I could hug you and cry right now," Blier said.
"This is much easier because they understand the question you're asking and then they'll look it up for you," added new customer Doug Gravelle of South Windsor.
A Cheshire elementary school dismissed early Wednesday morning after several students that fell ill tested high for carbon monoxide.
School officials said they learned Tuesday that several students from Highland Elementary School fell ill on a field trip. Some students had elevated levels of carbon monoxide in their systems. Some also reported diarrhea, which is not a symptom of carbon monoxide exposure.
The Cheshire fire department, police department, Cheshire Public Schools and Cheshire's school transportation company Chesprocott all began working to find the source of the carbon monoxide.
The school building tested safe for occupancy with no carbon monoxide detected but as a precaution and to continue testing, the school dismissed students early Wednesday
Officials determined that a malfunctioning boiler was releasing carbon monoxide through a chimney, which was then drawn into the building through rooftop air handling units. The boiler was shut down so it can be repaired. School officials said the boiler undergoes regular routine maintenance and was last serviced in November 2015.
According to school officials, some of the students reported viral symptoms, so the school will also disinfect rooms those students were in to prevent the spread of any illness.
The students that fell ill had been on a field trip around the time the symptoms began. The Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Conn. confirmed that Highland students visited their facility and that there were no reported issues during the trip. They had no further comment.
Every member of our team is confident that the situation has been fully remedied and that the school is now safe for occupancy. Therefore, Highland School will be in session tomorrow. Moreover, we have inspected the bus which transported students and are certain that neither thebus, nor the location of the trip had anything to do with this outbreak. We have sent students to The Institute for American Indian Studies on school trips many times and fully intend to continue to do so. This includes the field trip we have scheduled to return there tomorrow, wrote Superintendent Jeff Solan in an email to parents.
Students were dismissed at 10:55 a.m. Students that parents could not pick up were taken to the Dodd Middle School so officials can continue to test the Highland Elementary building.
Plainville police have arrested a man accused of abusing his girlfriends 2-year-old son.
According to Lt. Nicholas Mullins, Jacob Matthews, 20, of Maple Street in Plainville, faces charges of risk of injury to a minor, cruelty to persons, third-degree assault and disorderly conduct.
Police said the childs mother told them on October 6 she was concerned Matthews, who lived in her home, may be physically abusing her son. Matthews is not the childs father.
Officers reported the child had bruises on his face, head, hips, and genitalia. Connecticut Childrens Medical Center determined the injuries were consistent with child abuse, police said.
Matthews was arrested Tuesday and is currently held on a $75,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in Bristol Superior Court on October 19.
The child is currently under Department of Children and Families care.
At first glance, Farnam Courts, a public housing complex in New Haven, looks abandoned, but people do live there, despite garbage strewn around the property.
As children play in the complex playground, they're careful to avoid the broken glass sprinkled throughout.
"That is what they are doing, playing in the trash," Farnam Courts resident Michelle said.
People said the trash has been a problem since 2015, when the Elm City Communities/New Haven Housing Authority - which runs the subsidized complex - started boarding up units and relocating people to new housing as they plan to build a new Farnam Courts.
"I done seen weed baggies. I done seen needles before. Broken glass," said New Haven resident Dayshawna, whose family lives in the complex.
Those still waiting to be moved to temporary housing said staff members rarely clean anymore and it can get worse than its current state.
The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters caught up with some Elm City Communities staffers hauling away furniture, but leaving the trash. The staffers wouldnt explain why they hadnt been cleaning, but advised getting an answer from the office located at the complex.
An Elm City Communities employee inside the office onsite said they do clean, but told NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters to visit their main office for more explanation.
NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters reached out to the executive offices of the Elm City Communities/New Haven Housing Authority and they responded in an email:
"The grounds at Farnam Courts are maintained on a daily basis Monday through Friday," the statement says.
But the piles of garbage scattered about told a different story, as did residents.
NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters sent photos of the mounting garbage collecting about the grounds to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funds the subsidized housing at Farnam Courts at 177 Franklin Street.
An HUD spokeswoman responded within minutes and results were seen less than 24 hours later.
"We do not want our residents to be subjected to living in those conditions," Rhonda Siciliano said. "That is why we took immediate action upon learning of the condition out there. To work with the housing authority to ensure that it was addressed."
Siciliano said a crew worked overtime into the night to clean up the mess.
However, when the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters visited the property after it had been cleaned, a young man was observed breaking a bottle and leaving the glass on the ground near the playground.
"Obviously not everyone thinks of home in the same way," Siciliano said. "We have maintenance staff there to ensure that properties are kept clean and safe for the residents there."
However, some residents of Farnam Courts do their own cleaning.
"We see trash, we are going to pick up," said a Farnam Courts resident, Larry. "We don't want to just leave it there.
We found Larry, his 12-year-old son and 16-year old neighbor, cleaning the area in front of their home before Elm City Communities finally got around to it.
Siciliano said she will continue to follow up and ensure that this community is cleaned regularly. She added that if a person lives in subsidized housing and their local Housing Authority isn't keeping the property clean, they can reach out to HUD directly on their website.
The Elm City Communities/New Haven Housing Authority said its unclear when the remaining residents at the old Farnam Courts will be moved to interim housing.
New Haven Mayor Toni Harp and officials with Elm City Communities had a ground breaking ceremony on Wednesday at the new Farnam Courts.
Officials with the agency said residents of the old Farnam Courts will have an option to move to the newly built complex once it is completed, or they can use housing vouchers to live in other places.
A Vernon police officer was injured while trying to take a person into custody on Tuesday night.
Officers responded to the Walgreens at 188 Union Street around 7:30 p.m. to deal with a situation involving a mother and her adult son.
The woman told officers that her 30-year-old son was mentally unstable and was off his medications.
The pair were traveling from Natick, Massachusetts to Connecticut and had made a brief stop at the Walgreens when the son took his mother's car keys and cell phone, according to police.
When police tried to detain the man, he threw one of the officers to the ground and ran across the street, police said.
He was tasered and continued to fight with police, biting the same officer on the hand, according to police.
The man was eventually taken into custody and charged with assault on a police officer and breach of peace. He was held on $50,000 bond and was scheduled to be in court on Wednesday.
The officer was taken to Rockville General Hospital to be treated for his injuries and later released.
Nine people were sent to the hospital early Wednesday morning, following a wrong-way car crash on I-84 in West Hartford.
According to State Police, at around 1:15 a.m. a Toyota Corolla was travelling north in the southbound lanes of Route 9 from Kensington to I-84.
Police say the car continued on to travel east in the westbound lanes of I-84 in West Hartford where it struck three vehicles near Exit 40.
Nine people were involved in the crash and were sent to the hospital for evaluation, with some reporting minor injuries, according to Police.
All four involved vehicles were towed away from the scene due to disabling damage.
As a result of the crash, the area around Exit 40 was closed for about one hour with West Hartford Fire and Police assisting Connecticut State Police.
The highway has since re-opened.
Police say the accident remains under investigation.
Donald Trump isnt letting up on his claims that a rigged system threatens his victory on Election Day, although repeated investigations have found no evidence of widespread fraud at the polls.
As he and Hillary Clinton prepare for their last debate of the presidential race, he continues to tweet about fraud at polling places and about "a dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary." At a rally on Tuesday in Colorado, he again urged his supporters to watch the polls closely.
"They even want to try and rig the election at the polling booths, where so many cities are corrupt, and voter fraud is all too common," Trump said. "And then they say, oh there's no voter fraud in our country, there's no voter fraud, no, no, there's no voter fraud. Take a look at St. Louis, take a look at Philadelphia, take a look at Chicago."
The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law the publisher of Justin Levitts widely quoted study, "The Truth About Voter Fraud" calls fraud at the polls "vanishingly rare," so unusual that it does not come close to what would be needed to rig an election.
Levitt wrote in The Washington Post two years ago that he had found 31 allegations since 2000 of someone pretending to be someone else at the polls. More than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period in general and primary elections.
The Carnegie-Knight News21 program -- made up of journalism students and graduates -- analyzed 2,068 alleged cases in 50 states in the decade before 2012 and could document only 10 instances of in-person voter impersonation. There were 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud and 400 cases of registration fraud out of 146 million registered voters.
Another investigator, Lorraine Minnite, the author of the book "The Myth of Voter Fraud" and a professor of political science at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, says the claim that voter fraud threatens American elections is "itself a fraud."
"Its a rare occurrence," said Minnite, who has been studying voter fraud for 15 years. "I'm talking specifically about the kind of fraud that voters might commit, which really is mostly limited to misrepresenting their identity or misrepresenting their eligibility."
President Barack Obama on Tuesday called Trump's attempt to discredit the election irresponsible. No serious person would suggest it was possible to rig U.S. presidential elections because they involve too many votes and are so decentralized, he said.
"So I'd invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go make his case to get votes," Obama said.
Although Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, said on Tuesday that voter fraud was real in pockets of the country, other Republicans are refuting claims of a rigged election. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a former Trump rival, said that there was no evidence for Trump's statements.
"We have 67 counties in this state, each of which conduct their own elections," he said. "I promise you there is not a 67-county conspiracy to rig this election."
Another Trump rival for the GOP nomination, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, strongly disagreed with Trump's claims.
"To say that elections are rigged and all these votes are stolen, that's like saying we never landed on the moon, frankly, that's how silly it is," Kasich told CBS Wednesday. "No, I just, I don't think that's good for our country, for our democracy, and I don't believe that we have any massive fraud."
Even Trump surrogate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pushed back, telling NBC News, "I'm convinced that the election will be a fair one and that the process will be one that will accepted by the American people."
Here's a closer look at some allegations of voter fraud:
Dead Man Voting
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, another Trump surrogate, said on CNN over the weekend that, "Dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans."
In New York in 2002 and 2004, 2,600 dead voters were alleged to have cast ballots, based on a match of voter rolls to death records. No cases of fraud were substantiated, the Brennan Center says. Seven were found to be a result of a database mismatch or an accounting error. Even if all of the 2,593 remaining cases involved fraud, the rate would be 0.02 percent, the Brennan Center said.
In New Jersey, Republican officials compared voter registration lists, Social Security death records and other public information to allege that 4,755 dead people had voted. "No follow-up investigation appears to document any substantiated cases, and no allegedly deceased voter voted in 2005," the Brennan Center says.
And in Michigan, allegations of votes cast by 132 dead people in Detroit were challenged by the state's Republican secretary of state in 2006. The office said that 132 absentee ballots were mailed to voters who died in the weeks before Election Day, Minnite wrote in a 2007 study, "The Politics of Voter Fraud." Ninety-seven were never returned, 27 were returned before the voters' deaths a correction ignored by activists, Minnite said.
Double Voting
Allegations of double voting in New York can be found from elections in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and possibly others, according to the Brennan Center. In 2004, between 400 and 1,000 voters were alleged to have voted both in New York and Florida, according to matches between New York and Florida voting rolls. The Brennan Center said it as aware of only two cases being substantiated.
However, a 2013 New York City investigation of the city's Board of Election found systemic problems with accountability, transparency and dysfunction, including defects in the voters rolls, improper instructions that voters should "vote down the line" and a persistent failure to address ballot design issues.
In New Jersey, 4,397 people were alleged to have voted twice and 6,572 who were registered in New Jersey and five other states: New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina. The Brennan Center found that only eight cases were actually documented through signatures on poll books with at least five signatures appeared to match. If all eight cases were proved, the double voting rate would be 0.0002 percent, according to the Brennan Center.
Other cases were alleged in New Hampshire in 2004 of voters listed multiple times on city rolls or of people voting from improper addresses. The Brennan Center says that of the 676,227 ballots cast in 2004 general election in New Hampshire, two invalid cases were substantiated and two others were still under investigation. Even of all four were substantiated, the rate would be 0.0006 percent.
Voting by Non-citizens
The Brennan Center says it found no documented cases in which non citizens intentionally registered to vote or voted knowing they were ineligible. In Washington state in 2004, documentation appears to show that two votes were cast by non citizens in King County, the center says. The rate: 0.0002 percent.
Another example: In Hawaii in 2000, 553 apparent non citizens were alleged to have registered. Of those 144 documented that they had become citizens and at least 61 asked to cancel their registration. Others were stopped at the polls.
The students participating in the Carnegie-Knight News21 program found 56 cases of non-citizens voting.
Voter Impersonation
The Carnegie-Knight News21 program, as part of an investigation into the need for photo IDs, found 10 cases of voter impersonations -- in Alabama, California, Colorado, Kansas, New Hampshire and Texas. There were 146 million registered voters in the United States at the time.
"All were isolated and showed no coordinated efforts to change election results," the students wrote in 2012.
Dogs at the polls
The Brennan Center found two cases of ballots submitted in the name of a dog -- one from "Duncan MacDonald" in 2006 and 2007, although it notes that the ballot was labeled VOID and signed with a paw print; and one from "Raku Bowman" in 2003. The second was counted by volunteers in local elections in Venice, California.
The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters have learned that Gov. Dan Malloy is requesting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency get involved with the crumbling foundation problem in Hartford, Tolland and Windham counties.
In a letter to FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, Malloy asks the agency to establish a field office in northeastern Connecticut to conduct a preliminary damage assessment to determine the extent and impact of what he describes as approximately 34,000 homes in the area with foundations that could be at risk of crumbling and actually collapsing.
The governor explains that potentially tens of thousands of Connecticut residents are at risk. He notes that while the state, municipalities and a coalition of insurance companies have been collaborating on a strategy to address this problem, federal assistance and the expertise of FEMA are critical.
In April 2016, the state reached out to FEMA, but at the time the agency felt the crumbling foundation issue did not appear to constitute an emergency or major disaster.
Since that time, a state investigation concluded what the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters reported nearly a year earlier, that a chemical reaction involving a naturally-occurring mineral called pyrrhotite causes the in deterioration. Now the state believes this is a natural disaster which will require assistance from FEMA to solve what could be a $1 billion problem.
Governor Malloy, in collaboration with Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman, who has undertaken a leading role on this issue on behalf of the administration, continues to work with the various stakeholders involved in this issue including homeowners, municipal and state officials, the states federal delegation, and the insurance industry on this problem.
While none of us can fully grasp the full weight this disaster has placed upon these homeowners, it is vital that we all come together to assist them, Malloy wrote.
Dallas County Schools announced Tuesday it has hired a new interim chief financial officer as the operation attempts to regain public trust in the wake of a school bus driver ticket scandal.
An NBC 5 investigation revealed hundreds of bus drivers ran red lights, and district employees used $80,000 of taxpayer money to pay the tickets.
The bus drivers were never punished until NBC 5 Investigates asked why.
Now, 13 school bus drivers have been fired and 229 will be suspended at DCS, which transports students for about a dozen North Texas school districts, including the Dallas Independent School District.
Tuesday, DCS said Alan King will serve as its interim CFO. King is a former chief auditor at Dallas ISD and served as interim superintendent there.
In a statement, DCS said, "We could not have selected a better person for this job at this time."
King was widely praised as a trustworthy watchdog at Dallas ISD. His job will be to help DCS put policies and procedures in place and strengthen financial reporting in the wake of the scandal.
At a board meeting Tuesday DCS Superintendent Rick Sorrels outlined steps he's taken already to address concerns: demoting two senior managers, and requesting personal reports going forward when drivers are ticketed.
For nearly three years DCS paid the tickets and never notified the bus drivers responsible.
Some of the fired drivers argue the delay in notifying them robbed them of their right to challenge the tickets or change their driving behavior until it was too late.
"Three years. That right there makes it wrong. Three years, you notify a man," said Vernon Johnson, who was fired after DCS told him last week he had accumulated three red light running tickets over three years.
Johnson said his firing is unfair because he got no warning.
DCS didn't follow its policy didn't tell him he was accumulating red light tickets until he had three, the number that results in firing.
Johnson and other former bus drivers are filing grievances demanding their jobs back.
"I'm not going to take this laying down at all. I'm going to fight it 'til the end," Johnson said.
Two unions that represent DCS drivers are assisting drivers with the grievance process.
"Something needs to happen because they were not notified. They did not have the opportunity for due process, because they didn't know. If you don't know you have a certain behavior, you can't correct it," said Angela Davis, president of the NEA-Dallas, which represents about 500 DCS drivers.
More than 100 of the violations uncovered in the NBC 5 investigation involved one DCS bus running past the extended stop sign on another school bus.
Tuesday, the DCS board formally approved a new policy to terminate any driver who does this after just the first offense.
Late Tuesday, DCS released new video that appeared aimed at deflecting some attention from their own drivers. The video shows a Dallas Area Rapid Transit bus running the stop sign on a DCS school bus.
DART responded, calling the driver's actions "unacceptable" and said the video will be used for driver training.
An autopsy has confirmed that a student who died after a party at a Texas A&M University fraternity had an accidental drug overdose.
A College Station Police Department statement issued Wednesday says 19-year-old Anton Gridnev of Frisco died of an accidental overdose of several different types of opiates after the Aug. 20 party at the Sigma Nu fraternity.
Warrants on drug-related charges were issued for at least 10 A&M students, and national Sigma Nu officials suspended the fraternity's A&M chapter.
Gridnev was reportedly found unresponsive and not breathing during an all-night party at the fraternity house.
After someone noticed Gridnev's condition, police were called. Officers arrived at about 4:40 a.m. and noted the party was ongoing. CPR was performed and Gridnev was transported to College Station Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
After finding illegal narcotics at the home, College Station police obtained a search warrant and arrested four people for possession of illegal drugs and cited three others for possession of drug paraphernalia.
Later, six other fraternity members were arrested on warrants ranging from possession of marijuana to the manufacture and delivery of a controlled substance.
The Texas A&M chapter of Sigma Nu was founded in 1985.
Gridnev graduated with honors from Heritage High School, said Frisco Independent School District administrators. He was a commended National Merit Scholar and competed on the academic decathalon team.
In a statement to NBC 5, Heritage High School Principal Mark Mimms said, "Anton Gridnev was a 2015 honor graduate of Heritage High School. He was a valued member of our Academic Decathlon team and was an integral member of that team's success. Anton had a lasting impact on the teachers who worked with him and he had a bright future ahead of him. Our faculty and staff feels the loss of one of our Coyote family."
Gladewater police Chief Robert Vine is among millions of classic car enthusiasts who dream of restoring an old ride to its former glory.
The Tyler Morning Telegraph reports he knows many vintage vehicles are worth preserving, as they are well designed and carefully crafted with old school techniques and pride.
So when the idea dawned that perhaps an old car could be repurposed to represent the department in public, the chief's mental wheels started spinning.
Was it possible to transform an antique into a fully functioning patrol unit?
"It had to be functional," Vine said. "Our goal was, for one Saturday a month, to have it downtown. We also wanted to have it in parades and at special events in our community."
The police department's journey from brainstorming to buying could be described as both simple and complex.
If a suitable retro ride could be located, it needed to offer more than just a pretty grill.
Police hoped to find a car for downtown security and a fun conversation starter between cops and curious minds.
But no tax dollars could be harmed in the process.
Police started talking about the idea, and found that many people liked the idea of combining old and new.
Gladewater is, after all, the antique capital of East Texas.
McKaig Chevrolet Buick and private donors stepped up with offers of support, giving the department some cash flow, about $11,000, to do a little shopping.
"We wanted something from the '40s or '50s," Vine said. "We started looking on line and saw a possibility it was out of Missouri and the owner only drove it occasionally."
On the police radar: a reasonably priced, four-door, mostly original 1951 Chevy Deluxe, a monster of a car that offered an elegant style and top shelf comfort.
It featured smooth lines, a pristine interior, a great engine and a solid body adorned with gleaming chrome.
The exterior needed attention, but it was primarily cosmetic.
Apparently, there was instant attraction.
A deal was struck and the rest, as they say, is history.
"It was exactly what we had been wanting," the chief said. "It's a great car. You just don't find them in this condition every day."
Acquiring the unit was the first of many steps expected to unfold over the next few months.
The car, dubbed Unit 53, has a new station to call home, but it still needs work.
Police envision the faded gray-green former family car transformed into a spiffy, black and white, old school squad car, but that type of work can be expensive.
Kilgore College auto body instructor Joel Laws admits he jumped at the opportunity to volunteer his services.
He's a veteran paint and body expert, who recognizes the benefit of giving his students real world experience.
And in this case, the fruits of their free labor will become a piece of Gladewater's history, to be enjoyed for generations to come.
"It's in great condition," Laws said. "You're not going to find an original car any better than this one. This is a great project for our students."
Police Capt. Michael Kirkwood volunteered for transport duty, driving the cruiser windows rolled down from Gladewater to Kilgore without issue.
He gives the experience two thumbs up.
"It floats," he said. "I'd never driven anything that old, but I really liked it. It's just a big tank, but it runs and drives really smooth."
Kilgore auto body student Ethan McKamie, a resident of Gladewater, is among those assisting with the car's transformation. He and others appear eager to explore the rolling piece of history.
"It feels pretty good to help because I get to see it around town and say, 'Hey, I worked on that,'" McKamie said. "I like the idea of working on a vehicle to help people out."
Student Nick Flippo agreed, adding, "I think it's a gorgeous car. My uncle owned one, so I've seen them, but not a lot of people have them."
Laws, the instructor, said his students are to spend the next several weeks dismantling, cleaning, repairing, painting and reassembling the car.
Components that cannot be salvaged will be replaced, while others such as radios and siren will be added.
Police already found a bubble strobe light, still in the box, to mount on the hood.
Authorities hope to raise about $1,500 more to cover incidental costs associated with bringing the car into service. To learn more, contact the department at 903-845-2166.
"I think this is something our community will be proud to have on display," Vine said. "Gladewater is known for our antiques."
Recommendations from a special commission to fight homelessness in Dallas include $50 to $75 million spent over the next five years to add at least 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing.
The commission was appointed by Mayor Mike Rawlings in May after a surge in homeless encampments in the city this year.
"I have asked for this commission to give us a template to follow as elected officials to try to implement and fund against," Rawlings said.
After five months of work, the commission met for the last time Tuesday before publishing a final report.
It found about 10,000 people are homeless for at least a part of each year and 3,700 homeless students are enrolled in the Dallas Independent School District. The city has about 2,000 shelter beds and most of them are full each night. There are now at least 50 homeless encampments around Dallas, according to the commission's preliminary draft report.
The recommendations include homeless prevention programs, mental health and substance abuse treatment and a substantial increase in permanent supportive housing to be available for short term occupancy by homeless people.
"They came from the nationwide experts who have a track record of success on these issues," said commission member Anne M. Johnson.
An additional 1,000 permanent supportive housing units are suggested within the next five years, 70 percent of them leased from existing landords, 30 percent new construction for the homeless. There's a goal of leasing at least 300 apartments in 2017.
Members said most of the cost could be covered by federal housing money but up to $25 million could be sought from Dallas taxpayers in a future bond referendum. The idea of a Dallas restaurant tax for the homeless was also suggested.
But the commission also found about 1,100 vouchers worth about $8 million are going unused in Dallas, at least partly because of uncooperative landlords.
"Shame on us, for not figuring out how to use that $8 million the right way," Rawlings said.
Ricky Redd, the only commission member who was previously homeless himself, said he has a friend with a voucher but landlords refuse to accept it.
"He said he's tried 40 apartments and they have turned him down," said Redd.
The former Dawson State Jail is being studied as a possible homeless shelter. Dallas County commissioners voted Tuesday to investigate the option of acquiring the building on Commerce Street from the state of Texas.
Mayor Rawlings said another follow up from the homeless commission work should be a new management agency to better coordinate joint programs between the city of Dallas, Dallas County and social service agencies.
"How do we create this entity? How do we then make sure that you as providers, you as citizens, you as neighbors, make sure that there's a voice in that, as well?" Rawlings said.
Some homeless commission members have complained of too little focus on immediate solutions.
After the final meeting Tuesday, member Jim Burton said he will continue researching other potential buildings that could be used as shelters and alternative locations that could be used as homeless camps right now.
"We're looking to get a public encampment where we can provide restrooms, showers and safety for the people, and also help the community because there's a lot of effect on the community from the encampments," Burton said. "Not everybody wants to be inside and if we can provide a safe place for the city and for the homeless person, I think we've got a win on both sides."
The city of Dallas plans to close the largest existing camp under Interstate 30 at Haskell Avenue by Oct. 25.
Police said they need the public's help finding a man who fatally struck a pedestrian in Dallas Oct. 11 and fled the scene. [[397558231,C]]
Dallas police said the man was speeding in the 2700 block of East Ledbetter Drive and failed to yield the right of way to a pedestrian in the crosswalk at 9:52 p.m.
The victim was was lifted into the air and into the driver's windshield before coming to rest several feet away, according to police. The victim died at the scene.
After the crash, police said the driver parked his car nearby and walked over to the victim. He then fled without providing aid.
Police described the driver as black male, 21 to 24 years old and short with dread lock hair. His car was described as a white Ford Crown Victoria with damage to the front left headlight and a broken windshield.
Dallas police asked that anyone with information about this incident call their Vehicle Crimes Unit at 214-670-5817.
A Florida teenager severely beaten over the weekend was taken off life support and died Monday night, but police still don't know exactly how he died.
Witnesses said the victim, identified as Roger Trindade, 15, was jumped by a group of teens.
Winter Park Police Chief Michael Deal said Trindade was unconscious when officers found him. The boy was taken to a hospital, where he was put on life support. Authorities said Trindade was removed from life support Monday night.
According to Deal, the boy showed little sign of trauma, and it's still unclear what caused his death. Police said they don't believe the incident was gang-related or racially-motivated.
No arrests have been made, but police said they have identified multiple juvenile suspects, some of whom are students at Winter Park High School where the victim also attended.
Read more on this story at WESH.com.
President Barack Obama's half-brother says he doesn't agree with the decision by another half-brother to attend the final presidential debate as a guest of the Donald Trump campaign.
Mark Obama Ndesandjo said, "I love my brothers, but no one member represents the Obamas."
The Trump campaign said Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother Malik would be in the audience for the showdown Wednesday between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The three men share the same father but have different mothers.
Ndesandjo is an American businessman who has lived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen for about 15 years.
In an email to The Associated Press, he said: "Others in my family and I do not support my brother Malik's position on Mr. Trump." Malik Obama supports Trump's candidacy.
President Obama isn't losing sleep over Trump's plans.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama hasn't spent "a lot of time" considering whether Malik Obama will be in the audience
Earnest said he hopes Malik Obama will do something "more fun" than just attend the debate in Las Vegas if he does show up.
Earnest said Obama and his half-brother don't have much of a relationship.
A manatee that was rescued off the coast of Cape Cod and later found to be pregnant has left Connecticut's Mystic Aquarium and got on a flight to move to SeaWorld Orlando in Florida.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Charles Underwood told the Cape Cod Times the manatee will will undergo further rehabilitation before being released into the wild.
The 800-pound pregnant female, dubbed "Washburn," was picked up in September in Nantucket Sound off Falmouth, Massachusetts, by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The group said the animal was well out of its range and was rescued just before water temperatures dropped below 67 degrees -- too cold for it to survive.
Underwood said the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership will decide where the animal will be released in Florida.
A brush fire that began Tuesday night northwest of Los Angeles was 75-percent contained Wednesday morning as firefighters battled through the night.
The fire burned about 28 acres near the San Fernando Valley community of Porter Ranch near the 12000 block of Tampa Avenue. The area burning was "very difficult" for ground crews to access, fire officials said.
Helicopters were fighting the fire from overhead during the night.
The fire was burning downhill due to 20-38 mph winds.
Crews were making "great progress" and was expected to be fully contained by early Wednesday morning, according to the LA County Fire Department. However, Wednesday's low humidity, high daytime temperatures and northeast winds could be a disadvantage, said LAFD Capt. Daniel Curry.
No structures were threatened and no injuries were reported.
Firefighters were defending homes to the south and west of the fire. There were not reports of damage to residences.
The Sesnon Fire was burning close to the site of a massive natural gas leak that was discovered by Southern California Gas employees last year.
"We are aware of the fire at the Aliso Canyon storage facility. We are cooperating with first responders, including LAFD and LAPD, as they work to keep the community safe. The safety of first responders, the community and our employees is priority one," said SoCal Gas spokesman Chris Gilbridge.
The cause of the fire was unknown.
Two Jamaican nationals arrested in connection with a weekend mass shooting at a South Los Angeles party that left four people dead have been released from custody without charges being filed, authorities said Wednesday.
Mowayne McKay, 33, and Deigo Reid, 25, were released from jail around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to sheriff's inmate records. The Los Angeles Police Department declined comment on the case. A spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office called it an "ongoing investigation."
The gunfire erupted about 12:30 a.m. Saturday in the area of Rimpau and Jefferson boulevards, where officers responded to a "shots fired" call at a birthday party attended by about 50 adults, said Lt. Chuck Springer of the LAPD's Southwest Station.
The party was taking place at a private residence out of which the owner runs a catering business and, on Saturdays, operates an informal Jamaican eatery, authorities said.
McKay and Reid were arrested Saturday morning by homicide detectives -- Reid at 2:50 a.m. and McKay at 4:50 a.m., according to sheriff's inmate records.
They were found at area hospitals, where they had gone to be treated for gunshot wounds, and were booked on suspicion of murder at the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Station. The men initially were held in lieu of $2 million bail each, but they were released with no bail posted, sheriff's inmate records show.
Investigators said it appeared that a dispute -- possibly over a drug deal gone awry -- broke out between one man and two others, one of whom produced a handgun and fatally shot him.
Immediately following the first shooting, shots were fired indiscriminately into the crowd, and there appeared to be some return fire from other party guests, according to police.
A total of 15 people were shot -- nine males and six females. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics pronounced three victims dead at the scene.
A fourth victim died at a hospital, said Los Angeles police Officer Irma Mota.
The victims' names were being withheld by the coroner's office, which said there was a "security hold" on the case that prevented information from being released.
Detectives from the LAPD's Criminal Gang Homicide Division have asked for the public's help in the investigation. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call detectives David Dilkes or Isidro Soto at 323-786-5110.
An 18-year-old reputed gang member who allegedly opened fire inside a burger restaurant in a Harbor City strip mall, killing the eatery's longtime owner and another man, is facing capital murder charges.
Joey Alfred Mendoza is scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 16 at the Long Beach courthouse on two counts of murder stemming from the attack at Bob's Hamburgers last Wednesday morning that killed owner Charalambos Antonelos, 61, of San Pedro, and Louis Garcia, 23, of Wilmington.
Detectives say Garcia was the target, and Antonelos was struck by stray gunfire.
The murder charges, filed Monday, include the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder carried out to further the activities of the defendant's "criminal street gang," along with an allegation that he personally and intentionally discharged a handgun.
Prosecutors will decide later whether to seek the death penalty against Mendoza, who was arrested a day after the shooting.
The defendant allegedly pulled out a handgun and fired several shots after approaching Garcia as he stood next to the restaurant's counter about 9:30 a.m. Garcia collapsed and died at the scene.
Antonelos, who had been working behind the counter, was struck by a stray bullet and died at a hospital.
Witnesses and police said the gunman's face was covered during the attack.
"Harbor detectives identified the suspect through surveillance video, witness statements and gang intelligence,'' according to a statement released by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Mendoza has remained behind bars since he was arrested about 1:45 a.m. last Thursday.
An employee said Bob's Hamburgers had been operating for about 30 years, and distraught customers told reporters that the longtime owner was known for giving out free food to those in need.
Police say a man bought a storage unit at an auction in New York City and found dozens of dead cats in two freezers.
Officers responded to American Self Storage in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City Monday evening.
Police say one freezer had frozen cats stacked on top of each other. In the other, police say they were individually wrapped in paper and plastic bags. One cat had been skinned.
About 40 cats were discovered.
The nonprofit American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has taken the dead cats into its custody for necropsies. The tests can't be performed until the carcasses thaw out.
Police are searching for an unidentified woman who originally rented the unit.
The NYPD Animal Cruelty Squad is investigating.
"Saddened deeply by the deaths of forty cats, American Self-Storage has made significant financial contributions to ASPCA shelters in Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Staten Island and three NJ counties where American Self Storage facilities are located," the company said in a statement.
"Self-storage companies do not examine the items which tenants store in their rented units, the way apartment landlords do not study each item which tenants bring into their rented rooms," the statement continued. "But we join in feeling the shock at the mistreatment of animals."
What to Know Authorities arrested Shmurda in late 2014 after he left a recording studio near Radio City Music Hall
An indictment charged him and more than 15 defendants with a variety of crimes including murder, attempted murder, assault and drug dealing
If the case had gone to trial, Shmurda could have faced decades behind bars
Bobby Shmurda, a rapper once on the rise thanks to a viral music video that popularized the "Shmoney dance," was sentenced to seven years in prison Wednesday after claiming he was railroaded into taking a guilty plea on charges he conspired with a violent drug gang.
"I want to withdraw my plea," a defiant Shmurda said during his sentencing in a Manhattan courtroom. "I was forced by my attorney to take the plea. I was forced."
New York state court Justice Abraham Clott denied the request and imposed the seven-year term that was agreed to as part of a plea deal that spared Shmurda from going to trial on multiple counts carrying penalties that could have put him behind bars for decades.
The 22-year-old Shmurda, whose birth name is Ackquille Pollard, is best known for "Hot Boy," a gritty hit song with rhymes about gunplay. He and Chad "Rowdy Rebel" Marshall - another aspiring hip-hop artist who also pleaded guilty in the same case - gained notoriety with their performance in the "Shmoney dance" video, which has about 15 million YouTube views.
Authorities arrested Shmurda in late 2014 after he left a recording studio near Radio City Music Hall, only days after he performed "Hot Boy" for a national television audience on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Investigators found two handguns and a small amount of crack cocaine in a car in which he was riding, authorities said.
An indictment charged Shmurda and more than 15 defendants with a variety of crimes including murder, attempted murder, assault and drug dealing. Shootings by the gang left one rival dead, injured an innocent bystander sitting on a folding chair outside a Brooklyn home and caused pandemonium outside a nightclub in Miami Beach, Florida, authorities said.
The court papers alleged that Pollard once fired a gun toward a crowd of people outside a barbershop in Brooklyn. They also said he was present last year during a confrontation between rival drug gangs outside a Brooklyn courthouse where shots were fired.
Authorities hope the convictions of Shmurda and others "bring greater security and stability to neighborhoods plagued by gun violence," Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan said Wednesday. "These individuals have acknowledged possessing guns and conspiring with others to possess and use guns against others. The 21 weapons seized during the investigation fueled violence at the heart of the case."
In a jailhouse interview last year with The New York Times, Shmurda criticized his label, Epic Records, for not helping him pay his $2 million bail. Epic hasn't commented.
He also claimed in another interview with the entertainment website Complex after his guilty plea in September that his case was a sham.
"We had detectives lying, saying they seen us with guns in our hands, but when everything came back there was no DNA, no fingerprints, no nothing. ... We're black kids, these are white people with badges," he said.
Shmurda's lawyer has said he could get enough credit for time served and good behavior "to be home in approximately 3 years and resume his remarkable career."
A Wisconsin police officer's dashcam shows a very close call that was completely avoidable.
Authorities say a pickup truck plowed into the back of a Hudson Police squad at highway speeds while it was on the side of the road. Luckily, the police officer was not in the vehicle at the time of impact.
Police officer Hilary Lundberg was assisting a driver with a flat tire on the I-94 bridge Monday morning when the accident occurred. The squad was parked in the left lane when the pickup slammed into the back.
Lundberg's dashcam video shows her backing away from her squad car, moments before the impact.
The Ford Taurus squad flies past her at a high rate of speed, striking a concrete bridge railing just feet from the officer. The squad car then slides across four lanes of traffic before striking another concrete railing on the other side of the bridge.
Read more from KARE.com here.
With Halloween just days away, a swarm of bats could converge upon Miami Beach to help the city fight the spread of Zika.
Commissioner Rosen Gonzalez has introduced a proposal that would use the winged mammals to eat the infected mosquitoes.
The commission is set to vote on the plan Wednesday.
Gonzalez says the move would be an environmentally friendly alternative to the controversial pesticide naled.
She adds that "bats eat one thousand mosquitoes a day".
"I'm not saying that it's the answer to Zika by any means, but it's a gesture of goodwill to the many people who were so upset about neurotoxins being sprayed in Miami Beach," said Gonzalez.
The commissioner says after the city began its defense against Zika, many residents approached her and asked if the commission would consider using bats as a defense.
The effort would lure bats to the city by building bat houses in the Zika zone.
"There are not going to be bats flying all over the City of Miami Beach, but we might put a couple bat houses in some parks and some neighborhoods have already come to me and requested them," said Gonzalez.
Miami-Dade County's decision to use naled stirred controversy in Miami Beach.
Protesters rallied in front of City Hall for days.
Even the city's mayor Phillip Levine said he was not comfortable with the use of naled. Commissioner Mike Greico said the aerial assault of mosquitoes could be a threat to everyone.
With the mounting discontent over the use of naled, Gonzalez says she's optimistic and believes the bat proposal will be a popular project.
Deputies say an Escambia County Sheriff's K-9, Alek, is recovering after an armed robbery suspect kicked, punched and choked the dog while fleeing authorities.
The incident happened Sunday night near Pensacola.
The sheriff's office posted to Facebook an update on Alek, saying that the K-9 is doing well.
Investigators say 44-year-old Napoleon Bonapart Grandison now faces multiple charges, including battery on a law enforcement officer following the attack.
Petr David Josek/AP
An arrest report says Grandison was wearing a wig and bandanna mask when he robbed a Circle K at gunpoint.
The Pensacola News Journal reports Alek the K-9 tracked Grandison to a nearby home.
The arrest report says he pushed two deputies and attacked the dog.
Grandison is being held on a $296,000 bond.
Records don't indicate whether he has a lawyer.
The former owner of two now-defunct South Florida "for profit" colleges is now facing charges for closing them without warning and leaving students and faculty with plenty of problems and questions.
Ernesto Perez, 48, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of improper school closure after shutting down both Dade Medical College and the University of Southernmost Florida in October of 2015.
Perez was booked into the Miami-Dade jail Wednesday, records showed. It was unknown if he's hired an attorney.
Under state law, for profit schools must provide the states Commission for Independent Education at least 30 days in advance and provide a plan for students to finish their education or transfer records to another school.
Students and faculty were sent an email one hour before Perez closed both schools informing them of the closure, authorities said.
"Those students who placed their trust in Ernesto Perez and these two educational institutions, now have debts instead of degrees," Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. "If the law had been followed and proper efforts taken to assist students, at least hope could remain alive. School employees, locked out of their work place without any advance notice, appear to have fared no better."
Perez had run both schools since opening DMC and USMF in March and September of 2000, respectively.
An armed thief who tried to rob some people in a Plantation park wound up dead when one of the would-be victims shot and killed him, police said.
The incident happened around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at Multi-Cultural Park on Northwest 43rd Avenue, Plantation Police officials said.
According to police, three residents were sitting in the park when they were approached by two men who tried to rob them at gunpoint.
One of the residents, who has a concealed weapons permit and was armed, shot one of the robbers, while the second suspect fled the scene, police said.
The suspect who was shot died near the scene. His name wasn't released. Police said they're looking for the second suspect.
Anyone with information is asked to call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.
A man convicted of killing two 20-year-olds in 2002 is now working alongside the victims' families to drive home one message: never drink and drive.
The mother of one of the victims, Renee Napier, shared the stage Tuesday with the man who took her daughter's life, Eric Smallridge.
The pair are visiting schools in South Florida to talk to students about the irreversible consequences of drunk driving.
They teamed up with Broward County Sheriff Fire Rescue to push the important message to students at Boyd Anderson High School.
The presentation is part of the larger National Teen Driver Safety Week.
Smallridge shared his story with teen students, "I had that Superman complex that's why I wear these t-shirts to every presentation I do because this was my mindset. I knew bad things happened to people, I just didn't think it was going to be me."
Napier's daughter, Meagan, and her daughter's friend, Lisa, were killed when Smallridge, who was under the influence, crashed into the their car, causing them to plow into a tree.
"If you're doing it, it can happen to you," said Smallridge.
Napier started the Meagan Napier Foundation in honor of her daughter's life.
Smallridge has traveled with Napier across the country touching the lives of students who know the pain drunk driving can cause.
They bring with them the car Meagan and Lisa died in.
"Nobody can win in this situation. The only way for us to win is for Meagan and Lisa to come back," said Napier.
The partnership between Napier and her daughter's killer is a testament to the power of forgiveness and the positivity that can come from tragedy.
"I've caused so much pain, so much strife by the bad choices I've made and I feel like this is an opportunity for me to help carry on Meagan and Lisa's legacy.
One person died and multiple people were hurt after scaffolding fell from a high-rise building under construction in Miami's Brickell neighborhood Wednesday afternoon, officials said.
The incident happened at a luxury high-rise near Southeast 14th Lane and Brickell Avenue. At least four people were injured, Miami police said.
Miami Fire Rescue officials said there was a structural collapse at the Echo Brickell building, a 60-floor condominium.
#BREAKING Pics sent to me where crews are responding to a structural collapse at Echo in Brickell. @nbc6 pic.twitter.com/dhrzijykkW Jamie Guirola (@jamieNBC6) October 19, 2016
Footage showed debris strewn across the road near the building and a heavily damaged car. Splintered wood and other construction material was still hanging from the top floor.
People who worked nearby were stunned and some even ran to the scene to help.
A witness described the rush to rescue a woman was in the driver's seat of a car hit by flying debris. "Some people started running up to help the lady who was in the driver's seat. They had to pull her out from the passenger side," Sheila Everett said.
"I was in my office and saw a lot of things coming from the building. I just came to see if everything was ok and if I could help," said Ivan Clare.
A construction worker also said he saw a man with a bloodied hand that appeared to be severed.
A 50-year-old man died as a result of the incident. The man had a heart attack as he ran from the construction accident and later died, officials said.
Five others were injured, including two construction workers. Two victims were treated and released.
A family member at the hospital identified one of the injured as 34-year-old Quincy Williams. The relative said Williams is a construction worker at the job site and was wearing a helmet but suffered a gash to his head from falling debris.
Michael Jacobs was on a conference call when he looked out of the window and saw the chaos. "I see all this debris coming flying down and everybody inside the pool area at the Four Seasons Hotel were scattered around," Jacobs said.
Miami police said it appeared scaffolding fell from a construction site. Property Markets Group, the developer of Echo Brickell, released a statement on the incident.
When a construction accident occurs, all you can hope for is the safety of everyone involved. Kevin, Michael Stern, myself, and everyone at PMG and JDS send our deepest sympathies and condolences to the family of the gentleman who passed. At this time we understand that everyone else injured has been released from the hospital. PMG, our general contractor (JMA) and city officials are working diligently to understand what happened with the form work connection, which has not been determined at this time. The site has been secured and is currently being reinspected to ensure proper safety measures are in place.
Traffic was closed off from 14th to 15th streets on Brickell Avenue as a result of the incident.
Miami Fire Rescue rushed to the scene of a building collapse Wednesday in the Brickell neighborhood.
Ahead of the final presidential debate, one of Donald Trump's most vocal opponents went on a Twitter rampage targeting the Republican presidential nominee.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent out a series of tweets in response to Trump's recent allegations that the election is rigged in favor of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
"Give me a break, @realDonaldTrump," Warren said in her first tweet Wednesday. "You're not losing because it's rigged. You're losing because we see through your creepy bullying."
Warren went on to say that anyone with kids knows that whining about imaginary cheating is "the last refuge of the sore loser," echoing President Barack Obama's comments from Tuesday. She added that Trump can't expect to win when he is running a campaign based on hating women, African Americans, Muslims and immigrants.
"It's not rigged, @realDonaldTrump. You're losing fair & square. Put on your big-boy pants because this is what accountability looks like."
Give me a break, @realDonaldTrump. Youre not losing because its rigged. Youre losing because we see through your creepy bullying. Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 19, 2016
This election cycle, Trump has called Warren "goofy" and "Pocahantas," a skeptical reference to her Native American heritage.
Trump and Clinton will debate at 9 p.m. Wednesday at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Warren is scheduled to campaign with Clinton in New Hampshire on Monday. Details of their visit have not yet been released.
[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail
A court filing submitted Tuesday says Gov. Chris Christie will appear in a Bergen County courtroom next month to answer a citizen's criminal complaint related to the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closures.
But a source close to the case says such an appearance is unlikely, despite Christie's attorney having signed a stipulation Wednesday that the governor would appear in court on Nov. 23.
Last week, Judge Roy McGeady ruled that there was probable cause for a complaint of official misconduct against the governor related to the George Washington Bridge lane closures in 2013.
But the source said Wednesday that the judge's finding is being appealed. Additionally, even if the appeal is lost and the Bergen County prosecutor decides to pursue the case, Christie has the right waive a first appearance.
A spokesman for the governor said last week that the complaint filed by activist Bill Brennan was a "dishonorable complaint filed by a serial complainant" and that Christie had no knowledge of the lane closures before or while they happened on Sept. 9, 2013.
Brennan, meanwhile, has said that Christie "should spend seven years in jail" for his alleged role in the lane closures. Brennan's complaint alleged that Christie knew about the lane closures the day they happened and didn't require his subordinates to reopen the roadway.
The complaint comes during a trial for two former Christie aids charged in the lane-closing scandal.
Christie's approval ratings have hit an all-time low in recent months, according to a poll of registered voters conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University. Just 21 percent of those polled approved of the job the governor was doing. Sixty-five percent of respondents also said they had an unfavorable view of Christie.
What to Know Ahmad Khan Rahimi is accused of planting bombs in New York and New Jersey that wounded 31 people last month
The 28-year-old Afghan native was captured after a shootout with police in New Jersey two days after the bombings
He has been hospitalized since he was shot multiple times in the gun battle
The man accused of setting off bombs in New Jersey and New York last month has been released from a New Jersey hospital and was transported to a hospital ward at a state prison, a senior law enforcement official told NBC 4 New York.
Ahmad Rahimi had been kept under guard at University Hospital in Newark since he was wounded in a Sept. 19 shootout with police in Linden. But he was moved to a hospital wing of a state penitentiary in Trenton on Tuesday afternoon, the official said.
It comes less than a week after Rahimi pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and weapons charges from his hospital bed in connection with the gun battle outside a bar in the northeastern New Jersey town.
He is also accused of detonating a pipe bomb along the route of a Marine Corps charity race in the New Jersey shore town of Seaside Park and a pressure cooker bomb in New York City on Sept. 17. No one was injured in the New Jersey blast, and 31 people were hurt in the New York blast. A second pressure cooker bomb near the first in New York did not explode.
Rahimi also faces federal charges in connection with the bombings, but he would have to be moved to New York before he can be arraigned on those charges. It's not clear when he would be transported to the Empire State.
Rahimi's public defenders have a policy of not commenting on cases.
What to Know The prosecution rested last week; former Port Authority official David Wildstein was the star witness
Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly, the defendants in the case, say Wildstein conceived and carried out the scheme
Baroni and Kelly face 20 years in prison on the most serious charge
A former ally of Republican Gov. Chris Christie charged in the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case finished three days of testimony Wednesday by telling jurors he was left alone to explain to legislators in 2013 the series of traffic jams that prosecutors contend were part of a political revenge plot against a mayor who wouldn't endorse Christie.
Former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive Bill Baroni described how, in November 2013, "no one wanted anything to do with this issue," referring to the four days of gridlock in Fort Lee two months earlier. Prosecutors have characterized Baroni's testimony before a New Jersey legislative committee, in which he claimed the jams were part of a traffic study, as a fiction created to hide the plot's true intention.
"Everyone was running away. I was the one out there," Baroni testified Wednesday. He added that two Port Authority police officials who he claimed had suggested studying the access lanes to the bridge told him days before his legislative testimony that they "wanted to stay out of it." That contradicted the two officials' testimony that Baroni had sought to use them as cover.
Baroni and former Christie staffer Bridget Kelly are charged with causing gridlock at the bridge linking New Jersey and New York to punish Democratic Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich. Christie wasn't charged.
Kelly is also expected to testify. Baroni and Kelly face nine counts, the most serious of which carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
Baroni contended during testimony Monday that he was duped by Port Authority colleague David Wildstein, the self-styled architect of the scheme. Wildstein pleaded guilty last year and testified against Baroni and Kelly.
Baroni also testified several upper-level officials in Christie's office and at the Port Authority either knew of his impending legislative testimony or helped him prepare for it. Those included former Port Authority Chairman David Samson, a Christie mentor who headed his transition team, as well as Christie's chief counsel.
Prosecutors cast doubt Tuesday on Baroni's characterization of his relationship with Wildstein, a political blogger and former high school classmate of Christie's who was handed a Port Authority job in 2010 that was created especially for him.
Baroni testified he was not close with Wildstein, but prosecutors introduced evidence that they had talked more than 2,700 times on the phone in 2013 alone. They also showed a picture of Baroni hoisting Wildstein into the air in a chair at Wildstein's son's bar mitzvah.
Kelly's attorney, Michael Critchley, called Michael Drewniak, Christie's former press secretary, late Wednesday morning.
A Saudi prince was executed on Tuesday after pleading guilty to killing a fellow Saudi after a brawl, official media reported, according to Reuters. Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was found guilty by the court and serves as a rare example of a ruling family member subjected to execution.
The statement made by the ministry of interior did not say how the prince was killed. Most people who face the death penalty in Saudi Arabia are beheaded with a sword.
The ruling family is rarely faced with execution, one of the most prominent examples being Faisal bin Musaid al Saud, who assassinated his uncle, King Faisal, in 1975. While the ruling family is estimated to have several thousand members, only few hold nationally relevant government positions.
Delaware State Police investigated a crash involving a school bus with several children on board and car they say ran a red light while making a left turn at a Newark intersection Wednesday morning.
Police said in a statement that the crash happened just before 7 a.m. at the intersection of Old Baltimore Pike and Salem Church Road.
None of the 37 Newark Charter School students on board the bus were hurt but the 55-year-old school bus driver suffered non-life-threatening injuries. A 13-year-old girl in Ahmad Abdullah's 1999 Toyota Corolla as well as 49-year-old Abdullah suffered non-life-threatening injuries, said police.
The intersection was closed to traffic for about one hour as police asked commuters to find alternate routes.
As SkyForce10 hovered over the scene about an hour after the wreck, a tow truck driver could be seen loading the Advanced Student Transportation bus to be towed away.
Later Wednesday, police said that Abdullah ignored a red light while making a left turn onto Salem Church Road and caused the collision. The Wilmington man was cited for failing to stop at a red light.
Advanced Student Technology, a division of Krapf School bus contracted out by a series of Delaware school districts, refused comment when reached by NBC10.
A single-engine plane crashed in the backyard of a Camden County home Wednesday afternoon, trapping two people in the wreckage.
The aircraft landed upside down in the backyard of a home along Linden Avenue in Lindenwold shortly before 1 p.m. after somehow missing houses.
A small aircraft crashed into a yard in Camden County on Wednesday, injuring two people on board. NBC10s Ted Greenberg has the details.
"It looks like it came between four homes kind of on a diagonal, struck some trees and then ended up on the ground," said Lindenwold Police Chief Tom Brennan.
NBC10s Brandon Hudson reports live from Lindenwold, Camden County where a plane crashed into someones backyard.
As SkyForce10 hovered overhead a short time later, you could see firefighters from Lindenwold and Cherry Hill working on the aircraft that crashed into some trees and split into two.
"You could tell something wasn't right," said Willie Jones who heard the plane go down. "It was too low. The sound was too low."
After more than 30 minutes, crews pulled two men, the 66-year-old pilot and a 72-year-old passenger, from the upside down cockpit. Medics medivaced one occupant and took the other by ambulance -- they were conscious and breathing -- to Cooper University Hospital, said investigators. Police said they are expected to survive and their injuries appeared to be non-life-threatening. No one on the ground was hurt.
[PHOTOS] 2 Hurt as Aircraft Crashes Into NJ Backyard
"It's kind of crazy," said Cydnei, who lives next door to the yard where the plane crashed. "There are so many houses and trees around here but somehow it managed to miss like everything."
Officials say the plane took off from Flying W Airport in Medford, New Jersey but it's unclear where it was headed. A search of the FAA registry shows the plane is a 1946 Ercoupe 415-C registered to a man from Chesapeake City, Cecil County, Maryland. Investigators said 911 calls alerted them to the crash.
Besides the wreckage, crews also needed to clean up a fuel leak, said investigators. [[397634391, C]]
County hazardous materials crews and the Federal Aviation Administration were called to investigate the scene, said Camden County spokesman Dan Keeshen.
Streets surrounding the crash were closed throughout the day but were later reopened late Wednesday afternoon.
It had been about 45 years since the last time a plane went down in Lindenwold.
A 4-year-old boy from Saudi Arabia who was visiting the U.S. for medical treatment has died after he fell from a seventh-floor apartment balcony in the Wynnefield Heights section of Philadelphia, said police.
Officers and emergency responders were called to the Imperial Towers Apartments at 3801 Conshohocken Ave. around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday after the boy plunged 70 feet onto a parking lot, said police.
He was declared dead less than an hour later at a hospital. The boy's identity wasn't immediately released.
A window screen leading to the balcony was broken, said investigators. A 4-foot-tall railing surrounds the balcony.
The boy's parents were home at the time, said investigators. His mother had given birth to another child several days ago. Witnesses told NBC10 that the boy's mother was looking for the child, searching the hallways and outside
The investigation continued Wednesday.
Officials said police don't yet know what treatment the boy was seeking.
A man trying to break up a robbery in the heart of one of Philadelphia's toniest downtown neighborhoods, Rittenhouse Square, was shot Tuesday night, a police official said. And a day after the shooting, Philadelphia Police issued an arrest warrant for the suspected 17-year-old shooter.
A Good Samaritan was shot trying to break up a robbery in Rittenhouse Square. NBC10s Cydney Long has new information about the incident.
The victim, identified only as a 39-year-old man, was taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition for four bullet wounds to the mid-section, Chief Inspector Scott Small said. He was expected to live, said Small.
A 39-year old man tried to stop a robbery on Tuesday night in Rittenhouse Square, said Philadelphia Police. The search for suspects continued Wednesday morning.
Small said he rode his bike up to a robbery in progress. Two gunmen were in the middle of robbing a group of people, he said. [[397540561, C]]
Witnesses to the shooting, which occurred at the park along Walnut Street between 18th and 19th streets, took to social media to say gunshots could be heard from sidewalk cafes lining the park. Video from some passersby showed crowded dinner tables on the warm October night.
Chaos in Rittenhouse Square. Apparent gunshots. I heard about 5 shots. People ran for their lives. @PhillyPolice showed up very quickly. Greg Berry (@gregmberry) October 19, 2016
On Wednesday, Philadelphia Police Lt. John Stanford said police issued a warrant for the arrest of a 17-year-old. Officials say the teen's parents are cooperating in the investigation.
"We know who we're looking for," said Stanford.
The suspect wasn't identified since he is a minor. Police also continued Wednesday to search for a second male who had a gun during the robbery but didn't open fire, said investigators.
The robbery victims all know each other and cooperated with the investigation, said Stanford.
A dashboard camera captured a fare named "James" stabbing a Philadelphia cabdriver in the middle of the day then jumping out of the moving taxi as the driver fought back.
The incident played out inside an All Threes taxi as it rolled along Race Street near 58th Street in West Philadelphia around 12:45 p.m. Sunday, said Philadelphia Police.
The driver had picked up a thin man in his 20s with a beard who was wearing a green hoodie and light-colored pants who identified himself as "James" after being dispatched to the 800 block of N Markoe street, said Philadelphia Police.
After driving about 1.5 miles to Race Street, the passenger grabbed the driver by the neck in what police called a robbery attempt. The driver freed himself from the suspects grip but then the suspect began repeatedly stabbing the driver from behind.
The driver continued to fight back and pushed his attacker onto the backseat. The suspect then darted out of the moving cab and fled north on 58th Street as the driver, appearing to be bloodied, got out of the cab and attempted to give chase.
The driver suffered several cuts that required treatment at Presbyterian Hospital.
Investigators asked anyone who recognizes "James" to contact Philly Police.
Weeks after the search for a missing Bucks County woman closed a Pennsylvania state park, searchers returned to the park in hopes of uncovering clues about Lindsey Marie Piccone's whereabouts.
Various state and local agencies planned to descend on Tyler State Park along Swamp Road in Newtown Thursday morning as they resumed the search for the missing Bensalem woman, said Bensalem Township Police Department Lt. William McVey.
Piccone was reported missing on Sept. 6, said officials. Piccone, 21, did not have her cellphone with her or her beloved and was last seen two days earlier, according to investigators.
Piccone, who stands around 5-feet, 3-inches tall and weighs about 120 pounds, was wearing a black tank top when she went missing, said Bensalem Police. [[392640601, C]]
Family members said Piccones car was found at Tyler State Park where search groups scoured the 1,711-acre park for days in early September, causing closures and hassles for parkgoers.
Police asked that any first responders (no general public) who wanted to join in the search for Piccone to report to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources parking lot on Swamp Road, said police. [[392810801, C]]
If you have any information on Piccones whereabouts, please call Bensalem Police at 215-633-3719 or Bucks County Emergency Services at 610-982-5411.
Border Patrol agents discovered 30 illegal immigrants hidden inside a tractor-trailer at a checkpoint in Salton City on Monday, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
A tractor trailer was stopped for an immigration check at approximately 9:15 p.m. at the Highway 86 checkpoint. When Border Patrol agents searched the trailer, they found 30 people hidden inside.
According to the CBP, the illegal immigrants had been locked inside the trailer from the outsidewhich could be a danger to the individuals.
The driver and the 30 people, whom are all Mexican citizens, were taken into custody.
Border Patrol agents had discovered 19 illegal immigrants inside a tractor-trailer at the Highway 86 checkpoint on October 5. A 44-year old man and 18 people were Mexican citizens, one person was from Guatemala, according to CBP. They were all arrested and will be sent back to their country of origin.
In that incident, CBP says the door to the trailer had also been locked from the outside, leaving no way for the 19 individuals to get out.
A group of women who say they've had to grit their teeth and bear being sexually harassed are urging Congressman Darrell Issa to stand with them by withdrawing his support for Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump.
The women, who represent various groups from across Southern California, held a news conference at UC San Diego Tuesday morning in a free speech zone on the campus.
"Congressman Issa, do you endorse this war on women? Do you endorse the grabbing and groping? The hands up skirts? The unwanted kiss? The sexual assault?" Dale Kelly Bankhead, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Union, said. "If you do not, then you will withdraw your endorsement of Donald Trump."
They say they're tired of being grabbed and groped by their bosses, teachers and coworkers, and then ridiculed for protesting.
They want Congressman Issa to pull his endorsement of Donald Trump for president, like Republican leaders and other candidates have done.
After the Access Hollywood tape came out, Issa told NBC7 he would not withdrawing support for Trump and referred NBC 7 to a Facebook post he made over the weekend condemning Trumps words.
A statement from Issa's spokesperson said the Congressman has previously condemned Trump's behavior.
"Congressman Issa has a been a leader on sexual assault reform, the President signing the Survivors Bill of Rights which he sponsored into law earlier this month. If candidate's treatment of women is going to become a litmus test in this election, then these groups should consider withdrawing their support for his opponent who the California Superior Court made clear has a harassing and inappropriate history of abusive behavior towards women so bad that a judge forced him to surrender his firearms to the police to protect them," a statement from his office read.
Issa's 49th Congressional District stretches from Del Mar, all the way up through San Diego coastal suburbs through Oceanside, Camp Pendleton and into Orange Countys Dana Point. With a large presence of military voters, the district has traditionally had a strong Republican registration advantage.
However, the 49th District has large populations of female, affluent, well-educated voters with whom Trump is unlikely to do well.
Congressman Issa, do you endorse this war on women? Do you endorse the grabbing and groping? The hands up skirts? The unwanted kiss? The sexual assault? If you do not, then youy will withjdraw your endoresement of Donald Trump...Crowd cheers...
Issas 49th district is becoming a battleground seat, and he's in a tight race with Democrat Doug Applegate, a retired Marine colonel.
Border Patrol agents seized close to 100 pounds of cocaine and methamphetamine hidden inside the body panels of two cars on Sunday.
The first seizure happened at about 9:30 a.m. when a white Nissan Versa approached a United States Customs and Border Protection checkpoint on Interstate 8 near Pine Valley.
The vehicle was referred for a secondary inspection where K9 units alerted CBP agents to the rear of the car. After further inspection, agents discovered 15 wrapped bundles of cocaine stuffed in the cars rear-quarter panel.
The 15 bundles totaled 38.03 pounds, carrying an estimated $456,360 street value.
The driver, a 24-year-old male, and a 21-year-old female passenger were arrested and turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
[DONT CHANGE MAIN HEADLINE] San Diego's Border Busts
Hours later at the same checkpoint, a white Nissan Altima approached and was sent for secondary inspection. K9 units alerted CBP agents to the inside of the car where they found tape-wrapped bundles of crystal methamphetamine hidden behind the panels of the rear doors.
In total, agents discovered 40 bundles of meth weighing a total of 49.38 pounds. Agents estimate the meths street value at $197,520.
CBP agents arrested the driver, a 28-year-old female, and a 29-year-old female passenger and turned them over to the DEA.
Both vehicles were seized by the CBP.
The City of San Diego is facing a new sexual harrasment lawsuitthis time against an assistant city attorney.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday, claims that Assistant City Attorney Daniel Bamberg sent inappropriate text messages to San Diego Deputy City Attorney Molly Hoot, touched and asked her for sex three years ago. Hoot says the behavior continued for three years.
The Office of the City Attorney is same office charged with defending former Mayor Bob Filner against multiple sexual harassment complaints in 2013.
There is some emails, text messages, and there will be my client's testimony which will be very compelling, Hoots attorney, Josh Gruenberg told NBC 7.
The claim states that for three years, Bamberg sexually harassed Hoot and advised her not to complain about Filner putting her in the now infamous headlock and asking her out for drinks.
Hoot and Bamberg worked side by side in the City Attorney's office.
Gruenberg says his client complained about the unwanted advances from Bamberg two years earlier to equal employment investigators.
Nothing was done, no one interceded on her behalf there was no investigation, disciplinary action, no counseling, Gruenberg said.
City Attorney spokesperson Gerry Braun emailed the following response to the claim:
"At management's request, an investigative panel drawn from outside the office was convened to determine the facts. Mr. Bamberg was placed on administrative leave pending the investigation. These steps are required by law and do not reflect any prejudgment as to the facts."
Gruenberg told NBC 7 that Hoot was reluctant to file the suit but did so only after she was allegedly passed over for a promotion for rejecting Bamberg.
Her job was the most important thing to her in her life and she was friendly with this supervisor. He was a father figure to her so she had a lot of issues to balance, Gruenberg said.
Gruenberg represented a Filner accuser and was awarded the largest settlement among those complaints against the former Mayor$667,000.
Hoot is currently continuing to work at the city attorney's office.
Despite a protest by parents of students at an elementary school, the Encinitas Unified School Board (EUSB) unanimously voted to approve the transfer of Principal Jodi Greenberger.
A group of more than a hundred parents gathered at the board meeting on Tuesday to voice their anger and concerns over Greenberger's sudden transfer to a different school in the school district in the middle of the school year.
Greenberger is the current principal of Park Dale Lane Elementary School.
The parents told NBC 7 that the district has not been transparent and did not discuss the issue with them.
"We are tired of being the school that's pushed to the bottom of the bunch out of the 9 schools in the district," said parent Nina Seibert.
Seibert, like other parents, argued that they believe the district sees Park Dale Lane as a training ground for principals. Greenberger will be replaced by a teacher who does not have administrative experience, according to a parent who contacted NBC 7.
EUSB Superintendent Timothy Baird said Greenberger's transfer was not forced.
"This was a unique opportunity for Jodi" Baird said. "She loves Park Dale Lane but there are reasons, both personal and professional where this is appealing to her."
Baird added that the district did not involve parents in the decision to transfer Greenberger because their would have been opposition to the idea.
"No one wants to see their principal leave," Baird said.
But the decision isn't just making parents unhappystudents are also voicing their frustration.
"We think it's very disruptive in the middle of year to make her go to another school," a student told NBC 7. "It feels it was sprung on us. We feel it's a drastic move."
At the end of Tuesday night's meeting, parents and some board members agreed that the District needs to improve communication with the community.
Meanwhile, some parents are still demanding answers on the sudden transfer that involved the replacement of principals at two other schools within the district in the middle of the school year.
Greenberger will transfer to Camino Creek Elementary School in January.
There are plenty of places in San Diego to watch the third presidential debate Wednesday night as candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off for the final time before Election Day.
Regal Cinemas, for instance, will host free, live screenings of the debate across 206 movie theaters nationwide, including two locations in San Diego County: Regal Oceanside Stadium 16 (401 Mission Ave.) and UA Horton Plaza 8 at Westfield Horton Plaza (475 Horton Plaza).
The debate watch party at the theaters begins at 6 p.m. PT when Clinton and Trump take the podiums from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Attendees who purchase popcorn during the screening session get a free small soft drink, Regal Cinemas says. The company hosted similar screenings of the last presidential debate at movie theaters across the nation. For a full list of participating Regal Cinemas airing Wednesday nights debate, click here.
Some local Edwards theaters will also screen the debate, including Edwards Mira Mesa Stadium 18 (10733 Westview Parkway) and Edwards San Marcos Stadium 18 (1180 W. San Marcos Blvd.).
Meanwhile, the Angelika Film Center in Carmel Mountain, located at 11620 Carmel Mountain Rd., will also screen the debate with a watch party from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the upstairs lounge and outdoor patio.
Both the University of San Diego (USD) and San Diego Mesa College are also hosting debate watch events, urging students to closely study the civility of the candidates as Trump and Clinton go head-to-head, said Carl Luna, Ph.D, a professor of politican science at San Diego Mesa College.
Immigrant and refugee groups will also gather for a 6 p.m. debate viewing party organized by Alliance San Diego at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD) located at 7050 Eckstrom Ave.
This event includes members of the ICSD, the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium (SDIRC), the San Diego office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and MAS-PACE (Muslim American Society). After the debate, the group will host an informal discussion with community members centered on the topics of immigration and refugees, expected to be addressed during the debate between Trump and Clinton.
A California media coordinator for the Donald Trump campaign says several restaurants will hold debate viewing parties hosting Trump supporters Wednesday night including Hooleys Irish Pub in La Mesa (5500 Grossmont Center Dr.), Round Table Pizza in Oceanside (3440 Marron Rd.) and the San Diego Country Club in Chula Vista (88 L. St.). The local chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans will also hold a viewing party for the debate at Uptown Tavern (1236 University Ave.).
As you get ready for tonight's debate, here's a viewer's guide to the showdown.
A former security guard accused of shooting and killing his longtime girlfriend while she held their baby was ordered held on $3 million bond Tuesday.
Roderick Harris appeared in a blue jail uniform with his head lowered, his eyes focused on the floor in front of him.
Harris, 32, is accused of killing his girlfriend, Vanessa Marie Bobo, 29, in the apartment they shared on Lake Arrowhead Drive. The couple dated for four years and had an 11-month old baby together.
The hearing Tuesday was his first court appearance. When the judge addressed him, Harris looked up briefly and spoke softly. He pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder.
Harris was arrested the day after San Diego Police officers found Bobo's body and her 5-year-old son and crying 11-month old inside the apartment. The children were not harmed, but were frightened. Investigators initially said the older child helped identify his mother's killer.
When Harris was arrested in Chula Vista, he had several minor wounds on his body. A prosecutor described the wounds as self-inflicted and superficial.
According to the complaint, Harris and Bobo argued the night of her death. Bobo allegedly attempted to shield her children from the violence, holding the younger child in her arms.
Just before midnight, Harris allegedly fired two shots from a .357 revolver, the prosecutor claimed. One bullet went into a neighbor's wall but the other bullet struck Bobo's spinal cord, severing it, according to investigators.
The young mother fell to the floor and dropped the baby, the prosecutor said.
Man accused of killing girlfriend in front of her 5y/o son pleads not guilty. Roderick Harris' Bail set at $3m pic.twitter.com/jnGJWhH8yB Omari Fleming (@OmariNBCSD) October 18, 2016
Records indicate Harris has one prior domestic violence arrest, but no convictions. That prior incident was from a prior relationship and did not involve Bobo.
Investigators searched the home and removed three rifles, a shotgun, another revolver and two semi-automatic handguns, according to the complaint.
Prosecutors requested a $4 million bail saying that Harris, with his interest in weapons, posed a safety risk to the public.
The judge approved bail at $3 million and approved a protective order for the children.
According to police, Harris is the biological father of Bobo's younger child, who turns 1 on Oct. 21.
The 5-year-old son is staying with his biological father while the infant is being cared for by family members, NBC 7 confirmed.
The suspect was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Chula Vista at a relatives house. NBC 7s Wendy Fry has more on how authorities identified and located the man in such short time.
Sprouts Farmers Market plans to host a hiring fair Thursday to fill a total of 65 jobs across three coastal stores in San Diegos North County.
The company is looking to hire employees for its locations in Solana Beach (659 Lomas Santa Fe Dr.), Encinitas (1327 Encinitas Blvd.) and Carlsbad (2618 El Camino Real) for various positions including the bakery, meat, deli, grocery, produce, vitamin and cashier departments.
Sprouts will host walk-in interviews Thursday at the Holiday Inn in Carlsbad, located at 2725 Palomar Airport Rd. Interviews will take place during two sessions: 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Applicants should bring a copy of their resume. The hiring event will be put on in partnership with the hourly job-finding website, Snagajob.
The organization that runs the National Cherry Blossom Festival is suing a major paper company for trademark infringement.
In a lawsuit filed in court in D.C., attorneys for the National Cherry Blossom Festival accuse the Florida-based Rifle Paper Company of unlawfully selling merchandise featuring the phrase National Cherry Blossom Festival and depictions of the Jefferson Memorial and colorful cherry blossoms.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival, which draws more than 1 million visitors to D.C. during the spring bloom, also organizes an annual parade. The events are a celebration of the gift of blossoms from Japan and, according to the organizations website, the enduring friendship between the people of the United States and Japan.
In court filings, the National Cherry Blossom Festival said Rifle Paper Company posted merchandise featuring the phrase National Cherry Blossom Festival on its website in June. According to the court filings, merchandise with the same phrase also was posted for sale at the Paper Source store at Union Market in D.C.
The merchandise appeared on the Paper Source website Wednesday morning.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival trademarked its name in 2009, the organization said in court filings. Attorneys for the organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did attorneys for the Rifle Paper Company.
In the suit, the National Cherry Blossom Festival asks the court to award financial damages from the sale of the merchandise but does not specify a dollar amount.
The court filings include a correspondence from an attorney for the Rifle Paper Company. In that correspondence, the paper company argues its merchandise included a fair use of the name of the festival.
According to the Rifle Paper Company letter submitted to the court by the National Cherry Blossom Festival, the paper companys attorney said, It is difficult for our client to describe the festival without using the entirety of the mark. Moreover, no other terms, symbols or words are used to suggest a sponsorship or endorsement of our clients work by your client.
The case has been assigned to a U.S. District Court judge in D.C. No hearing date is yet scheduled.
Donald Trumps recent accusations of large scale voter fraud and rigged elections are highly unlikely, according to multiple campaign experts interviewed by the News4 I-Team.
The National Association of Secretaries of State, made up of both Republican and Democratic election officials from all over the country, issued a response to Trumps claims stating they cannot allow unsubstantiated claims calling into question the systemic integrity of the election process to shake voter confidence or disrupt voting in the run-up to Election Day and state election chiefs want to assure Americans that our process is fairly administered and well-secured, with built-in structural safeguards to ensure honest outcomes and accurate results.
The Districts Board of Elections released a document detailing cybersecurity precautions D.C. is taking to prevent hacking and cheating, which include beefed up firewalls, encryption software and monitoring systems to track internal IP addresses each time someone tries to access any of its databases.
Maryland officials released similar documents detailing the different security procedures theyve put into place to prevent what happened in Illinois and Arizona after foreign hackers infiltrated their voter registration databases and how they plan to prevent voter fraud at the ballot box. Maryland will use paper ballots that will be scanned into removable USB memory drives, a spokeswoman explained. But theyve installed multilayered security procedures to prevent anyone from using a phony USB drive to alter the results, she explained.
There are three parts to an election, spokeswoman Nikki Charlson said. Equipment, people and processes. The equipment was designed to protect the integrity of the system by ensuring the people and the processes cant change votes. We use people and the processes to make sure the equipment counted those votes properly. Its a checks and balances system.
Both Maryland and Virginia stressed their ballot boxes are never connected to the internet, so no one could hack into their machines.
The Districts Board of Elections said it hasnt received a single complaint of voter fraud since the last general election.
When voter fraud really does happen, its been limited to single individuals, Marylands Board of Elections told the I-Team. Marylands most recent case involved a woman who pleaded guilty to voting twice in Frederick County once as herself and once using her mothers absentee ballot during the 2012 election.
The presidential candidates are at each others' throats and data suggests there is more political animosity between Democrats and Republicans than there has been in more than 20 years.
But there still may be hope for us after all.
Before the final presidential debate and amid ample signs that America is growing more divided, News4 looked for examples of people working together across party lines. Here's what we found:
1) Democrats and Republicans Are Using an App to Bridge the Divide
The "friendship app" Verona is connecting people across party lines.
As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have duked it out this year, thousands of people have used an app designed to help members of opposing groups unite. Laid out much like a dating app, Verona initially paired Israelis with Palestinians. In February, creator Matthew Nolan expanded the app to introduce Democrats and Republicans to each other.
Verona bills itself as offering "World peace, one swipe at a time." Users create profiles, select the group they identify with and then browse profiles from users in the other group.
The most common feedback Nolan said he hears from Verona users is that the Democrat a Republican met, or vice versa, was less extreme than they expected.
"They were anticipating the divide being very left and very right, but they met someone who was very moderate that they had a lot in common with," he said.
Verona
Nolan declined to reveal the exact number of Verona users but said the group that uses the Democrat/Republican option breaks down about equally by party and between men and women. Users have made friends and even sparked a few romances.
"We're really happy we're helping to foster real-life friendships with people [users] otherwise would not have met," said Nolan, a Detroit native who lives in New York.
Verona
He said that regardless of who wins the election, he believes Americans can unite across party lines.
"I'm extremely hopeful," he said. "We're not as different as we think we are."
2) We Have Changes of Heart
A Virginia mother says her views on LGBT people were transformed when her teenager came out as transgender.
Hope Christina Hernandez said she was not raised to accept LGBT people. Like many Americans, the Woodbridge, Virginia, resident said she was taught that homosexuality and straying from conventional gender roles were wrong.
"I was taught that it wasn't natural, that it's not what God intended, that it is a sin and that God punishes sinners," she said.
Hernandez grew up with openly gay friends and came to doubt what she had been taught, but the biggest challenge to her beliefs about LGBT people came on June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
She and her 15-year-old daughter were watching the news and bickering about housework.
"I asked, 'Why are you so sloppy?' or something like that. You're such a boy,'" Hernandez recalled.
"Because I am a boy! I'm trans," the teen shouted in response.
Courtesy of Hope Christina Hernandez
Hernandez, who works as a social worker, said that at first she struggled with the disclosure that her child is transgender. She thought she just was being dramatic. But the teen insisted it was true. So, Hernandez decided to educate herself.
"I looked up online, 'teen came out as trans now what,'" she said.
Hernandez learned that her teen might want to start going by a new name and being referred to as "he." She registered him into a new high school as a boy, and started attending meetings of PFLAG, the national organization of family members, friends and allies of LGBT people.
Hernandez said she knows she still has a lot to learn about how to support her son, who now is 17 and looking ahead to college. But she said she is willing to keep working to do it.
"I know I don't have all the tools in my toolbox to help him," she said.
3) We Work Together on Behalf of Children
D.C. Democrats and Republicans unite for the sake of kids, one leader says.
In the neighborhood just east of the U.S. Capitol Building, Democrats and Republicans unite for the sake of their kids.
Joe Weedon, who represents the Capitol Hill area for the D.C. State Board of Education, said he has seen supporters of both parties come together to modernize public schools and improve the meal service system.
"Whichever candidate you're supporting, I think the quality of our schools has superseded any political candidate on a number of issues," he said.
A Prince Georges County school bus driver who rescued 20 students from a burning bus was honored Wednesday. News4s Pat Collins reports.
Parents agree on the need to put the education, health and safety of children first, said Weedon, who is the father of an 11-year-old and 9-year-old.
"A lot of energy can be mobilized for the common good," he said.
4) We Still Agree on a Lot, Believe It or Not
Data suggests that most Americans agree on many key issues.
A majority of Americans agree on fundamental issues, recent polls find.
Fifty-six percent of people included in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in March said they believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That poll included 2,254 people.
In that same poll, 59 percent of respondents said they agreed that immigrants "strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents," 74 percent said they agreed that "this country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment" and 60 percent said they agreed that "Muslims living in the U.S. should not be subject to additional scrutiny solely because of their religion."
A Gallup poll conducted in March found that 75 percent of respondents believe the U.S. government should spend more on infrastructure, and 91 percent said federal funds should be used to modernize the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. About 500 people participated.
Another Pew poll found that a majority of Americans support making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks. Eighty-five percent of the 2,002 people polled in July 2015 gave this response.
Our agreement on many issues is the good news. The bad news is that some scholars think that our beliefs on issues are not what divide us anymore.
"The parties now are less a collection of issues and more a collection of identities," Dr. Neil Malhotra, a political scientist at Stanford Graduate School of Business said. "Even if you don't have strong opinions on issues, you have strong opinions about identities."
Malhotra said he sees hope in multiracial coalitions and other instances of people crossing typical party lines.
"Maybe that's a potentially good sign," he said.
5) We Unite to Pray and Help People in Need
Across from the White House, Democrats and Republicans attend church services together.
Every president of the United States since James Madison has attended a service at Saint John's Church, in the yellow sanctuary across from the White House. Many people who work on Capitol Hill and at all levels of politics worship at the Episcopal church every Sunday, Rev. Andy Olivo said.
NBC Washington
Democrats and Republicans regularly come together at Saint John's to worship, collect clothing and books for people in need, and build Habitat for Humanity Homes, he said.
"People who very likely disagree on things political can still go out into the community and help people," Olivo said. "All of our folks here, no matter where they fall [politically], want to be involved in serving their neighbor and helping others and making Washington D.C. and the surrounding area a better place to live."
The reverend said he believes people are more united than we may seem during this bruising campaign season.
"I think on a day-to-day basis, most people are trying to do good in their life and in their work. They're doing that not because they're a Republican or they're a Democrat, but because they're a person and they care about other people," he said.
Olivo had this advice for people anxious now about the direction of the country: "Vote, pray, be involved in making the world a better place."
A construction worker was seriously injured after a live wire fell on top of him at a construction site in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday morning.
A crane operator at the construction site in the 700 block of Wythe Street hit an electrical wire just before 7:30 a.m., Crystal Nosal with the Alexandria Police Department said. The wire fell down to the street, striking 44-year-old construction worker who was nearby.
The victim suffered electrical burns and has been taken to a local hospital. He is in critical but stable condition, according to police.
Many traffic lights in the area were without power for a short time because of the accident.
You can't bring your Samsung Galaxy Note7 on a plane -- but you can bring it to any of the D.C. area's major airports. The airports, including Reagan National, now feature have pop-up kiosks where Samsung reps are collecting the phones for trade-in.
Samsung Galaxy Note7 phones have been recalled because some of them have been catching fire. The U.S. banned the devices from flights last week.
"Honestly, I've wondered the last few times I was on the airplane why they would allow people on and then tell them to turn their phone off," said traveler Sherri Baker. "If it was too dangerous to be on the plane to begin with, I've always thought they shouldn't be on there."
Galaxy Note7 owners can bring them to a Samsung table at D.C.'s major local airports to exchange their devices for another phone or to simply get a refund.
"It's not just for your own personal safety, but also for the safety of everyone around you," said traveler Daniel Shai at Reagan National Airport on Tuesday.
But what happens with all of your data? Samsung reps are uploading users' data to the cloud. Phones are supposed to be cleansed of all their data.
"If they're going to just take your phone like that, you would hope that they'll wipe everything," Shai said of users' data.
Shai owns a Samsung, but his model isn't a Note7. He said he made sure his phone wasn't a concern.
"I've always had a Samsung phone so it was actually kind of sad that this big problem has happened," he said.
Samsung sent News4 the following statement: "The U.S. Department of Transportation and FAA have banned all Note7 devices in carry-on and checked baggage on flights. If you are a Note7 owner and are traveling today, Samsung is at the airport to help you. Safety remains the top priority."
The Transportation Security Administration is also on the lookout for Note7 phones to make sure they're kept off flights.
An airport source says only a handful of Note7 phones have been turned in recently. But travelers said they're glad the phones aren't getting aboard flights, because it only takes one accident.
Samsung has said it found a manufacturing defect in the phones' batteries.
"Battery technology is changing all the time so I expect that Samsung is doing the right thing here," said traveler David Harnett at Reagan. "They are taking them away as soon as they can."
What to Know The suspect and victim had an ongoing dispute that ignited when the victim stole the suspect's cellphone, the suspect told police.
When a judge said Kyla Jones would be held without bond, Kaelia Minor's family burst into applause.
The 18-year-old woman charged in the stabbing death of a 17-year-old girl told police the victim took her cellphone because she wanted to start a fight, charging documents reveal.
Kyla Jones, 18, was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder while armed in the death of Kaelia Minor, a 17-year-old high school student.
Jones appeared in court Wednesday afternoon. When a judge said she would be held without bond, Minor's family burst into applause.
Jones told police she and the victim were involved in an ongoing dispute that ignited when Minor stole Jones' cellphone.
According to charging documents, Jones got onto a Metrobus on Gallatin Street Monday and saw the victim sitting near the back of the bus. Jones told police she sat in the front to avoid a confrontation.
But once she saw the victim walking toward the front of the bus, Jones said she put the knife she carries on her lap, charging documents say.
Jones claims the victim told her to "put the knife down" and threatened to rob her if she didn't fight her.
A witness was trying to separate the teens when the victim took the suspect's cellphone and ran off the bus, charging documents say.
Still armed with the knife, Jones followed the victim, and the two teens began to fight near the intersection of Kansas Avenue and Emerson Street NW.
Jones soon realized the victim had been stabbed, but told police she didn't think she was seriously injured.
Jones and other witnesses say Jones then searched the victim for her phone as Minor lay on the ground.
One witness reported hearing Jones say, "She took my phone" as she searched Minor's body.
Another witness heard Jones say she didn't care what happened to the victim and that she just wanted her phone.
Once she found her phone, Jones told police she left the scene and took an Uber to meet a friend in Southwest Washington to get marijuana to smoke.
But once she found out Minor had died, Jones told her parents what happened and turned herself in to police, the documents say.
Jones reportedly told police she threw the steak knife she used to stab Minor down a sewer, and investigators were able to recover it.
Chenna Latta, the victim's cousin, said Tuesday that her family is relieved a suspect has been arrested.
"We forgive you. But it hurt us. Because at the end of the day, God wants us to forgive," Latta said. "But it hurts so bad."
Minor, a senior at Calvin Coolidge High, was just three blocks from home when she was stabbed.
"It destroyed me," said Minor's mother, Docia Proctor. "It was just me and her, and she's gone."
Minor was a good student and captain of the dance team, Proctor said.
"She was beautiful and somebody took her from me," she said through tears.
Minor's family said they are planning to hold a candlelight vigil for her Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Kansas Avenue and Emerson Street.
Minor, who had recently been accepted into college, had "so much potential," neighbor Neil Arp said.
"I just know that she could have really become someone," he said.
A swimmer who went missing Tuesday off the coast of Ipswich, Massachusetts, has been rescued.
The U.S. Coast Guard said a man and his son-in-law, both experienced swimmers familiar with the area, went off the coast where Crane Beach meets Steep Hill Beach around 5:30 p.m.
When family members noticed they had been gone too long, they went to the scene, found their bikes and called 911.
Police found the younger man in the water. He told them his father-in-law had gotten caught in a heavy fog and pulled out in a rip current.
Later in the evening, the man was found treading water. He was taken back to land and on board an ambulance.
The Coast Guard had been searching by air and boat, and Ipswich Police remained on the scene.
One of the highest tides of the year brought out plenty of spectators to Long Wharf in Boston, but it also brought out concern among those who worry it could frequent problem in the future.
King tide occurs when the sun, moon and earth align. Gravity increases when the earth and moon are closest together, which helps increase the tide.
On Tuesday in Boston, the tide was roughly two feet higher than normal. King tide flooded streets near Long Wharf and left puddles along the Fort Point Channel.
While some were busy taking it in or dipping their toes in, others were surveying which parts of Boston flood first.
"What we're seeing here is what normal high tide is going to look like around or after mid-century," Julie Wormser of Boston Harbor Now said.
Wormser said with the sea level rising each year, it will not take a King tide to flood streets in the future. She predicts it will happen a lot more often and so do several waterfront business owners.
"In the future, we are quite certain there will be regular water days just as there are snow days in Boston because some streets will just not be passable," Ellen Watts said.
It is why they say the infrastructure needs to start changing before the rare spectacle becomes a constant headache.
"Chart House, Back Bay, the Innovation District, all of it is going to be underwater a few times of month if we don't take action," Daniel Benstein said.
The moon is expected to be even closer to the earth in November, when the highest tide of the year is expected to occur.
Waterfront business owners are hoping that does not coincide with a nor'easter because storm surges coupled with a King tide can be extremely damaging and dangerous.
A convicted sex offender has been extradited from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, according to the Rhode Island Department of Corrections.
Richard Gardner appeared in Kent County Superior Court today, after he was arrested at a Boston shelter Friday night on a fugitive from justice charge out of Rhode Island.
Gardner is a Level 3 sex offender who was released from prison after nearly three decades behind bars for kidnapping and raping boys in the 1980s. Upon his release, Gardner went to Weymouth, Massachusetts where he was met with outrage from community members.
The district attorney says Gardner was freed due to a human error.
He is now charged with violating the terms and conditions of his release after he was kicked out of the Quincy Library for violating a local ordinance.
According to court documents, Gardner, "entered and remained in a place frequented by children which is in violation of the no contact order issued."
He was held without bail following his appearance in court and a judge accepted his waiver of extradition.
His latest arrest comes after residents in his parent's Weymouth neighborhood filed a petition for GPS bracelets on sex offenders.
Felt skunked by clouds and a stalled front today. Sure, I smelled a rat in the weather models yesterday, but I still thought the warm front would get out of Massachusetts today.
Instead it stalled and limped north of the border after nightfall. Lot of good that did for the temps. Thankfully, we're able to wait this one out as highs soar tomorrow with increasing sun.
Yes, we start with clouds again, but this time it's different.
No really. A passing cool front will mix in mild air and kick the clouds offshore early on. As its name suggests, the cooler air will settle in for the final two days of the workweek. And that means we'll trade our near 80 degree temperatures in for 60s...and eventually 50s by the weekend.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. How about a healthy dose of rain too? We're watching a developing tropical system northeast of the Bahamas today. No, I'm not thinking we'll see a direct hit from this (potentially Tropical Storm Otto in a few days), but like we saw with Matthew, a stream of tropical moisture may get caught in our flow off the ocean, and voila...heavy rain comes to our backyards and neighborhoods.
It's more than mere fantasy at this point. It's actually a solid threat in the Friday time frame. Question is, does it sweep into Maine or first move into Massachusetts? As you might imagine, placement is an issue this far out.
We're on it like puddles in a downpour.
A suspect has been identified after another man was killed in a reported shooting Tuesday in Wardsboro, Vermont.
State police confirm 42-year-old man Kirby Staib was found dead outside a home around 4:45 p.m. Troopers were responding to the report of a shooting.
Another male, 57-year-old Kevin Parker, has been identified as the alleged shooter. However, he is not in custody and no charges have been announced pending results of the investigation, according to necn affiliate NBC 5.
No other suspects are being sought, and police do not believe there is any threat to the public.
The cause and manner of the victim's death will be determined by an autopsy.
A man was rushed to Boston Medical Center after being shot in Dorchester and a search for the suspect is underway, police confirm.
According to Boston Police, the 41-year-old victim was shot while working on his car on Dorchester Avenue, which was busy as families were returning home during the evening commute. A school is just two blocks away.
Someone opened fire down the street with a high-capacity handgun, police said. Fifteen rounds were fired.
One bullet hit the victim, going through his left arm and out his neck.
The victim is undergoing surgery at Boston Medical Center.
Police do not believe the incident to be related to a separate shooting that happened about three quarters of a mile away Monday.
Prosecutors have filed a new murder charge against a Springfield, Massachusetts, man accused in the beating death of a 5-month-old baby.
The Republican newspaper reports that 34-year-old Miguel Fonseca-Colon pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Springfield District Court on Tuesday and was ordered held without bail.
The new charge comes just days after a judge dismissed four indictments against Fonseca-Colon after ruling that prosecutors failed to present statements in 2014 to a grand jury from the baby's mother and aunt.
Authorities said the baby, Jadamier Cintron, suffered 32 fractures and died from blunt force trauma.
Defense attorney David Hoose has challenged the prosecution's claim that the baby was killed during the short time his client was baby-sitting, and says other potential suspects were not considered.
For nearly three hours, the town of Epping, New Hampshire was swarming with police officers searching for a suspect who was considered armed and dangerous.
The suspect - identified as Raul Natanero - was apprehended just before 4 p.m. Epping Police said he and two other men broke into a home in the Lamprey Village neighborhood.
An officer on routine patrol saw a suspicious car and interrupted the robbery in progress. That officer was able to arrest two of the suspects, but Natanero took off, armed with a 9mm handgun.
For the duration of the search, schools were put into lockdown and area residents were urged to stay inside and lock their doors as heavily armed officers and SWAT members combed through the neighborhood.
The victim told necn that one of the suspects slammed him in the head with a gun, put him in a chokehold and pointed the gun at his face. He was eventually able to break free and ran outside.
The victim is 21 years old and said he went to high school with one of the suspects but didn't know the other two.
Police said the three men will be facing charges.
A convicted sex offender denied a new allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman while armed with a gun.
The Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations said Jeffrey North, 34, of Burlington, pointed a gun at a woman he didn't know on a sidewalk in the citys Old North End in mid-August.
He then forced her into sexual contact, the sex crimes investigation unit said, allegedly telling her just enjoy it, baby before she shouted fire in an attempt to scare off the attacker.
Late Monday, North entered a plea of not guilty to the aggravated sexual assault charge and was ordered held without bail.
In a separate incident in September, police said North followed a different woman, who was also a stranger, and tried to force her into his car. He allegedly grabbed that womans upper thigh and pressed a knife or something else sharp against her neck, police said.
North has not yet been charged with that alleged assault, police said.
"We're definitely very glad to get him at this point, before there was another victim," said Det. Sgt. Chris Nadeau of the Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations. "Whether there would have been, I can't guess. I don't want to make a guess at that situation."
Nadeau said DNA evidence taken from the woman in the August incident matched North, after her physical description of him closely resembled the one given by the woman in the September case.
CUSI noted that North is a registered sex offender, adding that he was convicted for prohibited acts and lewd and lascivious conduct stemming from arrests in 1998 and 2002.
Cathleen Barkley, who supports survivors of sexual violence and aims to end sexual violence through the non-profit HOPE Works, said the circumstances police described are unusual.
"For the people that we serve, it's usually a very small percentage that are sexually assaulted by a stranger," Barkley told necn. "Most of the people that we serve are sexually assaulted by somebody that they already know. So that is unusual in this case, for Vermont."
Barkley said that HOPE Works, where HOPE stands for healing, outreach, prevention, and empowerment, served nearly 1,000 survivors of sexual violence in Chittenden County last year.
North is scheduled to be back in court next week, when he'll be charged with the September assault, Nadeau said.
Police are still investigating the alleged use of the gun in the reported August assault. Investigators said North told them he merely carried a BB gun in case he needed to "scare people," but claimed he did not display it the night in question.
A Norton, Massachusetts, woman is still in shock after giving birth to a baby boy over the weekend, claiming she never knew she was pregnant.
Ileana Martinez was admitted to Sturdy Memorial Hospital Sunday after she came in with a bad stomachache. She assumed it was cramping, but later learned from the doctors she was 38 weeks along.
"It was really, really bad abdominal pain," Martinez said. "Ive never felt like this in my life."
A few hours after receiving news of her pregnancy, she gave birth to Jaxson Jean-Pierre. The 5 pound baby boy was early, but healthy.
Martinez said she went to several routine doctor appointments during the time she was carrying the child, but no one noticed. She said she exhibited no symptoms.
"I had no morning sickness, my period was normal, I had no cravings and no extreme weight gain. I gained five pounds and that is just from me not working out like I used to," Martinez said.
She said she is thankful for her new son, but wishes she had more time to prepare for his arrival. They could not leave the hospital until they found a car seat to take him home. They do have a few diapers, outfits and a bassinet, but are looking for help.
"I was just bombarded with this myself so anything does help even if its just telling me that Im not alone," Martinez said.
Donations can be made through Martinezs sister by emailing madie07@icloud.com
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida warned his Republican colleagues not to discuss the WikiLeaks dump of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta.
"I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks," said Rubio in a statement to NBC News, breaking with Donald Trump's approach. "As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process and I will not indulge it."
Rubio did not mention Trump by name, but he is clearly departing from his former rival on the issue. Trump has repeatedly brought up the WikiLeaks' hack, accusing the media of ignoring the stolen emails in an effort to protect Clinton.
"I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks," Rubio said. "Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us."
In addition to picking the candidate they want for U.S. president and various federal and state offices, Bay State voters will have a chance to weigh in on four ballot questions.
While a few questions are garnering a lot of attention, such as Question 4, which would legalize recreational marijuana, others are still largely unfamiliar to voters, such as Question 1, which would allow another slots parlor in Massachusetts.
Check out our explainer below and the links to the campaigns for and against these ballot questions:
QUESTION 1
Question 1 would allow the state's Gaming Commission to issue another slots parlor license, which is targeted for Suffolk Downs. The main supporters for Question 1, which was proposed by a developer, are the Horse Racing Jobs and Education Committee and the Yes to 1 campaign, while the main opponents to Question 1 are the Committee for Sustainable and Responsible Economic Development and Vote No on 1 campaign, along with Gov. Charlie Baker, the mayors of Somerville and Revere, and the chief operating officer of Suffolk Downs.
QUESTION 2
The charter school expansion question has voters taking sides in Massachusetts.
Question 2 asks voters if they would like to see at least 12 more charter schools in or increased enrollment in existing charter schools by the state's education board each year, with priority given to applicants who want to open a charter school in public school districts that have been performing poorly for two years. Supporters for the ballot question includes Great Schools Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker and U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch. Opponents include Save Our Public Schools, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Marty Walsh and the entire Boston City Council.
QUESTION 3
Massachusetts voters go to the polls in less than two weeks and one thing they will vote on is Question 3, which prohibits the sale of foods from animals confined to small cages. Opponents claim the proposal will end up costing consumers more money.
Question 3 will have voters determine whether to ban certain methods of farm animal containment, including methods that prevent an animal "from lying down, standing up, fully extending its limbs, or turning around freely," and would apply to business owners who knowingly sell animal products from animals held in this way, even if the source is from out of state. Supporters for the ballot question include the MSPCA, ARL of Boston, the Sierra Club, Zoo New England and the Human Society of the United States. Lead by the No on Question 3 and Citizens Against Food Tax Injustice, opponents of Question 3 argue that these methods aren't typically practiced in Massachusetts, and include the National Association of Egg Farmers, the Massachusetts Farm Bureau, the New England Egg Council and the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.
QUESTION 4
A group of doctors rallied Friday to show their support for Question 4, which would legalize marijuana recreationally in Massachusetts.
If Question 4 passes, Massachusetts will join an increasing number of states to legalize recreational marijuana. The question would allow residents over the age of 21 to use, grow and possess certain quantities and would create a regulatory structure called the Cannabis Control Commission. Lead by the Yes on 4 campaign, supporters for the ballot question include former Gov. Bill Weld and various state senators and representatives, the ACLU of Massachusetts, Parents for Addiction Treatment & Healing and Moms United to End the War on Drugs. Lead by the Campaign for a Safe & Healthy Massachusetts, opponents of legalized recreational marijuana include Gov. Charlie Baker, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Attorney General Maura Healey, various state lawmakers, Roman Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association.
Sue OConnell takes Question 4 to the streets and gets Bostons response to the new ad in opposition to legalizing marijuana in Massachusetts.
Quiet Waters Christian Retreat in Bungay is holding a gentle day retreat exploring healing in the Kingdom of God.
Quiet Waters Christian Retreat in Bungay is holding a gentle day retreat exploring healing in the Kingdom of God.
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
Norfolk ministry coaching duo are guest speakers Former church leaders and now freelance ministry coaches, Jonathan and Paige Squirrell, are the guest speakers at the next dinner of Norwich FGB on Monday, November 21. Read more
Bringing light to Halloween Anna Price encourages Christians to engage positively with Halloween rather than hide away, on what many see as the darkest night of the year. Read more
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
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
The deal for Verizon to purchase struggling Yahoo became endangered thanks to reports of Yahoo spying on user email for the U.S. government, not to mention the lost data on 500 million accounts and a decline in revenue.
Earlier this month, Verizon publicly declared it was looking for a $1 billion discount on the original $4.8 billion it offered to purchase Yahoo. Verizon sought the discount because of Yahoos enormous data breach and because of reports that Yahoo was under a court order to scan emails for terrorist chatter, according to the New York Post.
Now it looks as though Verizon might be trying to back out of the deal completely. Reuters reports that the contract between the two companies has a clause in it that allows Verizon to cancel the deal if a new factor "reasonably can be expected to have a material adverse effect on the business, assets, properties, results of operation or financial condition of the business."
This came from Verizon's general counsel Craig Silliman, who told reporters at a roundtable in Washington the data breach could trigger the clause.
The Federal Trade Commission has approved the proposed acquisition, but it still needs approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the European Commission.
There had also been concerns that Yahoo was going to have a very bad quarter, but that was shot down with better-than-expected revenue and earnings. The research firm eMarketer had predicted a double-digit decline in ad revenue, and last week CEO Marissa Mayer canceled the earnings call with analysts, citing "the pending transaction with Verizon."
The company announced third-quarter earnings per share of 20 cents, adjusted, on revenue of $1.31 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected Yahoo to report earnings of about 14 cents a share on $1.31 billion in revenue. That may have saved the dealat least for now.
Photographs of nearly half of all U.S. adults -- 117 million people -- are collected in police facial recognition databases across the country with little regulation over how the networks are searched and used, according to a new study.
Along with a lack of regulation, critics question the accuracy of facial recognition algorithms. Meanwhile, state, city, and federal facial recognition databases include 48 percent of U.S. adults, said the report from the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law.
The search of facial recognition databases is largely unregulated, the report said. "A few agencies have instituted meaningful protections to prevent the misuse of the technology," its authors wrote. "In many more cases, it is out of control."
About 20 states, including Texas, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania allow police to search drivers license photo databases. Police in a handful of other states and cities San Fransisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Chicago can search criminal mug shots, the report said.
Police agencies don't need a search warrant to search facial recognition databases, the report said. "We are not aware of any agency that requires warrants for searches or limits them to serious crimes," the authors wrote. "This has consequences."
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona has enrolled all of Honduras' driver's licenses and mug shots into its database. This was presumably related to the tough stance on immigration taken by County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who just this week was indicted for defying a judge's orders to stop targeting Latinos. Meanwhile, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in Florida runs 8,000 monthly searches on 7 million Florida drivers, without requiring that officers have "even a reasonable suspicion," the report said.
In addition to concerns about racial profiling, the growing use of facial recognition by police raises several other potential problems, said Clare Garvie, a co-author of the report and an associate at the Georgetown center.
The facial recognition algorithms used to search the photo databases, sold by a handful of vendors, aren't perfect, she said by email. "The algorithms make mistakes," she added. "These mistakes happen at a higher rate when the systems are used to try and identify people in lower quality images," including surveillance camera images, or smartphone photos, and social media pictures.
Most police facial recognition systems use pre-trained algorithms that identify distinct nodal points on the face for each person, then match those blueprints to known images. A second type of facial recognition technology uses neural networks to learn and update itself over time, but the report's authors aren't aware of any police agencies that use "this type of deep learning algorithm at the moment," Garvie said.
The main companies that sell facial-recognition technology to U.S. law enforcement agencies are Cognitec, NEC, and MorphoTrust, Garvie said. These companies also license their face recognition algorithms to other value-added resellers, such as FaceFirst and Dynamic Imaging Systems.
Limited testing has suggested that facial recognition technology makes more errors on African Americans, women, and young people, Garvie said.
The search systems are also set up to return results, "regardless of whether the suspect being searched for is in the database," Garvie added. "This means that a system may return a list of 10 or 40 completely innocent people."
With many police systems using drivers license photos, the list "may be of people who have never had any interaction with the police before," she added. "But if the algorithm says it has a high confidence that one or more of these people is a 'match,' the police may investigate. They may arrest a completely innocent person because the algorithm pointed them in that person's direction."
Representatives of the FBI and the National Association of Police Organizations didn't immediately respond to requests for comments on the report.
Police in the Czech Republic have arrested a Russian hacker suspected of targeting the U.S. for cyber crime.
Czech police, working in collaboration with the FBI, arrested the Russian man at a hotel in central Prague. He is currently in custody and now faces possible extradition to the U.S., depending on what the local courts decide, according to a statement from the Czech police.
The arrest comes as the U.S. has blamed Russian government for hacking U.S. officials and political groups in an effort to influence this year's upcoming election. However, a U.S. law enforcement official said the Russian hacker wasn't involved with the breach of the Democratic National Committee reported earlier this year.
On Wednesday, the FBI would only confirm that the unnamed man had been arrested. "Due to the ongoing investigation, no additional details can be provided at this time," the agency said in an email.
The Czech police said that the Russian citizen had been found traveling in a luxury car with his girlfriend. Upon his arrest, the man offered no resistance, but immediately collapsed and was later hospitalized. Czech police have released video of his arrest, and his name is reportedly Yevgeniy N, according to the Associated Press.
Although the suspect may face extradition to the U.S., the Russian government reportedly is insisting that the man be returned to his home country.
"We are in contact with his attorney," said Russian embassy spokesman Andrey Kolmakov, according to the country's state-run news agency Tass. "Russia repudiates Washingtons policy of imposing its extraterritorial jurisdiction on all countries."
Russian and Eastern European cyber criminals are seen as possible culprits behind the data breaches involving LinkedIn and Yahoo, according to security experts. Those breaches stole details from hundreds of millions of user accounts, including hashed passwords, but the full scale of the intrusions have only recently come to light.
Level 3 Threat Research has noted an uptick in activity by new IoT botnets that are backed by the Mirai malware, with some attacks enlisting 100,000 individual hijacked devices.
A significant number of these zombie devices are enslaved by more than one botnet, according to the research described in the Level 3 Beyond Bandwidth blog, and some of these botnets use overlapping infrastructure.
Source code for Mirai was released Sept. 30, which has inspired a significant number of new bad actors, all working to exploit similar pools of vulnerable devices, the Level 3 researchers write.
They came across Mirai in mid-September, just days before it gained notoriety when it was used to launch one of the largest ever DDoS attacks, taking down the Krebs on Security Web site.
Before that, they had been tracking a different IoT botnet malware called BASHLITE, which is still around and being used to run giant IoT botnets in competition with owners of Mirai-enabled IoT botnets. Level 3 continues to monitor both, which are used to support DDoS-for-hire businesses.
Mirai is more sophisticated than BASHLITE, says Level 3 CTO Dale Drew, and since Mirai has been released, it is becoming still more sophisticated. For example, Mirai owners now rotate the IP addresses of the botnet command and control (C2) servers more frequently, every day or so, to avoid detection. Thats about three times as often as has been observed with other IoT botnets, the research says.
Actors using MIrai sometimes use the same IP addresses for C2s but assign different domain names to them over time. Those C2s are mostly compromised servers in small and midsize businesses, Drew says, and Level 3 is reaching out to the victimized organizations so they can clean up their machines.
Two of the Mirai C servers were attacked simultaneously at gigabit-per-second levels over a period of 24 hours stretching from Sept. 18 to Sept. 19. The attacker was BASHLITE. Three shorter, lower bandwidth attacks were subsequently noted on separate Mirai command and control servers on Sept. 20, 22 and 23.
Those shorter attacks might have been attempts to take over control of the C2s to enlist them and the bots they controlled into BASHLITE, Drew says.
Since the release of Mirai source code, the geographic distribution of hijacked IoT bots has changed. The code contains common and default user names and password, and these dictionaries have made attacks more effective in the U.S., so now a higher percentage of devices than with BAHSLITE are located here. The most are in the U.S. (29%), then Brazil (23%) and Colombia (8%).
Level 3 has tracked the IP addresses that contact known command and control servers for both kinds of botnets, and track what devices reach out to them. Prior to Mirai code being released, Level 3 had discovered 213,000 IoT devices being used as bots. Afterwards, that number more than doubled to 493,000. Since Level 3 doesnt have a complete view of the bot infrastructure, the actual number is likely higher, the researchers say.
The research found that individual hijacked IoT devices were used to scan the internet for other vulnerable IoT devices on TCP ports 23 and 2323 and send the IP addresses and credentials of vulnerable devices to a reporting server. Loader servers would then connect to the devices that had been designated as vulnerable and downloaded loaders to them. Then the infected machines connected to separate servers to download Mirai.
Level 3 observed long-lasting connections between the reporting servers and the onion router (Tor) network, which the researchers concluded was the bot herder connecting to control the botnet.
More than 80% of the bots were DVRs, with the rest being IoT routers, cameras, Linux servers and the like using default user names and passwords.
The researchers found that 24% of the bots in the Mirai botnets had also been enslaved by BASHLITE. Such a high overlap indicates that multiple malware families are targeting the same pool of vulnerable IoT devices, they say.
Police investigating after contractor was killed in a work based accident
IKEA Reading is closed after a man died in a work based accident this morning (Wednesday).
Deputy Retail Manager, IKEA UK and Ireland, Javier Quinones, said: We are very saddened to confirm that this morning, 19th October, a contractor died in an incident on our site in Reading.
"The safety and security of everyone on our premises is always our highest priority and we are now supporting the Thames Valley Police with their investigation.
"The store will remain closed this morning. Our thoughts are with the individuals family at this time."
Staff are directing customers away from the store and signs informing drivers of the store's closure have been put in place.
Police were called to the store at the Pincents Kiln Industrial Park, Calcot, at 2.33am by the South Central Ambulance Service.
An investigation is ongoing however, an ambulance spokesman said that the contractor had died in a work based accident.
Fire crews were also called to the scene.
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police, Jack Abell, said: "We attended the scene, where sadly a man had died. No arrests have been made.
"Officers remain at the site while an investigation is carried out, and the store is currently closed."
By PTI
NEW DELHI: Three persons, including two African nationals, have been arrested from south Delhi for allegedly duping people on the pretext of giving them jobs in the US.
Last week, a complaint filed by a Faridabad resident at Vasant Vihar police station said the trio charged Rs 1.20 lakh on the pretext of a job in the US, said Ishwar Singh, DCP(south).
Complainant Siddhant told police that he was in touch with some agencies in connection with a job and got a mail confirming him a job in the US. Later, he got a call from a person named Peter Coal on whose instruction he gave Rs 20,000 as visa fee to his alleged secretary Ruchi Batra at C Block market in Vasant Vihar, on October 11.
In another call, Peter demanded Rs 2,08,500, as TOFEL certificate charge, the complainant gave Rs one lakh to Ruchi on October 15 and promised to pay remaining amount later.
However, he got suspicious when he learned that TOFEL certificate was obtained after clearing a test, and approached the police. A police team laid a trap and apprehended Ruchi who came to collect remaining amount from the complainant on October 17, said the officer.
During interrogation, Ruchi claimed her real name as Alisha Ali. She told police that she worked with two African nationals who used to interact with job seekers and promise them jobs in foreign countries.
Police asked Alisha to keep on receiving calls from the duo and tell them that she had collected Rs one lakh from Siddhant.
Meanwhile, a police team was dispatched to nab them. In the raid at a restaurant near Safdarjang hospital, the duo Boby Brown Francis and Abdel K Cooper, kingpin behind the racket was arrested, he said.
Cooper is a native of Ghana while Francis is from Benin. Rs 20,000 cash and passport of the complainant were recovered from them, added the officer.
NEW DELHI: Three persons, including two African nationals, have been arrested from south Delhi for allegedly duping people on the pretext of giving them jobs in the US. Last week, a complaint filed by a Faridabad resident at Vasant Vihar police station said the trio charged Rs 1.20 lakh on the pretext of a job in the US, said Ishwar Singh, DCP(south). Complainant Siddhant told police that he was in touch with some agencies in connection with a job and got a mail confirming him a job in the US. Later, he got a call from a person named Peter Coal on whose instruction he gave Rs 20,000 as visa fee to his alleged secretary Ruchi Batra at C Block market in Vasant Vihar, on October 11. In another call, Peter demanded Rs 2,08,500, as TOFEL certificate charge, the complainant gave Rs one lakh to Ruchi on October 15 and promised to pay remaining amount later. However, he got suspicious when he learned that TOFEL certificate was obtained after clearing a test, and approached the police. A police team laid a trap and apprehended Ruchi who came to collect remaining amount from the complainant on October 17, said the officer. During interrogation, Ruchi claimed her real name as Alisha Ali. She told police that she worked with two African nationals who used to interact with job seekers and promise them jobs in foreign countries. Police asked Alisha to keep on receiving calls from the duo and tell them that she had collected Rs one lakh from Siddhant. Meanwhile, a police team was dispatched to nab them. In the raid at a restaurant near Safdarjang hospital, the duo Boby Brown Francis and Abdel K Cooper, kingpin behind the racket was arrested, he said. Cooper is a native of Ghana while Francis is from Benin. Rs 20,000 cash and passport of the complainant were recovered from them, added the officer.
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The National Zoological Park in Delhi has been temporarily shut down as a precautionary measure after a few birds which include Ducks, Rosy Pelicans and Painted Stork dying of H5N1 Avian Influenza.
Free-ranging Rosy Pelicans, Painted Storks, and Ducks have been found dead in the Park, nine birds have died so far. Some of these birds have tested positive for H5 Avian Influenza virus. It has been decided to close the zoo temporarily for the safety of visitors the Zoo authorities said in an official statement.
The Delhi Minister for Development Gopal Rai also visited the zoo to make an assessment of the situation. No need to worry, the government is taking necessary steps. Rai said after. These cases come a nearly month after India declared itself free from the highly contagious avian influenza (H5N1) or bird flu.
According to sources, the samples of the birds have been sent to Bhopal and Jalandhar for testing, further teams from Central Zoo authority and state are visiting the site to examine the exact cause of the spread of the virus. The floating population of the migratory birds around 150 might be the cause of the highly contagious virus.
The National Zoological Park has been battling with a spate of animal deaths since earlier this year. Around 46 spotted deer were found dead at its premises in January.
Bird flu affects mainly the domestic poultry. The disease spreads from infected birds to other winged creatures through contact with nasal and respiratory secretions and also due to contamination of feed and water.
NEW DELHI: The National Zoological Park in Delhi has been temporarily shut down as a precautionary measure after a few birds which include Ducks, Rosy Pelicans and Painted Stork dying of H5N1 Avian Influenza. Free-ranging Rosy Pelicans, Painted Storks, and Ducks have been found dead in the Park, nine birds have died so far. Some of these birds have tested positive for H5 Avian Influenza virus. It has been decided to close the zoo temporarily for the safety of visitors the Zoo authorities said in an official statement. The Delhi Minister for Development Gopal Rai also visited the zoo to make an assessment of the situation. No need to worry, the government is taking necessary steps. Rai said after. These cases come a nearly month after India declared itself free from the highly contagious avian influenza (H5N1) or bird flu. According to sources, the samples of the birds have been sent to Bhopal and Jalandhar for testing, further teams from Central Zoo authority and state are visiting the site to examine the exact cause of the spread of the virus. The floating population of the migratory birds around 150 might be the cause of the highly contagious virus. The National Zoological Park has been battling with a spate of animal deaths since earlier this year. Around 46 spotted deer were found dead at its premises in January. Bird flu affects mainly the domestic poultry. The disease spreads from infected birds to other winged creatures through contact with nasal and respiratory secretions and also due to contamination of feed and water.
Aishik Chanda By
Express News Service
KOLKATA: It was a rude shock for 24-year-old Rajashree Chattopadhyay on the lazy Sunday morning of October 16 when she found her Facebook status displayed on a 5.5 ft by 4 ft hoarding near her house with the caption Dhikkaar (Shame) to the left of the billboard.
The 'Citizens Forum' of Nagerbazaar in Dumdum locality of Kolkata had put up the M Tech first-year student's Facebook status of Oct. 14 in which she slammed chief minister Mamata Banerjee for organising a parade of 39 Durga Puja pandals that supposedly upheld and promoted the culture of Bengal on the global stage.
Bhashane Horibol! Mananiya aapni chuloy jaan! the status read, with the hashtag #bhasanAtRedRoad. This was the Rajabazar Science College student literally asking the chief minister to go to hell for organising such a programme. She went on to explain in her comments that when the state is facing high unemployment and malnutrition rates, so much taxpayers money was being wasted on processions and that if the parade truly represented the entire state, Durga Puja pandals from all the backward regions of the state ought to have also gotten a place in it.
In an interview with New Indian Express, Rajashree Chattopadhyay explained, As a citizen of the country, I have every right to protest under Section 19 (1) (A). There are no Citizens Forums in our locality. Women who saw me grow up and are now Trinamool supporters heckled and threatened me for putting up the status.
The status had not gone viral, garnering only some 219 likes and 5 shares. So what made her detractors decide to shame her publicly? I am a local committee member of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), a communist youth organisation, and campaigned for CPM candidate Palash Das in Dumdum constituency in the Assembly elections by sporting a party T-shirt and distributing leaflets. Since then, I have been mapped. They were looking for an opportune time to malign me, she said.
The banner has since been taken down on the insistence of the Dumdum MLA and IT minister Bratya Basu. Local councillor Avijit Mitra had earlier accused Rajashree of putting up the poster herself for propaganda. They did not even have courage to write that Trinamool Congress put up the poster in the guise of some non-existent Citizens Forum, Rajashree said.
Facebook posts have a history of triggering the umbrage of Trinamool Congress leaders. back in 2012, Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was arrested for circulating a cartoon of Mamata Banerjee on social media.
KOLKATA: It was a rude shock for 24-year-old Rajashree Chattopadhyay on the lazy Sunday morning of October 16 when she found her Facebook status displayed on a 5.5 ft by 4 ft hoarding near her house with the caption Dhikkaar (Shame) to the left of the billboard. The 'Citizens Forum' of Nagerbazaar in Dumdum locality of Kolkata had put up the M Tech first-year student's Facebook status of Oct. 14 in which she slammed chief minister Mamata Banerjee for organising a parade of 39 Durga Puja pandals that supposedly upheld and promoted the culture of Bengal on the global stage. Bhashane Horibol! Mananiya aapni chuloy jaan! the status read, with the hashtag #bhasanAtRedRoad. This was the Rajabazar Science College student literally asking the chief minister to go to hell for organising such a programme. She went on to explain in her comments that when the state is facing high unemployment and malnutrition rates, so much taxpayers money was being wasted on processions and that if the parade truly represented the entire state, Durga Puja pandals from all the backward regions of the state ought to have also gotten a place in it. In an interview with New Indian Express, Rajashree Chattopadhyay explained, As a citizen of the country, I have every right to protest under Section 19 (1) (A). There are no Citizens Forums in our locality. Women who saw me grow up and are now Trinamool supporters heckled and threatened me for putting up the status. The status had not gone viral, garnering only some 219 likes and 5 shares. So what made her detractors decide to shame her publicly? I am a local committee member of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), a communist youth organisation, and campaigned for CPM candidate Palash Das in Dumdum constituency in the Assembly elections by sporting a party T-shirt and distributing leaflets. Since then, I have been mapped. They were looking for an opportune time to malign me, she said. The banner has since been taken down on the insistence of the Dumdum MLA and IT minister Bratya Basu. Local councillor Avijit Mitra had earlier accused Rajashree of putting up the poster herself for propaganda. They did not even have courage to write that Trinamool Congress put up the poster in the guise of some non-existent Citizens Forum, Rajashree said. Facebook posts have a history of triggering the umbrage of Trinamool Congress leaders. back in 2012, Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was arrested for circulating a cartoon of Mamata Banerjee on social media.
By PTI
KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress MP and the party's youth wing president Abhishek Banerjee's health condition improved today, a day after he met with an accident on NH-2 near Singur, while returning to Kolkata from Murshidabad.
"The condition of Abhishek Banerjee is much better. He is completely out of danger. The CT scan report was normal. An MRI has also been conducted today. We are waiting for the report and are planning to shift him to a normal cabin in a day or two," hospital CEO P Tandon said. Abhishek is presently in ITU, Tandon said.
KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress MP and the party's youth wing president Abhishek Banerjee's health condition improved today, a day after he met with an accident on NH-2 near Singur, while returning to Kolkata from Murshidabad. "The condition of Abhishek Banerjee is much better. He is completely out of danger. The CT scan report was normal. An MRI has also been conducted today. We are waiting for the report and are planning to shift him to a normal cabin in a day or two," hospital CEO P Tandon said. Abhishek is presently in ITU, Tandon said.
By IANS
NEW DELHI: Filmmaker Shyam Benegal is saddened to see that director Karan Johar is being unnecessarily harassed for casting Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" (ADHM). Benegal wants the government to step in to protect the film industry which is particularly vulnerable.
"I am very saddened by what he had to say because the poor chap (Karan) is being unnecessarily harassed in a way because after all, over Rs.50 crore is at stake. What do you expect him to say?," Benegal told IANS over phone from Mumbai.
"Film industry is particularly vulnerable. They (film fraternity) need to be protected from people who will threaten them or attack them. We cannot avoid these things. Government has to protect us against these kind of attacks," added Benegal referring to several political outfits' threats to multiplexes who will screen ADHM soon.
The filmmaker, who heads the government-appointed revamp panel of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), expressed his views to IANS after the latest turn of events when Karan broke his silence about the forthcoming film, which will release on October 28, two days before Diwali.
In a two-minute long video, Karan said that he is hurt on being labelled "anti-national" ahead of the release of his directorial and production venture ADHM, and said he would not engage with talent from Pakistan "in the circumstance".
Benegal feels the "government should protect people like that. It is the duty of the government to protect people against the kind of threats that he (Karan) probably has received or is likely to receive".
Karan's film became the first target of those who are against inclusion of Pakistani artistes in Indian films after the September 18 Uri attack that killed 19 Indian soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir. The attack was followed by surgical strikes that India conducted on terror camps across the LoC.
While the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to quit India, the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association passed a resolution asking producers to avoid working with talent from Pakistan.
Last week, the Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India announced single screen theatres in Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat won't screen ADHM. The film, which also stars Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, is already facing threats from the MNS.
Benegal asserts that no one is being unpatriotic.
"Nobody has done anything unpatriotic. If you are born here, got education here, are working here, making your livelihood here and are voting every election, then why should you be constantly told to prove your credentials. What more credentials do you want?
"If you are an Indian then you are an Indian and are proud to be an Indian. I don't have to say that every day and every morning from my terrace that 'I am an Indian, and I am proud Indian'," he said.
What does he think about various groups demanding a ban on Pakistani talent working in India?
The 81-year-old said: "The fact is when the relationship between the neighbours was happy and okay, we were taking people from Pakistan. In fact, our actors and directors were also going to the other side."
"It was stopped because of the skirmishes on the border. This is a temporary thing."
NEW DELHI: Filmmaker Shyam Benegal is saddened to see that director Karan Johar is being unnecessarily harassed for casting Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" (ADHM). Benegal wants the government to step in to protect the film industry which is particularly vulnerable. "I am very saddened by what he had to say because the poor chap (Karan) is being unnecessarily harassed in a way because after all, over Rs.50 crore is at stake. What do you expect him to say?," Benegal told IANS over phone from Mumbai. "Film industry is particularly vulnerable. They (film fraternity) need to be protected from people who will threaten them or attack them. We cannot avoid these things. Government has to protect us against these kind of attacks," added Benegal referring to several political outfits' threats to multiplexes who will screen ADHM soon. The filmmaker, who heads the government-appointed revamp panel of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), expressed his views to IANS after the latest turn of events when Karan broke his silence about the forthcoming film, which will release on October 28, two days before Diwali. In a two-minute long video, Karan said that he is hurt on being labelled "anti-national" ahead of the release of his directorial and production venture ADHM, and said he would not engage with talent from Pakistan "in the circumstance". Benegal feels the "government should protect people like that. It is the duty of the government to protect people against the kind of threats that he (Karan) probably has received or is likely to receive". Karan's film became the first target of those who are against inclusion of Pakistani artistes in Indian films after the September 18 Uri attack that killed 19 Indian soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir. The attack was followed by surgical strikes that India conducted on terror camps across the LoC. While the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to quit India, the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association passed a resolution asking producers to avoid working with talent from Pakistan. Last week, the Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India announced single screen theatres in Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat won't screen ADHM. The film, which also stars Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, is already facing threats from the MNS. Benegal asserts that no one is being unpatriotic. "Nobody has done anything unpatriotic. If you are born here, got education here, are working here, making your livelihood here and are voting every election, then why should you be constantly told to prove your credentials. What more credentials do you want? "If you are an Indian then you are an Indian and are proud to be an Indian. I don't have to say that every day and every morning from my terrace that 'I am an Indian, and I am proud Indian'," he said. What does he think about various groups demanding a ban on Pakistani talent working in India? The 81-year-old said: "The fact is when the relationship between the neighbours was happy and okay, we were taking people from Pakistan. In fact, our actors and directors were also going to the other side." "It was stopped because of the skirmishes on the border. This is a temporary thing."
By Express News Service
MUMBAI: In the inner circles of Bollywood, the real issue is not whether Pakistani artistes should be allowed to work in India, but how to reckon with the menace of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which is threatening to take the fizz out of the two major productions lined up for Diwali release this year.
Politically, the MNS is much sound and fury, having won only 28 seats (out of 228) in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Council and one seat in the Maharashtra Assembly. But its cadres are live threats to multiplex cinemas if the movies they show are not to their taste.
Karan Johar knows what it is like to have an MNS threat hanging over his sugary sweet production. When he made My Name is Khan, starring Shah Rukh Khan, he had to reckon with an MNS threat. He resolved it, industry sources say, with a meeting with the party's boss, Raj Thackeray. The film came through unscathed then. And now, will his Ae Dil Hail Mushkil? Mushkil to say, what with this present cloud of patriotism hanging over Bollywood, and what with the BMC elections coming up early next year.
The MNS needs to show itself as a party of reckoning at this juncture, and the Pakistani artistes in Bollywood is a nice issue to ride. As Bollywood biggies cowered in their Malabar Hill residences, MNS functionaries were making much of the menace they have worked up in recent days. The party has refused to accept Karan Johars abject viceo submision yesterday not to ever again work with Pakistani artistes. Whatever he has said or has promised to do in future is too little and has come too late, Ameya Khopkar of the MNS' movie wing told New Indian Express today.
The MNS threat to their glass panes has already made single-screen theatres swear not to exhibit the two movies, Ae Dil... and Raees, that have Pakistani actors in their casts. But the multiplexes are still ambivalent about joining in on the patriotism plank. And it is multiplex cinema chains that hold the key to the forunes of Ae Dil and Raees.
There are around 2200 multiplex screens across the country which are controlled by just a handful of key players like PVR, Inox, Carnival Cinemas, Big Cinemas, Broadway Cinema, Cinepolis etc.
The multiplexes form a major component in any release strategy these days as they have presence even in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. The reach matters, said Nitin Vaidya, founder director of Dashmi Creations whose Marathi film Ghanta is to be released soon.
Another film distributor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the controversy has given a lot of publicity to the film. It's a cruel dig, but there are also those in the industry who say all this has served only to give publicity to MNS. One distributor pointed out that the MNS may only be looking for an issue to stay in the news till the elections next year, which are crucial for its existence.
And then there are those like retired Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju who on Wednesday dared the MNS and waved a danda at the party. On Twitter.
Why does MNS attack helpless people? If u are brave, come to me. Ive a danda waiting for u and is getting impatient, Katju tweeted.
Katju's support may be cold comfort to Karan Johar. The judge does not have crores riding on a film, which if it does not rake it in in three days over the Diwali holidays, is as good as a dud.
MUMBAI: In the inner circles of Bollywood, the real issue is not whether Pakistani artistes should be allowed to work in India, but how to reckon with the menace of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which is threatening to take the fizz out of the two major productions lined up for Diwali release this year. Politically, the MNS is much sound and fury, having won only 28 seats (out of 228) in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Council and one seat in the Maharashtra Assembly. But its cadres are live threats to multiplex cinemas if the movies they show are not to their taste. Karan Johar knows what it is like to have an MNS threat hanging over his sugary sweet production. When he made My Name is Khan, starring Shah Rukh Khan, he had to reckon with an MNS threat. He resolved it, industry sources say, with a meeting with the party's boss, Raj Thackeray. The film came through unscathed then. And now, will his Ae Dil Hail Mushkil? Mushkil to say, what with this present cloud of patriotism hanging over Bollywood, and what with the BMC elections coming up early next year. The MNS needs to show itself as a party of reckoning at this juncture, and the Pakistani artistes in Bollywood is a nice issue to ride. As Bollywood biggies cowered in their Malabar Hill residences, MNS functionaries were making much of the menace they have worked up in recent days. The party has refused to accept Karan Johars abject viceo submision yesterday not to ever again work with Pakistani artistes. Whatever he has said or has promised to do in future is too little and has come too late, Ameya Khopkar of the MNS' movie wing told New Indian Express today. The MNS threat to their glass panes has already made single-screen theatres swear not to exhibit the two movies, Ae Dil... and Raees, that have Pakistani actors in their casts. But the multiplexes are still ambivalent about joining in on the patriotism plank. And it is multiplex cinema chains that hold the key to the forunes of Ae Dil and Raees. There are around 2200 multiplex screens across the country which are controlled by just a handful of key players like PVR, Inox, Carnival Cinemas, Big Cinemas, Broadway Cinema, Cinepolis etc. The multiplexes form a major component in any release strategy these days as they have presence even in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. The reach matters, said Nitin Vaidya, founder director of Dashmi Creations whose Marathi film Ghanta is to be released soon. Another film distributor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the controversy has given a lot of publicity to the film. It's a cruel dig, but there are also those in the industry who say all this has served only to give publicity to MNS. One distributor pointed out that the MNS may only be looking for an issue to stay in the news till the elections next year, which are crucial for its existence. And then there are those like retired Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju who on Wednesday dared the MNS and waved a danda at the party. On Twitter. Why does MNS attack helpless people? If u are brave, come to me. Ive a danda waiting for u and is getting impatient, Katju tweeted. Katju's support may be cold comfort to Karan Johar. The judge does not have crores riding on a film, which if it does not rake it in in three days over the Diwali holidays, is as good as a dud.
Ramananda Sengupta By
Prime Minister Narendra Modis comparison of Indias surgical strikes with covert operations carried out by Israel comes at a time when defence cooperation and diplomatic ties between the two countries are at a high. Heres a look at how the bilateral relationship evolved and improved over time.
Why cant we deal with terrorists the way Israelis do? That question is often raised in social and other media whenever there is a terrorist strike in India. Which perhaps explains why Prime Minister Narendra Modi drew a parallel between the special forces of the Indian Army and their counterparts in the Israeli Defence Forces while praising the surgical strikes across the LoC to avenge Uri. It also comes at a time when Indo-Israeli cooperation, particularly in defence, is at an all time high, and growing each day. The bilateral relationship with Israel, however, was not always this rosy.
Even before Independence, the tone was set by the father of the Indian freedom movement, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who clearly articulated his opposition to the idea of Israel in an editorial in the November 11, 1938 issue of Harijan, a widely circulated weekly. My sympathies are with the Jews ... but my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me ... Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
Heres a quick timeline of Indo-Israeli relations to put things into perspective:
August 15, 1947: India gets Independence from British colonial rule
May 14, 1948: Israel is born, following the UN decision to partition British Mandate Palestine. India opposes this decision.
May 1949: India votes in vain against admission of Israel to the UN.
September 1950: India reluctantly and partially recognises Israel, allows it to set up immigration office in Mumbai. Indias main concern, apart from its endorsement of the Palestinian cause, was the fear that any overt relationship with Israel would alienate not just the Arab nationsIndias main source of oil and gas, and where a large number of Indians workbut also the Muslim population in India.
1961 Non-Aligned Movement, or NAM is born, with India, Yugoslavia and Egypt as founder members. Prime Minister Nehrus relationship with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and other Arab states, and the fact that Israel was clearly aligned with the United States, made it difficult for Nehru to formally reach out to Israel. However, the intelligence agencies of both nations started meeting discreetly to build a strategic relationship.
1962: Israel secretly ships artillery shells and other munitions to India after the latters border war with China, which ended when the Chinese unilaterally withdrew.
1965: Israel reportedly helps India with a modest cache of weapons, ammunition and intelligence during the war with Pakistan.
1971: Just before the brief war with Pakistan, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi okays a proposal by the Research and Analysis Wing, led by RN Kao, to initiate a discreet bid to secure Israeli weapons and training. These are eventually routed to India through Liechtenstein. When Bangladesh is born with Indian help, Israel is the first nation to recognise it.
August 1977: Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan pays a secret visit to New Delhi (some say Kathmandu) to meet Indian officials, and shares intelligence about Pakistans secret nuclear plant in Kahuta. But both RAW and Israeli intelligence officials are startled when Prime Minister Morarji Desai call up Zia ul Haq, Pakistans military ruler at the time, and tells him that he knows about Kahuta, courtesy RAW. Their concern is their sources would be compromised.
October 1985: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi officially meets Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at the UNGA in New York, the first such formal meeting.
June 1991: Insurgents, backed by Pakistans ISI, attack Israeli tourists in Kashmir, suspecting them to be military and intelligence officers aiding counter-insurgency operations in the state. One is killed, another abducted. A week later, under intense US and UN pressure, the kidnapped Israeli is released. Several senior Israeli officials visit India during the negotiations for his release.
1992: Prime Minister Narasimha Rao formally announced full diplomatic relations with Israel, after reassuring Arab nations that this did not mean a dilution of Indian support for Palestine. In return, Rao wants the powerful Jewish lobby in the US to pressure Washington to declare Pakistan a terrorist state. Earlier in the year, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao tells visiting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat that it would help Palestines cause if India establishes ties with Israel, and then uses its influence to push for a change in Israeli policy. Arafat agrees.
India also becomes increasingly aware of the fact that despite Indias support for the Arab cause, the Organisation of Islamic Conference constantly endorsed the Pakistani position on Kashmir. Israel, on the other hand, steadfastly endorsed the Indian position that the 1972 Shimla agreement between India and Pakistan was the only basis for a final settlement of the Kashmir issue.
December 1995: Ezer Weizmann, who served in Bangalore as part of the Royal Air Force in 1944, becomes the first Israeli president to visit India.
May 1999: Israel rushes military aid including shells for the Bofors gun as well as intelligence inputs to India during the Kargil war.
June 2000: Home Minister LK Advani visits Israel. Other visiting Indian leaders included West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, and Najma Heptullah, senior Congress leader and deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha.
July 2000: Jaswant Singh became the first Indian Foreign Minister to visit Israel.
January 2003: Israels arch rival Irans president Mohammed Khatami is the chief guest at Indias Republic Day celebrations.
September 2003: Ariel Sharon becomes the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit India, but cuts short his visit due to a terrorist strike back home. The very reason that brought us to India is responsible for the cutting short of the visit: Terror, Deputy Prime Minister Yosef Lapid told journalists in Delhi.
India announces the purchase of three Phalcon AWACS, to be fitted with Israeli radar equipment, on Russian IL-76 transport aircraft. This comes only after India assuages Israeli fears of transfer of defence technology to Iran.
2004: UPA government comes to power, and the relationship is taken underground again for a decade, mainly because the government believed overt ties with the country would alienate the domestic Muslim community. But intelligence, economic and defence cooperation continues discreetly.
2008: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh politely rejects Israels offer to send special forces to tackle the 26/11 attack on Mumbai.
2012: Minister of External Affairs S M Krishna visits Israel, but stresses on cooperation in science, technology, agriculture and commerce. However, he also quietly meets counter-terror and defence officials during the visit.
2010: President Prathibha Patil visits Damascus, and causes a stir in Israel when she reiterated Indias support for the full return of the Golan Heights to Syria, two-thirds of which it had lost to Israel in the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967.
2014: Within months of becoming Prime Minister, Narendra Modi meets his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UNGA in September. In October, India and Israel sign a $519 million deal to buy 8,356 Spike anti-tank guided missiles and 321 missile launchers. According to the Jewish virtual library, Between Modis election in May 2014 and November 2014, Israel exported $662 million worth of Israeli weapons and defence items to India. This export number is greater than the total Israeli exports to India during the previous three years combined.
2015: Moshe Yaalon becomes the first Israeli Defence Minister to visit India. However, keeping the domestic implications in mind, New Delhi continues to express its support to the Palestinian cause, and PM Modi meets Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September 2015 in New York.
October 2015: President Pranab Mukherjee visits Palestine and Israel. Reports of Indo-Israeli military exercises surface, but without specifics.
January 2016: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visits Israel, and declares that the full development of positive Israel-India ties is of the highest importance to New Delhi. The visit was seen as a precursor to a visit by Prime Minister later in the year. However, that has now been tentatively scheduled for 2017.
Today, although there are several critical agreements in agriculture and other sectors, India is Israels largest defence market, and Israeli intelligence inputs have helped prevent several terrorist attacks planned in Pakistan. More importantly, the government has no qualms about going public with the relationship.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis comparison of Indias surgical strikes with covert operations carried out by Israel comes at a time when defence cooperation and diplomatic ties between the two countries are at a high. Heres a look at how the bilateral relationship evolved and improved over time. Why cant we deal with terrorists the way Israelis do? That question is often raised in social and other media whenever there is a terrorist strike in India. Which perhaps explains why Prime Minister Narendra Modi drew a parallel between the special forces of the Indian Army and their counterparts in the Israeli Defence Forces while praising the surgical strikes across the LoC to avenge Uri. It also comes at a time when Indo-Israeli cooperation, particularly in defence, is at an all time high, and growing each day. The bilateral relationship with Israel, however, was not always this rosy. Even before Independence, the tone was set by the father of the Indian freedom movement, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who clearly articulated his opposition to the idea of Israel in an editorial in the November 11, 1938 issue of Harijan, a widely circulated weekly. My sympathies are with the Jews ... but my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me ... Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. Heres a quick timeline of Indo-Israeli relations to put things into perspective: August 15, 1947: India gets Independence from British colonial rule May 14, 1948: Israel is born, following the UN decision to partition British Mandate Palestine. India opposes this decision. May 1949: India votes in vain against admission of Israel to the UN. September 1950: India reluctantly and partially recognises Israel, allows it to set up immigration office in Mumbai. Indias main concern, apart from its endorsement of the Palestinian cause, was the fear that any overt relationship with Israel would alienate not just the Arab nationsIndias main source of oil and gas, and where a large number of Indians workbut also the Muslim population in India. 1961 Non-Aligned Movement, or NAM is born, with India, Yugoslavia and Egypt as founder members. Prime Minister Nehrus relationship with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and other Arab states, and the fact that Israel was clearly aligned with the United States, made it difficult for Nehru to formally reach out to Israel. However, the intelligence agencies of both nations started meeting discreetly to build a strategic relationship. 1962: Israel secretly ships artillery shells and other munitions to India after the latters border war with China, which ended when the Chinese unilaterally withdrew. 1965: Israel reportedly helps India with a modest cache of weapons, ammunition and intelligence during the war with Pakistan. 1971: Just before the brief war with Pakistan, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi okays a proposal by the Research and Analysis Wing, led by RN Kao, to initiate a discreet bid to secure Israeli weapons and training. These are eventually routed to India through Liechtenstein. When Bangladesh is born with Indian help, Israel is the first nation to recognise it. August 1977: Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan pays a secret visit to New Delhi (some say Kathmandu) to meet Indian officials, and shares intelligence about Pakistans secret nuclear plant in Kahuta. But both RAW and Israeli intelligence officials are startled when Prime Minister Morarji Desai call up Zia ul Haq, Pakistans military ruler at the time, and tells him that he knows about Kahuta, courtesy RAW. Their concern is their sources would be compromised. October 1985: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi officially meets Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at the UNGA in New York, the first such formal meeting. June 1991: Insurgents, backed by Pakistans ISI, attack Israeli tourists in Kashmir, suspecting them to be military and intelligence officers aiding counter-insurgency operations in the state. One is killed, another abducted. A week later, under intense US and UN pressure, the kidnapped Israeli is released. Several senior Israeli officials visit India during the negotiations for his release. 1992: Prime Minister Narasimha Rao formally announced full diplomatic relations with Israel, after reassuring Arab nations that this did not mean a dilution of Indian support for Palestine. In return, Rao wants the powerful Jewish lobby in the US to pressure Washington to declare Pakistan a terrorist state. Earlier in the year, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao tells visiting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat that it would help Palestines cause if India establishes ties with Israel, and then uses its influence to push for a change in Israeli policy. Arafat agrees. India also becomes increasingly aware of the fact that despite Indias support for the Arab cause, the Organisation of Islamic Conference constantly endorsed the Pakistani position on Kashmir. Israel, on the other hand, steadfastly endorsed the Indian position that the 1972 Shimla agreement between India and Pakistan was the only basis for a final settlement of the Kashmir issue. December 1995: Ezer Weizmann, who served in Bangalore as part of the Royal Air Force in 1944, becomes the first Israeli president to visit India. May 1999: Israel rushes military aid including shells for the Bofors gun as well as intelligence inputs to India during the Kargil war. June 2000: Home Minister LK Advani visits Israel. Other visiting Indian leaders included West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, and Najma Heptullah, senior Congress leader and deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha. July 2000: Jaswant Singh became the first Indian Foreign Minister to visit Israel. January 2003: Israels arch rival Irans president Mohammed Khatami is the chief guest at Indias Republic Day celebrations. September 2003: Ariel Sharon becomes the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit India, but cuts short his visit due to a terrorist strike back home. The very reason that brought us to India is responsible for the cutting short of the visit: Terror, Deputy Prime Minister Yosef Lapid told journalists in Delhi. India announces the purchase of three Phalcon AWACS, to be fitted with Israeli radar equipment, on Russian IL-76 transport aircraft. This comes only after India assuages Israeli fears of transfer of defence technology to Iran. 2004: UPA government comes to power, and the relationship is taken underground again for a decade, mainly because the government believed overt ties with the country would alienate the domestic Muslim community. But intelligence, economic and defence cooperation continues discreetly. 2008: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh politely rejects Israels offer to send special forces to tackle the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. 2012: Minister of External Affairs S M Krishna visits Israel, but stresses on cooperation in science, technology, agriculture and commerce. However, he also quietly meets counter-terror and defence officials during the visit. 2010: President Prathibha Patil visits Damascus, and causes a stir in Israel when she reiterated Indias support for the full return of the Golan Heights to Syria, two-thirds of which it had lost to Israel in the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967. 2014: Within months of becoming Prime Minister, Narendra Modi meets his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UNGA in September. In October, India and Israel sign a $519 million deal to buy 8,356 Spike anti-tank guided missiles and 321 missile launchers. According to the Jewish virtual library, Between Modis election in May 2014 and November 2014, Israel exported $662 million worth of Israeli weapons and defence items to India. This export number is greater than the total Israeli exports to India during the previous three years combined. 2015: Moshe Yaalon becomes the first Israeli Defence Minister to visit India. However, keeping the domestic implications in mind, New Delhi continues to express its support to the Palestinian cause, and PM Modi meets Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September 2015 in New York. October 2015: President Pranab Mukherjee visits Palestine and Israel. Reports of Indo-Israeli military exercises surface, but without specifics. January 2016: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visits Israel, and declares that the full development of positive Israel-India ties is of the highest importance to New Delhi. The visit was seen as a precursor to a visit by Prime Minister later in the year. However, that has now been tentatively scheduled for 2017. Today, although there are several critical agreements in agriculture and other sectors, India is Israels largest defence market, and Israeli intelligence inputs have helped prevent several terrorist attacks planned in Pakistan. More importantly, the government has no qualms about going public with the relationship.
NEW DELHI: On Wednesday, People Liberation Army of China landed in the state of Jammu and Kashmir for a day long military war games with Indian counterpart- the state whey had maintained as disputed. In 2010, China had denied visa to Northern Army Commander Lt. General BS Jamwal, because he was responsible for Jammu & Kashmir, a state that China maintained, was disputed.
While canceling Lt. Gen Jamwals visa, Beijing had expressed its unwillingness to "welcome senior Indian Army commander because he "controlled" a disputed area, J&K.
Indo-China military exercise was taken place in the backdrop of Beijings continuous support to Pakistan on Indias move to ban JeM chief Masood Azhar.
According to army the exercise conducted under the provisions of the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement, 2013. As part of the ongoing initiative to enhance interaction and cooperation between India and China, the Indian and Chinese armies held Second Joint Exercise Sino-India Cooperation 2016.
Army added that Wednesdays exercise was a sequel to the first joint exercise held on 6th February this year at Chushul Garrison of Eastern Ladakh, along with Chinese troops of Moldo Garrison.
During the day-long exercise on Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) a fictitious situation of earthquake striking an Indian Border village was painted. Thereafter joint teams carried out rescue operations, evacuation and rendering of medical assistance.
While Indian side was led by Brigadier RS Raman, Chinese PLA was represented by Senior Colonel Fan Jun.
The exercise was a great success and has not only refined the drills to provide succor to the border population in case of natural calamity but has also increased the level of trust and cooperation between the two border guarding forces along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh, said Army spokesperson Colonel Rohan Anand here in Army headquarters.
The joint exercise, compliments the Hand in Hand series of the India -China joint exercises and the effort of both the nations to enhance cooperation and maintain peace and tranquility along the border areas of India and China, according to army officials.
NEW DELHI: On Wednesday, People Liberation Army of China landed in the state of Jammu and Kashmir for a day long military war games with Indian counterpart- the state whey had maintained as disputed. In 2010, China had denied visa to Northern Army Commander Lt. General BS Jamwal, because he was responsible for Jammu & Kashmir, a state that China maintained, was disputed. While canceling Lt. Gen Jamwals visa, Beijing had expressed its unwillingness to "welcome senior Indian Army commander because he "controlled" a disputed area, J&K. Indo-China military exercise was taken place in the backdrop of Beijings continuous support to Pakistan on Indias move to ban JeM chief Masood Azhar. According to army the exercise conducted under the provisions of the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement, 2013. As part of the ongoing initiative to enhance interaction and cooperation between India and China, the Indian and Chinese armies held Second Joint Exercise Sino-India Cooperation 2016. Army added that Wednesdays exercise was a sequel to the first joint exercise held on 6th February this year at Chushul Garrison of Eastern Ladakh, along with Chinese troops of Moldo Garrison. During the day-long exercise on Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) a fictitious situation of earthquake striking an Indian Border village was painted. Thereafter joint teams carried out rescue operations, evacuation and rendering of medical assistance. While Indian side was led by Brigadier RS Raman, Chinese PLA was represented by Senior Colonel Fan Jun. The exercise was a great success and has not only refined the drills to provide succor to the border population in case of natural calamity but has also increased the level of trust and cooperation between the two border guarding forces along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh, said Army spokesperson Colonel Rohan Anand here in Army headquarters. The joint exercise, compliments the Hand in Hand series of the India -China joint exercises and the effort of both the nations to enhance cooperation and maintain peace and tranquility along the border areas of India and China, according to army officials.
Fayaz Wani By
Express News Service
SRINAGAR: Despite improvement in situation, there has been no let up in police crackdown on youth and separatists in Kashmir, which has been witnessing over three month long unrest triggered by killing of 21-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.
More than 100 people involved in disrupting public order in the Valley were arrested by police in last 24 hours, a police official told Express.
He said police had arrested 122 people on Tuesday for involvement in stone pelting and disrupting public order.
The official said police arrested 60 people, mostly youth on October 17, 62 on October 16, 48 on October 15, 63 on October 14, 52 on October 13 and 37 on October 12 during its continued crackdown on stone pelters and trouble mongers.
Police alongwith other security agencies have launched a massive crackdown on youth and separatist leaders in the Valley to end the ongoing protests and unrest.
Kashmir has been witnessing unrest and agitation since July 9, a day after killing of Burhan in an encounter with security forces.
At least 91 people have been killed and over 13000 injured in the 103 days of unrest and agitation in the Valley. On the call of separatist leaders, who are spearheading the ongoing agitation, Kashmir has remained shut since July 8.
The security agencies have compiled a list of stone pelters and trouble mongers across the Valley. All those, who are disrupting peace, would not be spared and put behind bars, the police official said.
He said only after the police crackdown on youth and separatist leaders, there has been a semblance of normalcy in the Valley and number of anti-government protests and clashes have come down.
The police, paramilitary forces and army on Monday launched massive 12-hour long search operation in in North Kashmirs Baramulla town to arrest the trouble mongers.
It was the major crackdown conducted by Baramulla by security forces in over a decade and security personnel had sealed all the roads and bridges connecting to the town.
During the 12-hour long operation, security forces searched over 700 houses. 44 persons involved in militancy related activities were apprehended during the operation. Large quantity of incriminating material including Chinese and Pakistan flags, petrol bombs, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jasih-e-Mohammad letter head pads, unauthorized mobile phones and seditious anti-national publicity material were also seized during the operation, a defence spokesman said.
According to police sources, over 7000 people including youth and separatist leaders and activists have been arrested in last three month of unrest to restore peace and normalcy in the Valley.
They said of the over 7000 people arrested, more than 450 have been booked under stringent Public Safety Act (PSA).
Barring 87-year-old hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who is under house arrest at his Hyderpora residence, other separatist leaders including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Shabir Ahmad Shah, Mohammad Yasin Malik, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai have been arrested and lodged in different jails and detention centres.
The police official said crackdown will continue till normalcy and peace is fully restored in the Valley.
SRINAGAR: Despite improvement in situation, there has been no let up in police crackdown on youth and separatists in Kashmir, which has been witnessing over three month long unrest triggered by killing of 21-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. More than 100 people involved in disrupting public order in the Valley were arrested by police in last 24 hours, a police official told Express. He said police had arrested 122 people on Tuesday for involvement in stone pelting and disrupting public order. The official said police arrested 60 people, mostly youth on October 17, 62 on October 16, 48 on October 15, 63 on October 14, 52 on October 13 and 37 on October 12 during its continued crackdown on stone pelters and trouble mongers. Police alongwith other security agencies have launched a massive crackdown on youth and separatist leaders in the Valley to end the ongoing protests and unrest. Kashmir has been witnessing unrest and agitation since July 9, a day after killing of Burhan in an encounter with security forces. At least 91 people have been killed and over 13000 injured in the 103 days of unrest and agitation in the Valley. On the call of separatist leaders, who are spearheading the ongoing agitation, Kashmir has remained shut since July 8. The security agencies have compiled a list of stone pelters and trouble mongers across the Valley. All those, who are disrupting peace, would not be spared and put behind bars, the police official said. He said only after the police crackdown on youth and separatist leaders, there has been a semblance of normalcy in the Valley and number of anti-government protests and clashes have come down. The police, paramilitary forces and army on Monday launched massive 12-hour long search operation in in North Kashmirs Baramulla town to arrest the trouble mongers. It was the major crackdown conducted by Baramulla by security forces in over a decade and security personnel had sealed all the roads and bridges connecting to the town. During the 12-hour long operation, security forces searched over 700 houses. 44 persons involved in militancy related activities were apprehended during the operation. Large quantity of incriminating material including Chinese and Pakistan flags, petrol bombs, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jasih-e-Mohammad letter head pads, unauthorized mobile phones and seditious anti-national publicity material were also seized during the operation, a defence spokesman said. According to police sources, over 7000 people including youth and separatist leaders and activists have been arrested in last three month of unrest to restore peace and normalcy in the Valley. They said of the over 7000 people arrested, more than 450 have been booked under stringent Public Safety Act (PSA). Barring 87-year-old hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who is under house arrest at his Hyderpora residence, other separatist leaders including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Shabir Ahmad Shah, Mohammad Yasin Malik, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai have been arrested and lodged in different jails and detention centres. The police official said crackdown will continue till normalcy and peace is fully restored in the Valley.
By IANS
NEW DELHI: India and Myanmar on Wednesday agreed to coordinate with each other on border security as Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed New Delhi's commitment to help develop Myanmar.
"As close and friendly neighbours, the security interests of India and Myanmar are closely aligned," Modi said in the presence of Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi after delegation level talks between the two sides.
"We have agreed that a close coordination to ensure security in the areas along our border, and sensitivity to each other's strategic interests, will serve the interests of both our countries," Modi said.
India shares a 1,600-km border with Myanmar. Security has been an issue with insurgent groups from the northeast taking refuge in Myanmar territory.
In August, the Indian Army reportedly carried out surgical strikes in Myanmar after National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) militants fled to Myanmar from Mon in Nagaland after being attacked.
Stating that India had a robust development cooperation programme with Myanmar, Modi mentioned the Kaladan multi-modal transport project linking Sittwe port in Myanmar with Mizoram and the trilateral highway connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand among others.
"From the mega connectivity projects like Kaladan and trilateral highway, to projects in the fields of human resource development, healthcare, training and capacity building, we are sharing our resources and expertise with Myanmar.
"India's nearly $1.75 billion of development assistance is centered on people and is in line with the priorities of Myanmar government and its people."
The Prime Minister said that in Wednesday's talks, both sides agreed to enhance engagement in several areas including agriculture, power, renewable energy and power sector.
India and Myanmar signed three MoUs following the talks - one on cooperation in power sector, another on banking supervision and a third on designing an academic and professional building programme for the insurance industry of Myanmar.
"India will develop a varietal development and seed production centre in Yezin in Myanmar to enhance the quality of seeds," Modi said. "We will also work to develop a mutually beneficial arrangement for trade in pulses," he added.
Modi said India had offered to scale up power supply from Moreh in Manipur to Tamu in Myanmar and also partner in a pilot LED electrification project at a site designated by Myanmar.
According to the Prime Minister, the Archaeological Survey of India will soon begin work on restoring two old temples and inscriptions of King Mindon and King Baygyidaw at Bodh Gaya in Bihar.
Commending Suu Kyi for her leadership and commitment to take Myanmar forward, he said, "As a reliable partner and friend, India stands shoulder to shoulder with you."
On her part, Suu Kyi said Myanmar wanted to work with India not just for friendship "but for peace and stability in the region and beyond".
She said Myanmar wanted a rule of just laws "and for this we look forward to the experiences of the Lok Sabha and other legislative bodies. "We believe India with its experience can help us in our endeavours," she added.
Suu Kyi met Modi on the third and concluding day of her state visit to India. On Tuesday, she met president Pranab Mukherjee and external affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
Though Suu Kyi is not the President as Myanmar's constitution bars her from holding the post, the Nobel peace laureate is effectively the de facto ruler of the country. This is the first official visit of Suu Kyi to New Delhi since her National League for Democracy assumed power in Myanmar in March this year.
Before reaching New Delhi on Monday, she attended the BRICS-Bimstec Outreach Summit in Goa.
NEW DELHI: India and Myanmar on Wednesday agreed to coordinate with each other on border security as Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed New Delhi's commitment to help develop Myanmar. "As close and friendly neighbours, the security interests of India and Myanmar are closely aligned," Modi said in the presence of Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi after delegation level talks between the two sides. "We have agreed that a close coordination to ensure security in the areas along our border, and sensitivity to each other's strategic interests, will serve the interests of both our countries," Modi said. India shares a 1,600-km border with Myanmar. Security has been an issue with insurgent groups from the northeast taking refuge in Myanmar territory. In August, the Indian Army reportedly carried out surgical strikes in Myanmar after National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) militants fled to Myanmar from Mon in Nagaland after being attacked. Stating that India had a robust development cooperation programme with Myanmar, Modi mentioned the Kaladan multi-modal transport project linking Sittwe port in Myanmar with Mizoram and the trilateral highway connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand among others. "From the mega connectivity projects like Kaladan and trilateral highway, to projects in the fields of human resource development, healthcare, training and capacity building, we are sharing our resources and expertise with Myanmar. "India's nearly $1.75 billion of development assistance is centered on people and is in line with the priorities of Myanmar government and its people." The Prime Minister said that in Wednesday's talks, both sides agreed to enhance engagement in several areas including agriculture, power, renewable energy and power sector. India and Myanmar signed three MoUs following the talks - one on cooperation in power sector, another on banking supervision and a third on designing an academic and professional building programme for the insurance industry of Myanmar. "India will develop a varietal development and seed production centre in Yezin in Myanmar to enhance the quality of seeds," Modi said. "We will also work to develop a mutually beneficial arrangement for trade in pulses," he added. Modi said India had offered to scale up power supply from Moreh in Manipur to Tamu in Myanmar and also partner in a pilot LED electrification project at a site designated by Myanmar. According to the Prime Minister, the Archaeological Survey of India will soon begin work on restoring two old temples and inscriptions of King Mindon and King Baygyidaw at Bodh Gaya in Bihar. Commending Suu Kyi for her leadership and commitment to take Myanmar forward, he said, "As a reliable partner and friend, India stands shoulder to shoulder with you." On her part, Suu Kyi said Myanmar wanted to work with India not just for friendship "but for peace and stability in the region and beyond". She said Myanmar wanted a rule of just laws "and for this we look forward to the experiences of the Lok Sabha and other legislative bodies. "We believe India with its experience can help us in our endeavours," she added. Suu Kyi met Modi on the third and concluding day of her state visit to India. On Tuesday, she met president Pranab Mukherjee and external affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Though Suu Kyi is not the President as Myanmar's constitution bars her from holding the post, the Nobel peace laureate is effectively the de facto ruler of the country. This is the first official visit of Suu Kyi to New Delhi since her National League for Democracy assumed power in Myanmar in March this year. Before reaching New Delhi on Monday, she attended the BRICS-Bimstec Outreach Summit in Goa.
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday welcomed Myanmars State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi to her second home India, which she is visiting after sweeping the Myanmars first democratic elections in half a century.
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Vikas Swarup desribed her as the old friend from the East, as Myanmars first Foreign Minister Suu Kyi began her maiden visit to India after her party came to power earlier this year.
I welcome her Excellency to her second home. It is an honour for us to receive you in India, Prime Minister Modi said during a conference that followed his meeting with Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi has spent her early years in India as her mother was posted here as a diplomat.
Invoking the centuries old cultural connect, Modi reiterated Indias commitment to the development of Myanmar.
India has a robust development cooperation programme with MyanmarOur societies enjoy centuries old cultural connect. We offered assistance in restoring pagodas that were damaged in recent earthquake, Modi said.
Sharing a 1600 km long border with Myanmar, India would want a strong and stable relation with Myanmar. Security and border management are also important issues between the two countries as Myanmar serves as the gateway for the geographically isolated north-eastern region of India with the South-East Asian countries.
Suu Kyi, who as the first woman foreign minister of her country has been seeking to mend Myanmars ties with China, had chosen Beijing as her first destination for a foreign trip. In August External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Myanmar with an invite for Suu Kyi to visit India. The 70-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate Suu Kyi in her meeting with Swaraj has sought Indias help for reconciliation in the country.
In her address during the joint conference with the Prime Minister Modi she expressed her admiration for Indias democratic credentials. It is our ambition to bring peace and stability in our country and beyond because we have suffered from instability for a long time, Suu Kyi said.
Suu Kyi has been known as the democratic icon of Myanmar. And she said that the Indian freedom fighters have been a source of inspiration for her. We are inspired by Gandhi, Nehru. We are confident that our countries can overcome challenges. The time has come for us to say that, yes we can do this. We have always admired India for being the greatest democracy in the world, she added.
Among the issues of cooperation the ASI will begin working on the restoration of two old temples and inscriptions of King Mindon and King Baygyidaw in Bodh Gaya. Both the countries have agreed to enhance their engagement in several areas including agriculture, power, renewable energy and power sector.
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday welcomed Myanmars State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi to her second home India, which she is visiting after sweeping the Myanmars first democratic elections in half a century. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Vikas Swarup desribed her as the old friend from the East, as Myanmars first Foreign Minister Suu Kyi began her maiden visit to India after her party came to power earlier this year. I welcome her Excellency to her second home. It is an honour for us to receive you in India, Prime Minister Modi said during a conference that followed his meeting with Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi has spent her early years in India as her mother was posted here as a diplomat. Invoking the centuries old cultural connect, Modi reiterated Indias commitment to the development of Myanmar. India has a robust development cooperation programme with MyanmarOur societies enjoy centuries old cultural connect. We offered assistance in restoring pagodas that were damaged in recent earthquake, Modi said. Sharing a 1600 km long border with Myanmar, India would want a strong and stable relation with Myanmar. Security and border management are also important issues between the two countries as Myanmar serves as the gateway for the geographically isolated north-eastern region of India with the South-East Asian countries. Suu Kyi, who as the first woman foreign minister of her country has been seeking to mend Myanmars ties with China, had chosen Beijing as her first destination for a foreign trip. In August External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Myanmar with an invite for Suu Kyi to visit India. The 70-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate Suu Kyi in her meeting with Swaraj has sought Indias help for reconciliation in the country. In her address during the joint conference with the Prime Minister Modi she expressed her admiration for Indias democratic credentials. It is our ambition to bring peace and stability in our country and beyond because we have suffered from instability for a long time, Suu Kyi said. Suu Kyi has been known as the democratic icon of Myanmar. And she said that the Indian freedom fighters have been a source of inspiration for her. We are inspired by Gandhi, Nehru. We are confident that our countries can overcome challenges. The time has come for us to say that, yes we can do this. We have always admired India for being the greatest democracy in the world, she added. Among the issues of cooperation the ASI will begin working on the restoration of two old temples and inscriptions of King Mindon and King Baygyidaw in Bodh Gaya. Both the countries have agreed to enhance their engagement in several areas including agriculture, power, renewable energy and power sector.
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The BJP appears upbeat to repeat the Assam electoral success in the poll-bound Manipur. Union Minister for Human Resources Development (HRD) Prakash Javdekar, who is also party in-charge for Manipur, claimed that like the former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi his Manipur counterpart Okram Ibobi Singh too is running into high anti-incumbency factor.
The situations in Manipur are same as had been in Assam before the BJP wrested power from the Congress. Like Tarun Gogoi, Ibobi Singh too has been the chief minister of Manipur for almost 15 years after having come to power in 2002. The people there are keen for a change in the government, said Javdekar.
The BJP is gearing up to launch a massive electoral campaign in Manipur, with a large number of Union Ministers set to visit the North-eastern state. The BJP currently has two MLAs, but has been successful in attracting two ministers and Congress leaders from the Ibobi Singh camp. Incidentally, the BJP had got a shot in the arms in the run up to the Assam polls after the senior state Congress leader Hemant Bisse Sharma joined the saffron party.
Javdekar said that the BJP has been able to get leaders like Sharma in Manipur too, who can help the party come to power. The BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav has also been focussing on Manipur in the bid to further expand the party footprint in the North-east.
Recent developments in Manipur have made people amenable to the BJP. Rice distributede through the public distribution system is now available at Rs 3 a kg, while the LPG cylinder are being delivered to the consumers at the normal price without any delay. These two developments have addressed the main concerns of the people there, added Javdekar.
Manipur is heading to Assembly elections in January next year.
NEW DELHI: The BJP appears upbeat to repeat the Assam electoral success in the poll-bound Manipur. Union Minister for Human Resources Development (HRD) Prakash Javdekar, who is also party in-charge for Manipur, claimed that like the former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi his Manipur counterpart Okram Ibobi Singh too is running into high anti-incumbency factor. The situations in Manipur are same as had been in Assam before the BJP wrested power from the Congress. Like Tarun Gogoi, Ibobi Singh too has been the chief minister of Manipur for almost 15 years after having come to power in 2002. The people there are keen for a change in the government, said Javdekar. The BJP is gearing up to launch a massive electoral campaign in Manipur, with a large number of Union Ministers set to visit the North-eastern state. The BJP currently has two MLAs, but has been successful in attracting two ministers and Congress leaders from the Ibobi Singh camp. Incidentally, the BJP had got a shot in the arms in the run up to the Assam polls after the senior state Congress leader Hemant Bisse Sharma joined the saffron party. Javdekar said that the BJP has been able to get leaders like Sharma in Manipur too, who can help the party come to power. The BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav has also been focussing on Manipur in the bid to further expand the party footprint in the North-east. Recent developments in Manipur have made people amenable to the BJP. Rice distributede through the public distribution system is now available at Rs 3 a kg, while the LPG cylinder are being delivered to the consumers at the normal price without any delay. These two developments have addressed the main concerns of the people there, added Javdekar. Manipur is heading to Assembly elections in January next year.
By PTI
NEW DELHI: Ahead of Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections polls due in 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) senior leader Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday said the Ram temple is the part of BJP 2014 manifesto, added that it is the partys obligation to the people to deliver the promise.
The Ram issue is a part of our manifesto in 2014, how can we run away from it? We have to deliver, Swamy told ANI.
Swamy said that the matter cannot be resolved forcibly, but the Supreme Court needs to take some action as the matter is pending from past six years.
Now its time for the matter to be heard and disposed off and the Muslim party is also agreeable for the hearing. I am filling an application on this main matter seeking the court to issue notice to the government, he said.
Yesterday, the Congress Party accused the BJP for selling the name of Lord Ram to siphon off a victory in Uttar Pradesh.
"The Congress has nothing to do with the BJP constructing a museum there (Ayodhya), or the Samajwadi party organising things for the Ramayana mela. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is selling the name of Ram in the wake of coming UP polls," said Congress leader D.P. Singh.
Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Katiyar, on the other hand, asked the BJP-led Central government to intensify its efforts to construct Ram temple in Ayodhya instead of giving 'lollipop' (Ram museum) to please the people, who are demanding the construction of the temple.
"It's a big mistake; effort should be made to construct the Ram Mandir (temple); this "lolipapi" (handing over Ramayana Museum as lollipop to please the people who are demanding the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya) won't work. People ask when will be the Ram Temple constructed? This (Ramayana Museum) is a lollipop, it doesn't have much importance, and thus, they should make positive effort. I would have said this had I been there. It's good that I did not go there," Katiyar told ANI.
NEW DELHI: Ahead of Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections polls due in 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) senior leader Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday said the Ram temple is the part of BJP 2014 manifesto, added that it is the partys obligation to the people to deliver the promise. The Ram issue is a part of our manifesto in 2014, how can we run away from it? We have to deliver, Swamy told ANI. Swamy said that the matter cannot be resolved forcibly, but the Supreme Court needs to take some action as the matter is pending from past six years. Now its time for the matter to be heard and disposed off and the Muslim party is also agreeable for the hearing. I am filling an application on this main matter seeking the court to issue notice to the government, he said. Yesterday, the Congress Party accused the BJP for selling the name of Lord Ram to siphon off a victory in Uttar Pradesh. "The Congress has nothing to do with the BJP constructing a museum there (Ayodhya), or the Samajwadi party organising things for the Ramayana mela. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is selling the name of Ram in the wake of coming UP polls," said Congress leader D.P. Singh. Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Katiyar, on the other hand, asked the BJP-led Central government to intensify its efforts to construct Ram temple in Ayodhya instead of giving 'lollipop' (Ram museum) to please the people, who are demanding the construction of the temple. "It's a big mistake; effort should be made to construct the Ram Mandir (temple); this "lolipapi" (handing over Ramayana Museum as lollipop to please the people who are demanding the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya) won't work. People ask when will be the Ram Temple constructed? This (Ramayana Museum) is a lollipop, it doesn't have much importance, and thus, they should make positive effort. I would have said this had I been there. It's good that I did not go there," Katiyar told ANI.
Prasanta Mazumdar By
Express News Service
AZIMALIRCHAR (Nalbari): When Assams Director General of Police, Mukesh Sahay, beat the afternoon sun on Tuesday with a one hour drive and one-and-a-half-hour motorboat ride in the swirling water of the Brahmaputra to personally inspect a char (sandbar) Azimalirchar in the states Nalbari district, it was clear that there was something amiss.
As India and Bangladesh are conducting a joint campaign against terror outfit Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the BJP-led coalition government in Assam is seeing the Brahmaputra sandbars with renewed suspicion.
The chars are the integral parts of the state. The Chief Minister (Sarbananda Sonowal) desired that I meet the people living on the sandbars and see the ground and the problems and sensitise people of various things. There are more than 2,000 such chars in the state and I will personally visit as many of them as I can, Sahay told reporters. The chars, largely inhabited by Bengali-speaking Muslims, are perceived to have become the hotbeds of terror activities in the state. Over the past two years, the police arrested nearly 50 people for their alleged linkage with the JMB.
Their activities were largely restricted to the chars where a section of the youths had been radicalized. A reason of my visit is to sensitise people against the jihadi elementsWe will try and get details of all people who frequent the chars and about those who go outside the state, Sahay said.
There is a growing suspicion that the sandbars, which are remotely located and difficult to keep tabs on, are the safe havens of jihadi modules. The suspicion made the Sonowal government to bring the sandbars under its surveillance. "Another reason of the visit is to ensure that the names of genuine Indians are included in the ongoing updation of NRC (National Register of Citizens), Sahay said.
Azimalirchar, located 60km west of Guwahati, is one of the 33 sandbars in Nalbari district. Some 2000 people, who live here, do not have access to drinking water, education and healthcare services. It is part of a sprawling char where two police outposts were set up six years ago but lack of manpower and motorboats to patrol the riverine stretch has virtually made them redundant. Meanwhile, Sahay and a team of senior police officials spent the night at a makeshift camp on the sandbar on Tuesday.
AZIMALIRCHAR (Nalbari): When Assams Director General of Police, Mukesh Sahay, beat the afternoon sun on Tuesday with a one hour drive and one-and-a-half-hour motorboat ride in the swirling water of the Brahmaputra to personally inspect a char (sandbar) Azimalirchar in the states Nalbari district, it was clear that there was something amiss. As India and Bangladesh are conducting a joint campaign against terror outfit Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the BJP-led coalition government in Assam is seeing the Brahmaputra sandbars with renewed suspicion. The chars are the integral parts of the state. The Chief Minister (Sarbananda Sonowal) desired that I meet the people living on the sandbars and see the ground and the problems and sensitise people of various things. There are more than 2,000 such chars in the state and I will personally visit as many of them as I can, Sahay told reporters. The chars, largely inhabited by Bengali-speaking Muslims, are perceived to have become the hotbeds of terror activities in the state. Over the past two years, the police arrested nearly 50 people for their alleged linkage with the JMB. Their activities were largely restricted to the chars where a section of the youths had been radicalized. A reason of my visit is to sensitise people against the jihadi elementsWe will try and get details of all people who frequent the chars and about those who go outside the state, Sahay said. There is a growing suspicion that the sandbars, which are remotely located and difficult to keep tabs on, are the safe havens of jihadi modules. The suspicion made the Sonowal government to bring the sandbars under its surveillance. "Another reason of the visit is to ensure that the names of genuine Indians are included in the ongoing updation of NRC (National Register of Citizens), Sahay said. Azimalirchar, located 60km west of Guwahati, is one of the 33 sandbars in Nalbari district. Some 2000 people, who live here, do not have access to drinking water, education and healthcare services. It is part of a sprawling char where two police outposts were set up six years ago but lack of manpower and motorboats to patrol the riverine stretch has virtually made them redundant. Meanwhile, Sahay and a team of senior police officials spent the night at a makeshift camp on the sandbar on Tuesday.
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Much more than the coming Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, the twists and turns in the Yadav family saga of Uttar Pradesh have become riveting. On Wednesday, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav was in a rebellious mood, about to embark upon a Vikas Rath Yatra to kick off his campaign all alone, skipping the Samajwadi Party's silver jubilee celebrations organised by his uncle and his father Mulayam Yadav's current favourite, Shivpal Yadav.
Akhilesh had rescheduled his Vikas Yatra once, from October 3 to November 5, thanks to the ongoing family feud. Now, he's not ready to defer it no more.
If in the process he is appearing a bit like a rebellious ward of the SP supremo Mulayam Singh and not quite the chief minister of the biggest state of India, that seems to be his own problem. The young CM's camp-followers, however, claim his determination to stick to his guns will "enhance'' his image among voters. "Akhilesh Yadav is our biggest USP,'' one of them told New Indian Express.
Well, Akhilesh seems ready for a political gamble in order to wrest control of the party. By shooting off a letter to his father, Akhilesh let him know he was going off on his 'Vikas Rath Yatra' as per schedule.
This would mean, he may not be available for the party's silver jubilee celebrations, slated to begin two days later.
The letter to his father also points out that all political parties have already started their campaign for the Assembly polls and he cannot wait to start his any longer. The last time, he deferred his yatra thanks to the
family feud fuelled by his uncle Shivpal.
"I had decided to take out the Yatra from October 3 but it was cancelled due to some reasons. I will take out the Samajwadi Vikas Rath Yatra from November 3," Akhilesh wrote.
The scheduling of the Yatra is what has resulted in speculation that Akhilesh might skip the SP silver jubilee celebrations which begin from November 5. The CM is said to be rather miffed over the sacking of a few youth leaders from the party, close to him, who would not be present at the event.
In the ongoing turf war, Akhilesh's Yatra is seen as a move to truncate the influence of Shivpal, who was appointed the new state party president replacing him. Akhilesh, however, is said to have faxed the details of Yatra schedule to Shivpal as well as Ram Gopal Yadav, the party's national general secretary.
According to sources, Mulayam tried to broker a truce between Akhilesh and Shivpal earler in the day at his residence. But Akhilesh's demands for revoking the expulsion of youth leaders and having his say in the ticket distribution may not have been met.
The Yatra announcement came thereafter.
NEW DELHI: Much more than the coming Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, the twists and turns in the Yadav family saga of Uttar Pradesh have become riveting. On Wednesday, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav was in a rebellious mood, about to embark upon a Vikas Rath Yatra to kick off his campaign all alone, skipping the Samajwadi Party's silver jubilee celebrations organised by his uncle and his father Mulayam Yadav's current favourite, Shivpal Yadav. Akhilesh had rescheduled his Vikas Yatra once, from October 3 to November 5, thanks to the ongoing family feud. Now, he's not ready to defer it no more. If in the process he is appearing a bit like a rebellious ward of the SP supremo Mulayam Singh and not quite the chief minister of the biggest state of India, that seems to be his own problem. The young CM's camp-followers, however, claim his determination to stick to his guns will "enhance'' his image among voters. "Akhilesh Yadav is our biggest USP,'' one of them told New Indian Express. Well, Akhilesh seems ready for a political gamble in order to wrest control of the party. By shooting off a letter to his father, Akhilesh let him know he was going off on his 'Vikas Rath Yatra' as per schedule. This would mean, he may not be available for the party's silver jubilee celebrations, slated to begin two days later. The letter to his father also points out that all political parties have already started their campaign for the Assembly polls and he cannot wait to start his any longer. The last time, he deferred his yatra thanks to the family feud fuelled by his uncle Shivpal. "I had decided to take out the Yatra from October 3 but it was cancelled due to some reasons. I will take out the Samajwadi Vikas Rath Yatra from November 3," Akhilesh wrote. The scheduling of the Yatra is what has resulted in speculation that Akhilesh might skip the SP silver jubilee celebrations which begin from November 5. The CM is said to be rather miffed over the sacking of a few youth leaders from the party, close to him, who would not be present at the event. In the ongoing turf war, Akhilesh's Yatra is seen as a move to truncate the influence of Shivpal, who was appointed the new state party president replacing him. Akhilesh, however, is said to have faxed the details of Yatra schedule to Shivpal as well as Ram Gopal Yadav, the party's national general secretary. According to sources, Mulayam tried to broker a truce between Akhilesh and Shivpal earler in the day at his residence. But Akhilesh's demands for revoking the expulsion of youth leaders and having his say in the ticket distribution may not have been met. The Yatra announcement came thereafter.
John C Bersia By
Which of the U.S. presidential candidates Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump would be better to boost ties between the United States and India?
To some people, it is a no-brainer. Clinton justifiably claims a hefty diplomatic portfolio, including a substantial record of engaging with India on a number of important mutual interests. Slipping into an effective working relationship with India would be easy for a Clinton administration. To others, though, it is essential to acknowledge Trumps global business dealings, which are evident in India from Mumbai to Pune. A Trump administration would offer the prospect of building on economic connections, among other areas.
Unfortunately, detailed discussions about the possibilities for U.S.-India relations are not receiving the priority they deserve. Many analysts and news media following the candidates have diverted their attention to alleged inappropriate behavior on the part of Trump and Clintons mishandling of high-level, sensitive government email. The candidates, themselves, have spent a disproportionate amount of time on these matters.
Make no mistake. Wrongdoing cannot be overlooked or condoned when deciding on a presidential candidate. Consider the reaction of Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished academic, researcher, writer and entrepreneur. In a recent email message to his global network, he shares his thoughts on how the rise of Trump affects him. Wadhwa then references his upcoming book, Driver in the Driverless Car, in which he contemplates the choices he says we must make that will either point us toward a utopian Star Trek world or the dystopia of Mad Max. With Trump, Wadhwa suggests, Mad Max could come sooner rather than later. His concern is that Trump has made racism, bigotry, xenophobia and sexism acceptable, and opened the door to demagoguery that will never stop. Evidently, Trump is not Wadhwas choice in general or in terms of U.S.-India relations.
What do others think about the two candidates? Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Asian Studies Center of The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., emphasizes that India has become a critical element in the U.S.-Asia rebalancing strategy. She adds that Washington and New Delhi are enhancing their cooperation in ways that will help balance Chinas rise, and contribute to a secure and peaceful democratic Asia with free and open seaways. Curtis applauds, for example, the recent U.S. designation of India as a Major Defense Partner, which basically places it among Americas closest allies in the area of technology transfer. Also, she welcomes the signing in August of an Indo-U.S. logistics-sharing agreement that allows the United States and India to access each others military bases for resupply and refueling. It is a testament to the importance the two countries attach to the partnership.
Curtis notes that improving U.S.-India relations is one of those rare foreign-policy issues with bipartisan support. Therefore, in her estimation, either a Clinton or Trump presidency would almost certainly attach a high value to maintaining and growing Indo-U.S. ties.
Why might a Clinton administration be favored by India? Curtis stresses that Clinton has a long history with India: traveling there as first lady in 1995; helping to establish the India Caucus when she was in the U.S. Senate; and launching and deepening a strategic dialogue between the two countries during her tenure as secretary of state. The bottom line is that Clinton is a known quantity in India. Polls show most Indian-Americans would welcome her election; I imagine most Indians would, as well.
What about Trump? He is more of a wild card, according to Curtis, despite certain positive statements he has made about India on the campaign trail. Indians are likely concerned as to how his stance on immigration could impact the ability of highly skilled Indians to work on a temporary basis in the United States. However, some Indians might welcome a Trump election based on the belief that he would take a harder position toward terrorism and partner more closely with India in confronting terrorist threats emanating from Pakistan.
Trump actually echoed such sentiments at an Indian-American rally in Edison, New Jersey a few days ago, declaring that the United States and India would be best friends under a Trump administration. There wont be any relationship more important to us, Trump said, and he added that we will stand shoulder to shoulder with India in sharing intelligence and keeping our people safe.
I was also interested in the perspective of someone who has worked inside the U.S. Congress, so I turned to Shilpa Deshpande Finnerty, a lawyer and former congressional staffer. She believes Americans have long overlooked the importance of strong ties with India. Indeed, she says, India should be a natural ally in the region, given its strong democratic credentials, diverse population and history of dealing with terrorism. Her sense is that Indian-Americans have been waiting for the day the United States would raise India to the level of consideration it applies to some other Asian nations such as Japan. Finnerty is also disappointed that the current U.S. election cycle has not focused on many leading foreign-policy issues, let alone U.S.-India relations. Regarding Clinton and Trump, there is no debate for her. She emphatically indicates Clinton would be better for U.S.-India relations, pointing to the knowledge and perspective the former secretary of state has to continue the encouraging steps the Obama administration has begun in strengthening relations. Clinton also understands the Indian-American community and how it has contributed to the United States while maintaining strong ties to India, Finnerty says. On the other hand, in her conversations with many Indian-Americans, Finnerty detects what she calls a genuine fear of a Trump presidency and what it might do to encourage the profiling of South Asians, hate crimes and increased racial tensions in America actions that would inevitably impact U.S.-India relations in a negative way.
Finally, I touched base with Pratyush S. Goberdhan, a young Indian-American who serves as the India Fellow at the University of Central Florida. He thinks Clinton would be the better candidate for president when one considers Indo-U.S. relations, given her history of working with the Indian government, serving as co-chair of the U.S. Senate India Caucus, supporting the U.S.-India nuclear deal and making many diplomatic trips to India. To him, these accomplishments are key to future positive and effective relations between the two countries.
In the remaining weeks before the election, it is clearly up to Clinton and Trump to demonstrate their interest in U.S.-India relations, along with other significant international issues. Without such input, voters will have a more difficult time making an informed decision, and the world will be left largely guessing about the candidates intentions.
John C. Bersia, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000, is the special assistant to the president for global perspectives at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He also co-chairs The India Center at UCF.
Email: John.Bersia@ucf.edu
Which of the U.S. presidential candidates Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump would be better to boost ties between the United States and India? To some people, it is a no-brainer. Clinton justifiably claims a hefty diplomatic portfolio, including a substantial record of engaging with India on a number of important mutual interests. Slipping into an effective working relationship with India would be easy for a Clinton administration. To others, though, it is essential to acknowledge Trumps global business dealings, which are evident in India from Mumbai to Pune. A Trump administration would offer the prospect of building on economic connections, among other areas. Unfortunately, detailed discussions about the possibilities for U.S.-India relations are not receiving the priority they deserve. Many analysts and news media following the candidates have diverted their attention to alleged inappropriate behavior on the part of Trump and Clintons mishandling of high-level, sensitive government email. The candidates, themselves, have spent a disproportionate amount of time on these matters. Make no mistake. Wrongdoing cannot be overlooked or condoned when deciding on a presidential candidate. Consider the reaction of Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished academic, researcher, writer and entrepreneur. In a recent email message to his global network, he shares his thoughts on how the rise of Trump affects him. Wadhwa then references his upcoming book, Driver in the Driverless Car, in which he contemplates the choices he says we must make that will either point us toward a utopian Star Trek world or the dystopia of Mad Max. With Trump, Wadhwa suggests, Mad Max could come sooner rather than later. His concern is that Trump has made racism, bigotry, xenophobia and sexism acceptable, and opened the door to demagoguery that will never stop. Evidently, Trump is not Wadhwas choice in general or in terms of U.S.-India relations. What do others think about the two candidates? Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Asian Studies Center of The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., emphasizes that India has become a critical element in the U.S.-Asia rebalancing strategy. She adds that Washington and New Delhi are enhancing their cooperation in ways that will help balance Chinas rise, and contribute to a secure and peaceful democratic Asia with free and open seaways. Curtis applauds, for example, the recent U.S. designation of India as a Major Defense Partner, which basically places it among Americas closest allies in the area of technology transfer. Also, she welcomes the signing in August of an Indo-U.S. logistics-sharing agreement that allows the United States and India to access each others military bases for resupply and refueling. It is a testament to the importance the two countries attach to the partnership. Curtis notes that improving U.S.-India relations is one of those rare foreign-policy issues with bipartisan support. Therefore, in her estimation, either a Clinton or Trump presidency would almost certainly attach a high value to maintaining and growing Indo-U.S. ties. Why might a Clinton administration be favored by India? Curtis stresses that Clinton has a long history with India: traveling there as first lady in 1995; helping to establish the India Caucus when she was in the U.S. Senate; and launching and deepening a strategic dialogue between the two countries during her tenure as secretary of state. The bottom line is that Clinton is a known quantity in India. Polls show most Indian-Americans would welcome her election; I imagine most Indians would, as well. What about Trump? He is more of a wild card, according to Curtis, despite certain positive statements he has made about India on the campaign trail. Indians are likely concerned as to how his stance on immigration could impact the ability of highly skilled Indians to work on a temporary basis in the United States. However, some Indians might welcome a Trump election based on the belief that he would take a harder position toward terrorism and partner more closely with India in confronting terrorist threats emanating from Pakistan. Trump actually echoed such sentiments at an Indian-American rally in Edison, New Jersey a few days ago, declaring that the United States and India would be best friends under a Trump administration. There wont be any relationship more important to us, Trump said, and he added that we will stand shoulder to shoulder with India in sharing intelligence and keeping our people safe. I was also interested in the perspective of someone who has worked inside the U.S. Congress, so I turned to Shilpa Deshpande Finnerty, a lawyer and former congressional staffer. She believes Americans have long overlooked the importance of strong ties with India. Indeed, she says, India should be a natural ally in the region, given its strong democratic credentials, diverse population and history of dealing with terrorism. Her sense is that Indian-Americans have been waiting for the day the United States would raise India to the level of consideration it applies to some other Asian nations such as Japan. Finnerty is also disappointed that the current U.S. election cycle has not focused on many leading foreign-policy issues, let alone U.S.-India relations. Regarding Clinton and Trump, there is no debate for her. She emphatically indicates Clinton would be better for U.S.-India relations, pointing to the knowledge and perspective the former secretary of state has to continue the encouraging steps the Obama administration has begun in strengthening relations. Clinton also understands the Indian-American community and how it has contributed to the United States while maintaining strong ties to India, Finnerty says. On the other hand, in her conversations with many Indian-Americans, Finnerty detects what she calls a genuine fear of a Trump presidency and what it might do to encourage the profiling of South Asians, hate crimes and increased racial tensions in America actions that would inevitably impact U.S.-India relations in a negative way. Finally, I touched base with Pratyush S. Goberdhan, a young Indian-American who serves as the India Fellow at the University of Central Florida. He thinks Clinton would be the better candidate for president when one considers Indo-U.S. relations, given her history of working with the Indian government, serving as co-chair of the U.S. Senate India Caucus, supporting the U.S.-India nuclear deal and making many diplomatic trips to India. To him, these accomplishments are key to future positive and effective relations between the two countries. In the remaining weeks before the election, it is clearly up to Clinton and Trump to demonstrate their interest in U.S.-India relations, along with other significant international issues. Without such input, voters will have a more difficult time making an informed decision, and the world will be left largely guessing about the candidates intentions. John C. Bersia, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000, is the special assistant to the president for global perspectives at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He also co-chairs The India Center at UCF. Email: John.Bersia@ucf.edu
By Express News Service
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Hardly a couple of days after a heavy weight minister in the Pinarayi Cabinet was forced to step down, the Vigilance Director seeking to move him out of the post has put the Left government in a spot.
Vigilance Director Jacob Thomas was appointed by the government soon after assuming office in an attempt to send out a strong message on its approach towards corruption. He had also initiated probe into many cases, thereby making many politicians and bureaucrats uncomfortable. His actions in controversial issues like the bar bribery case ratified the governments decision.
However, things took a turn two days ago when allegations were raised against Jacob Thoams for his stint with the ports department. On Monday, Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala came down heavily on Jacob Thomas in the Assembly, stating that the vigilance director had to prove his credibility.
Referring to the caged parrot remark, Chennithala said the parrot had been circling inside the Cliff House for some days. Both Chennithala and V D Satheesan targeted the vigilance director for going to the Cliff House in a private vehicle when the nepotism row against E P Jayarajan was on. There is nothing wrong in the vigilance director meeting the chief minister. But why did he choose to go in a private vehicle? The vigilance director has to prove his integrity, Chennithala said. Referring to the finance departments recommendation to initiate action on the corruption charges against Thomas, Chennithala asked, Who will show red or yellow card to the vigilance director now?
However, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the Assembly that a crippled vigilance was not what the Left government aimed for. Refuting Opposition charges he said the Left was for giving freedom to the Vigilance to function independently. He also made it clear that the LDF had no intentions to cripple the Vigilance system in the state. But with Jacob Thomas expressing his wish to step down a day after, the Pinarayi government would find it hard to explain the reasons before the Opposition inside the Assembly on Wednesday. The issue is expected to be discussed in the Cabinet on Wednesday.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Hardly a couple of days after a heavy weight minister in the Pinarayi Cabinet was forced to step down, the Vigilance Director seeking to move him out of the post has put the Left government in a spot. Vigilance Director Jacob Thomas was appointed by the government soon after assuming office in an attempt to send out a strong message on its approach towards corruption. He had also initiated probe into many cases, thereby making many politicians and bureaucrats uncomfortable. His actions in controversial issues like the bar bribery case ratified the governments decision. However, things took a turn two days ago when allegations were raised against Jacob Thoams for his stint with the ports department. On Monday, Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala came down heavily on Jacob Thomas in the Assembly, stating that the vigilance director had to prove his credibility. Referring to the caged parrot remark, Chennithala said the parrot had been circling inside the Cliff House for some days. Both Chennithala and V D Satheesan targeted the vigilance director for going to the Cliff House in a private vehicle when the nepotism row against E P Jayarajan was on. There is nothing wrong in the vigilance director meeting the chief minister. But why did he choose to go in a private vehicle? The vigilance director has to prove his integrity, Chennithala said. Referring to the finance departments recommendation to initiate action on the corruption charges against Thomas, Chennithala asked, Who will show red or yellow card to the vigilance director now? However, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the Assembly that a crippled vigilance was not what the Left government aimed for. Refuting Opposition charges he said the Left was for giving freedom to the Vigilance to function independently. He also made it clear that the LDF had no intentions to cripple the Vigilance system in the state. But with Jacob Thomas expressing his wish to step down a day after, the Pinarayi government would find it hard to explain the reasons before the Opposition inside the Assembly on Wednesday. The issue is expected to be discussed in the Cabinet on Wednesday.
By Express News Service
BHUBANESWAR: Here are the latest developments in the aftermath of the devastating fire at Bhubaneswar's SUM Hospital on Monday night, which swept the dialysis ward and took the state government's Fire Service off guard.
1. Bhubaneswar SUM Hospital's superintendent Pushparaj Samantasinghar, arrested yesterday, complained of chest pain while in police custody and has been admitted in the SCB Medical College and Hospital [SCBMCH] at Cuttack.
2.One more Bhubaneswar SUM fire victim, identified as Janaki Hui of Balasore, succumbed to burns at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar. The woman had earlier been admitted to Sum Hospital with lung cancer. She was taken to AIIMs with critical burns.
3. The toll in the tragedy climbed to 21 persons so far. About 105 patients shifted from SUM are receiving treatment in various hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.
4. Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik has announced ex-gratia payments of Rs 5 lakh to each of the 21 bereaved families. He also directed free treatment for the injured.
5. The Odisha state government has opened a control room to monitor the treatment of fire victims. The additional director of the National Health Mission [NHM] and the joint director of Medical Education and Training are monitoring the treatment of SUM fire victims.
6. The Odisha government has decided to conduct a fire audit at all government hospitals and healthcare facilities in the state. The decision was taken at a high-level meeting presided over by chief secretary A P Padhi and attended by secretaries of energy, health departments and the director-general of fire service Binay Behera.
7. In particular, electrical installations at hospitals will be reviewed. One month time has been given to the state's Energy and Works Department to submit their requirements after inspections, Padhi told reporters.
8. Fire chief Behera has submitted his report based on his prelim inspection. He said about 160 health facilities in the state capital, only three or four institutions, have availed fire safety permission.
9. The Congress has demanded Rs 25 lakh compensation for each of victim's family. "The state government should give Rs 10 lakh and the Centre needs to provide Rs 15 lakh," Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Prasad Harichandan said. The CPI's national secretary D Raja also demanded adequate compensation
10. Union health minister J P Nadda is in Bhubaneswar and said he is not there to play the blame game. "Our priority is proper treatment of patients," he said upon arrival. He and oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan met the fire victims at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, AMRI Hospital and KIMS Hospital. The two ministers will visit Sum Hospital later in the day.
BHUBANESWAR: Here are the latest developments in the aftermath of the devastating fire at Bhubaneswar's SUM Hospital on Monday night, which swept the dialysis ward and took the state government's Fire Service off guard. 1. Bhubaneswar SUM Hospital's superintendent Pushparaj Samantasinghar, arrested yesterday, complained of chest pain while in police custody and has been admitted in the SCB Medical College and Hospital [SCBMCH] at Cuttack. 2.One more Bhubaneswar SUM fire victim, identified as Janaki Hui of Balasore, succumbed to burns at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar. The woman had earlier been admitted to Sum Hospital with lung cancer. She was taken to AIIMs with critical burns. 3. The toll in the tragedy climbed to 21 persons so far. About 105 patients shifted from SUM are receiving treatment in various hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. 4. Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik has announced ex-gratia payments of Rs 5 lakh to each of the 21 bereaved families. He also directed free treatment for the injured. 5. The Odisha state government has opened a control room to monitor the treatment of fire victims. The additional director of the National Health Mission [NHM] and the joint director of Medical Education and Training are monitoring the treatment of SUM fire victims. 6. The Odisha government has decided to conduct a fire audit at all government hospitals and healthcare facilities in the state. The decision was taken at a high-level meeting presided over by chief secretary A P Padhi and attended by secretaries of energy, health departments and the director-general of fire service Binay Behera. 7. In particular, electrical installations at hospitals will be reviewed. One month time has been given to the state's Energy and Works Department to submit their requirements after inspections, Padhi told reporters. 8. Fire chief Behera has submitted his report based on his prelim inspection. He said about 160 health facilities in the state capital, only three or four institutions, have availed fire safety permission. 9. The Congress has demanded Rs 25 lakh compensation for each of victim's family. "The state government should give Rs 10 lakh and the Centre needs to provide Rs 15 lakh," Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Prasad Harichandan said. The CPI's national secretary D Raja also demanded adequate compensation 10. Union health minister J P Nadda is in Bhubaneswar and said he is not there to play the blame game. "Our priority is proper treatment of patients," he said upon arrival. He and oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan met the fire victims at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, AMRI Hospital and KIMS Hospital. The two ministers will visit Sum Hospital later in the day.
By Online Desk
BHUBANESHWAR: The Odisha government has slammed SUM Hospital for negligence with regard to fire safety regulations, leading to culpable homicide. Despite suggestions given during an audit in 2013, the hospital had failed to implement essential fire safety measures. In fact, a recent media report also claimed that the hospital had not obtained a NOC (No-Objection Certificate) from the fire department and had already lost its accredition two months ago.
There are several regulations and guidelines mentioned in the National Disaster Management Guidelines laid out by the Government of India for hospital safety. Here are five major fire safety norms that the SUM was found to be in violation of:
Water sprinklers were non-functional on the second floor where the Intensive Care Unit is located, and where the fire broke out.
No overhead water tank or water storage to douse fire in such mishaps. As per the guidelines, SUM was directed to set up a 25,000 - litre tank.
Lack of emergency staircases for immediate fire exit.
No system or sirens in place for automatic fire alert.
Fire hydrants installed had no water connection
Another news report from Chennai on Wednesday said a majority of both government and private hospitals in the city were in violation of various safety regulations, if not all.
But what are the basic norms as per the National Disaster Management (NDM)?
A Hospital Disaster Management Plan (HDMP) and frequent ICU & ward evacuation drills are deemed necessary amidst several other safety measures. The HDMP, formed by a set Disaster Management Committee of the hospital is also required to design floor maps, pointing at the designated exit ways for smooth evacuation in case of a mishap. Every hospital must not just have adequate resources like fire extinguishers and pre-stored water supply, but must also conduct regular training of hospital staff about evacuation procedures for patients.
In fact, hospitals must also have a standardised colour code system like "Code Green: Evacuation/ rapid response team", "Code Black: Bomb threat/ suspicious object", "Code Blue: Medical emergency/cardiac arrest", in place to communicate in times of crisis.
The SUM hospital management indeed has a lot to answer over Monday evening's blaze that claimed 20 lives and injured over a 100.
After fire officer (Central Range) had lodged an FIR against the hospital management at Khandagiri Police Station citing negligence in installing fire safety measures in the hospital despite recommendations made in a 2013 audit, the hospital authorities are now facing charges including culpable homicide not amounting to murder and negligence in dealing with combustible substances.
BHUBANESHWAR: The Odisha government has slammed SUM Hospital for negligence with regard to fire safety regulations, leading to culpable homicide. Despite suggestions given during an audit in 2013, the hospital had failed to implement essential fire safety measures. In fact, a recent media report also claimed that the hospital had not obtained a NOC (No-Objection Certificate) from the fire department and had already lost its accredition two months ago. There are several regulations and guidelines mentioned in the National Disaster Management Guidelines laid out by the Government of India for hospital safety. Here are five major fire safety norms that the SUM was found to be in violation of: Water sprinklers were non-functional on the second floor where the Intensive Care Unit is located, and where the fire broke out. No overhead water tank or water storage to douse fire in such mishaps. As per the guidelines, SUM was directed to set up a 25,000 - litre tank. Lack of emergency staircases for immediate fire exit. No system or sirens in place for automatic fire alert. Fire hydrants installed had no water connection Another news report from Chennai on Wednesday said a majority of both government and private hospitals in the city were in violation of various safety regulations, if not all. But what are the basic norms as per the National Disaster Management (NDM)? A Hospital Disaster Management Plan (HDMP) and frequent ICU & ward evacuation drills are deemed necessary amidst several other safety measures. The HDMP, formed by a set Disaster Management Committee of the hospital is also required to design floor maps, pointing at the designated exit ways for smooth evacuation in case of a mishap. Every hospital must not just have adequate resources like fire extinguishers and pre-stored water supply, but must also conduct regular training of hospital staff about evacuation procedures for patients. In fact, hospitals must also have a standardised colour code system like "Code Green: Evacuation/ rapid response team", "Code Black: Bomb threat/ suspicious object", "Code Blue: Medical emergency/cardiac arrest", in place to communicate in times of crisis. The SUM hospital management indeed has a lot to answer over Monday evening's blaze that claimed 20 lives and injured over a 100. After fire officer (Central Range) had lodged an FIR against the hospital management at Khandagiri Police Station citing negligence in installing fire safety measures in the hospital despite recommendations made in a 2013 audit, the hospital authorities are now facing charges including culpable homicide not amounting to murder and negligence in dealing with combustible substances.
By Express News Service
BHUBANESWAR: Here's a summary of all the developments in the aftermath of the fire tragedy at Bhubaneswar's SUM Hospital in which 21 people perished on Monday.
1. Bhubaneswar's Commissionerate of Police has issued a lookout circular [LOC] against Manojranjan Nayak and his wife Saswati Das, trustees of the Siksha O Anusandhan Charitable Trust which runs the hospital.
2. A clamour has gone up for action against the top management of SUM Hospital.
3. Police commissioner Khurania says Manojranjan Nayak and Saswati Das have not been cooperating with the investigation. They have not been named in the FIR registered in the case. Khurania said,"Nayak and his wife are required for the investigation but have not cooperated despite communications to them. Police teams went to Nayaks home and office today but to no avail."
4. The Ministry of Home Affairs has been informed about the LOC issued against Manojranjan Nayak and Saswati so that necessary intimation is made at all ports and airports to prevent their exit.
5. Union health minister J P Nadda arrived in Bhubaneswar on a stocktaking visit and said it is the Odisha government's responsibility if safety measures are not adequate in the state's hospitals.
6. Another patient perished to injuries suffered in the fire, taking the toll to 21. The deceased was identified as Janaki Hui from Balasore. As many as 105 patients are admitted in various hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, receiving treatment.
7. Police are studying the complex structure of the management of SUM Hospital in order to pin responsibility. Manojranjan Nayak's name does not figure on the website of SOA University, which is the holding company of the hospital. We are investigating the role of Manojranjan Nayak and other members of the management of SUM Hospital. We have secured official documents on the management structure and assessing their culpability basing on which action would be initiated, Khurania said.
8. Of the four persons arrested in the case so far, SUM Hospital medical superintendent Pushparaj Samanatsinghar complained of chest pain this morning and was moved to hospital.
9. Protestors are turning up at SUM Hospital demanding increased compensation for the kin of the victims and action against those responsible.
10. Trouble for ManojranjanNayak and his beleaguered hospital intensified as the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Black Money directed the Enforcement Directorate to probe the financial transactions of the group. The SIT has also asked DG Police K B Singh to ensure that documents and records of the institution are not tampered with in any manner.
11. Facing flak for the fire mishap which exposed the state of fire safety in health care centres, chief minister Naveen Patnaik announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh for the kin of each person who died in the blaze.
12. The State Government has opened a control room to monitor the treatment of the fire victims. An additional director of the National Health Mission (NHM) and a joint director of Medical Education and Training are monitoring the treatment of patients evacuated from SUM Hospital.
BHUBANESWAR: Here's a summary of all the developments in the aftermath of the fire tragedy at Bhubaneswar's SUM Hospital in which 21 people perished on Monday. 1. Bhubaneswar's Commissionerate of Police has issued a lookout circular [LOC] against Manojranjan Nayak and his wife Saswati Das, trustees of the Siksha O Anusandhan Charitable Trust which runs the hospital. 2. A clamour has gone up for action against the top management of SUM Hospital. 3. Police commissioner Khurania says Manojranjan Nayak and Saswati Das have not been cooperating with the investigation. They have not been named in the FIR registered in the case. Khurania said,"Nayak and his wife are required for the investigation but have not cooperated despite communications to them. Police teams went to Nayaks home and office today but to no avail." 4. The Ministry of Home Affairs has been informed about the LOC issued against Manojranjan Nayak and Saswati so that necessary intimation is made at all ports and airports to prevent their exit. 5. Union health minister J P Nadda arrived in Bhubaneswar on a stocktaking visit and said it is the Odisha government's responsibility if safety measures are not adequate in the state's hospitals. 6. Another patient perished to injuries suffered in the fire, taking the toll to 21. The deceased was identified as Janaki Hui from Balasore. As many as 105 patients are admitted in various hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, receiving treatment. 7. Police are studying the complex structure of the management of SUM Hospital in order to pin responsibility. Manojranjan Nayak's name does not figure on the website of SOA University, which is the holding company of the hospital. We are investigating the role of Manojranjan Nayak and other members of the management of SUM Hospital. We have secured official documents on the management structure and assessing their culpability basing on which action would be initiated, Khurania said. 8. Of the four persons arrested in the case so far, SUM Hospital medical superintendent Pushparaj Samanatsinghar complained of chest pain this morning and was moved to hospital. 9. Protestors are turning up at SUM Hospital demanding increased compensation for the kin of the victims and action against those responsible. 10. Trouble for ManojranjanNayak and his beleaguered hospital intensified as the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Black Money directed the Enforcement Directorate to probe the financial transactions of the group. The SIT has also asked DG Police K B Singh to ensure that documents and records of the institution are not tampered with in any manner. 11. Facing flak for the fire mishap which exposed the state of fire safety in health care centres, chief minister Naveen Patnaik announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh for the kin of each person who died in the blaze. 12. The State Government has opened a control room to monitor the treatment of the fire victims. An additional director of the National Health Mission (NHM) and a joint director of Medical Education and Training are monitoring the treatment of patients evacuated from SUM Hospital.
T Muruganandham By
Express News Service
CHENNAI: Yet to find its feet in the political landscape of Dravidian heartland, the BJPs State unit has decided to return to the basics: step 1 fine tuning its vocabulary. Senior leaders of the party, particularly those with roots in the Sangh Parivar, have asked leaders and cadre to shed the practice of suffixing ji and instead use vernacular terms that are more emotionally intimate to the local population Anna-Akka, Amma-Ayya.
The matter consumed a significant amount of time during the partys executive committee meeting at Tirupur on Sunday and Monday.
Addressing the functionaries, BJP joint general secretary (organisation), Kesava Vinayakam, asked them to avoid the use of ji which was not close to the hearts of the Tamil Nadu people. Speaking after him, veteran Sangh leader and newly-elected Rajya Sabha member L Ganesan recalled how he led a campaign on this decades ago while crisscrossing the State as a full-time pracharak.
But the vocabulary, in use within the saffron party for years now, is not easy to give up at once. State president Tamilisai Soundararajan, for one, began her speech addressing Ganesanji before quickly correcting herself. Her addressing the leaders as Ganesan annan and H Raja annan evoked peals of laughter from the audience.
Confirming the direction given to party functionaries, Ganesan added: It is a small but important step for the party in Tamil Nadu. Asked whether localising the vocabulary was due to the impact of the Dravidian movement, Ganesan recalled RSS founder KB Hedgewars advice to Sangh volunteers as to how they were part of society and not a secluded group. It is because I am an RSS worker. It is in my veins; it is an inborn thought, he said.
CHENNAI: Yet to find its feet in the political landscape of Dravidian heartland, the BJPs State unit has decided to return to the basics: step 1 fine tuning its vocabulary. Senior leaders of the party, particularly those with roots in the Sangh Parivar, have asked leaders and cadre to shed the practice of suffixing ji and instead use vernacular terms that are more emotionally intimate to the local population Anna-Akka, Amma-Ayya. The matter consumed a significant amount of time during the partys executive committee meeting at Tirupur on Sunday and Monday. Addressing the functionaries, BJP joint general secretary (organisation), Kesava Vinayakam, asked them to avoid the use of ji which was not close to the hearts of the Tamil Nadu people. Speaking after him, veteran Sangh leader and newly-elected Rajya Sabha member L Ganesan recalled how he led a campaign on this decades ago while crisscrossing the State as a full-time pracharak. But the vocabulary, in use within the saffron party for years now, is not easy to give up at once. State president Tamilisai Soundararajan, for one, began her speech addressing Ganesanji before quickly correcting herself. Her addressing the leaders as Ganesan annan and H Raja annan evoked peals of laughter from the audience. Confirming the direction given to party functionaries, Ganesan added: It is a small but important step for the party in Tamil Nadu. Asked whether localising the vocabulary was due to the impact of the Dravidian movement, Ganesan recalled RSS founder KB Hedgewars advice to Sangh volunteers as to how they were part of society and not a secluded group. It is because I am an RSS worker. It is in my veins; it is an inborn thought, he said.
By The Daily Telegraph
Europe must prepare for a fresh influx of Isil jihadists fleeing Mosul as the Iraqi army moves in on their last stronghold in the country, the EU's security commissioner said yesterday (Tuesday).
"The retaking of the [Isil] northern Iraq territory, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent [Isil] fighters," Julian King said. "This is a very serious threat and we must be prepared to face it."
Some 2,500 EU nationals are currently fighting alongside Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, he added. He said that if even a handful return it would pose a "serious threat that we must prepare ourselves for".
The warning came as the long-expected battle for Mosul entered its second day. Iraqi forces were advancing in an offensive aimed at retaking the city, dealing a death blow to the Isil group's "caliphate" in the spot where it was declared two years ago.
A relatively small number of jihadists are putting up a fight against the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the villages leading up to the city, but there are reports that fighters are fleeing Mosul itself in growing numbers.
Residents inside the city told The Daily Telegraph that scores of jihadists have escaped in recent weeks and more than 50 have fled since the start of the offensive on Monday.
"They wait until night and leave by car. They are going to al-Ba'aj to the west of Mosul, then on to the Iraq-Syria border, where they continue to Syria and Turkey," said one 35-year-old resident, who gave his name as Ahmed.
There had been reports last week that the US, which is supporting the Iraqi army on the ground and in the air, could decide not to completely encircle the city and allow fighters out through the western side in an attempt to avoid greater civilian casualties.
Should that happen, the jihadists -with no major territory left in Iraq -could move across the border to Syria, where they may either join the fight against President Bashar al-Assad's forces or travel on to Turkey or Europe.
There has been a growing backlash against Isil among Mosul's some 1.5?million residents. A small number of resistance fighters known as the Kataib al-Mosul group led a brief uprising in various parts of Mosul on the news the offensive had started, Iraq Oil Report said. At least 20 members were killed and their cars burned. They have vowed to fight Isil in support of the army once its forces enter the city.
Steven Nabil, who has family inside Mosul, said that phone lines had been reestablished inside the city for the first time in months on Monday, by the Iraqi government, and residents were sending the coalition "hundreds of messages" with Isil fighters' locations.
Isil has an estimated 4,000-8,000 fighters remaining in Mosul, but is increasingly recruiting children and other civilians for what has been called the "mother of all battles".
Peter Cook, the US Pentagon spokesman, said late on Monday that the campaign was "ahead of schedule" but warned it was not yet known whether fighters would "stand and fight".
Analysts say that even with the loss of its last-remaining stronghold in Iraq, it will not mark the end of the group.
The group is "entering a new phase," said Chris Phillips, managing director of counter-terrorism consultancy Ippso, adding that as the group loses its "caliphate", "it would force them into more guerrilla or terrorist actions".
With the retaking of Mosul, "I think we will see a growth of terrorist attacks across North Africa and the West," he said, adding that fighters could take cover among genuine refugees using established routes to slip in.
Europe must prepare for a fresh influx of Isil jihadists fleeing Mosul as the Iraqi army moves in on their last stronghold in the country, the EU's security commissioner said yesterday (Tuesday). "The retaking of the [Isil] northern Iraq territory, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent [Isil] fighters," Julian King said. "This is a very serious threat and we must be prepared to face it." Some 2,500 EU nationals are currently fighting alongside Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, he added. He said that if even a handful return it would pose a "serious threat that we must prepare ourselves for". The warning came as the long-expected battle for Mosul entered its second day. Iraqi forces were advancing in an offensive aimed at retaking the city, dealing a death blow to the Isil group's "caliphate" in the spot where it was declared two years ago. A relatively small number of jihadists are putting up a fight against the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the villages leading up to the city, but there are reports that fighters are fleeing Mosul itself in growing numbers. Residents inside the city told The Daily Telegraph that scores of jihadists have escaped in recent weeks and more than 50 have fled since the start of the offensive on Monday. "They wait until night and leave by car. They are going to al-Ba'aj to the west of Mosul, then on to the Iraq-Syria border, where they continue to Syria and Turkey," said one 35-year-old resident, who gave his name as Ahmed. There had been reports last week that the US, which is supporting the Iraqi army on the ground and in the air, could decide not to completely encircle the city and allow fighters out through the western side in an attempt to avoid greater civilian casualties. Should that happen, the jihadists -with no major territory left in Iraq -could move across the border to Syria, where they may either join the fight against President Bashar al-Assad's forces or travel on to Turkey or Europe. There has been a growing backlash against Isil among Mosul's some 1.5?million residents. A small number of resistance fighters known as the Kataib al-Mosul group led a brief uprising in various parts of Mosul on the news the offensive had started, Iraq Oil Report said. At least 20 members were killed and their cars burned. They have vowed to fight Isil in support of the army once its forces enter the city. Steven Nabil, who has family inside Mosul, said that phone lines had been reestablished inside the city for the first time in months on Monday, by the Iraqi government, and residents were sending the coalition "hundreds of messages" with Isil fighters' locations. Isil has an estimated 4,000-8,000 fighters remaining in Mosul, but is increasingly recruiting children and other civilians for what has been called the "mother of all battles". Peter Cook, the US Pentagon spokesman, said late on Monday that the campaign was "ahead of schedule" but warned it was not yet known whether fighters would "stand and fight". Analysts say that even with the loss of its last-remaining stronghold in Iraq, it will not mark the end of the group. The group is "entering a new phase," said Chris Phillips, managing director of counter-terrorism consultancy Ippso, adding that as the group loses its "caliphate", "it would force them into more guerrilla or terrorist actions". With the retaking of Mosul, "I think we will see a growth of terrorist attacks across North Africa and the West," he said, adding that fighters could take cover among genuine refugees using established routes to slip in.
By Associated Press
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel prepared to host a summit Wednesday with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and France aimed at reviving the stalled peace process in eastern Ukraine. The conflict in Syria is also likely to be discussed.
Prospects of significant progress on either front look poor, but Merkel said ahead of the meeting that she wanted to exhaust every possibility.
Merkel and Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Francois Hollande of France and Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine have met sporadically to discuss eastern Ukraine. This is the first time the four have met in over a year.
The 2015 Minsk agreement brokered by France and Germany has helped end large-scale battles between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia separatists, but clashes have continued and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.
The decision to hold the meeting Wednesday evening in Berlin follows a flurry of telephone diplomacy over the past week.
Merkel told reporters Tuesday that the talks would be about "establishing where things stand" and stressed that Germany wouldn't refrain from blunt talk including on Syria.
Merkel and Hollande have been sharply critical of Russia's support for Assad's forces, with Merkel suggesting Tuesday that Moscow was partly responsible for atrocities, citing "Syrian and Russian airstrikes on helpless people, hospitals and doctors."
Merkel said the possibility of imposing sanctions against Russia for its actions in Syria remained on the table. "But the priority is that we look at lessening people's suffering in some way," she said.
Speaking privately, European diplomats said any talks on Ukraine and Syria should be seen as a positive step, even if no concrete decisions are reached.
Several groups were planning to stage protests outside the chancellery, where the meeting will be held.
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel prepared to host a summit Wednesday with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and France aimed at reviving the stalled peace process in eastern Ukraine. The conflict in Syria is also likely to be discussed. Prospects of significant progress on either front look poor, but Merkel said ahead of the meeting that she wanted to exhaust every possibility. Merkel and Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Francois Hollande of France and Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine have met sporadically to discuss eastern Ukraine. This is the first time the four have met in over a year. The 2015 Minsk agreement brokered by France and Germany has helped end large-scale battles between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia separatists, but clashes have continued and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled. The decision to hold the meeting Wednesday evening in Berlin follows a flurry of telephone diplomacy over the past week. Merkel told reporters Tuesday that the talks would be about "establishing where things stand" and stressed that Germany wouldn't refrain from blunt talk including on Syria. Merkel and Hollande have been sharply critical of Russia's support for Assad's forces, with Merkel suggesting Tuesday that Moscow was partly responsible for atrocities, citing "Syrian and Russian airstrikes on helpless people, hospitals and doctors." Merkel said the possibility of imposing sanctions against Russia for its actions in Syria remained on the table. "But the priority is that we look at lessening people's suffering in some way," she said. Speaking privately, European diplomats said any talks on Ukraine and Syria should be seen as a positive step, even if no concrete decisions are reached. Several groups were planning to stage protests outside the chancellery, where the meeting will be held.
By IANS
VIENNA: The building where Adolf Hitler was born may be spared demolition, but emerge heavily disguised.
On Monday, Austria's interior minister, Wolfgang Sobotka, told the daily Die Presse that "the Hitler house will be torn down."
On Tuesday, he told reporters that the term "torn down" is debatable but the building, in the western town of Braunau, will be so thoroughly redesigned that it "will not be recognizable."
The "house," a large, three-story Renaissance-era structure, contains the apartment where Hitler was born.
Several members of a government-appointed commission on the future of the house said destroying it to end its attraction for admirers of the Nazi dictator would give an impression of trying erase part of Austria's history.
VIENNA: The building where Adolf Hitler was born may be spared demolition, but emerge heavily disguised. On Monday, Austria's interior minister, Wolfgang Sobotka, told the daily Die Presse that "the Hitler house will be torn down." On Tuesday, he told reporters that the term "torn down" is debatable but the building, in the western town of Braunau, will be so thoroughly redesigned that it "will not be recognizable." The "house," a large, three-story Renaissance-era structure, contains the apartment where Hitler was born. Several members of a government-appointed commission on the future of the house said destroying it to end its attraction for admirers of the Nazi dictator would give an impression of trying erase part of Austria's history.
By Associated Press
KHAZER: A senior Iraqi general on Wednesday called on Iraqis fighting for the Islamic State group in Mosul to surrender as a wide-scale operation to retake the militant-held city entered its third day.
Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati told reporters at a military base on Tuesday that up to 6,000 IS fighters are inside the city. He did not say how many of them are foreigners.
IS captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, in a lightning advance in the summer of 2014. The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats over the past year, and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq.
So far, the militants have put up fierce resistance in villages surrounding the city, where most of the fighting has been concentrated. IS has sent trucks loaded with explosives careening toward the front lines and fired mortars to slow the Iraqi forces' advance.
An Iraqi officer from the 9th Division told The Associated Press that his troops were now around 1 kilometer (half mile) away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul.
Over the past day, IS sent 12 car bombs, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, he said, adding that Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, did not provide specific figures.
The operation to retake Mosul is the largest launched by the Iraqi army since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Some 25,000 troops, including Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and state-sanctioned Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units are approaching the city from different directions.
The participation of the Shiite militias in the operation to retake the mainly Sunni Mosul has raised concerns that the campaign could inflame sectarian tensions. Rights groups have accused the Shiite militias of abuses in past campaigns against IS-held areas.
In a bid to alleviate those concerns, Shiite militia leaders on Tuesday announced that they will only focus on capturing the mostly Shiite town of Tal Afar to the west of Mosul, and not enter the city itself.
"The only troops who will enter Mosul are the army and police, not the Popular Mobilization Units or the peshmerga," said Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Brigade, one of the largest Shiite militias.
"This has been agreed upon," he said at a press conference in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday that Iraqi government and paramilitary forces detained, tortured or killed hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians fleeing IS-held areas during the operation to retake the Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, earlier this year.
The Iraqi government has denied any systematic violations by security forces or the militias, and says individuals have been held accountable for occasional abuses.
KHAZER: A senior Iraqi general on Wednesday called on Iraqis fighting for the Islamic State group in Mosul to surrender as a wide-scale operation to retake the militant-held city entered its third day. Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati told reporters at a military base on Tuesday that up to 6,000 IS fighters are inside the city. He did not say how many of them are foreigners. IS captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, in a lightning advance in the summer of 2014. The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats over the past year, and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq. So far, the militants have put up fierce resistance in villages surrounding the city, where most of the fighting has been concentrated. IS has sent trucks loaded with explosives careening toward the front lines and fired mortars to slow the Iraqi forces' advance. An Iraqi officer from the 9th Division told The Associated Press that his troops were now around 1 kilometer (half mile) away from Hamdaniyah, a historically Christian town also known as Bakhdida, to the east of Mosul. Over the past day, IS sent 12 car bombs, all of which were blown up before reaching their targets, he said, adding that Iraqi troops suffered a small number of casualties from the mortar rounds. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, did not provide specific figures. The operation to retake Mosul is the largest launched by the Iraqi army since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Some 25,000 troops, including Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and state-sanctioned Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units are approaching the city from different directions. The participation of the Shiite militias in the operation to retake the mainly Sunni Mosul has raised concerns that the campaign could inflame sectarian tensions. Rights groups have accused the Shiite militias of abuses in past campaigns against IS-held areas. In a bid to alleviate those concerns, Shiite militia leaders on Tuesday announced that they will only focus on capturing the mostly Shiite town of Tal Afar to the west of Mosul, and not enter the city itself. "The only troops who will enter Mosul are the army and police, not the Popular Mobilization Units or the peshmerga," said Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Brigade, one of the largest Shiite militias. "This has been agreed upon," he said at a press conference in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday that Iraqi government and paramilitary forces detained, tortured or killed hundreds of Sunni Arab civilians fleeing IS-held areas during the operation to retake the Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, earlier this year. The Iraqi government has denied any systematic violations by security forces or the militias, and says individuals have been held accountable for occasional abuses.
By The Daily Telegraph
Asma Al-Assad, the Syrian president's British-born wife, has said she turned down offers of financial security and safety for her children if she fled the war-torn country.
Mrs Assad, a former investment banker who married Mr Assad in 2000, said the deals were "stupid" attempts "undermine" her husband, in rare public comments to a Russian broadcaster.
"I've been here since the beginning and I never thought of being anywhere else at all," Mrs Assad, 41, told Russia's state-owned Rossiya 24 channel in an interview broadcast yesterday (Tuesday).
She said: "Yes I was offered the opportunity to leave Syria or rather to run from Syria. These offers included guarantees of safety and protection for my children and even financial security. It doesn't take a genius to know what these people were really after. It was a deliberate attempt to shatter people's confidence in their president.".
She said Western sanctions had impacted ordinary Syrians in a similar manner to those against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s. She also praised Moscow's "noble" intervention and economic assistance to the country. "The situation would have been much much harder if it had not been Syria's true friends," she said. "Russia has been tremendous."
Mrs Assad was born to Syrian parents in London and educated at Queens College, a private girls school, and Kings College London, where she graduated with a degree in computer science in 1996. She has largely kept out of the spotlight since the outbreak of war in 2011. She is subject to EU sanctions that make it illegal to render her economic assistance and ban her from travelling in the EU with the exception of the UK, because she holds British nationality.
In her first television interview in eight years, the mother-of-three also hit out at the West for what she called double standards in coverage of the war, saying media coverage of child casualties differed "depending on the loyalties of their parents".
Mrs Assad said she used her position as first lady to organise assistance for displaced people, wounded Syrian army soldiers, and the families of "martyrs" who have died in the war.
"From my perspective it was never a question of preference. I stood by him because my conviction did not tell me otherwise," she said when asked why she had stayed in Damascus with Mr Assad. "Western organisations have chosen to solely focus on refugees and those in rebel-held areas, whereas the vast majority of people who have been displaced are spread across the rest of the country," she said.
Meanwhile, Russian and Syrian regime aircraft halted their bombardment of Aleppo yesterday.
The abrupt stop came ahead of an eight-hour ceasefire that Russia unilaterally announced for tomorrow (Thursday), saying that the pause would allow for civilians and rebel fighters to leave the city.
But Western diplomats suggested it was designed to deflect criticism ahead of Vladimir Putin's visit to Berlin today. Gareth Bayley, the UK's special representative on Syria, said the proposed eight-hour ceasefire was "inadequate" and would not be enough time for the UN to deliver aid to the 275,000 people trapped by the regime's siege.
Asma Al-Assad, the Syrian president's British-born wife, has said she turned down offers of financial security and safety for her children if she fled the war-torn country. Mrs Assad, a former investment banker who married Mr Assad in 2000, said the deals were "stupid" attempts "undermine" her husband, in rare public comments to a Russian broadcaster. "I've been here since the beginning and I never thought of being anywhere else at all," Mrs Assad, 41, told Russia's state-owned Rossiya 24 channel in an interview broadcast yesterday (Tuesday). She said: "Yes I was offered the opportunity to leave Syria or rather to run from Syria. These offers included guarantees of safety and protection for my children and even financial security. It doesn't take a genius to know what these people were really after. It was a deliberate attempt to shatter people's confidence in their president.". She said Western sanctions had impacted ordinary Syrians in a similar manner to those against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s. She also praised Moscow's "noble" intervention and economic assistance to the country. "The situation would have been much much harder if it had not been Syria's true friends," she said. "Russia has been tremendous." Mrs Assad was born to Syrian parents in London and educated at Queens College, a private girls school, and Kings College London, where she graduated with a degree in computer science in 1996. She has largely kept out of the spotlight since the outbreak of war in 2011. She is subject to EU sanctions that make it illegal to render her economic assistance and ban her from travelling in the EU with the exception of the UK, because she holds British nationality. In her first television interview in eight years, the mother-of-three also hit out at the West for what she called double standards in coverage of the war, saying media coverage of child casualties differed "depending on the loyalties of their parents". Mrs Assad said she used her position as first lady to organise assistance for displaced people, wounded Syrian army soldiers, and the families of "martyrs" who have died in the war. "From my perspective it was never a question of preference. I stood by him because my conviction did not tell me otherwise," she said when asked why she had stayed in Damascus with Mr Assad. "Western organisations have chosen to solely focus on refugees and those in rebel-held areas, whereas the vast majority of people who have been displaced are spread across the rest of the country," she said. Meanwhile, Russian and Syrian regime aircraft halted their bombardment of Aleppo yesterday. The abrupt stop came ahead of an eight-hour ceasefire that Russia unilaterally announced for tomorrow (Thursday), saying that the pause would allow for civilians and rebel fighters to leave the city. But Western diplomats suggested it was designed to deflect criticism ahead of Vladimir Putin's visit to Berlin today. Gareth Bayley, the UK's special representative on Syria, said the proposed eight-hour ceasefire was "inadequate" and would not be enough time for the UN to deliver aid to the 275,000 people trapped by the regime's siege.
By The Daily Telegraph
Back in 2003, during the military campaign to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, coalition commanders had 160,000 highly-trained American and British troops at their disposal, as well as contingents of Australians and Poles.
The invasion of Iraq is now widely regarded as a political catastrophe, not least because of the controversy around the coalition's failure to find Saddam's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the highly effective anti-war propaganda effort mounted by groups such as Jeremy Corbyn's Stop the War.
Consequently, people tend to overlook the fact that the military campaign per se - or Operation Iraqi Freedom as the Pentagon dubbed it - was a brilliant success, managing to achieve its primary objective of overthrowing Saddam's regime within the space of just 21 days while incurring minimum casualties.
Much of the military equipment used to depose Saddam can now be seen in action on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq's second city, the long-awaited campaign to reclaim which from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) the Iraqi government has just launched. US-made Abrams tanks and artillery pieces are pounding Isil positions in preparation for the ground offensive to dislodge an estimated 5,000 Isil fighters from their strongholds in the city centre.
The big difference between the coalition's successful Iraq campaign in 2003 and today's planned offensive against Mosul is that, this time, the fighting on the ground will mainly be conducted by local troops, rather than forces deployed by Western countries.
British and American troops may have fought with bravery and distinction during the recent conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but the eventual unpopularity of these conflicts in the eyes of the public on both sides of the Atlantic means that very few of today's politicians are prepared to consider deploying ground forces overseas.
Thus, so far as the campaign to defeat Isil is concerned, Western involvement will be limited to providing air support, with RAF Typhoon and Tornado fighters making a significant contribution to the coalition's assault on Isil positions, as are Reaper drones, and elite special forces embedded within both Kurdish Peshmerga and conventional Iraqi army units.
Meanwhile an estimated 10,000 American and British military advisers have been instrumental in developing Iraq's armed forces into an effective fighting machine after the humiliating rout they suffered two years ago when Isil first stormed into Iraq, and the majority of Iraqi troops simply abandoned their weapons and fled.
It remains to be seen how effective these newly constituted Iraqi forces will be in tackling a determined and resourceful enemy like Isil. But the fact that it will be Iraqi, not Western, troops doing the lion's share of the fighting represents a significant change in our approach to fighting Islamist militants - one that could have a profound bearing on how we tackle other security challenges, such as targeting Isil in Syria and establishing political stability in Libya.
If, as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson remarked at the weekend, there is at present "a lack of political appetite in most European capitals" for military intervention, then it is vital that we find trusted proxies we can work with to achieve a common goal - in this case, liberating Mosul and destroying Isil's power base in Iraq.
It is easy to understand the appeal this kind of military marriage of convenience has for most Western politicians. It enables them to claim they are taking effective action to deal with a given problem while relieving them from the obligation to commit their own ground forces to counter a possible threat to national security.
But while the current political trend is to outsource the grunt work of military operations to regional allies like the Kurds and the Iraqis, ministers need to understand the price they pay is that they have less control over delivering the final outcome.
From day one back in 2003, coalition commanders worked directly to their political masters in London and Washington and understood fully that it was their duty to achieve their government's stated objectives.
Our attempts to work with proxies in countries like Libya and Syria, by contrast, have been less successful, not least because our so-called allies have been more interested in pursuing their own agendas. In Libya, many of the anti-Gaddafi militias we supported morphed into anti-Western Islamist factions, while in Syria Western-backed groups are more interested in fighting each other than Assad.
And it is entirely feasible we could experience similar difficulties once the fighting for Mosul is over - for example, the Kurds make no secret of their desire to use land captured from Isil to create their own state.
So we need to be clear. The fact that any Western military intervention is now seen as political suicide comes at a heavy price. It means we have no other option than to work with proxies, and simply hope they share the same goals of tackling our enemies.
Back in 2003, during the military campaign to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, coalition commanders had 160,000 highly-trained American and British troops at their disposal, as well as contingents of Australians and Poles. The invasion of Iraq is now widely regarded as a political catastrophe, not least because of the controversy around the coalition's failure to find Saddam's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the highly effective anti-war propaganda effort mounted by groups such as Jeremy Corbyn's Stop the War. Consequently, people tend to overlook the fact that the military campaign per se - or Operation Iraqi Freedom as the Pentagon dubbed it - was a brilliant success, managing to achieve its primary objective of overthrowing Saddam's regime within the space of just 21 days while incurring minimum casualties. Much of the military equipment used to depose Saddam can now be seen in action on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq's second city, the long-awaited campaign to reclaim which from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) the Iraqi government has just launched. US-made Abrams tanks and artillery pieces are pounding Isil positions in preparation for the ground offensive to dislodge an estimated 5,000 Isil fighters from their strongholds in the city centre. The big difference between the coalition's successful Iraq campaign in 2003 and today's planned offensive against Mosul is that, this time, the fighting on the ground will mainly be conducted by local troops, rather than forces deployed by Western countries. British and American troops may have fought with bravery and distinction during the recent conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but the eventual unpopularity of these conflicts in the eyes of the public on both sides of the Atlantic means that very few of today's politicians are prepared to consider deploying ground forces overseas. Thus, so far as the campaign to defeat Isil is concerned, Western involvement will be limited to providing air support, with RAF Typhoon and Tornado fighters making a significant contribution to the coalition's assault on Isil positions, as are Reaper drones, and elite special forces embedded within both Kurdish Peshmerga and conventional Iraqi army units. Meanwhile an estimated 10,000 American and British military advisers have been instrumental in developing Iraq's armed forces into an effective fighting machine after the humiliating rout they suffered two years ago when Isil first stormed into Iraq, and the majority of Iraqi troops simply abandoned their weapons and fled. It remains to be seen how effective these newly constituted Iraqi forces will be in tackling a determined and resourceful enemy like Isil. But the fact that it will be Iraqi, not Western, troops doing the lion's share of the fighting represents a significant change in our approach to fighting Islamist militants - one that could have a profound bearing on how we tackle other security challenges, such as targeting Isil in Syria and establishing political stability in Libya. If, as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson remarked at the weekend, there is at present "a lack of political appetite in most European capitals" for military intervention, then it is vital that we find trusted proxies we can work with to achieve a common goal - in this case, liberating Mosul and destroying Isil's power base in Iraq. It is easy to understand the appeal this kind of military marriage of convenience has for most Western politicians. It enables them to claim they are taking effective action to deal with a given problem while relieving them from the obligation to commit their own ground forces to counter a possible threat to national security. But while the current political trend is to outsource the grunt work of military operations to regional allies like the Kurds and the Iraqis, ministers need to understand the price they pay is that they have less control over delivering the final outcome. From day one back in 2003, coalition commanders worked directly to their political masters in London and Washington and understood fully that it was their duty to achieve their government's stated objectives. Our attempts to work with proxies in countries like Libya and Syria, by contrast, have been less successful, not least because our so-called allies have been more interested in pursuing their own agendas. In Libya, many of the anti-Gaddafi militias we supported morphed into anti-Western Islamist factions, while in Syria Western-backed groups are more interested in fighting each other than Assad. And it is entirely feasible we could experience similar difficulties once the fighting for Mosul is over - for example, the Kurds make no secret of their desire to use land captured from Isil to create their own state. So we need to be clear. The fact that any Western military intervention is now seen as political suicide comes at a heavy price. It means we have no other option than to work with proxies, and simply hope they share the same goals of tackling our enemies.
October 21st is the feast day of Blessed Karl I, the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary; this year marks the centenary of his accession to the throne on November 21st. He was beatified by Pope St John Paul II in 2004; a second miracle has been attributed to his intercession, a miraculous healing which led to the conversion of the person healed. His feast day is kept not on the day of his death, April 1st, but rather, on the day of his marriage to Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, which took place in 1911; her cause for canonization was introduced in December of 2009. It is well-known story about the Bl. Karl that he said to his wife on the day after their wedding, Now, we must help each other to get to Heaven. website has been created by the Emperor Karl League of Prayer (screen capture below), which has a great deal of useful information about the Blessed, his life and the cause for his canonization. It also has a section listing a number of Masses for his feast , including a Pontifical Mass which Bishop Athanasius Schneider will celebrate in Washington D.C., at church of St Mary Mother of God. The particular mission of the League is to pray for peace throughout the world, a mission of the greatest importance in these troubling times.
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Tom Kacich is a columnist and the author of Tom's Mailbag at The News-Gazette. His column appears Sundays. His email is tkacich@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@tkacich).
MIT neuroscientists have discovered that brain cells called glial cells play a critical role in controlling appetite and feeding behavior. In a study of mice, the researchers found that activating these cells stimulates overeating, and that when the cells are suppressed, appetite is also suppressed.
The findings could offer scientists a new target for developing drugs against obesity and other appetite-related disorders, the researchers say. The study is also the latest in recent years to implicate glial cells in important brain functions. Until about 10 years ago, glial cells were believed to play more of a supporting role for neurons.
"In the last few years, abnormal glial cell activities have been strongly implicated in neurodegenerative disorders. There is more and more evidence to point to the importance of glial cells in modulating neuronal function and in mediating brain disorders," says Guoping Feng, the James W. and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience. Feng is also a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute.
Feng is one of the senior authors of the study, which appears in the Oct. 18 edition of the journal eLife. The other senior author is Weiping Han, head of the Laboratory of Metabolic Medicine at the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium in Singapore. Naiyan Chen, a postdoc at the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium and the McGovern Institute, is the lead author.
Turning on appetite
It has long been known that the hypothalamus, an almond-sized structure located deep within the brain, controls appetite as well as energy expenditure, body temperature, and circadian rhythms including sleep cycles. While performing studies on glial cells in other parts of the brain, Chen noticed that the hypothalamus also appeared to have a lot of glial cell activity.
"I was very curious at that point what glial cells would be doing in the hypothalamus, since glial cells have been shown in other brain areas to have an influence on regulation of neuronal function," she says.
Within the hypothalamus, scientists have identified two key groups of neurons that regulate appetite, known as AgRP neurons and POMC neurons. AgRP neurons stimulate feeding, while POMC neurons suppress appetite.
Until recently it has been difficult to study the role of glial cells in controlling appetite or any other brain function, because scientists haven't developed many techniques for silencing or stimulating these cells, as they have for neurons. Glial cells, which make up about half of the cells in the brain, have many supporting roles, including cushioning neurons and helping them form connections with one another.
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In this study, the research team used a new technique developed at the University of North Carolina to study a type of glial cell known as an astrocyte. Using this strategy, researchers can engineer specific cells to produce a surface receptor that binds to a chemical compound known as CNO, a derivative of clozapine. Then, when CNO is given, it activates the glial cells.
The MIT team found that turning on astrocyte activity with just a single dose of CNO had a significant effect on feeding behavior.
"When we gave the compound that specifically activated the receptors, we saw a robust increase in feeding," Chen says. "Mice are not known to eat very much in the daytime, but when we gave drugs to these animals that express a particular receptor, they were eating a lot."
The researchers also found that in the short term (three days), the mice did not gain extra weight, even though they were eating more.
"This raises the possibility that glial cells may also be modulating neurons that control energy expenditures, to compensate for the increased food intake," Chen says. "They might have multiple neuronal partners and modulate multiple energy homeostasis functions all at the same time."
When the researchers silenced activity in the astrocytes, they found that the mice ate less than normal.
Unknown interactions
Still unknown is how the astrocytes exert their effects on neurons. Some recent studies have suggested that glial cells can secrete chemical messengers such as glutamate and ATP; if so, these "gliotransmitters" could influence neuron activity.
Another hypothesis is that instead of secreting chemicals, astrocytes exert their effects by controlling the uptake of neurotransmitters from the space surrounding neurons, thereby affecting neuron activity indirectly.
Feng now plans to develop new research tools that could help scientists learn more about astrocyte-neuron interactions and how astrocytes contribute to modulation of appetite and feeding. He also hopes to learn more about whether there are different types of astrocytes that may contribute differently to feeding behavior, especially abnormal behavior.
"We really know very little about how astrocytes contribute to the modulation of appetite, eating, and metabolism," he says. "In the future, dissecting out these functional difference will be critical for our understanding of these disorders."
Most women who used an experimental vaginal ring for HIV prevention report that the physical act of sex was largely unaffected by using the product, which is inserted monthly for continuous wear. This finding is among several insights gleaned about experiences of women who used the ring during the ASPIRE study, also known as MTN-020, announced today at the HIV Research for Prevention (HIVR4P) meeting in Chicago.
ASPIRE evaluated whether the ring, which continuously releases the anti-HIV drug dapivirine, could safely reduce HIV infection among 2,629 women aged 18-45 years living in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Among participants randomized to receive the dapivirine ring, risk of HIV infection fell by 27 percent. A further analysis found that the ring reduced the risk of HIV infection by at least 56 percent among women who used it with greater frequency, and up to 75 percent or higher among those who used it consistently. Further exploration of the ring's clinical potential began in July 2016 through the large-scale HOPE (HIV Open-Label Prevention Extension) study, also known as MTN-025. ASPIRE, HOPE and their ancillary studies were primarily funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The nonprofit International Partnership for Microbicides developed the dapivirine ring and supplied it for the studies.
"Women need an HIV prevention modality that offers safe, effective protection and is practical for use in their daily lives," said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "Women enrolled in the MTN-020/ASPIRE study reported that the experimental vaginal ring generally did not interfere with sexual intercourse, which is an encouraging sign that this product could appeal to a larger group of women at risk for HIV infection."
The ASPIRE study staff interviewed 214 participants who used the ring to obtain qualitative data about their sexual experiences during the trial. A team led by Nicole Laborde, Ph.D., M.P.H., of RTI International in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, analyzed the participant responses. While most of these women found that the ring did not negatively affect the physical act of sex, some women said they were continually preoccupied with how their partners would react if they felt or discovered the ring. To address this issue, some women removed the ring before sex, a practice not recommended by study investigators. Other women limited sexual activities that they believed might heighten their partners' awareness of the ring, such as certain sexual positions and receptive oral or digital sex.
Some women reported greater sexual satisfaction partially due to perceived protection provided by the ring. Other women reported diminished sexual pleasure associated with the worry that their male partners would notice the ring during sex.
Additional analyses of the ASPIRE data revealed other patterns of experience among study participants. Because women who face intimate partner violence and other social harms more often find it difficult to adhere to the clinically proven once-daily antiretroviral drug Truvada as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, researchers investigated the connection between consistent use of the ring and these issues. While fewer than 5 percent of all ASPIRE study participants reported incidents of intimate partner-related violence or other social harms, women who did report violence or social harm within a month of the interview were nearly 2.5 times more likely to have low adherence to the ring. Younger age at enrollment, having a new primary partner and not disclosing study participation or ring use to the primary partner were significantly associated with reporting social harms. These findings, reported by a team led by Thesla Palanee-Phillips, M.Med.Sci, Ph.D., M.Sc., at the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa, indicate that more research is needed to determine strategies to mitigate low adherence in the context of intimate partner violence and other social harms in future studies of female-controlled prevention methods.
The potential for women to suffer social harm and violence by sexual partners, along with other qualitative data from HIV prevention studies, suggest that some women may prefer methods of HIV protection undetectable by sexual partners. Additional new data revealed that a majority of women--64 percent--disclosed the use of the ring to their male partners at the outset of the study, while 13 percent of study participants never revealed that they were using the ring. The investigators, led by Lulu Nair, M.B.Ch.B., M.P.H., of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town, found that neither disclosing nor concealing use of the ring affected women's adherence to the product.
"Sub-Saharan African women have a broad range of sexual experiences and relationship dynamics, and we are learning more about how these diverse behaviors and circumstances influence the use of the ring," said Dr. Palanee-Phillips, director of Network trials at the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa and protocol co-chair on the ASPIRE study. "While we have found that most women do disclose ring use to their primary partners, it is reassuring that adherence is not affected for the significant minority of women who choose to use it more discreetly."
Researchers led by Ariane van der Straten, Ph.D., M.P.H., of RTI International also found that women's concerns about using an experimental vaginal ring for HIV prevention decreased significantly over the course of the study. At clinical visits, women were asked, "How worried are you about having a vaginal ring inside you every day for at least a year?" While 29 percent of women reported this concern at the start of the study, only 4 percent of participants did so at their final follow-up clinic visit. Specific concerns related to use, health, hygiene, sexual enjoyment and social approval also decreased significantly between the start and the end of the study.
As research on the ring continues in the HOPE study, investigators will collect both quantitative and qualitative data from women at risk for HIV infection. All participants in HOPE will receive access to a package of HIV prevention services, including condoms, partner testing and counseling, and will be able to stay in the study regardless of whether or not they choose to accept the ring after their initial clinic visit. The study investigators believe this approach will shed light on the critical questions of whether participants like using the ring, and why.
Launch of Hemostasis Clip Advances Innovation within the Field of Endoscopy
Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) today announced the launch of the Resolution 360 Clip, a novel technology designed to improve hemostatic clipping by providing physicians controlled rotation designed for more accurate clip placement. Boston Scientific will introduce the clip at the annual United European Gastroenterology Week (UEGW) in Vienna, Austria, and at the American College of Gastroenterology annual meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Hemostatic clipping is used in a number of endoscopy procedures of the upper and lower gastrointestinal (GI) tract to stop and help prevent bleeding associated with conditions including peptic ulcers, polyps removed during a colonoscopy and diverticulosis of the colon. There are more than 240,000 incidences of GI bleeding in the U.S. each year and worldwide a 10 percent mortality rate is associated with upper and lower GI bleeds. A retrospective study demonstrated that prophylactic clipping can reduce the risk of bleeding from a 9.8 percent to 1.7 percent leading to a reduction in adverse events associated with GI bleeding.
The Resolution 360 Clip gives me the unique advantage of controlling the movement and placement of the clip while also maneuvering the scope during the clipping procedure, said David L. Carr-Locke, MD, FRCP, FASGE, chief, Division of Digestive Diseases, Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, NY. The ability to have complete control can help improve the accuracy of clip placement and the speed of the procedure particularly in complex cases.
The device is constructed using a multi-wire braided catheter that is designed to enable the healthcare professional to rotate the device in small, controlled movements in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions, enabling the clip to be maneuvered to the target area and more accurately placed at the site of a GI bleed or a potential GI bleed. Physicians at the two conferences will have the opportunity to use the Resolution 360 Clip in a simulator to experience the device first-hand.
We are always striving to improve our technology so that physicians have the tools they need to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal disease more easily and effectively, said Art Butcher, senior vice president and president, endoscopy. Building on the legacy Resolution Clip and its clinically proven technology, the expanded portfolio now offers physicians more hemostatic clipping options to consider in different clinical situations and patient anatomies.
Episona Inc., an epigenetics data company focused on improving outcomes in reproductive health, announced today the launch of Seed, an innovative new male fertility test, at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Scientific Congress& Expo. Seedis the first product on the market to evaluate epigenetic changes on DNA to predict the risk for male factorinfertility and poor embryo development, offering physicians and their patients a valuable new tool for personalizing fertility treatment and increasing the chances of pregnancy sooner and more cost effectively.
"Physicians have long relied on the traditional semen analysis as the sole option for determining the male's role in fertility," said Episona President and CEO Alan Horsager,Ph.D. "While semen analyses provide valuable information on sperm count, motility and morphology, they offer little insight into the more complex factors related to male fertility or into the male's role in embryo development. By combining the latest advances in science and technology, Seed provides patientswith previously missing information about their fertility and we believe this has the potential to transform fertility care."
Seed is a physician-ordered test offered in a simple fertility kit for use at home or in a fertility clinic. Samples are sent to a CLIA-certified lab for analysis. Within two weeks physicians receive a detailed two-part interactive report on the patients risk of male factor infertility and poor embryo development. Male factor risk can help identify the severity of a patients case, helping both the physician and patient understand whether they should spend time and money pursing less invasive procedures such as intrauterine insemination (IUI) or move directly to in vitro fertilization (IVF). By analyzing sperms role in embryo development, Seed results can help identify problems that might occur with IVF and provide some answers if an IVF cycle fails or, in the case of seeking a donor, whether a male or female donor would be preferred.
"Male factors contribute to about half of the cases of infertility in couples, yet testingoptions for men have been woefully lacking. What's more, about a quarter of infertility cases are unexplainable," said Dr. Richard T. Scott, Jr., a founding partner at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey, and an Episona scientific advisory board member. "Seed has the potential to provide my patients with the information needed to better guide their course of treatment. I look forward to bringing this new test to my practice and to helping my patients become pregnant sooner."
Seed's novel approach is based on the science of epigenetics. Epigenetics examines external or environmental factors such as aging, smoking, obesity, environmental exposure or even exercise thatcan cause changes to the layer on top of the DNA known as the epigenome. These modifications to the DNA alter how genes are expressed, or read, which in turn can impact how genes function. Episona focuses specifically on DNA methylationon the epigenome by looking at the differences in methylation between known fertile sperm DNA and infertile sperm DNA. Using microarrays from Illumina Inc., Seed examines over 480,000 regions on sperm DNA for abnormal methylation at different gene sites important to fertility. A relative risk is then assigned to each abnormal location for either male factor infertility or poor embryo development.
"The Seed test uses epigenetics, which allows us to look much more deeply at potential problems associated with impaired fertility in men,said Dr. Paul Turek, an internationally known leader in mens reproductive health and an Episona's scientific advisory board member.
Episona has evaluated Seed in two clinical studies, with both demonstrating clear correlations between epigenetic abnormalities and male factor infertility. The first was a retrospective study involving 127 IVF patients and 36 known-fertile controls. The results of this study were published in Fertility & Sterility in August 2015. The second study was prospective and involved more than 200 patients from multiple clinical centers and 96 know-fertile controls. Episona intends to submit these study results for publication in a peer-reviewed journal early next year.
Seed, Episona's first commercial product, is initially being launched in the United States as a laboratory-developed test. Episona estimates there are more than 1.2 million couples seeking fertility care each year in the United States alone. The worldwide fertility market is estimated at $30-40 billion by Harris Williams & Co.
Source: https://www.episona.com/
An international group of population health experts is calling for sharing of health data to be the norm if precision health agendas are to succeed and build sustainable health systems.
Key messages
Health systems are failing citizens and need radical revamp
Success of precision health agenda hinges on data and data sharing
The silos between clinical and public health practice and between clinical practice and research must be broken down
Health systems are not keeping up with technology
The signatories from UK, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Canada and the United States note that people and patients across the world are being let down by the slow, evolutionary pace of change in health systems that fails to keep pace with massive advances in digital and genome-based technologies.
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In their statement Paths to precision health: act now published today, the signatories urge for active leadership to address this major obstacle to the success of precision health agendas and to harness new technologies to drive the publics participation in its health.
Gathering in Cambridge, UK, at a summit hosted by Dr Ron Zimmern (Chairman, PHG Foundation), the signatories urged governments to take revolutionary and disruptive action that will make sharing personal health data an accepted civic responsibility for all citizens.
Paths to precision health: act now
The vision set out in the statement is for a new reciprocal model for health in which the silos between public health and clinical medicine are removed and the emphasis is on prevention and health over treatment and cure. In this model citizens will be expected to pay forward by contributing their genetic and medical data as an investment in the countrys path to health.
Specifically, Paths to precision health: act now urges the freeing of data and engagement of citizens to make available to researchers and clinicians standardised, comprehensive and diverse health-related data as a matter of urgency.
Dr Ron Zimmern, Chair, PHG Foundation said:
Data and information will be critical to the development of precision healthcare. Sharing data as the norm and ensuring that the entire health system works together will require a radical reorganisation. Evolutionary change will not suffice. We must embrace a more radical agenda to make these changes happen.
Source: http://www.phgfoundation.org/
It is thought that more than 28 million British people across the United Kingdom suffer with chronic pain, with 8 million of those reporting pain that is moderately to severely disabling. Despite this, many patients find themselves with pain that is not well-managed; many are prescribed high strength opioids, such as morphine, to combat the discomfort or reach out for over the counter painkillers, unaware that many are opioid-based.
The Chronic Pain Policy Coalition (CPPC) have come together with John Cryer MP after the findings of a health survey in September confirmed that over 40% of British adults had consumed over-the-counter opioid painkillers for three consecutive days or longer, going against NICE guidelines. The study showed 64% of respondents have taken commonly available painkillers, but worryingly over half of them are unaware that these drugs contain potentially addictive opioids. This result is compounded by the fact that 41% did not know the signs or symptoms of opioid painkiller addiction.
Mr Cryer said:
I have recently met with the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition and discussed the vital need for improved education and awareness surrounding the risks of opioid painkiller addiction. I was concerned to learn that millions of people may not be following guidance on the use of over the counter painkillers and unaware that these drugs contain potentially addictive opioids.
In light of this, the CPPC and TalkHealth, alongside John Cryer MPs campaign, are launching a new survey to investigate just how many people who suffer with chronic pain take pain management medications and are being reviewed by their doctor annually.
Patients will be asked questions including what kinds of medication they are using, how their GP assists with managing their pain (if at all), and whether they are regularly checked.
Mr Cryer added:
There is a great deal of work to be done in order to ensure we as patients receive advice on our best treatment options, enabling us to return to a life no longer gripped by opioid addiction. I will be working with the CPPC to raise these serious concerns in Parliament and to work with local GPs, NICE, and Department of Health to improve patient education and awareness surrounding the risks of opioid addiction. With the aim to increase the number of people suffering from chronic pain who receive an annual check (both physical and mental), as well as a care plan to help combat the day-to-day problems they face.
The Chronic Pain Policy Coalition brings together a wide range of professional bodies, patient organisations, parliamentarians and industry representatives, with one purpose - to work together to improve the lives of people living with pain and their families.
A pioneering magnetic surgical device that eliminates exposure to radioactive materials and offers a less invasive, more flexible alternative for breast cancer surgery will be showcased in Texas next week (15th 21st October 2016)as part of a British Medtech mission.
Co-invented by University of Houston physicist, Prof.AudriusBrazdeikis and British company,Endomag, the pioneering device is just one of a group of British healthcare technologies being highlighted in the State.
Clinical leaders at the Baylor College of Medicine, Harris Country Hospital, Biomed SA and the US Military are amongstthe organisations that will welcome the British visitors, with the aim of developing long term relationships.
It is hoped that the unique MedTech mission may result in cutting-edge British medical technologies being used byclinicians to improve patient care across Texas.
The University of Houston physicist, Prof.Brazdeikis, said:
The technology is a great example of Britain and Texas working together to improve patient care. The system is extremely innovative and can help surgeons locate breast cancer tumours before they can even be felt. The device received FDA approval in April this year and, with the support of this British mission, we expect it will be used by surgeons in Houston very soon.
The visit has been arranged by the UKs medical technology industry body, the Association of British Healthcare Industries (ABHI) and the UKs Department for International Trade (DIT).
The UK delegation is excited to know more about Texan world-class hospitalsand medical centres, whichcontain such strength and depth in the health and lifesciences sectors. They are keen to collaborate and foster new relationships. The visit is part of a longer term programme of engagement.
Speaking about the visit,Baylor College of Medicines Stuart Corr, Director of Technology Development, said:
Texas and the UK have a successful and collaborative history, sharing many core values and goals. We believe that by building strong relationships with the United Kingdom, whose expertise and reputation in health and life sciences is world class,together we canimprove patient outcomes, efficiency, and productivity across both of our health systems. These are essential elements of a successful, happy, and healthy society.
From the ground-breaking invention of the hip replacement treatment and the use of ultrasound in modern medicine, to the development of the CT scanner and development of the first multi-articulated prosthetic hand, Britain has a well-deserved international reputation for turning innovative ideas into pioneering medical breakthroughs.
Renowned for its creativity, research, and outstanding talent, Britain has come to Texas, to share, learn and find new partners.
The delegation members include:
Alesi Surgical Limited - have developed Ultravision that manages the surgical plume created by energy-based instruments during laparoscopic surgery.
- have developed Ultravision that manages the surgical plume created by energy-based instruments during laparoscopic surgery. Endomag - pioneer in the use of magnetism for minimally invasive surgical guidance.
- pioneer in the use of magnetism for minimally invasive surgical guidance. Forte Medical - delivers 98.5% accurate urine specimens.
- delivers 98.5% accurate urine specimens. FutureNova Limited - specialises in Apple medical accessory design.
- specialises in Apple medical accessory design. Griffiths and Nielson Ltd the UK market leader in DVT prevention.
the UK market leader in DVT prevention. Lumeon Ltd a leadingdigital health company.
a leadingdigital health company. Mediplus aninnovator in the areas of anaesthesia, urology, urodynamics, gynaecology and gastroenterology.
aninnovator in the areas of anaesthesia, urology, urodynamics, gynaecology and gastroenterology. myrecovery - mobile application that improves patient experience and outcomes from elective orthopaedic surgery.
- mobile application that improves patient experience and outcomes from elective orthopaedic surgery. OBS Medical Limited - develops predictive algorithms for identifying critical instabilities in acute settings.
- develops predictive algorithms for identifying critical instabilities in acute settings. Owen Mumford Inc - global manufacturer with over 60 years expertise in the development of medical devices.
- global manufacturer with over 60 years expertise in the development of medical devices. Timesco Healthcare Ltd a manufacturer of medical devices for anaesthesia, surgery, podiatry and primary care.
a manufacturer of medical devices for anaesthesia, surgery, podiatry and primary care. The Association of British Healthcare Industries (ABHI) - the UKs medical technology industry body.
- the UKs medical technology industry body. The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) - The FCO promotes the United Kingdom's interests overseas, supporting UK citizens and businesses around the globe.
- The FCO promotes the United Kingdom's interests overseas, supporting UK citizens and businesses around the globe. Department for International Trade (DIT)-works with UK based businesses to ensure their success in international markets through exports.
Source: http://www.abhi.org.uk/
An interview with Dr Rahul Kapur conducted by April Cashin-Garbutt, MA (Cantab)
insights from industry Dr. Rahul Kapur Head of Medical Affairs,
Novo Nordisk, UK and Ireland
What are the main signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia (hypos)?
Hypoglycemia, or hypos, are the result of blood glucose levels falling too low (less than 4mmol/l).
The symptoms and severity of hypoglycemia can differ for each patient. The symptoms can range from headaches, dizziness, irritability, hunger to difficulty concentrating or blurred vision, and symptoms can escalate with the severity of hypoglycemia to disorientation, loss of consciousness and even, in the most extreme cases, death.
Hypoglycemia can also happen at night (nocturnal hypos), these can be especially scary for patients as they may have symptoms such as intense nightmares, waking with cold sweats, or in very severe instances, not wake up at all.
Why are the symptoms of a hypo often misinterpreted?
For people with diabetes, some of the symptoms in relation to mild hypoglycemia, such as hunger, sweating, irritability or headaches for example, can often be misinterpreted as they can often manifest for many other reasons.
There have been some more severe cases, whereby people with diabetes have become very disoriented, and have been mistaken by people for being drunk and stumbling in the street.
It is important that people with diabetes regularly check their blood sugar levels to ensure that any time that they feel the symptoms, they can treat accordingly if it is an episode of hypoglycemia.
This is one of the reasons behind the development of Hypo Hub; so that people with diabetes and those around them can better interpret the symptoms as being as a result of hypoglycemia and discuss this with their doctor or nurse.
What can people with diabetes do to increase their ability to recognize hypos and better manage them?
It is essential for patients to regularly measure their blood glucose, no matter what diabetes treatment they are on, but especially with insulin treatment where hypoglycemia is a common complication. Its also important to ensure you have quick access to treatment should you experience a hypo, such as a sugary drink or some other fast acting carbohydrate.
If patients are experiencing hypoglycemia, it is also important to have a conversation with your doctor or nurse on your next visit. As part of Hypo Hub, we have developed a hypo journal for patients to download in order to do this as we believe its vital for patients and healthcare professionals to talk about hypos in every consultation.
How can talking to a doctor or nurse about hypos help?
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There has been a lot of research done that shows that hypos are still going unreported by patients. It is very important for both sides to discuss hypoglycemia at every appointment in order for patients to better recognize hypoglycemia, but also for the healthcare professional team to be able to advise and help the patient to better manage their hypos through lifestyle and treatment options.
By using the hypo journal from the Novo Nordisk Hypo Hub, it provides a basis for that conversation with a journal that will allow patients to track hypos as they happen, and be able to remember them, and the circumstances around them in their appointment.
What long term impact can hypos have?
One of the more important complications is hypoglycemia (hypo) unawareness, which is when patients have repeated recurrent hypoglycemia and over time they stop experiencing the symptoms that inform them that they are having a hypo. This is very serious as patients could be experiencing dangerously low blood sugar which could lead to loss of consciousness or worse and they would not be aware this was happening.
There has also been a lot of research looking at long term effects of hypoglycemia that look at the neurological and cardiovascular complications for patients.
How common are hypos?
Hypoglycemia is a very common complication of diabetes, but despite numerous pieces of research, patients do not always discuss their hypos with their healthcare professional team making it very difficult to quantify the frequency of hypos.
Can you please give an overview of Hypo Hub? What resources does this provide?
Hypo Hub is an online resource developed to provide practical information and guidance for people living with diabetes, and those around them, to better understand the often misunderstood signs and long term impact of hypoglycemia.
Hosted on Novonordisk.co.uk, Hypo Hub resources include a Hypo Journal (a diary to track and monitor hypos) as well as tips on how to recognize and treat a hypo.
Whats your vision for Hypo Hub?
Our vision is that this becomes a valuable resource where people with diabetes can visit to get the information and resources they need in order to get a better handle on hypoglycemia, whether they have experienced one episode, or recurrent episodes.
We want this site to be a tool to enable them to better manage their condition, by helping patients to monitor all episodes and to get patients and healthcare professionals to effectively discuss hypoglycemia in every appointment.
What do you think the future holds for people with diabetes?
This is a very interesting question to which there is no simple answer.
There is a lot of focus on diabetes as we know this is a growing condition, with more and more people being diagnosed, partly because people are getting access to better healthcare across the world, but also because our lifestyles are changing.
There is a lot of research constantly happening into better therapies, better ways of detecting and measuring blood glucose, better algorithms and ways of treating diabetes to improve the lives of patients.
At Novo Nordisk, we put the patient at the center of everything we do and, we will continue driving change to defeat diabetes.
Where can readers find more information?
You can find more information at:
and also through patient sites such as: Diabetes UK
About Rahul Kapur
Dr Rahul Kapur currently works as Head of Medical Affairs, for Novo Nordisk UK and Ireland, joining in 2015.
Prior to this, he held other medical roles for Novo Nordisk, based in Copenhagen, more recently as Senior Global Medical Advisor at Novo Nordisk A/S, following his role as a Research Scientist for Novo Nordisk in the department of stem cell biology at the Hagedorn Research Institute.
Dr Kapur has a specific research interest in hypoglycemia, stem cell biology and beta cell regeneration, for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
He has been the recipient of several awards and scholarships, including an Industrial PhD fellowship from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation and has been lead or contributing author to articles on the genetics of type 2 diabetes and beta cell regeneration as well as hypoglycemia clinical research in diabetes. Dr Kapur is a licensed Medical Doctor from the St Johns Medical College in India.
Trauma Innovation 2016 saw attendance figures nearly double as clinicians gathered to discuss future trauma care capabilities
Trauma Innovation welcomed a record number of military and civil healthcare professionals to Birmingham from 27 28 September. Over 700 delegates from the UK and overseas gathered to discuss the latest advances in combat casualty care and how civilian medical services can learn from the military on vital aspects of trauma care delivery.
Run in partnership with the Ministry of Defence department, Defence Medical Services, and Orthopaedic Research UK, the 2016 event brought the future of patient care to the fore, ensuring military and civil healthcare professionals are prepared for future incidents.
The conference focused on understanding the complex nature of blast and gunshot injuries and how current research into these types of injuries is enabling clinicians to manage wounds more effectively and reduce the overall long term impact on victims lives.
Conference delegates, including 95 VIPs from leading medical organisations in 14 countries, heard from military clinicians on topics such as vehicle blast mitigation strategies, virtual and augmented reality for simulated trauma care training and the development of body-worn sensors to provide real-time information on a soldiers condition.
Delegates were also able to see some of the latest innovations in trauma care capability. 32 exhibitors, an increase of 39% on the previous event, showcased high-tech medical kit, including a sim-dummy with life-like organs used for surgical training, currently being developed by Nottingham Trent University. Mobile ultrasound imaging via a smart device, developed by Philips, also attracted a lot of attention from visitors.
The events unprecedented attendance underpins a strong appetite within the healthcare sector to improve trauma care delivery, not only through developing capability, but through collaboration, education and integrating the military and civil medical communities where commonalities enable lessons to be learnt from each other.
Commenting on the event Colonel KingOri, Lead Consultant Neuro Surgeon, Kenya Defence Force (KDF), said:
Its an excellent event with very knowledgeable speakers. The presentations were clear and the exhibition highlighted a lot of great innovation. It was a fantastic event for us to attend and get an idea about the types of innovations we can take back to the KDF.
Professor Kay Fawcett OBE, Royal College of Nursing, added:
Events such as Trauma Innovation are invaluable as the integration of military and civilian trauma care is so important. Civilian care can learn from and apply the same principals as the military with both sides learning from one another.
Surgeon Captain Sarah Stapley, Defence Professor of Trauma and Orthopaedics, DMS, who produced this years conference programme, said:
The Defence Medical Services is thrilled with the recent success of the Trauma Innovation 2016 conference held in conjunction with Orthopaedic Research UK and Clarion Events. The conference maintained the momentum towards understanding and innovation in trauma care across all specialties, allowing cross-specialty, national and international networking, so that as a collective we may deliver improved outcomes for our Service personnel, carers and civilian population in the future.
A spokesperson from Orthofix, which provides reconstructive and regenerative orthopedic and spine solutions and exhibited at the event, commented:
Trauma Innovation 2016 was an excellent event that enabled us to have a number of valuable conversations with potential new customers. Were a leader in the NHS, but the military is a growth area for us. By exhibiting we have been given an excellent opportunity to meet key influencers in military healthcare, so from that perspective it was superb.
Trauma Innovation will next take place at DSEI 2017, 11-15 September 2017 at ExCeL London, UK.
The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is proud to announce that its annual congress will be held in Paris at the end of August 2019. The ESC Congress is the world's premier cardiovascular congress, attracting more than 30,000 healthcare professionals from more than 140 countries during a five-day scientific programme.
"We are delighted to be returning to Paris, a destination which contributed to one of the greatest successes of the ESC," said Chief Executive Officer of the ESC, Isabel Bardinet. "The ESC Congress 2011 that was held in 'The City of Light' will be remembered as one of the most productive and well attended ESC events. We hope that this future edition will encounter even greater success in this very attractive capital."
Bernard Jomier, Deputy Mayor of Paris for Health, Disability and relations with the APHP, welcomed this good news for Paris: "After the success of the 2011 edition, Paris is very honoured to once again host the annual congress of the ESC. It is an excellent opportunity to increase the efforts undertaken by the City of Paris for the prevention of cardiovascular disease risks."
This enthusiasm is also shared by Jean-Francois Martins, Deputy Mayor for Sport and Tourism, who added: "Paris will assure the best conditions to make this major event a success. Once again, Paris proves its capacity to host such world-class events and is going to intensify its work to attract more congresses in the years to come."
Pierre Schapira, Chairman of the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau, praises: "the daily work carried out by the Convention Bureau teams to increase the attractiveness of the destination, offering help and advice to planners of major events in the capital; work which has been crowned today with this good news."
Michel Dessolain, CEO of Viparis, is delighted to host the ESC Congress at Paris Convention Centre: "We are proud to contribute to the international appeal of Paris. Paris Convention Centre will provide an optimal setting for major events such as this one. This represents a real vote of confidence for the future Convention Centre of the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles, which will be the biggest in Europe."
A federal judge in San Francisco said he was "strongly inclined" to approve a record-setting $10.033 billion proposed buyback and compensation offer from Volkswagen AG for 475,000 owners of polluting 2.0-liter diesel vehicles.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said he will issue a final decision in the matter, stemming from Volkswagen's use of illegal software to defeat U.S. emissions testing, by Oct. 25.
Owners, lawyers and others appeared before Breyer during a hearing raising arguments about why they think Volkswagen has failed to offer enough money for buybacks or refunding for other out-of-pocket costs like extended warranties, maintenance and government licensing fees.
Breyer said he would consider the objections before deciding whether to recommend any changes, but added that it was "imperative" to act quickly.
VW has agreed to spend up to $16.7 billion to address its so-called U.S. "Dieselgate" costs.
Elizabeth Cabraser, lead counsel for the owners, said that while the buyback settlement was not perfect, it represents the best efforts of the government, Volkswagen, court and plaintiffs to reach a settlement that is "fair, reasonable and adequate."
Volkswagen lawyer Robert Giuffra defended the settlement, saying the goal was a deal that was "efficient and made sense."
Breyer also granted preliminary approval during the three-hour hearing to a $1.21 billion settlement with VW's U.S. brand dealers. Jeannine Ginivan, a VW spokeswoman, said it welcomed Breyer's "positive comments" at the hearing. "We thank our customers for their continued patience as the approval process moves forward," she said.
The German automaker has hired 900 people to handle the buybacks and will have a dedicated person in each dealership to oversee the repurchases that could begin next month if the judge approves the settlement. Volkswagen is also offering $5,100 to $10,000 in compensation in addition to the repurchase price.
Volkswagen may also offer 2.0-liter vehicle fixes if regulators approve. Under a timetable announced this summer, regulators could approve a fix for some 2015 VW diesel vehicles as early as next month but talks are still ongoing.
About 3,200 of the owners have opted out of the settlement, while nearly 340,000 have registered to take part.
Volkswagen still faces billions of dollars in potential fines from the U.S. Justice Department due to a criminal probe into VW's cheating scandal.
VW and U.S. regulators are in separate intense discussions over whether the automaker should agree to buy back 85,000 larger 3.0-liter Porsche, Audi and VW vehicles that also exceeded U.S. emission standards, and whether it should offer additional compensation to those owners. Breyer set a Nov. 3 hearing on the issue.
In addition to other settlement costs, VW will pay more than $600 million to 44 U.S. states, spend $2 billion on zero-emission vehicle promotion and infrastructure, and another $2.7 billion to offset diesel pollution. Breyer must still approve those settlements.
VW in September 2015 admitted using a sophisticated secret software in its cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests, with millions of vehicles worldwide affected. The cheating allowed VW's U.S. vehicles sold since 2009 to emit up to 40 times legally allowable pollution levels.
Hyderabad: Former billiards champion Michael Ferreira and three others were taken into custody by the Hyderabad police in connection with the multi-crore rupee QNET scam and brought to Hyderabad from Mumbai.
The Qnet scam is a Rs 400-crore alleged fraud by the multi-level-marketing company.
An FIR was registered against the three on Monday based on a complaint by eight people who had lodged complaints with the Central Crime Station (CCS) in 2016 against the owners of Hong Kong based QNet, the multilevel marketing company.
The complainants accused the four of duping them of several lakhs through various fraudulent investment schemes.
A Hyderabad Police team had last week submitted an application seeking their custody in connection with the case registered by them.
A Mumbai court then granted transit remand and the Hyderabad Police took them into custody.
"The four directors of the company, including Michael Ferreira, have been brought to Hyderabad from Mumbai on warrant," a senior police official attached to Central Crime Station (CCS), a wing of Hyderabad Police, said on Tuesday.
They have been brought here as part of further investigation and will be interrogated, he said.
The Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) had taken them into custody on September 30 this year in
connection with the QNet case.
The EOW has so far arrested 19 persons in the case.
QNet and its franchisee firms allegedly sold products such as magnetic disks with 'healing' properties, herbal medicines and holiday schemes. The company is accused of using the banned 'binary pyramid' model in its marketing schemes, apart from duping the investors.
The FIR was registered in Mumbai in August 2013 under the Prize, Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 and Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act.
Special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat had earlier told the court in Mumbai that Ferreira held 80 per cent shares in a franchisee of Hong Kong-based QNet.
QNet ran a 'Ponzi scheme', seeking investments between Rs 30,000 to Rs 7.5 lakh, the prosecutor had said, adding the investors never got the high returns they were promised.
The money earned by QNet was "laundered" and diverted out of the country, Gharat had told the court, adding that Ferreira's interrogation was necessary to find its "destination."
(With PTI inputs)
Bhubaneswar: Two days after the massive blaze at Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospitals in Bhubaneswar that claimed at least 20 lives and left many injured, CNN News 18 has accessed the RTI copy that exposes the lax attitude of private hospitals across Bhubaneswar over issues of fire safety.
Out of the 568 fully operational private hospitals and nursing homes in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Puri, only three corporate hospitals have statutory fire safety certificates, a note from the Director, Medical Education and Training (DMET), Odisha government read.
The name of SUM hospital was among the 99 percent hospitals that did not have fire safety certificate, according to the RTI copy that exposed the safety flaws of the hospitals across the state.
The FIR by the fire department revealed how some hospitals blatantly violated all possible safety norms, that form the prerequisite for the efficient functioning of any hospital.
SUM Hospital in Bhubaneswar flouted safety norms on multiple levels thereby putting to risk the lives of all patients in the hospital.
The hospital neither had a 25 thousand liter water tank nor a functional sprinkler system that could have been used to mitigate the disaster.
Lack of fire detection system, faulty alarm and no fire escape staircase added to the violation of norms.
Four officials, including the Superintendent, of a private hospital were arrested and four employees suspended on Tuesday, a day after the fire mishap. The arrests were made shortly after Odisha government filed two FIRs alleging negligence in conduct and safety against Sum Hospital.
Sources also told CNN-News18 on Tuesday that the hospital owner Manoj Nayak could be arrested soon.
Suspected to have started from a short circuit in the dialysis ward, fire spread quickly through the second floor of the SUM Medical College Hospital in Bhubaneswar, trapping people inside.
Patna: The Patna High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Rocky Yadav, the son of a suspended JD(U) MLC, in a case of killing a youth in Gaya over road rage.
Chief Justice Iqbal A Ansari granted bail to Rocky Yadav in the case in which Aditya Sachdeva, son of a Gaya businessman, was shot dead in May this year.
Rocky Yadav is son of suspended JD-U MLC Manorma Devi and a history-sheeter Bindi Yadav.
Rocky's lawyer YV Giri argued that there is no direct evidence of his client's involvement in the incident.
Opposing the bail plea, government advocate Dilip Kumar Sinha told the court that Rocky Yadav was the main accused in the case.
After hearing arguments the court granted bail to Rocky Yadav.
Rocky is accused of shooting class XI student Aditya Sachdeva on May 7 following an altercation over overtaking. His parents, who were accused of sheltering him, were recently enlarged on bail.
New York: Indian-American hotelier Vikram Chatwal has been charged with criminal mischief for allegedly trying to light two dogs on fire.
Chatwal, 44 turned himself in to the police on Tuesday early morning at 7. He has been charged with criminal mischief, torture and injure animal, reckless endangerment and arson, a New York Police Department official told PTI.
According to a report in local news website patch.com, the charges stem from an October 7 incident in which Chatwal allegedly got into an argument with a woman walking the dogs outside Chatwals home.
Chatwal allegedly pulled out a lighter and aerosol can and used them to burn the two dogs, the report said.
It cited the police to say that the dogs suffered minor burns in the incident. Chatwal is expected to make a court appearance in the case later on Tuesday.
Bengaluru: Karnataka government on Wednesday said it would stick to the Supreme Court direction to the state to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders.
"We will stick to the Supreme Court order. I want to say no more than that," Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra told reporters on the sidelines of a media briefing on cabinet meeting.
The Supreme Court had on Tuesday retained its direction to Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs till further orders and asked the two states to ensure peace and harmony, saying citizens should not become law unto themselves.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra, which commenced the crucial hearing on various issues arising out of the dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over sharing of Cauvery waters, had said it first intended to adjudicate the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by both the states and Kerala against the Cauvery water dispute tribunal's 2013 award.
"The interim order dated October 4 directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu will continue till further orders," the bench also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar had said.
A court-appointed Supervisory Committee has submitted its report on the ground situation in the basin region in both the states, which have locked horns over water release in recent months, escalating tension over the more than century-old dispute.
The bench had also said yesterday it would first go into the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry against the award of tribunal and then hear the arguments on the report filed by the committee.
: A day after Mumbai Police assured a smooth release of film-maker Karan Johar's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM) on October 28 and Joha's own offer to not work with Pakistani artistes in the future, the Raj Thackeray led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) on Wednesday issued a fresh threat to multiplexes against the screening of the film.Amay Khopkar spokesperson for the party told CNN-News18 that they will beat up anyone who tries to stop them from protesting against the film or halt its screening.MNS leader Shalini Thackeray too had told CNN News18 that the makers of the film will know what the MNS can do in case the film releases in Maharashtra.Also read: Mumbai Police Assures Smooth Release of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil on October 28 On Tuesday filmmaker Director of the film Karan Johar had issued a statement through a video and vowed to avoid working with Pakistani actors till the current atmposphere in the nation improved."I have always felt that the best way to express your patriotism is through love. And that's what I have always tried to portray through my work and my cinema. When I shot my film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil from September to December last year, the climate was completely different. The circumstances were completely different. There were efforts made by our government for the peaceful relationship with the neighbouring country. And I respected those endeavours, those efforts then. I also respect the sentiment today. I understand the sentiment because I feel the same," Johar had said in the video."Going forward, I would like to say that of course, I will not engage with talent from the neighbouring country, given the circumstance. But with that same energy, I beseech you to know one thing- that over 300 people in my Indian crew have put their blood, sweat and tears into making my film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. I don't think it's fair to them to face any kind of turbulence on account of other fellow Indians," Johar added.Also read: Karan Johar Speaks Up On Ae Dil Hai Mushkil Row, Says Country Comes First Meanwhile Fox Star Studios - the distributors of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil - has also come out in support of Karan Johar."We unequivocally condemn the terror attacks on India and support the government of India in all its effort to bring safety and peace for Indians. Karan Johar is a proud, emotional and patriotic Indian, like all of us and his nationalism cannot be questioned," Fox Star studios said.Film-maker Mukesh Bhatt too had on Tuesday urged the MNS not to spoil Diwali for the many technicians who worked behind the scenes to make the film a reality.Bhatt had even met the Mumbai Police Commissioner and got an assurance for a smooth release of the film.In a press meet in the evening, Bhatt told the media that Pakistani actor Fawad Khan has just a four-minute appearance in Karan Johar's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM) and requested the MNS to support the movie and protect a product made by Indians."This film has 150 technicians, only one Pakistani actor who has a four-minute scene. We have put in our money. It is a request to MNS, an appeal on the behalf of the whole film industry that we, all brothers, should come together and protect the investment made by Indians. Why should we spoil Diwali?" he told reporters here.The filmmaker, who is the President of Film and Television Producers Guild of India (Guild), addedpeople should understand Johar's situation as well.The Raj Thackeray-led MNS on Tuesday said it would intensify its opposition to Johar's film as it features a Pakistani actor and issued a veiled threat of vandalism to the multiplexes if they screened it."MNS can say whatever it wants to say. We are extending a hand of friendship, we have to accept peace. The filmmaker is helpless, he is caught. We should understand his pain," Bhatt said.Guild has said films like Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Raees, featuring Pakistani artistes, should not be targeted as doing so will cause heavy losses to their producers. Bhatt added that the police are with them and the film will release worldwide on October 28."We are just requesting the theatre owners. We can't reverse the film ('Ae Dil...') which has been made. It should be allowed to release. In the future, we will obey the Government's decision."If there is some damage to the property by MNS, then there is property insurance. I am confident that 95 per cent screens will support us," he said.Cinema owners have announced they won't allow the screening of the movies with Pakistani artistes. Asked about his take on filmmaker Anurag Kashyap's tweet about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lahore visitlast year,Bhatt said, "We can't bother the PM with these things. He has bigger issues to deal with. We should tackle this within us."The 64-year-old filmmaker maintained that the film industry should also not be targeted. "Don't penalise us for no fault of ours. Media is a responsible factor today. Please spread peace and harmony. If we will fight it will be a win for terrorists," he said.(With inputs from PTI)
Chennai: For the eighth consecutive day, there has been no update on the health condition of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalaltihaa, admitted to Apollo Hospital in Chennai last month.
Ever since Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospitals on September 22, the hospital has been issuing a medical bulletin about her condition at intervals.
The last time it issued a health bulletin was on October 10 in which it said that Jayalalithaa is being constantly monitored by intensivists and other consultants.
On October 8, the hospital said: "The respiratory support is closely watched and adjusted. Lungs decongestion treatment is being continued. All other comprehensive measures, including nutrition, supportive therapy and passive physiotherapy, are under way."
The 68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to the hospital for fever and dehydration.
The doctors later said she needed a longer stay at the hospital as she was suffering from infection and put her on respiratory support.
However, several rumours about her health flew thick and fast during the initial days of her hospitalisation.
Following that, Apollo Hospitals started issuing the medical bulletins at regular intervals.
The state police started cracking down on the rumour mongers.
Allahabad: A court has issued notice to retired Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju on a petition accusing him of having made "objectionable" remarks with regard to consumption of beef in his blog posts.
Additional Sessions Judge Shuchi Srivastava passed the order on the review petition of advocate Rakesh Nath Pandey, who alleged that Justice Katju has hurt the sentiments of a major section of the society by attacking the Hindu belief that the cow was sacred and seeking repeal of the laws whereby slaughtering cow has been banned in many states.
The ADJ has asked Justice Katju to file his reply by the next date of hearing on November 18.
The petition was filed by Pandey challenging an order of the Chief Judicial Magistrate whereby his prayer for directing the police to lodge an FIR against Justice Katju was turned down.
Justice Katju, who is also a former Chairman of the Press Council of India, has made a series of controversial statements on the communally sensitive issue of cow slaughter and beef ever since possession and sale of beef were made punishable with fine and five years in jail in Maharashtra in January last year.
In the wake of the Dadri lynching case of September last year wherein a 50-year-old man was beaten to death near Noida by a mob suspecting him of having slaughtered a cow and consumed its meat, Justice Katju came up with an outpouring of a number of scathing remarks.
Recently, in a Facebook post, Justice Katju wrote that he had a "danda" (stick) with which he wished to hit those who made a fuss over the issue of cow slaughter and beef.
Srinagar: Separatists called protest shutdown paralysed life for 103rd consecutive day in Kashmir Valley, however, authorities on Wednesday did not impose any curfew or restrictions anywhere.
"No curfew or restrictions have been imposed anywhere today (Wednesday)," a senior police official said here.
"Adequate deployment of security forces have been made to maintain law and order across the valley."
Main markets, public transport and other businesses remain closed in the valley for 103rd consecutive day.
The unprecedented 103-day-long closure of educational institutions has hit hard the students who have not been able to attend classes in schools, colleges and universities in the last more than three months.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her cabinet colleague and Education Minister Naeem Akhtar have said that exams for class 10th and 12th will be held in November.
The Chief Minister, however, said the state board of school education has been asked to work out "relaxation" for students while setting question papers.
She has asked the board to ensure the examinees are asked to reply questions pertaining only to that part of the syllabus which has been taught in the schools till the end of June this year.
Students have been protesting against holding of exams in November and want them to be postponed till March next year.
There is a growing feeling in the valley that both the government as well as the separatists must stop doing politics in the name of education and all efforts should be made to secure the future of the valley's children.
At least 91 people, majority of them youths, have been killed and over 12,000 injured in the ongoing unrest in Kashmir since July 9, a day after the killing of top militant Burhan Wani in a clash with security forces.
Karva Chauth is a Hindu festival traditionally celebrated by married women in India. On this day, married women and girls fast for the day - from sunrise to moonrise - and pray for the longevity and wellness of their husbands or fiances. Women dress in bright ethnic wear and apply beautiful intricate henna designs on their hands.From wives waiting for the moon to rise to husbands feeding them the first bites of food; Bollywood has created a host of sequences and songs related to this festival.On this Karva Chauth, we bring 5 best scenes from Bollywood that capture the essence of this holy tradition perfectly.: One that inspired husbands to fast for their better halves: One that popularised the concept of feet-touching and also made the pre-wedding fasting fashionable: One that proved distance doesn't matter and depicted that husband-wife's love is eternalOne that made fasting fashionableOne that gave words to the agony of waiting for the moon to rise
Bollywood star Salman Khan is facing fresh legal trouble as the Rajasthan Government has challenged the actor's acquittal in the 1998 Chinkara poaching case in the Supreme Court.Earlier The Rajasthan High Court on July 25 had acquitted Salman, who was accused of killing two chinkaras in separate incidents. But the High Court had observed that the statement of a key witness could not be considered as he had "disappeared" and the defence could not cross-examine him. Moreover the High Court also said that the pellets recovered from the chinkaras were not fired from Salman's gun.The actor was accused of killing endangered chinkara near Jodhpur back in 1998. In 2006, Salman was sentenced to one year in jail for hunting Chinkaras but the Rajasthan High Court had issued a stay order on the actor's sentence after appeal. In 2016, the actor was acquitted after witnesses disappeared pre-cross-examination. The High Court had recovered pellets from Chinkara that did not belong to Salman's gun.
Bhubaneswar: Demanding a judicial probe into the fire tragedy which claimed 20 lives last night, opposition Congress and BJP on Wednesday demanded the resignation of Odisha Health Minister Atanu S Nayak, while CPI leader D Raja sought a high-level probe into the incident.
The fire tragedy, in the backdrop of the death of over 50 children due to Japanese Encephalitis in Malkangiri district, has come as a major ammunition for the opposition which demanded Nayak's resignation.
The Congress also demanded a compensation of Rs 25 lakh and a job to the kin of each of the deceased.
Odisha Congress chief Prasad Harichandan said, "The state government has not learnt anything from the 2011 AMRI hospital (Kolkata) fire accident in which, at least 89 people were killed.
"Apart from the hospital authorities, I will say that both the chief minister and the health minister are responsible for the tragedy. The state government must declare Rs 25 lakh as compensation and a job to the kin of each of the deceased."
Raising questions over the no-objection certificate issued to Sum Hospital, Harichandan alleged that the fire tragedy was an outcome of "complete negligence" on part of the state government.
"A judicial probe must be ordered into the incident and the culprits must be booked," he said.
CPI national secretary D Raja, who visited several health institutions where the patients evacuated from Sum Hospital were undergoing treatment, said, "A neutral probe is required to find out the lapses in the fire safety management at the hospital. Rs 5 lakh ex-gratia is not adequate. Our party has demanded that the amount should be increased to Rs 20 lakh.
"When such big corporate hospitals are built, there must be adequate medical infrastructure, including fire safety measures, and these must be monitored regularly. This is a case of complete negligence. All the lapses must be thoroughly analysed.
2/2 Hope FS Jaishankar won't get axed like Sujatha Singh for speaking the truth qua valour of Armed Forces & exposing BJP's deception. Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) October 19, 2016
Parrikar-'We made army realize its prowess'.
Parrikar-'RSS teaching behind Surgical strikes'.
Next-Godse was a freedom fighter? Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) October 18, 2016
The proceedings of the parliamentary panel on external affairs on Tuesday that discussed Indias surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir may remain a secret, but its now an open war between the Opposition and the government with the Congress expressing fear that Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar could get sacked for speaking the truth to the panel.At the core of the war-of-words is Jaishankars reported statement to the panel on a question whether India had carried out such strikes before. If you ask me whether there were strikes earlier across the LoC, I would say yes. But whether there were strikes across LoC which destroyed launch pads earlier I would say no, CNN-News18 had reported the foreign secretary as saying.Party sources told News18 that the foreign secretarys statements would be raised by Opposition in Parliament when it convenes on November 16.Curiously, even as Congress party seized the opportunity saying it was a vindication of the stand that India had carried out surgical strikes against Pakistan during the UPA dispensation, panel chairman and party leader Shashi Tharoor maintained silence.Among the more vocal was former home minister P Chidambaram. I agree with the Foreign Secretary and I thank him for setting the record straight, he told News18.In a series of early morning tweets, party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala sought to add fuel to the fire. The (Narendra) Modi government's rhetoric bravado and machismo exposed by FSAmit Shah and (Manohar) Parikkars lies exposedHope foreign secretary Jaishankar wont get axed like Sujatha Singh for speaking the truth, he tweeted.The Congress has been criticising the BJP and the Modi government for making the surgical strikes an election issue ahead of polls in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Congress in its defence has claimed that it too had done strikes, but as a policy preferred not to take political ownership or make it public.Over the past few days, the BJP had come under heavy criticism as Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar gave credit first to the Army, then the PM and then to the RSS for the surgical strikes.Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhis khoon ki dalaali statement in this context had sensationalised the issue. Faced with criticism over Rahuls comments, the Congress had seemed to be on backfoot but the party regained some of its mojo with the row over the parliamentary panel briefing.Sources told News18 that the Congress now hopes to corner the government by confronting it on what it calls "false claims" when Parliament session begins on October 16.Congress is already in touch with like minded parties such as the JD-U and the Left to issue a notice to ask government to come clean on the surgical strikes. The Opposition will demand of the government that it has to give a list of previous strikes and also why it was allowing its ministers to politicise the issue by giving credit to the PM and the RSS instead of the Army.Clearly, the political strikes are not yet over.
Back in the year 2000, Akhilesh, in his mid-20s, was gearing up to test the political waters as a Samajwadi Party candidate in the Lok Sabha bypoll to the Kannauj seat. His father, party president Mulayam Singh, was accused of nepotism and questions were raised on Akhilesh's political acumen and understanding of socialism.Socialist icon Janeshwar Mishra, often known as 'Chote Lohiya', then stepped forward to bail out Akhilesh and silence his critics. Janeshwar had then said it was not politics of nepotism but the nepotism of struggle.For him, the Samajwadi Party was about the politics of struggle, and Akhilesh was there not to reap the fortunes but to carry forward the political struggle. How right Janeshwar was in his political understanding about Samajwadi Party and Mulayam Singh might be debatable. But for Akhilesh, from then on there would be no better political guide than the much respected socialist leader not just in Parliament, but also on the history of socialism.Senior journalist and socialist thinker Ambrish Kumar says, "Akhilesh's immense respect for the late leader had often been evident in his speeches and gestures. Setting up a park often described as the biggest in Asia in the name of Mishra is just one of his gestures of respect."It could be irony or coincidence that now, at a time the young chief minister is involved in a challenging leadership struggle against his own father and uncle, his team is operating out of the Janeshwar Mishra trust. In its office at the sprawling 7 Bandariya Bagh, a stone's throw from the SP office on Vikramaditya Marg, sit key members of team Akhilesh, some of whom had been unceremoniously shown the door by the party.The office of the Trust was inaugurated by Akhilesh on October 9, just days after his aides like MLC Sunil Sajan, Anand Bhadauri and Sanjay Lathar were sacked and barred from entering the party office premises. The absence of most of the senior party leaders, including Mulayam and Shivpal, at the inauguration had clearly exposed the rift. No doubt then that the Janeshwar Mishra Trust is almost a de facto address for Akhilesh's party.And it's not just the young brigade which works out of this new centre of power. Old guards and Mulayam loyalists, like Rajendra Chowdhry, who is a minister, and SRS Yadav, who served as office secretary for the party for over two decades have now shifted to the new address. Both were considered close to Akhilesh and hence had to face Shivpal's anger. While Rajendra was removed as chief spokesperson, SRS was sacked from the post of party office secretary.It was here at the Trust office, where a meeting of rebel youth leaders was held on Tuesday that an open call of support for Akhilesh and a boycott of the party's 25th anniversary programme was given.A visitor to Bandariya Bagh office now will definitely see many such faces which till recently were visible at 4, Vikramaditya Marg Party office. But the same faces are now busy playing a different political role. As a prominent youth face of team Akhilesh quotes Dr Lohiya: "Zinda qaume paanch saal intezar nahin karti (living people don't wait for five years).
The problems of Samsung Electronics are far from over as disgruntled customers plan to file class action lawsuits in South Korea and the US over the company's exploding Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, media reports said on Wednesday.
While three US customers from three different states -- Nevada, Pennsylvania and California -- have already complained about the fire-prone devices, 38 owners of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in South Korea plan to file a class action lawsuit against Samsung for alleged inconvenience experienced after the discontinuation of the device.
Each person in the South Korean suit, which is scheduled to be filed with the Seoul Central District Court next Monday, is seeking 300,000 won ($267) in damages, Harvest Law Office said on Wednesday.
The proposed suit alleges that owners of the Note 7 were forced to visit stores several times for battery checks or to get replacements, Yonhap news agency reported.
The complaint also states that the consumers experienced anxiety over safety while using the Note 7.
Koh Young-il, an attorney at the law firm, said he expects the firm to win the suit, given precedents for faulty products.
Last week, Samsung permanently halted sales and production of the fire-prone Note 7, about two months after the device's launch.
The suit filed on Friday in the US District Court in Newark, New Jersey, and made public on Tuesday, accuses Samsung Electronics America of fraud and breach of warranty and good faith, NBC News reported.
The suit -- whose class action status must still be approved by a judge before it can proceed -- seeks unspecified damages over what it alleges was Samsung's mistreatment of its customers because they had to keep paying on their contracts during the weeks after Samsung recalled the phones but before replacements were made widely available.
The South Korean conglomerate began selling the phone on August 19 this year, but in September announced an unprecedented withdrawal following reports of more than thirty cases of combustion by terminals in multiple countries.
In the recall affecting about 2.5 million phones, the company proceeded in mid-September to deliver replacement phones, but the new batch continued to suffer from battery overheating, ultimately resulting in the definitive withdrawal of the product.
The South Korean tech giant last week estimated that it will lose $3 billion in operating profits over the next six months due to the withdrawal of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.
This month marks 10 years since the small, cancerous lump in Kathi Morgans right breast was removed.
She considers herself one of the lucky ones her cancer was found early, treated immediately and shes been free from the disease since.
Cancers tendrils had wrapped around Morgans family for generations. Both of Morgans grandmothers were diagnosed with breast cancer in their 50s, when an awareness of, and effective treatments for, the disease were not as prevalent as today.
Then there was her mother, diagnosed with carcinoid cancer in 2002, and the microscopic tumors eventually made their way into her back. Then in 2004, Morgans mother was diagnosed with massive breast cancer.
Then came her older sisters diagnosis of breast cancer at age 50.
She said, You girls, are you getting checked? I knew I had but my oldest sister hadnt, Morgan said. She went because of my mom.
In March 2006, Morgans mother died, and her father died of cancer five years later.
Just a few months after her mothers death, as her family gathered for Fathers Day, Morgan noticed a lump in her right breast. Her annual exam was set for August, so she wasnt concerned.
Due to her family history, Morgan received her mammograms at the Breast Imaging Center at Virginia Baptist Hospital. As she sat down to do paperwork that August day, she wrote she had found a small lump.
After a mammogram and an ultrasound, the doctor asked Morgan to point out the lump as it wasnt reflected in the scans.
I almost felt a little foolish, but I said OK, this is fine because I have a hair appointment, Morgan said.
The doctor repeated the ultrasound and told Morgan she found the lump and believed it to be malignant.
I felt like at that moment in time the ground opened up beneath me, she said.
Suddenly, there were many more technicians in the room. Someone asked her if she wanted to call a family member as they set up a needle biopsy. She asked them to cancel her hair appointment. She tried to reach her husband, but he was in a meeting.
The following day, Kathi Morgan learned it was cancer, and it became a whirlwind. I was inundated with appointments. I remember thinking thats too many appointments, too fast.
She turned 50 that year the second sister of four with breast cancer.
Her husband, Bob Morgan, said one of the hardest parts for his wife was telling their two daughters, who were in their 20s at the time.
When you are talking about that, in the back of your head is the concept of mortality, he said, adding his wife wanted to see life milestones for their daughters and grandchildren.
Bob Morgan talked about the conversation, both spoken and unspoken, discussing what to do and how to face this. And in our own heads, we were having the what if conversations: What if I lose my best friend, the love of my life? What if this doesnt work?
An MRI showed the cancer was confined to one breast, and a blood test showed Morgan had started menopause.
So, of course, Im in menopause, she said. It was like a double whammy, almost like some weird trick of Mother Nature. You have to kind of laugh about it at that point.
Morgans cancer, called ductal in situ, is the most common form of breast cancer and hers was estrogen positive, meaning the hormone could signal the cancer cells to grow.
The cancer forms in the milk ducts of the breast, but has not spread to surrounding tissue, according to the American Cancer Society. The cancer is considered non-invasive because it cant spread outside the breast, but it can go on to become invasive so it requires treatment.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with about one in eight women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer at some point in their lives, according to the American Cancer Society. About 40,450 American women will die from breast cancer in 2016.
About 246,660 cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed this year, and another 61,000 will be diagnosed with carcinoma in situ, like Morgan, according to estimates from the American Cancer Society. Carcinoma in situ is the earliest form of breast cancer.
Morgan opted for a lumpectomy to remove the cancerous tissue in September 2006 and seven weeks of radiation. In the final days of the radiation, Morgan had developed burns and was going through burn treatments as well.
I didnt want to give it the presence to disrupt my life, Morgan said. I did fine up until the last week.
Bob Morgan said his wife fought her way through the crushing fatigue to work every day, only calling in on the final day of her treatment.
She knew what she wanted the destination to be, he said. If you think of it as a journey, you have in mind the destination picked out. You just dont know if there is a side turn. I think it wasnt something you would hide from one another, but you always try to mask the bad what if feelings, but we talked about it.
Her treatments were completed just before Christmas 2006, and since that time, her younger sister was diagnosed, again at age 50. That sister opted for a total mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.
But the pattern broke with her youngest sister who hit age 50 and has not been diagnosed with cancer.
After her mother died, one of Morgans friends suggested she run an Angels Triathlon in her mothers memory, and the two had just started training when Morgan learned she had cancer.
I was more disappointed in that than in anything else, she said. That was supposed to be me honoring my mom. When the treatment was done, I called my friend, and said We are doing it.
So in April 2007, with her mothers name written on one arm and her grandmothers on the other and 62 names from friends and coworkers tucked in her hat, she completed the triathlon in Clemmons, North Carolina.
Morgan now undergoes ultrasounds, mammograms and breast MRIs annually, and said she feels confident the cancer is gone, but if its not, it will be caught early.
Despite all the bad parts, we had the best outcome Bob Morgan said.
Kathi Morgan and her husband volunteer with the American Cancer Society, particularly with its annual Gala fundraiser each fall.
For Morgan, discussing her journey is cathartic.
For me, it was a monster, and to talk about the monster gets it out of the closet, she said. Cancer consumed me for a year. It consumed my entire life for a year, and then it just didnt.
Riverviews to show PBS Hamilton documentary
Riverviews Artspace will be showing PBSs Hamiltons America at 9 p.m. Friday. The behind-the-scenes documentary is about Lin-Manuel Mirandas Broadway musical Hamilton, which has become an international phenomenon and multiple Tony Award winner since its debut.
A reception with actors portraying Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both of whom will speak about their complex relationship with Alexander Hamilton, will precede the screening at 7:30 p.m.; theyll also watch the documentary and share final thoughts after its over.
The screening is free, and the reception, which includes hors doeuvres, costs $10. There also will be a cash bar.
Visit www.riverviews.net for more information.
LSO holding fall concert in LU's new performance hall
Lynchburg Symphony Orchestras fall concert, Hymn of Praise, will be held in the new Liberty University Performing Arts Concert Hall at 3 p.m. Sunday.
LSO will play Mendelssohn's "Hymn of Praise" and Verdi's "Overture to Nabucco. The Liberty Symphony Orchestra and Liberty Choral Ensembles also will perform, as well as soloists Adelaide Trombetto, Samantha Miller, and John Hugo. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for students ages 16 to 22 and free for kids 16 and younger with an adult ticket holder.
Call (434) 845-6604 or visit www.lynchburgsymphony.org.
Ghosts of Historic Lynchburg tours coming this week
The Lynchburg Historical Foundations annual Ghosts of Historic Lynchburg tours will be held Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Historic Federal Hill. The walks begin at the Federal Crest Inn B&B at 1101 Federal St. at 6:30 p.m. each night and run every 15 to 20 minutes until 8:30 p.m.
Tickets, $10 for adults and $5 for children 11 and younger, are sold at 6 p.m. each night at the site. Group reservations for 10 or more can be made in advance by calling the Foundation office at (434) 528-5353.
All proceeds from the event will go to the Federal Hill Historic District and the Lynchburg Historical Foundation.
Bowen Jewelry Company holding Annual Estate Show
Estate jewelry from celebrities like Elvis Presley, Joan Rivers, Greta Garbo and legendary guitarist Les Paul will be on display this weekend during Bowen Jewelry Companys Annual Estate Show, which runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Pieces, which will be for sale, include a gold pocket watch, worth more than $28,000, and E.P. lapel pins that belonged to Presley; a pair of Cartier rings once owned by Joan Collins; a diamond pin from the collection of Joan Rivers; and a pair of silver diamond earrings from Garbo. Other stars whose jewelry is included are Jerry Lee Lewis, Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach, Mary Pickford and Luise Rainer, among others.
For more information, call (434) 845-3495 or visit http://bowenjewelry.com.
Switchfoot, Relient K to perform at LU
Switchfoot and Relient K will bring their Looking for America Tour to Liberty Universitys Vines Center at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Switchfoot, known for songs like Dare You To Move and Meant To Live, released its 10th studio album, Where The Light Shines Through, last July.
Tickets to the concert range in price from $16 to $51. Visit www.liberty.edu/sa for more information.
RVCC presents Robert Jospes World Beat Workshop
Drummer Robert Jospe and percussionist Kevin Davis will lead the World Beat Workshop at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Rockfish Valley Community Center, 190 Rockfish School Lane in Afton.
Using a map, percussion instruments and music charts, they will explore West African rhythms and their influence on current musical styles through an interactive program that includes clapping, dancing and singing to salsa, calypso, merengue, samba and hip-hop.
Jospe, who was born in Manhattan to Belgian parents, began his formal training during a summer session at the Berklee College of Music. He eventually attended New York University and spent more than a decade playing in the New York jazz and rock scene. Since 1992, he has received an annual touring grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts for the World Beat Workshop.
Admission is $10 for adults and free for children 12 and younger. For more information, visit www.robertjospe.com.
LC Theatre opens season with Cole Porter classic
Lynchburg College Theatre will kick off its new season with Cole Porters Anything Goes, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, with more shows at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Call (434) 544-8349 or visit www.lynchburg.edu/theatre.
Wolfbanes Crawford Farm Ghost Tour returns for sixth year
Wolfbane Productions annual Crawford Farm Ghost Tour, now in its sixth year, will be held at the Wolf Performing Arts Center in Appomattox on Thursday, with more tours on Friday and Saturday and Oct. 27, 28 and 29.
Tours run from 7:30 to 11:30 p.m. each night on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.wolfbane.org.
Chili Cook-Off to be held this weekend
The Sedalia Centers 20th Annual Chili Cook-Off runs from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday. As always, tasting begins at noon.
Live music will be provided by The Chilly Brothers, Firecracker Jam and Relacksachian. Admission is $10 in advance or $15 at the gate; children 12 and younger get in free.
Call (434) 299-5080 or visit www.sedaliacenter.org for more details.
I have had high hopes for NBCs The Good Place from the moment I heard about it.
With stars like Kristen Bell and Ted Danson on board and the creative mind of Mike Schur, who worked on both The Office and Parks and Recreation, at the helm, there was no way I wasnt going to like it.
The first episode introduced us to the afterlife through the eyes of Bells Eleanor, who, upon her death, wrongly winds up in the titular, heaven-esque Good Place when she most definitely belongs in the Bad Place.
In the show, heaven is basically a series of neighborhoods where each person lives in their own perfect, dream home; the woman Eleanor has been mistaken for was a humanitarian aid worker with a thing for clowns, and the materialistic Eleanor isnt exactly thrilled by her modest digs, which come complete with a collection of creepy clown portraits.
She is initially guided through her new home by Ted Dansons Michael, the architect of her neighborhood, who also informs her that, in the Good Place, everyone has a soulmate with whom they are matched.
Eleanors soul mate is the good-hearted Chidi (William Jackson Harper), an ethics professor from Senegal. She eventually confides in him that shes not supposed to be there and, after some debate, he decides to keep her secret and begins schooling her in how to be a better person.
But Eleanors presence somehow throws the universe off-kilter and starts causing strange occurrences in the neighborhood. In the first episode, giant shrimp attacked the town (yes, it was as cheesy as it sounds), and an episode or two later, a giant sinkhole opened up in the middle of a restaurant. The irregularities usually are fixed once Eleanor does something good.
The first three episodes were enjoyable but not exactly laugh-out-loud funny, favoring a more subtle, clever humor.
But things really gelled at the end of that third episode, when it was revealed that Eleanor wasnt the only person to erroneously end up in the Good Place. Turns out her neighbor, supposed Buddhist monk Jianyu (Manny Jacinto) was really an aspiring EDM DJ named Jason Mendoza back on earth and somehow wound up in heaven.
Having someone as bad, or worse, than Eleanor has allowed her to have a few bonding moments with Chidi and even feel a bit of superiority (Oh, wow, she says incredulously at one point. For the first time ever, Im the smartest kid in class.)
Jacinto is hilarious as the completely oblivious Jason, whose soulmate is beautiful do-gooder Tahani (Jameela Jamil), a statuesque Brit with a sunny disposition that annoys Eleanor and charms Michael.
Early episodes featured flashbacks to Eleanors life on earth, exhibiting some of the bad behavior that should have disqualified her from the Good Place. But recent installments have also used flashbacks to show us more about both Jianyu/Jason and Tahani, whose complicated relationship with her sister has left her struggling with her self-esteem even in heaven.
As Eleanor, Bell is everything I expected. The role allows her to channel the sarcasm of one of her most indelible characters, Veronica Mars, while also having some good a ha moments as Chidis lessons sink in.
Danson makes a welcome return to comedy here. We dont know much about Michael beyond the fact that hes thousands of years old and has a lot riding on this neighborhood, the first one hes designed.
Hes constantly marveling at human behavior in ways that never fail to make me laugh; last weeks episode had a running gag about him watching all 10 seasons of Friends to learn about the concept of friendship and then dropping in random references to them.
Danson also is adept at the spastic, physical comedy the role requires, whether Michael is excitedly donning suspenders for the first time or pushing imaginary clutter out of the air after noting that, unlike him, Eleanor cannot see in nine dimensions.
Even more impressive is the roster of relative newcomers or, at least, new to me starring alongside them. If you like what Bell and Danson do, you know theyll be reliably funny in anything (if you dont like what they do, dont even talk to me).
Jamil is perfect as the, well, perfect Tahani. You can see why she irks Eleanor, and she also hits just the right notes when Tahanis veneer is shaken.
As Chidi, Harper is the breakout star here. Hes so charming and has a great comic delivery. The most recent episode suggested that perhaps he and Tahani, with whom he shares a love of art and French culture, might be the real soulmates, an intriguing concept that will be fun to explore.
GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us.
Opposition hits Garcia
The clash came when the Lower House Standing Committee on Finance had resumed after a ten-minute suspension by Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George to quell a heated row on another matter.
Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh said MPs have each received a flood of complaints that pupils have not received textbooks, and his Opposition colleague, Tabaquite MP Dr Suruj Rambachan, concurred by listing 16 schools he knew that had not been supplied with textbooks. Gopeesingh supported his case by quoting Budget documents that showed that while the Government had initially allocated $35 million to buy books for fiscal 2016, only $6 million was actually spent, even as just $9 million is now being allocated for fiscal 2017. By contrast, the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government had spent $32 million on books, he said.
Gopeesingh said, We have been besieged with calls by parents that their children have not received any new textbooks within the primary and secondary schools for the last 2015/16 and 2016/2017 academic year. Garcia replied, We have been visiting schools Minister Dr Francis and other officials of the Ministry of Education and every time we visit the schools we will take the opportunity to question students and teachers with respect to textbooks.
I can safely say, as Ive been saying before all along, that there is an adequate supply of textbooks in our schools. It is not true to say that our students are going to school without books in their school bags.
There is a surplus. Garcia said he had visited a school where the principal showed him a room with hundreds of textbooks. I want to repeat, as Ive been saying over and over, there is an adequate supply of books in our schools. Gopeesingh said that last year was the start of a new three-year cycle for book purchase, and asked the minister if he had bought any new books last year or this year.
Garcia replied yes that a large number of books had been bought to fully replenish 100 percent of books for Infant One and Infant Two in primary schools. Those books are in the schools right now, he assured. Standards One to Five and Forms One to Six we are topping up by an average of ten percent, he said. Asked if he has done it yet, he replied, It is well on its way. The purchase has been done, the procurement has been done, and in some cases the books are in the schools already. Gopeesingh asked, Are you aware that during the Peoples Partnership administration, we purchased... He was cut off by Annisette-George, despite his protestations that his statement in fact qualified as falling within this line item of the Budget document on Recurrent Estimates of Expenditure.
Rambachan listed 16 schools in his constituency for which very few if any books had been received, including Happy Hill Hindu, Brasso RC, Tabaquite RC and Tabaquite Presbyterian Primary Schools, all of which had been advised to use photocopies and last years textbooks.
He said, Sixteen schools. I spoke to each one. And only very few books were received by the infant departments. Are you aware of this? This is information that came from the schools themselves, not something made up. Garcia replied, We have also done our action research. Our school supervisors were mandated to go to the schools and provide us with information. They have gone out to the schools and conferred with the principals and the teachers and that is why I can confidently say that there is an adequate supply of textbooks in our schools. Ive been saying that over and over and Im not taking that out of a hat. Its the result of the actual research that was done. Earlier the House suspension came when Gopeesingh and Couva South MP Rudy Indarsingh had hit Garcia over the functioning or non-functioning of school boards of management.
Wetting for weeping Ian Alleyne
Contacted for comment, Alleyne claimed that he does not at Rivulet Road in Couva. As fate would have it, while Alleyne was in Couva watching Court Marshals load his personal belongings onto a flat-bed truck, his name was being called in the Chaguanas Magistrates Court in an ongoing matter involving his former crime watch co-host Inspector Roger Alexander, who is now a co-host on the Beyond The Tape show on TV6.
When Alleyne failed to appear in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest but subsequently recalled when he appeared later in the morning. Yesterday, in the presence of Sammy and his son and under the watchful eyes of armed police officers, workmen packed household appliances of value including a fridge and stove, electronics and gym equipment onto trucks. Alleynes attorney Gerald Ramdeen said an offer was made to the Sammys before yesterdays levy.
Upon arrival at the premises of Mr Alleyne, an offer was made to Mr Shaun Sammy to liquidate or make arrangements to liquidate the debt that was owing at that time but it was indicated that was not an offer that Mr Sammy was willing to accept as he had come there armed with the officials from the High Court together with a bailiff in order to remove belongings of Mr Alleyne. When all attempts failed at trying to resolve the matter, without having to embark upon the execution (of the levy), the Marshals entered the premises and Mr Sammy pointed out items he considered for execution and those items were levied upon and removed from the premises of Mr Alleyne, Ramdeen said.
Alleyne told Newsday that action at his home was meant to embarrass him and prove a point while noting he just happened to spend the night at the house since he and his family do not live at Rivulet Road. Alleyne said attorney Om Lalla, once my best friend, is representing the Sammys who took him to court in 2014 following statements made on his then Crime Watch programme which was aired on the cable network CNC3. When Alleyne failed to put in a defence, judgement was given to the Sammys and costs ordered to be assessed. The businessmen also secured an injunction against Alleyne which restrained him from speaking, broadcasting, publishing or uttering anything in relation to Sammy, who at the time, was before the magistrates court on a driving under the influence charge.
Sammy had pleaded guilty and was given a conditional discharge and placed on a bond to keep the peace for three years. Sammy was represented by Lalla, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj SC and Dereck Balliram.
Alleyne was ordered to pay $630,000 in damages to Sammy and his son Shaun as well as the company Junior Sammy Contractors Ltd for defamation. The award was granted by High Court Master Marissa Robertson after her assessment of the damages to be awarded to the Sammys.
He was also ordered to pay costs which reached $734,000. Further speaking to Newsday yesterday, Alleyne has since severed ties with CNC3 and now is in the process of building his own studio. He said his eight-year-old son Israel Ian Alleyne and wife Miranda Lorna Alleyne were all left traumatized while he was humiliated. After all, I am only human, he said. My son was asleep and woke up to see police with guns. The court case involving Insp Alexander was adjourned to May 2017.
Costaatt responds to nursing students
COSTAATTs Executive Management Team has taken note of the issues raised by protesting nursing students at its South Campus yesterday [on Monday] and while we regret that we were not afforded the opportunity to hear these students concerns directly before the public protest action was launched, we have no doubt that legitimate issues have been raised which warrant further investigation and these are already under way, Paul stated.
Many of our nursing students are confronted by serious financial challenges on a day-to-day basis, and have come to depend heavily on the monthly stipend to meet their basic expenses. We therefore understand that these protests come from a place of real need. Unfortunately, during the period June to September 2016, the college was experiencing significant funding challenges linked to the mandatory budget cuts and its GATE reimbursements, and simply did not have sufficient funding to pay all its nursing students the monthly stipend as had obtained in previous years, Paul stated, adding that a decision had been taken to prioritise payments for students who had to go out to the health care facilities for their clinical experiences. We are resolved to address all legitimate claims for overdue stipend payments in the shortest possible time, she added. Regarding the length of the nursing programme, Paul noted that COSTAATT was established with a specific mandate to broaden access to tertiary education for many students who were not yet ready for college-level work but had the potential to succeed with the requisite bridging programmes and academic support. Some students may not be aware that the four-year completion time for the bachelors degree applies only to those students who come in fully prepared for college level work and who fail no courses whatsoever during their programme of study.
In fact, following a curriculum review exercise in 2013, the current administration reduced the number of non-nursing courses that the nursing students had to complete to meet their graduation requirements, Paul stated.
This resulted in a reduction of the duration of the nursing programme and not an extension of the programme as reported, she stated, adding that there was abundant evidence to show that management has been working assiduously over the last five years to improve the quality of the teaching-learning environment and experience for its nursing students.
Last year, like all other publicly funded institutions, the college had to confront very severe funding challenges...
School closed until further notice
Under the advice of the public health officer and the district nurse, the school which is situated at Richmond Street in Portof- Spain, would remain closed due to fears of a chicken pox outbreak.
A source yesterday said one child was observed with symptoms associated with the highly contagious chicken pox disease and his parents were called in and told to have him examined (and treated) by a medical doctor.
Speaking under condition of anonymity, the source said that school officials were advised to keep students away until they were able to get the school sanitised.
The source added that the issue of sanitising the school compound would have to be dealt with by the Education Ministry.
Education Minister Anthony Garcia could not be reached yesterday for comment as he was attending a sitting at the Parliament chamber.
Dow Just Had Its
Best Month Since 1976
(Newser) Approximately 10,000 scrotum frogs are dead near Lake Titicaca. And there's nothing funny about that. Seeker reports thousands of the frogsscientific name Telmatobius culeushave been found dead and floating along 30 miles of Peru's Coata river, a Lake Titicaca tributary, in recent days. The scrotum frogs, so named because of the baggy skin that helps them breathe in the thin air of their natural habitat, are "critically endangered," according to CNN. Experts say the scrotum frog population has shrunk by 80% over the past 15 years due to habitat destruction, the introduction of North American trout into Lake Titicaca, and locals over-harvesting the frogs for food. But no one is quite sure what's behind the recent mass die-off.
Environmentalists, who brought 100 dead scrotum frogs to the regional capital's town center in protest, blame sewage runoff from a town near the river. Sludge and solid waste have been seen where the frogs live. "They have no idea how major the pollution is," Seeker quotes the leader of the protest as saying. "The situation is maddening." The Committee Against the Pollution of the Coata River says the government has ignored residents' demands for a sewage treatment plant in the area, the BBC reports. According to CNET, the Peruvian National Forestry and Wildlife Service is investigating the recent deaths. It's important authorities find an answer, as scrotum frogs live only in the waters around Lake Titicaca. (Toughie the frog, likely the last of his species, has died.)
(Newser) Ecuador's government has acknowledged that it has "temporarily restricted" WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's internet access at its embassy in London after the whistleblowing site published documents from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the AP reports. The foreign ministry in a statement Tuesday said that while it stands by its decision in 2012 to grant Assange asylum, it doesn't interfere in foreign elections. Leftist President Rafael Correa's government said it was acting on its own and not ceding to foreign pressures. The foreign ministry didn't specify the extent of the restrictions on Assange's access to the internet, saying only that the restrictions on his communications wouldn't affect WikiLeaks' ability to carry out its journalistic activities. (Read more Julian Assange stories.)
(Newser) Some 150,000 gallons of water contaminated by toxic firefighting chemicals were discharged from a Colorado Air Force Base into a city sewer system, and authorities can't explain why. Peterson Air Force Base has confirmed that water containing perfluorinated chemicalsPFCsflowed through Colorado Springs Utilities wastewater treatment plant before ending up in Fountain Creek, which leads to the Arkansas River. PFCs, which have been linked to health problems such as liver and kidney damage, had already been found at up to 20 times safe limits in the area south of the base, the Denver Post reports.
A base spokesman tells the Colorado Springs Gazette that the discharge, which was discovered Oct. 12. came from a tank that held outflow from training exercises from as far back as 2013. He says the tank is designed to be difficult to discharge, suggesting the release was an intentional act. The Air Force says it has stopped using firefighting foam containing PFCs, except in emergencies. The Post notes that PFCs have been found at levels deemed dangerous in 63 areas nationwide, with the area south of Colorado Springs among the worst. The Air Force, which has contributed $4.3 million to help area communities deal with the contamination, plans to put out a report on the issue next year. (Read more Colorado stories.)
(Newser) The Texas veterinarian who outraged animal lovers nationwide by bragging about killing a cat with a bow and arrow is not going to lose her license permanently. CBS News reports that on Tuesday, the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners decided that Kristen Lindsey's vet license should be suspended for a year, followed by four years of probation. Lindseywho was fired after posting a picture of herself with the dead cat online, saying "The only good feral tomcat is one with an arrow through it's head!"will also be required to have six hours of animal welfare education, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
Last year, a grand jury decided not to charge Lindsey with a crime. Tuesday's hearing was attended by animal advocates from across America, along with a family who say the cat was their pet, not a feral tomcat as Lindsey claimed, KHOU reports. Her lawyer told the hearing that she believed the cat was feral, and feral animals are routinely killed in the rural area west of Houston where she lives. One of her former co-workers testified that she had heard Lindsey's boss and landlord tell her to "take care of the cat." Lindsey, who has been a vet since 2012, has 30 days to appeal the board's decision. (Read more veterinarian stories.)
(Newser) A 13-year-old boy sent to an alternative school was thrown to the ground multiple times on his first day, injuring his right leg so badly that it had to be amputated, a lawyer for the boy and his mother says. Attorney Renee Tucker says the Columbus, Ga., teen was slammed to the floor twice by the teacher at Edgewood Student Services Center when he tried to leave the room to call his mother to pick him up, the News & Observer reports. She says that after the Sept. 12 incident, the boy told school officials that his leg was numb. They told him they would call an ambulance, Tucker says, but the teacher ended up carrying him to a school bus, without even calling his family. The boy's leg was amputated below the knee on Tuesday, reports the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
According to a police report seen by the Ledger-Enquirer, Bryant Mosley, described as a "behavioral specialist," told officers he had to "physically restrain a student due to behavioral issues." The school district says Mosley is an outside contractor trained in "preventing and managing aggressive behavior." The district says there were "issues concerning the safety of the child and others in the room," though Tucker tells WTVM that the boy was the only student in the classroom at the time. She says his mother has lost her job because she spent so much time with her son at the Egleston Childrens Hospital in Atlanta, where the amputation took place. (Read more Georgia stories.)
(Newser) What goes best with swanky beer? Swanky potato chips, apparently. For a measly $11.20 per chip, snackers can enjoy what Sweden's St. Eriks Brewery describes as "the world's most exclusive potato chips." Brewmasters were apparently unhappy with ordinary snacks alongside St. Eriks India Pale Ale and decided to enlist the Swedish National Culinary Team to create "a snack of the same status" as its "first-class beer," a brand manager tells Adweek. The result is 100 boxes containing just five potato chips each, made by hand using "some of the most exclusive ingredients available in the Nordics." The price: $56 per box.
"It took a delicate touch, a finely honed sense of taste and time to ensure that each chip would achieve a perfect balance between the various ingredients," including matsutake mushrooms and truffle seaweed from the Faroe Islands, says chef Pi Le. "The taste is a very Scandinavian one." Since all 100 boxes are sold outthe proceeds went to charityyou'll have to settle for a chip with a more American taste. One option: Boulder Canyon Authentic Foods has returned with its Turkey & Gravy and Pumpkin Pie flavors at a far more reasonable cost of $2.99 per bag, just in time for Thanksgiving, according to a release. (They'd match well with pumpkin beer.)
(Newser) Didn't this election smell bad enough already? A hazmat team had to be called on Tuesday when a Democratic National Committee bus dumped raw sewage in Georgia's Gwinnett County, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. A worker at an auto parts store called the cops when he saw the buswhich had images of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine on the side and the slogan "Forward Together"dump sewage onto the roadway and into a storm drain, 11 Alive reports. The DNC apologized for "an honest mistake," saying it has spoken to the charter bus company involved and will work with state and local officials "to determine the best course of corrective action." (Read more Election 2016 stories.)
(Newser) A Philippine police van rammed into protesters, leaving several bloodied, as an anti-US rally turned violent Wednesday at the American Embassy in Manila. At least three student activists had to be taken to a hospital after they were run over by the van driven by a police officer, protest leader Renato Reyes tells the AP. TV footage showed the van repeatedly ramming the protesters as it drove wildly back and forth after protesters had surrounded and started hitting the van with wooden batons they had seized from the police. Police later arrested 23 protesters, who broke into a line of riot police and hurled red paint at the policemen and a US government seal at the embassy.
"There was absolutely no justification for it," Reyes says of the violent police dispersal of about 1,000 protesters. "Even as the president vowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the US." The violence happened as the protesters gathered to demand an end to the presence of US troops in the country and to support a call by President Rodrigo Duterte, who is on a state visit to China, for a foreign policy not dependent on the US. Duterte has tried to reach out to China and Russia, bringing uncertainty to his country's long alliance with America. (Earlier this month, Duterte said he is "breaking up" with the US and President Obama can "go to hell.")
(Newser) Four teenage students were shot in the shared parking lot of two San Francisco high schools Tuesday, and one of the students is in critical condition, authorities say. A police spokesman says the shooting occurred as students were being let out of school for the day from the June Jordan School for Equity and City Arts and Technology High School, which share a campus, the AP reports. Three of the victims ran inside the June Jordan School, and police initially ordered students to stay in place until police searched each room and determined it was not an active shooter situation. A fourth victim hurt in the shooting went to the Bayview police station.
"One female victim has life-threatening injuries to her upper torso," the police spokesman says. He notes four male suspects wearing dark hoodies and jeans were seen running away from the area. The shooters, who are not students at the school, seemed to have targeted the female student, officials say. "This was an isolated incident outside of the school building where one student was being targeted by outsiders," the San Francisco Unified School District said in a statement. The school says it plans to reopen Wednesday, but that may change if the shooters haven't been apprehended, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. (Read more school shooting stories.)
(Newser) Chalk up one more health advantage for the rich over the poor: more sleep. Researchers in Colombia crunched data about the movement of residents in Medellin and Manizales and found some interesting patterns, they report in Royal Society Open Science. For instance, rich and poor people traveled longer distances to get to work than the middle class, but their journeys were much different. Poorer residents left their homes at 5 or 6am and followed indirect routeslikely because they're walking parts of the way and then taking public transportation, reports Ars Technica. Richer residents, on the other hand, left about 7am and traveled direct routes because they're driving cars (or being driven). The same applied on the return trip.
The chart breaking down low-income commutes looks like a graph of "relatively poor wiring," write the researchers. But as wealth increases, so does travel efficiency, all of which "translates to substantially more sleep for the wealthy," notes a post at Boing Boing. In effect, the rich are able to buy more sleep than the poor, and the consequences go beyond the physical, writes Roheeni Saxena at Ars Technica: "This is sobering because it suggests that possessing wealth is a self-perpetuating state. The poor, who spend more time stuck in transit, have less opportunity to increase their income." She sees one potential remedy: Better public transit. (Your body will pay when you skimp on sleep.)
(Newser) Recreational marijuana is legal in the state of Oregon, but what's not is trading a bunch of it for a recreational vehicleand it's extra likely to come to light if a cop is the one selling said vehicle. But Jason Owen allegedly tried to do just that after seeing a Craigslist ad hawking a snowmobile, per the Statesman Journal, putting out feelers to the seller to see if he or she would be willing to accept a pound of pot in exchange for the snowmobile. The seller, an Oregon State Police trooper, agreed, KPTV reports.
When Owen showed up at a local gas station Saturday night to seal the dealcops say he had a pound and a half of pot, slightly more than what the original deal called forhe was greeted by a bunch of marked patrol cars, which conducted a traffic stop on Owen's car and reportedly found the pot. The Craigslist-frequenting trooper told Owen that even though pot is legal in the state, all pot transactions are required to go through the Oregon Liquor Control Commission or a medical marijuana dispensary registered with the Oregon Health Authority. Owen received a citation for marijuana delivery, and his car got taken away because he was driving with a suspended license. (Marijuana was the new crop featured at the Oregon State Fair this summer.)
(Newser) It's a long way from SoHo to Syria, but somehow a New York City college student ended up dying there last fall fighting for ISIS, prosecutors say. Per court records, 24-year-old Samy Mohammed el-Goarany showed "an increased interest in militant forms of Islam" and headed to Syria in February 2015, the New York Daily News reports. He was killed in November, but not before penning a note that reportedly read: "If you're reading this, then know that I've been killed in battle and am now with our Lord." The court papers were filed Monday in Manhattan federal court in a case against Arizona man Ahmed Mohammed el-Gammal, accused of helping Goarany get to Syria, amNewYork reports. The two men apparently started messaging each other on Facebook in August 2014, after Goarany, a student at an unnamed Manhattan college, noticed Gammal posting pro-ISIS comments.
Per court documents: By October, the two men had met in NYC, and Gammal started working with a Turkish man to expedite Goarany's journey overseas. By January 2015, Goarany was in Istanbul, and arrived in Syria the following month. Gammal was arrested in August 2015 on a slew of charges, including providing and conspiring to provide materials to support the militant group; he's pleaded not guilty ahead of his Dec. 5 trial. Goarany made a video in September 2015 after learning of Gammal's arrest, noting he went to Syria of his own accord. "I didn't come to this decision with anybody's influence or anybody's recruitment," he said in the video, per CNN. Gammal's lawyers say reports of Goarany's death are "unreliable," noting it's possible he wrote the note so he could fall off the radar of those monitoring his activity, ABC News notes. (Meanwhile, the "final battle" against ISIS for Mosul has started.)
(Newser) Detectives in Ohio have closed a 24-year-old murder case, and the outcome isn't much of a surprise to them: One furniture salesman killed another. Sam Perone, now 68, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter Tuesday, admitting that he shot 41-year-old Richard Woods in 1992, reports the Dayton Daily News. Perone had been a suspect from the start, given that Woods had visited his store on the night he disappeared on Perone's request. His body was found a month later in a ravine near Perone's store in Lebanon. Blood stains found in the store were inconclusive at the time, but detectives used more modern techniques to ID Woods' blood in both the store and at Perone's home. Perone was arrested in Arizona last year and extradited to Ohio.
It's a "small measure of justice," Woods' widow and the mother of his four children told the judge, per the AP. She called Perone a "bad man" who had threatened her husband before his murder. The judge sentenced Perone to 11 years in prison, with credit for the year he's been in custody. WCPO describes Woods as having been a successful salesman who'd made his name in the furniture industry, and authorities chalked up the motive to what the Washington Post calls "professional jealousy." The newspaper notes that Perone's wife was heard on a wiretap saying to her husband, "If you go down, I go down," but under Perone's plea agreement, she won't be prosecuted. (An ex-boyfriend who is now a paraplegic is accused in a woman's 33-year-old murder.)
(Newser) Donald Trump may have suggested Natasha Stoynoff wasn't attractive enough to assault, but the People writer has half a dozen people backing up her account that he forced his tongue down her throat during a 2015 interview at his Florida estateincluding her old journalism professor. Paul McLaughlin, who taught Stoynoff at Ryerson University in Toronto, tells People his former student called him the day of the alleged attack asking for advice. "I advised her not to say anything, because I believed Trump would deny it and try to destroy her," he says. "Now [Trumps] got to say that I'm a liar, too, and I'm not. I'm telling the truth," he adds, per the Toronto Star.
A friend also says she was with Stoynoff when she ran into Melania Trump in New York afterwarda claim Melania deniesand several colleagues say Stoynoff told them about the alleged assault when she returned from assignment. The encounter left Stoynoff shaken, the confidants say, though "it's possible [Trump] just doesn't remember it," adds Stoynoff. "It was over 10 years ago and I assume I am one of many, many women." She assumes right, according to Mark Cuban. He told CNN Tuesday that he's heard "second- and third-hand" accounts of at least two women assaulted by Trump in 2000 and 2014 who have yet to come forward and probably won't, per Fast Company. (Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser) What's in a name? In Malaysia, a heck of a lot when it comes to hot dogs. Per the BBC, the country's Islamic Development Department has told food vendors in the mostly Muslim nation that if they want a halal designation (meaning food items have been given the green light for consumption by Muslims), they can't use the word "dogs" in the meat product's namebecause the name might lead to "confusion." Sirajuddin Suhaimee, the department's director, elaborates: "In Islam, dogs are considered unclean, and the name cannot be related to halal certification." And that's even though the frankfurters themselves have already been given the OK as a halal item. "Even though the food sold at the outlet is halal, an inappropriate name is not suitable," the lead activist for the Malaysian Muslim Consumers Association says, per Free Malaysia Today.
The Auntie Anne's pretzel franchise is one of the first outlets to be affected by the new rule, as one of its items is called a "Pretzel Dog" (it would be better to call it a "Pretzel Sausage," Suhaimee notes, per the BBC). It's not the first time wording has messed up a snack or drink's halal standing in Malaysia: Time notes that A&W root beer, as well as ginger beer, have been banned since 2009 because of the word "beer" (alcohol is forbidden in Islam)unless they're rebranded, such as when A&W renamed its drink "A&W Sarsaparilla," FMT reports. One person who thinks the mandate is ridiculous: Nazri Aziz, Malaysia's tourism and culture minister, who told reporters Wednesday the ruling makes the country look "stupid and backward," per FMT. "In fact, I think I want to eat a hot dog now," he said. (More important: Is a hot dog a sandwich?)
(Newser) Anthony Russell allegedly violated a no-contact order and was due to appear in court in Indiana on a felony charge of stalking his estranged wife, Laura. Laura, 44, had reported to police multiple instances of finding Anthony, 51, waiting for her and following her, CBS reports. Prosecutors requested that a warrant be issued for his arrest, but on Oct. 6 Judge Michael Hensley declined to do so, choosing instead to simply issue a summons for Anthony Russell to appear in court days later, after a long holiday weekend. The day after that ruling, authorities found Anthony Russell dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound; when they went to the Russell home to inform Laura, they found her dead of multiple stab wounds. They believe Anthony killed her and then himself. On Monday, Hensley issued a statement acknowledging that "the most tragic result possible" came of his ruling, and explained why he made it, the Madison Courier reports.
"My role is not to simply grant all warrants without review," Hensley said. "Certain legal standards must be met before I can issue a warrant. The reason I did not issue a warrant in this case is that there was not sufficient probable cause. Without probable cause I do not have the power to issue a warrant. I made what I thought to be the correct legal decision." He added that he fully understands the risks involved in domestic abuse situations, but still found "the fact that an elementary school teacher killed his wife and then himself" difficult to believe. In the future, he says, he will issue an order for a hearing on the same day as the warrant request if he can't find probable cause to grant the warrant request. "I am hopeful the new procedure prevents a similar tragedy in the future," he writes. "I feel horrible about her death and realize the regret I express and information I provide in this statement do not bring her back." (Read more domestic violence stories.)
(Newser) It appears Europe's latest attempt to put a lander on the surface has Mars has once again resulted in failure. The BBC reports the European Space Agency lost communication with the Schiaparelli robot less than a minute before it was supposed to reach the Martian surface Wednesday. The lander's parachute definitely deployed, but it's unclear what happened after that, according to the New York Times. "These are not good signs," says the head of the mission operations department. And while it's possible the lander crashed and broke, the ESA isn't giving up yet. It could spend the next few days trying to figure out why it lost communication with the lander and how to get it back. The good news is the lander wasn't integral to the mission, which is centered around the Trace Gas Orbiter, currently circling above Mars and collecting information about its atmosphere. (Read more Mars stories.)
Everyone loves to travel but making your travel planning especially this coming holiday season is stressful with the rapid changing prices of flight tickets and accommodation. Google, however just announced a new and improved "Google Flights".
New features of Google flight-searching tool helps you in making your travel planning less stressful by finding the best deals and prices in booking your flights and/or accommodation at the best time by giving you an alert and new updates to mobile notification when flights are likely to increase in price, helping you find good hotel deals, and making travel planning easier on mobile or allow you to track flights by email to see how they fluctuate.
As the Project Manager Nabil Naghdy explained in a release on Monday, "After selecting a specific flight, a notification may appear letting you know when the current fare is expected to expire and how much you can save if you book now. For example, this flight to San Diego is likely to cost more in eight hours - and you would likely save $87 if you book before then".
If You Haven't Selected A Flight Yet
For an example, Google used a trip from New York City to San Diego.
Google Flights will show you a variety of possibilities to ensure a cheap travel, as you will see notification bar with multiple tips showing how to find the best price for this route including alternate airports and dates. You may also be given a new tip telling you about an expected price jump based on historic prices for that route. Tapping the notification will give you details about how likely the price rise is and by how much it will be.
If you're not ready to book yet
Google Flights will send you notifications via email to let you know when price are expected to change and that will help you choose to track your flight or route.
Finding Hotel Deals
Aside from best price for plane ticket, Google Flights is also offering more ways to find best hotel deals under the "Deals" section. It will show you when a hotel's price is lower than the usual pricing, and it also offers a neat filter for hotel discounts compared to the normal rate for those dates. Google will also notify users if there are deals for loyalty members on hotels' websites.
What to expect more?
We can expect over this coming weeks that the fare expiration and expected price jump notifications will be rolling everywhere Google Flights is available.
"We're also making it easier to find flights on the go. Next time you visit Google Flights, you'll be able to track and manage saved flights seamlessly on your phone,"- by Nabil Naghdy
Excitingly, this new and improved Google Flights could be a buddy in the hunt for the best fares, helping users find the best options.
New research done by University of Florida researchers has uncovered the mystery of why hand-picked tomatoes often taste better compared to those found chilled at the grocery store. This research also explains why tomatoes placed in the fridge tend to lose their flavor.
According to the report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, it was found that the fruits enzymes reduce in effectiveness upon chilling below 53.6 Fahrenheit, or 12degrees Celsius. Enzymes slow down when they go past their minimum working temperature. Because of this, they are less able at fusing volatile compounds which impart flavor to the tomato through a combination of sugars, acids and a set of 15 to 20 volatile compounds, with the possibility of there being more factors and compounds involved.
The author of the study, Harry Klee (Horticultural Sciences Professor at Florida), wrote that this would explain why many consumers perceive commercial tomatoes to be relatively bland. He pointed to the after-harvest handling system as being a large part of the problem. Chilling fruits led to this.
While storage at low temperatures decreases the rate at which the fruit decays and ripens, it also reduced the flavor quality of the fruit as the study discovered. This was because it affected significantly the volatile compounds rather than the sugars and the acids in the tomato.
In order to carry out this research, the researchers grew tomatoes in a UoF campus greenhouse and sorted out the ripe red fruits from the unripe ones. They then divided the fruits into three groups.
The tomatoes in group one were kept at 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celcius), at 92% humidity for 7 days. Afterwards, they were transferred to 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) for one day of recovery.
The tomatoes in group two were held for 8 days at 5 degrees Celsius and without recovery at room temperature. Tomatoes in group three were tested the next day after being picked, without any form of chilling.
It was discovered that if tomatoes were exposed to the cold for about 7 day their volatility levels decreased by up to 65 percent. The volatiles in the fruit did not return to normal even after having been given short recovery periods, the study also noted.
A panel made up of consumers (76 in total) was also created to judge the taste of the tomatoes that were chilled compared to the tomatoes that were not chilled. The tomatoes in the first group were judged by taste-testers to have less taste compared to the third group fruits that had been picked the previous day.
Ultimately, Klee revealed that the research was being used to help in the making of a better-tasting tomato according to the teams research page on the website for the University. How they hoped to do this would be by isolating the key genes necessary for the synthesis of flavor-inducing volatile compounds.
In other related news, tomatoes can have various beauty applications according to an article on the Huffington Post including as an acne remover, sunburn remedy, skin cleanser etc. This is due in part to the Lycopene in the tomato (key in age reversal) and its various vitamins.
Huawei has released another Smartphone that is of great quality but is very cheap. Huawei Honor 8 also has a dual camera like the new iPhone 7 Plus and another Huawei phone, Huawei P9.
Economic Times has reported that Huawei Honor 8 has a great camera for photography lovers. It has two 12 MP camera that is not protruding like the camera in the new iPhone7. The camera makes the pictures livelier with more vibrant colors and more detailed. Chinese Smartphone brand also has a 5.2-inch full-HD display and 2.5D glass on its sides that makes it look classy and shiny.
It is powered by Kirin 950 processor paired up with 4GB of RAM. Its external memory can support up to 128GB. The 16-nanometer Kirin 950 chip helps the phone's battery life. It also improves the overall performance of the Smartphone. The battery used in this phone is 3,000mAh battery
Live Mint stated that Huawei Honour 8 features 12MP dual lens main shooter and an 8MP front camera. It can work like an SLR with its depth that the user can define. It has a wide aperture mode that can make an illusion for your photo. It also lets the user regulate the focus of the picture and even blur the background of any picture. Furthermore, there is a professional mode to maximize the use of the camera.
According to News18, Huawei Honor 8 Sapphire Blue has sold out in just 48 hours after its release. All online resellers, Flipkart, Amazon, and even in Honor store, they have announced that the phone is already out of stock. Moreover, there were 250,000 pre-orders of the Huawei Honour 8 made at the Honor store.
Huawei phones are cheaper than many other famous Smartphone. If you do not care about the brand, you should check out Huawei's new phone, the Honor 8.
New Delhi:
The second day of Bigg Boss season 10 has very tactfully planned the task to create a wide rift between the celebrities and the India wales to see how much of a unity the team members within each teams show when pitted against the opponent.
As she forced the Sevaks to follow her orders and Bani was her obvious target. So, what offended Priyanka? Well, it was Banis request to use the word please as a courtesy while ordering around.
Also Read: (Bigg Boss 10, Day 2: Fight with Bani J leaves Priyanka Jagga in tears)
Manveer, Priyanka, Naveen and Manu, who are now Maaliks of the house team up against the sevaks to criticize the food that is being served to them.
Witnessed a cat-fight between Bani J and Priyanka Jagga. The spark of face-off between the two on Day 1 took no time to turn into a big fight on the second day, when both these bold and loud-mouthed female indulged in arguments and bad words.
Lokesh communicates Om Swamis message to Bigg Boss. Later, the celebrities poke fun at Priyankas surname.
In the evening, Salman Khan addresses the inmates about the first luxury task.
Gaurav is asked to read a letter addressed by Big Boss to the inmates.
Each of the India wales were asked to write a secret about them on a piece of paper before entering the house. The luxury budget task would require the celebrities to guess which secret belongs to whom.
Among the India wale, Priyanka and Manu are the loudest, Om Swami- the most annoying inmate inside the house he ends up irking people, Navin and Manveer the observers while Lokesh and Nitibha - the quietest. Akanksha is balanced.
On being asked by Gaurav, Akanksha speaks about her marriage.
Om Swami warns Gaurav to keep away from Akanksha. He engages in character assassination of Akanksha by indirectly holding her responsible for her failed marriage.
Om Swami tells Gaurav that he can bring his army to keep such unwanted people away.
After listening to Om Swami, Gaurav responds to him by telling that Akanksha has no intentions of impressing him.
New Delhi:
Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar Tuesday said whether cross-LoC surgical strikes were undertaken by the army in the past only the military will know as no message about such assaults were conveyed.
What FS said is that the key issue is that we went public after conducting the surgical strikes which conveyed a politico-military message. Whether any previous crossings had been done only the army would know. But it is irrelevant anyway because there was no message, sources in the government said.
ALSO READ: (Army has carried out 'surgical strikes' across LOC in the past too, says Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar)
The clarification about what transpired at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs, which was briefed on the strikes by Jaishankar, came after some opposition MPs quoted him having said the army had carried out target specific, limited-calibre, counter-terrorist operations across the LoC in the past too but this was for the first time the government had gone public about it.
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Ayodhya:
Lord Ram looked set to occupy political centrestage in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh despite BJPs claim of a temple to the deity not being on its agenda, with Union Minister Mahesh Sharma on Tuesday said that those who get to do Ram Ka Kaam (serve Ram) were fortunate.
If anyone gets a chance to work for Bhagwan Ram he is most fortunate...it will be good fortune if Bhagwan Ram gives us a chance to do Ram ka kaam and this responsibility has been given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the people of the country, Sharma said during his visit to Aodhya to inspect the proposed site for setting up a Ramayana musuem.
The proposed museum, to be built on a 25 acre plot given by the Uttar Pradesh government nearly 15 km from the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid complex, has reignited demands by BJP hardliners like Vinay Katiyar for building a Ram temple at the site where the Babri mosque stood before being pulled down in 1992.
ALSO READ: (Ramayana Museum: Vinay Katiyar calls it mere 'lollipop'; Mahesh Sharma rules out 'political motive' behind his Ayodhya visit)
Katiyar, who had yesterday demanded that a bill be brought in the Lok Sabha for creation of Ram temple, today said no positive efforts were being made for construction of the temple and only lollipop was being offered to the devotees of the deity.
A race is on...somebody is building a museum, somebody else (the Akhilesh Yadav government) a Ramleela Theme Park. We welcome development of Ayodhya, but everything is useless without construction of Ram temple. We cannot compromise on that.
No positive steps are being taken for building Ram temple, which is the core job that needs to be done. The Samajwadi Party government shot dead the Kar Sevaks and now it is offering lollipop in the form of a theme park, Katiyar, a BJP member of the Rajya Sabha who once represented Faizabad, the district where Ayodhya is located, in Parliament, said.
Mann ban chuka hai, mahaul ban chuka hai (we have made up our mind, a conducive atmosphere has also been created). The beginning has been made and we have got the directives from Ram Lala, Sharma said, adding, We are the Lords children and so have to do his work of spreading education.
Insisting that Ram temple was not on the Modi governments agenda, Sharma said Ayodhyas development will get a big push from the Rs 151 crore allotted for developing the proposed museum, which will present the life of the deity as portrayed in sage Valmikis epic.
He said there was no politics behind the proposed museum being constructed as part of the Ramayana Circuit. Similarly Krishna Circuit and Buddhist Circuit were also being developed, Sharma said.
He said Ram temple was an issue of faith for millions of people, but it was not on BJPs electoral agenda.
The Minister said the government would try to have the museum inaugurated before Uttar Pradesh votes to elect a new government.
The Modi government, however, came under attack from the Congress over the issue with party general secretary Digvijay Singh alleging the museum and Ram temple were being raked up with an eye on the assembly election in Uttar Pradesh due early next year.
Come election, come Ram Mandir issue. This is what BJP has as a strategy. Nobody is against the temple. I am a practising Hindu, but even Lord Ram would not have wanted a temple in the atmosphere of dispute. BJP has been trying to fool all the people all the time, Singh said.
Singh said Modis chant of Jai Shri Ram, Jai Jai Shri Ram at a Dussehra event in Lucknow was obviously intended
to polarise Hindu votes in favour of the BJP.
However, another Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan claimed there was no attempt at polarisation by constructing a Ramayana museum in Ayodhya.
Lord Ram is not an issue linked with polls. Mahesh Sharma has been trying for Ramayana museum for the last year-and-a-half. If not a Ram musuem, will a Babur (Mughal emperor) museum come up there, Balyan, an accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case, said.
About Katiyars demand for building a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, he said,The matter is pending with the court, nothing will happen without its verdict.
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Los Angeles:
Actress Kerry Washington and husband Nnamdi Asomugha have welcomed their second child together. The 39-year-old actress gave birth to baby boy, Caleb Kelechi Asomugha, on October 5, reported E! online.
Washington's second pregnancy was confirmed in May, after her baby bump was on display while attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington, DC. The couple are already parents to daughter Isabelle. Washington hasn't posted about her new son on social media.
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New Delhi:
With various film bodies imposing a ban on Pakistan actors after the Uri attack, government Wednesday said people-to-people contact would continue and there was no plan to stop it.
This was conveyed by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs during discussions on Indo-Pak relations with a specific reference to surgical strikes across the LoC on September 29. People-to-people contact would continue and there was no plan to stop it, he told the panel.
ALSO READ: (Only military will know if the cross-LoC surgical strikes took place in the past: FS Jaishankar)
In the aftermath of the Uri terror attack last month in which 19 Indian jawans were killed, the MNS issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave India. They also threatened to stop the screening of films featuring artistes from Pakistan.
Subsequently, Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association passed a motion to ban the artistes from the neighbouring country. The Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India recently decided not to screen the films with Pakistani actors in four statesMaharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa.
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Raipur:
Chhattisgarh Congress on Wednesday suspended its rebel MLA R K Rai for "anti-party" activities but that did not deter him from making "derogatory" remarks against Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi.
The decision to suspend Rai, considered a supporter of Chhattisgarh Janata Congress Party chief Ajit Jogi, was taken by Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee (CPCC) at a meeting of its Coordination Committee.
Also Read: Nitish Kumar suitable to replace Narendra Modi as PM, says JD(U) leader KC Tyagi
"With the unanimous decision of the members of Coordination Committee, Rai has been suspended from the party," AICC General Secretary in-charge of Chhattisgarh B KHariprasad told reporters after the meeting.
The panel also recommended to the party's centraldisciplinary committee that the MLA from Gunderdehi be dismissed from Congress, he added. Hariprasad asserted Congress will fight the 2018 Assembly polls in Chhattisgarh under the leadership of the party's state chief Bhupesh Baghel and legislature party leader TSSinghdeo.
Meanwhile, Rai welcomed the decision and said the action was taken against him for speaking against Rahul. "I was told the action has been taken against me for making comments against Rahul Gandhi (in the past). I can'tcall a donkey a horse.
If the party feels my observation is wrong then either it is blind or (is) acting like a blind person," a defiant Rai said in a statement. "I am not at all sad with the move because I am a true and vocal tribal representative.
I am free now," said the legislator, adding the decision has once again exposed the"anti-tribal" face of Congress. Chhattisgarh Congress had issued a show cause notice to Rai last week for "anti-party" activities and publicly making statements against the party. The police officer-turned-politician is said to be astaunch supporter of Jogi, who floated his own party after quitting Congress in June this year. Jogi had brought Rai into politics and helped him ingetting a ticket from Gunderdehi seat in the 2013 Assemblypolls.
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Bhubaneswar:
Four officials including the Superintendent of the private hospital, where a major fire claimed 20 lives, were arrested Wednesday after the Odisha government filed two FIRs alleging negligence in conduct and safety against the healthcare facility.
Those arrested are Superintendent of Sum Hospital, Pushpraj Samantsinghar, Electrical Maintenance Engineer Amulya Sahu, Fire Safety Officer Santosh Das and Junior Electrical Engineer Malay Sahu, said Commissioner of Police Y B Khurania.
Khurania said the officials were arrested on the basis of the preliminary inquiry report of the fire officer and the FIR filed by the Fire Services department at the Khandagiri police station where a case in this regard has been registered today.
The four were booked under Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 285 (negligent conduct with respect to fire and combustible materials) and 34 (common intent) of the IPC, Khurania said.
Meanwhile, Director General of Fire Service, Binay Behera submitted a report to the state government on the fire that ravaged parts of the private hospital last night in which 20 people died and many were injured.
Behera in his report has mentioned that fire safety norms as per the 2013 guidelines were not followed by the hospital authorities, an official said. A senior police official said more arrests in the case cannot be ruled out at this stage.
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Chennai:
Finance Minister O Panneerselvam, who has been allocated the portfolios held by ailing Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, will preside over a meeting of the Tamil Nadu cabinet Wednesday, government sources said Tuesday.
Panneerselvam will chair the meeting as Jayalalithaa is undergoing medical treatment at the Apollo Hospital here since September 22.
The meeting to be held Wednesday comes in the backdrop of the ongoing Cauvery water sharing row with Karnataka and demands by Opposition parties for an all-party meeting on the issue.
Farmers bodies and political parties had staged state-wide rail blockade yesterday and today urging the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board.
Last week, Tamil Nadu Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao had allotted the portfolios held by Jayalalithaa including Home and Police, to Panneerselvam, till she could resume official duties.
The Raj Bhavan had then, in a release, said Paneerselvam, who holds the Administrative reforms portfolio, in addition to Finance, will also preside over cabinet meetings.
68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to the Apollo hospital on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration.
A specialist from London besides three-member team of doctors from AIIMS, Delhi, had also examined Jayalalithaa, who is being treated for infection with respiratory support.
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Johannesburg:
South African struggle icon and husband of Mahatma Gandhi's grand daughter Mewa Ramgobin has died at the age of 83 after a prolonged illness. Ramgobin, the former president of the Natal Indian Congress which fought discrimination against Indians in South Africa, breathed his last at a Cape Town hospital on Monday.
A family member said he was admitted to hospital on October 8 and was doing well until two days ago. Ramgobin was married to Ela Gandhi, a human rights activist and Mahatma Gandhi's granddaughter.
A former African National Congress member of Parliament until 2009, he was among the first supporters of the Release Mandela campaign. He was charged for treason in 1985. The couple was involved in the activities of the Phoenix Settlement Trust that was established in 1904 by Gandhi near Durban during his tenure in South Africa.
Just hours before Ramgobin's death, Ela had departed for Sweden with one of their daughters Asha who is due to receive an honorary degree there. Their son Kidar said family members were meeting to discuss funeral arrangements, as his mother and sister were due to return only on Sunday.
Ramgobin's role in politics started in his teenage years,and continued when he enrolled at the University of Natal. He was among the first to join the Release Mandela Campaign after the infamous treason trial that sent Nelson Mandela to prison for 27 years before he became South Africa's first democratically-elected president.
Ramgobin faced intense persecution from apartheid-erasecurity forces which banned him for 17 years, many of those under complete house arrest. He also faced high treason charges after riots broke out in 1994 near the Phoenix Settlement between Indians and the indigenous Zulu community which had lived peacefully side-by side for decades, but was acquitted a year later.
Ramgobin's commitment to the Gandhian cause saw him establish a Gandhi museum and library, organising the Annual Gandhi Lecture and educate people from different race groupson Gandhian philosophies. An author of books 'Waiting To Live' and 'Prisms Of Light', he would have turned 84 on November 10. In 1983, Ramgobin made international headlines when he and five other members of the resistance movement United Democratic Front sought refuge in the British consulate. After Mandela's election, Ramgobin served for several years in the first Parliament of South Africa that was not exclusively white as in the apartheid years.
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New Delhi:
In a whopping deal of around $2 billion, India is all set to acquire a second class Akula 2 nuclear-powered attack submarine from Russia.
According to reports, the deal remains unannounced so far which was finalised and signed in Goa between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with other defence deals worth more than $5 billion which have been made public.
The submarine will arrive in Indian waters by 2020-21. Our Indian Navy already operates an Akula 2 class nuclear submarine, INS Chakra (formerly known as K-152 Nerpa), which was leased from Russia.
Earlier, there were reports that India was keen on leasing the much more advanced Project 885 Yasen Class nuclear attack submarine, the newest class of submarine in Russias arsenal.
ALSO READ: (INS Arihant: All you need to know about India's indigenous nuclear submarine)
About Akula class 2
#The Akula class 2 submarine is nuclear powered and considered one of the most advanced. Akula 2 is among the quietest submarines to have been built by Russia.
#Akula is armed with torpedoes and cruise missiles, it can strike enemy ships, submarines and also targets on the land.
#The second Akula submarine which is being leased from Russia is likely to be based in Visakhapatnam.
#It will have two roles- defending India's fleet of nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines and to track Chinese nuclear powered attack submarines which are increasingly frequent visitors to the Indian Ocean.
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New Delhi:
India would look to continue its winning spree when they take on New Zealand in the second match of the ODI series at Feroz Shah Kotla,Delhi on Thursday.
The hosts would come into the match with a lot of confidence after their comprehensive win over the Kiwis in the opener at Dharamsala.
Limited over captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni who has been under the scanner for his batting, shall be looking for yet another win from his team.
Dhoni who quite relished his new role of playing high up the order in Dharamsala ODI shall look to contribute with the willow too.
Meanwhile, Virat Kohli would eye another smashing knock at his home ground when favourites India lock horns with an hapless New Zealand in the second ODI.
It may be just another ODI in a bilateral series, but there is lot at stake for Dhoni, who has been under pressure after Test skipper Virat Kohli led India to the number one ranking following a 3-0 whitewash.
With India up 1-0 in the five-match series, Dhoni and his men would like to reassert themselves at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in order to further consolidate their lead.
It is expected that Dhoni would not tinker much with theplaying XI from last game with Suresh Raina, who missed theopening match, being ruled out of the second ODI as well afterfailing to recover from a bout of viral fever.
At the face of it, there is apparently no danger toDhoni's captaincy since the team is still winning matches. Butif one digs deeper, Virat has slowly and surely been the maneveryone is looking forward to as a leader.
A 'Clean Sweep' in Test series with a career-best doublehundred, followed by an effortless 85 Not out in first ODI,Kohli has time and again showed as to how it is done "leadingfrom the front."
For Dhoni, it's now about showing the world that he isfar from being dubbed as a spent force in limited overs afterearning sobriquet of 'Best Finisher" some years back.
While Kane Williamson's 'Black Caps' is struggling tostay afloat in the series, India's 'Captain Cool' is fightinga different battle to remain the 'supreme' commander' of 'MenIn Blue'.
Dhoni is still supremely fit and agile behind the stumps.His captaincy acumen cannot be questioned. Testimony to thatis Hardik Pandya opening the bowling and Kedar Jadhav fillingin the role of a part time off-spinner.
But then runs aren't exactly coming from his bat. The bighits aren't being executed with perfection that used to be hishallmark a few years ago.
He was run out for 21 in the last game and although thatdidn't affect the outcome of the match in any way, but theskipper knows only too well that he has to play a few impact innings in coming weeks.
No wonder Dhoni's intensity while batting at Kotla netsduring an optional session was there to be seen. For therecord, he needs another 61 runs to complete 9000 ODI runs.But there must be a lingering shadow of Virat standing rightbehind him.
A 3-0 Test series victory has set a benchmark. Now Dhoniwould like to ideally win the series 5-0 against a New Zealand side. A blip here or a hiccup there would invite morecriticism as people take it for granted that India will winhands down against New Zealand.
New Delhi:
Indian auto major Tata Motors has increased prices of its passenger vehicles by up to Rs 12,000 across models to combat rising input costs.
"We have hiked prices of our passenger vehicles by one per cent ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 12,000 due to rising input costs," Mayank Pareek, President, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors, told PTI. He said prices of raw materials such as steel and zinc have gone up prompting the company to take such a step.
Tata Motors sells a range of passenger vehicles, including the entry-level small car Nano, newly-launched hatchback Tiago and crossover vehicle Aria, which were priced at a range of Rs 2.15 lakh to Rs 16.3 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).
Home-grown rival Mahindra & Mahindra has hiked prices of some of its passenger and small commercial vehicles by up to 1 per cent from this month.
In August, Hyundai Motor India had hiked prices by up to Rs 20,000 across its models while Maruti Suzuki India had also done so for its various models by up to Rs 20,000.
Bhubaneswar:
With the fire incident at the Sum Hospital exposing the chinks in the system, the Odisha government has decided to conduct fire safety audit at all the government-run healthcare facilities across the state.
The decision in this regard was taken at a high level meeting presided over by Chief Secretary A P Padhi and attended by secretaries of energy, health departments and director general of fire service Binay Behera.
A total of 21 persons died and more than 100 others were injured in the fire that broke out at Sum Hospital on Monday evening.
Fire safety audit at government hospitals in district, sub-divisional level and medical colleges would be conducted. The fire safety measures at places particularly with electrical installations will be reviewed. One month time has been given to Energy and Works department to submit their requirements after inspection, Padhi told reporters.
Meanwhile, Behera has submitted his report based on an on-field investigation at Sum Hospital. He said that of about 160 health facilities in the state capital, only three or four institutions have availed fire safety permission.
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Chennai:
For the first time after the Tamil Nadu Governor re-allocated the portfolios of ailing Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, state Finance Minister O Panneerselvam Wednesday presided over a meeting of the state cabinet to discuss, among other matters, the vexed Cauvery issue.
Although the government did not release details of the agenda of the meeting, the Cabinet is understood to have deliberated on the ongoing Cauvery water sharing dispute with Karnataka, besides other subjects.
The meeting also comes ahead of the scheduled onset of north-east monsoon later this month. The rains in December last year had wreaked havoc, flooding Chennai and nearby districts.
Last week, Tamil Nadu Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao had allotted the portfolios including Home held by Jayalalithaa to Panneerselvam, till the time she returned to resume official duties.
The government released photographs of todays cabinet meeting, where Panneerselvam was seen seated with a picture of Jayalalithaa placed on his desk.
The nearly hour-long meeting was held in the backdrop of the ongoing Cauvery water sharing row with Karnataka and demands by Opposition parties for an all-party meeting on the issue.
Farmers bodies and political parties had staged a two-day state-wide rail blockade ending Tuesday, urging the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Management Board.
The Raj Bhavan had last week in a release, said Paneerselvam, who holds the Administrative Reforms portfolio, in addition to Finance, will also preside over cabinet meetings.
The last Cabinet meeting held by Jayalalithaa was in July this year to discuss the state budget. 68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to the Apollo hospital on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration.
A specialist from London besides three-member team of doctors from AIIMS, Delhi, had also examined Jayalalithaa, who is being treated for infection with respiratory support.
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Washington:
As ISIS sees its territory shrink to half its original size and its dreams of a caliphate evaporate, the extremist fighters are losing access to the sources of revenue that once gave them their power, prompting them to turn to extortion, kidnapping or foreign donations like their predecessors, the militant group al-Qaida.
The Islamic State group had a unique ability to capitalize on the natural resources of its territory in Iraq and Syria and swiftly implement a system of taxation and governance that allowed it to rule an area that once was the size of Switzerland.
As the battle gets underway to retake Mosul, the group's largest stronghold in Iraq, the Islamic State group is being denied access to revenue sources such as oil and gas and cash reserves that once amounted to more than USD 1 billion in 2014, said Daniel Glaser, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for terrorist financing.
With those resources slipping away, the Islamic State group is expected to revert to "traditional methods we see al-Qaida using whether it's deep-pocket donors, whether it's charities, whether it's NGOs, whether it's criminal activity,"
Glaser said in a recent discussion at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Beyond oil and gas sales, the Islamic State group also generated some USD 30 million per month in Iraq from taxation and extortion in 2015.
Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on IS who advises the Iraqi government, said the militant group currently makes about USD 4 million per month from taxes in Mosul alone.
Al-Hashimi said the group charges a 4 per cent income tax on salaries less than USD 600 per month, and 5 per cent on monthly salaries between USD 600 and USD 1,000.
Bank robberies made up the Islamic State group's third biggest source of revenue, mainly in Mosul, where there was more than USD 500 million in state-owned bank vaults when they captured the city in June 2014, but that was "a one-time take for them," Glaser noted, and they are quickly burning through that cash.
Glaser says the Islamic State group is under financial duress. Fighter salaries have been cut in half in some areas, including in Raqqa, Syria, its de facto capital. The group also set up an internal corruption agency, suggesting corruption may be a factor, Glaser and al-Hashimi said.
To compensate, there's been a noticeable spike in the IS group's revenue from criminal activity, such as extortion the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism says extortion accounted for a third of its revenue in 2015, compared to 12 per cent in 2014.
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New York:
Indian-American hotelier Vikram Chatwal has been charged with criminal mischief for allegedly trying to light two dogs on fire, an allegation his lawyer has denied.
Chatwal, 44, had turned himself to the police early yesterday morning and has been charged with criminal mischief, torture and injure animal, reckless endangerment and arson.
The charges stem from an October 7 incident in which Chatwal allegedly got into an argument with a woman walking the dogs outside his home in the city.
Chatwal, accused of allegedly pulling out a lighter and aerosol can to hurt the two dogs, pleaded not guilty to the charges during his appearance in a Manhattan court yesterday. Chatwals bail was set at USD 50,000 and the next hearing in the case is set for December 8.
His attorney Arthur Aidala told PTI that Chatwal denies all the charges and proclaims his innocence. He said he is a non-violent person who would never injure an animal or human being.
His personality and disposition in his 44 years is not of somebody who would injure another animal or another human being, Aidala said.
He informed the judge that Chatwals personality and disposition is that of a calm, peaceful and non-violent person as Chatwal himself owns many dogs and even takes care of a horse.
He is known as being an animal lover. We vehemently disagrees with the set of facts that the prosecutor put forth in court, Aidala said.
Aidala said he also informed the judge that the dogs in this case were not hurt and were not even taken to the veterinarian until days after the alleged incident occurred.
He said even the case the prosecutor puts forth says that some of the hair on the dogs back was burnt but none of the dogs were burned and neither did they suffer.
It was among Chatwals priority to make sure that the dogs in question were unharmed and were well-treated and cared for, Aidala said.
The big takeaway from this is that the dogs were never hurt, that was very important to Vikram and his whole family to make sure no one is accusing him of actually hurting the dogs. Even the prosecutor said the dogs were never hurt.
What flies in the face of the charges is that Chatwal is just not the kind of person who is going to attack anybody, let alone the dogs walking down the street, he said.
Aidala said he would meet with the prosecutors in the coming months and explain to them what really happened. We will try to work out some sort of disposition regarding case, he added.
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Hyderabad:
Padma Bhushan awardee Michael Ferreira and Former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira and three others have been arrested by Hyderabad Police in connection with an FIR registered against them, they were alleged in multi-crore rupee fraud involving themulti-level marketing company QNet.
The Central Crime Station (CCS), a wing of Hyderabad Police, has made a break through in a case of cheating which involved QNet and its Indian subsidiary M/s Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, by arresting four directors of Vihaan,Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty told reporters.
Michael Joseph Ferreira (78), Malcom N Desai, M V Balajiand Srinivas Rao, all directors and shareholders of VihaanDirect Selling India Pvt Ltd who were earlier arrested in Mumbai by Maharashtra Police, have been brought to city on PT (production transit) warrants and arrested, the DCP said.
On October 13 last year, a complaint was lodged by one Suman Ghosh, an assistant manager in a private bank,wherein he stated that he paid Rs 16 lakh (via DD) in the name of Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, on the promise of getting business. But, they did not give him any business despite collecting the amount.
Based on the complaint, a case under sections 406(criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of IPC, besides relevant sections of Prize, Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, Mohanty said.
He said during the course of investigation into the case registered, on October 8 (this year) they received an information from the EOW wing of Mumbai Police that the four accused persons, who are directors of Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, were arrested and remanded in judicial custody. Subsequently, Hyderabad Police filed an application at a court in Mumbai seeking their custody in connection with the case registered by them. The Mumbai court then granted transit remand and the Hyderabad Police took Padma Bhushan recipient Ferreira and three others into custody and brought them to the city late last night.
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Washington:
A 37-year-old man, who ripped off a Muslim woman's hijab on a flight while shouting "this is America!", has been sentenced to a year of probation, including two months of home confinement.
Gill Parker Payne was also fined USD 1,000 for the attack, according to a statement by the US Attorney's Office in the District of New Mexico.
"You hurt me, you disrespected me you violated me," the victim, Khawla Abdel-Haq was quoted as saying in court by the Albuquerque Journal.
"I was scared, and it shouldn't be like that," she said, adding that she did not leave her home for weeks out of fear after the in-flight attack last December.
Payne, from North Carolina, was sentenced in US District Court yesterday to a year of probation, including two months of home confinement.
US Magistrate Judge Steven Yarbrough also ordered Payne to pay a USD 1,000 fine, along with a nearly USD 4,000 fee.
In May, Payne had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of obstructing a person's free exercise of religious beliefs.
Payne also apologised during yesterday's hearing and said he has taken online courses to familiarise himself with other religions and recently toured a mosque in hopes of learning more about Islam.
"I'm embarrassed. I'm 100 per cent embarrassed," he was quoted as saying.
Payne said he was drunk on the flight and "doesn't fully remember everything" that happened.
But Abdel-Haq remembers. "I'm not gonna forget it. It's going to be with me every minute of every day of my life," she said.
She was sitting in an aisle seat on the Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to Albuquerque after a trip to Ohio when Payne approached her about 30 minutes before the flight landed, she said.
"I was minding my own business. He went and he grabbed my scarf, my hijab, and he told me, 'Take it off... This is America,'" she said of the incident.
A shaken Haq pulled the scarf back onto her head. She met with police after the flight landed, and the FBI launched an investigation.
Before he announced the sentence, Yarbrough said he had taken into account Haq's willingness to forgive along with the public shaming Payne endured and his recent efforts to learn about world religions.
"I hope that that has made an impact on the way you see the world," Yarbrough said.
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Mumbai:
Rejecting filmmaker Karan Johars statement that he will not engage with talent from Pakistan in future, the MNS on Wednesday protested outside a cinema hall while asserting that it will not allow Ae Dil Hai Mushkil to be screened in single theatres and multiplexes.
Four MNS film wing workers were later detained by police after they protested outside the Metro cinema hall in South Mumbai, asking the management not to hold any show of movie Ae Dil Hai Mushkil which features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
The MNS activists were raising slogans outside the Metro theatre for some time. The police asked them to carry it out peacefully but they were not in a mood to listen to us. We have detained four MNS workers so far, a police officer from Azad Maidan police station said.
Seeking to assuage tempers over opposition to the release of his directorial venture, Johar had yesterday made a fervent appeal against stalling the release, saying he will not engage with talent from Pakistan.
However, the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) today said reality has dawned late on Johar.
MNS cine wing head Amey Khopkar, after a meeting with senior party leaders and Raj Thackeray, told PTI that they were firm on opposing the release.
We will not allow the film to be screened in single screens and multiplexes. Reality has dawned late on the producer, Khopkar said.
The MNS protested outside Metro cinema he said, adding that such protests will be held at all cinema halls.
The MNS and some other political parties have opposed release of films with actors from Pakistan after the Uri terror attack, putting a question mark on the fate of Johars movie, slated for a pre-Diwali release on October 28.
The Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India too decided not to screen films with Pakistani actors in four statesMaharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa.
Johars film starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is facing trouble for Pakistani actor Fawad Khans extended cameo.
A team from Johars Dharma Productions along with filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt and Vijay Singh of Fox Star Studios had yesterday met Mumbais top police officials and sought protection for the theatres to screen the film.
Assuring all help from their end, Deputy Commissioner of Police Ashok Dudhe had said, Mumbai police will provide adequate protection to cinema theatres as and when required."
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New Delhi:
Rajasthan government has filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of actor Salman Khan in two poaching cases. They have requested SC to order Salman Khan to surrender in the poaching case.
State government wants Salman to serve his remaining sentence, after being convicted for hunting and killing the chinkaras.
Earlier in July, the high court overturned two trial court verdicts that handed the actor one and five years imprisonment and found him not guilty for killing an endangered species of gazelle or chinkara. Salman has spent 13 days behind bars.
The actor was shooting for the film Hum Saath Saath Hain at that time. Two cases against Salman black-buck hunting and possessing illegal arms are still being tried at trial courts in the state.
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New Delhi:
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav onA A written a letter to Samajwadi Party chief and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav and announced his decision to embark on 'Samajwadi Vikas Rath Yatra' alone from November 3.
In a letter written to party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Chief Minister expressed disappointment over not starting aSamajwadi Vikas Rath Yatraa on its slated date.A The aYatraa is part of party campaign for the next assembly election in 2017.A
#AkhileshYadav writes a letter to Samajwadi Party chief and his father #MulayamSinghYadav to embark on 'Samajwadi Vikas Rath Yatra' pic.twitter.com/GM88aHoKls
a News Nation (@NewsNationTV) October 19, 2016
A The CM has mentioned that all the other parties have already started their election campaign. A He also said that the detailed itinerary will be sent to all the heads of districts and party workers at an appropriate time.A
The announcement gave rise to speculation that Akhilesh might skip his party's silver jubilee celebrations which begins in Lucknow from November 5.
Party insiders said any attempt to derail or stop him from going ahead with the Yatra could lead to another crisis in the party.
Earlier in the day, Akhilesh Yadav and Shivpal Yadav held a closed-door meeting at Mulayam Singh Yadav's Vikramaditya Marg residence to discuss poll strategy.
According to party sources, Akhilesh is adamant on his demands of revoking the expulsion of youth leaders, some of whom are MLCs, and having his say in the ticket distribution.A
Akhilesh had earlier announced his decision to take out the yatra from October 3 through his twitter handle with a picture in which he was seen sitting inside a bus.
It was seen as a move to counter uncle Shivpal, who had been appointed the new state party president in his place.
Akhilesh hit back over his removal from the party post by stripping Shivpal of his key ministerial portfolios, bringing the family feud in the open.
(With PTI inputs)
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Mumbai:
Beverages major Coca Cola India has dropped Bollywood superstar Salman Khan as brand ambassador for its soft drink Thums Up after four years of association and the company is in talks with young star Ranveer Singh to replace him.
The contract with Khan had expired last month and the company has chosen not to renew it, according to industry sources.
When contacted, Coca Cola India declined to comment. The companys decision to not to renew the contract with the 50-year-old actor is more to do with the image of Coca Cola, which is seen as a young brand, a source said.
That explains why Coca Cola is talking to a much younger star like Ranveer Singh, the source added.
Khan has been among the top celebrity endorsers reportedly charging Rs 5 crore per year per brand. Recently, he had courted controversy when he supported Pakistani artists saying they were not terrorists in the wake of a debate on whether they should be allowed to work in Indian movies after the Uri attack.
Coca Cola India had roped in Khan as its brand ambassador for the second time to endorse its Thums Up brand in October 2012 replacing another Bollywood star Akshay Kumar. He had earlier endorsed the brand in early 2000s.
At that time, Coca-Cola India had also signed an agreement with Being HumanThe Salman Khan Foundationto jointly promote, conceive and execute charitable and social activities.
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Sambhal:
BSP national general secretary Naseemuddin Siddiqui on Wednesday cautioned the Muslims against SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav describing him as more dangerous than Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Muslims, you all need to be wary of Mulayam Singh Yadav...he is more dangerous than Narendra Modi...during Modis term as chief minister of Gujarat, 42 Muslims were killed in the Godhra riots, while 187 of them were killed in the Muzaffarnagar riots (in Uttar Pradesh) under the SP government, he said at the BSPs Bhaichara Committee meeting here.
Muslims, if you dislike Modi so much, why dont you dislike Mulayam? Siddiqui asked, adding that the community had been voting for Mulayam for 25 years but what had he given to them in return.
Mulayam remembers the minorities only at election times but after that, they are forgotten...all the parties, be it the Congress or the SP, have used Muslims as a vote-bank, alleged the BSP leader.
Siddiqui said riots did not take place on their own but were instigated.
Both the SP and the BJP instigate riots as part of a conspiracy for their political gains, he alleged.
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Mumbai:
R Madhavan and Dia Mirza, the much loved couple Maddy-Reena from "Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mei", meet for a special photo shoot on completion of 15 years of their hit romantic film.
The duo recreated the film's official poster and Madhavan shared the new version on his Twitter page, much to the delight of the fans.
"And a recreation of the poster.. how gorgeous does @deespeak still look..#15yearsofRHTDM," Madhavan tweeted.
And a recreation of the poster.. how gorgeous does @deespeak still look..#15yearsofRHTDM . pic.twitter.com/UVMee2CYH3 a Ranganathan Madhavan (@ActorMadhavan) October 19, 2016
The picture showed Madhavan resting his face on Dia's head as the two pose for the photo, looking as dreamy as the original poster.
Replying to his tweet, his co-star posted, "He is as charming as ever :) @ActorMadhavan Reena will always love Maddy. #15YearsOfRHTDM."
"Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein", released in 2001, was written-directed by Gautham Menon and also starred Saif Ali Khan.
It followed a Mumbai boy, Maddy, who does not believe inthe idea of love until he meets Reena. Soon, he learns that Reena is set to marry Rajeev Samra, an old friend who is now an NRI. After he gets to know that Reena doesn't know how her friend looks like now, Maddy pretends to be Rajeev to woo her.
The love triangle was backed by melodious music. The film wasn't successful at the box-office but over the years made its place in the youth's heart for its endearing love story.
R Madhavan and Dia Mirza, the much loved couple Maddy-Reena from "Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mei", meet for a special photo shoot on completion of 15 years of their hit romantic film.
The duo recreated the film's official poster and Madhavan shared the new version on his Twitter page, much to the delight of the fans.
"And a recreation of the poster.. how gorgeous does @deespeak still look..#15yearsofRHTDM," Madhavan tweeted.
The picture showed Madhavan resting his face on Dia's head as the two pose for the photo, looking as dreamy as the original poster.
Replying to his tweet, his co-star posted, "He is as charming as ever :) @ActorMadhavan Reena will always love Maddy. #15YearsOfRHTDM."
"Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein", released in 2001, was written-directed by Gautham Menon and also starred Saif Ali Khan.
It followed a Mumbai boy, Maddy, who does not believe inthe idea of love until he meets Reena. Soon, he learns that Reena is set to marry Rajeev Samra, an old friend who is now an NRI. After he gets to know that Reena doesn't know how her friend looks like now, Maddy pretends to be Rajeev to woo her.
The love triangle was backed by melodious music. The film wasn't successful at the box-office but over the years made its place in the youth's heart for its endearing love story.
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New Delhi:
Government will soon bring a bill that seeks decriminalisation of beggary and aims to offer a life of dignity by rehabilitating beggars and homeless people.
Social Justice Ministry has prepared a draft on 'The Persons in Destitution (Protection, Care and Rehabilitation) Model Bill, 2016' which aims to offer a life of dignity to the beggars and homeless and others who live in poverty or abandonment.
The ministry on Wednesday organised a pre-legislative consultation meeting with representatives from states and UTs to seek their opinion.
"The Bill will provide protection, care, support, shelter, training and other services to all persons in destitution. The approach of the Ministry towards addressing the problem of destitution and beggary is rehabilitative rather than punitive," Social Justice Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot said while chairing the meeting.
Expressing concern on the rise in number of destitutes, Gehlot asked all stakeholders to share their views and suggestions for the eradication of poverty.
The Ministry has drafted a model legislation for the persons in destitution on the basis of recommendations that emerged from the National Consultation Meetings held with state representatives, experts in the field of beggary, Social Justice Secretary Anita Agnihotri said.
Objective of the Bill is to provide protection, care, support, training and other services to persons in destitution and for establishing agencies to further the objectives identified there under, she added.
At present there is no law at the centre level for begging and destitutes. While most of the states have adopted Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 or modelled their law on it.
Beggary is criminalized under Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959. Its aim is to eradicating beggary.
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Dhaka:
A leading pro-left civil society group appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday to scrap a deal with Bangladesh for building a coal-fired power plant near the fragile Sundarbans even as UNESCO warned against the project it says threatens the worlds largest mangrove forest.
We have sent the Indian premier an open letter reiterating our demand to scrap the Rampal power project to save the Sundarbans through the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral, Resources, Power and Ports spokesman Anbu Mohammad said.
He said the letter was sent as construction process of the plant being built with Indian assistance near the World Heritage Site of Sundarbans was underway despite widespread criticism and protest from national and international experts and general public.
Witnesses said police allowed five representatives of the group to hand over their letter to the High Commission as over 200 activists marched towards the mission at upmarket Gulshan diplomatic enclave.
The protesters submitted the letter a day after police stopped them on their way to the Indian mission.
The UNs culture and science agency UNESCO, meanwhile, issued a second statement in the past month yesterday urging Bangladesh to halt construction of the huge coal-fired power plant reiterating its fears that it posed a serious threat to the delicate ecosystem of the Sundarbans forest.
The Sundarbans in Bangladesh is part of the worlds largest mangrove forests, home to the famous Bengal Tiger and a hotspot for dolphins, turtles, and birds. Millions of people depend on this labyrinth of tidal rivers for food, homes, and flood protection, the UNESCO statement read.
It added, The proposed Rampal power plant, a 1,320 megawatt super-thermal power plant located just 65 kilometres from the World Heritage property, poses a serious threat to the site.
UNSECO identified pollution from coal ash by air, pollution from wastewater and waste ash, increased shipping and dredging, and the cumulative impact of industrial and related development infrastructure as four key concerns related to the plants construction.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina earlier denounced protests against the proposed coal-fired power plant. Let me tell you one thing, I would have been the first person to oppose the power plant had there been the slightest chance of damage to the Sundarbans, she had said.
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New Delhi:
Private sector Axis Bank on Wednesday said there was no loss to its customers from the recent cyber attack.
The malware attack was detected in time and was duly informed to the regulator RBI, Axis Bank said in a statement.
The bank's internal monitoring mechanism identified such a threat recently and all steps have been undertaken to neutralise the same, it said.
"We stay committed to our customers and it is always been our endeavour to ensure that our customers' interests are always protected. There has been no loss to our customers," it added.
As a responsible financial institution, it said, the bank proactively communicate potential threats to the regulator to maintain broader systemic integrity.
Meanwhile, SBI and its subsidiary banks blocked about 6 lakh debit cards due to a malware-related security breach as part of precautionary measures after being informed of potential risks to those cards.
In July, state-owned Union Bank of India was also hit by cyber attack but successfully averted the theft from USD Nostro account.
Union Bank went for a cyber security forensic audit to identify and plug gaps, if any.
Last month, in a meeting with head of public sector banks, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley discussed issues related with cyber security and measures to strengthening cyber security.
With instances of cyber attack rising, the Reserve Bank also in its bi-monthly policy said it has decided to increase its supervisory coverage on IT risks for banks with an aim to eventually cover all the lenders.
RBI had started a special supervision of banks cyber security last year on a pilot basis in which it had covered a few largest banks.
The RBI is also in the process of setting up a dedicated IT subsidiary which may help with such issues.
New Delhi:
A Delhi Police team will be visiting Mumbai to arrest national-level kabaddi player Rohit Kumar, whose wife Lalita had allegedly committed suicide on October 17 accusing her husband and in-laws for mental and physical harassment in west Delhi's Nangloi area.
"Rohit is in the naval services in Mumbai. Two teams have been formed to arrest Rohit and his parents. One team is heading to Mumbai to arrest Rohit, who represents Bengaluru Bulls in the Pro-Kabaddi League, while the other team is conducting raids at places where his parents are likely to be found," a senior police officer said.
During investigation, it was found that Rohit's father, Vijay Singh, had worked in the Delhi Police as a sub-inspector and was dismissed from his service, police said.
27-year-old Lalita had left behind a two-hour long audio message and a 25-minute long video in which she claimed that her in-laws "harrased" her for minor issues.
"In the video and audio messages she left behind on her phone, she said that her in-laws were quite conservative and would often taunt her for her "modern" outlook and things like 'pallu' falling from her head and other minor things. She also said that while Rohit was away in Mumbai, they kept her in Delhi," the officer said.
In her suicide note and messages, she alleged that on October 15, Rohit told her that if she "goes away" from his life, he would be very happy. He dropped her halfway to her home and left, she alleged. She said the act of Rohit was traumatic for her, police said.
Police is likely to arrest Rohit and his family soon, the officer said.
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New Delhi:
The students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, led by the JNU Students' Union, blocked the entrances of the administrative block on Wednesday afternoon alleging that the administration has acted in insensitive manner regarding missing first year MSc student Najeeb Ahmed.
We have been confined in a wrong manner. We have made all possible endeavors in searching the missing student Najeeb, said Vice Chancellor Jagdish Kumar. However, the president of JNU student council Mohit Pandey has denied the reports of VC being confined. We have not confined anybody. Instead, we have sent foods for them, he added.
Meanwhile Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday spoke to Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Kumar Verma on JNU missing Student case.
Earlier, due to violence at Mahi-Mandvi hostel on October 14, JNU administration summoned 12 students to depose before the proctorial committee.
Najeeb Ahmad, pursuing MSc in Biotechnology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student and an AISA activist had gone missing under mysterious circumstances, police said on Sunday.
Najeeb Ahmad, was a resident of room 106 of Mahi/Mandavi hostel, has been missing since Sunday allegedly after an altercation with a few students on Saturday night, they added.
A case under section 365 (kidnapping with intent secretly and wrong fully to confine person) of IPC has been registered at the Vasant Kunj North police station on the basis of a complaint by his parents, police said.
An AISA activist said Najeeb, who joined the hostel a fortnight ago, had an altercation with some ABVP activists on Saturday night when they were holding a door-to-door campaign at the hostel for the mess committee election.
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Patna:
The Patna High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Rocky Yadav, the son of a suspended JD(U) MLC, in a case of killing a youth in Gaya over road rage.
Chief iustice Iqbal A Ansari granted bail to Rocky Yadav in the case in which Aditya Sachdeva, son of a Gaya businessman, was shot dead in May this year.
Rocky Yadav is son of suspended JD-U MLC Manorma Devi and a historysheeter Bindi Yadav. Rocky's lawyer Y V Giri argued that there is no direct evidence of his client's involvement in the incident.
Opposing the bail plea, government advocate Dilip Kumar Sinha told the court that Rocky Yadav was the main accused in the case.
After hearing arguments the court granted bail to Rocky Yadav.
Rocky is accused of shooting class XI student Aditya Sachdeva on May 7 following an altercation over overtaking. His parents, who were accused of sheltering him, were recently enlarged on bail.
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New Delhi:
In the wake of a major fire mishap at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar, AIIMS, which has witnessed two small fire incidents this year, today reviewed its fire safety measures and preparedness.
Following a review meeting with all the officials of Delhi Fire Service, AIIMS Engineering Wing, Fire Supervisors and Security Personnel, the Deputy Director Administration of the AIIMS V Srinivas said, AIIMS fire preparedness is in accordance with the provisions of the Delhi Fire Services Act.
The premier institute has witnessed two small electrical fires this year, both of which were due to UPS cables catching fire. The fires were extinguished and no major loss to property was reported, the AIIMS said in a statement.
The recommendations made by the CISF in their Fire Preparedness Study of AIIMS have been fully implemented. There are 30 trained fire officers and supervisors deployed at the Main Hospital and various centres. Fire systems are well maintained and on auto-mode.
All fire exists are fully operational. The fire supervisors have trained over 4,000 faculty, non-faculty and nursing personnel in 2016, the statement said.
The Centre for Medical Education and Training AIIMS has conducted training programmes for 700 newly-recruited nurses on fire preparedness, it added.
Monthly fire preparedness exercises are being held in the main hospital and centres. The main hospital and centres would also be undertaking evacuation drills in October to further enhance their preparedness, it said.
To address the electrical fires at the institute and centres, Srinivas said thermal scanning and thermal imaging audits have been conducted.
Cables where temperatures increase are immediately detected in the process. All panels having loose wires have been checked. Fire safety circulars have been issued to all faculty and laboratory in-charges, he said.
Delhi Fire Service has advised some improvements in fire safety operations for the Jaiprkaash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre and Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Studies with regard to installation of smoke management systems and sprinkler automisation, he said.
These shortcomings would be rectified in the next 10 days. The institute also said that over 2,000 fire extinguishers installed in all patient care areas, teaching blocks, residential areas are well maintained, fully functional and available on auto-mode, it said.
New Delhi:
Bollywood actors are always excited to promote their films or shows. And why would they not be. They have done hard work and dedicated their days and months to the film. Actors have now left behind the age-old ways of promotions and have headed towards experimenting some new. Want to know which Bollywood actress has come up with a new way to promote her upcoming movie?
Well Alia Bhatt posted a video to SRK on October 17, complaining about the Monday Blues, on Twitter. This unconventional way of indicating the release of teaser of Dear Zindagi on October 19, by Alia is being appreciated by the audience.
Alia asked her mentor, the question almost everyone has been asking since student life, Why can Mondays never be happy? to which King Khan, who is currently shooting in Budapest for Imtiaz Alis The Ring said, Monday is the punishment for the good weekend that we had, but I promise you a wonderful Wednesday.
And the questionnaire went on and Alia showing her impatience further asked for something she could get on Wednesday. And in a reply to Alia, Shah Rukh gave a sneak peek of Dear Zindagi poster.
And so his Wednesdays gift came in as the first teaser of their Upcoming film Dear Zindagi
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#KBO Battle of homegrown aces set in Korean Series opener Two of the best homegrown pitchers in South Korean baseball this season will go head-to-head to open the championship series Tuesday. The SSG Landers will host the Kiwoom Heroes...
Turkey blocks major filesharing websites in attempt to control email leaks
Hillary Clintons campaign manager may want to try stealing a page from the Turkish governments playbook. Censorship monitoring group Turkey Blocks has reported that cloud storage websites and applications, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, have been blocked in the country. The reason, Turkey Blocks surmises, is due to a recent email leak performed by the hacktivist group Redhack. The emails reportedly belong to Berat Albayrak, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In total, there were over 57,623 emails contained in the 17 gigabyte hack. The emails reveal how Erdogan used his power to suppress and shape the media, particularly what is published in pro-government newspapers. If this sounds familiar, a similar tactic was used by top members of the Democratic National Convention to sabotage the Bernie Sanders campaign. An email leak earlier this year brought this to light and resulted in the resignations of four officials, including chairperson Debbie Wassermen Schultz.
Redhack, a Marxist hacker collective, threatened to release the information contained in the emails if political prisoner allies were not released from pre-trial detention. In response, the Turkish government chose instead to ban all news coverage of the hack and asked Twitter to intervene on their behalf. Twitter almost immediately agreed and soon after users attempting to access the Redhack account were greeted with a message stating that the account had been suspended. It wasnt long after the Redhack deadline had passed that the information within in the emails began to drop.
This has been a rather eventful year for Turkey. Earlier this year, a failed military coup resulted in the imprisonment or suspension of roughly 50,000 soldiers, police, judges and teachers. A week later, 294,548 emails from the Justice and Development Party that had been obtained by WikiLeaks prior to the coup were made public due to the governments reaction to the attempted coup.
Going further back, Thomas White, an activist from the United Kingdom, obtained and distributed a large amount of personal information belonging to Turkish police officers. As has become the standard in situations such as this, White, who also goes by the handle The Cthulhu, had his site blocked by the Turkish government. In that incident Twitter did not comply with a request for content to be removed from Whites account, although as recent events have shown it doesnt take long for a government with too much power to bend any organization to their will.
Sources:
TheNextWeb.com
TurkeyBlocks.org
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BRIDGEWATER Town officials will ask the public on Saturday about plans to fix the Grange Hall, an old civic building that was donated to the town in disrepair.
No vote will be taken at the 10 a.m. hearing at the Burnham School, 80 Main St. South.
First Selectman Curtis Read said it will be informational, explaining several moving parts, including a possible sale of town land, the potential purchase of land behind the Grange for a septic system and the feasibility of renovating the Grange or building a new facility on the site.
The Grange, built nearly a century ago and donated to the town in 1999, has several problems. It has lead paint throughout, rotten wooden doors, asbestos, slanted floors, and potentially a failing foundation.
According to a structural engineer the town hired in 2015: The building is in very poor structural condition, fails to accommodate the handicapped, has non-code-compliant kitchens and several foundation problems.
To further asses the structural integrity of the building, the town has hired architects and engineers from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation with $4,200 which was matched by the trust to evaluate historical significance and concerns, Read said.
In 2016, the town found more problems with the Grange. An oil tank, abandoned around 2000, had leaked. In April, the town removed pounds of oil-soaked soil.
Read said he is unsure whether the town should renovate the building or just build a new one. He has heard expensive estimates for renovation, he said, so he leans toward just building new.
Any changes to the Grange would create the need for a new septic system, Read said. And behind the Grange are two acres of empty land owned by St. Marks Church. The town has looked into buying that property with money it could make from the sale of four acres of town land along Lake Lillinonah.
Read said he is looking forward to Saturdays hearing.
I want some feedback from people, he said. I want to know if they think its a good or a bad idea to build new.
Saturdays presentation from the town can be found here: http://www.bridgewatertownhall.org/Pages/bridgewaterct_webdocs/grange.pdf
blytton@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3411; @bglytton
Rohingya Islamist group blamed for border attacks has Pakistan links
Bangladesh,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Terrorism, Wed, 19 Oct 2016 IANS
Dhaka, Oct 19 (IANS) Myanmar has blamed a little known Rohingya Islamist group with links with the Pakistan Taliban for the recent spate of attacks on outposts along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, a media report said on Wednesday.
A statement from the office of Myanmar's President Htin Kyaw has blamed the little-known "Aqa Mul Mujahideen" for the recent attacks around Maungdaw township, a mainly Muslim area near the border with Bangladesh.
Nine Myanmar policemen were killed in the attack and eight attackers were gunned down on October 8 in Maungdaw.
The AMM is headed by Hafiz Tohar, a 45-year-old Rohingya from Maungdaw's Kyauk Pyin Seik village in Myanmar, bdnews24 reported.
According to Myanmar intelligence, Tohar was trained by the Pakistan Taliban for six months, after which he returned to the Rakhine state to recruit young Rohingyas.
Bdnews24 quoted Indian intelligence agencies as saying that Tohar's group has grown out of the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami-Arakaan (HUJI-A).
The HUJI-A chief is Abdus Qadoos Burmi, a Pakistani national of Rohingya origin, who recruited Tohar, 45, and arranged for his training in Pakistan.
Qadoos Burmi is reported to be close to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) headed by Hafiz Sayeed.
He developed the HUJI-A network in Bangladesh, using the remote hills on the border with Myanmar, where coverage by Bangladesh security forces was at best limited.
After training a few promising recruits in Pakistan, they were sent to set up bases on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, where new Rohingya recruits were trained in combat techniques and use of explosives.
Bdnews24 quoted senior Indian intelligence officials as saying that in July 2012, JuD and LeT started Difa-e-Musalman-e-Arakaan conference in Pakistan to highlight the Rohingya cause.
Indian officials say Rohingya militants could be used to disturb the Myanmar-Bangladesh border zone not only by staging attacks inside Myanmar but also by forging close links with jihadi groups in both Bangladesh and India.
--IANS
sm/rn/vt
'Hitler's birth home to be made unrecognizable'
United States,Politics, Wed, 19 Oct 2016 IANS
Vienna, Oct 19 (IANS) The Austrian minister who announced on Monday that the home Adolf Hitler was born in would be demolished, appears to have backtracked somewhat, now saying the goal is merely to strip it of any recognition.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka told the cabinet on Tuesday that the house in Braunau am Inn in the state of Upper Austria should have its exterior changed such that it is "not recognisable", Xinhua news agency reported.
Whether this can be defined as "demolition" or not is open for discussion, he contended.
An expert commission assembled for the purpose of deciding what to do with the building recommended it be used for either governmental administrative or charitable purposes, such as to provide services for disabled persons.
It did not recommend the building itself be torn down, but rather undergo a "far-reaching architectural transformation" to remove its recognition value and "symbolic power".
Sobotka thanked the commission for its input, and reiterated his stance that the building should not be used by Neo-Nazis as a memorial site or gathering point, or in any way show a connection to the Nazi leader.
He said architectural firms would be able to put forth their proposals on redesigning the building, and that the final decision on its new purpose would be made together with the city of Braunau.
--IANS
py/vm
Australia cleans oil spill as turtles head to lay eggs
Australia,Environment/Wildlife, Wed, 19 Oct 2016 IANS
Canberra, Oct 19 (IANS) Ahead of hundreds of female turtles making their way to Australia's world-heritage Fraser Island in a few weeks' time to lay eggs, the Queensland state government is working overtime to clean-up an oil spill that occurred earlier in the week.
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Head of Ocean Richard Leck told Xinhua news agency on Wednesday that it was unfortunate that an oil spill happened at the island so close before hundreds of turtles head to the area to lay their eggs.
"It's about the biggest natural event in the year," Leck said referring to the female turtles.
The rangers first discovered the "oil patties" scattered around the island shores late on Monday afternoon and authorities have been swift in taking remedial action to clean up the oil spill.
Queensland State Minister for Main Roads and Ports Mark Bailey on Wednesday said Maritime Safety Queensland, Roadtek, Queensland Parks, Wildlife Service and the Queensland Police Service have been assessing the area since Tuesday with more help from relevant authorities underway.
Meanwhile, Queensland State Environment Minister Steven Miles said the oil patties were dispersed mildly along about 60 km of high tide line from the wreck of the Maheno to Dilli Village.
"Experience has shown the best way to clean-up the beach is to remove the patties by rake and shovel," Miles said.
"This minimises the impact on the environment and reduces the amount of additional sand collected.
"This can be a time-consuming and physically demanding process and we have ensured we have sufficient personnel to work on rotation to get the job done," Miles said, adding that there were no reports of wildlife being affected by the event.
The last oil spillage incident occurred in July 2015, when 10 to 15 tonnes of oil was spilled off Cape Upstart, a National park in Queensland.
--IANS
ss/dg
LONGUEUIL, QC, Oct. 18, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. (TSX: INE) ("Innergex" or the "Corporation") will release its results for the third quarter on Wednesday November 9, 2016 and will hold a conference call on:
Date and time: Thursday November 10, 2016
9:00 a.m. ET
Phone-in numbers: 1 888 231-8191
or 647 427-7450
The Corporation's results will be presented by Mr. Michel Letellier, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Jean Perron, Chief Financial Officer. A replay of the conference call will then be available on the Innergex website at www.innergex.com. The press release, the financial statements, and the management's discussion and analysis for the third quarter of 2016 will also be available in the Investors section of the Corporation's website as of November 10.
About Innergex Renewable Energy Inc.
Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. (TSX: INE) is a leading Canadian independent renewable power producer. Active since 1990, the Corporation develops, owns, and operates run-of-river hydroelectric facilities, wind farms, and solar photovoltaic farms and carries out its operations in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, Idaho, USA, and France. Its portfolio of assets currently consists of: (i) interests in 43 operating facilities with an aggregate net installed capacity of 817 MW (gross 1,359 MW), including 29 hydroelectric operating facilities, 13 wind farms, and one solar photovoltaic farm; (ii) interests in three projects under development or under construction with an aggregate net installed capacity of 146 MW (gross 257 MW), for which power purchase agreements have been secured; and (iii) prospective projects with an aggregate net capacity totaling 3,280 MW (gross 3,530 MW). Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. is rated BBB- by S&P.
The Corporation's strategy for building shareholder value is to develop or acquire high-quality facilities that generate sustainable cash flows and provide an attractive risk-adjusted return on invested capital, and to distribute a stable dividend.
SOURCE Innergex Renewable Energy Inc.
For further information: Martine Benmouyal, Senior Advisor - Communications, 450 928-2550, ext. 335, [email protected], www.innergex.com
Canadian Cancer Society urges Canadians to get their children vaccinated against cancer-causing virus
TORONTO, Oct. 19, 2016 /CNW/ - Cancers of the mouth and throat caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) are rising dramatically among Canadian men and are poised to surpass the rate of cervical cancer in females, according to a special report released today by the Canadian Cancer Society. The report, Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016, was produced in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada.
In 2016, nearly 4,400 Canadians will be diagnosed with an HPV cancer and about 1,200 Canadians will die from an HPV cancer. The incidence of HPV mouth and throat cancers increased a dramatic 56% in males and 17% in females between 1992 and 2012. Mouth and throat cancers now represent about one-third of all HPV cancers in Canada.
The Society is urging Canadians to get the HPV vaccine a safe and effective way to prevent the cancer-causing infection.
"This report shows us for the first time how many Canadians are being affected by HPV cancers," says Dr Robert Nuttall, Assistant Director, Health Policy, Canadian Cancer Society. "These cancers are largely preventable through vaccination. In the moment it takes to vaccinate your children, you are helping to protect them from cancer in the future."
The HPV vaccine is widely available through publicly funded school-based programs. It is offered to girls in all provinces and territories, but to boys in only 6 provinces (Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, PEI and Quebec, but not in BC, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, or the territories). The Society is calling on the remaining 4 provinces and 3 territories to expand their programs to all boys.
"The more boys and girls that get vaccinated, the more cases of cancer will be prevented. It's that simple," says Dr Nuttall.
Today's report underscores how important it is to take preventive action to stop more cancers before they start. With the country facing a projected 40% increase in the number of cancer cases between 2015 and 2030, it's essential to reduce cancer risks across the board, from HPV to tobacco to obesity. It's estimated that almost half of all cancers can be prevented through healthy living and policies that protect the health of Canadians.
More about HPV
Most sexually active people will have an HPV infection at some point during their lifetime, making it the most common sexually transmitted disease in Canada and the world. Most people never even know they have it, as most infections clear within 2 years and cause no physical symptoms. However, some infections are serious and can lead to cancer. There are more than 100 different types of HPV, and around 25 types are known or suspected to cause cancer. HPV causes:
all cases of cervical cancers
25%35% of oropharyngeal and oral cavity (mouth and throat) cancers
80%90% of anal cancers
40% of vaginal and vulvar cancers
40%50% of penile cancers
While it's been known for decades that HPV causes cervical cancer, many people don't realize that it causes these other types of cancer too, and that it affects males as well as females. This report shows that only 35% of HPV cancers in Canada are cervical. In fact as many Canadians get an HPV mouth and throat cancer as get cervical cancer. And 1 in 3 HPV cancers occur in males. Two types (HPV16 and HPV18) are responsible for the majority of HPV cancers. These infections can be almost entirely prevented through vaccination.
Quotes
"The word eradicate has never been used in the context of a cancer," says Dr Eduardo Franco, world-renowned HPV expert and chairman of the department of oncology at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine. "But perhaps future historians will write about cervical cancer as a disease that only previous generations of Canadians had. In order to reach this goal, it is imperative that Canadians embrace the new public health advances that are significantly improving cancer control and prevention."
"We now know that HPV is causing a significant burden of cancer in Canada," says Dr. Heather Bryant, Vice President, Cancer Control at the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer. "Vaccination is effective and we are already seeing benefits in Canada."
Patient story
Will Dove, 51, a web developer in Calgary, had just returned from vacation with his family in Mexico this spring when he began to experience pain and pressure in one ear. The initial diagnosis was an ear infection, but it turned out to be throat cancer caused by an HPV infection. The self-described "fitness nut" and body builder lost 30 pounds in just 5 weeks while undergoing treatment. "Imagine if we had a vaccine for cancer," says the father of 2 teens. "For HPV cancers, we do. If we vaccinate our kids, we can help make these cancers nothing more than a grim memory."
More about HPV vaccinations
Three HPV vaccines are available in Canada. They are all highly effective in protecting against the HPV types they target, which includes the common high-risk (cancer-causing) types 16 and 18. The vaccines are most effective when administered before the onset of sexual activity when the probability of prior infection is low, which is why publicly funded programs are for school-aged children. In addition, the immune system responds better when vaccination is given at a young age.
Extensive research shows that the vaccines are safe, well tolerated and do not increase the risk of serious adverse events. The most common side effects are soreness, swelling, itching and redness at the injection site and fainting.
While the vaccine is widely available to girls in Canada through school programs, not enough children are getting vaccinated. Coverage rates range from 43% to 91% across the country, and only 2 provinces have coverage rates over 80% (NL and PEI). The Society urges schools and health professionals to promote the vaccine as a safe and effective cancer prevention strategy, and urges parents to sign the vaccination permission forms that their children bring home from school. The Society is also calling on those provinces and territories that haven't already done so to expand free vaccination programs to boys. 5 yeas, he Canadian Cancer Society has
General highlights Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016
Cancer continues to be the leading cause of death in Canada , causing 30% of all deaths.
, causing 30% of all deaths. An estimated 2 in 5 Canadians are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. And an estimated 1 in 4 Canadians will die from cancer.
Over the past 30 years, the death rate for all cancers combined has been declining for males and females.
There were no significant increases in death rates during the past decade for most types of cancer in men and women, with the exception of uterine cancer in females and liver cancer in both sexes.
Today, over 60% of Canadians will survive at least 5 years after a cancer diagnosis (adjusted for other causes of death). However, this varies considerably by cancer type.
An estimated 202,400 new cases of cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) and 78,800 deaths from cancer are expected to occur in Canada in 2016.
in 2016. Rates of the disease are relatively stable for new cases and declining for deaths. However, the number of new cancer cases and cancer deaths continues to rise as the Canadian population grows and ages.
Four types of cancer lung, breast, colorectal and prostate account for 50% of newly diagnosed cancers.
Lung, colorectal, breast and pancreatic cancer are the most common causes of cancer death, with lung cancer accounting for more than 25% of all cancer deaths.
All rates are age standardized to the 2011 Canadian population.
About Canadian Cancer Statistics
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016 was prepared through a partnership of the Canadian Cancer Society, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Statistics Canada and provincial and territorial cancer registries. For more information about Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016, visit cancer.ca/statistics.
Backgrounder: HPV
Backgrounder: General cancer statistics 2016
More information about HPV and HPV vaccines.
About the Canadian Cancer Society
The Canadian Cancer Society is a national, community-based organization of volunteers whose mission is to eradicate cancer and enhance the quality of life of people living with cancer. Thanks to our donors and volunteers, the Society has the most impact, against the most cancers, in the most communities in Canada. For more information, visit cancer.ca or call our toll-free bilingual Cancer Information Service at 1-888-939-3333 (TTY 1-866-786-3934).
Media backgrounder #1: Canadian Cancer Statistics
Special topic: HPV-associated cancers (HPV cancers)
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016 was released today by the Canadian Cancer Society, in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada. The report includes a special topic chapter on HPV-associated cancers in Canada.
Overview
The report shows the incidence rate of HPV mouth and throat cancers increased 56% in males and 17% in females over 20 years (1992-2012). Canadian men are more than 4 times more likely to get an HPV mouth or throat cancer than women. This may be because men are more likely to acquire an oral HPV infection and take longer to clear these infections than women. If recent trends continue, it is likely that the rate of HPV mouth and throat cancers in men will surpass the rate of cervical cancer in women in the near future.
Almost 4,400 Canadians will be diagnosed with HPV cancers in 2016. It is estimated that about one-third of these are mouth and throat cancers. Another third are cervical cancers.
Highlights
HPV is associated with many types of cancer in both sexes
In 2012, 3,760 Canadians were diagnosed with an HPV cancer. This number is expected to grow to almost 4,400 in 2016. Almost 1,200 will die from an HPV cancer this year.
35% of HPV cancers occurred in the cervix, while the remaining 65% of HPV cancers were in other areas.
The number of new HPV mouth and throat cancers cases was about the same as cervical cancer cases.
1 in 3 HPV cancers was diagnosed in males
The HPV vaccine plays a vital role in cancer prevention, a core priority of the Canadian Cancer Society
2 types of high-risk HPV (types 16 and 18) are responsible for 70% of cervical cancer cases, as well as a large proportion of cancers of HPV-associated cancers of the vagina, vulva, anus, penis and mouth and throat. HPV vaccines prevent these 2 high-risk HPV infections.
Although the vaccines aren't currently approved for the prevention of mouth and throat cancers, HPV16 is present in approximately 90% of HPV-associated mouth and throat cancers, and there is recent clinical trial evidence that HPV vaccination prevents the vast majority of these infections.
All 3 vaccines available in Canada are highly effective against the HPV types they target. They are most effective when administered before the onset of sexual activity when the probability of prior infection is low, which is why publicly funded programs are for young age groups.
are highly effective against the HPV types they target. They are most effective when administered before the onset of sexual activity when the probability of prior infection is low, which is why publicly funded programs are for young age groups. Extensive research shows that the vaccines are safe and well tolerated. The most common side effects are soreness, swelling and redness at the injection site, as well as light-headedness, dizziness, nausea, headache, or fever.
Studies have shown that HPV vaccination programs have already led to reductions in pre-cancerous cervical lesions in Canadian women.
The Canadian Cancer Society urges HPV vaccination for both males and females to help protect them against cancer.
Girls and boys aged 9 and older can be vaccinated against HPV to reduce their risk of HPV-associated cancers.
We urge parents to have their daughters and sons vaccinated through free school-based vaccination programs, where available.
The Society is calling for HPV vaccination programs to be expanded to boys in those provinces and territories that do not yet have a school-based program for boys (BC, Saskatchewan , New Brunswick , Newfoundland and Labrador , and the 3 territories).
The Society will continue to play a key role in reducing the burden of HPV-associated cancers by:
Funding more excellent research across Canada to find more answers about HPV-associated cancers, especially mouth and throat cancers. Over the last 15 years, we've invested $4 million into world-class research on HPV cancers.
In the 1990s, Society-funded research Dr. Eduardo Franco ( McGill University ) played a key role in establishing the link between HPV and cancer.
to find more answers about HPV-associated cancers, especially mouth and throat cancers. Over the last 15 years, we've invested into world-class research on HPV cancers. Advocating on behalf of Canadians to call for HPV vaccination programs to be expanded to boys in those provinces that do not yet have a school-based program for boys.
Raising awareness of vaccination programs amongst parents and providing information for those who wish to have their children vaccinated.
Encouraging those who are not eligible to receive publicly funded HPV vaccination to speak with their healthcare provider about whether the HPV vaccine is right for them.
More about HPV
In 2012, 3,760 Canadians were diagnosed with an HPV-associated cancer, and this number is expected to rise to 4,375 in 2016. More than 40 types of HPV can infect the anogenital tract, including the skin of the penis, vulva and anus, and the lining of the vagina, cervix and rectum. These types can also infect the lining of the mouth and throat, notably the oropharynx (including the base of the tongue and tonsils).
In 2006, the first preventative HPV vaccine became available in Canada. Since then, there has been increased attention on HPV cancers and their prevention. However with the exception of cervical cancer, there was little data on HPV cancers in Canada. Measures of the population burden of HPV cancers are important for a number of reasons, including prevention planning and evaluation.
About Canadian Cancer Statistics
Canadian Cancer Statistics is an annual publication that provides estimates of the burden of cancer in Canada for the current year. This year marks the 30th edition of Canadian Cancer
Statistics. It was prepared through a partnership of the Canadian Cancer Society, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Statistics Canada and provincial and territorial cancer registries.
For more information about Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016, visit cancer.ca/statistics
About the Canadian Cancer Society
The Canadian Cancer Society is a national community-based organization of volunteers whose mission is the eradication of cancer and the enhancement of the quality of life of people living with cancer. When you want to know more about cancer, visit our website www.cancer.ca or call our toll-free, bilingual Cancer Information Service at 1 888 939-3333.
Media backgrounder #2: Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016
Cancer in Canada: Fast facts
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016 was released today by the Canadian Cancer Society in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada.
Current estimates of new cases and deaths
In 2016:
An estimated 202,400 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in Canada (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers).
(excluding non-melanoma skin cancers). There will be an estimated 78,800 deaths from cancer.
Every hour of every day, an average of 23 people will be diagnosed with some type of cancer, and about 9 people will die from the disease.
Of the newly diagnosed cases, more than half (50%) will be prostate, breast, lung and colorectal cancers.
Canadians aged 5079 will represent 70% of all new cancer cases and almost 62% of cancer deaths in 2016. The highest proportion of new cancer cases (56,400, or 28%) will occur in Canadians aged 6069, while the highest proportion of deaths from cancer (26,900 deaths, or 34%) is expected in those aged 80 and older.
The number of new cancer cases and cancer deaths continues to rise steadily as the Canadian population grows and ages.
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Canadian men (21% of all new cases of cancer in men).
In 2016, it is estimated that approximately 21,600 Canadian men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and about 4,000 will die from the disease.
The incidence and death rates have both been declining. The death rate has been declining significantly by 3.1% per year between 2003 and 2012, which likely reflects improved treatments for this cancer.
Breast cancer
Breast cancer continues to be the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Canadian women (26% of all new cases of cancer in women).
In 2016, it is estimated that approximately 25,700 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and about 4,900 will die from it.
The death rate has declined 44% since peaking in 1987. In recent years (2003-2012), the death rate has decreased an average of 2.6% per year. The declines are attributed to earlier diagnosis through screening mammography and the availability of improved treatment. The breast cancer death rate is currently the lowest it has been since 1950.
Between 1987 and 2012, it is estimated that over 32,000 breast cancer deaths were avoided due to improved treatments and greater uptake of mammography screening.
Lung cancer
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women.
Lung cancer takes the lives of more Canadians than breast, prostate and colorectal cancers combined.
In 2016, it is estimated that approximately 28,400 Canadians will be diagnosed with lung cancer, and about 20,800 will die from it.
Tobacco use causes more than 85% of lung cancer cases. Other causes of lung cancer include radon and asbestos exposure, air pollution, certain lung diseases, a family history of lung cancer and exposure to certain occupational chemicals.
In women:
In 2016, it is estimated that approximately 14,000 Canadian women will be diagnosed with lung cancer, and about 9,800 will die from it.
The lung cancer incidence rate had been increasing since at least the 1960s but has recently leveled off (2006 to 2010).
Similarly, the death rate for women had been increasing but recently leveled off (2006 and 2012).
In men:
In 2016, it is estimated that approximately 14,400 Canadian men will be diagnosed with lung cancer, and about 10,900 will die from it.
The lung cancer incidence and death rates began to level off in the mid to late 1980s after several decades of increase, and have been declining ever since.
The incidence rates dropped by 1.7% per year between 2001 and 2010 and death rates by 2.3% per year between 2003 and 2012.
The difference between the male and female trends reflects the drop in smoking that began for men in the early 1960s and much later for women in the 1980s.
Between 1989 and 2012, it is estimated that more than 31,500 lung cancer deaths were avoided as a result of the decrease in death rate since 1988.
Colorectal cancer
In 2016, it is estimated that approximately 26,100 Canadians will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and about 9,300 will die from it.
About 14,500 men will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer and about 5000 will die from it. About 11,600 women will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer and about 4300 will die from it.
Between 2001 and 2010, the incidence rate for men decreased by 0.7% per year, and the incidence rate for women decreased by 0.6% per year.
The death rates continued to decline for both men and women by 2.3% per year in men between 2004 and 2012 and 2.0% per year in women between 2003 and 2012. This is likely the result of improvements in treatment, such as chemotherapy, and increasing availability and uptake of screening.
Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016 was prepared through a partnership of the Canadian Cancer Society, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Statistics Canada and provincial and territorial cancer registries.
All incidence and death rates are age-adjusted to the 2011 Canadian population. For more information about Canadian Cancer Statistics 2016, visit cancer.ca/statistics
The Canadian Cancer Society is a national, community-based organization of volunteers whose mission is to eradicate cancer and enhance the quality of life of people living with cancer. Thanks to our donors and volunteers, the Society has the most impact, against the most cancers, in the most communities in Canada. Building on our progress, we are working with Canadians to change cancer forever. For more information, visit cancer.ca or call our toll-free bilingual Cancer Information Service at 1-888-939-3333 (TTY 1-866-786-3934).
SOURCE Canadian Cancer Society (National Office)
For further information: Rosie Hales, Communications Specialist, Canadian Cancer Society, [email protected], 416-934-5338
CALGARY, Oct. 18, 2016 /CNW/ - Dr. Brad Thompson, President and CEO of Oncolytics Biotech Inc. (TSX: ONC) (OTCQX: ONCYF) (FRA: ONY), will present at the 2016 BIO Investor Forum in a session on Wednesday, October 19th, 2016 at 11:00 a.m. PT (2:00 p.m. ET). The conference takes place on October 18th and 19th at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, CA.
A live audio link to the webcast session will be available at: http://www.veracast.com/webcasts/bio/investorforum2016/38213260151.cfm.
A link to the presentation will also be available on the company's website at: http://www.oncolyticsbiotech.com/investor-centre/presentations/. It is recommended that listeners log on 10 minutes in advance of a live presentation to register and download any necessary software. Links to the audio replays will be accessible following the presentation on the Oncolytics website.
About Oncolytics Biotech Inc.
Oncolytics is a Calgary-based biotechnology company focused on the development of oncolytic viruses as potential cancer therapeutics. Oncolytics' clinical program includes a variety of later-stage, randomized human trials in various indications using REOLYSIN, its proprietary formulation of the human reovirus. For further information about Oncolytics, please visit: www.oncolyticsbiotech.com.
The session and webcast times are subject to change. This release and the presentation related thereto contain forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, delays, uncertainties and other factors not under the Company's control and which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from the results, performance or expectations implied by these forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, the efficacy of REOLYSIN as a cancer treatment, the success and timely completion of clinical studies and trials, uncertainties related to the research and development of pharmaceuticals and uncertainties related to the regulatory process. Investors should consult the Company's quarterly and annual filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities commissions for additional information on risks and uncertainties relating to the forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against placing undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws.
SOURCE Oncolytics Biotech Inc.
For further information: NATIONAL Equicom, Nick Hurst, 320 Front Street W, Suite 1600, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3B6, Tel: 416.586.1942, [email protected]; NATIONAL Equicom, Michael Moore, San Diego, CA, Tel: 858.886.7813, [email protected]; Dian Griesel, Inc., Susan Forman, 335 West 38th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10018, Tel: 212.825.3210, [email protected]
TORONTO, Oct. 19, 2016 /CNW/ - Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (TSX: CF) is scheduled to release its second quarter results and supplementary financial information on Tuesday, November 1, 2016 after TSX market close. Interested investors, the media and other stakeholders may review the earnings release and supplementary financial information at www.canaccordgenuitygroup.com .
QUARTERLY CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST:
Interested parties are invited to listen to Canaccord Genuity's second quarter conference call, via live webcast or a toll free number. The conference call is scheduled for Wednesday, November 2, 2016 at 5:00 a.m. Pacific time, 8:00 a.m. Eastern time, 12:00 p.m. UK time, 8:00 p.m. China Standard Time, and 10:00 p.m. Australia EST. During the call, senior executives will comment on the results and respond to questions from analysts and institutional investors.
The conference call may be accessed live and archived on a listen-only basis at: http://www.canaccordgenuitygroup.com/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Events.aspx
Analysts and institutional investors can call in via telephone at:
647-427-7450 (within Toronto )
) 1-888-231-8191 (toll free outside Toronto )
) 0-800-051-7107 (toll free from the United Kingdom )
) 0-800-91-7449 (Toll free from France )
) 10-800-714-1191 (toll free from Northern China )
) 10-800-140-1195 (toll free from Southern China )
) 1-800-287-011 (toll free from Australia )
) 800-017-8071 (toll free from United Arab Emirates )
Please ask to participate in the Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. Q2/17 results call. If a passcode is requested, please use 70234186.
A replay of the conference call will be available on November 2, 2016, after 8:00 a.m. (Pacific Time), 11:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) 3:00 p.m. (UK Time), 11:00 p.m. (China Standard Time), and on November 3, 2016, at 1:00 a.m. (Australia EST Time) until December 19, 2016 at 416-849-0833 or 1-855-859-2056 by entering passcode 70234186 followed by the pound (#) sign.
ABOUT CANACCORD GENUITY GROUP INC.:
Through its principal subsidiaries, Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (the "Company") is a leading independent, full-service financial services firm, with operations in two principal segments of the securities industry: wealth management and capital markets. Since its establishment in 1950, the Company has been driven by an unwavering commitment to building lasting client relationships. We achieve this by generating value for our individual, institutional and corporate clients through comprehensive investment solutions, brokerage services and investment banking services. The Company has offices in 10 countries worldwide, including Wealth Management offices located in Canada, the UK, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Australia. Canaccord Genuity, the international capital markets division, operates in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Ireland, Hong Kong, China, Australia and Dubai. To us there are no foreign markets.TM
Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. is publicly traded under the symbol CF on the TSX.
SOURCE Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.
Image with caption: "Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (CNW Group/Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20161019_C6664_PHOTO_EN_799117.jpg
For further information: For investor and media relations inquiries: Christina Marinoff, Vice President, Investor Relations & Communications, Phone: 416-687-5507, email: [email protected], www.canaccordgenuitygroup.com
Cancer Care Ontario releases 2016 Prevention System Quality Index
TORONTO, Oct. 18, 2016 /CNW/ - Cancer continues to be the leading cause of death in the province. One in two Ontarians will develop cancer in their lifetime, and one in four will die from the disease, but as many as half of all cancers could be prevented by eliminating known lifestyle, occupational and environmental risk factors. According to a report released today by Cancer Care Ontario, more can be done across various sectors to improve the health of Ontarians so that fewer people develop cancer.
The 2016 Prevention System Quality Index: Monitoring Ontario's Efforts in Cancer Prevention is the second report by Cancer Care Ontario focused on indicators of policies and programs that can reduce cancer risk factors and exposures in the population. The report identifies achievements and gaps in the prevention system and highlights opportunities to advance cancer prevention in Ontario.
"Targeting specific risk factors and exposures is key to improving the overall health of Ontarians, and ultimately, reducing the burden of cancer," says Dr. Linda Rabeneck, Vice-President, Prevention and Cancer Control, Cancer Care Ontario. "While there are already policies and programs in place in Ontario, the Prevention System Quality Index shows that there are still many opportunities to work with our multi-sectorial partners to create healthier environments and supports that could prevent cancer."
This year's Prevention System Quality Index reports on 21 policy and program indicators related to tobacco, alcohol, healthy eating, physical activity, ultraviolet radiation, environmental carcinogens (radon and fine particulate matter), occupational carcinogens (formaldehyde and nickel) and infectious agents (human papillomavirus and hepatitis B).
Key findings and opportunities include:
Approximately 30 per cent of cancer deaths are caused by tobacco smoking. To reduce smoking, the World Health Organization recommends a 75 per cent minimum tax on the total retail price of tobacco. As of April 2016 , tobacco taxes in Ontario were just 65 per cent of the average total tobacco retail price, which means that a substantial increase in tobacco taxes in the province is needed. Ontario has the second lowest tax rate on tobacco in Canada .
, tobacco taxes in were just 65 per cent of the average total tobacco retail price, which means that a substantial increase in tobacco taxes in the province is needed. has the second lowest tax rate on tobacco in . Each year, an estimated 1,000 to 3,000 new cancer cases in Ontario are caused by alcohol consumption. Privatizing alcohol outlets and increasing the physical availability of alcohol may increase alcohol consumption in the population. Ongoing monitoring will be required to determine whether alcohol consumption will increase as a result of the Ontario government's recent decisions to offer the online sale of alcohol and allow up to 450 grocery stores to sell beer, wine and cider over the next few years.
are caused by alcohol consumption. Privatizing alcohol outlets and increasing the physical availability of alcohol may increase alcohol consumption in the population. Ongoing monitoring will be required to determine whether alcohol consumption will increase as a result of the government's recent decisions to offer the online sale of alcohol and allow up to 450 grocery stores to sell beer, wine and cider over the next few years. There is evidence that increased consumption of foods containing dietary fibre reduces the risk of colorectal cancer, and that eating non-starchy vegetables and fruit probably reduces the risk of some cancers. Adults and some children who can't afford nutritious food tend to eat significantly fewer servings of vegetables and fruit than those who can afford nutritious food. In 2014, 11.9 per cent of households in Ontario had poor access to nutritious food due to a lack of financial resources (referred to as food insecurity), and access worsened for some households from 2005 to 2014. Increases in the general minimum wage, social assistance and the employment insurance benefit, as well as implementing other poverty reduction policies, could help increase access to nutritious food.
had poor access to nutritious food due to a lack of financial resources (referred to as food insecurity), and access worsened for some households from 2005 to 2014. Increases in the general minimum wage, social assistance and the employment insurance benefit, as well as implementing other poverty reduction policies, could help increase access to nutritious food. Physical activity reduces the risk of colon cancer, and probably reduces the risk of post-menopausal breast cancer and endometrial cancer. Active transportation (walking and bicycling) is used in about one fifth of trips taken to or from work by adults in the Greater Golden Horseshoe regions. Most of these trips are taken to or from public transit, suggesting that public transit is an important contributor to physical activity.
Radon exposure is an established cause of lung cancer, with the risk increasing at higher levels of exposure. Approximately one quarter of homes surveyed in Ontario have radon concentrations greater than or equal to 100 Bq/m, the average annual radon concentration at which the World Health Organization recommends remedial action. High radon concentrations in Ontario homes can be reduced by including radon prevention measures as part of a mandatory building code for new houses or major renovations, and by testing and undertaking remediation in existing homes.
have radon concentrations greater than or equal to 100 Bq/m, the average annual radon concentration at which the World Health Organization recommends remedial action. High radon concentrations in homes can be reduced by including radon prevention measures as part of a mandatory building code for new houses or major renovations, and by testing and undertaking remediation in existing homes. Occupational cancer is the leading cause of work-related deaths in Ontario . Asbestos causes mesothelioma, as well as cancers of the lung, larynx and ovary. Approximately 52,000 workers in Ontario are exposed to asbestos in the workplace. The most common current occupational exposure to asbestos occurs through the construction industry. Ontario's asbestos register should be expanded to collect data on all workers who may have been exposed to this carcinogen and it should identify asbestos-containing public buildings.
A full copy of the 2016 Prevention System Quality Index report is available at cancercare.on.ca/psqi. Click here to view the media backgrounder, which highlights key findings and opportunities.
Path to Prevention Recommendations for Reducing Chronic Disease in First Nations, Inuit and Metis, a report recently published by Cancer Care Ontario, provides the Government of Ontario with evidence-based policy recommendations to reduce exposure to the four key chronic disease risk factors in Aboriginal communities: commercial tobacco use; alcohol consumption, physical inactivity and unhealthy eating.
About Cancer Care Ontario:
Cancer Care Ontario equips health professionals, organizations and policy-makers with the most up-to-date cancer knowledge and tools to prevent cancer and deliver high-quality patient care.
It does this by collecting and analyzing data about cancer services and combining it with evidence and research that is shared with the healthcare community in the form of guidelines and standards. It also monitors and measures the performance of the cancer system, and oversees a funding and governance model that ties funding to performance, making healthcare providers more accountable and ensuring value for investments in the system.
Cancer Care Ontario actively engages people with cancer and their families in the design, delivery and evaluation of Ontario's cancer system, and works to improve the performance of Ontario's cancer system by driving quality, accountability, innovation and value.
Version francaise disponible.
SOURCE Cancer Care Ontario
For further information: Cancer Care Ontario, Phone: 1.855.460.2646, Email: [email protected]
WICHITA, Kan., Oct. 18, 2016 /CNW/ -- Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. [NYSE: SPR] will release its third quarter 2016 financial results at 6:30 a.m. Central Time Tuesday, November 1, 2016.
Spirit AeroSystems President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Gentile will be joined by Spirit's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Sanjay Kapoor on a conference call presentation to securities analysts about third quarter 2016 results and company outlook at 10 a.m. Central Time.
That presentation will be broadcast online. It will include charts and a question-and-answer session. The company's news release detailing the results will also be available. The live audio stream and slide presentation can be accessed November 01, 2016, at http://www.spiritaero.com/investor.aspx.
Individuals are urged to check the web site in advance to ensure their computers are configured for the audio stream and slide presentation.
On the web: http://www.spiritaero.com
About Spirit AeroSystems, Inc.
Spirit AeroSystems designs and builds aerostructures for both commercial and defense customers. With headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, Spirit operates sites in the U.S., U.K., France and Malaysia. The company's core products include fuselages, pylons, nacelles and wing components for the world's premier aircraft. Spirit AeroSystems focuses on affordable, innovative composite and aluminum manufacturing solutions to support customers around the globe. More information is available at www.SpiritAero.com.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130515/CG13652LOGO
SOURCE Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc.
For further information: Ghassan Awwad, Investor Relations, (316) 523-7040, or Jarrod Bartlett, Corporate Communications, (316) 523-5649, http://www.spiritaero.com
OTTAWA, Oct. 19, 2016 /CNW/ - Environment and Climate Change Minister, Catherine McKenna, and Mayor Don Iveson, City of Edmonton and Chair of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' (FCM's) Big City Mayors' Caucus released this statement after a productive meeting in Ottawa.
"Canada's big cities play a major role in addressing climate change: They are the centres of growth and innovation. In collaboration with businesses, the provinces, and the federal government, they will build healthy communities and dynamic economies for future generations.
"During today's meeting, we reaffirmed our commitment to work together on climate change, including through leveraging local investment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, such as those supported through joint federal-municipal programs like FCM's Green Municipal Fund, an initiative that will produce practical results on a local level.
"It is estimated that municipalities can reduce emissions in Canada by 40 percent by 2020. Through things like energy-efficient buildings, improved public transport, district heating, and active transport infrastructure, cities can create thousands of good-paying, middle-class jobs, and they can be leaders in the clean growth economy.
"Already on the forefront of combating climate change daily, we're excited that Canada's mayors welcome the ratification of the Paris Agreement. International collaboration helps strengthen the work we do domestically, and we look forward to working together to fulfill the commitments we made in Paris through real action here at home."
SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada
For further information: Caitlin Workman, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-938-9436; Media Relations, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll free)
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energys Ames Laboratory and partner institutions conducted a systematic investigation into the properties of the newest family of unconventional superconducting materials, iron-based compounds. The study may help the scientific community discover new superconducting materials with unique properties.
Researchers combined innovative crystal growth, highly sensitive magnetic measurements, and the controlled introduction of disorder through electron bombardment to create and study an entire range of compositions within a class of iron-based superconductors. They found that the key fundamental propertiestransition temperature and magnetic field penetration depth of these complex superconductors were dependent on composition and the degree of disorder in the material structure.
This was a systematic approach to more fully understand the behavior of unconventional superconductors, said Ruslan Prozorov, Ames Laboratory faculty scientist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. We found that some proposed models of unconventional superconductivity in these iron-based compounds were compatible with our results, and this study further limited the possible theoretical mechanisms of superconductivity.
That information will also serve as a resource for future research into unconventional superconductors.
A crystal sample of one of the iron-based unconventional superconductors studied by Ames Laboratory scientists. Their systematic investigation of this class of superconductors may lead to the creation of new materials with unique superconducting properties.
Science Advances Energy gap evolution across the superconductivity dome in single crystals of (Ba1xKx)Fe2As2
This study fleshed out the knowledge of a class of materials more completely and in a way that will be helpful to the scientific community as they search for high temperature superconductors. Knowing how transition temperature is affected by composition, magnetic field and structural disorder gives science a better idea of where to digit contributes to the goal of discovery by design, creating materials that do exactly what we want them to do, said Prozorov.
Abstract
The mechanism of unconventional superconductivity in iron-based superconductors (IBSs) is one of the most intriguing questions in current materials research. Among non-oxide IBSs, (Ba1xKx)Fe2As2 has been intensively studied because of its high superconducting transition temperature and fascinating evolution of the superconducting gap structure from being fully isotropic at optimal doping (x 0.4) to becoming nodal at x greater than 0.8. Although this marked evolution was identified in several independent experiments, there are no details of the gap evolution to date because of the lack of high-quality single crystals covering the entire K-doping range of the superconducting dome. We conducted a systematic study of the London penetration depth, (T), across the full phase diagram for different concentrations of point-like defects introduced by 2.5-MeV electron irradiation. Fitting the low-temperature variation with the power law, ~ Tn, we find that the exponent n is the highest and the Tc suppression rate with disorder is the smallest at optimal doping, and they evolve with doping being away from optimal, which is consistent with increasing gap anisotropy, including an abrupt change around x 0.8, indicating the onset of nodal behavior. Our analysis using a self-consistent t-matrix approach suggests the ubiquitous and robust nature of s pairing in IBSs and argues against a previously suggested transition to a d-wave state near x = 1 in this system.
SOURCES- Ames Lab, Science Advances
The Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group (CAC) is involved in preparation for some kind of aerial display involving the low-rate initial production (LRIP) J-20A. This included what was essentially a semiofficial presentation of the J-20A with a flurry of news reports and images issued between September 30 and October 1. Four pre-production aircraft two of them apparently in the new tactical light gray with low-visibility markings as well as two more in yellow primer performed a display over the factory at Chengdu on that occasion.
Seven pre-production aircraft have already been built and the first two examples have reportedly been delivered to a flight test center at either Cangzhou, or more likely, Dingxin air base.
The first front-line regiment is supposed to activate and receive aircraft by June 2017 and the J-20 is expected to be combat ready by 2018 or 2019. That milestone could be pushed forward, given the budget priority. The final requirement could be between 500 to 700.
SOURCES- Combat Aircraft, Defense Update
The Russian military is buying up jamming devices which it plans to mount on cell phone towers. The idea behind it is simple the Kremlin could switch on the jammers, known as Pole-21 to confuse American GPS guidance.
Russia has about 250,000 cellular base stations.
Russia is betting on disrupting a missiles receiver just enough to stop a direct hit. The transmission of an elementary signal from a satellite lies at the foundation of all satellite navigation systems, Russian military analyst Anton Lavrov told Izvestiya. Therefore, the slightest deviation from the designated frequency even for milliseconds will result in a loss of accuracy.
O.E. Watch, a monthly newsletter published by the U.S. Armys Foreign Military Studies Office, noted that the devices appear to be part of a larger push by Russia to prepare itself for the possibility of major conflict.
These initiatives coincide with other efforts to prepare Russia for large-scale conventional warfare, such as massive snap exercises, reformation of the reserve system, exercising wartime command and control relationships, and testing the nationalization of the industrial base in the event of a transition to a wartime footing, O.E. Watch stated.
Russian Defense Ministry has adopted a system of jamming Pole-21 protecting Russian strategic facilities from enemy cruise missiles, guided bombs and drones are used for navigation and targeting GPS satellite system, Glonass, Galileo and Beidou. Latest jammers developed by JSC Scientific and Technical Center of electronic warfare (STC EW) is mounted on the cell tower and integrated with the transmit antennas station RFI P-340RP, combined into a single network, covering impervious to signal satellite navigation dome entire neighborhoods
All four satellite navigation systems, the signals of which the Pole-21 must combat, use closely spaced frequencies, which end up in the interval from 1176.45 to 1575.42 MHz. The fact that even a transmitter with an output of a total of 20 watts in order to jam the radio signals in this range in a radius of 80 kilometers attests to the latest Russian systems capabilities to create an impenetrable jamming dome.
At the same time, the system has one shortcoming. As is indicated in its description, The fact that this complex creates jamming both for the enemy, who is using the GPS radio navigation system, and also for domestic consumers of this GPS radio navigation system and also for its
Russian GLONASS equivalent
Russia is also looking at leveraging existing GSM cellular towers as a detection system for unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missiles and light aircraft.
SOURcEs- OE Watch, Izvestia
Okon Umana The gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Akwa Ibom State in the 2015 elections, Okon Umana, on W...
Okon Umana
The gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Akwa Ibom State in the 2015 elections, Okon Umana, on Wednesday dismissed as baseless allegations by Justice Inyang Okoro that he and his party attempted to induce the judge to swing the ruling of the Supreme Court in their favour. Mr. Okoro, caught in the State Security Service crackdown on senior judicial officers after being accused of corruption and abuse of office, wrote to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mahmud Mohammed, narrating how Mr. Umana visited him, along with the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, and a clergyman, Ebebe Ukpong, in an attempt to induce him to manipulate the ruling on the Akwa Ibom governorship election petition in their favour.The security operatives had visited Justice Okoros home in Abuja to conduct a search on October 7 and 8 as part of its investigation in the case of alleged corruption and abuse of office levelled against him.At the end of the operation, the SSS said they found $38,800 and N3.5 million in cash as well as other documents pertaining to its investigation.But Mr. Okoro accused the SSS of working for the government in power to harass and intimidate him apparently for resisting pressure to help influence the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling on Akwa Ibom gubernatorial election.Specifically, he accused Mr. Amaechi of being behind his ordeal, citing a verbal report he said he made to the Chief Justice on February 1, 2016 about the former Rivers State governors visit to his official residence.Mr. Okoro said Mr. Amaechi had approached him to say President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC wanted him to plead with the Supreme Court judges, to ensure the outcome of the election appeals in respect of Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Abia States were in their favour at all costs.Mr. Amaechi has since denied the allegations, describing it as baseless and spurious and blatant lies bereft of any iota of truth.However, Mr. Umana in his reaction on Wednesday accused Mr. Okoro of making the allegation without any evidence, saying the alleged meeting was fiction.No such meeting to discuss how to bribe judges took place between him, Mr Umana Okon Umana and Dr (Pastor) Ebebe Ukpong as alleged, Mr. Umana said in a statement by his spokesperson, Iboro Otongaran.If we assume, without conceding, such a meeting took place, for a man of Justice Okoros standing and knowledge of the law, he ought to have known the legal implications of such a visit, and should have reported to appropriate authorities immediately. He did not do that, but only reacting after the authorities have established a case against him, Mr. Otongaran argued.He said Justice Okoros claim in his letter to the Chief Justice of Nigeria was not only false, it is diversionary and an afterthought. Justice Okoro should address himself to the facts of the case, which is between him and the State, and leave Umana out of it.Contrary to Justice Okoros claim, Mr. Otongaran said, Mr. Umana had no appeal before the Supreme Court from any court judgment on the 2015 governorship election in Akwa Ibom State, having won his case at the tribunal and Court of Appeal.Mr. Umana was therefore confident of victory at the Supreme Court, because of the concurrent judgments of the lower courts. But, the Supreme Court judgment had ignored the concurrent judgments at both the tribunal and the Court of Appeal.It also totally disregarded the reports of the international observers, including those of the United States government and the European Union that the elections in Akwa Ibom and Rivers states were marred by widespread violence and irregularities.Mr. Umana had issued a statement expressing disappointment at the verdict, and has since moved on and left everything in the hands of God. Justice Okoro should therefore leave Mr. Umana alone, Mr. Otongaran said.
A Justice of the Supreme Court, Inyang Okoro, has accused the Minister of Transport, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, of orchestrating his ordeal.
A Justice of the Supreme Court, Inyang Okoro, has accused the Minister of Transport, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, of orchestrating his ordeal.In a letter dated October 17, 2016 and addressed to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, Okoro said, I strongly believe that my travail is not unconnected with the verbal report I made to you on 1st February, 2016 about the visit to my official residence by H/E Rotimi Amaechi, former Governor of Rivers State and now Minister of Transportation.In that report, I told you my Lord, that Mr. Amaechi said the President of Nigeria and the All Progressives Congress mandated him to inform me that they must win their election appeals in Rivers State, Akwa Ibom and Abia State at all costs.Justice Okoro said although he declined the request and ensured he was not on the Akwa Ibom tribunal, Amaechi and others in the APC believed his presence in the Supreme Court made the APC lose its challenge against the Akwa Ibom governorship election at the apex court.He urged the NJC to ignore all allegations against him as they were lies, insisting he legitimately earned the money found in his house.
The currently detained former Minister of State (Defence) Musiliu Obanikoro has implicated Governor Ayodele Fayose in the probe of the N...
The currently detained former Minister of State (Defence) Musiliu Obanikoro has implicated Governor Ayodele Fayose in the probe of the N4.745billion wired to a company by the Office of the National Security Adviser(ONSA).The cash was wired to Sylva Mcnamara, which has been linked to Obanikoro within seven months in 2014.Sen. Obanikoro said of the cash, N2.23billion was transferred to Fayose.He handed Fayose $5,377,000 in cash and N1.3billion was received by the governors associate, Mr. Abiodun Agbele.Obanikoro admitted that the N1.3billion was flown to Akure airport in two chartered flights for delivery to Agbele.The money was sourced from the $2.1billion meant for arms purchase at the ONSA.Obanikoro told Economic and Financial Crimes (EFCC) detectives that he is not the owner of Sylva Mcnamara that was used to transfer the funds to Fayose.But he defended why the money was remitted to Mcnamara. Part of the reason is the warding off of a plot by Boko Haram to attack Lagos, he claimed.Accompanied by his lawyer, Mr. James Onoja(SAN), the ex-minister was confronted with a petition from ONSA which was dated November 28, 2015.The petition is titled Payment to companies with no contract awards or approval.He said having gone through the petition, he discovered that Sylva Mcnamara was No. 78 on the list of firms being investigated, having collected the aggregate sum of N4,685,000,000 between April 4, 2014 and November 13, 2014.A source quoted Obanikoro as saying that N2.2billion was transferred to Sylva Mcnamara for onward transfer to Mr. Ayodele Fayose on the instruction of the National Security Adviser (NSA).The sum of N1.3billion cash was brought in a bullion van by Diamond Bank on the instruction of the NSA.In addition, the sum of N60million was converted to dollars at the rate of N168 per dollar and altogether the sum of $5,377,000 was handed over in cash by me to Mr. Fayose while the N1.3billion was received by Mr. Fayoses associate, Mr. Abiodun Agbele, in the presence of my Aide-de-Camp (ADC), Lt. Adewale, who also accompanied them to the bank along with the bank officials.I didnt interact with the bank officials. I called Fayose before the funds were handed over to Mr. Abiodun Agbele. I spoke to Fayose with my phone at Akure airport.On how the cash was transferred to Fayose, the source said Obanikoro told investigators that two flights were used to convey the money from Lagos.The ex-minister said he took off with the first flight with part of the money. The second flight brought the remaining funds to Akure airport and I directed that it should be handed over to the same person, he was quoted as saying.The source said Obanikoro however maintained that part of the cash was used to ward off Boko Haram aggression in Lagos and in the Southwest.The source added: He told us that he is not the owner of the company in question but introduced the owner, Mr. Kareem Taiwo, to the NSA, Mr. Sambo Dasuki, when the threat of Boko Haram became more visible in Lagos.He said the government wanted to incorporate local input into the intelligence gathering and prevention of terrorist attack on Lagos and the Southwest.The EFCC had discovered that Sylvan Mcnamara Limited, allegedly owned by Obanikoro and his sons, was used to launder the N4.745billion.The company, which was incorporated in November 2011, has the following as its directors: the ex-Ministers aide, Ikenna Ezekwe(700,000 shares) of 51 Simpson Street, Ebute-Metta; Idowu Oshodi(299,000 shares) of 8, Prince Tayo Adesanya Street, Park View Estate, Ikoyi; and Elizabeth Adebiyi(1,000 shares) of 3, Adedoyin Street, Ijeshatedo, Surulere.
Cross section of the 21 Chibok Girls recently released from Boko Haram during a Presidential reception for them at the State House, Abu...
Cross section of the 21 Chibok Girls recently released from Boko Haram during a Presidential reception for them at the State House, Abuja. Photo by Abayomi ADESHIDA
Cross section of parents of the 21 Chibok Girls recently released from Boko Haram during a Presidential reception for them at the State House, Abuja. Photo by Abayomi ADESHIDA
Cross section of the 21 Chibok Girls recently released from Boko Haram during a Presidential reception for them at the State House, Abuja. Photo by Abayomi ADESHIDA 19/10/2016
Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has denied the allegation that he approached Justice of the Supreme Court, Inyang Okoro ove...
Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has denied the allegation that he approached Justice of the Supreme Court, Inyang Okoro over any case.Amaechi described the allegation by the judge as a figment of his imagination.Justice Inyang Okoro, who is among the seven judges arrested by the Department of State Service between October 7 and 8, pointed accusing finger to the former Rivers governor, as the one who instigated his ordeal.Mr. Amaechi, in a statement by his media office, asked the judge to respond to the corruption allegation levelled against him.The statement said, This accusation from Justice Okoro against Amaechi is a figment of his imagination, concocted to obfuscate and politicise the real issues for his arrest and DSS investigation of allegations of corruption against him.The claims by Justice Okoro against Amaechi are blatant lies, bereft of any iota of truth or even logic. Amaechi did not, and has never approached Justice Okoro in respect of the cases Okoro mentioned or any other case.This is a cheap attempt, albeit, political move to drag the name of Amaechi into something he knows nothing about.Justice Okoro should face his issues and leave Amaechi out of it. He will be hearing from our lawyers.
The Kaduna State Government said on Wednesday that it had not placed any ban on Shia Muslims in the state.
The Kaduna State Government said on Wednesday that it had not placed any ban on Shia Muslims in the state.Mr Samuel Aruwan, the government spokesman, said at a news briefing in Kaduna, that what the government did, was to declare the operation of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria illegal, as the group was not registered.Islamic Movement in Nigeria was never a registered organisation and it refuses to conduct itself with full adherence to the laws of Kaduna State.He added that the group had consistently blocked roads and inconvenienced road users.It occupies without permission, facilities that did not belong to it, and it has ignored the law and neglected the obligations of civility, he added.Aruwan said the IMN should follow due process and get the required government certificate for it to operate as an organisation.He noted that other groups that practice Shia Islam were not included in the ban.The government spokesman also dismissed insinuations that the state was trying to muzzle religious freedom, stressing that the restriction on the IMN had nothing to do with the right to worship.The government has a duty to uphold fundamental rights and security of everyone.This involves ensuring that nobody exercise their rights in ways that restrict the right of others or subject them to danger, distress or violation of their humanity, he said.According to him, all residents are free to practice whatever religion they profess, as guaranteed by the Constitution.He said government would only interfere if in the exercise of such rights, the person infringed on the rights of others and by putting danger to public order and safety.It is the fundamental obligation of the government to preserve the security and uphold the right of all citizens.
Oscar Pistorius was secretly freed from prison to join his family for a memorial service for his grandmother - prison bosses have confirmed.
The 29-year-old killer was allowed to travel to a boutique hotel under armed guard for four hours after being given 'compassionate leave'.
But the move has sparked criticism in South Africa that the disgraced Olympian is being given special treatment due to 'white privilege'.
Pistorius is serving a six-year jail term for the murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his home in Pretoria.
The hotel security guard at the centre of the 8.5million Kardashian robbery has revealed how he tried to comfort petrified Kim as she was held bound in her room during the robbery.The traumatised Algerian father-of-one, who has asked to be identified by his first name; Abdulrahman, for safety purpose, revealed that he pleaded with the robbers not to harm Kim, but admitted that he let them in to her luxury Parisian hotel apartment and even acted as the gangs interpreter, because Kim was screaming and the robbers couldn't understand what she was saying.In an exclusive interview, Abdulrahman told MailOnline;Abdulrahman revealed that the robbers were French speakers in their 40s or 50s, and were very angry when Kim told them she only had a small amount of cash in the room to give to them.Abdulrahman said.Abdulrahman noted that he let the gunmen into the building because they were dressed 'perfectly' in police uniforms, but as soon as the robbers got inside; they forced him to the floor and handcuffed him.he said. Abdulrahman now badly shaken from the Paris incident, is returning to Algeria to his wife and four years old son, to repair himself psychologically.
The United States, US, government has disclosed that it is no longer a major importer of crude oil from Nigeria, explaining that the comme...
The United States, US, government has disclosed that it is no longer a major importer of crude oil from Nigeria, explaining that the commencement of the production of Shale oil and gas in the last ten years has changed the American economy such that its no longer a major importer of oil especially from Nigeria.The countrys Deputy Assistant Secretary, West Africa and Economic and Regional Affairs, Peter Barlerin, made this known in Abuja yesterday, stating that Nigeria is one of the most important countries for the U.S in sub-Saharan Africa.Acknowledging that Nigeria has the largest population on the continent and the second largest economy, he stated that the U.S was considering increasing Direct Investment in Nigeria.It (the commencement of Shale oil and gas production) impacted on the oil export from Nigeria, I think this gives an opportunity to Nigeria to diversify the economic and deep our economic relationship in other ways, he said.While noting that the decline in the oil price had significant impact on Nigerias economy, just like other countries, Barlerin commended Buharis efforts in trying to improve the economic conditions.He pointed out that ongoing efforts of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in diversifying the Nigerian economy into non-oil export would make the nations export more attractive to America and the rest of the world.According to him, We believe that such efforts would be helpful for the economy because it will make Nigeria export more attractive to the region, the U.S. and the rest of world.It will help Nigerian economy as it would no longer depend on oil as it did in the past.A number of sectors in Nigeria are promising; there are lots of promising exports potentials in services industry, in fashion industry, agriculture and other sectors.The envoy said that U.S. would try to increase two-way trade and investments with Nigeria with a view to deepening the trade relations between both countries.So if we have a high level of trade here, we want to increase both U.S. export to Nigeria and U.S. import from Nigeria, so that we can have two ways trade. Also we think that increasing U.S. direct investment into Nigeria is very important.I think the Buharis Administrations efforts to improve easy doing business in Nigeria is very important.And we think that openness to U.S. investors into countrys economy will be very important for Nigerias economic growth, he said.
Midori Tajiri-Byrd's tattoo is a symbol of her samurai family history that dates back almost two millennia. (Photo courtesy Midori Tajiri-Byrd)
Authorities said Esperanza Jimenez Rojas, 25, was found stabbed to death in an Algiers townhouse on April 8, 2015.
Terrance Jacques, 25, escaped from Municipal Court early Tuesday afternoon (Oct. 18, 2016), but surrendered to police at noon Wednesday, according to the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office.(Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office)
The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
WASHINGTON (AP) The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all.
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Each of the two candidates claims the other doesnt really live in area
LINCOLN Two Republicans seeking to represent the states wide-open Sandhills in the State Legislature differ on everything from raising gas taxes to granting drivers licenses to immigrants as well as whether either truly resides in the rural, ranching district.
Incumbent State Sen. Al Davis is squaring off with retired Army Col. Tom Brewer to represent District 43. It is the states largest district geographically, including all or part of 13 counties. It is also heavily Republican, by a ratio of more than 3-to-1.
So far much of the battle has been about who really lives in the district. And both candidates say theyre victims of mudslinging.
Brewer, 58, has a home in Murdock, near Lincoln, but claims as his official residence a Gordon machine shed in which hes created three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a kitchen.
Davis, 64, rents out his ranchland north of Hyannis in District 43 and still maintains a home there, but after being elected in 2012, he purchased a second house outside of Lincoln.
Brewer switched his voter registration to Gordon prior to an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2014. He said that Davis spends most of his time in Lincoln and doesnt reflect the conservative views of his district.
Hes seen as someone who comes back as needed, Brewer said. Al Davis would be a great representative for Omaha or Lincoln, but not for the 43rd District.
Davis rejects that contention. He said he spends most of his time in Hyannis and is not unlike other outstate senators who have second residences in Lincoln. Davis cited work on legislation to maintain two-man crews on trains and to obtain a plane to battle wildfires in his district as examples of his accomplishments.
Ive got guts, I work hard, I think Im respected at the Capitol, Davis said. And I have a lot of expertise and knowledge that a new senator wont have.
Last week a formal complaint was filed with the Sheridan County assessor asking that Brewer be required to pay back taxes and penalties owed on the improvements made to the shed since 2011.
The complaint cited a state law requiring a property owner to report improvements of more than $2,500 by the end of the year in which they were done.
Davis said Brewer looks like a tax dodger to me because he has been paying taxes on a machine shed rather than the higher taxes that would be levied on a residence.
Sheridan County Assessor Amanda Lane said Thursday that she hadnt had a chance to look at the complaint. Ive got more important things to do, she said.
Earlier, former State Sen. LeRoy Louden contested Brewers residency in Gordon. But the Nebraska secretary of state ruled that the complaint had been filed too late.
Brewer said that hes talked with the Sheridan County assessor since the machine shed issue first arose and that the improvements will be part of his tax bill next year.
Its water under the bridge, Brewer said, adding that the controversy was an attempt by Davis supporters to poke me in the eye.
Jordan McGrain, former state Republican Party executive director, an adviser to Brewer, said the criticism was part of a campaign to smear a veteran who served six combat tours of duty in Afghanistan and earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.
McGrain leveled his own accusation: that Davis is getting lots of support from Democrats, such as a July fundraiser in Omaha co-sponsored by several Democrats, including former Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey.
Davis said that Fahey shares his commitment to lowering property taxes and providing adequate state aid to schools.
Brewer is also getting help from outside the district. A new group called Your Vote Matters PAC sent out a postcard to District 43 constituents accusing Davis and his wife, Dottie, of living in Lincoln now. The card was mailed from the Crete, Nebraska, home of Matt Innis, the former chair of the Lancaster County Republican Party.
Americans for Prosperity, an anti-tax group, attacked Davis in a recent mailing, criticizing his support for an increase of 6 cents per gallon in the state gas tax to fund new highway construction.
Davis, who switched his registration from Democratic to Republican 19 years ago, said the mailings are part of a campaign to deflect attention away from Brewers machine-shed controversy.
Davis has some ground to make up. Brewer out-polled him by 800 votes in the primary, even though Davis has a long list of groups endorsing him, including the Nebraska State Education Association, Nebraska Right to Life, the Nebraska Federation of Independent Business and the Nebraska Farm Bureau.
Brewer said he better reflects the core values of the district. He cited his support of the death penalty and opposition to granting drivers licenses to young immigrants brought into the country illegally as children as part of the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
People are angry at a national level and theyre angry at a state level because they dont feel that their elected representatives are listening to them, Brewer said. To address that concern, Brewer rode a mule for 19 days and 500 miles across his district, talking to people along the way an effort Davis labeled a publicity stunt.
Davis defended his vote for the gas-tax increase, saying projects across the state such as the Heartland Expressway in his district were not going to be completed without it.
He said he voted to allow DACA participants to get drivers licenses because Nebraska was the only state that forbade it. He added that he opposed giving DACA participants professional and commercial licenses, such as those given to nurses and truck drivers.
His vote to repeal the death penalty, Davis said, reflected his pro-life views as a Catholic and was the product of a tremendous amount of study, including looking at cases of wrongful convictions.
I hope people have done their research, he said. Ill be surprised if the death penalty is ever used.
Davis, according to state campaign reports, had outspent Brewer $114,288 to $29,269 through early October.
Davis has loaned his campaign about $14,600. His top contributors are Associated General Contractors ($10,000) and the state teachers union ($6,300).
Brewer has spent $4,600 of his own money on the campaign. His biggest donor is A.C. Musgrave, a Dallas, Texas, chemical company owner, who gave $15,000.
One other controversy has emerged in the campaign: Brewers involvement in a flap surrounding a Montana-based group that offers horseback rides as therapy for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The matter, involving the nonprofit group Heroes and Horses, prompted the Montana Attorney Generals Office to investigate.
One major donor to the group, Rod Fraser, a steel company executive from Minnesota, accused Brewer, a member of the groups board, of trying to steal the organization from its founder and executive director, Micah Fink, and of holding secret meetings without notifying Fink.
Fraser, who declined an interview request, expressed concerns to the attorney general in a letter that his donations to Heroes and Horses were being wasted.
In a 12-page report issued in June, the Attorney Generals Office concluded that board members, including Brewer, had breached their duty of care in operating the nonprofit group. Brewer disputed the allegations, saying that he just didnt see eye to eye with Fink and the roles of those in Heroes and Horses needed to be more clearly defined.
The matter was resolved when the Attorney Generals Office approved a settlement creating a second nonprofit group, headed by Brewer, called NewCo and transferring $140,000 to it.
Brewer said hes still looking for a ranch to host a therapeutic equine program. Meanwhile, Heroes and Horses hosted 14 veterans this summer under new leadership.
Davis has had his own controversy.
In June he was fined $500 by the state sunshine commission for failing to disclose an investment in a Canadian mining company, NioCorp, that plans to mine rare-earth minerals in southeast Nebraska.
Davis introduced a bill to impose a severance tax on such mining but failed to disclose that he had purchased stock in NioCorp. He has said that he did not intend to violate the reporting requirement.
Sandra Sue "Sam" Patterson, 60, of North Platte, passed away Oct. 13, 2016, at Bryan Medical Center East in Lincoln.
Sam was born on Oct. 22, 1955, in Sterling, Colorado, then adopted by James Alexander and Ione Magdeline Becky Beckley Patterson. The family lived in Lewellen for a while then moved to Ogallala, where Sam graduated from high school with the class of 1974. While in high school, she was recognized as Teen of the Month and Citizen of the Year for her work with the handicapped.
After graduation, Sam moved to Lincoln, where she attended Nebraska Wesylan University and during the summers worked as a counselor at Norweska Methodist Church Camp. Sam received her Bachelor of Arts in English, then went on to teach in Kimball. Sam eventually earned her M.A.R. degree from Iliff School of Theology in Denver in 1985, then began her ministry with the Methodist Church.
Pastor Sam was first assigned to the United Methodist Church in Neenah, Wisconsin, then moved to Windsor, Colorado, to work at Faith United Church of Christ. She went back to school at Iliff and graduated with a M.D.V. in 1993. Pastor Sam then became the associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in North Platte. After seven years, she was assigned to be pastor at the Methodist Churches in Shickley and Ong. Pastor Sam worked in the communities for the next two years before she had to take disability leave due to health concerns and return to North Platte.
Pastor Sam had great faith in the Lord and enjoyed her ministry. She also loved the snow and was a talented musician. She played the clarinet from fourth grade through high school and continued playing in college with the marching band and concert band. When Sam moved to Wisconsin, she played in the Neenah Community Band, and they had the opportunity to tour and perform in Europe. She also learned to play bells both in a choir and solo.
Along with her churches, Sam was a member of the Nebraska Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and a board member with Habitat for Humanity, and she attended the UMC Monday Musicale.
She was preceded in death by her grandparents and cousins, Larry Beckley, Merlin Orr and Shirley Flohr.
Sam leaves behind her loving parents, Jim and Becky Patterson, of Oshkosh; and her many friends.
In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to the First United Methodist Church, Bell Choir, Habitat for Humanity or the donors choice. Online condolences may be shared at odeanchapel.com.
Services will be at 1 p.m. CDT on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at the First United Methodist Church with the Rev. Dr. Douglas A. Delp officiating. Cremation will follow. Inurnment will be at 1 p.m. MDT on Wednesday, Oct. 19, at Ash Hollow Cemetery in Lewellen. Visitation will be prior to services at the church. Odean Colonial Chapel at & Sycamore is in charge of arrangements.
Public safety is one of my top priorities as your governor. One of the tools law enforcement needs to keep our families and communities safe is laws that are tough on crime. Criminal penalties like mandatory sentencing laws, three-strikes laws and the death penalty act as deterrents and provide justice.
Last year, the Legislature passed Legislative Bill 268 to abolish the death penalty. There was an immediate effort to allow Nebraska voters to decide the issue on the ballot. During the summer of 2015, enough petition signatures were gathered not only to allow the people to vote, but also to prevent LB 268 from going into effect until after the vote of the people this November.
Next month, voters will decide whether to abolish or keep the death penalty. The question on the ballot pertains to retaining or repealing the bill the Legislature passed. A vote to retain the bill passed by the Legislature will abolish the death penalty in Nebraska. A vote to repeal the bill passed by the Legislature will keep the death penalty in Nebraska.
I am a strong advocate to keep the death penalty because it is a critical tool for law enforcement and criminal prosecutors to protect public safety.
First, the death penalty protects our Corrections officers and law enforcement. Every week, numerous men and women go to work in our Corrections system. They risk their lives to provide security at our prisons as well as to deliver programming to help inmates become productive members of society upon release. In prison management, the death penalty is a safeguard against violent criminals who are already behind bars. Without the death penalty, an inmate sentenced to life in prison has nothing to lose by taking the life of a corrections officer. In fact, there have been a number of law enforcement and corrections officers who have thanked me for my support of the death penalty.
The death penalty also helps protect our communities. Those working to abolish the death penalty argue that life in prison will protect our communities; however, consider the story of Laddie Dittrich. In 1973, Laddie Dittrich was convicted of burglary and first degree murder. He received a life sentence. Prior to my administration, the Pardons Board commuted the sentence of Dittrich from a life sentence to a sentence of 80 years to life. Subsequently, Dittrich was paroled in 2014. Later that year, Dittrich was arrested for third degree sexual assault involving a 10-year-old girl. A life in prison sentence does not guarantee an offender will stay in prison, and it did not protect the community from Laddie Dittrich.
As we approach the vote, there is an increasing amount of misinformation. For example, out-of-state advocates are discussing wrongful convictions and the possibility of putting innocent people to death. This is an important conversation to have; however, nobody is claiming that any of Nebraskas 10 death row inmates are innocent. In fact, three of them are on video murdering five people in the attempted robbery of a Norfolk bank. Checks and balances in Nebraska ensure that the death penalty is used sparingly and applied justly, and rapid advancements in DNA technology will help to ensure accuracy in future cases.
Anti-death penalty activists paid a researcher for a study that said the death penalty costs the state more money. The study relies on out-of-state data rather than Nebraska statistics. Attorney General Doug Peterson identified serious inaccuracies in the study, noting that the study suggests Nebraska incurs 20 times the costs realized by other states. In fact, the Appropriations Bill advanced from the Unicamerals independent legislative fiscal office found zero dollars in cost savings associated with abolishing the death penalty.
In the next couple of weeks, Nebraskans will weigh the arguments to abolish or keep the death penalty, and its important people have the facts instead of bad information. Its also critical that you read the ballot language very carefully. A vote to retain LB 268 will abolish the death penalty in Nebraska. A vote to repeal LB 268 will keep the death penalty in Nebraska.
INDIANAPOLIS Manufacturers in the Hoosier State remain confident about their future prospects even as profitability has diminished compared with recent years, according to a new study by Indiana Universitys Kelley School of Business.
The 2016 Indiana Manufacturing Survey, released Wednesday, found leaders in the states largest industry believe they are in a maturing economic recovery with limited additional opportunities for growth, but not on the precipice of a recession.
In short, the day may be sunny, but there are clouds on the horizon, said survey co-author Mark Frohlich, IU associate professor of operations management.
Those clouds include reduced expectations for future product market expansion, shortages of skilled and unskilled production workers due to the states low unemployment rate, and continuing regulatory, tax and healthcare burdens.
There are deep concerns about the future of Indianas manufacturing sector, particularly as it relates to workforce and regulatory concerns, said Jason Patch, partner-in-charge of Katz Sapper & Millers Manufacturing and Distribution Services Group, which sponsored the survey.
As a result, just 3 percent of Hoosier manufacturers said they plan to open a new facility in Indiana over the next 12 months, down from 11 percent in 2015-16.
Instead, 11 percent of Indiana manufacturers this year are looking to nearshore facilities in either Canada or Mexico, up from 7 percent last year. However, planned offshoring away from North America is down 3 percent.
The survey found more than 8 in 10 manufacturers report their earnings are either stable or healthy, an improvement compared to last year. Though companies with healthy earnings are down 10 percent from 2012-13.
Manufacturers are remaining profitable despite slow market growth by investing in advanced technologies, improving processes and recruiting and training quality workers, according to the survey.
Other studies show Indiana remains a manufacturing powerhouse, with one out of five Hoosiers employed in the industry. Indianas manufacturing sector produced an estimated output of $93.61 billion in 2014, according to the National Manufacturing Association. Only California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas manufactured more.
But in the Indiana Manufacturing Survey, the states manufacturers identify Indianas corporate and property taxes as a growth impediment, believe many state and federal regulations make them less competitive, and claim not enough employees have the skills needed to immediately begin working.
David Resnick, managing partner of Katz, Sapper & Miller, said most everyone in Indiana has a part to play in keeping the states manufacturers thriving.
Lawmakers, industry leaders and educators can all shape a positive future for Indianas manufacturing industry, which serves as a tremendous economic engine and employer of hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers, Resnick said.
The complete results of the 2016 Indiana Manufacturing Survey are available with the online version of this article at nwi.com.
Steel imports fell by 7 percent to 2.8 million tons in September, down from 3 million tons in August, according to the U.S. Commerce Departments Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis data.
The American Iron and Steel Institute reported imports for finished steel, which would not require any further processing in the United States, dropped 9 percent to 2 million in September, down from 2.3 million in August. Imports captured about 25 percent of the overall U.S. market share in September and year-to-date, down from the record 29 percent that caused thousands of layoffs and mill idlings nationwide last year.
The use of recently passed trade laws are a way to deal with the results of overcapacity, which have resulted in a massive surge of dumped and subsidized steel in U.S. markets, AISI President and CEO Tom Gibson said in a conference call with reporters this week.
In September, imports of sheets and strip galvanized electrolytic rose by 82 percent, oil country goods by 20 percent, and sheets and strip all other metallic coatings by 15 percent. Imports of reinforcing bars increased by 12 percent so far this year.
The United States has imported 24.8 million net tons so far this year, down 20 percent as compared to the first nine months of 2015. Imports of finished steel products so far this year have fallen 22 percent to 19.6 million tons.
South Korea has sent 2.9 million tons of steel to the United States so far this year, an 18 percent decline as compared to the same period in 2015. Imports from are down 14 percent from Japan and 9 percent from Turkey.
In September, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Germany and Vietnam sent the most steel to U.S. ports. Imports from all those countries declined except for Vietnam, which U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittal has accused of sending rerouted imports from China in order to avoid tariffs.
Its been two years since The Joffrey Ballet brought Krzysztof Pastors Romeo and Juliet to the Windy City stage. The passionate production is back once again and continues through Sunday at Chicagos Auditorium Theatre.
William Shakespeares story of the tragedy of love found and lost also showcases family and political tensions as well as communities unable to get along.
Pastors take on the classic story is infused with much passion and is stamped with contemporary touches. The choreographer, who created the ballet in 2008 for The Scottish Ballet, celebrated the U.S. premiere of the piece in 2014 when The Joffrey first performed it.
This production of Romeo and Juliet offers a blend of poignant, dramatic and exciting choreography. The Joffrey artists easily draw audience members into the story and action with their attention to dance excellence.
Pastors Romeo and Juliet is set in three different decades: the 1930s, 1950s and 1990s. Dramatic footage and images on video screen backdrops are fascinating and greatly add to the appeal of the show.
The tale of the Capulet and Montague families unfolds in a stunning way in The Joffreys capable hands. The ballet is set to Prokofievs score, which is lush, beautiful and also tragic.
The Joffrey dancers portrayals of Shakespeares characters remain strong throughout.
Christine Rocas, who performs as Juliet, mixes grace, heartbreaking passion, as well as whimsical moves, in her performance. Rocas and Rory Hohenstein, as an energetic Romeo, are the perfect Romeo and Juliet. Their performances are striking.
Additional highlighted performances include Yoshihisa Arai as Mercutio, Fabrice Calmels as Lord Capulet, and Temur Suluashvili as Tybalt.
Romeo and Juliet, which is the official opening show of The Joffrey Ballets new season, is part of the Shakespeare 400 festival in Chicago.
FYI: The Joffrey Ballet performs Romeo and Juliet through Sunday at The Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Parkway, Chicago. Tickets are $34 to $174. For tickets, call (312) 386-8905 or visit joffrey.org.
Some new, distinct and smoky flavors are heating up the kitchen once again at Q-BBQ in Schererville.
The restaurant, which opened its doors in Northwest Indiana in November 2015, recently introduced its new brunch menu. Known for rich, smoked flavors, interesting and tasty side dishes and various sauces, Q-BBQ debuted brunch at its Naperville location a couple of weeks ago. Schererville's brunch was available beginning Oct. 15. Within a month, all of the restaurant's locations will have brunch.
Q-BBQ Brunch is offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays only.
"We want to keep innovating with good food and different ingredients. It keeps people coming back," said Michael LaPidus, owner of Q-BBQ. The Schererville location of the eatery was the fourth Q-BBQ on the scene. In addition to Schererville and Naperville, other locations are in LaGrange and Oak Park. A Q-BBQ pop-up restaurant also will be featured in Willis Tower in Chicago from Oct. 24 to 28.
Q-BBQ is the brainchild of LaPidus, who, in creating the eatery, wanted to pay tribute to classic roadside barbecue joints he visited while traveling around the country.
LaPidus has described the food customers get at Q-BBQ as "authentic barbecue." He said he wanted to bring brunch to the masses because he's always loved "food, breakfast and barbecue," and wanted to include breakfast items on his menu.
Q-BBQ features styles of barbecue from different regions of the country including everything from "dry rubbed meats of Memphis, the pulled pork from the Carolinas and the smoked briskets from Texas" LaPidus has said.
Customers will find that same diversity in the brunch items. Restaurant Scene recently visited Q-BBQ to check out the new brunch offerings.
The eatery's BBQ Brunch features Cornbread French Toast ($7.99); Alabama Benedict ($9.99); Chicken & Waffle ($10.99); Burnt End Hash ($13.99); Chicken Biscuit Sandwich ($9.99); and Portobello Hash ($12.99).
For those who like a fresh take on an old favorite, definitely try the Cornbread French Toast. The dish is moist and has a savory/sweet flavor. The Burnt End Hash is also a must try as it features a mix of the smoked burnt ends, crispy Brussels sprouts, roasted corn, black beans and potatoes. It's served with two eggs on top.
Besides the brunch items, diners also may order from the regular menu during brunch hours on Saturday and Sunday.
The Rev. David J. Simonetti poured a thick, aromatic spaghetti sauce over pasta and meatballs as he put the finishing touches on a recent Italian meal at his home.
On his dining room table sat four jars of special blends that star in Simonetti's line of Communio Sauces. Simonetti, associate pastor of St. James the Greater Church in Sauk Village, recently debuted his Communio Sauces, which are being sold for charity.
The Communio line was introduced in the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana last March. The recipes for the various sauces were developed by Simonetti, who has enjoyed cooking since he was a child. He learned the culinary craft from his mother and grandfather.
"The whole point of this is it's for charity," said Simonetti, about the nonprofit sauce company. He said the money goes to help organizations in the areas where the sauces are sold. Organizations include shelters, pantries and other groups. "This is a creative way for me to be charitable," he said.
Communio Sauces are currently sold locally at The Shrine of Christ's Passion in St. John, Rob's Chop & Deli in Dyer, Walt's Foods in Dyer and Welch's Stop & Shop in St. John as well as various places in Illinois. The sauces also can be used for school fundraisers and other event fundraisers.
Simonetti, who grew up in Chicago Heights, said cooking for others is something that definitely brings him much joy.
"I like everything to be an event," said the priest, as he placed a large plate of spaghetti and a large platter of roasted chicken on the table for three guests, including this reporter. Paul Anderson, general manager of The Shrine of Christ's Passion, also joined Simonetti for lunch that day.
Simonetti, who is a convivial host with a joking sense of humor, said he usually cooks to a musical soundtrack. One often will find him playing varied tunes from Pavarotti and Bocelli to Sinatra and Springsteen.
The priest explained he named the product Communio, which, in Latin, is translated to "communion together in love." The term also relates to the act of Communion and the sharing of the body of Christ in the Catholic faith.
"What I wanted to do with the Communio sauces is recreate an experience," Simonetti said. He calls the sauces "more than a meal, it's the way back home."
"I want people to be able to go home again, and to (recall) being there at their grandparents' (or family's) table where they are loved and feel loved," he said.
The recipes for the Communio Sauces have been perfected by Simonetti over the past year or two. He said he likes to experiment with different flavors and has fine-tuned his recipes.
"The first ingredient is love," said the priest, as he pointed to the back of the jar and its list of ingredients. Sure enough, listed there is "love" in the No. 1 spot.
Four different versions of sauce are now available. They are Rustic Home Spaghetti "Gravy" Sauce; Fresh Mushroom Spaghetti "Gravy" Sauce; Pizza, Parmesan & Sandwich Sauce; and Padre's Special Blend Vodka Sauce. A Creole Sauce and a Chunky and Spicy creation are also in the works.
While the sauces are Simonetti's recipes, the product is manufactured in a plant in the Chicago area. He said he's always on hand to taste test the product before it's bottled. Simonetti also seeks out various stores and outlets to carry the sauces. He'll often do tastings and demos at the stores where Communio is carried.
Communio, Simonetti explained, is made with high-quality ingredients, including San Marzano tomatoes, which are imported from Italy.
His mother taught him the basics of cooking, and Simonetti said he also learned about "the love of cooking for others and the (importance) of being together" from his family.
"When you eat together, it changes everyone. You go from a 'me' mentality to a 'we' mentality," he said. "And when people feel loved and eat together, that opens you up more to the love of God."
Learn more about the product, prices, where it's available, and fundraising opportunities by visiting CommunioSauces.com.
The following is a recipe for roast chicken from Simonetti.
Padres Rustic Italian Roasted Chicken And Potatoes
Ingredients:
Whole Roasting Chicken
Fresh garlic cloves, rosemary, salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder, thyme, lemons, white dry wine, preferably a Sauterne if you can find it, celery, carrots, all to taste
1 red apple
1/2 cup chicken broth
Butter, extra-virgin olive oil, cayenne pepper (optional), fresh mushrooms, all to taste
2-3 Russet potatoes, "holy" water
DIRECTIONS: Wash and clean one whole roasting chicken, pat dry. Place in a roasting pan that leaves the top 3/4 of the chicken exposed. Season inside cavity with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, rosemary, thyme. Peel and slice garlic cloves and slide them generously UNDER THE SKIN of the chicken with your fingers front and back, moving the slices around into the thighs, breasts, back, etc. Be gentle as the skin is thinner than on a turkey and will break through if not careful. Take a few tablets of softened butter and slide under the skin over the breast meat.
Cover the chicken in olive oil front and back then season with salt, pepper, rosemary leaves, garlic and onion powder, and thyme. If you like a little bite, add the cayenne pepper. Stuff the inside of the chicken cavity with carrots, celery, fresh parsley and rosemary branches, and 1/2 red apple. In the pan alongside the chicken, place celery and carrots along with a 1/2 cup of chicken broth. I like to cut the remaining red apple into slices, placing them in the pan as well.
Peel and quarter the potatoes, scoring the sides for a rough grooved surface (allows for flavor to penetrate). In a mixing bowl, cover in melted butter, olive oil, and lemon juice then season with salt, pepper, and rosemary and place in pan. Lightly saute fresh cut rustic mushrooms in a cast iron skillet in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and onion seasoning. Set on side.
Sprinkle "holy" water over this beautiful creation. Pre-heat oven to 475 degrees. Place pan on the middle rack uncovered so that the top of the chicken is about 6-8 inches from heat source on top. Cook at temp for 40 minutes, occasionally basting as chicken browns. Lower heat to 375 degrees. Take out of oven and pour wine and lemon generously over chicken, add mushrooms, then place back in oven for another 15 minutes. DO NOT TURN CHICKEN OVER AT ANY TIME. Take chicken out of oven, plating potatoes and mushrooms, cover chicken with tin foil and let stand to cool for cutting.
Loosen your belt, pray, say an Act of Contrition (to cover all bases) and begin your feasting.
From The Good Padre (Rev. David Simonetti)
HAMMOND A former Lake County Jail officer pleaded guilty Monday to taking a $400 bribe to deliver a cellphone to an alleged Latin Kings member being held at the county lockup.
David Victor, 23, of Merrillville, faces up to 15 years in prison. However, the U.S. attorneys office has agreed to recommend a minimum sentence in exchange for his plea.
Victor was accused of meeting Elissa Salazar, 23, of Griffith, on Feb. 2 in the parking lot at Meijer in Merrillville and accepting the money and a white Motorola cellphone he planned to deliver to inmate Julian R. Rebeles, 25, of Hammond.
Authorities followed Victors Chevrolet Spark to the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, where they conducted a traffic stop. Authorities found an envelope labeled with Salazars name containing $400 under the drivers seat and the cellphone in Victors lunchbox on the passenger seat, according to a complaint.
Victor later admitted Rebeles had passed him several notes while he was at work in the jail offering him money in exchange for a cellphone, the complaint says.
Salazar pleaded guilty Aug. 24 to attempting to provide an inmate with a prohibited object.
Sentencing dates for Victor and Salazar had not been scheduled as of Wednesday morning.
The indictment against Rebeles was dismissed in August, because the charges were added to another case in which Rebeles and 25 other alleged members and associates of the Latin Kings have now been indicted. Rebeles entered a not guilty plea Aug. 17 in that case, U.S. District Court records show.
HAMMOND A Lake Station man pleaded guilty Monday to murder in connection with a botched 2013 home invasion and robbery on the citys West Side.
Mark Knuckles Cherry, 24, faces no more than 30 years in prison if a U.S. District Court judge accepts his plea agreement.
Cherry is the last of three defendants to plead guilty in the case, which was moved from state court to federal court earlier this year.
James Dough Boy Landrum, 41, of New Chicago, pleaded guilty Oct. 4 to a murder charge. Bruce Casper Hendry, 30, of Hobart, pleaded guilty Sept. 23 to murder and conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
A federal judge earlier this month dismissed an indictment against Brandon Pacific, 24, of Hammond, without prejudice, which means charges could be re-filed later.
Rolando Correa Jr., 24, was fatally shot Dec. 1, 2013, when several men entered a home in the 6200 block of West 29th Avenue with guns and demanded marijuana, according to court records.
Cherry was wounded during the home invasion and arrested later that day. He became the focus of a manhunt months later, after it was discovered he walked out of an Illinois hospital.
Shortly after the home invasion, Andre J. Woods, 28, of Gary, was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in a vehicle in the 2100 block of Georgia Street. Gary police previously said they believed Woods also was involved in the home invasion.
A Valparaiso man facing charges of driving drunk and causing the death of another motorist is arguing before the Indiana Supreme Court that the case should be dismissed, in part, because he was not behind the wheel of his car when the fatal crash occurred.
The crash in question occurred at 2 a.m. April 25, 2013, when Howard Gutenstein parked his car in the right-hand lane of Interstate 94 in Michigan City and walked to the side of the highway. A semi-trailer truck stopped to check on the driver and his vehicle was struck from behind by a second truck driver, who died at the scene, according to court records.
The allegations against Gutenstein do not support the charges of reckless homicide or operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated causing death, according to an interlocutory appeal filed by his Portage-based attorneys John Vouga and Nicholas Barnes.
Gutenstein is also asking the court to toss out the results of the blood draw taken following the accident, arguing that it was taken without a warrant and without a valid exception to that requirement, according to court documents. He claims the move violated his Constitutional rights.
The Indiana Attorney Generals Office, which is handling the appeal on behalf of the prosecutor in LaPorte County where the crash occurred, has not yet filed a response to the most-recent interlocutory appeal. This type of appeal is used to challenge contentious issues while the overall criminal case is still pending.
But when the appeal was presented earlier to the state appellate court, which upheld the lower courts denial, the attorney generals office argued that there is no requirement within the drunk driving statute that the driver operate his vehicle at the moment of collision.
Rather, the statute requires only that he be intoxicated while operating his vehicle and that his conduct in operation of the vehicle be the cause of the death, according to court records.
The attorney general also opposed tossing out the blood results, arguing Gutenstein was twice advised of his rights and implied consent law, and consented to the blood draw.
Even if Defendant had not consented, police had both probable cause and exigent circumstances and could have taken the sample without consent, but they did not, the attorney general argued.
Police said they read Gutenstein his rights, but an officer mistakenly signed the consent form rather than having it signed by Gutenstein, according to court documents.
GARY A man was shot to death late Tuesday in a homicide in the citys East Glen Park section, officials said.
The man, who has not yet been identified, was found shot in the 5000 block of Maryland Street, according to the Lake County coroners office.
The man was pronounced dead about 9:40 p.m. at the scene from a gunshot wound.
Gary police were not immediately available for comment early Wednesday.
Anyone with information about the homicide is asked to call the Lake County/Gary Metro Homicide Unit at (219) 755-3852.
The homicide occurred several blocks from the scene of a double homicide last week outside a convenience store on East 49th Avenue. Zantrell Collins and Koreena Ramos, both 18 and of Gary, were found shot to death in a vehicle.
The man found Tuesday is the eighth person found dead in Gary this month and the citys 33rd homicide in 2016. The identity and manner of death for a 34th person found this month in the Little Calumet River in Gary remained pending. The city logged 50 homicides in 2015.
ST. JOHN The competition with other school districts is heating up, and Lake Central School Corp.s board is wondering if it will need to ask the voters for additional funding to offer programs that will keep it from losing students to districts like Crown Point.
Board President John DeVries said at Mondays board meeting the district needs to consider a general fund referendum because schools cant expect more money from the state and the only way to add new programs is to make cuts elsewhere or seek a referendum.
*Superintendent Lawrence Veracco said a general fund referendum is different from a building referendum, which the district successfully sought a few years ago for improvements and expansion of its buildings. With the building referendum, the exact amount isnt known. The district sought about $19 million and the actual cost came in at about $14 million, but Veracco said it could just as easily have been $22 million.
The district advertised an increase of 19.25 cents per $100 of Assessed Value but the actual increase was only 14.6 cents per $110 of AV. If the costs of construction required more than a 19-1/4 cent increase, the district would have had to cut parts of the project as they were limited to the advertised 19.25 cent increase.
With a general fund request, the amount is set and thats what it is. Another difference, Veracco said, is it is easier to show the need for the building improvements, but the need for programs is tougher to sell. And, if it passes, it has to be renewed in seven years or the board will have to make cuts in existing programs if it wants to keep the new ones. The district used federal stimulus money to add programs a few years ago, and, when the money ran out, it had to decide which programs to cut, he said.
Passing it requires the central office administration and the School Board to be enthusiastic supporters, Veracco said.
Board member Don Bacso said he might support it but would like to wait until after the election to discuss it to see if the election produced any changes in the Indiana Legislature. Board member Howard Marshall said he brought up the issue for discussion in the past.
The board is constantly looking for ways to increase programs to keep people from leaving, Marshall said. Im not one to say we need this now. Im not going to play that game. If someone comes forward with new programs, tell me how youre going to pay for it or what we are going to cut. Let the administration team bring forth the issue to us.
DeVries said, if someone starts a charter school, the district could lose 300 students, which would force deep cuts due to the loss of state funding because of the lower pupil count.
If there is a need and there is supporting data, we should be open to talking about it, board member Janice Malchow said. Ive been bringing up ideas, and I have some ideas for funding them that I will provide. Otherwise I go along with Mr. Bacso.
DeVries said he didnt think the referendum proposal has to come from the administration but could originate with the people at these tables.
This administrative team spent a lot of time pounding the pavement for the building referendum, and I didnt see a lot of support from teachers and others who would benefit, DeVries said. Im a lame duck and will be leaving in January, but I can bring this up. But, I will not support it without the support of the board and the administration.
*This story has been corrected from its original version.
*Superintendent Lawrence Veracco said a general fund referendum is different from a building referendum, which the district successfully sought a few years ago for improvements and expansion of its buildings. With the building referendum, the exact amount isnt known. The district sought about $19 million and the actual cost came in at about $14 million, but Veracco said it could just as easily have been $22 million. The district advertised an increase of 19.25 cents per $100 of Assessed Value but the actual increase was only 14.6 cents per $110 of AV. If the costs of construction required more than a 19-1/4 cent increase, the district would have had to cut parts of the project as they were limited to the advertised 19.25 cent increase.
INDIANAPOLIS Purdue University President Mitch Daniels believes Indiana is on the right track.
The former two-term Republican governor told Hoosier manufacturing leaders Wednesday that the state has made tremendous gains in business climate, disposable income relative to cost of living, infrastructure, education and environmental quality.
I like what the future may hold for us if we can keep these trends continuing, Daniels said. We should not allow people to mislead us that somehow were in a position of relative disrepair.
Daniels seemed to flirt with breaking his vow of political celibacy during his 30-minute address to the Indiana Manufacturers Association. But ultimately he refrained from directly endorsing the gubernatorial bid of his former top aide, Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb.
Instead, Daniels deployed his data-laden PowerPoint presentation to emphasize that Indiana today is in far better shape than it was when he took office in 2005 following 16 years of Democratic governors.
Ive always said were going to try to build the best sandbox in America where people of enterprise will come here and invest and create jobs and create hope for other people, Daniels said.
No matter who totes it up, no matter what criteria they use, a lot of headway has been made on this.
Daniels said Indiana going forward needs to remain focused on attracting and growing manufacturing enterprises because their jobs and associated spending rippling through the economy are the single biggest driver of hope and opportunity in our country.
I dont have patience for people who give big speeches and wring their hands about the middle class in this country, if theyre not prepared to support growth policies generally and specifically manufacturing which produces those middle-class jobs, he said.
Daniels confessed that hes concerned about the effects of shrinking male workforce participation, reduced family formation, increased disability claims and high levels of drug abuse among Hoosiers, and what that may portend for the states economy.
He suggested that in this bicentennial year Indiana could solve some of those problems, and might gain a leg up on other states, by refocusing on the values that Daniels said typify what it means to be a Hoosier: commitment to family, work ethic, honesty, self-reliance and diligence.
If we can have a citizen-led effort to preserve some advantage culturally in our state, to go with everything else we have on the asset side of the ledger, Daniels said, I dont think there will be any stopping us.
INDIANAPOLIS After being bombarded by some $30 million in television ads, mailers and billboards over the past few months, Hoosiers finally heard directly from the candidates for U.S. Senate on Tuesday during their only debate.
For most of the hour, Republican U.S. Rep. Todd Young repeatedly attacked former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, accusing the Democrat of abandoning Hoosiers to become a lobbyist and operating under the spell of D.C. insiders, party leaders and special interests.
No matter the question, Young found a way to tie it to Bayhs vote in favor of Obamacare, officially known as the 2010 Affordable Care Act, as Young insisted over and over that the health law has been an absolute job killer despite more Hoosiers working today than at any point in the states 200-year history.
Bayh was prepared for the Obamacare onslaught. He pointed out that its repeal would eliminate the Healthy Indiana Plan that serves 350,000 Hoosiers, allow insurance companies to charge higher prices to women in pursuit of unlimited profits and raise rates for insured Hoosiers to cover the health costs of the uninsured.
What we need to do is fix the parts of the law that need to be fixed and keep those that are working well, Bayh said.
On foreign policy, Young spoke generally about the need to defeat ISIS, but only intervening directly if the United States has a clear mission. He also mentioned 11 times that he previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Bayh detailed the roles of U.S. allies in the Middle East, talked about which agencies should protect Americans at home and stressed the need to win the war of ideas by standing unabashedly for freedom.
Both men said Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted and favor sanctions to punish Russias invasion of Ukraine.
On domestic issues, Bayh said his top priority if elected to a third term in the Senate will be expanding business, creating good jobs and helping Hoosier wages rise at companies like Garys Edsal Manufacturing by enforcing trade rules and halting currency manipulation.
He dinged Young for supporting a federal tax break for companies that move American jobs overseas. Young didnt respond to that issue, but said hes open to revisiting existing trade deals and called for the federal tax code to be simplified.
Young and Bayh both declared themselves strong supporters of the 2nd Amendments right to bear arms.
Though Bayh believes individuals on the No-Fly List shouldnt be allowed to purchase guns, while Young did not commit to any specific new gun purchase restrictions saying only, Every right has its limitations.
In response to a question by Chesterton teacher Bryan Nallenweg, Bayh emphasized that hes prepared to work across party lines to get things done for Hoosiers and even spoke favorably of his past partnerships with Republican U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar and Gov. Mike Pence.
Young said hes worked with Democrats to clarify that Obamacares definition of a work week is 40 hours, instead of 30. To which Bayh said hes fully on board with that proposed change to the health law.
On climate change, Young said its not a Hoosier problem we dont want to wreck our economy trying to deal with it.
Bayh endorsed an all-of-the-above energy strategy, including clean coal and ethanol, to preserve low-cost electricity for Indiana manufacturers.
Debate moderator Ken Owen, a former television newsman and current DePauw University executive director of media relations, did not ask about the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy.
But Young seemed to suggest that his preferred presidential candidate, Republican Donald Trump, will not win on Nov. 8 as Young warned that Bayh only would be a rubber stamp for Democrat Hillary Clintons policies and appointees, while he would stand up to the next president.
The Libertarian candidate, Lucy Brenton, condemned both Young and Bayh as hopelessly beholden to special interests and suggested the election outcome could be rigged by voting machine companies.
She pledged, if elected, to legalize hemp farming, restore sound money, keep the government out of the economy, stop bombing everybody and eliminate the Social Security Ponzi scheme.
CROWN POINT Caseys General Store is looking to open shop in the city.
Patrick Moone, an engineer with the Farnsworth Group, of Champaign, Illinois, represented Caseys during a workshop with the citys Plan Commission on Monday.
Moone said Caseys plans to construct a 4,350-square-foot convenience store with fuel sales at the intersection of 101st Avenue and Broadway just east of the Gary Sportsmen Club. The store would not be Caseys standard building footprint, but more of a red brick Williamsburg style the city wants on Broadway. Moone said its more costly and usually done because of a community requirement.
Theyll try to adapt as much as possible and still maintain the traditional Caseys building front, he said.
Commission member Laura Sauerman requested windows that are more architecturally interesting, mixed masonry or a column-type aspect, limestone accents and rather than the stores outdoor modern LED lights, have fixtures of a more vintage period.
Small details would accomplish a lot that were missing here, she said.
The commission also said that any poles in the fueling station must be covered with a brick or stone wrap and the canopy covering the fuel stations cannot be flat, but instead a hip roof similar to what it requested of Speedway when that store opened on 109th Avenue and Broadway.
Speedway did it although reluctantly, Commission President John Marshall said.
Moone said a hip roof could be a structural problem, and an analysis of such a roof was done for a store in Illinois where it was determined to be a $150,000 to $200,000 add on.
They would like to try to avoid that if at all possible, he said. But because of the community requirement, all I can do is take it back to them and let them make the decision.
Sauerman said not having a hip roof could be a deal breaker.
Because weve required it of others, she said.
Marshall is also concerned about the ins and outs of traffic on Broadway. Moone said the Indiana Department of Transportation is only allowing them to build a right in/right out on Broadway. Marshall said that was supposed to be the plan for the Speedway but then that was gutted, making it more of a full access in/out, thus creating a traffic hazard.
Although Moone said they will have the more restrictive island at Caseys compared to Speedway, Marshall said the first hour its open someone will pull out of there and make a left turn.
Moone said it would it be extremely difficult, especially because there are four lanes so a vehicle would have an extra lane to try to get across.
There is no way to prevent that if they really want to do it, Moone said. You cant prevent stupid.
CROWN POINT Join the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra and Music Director/Conductor Kirk Muspratt for Mahlers transformative Symphony No. 5 at Mahler 5 at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28 at The Auditorium at Bethel Church.
Tickets for the concert range from $29 to $69 each, students are $10, concert season subscriptions are still available, and group sales are available at a discount beginning at 10 people. Call the symphony office at (219) 836-0525 or visit the website at www.NISOrchestra.org to order tickets for Mahler 5.
HAMMOND Those who were fortunate enough to secure seats for the annual Trolley Tour of Terror embarking Friday night from downtown Hammond will learn details about some of the infamous history of Northwest Indiana.
The tour, sponsored by the United Citizens Association, Inc., was created over a decade ago by Robertsdale resident David Dabertin, a local attorney and history buff.
My wife and I travel a lot, so I get to go on a lot of tours in a lot of places and what really always irks me is that well be in some small town in Europe and its a bunch of Americans and theyre all oohing and aahing over some fairly insignificant history, Dabertin said.
Dabertin believes people tend to ignore their own history.
We look at our communities and we kind of just dismiss them as not being important, he said. And yet, a lot of the history here is really significant.
The city of Hammond trolley that is used for the tour sits 28 people and fills up each year, this being no exception.
A nominal fee had been charged in the past, but there was none this year.
The goal of Dabertin, who narrates the tour, is simply to promote the community and its history.
The three-hour excursion is expected to cover eight to 10 local sites, including downtown Hammond.
You had the Pullman strike happen there, Dabertin said. You had all of the things that happened at State Line. You know, that whole Calumet City and West Hammond State Line district was filled with all kinds of outrageous tales.
He said the Pullman railroad strike that occurred in 1894 saw the U.S. military fire on its own people.
And I dont think anybody can imagine that, Dabertin said.
The tour also covers gangster lore.
I like to head out to North Hammond because there are some spots there that fit really well into Al Capones history, Dabertin said.
A trip to Wolf Lake would not be complete without a discussion of Leopold and Loeb and their so-called crime of the century that involved the dumping of their victims body in the area.
This years tour also likely will stop in Gary at the site of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train wreck of 1918
Thats the area that everyone always points to for hauntings, Dabertin said.
He said a stop there allows for reflection upon the tragedy.
You know, those people all burned alive in horrible circumstances, Dabertin said.
The Dual Language Immersion Program (DLI) is underway at Parkview Elementary School. One of eight elementary schools in the Valparaiso School Corporation, Parkview is in its second year of DLI. The program began last year with native Spanish speaking, Kristin Nguyen, teaching Math in Spanish to Kindergarten students. Those students, now first graders, are continuing their Math in Spanish skills with Amelia Mota, also a native Spanish speaker. This years Kindergarten students are experiencing 50% of their day in Spanish.
One goal of DLI is to give children the opportunity to become biliterate by the time they graduate from high school, which is very different that being bilingual. This program trains students to read, write, speak, and think in a different language. As young adults, they will have many more opportunities available to them because of these skills. We are preparing them for future possibilities we cant even image in this ever-changing world. Our little community in Valparaiso is thinking globally as we empower and equip these future members of society.
My own daughter, Marie, is one of those students. As a first grade teacher at Parkview Elementary, I decided to bring Marie to Parkview with me for kindergarten because I could not pass up this incredible opportunity to have my daughter learn a second language!
So far, I am amazed! At this very moment, as I write this article, my daughter is playing and singing in Spanish. She comes home from school with a few new Spanish words each day. She is constantly counting, reciting the days of the week, singing songs, and using Spanish vocabulary in her everyday language. I recently spoke with the parent of a first grader who is new to Parkview this year. After only one month of Spanish, his mom is very impressed that he is not only meeting the first grade state standard of counting to 100 (in Spanish), but he insists on her listening to him count to 200! This program is proving to be quite amazing as we not only watch the students who had Spanish last year build upon what they learned, but also watch the new students catch on so quickly.
It is my hope that our corporation will continue this program so that Marie and her classmates will someday become biliterate. The pride and excitement I see in my first grade students when they are answering questions is Spanish gives me great hope for their future. Even if these students never use Spanish again in their lives, the confidence they have already gained makes this program so valuable to their education and overall well-being.
WASHINGTON The Latest on the U.S. presidential campaign (all times EDT):
Donald Trump's campaign manager says she doesn't believe there's widespread voter fraud in the United States.
Kellyanne Conway said "it would not be for me to say" that there was widespread fraud absent overwhelming evidence. She says there's fraud "here and there" including past incidents of dead people on voter lists and people voting in multiple places.
Conway's comments Wednesday on MSNBC appear to undercut Trump's unsubstantiated claim that massive fraud is rigging the election against him.
Trump also says the media is rigging the election for Hillary Clinton. But Conway says that while some journalists are colluding with the Clinton campaign, it's "certainly not all, or even most."
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11:15 a.m.
Tim Kaine says he wants Hillary Clinton to "win big" so that no one will believe rival Donald Trump's claims of a rigged election.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate was urging supporters in Ohio to run up the score against Trump. The Republican presidential nominee who has made unsubstantiated claims that the election has been fixed in Clinton's favor.
Kaine said that the bigger Clinton's margin of victory is, "the harder it is for him to whine and have anybody believe him."
Kaine said Trump's claims of election rigging are an insult to American democracy. He said "it's shameful."
Kaine said he hoped the moderator of Wednesday's presidential debate, Fox News host Chris Wallace, would challenge Trump and not let him simply lob insults at Clinton.
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10:10 a.m.
No matter how persuasive Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are at Wednesday night's debate, it's already too late for either to win over millions of voters.
Advance voting by mail or in person is now underway in more than 30 states. At least 2.1 million voters have already cast ballots.
More than 45 million people are expected to vote before Election Day, Nov. 8.
In Nevada, site of the debate, absentee ballots were being mailed out Wednesday.
Early balloting so far has shown promise for Clinton in battlegrounds North Carolina and Florida while Trump has generally held ground in Iowa and Ohio.
Early voting is traditionally favored by Democrats and is a key part of the Clinton campaign's strategy. Trump is counting on a stronger performance on Election Day itself.
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9:40 a.m.
Donald Trump's campaign manager is acknowledging that the Republican presidential nominee needs a "comeback" in the final weeks of the campaign.
Kellyanne Conway said that Trump has pulled off comebacks several times before. It's a rare acknowledgement by the confident billionaire's campaign that he could ultimately fall short. She spoke to Fox News on Wednesday ahead of the third and final presidential debate.
Conway's comment comes amid a string of battleground state polls showing Clinton ahead.
Conway said she doesn't understand why Hillary Clinton hasn't been able to "put him away" given her experience and her campaign's "endless amounts of money." She said, "What is her problem, already?"
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7:20 a.m.
President Barack Obama's half-brother says he doesn't agree with the decision by another half-brother to attend the final presidential debate as a guest of the Donald Trump campaign.
Mark Obama Ndesandjo said, "I love my brothers, but no one member represents the Obamas."
The Trump campaign said Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother Malik would be in the audience for the showdown Wednesday between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The three men share the same father but have different mothers.
Ndesandjo is an American businessman who has lived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen for about 15 years.
In an email to The Associated Press, he said: "Others in my family and I do not support my brother Malik's position on Mr. Trump." Malik Obama supports Trump's candidacy.
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3:25 a.m.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's ugly and acrimonious battle for the White House is barreling toward the end, with the candidates taking the debate stage Wednesday night for one final primetime showdown.
For Trump, the debate is perhaps his last opportunity to turn around a race that appears to be slipping away from him. His predatory comments about women and a flood of sexual assault accusations have deepened his unpopularity with women and limited his pathways to victory.
Clinton takes the stage facing challenges of her own. While the electoral map currently leans in her favor, the Democrat is facing a new round of questions about her authenticity and trustworthiness, concerns that have trailed her throughout the campaign.
When it comes to exciting elections, Indiana has it all this year. The Hoosier state settled the GOP nomination for president in the primary season and offered a vice presidential candidate in July. The races at the top of the ticket are close enough to be toss-ups.
And to think just a year ago, we were worried about voter apathy. Indiana was dead last in the nation for voter turnout.
Weve got three live-wire races (presidential, Senate and gubernatorial) at this point, according to political analyst Brian Howey, publisher of Howey Politics Indiana.
Howey, along with Dan Carden, The Times Statehouse bureau chief, and Andrew Downs, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, were panelists last Friday at the Lake County Advancement Committees political outlook luncheon at the Radisson Hotel in Merrillville. I was the moderator.
The big question this year seems to be, how toxic is Donald Trump, the highly controversial Republican presidential candidate?
And if Democrat Hillary Clinton is elected president, as the polls suggest, what would that mean for Gov. Mike Pence?
It could mean the end of his political career.
Name me a losing vice presidential nominee who ever did anything politically. There are not many, Howey said.
The Trump ick might stick, Downs said. But at this point, hes in a better position than he was before he accepted the nomination, Downs said.
He has been the adult on that ticket. He has been the one that has been acting most presidential.
Our governor has essentially checked out, Howey said. You havent seen him in East Chicago, where we have a humanitarian crisis a line that drew loud applause. We have a heroin epidemic that is sweeping the state that the governors office is ignoring. He has gone national. Hes nationwide.
If Trump loses the election, the extent of that loss could be a big factor in Pences fate.
If this turns into a Reagan vs. Mondale, a 49 states to 1 debacle, then I think anybody and anything associated with the Trump ticket could be tainted, Howey said.
Dont forget the anti-Pence yard signs that popped up across the state. He was in a tight gubernatorial race long before he jumped ship from the gubernatorial race to seek the vice presidency.
And now this evangelical Christian is defending a running mate whom several women have accused of unwelcome sexual advances and who publicly disagreed with Pence on a critical foreign policy issue during the last presidential debate. Its an awkward spot to be in.
Carden said what I was thinking.
If I was Mike Pence, and I just saw Evan Bayhs financials of where he was making $450,000 a year doing 10 minutes a week on Fox News, I would move to New York just to be on Fox News and give up all my dreams of ever winning public office again, because theyre probably not going to come true, Carden said.
I was disappointed that District 19 Rep. Julie Olthoff, R-Crown Point, couldnt make time in her schedule to be part of the League of Women Voters program Wednesday night. Nor was she available for a debate proposed by the Crossroads Chamber.
But two candidates did show up: Libertarian Evan Demaree and Democrat Shelli VanDenburgh. Shelli was particularly well spoken and well informed as she outlined her priorities.
She will work with both parties to do what is best for Hoosier workers, students, seniors and veterans. Unlike so many representatives in Indy, she will not be locked into doing just what her party tells her to do. In addition, Shelli will be our full-time representative, responsive to her constituents, ready to answer questions.
Im voting for the candidate who showed up, looked the voters in the eye and explained what she stood for Shelli VanDenburgh for District 19 Representative.
Mary Certa, Crown Point
Thousands of construction and other workers say they have been wrongfully arrested and prosecuted for carrying utility knives. Their arrests have touched off a legal battle in Albany. NY1 Criminal Justice Reporter Dean Meminger speaks exclusively with an NYPD expert about the controversial blades.
The NYPD says state legislators are playing with danger trying to relax a decades-old law governing gravity knives.
Thats a knife where the blade is in the handle, but opens quickly by the force of gravity.
"Gravity knives or certain knives that can be deployed rapidly under certain circumstances can pose a risk to police and civilians," said NYPD Detective Patrick DeCanio with the Firearms and Tactics section.
Problem is many workers carry utility knives that can quickly open with a flick of the wrist.
The Legal Aid Society says those knives aren't the traditional gravity knives that are outlawed.
But over the last 15 years, the civil rights organization claims, the NYPD has been treating utility knives that way, wrongly arresting tens of thousands of people for carrying them.
Electrical worker Jason Ferguson says his utility knife was clipped on his pocket when he was arrested.
"I had my Dewalt power tools in my left hand and these cops approached me for no reason and it is very clear I am coming from work," Ferguson said.
He sued, and reached a settlement with the city.
"I was locked up for two days," Ferguson said. "I feel like a criminal and I am not. I am an electrician."
Joshua Fitch represents workers in a class action lawsuit who say the NYPD falsely arrested them for what they consider legal knives. Fitch says trained cops are snapping the knives open and then charging people with having gravity knives.
"And their interpretation is that any knife that anyone can open by flicking their wrist is a gravity knife which is simply not the law," Fitch said.
I practiced trying to open three different knives, one was pretty easy, the other two pretty hard to do, but after some practice and adjusting my technique, I was able to open it almost every time.
Governor Cuomo is reviewing a bill passed by the legislature to legalize folding utility knives that tend to stay closed unless forced open.
Gravity knives would remain illegal.
The NYPD opposes the bill, saying it could increase the amount of people carrying knives.
Police shot and killed an emotionally disturbed woman inside an apartment building in the Bronx Tuesday night.
It happened just after 6 p.m. on Pugsley Avenue near Randall Avenue in Castle Hill.
Police say officers responded to call of an emotionally disturbed woman acting erratically.
When they got there they found a 66-year-old woman with scissors.
They say a sergeant talked the woman into putting the scissors down, but then she grabbed a bat and tried to hit him with it.
That's when he shot her twice.
Neighbors say the woman appeared to be mentally ill and are questioning the cop's use of excessive force.
"When you shoot somebody man it should be life or death you know, that's what you have stun guns and stuff like that for," said one neighbor.
"From what I've seen of her, I'm not surprised, because she was mentally I'm sorry, mentally unbalanced," said another. "My neighbor told me 'cause she lives right next door to her, she said that lady be screaming and hollering, cursing and talking like she's battling, fighting somebody."
Police say the sergeant involved was armed with a stun gun, but it is not clear why he did not use it.
News of the shooting and the circumstances surrounding it caused some local officials to call for an investigation.
"Tonight's shooting of a mentally disturbed, 66-year-old woman in the 43rd Precinct is an outrage, especially given the New York Police Department's knowledge of this woman's history and the police officer's possession of a stun gun," Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said in a statement.
"While I certainly understand the hard work that our police officers undertake to keep the streets of our city safe every single day, I also know what excessive force looks like," the statement continues. "This elderly woman was known to the police department, yet the officer involved in this shooting failed to use discretion to either talk her down from her episode or, barring that, to use his stun gun.
"I call on Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and District Attorney Darcel Clark to begin an immediate investigation."
Likewise, Public Advocate Letitia James also issued a statement Tuesday night.
"I am deeply concerned about the police shooting that killed a Bronx woman in her sixties with apparent mental health issues," James said in the statement. "I am calling for a swift and thorough investigation into this tragic incident and for the findings to be released publicly. While we are still learning details about this evening's incident, I am renewing my call to expand the use of non-lethal use of force by the NYPD. I look forward to working with the NYPD toward common sense criminal justice measures that protect our police officers and the communities they serve."
LAS VEGAS - Presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are getting ready to square off in their third and final debate tonight.
The debate is being held on the campus of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace will serve as moderator.
This is the last time the two candidates will go face-to-face before the election on November 8.
Trump arrived in Las Vegas yesterday after attending a rally in Colorado.
During that event, he outlined a series of federal ethics reforms.
They include a term limit of six years for members of the House, and 12 years for Senators.
Trump also renewed his claim that the election is being rigged for Clinton, and played up his status as a Washington outsider.
"Decades of failure in Washington and decades of special interest dealing must and will come to an end and remember by the time this ends, I will have spent over a hundred million dollars on my campaign," Trump said.
President Barack Obama's Kenyan-born half-brother will be Trump's guest at the debate.
Malik Obama tells the New York Post he is excited to attend, and that "Trump can make America great again."
At the last debate, Trump invited three women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexually harassing or assaulting them.
Hillary Clinton also arrived in Las Vegas yesterday.
Clinton has spent the last few days away from the campaign trail in preparation for the debate.
Her former rival, Bernie Sanders, made his case for her yesterday in Arizona.
The state hasn't voted for a Democratic president since Bill Clinton's re-election in 1996.
Sanders told Clinton's supporters that they have the power to turn Arizona from red to blue.
"We can win here if voter turnout is high. If young people, if working people, if senior citizens come out to vote we can win here," Sanders said.
Clinton's campaign says billionaire Mark Cuban and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman will be her guests at tonight's debate.
Whitman is one of Clinton's biggest Republican supporters.
A reminder that NY1 will bring you tonight's debate live.
Our coverage begins at 7 p.m. with a special edition of Inside City Hall.
We'll have a pre-debate show at 8 p.m., followed by the main event at 9 p.m.
After that, we will have a special wrap-up show with highlights and analysis at 10:30 p.m.
You're also invited to take part on our Facebook page and on Twitter using the hashtag #NYDebate.
We'll also be blogging and fact-checking the debate here on our website.
While Donald Trump has been relentlessly attacking both Bill and Hillary Clinton as he campaigns for president including going after Bill Clintons alleged infidelity he was filled with praise for both of them in an exclusive interview that first aired on NY1 on November 12, 2008.
"I think Bill Clinton was a great president," Trump said in the interview that was conducted shortly after the 2008 presidential election on NY1's "Inside City Hall" program.
"You know, you look at the country then. The economy was doing great. Look at what happened during the Clinton years. I mean we had no war, the economy was doing great, everybody was happy. A lot of people hated him because they were jealous as hell," Trump said.
Asked about Hillary Clinton, Trump said: "I think she is going to go down at a minimum as a great senator. I think she is a great wife to a president."
NY1 looked deeper into its archives Wednesday morning after a CNN reporter begain inquiring about the interview.
You can watch an extended portion of the interview below.
Watch NY1 News for reports from Josh Robin this evening and then watch NY1's coverage of tonight's final presidential debate starting at 7 p.m. NY1 will be fact-checking the debate online at http://ny1.com/factcheck.
And I have a real plan to invest in creating jobs and building stronger economies in coal country. Americas coal communities have kept our lights on and our factories running for generations, and I wont let them be left in the dark.
Finally, I believe the United States needs to continue to lead the global effort to combat climate change. I will fulfill the pledge President Obama made in the Paris Climate Agreement and seek to go further by cutting emissions up to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. We need to implement the breakthrough we achieved just last week in the Montreal Protocol to phase down super-polluting HFCs and avoid as much as half a degree of warming.
Not only does America need to lead, we need to do more to work with our neighbors. We trade more energy with Canada and Mexico than with the rest of the world combined. Thats why I want to negotiate a North American Climate Compact to cut emissions and accelerate the clean energy transition across the continent.
I wont let the climate deniers stand in the way of progress, or let us give in to the climate defeatists who say this challenge is too big to solve. We can and will take on climate change, build a clean energy economy, and leave our kids and grandkids a safe and healthy worldbecause there is no Planet B.
Donald Trump: Unlike Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump does not believe global warming is the most serious threat we face as a nation. Hillary Clinton supports a climate plan that costs our economy $5 trillion, while Chinathe worlds largest polluteractually continues to increase its emissions for at least 14 more years. Because of policies like hers, our country has lost countless jobs to China, Mexico, and other nations. From an environmental standpoint, it is much better to manufacture products here in the U.S. where we care about the environment, as opposed to countries like China where environmental standards are very low.
2. What would you do to reduce the extreme income inequality in this country?
Hillary Clinton: Too many hardworking Americans have the deck stacked against them. No one who works hard should have to raise their kids in poverty, or worry they wont be able to retire with dignity.
The National Archives and Records Administration is the guardian of some of the nations most precious documents, like the parchment Declaration of Independence displayed under glass in its main building in Washington.
But in recent weeks, its real breakout star has been a patriotic squirrel from a 1953 newsreel, which has been viewed more than three million times since it was posted online as part of a collection of GIFs made from the archives holdings.
That cache, available at the website Giphy, includes some well-known curiosities, like an animated version of the 1970 Oval Office handshake between Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon. But we asked Darren Cole, the digital engagement specialist who created the GIFs, about the back stories to some of the quirkier items in the 164-item (and growing) collection.
Hugh Laurie returns as a doctor this one even darker than before in Chance. Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump take on the issues, and each other, in their final presidential debate. And catch a glimpse of People of Earth, about a support group for alien abductees, before it runs this month.
Whats Streaming
CHANCE on Hulu. Hugh Laurie is back as a doctor this time, the forensic neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance, who mines the psyches of those whose lives have been turned upside down by traumatic experiences, to the neglect of his own life. But all that changes when he tries rescue a beguiling patient (Gretchen Mol) from her abusive spouse and embarks on a thrill ride to self-actualization. With the help of a militaristic Yoda named D (Ethan Suplee), Chance taps into a vein of vigilantism and maybe his own mental illness in this adaptation of the Kem Nunn novel, with its San Francisco setting and undercurrent of Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo. The incongruous fellowship of Chance and D has the advantage of being ridiculous and therefore entertaining in a show whose pacing and mood keep it tied down, Mike Hale wrote in The New York Times. But, he added, if the show gets a little less noir-heavy and a little more wacky, the progress of their beautiful friendship could be worth tracking.
Whats on TV
THE THIRD PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 9 p.m. on ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNBC, CNN, C-Span, C-Span 2, Fox, Fox Business, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, NY1, PBS, Telemundo and Univision. Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump face off one last time at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with Chris Wallace of Fox News moderating. The topics include debt and entitlements, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hot spots and the candidates fitness to be president.
SAN FRANCISCO A little-known investment bank catering to some of Silicon Valleys top private companies has hired some big names as it seeks to challenge more established competitors.
The firm, Disruptive Technology Advisers, plans to announce on Wednesday that it has hired two veteran financial executives Greg Kennedy, most recently of UBS, and Robert J. Williams Jr., a onetime president of Washington Mutual as senior executives.
The hires are meant to help the five-year-old firm grow as it competes in the business of buying and selling stock in privately held companies. As a merchant bank, Disruptive Technology Advisers helps companies find buyers for their shares and often invests as well.
Among the companies it has worked for, according to news reports, are the data analysis provider Palantir Technologies, the file-sharing giant Dropbox and the genetic testing service 23andMe. The firm declined to comment on any of its clients, citing confidentiality.
Big Oil is clawing its way back.
After a heart-stopping plunge in the price of crude over the last two years, along with slashed dividends and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, the biggest oil companies are proving surprisingly adept at again pumping profits, as well as oil, out of the ground.
Indeed, with oil trading in a range of $40 to $50 barrel for most of the 2016, experts say the biggest energy producers are poised to rebound if prices remain stable.
Its a hunger games environment, but they are learning how to be more efficient, said Evan Calio, an equity analyst with Morgan Stanley. Two years ago, nobody thought costs could drop as quickly as they did. Its staggering, and theres no doubt this has surprised people.
Not that it has been easy.
Over the last 12 months, drillers have eliminated nearly 20,000 jobs in the United States, according to the Labor Department, and Morgan Stanley expects domestic oil production to finish 2016 half a million barrels below where it started. Deepwater drilling has been curtailed in places like the Gulf of Mexico, as have multibillion dollar projects around the world.
SAN DONATO MILANESE, Italy A drilling ship working about 120 miles off the Egyptian coast for Eni, the Italian oil company based here, bored into a giant trove of natural gas in July 2015 that turned out to be the largest discovery ever in the Mediterranean Sea and by far the largest by the global petroleum industry that year.
The find, called Zohr, meaning noon in Arabic, was the source of enormous relief and even elation at Eni, which had risked $70 million to drill a well in an area where Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch company, had previously drilled 10 without success.
Enis chief executive, Claudio Descalzi, let the drilling go ahead despite serious misgivings inside the company because some of his geologists were convinced that Shell and other rivals might have missed something big.
It was a very emotional moment, said Mr. Descalzi. We tried to look outside the box.
In a series of recent interviews, Mr. Descalzi and other Eni executives reflected on the ramifications of the discovery, which has reignited the industrys flagging interest in Egypt and the entire eastern Mediterranean region.
The Transocean Winner, a rig filled with more than 300 tons of diesel and weighing 18,740 tons, broke away in an August storm to drift onto the rocks on the Isle of Lewis, in far western Scotland.
The huge semisubmersible oil rig detached in rough seas from a tug trying to bring it to Malta, and amid worries about pollution, it looked massive and forlorn as salvage crews tried to free it, and refloat it.
But the Transocean Winner, both in its plight and in its journey away from the North Sea, is a symbol of Scotlands growing problem. At the same time as North Sea production slips and oil and gas become harder and more expensive to extract, the price of energy has fallen sharply.
Cheap oil prices are making it uneconomical to produce oil and gas from the North Sea, so investment is postponed or canceled and rigs are shutting down or being transported elsewhere. And the drop in production from the mature field has meant a steep drop in tax revenues for Scotland, which in turn has put a big question mark over the prospects of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom.
City officials and lawyers representing some of the subjects of the investigation, however, contend that it has focused on what they characterize as the traditional business of politics and government: donors supporting the mayor and later seeking what they said was his legitimate help on issues of interest to them.
A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio said in a statement that the administration was absolutely confident that its members had acted appropriately at all times. We dont do pay-to-play, the statement said. Out of an interest of protecting the integrity of an ongoing review, we cant comment further at this stage.
As for the issues still being scrutinized, several lawyers for subjects of, and witnesses in, the fund-raising inquiry and others with knowledge of it have said the Campaign for One New York has drawn increasing attention. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss what is being examined by the authorities.
The nonprofit, which could take unlimited contributions because of its legal status, formed shortly before Mr. de Blasio took office, and raised more than $4 million to push his political agenda; much of it came from developers, unions, lobbyists and people and firms with business before the city. Watchdog groups complained that it amounted to a shadow government, allowing lobbyists, consultants and others to funnel money to the mayor unfettered by the citys strict campaign finance laws.
The nonprofit shut down in March; Mr. de Blasio said it had served its purpose of pushing for passage of universal prekindergarten and an affordable housing plan. At the time, the group was the subject of an inquiry by the Joint Commission for Public Ethics, a state agency that enforces the lobbying law, and a formal complaint filed with the citys Campaign Finance Board.
Some of the earliest and most generous donors to the Campaign for One New York are among those whose contributions along with their actions and those of the mayor and members of his administration and campaign staff are under scrutiny, several people with knowledge of the inquiry said.
A former state senator, Mr. Baroni has portrayed himself as a dutiful public servant who trusted the wrong person: Mr. Wildstein, who pleaded guilty in a conspiracy to close the lanes and is now the prosecutions chief witness.
Mr. Baroni has insisted he believed Mr. Wildstein when he said that the lanes had to be closed because of a traffic study important to the governor, and that Mr. Baroni would ruin it if he responded to messages from the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., who repeatedly complained of the ensuing chaos.
Mr. Wildstein, Mr. Baroni testified, was the Port Authoritys chief connection to Mr. Christie, a Republican, and his aggressive political operation. Mr. Baroni said he was left on the sidelines. He believed he was considered a wimp, he said, and was completely unaware of what he only later discovered was the punitive purpose behind the closings.
But in the prosecutors telling, Mr. Baroni and Mr. Wildstein plotted together as closely as Randolph and Mortimer, gleefully using the public resources of the Port Authority for Mr. Christies political purposes.
They spoke by phone nearly 3,000 times in 2013 alone, not to mention hundreds of emails, text messages and conversations at the agency, where they sat in adjoining offices. Mr. Baroni, prosecutors argued, was just as much a part of the governors inner circle, and eager to please Trenton a code word for Mr. Christie.
John F. Good, who developed and directed the F.B.I.s Abscam investigation, resulting in grainy black-and-white videotapes on the evening news that showed elected officials accepting bags and envelopes of cash from what appeared to be an Arab sheikh, died on Sept. 28 at his home in Island Park, N.Y. He was 80.
The death was confirmed by his brother, Kevin.
Abscam was a two-year inquiry in the late 1970s and early 80s in which agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation posed as representatives of wealthy Arabs willing to pay bribes for influence.
The idea evolved after Mr. Good, who was running the bureaus first Long Island office, in Hauppauge, saw a routine F.B.I. memo about Mel Weinberg, a reputed small-time con man operating in the vicinity. Mr. Goods bosses had been encouraging him to develop bigger, more important cases, and he thought Mr. Weinberg might be able to help ferret out wrongdoers, essentially by fooling a lot of people, a lot of the time.
In the beginning, Mr. Weinberg pulled in people who were thought to be interested in selling high-priced stolen art. A bureau employee of Lebanese descent was recruited to pose as the potential buyer, a wealthy sheikh who was portrayed as owning a company called Abdul Enterprises (the source of the name Abscam).
Proposals to enlarge P.S. 191s zone and to move P.S. 452 have stirred protest from a vocal contingent of parents. The loudest outcry has come from residents of two Lincoln Towers buildings, which under previous proposals presented by the Education Department would be zoned to P.S. 191. Currently Lincoln Towers is zoned to P.S. 199, which is mostly white and affluent, and residents have argued that the complex should not be divided. The department has appeared to vacillate.
But in its letter, the parent group said that to ensure a sufficient zone size, not only those two buildings, but also a third, should be assigned to P.S. 191.
Joe Fiordaliso, the president of the parent group, known as a community education council, said it made a tactical decision to make its position public to lay down the marker, so to speak.
The council cannot present its own rezoning plan; the department must submit a plan for a council vote. Mr. Fiordaliso would not say whether the organization would reject any proposal that did not match its letter, but he said the group would stand firm in any negotiation.
Our position is that this is the plan, and they can either stand with us or not, Mr. Fiordaliso said.
Updated, 9:47 a.m.
Good morning on this toasty Wednesday.
In New York, preparing a home-cooked meal for one can often seem just as expensive as eating out.
If thats the case, youre not doing it correctly, says Mark Erickson, the provost of the Culinary Institute of America, who wrote the book Cooking for One with his wife, Lisa.
Cooking for just yourself can be healthful and cheap, he said: It all boils down to planning.
To begin, Mr. Erickson recommends putting together a menu for the week, then cooking and storing large batches of food (like braised meat, tomato sauce and chili).
But Monday nights roast chicken should never be served the same way twice, he said. Think of it as an ingredient for another dish, like chicken salad or a sandwich.
And what about the pianos legs: Are they Queen Anne? Chippendale?
You mean like Chippendales, the male strippers? said a man at the New York Lottery storefront near where the piano was wheeled in.
Putting a piano in the biggest and busiest bus station in the world was the idea of Adrian Untermyer, who helped pay his way through college and graduate school as the keyboard player in a band on the Long Island wedding circuit and is now the deputy director of the Historic Districts Council, a preservation group.
He said he hoped that live piano playing would serve as a rebuttal to the piped-in classical music that was introduced in the 1990s because, it was said at the time, homeless people would go somewhere else at the sound of Bach and Beethoven. (They havent.)
But the first piece played on the piano was not a toccata and fugue or a sonata. It was a gospel-style song written by Mr. Untermyer himself.
The piano seemed to want it it had this great gospely feel, Mr. Untermyer, 26, said. I love gospel because of its authenticity, and that piano felt so authentic and the space felt so authentic. He said the song was called Prospect Park and was the lament of the phone-obsessed millennials of our time.
Donald J. Trump had already roiled the religious right, casting the Republican Partys most reliable voting bloc into an abyss of despair, recriminations and uncertainty about the future. Then the 2005 video surfaced of him boasting about his sexual predations and women began coming forward to accuse him of sexual assault.
The world is getting a glimpse into the dark and rotting core of evangelicalism, an evangelical with deep roots in the movement told me recently.
The divide or, more aptly, the crater between pro-Trump and anti-Trump evangelicals is a window into the future of the Republican Party. White evangelical voters are the heart of the partys base, the loyal foot soldiers who turn out for the partys presidential nominee every time. A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute taken in part after the videos release shows 65 percent of white evangelicals intending to vote for Mr. Trump. That is high enough to be significant, but is relatively low for evangelical voters and the Republican nominee. (For comparison, Mitt Romney, who was viewed with suspicion by many evangelicals because he is Mormon, won the votes of 79 percent of white evangelicals.) Most telling, though, is the significant gender gap: while 72 percent of white evangelical men said they intend to vote for Mr. Trump, only 58 percent of white evangelical women did.
A defection by even 15 percent or 20 percent of Republican evangelicals from lock-step support for the party could be a major contributing factor to a collapse of its national electoral viability. But that is just one measure of the splintering of this devoted voting bloc. The movement is also being subjected to a very public display of division between the pro- and anti-Trump camps and open talk among evangelicals about pro-Trump leaders plummeting credibility.
Tonight, like millions of Americans, I will be glued to my television, watching the third and last presidential debate. But unlike them, and millions of others, whatever I hear tonight, I wont be taking it with me into the ballot booth. I am a major in the United States Army, and I believe it is my professional duty and that of my fellow officers, in all branches not to vote.
To be clear, I strongly believe that officers, like all citizens, should have the right to vote. But because military officers have a special responsibility to prevent politics from dividing our troops and separating us from society, it is all the more important for us to choose not to exercise that right (this is my belief, of course, and not necessarily that of the Department of Defense or the American government).
Especially when our elected officials routinely make fateful decisions about where and how we are deployed, it is vital that we maintain the constitutional division between the civilians in charge and the men and women who execute their orders. Anything that erodes that division is a threat, however small, to our democracy.
The militarys guidelines on voting are fuzzy. Officers, were instructed, are encouraged to carry out the obligations of citizenship, yet we are also strongly cautioned not to engage in partisan political activity.
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has lost some of his guest privileges at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. After shielding the Australian anti-secrecy activist for more than four years from potential prosecution in Sweden, where he faces sexual assault charges, Ecuador cut off Mr. Assanges access to the internet over the weekend, according to WikiLeaks.
In a tweet, WikiLeaks said Secretary of State John Kerry pressured Ecuadors foreign minister last month to prevent Mr. Assange from disclosing more emails involving Hillary Clinton. A State Department spokesman called the allegation simply untrue.
The Ecuadorean government confirmed it had restricted internet access at the embassy, saying it respects the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states. It also said Mr. Assanges asylum status was unchanged. When Quito offered him refuge in June 2012, the government of President Rafael Correa saw an opportunity to rankle Washington, which he and other leftist leaders accuse of undermining their socialist governments. But relations between the United States and Ecuador have warmed up somewhat in recent years.
A thorough moral and political indictment of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., would spill far beyond this page. It would catalog the years of racial profiling, the tormenting of immigrants and Latinos, the physical mistreatment and humiliation of inmates and defendants, the beatings and neglect and deaths behind bars, the abuses of office withholding records, harassing and persecuting elected officials and journalists, failing to investigate hundreds of unsolved sex crimes, squandering taxpayer funds on crime sweeps and posses and looney-tune vendettas, like the mission to expose President Obamas supposedly forged birth certificate.
The actual criminal indictment that he faces is a lot simpler. On Monday, federal officials charged him with contempt of court. If the sheriff is found guilty at a misdemeanor level, he could go to prison for six months.
The federal judge in a long-running racial-profiling lawsuit had told Sheriff Arpaio and his chief deputy in 2011 to stop abusing Latinos by pulling them over on suspicion of being in the country illegally, in the absence of any other charges. That is, for the sheriff to stop acting as a federal immigration agency unto himself.
This the sheriff did not do, according to the indictment.
Sheriff Arpaio, who is running for a seventh term, says he is innocent. He insists he wont give up, wont take a plea deal, wont resign. In an unsurprising play at victimhood, he accused the feds of a blatant abuse of power, of applying a different standard of justice to a lonely lawman who, in his words, dares enforce the rule of law.
Is it too late for Hillary Clinton to surrender to Donald Trumps demand that she take a drug test before this last presidential debate?
I think she should if he agrees to a few tests of his own. He can choose any three of the following:
CITIZENSHIP TEST This is what the immigrants he feels so warm and fuzzy about must master to become full-fledged Americans and, for example, vote in presidential elections against the likes of Trump.
But would he himself pass one?
Hed surely be able to say who the current speaker of the House of Representatives is, given that he spends much of his time sticking pins in his personal Paul Ryan voodoo doll.
But the exact count of voting representatives in the House? Thats also on the test.
We could give him hints: your number of wives plus 432. The amount of federal income taxes you paid in 1995 plus 435.
Thank God for WikiLeaks.
I confess, I was starting to wonder about what the real Hillary Clinton the one you never get to see behind closed doors really stood for. But now that, thanks to WikiLeaks, Ive had a chance to peruse her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks, I am more convinced than ever she can be the president America needs today.
Seriously, those speeches are great! They show someone with a vision, a pragmatic approach to getting things done and a healthy instinct for balancing the need to strengthen our social safety nets with unleashing Americas business class to create the growth required to sustain social programs.
So thank you, Vladimir Putin, for revealing how Hillary really hopes to govern. I just wish more of that Hillary were campaigning right now and building a mandate for what she really believes.
WikiHillary? Im with her.
Why? Lets start with what WikiLeaks says she said at Brazils Banco Itau event in May 2013: I think we have to have a concerted plan to increase trade ... and we have to resist protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade.
Pluto is hazy, with a chance of clouds.
Scientists working with data from NASAs New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto last year, are presenting some of their latest results this week in Pasadena, Calif., at a meeting of the American Astronomical Societys Division for Planetary Sciences.
The findings include images showing seven small, bright spots that might be clouds floating just above Plutos surface.
Image More possible clouds above Plutos surface. Credit... NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
New Horizons had already discovered haze in Plutos tenuous atmosphere, rising more than 120 miles into the sky and separated into at least 24 distinct layers.
The artist Emma Hart is not a fan of the glossy, filtered visions of life offered by Instagram, at least as most people use it. Though she has a background in photography, Hart has issues with the mediums tendency to make subjects look good and smooth, and favors instead a pursuit of the grubby and real. Her artworks draw on the vexations of modern life with mischievous humor, referencing ill-paid jobs in call centers, faceless bureaucracy, the travails of young motherhood and her own South London roots.
Four years ago, while working on her Ph.D. in fine art, Hart started experimenting with clay as a sculptural medium, deploying ceramics skills garnered largely from the school of YouTube. I realized that clay could be an exciting way for me to talk about mess or chaos: all the stuff photography protects us from, she explains. What was immediately important was how personal it was. Theres a very raw, direct relationship between the clay and my hands. A series of attention-grabbing installations followed, in which Hart combined ceramic objects with video and sound.
Earlier this year, Hart was awarded the biannual Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Over the last six months, a research residency in Italy has taken her from studying funerary monuments in Rome to observing family therapy sessions at a renowned psychotherapy school in Milan. Faenza a city that lent its name to richly decorated faience, or tin-glazed pottery is Harts final stop, and her months here have been spent alongside master ceramists, acquiring skills in shaping and decorating clay.
Thirty miles inland from Ravenna, Faenza is calmly distant from Italys major tourist routes. Ceramics workshops such as La Vecchia Faenza use patterns and techniques that have been part of the regional repertoire since the 15th century, but this is no stagnant souvenir industry. Hart received much of her tutelage at the Museo Carlo Zauli, a teaching museum established within the postwar workshop of the eponymous sculptor, celebrated for his avant-garde work with ceramics.
SAN FRANCISCO If Verizon Communications really wants to renegotiate its $4.8 billion deal to buy Yahoos internet operations, its probably going to have a fight on its hands.
Yahoo said on Tuesday that it had actually gained a slight amount of traffic since its Sept. 22 disclosure that about 500 million accounts had been hacked. That appears to contradict Verizons assertion last week that the damage to Yahoos business from the breach could have been severe enough to set off a provision in the sale agreement that would allow Verizon to reopen the deal.
We take deep responsibility in protecting our users and the security of their information, Yahoos chief executive, Marissa Mayer, said in a statement reporting the companys third-quarter financial results. Were working hard to retain their trust and are heartened by their continued loyalty as seen in our user engagement trends.
Yahoos overall business in the quarter exceeded Wall Streets expectations, and the stock rose more than 1 percent in after-hours trading. The companys third-quarter revenue fell 15 percent compared with the previous year, after adjusting for an accounting change. But its profits rose as management cut capital spending and eliminated 300 jobs over the last three months.
Given how the objectification and exploitation of women has become an ugly but central topic in the presidential campaign I trust I dont need to remind you of any details Sell/Buy/Date, the newest show from the gifted writer and performer Sarah Jones, seems eerily timely.
In this absorbing solo show, a Manhattan Theater Club production that opened on Tuesday at City Center, Ms. Jones peers into the future to explore how a sociology professor examines the lives of sex workers in the first decades of the 21st century. More broadly, the show also discusses how women of our era are conditioned to conceive of themselves or how others conceive of them as sexual beings.
As those who saw her Tony-winning show, Bridge & Tunnel, will recall, Ms. Jones seems to slip into the soul of another person with the casual ease that most of us use to slide into a pair of flip-flops. Although this remarkable actor uses minimal props and no costume changes in Sell/Buy/Date, she nevertheless brings to life more than a dozen characters with such distinctness that each seems to take over her voice, her mind, her very presence.
The show is conceived as a lecture about sex work sometime in the future. (Once upon a time, prostitution was the term.) Our professor, Dr. Serene Campbell, speaks in crisp British tones once associated with the official BBC voice. She is addressing her students, but they are also here it gets a little confusing employing something called bio-empathetic resonant technology. This invention, new, we learn, in 2017, allows the students, once theyve plugged themselves in (or done something), to directly experience the emotions of the people interviewed for this class.
Of course, not all of us have Mr. Andrewss reach on Twitter (182,000 followers at the moment). For us mere mortals, hashtags can again come to the rescue: Seek out users that specialize in the places you are researching, using search and hashtags.
Ill usually get a few great recommendations either from locals that are excited to highlight something they love about their city or a traveler that had a great experience and wants to share it, Ms. Lucas said.
And if you are willing to expand your Facebook circle, that can come in handy, too, especially if you ask friends who might have connections overseas.
There may not be anyone within our Facebook circles traveling to Madrid on our given dates, but one of our friends tags their friends, their friends share the post with theirs, and the world becomes a lot smaller quite quickly, Ms. Jerrard said.
3. Trust the locals
Need dinner plans? If youre willing to take some risks in the form of advice from strangers, you could end up with a memorable experience. Just make sure to be specific in your requests.
Ill often ask my followers What cant I miss in Reykjavik? or Where can I find the best tapas in Barcelona? It almost always unearths something interesting I wouldnt have otherwise found, said Stephanie Yoder, who blogs at twenty-somethingtravel.com.
4. Service with an emoji
Many airlines have been bolstering their customer service departments with social media specialists to respond to questions and complaints on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Posting about a travel problem may now be the fastest way to get it resolved.
Good morning.
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If you work for the University of California, dont count on having enough to eat.
Thats according to a study released this week that found that 45 percent of the university systems full-time administrative workers sometimes go hungry.
Its heartbreaking, said Peter Dreier, an author and politics professor at Occidental College.
The survey, which drew responses from nearly 2,900 workers across a system that includes 10 campuses, was done in coordination with the Teamsters union that represents the clerical workers.
These are not memories that you want to go over. Its been somewhat unnerving since Friday to be rehashing it so many times. You suppress it. Its not part of your active thinking every day. But you dont forget. Im Jessica Leeds. Im 74 years old. Ive had the privilege of living in New York City since 1981. It was over 35 years ago. I was hired by a newsprint company. I was a sales rep. I was traveling in the middle West. I was coming back into New York City. And it was on that flight that the stewardess asked me to would I like to move up to first class? I didnt need to be asked twice. And I sat down next to a young man blond, tall and he introduced himself as Donald Trump. I was not really aware of the real estate world of Trump. We just chatted back and forth. Nothing particular. It wasnt until they cleared the meal that somehow or another, the armrest in the seat disappeared. And it was a real shock when all of a sudden his hands were all over me. He started encroaching on my space. And I hesitate to use this expression, but Im going to. And that is, he was like an octopus. It was like he had six arms. He was all over the place. If he had stuck with the upper part of the body, I might not have gotten I might not have gotten that upset. But its when he started putting his hand up my skirt. And that was it. That was it. I I was out of there. And I dont think I said a word. During the late 60s, 70s and into the 80s The culture had instilled in us that somehow it was our fault, the attention that we received from men. That we were responsible for their behavior. You didnt complain to the authorities. You didnt complain to your boss. If something happened to you, you just bucked up and you went on. I thought to myself, Gee, I wish the stewardess would come and rescue me. And then I decided. I got up. I got my purse. And I said, Im going back to my seat in coach. I was so glad to get back to that seat. I started telling my story about a year and a half ago when it became apparent that Trump was actually running for president. And I started telling my friends: Let me tell you what this guys all about. I would like to think that sharing this story would make a difference, both in the election and in societys view of women. To change some of the behavior, the sexual behavior between men and women in both directions. And I I would like very much to feel like Ive been a part of that. I feel its a control issue. That if men could get past trying to control women Whatever we can do to get through to people that this is not the way it should be. It would be very important.
WASHINGTON Before leading chants of Lock her up! and endorsing the extreme vetting of Muslim immigrants, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a retired career intelligence officer and registered Democrat who is advising Donald J. Trump, was already denouncing what he saw as the Obama administrations failure to tackle Islamist militancy and the many faults of Hillary Clinton.
But if few people were listening before this years presidential campaign, many are now.
General Flynn, 57, took a star turn at the Republican convention in July, and no matter who wins in November, he appears likely to emerge from the campaign as the angry voice of what could best be described as the alternative right of the American national security establishment.
For now, though, his focus is on getting Mr. Trump elected. General Flynn talks to his candidate multiple times a week, has sat in on the two intelligence briefings that the Republican nominee has received, and is part of the team that is helping to prepare Mr. Trump, as much as it can, for the third and final presidential debate on Wednesday, when national security is supposed to be one of the nights six topics.
In an election year filled with strange and jarring turns, General Flynns entry into politics may be one of the most unusual. He has gone from being one of the most respected military officers of his generation to one of its most openly partisan, loudly inveighing against what he sees as a corrupt Washington elite that has left the United States weak and vulnerable.
People magazine published an article on Tuesday that quoted six people who claimed to corroborate the sexual assault allegation made against Donald J. Trump by the magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, which both Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, have angrily denied.
Ms. Stoynoff accused Mr. Trump of cornering her alone in 2005 and pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat while she was at his Florida residence to interview him and his wife for an article on their first wedding anniversary.
People published her claims on the same day that The New York Times published an article in which two women described what they said were their own encounters with a sexually aggressive Mr. Trump.
The six people quoted in the latest article include two editors from People, Mary Green and Liz McNeil; a professor of journalism, Paul McLaughlin; a co-worker; and two personal friends of Ms. Stoynoff. All of them said Ms. Stoynoff told them about the episode around the time it occurred.
The moderator cited estimates that both candidates plans would increase the national debt. Mr. Trump rejected that analysis, saying he could create tremendous jobs and construct an economic machine to power growth. Mrs. Clinton likewise said she would not add a penny to the national debt. Asked next about entitlement spending, Mr. Trump switched to a discussion of the Affordable Care Act, which he said he wanted to repeal. When Mrs. Clinton tweaked her opponent for evading taxes, Mr. Trump interjected: Such a nasty woman, he said.
Mrs. Clinton, speaking about her support for some gun control measures, said she saw no conflict between saving peoples lives and defending the Second Amendment. She added that the National Rifle Association was running millions of dollars of ads against me. Mr. Trump said he was unsure if Mrs. Clinton had referenced the groups support for him in a sarcastic manner, but that he was very proud of it.
Asked about the role of the Supreme Court, Mrs. Clinton said she expected the court to represent all of us, citing the importance of marriage equality and abortion rights. She added that she hoped that the Senate would do its job and confirm the nominee that President Obama has sent to them. Mr. Trump, answering the same question, said, The Supreme Court, thats what its all about, before suggesting Mrs. Clinton would hope to steer the court away from adherence to the Second Amendment.
Mrs. Clinton focused attention on Mr. Trumps past comments that, if abortion were outlawed, there should be some form of punishment for the women involved. After Mrs. Clinton was pressed on her support for late-term abortions under certain circumstances she cited the health of prospective mothers Mr. Trump said he thought it was terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother, he said.
COLORADO SPRINGS Donald J. Trump called for congressional term limits during a swing out West on Tuesday, part of an effort to push a raw outsider message in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign.
In a speech here that aides had hoped would focus his populist, anti-Washington appeal to drain the swamp of the nations capital, a phrase Mr. Trump repeated several times he turned only cursorily, near the middle of his remarks, to what was supposed to be the days new policy proposal.
The time for congressional term limits has finally arrived, Mr. Trump said, after promising to push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on congressional lawmakers. Not only will it end our government corruption, but we will end the economic stagnation that we are in right now.
At a second rally in Colorado, Mr. Trump added specificity, saying he would limit House lawmakers to three terms, or six years, and senators to two terms, or 12 years.
Today, 10 months after Iraqs Shiite-led government proclaimed Ramadi liberated, parts of the city remain unlivable because of bombs and other dangerous remnants of war ensconced in the rubble or deliberately placed in vacant schools, homes and hospitals. The Iraqi prime ministers office estimated that 90 percent of Ramadi was contaminated with explosives when the Islamic State was defeated. The United Nations has estimated the cost of decontamination to be as much as $200 million, but others call this estimate unrealistically low. Rebuilding costs are estimated in the billions.
Lise Grande, the top United Nations humanitarian aid coordinator in Iraq, said about 300,000 people had returned to Ramadi, but basic services had not been fully restored. Bickering between Sunni factions in the city and efforts to remove the provincial governor from his post have slowed rebuilding.
Officials at the State Departments Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, which has overseen American efforts to help decontaminate Iraq of explosives, said the priority in Ramadi has been to clear explosive remnants of war, known as ERW, from schools, hospitals and critical facilities like water treatment plants.
Despite some progress, State Department officials said it would be premature to describe Ramadi as returning to normal.
To clear Ramadi of every piece of ERW, youre talking about a yearslong effort, hundreds of millions of dollars, well beyond what we have, said Jerry Guilbert, the offices deputy director for programs.
The hard work of dancing is too often undernoticed and underpaid. Enter the New York Dance and Performance Awards, better known as the Bessies, which bestow some much needed recognition and a touch of glamour on the profession once a year, if not a whole lot of money though this years ceremony, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday, began with an announcement that all nominees would receive a $500 honorarium. (Its a start?)
Returning to its original home after five years at the Apollo Theater, the shebang felt more subdued than usual, perhaps because of its proximity to the election (or the absence of a bar in the theater, one of the Apollos assets). The night opened with some words (on video) from the great ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov: America welcomed me, an immigrant, and that welcome has made my life possible.
On that note, Lucy Sexton, the executive director of the Bessies, welcomed us to the academys Howard Gilman Opera House, before introducing our host, the choreographer, writer and comedian Adrienne Truscott, who talked politics mostly by way of her increasingly imaginative outfits. (Her cardboard-box skirt sporting the letters G.O.P., the O rendered as a hole over her crotch, was a work of art in itself.)
They are just a pair of shoes, but what a pair of shoes.
Possibly the most famous footwear in America, a pair of Dorothys ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz are showing their age.
So the Smithsonian Institution, home to the slippers for nearly 40 years, is raising money to save them at an eye-catching cost of $300,000.
The money is being raised through a Kickstarter campaign, the online technique the Smithsonian has begun to use to expand its private fund-raising for objects that capture the public interest.
Last year, in its first such online campaign, the institution attracted $719,779 from 9,477 individual donors to enable its National Air and Space Museum to conserve, digitize and display the spacesuit worn by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 and Alan Shepards spacesuit from the first American manned spaceflight in 1961.
But the writer and Palestinian diplomat Elias Sanbar gave a powerful rebuttal to Mr. Sattoufs critics in a New Yorker profile of the cartoonist last year. The problem isnt Sattouf, he said. Its the readers who think theyve understood a society as complex as Syria because theyve read a single comic book.
Image A sequence from The Arab of the Future 2, a graphic memoir by Riad Sattouf. Credit... Riad Sattouf/Metropolitan Books
By way of extension, I would add: People forget that The Arab of the Future is a story told from the point of the view of a very small child. Mr. Sattoufs cartoony style alone his characters have potatoes for noses and peas for eyes conveys a sense of both reality and unreality. Like the italicized commentary in Mary McCarthys Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, it says to the reader: What youre witnessing may be a caricature of memory.
Also? The series is very funny. Particularly this second installment, which takes place over the course of a single year, 1984-85.
So again, on the opening page of Volume 2, we meet the young author, ever adorable, just as we did on the opening page of Volume 1. His family still lives in the village of Ter Maaleh. Clementine, his mother, is still tolerating his fathers idealism.
But now young Riad must go to school, an eventuality he feared. He makes a few friends its very sweet and takes great pleasure in learning to read and write Arabic. But some of the children are vicious, and so is his teacher, a hillock of a woman who speaks softly and does, in fact, carry a big stick that she regularly wields. Shes as suspicious of Mr. Sattoufs origins as his bully cousins.
Are both your parents Syrian?
My father is. My mothers from France.
FRANCE! Who knows what is special about France?
A childs hand goes up. Theyre Jews?
Many of them are, yes. But not all.
More poignantly, though, Riad develops a much keener sense of his fathers feelings of impotence. The garish home of a cousin a general fills Abdel-Razak with bitter envy. When he tries to enlist the cousins help in getting a better position at the university, the general, his eyes concealed by mirrored sunglasses, barely listens. When he asks another general, a friend of this cousin, for the dispensation to have his own rifle he says hes been using his bare hands to hunt the man blithely denies his request: Haha! Nooo! With your bare hands is better! HA HA! HE HUNTS WITH HIS BARE HANDS HA HA!
Im cautiously optimistic that will happen, but its still a significant challenge to address public perception of G.M. food, said William S. Niebur, chief executive of Origin Agritech, a Chinese genetically modified seed developer and a partner with DuPont. He says that the public wants transparency, accessible information and choice, but where we are today, the emotions continue to be stronger than facts.
In a country where dissent is roundly discouraged, a number of activists have publicly criticized the pending Syngenta deal. Hundreds of citizens, including Qin Zhongda, a 93-year-old former minister for Chinas chemical industry, signed letters to top leaders and the China National Chemical Corporation, Syngentas would-be buyer, saying that the Syngenta deal would lead to uncontrollable pollution of Chinas food crops. They also predicted severe damage to the health of Chinese consumers, the safety of the countrys food supply and the livelihoods of Chinese farmers.
ChemChina must stop this suicidal acquisition that will destroy the country, one letter said.
G.M.O. food has come under further scrutiny in recent weeks after state media reported that a testing center for modified animals at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences had faked inspection records and let unqualified people perform tests. The Ministry of Agriculture conducted an investigation into the academy after a former Ph.D. student made claims online last month about problems there.
A spate of reports on illegally planted seeds prompted Lin Xiangmin, an official in charge of safety management and intellectual property rights of G.M.O.s at the Ministry of Agriculture, to tell The Beijing Times newspaper that the department was working to make illegal planting of G.M.O. seeds a criminal offense.
For many opponents, China simply is not ready. Safety can be achieved only with regulation, said Cui Yongyuan, an anti-G.M.O. campaigner at the Communications University of China. Many Chinese scientists dont seem to understand this. They feel that safety is created in a laboratory.
The roots of this skepticism run deep. Human tampering with food has been behind many of Chinas most shocking food scandals. The tainted milk that killed six babies and injured hundreds of thousands of others stemmed from milk producers adding a chemical to make the milk look protein-rich. Fruit has been spiked with chemicals to make it look fresh and to stimulate growth.
Steven A. Cohen, a billionaire investor barred from managing money for others, is one step closer to making his return to the hedge fund industry.
Mr. Cohen, whose former hedge fund pleaded guilty to insider trading charges, has confirmed that a new investment firm he opened this year will probably begin raising money from outside investors in early 2018.
I think were leaning that way, Mr. Cohen, 60, said in a recent interview at his office in Stamford, Conn. But we havent made a final decision.
Mr. Cohen, considered by many to be one of the most successful stock traders of his generation, said he expected to make that decision in the next three to four months.
LOS ANGELES The former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is coming back to television, but perhaps not in a way he will like.
The writer-director Tom McCarthy, whose journalism drama Spotlight won multiple Academy Awards in February, including the one for best picture, has agreed to be the executive producer for a mini-series about Mr. Ailes, who was ousted from Fox News in July after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment.
Producing the series will be Jason Blum, who is best known for horror movies like The Purge. Mr. Blum has also shepherded TV projects like HBOs Emmy Award-winning The Jinx, which chronicled the deaths or disappearance of three people close to the real estate scion Robert Durst. Mr. Durst was subsequently arrested, convicted and sentenced on gun charges and now faces a murder trial in California.
Joining them in creating the still-untitled series: Gabriel Sherman, the journalist who doggedly pursued Mr. Ailes and his allies starting in 2011, when Mr. Sherman was working on a biography about the cable TV titan. Mr. Ailes, as reported by CNN, was so eager to discredit Mr. Sherman and silence his sources that a 400-page dossier was compiled on him.
Obsessed fans of Star Wars have long enjoyed a tolerant relationship with owners of the pop culture empires copyrights and trademarks.
But several companies that offer lightsaber combat and Jedi training classes for adults and children apparently went too far for Lucasfilm and its new owner, the Walt Disney Company, which has a reputation for zealously guarding intellectual property.
Lucasfilm filed a lawsuit this month against New York Jedi and Lightsaber Academy, which teach classes on how to engage in Jedi battles, claiming that the businesses use of the words Jedi and lightsaber along with a logo of the Jedi Order are in violation of intellectual property laws.
The lawsuit identifies Michael Brown, also known as Flynn Michael, as the man behind the businesses. It says that he had sought licensing permission from Lucasfilm and, having been denied it, continued to operate despite receiving multiple cease-and-desist letters.
Among the luminaries assembled at Carnegie Hall on Monday to memorialize Bill Cunningham, who died on June 25 at age 87, was former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Stepping briskly to the stage, Mr. Bloomberg reminded the gathering of more than 1,000 that few people knew better than Mr. Cunningham himself that the best runways are the streets of New York.
That they are, an observation emphatically underscored by the scene outside the fabled concert hall. Thats where scores of friends, fans and New York City dignitaries had convened to unspool personal recollections and pay their respects to the ubiquitous blue-coated figure who had captured their best selves on film.
It was a conclave of the elect, anointed by Mr. Cunningham for their singular, eye-catching style. Social figures, fashion magnates, models and actors, and rafts of the largely unsung fanned out their finery as they filed into the vaulted auditorium, transforming what might have been a melancholy hour into a certified social event the kind of gala affair, in short, that Mr. Cunningham might have relished himself.
I almost expect him to come out now, just taking pictures of everybody, said Lauren Ezersky, a freelance journalist and former cable television host. Turned out for the occasion in a goth-tinctured Alexander McQueen ensemble, her white hair cascading over her black leather jacket, she surveyed the gathering expectantly. Even now, I feel like Bill could just jump out from somewhere, she said. I feel like he is here to capture us.
On Tuesday night, at her final state dinner as first lady, Michelle Obama solidified her legacy as perhaps the most adept and successful practitioner of the art of political dressing that any administration has seen.
Her choice of an Atelier Versace gown for the Italy state dinner was not only a nice bit of sartorial diplomacy Versace being an Italian success story, a company often touted as a candidate for a public offering but, coming less than a week after her magnetic speech in New Hampshire on women and respect, it went far beyond being simply an ambassadorial nod to a guest countrys talent and made a powerful subliminal statement.
The dress, after all, was made of rose gold chain mail. As much as it was gracefully cut and draped, it also spoke of armor and female strength, of the need to gird yourself to fight for what you believe in. And it was designed by Donatella Versace, a woman who was famously thrust into one of the most difficult situations of all: having to take over and preserve the company founded by her brother after his murder in Miami. And who, despite a fair number of doubts, has ultimately triumphed in part by transforming the aesthetic of her company from one built on the power of sex to one built on the power of self.
After all, Ms. Versace did describe her most recent womens wear collection, shown in Milan last month, as, all about a womans freedom: freedom of movement, freedom of activity, freedom to fight for their ideas, freedom to be whomever you want to be. And she set it to a soundtrack by the trance duo Violet + Photonz that featured the statement that it was time for women to take the leap.
Sure, maybe. Or maybe not. Mr. Moore has basically made an earnest but not very entertaining pro-Clinton campaign film, occasionally funny, momentarily heartfelt when he takes up the subject of universal health care and the lives lost for lack of it. Against the rest of his work (Bowling for Columbine, Roger & Me) its fairly tepid stuff. (As of Tuesday night, it was booked for a run at the IFC Center and a theater in Los Angeles.)
But if the film doesnt shock or enrage, it is accidentally revelatory. The performance in Wilmington was filmed just as the 2005 tape that captured Mr. Trump talking about groping women was hitting the news; Mr. Moores stage material contains no mention of that controversy, which has since consumed the presidential campaign. So at this juncture his film is, if nothing else, a stark contrast to all that has transpired in the last couple of weeks. Its surprising to hear someone extolling a candidates virtues rather than just harping on whats wrong with the opponent its surprising to hear, in other words, why we should elect someone rather than why we shouldnt.
Michael Moore in TrumpLand is not rated. Running time: 1 hour 13 minutes.
Mr. Pollard pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and weapons possession in connection with what the police said was his leading role in the GS9 gang, an offshoot of the Crips, in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Mr. Pollard was arrested in December 2014 outside Quad Recording Studios near Times Square. The police later arrested 14 other reputed members of the gang, which they said was responsible for one murder and multiple shootings. Unable to raise his $2 million bail, Mr. Pollard has remained incarcerated at Rikers Island for nearly two years.
Mr. Pollards lawyer, Alex Spiro, told Justice Clott that his client wanted an adjournment because he was unable to see a probation officer before his sentencing, which Mr. Spiro said was his legal right.
It does affect his liberty and I dont think its proper, Mr. Spiro said. My client was clearly frustrated.
He said Mr. Pollard complained that his case was moved from his native Brooklyn to Manhattan, and that he could not get his bail reduced.
A for-profit network of schools and the family behind it have agreed to pay New York State more than $4.3 million in a settlement after having spent state funds, intended to pay for special education preschool, on credit card bills, maintenance of a boat and a sons law school tuition, as well as claiming false tax deductions, the office of the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said on Wednesday.
The education company, K3 Learning Inc., is owned by Michael Koffler. His sons, Daniel and Brian Koffler, are its president and its chief technology officer.
Michael Koffler also owns Sunshine Developmental School, a special education preschool program based in Queens. Federal law mandates that states provide special education preschool, and New York is one of a few states that do so by funding private contractors, many of them for-profit companies. Contractors are expected to track their expenses and submit reports to the State Education Department annually, seeking reimbursement.
The cost of providing special education preschool has ballooned in recent years, particularly in New York City, where the city administers the reimbursements. Some companies have been found to have inflated expenses or diverted state money for their own private use.
To the Editor:
Re A Misguided Attack on Charter Schools (editorial, Oct. 13):
The N.A.A.C.P. should be applauded for ratifying a resolution calling for a halt to the expansion of charter schools.
You say charters give children in poor communities their only opportunity for a superior education. Actually, equity gives children an opportunity for excellent education. Here in Chicago, there are public schools that offer Mandarin, Arabic and Spanish and that support every teacher with a classroom aide.
In the same city, same district, there are schools with one teacher aide in the entire building, no world language classes and no librarian. These schools are not failing: They have been failed.
We are not anti-charter ideologues. We applaud the 20 percent of charters that outperform traditional public schools. We are not advocating the mass shutdown of charters, because closing schools harms children.
LONDON The word Wahhabism has become a boogeyman in the West, deemed responsible for the radicalization of Muslims around the world. And since Wahhabism is a strain of Islam that has its origins in the Arabian Peninsula and is the dominant religious doctrine of Saudi Arabia, that country is often viewed as the prime culprit in the propagation of violent extremism.
But blaming Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia for Islamist radicalism is a dangerous red herring. This single-cause explanation distracts from the complex political, economic and psychological reasons people join terrorist groups. In doing so, it impedes our ability to effectively fight terrorism.
Wahhabism is, in fact, a loaded, anti-Saudi synonym for Salafism, a puritanical strain of Islam that encourages emulating the salaf, or predecessors, the first followers of the Prophet Muhammad. Salafism has historically been apolitical and the overwhelming majority of Salafis are not violent.
Most Islamist militants have nothing to do with Saudi Wahhabism. The Taliban, for example, are Deobandis, a revivalist, anti-imperialist strain of Islam that emerged as a reaction to British colonialism in South Asia. Most members of Al Qaeda follow a radical current that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that defined itself largely in relation and opposition to the West and its values. While some terrorists do identify as Salafi, Islamic sects that are ideologically opposed to Salafism Naqshbandi Sufis and Shiites, among others have engaged in violent jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
On Election Day, voters in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada will consider proposals to allow recreational use. In California, which approved medical use in 1996, polls show that the measure is likely to win. In Massachusetts, a recent poll showed 55 percent of likely voters supporting legalization. In Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota, residents will vote on medical marijuana. If Florida voters say yes, other Southern states that have been resistant to liberalizing drug laws could reconsider their prohibitions, too.
Passage of these proposals should increase pressure on the federal government to change how it treats marijuana. The Obama administration has chosen not to enforce federal antimarijuana laws in states like Colorado and Washington. But this bizarre situation cant last even as more states legalize the drug, state-licensed marijuana businesses remain criminal operations under federal law. Even if they are not prosecuted by the federal government, this conflict in their legal status creates immense problems.
Hillary Clinton has promised to move marijuana from Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (for drugs like heroin and LSD that have no accepted medical use) to Schedule 2, which includes opioid drugs that are medically useful but have a high potential for abuse. While that change would be an improvement, that classification would not eliminate contradictions between federal and state laws when it comes to recreational use of marijuana. Donald Trump has said he supports the medical use of marijuana, but has opposed full legalization.
States are driving the change in marijuana policy because they see the damage created by draconian drug laws on communities, families and state budgets. Its time the federal government acknowledged these costs and got out of the way of states adopting more rational laws.
Canadas modern-day love affair with immigration began in 1971, when the country, under Justin Trudeaus father, Pierre, became the first in the world to adopt multiculturalism as official policy. But despite Canadas reputation as a welcoming harbor for immigrants and refugees, the issue has always divided Canadians themselves, mainly on economic grounds, according to polls.
In 1979, for example, the right wing think tank National Citizens Coalition reacted to Canadas acceptance of 50,000 Vietnamese refugees by predicting it would lead to at least 750,000 in the not too distant future.
Today, there are roughly 190,000 Vietnamese in Canada, according to the most recent census numbers. The integration of Vietnamese refugees into Canadian society has served as a blueprint for the countrys welcoming of 31,000 Syrian refugees. (The United States, which is nearly nine times the size of Canadas population, has pledged to take in only 10,000.)
The most recent obstacle has been terrorism on home soil. In 2014, in the space of two days, two members of the Canadian military were killed by Islamic terrorists in separate attacks in the military town of St.-Jean-Sur-Richelieu and on Ottawas Parliament Hill.
That the perpetrators were self-radicalized Canadian-born men was seemingly immaterial, as fear trumped common sense. The arrival of Syrian refugees has only increased that fear.
Stagnation and security fears have produced a closing of the Canadian mind when it comes to the three pillars of globalization: immigration, free trade and foreign direct investment, says Frank Graves, the president of the Ottawa-based EKOS Research Associates polling firm. We are not closed, but we are much less open than we were at the outset of the century.
In Quebec, immigration has always raised tensions, in large part because it is often seen as a threat to the culture of the French-speaking province. In 2013, the province of Quebecs governing Parti Quebecois introduced the Quebec values charter, which sought to prohibit the wearing of any conspicuous religious garb by the provinces public service, in the interests of state secularism.
Mars has a new visitor at least, in orbit.
ExoMars 2016, a joint mission of the European and Russian space agencies that launched in March on a Russian rocket from Kazakhstan, consists of an orbiter and a lander that arrived at the red planet on Wednesday.
The Trace Gas Orbiter pulled in around Mars as planned, to cheers and fist pumps at the missions center in Darmstadt, Germany.
We have a good capture, Michel Denis, the ExoMars flight director, said shortly after the signal arrived at 12:35 p.m. Eastern.
A couple of hours later, Mr. Denis confirmed that the orbiter was almost exactly in the targeted orbit and that everything appeared to be operating well. We have a mission around Mars, he said.
Airbnb said on Wednesday that it was willing to crack down on individuals in New York City who rent out multiple homes, bowing to pressure from politicians and tenants rights groups who say the company has worsened affordable housing issues in the city.
The company also said, in a proposal to city officials, that it was willing to create a registry of hosts to make it easier for the state to enforce housing rules and that it would create a hotline for neighbors complaints. It would bar hosts who violated local regulations three times, and it said it had already taken 3,000 commercial operators off its service.
Airbnb has had an unusually contentious relationship with New York. The companys attempts to court local support have alienated a broad array of powerful interest groups, including hotel unions, landlord and tenant groups, affordable housing advocates, Republicans and Democrats.
In June, state lawmakers voted to impose steep fines on anyone who rents out a whole apartment on Airbnb for fewer than 30 days. Such short-term rentals have been illegal since 2010. That bill was delivered to Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday. Mr. Cuomo now has 10 days to veto it or let it become law.
KKR-backed Cofco Meat seeks up to $333 million in HK offering Updated: 2016-10-19 09:36 (China Daily)
Cofco Meat Holdings Ltd, the Chinese mainland pork producer part-owned by KKR & Co, is seeking to raise as much as $333 million in a Hong Kong initial public offering.
The State-backed company is offering 975.6 million shares at HK$2 (25 US cents) to HK$2.65 apiece, according to terms for the deal that were obtained by Bloomberg on Monday. Haier Group Corp agreed to buy $57.4 million of stock as the biggest cornerstone investor in the offering, the terms show.
Investors are returning to the Chinese food industry after a series of safety scandals that shook consumer confidence. Shares of WH Group Ltd, the Chinese mainland owner of the Smithfield bacon brand, have risen 56 percent in Hong Kong trading this year, outpacing the 5.2 percent gain in the city's benchmark Hang Seng Index.
KKR, Baring Private Equity Asia, Hopu Investment Management Co and Boyu Capital bought stakes in Cofco Meat in 2014, according to a pre-listing filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Hopu sold its interest in the company last year to Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte, the filing shows.
Cofco Meat follows Dali Foods Group Co, the maker of "Copico" brand potato chips, and seasoning producer Yihai International Holding Ltd in pursuing a Hong Kong listing to fund expansion. First-time share sales in the city have raised $19.1 billion this year, down from $21.1 billion during the same period in 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Other cornerstone investors in the Cofco Meat offering include China Life Insurance Co, which agreed to purchase $20 million of shares, the terms show. China Life Franklin Asset Management Co will invest $10 million, according to the terms. Such stock buyers agree to keep their holdings for six months in return for early, guaranteed allocation.
The company plans to price the offering on Oct 24 and begin trading on Nov 1, the terms show.
BLOOMBERG
In its glory days, Yahoo had a garish mock hotel sign in San Francisco that billed the service as a nice place to stay on the internet. It may be again but only after a fashion.
As Vindu Goel reports, an increased number of people were drawn to Yahoo in September. The reason may have been Yahoos disclosure that month that hackers stole data on 500 million users in 2014.
Yahoos chief executive, Marissa Mayer, did not give a reason for Yahoos traffic bump, which she described during a discussion of the companys third-quarter earnings. It may have been a greater awareness, as customers remembered that they had accounts there, or it may have been people checking on their accounts and changing their passwords.
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Neither of those scenarios suggests long-term loyalty or the kind of delight that draws new advertisers.
The answer, of course, is that email is as tempting as it is inescapable, for Mrs. Clinton as well as for the rest of us. More than 50 years after its birth, email exerts an uncanny hold on all of our internal affairs.
But everything must meet its maker, and for email, that time is nigh.
The sudden exposure of the Clinton campaign email cache is perhaps the ultimate evidence that weve all overcommitted to email weve put too much in it, expected too much from it, and now, finally, were seeing the spectacular signs of its impending destruction.
Email is simply not up to the rigors of modern political and business life. It lulls us into a sense of unguarded security that it never delivers. It entices us to spill our darkest secrets, and then makes those secrets available to any halfway decent hacker. There are several alternatives that could take its place, without the same pitfalls, and the Clinton cache shows why we would be wise to adopt one of them.
Lets pour one out for email, which has had quite a run. Then lets move on to something else, and dance on emails grave.
The latest Clinton emails come from the hacked Gmail account of John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clintons campaign chairman. I emailed the campaign to ask about the breach and email security practices, but I got no response. (Maybe theyve shied away from email?) The campaign has refused to confirm the authenticity of the messages, which speaks to one of the shortcomings of email: It can easily be forged, so theres no good way for anyone reading those messages to confirm that they really are the Clinton campaigns.
I just took a shower right now, Mr. Mejia said, standing on his dusty street on the edge of a community where many homes, including his, have temporary water tanks perched on their lawns.
Bullet Train to Nowhere : Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare
A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California endured for decades. Lincoln Heights a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire
Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action
A few miles away at the Drought Resource Center, no one was in line on a recent afternoon to use the temporary showers that were set up last year.
But the drought shows no sign of ending. Meteorologists say it would take five years of normal to heavy rain to replenish depleted groundwater supplies and reservoirs. Last year, after forecasts of a heavy El Nino weather system that would soak the state, California ended up with average rainfall, concentrated in the north of the state.
And a number of environmentalists say this is not a typical cyclical drought that is part of life here, but rather the beginning of a more arid era created by global warming.
Weve had less than 39 inches of rain in five years in L.A. County, which is absolutely unprecedented in our history, said Mark Gold, an environmental professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The timing of the rollback and the mixed message could have severe consequences. The public did their part in responding to the emergency. We are still under emergency conditions.
Even in places like this community, improvement in the availability of water has been limited.
Elva Beltran, who runs the Porterville Area Coordinating Council, which provides emergency water to families who run out, said that while the pace had slowed, people were still coming in for help. I never know from one day to the next when a family is going to come by and say, Mrs. Beltran, we are out of water.
WASHINGTON The Obama administration said Wednesday that it expected monthly enrollment in the Affordable Care Act marketplace to average 11.4 million next year, up 9 percent from the monthly average this year, despite rising premiums and the departure of major insurers from the marketplace in many places.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of Health and Human Services, also predicted at a news conference that 13.8 million people would sign up for coverage in the fourth annual open enrollment period, which starts Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 31. That represents an increase of 1.1 million people, or 9 percent, over the number who signed up in the last open enrollment season.
If enrollment increases as the Obama administration predicts, it would suggest that the marketplace is steadier than its critics contend. Federal officials say that subsidies will insulate many consumers from rate increases, and that the prospect of stiffer penalties will induce more people to sign up. In addition, they say they have refined their marketing strategy to attract young, healthy people.
But some of the administrations previous forecasts have proved overly optimistic. Insurers say they have not seen a big influx of healthier consumers, as officials predicted last year.
WASHINGTON Until just a few months ago, Evan Bayh was working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Now the chamber is working as hard as it can against him.
In a campaign twist with significance in the battle for the Senate, the nations leading business lobby is going all out to defeat Mr. Bayh, the former Democratic senator from Indiana trying to reclaim his old seat. The chamber is doing so despite the fact that Mr. Bayh, considered a business-friendly centrist, was on the chamber payroll as recently as June and made appearances on the organizations behalf after leaving the Senate in 2011.
The chambers decision to attack its former ally has angered Senate Democrats to no end because capturing the Indiana seat is a crucial element of their plan to take back the Senate majority. Democrats efforts to persuade the chamber to stay out of the race as a demonstration of bipartisanship were rebuffed. The result has strained ties with Democrats, who might be chilly to future overtures from the chamber, particularly if they are running the Senate.
The fact that the U.S. Chamber has spent millions against Evan Bayh, a pro-business candidate who has even served on some of their advisory boards, rips away any pretense of bipartisanship, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, in line to be Democratic leader, said in a statement. The national headquarters is a totally partisan place and has dramatically hurt their ability to work with our caucus in 2017.
WASHINGTON There were more cases of sexually transmitted diseases reported in the United States last year than ever before, according to new federal data. Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis three of the most common S.T.D.s grew for the second consecutive year, with sharper increases in the West than other regions. And while all three diseases are treatable with antibiotics, most cases continue to go undiagnosed, potentially causing infertility and other problems.
The syphilis rate rose most sharply, by 19 percent. Public health officials are particularly worried about an increase in the number of babies whose mothers are passing it to them in utero, which can cause stillbirths and infant deaths. Progress in the fight against S.T.D.s has unraveled, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Who is most affected by the rise in S.T.D.s?
Young people, members of racial minorities and men who have sex with other men are at most risk of getting an S.T.D.
Chlamydia rates are highest among 15-to 24-year-olds, who accounted for nearly two-thirds of diagnoses last year, and among blacks. While chlamydia disproportionately affects women, the rate of reported cases among men grew more sharply last year. Over all, the rate of reported cases grew by 5.9 percent.
Gov. Peter Shumlin of Vermont on Wednesday announced proposed limits on the number of painkillers that could be prescribed, the latest measure his administration has taken to combat the opioid crisis that has ravaged the state in the last five years.
At a news conference outside the Vermont Department of Health in Burlington, Mr. Shumlin and Dr. Harry Chen, the states health commissioner, spoke for about half an hour about proposed regulations, which they said represented a cutting-edge approach to combating the crisis.
Under the proposal, the severity and duration of pain would be used to determine the specific limit for a prescription of opioids. For example, for a minor procedure producing moderate pain, a provider would be limited to prescribing nine to 12 opioid painkiller pills, depending on the medication. The limits would be higher for more complicated procedures, and there would be exceptions for the treatment of severe pain.
The limits are proposed amendments to an existing rule and would be official in December if approved after a period of public comment and review by a state legislative committee, said Scott Coriell, a spokesman for the governor. Mr. Shumlin proposed the rule in his State of the State address in January, and he set its passage as one of the chief priorities in his final year in office.
PESTEL, Haiti Guy Philippe is among the most feared men in Haiti, a nation with a rich history of men worthy of fear.
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration wants him for narcotics trafficking; the Haitian government for killing police officers. He led an armed rebellion that ousted a president and has survived, by his count, seven attempts on his life. From his redoubt on the rocky shoreline of southwest Haiti, he has evaded capture for nearly a decade.
Now, Hurricane Matthew has done what neither government nor armed forces have managed to accomplish: bring the outlaw commander to his knees.
I dont like to beg, but this time I have to, Mr. Philippe said, touring the devastation wrought on his hometown, Pestel, an area of some 80,000 people ensconced in a natural fortress of rugged mountains. Its the first time in my life I feel I can do nothing for my people. They are starving.
KABUL, Afghanistan An Afghan soldier opened fire on a group of Americans at a military depot near Kabul on Wednesday, killing two and wounding another three in the latest outbreak of green on blue insider violence, American and Afghan officials said.
A statement from the United States military in Afghanistan said one of the people killed had been a service member and the other a civilian. One U.S. service member and two U.S. civilians also sustained wounds and are currently stable, the statement said.
Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry, said the Afghan soldier opened fire on a team of coalition forces around 11 a.m. at one of the Afghan Armys largest ammunition and food depots, southwest of Kabul. American officials said the attacker was killed.
Green-on-blue attacks caused enormous strain between Americans and Afghans at its peak in 2012, when 44 such clashes caused about 15 percent of the total coalition deaths that year.
HONG KONG Dozens of Hong Kong politicians loyal to the Chinese government prevented three newly elected lawmakers who support greater autonomy from Beijing from being sworn in to the local legislature on Wednesday.
Hours earlier, the Hong Kong government, in a rare legal challenge, had tried to block two of the new representatives, who demand outright independence from the Chinese mainland, from taking their seats on the Legislative Council.
Those lawmakers, Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching, had been scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday morning after the oaths they took last week were declared invalid. Both had declared allegiance to a Hong Kong nation and then replaced the word China with Shina, considered derogatory by some.
The Fu Lei translation awards: Bridging French-Chinese literature Updated: 2016-10-19 13:40 By Li Ping(chinadaily.com.cn)
The jury of the 8th Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Awards announces 12 finalists at the French Culture Center in Beijing, Oct 18, 2016. [Photo by Li Ping/chinadaily.com.cn]
For eight years, the Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Awards, founded by the French Embassy in China in 2009, has been dedicated to honoring prominent Chinese translators who make efforts to introduce French literature to Chinese readers.
The 8th Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Awards unveiled 12 finalists - six under the category of "social science" and six under "fiction" - at the French Culture Center in Beijing on Tuesday, selected from over 50 candidates who submitted applications before April this year.
They will compete for three honors which will be announced at an awarding ceremony at the Temple Hotel in Beijing on Nov 26. Winners for fiction and social science will each get a bonus of 4,000 euros ($4,400) to share with their publishers, and a special prize of "best new translator" will come with 1,500 euros ($1,650).
In the shortlist, there are a variety of books under different subjects, including The Consolations of the Forest from famed French adventurer and writer Sylvain Tesson, Distinction from sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and Astragal - the 1965 semi-autobiographical novel by Albertine Sarrazin.
The finalists are chosen based on criteria of both the importance of the books in French literature and the translators' language level, Sylvie Gentil, a jury member, said at Tuesday's news conference.
HONG KONG More than a week after attacks on police officers began a wave of bloodshed in western Myanmar, a lockdown by security forces has prevented aid workers from operating in the area, and new videos of what appear to be local Muslims calling for resistance have raised fears of more violence.
Maj. Gen. Aung Soe, the deputy minister for home affairs, told reporters on Monday in Naypyidaw, the capital, that 30 attackers had been killed in Rakhine State since the Oct. 9 assaults on three border posts that left nine police officers dead. Activists from the Rohingya ethnic group, a persecuted Muslim minority who number more than a million in Rakhine, have accused the security forces of waging a counterinsurgency campaign against civilians, and they have circulated photos that they say show security forces burning Rohingya homes.
Neither the governments nor the activists version of events could be independently verified. But an advocacy group, Fortify Rights, recently said that it had interviewed witnesses who described what appeared to be extrajudicial killings by the military.
President Rodrigo Duterte, on a state visit to China, said in Beijing that Filipinos in the storms path should heed the warnings of disaster officials.
We only pray that we be spared destruction such as in the previous past which brought agony and suffering to our people, but we are ready, Mr. Duterte said Wednesday at a news conference, The Associated Press reported.
BERLIN A policeman has died of injuries suffered when a 49-year-old supporter of a fringe group that rejects modern Germany opened fire on officers sent to his home to confiscate his weapons, the authorities said on Thursday.
The gunman, who was not identified, was arrested and slightly wounded in the confrontation on Wednesday, said the police in the northern Bavarian region of Middle Franconia.
On Wednesday evening, the police said the badly wounded officer had died, but it retracted that statement a few minutes later.
Several hours later, they reversed themselves again, issuing a statement that the officer had died early Thursday of serious gunshot wounds. The officers identity was not released.
PRAGUE A man identified as a Russian hacker suspected of pursuing targets in the United States has been arrested in the Czech Republic, the police announced Tuesday evening.
The suspect was captured in a raid at a hotel in central Prague on Oct. 5, about 12 hours after the authorities heard that he was in the country, where he drove around in a luxury car with his girlfriend, according to the police. The man did not resist arrest, but he had medical problems and was briefly hospitalized, the police said in a statement.
David Schon, a police spokesman, said on Wednesday that the arrest of the man, whose name has not been released, was not announced immediately for tactical reasons.
The police statement said that the man was a Russian citizen suspected of hacking attacks on targets in the United States, and that the raid was conducted in collaboration with the F.B.I. after Interpol issued an arrest warrant for him.
To focus attention on the issue, the United States has called for a rare meeting of the Special Verification Commission, a body that was established by the I.N.F. treaty to deal with compliance.
What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.
Russia inherited the treaty obligations of the Soviet Union. Other former Soviet states that also are a party to the treaty Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan will also send representatives to the meeting of the commission, its first since 2003.
The arms control dispute comes against the background of steadily deteriorating relations, which are already strained over Russian airstrikes on Aleppo, Syria, as well as its seizure of portions of Ukraine. A range of American officials also have accused Russia of meddling in the presidential election by hacking into the email accounts of Democratic Party figures.
But the arms control issues are important in their own right. The I.N.F. treaty is regarded as one of the accords that brought an end to the Cold War. The question of Russian compliance threatens to tarnish the White Houses arms control legacy and President Obamas vision of a world in which there would be fewer nuclear weapons.
Since the I.N.F. treaty was signed, some Russian officials appear to have had buyers remorse, arguing that Moscow needs more ways to respond to the potential array of threats around its periphery. During the George W. Bush administration, Russias defense minister suggested that the two sides drop the treaty.
The Obama administration says that the treaty is in the overall interest of the United States even if some of its provisions are being violated. When the United States charged Russia with violating the accord two years ago, Mr. Obama sent a letter to President Vladimir V. Putin stressing his interest in a high-level dialogue to preserve the treaty and bring the Kremlin back into compliance.
SOLONESHNOYE, Russia Wood smoke hangs like a mist over this town, nestled in a valley deep in Siberia. The log houses lean at jaunty angles, dogs bark in the yards and cows, their neck bells clanging, walk the dusty streets.
At once picturesque and poor, Soloneshnoye, like so much of rural Russia, was passed over by the oil boom and bust of faraway Moscow.
But for all its woes, the town may have found its ticket in another form of fossil fuel: human prehistory, linked to discoveries of ancient bones in the area.
In an emerging model of evolution, widely supported by scientists, different types of early humans, including Neanderthals, interbred and left their genetic traces with many of us today. It is a theory known in the scientific literature as admixture between archaic and anatomically modern humans.
KIEV, Ukraine With soldiers dying daily in Ukraine, the site of the only active war in Europe, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany hosted a meeting on Wednesday to see whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was willing to cut a deal to end the conflict while he also faces pressure from the West over Moscows role in Syria.
Mr. Putin and Ms. Merkel met with President Francois Hollande of France and President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine to talk about the fighting as the Ukraine crisis returns to the diplomatic agenda and the leaders try to restart a cease-fire.
Separately, Mr. Putin, who is often in the eye of the storm on international crises, met with Ms. Merkel and Mr. Hollande to discuss the civil war in Syria, where the Russian Air Force is backing the government.
At a news conference late Wednesday, Ms. Merkel said that, as predicted, no miracles were achieved. But, she added, the value of meeting face to face was clear and that it is urgently necessary that high-level meetings continue as the foreign ministers of all four countries work on a new road map to resolve the conflict.
Once college is over, however, we enter the realm of anecdotal evidence when it comes to first jobs. Parents worry that if their children take a gap year, they will appear wayward to employers, which may have more to do with the term than how that year was spent. It suggests a hole, said Abigail Falik, founder of Global Citizen Year, which has 115 people working in four countries. She prefers the term bridge year, with its implication of a deliberate connection between one stage of life and the next.
In fact, logic would suggest that many people who take a gap year get better jobs after college than people who dont. If you were hiring entry-level employees, wouldnt you rather employ the risk-taking 23-year-olds who found their way in the world for a while than the 22-year-olds who have not done much besides going to school?
There is no way to know for sure except by asking some of the people who have had the experience. Susie Steele took time off from the University of Vermont to teach disabled people to ski and eventually landed a plum full-time job at the Keystone Science School in Keystone, Colo. Now a middle-school biology teacher in Louisville, Colo., Ms. Steele, 44, figures her odds would have been quite long without the gap year.
Akiima Price took a break from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore to work with the Student Conservation Association in Nevada. The organization eventually hired her full time, and she has forged a career in and around environmental education and community work.
Now, looking back on my resume, all of the dots ended up connecting, said Ms. Price, 44, who lives in Washington. I would tell younger Akiima to trust the process.
New York City Ballets fall season just ended, but the corps de ballet dancer Troy Schumacher isnt taking any breaks. Mr. Schumacher has been directing his own, much smaller company, BalletCollective, since 2010, and this spirited troupe returns to New York Universitys Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, Oct. 27, and Friday with two new works.
Mr. Schumacher, always interested in cross-genre collaboration, is teaming with two architects, James Ramsey (the designer of the Lowline, an underground park set to open on the Lower East Side in 2020) and Carlos Arnaiz. One premiere takes inspiration from Mr. Ramseys sketches, while the other deconstructs, through Mr. Arnaizs architectural lens, a shot by the former N.B.A. star Allen Iverson. The program also features last years Invisible Divide, to music by Ellis Ludwig-Leone, and a cast of Mr. Schumachers City Ballet colleagues, including the principal dancers Lauren Lovette and Anthony Huxley. (nyuskirball.org)
Both men have noticed a change in tone in the conversation about immigrants during the last year.
My nephew came to me the other day and said: Uncle, its bad to be Mexican. At school theyre saying this or that, Mr. Rivera-Barraza said. That really hurt. That really scared me. I dont want my niece and nephew to be ashamed because someone is saying theyre less than.
For him, the need to provide role models in the creative industry for a younger generation of Latin American descent became a particularly important goal.
A lot of these kids dont know where to look, Mr. Rivera-Barraza said. Theyre the first generation who are going to get educated. We want to tell them, Dont give up.
Dr. Pomeroy of the Frost Museum noted that showing young people what they can aspire to is part of the work of an exhibition like the one about Mr. Rodriguez. It is imperative that children of Latin American descent living in the U.S. are exposed to a spectrum of futures through places like museums, she said.
And what of the books subjects? Ms. Cornejo, a fashion designer whose story of leaving Chile when she was 11 as a political refugee, then moving to London, then Paris and finally New York appears in Nuevo New York, said she loved the sense of community participating in the book gave her.
National library releases new WWII files Updated: 2016-10-19 15:31 By Wang Kaihao(chinadaily.com.cn)
The National Library of China released new collections of files related to World War II on Tuesday.
The collections are related to trials held in December 1949 in the Russian city of Khabarovsk bordering China of Japanese suspects of war crimes. The records of the court hearings for the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials are now available for public viewing at the Beijing library in Chinese, English, Russian, German and Japanese.
The trials exposed the atrocities of the Japanese troops that used biological weapons in WWII.
A separate 30-volume collection of files on Japanese armed forces' battle plans, which can function as crucial references in the study of the Chinese theater in that war, was also released.
Since 2011, the library has published 58 sets of historical recordings (3,066 volumes in total) on WWII as part of a massive project collecting 2 million pages from libraries not only nationwide but also from institutions in Japan, North America and Europe.
Related:
National Library of China launches digital database of ancient books
On a recent September evening in Washington, D.C., there wasnt a seat to be had at Fiola Mare (fiolamaredc.com), a seafood-centric Italian restaurant in Georgetown. Smartly dressed visitors in the spacious dining room and at the patio tables savored the piercing sunset while tucking into towers of cold seafood and sipping Champagne and white wine.
All the while, three security men trolled the area, keeping a watchful eye on the crowd. Who were they there to protect? Was it Yousef al-Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to Washington, seated at Table 65 along the back wall with three other men in suits, or the Portuguese ambassador, Domingos Fezas Vital, and his companion dining alfresco?
They were working for neither, specifically, yet all of them at once, said Maria Trabocchi, who co-owns the two-and-a-half-year-old restaurant with her husband, Fabio, the chef. High-profile political people eat here often so we have our own security to make sure that theyre not bothered, she said.
Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III is best known for his successful landing of a US Airways plane on the Hudson River in 2009, an event depicted in the Clint Eastwood-directed film Sully, now in theaters. Captain Sullenberger is currently the aviation and safety expert for CBS News, and he travels around the world speaking on topics related to airline safety and standards.
When flying for work, hes mostly in the passenger seat. I still fly myself privately on short-range business and family trips, but Im on the major airlines all the time, he said. Now retired from his job as a pilot with US Airways, when he flies commercial he has no particular favorite airline. I travel on whoever has a flight going where I want to go, when I want to go, nonstop, with the largest airplane I can get on. Thats my strategy. Bigger airplanes, with two aisles instead of one, provide a better experience overall, and I think its more comfortable.
Captain Sullenberger has a couple of tips for travelers. To start with, dont take more than you need. That makes it easier for everyone. As an airline family weve been through Europe with one roll-aboard apiece for a week. You just have to pack intelligently and mix and match. He also recommends flying early in the day. Especially in the summer time before the thunderstorms develop and the weather becomes more of a factor. If you take one of the first flights out in the morning, typically the airplane and the crew have arrived the night before. When youre not waiting on an inbound flight, there are fewer delays.
Food safety, salt price addressed Updated: 2016-10-19 07:15 By Wang Yiqing(China Daily)
Departments and ministries under the State Council have responded to a series of public concerns in the past week, including food safety, salt prices, real estate market management, senior high school rankings and the safety of X-ray security inspection devices for airplane and train passengers.
The China Food and Drug Administration has inspected 369 samples of fruit, meat products, liquor, pastries and biscuits and found seven substandard samples. Local food and drug administrations have urged food manufacturers responsible for the substandard samples to recall the products, analyze the problems and rectify them.
The administration also called for halting sales of these substandard items, reporting the result of their investigation to the China Food and Drug Administration and publicizing the findings.
Officials of the National Development and Reform Commission have recently responded to the liberalization of salt prices. The commission said that the government will take effective measures concerning salt distribution and delivery, stocking, market price supervision and market inspection to maintain the basic stabilization of salt prices. Meanwhile, relevant departments will provide subsidies to the salt industry and targeted low-income groups to ensure their consumption of salt will not be affected.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has recently reported cases of rumor spreading in the real estate market in Hangzhou and Shenzhen. The ministry called for local authorities to further strengthen management of the real estate market and strictly deal with "vicious rumors" that disturb the local market in order to protect potential and actual buyers' legal rights and interests, and promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market nationwide.
The Ministry of Education recently announced that the ministry has never carried out an evaluation of the so-called 100 best senior middle schools nationwide and has never published any national rankings of senior middle schools. The ministry said such evaluations go against the requirement of quality-based education and undermines the diversified development of senior middle schools.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs has recently released the third batch of "offshore non-governmental organizations" and "fake non-governmental organizations".
The batch includes 68 non-governmental organizations, such as international Chinese language teacher associations, among others. The ministry had previously released the names of 1,287 unqualified non-governmental organizations.
wangyiqing@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 10/19/2016 page7)
Call for departing minister to listen to educators - NZEI
18 October 2016
NZEI Te Riu Roa wishes Education Minister Hekia Parata well, following her announcement that she is leaving politics, and hopes her parting move will be to listen to the education sector and ditch her radical bulk funding proposal in favour of better funding for education.
"Though we often disagree on the ways we want to achieve our goals - the best education for every child - it is clear that Hekia Parata has been passionate about her work in education," NZEI president Louise Green said.
"Recently the combined membership of the NZEI and the PPTA voted almost unanimously to reject the Government's radical funding proposals, which would result in bulk funding of schools and risk driving down the quality of public education.
"As a sign of genuine goodwill for the young people, parents, and educators who value public education, we'd ask the Minister to restore funding to early childhood education, and clearly rule out bulk funding before she leaves her role.
"We believe New Zealand children deserve the best education in the world and that our country can afford to provide it.
"Any replacement for Ms Parata must have the ability to convince Cabinet to significantly increase the funding of education, if they are serious about ensuring every child in New Zealand can access the best education possible," Ms Green said.
For more information:
A judge has denied former Alabama Speaker Mike Hubbards request for a new trial on the grounds of jury misconduct.
Although Hubbards motion for a new trial technically was denied on Sept. 6 after the time limit for the court to respond to his motion elapsed, Judge Jacob Walker said in an order filed Tuesday the allegations of jury misconduct warranted a written response.
Hubbard was convicted of 12 counts of felony ethics violations for using his office of Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives for personal gain.
Hubbard was sentenced to four years in prison and eight years of probation. He also was ordered to pay $210,000 in fines.
Hubbards lawyers filed an appeal with the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals on Oct. 5, and he remains out of jail pending the appeal.
A juror came to Hubbards defense attorneys after the trial and said other jurors had made comments during the trial.
During a post-trial hearing on Sept. 15, Walker asked attorneys if they wanted to hold a hearing on the juror misconduct allegations.
Bill Baxley, Hubbards attorney, filed a motion for the Lee County sheriff to investigate the allegations.
Walker denied the motion, but did call witnesses to testify about the juror misconduct.
A juror had notified the court administrator, Patricia Campbell, about other jurors making comments.
"I asked (the juror who complained) what the comments were, Campbell said at the Sept. 15 hearing. She said things like, Uh-huh, yes, now the truth is coming out.
Campbell testified she told Walker about the complaint, and Walker had one of the bailiffs tell the juror not to make any more comments.
The order filed Tuesday also included an affidavit from the unnamed juror who made the complaint.
Based on what I was hearing from the beginning of trial until the end, several jurors had their mind made up to convict Mr. Hubbard before the trial even started, the juror said.
The juror said the comments from other members of the jury continued throughout the trial in the jury room.
I heard these jurors call Mr. Hubbard greedy and speculating as to why he needed all that money and he was just plain greedy,
The juror came forward because the juror felt Hubbard didnt receive a fair trial, according to the affidavit,
Walker in his order said the fact that Hubbard was found not guilty on the remaining 11 counts he was charged was evidence the jury considered each count based on the evidence.
Because the defendant failed to make a showing that he was actually prejudiced, this court would not disturb the verdict of the trial jury, Walker said.
Six weeks after many Alabama municipalities held elections, the town council of Loachapoka, population 186, reappointed itself to a new term without a citizen casting a ballot.
In a meeting held before the regularly scheduled Oct. 4 council meeting, the council reappointed itself to four-year terms.
Ed Packard, director of elections for the Alabama Secretary of States office, confirmed the office is investigating a complaint about the councils actions but couldnt comment on specifics of the investigation.
No candidate qualified for the town council after failing to file statements of candidacy with the town clerk by the July 19 deadline.
Ben McDaniel filed a statement of candidacy for mayor, but Mayor Jim Grout said McDaniel was disqualified because McDaniel didnt live in the town limits.
McDaniel said he does live in the town and should be the new mayor.
No election was held, and at the next town council meeting on Oct. 4 Grout announced the council had been reappointed to new terms.
Id like to report that the town council has been self-reappointed, Grout said at the meeting.
Loise Weathers, Jeannie ODonnell, Rex Dunham and Kenny Brown were reappointed to their positions on the council. Grout was appointed as a council member and Zach Holmes was appointed as the new mayor.
The new term for the town council will start on Nov. 1.
(The reappointment) doesnt seem to be consistent with state law the way we understand it, Packard said.
The normal process for filling a vacancy after no candidate qualified for election would be for the newly elected members to fill the vacancy, Packard said.
Of course, thats kind of a wrinkle in this case, Packard said. Whats been alleged is that no council members qualified and therefore when its time for the new council to be seated there would have been a vacancy in all the seats.
Grout said at the Oct. 4 meeting the vote had been taken in an earlier meeting.
I will refer all questions to our attorney, Grout said.
Travis Wisdom, attorney for Loachapoka, said the council followed Alabama law in reappointing itself and no council member nominated themselves, and council members abstained from voting on someone within their own district.
The town did not have anyone qualify to run for city council for the upcoming term, Wisdom said in an email to the Opelika-Auburn News. Pursuant to Alabama law, the council has both recognized and filled the vacancies under the authority granted to it by the Alabama Legislature under 11-44G-2 Ala. Code (1975) which gives the council the authority to fill vacancies for both Mayor and Council Districts In the event of a vacancy from any cause as long as that is done within 60 days.
EU talking tough on trade ahead of talks with China Updated: 2016-10-18 17:06 By Fu Jing(China Daily)
A worker checks steel product files at a cold rolling mill of Tangsteel Group Ltd in Tangshan, Hebei province. [Photo/China Daily]
Soon after Chinese Vice-Premier Ma Kai took part in a high-level economic dialogue with European Union officials three years ago, Beijing and Brussels reached an amicable solution to end their dispute over China's solar panel exports to Europe that had almost frozen bilateral relations for a year.
With that obstacle removed, they entered into talks on opening their markets to investments by the other. Soon after the dispute was settled, Xi Jinping made the first visit ever by a Chinese president to the European Union's Brussels headquarters.
These developments established a solid foundation for Beijing and the EU to forge closer ties.
But when Ma returned to Brussels to attend a new round of the high-level economic dialogue between the EU and China in Brussels on Tuesday, he faced the challenge that the problem-plagued EU is once again getting tough on access to its market. And this despite the fact that bilateral trade now stands at $1 billion dollars a day. As much trade is now done in seven hours with one EU country Belgium as it took a whole year to achieve 45 years ago.
A number of issues are expected to be discussed during this week's talks.
Both sides set an end of year deadline to come up with an agreed text after 12 rounds of negotiations. But, even with the best efforts of both sides, it will not be easy to find a compromise on the issue of market access within that timeframe.
There is also the issue of over-capacity in the global steel industry. The EU position, reinforced by lobbyists and industry groups, is as tough as it was in the dispute over solar panels. This year, steelworkers from around the EU took to the streets of Brussels to demand greater protection for their ailing industry. Their complaints against foreign imports have to be set against the fact that expensively run European plants also bear a share of the blame for what is a global problem.
Since China embarked on its economic miracle decades ago, much European capacity in steel-making has moved to China. Brussels should stop blaming Beijing for the problems, and work with it to find a solution. China has been making its contribution to solving the issue by reducing its steel capacity, which has led to a rising number of lay-offs in the domestic steel industry.
Also at the conference table, the two sides will not be able to avoid the topic of China's market economy status as Dec 11 is very close. After that day, in line with a World Trade Organization agreement, Brussels should no longer charge anti-dumping duties against Chinese exports to the EU on the basis of China's non-market status, since the transitional period of 15 years since China joined the WTO is over.
Beijing insists that the matter is non-negotiable, but so far Brussels has not offered a solution. Voices within the European institutions recently started commenting that the market economy issue is "not a technical but a political" one at a time when the EU is facing an existential crisis that challenges its political unity.
Within the context of the rule-based international community, it is maybe time for Brussels to show political wisdom and respect the WTO agreement.
Ideally, it would send such a message in the talks with Ma. And then, Brussels and Beijing could renew harmonious relations at a number of levels.
The author is deputy chief of China Daily European Bureau.
fujing@chinadaily.com.cn
Philippine president arrives in Beijing for 'historic' visit Updated: 2016-10-19 09:15 (Xinhua)
BEIJING -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrived in Beijing Tuesday evening, beginning his four-day visit to China.
Choosing China as the first country outside the ASEAN since taking office in June, Duterte makes the visit amid a backdrop of deteriorating China-Philippines ties, due to the unilateral filing of the South China Sea arbitration case initiated by his predecessor Benigno Aquino III against China.
Duterte will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, and top legislator Zhang Dejiang, according to China's Foreign Ministry.
"This is a historic visit, and presents an opportunity for relations between China and the Philippines to restart on a fresh, more positive footing," said Foreign Minister Wang Yi earlier on Tuesday.
Applauding Duterte's commitment to improving bilateral ties and voicing support for dialogue and cooperation between the two nations, Wang said the visit accords with the national interests of the Philippines and the wishes of its people.
No foreign force can stand in the way of improvements to China-Philippines relations, Wang said, adding that China's arms are open and ready for friendship and cooperation.
The upcoming meetings are expected to enhance cooperation in trade, infrastructure and drug control, said Ruan Zongze, executive deputy president of the China Institute of International Studies.
Though the anticipated visit will not be able to wipe the slate clean, it is a "window of opportunity" that may ameliorate the situation, as long as the two sides agree to shelve their differences and get back to consensus through dialogue, Ruan said.
SANTA ANA An Anaheim man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for trying to aid a foreign terrorist group, with a federal judge determining that he aimed to recruit others and radicalized a friend who tried to travel overseas to join the Islamic State.
After spending days torn over the role Muhanad Badawi played in his friend Nader Salem Elhuzayels alleged plot to travel to Syria and become an Islamic State fighter, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter decided late Wednesday morning that prosecutors were correct in describing Badawi as directly responsible for Elhuzayels actions.
I believe you radicalized, Carter told Badawi. I believe you are a recruiter. and I believe you are extremely dangerous. You are just as dangerous, if not more so, than Elhuzayel.
Badawi stared forward, his face blank and eyes slightly downcast, as Carter announced the sentence. His family and friends wept and consoled one another in the courthouse hallway following the hearing but declined to comment.
The 30-year federal prison sentence, as well as a lifetime of supervision following release, is the same sentence Carter gave Elhuzayel, an Anaheim man the judge referred to in court as beyond redemption.
Federal prosecutors, during the trial of Badawi and Elhuzayel, both 25, described Badawi as being a facilitator for Elhuzayel. Using his student financial aid, Badawi paid for Elhuzayels plane ticket to the Middle East.
FBI agents had monitored the pair for at least a month. They arrested Elhuzayel as he attempted to board at Los Angeles International Airport discounting Elhuzayels claims that he was traveling to marry a woman he had met online. Badawi was arrested hours later.
Prosecutors presented jurors with social-media transcripts and recordings of Badawi and Elhuzayel discussing their support for the Islamic State. They also showed jurors often-graphic photos and videos the two men had shared, including clips of the Islamic State beheading civilians.
The pairs attorneys described their clients discussions as protected free speech and noted that the friends lacked the training and the connections to fight overseas.
During Wednesdays sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Heinz focused on what she alleged was Badawis role in radicalizing Elhuzayel, and his attempt, she said, to recruit at least seven others for the Islamic State.
If Elhuzayel is beyond redemption, it is Badawi who brought him there, Heinz told the judge. How many other Elhuzayels will we see because of Badawi?
The prosecutor described Badawi as a focused and forceful speaker who used his knowledge of the Koran and of Islamic State rhetoric to be the learned one who can inspire other soldiers.
Badawis attorney, Kate Corrigan, argued Wednesday that her client shouldnt spend more than 15 years in prison. She noted that he has no criminal record, is a member of a tight-knit family and that there was no indication that he kept in touch with his alleged recruits.
Corrigan questioned why, if Badawi was indeed recruiting others as alleged by the government, none of those individuals are facing criminal charges. I think if he was really the recruiter the government has described him as being, we would have seen indictments, Corrigan said.
Heinz said that there are several ongoing investigations related to the case.
We do have to be resolute in our fight against ISIS, Corrigan said. But we also have to be resolute that our rights and the rights of my client arent trampled in the name of fear.
Badawis sentencing was originally scheduled for Monday but was continued so that he could finish reading a probation report about his background. On Monday afternoon, Carter told Badawi that he was still unsure what to think about him. The judge said he wrestled with the case right up until Wednesdays hearing.
The judge asked prosecutors to replay for him several recorded conversations. Among those recordings was a conversation between Badawi and Elhuzayel in the days leading up to Elhuzayels aborted trip overseas, in which Badawi is heard saying We are five now, I am going to convert more.
The judge then said to Badawi: You continued right up to the day you were arrested to spread this evil gospel to the community.
Despite hours of hearings, testimony, courtroom argument and voluminous evidence presented to the jury, it remains unclear what exactly drew Badawi to the Islamic State.
As part of what both his attorney and the judge described as a loving, hard-working family, Badawi immigrated with his parents from the Sudan at the age of 16. He met Elhuzayel while the two attended Cypress College in 2012.
Leading up to the trial, Badawi underwent a hunger strike. By December, the 6-foot-4 Badawis weight had plummeted from 140 pounds at the time of his arrest to a shockingly gaunt 105. Judge Carter ordered that Badawi be force fed. Badawis family also helped coax him back to eating and communicating.
The sentencing of Badawi and Elhuzayel, as well as the recent sentencing of Orange resident Adam Dandach, ends a high-profile wave of cases involving local individuals attempting to join the Islamic State.
Contact the writer:
LONDON The strange tale of Julian Assange and Ecuador became a little odder Tuesday, as the Ecuadorean government restated its commitment to providing Assange political asylum at its embassy in London but refused to even acknowledge a charge by WikiLeaks that it had cut off his access to the internet.
WikiLeaks, founded by Assange and known for its frequent release of confidential information about governments as well as private organizations and individuals, said on Twitter Monday that Ecuador had severed Assanges internet access Saturday afternoon.
Assange, who sought refuge in the embassy four years ago and is wanted for questioning by Swedish authorities, lost internet access shortly after WikiLeaks published information about speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs, his organization said.
Assange and WikiLeaks have recently posted emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and from John D. Podesta, a senior official in Clintons presidential campaign, some of which have been highly embarrassing to the Democrats. WikiLeaks published more hacked emails from Podesta on Monday.
Although Assange has said that he did not know the source of the WikiLeaks material, the U.S. government has suggested that the hacking was the work of Russia and that it was intended to help Clintons opponent, Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, WikiLeaks accused Secretary of State John Kerry of pressuring Ecuador in September to cut off Assanges access to the internet to stop him from publishing further leaked documents from the Democrats. The group said that Kerry made the request on Sept. 26 during a private meeting on the sidelines of negotiations seeking peace in Colombia.
The State Department immediately denied the accusation. While our concerns about WikiLeaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down WikiLeaks is false, the departments chief spokesman, John Kirby, said in a statement. Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorean officials about this are simply untrue. Period.
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is a man of the left, and he recently told the Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT that he would support Clinton.
At the same time, he suggested in the RT interview that a victory by Trump, who has made no secret of his admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, would be good for Latin America because it would, paradoxically, bolster left-wing parties.
I sincerely believe that it would be better for Latin America if Trump won, Correa said. When did progressive governments come to power in Latin America? During the Bush administration. His primitive policies were rejected so much that it caused reaction in Latin America. Trump would do the same.
Questions to the Ecuadorean Embassy on Tuesday were met with a polite reference to the missions website and to a brief statement.
In view of recent speculations, the government of Ecuador reaffirms the validity of the asylum granted four years ago to Julian Assange, the statement said. We also ratify that the protection given by the Ecuadorean state will continue while the circumstances that led to the granting of asylum remain.
There was no mention of internet access.
Assange is the subject of an arrest warrant in Sweden, which wanted to question him about allegations of rape and sexual abuse dating to 2010, to decide whether or not to bring charges.
Assange, saying that he feared extradition to the United States on espionage charges stemming from the publication by WikiLeaks of secret documents given to the website by Chelsea Manning, broke bail and took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in June 2012. He has been in the tiny embassy since.
Given the statute of limitations, the one allegation Assange still faces in Sweden is one of rape. He is wanted for questioning but has not been charged.
After long negotiations, he was scheduled to be questioned on Monday by Swedish prosecutors in the presence of an Ecuadorean prosecutor. But Ecuador, at Assanges request, postponed that session until Nov. 14, after the U.S. presidential election.
There is no public indictment in the United States of Assange; if Sweden chooses not to press charges, he would presumably be free to leave the embassy.
Federal regulators are looking to set up new standards for big banks planning and testing for possible cyberattacks. The aim is to bolster the banking industrys defenses amid concern over periodic security breaches at U.S. banks.
The move announced Wednesday by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a Treasury Department banking agency is designed to get banks senior executives and directors to pay closer attention to cybersecurity, agency officials said.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said that cybercrime is a very significant threat.
The proposal, open to public comment for three months, would apply to banks with $50 billion or more in assets. That would affect several dozen major banks and a few big insurance companies, all deemed to be so interconnected with the financial system that a cyberattack against one of them could shake the systems stability.
In a stunning incident early this year, hackers diverted $101 million from the Bangladesh central banks account at the New York Federal Reserve.
The theft amplified worries about the security of the SWIFT global money-transfer system, which is overseen by the Fed and other central banks. Belgium-based SWIFT, formally the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative that manages the international transfer system among banks. The hackers in the Bangladesh bank case apparently got the money by stealing the central banks SWIFT access codes.
The rules proposed by the three agencies would pile on a second set of stricter standards for big banks computer systems that are considered critical to the functioning of the financial industry.
The banks should establish goals for how long it would take them to recover from a cyberattack, and should assess the potential for malware or corrupted data to spread through connected computer systems, the regulators said.
The proposal doesnt require the banks to submit their cybersecurity plans for approval or to notify the regulators if they suffer a data breach.
Beyond their oversight of banks efforts, the agencies themselves have suffered some serious security breaches. Computers at the Fed were penetrated dozens of times between 2011 and 2015, according to House lawmakers. The breaches raised concerns about the Feds ability to safeguard sensitive financial information in its computer systems, the lawmakers said.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, is believed to have hacked into computers at the FDIC in 2010, 2011 and 2013, including the workstation of then-FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, according to a congressional report. It cites a May 2013 memo from the FDIC inspector general to agency Chairman Martin Gruenberg, describing an advanced persistent threat said to have come from the Chinese government which compromised 12 computer workstations and 10 servers at the FDIC.
The issue of suspected Chinese government hacking has been sensitive since the disclosure last year of a massive breach of the U.S. Office of Personnel Managements databases, which the U.S. believed was carried out by Chinese cyber spies. In one of the worst data breaches in U.S. history, the personal files of 21 million Americans were stolen.
SACRAMENTO California regulators asked members of the public Wednesday what they think about proposed regulations that would eventually permit self-driving cars that lack a steering wheel or pedals on public roads.
The states Department of Motor Vehicles hosted the workshop in the state Capitol. Among those planning to comment were representatives of companies developing these cars of the future and skeptics who worry regulators are being pushed to embrace the technology before it is ready for the masses.
For now, self-driving cars are still in the prototype phase, and Californias roads and highways are their real-world testing grounds. The technologys most bullish supporters suggest the cars could be ready for market within a year or two.
The regulations that department officials drafted will govern how everyday people can get and use the cars once companies and federal regulators conclude they are safe. The proposed rules were supposed to be in place by Jan. 1, 2015. They have taken several years to write, partly because the technology is so new and complex that regulators have struggled with how to ensure the cars are safe enough for widespread use.
In permitting prototype testing, regulators required a trained driver behind the wheel, to take over just in case. Now the department is trying to balance safety with the interests of companies in a rapidly evolving industry which could transform how people get around.
In December, the department released an initial draft of regulations that required a licensed driver in self-driving vehicles. Companies including Alphabet, where the pioneering Google self-driving car project is housed, reacted with great disappointment, as the ultimate vision of many companies is a car that has no wheel or pedals.
In September, the department updated its proposal. The new language, the subject of Wednesdays hearing, pivoted regulators position from cautious to bullish. Gone was the requirement of a licensed driver; California was open to permitting cars which could drive around without a person inside at all, if the federal government gave its blessing that the make and model is safe.
In an interview, California Secretary of Transportation Brian Kelly explained the pivot by citing a close collaboration between the Department of Motor Vehicles and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in developing a model framework for state regulators. That federal policy was released in late September.
On Wednesday, in a show of unity the top federal authorities on self-driving cars were seated in the front row.
T-Mobile US Inc. is to pay at least $48 million in penalties because it didnt clearly tell customers of limits to wireless data plans sold as unlimited.
The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday announced the sanctions, including a $7.5 million fine and $35.5 million worth of discounted gear or data for customers of T-Mobile and its MetroPCS unit. Some $5 million will go toward expanding access to the internet for poorer children. The company will provide free internet service on devices for children in low-income school districts. The children can take the devices home to help them do their homework.
An investigation found that company policy allows T-Mobile to decrease data speeds when customers on plans sold as unlimited exceed a monthly data threshold, the FCC said in a news release.
Consumers should not have to guess whether so-called unlimited data plans contain key restrictions, like speed constraints, data caps and other material limitations, said Travis LeBlanc, the FCCs enforcement bureau chief. When broadband providers are accurate, honest and upfront in their ads and disclosures, consumers arent surprised and they get what theyve paid for.
T-Mobile failed to adequately inform its unlimited data plan customers that, under a top 3 percent policy, their data would be slowed at times if they used more than 17 gigabytes in a given month, the FCC said. It said the company had agreed to update its disclosures to better explain who may be affected.
T-Mobile also is to spend at least $5 million dollars to help low-income school districts provide broadband service and equipment to students, the FCC said.
The Associated Press
contributed to this report.
ABUJA, Nigeria Nigerias government is negotiating the release of another 83 of the Chibok schoolgirls taken in a mass abduction 21/2 years ago, but more than 100 others appear unwilling to leave their Boko Haram Islamic extremist captors, a community leader said Tuesday.
The unwilling girls may have been radicalized by Boko Haram or are ashamed to return home because they were forced to marry extremists and have babies, chairman Pogu Bitrus of the Chibok Development Association told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Bitrus said the 21 Chibok girls freed last week in the first negotiated release between Nigerias government and Boko Haram should be educated abroad, because they will probably face stigma in Nigeria.
The girls and their parents were reunited Sunday and were expected to meet with Nigerias President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday or today, Bitrus said.
Buhari said Monday that his government is prepared to talk with Boko Haram as long as the extremists agree to involve organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was an intermediary in last weeks release.
Some 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped from a school in northeastern Chibok in April 2014. Dozens escaped early on and at least half a dozen have died in captivity, according to the newly freed girls, Bitrus said.
All those who escaped on their own have left Chibok because, even though they were held only a few hours, they were labeled Boko Haram wives and taunted, he said. At least 20 of the girls are being educated in the United States.
The freed girls have told their parents they were separated into two groups early on in their captivity, when Boko Haram commanders gave them the choice of joining the extremists and embracing Islam or becoming their slaves, Bitrus said.
The girls freed and those whose release is being negotiated, numbering 104, are believed to be in the group that rejected Islam and Boko Haram, he explained. The freed girls said they never saw the other girls again.
Bitrus said the freed girls were used as domestic workers and porters but were not sexually abused. He said that was why only one girl in the freed group is carrying a baby, and her parents have confirmed that she was pregnant when she was kidnapped. An aid worker had told The Associated Press that he had seen the girls on their release and that all but three carried babies. Bitrus said that report was incorrect.
Description
LEGENDARY, AWARD-WINNINGSONGWRITER CAROLE BAYER SAGER
COMES TO LONG ISLAND OCTOBER 19th
Its a rare Long Island appearance! Legendary songwriter Carole Bayer Sager talks about her new revealing memoir Theyre Playing Our Song (Simon & Schuster) on Wednesday, October 19th at 6:30 pm at The Madison Theatre at Molloy College in Rockville Centre. This is a LONG ISLAND LITFEST PRESENTS special author event. Admission is $35 and includes a copy of the book, provided by sponsor Turn of the Corkscrew Books & Wine.
Audiences will have an opportunity to ask Carol Bayer Sager questions about her songs, her working and personal relationships with Marvin Hamlisch and Burt Bacharach, and her friendships with Peter Allen, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson. Book signings will follow the Q&A.
Nobody Does It Better, A Groovy Kind of Love, Dont Cry Out Loud, The Best That You Can Do (theme from the movie Arthur), On My Own, Thats What Friends Are For Carole Bayer Sager has written more than four hundred songs. Nominated for over fifteen awards, she has won an Oscar, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy for Song of the Year. She recorded three solo albums and with Marvin Hamlisch wrote the hit Broadway musical Theyre Playing Our Song. With Peter Allen she co-wrote half of the songs featured in in the Broadway musical The Boy From Oz, which starred Hugh Jackman and told the story of Peters life. She is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Other upcoming author events this winter include LONG ISLAND LITFEST PRESENTS WALLY LAMB (Ill Take You There, Harper), Wednesday November 30, 2016 at 7:30 pm and LONG ISLAND LITFEST PRESENTS ALICE HOFFMAN (Faithful, Simon & Schuster), Wednesday December 7, 2016 at 8 pm. All events are held at The Madison Theater at Molloy College in Rockville Centre.
Long Island LitFest is a day-long literary festival taking place each spring, with additional, special single-author events throughout the year. Tickets for Carole Bayer Sager are available here. For more information, visit www.LongIslandLitFest.com or cgc@ClaudiaCopquin.com, 516-810-7781.
SANTA ANA A 56-year-old man slashed his throat Wednesday with a razor blade moments after jurors found him guilty of sexually assaulting a teenager in Huntington Beach.
Jeffrey Scott Jones, who was out of custody on bail during the trial, cut his throat in C-28 on the courtrooms eighth floor just after the verdict had been read, authorities said.
UPDATE: How did man who slit his throat sneak razor blade into court? Sheriffs review video footage
Deputies rendered first aid and Jones, who was uncooperative, had to be handcuffed, sheriffs Lt. Mark Stichter said.
Jones was transported by paramedics to an area hospital with non-life threatening injuries, said Capt. Larry Kurtz of the Orange County Fire Authority. He remained under guard Wednesday afternoon by deputies.
The Sheriffs Department is investigating how Jones managed to bring a razor through a security checkpoint at the court building, Stichter said.
Ed Welbourn, who is Jones attorney, said he was stunned by the incident.
It was totally unexpected and very unfortunate, he said.
Welbourn said a courtroom clerk had just finished reading the jurys guilty verdict when Jones suddenly cut himself with a standard razor blade.
I didnt see it happen, my attention was on the jury, but from what people tell me he had a blade somewhere in his clothing and he pulled it out when the verdicts were read, he said.
Welbourn said Jones head hit the table and blood began pouring out of his neck. Courtroom bailiffs rushed to him and called for medical aid.
He said his client didnt show any previous signs of mental distress during the trial: He was confident in his innocence.
Jones, a Huntington Beach resident, previously taught Advanced Placement English at Libra Academy in Huntington Park.
He sexually assaulted a girl between Sept. 1, 2012 and April 30, 2013, prosecutors said. The Register is not specifying her relationship with Jones to avoid identifying a sexual assault victim.
Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown had told jurors that a sexual-assault test performed on the girl turned up Jones DNA.
Since the abuse was reported, the girl has been in youth homes, juvenile hall and has lived on the streets, and at one point was arrested for stealing a bike while attempting to run away, the prosecutor added.
The county is offering counseling services available to court employees and jurors who may have witnessed the incident, said Gwen Vieau, spokeswoman for Orange County Superior Court.
For his conviction, Jones faces a maximum sentence of 68 years to life when he is sentenced on Nov. 4.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7767 sschwebke@scng.com Twitter: @thechalkoutline
The Schiaparelli lander, a small, saucer-shaped spacecraft equipped with an array of weather sensors, has already traveled farther than any meteorologist has ever gone. Seven months ago, it launched from a desert in Kazakhstan, and it has traveled 500 million miles to reach its current spot in the skies above Mars. On Monday, it successfully separated from its parent spacecraft, the Trace Gas Orbiter, which will relay signals from the surface and scan the red planets atmosphere for an important signature of life.
And on Wednesday the intrepid spacecraft was set to attempt its most daring feat yet: Landing on a foreign planet, smack in the middle of a dust storm, to check out the weather up there.
The orbiter and lander are part of the ExoMars mission, a joint project of the European Space Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency aimed at assessing Marss habitability, investigating its geology and atmosphere, searching for biosignatures, and testing the technology that will get scientists closer to examining real samples from the surface. In 2020, using data from the Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli, the space agencies are scheduled to launch a rover capable of tracking down signs of past or present life on the planet if any life ever existed.
But first, the orbiter and lander need to get there.
Both spacecraft circled high above the planet, coasting toward the positions from which they were set to start their orbital insertions and landing. At 5:04 a.m., the TGO was set to begin a complex, two-hour series of engine burns to move it into orbit.
For parts of this process, scientists on the ground will be completely out of touch with the orbiter. There is also a nine-minute time lag for communications between Earth and Mars. This means that the ExoMars team must trust in the programs it wrote for this maneuver more than a year ago.
Once it has settled into orbit, the Trace Gas Orbiter will spend the next six years sniffing Marss atmosphere for gases that could tell us about conditions on the ground. Its main target is methane, a gas that has briefly, fleetingly been detected in the Martian air. This is important because there are only two known sources of methane gas: geothermal activity, like the kind that occurs at ocean vents on Earth, or life. Either source would be of great interest to planetary scientists, since we have no evidence of current volcanic or biologic activity on Mars.
Shortly after the Trace Gas Orbiter begins its orbital insertion, Schiaparelli will start its descent toward Mars. Over the course of the six-minute landing, it will rely on its heat shield, thrusters, a parachute and a crushable landing structure to keep it intact. It will also take a series of 15 black and white photos as it plummets toward the surface, allowing scientists to reconstruct the landing process.
The European Space Agency has produced a visualization of what Schiaparellis descent will look like. It was also set to broadcast a live stream of the orbital entry and landings starting at 5 a.m.
If everything goes according to plan, Schiaparelli will be the first successful Mars landing for the European and Russian space agencies (previous attempts have failed to make it to the Red Planet or were unable to communicate once they got there).
The lander lacks a rechargeable battery, so it has just a few days to collect all the data it needs. It will be touching down in the middle of the Martian dust-storm season, in a desolate plain marked by impact craters, volcanic rock and rare crystals of hematite that (on Earth, at least) usually form in the presence of liquid water.
Schiaparellis primary goal is to demonstrate the technologies needed for landing, but it carries a small suite of scientific instruments that will study things like wind speed, temperature, dust and other weather-related phenomena that will be needed to plan the second round of ExoMars missions.
The landing will be our own six minutes of terror, Francesca Ferri, a planetary scientist at the University of Padua in Italy, told Nature. She was referencing a phrase used to describe the landing of NASAs Curiosity rover in 2012.
Around 50 percent of the landings on Mars havent succeeded, so its not easy, said Ferri, the principal investigator for an experiment that will study atmospheric data gathered during Schiaparellis descent. But Im feeling pretty confident.
The Republican Party of Orange County has requested the resignation of Lake Forest City Councilman Adam Nick, saying he fraudulently called himself a certified public accountant on a SmartVoter website until August 2015.
Fred Whitaker, partys county chairman, sent a release dated Oct. 3 asking for Nick to resign, alleging Nick misled the public by saying he was a CPA despite not being issued a license.
The base of Whitakers claim is Nicks profile for his 2012 campaign for Lake Forest City Council on a candidate website called SmartVoter.org, where office-seekers supply information to be posted in a profile.
Nick said he never provided information for the website and the information placed on the website was an error in data entry. He said Whitakers call for his resignation is an attempt to exploit the matter to benefit himself.
That statement was manufactured, Nick said after the Oct. 4 City Council meeting. I stated, correctly, that I had aced the board exam.
An archived version of Nicks profile shows Accountant/CPA under the category Biographical Highlights. The current profile shows a remark on the bottom of the page that says it was modified at the request of the candidate, Aug. 28, 2015.
Ive used that for my own campaigns in the past, Whitaker said in an email. No one edits it but the candidate. He created it, he left it for everyone to be misled, he got caught, he took it down.
Nick contends hes never claimed to be a CPA, but has said that hes passed the board exams necessary to obtain the CPA license. The California Board of Accountancy sent Nick a letter, addressed to City Hall on July 14, 2015, informing him that it had no record of issuing a license.
The notice where Nick had asked for the modification on the SmartVoter profile page was dated more than a month later.
I did not provide them such information nor did I enter the info myself, Nick said Tuesday. I think they misinterpreted what I had on my website.
SUPERVISORS OFFICE BACKS ROBINSON
Dwight Robinson, the second incumbent hoping to retain his seat in the 2016 election, has seen his candidate statement challenged by residents and Nick in recent weeks because of two lines in which Robinson said hell partner with two Orange County supervisors to end a Mello-Roos district in Foothill Ranch just like weve done in Portola Hills.
In an Oct. 12 email, Supervisor Lisa Bartletts office said Robinsons statement is not misleading to voters. The email said Robinson, Mayor Andrew Hamilton and Mayor Pro Tem Scott Voigts had all been reaching out via phone or email to discuss Mello-Roos.
Their advocacy on behalf of (Portola Hills) residents dates back to February 2015, the email said. Similarly, residents from the (Portola Hills) community who have worked with Supervisor Bartlett could credibly assert they worked to eliminate Mello-Roos districts as well.
At the Oct. 4 City Council meeting, a proposal by Nick to discuss censuring Robinson at a future meeting died in a 3-2 vote, with Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton opposed.
Robinson said he didnt claim to have eliminated Mello-Roos singlehandedly and referenced the chain of communication with Bartlett. Ive chosen to foster a relationship with (the supervisors) because at time, the residents of this city needed us to talk to those above us, Robinson said Oct. 4. Did I have sole decision authority? Clearly not. That was a Board of Supervisors decision that was made.
The Board of Supervisors voted July 26 to dissolve the Mello Roos district in Portola Hills, county Auditor-Controller Eric Woolery said. The Mello Roos bonds for Portola Hills had been paid off entirely in August 2013, but the Community Facilities District had continued to collect taxes. Those residents will receive a tax refund.
Foothill Ranchs debt is projected to be paid in full in August 2019. Once the debt is redeemed, supervisors could dissolve the Community Facilities District or retask it to provide additional capital projects and services for the district, Woolery said.
But Bartletts office said factors could affect both the term and amount of the facilities district at any point, including projects being under budget, refinancing of bonds, private homeowners paying off obligations early, or developers footing the bill in order not to reduce the sales price of a new home.
In contrast, the other option for the public agency to consider is whether there is a need for additional infrastracture, the email said. In that case, it is possible to extend the life or increase debt of a Mello Roos district for the purpose of providing public infrastructure.
All of these actions require active management of public policymakers, the email from Bartletts office said. Local elected leaders and residents can influence the public policymaking process surrounding Mello Roos.
COSTA MESA A woman and her two young sons were found stabbed Tuesday night, authorities said.
UPDATE: The man suspected in the stabbing was found with several knives
All three victims were taken to trauma centers in critical condition, according to Costa Mesa Fire Department Capt. Chris Coates. A male suspect was detained, Costa Mesa police Lt. Greg Scott said.
Firefighters were called to an apartment complex in the 1900 block of Wallace Avenue around 7:30 p.m. At the scene, paramedics found the three with stab wounds and an injured police officer, Coates said.
The oldest boy, 11, was stabbed several times in the torso and was undergoing exploratory surgery to determine the extent of his injuries at 10:45 p.m., Scott said.
The suspects relationship to the mother and children was not immediately known, and the nature of the officers injury or injuries was not immediately released.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@scng.com
PALM SPRINGS All seems lost as thousands of hearts break and tears cascade Tuesday for two fallen police officers as the Tenors sing Hallelujah.
But then you look around the Convention Center and realize that the men and women in uniform gathered here to honor the lives of Officer Jose Gil Vega and Officer Lesley Zerebny arent cowed.
Instead, these cops are proud to simply be associated with people who are willing to give their all to keep the peace, to help those in need, to step forward when many of us step back.
These peace officers who have buried dozens of their brothers and sisters this year across our nation find strength in their solidarity, their acceptance of the dangers they face, their love for one another.
But far more significant on this day is that our men and women in blue are reminded at this double memorial service that it isnt just fellow officers who support the good fight. Hundreds of civilians are here to say thank you.
Still, nothing is simple in an era in which internet babble does its best to spread fear.
DIVERSITY IN UNIFORMITY
Just when you think you can tell most everything about someone by their uniform, people like Orange County sheriffs Deputies Michelle Rodriguez and Brandon Mundy and Andrew Vega, nephew of Officer Vega, blow up your perceptions.
Rodriguez is said to be a cops cop. Fourteen years on the force, shes worked patrol and now works the detail at John Wayne Airport. For a time as a single mother, she raised her first child, now a 19-year-old Fullerton College student. Today, she and her husband share raising their 5-year-old daughter.
She doesnt suffer fools gladly or otherwise, believes in consequences rather than being a helicopter parent, and is careful with her money. Yet like so many officers I know, she has a heart soft enough to pay for her dogs cancer treatment.
As the Tenors voices soar, Rodriguez sneaks a finger below her eye to wipe away a tear, then another.
Mundy, a rookie who works the Orange County Jail, stands ramrod straight as the honor guard lines the way at the Convention Center for Vegas and Zerebnys families.
As a cadre of bagpipers blow a soulful dirge, Mundy joins thousands of fellow officers who offer stiff salutes to the parents, nieces, nephews, spouses and children of those slain.
Not for a second would you guess how deeply Mundy understands the pain of violence. Six years ago, his 24-year-old sister was raped and strangled.
In a quiet side moment, Mundy shares that his sisters death is what brought him to police work. I dont want to let that happen to anybody else.
Andrew Vega steps in front of dozens of white carnations and faces the vast auditorium. He confesses hes been in a police car twice. Once was the day before when he was greeted by Palm Springs police at the local airport.
The other time was when he was sitting in the back of a police car getting chewed out by his uncle Gil Vega. Not even my parents know about that, he smiles, until today.
Back then, the officer told his nephew, People will make assumptions about you. Prove them wrong.
A grandson of farmworkers, Andrew Vega did just that. Today, he is a school principal in Boston.
My uncle created a counter-narrative, the principal says, for Latinos to look up to. He was proud to be a Mexican and he was equally proud to be a police officer.
Making a pointed reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, Andrew Vega concludes the life of his uncle mattered.
His point isnt that blue is more important than black. His point is the need for movements to be inclusive, for this nation to come together.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Palm Springs Police Chief Bryan Reyes takes the stage with purpose.
The threat to law enforcement in our country is very real, Reyes declares. He calls for friends and family of troubled individuals to step up and report problems. Enough is enough.
The suspect accused of gunning down Zerebny and Vega reportedly told others he was going to kill cops, that he was armed. Yet when police responded to a domestic call, no one offered that information.
People need to start taking responsibility of their own households, Reyes says. They need to pay attention to red flags.
The chief offers a litany of police who were killed by suspects who, essentially, waved rad flags. Dallas, Baton Rouge, the list goes on. These, Reyes says, were ticking time bombs.
Keeping our community safe is a shared responsibility.
Time and again, the chiefs speech is punctuated with waves of applause. Time and again, Reyes hammers home his theme that the country must unify in ending the killings.
May you be blessed, Reyes says to his troops, for you are trying to keep the peace in the most difficult time in the nations history.
A LEGACY OF SERVICE
Vega, 63, a 35-year police veteran, left behind a wife, eight children including an 8-year-old daughter, 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Zerebny was a 27-year-old mother to a 4-month-old daughter, Cora.
Toward the end of the memorial, the Tenors return to sing Angels Calling. Zerebny loved the group and they made a surprise visit to honor her.
It is just one of many moments during a ceremony that reminds us that heroes are just regular people who are willing to do dangerous, difficult jobs under extraordinary circumstances.
Still, some moments make you bite your quivering lip like when family members walk up the aisle toward the stage and when they return. The loss on their faces crushes.
But police officers persevere by seeking out and recognizing the very best in humanity, even in death.
After the service, Rodriguez points out that Zerebny at least lived long enough to become a mother, to care for her child.
For what, four months? The officer explains that those four months were more than some get. Rodriguez also knows something many civilians dont.
A cop like Zerebny passes along things to a daughter things like adventure, hope, service.
Contact the writer: dwhiting@scng.com
SANTA ANA A boy was shot in the leg during an apparent drive-by shooting Wednesday, police said.
The minor, who was not identified, told police that the driver of a dark-colored vehicle confronted him for unknown reasons as he walked in the 500 block of South Pacific Avenue around noon, said Sgt. S. Gatt.
The juvenile ran and hid, Gatt said. Then, he heard a gunshot and realized hed been hit in the leg.
The vehicle speed off, Gatt said.
The victim was not able to provide investigators with the make or model of the vehicle nor a detailed description of the driver. He didnt see much because he was hiding, Gatt said.
The boy was transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and was expected to fully recover.
Anyone with information about this incident can call the Santa Ana Police Department at 714-245-8665. Anyone who wants to remain anonymous can call the Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS (855-847-6227).
Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@scng.com
When cities close down street traffic lanes and paint experimental bicycle paths on pavement once used by cars, the so-called experiment almost never fails. The change virtually always becomes permanent.
Even in Portland, Ore., where as an experiment officials early this year installed small sound-making bumps to let drivers know when they drift into a bike lane and resentful motorists responded by ripping out 70 percent of those bumps, the bumps are back. There was no serious consideration of removing either the once-experimental bicycle path or the humps.
Its much the same with temporary taxes. California has seen only one temporary levy disappear on schedule, a one-time $7 billion surcharge on income taxes of the wealthy imposed by Republican Pete Wilson shortly after he became governor in early 1991.
So its no surprise that the majority of new taxes imposed by the 2012 Proposition 30 are about to become all but permanent, lasting at least through 2030.
This is what the current Proposition 55 is about. Gov. Jerry Brown pushed hard for Prop. 30 four years ago, spending liberally from his political war chest to get the measure passed. He promised at the time the increases would be temporary, petering out after 2018 and hes not actively supporting Prop. 55 now. None of the money behind it comes from Brown or any political action committee related to him. But hes not opposing it, either.
Prop. 30 did work. Using the $6 billion-plus per year raised via its small sales tax increase and its income tax hikes for the wealthy, Brown and the Legislature kept Californias general fund solvent.
The central question of Prop. 55: Can this continue without that money? A general belief the money would be vitally needed in even a slight economic turndown is the main reason there is no significant opposition to extending these tax hikes another 12 years.
Much of the $50 million-plus behind Prop. 55 comes from public employee unions, notably the California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union. The California Hospital Association and the California Medical Association are also big contributors. All remember the years of belt-tightening before Prop. 30.
They also know that voters are often happy to tax the rich, which is what Prop. 55 does. It would eliminate the sales tax portion of Prop. 30, while extending the tax surcharge for the top 1.5 percent of the states earners. Single people would pay nothing for this unless their adjusted gross income tops $263,000, or twice that for married couples. The top tax rate would be 13.3 percent for annual incomes above $1.1 million.
Most voters have little sympathy for those folks, one reason polls all year have showed about two-thirds of voters support Prop. 55.
Because the money is all earmarked for education and health care, this measure also dovetails neatly with polling that shows about 60 percent of voters believe California schools should spend much more than they do now. The 2014 average of $9,595 per student was well below the national average of $11,667, and placed this state 42nd in per-student education spending, even though it was in the top 10 for per-capita state taxes paid.
While few voters can rattle off those numbers, they get the idea when they see peeling paint and leaky roofs in school buildings.
So the idea of making near-permanent the Prop. 30 tax increase on the wealthy seems like a natural this year.
But nothing in Prop. 55 would actually lead anyone to believe it would promote better education. Yes, districts may add a few more courses here and there. But even Browns 3-year-old system of giving more of the Prop. 30 money to schools with the most low-income and English-learner students has not discernibly improved education. Test scores in most places have been static.
There is no doubt, then, that if and when it passes, Prop. 55 will be yet another example of a temporary tax made near-permanent. In fact, its take has already become part of the status quo, which means voters can expect more school-funding propositions down the line.
FOUNTAIN VALLEY A man and woman were arrested for multiple offenses following a vehicle pursuit Sunday night.
Police identified the suspects as German Gaytan 34, of Westminster and Sara Morales, 18, of Huntington Beach.
Gaytan was booked into Orange County Jail on suspicion of evading police, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of methamphetamine, driving under the influence, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and possession of a short-barreled shotgun, Fountain Valley police Sgt. Tony Luce in a statement.
Morales was booked into jail on suspicion of possession of a short-barreled shotgun and destruction of evidence.
Around 11:30 p.m. Sunday, Fountain Valley officers attempted to make a traffic stop of a 1996 Toyota Tercel in the area of Edinger Avenue and Los Gatos Street, Luce said.
However, the vehicle didnt stop and a pursuit began. The pursuit ended near Brookhurst Street and Stilbite Avenue.
Officers took Gaytan and Morales into custody and recovered a shotgun and other evidence that had been discarded from the car during the pursuit, Luce said.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7767 sschwebke@scng.com Twitter: @thechalkoutline
For a second straight year, the San Juan Capistrano City Council has turned back a rent increase sought by the owner of El Nido Mobile Estates under terms of the citys rent control ordinance.
A year ago, the council ruled that a $641 rent increase sought by owner Richard Worley was not justified and instead allowed $37 per month.
Monday, after a hearing at City Hall, the council rejected the owners proposed increase of $403 per month, allowing instead a rent increase of $4.75 per month plus a separate charge of $4.75 per month, for the next five years, to amortize legal and accounting fees.
A roomful of senior-citizen occupants of the 152-unit park at 27703 Ortega Highway cheered the councils 4-0 vote to issue the decision. Mayor Pam Patterson was absent.
Robert Coldren, Worleys attorney, said the City Council has unfairly kept the landowner from receiving a fair return on property adjacent to the Hunt Club, where homes sell for millions of dollars. No one with a straight face can argue that these people arent getting an incredible housing bargain, Coldren said. He suggested the city is forcing an aggrieved property to go to court.
Bruce Stanton, attorney for park residents, said the park owner doesnt like rent stabilization, despite buying a park in a city with rent control, and wants to grab part of a premium allegedly obtained when some residents sell their homes and spaces. Stanton said that disagreement is no basis for determining a fair return under the ordinance.
Contact the writer: fswegles@ocregister.com or 949-492-5127
SAN DIEGO A member of the U.S. Navy arrested after the pickup truck he was driving plunged 60 feet off a San Diego bridge, killing four people and injuring nine at a festival below, will likely be arraigned this week at a hospital, authorities said Tuesday.
Richard Anthony Sepolio, 25, is expected to be arraigned Wednesday on charges including DUI and vehicular manslaughter, said district attorneys spokeswoman Tanya Sierra.
Sepolio remained hospitalized three days after the GMC pickup crashed through a concrete retaining wall and crushed a vendors booth at Chicano Park, said California Highway Patrol Officer Jake Sanchez. He didnt know Sepolios condition.
Sepolio had been stationed for about a year at the base on Coronado Island across the bay from San Diego, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday (http://bit.ly/2eePzq6 ).
He enlisted in September 2014 and went to boot camp at the Recruit Training Command Great Lakes in Illinois and also attended apprenticeship schools in Pensacola, Fla., and Norfolk, Va.
Sepolio worked at Coronado as an aviation electronics technician, or a J130, and was assigned to Helicopter Combat Squadron 6. Aviation electronics technicians troubleshoot and repair a number of electronics in Navy aircraft.
A military spokesman said it is too soon to say what next steps the Navy will take.
The Navy is supporting the investigation as they can, and we cant speculate from there, said spokesman Brian ORourke.
Blanca Sepolio, the mans mother, said family members didnt wish to comment on the crash when reached by the newspaper.
Saturdays crash happened as a crowd gathered for La Raza Run, a motorcycle ride that begins in downtown Los Angeles and ends with a celebration at the park. The truck crashed into a both steps away from a stage where a rockabilly band was playing.
The people who were killed were Cruz Elias Contreras, 52, and Annamarie Contreras, 50, of Chandler, Arizona; and Andre Christopher Banks, 49, and Francine Denise Jimenez, 46, both from Hacienda Heights, a suburb east of Los Angeles, the San Diego County Medical Examiner said.
Four candidates for Tustin City Council shared their ideas about leadership at a public forum in the Council Chambers Monday night.
Candidates exhibited nothing of the heated rhetoric of this falls presidential debates. However, members of the self-designated Team Tustin incumbents Allan Bernstein and Chuck Puckett and newcomer Austin Lumbard noted occasional differences in opinion with first-time candidate Letitia Clark.
Moderator Jonathan Stone of the Tustin Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the event, asked the questions, some of them submitted by audience members.
Lumbard, an attorney, began by noting that the event was much better attended than the Planning Commission meetings he chairs.
I havent seen this room this full in quite a while, he said.
In responding to a question about dealing with homelessness, Clark, public affairs director for the Coast Community College District, said the problem is regional.
There are 28,000 homeless children in Orange County, she said. We must work with our neighboring cities and look toward a countywide plan.
Puckett, a retired food-service executive, used the moment to applaud the founder of Operation Warm Wishes.
We need to find a way to clone TyRon Jackson, he said. If we had more people who have his heart, we wouldnt have a homeless problem.
Regarding the promotion of businesses in the area, Lumbard said he wants to get rid of regulations that dont make sense. Bernstein, a podiatric physician, said that he hopes the citys increase in its transient occupancy tax for hotel guests from 6 percent to 10 percent will fund a tourism board.
Asked about the potential for expanding public space, Puckett said he is keeping an eye on the development of a regional park around the north hangar approved in 2012 by the Orange County Parks Commission.
We want to make sure that land doesnt go to revenue sources, he said. We can never have too many parks.
When the topic turned to schools, Clark said she is proud that Tustin Unified School District competes well with Irvine in terms of test scores. But she expressed concern over the declining enrollment predicted in coming years as younger families are priced out of the housing market.
Lumbard retorted that parents are more focused on the present than on a decade or two down the road.
They care about where their kid goes to school tomorrow, he said.
Puckett cited the improved relationship between the city and the school district which, when he ran four years ago, were embroiled in a lawsuit over the delayed opening of an elementary school at The Legacy.
Its one of the things Im most proud of, he said.
Also broached was the proposed 140-unit condominium complex in Old Town. Clark agreed that Tustin should bring in more high-density, affordable housing. Controversy over the project arose, she said, because residents didnt feel included in the process. Communication wasnt there.
Bernstein countered, I havent heard one complaint about a lack of communication a comment that elicited chuckles from some audience members.
All candidates took turns praising the Tustin Police Department.
They have the hardest jobs, putting their lives on the line every day, Clark said. Given national events, its important to lift up and encourage our police.
The forum concluded with a chance for each candidate to make an appeal for votes.
Bernstein got the biggest laugh of the night, this one on purpose, when he quipped, If Im elected, I will build a wall and Irvine will pay for that wall.
Lumbard summed up the evening saying, We have four great candidates who all care about the city.
Contact the writer: sgoulding@scng.com
Mohammed Bello Abubakar is one of the most controversial figures in Nigeria. Despite having no discernible income, the 92-year-old man somehow convinced 107 women to marry him throughout his life, 97 of which are still his wives. He claims that marrying as many women as possible is a divine assignment he has received from God.
Mr Bello first shot to fame in 2008, when a series of articles revealed that he had 86 wives and around 150 children, either living with him on his compound in Bida, Niger state, or in his house in Lagos. Muslim clerics accused him of breaking religious rules, which most scholars agree allow a man to marry up to four women, as long as he can provide for all of them and treat them equally. He was given a very simple choice, either divorce 82 of his wives or face the consequences. He refused, arguing that there was no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives, and that every man should be free to marry as many women as he can support. He was arrested at the request of the local Shariah Court, but subsequently released, on the condition that he only keep four of his wives.
Not only did the superpolygamist ignore this requirement, but he has since married other women as well. In total, he married 107 women so far, divorced 10 of them, which brings the total wife count to a whopping 97. And despite his ripe old age, Abubakar says he plans on marrying even more. What I am doing is divine. It is an assignment and I will keep doing it till the end, he told Nigerian newspaper Vanguard.
Photo: video screengrab
My large number of wives? I only have 97 wives, he added in an interview with The Nation. I am still going to marry more. I will keep marrying them for as long I am alive. If it was up to me, I would have married maybe two wives, but what I am doing is divine.
He advises men not to follow his example, as a normal husband could not even cope with 10 wives, let alone 97. Bello claims that he has been able to control all of them only with the power bestowed on him by Allah.
Whats really strange about Mohammed Bello Abubakar and his incredibly large family is that none of them have an official income. He doesnt work and doesnt allow his wives to work either. Not even their neighbors in Bida know how they make ends meet. In a 2008 BBC article, some claimed that Bello sends some of the children to beg, but even if that turned out to be true, it wouldnt even be enough to cover the cost of the three 12-pound bags of rice they eat every day. When asked how he can afford to feed everyone, the Nigerian man simply said Its all from God.
92-year-old Mohammed Bello Abubakar has outlived most of his 185 children, and despite recent rumors that he had died following a swift illness, he told reporters he was alive and well. My dear, I am very much alive, hale and hearty, he told Vanguard. The rumor is baseless and can best be described as the work of my detractors because they envy what God has done and what He is still doing for me.
I just want to advise those fighting against the number of my wives to stop because such people are waging war against God, their creator, Abubakar concluded.
Robert Dilenschneider
With less than 20 days before one of the most important elections in American history, I have prepared this note on executive privilege, executive orders and executive actions that may be of interest.Many wonder if either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be able to make much difference in office if, for example, the Democrat is faced with a Republican-led Congress or the Republican president must deal with a Democrat-controlled Congress.Be sure that either Clinton or Trump will invoke executive privilege, executive orders and executive actions to advance their agenda. Each of these is quite different, but all three are used by presidents to get their way when the path is firmly blocked on Capitol Hill or they are fighting legal action.Executive privilege is power claimed by the president to thwart interventions to the executive branch by Congress and the judiciary seeking to access sensitive information and personnel issues relating to the executive branch.Ironically, the concept of executive privilege is not mentioned in the Constitution. However, the Supreme Court has upheld the concept as part of the doctrine of separation of powers, especially in areas of national security.Please note that while executive privilege is often used to avoid abiding by subpoenas, the whole concept is far from settled law.Famously, President Truman issued a secrecy order to keep Congress from getting FBI and White House data on security problems. Truman had security files moved to the White House and ordered his team not to testify in Congress on anything involving security. During the McCarthy hearings into alleged Communist infiltration of government, President Eisenhower claimed executive privilege to keep internal conversations and meetings and notes (well before email) private. Likewise, Defense employees were not permitted to testify before McCarthy or provide any documents he sought.The most famous case is United States v. Nixon. In 1974 Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox ordered President Nixon to produce White House Oval Office audiotapes. Nixon invoked executive power to refuse. The Supreme Court noted that there is a valid need for protection of communications among government officials but said that certain procedures must be invoked to protect public interest with the courts put in the difficult position of deciding which branch of government prevails. The court said this is a difficult situation that is to be avoided as much as possible. Once executive privilege is asserted, coequal branches of the Government are set on a collision course.Bill Clinton in 1998 became the first president since Nixon to assert executive privilege and lose in court, when a federal judge ruled that Clinton aides could testify in the Monica Lewinsky case.Executive orders are directives issued to federal agencies, department heads and other federal employees by the president using his constitutional powers. They are similar to written orders or instructions issued by CEOs to department heads or directors. They have the force of law, although, of course, they can be challenged in the courts. They are published in the Federal Register and take effect 30 days later. They bypass Congress but may not be used to circumvent laws or direct agencies to do anything illegal.Two of the most famous executive orders came after the United States was attacked. After Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Roosevelt issued executive order 9066 (they are numbered historically) ordering the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, although many were U.S. citizens. After 9/11, President Bush issued an executive order to combine more than 40 federal agencies into the Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.Although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously decreed Republicans would do everything in their power to ensure President Obama would be a one-term president, Obama prevailed more than many expected he would by issuing executive orders. For example, in a 2012 order known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Obama decreed that people under 30 who came to the United States before the age of 16 could get a two-year deferral from deportation, under certain conditions.Executive orders are not immutable. The president may change or abolish an executive order at any time or supersede an existing order. Incoming presidents may keep or replace or revoke previous orders. Rarely, Congress may pass a law that alters an executive order. The Supreme Court may declare an executive order unconstitutional.Executive actions are even more common. Early in office Obama called a press conference and announced he was issuing 23 "executive actions" addressing gun violence. He called for universal background checks on anyone trying to buy a gun and restoring a ban on military-style assault weapons. But they carried no legal weight.There have been a number of myths about Obamas use of executive orders. He did not issue an order keeping his records (e.g., birth certificate) secret. In fact, he issued an order reversing a Bush order so that records of former presidents are no longer as secret as they were. Obama did not sign an order giving him a third term, contrary to Internet gossip. And he did not sign an order getting rid of super political action committees, which give huge amounts of money to the political process, although he dislikes them. He is urging Congress to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing them.Although President Obama has issued 252 orders so far in his presidency and undoubtedly will issue more, he is lagging behind his predecessors. George W. Bush had 291 executive orders in eight years, and Bill Clinton built up a total of 364 executive orders during his eight years. Obama actually has issued the fewest per year33since Chester Arthur. Franklin D. Roosevelt issued 3,721.The point: Expect the new president to use these three opportunities to advance their agenda and expect each to be challenged and to receive considerable attention from the news media.* * *
Robert L. Dilenschneider is chairman and founder of the Dilenschneider Group, Inc.
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Nebraska communities need more apartments, homes to rent and moderate-priced houses to buy, a shortage that makes it difficult to attract and keep middle-income workers.
Thats a problem cited by a large majority of business owners, civic leaders and others about 940 people in all who have attended 24 meetings held across the state by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce & Industry since late August.
Of about 600 people who filed out survey sheets, more than 85 percent marked yes to a question asking whether their communities or businesses face a housing shortage.
The biggest shortage, according to those surveyed, is moderate-priced housing for middle-income people, said Jamie Karl, the chambers vice president for public affairs and policy. People want more of it, he said.
About the same share also said they face workforce shortages, and the two are related, Karl said. Qualified workers may leave the state or avoid Nebraska if they cant find the housing they want, even if jobs are available.
The latest meeting, held to discuss state legislative issues, was Tuesday at the Goodwill Industries office near 72nd Street and Ames Avenue.
Karl said the only attendees who didnt agree with the housing shortage question were those at the chambers Aug. 31 session in Sidney, the home of Cabelas Inc.
Listings of homes for sale in Sidney have increased because a competitor is buying Cabelas and may eliminate jobs while consolidating the two companies.
About 60 people attended Tuesdays meeting in Omaha.
State senators and candidates for the Legislature talked about issues facing the 2017 Legislature, including the states coming two-year budget, tax policy, prisons, crime, education, health insurance and early childhood education.
State Sen. Rick Kolowski, who is up for re-election in the Millard areas District 31, spoke along with candidates Lou Ann Linehan, District 39 in the Elkhorn area, and Omaha candidates Tony Vargas of District 7, Larry Roland of District 9 and Jill Brown and Justin Wayne of District 13.
Senators at the meeting who are not up for re-election this year were Bill Kintner of Papillion, Merv Riepe of Ralston and Omaha Sens. Joni Craighead, Burke Harr, Robert Hilkemann and John McCollister.
Kira Smith, a junior at Northwest High School, donned a welders black cap, black coat, safety mask and a pair of heat-resistant gloves. Under the tutelage of welding inspector Gene King, she laid down a weld on a steel practice piece as a group of high school students and officials at Distefano Technology and Manufacturing, an Omaha metal fabricating company, looked on.
Wow that was fun! Smith said.
I love the science of it how it heats up and how it looks, she said, referring to the waterfall of blue sparks emitted by the arc welder.
More than 150 Omaha-area high school students toured one of four regional manufacturers Wednesday as part of Nebraskas annual Manufacturing Day.
The event, coordinated by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Omaha Economic Development Partnership and the Partnerships Manufacturing Council, connects area high schools with local manufacturers, with the aim of introducing students to manufacturing careers.
By engaging students, we hope to raise awareness about the importance of manufacturing to the state ... and generate some real excitement about the career opportunities that will be waiting when theyre ready to enter the workforce, said RJ Jerrick, the Omaha Chambers manager of business development.
This year, Distefano, Owen Industries, Lozier and Airlite Plastics welcomed students, said Brian Turner, chair of the Partnerships Manufacturing Council and Distefanos general manager.
Look around the room. Look around this building just about everything you see has been manufactured, Turner told a group of about a dozen high school students who toured the metal fabricator at 3838 S 108th St. in Omaha.
Everything in this building from the sheet rock to the light bulbs to the machines was manufactured by men and women like yourselves, he said.
Students who took part in a two-hour tour of the plant were given the opportunity to try their hand at arc welding, operating a welding robot, creating a materials order and even shrink-wrapping a 5,000-pound pallet of metal brackets.
Haley Cox of Council Bluffs, one of Distefanos 87 employees, told students that she never envisioned herself pursuing a career in manufacturing.
The 23-year-old has been working in Distefanos shipping and receiving division for eight months, and during that time she has earned her forklift license, learned to operate the manufacturing software the company uses and begun taking in-house classes to boost her business and financial skills, Turner said.
We need IT people, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, accountants, welders, people who like to design and fix things, Turner said. No matter what your talent is, I bet there is a position within the manufacturing field that uses those talents.
In the next decade, the U.S. manufacturing sector will need to fill nearly 3.5 million jobs, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
Nebraska Lt. Gov. Mike Foley, who joined Wednesdays tour of Distefano, told students that the state is home to about 2,000 manufacturing companies that contribute billions of dollars each year to the states economy.
About one in 10 Nebraska workers is employed in the manufacturing sector, compared to 1 in 12 nationally, according to the 2016 Nebraska Manufacturing Report prepared by the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for the Nebraska Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
The largest portion of manufacturing jobs, about 37 percent, was in food processing, followed by machinery manufacturing, fabricated metal product and transportation equipment production, the report said.
A 30-year-old Houston man has been arrested in Grand Island, Nebraska, in connection with a fatal shooting in Texas.
Authorities said the Metro Fugitive Task Force, in connection with local officials, arrested Jose Rivera on Tuesday night. Authorities said they learned that Rivera was at an address in Grand Island, where he was arrested without incident.
Rivera was wanted in connection with the fatal shooting that occurred during a convenience store robbery in Houston in January 2015.
The Metro Fugitive Task Force is made up of officers from the U.S. Marshals Service; the FBI; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Omaha, Bellevue, La Vista and Lincoln police; and the Sheriffs Offices from Douglas, Sarpy, Dodge, Lancaster, Saline, Saunders, Jefferson and Gage Counties.
A 46-year-old Kearney, Nebraska, man was sentenced Monday to 11 months in a federal prison in a case involving the sale of misbranded drugs.
U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilgs office said Paul Martin was sentenced in Omaha by U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp over the sale of misbranded products containing ingredients that can increase the risk of cancer.
Gilgs office said Martin was indicted after federal investigators learned that Martin continued to sell foreign products with banned ingredients after he was warned to stop. The sales occurred over the Internet and through the U.S. mail, Gilgs office said.
Martin pleaded guilty to one count each of delivery of misbranded drugs, mail fraud and wire fraud, Gilgs office said.
After serving his 11-month sentence, Martin will be required to serve two years of supervised release, Gilgs office said.
COUNCIL BLUFFS The jury trial of a Council Bluffs man who works at a Nebraska jail started Tuesday with prosecutors laying out the case of a man allegedly hiding a secret.
Shawn Beu is charged with 10 counts, including allegedly sexually abusing a child and recording other children in his own home.
Beu was arrested March 3, originally charged with sexual exploitation of a minor. However, as more evidence was collected, he was eventually charged with sexual exploitation of a minor to promote film.
In court, Pottawattamie County Assistant Attorney Shelly Sudmann told the jury of eight men and four women that Beu, a man with a family and a job as a sergeant at the Douglas County Corrections Department, held a secret.
This case is about a secret he had, something he kept from everyone, Sudmann said.
The prosecution said that in January the Department of Homeland Security received a tip from the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children of a video that was believed to have come from Beus cellphone.
The video showed a man committing a sex act on a sleeping child while she lay next to another child in a bed.
Investigators said the video showed the man, whos face couldnt be seen, dressed in a red jersey and wearing black sweatpants.
A search warrant was obtained for Beus home and executed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Council Bluffs Police Department, which collected numerous electronics and other pieces of evidence for DNA testing.
Sudmann said investigators found evidence on Beus computers that a portable hard drive existed that had yet to be discovered and a second search warrant was executed May 26, which found the hard drive next to a TV projector in Beus basement.
The same video was found on the hard drive, Sudmann said, along with numerous photos and videos of other children who were filmed or photographed while partially nude.
Some of the videos seemed to have originated from a hidden-clock-camera inside Beus bathroom, she said.
Dave Sullivan, special agent with Homeland Security, was the prosecutions first witness.
He said the cyber tip that began the investigation came from Google, which detected the explicit photo in Beus Google account.
I was able to get from Google the entire contents of the account, Sullivan said. Thats where we found the video that concerned me of exploitation of a minor.
The video, shot by a right hand shows an adult, white, heavy-set male that fits Beus description, Sullivan said.
By using still frames of the video showing the child, photos of a similar-looking child wearing what appears to be the same pajamas were also found on Beus account as the children unwrap presents around a Christmas tree around the same date as the video was made.
The childs mother was called as the second witness.
She told the court she and Beu had dated in 2014 for about 8 months and broke up shortly after Christmas that year.
She said her child and Beus child would often sleep in the same room together. She said Beu would often wear red jerseys during Nebraska Cornhusker or Kansas City Chiefs games.
After the warrant was served, police asked her to identify the child in the video, which she said was hers because of the pink pajama shirt.
Speaking through tears, the childs mother said she did not know about the photos before police talked to her.
Michael Winter, Beus attorney, asked the mother if she noticed any odd behavior from Beu concerning children while they dated.
Not till the end, no, she said.
The mother said she found photos of younger girls on Beus Google account and confronted him about it.
Winter said Beus response to the allegations at the time was that he did not know how the photos got on his account.
The prosecutions third witness, Council Bluffs Police Detective Amber Kennedy, said they located several red jerseys and a pillow with DNA evidence in the home.
One of the photos shown to the jury as evidence was of a Husker jersey with the lettering BIG DADDY 69 on it.
What appears to be black dog hair shown in the video was also found at the home to be from a black Labrador named Shep, which is owned by Beu.
Kennedy explained the computer thumb drive they found contained footage from a hidden camera in Beus bathroom of children using the toilet.
Footage was also found of children playing outside in what appears to be the house next to Beus in swimsuits.
There were 475 images of them swimming, and 600 more photos of the same child were deleted, Kennedy said.
Winter delayed his opening statement in both cases against Beu for the exploitation and the filming of exploitation until after the prosecutions witnesses.
Beus trial continues Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.
COUNCIL BLUFFS Catholic Charities Phoenix House received 307 pairs of pajamas Tuesday for the women and children who stay at the Council Bluffs domestic violence shelter, which serves nine southwest Iowa counties.
The brand-new nightclothes came from Helens Pajama Party to Protect Women, a nonprofit organization based in Des Moines. The timing of the donation was fitting, as October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
These pajamas will be used for all the victims we serve throughout the nine-county area, said Diane McKee, program manager at Phoenix House.
Most women seeking refuge at a domestic violence shelter have only the clothes on their backs, according to Kelly Sargent, who founded Helens Pajama Party. Being able to pick out new clothes for themselves can help the women begin to recover their dignity and sense of self-worth.
The women are very grateful, McKee said. Theyre surprised that theyre getting something new that they dont have to give back.
The organization has been supplying Phoenix House with pajamas for about six years, McKee said. The jammies come from overstock at retail stores and donations from other parties.
Whenever we need them, we give her a call, she said. Last year, we had 175 women and 99 children use our shelter services and a total of 1,465 use our programming.
Sargent has been in contact with all of the states domestic violence shelters, McKee said.
These PJs, and at least 900 other pairs designated for other Iowa shelters, were sorted, folded, tagged and packed by 80 officers-in-training at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, including Pottawattamie County Park Ranger Ryan Penney, at Des Moines Area Community College in Ankeny. They were transported to the shelter by Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs.
Kelly tries to do things as efficiently as she can, and she knows Mike goes back and forth frequently, McKee said.
When the shipments are publicized, the pajamas serve another purpose, too, McKee said: They remind the public that there is domestic violence in the community, hopefully starting a conversation about the problem.
People in the community need to talk, not just victims, she said.
A deer hunter accidentally shot himself in the thigh with a pistol as he walked Monday in southern Crawford County, authorities said.
His condition was not clear Tuesday, but the Iowa Department of Natural Resources said he was stable.
Daniel Gehling, 51, of Denison, was heading with a muzzleloader to a field about 5 p.m. when he adjusted a pistol in his waistband and it fired, the DNR said.
Gehling was with his wife, Carolyn. She called for help and then applied pressure on the wound until rescue personnel arrived, the DNR said.
Gehling was taken by ambulance to Crawford County Memorial Hospital and then by helicopter to an Omaha hospital for surgery.
Three months after saying goodbye to friends and family in Lincoln, nearly 100 members of the Nebraska National Guards newest unit are bound for Iraq with the Armys 1st Infantry Division.
A ceremony Tuesday at Fort Riley, Kansas, marked the casing of the Big Red Ones unit colors before the deployment to Iraq, where the division will take charge of the two-year-old coalition effort to dislodge the Islamic State from Iraq.
The Nebraska Guards 1st Infantry Division Main Command Post-Operational Detachment was formed earlier this year to augment the Big Red Ones headquarters staff. It is the second unit of 16 similar ones being formed as a result of the budget-driven cuts to division headquarters staffs in the Army and National Guard.
The Nebraska Guard contingent will make up about one-fifth of the division staff.
The deployment comes at a critical time as Iraqi units trained and advised by the U.S. have just begun an offensive to retake the critical Iraqi city of Mosul.
Also at Tuesdays event, Maj. Gen. Joseph Martin assumed command of the division. He replaces Maj. Gen. Wayne Grigsby, who was relieved as a result of loss of confidence in his ability to lead the division.
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. The Hall County Board of Supervisors approved a $75,000 settlement with a former County Corrections Department employee, Sgt. Debb Rea, during its regular Tuesday meeting.
Reas attorney filed a lawsuit in May, saying that Reas civil rights were violated by the jails former management team of Corrections Director Fred Ruiz and Assistant Director Jimmy Vann. The board fired both men in August 2015 after the county hired Omaha attorney Pam Bourne to investigate the jail.
Rea submitted a letter to the board detailing management concerns after she was constructively discharged in 2015 after 30 years working at the jail. She was 59. Her letter prompted Bournes investigation.
The lawsuit alleged that Hall County allowed the hostile work environment to exist. It stated that Ruiz and Vann subjected female employees to harsher discipline; referred to female employees in an offensive, unwelcome, discriminatory and derogatory manner; made false allegations against female employees; directed female employees to engage in conduct for Vanns and/or Ruizs sexual enjoyment; requested female employees to engage in demeaning conduct; denied promotions to qualified female employees; and promoted unqualified male employees.
The lawsuit filed on Reas behalf was moved from Hall County District Court to U.S. District Court in late June.
Reas lawsuit asked for her to be reinstated to her former position at the jail; along with back pay, an unspecified amount of compensatory damages for her pain and suffering; and an unspecified amount of punitive damages from Ruiz and Vann.
A county response filed in federal court on June 20 stated that Rea was offered her job back shortly after Ruiz and Vann were fired, but she declined the offer.
Rea then asked for a jury trial. The county maintained that she wasnt entitled to one based on her claims.
After nearly an hourlong discussion with Reas attorney, the board approved Reas settlement of about $70,000.
Hall County Attorney Jack Zitterkopf said the county will be paying Rea $4,487 of the total settlement for back wages. Another $45,000 will be paid to Rea by the Nebraska Intergovernmental Risk Management Association for alleged damages other than lost wages. Another $25,113 will be paid by NIRMA for Reas attorney fees.
He said its also important to note that the settlement includes a nonadmission clause. This means that the county, Ruiz and Vann dont hold liability or admit wrongdoing just because the settlement was approved.
Basically this agreement resolves all claims among those four parties (Rea, Hall County, Ruiz and Vann) up to the date that the agreement becomes effective, Zitterkopf said.
LINCOLN A staffer at the Nebraska State Penitentiary was treated and released from a hospital on Tuesday after being punched by an inmate.
Staff members were escorting an inmate at the prison when he struck a staff member in the face, according to a state Corrections spokeswoman.
The incident is under investigation and the findings will be turned over to the Lancaster County Attorneys Office for possible prosecution. The names of the employee and inmate involved were not released.
Our set of Nebraska Legislature recommendations today focuses on a particular theme: candidates, regardless of party or philosophy, who demonstrate a sound understanding of the legislative process and the need to keep it on track.
That approach will be crucial during the 2017 session, given the revenue challenges, the push for major tax relief and the troubling attempt by some senators and activists to turn the Legislature into a congressional-style body where partisan enforcers dictate to senators how they should vote.
Our recommendations:
Mike Hilgers, District 21 (northwest section of Lancaster County). Hilgers demonstrates leadership qualities and intellectual heft that indicate he can be a highly capable state senator. He has talked to current and former senators to further his education of the Legislature and has worked to acquaint himself with its operations and rules.
Hilgers, who heads a law firm specializing in intellectual property issues, ably describes ingredients for effectiveness. He says that while the Legislature should have a positive relationship with the Governors Office, it is an independent branch with important oversight duties.
Hilgers is a level-headed Nebraskan with the potential to contribute in major ways to our Legislature and give strong representation to District 21.
Suzanne Geist, District 25 (southeast Lincoln and Waverly). This candidate speaks thoughtfully in describing the legislative process. Geist is a firm social and fiscal conservative, but she makes clear that politics is the art of the possible, meaning that a responsible state senator needs to work with a range of colleagues, not just a small clique, and that the Legislature should be mindful not to fall into congressional-style rancor and dysfunction.
Geist, who runs a Lincoln company that sells professional clothing, emphasizes the need to improve Nebraskas tax and business climate. Her observations to us indicate she would respect the legislative process and understands the need for responsible consensus-building.
Anna Wishart, District 27 (portions of west and southwest Lincoln). Wisharts ability to work constructively and reach practical solutions is shown by her success during six years as a member of the Lincoln Airport Authority board. Wishart, a Democrat, is a past chairwoman of the board, and each of the Republicans who works with her on the board has endorsed her candidacy for the Legislature. As a former legislative aide to State Sen. Rick Kolowski, Wishart has a detailed knowledge of the Legislature and its processes.
We appreciate her point that lawmakers should re-examine regulations on schools to see how much, if any, those are driving local spending and property taxes. She would like to join the Natural Resources Committee to make sure urban water quality issues receive proper attention.
Sen. Kate Bolz, District 29 (a portion of south side of Lincoln). The challenger in this contest has refrained from campaigning, but her name will still appear on the Nov. 8 ballot. So, we offer some brief thoughts about the incumbent, Sen. Kate Bolz, whose energetic work as a lawmaker warrants her re-election.
Bolz shows dedication on the budget-setting Appropriations Committee, which handles some of the Legislatures most complicated work. She is known for diving into detailed work on special committees focusing on childrens needs, the elderly and Nebraskas troubled prison system. She is right to underscore the consensus among Nebraska policy-makers for doing more to strengthen worker training.
Gregg Neuhaus, District 35 (Grand Island). When we interview candidates at election time, its disappointing that so many resort to simplistic, bumper-sticker rhetoric. Neuhaus did not do that. When asked about Nebraska issues, he shows a strong analytical mind and commendable knowledge.
To his credit, he also displays a solid understanding of the legislative process, having testified before the Judiciary Committee and been involved in development of legislation. Neuhaus, a lawyer with considerable volunteer experience in Grand Island, has the makings to be an engaged and energetic conservative-minded representative for District 35.
We are impressed by these five candidates who display a commendable understanding of proper legislating: Mike Hilgers in District 21, Suzanne Geist in District 25, Anna Wishart in District 27, Sen. Kate Bolz in District 29 and Gregg Neuhaus, District 35.
Great hunting opportunities are available for youth in Nebraska this weekend.
Hunters ages 15 and younger can participate in special youth pheasant hunts during the Saturday and Sunday statewide youth pheasant, quail and partridge season.
Rooster pheasants will be released at 14 wildlife management areas before the special youth hunt season. The special hunts are open to the public, and the number of participants is not limited. No registration or special permit is required. Special regulations posted at each of the 14 WMAs will apply to all portions of the designated areas normally open to hunting. All other current youth and regular hunting regulations also will be in effect at these designated areas.
Pheasants will be released at the following WMAs: Pressey (Custer County), Sherman Reservoir (Sherman County), Oak Valley (Madison County), Branched Oak (Lancaster County), Twin Oaks (Johnson County), Hickory Ridge (Johnson County), Wilkinson (Platte County), Peru Bottoms (Nemaha County), Yankee Hill (Lancaster County), Cornhusker (Hall County), Arrowhead (Gage County), George Syas (Platte County), Randall W. Schilling (Cass County) and William Gilmour/Tobacco Island (Cass County).
In other news:
The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is seeking information about two cases involving the unlawful killing of big game animals in western and north-central Nebraska.
One case involves the death of four buck pronghorns. The remains of the animals, minus three of the heads and some of the meat, were found Oct. 17 on private land south of Kimball.
The other case involves the death of a cow elk believed to be shot either Oct. 14 or Oct. 15 and left to rot near the road to Smith Falls northeast of Valentine.
Rewards of up to $1,000 are being offered for information leading to conviction of people responsible for the animals deaths. Informants may remain anonymous.
People who wish to report information about these cases may contact conservation officers Scott Brandt of Gering at 308-631-0663 and Frank Miller of Valentine at 402-389-0444.
DU's second list of seat allocation for UG courses out
When is Dev Diwali 2022? November 7th or November 8th? Know timings, significance and more
Instagram is down: No, your account isn't actually suspended
Offline retailers offer freebies, see 50% sales jump this festive season
Business
oi-PTI
New Delhi, Oct 19: Retailers at shopping malls are expecting about 45-50 per cent increase in sales this festive season as they are offering freebies and easy finance options to beat competition from e-commerce players, a study by industry body Assocham said.
"Faced with heavy discounts from e-commerce, shopping mall owners in major cities are shaping back, going aggressive in the run up to Diwali, offering freebies and easy finance options, hoping to win back the footfalls and increase their business by at least 45-50 per cent in the ongoing festive season compared to similar period last year," Assocham said.
It said that as per feedback received from retailers, malls in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Chennai have already started seeing increased activity.
Malls have adopted a new sales strategy of giving a festive feel to the consumers, it added.
"There is a better market experience this festive season, which is expected to give a leg-up to the consumer sentiment," Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat said.
Assocham said its study is based on responses from 750 leasing managers, management representatives of malls, strategists, marketers and supervisors in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Dehradun.
The study noted that most retailers and consumer durable goods makers were upbeat about brisk business during the third quarter and therefore increased their overall marketing budget by about 30 - 40 per cent for this period alone.
They plan to conduct these promotional activities until early January, it added.
Some malls in New Delhi reported record business on weekends as buyers rushed to get clothes, food, jewellery and cosmetics for Diwali celebrations.
In value terms, the growth is 20 percent higher than the previous year, while in volume terms it could be around 10-15 percent higher, according to mall managers.
PTI
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Story first published: Wednesday, October 19, 2016, 8:43 [IST]
As the countdown clock struck zero, rocket of Aakash BYJUS took off from Bandra Bandstand
Vijay Mallya's villa, priced at Rs 85.3 crore, to be auctioned today
Business
oi-PTI
Mumbai, Oct 19: The 17-lender consortium led by State Bank of India will auction the Kingfisher Villa, the sea-facing plush property once-owned by the beleaguered Vijay Mallya in Goa, on Wednesday
The reserve price for the property, which once was used by Mallya to host lavish parties, has been set at Rs 85.29 crore.
Lenders had taken the possession of the villa in May this year after a protracted legal battle with United Spirits over tenancy rights.
The villa was owned by United Breweries Holdings, one of the Mallya group companies and was mortgaged by the now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines to the consortium of banks to obtain loans in 2010.
Lenders had opened the villa for inspection to interested bidders in two slots--September 26-27 and October 5-6. In the four days during which the property was thrown open, around half-a-dozen entities had visited the palatial villa.
"The response was good. Nearly six to seven parties from the hospitality industry and a media organisation have visited the villa," a source had earlier told PTI.
SBICap Trustees, which is auctioning the property on behalf of the lenders, said the e-auction will include only the immovable part of the villa and not its movable assets.
Mallya owes over Rs 9,000 crore to lenders like SBI, PNB, IDBI Bank, BoB, Allahabad Bank, Federal Bank and Axis Bank, among others.
He had left the country in March and is currently said to be in Britain, having defied several court orders to return to India.
The lenders efforts at selling other KFA properties including a luxe private jet and brand kingfisher as well the Kingfisher House in Mumbai all met with repeated failure.
PTI
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Story first published: Wednesday, October 19, 2016, 8:31 [IST]
12 MNS workers held for protesting against 'Ae Dil...'
India
oi-PTI
Mumbai, Oct 19: A dozen workers of MNS were today arrested for protesting against the upcoming release of filmmaker Karan Johar's "Ae Dil Hain Muskhil" as the party rejected his statement that he will not "engage with talent" from Pakistan in future.
The workers from MNS' film unit Maharashtra Navnirman Chitrapat Karmachari Sena were protesting and raising slogans outside Metro Cinema in South Mumbai.
The Raj Thackeray-led party has asked the theatre management not to hold any show of "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" which features Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
The MNS had given a written appeal to the theatre management urging them not to show the movie as it features a Pakistani actor. The party workers also raised slogans outside the theatre, police officials said.
"We arrested 12 MNS activists and booked them under relevant sections of Maharashtra Police Act and also CrPC," Senior Inspector of Azad Maidan Police Station Vijay Kadam told PTI.
MNS warns Mahesh Bhatt, Johar over working with Pak artists
They were produced before a local court which granted them cash bail of Rs 5,000 each in the case (carrying out procession without permission) under the Police Act. The MNS activists were also booked under the CrPC section 151 (3) (arrest to prevent the commission of cognisable offences) in which they did not get any relief and sent to judicial custody till November 4.
Seeking to calm tempers over opposition to the release of his directorial venture, Johar had yesterday made a fervent appeal against stalling the release, saying he will not engage with talent from Pakistan in future. However, MNS said reality has dawned late on Johar.
MNS cine wing head Amey Khopkar, after a meeting with senior party leaders and Raj Thackeray, said they were firm on opposing the release. "We will not allow the film to be screened in single screens and multiplexes.
Reality has dawned late on the producer," Khopkar said. The MNS and some other political parties have opposed release of films with actors from Pakistan after the Uri terror attack, putting a question mark on the fate of Johar's movie, slated for release on October 28.
The Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India, too, decided not to screen films with Pakistani actors in four states -- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Goa. A team from Johar's Dharma Productions along with filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt and Vijay Singh of Fox Star Studios had yesterday met Mumbai's top police officials and sought protection for the theatres to screen the film.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Ashok Dudhe had said, "Mumbai police will provide adequate protection to cinema theatres."
PTI
This is 21st century, where have we reached in name of religion: SC on hate speeches
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SC frowns on two-finger test in rape case: Stop the practice immediately it says
Cauvery: SC reserves verdict on maintainibilty of appeals filed by Kar, TN
India
oi-Vicky
New Delhi, Oct 19: The Supreme Court today reserved its verdict on the maintainability of the appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala in connection with the Cauvery issue.
The Bench comprising Justices Dipak Mishra, Amitava Roy and Khanwilkar heard all three parties and the centre at length and said it would decide on whether the appeals are maintainable or not.
While reserving the verdict the Bench reiterated that Karnataka should continue releasing 2,000 cosecs of water daily to Tamil Nadu.
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had challenged the order of the Cauvery Waters Tribunal dated February 5 2007. The centre had opposed the appeals stating it is not maintainable.
The tribunal in its final award had determined the usable quantum of water of the Cauvery at 740 tmcft. Karnataka is entitled to 270 tmcft, Tamil Nadu to 419 tmcft, Kerala 30 tmcft, Puducherry 7 tmcft and 14 tmcft is meant for environmental purposes, the tribunal had said.
Karnataka, TN cannot challenge Cauvery Tribunal Order, says Centre
On Tuesday the Supreme Court today directed Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water daily to Tamil till maintainability of the appeals filed by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is decided.
The union government contended that the decision of an inter state water tribunal is considered as a decree passed by the Supreme Court. The tribunal had delivered its final award on February 5, 2007. The centre contends that once the tribunal's order is published it partakes the shape of a Supreme Court order.
Under Article 262 (1) and (2) of the Constitution the power of the Supreme Court is eclipsed after the Tribunal formed under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act,1956 has adjudicated over the issue. Such decisions cannot be challenged, the centre also contended.
Karnataka however contended that it had challenged the award before the same was published on February 19 2013. The contention made by Karnataka was supported by Puducherry which has also challenged the award of the tribunal.
Tamil Nadu said that Section 6(2) of the Inter State Waters Dispute Act of 1956 cannot oust the Supreme Court's constitutional appellate powers under Article 136 of the Indian Constitution.
OneIndia News
PM Narendra Modi chokes up as he talks about Morbi tragedy | Video
Narendra Modi faces ire over price rise; Congress workers deface hoarding depicting PM
India
oi-PTI
Ghaziabad, Oct 19: Several workers of the women Congress on Wednesday staged a protest against BJP here for failing to rein in the skyrocketing prices of consumer goods and defaced a hoarding depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"City chief of women wing of Congress Pooja Chaddha along with several women workers reached the petrol pump in Raj Nagar area and smeared Modi's face (on the hoarding) with black ink," said party's District president Harendra Kasana.
Addressing the workers, Chaddha said the advertisement of BJP (in the hoarding) was "misleading".
"People are suffering from soaring prices of petrol, diesel, pulses, vegetables and other basic commodities. Such protest will be staged in future at every place where such hoardings are installed," she said.
"No FIR has been lodged by the BJP," SHO Avdhesh Yadav told.
PTI
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Story first published: Wednesday, October 19, 2016, 8:52 [IST]
In a first, two inmates of Institute of Mental Health tie the knot
In Pics: Amma's supporters camp outside hospital, pray for her health
India
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia Staff Writer
Oct 19: With no medical bulletins for eight days now, Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa's supporters are getting anxious about their Amma's health.
In the last medical bulletin, issued on Oct 10, it was stated that Jayalalithaa was being constantly monitored by intensivists and other consultants.
While the Tamil Nadu CM continues to be in hospital, her supporters have been offering special prayers for her speedy recovery. Hundreds of her supporters continue to wait anxiously outside the Apollo Hospital in Greams Road, Chennai to hear about her health updates.
The doctors have suggested that Jayalalithaa needs to be in the hospital for a longer time.
Here are some pictures of Jayalalithaa's supporters offering special prayers for their beloved Amma:
They burn but pray for Amma's health AIADMK supporters hold fire pots on their heads during a special prayer offered for the speedy recovery of Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. Jayalalithaa's supporters offer special prayers Jayalalithaa's supporters offered special prayers in front of the Apollo hospital, where the Tamil Nadu chief minister is currently undergoing treatment. Muslim clerics pray for Jayalalithaa Muslim clerics seen here praying outside Apollo hospital for speedy recovery of Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa. Image courtesy-ANI. People line out outside Apollo hospital to hear about Jayalalithaa Several supporters of Jayalalithaa have been camping outside the Apollo hospital to hear updates about her health. However, there hasn't been a medical bulletin for eight days now. Image courtesy-ANI Special prayers offered for Jayalalithaa Jayalalithaa's supporters across Tamil Nadu have been praying for her speedy recovery. Several VIPs and politicians have visited the hospital in the past few days enquiring about the CM's health. AIADMK workers hope for a miracle With mass prayers being offered in the state, AIADMK workers hope for a miracle so that Jayalalithaa can resume work and lead the party from the front.
OneIndia News
Gujarat polls: These Kerala artists want the Amulya vote to be used against BJP
Marathi film industry body backs ban on Pakistani artistes
India
oi-PTI
Mumbai, Oct 19: A Marathi film industry body today backed calls for ban on Pakistani film artistes working in India and opposed release of films featuring them.
In a statement here, the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal said it opposed release of films featuring Pakistani artistes till relation between the two countries improved.
"If such films are released, there would be tension during the festive season and people would not be able to properly celebrate Diwali," said the Mahamandal, which is affiliated to the Film Federation of India.
Cinema owners' body bans films with Pak artistes in 4 states
The organisation said it supports the ban on Pakistani artistes and technicians imposed by the Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association and Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India, which has said it will not screen films featuring actors from the neighbouring country.
PTI
As the countdown clock struck zero, rocket of Aakash BYJUS took off from Bandra Bandstand
Mumbai hawkers demand roll-out of Street Vendors Act
India
oi-PTI
Mumbai, Oct 18 Hawkers today held a sit-in agitation in south Mumbai seeking speedy implementation of the Street Vendors Act, 2014.
The protesters, who came together under the banner of 'Mumbai Hawkers Union', the leading union of hawkers in the city, gathered at the Azad Maidan urging the state government and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to act on their demand.
"The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 is for our betterment, but Maharashtra government is doing nothing on this issue, while BMC is acting against us. This is unacceptable and we want immediate implementation of the Act. We also demand that action against the livelihood of the street vendors should be immediately stopped," president of the Union Shashank Rao said.
BMC is currently conducting a drive against the illegal street vendors, which the opposition Congress has opposed saying that the civic body was "flouting" the rules set by the Supreme Court.
Azam Sheikh, a union leader representing suburban Chembur area, said the civic body and police must stop playing with the livelihood of the hawkers.
"Although police and BMC officials do not harass hawkers in Chembur, in other parts of the city harassment of the vendors is quite common," he said.
The Act, passed on March 3, 2014, allows issuing vending certificates/licenses up to a number equivalent to 2.5 per cent of a city's population.
PTI
Narendra Modi condemns atrocities on Dalits; promotes entrepreneurship among youngsters
News
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday reached out to Dalits across the country by condemning atrocities against them.
While addressing a gathering at the launch of a national SC/ST hub in Ludhiana, Punjab, the Prime Minister stressed on the need to promote entrepreneurship among the Dalit youngsters to empower them.
At a time when Dalits are voicing their anger against discrimination meted out to them by the upper castes across the country, PM Modi's words could provide "healing touch" to the aggrieved community.
The Prime Minister said his "head hangs in shame" over incidents of atrocities on Dalits that take place even after 70 years of Independence and called for more focused efforts to correct social anomalies.
Citing the example of Guru Gobind Singh in raising his voice against casteism and untouchability, Modi said: "We know that due to our societal anomalies, hearing out some incidents targeting our Dalit brothers even today, my head hangs in shame. After 70 years of Independence, we cannot wait longer".
Talking about the importance of entrepreneurship, Modi said the hub for scheduled castes and scheduled tribe would help Dalits and Adivasis become entrepreneurs so that they can provide jobs to others.
"We will have to sharpen the focus of our direction. The aspirations of a Dalit or an Adivasi exceed those of other youth in the country. If they get an opportunity they will not lag behind in changing the fortunes of India," the Prime Minister added.
This is what Modi tweeted about the importance of installing business acumen among the Dalits:
Emphasised on the need to harness a spirit of entrepreneurship among Dalit youngsters so that they become job creators & innovators. October 18, 2016
At the programme in Ludhiana, spoke on the key role of MSME sector in the transformation of Indian economy. https://t.co/um1Qybj8Ri pic.twitter.com/RSxzIDaRu7 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) October 18, 2016
Modi also mentioned that under the Startup India, Standup India scheme, 1.25 lakh branches of nationalised banks in the country have been directed to sanction loans up to Rs 1 crore to at least one woman, and one person each belonging to scheduled caste and scheduled tribe categories, adding that the move can help create 3.75 lakh such entrepreneurs.
"I have requested the state governments that 4 per cent should be procured from goods manufactured by Dalits to encourage them," Modi said.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Wednesday, October 19, 2016, 12:28 [IST]
As the countdown clock struck zero, rocket of Aakash BYJUS took off from Bandra Bandstand
Former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira arrested by Hyderabad Police
India
oi-PTI
Hyderabad, Oct 19 Former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira and three others accused in a case of Rs 400-crore alleged fraud involving the multi-level-marketing company QNet have been taken into custody by Hyderabad Police and brought here from Mumbai.
A Hyderabad Police team had last week submitted an application seeking their custody in connection with the case registered by them.
A Mumbai court then granted transit remand and the Hyderabad Police took them into custody.
"The four directors of the company, including Michael Ferreira, have been brought to Hyderabad from Mumbai on warrant," a senior police official attached to Central Crime Station (CCS), a wing of Hyderabad Police, said today.
They have been brought here as part of further investigation and will be interrogated, he said.
The Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) had taken them into custody on September 30 this year in connection with the QNet case.
The EOW has so far arrested 19 persons in the case. QNet and its franchisee firms allegedly sold products such as magnetic disks with 'healing' properties, herbal medicines and holiday schemes.
The company is accused of using the banned 'binary pyramid' model in its marketing schemes, apart from duping the investors.
The FIR was registered in Mumbai in August 2013 under the Prize, Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 and Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act.
Special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat had earlier told the court in Mumbai that Ferreira held 80 per cent shares in a franchisee of Hong Kong-based QNet.
QNet ran a 'Ponzi scheme', seeking investments between Rs 30,000 to Rs 7.5 lakh, the prosecutor had said, adding the investors never got the high returns they were promised.
The money earned by QNet was "laundered" and diverted out of the country, Gharat had told the court, adding that Ferreira's interrogation was necessary to find its "destination".
Here is the brief history of the case:
Michael Ferreira was booked by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) for the QNET case. He had surrendered in a special Maharashtra Protection of Interests of Depositors Act court after his anticipatory bail was rejected by the Supreme Court.
The FIR was registered in August 2013 under the Prize, Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 and Maharashtra Protection Of Interest Of Depositors Act.
Eight victims had lodged complaints with the Central Crime Sleuths against the Hong Kong-based QNET multilevel marketing company for duping them to the tune of several lakhs through various fraudulent investment schemes and by promising to provide e-commerce jobs.
It has been reported that nearly five lakh investors from across India have been cheated in this scam.
In an order on 6th of May 2016, Justice Mridula Bhatkar had said, "The motto of the company 'sell more, earn more' appears very attractive and innocuous. However, this motto is fully camouflaged. The company stands on a basic statement that people can be fooled. Thus, the true motto is 'sell more earn more' by fooling people. In fact it is a chain where a person is fooled and then he is trained to fool others to earn money. For that purpose, workshops are conducted where study and business material is provided with a jugglery of words, promises and dreams. Thus, the deceit and fraud is camouflaged under the name of e-marketing and business."
In this case so far 17 people have been arrested. The bank accounts of QNet, its representatives and associates have also been frozen with assets worth Rs 110 crore.
On Tuesday Enforcement Directorate for the same case also questioned Danesh Irani, son of actor Boman Irani. Danesh was asked to be present with his bank details and he was questioned for at least four hours as per the news details.
PTI
Tamil Nadu bandh over Cauvery issue today: All you need to know
SC order on Cauvery: Helpess Siddaramaiah says no water in Karnatakas reservoirs
News
oi-PTI
Bengaluru, Oct 19 Reacting to the Supreme Court order directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday said there was no water in the state's reservoirs.
"There is no water in our reservoirs, I have not yet seen the order copy. I will speak to the advocates after going through the order copy," he told reporters here.
The apex court today retained its direction to Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu till further orders and asked the two governments to ensure peace and harmony, saying citizens should not become law unto themselves.
"We intend to first adjudicate the issue of maintainability of appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. At this juncture, the interim order dated October 4 directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of water per day to Tamil Nadu will continue till further orders," the bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar said.
Made Gowda, President of Mandya Zilla Raitha Hitharakshana Samiti (MZRHS), which is spearheading the Cauvery agitation in Mandya, said, "We should maintain peace until tomorrow's hearing."
"The court might have asked us to release 2,000 cusecs of water to test Karnataka government's patience....If they again ask us to release water tomorrow, we can reject it.
There is no dharma in leaving water to them for crops, when we don't have it even for drinking," he added.
PTI
Lack of development in J&K for decades was one of the reasons behind rise of terrorism: Rajnath Singh
40 down and counting: Forces on the verge of wiping out Pakistani terrorists in Valley
Zargar, the man who massacred 40 Kashmiri Pandits, being re-launched by ISI
India
oi-Vicky
Ahmed Zargar of the Al-Umar-Mujaheedin may be a forgotten name in India today. Just to recall, he was one of the terrorists who was released in exchange during the Khandahar hijack incident along with Maulana Masood Azhar.
While Azhar returned to Pakistan and launched the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Zargar was told to lie low. Today the man responsible for killing 40 Kashmiri Pandits is back in business after being told by the ISI to relaunch his activities in Jammu and Kashmir.
The officials who are well-versed with terrorism in the Valley say that this man is dangerous. He may be a forgotten name today and that is why the ISI, with an intention of creating an element of surprise, is planning on activating him and his network.
He is responsible for the killing of nearly 40 Kashmiri Pandits. After his arrest in 1992, he was released in 1999 in exchange for the hostages aboard the IC-814. Zargar's operations are well known in Jammu and Kashmir.
He has been involved in large scale recruitment and had worked closely with the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front before splitting up.
He formed the Al-Umar-Mujaheedin. He was also responsible for the abduction of Rubaiya Saeed, sister of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti in 1989. Intelligence Bureau officials say that following his release, he was lying low.
However now, he has been told to step up operations in Jammu and Kashmir. He has been trying to activate his old contacts in the Valley. Residing in Pakistan occupied Kashmir, Zargar was recently contacted by the ISI and told to relaunch the outfit and operations in the Valley.
Further, the IB has also intimated security forces to be on the watch out for groups such as the Al-Badr, Ikhwan-ul-Mujahiddin and Al-Jihad. These are small groups that are present in PoK. They too would be launched into the Valley.
This is being done as there is too much heat on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad who are finding it difficult to operate in the Valley today.
IB officials say that the ISI is known to launch unknown groups into India when the heat on their main proxies in very high.
OneIndia News
Christians celebrate as Iraq forces enter town near Mosul
International
oi-PTI
Arbil (Iraq), Oct 19: Hundreds of displaced Iraqi Christians danced and sang to celebrate an Iraqi military operation to retake their community's main hub of Qaraqosh from jihadists.
Iraqi Christian men, women and children -- some of them holding candles -- gathered at Mar Shimon church in the Kurdish capital of Arbil to pray and celebrate, an AFP correspondent reported yesterday.
Iraqi federal forces on Tuesday moved deep into Qaraqosh, a town that lies around 15 kilometres (10 miles) southeast of Mosul and was seized by the Islamic State jihadist group in August 2014.
"Today is a happy moment. There is no doubt our land will be liberated and we thank God, Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary," said Hazem Djedjou Cardomi, a journalist among the crowd.
The evening gathering was organised in spite of what remained a fluid situation in Qaraqosh, with Iraqi forces taking position in several neighbourhoods but IS fighters potentially still holed up in others.
Qaraqosh had a population of around 50,000 people prior to an August 2014 offensive across the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul that forced almost every resident to flee. The overwhelming majority of Qaraqosh residents were Christians, making it the largest Christian town in Iraq.
"We have been through a lot of suffering and today we are looking forward to returning to our region as soon as possible," Cardomi said.
Also present at the joyous gathering in Arbil, the nearby capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region to which most displaced Christians fled two years ago, was George Djahola, a Syriac father.
"The people had this idea to celebrate when we heard this morning about the liberation... or at least the army's progress and entry into Qaraqosh, the first Christian town in the Nineveh Plain," he told AFP.
"Over the past two years, people were alive but their joy was not complete. They want to return to their homes, their land -- even if they have been destroyed -- and live in peace in their town," he said.
Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi federal forces on Monday launched a major offensive aimed at retaking Mosul, the second city and last major remaining IS stronghold in the country.
AFP
Fact Check: Did Trump thank Musk for welcoming him back to Twitter
Trump promises Hindu holocaust memorial in Washington DC if he wins
Endorse Trump, Hillary on Facebook now
International
oi-IANS
By Ians English
New York, Oct 19: Facebook on Wednesday rolled out a new feature which lets users endorse US presidential candidates -- Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and even third-party candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.
To activate this feature, go to any candidate's Facebook page. Click "Endorsements" in the left-hand column and add your own endorsement.
Facebook's Help Centre has detailed instructions on how to make endorsements, Tech Crunch reported.
Users can choose to make endorsements public to everyone, who visits the candidate's page.
"You can also make your endorsement (visible) only to your friends and family," the report added.
Facebook also added an "Issues" tab to the candidates' pages.
It allows candidates to list directly in search results their positions on a variety of issues.
IANS
Final Presidential Debate: Will Trump, Clinton, be able to set aside their personal grudges?
International
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia
Washington, Oct 19 The stage is set for the final US presidential debate, the last opportunity for the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, to save his "floundering" campaign.
The third and final presidential debate is scheduled at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Wednesday evening (9PM US timing)
A lot is at stake for Trump as the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, has managed to garner handsome leads in most of the national polls.
Please have some policy discussion
Echoing the sentiments of the voters of the United States, an article by CNBC wondered if the final debate will be different than the first two, where candidates were mostly engaged in personal attacks.
This time everyone wants to see the two candidates engaging in some policy discussion.
Details about the debate
To know in depth about the debate, its format, timings and other vignettes read this article by the Mirror.
"The final debate will have the same format as the first - with six fifteen-minute segments. The moderator will be Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace," writes the Mirror.
When will Trump stop whining?
As Trump continued "grumbling" about "rigged" elections, President Barack Obama took a jibe at the Republican presidential nominee. Obama asked Trump to stop "whining" and trying to discredit the election", writes The New York Times.
Trump continues attacking
Who can stop Trump? Not even Obama, as Trump continued with his attack against Clinton. This is what he posted on Twitter:
Hillary is the most corrupt person to ever run for the presidency of the United States. #DrainTheSwamp pic.twitter.com/xA3YO8YzCq Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2016
OneIndia News
Video: Why Chinas former president was escorted out from stage
India can only 'bark' about trade deficit: Chinese media
International
oi-IANS
By Ians English
Beijing, Oct 19 The call for boycott of Chinese goods on Indian social media is "rabble rousing" as Indian products cannot compete with those of China, the state-owned media said on Wednesday.
In an acerbic op-ed, Global Times launched a blitzkrieg of sort against India, saying New Delhi can only "bark" and do nothing about the growing trade deficit between two countries.
China's continued opposition to India's effort to declare Pakistan-based militants as international terrorists has angered many Indians who have called for a boycott of Chinese products.
It described Prime Minster Narendra Modi's pet project "Make in India" as "impractical".
The daily warned Chinese companies not to invest in India as it would be "suicidal" to put money in a country where corruption is high and the workforce is not hard working.
"There has been a lot of talk recently in the Indian media as well as on social media about boycotting Chinese products. It's just rabble rousing," it said.
"Indian manufacturing cannot compete at all with Chinese products, for various reasons."
The daily said that India was to yet build roads and highways and had chronic shortage of power and water supply.
"Worst of all, corruption is highly prevalent from top to bottom in every single government department."
It slammed India for courting the US.
"The US is no one's friend. The Americans are just indulging India in order to contain China, as the US is jealous of China's development and global power.
"India has enough money but the majority of it is concentrated with politicians, bureaucrats and a few crony capitalists. Indian elites don't want to spend funds available in the country, which in reality is the taxpayers' money but is utilized by the Indian establishment for its own personal consumption.
"Because of this, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started impractical schemes like 'Make in India'. The reason is that the Indian establishment wants foreign companies to invest in the country.
"It would be completely suicidal for Chinese companies to put their money in India by starting manufacturing projects there. The labour class in India is not very hard working or efficient," it argued.
The daily said that instead of opening shops in India, Chinese companies should set up their manufacturing units in China.
The world's third-largest smartphone maker, Huawei, opened its manufacturing unit in India last month.
"In any case, Indian businessmen flock to China in large numbers to buy products from China and sell them in India. This model suits China, so why disturb it by going and wasting money setting up manufacturing facilities in India?
"Let the Indian authorities bark about the growing trade deficit with China. The fact of the matter is they cannot do anything about it."
IANS
Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence
IS leaders 'abandon' Mosul as Iraq forces close in
International
oi-PTI
Qayyarah (Iraq), Oct 19: Jihadist leaders are fleeing Mosul, a top US general in the coalition battling the Islamic State group said today as Iraqi forces closed in on the northern city.
Mosul was where IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his "caliphate" two years ago but is now the group's last major stronghold in Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who announced the launch of a broad offensive to retake the city on Monday, visited the front line today. In the biggest Iraqi military operation in years, forces have retaken dozens of villages, mostly south and east of Mosul, and are planning multiple assaults for Thursday.
"We are telling Daesh (IS) that their leaders are abandoning them. We've seen a movement out of Mosul," said Major General Gary Volesky, who heads the anti-IS coalition's land component.
He told reporters in a video briefing that the many foreigners among the 3,000 to 4,500 IS fighters would likely end up forming the core of the holdout jihadist force.
Obama confident of driving ISIS out of Iraq's Mosul
Volesky noted that the Iraqis would screen anyone leaving Mosul, and attempts by foreign fighters to blend in to an expected exodus of displaced people would be thwarted. "It's difficult for them to blend into the local population based on the number of different types of foreign fighters that there are," he said.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians were still trapped in the city with dwindling supplies, many sheltering in basements as air strikes intensified on IS targets. "We couldn't sleep last night because of the air strikes.
The explosions were huge," said Abu Saif, a 47-year-old resident contacted by AFP. "Many families are starting to run out of some basic food goods, there is no commercial activity in Mosul -- the city is cut off from the world," he said.
East of Mosul, forces were poised for an assault on Qaraqosh, which lies about 15 kilometres away and was once Iraq's largest Christian town. News of the move to recapture Qaraqosh sparked jubilation among Christians who had fled the town, with many dancing and singing in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil on Tuesday night.
Units from Iraq's elite counter-terrorism service, which has done the heavy lifting in most recent operations against IS, were poised to flush jihadists out of the town, officers said. "We are surrounding Hamdaniya now," Lieutenant General Riyadh Tawfiq, commander of Iraq's ground forces, told AFP at the main staging base of Qayyarah, referring to the district that includes Qaraqosh.
"There are some pockets (of resistance), some clashes, they send car bombs -- but it will not help them," he said. Qaraqosh was the largest of many Christian towns and villages seized by the jihadists who swept across the Nineveh plain east of Mosul in August 2014.
AFP
At UNSC, US calls on world to tell Russia to stop its nuclear threats
US welcomes lifting of restrictions on NGOs by India
International
oi-PTI
Washington, Oct 19: The United States has welcomed the Indian government's recent decision to lift the restrictions from some NGOs, saying the move will strengthen civil society in the country.
"We certainly would welcome and do welcome any actions by government that support and strengthen civil society. I'd refer you to the Government of India with respect to any specific actions that have been taken regarding the NGOs in India," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday.
"But we want to see a strong, healthy civil society throughout the world. And that certainly extends to India, which is a strong democracy," he said.
"We believe that a strong and vibrant civil society only strengthens that democracy," he added.
Toner said the US supports the very good work of many of these NGOs that they play in strengthening civil society. But it is a for the Government of India to work with them with regard to taxes and other regulations that te NGOs need to comply with on ground.
"We are very clear not just with respect to India, but with many countries around the world, about our support for NGOs and the important role that they play in any democratic society.
"And in so far as we push for a more welcoming environment for these NGOs to work in, that's just the way we work," the deputy spokesman said.
PTI
When is Dev Diwali 2022? November 7th or November 8th? Know timings, significance and more
Seven-judge Supreme Court bench starts hearing on 'Hindutva' judegment
New Delhi
oi-PTI
New Delhi, Oct 19: The Supreme Court on Tuesday commenced hearing to revisit its two-decade-old 'Hindutva' judgement for an authoritative pronouncement on electoral law categorising misuse of religion for electoral gains as "corrupt practice".
A seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur decided to go ahead with the hearing, ignoring the request of some parties in the matter to involve Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi for his assistance.
"Are you saying that in every case which relates to interpretation of a legislation, assistance of the Attorney General is needed," the bench, also comprising justices Madan B Lokur, SA Bobde, AK Goel, UU Lalit, DY Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao, asked the counsel who had raised the issue of assistance by the top law officer.
The bench began the hearing grappling with issues which could be examined by it and wanted to know whether some of them can be remanded back to a smaller bench of five or three judges.
Senior advocate Arvind Datar, who set the ball rolling at the crucial hearing, submitted that the case of his client BJP leader Abhiram Singh should be separated from this hearing as all the similarly situated people have already got relief from the apex court.
He said the appeal filed in 1992 by Singh, whose election to 1990 Maharashtra Assembly was set aside in 1991 by the Bombay High Court, has wrongly been tagged to the main petition of Narayan Singh whose appeal by the five judge bench was referred to the seven judges.
Datar submitted that the high court had set aside his election as it was alleged that other BJP leaders in their speeches had referred to religion to garner votes for him.
The senior advocate said there were 10 such appeals against the high court order and, except in two, the election of others were restored by the apex court and therefore, Abhiram Singh should be treated on the same footing and his appeal should be remanded back to three-judge bench.
He made reference to the similar relief secured by former Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi contending that there was no conflict in that judgement.
Datar said in 1990, two such speeches were made, one by late Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray and another by late Pramod Mahajan in which reference to 'Hindutva' was made to garner votes for the Shiv Sena and BJP candidates.
PTI
For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications
Story first published: Wednesday, October 19, 2016, 7:42 [IST]
Foreign Secretary Jaishankar has differed from Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on surgical strike. Jaishankar has said that the army had carried out target specific, limited-calibre, counter-terrorist operations across the LoC in the past too but this is for the first time the government has gone public about it.
Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India
Why gun snatching in J&K has become a routine affair
Srinagar
oi-Vicky
Srinagar, Oct 19: Gun snatching incidents in Jammu and Kashmir have become a routine today. Fresh incidents of terrorists snatching guns from security personnel in the Valley have been on the rise following a video by the Hizbul Mujahideen.
In the video, the Hizbul Mujahideen commander urges the youth to snatch weapons from government forces.The Indian army has expressed concern over such incidents.
There have been at least three such incidents in the past two months. Officials while raising concern over such incidents say that the Hizbul Mujahideen has called for snatching of guns. During the unrest in the Valley, the recruitment of youth into the outfit had gone up three folds.
Officials say that due to the sudden rise in the recruitments, there is a shortage of weapons in the outfit and hence such incidents of weapon snatching are taking place. Such incidents are also planned with a view of embarrassing the security personnel, officials also say.
Also read: Valley unrest: With dreams in their eyes, Kashmiri students head to Jammu
Since July, militants have so far decamped with more than 55 service rifles.
The Indian army has expressed concern and says that it would be working closely with the local police who have been the targets of such incidents.
General Officer Commanding, Chinar Corps Commander, Lt. General Satish Dua said, that the Army is working closely with the Jammu and Kashmir Police to bring normalcy in the State. However, the incidents of rifle-snatching are a cause of concern for the Army, he also said.
OneIndia News
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Opalesque Industry Update - Jerseys finance industry facilitates almost 190bn of foreign investment into the European Union (excluding the UK), supporting in the order of 88,000 jobs across those same member States, according to an independent report launched today. Jersey also supports an estimated 250,000 British jobs. A Jersey Finance-commissioned report, entitled Jerseys Value to Europe, has been published by Capital Economics, and demonstrates the vital contribution the jurisdiction makes to the economies of the European Union. Meanwhile, a separate report, also launched today from Capital Economics and entitled Jerseys Value to Britain, builds on previous research undertaken in 2013 to outline the current value of Jersey to the UK. Taken together, they provide a comprehensive summary of Jerseys total value to the EU, be it in terms of jobs, investment or extra tax income. The reports main findings are: Jersey is a conduit for 188bn of foreign investment into the European Union (excluding the UK), equivalent to 4% of the blocs total net international investment
That investment supports in the order of 88,000 European jobs, in addition to those created solely in the UK
Around one third of all fund assets administered and managed in Jersey are located in EU countries other than the UK
Looking at the UK, Jersey is estimated to be a conduit for almost 500 billion of foreign investment into the country, equivalent to 5% of the total stock of foreign owned assets in the country
Jersey supports an estimated 250,000 British jobs, of which 190,000 are from foreign investment alone, and adds 14bn to the UK economy The reports also reinforce how Jerseys benefit to the UK and the rest of the EU far outweighs any potential costs in terms of foregone tax revenues to the continent. Geoff Cook, CEO of Jersey Finance, said: Jersey has the flexibility and freedom to provide the taxation, regulatory and supervisory regimes required by clients with cross-border asset portfolios. That is why Jersey has become a leading international financial centre. And even though its footprint is nowhere near as large as centres such as Luxembourg and Switzerland, the Island has attracted a mix of skills and financial businesses that account for a quarter of its 59,000 jobs and two-fifths of its economic activity. Mark Pragnell, Head of Commissioned Projects at Capital Economics, said: Jersey is unambiguously European, with unique relationships with the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union. Jerseys freedom to legislate and govern, and determine its own taxes, has allowed it to become established as a leading centre for international financial services, one whose expertise benefits all the constituent countries of the EU. Jersey was also featured in an Opalesque Roundtable, which can be downloaded here: Article source - Opalesque is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
Rolf Majcen with his trophy Rolf Majcen with his trophy
The Shanghai World Financial Centreis 495 meters high. In this race, runners had to run up 100 floors, 2744 stairs and474 meters in elevation.Majcen finished the race in 18:17 miinutes.
It was his 132nd stair climb all over the world and his 61st top 3 result. Over his (running) carreer, he was able to run up 83 different building on 4 continents. And he wont stop: already next Saturday he will compete again in another stair climb in Chongqing
Rolf Majcen is theLegal & Compliance Officer of Austrian Alternative Investment Fund ManagerFTC Capital, which is specializedin Managed Futures Funds. Rolf Majcen is currently trying to open the UCITS directive to allow UCITS to invest in liquid AIFs. He says the EU commission read his legal opinion, which was published in Austrias media "Bankarchiv, with "great interest." Let's hope for the best...!
Since my sister's brain injury eleven years ago I have spent more time in hospitals and emergency rooms than I care to remember. During that time I have noticed a frightening decline in the level of care my sister and other patients who are unable to speak for themselves receive.
Perhaps a knee-jerk reaction to what I've observed would be to say that it's all due to "Obamacare"--but that doesn't jibe with my own experience. I began noticing the decline in hospital care long before the Obama administration passed its healthcare legislation. That is not to say that there aren't forces out there so hell-bent on seeing Obamacare fail that they'd have no problem seeing to it that care is withheld from those who need it most. It also would be easy to blame the problem on too few doctors to handle the patient load, or on staffing shortages for nurses or nurse assistants.
While doctors with too many patients and nurse staffing shortages both contribute to the decline in patient care, the problem I am seeing goes well beyond those factors. It seems to reflect both a lack of training in how to care for and treat patients with disabilities and conditions like dementia, and also an outright lack of common sense.
For example, you cannot expect someone who is not able to speak or to use their hands to push the call button to let you know they need to be changed or are in need of some other assistance. Only today, my sister found herself in just such jeopardy. Her mattress/bed malfunctioned, and she was pulled down into it. Her upper body was trapped down at the head of the mattress and her nasal tube pulled taut across her neck, while her legs were up at normal height. To say the least, this was a dangerous position for someone with a feeding tube or a high risk of aspiration.
Other things are commonly neglected that are, or should be, common-sense patient care--from turning on the television or turning up the volume, to opening the blinds or turning on the room lights during the day, or even to equipping patients with their eye glasses. I have come into my sister's hospital room on an overcast day or just before sunset, and found her in a dark room without her glasses. No one had thought to open the blinds that morning or to turn on the room lights as the skies turned overcast. No one had bothered, either, to turn on her television, so she had had to sit in a dark room all day staring at the wall. Whenever I walk into my sister's hospital room and see the look on her face that says "They forgot me," it first breaks my heart and then makes me angry.
When it comes to changing the dress of patients like my sister--those who are unable to move their limbs or who have contractures--I constantly see a lack of attention and common sense. In turning or moving a patient who is unable to actively assist you, it is imperative always to pay attention to the placement of their hands, arms, feet and face. As I've witnessed nursing technicians change and turn my sister, I've more than once had to call out to them to "Watch her foot!" "Watch her foot!" when her foot was caught between the bed and rail. Other times I've had to shout, "She can't breathe!" when her face was buried in the pillow. After every one of those episodes, I've been told, "Oh, its okay." No, it's not okay! A patient is crying out in pain, and no attendant bothers to check why she is crying out and why it was difficult to turn her!? And don't get me started on oral care--or should I say the lack thereof!
I do understand that most hospitals are dealing with staffing shortages. However, most are using travel nurses to cover the shortfall, so there is no excuse. I in fact know of one northern Virginia hospital where about ninety-percent of the nursing staff consists of travel nurses. There are, however, problems with travel nurses. In my experience, they do not seem to have the same loyalty or buy-in to the hospitals they are contracted to as do permanent members of a hospital nursing staff. Perhaps that is because travel nurse contracts at a given hospital are usually for no longer than a year. Moreover, very few travel nurses demonstrate the same level of experience or training as the staff nurses at hospitals. That may be because, in many fields, workers contracted from the outside either do not have or get the ongoing mandatory training required of permanent employees at most institutions today.
With all that said, it is urgent that doctors and nurses of all stripes up their game in patient care. Most people are not able, and should not have, to sit all day in the hospital with their loved ones in order to ensure that the room lights or the television are turned on for them. Yet, in my experience, it seems that more and more hospitals now almost expect them to do exactly that. Things have got to the point where technicians are leaving their duties without giving certain treatments if I am not there to assist them, or my sister is never moved out of her bed and into a chair unless I'm there to do it myself.
The sad and most disturbing aspect of this decline in the level of care for the disabled is that it is just the tip of the iceberg. I have provided only a snapshot of the many ways in which hospitals and the healthcare industry are failing disabled patients, especially those on Medicare or Medicaid. Based on my experience, an increasing number of doctors and hospitals seem to no longer care about patients with disabilities, and have simply written them off. As two doctors at one hospital told me, "I don't understand why we are doing all these tests. Even if we find something we won't do anything [by way of treatment], because it won't cure her underlying brain injury."
Here's a tip for those doctors and others who think like them. Patients with disabilities are people too and deserve to be treated as such. Disabled lives matter. God forbid that one of your own loved ones suffers a debilitating injury or illness and is then subject to the same kind of care I've described. It would behoove healthcare and medical professionals to (1) treat all patients as they would want their closest loved ones to be treated, and (2) remember karma is a b*****.
When it comes to sexual predators, there should be no political bright line test to determine who gets a free pass and who goes to jail based on which candidate is better suited for office.
Yet almost 20 years after Bill Clinton became the first and only sitting president to be sued for sexual harassment and impeached for lying under oath about his sexual escapades while in office, the Left and the Right are still playing politics with women's rights.
I should know.
As one of Paula Jones' lawyers in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton, I saw first-hand how quickly Hillary Clinton and the nation's leading women's rights groups demonized any woman who dared to accuse Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct while turning a blind eye to a long list of incidents involving groping, propositioning, and pressuring women for sexual favors.
Trust me, it was a very long list.
I also witnessed first-hand the hypocrisy of the Religious Right, which was eager to stand in judgment over Clinton for his marital infidelity, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the indiscretions of other conservative politicians in their midst.
Fast forward 20 years, and the women's rights groups that were silent when Bill Clinton was being outed as a sexual predator have suddenly found their voice and their outrage in the face of accusations that Donald Trump groped and kissed women without their consent. Likewise, the religious groups that were aghast over Clinton's sexual immorality have somehow created a sliding scale of sin that allows them to absolve Trump of his own indiscretions.
It's like being in the Twilight Zone.
Only instead of Rod Serling's imaginary "land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas," we're trapped in an all-too-real land of politics and lies, where freedom and integrity play second fiddle to ambition and greed.
Nothing is real.
This year's presidential contest and its candidates have, through their double-talking and lies, pulled back the curtain to reveal that what we see is all part of an elaborate hoax, a cruel game where "we the people" are just pawns to be used, abused, discarded and demonized when convenient.
All this talk about sexual predators is just so much political maneuvering to score points off one another. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump care one whit about the victims of sexual harassment.
Frankly, they don't seem to care much about the rest of the populace, either.
For all intents and purposes, we're all victims of a perverse, perverted, psychotic mindset that views the citizenry as lesser beings: lacking in value, unworthy of respect, and completely undeserving of the legal rights and protections that should be afforded to all Americans.
This is what happens when politics is allowed to trump principle: "we the people" lose.
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From Media Matters
Like everything else about Donald Trump's vitriolic campaign, his attacks on journalists, and the way those assaults are being fervently amplified by Trump's whipped-up supporters, have become genuinely frightening during the finals weeks of the Republican's faltering run.
Fronting a nihilistic campaign that seeks to do lasting damage to our electoral and democratic process, Trump has shifted his all-encompassing war on the media onto more dangerous terrain this month. Graduating from his previous claims that reporters are "disgusting" and "horrible people," Trump now insists they're all part of the "rigged" infrastructure this election cycle that's conspiring against the former beauty pageant owner.
Forget blaming the messenger -- Trump's now trying to bury the messenger. And his fans want to help.
In addition to lobbing regular abuse at journalists on social media, Trump and his supporters have waged their vendetta at the candidate's rallies, where journalists are corralled behind metal barricades. And his fans have become increasingly unhinged. "The traveling press corps covering Donald Trump's rally in Cincinnati had to be escorted out the back door of the event to a heavily guarded motorcade after being greeted with boos, middle fingers and a seemingly 'arena-wide' chant of 'Tell the truth!' from a crowd of 15,000 people, according to a pool report," People recently reported.
Meanwhile, journalists have been sharing disturbing rally snapshots on Twitter:
From NBC News' Ali Vitali:
CNN's Jim Acosta:
Washington Post's Jose DelReal:
None of this is new, unfortunately. On Monday, The New York Times published a piece headlined "Criticism of the News Media Takes on a More Sinister Tone," which raised concerns about "dangerous" anger targeted at reporters.
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On October 23, 2016 Lithuania will hold the second round of parliamentary elections, with 68 constituencies voting for a new parliament. As the results came in for the first round, it was clear that the situation in the country will change completely no matter who wins.
The Centrist Homeland Union (the traditional opposition of the ruling Social Democrats) together with the Peasant/Greens Union have a chance to form a ruling coalition. Yet sociologists failed to predict the support of 21.64% of voters to Gabrielyus Landsbergis' Conservatives. Ramunas Karbauskis' Peasant/Green party took second place with 21.56% of votes.
Some experts are sure that the Peasant/Greens Union will form a coalition with the Conservatives and the Liberals (S...judis liberals). However, despite the defeat of the Social Democrats (LSDP), that took third place with a score of 14.43% they still have a chance to convince the union's leadership to unite with them in a new coalition.
Analysis of preliminary results shows not only the defeat of ruling parties: Lithuanians voted for changes in the political life of the country. They are sick and tired of politicians' promises that were no more than leaves without figs. That is why ordinary people voted for opposition parties, believing that they will do real things. But what can we expect from these political powers? First of all we should not write off the fact that they will try to achieve the goals they announced. For example, Lithuanians should be concerned by the call to reduce the number of teachers, a statement made by Gabrielius Landsbergis, who is convinced that Lithuania has too many teachers.
The second shocking thing is the fact that Lithuanians voted for war parties. All the winning parties support increasing military expenditures and compulsory military service. Conservatives propose to enlist all people without exception immediately after graduation. Are young people ready for this? Such initiatives may lead to an increase in emigration.
In other words, the political wind in Lithuania is certain to bring changes which could become controversial.
The American criminal justice system, despite proclamations of it being the "greatest system in the world," is quite unforgiving. With 5% of the world's population, the US incarcerates 25% of the world's prisoners. Prosecutors, particularly in federal courts, are quite adept at criminalizing even seemingly inconsequential acts.
As Donald Trump's past business practices come under increased scrutiny during this election cycle, a question emerging is how he has thus far escaped criminal prosecution. How can someone operate a scam "university" without criminal, most likely federal, charges ultimately being filed? The facts are not in dispute. Monies were obtained under false pretenses as it is not bona fide a university. Both the mails and internet were used to further the scheme. A first year law student could likely obtain an indictment for mail and wire fraud under such circumstance.
Trump's operation of his foundation, purportedly a charity, presents another straightforward case of fraud. It is uncontroverted that Trump directed income to his "charity," and then used these purported donations for personal expenses. One need not be a federal prosecutor to recognize a prima facie case of tax fraud.
But where are the federal prosecutors? Federal prisons are packed with people serving decades-long sentences for arguably far less egregious acts. Laws governing mail and wire fraud have been held to be interpreted as widely as possible, transforming them into all-encompassing catchalls.
One aspect of Trump's life that has been underreported is his good fortune to have a sitting federal judge for an older sister. Maryanne Trump Barry was appointed to the federal bench in New Jersey by Ronald Regan in 1983. Bill Clinton elevated her to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999.
Donald Trump has been loath to admit aiding the effort to appoint his sister to the federal bench, but MaryanneTrump Barrie has acknowledged as much. The New York Times reported that:
According to a person involved in the effort to appoint Ms. Barry, who discussed the clandestine strategy on the condition of anonymity, Mr. Trump had his lawyer, Roy M. Cohn, a politically connected former counsel to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, lobby Edwin Meese III, then a senior White House aide, to put his sister on the bench. "I'm no different than any other brother that loves his sister," Mr. Trump said when asked about Mr. Cohn's pressure on the Reagan administration. "My sister got the appointment totally on her own merit." Ms. Barry herself has given her brother some of the credit for her appointment. "There's no question Donald helped me get on the bench," she was quoted as saying in Gwenda Blair's "The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire. I was good, but not that good."
So how can having a high-ranking federal judge as a sister be helpful in escaping the scrutiny of typically tenacious federal prosecutors?
The Bridgegate scandal currently unfolding in a Newark, NJ federal court, the very same court in which Maryanne Trump Barrie began her judicial career, offers some insight into the discretionary power of federal judges and prosecutors. Governor Chris Christie has been identified as a co-conspirator by both the prosecution and defense, yet remains uncharged federally. Defense and prosecution witnesses have offered testimony about Christie's direct participation in the conspiracy to obstruct the George Washington Bridge. Prosecution witnesses in federal court are well-prepped before offering testimony, evidencing more confirmation that federal prosecutors are on-board with the assertion that Christie was an active participant in the scheme.
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If you peruse our collection of Free Online History Courses, youll find plenty of enriching history courses from top-notch universities, all presented in a fairly conventional style. And certainly nothing like the short history lesson youll find above. Created by American musician and video blogger Bill Wurtz, this History of Japan walks idiosyncratically through 40,000 years of history in 9 minutes, covering the rise of technology and religion, the influence of China on Japans language and brand of buddhism, the rise of the samurai, the countrys vexed relationship with the West, the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and more. Released in February, the video has already clocked more than 17 million views on YouTubepretty good considering that Wurtz created the video as a prototype to see if I could do a long video in the first place. In a recent Q & A, Wurtz suggested that he may well try to revive another project hes been working ona History of the United States. Stay tuned for that.
You can read a script for the History of Japan video here.
Note: The Great Courses is now offering a 30-Day Free Trial, giving you access to a video library of great courses. If youre not familiar with them, The Great Courses travels across the US, recording great professors lecturing on topics that will appeal to any lifelong learner. If youre interested in streaming their courses onlinewhenever you want and however much you wantget details on their a 30-Day Free Trial here.
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Smart Set-top Box And Dongle Market size and Key Trends in terms of volume and value 2016-2026
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Smart set top box is a part of Internet of Things (IoT). Smart set top box enables the users to access online videos, photos and apps that are specifically optimised for TV. In addition, smart set top box has features that enables the users to store and display the content through connection of external storage devices.Benefits of Smart set top box:Online streaming of videos, music, photos, and other web content without any subscription of cable or satellite TV.Display quality of up to 4K.Provide access to DVR capabilities.Display of content through external storage like USB.Social connectivity through optimized apps.Access to weather updates, news and financial information through TV.Apart from set box, dongle can be directly plugged into TV to enable the content access from internet.Request Free Report Sample@Smart set top box & Dongle Market: Drivers and RestraintIncrease in the number of smart homes, growth in adoption rate of smart technologies, and rise in demand for video on demand services & video recording are the major drivers for smart set-top box & dongle market.Smart TV manufacturers are deploying different types of interface and software in their products, as there is lack of standard for software, operating system and interface implementation in TV. Most of the TVs are supporting popular services that includes Netflix, Hulu, Amazon video and Pandora, where as some manufacturers are supporting only some of the most popular apps such as Facebook. The absence of standard operating system and interface to run the online content on TV, are the major challenges for smart set-top box and dongle market.Smart set top box & Dongle market: SegmentationSmart set-top box & dongle market can be segmented on the basis of product and feature.On the basis of product, the smart set-top box and dongle market can be categorised in to smart set -top box and dongle. Dongle was the emerging market due to compatibility, price and other relatively more user friendly features of the device.On the basis of feature, the smart set-top box & dongle market can be classified in to operating system, video quality and memory. Operating system segment can be further bifurcated in to Android and Linux. On the basis of video quality, the smart set-top box & dongle market can be further categorised in to Full HD and UHD 4K. In 2015, Full HD was the dominant segment in overall smart set-top box & dongle market, where as UHD 4K was the emerging segment worldwide.Request For TOC@Segmentation on basis of regions:Smart set-top box & Dongle Market is sub-segmented into 7 key regions- North America, Latin America, East Europe, West Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East & Africa.Smart set top box & Dongle Market: Region wise outlookIn 2015, North America was dominating the overall smart set-top box & dongle market in terms of consumption. US was the leading market in the region as, major companies including Apple and Roku were launching the new generation devices in order to take maximum advantage of poor performance by Pay TV in the region.India and China were leading markets in Asia Pacific region. In 2015, Growth in china was driven by IPTV, where telecommunication companies were creating trend by pushing IPTV services in order to generate return on their investment in fibre to home.Europe was the emerging region for smart set-top box and dongle market as, the subscription of video on demand services had grown with the significant rate by end of 2014.Smart set top box & Dongle Market: Key PlayersApple Inc. (US), Google Inc. (US), Roku Inc.(US), Netflix (US), Amazon.com Inc.(US), Cisco Systems Inc. (US),NVIDIA Corporation (US), LG Corporation (South Korea), D-Link Corporation (Taiwan), Plex Inc. (US).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:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Business Intelligence Market will grow at a CAGR of around 8.4% between 2016 and 2021
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Zion Research has published a new report titled Global Business Intelligence Market by Mobile BI, Cloud BI, and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2015-2021. According to the report, the global business intelligence market accounted USD 16.33 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach USD 26.50 billion by 2021, growing at a CAGR of around 8.4% between 2016 and 2021.Get a copy of free Sample Report @Business Intelligence defined as the process of analyzing huge volumes of enterprise data usually stored in large databases such as data warehouses. BI detects the hidden trends and patterns in data, track the business performance and assist the business users to make improved decisions based on real-time data. From a marketing stand point, Business Intelligence can be described as a strategic management tool that can support executives and business users to make improved decisions that are necessary for day to day operations, tactical and strategic planning.Applying BI to each of department like (Marketing, HR, Payroll, CRP etc) can provide ultimate flexible analysis of raw data. BI provides end to end approach to store and present data. For example, Companies can compare their respective revenues per quarter or month with peers, so that they can retrospect there strategic decisions or policies. Business intelligence helps companies understand their customers. This is possibly the most important reason for business intelligence.A good business intelligence tool will allow employees to gain imminent into key marketing questions such as who are best customers, how sales can be increased through new sell opportunities, or what products are trending. With business intelligence tool companies can plan marketing campaigns accordingly based on real data. Business Intelligence helps companies make better decisions. Other drivers are like the software will improve the visibility of processes and make it possible to identify any areas that need development.Know more before buying this report @By type segment, the mobile BI (MBI) segment accounted for more than 20% of the global Business Intelligence market in 2015. Mobile BI enables the mobile workforce to get business insights by analyzing data with the help of applications for mobile and smart devices. The growing smartphone adoption is likely to appear as a key driver for this segment during the forecast period. Mobile business intelligence is software that extends desktop business intelligence (BI) applications so that they can be used on a mobile device. MBI applications optimize traditional BI reports so they can be viewed easily on small screen. It is ideal for displaying key performance indicators (KPIs) and alerts on small screens with simple charts, graphs, and sparklines. An additional advantage of MBI is that it allows data that is captured by the mobile device to be incorporated on-the-fly so that reports are currents and mobile workers can make informed decisions in real time.By deployment segment, the on-premise segment accounted for 86% of the market share in 2015. However, this segment is projected to witness a decline in its shares by the end of the forecast period. In this segment, software is installed on the server of an enterprise. It requires more protection but is highly secure and easy to manage.North America is expected to be the largest market for BI due to major growth in the market. It accounted for around 56% of the markets share globally. Asia Pacific is expected to manifest high-growth over the foreseeable future due to rapid industrialization in the region and growing number of start-ups focusing on smartphone application development. Major industry participants in this include Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Microstrategy, GoodData, Targit, SAS, SAP, and Tableau Software among others.Browse detail report with in-depth TOC @Business Intelligence Market: Technology Segment AnalysisMobile BICloud BISocial BIBusiness Intelligence Market: Deployment Segment AnalysisCloud BIOn-Premises BIBusiness Intelligence Market: Region Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilThe Middle East & AfricaPurchase a direct copy of report with TOC @About Us:Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact Us:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite: